Do you want to win this thing? Actually win it?

By that I mean, do you actually want to create a healthy world instead of a world where we are ruled by lying, murderous, warmongering, oppressive, ecocidal, omnicidal sociopaths? Is that something you truly, deeply want?

It’s okay if you don’t, but be real with yourself about it.

A large percentage of the people who get involved in revolutionary political movements and criticism of establishment power structures, if they were honest with themselves, would admit that they do so not out of a sincere desire to replace the sociopathic ruling empire with something that benefits all life on this earth, but out of a desire to feel good about themselves. It’s not a real battle for them, it’s just a titillating ego game. A hobby, no different from any other.

If this is you, that’s fine. Humanity is asleep in a whole host of ways, and it wouldn’t be fair to single you out as uniquely awful when you’re not any different from the vast majority of people. But at the very least please do try and be real with yourself about it.

If this is not you, and you really are in this fight to win it, then you should be spending every day doing everything you can to hone yourself into the perfect weapon in that fight.

If this were a revolution that is fought with physical weaponry, then you should be training every day to use those weapons effectively in that revolution. But this is not a revolution that is being fought with physical weaponry. The frontline of this revolution is propaganda, and the guerrilla psywar that we are fighting against it.

As I never tire of saying, the only thing keeping the imperial status quo in place is propaganda. People would never consent to the exploitation, inequality and murderousness that is intrinsic to the US-centralized empire if they were not propagandized into consenting to it; all that is required to end that consent is to wake people up to the reality that they are being propagandized, because manipulation only works if you don’t know it’s happening.

If we can get enough energy behind a populist guerrilla psywar against the establishment propaganda machine, which so many of us are already fighting toward in many ways without even realizing it, we can break public trust in the establishment propaganda machine so that their manipulations become ineffective.

In a military revolution you would train with your body and your weapons to fight and kill the enemy. In a psywar, you must train your mind.

You must educate your mind about what’s really going on in the world. Never stop learning, never rest in confidence that you’ve got it all figured out. You can have the feeling that you totally know what’s true or you can have a humble devotion to trying to learn the truth as best you can from moment to moment. You can’t have both.

You must hone your inner sensemaker so that you can perceive reality lucidly amid the confusion and obfuscations of a society that is saturated in propaganda.

You must train your mind to focus so that your mental energy is not diffuse. Make time each day to meditate so that you can point the full power of your mind at this battle, and learn to become present in each moment.

You must know yourself and understand your inner landscape, so that you understand what makes you tick. If you understand your inner dynamics, you can understand how you’ve been fooled in the past and could be fooled in the future (and most importantly how you fool yourself), and you’ll understand how other people are fooled by powerful manipulators as well.

You must heal your inner wounds so that you don’t bleed out energy that you will need to win this fight. You need to be able to point yourself at winning this fight, and you can’t do that when you’re bogged down by inner misery and neuroses, as we all are without having done extensive inner work.

You must focus on the true fight without getting sucked up in drama and sectarianism, as ends up happening with pretty much every revolutionary movement these days. Don’t fall into any herd mentality, don’t get excited about the Hot Topic of the Day, don’t bleed out your energy toward infighting with people who basically align with you. It’s not hard to see who the real bad guys are in this world. If you’re focusing your firepower on anyone but them, then you’re inadvertently revealing that you don’t truly care about this fight.

You must do these things while practicing to become an effective soldier in the decentralized guerrilla psywar against the propaganda of the plutocrat-owned mass media and political class. You must do what you can to help wake people up to the reality that they are being lied to, using whatever tools you have at your disposal.

If you can write at all, write blogs. Write pamphlets. Write tweets. Write comments under influential MSM propaganda pieces.

If you can speak, make videos. Make podcasts. Talk to friends and family. Talk to strangers. Get the truth out there wherever you can.

Protest. Record. Report. Use your inborn creativity to keep finding ways to slip little messages in bottles into the narrative matrix informing people that they are being deceived.

Keep honing yourself in all of these ways, and you will get better and better at it. You will probably suck a bit and make a bunch of mistakes when you first start. Lord knows I did. You’ve got to fight through that awkward learning stage as you hone your weaponry.

You can only learn by doing. You’ve got to want freedom from the empire more than you want to stay small and unseen and unembarrassed. You’ve got to want this thing more than you want to look cool.

We must become the media. We must replace the media by becoming the media.

You are infinitely more qualified to report the news than all the scumbags in the mass media who are paid by billionaires to parrot government lies. I mean that 100 percent literally. If you’re not being paid by the wealthy to lie to the public, you are more qualified to report the news than those who are. Doesn’t matter if all you have is a smartphone and a Twitter account; you are set up to be a better news reporter than them.

You know all that space mass media reporters take up in society’s awareness proclaiming what’s true and what’s going on in the world? That’s your space. They usurped it. Take it back from them. The MSM have betrayed humanity to an unforgivable extent. We must move into that space, and use our collective voices to cripple the establishment propaganda machine.

