Who Are the Distractors and Who Is the Distraction?
Trump, Musk, and Bannon; Surveillance State, Deep State, and Media-Industrial Complex; Shock and Awe, Political Spectacle, and Psyops
“You see, the Tech Bros of Silicon Valley believe that the American Empire is on the verge of collapse. Silicon Valley wants to speed this up, but use the coming administration to create safe landing zones for them and their cash where they can also run their own governments. And what is so annoying about this is it makes me sound crazy.”
~Joanna Richards
W e are collectively in the Truman Show. It’s a socially constructed reality tv show that is being directed from behind the scenes. In this scenario, we are Truman Burbank being manipulated, not the audience that is watching. Our perceived reality is being scripted for us. The politicians and other officials giving their speeches are actors who draw us in with a mirage of trust; like Truman’s friend, Marlon, and his wife, Meryl. The spectacle of political disaster that is placed before us is akin to the traffic, forest fire, and storm that is created to stop Truman from escaping and discovering the truth.
The following is an observation and speculation about the present Trump-Musk insanity going on. We’re taking a thought that others have had, combining it with a point of common sense, and wondering about what it means. Following that, we’ll conjecture a bit about what might really be going on and who might be behind it.
There has been an idea floating around that originates from the official conspirators themselves — the tech broligarchs in Silicon Valley and Steve Bannon in his War Room; along with being evidenced by Donald Trump’s history of behavior. It’s the notion that all of the chaos, destruction, instability, and uncertainty being created is an intentional act of shock and awe, as political spectacle.
The whole society is paralyzed by it all and grinds to a halt, like a traffic jam caused by cars slowing down as people can’t turn away from gawking at a gruesome crash.
It’s all about overwhelming, distracting, and preoccupying the public, along with any opposing elites who might try to intervene. The whole world is thrown off balance and, in a state of anxiety, it leaves everyone reacting to the last bit of craziness among a deluge of craziness while much more craziness having already occurred in the duration of a moment. There is no pause for anyone to catch their breath and gain their bearings. The whole society is paralyzed by it all and it grinds to a halt, like a traffic jam caused by cars slowing down as people can’t turn away from gawking at a gruesome crash, but no one stops to get out and help.
As explained by the new ruling elite, this is a strategy to quickly enforce change before anyone could organize resistance, enact a defense, or make a counter strike. For the tech overlords, this is about accelerationism to hasten the demise of the American Empire, what they call The Butterfly Revolution, the name taken from . — the name apparently was first adopted by (AKA Mencius Moldburg) who is the grand visionary of the reactionary alt-right and Dark Enlightenment (NRx). And for Bannon, it’s simply a non-stop barrage of shitfuckery to offer cover fire for the real agenda. But it also fits Trump’s M.O. from his first administration.
If nothing else, Trump always promised to be a wrecking ball. He would send a message that couldn’t be denied, that he was king and would do whatever he wanted. We’ve argued that is precisely the main reason many outraged and disgruntled Americans voted for him, if they failed to understand that he didn’t actually want to drain the swamp and eliminate the deep state, but maybe that stated aim was always irrelevant. As no one would give them what they wanted, the MAGA ‘populists’ would put into power the guy who would be a punisher, who would enact vengeance on their behalf, who would be the bigger bully, who would be the equivalent of a grenade thrown into the bunker of power ().
There is another aspect to it, though. A friend of ours made a good point. In Trump’s first term, he went out of his way to directly and strategically destroy every international alliance that had been carefully built up over decades and generations; by the way, all that had been constructed precisely to prevent a World War III. He wasn’t merely thrashing about randomly like a bull in a China shop. He picked his targets and systematically eliminated them, one by one. That is to say none of this was a mere side effect of Trump’s brutish, ignorant, and narcissistic incompetence. Rather, it was part of the plan all along. Now we’re in phase two, to finish what he started.
It’s reminiscent of the Joker — as we once described it (also from the above link): “In The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred Pennyworth describes the Joker in saying, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” But that isn’t quite right. In his own words, the Joker explains himself: “Introduce a little anarchy — upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos — it’s fair.” Exactly! It’s fair. Death and destruction is the last refuge of fairness, what is necessary to bring on justice, even if it is the justice of a mad man’s chaos. The slate must be wiped clean. Then something new can emerge from the ashes. .”
Many keep warning about this dizzying chaos of deception and distraction. Yet those in power, including supposed leftists in opposition like Bernie Sanders and AOC, remain dazzled by it or pretend to be. All they do is impotently and passively speechify, as Rome burns. And even then, their criticisms and condemnations are always several steps behind the ongoing political apocalypse.
Who Controls the Controllers?
“Control [is] controlled by it’s need to control.”
