(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Four Pests Playbook: HOW FEAR, IGNORANCE, STUPIDITY AND GREED ARE STOKED FOR CONTROL [1] ['Thom Hartmann', 'Momma O', 'Greg Dworkin'] Date: 2026-08-12 created by the author and chatgpt with many revisions I have seen the playbook employed by countless groups, religions, cultures, neighborhoods, conservatives and liberals, but to me, no one has executed it better than conservatives and their media outlets. So let’s understand what is going on so we can call it out. Instill Fear. Validate Ignorance. Reward Stupidity. Imply Gain. When I created my Four Pests Campaign, I was looking at the resurgence of things we already know how to prevent, control or mitigate. That led me to a different question: Why, in an age when more human knowledge is available to more people than at any previous time in history, are we so easily persuaded to disregard it? Look at the little computer in your hand. Mine has an astounding display, 8 processing cores 12 gigabytes of RAM and 512 gigabytes of memory. The Apollo Guidance Computer that helped take humans to the Moon operated with about 2K of RAM and 36K words of fixed memory. Meanwhile, NASA Mission Control relied on rooms of IBM computers; the Real Time Computer Complex eventually used five System/360 Model 75 mainframes to process Apollo mission data. Regardless of workloads and architectural difference, the evolution is enormous. What once required specialized computers, buildings, programmers, communications systems and entire teams of technicians now rides around in our pockets. The smart phone has replaced or absorbed the telephone, camera, movie camera, map, compass, encyclopedia, newspaper, television, radio, calculator, calendar, address book, music player, recorder, flashlight, photo album, ticket book, bank branch and much more. Most have access to an extraordinary amount of accumulated human knowledge. And then many use that technological portal to argue on social media that science/technology cannot be trusted. As a software engineer of the 70s-2000s I marvel at the incongruity. The problem isn’t the machine it is the animals that use it. When faced with complex issues, grey areas, uncomfortable topics, or our own preconceived ideas and shut our eyes, we then are ready for the Four Pest Playbook to be used against us. I have fears. I have been suckered by not looking at the big picture. I have created elaborate rationalizations. I have cherry picked facts. I have been conned wanting something for nothing. I have let my fear, ignorance, stupidity and greed take over. I work against it, but I am an animal. So how are we jerked around? How are people who don’t have time, maybe can’t understand, maybe won’t understand, maybe refuse to understand (or even consider) supposed to un-tilt the table? We start by understanding the playbook. Instill Fear. Validate Ignorance. Reward Stupidity. Imply Gain. The most powerful emotion (probably Sex but that carries all kinds of limitations/rules but hey, if we can use it for fear even better – THE PERVERTS WILL CORRUPT YOU!) : FEAR Keep ’em afraid and they’ll give up freedom for “safety.” Fear is useful because frightened people want relief. Tell people someone is coming for them. Exaggerate examples (this person did something bad). Find a scapegoat (that person who did something bad represents a group, city, state, religion, race). Describe the situation as an invasion, catastrophe or existential crisis. Then offer salvation. We will protect you from the bad thing/people!!! And Most importantly, maintain the crisis. If the crisis ends, the frightened person may stop looking toward the person who promised protection. The fear need not be completely imaginary. That’s what makes the mechanism effective. Start with something real, select the most frightening examples, amplify them, repeat them, and allow the exceptional to become psychologically commonplace. There is always another notification. They’re coming. Crime! Invasion! Click here. People/animals Fear what they don’t know. So at all costs, maintain: IGNORANCE Don’t read that book, don’t fact check, don’t check other news sources. Discard historical voices as disruptive. If we don’t like what we hear – its fake news and we can offer alternative facts. Drown out knowledge and truth becomes “just another opinion.” The same device that can retrieve serious scholarship, medical information and historical documents, that boring old stuff for stuffy old bores, can deliver a flashy conspiracy theory with wonderful visual effects and pretty people speaking with authority. Repeat enough contradictory claims and eventually the problem isn’t convincing someone that your claim is true. It’s convincing them that nothing can really be known. You have heard it all 1000 times by now: Experts disagree. Scientists are bought. Journalists lie. Universities have agendas. Government statistics are fake. My neighbor neighbor posted a video therefore everybody merely has an opinion. Anything and everything can be questioned. If the other guys say the sky is blue then they are still wrong. But someone steps forward: I KNOW WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON. While the chump says: This is the most likely outcome, but there are limitations and exceptions. (and I get the irony of what I am saying) Guess which makes the better video. An ignorant public is predictable, fears easily, and wants a hero. A confident hero steps forward, shapes the narrative, and takes control whether they are selling pet food or telling us people are eating our pets. Once people are fearful of anything they don’t understand and kept ignorant they can be relied on to make stupid decisions that work against their own interests to fill a need of validation (or greed). Once we have that STUPIDITY then reward the mindless. And by all means celebrate the distraction. And Stupidity is an amazingly equal opportunity employer. Some extraordinarily intelligent people do extraordinarily stupid