Obamania and the Psychology of Fear and Guilt

On the lighter side of politics and for the fence-dwellers, here's a rather good "who's your ideal candidate?".

In the bubbling cauldron of campaign passion a number of writers have taken a more contemplative attitude, analyzing the psychology behind Obamania that has taken the US by storm. Fouad Ajami on Wall Street Journal in "Obama and the Politics of Crowds", subtitled "The masses greeting the candidate on the trail are a sign of great unease," looks at the rather worrisome phenomenon of Third World style crowds.

It reminds him of what the media terms 'the Arab Street': "the tragedy of Arab political culture has been the unending expectation of the crowd -- the street, we call it -- in the redeemer who will put an end to the decline, who will restore faded splendor and greatness. (...) the faith in the Awaited One lives on, and it would forever circle the Arab world looking for the next redeemer."

Third World style demagogy of the meaningless platitudes of 'change' and 'hope' could just as easily turn into Third Reich passionate rhetoric. After all, there is no basic difference between tribal societies and totalitarian ones. From the faintings and hysterics at the mass rallies you'd have thought the nation was decimated by famine and pestilence over the last few years!

What we see is a collection of hedonistic Narcissists, force-fed on dialectically induced self-loathing through Ayers' educational reform. They're simply unable to deal with the surge in cognitive dissonance as a result of their idealistic self-image as caring, generous people, that clashes with the cultivation of intense hatred, of which Bu$hitler has been the main recipient.

Of course these drones are largely Subjectivists, meaning that they've substituted reason with emotion as a cognitive tool. At some point they'll find that feelings cannot guide them, but that they can experience no emotions save one: terror. To escape from its impotence they seek safety in numbers, a frantic desire to belong and attach themselves to some group, gang, clique, whatever hive.

For certain is, that the choice for Obama as the next POTUS is an emotional one, made on the basis of the dangerous potion of guilt and fear: the hope of white redemption. Policies (or lack thereof) are irrelevant to most, only few bother to rationalize their choice.

David Kupelian in "Yes, Barack Obama really is a Manchurian candidate" explains the power of guilt, of which - it must be said - Democrats, as the party of the KKK and segregation - may suffer more than - say, Evangelicals.

"(...) Americans – even though slavery and segregation are long gone from the national scene – still have a large and understandable reservoir of collective guilt over its past exploitation and mistreatment of blacks. Guilt is a fantastically powerful factor in all of our lives. (...) When we're guilty we try to relieve this inner conflict, and this is often a good thing. (...)

Manipulative and unprincipled humans soon discover how to use our guilt to get their way. They can even make us feel guilty when we haven't done anything wrong – for instance, by way of false accusation, a tactic the left has perfected. (...) With white voters in particular, there is a strong urge to finally move beyond our collective guilt over slavery and to prove, once and for all, that we're not a nation beset by racism – by electing a black president.

It's not an exaggeration to call this guilt-induced way of looking at Obama, this conditioned attitude, a type of trance. We hold him to a different standard, we see and feel (...) a desire for his success (...) all based on guilt. But love based on guilt is not real love. It's just an unconscious attempt to rid ourselves of guilt. Shelby Steele, author of "White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era," puts it this way: "[Americans] struggle, above all else, to dissociate themselves from the past sins they are stigmatized with." (...)

Did you ever get angry at your kids – and then find yourself "being nice" to them to make up for the guilt of having been impatient? With that in mind, consider just one of many ways guilt (in this case, racial guilt) can find its way into you: Let's say you're walking down the street and a group of black men are walking toward you, and you become fearful (very similar to the story Obama famously told about his white grandmother). That fear has a little resentment attached to it, for that's the nature of fear. But when you become resentful for any reason at all, you automatically incur guilt, because resentment is a wrong, failing way for mature human beings to respond to the stresses of life.

Now, saddled with this new guilt associated with black people, a compulsion rises up from within you to make up for that guilt – which you do by discovering a mysterious affinity for black people that wasn't there before. But that "love" isn't real love – it's all rooted in guilt and resentment (just like when you got impatient with your kids, then suddenly became "nice" to them to compensate for your anger). Although my example here centers on race, this guilt principle is universal. (...) read it all, also why Barack Obama really is the Manchurian candidate >>> (read also "Who Sent Obama?").

As some would have it (and it makes sense) the MSM have made a reckless choice by putting all their cards on a "monolithic, single-party government [which] will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there".

But once the ideology driven collective unfolds, perhaps they'll realize too late how much they've got to answer for. In an age of indoctrination induced self-loathing dictators rise because men do not know their own course, and values have no means to resist his promises and demands. A nation does not learn from disaster, it only does from discovering its cause.

