Well, he's right but not in the way, I'm sure, we agree. The right has done a very effective job of brainwashing a large portion of this country into their warped definition of normalcy and patriotism. This was quite evident when Sarah Palin described the "real America."
And when he speaks of "true information" I must again point out the similar pattern between control and/or assassination of information by fascists and the current (and hopefully soon gone) incarnation of conservatism. They demonize and over simplify the main two outlets of information (media and education) and tap into people's anger and fear. Thus, they have their sheep and can pursue their agenda.
Thankfully, last Nov 4th it didn't work. And it wasn't because people were stupid. It was because they woke up and realized that a very large group of people are completely full of shit....as well as only hate, ignorance, and fear.
Markadelphia: Exhibit A for the accuracy of Bezmanov's statemeant:
"As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom. When a military boot crashes his... then he will understand. But not before that. That's the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization."
I'm right with Sarah on this one.
The sad thing is, Marky, we're trying to get you to understand so that you can avoid the "military boot" cure. Oh, and BTW, if you do encounter the military boot, the odds are pretty good that it won't be our boots. In the last century, the military boot has been wielded by the communists/socialists (yes that includes the National Socialists) against their own populations, i.e., the people who put them into power.
Once again, it's time for questions Marky is trying to dodge:
1) Which of our claims about Obama are undermined by rules of evidence?
2) You claimed we regularly quote Rush Limbaugh verbatim. If this is actually true, then cite some examples.
This was quite evident when Sarah Palin described the "real America."
You know, it's ironic. A while back the Geek with a .45 moved from the People's Republic of New Jersey to Pennsylvania, saying:
“People are moving away from certain states: not because they've got a job offer, not because they want to be closer to family, but because the state they are living in doesn't measure up to the level of freedom they believe is appropriate for Americans. We are internal refugees.”
The fact that things have gone so far south in some places that people actually feel compelled to move the fuck out should frighten the almighty piss out of you.
Ten or fifteen years ago, I would’ve dismissed that notion, that people were relocating themselves for freedom within America as the wild rantings of a fringe lunatic, but today, I’m looking for a real estate agent.
When I returned from the Para USA weekend at Blackwater, I was amused when the lady checking my carry pistol at the Norfolk airport counter exclaimed "Ooooh! That's pretty!"
And I said to myself, "It's nice being in American-occupied America."
As opposed to, say, New Jersey.
Or California.
Or New York.
That's what Sarah Palin was talking about. And those of us who are observant knew precisely what she meant.
I was a Soviet studies major in college during the 1980s, and Bezmenov is absolutely right. Instead of the short time frames used by American intelligence to determine projects--mostly within four-year Presidential political timelines--the Soviets were much more forward-thinking.
They thought of their intelligence and subversion projects against us being measured in decades. And why not? In the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the intelligence planners in the KGB and the GRU didn't think their struggle against the West was going away. So they injected into the American body politic subversive ideas and funding, hoping that they would take off in naturally sympathetic elements. They started seeing results in the 1960s through the New Left and figured such support would continue in some kind of form as the US and Soviets continued their clandestine ideological battles.
Never in a million years did they think the Soviet Union would collapse in 1989. Unfortunately, the "sleeper agents" and U.S. symphatizers the Soviet intelligence program had created twenty and thirty years earlier did not get the memo that the mothership had surrendered without a fight and joined the other side.
It's like an enormous living grenade--once you pull the pin and let the lever fly, you can't stop the fuse from burning down until it finds the destruction it has been programmed to deliver.
It will take a generation of new, young minds inculcated with American patriotism to clean up this mess. I think we have seen some good progress in the last twenty years with Reagan and Bush and the resurgence of conservative and libertarian thought to some extent, but certainly not the majority of ideological thinkers in today's educational institutions.
The horrifying thought is what does one do with the subversives-in-place in the meantime? There are a number of options, none of which I want to think about, especially on a beautiful holiday like Thanksgiving. Or ever see written down as a part of American history.
You owe me for an irony meter. Markdelphia, just as you knew he would, just broke the shit out of mine.
It broke the peg, spun out of the casing, and was last seen running down the road screaming "IT BURNS, IT BURNS, AAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE".
It was because they woke up and realized that a very large group of people are completely full of shit....as well as only hate, ignorance, and fear.
Charming.
You keep up the good work with your free-thinking moderation, Mark.
While I can point to many people who I consider dangerous to society, I do not make caricatures of them. They are, in the main, motivated by some of the same impulses I am—the desire to do good, to improve the world—combined with a crippling lack of true understanding.
You seem to lack the capacity for that sort of nuance.
Indeed, that is Bezmenov's point. You take otherwise decent, idealistic people and you warp their cognitive processes so that they associate their decency with a certain, ultimately vampiric political program.
I must again point out the similar pattern between control and/or assassination of information
If there's anybody on this site who should never, ever, ever dare to speak of "information assassination", it would be you.
But you have no shame, no honor, no reputation, so you don't care.
Funny thing, who's lied to us, deliberately and with malice aforethought? Has Kevin lied to you? If he has, why would you come back?
Have I lied to you?
DJ?
Sarah?
Any of us?
Show me where we lied to you.
I can show you where you lied to us. I can show you where we refuted claims you made, and you ignored them, and then made the exact same claims later.
You show me where we have. I've been showing you for weeks where you lied to us - and you've just ignored it. You show me where any of the notable commentors on this site have "assassinated information".
You won't, and you still won't see why you're reinforcing Bezmenov's point. You're proving him right as you call him a liar, and a fool. (Don't forget! He's a primary source!)
Speaking of which, it's time you either put up or shut up about "primary sources". We've been making fun of you for misusing them, but I've used your methodology several times and you've just ignored it), So's Kevin. It's time for you to address "primary sources". What is their importance, how impeachable is their testimony, and when and where can one be used. You've ignored when we've used them - per your misuse of the term.
In one of sci-fi author Charles Strosses' far flung futures, he tantalizingly hints that mankind existed for 10,000 years under what he calls a "cognitive tyranny", which is effected by the subversion of widespread brain enhancement technology.
It would seem that such technology is superfluous to that endeavor.
---===|===---
Some people adopt a narrative because it fits the available facts, without reference to how it fits their aesthetics. Others adopt a narrative solely because it fits their aesthetics. They find it beautiful, and never stop to consider the long list of preposterous things they must believe in for their narrative to be true.
It is of rich irony that both teams accuse the other of same.
One of them is mostly right.
The other is mostly wrong.
We all know where I've placed ~my~ bet on the matter.
Okay, teacher boy, it's time for a simple observation. If you make demonstrably stupid statements, you will be characterized as a demonstrably stupid person. If you do so over and over and over again, month after month after month, then those who make such a characterization of you will become utterly certain that said characterization is correct.
You surfaced in China long ago. Are you gonna keep on digging?
I'm off for the weekend guys but will return to respond next week. In the meantime, try to get your head around this simple fact.
When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance.
And therein lies the problem. The right (generally speaking) wants to continue to be intolerant and are pissed as hell that someone is trying to CHANGE them. They should be able to be as intolerant as they want, damnit and no one can stop them! So, they accuse the left of being the ones who are intolerant/fascists/insert demonized word here. Which is were folks like Bezmenov come in.
Quite frankly, it's pure genius and very effective. All of you are quite intelligent and yet you still believe that what he is saying is real.
"The right (generally speaking) wants to continue to be intolerant and are pissed as hell that someone is trying to CHANGE them. They should be able to be as intolerant as they want, damnit and no one can stop them!"
We ARE intolerant -- of you and your ilk's intolerance of intolerance.
Who the hell are you people to decide we need to CHANGE? Particularly when your social engineering involves a total destruction of everything America ever uiquely was, our ideals, culture, traditions, and history, and particularly our Constitution. You're damn right we're intolerant.
Speaking of which, one of your stinkin' fellow travelers came right out with her disdain this past week. Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Tonya Payne said:
“Who really cares about it being unconstitutional? This is what’s right to do, and if this means that we have to go out and have a court battle, then that’s fine.”
She had an anti-gun bill in mind. So much for "shall not be infringed".
Incidentally, 'The Right' is just another derogatory misnomer for folks who are simply as the Founders were.
Okay, so I'm going to completely disagree with all of you and with Bezmenov.
If the Soviets had been so capable of molding human behavior they would've created their ideal 'new man' in the homeland, where there was no lack of resources or need for deception. That that didn't work out as planned should lead one to be skeptical of his claims of re-engineering people in other places through means decidedly less direct.
Certainly one of the main tenets of conservatism is that human nature is not very malleable. The unconstrained (i.e. liberal) vision is that mankind can be shaped into whatever we desire - Skinner writ large. On this point you may count me as profoundly conservative - we do not fundamentally change so easily. Bezmenov is still operating from the unconstrained view, albeit with a slightly elongated timeframe.
I've been ignoring you, Mark, for a long time now because I came to the conclusion that "arguing" with you was as pointless as arguing with a Furby. UJ and DJ still do it, because someone needs to point out your history here for the benefit of those new, but they both have a lot more patience than I do.
But I have to know, I really do: what do you get out of this? Your arguments never, ever change, even when they are shown to be factually wrong- not just the logic, not just the conclusion, but at odds with reality in all possible ways. You don't actually engage with anyone, you just run through the 1-4 routine that DJ's chronicled. Nobody has even the smallest shred of respect for you and you really and truly don't seem to care about that, as you've never made any attempt to create it.
You don't respect anyone here either, no matter what you may claim, because you never treat them with respect, but rather as mindless right-wing drones. So it can't be attachment to the people here. You never change anybody's mind because your arguments never change, are never honest, are never rigorous, and now nobody would believe you anyway if you said the sky was blue without looking out the window first. So it can't be that you're really hoping to do that.
So what is it? What do you get out of this? Is it just habit? Does it make you feel good to go through the same routine with the same exasperated people each time? Or does it just suit your personal narrative to "preach" to the heathens?
"If the Soviets had been so capable of molding human behavior they would've created their ideal 'new man' in the homeland, where there was no lack of resources or need for deception. That that didn't work out as planned should lead one to be skeptical of his claims of re-engineering people in other places through means decidedly less direct."
