Introduction
So you or your country want to take over the USA for your own gain and wield absolute power? It requires a fair amount of planning and a lot of money, but with great execution and a little luck, it can be done. The great thing is you don’t even need to run for office, you can find someone to do that for you.
Stage 1: Make people believe stupid things
Step 1) Neuter the press
A free press is your enemy but it is enshrined in the constitution, so you will need to turn the public against the press. Activate a small group of loyalists to discredit the “mainstream media”. Present half-truths as facts and take those and generalize them: If the CIA planted a stories in the press before then all stories must be planted by the CIA. If an article was found to overreach, then all articles overreach. Repeat over and over through social media until it becomes a commonly held belief by people who view themselves as activists on any end of the spectrum.
2) Eliminate critical thinking
As the “mainstream media” is discredited, build up an alternative “press”. Throw significant money and resources behind a set of opinion based web-sites masking as news so they gain viewership. Ensure wide distribution through social media. These sites can act without journalistic standards and don’t need to stick to checking facts. Use them to build extreme opinions and raise doubts on a number of issues (see step 3). If you really want to do this step well you want to try to use this platform to discredit all kinds of intellectual thought and people who use reason to make judgement — Science, policy, economics, etc. they are all conspiracies designed to make people ignore the truth that Breitbart (or whomever) is so graciously revealing to injured masses.
3) Use your alt-press to make people believe whatever you want
Congratulations! You have taken a huge step towards your goal. You can now feed people propaganda with little concern they will think for themselves. Now you basically want to confuse people with your new “alt-press” to move their concerns to areas that align with their insecurities. First, discredit real issues: Climate change? Hoax (remember lack of journalistic integrity is your friend), racism? Invented by the mainstream media to boost circulation. Second, create a set of faux-issues that play to the insecurities of the most insecure groups of people: Crime is down? NO crime is up (psst “it’s black thugs and Mexican rapists”, shhh!), Terrorism! (See they won’t even say “Islamic extremists”). The brilliance is, with a discredited press the people will become sheep, except for the liberal intellectual elite who will just talk to each other and read the New York Times — don’t worry about them.
Stage 2: Take over
1) Find your candidate
OK, you have a great platform for your rise to power, but you will need a front man if you really want to run the show. There are a few critical characteristics they need to display:
- They need to be entirely motivated by narcissism. Many of things you are going to want to do with our power will be harmful to people, so make sure there is no hint of altruism. Americans love celebrities, you will need someone who revels in celebrity status and wants to build it. Some kind of unethical version of Ronald Reagan comes to mind.
- I hate to put it to bluntly, but they need to be stupid. You are going to ask a candidate to say totally illogical things, and you need someone who can say them credibly — self-doubt is sniffed out, even by the masses.
- Finally you want to portray this person as an outlaw. You are trying to appeal to a group of people who celebrated a bunch of mediocre ranchers’ armed takeover of a inconsequential federal building in a reserve as heroes. You don’t need much here to convince — probably a few pussy grabbings and some tax evasion will be sufficient.
2) Discredit the opposition
You have one simple task here and it is called “false equivalency”. You will have to defeat an opposing candidate to win the presidency — no problem. If you are accused of sexual misconduct make the same accusation or just accuse the accusers of manipulation, etc. Find any chink in the opponent and make a huge deal of it (ideally you have been building this case for years in your alt-press). You can create whatever narrative you want around them. One more thing, avoid policy discussions which can be objectively assessed, stick to random allegations and focus the campaign on personality. Since no one trusts politicians it is easy to win a “he said/she said” campaign.
3) Manipulate the “mainstream media”
Remember that media you discredited? Well they are still around, time to put them to work! They need to make money and you can help. The best thing about them is they have this ethical need to be “fair” — manipulate the crap out of it. If they say something bad about our candidate, trumpet how unfair and biased the “mainstream media” is and how it is all lies. When they respond with “fair coverage” use them as facts against the opposition. Your target audience will respond perfectly, all of the negative coverage is lies, all the positive is truth. It becomes a one-sided battle.
4) Prepare to take power
One thing you want to do prior to actually winning is to begin to put the rule of law in question. Laws can highly constrain our power so you want to make sure that you begin to lay the foundation to avoid those constraints now. The way to do this is simply ignoring the laws, but at the same time make sure that these violations skirt around the edges. An example might be having your party (they will already be part of the ‘loyalty trap’ I talk about next) delay confirmation of an important position like a Supreme Court Justice — anything that puts politics above the checks and balances in our legal system is really good.
