REBOOT — A Port in the Storm - A Guide to Communicating with Family Members Under Undue Influence
Just in time for the holidaze
***Originally published December 19, 2022. I hope you find it helpful. Thank you to everyone who supports my work.***
In the Before Times, we sat together at the dinner table during the holidays and celebrated another year. Ideological differences took a backseat to the love we shared for one another. The song that best embodies this spirit for me is John Legend’s “It Don’t Have to Change.”
And then 2016 happened, and everything changed. The illegitimate presidency of Donald Trump - a result of Russian military attacks on America and domestic traitors cooperating with the Russians - divided families, friends, colleagues, our nation. Big business goose-stepped alongside Trump, as he and his allies tweeted Russian propaganda originating in St. Petersburg, while disgraced General Mike Flynn detonated psychological operations on American citizens. Despite felony convictions for many in Trump’s orbit, an abuse of pardoning power enabled American traitors to walk free.
If you are reading me here, I do not need to explain the finer points to you. But tonight, at our second Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ salon, friends shared with me their concerns about how to talk to family members who do not see this Invisible War that is hacking their minds. They do not recognize that Trump and Flynn are the biggest traitors in American history. They do not see that Elon Musk is transmitting messages for Vladimir Putin on Twitter. They do not see that Twitter is being used as the largest platform for brainwashing in history.
And unfortunately, facts are not helpful when trying to get through to brainwashed family members or friends, who actually experience physical and emotional pain when being told something that runs contrary to their unreality. This unreality has been carefully crafted in extremist think tanks filled with PhDs to intentionally spread a plague of digital poison. As we learned from Jason Stanley, conspiracy theories are a key component of fascism. Getting people to disbelieve their own minds makes it easier to install rage and fear, and to get people to vote against their own interests.
Before someone can be coerced to believe lies, they first must be put through the conspiracy theory gauntlet. There are many entry points and with our data being sold about 900 + times a day, the villains of these operations know where to find the vulnerabilities.
So it is very important to view the people in your life who are supporting domestic traitors and foreign dictators as victims. This is the first step. They are being radicalized on Fox, Facebook, OAN, Telegram, Twitter, in their churches, and by their friends. The goal of Russia’s active measures is to make us hate each other - to cause chaos, trauma, to make us vulnerable to the ‘strongmen’. And yes for some it is merely about greed - a desire for tax breaks. They are not going to like fascism either.
Tonight, I heard from a friend whose father was a lifelong democratic before Fox stole his brain, filling it with outrage, white rage, othering, and fear.
The weapon’s grade propaganda he was fed altered him, and few have protection against it because the propaganda is designed to be addictive. I call this, ‘outrage junkies.’ People tune in to be fed more outrage, and the dose is steadily increased until one day, we find ourselves hanging up the phone on people we love.
I ask you to make sure your last words to everyone in your life who are suffering undue influence are words of kindness, so you never suffer regret.
Here are my recommendations for how to co-exist with brainwashed family members, particularly useful as we break bread during the holidays:
Do more listening than talking
Meet people where they are at
Do not try to stuff facts in their face
Brainwashed people are like addicts - many will not surrender to reality until they are ready
Some have to hit an emotional bottom or have a psychic shift to come back to themselves
The real person you know and love is still in there and when they are ready to come back, they will remember your kindness and you may get the first phone call
Until the nation is ready to address these psychological manipulations en masse, we bring people back one at time and with patience
I have learned these techniques from interviewing Dr. Steven Hassan, and many others, and I have employed them in my own life. I spent a year doing more listening than talking while in campaign trenches. I met perfectly beautiful people, who I came to love deeply, who are under undue influence. They do not realize Joe Biden is a good and decent man. They think vaccines are the devil and do not realize Trump is a con man picking their pocket.
When you are kind and listen and do not judge harshly, the law of attraction sets in, and when they ask your opinion, calmly, give it to them. Initially, you may get the preprogrammed response: “Soros! Soros! Soros!”
Pause to grace, and let it just waft into the ether.
Find what you have in common, and cherish those moments when you see who they really are inside.
Continue to do the work of democracy without familial validation. As I looked around the Zoom squares last night, I realized I have been creating my own family through my activism for years. The best minds in this fight are my family. I am blessed.
I am reminded of the words of Dave Troy from our very first interview nearly two years ago: “I have often said, if you want to change someone’s mind about something, change their friends.”
I hear the words of Ruth Ben-Ghiat, whose mother was radicalized by RT into voting for Brexit and believing Putin. As soon as the UK moved to ban RT, within days her mother regretted voting for Brexit, and she believed Putin to be a bad man. She had shifted her viewing to the BBC. Her mom returned to her Before Times self.
Nothing can bring back the mothers and fathers lost during Covid, who were radicalized against science, their children forced to come to terms that something is profoundly wrong in America’s information streams. They were casualties of an information war, a war other countries are fighting against and winning. Leaders in Denmark, Finland, Estonia, have stepped up to battle Russia’s ongoing attacks on their people. Russia is always at war, and active measures are cheap, but we do have defenses. We just need to deploy them.
In coming days and weeks, we will find out if we are still a country with rule of law. We must also find out if we are still a country that makes big bold moves.
If we are, then we will have reinforcements.
Until then, stay kind, stay calm, stay empathetic.
Be a port in the storm.
****
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