That doesn't follow, juris.
The Soviet effort is, in effect, to get people to believe in socialism enough to voluntarily try it, and they are succeeding in that effort because those people who become believers haven't yet personally experienced its ultimate form. So, the collapse of the Soviet Union, although evidence of its ultimate form, does not deter the new believers because they'll do it again, only harder! What we see walking out of our education system shows that Bezmenov is correct about the effort and its results.
When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance.
I am only intolerant of one thing: Anything that is not the truth.
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
And this statement squares precisely how with the treatment of Joe Wurzelbacher after Obama walked onto his lawn and talked with him? Joe the Plumber asked The Messiah, "I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year. Your new tax plan's going to tax me more, isn't it?" The Left did everything but crucify him.
C'mon, teacher boy. Show us, yet again, what a blithering idiot you are.
>>Okay, so I'm going to completely disagree with all of you and with Bezmenov.
Fair enough. I too have some reservations... a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted when it comes to conspiracy theory.
>>>If the Soviets had been so capable of molding human behavior they would've created their ideal 'new man' in the homeland, where there was no lack of resources or need for deception.
I don't think the goal was to create the "new man", and I agree, they didn't have the means to do it.
What they did have the means to do was to apply Gramsci's theories to undermine bastions of thought that resisted their brand of collectivist statism.
The goal was to destabilize enemy countries (that would be us) using expedient means, while putting loyalists into position to step into the aftermath of the crisis. You might recall that once that happened, the next part of the plan was to *eliminate* the true believers that initiated the instability, because they knew they could never deliver on what they'd promised, and that the true believers would become their most bitter opponents once disappointed.
There is one reality. We can affect reality by our actions (properly applying a shovel to dirt moves the dirt to a different location and creates a hole) but there is only one reality, and it does not change simply because we wish it to. Therefore, reality is intolerant.
Truth is an accurate mental map of reality. Therefore, truth is just as intolerant. Attempting to ignore truth can only lead to misery and trouble.
Marky, try stepping in front of a bus then complaining about how intolerant the bus is when it slams you into the pavement. Reality does not care about "tolerance." It is what it is.
Care to point out anything intolerant we've posted which has not also been backed up by evidence showing the truth of our argument?
And once again, my gallery of brass tacks questions which Marky refuses to answer:
1) Which of our claims about Obama are undermined by rules of evidence?
2) You claimed we regularly quote Rush Limbaugh verbatim. If this is actually true, then cite some examples.
While collecting the URL for question 1, I realized that there are two more questions Marky has dodged:
3) By your rules an anonymous source is more reliable than a known source. Is that accurate?
4) You claimed to have the same rules of evidence as the Fox reporter who said Sarah Palin is stupid. I showed how that was not physically possible. What are your rules for evaluating evidence?
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of … freedom of speech."
Yep, we're so intolerant that we tried to implement the Fairness Doctrine directed only at portions of the media where our opponents dominate to shut down speakers we didn't like.
Oh… wait… you mean that wasn't conservatives shutting down lefties, but lefties planning to shut down conservatives? I guess that pesky First Amendment only protects speech you like.
"In fact it's been 'splained to him many times right here in Kevin's parlor."
Many things have been explained to him, but we have yet to see any evidence that those explanations have even entered his brain, let alone been remembered.
I must have a heavier duty irony meter than Unix, (an awesome word picture, BTW) 'cause mine pegged again over his "tolerance" claims.
...does not deter the new believers because they'll do it again, only harder!
I would argue DJ, that that is a 'pathology of thought' all in its own right. And it is a behavior consistently seen in humanity across time, not something simply impressed onto a tabula rasa.
And Marxists have generally despised Socialists - they are competing schools of thought, much as Capitalists despised Mercantilists.
I don't think the goal was to create the "new man"
Geek, in the early days of the Soviet revolution and for a good many years after it indeed was. The unconstrained view is to remake man in the desired image, and Marxism fully expected to be able to do that.
And, if you believe in your ability to do that, you would fully expect to be able to do what Bezmenov posits - destabilize opponents through similar means (i.e. perversion of education).
Consider it from the reverse, are we able to willy-nilly recreate rule-of-law, liberal democratic capitalist societies? Obviously the neo-cons believe so - but that is the hubris carried over from their liberal adolescence. Most other conservatives do not believe in such due at least in part to their constrained view of the world.
I think this might be one reason why the Libertarian Party is always self destructing - the tension between the purists (and anarchists) who are 'liberal' in viewpoint versus the minarchists who tend to a 'conservative' world view.
"The goal was to destabilize enemy countries (that would be us) using expedient means, while putting loyalists into position to step into the aftermath of the crisis."
Building on that point, something that (what I've seen of) Bezmanov's presentation doesn't make clear enough is that the destabilization effort was never intended to culminate in a military invasion by the USSR. The tenets of international socialism state that it is the natural successor to "failed" capitalist states; thus it was only necessary that capitalist states be contrived to fail - socialism would be the spontaneous result if "the people" were properly prepared for the transistion in advance. Bezmanov describes the preparation process but fails (AFAIK) to make clear what that effort's relevance was within socialist ideology (which was quite distinct from USSR nationalist policy). It was never necessary that the USSR "win", only that "capitalism" (and thus the market-based ideologies governing the West) be seen to "fail" - or at least that the citizens of those countries become convinced it had.
The Soviet collapse left the subversion process unsupervised and now domestic nationalist (vs the Soviet internationalist) socialists have siezed the opportunity left vacant and unattended post-1989. Putin has re-asserted Russian grasp on the remains of the former Soviet command structure, but has no authority within surviving western socialist infrastructure.
Obama isn't a Trotskyite, he certainly is no Hitler, nor does he rise to the level of a Mussolini; more than anything, he appears to be deeply conflicted. Watching him and his competing doctrinal ideologues spontaniously implode while failing spectacularly won't exactly be a comfortable experience these next four years, and their successor isn't an assured alternative either, but I think the outcome is basicly fore-ordained at this point.
Not only will the trains not run on time, the army will be reduced to incapacity, the circus will be regulated into dissolution and the bread will sit moldering in warehouses awaiting central planning directives. Not because socialists are inherantly inefficient (history demonstrates they are anything but), but because we don't suffer under only one variety of socialist and none of them will concede the doctrinal points that differentiate between them. Instead of identifying politicians by name or party, we ought to do so by ideology - which is uncomfortably akin to classifying strains of dysentery by patient I admit.
They may well have had the goal of creating the "new man" for their own people, and they may or may not have had that goal for our people. The main point that I'm trying to get across is that their tools weren't sufficient to the task of forging a "new man", but it wasn't necessary to do so in order to destabilize an enemy society. The tools they had were, if not sufficient, then at least contributory to the goal of destabilization, even though failures at "new man" making.
---===|===---
The key cognitive sabotage is to present a method of evaluating information that passes as "rigorous" to an uninformed mind.
Such a substitute cannot, by definition stand against a genuinely rigorous evaluation process, but it doesn't need to, as far as the host is concerned. The mental niche is filled, evaluating the genuinely rigorous process as false, and thus the root of the tree of knowledge is poisoned.
If you look inside the head of such, you'll find Gramsci laughing his ass off, saying "im in ur base, killing ur d00ds."
LabRat -- As far as Russell and I can figure out, Mark is some kind of Turing Machine/Spambot hybrid with "hate conservatives" as the default setting. That's the only thing that makes sense.
"Quite frankly, it's pure genius and very effective. All of you are quite intelligent and yet you still believe that what he is saying is real." Markadelphia
That's because it is real Mark. Liberals absolutely cannot deal with facts. Cannot weigh evidence. In a place far away geographically and in the past a liberal would not believe me, and stood up, and was cut in half by NVA machine gun fire. This poor fools last words prior to commiting suicide was "...they won't shoot at us if we wave to them."
"Instead of 15-20 years, we've been at it since at least the 1950's."
Twenty's or Thirty's I'd say...
Reminds me of sitting in a Hawaii, Kailua-Kona tavern ~15 years ago, looking at the news prints from WWII under the counter... lot's of boat watchers and plane watchers; enthusiasts all; complete with binoculars, notepads, and radio; arrested under martial law and sent away without trials; none ever convicted of espionage; hence it is true - no Japanese National in America was ever convicted of treason in WWII.
Hard to be accused of treason when one never was never accused of loyalty in the first place.
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Hey Marky,
Go present a dissenting opinion on DU, Huffpo, or DailyKos and then come back and tell us how 'tolerant' the 'left' is.
Go back on those message boards and actually read what people were saying about Palin et al. Then come back and tell us how 'tolerant' the 'left' is.
But you won't. We all know it and you know it as well.
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Bezmenov specifically stated :
The demoralization process in [the] United States is basically completed already. For the last 25 years... actually, it's over-fulfilled because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even Comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to [a] lack of moral standards.
Markadelphia, you are a full blown, walking, talking, living example of what Bezmenov was aiming for, and as you claim to work in education, his efforts and aims have most certainly been achieved..
There is no “right”, there is no “wrong”, nothing is either moral or immoral. So intolerance of a political ideology which seeks to impose the Soviet model on the rest of the world which has deliberately and in cold blood murdered well over 100 Million of its citizens in the last century alone must be shouted down. You will not tolerate such a point of view. It can be countered by listing the “sins” of the Western civilisation, which Bezmenov is at pains to point out, are immeasurably less than the sins of Socialism/Communism. But you have no sense of proportion – 100 Million killed deliberately against (say) the number of black people killed in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s or 1970’s - is one and the same. A clear and classic example of a lack of moral standards and a critical faculty to evaluate evidence (IMHO).
The destruction of the family (which belatedly the “liberal”, left wing of Politicians in this country – the UK – is starting to wake up to) and the promiscuous “freedoms” to do whatever an individual desires (with the tab being picked up by everyone else) is absolutely fine. Anyone who wants to prevent the unrestrained decline in moral standards (as promulgated by the philosophy Bezmenov pedalled to undermine the strengths of the target country) is branded as intolerant, a fascist oppressor who wishes to deny “personal freedom”. Which you will not tolerate.
