Indoctrinate

We Americans have been hearing about indoctrination for years now. We have heard how the “Left” is using education to indoctrinate the children to be gay, to be trans, to be weak, to be progressive, to be un-American, to be elitist, to be educated, and on and on. Children, like everyone else, are political pawns. Faceless little angels who are being abused, perverted, and sold by the Left. 

It’s not just children though, no, we’re all being indoctrinated. Education itself is bad, is infecting all of us with liberalism and wokeness and destroying this great nation. 

That’s what we hear. 

Wokeness, the great disease of our time, despite it simply being the act of people standing up for themselves and one another. Sure, sure, it gets a bit silly when pushed to the extreme, as all things do, but at its heart, it’s a push back against people that think Trump’s “telling it like it is” is a good thing. 

As if being cruel, and abusive are admirable traits. 

For some, those are. 

The real truth though is that we are all being indoctrinated every day and whether we fall for it or not is really a matter of what we already believe. We are advertised to and sold to in everything we do. We have been told that collecting things is clutter and that we need to declutter our lives, leading us to get rid of things we may have cherished. Our own loved ones portray these lives that are not real but are the condensed versions that are fit for the masses – vacations, parties, dates, concerts, and everything else exciting. Doing the dishes, washing clothes, bathing kids, arguing with loved ones, and doubting what you’re doing in life is often cut because we don’t want people to think…what, we’re human?

And indoctrination doesn’t have to be diabolical. Your friends trying to show the great parts of their lives aren’t being terrible. Just as you aren’t when you are trying to tell the world about a new movie, or album, or book, or piece of art you fell in love with. There is a sinister indoctrination though, and it’s right in front of us. 

I am not much on social media. 

I have an Instagram to promote my writing and event stuff. I have a LinkedIn that I used when I was trying to find work. I have a Facebook that I have as a ghost account so I can have my event page – stupid FB insists you have a personal page to have a “business page”. I am not “social media free but I am not as visible as I once was. For some reason, this invisibility has aligned with Meta (Facebook’s) pursuit of global saturation and in their taking the guardrails off – so they don’t look like they’re dirty, censorious libs! What we have then are countless accounts created by foreign entities and political nuts. Facebook has been filled with bot accounts for years, many of them “sexy ladies” that lure in thirsty or lonely guys to rip off in one way or another. Now though there are all manner of “patriot” accounts and “patriotic” groups. Worse, there are groups set up to look like they are news agencies of one ilk or another and then you see them posting stories that are mere whips of truth to them. Truth isn’t the point though, it’s about riling up people who are already angry and indoctrinating people who are struggling with what they believe. 

You’ll see articles about “woke Hollywood” and the heroic rebels who refuse to succumb to their evil ways. You’ll see stories say that the “truth” is coming out about some famous person seen as liberal, often a person of color or a woman. You also get sexual politics, body politics, and everything else you can name. You see Musk being touted as a strongman, much like Trump has been. Two weak men whose strength comes from their power and their bully pulpit. These posts are about creating boogeymen for people to rally against. Right now people are desperate to know who to hate and these posts are more than happy to give out targets for disdain.

We are seeing people being lied to and misled and Facebook both doesn’t care, and doesn’t have resources to care. Like most corporations, they don’t have any interest in putting resources into curtailing these fake accounts and groups and only a minimal interest in getting rid of the propaganda. Heck, with the incoming administration it behooves them to look the other way lest they get hit with penalties or worse. 

We are surrounded by people trying to get us to buy into whatever they are selling and now that many of us are working our own grifts and hustles it’s hard to really tune it out. Just using social media or social video you are being sold to, preached to, or lied to and the best you can do is be smart and educate yourself. For me, I know enough not to believe the nonsense I have been seeing but we’re all susceptible to something. We all have things we want to believe, good or bad, and it’s just a matter of whether we put the work in to figure out if things are real or not. 

I leave you not with a deep sentiment but with a collection of the images I caught on my own feed, which is just a whisper of the shouting that people log in to hear every time they get on Facebook. 

And that’s a scary thought.  

As Public Enemy says though, don’t believe the hype.