~William S. Burroughs
The destruction we’re witnessing largely has to do with the addiction to power, the greatest of addictions. As argued elsewhere, the reason everything seems out of control is because those seeking control are themselves out of control. The very reason they want to control others and control the world is because they can’t control themselves. There is a psychological explanation, having to do with socioeconomic status and stunted cognitive empathy, for why those born into the super-elite become so disconnected from reality, from society, and even from their own humanity.
But we won’t go into the reasons here. Just consider the possibility that such people “are closer to terrorists than ideologues. They want to destroy the system, as that is the ultimate act of control.” Think of them as true believers where conviction, in being emptied of meaning, has become it’s own totalizing force as realpolitik — power used to gain more power. It’s the mentality of those styling themselves as Masters of the Universe (or “Masterbaters of the Universe,” as Greg Daneke calls them), in opposition to the “reality-based community.” To hold any genuine beliefs or to hold to any fundamental principles would be an unnecessary hindrance and an unwanted inconvenience.
The basic idea of concern here is that the chaos was planned all along or that, in some sense, it was inevitable and predictable. These people are chaos agents, some combination of scheming design and psychological disposition. But in this sense, they have been known quantities. And they didn’t represent a surprise attack on the system.
Anyway, the basic idea of concern here is that the chaos was planned all along or that, in some sense, it was inevitable and predictable. These people are chaos agents, by some combination of scheming design and psychological disposition. But in this sense, they have long been known quantities. And so they don’t represent a surprise attack on the system. That then brings us to a more intriguing and disturbing thought, which puts us in the territory of deeper questioning, interrogation, and speculation.
None of the overt actors — Trump, Musk, and Bannon — involved now or earlier in the first term have hidden their motivations, their agenda, or their tactics. All of them, the techno-feudalists most of all, signaled in advance what they planned to do and how they planned to do it (Eric Lee, Dark Gothic MAGA and the Butterfly Revolution; Paddy Murphy, The Butterfly Revolution — America Is Being Stolen). They telegraphed their punch. They were entirely out in the open and above board, often going to the trouble of publicly and explicitly explaining it all in great detail, if anyone bothered to listen to them — a few have (Greg Daneke, REVENGE OF THE GEEKS: Trump as Merely a Dupe for the Tech Bros).
They’ve stated what they’d do before they did it and then they did exactly what they said they’d do. Think about that. Something doesn’t quite add up here. Since the 9/11 terrorist attack, there not only was an expansion of the surveillance state with the creation of Homeland Security but, more importantly, an increased tight coordination and cooperation between the intelligence, security, and law enforcement agencies: CIA, FBI, DEA, DOJ, ICE, etc. This is the real deep state that isn’t elected and continues from one administration to the next. And it was created with the explicit intent to prevent any unexpected national threat to ever happen again.
The American Empire has never been more prepared and empowered to deal with any national threat, foreign or domestic. Never before in all of human history has there been political power that had more control over its national population and the global population. And that has been implemented through a vast network of information gathering and analysis. With this in mind, no rational person could deny that this conjoined apparatus of the surveillance state knew in advance basically everything that Trump and associates would do. As noted, it’s not as if any of the conspirators hid their intentions, as all of it was in the public record and so not exactly requiring high level sleuthing or spying to ferret it out.
We’d have to be idiots to think the powers that be didn’t see this coming. That leaves us with a worrisome thought. Everything that happened since Trump took power, from the first time to now, was known about by those who at any moment could’ve intervened to stop, stall, obstruct, compromise, mitigate, nullify, or contain such actions by various means, overt and covert. That implies that those in the highest levels of the deep state support, agree with, or are indifferent to all that is occurring right now.
Everything that happened since Trump took power, from the first time to now, was known about by those who at any moment could’ve intervened to stop, stall, obstruct, compromise, mitigate, nullify, or contain such actions by various means, overt and covert. That implies that those in the highest levels of the deep state support, agree with, or are indifferent to all that is occurring right now.
For weeks, this new administration has been acting illegally and unconstitutionally. This has been done brazenly with little pretense. Everyone in the public and in the government knows that this administration is illegitimate according to its own illegal and unconstitutional actions. Furthermore, everyone in power has a formal obligation to defend the country and it’s people. Even if Congress wouldn’t impeach, every single official in numerous powerful agencies and in the military took an oath to uphold, enforce, and defend the law and constitution. It’s their sworn duty to stop such things as coups and everyone knows that this is a coup, if of the strange variety of what’s called a .
There are endless things that the heads of agencies and generals could do to interfere with, challenge, or prosecute what is going on. If nothing else, Musk should’ve been arrested or at least stopped, blocked, and removed the first time he broke the law. But even short of that step, any of the officials in power could’ve refused to step down from their positions when Trump sought to replace them. They simply could’ve stated that, until there was an investigation into these high crimes of state, any commands from Trump or Musk were without legal and constitutional legitimacy and hence without actionable force.
