If I were going to try to take power from the masses I would use three basic principles:
- Perpetuate fear over a thing that only I have the solution for. Create a new truth from simple pieces of data that you believe are fact.
- Convince you that without my help, you will suffer and create offsetting distractions so you never actually determine my lies.
- Sell a narrative to divide all those that if they ever unified could remove me from power. Bait and switch the players and scenarios to ensure the division never ends.
1) I would ensure that you were in constant belief that the world was slowly coming to an end. The only way to save yourself and in doing so you would also act in a noble way was to change your behaviors which I would profit from as I drained you of free will. You would gladly give away your rights and freedoms and willingly take them from others in the pursuit of this cause. You would believe any picture or graph I posted, especially since I would use celebrity endorsements. I would redefine the nature of truth and you would pay to hear it.
2) At every turn I would broadcast that you needed my medicine and advice to live a better and healthier life. You would come to believe you were sick when you were not. You would believe you were ugly, when you were not. I would sell beauty and eternal life for a small down payment and easy monthly installments. I would create entertainment that you could live vicariously through and believe it was you as the line of fact and fiction blurred over time and eventually was the same thing. I would control your diseases and sell you the cure. Sex, drugs, alcohol and narcissism would be your new gods.
3) My final act would be to have a constant issue of the utmost importance in front of you so you never looked behind the curtain. I would create the perpetual enemy that was always over that last hill and ready to storm the castle. If you got a hint of my ruse I would change the enemy to something that ignited racial or cultural fires and change the division I am wedging between people that would under normal circumstances get along. I would create diversion and distraction of non-issues and sell you gasoline to throw on the mundane to force more people into the fray. You would take a knee to me without even knowing I benefit from your misguided belief it was not your choosing.
Once I have a foot hold in any of these areas I simply repeat them in a sequence of my choosing to engender profit and control so that you never knew I was pulling your strings.
Given enough time and a gullible populace I would control you and you would never know it was being done.
Move along citizen.
I profit from your outrage.
I take what you give me and I become more powerful.
I am the reflection in your mirror.
