Sipsey Street Irregulars: The Czars of "Suggestion."

Monday, August 12, 2013

The Czars of "Suggestion."

Nudge off!

Unemployed? Underemployed? Working the register at Denny’s when you used to be on the management track? Just been informed you’ll be one of the ObamaCare “29ers” who gets that many hours of work a week, no more, to sidestep penalty costs? Don’t fret. Washington has just brought in a new behavior sheriff. She’s rounding up an encouragement posse to get you to live your life better. She’s 27. Her name is Maya Shankar.

You know how Best Buy can send a Geek Squad to your house to hook up your new gadgets? If a recruitment e-mail sent out by Maya Shankar is any indication, there will soon be a White House Nudge Squad. They’ll be there to hook you up with correct thinking and behavior, but you don’t have to call them and they don’t have to come over. They’re fine with redirecting your brainwaves from their comfy conference rooms in DC.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Nudge squads are just the beginning: behavior modification is the heart and soul of collectivization and the "transformation" to communism. While this woman may not have much of a resume, it is unwise to underestimate the effectiveness of psychological manipulation.

The desire to be accepted, and to be considered normal, is very strong. So is the reluctance to disobey authority (as proven by the Milgram experiment).

The best way to counter manipulation is to recognize the methods. Popular methods and examples:

Gaslighting: a form of psychological abuse used to get the victim to question their own perception, beliefs or sanity. When they claim they support the 2nd Amendment while New York police are confiscating guns from people on anti-depressants, or when they call gun owners the "black helicopter crowd" while voting on a national registry, that is gaslighting.

Projection: scapegoating the victim for the actions of the abuser. They accuse constitutionalists of being anti-government when they undermine the existing multi-branch government with unaccountable, unelected "Tsars" and non-congressional committees (the health exchanges with their death panels).

Rationalization: what many people call "spin." Justifying their actions, either falsely or by throwing in a dash of Negative Reinforcement ("It's for the children").

Misdirection: Changing the subject. This one is notoriously effective when they use Shaming ("you're a racist!" "you're a tinfoiler!") or Guilt-Tripping ("you love your guns more than our children") to throw their intended victims on the defensive to regain control of the narrative.

Positive Reinforcement: Superficial Sympathy. Seen a few times when Obama showed his crocodile tears. Also famously played by Franklin Delano Roosvelt ("There is nothing to fear but fear itself!").

Denial: The least effective but has been played by Janet Napolitano (denying that DHS is turning into a war machine).

Lying by Omission: Maintaining the appearance of accountability by telling only a little bit of the truth. We have seen this one played on attack on Benghazi.

Minimalization: A type of denial combined with Rationalization. Martial Law in Boston was called "Shelter in Place."; August 12, 2013 at 6:46 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Monday, August 12, 2013

The Czars of "Suggestion."

1 comment:

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