Notice how many people you know are “brainwashed” to hate Trump, liberty, the Constitution and everything else they’re told to hate by the one-sided media? Brainwashing doesn’t simply mean being taught wrong things. What actually happens with brainwashing? You’re taught one side of the issue, while facts upholding any other side are left out. That’s what public schools do with kids. They don’t say to kids, “Here’s the case for capitalism; and here’s the case for socialism.” Instead, they indoctrinate children on the assumption that socialism, environmentalism and other dogma of cultural leftism are the ONLY positions any sane, thinking educated person can have. The children never hear the alternative views, other than to hear them dismissed as racist, hateful, etc. In college, the dogma gets even worse.
Such brainwashing appeals to the “herd” mentality in the great majority of people, something that lasts well beyond childhood. This mentality involves a deeply embedded fear of being seen as wrong, stupid, “uncool”, or otherwise not part of the pack. Human beings are — by nature — conceptual beings, and conceptual thinking requires independent, objective thought. Nobody can think for you. Despite our nature as conceptual beings, most of us are trained to be thought well of by others, to “fit in” with the pack. Most of us, when given a choice between the loneliness and possible shame of independent thought, and the warm embrace of the slobbering pack, will opt to go with the pack.
Most people don’t have the tools or the motivation to investigate the other arguments of philosophy, culture, economics, government and psychology that their teachers (and later their cultural icons in music, sports, the corporate world) conveniently leave out. Only the most rugged of rugged individualists survive this onslaught. It’s not that alternative information isn’t available to them. In America, alternate ideas have always been available, although that’s rapidly waning with free speech disappearing. The issue, psychologically, is being unable to bear the idea that others would know they don’t accept the prevailing view. THIS is what bothers them, much more than Trump, capitalism or any of the other things they so ferociously oppose. That’s why you’re greeted with such hostility when you present opposing arguments. They’re hostile because they’re afraid, and because they’re defending their membership in the pack.
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