This is true for both political and religious totalizing ideologies - the one who disagrees is always either an idiot or a traitor, never just a honest, smart person who looked at the same stuff and just happened to reach a different conclusion.

And all of them hate heretics more than infidels - the early Catholic Church spent more time on fighting Arians than on converting Pagans, Stalinist USSR was willing to cooperate with Social Democrats, Liberals and even Nazis (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) - but never with Trotskyists. Modern radical movement also spend a disproportional amount of time on internal purges and policing boundaries, sometimes more than on pursuing their stated goals.

Edited August 10Aug 10 by Otto Kretschmer

13 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

This is true for both political and religious totalizing ideologies - the one who disagrees is always either an idiot or a traitor, never just a honest, smart person who looked at the same stuff and just happened to reach a different conclusion.

And all of them hate heretics more than infidels - the early Catholic Church spent more time on fighting Arians than on converting Pagans, Stalinist USSR was willing to cooperate with Social Democrats, Liberals and even Nazis (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) - but never with Trotskyists. Modern radical movement also spend a disproportional amount of time on internal purges and policing boundaries, sometimes more than on pursuing their stated goals.

Sadly that's a big part of human nature for you, though there are usually only a few real zealots and a lot of folks being led by the nose.

+1

Edited August 10Aug 10 by studiot

Just now, studiot said:

Sadly that's a big part of human nature for you, though there are usually only a few real zealots and a lot of folks being led by the nose.

+1

There's the third thing I forgot about in the OP - they split constantly. So the one truth turns out to be not so one in the end...

(since this doesn’t belong in the lounge I’m moving it. I chose ethics for lack of a better idea, though psychology might be a fit)

3 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

This is true for both political and religious totalizing ideologies - the one who disagrees is always either an idiot or a traitor, never just a honest, smart person who looked at the same stuff and just happened to reach a different conclusion.

That’s a decent description of MAGA. There are ones not toeing the party line who get cast aside, and the enemy is the dumbocrats.

I think the traitor aspect speaks to the fanaticism and initial focus one one or two aspects of the ideology, but as the movement matures you find that not everybody shares the same vision for a wider range of issues. Dissent is probably a distraction and has to be stamped out. As fanaticism, though, it’s emotion and not reason so good faith doesn’t make an appearance

It seems to me there are usually some small number who profit from chaos and do everything they can to sow dissent and ensure that institutions don't work the way intended. Pretty strange since very few people I have ever met fall outside a pretty narrow spectrum of wants and desires but many think their worldview is vastly different from a significant portion of the human race.

11 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

This is true for both political and religious totalizing ideologies - the one who disagrees is always either an idiot or a traitor, never just a honest, smart person who looked at the same stuff and just happened to reach a different conclusion.

And all of them hate heretics more than infidels - the early Catholic Church spent more time on fighting Arians than on converting Pagans, Stalinist USSR was willing to cooperate with Social Democrats, Liberals and even Nazis (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) - but never with Trotskyists. Modern radical movement also spend a disproportional amount of time on internal purges and policing boundaries, sometimes more than on pursuing their stated goals.

Surely all you have done here is to define "totalising", when applied to an ideology? There are plenty of political and religious ideologies that do not do this, but then you would presumably not call them "totalising". So then toleration of good faith disagreement in "totalising ideologies" is impossible, by virtue of your own definition.

But there are quite a few of them around, it is true, from exclusivist religious sects to political movements. I think it is a form of tribalism. You have to be either with them 100%, or against them, in which latter case you are designated as the enemy. One sees this among football supporters, for instance. The demand for allegiance to an "in group" of some kind seems to be quite deeply embedded in human nature, which can all too easily lead to intolerance of those who are in some way different.

Edited August 11Aug 11 by exchemist

On 8/10/2026 at 5:48 PM, Otto Kretschmer said:

This is true for both political and religious totalizing ideologies - the one who disagrees is always either an idiot or a traitor, never just a honest, smart person who looked at the same stuff and just happened to reach a different conclusion.

