Gone are the days.
Once upon a time, every reasonable person agreed that allowing the government to control the flow of information was a very bad idea. Why? Because by controlling what you can or cannot see, hear, or read, the government would be able to directly control what you think, believe, and feel. This mind control would then allow them to control your behavior.
When the government controls what you think and what you believe, and when it controls how you feel and how you behave, it’s made you a slave to the state.
Understanding this, and knowing instinctively that having the public be enslaved by the state is a really, really bad idea. Americans were bestowed with a Bill of Rights that was designed to remind people government enslavement is bad, and more importantly, how best to prevent the public from being enslaved in the first place.
Cue the 1st and 2nd Amendments:
First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The government shall make NO law restricting religion or abridging free speech or the free press. Those are incredibly powerful words, as we will get into shortly. The government also has no right to restrict our ability to peacefully assemble or gather petitions to correct government wrongdoing. This too is incredibly important.
And, when the government does interfere or attempt to prohibit religious freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the freedom to gather, or the freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances—that is, when the government becomes a tyrant and begins to treat us like slaves—we have this:
Second Amendment: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Please note that the 2A does not say a “government regulated” or “state regulated” militia, but instead, a “well regulated” militia—as opposed to say, marauding gangs of thugs and criminals using firearms to terrorize and pillage the village. When properly understood, the First and Second Amendments are intended to protect the public from being enslaved by a tyrannical state.
And the real beauty is that they provide a road map to prevent such tyranny.
So let’s circle back to the issue at hand:
When the government controls what you think and what you believe, and when it controls how you feel and how you behave, it’s made you a slave to the state.
Free speech is the bedrock of a free society, and freedom of the press is simply a natural extension of this fact. People speaking their minds and sharing their various conflicting perspectives is both natural and necessary for society to thrive. When it comes to speaking out about injustices and speaking truth to power, it is through the free press the voice of the public can be amplified.
It is through personal conversations, books, letters to the editor, op-eds, thought-provoking articles, and investigative reporting the public remains informed. In the modern era, this also includes podcasts, videos, news channels, websites, and social media, all of which are merely extensions of free speech in the 21st century.
These are the means by which information flows throughout society. This is how the public stays informed, how we learn about what’s happening in our communities and in society at large. This flow of information is what shapes public opinion, and it’s also what shapes personal perspectives, beliefs, and behavior.
In yesterday’s report—TR 507 - Hamilton 68 and Unconventional Warfare—we discussed how the current “whole-of-government” approach to information warfare was warping the very fabric of reality. By flooding the flow of information with military-grade propaganda, and simultaneously using weaponized AI to censor counter-narrative perspectives, the government has effectively captured the public psyche.
It should go without saying that this is not only a gross violation of Constitutional rights, but also a gross violation of personal sovereignty and individual liberties.
How can we be free to petition the government for grievances if we are not allowed to learn about what’s going on in the first place? When state censorship prevents the public from learning about the government’s criminal behavior, and state propaganda pumps out the lies made to conceal these scandals, then We The People really have no way of correcting the rise of authoritarian control.
That is precisely where we are today.
In an interesting turn of events, today there is an article out about how the Global Engagement Center—which was discussed in yesterday’s report—is currently being sued by news organizations from both the left and right ends of the political spectrum. Uncovered is the fact that there is a vast network of shady organizations “white listing” what they deem to be “legitimate” news sites, while using a “Dynamic Exclusion List” to, in their own words, “defund disinformation.”
Just to give you a taste of their supposedly unbiased assessments, get this:
The four highlighted sites are the ones who have filed lawsuits against the government’s Global Engagement Center, the two from the left first, and now the two from the right. At this point, only a fool would think that any of the supposedly “least risky” sites are anything but mouthpieces of leftist propaganda. Meanwhile, those labeled the “riskiest” sites are all center-right with a conservative slant.
This farcical assessment and arbitrary labeling is driving censorship on a massive scale, promoting government propaganda and burying dissenting perspectives, and this is but one example of what’s happening all around the world. This is how the government—via the Global Engagement Center and many other agencies—is controlling the flow of information.
This is how they are enslaving the public within their own minds.
But it’s worse than that.
What could be worse than having the majority of people happily living in an alternate reality, peacefully enslaved in the illusions created by a government that’s controlling what they think, how they feel, and how they behave?
Well, just to cut to the chase, try to imagine if everyone was living in this subdued state of being, and no one ever woke up because there was no information available to signal that something was terribly wrong. Imagine being a mental slave, forever.
If the government was actively using AI to censor any warnings, and relentlessly programming the public with sophisticated propaganda, how would you ever know? Places like North Korea and China come to mind: why don’t more people rise up against these totalitarian governments?
ANSWER: They don’t see the need.
They are not only blinded by the censorship and propaganda—meaning they literally do not see anything wrong—but they have also been tamed, subconsciously, with little to no awareness of what’s happened to them. That’s TERRIFYING.
And yet, that is exactly what several highly esteemed clinical psychologists were trying to sound the alarm about nearly a century ago. Remember these words:
“It is now [in the 1940s] technically possible to bring the human mind into a condition of enslavement and submission.
…
They influence the mind so slowly and indirectly that we may not even realize what they have done to us.”
And just to drive the point home:
“The ideal of the totalitarian psychology is to tame men, to make them willing tools in the hands of their leaders. Like training, taming has the purpose of making actions automatic; unlike training, it does not require the conscious participation of the learner.”
Subconscious taming is scary stuff. We know that it’s possible, and it appears to be prevalent. This is why government censorship and propaganda are so damn dangerous. But what I want to emphasize here, taking all of the above into consideration, is that it’s actually worse than that:
“Political conditioning is tampering. It is taking possession of both the simplest and the most complicated nervous patterns of man.
It is the battle for the possession of the nerve cells.”
Put differently, censorship and propaganda directly rewire the brain. Not only does this rewire patterns of behavior—just look around and take note of all the unnatural behavior—it also changes the way people vote. That’s the bottom line.
Joe Biden is the most popular president ever elected—except for maybe Kim Jon Un and Xi Jinping. In the “Democratic People’s Republic” of North Korea, people love their leader, and the same goes for the “People’s Republic” of China.
Of course, expressing any other sentiment is strictly prohibited, but what’s not to love? Both leaders bask in their “cult of personality,” and they’ve demonstrated strong leadership through various “anti-corruption” campaigns and political reforms like the “Corporate Responsibility Management System” and “National Supervisory Commission”—just to name a few.
It all sounds so nice and innocuous, doesn’t it? It also sounds familiar.
My personal favorite is the “whole-process people’s democracy” reform launched by the CCP back in 2021—you know, when they were bolting people inside their homes and flying drones down the street that said “control your soul’s urge for freedom.”
This “whole-process people’s democracy” is said to promote “common prosperity” through “an improved model of social democracy suited for the needs of the 21st century.” Tell me: what do you think would happen if this initiative was put on a ballot in America today?
How many people would be duped by the words?
Do you know why so many people would be duped by the words?
Because words have meaning, and meaning leads to emotion. At a biological level, emotion trumps logic. It’s more primitive and predictable. The repetition of words conditions certain emotional responses, which is why propaganda works so well. By systematically eliminating conflicting signals, via censorship, governments are able to rewire your brain.
You might want to tell your friends, before the most popular president ever gets reelected and “whole-process people’s democracy” officially comes home to roost.
TR 508 - How Censorship Changes Your Brain