Roll on the full blown socialist/communist revolution when such useless non workers will be dealt with as detailed explicitly by Bezmenov – no work, no food. Of course this must be counterbalanced by the evil wickedness of the USA today which gives such people food stamps instead of money and the freedom to do what they like with it. So again, full moral equivalence, eh?
"As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents …”
As they say “Compare and Contrast” .
I believe that the vast majority of readers (EXCEPT Markadelphia) believe in SMALL GOVERNMENT. I interpret this as “get out of peoples lives and, provided they are not causing harm, a nuisance or interference to anyone else should be able to do whatever they want”. The Government should only assume those powers that the individual cannot do for themselves (National defence springs to mind).
I get the distinct impression that Markadelphia wants politicians to behave exactly like the travelling quack snake oil medicine doctors with “a Pill for every ill” – except this time it is a Bill for every (perceived) ill or injustice and the micromanaging of peoples lives.
Bezmenov would rightfully claim that you have no moral standards – they have been successfully eroded and destroyed. They have been replaced with the new morality of “Intolerance to intolerance”. Your inability to distinguish between the faults of the west and the inhumanity and evil of the communists is a perfect example of the flowering of the seeds so carefully sown by the communists and nurtured by the “Liberals” and “left” for so long.
Ladies and gentlemen, I offer exhibit A as proof that, as Bezmenov claims, the concept he stated (the subversion of the western democracies by communism) has exceeded his wildest hopes and expectations.
I would dearly enjoy being proved wrong. Please point out the flaws in my evidence or logic.
(Markadelphia, I didn’t mean you in that last statement – I want people who have a logical and critical thought process to evaluate the statements, not someone who relies on “feelings” to do so.)
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Okay, let's take that a piece at a time...
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see..."
The reason it's easy to see things on the right is because those on the right tend to pride themselves on being truthful, whereas those on the left tend to pride themselves on their ability to conceal their true intentions until it's too late to do anything about them. As an example, I give you the dozens of claims made by the Obama campaign that turned out not to be true when they became politically inconvenient.
"Intolerance of political ideology..."
Please point out how collectivists are any more tolerant of those insisting on *their own* individualism than individualists are of those insisting on not only their own collectivism, but demanding that everyone join them in it.
Part of what you apparently see as a problem is that individualists only want their individualism *for themselves*. The intolerance is for collectivists' INSISTENCE that all individualists must be included in their collectivism. But on the other side, individualists tend to support freedom of contract, meaning you personally can *choose* to make collective decisions in whatever manner you see fit.
"...sexual orientation..."
Every single week for 6 years that I can personally verify, there was an ad for a gay bar in Albuquerque NM's "alternative" newspaper that read, "100% gay owned and operated." No one griped about this, and I'm fine with that.
But is there any tiniest doubt in your mind what would happen had there been an ad for a NON-gay bar that said "100% heterosexual owned and operated"?
"...diversity..."
This is going to come as a shock to Michael Steele.
Have you noticed that for the last 30+ years, black people have rights and privileges UNDER LAW that whites do not? You can claim that as "embracing diversity" all you like, but the FACT is that's embracing racism.
"...freedom of person..."
Define what you mean by that, please.
"...and yes, even freedom of speech."
Please give examples of this. I suspect you're claiming that people *choosing* not to buy the Dixie Chicks' latest CD because of their stated views about America counts as censorship, whereas the Obama campaign's attempts to legally silence opposition is somehow not.
Note that Rev. "God Damn America" is still a free man, and Prof. Ayers, who planned the mass murder of 25 million American citizens, was on Good Morning America.
"The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Oh? First, see my remarks about the Obama campaign above. Second, note that the left fights against allowing students to meet before school for prayer. No government funding, no government approval or disapproval, but the left feels Christians should be forbidden to practice their religion on school grounds. Is that not religious intolerance?
Third, note that it was the left, not the right, who referred to Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice as "house niggers". I have yet to hear any even remotely similar statements from the right about Jesse Jackson or Barack Obama.
Fourth, note that when Sarah Palin began to make national news, the left went off the deep end. The fact that she was successful in both career and family simultaneously would have been hailed as a triumph of feminism had she been politically left. As it was, she got accused of anything and everything, up to and including the proven to be fraudulent "she doesn't know Africa is a continent" dig that you accepted without question and repeated without shame.
"The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
It would be accurate if you had said, "The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance of things they support. Intolerance of things they do NOT support, however virulent, is celebrated."
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Mark, I don't think anyone is claiming that the right is never intolerant. Your problem is that you cannot see what is right in front of you. You will steadfastly deny that the left is even capable of intolerance (no matter how much vile crap I show you spewed from the likes of DU, Daily Kos, or Delaware Liberal)
Of course we've consistently seen you deny facts. It's what you do, it's all you do, and sadly, you know nothing else.
The key cognitive sabotage is to present a method of evaluating information that passes as "rigorous" to an uninformed mind.
This is not like adding fluoride to water. This is my point to DJ - this thought process is already present. It isn't a foreign pathogen invading the body (or mind).
It is certainly satisfying to have a culprit, a villain, an excuse for why we have come to what we have. That is obviously a great part of the appeal to a conspiracy theory (which in fact is what Bezmenov is peddling - see e.g. exceeding the ambitions of Andropov and his cadre of experts). The problem I see with that is that it too neatly wraps up the story. And in it's own way is still based in the unconstrained view. Bring yourself back to a constrained view and ask, is this possible given what I believe about the human condition? Are people really so easily fooled, so malleable to the artist's intention? Was Lincoln wrong with his maxim about fooling the people?
I'm not denying the perilous state of our educational system, nor the dismal decline in the product thereof. I absolutely dispute that it is all part of a conspiracy rooted in Gramsci and those evil Marxists. We have but to look much closer to home to find the roots of failure.
I'm not denying the perilous state of our educational system, nor the dismal decline in the product thereof. I absolutely dispute that it is all part of a conspiracy rooted in Gramsci and those evil Marxists. We have but to look much closer to home to find the roots of failure.
My curiosity is piqued. Gramsci fits the evidence. What is your explanation?
Another excellent exposition can be found in the early pages of Manchester's A World Lit only by Fire. A very condensed treatise on the fall of Rome and one that fits our current times all too well.
Last post for today - turkey will be out of the oven soon! Happy Thanksgiving to you all; may you enjoy the company of family and friends and the recounting of your many blessings this day.
It's far easier to plant misinformation and corrupt the young than it is to re-engineer an effective society. I certainly do believe that it is possible for an agency to see great effects in corrupting a society over long periods of time.
One need only look at successful advertising campaigns to see that most people are more readily swayed by emotion than logic, and that they can be convinced to part with their hard-earned cash, rather than making ultra-rational economic decisions, because human beings must be trained to think rigourously, while many logical fallacies match up with evolutionarily evolved heuristics.
Socialism has some appeal precisely because we evolved in small, communal groups with a highly social aspect. Now, if we hadn't figured out more complex rules for dealing with each other, we'd still be fighting any strange face we saw and squatting in caves. But these evolved heuristics are hard to beat without education and training, and a certain critical mass in society that lends moral authority to it.
It's not paranoia if people really are out to get you. Over the past few years, new access to KGB files and former KGB members have shown it to be beyond a doubt that they really had active measures in place to do these things: corrupt education, art, and architecture to demoralize the American people. It is consistent with the outlook of the Russian people: unlike some other Communists, (think Khmer Rouge destroying the "legacy of bourgoise and royalist history") they kept the Czarist treasures as a cultural legacy which "belongs to the people" (even though only Party members really benefited from most of it) and they really did look down their nose at the contemporaneous developments in American social life.
It is obvious also, that they achieved a mixed bag of results. Not quite what they wanted, but not without effect either.
Television programming is bourgoise. It's a "dumbing down" of art. This is almost impossible to deny. Not that it has zero merit, because accessibility to art has always been limited, and at least this gives a glimpse of the possibilities to the masses. But these are examples that a cultural imperialist can point to and use as a demonstration of demoralizing influence. There's alot of poison spewed out over the ariwaves, and it's mostly NOT "hate and intolerance"; IMHO, the worst poison we have is the marginalization of the individual in favour of group identity, the denigration of personal responsibility and standards of conduct, and the promotion of shallow thinking in personal values systems, like popularity contests and cults of personality.
One need only look at successful advertising campaigns to see that most people are more readily swayed by emotion than logic, and that they can be convinced to part with their hard-earned cash, rather than making ultra-rational economic decisions, because human beings must be trained to think rigourously, while many logical fallacies match up with evolutionarily evolved heuristics.
Alright, let's consider this. If most people are easily swayed (and that's hard to argue against), is this a corruption or their actual nature? I would argue it is their 'natural state'. Therefore they are easily swayed by any pretty quasi-intellectual bobble. You are no more going to change them to persons of rational decision-making then the most stealthy communist is going to infiltrate and corrupt your own natural inclination to rationality. Therefore, it seems silly to blame Soviet espionage for what is the natural condition of most people.
Now if people are essentially just sheep with emotions, you can't have much hope for self-government. It will ALWAYS be a sham. This is my point against Chomsky - he critiques what he sees as the deception of the masses, which is only possible if the masses are susceptible to deception. If they are, then you can only end up with a succession of elites each using the masses in their own way. The masses just don't somewhere along the line jump up and say "stop" - anymore than sheep stop eating grass. Though Chomsky argues the masses are deceived he still believes they'll stop eating grass if you just put the proper message in front of them. This is the unconstrained view - remaking man in a new image.
Considering that we've had fairly successful (though by no means perfect) self government for a fairly long time, are the majority of us just sheep with emotions? Or, is the explanation of our decline to be found in another area? The Roman Republic dissolved into the imperium without the aid of external conspiracy to destabilize it. Are we so different as to be immune to such?
"Therefore, it seems silly to blame Soviet espionage for what is the natural condition of most people."
That doesn't follow, juris. It would be silly to blame the Soviets only if what the Soviets wanted would have happened without the Soviet's efforts. No, blame the people's nature for making it easy, but blame the Soviets for taking advantage of it successfully.
We are essentially social pack animals. Losing sight of that fundamental part of human nature will make us overlook certain unalterable tendencies, as well as other aspects that are subject to behavioural modification.
