Mind Fuck America

Mind Fuck America

 

Here is the first verse of Green Day’s American Idiot:

 

Don’t want to be an American idiot

Don’t want a nation under the new mania

Can you hear the sound of hysteria?

The subliminal mind fuck America

 

I wrote a monograph entitled Mindfucking over a decade ago, and it seems more prescient every day. What else is the Big Lie? But don’t think it’s confined to the political right: the left is prone to it too. The point I missed is that the mind fuck can proceed on the basis of an obvious lie, so long as the audience is primed to accept it. Indeed, the bigger the lie the better, so long as it has the right psychological shape. I notice that Green Day associates the phenomenon specifically with America–a point worth pondering.

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2 replies
  1. jgkess@cfl.rr.com
    jgkess@cfl.rr.com says:

    My own more or less sober prediction is that the Republicans will re-take the Presidency as well as the House and Senate in the coming all too tedious years. Today’s American Democrats are as pointless as a box of snot. For a more expansively pessimistic take on matters more widely involved, check out, Richard Marshall’s interview(!) of Arthur Schopenhaur at his blog, “3;AM”. (Yes, the same Arthur who kept a poodle and pushed his mother down a flight of steps)

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