By John Gill
We are all living in a bubble, a pressurized ball that gets inundated with messages, “news”, opinion-manipulation and unending social engineering. The results are more evident every day. It is, in a word, insane.
Trying to avoid the onslaught of communication is not an effective response. Those who do bath in it then impact those who are trying not to. The end result is an ever-expanding population that is trapped in the information vortex, consuming the non-stop deluge of rumors, stories and “analysis”.
Let’s take a couple of examples.
A major in-house organ of the globalist left, the Atlantic, runs a story about food being destroyed by the Trump Administration. Most of the story is an emotion laden tirade about the children that will starve and the damage to be done, all because Trump ended the corrupt and graft-ridden USAID. This had the effect of spawning dozens of stories in the known tactics of recycling distorted information so widely that it would then be presented as fact with the resulting hatred and anger at the Administration.
But the story was truly distorted. As reported by Reuters — hardly a pro-Trump outlet — the food in question was in a warehouse in Dubai for emergency use only in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A large quantity was about to reach its expiration date so it had to be used or destroyed. Over half was deployed but a bit under half had to be destroyed.
Now think for one minute about how the equivalent of K-Rations got to an expiration date? It had to be sitting there a good while. Why wasn’t a system in place to alert those in charge of impending expiration? And why was it a lower-level employee who alerted the newly installed Trump official about the problem — who immediately responded and saved over 600 million tons — and not the so-called Senior Executive?
An honest story would have asked that question; or at least reported as did Reuters on the real numbers and circumstances. But no, for those at the Atlantic reporting was not the mission, causing harm and creating hate was the mission.
Is this only an issue on the radical Left?
No, it is sadly not.
Reporting from conservative and pro-MAGA outlets regularly understate the damage done in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force. The right to retribution for the horror of October 7, 2023 has become for some a license to ignore or write-off some truly horrendous actions. And those who want to put a stop to the slaughter are lumped into one definition of pro-Palestinian Hamas-loving gang of terrorists. That, to be direct, is not true. There is a cost to the war in human suffering that should not be ignored.
There are many people on the right who are concerned about and outright oppose the Israeli actions. They are isolated and ignored. The impact is to further polarize the public around an issue that is so multi-faceted that it makes a prism look flat.
What these examples, and countless others, have in common is the end result — division, anger, emotional responses and in some cases violence that is driving us and many other nations in the West toward civil war.
Once seen in this light, a couple of things jump to mind. The first is how to short-circuit the messaging barrage, how reduce the negative effect? And the second is the very fundamental Cui Bono — who benefits from this destructive behavior that is literally creating insanity in the world?
Short-circuiting the process is both easy and very difficult. The first step is to question everything. Understand from the thing you read in the morning that someone is trying to manipulate you into a position or state of mind that serves them. Do not accept any of it, whether it comes from Donald Trump or AOC. As with the food story, just a quick google search yielded the facts, in that case from Reuters. In other cases it will require the suspension of personal biases to look for facts.
But that is not all of it. Even if you are able to walk away from the emotionally charged propaganda, those close to you may not. And, as a result, their actions will affect you. So, spreading the doctrine of “question everything” has to become a movement. It cannot and should not be tied to any party or position or person. It is a way to block the impact of a communications machine that has nothing but ill-will as it purpose. That is the hard part, getting others to use the question-everything approach and avoiding the trap of emotion and blind acceptance.
The second question of Who Benefits from all of this is more difficult to pin down. But it is clear that there are those in the dark recesses that seek to stir division and hatred for their own gain. Those who have never believed in free peoples running their own lives gain. Those who relentlessly push for global power and control gain from chaos. And, to be blunt, the international bankers gain. The phrase, “the time to buy is when there is blood in the streets” comes to mind.
Most certainly, those who look to use chaos and disruption gain. And with the information environment so spread out and fractured, it is fairly easy to accomplish. The insanity of our current political and social world must be addressed, we cannot as a people or as individuals allow it to continue on its current trajectory. Changing that trajectory will be the greatest challenge of the next ten years but will decide if we as a nation dedicated to individual liberty can survive or continue down the path of delusion, manipulation and ultimate slavery.
John Gill is a contributor to Americans for Limited Government.
