We live in a time when soundbites and talking points have replace thinking. So many times I have stopped one such repeater of knowing it all, and asked for them to put the concept in their own words.So far, none have been able to do so. Kids in school are taught group think, anything else is chastised. Reason is not in their reach.
I have sat through multiple days of meeting where the Delphi Technique was applied. They tell any ideprndent thinker that "no one else feels the way you do about this." Hogwash! They screen people and assign morons to be handlers and they separate those who do think independently. You have to know it going in, and be prepared to disarm it.
The other day my husband and I were in a waiting room where the TV was set to CBS. We watched the audience cheer and stand up jumping as the daytime female host made her pint. We looked at each other and agreed, it was liek the Roman circus,anything to deep people from actually thinking.
Along tose lines, what is the FBI up to. I knew they had been lonlien with the Colunbine shooters prior to that tragedy, playing mind games under assumed identities. Now, document released yesterday indicate the FBI met with the Sandy Hook shooter the day before that incincident, saying as they left to his mom they wanted him to work for them one day. Really, and just what went on there? Of course that does not fit the agenda of the fake news media to pursue that one, they are in the tank for gun control

Yes! The newest is this ridiculous claim that there is a public health crisis over opioids *caused by the legitimate prescribing of opioid medicines for people who actually are in pain.**

It's like they are completely ignoring the ACTUAL problem, which is people who are illegally obtaining these drugs and using them without actual need.

This is only going to make it harder for people who have a legitimate need. Note: it's now time to hoard.

I've noticed that just in the past couple of weeks, the flat statement - as though it were actual fact - that there is an opioid crisis caused by legitimate prescriptions has become a FREQUENT flat-out statement on my local NPR station. It's like they are wanting to brainwash us....oh wait....

It very well might be a cycle that matches up with the solar cycles and it can either go bad or good depending upon culture base; The Me or the We generation...forget the authors name but this is a recent realization...80 cycle...the swing of the pendulum.

"In The Rape of the Mind, Joost Meerloo makes the point that there are times of mass delusion and that they often become totalitarian."

I'll keep saying it. "Those who can make you believe fallacies can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire

Yes...we are right on the cusp of that now...

My impression also...It's hard to resist hollering back at these creatures, even though that's exactly what they want.
I really don't think that the left knows what they are doing...they seem to be the one's in a trance...

Like 7 of 9 said...you Will be assimilated.

"President Trump shouting down reporters in the press room as "fake news" comes to mind." I thought the same thing only from a different view point from what you allude. I viewed Trump's action as the little boy pointing at the Emperor and with a simple display of honesty and intestinal fortitude declared the deluded fool on parade was really naked.

President Trump shouting down reporters in the press room as "fake news" comes to mind. The delusional support here for his excesses is another example.

However, it is also an error within the original article cited that times of mass delusion lead to totalitarianism. It is hard to show any cause and effect, especially because the primary popular work in the field Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay cited examples from times of intellectual freedom. The iconic Tulip Craze occurred during the Northern Renaissance. I have a similar book, Humbugs of New York: being a Remonstrance against Popular Delusions by David Meredith Reese, M.D., 1838. (My copy is a reprint.) The good doctor exposed animal magnetism, phrenology, and homeopathia, as well as "ultra-temperance", "ultra-abolitionism*, "ultra-protestantism" and "ultra-sectarianism." And I point out that all of that took place at time that we would consider a golden age in our republic.

Millenarianism is a delusion shared by left and right.

Meanwhile, the Left has been employing social psychology and depth psychology on the masses for decades. President Obama’s campaign staff was filled with social psychologists. In this context, those who believe conservatives can subsist on reason and logic alone are kidding themselves. It’s no wonder GOP leaders are caving on so many principles, and being absorbed so easily into the Left’s machine.

And a WHOLE bunch more! like Twerking, beheading, mass shooting, mowing people down, criminals blaming the innocent, safe spaces, calling out "Racism" when the one shouting is the racist?, child sex slaves, pedophilia, homosexuality, sneaking into a country illegally, molesting men and women to get your way, making up bull crap against one's opponent, killing domesticated animals, throwing rocks at cars on the hyway, burning business cause your pissed, disrespecting the flag cause you just can't behave and get arrested, making men into women and women into men, lying about history...oh, and to the point, causing massive delusion in society.

I'm absolutely sure I missed a bunch more!

Inappropriate acts?
Like all the vulgar tweets that celebrities think are acceptable?
Like the vulgar language being used in Star Trek Discovery as if it is humor?