0 comment Thursday, August 21, 2014 | admin
Thomas Jefferson famously said "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." We've all heard this quoted, or read it, but it's significant that he specifically said ''tyranny over the mind of man."
Often when we hear the word 'tyranny' we automatically envision the old Communist regimes in Eastern Europe where people were shipped off to gulags or mental institutions for dissenting from the regime and the Party. This hard totalitarianism, with its roundups of dissidents, or its midnight knocks on the door, is not the only kind. Though the systems could and did imprison (and sometimes kill) the bodies of dissenters, they could not always imprison the minds of their subjects.
It's commonly said, by those with direct experience of these regimes, that the people in general did not truly believe the ideology whichwas the basis for the Communist regimes. Newspapers, radio, and television, as well as movies, offered only the accepted party line on anything, and heavily censored anything that belied the official belief system. However, it seems that this information control was rather clumsy and transparent, and many people thus saw through it, inwardly rejecting it while outwardly conforming, and discreetly keeping silent.
Sometimes it's a temptation to wonder if the same is not true in the Western countries, where our politically correct, mandatory multiculturalism and ''equality'' are the dictates of the day. There is, certainly, a core of people who, for whatever reason, have managed to reject the lies at the heart of the prevailing order. But are these people sufficient in numbers to form any significant opposition?
Sad to say, I think the majority in our country, and perhaps in all Western countries, are fully indoctrinated, so much so that they have no idea they have even been programmed to think as they do. I think many are indoctrinated so thoroughly that they believe the ideology of the regime to be their own, independent beliefs, and what's more, they would probably be willing to give their lives or take the lives of others for the sake of those beliefs.
True believers, no matter how bereft of truth the system to which they've pledged themselves, will do this. How many cults have made the headlines, as their benighted followers commit suicide or go to the extreme of killing the ''traitors'' who desert the cult or question its tenets?
Thomas Jefferson was a man who chose his words with great precision and care, as he did all things. When he wrote the phrase, 'tyranny over the mind of man,' he did so for a reason.
Imprisoning men's bodies does not confine their minds. The Left knows this. It's often said, however, that an idea can't be killed. When the Communist regimes imprisoned people like Solzhenitsyn, they did not destroy his ability to think freely. When a dissident or resister is killed, his ideas often spread because of his death. You truly can't kill ideas, but the tyrants know that you might kill an idea a-borning, and stop it from becoming fully formed and growing. And you might, to a great extent, render many people incapable of conceiving a free idea. You might intellectually sterilize or stunt people by steady, unrelenting propaganda, especially if it's started as early as possible in life, and sustained. You might, if you wished to do this, use everything from advertising to movies, to plays, music, literature, the visual arts, sports and games. Soon, as the propaganda takes hold, people propagate it without even realizing they are passing it on, like a virus. It becomes part and parcel of the whole culture.
To truly condition people and diminish their ability to think freely, you might also make plenty of mind-numbing, dulling drugs available, from the illegal ''street drugs'' to the respectable kind, prescribed by your kindly doctor and dispensed by the pharmacist. Have you ever noticed how many people you meet are on some kind of mood-altering drugs these days? The children are on various drugs for 'ADD", or ADHD or whatever it's called now, and the adults are often on antidepressants or sleep medications. Why are our medical professionals so eager to press these things on us? Every time I visit the doctor, the routine question ''are you depressed?'' is asked. Whose idea is it to importune people to take antidepressants? Is it some kind of official policy?
I am not impugning the character of doctors or other medical workers. I don't doubt that they believe they are doing only what is for our benefit, but I wonder why as a people we are so medicated.
A population that is harried and stressed by unstable conditions, uncertainty about tomorrow, and grieving, in some cases, the loss of the familiar, may feel more need to medicate their feelings away, and our government is probably happy to encourage this trend, as they become increasingly involved in our medical and health business. But a population that is anxious, stressed, and medicated for it will be less likely to be able to think clearly and judge rightly.
The ideologues who shape our culture do not want a populace with the time, the acuity, or the inclination to think and evaluate for themselves. The ideologues, those soft totalitarians who sit in seats of power, want to influence if not control our thoughts. Not only are our thoughts fair game, but our feelings, our emotions, our attitudes, our opinions, our moods, our wishes, aspirations, dreams, hopes, and expectations. They want to dictate the language we use, the words we choose to express ourselves. Obviously, via our entertainment, they want to shape the most private and personal fantasies and urges, too, and then enslave us to those as well.
Even our most sacred impulses are being shaped by the insidious influence of the prevailing ideology, which of course is, like the true God, a jealous 'god' who wants us to have no other deity but itself. Our churches, being led by and populated by imperfect people, has also fallen prey to the world's belief system, and the propaganda, which wants to govern how we relate to God as well as to our fellow man.
The Bible tells us not to fear those who kill the body. The soft totalitarians, the mind tyrants, may not kill dissenters outright, but they want to abort our ability to think and to feel as free men and women.
