Posted on 08/28/2022 1:30:49 PM PDT by UMCRevMom@aol.com
When you know well in advance that you have over two decades to methodically peddle the venom of propaganda into the ears of the nation, and in the process, hope you will succeed in building enough national unity around some of your favorite ideas, what you might want to put at the forefront of your early efforts is the fundamental conviction of injustice and oppression at the hands of a vicious enemy or two, where - inevitably - you're the one riding the white horse of justice and values worth dying for and everyone else occupies the "forces of evil and-oppression" territory. Here's how you go about it!
CHAPTER I: MOTIVATION
If there's one thing you will really need a lot of as an aspiring dictator, it's motivation! Not the kind that you get from watching TEDx presentations, Hollywood blockbusters or Netflix series, but the most visceral, atavistic category. A good old inferiority complex or feeling underrated or bullied for years will do. History proves time and again, it always helps to be physically short and undersized (in just about every Freudian meaning of the word) but not petite or Lilliputian, because you really shouldn't make it too difficult for people to see you in a certain way.
CHAPTER II: EVERYTHING IS EVERYONE ELSE'S FAULT
As you go about building the foundations for your (inevitably, ever-more ruthless) propaganda machine, there are a few steps you will likely want to observe:
1. Always start your indoctrination efforts "early", as early as possible! Don't always be too straightforward about it! Remember, you can always dress it in a compelling narrative, story, melody, march, event, poetry contest, song, heroic paintings of characters (always seen "from below"!). And don't forget about posters, monuments graphics, not to mention TV and radio broadcasts, epic cinema productions by your homeland's best directors. Reaching for the likes of the classic western body-builder-turned-Hollywood-superhero-turned-governor can be risky, but you can always rely on some true legends of action films, like Steven Segal, to support your message of true grit, leadership and integrity.
2. Always make sure your version of world history and its contemporary challenges goes far and wide. Generously reward loyalty and everyone for whom no opportunity is to be wasted, no matter how spineless or unethical it makes them! Never forget that the most important thing is the clarity of your message in the eyes of the nation, so do avoid and eliminate all noise and unnecessary distractions. Luckily, the stronger you become, the more efficiently and "quietly" you will be able to get rid of your enemies (aka critics, opposition, and, eventually, any incarnation of think different). Sometimes put the severity of your punishment on public display, if only to show your strength and determination, while sowing primal fear in the hearts of many.
3. Be sure to often make use of flowery metaphors and heroic tales of sacrifice, with a unifying spirit and a sense of injustice and oppression you were born to fight against, so that everyone who is to lay down their lives "for a cause" is always fully focused on it. Remember, you're superhuman! Anything human is just not enough, so why risk unnecessarily that anyone might want to turn their gaze, even for a brief moment, towards any of your all-too-human qualities and motivations. demiurge and the direct perpetrator of all "confusion".
CHAPTER III: THE LESSONS OF THE GREATS BEFORE YOU
Finally, always let (and help!) people believe that the best that could happen to them in their miserable little lives is you, the "gentle dictator"! Always caring, yet strong and firm, a true father to the nation, independently and tirelessly solving the smallest and the greatest of issues and dilemmas, day and night, always caring for and thinking about everyone, especially those perfect little children in perfectly white shirts and with perfect hair. Here's a little video, one of many, illustrating much of the above. It goes back to 2017, mind you. A year earlier, a very different song was posted on YouTube and has since recorded over 42 million views. As irony would have it, even this heavily satirical portrayal of Russia's notorious dictator would normally have an image-warming dimension to it, were it not for a single decision in February 2022, and its deadly consequences, unfolding before the world's eyes.
Many excellent biographies and history books have already been written about tyrants and psychopaths of the worst kind. Some of them were even supposed to be priests and painters, but things didn't work out quite the way they wanted. What the world didn't know at the time was how they might go about venting their anger and "making the world a better place".
