Your father taught you WHAT? Part 2.

Wood engraving by John Charlton, 1890 cover of Graphic Magazine entitled “Of Danger All Unconscious.” In the public domain.

A recent post introduced an analysis by cognitive psychologist George Lakoff regarding supporters of Donald Trump.  Lakoff stresses the arch conservative’s  investment in a “strict father” authoritarian, white male supremacy moral code. Today’s post shares Lakoff’s psychological analysis of How Trump Uses Your Brain to His Advantage.”

Lakoff’s basic argument is that conscious thinking is a tiny portion of what goes on in the brain, and that indeed an estimated 98 percent of all mental activity is unconscious. (Think of times when you started driving to see a friend on Saturday and all of a sudden realized you had passed your exit and were on your way to work—conscious enough to drive safely but led unconsciously onto the route to work.)

Unconscious thought, Lakoff maintains, is influenced by certain basic mechanisms that Donald Trump and his team manipulate with finesse. These mechanisms include:

  1. Repetition. Words have links in the brain to circuits that give them meaning. Think about what you do when you are learning a new word or name—you repeat it and repeat it and perhaps also repeat its definition or its connection with something familiar.  Those repetitions strengthen the neural connections associated with the word and make it easier to activate them. So, when Trump says over and over again that “I am the only one who…”,  our brains tend to fill in the rest of the message whether we consciously believe it or not (“…can make America great again.”
  2. Framing. One of the mantras of the Trump campaign is “crooked Hillary,” framing Hillary Clinton as a crook who deliberately perpetrates crimes for her own benefit. Framing her this way evokes a common myth in the minds of conservatives—that is, what is illegal is also immoral according to Strict Father Morality (making, for example, a lot of anti-war and pro-environment activism “immoral”). Thus, at Trump rallies, we increasingly hear “Lock her up, lock her up!”
  3. Well-known examples. Trump repeatedly refers to examples of “Muslim terrorists” widely amplified in the popular media to maintain and exacerbate fears, which unconsciously activates desire for a strong no-nonsense father to fix everything. And they are told exactly who can play this role for them.

Lakoff goes on to describe other forms of mind control used by the Trump campaign. Read them for yourself and decide whether you think he makes his case.  And, given what you have learned about Lakoff’s analysis, what kinds of connections do you think human minds, particularly conservative minds, will make when they get swamped with photos and stories concerning the infidelities of former President William Clinton? Do you think the promulgators of those photos and stories are conscious of their effects?  How about the recipient of those messages?

Rebelling Against the War: Endless Tragedy of Vietnam, Part 5

Myra MacPherson, adapted from an article published in Consortium News February 16, 2015:  https://consortiumnews.com/tag/myra-macpherson/

A U.S. riverboat (Zippo monitor) deploying napalm during the Vietnam War<br>This image is in the public domain.
A U.S. riverboat (Zippo monitor) deploying napalm during the Vietnam War
This image is in the public domain.

According to Don Blackburn, “I thought I could serve my country without sacrificing my morality — a very naïve notion. But I fought harder to keep my morality/humanity than I fought the ‘enemy’. It cost me. I was under near constant harassment — two article 15’s, the threat of imprisonment, many restrictions and odious (literally, burning shit,) details, guard duty, K.P. When I returned from Viet Nam, I was a private E-1, the lowest rank possible. But I never tried to get out of the service, and this, I think, pissed the army off even more.”

After the war, Blackburn became a teacher in Oregon and, while battling PTSD, wrote searing poetry, now in a book called All You Have Given: Meditations on War, Peace & Reconciliation. Like many veterans who came back troubled from a war fought in and around civilians, this aspect was the most disturbing. Two of his disorderly conduct actions were for refusing to go on “search and destroy” missions.

Napalm was dropped from planes and shot from guns for no other use than to incinerate; bright orange walls of intense fire that spared no one and stuck to skin, impossible to shuck off. Victims were embodied in the 1972 Pulitzer Prize iconic picture of a nine-year-old girl running naked in terror, her body still burning, having torn off her clothes to escape the pain.

Like many Vietnamese, Kim Phuc astounds Americans by saying she has forgiven those who caused her excruciating pain: “It was the hardest work of my life, but I did it.” In the end, “I learned that forgiveness is more powerful than any weapon of war.”

Don Blackburn’s desire to save civilians was shatteringly personal. “There was a lot of napalm used where I was.” He recalls in poetry a still haunting incident:

Fire in the Village near Ben Cat, 1967

With all my strength I hold onto you.

