Authored by Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com,

Presidential elections are planned distractions To divert attention from the action behind the scenes Like a game of chess when the house is a mess Or a petty money squabble when your marriage is in trouble Or a football game when there’s rioting in the streets It’s just another movie, another song and dance Another poor sucker who never had a chance" – Timbuk3. “Just Another Movie”, Greetings From Timbuk3 (1986), Mamdadaddi Music/I.R.S. Music, Inc. admin. by Atlantic Music

Before the big game there’s a coin toss and by the luck of the draw, decisions are made even before the teams take the field. It is the same for politics with, perhaps, the exception of luck having anything to do with the outcomes. Regardless, the games play on our screens and we passively watch; anxiously waiting to see what happens.

It’s an all-or-nothing blitz to score big and winners take all. In the interim, there are the commercial breaks revealing ads refined by the fires of focus groups and in boardrooms.

Edward Bernays, the influential pioneer of public relations and the nephew of iconic psychologist Sigmund Freud, wrote in his 1928 book “Propaganda” (page 37) regarding an “unseen mechanism of society” that constituted “an invisible government” that was, assuredly, “the true ruling power of our country”. Bernays added: “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

Bernays was quite proud of his uncle’s work and he accepted Freud’s foundational premises towards the use of emotional manipulation of the masses through advertising. It was Bernays, in fact, who changed the term “propaganda” to “public relations”.

But it was the Canadian intellectual and author Herbert Marshall McLuhanwho coined the phrase “the medium is the message”. In his 1964 book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, he wrote:

…the form of a medium embeds itself in any message it would transmit or convey, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

Marshall McLuhan was a fascinating person. In addition to identifying media massaging, he also coined the term “global village” in his 1961 book “The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man”. Therein, he described four epochs of history: Oral tribe culture, manuscript culture, Gutenberg galaxy and the electronic age. Furthermore, in that book, McLuhan is said to have predicted the World Wide Web decades before it came into being as we understand it today. In 1962, he even coined the term “surfing” as referring to “rapid, irregular and multidirectional movement through a heterogeneous body of documents or knowledge” using computers. He said:

The next medium, whatever it is — it may be the extension of consciousness — will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. - Marshall McLuhan, ‘The Invisible Environment: The Future of an Erosion.’ Perspecta, Vol. 11 (1967) pp. 162–167. Published by the MIT Press. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual’s encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind. -A dialogue between Marshall McLuhan and Bruce Powers called “Angels to Robots: From Euclidean Space to Einsteinian Space,” in ‘The Global Village’ by Marshall McLuhan and Bruce Powers, 1989.

In his bestselling 1967 book, “The Medium Is the Massage”, McLuhan utilized the term “massage” to: “denote the effect each medium has on the human sensorium” and therein he reinforced his earlier claims of media as “extensions of our human senses, bodies and minds.”

Disturbingly, McLuhan believed modern electronic media would wipe away society’s “traditional values, attitudes and institutions” and said twenty-three years ago in an interview with Wired magazine, the following:

Postindustrial man has a network identity, or a net-ID. The role is now a temporary shift of state produced by a combination of environmental factors, like in a neural network. This possibility has always been latent in the concept of role, but in the machine age this was perceived as a danger, while today it is simply a game – we no longer see shifting roles as dangerous and taboo and therefore theatrically compelling. Rather, we follow these shifts as if we were doing a puzzle or kibitzing a chess game. Yes, the medium is the message, but this does not mean and never meant that the content of the medium is a conscious reflection on itself. The medium is the message because it creates the audience most suited to it. Electronic media create an audience whose shifting moods are as impersonal as the weather. – Wolf, Gary. (1996, Jan 1) Channeling McLuhan. Wired Magazine [Online]. Available: https://www.wired.com/1996/01/channeling/.

