The Manipulators 1
We’ve heard a thousand times or more, the term, “brainwashing,” or “brainwashed.” But does one in a thousand know what it means? How does it happen?
Most people think along the lines of The Manchurian Candidate, when they think of “brainwashing.” A process performed in glittering stainless steel labs packed with menacing technical gizmos, dazzling spot lamps and zany scientists gleefully eyeing sweating needles oozing nefarious serums.
Well, there’s that, but, generally, people are brainwashed by everyday and routine strategies, not in labs.
Table of Contents
Of course they want to push that “mad scientist” take on it, to make it seem rare and difficult to do.
Also, “brainwashing” can be a misused, facile term that can conceal or obfuscate a sort of psychosis that very many people have: the cry for attention, which is the key to exploitation.
So, brainwashing is the human condition, not the exception, perhaps why there are gurus saying you must detach yourself from things like wants and desires.
So, yes, we’re brainwashed about brainwashing!
Brainwashed?
How do you determine if you’re brainwashed, and how do you counter it? Tough questions.
Being “offended” by something you read or observe, is usually due to brainwashing.
Doing most anything that is ultimately against your interests is due to brainwashing. Like wanting things in excess. For example, take vehicles. Why anyone would need more than a top-trim Toyota Camry or Honda Accord or Mazda 6 for a luxury car is perplexing, perhaps a Chrysler 300 if you need more room, but, it’s brainwashing that pushes us into higher-priced cars than those. (Accords and Camrys are far more “luxurious” in a real sense than anything called “luxury” back in the ’60s or ’70s. The Fleetwood was nice, but still more a mobile boudoir than sensible transportation.) Many of the rich use only common, not ostentatious, autos.
Buying the higher-priced cars for routine traveling is ultimately a bad move, being that you lose even more due to depreciation, and it’s due to brainwashing.
Misunderstood?
It is said that no one who is brainwashed has ever known that he or she is brainwashed.
If you were to tell someone’s quite innocuously, that he was brainwashed, most likely you’ll immediately be accused of being brainwashed yourself, in a knee-jerk reaction. Yet it’s not an insult to be told you’re brainwashed, it’s a warning.
“You’re brainwashed...”
“No you’re brainwashed!”
“You’ve got a poisonous deadly scorpion about to sting your neck!”
“No! You’ve got a poisonous deadly scorpion about to sting your neck!”
Well, as the world turns, we see the folly of man, and we all are guilty of that ego-driven nonsense. Instead of a simple, “What brings you to that conclusion?” with real concern for whether it’s true, the mentality is to “strike back” in “self-defense.” Certainly, if someone is just saying that to be insulting, you’ll want to defend, but there’s no way of knowing without some civilized inquiry as to the legitimacy of the claim.
Another good response could be, “Thank you for pointing that out to me, and please tell me how and where I am brainwashed so I can correct it.”
We’ll see how far that flies. Because ego looks to defend itself even against rationality.
So how would you advise someone in a civilized way that he’s brainwashed, without offending? Perhaps the proper way is from another angle, indirectly, hoping to teach, rather than rile.
Secret
A “secret of life” is knowing we are all brainwashed, and a task of life is finding out how, then overcoming the brainwashing.
The First Step
So the first step in recovery is to realize, and really know, that we are all flawed and brainwashed, not just some.
The term, “brainwashing,” then, is an example of “the labeling fallacy,” described in our discussion of logical fallacies. Brainwashing is everyday life, and “brainwashing,” and similar terms, like hypnosis, subliminals, mind control, indocrination and gaslighting, are widely used, but they’re all interrelated. All of those are types of “brainwashing,” a term it appears we’ll have to continue to use for lack of a suitable alternative, while keeping in mind, it’s really a descriptor for a whole range of manipulative tactics and techniques.
Brainwashing and mass psychosis are the same as well.
Brainwashing is pursued because a dysfunctional society is a profitable society. Lots of use of shrinks, doctors, lawyers. Despairing people are easily manipulated.
