Deborah, what is occurring is divide and conquer 101, it is the oldest playbook that exists. It is a pathetic tactic of predators without imagination.
The 1% wants everyone,—ICE, police, protestors, left, right, center highly activated - with the migrants caught in the middle - and at each others' throats in order destroy America in a blaze of hated to achieve their 2030 goals of:
1) you will own nothing and be happy, AKA we will loot it all and you will like it or else
2) The USA will no longer be a super power AKA there will be nothing standing in our way of enslaving you.
Here is how they are doing this, we cannot allow it to continue:
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
I don't know how we can take another three years of this. I just don't. And he grows more and more demented every day while neo-white supremacist Steven Miller (oh, the irony) calls the shots. It's exhausting and horrifying and paralyzing in equal measure.
Thank you for putting into words what so many of us feel. In my life I never thought it would be this bad but the day the Supreme Court gave tRump the power he so badly wanted, I was frightened. What is so shocking and fearful is how many people agree with his cruel, illegal behavior. It has never been about migrants. It's about his power to take away everything we stand for as indicated by Pam Bondi's letter to the officials in Minnesota...."give us the voter data base and we'll call off the goons." EXTORTION in plain view! OMG! How far THEY have fallen for power expecting us to obey laws but not they themselves. We're told we will be the Blue Wave in November but whose votes will count? Some states requiring birth certificates & current ID's and if the last names don't match well too bad. You can't vote. How many women will lose that right....It keeps getting crazier & crazier.....now I have to go eat another Hershy Bar. Even that isn't making me feel better!
I thank you for distilling so expertly the nature of these atrocities to which we have been bearing witness. My family didn't contend with the pogroms or the Holocaust, but my maternal grandfather, who died before I was born, landed here after informing on the Black and Tan in his native County Kerry, Ireland. The goons showed up at the family home the next day. My father's family landed here as a result of Samoza taking over in Nicaragua...I could go into how US meddling in Latin America has led to all the Brown folks seeking a new life here, but I won't do that now. I do know that I'm glad that my dad, who was born here, who passed suddenly mid-March, is not here to be impacted or upset by this. Sorry so long, but you well know, it's been a lot since the last Presidential election.
As a nurse, I know this gentleman could not have tried to kill anyone. It’s not in our DNA. We try to save everyone. His poor parents. Too many deaths. So much tragedy. I can’t stay silent. Thank you for being way more articulate than I am. We must stop this. How, I don’t know. I have protested, sent postcards, called Congress members, sent many emails. It’s taking too long. I don’t understand. I worry for my granddaughters. My grandma’s family also were in a concentration camp in Germany. They were white, Polish Catholics. It didn’t matter. Just like now. I just don’t get it.
Deborah, what is occurring is divide and conquer 101, it is the oldest playbook that exists. It is a pathetic tactic of predators without imagination.
The 1% wants everyone,—ICE, police, protestors, left, right, center highly activated - with the migrants caught in the middle - and at each others' throats in order destroy America in a blaze of hated to achieve their 2030 goals of:
1) you will own nothing and be happy, AKA we will loot it all and you will like it or else
2) The USA will no longer be a super power AKA there will be nothing standing in our way of enslaving you.
Here is how they are doing this, we cannot allow it to continue:
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
Thank you for this.
Thank you for reading.
Sending love and best wishes from Canada. There’s nothing else I can do.
We appreciate it!
Oh Deb
Crying right along with you … it HAS to get better
We have to make it so
For our children, our grandchildren, and for ourselves
xo
Lena C
I don't know how we can take another three years of this. I just don't. And he grows more and more demented every day while neo-white supremacist Steven Miller (oh, the irony) calls the shots. It's exhausting and horrifying and paralyzing in equal measure.
Thank you for putting into words what so many of us feel. In my life I never thought it would be this bad but the day the Supreme Court gave tRump the power he so badly wanted, I was frightened. What is so shocking and fearful is how many people agree with his cruel, illegal behavior. It has never been about migrants. It's about his power to take away everything we stand for as indicated by Pam Bondi's letter to the officials in Minnesota...."give us the voter data base and we'll call off the goons." EXTORTION in plain view! OMG! How far THEY have fallen for power expecting us to obey laws but not they themselves. We're told we will be the Blue Wave in November but whose votes will count? Some states requiring birth certificates & current ID's and if the last names don't match well too bad. You can't vote. How many women will lose that right....It keeps getting crazier & crazier.....now I have to go eat another Hershy Bar. Even that isn't making me feel better!
Yes. The voter data is insane and totally illegal. Out there in the open for all to see, should they want to. I’m horrified. By all of it.
I thank you for distilling so expertly the nature of these atrocities to which we have been bearing witness. My family didn't contend with the pogroms or the Holocaust, but my maternal grandfather, who died before I was born, landed here after informing on the Black and Tan in his native County Kerry, Ireland. The goons showed up at the family home the next day. My father's family landed here as a result of Samoza taking over in Nicaragua...I could go into how US meddling in Latin America has led to all the Brown folks seeking a new life here, but I won't do that now. I do know that I'm glad that my dad, who was born here, who passed suddenly mid-March, is not here to be impacted or upset by this. Sorry so long, but you well know, it's been a lot since the last Presidential election.
As a nurse, I know this gentleman could not have tried to kill anyone. It’s not in our DNA. We try to save everyone. His poor parents. Too many deaths. So much tragedy. I can’t stay silent. Thank you for being way more articulate than I am. We must stop this. How, I don’t know. I have protested, sent postcards, called Congress members, sent many emails. It’s taking too long. I don’t understand. I worry for my granddaughters. My grandma’s family also were in a concentration camp in Germany. They were white, Polish Catholics. It didn’t matter. Just like now. I just don’t get it.
Deborah, you’ve expressed my pain very well. Thank you.
Thank you. It’s not very well-written. Barely edited. But it was a cri de cœur from the heart I think many of us were feeling yesterday.
That Dave Matthews clip. Wow.
Right?