And all of them hate heretics more than infidels - the early Catholic Church spent more time on fighting Arians than on converting Pagans,

No doubt, many of us have noted this problem and wondered about it. But a few years ago, I ran into a pretty good explanation as to why/when this happens. I wish I had saved the article; I didn't and can't remember all of the details, but it told about floods, earthquakes, plagues, wars, and famines, etc, or all manner of miseries that made people afraid. Many of these happened at the same times as these religious and political upheavals and also happened during the organizing of the early Catholic Church -- around 400/500 AD.

Prior to that article, I had always blamed Augustine (who was a prolific writer) for the work which created most of the Church doctrine at that time and validated the idea of "just war", or war in "God's" name. I did wonder why people accepted his ideas of just war, heaven and hell, the City of God, the idea that Mary of Magdalene was a prostitute, that witnesses, logic, and evidence were irrelevant, which ushered in the Dark Ages, and a great deal more that I saw as nonsense. I just thought that people must have been stupid back then.

Then I read the article and realized that I was wrong. The people weren't stupid, they were afraid. We are not talking about normal fear, we are talking about life changing fears caused by floods, earthquakes, plagues, wars, famines, etc. This kind of fear shuts down the conscious rational aspect of mind, so we work instead through the sub/unconscious aspect of mind, which does not process information in the same way.

Swansont was probably right and should have moved this thread to psychology. But I am not sure if there are enough members who study psychology to make it worth the move. I am not a psychologist, but have looked into it because of my studies of consciousness, so I have learned a few things. The first thing to note is that emotion always works through the sub/unconscious, and the unconscious has it's own logic. Bianco calls it bi-logic. You can look up more about Bianco's very well accepted and clinically tested ideas here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Matte_Blanco

Suffice it to say that if you can make people afraid, you can access their emotional logic. Trump knew this. I am tired now and will finish this later.

Gee

7 hours ago, Gees said:

No doubt, many of us have noted this problem and wondered about it. But a few years ago, I ran into a pretty good explanation as to why/when this happens. I wish I had saved the article; I didn't and can't remember all of the details, but it told about floods, earthquakes, plagues, wars, and famines, etc, or all manner of miseries that made people afraid. Many of these happened at the same times as these religious and political upheavals and also happened during the organizing of the early Catholic Church -- around 400/500 AD.

Prior to that article, I had always blamed Augustine (who was a prolific writer) for the work which created most of the Church doctrine at that time and validated the idea of "just war", or war in "God's" name. I did wonder why people accepted his ideas of just war, heaven and hell, the City of God, the idea that Mary of Magdalene was a prostitute, that witnesses, logic, and evidence were irrelevant, which ushered in the Dark Ages, and a great deal more that I saw as nonsense. I just thought that people must have been stupid back then.

Then I read the article and realized that I was wrong. The people weren't stupid, they were afraid. We are not talking about normal fear, we are talking about life changing fears caused by floods, earthquakes, plagues, wars, famines, etc. This kind of fear shuts down the conscious rational aspect of mind, so we work instead through the sub/unconscious aspect of mind, which does not process information in the same way.

Swansont was probably right and should have moved this thread to psychology. But I am not sure if there are enough members who study psychology to make it worth the move. I am not a psychologist, but have looked into it because of my studies of consciousness, so I have learned a few things. The first thing to note is that emotion always works through the sub/unconscious, and the unconscious has it's own logic. Bianco calls it bi-logic. You can look up more about Bianco's very well accepted and clinically tested ideas here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Matte_Blanco

Suffice it to say that if you can make people afraid, you can access their emotional logic. Trump knew this. I am tired now and will finish this later.

Gee

That's far too simplistic, emotions have many triggers and they all interrupt rational thinking, that's why pure reason/logic is a pipe dream of the class/room...

I think our innate sense of fairness has a more profound influence on most societies, religious or otherwise, it's why we instinctively seek an external arbiter of justice; just so we're sure that that arsehole suffers too... 😉

Edited September 2Sep 2 by dimreepr

7 hours ago, Gees said:

I just thought that people must have been stupid back then.

That may be a very important aspect of it.

