UNCLEAR YET PRESENT DANGER
This article is about a simple three-stage war strategy that could topple a country from within. Right now, America is not only vulnerable to this but is between stages two and three.
The first stage is isolation, and it’s easier to isolate people and groups who feel marginalized. This is done by the use of sophisticated algorithms that corral outliers of the population into bubbles where they are fed information that satiates their confirmation bias and pokes at their fears of the other.
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the need to belong comes right after food, shelter, and security. This first stage uses that need to belong against us. So, even if we don’t agree with our tribe, we will rationalize our need to belong to that tribe over critical thinking. This first stage paralyzes rationale and logic as it makes emotions driven by fear paramount.
The second stage is all about misinformation. Paying enormous amounts of money and compromising information to government officials who will parrot the misinformation out of greed or fear or both.
Right now, we see the level of misinformation coming from Congress, who are beholden to Russian oligarchs, Chinese magnates, and/or wealthy Lobbyists. There are ways to ferret out who is funding these federal officials, but we are too deep into stage two to fix this now.
The misinformation stage is when people start turning against each other in the country because there is no clear enemy or motive.
If stages one and two are successful, the third stage is a sudden and illegal seizure of political power, typically carried out by the military or a political group, often with the aim of overthrowing an existing government, hence the January 6th, 2021 insurrection attempt.
This was an almost perfectly executed three-stage plan. Almost, because the danger is not over. Stage one is back in force, fortifying these bubbles and feeding them with more disinformation and misinformation, making the 2024 election the most dangerous in American history.
Stage Four
There is a fourth stage to this war strategy when the first three fail. When you fight an insurgency that has made this belief part of their being, they don’t back away; they retrench. Just like how doomsday cults claim a date for the end of the world, and when that date comes and goes, they don’t fall away; they choose another date. This illustrates the power of our need to belong, which, again, is the most important need after food, shelter, and security, and that need eliminates rational or critical thinking. And right now, we are deep into Stage Four.
We may well be beyond the Rubicon here and therefore must brace for a new Civil War. This one won’t last four years. Four weeks tops because the Union has been fortifying itself against a rebel uprising for nearly 160 years. There is no match for the American military, least of all some militias.
The bigger problem predates us by 120 years when Rockefeller took control of the US educational system, which was designed to dumb down the American public, dull critical thinking, and prepare us to work in factories. This is something most of us have in common. And recognizing it is half the battle.
Unless we bring our fellow Americans into a bigger fold, a bigger bubble of true patriotism in 2024 to fight together against the oligarchs, magnates, charlatans, and congress people who are fearful and greedy our only option is Civil War.
We must be clear-eyed and face this danger, or we will have no country to belong to.
