Fifteen years ago, my father and I were robbed by the Mexican Federales in broad daylight on a busy highway. Thousands of motorists drove by during our encounter, clearly seeing us... but not really seeing us. The image they saw was accompanied by a projection in their mind of what they thought it was, a routine traffic stop. The familiarity presented a thought terminating conclusion to their curiosity without much willful deliberation, which then quickly faded from memory as they continued about their day. Such is the case with most nefarious activities conducted by governments, they present the ostensible reasons while the shadow works underneath, not necessarily out of sight, just out of the imagination and hence, the mind. Most often the worst acts are committed right in front of our faces. It is not that our eyes lie to us, rather it is our perception of what it is we are seeing. Such is the case with the ongoing meta-narrative which I will address shortly.
This Mexican experience occurred at the end of an otherwise outstanding trip where our family had rented a home for a few weeks so we could enjoy the cornucopia of sights and activities on the Yucatan Peninsula. Great history, great culture, great food and overall, great people.
Mexico is known to have its issues and tourists are often warned of them, usually such warnings and thoughts involve actions by the “cartels.” Having been to Mexico several times previously I was used to seeing armed military personnel in civilian locations, which is a phenomenon in most counties now even in western Europe. A notable exception is here in the United States, where Americans simply wouldn’t “tolerate” seeing their military deployed on their own soil. Plus, they believe they are protected from such authoritarianism by the Posse Comitatus Act.
Americans incorrectly perceive the lack of soldiers on their streets as a sign of freedom and social order, a lack of authoritarianism by the government, as opposed to countries like Mexico who often task their military to engage in civilian checkpoints and routine patrols through neighborhoods.
During my travels I have often overheard fellow American tourists make similar remarks, interpreting such government intrusiveness as inconceivable back home. “Our government would never point a .50cal at me for nothing” and “they would never invade my privacy without a warrant bypassing due process.” And my favorite: “We have rights in America!” Moving past such naivete, this person believes they are too far removed from the reach of the government, thinking we have a long way to go before arriving at the authoritarianism they witness in other countries. This illusion of separation is useful to the ongoing meta-narrative that I will discuss later that an organic hot civil war is possible in America. Of course, both notions are complete nonsense.
We are currently engaged in 5th generation warfare and mind war, creating a system of total warfare and the battlespace is everywhere, omnipresent within the fabric of our modern reality. The newer generations of warfare are much more covert and insidious, operating in designed psychological blind spots where the violence is distilled past the kinetic and physical, instead it is delivered upon the mind, achieving its desired transmutation and victory without firing a single shot. Textbook Sun Tzu, defeating the enemy without them realizing there was even a war. This is where the average mass society produced global citizen and American finds themselves; unaware they are inside a hive of glass being algorithmically groomed and nudged to be made more predictable and malleable, managed into desired social cascades. This concept will be important in a bit further.
Paradoxically, the same American when upon hearing my story about being robbed by the Federales is often met with momentary disbelief. Seemingly, if I had told them we were shot at by a cartel and were involved in some high-speed maneuvers they would have been more receptive. It is funny how we are conditioned to give governments, or authority figures, the benefit of the doubt, especially our allies and “partners.” However, after providing details they quickly remember that corruption exists and that we do live in a dangerous world. Naturally, they consider that being robbed by cops only happens in 3rd world countries like Mexico, places without “order”. Clearly most are unaware of the Americanized racket called civil asset forfeiture, a Russell conjugation game with the word theft. The technocratic empire thrives on its games of semantics, semiotics, bafflegarble and jargon, which enables it to “legally” steal more from innocent Americans every year than actual street criminals… among many other things.
With all of that being said, considering the promulgation of the meta narrative surrounding an American hot civil war is once again being deployed, highlighted by the release of a movie with the same name, (and conveniently around an election year… for the 4th cycle in a row) Americans are finding themselves in a Mexican quagmire similar to the one my father and I found ourselves in on the way back to the airport in Cancun.
In hindsight, the bright cherry red jeep we rented screamed tourists, but it was beautiful and fun. Plus, my father and I are both fairly large men and with the top down it was not hard to miss that we were not Mexican. It is known that government officials in Mexico go harder on tourists, so wearing a big cherry red sign was probably not the wisest move. We were traveling along 307 just north of Playa del Carmen when the first Federales raced up behind us and put on their lights. Immediately we both took a sitrep, determining we were traveling 5km per hour under the limit and within all traffic protocols that we could tell. While waiting for the officer to come to our window we calculated how much time we had to get to the airport, thankful we had left early.
