Alex, what is occurring is anything but organic. It is divide and conquer 101, the mechanism to achieve disintegraton of the enlightenment in a blaze of hared against one another (no more Constitution to stand in their way) so the 1% can take it all impose global digital ID technocratic tyranny.
Ten Ways the 1% - Who Own Almost All Media - Are Manipulating Us Right Now to Walk in Lockstep Into Incinerator, by Unknown
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.
That's a nice summation. Please tell me you have made it into a post. I might add one more thing, based on a friend's thoughts of how govt overreach saps individual dignity. This is the poverty-industrial complex that not only perpetuates the problem it is ostensibly designed to address but also surreptitiously fosters further division. Let me explain.
When a permanent underclass is maintained through mechanisms that discourage self-reliance. I have personally witnessed people who got more hours, higher pay, or a better job be "rewarded" with an immediate loss of benefits, thereby discouraging positive action. These people are not just unwittingly made wards of the state, their status also affects how the rest of us view them.
It's the same with the equity gambit; people are robbed of agency, judged by a lower standard, and prevented from demonstrating subject matter mastery or even competence. To anyone outside of that group, there is a natural chafing at the different standards that breeds a resentment toward the group as we have no way of knowing which members are genuinely capable and which are not. It's a nasty little system.
What you write about the deliberate poverty quicksand trap is reminicient of something MLK Jr. said:
Segregation and cruelty do not only wound those who are excluded. They also deform those who exclude. Both are harmed. Both parties are dehumanized. As he wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, written April 16, 1963, while imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama, “Segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, while it gives the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”
The mechanism of harm is the same or very similar.
For the list, it has an unknown author, but it was found in a forum by The Wise Wolf, who didn't credit it so i marked the author as unknown. You can find it and the absolutely phenomenal article it is based around here: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/everything-you-watch-or-read-is-owned
I have no idea how much of this was actually written by the Wolf, as he didnt tell me he didnt write the list until weeks after it was published.
Alex, what is occurring is anything but organic. It is divide and conquer 101, the mechanism to achieve disintegraton of the enlightenment in a blaze of hared against one another (no more Constitution to stand in their way) so the 1% can take it all impose global digital ID technocratic tyranny.
Ten Ways the 1% - Who Own Almost All Media - Are Manipulating Us Right Now to Walk in Lockstep Into Incinerator, by Unknown
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.
That's a nice summation. Please tell me you have made it into a post. I might add one more thing, based on a friend's thoughts of how govt overreach saps individual dignity. This is the poverty-industrial complex that not only perpetuates the problem it is ostensibly designed to address but also surreptitiously fosters further division. Let me explain.
When a permanent underclass is maintained through mechanisms that discourage self-reliance. I have personally witnessed people who got more hours, higher pay, or a better job be "rewarded" with an immediate loss of benefits, thereby discouraging positive action. These people are not just unwittingly made wards of the state, their status also affects how the rest of us view them.
It's the same with the equity gambit; people are robbed of agency, judged by a lower standard, and prevented from demonstrating subject matter mastery or even competence. To anyone outside of that group, there is a natural chafing at the different standards that breeds a resentment toward the group as we have no way of knowing which members are genuinely capable and which are not. It's a nasty little system.
What you write about the deliberate poverty quicksand trap is reminicient of something MLK Jr. said:
Segregation and cruelty do not only wound those who are excluded. They also deform those who exclude. Both are harmed. Both parties are dehumanized. As he wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, written April 16, 1963, while imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama, “Segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, while it gives the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”
The mechanism of harm is the same or very similar.
For the list, it has an unknown author, but it was found in a forum by The Wise Wolf, who didn't credit it so i marked the author as unknown. You can find it and the absolutely phenomenal article it is based around here: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/everything-you-watch-or-read-is-owned
I have no idea how much of this was actually written by the Wolf, as he didnt tell me he didnt write the list until weeks after it was published.