Often when we hear the word 'tyranny' we automatically envision the old Communist regimes in Eastern Europe where people were shipped off to gulags or mental institutions for dissenting from the regime and the Party. This hard totalitarianism, with its roundups of dissidents, or its midnight knocks on the door, is not the only kind. Though the systems could and did imprison (and sometimes kill) the bodies of dissenters, they could not always imprison the minds of their subjects.
It's commonly said, by those with direct experience of these regimes, that the people in general did not truly believe the ideology whichwas the basis for the Communist regimes. Newspapers, radio, and television, as well as movies, offered only the accepted party line on anything, and heavily censored anything that belied the official belief system. However, it seems that this information control was rather clumsy and transparent, and many people thus saw through it, inwardly rejecting it while outwardly conforming, and discreetly keeping silent.
Sometimes it's a temptation to wonder if the same is not true in the Western countries, where our politically correct, mandatory multiculturalism and ''equality'' are the dictates of the day. There is, certainly, a core of people who, for whatever reason, have managed to reject the lies at the heart of the prevailing order. But are these people sufficient in numbers to form any significant opposition?
Sad to say, I think the majority in our country, and perhaps in all Western countries, are fully indoctrinated, so much so that they have no idea they have even been programmed to think as they do. I think many are indoctrinated so thoroughly that they believe the ideology of the regime to be their own, independent beliefs, and what's more, they would probably be willing to give their lives or take the lives of others for the sake of those beliefs.
True believers, no matter how bereft of truth the system to which they've pledged themselves, will do this. How many cults have made the headlines, as their benighted followers commit suicide or go to the extreme of killing the ''traitors'' who desert the cult or question its tenets?
Thomas Jefferson was a man who chose his words with great precision and care, as he did all things. When he wrote the phrase, 'tyranny over the mind of man,' he did so for a reason.
Imprisoning men's bodies does not confine their minds. The Left knows this. It's often said, however, that an idea can't be killed. When the Communist regimes imprisoned people like Solzhenitsyn, they did not destroy his ability to think freely. When a dissident or resister is killed, his ideas often spread because of his death. You truly can't kill ideas, but the tyrants know that you might kill an idea a-borning, and stop it from becoming fully formed and growing. And you might, to a great extent, render many people incapable of conceiving a free idea. You might intellectually sterilize or stunt people by steady, unrelenting propaganda, especially if it's started as early as possible in life, and sustained. You might, if you wished to do this, use everything from advertising to movies, to plays, music, literature, the visual arts, sports and games. Soon, as the propaganda takes hold, people propagate it without even realizing they are passing it on, like a virus. It becomes part and parcel of the whole culture.
To truly condition people and diminish their ability to think freely, you might also make plenty of mind-numbing, dulling drugs available, from the illegal ''street drugs'' to the respectable kind, prescribed by your kindly doctor and dispensed by the pharmacist. Have you ever noticed how many people you meet are on some kind of mood-altering drugs these days? The children are on various drugs for 'ADD", or ADHD or whatever it's called now, and the adults are often on antidepressants or sleep medications. Why are our medical professionals so eager to press these things on us? Every time I visit the doctor, the routine question ''are you depressed?'' is asked. Whose idea is it to importune people to take antidepressants? Is it some kind of official policy?
I am not impugning the character of doctors or other medical workers. I don't doubt that they believe they are doing only what is for our benefit, but I wonder why as a people we are so medicated.
A population that is harried and stressed by unstable conditions, uncertainty about tomorrow, and grieving, in some cases, the loss of the familiar, may feel more need to medicate their feelings away, and our government is probably happy to encourage this trend, as they become increasingly involved in our medical and health business. But a population that is anxious, stressed, and medicated for it will be less likely to be able to think clearly and judge rightly.
The ideologues who shape our culture do not want a populace with the time, the acuity, or the inclination to think and evaluate for themselves. The ideologues, those soft totalitarians who sit in seats of power, want to influence if not control our thoughts. Not only are our thoughts fair game, but our feelings, our emotions, our attitudes, our opinions, our moods, our wishes, aspirations, dreams, hopes, and expectations. They want to dictate the language we use, the words we choose to express ourselves. Obviously, via our entertainment, they want to shape the most private and personal fantasies and urges, too, and then enslave us to those as well.
Even our most sacred impulses are being shaped by the insidious influence of the prevailing ideology, which of course is, like the true God, a jealous 'god' who wants us to have no other deity but itself. Our churches, being led by and populated by imperfect people, has also fallen prey to the world's belief system, and the propaganda, which wants to govern how we relate to God as well as to our fellow man.
The Bible tells us not to fear those who kill the body. The soft totalitarians, the mind tyrants, may not kill dissenters outright, but they want to abort our ability to think and to feel as free men and women.
