“‘There are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed. It’s as if they are members of a cult,’ Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said of Trump supporters on January 12. Former CBS news anchor Katie Couric agreed. ‘How are we going to really, almost, deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump?’ she asked Bill Maher. And both CNN and Vanity Fair ran interviews with Steven Hassan, former Moonie and author of The Cult of Trump, discussing the best way to help Trump cultists escape the supposed abusive authoritarian who supposedly rules their minds.’” (Spectator)
Political deprogramming is the bread and butter of Marxist regimes. Forced compliance is what drives oppressive regimes to maintain conformity.
Lucas Jackson, the title character in the film Cool Hand Luke (1967), was the world’s most noted non-conformist ever to flicker on the silver screen. The story begins with Luke cutting off the heads of parking meters with a pipe cutter to “settle an old score.” The crime lands him in an oppressive work camp with more rules and regulations than the DMV. Luke entered the prison camp a hard case, and he would remain hard throughout his brief but impressionable stay. The Captain was relentless in his pursuit to get Luke’s mind right. If reason didn’t work, there was the upright coffin-like box for offenders, the broiling southern sun, sun-up to sun-down road-gang work, acts of dehumanization, and groupthink from within and without. Nothing worked on the recalcitrant Luke. “What we have here,” the frustrated Captain declared in one of the movie’s classic lines, “is failure to communicate.” Nothing seemed to reach Luke’s non-conformist mind.
Using Classic Films to Teach the Christian Worldview
Movies are a self-contained world. The writers and producers make the rules and the circumstances for the worlds they create. Most often though, films use the assumed order of the natural world and don't attempt to re-write reality for the viewer. Films either reinforce the real world or they rebel against it. Either way, they provide a great way to think through worldview issues and their consequences.
Buy NowThe regimented prison camp worked like a vice on Luke’s individuality and nonconformist nature. Luke’s only remedy was to escape. The regiment beat down on him, and he fought to free himself no matter what the consequences. After numerous escape attempts, a last effort is made to get Luke’s mind right:
After a full week of work, Luke is humiliated and tormented by being forced to submit to the authority of Boss Paul. To systematically break his spirit in front of the other prisoners, he is ordered to dig a “graveyard-shaped” ditch on the prison grounds. When he has completed the grueling task of emptying the Boss’ ditch, he is told to fill it back up again—and then after it’s filled to re-empty it again! The men sing “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down” in full view of his tortured, groveling humiliation.
To symbolize his own death and the genuine end of his ferocious individuality and defiance, the guard slashes Luke across the head at one end of the ditch, and he is tossed backwards into the open “coffin.” Broken and tired, he begs the bosses to accept his cracked will and tarnished pride.
What follows is Luke’s seeming submission to authority and his willingness to conform. He appears to be a broken man. Exhausted from digging and emptying the Boss’s ditch, the scene continues with the following exchange:
Luke: Don’t hit me anymore…Oh God, I pray to God you don’t hit me anymore. I’ll do anything you say, but I can’t take anymore.
Boss Paul: You got your mind right, Luke?Luke: Yeah. I got it right. I got it right, boss. (He grips the ankles of the guard)
Boss Paul: Suppose you’s back-slide on us?
Luke: Oh no I won’t. I won’t, boss.
Boss Paul: Suppose you’s to back-sass?
Luke: No I won’t. I won’t. I got my mind right.
Boss Paul: You try to run again, we gonna kill ya.
Luke: I won’t, I won’t, boss.
But Luke does. For a time, Luke plays the role of the dutiful and compliant prisoner who has finally gotten his mind right. But there’s one more act of defiance in Luke. Having gained the confidence of the guards, Luke bolts one last time. It takes a bullet to the head finally to get Luke’s mind really and truly right.
Getting a person’s mind right has been the modus operandi of totalitarian regimes for millennia. George Orwell’s 1984 is a relentless tale of Winston getting his mind right. In the end, he loves Big Brother. Getting a person’s mind right is the latest tactic of the oppressive homosexual bosses with compliant media at the ready to take up the homosexual cause. The rainbow flag will now fly at US embassies around the world. We will be forced to endure the charade of Richard Levin (who goes by Rachel) as the assistant secretary of Health and Human Services. Richard is a man, but we must get our mind right and ascent to the claim that he is now a she or else.