People who don't think rationally, or who are ignorant, are more easily led to believe that fear and hate should dictate their lives.
Early Christians were 'controlled' by fear of retribution in Hell, and hate ( denouncing ) of their neighbors as 'heathens'. They called them the 'Dark Ages' precisely because of the knowledge lost between the 'classical' era and the 'renaissance'.
All totalitarian regimes try to keep their supporters as stupid and ignorant as possible, by taking away sources of news, and burning books which present alternate ideas; they control the newspapers, TV stations, and the internet.
Alternative 'views' are not welcome, even from advisors ( Trotsky syndrome ), so that all of D Trump's cabinet are idiots, like P Hegseth, who fire Generals that give him bad news, or disagree with party lines.
D Trump has gone as far as appointing L McMahon, a purveyor of 'fake sports performance' entertainment as Sec of Education, to overhaul the education system ( something she knows little about ), and keep people dumb.
Or a crackpot like R Kennedy Jr, to keep people dumb, and sick, with his non-sensical, and unscientific, ideas about vaccination.
Or S Bessent, who could be taught the ecomics of the bond market, and its implications, by a high schooler.

In all these ways, totalitarian regimes are very similar to most religions, they don't work for the best interests of the people, rather they try to control them, keep them dumb and subservient, for their own gain ( power, influence and wealth ).

Edited September 2Sep 2 by MigL

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Or S Bessent, who could be taught the ecomics of the bond market...

That maybe a typo, but it is apt.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

That may be a very important aspect of it.

This made me chuckle and grin. You can't agree that people may have been stupid back then and follow that up with a reference to the 'classical' era. The people, who lived in the classical era were not stupid, but the fall of Rome around the fifth century coincided with a lot of misery -- which can make people stupid, according to Blanco.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

People who don't think rationally, or who are ignorant, are more easily led to believe that fear and hate should dictate their lives.

Should dictate? I don't think that "should" had much to do with it. Using the word, should, implies that this was a decision. It was not -- unless you are talking about the people trying to lead, rather than the ones who are led. The conscious aspect of mind is rational -- we call it the rational mind. The unconscious is strongly influenced by emotion and is not rational. We are talking about an emotional reaction, not a conscious decision.

I remember either a book or a movie about bank robbers. The leader shot a bunch of bullets into the ceiling making the people scream, then he said, "If you can get them pissing down their legs, they are easier to control." He was right.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Early Christians were 'controlled' by fear of retribution in Hell, and hate ( denouncing ) of their neighbors as 'heathens'.

So what made the early Christians suddenly afraid of dying and going to Hell? What caused them to think they were going to die? The fall of Rome? Or was there more? What caused the fall of Rome?

2 hours ago, MigL said:

They called them the 'Dark Ages' precisely because of the knowledge lost between the 'classical' era and the 'renaissance'.

First there was the classical era, then there was Augustine, then there were the Crusades, then there was Aquinas, then there was the renaissance. The knowledge was never "lost". It was hidden. These are the main points that surrounded the 'Dark Ages'.

The classical era gave us Plato, Aristotle, Thales, Socrates, and many others. People were not stupid at that time.

In the fifth century AD, Rome fell and no doubt other tragedies contributed to that fall. Augustine's work came to light and his distrust of science became apparent. I think he hated Aristotle. Augustine thought that "God's" word alone (the church's word) should determine right and wrong, guilt and innocence, so this thinking validated just war, or "God's" war, and it prohibited a large amount of knowledge from leaving the church archives, hence the Dark Ages.

The really ironic part of this is that Augustine's ideas about just war allowed the Crusaders to go into the middle east to spread "God's" word, or to collect gold, (whichever you believe) and while there they found Aristotle's work, Plato's work, and this little thing called a zero, which changed math.

Then Aquinas, et al, studied this information, rewrote church doctrine, and threw open the doors of the church to knowledge ushering in the renaissance and closing the doors to the Dark Ages.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

All totalitarian regimes try to keep their supporters as stupid and ignorant as possible, by taking away sources of news, and burning books which present alternate ideas; they control the newspapers, TV stations, and the internet.