As we continued to wait, a second officer pulled in front of our jeep, the mood shift was palpable. Call it intuition, but we both knew we needed to be frosty, while simultaneously making ourselves appear less threatening by keeping our hands visible and removing our sunglasses.
Cop #1 approached the driver’s door from the rear and began asking questions about our destination in broken but very passable English. While my father was engaging, the second cop approached from the front and circled the passenger side, where I was sitting, to stand behind my right shoulder. This was unorthodox and gave me concern because he did not address me, nor could I see him from the angle he stood. I recognized this tactic right away. It was at that time that Cop # 1 informed my father that we had been speeding a whopping 20km per hour over the limit.
Without words we both understood this was a bullshit reason, knowing the point was to pull us over and this was the ostensible reason used. During our brief glance at each other where we communicated this reality, a third cop approached the driver’s side and stood next to cop #1. While we were otherwise distracted, he had pulled his car behind the officer to our rear, making a total of 3 patrol cars for our traffic stop. Seeking to bring the conversation along, my father looked at Cop #1 and said that we did not realize we were speeding and that he had the cruise control set lower than the posted limit and apologized. This is when Cop #3 spoke for the first time letting us know that we would need to drive back to Tulum to sign papers to set our court date for the following week.
Silence fell over the jeep, even the noise from the highway momentarily evaporated as we both realized they were saying we couldn’t leave the country for weeks. For what was only a brief moment, time appeared to stand still as the absurdity and danger of our situation came into focus. I was the first to speak up, albeit rather measured and calm, protesting such an inconvenience over a contestable speeding ticket. While I was speaking, I observed the change in the body language of cop #1, by the time I had finished my short objection I knew I had fallen for the trap that he had set.
In a flash, I got it. – He wanted us in a desperate inconvenient situation and for us to realize it. He wanted us to know he had the keys and the game we were playing was his alone. He was going to win, but the question becomes by how much and at what type of cost? Refusal to play would cost significant time and money (perhaps even employment due to delayed arrival) at best. At worst, we disappear into the bowels of Mexico never to return. Another victim of those pesky cartels...
My suspicion was immediately confirmed because at the end of my objection and simultaneous realization of our situation, cop # 2 began speaking to cop#1 in Mexican, asking the other officers to join him at the rear of the jeep. At the time I understood enough Spanish to interpret the gist of the conversation. We were being extorted.
I made a strategic choice and attempted to speak to them in Spanish, but not well enough so they may interpret my skill as good enough to translate their little talk. More like a tourist from a place like Iowa, instead of a person who lived for a time in south Florida as well as Puerto Rico. While I was never close to fluent, I did not want them to think I could understand much. My interruption was enough to perhaps instill some doubt in their minds, so they brought the scheming out in the open. One of them said that “these things can get expensive”. The other officers appeared to have lost the ability to speak English at all during this time. This prompted my father to ask the unspoken question, “How much?”
You know how some memories are more vivid than others? Many arrive as images and sounds through opaque glass, with occasional still shot impressions of clarity, but not this one. This memory is in HD. I remember the smell of the July heat coming off of the asphalt and his knock-off ray bans glasses, but especially the details of his smug little shit Mexican face when he spit out, “How much you got?”
For as different as I am from my father, we have several important behavioral similarities beyond our core morality and ethics which are naturally very similar. One of these similarities is our ability to gauge a situation before reacting, as we both understood without conversation that the price was not how much we got… rather it was whatever we got.
The truth of our offering, which was as voluntary as taxes, was witnessed and verified to be whatever we got, by all three officers who looked through our open wallets after we emptied them into their hands. They only wanted cash and did not even look at plastic or jewelry. (cash isn’t traceable) Luckily, we did not have much physical cash left between us after two weeks, but it was more than enough to give the officers a look of smug satisfaction.
As the officers began to disperse the original cop added insult to injury by saying they would mail us the paperwork with a chuckle. They never even looked at our drivers licenses to get an address. While aggravated, we would still be able to make our flight, so we merged back into traffic leaving the three patrol cars in the rear-view mirror thinking the ordeal was over. We were wrong.
