When a baby is born, its parents teach it how to eat solid foods and walk and talk, which generally works out fine. Then they start teaching the baby all the lies their parents taught them, and things start to get messy.

When the baby is old enough, they send it to school, where it spends twelve years being taught lies about how the world works so that one day it will be able to watch CNN and say “Yes, this makes perfect sense” instead of “This is ridiculous” or “Why does this whole entire thing seem completely fake?” or “I want to punch Chris Cuomo in the throat.”

The baby is taught history, which is the study of the ancient, leftover propaganda from whichever civilization happened to win the wars in a given place at a given time.

The baby is taught geography, so that later on when its country begins bombing another country, the baby’s country won’t be embarrassed if its citizens cannot find that country on a globe.

The baby is taught obedience, and the importance of performing meaningless tasks in a timely manner. This prepares the baby for the half century of pointless gear-turning it will be expected to undertake after graduation.

The baby is taught that it lives in a free country, with a legitimate electoral system which facilitates meaningful elections of actual representatives in a real government. It is never taught that those elections, representatives and government are all owned and operated by the very rich, who use them to ensure policies which make them even richer while keeping everyone else as poor as possible so that they won’t have to share political power. It is never taught that highly secretive intelligence and defense agencies form alliances with those rich people to advance murderous and exploitative agendas for profit and power. It is never taught that the things it sees on television are mostly lies.

The baby is smoothly, seamlessly funneled from uterus to full-time employment through this system, often with a little religion mixed in to really drive home the importance of obedience and meekness and the nobility of poverty. From there the various screens in the baby’s life take over its continuing education, tightening the bolts of the propaganda cage and making sure that baby keeps turning those gears without asking too many questions. This continuing education continues until the baby dies in a mass shooting or nuclear holocaust, or of cancer from trying to numb the pain of living with cigarettes, or of liver failure from trying to numb the pain of living with alcohol, or of suicide because it just couldn’t take it anymore, or from its body and brain simply falling apart after a long, pointless, immensely unsatisfying life.

So now you’ve got all these babies wandering around, just as confused and clueless as the day they were born, thinking thoughts they were told to think and believing beliefs they were told to believe. Some are better at feigning confidence than others, but one baby’s guess about what’s going on is really as good as the next baby’s. The only thing any of them have ever known is the stories that they have been told.

So those stories get treated as something very important. All they’ve been taught to believe from womb to present moment tells them that it’s very important to keep turning those gears and walking in the same direction as all the other babies, so if all of a sudden one baby steps out of line and starts saying things like “Uhh, guys? We’re marching off a cliff of ecocide and omnicide. Maybe we should turn around?” or “It’s all a lie! We’re being exploited and deceived by an Orwellian oligarchy!”, that baby will usually sound crazy to all the other babies.

“Shut up you crazy conspiracy theorist baby,” they might say. “We all agree on our story about what’s going on. Our parents told us the same story, our teachers told us the same story, the news man on TV told us the same story, and the politicians told us the same story. We can’t all be wrong!”

But of course they can, and they are. All it takes is a dominant power structure wielding sufficient control of the stories that all the babies are told.

Imagine, though, if one of the other babies stepped forward and said, “You know what? Maybe that baby is right. None of the stories we’re told have ever added up. How come voting never seems to make much difference no matter who we elect and our lives stay shitty even though we always vote for the politician who promises to make them better? How come the news man on TV is always telling us about a New Official Bad Guy we need to go bomb, and how come it always happens the same way each time? And how come they can always afford all those big fancy bombs while we’re getting poorer and poorer?”

Then the story of total agreement would be disrupted. If another baby steps forward and does the same thing the story loses even more weight. If those babies get better at communicating with other babies, say with the invention of the internet, more and more babies start questioning the official stories they’ve been told since birth, and before long there’s no more herd mentality keeping all the babies moving in the same direction.

But those gears still need turning if the rich are going to remain rich and powerful. So they come up with even more stories to restore authority to their old stories about what’s going on. Stories about Russian propaganda, stories about fake news, stories about “useful idiots”, a term applied to babies who believe different stories from the ones they were taught by their parents and teachers and the news man. They do this because they know if they no longer have widespread consensus giving the illusion of credibility to their stories, they’re going to have to start relying on facts and evidence. And that won’t go well for them at all.

And now the babies are growing restless. The babies are growing cranky. The old lullabies aren’t keeping them asleep anymore.

The babies are waking up. The babies are growing up. Soon the babies won’t be babies anymore. Soon the babies will be able to tell their own stories. True stories.

What will happen to those gears then? What will happen to the machines they power? The answer to that question is why the rich have been fighting so hard for so long to sing the old lullabies, and keep the babies asleep.