THE FAMILIAR BODY LANGUAGE WITH A HISTORIC PRICE TAG ATTACHED
One of the countless reasons why I love talking to very(!) different people at very(!) different conferences (both on- and offstage) is the sheer diversity of their viewpoints, backgrounds, perspectives, the amazing wealth of their experience, knowledge and the wild variety of topics and disciplines they so often represent (and feel passionately about). Emceeing events and debates almost automatically forces your brain to instinctively operate in the out-of-the-box (aka think different) terrain, which, over the years, becomes an instinctive preparations ingredient.
Daily access to such an amazing diversity of backgrounds, egos and personalities inevitably makes you an ever more astute, humble and careful observer. Over time, you are hopefully able to reduce the impact of cognitive biases on the final outcomes of your thinking, performance and on-stage reflexes. Continuously improving your observation skills, however, is not an easy 'blessing' to live with, not in a world where ignorance continues to enjoy its blissful status and political leadership is so easily confused with pathological reasoning dysfunctions, at best.
If you have lived your entire life in a remote Siberian village and did next to nothing about it, chances are your daily requirements for intellectual and emotional stimulation will be a very easy prey for atavistic political storytelling, assuming that winning your vote still matters for the continuity of power and influence. No alt text provided for this image
THE OLDEST OF HABITS DIE...MUCH HARDER THAN WE THINK
Every now and then (i.e. far too often, and in far too many places), the world becomes a stage for systemic, premeditated acts of unimaginably barbaric violence, the kind that makes it really difficult to believe there may even be a future (let alone a sustainable one) for a civilization that, despite centuries (if not millennia!) of "lessons learned", still finds it next to impossible to free itself from its atavistic need to unleash a true hell, here on Earth, preferably starting with your immediate neighbors.
THE POWER OF DISTANCE... TO YOURSELF
I sometimes wonder if it would change anything if everyone could somehow (magically, if you like) take a brief look at this planet of ours from a distance, from outer space – if only to, for a brief moment, replace the sensation of powerlessness with that of weightlessness, to realize how ridiculously primitive our warmongering motivations still(!) are! And how little they have changed since time immemorial.
If there is one thing that the past few years have proved beyond reasonable doubt, it's that the world can change almost beyond recognition in a matter of days (see COVID19). If there is one thing the past few weeks have proved beyond reasonable doubt, it's that one man's ill-fated decision can turn the lives of millions into an absolute horror, literally overnight, and no existing systemic checks and balances, precautions and alliances can stop it before it's too late. Worse still, in most cases, the very people who ultimately push the 'unleash hell' button are often left to build themselves glaringly authoritarian immune systems for decades, worthy of the most notorious magalomaniacs in history, before things spin out of control. And spin out of control they always do. Remember how long the gentle individual on the November 1997 Newsweek cover was eventually allowed to pursue his idea of a functional, mature and well-managed state?
LEADERSHIP EXTREMES
Portentous and apocalyptic as it may sound, it's really quite simple, while easier said than done, of course: our world will never become a (sustainably) better place, unless humanity redefines and relearns the ultimate responsibility and accountability attached to the very concepts of leadership and puts effective compliance and risk-management mechanisms in place. In other words, tolerance for mediocrity, inadequacy, buffoonery, populism, disinformation, unintelligence and insensitivity is what is killing us – less visibly than guns and bombs, perhaps, but far more effectively in the long run, assuming we still have a long-enough track left to change our ways.
What the world needs (more urgently than ever before, perhaps) is a profound redefinition of what we can and what we really can't put up with in those who assume leadership roles, especially at national and international level. Otherwise, we may as well keep turning a blind eye for decades to individuals (and blood-thirsty immune systems they build, once left to their own devices) up until their pathological inferiority complex mutates into evil of truly mythological proportions, making the world rediscover its ultimate fragility, over and over and again.
Ironically enough, with the pressing challenges of climate change and our progressive impact on multiple natural ecosystems, we might just have a lot less time to do it than we're prepared to admit (see denial).
IGNORANCE IS BLISS
If there's one thing our world has consistently been exceptionally good at proving, time after time, century after century, it's that ignorance really is bliss, and there seems to be no such thing as too much (systemic) denial or hypocrisy. As a spece life-changing areas, beyond which there really seem to be no alternatives but to rethink our thinking and recalibrate our actions.
