by Joe Kandra (cartoonist) and Kathie MM
Category: Moral disengagement
Con artist trick # 1: Make cruel and inhumane behavior sound morally justifiable
by Joe Kandra (cartoonist) & Kathie MM
Pegean says, “It makes me want to gag! See how he blames the victims? See how he tries to make it sound as if abandoning people who helped you (and their families) is a good thing? What would you call that behavior?
Starting now! Your guide to deception detection!
by Kathie MM
Good news! In their New York Times bestseller, Spy the lie, former CIA agents Philip Houston, Michael Floyd, and Susan Carnicero have provided a blueprint for how to detect deception.
Better news! Over the next few weeks, we at Engaging Peace will distill their main guidelines for you, helping you become better prepared for the 2020 election campaigns. Tax payers paid for their work. Now let’s put their tools to use in pursuit of democratic rather than autocratic principles.
Floyd and his co-agents begin Chapter 1 with a pause-for-reflection quote: “People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.” (Malcolm Muggeridge) (What claims from what politicians do you want to accept as the truth, whether there’s any support for them or not?)
Houston and his fellow spy-detectors warn us: becoming good deception detectors means surmounting major obstacles, including: 1) the common belief that people (at least some people) won’t lie to you; and 2) inescapable biases affecting whether or not you’ll believe a particular person or not.
In a little over a year, many of us will be voting particular people in and out of major political offices. Our votes (or unwillingness to vote) will determine whether those candidates will gain, or hold onto, or lose considerable power over the lives of countless human beings and the environments in which we strive to survive. Many candidates will tell you the truth about who they are, and what they’ll try to do if elected—and many will lie. How can you tell who’s who (if you really want to know)?
Spy the lie has guidelines for lie detection that we’re going to share with you. You’ll be able to start trying out the guidelines before the first primaries and caucuses of 2020. Videos of Congressional hearings, televised segments of press conferences, the upcoming debates among the Democratic Presidential candidates all can provide material on which to test your mastery of their principles.
Any forums in which individuals are answering questions about themselves, their achievements, their beliefs, and their goals provide information you can learn to analyze for truth or falsehood.
Knowing how to spy the lie is another tool, like recognizing a mind game when you see one, and confronting efforts to morally disengage you on behalf of the power mongers. Stay tuned and we’ll show you how to do all three before you go to the voting booth.
Pegean says, Don’t for one minute think they’re going to put anything over on me. I know a lie when I see one.
Who’s been attacking your country? (Plutocrats, moral disengagers, & mind game perps)
by Kathie MM
Republican President Theodore Roosevelt , the “trust buster” president who successfully opposed powerful monopolies, said what the country needed was “a real democracy” and “of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.”
A plutocracy is a “society…ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income….“[T]hroughout history, political thinkers such as Winston Churchill…and Noam Chomsky have condemned plutocrats for ignoring their social responsibilities, using their power to serve their own purposes and thereby increasing poverty and nurturing class conflict, corrupting societies with greed and hedonism” (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy ).
Plutocrats overlap with the group Eidelson calls one percenters, but not every multi-millionaire or billionaire is motivated solely by greed and lust for power.
Currently, the United States (and other countries) are being wrenched steadily back into the tyranny of plutocracy. Where is the Theodore Roosevelt to stop them?
What you need to understand about plutocrats:
- Many are morally disengaged, able to convince themselves that behaviors causing enormous damage to people and the planet are all for the good.
- Many want to get you morally disengaged too, and exploit groups already morally disengaged (more on fascists and chaos seekers later).
- Many are political extremists who feed racism, ethnocentrism, and sexism, and use mind games (manipulating feelings of fear, anger, resentment, distrust, pride, and despair) to spread moral disengagement to vulnerable audiences. For example, they create scapegoats and dehumanize them. They propagate increasingly severe levels of poverty, and blame the poor for their misery. They generate policies designed only to help themselves, but claim the policies will benefit all.
For a powerful insider portrayal of how plutocrats do these things, click here: https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming
Whistleblower Nick Hanauer never uses the terms mind games or moral disengagement, but provides compelling examples of both; moreover, his effort in this video and elsewhere (e.g., here and here ) suggest that even a one percenter can become morally engaged.
As the next election year approaches, let’s all work together to sustain and promote moral engagement.