Lying, cheating, and Stealing in Politics, Part 2 -Elections

I have been getting lots of feedback from readers of this blog. Some has been good, but, clearly, changes are needed to keep the readers happy.

First of all, readers complained that the earlier blog entries are too long and clogged up with science and facts.  Too few venomous adjectives.  Too few raving tirades.  The blog, readers say, needs to be less like Martin Heidegger in “What is Metaphysics?”  and more like the Borowitz Report.

No problem.  I can fix that, especially with today’s blog, which is about elections.

Those of you who have been complaining about all the research and complicated factual information in the earlier blog articles can now try out a simple, but revealing, exercise that explains a lot about elections.

If you are a Democrat, say over and over again in a loud voice “O-BA-MA. O-BA-MA. O-BA-MA. O-BA-MA. O-BA-MA. O-BA-MA. O-BA-MA. O-BA-MA……” Keep this up for 3 minutes.

If you are Republican, you can do the same thing with “NEWT. NEWT. NEWT. NEWT…”

If you are independent, you can pick either one.

(P.S. Don’t try this in the office.)

Now, after the exercise, note carefully how you feel, how your thinking has slowed to a crawl, how you have a warm relaxed glow all over.  Immediately hook yourself up to a brain scan device.  You will note that at least one entire hemisphere of your brain has TOTALLY SHUT DOWN! Maybe both are out of commission.  That’s the idea.

A few months ago, I went to a rally against the Keystone tar sands pipeline at the Canadian Embassy. A group of us stood around holding various provocative signs chanting over and over again, “WE DON’T WANT YOUR DIRTY OIL!”  After a while, I started to feel really good. I started to hate Canadians and pipeline-lovers around the world.  At the same time, I started to feel really close to the other chanters. It was transformative.

 It probably didn’t hurt that some of the anti-pipeline chanters were cute 25-year old female hotties.

Anyway, the point is chanting with all those cute girls did something weird to my brain. I felt good about the people I was with, and I hated all the bad people who love tar sands and dirty oil pipelines.

Chanting  is what Buddhist and Yogic meditators do all the time.  The Hare Krishna people who used to hang around airports were really into repeating: “Ha-Ray Ha-Ray Krishna Krishna.” I used to love that one. They call it a “mantra.”

In the case of meditation, chanting a mantra (like Ommm Manay Padmay Ommmm) is supposed to bring you closer to God. That might be a good thing for religious cults, but think about that in the political context. Yikes!  Get closer to Ron Paul?  Or Joe Biden?

Holy cow! NO THANK YOU!

The Koreans and Chinese used to make American prisoners of war repeat slogans back in the Korean War in the 1950s. It is one of the key techniques of what was known then as “brainwashing” or mind control, and it is still in widespread worldwide use.

In North Korea, they kept on using their highly evolved brainwashing techniques after the war ended, except that they used them on themselves. It worked so well that now millions of North Koreans are convinced that it is fun to starve to death for the greater glory of the Great Leader.

Somebody should send them a copy of "Animal Farm."   Where is George Orwell when we need him?

Back to American elections.  Mind-control techniques are standard practice in political campaigns today. The key is to use anything and everything you can to shut down the rational, logical part of the brains of an entire electorate.  So far. It seems to be working well.

Of course, it takes a lot of money to make it work, but more on that later.

Next time, Part 3 - How Our Elections Are Gamed.