Are We Governed, Or Are We Ruled? (Part One)

We may not be in control now, but power is a game of numbers

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to suspect that powerful people are doing everything they can to silence dissent and divide us. And it’s not hard to see why. When we’re muzzled and distracted, we’re more likely to miss the Bigger Picture:

• Our economy relies on a debt-based Ponzi scheme that systematically transfers wealth into the hands of elites over time.

• Our media, owned by the same elites, keep us too distracted to see what’s happening.

• Our government, paid by the same elites, tries to convince those of us who notice that it’s not happening.

But why would powerful people work so hard to sustain a System that enriches elites? Is this all about money? Is that really all there is to it?

I don’t claim to have the answer, but I have a theory. I think there’s something that matters to these people even more than money. And the key to acquiring it lies in our willingness to surrender the most beautiful gift —and the most powerful weapon — that we possess.

Our minds.

Thousands of years ago, the world was a simpler place.

Emperors and kings ruled the masses with an iron fist. The masses saw the iron fist and clearly knew who it belonged to, but they accepted their circumstance because they knew there was nothing they could do about it. Most people weren’t armed with more than a handcart and a shovel, couldn’t read, and lacked the ability to easily communicate with anyone outside their town or village. An imperial authority with a standing army could easily keep tens of thousands of subjects in line. If you were a king or an emperor, there was really no downside to ruling with an iron fist.

But as the masses grew in number, the world became a more complicated place.

Gone were the days when emperors and kings could openly force their will upon those below them. As technology blossomed and people became educated, they shared information about what was happening where they lived and in distant lands. The masses gained access to weapons that soldiers had: swords, muskets, rifles, and semi-automatic guns. If they got fed up with their situation, they could stage a revolution to rid themselves of the iron fist. And if they could somehow wrangle the right to vote, they wouldn’t even need a revolution to shake things up.

Judging by the direction things were headed in the 20th century, dark days loomed for those accustomed to ruling with iron fists — unless certain adjustments were made.

And so they were.

Let’s not fool ourselves: the kind of people who were emperors or kings thousands of years ago didn’t disappear or go extinct. The genes of Genghis Khan, King Henry VIII, and Czar Nicolas didn’t vanish into nothingness. I think these personalities are still with us today, even though they might look and move through the world differently now.

In the 21st century, admitting that you aspire to be an emperor or a king isn’t the sort of thing that sits well with masses who have taken a fancy to “social justice,” have ready access to the internet (and weapons), and are prone to uprisings. So what would people lusting for an iron fist do if they wanted that kind of power and control today? I think they would find a less obvious way to rule.

Enter Edward Bernays.

The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

— Edward Bernays

Bernays is the most powerful man you’ve (probaby) never heard of. He’s the father of modern propaganda. Today we’re living with the lessons he taught leaders of governments and heads of businesses in the 20th century: how to shape the thoughts and beliefs of hundreds of millions of people.

Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, so he came from a family with a passion for understanding what makes people “tick.” He was a journalist before joining President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI) during World War I, where he was tasked with persuading reluctant Americans to unite behind the war effort. It was a huge success.

The CPI experience taught Bernays how a simple slogan — making the “world safe for democracy”  —  could sway public opinion, and his marketing strategy would later become the model for generating public support for America’s future wars. But Bernays didn’t limit his techniques to wartime strategies; he dabbled in other areas of “foreign relations.”

One of Bernays’ most impressive feats was a marketing campaign to assist the United Fruit Company in overthrowing Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, the democratically-elected president of Guatemala, in 1954. By branding Arbenz a communist, Bernays convinced the U.S. media to support the government’s efforts to oust him. And with the media on board, the public followed the government’s lead. Sound familiar?

Using Freudian principles of human behavior, Bernays later expanded his propaganda techniques to create a powerful new field: public relations.  Managing public opinion through mass marketing soon became a tool that advertising agencies used to sell consumers everything from washing machines to television shows.

Bernays was a rock star of mind control.

He’s the marketing genius who convinced Americans to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast. He even made it fashionable for women to smoke cigarettes by putting them in the hands of movie icons like Rita Hayworth and selling the idea that they were lighting up “Torches of Freedom” (it takes a twisted brand of chutzpah to convince women that exposing themselves to lung cancer paves the way to “liberation”).

Bernays’ footprint was so prominent that Life magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential Americans of the 20th century.

You might think a man who manipulated the public into overthrowing foreign governments, consuming artery-clogging meat, and smoking their way to cancer would be too ashamed to admit what he was doing. But Bernays was so proud of his work that he wrote several books explaining how he masterfully massaged minds. In his most famous tome, Propaganda, he claimed that propaganda was not only desirable, but even necessary in a democratic society. Why? Because he believed that democracy requires “the conscious and intelligent manipulation” of the masses.

Remember that iron fist I mentioned earlier?

