Introduction

"All I'm offering is the truth, nothing more.” ~Morpheus

How disappointingly little humanity has progressed by the 21st century that such ancient superstitions like invisible, omnipresent gods, kings, queens, and governments still populate the confines of people’s minds and are worshiped and feared. All the while, as in ancient times, the priests and rulers are enriched and live like kings as the peasants pay weekly tribute to the church and state. The difference between right and wrong is a feeling. Divided up into ideological categories: woman's rights, gay rights, trans rights, minority rights, elderly rights, handicapped rights rather than just human rights that apply to all humans equally. Five thousand years of recorded human history and what's changed? Gods and magic, kings and queens, war and human sacrifice, rulers and indentured servitude, worthless money and debt. Cultural artifacts from a darker, less enlightened time that have persevered the millennia like an irradicable virus.

Maybe it’s because people need something to believe in that’s bigger than themselves, a belief system. Belief systems are powerful, they define people, they help them cope with life and get through the day. But all belief systems are religions, superstitions regardless if it’s a belief in a god, a government authority, or something else. And to realize that your beliefs are nothing more than medieval superstitions at best, complete and utter bullshit at worst, would be to admit that your entire life has been a lie. That you have no idea who you really are or what you really believe. Such a shock to a person’s mind could trigger a psychological depression so profound it could be life threatening, so the mind fights back. It refuses to acknowledge the truth, the elephant in the room, it creates excuses for things that are so ridiculously absurd that it borders on insanity.

“What do you mean you can’t see God? He’s all around you.” Really? If he’s all around me then why can’t I see him? “The military is in the middle east defending your freedom.” I didn’t know my freedom was in the middle east. What’s it doing there? “I’m writing you this speeding ticket for your own safety.” Thank you officer, without your help I probably would have killed myself. “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain!” I can’t complain about government fraud, waste, scandal and abuse if I didn’t vote for government fraud, waste, scandal and abuse? Wait, what?  How about that clichéd catch all “the law is the law!”? What does that even mean? Red is red! See, I can say meaningless dumb shit too. But for many that meaningless cliché is so profound it defines a belief system that they live their lives by. An alternative reality they’ve created for themselves. I’m not a mental health professional but that has to be a symptom of mental disorder, doesn’t it?

The truth is that ninety-nine percent of what your parents, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, your teachers, your preacher, your scout leader, your baseball coach, your friends, the news, social media, the Internet, and anyone else has ever told you was wrong or an outright lie. Everything you thought you knew about the United States, history, education, government, voting, the police, laws, rights, crime, justice, taxes, jail, the military, wars, banks, money, language. Everything you thought defined your life and the world around you is a lie, an illusion. All part of a carefully orchestrated social indoctrination program created to perpetuate political traditions and myths and create the useful idiots that the State can control. People just smart enough to turn the wrenches and do the paperwork, but dumb enough to follow orders like obedient citizens without question. It’s social engineering and it’s been so well refined over the millennia that people can be convinced they’re free while being tethered securely to the State’s leash. Want to drive a car, fish, hunt, buy land, build a house, own a gun, work, drink, get married, start a business, invest, adopt a child, adopt a pet, own a boat, send your kids to school, travel abroad? All the most basic of human activities requiring permission by the State; privileges given to you by the powers that be, in what they tell you is a free country. I don’t think “free” means what people think it means.

But when doubt in a belief system starts, and those first rays of reason, rational thought, logic, and common sense shine in, it quickly permeates the mind and can trigger a chain reaction. The whole house of cards begins to crumble. Every lie exposes two more lies, which in turn expose two more lies each. The destruction is exponential—like when you realized Santa Claus wasn’t real. If Santa Claus is not real, then whose lap did I sit on at the mall? If the guy at the mall wasn’t Santa, then how could Santa know what I want for Christmas? If Santa didn’t know what I want for Christmas, how come I got everything I asked for—and who ate the goddamn cookies and drank the milk?

Hard to believe at first, but true nonetheless. And Christmas was never the same after that, your reality was altered just like that. You see the holidays completely differently, not as exciting, without the charm and enchantment. It was your first awakening. The truth is nowhere near as much fun or exciting as the illusion, that’s why people like fiction. But the truth has something the illusion doesn’t: it’s liberating. Once you realized Santa isn’t real, your parents, your teachers, and the other “authority” figures couldn’t use it as a weapon to control you anymore. “He sees you when you’re sleeping”? “He knows when you’re awake”? “He knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake.”? Jesus, who was this pervert? So much for that creepy shit. But it was the first of many lies to come preparing your impressionable mind for your future social engineering and indoctrination.

Similarly, the Founding Fathers, democracy, constitutions, country, nation, patriotism, voting, the law, foreign policy, economics, American history, money, war: all historical, cultural myths; superstitions used by the powers that be to socially engineer society into obedient lap dogs, and it works like a charm. National pride convinces people to hate those they’ve never met and take credit and be held responsible for things they never did. Such nationalism not only convinces young men to go to war and kill innocent people they don’t know and who have never threatened them, but it has them lining up to do so and high fiving one another when they do it.

