Writing Rant: The Masses

This is a phrase I saw in damn near half of your papers:

Propaganda was used to reach the masses. (or something like that)

Can someone please tell me where you are picking up this phrase and what you think it means? Who are the masses ? Germans? Are Germans in a mass? Aren’t they, rather, a number of distinct social groups with different or competing interests? Otherwise why would propaganda have to target them in different ways? So how can we then call them “the masses” as if they are undifferentiated? If you were referring, for instance, to the urban working class in particular, perhaps it would make sense to say "the masses," as this might be the majority of the population. But no, you're often using the term to refer to the middle class, or to farmers in the rural areas.

I take it that you've adopted this term because of our concept, in U.S. liberalism-capitalism, that we are all one big group of equals. "The masses" is different from some unspecified set of experts or elites. But anyone who actually depends on the American people to act in certain ways, for instance politicians or commercial advertisers, knows that regardless of their equal political status (in the strictest sense), Americans comprise many different groups, ideas, and interests. They are not one block. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE MASSES. Maybe if we are in medieval Europe and you are referring to the peasantry? This concept makes no sense to me whatsoever. Maybe someone can explain it.

As for the papers otherwise:

You did pretty well with this assignment, on the whole. I don't think it turned out to be much "easier" than the last, nor do the grades reflect that (average 2.85 vs. 2.78, a slightly higher B-)... instead, I think it had some very different challenges, in particular the need to research a lot of possibilities and choose between them, and the need for concision. The more important thing is that I think a lot of you liked doing the assignment and got a lot out of it. (I also felt kind of vindicated, because I'm starting to see that the way I approached the Shakespeare assignment has been helpful to you going forward.)