How Faulty Camera Focus Leads to a Deadly Form of Projection

Every camera phone these days has a feature that can flip the focus on ourselves for a “selfie” or to the outside world for a more conventional photograph. All of it done happens with a quick touch to our screen.

That’s as good a high tech explanation as any, of projection in the psychological sense.

Apart from deliberate projection which is regularly used as a political tactic per Saul Alinsky, there is the more classic and unconscious projection that happens among true believers.

Take a look at what happens when one of those believers is caught telling the truth about what he’d like to do to Trump voters: DNC Member Suggests ‘Deprogramming’ 75 Million Trump Supporters

While David Atkins wonders how anyone could be a Trump supporter, many of us wonder how a Leftist who was may have been attracted to feel good ideas like “tolerance” and “diversity” could reach the point where he publicly advocates for the forceful “deprogramming” of 75 million of his fellow citizens (in refugee camps? concentration camps?) for the sin of disagreeing with him about a political candidate.

We are all capable of powerful emotions. To further complicate matters, we have powerful emotions about our powerful emotions. That can scare some of us to death, especially if we already have trouble distinguishing between thoughts, feelings and actions. How could I have such horrible, evil, hateful thoughts?  Does that make me evil too?

Among the variety of responses possible when emotions become too intense or painful to tolerate, is a similar kind of flip of focus. The subject disowns his uncomfortable or embarrassing feelings and attributes them usually, to the person or group on which he is already intensely focused.

Viewing himself as the victim, he can justify the atrocities and persecution he openly advocates against those he hates more easily. To add insult to injury, it’s all in the name of “tolerance.”

What happens when the victims of a paranoia-fueled vendetta are themselves called “paranoid?” Who is a person to believe?  Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha and the McCluskeys in St. Louis know firsthand how the propaganda media has worked full time to confuse the public about who are the criminals and who are the law-abiding citizens.

The inability to distinguish or accept the origins of one’s rage are the building blocks of paranoia and persecution complexes.

A culture that positively values personal responsibility rather than collective guilt is infinitely healthier not just politically but psychologically.

Atkins goes on to project another charge against Trump supporters claiming they are in a “death cult against reality & basic decency.”

If ever there were an ideology that resembles a classic cult it is today’s Leftism-Socialism-Communism which now controls what used to be the Democrat Party.

In 2017, I outlined some of the most obvious comparisons in Twenty-One Reasons Why Liberalism is Like a Cult

Cults feed and grow off collectivism and group-think. That is why they must always demonize dissent, individuality and personal responsibility.

Remember when the Left lectured us (when do they not?) about “hate!” “hate!” We have to root out hate!”  That should have been our first clue that they were getting ready to unleash an avalanche of hate upon us, and they did.  The pattern is so often repeated that we can just about predict what they’ll do by watching what they accuse everyone else of next

For his mental health and our safety, David Atkins and others like him need to flip their cameras “selfie.”  That, or take a long, good look in the mirror.

photo credit: La Chachalaca Fotografía Mirror Me via photopin (license)