Let us call it a day by drawing attention to the activities of a fellow Objectivist, a great campaigner for the Jewish and American cause ...

Atlas Shrugs: "The Great Reverse Schlep"

· BOCA RATON, FRIDAY, OCT. 31, NOON TO 1:30PM

· DO NOT MISS IT

· COME AND PARTICIPATE IN A MAJOR EVENT THAT COULD IMPACT THE ELECTION!

Related:

- "Pulling the Plug on the Press from Hell"
- "The Hidden Sinisterism of the O Campaign"



- Filed on Articles in "The Pomo White House" -

Of Mass Mind Control and Psychopathy

A Google Alert subscription to key words which have our specific interest recently shot to attention a post on The Daily Cultist about cognitive dissonance. It is a cross-posting of a Newsletter issued by conspiracy theorist David Icke.

We need not here indulge in the finer points related to the Illuminati, the Troof about 911, the "Hidden Hands" behind the death of the Princess of Wales and the "manufactured wars in the Middle East."

What concerns us is the coinciding of mass psychology with the cabal of Common Purpose (CP). On both counts he is correct and factual, but regrettably half-way shoots out into the thin space of classical paranoia. Ironically he is oblivious to his own cognitive dissonance, and copes with it by transforming his outlandish beliefs into baseless facts.

But Icke's findings regarding the CP cabal pans out with our own investigations. His references to "The Plan" is the subject of Icke's personal paranoia which need not concern us here, nor his thinly veiled anti-semitism (he probably thinks the Protocols and the Da Vinci Code are true history too). He explains that ...

(...) ‘cognitive dissonance’ appears to have its origins with a Jewish American social psychologist called Leon Festinger, who (...) studied closely with Kurt Lewin, a German-born Jewish psychologist, who is known as the ‘founder of social psychology’ (...) ’social engineering’ or mass mind control would be a better way of putting it. Lewin was Festinger’s ‘mentor’.

Lewin was a major influence on the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations in London, one of the premier individual and mass mind-control research and development operations on the planet, which based much of its ‘philosophy’ on the work of the Austrian Jew, Sigmund Freud.

The Tavistock Institute was officially founded in 1947 (though its work goes back much further under other guises) and it was funded into existence by the Rockefeller Foundation. Among its key founders was John Rawlings-Reese, commander of the British Army Bureau of Psychological Warfare. (...)

(...) an organisation called Common Purpose (...) develops the ‘leaders’ for the institutions of government, commerce, ‘education’, law enforcement and so on. Its methods are classic Tavistock.

Tavistock is a mass mind control operation and at the heart of global ’social engineering’. (...) The plan, now well advanced, is to create a massive network of ‘training and diversity’ organisations to brainwash the useful idiots to run society on behalf of the Elite. These include, as with Common Purpose, those involved with the institutions of government, commerce, ‘education’, law enforcement etc. (...)

Icke's paranoid theory that cognitive dissonance is being used as a tool by 'the Illuminati" or whatever, does not diminish the reality and its workings in any way. It sounds disturbingly familiar when transposed on the subject matter of recent posts, "The Twin Blessings of Denial and Projection", "The Perception Campaign" and "Thought for the Relative of Mind".

Indeed we are being manipulated into directions that are not of our own choosing, but as far as the sources are concerned our thoughts just do not wander with Icke into the avenues of Rovian cabals behind The Troof of 911. Indeed, the pointers go in the other direction - the ones with proud collectivist ethics of Common Will, rather than those who see the dissemination of individual freedom as the best antidote to violent and coercive collectivism. Icke stresses the importance of social and group pressure:

(...) The individual believer must have social support. (...) If (...) the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade non-members that the belief is correct.’

That is how the herd mentality works and how individuals are pressured to conform to the beliefs of the group - what is termed ‘creating the consensus’. It is also why individuals changing or questioning the consensus view are targeted, marginalised or removed (a Tavistock speciality). Such people are ‘dangerous’ because they have the potential to prick the collective reality bubble and instigate cognitive dissonance by making the others see contradictions.

It is this constant mental and emotional readjustment in the wake of cognitive dissonance that ensures the survival of all religious, political and social beliefs. When something comes along to demolish the original belief, people just find a way of explaining the contradictions so their belief remains intact (...) ...

... indeed one of Icke's own specialties. But here we connect with another worrisome aspect of the O campaign and the 'creed' in which he wants us all to 'believe': meet MyBO ...



