More on Robin of Berkeley’s change story
Another excellent offering from “change” therapist Robin of Berkeley at American Thinker.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Another excellent offering from “change” therapist Robin of Berkeley at American Thinker.
Robin made an important point: in emotional distress even smart people lose their heads and behave and think utterly stupid. And liberals are doomed to fall into this emotional distress when the whole their worldview is going to fall apart around them – that is, every time they are confronted with reality.
I’m hoping for a perfect storm of events to give us millions of Robyn’s in a short time span. Liberalism has become so removed from reality just in fifteen months, that it has to be a plausible possibility.
From Robin’s commentary;
“Imagine a liberal and a conservative being dropped off in separate wilderness areas. How many days before the liberal would be no more? Meanwhile, weeks later, the conservative would still be going strong.
Many liberals know how inadequate they are, whether at hunting their own meat or throwing a baseball. It’s generally the conservative they’ll call on to build a fence or rewire their house or protect their families. Without conservatives, they are rendered absolutely helpless.”
Besides agreement, my reaction to this was to consider how a primary aspect of evolution might apply. How long before nature eliminates the weak and dysfunctional? Which we all know at some point it will do, nature not being sentimental nor merciful…
Whether through a new plague sweeping through the cities or liberalism’s denial of economic reality leading to the collapse of the financial system and the chaos that would follow or liberal denial of the threats we face leading to nuclear terrorist attacks…it may well be that liberals are living on borrowed time.
While they merely fed at the public trough, evolution could tolerate their dysfunction. Now that their ‘elites’ are attempting to impose their ‘delusional improvements’ upon the US, the last bulwark against the socialistic economies drag upon the global economic system, nature may finally address the ‘problem’.
I serve on a committee with a group of liberals, like Robin I’m a conservative in a deep blue area of a very blue state, and I’m not totally out of the “closet” yet.
The statements that come out of the liberals’ mouths sometimes makes me wonder how these people managed to live long enough to become adults. Not to mention, the extreme hostility they have for conservatives. Example: one of the people on this committee went to Mt. Rushmore last year, and shared that with us. But then, instead of talking about the beauty of the area, the magnificence of the sculpture, etc., she proceeded to rant about the fact SD is a red state, she was surrounded by “wingers”, and how much she despised everyone and everything she came into contact with………I finally had to ask if people had been rude to her, and of course she repllied no, everyone was fine. But they might have somehow flipped out, because after all they’re in a red state and can’t be trusted.
“During the election, I told a friend, George, that I thought Obama was a socialist. George responded, “Well capitalism doesn’t work. Why not try socialism?” Dr. George has a Ph.D.” (Qoute from Robin of Berkeley)
Does the intelligence of Dr. George approach that of a caveman? No. A caveman was not allowed the luxury of delusion or living off the surplus of others distributed by a welfare government. (It takes a village.)
Boots: if you had pointed out to her that she was guilty of bigotry, I wonder what her response would have been.
It has long been my experience that one can almost always have a reasonable, informed discussion with a conservative, and can expect them to carefully consider your argument, even admitting when it might be superior to theirs. On the other hand, I’ve found it, almost always, impossible to have similar conversations with liberals. To a man and woman, they quickly become angry and resorting to the common cries of racist, sexist or various other kinds of ists, blow their tops and refuse to continue speaking when you call them on such weak and shoddy tactics. Telling, no?
Robin said, “Liberals live in a stratosphere centered on emotions and magical thinking.” If I did this right, there is a link to Modern Liberalism And Magical Thinking at
http://www.brookesnews.com/100305magicalthinking.html
For years I have been trying to figure out what drives liberals. Read this article. It is very enlightening. It also explains why you can’t really communicate with liberals. It’s enough just to laugh at them.
A good example of progressive thinking: Building a mosque at Park Place and Broadway, just two blocks from the World Trade Center site.
I’d be interested to know just how many of us are out there, what the numbers are, and how many new conservatives were created in the last Presidential election.
