The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street- the right wing propaganda machine.

The right wing propaganda machine makes my blood boil for at least a few reasons:

1- I hate liars to start with
2-It has always gotten under my skin when some people seem to 'get away with' crap and I had a supernatural being keeping a record of every action or thought (recovered Catholic)...sneak cookie before dinner? That goes down as 'disobeying your parents, lying and stealing' Boy are YOU going to hell!" Some call it instant karma. I call it frustrating.
3-I grew up being called names for my dark skin, (being called the N word), having people telling me 'Italians are not white people', even some ass explaining to me how dark people, including Italians, are 'mud people'; God's screw up when he first attempted to bake a few human cookies. I hated having to defend myself from BS and not being able to do it with the same level of angry vitriol as the accuser unless I wanted to be in a fist fight (at least). It also made me uncomfortable because why should I defend the color of my skin? It made me feel ashamed when I would say 'I am not..." because I didn't have the same amount of racist hate some around me did. I remember asking my mom, 'why does dad hate black people?" Her answer was 'he had a bad experience with some when he was younger...never mind'. I said 'well, I had some bad experiences with a couple Italian people when I was younger. Should I hate all Italians?" I backed up before she tried to slap me.

4- I personally experienced the political lie machine in my teens. I got involved early on in the 'environmental movement' before Earth Day, and watched the lie machine in action, as in people like Reagan saying 'seen one tree...." Or people saying those of us complaining about smog in Los Angeles (and not being able to breathe) were a bunch of commies. I went to work with a group that put environmental initiatives on the ballot and saw millions spent on ads to paint us as some kind of cult that 'worshipped the sacred mosquito" (I still have a copy of that ad!); that we wanted to shut down ALL transportation, and send everyone back to living in caves using candles for lighting. They didn't argue the information, just kept smearing manure so people would have doubts. They KNEW, and know that when people have doubts or are confused, they will vote NO on anything new. They also hired people to spy on us. They, AND some FBI agents infiltrated our group and stole files, kept dossiers on us and would talk to some members to try to instigate something that they could publicly ue to say something like 'this group advocates blowing up the Chevron refinery", when it might just be something a volunteer said out of frustration while stoned. This is not paranoia, we actually had a couple of those spies return files to us and confess that they were sorry, that while spying on us, they saw that we were out to accomplish something good.

I have also done a lot of study of social psychology, behaviorism, and am good at seeing patterns in people's behavior. It makes me ill to see a whole machine that has been created after DECADES of work and billions in research, to manipulate people into swallowing some of the biggest piles of crap and being willing to practically canibalize themselves for a reward of being called a 'hero' or a 'patriot'.

I was also awake during the slaughters in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia and other places that were fomented by a loud propaganda machine that turned people on their neighbors.

And, finally (but not the last), I remember the Twilight Zone episode- The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street

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