Brainwashing is pursued because a dysfunctional society is easily kept under control, with its subjects subservient and malleable to authority.
Now, it doesn’t help that most of us can’t distinguish lies from truth, because we’re indirectly, and directly, trained to the point where lying is fundamental to our behavior. And we’re trained to believe the lies we’re fed. That is the ultimate (successful) goal of the educational and societal brainwashing we endure, designed to keep us in a child-like state of belief and existence.
Clinging to False Knowledge
False knowledge is a big part of brainwashing. Ego works against us here, our innate sense that conceding a particular point or accepting another point of view might cause us to have to change our beliefs and behavior, which would mean that we were wrong before. This causes us discomfort, so we “change the subject,” argue pointlessly, or make a run for it.
An old blowhard with a PhD. and probable agent or plant, was interviewing a woman on his podcast. This woman was informing him – trying to educate him – that women hate men due to the media war on men. And the old fart doubts it! He was simply shocked to be told the truth. What the...? She had to work to explain something that is readily verifiable via simple observation, and this mange-ridden buzzard argues the point?
Well, the stooge has explained before he fancies himself a “ladies’ man,” not realizing he gets approval of that nature as a result of suckery, pandering, and saying what others want to hear.
That women have been groomed to hate men is important for men to understand. A media war is ultimately damaging both sexes. So brainwashing is a serious business, and goes a long way to help explain this dysfunctional “society.”
Ideological Subversion
This is the nasty result of exploitation of brainwashing, a process by which a country can be taken over by a foreign power, “without firing a shot,” as they say.
Yuri Bezmenov exposed this back in the ’80s. “What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”
He specifies the US, but of course it may be applicable to any nation. This Communist infiltration has four main stages:
- demoralization, a long process that is now complete in the Western nations;
- destabilization, which we’re now going through, where the nations’ structures are destroyed;
- crisis, brings a “a violent change,” of power, the political structure, and the economy;
- normalization, or acceptance, where the new regime takes over, and a new reality takes hold.
Demoralization
A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom. When a military boot crushes his balls then he will understand. But not before that. That’s the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization. - Bezmenov
Thus Bezmenov, a Soviet defector, laid out the entire scheme of this ongoing world-wide brainwashing that has broken Western society.
Destabilization
Once demoralization is completed, the second stage of ideological brainwashing is “destabilization,” about a two- to five-year period. Bezmenov explained that this is the targeting of essential structural elements of a nation: the economy, foreign relations, and defense systems. Basically, the subverter would look to destabilize every one of those areas in the United States, considerably weakening it.
Crisis
This third stage involves inducing a crisis situation. For example, this could be a replay of the 1920s-30s strategy of market collapse, depression, war. It would take only up to six weeks to send a country into crisis, explained Bezmenov.
Normalization
The last stage, “normalization,” is the ultimate phase and the goal of the conspirators, when the country is basically taken over, living under a new ideology and reality.
To clarify, the first two stages are pretty much ongoing. It’s not like they just stop demoralization and move sequentially to destabilization. Demoralization is an ongoing process. But how is demoralization achieved? The following are some of techniques, and note these are also used by controlling, sociopathic personalities to achieve their own ends.
Brainwashing Methods & Tactics
Education
“Education,” as we’re saddled with today, is an active process intended to “mold” or “shape” children’s minds using known psychological conditioning processes.
Once the student is molded to their satisfaction in the public schools, in colleges, the brainwashing continues, and in certain programs, like medicine, excessive workloads cause fatigue and even sleep-deprivation. Those are only good for brainwashing and indoctrination, not education.
Psychological Tricks
This one pretty much goes without saying. Pavlovian Conditioning is one example (someone wisely observed that school bells signaling start and end of classes are a good example of this). Positive reinforcement when we comply, negative when we resist or rebel. Being taught to assign “authority” to “official” figures (but rather than the deserving, this authority goes to approved designates who follow an agenda).
And it’s not really conditioning, is it, when it’s inherent to associate things?
