Reply #72: Unity? No! JUSTICE>which requires couragous DISSENT=CHANGE! [View All]

This billboard illustrates exactly how indoctrination fills our heads from the beginning of life to make us believe in Nationalism, Racism, Sexism and Religious Intolerance.

Us vs Them thinking is imprinted on us to keep us in the herd and moving with them or get trampled.

Patriotism=Nationalism=War Machine Acceptance.
Prussian education tactics+Patriotism+Fundamentalism=Nazi America.

I put this in another post about psychological warfare. It belongs here as well:

Psychological warfare? Yup. This is the story of Civilisation. Only its very scientific now.

Education and Media indoctrinate us from birth to death with lies supporting the Validity of Authority. Socialization is mind-control and always has been.

Patriotism (nationalism), racism, sexism and religion have always been used to divide and conquer the people/peasants/masses. Now ubiquitous mass media adds repetition of message to the propaganda arsenal. Tragedy ensues.

Quite simply, this spells out the Republican Platform: Sex/pleasure=sin, violence/suffering=justice.

Karl Rove exploits the ignorance of TV Nation by telling Americans they are Superman Jesus in a Cowboy Hat-the strongest, most virtuous lawman in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, promoting celibacy to Africans dying of AIDS, that is, 'dying of their sins as they should, just like the homos.'

Read the 9/03 Harper's magazine essay by John Taylor Gatto, a former NYC and NY state Teacher of the Year, author of the Underground History of Public Education.

In an essay called 'How Public Education Cripples Our Kids and Why,' he details how Prussian culture was adopted when public education became widespread in the 1800s.
>snip<
"...compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table.

Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses...

The actual purpose of modern schooling...six basic functions:
1)THE ADJUSTIVE OR ADAPTIVE FUNCTION-
Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgement completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting things should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) THE INTEGRATING FUNCTION-
This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) THE DIAGNOSTIC AND DIRECTIVE FUNCTION-
School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) THE DIFFERENTIATING FUNCTION-
Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only sofar as their destination in the social machine merits-and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) THE SELECTIVE FUNCTION-
This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit-with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments-clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) THE PROPAEDEUTIC FUNCTION-
The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country...the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers."

Pretty horrifying, isn't it? I went to that school for sure.
A mythology of justification to keep the peasants in line has always been necessary.

American national power came from white men with guns stealing and killing. It is that simple.

Read Chomsky's 'Understanding Power.' It describes how the rich white men who have always owned and run the government have used violence and propaganda to prevent democracy in the US and around the world:

First the Native American holocaust and land grab.

Then African slavery in textiles back when cotton was the oil of its day, the source of manufacturing wealth.

Then corporations and robber barons using wage slaves in mass production factories and sweatshops. Unions were broken up by armed thugs. The Communist Revolution was used to demonize all popular movements as 'anarchists.'

Since capitalism failed in the depression of the 1930s, massive government spending on the Military Industrial Congressional Complex keeps the economy going, those not in these industries are on their own. This is the dictionary definition of FASCISM, the alliance of business with government.

As media became more pervasive and sophisticated, it was used to further propagandize and indoctrinate the population.

The Cold War brought Nazis recruited into the US government and intelligence services to fight the Soviets. A secret government took over from the business tycoons who had been using it for their own purposes.

The Bush family was key in this transition. The Reagan years saw the post-Vietnam re-militarization of the economy and the re-deification of corporations as symbolizing the Puritan Work Ethic in the (fictional) Free Market. Newt Gingrich used viciously partisan tactics to begin to drive back the progress of the 20th century.

Clinton only slightly slowed this process. Now the same people are back in power to finish the job of preventing democracy, looting the federal budget, neutralizing the masses, stealing the world's oil at gunpoint.

Religiousity helps them get away with it by turning racism, fear, and now 9/11 reactionary anger into a Crusade despite their denials.

A large percentage of Americans believe they are 'God's Chosen People In the One True Religion.'

And W. believes he was chosen by God to be President of the United States. Don't forget General Boykin, whose "god is bigger than the Muslim's god."

The Divine Right of Kings didn't go away; it is back with a vengeance. Ask Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. In a speech he said that it is a shame that democracy impedes God's will in choosing leaders. I'm not kidding.

How many centuries back can they take us? It is up to us.