Curtis-
Are you serious?, they are building one there?
Will: according to the following blog:
http://infidelsarecool.com/2010/05/06/good-news-huge-100-million-mosque-to-be-built-near-wtc-site/
The part I don’t get is why it took Robin so long to fall away from the true religion and become conservative. Three months in Berkeley, seeing the real-life consequences of liberal policies actually implemented rather than just espoused, turned me from earnest left-winger into the crusty conservative curmudgeon you see today.
The metamorphosis was personally wrenching, as the inner turmoil grew daily as I strove to reconcile my world view with increasingly discordant observations. Then one day I had a Damascene conversion, and realized that rather than try to reconcile theory with obviously conflicting facts, the solution lay in jettisoning the theory entirely. A cathartic moment I remember clearly to this day.
But why did it take Robin so long? Living in Berkeley is like living in Detroit; it surpasseth all understanding how any sentient person could live in either place and think that liberal policies work. Look around!
Occam, I think liberalism if anything is very good at keeping adherents in the fold. And it’s beyond political theory. It’s a life of back scratching and reassurance that they are indeed the only ones who truly understand the world really can be directed to be pain free and without disappointments.
But liberals can’t all be that weak-minded…can they?
Its a cult… just a large formal cultist application of mass psychology. there are many groups so that they can fuse which each net gets. but its a cult… it has a prophet (marx), doctrine (ideology), guru’s and religious leaders of the faith (castro, stalin, hitler, obama, etc), the faithful blind followers… its a cult pseudo religion.. (and its conservative, requiring everything else to change, except itself, even if its wrong on many levels). like moonies and other cults they give all their property to the leaders who will control property, lives, and they dont have to think…
From Robin’s article:
I’ve heard the “I just am” response quite a lot from lefties. It doesn’t require any rational thinking, or use of logic, or reference to facts. You just say “I just am.”
Another version of this, used after a lefty has been presented with a good argument against his views, is: “well, I still feel that [fill in the blank].” Again, no facts, no logic, just a mantra-like assertion of a previously held belief.
For example, I remember observing a discussion which included a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist who opposed (literally) any sort of military action. He was presented with an excellent refutation of his point of view. In the course of the refutation, it was pointed out to him that without the defense of a strong military, we would have had no recourse against enemies like Hitler who would have sought to dominate us. The pacifist’s response to such a logical analysis: the factless, non-logical response, which did not refute a single sentence of his opponent’s statement, said with a clueless smile: “well…[pause]… I still think that nonviolence is the best way yadda yadda yadda. . .”
Artfldgr Says:
I think that may be part of it. I think in some ways, for the leftist, politics is taking the place of religious faith. It substitutes belief in a god or spirituality for the secular god called “progress.”
Neo- Don’t mean to thread-jack, but there is timely piece in Vanity Fair by Hitchens regarding his meeting of (the terribly maligned) Margaret Thatcher and his “change” of sorts.
Curtis- In the parlance of many, but certainly not all, of New Yorkers “Dat shit ain’t even right”
You can’t leave out the role of fear and intimidation in keeping Leftists in line.
If you dare to think for yourself and even question the conventional wisdom and prejudices of the Left–which the likes of Frank Rich summarize for easy reference–you are committing heresy and setting yourself up for excommunication from Society. This means suffering slander and contempt, the loss of career opportunities and patronage, trouble for your employer and perhaps the loss of your job, perhaps harassment for your spouse and children, and in some cases threats against you or them. You mark yourself as Stupid or Evil or both, according to the self-appointed arbiters of rectitude.
If you don’t understand the issues all that well (and if you depend on the MSM for information, you won’t), you would surely stay as far from all that as you possibly could.
Conversation with a co-worker, as we look out the office window at a Tea Party gathering of modestly dressed, smiling people with American flags,well-behaved children, cute dogs on leashes, and signs about budget and taxes who are, as we watch, pledging allegiance to the flag:
Co-worker: “Those people are crazy.”
