“It's weird how the name outlives the person, the signifier outlasts the signified, the symbol the symbolized.” 

This is one of the famous final quotes of Tender Branson in Chuck Palahniuk’s postmodern 1999 novel ‘Survivor.’ A story about an ex-cult member turned terrorist who -upon his final terrorist act- talks into the black box of an airplane he hijacked as it descends into Australia. 

On its face, this quote highlights the power of propaganda and how it appropriates truth into untruths without you even realizing the “weird” irony at play. It highlights how propaganda is a conspiracy-in-action. But to be aware of it in real time, you must understand irony.

Understanding all the dimensions of irony is the most important weapon any critical thinker can have in a post-truth world. It’s like having the power to see through a double-sided mirror that everyone else just perceives as a mirror. In seeing through the veneer, you see the illusion at hand and how it manipulates those that can’t see through it, particularly, by blinding them into a complacency with cognitive dissonance.

The word irony is synonymous with opposite. If something is ironic, it’s because an opposite effect is taking place either beknownst or unbeknownst to you. The easiest way to understand irony though is through understanding it in its simplest form, which is sarcasm. What makes sarcasm (and irony) so powerful is that it’s a vehicle for plausible deniability. It allows you to both express views and not express views simultaneously. The broader umbrella that sarcasm falls under is a term called Verbal Irony. Verbal Irony is when you say one thing but mean another. That “another” can be the opposite or an alternative depending on the verbal irony type. For instance, propaganda is a type of verbal irony in that it is a conscious misleading. Thus, any other type of conscious misleading is considered verbal irony like disinformation, manipulation, etc. But one of the newer forms of verbal irony that best encapsulates the propaganda of our post-truth moment is a new type of conscious misleading known as gaslighting.

Over the last decade the term has given a voice to a new rhetoric that’s bewilderingly defining our time. And only those who understand irony are able to “see through the mirror” it casts in real time.

“Are you sure today is the day your phone says it is? How do you know it’s not a Gregorian-calendar based psy-op?” These questions best exemplify how gaslighting is used. Making you question your sense of what’s real either through interrogation, declaration or command. It has been the means by which the media and politicians alike have utilized a ‘slight of hand’ to misdirect the public’s attention away from what’s true and real for the sake of buying time to manufacture a consent retroactively.

Now the difference between disinformation and gaslighting is an important distinction to delineate here. Disinformation is when you knowingly are giving wrong information, but gaslighting is when you knowingly misinform. This is where plausible deniability comes into play because at its core it’s not only what influences irony, but it’s also what divides misinformation from disinformation. If I’m misinforming you I’m not consciously misleading you (hence plausible deniability), but if I disinform then I am consciously misleading you. Gaslighting utilizes the plausible deniability of misinforming in a dramatically ironic way, blurring the lines between fiction and reality like never before. 

In its traditional function, Dramatic Irony is a narration device used in fiction where the audience is in on a secret that a character(s) is not aware of in the story. Dramatic Irony is like an inside joke between the author and their audience. In our post-truth world, it seems this device has jumped off the pages of fiction and integrated into our zeitgeist. As, thanks to technological innovation, it seems special interest groups now have the power to author their own realities to widespread audiences, all the while unbeknownst to other divergent audiences. Creating dramatic irony silo's that continuously fold in on themselves until massive information gaps quake through society.

Because of this, gaslighting has now allowed racist ideologies to seep back into the mainstream fold via successful gaslighting counter-movements like Birtherism and the ‘All lives matter’ counter-mantra of the early '10s. It’s also allowed for cognitive dissonance to be mainstreamed via Hillary Clinton and the DNC's gaslighting Russiagate hoax & 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary "super delegate" debacle against Bernie Sanders, the gaslight sane-washing of the January 6th insurrection and subsequent election denialism, and the Biden administration’s economic recession denialism gaslighting that took place from January 2022 - June 2022 when, according to Statista, we had 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth that were actively suppressed in real time by the media. Some would argue the Covid era also fits into this gaslighting era. Regardless though, it is abundantly clear that gaslighting has eclipsed disinformation as the defining propaganda of the last decade plus. Truth has successfully been appropriated for untruths, and understanding irony is the only way to pre-emptively see the appropriations in real time.

Wyatt's Gaslight

In the history of American literature there have been many movements that have provided many psychological insights about their times, but none did so as spectacularly as Literary Realism. Born of the 19th century, Realism was a romantic response to enlightenment that emphasized emotion over reason. It aimed to depict the world as it was, not as we wished it to be. And unlike other literary movements of the time that aimed to make the same depictions (Naturalism), Realism was most concerned with truth, and the thinking was that human emotions spoke more to this truth than human reasoning ever could. So we must pedestal the nature of truth (not the truth of nature) in our story telling for the most spectacular insights.  

The most seminal Realist work of this time was Mark Twain’s ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ It was a story about a poor river boy embarking on various feral adventures in antebellum Missouri. As the story unfolds, the reader comes to see how cultural biases condition Finn’s understanding of truth, and in the end he rebels against these biases in favor of his lived personal truth (which was at odds with the public). In ‘Huck Finn’, Twain cleverly illustrates how truth is universal and can subjectively cut through a false objectivity. 

