The Power of Delusion

Mike Ruppert advised readers not to be hypnotized by either the bogus election or its appalling result. The Left is vulnerable to a trance-inducing melody that repeats, and repeats, "you were cheated… cheated… cheated… it isn't fair… no fair... no fair." The danger is that this particular fraud - the pseudo-election of 2004 - will absorb their attention while implying that the rest of American institutions are more or less intact. Those institutions are, of course, rapidly crumbling.

Here Dale Allen and Elizabeth Anne Pfeiffer examine the much larger hypnosis, whose captive audience numerically dwarfs the Left wing of the Democratic Party. This is the Puritanical spell that afflicts those tens of millions who regard Bush as some sort of virtuous hero, rather than the "mentally ill empty suit" one reads about in Crossing the Rubicon. Why do they do it? Here are fifteen reasons, a set of techniques used by the image-managers and their elite employers in a successful effort to monopolize the freedom to persuade and to suggest. "The Power of Delusion" is especially rich in sources for further reading.

What is going on with the US population? How could anyone vote for George W. Bush? This guy shouldn't be in the White House, he should be in prison. And now, with the fascists vindicated in the White House and in control of the House and the Senate (and soon the Supreme Court), the future is wide open. We will likely see more war, more death, and the complete pillaging of the US economy and our social system (social security, medicare, school budgets). We could see not only the outlawing of abortion, but the criminal prosecution of any woman who obtains an abortion. We could see the reinforcement of the Patriot Act, the scrapping of the Bill of Rights, and the full establishment of a police state. We could see a nuclear attack, ecological devastation, and the impoverishment of the working class.

Is this the future for which approximately half of the US population voted? Are these people brain dead or what?

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How can such a large percentage of the US population remain blinded by denial in the face of so much evidence which flatly contradicts their view of reality (and isn't such delusion a feature of psychosis)? When the rest of the world clearly sees and deplores what is happening, how is it that a majority of the US population-which prides itself on freedom of information and informed democracy-has not clue what is really happening? How is this delusion being maintained? Through a few simple techniques.

The following are just headings see the complete article at

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_13897.shtml

1. Promote a system of socialization in schools that trains people to respect and obey authorities and not to question the system.

2. Encourage and rely on a social system where anyone who dissents is viewed as deviant.

3. Rely on and encourage family dysfunction, so that people are reacting from their own inner wounds and seeking acceptance and forgiveness.

4. Reinforce the atomization of society so that people have fewer opportunities to communicate openly.

5. Keep people stressed, afraid and insecure, while reporting that the economy is improving using only data for the upper percentiles of the population.

6. Support reactionary thinking and religious fundamentalism. And encourage the projection of fears and personal faults onto the Other, making him / her / them the enemy.

7. Throw any residual dangerous information down the memory hole

8. Rely on the media to underreport serious issues and leave out important details.

9. Rely on the media to present a frame of reality which places an honest assessment outside of the viewer's comfort zone.

10. Count on the complicity and compromises of your opponent, while utilizing these complicities and compromises to present yourself as the honest candidate.

11. Repeated denial of culpability on major issues which could result in criminal charges (i.e. WMD, prisoner torture, 9-11 complicity, the Plame investigation).

12. Appeal to emotions using keywords and images; subconscious suggestion through staged media events.

13. Control the terms of conversation and debate using verbal framing. neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

15. Focus on minor, sensationalized issues which favor your candidat

I'm kicking this up so everybody can read it.

Could be I'm over-simplifying, but none of this works if people are well informed.

Of course, the other stuff helps insure that people don't realize, or care, how uninformed they've become.

Check out something called 'Biderman's Chart of Coercions.'
http://www.actabuse.com/chartofcoercion.html

Amnesty Int'l put together a chart of the 8 common tactics used to break prisoner's minds and wills.

The same tactics are used against the American people by the Faith-based fascists who use things like this Army Propaganda Field Manual 33-1. BushSpeak is assembled straight out of this 1979 psy-ops instruction manual!
http://www.tscm.com/CIA_PsyOps_Handbook.html
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/01-06-04/discussion.cgi.79.html

Some great links here. Anyone interested in this should also read a book by Robert Anton Wilson titled "Prometheus Rising" (especially the chapters on "brainwashing") and "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

It's good to be here! (You're the first person who greeted me!)

against them.

eom

This is my first post, so please forgive any errors, mistakes, etc. (but do tell me !)

From the authors' first point:

"The ideological purpose of school is to inculcate students into a system of obedience which will prepare them for the workplace and turn them into complacent, unquestioning citizens"

The problem with this is that obedient, complacent, unquestioning (did I miss anything?) people don't really make good employees, even at the lowest levels of the organization. In an economic environment where US businesses are finding it harder and harder to compete in both foreign and domestic markets (for which there are many reasons, including, but not limited to the educational system), the last thing we need is bunch of sheep. What we need are self-motivated, creative, risk-taking folks -- just what's being trained out.

So. We end up repressed and poor. :(

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

I've been lurking since September :)

seems to me that made me much more suspicious of people, not less.