This article, which I like
to re-write the title (correctly) as
Con Senses, was sent by a woman who remains anonymous since the
original article, which contained her name, was lost long ago.
I have a tendency towards breaking up words... which can be quite enlightening.
But not to a non-critical thinking person. - crabby
Date:
Fri, 02 Aug 2002 14:20:41
"Consensus"
When you hear that word - look out!
The government
says your town is the critical habitat of the brown-backed slimy slug.
The government forbids the townspeople to do anything - even belch
- without first obtaining permits from the government. Half of the
town will have to move so Slimy has more room to slither in pristine
habitat lest he perish from the earth.
Public
outrage follows. The government schedules a "visioning meeting"
with local "stakeholders" so they can express their "concerns"
and build a "consensus" on how to deal with Slimy.
The night
of the meeting, citizens arrive at the town hall in expectation of
filling the government's ear with unpleasantries, after which they
hope the government will lamely retreat and find some other place for
Slimy to slither. The meeting is chaired by a "facilitator"
supplied by the government, who seems friendly enough and seems to
care about the town. He encourages everyone to express how they "feel"
so they can achieve a "community consensus" about Slimy.
But everyone is only allowed three minutes to speak and no direct issues
seem to come into question. Debate is not tolerated because that would
be "intolerant" of others and there are no "right or
wrong" answers. (This is called the "moderate approach")
At one
point the meeting breaks up into small groups so everyone can better
express their feelings. These are chaired by sub-facilitators.
By the
end of the meeting everyone has blown off steam and the facilitator
pronounces that they have a marvelous consensus, which will form the
basis of the government's new policy for their town. Everyone goes
home. Some are happy since their concerns will now be included in public
policy. True, a couple of people got angry at the meeting but they
did seem a bit "extreme" (conservative) and really did look
stupid.
Besides they were quickly silenced because they didn't share the "common
good".
But surprise,
surprise! In very short order, the so-called "stakeholders"
discover nothing has changed. They still have to get permits to belch
and half the town still has to move, but now the townspeople are told
this is their plan! This town has been consensed!
Communism
is dead. Long live Consensus!
Today
we hear about "achieving consensus" in all issues of public
life; in government, the workplace, schools and even churches. To the
western ear, consensus has the sound of representative government in
action, a group of people debating their issues and coming to some
form of workable solution. But it operates on a totally different agenda.
The consensus
process (sometimes called the "Delphi
Technique") is a psychological method used to steer the participants
to a pre-determined outcome, while eliminating opposition by causing
the majority of people to view dissenters as angry, out-of-touch extremists
not concerned with the public good or holding the public's values.
The community
must believe it has arrived at these positions themselves without realizing
they have been manipulated into them.
Today's
consensus is the very same "collective" process used in the
Soviet Union to make political decisions at all levels. The word "soviet"
means collective.
Modern
consensus was the brainchild of transformational Marxists from the
Frankfurt School, who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and set up shop
at leading colleges in the United States from whence they proceeded
to spread their version of Marxism, called "Transformational
Marxism" (where this article originatee?),
although they weren't able to call it that publicly at the time. It
was repackaged under non-threatening names.
Whereas
Leninist Marxism believed communism could only be spread by violence
and revolution, Transformational Marxism believed it could be more
effectively spread by gradually changing a society's attitudes, values
and beliefs and ultimately its public institutions. To do this, the
public would have to be unaware that a major change was underway.
For consensus
to work, one must be conned into taking leave of one's senses; thus
con-sensus.
A more
technical definition would be a diverse group of people, dialoging
to a consensus over a social issue in a facilitated setting to a predetermine
outcome. The phrase "predetermined outcome" is the key item.
What
will be decided at a meeting is decided by government long before the
meeting ever starts. The only purpose of the meeting is to con the
citizenry by making them think it was their idea.
When
citizens arrive at a meeting driven by consensus, the facilitator does
not simply chair the meeting. He has been well trained in psychological
manipulation and plays on the audience's feelings (a dialectical process)
rather than on their critical thought (a didactic process).
Consensus-building
does not actually involve convincing anyone to alter his or her views.
It causes them to accept new views without realizing they are in conflict
with their old ones by use of a technique known as semantic deception;
using words which have double meanings, making it possible for people
in conflict with each other to appear to agree even though they disagree.
Citizens
are encouraged to express their concerns. This isn't because the facilitator
cares about them but rather provides a method of polling the crowd
to determine where everyone stands so "resistors" can be
readily identified and the facilitator knows what he has to do to manipulate
everyone to the pre-determined outcome. In large meetings, auxiliary
facilitators "spies" are situated in the crowd, unknown to
the citizenry. These people identify resistors and report back to the
facilitator at various points. They can also be used to counter dissenters
should the meeting get out of hand by posing as citizens who oppose
the dissenters.