Me: “I don’t know, they look pretty normal to me.” Co-worker: “No, they’re all crazy. They’re dangerous!”
Me: “How can you tell?”
Co-worker: “They just are!”
Me: (long pause; tea partiers start singing God Bless America.)
Co-worker, eventually: “Well, maybe the ones right here aren’t. But all the others are. Besides, they’re racists.”
Me: “How can you tell?”
Co-worker: (visibly struggles against saying, “They’re white!”) “Well . . . look, now they’re praying!”
Me, finally unable to resist a little sarcasm: “Oh, my God, how awful!”
Co-worker: (long pause . . . starts talking about work . . . )
SteveH Says:
“I’m hoping for a perfect storm of events to give us millions of Robyn’s in a short time span. Liberalism has become so removed from reality just in fifteen months, that it has to be a plausible possibility.”
It’s happened in several waves before (even in the 50s-60s most of the leading conservative lights were leftist converts). It can happen again, provided we don’t screw it up.
Steve G Says:
“If I did this right, there is a link to Modern Liberalism And Magical Thinking at”
I tend to think that lefty economic thought is a sort of magical thinking. If only we removed money and profits, everything would be better.
I think we are catching on that
Sorry. My new iPad takes some time to learn.
I think we are finally catching on to the fact that liberals and conservatives are able to deal with each other in the business and professional world but, when it comes to politics, they speak completely different languages. Liberals reach into their emotional self, their very identity, to explain why suss and such is a good policy or so and so is a rotten person. Conservatives are objective and attempt to analyze their way to reasonable conclusions. As soon as the conservative begins to analyze the liberals position, the liberal takes umbrage, that the conservative, by not feeling the goodness emanating from the liberals position, and thus the liberal’s innate goodness, exposes himself as stupid and evil. So, in these debates the conservatives advance a position that makes all the
Sense in the world and the liberal is unmoved. The trick is to find the one thing that might get the liberal to really think.
I think Oblio has touched on one of the real reasons that liberals “cling to their theories and prejudices” to paraphrase Teh Won.
Take my fellow committee member, who disparaged the nice people of South Dakota for absolutely no reason. First up, nobody had even inquired about how she had spent her previous summer vacation, she volunteered that info. Then she volunteered the additional info that it was a horrible place full of horrible people.
It was like she was “witnessing” for her liberal beliefs to her liberal friends (well, I was in the group too, but it’s easier to get liberals to open up if you maintain a low profile). Anyway, it really seemed as though she was presenting her correct thinking for group approval. There were probably 20 people around the table, listening to this as we waited for the meeting to start. She was definitely putting down a quick marker of who she was and what she believed, even if the poor people of SD got libeled in the process.
what your describing is common in cults… a form of testimony/witnessing…
The modern definition of a mind control cult is any group which employs mind control and deceptive recruiting techniques. In other words cults trick people into joining and coerce them into staying. This is the definition that most people would agree with.
they lie and use other means to acquire and maintain members. in the case of mass cults, there are different kinds. one to get the women (not competitors), some to get blacks, some for Spanish, some for gay…as there is no cult that could capture enough to take a state…but a bunch of them all variations on one them can when you fuse them into a false movement where the commonalities resonate.
however, its a game of having enough to replace or build control structures.
we are way gone in that we cant oppose these cults as they have linked up PC and now they are defining morals. where hurting or killing oppressors (designated cult enemies, or the unconvertible) as a moral goodness…
once enough power is aquired, the real leaders that are using the groups bring out the real deal… and it no longer is a lot of odd factions, but a more singular unopposable body
A cult needs to recruit and operate using deception. Why?
Because if people knew their true practices and beliefs beforehand then they would not join. A cult needs to hide the truth from you until they think you are ready to accept it.
