Here’s a passage from Belgian sociologist Fernand van Langenhove as cited by Lippmann in Public Opinion:
“Hardly had the German armies entered Belgium when strange rumors began to circulate. They spread from place to place, they were reproduced by the press, and they soon permeated the whole of Germany. It was said that the Belgian people, instigated by the clergy, had intervened perfidiously in the hostilities; had attacked by surprise isolated detachments; had indicated to the enemy the positions occupied by the troops; that old men, and even children, had been guilty of horrible atrocities upon wounded and defenseless German soldiers, tearing out their eyes and cutting off fingers, nose or ears; that the priests from their pulpits had exhorted the people to commit these crimes, promising them as a reward the kingdom of heaven, and had even taken the lead in this barbarity.
“Public credulity accepted these stories. The highest powers in the state welcomed them without hesitation and endorsed them with their authority…”
It is striking the ease with which Christian clerics were imbued with the ability to exhort savage behavior of ordinary people, much as Americans are told now that Muslim clerics do. It never changes, the meme, that is, that the enemy is capable of any sordid deed while our own fighting forces merely combat that evil.
My Dad was a soldier in the Pacific in World War II. He never talked about his experiences, nor did many of that generation. Brokaw unerringly lied about the present before his retirement, and also wrote “The Greatest Generation,” equally clueless one must assume. Brokaw claimed that Dad’s stoic behavior and most of his comrades was the result of nobility of spirit. But I wonder. Dad was a wonderful, kind and compassionate man, but no hero. I wonder what he saw that convinced him to shut up. My guess is … not much. I know he saw a few corpses, but did not kill anyone. He brought back books of photos about that war that showed mountains of bodies in trenches – from the European theater. The books sat in a coat closet, and I viewed them in private as if they were pornography.
That’s all he knew. His perceptions were defined by a very narrow experience, word of mouth, journalism of his time (that he was allowed to hear while in the service), and few pictures. He probably thought his own experience was at odds with everyone else’s, and so kept to himself, as did everyone else.
Far from being part of the greatest generation, Dad’s was no better than our own, equally clueless.*
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*Elmo Roper, pollster, said that about 90 percent of the population is ”politically inert.” They become active when they are set into action, but are normally “inactive, inattentive, manipulable, and without critical faculty.” There is no reason to believe that the “Greatest Generation” was any different.
Piece of Mindful 
Brokaw has a serious illness: He thinks he is special. Damands special treatment, constantly. Montana doesn’t do special very well, it’s fun to watch when peons don’t govel in just the right way. A real tight-sphincter dude with a big ranch and no clue.
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I forgot about his Montana estate. There really is massive ego at work there, and damned little intellect was ever called upon in his line of work. Just repeat what you’re told, look and sound believable, and you’ll make a fortune, perhaps be so puffed up that you imagine you are smart enough to write a book.
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I thought the line here was that American soldiers killed civilians at the behest of David Koch and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
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If you must reduce it so as to be able to grasp it in some fashion, do so, but don’t lay that explanation of events on me.
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If the shoe fits…
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Khrushchev called it our “dark forces,” others have called it our “shadow government,” “government behind the government,” “fascism.” Lobaczewski called it “”pathocracy” and coined the term “ponerology” from the Greek poneros, or simply “study of evil.” We are dealing with systematic and organized evil. There are people behind this evil, sociopaths, who naturally know one another and who gravitate towards centers of power for its own sake, as no other aspect of life so engages their abilities. They are always among us, but when they take hold of power, aggressive war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, terrorism, despotism and chaos follow.
The remedy is nonexistent, as once they are in power those who oppose them are systematically murdered, and others learn to shut up and stay low. So our country, in the grips of pathocracy since the 1950’s, can only play it out. We cannot unelect them, as they were not elected. We cannot prosecute them under the legal system, as they own the legal system. We cannot oppose them in public, as they will murder us if we gain traction, or drive us from public view in some fashion.