I will not, cannot, let you go.

Together we tremble in fear and sorrow.

Our eyes bitten blind by swirling smoke.

Our faces stung by wind-blown, fried sand.

The conical hat, ripped off your head,

bursts into flame a few feet in front of us.

In tortured anguish, you scream at the sky:

Why? Why?

With all my strength I hold you.

Your heart pounds fierce through your chest.

You kick, try to bite, strain against my arms,

You try to pry and squirm loose.

You yell at me to let you go.

But I cannot, will not.

You will run back into your fire-engulfed house.

Try to save, or be with, whatever/whoever

Is still inside.,,,

Together, we tremble in fear and sorrow,

And cry, cry, cry until there is no sound.

At first light tomorrow, you will return,

to see what can be found.

Myra MacPherson is the author of the Vietnam classic, Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation. She has continued to lecture and write about Vietnam and veterans.

Two Paths in the Wood: “Choice” of Life or War, Part 1

“Choice:” Poetic, Personal, and Political from guest author Dr. Anthony Marsella.*

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both. . . .  Somewhere ages and ages hence,
Two roads diverged in a wood,
And I . . . And I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference. 

Robert Frost, Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet (1874-1963)

Literary critics have written a lot about this popular Robert Frost poem. All seem to agree that the essence of Frost’s poem is the importance of “choice” in the absence of any knowledge of possible consequences the making of an important decision without knowing the likelihood of the outcomes. This decision requires the willingness to choose, based on personal confidence, trust, and, perhaps more than anything else, courage.

Critics suggest Frost expressed in his poem that there was no better path, but rather that “choice” is our daily reality Choice is always present. Choice is inherent in the nature of human life, and forms the basis for individual and social morality. Unlike other species that rely on reflexive, inborn fixed-response patterns, humans have the capacity for choice, although there may be little conscious awareness of this special capacity. As life unfolds, the consequences of our choices reveal the wisdom (i.e., fulfillment, satisfaction, comfort), and/or regrets (i.e., remorse, penitence, guilt, trauma) of our life.

I chose Frost’s poem as a departure point for a choice all humans face at this time in our world; in my opinion, the choice is between endless war or nurturing and sustaining life. Here I could substitute the word “peace,” but I am uncertain at this point what peace means. People, societies, and nations use the word peace with impunity to benefit their own needs, rather than as a source of mutuality, an enduring condition in which violence, destruction, and war are refused. Enough!

I am asking for a world free of strife, suffering, agony, and endless pain and grief. The apocalyptic horses are exacting their legendary tolls of poverty, famine, disease, and war, amidst threats of extinction, disposable lives, and the exhaustion of natural resources. We are living in the Anthropocene Era  (age) in which human behavior, shaped by choice, is the dominant force that shapes our world’s survival. The two greatest capacities of humanity — consciousness and conscience—have yielded to denial and avoidance in favor of reflex and impulse. Cui Bono?

 *Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii. Dr. Marsella’s essay was originally published by Transcend Media Service at https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/10/two-paths-in-the-wood-choice-of-life-or-war/ . We will publish excerpts from it intermittently over the next few months.

 

In need of a moral compass (Drone warfare, Part 2)

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

On War by Carl von ClausewitzAll our legal and moral strictures about ethics and laws in war presume that war is, in a Clausewitzian sense, a state to state activity. Both Scott Shane and Tom Junod do not fully come to grips with this reality.

What happens when a state, like the US, faces a non-state adversary, like al Qaeda? With whom are we “at war”? Where is what we might call a “war zone”? Who is a “soldier”‘ and thus liable to violent action?

The dilemma is one of our own making. The US has become so militarily powerful that few will try to challenge us in a conventional military way through conventional state actions.

Non-state actors like al Qaeda present threats less than conventional military force but well beyond the current capabilities of domestic police forces. Modern communications and technology have enabled such groups to be as deadly as smaller states once were. Perhaps even more so.

Identifying how to deal with  non-state actors who can do a country great harm is not a new dilemma. Even Carl von Clausewitz himself saw this with the Spanish guerrillas in the Napoleonic Wars. And he had no answer.

However, the time is now at hand to confront the issue before drone warfare is more widely available. We must learn how to preserve the security of a country’s people without undoing security altogether by the methods used.

These are uncharted waters and a moral compass is badly needed.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University