Short answer: yes, it is indeed possible to condition people to behave in certain ways, yes, you could look at this as an attempt to create the pefect Utopian society, but rational people have a much more acheivable goal.
Any attempt to condition people to behave in a certain way has to take into account those natural tendencies I mentioned above: i.e. self interest and social bonding including pack hierarchy. Those twin tools of self interest and status-seeking (or more generically, in-group identity) drive most of human behaviour.
There is little doubt that human beings have certain innate abilities; nonetheless these abilities become atrophied without social context. Past a certain point, children raised by wolves will never develop speech. Children develop in stages, and don't even develop a moral sense until they get to a certain point in their intellectual growth.
So, interrupting that leads to a different "natural state". On the one hand, we have the natural state of children absorbing the social constructs of their cultural environment. In another natural state we have children absorbing the constructs of a different culture. In yet a third "natural state", children deprived of human input develop as amoral animals.
However, this does not mean all cultures are equally good, even though all cultures are "natural" (honestly, the line blurs on what is natural and what is deliberate, and that's really the discussion we're having, but I'll get to that in a minute). It's relatively uncontroversial to make a statement that our culture has advanced over the paleolithic- that's a matter of time. It's more controversial to say that our culture has advanced over that of the French, or that of Arab Muslims in the middle east. One has a comparison that no one identifies with, one has a contemporaneous "victim" that is being maligned. Even so, it's is quite probable that objective criteria could be selected by an alien observer that would demonstrate the superiority of a given culture. Certainly for elements of a given culture.
Now, precisely because we are self-aware, some elements of our culture are deliberate. We debate and discuss and form social consensus on acceptable behaviour. Mostly this is a gradual and only semi-csonscious decision. We come to social norms by absorbing the forms of them while we are pre-rational (by being conditioned into certain behaviours as children with threat of punishment and promise of reward) and as we grow older and more self-aware, we can consciously accept or reject the moral lessons contained within or embodied by those forms. However, these social interactions are extremely complex and we often don't perceive all the ramifications of modifying them. This is where deliberate social engineering meets it nemesis: complexity. This is why we have to organically grow and empirically test the social constructs we wish to use to change society.
This is why the Soviets failed miserably. They were too inflexible to discard failed ideology, and not wise enough to predict even (in hindsight) obvious problems where their philosophy conflicted with those two social forces I mentioned first: self interest and social hierarchy.
On the matter of making people more or less rational, that is partly going to be deteremined genetically. Some people are just not very smart. Other factors will be the culture: does the culture value rational decision-making, and does it have the tools to use in rational decision-making (basic empiricism, enough facts, the ability to transmit knowledge inter-generationally)?
500 years ago, people as a whole were almost certainly less rational. People today in faith-based cultures are less rational (by definition, in most cases). This doesn't mean all religious people are irrational (throwing the PC life ring) but it does mean that societies based along religious lines reject most of the tools of rational thought.
At the end of the day, cultural values matter, because they affect the individual's abilities, both in a concrete way of intellectual development, and in what the individual is allowed to do by the group. When the Soviets attempted to inject their ideology of group-focus rather than allow our individual focus to continue undisturbed (except by our own legitimate home-grown commies) they undermined that. When they attempted to inject demoralizing propaganda and debased intellectual and artistic standards into public discourse and prop up their validity with monetary support, they were validating counter-productive values. The strength of our system is that we continued to grow despite that influence. The weakness is that our basic openness doesn't admit of the institutional duplicity of some other cultures, and most of us don't understand it, and find it hard to believe that such regular deceitfulness exists. It just doesn't make sense. I think that is where you have a hard time with the seeming conspiracy theory here.
"Alright, let's consider this. If most people are easily swayed (and that's hard to argue against), is this a corruption or their actual nature? I would argue it is their 'natural state'. Therefore they are easily swayed by any pretty quasi-intellectual bobble. You are no more going to change them to persons of rational decision-making then the most stealthy communist is going to infiltrate and corrupt your own natural inclination to rationality. "
Sorry- y'all probly thought I had said too much already, but a couple more points:
This above is missing thepoint of the original article, which is that this is a multi-generational problem. That the issue is programming of children to either be individuals or grass-eaters, over a long period of time. You won't turn the ones who are already grass-eaters into courageous sheep dogs. At least not enough of them to be statistically significant. What you can do is take those who are on the fence and help them, and you can promote ideals publicly that can help the next generation.
Secondly:
"Though Chomsky argues the masses are deceived he still believes they'll stop eating grass if you just put the proper message in front of them."
No, Chomsky IS a grass-eater and he promotes that ideal. He does think that is the right message and can modify the person, but he's on the other side from us. Again, it's an attractive proposition for a lot of people because it rings some of the right bells in our evolved psyche: it provides a place for everyone (at least in theory) and group identity, "belonging to the pack, any pack" is important. This is something we sheep dogs should be promoting in the public consciousness: Yes, we intend to have competition for the best to prove their ideas and improve their lot in life, but we also have room for the weaker members of our society: that alphas don't prey on our own, but wrestle with the intractable world to provide for our pack. Business tycoons are taking the risk for you by providing capital and jobs. The government may be saying they will provide for you, but they are not truly the alpha. They don't have the resources to provide for you, they are just bullies taking it from someone who does, and mostly because they want status, not because they truly care about the whole of the polity (arguably impossible in any concrete way for any society much over the Dunbar limit.)
bastidge, I think we're not far off. Certainly I don't mean to imply that humankind is immutable. We obviously change over time. I think the nub comes in considering how much time and under what influences.
My problem with the Bezmenov storyline is 1) it proceeds from the unconstrained view of man with all the inherent issues I associate with that, and 2) it is at heart a conspiracy story. Rome fell without an outside conspiracy (the internal ones were more than enough ;-) ) and I see no reason why we would not be susceptible to the same.
DJ, I'm not a fan of conspiracy in any form, and my reference to those internal to Rome was meant quite playfully.
Kevin asked what my alternative was, and I laid it out, at least by reference.
I might add that Kevin's favorite bete noire, John Dewey did his damage well before Gramsci had laid down a trace of his theory. Thus a trajectory was set before Bezmenov was even out of diapers.
Interestingly, try and find more info on Bezmenov. Then ask yourself, why would a man who wanted to warn the West use a Bircher as his conduit? Suffice to say, you have to really question how much to trust anyone who has worked in intelligence or propaganda.
We probably aren't far off from each other, but here's where we differ, perhaps: The unconstrained view (I assume you're referencing Sowell here) doesn't have to be correct to have effects. It just rarely has the exact and precise effect they are aiming for. On the other hand, it often has some semblence of achieving that effect in the short term, or in shallow ways, or with lots of unanticipated/unwelcome side effects. Just because some people are programmed into that unconstrained view doesn't mean they are stupid, they can reason many cause/effect chains as well as anyone, they just have blind spots (the rest of us do as well, we just acknowledge the possibility).
So it's quite believable to me, that a program meant to demoralize the United States over generations could have a negative effect on the US, specifically in arts and culture that tends to glorify that which is base in our natures. It's conceivable that creeping socialism in our schools could have an effect of upping the percentage of sheep to sheepdogs. Every society exists in a dynamic balance, when it shifts far enough, a new culture results, that may not have much in common with it predecessor. Usually this happens through immigration and assimilation or immigration without assimilation.
If we can be convinced that our society is not worth preserving, then we have no bulwark against mass immigration changing us. If we can be convinced that all cultures are equal, then we can be convinced (eventually) that other cultures are better than ours (and we see this: lots of lefties praise other cultures while denigrating ours.)
I recall reading "Gorky Park" long ago. In this Soviet-era, Moscow-centered murder mystery, the detective gave a correct answer to his superior when queried about the chance of finding a murderer: "With the support of the people and the state, we will find him!"
I also recall reading a Tom Clancy novel in which the high level discussion of a military fiasco was ended by the admission that "objective factors" were at fault, not the decisions made by the high level Soviet leaders.
When reality is ignored, along with the centuries of philosophy and science that revealed reality to humanity, the outcome is inevitably disastrous.
I tend to agree with juris_imprudent re: Bezmenov. (I was the guy who transcribed this.) At some point I will post about this on my blog.
But a couple of quick points. Though I agree that Bezmenov seems to believe in what Sowell calls "the unconstrained vision," we don't need to get into that to mitigate and temper his words and predictions. Almost all ex-KGB personnel are wildly optimistic about the effects of their work, partly because they are just so baffled that for ordinary people it goes completely unrecognized and partly because they are, to cop a Bezmenov phrase, "conformist to their own... bosses." This is true of most intelligence operations but especially true of the Soviet Union, where the need for ideological purity restricted accurate intelligence assessment.
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Well, he's right but not in the way, I'm sure, we agree. The right has done a very effective job of brainwashing a large portion of this country into their warped definition of normalcy and patriotism. This was quite evident when Sarah Palin described the "real America."
And when he speaks of "true information" I must again point out the similar pattern between control and/or assassination of information by fascists and the current (and hopefully soon gone) incarnation of conservatism. They demonize and over simplify the main two outlets of information (media and education) and tap into people's anger and fear. Thus, they have their sheep and can pursue their agenda.
Thankfully, last Nov 4th it didn't work. And it wasn't because people were stupid. It was because they woke up and realized that a very large group of people are completely full of shit....as well as only hate, ignorance, and fear.
My irony cup runneth the f-ck over.
"Well, he's right but not in the way, I'm sure, we agree."
It sticks in your craw like old peanut butter to admit that he's right because he's right, doesn'it, liar boy? You just can't do it, can you?
And you still can't communicate in anything other they hype and blather, can you?
Markadelphia: Exhibit A for the accuracy of Bezmanov's statemeant:
"As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom. When a military boot crashes his... then he will understand. But not before that. That's the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization."
I'm right with Sarah on this one.
The sad thing is, Marky, we're trying to get you to understand so that you can avoid the "military boot" cure. Oh, and BTW, if you do encounter the military boot, the odds are pretty good that it won't be our boots. In the last century, the military boot has been wielded by the communists/socialists (yes that includes the National Socialists) against their own populations, i.e., the people who put them into power.
