THE DEVIL'S HENCHMEN

A recent article in Vox reported:

"The "Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous and compelling psychological studies of all time, told us a tantalizingly simple story about humanDon't blame Eve nature. The study took paid participants and assigned them to be “inmates” or “guards” in a mock prison at Stanford University. Soon after the experiment began, the “guards” began mistreating the “prisoners,” implying evil is brought out by circumstance. The authors, in their conclusions, suggested innocent people, thrown into a situation where they have power over others, will begin to abuse that power. And people who are put into a situation where they are powerless will be driven to submission, even madness.

The Stanford Prison Experiment has been included in many, many introductory psychology textbooks and is often cited uncritically. It’s the subject of movies, documentaries, books, television shows, and congressional testimony.

But its findings were wrong. Very wrong. And not just due to its questionable ethics or lack of concrete data — but because of deceit."

Vox reports the fact that people participating in the Stanford Prison Experiment had to be compelled to be cruel and that doing so invalidates the experiment. The article points out that Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psychologist who ran the study coached the guards in the experiment to act cruelly. While coaching the guards may have invalidated the stated methodology of the experiment, it demonstrated something far more disturbing. 

The fact that participants had to be coached to be cruel suggests the fact that soldiers under orders in the Holocaust, the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the thousands of innocent people murdered in drone strikes by the U.S. military, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the murder and mistreatment of Palestinians in Gaza by the IDF, and police brutality anywhere as just a few examples, were all coached, ordered, coerced, inveigled or manipulated into these acts by their superiors.

Unlike volunteers for an experiment, military personnel caught in a situation in which their very existence in the group depends precisely on obeying commands from above is a situation their superiors can and do exploit for their own purposes, no matter how nefarious they may be. Failure to obey the orders of superiors in the military is a punishable offense, as is making a conscientious decision to expose the crimes of intelligence community superiors considered treason. The environment such actions take place is itself supportive of the conduct. There is enormous pressure on individuals to conform to the instructions of their superiors and it is clear that such instruction has the effect of suspending personal judgment, even if temporarily.

What is even more disturbing is the fact that people who witness torture and murder or crimes against citizens like Snowden exposed, involve numerous people in similar positions, all of whom would know the torture and murder of innocent people or the illegal spying and lying about it are all wrong, and yet few individuals come forward to expose this conduct.

To say that this conduct can be blamed on a few bad apples is nonsense. The culture of the military permitted the torture of detainees. And the behavior of the FBI agents working to undermine Trump exposed a culture that permits or overlooks lies, deceit and abuse fostered by the leadership of the FBI. This conduct started with the reign of J. Edgar Hoover who was simply a blackmailer and political shakedown artist compromised by his alleged homosexuality. Hoover deliberately overlooked the crimes of the mafia to protect his personal position for his entire 37 year tenure at the FBI. The example of his conduct has carried on to this day with the FBI doing everything in its power to avoid oversight or answering to the people they are responsible to. They pose a serious threat to the people elected to represent the public, and when they are caught, they plead the fifth to avoid prosecution.

No reasonable person would think it is acceptable for agencies wielding such power to act the way they are, yet the employees say nothing.  Why is certainly worthy of investigation. The same behavior holds true for the hundreds of people working at Monsanto and Dupont who are well aware that many of the products the company make contribute to the long term destruction of the people exposed to them, and yet they say nothing. Same with the employees of tobacco companies. I have some insight on that subject, and one of the keys to retaining employees who keep their mouths shut is to pay them far more than they would get in an equivalent position elsewhere and make their pension benefits equally as generous.

The participants in the Standford Prison Experiment were looking for course credits and participation acknowledgment of some kind, while Monsanto and Dupont use a combination of wages and non-disclosure agreements to keep their employees in line. The military uses communist practices to keep their members in line, which includes creating enemies out of everything that moves, denying their members the right to access to information that might actually expose the truth, getting authority figures like psychologists to lie about the efficacy of their conduct, and paying military salaries with medical and dental benefits. The military is part of a closed shop propaganda machine that pays benefits.

