Raising Deluded Americans

All Nations Do Something Similar, But I Can Speak Best to My Experience

I was born in Seattle in 1958, my family moved to California in 1963, and except for a year in Houston while my father worked for NASA, I grew up in California.  I was a bookworm from the time that I could walk, was at the top of all my classes through my college diploma, and boy, did I ever get indoctrinated.  My awakening from my conditioning was a long, fitful process that would have likely never quite happened if I had not met Dennis Lee in 1986.  I had early experiences that gave hints of where I was heading, such as when my family went “health nut” in 1970 to save my father’s health.  I had my first paranormal experiences at age 16 in a meditation class, soon after spending the summer in Europe, and those were early milestones in my awakening process.  But the cognitive dissonance that led to my awakening began after college, and when I asked that question in auditing class that everybody laughed at, I can see that the idealist in me was having a difficult time in the real world.  My “naïve” question was the most important one that could be asked in my profession, but nobody wanted to hear it.  I subscribed to Christian Science Monitor in my LA days, thinking that I was getting something a little more thoughtful than the LA Times that I read each morning. 

Looking back, I recognize those attempts to question my conditioning, but it was a half-conscious process.  I am not sure that I knew what I was looking for.  My years with Dennis radicalized me, and I would never see the world the same way again.  Over the years since then, I have met people who reminded me of how I would have likely turned out if I had not met Dennis: well-meaning but naïve and not quite awake. 

In my early years of study after my radicalization, at the scholarly feet of people such as Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman, and Howard Zinn, it was one revelation after another about how I had been lied to while growing up.  Before long, I was wondering if anything taught to me while young was true.  The USA is a special case in ways, as history’s richest and most powerful nation that is an empire that pretends that it is not one.  The propaganda and indoctrination that Americans receive is different from what the citizens of Asian, African, Latin American, or even European nations receive, but I eventually realized that all nations do that to their children, to make them loyal members of their societies. 

I will make some posts on the indoctrination and propaganda that I received while growing up, as I know that best.  But any adult on Earth could likely tell similar tales, if they had awakened from their conditioning.  Americans may be the most brainwashed people on Earth, and relatively few realize it.