Deprogramming to Bridge the Divide

 

        Have you ever felt surrounded, out-gunned, and overwhelmed by the loud insanity yelling over you constantly online, and think your head might explode? Have you ever wanted to just shut the world out, singing loudly, Lalalalalala with your fingers in your ears?

        You are not alone, despite pandemic isolation making you wonder.

Life has not felt normal for about seven years now.  Thank you, Trump, MAGA, QAnon, KKK, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, militiamen, white supremacists, anti-vaxxers, and just plain old GOP, the most dangerous organization in US, etc.  

Our pandemic isolation, that has caused a lot of psychological and financial woes, could have been cut far shorter, with fewer deaths, and businesses and schools remaining open, if we hadn’t had such an influx of misinformation, disinformation, and crazy conspiracies. And thank you, anti-vaxxers, for bringing back polio, too, BTW.  Gee. We missed it.

And now there is a new COVID variant for this winter, due to its mutating, also thanks to anti-vaxxers. We owe them so much. Dogs have to have all their shots before they can get together with other dogs.  But, you can’t even explain that to that anti-information group.

I’ve read and heard a lot of the disinformation was Russian propaganda.  Nothing Putin would rather see than US citizens dead from a virus, and/or at war with itself, to divide and conquer US.  Putin has been spreading disinformation and fomenting division and violence in US, at least since the orange con man formally launched his campaign, June 16, 2015 on that escalator with his paid audience. 

I want to blame the Trumpers for buying into the lies and conspiracies, and spreading them along with all their prejudices and hatred. Trump gave conspiracy cockroaches permission to come out of the woodwork and wreak their havoc.

It’s worse right now, of course, because it’s that voting time again.  So much more propaganda and so many more lies are swirling about US in election season. So many loud and obnoxiously opinionated and ignorant folks are feeling their oats. And, too, again, there are probably a lot who are Russian bots.  

The wrong-headed stuff I’ve been reading and hearing lately are staggering.  They are projecting Trump’s worst attributes onto Biden. There is so much hatred of Biden online.  None of the things that they accuse him of are true. But, they are true of Trump. Trump is the pedophile, sexual predator, con man criminal, and traitor the misinformed MAGA crowd says Biden is.

And you can’t make sense to any of the purveyors of this garbage. They yell over you.  Republicans and Democrats used to be able to debate and argue in Congress, and go out for a beer after. The good old days. Now Dems need to wear Kevlar jackets to Congress. 

And Republicans continue on the smear campaigns. The Neanderthal blonde with the voice of a Velociprator in Congress, told the orange con man’s mob at his last rally the other day that Democrats are killing Republicans. She lied and made up stories and they believed her.  She was stirring up more violent insurrections.  How is that legal? Free speech does not covering yelling fire in a theater. It should not cover trying to start a violent overthrow of the government.

Is MTG now just MT with the impending divorce?  As Stephanie Miller said on her radio show when she heard about the divorce, “Her husband wants a Greene New Deal.” MT is a Q crazy and Q is eating her and all their brains. 

They accuse Dems of drinking babies’ blood.  I mean, really? Remember the pizza parlor in DC, with the basement where supposedly Hillary Clinton was sex trafficking children? Remember the man who took a gun into that pizza parlor to shoot them? The pizza parlor has no basement. Innocents out for pizza that night could have been killed due to these lunatics.  How do deal with the gullible? Again, you can’t talk to them.

And sadly, I am related to some, not Q, but Evangelicals who think Biden is Satan and Trump is the second coming.  I got tired of hitting a brick wall with them and being accused of only reading “fake news.” The more I reasoned and gave them facts and stats, the more I heard I was fake news.  

So, I decided to read an article on deprogramming the brainwashed.  Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong all along. I was creating an armed camp on the other side by disagreeing with them and trying to get them facts.

The article said we should pretend to understand and even be on their side. Get on their good side, so to speak. Contradicting and arguing with brainwashed subjects is spitting in the wind.  One must get their trust, not get their hackles up.  I’m not good at this.

But, after nearly losing family members and friends, (Well, I did lose a few along the way.), I decided to try the professionals’ advice.  Get their confidence by agreeing with little things.  And when you get them to let down some of their defenses, ask questions about stuff they believe. Using the Socratic method.

But, you need to ask questions in a way that does not sound like you are putting them down or belittling their beliefs.  Not as easy as it sounds.  Because when I hear or read the things they believe, I have to breathe deeply, and try to see things from their POV as to why they have accepted such outlandish ideas.