At the turn of the 20th century, this was the legacy of Realism: truth is objective, and can cut through a false subjective conditioning. Truth is infallible, but to be in tune to it in your time you have to have the courage of your convictions. What the next century in American literature proved was that this courage was actually rarer than imagined. Because yes, truth is truth. But what weight does that carry within the reality of the modern world? What does truth have to do with what’s real in the world? Matter of fact, what is real right now? Cause it’s obviously not truth.

And with those questions came the birth of their vetting through a literary movement known as the Modernist movement. Whose primary concern was defining reality. In the end, Modernism came to the conclusion that reality is centered only around what can be observed and understood through the senses (and truth is not that). Then came the Postmodern Movement in the late 20th century, a movement many would argue we’re still in the throws of, that’s primary concern was identifying the forces that control this manufactured reality we’re type-caste into. It’s a question that still persists today, as our manufactured reality has shifted into a distinct ‘hyper-real’ simulation thanks to technological augmentation. The postmodernist hope though is that it’s an illuminati-like force that controls everything and we can socially climb our way into their affiliation, but the truth is much darker and more sinister.

It was at the turn of the 2000s when I realized truth was over. The 2000 Presidential Election of George W Bush, followed by the beginning of the -quote unquote- War on Terror that was built on the false pretenses of “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” At the time, disinformation wasn’t a word, but it was a feeling. An eerie feeling creeping its way into the zeitgeist deeper and deeper with every passing year until its encapturing was undeniable. Nowadays the disinformation is realer than information itself, and truth is now just a byproduct of whatever you think.

And that is where the power lies, funneling the stream of your attention down engineered pathways via various tactics. We’re stuck in this momentum, with no end in sight. And the haunting postmodern truth is, the end is indeed in sight, but not to us...   

An Inconvenient Post-Truth

Secrets dictate more of what’s happening in the world around us than external expressions. This’ been proven over time thanks to research in the field of ‘implicit bias.’ It's proven our nerves communicate to us quicker than our words or thoughts do.

“Every Accusation is an Admission” has become a popularized rallying cry among liberals online in response to conservative viewpoints. The thinking goes: conservative speculations are just ‘veiled-tells’ that mask the secret truths they're indirectly expressing about themselves. It’s a shrewd but useful form of irony that keeps them one step ahead.

So what then is the biggest accusation conservatives hurl at liberals? What’s their go-to response to anything liberal? Ever since the Civil Rights movement, their main accusation against liberals has always centered around liberals being either “communist!”, “cultural marxist!” or a poetic combination of the two. What’s most ironic about these accusations though is that they actually are Freudian Slips on conservatives part. Proving the liberal rallying cry correct twofold; Because not only are they tells that conservatives today are actually communist, but they're also tells that conservatives today are actually Neo-liberal like democrats too. And since “communism” has always been seen as an extreme version of liberalism, that would mean that both the republicans and democrats of today are extreme communist?!?!? But how?!?

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, communism is an “economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and ...labor for the common advantage of all members.” 

The communist system centers around a community of “members” owning and operating everything to their leveraged advantage. The premise here is that everyone in a communist country is a ‘member,’ but, based on how its played out in history, communism has always ended up devolving into some form of engineered tribalism and/or authoritarianism.

What separates communism from fascism though is that communism is centered around an idea while fascism is centered around an ethnicity. To be short, communism would be a more effective system for tribalism to operate under than fascism because -at its core- communism is more pluralistic than fascism. Even if the uniting principle behind a communist system was something racist (hint, hint), communism would still be a better option to execute that systemic racism through than fascism because it’d be more inclusive in its allegiances, allowing for a broader tent of races to merge under it in comparison to a fascist model.

So to repeat, Neo-liberalism rules over both political parties today, and since its based in liberalism, that makes extremists on both sides communist. Now the ideology at the center of Conservative Communism and the ideology at the center of Liberal Communism would both be conditional to whatever their respective “membership” requirements would be, but differing ‘membership’ requirements would be a prerequisite for both.

Which brings us to the modern day paradox known as MAGA COMMUNISM:

According to The Guardian, MAGA COMMUNISM is “a [nativist] movement that combines elements of Marxism with right-wing populism. It promotes ideas such as anti-imperialism and working-class solidarity while often embracing contradictory beliefs, making it a fringe and controversial ideology.”

MAGA Communism is the Orwellian nightmare come to life. A disinformation doctrine that utilizes doublespeak and data ironically. Its a language of the occult, where words and phrases mean something alternate from their denotation for a desired effect that’s alternate from the uninitiated's understanding.  

From a modern policy standpoint, the biggest tell of a MAGA Communist is through the anti-imperialism, especially in regards to non-interventionist stances with Russia, Iran and China. Although the origins of MAGA Communism have been accredited to a dis-informer named Jackson Hinkle, it’s been popularized in modern media by Charismatic Christians like Tucker Carlson and his ilk. Who, ironically, have begun pivoting away from Donald Trump due to his perceived allegiances to an imperialistic order. 

