November 1978 found me in fifth grade, but I remember it like it was yesterday.  It was one of those events, like Pearl Harbor, the assassination of Kennedy, and 9/11, that sears itself into your mind.  The news of over 900 dead in Jonestown Guyana at the hands of a religious madman.  To me, it left a lot of questions nobody could answer.  The lack of answers disturbed this little boy far more profoundly than the answers ever could.

How could so many follow one man even to their own deaths?  What spell did he cast upon them?
Could someone do the same to me?  Can I resist?
Is this something one can learn?  Can even I learn to do this?

These are tough questions for an 11 year old boy.  Questions no adult around me could (or would) answer.  But I had determined then to learn these secrets no matter where it took me.  And it was quite the journey into lots of blind alleys, bizarre occult rituals, secret organizations, and finally to the banal truth.  I’ve read books on the occult, interviewed practicing pagans, witches, evangelicals, and satanists.  I’ve interviewed minor cult leaders, business leaders, a few minor political leaders, and even some professional salesmen.  I’ve delved into conspiracy theories, learned about secret organizations, secret programs, secret practices.  I’ve studied certain aspects of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, religion, mysticism, and so much more.  I’ve always been fascinated by leadership and charisma (having so little of each myself).   As I wrote earlier, I’ve been down a lot of blind alleys.  All of it done in my spare time, of course.  I’m no professional researcher.

So what are the common threads between guys like Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Lee Iacoca, Martin Luthor King Jr., and all those others who seem to pull the world in whatever direction they go?  It seems like quite the motley lot, all jumbled together.  One might think there must be multiple ways.  But really, there’s not.  Each had established a base of authority uniquely theirs.  Each stuck to a few very simple messages and hammered on them over and over again.  Literally to the point of filtering the whole world through the lens of their message.  Of course, politicians tend to have others give them the message, but the presentation is all their own – perfected through many years of practice.

And here’s the part that I find scary; anyone can learn to become a cult of personality.  It only takes a willingness to learn and lots of practice.  A few simple techniques done over and over again.

The techniques of indoctrination are well documented, so I won’t bother going over that.  Suffice to say, many of these techniques were learned from various cult leaders, developed by psychologists, then practiced and perfected by people such as salesmen, politicians, public relations experts, and even bureaucrats.  Believe it or not, a large part of the advertising surrounding you every day was developed using techniques learned from cults.

And this also scares me.  It’s everywhere.  It’s in advertising, it’s in the papers, it’s on billboards, it’s on the radio, television, the Internet.  You cannot go a day outside your home without being exposed to the mind control techniques developed over the course of the last 90 years or so.  Yes, it’s mind control; the same thing that invokes thoughts of MKULTRA, bizarre cults, and manchuran candidates.  All of that, plus decades of legitimate research into psychology and sociology all goes into controlling your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs, your habits, your spending, and your vote.  We cannot escape it.

Ronald Reagan, for instance, left a failing acting career to take what was then a huge salary as an official spokesman for General Electric.  He had a natural oratory talent and a common man image.  But during those 8 years, he was almost never seen alone.  Edward Langely was a PR expert who studied the giants like Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, Joseph Goebbels, and had studied the cultish techniques of the Nazis during WWII.  During those 8 years, Ronald Reagan visited every GE facility in the country and had met with nearly every one of the quarter million GE employees.  He also gave up to 16 speeches per day.  But all the travel time was spent at the knee of Edward Langely who fed him the company line.  It was the classic mind control technique of constant memorization and regurgitation of the same thoughts in an infinite number of ways; driving out all contradiction.  By the end of 8 years, Reagan had gone from a New Deal liberal to a Corporatist conservative.  Towards the end, he started giving speeches for an organization called the National Association of Manufacturers as well.  Their message was nearly a carbon copy of the GE message.

