Brainwash: verb, pressurize (someone) into adopting radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible means.
We can learn by repetition. I know that six sevens are forty-two because I repeated it aloud with my infant's class time and time again. It wasn't radical or different, but it was a fact and by a systematic means I was taught it and won't forget it. So what is TV etc. systematically teaching us? What's repeated over and over again systematically affecting people's beliefs?
- Evolution. How many times have you watched a nature documentary and someone says that a mountain or river or whatever is "X" million years old? It's not a geology show is it? No but drip, drip, drip; systematically dropping the idea of old age earth and evolution into people's minds while they're watching something else.
- Homosexuality. The only new TV drama I watch is Doctor Who and it has the homosexual characters. They add nothing to the story line, their sexual sins don't need to be in the show, but drip, drip, drip. I can't remember noticing it the first time I watched the shows but there are a quiet a number of homosexual characters in Midsomer Murders all portrayed in a good light. The latest I saw weren't part of the plot in any way. Drip, drip, drip. Agatha Christie didn't put homosexuals in her novels, but when they were adapted for TV ... drip, drip, drip, you're there to be entertained but homosexuality being normal it being put into your mind.
- Clergy. The first time I noticed this would have been 30+ years ago in a Little Golden Book. It was a simple story of a kid/rabbit rushing off to school as he thought he was late and it turned out to be Saturday. No probs, but just one person in the background images in the book is portrayed as doing something wrong, someone is pulled over by the police; a clergyman.
In the above mentioned Midsomer's there were two clergy (one female naturally. A lot of Midsomer clergy are female) and both were portrayed as bad. One was money hungry and prepared to hurt others to get her way and the second was a kidnapper/multiple murderer. Drip, drip, drip.
Does this work? It's worked on me.
OK I hope you know that God created the world about 6k ago, homosexuality is sin and not all clergy are bad, but on a young mind, if they're getting all this drip, drip, drip from TV and never hearing the truth from the church, what do you think they'll believe?