Labels: Freedom Of Expression, Freedom Of Thought, Leftism, Media Manipulation, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Totalitarianism, Tyranny
0 comment Tuesday, August 12, 2014 | admin
It might have been worth watching this fake townhall event if only to see this foot-in-mouth moment -- or was it a Freudian slip? See the video.
However, I missed it -- well, OK, I avoided watching it. I figured it would be staged and scripted and the attendees would all be plants and cult followers.
Yet Obama encountered a friendly, cheering crowd, as if at a campaign stop. While there were crowds of protesters outside, few seemed to make it inside.
He spoke for almost 20 minutes before questions. After several friendly questions, he urged people with tougher ones to step up.
"I don't want people thinking I just have a bunch of plants" in the audience, Obama said. After two more mildly skeptical questions, Obama ended the town hall. He took nine questions in total.
A little girl who asked him a rather precocious-sounding question, may have been a plant, reportedly.
According to the IBD article, the Resident implicitly reiterated the new talking point: that those with concerns about euthanasia or 'death panels' are crazy.
Obama ridiculed the notion that this plan would create "death panels" to decide end-of-life care.
He said the bill provides for panels of experts "who can provide guidelines to doctors and patients about what procedures work best in what situations. . . . These aren't going to be forced on people but they will help guide how the delivery system works so you get better quality care."
My opinion of New Hampshire went down a little after seeing some clips of the audience there; is this the 'Live Free or Die' State?
And is this president the one with the off-the-chart IQ? Why is it that Democrat presidents are always said to be geniuses? Bill Clinton was another mediocrity who was touted as a high-IQ prodigy. Where's the evidence?
I notice that with the president's faux pas or whatever you would call it, the IBD op-ed reports it with a straight face, either missing the irony or intentionally spinning his statement as an 'I meant to say that' moment.
I was talking to a nurse friend yesterday and she is very much opposed to this proposal (which the Democrats say does not exist: ''There is no health bill!" they insist), though the Democrat talking points say that the AMA and the American Nurses' Association are on board with this. My nurse friend says that many of the people she is hearing from are very upset about the prospect of government-run health care. I don't hear much favorable comment about it myself -- in fact, I've heard none, in real life. Only the shills on TV speak in favor of it.
I've read some internet comment from right-wing bloggers criticizing the townhall protesters, on the grounds that it makes us look bad, or that it amounts to using the left's rabble-rousing tactics and crudeness. I don't think there is any kind of 'astroturfing' on a wide scale going on. I don't know any sheeplike Republicans who would attend a protest and shout at their representatives just because the RNC or anyone else told them to. I believe the anger is genuine and spontaneous; it certainly is on my part.
And by the way, the RNC periodically begs me for donations, but they have not contacted me in any way to try to get me to protest or to demonstrate.
Somebody on a blog discussion said that it was ridiculous for people on the far-right to get worked up about health care when we have our dispossession to worry about. I don't see how that person could fail to notice that this thing is a not-so-veiled attack on us, a way to reduce our numbers even further and more quickly. This is a survival issue, and as such it's not trivial or irrelevant, not in the least.
However, I missed it -- well, OK, I avoided watching it. I figured it would be staged and scripted and the attendees would all be plants and cult followers.
Yet Obama encountered a friendly, cheering crowd, as if at a campaign stop. While there were crowds of protesters outside, few seemed to make it inside.
He spoke for almost 20 minutes before questions. After several friendly questions, he urged people with tougher ones to step up.
"I don't want people thinking I just have a bunch of plants" in the audience, Obama said. After two more mildly skeptical questions, Obama ended the town hall. He took nine questions in total.
A little girl who asked him a rather precocious-sounding question, may have been a plant, reportedly.
According to the IBD article, the Resident implicitly reiterated the new talking point: that those with concerns about euthanasia or 'death panels' are crazy.
Obama ridiculed the notion that this plan would create "death panels" to decide end-of-life care.
He said the bill provides for panels of experts "who can provide guidelines to doctors and patients about what procedures work best in what situations. . . . These aren't going to be forced on people but they will help guide how the delivery system works so you get better quality care."
My opinion of New Hampshire went down a little after seeing some clips of the audience there; is this the 'Live Free or Die' State?
And is this president the one with the off-the-chart IQ? Why is it that Democrat presidents are always said to be geniuses? Bill Clinton was another mediocrity who was touted as a high-IQ prodigy. Where's the evidence?
I notice that with the president's faux pas or whatever you would call it, the IBD op-ed reports it with a straight face, either missing the irony or intentionally spinning his statement as an 'I meant to say that' moment.
I was talking to a nurse friend yesterday and she is very much opposed to this proposal (which the Democrats say does not exist: ''There is no health bill!" they insist), though the Democrat talking points say that the AMA and the American Nurses' Association are on board with this. My nurse friend says that many of the people she is hearing from are very upset about the prospect of government-run health care. I don't hear much favorable comment about it myself -- in fact, I've heard none, in real life. Only the shills on TV speak in favor of it.