One example lays bare the lame understanding of the popular press: “Golden arches of McDonald’s associate with making you hungry.” That must be a page out of the “Notes for Dummies.” First off, no one at Mickey Ds is “conditioning” anything by putting up a sign. You already know arches are outside McDonald’s. And they induce vague feelings of nausea in discerning people. It’s no more conditioning than a banana is conditioning.
Conditioning is an association of a stimulus with a reaction not normally related (like a dog salivating when a bell is rung). Better is a Coke example, back when Coke used ads to promote feelings of happiness and love with Coca-Cola. They’d show people having fun and wanting to buy the world a Coke, and say that Coke was “The Real Thing,” which meant, indirectly, love. So you’d have loving feelings about Coke. That’s conditioning.
These ads had to be withdrawn, as you may remember, when too many people were marrying their Coke bottles.
It’s tragic, but a bulletin just came in. I have to place notice that, no, they weren’t really marrying their Coke bottles, that was a joke. And a pretty darned good one, I might add!
Learned Helplessness
A recent development has the U.S. government boasting of hiring the disabled to fill critical roles — roles that need people without disabilities. This had people speculating about compliance being the hiring of people like blind air traffic controllers. Someone pointed out that this is to frustrate and fatigue people. It’s irrationally flaunting unfettered power, and the term for what it induces in people is, “learned helplessness.”
Entertainment
Entertainment is one of the avenues by which you are most susceptible to fraud. They say it’s because you’re vulnerable because you’re “off guard,” but, really, people want to be fooled. In fact, we watch entertainment, hoping to be brainwashed. Oh, we only want the good parts of the brainwashing, of course. But as you know, we take the good with the bad, happy with the sad...
Bond playing baccarat, or poker (and smoking like a chimney)? Brainwashing. They don’t just make expensive movies purely for your amusement, to surprise and delight and coddle you. So James Bond is a gambler, and a smoker, and a heavy drinker. So that will rub off on certain people, who will imitate him, hoping to get some of that whiff of “Bondness.” Bond also is supposedly a government agent out there, saving the world. That in itself is farcical.
Poker Stars is brainwashing. Organized poker needs a steady supply of suckers. (That’s you and me.) So they focus on publicizing how “average Joes” “make a killing at the tables” against “The Pros.” They can’t resist sticking it to the rubes, though. “Chris Moneymaker” was a champion. Really? Reminds of how Homer Simpson went to change his name to one of, “Rembrandt Q. Einstein,” “Handsome B. Wonderful,” “Hercules Rockefeller,” or “Max Power.”
Subliminal Suggestion
It’s not just some brief unconscious clip spliced into a movie reel that makes you feel like having popcorn or something, oh, no.
There are many other subliminal tactics than that.
There’s a flip side, where they include the word, “cancer,” airbrushed into cigarette ads. Then there are the skulls disguised in whiskey ads...
The reasoning? Research has shown that there is a positive, not negative correlation between these death symbols, and sales.
Well, horror movies are popular, this shouldn’t come as a complete surprise.
So now we can understand the motive behind all these government-mandated warnings with those horrid pictures on cigarette packs. Sneaky, back-handed reverse psychology instead of sincerely motivated disincentive, like the “Just Say No!” con we discuss in another article.
“Subliminal suggestion” goes much deeper than the superficial implanting of silly desires.
It’s a similar case as with Pavlovian Conditioning, which is much more potent than the mumbo-jumbo about “dogs salivating when you ring a bell” would have you believe. No, Pavlov and later experimenters explored in depth, and there are many still at it, seeking insights to allow greater exploitation of humanity. Conditioning is another process, with many nuances. For example, there is a paradoxical response, where more of a conditioned stimulus creates less, instead of more, response. All of the details need an entire essay to expound on.