The only saving force in history has been public policy that keeps them out of absolute power. It is not “democracy”, as that cannot possibly work. Rather, it is natural forces in public policy that tend to minimize their power, among them steep progressive taxation (wealth accumulation is at the center of their game), high estate taxes, egalitarian pursuits such as education for all and public health care – in short, robust development of the lot of normal people. The battle is never won but all of this tends to keep the wolf packs from breeding and taking control of the forest.
I’m sorry if it is big and hard to describe or that you feel the need to reduce it to a few names or tags like “conspiracy”or “voices” in my head. You’ve been conditioned to describe their activities as an expression of “freedom” when we are merely building our own cages. It is “life.” I don’t know why evil exists in the form of sociopaths, but suspect that natural selection gives us a small percentage of them, and further, that since “good” and “evil” are human constructs anyway, what we normal compassionate people regard as “evil” is merely an abhorrence of nature as it really exists.
Plain enough?
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You passivity here is irritating: “We are victims of forces larger than us. We can’t do anything. Any effort is for naught.”
Many tried to maintain logging on Federal forest in the western US, but they were crushed by the evil forces you discuss. Everybody who loses imagines themselves at the mercy of vile omnipotence. As it has been throughout history.
Our age in many ways is not as evil as the past.
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Again, good humor. The evil forces that “crushed” logging in the national forests are called “market.” Demand sunk, marginal logging had to go, and blaming environmentalists was convenient.
Do you really think I ascribe all events to planning? If so, you’re not a good reader.
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I thought “market”, aka classical economics, was all b.s., soon to be replaced by something incorporating chaos theory, which can apparently predict things.
I notice logging continues on private land. I guess that must be the non-marginal stuff.
The point here wasn’t to open the logging debate, but to point out that when your side wins, it is people action, market forces, consent of the governed, etc. When your side loses, it is vile minority forces co-opting the good. It is probably the other way around, with strident, loud mouth environmentalists controlling the debate and shutting down a useful industry.
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Neoclassical economics and “market forces” are apples and oranges. There are markets. Neoclassical economics doesn’t describe them in the past or present nor can it predict the future. It is useless, but does serve power well, which is why economists never have to be right to keep their jobs. Have you noticed they are never right?
Market forces are real, but none of us have accurate information by which to make informed choices, since advertising is nothing but lies. Hence, consumer markets are nothing but manipulation. And anyway, the “demand curve” cannot be gauged in a large economy, as it is like firing a rifle at a distant target – small errors hugely magnified.
Commodity markets have better information, and so make better predictions and have more rational behavior. But most such markets are monopolized with a few producers viewing consumers as enemies, so that prices are rigged. So again, “markets” are not real. (Money versus mouth: I recently purchased small interests in 20 natural gas wells (in the Utah desert) on the cheap. We are swimming in gas, so market theory says prices will suffer. I say that producers won’t suffer too long with low prices and that they will somehow manipulate the market to bring them up. Now I read that new drilling rigs are active in W Colorado in response to higher prices. So far, so good.)
SK can explain the logging “market” far better than me. I do recall that logging on federal lands was 5% of total supply, and that by hook and crook (fungible commodity) those logs were exported.
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Your reliance on conspiracy as deus ex machima gets to be a little much.
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Eliminate the phrase “conspiracy theory”, which is an American concept that only applies to activities by American actors (19 Arabs and a guy in a cave is a conspiracy theory, but no one gets called a “theorist” for believing in that one), and your thinking will clarify just like adding hot water to sun tea.
Fact is that a large percentage of the population is sociopathic – 5% seems a good estimate by people who study the phenomenon. Further, people who study it are able to point out characteristics of the state of mind (not a disease): lack of emotion, indifference to suffering of others, lack of fear of consequences for behavior, poor study abilities, a need to pursue excitement by participation in games of some sort. They are well represented in prisons, police and the military, but often manage to work their way into the high ranks of business and government due to their ‘kill instinct,’ the ability to con and manipulate other people and then pull a trap.
