by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
November 21, 2020
Pop quiz: What’s the most powerful weapon ever invented?
The MOAB? you ask, quizzically. No, I respond authoritatively.
The H-bomb? Of course not. The A-bomb, then. Wrong again. The neutron bomb? No.
I’ll give you a hint: it’s not a bomb at all.
Ahhh, the Rods from God! No.
The mysterious new Chinese microwave weapons? Directed energy weapons generally? Whatever world-destroying technology that DARPA is playing with in Area 51?
The DoD and their MIC brethren in China, Russia and elsewhere are doubtless in possession of weaponry that would boggle our minds if it were revealed to the public, but without even knowing what those weapons are I can unequivocally tell you that none of them qualify as the most powerful weapon ever invented.
OK, last guess: F—I. W.
What a fantastic guess. You get bonus points for a very apt FLNWO callback if nothing else. And, as it turns out, you’re almost right. Or, at least, you’re on the right track.
Certainly the most powerful weapon ever invented is not traditionally viewed as a weapon at all. In fact, it is almost completely overlooked by everyone—even by the savvy sort that have found their way to The Corbett Report. Nevertheless, we don’t stand a chance of stopping the Great Reset, ending the COVID scam, halting the erection of the biosecurity state or de-throning the powers that shouldn’t be without it.
Do you give up? Alright, I’ll tell you. The most powerful weapon ever invented is . . .
Wait. Hold on. Rather than answering right away, let me tell you a story instead.
By the 1770s, tensions between the American colonies and Mother England were at an all-time high. The Stamp Act. The Townshend Duties. The Boston Massacre. The Tea Act. The Tea Party. Protests were sweeping the colonies and no one could deny that American anger at King George III and the English parliament was reaching a boiling point.
But still, even as the shots heard round the world rang out in Lexington and Concord to mark the beginning of what we now call the Revolutionary War, few understood that the American colonies were engaged in a war for independence at all. Even the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms sought “to relieve the Empire from the calamities of civil war,” not to achieve independence from England. Although the ranks of those agitating for independence were growing, it was still a fringe idea; the average colonist in 1775 believed themselves to be loyal subjects of the British crown seeking to secure the rights afforded them as Englishmen.
So what happened? Common sense happened, that’s what. Or, more accurately, Common Sense happened.
Thomas Paine’s political pamphlet, Common Sense, was published on January 9, 1776, quickly becoming one of the most important political tracts in history. Some even hold itto be the real founding document of the United States, not the Declaration of Independence. (There are even those who claim that Paine himself was the author of the Declaration of Independence, but that’s another story.)
It’s difficult to overestimate the impact that Common Sensehad in shaping the course of American history. It sold 120,000 copies in the first three months alone, equivalent to 5% of the colonies’ total population of 2.5 million. By the end of the year, it had sold 500,000 copies, or one pamphlet for every five men, women and children in the colonies. To put that in perspective, a book today would have to sell 66 million copies in America to achieve the same status, and with those sales figures it would be the thirteenth bestselling book of all time.
But it’s important to note that Paine did not achieve this monumental success by dishing out dumbed-down, mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy platitudes or by regurgitating the type of “common sense” that would have been held by most of his readers. No, he did it by completely and utterly changing the narrative about the colonies’ struggle against the crown. In Paine’s view, the colonists were not aggrieved Englishman seeking redress from their king, as many at the time believed; they were a nation of free peoples engaged in a war of independence from a foreign ruler.
Paine did not couch his argument in fluffy rhetoric or condescending patter. On the contrary, he confronted his readers head-on with his radical view.
Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of Great Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, Come, come, we shall be friends again for all this. But examine the passions and feelings of mankind: bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honour, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honour, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.
Incredibly, by the mere force of his words, Paine succeeded. If he had picked up a gun and taken some shots at some British soldiers, he may have taken one or two out before he was subdued. But by picking up his pen, he did something incalculably more effective: he roused an entire nation into open rebellion against the largest and most fearsome military and economic power on the planet.
