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