All forms of government from that of a tribal clan chieftain to the global corporate fascism of today share one thing in common: they cannot be maintained without deception and the maintenance of privileged access to information, natural resources, and legal immunity from prosecution. I consider this fact obvious, but if asked for supporting evidence i would respond thus: if this privilege were absent then one would have to conclude that those in power (inter-generational dynasties for the most part) are in power because of merit. if you can believe that as a possibility you are essentially believing that people like 'insane McCain' and hillary clinton were on stage because they are actually the smartest, most ethical, and are in fact superior in all relevant qualifications to everyone else elligible for the office. . .that they are simply the best America has to offer. this is obviously false. any sane person knows, in fact, that the reverse is true. the leaders of our 'democracy' are actually the most incompetent corrupt and foolish possible people (if you accept that their stated goals are their true goals). their actions and decisions during my lifetime have precipitated only death, perpetual economic crisis, and crime on such a scale it is unquantifiable. every president in history has been the subject of both moral and financial scandal, as well as glaring errors in judgement. so how is this baffling discrepancy between expectation and performance, between stated goals and actual results maintained? I created this blog to expound the answer to this very question. decades of study have led me to a relatively simple conclusion: over the course of thousands of years of human history a highly-evolved science of herd management has been developed based on a meticulously studied and thoroughly tested knowledge of human psychology and perception and the exploitation of these factors to achieve any desired end. though we know look dismissively back on the time when Caesars, kings and pharaohs were worshiped as human gods, the fact is that exactly the same mechanisms are in place today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_Washington
"The Apotheosis of Washington depicts George Washington sitting amongst the heavens in an exalted manner, or in literal terms, ascending and becoming a god (apotheosis)"
"Horatio Greenough based “Enthroned Washington” on Phidias' great statue of Zeus Olympios
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_(Greenough)
[note the similarity to both zeus and baphomet images on the right]
although i could go on for pages and pages about the symbolism used to deify American politicians, i have chosen instead to look at what it is within the human mind that allows such bizarre and blatantly absurd veneration of such corrupt people to be perpetuated despite all available evidence to the contrary.
the deception is vast and multifaceted and involves art, music, oratory neurolinguistic programming, and dramatic histrionics and pageantry, but for the time being i want to focus on the internals within the mass psyche of the population that allows these parlor tricks (parlortrick-tions) to gain any purchase whatsoever and actually take hold of the mass mind. the psychological tendencies of enslaved populations i want to examine could be grouped together under general terms like 'psychological defense mechanisms' or perhaps more accurately as elements of 'victim psychology'. by this i refer to consistent and reproducible reactions and tendencies of the human mind when confronted by paradoxical input or any kind of trauma in general which threatens the persons feeling of safety or, even more abstractly, anything that threatens an individual's ego/self-image. these mechanisms are so well understood by politicians, advertisers, and all manner of charlatans and con-men that even an absurd circus like America can go on functioning despite the obvious psychopathic, exploitative, and murderous conduct of governmental policies. all the while people are waving flags, singing anthems, crying out of reverence, and blaming everything under the sun except themselves and their own government for the state of suffering that persists worldwide.
perhaps the most fundamental of the elements of victim psychology has been termed "Stockholm Syndrome"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
"Stockholm syndrome is a psychological condition that causes hostages to develop sympathetic sentiments towards their captors, often sharing their opinions and acquiring romantic feelings for them as a survival strategy during captivity.[1] These feelings, resulting from a bond formed between captor and captives during intimate time spent together, are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims. Generally speaking, Stockholm syndrome consists of "strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other."[2] The FBI's Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly eight percent of victims show evidence of Stockholm syndrome.[3]
Formally named in 1973 when four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, Stockholm syndrome is also commonly known as ‘capture bonding’.[3] The syndrome’s title was developed when the victims of the Stockholm bank robbery defended their captors after being released and would not agree to testify in court against them.[4] Stockholm syndrome’s significance arises due to the fact that it is based in a paradox, as captives’ sentiments for their captors are the opposite of the fear and disdain an onlooker may expect to see as a result of trauma.
There are four key components that generally lead to the development of Stockholm syndrome: a hostage’s development of positive feelings towards their captor, no previous hostage-captor relationship, a refusal by hostages to cooperate with police forces and other government authorities, and a hostage’s belief in the humanity of their captor, for the reason that when a victim holds the same values as the aggressor, they cease to be perceived as a threat.[2][3]. . . .From a psychoanalytic lens, it can be argued that Stockholm syndrome arises strictly as a result of survival instincts. Strentz states, “the victim’s need to survive is stronger than his impulse to hate the person who has created the dilemma.” A positive emotional bond between captor and captive is a “defense mechanism of the ego under stress”.[4] These sentimental feelings are not strictly for show however. Since captors often fear that their affection will be perceived as fake, captives eventually begin to believe that their positive sentiments are genuine."
