Here is that reality broken down in all it's wicked intention:
What is occurring is divide and conquer 101, it is the oldest playbook that exists. It is a pathetic tactic of predators without imagination.
Ten Ways the 1% Who Hate Us Are Manipulating Us Right Now
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable
Excellent points, all. Thank you for sharing and I'm very much looking forward to your follow-up commentary on the *much more effective* strategies that lie ahead.
It is worth repeating ad nauseam: "Violence is the most destructive *and least effective* way to bring about change for the better."
It is, as you said, a last resort. People on the left arming themselves must contemplate the corollary of fighting a fire by pouring gasoline on it. That's potentially what they're doing. How much benefit was brought to the left through the killing of Kirk? None whatsoever. And that's the *nominal result* of violence.
If we want real change for the better, the system must be remade. As your UF guest William Rees recently pointed out: the capitalist, neoliberal system we have is optimized to be captured by psychopaths: https://reeswilliame.substack.com/p/why-collapse-is-inevitable-7bc
The psychopaths ALREADY have all the power and wealth. But they do NOT have the numbers - we do. Violence is pitting our weakest trait against their strongest; a terrible strategy. We *must organize.* Our strength is in numbers, decency, and compassion. The sum of that is *far* greater than the powers that be. So THAT is what we must face them with first and foremost. This isn't just the moral high-ground; it's a strategic best-practice, given the asymmetry in this conflict.
However this plays out, the only hope for a decent tomorrow is to recognize the innate and eternal risks of humans born with dark triad/tetrad personalities. They are *inevitable.* So we are obligated to build new systems that are resilient against them. We need systems that are built on the true liberal values of equality and respect. And, most importantly, values grounded in the reality that we are all siblings and children of this planet; that ALL life on this planet is important - worthy of respect and compassion.
Yes! All of this!! (Especially the Bill Rees love—a living legend, without hyperbole one of the best to ever do it.) Thank you for reading and sharing such thoughtful added perspective here.
Rees has the dubious honor of being a real Cassandra of our age :) A man of great insight, and of quiet, but implacable, courage. It is beyond foolish to dismiss his work!
And thank YOU, sir, for all you do. Your work garners you neither riches nor great notoriety. But real yeoman's work is always that way. Good luck to us all as we keep fighting the good fight :)
What rubbish. "Decency and compassion" never saved a populace from a hostile government without an AK47 in the mix. Name a single example of this ever working in favour of the people.
If you read the piece, you’ll see I’m not pushing a “decency & compassion” agenda, but strategic nonviolence. There is a long and well-documented history of this working—India, South Africa, the Philippines, East Germany, Serbia, Poland, Tunisia, and of course the American Civil Rights movement, to name a few. The argument is not that violence has never worked. The argument is that when you have better options, use them.
Looks like Jesse beat me to the reply - with the examples I had in mind.
I didn't say pacifism *must* be the strategy, I said violence is a *last resort.* Huge difference. If you decry decenty and compassion then I sure hope you are NOT a part of leading whatever comes next. That dismissal is at the root of all of our collective problems.
Brilliant framing of the narrative trap here. The observation about winning the current narartive war while potentially walking into a kettled position is spot on. I've noticed the same pattern playing out in community orgs where the gun talk overshadows actualy organizing around mutual aid networks and legal coordination.
I appreciate you bringing this up and inviting conversation. One issue that comes up for me is that we are living through the collapse of an ecocidal, genocidal, settler colonial civilization within the context of an ecological collapse which will completely disrupt the way we live.
I have been facilitating conversations for some time that essentially center on the question of “how do we live into this rapid anthropogenic extinction event with love and compassion?”
My thought is that many people will have guns, and they will use them to kill many other people. As the ecological crisis accelerates, the grab for resources is more militarized. “Imperial boomerang” is the new norm. The integrated, militarized system to control people’s bodies goes right along with the necropolitics and brutalism that sees humans as chattel on the plantation.
