Secular fundamentalism is being pounded into American consciousness, and I believe it is from outside sources, experts on propaganda, like China or Russia. One characteristic of expert or elite propaganda is you do not know you are being subjected to it. The purpose is to divide this country into “armed camps” pitted against each other.
The sign that you have fallen for outside propaganda is you become hot under the collar over the issue. You become fiercely righteous. That other side has assaulted your God given inner moral code, the most precious things you stand for. You might even be horrified by what the other side is doing – an extreme example is pedophilia or transgender marketed to your children. Your need to defend and protect the innocent is triggered. The purpose is to keep you focused in the lower parts of your brain – the limbic system – so that rational thought is not engaged. Meanwhile you feel discerning and smart – able to discern the issue because of your superior intelligence. Thus you stay fiercely against the “enemy” – other Americans.
The term fundamentalism was first applied to religions, especially Christianity, but now we recognize secular fundamentalism defined by Wikipedia thusly:
“Fundamentalist” has been used pejoratively to refer to philosophies perceived as literal-minded or carrying a pretense of being the sole source of objective truth, regardless of whether it is usually called a religion.
For a long time now I have had creepy feelings about a universal war on truth that is bouncing around between our two political parties. Both candidates lie, one more profoundly than the other. Historically we are used to politicians lying, but something has shifted toward an extreme we have never seen before. I didn’t get a grasp on what is bothering me about how difficult it is to find truth until I had another encounter (mentioned in my post, Misinformation Prison) – with a Dem friend where I sent her an article to read about a scientist physician who had invented mRNA technology. She immediately checked with mainstream media which disses him as a villain and a newly created right winger.
Why can’t she just go to the YouTube video. She literally can’t. She blocks herself every time.
So the tragedy is she cannot consider the science he is presenting, the facts he is carefully documenting. He is a highly credible source but all his credibility is denied over his supposed political leanings. This is pure fundamentalism — “That guy isn’t in our club so we can’t listen to him.” Politics has become a religion with blind belief running the show.
She relied on gossip sources which are “The Sole Source of Objective Truth.”
This has nothing to do with her intelligence. She is brilliant. I sent something long ago to a Dem PhD I know, equally brilliant, and he refused to look at it because of the “source”.
Mainstream google is the Sole Source of Objective Truth so the gossipy opinion of who the man is blocks any taking in of his information.
Cutting off knowledge and information because my source tells me it is the Sole Source of Objective Truth swings both ways. The Right does this too — it began with Trump calling Mainstream Media “Fake News,” two terms now assimilated into common speech. Why? It hit a nerve. There was a grain of truth in what he proposed. One example is that Mainstream news sources are beholden to Big Pharma — just look at all those drug ads. Think back — what was broadcast for almost a year? Covid covid covid, and nothing else. Who told them to do this?
What THIS spawned was right wingers going too far. Right wingers can only watch Fox “News.” As my ex, a Jewish former Dem said to me, “The only news is Fox news.”
From both sides the message is “Everything they say is a lie. Never listen to them.”
You tell me what the result of that is – Nobody listens to anyone else outside the group they side with.
There are other issues I suspect are overblown to divide us by outside forces:
- Slavery. How come this ancient issue that we all know about because we learned it in school, is a sudenly hot topic? Why is animosity between the races being stirred up to the max? This stuff thrills Dems who want to support the underdog but what is the net outcome? Divisiveness.
- WOKE. All I hear from right wingers is “All the Dems think about is WOKE. That’s their only agenda.” Actually Dems don’t think much about it at all.
- Tearing down historic statuary. Who invented that? That stirs up animosity quickly.
- Transgender. Republicans think all children everywhere are being indoctrinated to changing their sex at age 6. I’ve talked to many school kids. The topic isn’t even mentioned.
- All academia is Communist. Let’s destroy the Universities. Uh Oh. Talk about returning to the dark ages, and aren’t you getting your totalitarians mixed up? It was the Chinese Communists who shut down Universites in China for 3 years.