Obviously, we do not live in not the world of 1776. But it is worth reflecting on the story of Common Sense because embedded within it is the answer to the question: What is the most powerful weapon ever invented?
Have you figured it out yet? Story is the most powerful weapon. Narrative. Ideas presented in such a way as to provoke certain thoughts or actions.
With a gun you can kill a man. With a bomb you can kill a family. With a nuke you can level a city. But with a story you can control the world.
This is how billions of people around the world have been locked up as prisoners in their own homes this past year. Not because there is an inexhaustible supply of police thugs standing on every street corner ready to shoot anyone who steps outside of their home, but because a narrative has been constructed such that the vast majority want to stay home. Give a society the right narrative and they will gladly lock themselves inside their own prison and hand over the key.
This is why billions around the globe are prepared to roll up their sleeves for an experimental, unproven “vaccine” for a disease with a 99% survival rate. The masses have been given a narrative whereby this “vaccine” is going to deliver them from a deadly plague. It doesn’t matter what counter-evidence is presented to them; the ones who take the vaccine are the righteous heroes of this story, and those who question the vaccines are the villains.
This is also why—as I’m at pains to point out over and over again in my #PropagandaWatch series—the powers that shouldn’t be spend so much time, money and effort propagandizing the public. If the world could be ruled over simply by posting armed guards on every street corner and listening devices in every home, you better believe that those who seek to rule over you would do that instead. But how could they get the armed guards to police their fellow citizens? How could they get the snoops to listen in on their neighbors? Where would the enforcers come from? The population needs to be told a compelling story about why the rulers are ruling and why it is wrong to resist their rule. If such a story is secure in their minds, they will happily police themselves.
There is a flip side to this seemingly depressing insight, however. Yes, people can be tricked into enslaving themselves through propaganda and narrative manipulation. To a large extent, that explains the situation we find ourselves in today. But the inverse is also true. We can be freed by a narrative that helps us to break out of our mental prison. One storyteller with a compelling tale to tell can re-frame our collective reality in an instant, and the world will change all at once.
Sadly, it seems that the powers that shouldn’t be are much more aware of this than we are.
This is why the Dutch army is targeting dissenting voices in the Netherlands.
This is why the Canadian military declared that they were going to target the Canadian public in the information war (but don’t worry, they totally scrapped that plan).
This is why the British army has an entire cyber brigadededicated to influencing public behavior online, as does the US military, the Israelis, the Chinese and Russians and every other major government in the world.
It is because the great resetters and the new world order agenda-setters recognize the power of story and they fear the rise of a powerful storyteller. They’re afraid of dissenters coming along and disrupting their carefully constructed narrative. In the days of yore they would label those subverting their narrative control a heretic and burn them at the stake. Today they label them as agents of disinformation and seek to censor them out of existence. But the fear that motivates these responses is the same.
Once again, the world is in crisis. And, just as in 1776, there are precious few of us who understand the true nature of the struggle that we are engaged in. What we need is a story; a way to explain this struggle to the duped masses who have bought into the false narratives.
Unlike 1776, however, it will not be a political pamphlet that ignites that spark of understanding among the masses. But someone will emerge with a story to tell. A university lecturer or an online blogger or a street activist or a crazed person who emerges from the wilderness in beard and sandals to remind us that we are free human beings and that we have all the power, not the small cadre of deranged psychopaths who seek to rule over us.
Whoever it is that brings this message to the world, and whatever form that message takes, it will appear as a revelation; an answer that’s been sitting there under our nose all along. And when it arrives, it won’t require persuasion or cajoling to convince the public to act. The story itself will compel the public into action.
I know these words will fall mostly on deaf ears. One of the narratives that the narrative controllers has implanted in us is that words are meaningless and only the armed heroics of some steroid-laden, gun-toting Rambo can save us from the bad guys.
But those who have really studied history know better. They understand that ideas and stories are the only things that have ever changed the world.
Where’s Thomas Paine when you need him?