A fruitful conversation, for me, focuses on letting go of ultimate outcomes - none of us will control much about what happens by 2050 or 2100. The planet will soon not support industrial agriculture and the long, brittle supply chains that are essential for modern technologies. We are likely to see extreme weather volatility that makes it difficult to live anywhere on earth.
I don’t predict the future, but as you are likely well aware, actuarial analysis of the existential risks facing our species show that the odds are pretty grim.
So I don’t see the question as being one about how to fight tyranny as much as a question of how do we choose to live within a series of ecological tsunamis. The rise of extreme state violence and of a heavily militarized “fortress America” is already here.
Chris Hedges just published a short essay on “Imperial Boomerang” that intersects with your questions. He notes: “The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.”
I write this as one who lives in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. So that colors my thought right now.
I am involved in sanctuary and resistance work, and I fully expect to pay the price for that. The carceral system being set up is designed to eradicate local communities who try to create sanctuary.
The world is a house on fire. All we can bring to it is love. All that we will ever save from it is love. I have come to think of the world as a living organism that is always dissolving, but also always generating life. Right now, the violence of Global Goliath civilizations has already made the soon loss of most of life on earth a foregone conclusion. We are not going to fix this.
We can choose how we want to live between now and whenever we die as individuals. As the dominant culture slashes and scorches the planet, we can nurture life as best as we can. We are not likely to live all that long - guns or no guns.
For the moment, I will simply say that we are here to love. We are each here for a very short time, and we get to love and be loved. Let’s not lose sight of that.
I absolutely love this comment, thank you. And thank you for the work you're doing in Minneapolis, sending you solidarity from afar. Completely agree about both collapse and the Imperial Boomerang. I've written about both and agree that they ought to be top-of-mind for all of us.
Excellent read! Thank you for sharing & pairing it with @your weirdo friend ’s video.
Going forward we will no longer publicly discuss fire arms. I see now how this was a mistake on my part as it seriously impacts the danger for more vulnerable communities.
We have a lot to learn & need to be out in our own communities more to build resilience, support & strategy in the event ICE/DHS shows up in our section of Philadelphia.
We are in a peaceful, professional working class section that is 90% college graduates straight/white/cis gender people. I’m sure most will agree - after we explain this - that pouring gasoline on a fire is never a good thing!
Thanks again for the post. More people need to think this through!
I understand and empathize with your rage, and whoever feels like owning a gun and exercising their 2nd Amendment rights should follow their conscience, but we’re not going to win in violent conflict. Advocating for this outcome is a strategic blunder. Even AR-15s pale in comparison to the military technologies at the disposal of this regime.
Here is that reality broken down in all it's wicked intention:
What is occurring is divide and conquer 101, it is the oldest playbook that exists. It is a pathetic tactic of predators without imagination.
Ten Ways the 1% Who Hate Us Are Manipulating Us Right Now
1) The first manipulation is the illusion of choice. You think you have two parties representing different visions for America but both parties are funded by the same billionaires, vote for the same surveillance bills, approve the same defense budgets, and serve the same corporate interests. The choice you are given is which color tie the puppet wears, not who controls the strings.
2) The second manipulation is emotional hijacking. The news does not inform you, it activates you. Every story is framed to trigger fear or anger or disgust because those emotions bypass your rational thinking and make you easier to control. You are not watching journalism. You are being subjected to psychological operations designed to keep you in a constant state of agitation.
3) The third manipulation is tribal sorting. The algorithm learns what makes you angry and feeds you more of it until your entire worldview is shaped by outrage at the other side. You are sorted into a tribe not because you chose it but because keeping you tribal keeps you predictable and profitable.
4) The fourth manipulation is false scarcity. You are told resources are limited and the other tribe is taking what belongs to you. Immigrants are stealing your jobs. Welfare recipients are draining your taxes. The other party is destroying your healthcare. Meanwhile the billionaire class has more wealth than any humans in history and could solve most of these problems tomorrow if they wanted to.
5) The fifth manipulation is memory holing. Stories that threaten powerful interests get buried or forgotten within days. Exposed crimes result in no consequences. Historical context that would help you understand the present is never taught. You are kept in a perpetual present with no past to learn from and no future to plan for.
