Cognitive Dissonance: The Establishment’s Alternate Reality

The system is too corrupt to recognize its own collapse

For several days after the election, I refused to turn on the TV except for basketball and Archer because it was just too depressing. But nearly a week after the fall of American democracy, I‘ve started to monitor “liberal” cable again — but only in small doses, because just like QAnon or other psychological warfare content, it causes me cognitive dissonance.

If you’re unaware, cognitive dissonance is the mental pain you feel when presented with a reality inconsistent with your own. That’s why cult members, who have been bathed in propaganda get “triggered” when you try to tell them something real.

Turning on MSNBC to see the usual punditocracy rambling on about the Democrats “grappling” & “regrouping,” or the “incoming administration taking shape” is painful — because it’s all theater. It’s dissonant from the real world, which is that America as we know it is over. And the machine is already trying to whitewash it.

We allowed the minds of our population to be left vulnerable to capture by alternate realities like MAGA and QAnon. But there are also theatrical worlds on the other “side” of the conflict. All of it is designed for your amusement while the oligarchy picks your pockets. The corporate media has fallen. We are on our own.

The weaponized disaster of the current information environment — the active, intentional poisoning of the body politic by a cabal of foreign dictators, oligarchs and domestic traitors — was the conduit for the suicide pill America just took.

And now the entire system is too corrupt to even recognize its own collapse.

The establishment as we knew it must be abandoned. This was a systemic failure of our entire government and our press. We are going to need new places to gather, to share information and to build a new movement to resist, sabotage, and defeat this foreign enemy invasion that just captured America without firing a shot.

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

—Leon Trotsky

FYI, I’m going to moving away from the former Twitter and focusing here on Substack. I’m very grateful to all of you for your support. It means everything to me. Whatever happens, I’m going to be a witness.

Here are a few other places I’ll be. It’s important to diversify your communications portfolio in this environment.

Bluesky: jim-stewartson https://bsky.app/profile/jim-stewartson.bsky.social

Threads: @jimstewartson. https://www.threads.net/@jimstewartson?invite=0

Mastodon: https://toad.social/@jimstewartson

TikTok: @jimstewartson https://www.tiktok.com/@jimstewartson?_t=8rJUX4ejmN1&_r=1

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