Mainstream media reporters have a much higher body count than all serial killers and terrorist organizations combined. They do not deserve respect, and their institutions should not exist. Take their power away from them, bit by bit, grain by grain, by becoming better and more influential than they are.

Do this by mastering your weaponry. Do this by honing yourself into the perfect enemy of empire.

___________________________

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61 responses to “Shape Yourself Into The Perfect Weapon Against The Empire”

  1. Again – If only I could believe you, unreservedly.
    Let me give you another example.

    […]Lord knows I did.[…]

    If that’s not just a flowery phrase (and I don’t think so), you’re not using it like “the Pied Piper of Hamelin” and you mean it serious, wanting to praise the Lord and serve him, then you want to serve a hot-headed, paranoid, jealous, mafia-minded man of the house[1], who punishes everyone, throws them out of paradise, or immediately sends them to hell, in eternal torment, who does not keep to his rules, no matter how absurd or incomprehensible his rules are.
    One who rules all – this is what you can understand by the one world government, the NWO – it is an almost perfect description!

    You are talking about revolution[2] – I want evolution. An evolution (not a revolution like Krishnamurti said) in the human mind – without fighting a war with endless deaths!
    If you can’t imagine that and therefore come along with such war rhetoric, then you are really no different from the vast majority[3] of people, which would be a real pity, because actually I have a different impression of you and I like most of your writings I’ve read so far.
    Maybe I’m a dreamer – but I’m not the only one…..

    Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. — Timothy Leary

    Cheers!

    [1] See “Higher Intelligence and Creativity” by Timothy Leary, Robert A Wilson

    the attempt to establish heaven on earth always creates hell. This attempt leads to intolerance, to religious wars and to the salvation of souls by the Inquisition.

    — Karl Raimund Popper in “The open society and its enemies

    [2] From the book “The Third Wave” by Alvin Toffler

    […]Consequently, a similar elite structure grew up in all forms of Second Wave society. And this secret hierarchy of power – with small differences, depending on the place where the event took place – rose anew after every crisis, every political upheaval. Names, slogans, party badges and candidates might change, revolutions might come and go, new faces might appear on the executive floors: The basic structure of power remained the same.
    Again and again, in all sorts of countries, rebels and reformers have tried over the past three hundred years to storm the bastions of power, to build a new society based on the principles of social justice and political equality. At times, such movements have carried millions of people by their promises of freedom. Some revolutionaries even succeeded in overthrowing a regime. But every time the same result came out. Each time the rebels, now under their own banner, set up an equal structure of sub-elites, elites and super-elites. For this integrational structure with its power-engineers was just as necessary for the civilization of the Second Wave as its factories, fossil fuels or even its core families.
    Industrialism was in reality incompatible with the comprehensive democracy it promised. At best, revolutions and the like could only force the industrialized countries to move back and forth in the spectrum between “free market economy” and “central planning”; they could change from “capitalist” to “socialist” and vice versa. But like a leopard that cannot change its spots, they too could not get out of their skin. Without a powerful hierarchy of integrators, they could not function. […]

    [3]

    The word “religion” beautifully defines itself, of course. It translates “to bind” from the Latin – “re” means back and “ligare” means to tie up. All religions are straightjackets, jackets for the straight.

    — Timothy Leary

  2. The idea that “whoever controls narrative controls the world” is not right. It reminds me of the sophists, where justice was a result of contest of who delivered the best rhetoric. Also reminds me of Animal Farm where opposing groups fight it out with repetitive chanting. This is unfit for human beings. It’s part of the propaganda, in the sense that if you accept this narrative vs narrative construct, you are captured. The oligarchic minds didn’t worry about controlling what you think, because they have control over HOW you think. The issue is how man comes to find objective truth, a meta concept above the individual issues. He does not find Truth with via narrative control. That’s the error. The real power is closer to the model of Socratic dialogue, and the scientific method, where hypothesis is allowed and tested.

    Objective truth matters. Rather than a long list of dos and don’t s, you should plug into the question of what it means to know something, from the best traditions of western civilization, starting from Plato, and continuing to the present day.

    You will find that the enemy put in more effort here, in epistemological propaganda, than politics itself, to bury the methods used to outflank financial interests. There is where the “narrative control” did the most damage. Where? On the topic of what man can know, and not know, the cognitive ability, the unique quality which distinguishes man from all other animals. So, they reduce us to animals by denying future generations that epistemological birthright, in science, economic theory, language theory, and mathematics. The fight was deeply embedded in all those subjects, and still is. If oligarchic academic controls the axiomatics of how you form arguments and thoughts, the outcome in their favor is predetermined. That is why older founding father writings seem so profound, they had to address the meta-arguments (Built in false axiomatics) before moving on to populist political argument. The core person all American epistemological argument came from was Liebniz, not Locke.

  3. […]Shape Yourself Into The Perfect Weapon Against The Empire[…]

    Just so you know.
    This is war rhetoric and therefore disgusting!
    Moreover, I am not a weapon and will never become one for anyone else, because weapons only serve others, not themselves, even the artificially intelligent ones are only tools for others, they do not fulfil an end in themselves, because they are not alive – not yet!

