The Brainwashing of America

Many – including myself – have been amazed and alarmed at how easily humanity can be brainwashed into thinking anything is true, no matter how fantastic or obviously fabricated the falsehoods.

Today, in the year 2021, a conspiracy network of pranksters, influencers - and even foreign misinformation actors – have succeeded in convincing millions of Americans that a secret cabal of powerful and evil people control everything in the world from money to politics to eugenics. This network of lies is often referred to as ‘QAnon’ in social media, but it is not an entity as much as it is a metaphor for ‘religion’.  

I am often confronted by other atheists that ask how knowledgeable, educated, mature adults could possibly believe that the earth was created in seven days, or that a god controls all that we do, or that a virgin gave birth, or her son rose from the dead?

I tell them that it is part of our DNA. We are ‘instructed’ by genetics to believe so we may create. All of nature is a balance. Good and bad, life and death, love and loss,… they all play a role in life as we know it. The price we pay for sentience is imagination. Without imagination we cannot be truly sentient. It is nature’s way to balance the awesome power of sentience.

Thus, we are genetically designed to ‘believe’.  And to insure we believe in accordance with our ability to create and destroy – nature allows us to apply no logic to anything we believe.  We must train our minds to be logical. Moral. Objective. Fact seeking. If we are trained only to believe without question as to facts or reason, then we are prone to believe anything.  It is not a coincidence that most all the QAnon believers claim to be avid Christians. The religious right in this country are some of the most malleable - as they are the least trained to seek answers and logic in what they believe. They are trained to believe what they are told to believe.

Not only is imagination and belief essential to sentience and creativity, but it is also essential to hate and violence. It is no coincidence that religious wars and wars attributed to ‘Gods Will’ have killed so many people over history.  Having ‘God’ on our side has always been a sure way to get people to die for the power mongers of history.

On Jan 6th 2021 a mob of US ‘patriots’ engaged in a 3rd world type insurrection aimed at forcing politicians to overturn an obviously fair and free democratic election. They stormed the US Capital in Washington DC and were solely responsible for the loss of 5 lives.  They were made to ‘believe’ that the election was fraudulent – not by just social brainwashing – but also by a sitting president of the United States. 

The power elite have used social brainwashing to their own ends throughout history. However, few as brazen and overt as that used by a U.S. president.  The power of control over others is so intoxicating that the powerful start imagining themselves being omnipotent. The imaginations of both the controlled and the controllers begets more and more ‘alternate realities’ - and first thing you know the whole country is a violent video game.

Power is not only intoxicating, but also contagious.

Hundreds of US politicians saw the awesome power and control that were at their beckon call if they too acted as if they believed the lies and promoted the anger and hate building in millions of controlled followers.  Either by action or inaction many in leadership roles helped make the unthinkable true and the truth a lie.

We may very well be at a crossroads where conflict to restore truth and honor will be the only recourse. I pray it’s not true. But what I believe is more important.

JWB

The second impeachment of the U.S. Senate

This is a follow-up to my post “The Trump Led Insurrection of 2021”.

After that post, the U.S. House of representatives voted to impeach then-president Trump a second time. This time with far more cause than the previous political theater that focused on Trump’s apparent influence bartering - which every politician has engaged in since the creation of human society.

But as is the case with politicians, they are not all that smart when it comes to cause and effect.

In order to get a conviction in the Senate, there needs to be a ‘super majority’ of 67% - or 67 Senators out of the body of 100 must vote to convict. With the Senate evenly split 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans, the Republican party must offer up 17 of their senators to convict Trump (a Republican) of inciting an insurrection.

Of course, this cannot happen. If the Senate convicts, then all the congressional Republican politicians that, through action or inaction, supported the lies and actions of Trump – would be indicting themselves. They would be virtually admitting fault - and that is the single most important rule in politics. It’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault. 

Admitting fault is a 100% sure end to a political career. The opposing party will never let your constituents forget.

There are a half-dozen ‘real’ legacy Republicans that parted ways with Trump long before the insurrection. The writing on the wall being what it was. So, their political future is less constrained by deceit. Alas, their more patriotic votes will not be enough to convict and bar Trump from American politics for life.

Contemporary Republicans of the ‘shock & awe’ generation are stuck with the facts, the lies, their arrogance, their cowardice, their power trip under Trump. Not to mention the visceral images of insurrection that many thought only graced newscasts of third world countries. Now they had to deny, deny, deny – or its over for them.

The leaders of the insurrection in the Senate actually met with Trump's defense attorneys to be sure they presented evidence to the jury (the Senate - i.e. themselves) that would get Trump off without a conviction. This is the type of manipulation politicians engage in all the time. They think the electorate is too stupid to notice. And as can be seen in the results of the 2020 election – they are at least half right.

The point to all this is simply that Trump was what the Republican party allowed him to be. Warts and all. They own it. So, they cannot condemn it.

JWB