Barley long enough for us to get up to get up to speed and briefly verbalize the fuckery we had just experienced another Federales pulled up behind us tight with their lights on. After a few moments and before we could react the officer turned his lights off and exited an off ramp. The officers from the stop had not even moved their cars yet. The remainder of the trip was about 20 minutes and was one of the most intense moments of my life as a civilian. Every five minutes we would be “buzzed” by another cop. They would run up on us, back off, then do it again. I am not sure how many were playing with us but it was more than five. About halfway through this ordeal, we agreed that we would not stop if they attempted to pull us over again. We were going to get to the airport.
This quagmire from start to finish provided no good choices. Such a decision to get to the airport at all costs was not a light one, but it was quick and with great resolve. Most likely the Federales were just intimidating us because they could, but we were not going to take the chance. Luckily our resolve did not need to be tested as we made it to the airport, the last officer opting to not follow us off the exit ramp to the Cancun International Airport. Our only hope in our strategy was the inclusion of witnesses because violence was not an option. While we may have been able to rid ourselves of a few of them, we knew how many they were going to use to get the job done. As many as it takes. This is why we stayed calm. This was their game, and we had no dice.
In the game played by the Mexican Federales, their victory was already assured. They had all of the power; the only question was the degree of their spoils. By not playing, we lose. Either we lose by resisting and meet an unfortunate end, or we lose significant time and money. Winning was baked out of the cake, for these are house rules we are playing. But if we played, which we did, the best we could hope for was to arrive at the airport on time and lighter in the wallet. This was the designed compromise of their heist.
My father and I got home safely and have grown to laugh about this event over the years. However, it serves as an example of what an individual is up against when targeted by the monopoly of violence of the state. Our lives are lived at their discretion, in Mexico, in the Ukraine, as well as here in the United States.
Yes, even in these United States.
This transition feels like it could be best served by one of my favorite Marshall McLuhan quotes:
“Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.”
I am not implying that everything is like the gorilla suit study, which proved the human tendency to be inattentionally blind. Undoubtedly there are state secrets protected by force, including the deeper layers of the onion I am about to unveil. However, what McLuhan stated is embarrassingly true.
This is where America ™ presents its primary weapon, the obfuscation of power in our reality, right in front of our eyes. Like the motorists on a Mexican highway, we see the asshole gringo getting caught for making the roads more dangerous for our Mexican families, thankful the Federales are keeping our roads safe. Much in the way how the passing motorists saw my father and I, Americans can see what it is that I speak of, but they do not have the eyes to perceive it. For brevity, you are being hoodwinked.
In addition to controlling all forms of security and economic regulation, which America already does, If the government openly controlled all forms of media, finance, entertainment, telecommunication, emerging technologies, agriculture et cetera… the average person would reject this even in 2024. Real power came to understand this generations ago and evolved their strategy to match this social reality, opting to manipulate the perception of reality for mass society instead of attempting to condition certain inalienable rights out of them. Rather than developing a monolithic vertical power structure, which is susceptible to dismantling attacks, either through violence or the ballot box, a horizontal decentralized structure was developed to “scientifically manage” society. While there are capstone elite at the top of this pyramid, the technocratic structure is a self-protecting mechanism, rendering it impervious to any measure of significant bottom-up influence, nor does it have a “Rome” to sack. It is like attempting to fight a gas cloud with a wiffle ball bat, and it can suffocate you at will.
This system has many names and there is significant debate as to how to describe it, but it essentially hides behind the public-private partnership label right in front of our eyes as obvious as a big red cherry jeep rolling down 307. Instead of understanding everything is controlled and managed from a mostly supranational high-level with names that link them to government, they index them through private companies. So instead of; USA Telecom, USA search engine, USA one stop-n shop, American Social, American venture capitalist, USA Space company, et cetera… we have Verizon, AT&T, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Y-Combinator, Space X… and many many more. On the lower levels they have agency but they are all indemnified to larger purposes.
I can hear the screeching…. “bUt ThosE ArE PrivAte ComPanies”
Eight years ago, I would have been one of them. Like many other libertarians at the time I found myself defending the actions of some of the social media giants because I perceived them as being private. Moreso, I perceived “private” to be distinct from “public.” I support private businesses’ right to conduct themselves as they wish, including discrimination. (I wouldn’t shop there but that is how a free market should work) But, like the motorist complaining about gringos I did not have the eyes to see.