Deception
“Desires” are largely artificial, like this insane desire to get in line for new iPhones, or buy gigantic SUVs, or one of those absurd “McMansions.” We could have as easily been coached into lives lived in the most prudent and unassuming way possible. Where, to “beat the other guy,” you’d buy an ever smaller car with even better gas mileage, or grow more turnips per square foot in your home backyard garden. Where the status symbol was the smallest, most efficient house.
All this advertising and propaganda appeals to deep-seated desires to excel by “coming out on top,” in endless competition with that other guy. It feeds a silly competitive emotion whose origins might be mysterious if we couldn’t see that humans are childish in many ways beyond just this quirk. Competitiveness is not all bad, of course. It is a motivator.
Propaganda, often doesn’t have to work too hard, as it relies on the strategy of reinforcing a comic book worldview that people want to believe, a happier world they have created for themselves.
Insularity
The problem: inability to communicate with others, and when we do, we must speak in platitudes and lies, so as not to offend, or “trigger,” or hurt someone’s feelings.
Groupthink
Going along with the crowd is an obvious sort of inherent, exploitable, brainwashing.
Trusted Source
If you have a compromised “trusted source,” your brainwashing is ready-made and prepackaged. Newsreader Cronkite was “the most trusted man in America,” in the old days, and we still listen to other news anchors, doctors, teachers, ministers, politicians, even lawyers and actors, of all people, despite them either proving unreliable, or not having knowledge in the area where they speak.
Grassroots Marketing
This is any situation where you think you’re getting a private person’s recommendation, but it’s actually just a false-fronted form of advertising/publicity.
A current trick is saturation on sites that accept comments. One recent example: people talking up Rolex watches on website comments sections, particularly on a financial blog I read. Soon after, Rolex crashed — did they know ahead of time and were front-running or executing a pump and dump? And now, right after, we aren’t seeing anything in comments about Rolex. This is related to “trusted source,” since you’re susceptible to trusting some commenter that seems rational and knowledgeable.
Brainwashing by Attrition
Argumentum ad nauseam is a part of brainwashing by attrition and by the psychological fact that if you keep hearing something long enough, you start to incorporate it, leading to “belief.”
Exploitation of Cravings & Desires
An example of this is the leveraging of James Bond, to promote smoking. Sexual desires, or desires to feel excitement, or to eat a lot of sugary food can be exploited, too. The brainwashing here is already sort of prepared, the schemer just has to walk in and take advantage.
You’re Not Healthy
An accelerating trend: they’ve really started to feed us slop. A lot of what we eat is unfit for consumption, and a lot used to be considered waste product. Pink slime, HFCS, rancid and hydrogenated seed oils and margarine, bleached flour and sugar... And of course all the chemicals in our food, air and water are ruinous.
It’s not natural to crave so much sugar. There might be a cup of it or more in your sugary morning breakfast, all tolled. And all those cakes, candies and ice cream. Sugar is a poison in the quantities we guzzle it down. It should be considered a condiment, not a staple. But you crave sugars and starches and bad fats because you aren’t getting sufficient proper nutrition. Certainly this has been known for a long time as sort of an open secret.
And the drugs... Good lord, the drugs. Most of the proletariat are unacknowledged druggies, the water supply itself being contaminated due to their addictions. And no one calls to put a stop to this? Of course sugar itself is a drug in the body.
Because of that, toxicity and nutrition deficiencies, a person’s will is sapped by hormonal imbalances and weakness, and yet more susceptible to brainwashing.
Trauma
They are talking about trauma-based mind control recently. This is in reference to a concerted effort where people, particularly children, are subjected to cruel tortures and psychological tactics with the objective of creating split-personality slaves. But this “Stockholm Syndrome” style brainwashing is all over the place. And you see it especially in the medical arena. Look at the people, damaged and killed by the medical profession, and yet it still gets the highest praise! “Heroes!” the simps bleat and fawn. Yet the deaths by medical interventions and disease skyrocket. The only explanation must be trauma-based mind control.
