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Old 10-26-2018, 09:04   #1
tonyz
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Transforming a society from within

Buried in an article addressing the Kavanaugh matter was this interesting summary of the progressive agenda.

The excerpt posted below does not specifically address Kavanaugh but describes a path toward the fundamental transformation of America from within.

Complete article at link.

“Essentially the Frankfurt School believed that as long as an individual believed that his reason and common sense could solve the problems facing society, then that society would never reach the state of hopelessness and alienation that they considered necessary to foment socialist revolution.”


Judge Kavanaugh was understating the problem.
The American Spectator
October 5, 2018, 12:05 am

How is it that so many Americans have allowed institutions and norms to be undermined that were the basis for almost all our prior success? And how could this happen after the United States stood decisively with the forces of good — helping the allied powers to win two world wars and then playing the key role in winning the Cold War.

It has happened because revolutionary ideological forces have been subtly at work to transform society from within — slowly and broadly so as to be almost unnoticed. Most assume that winning the Cold War meant we also defeated the Marxist ideology backing the Soviet Union. Yet a closer look at social history in 20th century America shows that strains of neo-Marxism have proliferated and collectively provided the central transformative ideological force shaping American culture over the last several generations and into the present.

Antonio Gramsci was a leading 20th century Marxist theoretician who argued that communists’ route to taking power in developed, industrialized societies such as the United States would be best achieved through a “long march through the institutions.” This would be a gradual process of radicalization of the cultural institutions — “the superstructure” — of bourgeois society, a process that would in turn transform the values and morals of society. Gramsci believed that as society’s morals were softened, its political and economic foundation would be more easily undermined and restructured.

Cultural Marxism was also advanced by intellectuals from the “Frankfurt School,” who were forced to flee Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s. Resettling in the U.S., members of the Frankfurt School, such as Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkeimer, Eric Fromm and Wilhelm Reich, first set up shop at Columbia University, and then later found their way into teaching at various elite universities such as Berkeley, Princeton, Harvard, the New School for Social Research and Brandeis. In the context of American culture, “the long march through the institutions” meant, in the words of Herbert Marcuse, “working against the established institutions while working in them.”

While the Frankfurt School was neo-Marxist, many of its adherents were less interested in economics and redistribution of wealth than in remaking and transforming society through attitudinal and cultural change. They incorporated Marxist class theory into sociology and psychology while also assimilating Freud’s theories on sexuality. Thus, Marx’s theory of the dialectic of perpetual conflict was joined together with Freud’s neurotic ideas, creating a sort of Freudian-Marxism. The amalgam provided a broad-based critique of social problems oriented toward transforming society as a whole — something they called Critical Theory.

While the leaders of the Frankfurt School had limited influence being somewhat ensconced in Berkeley, the New School and Ivy League universities, their Critical Theory ideas were considered avant-garde and received a multiplier effect through other universities and particularly as they were embraced by the teachers’ colleges across the country in the 1950s and 1960s. What was perhaps unique about the cultural Marxists was their “street smarts” recognition that psychological conditioning was more effective than philosophical arguments to achieve the goal of transforming America’s culture.

Essentially the Frankfurt School believed that as long as an individual believed that his reason and common sense could solve the problems facing society, then that society would never reach the state of hopelessness and alienation that they considered necessary to foment socialist revolution. Their task, therefore, was to undermine both the Judeo-Christian legacy and the foundation for rational reasoning by creating a narrative of destructive criticism affecting every sphere and institution of life, resulting in a loss of any absolute truth or meaning. This then would bring on mass hopelessness and de-stabilize society, setting the stage for bringing down what they saw as the ‘oppressive’ order.

The Critical Theory project emphasized and prioritized the demolition of Christianity and the nuclear family. They also sought to exacerbate race relations and promote massive immigration to destroy national identity. Additional focal points in their agenda encouraged dependency on state benefits and the bending of the legal system to favor perpetrators of crime over victims. And lastly, the agenda sought to dumb down the media and undermine schools’ and teachers’ authority.

An important part of the Critical Theory project of total transformation of society was to break down traditional relationships between men and women by promoting and legitimizing unhinged sexual permissiveness with no cultural or religious restraint. Building on the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory, leaders of what came to be known as Postmodernism advanced the wrecking ball cultural deconstruction project right through the turn of the 21stcentury.

Postmodernists have had no use for tradition or any standards of normalcy, believing that all truth is contrived illusion rather than absolute. Homosexuality and transgenderism are not only valid choices, but even preferable for advancing the destruction of the traditional family and society. They also view the scientific method as being useless, with facts too limiting to determine anything — making truth and error two side of the same coin. Thus Fake News did not arise out of reaction to Donald Trump, but more fundamentally as an extension of Postmodernism. Postmodernists were the first advocates of open borders, which was also an extension of the project to destroy national identity and undermine the democratic electoral process.

