On Thursday, I talked about the destructive new ethnic studies program that has just been unanimously approved by the California State School Board and the ways in which it’s setting kids up to be indoctrinated, all the way from kindergarten to graduation. I described the “long game” that some are playing to tear our country apart from within.

Later that day, by coincidence, Dan Bongino in his podcast brought up a video interview from the 1980s featuring a former KGB propagandist who defected to Canada, Yuri Bezmenov, who warns of just this sort of thing being done in America over several generations. Here is that interview.

It’s sadly true: Some of the most “well-educated” people in America are so doggone dumb (and so thoroughly brainwashed) that we can argue the facts till we’re blue in the face and it will have no effect on them. Fortunately, you and I still have some functioning brain cells, so let’s look at what Bezmenov is saying.

He’s talking about how Communists subvert American ideology in a totally non-sneaky way. It’s right in front of us. “All Americans have to do is “unplug their bananas from their ears” and it will be obvious. It’s not like James Bond and the spy-themed entertainment that he says Americans are so enamored of, “that sells more deodorants.”

Most of what our enemies are doing is not spy stuff, he says, and “has nothing to do with intelligence at all.” Only about 15 percent of “time, money and manpower” is used for espionage. The rest is part of a very slow brainwashing process –- like the “long game” I was talking about being played in California schools –- that they call ideological subversion.

They have another name for it as well: “active measures.” It’s psychological warfare.

The goal is to change Americans’ perception of reality so thoroughly that “despite an abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions.”

Bingo. Ding-ding-ding! We are entering that place, RIGHT NOW.

He breaks the process down into four stages:

1. Demoralization. Communists have this down to a science; Bezmenov says it takes about 15-20 years to demoralize a nation. That’s the length of time it takes to educate one generation, to expose them to “the ideology of the enemy.” He says that in America, “Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of...American patriotism.” It’s now being done mostly by Americans to Americans. (I would add that, ironically, many are getting hugely rich doing so, on books and workshops about Critical Race Theory and class and gender "equity.") The result: “half-baked intellectuals” in their 60s who now are in positions of power --- government, civil service, business, mass media and education. “You are stuck with them,” he says.

These people are “programmed to think and react to certain stimuli,” he adds. The process is “complete and irreversible.” They have their own perception and their own logic. “YOU CANNOT CHANGE THEIR MIND, EVEN IF YOU EXPOSE THEM TO AUTHENTIC INFORMATION, EVEN IF YOU PROVE THAT WHITE IS WHITE AND BLACK IS BLACK.”

"Even if I take [a programmed person] by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it.”

Since there is no way to reach these people, he says, the only way out of this mess is to bring up a new generation that is well-versed in American values and doesn’t think this way. His message to us listening in the 21st Century surely is this: that it took a long time to get here and it’s going to take a long time to get out. Start NOW.

He says that when those “useful idiot” Americans experience with shock what it’s like to be trapped within real Marxist-Leninism, there will be revolt, but rebellion will be put down. “There will be no place for dissent,” he says. Dissenters will be “squashed like cockroaches.”

2. Destabilization. Bezmenov says this process can take just two to five years. The enemy concentrates on “essentials”: economy, foreign relations and defense systems. They eliminate the principle of free-market competition and cozy up to Marxist-Leninist powers. He says that when he first came to America, he would never have believed the great success Marxist-Leninists would achieve in these areas. Imagine how stunned he would be if he could be here now. (He died in 1993.)

3. Crisis. This leads into a radical changeover of structure, power and economy and typically takes “up to six weeks.”

4. "Normalization.” He’s using this word cynically, as in Soviet propaganda. That’s when the tanks role in, as they did in Czechoslovakia and the new rulers said the situation was “normalized.” The government really has become Big Brother and those in charge function pretty much like “benevolent dictators.” I would add that they’re benevolent as long as everyone goes along and racks up the required number of social credits.

"This is what will happen in United States if you allow all the schmucks to bring the country to crisis.” They do it by promising “all kinds of goodies” and “paradise on earth.”

We’ve been at war, he says, an “undeclared total war” initiated by the “world Communist system,” or call it a “world Communist conspiracy.” We must turn this process around, because this is the last refuge of freedom and unlike him, we “will have no place to defect to.” That is, unless we want “to live in Antarctica with penguins.”

So, what has to happen? The first essential is “a very strong national effort” to educate children in American values and patriotism and teach them the real danger posed by socialist/communist ideology. If young people fail to grasp this, he says, “nothing ever can help the United States.”

Fortunately, he says, at least part of the American population gets what is happening, and they have to FORCE their government to stop “aiding Communism.” This effort has to go beyond the typical letters and petitions, he says, because “there is no other problem as burning and urgent.”

At the time of this interview, Bezmenov is warning about the “murderers” in the Soviet Union, which did implode soon after while Ronald Reagan was President (thank you!). As we look at what is happening in our country and world today, his warning applies to the growing power of China –- particularly American business’s dependence on that market –- and the global Communist system. If China and Russia ally themselves, our situation is even more dicey. Bezmenov says we're at war, though many don't realize it, and we have “precious little time” to save ourselves and future generations.

The priority now: our education system. Whether or not you have kids in school, you are in this fight, and it is a FIGHT. Readers ask me all the time what we can do –- start here. That goes double for folks in California. Become an activist. Run for school board if you can, and support strong candidates. Make demands. See that the "woke" go broke. We have no choice but to take our classrooms and our culture back.