The Brainwashing of a Nation by Daniel Greenfield

Subtitled:
From campus identity politics cults to the media, brainwashing is bigger than ever.

Greenfield says:

The human mind, like the human body, adapts to a crisis with a fight-or-flight response. Brainwashing forces the mind into a flight response. Once in flight mode, the mind can rationalize a new belief as a protective behavior that will keep it safe. Even when, as in the case of the suspect, the new belief will actually destroy his life. Fight or flight mode inhibits long term thinking. In panic mode, destructive and suicidal behaviors seem like solutions because they offer an escape from unbearable chemical stresses.
There’s a good biological reason for that. Our minds stop us from thinking too much in a crisis so that we can take urgent action, like running into a fire or at a gunman, that our rational minds might not allow us to do. But that same function can be ‘hacked’ by artificially putting people into fight-or-flight mode to break them down and shortcut their higher reasoning functions. Decisions reached subconsciously in fight-or-flight mode will then be rationalized and internalized after the initial crisis has passed.

Cults, abusive relationships and totalitarian movements maintain ‘total crisis’, shutting down higher reasoning, creating a permanent state of stress by triggering fight-or-flight responses unpredictably. This leads to Stockholm Syndrome, where the captive tries to control their fate through total emotional identification with their captor, pack behavior, loss of identity and will, and eventually suicide or death.

Total crisis leads to burnout, emotional exhaustion, detachment from friends and family, and violence.
How do you brainwash a nation?
Control the national environment, force a crisis on the country, and tap into their fear and guilt. And then you can outlaw planes, cows, skyscrapers, straws, plastic bags and the rest of the Green New Deal.
The environmental crisis is just one example of how leftist movements can brainwash a nation.
The growing number of millennials who say that they will not have children because of environmental panic is an example of how brainwashing can make suicidal behavior seem like self-preservation.

Since the Left still lacks total control over the United States, it relies on repetition, itself a form of control and stress, to create fear and panic. It makes up for its lack of physical control by bombarding Americans with messages meant to inspire fear, love, hate and guilt through the media, through the educational system, through entertainment and through every possible messaging channel.


Global Warming panic is one of a succession of manufactured leftist crises in America that began with a class crisis. transitioned to a racial crisis, and then to an environmental crisis.

He also says "Human beings don't behave rationally." Most people do behave relatively rationally in certain compartments of their life, but largely irrationally in other compartments. Unfortunately, moral philosophy is about the most irrational compartment of most peoples lives.

I do not think intelligence itself makes you more vulnerable to brainwashing, expect insofar as unintelligent people seem much less likely to give thought at all to moral philosophy and they are usually only captured by the education system for about 12 years, not 16 years or more. It is the amateurs of moral philosophy who spend 16 or more years trying to please nearly universally leftist teachers and professors who are most likely to fall victim to the Left. A social metaphysician in the hands of leftist educators for 16 years is a goner.

Before the education system played this role, it was largely religions that played it. However irrational the religion, one of them was usually able to secure a monopoly on moral philosophy over a substantial region of the earth, demonstrating that most people are social metaphysicians.

With these qualifications, much of what Greenfield says is correct. In 1965 when I was a freshman at Brown University, I had many moral and political discussions with very committed leftist products of the nation's finest private schools. Over and over, I had the experience that someone would reluctantly concede that I was right about my limited government and generally libertarian individualist philosophy on an issue. The next day they were still spouting the belief they had conceded was wrong the day before as though we had never had our discussion. The same thing happens now when I explain why catastrophic man-made global warming is a failed hypothesis.

Greenfield is right about this: "That is why the Left cannot be defeated through policy debates and intellectual abstractions. It is a belief system. Though it traffics in seeming abstractions, these are a language, but not the meaning. The esoteric languages of policy and pop culture in which it speaks are vehicles for a deeper language of primal emotions. Behind the theories and manifestos is a great darkness of fear and terror, of love and hate, of emotional instability and vulnerability on which its lies and propaganda are built."

