When I write a column, besides getting thousands of readers, I usually get some e-mails telling me how good it was, and of course there’s always someone who disagrees, which is OK. (When you write for yourself, no one can censor, but of course it doesn’t pay very well.) One fine fellow was outraged at my objecting to the goons kidnapping over 460 innocent kids, and taking them away from their parents. “They were brainwashed,” was his comment, and therefore, according to he, it was OK to seize innocent kids.
I say, NONSENSE! We’re all ’brainwashed’ from the moment we are born. Think about it. Negroes speak ’black English,’ because they are copying their parents, which is simply brainwashing. We are taught from childhood to follow a certain religion. I exposed my kids to all sorts of things, such as travel, classical music, restaurants, and creative things I wanted to inculcate into their young brains. I wouldn’t allow them to watch TV, other than PBS and one other show, and made them use correct English and table manners. That was simple parental ’brainwashing.’ My parents did it to me, as did your parents to you, either for the good or bad, also depending on your point of view as an adult.
We are brainwashed by the media, teachers, and liberal college professors. Kids are influenced by current trends in dress and music, and are ’brainwashed,’ trying to be like the rest of the misguided urchins around them. When I was young, I loved Glenn Miller, the big band sound, blue grass, classical music, and pipe organs, and I still do. I loved to go the Glen Echo amusement park, near D.C. and endlessly listened to the band organ which accompanied the carousel. I still love band organ music. Maybe I brainwashed myself? (Did you know that the word ’carousel’ came from the original crude, round device, which ’carried us all?’) I have all sorts of loves and dislikes, which are from childhood or even adulthood, self or otherwise ’brainwashing,’ which I am glad of, and am in no way ashamed. When I was a kid, I loved dollars, and now I hate them. I self-brainwashed myself, due to thinking, logic, and observation. When we find out that something is wrong or right, we can wash our brains of the old, and inculcate the new beliefs into our psyche…or willingly change the contents of our brains for what we now consider to be good or enlightened.
As far as the 460 kids who were kidnapped, like all children, they were indeed ’brainwashed’ by their parents and peculiar religious beliefs and training. Children rarely escape childhood brainwashing or training from parents, and I know I haven’t. As a kid, my Dad had “Trains” and “Railroad” magazines on his magazine rack in his drug store, I had swell Lionel electric trains, and we went to see three B&O trains at Silver Spring Station on Sundays, so I grew up loving trains, and I still do. What in the world is wrong with that? When I was young, boys used to watch a huge steam locomotive roar by, with the brave engineer waving to them, and they dreamed of becoming one when they grew up. Now they want to be astronauts, but so what? Their brains have been ’washed’ or trained by circumstances or surroundings to be what they want to be, and it’s normal.
Little girls follow their mothers in just about everything, and that’s as it should be, so stop all this outrage about how immoral or foolish those polygamous people are in Texas. They are, in my opinion, but it’s what they want to be, it’s what they believe in, and it is their right to bring up their kids as they see fit. Those kids belong to the parents, not the state, and it’s no one’s business but the parents. I hate ’black English,’ but I can’t intervene and force negro kids to speak correctly, as it is their parent’s job, if they see fit to do it, by reforming their own speech. I can’t force parents to not allow their kids to do foolish things, which may cloud their future lives. I’d love to abolish all video games, trash TV, Democrats, liberals, dollar savers, and politicians, but I can’t. So you people out there: Stop trying to legislate your own brand of morality, and while you’re at it, have a great weekend. Protect yourself, and especially at these absurd gold and silver prices? You bet.