Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

“I have spent my entire lifetime treading water in an ocean of lies. I am fucking sick and tired of it.”—L. Neil Smith

The above comment struck quite a chord with me. El Neil’s experience is universal, but both his awareness of and his response to it are rare. The current Covid scam, for example, makes a rare few souls question how its promoters have been able to get away with such a con game.

The answer is that our brains have been washed in an ocean of lies. Try telling that to any but the aforementioned few, however, and the response is either “I couldn’t be brainwashed!” or “I’d know if I’d been brainwashed!”

Really? If you are brainwashed you do not , by very definition, know it.

So how is it accomplished?
In two main ways: 1) indoctrination by government (“public”) schools and, 2) a constant bombardment of the “politically correct” agenda from the MSM (mainstream media). The latter uses radio/television/print/online “news” in conjunction with the dispensers of what passes for entertainment these days, i.e. movies (both online and off), Youtube, etc.

As to the former, Gary D. Barnett has pointed out that, “Mass schooling guarantees a weak and compliant population, one that has lost the ability to think critically,” and Laurence M. Vance has suggested that, “A public school is a government school and therefore should not exist. Public schools indoctrinate children…”

But John Dewey, “the father of public education”, went so far as to state that, “The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society.” Notice if you will, comrades, that the brainwashed are in “harmony” with the “collective”. Such as Dewey want to save us from the scourge of unharmonious children.

It is to weep.

As for the MSM, may God deliver us and the saints preserve us from those pathologically lying swine! Many of my family and friends sit stupefied in front of television and/or computer screens for at least an hour a day; they passively soak up the lies by omission, the distortions, the fabrications, and the outright prevarications—and they consider themselves to be “informed”.

It is to weep and wail.

Here are two quotes from men who have decades of inside knowledge of “the press”:

“For practical purposes, today’s press is an arm of government.”—Fred Reed

“If you rely on the mass media to inform you about your community, state and nation, you will, with rare exceptions, be woefully ignorant of what is really going on.”—Charley Reese

To occasional suggestions that they investigate alternate viewpoints, the reactions of my friends and kin are anger and hysteria. I bet it would be easier to pull teeth without anaesthesia. Such responses are typical of those who have been brainwashed.

Once I was even told that, “It must be true, otherwise they couldn’t say it.” When I inquired as to what was to prevent the MSM from telling a deliberate lie I was told that, “The government wouldn’t let them.”

It is to weep and wail and gnash teeth.

A few will respond by actually looking at alternate sources; whether they agree or disagree with the opinions, this is proof that they have at least not been entirely propagandised. This is a small but, I hope, growing circle.

I am often asked, “How do you know that you haven’t been brainwashed?!” To the astonishment of the challenger I reply that I know that I have been brainwashed. Everyone has. The only remaining question is what to do about it…

One must struggle against "what everyone knows " and "perceived 'wisdom'" every day. One must analyse and doubt even—and especially—one’s own core beliefs. Then, and only than, can one hope to be free from brainwashing. This is, of course, an ongoing process and a disquieting one. It’s infinitely more comforting to just believe and to do what and as one has been told. So…

Choose wisely.

Some final quotes [Yes I know that I quote others a lot, but I’m just smart enough to know that most of them are smarter than I am]:

“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.”—H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

“In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”—Edward Bernays—Propaganda—1928

“If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.”—Harriet Tubman

“Whoever controls the media, controls the (people's) minds.”—Jim Morrison of the Doors

“…what’s wrong with this country [the USA] today [is] it’s turning into a bunch of lemmings who are being marched off a cliff without bothering to look left or right.”—Jesse Ventura

“The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.”—Archibald Macleish

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”—Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Yours for Peace and Liberty,

—Manuel Miles, aka Kaptain Kanada