Changing Minds, Convincing The Public

Philosophical Musings #6

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A:Only one, but the lightbulb must really, really want to change

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After many years of failed attempts using scientific persuasion, I reached the conclusion that it is impossible to change the minds of the vast majority of people using facts and sense. Their prejudices and biases are deeply wedded to their sense of identity, which, if abandoned, will cast them adrift onto a roiling sea of psychological doubt, uncertainty and confusion. Only a tiny minority of people may be amenable to rational persuasion by engagement with their neocortex (the logical part of the brain) and these people are known as sapients. 1

Conversely it is eminently feasible and actually rather easy to shape and even radicalise the views of the vast majority, the clueless sheeple, using non-facts and non-sense. This is done by employing tactics that appeal to their reptile brain (amygdala, limbic system etc), which is governed by fear, prejudice and infantile egocentricity (an inflated personal and tribal sense of self). This fact has been amply demonstrated by the astounding effectiveness of state, commercial and social propaganda that have been able to convince millions of people that Iraq had WMDs threatening the US, that global warming is a hoax, that cigarette smoking is “cool” and that there is any basis whatsoever for wacky Qanon ideas.

I previously expanded PT Barnum’s famous quote by saying that you can actually fool most of people all of the time. All it takes to pervert democracy is to convince 51% of a population 2 of your point of view and they will then vote in the government of your choice. This is known as “Manufacturing Consent“, the title of the famous book by Herman and Chomsky.

You may be familiar with the psychological studies of Milgram (obedience to authority), Asch (conformity) and Zimbardo (prison role play leading to brutality). These studies, among others, have enabled the mass manipulators to work out how to influence people (even the “highly educated” – better termed the “highly mis-edumacated) by appealing to their basest herd and animal instincts.

The topic of how to change peoples minds is a subset of the wider topic about how to convince the general public of your chosen point of view. This is the basis for the hugely profitable multibillion dollar advertising industry. There is an entire branch of psychology devoted to the study of propaganda or “public relations” 3. There are whole university departments of “public relations” that employ “professors” of PR 4. Indeed the father of systematic propaganda, Edward Bernays, who literally wrote the handbook on propaganda entitled, can you guess it?…”Propaganda”, and who coined the term “public relations”, was the double nephew of Sigmund Freud (“uncle siggy”). Edward Bernays was, like his uncle, an Austrian Jew. Goebbels, the el-primo Nazi propagandist, literally copied his tactics from Bernays’ books, using them to inflame the prejudices of “Aryan” racists, thus facilitating the mass murder of Jews, some of whom were Bernays’ own relatives. Bernays was also responsible for addicting millions of American women to cigarettes which he called their “torches of freedom”. Way to go, Bernays!

Nobody can take away my freedom to get lung cancer from cigarettes, they will have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands!

In my previous piece debunking racism, I stated that prevention is better than cure and that it is essential to immunise children against that toxic brain virus before the merchants of bullshit get their tenterhooks into them. The merchants of bullshit are well aware of that principle themselves. After all, wasn’t it the Jesuits (echoing Aristotle) who said, “give me the child before he is seven and I will show you the man”? That obviously applied to brainwashing women as well.

Understanding and applying the above has enabled the U.S. GIMME 5 establishment to, piecemeal over several decades, extirpate from American society the mechanisms and champions of social justice, equity and fairness 6, to transform the US into the predatory, parasitic, protofascist, fake “neoliberal” (neither new nor liberal) bogus democracy that operates today.

To summarise how the US propaganda machine works:

The majority of people, the clueless sheeple, are governed by their reptile brains characterised by a tribal/herd mentality and infantile egocentricity, which can either be contained or inflamed depending on the environment they are exposed to.

It has been shown to be quite easy, using relentless media propaganda, to manufacture an environment of fear and loathing against the bogeyman du jour (Jews, Muslims, Iraqis, Iranians, Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, Mexican wetbacks, “Ecoterrorists” – whatever) and convince the sheeple to give up their basic freedoms (personal privacy, free speech, the right to protest against unjust laws, the right of habeas corpus etc) for the illusion of security. Vote me into power and I will protect you against the designated scary enemy of the day. Orwell had it right when describing the workings of the “Ministry of Truth”, “Doublethink”, “Newspeak” and the “two minutes hate” directed against the enemy du jour. Blaming scapegoats works well to deflect resentment away from the real culprits causing the catastrophic environmental and economic problems we face today: the filthy rich 0.1%.

