Trumpism and the Weaponization of Culture

There is a schism in American society that, at least for now, appears to be unbridgeable. I call the two sides of the chasm “Realists” (aka Us™) and “Trumpists” (aka Them™.)

The genesis of this split goes back to the Powell Memo of 1972. It was what convinced corporations to get into the social engineering business. The FCC changes that happened under Ronald Reagan were one of its outcomes. Those changes enabled RW hate radio to take hold and spread.

The spread of RW talk radio in turn permitted the mass brainwashing of a large number of citizens. It did this through a form of the process called “psychic driving”. Driving is a technique developed by Dr. D. Ewan Cameron under the auspices of the CIA’s MK Ultra project in the 1950s and 60s. Driving involves subjecting people to continuously repeated audio messages to alter their behaviour. The goal is to alter the subjects’ interpretation of reality.

So that’s what RW talk radio did, over a span of 40 years. It succeeded, and the Trumpists are the result.

Then the Citizens United ruling came along in 2010. It allowed corporate money to flood into politics. The money was used to entrench the corporate version of reality that had been perfected by RW think tanks, radio and Fox television in the political arena. That change has resulted in the current version of the GOP, and ultimately enabled the election of Trump.

The end result is a segment of society that has been socially engineered over a long span of time. They have been given a political environment through which to expand their beliefs into the rest of society. The result is the current sociopolitical polarization of the USA.

As far as I can see, the chasm can only be bridged by deprogramming the brainwashed sector of the populace — people I have called the “Manchurian Voters”. Unfortunately, the deprogramming would require unwinding the changes brought about by the Powell Memo, the FCC changes and Citizens United.

Then the economy needs to be made more equitable to assuage their bitter sense of “left-behind” grievance.

And finally, once all that is done, the actual deprogramming (if it can be accomplished at all) would probably require another generation and a half — 45 — years to take effect. This time frame is equivalent to the time it took to brainwash them in the first place.

The Trumpists’ problem isn’t really stupidity or ignorance, despite what it may look like to us. It’s brainwashing. They have been deliberately reengineered, reshaped and reeducated into a new worldview that is fundamentally incompatible with ours. They now see every situation, event and idea through those engineered filters.

There are, of course other factors at work. For example, in his book “The Authoritarians” (HIGHLY recommended), Bob Altemeyer estimates that up to 25% of Americans are Right Wing Authoritarians:

Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result…. And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.

These people form the core of the Trumpist Movement, and need the least brainwashing. The less authoritarian you are the more brainwashing is needed to make you join the Movement. The messages used in the driving originate exclusively from the core group. The purpose of the brainwashing is to expand the Movement beyond its core, and make it a political force. The Movement also seems to have a lot in common with cults like Scientology in terms of the degree and kind of social control that is exercised over the members.

The other thing that is required for the whole mechanism to work is a general perception that one’s community is being left behind by society. If that perception is real to some extent, it can be amplified to become a rallying cry. Trumpism could not have succeeded without a Rust Belt, offshoring and an overall stagnant or declining economy.

It requires a mix of factors to cause a Movement to coalesce — in this case psychological predisposition, the economic environment, legislative changes, and the communications technology that allows messages to be driven down to the individual level.

I should also mention that ANY acculturation is a form of brainwashing. The difference is that in “normal” acculturation people are exposed to quite a broad mix of thoughts and beliefs, resulting in a more diffuse norming effect. In the case of Trumpism, the exposure is restricted as much as possible to a single set of ideas and beliefs, which are repeated so often that they bring the person’s thinking into alignment with the core message. So while this effect has been around in some form for as long as there have been cultures, these particular circumstances and available technology have allowed culture itself to be weaponized.

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