Sunday, March 23
Drowning in Niceness: The Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Gordon Solberg, Counterpunch, March 22, 2993
When Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her home last June, she was taken to a camp only 3 miles from her home, from which she evidently made no attempt to escape. When she was apprehended 9 months later, she had taken a new name and a new identity. Her relatives say she was brainwashed by her kidnapper. I say it's obvious that she was already brainwashed by the "nice" culture she grew up in, which allowed her to be easily controlled. She was already programmed to be a "good girl," to be nice to everybody, to get along, to obey authority. When she was kidnapped, her pre-existing programming merely transferred her loyalty to her new authority figure, the kidnapper.[...]