Hat Tip: the Founding Bloggers

At first we couldn't figure out what exactly is so creepy in this video commercial. But it is the mob/hive thing, the creation of a vested interest in the O personality cult, the 'belief in O as the savior'. Combined with the other 'voodoo' features (the campaign is filled to the brim with psychological triggers, archetypal symbolism, and memes), the O Public Service proposal, the details of which yet need scrutinizing, may well be the most disturbing aspect of the developing personality cult.

A little further, Icke goes into what we very often discuss in these pages, the psychological mechanism of projection: "(...) people who have a self-identity of being kind, loving and caring for others (...) is always a fake identity because no-one lives up to that all the time, and I mean no-one. (...) ‘It was you who made me react like that’ or ‘they deserved it’ are among the [regular methods of dealing with dissonance] (...) This filters reality to fit the self-identity and (...) why it was not their fault and not their responsibility. In short, they will protect the self-identity at all costs. (...)

To overcome the negative effects of cognitive dissonance I would offer just one sentence: it's okay not to be 'perfect' and it's okay to be wrong (...) ... hear, hear!

This is the last sensible word we get from Icke et al. At this point his own paranoid beliefs take over reality. Aristotelian philosophy could gave saved him, but the subjectivist triad Rousseau, Kant and Hegel got the better of him.

He sighs: "How about those who believe that our freedoms must be taken away to protect our liberties?? That’s classic Doublethink and vast, vast numbers of people believe that blatant contradiction to be true" ... which would - had it not been a false statement- be classic Hegel dialectic, echos of "Freedom through the state."

To clear up the point he is alluding to, in all honesty he would have to concede that he, David Icke, hasn't forfeited a single liberty, and were he ground to pulp by an Al Qaeda tool, his liberties would be quite irrelevant anyway.

- Chart: mature defenses (click to enlarge) -

We also see the destructive Rousseau idealism at work, the basis of his fallacy that morphs 'is' into 'ought': "(...) millions die of hunger in a world of plenty and millions more die in manufactured wars? (...)" - surely that cannot be reality/the natural state/the will of God; there MUST be a conspiracy, a cabal of humans who 'manufacture wars' and who out of callous egoism see to it that wealth accumulates unevenly.

Reality has become part of the conspiracy theory - classic paranoia. But at least it seems to earn him a living.

Interesting article, nonetheless.

- Filed on Articles in "Dossier Common Purpose" and "The Political Pathology Pile" -

Of Demagogy, Voodoo and Hypnosis 2.0.

After the demagoguery and the mass hysteria in what is now a full-blown personality cult of the type that is often observable in collectivist circles, some are starting to question the use of imagery and symbolism in the Obama campaign.

Without committing the mistake of falling into the gaping conspiracy trap, the question what is going on here is entirely legitimate.

Those who haven't noticed something distinctly unhealthy has crept into the performance - frankly - are only deserving to live in a neotot state for the rest of their illusionary lives.

Patrick Ruffini in "Obama's Manipulation of Patriotic Imagery" on The Next Right has this to say:

"Doesn't this seem like an odd use of imagery for a candidate who has repeatedly denounced the manipulation of patriotic imagery for political purposes, going so far as to refuse wearing a flag pin? And he does it in a way that goes well beyond plopping a stylized flag in your logo (...) campaigns use patriotic imagery all the time. What's different -- in an "I know it when I see it" kind of way -- is Obama crudely grafting his logo on historical renderings of the official seal of the United States."

Of course we all know of the obsession the Third Way-ers Clinton and Blair had with image and perception; their mastery of spin has become the stuff of legends. But Obama is of entirely different ilk.

If the idea is, 'coming across all presidential' the symbolism and the style just aren't 'regal' enough. One would expect Roman overtures and hints of more traditional heraldry.

Townhall's Nedra Pickler in "Play of the Day: Obama debuts new seal" incites an interesting comment (reply #14) by tx honeybee:

"Obama's voodoo campaign politics.. The Great One, Obammessiah, would not need to use subliminal messages and false psychological Props, on gullible voters.. If he weren't a babbling Socialist Empty Suit (and metro-sexual) Better "Bush III" than Marx II ..."

... which is more or less in line with an interesting comment on the other article on The Next Right, which heads "Good Detective Work, and a Potential Example of NLP":

"The subtle message that you've discovered in the image is fascinating. I've been interested in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, aka NLP, for several years. To the uninitiated, NLP is Hypnosis 2.0. While it's still disputed as a model or theory, mainly it's a set of techniques or strategies for enhancing communication and personal influence (...) read it all here >>>

It just so happens that next week we'll have the opportunity to query a hypnotherapist, after which we'll report back on the tender subject of slick looking archetypes, psycho bots and memes.

