A meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures. as quoted from wikipedia
Below is a well informed and clearly articulated video by a New Zealand researcher and author Trevor Loudon, author of Barack Obama And The Enemy Within. Loudon has investigated Obama's background and the deeply rooted communist beliefs of those that shaped the philosophical development of the youthful Obama. In this video, created before the elections , Loudon pleads with Americans, for the sake of the entire western world, not to re-elect Obama
An Urgent Message To America
I found this video so compelling that I have listened to it many times over and I posted it on AS Maine Goes, a primarily conservative forum, where, as far as I can tell no one listened to the video except Eagleisland who claimed to have listened to it partially and then stopped because he found it boring.
While ignoring the video, The responders weighed in on the other headline in the topic title - the call to impeach Obama , declaring in unison that Obama cannot be impeached, citing as reasons the color of Obama's skin and the media love affair with our dear leader .
The author of the video, Trevor Loudon, is also the author of Barack Obama an the Enemies Within. Loudon describes how his country, New Zealand, was manipulated by foreign powers into severing their military alliance with the United States. Loudon's source is a former soviet spy who studied at the Lenin Institute for Higher Learning with 35000 students from all over the world excluding the United States, who is the main enemy. The spy sat in a room with members of the KGB and tutors from the institute. The soviets were planting ideas and funding the peace marches aiming at breaking up NATO
A couple of days after I watched the Trevor Loudon Video, when its impact was still weighing on my mind, I watched the movie Inception. Inception is a science fiction film about a team that goes into people's minds as they sleep and extracts ideas from the dreamer- but the team is now challenged to go even further to implant an idea into the dreamers mind.
As I watched the movie, it spoke as a metaphor for the soviet based political manipulations that Trevor Loudon described. The soviets evolved a social science that can be used to access and manipulate the minds of the masses.
I haven't read Trevor Loudon's book and so I am speculating as to how the seeding and manipulation of the memes has long been practiced, primarily by the enemies of the American political philosophy which targets humanity through the emotions to a greater degree than the American conservative who rely more strongly on reason. but that is not entirely so and so the same memes with identical emotional content can be tailor made for either the left or the right, but I believe that the left understands the process and power of such manipulations far more acutely than does the right.
The first step is to go into the mental landscape of the targeted group and extract ideas. This is important because in order to have a powerful effect, the targeted individual or group has to believe that the ideas being perpetuated are their own. What better way to do this than to start with self seeded ideas and feed them a shot of growth stimulus? The character of the meme, which I am intending here, are thoughts that are passed on, borrowed, adopted and repeated with very little examination. An example in contemporary news is the current media blitz that tells us that four "conservative" representatives of the House lost committee assignments because they are conservatives. If one googles the a search term about the committee assignments the entire page will be filled with stories of a similar headline but upon reading the stories there is no evidence that the news media has a genuine inside track to what is taking place in the Republican Committee assignments. The four who lost their appointments are identified as "conservatives" because they "held their ground" on deficit reductions and balancing the budget, refusing to vote for that passage of a resolution that did not meet their measure.
I submit that the definition of a conservative should not be contingent on a form of action. Conservative principles are goals. Forms of actions are means of achieving the goal. One can stand one's ground on all of the demands that one wants, and call that being "principled" without a single second of reflection as to the functional result that one's form of action (standing one's ground) can be expected to achieve. This was the modus operendi of the far left during the elections season. To my grass roots observation- those that called them selves "principled" campaigned heavily against Romney and the Republicans and accepted no responsibility for the electoral function of their actions. Once Obama had (allegedly) won the presidency and the Democrats had retained the Senate- that same self-proclaimed "more principled than thou" contingency turned their bashing actions on vaguely identified targets such as "The Republican leadership",and "The Republican establishment" and of course John Boehner, who is held accountable for all the actions of the House Republicans including committee actions in which Boehner is not even a member. The reason is clear: it is easier to have a catch all target of blame than to actually educate oneself on the balance of powers that the US Constitution provides and identify which House members chair which committees to reveal the real chain of command That takes some work.
Getting back to the mind control process central to the plot of the movie, Inception The route to such control is through the emotions and in convincing the dreamer that the thoughts being planted are his own. The dream master who traveled deep into the dreamscape needs a reference point lest he lose track of what is real. in the movie, the dream master's reference point is the spinning function of a top. which in the real world eventually slows to a stop but within a dream just keeps on spinning. In order to execute a reality check, the dream master must observe "how the spinning top functions, That, I submit, is almost the same question that we need to ask to identify which side of the political divide an idea, or an individual, or a group serves. A true conservative must serve conservative ends in the real and practical world.
One of the fundamental principals of conservativism is self reliance and personal responsibility. During the election season- there developed a third party contingency which perceived itself to be more principled than the rest of the conservative movement. In their eyes they are the entire conservative movement, which they made clear by actively and aggressively campaigning against Romney and the Republicans. I am familiar with the third party faction from various online forums, where one was vilified if one dared to contest misinformation that was being spread about Romney and the Republicans. If one brought up the subject of Obama, the third party contingency would claim to be anti-Obama but at the same time they insisted that staying true to their principals called for remaining outside of the electoral process and accepting no personal responsibility for the electoral function of their negative campaigning directed squarely at Romney and the Republicans. In response to this line of reasoning, I once said that I would hold the third party faction responsible should Obama win the election. Even as the race was tightening right up to election day, the third party contingency was advancing a campaign to encourage others to take the "principled" action of voting for a third party instead of for Romney whom they demonized with predictable, often repeated and ill considered ideas. One of the most prevalent ideas was the slogan that Romney is just another Obama. The two men are as different as night and day. (said at the risk of being called racist for using such a metaphor).
