Turn Off the MSM Rant and Open Your Minds

Posted on August 1, 2020 by marcia

Corporate Controlled Mainstream Media (MSM) Exists to Demoralize the Public

It has become increasingly obvious that the corporate controlled mainstream media exists to demoralize the public by cherry-picking stories that favor a narrative that promotes victimization.

by Patrick Herbert

Incidents that are in the minority are amplified and with purposeful repetitive selection to give the impression that the conditions and circumstances surrounding a particular narrative are in the majority.

I have observed the effect that mainstream narratives have on both the collective and individual level, and the ferocious intensity with which people are convinced that the world that they read about has a one-to-one correspondence with a reality that they believe exists right outside their front door.

One need not look any further than the ocean of mask wearing individuals walking about in public, convinced that the breath of their neighbor or fellow pedestrian is a weapon of mass destruction.

The media has purposefully promoted the concept that those who do not wear a mask are an existential threat to you and your family.

According to them, you are a victim to their callous behavior; that ultimately freedom loving people who refuse to wear a mask are a threat to society.

This is intentional, for as you have been victimized you will willingly forgo any of your freedoms for a guarantee of safety.

Oh, and for good measure, the media will add that they are probably Trump supporters and thus COVID-19 deniers, a tactic sure to enrage the reader even further and a blatant effort to steer the reader politically.

While the fake pandemic is a great example of the media’s role in victimizing its audience, this tactic has been deployed for long before then, primarily for the promotion of a political, racial, and gender divide as part of the effort by those at the top to divide and rule over the population.

As the attention span of the average reader has shrunk, the media has focused its energy on manufacturing loaded headlines.

For the most part, it is the headline exchanged between people who do not have the time to read the content but want to lend credence to their own perspective on an issue.

A heavy emotionalized headline will do just that, and using technology you can fire that headline in every direction like a machine gun.

These headlines are thusly shared rapidly via text messaging or as a post to timelines on the various social medias.

As the world is currently filled with an army of social justice warriors (SJW), so too are their timelines filled with selective headlines that emotionally emphasize the severity of the issues they feel they are valiantly fighting for or against.

Reading through the cherry-picked and heavily manipulated headlines on mainstream media news websites, we can see the reoccurrence of common themes: everyone is a racist, everyone desires to keep women and minorities down, members of the LGBT+ community are in danger, and COVID-19 is killing everyone, everywhere, at every moment.

Victimization. Demoralization.

Also manipulated are the pictures that accompany the stories. Normally, these are selected in ways that will further the psychological impact of that which the article is trying to convey.

A story about Joe Biden making gaffes will be accompanied by a picture of Joe Biden looking confused. A story about COVID-19 will show covered gurneys surrounded by people in hazmat suits.

A story about racism will show pictures that emphasize the narrative, such as a picture of people in robes typically worn by the Klu Klux Klan.

I have even seen stock photography of young white men holding torches, mouths open as if yelling, with a headline suggesting they were white supremacist Trump supporters.

With these elements combined tactically, it should be quite obvious that we are not confronted with organizations that seek to inform us but instead to propagandize us along a divide, and within that divide they seek to victimize and demoralize us.

The divides are many, from political to race right down into gender with there being radical subdivisions as we have been introduced to various complexities related to gender and further complicated by what we are told is a biological misunderstanding, with a narrative that is going so far as to try and alter our own perceptions of our own gender biology.

J. K. Rowling has been incessantly attacked for a seemingly innocent defense of what she considers to be the definition of a biological female, something that she has lived and identified with her entire life.

Those attacking her feel some level of injustice has been bestowed upon them, that somehow they are being denied their own identity. Some go so far to claim that these grievances are no less destructive than a physical attack.

How did they reach these conclusions? Victimization.

Certainly we all experience discrimination at some point in our lives but the truth is it happens in perpetuity when one reads the headlines and stories promoted by the mainstream media.

There is a definitive psychological impact and the people behind the engineering of these divides understand this.

You do not have a black vs. white, man vs. woman, gender biology vs. gender fluidity, religion vs. religion, woke vs. unwoke, without the victimization of one or the other.

There is no better place than to engineer this divide by promoting victimization than through the corporate mainstream media elements most consumed by a majority of the population: television news, news papers, magazines, and websites; an effort done most intentionally in order to manipulate large swaths of society into divided positions much like on a chess board.

