Many times people ask me, “Are you a golfer?” And my typical response is, “No, but I play golf.” To embrace the identity of ‘golfer’ is to take on some attributes that I really don’t want to take on. It sort of raises certain expectations for me when I get on the golf course.
In the same way, being a person who owns a gun does not automatically make someone a ‘gun owner’ in terms of their identity. And in fact, there may be some assumptions that people make about who gun owners are and what gun owners are like that would make them want to distance themselves from the ‘gun owner’ identity. But adopting that identity is important for people to become more engaged in the gun culture. …
If they don’t develop a ‘gun owner’ identity, it’s unlikely that these new entrants into gun culture will become 2A advocates and there’s also, again, this concern that many have that being a 2A advocate today means buying into a whole package of political positions and ideologies that not all new gun owners are going to buy into.
— Professor David Yamane in Gun Culture 2.0 and the Changing Face of Gun Owners in America
Tldr a leftist who owns a gun is still a leftist.
The stigma behind exercising a Constitutional Right is attributed to those who have allowed Gun Control zealots to set the pace. Because of that the 2A is tied to crime and is always on the hot seat or under the bus while Gun Control gets cheered and skates on by. And why is that?
That is because so called defenders of the 2A never set the pace and defined Gun Control for milquetoast America. Well…History defines Gun Control and History clearly confirms Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is a racist and nazi based agenda.
Frankly milquetoast America et al…When you hear the truth about Gun Control and its diabolical baggage and it falls on deaf ears it confirms You have some racist and nazi in you.
1) The Second Amendment is one thing.
2) The criminal misuse of firearms, bricks, bats, knives, vehicles, etc. is another thing.
3) History Confirms Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is a racist and nazi based Thing.
Exactly, Debbie! History AND precedent case law! Also…In America, there are Explicit Laws of the Land that the violation of amounts to serious Felonies against racism and Disarmament of Free Citizens protected by a Constitution not only guaranteeing rights but STRICTLY and Clearly establishing that No government shall attempt to independently abrogate the will of The People, who allow ‘Government’ to exist by consent only.
There should not even be a debate about this immutable FACT of Egalitarian life in America, as designed by the Founders.
The bigger issue here is how do these Deep State Marxists keep getting the fuck away with continuous chipping away at the Constitution and making their own Unconstitutional Laws when this is a clear violation of Federal Criminal Law that protects the Constitution from such violations under 18-USCC 241-242 (and other similar statutes) without indictment and prosecution?
the short answer, of course, is that the entire Deep State Criminal justice system is corrupted from the top down and inside out, hell-bent with an entrenched Marxist agenda as so ‘in our faces’ exposed and demonstrated during the Trump tenure. But virtually nothing has been accomplished to eliminate this nation killing problem? It’s like the crack, ‘after all is said and done, there will be more said…than done.’
This article appears to be just another redirected psueado-intellectual obfuscation that’s useless to combat the growing Totalitarian juggernaut that is demonstrably severely determined to disarm the American populate.
However, the comments herein impressed me immensely. It makes me a little more of a believer that there might really be a ‘silent majority of true Egalitarian American Patriots to provide the proactive answer to save our Country?
“The bigger issue here is how do these Deep State Marxists keep getting the fuck away with continuous chipping away at the Constitution…”
Two quick and immutable answers:
1. Politics is always a case of “depends on what ‘is’ is”
2. The majority of voters (dead or alive) always determine outcomes
Hi, thanks for sharing .. very good
It’s a much broader problem than that.
Plenty of people might speak but not be 1A absolutists on behalf of someone they don’t like.
It’s similar with 8A, 4A, 2A, and so on.
True. But even if just a small percentage of these new owners turn to POTG we have another victory. And more and more households have guns now thanks to the efforts of the fascist left.
The fascists will tell you that it’s just a small number of old white guys owning all those guns. Which is a blatant lie. And the more lies they tell, the more their credibilty is damaged.
The truth is too eas6y to find these days and this terrifies the fascists. Look how desperate lil’d and miner49er have become of late. Hell, lil’d has vanished of late. That could just be because he’s been 5150’d or his parole violated.
