“The corruption in all this has been supernatural, and the fact that, until late 2024, seventy-million Democratic Party American voters thought this was all okay is extra-supernatural. What happened to their minds?”
This is a reasonable question, addressed by a pair of important books. In 1896 Gustave le Bon pondered the bizarre events fo…
“The corruption in all this has been supernatural, and the fact that, until late 2024, seventy-million Democratic Party American voters thought this was all okay is extra-supernatural. What happened to their minds?”
This is a reasonable question, addressed by a pair of important books. In 1896 Gustave le Bon pondered the bizarre events following the French Revolution and wrote The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. He concluded that occasionally societies collectively run off the rails – suffering mass insanity, with appalling consequences.
Building upon le Bon’s premise, in 2022 Mathias Desmet published The Psychology of Totalitarianism, coining the term “Mass Formation (Psychosis)” to describe this phenomenon. Among the causal factors identified by Desmet is exploitation of individual insecurity, caused by social isolation.
Draconian isolation, enforced during the Covid scare, provided ideal circumstances for subjecting the populace – already feeling insecure about a manufactured plague – to the most comprehensive and sophisticated program of propaganda ever contrived. The Blob capitalized on this giant experiment by inoculating the populace with the damnedest bunch of ridiculous ideas ever sold.
Having successfully demonstrated proof of concept for imposing totalitarian control of the American public, with free expression of objections outlawed, one can easily imagine the scenarios for building upon that experiment that The Blob concocted and was eagerly preparing to implement, had it won our recent election.
Maybe totalitarianism is a reaction by a government which considers itself under threat by groups of people that it alienated. I believe that people, like everything , are bipolar in nature. Not the disease but the natural fact that for any opinion there will be an equal and opposite opinion by someone else. So the positive job of government is to consolidate the opposing opinions into one “patriotic” common cause. Look at us right now. Both sides at a 50-50% split. Half want liberty and justice for all and the other “please Big Brother tell me what to do”.
History is not kind, almost all “governments”, no matter their form, have failed to consolidate their folks. The evil bred into the governments hinders any consolidation, as government by its nature is against 50% of the population. IMHO, the USA is very close to schism due to its Red-Blue split. Reagan and Trump both have used the patriotic “American First” and the flag to try to consolidate the people. Will it work? I wonder if Vegas is betting odds on that conundrum?
I have doubts that a "fifty-fifty" split is natural, or even real. We are taught that our two corrupt parties are adversarial when they are, in fact, symbiotic, sharing positions on the big stuff, like serving corporate interests and endless wars. The corporate press helps assure their perpetual parity by representing every election as a horse race, which sells their product.
Many of these guys jump from public to private and to academia (public or private) all the time. But a deeper look shows who is on top - the Bankers - very, very private. Being able to print money at will, they control all men and institutions, ultimately. A few outliers excepted.
Most people have never even heard of the BIS - the Bank of International Settlements. When the day comes that our Federal Reserve is at the brink of failure, the BIS can choose to bail them out, or to take them down.
Joost Meerloo, M.D.'s, 1956 book, _The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing_, spells out EVERYTHING anyone needs to know about Totalitarianism and human nature, specifically those aspects of human nature which make us vulnerable to totalitarian methods (which have remained remarkably consistent over the decades).
“The corruption in all this has been supernatural, and the fact that, until late 2024, seventy-million Democratic Party American voters thought this was all okay is extra-supernatural. What happened to their minds?”
This is a reasonable question, addressed by a pair of important books. In 1896 Gustave le Bon pondered the bizarre events following the French Revolution and wrote The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. He concluded that occasionally societies collectively run off the rails – suffering mass insanity, with appalling consequences.
Building upon le Bon’s premise, in 2022 Mathias Desmet published The Psychology of Totalitarianism, coining the term “Mass Formation (Psychosis)” to describe this phenomenon. Among the causal factors identified by Desmet is exploitation of individual insecurity, caused by social isolation.
Draconian isolation, enforced during the Covid scare, provided ideal circumstances for subjecting the populace – already feeling insecure about a manufactured plague – to the most comprehensive and sophisticated program of propaganda ever contrived. The Blob capitalized on this giant experiment by inoculating the populace with the damnedest bunch of ridiculous ideas ever sold.
Having successfully demonstrated proof of concept for imposing totalitarian control of the American public, with free expression of objections outlawed, one can easily imagine the scenarios for building upon that experiment that The Blob concocted and was eagerly preparing to implement, had it won our recent election.
A more simple explanation would be just two words. "Group Think." A very dangerous phenomenon.
Two words don't explain "why," which is the question posed by Jim in the first place.
Maybe totalitarianism is a reaction by a government which considers itself under threat by groups of people that it alienated. I believe that people, like everything , are bipolar in nature. Not the disease but the natural fact that for any opinion there will be an equal and opposite opinion by someone else. So the positive job of government is to consolidate the opposing opinions into one “patriotic” common cause. Look at us right now. Both sides at a 50-50% split. Half want liberty and justice for all and the other “please Big Brother tell me what to do”.
History is not kind, almost all “governments”, no matter their form, have failed to consolidate their folks. The evil bred into the governments hinders any consolidation, as government by its nature is against 50% of the population. IMHO, the USA is very close to schism due to its Red-Blue split. Reagan and Trump both have used the patriotic “American First” and the flag to try to consolidate the people. Will it work? I wonder if Vegas is betting odds on that conundrum?
I have doubts that a "fifty-fifty" split is natural, or even real. We are taught that our two corrupt parties are adversarial when they are, in fact, symbiotic, sharing positions on the big stuff, like serving corporate interests and endless wars. The corporate press helps assure their perpetual parity by representing every election as a horse race, which sells their product.
Many of these guys jump from public to private and to academia (public or private) all the time. But a deeper look shows who is on top - the Bankers - very, very private. Being able to print money at will, they control all men and institutions, ultimately. A few outliers excepted.
Most people have never even heard of the BIS - the Bank of International Settlements. When the day comes that our Federal Reserve is at the brink of failure, the BIS can choose to bail them out, or to take them down.
That's ever present. But periodically it's get weaponized and overcomes the real individuals upon who society depends.
Joost Meerloo, M.D.'s, 1956 book, _The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing_, spells out EVERYTHING anyone needs to know about Totalitarianism and human nature, specifically those aspects of human nature which make us vulnerable to totalitarian methods (which have remained remarkably consistent over the decades).