______________________

Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing the stuff I publish is to get on the mailing list for my website, so you’ll get an email notification for everything I publish. My articles and podcasts are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat onPatreon or Paypalor buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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21 responses to “Babies”

  1. Susan Mercurio Avatar
    Susan Mercurio

    We didn’t have the Internet back in the 60’s, and we woke up and tried to wake up others.
    It was called “Tune in, turn on, drop out.”

    1. please give my life your thoughts regarding what you see in the documents of the below website and please give this information to all of your people around the world
      Thank you spiritually
      https://hmalayanspiritualmasters.tumblr.com/

  2. Excellent story. Well done.

  3. John Bestevaar Avatar
    John Bestevaar

    Am not convinced that replacing the current narratives with new ones created by the “woke” generation is not just another cycle of human history. My solution is just throw out all the narratives and pretend to agree to the local systems so they will leave you alone.

    1. Leave you alone? What does that look like?

  4. True Life Documents about only one Man how many other ????
    THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WILL NOW SEE BELOW AND ASK ??????
    [1990 Israel’s Prime Ministers Office said that Mossad in English should be translated as ISIS (Israeli Secret Intelligence Service]
    ———————————————————
    TRUE FBI and other record state department CIA documents in part.[ The wall is not only to keep people from getting into the USA it will be used to keep people from going out of the United States ????? 2 years ago Obama US Army city and states 1 time action on american soil ?????
    ———————————————————
    please give my life your thoughts regarding what you see in the documents of the below website
    Thank you Spiritually
    https://hmalayanspiritualmasters.tumblr.com/

  5. Yep that sums it up very nicely.

  6. Dear Professor Johnstone:

    How beautifully you put it all. I remember so many years ago aged just 19 putting away my fundamentalist protestant “faith” – and the next big step in this slow learner’s passage through life – becoming aware of prejudice and bigotry – and the way my Indigenous “brothers and sisters” were affected by racism and official legal barriers – then it was off to the world and uncovering entire narratives of history which I had not hitherto been exposed – but it certainly showed up the narrow “vision” I’d been fed – and other languages, too – and discovering that protest against power structures is imbedded – with variations – into all them – where cries for fairness are the same as one might argue in Australia for the fair go – about what is NOT fair. And one gets to see the cycles of history – a decidedly ugly downswing now in progress apart from a few pockets of hope – even if not perfect (I’m thinking Canada, and New Zealand) – but the ugliness of commercial media and NewsCorp in particular – the hand-in-glove symbiotic relationship between the Big-Biz/WMD war-mongerers and politicians – opposed by a few independents – yourself – Julian Assange, John Pilger, Ed. Snowden – and others – holding on into the coming darkness – but then the upswing to decency and respect and life will come. But thank-you as always – for your clarity and courage in the face of the almost overwhelming dead hands of the fascists.

  7. I love your work but not your best read. We wouldn’t be reading your work if we weren’t all already asking that same question.
    However cute and maybe like the cogs it just needs to be said as well.

  8. This is all quite true , but I have to warn you – when you’re attempting to red-pill a baby , people around you will give you some weird looks. That’s always been my experience , anyway.

  9. Amazing, Hannity showed her whole platform to the Fox world:
    (Rachel Maddow didn’t, WTF over)
    Sean Hannity’s FANTASTIC Political Ad for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

    1. She’s a Democrat. A new face, twist on an old narrative. Check out John Stepplings great piece on her arrival and subsequent fawning over it.

  10. Joe, you & your Q friends have taken it a step too far if you think Mr Fake News Trump, who jiggered the tax code to benefit the wealthy, who installed a climate-science dope to run the EPA, who is Israel’s pawn to inflame the Middle East further, is somehow the solution.

  11. Harry S Nydick Avatar
    Harry S Nydick

    Rather than keep the babies asleep, I’d rather that their parents were informed enough to tech them the lyrics of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine,’ and more so than any other, the line that says, “Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”

    1. Thing is we ARE all sharing the world. Its impossible not to. Its the slicing of the pie thats the problem. Even dear ol John missed that while buying his Rolls Royce.

  12. Joseph Mirzoeff Avatar
    Joseph Mirzoeff

    Look at these people’s enemies — they are the same as yours. It gives me hope — but I am a sucker, fell for Obama in 2008, among others, once even liked McCain.

