Tying things together or trying to

10/12/23: Update of the post written on 8/11/23:



COLUMBUS DAY EDITION.

Today is the REAL Columbus Day before the change to a Monday, so that people could have a 3-day weekend. Might as well change Christmas Day to some Monday in late December. Then you would call it X-mas Day, or Winter Solstice Day or what have you.

end update:

the original post:

Readers of this blog may note a pattern. One of the first things was about respect for truth. Also, that the truth is a slippery thing. Then it was about the lack of material progress, which started sometime in the late sixties. It moved on to other things, like the Uniparty. But it all has a tie in somewhere. Going a bit further, the comparison with the fall of the Roman Empire, and lately, the Brave New World. The comparison is with our situation.

It may be hard for people to accept, but a lot of what you believe may be programmed into you. When I was a little boy, and just starting out in school, there was school prayer. Christopher Columbus was a great man. All Americans were very grateful and proud to live in the USA. In school, the songs we sung were patriotic. Does anybody think that these things are still true today? Little by little, these things changed. It may explain why I long for the old days when America really was great, and almost everybody said so. It may also explain why fewer and fewer people seem to like their own country. Why the change? I would submit that a lot of these attitudes are drilled into you and me all the time. It starts in school, and is reinforced by the culture that seems to have taken root. The culture has changed because the cultural conditioning has changed.

The Patty Hearst case comes to mind. She was kidnapped by the so-called Symbionese Liberation Movement, or some such thing. As time went by, she was converted to their cause. She became one of them, and began calling herself Tanya. These folks were revolutionaries. Once they were caught, Patty Hearst changed her attitude once again, and wanted to be called Patty again. At her trial, she pleaded that she was brainwashed. The jury didn't buy it, and she was convicted. President Carter may have commuted her sentence, and eventually she may have been pardoned altogether. At any rate, her case begs for some explanation. Was she brainwashed?

There are films that cover the topic of brainwashing. There was the Manchurian Candidate, which starred Frank Sinatra. That sort of brainwashing was never really believed, as the people brainwashed seemed to be programmed into believing things that seemed unbelievable even to themselves. Perhaps that's why folks at that trial didn't buy into the brainwashing theory, and refused to acquit Patty Hearst. Another film is Clockwork Orange. In that film, the main character is brainwashed into acting completely opposite of how he acted before. This treatment was to make him a good citizen who would be sick to his stomach at the very thought of sex and violence.

There have been stories in films based upon real events, such as the one in Dances with Wolves. It is based upon the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped by plains Indians, and became one of the tribe. The explanation for the change is referred to as Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome refers to the identification with one's captors. Such may have been the case with Patty Hearst.

The cultural morass of today may have had at least some of its success to a similar process. The culture has captured the people and the people are coming under its power. The trouble is that the culture is antagonistic to America's existence. People like me are somewhat puzzled by the lack of resistance to it. But not everybody remembers a time when things were quite different. The culture has really done its job of programming people. I note it from time to time how the language has been changed. Back in the old days, homosexuals were called "queers". To call someone a queer was to insult them, and it might well have been fighting words. These days, it is the other way around. If you call a faggot a faggot, you're the bad person. The culture was flipped on itself 180 degrees. The mutilation of children is starting to be accepted as a normal thing. Back in the day, it would have been scandalous.

So Donald Trump runs on the banner of Making America Great Again. For that, he is the bad guy that the programmed and mindless seals hate. They are taught to hate Trump for nothing more than restoring America to its greatness. Their hysterical opposition is to the possibility that he may succeed, and the fear that he would succeed. For that would mean the rejection of them.

If the true issue is not whether or not Trump is the bad orange man, but whether or not the underpinnings of that belief are valid or not. If the issues were valid, then why make things up? Why lie about Trump if he is so obviously evil?

The problem is, for these cultural programmers, is that their programming isn't finished yet. There are still too many people who like what this country once was, and would like to return back to it.

There was no insurrection on January 6th. There is a cultural divide that is basically incompatible with each other, and this is a cultural war. In warfare, truth is the first casualty.

It would seem that those who do not want to defend America should be asked why they don't. This is another one of the patterns here. I'm referring to the never-Trumper faction of the GOP, who will not defend Trump. Indeed, they have added their voices to the Democrats, who are the party of the cultural morass that is overcoming this country.

Pence could have referred the votes back to the states. The fact that he could have has already been addressed in the law change after January 6th. If the fact had to be addressed at that time, how could it have been an insurrection? It was lawful, and their words and deeds match up to that fact. There was a riot, but the rioters may have been provoked into violence. They did not come to overthrow the Constitution, but to protest the outcome an election that didn't seem fair nor honest. The right to protest and redress one's grievances is a lawful act.

It seems that the never-Trumpers aren't much interested in the rule of law unless they could use it to discredit their opponents. Neither are they much interested in democracy, for the same reasons. They are a lot like the cultural brainwashers that want us to ignore the laws when convenient. They identify more with their captors, and may be suffering under a type of Stockholm Syndrome. That is being as kind and generous to them as is possible. The worse case is that they are traitors.

The troubling thing to people, and the thing they may not be able to accept, is that this is pretty hard to use reason as a way to influence change. That's why it could result in a civil war. To listen to reason is to subject one's own closely held beliefs to scrutiny. Maybe only a small number of people are willing to do that. In the absence of reason, how can violence be far away?

There may be a way out of this, but it looks like a rough road ahead regardless of the final outcome.

Here's a thought to chew on. I saw this movie when I was bit too young to be allowed into the theater. It went over my head for the most part. The prison chaplain argues for free will. But the boy named Alex was forced into self-abasement in order to escape the sickness was forced into having through his treatment. Is free will a real thing? Indeed, that is what we may have to decide in our current time. Our cultural captors may be forcing us into a change that we may refuse if we had the real choice.