Why we are sleepwalking into tyranny

Why we are sleepwalking into tyranny – American Thinker

November 12, 2023

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The world is heading quite rapidly toward tyranny. We are in a revolutionary period that will dramatically change civilization. Few people understand the gravity of our situation. Here are some of the reasons why the majority of people seem oblivious to the danger. These psychological shortcomings explain why we are sleepwalking into tyranny.

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The Normalcy Bias “is a cognitive bias that occurs in times of crisis, leading us to disregard any signs or warnings that we are in danger. … Normalcy bias is a defense mechanism that lulls us into thinking life will just continue as it always has.” It is a reassuring presumption that things will get better, or, at least things will not take a dramatic change for the worse.

But steady progress is not the way the world works. History is a story of the rise and fall of civilizations. Tyranny, poverty, and servitude are the normal state of mankind, and it would not be difficult at all to return to that state. The pattern of history is that humans make some progress, and then evil men do evil things and stupid men do stupid things, and the civilization crumbles. The normalcy bias can stop people from seeing this.

You may have confidence in constant improvement because the people you know are good, productive people who are kind to others. You assume that most people are like that. But you need to notice that there are also evil people who have decided that their role is to manage your life. They are self-appointed shepherds, and they see you as their sheep. This is the essence of tyranny. If these evil people are also foolish, they may think that they can manage the world economy and force all the “little” people to act in a way that creates utopia…. a great leap forward.

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Centrally managed economies have been tried many times. They always fail, often spectacularly.

Masses of people can also be detached from reality by the Conformity Bias, which also goes by several other names. Ayn Rand called it Social Metaphysics. People with this cognitive defect look to their social group to tell them what is true. There is no independent critical thinking. This is the lazy person’s way of acquiring his view of reality.

It is the dream of any tyrant to have a population that acquires its beliefs this way. If a political faction can be lied to with impunity, and if blind acceptance of the lies is required to maintain membership in the group, that is a powerful means of control. A group like that could be expected to believe, for example, that a man could choose to be a woman and even have a baby. They could be told that “the border is secure” at a time when millions and millions of people are streaming in. They could be told that Trump said white supremacists are fine people. Etc.

There are no limits to the lies when the target audience is essentially detached from reality. In the book 1984, George Orwell symbolized this by showing that the model citizens readily accepted the government decree that 2+2=5. Many of the lies of the left are equally absurd. They are direct contradictions of what we know to be true.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Václav Havel, two brilliant antagonists of tyranny, said that simply and steadfastly telling the truth was a fundamental weapon that citizens should use against tyrants. Solzhenitsyn said, “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”

The third unfortunate human trait that favors tyrants was explained by Aldous Huxley. Huxley and Orwell each wrote novels predicting a dystopian future. Orwell’s prediction involved a substantial amount of fear and coercion, but Huxley predicted a relatively smooth and easy transition to tyranny. Huxley said the population would be distracted with trivial pleasures and would hardly notice the prison being built around them. He brilliantly foresaw how a society could sleepwalk into tyranny. These Huxley quotes demonstrate his prescience.

Huxley said, “There will be [a] dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

He said, “By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms … will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. … [T]he ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”

Huxley imagined “a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitude.” He believed that “[t]he greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and … is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.”

Huxley correctly predicted, “a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. [The media will cater to] man’s almost infinite appetite for distraction.”

He knew that both poor education and perpetual crisis would enable tyranny, writing, “Children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements.” And “[l]iberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.”

While most people are not paying attention, most of the key elements protecting freedom and prosperity are now under attack by people who wish to control our country and the world. Globalist leaders wish to put an end to national sovereignty, enforce a “New World Order,” control information, put an end to free speech, give the WHO worldwide dictatorial power on major health choices, ban our only reliable sources of energy, and impose a digital currency that will allow complete monitoring and control of every single citizen with a Chinese-style social credit system. At home, the U.S. is in the “looting the treasury phase” of empire collapse. Our military is weak, woke, and overextended. The dominant media function as a branch of the Democrat party. The upper levels of the Justice Department also function as a branch of the Democrat party. Anti-white racism is widely taught and supported by the government.

These are not conspiracy theories. The evidence is mostly out in the open. The people who are planning to be your future masters are not worried about stating their plans because the vast majority of people are distracted with their trivial amusements. They are busy watching ball games and movies and smartphone screens. The mental weaknesses discussed above have created a culture ripe for the taking, oblivious and unconcerned about the things that really matter.

People can ignore important things…but they cannot escape the consequences of ignoring important things.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. That price has not been paid. Not at all. So here we are, at the brink.