the people. Government has no God-given right to interfere with our personal control, co-opt our drives for independence, or restrict inborn needs to excel or pursue happiness.
Biology is on our side. During our developmental period, brain and body grow from precarious states of dependency to more sustainable states of independence. This rush to individual independence is accompanied by internal urgings to improve the self, and achieve with all potential working together to reach its highest level of output. Don’t we already hope that our children are at their best? Don’t many of us strive to improve ourselves to find that elusive glimmer of lasting happiness?
Simply put, the goal of living is to follow Mother Nature’s laws. Achieving a true state of happiness is the result of lifelong quests that begin in the early years in preparatory struggles to become our best. Once an individual’s psychological gifts are maximized (optimized), everything subsequent to this preparatory stage of life falls naturally into place—all things being equal. Unfortunately, even a minor glitch in the mind’s processing during the early years will prove costly in later years. Traumatic experiences—mild or serious—disturb mental processing in corresponding degrees.
One feature of mental processing that is fragile to even the most subtle of insults is curiosity/motivation to learn. We’re born motivated to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. When interrupted by abuse, for example, motivations to learn are immediately, and momentarily, redirected to raw, reflexive, defensive, survival strategies. Here’s the danger: Depending on circumstances, motivations may never return to their original baseline of maximum passion to learn. When we admire fast learners, we’re actually admiring quality of parenting that produced minds with few internal or external restrictions where passions to discover, create, and innovate were energized and allowed to proliferate. Because psychological, defensive reactions were unnecessary, mental processes were free to succeed or fail. Success is a learning experience, but so is failure. Success shows us what works for us; failure shows us what does not work for us. We can only reach the state of wisdom when we experience and understand both.
Any threatened child can learn, but what is he learning? He is learning how to fight back, hate, seek revenge, escape, deny, or mechanically submit to avoid more threats. Replacing curiosity with raw survival strategies that cause unnecessary suffering for a lifetime is not what any parent, or society, wants for a child.
What does this have to do with politics?
When the child feels protected, safe, and is free to learn, he grows into a psychologically healthy adult who, with other psychologically healthy adults, form the source of political power that improves society on all levels. Ideas that the individual must be free to seek excellence of any kind, that he is master of his destiny, and that in him lies the source of political power stand in stark contrast to the “modern” idea that the individual must be forced into submission—for the “benefit” of all.
Whatever personal positives the psychologically healthy individual brings to build a better world, they are today being replaced, even condemned, by misperceptions that government is solely responsible for building that better world. Subtle political messages are telling us that the individual, with his irrational thinking, capitalistic greed, and runaway impulses, going off in all directions without enlightened leadership, will forever be scrambling, and failing, to build anything that resembles a better world.
With this threat’s political ideology viewing government as the source of everything good, and the free-thinking individual as the source of everything bad, political mind-shapers are driving messages into our American culture and traditions to build that “better world” on the backs of naive, dependent, helpless, amoral, misguided, apathetic, suffering, and psychologically and intellectually challenged followers who blindly submit to political elites they have been led to believe have reached a state of self-inspired wisdom far beyond the common man’s capacity to understand.
All of this was possible because this threat never had a nemesis pushing back. It does now; you’re holding it: a new, scientific psychology specifically designed to challenge its illegitimate brand of political psychology point for point, and then some. Now the ideological playing field of politics is level. Now your political beliefs, and votes, count. Your newly enlightened words will pierce endless arguments with a legitimate psychology specifically designed to cut through the nonsense.
The new psychology you will discover in this book draws sharp lines; all Americans must choose a side. Both sides will be exposed for anyone to examine and compare. A prediction: Expect political battles to end with certain and predictable results, i.e., one political ideology will clearly win; one will clearly lose.
Isn’t this what we the people of America are crying out for? Isn’t it time to stand up to meet anti-American attacks with fact-filled reasons why America is exceptional? Why not address today’s collapsing of American values and traditions with prescriptive strategies and clear-cut methodologies that directly challenge political masterminds hawking their shifting ideology anyway they see fit? Don’t good people deserve something better for saving America from itself than a different political point of view?
My above triad of political controllers, willful controlees, and angry, resentful activists railing against critics, and demanding blind obedience to their “enlightened” leaders, yields a tightly organized cluster of psychological symptomologies I will expose by identifying, classifying, and diagnosing them so you can apply them on the spot.
Without this new psychological expertise held firmly in the hands of every patriotic American, corrupt politicians will never cease to exploit us in ways we’ll never notice, much less understand. Morally-challenged politicians will continue to give us what they want, not what we need. We’ll keep hearing solutions reinforced by warmed over, well-rehearsed, political psychobabble. Politicians may take a second look at their bad law or regulation, but in the end spend more of our tax money on it with their “good” intentions.
Beware of the so-called good intention in politics; it’s like the fabled Trojan Horse, i.e., appearing unexpectedly as a perfect answer to an intractable problem—until time reveals its true purpose. In many cases, it exacerbates the very problem it was supposed to correct. Why? The good intention in politics may not be about solving anything. It may be more about politely walking away from responsibility, feeling good, generating good feelings in others, exchanging action for inaction, avoiding hard choices or standing up for what is right, dodging issues, exploiting opportunities to grab power or secure riches, bending to powerful donors or influence, gaining attention, escaping blame, dodging criticism, deceiving, controlling others, or bestowing moral values on the self to appear honorable.
Trapping unsuspecting victims with good intentions, smiley faces, happy talk, optimistic predictions, or false promises is an old but reliable ruse. Pedophiles offer candy or car rides. Pimps offer companionship, protection, money, and promised paths out of misery. Political exploiters differ in strategies, but the end results are often the same: give potential victims whatever they want so they, without question, eventually nod in the affirmative to their certain demise. Psychologically distressed people are the first in line to bend. Once they bend, they are doomed to live marginal lives clinging to their misfortunes trusting government to make them whole—someday.
This political threat to America treats us as if our individual survival drive is under government control, not Mother Nature’s. But then, why not? Who or what controls the individual survival drive is a subliminal conflict that has never been resolved, and therefore is open to any and all opinions. Few people understand it; fewer still warn of violations against it. This has serious political implications. America’s treating the individual survival drive as if government owns it is a green light for this threat to speak with authority about what we instinctively hold to be most important to our very existence. Reaching deeply into the mind to replace Mother Nature with government gives political elites unlimited power to openly create helpless/dependent lifestyles
