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The Classic Psychology Text That Predicted Today’s Urban Decay
americanthinker.com ^ | 7/18/2023 | Lewis M. Andrews

Posted on 07/19/2023 10:51:31 AM PDT by bitt

It’s a question that most Americans who follow the news ask themselves daily: “How can the residents of so many of the nation’s largest cities keep supporting local officials who tolerate the ongoing destruction of their communities?”

Why this May, for example, did the citizens of Chicago -- a city where 21,000 students cannot demonstrate a basic competence in reading, science, and math -- choose the teachers union-backed candidate, Brandon Johnson, for mayor? Especially when Johnson’s chief opponent, Paul Vallas, had promised the electorate sensible school reforms?

Why, a few years earlier, did San Franciscans elect a mayor, London Breed, whose obvious reluctance to crack down on criminal behavior has since forced the city’s largest mall to close, two of its best hotels to declare bankruptcy, and tens of thousands of high-earning taxpayers to move away?

Why has there been no serious movement to get New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to initiate proceedings to remove Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who refuses prosecute “low-level” crimes, all while promising to downgrade felony charges and to decriminalize resisting police arrest?

And why, in 2022, did Los Angelinos pick another progressive Democrat to be their next mayor, rather than the candidate who promised to finally do something about the city’s exploding homelessness problem?

In 1954, three academic psychologists -- Stanford University’s Leon Festinger along with Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter -- described a very different kind of social dysfunction, but one that helps us understand why so many urban Americans refuse to demand saner government. As reported in the still-widely read college text When Prophesy Fails, Festinger and his colleagues followed the activities of a religious cult, whose leader claimed to have received messages from the planet Clarion. These communications warned of a massive flood

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: anarchotyranny; cities; culture; dystopia; urbandecay
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To: EEGator
Thanks, bad link.

George Carlin (warning)


21 posted on 07/19/2023 11:28:07 AM PDT by SpaceBar
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To: bitt

Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all? (Ezekiel 14:3)

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

https://gracethrufaith.com/end-times-prophecy/cognitive-dissonance/


22 posted on 07/19/2023 11:31:02 AM PDT by MAAG (, “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve someone.)
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To: T.B. Yoits

Remember too, in ghetto culture, doing well in school is derided as “acting white”. So there is not the same importance placed on education that most of place on education.


23 posted on 07/19/2023 11:34:54 AM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: T.B. Yoits

The article made some really good points. I found interesting that when confronted with the facts the true believer doubles down-think Adam Schiff. Then there are the not-so-true believers that can be swung.

Look. To win we need more strong leaders who can pull those sot-so-trues in our direction. W did it and so did Clinton. Obama was the iron hand in the velvet glove to the left. He stayed true to his beliefs.

Trump is the bull in the china shop who needs Biden to continue failing. Reagan was painted with the same broad brush. ‘I’ve seen 4 wars’ and ‘There you go again’-2 lines that worked. Reagan was self deprecating. Trump CAN make us laugh-I love him. If he can just appeal to those not-so-trues.


24 posted on 07/19/2023 11:36:43 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET (e allowed )
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To: cgbg

Same with the lab leak, and the people censored for that. Same with vax risks, and the people censored for that.

In Canada, a whole subculture of “Indian Residential School Mass Graves” has been created by the Trudeau gov’t, despite the fact that not a single skeleton has been found.

And now we have politicians proposing to criminalize “denial” of Residential School graveyards.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/should-residential-school-denialism-declared-hate-speech-1.6744100

Putin is absolutely right. The Globohomo American Empire and all their subalterns (like Trudeau) is entirely an Empire of Lies.


25 posted on 07/19/2023 11:50:24 AM PDT by Reverend Wright ( Everything touched by progressives, dies !)
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To: Reverend Wright

Good list—there are lots and lots of topics that are now banned in academia and social media—and many of them are not even familiar to most Freepers.

The Overton Window on a million topics is getting smaller and smaller—which means obedience is rewarded and thinking is punished.


