tinfoil cattery: if i wanted to empower a truth ministry

tinfoil cat dons his tinfoil hat and forays into speculation

now, tinfoil is fun, and no one likes having fun theories debunked as i did HERE.

so allow me to offer you a replacement explanation for this current media obsession with food processing fires:

let’s be clear: this is febrile feline imagination.

i claim precisely zero evidence this is true.

we’re just connecting photos with red yarn because if i were looking to take your rights and privacy, this is what i would do.

(and you should be grateful that cats are anarcho-capitalist libertarians, not authoritarians, because, frankly, you people are pushovers)

i have invited a colleague from the WEF (world expropriating felines) to walk you through it.

step one: create a sense of crisis.

we’re at proxy war with russia, the jingo bells are jingling, and this is the bad hat bad guy from generations of memory. we keep accusing them of meddling with things going all the way back to making big trouble for moose and squirrel and everyone knows they have powerful cyber attack capabilities. they are a perfect patsy, especially ahead of an election whose prospective results worry you.

and food plants are a perfect set piece to blame on them.

food prices are up and no one wants to take the blame, so this is a double win. add this one to putin’s tab along with gasoline and then ascribe the attacks to a foreign actor seeking to influence the US elections and keep us out of ukraine. it’s a tidy little package to add to the rest of the war rhetoric.

“we’re being attacked here at home!”

so find any small reports of issues and breathlessly foreground them them like this has never happened before. whether it had any real effect on supply or even really happened or was just a parking lot dumpster fire is immaterial. the more you hype this in the media, especially if you can get the right wing to bite, the more you can create a false reality and a sense of fear and menace.

the idea of foreign actors or their domestic allies using cyber weapons or outright sabotage to attack the food supply generates atavistic fears that will be driven home and locked into belief by rising prices. “well, something is doing it!” this not only establishes excuses for impending outcomes based on other screwups but generates the fear to excuse encroachment.

it also allows a spread into “cyber security” which can be tightly linked to “cyber surveillance.”

americans go bananas when they think they are being attacked on their own soil. this is a false flag they’ll follow anywhere.

added benefit that it’s your political opponents doing the legwork. added added benefit that you can rug pull them later and show them all to be credulous and wrong.

step two: create new, extra-constitutional powers on the basis of this fear

a new misinformation board is a great start. add this to your existing panoply of unaccountable powers the minute anyone mutters “russia” or “foreign actor” or heaven forfend “terrorist” and you’re in business. there is a rich history here and this stage has long since been set.

FBI warrantless searches of Americans' data more than doubled from 2020 to 2021, ODNI report.

Nearly 2 million of the reported searches were part of an investigation into alleged Russian hackers attempting to break into the U.S.'s critical infrastructure. Senior officials said that the searches were part of efforts to identify and protect potential victims of the alleged Russian campaign, also according to the news outlet. 

this loops your new truth ministry into the same fast lane of due process evasion around domestic spying that the anti-terrorism squads use. swear up and down you won’t use it domestically, but everyone knows this is patently false. add some 2 and 3 hop warrants from secret courts, and you can get some serious coverage of americans and especially your political enemies in a serious hurry.

pile “cyber security and internet monitoring as a national security need” on top and you’ll have near infinite reach and endless opportunity to conjure images of danger.

to the extent that one believes that many of the actors in the obama admin are currently pulling the puppet-strings of biden, this is not even a new plan. it’s just recidivism.

step 3: tentacles everywhere

you have now successfully executed a trojan framing. the thin end of the wedge is in, people are scared and see an attacker, and are happy to cede you power. they will beg to trade liberty for safety.

and we all know how that trade goes.

you use this to validate the idea that there is a need for “misinformation ministries” because “look, bad guys!” and, of course, once you can do a thing for one reason, you can do it for another.

those who seek to oppose you get labeled misinformation. their existence serves as validation that we need someone out there stopping the flow of bad info. resistance is not just futile, it’s helpful.

you spread the fear to “election meddling” and “public health” and “climate change” and “hate speech/domestic terror/interference in everything” until you can basically spy on and censor suburban soccer moms who stand up to school boards on masking by alleging it’s anti-american agitation fomented by rambunctious russkies.

“muscovite oil oligarch in secret plot to oppose teaching the dangers of climate change to US skoolkidz!”

this is how you dig a new agency subunit and power base in so deeply that it can never be dislodged. hey, it worked for the rest of the patriot act.

and then, it’s too late and that which was temporary now is, always was, and always will be.

they have been caught abusing patriot act powers 100 times, but nothing changes.

now everyone does it.

no one even raises an eyebrow anymore.

the ratchet remains one way.

and you keep falling for it.

it all hinges on the perception of fear and of attack. gaslighting the populace into clamoring to sell its own freedom cheaply is not exactly a new idea, is it? i mean, when was the last time we saw that work? for 2 straight years? to grab unprecedented power?

when is the last time the government was not “waging a war” on something from poverty to weather to racism, sexism, iraq, afghanistan, russia, covid misinformation, inequality, invasive crabgrass, whatever...?

did you think this framing was an accident?

it does not require a real attack. it actually works better if the attack is false or mostly false. real enemies are unpredictable and hard to control. invented hobgoblins can always be thwarted by simply ceasing the illusion.

but real of fake, it’s all the same game.

so, here endeth the lesson.

is it true? who knows?

but it’s what i would do.

go forth and connect you own yarn.