A Story in Smoke, Mirrors, and Manufactured Memory
By A.L. Childers, author of
The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America
If you rise early enough—before the city yawns awake—and walk the quiet streets of any American town, you’ll hear it:
the soft hum of stories being sold.
Some come from billboards.
Some glow in storefronts.
And some rise from the vaulted halls of our schools, wrapped in the respectable perfume of “education,” though they are no different in purpose or design.
In truth, dear reader, advertising and history are not distant cousins.
They are twins.
Both industries create illusions.
Both manufacture consent.
Both decide what the masses should remember and what they should forget.
Both sell a narrative—
one to make you a customer,
the other to make you a citizen.
And neither has ever promised to tell you the truth.
This is not cynicism.
It is architecture.
Let me show you the scaffolding.
⭐ ACT I: Where Storytelling Beats Truth into Shape
Picture a dim-lit room, London-wet with fog… except this is not Dickens’ England.
This is a modern textbook committee meeting in Texas or Florida.
Behind closed doors, men in suits—politicians, lobbyists, corporate representatives—hold a red pen over American memory.
They are not historians.
They are not scholars.
They are marketers.
They ask:
- Does this version sell?
- Does it protect patriotic sentiment?
- Does it make people complacent?
- Does it maintain the illusion of innocence?
These are the same questions asked inside an advertising boardroom.
In fact—
they are the same boardrooms.
Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—
the three corporations that control 80% of American textbooks—
also operate massive advertising, consulting, and digital marketing divisions.
When they craft a history lesson, they craft it with the same hand that sells cereal, pharmaceuticals, and political candidates.
History is not written.
History is branded.
⭐ ACT II: A Product Called America
Advertising teaches you to want things.
History teaches you to believe things.
Both industries depend on repetition.
Both rely on emotional triggers.
Both shape identity.
And both have mastered the art of omission.
Take the Boston Tea Party—
Always taught as bold patriotism…
never as economic vandalism committed by wealthy merchants protecting their smuggling profits.
Take Thanksgiving—
Always gratitude and harmony…
never genocide and starvation.
Take the Civil War—
Always “a disagreement over states’ rights”…
never an economic fight to preserve slavery.
Advertising uses glossy slogans.
History uses glossy heroes.
Both are campaigns.
Both are propaganda.
Both are narratives designed for mass consumption.
This is precisely the topic of my book:
📘 The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America,
a documented autopsy of how corporations and political leaders crafted the stories we call “truth.”
Not to educate us.
To control us.
⭐ ACT III: The Machinery Behind the Curtain
Let’s pull back further.
✔ Advertising is funded by corporations.
✔ History textbooks are funded by the same corporations.
Advertising creates desire.
History creates devotion.
Advertising freezes you into a consumer.
History freezes you into a compliant citizen.
Both industries depend on people not questioning the narrative.
This is why real history—
the kind that bleeds, snarls, contradicts, exposes—
It is rarely allowed in classrooms.
The truths that would awaken a generation are the ones most aggressively cut:
- corporate crimes
- CIA coups
- Indigenous genocide
- labor union massacres
- pharmaceutical corruption
- political propaganda
- the myth of American innocence
These truths are bad for business.
Bad for loyalty.
Bad for branding.
And America is a brand.
⭐ ACT IV: The Evidence (The Receipts They Hope You Never Read)
📘 Lies My Teacher Told Me — James Loewen
Documents textbook falsification and political tailoring.
📘 The Revisionaries — PBS Documentary
Exposes Texas rewriting national history.
📘 A People’s History of the United States — Howard Zinn
Shows the narratives omitted from classrooms.
📘 New York Times (2019)
Found two versions of the same textbook—
one for California, one for Texas—
each telling a different America.
📘 Texas Board of Education Records
Show mandated changes on slavery, civil rights, climate, capitalism, and religion.
📘 Pearson & McGraw Hill Financial Statements
Prove billions in profits tied to curriculum influence.
📘 Corporate Advertising Archives
Reveals identical messaging strategies used in textbooks and brand marketing.
The machinery is real.
The pipeline is documented.
The manipulation is measurable.
This is not conspiracy.
This is capitalism.
⭐ ACT V: Why They Keep the Public Misinformed
Because critical thinkers do not make good consumers.
And educated citizens do not make obedient workers.
A miseducated nation is easier to:
✔ manipulate
✔ pacify
✔ distract
✔ divide
✔ exploit
When you control a child’s history book,
you control their worldview.
When you control their worldview,
you control their future.
It is the oldest trick in civilization:
Give the masses a story they can cling to,
And they will never realize the chains they wear.
⭐ ACT VI: Why My Books Exist (And Why They Hit a Nerve)
Everything I write—
from The Lies We Loved
to Silent Chains
to The Witch’s Almanac Cookbook (which teaches ancestral truth through food)
to Enchanted Realms and My Grandmother’s Witchy Medicine Cabinet—
—all of it exists for one reason:
🔥 To return power to the individual.
🔥 To expose the illusions sold to us.
🔥 To bring forgotten knowledge back to the people.
Because the truth is not hidden.
It’s advertised.
Discover how advertising and history operate as twin industries—shaping public belief, manufacturing national identity, and controlling collective memory. Explore the corporations, political influences, and propaganda strategies behind America’s textbooks in this Dickens-inspired deep dive by A.L. Childers.
⭐ ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A.L. Childers is a journalist, researcher, and author known for exposing the machinery behind American narratives. Her books—including The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America, Silent Chains, and her witchcraft & ancestral healing series—pull back the curtain on propaganda, power, and the forgotten wisdom of ordinary people. She believes truth belongs to the people—not the institutions that profit from distorting it.
⭐ DISCLAIMER
This article is based on verifiable historical documents, textbook committee archives, academic studies, media investigations, and corporate financial statements. It is intended for educational analysis, not as legal or professional advice. Readers are encouraged to explore all referenced sources directly.
