THE GEORGE W . BUSH HYPONOSIS FILE

[Guest guest]

THE GEORGE W. BUSH HYPNOSIS FILE

 

by Russell M. Drake

 

Call him hypnotist-in-chief. He earned it.

 

Among modern era statesmen, only Adolf Hitler comes close to George

W. Bush's skill level as operator of the public consciousness.

 

Consider: After three years of terror and death at the hands of a

terrorist band run by two guys hiding in caves, after a bloody,

failed invasion of the wrong country in search of who knows what,

after a jobs market crash matched only by the Herbert Hoover

Administration, and after mismanaging huge national budget surpluses

into over-the-cliff national deficits – all supported by the most

outlandish lies – Bush still holds a firm grip on the minds of more

than half of the people who say they're going to vote.

 

The hypnosis has been so effective that it has enabled Bush to

survive repeated blunders that might well have led to another man's

impeachment and removal from office, even by members of his own

party.

 

He did it with fear hypnosis, verbal confusion hypnosis, peace

hypnosis, deference hypnosis, radio hypnosis, the help of the press,

and the Big Lie technique pioneered by Hitler.

 

" In the size of the lie there is always contained a certain factor of

credibility, since the great masses of the people....will more easily

fall victim to a great lie than to a small one. " – Hitler, Mein

Kampf.

 

Bush's political hypnosis talent, like Hitler's, lies in taking

classroom hypnosis theory and technique and projecting it to mass

audiences.

 

Verbal Confusion Hypnosis

 

Bush's most famous lies have centered around the reasons (23 counted

by University of Illinois senior Devon Largio in her 2004 honors

thesis) given for going to war against Iraq. The ever changing

justifications for the war put Bush groupies into a state of verbal

confusion hypnosis where they more or less gave up thinking for

themselves and believed anything Bush said, a condition explained by

Jesse E. Gordon in Handbook of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.

 

" The verbal confusion technique, which is quite difficult to

administer, involves an approximation of double-talk in which

instructions of a somewhat contradictory kind are given in rapid

succession making it impossible for the attentive subject either to

quite comprehend or quite acquiesce to any of them. Finally, he

simply gives up all attempts and more or less collapses into a

hypnotic state. " Trying to sort through 23 reasons in search of the

right one can be confusing, particularly when they're given in rapid

succession, over and over again.

 

Some might see Bush's 23 reasons as nothing more than a scoundrel's

desperate scramble to cover his trail except that he does it

elsewhere, as in his rambling State of the Union addresses where he

may produce a dazzling list of jobs creation spending that quickly

evaporates into thin air. Remember the hydrogen car, or launching a

man from the moon to Mars?

 

Fear Hypnosis

 

The initial reason for war advanced by Bush was that Saddam Hussein

posed an intolerable threat to the safety of Americans.

 

In a hysterical, almost panicky call to war at the Cincinnati Museum

Center, October 7, 2002, Bush belabored Saddam as a " murderous

tyrant " with " an arsenal of terror " that included " a massive

stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for and

is capable of killing millions. " Further, Bush cried, Saddam had the

know-how and materials to make nuclear bombs and " a growing fleet of

manned and unmanned aerial vehicles " capable of delivering chemical

and biological weapons " in a region where 135,000 American civilians

and service members live and work. "

 

Later exposed as pure hokum, Bush's hypnotized minions bought this

swindle lock, stock, and barrel.

 

With his Weapons of Mass Destruction charges under increasing

scrutiny after none were found, Bush shifted to torture themes which

he used to high effect in his January, 2003 State of the Union

address: " This dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous

weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of

his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us

how forced confessions are obtained by torturing children while their

parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have

catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq:

electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin,

mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues and rape. "

 

In The Group Mind, first published in 1920 by Putnam, author and

social psychologist William McDougall says, " It is well recognized

that almost any emotional excitement increases the suggestibility of

the individual, though the explanation of the fact remains obscure. "

 

According to recent research, the answer lies in the fact that fear

messages induce subjects to react not with their logical " left brain "

but with their more emotional " right brain. " The theory is explored

in Mindsight, a soon to be published book by psychiatrist Daniel

Siegel.