I've read some internet comment from right-wing bloggers criticizing the townhall protesters, on the grounds that it makes us look bad, or that it amounts to using the left's rabble-rousing tactics and crudeness. I don't think there is any kind of 'astroturfing' on a wide scale going on. I don't know any sheeplike Republicans who would attend a protest and shout at their representatives just because the RNC or anyone else told them to. I believe the anger is genuine and spontaneous; it certainly is on my part.
And by the way, the RNC periodically begs me for donations, but they have not contacted me in any way to try to get me to protest or to demonstrate.
Somebody on a blog discussion said that it was ridiculous for people on the far-right to get worked up about health care when we have our dispossession to worry about. I don't see how that person could fail to notice that this thing is a not-so-veiled attack on us, a way to reduce our numbers even further and more quickly. This is a survival issue, and as such it's not trivial or irrelevant, not in the least.
Labels: Health Care, Media Manipulation, Public Health, Socialism, Socialized Medicine
0 comment Thursday, June 19, 2014 | admin
Frank Ellis on multicultural societies:
''It is the power of the charge of "racism" that stifles the derision that would otherwise meet the idea that we should "value diversity." If "diversity" had real benefits whites would want more of it, and would ask that yet more cities in the U.S. and Europe be handed over to immigrants. Of course, they are not rushing to embrace diversity and multiculturalism; they are in headlong flight in the opposite direction. Valuing diversity is a hobby for people who do not have to endure its benefits.
A multicultural society is one that is inherently prone to conflict, not harmony. This is why we see a huge growth in government bureaucracies dedicated to resolving disputes along racial and cultural lines. These disputes can never be resolved permanently because the bureaucrats deny one of the major causes: race. This is why there is so much talk of the "multicultural" rather than the more precise "multiracial." Ever more changes and legislation are introduced to make the host society ever more congenial to racial minorities. This only creates more demands, and encourages the non-shooting war against whites, their civilization, and even the idea of the West.
How is such a radical program carried forward? The Soviet Union had a massive system of censorship the Communists even censored street maps and it is worth noting there were two kinds of censorship: the blatant censorship of state agencies and the more subtle self-censorship that the inhabitants of "peoples democracies" soon learned.''
Subtle self-censorship: this is what I referred to as 'democratic censorship', done of people's own volition more or less, but subtly promoted by the powers-that-be. And then there is the use of the arts and the media:
"A mode of opinion control softer than outright censorship is the current obsession with fictional role models. Today, the feminist and anti-racist theme is constantly worked into movies and television as examples of Bartold Brecht's principle that the Marxist artist must show the world not as it is but as it ought to be. This is why we have so many screen portrayals of wise black judges; street-wise, straight-shooting lady policemen; minority computer geniuses; and, of course, degenerate white men. This is almost a direct borrowing from Soviet-style socialist realism, with its idealized depictions of sturdy proletarians routing capitalist vermin.''
The post I wrote yesterday dealt with this kind of thing, with the use of entertainment (so-called) deployed to provide fictional role models for minorities, feminists and so on, and at the same time to diminish and defame majority Whites -- and to alter the past in our minds.
It could be called a form of 'gaslighting', couldn't it?
Some of you may have seen the 1944 movie Gaslight, with Charles Boyer as a husband attempting to manipulate his young wife into insanity. He changes and alters things in their home in order to make her doubt her own sanity. He denies her perceptions and slowly convinces her that she is mad, and that she is the culprit in the mysterious things that are happening. He plays on her vulnerabilities and soon has her believing the opposite of reality.
That's what the leftists in the media and their masters are doing to us. They fill our heads with lies and distortions. They deny us the right to feel what we feel about what is being done. They make us out to be psychotic and paranoid if we notice what is happening, and if we object to the changes that are being forced on us all.
''What changes?'' they ask. According to the media and the rewriters of history, we have always been a multicultural nation. It was recently, was it not, that our president said that Moslems and Hindus had always been part of America. Any denial of these newly-minted 'facts' is met with an accusation of conspiracy-mongering and paranoia. Some years ago I said that legal immigrants came mostly from the Third World, and someone challenged me very angrily on that statement. ''That's crazy! That's not true.'' So I had to decide who to believe, and I chose my lying eyes -- and statistics. But lots of people begin to doubt their lying eyes, and to doubt the old history books or the statistics they may come across. There are many people who don't seem to be able to stand up to the subtle conditioning and 're-education.'
People who 'gaslight' others in personal situations usually go about it by undermining the self-confidence and the perceptions of the gaslight-ee. They make the target doubt himself, and doubt the rightness of his feelings. That is what is being done to us. It is being done by the news media as well as by the 'entertainment' media and by educators who toe the politically correct line. We are told (as Mr. Wise told us in that seething letter a couple of weeks ago) that the world we remember from the pre-PC era never existed. This is a frequent device used by the left; they try to undermine even our memories. We are told that we are misremembering, that we are re-framing the past to view it through rose-colored lenses, or that we are confabulating the whole picture of old America. Some leftists make whole careers on 'debunking' pre-PC America.