    1. Lawrence Beck Avatar
      Lawrence Beck

      Joseph, Thank you for posting this video. It deserves it’s own post as it emphasizes and proves the real agenda of both parties: divide and conquer. They’re succeeding to a large degree with the media fanning the flames. If they can get us fighting amongst ourselves they’ve won.
      We all basically want the same things, but politicians are now so skilled at manipulating viewers that they can actually succeed in getting their followers to support policies that are in direct conflict with their own interests.
      Unfortunately you’ve swallowed the same divisive pill if you think that Q-anon and trump have a plan to destroy the deep state. You must have missed that trump has been surrounded by generals in the White House and they’re calling the shots while he tweets to his heart’s content. trump’s tweets are endlessly covered by the media while the real agenda goes on behind the curtain and we the people are ignorant to those changes because we’ve been conquered by a psyop that has us participating in the divide and conquer media mind game.
      Both parties want wars… much as some politicians speak out against them (Dennis Kucinich wanted a Department of Peace and was defeated.) Wars mean jobs in congressional districts and the war machine has carefully placed the war industries in as many districts as possible. So now a candidate (or politician) who is against war is against jobs! You see how convoluted and manipulative this has become?
      trump has increased the military budget to insane levels because he is part of the problem. Look at the weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the real consequences of the war in Yemen! Look at the billions given to israel and the continued support they receive while shooting Palestinian children and teens in the head (and injuring more than 14,000 others with direct shots to their groin, chest and shoulders). He wants to build walls. We need bridges. Peace with N Korea was made possible by the South Korean President joining hands with N Korea’s President. Not trump.
      How could anyone think that someone with a record of consistent business failures (6 major bankruptcies), countless accusations of sexual assault by women inside and outside of beauty pageants, money laundering with Russian mobsters through his hotels (and please don’t get into dichotomous thinking by assuming that this means the Russians skewed the elections in favor of trump… because William Binney and other have proven otherwise). This whole Q-Anon nonsense is yet another psyop made to order for those who are desperate to believe that trump is playing the world chessboard in four dimensions… while the military runs the white house.
      How many have ever considered just how they’d feel if we were being bombed, if our children were being shot and maimed, if our cities were being leveled and eternally rendered toxic with rounds of depleted uranium? Look at the birth defects shown when you google depleted uranium birth defects and ask how you’d feel if this was happening all around you in your own cities and country? Listen to the testimonies of Iraqi doctors who explain how these sorts of birth defects have never been seen before.
      Then ask why there aren’t more acts of terror by relatives of these victims against the US, the country that is rendering so many places unlivable by the use of these weapons?
      Even after losing their families, their homes and their cities these victims don’t seek revenge because they still haven’t lost their humanity… unlike US politicians who stand behind these wars.
      Listen to the testimonies taken during Winter Soldier on youtube and then ask why the VA admits that 20 veterans have committed suicide daily between 2001 and 2014 (https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/docs/2016suicidedatareport.pdf). Reality is a number orders of magnitude higher, as the VA doesn’t keep track of every single veteran once inactive and they don’t want the truth to be known or we the people might put an end to wars.
      We actually can.
      Once you view the havoc we’ve created worldwide and the fact that this is supported by the vast majority of our politicians you’ll see the problem. When they begin to demonize candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez you will understand that they don’t want what you want. They only want more of what they already have: more resource wars of conquest… and we taxpayers will pay for it. The Rachel Mad Dogs and Chris Hayes’ and Sean Hannity’s will continue to draw their obscene salaries for their efforts to divide and conquer and polarize along party lines because their salaries guarantee their fealty.
      Please don’t get caught up in yet another psyop. This video was very skillfully put together, filled with truth at the beginning and then leading into the psyop of our current fearless leader, to make you think he is the savior.
      Please wake up and realize that no single President would be allowed to do what you think trump is in the process of doing or he would end up like Kennedy!
      Or did you miss that part of the video? (It begins at 4:44 in the video you posted).
      And trump is going to accomplish what Kennedy couldn’t?

  13. Lawrence Beck Avatar
    Lawrence Beck

    After reading the first five paragraphs a thought came to mind: How is it possible that you can describe my two younger brothers to the “T” without ever having met them?

    I can’t even talk with them any longer. They are so mind controlled and so sure of what they’ve been told by the mainstream propaganda networks that anything I say is “conspiracy theory”… and I’ve been cautioned to be very careful about sharing my ideas with anyone because I’m fking nuts!

    The problem as I see it is that they have no curiosity. They believe what they’re told and what the tv has taught them, and to question anything is just beyond the realm of possibilities and a sure sign that he or she who asks questions is mentally compromised.

    1. Agreed. We, the ‘human’ species, represent one of the most NATURALLY curious of all. But all curiosity has been systematically programmed out of us — literally murdered, in favor of instilling fear and obedience.

  14. ❤️ Spot on.

  15. And slowly but surely we start to wake up.
    About bloody time – it’s been lonely and I’d like some more company.
    Thanks Caitlin.

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