I don't think they had TV stations or the internet back then, so you are talking about Trump now. You are Canadian and I can not blame you for feeling frustrated with the United States right now, but I want to tell you that I am American and never voted for Trump. I know a lot of people are going to start denying that they voted for him, but I truly did not. I found him to be an embarrassment. I also remember 911 and remember that my President, Bush, in his fear forgot that airplanes can not stay in flight indefinitely. He ordered that passenger airplanes with hundreds of Americans on board not be allowed to land -- which was insane. Canadians, not insane, allowed the planes to land on Canadian soil and saved hundreds of American lives. I will never forget this and neither will my children.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Alternative 'views' are not welcome, even from advisors ( Trotsky syndrome ), so that all of D Trump's cabinet are idiots, like P Hegseth, who fire Generals that give him bad news, or disagree with party lines.
D Trump has gone as far as appointing L McMahon, a purveyor of 'fake sports performance' entertainment as Sec of Education, to overhaul the education system ( something she knows little about ), and keep people dumb.
Or a crackpot like R Kennedy Jr, to keep people dumb, and sick, with his non-sensical, and unscientific, ideas about vaccination.
Or S Bessent, who could be taught the ecomics of the bond market, and its implications, by a high schooler.

In all these ways, totalitarian regimes are very similar to most religions, they don't work for the best interests of the people, rather they try to control them, keep them dumb and subservient, for their own gain ( power, influence and wealth ).

I can't argue with any of this and agree with most of it -- if not all of it. But what I was trying to state was not how these totalitarian regimes work, but why they are accepted in the first place.

From Blanco's Wiki page: " "unconsciousness" is marked by symmetry, where there is a tendency towards 'sameness' and likewise, an implicit aversion to 'difference' "

This 'same' verses 'difference' describes most of the processing of information in the deep unconscious and is the source of our bias. We also have a 'self' verses 'other' in the unconscious which together with the 'same' v 'difference' triggers our prejudices. You might think that we can or should dispose of these triggers, but we can't because many of our survival instincts are also tied to the same triggers.

What we can do is recognize that when someone tries to make you afraid, they are trying to control you. We don't have to let them.

Gee

Sethoflagos: I missed that typo, but am glad you caught it. What fun. +1

7 minutes ago, Gees said:

The people, who lived in the classical era were not stupid

No they were not.
The classical era included ancient Greece and Rome.
With the fall of Rome, a lot of know-how was lost, and led directly to the Middle, or Dark, Ages; perhaps due to the fact that only religious people read, and copied, the old manuscripts, nothing to do with the fall of Rome.
Muslims, however, seem to have retained the knowledge of the ancient Greeks, and the slow re-introduction into Europe led to the re-birth ( Renaissance ) in the mid 1300s.

10 minutes ago, Gees said:

Should dictate? I don't think that "should" had much to do with it. Using the word, should, implies that this was a decision.

So your typical D Trump supporter can either choose to educate himself, or believe Trump's lies.
This is sometimes made difficult by the fact that despots control information ( if not TVs and internet, then newspapers and public 'stumping' ), but this happens gradually.
Do people not recognize Trump's attempts to control 'news' and elections ?
Did the Chinese not realize Mao Zedong's purges of academics were meant to stifle opposing thought ?
Did people not recognize Hitler and Mussolini's election tactics ( black/brown shirts ), Kristallnacht, and speeches ( blaming all their woes on Jews and the Treaty of Versailles ) were attempts at control, violent persuasion and spin ?
Did V Lenin's supporters believe his speeches that the Revolution was good for the Russian people, while conveniently ignoring the 10 million people who died in the Revolution and subsequent Civil War of 2022 ?

When people choose to ignore the 'reality' around them, in favor of increasing their personal gain/power ( thinking bad things will only happen to others, not themselves ), that sounds like a decision to me.

6 hours ago, MigL said:

That may be a very important aspect of it.