For example, imagine if the leader of Heavens Gate cult was open and honest about the group and had said to new recruits, “Join us, wear strange clothes, get castrated and then drink poison!” he would not have had many takers.
same with the communists, and their lower cult group feminists… NOW we think destroying the family, eugenics, and tons of other things are normal… so we defend them… and on top of it, since they crushed all opposition, they are now considered synonymous with what they pretend to represent
A cult will have a slick well-rehearsed Public Relations front which hides what the group is really like. You will hear how they help the poor, or support research, or peace, or the environment. They will tell you how happy you will be in their group (and everyone in the cult will always seem very happy and enthusiastic, mainly because they have been told to act happy and will get in trouble if they don’t). But you will not be told what life is really like in the group, nor what they really believe. These things will be introduced to you slowly, one at a time, so you will not notice the gradual change, until eventually you are practicing and believing things which at the start would have caused you to run a mile.
as i said.. if most followers knew the history and goals of the leaders, they would run them out of town.. instead if you tell them you get some defensive thing that basically refuses to come to terms with the truth and history.
or as i put it
they develop personal versions. which allow them to be withthe group and ignore the tenets and things that they dont agree with. which is how you get christians to join a group that states it wanst to destroy the church. or women joining a group whose tenet is to destroy the family (since moses harmon in 1830s… and modern ones say it, so its a core tenet and goal).. you can find huge things like that that people just ignore or dont know, or say, nah, thats just a few of the leaders.
but here we are on the cusp of what?
here try this on with feminists..
let me know what happens to apostates of feminism who decide to have a lot of kids. who say that they dont need feminsm. or who say it didnt do anyting for them. are they allowed to go without harrasment? do they go from ideation to hate?
A normal religious organization would not have any trouble with you moving to another similar organization as long as you stayed in that same religion. Because it is the belief system that matters, not membership in an organization. For example if you were a Christian then you could move from one church to another and still be a Christian.
However cult leaders will tell you can only be “saved” (or can only be successful) in their organization alone. No other organization has the truth, all others miss the mark. So it is not the belief system that decides your future, but it the belief system AND your membership with that particular group.
its the same with other left cult groups besides feminism… its just feminism is the easiest one to see, and not see…
Be very suspicious of any group that claims to be better than all the others. A religious group may say that other groups following the same religion are OK, but they are the ones who have a better grasp of the truth and they are superior to the rest. This is often just a subtle version of exclusivism.
all these cult FACTIONS do this. women and men are equal, but women are superior is what feminism says… what do you think every faction does with its variation?
Cult leadership is feared. To disagree with leadership is the same as disagreeing with God. The cult leaders will claim to have direct authority from God to control almost all aspects of your life. If the cult is not a religious group then questioning the leaders or program will still be seen as a sign of rebellion and stupidity.
ever contradict with facts a womens studies teacher? ever tell a racialist that the dems were the ones killing blacks? (by the way from 1940 on, there wer only 40 lynchings. during hayes tilden over athousand… with woodrow wilson giving glowing talks as to how good the kkk was)
Guilt, Character Assassination and Breaking Sessions.
how many women will live their own life today and contradict feminism where they place her in opposition to all other women, as feminism is women… or how we hace white guilt for racist games. etc.
Guilt will be used to control you, It could never be that the programme isn’t working, or those new recruits have valid reasons for not joining. It’s always your fault, you are always wrong, and so you must try harder! You will also be made to feel very guilty for disobeying any of the cult’s written or unwritten rules.
when women realize they cant have it all as the leaders have been telling them, who is guilty? the leaders for the false goal, or the cult follower who couldnt do the impossible.
feminism isnt to blame for the much higher rate of poveryt for women and children… right? they are not responsible for x its alwasy the men… etc.
its a cult… always was one… its jut that if you normalize the cult points, then the cult becomes norma, and normal becomes something to attack
if you make a list of what makes a cult. character assasination, lies, manipulation, guilt, and more…
you willl find christianity fails (but some groups dont), feminism comes up a cult, communism comes up a cult, marxism a cult, environmentalism, etc.
and now i come to the kinds of things like witnessing and such. when someone goes on a vacattion and comes back and does the witness thing
Breaking sessions are when one, two or more cult members and leaders attack the character of another person, sometimes for hours on end. Some cults will not stop these sessions until their victim is crying uncontrollably.
basically the confessor is showing that they dont need this kind of treatment, they have learned, and they come back to show the people they have learned.