Illusion of free speech and thought: Unlike overtly authoritarian heavy handed dictatorships, the US propaganda machine has discovered that it is not necessary to completely stamp out isolated voices of dissent such as Noam Chomsky. They can simply be ignored and denied mainstream platforms. Such marginalised voices have zero influence on the world stage if the media are copiously flooded with complete bullshit, repeated in multiple outlets, that drown out any voices of reason. Worst of all are those historically “progressive” outlets now controlled by interests that do not serve the public good eg the Washington Post bought by Jeff Bezos. Half truths can be far worse than outright lies because they are more believable. William Casey, CIA Director from 1981-87 famously said,
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
The greatest triumph of the US propaganda machine is convincing people that they have not, in fact, been brainwashed.

Illusion of a free press: Is the US press free? Just ask Julian Assange, whose greatest crime was exposing the war crimes of the US government.

Illusion of democracy: The biggest lie of all is that the USA is a democracy which supports democracies around the world. Indisputable overwhelming evidence has proven that the US is no longer a democracy at home 7, has a contemptible history of overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world 8 and in fact supports many brutal authoritarian regimes when it suits US political purposes (Shah Reza Pahlavi, the Saudi Arabian monarchy – who still practice public beheadings, Augusto Pinochet, as well as Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak who were supported for decades by the US before reaching their use-by dates, to name just a few).

This system “coincidentally” works in favour of the financial interests of the military industrial complex, the militarised police, the privatised prison system (unpaid prison labour is the modern version of Black slavery), the corporations, the banks and the stockmarket.

The corporate Deep State in conjunction with the mass media have learned how to effectively employ identity politics to fragment their opposition and to sabotage concerted public initiatives to address the crucial issues of ecodestruction, global warming, resource depletion, pollution, risk of nuclear war etc: issues that the Deep State are in fact exacerbating. Trump and Bolsonaro were and are obvious examples of this. Biden merely pays lip service to sustainability concerns. If Biden was serious about climate change he would immediately abolish all government subsidies to the fossil fuel industries and greatly reduce the US military budget (the funds to be redirected to the permanent restoration of beneficial social policies eg universal health care, public education etc). However neither have any hope of occurring.

CONCLUSION: An elite cabal of smart but evil self serving psychopaths have discovered how to effectively manipulate the opinions of the clueless sheeple and thereby pervert American Democracy – as well as royally screw any other countries who refuse to toe their line.

FOOTNOTES

1. Sapience has little to do with formal education, indeed ivy league universities are the viral epicentre of neoliberal economic disinformation and untruth. (But paradoxically they are also the centre of important factual research. The presence of the latter, based on truth, lends credibility to the former, based on lies).

2. Actually, way less than 51% will suffice. You just need to convince A% of the people, provided that A% exceeds the individual percentages of the smaller fragmented categories of B, C, D etc. “First past the post” democracy operates this way, another example of divide and rule which works by fragmenting your opposition.

3. Other near synonyms are “perception management” or “brainwashing“

4. The medical abbreviation “PR” (per rectum) refers to the act of sticking one’s finger up another’s rectum. The difference between medical PR and public relations PR is…er…actually, there is no difference.

5. Government, Industrial, Military, Media and Economic

6. Multiple assassinations of progressive leaders such as JFK, Robert Kennedy, MLK jr, Malcolm X and Fred Hampton in the 1960s were not random unconnected events. As with all situations where there is a fog of uncertainty, one must always ask, “cui bono“? Ever since the early 1970s after the removal of such “impediments”, social inequity in the USA has exploded, with the 0.1% economic elite making out like bandits. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

7. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-ofamerican-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-averagecitizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

8. https://www.academia.edu/40418850/Americas_Deadliest_Export_Blum_William

9. For those in denial that global industrial civilisation is in the throes of collapse right now, I paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, who never said,