    Your narrative is suitable at best for “little children in mind”, but maybe you want to address exactly these with this article?! Are you looking for pawn sacrifices, maybe?

    […]If this is you, that’s fine. Humanity is asleep in a whole host of ways, and it wouldn’t be fair to single you out as uniquely awful when you’re not any different from the vast majority of people. But at the very least please do try and be real with yourself about it.[…]

    Please, grab your own nose!
    If only I could believe you, unreservedly.
    You know what I mean when I give you this hint. For example your preparation and the celebration of Christmas, even though you reject e.g. escapism etc.

  4. Meditation helps me a lot. THanks to a daily practice I could get rid of the empire`s cognitive system (media, sports, official science, etc etc) my mind was fully of.
    The meditation I adopted was to remember every person I met, from the last to the very first one and, after that, analysed all the feeling connected to those memories.

  5. My compliments to Caitlyn Johnstone; very well written and well conceived as always.

  6. Those of the highest consciousness have no enemies, only adversaries.

  7. Mike McDonnell Avatar
    Mike McDonnell

    A person has to believe some people because we can’t check everything out for ourselves. So what should we do? I think that Bertrand Russell’s guide to life is the best: “Live a life based on love and guided by science.” For those of you who think that science is just part of the establishment, I can only say as a retired scientist myself, that there is no human endeavor freer of politics and opinion than science. You still have to identify the real scientists. The best guide I know of to find the real scientists is to listen to the people who are modest about what they know. Skepticism and modesty are the hallmarks of good science and good scientists. I think that It has always been true what Yeats wrote: “the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Beware of enthusiastic assurance. It is the mark of a con.

  8. I’m an old cynic so apologies for the bleak viewpoint, which is: it’s too late. History says Utopia ain’t coming and people ain’t changing, no matter how elegantly and truthfully you write. They’re too entrained, dumbed down, drugged (Big Pharma), panicked, whatever.

    Insiders and smart people know what’s coming (collapse) and are acting accordingly i.e. trying to suck out max $$ and prepare while they still can. COVID is a smokescreen for the economic collapse and associated financial shenanigans, which was triggered by Peak Oil II (Peak Oil I happened in 2005).

    As well as resource depletion, countries go bankrupt from overspending and corruption. The US is a poster child in that regard and many commentators think the US will probably Balkanise into separate regions.

    An aside: mass vaccination is an obvious part of the plan, remembering it’s hugely profitable. They’re indemnifying just about everyone involved in the COVID treatment process, so forget about safety and proper testing procedures.

    Would they like to chip everyone too? Hell Yes. Sell it on health, safety and convenience to coax people to line up. No cash and chipped people means fantastic social control possibilities.

  9. We’ve lost our Humanity; in fact, it’s been usurped*.
    We’ve forsaken Free Will for a paycheck, “Healthcare”, false security and destructive pleasures.
    We fear pain.
    We deny truth.
    We destroy nature.
    We abide oppression.
    We “support…” tyranny.
    We condemn peace.
    We hate unknowns.
    We embrace lies.
    We produce toxins.
    We consume toxins.
    We celebrate morons.
    We reward villains.
    We pretend Democracy is real.
    *We forget Plutocrats rule the world … because we let them.
    http://www.plutocracycartel.net/
    ___
    There is an empowering message in this story:
    https://bookaudiobook.com/ishmael-audiobook/
    This interview has a lot of useful information:

  10. “. . . do you actually want to create a healthy world instead of a world where we are ruled by lying, murderous, warmongering, oppressive, ecocidal, omnicidal sociopaths? Is that something you truly, deeply want? . . .
    “You must educate your mind about what’s really going on in the world. . . . have a humble devotion to trying to learn the truth as best you can from moment to moment. . . .
    “You must do what you can to help wake people up to the reality that they are being lied to, using whatever tools you have at your disposal.
    “If you can write at all, write blogs. Write pamphlets. Write tweets. Write comments under influential MSM propaganda pieces.
    “If you can speak, make videos. Make podcasts. Talk to friends and family. Talk to strangers. Get the truth out there wherever you can.”
    — Caitlin Johnstone
    .
    “The goal is justice, the method is transparency.”
    — WikiLeaks
    .
    “What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.”
    — Bertrand Russell
    .
    “Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living.”
    — Gautama Buddha
    .
    “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”
    — Jesus of Nazareth
    .
    “If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.”
    — Julian Assange
    .
    You know, that’s it, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
    .
    The end of darkness

  11. Great article Caitlin !!!! Very precise content and extremely accurate aim at the blights this country faces with the MSM at a strategic position at the helm.

    You know as well as I the only reason this persistent bullshiet keeps persisting is because each individual who hasn’t approached their own bullsheit within them and believes their ego mind based narcissistic self importance filled with denial are lieing to themselves with Pythagorean accuracy. They avoid truth like it was a virus. Then blame everyone else but themselves for the reason things are how they are.