things. How many times have we seen someone rail against an issue only to be caught in that very issue. The most obvious one is the same sex scandal. They rail against homosexuality only to be caught in the act. Perhaps they hate publicly which they’ve been taught to hate in themselves. Or they rationalize they won’t get caught and know it’s a hot button issue with the right crowd. I bet you can think of plenty of examples. Hypocrisy is a big one. I try to shame them not to change their minds but because my animal nature enjoys doing it. Shame doesn’t change people’s minds. And by all means reward mindlessness. Give the thumbs-up. Give the heart. Give the repost without validating the source or message. Get the dopamine pellet when life becomes hard. Make certainty more rewarding than curiosity and outrage more rewarding than reflection. Then ridicule intelligence itself. Thinking becomes overthinking. Expertise becomes elitism. Complexity becomes evidence that somebody is trying to fool you. Eventually stupidity rewards stupidity. The person supplying it gets attention. The audience gets validation. The platform gets engagement. Everybody gets a banana. Except perhaps society as a whole and those ostracized. And best of all stupidity never questions. We don’t like questions. Get a like instead. So now we have a segment of population fearful, fearful of knowledge, and making bad decisions, its time to profit from them and keep the machine going. And nothing says profit and reward like GREED. Fear buys security in the form of security devices, alarm systems, weapons, martial arts training, and the secret information that will put you ahead of ‘those people’. Look at how successful they are. Your group, religion, society or country tells you what the markers are for success and salvation. Ignorance buys the promise. Everyone will succeed if you just listen to us. No more whatever – war, high prices, taxes, someone getting something I didn’t get. We’ll fix them. Stupidity buys validation. Yes hate those guys. Throw those dice one more time whether you didn’t get sick, didn’t lose it all, or just aren’t valued. Trust us. You are valued as long as you can buy our product, donate to our cause, or vote for us. Every life is precious, until it isn’t. If keeping you angry keeps you watching, there is little financial incentive to make you less angry. If frightening you generates another click, another contribution or another sale, then fear’s market value is obvious. And the money earned from fear, ignorance and stupidity can purchase the means to manufacture more fear, ignorance and stupidity. The loop closes. The Electronic Message Ants I limit the applications on my phone and use social media at home. I never needed twenty-four-hour updates from everybody I know. If someone needs me, then call, email or text me. I grew up in the era without the cell phone. It was rude to call after hours. There are times when I don’t have the phone on or look at the computer. I disengage. Emergency – 911. However the ants want to come into my home, phone and mind seeking permission to interrupt. News alert. Special offer. Someone replied. Someone liked. Someone you don’t know posted something you didn’t ask to see. Buy this. Fear this. Be angry about this. Come back. The electronic message ants, constantly looking for another crack through which to enter our homes, our minds and, eventually, our joy. Each individual ant is insignificant. The colony is another matter. We can break the playbook by asking a question: Who is Affirming you? We seek information that makes sense to us and we enjoy being told that we’re right. Modern communications technology has industrialized that pleasure. So when something affirms you, ask another question: Who is doing the affirming, and what are they getting from it? Are they applying the law consistently, or selectively? Are they quoting a religious text because they follow its principles, or because this particular sentence helps today’s argument? Do they want you to understand something? Or do they want your information, your attention, your vote, your money—or simply another hour of your life? Sometimes complicated arguments can be tested against remarkably simple questions. Do you claim life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for yourself while denying those things to someone else? Do you demand freedom of religion for yourself while restricting another person’s? Does your religion instruct you to care for the poor, the sick and the stranger—and if so, how many intellectual pretzels are required to explain why it doesn’t apply to this particular poor person, sick person or stranger? If maintaining a position requires increasingly elaborate explanations for why your principles don’t apply, it may be worth considering another possibility: Perhaps the position doesn’t make sense. Here Is the Playbook That is what the illustration is about. It isn’t a theory about one political party, one religion, one corporation or one ideology. It is a mechanism: CREATE THE FEAR – Fear captures attention and creates demand for protection. CONTROL THE NARRATIVE – Overwhelm competing knowledge until truth becomes merely another opinion. REWARD CONFORMITY – Give people attention, belonging and validation for repeating the message. DISPLAY SUCCESS – Show them the people who gained money, status, audience or power by participating. OWN THE CROWD – Then use the resulting attention, money and power to begin the cycle again. That’s The Four Pests Playbook. Apply it to politics, religion, social media, advertising, conspiracy movements, investment schemes. Apply it to whatever system you choose. I challenge you to break it. And if you can’t break it, perhaps the next question isn’t whether the people using the playbook are smarter than we are. Perhaps it is: Why do we keep buying what they’re selling? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/12/800083145/community/go/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/