GroupThink and the Control of Perception

By David Risselada

If there is one thing liberals tend to agree on it is that the United States is an oppressive nation that uses its wealth and power to keep so called “underprivileged people” in poverty. Liberals believe in a collective greater good, and just like so many times throughout history, those who tend to disagree with this greater good end up being labeled and at times dehumanized to the point of genocide. The left use this argument of working for the “collective greater good” to advocate for the reformation of our economic system from one of free enterprise to centralized control. This is generally referred to as socialism, and has historically led to nothing but greater human suffering. The reason being is because socialism limits initiative and ingenuity. People who produce wealth are accused of doing so only for only their own benefit. Therefore, the goods and service provided are overlooked. The belief that government should be everyone’s provider becomes set in stone, and a society’s means of economic growth are destroyed. Given the historical failure of socialism and the suffering, it has produced one has to wonder how so many people could once again be calling for socialism to replace our capitalist system. After all, the United States has produced the world’s largest middle class and the highest standard of living for the average citizen the world has known, and it wasn’t because of centralized control. Much of this can be attributed to a “group think mentality.”

Controlling perception through a “group think mentality” is the ultimate goal; psychological techniques, which create unconscious associations to a given set of circumstances, can be used to guide and control human emotions. Group think is defined as:

“A phenomenon developed in groups and marked by the consensus of opinion without critical reasoning or evaluation of consequences or alternatives. Group think revolves around a common desire to not upset the balance of a group of people by creating conflict, with creativity and individuality considered potentially harmful traits that should be avoided.”

A desire to conform, or to not be the one going against the grain seems to be a good comparative description of group think. It is a common phenomenon whenever people are together for the purpose of decision making. It is safe to say that liberal’s fascination with the “collective” is certainly without critical evaluation, and often many liberals can’t even tell you what socialism really is. This describes the notion of not wanting to upset a balance perfectly. Finally, all liberals seem to utter the same nonsense over and over so there is a definite effect on a person’s individual attributes when dealing with a group think mentality.

As noted above, one of the purposes of group think is to change a perception, or create a mental association in order to change a perception for the purpose of accomplishing a larger objective. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Under the current administration, there is a massive effort underway to give the perception that patriotic Americans are terrorists. This is easy to do as the actions of this administration are creating the very conditions in which these Americans are being baited into responding. The mental association with terrorism has already been established through the war on terror so all that needed to be done to shift that perception was take the focus off of Islam and put it on the patriot movement. The technique is so successful that it doesn’t matter that not one act of terror has been committed by right wing Christian extremists. The fact that Timothy Mcveigh was associated with “right wing groups” was possibly enough to make a conscious connection in the minds of the collective.

Our veterans are another good example. The Obama administration is going to great lengths to disarm honorable men who have served their country, in the name of mental health. The association between mental health and deranged mad men going on shooting sprees has already been established. The only thing that remained was pushing this perception on to veterans by labeling them with PTSD. Senator Diane Feinstein had announced that all veterans suffered from PTSD and shouldn’t be allowed to own guns. This turns into fear in the minds of the public as they now suddenly believe that the thousands of returning war vets are a threat to public safety. This was intended to remove one of the administrations biggest obstacles to fundamentally transforming the United States. It achieved its desired results in more than one way as well. This blatant attack against those that have served this country has resulted in an up swell of social activism on the right which, in turn, is just more that the administration can use to justify their claims that veterans are mentally ill and dangerous as many of them have made their willingness to fight for freedom again publicly known.

In the case of liberal’s acceptance of socialism and greater government control, the class room has been the facilitator of techniques which reinforce a groupthink mentality. Techniques like Delphi…

“A method of group decision-making and forecasting that involves successively collating the judgments of experts,”…

…are used to manipulate the opinions of students out of fear of appearing as a non-conformist. Classroom discussions that focus on social issues are designed to bring out the opinions of those with differing opinions, and they are systematically discredited in front of the whole class in an effort to get them to conform to the general consensus. Text books that routinely lie about America’s social issues while comparing statistics to socialist countries are used to create the mental association of capitalism being greedy and selfish, while socialism is compassionate. The argument over universal health care is an excellent example here. False statistics about poverty in America are continuous shoved down the throats of students without the opportunity to give a critical analysis and ask questions. If one were to ask why the poverty rate is higher now than when the war on poverty began, after spending nearly $15 trillion, for example, the student would be thoroughly discredited not only by the professor but by those who have already succumbed to groupthinking as well. Without an effective method of regaining control or perception and encouraging “individual analytical thought,” social science and those who seek control will, through these techniques, maintain an advantage.

Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

Contributed by Freedom Outpost of www.FreedomOutpost.com.