How to Take Control

If you want to take control, use fear as leverage and ruthless action to nail it down. Fear is the key, as Alistair MacLean once wrote.

Fear? Easy. Plant doubts, water them with possibilities, and feed them with hints and allegations. Soon you’ll have suspicion, dread, and fear; a garden you can harvest at will.

People don’t know much. They are not confident in what they know. They will listen to confident assertions. They will consider suggestions that sound reasonable. They will blame scapegoats rather than examine their own faults.

Interpreting things according to prior vague threats is easy. Bad things happen all the time. Cite them and offer reminders of previous warnings. Vague warnings work better but specific warnings can be changed in retrospect. The key thing is to hook emotion to event.

Do this and thought is short circuited. Fan panic’s flames. Shout fire in all theaters.

Once they stand, make them run. Worsen all stampedes. Increase chaos and decrease reliable information. Question real sources and point at false ones.

To think, people must be informed. Keep them not uninformed but misinformed. Half-truths work better with whole lies. Contradict yourself continually, especially in your emotional tone. Alternate panic and confidence, desperation and cockiness. Cower as you strut. Preen as you dissemble.

Confusion maintains anxiety. The unsure are more easily led. Offer false hopes and yank them away erratically. Make impossible promises and grandiose claims. Salt them with bizarre and scary details.

We’ve watched Cheney’s chaingang and Bush’s pushers use these methods to great effect. Neo con scum steal elections and laugh at even the idea of honest recounts. Nazism is back with a vengeance. Fascism dominates media distractions, corporate looting of tax coffers, and kangaroo courts of no appeal. Sadists high and low rejoice as rendition feeds torture’s sausage grinder. Color pictures of the fun go straight to the top and same-sex sex slaves are sneaked in after hours to enhance the enjoyment.

They don’t care if we know. Arrogance is part of taking control. Did Al Capone back down when tax law loopholes tangled him in jail time? Did Mussolini lower his chin when the meat-hooks came out? Did Hitler leave witnesses when he dodged the Russians near the bunker? Did Stalin stop murdering rivals, enemies, and suspected conspirators when his statues fell?

Never show even a blink of self-doubt. Never apologize, backtrack, or rescind. Do not admit error, ever. Do not allow investigation of your biggest crimes, even as you ignore charges of smaller crimes.

Use your position for self-gain and self-protection. Shield cohorts until you can eliminate them permanently. Reward loyalty above all else, and punish disloyalty in draconian ways that go well beyond sanity.

Embrace terror. It is your plinth, your foundation, your keystone. It is your blunt instrument, too. Hammer with it and resort to it continually.

Total information awareness is vital. Spy and reward informants. Punish squealers and whistle blower beyond all reason. Make entire families suffer for one person’s transgression against you.

Be bold in your statements and ignore facts. Attack reason and logic as quibblers’ games. Refute science with faith and belief. Strike poses instead of taking stances. Undermine and undercut anything that benefits others, in any way possible.

Choose corruption over competence. The corrupt can be controlled. Make fellow criminals your partners and avoid the honest and the fair as if they are fallen, sparking high-voltage lines. Anyone you can’t bribe, coerce, or blackmail is of no use to you. They are, in fact, threats. Eliminate them when you find them, these so-called honorable, honest people.

Once you have power, abuse it egregiously. Take it further than anyone dares believe possible. If observers gasp, do more. If they rebel, crush them.

In fact, crush them anyway, just because you can. Unexercised power is power lost.

And remember, any slice of pie you let others grab is one less for you. Grab the whole pie. Grab the bakery. Grab the mills, farms, and land. Grab the air. Grab it all, and keep grabbing more.

More is all you ever want. More should be all you ever take. And what you give is demands. Always more demands.

These simple principles will allow anyone to take control. Not everyone can implement them, or get away with them, but anyone is free to try. Isn’t that the glory of Rule By Fear?

And if you can bully someone, what good are you, really?


/// /// ///