From Publishers Weekly
The golden age of the American family never existed, asserts Coontz ( The Social Origns [sic] of Private Life ) in a wonderfully perceptive, myth-debunking report. The "Leave It to Beaver" ideal of breadwinner father, full-time homemaker mother and dependent children was a fiction of the 1950s, she shows. Real families of that period were rife with conflict, repression and anxiety, frequently poor and much less idyllic than many assume; teen pregnancy rates in the '50s were higher than today. Further, Coontz contends, the nuclear family was elevated to a central source of personal satisfaction only in the late 19th century, thereby weakening people's community ties and sense of civic obligation. Coontz disputes the idea that children can be raised properly only in traditional families. Viewing modern domestic problems as symptoms of a much larger socioeconomic crisis, she demonstrates that no single type of household has ever protected Americans from social disruption or poverty.''
This is gaslighting. The message is that your memories and my memories are false and mistaken. In reality, the world was always a grim and ugly place, so if you find today's America grim and ugly, well, the world has always been just like that. Things have not worsened; you are just crazy or senile to think so.
And America was always multicultural; all those old movies and still pictures that show White people just prove that the racist Whites kept minorities out of sight, just as with gays and lesbians.
Perhaps it comforts some people to believe this kind of thing, because if they (like most young people) believe that the past was horribly flawed, full of sexism, racism, and homophobia, then they can congratulate themselves on how much 'freer' we all are now than we were then.
The rewriting of history books, along with the rewriting of long-established legends and lore, is part of this gaslighting program. The idea is to efface the memory of the real past, and substitute a politically corrected past, one in which Britain was 'always a multicultural/multiracial nation' or to establish the idea that Britain is populated today by people who are descendants of many races all mingled together. There is no ''White race'', as I have heard many leftists say. In fact, there is no ''race'' at all. It's all your imagination.
Glenn Beck and his 'black Founding Fathers' also fit in with this kind of agenda.
I've already noted on this blog that people, the public at large, anyway, seem to be more and more 'fuzzy' on the concept of race. I wrote of my bewilderment at hearing many White Americans claim that the president is ''not really black'' or ''just as White as he is black.'' That would never have been said just a couple of decades ago. And I was baffled at people saying that the president ''looked just like his mother'' or his maternal grandfather. What? How did we all come to see things so differently? I can only conclude that this increasing confusion about race is the product of many years of hearing 'race is a social construct' and 'we are all one race.'
The obvious social divisions (and racial divisions) in our society are not news to anybody, but it seems that the younger generations and even many of the older generations are actually starting to see, to physically see, race differently -- or perhaps not to see race at all. Can programming really alter people's perceptions so radically? Or is this something like what we have all seen in depictions of night-club hypnotists convincing their subjects that they see pink elephants in the room.
I am lost for an explanation. I do know that many people are very suggestible and easily manipulated, and I don't doubt that there are some very sophisticated and well-planned efforts to alter people's thinking and perceptions. And I don't doubt that they are very pleased with the apparent success of their efforts.
But of course that's just paranoia, isn't it?
''It is the power of the charge of "racism" that stifles the derision that would otherwise meet the idea that we should "value diversity." If "diversity" had real benefits whites would want more of it, and would ask that yet more cities in the U.S. and Europe be handed over to immigrants. Of course, they are not rushing to embrace diversity and multiculturalism; they are in headlong flight in the opposite direction. Valuing diversity is a hobby for people who do not have to endure its benefits.
A multicultural society is one that is inherently prone to conflict, not harmony. This is why we see a huge growth in government bureaucracies dedicated to resolving disputes along racial and cultural lines. These disputes can never be resolved permanently because the bureaucrats deny one of the major causes: race. This is why there is so much talk of the "multicultural" rather than the more precise "multiracial." Ever more changes and legislation are introduced to make the host society ever more congenial to racial minorities. This only creates more demands, and encourages the non-shooting war against whites, their civilization, and even the idea of the West.
How is such a radical program carried forward? The Soviet Union had a massive system of censorship the Communists even censored street maps and it is worth noting there were two kinds of censorship: the blatant censorship of state agencies and the more subtle self-censorship that the inhabitants of "peoples democracies" soon learned.''
Subtle self-censorship: this is what I referred to as 'democratic censorship', done of people's own volition more or less, but subtly promoted by the powers-that-be. And then there is the use of the arts and the media:
"A mode of opinion control softer than outright censorship is the current obsession with fictional role models. Today, the feminist and anti-racist theme is constantly worked into movies and television as examples of Bartold Brecht's principle that the Marxist artist must show the world not as it is but as it ought to be. This is why we have so many screen portrayals of wise black judges; street-wise, straight-shooting lady policemen; minority computer geniuses; and, of course, degenerate white men. This is almost a direct borrowing from Soviet-style socialist realism, with its idealized depictions of sturdy proletarians routing capitalist vermin.''
