“I’m sorry, I believe in good grooming.” – The Simpsons
I was outbid trying to buy a shopping center. I guess the old saying is right: you just can’t win a mall.
The biggest part of a dictator’s ability to control a people is the control of their thoughts. Sure, a large supply of bullets is nice, but if you use that method, sooner or later you run out of people to control. How, then, is that sort of mental crowd control done in a nation that once staged a rebellion over a tax on whiskey? The answer is simple –a little bit at a time.
The first step in that is to program the people. The easiest way to do that is to control their education and their entertainment. In the modern world, it is that combination of education and entertainment that form our modern-day mythos – the very definition of who we are and what we stand for.
Education was the easiest part, and, by necessity, the first. The problem (from the standpoint of those that would set the world up for dictators) is that educators aren’t swapped out yearly. No, educators often are in a classroom for decades, watching hundreds of their children move from grade to grade. I think my kindergarten teacher was old enough to have known Moses personally, though in her defense I was probably more of a handful than those James and Younger brothers she told stories about.
True fact: They charge a $6 entry fee to see Karl’s grave.
That’s why the real Leftism (as far as I can tell) didn’t start showing up in the classroom until, perhaps, the 1960s. That had given them time to infiltrate the colleges and begin to sway the way that teachers were taught. I knew something was up when I told one teacher I was struggling with a class.
“Who, the Bourgeoisie?” she asked.
An aside – teachers often slant Left/Globalist anyway – they work for a government, after all. The teacher unions are strongly Leftist in political leanings. Educating a group of teachers and then placing them in the schools only changes the schools slowly. But after a while, a critical mass is achieved, and government schools become indoctrination centers for Leftist thought.
To be clear – government schools have always been indoctrination centers. The previous versions prior to the 1960s had (in my opinion) more innocuous indoctrination, putting memes like these in the heads of the students:
- The United States is a force for good,
- Christopher Columbus was alright,
- The Inalienable rights are: life, liberty, and the pursuit of PEZ™,
- Hard work is important,
- If you pee on the playground you have to go see the principal,
- Religious values are one of the things that make the United States strong, and
- There is a morality beyond mere legality that keeps society cohesive.
I could keep going on this list. But the values that the kids were programmed with led to a prosperous society that, generally, was also a society where you trusted your neighbor and, even though he might have voted for the other guy, was still on the same team. Was it perfect? No, of course not, and a lack of skepticism led to all manner of government shenanigans being ignored – MK Ultra, I’m looking at . . . what was I saying?
Is it just me, or is that glowing?
The change in schools was the vanguard of that Leftist. Ideas were infiltrated that began to chip away at the idea of values. Equity in education became a buzzword even in the 1970s, decades before managing the equality of outcomes became the goal. Heck, you could even teach math and give grades back then.
Of course, the Leftist ownership of education wasn’t the only thrust at that time. Movies and television began to change as well. I didn’t see first-run episodes of Leave it to Beaver nor All in the Family, but I could see the shows couldn’t have been more different as I watched them on reruns.
Leave it to Beaver was a show about kids going through typical kid problems, and also dealing with that oily Eddie Haskell. That also led to the Funniest untrue rumor ever: Eddie Haskell was played by a young Alice Cooper. It would have been far more interesting if Eddie had a guillotine.
I did hear that Rob Halford did move to a Tibetan monastery. I guess that makes him a Buddhist Priest.
All in the Family, though, was a show that could have been called All in on the Narrative. All in the Family was simply a tool to move the narrative to the Left, plus it showcased that family-dividing character – the ever-bumbling incompetent father. Later shows in the 1970s moved the father to a position of irrelevance: single-parent households became a staple of sitcoms.
Sitcoms were used because nothing is better at attacking power than comedy, since it allows the comedian to poke fun at the weakest parts of their enemy. I wonder why comedy is out of style . . . hmmm. Oh, wait. Amy Schumer.
I could go on about movies, but they were playing their role in pulling the narrative along. There’s a reason that The Exorcist, The Omen, Halloween, and Friday the 13th all had monsters that were young – essentially the monsters were all children (or, started out as kids in Halloween or Friday the 13th). . . Gen X age. No wonder my kindergarten teacher called me a little monster!
The propaganda in both television and film was the same: show the most sympathetic case of (insert movement – divorce, abortion, gay rights, et cetera) and then milk it for everything that it was worth. It didn’t matter that the case represented the very edge of reality, that small 0.01% of cases – no, publicize it and create an emotional backstory.
Why? To program people. When I look back at many (not all!) movies from that time frame there are places I can see the Narrative Programming being implanted. Heck, when I was a kid I wondered why people on the Right couldn’t be funny. They can be – P.J. O’Rourke taught that to the world.
I saw one bee I thought was drunk. Turned out he was just buzzed.
I don’t think it was a coincidence that church attendance started to go down in the 1970s. I don’t have a lot of data on why – perhaps single-parent households are less likely to go? Regardless, there’s plenty of data that shows when. The 1970s.
