The Source Of Our Political Anger Is Not What You Think

It’s that jealous goebbelsologist hiding in the corner.

What I’ve had to say about Anger is important – and I’m afraid I’ve not quite connected. I’ve been too pedantic.

Smart, earnest people think that the shrill Left-vs-Right arguments that have polarized America and the West are about political discourse.

They are not about political discourse.

Just now, talking about the situation with with a good friend and fellow Authenticity team member, I came up with an allegory that I think will work.

Guy Walks Into A (couple of) Bar(s)

Picture a town with two bars.

Sam’s Bar is a fun place. For years this local institution has a been a community treasure where people come to talk, laugh, have a burger and beer with each other and really enjoy each others’ company. Sam’s bar is very successful.

A few blocks away, Pete’s bar is, well, not such a fun place. The crowd is smaller, and everyone there seems to be nursing a grudge about something.

Pete’s management might think about ways to make their place a little brighter and happier and more successful. Perhaps they could offer some specials or new brews on tap to lure away some of Sam’s customers.

Constructive Isn’t Pete’s Style

But that just isn’t their style. Instead, Pete’s gang, being the embittered, hostile malcontents they are, take a different approach.

Pete gathers a bunch of his unhappy cousins and other dour family members together after hours to do some planning, which to them means plotting and scheming. They work up a game plan to implement the latest version of a scheme they’ve been using for years to try, mostly unsuccessfully, to break up the crowd at Sam’s.

Each of Pete’s gang is given a list of well-chosen rumors and lies, and heads over to Sam’s. The Sam’s crowd knows where they’re coming from, but being a mostly generous bunch they give the Pete’s crowd the benefit of the doubt. Pete’s folks manage to make themselves welcomed at various tables and join in their conversations. Then, at opportune times in the discussion, they start introducing the lies and rumors.

Soon, everyone at Sam’s Bar is either in a heated, acrimonious shouting match with their former friends at the next table or is leaned over, huddled with others, talking in hushed tones about how those they thought were good friends turned out to be such detestable pariahs.

***

Unmasking Sam and Pete

Sam is Uncle Sam.

Pete is Peter The Great.

We make a huge mistake when we assume that our spirited political discussions are actually political discussions, that what’s behind them are ideological differences.

In reality, what is behind them is a society and a culture that has been intensely jealous of the West since before the time of Peter The Great. Russian culture is good at four things: aircraft engineering, ballet, brutality, and what I call goebbelsology.

Goebbelsology is much much more powerful than mere propaganda and brainwashing. Goebbelsology is the science of getting you to believe whatever its practitioner wants you to believe.

This Stuff Is Powerful

How powerful is goebbelsology?

Let’s look at an example.

The central belief of the Heaven’s Gate cult was that followers could transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrial beings by rejecting their human nature, and they would ascend to heaven.

In October 1996 the cult purchased alien abduction insurance covering abduction, impregnation, or death by aliens of its thirty seven members. Then in late March 1997 their leader, Marshall Applewhite, instructed the members to isolate themselves and record farewell statements, many of which praised Applewhite. All thirty seven members then took phenobarbital mixed with apple sauce or pudding, and washed it down with vodka. After ingesting the mix, they secured plastic bags around their heads to induce asphyxiation.

The members of Heaven’s Gate were apparently just a normal selection of reasonably well-adjusted young men. Each had plenty of time and opportunity to say “This is nuts” and walk away from the whole thing. They were not subject to mind-altering chemicals; the only tool used was verbal and written communication.

That is, the only tool was advanced goebbelsology.

We Got The Source Of The Tension All Wrong

We used to get all worked up about Russian interference in our affairs because they were bringing communism. When their purported communist ideology was replaced with crony oligarchic capitalism, the tension didn’t skip a beat. That should have alerted America, and the West, to the obvious:

The whole thing had nothing to do with ideology.

It still has nothing to do with ideology.

Consider that one of their pairs of rabid echo chambers consists of those who have been induced to believe that Earth is a flat plane, versus those who know that it is spheroid. Where’s the political ideology in that?

Listen For The Russians At Your Family’s Thanksgiving Dinner

Russian jealousy of the West’s freedoms is the reason why many of us will not be able to enjoy a peaceful family Thanksgiving this year. Russia has skillfully and totally by remote control turned Western conversations into a bunch of raging civil wars.

Russia is a jealous mafiocracy. Since they won’t let themselves have the happy freedoms we enjoy, they set out to destroy us, exactly as a jealous and resentful member of a family will destroy peace in the family by skillfully planting rumors and lies.

We cannot let them succeed.

About the Author

In 1981 Wes Kussmaul, working with friends at the MIT Joint Computer Facility, created the world’s first online encyclopedia, implemented using what he calls “the world’s worst business model.” Over the the next year the addition of social features transformed the encyclopedia into the more sustainable Delphi social network, which in 1993 was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News America Corp.

Wes is the author of four books about bringing accountability with privacy back to social networks. One of those books caught the attention of a group at the ITU, a United Nations agency, while it was building a global PKI-based source of trust that resembled what the book advocated. Wes announced its re-launch as The City of Osmio in a 2008 presentation to the United Nations World Summit on Information Society. Wes is also the creator of Stoanova, an approach to Stoicism as it applies to problem solving.

Wes is the founder of The Authenticity Institute, a provider of a PKI platform to licensed Authenticity Enterprises, which may be seen here. The outcome of the work of those Authenticity Enterprises may be seen at Authentiverse.