The “mainstream media” will strive to be fair and explain in painstaking detail the pros and cons of your position. But you will have already inoculated the masses from critical thinking so they will simply not listen and begin to view these “misunderstandings” as part of a broader media plot to subvert the will of the people.
Stage 3: Make your power absolute
OK, so your candidate won, now what? It is not enough to hold the office, you must shape the office to be able to have absolute control.
1) Set the loyalty trap
You will of course gain power by taking over one fo the two political parties, it is vital that you use that party to help you make your power absolute. To do this you must use a simple truth that will make it much easier: While politicians may have some ethics and principles, these are overwhelmed by the desire to take and hold power.
Play with them. Demand loyalty and if it is not given, attack them viciously through the alt-press you own (the “mainstream media” will also give you airtime in the interests of fairness). They will at first try to push back on your most blatant attempts to seize power, but as you punish them for it they will flip-flop quickly and so many times that both the public and press will view them as weaklings — and as they look weak you look stronger.
After awhile they will fall in line behind you and you can viciously attack those who are more principled. Having a set of power-hungry politicians validating your every move is extremely helpful in your mission, particularly in the next couple of steps.
2) Mold the government
Running a government is hard work and you have so much you need to accomplish, you will need the right people to lead the different functions in government. There are really only two different prototypical roles you need to fill.
Role 1) If the cabinet role is one that helps people, then put someone so incompetent in the role they will destroy the agency’s effectiveness. Why? You want to make people more dependent on government, not less — this is how you maintain power indefinitely. Now it is important that these people have an ideology that appeals to a narrow swath of the country intensely, because then they will help you defend them vigorously (thank you alt-press!). For example, you might have a Health and Human Services Secretary who is vigorously anti-abortion or a Labor secretary who appeals to unscrupulous corporate shareholders through elimination of safety regulations or wage restrictions.
Role 2) Other cabinet roles are important because they are in charge of policies that will be critical in helping you consolidate power. Here you want individuals whose interests align with your own. For example you might want a secretary of state who has a set of corporate interests that overlap particular countries that are important to your cause. In general, the corporate sector can be your friend here, but be careful! Increasingly there are a set of corporate leaders whose focus is on ethics. Avoid them. Find businesses where money and resources are power, not people, and you will do fine.
Finally, don’t worry about your selections in any way being qualified. While the people are smart enough that they wouldn’t go to a plumber that decided to suddenly try out dentistry, they think that “outsiders” with no experience are really good for government. Use this to your advantage.
3) Cripple the checks and balances
Here we learn why it was so important to establish doubts about the rule of law early. I suggest you focus on disabling four primary institutions.
- The Supreme Court: An independent judiciary at the highest level can really hurt your ambitions. Fortunately, you just need a majority here and the court already has some members that will bend to your will. It will be easy to get your hand-picked candidates on the court (all that will be discussed is their opinion on abortion really) and once they are pointed, no one can do anything about them. Of course vacancies occur infrequently so you may have to speed the process up with a few “accidents”. Don’t worry though, they are old so it is easy to make those look credible, especially with the resources you have.
- Education: You won because people lost their ability to think critically, you don’t want them to regain it. Many serious educators want to bring that back so it is important to minimize their influence. Narrowly focused religious groups, schools for profit and ensuring that the bottom half of our economic ladder stays that way through poor education are all key goals. I hope you hired an Education Secretary who opposed public education in the previous step. Did you?
- Press: You did a lot of work to eliminate the influence of any press that had journalistic standards, don’t let them get any back! Ensure that libel laws are strengthened and that you challenge them regularly — remember your loyalty trap will let you pass whatever laws you want. In general you don’t want to jail a lot of the press (so unseemly!) but you may have to in a couple of cases to set an example. A quick death of a reporter by some aggrieved victim of their journalistic aggression is probably also a good idea.
- Elections: Look, anything you need to answer to the people on is really constraining to your objectives, but you can’t just eliminate elections, so what to do? First, cast doubt on their credibility (thanks again alt-press!). Be prepared to tie up elections for years in fraud investigations and do not give up any power while those investigations are underway. Second, if you know the kinds of people who vote against you just eliminate their right to vote. With your loyalist party members and your influence on the courts you will be surprised what you get away with! Third, have your leader talk and act like a monarch or dictator, not an elected official and not subject to any of those norms we had when all those dumb voters put all those corrupt officials in office.
Congratulations! You are well on your way to absolute power. It won’t be easy but the rewards you will get from the ability to take over the world’s wealthiest country will be well worth the effort. Who knows? It might be easier than you think!
Stern Thoughts 