What is obviously striking is the degree to which this agenda of breakdown and national transformation promoted by a relatively small constituency of cultural Marxists associated with the Frankfurt School and Postmodernism has been accepted and infused into the leadership and operating procedures of the Democrat Party. Illustrative of this was Democrat Presidential candidate flagbearer Hillary Clinton, wherein she proclaimed to the 2015 Women in the World Summit, not long before she launched her 2016 presidential campaign, that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

Since the 2016 election, this breakdown has now erupted in a new civil war. On the one side, we have those who have been shaped both overtly and subliminally by cultural Marxist ideology and on the other side we have those who find grounding and purpose in transcendent values—predominantly associated with Judaism and Christianity.

https://spectator.org/the-whirlwind-is-already-here/
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Old 10-26-2018, 10:15   #2
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I take heart in knowing that there are a couple of "speed-bumps" that stop a American socialist revolution dead in it's tracks, the 2nd Amendment and the American military.

It is interesting that they have successfully "weaponized" the internet and mass media, that was a stroke of brilliance, mao, hitler and stalin would be proud.
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Old 10-26-2018, 10:52   #3
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Quote:
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I take heart in knowing that there are a couple of "speed-bumps" that stop a American socialist revolution dead in it's tracks, the 2nd Amendment and the American military.
Amen.

And the ballot box.

Quote:
It is interesting that they have successfully "weaponized" the internet and mass media, that was a stroke of brilliance, mao, hitler and stalin would be proud.
True.

And, fortunately that street runs both ways.
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Old 10-26-2018, 11:46   #4
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Amen.

And the ballot box.



True.

And, fortunately that street runs both ways.
You think so? Get on twitter/faketube etc and say hitlery is a corrupt thug, see how long that account lasts.
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Old 10-26-2018, 12:05   #5
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You think so? Get on twitter/faketube etc and say hitlery is a corrupt thug, see how long that account lasts.
Point well taken - I avoid sticking sharp sticks in my own eye.

My comment was directed more toward the utility of the Internet in bringing information to light and as a tool for research and communication - for all freedom loving peoples.

But, I stand corrected on the two way nature of treatment relating to non-PC speech.
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Last edited by tonyz; 10-26-2018 at 12:22. Reason: Readability
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Old 12-02-2020, 08:45   #6
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Undermining American Institutions - creating hopelessness and alienation

Just happened to search the phrase “cultural Marxism” and experienced a similar result as the author of the article posted below. He goes on to explain how the wiki result is flat out wrong as he explores the history of the phrase in an easily readable and informative manner.

The piece in the OP is also an easy to read refresher commenting on the transformation we see before our very eyes.


Cultural Marxism and Its Conspirators
American Spectator
Paul Kangor
April, 3, 2019

Last week I did one of my routine exercises in my Marxism course at Grove City College. In that class, we scour everything on Marx and various strains and offshoots of Marxism. We read all sides — true liberal learning, real diversity, genuine academic pursuit of truth. At this conservative college, we look at all sides, which is what liberal universities claim to do but, under the flag of “diversity” and “tolerance,” frequently shun opposing viewpoints that conflict with leftist orthodoxy. My Marxism course is an interactive class in which we pull up the big computer screen and openly Google terms, ideas, websites, and organizations. We do not shy away, ever, from daily checking Marxists.org, the website of Communist Party USA, The Jacobin, The Militant, you name it. We don’t fear and censor opposing viewpoints. My students will not be left ignorant of what the other side thinks.

Last week, as I do at some point every semester, I Googled the words “cultural Marxism.” I was shocked when the first thing that appeared on the page was this boxed definition:

Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. In contemporary usage, the term Cultural Marxism refers to an anti-semitic conspiracy theory which claims that the Frankfurt School is part of a continual academic and intellectual effort to undermine and destroy Western culture.

Frankfurt School – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School

Whoa. Seriously? After years of looking up “cultural Marxism,” I had not seen that whopper. An “anti-semitic conspiracy theory”? Says who? That’s not a definition; it’s an ad hominem. Actually, it’s a cheap smear. And it’s a smear that countless millions will see daily as their go-to definition for “cultural Marxism.”

It gets worse.

The link then charges: “This conspiracy theory is associated with American religious paleoconservatives such as William S. Lind, Pat Buchanan, and Paul Weyrich; but also holds currency among the alt-right, white nationalist groups, and the neo-reactionary movement.”

Yeah? No kidding? The “neo-reactionary movement”? What’s that?