By means of our devices we are plugged into a grand neural grid defined by what we think we see. As revealed by Bernays and acknowledged by McLuhan: The Messengers utilize interactive media platforms like hypnotists very subtly conveying their commands and suggestions to an oblivious public. The spin masters massage their messages like opiates onto the hive mind. The importations are delivered as propaganda not to inform the public per se, but rather to suggest that which is meant to be reinforced or believed; even unto the bifurcation of a single narrative; like two teams playing one football game; or the two-sided spinning blur of the same coin.

Advertising radiates throughout the entire Matrix, as the contagious hum of a jingle, from one mind to the next. Media, in all of its various forms, provides the context that coheres realism to dreams. It is how virtual became the New Reality.

The messaging wars were not meant to be won. They were meant to be continuous.

One wonders if National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower, Edward Snowden, was indeed part of the Matrix given his visibility on the grid. Perhaps he was meant to reveal the surveillance state and without him, there would have been no interactive consent.

Metal chains or velvet handcuffs, what’s the difference?

To the sounds of mouse-clicks, once free people have “accepted” the “terms” of their surrender and have forfeited their liberty in the name of convenience. Like buzzing insects, the citizens of modern societies are caught in silicon honey traps mortgaged with plastic and electronically powered via USB cable nooses wrapped tightly around their collective throats. The Technocratic Powers That Be wield weapons far more powerful than any time prior in history and soon, people will wake up to realize the electronic buzzing sound ringing in their ears was not emanating from their own wings, but rather, it was merely the sound of drones over their heads.

Additionally, what if the polemics of Trump versus Hillary, the #MeToo movement’s men against women, Intersectionality and White Privilege, Trump against Mueller, Trump versus Pelosi and Schumer, Kavanaugh against the mob, guns against children, Russia against free elections, Deplorables versus the Deep State, globalism versus nationalism – all of these – every last conflict – were all subplots of one extended reality TV show? Like watching a football game when the roof is on fire. Or a soap opera at the end of things, entitled “As the World Burns”; and prior to next week’s introduction of a New Phoenix soon to rise from the ashes.

In so many ways, Trump is the perfect foil to usher in a new epoch; as the perceived darkness before the age of rainbows and unicorns. Or, at least a forerunner of sorts before another ringleader takes center stage.

To be sure, President Trump is like a flip-sided Obama the way he’s branded upon America’s psyche. And, like Obama, he’s a walking, talking, Rorschach test.

For good? Or bad?

Either way: We all have our suspicions and are becoming more certain with each passing day.

In the below video clip from the 1999 film “The Matrix”, the story’s protagonist, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is distracted by a computer simulation of a woman in a red dress as these words are spoken by Laurence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus:

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. Are you listening to me, Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?

In our version of the Matrix, however, what if the diversion was the man with orange hair?

Certainly, United States President, Donald J. Trump, is either:

Real Real clueless Or the Matrix’s woman in the red dress

In point of fact, if anyone were 100% honest, they would admit they couldn’t realize any of those options with 100% certainty at this time. Because it’s difficult to see the Matrix when you’re in the Matrix. Yet, like Neo in the movie, and as stated heretofore: We all have our suspicions and are becoming more certain with each passing day.

It is very likely, notwithstanding the uncertainty, odds-makers would lower their percentages on the second option. After all, the famous underworld attorney, Roy Cohn, in a 1984 interview declared Trump to be the closest thing to a genius he had ever met in his life. And, thirty-two years after that statement by Cohn, Trump became President of the United States while being outspent two to one, against a rabidly hostile media, in opposition to colluding officials in the United States’ FBI, DoJ, and State Department; plus, with zero support from all Democrats and a significant percentage of Republicans.

Even so, it was a close election determined by a few thousand votes in key states which resulted in an Electoral College victory against one of the most corrupt, despicable, and unlikable candidates in U.S. history. It almost seemed as if Hillary was meant to be Trump’s foil in the same way McCain and Romney were Obama’s. So close. Or, rather, the margins consistently appeared close enough for purposes of credibility.