Sometimes they have some stuff right.  Sometimes I have some stuff wrong. So, I figure I can start there and let them correct things I say and say, oh, I didn’t know that, or concede a point or two.  Take them off guard and then ask them questions that may make them question what they have accepted as true.  Then if you can get a little trust, gently throw in a few facts that they can check.

Maybe ask them questions that make them see why the other side is saying what they are saying, as in who is to gain from that?  For instance, I have relatives who really believe Biden is corrupt and his family is a crime family.  They think Trump is just misunderstood and has been attacked forever.

Where do you start with that? I used to give them titles and authors of books to read. They didn’t read them.  They just said the authors were anti-Trump or they had Trump derangement syndrome.  They tell me I have Trump derangement syndrome. 

Gotta hand it to that con man. He’s good. They really believe his victimhood stories.  They are the ones with  Trump derangement syndrome, and it goes deep.

So, how does one get through that wall of brainwashing? Not easily.  I’m a work in progress.  I only read one article on deprogramming so far. And I’ve only begun work on one relative.  But, I am hoping that I am learning that my tactics were not working at all, and I’m hoping that by adapting my tactics, language, behavior, etc., I can affect a change in their thinking.

I’ll keep you posted.  This could take a century or two.  The misinformation and disinformation is very ingrained.  Between the pervasive Russian propaganda going around social media, and the grifter in chief having gotten so many people’s confidence, and still being allowed to hold rallies where he continues his big lies, and so many Republicans willing to repeat the lies to win elections with his ignorant base, it is a Sisyphean task.  

I’ve never seen the nation so divided as it is now since the country was taken over by probably the best con man America has ever seen.  There’s a new book out by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Divider, Trump in the White House 2017 - 2021. I haven’t read it, yet.  I have lived it, though.  Those years left me, and so many of us, with such angst and dismay about how far we have fallen, fearing for the future of democracy.  

I should probably also read the book, Talking Across the Divide, How to Communicate with People You Disagree with and Maybe Change the World, by Justin Lee.  Maybe that should be my next non-fiction book in my deprogramming education.  

We saw the culmination of the divide and the lies on January 6, 2021, and the committee hearings are still going on.  But, many of us fear that that insurrection was not the culmination, but rather a dress rehearsal for those who would overthrow our government and install a fascist dictator.  Fingers crossed.

Jacosa Puella

October 3, 2022

When Neighbors Don't Realize They Have Neighbors

I want to keep peace with neighbors and get along.  Doesn’t everyone?  Mostly I am friends with neighbors and have keys to most of their homes and vice versa, in case of anything.  So, I don’t want to complain too much. Everyone has a right to party now and then. 

I just want people to be aware and thoughtful of others.  Not much to ask, seems to me. I was raised to think of others before myself.  My dad was annoyingly over the top about it, too.  

Even so, I’d rather have someone aware of others around them, and courteous, rather than obnoxiously and unconsciously loud and invasive in my space.  This is a crowded city.  And we are all on top of each other. We have to do the best we can to be respectful of each other.  It’s fishbowl living in LA.

  My neighbors are now having an apparently uproariously funny party right under my windows this evening.  I’ve explained a few times that when they are in their yard under my windows, they might as well be in my living room and office. Do they forget or just not care? Their patio, their right? 

I had neighbors in that same back cottage next door years ago who were members of a band. They would come home after a gig at 2 or 3am and play live music till dawn on work nights. That was a fun time. 🤨 

I tried to reason with them and they told me I was jealous because they had a social life and I didn’t. 😳 The only way I got them to finally stop was by leaving an anonymous note at their door, as if it was from a group of their neighbors. 

The note said, if you don’t stop playing live music all night, when you go to sleep at dawn, we are going to begin pounding pots and pans and screaming in front of your door.  Hey.  It worked. 😂 At least it got them to finally take the band and move out. 

These current tenants work in TV, not music.  The young woman in the couple just finished writing This Is Us.  No loud music.  Just loud voices and loud laughter.  They seem like a nice group of people.  I never saw the show, but I heard it was funny.  

So, maybe they are practicing their humor over there. My neighbor is a very sweet girl. She is just loud, has the worst and loudest jarring laugh, and seemingly has no boundaries.  She walks over into our back area to call her cat. Never asks.  Just trespasses.  I say nothing. Again, peace has its price.

And basically, I grew up in a party, so I don’t mind hearing laughter and cheerful babbling outside my windows.  My parents were party animals. 🤣 They had parties right under my bedroom windows on their back patio, too.  Voices and laughter were soothing white noise for me. I could sleep through most of that.  Hearing the warm, friendly voices outside, so close made me feel secure.  