First published in 1994, author Dee Graham uses the Stockholm syndrome label to describe group or collective responses to trauma, rather than individual reactions. Graham focuses specifically on the impact of Stockholm syndrome on battered and abused women as a community.[4] She claimed that in both the psychological and societal senses, women are defined by their sense of fear surrounding the threat of male violence. This constant fear drives women to perform actions that they know will be pleasing to men in order to avoid emotional, physical, or sexual assault as a result of male anger. Graham draws parallels between women and kidnapping victims in the sense that these women bond to men to survive as captives bond to their captors to survive.[4] "
. . .
when i read the above, i am reminded of the exaggerated patriotism i have observed among veterans i have met who have direct experience of the murder, drug-dealing, and mind control abuse that is experienced in the military training process as well as the draconian disciplinary measures therin, and the actual horrors of battle and murder of unarmed or innocent civilians, including women and children. people i have met can tell you about all these horrific experiences in one breath and in the next moment salute the flag or talk about the camaraderie between their fellow soldiers. . .'semper fi' or some such idea. they have been so programmed by their abusers that they actually transfer all their fear and hatred on to the malnourished subsistence farmers of the viet-cong 'gooks', 'slopes', 'rag-heads', 'hajis', 'sand-niggers' etc. (who are obviously much less responsible for worldwide murder and radiation/chemical poisoning than the US armed forces themselves).
a less extreme version of this type of bizarre paradoxical thought process is obvious to me whenever i watch people in crowds at something like the democratic or republican conventions in the US election cycle; here we see hordes of the poor working class fawning over the political class oligarchs who are actually responsible for most of the social problems they are there to complain about. when a politician gets out of a limousine, walks on stage in an armani pantsuit like hillary clinton, flies around in private jets, stays in 5 star hotels and drinks only the finest wine. . .this is seen as evidence of the superiority and high-class status of the politician, and of their mystical god-like power to solve the problems that are just too complex to be solved by the voters themselves. instead of correctly perceiving that the political class has nothing in common with the voters and no interest in addressing their problems, and indeed that elites would actually lose all their power, prestige and payola if they were to actually do anything to undermine the mafia-style violent oligarchy that maintains the status quo with technological monopoly, economic privilege, insider trading, and full-spectrum deception about what the government is actually doing, the victims of political stockholm syndrome see the deification of the political class as heroic and awesome, believing only this type of demi-god is capable of running their lives for them, telling them how to live, and acting as an intermediary between the public and the levers of power (much as a priest in ancient times mediated between the holy law and the illiterate masses). the common person has no concept that a paradox like this even exists in their own mind. this willful ignorance and the mechanisms underlying it are so well understood by the so-called 'elites' because it has been cultivated over thousands of years to the point of becoming a science.
the next concept i want to examine is closely related to that described above, and functions similarly on the basis of paradox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
"In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values.[1][2]
Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance focuses on how humans strive for internal consistency. An individual who experiences inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance, as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it.[1]"
to put this more simply, you could say that humans all function on the basis of dogmatic beliefs that serve to simplify a complex world into a manageable kind of stick-figure caricature of reality. one example would be the general development of a belief (notably under the george w. bush presidency) that republican conservatives are racist capitalist war-mongers, while democrat liberals are egalitarian socialist peaceniks.
it doesn't matter that Obama expanded drone-strikes, deportations, domestic surveillance, censorship of whistle-blowers, corporate bailouts, and foreign wars and proxy-wars. . .none of these matters even register in the minds of 'liberals' because they have already accepted the fact that 'their' president and demi-god is a peace-prize winner. the fact that all the behaviors that were protested by 'liberal' activists under the republican bush administration actually increased under obama does not even register, because to acknowledge that fact would undermine the delusional worldview that there are really differences in the conduct and values of 'conservative' and 'liberal' presidents. the inversion of pragmatic facts of real world experience with abstract and ephemeral labels and categories as determinants of reactions to policies or activities is typical of all delusional and dogmatic systems. dogma cannot accommodate changing or new information, that is its nature--to resist change or inconsistency no matter how much evidence is presented. dogma is actually the most prominent characteristic of human belief systems, and nowhere is this more obvious than in politics. again, as stated above, this dynamic is so well understood by world rulers that the 'divide and conquer' scheme has never waned in any sphere of human discourse for thousands of years. all you have to do is polarize discourse into two fabricated 'enemies', and suddenly everything becomes black and white (just as in religious dogma). this false simplification is embraced by the masses because it relieves the stress on their psyche that would arise if they had to actually examine reality in detail and admit the profoundly deceptive and exploitative nature of their culture as a whole, and of their own personal conduct in particular.
now that this process has been laid out in some detail, we can examine some specific reactions of the psyche when confronted with internal and external paradox and contradiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_formation
"In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation (German: Reaktionsbildung) is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which emotions and impulses which are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the directly opposing tendency.[1][2] "
in short, i would say that this describes the process where voters idolize the corrupt and decadent 'elite' and look to them to solve societies problems, rather than admitting that the violent, deceptive, and corrupt 'elites' are obviously the cause of the problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial
"Denial, in ordinary English usage, is asserting that a statement or allegation is not true.[1] The same word, and also abnegation (German: Verneinung), is used for a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.[1][2][3] An individual that exhibits such behaviour is described as a denialist[4] or true believer. Denial also could mean denying the happening of an event or the reliability of information, which can lead to a feeling of aloofness and to the ignoring of possibly beneficial information.
