gaslighting verb ruthlessly manipulating an individual, for nefarious reasons, into believing something other than the truth; manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity
After a decade of gaslighting the Americans into a permanent state of anxiety over war, terrorism, economics, health, and even their very identities, the right wing media complex is moving in for the kill, boring deep into the lizard brains * of the most vulnerable amongst us.
This is terrorism, plain and simple. The latest manufactured fear is the speech that President Obama is going to give to the nation’s school children on Tuesday. Framed as a socialistic plot to indoctrinate kids into supporting Obama’s nefarious political agenda, this is about as low as it gets.
*Man will never accept peace as a normal mode of living until he has been thoroughly and repeatedly convinced that peace is best for his material welfare, and until society has wisely provided peaceful substitutes for the gratification of that inherent tendency periodically to let loose a collective drive designed to liberate those ever-accumulating emotions and energies belonging to the self-preservation reactions of the human species.
—The Urantia Book
UPDATE: From yesterday’s NY Times:
After reading the text on Monday, even Jim Greer, the Florida Republican Party chairman who last week accused the president of seeking to use the speech to foist “socialist ideology” on schoolchildren, said he could find nothing to criticize in its text.
“In its current form, it’s fine,” Mr. Greer said in an interview. “But it remains to be seen if it’s the speech he’s going to give.”
Yeah, even though he posted the text on the White House web site yesterday for all the world to see and download, we’re going to have to keep a close eye on him, you betcha, sneaky Muslim socialist commie fascist Goebbels indoctrinator that he is.
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Yo nonnie-o
You might want to check out Dr. Bryant Welch’s book State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind. (2008)
He credits the movie for providing a primer on the current phenomena of psychological manipulation being insinuated into the American psyche. He even has an entire chapter dedicated to Fox News.
Citing the plot of the movie as an example of how modern terroristic propaganda works, he writes:
Replace Chas Boyer with Glenn Beck or any of the of the other winger fear mongers and voila!— you get the picture.
@Propagandee,
oooh! reply buttons! 😀
i saw that movie, props, and it really does represent what faux news and the rethugs do. i forgive you for using a movie poster now. 😉
hey, hey, hey props! what’s with the movie poster? that’s my beat! 😉
Yo mary b
Consider that passage from TUB with those below that describe our long ascension through the “mansion worlds”, which in the greater scheme of the universe ascension career amounts to little more than remedial mortalhood. Even so, the transit through those first seven architectural worlds would exceed most of our wildest dreams of what heaven should consist of.
The fact that it is only after graduation from the “seventh heaven” (probably accomplished over millions of earth years) that the last remnants of the lizard brain– “the mark of the beast”– are finally vanquished.
For me, it is this overarching perspective of the power of our evolutionary upbringing that makes understanding teh crazy somewhat comprehensible. From a philosophical perspective, the farther the evolutionary bow is pulled back, the farther our soul’s arrow to eternity flies.
The experience on this sphere is the crowning achievement of the immediate postmortal career. During your sojourn here you will receive the instruction of many teachers, all of whom will co-operate in the task of preparing you for residence on Jerusem. Any discernible differences between those mortals hailing from the isolated and retarded worlds and those survivors from the more advanced and enlightened spheres are virtually obliterated during the sojourn on the seventh mansion world. Here you will be purged of all the remnants of unfortunate heredity, unwholesome environment, and unspiritual planetary tendencies. The last remnants of the “mark of the beast” are here eradicated. [47:9.1]
John the Revelator saw a vision of the arrival of a class of advancing mortals from the seventh mansion world to their first heaven, the glories of Jerusem. He recorded: “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire; and those who had gained the victory over the beast that was originally in them and over the image that persisted through the mansion worlds and finally over the last mark and trace, standing on the sea of glass, having the harps of God, and singing the song of deliverance from mortal fear and death.” [47:10.2]
“….let loose a collective drive designed to liberate those ever-accumulating emotions and energies belonging to the self-preservation reactions of the human species. ”
Well, I have to admit my emotions have been let loose for a long time now. For a while, I thought that I was losing it. I could not control them.
But now, after letting them all out, I’m in an introspection phase.
Many people, the most materialistic people in this country, would be so much better off if they didn’t have those false comforts. You know, like big screen tee vee’s, the nicest cars, nice homes with expensive furniture. While it’s nice to have those things, they do give a false sense of comfort to whomever owns them. They always want more. But what good do those materialistic things do if you have a life without any kind of peacefulness, love and spirituality?
I do NOT get my spirituality from a church. And I never have. People need to have their own, personal relationship with Jesus. It is soooooo much better that way. Nobody can tell you what a terrible sinner you are simply for having your own way of praising God. The churches (of any denomination) are all about power, control and money. Not necessarily in that order. I really don’t see much good in going to church, although there must be a few at least that are not so bad. But this is what a lot of churches, organized religion in particular, has wrought. The crazies on the right.
I have asked people before (I live in the heart of the Bible Belt) what if their way of religion is a wrong way (because they are so adamant that they’re right). I always get the same answer, that I will rot in hell just for asking. This is where most of the right wing has come from. It’s really rather simple, indoctrination.
Kinda scary, huh?