In 1983, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, (William Casey), told President Ronald Reagan: We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. There are two questions I have regarding that statement. First off is, if Casey said that almost 40 years ago, how long prior to that have they been feeding us disinformation? Secondly, if they are feeding us false information, how are we supposed to know when we’re being lied to? If you want my honest opinion, the answer to that second question is; all of the time.

In any case, I suppose the first thing I should do is establish a working definition for the word disinformation. Your definition might differ somewhat than the one I use, but I would venture to guess that whatever your definition is, it is somewhat similar to mine: the purposeful spreading of false, or misleading, information for the purpose of shaping, or shifting public opinion. So, any information that is used to shape your opinion is a prime candidate for disinformation.

While there are many sources of information, information itself can be broken down into two categories; information that deals with current events and information that deals with past events. If one wants to know what is currently happening in the world, they, more often than not, rely television news broadcasts, and to a lesser extent, radio news. If one wants to know about events from the past, they resort to textbooks; either the history books they learned from in school, or those written by authors who probably weren’t even alive when the events they write about transpired. In either case, both are suitable means of delivering disinformation.

I often tell people to trust no one, and that includes me. In all honesty, I would much rather someone do their own research and prove me wrong than I would they do no research at all and just accept that what I’m saying is the truth. It is because people do not do their own research that disinformation is so effective; they accept that what they are being told is the truth without verifying, or researching, the subject matter for themselves.

There are two quotes I’d like for you to consider; both being similar in nature. The first goes as follows: He who controls the flow of information controls the world. The second states: He who controls the media controls the minds of the people. Both of those quotes seem so blatantly obvious to me that they shouldn’t require any explanation; yet after watching how people blindly accept what they see and hear on the boob tube, it is obvious that they aren’t as clear as I would prefer.

I don’t think people realize how powerful the media is in, not only shaping their opinions, but in such simple things as dictating what is considered fashionable. Take, for instance, the old TV Show, Friends. How many of you recall how women across the country began getting their hair styled exactly like Jennifer Anniston wore hers on the show? Although how a woman styles her hair is relatively insignificant, it still shows how powerful a tool the media can be.

Look at the Super Bowl, and how advertisers spend top dollar to get slots for their ads during a football game. They wouldn’t spend all that money, buying up advertising slots, and hiring marketing teams to come up with catchy new ads, if these things weren’t effective and conditioning the masses to go out and buy their products.

If a simple 30 second advertisement is that effective in programming you to buy a certain type of beer over the competition, or go to this fast-food restaurant instead of the other, think how effective the media is in conditioning you to believe what is going on in the world around you; especially when there is no real alternative media telling you an opposing opinion; i.e., the truth.

From our formative years we enter into a system the builds a mental box that we live in the rest of our lives. We see things from the perspective of the walls of that box; never realizing that if we would just break free of those mental restraints, the truth is on the other side waiting for us.

We live in a world where information surrounds us all the time. We have 24 hour a day news channels and people carry the internet around in their back pockets in the form of smart phones. That can be a good thing if the information we are being provided is truthful, but it can be a bad thing if the mediums delivering that information have become tools for the spreading of disinformation.

There are certain institutions that people tend to trust inherently to provide them with the truth; two of them being the school system and those who provide us with the news. Even those who have taken to using the term ‘Fake News’ tend to trust the very medium they criticize by using that term. For instance, those who supported Donald Trump while he was president tend to trust FOX News to provide them with accurate news coverage, while they distrust CNN; saying it is biased towards the Democrats. The reverse is equally true; Democrats tend to call FOX a right-wing propaganda machine, while trusting CNN and MSNBC to provide them with accurate coverage of the news.

I have a question for both sides. If you believe one side is biased, is it not likely that the side you trust is biased as well? Is it too much to ask of you to possibly consider that both sides are feeding the left/right division in this country, with both sides feeding us propaganda to keep us trapped within the confines of the two-party paradigm; that neither side is providing us with accurate coverage of events? I’ll return to this soon enough, but for the moment I’d like to discuss the educational system that is supposed to teach us how to think.

I don’t know how long a typical school day is now, but when I was growing up school lasted for 8 hours. That is a long time to trust your children in the hands of others, and therefore the school system is a prime candidate for beginning the process of spreading disinformation. Vladimir Lenin once said, or at least he is quoted as saying: Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted

Whether or not Lenin actually said that is not relevant; as there is a lot of truth in that statement regardless of who said it. If, by careful selection of what our children are taught, by withholding certain facts, while emphasizing others, you can instill an idea, or belief, into the minds of our youth, that idea then is transmitted to their children, and the lie, if you wish to call it such, becomes self-perpetuating.

