In the Dutch media there wqs a discussion today about an opinion poll about support for conspiracy theories organized by a Dutch university research group. The researchers used the same arguments as in the NYT piece. If you ask sensible questions and don't believe the official narrative you must be crazy and have low self worth.
Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories
MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER
New York Times, May 21, 2013
Phi Beta Iota: The only useful part of the NYT article is this first comment by a sane person:
- Pat Nyack, NY. Part of the conspiracy cohort is made up of those of us who grew up during Watergate; the lies told about the number of enemy deaths during the Viet Nam war; the actions of major corporations in places like Chile in the 70's and 80's. Some of us stood in public spaces in the heart of our universities with the guns of the National Guard trained on us. These were all factual happenings, many uncovered and reported on by this very paper. Our childhood was built upon the illusion that America was mostly just a large Mayberry. These revelations shook our basic beliefs right to the ground. It's hard to step back from that cliff once you've been pushed to the edge of it.
Authorities Never Have “Issues with Authority”
May 21, 2013
It’s simple. Authorities invented the idea that other people have issues with authority.
Psychiatrists rank right up there among the elitists setting the standards. They, for example, have concocted a little fictional doodad called Oppositional Defiance Disorder. And magically, they never accuse their professional colleagues of having it. No.
Why should they? They amuse themselves by deciding when civilians are overly defiant and need pacification (drugs).
But we’re also talking about character structure here, because psychiatrists turn out to be exactly the people who want to slap labels like ODD on others. They like that. So they labor in universities and hospitals and earn their degrees and state-issued licenses, knowing that soon they will have that power.
Having gained it, there is nothing to be defiant about. They’re sitting on top of the heap, which they call science.
It’s quite a racket.
Full post below the line — both humorous and frightening.
In response, how about this? The Challenge to Authority Syndrome (CAS). It would be diagnosed in people who hold positions of authority and react very badly when someone lower on the totem pole doubts them.
Symptoms include: facial flushes; body tremors; shouts excessively; deals out punishment; calls challenger a “terrorist”; obtains secret warrant to spy on challenger…
Treatment for CAS: sedatives; aspartame; fluoridated water.
There are literally millions of jobs and positions in this country that are entirely dependent on listening to instructions and following them, no questions asked. No suggestions permitted. No divergence tolerated.
Therefore, the potential pool of people who “have issues with authority” is huge. It seems only fair to do a reversal and start diagnosing authorities with CAS.
In 1957, at the age of 19, I found myself taking a train into New York, to see a psychologist who was going to give me a Rorschach (inkblot) Test.
We sat in his office and he ran down his credentials and background, and assured me he was a “specialist.” Right away, I had “issues.”
He said he would show me 10 cards with pictures, and he wanted me to tell him what I saw. His interpretation of my answers would enable him to assess my state of mind.
Really? Now I had serious issues.
He flashed the first card. The picture looked like a bat. Well, all ten pictures pretty much look like bats or butterflies or moths.
But I thought it would be too obvious to say “bat.” I was going for more arcane material to make it interesting.
So…a full hour later, I was still working on one section of the picture on card one. I was seeing clouds, branches, statues, ancient Rome, space travel, stoves, noses, Graham crackers, interplanetary musical notation, pregnant deer, Civil War soldiers, private detectives’ hats, freezers, sandstorms, X-rays, lint, faces in the moon, candy wrappers…
The authority figure was sweating. He was supposed to make notes on everything I said without comment. At the rate I was going, we’d be in his office all night and into the next day.
I observed him come to a boil.
Finally, he snapped. “Keep it simple!” Obvious symptom of CAS.
My, my.
“Why should I keep it simple?” I calmly asked.
“Because I have enough material!”
“What about the other pictures?” I said. “And I’m not through with this one.”
“We don’t need the other pictures!” he said, his face a fine flushing red.
“We don’t? I thought the test was all ten.”
“It doesn’t have to be!”
“Oh,” I said. “But I’m really enjoying this. It’s an interesting picture. They’ve put so much in it…”
He sat there, pen in hand, notebook on the table, and glared at me, as if I’d just blown up his house. He was clearly having a full-blown CAS episode.
“Are you doing this on purpose?” he said.
“Doing what?”
He sputtered, “Finding so many things!”
“Well,” I said, “there’s really nothing in the picture, is there, come to think of it. It’s all what I imagine.”
He shook his finger at me. “No it isn’t. I’m not asking you to imagine anything. I’m asking what you see.”