Lil’derpian might be hunting down one if those factory original/standard production/hand-fitted military contract M9s he spoke of last week. 🤪
Could take a while. 🤣
Dacien was on one relatively recently I think for the story on Australia, but hoping he gets banned soon. I reported him myself after he started comparing conservatives to Nazi’s.
He’s the closest thing we have to a nazi around here.
So many things are – and have been for decades – an unspoken litmus test for where people stand on issues that have no connection to other issues. Abortion, ecology, immigration, socks with sandals to mention a few.
“issues that have no connection to other issues”
No, not really. The same basic principles apply to and connect all human choices.
Armed self defense isn’t the only issue, but it’s a bellwether issue – a clear indicator whether a person believes in the right and responsibility to take care of oneself, or wishes to be a dependent pet of the state.
Leftist gun owners (people who believe that “Society is best when everyone is a dependent pet of the state, except I have this one hobby that I’d like them to leave alone”) may exist, but that doesn’t make it a rational, defensible, or ethically consistent position.
Since when has the left been ethically consistent? If it weren’t for double standards, the leftists would have no standards at all.
Exactly!
On the plus side (from their perspective), since they categorically reject moral principles, they can never be accused of hypocrisy.
Or rational? Or logical for that matter? For example:
Liberals- let’s make it easier to get out on bail, raise the limit for theft being a felony, and not prosecute crimes, what’s the worst that can happen?
Worst happens (aka. Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles): Again, liberals- “it’s all the guns fault and why are conservatives picking on us, it’s conservatives faults as well. How dare they point out the logical consequences of our illogical laws. I need a safe space.”
“If they don’t develop a ‘gun owner’ identity, it’s unlikely that these new entrants into gun culture will become 2A advocates and there’s also, again, this concern that many have that being a 2A advocate today means buying into a whole package of political positions and ideologies that not all new gun owners are going to buy into.”
Almost half the people who own AND use guns who respond to firearms focused surveys answer the question (or similar) “Are you a gun owner?” by checking “No” but will check “Yes” for the question (or similar) “Are you a gun user?”. Over 60% of people who conceal EDC and answer the survey question (or similar) “Do you conceal carry a firearm?” will check “NO” for their answer.
If I can identify as a nineteenth century territorial governor, they can identify however they want. As far as how they vote, Joe Biden is doing a pretty good job of recruiting Republican voters all by himself anyway. As Napoleon said, never interrupt your enemy in the midst of making a mistake.
How do your poll numbers sink that fast while the media runs cover for you? Imagine them treating Puppet Joe like they treated Trump. Actually, I think the reason his numbers are sinking so fast is because people were fooled by the media and voted for the puppet. Now, they can’t help but notice how terrible he is, even with the media constantly running propaganda.
Why did they stop the Covid death counter after Joe came in? Have people stopped dying yet? Joe’s brilliant plan for saving America was 100 DAYS OF MASKING UP! LOL! Remember that? That was it. Oh, and withholding life saving medication from political rivals. What a sick joke!
*I’m sure 100 days was very scientific. It was totally not arbitrary. /s
COVID is the one thing the Big Guy is almost even on in the polling, even though the CDC now says more Americans have died of it under Biden than Trump. (Hard to believe when there were so many COVID patients stuck in nursing homes by Dem governors when Trump was in office, not to mention the COVID deaths which also involved other contributing factors such as gunshot wounds.) Personally I think it was the botched pullout in Afghanistan that sunk his presidency but Quinnipiac has him at 25% on immigration, 67% disapproval. It’s a lot like that CNN guy standing in front of the building engulfed in flames calmly explaining that the protests were ‘mostly peaceful’. Eventually people will believe their own eyes over their lies.
Eventually?
Not even close for about a third of true Americans, 36% in this case. Which means 64% of you are lost without the media’s essential guidance on what to believe.
We Leftists know the truth and trust the media no matter what.
The NYT, WaPo, and Salon are my religious reads of the day. They tell us what to think, when to grow angry, and give us our marching orders.