The only way to defeat this brainwashing is to be there constantly throughout children's and young people's lives encouraging them to apply reason to every problem and every situation. Without that encouragement, few children and young people are able to make that commitment to reason. Being there does require having the rational arguments to defeat the leftist belief system and making those argument over and over throughout a child's upbringing. One needs to take care that children really do understand the basis of rational individualism and that they do not just adopt it as a religion themselves.

I remember literally making a compact with myself when I was 5 years old to always put reason first. I did not always succeed, but I did put a lot of effort into that commitment. I realized even then that many adults, teachers, and, later, authors were wrong about many things. Whatever they said had to be subjected to critical evaluation before it was believed. I sorted what I learned into three categories: This I have evaluated and is true, this I have evaluated and is false, and this I have not yet evaluated so its truth is unknown.

Unfortunately, few people at any age make such a commitment to reason and far too many accept the word of authorities all too readily. Most students simply try to remember all they are told and assume it must be true. This often makes then "fast learners", which is interpreted as intelligence. That sort of false intelligence does make such people very much more likely victims of brainwashing.

Mark Tapscott Gets It Too

During the presidential campaign, I warned that Barack Obama was a highly committed socialist who wanted to bring radical change for the worse to the U.S. He explicitly told us that that was what he was going to do, though he did not spell out all the changes. Nonetheless, he was also very explicit about quite a few of his radical and foolhardy changes. To fail to understand how he fundamentally viewed politics, government, the nature of man, the environment, and America's place in the world, one had to have one's head buried deeply in the sands of guilt for the slavery of the long past and for Jim Crow laws of the not so far past and be easily hypnotized by glib speech delivery.

Glen Beck has rightly come to be alarmed by the nature of the transformation of America that Obama intends. It is also clear that Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner also has Obama's number. They both understand that this is not just about Obama, but that the stage was set for Obama by many other long-working socialist cadre members with a grand totalitarian vision of a new America. Mark Tapscott is the Editorial Page Editor and wrote a great editorial on 24 September 2009 called Beware the Stalin in progressive hearts. It is well worth your time to read this essay in its entirety.

There are a couple of things I want to draw your attention to in any case.

• The Department of Health and Human Services issued a gag order telling all of the companies participating in the Medicare Advantage program that they could not tell their customers about the effects of ObamaCare on the program. These companies were threatened with fines and jail time. Obama does not believe in the Constitution and he consistently does care about the First Amendment either.
• He quotes Thomas Friedman, the NY Times columnist, as saying

  "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century."

Mark Tapscott then says

That in a nutshell is the totalitarian temptation that plagues all who would use the power of the state to impose their vision of the good society on the rest of us.

It's the ever-present Stalin whispering in the progressive ear: "Ignore those reactionary, loud-mouthed, ignorant Tea Party protesters and decree Obamacare, Waxman-Markey, and all the rest of it. Do it now while you have the power!"

He suggests you read Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism and Paul Johnson's Modern Times to understand how the modern progressive movement came to be so infected with this tendency to totalitarianism. He also warns that there are only two more chances to save America, 2010 and 2012.

Edward Hudgins: Uncharitable Attack on Charity

Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society wrote an interesting article on a group called the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy (NCRP) which is the kind of organization Ellsworth Toohey would have encouraged. While in general Ayn Rand's novels are dramatizations of the conflicts between an individualistic, rational, life-centered morality and philosophy and collectivist, irrational, and anti-life moralities, the real world really does have evil-doers who are perfectly capable of replicating a stark dramatization of evil and irrationality from an Ayn Rand novel.

This charitable watchdog group is headed up by a former ACORN organizer. This group issued a report saying

Philanthropy at its Best must serve the public good by contributing to strong, participatory democracy that engages all communities.

It adds that a well-managed charity must:

Provide at least 50 percent of its grant dollars to benefit low-income communities, communities of color and other marginal groups…
Provide at least 25 percent of its dollars for advocacy, organizing and civic engagement to promote equality, opportunity and justice in our society.