For years I’ve known about cultural Marxism. My first tutorial on it, and the entirety of the Frankfurt School, came from Herb Romerstein, a friend and mentor to whom I dedicated my book Dupes. Never did Herb say that the charge of cultural Marxism was a slimy anti-Jewish plot. He walked me through the leading lights in the Frankfurt School, and he didn’t single out which ones were Jews

An “anti-semitic conspiracy theory”? That sounds like the very conspiracy-mongering that the anonymous writers are charging as conspiracy-mongering.

This flatly isn’t right. It’s wrong. And it’s a shame. It’s a nasty charge that’s clearly having a pernicious influence. As a case in point, a testimony comes from the UK, where a conservative supporter of Brexit has been accused of peddling the “anti-Semitic trope of ‘Cultural Marxism’.” That’s an actual headline.

The two reporters who wrote that story, slinging that accusation at this unfortunate British conservative, almost certainly Googled a term they knew little to nothing about and landed at the first thing that glared from their screen. The intellectual laziness led to intellectual nastiness — cruelty even, as this is a vicious charge to make against someone, especially if those leveling it really don’t have a good idea of the history of the term.

And yet, in fairness to those two reporters, “cultural Marxism” is unquestionably hard to pin down. It would be nice if everyone could be, well, nice, as we all suffer the ideological folly of the men who devised the inane theories and perverse schools of thought which, for better or worse, have come to be known as “cultural Marxism.” Take it from someone who reads this poison for living. These ideas are not merely confusing, vague, but often incoherent, incomprehensible, rambling, meandering, and, first and foremost, utterly idiotic and completely destructive to mind and soul. When I slog through it, I think not of “trope” but “tripe.” It’s awful junk.

Here are some rudimentary facts:

First off, you will not find a foundational book from, say, the 1930s, called The Cultural Marxism Manifesto. Maybe the best we can say is that cultural Marxism, for lack of a better term, is essentially, and very simply, Marxism applied to cultural goals. To repeat: Marxism applied to cultural goals. This is distinguished from the classical Marxism applied to economics or class goals. It is Marxist theory affixed to culture, and thus referred to commonly and understandably as “cultural Marxism.”

Who first coined the term? It’s hard to say, just as it’s hard to say who first coined the term “communism.” Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, but they didn’t coin the term communism. No one really knows, for sure.

And the fact is, there are many Marxists today working far more aggressively on the cultural front than the economic front. They are, in effect, cultural Marxists. And no doubt, 99% of them are not Jews. To criticize them and their cultural Marxism would not, by any stretch, be an exercise in anti-Semitism.

Who were some of the early Marxists who applied Marx to culture?

Pivotal was Antonio Gramsci, an Italian, a pioneer of applying Marxist theory to cultural objectives. He was not a Jew, not German, and not a member of the Frankfurt School.

That said, the Frankfurt School was the leading literal “institute” that applied Marxist theory to cultural objectives.

The two leaders of the Frankfurt School were Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who wrote major works on what they called the “culture industry.” This is so well-known that the very same Wikipedia has an entry for “Culture Industry,” a term it rightly credits to its founders, “the critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer,” as Wikipedia says in the first line of the entry, and to the wider Frankfurt School, as it lays out. Adorno and Horkheimer had a chapter called “The Culture Industry” in their book, Dialectic of Enlightenment. (Sounds a little cultural and a little Marxist, eh?)

Two of the most influential members of the Frankfurt School who applied Marxism to culture (and to other areas) were Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. They were not only cultural Marxists but Freudian Marxists. One might also call Marcuse a sexual Marxist. He was the guru to the 1960s New Left on American college campuses.

An undisputed sexual Marxist who applied sex and Freud and Marx to culture was Wilhelm Reich, who coined the term and wrote the book, The Sexual Revolution. He’s linked to the Frankfurt School, though he was much earlier. He was such a sexual freak, with very disturbing thoughts on the genital stimulation of children (among other things), that the Bolsheviks rejected him.

Georg Lukacs, a Hungarian, a Bolshevik, and a major early influence on the founders of the Frankfurt School, also applied Marxist theory to culture. He was Deputy Commissar for Culture and Education in Bela Kun’s Hungarian Soviet Republic. To repeat: culture and education. Theodor Adorno adored Georg Lukacs.

Most of the guys in the Frankfurt School were Freudians as well as Marxists. Some, like Fromm especially, sought to devise a field of Freudian-Marxism that was anchored in psychoanalysis.

So, cultural Marxists, sexual Marxists. Yes.

Today, in the 21stcentury, much of the more culturally inclined Marxism flies under the banner of what is known throughout the academy as “critical theory.” There are entire academic departments at universities dedicated to critical theory. Tellingly, most of these academic proponents of Marxism are not econ or Poli Sci professors, or historians, all of which know better, but faculty from English departments.

Today, there are even gender Marxists in the academy. There are self-described “queer theorists” and academicians engaged in “intersectionality” who are Marxists focused on cultural work.

This is widely known.

But above all, these Marxists are and were about culture. Culture, culture, culture.