 

Always a step ahead of his critics, by March, 2003, on the eve of his

invasion of Iraq, Bush had whipped the American public into a frenzy

of war hysteria hypnosis with his fevered visions of the peril posed

by Saddam.

 

War and Power

 

Bush began preparations for war long before 9/11 and Hussein.

 

The Bible on which he swore to uphold The Constitution was still wet

with his palm print when the gears of war began grinding in his

brain.

 

Soon, the new president was issuing belligerent statements against

other countries and their leaders, trashing traditional allies,

bullying the United Nations, refusing U. S. participation in a world

court to try war crimes, turning thumbs down on a global warming

pact, and making policy decisions that adversely affect the poor and

downtrodden of the planet.

 

Bush primed the terrorist bomb as surely as if he had assembled it

himself.

 

The conclusion that he did it deliberately to provoke violence that

would enable him to go to war is nearly inescapable.

 

That he wanted war to insure that he could serve two terms in the

presidency is another inescapable conclusion. It could not have been

lost on Bush that almost all lasting public policy has been achieved

by presidents of long tenure, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

Harry S. Truman, Dwight David Eisenhower, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and

Ronald Wilson Reagan.

 

Two terms would give him the time to set in motion a chain of events

that would cement conservative policy so solidly in place that it

would be shatter resistant, if not immune to change by succeeding

administrations. " Reforming " most social programs in a way that would

curtail their access by ordinary citizens, and appointing federal

judges and Supreme Court justices agreeable to the process would be

not just a worthy goal, but an achievable one.

 

Making war to hold on to political power is not a new idea. English

statesman and writer Edmund Burke accused George III and his prime

minister Lord North of using force against the American colonies to

render critics impotent, and strengthen their hand in other ventures

of empire. " Let them but once get us into a war, and then their power

is safe, and an act of oblivion passed for all their misconduct, "

said Burke in his Letter to the Sheriffs of Nottingham. FDR, LBJ, and

Nixon were all accused of making war to extend their terms and

agendas.

 

Ultra hawk Dick Cheney may be the Bush administration's biggest " war

makes power " advocate, a trait exhibited early in his government

career and honed in successive White House assignments. The bellicose

vice president, as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford, first

teamed up with Donald Rumsfeld to convince Ford that " the way to turn

himself into a real president was to stir up crises in international

relations while lurching to the right in domestic politics, " writes

T. D. Allman in " The Curse of Dick Cheney, " Rolling Stone online,

August 25, 2004.

 

War is always a fait accompli. Bush knew that getting the U. S. into

a Middle East conflict was an irreversible act and said as much to

conservative Britons in a speech at Whitehall Palace, November 19,

2003, when he cast the war as a contract with the Iraqi people that

could not be broken without going back on " our word. " Outside the

palace, 100,000 Londoners called for his head.

 

The Hitler Connection

 

Bush is seen all over the world as the second coming of Hitler. Type

in " bush hitler " in your search engine address line, punch " go, " and

you will get about 565,000 " hits, " nearly twice as many as runners-up

Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton, tied at 288,000 each.

 

Much of this is little more than simple name calling by people who

don't like Bush, but others see a real Bush-Hitler connection.

 

Perhaps the clearest likeness between the two men lies in their use

of emotionally induced hypnosis to plant in the mass consciousness an

image of themselves as protectors of their subjects from threats to

national survival both inside and outside the fatherland.

 

His image as protector may have helped Bush siphon off some of John

Kerry's lead with women voters.

