MAGA: You Are In A Propaganda-Induced Psychosis. Wake Up.

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Photo by Natilyn Hicks Photography on Unsplash

Listen to me. I am a very serious person. I try to be deliberate about the big decisions in my life in accordance with my values. Writing this stupid Substack makes a hell of a lot less money than my old job in Silicon Valley. I gave up career, income, professional relationships—not because I wanted to, but because intellectual honesty required it. I’m not here for money or status or team loyalty. I’m here because some truths matter more than comfort.

I want to address you as both a fellow human being and a fellow citizen and explain to you what I seriously believe about you: You are trapped in a false reality.

The way you understand the world—built up by scrolling through TikTok, sharing Facebook posts, forwarding chain emails across retirement homes, and all the ways you build up a picture of the world in your head—you’re living in a simulation. It isn’t real. The woke mob isn’t after you. There is no deep state. Donald Trump is a crook, and deep down you know it.

What are you doing? Are you proud of what this man is doing in your name? You tell your children and grandkids these are the men they should look up to?

I know the tone in which I’m writing may sound condescending. It’s not. It’s serious. I’m just being serious. I know people aren’t used to people acting serious anymore. But this is just me being serious. To be clear: in my opinion, we should be more serious because there are very serious threats and problems in the world. And I think we should be serious about them.

I Know You Can’t Hear This

I know what you’re thinking right now. “This is just another liberal telling me I’m stupid. Another elite looking down on me. Another person who doesn’t understand what we’re fighting against.”

I’m not doing that. I’m telling you something harder to hear: you’ve been captured by a system designed to capture you. And the capture is so complete you can’t see you’re captured.

This isn’t about intelligence. Some of the smartest people I know are in this psychosis. This isn’t about education. This isn’t about class or geography or culture.

This is about what happens when your information environment gets systematically manipulated to produce a version of reality that serves power while convincing you it serves you.

How Did You Get Here?

Think back. Ten years ago, would you have defended a president conducting military strikes without Congressional authorization? Would you have said “someone needs to lay down the law” when gridlock happens? Would you have pivoted from constitutional violations to trans sports and thought that was serious reasoning?

Something changed. Not in your values. In your reality.

The information you consume—every day, every hour—has been carefully curated to:

• Make you angry about culture war issues

• Make you terrified of manufactured threats

• Make you believe your side is under attack

• Make you excuse any violation by your leaders

• Make you unable to see you’re doing this

This is propaganda. Not the crude kind. The sophisticated kind that works by making you think you’re thinking independently while actually following a script.

The Symptoms

You exhibit specific symptoms that reveal the psychosis:

You cannot evaluate your own side’s actions on their merits. Everything is relative to what the other side did. “Your team” becomes the answer to every critique. This is not independent thinking—it’s propaganda-induced inability to think independently.

You pivot to culture war when confronted with constitutional violations. Trump conducts illegal military strikes → you respond by talking about trans sports. This isn’t you being strategic. This is your brain following a script it doesn’t know it’s following.

You’ve lost the ability to distinguish urgent from irrelevant. You think trans issues are more important than presidential war without authorization. You think woke corporations are bigger threats than constitutional collapse. Your sense of priority has been systematically inverted.

You accuse critics of your side of supporting the very outcomes those critiques aim to prevent. “You oppose illegal boat strikes = you love drug dealers.” This is not reasoning. This is propaganda logic: anyone who questions our methods must support our enemies.

You claim to be the serious, well-adjusted adult while exhibiting these symptoms. The lack of self-awareness isn’t accident—it’s the goal. Successful propaganda makes you unable to recognize you’ve been propagandized.

What You’ve Lost

The tragedy isn’t just that you’re wrong about specific issues. The tragedy is what you’ve surrendered to be wrong.

You used to be capable of:

• Evaluating actions on their own merits

• Holding your own side accountable

• Distinguishing important from trivial

• Recognizing when you’re being manipulated

• Thinking independently

You still are capable of these things. The capacity is still there. But the propaganda has convinced you that using these capacities would make you disloyal to your tribe.

So you’ve voluntarily surrendered your judgment. Not because someone forced you. But because the information environment you’re in rewards tribal loyalty and punishes independent thinking.

The Matrix Has You

Remember The Matrix? Neo lived in simulated reality while thinking it was real. The machines fed him sensory inputs that felt completely authentic. He couldn’t see the simulation because he was inside it.

That’s where you are. The simulation isn’t technological—it’s informational. Every scroll, every share, every algorithm-curated feed—it builds a version of reality that feels authentic while systematically distorting what’s actually happening.

You think you’re seeing clearly. You think the people warning you are the ones who can’t see. That’s how good the simulation is.