It is the narratives that they build in our minds that allows them to control us emotionally, for we forgo any semblance of emotional control when we allow ourselves to become victims.

We are segmented into like-minded collections, played against each other across the board in whichever way is politically, financially, and/or socially expedient to the corporate media masters for reasons that they seek to benefit from.

The majority of humanity, the 99%, are thus relegated to the role of simple pawns in a much larger game whose existence they may never even be aware of.

from: https://humansarefree.com/2020/08/corporate-controlled-mainstream-media-msm-exists-to-demoralize-the-public.html

Questioning What’s Real? Maybe You Are Being Played.

Posted on July 27, 2020 by marcia

11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting

Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to gain power. And it works too well.

Source: 123rf Stock Photo/Standard License

Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn’t realize how much they’ve been brainwashed. For example, in the movie Gaslight (1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind.

In my book Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People – and Break Free I detail how gaslighters typically use the following techniques:

1. They tell blatant lies.

You know it’s an outright lie. Yet they are telling you this lie with a straight face. Why are they so blatant? Because they’re setting up a precedent. Once they tell you a huge lie, you’re not sure if anything they say is true. Keeping you unsteady and off-kilter is the goal.

2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.

You know they said they would do something; you know you heard it. But they out and out deny it. It makes you start questioning your reality—maybe they never said that thing. And the more they do this, the more you question your reality and start accepting theirs.

3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.

They know how important your kids are to you, and they know how important your identity is to you. So those may be one of the first things they attack. If you have kids, they tell you that you should not have had those children. They will tell you’d be a worthy person if only you didn’t have a long list of negative traits. They attack the foundation of your being.

4. They wear you down over time.

This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting—it is done gradually, over time. A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often…and then it starts ramping up. Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting—it is that effective. It’s the “frog in the frying pan” analogy: The heat is turned up slowly, so the frog never realizes what’s happening to it.

5. Their actions do not match their words.

When dealing with a person or entity that gaslights, look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying. What they are saying means nothing; it is just talk. What they are doing is the issue.

6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.

This person or entity that is cutting you down, telling you that you don’t have value, is now praising you for something you did. This adds an additional sense of uneasiness. You think, “Well maybe they aren’t so bad.” Yes, they are. This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter—and again, to question your reality. Also look at what you were praised for; it is probably something that served the gaslighter.

7. They know confusion weakens people.

Gaslighters know that people like having a sense of stability and normalcy. Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything. And humans’ natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable—and that happens to be the gaslighter.

8. They project.

They are a drug user or a cheater, yet they are constantly accusing you of that. This is done so often that you start trying to defend yourself, and are distracted from the gaslighter’s own behavior.

9. They try to align people against you.

Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what—and they use these people against you. They will make comments such as, “This person knows that you’re not right,” or “This person knows you’re useless too.” Keep in mind it does not mean that these people actually said these things. A gaslighter is a constant liar. When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don’t know who to trust or turn to—and that leads you right back to the gaslighter. And that’s exactly what they want: Isolation gives them more control.

Source: StockLite/Shutterstock

10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.

This is one of the most effective tools of the gaslighter, because it’s dismissive. The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control. It’s a master technique.

11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.

By telling you that everyone else (your family, the media) is a liar, it again makes you question your reality. You’ve never known someone with the audacity to do this, so they must be telling the truth, right? No. It’s a manipulation technique. It makes people turn to the gaslighter for the “correct” information—which isn’t correct information at all

The more you are aware of these techniques, the quicker you can identify them and avoid falling into the gaslighter’s trap.

from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/11-warning-signs-gaslighting

Propaganda + Repetition + Economic Devastation = Reaction

Posted on May 20, 2020 by marcia

May20 by Jon Rappoport

In today’s episode of COVID fakery on rye and hold the apocalypse, we begin with a bevy of quotes from Edward Bernays (1891-1995), the acknowledged father of modern public relations, aka propaganda. I include his statements as a warm-up backgrounder—

“This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas.” (1928)

“The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.” (1947)

“It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man.” (date unknown)

“When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And ‘propaganda’ got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words. So we found the words ‘counsel on public relations’.” (date unknown)

“When Napoleon said, ‘Circumstance? I make circumstance‚’ he expressed very nearly the spirit of the public relations counsel’s work.” (1923)

“Domination to-day is not a product of armies or navies or wealth or policies. It is a domination based on the one hand upon accomplished unity, and on the other hand upon the fact that opposition is generally characterized by a high degree of disunity.” (1923)

“The public relations counsel, therefore, is a creator of news for whatever medium he chooses to transmit ideas. It is his duty to create news no matter what the medium which broadcasts this news.” (1923)

“The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda.” (1923)

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.” (1928)

“Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” (1928)

“If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.” (1928)

The news heads and the talk show heads and the sports heads and the advertisers and bureaucrats and politicians and public health flacks and celebrities are assuring television viewers, with no shame: We’re all in this together. Over and over. Night and day. On every channel.