People who don't think rationally, or who are ignorant, are more easily led to believe that fear and hate should dictate their lives.
Early Christians were 'controlled' by fear of retribution in Hell, and hate ( denouncing ) of their neighbors as 'heathens'. They called them the 'Dark Ages' precisely because of the knowledge lost between the 'classical' era and the 'renaissance'.
All totalitarian regimes try to keep their supporters as stupid and ignorant as possible, by taking away sources of news, and burning books which present alternate ideas; they control the newspapers, TV stations, and the internet.
Alternative 'views' are not welcome, even from advisors ( Trotsky syndrome ), so that all of D Trump's cabinet are idiots, like P Hegseth, who fire Generals that give him bad news, or disagree with party lines.
D Trump has gone as far as appointing L McMahon, a purveyor of 'fake sports performance' entertainment as Sec of Education, to overhaul the education system ( something she knows little about ), and keep people dumb.
Or a crackpot like R Kennedy Jr, to keep people dumb, and sick, with his non-sensical, and unscientific, ideas about vaccination.
Or S Bessent, who could be taught the ecomics of the bond market, and its implications, by a high schooler.

In all these ways, totalitarian regimes are very similar to most religions, they don't work for the best interests of the people, rather they try to control them, keep them dumb and subservient, for their own gain ( power, influence and wealth ).

No historian speaks any longer about the Dark Ages. We now know they were far from “dark” in terms of culture and civilisation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)

Ages are 'relative'.
Compared to periods that came before, and came after, they were relatively 'dark'.
But I could call them the Middle Ages, If I'm hurting anyone's sensibilities.
( any 1200 year old members of this forum ? )

Edited September 2Sep 2 by MigL

53 minutes ago, MigL said:

Ages are 'relative'.
Compared to periods that came before, and came after, they were relatively 'dark'.
But I could call them the Middle Ages, If I'm hurting anyone's sensibilities.
( any 1200 year old members of this forum ? )

Just don't call them the Black Ages ;-)

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Ages are 'relative'.
Compared to periods that came before, and came after, they were relatively 'dark'.
But I could call them the Middle Ages, If I'm hurting anyone's sensibilities.
( any 1200 year old members of this forum ? )

It’s a question of accuracy rather than sensibilities. As we have learned more about the early Middle Ages we have come to recognise a lot more was going on than c.18th and c.19th historians thought, raised as they were on the notion of the Roman empire as some kind of golden age. Details in the link I provided.

My take is... Having The Truth and being sure of it means those who disagree must - logically, hah! - be wrong.

I expect that very different views are easier to deal with; they are just wrong - no reasoning is required. There is no threat to established beliefs. But addressing a reasoned argument, especially those presented by insiders and based in familiarity with The Truth - requires a reasoned response and threatens established beliefs the way debate with outsiders does not.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Ages are 'relative'.
Compared to periods that came before, and came after, they were relatively 'dark'.
But I could call them the Middle Ages, If I'm hurting anyone's sensibilities.
( any 1200 year old members of this forum ? )

I think the issue is more of it being a rather powerful narrative, that also happens to be a myth that historians for a long time now try to address, as @exchemist points out. It is like the alpha wolf myth or the belief that evolution is directed towards complexity. The big issue with those intuitive narratives are that they are so powerful that the actual facts become harder to teach, because folks have to unlearn things first. And unlearning is often harder than learning, folks are really resistant to that and sometimes become more entrenched. I think a reason for that is that because in order to overwrite prior assumptions one has to understand the concepts better than the previously held beliefs. This makes it a rather arduous process that one would rather not do under most circumstances.

Edit: what makes things complicated related to the "Dark ages" narrative is also that there is some decline due to strife, though not universally so. There is significant cultural continuity but also a (slow) decline in trade and other changes while certain areas (I believe agriculture) saw some technological innovation in the time period. I think a bit issue is that many folks think of history a game-like progression toward something, not dissimilar to how some folks erroneously believe evolution works. But for much of our history things just changed but were not necessarily progressing on any recognizable trajectory.

If you look back at my posts, you may notice that I mentioned 'dark ages' in the context of written records.
Because written and read words were exclusive to the religious clergy, the general population were left in the 'dark'.

"Significantly, Baronius termed the age 'dark' because of the paucity of written records. The "lack of writers" he referred to may be illustrated by comparing the number of volumes in Migne's Patrologia Latina containing the work of Latin writers from the 10th century (the heart of the age he called 'dark') with the number containing the work of writers from the preceding and succeeding centuries. A minority of these writers were historians."