The overwhelming majority of Americans have never met an Iranian and know absolutely nothing about Iran—they couldn’t even point it out on a map—yet they have been conditioned to believe that Iran poses the greatest existential threat to national security. And they would wholeheartedly, without question support a preemptive attack on innocent Iranians if the President and Congress and American “intelligence agencies” said it was justified.

There’s a reason people avoid discussing politics (unlike any other subject). They don’t avoid discussing food or travel, work or dating. They don’t avoid discussing cars or science, kids or sports. Why is politics so different? Cognitive dissonance is the State in which one part of your mind holds a belief system to be true while at the same time your reason, rational thought, common sense, and logic tells you that it's bullshit. Your mind is literally at war with itself and this triggers confusion, disorientation, and anger. And since every aspect of the institution of government is irrational, illogical, and doesn’t make any sense, the truth will always instigate anger in the believers. People have been conditioned their entire lives to believe what the government tells them, but they don't know why. It doesn't make any sense. What's the reason, the logic? There is none.

The social engineering begins before kids are even in school with Columbus Day, stories of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, Fourth of July parades, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day picnics, singing “God Bless America,” and standing for the national anthem at sporting events. Then when they enter the government school indoctrination centers they are marinated for twelve years in the Pledge of Allegiance, police officer-friendly, revisionist history, civics, student government, the Boy Scouts, Police Explorer Scouts, and ROTC. They are taught that authority comes from the State; they are trained, like dogs, to ask permission to go to the bathroom, to stop talking when the lights are turned off, and to walk on the right hand side of the hallway in a single file line like little soldiers. Those who obey are given gold stars, those who don’t are punished. The kids are passed from one sauce pan to the next with vigor and with the complete support of their patriotic parents—veterans of the indoctrination program. They are shaked and baked until they are nice and tender, perfectly distilled of all individualism and sense of self: a blank canvas for the State to create the necessary useful idiot on. Rinse and repeat.

It’s right around that twelfth year that the military recruiters come sniffing around, wining and dining the eager, impressionable adolescent minds looking for blunt instruments ripe for military service to the empire. Dressed in pretty uniforms, adorned with shiny medals and armed with stories of god and country, national pride, heroism and honor, that would make a school girl dance and drop her pants. Who wouldn’t want to be the handsome hero in a brave, romantic tale? Make your parents proud, get the girl, and save your country from evil. Marine Corp commercials even have the soldiers dressed up as medieval knights with swords that shoot lightning bolts! Wow! Where do I sign?

The story conveniently leaves out the part about injury, dismemberment, and death while trying to kill people for the military-industrial complex. It ignores the PTSD, the mental health issues, the nightmares, the counseling, the drug addiction, the homelessness, the rancid conditions and care of the VA. How are you going to get the girl to dance and drop her pants when you have no arms or legs? See, it was all just a lie, a carefully planned illusion, a magic show, just another Santa Claus, all of it from pre-school on. There is no pride or honor in nationalism, only hate, death, and destruction. Invading and occupying foreign countries is not courageous, it’s criminal and terrorism. Authority doesn’t come from the State. You have no obligation to a country, whatever that is. Nationalism is a religion, and like all religions it requires human sacrifice.

This lifelong indoctrination program enslaves the mind and creates a very real psychological matrix among people in society. Even the most intelligent and talented people are unwittingly attached to it. They are the ones that won't cross the street unless the light is green even if there's not a car in sight. They'll stand in the rain, the cold, the wind, the snow suffering, staring at a light, hypnotized by it like a fish to a lure, unable to move even if they wanted to until the light turns green. When it does, it frees their mind allowing their brain to move their muscles and cross the street. Like a dog trained to stay until his master gives him permission to come. It’s as creepy as it is interesting to see how all reason, rational thought, logic, and common sense can be psychologically overridden to the point of being willing to endure physical pain rather than threaten one’s belief system.

Like when the military tells young soldiers that they have to go to war in a foreign country they can’t spell, in a place they can’t point out on a map, in order to overthrow a dictator they never heard of because he’s doing things they don’t understand. Don’t ask why, just follow orders and arm up and go kill and risk being killed or else you are unpatriotic, treasonous, and a bad human being and your parents will be ashamed.

Nationalism and belief in government authority is a mental disease, a fatal faith that infects the mind for which very few survive. Most are lost forever and their minds can never be recovered even in the face of centuries of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Their emotional and intellectual maturity retarded from an early age, socially lobotomized. They’re not able to process the world around them in a rational way. They can only see the reality that’s been created for them. It has a hold on their minds so tight that the absurd not only seems perfectly normal to them, but necessary, and they will become angry, even physically violent, at anyone challenging that reality. Rinse and Repeat.