This was the strategy during older wars. No time for disagreement or dissent; there must be a unified response and effort; otherwise, we could lose.

We’re all in this together means: fall in line.

If that’s share and care and love, it’s robot love.

Advertisers, despite their studies and their sophistication and their wall-to-wall profiling of consumers, still believe in the first principle of propaganda: repetition.

Get the name of your product and company out there and don’t stop. Do it a thousand times, a million times. As long as you have money to pay for ads, do it.

Look at the insurance company commercials. Progressive, State Farm, Liberty, Geico. The little vignettes they lay on are really the occasion for pasting their company name on the screen. Make these 30-second stories friendly and funny and crazy, but the money shot is the company name.

Pandemic ads and messages follow the same rule. In this case, it’s TOGETHERNESS. UNITY. Pounded on and on.

Why? If cooperation and love and togetherness are basic human impulses, why do people need to be reminded of that 24 hours a day, on television?

Does a husband who loves his wife need to see his face and his wife’s face on a screen, on every channel, without let-up, along with a message urging him to adore her?

On the other hand, a person who’s been thrown out of a job, who can’t find work, who sees his government checks fading down to zero…he needs pacification. That’s a tough sell. That sell-job requires a whole lot of repetition…

…In order to produce SHAME in him, if he feels cheated and exiled and screwed. The repetition of togetherness and fake love informs him that the collective citizenry isn’t on his side. It tells him his righteous anger has no place in the relentlessly upbeat messaging of “unity.” It keeps him feeling isolated.

Now we’re getting down to it. Don’t let the people who are economically devastated believe they can find each other. Shut them out. Pump them full of television public service ads that paint an “uplifting” picture from which they’re excluded.

They may be devastated, but television tells them they aren’t on the team if they give their own concerns first priority. If they do, they’re non-persons.

After all, when they sit at home watching TV, do they see a cropped video of another unemployed worker sitting in a dark room saying, “THIS IS CRAZY. I WANT TO WORK. I NEED FOOD. MY BOSS CLOSED HIS COMPANY. HE’S BANKRUPT. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?”

Are they offered that kind of unity? Togetherness?

“Hi. I’m an NFL cornerback. I’ve made thirty million during my career. Here I am at home with my kids. We’re playing games on the floor. I’m enjoying my family. We’ll get through this. All of us. Stay safe. Use the time to bring your family closer together.”

Major news outlets are under strict orders to keep “disturbing human interest stories” off the front page and away from their broadcasts. This is also part and parcel of the wartime effort.

It would have to be, since economic devastation is what this fake pandemic is actually all about. No one in the mainstream will let that cat out of the bag. It would be more than a mistake. It would be a confession. It would be suicide.

How about these headlines? VACCINE KINGS WANT TO SOFTEN UP POPULATIONS FOR A NEEDLE IN THE ARM. A RUINED POPULACE IS READY TO BE LED INTO A NEW WORLD ORDER.

Propagandists know that a one-two punch of fear and then assurance works. Scare them with the virus, comfort them with togetherness.

But still, it’s a tough sell. It has legs for a while, but then the natives become restless, especially in the hinterlands. People who aren’t jammed together in big cities, who live in open spaces, tend to develop immunity to lies. Coiffed press hookers on television dispensing so-called news carry less punch. Farmers know if they can’t plant their crops on time, with workers side by side, they’ll go broke.

Generally speaking, people who don’t see other people who are sick, and don’t hear ambulance sirens, start wondering what’s happening.

Protests begin. Protests expand.

The fake night of obedience turns into the real day of rebellion.

It turns out that a story about an invisible virus isn’t quite the same as a line of enemy tanks approaching. All promoted wars are not equal.

Fauci knows this. Birx knows this. Bill Gates knows this. Mayors and governors know this. The CDC and WHO know this. They don’t really care whether you survive, but they know you care. So, for them, it’s a race against time. How long can they keep the lid on? How long can their preposterous messaging work?

