But there was a bigger picture that I didn't quite see, and that was the all-out war on meaning that this new stage of progressive-cloaked capitalism represented. In the end, what mattered most about those campaigns was the boldness with which they were broadcasting that, from here on out, nothing means anything anymore: if MLK and Gandhi and Bob Dylan can all be conscripted as neoliberal shills, then absolutely anything and anyone can be severed from their contexts and made to mean their precise opposite. The story beneath the story was the normalization of the disassociation between words from reality, which could only usher in the era of irony and flat detachment, because those seemed like the only self-respecting postures to adopt in a world in which everyone was lying all the time.

SEED: Potential essay angle: 'the all-out war on meaning' as a framework for understanding how brands and campaigns empty symbols of their content, using historical icons as shills.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 505