Public disinterest is fertile ground for a tyranny to spring up and eventually blanket America with its political venom. At first it may present as just another political movement with the best of intentions. When cracks in “noble causes” begin to appear, we dismiss them as political errors, “changing times,” “pains of progress,” effects of normal, cultural shifts, or blame it on the other political party. Maybe we feel it’s none of our concern; personal priorities come first. Then there are political scandals and conflicts that leave us confused. Let’s not forget fellow citizens overwhelmed with child care, personal, or financial issues that demand all of their attention. No wonder most of us live our lives as if politics is on autopilot, i.e., our interest is not required.
America has always tolerated a measure of public disinterest, and still maintain its original, founding purpose. Now, however, growing disinterest has serious consequences when so much misunderstanding and public apathy lie between those who love America and those who hate everything it stands for.
For America’s haters, viewing our republic’s collapse is a welcome event because of America’s perceived illegitimacy, arrogance, racism, and global exploitation. America must be taken down to join the global union as just another country that does not offend other countries with ridiculous claims that it is somehow exceptional.
Underlying all of the above is a curious shift in America’s collective thinking that has traded respect for the power of the individual for the power of government, as if we the people of America are no longer participants in determining our political futures, and are nothing more than annoying political roadblocks in the way of an ever-expanding government.
How did this shift in thinking happen? What exactly is its underlying nature? How does this political threat turn our thinking against us? Why didn’t Americans identify it before it became a threat? But the most telling question is this: What we can do about it?
What can we do if merely talking about this threat as a threat labels us as politically incorrect, or worse? What options are there when so many of us view it as a final solution to all of America’s problems? What can we do if turning against America’s heritage and values is looked upon as patriotic, responsible, or moral?
More to the point, what can we do when the real danger to our future quality of life lies in how and why this threat’s highly refined, group-think psychology is presently contaminating the very cognitive processes we depend on for selecting political candidates, or how we interpret political events? I ask you: Are your political views really your own or someone else’s views that have been figuratively pounded into your head with each daily, well-orchestrated serving of political propaganda?
It’s all about changing perceptions, but perceptions are formed around the quality of cognitive patterns we live by. Once well established after birth, we’re stuck with them for life. We can’t choose or change these patterns. Some are not good for us, or for the people we affect with them. Here’s the problem: Cognitive patterns that are not good for us are embedded in psychological dysfunction—the very fertile, psychological ground this tyranny is drawn to, has chosen to operate in, and build its strategies upon.
Our psychological problems, no matter how seemingly insignificant they may be to us, or appear to others, are cues for a tyranny to move in to re-interpret our psychological liabilities as potential opportunities to exploit so we eventually believe everything the tyranny wants us to believe. Once that is accomplished, we become part of an ever-expanding political power base that marches to one tune to smother all opposition so our mind-shaping masterminds can establish a one-party government with unlimited power forever shielded against the values that once made America great.
Without a psychology, we’ll never explain the above, much less do anything significant to stop it. On the other hand, guided by a psychology, we can explain the above and answer questions we couldn’t ask before. For example:
How is the mind so easily drawn to nonsense and repelled by fact? Why would anyone work so hard to control how I think?
What kinds of people impose their personal beliefs, values, and attitudes upon other people’s personal beliefs, values, and attitudes with little regard for their welfare?
How is quality of our life being diminished without our having a say?
Why is the natural act of thinking for ourselves so threatening to some politicians?
These questions, and others like them, will be answered in this book to your satisfaction. But first we have to think differently about psychology. While reading this book, you will think differently because its contents reflect a true science of the mind designed for you and around you.
Here’s a question that might make you think differently: Is today’s psychology art or science? Most mental health professionals reluctantly admit that it’s art. What’s the difference? The art of psychology is built upon a soft, conceptual foundation of political and cultural trends, opinions, educated guesses, theories, isolated/stand-alone facts, and changing public values. The science of psychology, on the other hand, is built upon a solid, conceptual “rock” of practical conclusions formed around psychobiological realities that never change.
However, thinking about the human mind like we think of today’s art, i.e., open to any interpretation, is not a new phenomenon. Down through the ages, educated guesses, government decrees, kings, tyrants, corrupt politicians, ideologies, theologies, philosophies, orthodoxies have treated issues of the mind as if the opinion rules—as long as the opinion came from a perceived authority.
Sugarcoating humanity’s most destructive political ideologies is a power-hungry politician’s privately sworn duty. How then do we the people penetrate insulated minds of tyrants living out unsatisfied obsessions on the hunt for power and riches without a psychology guiding us? How else do we address the human suffering bad politics causes, and what this suffering represents? Without a psychology, how do we interpret seductive messages from the tyrannical mind painting glorious pictures of a perfect world that will somehow magically appear in the future to satisfy everyone’s yearnings? Politics, by itself, will never explain why this perfect world, so artfully rendered, is always spoken of as somewhere in the future, never in the present. Bottom line: Politics, even if it could, would never expose its failures, hidden corruptions and compromised personalities. So, it’s up to us.
Lacking information, we’ve settled on a position that only creates more political conflict: Good politics is what we agree with; bad politics is what we disagree with.
We’re not doing much better trying to figure out which politician is good or bad for America, especially when we’re told that all possess a superior intellect, unquestioned integrity, high moral standing, vast knowledge, enlightened expertise in every field of study, and are beyond reproach. We’re expected to believe that politicians put us first. Their lives are guided by every honest trait imaginable while holding to every positive ideal. Collective misperceptions like these permit the tyrannical personality to meld into politics unnoticed. And America is the worse for it.
Political tyrants will always deny their tyrannical calling. The untold suffering they cause is also denied; for them, public suffering brings exploitable opportunities. Victims seek relief; any politician who promises relief today is in a position to mold minds into blindly accepting lifelong states of victimhood tomorrow. Helpless but willing masses also serve as a social foundation of “inferiors” for political elites to proudly compare themselves to, and stand above, as self-anointed “superiors” who are born to lead and, therefore, deserve to be idolized by those born to follow. In other words, we the people of America are inferior, and will always be inferior.
Let’s, for a moment, accept that argument. We’re still left with this