Dr. Steven Hassan, the cult expert, interviewed Dr. Dustin Rozario Steinhagen on “How Tech Companies Use Your Data to Hack Your Mind.” It was interesting for a while. His guest started talking about Cambridge Analytica, romances scams, and privacy rights. They lost me at China and surveillance capitalism, though. It’s as if they’ve never heard of the Snowden disclosures or the National Security Agency. COINTELPRO? FBI infiltration of mosques? FYI, the social credit system doesn’t exist! How’s your credit score, BTW? Have you bought your luxury condo and sports car, yet?

They went on to talk about nudging and inoculation theory. You know, so we won’t believe that evil Russian propaganda because the corporate media and our government never lie to us! Russia’s losing, right? Okay, they didn’t mention Russia. They were actually talking about MAGA. The thing is, I don’t see either nudging or the inoculation theory as any being any different from the psychological manipulation that cults are guilty of!

Who determines what the truth is? Bill Gates? George Soros? Elon Musk? Jeff Bezos? To them, they’re benevolent people who would never lie to us plebs! No, Gates isn’t buying up all the farmland in the U.S.—it’s China! You know that it’s antisemitic to point out that Soros helped to fund the color revolutions in the Eastern bloc, right? Israel isn’t committing genocide against the Palestinians, which is why Zio-Musk is censoring people on Twitter! How dare you suggest that, you Daesh lover! Bezos never cheated on his ex, either!

Please keep in mind that capitalism is wonderful and the only reason that you live paycheck to paycheck is that you haven’t pulled up your bootstraps far enough! Maybe you should aim higher while pulling them up because they’re expecting you to take it on the chin!

Please note that I’m being sarcastic about much of the above. I love capitalism! /s