After reading through recent news events regarding the group 'Anonymous' this past ramble seemed quite fitting. It is highly sarcastic, but hey, that's me. ;)
Once again, none of this is not meant as a serious portrayal of my beliefs, but a highly sarcastic and somewhat over dramatic commentary on power and those who try, through any means necessary, to attain it.
Giving knowledge is giving power. The best way to get power over a people is to restrict which knowledge they receive. This must be done subtly as downright denying access to knowledge tends to arouse suspicion and the masses may revolt. However by gradual watering down of the content of the information they receive one can actually appear to offer better education to the masses while rendering them less knowledgeable. By the same gradual process it is also possible to change the content of the information to better suit the purposes of those in power. History can be tweaked and given a certain perspective that puts recent developments in a better light. Psychology, and Biology are great friends to the person in pursuit of power as well. Teach people about the body and minds of others as something to be studied, not as something to be respected or revered. Sciences in general are important in this endeavor as they greatly assist in compartmentalizing and desensitizing of bonds of humanity and morality. By the end of a very short period of time, the pursuit of knowledge can be so molded as to become nothing more than a donkey forever chasing a carrot. Those under your charge will be trained to chase after success without ever gaining anything meaningful from it. They will become compliant workers with low expectations of personal worth. In this way you will not take power, but have it handed to you. People in this situation need a ruler.
To further attain your goals there are further steps to take. The above process will be a great beginning, but there will still be a relatively high chance of a person or persons taking their education into their own hands and thus corrupting your work. It is therefore necessary to pollute the knowledge base so completely that when searching for a book/magazine/article on any given topic there is at least five times the chance of coming across the ideas that you would prefer they believe. Over time slowly weed out those that have contrary messages. It is important not to take them all at the beginning, as once again this would cause alarm and would provide opportunity for rebellion. As the texts are considered obsolete they will be gladly tossed aside. This will be especially easy for texts on science, philosophy, social sciences. It will be a bit trickier with history and religion since the texts they cling to are so very old and so filled with contrary ideas. These, rather than attempting to pry from rebellious fingers (which always provides far to much attention and commendation to the person troubling you), simply make irrelevant, outdated, unwanted. Slowly poison the minds of those learning.
This can be achieved most easily through popular culture and the media. Flippant remarks about the irrelevance of these subjects to their lives will work well, but even better is the demonizing of those who hold to these beliefs. Movies in which religious fanatics torture and kill will serve your purpose well. News of them cracking and going on maniacal rampages (someone must get hurt badly as well) will help as well in making people who cling to these ideas seem the outsiders that they are. The best however, will be parodies. Simply mock them. Make them appear backward and behind. No one wants to appear behind. This will be more easily achieved through comedy shows, sitcoms, late night news anchors, comic strips, etc… Make sure not to directly insult, however, as once again this gets the insulted to much attention and might bring them sympathizers. The objective is to make it as unattractive as possible while giving as little information as possible.
Now that I have briefly covered some basic strategies for the control of knowledge, let us move on to motivation.
It is incredibly difficult to motivate a person who is content. Thus contentedness is one of your most powerful weapons. This requires food, work hours that are long enough to leave them with little free time, but short enough to make them feel lucky to be in their position, stable lifestyles, money, ways to squander the money, and a sense of freedom. Let people believe they can do whatever they want and more time then not they will chose to do nothing. Look at a college student’s idea of a day off. They sleep till noon, spend two hours preparing themselves for the day, refuse to better their mind or body, eat till they are ready to puke, drink till they are ready to puke, and then collapse back into bed. This is their idea of freedom. Use this against them. Tell them they are free to make their own decisions. Insist that you will not interfere in their business except to improve their working conditions, increase their pay, lower their taxes, reform their health care, and revitalize their education. All of the above, you will do. This is important. The people are not quite stupid enough not to notice a lack of change. Therefore you must change things continually until they lose track of what changes have been made. Start with education. Insist on more testing. Testing encourages mindless repetition. It keeps students busy, gives the illusion of learning, and promotes an unhealthy focus on arbitrary number assignments. This is what you want. Once you have parental permission to sort students by ‘knowledge’ or ‘ability’ then they have given you the right to do with their children as you will. They will seldom again bug you about what you teach their child as long as his/her test scores show him/her to be smarter than the average child.
