Now the Neo-Conservatives became all powerful … A small group began to shape America’s response to the attacks: at its heart were Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, along with the vice-president Dick Cheney, and Richard Perle was a senior adviser to the Pentagon. Last time these men had been in power was twenty years before under President Reagan. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives distorted and exaggerated the Soviet threat. They created the image of a hidden international web of evil run from Moscow that planned to dominate the world. When in reality the Soviet Union was on its last legs, collapsing from within. ibid.
What the British and American governments had done was to disturb and exaggerate the real nature of the threat … The way the American and other governments have transformed this complex and disparate threat into a simplistic fantasy. ibid.
Dirty Bomb: and the media took the bait. They portrayed the dirty bomb as an extraordinary weapon that could kill thousands of people. ibid.
The Neo-Conservatives: America had a special destiny to overcome evil in the world. ibid.
Such was the nature of that fantasy that it began to transform the very nature of politics. ibid.
But the fear will not last. And just as the dreams that politicians once promised turned out to be illusions, so too will the nightmares. Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares
People are in control is a comforting illusion … You could never change people’s behaviour by appealing to them rationally … Human beings did live in a simplified dream world but what he was saying was that there was nothing you could do about that. And in an age of individualism when you could no longer order people about, the only solution was to keep them in that dream world and to make sure the dream world was safe and happy. The idea of appealing to them rationally and changing the world was pointless. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head II: Shooting and Fucking are the Same Thing, BBCiplayer 2021
Television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation ... Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information – misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information – information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing. Neil Postman
There is an illusion of choice that’s maintained when you can have a hundred channels on your cabal system. Professor Aurora Wallace, Communications
The pandemic has altered the way Americans understand reality. The nation has fractured. Divisions are widening. So what is real and what is not? The Truth Illusion, Al Jazeera Investigates 2022
Neo-Conservatives built a new global economic order and they tried to create a new political reality. ibid.
Why is it Americans tolerate their reality being manipulated? ibid.
In the new reality, the majority are encouraged to vote for politicians who serve a wealthy minority. ibid.
‘The bullshitter is more dangerous than the liar.’ ibid.
‘And the government cracks down on this one segment, and they do so with brute force, sending in the stormtroopers essentially, and shutting down the milk plant in its entirety, and confiscating all the milk, regardless of whether or not it’s contaminated.’ Freedom from Choice, Youtube 1.18.14 2014
The California milk raids were not an isolated event. Over the past few years there have been raids all across the US to crack down on the sale of many organic products. ibid.
‘The problem with the US political system is that it revolves around money.’ ibid. Sheila Krumholz
‘People think we live in a free market society. And we don’t. Big government and big business are way too closely aligned today especially in the United States. And this you know is because of lobbying basically. We have cronyism, we don’t have capitalism.’ ibid. Mike Maloney
‘The revolving door is merely proof of the fact that when you give government and its agencies the power to regulate commerce it always, always, leads to corruption.’ ibid. G Edward Griffin
‘This isn’t a representative form of government. They only represent the most powerful and the people that give them the most amount of money.’ ibid. Gerald Celente