Posted on 06/08/2015 9:38:51 PM PDT by DeweyCA
[Snip]
One of the best books that cracks the code on what we are living through was written by Dutch psychiatrist Joost A. M. Meerloo about 60 years ago. Mull over the first line of his book’s forward, and you will think he is writing about today: “This book attempts to depict the strange transformation of the free human mind into an automatically responding machine – a transformation which can be brought about by some of the cultural undercurrents in our present-day society as well as by deliberate experiments in the service of a political ideology.”
That’s from “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing” (1956). There is indeed a war on the private mind, as Kevin Williamson explained in a recent National Review column. Unfortunately, too many Americans have been sleeping through most of its propaganda battles, and for a very long time. When it comes to understanding the inner workings of social psychology and political correctness, we seem to be at a loss.
Meanwhile, the power elites who now control the media, academia, and Hollywood seem to understand social psychology well enough to exploit it on a massive scale. They have engaged in psychological warfare against the private mind by inducing “collective belief formation.” There’s really nothing new here. Conditioning and nudging the masses into groupthink is a very old trick of all wannabe dictators. The bloody twentieth century is filled to the gills with examples.
[Snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
“Tune in, turn on, drop out” doesn’t have to mean drugs or becoming a slacker.
Some say it is going Galt or living off the grid.
Maybe it is just unplugging from television and socialist networking where you are pummeled for 8-12 hours a day with liberal rhetoric. Even if you know what it is, it can be depressing or bring on anxiety to have to continually be bombarded by a litany of lies, smears, half truths, and coverups. And what they choose to ignore is as much a part of it as what they do cover. And it isn’t just in news, it’s the steady drumbeat in programming (fiction as well as “documentary” and infotainment interviews), advertising, and previews of other programming.
I don’t reject liberalism ‘because I don’t know what it is’, I’ve heard their arguments directly for 30+ years (even considerably longer in my lifetime but clocking from college onward). I’ve read the texts. I know them and I never bought into it.
So y'all need to be joining a Tea Party or a Lions Club, Kiwanis Club or some other civic minded organization.
Get out there and increase your sphere of influence.
If you think you have not been brain washed (to some extent)..
you are wrong...
Some to a greater extent than others, true..
Example: if your paying taxes on something you OWN... (or don’t own)..
You are paying rent on it to the givernment that OWNS IT..
YET; think you own it.. when you don’t.. a delusion..
>>President Obama’s campaign staff was filled with social psychologists.
JFK’s 1962-63 national security seminar ( industrial college for the armed forces) included Vance Packard’s “The Hidden Persuaders” on the recommended reading list.
This text was a study of the tricks used by ‘Mad Men” advertising teams on Madison Avenue in NYC as prompted by psychologist research on market manipulation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/books/review/Greif-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The Hard Sell
By MARK GREIF
Published: December 30, 2007
The volume I made off with was a 75-cent paperback of “The Hidden Persuaders” by Vance Packard. It did scandalize me, completely. But it did so by exposing the secret world of advertising and brands. Published in 1957, it is now enjoying its 50th anniversary and a new edition from Ig Publishing, with an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller. I remember my own edition as small enough to hide — not that I really needed to — but packed with dynamite. It had a lurid cover illustration showing a barbed fishhook buried in a gleaming apple. Packard’s book reached into the darkest corners, not of sensuality, which I was sure I knew all about from television, but of the cynical selling in the commercials that ran between the shows...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vance_Packard
In The Hidden Persuaders, first published in 1957, Packard explores the use of consumer motivational research and other psychological techniques, including depth psychology and subliminal tactics, by advertisers to manipulate expectations and induce desire for products, particularly in the American postwar era. He identified eight “compelling needs” that advertisers promise products will fulfill. According to Packard these needs are so strong that people are compelled to buy products to satisfy them. The book also explores the manipulative techniques of promoting politicians to the electorate. The book questions the morality of using these techniques.
bkmk
I read that in Junior High, I really liked that book.
Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace, (1967)
http://www.hermes-press.com/lewin1.htm
One of the linked articles cited in the thread article:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201211/the-obama-campaign-s-secret-weapon-psychologists
contained this:
“In dealing with the right wing claim that Obama was a Muslim, it was suggested that an affirming, competing message would be more effective than simply denying the claim. The Obama campaign apparently took this advice to heart and repeatedly emphasized that Obama is a Christian.”
The claim that Obama is Christian is a lie. His “fight the smears” page even said he was a lifelong Christian. He was born to an agnostic mother, raised by two muslim fathers, enrolled in school in Indonesia as a muslim where he attended koranic studies (a fact he wrote about in his autobiography) and then was raised by his Unitarian grandmother. He said he came to Jesus through Jeremiah Wright (an ex-muslim reverend with little credibility). When was Obama baptized? His interview with “God’s Girl” on faith wasn’t very convincing. He sees Jesus as a historical figure but not the only way to salvation. Sin is what goes against “Obama’s values”. These are his own admissions.
But Obama needed the church going black vote to take office. Never mind that pastors lied to their congregations about Obama’s stance on abortion and homosexuality.
Obama may not be a muslim, but it is a lie to deny he was raised in the muslim faith for at least part of his life. It’s also a lie to sell him as a Christian. He doesn’t attend church now because he says it would be disruptive in the congregation. This didn’t seem to be problematic for the other 40+ presidents.
BTTT
“Mull over the first line of his book’s foreward,”
That’s also incorrect. A preface is a foreword.
It is a lengthy article and I found myself getting sidetracked by some of the embedded links to articles under discussion. I will try to read the whole thing tomorrow.
the New Democrats (1968 radicals) who run the DNC today don’t believe it is possible to ‘win’ a war, you only wind up as a loser or oppressive imperialist/colonial conqueror.
Placemarker to read with coffee in the morning. Thanks for posting the article.
Bkmk
ping
Awesome article. Plan to read the book soon.
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