However, I'm unsure if I can truly blame my social brethren for their infinite capacity for mindlessness.  Orwell, Huxley and Machiavelli were right - propagandizing a public is definitively simple.  Ten easy steps for a healthy dictatorship.  Here's how:

Step 1: Divide and conquer.  Ensure that your populace is given enough emotionally driven issues to stave off any potential allies.  Abortion, racism, sexism, (gay rights is especially effective at the moment) it really doesn't matter.  Take 'em all if you want.  Anything that prevents organization.

Step 2: Use the media.  Perhaps the most effective method of ensuring this division is to utilize mass media since it is the most widely used manner of the public educating itself.  Consolidate newspapers, magazines, television programs into singular beliefs so that opinions running counter won't be heard.  How often do you hear denouncements of capitalism on any television station or in any print media?  Have you ever heard condemnation on America's woeful human rights record?  Exactly.
NOTE: Currently, the internet poses a huge danger to the higher class.  However, given the looming threat posed to net neutrality, that may not be a concern in the future.

Step 3: Keep them stupid.  Nothing will topple a corrupt regime faster than an educated mind.  Place heavy emphasis on math and science, two areas of thought that have much to do with grinding forward industry, but very little to do with any social sciences, such as sociology or politics.  In this manner you guarantee a lopsided workforce, one with skills to advance corporate interests without the usual developed understanding of fairness.

Step 4: Keep them busy.  If individuals are too busy with work, family, schooling, partying and the like, then it means they're not given time to think.  If they don't have time to think, they don't have time to realize how screwed they are.

Step 5: Make them hate.  It's not enough that we all have differing opinions and that we may disagree; it's not enough to diminish the concept of right and wrong, of injustice.  To overcome that obstacle, each issue must be highly divisive and especially pandering so that it can reach even the lowest dredges of society.

Step 6: Indoctrinate early!  There can be no more effective results from your carefully monitored society than to teach children at an early age conformity is necessary.  While public schooling can do an admirable job of this (through pledging allegience to flag and country, ignoring certain parts of history and paying special attention to others, etc.), unfortunately, children still return to their parents at the end of the day.  That's why those parents need to be too busy and distracted to notice their children.  And this is where wonderful inventions like television come in (refer to Step 2 for more information).

Step 7: ALWAYS be at war.  This step is one of the most important.  War produces two effects:
    a) It creates a life or death situation for everyone, thus trumping all other situations and creating a solidarity (either for or against the war, it's irrelevant since the war will continue regardless) of fear that can be heavily abused.  9/11 is a prime example of this type of engineering.
     b)  It drives the economy and gives us something to do.  When people are dying and structures are being destroyed, that workforce and those objects need to be replaced.  In doing so, it gives purpose to war manufacturers whose companies are able to reap enormous benefits for something that should otherwise be meaningless.  Even on a civilian front, this proves a great asset to corporations: take Halliburton for example, offered a no-bid contract to rebuild a country America devastated.  Would they have made that money if Iraq was fine?  Of course not.

Step 8: Redefine individuality and freedom.  Your population needs to know immediately that individuality is a result of what they wear and where they pierce or tattoo rather than a natural personal evolution from birth.  By appearing different, one can feel different and thus their individuality is asserted.  If they feel that they have attained this difference from one another, then they will feel that they are exerting their right to be free and faux freedom is attained.

Step 9: Redefine and demand patriotism.  Create a fundamental bedrock that defines what it is to be a member of that society and demonize anyone that doesn't adhere to those rules.  If anyone is allowed to question the principles on which society is built then it's much easier for logic to be the dictated argument and people will listen.  If you remove that avenue of dialogue then you remove the argument itself and society's foundation always remains intact.

Step 10: Learn to utilize the government you're given.  While simplistic governments such as monarchies and despotisms can be mandated through militaristic force, more complex structures such as republics and democracies require a tad more ingenuity.  Let's use the American Constitution as the groundwork for an example.  To prevent corruption, the "founding fathers" drafted a resolution that would dismantle centralized power by delineating three separate branches which would watch one another.  These were called the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches.  To overcome this problem, use what you have at your disposal: the Executive branch appoints the Judicial branch with Legislative approval.  So, if you can control the Executive branch AND the Legislative branch, you can control the Judicial and thus run the entire government.  The drawback is Democracy, which enables the will of the people on their government.  However, by removing their ability to vote for anyone other than those handpicked to begin with, you remove the chance of upheaval.  Obama and Clinton weren't candidates we the people decided upon, they were chosen for us through the media.  Thus, we are forced to choose between those already dictated for us.

Unfortunately, as I'm unable to convert this diatribe into brightly colored cartoon animals dubbed over with an excited "tough growling" announcer armed with an 800 number you can CALL NOW to order the nation's newest China-made invention, I'm unsure as to how many of the American public I could ever actually reach.  Here, I'll make it easier.

You dumb.  Rich smart.  Rich use you to keep them rich.  You're a slave from birth that must work in their capitalistic world or end up homeless or dead.  No, no, don't listen to the cute bubbly Disney announcer--  Damn.  Too many big words.