Plutocrats like Thiel are constantly thinking about the fact that ordinary people vastly outnumber them and can kill them at any time. They think about it way more often than ordinary people do. Itâs a point that they are acutely aware of at all times. It consumes their attention. They are always working on manipulating public consciousness to ensure that we donât think as much as they do about how many more of us there are of them, and how we donât have to put up with their domination of our society if we donât want to.
As Michael Parenti once put it:
âI tell students when they say, âOh they donât care what we think. They ignore usâ, and all that, and I say, âOh no, no. Thatâs the only thing they care about you. The only thing they care about you is what youâre thinking. They donât care if you eat correctly, they donât care how your living conditions are, they donât care that theyâve built up an inhuman and irrational traffic system thatâs strangulating us and polluting our air, they donât care about anything. The only thing about you they care about is what youâre thinking. In the morning, they start, âWhatâs going to be the story today? How do we manipulate, how do we control, how do we contain, how do we influence, how do we act upon what it is that they have in their minds?ââ
Manipulating public consciousness is of existential importance to the ruling class, because no matter how many billions of dollars you amass, at the end of the day youâre still a soft skin sack of blood and bones like anybody else, and you share a society with huge numbers of people who can very easily hurt you if they want to. Thatâs why our minds are constantly being hammered with propaganda into accepting the status quo politics upon which our rulers have built their kingdoms.
I donât believe this crap for a second - they can afford all the security they need to protect themselves. I think this is an attempt at manipulation to keep us at bay for a while until we cool off & resume living like before this happened, so they can continue doing what theyâve been doing all the while knowing that they shouldnât push much further for now.
Letâs face it - human attention spans are short, and in three months or so this will be pushed back in most peopleâs minds as they continue dealing with their day-to-day struggles. This messaging is designed to make us feel âheardâ so we wait to see what happens rather than risk our lives on taking further action, but after a while nothing will have changed & itâll all be the same as before.
Remember two things:
Having been both military and security, I will tell you that while military, my position was MUCH harder for me to ignore. As security, I could easily say âfuck this, it isnt worth it.â In the military, the job (in ones head) is the security of the nation and the people around you. As security, youâre more likely to have a family, and at some point youâre like âI wanna see my family again, $20/hr isnât worth not seeing my kid againâ. As security, youâre essentially a mercenary. You have no ideological points for it, itâs just a check. Security almost never has a situation where it becomes âthis issue is something worth dying forâ. Thatâs simply absurd. Even if Iâm making $50/hr for Jeff bezos, thereâs an amount of discontent that Iâm not willing to deal with just for his safety, and thatâs before you consider your own personal opinions/ideals/objections. Historically speaking, buying security is iffy at best.
Which crap donât you believe?
Whose messaging? Michael Parentiâs? Caitlin Johnstoneâs? Peter Thielâs? Piers Morganâs?
As Iâve already said elsewhere in this post, one difference will be that the expansion of the security state/police state will be accelerated.
I think itâs a bit silly to think their security will protect them indefinitely. They have to be perfect 100% of the time, where someone else only has to be lucky once.
I think youâre underestimating the amount of Luigies there are. And I think this probably has woke a lot of them up.
This is the real answer. The rich know itâs just like school shootings. One can trigger several in a short period and theyâre terrified of that.
Theyâre not worried only about stochastic terrorism. Theyâre also worried that weâll become an organized & militant labor movement and gain some political power. Or worse still, that weâll seize the means of production and depose them.
I agree with you but I donât think that last point is where this is going. There wonât be any seizing of the means of production. That just isnât happening in America, and is arguable if itâs ever really happened ever, anywhere. Power has transferred, but never to the people. However, they are worried that people have had enough of their shit. Itâs very difficult to start a revolution. Itâs much easier (as evidenced) to kill one guy and make the rest live in fear.
Itâs almost definitely not going to happen while the US is still the global hegemon. I think the US empire will have to further unravel before this can become even a slim possibility.
From Michael Parentiâs Blackshirts and Reds:
Yes, itâs a helluva lot easier. But those people who live in fear also live in power. They have the stateâs monopoly on violence at their disposal, and theyâve captured the regulatory bodies, they fund/bribe the politicians, they fund the NGOs, and they own the media.