Continued below...
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Old 12-02-2020, 08:50   #7
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Feelings of hopelessness and alienation...

Continued from above...


If you Google “critical theory,” the first thing that pops up is a boxed definition that states: “crit-i-cal the-o-ry, noun, a philosophical approach to culture, and especially to literature, that seeks to confront the social, historical, and ideological forces and structures that produce and constrain it. The term is applied particularly to the work of the Frankfurt School.”

Precisely. Whoever posted that one nailed it. Hooray for accuracy! Note the words “culture” and “Frankfurt School.” Again, cultural Marxists — or, if you don’t like that, Marxists in culture.

As I noted in a piece here last year, People’s World, the successor to the Daily Worker, in the “About” section of its website, calls out and rallies what it calls “cultural workers” for the Marxist cause. These are Marxists operating on the cultural front. They are cultural Marxists.


This ain’t rocket science, boys and girls. And it ain’t anti-Semitism either.

Go back to that original Google box defining cultural Marxism as anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Ironically, if you click the provided link to the Frankfurt School reference at Wikipedia, it indeed explains: “The works of the Frankfurt School are understood in the context of the intellectual and practical objectives of critical theory…. In the praxis of cultural hegemony, the dominant ideology is a ruling-class narrative story, which explains that what is occurring in society is the norm.”

Again, note the words “cultural” and “Frankfurt School.”

There, it links (correctly) to Antonio Gramsci, the non-German, non-Jew, Italian. In fact, the Wikipedia page on Gramsci is pretty good, and includes 32 references to “culture” or “cultural.” The third paragraph of the Gramsci entry states:

Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class — the bourgeoisie — use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. The bourgeoisie, in Gramsci’s view, develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. Hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the “common sense” values of all and thus maintain the status quo. Hegemonic power is therefore used to maintain consent to the capitalist order, rather than coercive power using force to maintain order. This cultural hegemony is produced and reproduced by the dominant class through the institutions that form the superstructure.

That’s correct. And there, at the page on Gramsci, are (rightly) no references to “conspiracy.” Apparently, that’s because certain different anonymous contributors (better informed) contributed to the Gramsci page — obviously not the same ignorant individuals who generated the shameless little box on cultural Marxism; that is, the nasty name-callers alleging anti-Semitism.

For the record, where does the charge of anti-Semitism come from? It, too, comes from laziness, nastiness, or a lack of charity and desire to smear opponents rather than get at the truth. The Wikipedia entry quotes (accurately or inaccurately) one of the individuals it accuses of anti-Semitism stating that all the members of the Frankfurt School were Jews (“to a man, Jewish”). I cannot vouch for that. I’ve never endeavored to tabulate a scorecard of Jews in the Frankfurt School. I have no desire. I don’t do that. Don’t ask me. Do your owned damned scorecard.

It’s crucial to understand, however, that those who write on the Frankfurt School, including its staunch advocates, always note that many to most of the members were Jewish. You can’t read a history that doesn’t note this. Why is that? For this reason: Any historian offering even a brief narrative account of the Frankfurt School, including the salient fact of its sudden mass migration to the United States, unavoidably notes that most members were Jews because it’s a crucial explanatory factor in their move to America — namely, they relocated because of Hitler’s madness. As Jews, they would be targeted by Hitler for genocide. That’s why they moved.

Truth be told, the only sympathy I’ve ever had for the Frankfurt School is that the poor guys could have been murdered by the Nazis. It’s my only soft spot for them. Otherwise, their writings are nonsense, useless, fruitless.

But again, historians writing histories of the school can’t avoid this fact. To cite just one example of numerous that could be referenced, probably the top academic work on the Frankfurt School (aside from Martin Jay’s research) is Rolf Wiggershaus’s The Frankfurt School, published in 1994 by MIT Press. It’s a seminal scholarly work, nearly 800 pages in length, with translations of German writings that no other scholar in English has published. This is a fully sympathetic tome. My sense is that Wiggershaus likely aligns ideologically with — and is at least favorable to — the school. He writes in his opening pages: “The first generation of the Frankfurt School consisted wholly of Jews.”

Wiggershaus certainly didn’t mean that as a negative. He proceeded to further note how they were persecuted as Jews. Heck, Wiggershaus might even be Jewish himself. (I don’t know, I haven’t checked.)

Again, it’s part of the history.

The first time I wrote about the Frankfurt School in a book, my editor added this query amid the editing process: “Paul, why in the world did they all suddenly leave Germany to come to the United States?” My editor wanted to know if this was some sort of Comintern-inspired conspiracy or the work of a communist cabal at Columbia University. No, no, I explained. The answer was because they were Jews fleeing Hitler. My editor answered: “Oh! You need to include that!”