The subject may use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_Washington
"The Apotheosis of Washington depicts George Washington sitting amongst the heavens in an exalted manner, or in literal terms, ascending and becoming a god (apotheosis)"
"Horatio Greenough based “Enthroned Washington” on Phidias' great statue of Zeus Olympios
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_(Greenough)
[note the similarity to both zeus and baphomet images on the right]
although i could go on for pages and pages about the symbolism used to deify American politicians, i have chosen instead to look at what it is within the human mind that allows such bizarre and blatantly absurd veneration of such corrupt people to be perpetuated despite all available evidence to the contrary.
the deception is vast and multifaceted and involves art, music, oratory neurolinguistic programming, and dramatic histrionics and pageantry, but for the time being i want to focus on the internals within the mass psyche of the population that allows these parlor tricks (parlortrick-tions) to gain any purchase whatsoever and actually take hold of the mass mind. the psychological tendencies of enslaved populations i want to examine could be grouped together under general terms like 'psychological defense mechanisms' or perhaps more accurately as elements of 'victim psychology'. by this i refer to consistent and reproducible reactions and tendencies of the human mind when confronted by paradoxical input or any kind of trauma in general which threatens the persons feeling of safety or, even more abstractly, anything that threatens an individual's ego/self-image. these mechanisms are so well understood by politicians, advertisers, and all manner of charlatans and con-men that even an absurd circus like America can go on functioning despite the obvious psychopathic, exploitative, and murderous conduct of governmental policies. all the while people are waving flags, singing anthems, crying out of reverence, and blaming everything under the sun except themselves and their own government for the state of suffering that persists worldwide.
perhaps the most fundamental of the elements of victim psychology has been termed "Stockholm Syndrome"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
"Stockholm syndrome is a psychological condition that causes hostages to develop sympathetic sentiments towards their captors, often sharing their opinions and acquiring romantic feelings for them as a survival strategy during captivity.[1] These feelings, resulting from a bond formed between captor and captives during intimate time spent together, are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims. Generally speaking, Stockholm syndrome consists of "strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other."[2] The FBI's Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly eight percent of victims show evidence of Stockholm syndrome.[3]
Formally named in 1973 when four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, Stockholm syndrome is also commonly known as ‘capture bonding’.[3] The syndrome’s title was developed when the victims of the Stockholm bank robbery defended their captors after being released and would not agree to testify in court against them.[4] Stockholm syndrome’s significance arises due to the fact that it is based in a paradox, as captives’ sentiments for their captors are the opposite of the fear and disdain an onlooker may expect to see as a result of trauma.
There are four key components that generally lead to the development of Stockholm syndrome: a hostage’s development of positive feelings towards their captor, no previous hostage-captor relationship, a refusal by hostages to cooperate with police forces and other government authorities, and a hostage’s belief in the humanity of their captor, for the reason that when a victim holds the same values as the aggressor, they cease to be perceived as a threat.[2][3]. . . .From a psychoanalytic lens, it can be argued that Stockholm syndrome arises strictly as a result of survival instincts. Strentz states, “the victim’s need to survive is stronger than his impulse to hate the person who has created the dilemma.” A positive emotional bond between captor and captive is a “defense mechanism of the ego under stress”.[4] These sentimental feelings are not strictly for show however. Since captors often fear that their affection will be perceived as fake, captives eventually begin to believe that their positive sentiments are genuine."
First published in 1994, author Dee Graham uses the Stockholm syndrome label to describe group or collective responses to trauma, rather than individual reactions. Graham focuses specifically on the impact of Stockholm syndrome on battered and abused women as a community.[4] She claimed that in both the psychological and societal senses, women are defined by their sense of fear surrounding the threat of male violence. This constant fear drives women to perform actions that they know will be pleasing to men in order to avoid emotional, physical, or sexual assault as a result of male anger. Graham draws parallels between women and kidnapping victims in the sense that these women bond to men to survive as captives bond to their captors to survive.[4] "
. . .