Stage magic is an odd game. The performer has to run his tricks quickly, so people don’t have the luxury of sitting back and thinking about how he is fooling them. However, the public health magicians and the politician magicians and the news magicians are hemmed in—they’re basically one-trick ponies. Virus, virus, virus=together, together, together.

It looks good, but it wears out.

It’s wearing out now.

I’ll close this piece with a few more gems from Edward Bernays—to urge you to keep your eye on the ball. The real ball.

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?” (1928)

“A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable. This entails a vastly more complex system of distribution than formerly.” (1928)

“No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.” (1928)

“Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.” (1928)

from: https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/05/20/television-wartime-messaging-for-the-love-of-unity/

Cults & Corporations

Posted on October 31, 2018 by marcia

The Cult of Trump

Cult leaders arise from decayed communities and societies in which people have been shorn of political, social and economic power. The disempowered, infantilized by a world they cannot control, gravitate to cult leaders who appear omnipotent and promise a return to a mythical golden age. The cult leaders vow to crush the forces, embodied in demonized groups and individuals, that are blamed for their misery. The more outrageous the cult leaders become, the more they flout law and social conventions, the more they gain in popularity. Cult leaders are immune to the norms of established society. This is their appeal. Cult leaders demand a God-like power. Those who follow them grant them this power in the hope that the cult leaders will save them.

Donald Trump has transformed the decayed carcass of the Republican Party into a cult. All cults are personality cults. They are extensions of the cult leaders. The cult reflects the leader’s prejudices, worldview, personal style and ideas. Trump did not create the yearning for a cult leader. Huge segments of the population, betrayed by the established elites, were conditioned for a cult leader. They were desperately looking for someone to rescue them and solve their problems. They found their cult leader in the New York real estate developer and reality television show star. Only when we recognize Trump as a cult leader, and many of those who support him as cult followers, will we understand where we are headed and how we must resist.

It was 40 years ago next month that a messianic preacher named Jim Jonesconvinced or forced more than 900 of his followers, including roughly 280 children, to die by ingesting a cyanide-laced drink. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge and address the impending crisis of ecocide and the massive mismanagement of the economy by kleptocrats, his bellicosity, his threats against Iran and China and the withdrawal from nuclear arms treaties, along with his demonization of all who oppose him, ensure our cultural and, if left unchecked, physical extinction. Cult leaders are driven, at their core, by the death instinct, the instinct to annihilate and destroy rather than nurture and create. Trump shares many of the characteristics of Jones as well as other cult leaders including Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles, the founders of the Heaven’s Gate cult; the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who led the Unification Church; Credonia Mwerinde, who led the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda; Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong; and David Koresh, who led the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious fawning and total obedience. They prize loyalty above competence. They wield absolute control. They do not tolerate criticism. They are deeply insecure, a trait they attempt to cover up with bombastic grandiosity. They are amoral and emotionally and physically abusive. They see those around them as objects to be manipulated for their own empowerment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment. All those outside the cult are branded as forces of evil, prompting an epic battle whose natural expression is violence.

“A cult is a mirror of what is inside the cult leader,” Margaret Thaler Singer wrote in “Cults in Our Midst.” “He has no restraints on him. He can make his fantasies and desires come alive in the world he creates around him. He can lead people to do his bidding. He can make the surrounding world really hisworld. What most cult leaders achieve is akin to the fantasies of a child at play, creating a world with toys and utensils. In that play world, the child feels omnipotent and creates a realm of his own for a few minutes or a few hours. He moves the toy dolls about. They do his bidding. They speak his words back to him. He punishes them any way he wants. He is all-powerful and makes his fantasy come alive. When I see the sand tables and the collections of toys some child therapists have in their offices, I think that a cult leader must look about and place people in his created world much as a child creates on the sand table a world that reflects his or her desires and fantasies. The difference is that the cult leader has actual humans doing his bidding as he makes a world around him that springs from inside his own head.”

George Orwell understood that cult leaders manipulate followers primarily through language, not force. This linguistic manipulation is a gradual process. It is rooted in continual mental chaos and verbal confusion. Lies, conspiracy theories, outlandish ideas and contradictory statements that defy reality and fact soon paralyze the opposition. The opposition, with every attempt to counter this absurdism with the rational—such as the decision by Barack Obama to make his birth certificate public or by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to release the results of her DNA test to prove she has Native American ancestry—plays to the cult leader. The cult leader does not take his or her statements seriously and often denies ever making them, even when they are documented. Lies and truth do not matter. The language of the cult leader is designed exclusively to appeal to the emotional needs of those in the cult.