Update:

Whatever the subconscious meme bots may trigger in the unattentive subjectivist, "The People's Cube" has created this inspirational variation discussed here:

- Filed on Articles in "The Pomo White House" -

The Natives of Twilight Zone planet Nauseam 11

The following conversation might easily have taken place between Captain James T. Kirk and Spock of the gallant Star Ship US "Enterprise":

- Captain Kirk: "Spock, what's your idea of Twilight Zone planet Nauseam 11 on which we just crash landed? The natives seem kind of agitated, psychologically inbalanced and not a little anti-human."

- Spock: "I find the capacity to reason and logic of these carbon-based units inadequate. I would suggest to get out of here by means of an emergency degravitation operation. Put your levitation boots on, Sir, and hold tight!"

Some specific tribe of carbon-based units called The Troofers are so bent on deluding themselves of the truth of their own self-devised universes, that they decline to accept real reality, even if it comes to them from the horse's own mouth (so to speak).


Sit tight and watch in awe the following footage, plucked from a blog called Planet Grenada, which in the unabridged version is subtitled as follows:

"Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture, which post-colonial critic Robert Young would say incarnates a "tricontinental counter-modernity" that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary
black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity ... constructed in order to fight global imperialism."

The Marxist dialectic is alive and kicking in the year 2008! It provides us with another piece of jaw-dropping media footage: an interview during which "Al Qaeda operative", Omar Al Farouq is vainly confronting Troofer and author William Gerard of the pamplet "The Truth About September 11", with the terrible injustice done to them.

Just as you've spent months, living in caves under rocks and rubble, to think up "SOMETHING REALLY SPECIAL", some darned Troofer comes along, stealing the glory away from you, heaping it on the already heavily laden consciences of the neo colonial capitalist fascist trinity BusHitlerCheney!!! The dmnd cheek!

Can anybody please tell me what planet we've landed on since the onset of the new millennium...? (If the thingie fails, here's a link to the vid collection.) In all the spychopathological bloody-mindedness one would almost forget that 3,000 souls have lost their lives on 9/11.



- Filed on Articles in "The Political Pathology Page" -

A Tragedy Waiting to Happen

For some time now I've been pondering how to inject a word of caution into the Counter-Jihad blegosphere over the manner and intensity with which concerns and calls to resistance are being voiced. Some posts, or even entire blogs, give rise to serious anxiety over the author's well-being.

Having been out of the loop for some weeks due to a technical glitch, the news of the suicide of Ronbo only reached these pages yesterday while making the rounds. This may be just as well for what I am about to say. It is clear that Ronbo was plagued by more than just the current set of geopolitical intricacies, serious as they may be. In fact, Right Wing News has information today that throws another light on events altogether. Still, it will serve for the purpose.

A message of caution seldom reaches the ones that need it most. Nevertheless I'd like to share this personal story. A few years back I thought myself justified in my suspicions that great harm had been done by someone to somebody close to me, who I'd loved and since had passed away. In fact, I was livid to the point of murder! Until one silent night a glass plateau carrying crystal knickknacks came crashing down to earth. Taking the irrational approach I took the occurrence as a message from beyond, warning me of the error of my ways. This was in all probability my own subconscious at work.

We are warned by Christianity, borne out by more recent insights into psychology, that cultivating hatred and seeking revenge in a sin, for good reason. It is a boomerang, which is not directed against the party it is intended for, but that will turn against the person from whom it emanates. In the end - with the equal potency with which it is energised - it has the capability to destroy us.

While we are in an existential struggle with the forces of darkness with at stake, nothing less than two and a half millennia worth of civilization, we cannot allow our emotions to turn against us. Yes, we are dealing with bloodthirsty pocket tyrants who are themselves the victims of their own feelings in a similar manner. This will guarantee their undoing.

Western civilization has the advantage of Judeo-Christian tradition which has helped us in the past to muster the courage and wisdom we need to survive the onslaughts of totalitarian tyrants. It is our ligament, and our common strength. We should be realistic and deal with the problems as best and vigilant as we can. But we need to put some distance between our enemies and the emotions that drive us: they energize us, but we cannot allow them to take over and rule our lives and decisions.

Let's strengthen our resolve to stand up to the tyrants and - foremost - to their pomo surrender facilitators, the traitors in our midst - so that we may pass on our highest values to the next generation, enabling them in turn to pursue happiness in liberty and in peace.

For Ronbo, a Freedom Fighter: “Live for nothing or die for something. Your call.”

More information at Gates of Vienna, My Flanders Fields and latest: Right Wing News.

- Filed on Articles in cat. Psychology (sidebar) -