{"id":1615,"date":"2020-10-17T01:13:34","date_gmt":"2020-10-17T01:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/?p=1615"},"modified":"2020-10-17T01:13:34","modified_gmt":"2020-10-17T01:13:34","slug":"the-2020-election-bamboozle-we-are-all-victims-of-the-deep-states-con-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/?p=1615","title":{"rendered":"The 2020 Election Bamboozle: We Are All Victims of the Deep State\u2019s Con Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John W. Whitehead<\/a><\/p>\n

\"march_of_tyranny.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re run by the Pentagon, we\u2019re run by Madison Avenue, we\u2019re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don\u2019t revolt we\u2019ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche…. As long as we go out and buy stuff, we\u2019re at their mercy\u2026 We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people\u2019s Villages, but we are all prisoners<\/a>.\u201d\u2014 Patrick McGoohan<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is not an election.<\/p>\n

This is a con game, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko, a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, and a bamboozle.<\/p>\n

In this carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, \u201cwe the people\u201d are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls.<\/p>\n

We are victims of the Deep State\u2019s confidence game.<\/p>\n

Every confidence game has six essential stages: 1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion; 2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted; 3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they\u2019ve got a vested interest in the outcome; 4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up; 5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early \u201cwins\u201d; and 6) the \u201churrah\u201d\u2014 a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency.<\/p>\n

In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior\u2014including Donald Trump and Joe Biden\u2014is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.<\/p>\n

In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it\u2019s the Deep State rigging the outcome.<\/p>\n

Terrorist attacks, pandemics, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn\u2019t change much in the long term.<\/p>\n

No matter who wins this election, we\u2019ll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.<\/p>\n

We just haven\u2019t learned to recognize our prison walls as such.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like that old British television series The Prisoner, which takes place in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly idyllic retirement community known only as The Village.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned, monitored by militarized drones, and interrogated in The Village, a beautiful resort with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.<\/p>\n

While luxurious, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, all of their movements tracked. Residents of the Village are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.<\/p>\n

First broadcast in Great Britain 50-some years ago, The Prisoner dystopian television series \u2014described as \u201cJames Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka\u201d<\/a>\u2014confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the loss of freedom, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of human beings to meekly accept their lot in life as prisoners in a prison of their own making.<\/p>\n

The series\u2019 protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan is Number Six.<\/p>\n

Number Two, the Village administrator, acts as an agent for the unseen and all-powerful Number One, whose identity is not revealed until the final episode.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not a number. I am a free man,\u201d was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by Patrick McGoohan, who also played the title role.<\/p>\n

In the opening episode (\u201cThe Arrival\u201d), Number Six meets Number Two, who explains to him that he is in The Village because information stored \u201cinside\u201d his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free \u201coutside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to \u201cpersuade\u201d him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.<\/p>\n

Number Six refuses to comply.<\/p>\n

In every episode, Number Six resists the Village\u2019s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. \u201cI will not make any deals with you,\u201d he pointedly remarks to Number Two. \u201cI\u2019ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it\u2019s never far enough.<\/p>\n

Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six\u2019s attempts to escape are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as \u201crovers.\u201d Still, he refuses to give up. \u201cUnlike me,\u201d he says to his fellow prisoners, \u201cmany of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Number Six\u2019s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unfunny, unsettling Groundhog\u2019s Day that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.<\/p>\n

As journalist Scott Thill concludes for Wired, \u201cRebellion always comes at a price<\/a>. During the acclaimed run of The Prisoner, Number Six is tortured, battered and even body-snatched: In the episode \u2018Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,\u2019 his mind is transplanted to another man\u2019s body. Number Six repeatedly escapes The Village only to be returned to it in the end, trapped like an animal, overcome by a restless energy he cannot expend, and betrayed by nearly everyone around him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one\u2019s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the seemingly benevolent trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and the need to guard against terrorists, pandemics, civil unrest, etc.<\/p>\n

As Thill noted, \u201cThe Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Prisoner\u2019s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.<\/p>\n

The American Police State, much like The Prisoner\u2019s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon<\/a>, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.<\/p>\n

Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham<\/a> envisioned the panopticon prison to be a cheaper and more effective means of \u201cobtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bentham\u2019s panopticon, in which the prisoners are used as a source of cheap, menial labor, has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be while funding its existence.<\/p>\n

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the Deep State and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Instagram, etc.).<\/p>\n

Government eyes are watching you.<\/p>\n

They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you\u2019re watching on television and reading on the internet.<\/p>\n

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.<\/p>\n

When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you\u2019ve got nothing to worry about if you\u2019ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.<\/p>\n

Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we\u2019re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between obeying the dictates of the government\u2014i.e., the law, or whatever a government official deems the law to be\u2014and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.<\/p>\n

When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one\u2019s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an \u201cexpectation of privacy.\u201d And technology has furthered muddied the waters.<\/p>\n

However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one\u2019s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it\u2019s no one\u2019s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, George Orwell\u2019s 1984\u2014where \u201cyou had to live\u2014did live, from habit that became instinct\u2014in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized\u201d\u2014has now become our reality.<\/p>\n

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies<\/a> that answer to government and corporate rulers.<\/p>\n

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways<\/a>, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.<\/p>\n

A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you\u2019re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.<\/p>\n

Stingray devices<\/a> mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices<\/a> that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates<\/a> per minute, sidewalk and \u201cpublic space\u201d cameras<\/a> coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police \u201cpre-crime<\/a>\u201d programs, police body cameras<\/a> that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things<\/a>: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there\u2019s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence\u2014especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.<\/p>\n

As French philosopher Michel Foucault concluded in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish<\/a>, \u201cVisibility is a trap<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the electronic concentration camp\u2014the panopticon prison\u2014the Village\u2014in which we are now caged.<\/p>\n

It is a prison from which there will be no escape. Certainly not if the government and its corporate allies have anything to say about it.<\/p>\n

As Glenn Greenwald notes:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way things are supposed to work is that we\u2019re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that\u2019s why they\u2019re called public servants. They\u2019re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that\u2019s why we\u2019re called private individuals. This dynamic – the hallmark of a healthy and free society – has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more<\/a>. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That\u2019s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

None of this will change, no matter who wins this upcoming presidential election.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the hustle, you see: because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, the day after a new president is sworn in, we\u2019ll still find ourselves prisoners of the Village.<\/p>\n

This should come as no surprise to those who haven\u2019t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven\u2019t fallen for the Deep State\u2019s phony rhetoric, who haven\u2019t been lured in by the promise of a political savior: we never stopped being prisoners.<\/p>\n

So how do you escape? For starters, resist the urge to conform to a group mind and the tyranny of mob-think as controlled by the Deep State.<\/p>\n

Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, \u201cAt this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves\u2026 As long as people feel something, that\u2019s the great thing. It\u2019s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that\u2019s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

You want to be free? Remove the blindfold that blinds you to the Deep State\u2019s con game, stop doping yourself with government propaganda, and break free of the political chokehold that has got you marching in lockstep with tyrants and dictators.<\/p>\n

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People<\/a>, until you come to terms with the fact that the government is the problem (no matter which party dominates), you\u2019ll never be free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John W. Whitehead \u201cWe\u2019re run by the Pentagon, we\u2019re run by Madison Avenue, we\u2019re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don\u2019t revolt we\u2019ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche…. As long as we go out and buy stuff, we\u2019re at their mercy\u2026 We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1615"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1617,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615\/revisions\/1617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}