It brings to mind a horror novel where the villain kicks a dog to death. As it’s dying, with its last effort, it licks the man’s shoe. Man exhibits exactly the same defeatism. It appears the mind is susceptible to being permanently manipulated and warped due to extreme pain and injury, trauma or psychological warfare. The conclusion from this is that we’ll never progress any further as a society as long as this isn’t publicized so as to be understood by most every citizen. It should be taught and drilled constantly, starting early, in childhood. Along with this, we need to devise methods to counter the effects of trauma, though widespread awareness would be the fundamental tool to resist.
Wanting to “Fit In”
We want to be accepted — at church, school, work, in the family, with friends, in society in general. What isn’t recognized for its significance is that there are beings akin to sociopaths that recognize and exploit that. In fact, virtually every successful organization has succeeded in brainwashing you, or in exploiting the labors of others’ brainwashing. Once you absorb that, your life should improve. Churches, your job, school, government, and now, even our supposed helpers, corporations, like Walmart. The leaders of these organizations are these exploiters, or they don’t last long in their positions.
Some Contemporary Examples
Weather Maps
This recent scam is showing weather temperature pattern maps all in scalding reds and oranges, but those colors only represent moderate temperatures. In the past, greens and yellows were used for the same temperatures. They already conditioned you to consider oranges and reds as “hot” and “very hot,” so that priming is now exploited.
Similarly, strange as it seems, Conservatives/Republicans in the US, in the 1970s, were represented as blue, Liberals/Democrats as red, on demographic maps, now it’s reversed, to take away the stigma of the association of Democrats with... Communism!
ChatGPT
Most should relate to this. These headlines over the past few years, such as: “A.I. Going to Eliminate 50% of Jobs by 2025.” They’ve been touting that more and more aggressively. To repeat, there’s no such thing as A.I. in the sense that most think of.
They’re using ChatGPT as their poster child. It has enough functionality to fool the masses, so they’re touting it to hype A.I. as the new phenomenon, as explained in Stop Killer Robots Now!
But It Gets More Weird
Glow-op huckster Elon Musk is bleating that they “must stop all A.I. development now,” before it’s too late. What a dipstick. He’s in talks with Bill Gates or something to avert the catastrophe.
Then there’s this knee-slapper.
“If We Go Ahead On This, Everyone Will Die” Warns AI Expert Calling For Absolute Shutdown
Yudkowsky predicts that in the absence of meticulous preparation, the AI will have vastly different demands from humans, and once self-aware will “not care for us” nor any other sentient life. “That kind of caring is something that could in principle be imbued into an AI but we are not ready and do not currently know how.” This is the reason why he’s calling for the absolute shutdown.
Without a human approach to life, the AI will simply consider all sentient beings to be “made of atoms it can use for something else.” And there is little humanity can do to stop it.
This incompetent jabroni and self-styled expert is in the same league as all of the other promoted A.I. “experts,” like Max Tegmark, Musk, Kissinger, Gates... Know-nothing, hysterical and nonsensical.
We wish we could laugh at all of this, but it has really become too wearisome.
Why even come out with this sort of mad crap, though? Well, other than its value as a simple distraction for the mutts and simpletons, it’s important for them to always have something simmering to entice investors to get in on “the next big thing.” It’s part of a — wait for it... a sort of pump-and-dump.
Also, it’s to make you think they’ve really got something there, so maybe you’ll buy some product or brand they’ve got prepared for market.
Also, we’ve previously looked at how they’re trying to sell this A.I. as all-seeing and knowing, so they’ll have another potential avenue to feed you BS when it comes time to make “the big decisions.” They’ve already piloted this project with things like, “The A.I. says we’ve only got another few years until catastrophe from Climate Change!” If they can scare you, you don’t reason well, and you’ll jump into any old thing for “safety and salvation.” It’s an age-old tactic, and those of you who don’t know it better get schooled post-haste.
As always, it also gives them an excuse to trot out their mouthpieces to spout off their worthless blather.
Benefits of a Brainwashed Population to Controllers
We’re brainwashed — and this is one of the most foul examples — not to inquire into the simplest yet most urgent questions, like how to deal with when political units become corrupt, and how to constantly check for that, and guard against it.