    Until these lazy arse individuals take themselves through a session of self actualization and inner discovery the MSM has a place to live in their minds.

    Until these lazy arse individuals begin to question something more than ‘why are there so many commercials for pharmaceuticals” on their 70″ television,…this global community is in deep trouble. The trouble is they ask a good question but don’t move to detective mode for the answer.

    A whole-hearted THANK YOU for doing your inner work Caitlin. Thank you,..and peace to your Heart.

    1. Unfortunately , it seems the work of seeking the truth must first begin within. For most including myself this only happens when we hit rock bottom and ask very hard questions of our selves that when answered truthfully are very very difficult to accept. This process is extremely hard to go through for anyone however it seems a necessity to begin the journey on the path needed to truth.You have to recognize that you are lost before you can start to find your true self.

      Most in the 1st world can avoid this hardship easily by the upkeep of the ego via the accumulation of extra digits in our online bank balances or the proper use (as designed and intended by their creators) of social media. Its to easy not to ask these questions that have uncomfortable and confronting answers that force change in oneself. It is to easy to just avoid and dismiss them when the consciousness gives you a kick in the backside and forces a glimpse of self doubt as it has a tendency to do at times. At the moment that is.

      It may come to pass that many will be forced into this process via events that they no longer have the ability to control and prepare for. Mass destruction, societal collapse, financial ruin. Still many will still not see and their actions will still be determined by their egos. Those that have at least begun the journey will have to congregate for their own survival and prosperity. Hoping this will not eventuate, but f%&* me its not looking good.

      .

  12. There is a campaign of denigration being waged by Washington,D.C. against Beijing, and Secretary Pompeo is brandishing the sharpest sword.
    His speech of July 23 at the Richard Nixon Library and Museum was a definitive indication of how the United States stands in regard to the Peoples Republic of China, and its very title made it clear that Washington,D.C. has no intention of engaging in reasoned dialogue that could lead to rapprochement with the Chinese government. Mr. Pompeos discourse on “Communist China and the Free Worlds Future” was a venomous diatribe aimed at persuading the world community to combine against the PRC.
    This article can be read here:
    Washington,D.C.s Campaign Against China Could Lead to War by Brian Cloughley!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/04/washingtons-campaign-against-china-could-lead-to-war/

  13. Whackjob Normie Avatar
    Whackjob Normie

    YES. SPOT FUCKING ON. You totally woke me up not too long ago when you talked about “marinating” in certain circles… it was one of the narrative matrix blurbs I believe. I realized I was in the habit of passively consuming a bunch of alt media sources – absorbing very little information, but getting the little “rush” that comes from thinking I’ve got the inside scoop on reality, the real truth. If you asked me the next day I could tell you something like “bill gates is an evil psychopath” but couldn’t give you much more than that. So when certain topics come up in conversation (sayyy, COVID stats? masks?), I keep my mouth shut and quietly get mad or sad, worried if say something and am pushed on it I wouldn’t be able to defend it and would look foolish. Also, I tend to avoid reading anything from NPR or other mainstream sources, maybe fearful on some level that it would threaten my “red pill” status or prove me wrong? Anyway, Caitlin, you helped me self-reflect. I’m highly skeptical of the mainstream narrative around the pandemic, and my wife is fully receptive to what comes out of the WHO, CDC, MSM, and so on, and is full-on worried about my skepticism. (man was she worried when I said I probably would refuse the vaccine) It’s been starting to strain our relationship. We finally had a decent conversation about it, and I realized I really need to be able to defend my anti-establishment position and my distrust of these institutions. I’ve taken on the project of researching to learn everything I can about Covid and the context from every source I can find: the holy sanctioned “experts” and marginalized whackjobs alike, taking ALL with a healthy grain of salt. Posing questions, seeking answers from different sources. Who’s saying what? What incentives are at play? What are these organizations? TAKING NOTES AND COMMITTING IMPORTANT DETAILS TO MEMORY. Understanding that it is not about taking a position and compiling as much evidence in support of that position as possible – it is about looking your own bias directly in the face and trying to fucking destroy it. Seek out what the internet has to offer to refute my conceptions. “I might have been wrong this whole fucking time and that’s FINE”. Read an article as a normie, then read it again as a “consipiracy theorist”. I think once one has an understanding of the the extent to which propaganda is at play, it’s safe to dive in head first to any reality tunnel. Just have careful criteria for what you deem “fact”, and understand deception comes in many forms… of course pay careful attention to the ever-sneaky self-deception.

    Anyway, great post – I’ll be thinking of my Covid research project as training exercise for the guerrilla psywar…

  14. Caitlin, I share your disapproval of the evil empire and rejection of their propaganda and your desire for revolution. You urge readers: “If you can speak, make videos. Make podcasts. Talk to friends and family. Talk to strangers. Get the truth out there wherever you can.” For 20 years I tried doing that but made no converts. Ask your readers and they will tell you the same result. Please set up an online survey and ask readers: (1) how long have you been trying to wake people up to reality? (2) Approximately how many people have you tried to wake up? (3) Approximately how many people did you succeed in waking up, really convert them? I don’t like sounding negative but the only way to make any progress towards successful revolution is for dissidents to dis-invest completely from the fraudulent fiat-currency-based financial, economic, commercial, political systems we all use and support. If people were really honest and truly opposed to the evil empire they would not be engrossed in using and supporting this fraudulent fiat-currency-based system.