Once
key resistors are identified, the facilitator's job is to make sacrificial
lambs of them. He must make the crowd believe they are angry extremists,
who don't care about the issue in question and that they do not share
the common interest or good. Making examples of dissenters is designed
to elicit silence from all others present, who don't want to appear
extreme in front of their friends. This technique plays on the psychological
principle that most people fear what their peers think of them. A well-trained
facilitator is capable of forcing a dissenter's friends to be very
angry with him for being such a "jerk" as they themselves
fall prey to the deceptive manipulation the facilitator is employing.
A lone
dissenter can expect to be barraged by a series of slogans, aggressive
responses and counter-allegations, to the effect that the dissenter
is engaged in "type-casting" or "finger-pointing."
It is
only when dissenters themselves become trained and come in groups to
such meetings that the tables can be turned on the facilitators. One
thing a facilitator must avoid doing is being forced into a position
of defining his double-speak terms. Otherwise the deception becomes
immediately apparent to everyone and the crowd will have lots of things
to object to. Exposing his duplicity short-circuits the process.
In rare
cases, a brave and intelligent dissenter succeeds in getting the upper
hand, forcing the facilitator into the position of defining what he
means and what his agenda is. The facilitator is now in an embarrassing
position. He is prepared for this. One technique is to immediately
break the meeting into group sessions to avoid answering the hardball
questions. Another is to have the spies become "outraged"
or "offended" by the dissenters? position as if they were
fellow citizens. This outrage appears to come from the public and puts
the dissenters' objections at odds with the apparent public position.
The facilitator
can also engage in long-winded answers that lead nowhere and which
numb everyone's minds so they forget what the issue in question is
and don't care if it gets answered. If things get a bit rough, the
facilitator, while continuing to smile and play the good guy -- barrages
dissenters with a torrent of ad hominem invective for having the audacity
to challenge the common good. The facilitator always tries to make
his position look like the "reasonable" or "moderate"
one commonly accepted by the public.
If the
dissenter successfully withstands the onslaught, the facilitator's
last trick is to shut the meeting down. Nevertheless, the public will
frequently read in the local paper the next day that a consensus was
reached at the meeting. Strange, were they at the same meeting?
Remember:
any system, which uses consensus is a dog and pony show designed to
brainwash the participants into going along with the pre-determined
outcome, thinking they arrived at it themselves.
It is
70 years since Wilhelm Wundt and others of the Frankfurt School began
spreading Transformational Marxism in America. Today the consensus
process is the backbone of decision-making in government, big business
and even church growth programs, which seek to eject church members
who don't go along with the new "vision" for church growth.
It was a Marxist revolution that happened without a shot being fired.
Consensus
is killing representative government in the West because it systematically
eliminates input from the electorate and allows government to proceed
with its agendas unabated and unaccountably.
More
and more decisions that were supposed to be made by legislatures or
county and city boards are being made by facilitator "change agents",
who are unelected and unaccountable, using this facilitated consensus
process.
A growing
number of concerned Americans has begun to realize that something is
radically wrong; that the representative process we used to enjoy is
being subverted by something but they don't know quite what.
Consensus
can be dealt with at any level but Americans must understand the process.
Anyone involved in a consensus-driven event not understanding the deceptive
principles on which it functions, will be taken in by it and the process
will roll forward unabated as thousands of Americans wonder why their
government officials aren't responsive to them and why actions they
strongly oppose continue to be implemented unabated.
Remember,
consensus means you have been conned into taking leave of your senses.
We must understand we're being had. Breaking consensus relies on forcing
a facilitator and his supporters to expose their actual agendas by
defining what their words mean. They will avoid doing that at all cost
but trained dissenters can force the issue and make the crowd realize
it has been the victim of a deliberately-planned hoax.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The "Delphi Technique"
has been covered repeatedly in The
Anderson Report. This article merely shows that more and more people are becoming aware of
its use by agenda-driven State and Federal Agencies.
It has been used repeatedly
in the local area in support of "environmentalist driven"
agendas.
The Border Patrol "heavies"
tried it once in Douglas and imported a "collaborative consensus
building facilitator" to run the show. We were ready and ate his
lunch. He crawled out - has not been seen since.
"The price good
men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
- Plato
"All evil needs
to triumph is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke
“It is impossible
to defeat an ignorant man in argument.” - William G. McAdoo