Of course. And historians of the Frankfurt School need the freedom to include that key fact without nameless hacks vilifying them online as anti-Semites for doing so.

Even then, assume for a moment, for the sake of argument, that the vast majority of cultural Marxists in the Frankfurt School were Jewish, as its historians have asserted. Well, the vast majority of cultural Marxists today — writing at People’s World, joining the International Gramsci Society, penning tracts on “queer theory” — are certainly not Jews. Today’s cultural Marxism isn’t a Jewish thing. That’s stupid.

Now, all of that said, could certain agitators on the “alt-right” exploit the fact that so many Frankfurters were Jews to try to create an “anti-Semitic trope” of the Frankfurt School? Of course, they could. That needs to be condemned and countered. But simply noting that many were Jewish, or, more important, simply noting that today there’s such a thing as a cultural form of Marxism, should absolutely not be permitted to be labeled an “anti-Semitic trope.”

Ironically, these faceless online contributors also threaten leftist academic allies. When I last week checked the website for Occidental College’s Department of Critical Theory and Social Justice, which, for years, boasted about instructing its pupils in “Marxism, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School,” there was no longer any mention of Marxism, nor certainly cultural Marxism. Those leftists at Occidental must have yanked the language, no doubt fearful of being accused of anti-Semitism.

Above all, this is as much a lesson in the power of an enormously influential source like Wikipedia (and the Internet generally) to be abused and to spread bad information that ends up hurting people. Unfortunately, millions if not billions rely on Wikipedia, and what you thus have online is, ironically, the creation of a conspiracy theory about the “conspiracy theory” of cultural Marxism.

Again, if some are guilty of creating a fake conspiracy of a very real ideology or literal theory, then we should condemn that. That does not, however, mean that, say, critical theory, or the application of Marxism to culture, à la cultural Marxism, doesn’t exist.

Alas, let’s also be on guard for those who want to create a conspiracy theory out of term that, properly applied, isn’t a conspiracy theory.

https://spectator.org/cultural-marxi...-conspirators/
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Old 12-02-2020, 09:37   #8
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This paragraph rings true for my boys in public schools:

“Today, in the 21stcentury, much of the more culturally inclined Marxism flies under the banner of what is known throughout the academy as “critical theory.” There are entire academic departments at universities dedicated to critical theory. Tellingly, most of these academic proponents of Marxism are not econ or Poli Sci professors, or historians, all of which know better, but faculty from English departments.“

Honors English has been Critical Race Theory at every step. Everything is about telling the students how Christian white American MEN have made the world an evil place.

The high school teacher also is an elected municipal politician in another community. Far left wing in all of her posts and communications as a politician, she brings that into the classroom. In discussions with other parents, this is happening in every English class in the district, at middle and high school levels.
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Old 12-02-2020, 09:58   #9
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Solid ground truth FlagDayNCO - thanks for that.

We have arrived where we are at - in the cultural wars - due in part to quiet indoctrination. While we have been very busy earning a living - some very strange ideas about “57 genders” and a whole host of other unusual ideas have been floated as mainstream.

An interesting follow up article to some of your observations below - as the transformation marches on.


How Public Schools Indoctrinate Kids Without Almost Anyone Noticing
The Federalist
Auguste Meyrat
OCTOBER 26, 2018


Teaching the value of free thought matters now more than ever. Unfortunately, most American public schools take the opposite approach.


Many people have long suspected that governments sometimes attempt to indoctrinate their people to increase the government’s own power and influence. Unfortunately, ambitious governments will not stop at merely controlling what their people can do; they must control their minds.

Indoctrination happens through many channels—entertainment, speeches, and censorship––but its main instrument is the school system. Teachers have a captive audience of malleable young minds for several years. They may not have figured out how to make students smart and productive, but they can at least make them submissive and obedient.

Judging by results and from most people’s experience, indoctrination is not only a problem with rogue regimes, but also a distinctly American problem. However, here it is difficult to determine the extent of indoctrination, how it works, or even if it does work.

Most Americans might receive a mediocre education, but this education may be so mediocre that the intended brainwashing might not even be effective. True, some will feel the Bern and join the Socialist Party, and others will become feminists and beat up women who protest abortion. A precious few may even become conservatives. Most, though, seem content to remain disengaged from politics, religion, and most ideas in general, and allow the mainstream media to think for them.

Far from resembling a unified collective, society has become more polarized and tribal. Some might see this as evidence of the failure of indoctrination, and the insuppressible human desire for freedom and justice, but they are mistaken. Indoctrination does work, and it is one the main reasons America is so divided.

What Is Indoctrination?
Few people seem to have a clear definition of indoctrination, and thus call anything they dislike indoctrination (e.g., “Leftists professors are indoctrinating their students,” “Those fundamentalist Christians are indoctrinating their kids,” or “Facebook is indoctrinating its users.”).