They are my bible, they are infallible.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-dips-second-lowest-record.aspx
I just watched his talk to the National Firearms Law Seminar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_b9HIrjrAY.
It’s good stuff. He is still “liberal,” possibly for his own safety in academia. I’ll take him, no problem. A Democrat who owns guns has a vested interest in the Second Amendment and are allies in at least this one issue.
Sometime people are just people. It will take some seasoning for them to develop into 2A advocates. If they are the kind of gun owner that seeks knowledge and training, and becomes a “shooter”, they will become interested in preserving their right to do so. If they are a sock drawer gun owner, who knows?
The best we can do is support and encourage participation in shooting activities, to sprinkle that seasoning.
Always offer to take new people along for shooting activities. It can pay off.
Yes, it can pay off. One guy tried to give me $100.00 to show him how to shoot properly. I told him “Sure, I’ll teach you. Its easy. Keep your money, basic essential skills training should be free for everyone.”
THIS ⬆️ CANNOT BE STRESSED ENOUGH!
JWM and 40cB are spot on.
Just stop judging people. There’s nothing wrong with driving a Camaro. There I said it.
Hey I agree a % of new gun owner’s will “get it” that Dims want to disarm them. With the performance of slow Joe’s damnable administration I hope everyone will get it! There’s a helluva lot of idiots out there so whatever..
Not a ’99 Camaro. I’m sorry but just NO.
The “progressive” narrative is failing. The only question is how much damage the “progressives” will do on their way down.
The complete and total permanent utter ruination of America on every social and economic level of which we will never recover from.
Liberals are liberals first. There is nothing about owning a gun that changes that.
There’s an expression that a conservative is a liberal that’s been mugged, and I think that might apply to these 12 million or so new gun owners. It was the ‘mostly peaceful’ protests and the defund the police movement that motivated them to buy guns because of the epiphany that the Democrats had no interest in their personal security. The promise from the Dems has always been ‘don’t fend for yourself, let the government provide for you’, and that extends to crime and personal security. These people have realized that they’ve been abandoned by that government and forced to fend for themselves. It’s likely many of them will question their trust in government in other areas as well.
Then they went to try an buy firearms, finding out, in some states, that Obama lied when he said that it is easier to buy a gun than it is to buy a book. In some states (Il and NJ) it may take months to complete a purchase. That, and that alone, has resulted in a dip in support for more gun control, as people have suddenly been slapped in the face with the realization that the gun control advocates are also lying through their teeth.
And a subset of those are going to notice “hey, they’re talking about banning MY gun” or “wait, MY magazines are bigger than 10 rounds…”
Perhaps the issue should be presented to them as simply as “Do you want to keep your gun?”
They’re of the mind that they’ll keep it regardless of any law.
These are the same people by and large who have been using illegal drugs recreationally and casually despite their legal status for much of their young and adult lives. Prohibition isn’t a thing to them. The rich like prohibition because they can afford to get around any obstacles that may present themselves. These people just ignore prohibition because “fuck it, why not?” and we’ve seen demonstrated over and over and over that as long as their politics and pronouns are approved they’ll never experience the same consequences as some old white guy in Maine would for keeping a prohibited AR out at his camp.
These people are scum of the highest order. Self-righteous, narcissistic, entitled, nigh-invulnerable. I should know, half my related family are these self-declared “radical leftist” drug-addled cretins who follow the philosophy of “do what thou wilt” while screaming that grandma holding a flag on Jan.6 is a nazi terrorist who needs to be flayed alive in the town square. They’re irrational, mentally ill, violent, dangerous and the politically chosen.
Exactly. These are the people to whom statistics mean nothing, as they always think they are the exception and have a real problem seeing other perceptions. They have no empathy or sympathy yet fully believe they are good people.
Narcissists don’t know they’re narcissists.
When talking to a telephone survey/poll, emulate this?
https://www.rescuehumor.com/2016/10/07/telemarketer-calls-fake-crime-scene-prank-call/?__cf_chl_captcha_tk__=pmd_UhBkIWCbNRNCaFhf9m1uWrRZCcmevt41Fy6gjsiPyKs-1633707255-0-gqNtZGzNAyWjcnBszQhR
Now that was funny.
