I once heard Rush Limbaugh tell his audience that they didn’t need to think anymore. Now that they had him, he would tell them what to think. If I remember correctly, in the moment, I thought he was being funny. He wasn’t. He meant it. Worse, his listeners believed and obeyed. That was early days in the slowly-going-crazy movement that became known as MAGA.

There was a guy named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who lived in Germany while they suffered THEIR slowly-going-crazy moment that became known as the Nazis. He was murdered by the Nazis about three weeks before Hitler killed his evil self. He spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how his once great nation of thinkers and philosophers could allow themselves to be led by such a puny, stupid, and vulgar man. (Sound familiar?)

He chose the word ‘stupidity,’ but didn’t mean it as an intellectual measure. He meant is a a moral measure. The German people had been slowly led to abandon decent morals in favor of the new paradigm. But ‘stupid’ could have been a failure of translation. I find myself wondering if he might have intended the word to be ‘dumb,’ instead.

I know, it doesn’t seem like there’s much difference. Also, and this is important, I suspect I’m applying a definition that likely did not have a similar meaning back in 1945. Here’s what I mean. You can sit at what looks like a computer. It has a monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard. What it does NOT have is it’s own processing power. It’s just a portal that connects, along with many others, to a single, central computer, called a mainframe, a BIG computer.

That station you sat down at is known in the industry as a “dumb terminal.” It’s not meant as an insult. It just means that screen gets it’s information from someplace else. It isn’t coming up with answers on it’s own. A dumb terminal doesn’t “think” for itself. It gets it’s information someplace else and simply regurgitates it. It turns out, that’s another aspect of Bonhoeffer’s “stupidity.”

He saw what happened in Germany as a kind of mob response. Too many Germans allowed someone else to do their thinking. They shut down their own minds and just started parroting the party line. They didn’t think about what they were being told because they didn’t have to think about what they were being told. It got easier for them. They embraced it.

But if one doesn’t check the information coming into their brains, someone else can push anything they want into those brains. The Nazis did. They got their followers to surrender their own thought process, then they eroded the morals of a nation. Eventually, it led to the kind of mob rule that we learn about in history books today. As many as 80 million people died as a result.

Right wing media does it today to MAGA, with very similar results. It turns out, the MAGA mind is no mind at all. In a sense, there is no MAGA individual. Each one of them represents a kind of dumb terminal to the central message distribution. That’s part of the reason it’s so effing hard to convince MAGA they’ve been deceived. THEY didn’t think these thoughts in the first place. How can you reason them into a more accurate or successful thought pattern?

This self-imposed blindness makes these dumb terminals perfect instruments for those in power. They are easily manipulated, happy to follow orders without question, and oblivious to the harm they are causing. Until that harm comes back to themselves. But even then, the dumb terminals can easily be convinced the harm comes from somewhere else. (Biden, anyone?)

The most frustrating part of Bonhoeffer’s observations is that he didn’t offer a successful antidote. One would have to engage in some critical thinking. One would have to check facts. One would have to question information, especially when it conflicts with already known facts. The dumb terminals simply will not do that. Many of them can’t.

So we’re still looking for the formula to break the spell. These extremist cons aren’t stupid intellectually, most of them, anyway. They COULD think if they chose to. The trick is to get them to choose to. But it’s so much easier to let someone else control them, like puppets on strings. AND, there’s a built-in “out.” MAGA doesn’t think of the terrible things MAGA supports. Each one of them can tell themselves it wasn’t their fault.

So how DOES one get dumb terminals to think and take responsibility for themselves? It’s the question of the ages, sure, but it’s the pressing question of the moment. We desperately need answers and we need them now…

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Well, I’m glad to see Gavin Newsom fighting back against obvious threats from the Grifter in Chief about the elections. Newsom signed a package of bills that protect against some of the things corrupted Americans might do to help their MAGA cause, like seizing ballots, and signed one intended to thwart illegal federal political interference. The package also laid out parameters around how political campaigns interact with social media influencers.

In the last election candidate Tom Steyer is said to have paid social media influencers to boost his campaign without any disclosure they were being paid. Newsom signed a bill to impose penalties against individuals who do not disclose paid political content. So California has taken steps to protect it’s voting process. I hope other states will follow. I’m sure none of them will be red.

Now that the Pedo President has declared without evidence that mail-in ballots aren’t safe, the red states are going to have to try to prove him right. Since he’s wrong, they’re going to have to engage in a bit of chicanery to get ‘er done. They don’t mind. Evil people never mind doing evil things to further their own, evil purposes…

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I was less happy to hear that Newsom said he wouldn’t run for President in 2028 if Kamala runs. Mostly, I think, I’m bummed that Kamala might run again. She isn’t exactly an electric candidate. She hasn’t done well in any national elections. She became vice-president on the coattails of a guy who, himself, wasn’t the dynamic leader people demanded. He simply wasn’t trump. People were so mad at the Drumpfster they would have voted in a turkey sandwich to replace him.

Despite GOP propaganda, Biden did a pretty good job, especially when one considers the mess he inherited from the worst President in history. But nobody knew that would be the case when we all voted for him. No. We didn’t vote for him. We voted against trump. That’s different. Kamala just got caught up in the current and found herself swept into power – until she was sidelined by her own team.

Leave it to the Dems (or should I say, the Washington Generals) to back the candidate that lost to a buffoonish moron, a known quantity, a piece of human garbage. We have better options out there. Please, Kamala, don’t run…