Good post, Norm.
Professional writers, salespeople and propagandists all draw from the same well. The techniques of social engineering are central to all three and ultimately, manipulation is the goal.
The average person will never delve into it because it is so foreign to their way of thinking. Which is why it is so effective. People want to believe. Like Fox Mulder. They could not live as they do if they had to consider that they may in fact be in a real world 1984. But they are.
So they accept the lies and the manipulation as a coping strategy and get mad when someone rips them from their protective bubble. But as long as people stay in it, the propagandists can manipulate the world around them to their ends unopposed.