The post I wrote yesterday dealt with this kind of thing, with the use of entertainment (so-called) deployed to provide fictional role models for minorities, feminists and so on, and at the same time to diminish and defame majority Whites -- and to alter the past in our minds.
It could be called a form of 'gaslighting', couldn't it?
Some of you may have seen the 1944 movie Gaslight, with Charles Boyer as a husband attempting to manipulate his young wife into insanity. He changes and alters things in their home in order to make her doubt her own sanity. He denies her perceptions and slowly convinces her that she is mad, and that she is the culprit in the mysterious things that are happening. He plays on her vulnerabilities and soon has her believing the opposite of reality.
That's what the leftists in the media and their masters are doing to us. They fill our heads with lies and distortions. They deny us the right to feel what we feel about what is being done. They make us out to be psychotic and paranoid if we notice what is happening, and if we object to the changes that are being forced on us all.
''What changes?'' they ask. According to the media and the rewriters of history, we have always been a multicultural nation. It was recently, was it not, that our president said that Moslems and Hindus had always been part of America. Any denial of these newly-minted 'facts' is met with an accusation of conspiracy-mongering and paranoia. Some years ago I said that legal immigrants came mostly from the Third World, and someone challenged me very angrily on that statement. ''That's crazy! That's not true.'' So I had to decide who to believe, and I chose my lying eyes -- and statistics. But lots of people begin to doubt their lying eyes, and to doubt the old history books or the statistics they may come across. There are many people who don't seem to be able to stand up to the subtle conditioning and 're-education.'
People who 'gaslight' others in personal situations usually go about it by undermining the self-confidence and the perceptions of the gaslight-ee. They make the target doubt himself, and doubt the rightness of his feelings. That is what is being done to us. It is being done by the news media as well as by the 'entertainment' media and by educators who toe the politically correct line. We are told (as Mr. Wise told us in that seething letter a couple of weeks ago) that the world we remember from the pre-PC era never existed. This is a frequent device used by the left; they try to undermine even our memories. We are told that we are misremembering, that we are re-framing the past to view it through rose-colored lenses, or that we are confabulating the whole picture of old America. Some leftists make whole careers on 'debunking' pre-PC America.
From Publishers Weekly
The golden age of the American family never existed, asserts Coontz ( The Social Origns [sic] of Private Life ) in a wonderfully perceptive, myth-debunking report. The "Leave It to Beaver" ideal of breadwinner father, full-time homemaker mother and dependent children was a fiction of the 1950s, she shows. Real families of that period were rife with conflict, repression and anxiety, frequently poor and much less idyllic than many assume; teen pregnancy rates in the '50s were higher than today. Further, Coontz contends, the nuclear family was elevated to a central source of personal satisfaction only in the late 19th century, thereby weakening people's community ties and sense of civic obligation. Coontz disputes the idea that children can be raised properly only in traditional families. Viewing modern domestic problems as symptoms of a much larger socioeconomic crisis, she demonstrates that no single type of household has ever protected Americans from social disruption or poverty.''
This is gaslighting. The message is that your memories and my memories are false and mistaken. In reality, the world was always a grim and ugly place, so if you find today's America grim and ugly, well, the world has always been just like that. Things have not worsened; you are just crazy or senile to think so.
And America was always multicultural; all those old movies and still pictures that show White people just prove that the racist Whites kept minorities out of sight, just as with gays and lesbians.
Perhaps it comforts some people to believe this kind of thing, because if they (like most young people) believe that the past was horribly flawed, full of sexism, racism, and homophobia, then they can congratulate themselves on how much 'freer' we all are now than we were then.
The rewriting of history books, along with the rewriting of long-established legends and lore, is part of this gaslighting program. The idea is to efface the memory of the real past, and substitute a politically corrected past, one in which Britain was 'always a multicultural/multiracial nation' or to establish the idea that Britain is populated today by people who are descendants of many races all mingled together. There is no ''White race'', as I have heard many leftists say. In fact, there is no ''race'' at all. It's all your imagination.
Glenn Beck and his 'black Founding Fathers' also fit in with this kind of agenda.
I've already noted on this blog that people, the public at large, anyway, seem to be more and more 'fuzzy' on the concept of race. I wrote of my bewilderment at hearing many White Americans claim that the president is ''not really black'' or ''just as White as he is black.'' That would never have been said just a couple of decades ago. And I was baffled at people saying that the president ''looked just like his mother'' or his maternal grandfather. What? How did we all come to see things so differently? I can only conclude that this increasing confusion about race is the product of many years of hearing 'race is a social construct' and 'we are all one race.'