“Now that was funny.”
Happy to be here, grateful for the opportunity, proud to serve.
Thanks, had to share that! What a wonderful way to deal with the kind of human trash that feels entitled to “take just a few minutes of your time” since all of us have a finite number of minutes in our lives time wasters who steal some of it suck.
“Thanks, had to share that!”
Years ago, tried an emulation, once, just once.
When a call arrived that was clearly telemarketing, I said, “What? What? Aw man, I’m trying to rob this place and your are taking up my time!”
Thought about that later, and realized the telemarketer could report this, and have the address discovered; call the cops.
Once, only once.
An oldy but goody! Still don’t know how he did that without cracking honestly.
“When talking to a telephone survey/poll, emulate this?”
That’s like 25 years old, by now, and a true *classic*.
Tom Mabe has a *lot* more head games he plays with people…
“That’s like 25 years old, by now, and a true *classic*.”
An OBG for sure, but there are new viewers, subscribers, followers here from time to time; some even younger than the joke is old.
Owning a car does not make you race car driver.
No. It doesn’t. But it makes you qualified to run a mutherphucker down.
“Owning a car does not make you race car driver.”
Doesn’t that kinda depend on how “auto racing” is defined?
If you own a car you are automatically racist!
“If you own a car you are automatically racist!”
Ziiiiiiinnngggg !
Good one; liked it.
A whole bunch of “gun people” are within 20 years of putting it in the holster for the final time. Meanwhile all these new owners do not hold the typical set of views and values of the old guard. Change is coming to the gun culture, and you probably won’t like it.
“Change is coming to the gun culture, and you probably won’t like it.”
The change won’t be to your liking, I assure you. The new breed coming up are some of the most aggressive concerning gun rights, and asserting those rights… 😉
Yeah, but quite a few of them think Multicam Black is an acceptable pattern for gear. And don’t even get me started about the Kryptek Typhon fans!
They’re uncivilized! Uncivilized I say! What with their SMG mag pouches and their fancy rip-away IFAKs on their body armor running those goddamn suppressed SBRs with, like, infrared lasers and shit and those NODz thingies! The Hell do these people think they are? Sharks!?
Fuck man, when these people take over TTAG’s gonna end up with podcast like that Joe Rogan weirdo or… God forbid, a Meme of the Day post!
“Hannibal ad portus” we shall cry, but it will be far too late to save the gun culture because by then popular opinion might actually be that the 1911 isn’t the best EDC gun ever created for any and all circumstances!
Goddamn heathens, taking our culture away!
Pfft anyone who owns guns but doesn’t think they are a “gun owner” would be as retarded as someone not being able to look down and recognize their gender.
” Yamane: Lots of America’s New Gun Owners Won’t Necessarily Want to Identify as ‘Gun Owners’ ”
There is no proof of this headline statement.
Oh, many of them will not want to come around this and other sites and be made fun of as FUDDS and fair-weather POTG but I doubt very many will want to willingly give up their new tool just because Big Brother says they’re unsafe. If they’ve owned their firearm for 2 weeks they know that’s BS. Really- out of the 100 million or so gun owners in the US- how many do you think want to make it the only thing they take seriously or want to talk about?
Encourage new gun owners all you can, whenever you can, anytime you can. Don’t even think about turning them off. Remember- it wasn’t gun people who convinced the majority of the new 2019-21 gun owners to purchase firearms, it was the dimwit left and woke cretins who did. Now WE need to start reaching out to them- they’ve already made their decision and taken the first step.
No proof? He said “Lots”!!!!
Hasn’t it been a widely held belief for years now many people who own guns won’t admit it to begin with?
Are we now saying that this assertion is as wrong as a suggestion from Miner about spare instrumentation parts or has something changed?
If your response to this story is to say “Well then, f*** new gun owners.”, guess what. You ARE the problem.