Reagan’s speech patterns was so smooth because he rarely spoke a word after 1965 that was not already given to him in the 8 years of programming.  Everything he said was from memory without much thought.  He rarely had to hesitate to think about any response.  This gave him the air of confidence that so many look for in a leader.  Plus, he still retained a “common man” image from his Hollywood years.  He was the first American Manchurian candidate – created by a corporation to do exactly as they desired.  His presidency reflects this.  Since then, we’ve had several attempts by PR experts to duplicate their success with Reagan.  George W. Bush was another one hand picked by PR experts.

But it’s not just about Americans being fooled by Manchurian candidates.  It’s also about us being manipulated directly.  The PR industry – which is the most egregious violator of our free will – now has 90+ years and billions of dollars in research behind it.  Experts already know exactly what percentage of the American population will accept message X if presented using technique B.  As Edward Bernays once said, it works because “it is a logical result of the way our democratic society is organized“.  What’s even worse is that these experts know exactly how to craft a fallacious argument so that most people of average intelligence will not detect the fallacy.    One of my greatest fears is that the more we learn about psychology, the more effective the mind control used on us shall become.  And make no mistake, propaganda IS mind control.  They are as equivalent as gravity and acceleration.  We already have little defense left to us.  Nothing we read, see, or hear can be trusted, (and I hope, dear reader, that you include me in that statement).  People have managed to insert propaganda into every form of media, even university studies and alternative news sources.  Few have the desire, the skill, and the time to track down and verify everything we hear, see, and read.  So we’re faced with a choice of either accepting and basing our opinions on very little trustworthy information, or we must accept that our opinions will be unduly influenced by lies deliberately designed to manipulate our thoughts, our opinions, and all our subsequent words and actions.

What are our opinions but the very things upon which we act?

Democracy can only function when the participants are informed and reasoning.   This was the original purpose for educating the public in the first place.  But with the advent of mass media, the ongoing perfection of propaganda, and the inadequacy and slow demise of liberal education, we are now faced with a problem that has grown into a national crisis.  Propaganda is now being applied to us on an industrial scale.  Through this cradle to grave inundation of false information and sophistry, large segments of the population are convinced of things that are actually against their own interests.  Propaganda is using the first amendment right to free speech to undermine the very basis of democracy itself.

And don’t think that elevating public education is a solution.  That only causes the propagandist to adjust the delivery; to craft the message to account for the new level of education.   It does not solve the underlying problem.

So can anyone learn to be a cult leader?  Sure, just study to become a PR expert and practice, practice, practice.  Can you defend yourself against it?  It’s becoming increasingly difficult and may someday become impossible.  The legacy of Jim Jones is all around us.  All of America is slowly becoming a cult.  Democracy is dying as a result.

This is in response to a post by Joshua Holland, entitled “Some Dems Brain-Dead on Deficits; Others Breaking Out Some Political Jiu-Jistu”.  One would do well to read his post before returning to read the rest of this one.

During the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes wrote a series of letters to then president Roosevelt, councilling him on matters of the economy.  In all his letters, the theme was to spend far more than he already had.  But being a politician, Roosevelt was more concerned of the possible backlash of greater spending.  Already, corporations were organizing a propaganda campaign against his new deal social programs and would take any increased spending as an opportunity to turn public opinion against it.  Roosevelt was already walking a political tightrope without a net.

But economics is a science of hard, cold numbers.  X amount becomes self sustaining, anything less is not.  Thus, the new deal programs only prevented the worst of poverty’s rapaciousness without actually pulling us out of the depression.  Nor does economics care for the politics of the times.  X amount becomes self sustaining regardless of public opinion.  Anything less will not; again, regardless of public opinion.

Keynes was made aware of this situation, so in his frustration and in an effort to help counter the propaganda organized against the new deal, he published his final letter – a scathing criticism of the moderated policies Roosevelt was pursuing – openly in the New York Times.  There, for all to read, was the worlds pre-eminent economist telling all of America how to lift themselves out of poverty and depression, and the fallacy of moderation for the sake of political expediency.