Secret Wars

In Language Arts, there is a term called ‘Rhetoric.’ It means persuasion. If you’re being rhetorical, you’re being strategically persuasive. Unbeknownst to many, there is actually a structure to persuasion that can be studied through a multitude of mediums, but language the primary one. In Journalism, the study of rhetorical structure is absorbed into a broader discipline known as ‘Framing.’ And to understand the nature of framing, it is important to first understand the utility of a frame:

[ ]

All it does is establish a focal point for the onlooker to gaze through. Look through this frame -and in doing so- see what I want you to see. It seems like a forgettable premise, but in literature it’s the most important premise. Because by establishing where the audience is looking, you establish where their point of view (or point of reference) ends and begins, and thus mediate their discussions.

In modern news media, this symbolic “frame” used for framing has been coined ‘The Overton Window.’ It’s a zeitgeist term that describes where the collective focus of the news audience is at any given moment in time researched. Here is a look at the Overton Window for June 14th, 2025 in American News Media:

-----------------------
Democrat Congress Rep Murdered

‘No Kings’ Protest
              -->  <--
Trump Military Parade

Israel Preemptively Strikes Iran
-----------------------

Whoever has control of the Overton Window sets and drives the audience’s focus and topics of discussion. It’s a very subtle tactic, but effective in “manufacturing consent” of the audience. According to the Oxford Reference, ‘Manufactured Consent’ is:

“the acceptance of government policies by people in the USA on the basis of the partial picture of issues offered by the mass media, denying them access to alternative views which would lead them to [alternative viewpoints]. They present this as a propaganda model in which the mass media select material in relation to the values of those in power."

The term ‘Manufactured Consent’ was coined by a famous linguist named Noam Chomsky. The importance of language in framing can not be overstated enough, being that it is a linguist who coined the most important diagnostic that explains the gaslighting America is currently helpless to.

The Art of Framing

In a feeble display of strongman grandstanding, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry took it upon himself to virtue-signal atop a well watched sporting event. Proclaiming that -due to the LSU Women’s basketball team not being present for the national anthem ceremony before their game against the Iowa Hawkeyes- any student athlete in the state who doesn't partake in national anthem ceremonies will no longer have access to a college scholarship. 

	To be clear, it is not against the law to not stand during the national anthem let alone perform the national anthem at a sporting event in the first place. All it is, is a branding exercise meant to impose nationalism on the viewership. A nationalism that is our natural birthright and needs no performative imposing. But instead of just letting the natural be the natural, Landry authoritatively decided to grandstand and proclaim how he will now require new conditions on college scholarships that have nothing to do with college or scholarships? Further sowing the seeds of tribalism and obstructing young people's access to education.

All things being considered though, it is actually a savvy branding move by Landry but not for the reasons you’d think. Because by inserting himself into this diversely watched event, he is actually re-asserting a white savior complex upon the masses. 

Now the predictable reaction to this is to just dismiss it as mere antics. But in dismissing it, we actually implicitly concede to it when -instead- we should be countering it with an equal and opposite reaction (like demanding an apology for threatening access to free education). But yet and still, Landry feels as though what he is doing is correct patriotism. He feels as though he is mythologizing himself upon the right side of history in real time.

	Whatever the case though, the true history of patriotism in this country has long been hijacked by propagandist like Landry who induce factionalism on the populace instead of truth. According to propagandists like Landry, there isn’t just an objective history of patriotism in America. There is a history of correct patriotism and a history of incorrect patriotism. Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes displayed correct patriotism while Angel Reese and the LSU Tigers displayed incorrect patriotism with their acts. But the truth of the matter is that they both displayed two sides of the same patriotic coin regardless of intent. It's just as American to stand for the national anthem as it is to not stand for the national anthem in protest (which wasn’t even the case according to LSU head coach Kim Mulkey, but even still...), Landry wanted to propagandize this moment to further sow the seeds of factionalism. 

The propagandized history of "correct" patriotism in this country is steeped in the desire of myth-making and imposing curated-archetypes upon the zeitgeist instead of just letting the true archetypes of the time arise naturally. The desire to spin the ‘grand narrative’ of American history into a flattened story of good vs bad for the sake of worshiping “correct” heroes has forever plagued this country. Those in the business of histrionic-spinning understand the power of mythology and how it imposes who gets to be the heroes of American history, the villains of American history, and yes, the saviors of American history.

Which brings me back to Mr Landry & his grandstanding. In his feeble attempt to embody the savior archetype; he proclaimed that he and only he -the governor of Louisiana- can save the state from the anti-patriot insurgents trying to invade its purity. And just like countless masses would overlook Landry’s grandstanding as something small, so do we overlook other subtle day to day symbols of the white savior complex in our own lives. Like pictures and likenesses we see of White Jesus in our homes and churches. 

MLPMetanarrative

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Wyatt's Gaslight

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An Inconvenient Post-Truth

Secret Wars

The Art of Framing

White Savior Complex Reloaded