“It’s kind of hard to figure how Warren Buffett endorsed me, Colin Powell endorsed me, and John McCain thinks I’m socialist.” —Barack Hussein Obama
This is how brainwashing works. Let’s take the example of a prisoner of war—his name is Tom—kept in isolation from his comrades for many days. The enemy wants to make Tom believe that the enemy’s cause is greater, that the enemy’s system is superior, and that the POW’s cause and system are wrong. The enemy tells the POW all sorts of things in an effort to break him, but Tom resists because he knows it is the enemy telling him these things. Tom knows what’s going on. Tom is his own man.
For months, we have heard that Barack Obama is a “transformational figure,” a leader who has come to take us all to higher ground. Many of Americans have resisted the man and the message because they are suspicious of both. Of course, Republicans and conservatives are suspicious. How can a progressive Democrat represent their interests? But some progressives were suspicious. How can a centrist Democrat represent progressive interests? The media continued to hammer away the Obama narrative. The man and his message are everywhere.
Then Obama rolls out the Warren Buffetts, the Colin Powells, and the Bernie Sanders—men from the right and the left, businessmen, generals, labor leaders, conservatives, liberals, and social democrats. Powell says, “Obama is a transformational figure.” Like our POW Tom, the sentiments of those who were suspicious of Obama were transformed. So many different sorts of figures, appealing to so many different sorts of people—all elites, of course—rolled out in a massive propaganda campaign represents a deft brainwashing campaign of historic proportions.
Obama’s half hour propaganda special, which appeared last night one several channels, was another key aspect of the brainwashing campaign. Did you see the way the people were responding to Obama? One man kept muttering in a whisper, tears in his eyes, “Thank you … thank you,” as Obama told him he would save his pension. The old man looked like an enraptured zealot at a Benny Hinn anointing, hands clasped together, “Thank you, sweet Jesus…. Thank you, sweet Jesus.”
The Obama campaign believes—and given the ground of religiosity of this country, their assumption is not far off the mark—that Americans will fall for a politician who is every bit the image of an evangelical faith healer, especially progressives who want a religious leader even if they reject organized religion. Obama is pitched as a liminal figure on a divine democratic mission to save America from decay and pollution. The clouds will part and the seas will recede—he told us this himself—and a righteous leader will step through the breech to take us all to higher ground. He is “the One,” the special man who will unify his people—class, gender, racial matter no more—and lift the nation to new heights. We will be saved. Reborn in a New America.
If the ruling class succeeds in pulling off this moment, the United States political system will have entered into a political phase, one closely paralleling—of course, in its own unique American way—the personality cults of Nazi Germany and North Korea. For this reason alone, we should hope for its failure.
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Note: This post was migrated from my old platform. I have added to it an image generated by Sora.
freedom and reason 