26 posted on 07/19/2023 11:59:58 AM PDT by cgbg (Claiming that laws and regs that limit “hate speech” stop freedom of speech is “hate speech”.)
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To: bitt

“Why this May, for example, did the citizens of Chicago...”

~~~~~~~

It should be fairly clear by now that it’s not the citizens doing these things...

It is those carefully put in place to replace, recount and report the “ballots” who are “doing” these things.


27 posted on 07/19/2023 12:14:24 PM PDT by EasySt (Say not this is the truth, but so it seems to me to be, as I see this thing I think I see. #MAGA-AaA)
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To: bitt

“described a very different kind of social dysfunction, but one that helps us understand why so many urban Americans refuse to demand saner government”

I call it the “doubling down on stupid” phenomenon. It’s very similar to how compulsive gamblers behave. A real professional gambler knows that you never throw good money after bad, even though everyone has that temptation. But a sucker, a rube, a degenerate perpetual loser, they never learn that lesson, and they just give in to that instinct, thinking that they can’t keep losing forever.

I have a friend like that. He doesn’t gamble in real life thankfully, just in video games, but he was convinced he had come up with a genius system to beat the roulette wheel. He explained it to me, and then I had to explain to him that he just “reinvented” the Martingale system, one of the oldest flawed systems around, which doesn’t work unless you have unlimited money to start with, in which case you don’t need it. His brain could simply not comprehend it.


28 posted on 07/19/2023 12:14:55 PM PDT by Boogieman
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To: bitt
FTA "the good news about this psychological explanation for urban decay is that it does offer some hope for an eventual reversal (dwindling believers)

The bad news about this outcome is that, while inevitable, it can take a lot of time, especially if many city voters........work for any of the misguided government agencies which are contributing to their city’s decline. As the early twentieth-century writer Upton Sinclair famously observed:

it is more “difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

The Kalifornia State Workers Union has a stranglehold on Kalifornia. CalPers is the State Employees Pension Fund. CalStrs is the State Teacher's Pension Fund. If you drive to downtown Sacramento, they keep building larger and taller buildings to house the staff of these two funds. Between the current, active, working State employees / teachers, and all the retirees, they will continue to vote for these wackos as long as their checks keep coming. The liberals have even written into the Kalifornia Constitution that the Kalifornia General Fund will be used to fund the monthly retirement checks if the CalPers Pension Fund has trouble meeting all the amounts. In fact, 10-15 years ago, the Pension Fund managers tried to go politically correct in their investment decisions. Very quickly the Fund suffered losses. The Fund's Board of Directors threatened to fire these idiots if they did not return to proper investment practices.

29 posted on 07/19/2023 12:49:43 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus III (Do, or do not, there is no try)
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To: bitt

bkmk


30 posted on 07/19/2023 2:09:00 PM PDT by sauropod (Sun Tzu: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”)
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To: bitt

Micheale Shellenger has a youtube out entitled Why Progressies Ruin Cities.

It works a similar vein.


31 posted on 07/19/2023 3:05:34 PM PDT by ckilmer (ui)
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To: bitt

Or maybe it’s just been voting fraud the whole time.


32 posted on 07/19/2023 3:08:36 PM PDT by jocon307 (Democrats delenda est.)
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To: bitt

It’s all VERY SIMPLE, whether people can deal with it or not:

The US Constitution was written for White Men on the basis of ONLY White Men voting.

That’s why the first priority of the Communists in this country was Women’s Suffering. Then came further expansion of ‘voting rights’.

Had the intent been to allow voting to be a free-for-all (as we have now), then the rules allowing majority decision-making would have been written much TOUGHER, so as to require Super-Majorities for most legislation, as in 75% to 80% to pass.

Bottom line is that we FAILED to follow the intent of the Constitution, and now we pay.


33 posted on 07/19/2023 8:09:30 PM PDT by BobL (Trump has all the right Enemies; DeSantis has all the wrong Friends)
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