Bernays recognized that propaganda could be an indispensable tool for molding the minds of the masses and persuading them to throw their “newly-gained strength in the desired direction.” It could give the people who might have been emperors or kings in another age the means to gain the same power and control over millions — even billions — of people by getting inside their heads. Humanity could be ruled, not openly with an iron fist, but discreetly with propaganda refined and dispensed by all-encompassing media.

The velvet fist.

Let’s be honest. Unless you’ve been living under a rock you know that our government isn’t working the way it “should,” and it hasn’t for a looong time. Maybe it never did. We all take for granted that there’s a certain amount of corruption and self-dealing in Washington. We know the people we elect don’t always do what they promise to do because lobbyists and wealthy donors often grease their palms. Because it’s all about money, right? Most of us never imagine that the problems go deeper than these “normal” dysfunctions. It never occurs to us that the people we elect to serve us are merely puppets who bow to masters we never see or hear about. Because that’s just crazy Q-Anon talk, the stuff of wacky MAGA conspiracy theories, misinformation, blah blah blah.

Except…it’s not.

If Bernays is to be believed (and given how highly placed he was, why shouldn’t we believe him?), the people we elect aren’t just influenced, but are even controlled by powerful players who operate behind the scenes. These hidden elites “pull the wires,” using influential leaders and propaganda to mold our minds so we willingly consent to the thoughts and actions they prescribe.

Bernays called these people the “invisible government.” But whether you call them the Deep State, the Shadow Government, or the Uniparty, it all amounts to the same thing: anonymous dictators who secretly rule over us.

So who are our invisible rulers?

Bernays never gives names, but he identifies the types of people they influence: the president, members of Congress, heads of federal agencies, governors, mayors, Wall Street bankers, owners of media, fashion icons, presidents of universities, television and movie producers, popular celebrities, sports figures. The list goes on.

Bernays also claims that political campaigns are merely “sideshows.” We may vote as we please, but only after the invisible government filters our choices through the political parties they control. Propaganda facilitates this process by conditioning us to believe that party leaders are “experts” who select the candidate who best represents our interests and has the best chance of “winning.”

Have you ever wondered why some candidates become overnight favorites with their faces plastered on the covers of magazines and popping up on every cable news channel? It may seem like they’re rising stars based on buzz and voter sentiment, but Bernays tells us they were likely selected “by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room.” They become frontrunners simply because they are the names we hear and the faces we see most. Propaganda ensures that this happens.

The idea of an invisible government “pulling the wires” of the people we elect is extremely unsettling because it goes against everything we’ve been taught to believe and want to believe. It’s an Easter Bunny reveal on steroids. It’s also profoundly disturbing on an existential level because it makes us feel helpless and powerless. It can even create such cognitive dissonance that many people will simply refuse to believe it (hence the conspiracy/misinformation deflection). But the question is, do we have reason to believe it? Does it make sense, given what we see unfolding around us?

When the people we vote for consistently break their promises, repeat the same horrible mistakes, and blindly follow their predecessors on the same path to disaster, can we really write it off as mere incompetence?

When our government blatantly disregards our needs, passes laws we don’t want, and treats us like a taxpaying afterthought, is it so hard to imagine that they might be serving the interests of people we’re not even aware of?

Yes, it all sounds unsettling and disturbing, and it is. But here’s the good news: I don’t think our situation is hopeless. Because the invisible government’s power is also its weakness.

The people pulling the wires know that the only way they can truly control 330 million people isn’t with guns or money. The only way they can control us is by controlling our minds. And the moment they encounter civil disobedience on a mass level, this game ends.

We’ve seen what happens when we push back. We’ve seen what happens when enough remote workers refuse to come back to the office, when enough employees refuse to get jabbed. It becomes a game of chicken.

When enough of us push back, they back down. That’s the power of numbers.

We have so much more power than we realize, and the people who are desperately trying to take our freedom know this. They’re in a race against time, because they know what’s possible when we awaken in large numbers.

And this is why the velvet fist is squeezing so much harder now — restraining our speech, restricting our freedoms, denying our bodily autonomy. But there’s a conundrum. Because the tighter the fist squeezes, the more aware we become of its grip, and the more people wake up. And so the grip tightens in response, but still more people feel it and wake up. It becomes a feedback loop. This is the awakening, and it can’t be stopped.

The people who are fighting to take our freedom have already lost this game. They just haven’t accepted it.

So be hopeful. Know that we don’t need everyone to realize that we are being ruled. Know that there will always be some who will be compelled to play along with the illusion of freedom. And that’s okay. We only need a critical mass to be awake and aware, ready to stand firm, willing to not comply when the velvet fist goes for its death squeeze. And make no mistake, that time is coming.

Stay strong. Stand your ground. And protect your mind. Because that’s how we take back our country, our lives, and our world. That’s how we win.