The obvious social divisions (and racial divisions) in our society are not news to anybody, but it seems that the younger generations and even many of the older generations are actually starting to see, to physically see, race differently -- or perhaps not to see race at all. Can programming really alter people's perceptions so radically? Or is this something like what we have all seen in depictions of night-club hypnotists convincing their subjects that they see pink elephants in the room.
I am lost for an explanation. I do know that many people are very suggestible and easily manipulated, and I don't doubt that there are some very sophisticated and well-planned efforts to alter people's thinking and perceptions. And I don't doubt that they are very pleased with the apparent success of their efforts.
But of course that's just paranoia, isn't it?
Labels: History, Media Manipulation, Political Correctness, Propaganda
0 comment Tuesday, June 10, 2014 | admin
But who's being taught, and who's doing the teaching? Is anybody learning anything?
Does anyone else get the impression that this Gates incident is being used opportunistically to hammer us some more with guilt and to further instill political correctness in the population?
I was disgusted to see that it was all over the news channels today. Early in the day there was coverage of the Cambridge police press conference in which the White House was requested to apologize. Later on in the day we heard that the president had summoned Sgt. Crowley, the latest victim of this race-baiting scam, to a private conversation in which things were smoothed over.
Lou Dobbs, who is one of the more reliable news personalities (though not free of political correctness) said that the president was turning this into a ''teachable moment'', and I thought: uh-oh. That means more lectures, more guilt, about 'racism', 'Jim Crow', 'the legacy of slavery' and Dixie Peach pomade. Please, spare us from such ''teaching.''
So in this typically witty piece from Mark Steyn, we learn that yes, some of that all-too-familiar 'teaching' is part of the script that's now being written for our edification:
Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sgt. Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to "educate him about the history of racism in America." Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents remortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.''
Maybe Steyn is kidding, but I would not bet on that; it sounds too plausible, and nothing is too silly to be believed these last seven months. More from Steyn's piece:
For everyone other than the president, what happened at professor Gates' house is not entirely clear. The Harvard prof returned home without his keys and, as Obama put it, "jimmied his way into the house." A neighbor, witnessing the "break-in," called the cops, and things, ah, escalated from there.
[...]
As to the differences between the professor's and the cops' version of events, I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.
As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates' testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.
[...]
In the Sixties, the great English satirist Peter Simple invented the Prejudometer, which simply by being pointed at any individual could calculate degrees of racism to the nearest prejudon, "the internationally recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice." Professor Gates seems to go around with his Prejudometer permanently cranked up to 11: When Sgt. Crowley announced through the glass-paneled front door that he was here to investigate a break-in, Gates opened it up and roared back: "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?"
Note: If there is no ''prejudometer'' in real life, I am sure there are even now some deranged liberals somewhere trying to develop one. Actually, I suppose it would be superfluous for White liberals and race-baiting minorities -- they already have a foolproof way of detecting 'prejudice': look for White folks, and there you have prejudice.
A side note: I wish 'Peter Simple's' columns might be published in book form; most of us have not had the opportunity to read them in the UK Telegraph over the years. Those of us who enjoy that kind of British whimsy combined with satire would enjoy his writings in book form.
Gates then told him, "I'll speak with your mama outside." Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show. But among his colleagues were a black officer and a Hispanic officer. Which is an odd kind of posse for what the Rev. Al Sharpton calls, inevitably, "the highest example of racial profiling I have seen." But what of our post-racial president? After noting that "'Skip' Gates is a friend" of his, President Obama said that "there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." But, if they're being "disproportionately" stopped by African American and Latino cops, does that really fall under the category of systemic racism? Short of dispatching one of those Uighur Muslims from China recently liberated from Gitmo by Obama to frolic and gambol on the beaches of Bermuda, the assembled officers were a veritable rainbow coalition. The photograph of the arrest shows a bullet-headed black cop � Sgt. Leon Lashley, I believe � standing in front of the porch while behind him a handcuffed Gates yells accusations of racism. This is the pitiful state the Bull
Connors of the 21st century are reduced to, forced to take along a squad recruited from the nearest Benetton ad when they go out to whup some uppity Negro boy.''
Does a grown, senior-citizen, college-educated, Harvard professor make comments like the 'yo mama' remark? I thought that was middle-school stuff. And yes, the policemen who responded to this call did look like one of those multicult TV commercials, with 'one of each' distributed among the group. It's absurd that we run our society on such a basis.
This incident might have, if handled rightly, represented a possible turning point, an opportunity for someone in a nationally-publicized case to refuse to cave in and apologize, to admit wrong where no wrong was done. What the ultimate resolution (if any) will be, isn't clear yet, but it appears that the White House and the race-grievance industry are manipulating this incident to their advantage. If we have to see more 'news' coverage, including the pompous, pretentious 'academic' holding forth on 'racism in America', while Whites once again sit meekly listening and offering mea culpas, I hope that it will perhaps be the cause of a few more people becoming fed up and finally proclaiming the PC emperor has no clothes.