After the elections the right wing pundits are asking what did we do wrong. My answer is that what we did wrong is still being done and that is the identification of a principal with a form of action. I am seeing the same individuals who bashed Romney and the Republicans and swore not to vote for Romney as a badge of their principals, now bashing Boehner and what they often refer to as "the Republican establishment, which if one scratches the surface means the same on the far right as it means on the far left- ie. "old white men" to quote Debbie Wasserman Schultz in one of her most racist, sexist moments. Whenever I asked why the third party constituents so hated Romney, it was inevitable that they would answer by describing Romney as a generic establishment type, citing his wealth as a reason why they hated him, sounding no different than the class war-farers on the left.
With the media launching into a chorus of "The Conservatives were dropped because they are conservatives", implying that the "Republican leadership" is not conservative, the right wing media is re-enforcing the living meme festered as the third party constituency during the election, which told themselves that they and they alone are conservatives, The media's conclusions are arrived at with virtually no investigations- just interviews with the alleged conservative victims- all that is needed to justify the claims the media makes as it rushes to judgement that "wrong" actions were taken - with no consideration that there might be more to this story than their foregone conclusions. The effect of this media frenzy is to reinforce the delusions of the very faction that refused to accept personal responsibility for the function that their voting choices serve- that functional result being the election of an administration and a Senate majority that is least inclined to advance the principals of conservativism. I am not making my own judgement about the four representatives who lost their appointments, about whom I know nothing. I am talking about what I am observing at the grass roots level, which is in other terms, the electorate.
Obama (allegedly) won the election by a slim margin. I hold the third party contingency, responsible for the construction of our government for the next four years. I think the right wing media is making a huge mistake in playing to the misguided conceits of this faction. 'Holding ones ground" does not make one more principled or more conservative than any one else. Having a clear understanding and commitment to conservative principals combined with accepting personal responsibility for how ones political choices advance or hinder those principles is the measure of a true conservative. "Holding ones ground" and/or negotiating are forms of strategic action. There is room for differences of opinion about what strategic actions will best serve the ultimate achievement of the goal.
I just want to say to that third party contingency - whose activity I have observed locally and on the internet to no small degree: "You are responsible for the formation of our government for the next four years. The very government formation that you helped to put into power though your actions and non-actions necessitates negotiation with those that do not share our conservative values. If not for your negative campaigning and expressed voting choices, we might be looking at a Romney Presidency and even a Republican Senate majority in congress. In an election as close as it was, your actions are accountable. In your per-election rhetoric you refused to accept personal responsibility for the out come of the elections and so divorced principle from function. It is the outcome of the election that makes satisfying your demands so difficult and its time for you to own up to the role that you played that sets us back in achieving the goals the we mutually seek. It is time for you to make some attitude adjustments appropriate to the real world.
And I want to tell the media to stop legitimizing the arrogance of the far right by continuing to label them as the "true conservative", which feeds their continued lack of responsibility to the greater good. They are not more conservative than others. They have failed the reality check- which in a word is functionality!
We are told in meme like fashion that it is "wrong" for the "Republican leadership" to remove "conservatives" from committees because of the way that they vote. Dare I ask why? If there is shown to be an unrelenting voting pattern that bucks the "Republican leadership", then are not the so labeled "conservatives" functioning as dead weight if their collective vote is not enough to make a difference- or as obstinately as Obama if their vote is enough to obstruct the negotiating process by making demands that the Senate will find unacceptable? Is not the process of negotiation built into the United States constitution by the very fact that it is constructed as a division of powers?
Could it be that these four committee members could better serve our country in a different function? The media meme does not bother to ask this question- nor does it wait to adjudicate until after we know the identity of the new appointees to the Budget and Financial Committees. The "Republican leadership" and "John Boehner" have been convicted by the media meme without a trial or a voice. Are we really to believe that this is the way "true conservativism" works?
In the age of the internet, the politicization of memes is more powerful a tool than ever. Memes can be intentionally seeded and nourished by a manipulator who conceals his true identity. Organized groups are easily profiled and so become fertile ground for meme development. The Lenin Institute, and other organizations have long been profiling identifiable segments of the population. Ideas useful to the profiler are identified and the operators work to build momentum for the idea. The repetition of the idea legitimizes it to the most vulnerable minds. The meme takes on a reasoned appearance as it targets emotional responses and reactions.
One such example is the mantra that spread through the internet that said Romney is just another Obama. There is no reasonable support for such an idea but it was quite successful and given added impact through Obama's proliferation of the class warfare meme. But does anyone really believe, that even in a lame duck Congress session, that we would be facing the infantilism and arrogance that Obama is delivering if Romney were our next president? On second thought maybe so- when it's Obama about whom we speak- but does anyone really believe that we would be looking at the exact same next four years if we were about to enter the Romney presidency?
After Thoughts
Manchurian President picked by Russia
In this a video in which a physicist tells a prediction he heard in Russia in 1991 theat we would soon have a black communist president. The woman spoke with great certainty, identifying his name as Barack, that he had not yet entered politics, that he was from Hawaii and would have an ivy league education and that he was being groomed to be our president. She also said that the Communist movement knew that they had to take the United States.
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