We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, February 11, 2016

The bloody legacy of American Exceptionalism

Click here to access article by Vanessa Beeley from American Herald Tribune. (Beeley also has her own blog at The Wall Will Fall.)

Beeley explains the concept of "gaslighting" which is a term used to describe some very sophisticated techniques designed to destroy one's capacity to form their own judgements and opinions about reality. She describes its use in three stages; and after the final stage is reached, she describes the victim this way:
The process is complete and the victim has been reduced to a willing accomplice in the abusers creation of a very distorted reality.

We are currently seeing the transformation of US exceptionalism into an abusive Narcissism.  The gargantuan apparatus of mind bending and controlling is being put into hyper drive by the ruling elite.  We are inundated with propaganda that challenges our sense of reality but only after being “tenderized” by the fear factor.  Fear of “terror”, fear of war, fear of financial insecurity, fear of gun violence, fear of our own shadow.  Once we are suitably quaking in our boots, in comes the rendition of reality that relieves our anxiety.
This reminds me of a recent incident while I was sitting in my dentist's waiting room waiting for my dental work to be done. The room had a flat screen TV mounted on the wall which was impossible to ignore. My attention was immediately drawn to Wolf Blitzer of CNN warning his audience in very sinister tones of the likelihood that terrorist "sleeper cells" were being set up across the US. (Of course our masters manage to make just enough of these "terrorist" incidents happen to make such lies believable.) I spontaneously had to chuckle at this obvious latest attempt to scare the wits out the American public, but then I looked around and noticed that other people in the room looked rather scared.