(This is long but every link in here is golden to understand what we are up against and why the Republican media are winning for 30 years.)
Unfortunately, Americans have been subjected to scientifically applied propaganda by an alliance of corporate-dominated government agencies and corporate-dominated media outlets, especially TV.
This isn't just leftist rhetoric. It is real science developed by behavioral scientists, neurologists, sociologists, linguists, and historians.
And the diagnosis for conservative Americans is an ‘Authoritarian Personality’ which is a precursor to a socially destructive behavior called FASCISM.
After WWII, psychologists turned their studies to figuring out what personality traits led to large populations accepting the inhumane fascism of Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler. What they discovered was something they termed 'The Authoritarian Personality' which, in a nutshell, is fearful and prone to seeking security through pack identity (virulent nationalism), attacking other identity groups (like Jews, blacks, gypsys, gays, Muslims, etc.), and revering cruel dictators (the strong father as Fuhrer).
All that ugly behavior because of intentionally exaggerated fear inflaming their amygdala, that primal lizard part of the brain that is vigilant against possible threats and responds quickly without using the rational left-brain thought process that people like the...say...'liberal elitists'...might use to think for themselves instead of blindly accepting the things they are told by authority figures and the media. Watching television numbs the left brain and activates the less-critical right brain and accesses the alarm-prone amygdala in the base of our brain.
Look at this analysis of the 'conservative' personality:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtmlTake a look at this 1950 questionnaire used to determine 'Fascism Personality Receptivity' or F-factor.
http://www.anesi.com/fscale.htmNow look at the 14 symptoms of Fascism.
http://empirewatch.org/pages/_archives/fascism/pages/14_symptoms.htmlNow look at this article about the lessons learned about the power of the 1938 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast and deliberately exploited with omnipresent television culture, the propagandists dream invention.
http://www.mackwhite.com/tv.htmlAnd look at this site looking into the science of affecting how people think and behave or brainwashing:
http://www.hermes-press.com/brainwash1.htmBesides the primal element of fearful brain control, there is also another primal element of human identity at play in our family experiences projected onto the world at large and used to pick our leaders and judge those in our group. Read linguist George Lakoff's work on 'framing' issues in words that appeal to those originally family-based emotions.
He claims that we tend to model our sense of what is appropriate behavior on either the Republican's 'Strong Father' dictator model or the Democrat's 'Nurturing Mother' teacher model. And he's advised Howard Dean and John Kerry on how conservatives have been using this technique for 30 years with stunning success.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtmlThe power of words is also explained in this analysis of a George W. Bush State of the Union speech where the mechanics of verbal abuse and manipulation are explained in detail.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/130534_focusecond13.htmlThe personality of George W. Bush is explained in this British psychologist’s psychological profile based on family history shown to include abuse and leading to alcoholism, anti-intellectualism, cruelty, and the dreaded fascism-prone ‘Authoritarian Personality.’ Read this and understand just why that man is doing what he’s doing and why so many Americans are applauding him for it. Read this article called ‘So George, How Do You Feel About Your Mom and Dad?’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1033904,00.htmlA film illustrating the way corporations perfectly mimic a destructive psychopath shows how that common and dominating structure leads good people to do terrible things:
“While the corporation has the rights and responsibilities of ”a legal person”, its owners and shareholders are not liable for its actions. Moreover, the film explains, a corporation's directors are legally required to do what is best for the company, regardless of the harm created. What kind of person would a corporation be? A clinical psychopath…”
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0120-03.htmThe psychology of an abused child or battered wife is also in play. Americans identify with their government as they would a parent and they are heavily committed to defending it's actions as virtuous and well-meaning. Think of the sad phenomenon of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ where helpless captives come to identify with and empathize with those who they are most vulnerable to, their very own captors. The status of being dominated induces a regressive embrace of the aggressor into ‘protector’ and their own status into ‘child.’ The power relationship is the sado-masochism that Hitler utilized to build the Nazi party in post-WWI Germany and wrote about in his book ‘Mein Kampf,’ fully aware of what he was exploiting in people’s emotions.