“Hitler kept his enemies in a state of constant confusion and diplomatic upheaval,” Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing.” “They never knew what this unpredictable madman was going to do next. Hitler was never logical, because he knew that that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot—it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counter-argument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another.”

The cult leader grooms followers to speak in the language of hate and violence. The cult leader constantly paints a picture of an existential threat, often invented, that puts the cult followers in danger. Trump is doing this by demonizing the caravan of some 4,000 immigrants, most from Honduras, moving through southern Mexico. Caravans of immigrants, are, in fact, nothing new. The beleaguered and impoverished asylum seekers, including many families with children, are 1,000 miles from the Texas border. But Trump, aided by nearly nonstop coverage by Fox News and Christian broadcasting, is using the caravan to terrify his followers, just as he, along with these media outlets, portrayed the protesters who flooded the U.S. capital to oppose the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh as unruly mobs. Trump claims the Democrats want to open the border to these “criminals” and to “unknown Middle Easterners” who are, he suggests, radical jihadists. Christian broadcasting operations, such as Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club, splice pictures of marching jihadists in black uniforms cradling automatic weapons into the video shots of the caravan.

The fear mongering and rhetoric of hate and violence, as I saw in the former Yugoslavia, eventually lead to widespread acts of violence against those the cult leader defines as the enemy. The 13 explosive devices sent last week to Trump critics and leaders of the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, along with George Soros, James Clapper and CNN, allegedly by Cesar Sayoc, an ex-stripper and fanatic Trump supporter who was living out of his van, herald more violence. Trump, tossing gasoline on the flames, used this assault against much of the leadership of the Democratic Party to again attack the press, or, as he calls it, “the enemy of the people.” “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” he tweeted. “It has gotten so bad and hateful that is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its acts, FAST!”

It should come as no surprise that on Saturday another enraged American white male, his fury and despair seemingly stoked by the diatribes and conspiracy theories of the far right, entered a Pittsburgh synagogue and massacred eight men and three women as he shouted anti-Semitic abuse. Shot by police and arrested at the scene was Robert Bowers, who believes that Jewish groups are aiding the caravan of immigrants in southern Mexico. He was armed with a military-style AR-15 assault rifle, plus three handguns. The proliferation of easily accessible high-caliber weapons, coupled with the division of the country into the blessed and the damned by Trump and his fellow cultists, threatens to turn the landscape of the United States into one that resembles Mexico, where at least 145 people in politics, including 48 candidates and pre-candidates, along with party leaders and campaign workers, have been assassinated over the last 12 months, according to Etellekt, a risk analysis firm in Mexico. There have been 627 incidents of violence against politicians, 206 threats and acts of intimidation, 57 firearm assaults and 52 attacks on family members that resulted in 50 fatalities. Trump’s response to the mass shooting at the synagogue was to say places of worship should have armed guards, a call for further proliferation of firearms. Look south if you want a vision of our future.

Domestic terrorism and nihilistic violence are the natural outcomes of the economic, social and political stagnation, the total seizure of power by a corporate cabal and oligarchic elite, and the contamination of civil discourse by cult leaders. The weaponization of language is proliferating, as seen in the vile rhetoric that characterizes many political campaigns for the midterm elections, including the racist robocall sent out against Andrew Gillum, an African-American candidate for the governorship of Florida. “Well, hello there. I is the negro Andrew Gillum and I’ll be askin’ you to make me governor of this here state of Florida,” a man speaking in a caricature of a black dialect accompanied by jungle noises said in the robocall. Cults externalize evil. Evil is embodied in the demonized other, whether desperate immigrants, black political candidates and voters, or the Democratic Party. The only way to purge this “evil” and restore America to “greatness” is to eradicate these human contaminants.

The cult leader, unlike a traditional politician, makes no effort to reach out to his opponents. The cult leader seeks to widen the divisions. The leader brands those outside the cult as irredeemable. The leader seeks the omnipotence to crush those who do not kneel in adoration. The followers, yearning to be protected and empowered by the cult leader, seek to give the cult leader omnipotence. Democratic norms, an impediment to the leader’s omnipotence, are attacked and abolished. Those in the cult seek to be surrounded by the cult leader’s magical aura. Reality is sacrificed for fantasy. Those who challenge the fantasy are not considered human. They are Satanic.