While indoctrination involves pushing a certain opinion, it is also much more. It is the comprehensive effort of passively disseminating a particular viewpoint. The passive aspect is key. People who are indoctrinated with a certain narrative or ideology do not arrive at the intended conclusions through their own thinking, but hear the same thing repeated in a million different ways until they finally take it as unquestionable truth.

Because indoctrination happens in the absence of thinking, many teachers who engage in indoctrination do so unconsciously. They themselves take what they’re given and pass it along without thinking. Ideologues often intervene at this level by writing the scripts for teachers, which is how LGBT advocacy and anti-Semitic fabrications become included in their lessons.

Thoughtlessness is essential. As the fictional demon Screwtape, from C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters,” states in his letters to Wormwood, “It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.” A person who really thinks will eventually reason himself out of the things he heard at school.

In some ways this could be good––he could reason his way out of utopian thinking that contradicts reality. It could also be bad––he could reason his way out of superstitious beliefs, but not have the wherewithal to take the next step of adopting reasonable beliefs.

For this reason, it is often fruitless for Republican politicians to insist on incorporating more conservative viewpoints, or for conservative intellectuals to decry bias in U.S. history classes, or for classical schools to replace Maya Angelou with Tacitus. If students are still receiving the material passively, a switch of content will not help, and, in the case of introducing classic literature, it will usually backfire. English teachers have soured multiple generations of Americans on Shakespeare because they taught it as propaganda, not as dense texts requiring complex thought.

Indoctrination In Common Core
Even changing curriculum will not prevent indoctrination. Curriculum should help guide the teacher to create lessons and use materials that will train the students to think and function independently. Instead, most public school curricula, either adopting the Common Core standards or imitating them, do the opposite.

Common Core has facilitated progressive indoctrination by smothering independent thought and stifling intellectual development. It effectively trains students not to think by emphasizing skills over content, process over product, and relative standards over absolute ones.

The humanities suffer the most from the focus on teaching supposedly practical skills rather than quality content. Instead of reading great poetry and literature, English teachers asked their students to read more journalistic nonfiction and develop research skills. Instead of reading for meaning and writing clearly, students read for bias and learn to write fluff.

History teachers now teach their students “history skills,” which involve everything except remembering actual history and synthesizing information. Consequently, both literary and historical content is drained of relevance or meaning. While students learn to process data, they do not think about anything in particular.

Math and science are hurt more by Common Core’s obsession with the process over the product. Reaching the right answer means little in Common Core math. It is more important that students learn various arbitrary methods through which they can arrive at an answer. Students receive more credit for following a needlessly complicated breakdown, complete with color-coding and an array of abstract terms, for relatively simple computation. Word problems also loom large, causing teachers to spend less time on their subject and more time teaching students to highlight the right terms.

Needless to say, some students can make their way through the Common Core curriculum without knowing much math or science at all. Common Core proponents will say that this teaches students “metacognition”––thinking about thinking––and pushes students to learn how to learn. In reality, kids stop thinking, since it’s all pointless.

These two problems come together to bring about a pervasive relativism in education. Content is interchangeable and mastery is either illusory or impossible. Knowledge becomes subjective. One text is as good as another. One period of history is as important as another. One theory or formula is as useful as another. It is hard to learn how to think when there is nothing real to think about.

In such a system, thinking is only the articulation of opinion; it has no bearing on truth. This means that people don’t really need to think critically and understand why they believe what they do. They just need to have the right viewpoint and force others to conform like they’ve been forced to conform. They engage in arguments where the loudest voice wins because no one’s points are better than another. They pressure instead of persuade.

This, in turn, leads to tribalism—groups of people united in feeling and opinion, but not in reason and truth. The lack of thought makes all these groups vulnerable to mass media and prevents any organized resistance to an encroaching state or lawless ideologue in power. Indoctrination is complete when perception (i.e., whatever is on the screen, whatever an “expert” says, whatever is popular) really does become reality for most people because they’re too stupid or apathetic to respond rationally.

Good Teaching Is The Cure For Indoctrination
The only real solution to indoctrination, then, is good teachers. Good teachers (which include parents, mentors, and other knowledgeable adults) train students in methods of thought while supplying the stuff of thought. They teach a person to evaluate an argument properly, find actual solutions to problems, and determine what is true and what is false.

More importantly, they don’t succumb to promoting one ideology over another because they trust their student to reason through to the right position. This was St. Augustine’s argument in “On Christian Doctrine” (back when indoctrination meant teaching, not brainwashing), in which he recommended the inclusion of pagan learning in Christian education, trusting in the rational faith of the Christian scholar to handle it properly.