One of the biggest gripes against the 2A community I’ve heard in the nearly 40 years I’ve been a firearms enthusiast is that it’s the “gun people”, not the guns, that’s the problem, especially in the last 15 years. We all joke about the neck-bearded tacticfool idiot that thinks he’s a ‘gunfighter’ because he reads Recoil magazine religiously, has subbed to Larry Vickers on YT, shoots gelatin in his garage and loves to used pretentious 2A slang in his every day language (“I CCW my EDC in a IWB, but have a BUG in APX carry in case I have to CQB on the way to my LGS….” yes, I’ve heard idiots talk like this), it’s good fun to mock these types.
But there’s a lesser percentage of the entirety of the community that comes across as immature, childishly provocative, insulting, profane, intolerant and bullying. They’re the ones that open carry into Starbuck, Chipotles or any other “lib” places just to annoy or fearmonger. They’re the ones online that use all-cap screaming to say “F*CK YOU P*SSY!” to anyone who displays reservation about gun ownership. They’re the ones that want to argue endlessly with folks that are ‘in process’ of learning about or deciding about the 2A, telling them that if they don’t agree with being allowed to buy fully automatic machine guns and carry them onto airplanes or into prisons or schools then their a “Communist piece of sh*t!”. They’re the locker room loudmouth jackasses that think the more vulgar one is and the better one tears down, insults or humiliates another, the funnier it is.
These are the trash bags that are destroying the 2A and concealed carry movement and are seriously, irrevocably damaging the argument. You don’t win new friends and successfully make your case by belittling, cursing, mocking or intimidating others. Only a 3rd grade school yard bully thinks that’s a good idea.
I’ve no doubt many of the people that Professor Yamane are speaking of are resistant to adopt the moniker ‘gun owner’ simply because they don’t want to be associated with that kind of hyper-aggressive, confrontational, foul-mouthed culture.
I get that we boil over when the left outright lies about the 2A or gunowners after a tragic Sandy Hook or Sulphur Springs shooting, how they blame gunowners and inanimate objects and give their own terroristic thugs a complete pass for rioting, burning, looting and killing just because of politics. We all seethe when a professional liar like Joe Biden or idiots like Beto O’Rourke outright state that ripping away our firearms is the only way to bring peace to the nation, when the cities their party have completely politically dominated for over 50 years have the most restrictive gun laws but the highest violence rates. Trust me, I get it.
But we won’t bring more voters over to our side by roasting folks online, showing up to their rallies with bullhorns and cussing them out as the speak or by belittling those with little true understanding of the truth of the 2nd Amendment.
We’ll never win over the leftists, they’ve sold their sold to Marxism and are a lost cause. But we can’t give up on the moderate or undecided just because they don’t instantly agree with everything believe in, them caustically insult them or berate them when they don’t.
I may get roasted myself for even saying these things, but there’s a segment of our group that needs to be called out and corrected for this type conduct, they just need to grow up. And the rest of us need to develop and intolerance for that kind of intolerance, we shouldn’t let them drag our rights down into the incinerator just because they want to be the gun community version of Biff Tannen.
Rant over.
Thinking that the “undecided” are present in such small numbers that running them out of town would not move the needle either way when it comes to the emotionally stunted anti-gun mafia.
OTH, any impoliteness on the part of 2A defenders adds to “evidence” that all gun owners are psychotic, and a “menace2society”
His point about the tribal nature of many in the gun world is, IMHO, correct.
I’ve been saying this for a long time. Mostly it falls on deaf ears. In some regards the 2A community is it’s own worst enemy when it labels “outsiders” and this is something the antis have played up quite well to make us seem unlikeable and pigeonhole us with a caricature. Often 2A people unwittingly play into that.
The “tacticool vs FUDD” thing is tiresome to most POTG but it’s a definite turn-off to non-POTG who already have impressions of us and then walk into a gun store where it seems like the options are binary and both sides are full of opinionated assholes who only want you to do what they do.
You see the same thing in other places but it doesn’t tend to matter as much since most of those things are not directly linked to an right spelled out in the BoR.
“His point about the tribal nature of many in the gun world is, IMHO, correct.”
Not disagreeing, just saying it doesn’t matter in the wasteful pursuit of “undecideds” as recruits to become PO TG, or to the political landscape surrounding pro/anti gun groups.
