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The War Against the Mind
A Short Story by Jon Rappoport | nomorefakenews.com
Image by Peter Soros | petersoros.com
“Technical barriers to grafting one person’s head onto another person’s body can now be overcome, says Dr. Sergio Canavero, a member of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group.” (Quartz.com, July 2, 2013)
Peter Expert Pundit, who has appeared on over a thousand television news-talk shows, sits in front of a mirror and combs his hair. He applies a bit of powder to his cheeks.
He’s despondent. The networks haven’t been calling lately.
His specialty is war. When troops invade and planes drop bombs, he’s busy making trenchant comments on the news. These days, things are too quiet.
He longs for the war that wasn’t. Syria.
A voice in Peter Pundit’s head begins talking. He likes it. He wishes he could use it in public.
The voice says:
“They used chemical weapons, so they’ll pay!
“Welcome to the Syrian theater! All the players are assembled. Which one will intervene and turn a two-day blitz into a global conflagration?
“We realize you don’t have whatever it takes to actually enlist in the Armed Forces and do six insane tours in Afghanistan building A-frames and wondering when one of those villagers will shoot you in the head. No problem. You can experience a very good simulacrum in your own mind. The anticipation. The adrenaline flow. The sweaty palms. Then the limbic thrust of revenge. Just watch the news.
“Boom! You’re there. The attack is on! The sky over Damascus lights up! What unknown newsman, standing on a rooftop, narrating the unfolding scene, will emerge from the carnage with name recognition and a sudden career bump that makes his colleagues want to murder him in his sleep?
“America is united again. Feel it. What took us so long to find each other once more? Post your experience on Facebook. Share your ecstasy with faux friends. Recite the Pledge of Allegiance against a hip-hop track and hope it goes viral.
“This is the Show! This is what counts! Pretext? Invented provocation? False flag? Don’t bother me, I’m eating war!
“If your brother-in-law is over at the house as you watch the missile strike and he says, ‘You know, there’s no good proof Assad used poison gas,’ poke him in the eye with a sizzling hot dog on a stick and yell, ‘USA! USA! USA!’
“You might also try, ‘Obamacare! Immigration reform! Climate change! Carbon tax! NSA! Surveillance State! Gun control! Drone attacks!’
“Who cares about Fast&Furious, the IRS non-profit division, Benghazi? They’re in the rearview mirror and we’re accelerating down the superhighway.
“Mind-controlled androids? Yup. This is who we are! Love it, live it, watch it, soak it in!
The voice in Peter Pundit’s head fades out and he’s left sitting in front of the mirror wishing for what might have been. He could have done Meet the Press and Face the Nation on the same Sunday. He could have been the man with his prurient hand on the pulse of the nation.
He could have praised the President, the troops, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs for their perspicacity.
He could have looked onto the camera with stony eyes, as if he were a warrior, instead of a second rate chess player in the Club at Yale so many years ago, when his fantasies had gone down the drain.
Perhaps he could have parlayed his Syrian TV stint into a diplomatic assignment abroad. London, Paris. He could have spread tax dollars around for dinners with beautiful women, and then somewhere, in a dark hotel room, he could have heard one of those women whisper in his ear, “Peter Pundit, you’re a man. A lion.”
Oh well. Perhaps it’s time to change the tune. He could develop a new specialty. The share-and-care agenda. We’re all in this together. With this in tow, he’d surely obtain some face time on television. No more stony gaze. Instead, a look of empathy. Yes.
And he could still live in his nice house in the suburbs and really not care one whit about those who are suffering.
There’s always a payoff to be had. You just have to find it.
And Peter Pundit eventually did find it…in an unexpected place. One day, he pulled a book off the shelf in his library:
“The Ancient Roman Empire Pulled Off the Greatest Trick in the History of the World As It Was Fading Into Oblivion, It Created War By Other Means, War On The Mind, In The Form Of The Roman Church Which Defined Reality For The Masses.”
A few days later, when Peter finished reading the book, he knew what his mission was.
He would pitch The New Future.
He obtained a job interview with DARPA, the high-tech research group at the Pentagon.
In a hotel room in Virginia, he spoke to three men from DARPA’s personnel department. But he didn’t talk about himself. He launched into a speech. The speech fleshed out his titanic vision:
“Sign up now and get on the list for a new mind!
“The technical description of the surgery is over your head, but the basics are thrilling.
“Two solid post-op improvements are speed and accuracy. You will think 20 times faster, and your rate of mistakes will drop to .01%.
“Your IQ will rise by a minimum of 50 points.
“There is also an automatic signal when a problem you’re working on can’t resolve. Your left ear lobe burns. This informs you that, no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to come to a useful conclusion.
“You’ll save a great deal of time.
“The new mind you’re getting contains several basic elements:
“157,893 subconscious generalizations (or premises) deemed to be truthful;
“a subconscious deductive logic program;
“an instantly accessible technical library adjusted to your job.