We are talking about powerful systems, structures, and figures who have a history of manipulating world events with little moral compunction. The CIA has toppled democratic governments around the world, along with eliminating unwanted leaders by various means. The FBI has taken down crime syndicates, used COINTELPRO to systematically destroy the organized Left, tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into suicide, and even participated in the assassination of the American leftist Fred Hampton. And though technically illegal, Homeland Security has used COINTELPRO tactics like entrapment. No one is going to convincingly lie to me that these agencies, among the most powerful in the world, were caught off guard and are helpless to do anything.
It’s rather simple and easy to stop a coup, if anyone in power wants to stop it. The same is true of authoritarianism in general. It exists and takes power because it is allowed to do so. Authoritarian power is entirely dependent on complicity and cooperation by nearly everyone involved and nearly everyone who stands by doing nothing. That could change in an instant, though, potentially by even a small group in key political positions, civil service, or the military deciding to not go along with tyranny and oppression.
It’s rather simple and easy to stop a coup, if anyone in power wants to stop it. The same is true of authoritarianism in general. It exists and takes power because it is allowed to do so.
An example of that happened in Portugal. In that case, a police state had been long established. But for some reason, many of the generals came to an agreement that they no longer wanted to defend the harm done to the citizenry, by way of a police state, war on drugs, and mass incarceration (sound familiar?). So, they marched their troops and drove their tanks into the capitol. Then they refused to take any orders from the government. They just stood at attention and waited. Eventually, the residents realized they weren’t going to do anything. They came out of their houses and placed carnations in the soldier’s rifles.
That was the end of authoritarian rule. The ruling government stepped down from power and the military maintained order until there was a democratic election. In an instant, and without any bloodshed, a social democracy was enacted and a people made free. It was that simple.
What Does a Banana Republic Become When the Mask of Democracy is Lifted?
“If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.”
~Franklin Roosevelt
The fact that no comparable intervention is happening in the United States at present tells us much. It means that nearly all of the most powerful people within official positions, possibly among the party leaders, knew what was going to happen and chose to let it happen. It’s not only the actions of Trump and friends that is the distraction. They themselves are the distraction. They are being dangled in front of us to be the focus of our anxiety and fear, hatred and anger. That way no one will stop to think why everyone else in power is standing around. In our looking in the wrong direction, the other hand can act unseen.
To add another layer to the moral and democratic failure, apparently by design, consider how there has been no investigation into what happened during the election, before Trump was inaugurated. There was such vast and systematic purging of ballots that it might’ve effectively been a stolen election. Yet like with the stolen election of 2000, the DNC elites remain complicitly mute, no agency seems to have investigated the issue, and the media-industrial complex as the propaganda arm conveniently doesn’t report on it. As such, most Americans don’t have an inkling. It’s a near total blackout.
The only time anyone in power, authority, and influence speaks of ‘Stop the Steal’ is when there is a fair election. Or at least what goes for ‘fair’ in a ‘democracy’ that is at best weak, compromised, partial, flawed, defective, dysfunctional, backsliding, imperiled, and failing (Pat Finn, ; Cynthia Millier-Idriss, ; Sujata Gupta, ; Ian Bremmer, ; & Wikipedia, ).
So, not only is the present administration breaking the law and betraying the constitution. The very way they gained power in the first place may have been a complete undermining of democracy. If so, the illegitimacy began the moment Trump stepped into the White House.
Yet when mass corruption, abuse, and depravity actually happens in the electoral system, there is instead a deafening silence on all sides and at all levels. This would add to the charge of real and perceived illegitimacy. So, not only is the present administration breaking the law and betraying the constitution. The very way they gained power in the first place may have been a complete undermining and flouting of democracy. If so, the illegitimacy began the moment Trump stepped into the White House or even earlier.
None of this is surprising. The United States has been a banana republic for a long time (Devon Price, They Don’t Really Want You to Vote), with some questioning if it has ever been a fully functioning democracy at any point in its history (The American Dream of Democracy). Indeed, Congress consistently acts according to elite opinion, no matter what their constituents want (Norman Ornstein & Thomas E. Mann, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks; Martin Gilens & Benjamin Page, Democracy In America?).
Keep in mind, though, that the decline of democracy was being observed, measured, and discussed long before the existential crisis of this Trumpian era. We are merely reaching the culmination of the more than a half century of actions by right-wing reactionaries, social dominators, and Machiavellians; starting with Allen Dulles (David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard; & Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers), Lewis Powell (Powell Memo), and Paul Weyrich (Anne Nelson, Shadow Network).
