Brainwashing for fun and profit!

Unexplained and Just Plain Crazy 17 comments

brainwashing cover

Brainwashing is a Cinch!
Maratta
1966

Of course I am interested in any book that would allow me to bend people to my will. (The longer I am in this profession, I realize that I really want to be a librarian dictator.) Our author defines brainwashing as substituting one belief for another. By using the power of suggestion and saying things a bit differently, you can control the people around you. Sure. Whatever.

However, the second half of the book is crazy on a whole new level. Our guy has a bunch of ideas and he is here to educate us all on the American way of life. Evidently, the poor, minorities, and women aren’t understanding how much good white men do for them. We have been brainwashed into thinking that there is a problem in how the American way of life works.

Take a look at some of the text. Poverty is a good teacher and an “honorable way of life.”  Evidently, poor people and minorities are not appreciative enough of the concept of opportunity. He doesn’t stop at poverty and racism, there is also another diatribe on how women have “lost ground.” The ladies need to appreciate that the men are the ones that teach them and provide for them. Men should be the breadwinner and women keep house. Note his letter to the ladies about their greed and other failings. Even violence on the street is the fault of these mothers. (How can men respect them when they do this?)

I will be in the back, weeping for humanity, once again.

Mary

brainwashing inside flaps

 

memory

equality and discrimination

imaginary discrimination

why women are "losing ground"

17 comments

  1. “Evidently, the poor, minorities and women aren’t understanding how much good white men do for them. We have been brainwashed into thinking that there is a “problem” in how the American way of life works.”

    The scary part is, a lot of America fell for the “good white men do for them” line during the last election. We were told there was a “problem” in the American way.

    If someone we all know read, I’d say he read this book.

  2. “Discrimination is often imaginary.” Oh, so all those centuries of slavery were just imagined by black people, that’s a relief.

  3. “Discrimination is often imaginary,” he says….. IMMEDIATELY before going off on a horribly racist diatribe about “the ineptitudes of the non-whites.”

    Wow. This guy is AWFUL.

    1. Also, side-note – looks like he’s pulling from the “73% of all statistics are made up” school of thought with the bizarre memory attributions. I’m not a scientist, but those are, um…. not correct. At all.

  4. Wow. The victim blaming in the last scan makes me want to throw things.
    I wonder if the author is/was a fundamentalist Christian? Some of this is just textbook sexism but some of it (including the “long hair”) comment suggests this was written by an EXTREMELY conservative author. Which would explain also why he suggests all women are attracted to men. No lesbian, bi, or asexual folks among us women!

    1. Scratch that…my brain went completely over the fact that he’s divorced three times.
      Just general sexism it is!

      1. What happened to those first three wives? Couldn’t he brainwash them? Did he present them with his beliefs as outlined on page 137? That would be enough for me!

  6. “The happiest and most contented man is one who can afford a woman of his own” Why stop at just one? Collect a whole set!

    1. Oh, but he does – on 114 when he “added” his future fourth wife to his “list of merrymakers” ugh.

  8. WOW. I am surprised that a book published THAT recently (1966- to give you an idea as to how recent that was, ’66 was the same year when my older sister was born!) would express such shockingly racist comments! That was during the era when civil rights was staring to become a hotly-debated and controversial political issue, at least in the USA, if not worldwide.

  11. Anyone else wonder why he seems so focused on the grandmother archetype, I thought he liked young, attractive women. Hmmm….maybe someone brainwashed him into thinking he should be attracted to young, attractive women, when really, he has a flannel nightgown and curlers fetish.

  12. I love where the author brags about having snagged a much younger 4th wife in his fifties. Ewwww! Also incredibly racist. Reminds me of someone unfortunately in power right now, with these same horribly outdated belief system…

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