Cults know that if they can control your relationships then they can control you.
feminism controls the relations of its followers
liberals control the relations too
all men are rapists tends to contrl your relationships and create guilt.
feminisms biggest source of guilt and betrayal for women is that women still love men!!!!!!!!!!! so they betray the sisters and are guilty for having relations..
they tell you how to live… like you have to split houswork. hsi work doesnt count. etc
Those who control the information control the person. In a mind control cult any information from outside the cult is considered evil, especially if it is opposing the cult. Members are told not to read it or believe it. Only information supplied by the cult is true.
ever see womens studies? ever try to show cornell west that democrats were the ones killing blacks?
Common sense tells us that a person who does not consider all information may make an unbalanced decision. Filtering the information available or trying to discredit it not on the basis of how true it is, but rather on the basis of how it supports the party line, is a common control method used throughout history.
yeah. like not telling women that Sanger wanted to exterminate Negroes and Chinese… and that abortion was key to eugenics. or tons of other things… or telling them every chance they get what they actually stand for as an end result.
if they were legitimate they would not care if you read others views.
this also pertains to the point as to your worker witnessing, or confessing things.
In a mind control cult like in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia you must be careful of what you say and do; “The walls have ears”. Everyone is encouraged to watch out for “struggling” brothers and sisters and report what they see to leadership.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
People in a mind control cult will also hide their true thoughts and feelings, and instead wear a mask which presents them as a perfect cult member. This mask is a defense against being reported to leadership and being punished for not measuring up (cult members never feel like they measure up to the cult’s ideals, and yet often believe the other members around them do, when in reality the others feel the same as them). Hence cult members are trained not only to deceive outsiders, but also to deceive their fellow cult members.
Nothing is allowed that can be more powerful than the cult members’ allegiance to the group and it’s leaders.
Mind control cults keep their members so busy with meetings and activities that they become too busy and too tired to think about their involvement.
Time control also helps the cult keep their members immersed in the manufactured cult environment.
And time control helps keep cult members away from friends and family.
marches, rallys, bra burning, making posters, doing mailings, rating amazon books, etc.
KEY WARNING SIGNS…
Single charismatic leader.
Instant friends (love bombing)
If you are told who you can or cannot talk to or associate with.
They hide what they teach.
Say they are the only true group, or the best so why go anywhere else.
Hyped meetings, get you to meetings rather than share with you.
Experiential rather than logical.
Some cults travel door to door during times when women are home alone. They, and this is rather sexist, think that women are easier to recruit and once they have the woman then it will be easier to snare the husband or partner.
The question that should be asked is “what needs do having reality denying beliefs satisfy”? What did Boot’s co-worker get out of dissing the people of South Dakota? It sounds like having a set of beliefs that are supposedly held by a fashionable elite allows the holder to claim some sort of moral and intellectual superiority. There is a big social pay-off for being stupid, as long as the people who are protecting you are not.
It’s back to Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer again and again. Irrational beliefs are meant to protect the holder from an unpleasant personal reality. Boot’s co-worker need for security and self-esteem was found by bad mouthing South Dakotans.
That must be some sort of cornerstone for modern liberalism.
“to claim some sort of moral and intellectual superiority”
Bingo. That is at the heart of the matter. When you defend a position that says they are neither as moral nor as intellectual as they claim to be, and not even as moral and intellectual as the opposition, watch their hair catch on fire. Expect anger and ugliness from the Platonic Guardians, with no holds barred.
We should probably all be reading Alinsky for tips.
“what needs do having reality denying beliefs satisfy”
as previously explained (purple horse), it allows the leaders who may or not believe, know who is loyal to THEIR WORLDVIEW (or the one that they are trying to create)
its a ruler. a point of measure.