Ed Hudgins points out that this is nonsense, which it most certainly is. Charity at its best serves the purposes of the voluntary contributor and does so in a manner which does not use force to impede others in living their lives. Period. There is nothing wrong with giving to a charity that supports the Classical Music station of WBJC in Baltimore even though few people living in the often rich poverty of today in America choose to listen to it. In fact, doing so may help to preserve a rich heritage in intelligent music and be a very decent thing to do. Or, one might choose to give money to The Atlas Society, which directs its programs and education efforts at everyone about equally. There is no reason why they should target their message to groups defined by race or income. And, of course, as Ed points out, a charity dedicated to finding a cure for epilepsy should probably give as much of its money as possible to medical researchers without regard to the 50% and 25% rules produced by NCRP.

Ed also quotes Xavier Becerra (CA Democrat) as saying

“Taxpayers have rewarded [foundations] for being there for America.” But, he added: “At the same time, those of us at Congress have an obligation as the representatives of the people to make sure that their money—taxpayer money—is being well invested.”

Ah....so Congress has the right to redirect the money that individuals give to charities to see to it that Congress believes the money is being well-used. In fact, he twists the individual into being a taxpayer, uses that to say the money given to charity is taxpayer money, and then claims the usual power to spend taxpayer money that he would have for government revenue from taxes. One would think anyone would see through this extremely faulty argument, but surprisingly many do not.

Ed also noted that there was a move afoot in the Obama despotism to tax the charity gifts of the so-called wealthy, before many howls forced them to back down. Clearly they wanted to remove capable and wealthy people from the boards of charitable organizations and keep them from having a role in directing the purpose of those organizations. This would also make charities more dependent upon government grants, which would let the government re-direct their purposes.

It is clear that the so-called Progressives want total government control over charity in America and want it used for their agenda only. Of course, if you recognize that the Progressives have an agenda of mixed fascist and communist goals, control of all charity is readily recognized as being essential for the purposes of their total control of the American people. Individual choices even in charitable giving will not be allowed. This is the Totalitarian Dream, that Obama oulined in his acceptance speech before the Democrat Convention in Denver, CO.

Leon Aron - Back in the USSR?

Leon Aron is the director of Russian studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. On Monday, 14 July, he published a column in the Washington Post providing an interesting update on Russia. He draws a parallel with the USSR under Brezhnev, when the USSR was benefiting from high oil prices in the 1970s. Under Brezhnev, many of the excesses that later helped lead to the fall of the Soviet Union became SOP. Under Putin and his minions, Russia has become increasingly authoritarian, corrupt, and has burdened the economy with ever greater statism.

In the 1970s the Soviets consumed 8 liters of strong alcoholic beverages each, which was more than the people of any other country. As a result, male life expectancy fell from 67 to 62 years between 1964 and 1980. Now, per capita consumption of vodka is 10 liters according to Russian officials, but experts say it is definitely higher than that. In the U.S. consumption of strong alcoholic beverages is 2.57 liters per capita. Life expectancy for Russian men now is 60.6 years or 15 years shorter than in the U.S. and the European Union.

70% of the food in Russian cities is imported. The denationalization of land in the 1990s lead to food surpluses, which the USSR had not had, but the failure to put land property rights on a sound basis has again led to food shortages. Local officials use their continued power over land rights to force entrepreneurs and farmers to share their output and income with them.

Russia is ruled by the United Russia party, which rigs elections. There is no effective opposition to demand that disastrous policies be changed. Putin has achieved stability in the nomenklatura. His followers are given positions free of criticism and without consequences for their failures.

Russia, with China, has been helping the Iranians with their nuclear program. Russia is once again flying planes along the edges of our airspace in practice attack sessions. As the country has come under increasingly dictatorial rule, it has followed the usually increasingly aggressive nature of such regimes. But, the present rulers are also repeating the mistakes of Brezhnev and company and are setting Russia up for another fall when oil prices drop and can no longer support such a rotten structure.