Instead of feeble and futile protests of ''I'm not a racist!" I wish someone of note, someone with the world's attention, might break the ice and reject the whole rigged concept of 'racism' and all the cant and lies it has fostered over the last half century or so.
Does anyone else get the impression that this Gates incident is being used opportunistically to hammer us some more with guilt and to further instill political correctness in the population?
I was disgusted to see that it was all over the news channels today. Early in the day there was coverage of the Cambridge police press conference in which the White House was requested to apologize. Later on in the day we heard that the president had summoned Sgt. Crowley, the latest victim of this race-baiting scam, to a private conversation in which things were smoothed over.
Lou Dobbs, who is one of the more reliable news personalities (though not free of political correctness) said that the president was turning this into a ''teachable moment'', and I thought: uh-oh. That means more lectures, more guilt, about 'racism', 'Jim Crow', 'the legacy of slavery' and Dixie Peach pomade. Please, spare us from such ''teaching.''
So in this typically witty piece from Mark Steyn, we learn that yes, some of that all-too-familiar 'teaching' is part of the script that's now being written for our edification:
Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sgt. Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to "educate him about the history of racism in America." Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents remortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.''
Maybe Steyn is kidding, but I would not bet on that; it sounds too plausible, and nothing is too silly to be believed these last seven months. More from Steyn's piece:
For everyone other than the president, what happened at professor Gates' house is not entirely clear. The Harvard prof returned home without his keys and, as Obama put it, "jimmied his way into the house." A neighbor, witnessing the "break-in," called the cops, and things, ah, escalated from there.
[...]
As to the differences between the professor's and the cops' version of events, I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.
As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates' testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.
[...]
In the Sixties, the great English satirist Peter Simple invented the Prejudometer, which simply by being pointed at any individual could calculate degrees of racism to the nearest prejudon, "the internationally recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice." Professor Gates seems to go around with his Prejudometer permanently cranked up to 11: When Sgt. Crowley announced through the glass-paneled front door that he was here to investigate a break-in, Gates opened it up and roared back: "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?"
Note: If there is no ''prejudometer'' in real life, I am sure there are even now some deranged liberals somewhere trying to develop one. Actually, I suppose it would be superfluous for White liberals and race-baiting minorities -- they already have a foolproof way of detecting 'prejudice': look for White folks, and there you have prejudice.
A side note: I wish 'Peter Simple's' columns might be published in book form; most of us have not had the opportunity to read them in the UK Telegraph over the years. Those of us who enjoy that kind of British whimsy combined with satire would enjoy his writings in book form.
Gates then told him, "I'll speak with your mama outside." Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show. But among his colleagues were a black officer and a Hispanic officer. Which is an odd kind of posse for what the Rev. Al Sharpton calls, inevitably, "the highest example of racial profiling I have seen." But what of our post-racial president? After noting that "'Skip' Gates is a friend" of his, President Obama said that "there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." But, if they're being "disproportionately" stopped by African American and Latino cops, does that really fall under the category of systemic racism? Short of dispatching one of those Uighur Muslims from China recently liberated from Gitmo by Obama to frolic and gambol on the beaches of Bermuda, the assembled officers were a veritable rainbow coalition. The photograph of the arrest shows a bullet-headed black cop � Sgt. Leon Lashley, I believe � standing in front of the porch while behind him a handcuffed Gates yells accusations of racism. This is the pitiful state the Bull
Connors of the 21st century are reduced to, forced to take along a squad recruited from the nearest Benetton ad when they go out to whup some uppity Negro boy.''
Does a grown, senior-citizen, college-educated, Harvard professor make comments like the 'yo mama' remark? I thought that was middle-school stuff. And yes, the policemen who responded to this call did look like one of those multicult TV commercials, with 'one of each' distributed among the group. It's absurd that we run our society on such a basis.
This incident might have, if handled rightly, represented a possible turning point, an opportunity for someone in a nationally-publicized case to refuse to cave in and apologize, to admit wrong where no wrong was done. What the ultimate resolution (if any) will be, isn't clear yet, but it appears that the White House and the race-grievance industry are manipulating this incident to their advantage. If we have to see more 'news' coverage, including the pompous, pretentious 'academic' holding forth on 'racism in America', while Whites once again sit meekly listening and offering mea culpas, I hope that it will perhaps be the cause of a few more people becoming fed up and finally proclaiming the PC emperor has no clothes.
Instead of feeble and futile protests of ''I'm not a racist!" I wish someone of note, someone with the world's attention, might break the ice and reject the whole rigged concept of 'racism' and all the cant and lies it has fostered over the last half century or so.
Labels: Ethnic Division, Grievance-Mongering, Liberalism, Media Bias, Media Manipulation, Political Correctness, Race Card, Race-Baiting, White Guilt