This is Edward Bernays. Sigmund Freud's nephew. The man who invented modern public relations.

In 1928, he wrote a book called Propaganda. I've been reading it while my power was out.

He is not writing to you. He is writing to the people who manage you.

Bernays divides society into two groups. There is an intelligent minority who shape public opinion, and there is everyone else. His book is a field guide for the first group. The argument he makes to them is simple. Stop addressing the public directly. Find the groups they already belong to. Find the people they already trust. Work through those people instead. A church leader. A union rep. A local figure with credibility in the community. Control those voices and you control what entire communities believe, without ever speaking to them yourself.

You think you formed your own opinion. Bernays is explaining, to someone else, how they arranged that.

This is the same structural framework as Curtis Yarvin's Dark Enlightenment theory, which Vice President JD Vance has cited openly and repeatedly. Yarvin is also writing to a self-identified minority, people who believe they are on the managing end of history. The audience has not changed. The playbook has not changed. Only the era has.