In retrospect, it all does have a reality TV feel, does it not?

The games play out on our screens: the drama, offense, defense, and play by plays interpreted and relayed by various announcers on disparate channels; and, as asserted by the previously mentioned Marshall McLuhan: Electronic media creating an audience whose shifting moods are as impersonal as the weather.

Of course many reading this, if not a majority, will NOT appreciate President Trump’s motives being questioned in the least; and perhaps they are right to still trust the man. Nevertheless, there does remain the possibility the reach and power of the Matrix has been vastly underestimated.

Or, it could be the obtuseness of the American Body Politic is what’s been greatly underrated and Trump is heroically fighting his best against great odds.

SIDE ONE: Trump the Embattled Warrior: Art of the Deal and 4-D Chess

Those sympathetic to Trump, see a hero saving the nation, if not the world, one tweet at a time. He says exactly what so many of his supporters are thinking and the apoplectic convulsions of his political opponents are fun to watch. In fact, Trump always seems to know where to psychologically stab the knife to draw the maximum amount of pain and blood from those who hate him.

In so many ways Trump triggers his enemies to the point their primary defense is to simply label him a fool, a liar, or both; including the husband of one of the president’s closest advisors, Kellyanne Conway:

But is it real or reality TV? Is it perception or deception?

In any event, Trump’s strategery definitely transcends Twitter as demonstrated by his remarkable 289 accomplishments in only the first twenty months of his presidency; and in spite of the media’s reporting on the “second-worst start to any newly elected administration in modern political history”.

Currently, at the time of this writing, Trump has been taking much heat and negativity from those on the conservative side of the aisle as well. In the aftermath of the recent immigration gridlock, government shutdown, and Trump’s reopening of the U.S. government without his requested $5.7 billion for his border wall – political commentator and author, Ann Coulter, claimed “the president had broken the promise he made every day for 18 months”.

Is that actually the case? Take, for example, this ongoing plot’s twist and turns:

On December 11, 2018 Trump hosted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and (soon-to-be-reinstated) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Oval Office. There, the president apparently surprised them both by allowing the press to video-record the meeting. During the discussion, the Democratic dynamic duo appeared uncomfortable and with Pelosi actually stating the following:

We’re here to have a conversation. I don’t think we should have a debate in front of the press.

The reason Nancy didn’t want the American public to see that exchange was precisely because of what happened next: It was reported accurately (via the video) on all news outlets and firmly placed Trump out in front on the issue of illegal immigration; and in manner that could never be spun otherwise before the American public. Moreover, the president made it very clear he was taking responsibility for shutting down the government over what he designated as “border security”.

Stated another way, that episode’s summary would have been:

Pursuant to the prohibition of southern invaders, it was Trump’s way or the highway. He would build that wall.

Towards that end, over the next several weeks, Trump casually dropped little hints of possible concessions to be made should the Democrats come to the negotiation table. This culminated on Saturday, January 19, 2019 when the president announced his BRIDGE Act which included two offers to the Democrats in exchange for the $5.7 billion in funds for a border wall. First, he proposed an extension of DACA protections for Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and, secondly, he offered to extend the legal status of Temporary Protected Status holders.

A few days after that, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, floated the idea of green cards to the 700,000 current DACA recipients.

But nothing worked and the impasse made the Democrats appear as the obstructionists in the stalemate; at least according to many common-sense American viewers. This, even though an Associated Press, NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll showed the majority of the country blamed the shutdown on Trump.

Around the same time, House Speaker Pelosi sent Trump a letter stating that she would not consider a resolution authorizing the President’s State of the Union (SOTU) in the House Chamber until the government had re-opened. In the letter, Pelosi specifically cited concerns regarding security amidst the shutdown. In response, Trump postponed the Speaker’s scheduled trip to Brussels, Egypt and Afghanistan, and then accepted Pelosi’s invitation after overcoming her security concerns for the SOTU.