Further, they instantly recognize one another in a crowd. They imitate us to get along in life. You’ve met them, but did not know what you were dealing with. They conned you, scammed you, hurt you for no reason, slept with your girlfriend and then dumped her … many women find them sexually appealing – the indifference to feeling is a real turn-on, leading to the nice guys not getting the prom date phenomenon.
You are simply not in tune enough to have a debate like this with. I’ll continue on but it is hard for me to continually do 101 type stuff with you, only to be called a “CS.” It’s a convenient device you use to avoid dealing with hard reality.
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You are simply not in tune
Oh, I don’t claim that much mojo here. But thanks for bragging, I guess. For that matter, you’ve been lapped by sites like this one. Read. Go blind.
description of a sociopath
Sounds like every gypsy, Irish Traveler, Viking, and Bantu tribesman; which is pretty much the default condition of human existence in most of history: high fertility, high mortality, scrambling for scraps at the expense of your neighbor and surrounding tribes.
The rise of the “nice guy not going to prom” is a recent phenomenon: the hard working, cooperative beta male. Coupled with the monogamous nuclear family, this gave rise to high investment in children– rewarding intelligence and foresight, and building the modern industrial society. This is breaking down now, for various reasons: more wealth allows more independence; bigger gov’t becomes the default patriarch.
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I disagree. Sociopaths appear to have a mating advantage. The ones you name, Gypsies, Vikings, etc., are groups with strong bonding, hardly sociopathic.
I’ve been lapped by the whole world, time and again. It’s part of being alive – never the first, never the best. Stll, I’m happy and like doing this. Go figure.
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Maybe sociopaths were limited in the past when they were killed by the more cooperative, bonding members of the group. But now we can’t kill anyone (unless you are a sociopath, in which case you get a fan club.) I blame nice, touchy-feely policies promoted by people like you. So it is your fault. Stop it.
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icymi:
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Apparently the only race problem is that people notice race problems.
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Apparently you think racial differences are a “problem.”
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Can be.
The interplay of differing peoples adds richness to a culture. It invents and creates new forms. There is also a negative side, and it would be nice to have a little more honesty about things, but I guess that is too much to ask, ’cause apparently we all have an inner Nazi that must be suppressed. Puritans still rule. Thanks a lot.
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If you want to break it down to racial differences, look in the mirror, white guy, and concentrate on your own failings. You are all aout the failings and weaknesses of other races.
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I’ll own my faults. But are you comparing me to others, or some ideal?
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Flawed humans, all of us, limited in our perceptions, needing to reduce the world to understandable terms.
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You are all aout the failings and weaknesses of other races.
Remember: different, not better or worse.
There is some anxiousness lately to import different people into the US, supposedly to “do the work American’s won’t do”; or to buy my house; or because White people are boring; or to increase the GDP, pay for Soc Sec; etc. But what duty do we have to lessen ourselves in service to such a utilitarian calculation? Why do we have to give our posterity to somebody else? If an alien race landed on earth tomorrow, a people who could do every single thing a human could, but ten times faster, better, and at one tenth the cost, should we agree to extinguish ourselves and let them have the planet?
It is reasonable to survive for survival’s sake, even the survival of White people. Would be nice if we didn’t have this program of active destruction.
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Christians in this country feel like a downbeaten minority too.
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There influence is waning, and I’m not sure it is being replaced by anything better. But no worries, there is a lot of room in Hell.
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“their influence is waning”? It’s not so easy as that. “They” are the lot of people who want to be good and who also need certainty and simplicity in life. “They” are not harming us, but “they” were here before religion. “They” are us. It’s that damned 5%, the Pat Robertson’s and others who use religion to manipulate us that are the problem. If there were no religion, there would still be the same problems, 95% good and gullible, 5% taking advantage.
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