Who's Bad?

When I saw the second plane hit, my first thought was, They’re coming out of the woodwork. Masks off. They want us to know.

This is why they lied about how it happened, instead of just lying about who did it. They want thinking people to know it was an inside job.

This delivers the unspoken threat: If we’re willing to do this, do you dare think anything you can do will even slow us down? This is chilling to free thought, free speech, and free action. It’s a direct threat to shut up or else.

Then they covered up the physical evidence as quickly as possible, to foment doubt. Not probable, nor even feasible doubt, but a species of doubt propagandists know well.

It’s the anxiety of having to choose between going along with an absurdity endorsed by the dominant group, or risking being ostracized by trusting reason, logic, and observation.

The Emperor Has No Clothes, but only the naive little boy, alone in the crowd, dares say it, because social pressure forces everyone to go along with the absurdity.

This is how religion works, and why propagandists choose this method. If they can force you into believing an absurdity, they know you’ll fight to the bone to keep hold of it. Once they have you suckered, you stay suckered unless and until there is a major social change, or some other compelling reason, forcing you to shake off the illusion.

Who is angrier than a letdown former believer? Is not a true believer unshakable and, once shaken, shattered?

We need to understand the process we’ve been put through. They did something so outrageous, few could credit it. They covered up the physical evidence and lied about who did it and how it was done. They scapegoated a marginalized targeted enemy, demonizing Others. People Not Like Us did this, they claimed.

Despots all do this.

Pick a scapegoat and pick on that scapegoat unrelentingly. Blame everything on a marginalized, demonized minority. Persecution focuses hatred. It excites bigots to action and rallies mobs to act on false beliefs.

Once that happens, it locks in the lies.

That is why they did it so sloppily, so badly, and so baldly.

After all, they can’t be that incompetent, can they?

Because if they really are as bungling as they seem, and we have responded as flatfootedly, gullibly, and stupidly as we have, what does that make us?

Ahem.


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