    1. I don’t think it’s possible to wake someone up in the way you suggest. The best you can do is “plant seeds”. When the person is ready, the seed will take. Occasionally, the person is ready there and then, and you will be privileged to see the “aha” moment. If it’s someone you interact with regularly, then over time you might see a change in approach.
      .
      When Caitlin says “Do you want to win this thing? Actually win it?”, I think this is a key question. Most people are not even ready to believe in the possibility of change, so that is the place to start waking them up. Have you asked yourself this question?
      .
      Awakening someone is not the same as converting them. An awake person is someone that has their own thoughts, not yours. I apologise if that’s not what you meant.
      .
      People aren’t wrong, even when they are. From their point of view it makes sense. Try to understand where they’re coming from and you might be able to point them in a different direction. It’s rarely about logic.
      .
      You have a good point about the need to dis-invest in the fraudulent financial and political systems. One way to do that is to pro-actively use other forms of interaction when exchanging goods or services with other people – demonstrate the concepts in practical ways. Another is to dis-invest emotionally and intellectually, by working on the emotional distresses around money, and by understanding the money systems and the alternatives. Beware of dogma.

  15. Roundball Shaman Avatar
    Roundball Shaman

    “Do you actually want to create a healthy world instead of a world where we are ruled by lying, murderous, warmongering, oppressive, ecocidal, omnicidal sociopaths? Is that something you truly, deeply want?”
    .
    Is it too much to want to live in a world that’s not run by a determined group of heartless demons? No, it’s natural to want to live in a healthy world based upon cooperation and positivity. Unfortunately, we don’t live in such a world and none of us will see anything different during our lifetimes. But what we can do is try to make a sane and livable world for ourselves and those in our circle of life. In the outer world, the rot is too deep. The corruption is too institutionalized. The levers of power have been centralized into just a few hands of soulless inhumanites. There are just too many people these days that are hypnotized and deeply under the spell of sorcerers and vipers and energy vampires that prey upon the good intentions of others. It is as if when we leave our homes each day and go out into the world we are immediately surrounded by huge ugly roaches that we can’t seem to get away from. And no one has yet invented a big-enough can of roach spray to rid our world of these inhuman monsters. And these ugly things get to you through your smartphone and internet and television so your own home is not safe, either.
    .
    “…this is not a revolution that is being fought with physical weaponry. The frontline of this revolution is propaganda, and the guerrilla psywar that we are fighting against it.”
    .
    Propaganda is an invasive species. It comes from the outside. It is the open sewer line dumping loads of untreated waste products directly into your mind every moment. The answer is to shut the damn thing off and do a deep cleaning.
    .
    There is a place for demonic-inspired beings and a place for sewerage and waste products. You already know where.

  16. Caitlin if we want to win this won’t happen as a group of individuals. I don’t know how long you’ve been writing you’re hard-hitting pieces but the state of our country continues to get worse. We need a way to pull together. We need to discuss ways we can stand up as a group and pressure our legislators to do the right thing like propose and pass Medicare for All. I suspect you are preaching to the choir and there are a number of us. Enough to make a difference. We just don’t know who each of us is. I live in PA’s First Congressional district. If I knew 20 or 30 like-minded people people who don’t believe Russia stole our election or that Mueller was going bring the walls crashing down or that the impeachment was going to change anything then we will have a base from which to work that create decentralized groups that can change the world. I know things are fucked up and so do many of us but what can we do? You say write. There are already too many people who write and publish to be able to keep up with. We need ways to hack a system that doesn’t give a fuck about us and would just as soon let us perish. My idea needs your help. It needs you to invite people to organize and it needs to be a voice to spread our successes. My idea is not set in stone but I think it’s a pretty damn good start. Just showing we can organize around an issue should scare the crap out of the establishment. It’s free, sustainable, and doesn’t ask people to march in the streets. https://sites.google.com/site/congressionalwatchdogcentral/ Please let me know what you think. Let’s have a discussion.

    1. Looks like a most worthy and creative endeavor at this moment. Good on you and those working with you. But let’s keep in mind that we’re at the penultimate moment, not THE moment when the tidal wave of massive, overwhelming demand for fundamental, radical change–for a better, more beautiful society NOW–comes rolling, raging in. Even the oppression (which never left us) of the Great Financial Crisis did not sufficiently immiserate the masses to trigger this tidal wave. The vast majority continued to make do, to scrape along with gig jobs, social media, video games, etc. But it would appear that the anticipated lack of appropriate governmental response to the coming Covid Depression, costing millions upon millions upon millions of Americans their homes and jobs and futures, will do the trick, will cause mass resistance and rebellion FAR more incendiary and lasting than the civil disorder following the Floyd murder. So all the better that you’re putting something in place ahead of time. We’re in for quite a ride.