6) The sixth manipulation is controlled opposition. The voices you think are fighting for you are often funded by the same interests they pretend to oppose. The outrage merchant on your side of the aisle is playing a character designed to keep you engaged and angry and tuned in while nothing ever actually changes.
7) The seventh manipulation is the Overton window. The range of acceptable opinion is artificially narrowed so that anything outside it seems extreme. Ideas that were mainstream fifty years ago are now treated as radical. Ideas that serve elite interests are treated as moderate common sense. You are not choosing your beliefs from the full range of human thought. You are choosing from a menu they wrote.
8) The eighth manipulation is learned helplessness. You are shown so many problems with no solutions that you eventually give up and accept that nothing can change. This is intentional. A population that believes resistance is futile does not resist. They scroll and complain and feel superior for understanding how bad things are while doing absolutely nothing about it.
9) The ninth manipulation is identity capture. Your political affiliation becomes your identity, and any attack on your party feels like an attack on you personally. This makes you defend politicians and policies that harm you because admitting they are wrong would mean admitting you were wrong, and your ego will not allow that.
10) The tenth manipulation is the most insidious of all: you are manipulated into believing you are too smart to be manipulated. Every person reading this thinks the manipulations I described apply to other people, the stupid people, the brainwashed people on the other side. That certainty is itself a manipulation. The moment you believe you are immune is the moment you become most vulnerable
Excellent points, all. Thank you for sharing and I'm very much looking forward to your follow-up commentary on the *much more effective* strategies that lie ahead.
It is worth repeating ad nauseam: "Violence is the most destructive *and least effective* way to bring about change for the better."
It is, as you said, a last resort. People on the left arming themselves must contemplate the corollary of fighting a fire by pouring gasoline on it. That's potentially what they're doing. How much benefit was brought to the left through the killing of Kirk? None whatsoever. And that's the *nominal result* of violence.
If we want real change for the better, the system must be remade. As your UF guest William Rees recently pointed out: the capitalist, neoliberal system we have is optimized to be captured by psychopaths: https://reeswilliame.substack.com/p/why-collapse-is-inevitable-7bc
The psychopaths ALREADY have all the power and wealth. But they do NOT have the numbers - we do. Violence is pitting our weakest trait against their strongest; a terrible strategy. We *must organize.* Our strength is in numbers, decency, and compassion. The sum of that is *far* greater than the powers that be. So THAT is what we must face them with first and foremost. This isn't just the moral high-ground; it's a strategic best-practice, given the asymmetry in this conflict.
However this plays out, the only hope for a decent tomorrow is to recognize the innate and eternal risks of humans born with dark triad/tetrad personalities. They are *inevitable.* So we are obligated to build new systems that are resilient against them. We need systems that are built on the true liberal values of equality and respect. And, most importantly, values grounded in the reality that we are all siblings and children of this planet; that ALL life on this planet is important - worthy of respect and compassion.
Yes! All of this!! (Especially the Bill Rees love—a living legend, without hyperbole one of the best to ever do it.) Thank you for reading and sharing such thoughtful added perspective here.
Rees has the dubious honor of being a real Cassandra of our age :) A man of great insight, and of quiet, but implacable, courage. It is beyond foolish to dismiss his work!
And thank YOU, sir, for all you do. Your work garners you neither riches nor great notoriety. But real yeoman's work is always that way. Good luck to us all as we keep fighting the good fight :)
What rubbish. "Decency and compassion" never saved a populace from a hostile government without an AK47 in the mix. Name a single example of this ever working in favour of the people.
If you read the piece, you’ll see I’m not pushing a “decency & compassion” agenda, but strategic nonviolence. There is a long and well-documented history of this working—India, South Africa, the Philippines, East Germany, Serbia, Poland, Tunisia, and of course the American Civil Rights movement, to name a few. The argument is not that violence has never worked. The argument is that when you have better options, use them.
Looks like Jesse beat me to the reply - with the examples I had in mind.