when i read the above, i am reminded of the exaggerated patriotism i have observed among veterans i have met who have direct experience of the murder, drug-dealing, and mind control abuse that is experienced in the military training process as well as the draconian disciplinary measures therin, and the actual horrors of battle and murder of unarmed or innocent civilians, including women and children. people i have met can tell you about all these horrific experiences in one breath and in the next moment salute the flag or talk about the camaraderie between their fellow soldiers. . .'semper fi' or some such idea. they have been so programmed by their abusers that they actually transfer all their fear and hatred on to the malnourished subsistence farmers of the viet-cong 'gooks', 'slopes', 'rag-heads', 'hajis', 'sand-niggers' etc. (who are obviously much less responsible for worldwide murder and radiation/chemical poisoning than the US armed forces themselves).
a less extreme version of this type of bizarre paradoxical thought process is obvious to me whenever i watch people in crowds at something like the democratic or republican conventions in the US election cycle; here we see hordes of the poor working class fawning over the political class oligarchs who are actually responsible for most of the social problems they are there to complain about. when a politician gets out of a limousine, walks on stage in an armani pantsuit like hillary clinton, flies around in private jets, stays in 5 star hotels and drinks only the finest wine. . .this is seen as evidence of the superiority and high-class status of the politician, and of their mystical god-like power to solve the problems that are just too complex to be solved by the voters themselves. instead of correctly perceiving that the political class has nothing in common with the voters and no interest in addressing their problems, and indeed that elites would actually lose all their power, prestige and payola if they were to actually do anything to undermine the mafia-style violent oligarchy that maintains the status quo with technological monopoly, economic privilege, insider trading, and full-spectrum deception about what the government is actually doing, the victims of political stockholm syndrome see the deification of the political class as heroic and awesome, believing only this type of demi-god is capable of running their lives for them, telling them how to live, and acting as an intermediary between the public and the levers of power (much as a priest in ancient times mediated between the holy law and the illiterate masses). the common person has no concept that a paradox like this even exists in their own mind. this willful ignorance and the mechanisms underlying it are so well understood by the so-called 'elites' because it has been cultivated over thousands of years to the point of becoming a science.
the next concept i want to examine is closely related to that described above, and functions similarly on the basis of paradox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
"In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values.[1][2]
Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance focuses on how humans strive for internal consistency. An individual who experiences inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance, as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it.[1]"
to put this more simply, you could say that humans all function on the basis of dogmatic beliefs that serve to simplify a complex world into a manageable kind of stick-figure caricature of reality. one example would be the general development of a belief (notably under the george w. bush presidency) that republican conservatives are racist capitalist war-mongers, while democrat liberals are egalitarian socialist peaceniks.
it doesn't matter that Obama expanded drone-strikes, deportations, domestic surveillance, censorship of whistle-blowers, corporate bailouts, and foreign wars and proxy-wars. . .none of these matters even register in the minds of 'liberals' because they have already accepted the fact that 'their' president and demi-god is a peace-prize winner. the fact that all the behaviors that were protested by 'liberal' activists under the republican bush administration actually increased under obama does not even register, because to acknowledge that fact would undermine the delusional worldview that there are really differences in the conduct and values of 'conservative' and 'liberal' presidents. the inversion of pragmatic facts of real world experience with abstract and ephemeral labels and categories as determinants of reactions to policies or activities is typical of all delusional and dogmatic systems. dogma cannot accommodate changing or new information, that is its nature--to resist change or inconsistency no matter how much evidence is presented. dogma is actually the most prominent characteristic of human belief systems, and nowhere is this more obvious than in politics. again, as stated above, this dynamic is so well understood by world rulers that the 'divide and conquer' scheme has never waned in any sphere of human discourse for thousands of years. all you have to do is polarize discourse into two fabricated 'enemies', and suddenly everything becomes black and white (just as in religious dogma). this false simplification is embraced by the masses because it relieves the stress on their psyche that would arise if they had to actually examine reality in detail and admit the profoundly deceptive and exploitative nature of their culture as a whole, and of their own personal conduct in particular.
now that this process has been laid out in some detail, we can examine some specific reactions of the psyche when confronted with internal and external paradox and contradiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_formation
"In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation (German: Reaktionsbildung) is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which emotions and impulses which are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the directly opposing tendency.[1][2] "
in short, i would say that this describes the process where voters idolize the corrupt and decadent 'elite' and look to them to solve societies problems, rather than admitting that the violent, deceptive, and corrupt 'elites' are obviously the cause of the problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial
"Denial, in ordinary English usage, is asserting that a statement or allegation is not true.[1] The same word, and also abnegation (German: Verneinung), is used for a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.[1][2][3] An individual that exhibits such behaviour is described as a denialist[4] or true believer. Denial also could mean denying the happening of an event or the reliability of information, which can lead to a feeling of aloofness and to the ignoring of possibly beneficial information.
The subject may use:
- simple denial: deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether
- minimisation: admit the fact but deny its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization)
- projection: admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility by blaming somebody or something else."
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