I find the term “psyopcracy”, coined by Cathy Vogan to describe the rule by psyops or psychological operations, concerning, to say the least. The purpose of the United States psychological operations is to influence audiences’ emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, ultimately reinforcing behavior perceived to be favorable to U.S. objectives. William Casey, the C.I.A. director under Ronald Reagan, said, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” As a result, American people are constantly subject to psychological operations disguised as “the news.” Because of this, American citizens are unable to decipher what is real and what is fake.
As we have seen, U.S. intelligence officials have been known to feed journalists disinformation to create a false narrative that misleads the public and covers up what is genuinely taking place. As time passes, the constant reinforcement of these lies becomes entrenched in the public’s minds and, ultimately, becomes accepted as unquestionable truth. However, there are instances when psyops don’t involve inserting false information but rather omitting what is true. This leaves people with the false impression that they have the correct information while, in reality, they are being manipulated.
For example, in Vietnam, the American people were led to believe that the United States was winning the war when, in fact, we were losing. Since then, several false stories have been implanted into people’s minds to start and maintain a war (Iraq). In the case of Ukraine, people have been misled into believing that an unprovoked Russian madman began the war last February, deliberately ignoring the fact that the war began in 2014 after a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev led Russian speakers in Donbass to declare independence, after which the coup government militarily attacked them. Several other facts have been removed from the story, such as Russia’s proposed treaties with the U.S. and NATO last December, which would have prevented Russia’s intervention in the Ukrainian civil war. However, none of these events are ever covered in the news. Unless you are an active critical thinker and uncoverer, many citizens will never hear about events like these.
It is essential to understand that many people are subject to psyops, which makes it challenging to tell the truth. Telling the truth becomes a formidable task since you become the one who is “out of step, and you are the one that seems to be mad.”