Once again, it's time for questions Marky is trying to dodge:
1) Which of our claims about Obama are undermined by rules of evidence?
2) You claimed we regularly quote Rush Limbaugh verbatim. If this is actually true, then cite some examples.
This was quite evident when Sarah Palin described the "real America."
You know, it's ironic. A while back the Geek with a .45 moved from the People's Republic of New Jersey to Pennsylvania, saying:
“People are moving away from certain states: not because they've got a job offer, not because they want to be closer to family, but because the state they are living in doesn't measure up to the level of freedom they believe is appropriate for Americans. We are internal refugees.”
The fact that things have gone so far south in some places that people actually feel compelled to move the fuck out should frighten the almighty piss out of you.
Ten or fifteen years ago, I would’ve dismissed that notion, that people were relocating themselves for freedom within America as the wild rantings of a fringe lunatic, but today, I’m looking for a real estate agent.
When I returned from the Para USA weekend at Blackwater, I was amused when the lady checking my carry pistol at the Norfolk airport counter exclaimed "Ooooh! That's pretty!"
And I said to myself, "It's nice being in American-occupied America."
As opposed to, say, New Jersey.
Or California.
Or New York.
That's what Sarah Palin was talking about. And those of us who are observant knew precisely what she meant.
And agreed.
I was a Soviet studies major in college during the 1980s, and Bezmenov is absolutely right. Instead of the short time frames used by American intelligence to determine projects--mostly within four-year Presidential political timelines--the Soviets were much more forward-thinking.
They thought of their intelligence and subversion projects against us being measured in decades. And why not? In the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the intelligence planners in the KGB and the GRU didn't think their struggle against the West was going away. So they injected into the American body politic subversive ideas and funding, hoping that they would take off in naturally sympathetic elements. They started seeing results in the 1960s through the New Left and figured such support would continue in some kind of form as the US and Soviets continued their clandestine ideological battles.
Never in a million years did they think the Soviet Union would collapse in 1989. Unfortunately, the "sleeper agents" and U.S. symphatizers the Soviet intelligence program had created twenty and thirty years earlier did not get the memo that the mothership had surrendered without a fight and joined the other side.
It's like an enormous living grenade--once you pull the pin and let the lever fly, you can't stop the fuse from burning down until it finds the destruction it has been programmed to deliver.
It will take a generation of new, young minds inculcated with American patriotism to clean up this mess. I think we have seen some good progress in the last twenty years with Reagan and Bush and the resurgence of conservative and libertarian thought to some extent, but certainly not the majority of ideological thinkers in today's educational institutions.
The horrifying thought is what does one do with the subversives-in-place in the meantime? There are a number of options, none of which I want to think about, especially on a beautiful holiday like Thanksgiving. Or ever see written down as a part of American history.
Kevin: you knew he'd comment.
You owe me for an irony meter. Markdelphia, just as you knew he would, just broke the shit out of mine.
It broke the peg, spun out of the casing, and was last seen running down the road screaming "IT BURNS, IT BURNS, AAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE".
It was because they woke up and realized that a very large group of people are completely full of shit....as well as only hate, ignorance, and fear.
Charming.
You keep up the good work with your free-thinking moderation, Mark.
While I can point to many people who I consider dangerous to society, I do not make caricatures of them. They are, in the main, motivated by some of the same impulses I am—the desire to do good, to improve the world—combined with a crippling lack of true understanding.
You seem to lack the capacity for that sort of nuance.
Indeed, that is Bezmenov's point. You take otherwise decent, idealistic people and you warp their cognitive processes so that they associate their decency with a certain, ultimately vampiric political program.
Then you sit back and watch.
I mean not "you" as in Mark, but "you" in the generic sense.
Mark is no longer self-aware enough to be doing that consciously.
Mark:
I must again point out the similar pattern between control and/or assassination of information
If there's anybody on this site who should never, ever, ever dare to speak of "information assassination", it would be you.
But you have no shame, no honor, no reputation, so you don't care.
Funny thing, who's lied to us, deliberately and with malice aforethought? Has Kevin lied to you? If he has, why would you come back?
Have I lied to you?
DJ?
Sarah?
Any of us?
Show me where we lied to you.
I can show you where you lied to us. I can show you where we refuted claims you made, and you ignored them, and then made the exact same claims later.
You show me where we have. I've been showing you for weeks where you lied to us - and you've just ignored it. You show me where any of the notable commentors on this site have "assassinated information".
You won't, and you still won't see why you're reinforcing Bezmenov's point. You're proving him right as you call him a liar, and a fool. (Don't forget! He's a primary source!)
Speaking of which, it's time you either put up or shut up about "primary sources". We've been making fun of you for misusing them, but I've used your methodology several times and you've just ignored it), So's Kevin. It's time for you to address "primary sources". What is their importance, how impeachable is their testimony, and when and where can one be used. You've ignored when we've used them - per your misuse of the term.
In one of sci-fi author Charles Strosses' far flung futures, he tantalizingly hints that mankind existed for 10,000 years under what he calls a "cognitive tyranny", which is effected by the subversion of widespread brain enhancement technology.
It would seem that such technology is superfluous to that endeavor.
---===|===---
Some people adopt a narrative because it fits the available facts, without reference to how it fits their aesthetics. Others adopt a narrative solely because it fits their aesthetics. They find it beautiful, and never stop to consider the long list of preposterous things they must believe in for their narrative to be true.
It is of rich irony that both teams accuse the other of same.
One of them is mostly right.
The other is mostly wrong.
We all know where I've placed ~my~ bet on the matter.
"They find it beautiful, and never stop to consider the long list of preposterous things they must believe in for their narrative to be true."
How much of the thinking that mankind has saddled itself with does that statement describe?
Okay, teacher boy, it's time for a simple observation. If you make demonstrably stupid statements, you will be characterized as a demonstrably stupid person. If you do so over and over and over again, month after month after month, then those who make such a characterization of you will become utterly certain that said characterization is correct.
You surfaced in China long ago. Are you gonna keep on digging?
Nice one Kevin! You set the trap and he fell right in! The first one, too. Heh.
Eagle 1
I'm off for the weekend guys but will return to respond next week. In the meantime, try to get your head around this simple fact.
When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance.
And therein lies the problem. The right (generally speaking) wants to continue to be intolerant and are pissed as hell that someone is trying to CHANGE them. They should be able to be as intolerant as they want, damnit and no one can stop them! So, they accuse the left of being the ones who are intolerant/fascists/insert demonized word here. Which is were folks like Bezmenov come in.
Quite frankly, it's pure genius and very effective. All of you are quite intelligent and yet you still believe that what he is saying is real.
Intolerance? Really?
I've been lurking for a while.
I've never read rascism here.
I've never read hatred here.
I've never read bigotry, chauvanism or any other undesirable quality here.
I have, however, read exasperation, annoyance, and frustration here, many times.
And I have often read intelligent, rational veiwpoints, argued calmly and politely.
I've also seen denial, and accusations of items 1 thru 4. Mostly from you, Mark.
Grow up!
"The right (generally speaking) wants to continue to be intolerant and are pissed as hell that someone is trying to CHANGE them. They should be able to be as intolerant as they want, damnit and no one can stop them!"
We ARE intolerant -- of you and your ilk's intolerance of intolerance.
Who the hell are you people to decide we need to CHANGE? Particularly when your social engineering involves a total destruction of everything America ever uiquely was, our ideals, culture, traditions, and history, and particularly our Constitution. You're damn right we're intolerant.
Speaking of which, one of your stinkin' fellow travelers came right out with her disdain this past week. Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Tonya Payne said:
“Who really cares about it being unconstitutional? This is what’s right to do, and if this means that we have to go out and have a court battle, then that’s fine.”
She had an anti-gun bill in mind. So much for "shall not be infringed".
Incidentally, 'The Right' is just another derogatory misnomer for folks who are simply as the Founders were.
That ain't you, Markieboy.
Okay, so I'm going to completely disagree with all of you and with Bezmenov.
If the Soviets had been so capable of molding human behavior they would've created their ideal 'new man' in the homeland, where there was no lack of resources or need for deception. That that didn't work out as planned should lead one to be skeptical of his claims of re-engineering people in other places through means decidedly less direct.
Certainly one of the main tenets of conservatism is that human nature is not very malleable. The unconstrained (i.e. liberal) vision is that mankind can be shaped into whatever we desire - Skinner writ large. On this point you may count me as profoundly conservative - we do not fundamentally change so easily. Bezmenov is still operating from the unconstrained view, albeit with a slightly elongated timeframe.
Okay.
I've been ignoring you, Mark, for a long time now because I came to the conclusion that "arguing" with you was as pointless as arguing with a Furby. UJ and DJ still do it, because someone needs to point out your history here for the benefit of those new, but they both have a lot more patience than I do.
But I have to know, I really do: what do you get out of this? Your arguments never, ever change, even when they are shown to be factually wrong- not just the logic, not just the conclusion, but at odds with reality in all possible ways. You don't actually engage with anyone, you just run through the 1-4 routine that DJ's chronicled. Nobody has even the smallest shred of respect for you and you really and truly don't seem to care about that, as you've never made any attempt to create it.
You don't respect anyone here either, no matter what you may claim, because you never treat them with respect, but rather as mindless right-wing drones. So it can't be attachment to the people here. You never change anybody's mind because your arguments never change, are never honest, are never rigorous, and now nobody would believe you anyway if you said the sky was blue without looking out the window first. So it can't be that you're really hoping to do that.
So what is it? What do you get out of this? Is it just habit? Does it make you feel good to go through the same routine with the same exasperated people each time? Or does it just suit your personal narrative to "preach" to the heathens?
To put it much more simply, but nowhere nearly as eloquently, are you no more than a troll, liar boy?
"If the Soviets had been so capable of molding human behavior they would've created their ideal 'new man' in the homeland, where there was no lack of resources or need for deception. That that didn't work out as planned should lead one to be skeptical of his claims of re-engineering people in other places through means decidedly less direct."
That doesn't follow, juris.
The Soviet effort is, in effect, to get people to believe in socialism enough to voluntarily try it, and they are succeeding in that effort because those people who become believers haven't yet personally experienced its ultimate form. So, the collapse of the Soviet Union, although evidence of its ultimate form, does not deter the new believers because they'll do it again, only harder! What we see walking out of our education system shows that Bezmenov is correct about the effort and its results.