But, when I want to work and don’t really know the people, it’s a tad tougher. I feel invaded.  I had to close my windows and now it’s hot in here.  The owners of the property moved out of their front house, and I thought it would be a lot more quiet.  

They were also from TV/film, and had movie screenings at night on their driveway with what sounded like a Dolby Sound system.  I texted him one night to ask if he could possibly lower the volume by one decibel, (you know like down to 10 from 11?), so I could hear my TV.  Apparently, he felt I was raining on his crowd pleasing parade over there. He texted back that when he hit the lottery he was buying our building and blowing it up.  🤣

He’s a prop master who works on huge projects, making many props at home in his garage studio.  And he restored his 1928 house himself, too. I was basically living in a construction zone daily for years, often with nightly parties, too. But, he is such a nice, generous, and helpful neighbor, (if you overlook the noise), I just coped as best I could. He even gave me a noise-canceling headset. It canceled nothing.  But, it was the thought that counted. I guess.  😬

Then he and his wife had two kids in a row.  To say the kids were loud is a huge understatement.  Nice kids, too, though. But, I don’t remember ever crying or screaming that much at their ages, or smashing things.  My dad, who didn’t allow us to impose on others, would have knocked me into the next week.  But, again, after they moved, I expected a lot of quiet.  So much for theory. This is noise pollution central. There are worse things.  🧐 All considered, I don’t live in Ukraine.

It’s now the next day.  I survived. I just turned up music, closed windows, put on fans, and then turned on TV and turned up its volume, too. I guess we all have our defense mechanisms to survive living in the city.  

Not much I can do about helicopters, sirens, loud muffler-less cars, etc.  The fireworks, as I mentioned in my last blog, were loud. But, it doesn’t seem like they went on as long as they have in previous years.  Maybe after all the upsetting SCOTUS rulings recently, people lost some of their glee for patriotism and exploding things? 

Jocosa Puella

July 10, 2022

Relationships, Ten Trillion to One

Relationships. There’s a mouthful. And a handful. How does any one of them survive? How does anyone survive them?

I think, as with life itself existing at all in the universe, the odds of a relationship making it at all are about one in ten trillion. Nonetheless, we find ourselves alive and relating to each other, for better or for worse.

Relationships are work, we always hear. Or maybe it’s ourselves we hear saying, bitching that. But often, they are more like a bloody war than just a mere job.

Why can’t we all just get along? Why do we prefer war to peace in our relationships? Why do they often seem like more of a competition than a cooperation? Wouldn’t it help people in a relationship, as well as the survival of our species itself, to cooperate with each other?

Doesn’t it make more sense, that if everyone cooperated for the greater good, things would go along far more swimmingly for all involved, on all levels? For instance, wouldn’t not capturing, torturing, or killing anyone, but instead giving the other a helping hand, thereby helping ourselves with our own hands, make for a better world?

Why, instead, does it feel that there is some goal we think we must reach, passing Go and grabbing the cash, before the other can? Why do we need to beat the other? Where are we going? Are we proving something? Dog eat dog relationships? Last guy standing is not that rotten something or other?

Everything in life is relating. Right? Everything and everyone relates to everything and everyone else. We don’t materialize out of thin air. We are born through another. We need the other.

As with the Acacia tree and the ants, life is inter-woven, inter-active, and inter-dependent for survival. Scratch my back. I’ll scratch yours. Or in the case of the ant, I’ll keep pests off your limbs for some good eats.

We would not have even evolved if plant life had not developed first. Without the oxygen plants give off as a bi-product, we wouldn’t be breathing here. Life is simply symbiotic. No one, nothing survives alone in a vacuum.

It’s the Indian myth’s web of gems, with each one reflecting the next into infinity. We are all gems and part and parcel of that web of life. We’re all in this kitchen sink together, that Mulligan Stew of existence.

So, why don’t we take better care of our essential connections to each other and to every living thing instead of acting as if some god put the other fauna and flora here to serve us?

Countries, companies, religions, gangs, races, genders, and individuals all seem bent on bringing the other down while running off with the other’s flag toward some illusionary goal line in the sand. They argue, point, criticize, correct, and condemn the other to make themselves better than.

And this happens even within loving personal relationships, not just in the competitive world of business or in a war zone or gang turf war, or in a courtroom. Or maybe we have made life all one big court case. The People vs. People trial of the ages.

Are we all just stuck in an unconscious circular rat race, playing a game of steal the flag, or chess to the death? Why, shouldn’t it be more like Alice in Wonderland’s, Caucus Race?