The Left focuses on identity and has since before the 1970s. The big reason for this focus is that class never really existed here in the United States in any sort of formal fashion. We never had Lords and Ladies and Kings, just rich people and poor people. And most poor people think there’s at least a hope that they’ll become rich people, which is why the lottery is still a tax on people who can’t do math.
So, that left only identity. The playbook on the Left was to let every identity group know that they were a victim. Women’s Lib. The 1967 riots. Certainly, there were legitimate grievances in some cases, but the Left wanted to create division between groups – and it’s possible to show how every group has been treated unfairly. Except for the Dutch. They had it coming.
Their answer was simple: normalize the victim status of nearly every group in order to fragment society. What is normal changes, first slowly, then all at once.
Joe walks into a bar and sees a hot woman and asks her, “So, do I come here often?”
Joe Biden in 2008 was against gay marriage. Joe Biden in 2022 wants to make it illegal for states to stop kids from getting hormone blockers. Yes – the same man who said that “marriage is between a man and a woman” only fourteen years ago now wants minors to receive powerful hormones that will unalterably change their bodies. On a whim.
What is normal now changes in a heartbeat, which is easy once the fixed morality of religion is gone. Then, the only standard becomes the law: if it’s legal, it must be moral. And in a dictatorship, who makes the laws?
Next Up: There’s more to come in this series, but I’m waiting on some reference books to show up. See how hard I work for you?
And yet the Long Marching comrades think that they are so urbane and sophisticated as they push the weak around.
The victim totem pole is placed in sand and there won’t be enough redistribution to go around for every new group of lives that matter.
We are all equally worthless to the Long Marching global soviets and finally the precious indispensable equality is achieved.
Weimarbabwe wallpaper wheelbarrows won’t even wake up the drooling safety über alles zombies and just read an article about a cubicle taxable units serf plantation that was 80-20 against lifting all COV-LARP “mandates” with comments such as…how will we be safe and who will guide us.
A good comrade is one who does what Big Brother says . . .
“Equity in Education”
William Faulkner was no “conservative” but had a very prescient comment back in the late 50s after Eisenhower invaded Little Rock. This is not completely accurate, but he stated something like “In Mississippi we have two school systems – one for whites and one for Negroes. Both are underfunded and suck, so we need to have only one. But, we need to integrate slowly, as the Negro population needs to be brought up to the same eductional level as whites. If integration of schools is forced, it will be a disaster for the Negroes.”
Forced integration commenced in January 1970. What a coincidence.
“But, we need to integrate slowly, as the Negro population needs to be brought up to the same eductional level as whites.”
Therein lies the problem, because blacks, by and large, have lower IQs, hence their propensity for things like immediate gratification. It won’t happen.
As for grooming our children – it looks like that whole “slippery slope” thing that the Religious Right harped on about for years wasn’t so far-fetched after all.
Maniac,
Any focus on strictly the differential in intelligence between Northern European Heritage folk and any other segment of our species ignores localized culture influencers.
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Anybody in the business of manipulating closed groups — while hoping to profit from ‘sticking it to [Northern European Heritage folk]’ — inevitably plays to the lowest denomination.
At that point, peer-pressure raises its ugly hammer-head, reducing any above-average individual back down to the norm.
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My experience indicates low-intelligence individuals are targeted because they are a visible vocal minority in any culture.
Their lack of understanding consequences — long-term or otherwise — creates that addictive adrenaline buzz… and as it dissapates, the craving for the next buzz drives their unconscious choices.
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I see no way to ‘co-exist’.
Any attempt to ‘bring them up to our level’ is automatically doomed.
Their cultural peer-pressure cannot allow it.
Forced school integration was certainly a disaster for the whites. Schools used to educate. Schools used to be safe…
McChuck,
Education encourages innovation through introspection and, inevitably, facing the forge.
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Today’s flawed imitation of education rewards memorized recordings of whatever is in front of them.
Innovation is punished while safety within the group recieves the coveted Gold Star.
(‘receives’? I can never remember…)
I heard that now colleges are now re-segregating. And it’s somehow racist to complain. Full circle.
“We never had Lords and Ladies and Kings, just rich people and poor people”.
There’s still hope the next American Dictator won’t be the Left – or even of American origin. Elon, who now is a literal $100 billion richer than Jeff and a near-quarter-trillionaire, just said he will not join the board of Twitter and then be forced by law to limit his stock stake to a max of 14%. Hostile takeover inbound of the Left’s main comms consorship forum by an unrestricted free speech advocate?
Elon gets commspace for (to him) chump change while you need to work a literal three million years at your $70K / yr day job to equal his wealth…
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/three-million-years-become-next-elon-musk
Zuck gets metaspace and is setting up his own economy there…
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/6/23013896/meta-facebook-zuck-bucks-finance-financial-services-products
Meanwhile, Jeff and the Waltons gets to supply meatspace and keep babies alive…
https://www.axios.com/baby-formula-shortages-abbott-nutrition-recall-86ed942c-74d1-48c5-b06b-09a033220547.html
You’re right, John, we don’t kave Kings – just rich people and poor people.
Well, at least it’s a Strong Man who wants to get us up into space.
I never noticed the monsters were kids.