Only clear thought will be the death of foggy indoctrination. If people want to pass on their ideas on to the next generation, they should focus on building up logic, not just giving them the right texts to read and TV shows to watch. The goal should be to understand the reasons, not follow the signals of the right tribe.

At some point, indoctrination will always collapse on itself and leave mediocrity in it wake. Teaching, by contrast, is what will sustain our culture and bring out its virtues. It fosters the presence of active thought––not uniform thought––and it is what will ultimately mend and civilize our sorely divided country.

https://thefederalist.com/2018/10/26...yone-noticing/
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Old 12-02-2020, 17:12   #10
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Amen.

And the ballot box.



True.

And, fortunately that street runs both ways.
Tony, how's this working out?


I don't remember this thread and it's a lot to read but if I get the jest of it it's what we've all been talking about and worrying about now for awhile.

Seems we should have listened better when the O said he was going to "Transform America" because for eight years they did. Only they lost the election in 2016 and we found out what was behind door number #3.

I think it's too late now, and the "Ballot Box" has been compromised to the point where whats the point...?
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Old 12-02-2020, 17:33   #11
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Tony, how's this working out?
Like shit.

Still sounding the alarm as politely as possible.
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Old 12-02-2020, 18:56   #12
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When I was growing up I was friends with a kid named Booth - great kid - came from a good family - we were like peas and carrots... we went everywhere together.
Box and Booth - we were raised as red-blooded American patriots - but we both had cousins that weren't worth a fuck...

Voting Booth and Ballot Box.
Those two little mother fuckers both betrayed their family for money and power - now we don't speak anymore.
Recently my second cousin Mail fell in with a bad crowd too. Mail Box hooked up with Voting Booth and Ballot Box last month and the three of them caused a shit show of epic proportions.
I'll probably never trust any of those mother fuckers again.

Most of the Booths and the Boxes are still tight except for those three deceptive untrustworthy pricks Mail, Voting, and Ballot can all suck my ass. They talk a big game but neither of them can do shit on their own. They just sit there motionless - they take take take take take - but they don't actually "do" anything. It took our families a long time to realize that Voting and Ballot were useless if the family didn't demand action. We learned a long time ago that we can't just depend on Voting Booth and Ballot Box to get things done.
It's amazing how many people still pretend that those two motherfuckers are the ones that do all the work.

I'm still good friends with a few members of the Booth family (no relation to Powers - God rest his soul)
-Phone Booth was a good kid but he started hanging around with some kid named Wireless and nobody has seen as much as a glimpse of Phone Booth in years.
-Paint Booth works on cars at a custom shop on the east side and I only see him a few times a year.
-Ticket Booth moved to California and went into show business
-Control Booth went to work for the Defense Department and works in DC - I think he works at the Pentagon but he doesn't talk about work very much.

The Boxes are all doing well...
-Pizza Box went to Culinary School and owns a nationwide chain of eateries
-Shoe Box moved to Milan and works as a male model. He did a joint photoshoot with Zoolander a while back
-Gift Box went to business school and works in retail. He refuses to do business with Dicks
-Tough Box joined the Army and he is deployed all the time.
-Pandora is sitting quietly in the corner waiting for Ballot Box and Voting Booth to show their ass one more time and then all hell is going to break loose.

Once Pandora gets into the fray, this bullshit about fundamentally transforming society is going to get real...
...real quick

Just dont count on Voting Booth and Ballot Box to fix anything - you have to get out there and make things happen if you want things to change.
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Old 12-02-2020, 20:08   #13
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Just read this whole thing...quite interesting. But, some more or less modern writers are missing whether I'm missing their input or not it seems important to mention them:

Leon Trotsky
Frederick Engles (I think there was a small mention of him with Carl Marx because they wrote the book.)
and of course Vladimir Lenin

I'd throw in Sal Alinsky but he's less of a Marxist and more of a straight up Communist but hey what's the difference in the end...


I'm raising a teenage boy with ADHD who began primary school outside Tacoma WA., (Fife to be exact because it was supposed to be a good school on that real estate guide.) Kindergarten and the 1st grade didn't seem too far off normal but by the time he was entering 2nd and 3rd grades I could see more clearly why he was being used as a special needs child (government funding) and I could also see where common core education was problematic not just for him but for myself to understand what they were doing. Homework was hard just to understand why he had to do simple math three different ways to solve a simple problem. I was constantly being called to the school for one thing or another and got to know everyone in his "scholastic" environment. His 2nd grade teacher ruined him from the second of week of school and I regret not taking him out of that school immediately. But he persisted to say he was happy there and had friendships he wanted to keep and so we all tried to accommodate him. [I never had that in my life, never went to the same school year to year and sometimes only spent months here or there, so I wanted him to have that stability.] That summer the teacher retired and the principle and asst. principle were both fired (let go by the district for academic failures - duh.) The 3rd and 4th grades were better but the damage was done, my son was always playing catch up and struggled with common core lesson plans although he seems very bright and smart. The doctors said he had ADHD and we tried medicine with bad results and little improvement. It was hell...but we persisted and worked closely with counselors and special education teachers that he had on top of his regular teachers throughout the day.

