Did you have any inkling that you were brainwashed?
Do you think that strictly because you were no longer surrounded by the outside influences that you were able to un-brainwash yourself?
Was in frightening?
In my opinion, people who are 'brainwashed' generally have no idea they are.
That's what propaganda genrally is - 'one' plausible set of views that is internally consistent - and 'makes sense' if you don't cratch the surface too much.
I could name hundreds of examples - it's why Vietnam was a 'good war' to stop the 'domino theory', and as was just posted here today the 'reason for losing' was the politicians.
The process for understanding their error is a process of education - at which point they understand they were wrong and why on that issue, but nothing else would have fixed it.
If you had tried to talk to them, they have a series of views why you are wrong and they're right, to dismiss the water you lead their horse to but can't make it drink.
That's why I have a long series of posts here flagged about '95% of what's posted here about the left is wrong or lies and I can't remember the other 5%'.
Interestingly even if you educate someone on one issue, it doesn't help them on other issues; and sometimes, 'more education' can actually lead to brainwashing.
A complicated issue can have a great case that's wrong for one side. Someone who is very ignorant can hear the one side and fall for it thinking they have a better opinion.
That happens a lot with a group like Libertarians - and is the bases of the saying 'a little knowledge is dangerous'. It's why they latch on so hard to a few nuggets of truth.
Some of the most stubborn people who are wrong can be those who have gotten that 'little information', so they've 'corrected' one wrong view but not realized they've gotten a better informed but wrong position. And to make it worse there are legions of propagandists who are paid exactly to fool people this way, by persuading less informed people of a wrong position by creating a plausible argument.
'Everyone knew' that Vietnam was a stage for the Soviet-US conflict, and that if we didn't defend South Vietnam, they'd simply eat it up and then we'd have to fight in Thailand.
It's rational and plausible - and drove us to be behind millions of people being killed and politically derailing our own progressive government. And it was wrong.
It's not as if 'one side' was right; JFK eventually was, but most of his party was not. The Democrats were faster to switch positions, but they were late to do so.
It was not easy to explain to someone in the early 1960's why Vietnam was a mistake. How long has it taken our country to stop viewing gays as monsters deserving jail or worse?
To answer your questions, imagine someone who saw the real horrors of the USSR and felt they were a threat to the planet, it was freedom or their tyranny. While they put Vietnam into that forumla, it was clear what the right thing was to do; and until they got educated, 'oh, it was about people not wanting to be colonized', 'oh, we only had options to back corrupt regimes', and so on - despite there being some truth to the North being terrible, communists, murderous thugs, torturers and moral criminals - they supported it.
And these things take on a life of their own - once the political decision has been made to go to war, simply protecting political power means continuing to defend the war.
See my sig, 'ideology is the enemy'.
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