The Comprachicos

”You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”

Ayn Rand

It bothers me when people lie to us with a straight face, with no conscience, with no remorse. When our politicians and their compliant media on both sides of the political spectrum look us in the eye and with a straight face tell us: there is no border crisis while we watch millions of people illegally crossing our border; or that it’s a peaceful protest while we watch mobs burn down our cities; or that we must go to war because an evil despot has weapons of mass destruction, only to find out they have none; or, the most disingenuous lie of late, when a female nominee for the Supreme Court claimed that she cannot define a “woman” because she’s not a biologist, when all she had to do was stand up and say, “I am a woman.”

People who would lie to us with no conscience nor remorse are either con men or sociopaths, or both. But why would they expect us to ignore reality and believe their lies? I’ve been struggling with this question for some time, and in my search for an answer I recalled an essay by Ayn Rand that I first read forty years ago. Her essay presented the atrocities committed on young children by the Comprachicos of the seventeenth century as a metaphor for what our modern day ruling elite are doing to us with their attempts to distort reality.

I would like to share with you some excerpts from Ayn Rand’s book The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (published 1970),Chapter I, The Comprachicos:

The following description of the Comprachicos was taken from Ayn Rand’s translation of Victor Hugo’s, The Man Who Laughs, which he wrote in the nineteenth century:

“The Comprachicos traded in children.

And what did they make of these children?

Monsters.

Why monsters?

To laugh.”

“The people need laughter; so do the kings. Cities require side-show freaks or clowns; palaces require jesters… To succeed in producing a freak, one must get hold of him early.”

“They took a child and turned him into a miscarriage; they took a face and made a muzzle. They stunted growth; they mangled features. Where God had put a straight glance, this art put a squint. Where God had put harmony, they put deformity. Where God had put perfection, they brought back a botched attempt. And, in the eyes of connoisseurs, it is the botched that was perfect…”

“The practice of degrading man leads one to the practice of deforming him. Deformity completes the task of political suppression… The Comprachicos had a talent, to disfigure, that made them valuable in politics. To disfigure is better than to kill.”

The following are excerpts of Ayn Rand’s description of the modern heirs of the Comprachicos:

“The modern heirs of the Comprachicos are smarter and subtler than their predecessors: they do not hide, they practice their trade in the open; they do not buy children, the children are delivered to them…”

“…they take a child before he is fully aware of reality and never let him develop that awareness. Where nature had put a normal brain, they put mental retardation. To make you unconscious for life by means of your own brain, nothing can be more ingenious.”

““Give me a child for the first seven years,” says a famous maxim attributed to the Jesuits, “and you may do what you like with him afterwards.” This is true with most children, with rare, heroically independent exceptions. The first five or six years of a child’s life are crucial to his cognitive development. They determine, not the content of his mind, but its method of functioning…”

“He learns that regardless of what he does – whether his action is right or wrong, honest or dishonest, sensible or senseless – if the pack disapproves, he is wrong and his desire is frustrated; if the pack approves, then anything goes. Thus, the embryo of his concept of morality shrivels before it is born.”

“The pack leaders are manipulators, who sold out: they have accepted the approval of the pack and/or power of the pack as a value, in exchange for surrendering their judgement. To fake reality at an early age when one has not learned fully to grasp it – to automatize a technique of deception when one has not yet automatized the technique of perception – is an extremely dangerous thing to do to one’s own mind. It is highly doubtful whether this kind of priority can ever be reversed.”

“The manipulators acquire a vested interest in evasion. The longer they practice their policies, the greater their fear of reality and the slimmer their chance of ever recapturing the desire to face it, to know, to understand.”

Are We Afraid Of The Truth?

Statements are true when they correspond to reality, and our search for truth allows us to better understand reality so we can live better lives. Why would modern day Comprachicos want to hinder our search for truth by distorting reality with their lies? Do they not want us to live better lives?

Our politicians and their compliant media are not only the disfigured product of the Comprachicos, they have become the present day Comprachicos whose goal is to disfigure us. It has become commonplace for them to manipulate us by projecting their sins onto us. They lie and distort the truth, while their “disinformation experts” attempt to cancel our freedom of speech. They “never let a crisis go to waste” as a chance to take away our freedom, while labeling their political enemies a threat to democracy. They ask us to be tolerant of their ideas, while their mob shouts down and intimidates anyone with an opposing idea. However, the most insidious method of manipulation is by eliminating and changing the meaning of words from the English Language.  As we learned from George Orwell’s, 1984, the purpose of their “Newspeak” is to limit our ability to think and prevent us from engaging in rational debate. Their goal is simple: join their mob and conform to its alternate reality or commit social suicide and be canceled.

I chose not to join their mob. I choose to search for a truth that corresponds to reality.

“Reality and Perfection are synonymous.” Spinoza

Thank you for joining me in a search for truth. Your comments are welcome.