When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance.
I am only intolerant of one thing: Anything that is not the truth.
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
And this statement squares precisely how with the treatment of Joe Wurzelbacher after Obama walked onto his lawn and talked with him? Joe the Plumber asked The Messiah, "I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year. Your new tax plan's going to tax me more, isn't it?" The Left did everything but crucify him.
C'mon, teacher boy. Show us, yet again, what a blithering idiot you are.
>>Okay, so I'm going to completely disagree with all of you and with Bezmenov.
Fair enough. I too have some reservations... a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted when it comes to conspiracy theory.
>>>If the Soviets had been so capable of molding human behavior they would've created their ideal 'new man' in the homeland, where there was no lack of resources or need for deception.
I don't think the goal was to create the "new man", and I agree, they didn't have the means to do it.
What they did have the means to do was to apply Gramsci's theories to undermine bastions of thought that resisted their brand of collectivist statism.
The goal was to destabilize enemy countries (that would be us) using expedient means, while putting loyalists into position to step into the aftermath of the crisis. You might recall that once that happened, the next part of the plan was to *eliminate* the true believers that initiated the instability, because they knew they could never deliver on what they'd promised, and that the true believers would become their most bitter opponents once disappointed.
To expand on what Caleb said:
There is one reality. We can affect reality by our actions (properly applying a shovel to dirt moves the dirt to a different location and creates a hole) but there is only one reality, and it does not change simply because we wish it to. Therefore, reality is intolerant.
Truth is an accurate mental map of reality. Therefore, truth is just as intolerant. Attempting to ignore truth can only lead to misery and trouble.
Marky, try stepping in front of a bus then complaining about how intolerant the bus is when it slams you into the pavement. Reality does not care about "tolerance." It is what it is.
Care to point out anything intolerant we've posted which has not also been backed up by evidence showing the truth of our argument?
And once again, my gallery of brass tacks questions which Marky refuses to answer:
1) Which of our claims about Obama are undermined by rules of evidence?
2) You claimed we regularly quote Rush Limbaugh verbatim. If this is actually true, then cite some examples.
While collecting the URL for question 1, I realized that there are two more questions Marky has dodged:
3) By your rules an anonymous source is more reliable than a known source. Is that accurate?
4) You claimed to have the same rules of evidence as the Fox reporter who said Sarah Palin is stupid. I showed how that was not physically possible. What are your rules for evaluating evidence?
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of … freedom of speech."
Yep, we're so intolerant that we tried to implement the Fairness Doctrine directed only at portions of the media where our opponents dominate to shut down speakers we didn't like.
Oh… wait… you mean that wasn't conservatives shutting down lefties, but lefties planning to shut down conservatives? I guess that pesky First Amendment only protects speech you like.
Have you even heard of projection?
Yes, Ed, he's heard of it. In fact it's been 'splained to him many times right here in Kevin's parlor. In related news, the sun is hot, isn't it?
"In fact it's been 'splained to him many times right here in Kevin's parlor."
Many things have been explained to him, but we have yet to see any evidence that those explanations have even entered his brain, let alone been remembered.
I must have a heavier duty irony meter than Unix, (an awesome word picture, BTW) 'cause mine pegged again over his "tolerance" claims.
...does not deter the new believers because they'll do it again, only harder!
I would argue DJ, that that is a 'pathology of thought' all in its own right. And it is a behavior consistently seen in humanity across time, not something simply impressed onto a tabula rasa.
And Marxists have generally despised Socialists - they are competing schools of thought, much as Capitalists despised Mercantilists.
I don't think the goal was to create the "new man"
Geek, in the early days of the Soviet revolution and for a good many years after it indeed was. The unconstrained view is to remake man in the desired image, and Marxism fully expected to be able to do that.
And, if you believe in your ability to do that, you would fully expect to be able to do what Bezmenov posits - destabilize opponents through similar means (i.e. perversion of education).
Consider it from the reverse, are we able to willy-nilly recreate rule-of-law, liberal democratic capitalist societies? Obviously the neo-cons believe so - but that is the hubris carried over from their liberal adolescence. Most other conservatives do not believe in such due at least in part to their constrained view of the world.
I think this might be one reason why the Libertarian Party is always self destructing - the tension between the purists (and anarchists) who are 'liberal' in viewpoint versus the minarchists who tend to a 'conservative' world view.
geekWithA.45 said:
"The goal was to destabilize enemy countries (that would be us) using expedient means, while putting loyalists into position to step into the aftermath of the crisis."
Building on that point, something that (what I've seen of) Bezmanov's presentation doesn't make clear enough is that the destabilization effort was never intended to culminate in a military invasion by the USSR. The tenets of international socialism state that it is the natural successor to "failed" capitalist states; thus it was only necessary that capitalist states be contrived to fail - socialism would be the spontaneous result if "the people" were properly prepared for the transistion in advance. Bezmanov describes the preparation process but fails (AFAIK) to make clear what that effort's relevance was within socialist ideology (which was quite distinct from USSR nationalist policy). It was never necessary that the USSR "win", only that "capitalism" (and thus the market-based ideologies governing the West) be seen to "fail" - or at least that the citizens of those countries become convinced it had.
The Soviet collapse left the subversion process unsupervised and now domestic nationalist (vs the Soviet internationalist) socialists have siezed the opportunity left vacant and unattended post-1989. Putin has re-asserted Russian grasp on the remains of the former Soviet command structure, but has no authority within surviving western socialist infrastructure.
Obama isn't a Trotskyite, he certainly is no Hitler, nor does he rise to the level of a Mussolini; more than anything, he appears to be deeply conflicted. Watching him and his competing doctrinal ideologues spontaniously implode while failing spectacularly won't exactly be a comfortable experience these next four years, and their successor isn't an assured alternative either, but I think the outcome is basicly fore-ordained at this point.
Not only will the trains not run on time, the army will be reduced to incapacity, the circus will be regulated into dissolution and the bread will sit moldering in warehouses awaiting central planning directives. Not because socialists are inherantly inefficient (history demonstrates they are anything but), but because we don't suffer under only one variety of socialist and none of them will concede the doctrinal points that differentiate between them. Instead of identifying politicians by name or party, we ought to do so by ideology - which is uncomfortably akin to classifying strains of dysentery by patient I admit.
Juris_imprudent:
I clarify, 'cause its not coming out right.
They may well have had the goal of creating the "new man" for their own people, and they may or may not have had that goal for our people. The main point that I'm trying to get across is that their tools weren't sufficient to the task of forging a "new man", but it wasn't necessary to do so in order to destabilize an enemy society. The tools they had were, if not sufficient, then at least contributory to the goal of destabilization, even though failures at "new man" making.
---===|===---
The key cognitive sabotage is to present a method of evaluating information that passes as "rigorous" to an uninformed mind.
Such a substitute cannot, by definition stand against a genuinely rigorous evaluation process, but it doesn't need to, as far as the host is concerned. The mental niche is filled, evaluating the genuinely rigorous process as false, and thus the root of the tree of knowledge is poisoned.
If you look inside the head of such, you'll find Gramsci laughing his ass off, saying "im in ur base, killing ur d00ds."
That's QotD fodder right there, Geek.
LabRat -- As far as Russell and I can figure out, Mark is some kind of Turing Machine/Spambot hybrid with "hate conservatives" as the default setting. That's the only thing that makes sense.
"Quite frankly, it's pure genius and very effective. All of you are quite intelligent and yet you still believe that what he is saying is real." Markadelphia
That's because it is real Mark. Liberals absolutely cannot deal with facts. Cannot weigh evidence. In a place far away geographically and in the past a liberal would not believe me, and stood up, and was cut in half by NVA machine gun fire. This poor fools last words prior to commiting suicide was "...they won't shoot at us if we wave to them."
"Instead of 15-20 years, we've been at it since at least the 1950's."
Twenty's or Thirty's I'd say...
Reminds me of sitting in a Hawaii, Kailua-Kona tavern ~15 years ago, looking at the news prints from WWII under the counter... lot's of boat watchers and plane watchers; enthusiasts all; complete with binoculars, notepads, and radio; arrested under martial law and sent away without trials; none ever convicted of espionage; hence it is true - no Japanese National in America was ever convicted of treason in WWII.
Hard to be accused of treason when one never was never accused of loyalty in the first place.
One can be assured, a dollar to your million, that when Obama takes office it will be the FIRST TIME he has EVER sworn loyalty to the US.
It is a good front page trivia story...
...
George W? Certainly sworn loyalty.
Bill Clinton? Maybe
George the Eldar? Yes.
Reagon, Yes
Carter, Yes
Nixon?
Johnson?
Kennedy, Yes...
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Hey Marky,
Go present a dissenting opinion on DU, Huffpo, or DailyKos and then come back and tell us how 'tolerant' the 'left' is.
Go back on those message boards and actually read what people were saying about Palin et al. Then come back and tell us how 'tolerant' the 'left' is.
But you won't. We all know it and you know it as well.
Sad. Pathetic really.
"Go present a dissenting opinion on DU, Huffpo, or DailyKos and then come back and tell us how 'tolerant' the 'left' is."
But, but, but… They're not intolerant because what they're saying is true!
::: Switching off Markadelphia mode and racing for the shower. "Get it off! Get IT OFF!!!" :::
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,
I give you Exhibit A - Markadelphias statement :
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Bezmenov specifically stated :
The demoralization process in [the] United States is basically completed already. For the last 25 years... actually, it's over-fulfilled because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even Comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to [a] lack of moral standards.
Markadelphia, you are a full blown, walking, talking, living example of what Bezmenov was aiming for, and as you claim to work in education, his efforts and aims have most certainly been achieved..
There is no “right”, there is no “wrong”, nothing is either moral or immoral. So intolerance of a political ideology which seeks to impose the Soviet model on the rest of the world which has deliberately and in cold blood murdered well over 100 Million of its citizens in the last century alone must be shouted down. You will not tolerate such a point of view. It can be countered by listing the “sins” of the Western civilisation, which Bezmenov is at pains to point out, are immeasurably less than the sins of Socialism/Communism. But you have no sense of proportion – 100 Million killed deliberately against (say) the number of black people killed in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s or 1970’s - is one and the same. A clear and classic example of a lack of moral standards and a critical faculty to evaluate evidence (IMHO).
