The Armenian Genocide

It's the 100-year anniversary - a very sad anniversary - of the Armenian genocide.  Even today, the Turks refuse to accept that it was a deliberate attempt to wipe a people off the face of the Earth.  Not unlike Japanese refusal to accept their nation's responsibility for atrocities committed by Japanese forces during WWII.

Here's a link to a thoughtful piece about HOW these actions occur - afterwards, too many people have trouble understanding just how a seemingly civilized nation could possibly be complicit - even directing - deliberate murder, rape, and attempted annihilation of their own citizens, based on cultural/religious factors.

In 1915, radio was in its infancy and few in Turkey were literate; most government messages of demonization were spread by word of mouth. According to Vahagan Dadrian, an historian of the Armenian genocide, the vilification of the Armenians was spread mainly through sermons by mullahs and by town criers who sprinkled the news about Armenians with words such as “traitors,” “saboteurs,” “spies,” “conspirators,” and “infidels.” Other means included dissemination of photographs of weapons that were labeled to convince Turks that their Armenian neighbors were storing up arms for use in plots to slaughter them. By stirring up distrust and fear of “those people,” a program of genocide can gain at least tacit if not open compliance from the population at large.

It sound not unlike the deliberate attempts to create hatred and mistrust of non-Black people by the Obama administration.  Americans, traditionally a people that avoided tribal/cultural divisions, are being herded into cliques, tribes, and deeply divided political entities.  Your political opponents are not merely those with different experiences and viewpoints, but actual demons.

Here's a list of those who call the Armenian genocide what it was.

Recently, Pope Francis stuck his neck out, and called a spade a spade - he garnered a lot of criticism for it, but he did it nonetheless.  For that reason, and because I'm generally a hopeful person, I have some optimism that the Catholic Church, and the papacy, will survive its Liberal/Leftist collaborators.

Here's a link to a LONG post - about divisiveness and politics, and how friendship can provide links that bridge the gap.  I think it's worth reading, and considering how we might put friendship at the service of re-building our country.

Here's another post - about brainwashing - which I think is relevant, as so many of the techniques used by Leftists - Social Shunning, Thought Control, Consensus, The Delphi Techniques - are designed to coerce obedience to authority through psychological pressure and specific, teachable techniques.

I'm luckier than most.  My father was a West Virginian, and after moving to Ohio, an outsider.  As such, he had a long experience with NOT conforming to groupthink.  Some of that must have rubbed off on me, as I've often been on the other side of conformity.

One of the most valuable things we can teach our children and grandchildren is that they won't die - they will find inner strength - by NOT conforming to the pack.  They need to learn this before they get sucked into the Great Progressive Mind-Molding Machine.