Forced compliance did not start with the Biden Administration. It’s been going on for a long time. Consider Rolf Szabo, an employee for twenty-three years at Eastman Kodak. He was fired for giving his opinion in an email about Gay and Lesbian Coming-Out Day sponsored by the company. Kodak’s “diversity group” sent out an email asking employees to “be supportive” of fellow workers who choose to reveal their homosexuality on Gay and Lesbian Coming-Out Day. Szabo replied to the memo telling the company not to send him this type of information since he found it “disgusting and offensive.”
The wrong thing to say to Big Brother. The diversity bosses had to get his mind right. If Mr. Szabo would not change his mind, like Luke, the full weight of oppression would be brought down on him. If that didn’t work, the diversity police would get rid of him so he could not infect other employees. Mr. Szabo said Kodak wanted him to sign a letter admitting he was wrong. When he refused, he was fired. So much for “diversity” at Kodak.
Then there was the case of motivational speaker Danny Buggs. It seems that Buggs made some derogatory remarks about homosexuality during an assembly of 500 male students at Stone Mountain (Georgia) High School. “God made Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve,” Buggs told the students. Of course, Buggs is correct. It was Adam and Eve. If it had been Adam and Steve, none of us would be here today.
As you can imagine, the leftist establishment in Atlanta went ballistic when the story broke. Atlanta’s “gay community” was “outraged.” State Democrat Representative Karla Drenner, a self-professed homosexual, condemned Buggs’ speech. “Children should not have to go to school and be afraid because they are different,” Denner wrote. “As a mother of two, I cannot stand by and be a witness while other people judge or demean anyone’s children, gay, straight, black, white, tall, short, Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. . . . In the end, no matter how you spin it, hatred is hatred.”
Denner’s list is interesting in that it compares sexual behavior with physical characteristics and belief systems. Homosexuality is what people do. Being black, white, tall, and short are not behaviors. Religions are defined in terms of what people believe. Just because a person holds certain religious beliefs does not mean that anything can be done in the name of religion. Again, actions are what’s being evaluated, not beliefs. Sodomy is an immoral and unnatural sexual behavior. It’s not “hate speech” to point out these things. Well, it is today since new bosses are guarding the camp.
In 2008, when a group of traditional marriage activists peacefully expressed their displeasure when a court overruled their vote on the marriage issue, homosexuals took to the streets to harass and assault them:
A group of homosexual tyrants surrounded and physically assaulted a 69-year-old grandmother in Palm Springs earlier this week, after yanking a cross out of her hands and stomping on it while it lay on the ground. She can be seen mouthing the words “I love you” to protestors, who in response threaten her, and call her “stupid” and a “Nazi” while shaking their fists in her face with their own faces contorted with rage. Said the woman, “They began grabbing me. It was like a dog pack, actually.”
Another beat down came from the wide world of sports. Peter Vidmar, who was named to head the 2012 United States Olympic team in London was forced to resign after homosexual Olympians, in particular figure skater Johnny Weir and softball player Jessica Mendoza, protested because he opposed homosexual marriage.
Frank Turek has written several books on Christian apologetics, some of them co-authored with the late Norman Geisler. In addition to his work in Christian apologetics, Turek also conducted leadership and team-building seminars for large companies. Since 2008, he had been a consultant for the California-based software company Cisco Systems. By all accounts, his training programs have been reported to be “excellent.” Then it happened:
[O]ne of the managers in Turek’s session “googled” his name and found out that his trainer [Turek] is also the author of a book entitled Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone [still sold on Amazon]. The manager, a homosexual, took offense at the book that critiqued same-sex marriages and phoned in a complaint to Marilyn Nagel, senior director of inclusion and diversity for Cisco. Turek was fired soon after.
Nagel later apologized for Turek’s firing but did not see the irony in that she is the director of inclusion and diversity. “She refused to admit there was a culture that punished views that were not politically correct.”
Homosexuals are doing what tyrants have always done. Pick out a few offenders and make examples of them. This tactic was used by the Romans and later copied by military tyrants to keep the troops in line. Decimation was a form of military discipline used by officers in the Roman Army to punish mutinous or cowardly soldiers. The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning “removal of a tenth.” See the antiwar film Paths of Glory (1957) for a modern example. A similar tactic is being used today to decimate anti-homosexual/anti-transgender opposition. Show the price they will have to pay if they decide to go up against the homosexual bosses.
Thinking Straight in a Crooked World
The nursery rhyme ‘There Was a Crooked Man’ is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it.
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