You can still read his nearly prophetic letter here .  In fact, this letter seems so relevant to our times that if one were to remove all references to names and dates, it seems as if it could be an open letter to the Obama Administration, written and published just yesterday.  But I remind the reader that this letter was published on December 16, 1933.

Here is where conservatives claim that Keynesian economics failed to pull us out of the depression.  They claim that it was the war – not the policies that did the job.  But they are misrepresenting the truth for their own agenda.  Some go so far as to claim that this represents the failure of Keynesian economics.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  And every reader here must know this to counter the conservatives’ lies and half truths.  The letter proves that Keynes was right all along; that government spending must be absolutely enormous for the economic stimulus to become self sustaining.

The conservatives are wrong because it was their own opposition to the new deal that prevented it from working in the first place.  It was their opposition that Roosevelt feared when he moderated his spending.  It was  their own opposition that prevented the recovery.  It took a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to sweep away conservative opposition to the proper levels of government spending necessary for recovery.    Only once we entered into war did conservatives abandon their “sky is falling” rhetoric about government spending.  Only then did they accept spending levels equal to what Keynes was calling for all along.  It was not the war itself, but the political will (to spend appropriately) that the war enabled, that brought us out of the depression.  Had we spent the same amount without a war, we would have had the same economic recovery without all the bloodshed and wasted resources.

This is the hard lesson for us during the Obama administration.  Once again, we are faced with a depression, with conservatives organizing in opposition to the proper levels of government spending required to pull us out of it.  And yet, we still accept moderation for political expedience rather than looking to the hard, cold numbers that tell us what we must do.  Once again, we fear the “sky is falling” rhetoric of conservative opposition and let them paralyze us in poverty and depression until some overriding event unites us to sweep conservatives aside and do what needs to be done.

I wonder what that event will be this time?  Or will we continue like this for decades?

The main difference today is that our conservative predecessors have attempted to prevent us from having this option.  Remember, Keynes said we should accumulate a surplus during good times to ameliorate the cost of deficit spending during bad times.  Bill Clinton followed this advice to good effect; turning a flagging economy with deficit spending into a booming economy with projected surpluses.  Unlike Clinton, our conservative leaders have spent like drunken sailors with no limit credit cards during the best of times.  Of course, nobody can prove it, but I’ve seen evidence that this was their intent all along.  This being the only means they could find to get the American people to accept cuts in social security, disability, and other hated social programs.  This is an agenda called “starve the beast” exemplified by the likes of Grover Norquist, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, and other prominent conservatives.  Their intent was literally to drive America to the brink of default to force cuts in social services.  And then they can blame Democrats for causing the default if they don’t go along with it.  It’s both ingenious and insidious at the same time.  They would rather see an America in financial ruin than to see it continue to extend a helping hand to the sick, disabled, unemployed, retired, poor and dispossessed; all the “unworthy” people in their opinion, I’m sure.

Through this lens, one can plainly see the logic of calling for both cuts in social programs as a means of balancing the budget while also calling for tax cuts.  It’s all part of the same “drive America to the brink” agenda we have seen for the past 30 years.  First, we’ve seen them undermine social programs and federal revenue streams.  Now they call for cuts in both even after they presided over unprecedented spending increases at most economically inappropriate times.  If successful, they will then call for kicking out from under us, the very social contract we have with our government (thus with each other), that prevents us from complete dependence upon the corporation for our very lives and livelihoods.  The consequence of their success is clear; the re-imposition of a two tiered socio-economic structure upon us.  The haves and have nots; the masters and the slaves; the rich and the rest; whatever you want to call it, it’s all the same result.  A population depending solely upon employment for survival.  Just like it was with the “anything goes” capitalism of the late 1800s before the advent of unionization, labor laws, social, economic and environmental regulation, child labor laws,  banning ‘company store’ policies…

I’m sure you get the gist of the intent.