Boot’s co-worker need for security and self-esteem was found by bad mouthing South Dakotans.
her need for security comes from the cultish people. that is, she comes adn then VALIDATES their reality, because to do otherwise, be nuanced, be honest, and what will happen?
she may have loved them, but since its a cult, and a mind control cult, she can never let them know that she sees anything different
the cult will not let her like people they dont wnt her to like. and if she travels, like a soivet coming to america, she BETTER have a story of how bad america is and that MACYS is a fake front (like ceucescu thought), etc
you guys dont get that they want their INTERNAL life in the group to become the external life of the whole world.
so when she returns, even if she thought america was great, she has to report to the OTHERS and potential leaders that she found it to be horrible.
they now know she is loyal to work on any world view they present no matter how bad it is. her actions tell them that she is a good slave, and she awaits other ideas and things which she will parrot back
the analysis of people fromthe point of ME does not work. if she was like you, she would not choose to do that, as you wouldnt. so the explantaions make no sense.
WHY does she do it? you want to call her stupid and say she doesnt see… but the truth is that she sees that her life and bread is buttered by how well she pretends to be happy, and negative to the enemies
read as to cults… its EXACTLY this way.
she fears being an apostate for not being under their eye
Artfldgr is correct in calling liberalism a cult with all its typical properties. Here in Europe this cult has become to a large degree the new normal. I have to frequently vist and read the more intelligent conservative American websites to keep my sanity. When some leftist familymember found out that I read and liked American conservative websites he suddenly-without warning- began to treat me as the devil himself. It is indeed a cultish thing.
My country (Holland) was once one of the most soberminded and decent countries of the world. Even to the point of being boring. Now, like the rest of Europe, it is filled with leftist polically correct lies, untruths and errors to a degree that you don’t know where to start. And you do know that once you start to publicly challenge each and all of these falsehoods, the consequences for you and your family may be disastrous.
In Britain last week a man was arrested for citing St Paul on homosexuality in a private conversation overheard by a police-officer. This, while Muslim demonstrators display death to USA calls in public all the time and the police does nothing. Britain, once a a great example of common sense and sobermindedness, is also becoming more and more weird cultish society.
Liberalism, as I see it, is what Christianity necessarily becomes once the belief in the God and His authoritative text (the Bible) is stripped from the Christian belief system. It is Christianity without the Supernatural. Once you have removed God you will be left with something more dangerous than people-with-no faith. They will still have faith, and even zealous faith, but it will be faith in things in which you can and should not have faith.
All our actions, all our knowledge, our being itself, are ultimately grounded in something that surpasses our understanding. In the end we stand for the great Unknown. We hope and trust that this great Unknown is something benign and good to us, but we don’t know anything for sure. We hope that ultimate being is something good like it is portrait in the Bible (the Father). It is here (in the ultimate things) that faith has its legitimate place, because here we cannot know and still depent completely on what it is, that we ultimately cannot know.
On all other things than transcendent ultimate things, faith is not legitimate. You should not have faith in climate change but investigate, you should not have faith in socialist policies but investigate etc…
Liberalism is a perversion of the Christian faith. It takes the faith character from it ( with a lot of the Christian terminology) and applies it illegitimally on finite, human things, where faith is wholly inappropriate.
National Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Environmentalism, Feminism, Obama-ism, they are all the same in this respect. It is faith where you should not have faith, and no faith where you should have faith…
I would like to add that when Christianity transforms into liberalism it becomes more similar to Islam. And this is because Islam has also great problems to keep the sacred from the profane. It tends to secularize the sacred into totalitarian forms of government the other way around. ‘What kind of government is there, is not important, as long as Islam rules’ is what is often stated. Here you begin with a concept of the sacred that involves all kinds of finite things, leaving the finite human realm not open to free human investigation.
The result is the same as in liberalism: religious faith extended to finite things where you should not have faith to begin with.
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