Why am I telling you this...

I took a new job location in Texas, North Houston area and we moved three years ago...he began the 5th Grade from scratch one the first day of a new school year and although lots of information had to be entered on school admittance forms we told them he had been diagnosed with ADHD and ODD but medications only made matters worse and we would not be doing that...that he had been in special needs classes and that they were not going to find his prior school records very welcoming. The school said not a problem we have lots of kids like that - they are boys!

Immediately he felt more at home, the lesson plans were more direct and more challenging too. The teachers were teaching and not preaching the common core crap but more importantly he would come home and tell me, "Dad, this school doesn't talk about homosexuality, transgenderism, racism and religious intolerance, like they did in Washington." My jaw about hit the floor! I suspected it was happening but none of that ever came home, it was all small incremental classes thrown into the curricula in Washington schools from about the beginning in Kindergarten...words from teachers that "It's okay to be different that somethings aren't what they seem. Everyone is special!" Well, bullsh!t, at age five...boys are boys and girls are girls and the pictures on the bathroom door should be an indication that you are one or the other and no confusion should exist. [Now I know why Ellen Page is Elliot Page except that Elliot will probably not be happy with a vagina. But I digress...]

Anyway, my son, he's an 8th grader now, he's doing okay even though it has been a tough act to follow and he's in AFJROTC and excelling there. He's got a really good head on his shoulders and I've been successful at all the important things in his life so far, he knows who he is and what he's not. He knows right from wrong and more importantly lately he knows right from Left.

They don't teach common core in Texas grade school or at least the one he goes to. Can't speak for Houston ISD, I think they are socialist!
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Old 12-02-2020, 20:24   #14
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Originally Posted by Box View Post
When I was growing up I was friends with a kid named Booth - great kid - came from a good family - we were like peas and carrots... we went everywhere together.
Box and Booth - we were raised as red-blooded American patriots - but we both had cousins that weren't worth a fuck...

Voting Booth and Ballot Box.
Those two little mother fuckers both betrayed their family for money and power - now we don't speak anymore.
Recently my second cousin Mail fell in with a bad crowd too. Mail Box hooked up with Voting Booth and Ballot Box last month and the three of them caused a shit show of epic proportions.
I'll probably never trust any of those mother fuckers again.

Most of the Booths and the Boxes are still tight except for those three deceptive untrustworthy pricks Mail, Voting, and Ballot can all suck my ass. They talk a big game but neither of them can do shit on their own. They just sit there motionless - they take take take take take - but they don't actually "do" anything. It took our families a long time to realize that Voting and Ballot were useless if the family didn't demand action. We learned a long time ago that we can't just depend on Voting Booth and Ballot Box to get things done.
It's amazing how many people still pretend that those two motherfuckers are the ones that do all the work.

I'm still good friends with a few members of the Booth family (no relation to Powers - God rest his soul)
-Phone Booth was a good kid but he started hanging around with some kid named Wireless and nobody has seen as much as a glimpse of Phone Booth in years.
-Paint Booth works on cars at a custom shop on the east side and I only see him a few times a year.
-Ticket Booth moved to California and went into show business
-Control Booth went to work for the Defense Department and works in DC - I think he works at the Pentagon but he doesn't talk about work very much.

The Boxes are all doing well...
-Pizza Box went to Culinary School and owns a nationwide chain of eateries
-Shoe Box moved to Milan and works as a male model. He did a joint photoshoot with Zoolander a while back
-Gift Box went to business school and works in retail. He refuses to do business with Dicks
-Tough Box joined the Army and he is deployed all the time.
-Pandora is sitting quietly in the corner waiting for Ballot Box and Voting Booth to show their ass one more time and then all hell is going to break loose.

Once Pandora gets into the fray, this bullshit about fundamentally transforming society is going to get real...
...real quick

Just dont count on Voting Booth and Ballot Box to fix anything - you have to get out there and make things happen if you want things to change.
LMFAO! Brilliant absolutely brilliant.

Next time you see your "smiling" cousin Amazon Box tell him to stop showing up on my doorstep expecting me to pick him up and carry him inside. I know it's cold outside baby but really!

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Old 12-02-2020, 20:27   #15
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Great write up ODNT.

What a very encouraging personal experience for your son (if I was a kid today I’d have been drugged or confined for sure). Sounds like the move was just the ticket for your son !

Unfortunately, too often the schools appear to be the flash point of transformation - and as you and FlagDayNCO point out - obviously not always in a positive way.

By the time a young person hits college it is full court press indoctrination.
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