[Peace-discuss] Mort -- On the topic of "brainwashing"

[Bill Strutz]

(1) Excellent point, Ron, and I think it's one that needed to be made.
Education, enlightenment, and factuality are not the same as brainwashing.

(2) I've been thinking hard about this incident itself, replaying the tape
and so on.  Frankly, I'm upset.  There was a real air of violence there.
     (a) As I see it, it was mostly a matter of the three pro-war people
trying to impress each other with how tough they were.  The primary guy was
playing top dog, the dominant member of the pack.  The woman (the most
muscular woman I've ever seen aside from professional body-builders) was so
macho I would have thought that she was (pardon the expression) a "dyke",
except that she kept looking to the alpha male; and (less often) she also
looked to the secondary male.  It was clear from her behavior that she was
"with" the alpha male but also wanted status with the other male.  Then
there was that other male, who pressed in on a couple of occasions, but was
clearly not the leader of the pack.  It struck me at the time that he didn't
want to have the alpha male think that he was interested in the female.
     (b) I do think that beer was a factor; they were not drunk by any
means, but inhibitions had been lowered.
     (c) It's important that we were behind a table.
     (d) It's also important that there were TWO of us behind the table.  In
the event, we had two because Stuart stepped in when he wasn't scheduled,
and Jennifer started significantly earlier than her scheduled shift.  (Ron
was also there during some time when he wasn't scheduled.)  Otherwise, we
would have had just ONE (me!) or none.
     In the Farmer's Market venue, the atmosphere is relatively friendly,
and there is no beer.  In the Sweetcorn Festival, it seems important to me
that we fill the shifts (especially after a certain hour of the evening.)
     (f)  Okay, so there were at least two of us behind the table at the
critical moments.  At those times, I was standing, but I should have been
sitting.
     (f) I'm kicking myself over one point:  There were usually a couple of
cops in the middle of the street (aside from Sheriff Walsh).  24 hours
later, when I came back on duty, I think that I should have had a word with
them: Recommending that if we had a repeat performance, a cop should step up
closer, just so everyone would be aware of a police presence.  That is what
police are FOR.
     (g) In my Saturday shift (24 hours later) I think that I saw each of
the two guys eying us, thinking of coming over--but on Saturday, they were
not TOGETHER, and each decided against coming over to the booth.

-- Bill





On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 10:26 PM, Ron Szoke <r-szoke at illinois.edu> wrote:

> 1.  Is a valid mathematical proof an instance of brainwashing?
>
> 2.  Is a scientific or scholarly paper citing data & drawing inferences
> based on
> the evidence of those data an instance of brainwashing?
>
> If so, the notion has lost all sense & usefulness.
>
> -- Ron
>



-- 
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"No one party can fool all of the people all of the time.  That's why we
have two parties." --Bob Hope
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