No wonder most Americans have had declining trust, near continuously since the 1960s, in almost every major social, economic, and political institution along with trust being lost in the professions situated in those institutions (Pew, ; Partnership for Public Service, ; Lea Wang, ; America’s New Majority Project, ). It has dropped to supermajority mistrust in many cases: corporate news media, social media, big biz, tech giants, banks, healthcare system, lobbyists, organized labor, organized religion, education system, criminal justice system, etc; including the three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial).
In spite of majority support for police reform specifically because of police abuse, corruption, and failure, most Americans have less mistrust of the police than of Congress (Heather Murphy, ); although as far as that goes, there seems to be nothing Americans mistrust as much as Congress (Rebecca Riffkin, ; Steven S. Smith, ). Interestingly, trust in military, science, and civil service has remained relatively higher, the last pillars of any hope for a functioning society; and all three are at this very moment being targeted by the Trump administration.
Before long, there won’t be any public trust left at all, and that seems to be part of the plan. Certainly, going down the generations, public trust goes lower and lower; with Generation Z have attained full cynicism, particularly toward government. Only older Americans who remember post-war progressivism and social democracy maintain a trace of that old culture of trust, although even for them the foundations have eroded. Make America Great Again, indeed.
Before long, there won’t be any public trust left at all, and that seems to be part of the plan.
Not only public trust has taken hit after hit but also public perception of honesty and ethics is in a tailspin (Sarah Holliday, ). The obvious implication, with the American people being a that is to the left of the government and the , is that there is no longer any kind of popular support and public mandate, no consent of the governed and political legitimacy (Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die & Tyranny Of The Minority). The fact that more Americans didn’t vote than voted for the winning candidate, even ignoring electoral failure, could be taken as a mass vote of no confidence in the entire system (Let’s Be Honest With Ourselves). If we aren’t already a failed state, we are close to it.
Trump and Musk will surely finish it off. The real power, though, is not to be found in the Trump-Musk presidency but with those behind the scenes who hold far greater influence over events. The deep state isn’t in a weak state, even now. It’s still functioning as it has for a long time and it will continue to do so. It’s simply biding it’s time, whatever might be the hidden motivation and agenda. Maybe they simply don’t care what this GOP-MAGA-NRx administration does, while the American Empire is dismantled. Maybe what maintains the deep state is no longer the old forms of national bureaucracy and global superpower.
But even if their passivity is a neutral and amoral indifference, it still seems strange. The American Empire took generations to build, specifically with an entrenched deep state that maintained stability, dependability, and consistency no matter who was elected. Why have those in control of that deep state suddenly decided the national and imperial order is no longer useful to their purposes? And what exactly are their purposes? What kind of new power structure do they plan on putting in its place? We might be wise to be less worried about Trump and Musk than we are about the deep state that appears to be using them for its own ends or else whose ends are so far beyond us that the fate of the United States and the fate of Americans is irrelevant to them.
As Catherine Austin Fitts explains it, “the leaders of the push for a totalitarian control model and the central bankers had decided to back Trump because he could deliver the conservatives into the model. What is happening now has been in the planning at least since then; Trump and Musk are simply Kabuki theater”
Then after the destruction is accomplished, Trump and Musk very well could be offered up as scapegoats or otherwise eliminated, such as with assassinations that would be successful this time. One might suspect that these two aspiring despots don’t even realize they’re being used as pawns in the way they think they are using others. As already mentioned, they aren’t the kind of person who has much awareness of the world or understanding of others. They likely make for the perfect puppets and patsies for those who are really in control.
As Catherine Austin Fitts explains it, “the leaders of the push for a totalitarian control model and the central bankers had decided to back Trump because he could deliver the conservatives into the model. What is happening now has been in the planning at least since then; Trump and Musk are simply Kabuki theater” (). Ironically, in their conceited narcissism, Trump and Musk might be the ultimate useful idiots.
Speculation aside, at the very least, the most basic point we are forced to concede and acknowledge is that everything that is happening is being allowed to happen. From an outside perspective of the average citizen watching the corporate media propaganda system, we don’t have the capacity to pull back the curtain to see who is the wizard. But we can be fairly certain that this is being orchestrated and that those with the greatest power are likely those operating unseen.
Speculation aside, at the very least, the most basic point we are forced to concede and acknowledge is that everything that is happening is being allowed to happen.
All of the showy blitzkrieg is distraction built on layers of distraction. Our collective attention is being effectively misdirected. In future retrospect, historians might conclude that this was the greatest and most extensive psyops of all times. But for now, we’re caught up in the smoke and mirrors. The challenge we find ourselves in is that to attempt to explain the craziness makes one sound crazy. And surely, the seeming absurd incomprehensibility of it all is part of the strategy.
When will we the American public wake up from the horror show to realize the horror reality? When will we turn away from the shadows on the wall so as to see the flames consuming us?
“I would set you free if I knew how. But it isn’t free out here. All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom but the least free of all.”
~Thomas Pynchon
