by Travis Mateer

The title of this post is quite a bold statement, but I’m feeling pretty bold after my performance on the street of downtown Missoula for a group of people who included the man who plays Lloyd Pierce in the show Yellowstone.

I rolled up to the group and said “Whoa, famous people” as an ice breaker, then produced one of my cards. I explained that I was a local journalist trying to get out suppressed narratives in this town–like what REALLY happened to Sean Stevenson in January of 2020–and maybe they could help.

Just the fact they listened to me for the few brief minutes I had their attention was a big help, and it was also helpful that my pitch was recorded by a member of the group on a fancy looking camera (much fancier than Andy Smetanka’s hipster camera).

Last Sunday I published a similarly bold declaration to the myth makers that they will not win this war. One of this blog’s astute observers and commentators, J. Kevin Hunt, had a little difficulty in wrapping his head around my declaration. Here’s how he ended his comment: “Fun read, notwithstanding my difficulty discerning a coherent message or theme“.

For Mr. Hunt and anyone else scratching their head over my declaration, allow me to elaborate on how THEY see the power of narrative control, and by “they” I mean global narrative influencers like Ajit Maan, who wrote the book Plato’s Fear. Here’s the back of the book describing Maan’s background:

And here’s an excerpt from page 10 to give you an idea of how Ajit Maan perceives the power of narrative:

Artists are dangerous people. Plato would have banned poets from his ideal Republic due to the danger they pose. He was afraid of the artist’s ability to evoke emotion in audiences – emotion that would override reason.

Plato was afraid of the power of representational force.

Reality, Plato thought, was comprehensible through a logical process. But neither reality, nor reason, holds the power that artists do, because artists don’t just reproduce reality; artists provide a new way to view reality. Observing the unfolding of events often does not move people emotionally the way the representation of the unfolding of events does. Representations of events, what we call narrative these days, ties events together in a way that imbues them with meaning.

Plato’s suggestion of banning poets from his ideal Republic would have been a disaster because THAT kind of overt action tips the hand to artists about the power of their craft to shape reality. A much more effective strategy, as our lovely “intelligence” community has shown, is to CONTROL artists with money. Here’s how it works:

Did the CIA fund creative writing in America? The idea seems like the invention of a creative writer. Yet once upon a time (1967, to be exact), Paul Engle received money from the Farfield Foundation to support international writing at the University of Iowa. The Farfield Foundation was not really a foundation; it was a CIA front that supported cultural operations, mostly in Europe, through an organization called the Congress for Cultural Freedom.

Yes, it’s a fact the CIA justified funding culture creation as a legitimate front in the war against Communism. The problem, though, is that kind of thinking is antiquated. The ‘ism wars are a smokescreen for the REAL war, which is an anti-human one. Who (or what) is waging this war, and why, are questions requiring serious engagement.

Understanding HOW some of this narrative control works erodes its influence, and I am more than happy to do my part in service of the deeper truths this narrative control seeks to hide.

If you feel like helping me financially, I do have a GoFundMe page I’m terrible at promoting, and some other ways I am working on to do what it takes to fight back.

Thanks for reading!