A perfect example of this is how people view the document that established our system of government. No matter how bad government behaves, people still put their trust in the document that established it; saying that if we could just hold those we elect to the principles found within it we wouldn’t have all these problems. Think about that for a minute; if the document really was as good as people believe it to be, then wouldn’t it be able to prevent those we elect from misbehaving, and provide a means by which we could punish them if they did?

Even as bad as our government has become, people still say that the document that created it is the best the world has ever seen. Is that something that can easily be proven by facts, or is it something we’ve been conditioned to believe during our time in the public school system? I would be willing to bet that well over half, if not three quarters, of the American people could not explain with any detail the difference between the system outlined by the constitution, and the system it replaced under the Articles of Confederation. I’d also be willing to bet that those who put all this trust in the constitution do not know that those who drafted it violated the law when they did so; that simply isn’t something we’ve been taught in school, and the only reason I know it is because I’ve researched the matter on my own.

Ask anyone today to name 5 Founding Fathers, and you are liable to hear the names Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and maybe Paul Revere. Ask anyone to tell you who Luther Martin, Patrick Henry, Mercy Otis Warren, or Samuel Bryan were, and you get, what I call, the Stupid Cow look; that empty stare that tells you their brains have drawn a blank. Even worse, provide quotes from any of the aforementioned people, showing how our government today does not come close to adhering to the principles this country was founded upon, and you’re labeled an extremist; a danger to society.

How can it possibly be that one can be considered a danger to society when they quote from the people who actively participated in founding this country? The only possible explanation for it is that people have been indoctrinated into trusting the system as it has been explained to them by their teachers; not by a careful examination of the debate that raged over whether or not to adopt the system. In other words, the school system is guilty of filling their minds with disinformation from an early age; which is why I provided that quote from Lenin a few moments ago.

Another example of how disinformation has been used to shape public opinion on historical events is, the mis-named Civil War. Ask almost anyone and they will tell you that the Civil War was fought over slavery – yet those who say that are dead wrong. I have never said that slavery was not a factor in the events of that period of our history; I’ve merely said that it was not the cause of the war between the North and the South. The war itself was fought over the issue of whether a state, or group of states, had the right to separate from the Union. The interference by the North in the institution of slavery, and their prohibiting it from expanding into new states, was but one of the many reasons the South chose to separate/secede from the Union – and it was that separation that led to the war.

You aren’t taught any of that though, you are taught what the bureaucrats who control our educational systems want you to know about the history of this country; which is often either biased, or a flat out lie. Your beliefs, your opinions, your ideologies have been shaped by those who control the flow of information you have access to. That is the very reason disinformation is utilized against a people; to shape their opinions in a manner conducive to the goals of those who are spreading this disinformation.

George Orwell, author of the dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, wrote something you might find interesting: Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future. It took me a long time to fully understand what Orwell meant when he said that, but now it is crystal clear to me.

Breaking that down, those who control the present are those who are alive today who control the information we have access to. Therefore, those who are alive today decide what we learn about the past. Finally, it is what we learn about our past that dictates the future course our country will take.

Think of it this way, if you are on a journey with a specific destination in mind, and you ask someone for directions, if those directions are not accurate, if they contain incorrect instructions, or if they omit certain things, it if very likely that you’ll end up off course. If all you’ve been taught is that government exists to provide you with all these wonderful benefits; that you are obliged to obey it, and those who enforce the laws it enacts, and that is the definition of patriotism, then that’s all you know. Then, when someone comes along and provides you with the truth, it is as alien to you as the idea of an alternate reality; your mind simply has too much trouble accepting that what you are hearing is reality.

I believe that is the ultimate goal of disinformation, to create a condition in which people are living a lie, and that they are so convinced that the lie is the truth that they will attack those who try to expose the lie. That is why the first Matrix movie affects me the way it does. It is not about how Neo is ‘The One’, it is about how the world around us has been carefully fabricated to keep us subdued/oppressed, and how there are some who are fighting to expose the reality of our condition to those who have yet to see it on their own.

Disinformation is not a new concept; it’s been around for a very long time; it just may not have been given the name disinformation. Returning to the ratification of the constitution for just a moment; those who pushed for its ratification were the rich and powerful; let’s just say, those who would benefit from its adoption. At the time, there were only two ways people learned about what was happening in current events; word of mouth or the newspapers.