Meerloo wrote:

The dictator is not only a sick man, he is also a cruel opportunist. He sees no value in any other person and feels no gratitude for any help he may have received. He is suspicious and dishonest and believes that his personal ends justify any means he may use to achieve them. Peculiarly enough, every tyrant still searches for some self-justification. Without such a soothing device for his own conscience, he cannot live. His attitude toward other people is manipulative; to him, they are merely tools for the advancement of his own interests. He rejects the conception of doubt, of internal contradictions, or man’s inborn ambivalence. He denies the psychological fact that man grows to maturity through groping, through trial and error, through the interplay of contrasting feelings. Because he will not permit himself to grope, to learn through trial and error, the dictator can never become a mature person. … It is because the dictator is afraid, albeit unconsciously, of his own internal contradictions, that he is afraid of the same internal contradictions of his fellow man. He must purge and purge, terrorize and terrorize in order to still his own raging inner drives. He must kill every doubter, destroy every person who makes a mistake, imprison everyone who cannot be proved to be utterly single-minded.

Behavior that ensures the destruction of a public figure’s career does not affect a cult leader. It does not matter how many lies uttered by Trump are meticulously documented by The New York Times or The Washington Post. It does not matter that Trump’s personal financial interests, as we see in his relationship with the Saudis, take precedence over the rule of law, diplomatic protocols and national security. It does not matter that he is credibly charged by numerous women with being a sexual predator, a common characteristic of cult leaders. It does not matter that he is inept, lazy and ignorant. The establishment, whose credibility has been destroyed because of its complicity in empowering the ruling oligarchy and the corporate state, might as well be blowing soap bubbles at Trump. Their vitriol, to his followers, only justifies the hatred radiating from the cult.

The cult leader responds to only one emotion—fear. The cult leader, usually a coward, will react when he thinks he is in danger. The cult leader will bargain and compromise when afraid. The cult leader will give the appearance of being flexible and reasonable. But as soon as the cult leader is no longer afraid, the old patterns of behavior return, with a special venom directed at those who were able to momentarily impinge upon his power.

The removal of Trump from power would not remove the yearning of tens of millions of people, many conditioned by the Christian right, for a cult leader. Most of the leaders of the Christian right have built cult followings of their own. These Christian fascists embraced magical thinking, attacked their enemies as agents of Satan and denounced reality-based science and journalism long before Trump did. Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are expanding, soon to explode in another financial crisis.

The efforts by the Democratic Party and much of the press, including CNN and The New York Times, to discredit Trump, as if our problems are embodied in him, are futile. The smug, self-righteousness of this crusade against Trump only contributes to the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. This crusade attempts to reduce a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It is accompanied by a refusal to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. This collusion with the forces of corporate oppression neuters the press and Trump’s mainstream critics.

Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump. Our democratic institutions, including the legislative bodies, the courts and the media, are hostage to corporate power. They are no longer democratic. We must, like liberation movements of the past, engage in acts of sustained mass civil disobedience and non-cooperation. By turning our ire on the corporate state, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, liberals, feminists, gays and others. We give people an alternative to a Democratic Party that refuses to confront the corporate forces of oppression and cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society. If we fail to embrace this militancy, which alone has the ability to destroy cult leaders, we will continue the march toward tyranny.

from: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-cult-of-trump-2/

Using Discernment in Listening to the News

Posted on October 26, 2015 by marcia

The 10 Most Critical Things to Consider When Consuming Mainstream News

Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times

It’s no secret that 90% of American media is owned by just 6 corporate conglomerates, and it’s also no secret that the media is used by political and corporate propagandists as a tool to reach deep into the hearts and minds of the masses. Mainstream newscasts are a staged version of reality, and as world events continue to rise in pitch and fervor, so will the propaganda, so it’s imperative to brush up on critical thinking skills as a defense against falling into group-think and mass-hysteria.

The great irony here, though, is that it is precisely through the power of media that people will awaken to the deceit happening in the media. By and large the programming that makes it to our eyes and ears is produced to support an agenda, but, even amongst the corporate programs there are genuine voices of reason and truth.

So, how do you tell the difference between a voice of truth and voice of deceit?

The fog of the propaganda war is sure to thicken in the coming months and years, so here are 10 absolutely critical points to ask yourself when consuming mainstream media.

