Full Black - Brad Thor [30]
“They knew they needed to change the way Americans saw themselves. It’s ideological subversion, plain and simple. To get it to take hold, though, they needed to begin planting this new way of thinking in the most fertile minds they could get a hold of.”
“Which means kids,” said Ralston.
“Precisely,” Salomon replied. “That’s why Standing and the foundations aligned with him have been such heavy contributors to educational endowments. It’s the golden rule. He who controls the gold controls the rules, or in this case, the curricula.
“But it wasn’t enough to simply plant this new ideology. For it to blossom, it had to grow without being challenged. Hence the disappearance of civics classes and the portrayal of American history through the lens of imperialism and aggression. Instead of social studies, children were taught studies in social justice with America repeatedly shown as the bad guy.”
“How long has this been going on?” Ralston broke in.
“Decades,” replied Salomon. “The students subjected to Standing’s propaganda are now adults. They’re everywhere you look—business, the media, government, even teaching successive generations of kids in our schools.”
“Couldn’t they be deprogrammed?” asked Ralston. “I’m sure it’d be a monumental task, but—”
The movie producer shook his head. “They’re completely immune to anything that deviates from their ideological perception of reality and what they have been taught is the ‘real’ truth. The lens they look through life at has forever been altered. It’s both terrifying and brilliant in its totality.”
Ralston nodded. It was terrifying.
“On top of indoctrinating kids,” said Salomon, “Standing wanted to get as many people dependent upon the government as possible. Government handouts, even for corporations, are like heroin. Most people, once they’re hooked, remain hooked and don’t even realize it. They rationalize that they’re entitled to the handouts.
“And the politicians are just as addicted, except they’re addicted to power, and to increase their power, they need to keep doling out more and more handouts. It doesn’t matter if we can’t afford the handouts. They’ll keep borrowing and printing money, running the country deeper into debt in order to keep the heroin flowing. It’s a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle.
“In fact, one of the most apropos political observations I have ever read is that a democracy can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From the moment that realization takes hold, history shows that the majority of the people will always vote for the candidate promising the most goodies from the public treasury.
“History also shows us that once a democracy goes down this road, things never end well. Each and every single time, the democracy collapses. It always happens. It collapses over loose fiscal policy, and democracy is always followed by dictatorship. And guess what the dictator promises?”
“Utopia?” Ralston replied.
Salomon shook his head. “No. When democracy collapses, fear, violence, and uncertainty fill the void. In essence, it’s chaos, and that’s what the dictator preys upon. The people are so terrified that they will agree to trade anything, even the most precious possession they have—their liberty—in exchange for a return to order. But when order is restored, freedom is never seen by those citizens again.”
“So that’s Standing’s goal,” said Ralston. “But how does he intend to get there? How the hell could he force America to collapse?”
“That’s the tricky part,” Salomon replied. “Historically, when democracies have collapsed it’s because they were already unstable to begin with, like us. Then, some sort of crisis, or a group of crises come together in such a way that they push the democracy over the brink. They can come in any form. Often, it’s some sort of black swan event.”
“Like the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan,” stated Ralston.
“That’s a perfect example. The 9/11 attacks were another. Basically, a black swan is something that no one would have ever expected to materialize, which