  17. Great post exposing the fallacy of the free will delusion ?

  18. Joe Van Steenbergen Avatar
    Joe Van Steenbergen

    Unfortunately, are we not left with using the same technology tools used by, and controlled by, propagandists to fight propaganda?

  19. The most pernicious propaganda now fully in motion in US corporate media is the one about how China is our mortal enemy and we have no choice but to intimidate it into surrendering to US domination or annihilate it with nuclear weapons. It’s a propaganda meme that stretches across the permissible political spectrum, from right wing fascist Fox to neoliberal MSNBC, CNN and NPR. And if it isn’t confronted it will spell our collective end so thoroughly as to make covid19 look like a 24 hour cold.

    Let John Pilger explain.

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/04/another-hiroshima-is-coming-unless-we-stop-it-now/#gsc.tab=0

  20. If this is not you, and you really are in this fight to win it, then you should be spending every day doing everything you can to hone yourself into the perfect weapon in that fight.

    Know what you can control and what you can’t. Some days your only option will be to keep the flame alive. Rome was not built in a day. Finding a new way to live today will not happen in a day either. But if you are in this fight to win, how long it takes and even possibility of failure does not matter. You fight on regardless.

    1. “if you are in this fight to win, how long it takes and even possibility of failure does not matter. You fight on regardless.” precisely!

  21. “You must educate your mind about what’s really going on in the world. Never stop learning, never rest in confidence that you’ve got it all figured out. You can have the feeling that you totally know what’s true or you can have a humble devotion to trying to learn the truth as best you can from moment to moment. You can’t have both.”

    I agree with this.

    1. When it comes to knowing what is going on there is no free lunch.

  22. This is a great article. SHARED. I will try to live up to it. Thanks, Caitlin, you’re a real inspiration

  23. The masses cannot think about the truth of what’s actually going on because it’s quite frankly terrifying. Such is the reason that the most often expressed emotion is fear. And rightfully so. The frequency with which the Psychopaths In Charge have resorted to deprivation and mass murder displays such as the rule rather than the exception. They will continue to do so. Such has been the case throughout most of the history of the species, with a few instances of sanity. The occasional benevolent tyrant, or the foundation of reasonable systems such as the now failed American experiment are the only examples of departure from that norm. They don’t typically last long. Once the idea of ruling and being ruled became dominant, there was no other outcome possible. Once upon a time, what little ruling was done was at a tribal level. One could walk away from their tribe if it became oppressive, and stop feeding it. Now, with the entire world under absolute control of psychopaths, their is no place left to run.

    1. If it is truly terrifying survival instincts kick in and people pay attention. If it is only emotionally unpleasant and there is no awareness of personal connection, denial is the instinct. Seek to amplify awareness of the personal connection where you can.

      Once upon a time, what little ruling was done was at a tribal level. One could walk away from their tribe.

      You might find this interesting:

      http://abetterhumanstory.org/2017/06/17/5-the-parable-of-the-tribes-the-problem-of-power-in-social-evolution/

      1. “If it is truly terrifying survival instincts kick in and people pay attention. If it is only emotionally unpleasant and there is no awareness of personal connection, denial is the instinct.” – interesting thought.
        .
        “Seek to amplify awareness of the personal connection where you can.” – good point.

  24. Back in October 1967, when I was one of hundreds arrested and beaten on the Mall of the Pentagon during a night-long sit down in front of armed United States troops, and found myself charged with misdemeanor trespass and jailed at Occoquan Federal Prison until my arraignment, I ended up being sentenced to five days in prison, suspended on condition that I “never return” to protest in the nations capital. This article can be read here:
    Banned from Protesting in the Nations Capital for Five Years back in 1967
    by Dave LIndorff!
    https://thiscantbehappening.net/banned-from-protesting-in-the-nations-capital-for-five-years-back-in-1967/

  25. A painfully simplistic and incorrect assessment or just flaming of sort ? Both Chesterton , The Man Who Was Thursday, and Conrad , The Secret Agent wrote better analysis’ of revolutionaries in the Victorian era when Empire had a lot less political baggage , and a clear non pejorative definition.

    1. The Boston Bombing is a modern version of the Conrad Story. 100%

      1. Which Boston bombing ? I enjoyed the movie version as well with Robin Williams as the unlisted in the credits bomber.

  26. Plan B?

    What if everyone watching this blog (i.e. the “Soldiers for Truth”) [sorry but I could not think of a better phrase] shaped themselves into the perfect weapon and did everything they could do to wake the people up, but ultimately the vast majority of people never demanded change and the Empire rolled down the road unchecked? After that, what do the Soldiers for Truth do next? What is Plan B? I’m not saying the cause is unjust or that it should not be pursued but the Empire is formidable and one must recognize the possibility that goals will not be achieved and consequences will be incurred.