 

In a June, 2003 article written for The Nation about Bush's " mastery

of emotional language, especially negatively charged emotional

language, " clinical psychologist Dr. Renana Brooks observed

that " Bush creates and maintains negative frameworks in his

listeners' minds with a number of linguistic techniques borrowed from

hypnosis and advertising to instill the image of a dark and evil

world around us. "

 

Dr. Justin A. Frank, professor of psychiatry at George Washington

University Medical Center, in Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of

the President, published this year, finds Bush so seriously impaired

mentally that he should be removed from office, not a reassuring

diagnosis for someone with his finger on the button. One reviewer of

the book identified Frank as a " Democrat. " Another called his work

a " provocative blend of psychological case-study and partisan

polemic. "

 

To study the Bush-Hitler connection outside the hot partisan air of

presidential election politics, go to either of two books from an

earlier period: Hypnotism, the ne plus ultra of Hitler hypnosis

books, by George H. Estabrooks, first published in 1943, and The

Crowd, by Gustave Le Bon, first published in 1897.

 

Both writers show how leaders like Bush and Hitler get public support

by spreading emotional contagion or, simply, fear.

 

Bush's subliminal messages to justify religious war

against " evildoers " are right out of Madison Avenue. Writing in The

New Yorker of July 12 & 19, 2004, David Greenberg tells how Bush

speechwriter Michael Gerson, " himself an evangelical, laces the

President's addresses with seemingly innocuous terms that the devout

recognize as laden with meaning: `whirlwind,' `work of

mercy,' `safely home,' `wonderworking power.' "

 

Hypnosis goes deep, to the core of one's being, which is why it has

found wide acceptance in treating disorders such as over-eating and

smoking. By getting where the addiction lies hypnosis can suppress

the addiction and replace it with positive behavior. In its

effectiveness, hypnosis has been compared to prayer, to which it is

clinically nearly identical.

 

War and Peace

 

Perhaps the biggest challenge Bush has given the public is asking

them to think of his war making as, actually, peace making. Bush has

been almost studious in application of the hypnotic word " peace " to

sugarcoat his designs for war.

 

" Peace " has become his slogan.

 

" How many people in the confusion of a defeat or crisis have been

reassured by one word? Peace. Independence. Reconstruction. Without

taking a closer look, they adopt the leader in whose name this ideal

has been proposed. It is the ideal that unites them and leads them

into the venture. If necessary, technicians will be responsible for

conducting it from the inside so long as the figurehead maintains his

prestige. " Jean Dauven, The Powers of Hypnosis George W. Bush misses

no chance to reaffirm his dedication to peace and to denounce those

who he says threaten peace.

 

Saying that his proposal to attack Iraq should be seen as an act of

peace, he mounted the pulpit of the United Nations, September 17,

2002 to bully the international body with his peace message: " The

United Nations must act. It's time to determine whether or not

they'll be a force for good and peace or an ineffective debating

society. "

 

When Hitler preemptively invaded countries he invoked the Almighty

and said he was doing it to keep the peace.

 

Bush stood before Congress and the press, sent an emissary to the

Orwellian sounding United States Institute of Peace, went on the

radio, and appeared at factories and military bases, hawking his

peace message while putting U. S. forces in place to invade Iraq.

 

Radio Hypnosis

 

With his regular Saturday radio addresses, Bush works heroically on

turning Americans into automatons of subservience to his goals.

 

Radio is the most hypnotic of the media as, in the words of Jean

Dauven, " It is through the spoken word that the hypnotist exercises

his power. " The audio nature of broadcast fosters an illusion of

privacy that allows the hypnotist to flatter the listener that he/she

is being addressed exclusively, enhancing the listener's

suggestibility.

 

Bush's thin nasal whine is not a good radio voice, and he reads like

a school boy underlining every word with his forefinger. But his

messages are so loaded with fear, greed, mawkish patriotism, and

invocations of the Almighty that they are effective hypnosis

nonetheless.

 

Deference Hypnosis

 

As Bush races to the wire in the 2004 presidential election race, he

is being borne by the press on wings of approbation.

 

Almost to a man, the big city dailies backed the invasion of Iraq.

The New York Times and the Washington Post issued mea culpas, too

late.