From Dark Ages (historiography) - Wikipedia

The above link includes a graph, and chart, of the number of manuscripts per century, and the numbers start to take off during the 14th century, as I've previously mentioned.
I'm not claiming a lack of culture and civilization, and calling the era the Dark Ages may be out of fashion, but it is very applicable in the context of the read and written word.

3 hours ago, geordief said:

Just don't call them the Black Ages ;-)

Never.

7 minutes ago, MigL said:

"Significantly, Baronius termed the age 'dark' because of the paucity of written records. The "lack of writers" he referred to may be illustrated by comparing the number of volumes in Migne's Patrologia Latina containing the work of Latin writers from the 10th century (the heart of the age he called 'dark') with the number containing the work of writers from the preceding and succeeding centuries. A minority of these writers were historians."

So, Baronius' framing is a bit different to others (also in the link) and your previous usage, as you alluded to the fall of Rome. I.e. in this framework the assumption would then be that the output was high before, then dropped during the Dark Ages, before climbing again. The Issue here is that despite the well-known works within the classical Latin literature, the output is not really that high and roughly matches what we see in the time frame of the Dark Ages. The way it was explained to me is that the output is simply a function of time and how likely they survived and importantly, many of the classic Latin work survived, because they were reproduced in the middle ages. I.e. the argument then goes more towards how much survived rather than how much was produced (with monasteries and similar institutions driving maintenance). The issue, of course is that the limitation of classic Latin lit can also not be connected to being just less being produced, but just much less surviving due to time (though not sure how much one can disentangle that).

The other part, was, and I only vaguely remember this, as it has been a long while I talked to my historian friend about that, was regarding the way folks described the quality of the writing vs survival. That part was rather complicated and I admit, when he pulled out graphs I might have zoned out a bit.

43 minutes ago, MigL said:

Never.

I just listened to the whole of that clip.

It started off funny and turned very dark.

MA was some performer(could have been an actor) but he let himself down then.

I think he recanted later but I don't know if he did explicitly -maybe he just put it behind him.

1 hour ago, geordief said:

just listened to the whole of that clip.

You post stuff you haven't seen/read 😮 .

30 minutes ago, MigL said:

You post stuff you haven't seen/read 😮 .

I had read the first part and then I read the whole of it.

It is a very famous interview over here but it was the first time I had listened to it.

I was taken by his charm in the first few minutes and I thought it was apposite to the discussion.

He then veered into apartheidt territory and Parkinson had to hold his ground since MA was such a convincing act but his views were repellent.

On 8/10/2026 at 6:05 PM, Otto Kretschmer said:

There's the third thing I forgot about in the OP - they split constantly. So the one truth turns out to be not so one in the end...

My understanding is that this constant splitting is also because of the unconscious, and falls under the idea of Generalization.

From Matte Blanco's Wiki page on the unconscious: "1) The principle of Generalization: here logic does not take account of individuals as such, it deals with them only as members of classes, and of classes of classes."

Nobody interprets truth the exact same way as others do because truth is subjective. Since the unconscious does not account for individual interpretations, it either disposes of the individual interpretation or assigns it to a class, which causes the split. This does not happen in all groups, but it does happen in groups guided mainly by emotion -- totalizing ideologies. Of course splitting can not go on indefinitely as there will eventually be nothing to split -- which is the only good news about totalizing ideologies.

On 8/11/2026 at 5:40 AM, exchemist said:

Surely all you have done here is to define "totalising", when applied to an ideology? There are plenty of political and religious ideologies that do not do this, but then you would presumably not call them "totalising". So then toleration of good faith disagreement in "totalising ideologies" is impossible, by virtue of your own definition.

I agree. It would be a mistake to equate all religious ideologies to totalizing ideologies, as some do.

On 8/11/2026 at 5:40 AM, exchemist said:

But there are quite a few of them around, it is true, from exclusivist religious sects to political movements. I think it is a form of tribalism. You have to be either with them 100%, or against them, in which latter case you are designated as the enemy. One sees this among football supporters, for instance. The demand for allegiance to an "in group" of some kind seems to be quite deeply embedded in human nature, which can all too easily lead to intolerance of those who are in some way different.