    1. William James, the great American psychologist/philosopher, had the perfect answer to your question, an answer in the form of a story. A mountain climber, in the midst of a blizzard, comes to a narrow chasm interrupting the path upward to shelter. She doesn’t know whether she can jump over the chasm, whether her best effort will succeed or fail. If she remains at the edge, immobilized by doubt and fear, she will surely freeze to death. But if she leaps and can’t make it across, she will plummet into the abyss. What to do? James says there is only one thing for the mountain climber to do, only one course of action that makes sense. And that is to summon all of her optimism, confidence, strength, and determination…and go for it. If she makes the leap successfully, she can continue on to the shelter, weather the storm, and continue her journey. On the other hand, if she doesn’t make it, if even her best effort falls short and she plummets, what better way could there possibly be to go out? By the way, James called this situation, so similar to the one you correctly indicate we’re all now facing, a “forced option.”

    2. It is not a fight for the summer soldier and that is why:

      It’s okay if you don’t, but be real with yourself about it.

      Is important.

    3. Every empire in history looked formidable and eternal. And every single one of them collapsed.

  27. The real situation in our world is so bad that the majority of people are unwilling to become aware of it. And the worst part of it is that we ourselves are deeply infected with and unconsciously spreading the lies that are destroying humanity. This is really hard to admit and own up to! But before the exhilaration of real inner and outer freedom, and the bliss of real love, there must be endured the pain of waking to the nightmare of mutual hatred and indifference that we have been living. Any other “solutions” to our multiple dysfunctions lack this essential foundation of acknowledging the dark reality of our present way of life.

  28. I do appreciate the as above so below sentiments in this article and have been looking for new articles on here daily. Im amidst a personal catharsis triggered by the quarantine myself. A huge part of my growth has been the realization of how psychological trauma is so extremely widespread and normalized in the US, and my assumption being this is actually a formula. Like a kind of whoopsie accidental cultural byproduct trauma, is disseminated worldwide as the core strategy of the neoliberal emipre to divide and rule. For example any country with extensive poverty issues, typically related to neocolonialization, that openly states it wants to contest brutal poverty must be smeared, sanctioned, invaded, regime changed, etc. The media uses all of its tricks to build public support for wasting our resources on these heinous efforts because we cannot allow any country to make the example that it doenst need a pliant underclass too busy backstabbing each other for precious shit jobs in sweatshops. Doesnt fit the math of how the grand scheme is supposed to work. But this is an extreme end of the axiom as above so below. The pressure in these extreme cases demands people rise up or die from preventable diseases or malnutrition under the norms of business as usual. Its supposed to happen in every stage along the way to the top, only the consequences of losing are mitigated the farther up the scheme you make it. Part of making it is the extreme dehumanization becoming sociopathy that people make real, a post hoc justification for what they already did to “earn” what they have. We cant bring any of it with us. Leaving it to your kids on a dying planet you are helping to destroy
    (as far as biodiversity and ecological services in support of us surviving at very least) sanctified by some preposterous notion that its legal, or its how you make a living, is meaningless.
    The shape of our weapon is a heart. Love life, defend the boundaries around life where you can, human and all other, dismantle the structures and behaviors that promote suffering and allow the full range of emotions to speak without repression, before they blow up to recreate the pattern. Once trauma begins to fail as their primary weapon, propaganda will not work. Materialism will not work the way its supposed to. No one will obsess about celebrities or sports. State level politics will be obsolete. The current state of polarization will seem like a fugue state of delusional madness driven by emotionally wounded children no matter what age they are.
    And that is the descriptor of what the problem is top to bottom, stunted growth determined to become a superhero, settled for lies. Is it any wonder that my minds on fire?

  29. Life.
    It is not outside of us.
    They are forms of Life.
    They are real of course, but they are not THE LIFE that courses through your body.
    Life.
    It’s as close as your breath, your senses and the Love you feel within.
    Make contact with that feeling as often as possible and everything else becomes a distraction.

  30. Sheep spend their whole lives in fear of the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd.

    “WuFlu Bat Stew News for You” > principia-scientific(.)org >

    Become a SHEEPDOG

  31. This is very good article, Caitlin.

    I would add:- Choose your own ground. Don’t let your enemies, or people who claim to be your allies, or accomplices, choose the battlefield.

    Zoom and Google are examples of establishment software. Google have, for many years, openly collaborated with the CIA and the NSA. Everyone who uses Zoom (except those who use a Google Chrome browser) has to download a Zoom ‘app’. Don’t download establishment ‘apps’. As my bank have recently reminded me, ‘apps’ are used by ‘criminals’ to ‘control’ our computers and ‘defraud’ us. Instead, we could all use Jitsi Meet, which doesn’t need to be downloaded onto our hard-drives, if people chose to do so.

    So, everyone who has been told by left-wing campaigning organizations, or peace and environmental organizations, to use Zoom for virtual ‘meetings’ and ‘webinars’, now has an ‘app’ on their computer, that can potentially be used, by giant tech corporations and/or government ‘intelligence’ agencies, and military or mercenary cyber-warriors, to control us.