This checklist was submitted by one of our readers, George L. Humphries, who brings a lifetime of experience in military and law enforcement to bear on the issue of propaganda.

Questions I routinely ask myself while reading or viewing. And I ALWAYS pay attention to the masthead and the credits!

1. Who is the author – nationality, ideology and political affiliation, religion, affinity group, related experience base, and education? Who are this author’s friends and promoters? Where, by who, and possibly why is this author normally published? Are other publications by this author parallel, or do they take a different angle entirely – and if so, why?

2. Unstated underlying value assumptions. What values does the author assume the audience shares, and upon which the author builds the thesis? Do you share these values? Does the author in fact share these values, or are they used merely to sell copy or manipulate the reader to a desired attitude or conclusion? What symbols does the author use?

3. Is the author attempting to ‘frame an argument’? What alternative frameworks for the argument occur to you? Why might the author attempt to frame the argument in the way provided, and exclude from identification, acknowledgment or general acceptance other frameworks? Is the author’s thesis merely a preemptive counter-accusation?

4. Does the author’s mistrust of one government extend to all governments, or does the author forgive the sins of a particular nation’s regimes and ascribe to them an overwhelming benign humanitarian sensibility? What are the shear points in the logical development of the author’s thesis – does the author jump from one well-developed line to an undeveloped one to engage you in the pre-drawn conclusion, hoping you won’t notice or object to the somersault en route?

5. Does the author appeal to your intellect, your emotions, or both? Does the author subliminally propose that all civilized, educated, right-thinking people of the social elite think a certain way, thereby suggesting that your attitudes should fall in line? Does the author recruit you for the ‘Heavenly Host’ by appealing to ‘common’ religious values? Does the author appeal to your sense of justice and proportionality? Does the author appeal to your spirit of humanity? Does the author wave the flag? What does the author’s peripheral vision include, and what does it exclude? What does the author’s cognitive dissonance miniaturize, and what does it enlarge?

6. What gimmicks does the author use to characterize individuals or groups? Does the author use hyperbolic comparisons to historical figures such as Hitler or Jesus? Does the author try to make a case through guilt by association or guilt by dissociation, or innocence by association or innocence by dissociation? Does the author damn with faint praise or edify through shallow criticism? Does the author tear down and trivialize individuals through cheap, pseudo-comic references to personal habits, modes of dress or accent, and then compound these with unfair, grotesque analogies? Does the author use the unsubstantiated words of others, great or terrible, to reference an individual’s character or lack thereof? From where and from whom does the author draw expert witnesses and citations, and do you agree with these sources? Are sources footnoted or substantiated in some way? Might a citation be the old propagandist’s trick of referring to an item carefully placed elsewhere just for that purpose?

7. What themes can be identified? For this author, who or what is good and who or what is bad? What is the author’s litmus test and bottom line, and do you share it? What alternative does the author wish us to identify and support, even if it is not outlined in bold terms?

8. What is the author’s agenda? What, if anything, does the author want us to believe when we have finished reading or viewing, or what action if any would the author like us to take? Remembering that the best propaganda is the truth, and the second best propaganda is 99% truth as a vehicle to propel a 1% lie, does this article fall into either of these two categories? What piece of information might be the 1% lie?

9. Does the author recommend military action? What other conflicts has the author supported, and what other conflicts has the author opposed? What military service, if any, does the author have, and for which nation? Does the author want to put one nation’s blood and treasure in harm’s way for the benefit of a client state? Is the author still fighting a past war? If so, which one, and what side is taken? From your point of view, which conflict should the author be fighting, and from what side?

10. If the author was a paid agent of (foreign) intelligence services(s), who might be the author’s paymaster(s)?

– George L. Humphries

from: http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/10/23/the-10-most-critical-things-to-consider-when-consuming-mainstream-news/

CERN Experiment Results Stifled

Posted on July 18, 2011 by marcia

CERN ‘gags’ physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment

What do these results mean? Not allowed to tell you

By Andrew Orlowski Posted in Science, 18th July 2011 12:01 GMT

The chief of the world’s leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment. The CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets”) experiment examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation. CLOUD uses CERN’s proton synchrotron to examine nucleation.

CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Welt Online that the scientists should refrain from drawing conclusions from the latest experiment.

“I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them,” reports veteran science editor Nigel Calder on his blog. Why?

Because, Heuer says, “That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.”

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