The term “brainwashing” was first used in 1950 by an American journalist — who had worked in wartime intelligence, and later with the CIA — to describe a technique introduced by the Chinese to persuade people to believe in an idea they hadn’t believed in before. The CIA was quick to recognize the technique and subsequently use it. It rapidly grew in popularity and soon found wide usage in advertising and sales — often of inferior products.
Whether he knew it or not, Donald Trump soon started using brainwashing very successfully when advertising property — often of inferior quality, or at unreasonably high prices. It often worked. In my opinion, he’s still using brainwashing on TV to sell his inferior political ideas — with remarkable success. I suspect it’s second nature by now and he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
Unfortunately, the key word is “inferior” and the whole world — but especially Americans — is suffering as a result. A perfect example is Trump himself. He’s increasingly selling his lousy ideas to drooling Republican politicians. The one that guts me most is that we should increase the use of gasoline as fuel instead of electricity — when it’s clear to the whole world that burning gasoline is the main cause of the rapid increase in the world’s temperature, resulting in the growth in wildfires over the last few years, killing hundreds of people (soon forecast to be many tens of thousands) and eventually making the earth uninhabitable.
No wonder Trump is pandering to Musk. Musk’s a genius and the only person likely to have rockets soon enough and big enough to carry Trump and others to another planet with a livable climate.
In my view, the only solution is to get rid of Trump and get Musk working on methods of better controlling the earth’s climate!
Frank Fish, Taylorsville