What about the tacit acceptance of cancer and heart disease increasing year by year, consistently, with no apparent curiosity or desire to investigate or stop it?
Pathetic, too, that we’ve somehow accepted bottled water when we’re brainwashed to not insist that one role of government should be to ensure all water is 100% pure coming out of taps.
As brainwashed mechanisms in search of validation, we merely roll, on autopilot, until something comes along that validates the quest to be brainwashed. Then cue the fanaticism, group-think and other insanity that engenders.
Now they’re saying 300 million jobs to be displaced by A.I., a predictive programming ruse to condition people to the unemployment they’re trying to foist on us. A note about “employment” — it is limitless, another thing that we expect few to understand. As long as there’s one project, one thing that someone wants that they could make use of, and don’t have, there’s potential employment.
There’s plenty of idle, willing manpower, it’s just stifled by the absurd, unworkable monetary and economic system. You must grok this point: there’s no limit to what needs to be done, and there’s plenty of opportunity and ability to do it. And each positive job or creation elevates society that bit more. Instead, we have goons creating only opportunities for squalor and destruction, and goofs go along with it every step of the way.
No limit to the work that needs to be done. There’s nowhere that roads don’t need improvement, potholes filled. Nowhere that couldn’t use a subway or extension. Nowhere that couldn’t use more sidewalks or more power generation or improved tech. That’s just the public works. And when all the tidying up and repairs and infrastructure are in order, we could turn to enhancements of each individual.
If everyone wants to live in a castle, that could be done. If everyone wants to drive a Lambo, so be it. If free enterprise and efficient use of labor were not stifled, but allowed to function, Lamborghinis would be financially attainable for almost every worker, or, most every worker would be able to advance to that point.
Summary
The Sad Truth: A Brainwashed State Is the Human Condition
You’ve heard the expression, “You can’t con an honest man.” It refers to most cons involving a victim who gets suckered in because he thinks he’s going to profit off some shady deal — a “confidence scheme.” Well, there’s a similar rule for brainwashing. Those tricks we’ve discussed don’t work on a person with his feces in a tidy pile. If you understand the way the world works, and know truth, how can you be convinced of falsehoods that contradict it? You can’t. So why isn’t everyone resistant against brainwashing? Because truth is often hard, and, generally, people prefer the soft cushion provided by lies.
So Important
That point: there is no limit to the “economy,” or to the wealth we can produce, except our capacity to perform tasks, and our determination, and our commitment to eliminate useless make-work and counterproductive “jobs.”
This other salient point: You know you’re brainwashed if something spoken or written “offends” you. Most times, it merely reflects on how you are brainwashed, and is exploitation of that brainwashing. A good example is politics. You’re tricked into “picking a side” and being offended by “the other side,” in an endless carnival of absurdity that is neutering. If something is wrong or bad, take action to stop it if possible, don’t run around “offended” all the time. We’re talking about non-personal things, not, for example, direct threats of violence affecting you personally, of course, that should be obvious.
Also:
- Brainwashing is required to gloss over that basically everything is a lie to manipulate you or drive your emotions.
- People can’t understand that the world was here long before they were, and had a chance to cement all the nefariousness of the “bad guys,” with their mastery of these controlling techniques, like brainwashing.
- If you’re brainwashed into obedience to authority, like that relayed on the TV, any other brainwashing is of course unnecessary.
- If you’re brainwashed into materialism, you can’t ever be happy, you’ll always be “coming up short” by comparison to someone else, and there will always be someone that will step in to exploit your desires.
- Most people, sadly, are looking for the chance to be brainwashed to allow indulgence of needs, and cravings, which can be mostly negative, not positive.
- There is a problem for anyone who has half an inkling of what’s going on, being swept along in the backwash of the teeming brainwashed hicks and their crazy behavior.
- Awareness of the problem may not even be possible, at a certain stage. It behooves people to, if they can, simply assume they’re brainwashed and work from there.
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