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
“I’m just telling you the way it seems to me. Maybe there are right and wrong answers. You’re in charge. You would know.”
The authority. The authority on perception and what it means. The authority on my state of mind.
“No,” he said. “There is no right or wrong.”
“Then I guess I should continue,” I said.
So I did, for another few minutes. On the same section of the picture on card one, I chirped right along.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s enough.”
“No,” I said. “I feel like I’m just getting started. I thinks it’s therapeutic.”
“Listen,” he said. “This isn’t a test of your imagination. I want to know what you see in the picture.”
“I see an inkblot. It’s symmetrical.”
Then he came out with it. “You have a problem with authority,” he said.
“Really? You can tell that from my responses to the picture? Was it the hats? The Civil War soldiers?”
He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down.
“No,” he said. “You don’t want to be judged.”
“Would you?” I said. “I could sit here and make notes on what you see in the pictures.”
“I’m administering the test,” he said, “not you. I’m trained to interpret it.”
“Okay,” I said. “I see male genitalia there at the top of the picture. They’re reading the New York Times and ordering coffee at a cafe.”
He stood up. He closed his notebook. He looked very tired.
He showed me out the door.
At the tender age of 19, I learned two lessons that day. One: they command, I subvert. And two: pretensions to science make a marvelous front for authorities.
There is something further. So-called mental-health authorities build a feedback loop to make a sale. They essentially ask you what you see, think, and feel, and then, when you tell them, they jam a label on your head. They just rearrange your own words and sell them back to you. In essence:
“I feel sad.”
“You have a condition called Sadness (depression).”
“I feel up and down.”
“You have condition called Up and Down (bipolar).”
No. They have a condition called Authority.
The Rorschach Test was one of those disastrous experiments where academics tried to make art into science. They presumed to carve pictures up into neat and revealing categories.
It didn’t work. It’s never worked. People looking at pictures see what they see, think what they think, and imagine what they imagine. This is why Hitler, Stalin, and the Chinese leadership destroyed so much art and set binding rules on what should be imagined.
Art is dangerous. People move out of standard-response channels and actually conceive of ideas they’ve never considered before. They surpass brainwashing.
They realize, for starters, that any system, when it becomes large enough, can only continue to exist by turning rotten at the core.
Here is a piece from an interview I did with hypnotherapist Jack True in 1990:
Q (Rappoport): “There seems to be a growing interest, from psychiatrists, in ‘problems around authority.’”
A (Jack): “It’s self-reflexive. The psychiatrists are the authorities. So they want to protect their own turf. Anyone who questions their supremacy can get a diagnosis of mental illness.
“This society is being shaped into tighter systems. It means people in charge have to exert more control. They want to be immune from serious attacks.
“Everything leads back to freedom. When you press down hard on people, they think about their freedom. They want to break out. There are a lot of strategies employed to keep that from occurring.
“Code words are dropped into the culture. ‘Family,’ ‘groups,’ ‘love,’ ‘humanity,’ ‘care,’ concern.’”
Q: “Those are real words.”
A: “Yes, but they’re put there to bring about a kind of trance. They induce certain frequencies that are calming. As vague general terms, in basically trivial contexts, they flatten out emotional responses. They reduce emotional energy.”
Q: “And then what happens?”
A: “A number of things. The idea of freedom becomes less forceful. It become associated with less power. People opt for gentle behavior. But it’s not genuine. It’s the outcome of hypnotic suggestion.”
Q: “And the people who resist, who don’t buy in?”
A: “Their numbers decline. Ways are found to characterize them as mentally ill.”
Q: “If a person doesn’t react well to overweening authority…”
A: “He’s said to have a problem. You see? It’s his problem. That’s turning it around on the rebel. He’s not exposing authority. He’s got a problem.”
Q: And the psychiatrist ‘cares.’”
A: “Sure. He ‘wants to help.’ It’s a load of hypnotic suggestion, all the way up and down the line. I wouldn’t refer a person to a psychiatrist for all the tea in China.”
end of excerpt
On August 18, 1988, George Bush the Elder gave a speech in which he said, “I want a kinder, gentler nation.” It was perfectly in line with the ongoing pysop Jack True referred to above.
Bush’s words seemed to be positive, but they were really trying to “soften the frequencies” generated by the mind. Bush was basically saying, “We’re the authorities, we’re in charge. Be nice and everything will be all right…”
Jon Rappoport