After you have ‘reformed’ education, move on to health care. Health care is essential. Only after taking over health care can you neutralize the growing debt that you face. People will pay anything when they feel that their health and safety are on the line. Therefore offer cheap healthcare that is inconvenient, in order to prove to the masses that you have lowered the cost of healthcare. Then offer alternatives to this healthcare that are substantially more expansive. Rather than waiting in line for two months for treatment of a condition and paying X amount of money, a person will, if the means are attainable, pay several times that price for immediate treatment, especially if this treatment is from a ‘prestigious’ clinic, or a ‘respected’ doctor. Therefore, in order to ‘encourage the use of this new and innovative medical system,’ tax doctors and clinics that choose to remain outside of its control. This will drive their costs up, thus driving their prices up, and thus providing you with more tax dollars through their practice. This alone will be able to fuel a large amount of the ‘medical reform’ cheap healthcare. However it will not be enough. It is essential to decrease your population base. You must decrease the amount of elderly. The elderly will give you the most problems with all these changes anyway, so their loss will be minimal to your success. However they take up a huge amount of the medical spending on the exorbitant amount of prescriptions that they take and procedures that they require just to keep them going. This will be most easily remedied by the moving of the elderly population into ‘care centers.’ Nothing kills off the elderly so fast as being forgotten, useless, and bored literally to death. Remove them from all who profess to care for them and they will drop like flies.
Keep your public entertained (since they always need a good bit of drama and gossip to get them through the day), with celebrity scandals, and well publicized murders. Scape goats will often get you out of a pickle. If the populace gets restless stir up a good bit of drama and then come in and clean it up. You will be applauded the hero no matter if you started the mischief or not.
The media will be incredibly important to have on your side. Flatter them, pay them if necessary. They are crucial to your success. A well publicized scandal has ruined many a promising politician. If it becomes necessary, find more extreme ways to keep your secrets, however if you give the media no reason to distrust you or dislike you and give them plenty of stories on your positive side you may be able to keep them from looking at all. As every powerful politician in history has learned, there are those who seek, and they often find. Bury your secrets deep, and bury the secret keepers with them. Place yourself in the media spotlight whenever the occasion requires with a smile on your face and some well practiced compliments and you will win their hearts. However much you may want to disagree with me here, trust me that appearance is everything. This most definitely includes your physical appearance. Makeovers are your friend. Get well tailored clothing. Cover the grey, at least at first, and practice that smile in front of the mirror. If you cannot convince your wait staff then you will not convince the media. You may think that getting rid of media all together would be an easier course of action but trust me when I say that this is a mistake. The established media is so eager to win your favor that with time and patience you will have them eating out of your hand and they will almost singlehandedly convince your entire populace of your good intentions and of their desire to back you in your every efforts. Get rid of the media and you will have sniper media on call and at the ready. They will come out of the woodwork and fade back into it with impossible cunning and speed, they will be unplacateable, they will find the skeletons in your closet and unearth and bring them to light. They will counter your every move with malcontent and will stir up the populace making them untrusting. As with knowledge, if you make it appear easy for them to access then they will stop looking so hard. Make sure to appear whenever possible in the company of animals, women, and children (at the beginning) to make yourself seem relatable and attractive. The media will suck it up. They will follow you around like puppies as long as you continue to give them stories. As you progress, however, you must abandon the facade of the family man and take up the mantel of the true leader. Everyone loves the family man, but they revere the strong leader. Once you have the media completely hooked, move towards the more powerful, lone, figure that inspires obedience.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. -Abraham Lincoln