 

As an even bigger favor, the press granted Bush immunity from debate

throughout the campaign year, just as it did in the 2000 election –

giving him a virtual free pass to the White House. It was a gift

wrapped in arrogance and negligence with overtones of complicity,

even conspiracy, but however it is defined, one of journalism's

biggest all time failures.

 

Even as it kept Kerry's candidacy under wraps, the press had the bare

faced audacity to complain, " The American people still don't know

much about Kerry, " and " He needs to clearly define himself to

voters. "

 

By studiously ignoring John Kerry's call for monthly debates all year

long, by shutting off the one avenue Kerry had to a level playing

field in his contest with the opportunistic incumbent, the press

handed Bush the presidency on a plate. If Bush loses the election, it

won't be because the press had anything to do with it but if he wins

he owes them a steak dinner.

 

What is at work here is deference hypnosis, meaning respect for an

individual because of his superior position. Deference hypnosis

bestows a stature that doesn't have to be earned and may not be

deserved. The press has shown susceptibility to deference hypnosis by

bowing to Bush both as rookie presidential candidate and as

president.

 

Le Bon said of deference hypnosis, " The mere fact that an individual

occupies a certain position, possesses a certain fortune, or bears

certain titles, endows him with prestige, however slight his own

personal worth. "

 

Le Bon could have been talking about George W. Bush. With his

incumbency, his famous family, his professional sports credentials,

former ownership of the Texas Rangers baseball team, his ties to the

Saudi royal family and Big Oil, Bush is a walking case of deference

hypnosis.

 

Repetition Hypnosis

 

With the pressure to debate removed from his schedule, Bush was free

to take the George and Laura Show on the road, preaching unchallenged

his gospel of peace through war, freedom from government regulation

and taxes, and privatization of Social Security and Medicare.

 

Before audiences of small business owners and farmers August 18, in

St. Paul, Minnesota, and Hudson and Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, in two

of the " battleground " states that he narrowly lost in 2000, Bush was

at his shirtsleeved best, hoarsely beseeching the crowd in all the

old familiar ways: " Listen, I'm going to give you some reasons to put

me back in, but perhaps the most important one is so that Laura is

the First Lady for four more years.......we must engage these enemies

around the world so we do not have to face them here at home....We

have a difference of opinion as to how to handle this issue in

Iraq.....There are enemies who hate us, and they're still

plotting....we must take threats seriously before they fully

materialize.....So I had a choice to make: either to forget the

lessons of September the 11th and trust a madman who is a sworn enemy

of America, or take action necessary to defend this country....Even

though we did not find the stockpiles that we expected to find, I

want you to remember that Saddam Hussein had the capability of making

weapons, and he could have passed that capability on to our

enemies....I'm really proud of our military. We've got a fantastic

military.....We want more people to own things....We stand for

institutions like marriage and family which are the foundations of

our society....I'm running for four more years to continue to rally

the armies of compassion all across America.....On September the

14th, 2001, I stood in the ruins of the Twin Towers....Workers in

hard hats were yelling at me, `Whatever it takes....do not let me

down.'....It was a powerful day.....Thanks for coming. God bless.... "

 

Bush is nothing, if not consistent. Repeating the fear themes from

9/11 and the run up to the Iraq War is a technique of repetition

hypnosis that carried over into the Republican Nominating Convention

in New York with Rudy Giuliani's 9/11 nostalgia and Zell Miller's

hysterical rant, and still dominates Bush campaign rhetoric.

 

" The influence of repetition on crowds is comprehensible when the

power is seen which it exercises on the most enlightened minds. This

power is due to the fact that the repeated statement is embedded in

the long run in those profound regions of our unconscious selves in

which the motives of our actions are forged, " said Le Bon.

 

As of September 26, the fear hypnosis was working in the " swing

state " of Missouri. A voter survey in Clay County by the Guardian

Unlimited newspaper concluded, " America's heartland is afraid. "

 

No one will ever accuse George W. Bush of stealing FDR's line, " The

only thing we have to fear is fear itself. "