In case anyone thinks I'm a just a scorning elitist out to alienate people, understand that my view is that Americans are raised on lies from birth and indoctrinated unremittingly to maintain the lie matrix. In other words, 'forgive them, they know not what they do.'
Americans don't know what the Bill of Rights is or why it is an important protection against tyranny.
They don't know history, geography, civics, science, or politics.
Around 50% still think Bush* is trustworthy! Given that everything he's said publicly for years has been a lie, why is this?
Perhaps because Americans have been raised to believe that they:
1) live in a democracy.
2) compete in free markets.
3) share equal opportunity for all.
4) see their government spreading democracy and protecting the innocent around the world.
5) inherited the status of Best in Show Among Humans in 1776, 1945, 1991 and 2003 by winning the Revolutionary War, WWII, and both Iraq Wars I and II.
These are all lies taught to American children in school and then reinforced every day in movies and on TV for the rest of their lives. There is a well defined historical narrative that describes America as the strongest and most virtuous moral force in the world ever. So surely the President of these United States must embody all that is good about our country.
I call this Superman-Jesus-in-a-Cowboy-Hat Syndrome. Ronald Reagan fit this movie-role-as-national-identity perfectly for many Americans who didn't realize that he was a senile figurehead for a cabal of murderers who successfully portrayed the poor as lazy thieves and secretly armed terrorists against foreign governments in the name of democracy and freedom.
Here is how Americans have been led down the path to a Master Race group-think that accepts as both inevitable and just that domestic policy should be eugenics and foreign policy, imperialism:
Ever since the US lost the Vietnam War, the social atmosphere here has been very similar to post-WWI Germany. The hyper-nationalist German people were told in the summer of 1918 that they were winning World War I. But in the fall, they were suddenly informed that they had lost. They were stunned and angry as the victorious Allies raped them economically and their orderly society imploded into chaos. They looked around to find who among them had betrayed them and robbed them of their much-deserved victory over their inferiors. They demonized, assaulted, and killed Jews, labor unionists, socialists, Gypsys, and homosexuals.
The same scapegoating atmosphere bloomed in the US after Nixon was disgraced and the Vietnam War was revealed to be a quagmire of atrocities which had also ruined the economy. The Republicans have cleverly exploited this petulant atmosphere of entitlement denied to bring us to where we are today, mired in a culture war against liberals, feminists, blacks, homosexuals, and dangerous Middle Eastern foreigners, pretty much the same targets as the Nazis.
Ever wonder why 'liberal' became a swear word? Now you know. It is the American power structure’s synonym for ‘Jew.’
In fact, there is a name for this late 20th century fascist movement brought into the early 21st century: Dominionism.
It is an alliance between Christian fundamentalists, Cold Warrior Fascists, and the Military Industrial Oil Complex, just like the rise of the German Nazis who, by remarkable coincidence, were also financed and supplied in their day by many US corporations, including George W. Bush's financier grandfather, Prescott Bush.
It all rather makes sense, doesn't it? Military and financial powers work hand in hand to reinforce and protect each other by keeping people starving and fighting each other over worthless things like flags and uniforms. Meanwhile, the powerful swell up like ticks on the blood of the people they fool into doing the fighting and reward them with not much more than parades, ribbons, plaques, and brass bands.
Because this is the key to understanding politics-
Power protects power and gives not a whit for morality. Hence the pathological amorality of corporations. And nation states behave as corporations, not as the sum total of the words to their national anthems.
Power has a vested interest in keeping people divided, fearful, and ignorant using all those -isms we've become wary of.
Some Americans see through this and have evolved past nationalism and racism but lately it seems that a majority have not. And there is an alliance of media corporateers and fascist politicians who are determined to prevent Americans from finding out how this scam works. If you have figured out anything about life in America, consider sharing it with your fellow Americans so we can all evolve a little faster.
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