What’s Actually Happening

While you’re focused on culture war grievances and algorithmic outrage:

Trump is conducting military strikes without Congressional authorization. This violates the Constitution the Founders wrote specifically to prevent this exact scenario. You know this. You would oppose it if Obama did it. But your information environment has convinced you opposing it now would be disloyal.

Admirals are resigning because the strikes are hitting boats “not showing immediate hostile intent.” The people who know most about what’s actually happening think it’s wrong enough to end their careers over. But your information environment tells you they’re the deep state.

American citizens are being detained without warrants. Fourth Amendment violations documented by ProPublica. Children marched out barefoot. Apartment numbers written on foreheads. Constitutional protections you claim to defend being systematically demolished. But your information environment tells you this is necessary to protect the border.

The Epstein files document Trump’s relationship with a child sex trafficker. Emails showing coordination, strategic planning, years of friendship. Not allegations—documents. But your information environment has convinced you this is just partisan attack.

You’re defending all of this. Not because you think it’s right. But because the propaganda has convinced you that admitting your side is wrong would mean the other side wins.

The Cost

You’re not just defending bad policy. You’re losing yourself.

Every time you deflect from constitutional violations to culture war, you become a little less capable of independent moral reasoning.

Every time you excuse your side’s actions by pointing to the other side’s failures, you surrender a little more of your capacity to hold anyone accountable.

Every time you perform loyalty for your tribe, you become a little more hollowed out—the mask becoming the face, the performance becoming the identity.

You’re losing what made you human: the ability to see clearly and respond honestly.

To Your Children and Grandchildren

What are you going to tell them when they ask why you defended this?

Not the policy disagreements—they’ll understand people disagreeing about taxes or trade or foreign policy.

But how will you explain defending military strikes without Congressional authorization? How will you explain excusing constitutional violations by pointing to culture war grievances? How will you explain the Epstein connections you dismissed as partisan attacks?

Your grandchildren will read the documents. They’ll see what you defended. They’ll ask: “Did you know? And if you knew, why did you defend it anyway?”

What will you tell them? That you were defending your team? That the woke mob was the real threat? That trans sports mattered more than constitutional law?

Will you be proud of that answer?

The Choice

You’re at a decision point. You probably can’t see it because the propaganda makes every moment feel like continuation rather than choice. But this is a choice:

Option A: Keep following the script. Keep defending the indefensible. Keep losing yourself in the performance. Keep letting algorithms tell you what to be angry about. Keep surrendering your judgment to maintain tribal belonging.

Option B: Wake up. Look at what you’re actually defending. Evaluate actions on their merits. Hold your own side accountable. Remember what you used to believe about constitutional constraints. Use the capacity for independent thought you’ve been told is disloyalty.

This isn’t about switching teams. You can still be conservative. You can still want secure borders and limited government and traditional values.

But you cannot be those things while defending constitutional violations. You cannot claim to love America while supporting what the Founders built the Constitution to prevent.

I’m Not Your Enemy

I know your information environment has told you people like me are the enemy. Coastal elites. Liberal media. The people trying to destroy America.

I’m not your enemy. I’m your fellow citizen trying to reach you before it’s too late.

I don’t want to defeat you. I want you to wake up. To see what you’re defending. To recognize you’ve been captured by a system designed to capture you. To use the independent judgment you’ve surrendered.

Because what happens next affects all of us. Your children and mine. Your grandchildren and mine. The country we both claim to love.

The Truth You Know

Deep down, you know Trump is a crook. You know the Epstein connections are real. You know the boat strikes are illegal. You know admirals don’t resign for no reason. You know constitutional violations are wrong regardless of who commits them.

You know all of this. The propaganda hasn’t made you forget—it’s just convinced you that admitting it would be disloyal.

But loyalty to what? To a man who’s using you? To a tribe that demands you surrender your judgment? To a performance that’s costing you your humanity?

Or loyalty to truth? To constitutional principles? To the capacity for independent thought that makes you human?

Wake Up

The Matrix has you. The propaganda-induced psychosis is real. The false reality you’re living in serves power while convincing you it serves you.

But you can still wake up. The capacity is still there. You just have to choose to use it.

Look at what you’re defending. Really look. Not through the lens of tribal loyalty or algorithmic outrage. But with the independent judgment you used to have.

Are you proud of this? Would you want your children to be like this? Is this who you wanted to become?

I don’t think it is. I think you’re better than this. I think you’re capable of seeing clearly and responding honestly. I think you’re still human under all the propaganda.

Prove me right. Wake up. While there’s still time.

Two plus two equals four. Trump is breaking the law. The Epstein connections are documented. Constitutional violations are wrong. You know this.

The only question is whether you’ll admit you know it.

Fellow human. Fellow citizen. Wake up.

The circus continues. But you don’t have to keep performing in it.

You can still choose to see clearly.

Please choose.

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Go Deeper into the Circus

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