I didn't say pacifism *must* be the strategy, I said violence is a *last resort.* Huge difference. If you decry decenty and compassion then I sure hope you are NOT a part of leading whatever comes next. That dismissal is at the root of all of our collective problems.
Brilliant framing of the narrative trap here. The observation about winning the current narartive war while potentially walking into a kettled position is spot on. I've noticed the same pattern playing out in community orgs where the gun talk overshadows actualy organizing around mutual aid networks and legal coordination.
Thank you for the comment—glad to know there are other folks in the community observing what I am.
I appreciate you bringing this up and inviting conversation. One issue that comes up for me is that we are living through the collapse of an ecocidal, genocidal, settler colonial civilization within the context of an ecological collapse which will completely disrupt the way we live.
I have been facilitating conversations for some time that essentially center on the question of “how do we live into this rapid anthropogenic extinction event with love and compassion?”
My thought is that many people will have guns, and they will use them to kill many other people. As the ecological crisis accelerates, the grab for resources is more militarized. “Imperial boomerang” is the new norm. The integrated, militarized system to control people’s bodies goes right along with the necropolitics and brutalism that sees humans as chattel on the plantation.
A fruitful conversation, for me, focuses on letting go of ultimate outcomes - none of us will control much about what happens by 2050 or 2100. The planet will soon not support industrial agriculture and the long, brittle supply chains that are essential for modern technologies. We are likely to see extreme weather volatility that makes it difficult to live anywhere on earth.
I don’t predict the future, but as you are likely well aware, actuarial analysis of the existential risks facing our species show that the odds are pretty grim.
So I don’t see the question as being one about how to fight tyranny as much as a question of how do we choose to live within a series of ecological tsunamis. The rise of extreme state violence and of a heavily militarized “fortress America” is already here.
Chris Hedges just published a short essay on “Imperial Boomerang” that intersects with your questions. He notes: “The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.”
I write this as one who lives in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. So that colors my thought right now.
I am involved in sanctuary and resistance work, and I fully expect to pay the price for that. The carceral system being set up is designed to eradicate local communities who try to create sanctuary.
The world is a house on fire. All we can bring to it is love. All that we will ever save from it is love. I have come to think of the world as a living organism that is always dissolving, but also always generating life. Right now, the violence of Global Goliath civilizations has already made the soon loss of most of life on earth a foregone conclusion. We are not going to fix this.
We can choose how we want to live between now and whenever we die as individuals. As the dominant culture slashes and scorches the planet, we can nurture life as best as we can. We are not likely to live all that long - guns or no guns.
For the moment, I will simply say that we are here to love. We are each here for a very short time, and we get to love and be loved. Let’s not lose sight of that.
I absolutely love this comment, thank you. And thank you for the work you're doing in Minneapolis, sending you solidarity from afar. Completely agree about both collapse and the Imperial Boomerang. I've written about both and agree that they ought to be top-of-mind for all of us.
https://www.realitystudies.co/p/the-department-of-war-gaza-ukraine-imperial-boomerang
https://www.realitystudies.co/p/los-angeles-fires-altadena-palisades-polycrisis-collapse-overshoot
Excellent read! Thank you for sharing & pairing it with @your weirdo friend ’s video.
Going forward we will no longer publicly discuss fire arms. I see now how this was a mistake on my part as it seriously impacts the danger for more vulnerable communities.
We have a lot to learn & need to be out in our own communities more to build resilience, support & strategy in the event ICE/DHS shows up in our section of Philadelphia.
We are in a peaceful, professional working class section that is 90% college graduates straight/white/cis gender people. I’m sure most will agree - after we explain this - that pouring gasoline on a fire is never a good thing!
Thanks again for the post. More people need to think this through!
All Black and minority Americans need to embrace 2A, arm up, and OPEN CARRY, EN MASSE.
This cowardly murder of US citizens by Temu Tactical will stop when that happens.
I understand and empathize with your rage, and whoever feels like owning a gun and exercising their 2nd Amendment rights should follow their conscience, but we’re not going to win in violent conflict. Advocating for this outcome is a strategic blunder. Even AR-15s pale in comparison to the military technologies at the disposal of this regime.