These are not private companies; they are indexing firms for the power structure that sits as a shadow to the publicly visible government as well as for the supranational organizations that help constitute the real ligaments of the empire. What is wild about this, it really isn’t very hidden, just mostly protected by citizens being inattentionally blind and as McLuhan stated, shielded by public incredulity.
But what about Musk, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos...et cetera… aren’t they signs of a successful private meritocracy? No. They are evolved modern day robber barons, who instead of rising to power through born in networks and by buying off corrupt government officials to build railways and seize land, they were manifested by the government itself for those very mechanisms. You didn’t really believe that Facebook was created in a dorm room and it was just a coincidence it launched the same day DARPA’S Life Log program ended, did you? Did you really believe the military would create the internet but then let it go? Did you really think the large multi-national companies weren’t extensions of the state? There is a difference between the problem of regulatory capture and institutional creation, but both exist simultaneously and often go hand in hand. All of this is legal by the way, the road for it “formally” being paved by the National Security Act of 1947 and buffered many times since. This is the gorilla in the room that global citizens and Americans cannot see. It is all part of the same leviathan.
It can be really distressing to see the world as it is because it requires one to dissolve their previously held beliefs. This is a very uncomfortable process, so we tend to subconsciously protect our reality from these truths. It is comfortable to believe that as bad as it is, at least we aren’t them. We still have private enterprise and the ballot box after all, at least the illusion of them. It is comfortable to think you are in the land of the free while speaking openly to your family over dinner while Alexa records your words for the NSA, then you watch a popular TV program together while it feeds you algorithmically designed commercials based upon your spending habits. Between our ring cams, wi-fi, cell phones, smart devices, and other mechanisms, our physical bodies can not only be tracked, but our mental state can be ascertained. With thought to text and thought to image technology on the public horizon, it is fair to think that these have already been deployed in some capacity as well in our panopticon surveillance state. It is comfortable to dismiss all of this intrusion and data mining as science fiction or fake news, or if you accepted its existence it is dismissed because the companies doing it to you are not called the United States Government.
But it is.
To quote someone that I loathe:
“What difference does it make?” – Hillary Clinton
Whatever you call it, public or private, Google or ARPANET …consider for a moment that all of these interconnections trace back to a single focal point which produces a detailed model of you that knows you better than you know yourself… the constitution won’t protect you. It can’t.
In this new age of warfare, all of our virtual mediums have been fully weaponized by the design of the Macy conferences, and we are all combatants. This especially includes social media, as they are all part of the surveillance state that constitutes this hive of glass we occupy. Undoubtedly, even Peter Thiel’s backed rumble is not as “untethered” as people want to believe. (I only call out rumble because it is the new “current thing” in mainstream anti-establishment circles). Not to mention there are Heyoka’s lurking everywhere in our psychosphere.
Nation states hide their data mining and human terrain building sentient world simulators in private social media apps and to a large extent, the internet itself. This permits real time individual specific behavioral prediction models. Remember the statement by the former head of the National Security Agency, General Michael Hayden?
“We kill people based on metadata.”
Where do you perceive all of this data comes from? It’s not just your smart TV or your Facebook wall.
(They cannot say it plainly because it gives away part of the game, but this is part of the real Tic-Toc fight)
While such apps are roughly limited as to how many useful variables they can provide, sentient terrain systems also drag net many other data points around you like traffic patterns, local gas and market prices, the weather, breaking news, current events, as well as your financial status including those around you. Additionally, this calculates your changing behavior patterns as these variables are altered in real time, including the same changing cascades of everyone around you. These programs can war game your behavior as well as that of your community, or the entire geopolitical community to any variable they wish to simulate.
This knowledge, this raw power, can be used to perform seemingly mundane things like sell a useful product to a specific demographic all the way up to shaping reality itself. This knowledge can often make it appear as though one can predict the future, hence why pre-crime is jumping straight off of the pages of Philip K. Dick’s book “The Minority Report” and into our public arena. Human terrain systems (HTS) are so accurate in real time in predicting human behavior they can create a legal case for its use…
With what I just said, focus not on the pre-crime aspect (which is bad and would be unconstitutional if the document had real authority) but instead focus on the testament in their belief of accuracy.