All the creatures run around in a circle. There is no beginning, no end. Anyone can begin wherever he is and leave off wherever he is. And in the end, everyone wins and gets a prize. Now that makes sense.

That’s life. It’s simply a circle and yet, we run around like we are going to get somewhere first and be looked up to as some great conquering hero. Is it all ego and hero worship complexes?

But, really everyone is already a hero. We have each chosen to take this death-defying journey of life. And we need each other along our routes to keep us on track and off cliffs.

So, why do we not understand that there is no such thing as winning alone? If survival is our goal, why don’t we know that that desire to be on top, produces it’s opposite effect of all those you trampled to get there, pitching rocks at you to bring you down hard?

Did this need to conquer begin with early man and its need to survive when food was short? Maybe, but all life takes life in the process of surviving. And within species, members kill their own to make sure their genes are passed on rather than the other’s. Each individual thinks it is the best combination of that gene pool ever created and that it must replicate itself over others for the future good of its species and life.

Now, I’ve read rules of engagement for relationships to work. I’ve read Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements. I know that we should not take ourselves too seriously or accept another’s criticisms without realizing he is probably projecting his own feelings of inadequacy. I know we should reflect before we project or deflect our lousy day off on to the other, too.

I know we should respect and treat each other the way we wish to be treated. Jesus’ Golden Rule is the best and simplest ground rule for the world to co-exist. But, do we abide by the rules, especially the golden one?

Not so much really. People are constantly at war with each other. Sun Tzu’s 6th Century B.C., The Art of War is still a huge seller, and recommended to executives for business dealings. We learn to live by the rules of engagement in war.

And the divorce rate in the US, according to the Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri, is 50% of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages. According to enrichment journal (whatever that is) the divorce rate in America for first marriages is only 41%, second 60%, and third 73%.

Those third marriages are really under siege, endangered species. If at first you don’t succeed, give it up already… Huh? And marrying between the ages of 20 and 24 seems to doom it even more. Why is that worse than marrying at age 17? Too much time being free, know the difference, and thus harder to adapt to the compromise a union requires? My way or highway thinking? Longer in individual egg rather than as two broken into omelet?

And look at all the drivers yelling at each other on the road. People are ready to battle complete strangers at the drop of a hat, or the cutting off of a car in traffic.

And countries. People in mass are a mess? Mob mentality rules? A country will declare another country the enemy and then objectify the people as different from themselves, and all as one big bad seed, so they can feel justified in trying to destroy it or take its property or resources.

Hate and fear and label branding are camouflage for motives. I’m not trying to steal their oil or water. I’m trying to stop their evil ways from hurting themselves any longer, and introduce them to Democracy and Jesus. I want them to go to heaven. Yeah. Sooner than later, too, if they happen to be sitting on resources we need.

And far too often, the same thing seems to apply in a romantic relationship. Instead of cooperating in love to make their union work for the best for both parties in that omelet, it’s too often a competition. Seems we often plunder rather than embellish our significant other.

One wants to control the other. One wants to dominate. One must be right, the other wrong. Is it all just deep insecurity and/or fear of being abandoned, losing the other, being alone, again, naturally? So, instead, we drive the other to run screaming away before they wake up and decide they are better off without us, so that we are still in control?

Is it just a matter of seeing one’s own faults in the other and familiarity breeding contempt? Don’t we put people on pedestals only to then try to knock them off later? Or do we just look up to people we don’t personally know. Never a prophet in one’s own land theory.

I don’t know. But, I do know that when you bring two different, unique human egos together, all hell can break loose. It would seem that with all our same human genetic make-up, we’d be more on the same page.

And then, again, maybe we are. Maybe we are all on the same competitive, knock the other guy off the mountain to claim it as our own page.

What if we just dug beneath the surface a little deeper? If we can spill oil by digging, couldn’t we spill no man is an island consciousness and our deep connections by digging into ourselves more? Water represents the mind, after all. Dig, baby, dig. Spill love and oneness.

We want our freedom to do what we want when we want. And we want the relationship to be there as our safety net. We want sex, support, and companionship. We do need each other. We do want each other. And yet, war continues to break out all over the place all the time. Quel waste…

Maybe it’s time we take stock of our own superficial and counter-productive thinking and not only dig in, but back up a bit to get a less myopic view of what we’re doing and why. Time for Sun Tzu’s retreat and regroup plan. Not to live to fight another day. But, instead to live to love another day.

Wouldn’t that make a lovely and fine mess of the war zone we’ve created here in paradise? Love is all there is. Let’s practice it. We can get it right.