LIKE IT OR NOT

 

Like it or not facts are not always stronger than fiction. 

In the last 75 years I have seen the art of twisting the truth into a weapon being used on our society by our own people.  We are at war, and we are not winning.  We have spent millions of dollars, lost blood and lives fighting wars in countries far distant from our shores.  We are facing threats of attack from North Korea.  The U.S. is experiencing cyber intrusion into our financial, economic and military systems from so many fronts that it’s difficult to keep them straight.  It seems there is some new confrontation occurring on a daily basis.  One might think those are our greatest dangers.  (Our war in the Middle East has been our longest war and one of our most ill-advised undertakings of our short history as a country.)

The fact is the most dangerous war we are in is the one we are having with ourselves, with our achievements and our own history.  The “fifth column” is alive, organized and active and it has spread like a cancer across our country.  We are like lambs being led by the “Judas Goat” to cutting our own throats.  That war has far surpassed any other in terms of span of time, cost to our nation and the absolute danger to our way of life.  The weapon and method used against us is using the pliable minds of our own children being contaminated through the propaganda being taught in colleges and universities we pay for. 

The truth of the matter is this mental contagion is the product of our own making.  Years ago our parents began abdicating the responsibility of child rearing to the primary educational system.  Rather than instilling the ethics of honesty, hard work, compassion, and yes, the Ten Commandments, we allowed our way of life to be corrupted.   We have allowed our way of life to erode as the rock into sand.  The constant pounding of discontent and identity separateness has unraveled the strength of unity into the weakness of a single thread.  Through the power of communication media, our collective knowledge base is shown to be lacking.  Were you to stop twenty random people (under the age of thirty) you would find few that know anything about our country’s history, its political and economic systems and the positive results that have been contributed to our world as a whole.  You will find, however, that they are quite knowledgeable regarding the warts and moles marring the beauty of our nation.  We are at war, we have been at war, a war for the minds and hearts of our people, society and our country.   This war has been hidden for over 60 years and is now moving into public view.  We see it on our streets, on attacks on our law enforcement and first responders, and most recently against the President of the United States. 

I keep returning to one of my favorite books, “As a Man Thinketh”, the premise being that what a man thinks and believes is the real who and what he is.  The same holds true for a society.  Our current state of disarray is a result of what our collective minds have allowed our society to believe and be.  In our desire, as a Judeo-Christian based nation, to be considerate loving folks, we now find ourselves overly protective of every whim, of the individual, and to be the guiding factor for the rest of us to condone to the utmost.  

An overzealous drive to be known as a nice person, a generous person, a charitable and caring person each of us in our own way has contributed to the separateness of all the different groups we have chosen to be included in.  The self-imposed definitions of good and bad are no longer used just to change our own actions but are now used as a defamatory judgement of our neighbors.  Contrary to popular belief, you are not always right and there are always unexpected results.  That is a fact in all reality and it’s true for you and most importantly for me in our society.

We are at War. Our enemy is what is being infused into the minds and hearts of our people.  The weapons of choice are: creating discontent through the use of the words “fair and unfair”, “acceptable and unacceptable”, “right and wrong”, etc.

The age old trick of deception is the use of slivers of truth and fact interspersed with falsehood in the intent to direct and mislead.  That is basically the art of propaganda. It has proven to be a highly effective tool, used for good and bad, in the fight to control societies, be it our own or that of the world in general.  When used against an enemy, it is generally used to create fear to weaken their intent.  Within our own society it is used to lead us in a direction of collective thought congruent with those who are leading us. 

A question might be, “where are we being led”, and who is doing the leading, and why?