The destruction of the family (which belatedly the “liberal”, left wing of Politicians in this country – the UK – is starting to wake up to) and the promiscuous “freedoms” to do whatever an individual desires (with the tab being picked up by everyone else) is absolutely fine. Anyone who wants to prevent the unrestrained decline in moral standards (as promulgated by the philosophy Bezmenov pedalled to undermine the strengths of the target country) is branded as intolerant, a fascist oppressor who wishes to deny “personal freedom”. Which you will not tolerate.
Roll on the full blown socialist/communist revolution when such useless non workers will be dealt with as detailed explicitly by Bezmenov – no work, no food. Of course this must be counterbalanced by the evil wickedness of the USA today which gives such people food stamps instead of money and the freedom to do what they like with it. So again, full moral equivalence, eh?
"As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents …”
As they say “Compare and Contrast” .
I believe that the vast majority of readers (EXCEPT Markadelphia) believe in SMALL GOVERNMENT. I interpret this as “get out of peoples lives and, provided they are not causing harm, a nuisance or interference to anyone else should be able to do whatever they want”. The Government should only assume those powers that the individual cannot do for themselves (National defence springs to mind).
I get the distinct impression that Markadelphia wants politicians to behave exactly like the travelling quack snake oil medicine doctors with “a Pill for every ill” – except this time it is a Bill for every (perceived) ill or injustice and the micromanaging of peoples lives.
Bezmenov would rightfully claim that you have no moral standards – they have been successfully eroded and destroyed. They have been replaced with the new morality of “Intolerance to intolerance”. Your inability to distinguish between the faults of the west and the inhumanity and evil of the communists is a perfect example of the flowering of the seeds so carefully sown by the communists and nurtured by the “Liberals” and “left” for so long.
Ladies and gentlemen, I offer exhibit A as proof that, as Bezmenov claims, the concept he stated (the subversion of the western democracies by communism) has exceeded his wildest hopes and expectations.
I would dearly enjoy being proved wrong. Please point out the flaws in my evidence or logic.
(Markadelphia, I didn’t mean you in that last statement – I want people who have a logical and critical thought process to evaluate the statements, not someone who relies on “feelings” to do so.)
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Okay, let's take that a piece at a time...
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see..."
The reason it's easy to see things on the right is because those on the right tend to pride themselves on being truthful, whereas those on the left tend to pride themselves on their ability to conceal their true intentions until it's too late to do anything about them. As an example, I give you the dozens of claims made by the Obama campaign that turned out not to be true when they became politically inconvenient.
"Intolerance of political ideology..."
Please point out how collectivists are any more tolerant of those insisting on *their own* individualism than individualists are of those insisting on not only their own collectivism, but demanding that everyone join them in it.
Part of what you apparently see as a problem is that individualists only want their individualism *for themselves*. The intolerance is for collectivists' INSISTENCE that all individualists must be included in their collectivism. But on the other side, individualists tend to support freedom of contract, meaning you personally can *choose* to make collective decisions in whatever manner you see fit.
"...sexual orientation..."
Every single week for 6 years that I can personally verify, there was an ad for a gay bar in Albuquerque NM's "alternative" newspaper that read, "100% gay owned and operated." No one griped about this, and I'm fine with that.
But is there any tiniest doubt in your mind what would happen had there been an ad for a NON-gay bar that said "100% heterosexual owned and operated"?
"...diversity..."
This is going to come as a shock to Michael Steele.
Have you noticed that for the last 30+ years, black people have rights and privileges UNDER LAW that whites do not? You can claim that as "embracing diversity" all you like, but the FACT is that's embracing racism.
"...freedom of person..."
Define what you mean by that, please.
"...and yes, even freedom of speech."
Please give examples of this. I suspect you're claiming that people *choosing* not to buy the Dixie Chicks' latest CD because of their stated views about America counts as censorship, whereas the Obama campaign's attempts to legally silence opposition is somehow not.
Note that Rev. "God Damn America" is still a free man, and Prof. Ayers, who planned the mass murder of 25 million American citizens, was on Good Morning America.
"The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Oh? First, see my remarks about the Obama campaign above. Second, note that the left fights against allowing students to meet before school for prayer. No government funding, no government approval or disapproval, but the left feels Christians should be forbidden to practice their religion on school grounds. Is that not religious intolerance?
Third, note that it was the left, not the right, who referred to Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice as "house niggers". I have yet to hear any even remotely similar statements from the right about Jesse Jackson or Barack Obama.
Fourth, note that when Sarah Palin began to make national news, the left went off the deep end. The fact that she was successful in both career and family simultaneously would have been hailed as a triumph of feminism had she been politically left. As it was, she got accused of anything and everything, up to and including the proven to be fraudulent "she doesn't know Africa is a continent" dig that you accepted without question and repeated without shame.
"The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
It would be accurate if you had said, "The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance of things they support. Intolerance of things they do NOT support, however virulent, is celebrated."
Just ask Joe the Plumber.
Mark Says,
"When you look at the right side of the political spectrum, it's pretty easy to see a lot of intolerance. Intolerance of political ideology, sexual orientation, diversity, freedom of person, and yes, even freedom of speech. The left, however, is intolerant of only one thing: Intolerance."
Mark, I don't think anyone is claiming that the right is never intolerant. Your problem is that you cannot see what is right in front of you. You will steadfastly deny that the left is even capable of intolerance (no matter how much vile crap I show you spewed from the likes of DU, Daily Kos, or Delaware Liberal)
Of course we've consistently seen you deny facts. It's what you do, it's all you do, and sadly, you know nothing else.
The key cognitive sabotage is to present a method of evaluating information that passes as "rigorous" to an uninformed mind.
This is not like adding fluoride to water. This is my point to DJ - this thought process is already present. It isn't a foreign pathogen invading the body (or mind).
It is certainly satisfying to have a culprit, a villain, an excuse for why we have come to what we have. That is obviously a great part of the appeal to a conspiracy theory (which in fact is what Bezmenov is peddling - see e.g. exceeding the ambitions of Andropov and his cadre of experts). The problem I see with that is that it too neatly wraps up the story. And in it's own way is still based in the unconstrained view. Bring yourself back to a constrained view and ask, is this possible given what I believe about the human condition? Are people really so easily fooled, so malleable to the artist's intention? Was Lincoln wrong with his maxim about fooling the people?
I'm not denying the perilous state of our educational system, nor the dismal decline in the product thereof. I absolutely dispute that it is all part of a conspiracy rooted in Gramsci and those evil Marxists. We have but to look much closer to home to find the roots of failure.
I'm not denying the perilous state of our educational system, nor the dismal decline in the product thereof. I absolutely dispute that it is all part of a conspiracy rooted in Gramsci and those evil Marxists. We have but to look much closer to home to find the roots of failure.
My curiosity is piqued. Gramsci fits the evidence. What is your explanation?
What is your explanation?
Something more along the lines of Edward Gibbon.
Another excellent exposition can be found in the early pages of Manchester's A World Lit only by Fire. A very condensed treatise on the fall of Rome and one that fits our current times all too well.
Last post for today - turkey will be out of the oven soon! Happy Thanksgiving to you all; may you enjoy the company of family and friends and the recounting of your many blessings this day.
"Was Lincoln wrong with his maxim about fooling the people?"
No, he wasn't. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Juris;
It's far easier to plant misinformation and corrupt the young than it is to re-engineer an effective society. I certainly do believe that it is possible for an agency to see great effects in corrupting a society over long periods of time.
One need only look at successful advertising campaigns to see that most people are more readily swayed by emotion than logic, and that they can be convinced to part with their hard-earned cash, rather than making ultra-rational economic decisions, because human beings must be trained to think rigourously, while many logical fallacies match up with evolutionarily evolved heuristics.
Socialism has some appeal precisely because we evolved in small, communal groups with a highly social aspect. Now, if we hadn't figured out more complex rules for dealing with each other, we'd still be fighting any strange face we saw and squatting in caves. But these evolved heuristics are hard to beat without education and training, and a certain critical mass in society that lends moral authority to it.
It's not paranoia if people really are out to get you. Over the past few years, new access to KGB files and former KGB members have shown it to be beyond a doubt that they really had active measures in place to do these things: corrupt education, art, and architecture to demoralize the American people. It is consistent with the outlook of the Russian people: unlike some other Communists, (think Khmer Rouge destroying the "legacy of bourgoise and royalist history") they kept the Czarist treasures as a cultural legacy which "belongs to the people" (even though only Party members really benefited from most of it) and they really did look down their nose at the contemporaneous developments in American social life.
It is obvious also, that they achieved a mixed bag of results. Not quite what they wanted, but not without effect either.
Television programming is bourgoise. It's a "dumbing down" of art. This is almost impossible to deny. Not that it has zero merit, because accessibility to art has always been limited, and at least this gives a glimpse of the possibilities to the masses. But these are examples that a cultural imperialist can point to and use as a demonstration of demoralizing influence. There's alot of poison spewed out over the ariwaves, and it's mostly NOT "hate and intolerance"; IMHO, the worst poison we have is the marginalization of the individual in favour of group identity, the denigration of personal responsibility and standards of conduct, and the promotion of shallow thinking in personal values systems, like popularity contests and cults of personality.
One need only look at successful advertising campaigns to see that most people are more readily swayed by emotion than logic, and that they can be convinced to part with their hard-earned cash, rather than making ultra-rational economic decisions, because human beings must be trained to think rigourously, while many logical fallacies match up with evolutionarily evolved heuristics.
Alright, let's consider this. If most people are easily swayed (and that's hard to argue against), is this a corruption or their actual nature? I would argue it is their 'natural state'. Therefore they are easily swayed by any pretty quasi-intellectual bobble. You are no more going to change them to persons of rational decision-making then the most stealthy communist is going to infiltrate and corrupt your own natural inclination to rationality. Therefore, it seems silly to blame Soviet espionage for what is the natural condition of most people.
