On 2004-07-01 20:13:00, ottawa5 wrote:
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I suppose that I could accept unquestioningly the point of view that the individuals who could be called CEDU success stories are brainwashed. Yet several of these people are known to me reasonably well and I see no sign of delusion or dysfunction in the ways (which are appropiately individualized) in which they have gone on to live their lives after CEDU.
Puzzling, but then life is sometimes like that--I am confident that patience and further information will help to clarify the situation."
It shouldn't be that puzzling to people who have read Chomsky, and before that Willhelm Reich, on the "Mass Psychology of Fascism"
You mentioned earlier something about my belief system being perhaps socialist. Where brainwashing is concerned, it's not a question of belief systems, but of cold hard logic and science. That's one reason I have so much difficulty accepting so many things that are dictated by "The Law". True, there is a great deal of logic involved, but very little hard science, and Law does not base itself on scientifically validated data, but frequently on myths, propaganda and socially determined legislation. With an unthinking media involved, this is how you have the manufacture of consent as Chomsky calls it.
It's easy to see how the US, from the cold war onwards has fallen victim to brainwashing. Brainwashing based on fear was the very foundation of Nazi Germany, and, today, of the American Bushist state. Chomsky, again goes into this in his "Hegemony or Survival" While he only mentions the drug war in passing in relation to the US involvement in, for example, Colombia, I would suggest that it is equally significant that once the Taliban agreed to ban poppy production in Afghanistan, the US were willing to ignore all the other incredible abuses being wrought by them, at least until 9/11. The Cold War had been replaced by the War on (some) Drugs and only then the War on Terrorism. But perhaps I'm getting too far afield.
The brainwashing of almost an entire population by Hitler was relatively easy following the Reichstag fire.
It's been just as easy for Bush following 9/11, especially as the US has been on an almost constant war footing since WWII.
In law we have a saying that some people "never let the facts get in the way of a good argument." other times "never let the Law get in the way of a good argument"
Bush succeeded in both in his immoral and illegal invasion of Iraq.
But it would never have been possible without the brainwashing of unfortunate Americans that had been taking place for years.
And that brainwashing included the Drug war based as it was on some very flawed thinking. You, dear Ottawa5 must realise, if you have read John Stuart Mill that the drug war was what created victimless crimes.
The indoctrination about the evils of drugs was so complete that even many drug users came to believe that they were victims of "pushers" The Demonization of pushers has come to be regarded as a universal truth (by pressure at the UN from the US) It was reflected in Steppenwolf in the 1970's "Goddam the Pusher man". But almost inevitably the pushers that are arrested or entrapped are people at the low end of the scale and most often are doing friends a favour in dealing small amounts. Sometimes they are addicts, but only sometimes.
So the grown-ups begin to see their kids experiment with small amounts of pot and they begin to panic (after all, says the brainwashing propaganda, its 30 times more potent than when YOU experimented with it.(false) And this is where the cults can move in. They feed on fear, which is endemic to the American belief system. "Somebody is going to seduce my child into a life of drug-abusing decadence and I do not have the confidence in my own upbringing to be able to handle this and have him come out of it alive." The cults know your fears, and they will tell you after a brief "assessment" of your child that he's on a slippery slope, and if he's not treated by them, he's going to be dead within 3 years"
And it's all about money and politics ,too. Do some more reading on these fora, and you will see a very interesting link between the money making schemes of private "treatment" facilities, mandatory drug testing (private organizations), drug warriors like Mel and Betty Sembler (Mel's a Bush appointee to the US ambassadorship in Italy, and DARE (widely criticised for it's ineffectiveness).
So, Boot camps, Adolescent Treatment, adult treatment AA, NA, Synanon, All of the 12 step programmes (note my English spelling) are based upon a fundamental flaw.
And I think that I feel very very sorry for the victims of these programmes because they have been deprived of so much of their potential for true joy, independance, freedom and experience.
And if you think that Fahrenheit 9/11 is a pack of lies, you might as well go on believing these cults, created by the hard religious right are a good thing. ( I cheered when I heard Ted Kennedy referring to that segment of the US population as religious zealots)
So that's my final word on this thread, I named myself after that great American Republican Hamilton Fish Jr from New York who opposed the US getting into the war against Hitler. Perhaps because my belief system tells me that he was a perfect example of deluded thinking.