As you note, internal name-calling will always be used against us.
Of course, the gun grabbers don’t really need our help. Making stuff up seems to serve them quite well.
Sam, you’re smart enough to get this, so I’ll just give you something to keep in mind here, something I’ve been explaining in bits and pieces for several years now I’ll just quote two of the more relevant pages:
“Pavlov found that all conditioning, no matter how strong it had been, became inhibited through boredom or through the repetition of too weak signals. The bell could no longer arouse salivation in the experimental dogs if it was repeated too often or its tone was too soft. A process of unlearning took place. The result of such internal inhibition of conditioning and the loss of conditioned reflex action is sleep. The inhibition spreads of the entire activity of the brain cortex; the organism falls into a hypnotic state. This explanation of the process of inhibition was one of the first acceptable theories of sleep. An interesting psychological question is whether too much official conditioning causes boredom and inhibition, and whether that is the reason why the Stakhanovite movement in Russia was necessary to counteract the loss of productivity of the people.
We can make a comparison with what happened to our prisoners of war in Korea. Under the daily signal of dulling routine questions-for every word can act as a Pavlovian signal-their minds went into a state of inhibition and diminished alertness. This made it possible for them to give up temporarily their former democratic conditioning and training. When they had unlearned and suppressed the democratic way, their inquisitors could start teaching them the totalitarian philosophy. First the old patterns have to be broken down in order to build up new conditioned reflexes. We can imagine that boredom and repetition arouse the need to give in and yield to the provoking words of the enemy. Later I shall come back to the system of negative stimuli used in conditioning for brainwashing.
Mass Conditioning Through Speech
According to official Pavolovian psychology, human speech is also a conditioned reflex activity. Pavlov distinguished between stimuli of the first order, which condition men and animals directly, and stimuli of the second order, with weaker and more complicated conditioning qualities. In this so-called second signal system, verbale cues replace the original physical sound stimuli. Pavlov himself did not give much attention to this second signal system. It was especially after Stalin’s publication in 1950 on the significance of linguistics for mass indoctrination (as quoted by Dobrogaev) that the Russian psychologists began to do work in this area. In his letter, Stalin followed Engel’s theory that language is the characteristic human bit of adaptive equipment. That tone and sound in speech have a conditioning quality is something we can verify from our own experience in listening to or in giving commands, or in dealing with our pets. Even the symbolic and semantic meaning of words can acquire a conditioning quality. The word “traitor” for example, provokes direct feelings and reactions in the minds of those who hear it spoken, even if this discriminatory label is being applied dishonestly.
Thorough an elaborate study on speech reflexes written by one of the leading Russian psychologists, Dobrogaev, we get a fairly good insight into the ways in which speech patters and word signals are used in the service of the mass conditioning, by means of propaganda and indoctrination. The basic problems for the man tamer are rather simple: Can man resist a government bent on conditioning him? What can the individual do to protect his mental integrity against the power of a forceful collectivity? Is it possible to do away with every vestige of inner resistance?
Pavlov had already explained that man’s relation to the external world, and to his fellow men, is dominated by secondary stimuli, the speech symbols. Man learns to think in words and in the speech figures given to him, and these gradually condition his entire outlook on life and on the world. As Dobrogaev says, “Language is the means of man’s adaptation to his environment.” We could rephrase that statement in this way: man’s need for communication with his fellow men interferes with his relation to the outside world, because language and speech itself-the verbal tools we use-are variable and not objective. Dobrogaev continues: “Speech manifestations represent conditioned-reflex functions of the human brain.” In a simpler way we may say: he who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind.
In the Pavlovian strategy, terrorizing force can finally be replaced by a new organization of the means of communications. Read-made opinions can be distributed day by day through the press, radio and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern of thought in the brain. Consequently, guided public opinion is the result, according to the Pavlovian theoreticians, of good propaganda technique, and the polls a verification of the temporary successful action of the Pavlovian machinations on the mind. Yet, the polls may only count what people pretend to think and believe because it is dangerous for them to do otherwise.