Now if people are essentially just sheep with emotions, you can't have much hope for self-government. It will ALWAYS be a sham. This is my point against Chomsky - he critiques what he sees as the deception of the masses, which is only possible if the masses are susceptible to deception. If they are, then you can only end up with a succession of elites each using the masses in their own way. The masses just don't somewhere along the line jump up and say "stop" - anymore than sheep stop eating grass. Though Chomsky argues the masses are deceived he still believes they'll stop eating grass if you just put the proper message in front of them. This is the unconstrained view - remaking man in a new image.
Considering that we've had fairly successful (though by no means perfect) self government for a fairly long time, are the majority of us just sheep with emotions? Or, is the explanation of our decline to be found in another area? The Roman Republic dissolved into the imperium without the aid of external conspiracy to destabilize it. Are we so different as to be immune to such?
"Therefore, it seems silly to blame Soviet espionage for what is the natural condition of most people."
That doesn't follow, juris. It would be silly to blame the Soviets only if what the Soviets wanted would have happened without the Soviet's efforts. No, blame the people's nature for making it easy, but blame the Soviets for taking advantage of it successfully.
We are essentially social pack animals. Losing sight of that fundamental part of human nature will make us overlook certain unalterable tendencies, as well as other aspects that are subject to behavioural modification.
Short answer: yes, it is indeed possible to condition people to behave in certain ways, yes, you could look at this as an attempt to create the pefect Utopian society, but rational people have a much more acheivable goal.
Any attempt to condition people to behave in a certain way has to take into account those natural tendencies I mentioned above: i.e. self interest and social bonding including pack hierarchy. Those twin tools of self interest and status-seeking (or more generically, in-group identity) drive most of human behaviour.
There is little doubt that human beings have certain innate abilities; nonetheless these abilities become atrophied without social context. Past a certain point, children raised by wolves will never develop speech. Children develop in stages, and don't even develop a moral sense until they get to a certain point in their intellectual growth.
So, interrupting that leads to a different "natural state". On the one hand, we have the natural state of children absorbing the social constructs of their cultural environment. In another natural state we have children absorbing the constructs of a different culture. In yet a third "natural state", children deprived of human input develop as amoral animals.
However, this does not mean all cultures are equally good, even though all cultures are "natural" (honestly, the line blurs on what is natural and what is deliberate, and that's really the discussion we're having, but I'll get to that in a minute). It's relatively uncontroversial to make a statement that our culture has advanced over the paleolithic- that's a matter of time. It's more controversial to say that our culture has advanced over that of the French, or that of Arab Muslims in the middle east. One has a comparison that no one identifies with, one has a contemporaneous "victim" that is being maligned. Even so, it's is quite probable that objective criteria could be selected by an alien observer that would demonstrate the superiority of a given culture. Certainly for elements of a given culture.
Now, precisely because we are self-aware, some elements of our culture are deliberate. We debate and discuss and form social consensus on acceptable behaviour. Mostly this is a gradual and only semi-csonscious decision. We come to social norms by absorbing the forms of them while we are pre-rational (by being conditioned into certain behaviours as children with threat of punishment and promise of reward) and as we grow older and more self-aware, we can consciously accept or reject the moral lessons contained within or embodied by those forms. However, these social interactions are extremely complex and we often don't perceive all the ramifications of modifying them. This is where deliberate social engineering meets it nemesis: complexity. This is why we have to organically grow and empirically test the social constructs we wish to use to change society.
This is why the Soviets failed miserably. They were too inflexible to discard failed ideology, and not wise enough to predict even (in hindsight) obvious problems where their philosophy conflicted with those two social forces I mentioned first: self interest and social hierarchy.
On the matter of making people more or less rational, that is partly going to be deteremined genetically. Some people are just not very smart. Other factors will be the culture: does the culture value rational decision-making, and does it have the tools to use in rational decision-making (basic empiricism, enough facts, the ability to transmit knowledge inter-generationally)?
500 years ago, people as a whole were almost certainly less rational. People today in faith-based cultures are less rational (by definition, in most cases). This doesn't mean all religious people are irrational (throwing the PC life ring) but it does mean that societies based along religious lines reject most of the tools of rational thought.
At the end of the day, cultural values matter, because they affect the individual's abilities, both in a concrete way of intellectual development, and in what the individual is allowed to do by the group. When the Soviets attempted to inject their ideology of group-focus rather than allow our individual focus to continue undisturbed (except by our own legitimate home-grown commies) they undermined that. When they attempted to inject demoralizing propaganda and debased intellectual and artistic standards into public discourse and prop up their validity with monetary support, they were validating counter-productive values. The strength of our system is that we continued to grow despite that influence. The weakness is that our basic openness doesn't admit of the institutional duplicity of some other cultures, and most of us don't understand it, and find it hard to believe that such regular deceitfulness exists. It just doesn't make sense. I think that is where you have a hard time with the seeming conspiracy theory here.
"Alright, let's consider this. If most people are easily swayed (and that's hard to argue against), is this a corruption or their actual nature? I would argue it is their 'natural state'. Therefore they are easily swayed by any pretty quasi-intellectual bobble. You are no more going to change them to persons of rational decision-making then the most stealthy communist is going to infiltrate and corrupt your own natural inclination to rationality. "
Sorry- y'all probly thought I had said too much already, but a couple more points:
This above is missing thepoint of the original article, which is that this is a multi-generational problem. That the issue is programming of children to either be individuals or grass-eaters, over a long period of time. You won't turn the ones who are already grass-eaters into courageous sheep dogs. At least not enough of them to be statistically significant. What you can do is take those who are on the fence and help them, and you can promote ideals publicly that can help the next generation.
Secondly:
"Though Chomsky argues the masses are deceived he still believes they'll stop eating grass if you just put the proper message in front of them."
No, Chomsky IS a grass-eater and he promotes that ideal. He does think that is the right message and can modify the person, but he's on the other side from us. Again, it's an attractive proposition for a lot of people because it rings some of the right bells in our evolved psyche: it provides a place for everyone (at least in theory) and group identity, "belonging to the pack, any pack" is important. This is something we sheep dogs should be promoting in the public consciousness: Yes, we intend to have competition for the best to prove their ideas and improve their lot in life, but we also have room for the weaker members of our society: that alphas don't prey on our own, but wrestle with the intractable world to provide for our pack. Business tycoons are taking the risk for you by providing capital and jobs. The government may be saying they will provide for you, but they are not truly the alpha. They don't have the resources to provide for you, they are just bullies taking it from someone who does, and mostly because they want status, not because they truly care about the whole of the polity (arguably impossible in any concrete way for any society much over the Dunbar limit.)
bastidge, I think we're not far off. Certainly I don't mean to imply that humankind is immutable. We obviously change over time. I think the nub comes in considering how much time and under what influences.
My problem with the Bezmenov storyline is 1) it proceeds from the unconstrained view of man with all the inherent issues I associate with that, and 2) it is at heart a conspiracy story. Rome fell without an outside conspiracy (the internal ones were more than enough ;-) ) and I see no reason why we would not be susceptible to the same.
"Rome fell without an outside conspiracy (the internal ones were more than enough)and I see no reason why we would not be susceptible to the same."
Nor do I, but it does not follow that we are therefore not susceptible to an outside conspiracy.
DJ, I'm not a fan of conspiracy in any form, and my reference to those internal to Rome was meant quite playfully.
Kevin asked what my alternative was, and I laid it out, at least by reference.
I might add that Kevin's favorite bete noire, John Dewey did his damage well before Gramsci had laid down a trace of his theory. Thus a trajectory was set before Bezmenov was even out of diapers.
Interestingly, try and find more info on Bezmenov. Then ask yourself, why would a man who wanted to warn the West use a Bircher as his conduit? Suffice to say, you have to really question how much to trust anyone who has worked in intelligence or propaganda.
LOL there you go. You can't trust me.
We probably aren't far off from each other, but here's where we differ, perhaps: The unconstrained view (I assume you're referencing Sowell here) doesn't have to be correct to have effects. It just rarely has the exact and precise effect they are aiming for. On the other hand, it often has some semblence of achieving that effect in the short term, or in shallow ways, or with lots of unanticipated/unwelcome side effects. Just because some people are programmed into that unconstrained view doesn't mean they are stupid, they can reason many cause/effect chains as well as anyone, they just have blind spots (the rest of us do as well, we just acknowledge the possibility).
So it's quite believable to me, that a program meant to demoralize the United States over generations could have a negative effect on the US, specifically in arts and culture that tends to glorify that which is base in our natures. It's conceivable that creeping socialism in our schools could have an effect of upping the percentage of sheep to sheepdogs. Every society exists in a dynamic balance, when it shifts far enough, a new culture results, that may not have much in common with it predecessor. Usually this happens through immigration and assimilation or immigration without assimilation.
If we can be convinced that our society is not worth preserving, then we have no bulwark against mass immigration changing us. If we can be convinced that all cultures are equal, then we can be convinced (eventually) that other cultures are better than ours (and we see this: lots of lefties praise other cultures while denigrating ours.)
I recall reading "Gorky Park" long ago. In this Soviet-era, Moscow-centered murder mystery, the detective gave a correct answer to his superior when queried about the chance of finding a murderer: "With the support of the people and the state, we will find him!"
I also recall reading a Tom Clancy novel in which the high level discussion of a military fiasco was ended by the admission that "objective factors" were at fault, not the decisions made by the high level Soviet leaders.
When reality is ignored, along with the centuries of philosophy and science that revealed reality to humanity, the outcome is inevitably disastrous.
I tend to agree with juris_imprudent re: Bezmenov. (I was the guy who transcribed this.) At some point I will post about this on my blog.
But a couple of quick points. Though I agree that Bezmenov seems to believe in what Sowell calls "the unconstrained vision," we don't need to get into that to mitigate and temper his words and predictions. Almost all ex-KGB personnel are wildly optimistic about the effects of their work, partly because they are just so baffled that for ordinary people it goes completely unrecognized and partly because they are, to cop a Bezmenov phrase, "conformist to their own... bosses." This is true of most intelligence operations but especially true of the Soviet Union, where the need for ideological purity restricted accurate intelligence assessment.
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