Word of mouth took time to reach those far removed from where key events were taking place, so it was the press that distributed information to those in more rural and isolated locations. The thing is, the press was, for the most part anyway, owned by those who supported ratification of the constitution, and they refused to publish/print anything that was critical of the constitution. By refusing to publish an opposing viewpoint, they were practicing a form of disinformation; creating the impression that there was overwhelming support for the constitution; when that was hardly the case.

I’d be willing to bet that most people today don’t know that the notes James Madison took during the Constitutional Convention were not published until all the members of that convention had passed away. There could be a couple of reasons why this happened. First, he could have wanted this system of government to get going before people were exposed to the intent of many of those who drafted the document outlining it. Another thing is, he could have been protecting the names, and reputations, of those whose words proved that what they really wanted was akin to the system the country had just recently fought a war to free themselves from; a despotic monarchy.

I’d also be willing to bet that people do not know that for the entire period Madison kept his notes hidden from the public, he was revising them, editing out certain passages and rewording others. There is an excellent book, called Madison’s Hand, by Mary Sarah Bilder, that explains in great detail how Madison revised his notes before they were finally released to the public after his death. That, in and of itself, is a form of disinformation; altering the facts so as to hide the truth of what actually happened.

I have had numerous arguments/debates/discussions with people over whether or not certain laws are authorized by the constitution. In almost every instance, those I’m debating are unable to point out where in the constitution it authorizes government to do the thing we are debating. People will refer to past laws, or Supreme Court decisions, but they cannot point out Article and Clause in the constitution where the power to do something is located.

Now I’m not saying the constitution is great, far from it; but I am saying that if the constitution truly grants government the power it holds, then people should be able to point their finger at the exact location in that document where government is authorized to enact each and every law it passes. If they cannot do that, then does that not mean that what government did is unconstitutional; by the very fact that the power to do so is not found in the constitution?

Does the news media ever tell you this though? No, it simply reports that the president signed a new bill into law, or that there is heated debate between the two parties over the passage of a certain bill making its way through Congress. If the purpose of the news media is to provide us with the truth, then why aren’t they telling you that Congress is attempting to pass a bill that is not authorized by the constitution? Why haven’t your teachers taught you that you are under no obligation to obey and unconstitutional law; or that the police and courts are not bound to enforce it?

Oh, you think I’m joking!?! Try this on for size. Sixteen American Jurisprudence declares: The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law, and no courts are bound to enforce it. (Sixteenth American Jurisprudence, Second Edition, Section 256 137, 180)

That information has been withheld from you by those responsible for teaching you the truth; when instead they are disseminators of disinformation; whose job is not to teach the truth, not to created critical thinkers or those who question what they are told; their job is to create obedient little drones who do not question authority.

It’s the same with the news; their job is not to provide you with the truth; their job is to keep the discussing focused within the confines of the left/right paradigm, and to shape/manipulate public opinion by a constant barrage of fear tactics, designed to subdue your desire for liberty, and submit to laws/rules/regulations/mandates that deprive you of that liberty.

To free yourself there are a few things you must do. First, you must realize that almost everything you are being told, or everything you’ve been taught, is a lie; are at least heavily biased. Next, you must stop listening to those whose job is to keep feeding you these lies. Finally, you must seek out the truth on your own; do some research; exercise your brain so that you learn to see the lies for what they are and learn to recognize the lies when they are being told.

You will never be free if you implicitly trust others to tell you the truth – even me. Question everything, and verify everything on your own. Hopefully, if you begin to do that, you will learn that government is not your friend, it was not established by great men who sought to secure your rights and liberty; it was created to turn you into serfs to feed its insatiable desire for control and power over you, your property, and your freedom.

The pathway to freedom is not quick, and it is not painless. It took me well over 20 years to get to where I am today; suffering numerous bouts of cognitive dissonance; those times when your mind refuses to accept that what you are learning can be true. But, if you undertake this journey, if you steadfastly continue to seek out more knowledge, the reward is that you will learn the truth; and the truth, as they say, shall set you free.

Be More Like Patrick Henry
As Patrick Henry said on that fateful day in 1775: For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. If you cannot, or will not, live by those words, then how are you to know whether your lives are based upon reality, or some cleverly designed disinformation program implemented to keep you enslaved?

I’ve given you all you need to know to take the first steps towards freedom, and I’ll gladly help you along the way if you should require assistance in your journey. However, YOU must take that first step on your own; as Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix: I’m trying to free your mind, Neo, but I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.

Do you have the courage to take that first step? Your future, your children’s future, your country’s future is resting upon whether or not you do.

November 24, 2021 by Br’er Rabbit