This is important because they are accurate in their predictions at least 90 percent of the time or greater, which means we have been highly conditioned and made mathematically predictable. The HTS always knows where you are, constantly altering its predictions of your behavior in real time. Furthermore, through slight algorithmic modifications (altering any of its variables including market prices or pushing a new social op or narrative) they can nudge you into desired thought architecture. We can be steered into defending the system against its own crimes against us or others, or we can be steered into fighting our neighbors….
This is important because as it relates to the concept of a civil war being pushed by narrative managers, Americans are all driving around in a bright cherry red jeep, fully visible to the system. No mystery.
The managed state of the American political system reminds me of the following quote:
“The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.”
-Ezra Pound
For this point, let us say instead of Americans just driving my bright red Mexican rental, they are driving bright red and bright blue jeeps, distinctions with only superficial low-level differences. These two fundamentally similar yet distinctly different vessels represent the dual aspects of the empires engineered dialectic of the uni-party. Everything the jeep occupants do is managed and under surveillance. Just by getting behind the wheel we are subjected to the rules of the road, which is the same as being born into our technocratic administration state. Your consent was implied. Its control is ambient, like the patrolling Federales. Regardless of your political persuasion, you are already playing their game. Likewise, you have no dice.
It is true that we are all divided. There are also very legitimate reasons to be upset… there would have to be for this system of managed populism to work as well as for what could be coming next…
People would need to first believe that a civil war is possible by developing meaningful perceived irreconcilable differences.
But… even those legitimate reasons are part of the nudged artificial schismogenesis that was designed for this purpose…to divide.
Considering all of this they have been priming us with pre-conditioning to think a civil war is even possible in the United States. The nudging keeps getting louder every cycle, from the Tea Party reactions in 2012 to the January 6th “insurrection”, the theatre is being set and the plot lines are taking shape into a coherent form. It could easily be set into motion.
This is not the 1770’s where folks lived in communities where neighbors were friends or family, where people spoke openly in local taverns and passed messages of revolution through the pulpit… when the adversary wore a distinct red coat.
This isn’t the 1860’s where geographical lines could be drawn between separate cultures and beliefs. (among other things)
No, this is the simulacrum of total warfare, where enemies are manufactured as easily as coding a new NPC to distract from the real oppressor, one who has conditioned the thought of its very existence to produce incredulity. This is where mass society is conditioned into a rat utopia, separated out into networks, atomized from real organic cultural movements. Our ability to truly revolt has been neutered because our perception has been neutered. We are a blind troupe of infantilized tourists.
If there is a “civil war”, it will not manifest the way people think it will. The system is not nearly as incompetent as people perceive it to be on a low level like the DMV, post office, or even lower echelons of the bureaucratic military. The system is not falling apart or losing control as the Russel Brand’s of the world push you to believe. It is shedding its skin like a snake and is in full control.
It would be like two tourists fighting each other on a Mexican highway, being watched by the Federales as they exchange bets, smug faces behind their knock off Ray-Bans. The game the tourists are playing belongs to him, the smug Mexican cop, just like Uncle Sam holding the dice with a shit eating grin.
An organic civil war or revolution 2.0 is simply not possible. The intelligence apparatus would recognize and crush it before it could sprout or it would steer it into utility. Either way, it isn’t happening in the capacity that some want it to.
If America does have a Civil War, and it very well might one day as they want us to believe and fear, I imagine it would be a bunch of doomed to fail (designed to fail) fed-boy organized groups who cause just enough destruction to have the general public begging for overt totalitarian control all in the name of safety and order.
If I really wanted to bring about certain agendas like; Agenda 2030, full debt bailout, expansion of domestic terrorism laws, CBDC’s, dissolution of national sovereignty, this is what I would do… instigate a domestic color revolution like we (USA) have been practicing and perfecting all over the world for half a century. This would be easy to do here since the National Security state owns the whole game. (at least manages it for those who do) Such a movement would drag net any real empire dissent into its wake, eventually crushing it for good with its inevitable programmed demise.
Earlier in the essay I said as it relates to American authoritarianism that “people think they are too far removed from the reach of their government.” The reality, all it needs to do is to close its hand. The noose is already tied.
It must be understood, It’s a trap.
The only way to win is to not play their game. Instead, create a new one where all roads do not lead to Rome.