What to Think
By Brent Regan
The “Seditious Six” attempted brainwashing.
Thinking is hard. The brain is less than 3% of your body’s weight but consumes 20% of your total energy while at rest and nearly a third when deep in thought. If you live in a situation with limited food, too much thinking can cause an early demise. Evolutionary forces have encouraged the development of brain behavior that favors survival over thinking. When presented with a new situation you naturally quickly form “first impressions.” Your brain looks for clues and patterns so it can quickly classify the elements in your environment to determine the degree of danger that exists. Survival is the priority so the truth is only important when it serves to help survive.
Once this first impression is formed your brain throttles to idle to conserve energy. First impressions are important because changing that impression requires additional thinking and energy. Once you have made up your mind, it is tough to change.
Most of the brain’s pattern recognition is on the subconscious level and can manifest as a “gut level” reaction. If you walk into a situation and feel apprehension, that’s your subconscious recognizing patterns of danger.
The subconscious is a primitive “lizard brain” part of your mind. It operates on three simple rules. First, there is no past or future, there is only now. Second, there are no negatives. If I tell you to NOT think of an elephant you WILL think of an elephant. Third, there is no difference between fantasy and reality which is why imagining biting into a lemon causes your mouth to water and watching a sad movie can make you cry.
Understanding the operating rules of the mind will allow you to critically analyze attempts at persuasion. Consider the recent video released by the “Seditious Six” Democrats telling soldiers to refuse illegal orders from the president.
The culprits assert that their video was just a public service announcement but Trump immediately recognized the video as an act of sedition; a deliberate attempt to challenge the authority of the President. The facts are clear.
The President does not issue orders directly to the soldiers on the ground. There are no fewer than 10 command layers between the President and the foot soldier. At each layer a command is examined for legality. The chance that an illegal order from the president would make it all the way through the chain of command is nil.
The Seditious Six cannot point to ANY illegal order issued by the President.
How would a soldier determine if an order from the president was illegal?
The leader of the Seditious Six, Elissa Slotkin had a career as a CIA Analyst before being elected to the Senate so she has training in psychological operations. The other five also have national intelligence service-related backgrounds.
The video is a study in persuasion techniques including quick cuts to hold your attention, the phrase “refuse Illegal Orders” repeated multiple times in both audio and print and speakers looking directly at you. All designed to implant the idea that you should refuse orders from the president that you don’t like. They are telling you what to think.
Democrats rely heavily on telling their constituents what to think.
Republicans, like Trump, will tell you how to think and to analyze a situation to see past the rhetoric and fake news. How many of your opinions have changed over the past decade once Trump showed what was behind the curtain?
Skeptical that Republicans will tell you how to think? Reread this article and you will see that is exactly what just happened.
It’s just common sense.