By the time Nancy wrote another letter denying the U.S. President the U.S. House Chambers once again, she appeared even more the persistent obstructionist. Next, the ever-displaced and inconvenienced Trump shopped around for another venue before, finally, acting as the only adult in the room by reopening government for three weeks.

Only three weeks.

An argument could be made that Trump consistently stayed out in front on every reality TV maneuvering during the entire border wall standoff. It is also a lesser known fact that, in advertising and business, the law of primacystates being first is all that matters. It is, in fact, what winners do. It’s calledleading.

Accordingly, during any shrewd deal-making, the way to win the negotiations is by demonstrating the willingness to walk away first. The old game was stalled, so Trump started a new one. Or, rather, a new series of episodes whereupon the president could bang the Democrats like bongos for twenty-one more days. Right up to the point he gets his wall anyway, because he’s already made it known: He will move forward on the wall at the end of three weeks and the only question is whether the Dems “want something or nothing”.

Nonetheless, when Trump unilaterally moves to build the wall in response to the “national security crisis” on our southern border, a black-robed antagonist (or protagonist depending upon the TV viewer’s perspective) will stop Trump in his tracks; just like the prior so-called “Muslim Ban”.

The show goes on. As it always has.

In the meantime, be sure to tune in this Tuesday for the 2019 State of the Union Address; coming soon to a screen near you. Check your TV guide for local listings.

SIDE TWO: Trump’s Big Game & the Psyoptic Woman in the Red Dress

Of course, there is another face to President Donald Trump; the other side on the same coin.

After winning the 2016 toss, why didn’t the president and his team build the wall as they took the field in control of all three branches of U.S Government? Perhaps it was a lack of cohesiveness with offensive coordinator, then Speaker Paul Ryan, at the helm coaching the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and Never-Trumpers alike. Or perhaps Trump was thinking he might actually improve his odds by scoring the House in the 2018 Midterms. Or, even in the event of overwhelming catastrophic game losses, the president still believed he could utilize border insecurity to hammer his opponents offensively, all the way into the end-zone for a 2020 victory.

Or was it because the ratings favor competitive games all season?

Remember, Trump did reveal, in a presidential debate no less, he would instruct his attorney general to oversee a special investigation into the crimes of Hillary Clinton. But then, just days after the big game’s win, Trump said the following regarding Bill and Hillary Clinton:

I don’t want to hurt them, I don’t want to hurt them. They’re, they’re good people. I don’t want to hurt them.

Good people? No. It was a quarterback sneak.

Furthermore, in spite of his promise to drain the swamp, Trump has, instead, recruited cadres of elite bankers and Deep State draftees into his lineup, he has greatly expanded America’s debt, and even bombed Syria twice in response to obvious false flags. Around the world, most recently in the nation Venezuela, Trump’s inner imperialist emerges at exactly the right, or wrong, times; depending upon the perspective of the viewers.

The United States President has refused to authorize the release of the Russia Investigation’s FISA applications, FBI 302 forms, and 1023 counterintelligence documentation; even when doing so prior to the 2018 Midterm elections might have helped him with independent voters enough to retain his party’s control of the U.S. House.

And why did Trump correctly identify stock market bubbles before he was elected, only to later take credit for stock market highs after his election? Won’t that now make him culpable in the eyes of the American public when the bankers crash the economy?

Why would he do that? As a former reality TV star, surely he knows optics are everything, right?

All of which raises legitimate questions as to whether these mistakes and missteps were scripted after all and, quite possibly, preordained by a secret playbook; because, honestly, over the past two years, all of the snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory now seems too perfect for reality. It is, in fact, exactly how it looks when one throws a game.

So close. But was it real? Or reality TV?

Perhaps we were all played like suckers who never stood a chance and will soon hear: “You’re fired!”