    Likewise, don’t write free copy for the establishment press. If you do so, you will only put yourself at the mercy of their hostile editors.

    1. And that is why if the owners want to stay rich they will sell TiKTok to Microsoft. Surveillance is done through an untraceable blanket of corporate servers and the TiKTok servers shall have government hooks. The empire has spoken.

      The Orange One raised his golden staff over the ocean of cyberspace and proclaimed. Mine, all mine. Everything you do is known to me. And his darkness was tweeted across the land.

      1. Yes, and that is why it is better to avoid commercial software, altogether.

  32. My suggestion for America’s epitaph- “We had some ideas about fixing things, but someone said they wouldn’t work so we didn’t try because we didn’t want to look dumb”.

    1. And others said it was not their problem.

  33. In the article it states:
    “As I never tire of saying, the only thing keeping the imperial status quo in place is propaganda. People would never consent to the exploitation, inequality and murderousness that is intrinsic to the US-centralized empire if they were not propagandized into consenting to it; all that is required to end that consent is to wake people up to the reality that they are being propagandized, because manipulation only works if you don’t know it’s happening.”
    My question to the author is: “Have you met the people that live in the Empire (aka “Empirians”)”? Unfortunately, most of the people I know (by the way, I live in the Empire) don’t care about anything but themselves and no amount of waking the Empirians up to reality will matter? If other Empirians or non-Empirians) must be exploited or murdered for the benefit of the winning Empirians to maintain their standard of living or achieve their next conquest, then so be it. If others die that is great news because it means more for the surviving winners! Survival of the fittest! We are the champions! We are number 1! If they see something they don’t like on TV then Empirians turn the channel or go for a another beer or martini or shop on Amazon for a great pair of shoes or invent some reason why these suffering people deserve their lot in life such as they were lazy and failed to prepare adequately or it is God’s will or they go through some form of cognitive dissonance.
    Some Empirians you might be able to reach but will they be willing to incur a material decline in their quality of life to save another from suffering or a premature death? This argument assumes, correctly or incorrectly, that there are scarce resources and there is not enough for everyone.
    I believe there are a few good Empirians that can be persuaded to engage but do not be surprised if many of the Empirians tune out and reveal their true character.

    1. Ms Johnstone, the ” empires sheeple ” enjoy being asleep and not having to think and decide any moral or ethical hypocrisy about their government or their society. The coming economic chaos that will engulf the empire soon is going to disturb their blissful ignorance big time. The only preparations that the empire has made is to build camps and arm more government troops to control the sheeple when they get out of hand. Our entire society is one great charade after another; the curtains on the stage are about to go up in flames and the massive corrupt evil empire will be exposed to everyone. The results will be unpredictable, but extremely bloody on every side. The shitstorm is on the way.

      1. Shitstorm, absolutely, at least at first. Bloodbath, I suspect not, except for some unavoidable initial violence. At this unprecedented point we’ve reached, suspended over fathoms in uncharted waters, I don’t think we can learn much from history or reality and their realpolitik. I’ll go far as to surmise that this revolution/evolution we must make to survive will be, in the longer run, in the bigger picture, much more beautiful than brutal. The sea change, when it comes, will be utterly overwhelming, like a tidal wave, far beyond the ability of the PTB to even begin to control or curtail.

    2. The problem is not that people consent to be exploited; they consent to be propagandized every time they switch on CNN or NPR and think that’s all they need to do to be informed.

    3. Does your astute perception of the ‘Empirians’ lead you to the conclusion we cannot tolerate emperors who do not hold the public good in high esteem and who might be incompetent? If your analysis is correct without a few Marcus Aurelius around to keep the unconcerned out of trouble, it seems to me we are lost.

  34. So you are saying to take the red pill and see how far down the rabbit hole we can go. Perhaps one of us is the One. I have heard they are running low on blue pills.

    1. In regard to one’s own experience, everyone is the One. And that is all that exists.

      Society is an illusion, although one’s thoughts can make it seem real enough.

      How to change an illusion? This may be a bit cliche, but how about change one’s thoughts?

      1. This may be a bit cliche, but how about change one’s thoughts?

        Ancient Wisdom

  35. This is my attempt at what Caitlyn suggests.

    https://www.northofamerica.net/

    Please visit read and watch and share.

    Cheers

    1. Kevin, A delight to make your acquaintance. I read one of your articles and will read more later. I too noticed the nonchalance and it told me something was going on that not everybody watching the video will notice. A man comfortable with the power indeed. You are right, there is a bigger picture.

      I will be posting you as a news resource on my own website by the end of the day.

      1. Poll shows both Trump and Biden trailing behind unknown third contender!

  36. Daniel B Smith Avatar
    Daniel B Smith

    Excellent.. keep up the good fight.. notice that they give you ammunition in every word they say.. turn it back to them with logic and clarity.. Caitlin, you’re awesome and such an inspiration. Together, you and I and all are winning.. They might have the front page but we have the people’s ear, heart and mind.. and those not with us are waking up every day.. as I said, their own words are all we need to take them down…

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