You’ve time-traveled for a long, long time. You lived through famines, plagues, wars and the occasional inquisition.

You’ve even witnessed Oswald not shoot Kennedy.

Maybe.

You’ve witnessed heretics burned at the stake, volcanoes crammed with virgins, and a mass sacrifice on Roanoke Island.

You've seen so much crap that very few things can surprise anymore.

At least that's what you tell yourself.

Forbidden City

You’re in Tienanmen, China, and the last emperor is about to be taken to the forbidden city to receive the message from the heavens and be crowned as their supreme ruler.

But back then you didn't know that he’ll the last emperor China will ever have. Nobody did.

That dynasty had ruled for over two hundred and seventy years as million upon millions of souls lived for the sole purpose of serving them.

The young emperor is now at the temple of heaven. He’s barely a child, yet they say that the fortunes of the entire earth and universe depend on the Son of Heaven.

How can you expect so much from a kid?

He’s so young and impressionable that he would believe in anything he's told, and now he’s waiting for his big moment.

“So when do I get to speak to the heavens?”

The Manchurian Candidate

His family claimed the mandate of the heavens in 1643, and since then millions upon millions of poor souls fell prey to the same ridiculous joke.

The way to win is to spend your life serving the ruling class and sacrifice this ephemeral life on earth for a promise of riches in the heavens.

The oldest con in history of the world. Rinse and repeat.

But you keep your thoughts to yourself, you don’t want to upset the balance, you’re merely the watcher.

“So when do I get to speak to the heavens?” Asks the kid emperor one more time.

Blank stares everywhere, everyone is hesitant. The empress takes a deep look at the kid and tells him:

The dirty secret everyone in the family knows, and everyone else in the empire ignores, is that...

She pauses. The suspense is killing me.

“You see, we don’t really talk to the heavens.”

Hysterical laughter irrupts across the place.

It’s all a damn joke. It always has been.

You think about the millions upon millions of people who let their entire lives revolve around those fables for centuries without even daring to question them.

Almost three centuries of brutal tyranny and for what? A celestial phone line that has never existed?

But no one will ever believe that their rulers lied to them, because you know, sociopaths are notorious for their brutal honesty.

You keep watching, generation after generation, civilization after civilization… And you watch them all of them succumb to the same.

A Sci-Fi story that defies every single law of the universe, and which main premise is to promise the bliss of imaginary certainty in exchange for servitude.

Locked Inside a Holy War

For the glory of Rome, For Mother Russia, for the Third Reich, for the Fourth Reich…

The title may change from time to time but the song remains the same, the song always remains the same.

Some may even call it a Modus Operandi.

The truth is, all those rivers of blood were never spilled for God, nor for the country, nor even for that piece of fabric hanging on poles that everyone seems to be so excited about.

“We did it for Antarctica!”

― “No, you didn’t. You did it for the ruling class. Just like any other generation before you.”

But you can’t say that. You keep your thoughts to yourself and watch.

That’s all you can do, keep watching.

You watch country after country, century after century, and everybody keeps getting enchanted by the same damn hypnotizing song.

Each of them so sure of their realness, and none of them will ever entertain the thought that they have been lied to.

They read and read about all sorts of past civilizations whose entire existence revolved around a damn lie yet somehow, they all believe themselves to immune.

They all believe themselves to be the anomaly despite all signs to the contrary.

Until it’s too late when the rivers are filled with tears and silence drowns the screams.

“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

― Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841.

Unpaid Employees of the War Division

Fake news is not a new phenomenon, it wasn’t sprung out of thin air in the past year.

Where do we even start? Brian Williams? Jessica Lynch? The Incubator babies in the Gulf War?

Nah, we must be the anomaly. Surely, we must be the only civilization in human history who hasn’t been lied to.

Cough, Cough.. Tonkin.

Either that, or fake news is a more propagated phenomenon than we previously thought.

Whatever you choose to believe don’t let that damn song affect your life and make you hate other people.

There is no us VS them, no conservatives VS liberals, no immigrants VS patriots, there is no conspiracy theorists VS sheeple…

Or whatever “us” versus “them” crap we’re being sold this time.

Say no, to the oldest con in history of the world.

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