You cannot reason them out of their beliefs. The BEST thing you can do is to work towards structure that will not permit the GroupThink, but allow them to be isolated, finally confronted with the reality that they have been programmed, and re-built into Homo Sapiens – THINKING Man/Woman.
We should look to ‘de-programmers’ who work with families that want to break their relatives out of cults. Other than just waiting until the cult collapses (often destroying their members in the process), I can’t think of another way to deal with it. A few will leave the cult’s intertwined social structure – for a job, for personal/health reasons, to move to another part of the country or to a more rural environment – and, sometimes, in the process, break the spell. The current situation, where people are leaving their urban environments for a less crowded environment, some are adopting the virtual lifestyle for work/school, or otherwise breaking free of the Omnipresent Borg, may be a stepping stone.
We need to follow that suggestion to set up Welcome Wagon committees, that will work to integrate them into their new lives. They need help to do so.
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Linda, that last paragraph put me uncomfortably in mind of The Prisoner. A whole village couldn’t “deprogram” one stubborn prisoner! What hope have we of deprogramming half a nation? (:-)
And it IS a cult. I’ve had many great discussions with several people to that effect.
In a post that is, I presume, forthcoming soon as soon as our host approves it – my tendency to going long having understandably attracted his attention, and thanks for the direction – these people are enmeshed in their self-perception as special, anointed intellects. They are smarter, more noble, more worthy, etc.
In my limited reading about cults, deprogramming requires being able to both isolate from the herd as well as get them to look at things.
As our host notes, how will we do that to half a nation? Even one on one is difficult.
The left cannot be deprogrammed, but they can be demoralized, and the deep contradictions within their incoherent vision of the world set at war with each other. You cannot reason with the left, because like a spoiled child who takes a hammer to a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that stubbornly refuses to fit, they have deliberately abandoned reason or any other impediment to their narcissistic wilfulness. You cannot bring them to reason, but the next best thing, and perhaps the only option, is to permit them to go completely insane, so that they eventually fall supine and catatonic, exhausted by their frenzy. They are already well on the way there.