Nonetheless, the clues are there for those who carefully watch the replays. For example, during the government shutdown fracas, the following was revealed in an article dated January 8, 2019:

Ahead of the one year anniversary of the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Thursday re-introduced the ‘Extreme Risk Protection Order and Violence Prevention Act,’ commonly referred to as ‘red flag laws.’

The red flag laws, even supported by the NRA in the wake of the Parkland shooting, would grant Trump’s prior expressed desire to “take the guns first and go through due process second”. All that’s required is for anyone to claim to see something in order to say something so law-abiding Americans can have their due process erased faster than Trump’s attorney client privilege.

Think it couldn’t happen? Think again. Trump’s attorney general nominee, William Barr, during his senate confirmation hearings in mid-January 2019, stated his own desire regarding the red flag laws as “the single most important thing we could do in the gun control area”. Barr’s statement actually made Democrat Dianne Feinstein very excited. In response, she said quite flirtatiously:

Well, thank you, I would like to work with you in that regard.

What an amazing act of reaching across the aisle. Rarely have we seen such cooperation occurring in Washington DC.

Who knew?

But our screens only show extended replays of the antagonistic political clashes. Over and over; again and again.

This, coincidentally, allows precious time for the Matrix’s Agent Smiths, the neighborhood Stasi, and willing associates, to huddle together on the sidelines and finalize their next plays.

CONCLUSION: Fair Play or One Coin to Rule Them All

At the end of everything, it really does distill down to fair play against rigged rules of the game: to natural rights versus tyranny; the individual’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness enforced by means of an equitable and just legal code – or mandated utopia by way of corporate collectivists and their piecemealed totalitarianism.

Although President Trump provides the appearance of advocating for the former options, there remains the possibility he was hired as a means to deliver the latter alternatives.

Trump’s “Make America Great Again” only appears antithetical to Obama’s “Hope and Change” when, in fact, they were slogans for different products sold by the same company. They are two faces on the same coin and both spokesmen fundamentally changed America by the luck of the toss. Obama was the gift to Snowflakes and Trump a bestowal unto Deplorables.

And everyone loves a good tagline, don’t they.

In for a penny

In for a pound

All the corruption goes ’round and ’round

Spinning on air until it lands. And no one knows that it was planned.

Every president measures good and bad and to varying degrees. All of them make mistakes. But in the end, there is no such thing as luck in politics. All of our leaders are imprints on the same coin twisting on the air; as the plebs plan outdoor weddings and pray for dry weather as the gardeners across the street pray for rain.

Time waits on no one yet our luminous screens are always on; radiating our sight with light and shades and color.

One episode after another. One game before the next.

President Trump’s former aid and advisor, Roger Stone, was arrested on January 25, 2019 in an FBI pre-dawn raid for a process crime in an illegal special counsel investigation. On that very same day, the president re-opened the government with no border funds allocated for his wall.

Is the embattled Trump surrounded and waving a white flag?

Or is he virtuoso on the field playing his opponents like violins, and with the very strings from which they will soon hang?

Or is he an orange-haired pied-piper using Tweets and headlines and sound bites as flute music to simultaneously soothe and rile a nation of lemmings marching towards the cliff?

Is Trump the Matrix’s lady in the red dress?

Either way, in all the scenes now playing upon our screens, President Donald J. Trump remains the most interesting man in the world. He doesn’t always build walls, but when he does, the Mexicans will pay for them.

He’s a man of the moment; not the first, and he won’t be the last.

In the meantime, hundreds of millions of people worldwide will watch the Superbowl. The year 2019 will be remembered as the year the Patriots battled against the Rams. But, by the very next day, it won’t matter; because the real game isn’t the football. Nor does it consist of corporation’s competing for the most creative television advertisements. No. The real conflict remains between genuine patriots and inconspicuous horned beasts from on high; between free men against a secretive multinational financial elite ramming globalism down the throats of sovereign nations.

Heads they win. Tails we lose. It’s a flip of the coin. America First? Or, a New World Order?

Stay tuned and don’t touch that dial. We’ll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.