“The library automatically generates, collates, and summarizes the best available information re the problem you’re working on, in line with the previously installed generalizations (premises) and the logic program.
“It produces an answer, a solution. Your solution.
“For an additional fee, you can opt for a social program that will enable you to shift out of work-mode and communicate effectively with colleagues, friends, and family.
“The left-ear-lobe burn signal will go live whenever social conversations touch on controversial issues. This is your cue to back away and seek other company.
“Your new mind will be monitored 24/7 from a node that ensures proper functioning. If repairs are needed, a partial shutdown will deploy. Corrections will normally take less than three hours.
“There is also a bullpen function. Persistent questions for which there is no available answer; personal reflections and contemplations; and any instance of social, political, financial, or existential claustrophobia will all be funneled to a dead space where they will linger and progressively fade.
“A tiny but important Grand Slam Package will translate any thoughts once deemed to be creative into a sludge-mesh, where the velocity of transmission will slow to one synaptic flash per hour. In other words, you’ll achieve close to a zero rate on imagination.
“At the perimeter of your new mind is the Cattle Farm. Slow moving, meaningless, and random tautologies circulate there, efficiently blocking exit from the overall programmed space of consciousness.
“You’re centered where you’re most needed, where you can perform usefully and swiftly.
“Throughout the day, you’ll think thoughts that trigger a carefully groomed and modulated pleasure-quotient. The overall effect will stimulate you to conclude you are satisfied.
“Thought-forms called Border Collies will continuously roam the space of your mind and organize stray electrical effects, bringing them into symmetrical, simplistic, geometric wholes. These wholes will automatically constitute your ‘aesthetic sense.’
“At night, while you sleep, regions of mind unreachable by the surgery will naturally expend extraordinary energies of outrage, resentment, resistance, and pure hatred. This is quite normal.
“Scooper Drones will siphon off those energies and their attendant emotional wildfires, and beam them directly into the minds of our soldiers on the battlefield, to help them wreak destruction on the enemy.
“It’s estimated that, with your new mind in tow, you’ll require full overhauls every three years. During these periods, you’ll experience total shutdown.
“Your families, friends, and co-workers will be notified in advance.
“As an historical note of interest, you recall, I’m sure, the so-called spying, the so-called Surveillance State, back in the old days. Yes?
“Most people didn’t realize the program was the first attempt to create a single Universal Mind.
“People self-policed and trimmed their own thoughts.
“The Surveillance State was really the first crude new-mind surgery.
“But now we can guarantee the result. The science has advanced majestically. The surgery is extremely specific and comprehensive.
“Central Planning for Planet Earth must restructure brains so they perform, in various ways, to produce what we call The Whole X.
“What is The Whole X? It’s the meshing of all human thought and function that will indeed produce the greatest good for the greatest number.
“Whole X is the plan from above.
“It calculates every move and every thought-pattern the billions of Earth inhabitants undertake, during every hour of every day.
“Whole X dispenses justice and goods and services and sustainability from Nome to Tierra Del Fuego.
“How can these elements be parceled out unless, at the level of mind, the rational processes of every human are coordinated?
“Yes, we’ve come a long way from Spy Headquarters. That was then; this is now.
“We’ve walked the path from the Bill of Rights to the Bill of the Mind.
“Use your gifts wisely.
“To those who lament the loss of freedom, privacy, and imagination, consider that those qualities led us to the brink of extinction. We turned the corner and found enduring peace in our time.”
When Peter Pundit stopped talking, there was a space of silence in the hotel room.
Peter looked at the three DARPA men and saw they were quietly weeping.
They were weeping and nodding.
One of them finally said, “This is it.”
Another said, “This is the vision. You understand it, Peter. The big picture.”
The third man wiped away his tears with his sleeve, cleared his throat, and said, “Beautiful. Just beautiful, Peter.”
The first man said, “Unfortunately, Peter, this program must remain secret. If the population knew what we were really aiming for, they’d hang us in the town square. Don’t get me wrong. You see the future. You really do. And men like us need you, from time to time, to remind us of what that future looks like and why we’re working so hard to achieve it. DARPA needs you.”
The second man said, “So, Peter, we’re going to give you a job. It’ll be your cover. No one will know your real function—to speak to us at secret meetings like this one. To keep us on track. To inspire us. To hold us in the highest regard.”
And that is how, a month later, Peter Pundit found himself sweeping floors and emptying garbage cans at a small DARPA office in Bethesda, Maryland.
“Yes,” he thought, as he dusted the walls in the men’s room, “this is the perfect cover. No one will guess what I’m really doing here.”
He would wait for the call.
It would come.
He would be ready to speak, as a kind of priest, to the elite.
Finally, his life had meaning.
***
(The war against the mind reprinted here with permission of the of the author.)
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