The power is in the system. The system creates the situation that corrupts the individuals... If you want to change a person, change the situation." - Dr. Philip Zimbardo, TED talk September 2008
"Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's own need to think." - Adolf Eichmann, Nazi SS Lieutenant Colonel

"We shall meet again. I have believed in God. I obeyed the laws of war and was loyal to my flag" - Adolf Eichmann, Nazi SS Lieutenant Colonel

Evil starts at the top

When experimental processes fail to proceed as planned, in one sense that can be seen as a failure, yet on the other hand looking at them in other ways can offer unexpected insights and results, as a number of discoveries that occurred by accident show.

The Stanford Prison Experiment deviation turned the spotlight on the leadership of the experiment. Dr. Philip Zimbardo was able to convince the guards to behave cruelly and they continued to do so for a time for some reason only they can explain. It may have been for marks, it may have been to appease the project team, but no matter for what reason, they continued to live up to what is expected of them. Adolf Eichmann again offers some insight into the process:
"Adolf Hitler may have been wrong all down the line, but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up from lance corporal in the German Army to Führer of a people of almost 80 million. … His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to this man." - As quoted in "The Eichmann Memoir" in The Personalist Volume XLII (1962).

What lesson does that offer to our everyday living?

You only have to study the number of wars America has started under false pretenses, and the military's ability to recruit and enjoin its members in unlawful murder to realize the real value in the Stanford Prison Experiment was the fact that it demonstrated how easily leaders can involve their subjects in conducting egregious acts.

However, the acts need not only be egregious. Leadership power and influence can be wielded more subtly, yet with equally damaging consequences. For example employees continuing to work for companies that try to pay them as little as possible and plan on eventually replacing them with lower cost illegal aliens or robots produces no outcry. It seem to be accepted as some kind of normal conduct. We live in market economies in which we are told the system allows everyone the opportunity to achieve a degree of financial independence if we are willing to work for it.

One of the big tricks of fraudsters is to make us accept blame for something we are not to blame for. If we do not advance we are told we are lazy, or too poorly educated, or our position is worth no more than what we are being paid and we are ungrateful if we expect more. If we have not gone to college and cannot afford to we are called deplorable, and are made to feel like we are lucky to be employed at all.

When we need a job and have debt we find a company that is willing to pay some amount with the employment line trailing out the door. We are made to sign employment agreements that take away many rights we have and we are expected to live in fear that down the road that our job and therefore our ability to participate in the economic system we live in can be threatened.  And we say nothing.

Then the truth comes out that government and big businesses are deliberately rigging the system to ensure corporations and their shareholders profit while the people that work for them are deliberately undermined by policies designed to limit their wages and personal wealth. The contents of this article quoting the Business Roundtable, a group whose president is the former chief of staff to President George W. Bush and whose members include JPMorganChase, General Motors, Mastercard, Johnson & Johnson, Walmart, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM confirms as much.  In a press statement the Business Roundtable's members insisted:
   
    "immigration policy boost the economy, not Americans’ wages and per-capita wealth."

and further suggested that their position

    "reflects American values will boost our economy and is right for our society." 

Essentially corporations and compliant government officials are destroying American citizens' right to negotiate for better pay and working conditions by flooding the workplace with desperate people who are willing to work for less and put up with much more abusive behavior simply because they came from far less favorable circumstances. 

What does all of this show. It shows our leaders are simply liars, deceivers and manipulators with an inflated sense of self worth brought on by wealth and their ability to manipulate and control us. History offers an ample record of the damage this behavior causes. When the so called leaders of the nation have absolute disregard for citizens, their families and anyone who gets in their way around the world in order to maintain power and profit, we are in trouble, at least temporarily.

But you have a secret weapon, and that is you can deliberately and willfully stop spending whatever discretionary money you have, you can pay off your debt as quickly as possible, and you can substantially reduce your use of your electronics, while substantially reducing or completely ditching the use of Google, Facebook and  social media, as a beginning.

The longest journey begins with the first step.