Historically, there seems to be only one 'social phenomenon' capable of bringing about a qualitative/quantitative change of such unprecedented proportions. The word is LEADERSHIP, albeit the kind that truly inspires, unites, builds trust, love and understanding across countless differences and infinitely diverse boundaries this global village of ours has become so full of.
If there's a glimmer of hope in all that, a symbolic yet very powerful light at the proverbial end of the tunnel, it's probably humanity's unbelievable capacity for goodwill, generosity and bottom-up initiatives that, more than anything else, perhaps have the power to become the necessary catalysts for a truly lasting, positive change, somewhere between revolution and evolution.
Remember the opening lines of a brilliant 1859 novel by Charles Dickens? It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way... - sounds as if conceived in the mind of a talented 21st-century writer, going about describing the paradoxes of our times, doesn't it?
I appreciate this article.
So much truth in so little space.
For all your globalist warmongering needs, turn to George Soros. (also sponsored by Pfizer)
*MAGA First/Anti-War/Anti-Globalist Ping*
If you want on or off this list, please let me know.
Good grief. Pushing Newsweek? Old Newsweek covers?
Did I accidentally take a left on my way to FR and end up at DU? 🤔
Don’t just look at pictures.
Good article
Oooh, he so pegged Saint Zel in the first paragraph. Kudos on posting a very out of date piece.
“Oooh, he so pegged Saint Zel”
Nope. Sorry, try reading more than the 1st paragraph. The article isn’t long.
All references, including as well as the Newsweek cover photo is of Russian dictator 5’2”- 5’5” Lil’ Emperor Putin without an empire.
“As irony would have it, even this heavily satirical portrayal of Russia’s notorious dictator would normally have an image-warming dimension to it, were it not for a single decision in February 2022, and its deadly consequences, unfolding before the world’s eyes.”
Did I accidentally take a left on my way to FR and end up at DU? 🤔
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Taking a page from America’s official border policies, the lonely residents of DU, tired of monosyllabic arguments with each other, have obviously sent one of their crack troll teams to infiltrate FR.
They are zombies with an insatiable craving for brains. They don’t even know that they are simply walking dead.
They are only good for rhetorical target practice.
Good point.
The fervor with which they post these things and the sheer number of propaganda articles posted on a daily basis here is a legitimate cause for our asking “Why?”
you and your troll buddy Mucus better get to work.
neocon timber rattlr is pumping out BS propaganda faster than you. this is trash, you should be ashamed of yourself.
“you should be ashamed of yourself”
Yes, you should not be so reactive. Free Republic is a DISCUSSION FORUM!
This article presents an opportunity for further insight.
Don’t be unhappy. Not intended to diminish your viewpoint. Ask your self, why does this article seem contentious? This article just offers another perspective. Perhaps, different from yours. Actually, this is a good article for dialogue without serving as an attacking platform?!?
Yes, not sorry. He did peg Zelensky, and others as well. Some a bit closer to home. The dude has the wrong villian.
March 22 was a lifetime ago.
And did read the whole thing. Twice..
(waste of time)
LOL.
“He did peg Zelensky”
I think you misunderstand the thesis statement of the article. This does not address President Zelensky.
...legitimate cause for our asking “Why?”
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Did you see that there is a working group (UN, IIRC) dedicated to finding out why so many people are declining the injections?
That between the WEFfers, the UN, and Demcast there an admitted 250k influencers set loose on all forums, especially conservative ones, to ‘counter misinformation’?
The megaphone of the global state legacy media is evidently not working, so the Big Lie meeds amplification.
That is all they are: amplifiers. Their brains are full and they need to take a dump regularly. We are but one of their targets.
Fire at will.
FReeper grey_whiskers posted this on another thread just a little while ago. Very appropos to what you just posted.
Yeah, that’s the one. Rockefeller<>UN: same difference.
They are on every thread, in every forum, every topic. Some are likely just evidence of contagion, but the core of each team is simply indoctrination fortification.
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