Such is the Pavlovian device: repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity of communicating dissent and opposition. This is the simple formula for political conditioning of the masses. This is also the actual ideal of some of our public relations machines, who thus hope to manipulate the public into buying a special soap or voting for a special party.
The Pavlovian strategy in public relations has people conditioned more and more to ask themselves “What do other people think?” As a result, a common delusion is created: people are incited to think what other people think, and thus public opinion may mushroom out into a mass prejudice.
Expressed in psychoanalytic terms, through daily propagandistic noise backed up by forceful verbal cues, people can more and more be forced to identify with the powerful noisemaker. Big Brother’s voice resounds in all the little brothers.
News from Red China, as reported by neutral Indian journalists*, tells us that the Chinese leaders are using this vocal condition of the public to strengthen their regime. Throughout the country radios and loud-speakers are broadcasting the official “truths”. The sugary voices take possession of the people, the cultural tyranny traps their ears with loud-speakers, telling them what they may and may not do. This microphone regimentation was foreseen by the French philosopher La Rochefoucauld, who, in the eighteenth century, said: “A man is like a rabbit, you catch him by the ears.”
During the Second World War the Nazis showed that they too were very much aware of this conditioning power of the word. I saw their strategy at work in Holland. The radio constantly spread political suggestions and propaganda, and people were obliged to listen because the simple act of turning off one’s radio was in itself suspicious. I remember one day during the occupation when I was taking a bicycle trip with some friends. We stopped off to rest at a café that, we later recalled, was a true Nazi nest. When the radio which had been on ever since we arrived, announced a speech by Hitler, everyone stood up in awe, and it was a must to take in the verbal conditioning by the Fuhrer. My friends and I had to stand up too, and were forced to listen to that raucous voice crackling in our ears and to summon all our resistance against that long, boring, repetitive attack on our eardrums and minds.
Throughout the occupation, the Nazis printed tons of propaganda, Big Lies, and distortions. They even went so far as to paint their slogans on the stoops of the houses and in the streets. Every week newly fabricated stereotypes ogled at us as if to convince us of the splendor of the Third Reich. But the Nazis did not know the correct use of the Pavlovian strategy. By satisfying their own need to discuss and to vary their arguments in order to make them seem more logical, they only increased the resistance of the Dutch people. This resistance was additionally fortified by the London radio, on which the Dutch could hear the sane voice of their own legal government. Had the Nazis not argued and justified so much, and had they been able to prevent all written, printed, or spoken communication, the long period of boredom would have inhibited our democratic conditioning, and we might well have been more seduced by the Nazi oversimplifications and slogans.”
*The New York Times, November 27, 1954
Curious, eh? Interesting when you considering smartphones, facebook, media manipulation in the past 18 months etc etc etc.
But hey, they wouldn’t lie to you, would they?
“I’ve been explaining in bits and pieces for several years now I’ll just quote two of the more relevant pages:”
First…I am happy to know someone who actually experienced the Nazi era in an occupied nation.
As to the constant barrage of leftist/fascist, dem propaganda, I found one statement of Stalin worthwhile….”I trust no one.” This attitude I apply daily. Hence, my often fierce skepticism of much of the conventional wisdom displayed on TTAG. Just as I tell myself to not begin drinking homemade vodka for my martinis, it is just as important to not drink only the information that makes me feel good.
On a related (barely) note…it is amazing how many millions pay for the privilege of “bugging” themselves.
Wow, that ‘news channels all saying the same thing’ clip… Word for Word even is like the Twilight Zone! Now I’m convinced that it’s true what some scientists believe. That we are nothing more than an advanced 3-D mind game for the ET Alien Gods that control us. They want to see how far they could bring us all to the brink of self-extinction…maybe stopping the game just before we launch the nukes so that we don’t destroy the nice planet that they’ll simply take for themselves or replace our destructive, hateful species with life forms of more advanced dispositions? And before all you religionists smirk and twerk, remember old JEEZE is supposed to make a ‘second coming’, according to the bible, right? But it never said in what form HE or ‘she’ would return in?
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