The Three Legged Stool Part 2

Pop Quiz

What public relations pioneer said: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”?

What self-described intellectual said: “Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business … the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products.”?.

What economist said: “People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.”?

What author said: “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who use the words ”?

Answers at the end of the post.

There are two things that the Democrats have used for more than a century to make it easier to instill fear among their constituents: ignorance and dependence.

Mencken once observed: “No one in this world, so far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” The last post dealt with the Democrat Party’s ongoing program to ensure ignorance among the voters. It is aided and abetted by the useful idiots in the education system and the media, news and social. All indications are they have enjoyed great success.

Dependence

There are many facets to the pandemic of dependence that we see among a number of our fellow Americans. There are, of course, many sources of dependence: ignorance, government “entitlements”, drugs, the media, news and social, smart phones and, a recent phenomenon, AI.

Government Entitlements

For the first 140 years it was the American Dream that every person should have the freedom and the opportunity to succeed and better their lives. Imperfect perhaps but as long as we were expanding the Western frontier people could strike out on their own and embrace individualism and the opportunity to pursue their personal hopes and dreams. Horace Greeley said it all with his famous dictum “Go West young man”. American historian Frederick Jackson Turner taught and wrote about his “Frontier Thesis”. Suggested reading: Turner’s The Frontier in American History.

This all changed in 1932 when FDR was elected. His puppet master Harry Hopkins had a simple political strategy…Tax, tax, spend, spend, elect, elect. Using his Presidential ventriloquist’s dummy he directed the administration of Roosevelt II toward creating a cradle to grave welfare system and thus began the transition from rugged individualism to dependence.

The Great Society doubled down on the Hopkins agenda and LBJ religiously believed that the welfare handcuffs would guaranty that the people would vote Democrat forever. It was a huge step from JFK’s famous entreaty: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”. Truth be told the incompetent President Warren Harding said about the same thing 40 years earlier: “We need citizens who are less concerned about what their government can do for them, and more concerned about what they can do for the nation.” Plagiarism…the only thing Kennedy had in common with Joe Biden.

We have become an entitlement society and the sheeple are well and truly addicted to the Federal teat.

Drugs

And speaking of addiction… We have now created an express lane to addiction. Marijuana, a gateway drug, is now legal in forty states, The Biden administration turned a blind eye to the illegal importation of drugs across the Southern border and by the Venezuelan Navy. Fentanyl alone causes the death of tens of thousands of Americans every year. Trump has done much to reduce the northern migration of fentanyl thereby saving American lives.

According to medical studies long-term cannabis users’ IQ’s decline by 5.5 points on average from childhood, and there were deficits in learning and the ability to process information. The more frequently an individual used cannabis, the greater the resulting cognitive impairment, suggesting a potential causative link. We are witnessing the creation of Democrat voters by tacitly encouraging this dependence on drugs as it appears that marijuana use results in a mental lethargy and cognitive decline. This mental lethargy renders them easier to manipulate. This may be one explanation of the recent behavior by the good people of Minneapolis.

TikTok et al

An entire generation is addicted to and therefore dependent on social media. Walk through any shopping mall in America and you will see an army of lemmings glued to the principal delivery system of their addiction…the smartphone. It is the source of all their “knowledge” about the world. The smartphone stifles thinking and common sense. It creates a herd mentality. If you watch any videos of Charlie Kirk on college campuses in his fruitless effort to be proven wrong you will note that most of those who challenge him are reading from their phones. Disagree with them and they believe you have cut them to the quick.

Our schools do nothing to develop the intellectual confidence of their charges. Debate in the classroom is frowned upon and information is carefully dispensed by the pedagogical Pied Pipers. The students generally choose not to engage in dissent as they are dependent on the grades they wish to receive and the threat of a failing grade is a powerful sedative where intellectual curiosity is concerned.

The news media have become, over time, a propaganda tool for the Left. If you are foolish enough to admit in any social setting that you may occasionally turn the radio or TV dial to Fox News you are treated as if you suffer from mental calcification. The media do nothing to undermine the information that spews forth from sources such as TikTok. The dependence goes serenely forward.

The smartphone obviates the need for human interaction. Young people today have very weak social skills and they have trouble looking people in the eyes. They measure their social status by the numbers of “likes” they receive on their social media accounts. As a general rule being independent is frowned upon by one’s peers and this leads, inevitably, to groupthink. Consensus is de rigueur and individualism, rugged or otherwise, is perceived as a threat. . If you suggest that Donald Trump may actually be a human being you are treated as if you are afflicted with an intellectual STD. We are creating a world of total intellectual dependence. How else to explain 81.3 million votes in 2020 for the barely animate Democrat candidate?

The Ultimate Control…AI

AI is upon us and it is removing yet another barrier to intellectual curiosity and independent thought. It is a recreational drug upon which those suffering from mental lethargy, drug induced or otherwise, become dependent. It is a substitute for critical thinking and learning. A learning avoidance aphrodisiac.

Many historians have sought to explain why the Russian people accepted Lenin and Stalin in Russia/USSR after 1917, why the German people embraced Hitler in the 1930’s, or the Chinese Mao Tse Tung after World War II. Ignorance and dependence are certainly part of the explanation. Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, offers a compelling example in his masterpiece 1984.

But in the end it all comes down to Fear…the subject of the next post.

Answers to the pop quiz:

What public relations pioneer said: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”? Edward Bernays

What self-described intellectual said: “Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business … the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products.”?. The very comparable Noam Chomsky

What economist said: “People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.”? The incomparable Walter Williams

What author said: “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who use the words ”? Philip K. Dick