I agree it is a lot like tribalism and plays a part in every group that I have ever seen or that I could imagine. It is even here in this forum. If a member is a science person, they are well accepted. But if they are not, then they have to work for acceptance. This idea shows up in the up/down votes. The forum doesn't use fear to control people, but does use down vote disapproval to control people's responses.

Gee

11 hours ago, MigL said:

No they were not.
The classical era included ancient Greece and Rome.

Those were the good old days.

11 hours ago, MigL said:

With the fall of Rome, a lot of know-how was lost, and led directly to the Middle, or Dark, Ages; perhaps due to the fact that only religious people read, and copied, the old manuscripts, nothing to do with the fall of Rome.

I think it had everything to do with the Fall of Rome. I have just spent an hour researching this Fall in Wiki, and it was much worse than I knew. I thought of Rome as a city, or maybe a country, but it was so much more -- it was more like an entire continent that slowly collapsed over hundreds of years. What I found was the Antonine Plague 165 - 180, the Crisis of the third Century which included climate change, pandemic disease, changing to Christianity as an exclusive religion, and the imminent end of the world. Then there were the military and political failures and the Little Ice Age and the Plague of Justinian to name a few things. There is more and you can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire

As Rome was slowly collapsing, the state religion, Christianity, was slowly picking up the pieces. It is not surprising that the eventual collapse left the Church in charge of the writings/information. Maybe the Church wanted to hide the information, or maybe the Church no longer trusted the failed government and wanted to protect the information. Regardless, the result was the Dark Ages and as I suspected, fear was the motivator.

11 hours ago, MigL said:

Muslims, however, seem to have retained the knowledge of the ancient Greeks, and the slow re-introduction into Europe led to the re-birth ( Renaissance ) in the mid 1300s.

Yes, Muslims, South Africans, Asians, North and South Americans, actually everyone who was not Christian retained knowledge. What a coincidence?

11 hours ago, MigL said:

So your typical D Trump supporter can either choose to educate himself, or believe Trump's lies.

I don't think it was quite that simple. Trump saw a truth that no one else was looking at, or that they did not want to admit, and it was about the young American white male. After World War II, the men came home to an unrecognizable life. The women were in the factories and liked making money. No one could use babies as an excuse to keep the Moms at home because the government pushed the idea of bottle feeding to get women into the factories during the war and convinced everyone that nursing was not clean as it could not be sterilized. Then came birth control and state run programs to protect women from angry husbands and to give women and children support. Then came civil rights which gave black workers/students advantages over white workers/students. Then came no fault divorce. Lots of laws. Each one of these things can be good on their own, but when put together, a man has no reason to work, no family that he has power over, no reason to care. The suicide rates for young men went through the roof.

Then Obama became President. In the unconscious, the part represents the whole. This means that if a black man (the part) is President and is above you, then all black men (the whole) are above you. Racism is not a dead issue, especially in the South. MAGA was born, and Trump capitalized on it.

When Obama first ran, I did not vote for him because he was an intelligent young man (maybe a little too young) who understood law, and he had a beautiful intelligent wife, and two adorable little girls. And I did not want that family wrecked, because I know racism still exists, and I live in Michigan.

11 hours ago, MigL said:

This is sometimes made difficult by the fact that despots control information ( if not TVs and internet, then newspapers and public 'stumping' ), but this happens gradually.
Do people not recognize Trump's attempts to control 'news' and elections ?
Did the Chinese not realize Mao Zedong's purges of academics were meant to stifle opposing thought ?
Did people not recognize Hitler and Mussolini's election tactics ( black/brown shirts ), Kristallnacht, and speeches ( blaming all their woes on Jews and the Treaty of Versailles ) were attempts at control, violent persuasion and spin ?
Did V Lenin's supporters believe his speeches that the Revolution was good for the Russian people, while conveniently ignoring the 10 million people who died in the Revolution and subsequent Civil War of 2022 ?

When people choose to ignore the 'reality' around them, in favor of increasing their personal gain/power ( thinking bad things will only happen to others, not themselves ), that sounds like a decision to me.

I can't argue any of this.

Gee