I did notice the nihilism and depression in movies like Rollerball, The Omega Man, Warriors, Soylent Green, or any of dozens of others. And the “gritty crime drama”, might have started with Serpico? or Dirty Harry. The rise of serial killers and horror movies and all the horrible VC Andrews paperbacks coincided iirc.
That was followed by the “teen sex comedy” though, so I don’t really know what to make of it during the go go 80s. (although from an Epstein point of view, encouraging sex and nudity among young people and actresses DOES make sense- Lolita got made during that period.) Drugs were cheap, fun, and wouldn’t kill you, sex was becoming more available to young people, and wouldn’t kill you. The woman’s lib movement bore fruit and increased the sexual availability of women exponentially*, culminating in today’s hookup and pervasive porn culture. (the over-abundance of a desirable good always devalues it)
The pendulum has been swinging toward extremism and extremes for some time. I wonder if it’s started to swing back, finally, and if we’ll get something like Neal Stephenson’s neo-Victorians in Diamond Age. I do know the world my kids inhabit will be different from mine. I pray that the difference isn’t the lack of plumbing, electricity, or food.
nick
*the sexual revolution- designed by men, to benefit men (and lesbians), succeeded far beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
The system in movies was shown as broken. Dirty Harry had to do whatever he could because it was all broken.
I did like the Diamond Age society. Better than what we’ll look like in 2030. In 2040? Those seeds are being planted today.
Ah, forgot Logan’s Run. I wanted one of those pistols SO bad…
n
I wanted one of the splurge guns from Bugsy Malone.
My fav gun as a kid. This was a great toy. Wish I’d kept it – one WITHOUT the red roto attachment and spinners is going for over $300 on EBay.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/modern_fred/2169813495
Come on, with the size of the hole it put in a Replicant, Deckard’s blaster was the way to go….
I found the blueprints on the Internet. They actually used a flammable gas cylinder that activated a puff of flame when the trigger was pulled.
Ditto.
John, that may be the truest words you’ve ever written here. And that’s a high bar to clear, let me assure you.
It’s such a shame that the Whiskey Rebellion didn’t succeed. That was the beginning of the end, right there. And it’s double-plus ungood, when the beginning of the end occurs right at the beginning, practically.
Thank you.
It isn’t a coincidence that public school teachers were once education majors who have some of the lowest average SAT/ACT scores of any major. We aren’t sending our best and brightest to be teachers, mostly women who just wuv children and people who like the idea of getting 1/3 of the year off. Add in a culture of resentment and endlessly being told how “underpaid” they are and you have bitter, easy to manipulate people. No wonder they are easy pickings for the Left.
Agreed. The Boy had several teachers in Houston that were running out the clock. Bitter Leftist women. And they were in their 30s.
Great post, as usual.
The problem fighting incrementalism is that it’s so… incremental.
I must mildly disagree with the notion of a “fixed morality of religion” as the safeguard against all the bad things. Religious morality is not immutable. In fact many immoral aspects of history were defended on religious grounds.
Slavery and subjugation of women were often seen as moral on the basis of religion. That has changed a bit.
I’m not saying religion has no value in maintaining a moral culture, but it’s incorrect to say that it never changes or evolves; and it is also far too easy to tailor based on individual interpretation. Belief is a personal decision and the morals that follow belief can be very subjective. One person’s holy moral code can easily be another’s foul heresy. As a former Catholic, I’ve seen both sides of that disagreement face to face.
A few months ago I posted an image of a portrait I painted to a social media platform. I soon received a comment condemning me to the Lake of Fire because that person’s moral code prohibited the creation of images. If we are going to rely on a fixed morality of religion, whose religion, and whose morality? Hopefully not that guy’s.
Far more important to me (and more in need of defending) than religion is the shared culture we have as Americans which is derived from our Western Civilization heritage and enshrined in our founding documents. These are things worth preserving:
• Free Speech
• Freedom of Religion
• The Right to Dissent
• The Right to Self Defense
• Due Process
• Equality before the Law
• Freedom of movement and personal autonomy
• Private Property
• etc.
Many of the above are incrementally being destroyed. I’ll fight for them long before I’ll ever fight to uphold a religious moral code.
A while back you wrote about a “Civic Religion” (I’m not sure you called it that), but it’s the common belief in the goodness of our country and how that takes the form of a quasi-religious attitude to civic duty. As a non-believer, this civic religion is probably as close as I will ever get to a religious moral code.
It was something like Civic Religion. It was a shared moral code, and it meant more to the WWII generation than a religious code. Yup – different sects of Christianity do differ, but they agree on a lot more than they disagree.
re — televisionprogramming
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In fUSA, the phrase ‘single-parent household’ is code for self-centered decisions… choices singularly based on the hoped-for continued generosity of Northern European Heritage tax-payers.
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After we remove our generosity (and tolerance… [shoots the side-squints]), gals might consider outcomes.
The next eighteen years of raising a child, living under the generosity of her parents or in a church cellar, might impact her choice to get knocked-up.
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Might, might not.
We’ve spent 60 years building up a cozy blanket for divorce and single parents. It only flourishes in a land of plenty.
Just like you said – “oops”