So now they tell us Trump’s team is planning to build a mass surveillance tool? Newsweek seems interested:

Supporters of President Donald Trump expressed anger and disbelief online following reports that his administration had advanced plans to create a national citizen database with technology firm Palantir.

Newsweek reached out to Palantir for comment.

The White House has contracted Palantir, a Colorado-based analytics company co-founded by Trump supporter Peter Thiel, to assist in compiling a database of personal information on American citizens, according to unnamed government officials and Palantir employees who spoke with The New York Times. The purported deal follows project talks Palantir had with the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Education.

The reaction from Trump’s supporters reflected growing unease within conservative circles, indicating a rare rupture between the president and key segments of his constituency. The controversy underscores nationwide anxieties around privacy, civil liberties, and the growing influence of technology firms over personal information management.

The Palantir deal marks a significant development in government data collection, drawing sharp concern from privacy advocates and Trump’s own core base, otherwise known as “MAGA.” Detractors compared the centralized database effort to surveillance initiatives in authoritarian regimes.

Numerous pro-Trump voices expressed dismay and feelings of betrayal across social media platforms like X.

And to that I say welcome to 2003.

The headline reads like it’s breaking a scandal. “‘Trump Flipped On Us’: MAGA Reacts to Potential National Citizen Database”

Oh no. The government might track us. Let’s get angry about it for about three days or even three hours and go back to giving the government all the information it needs through the public outpouring of our personal lives on social media.

The truth is, they already did track us. Probably for much longer, but a good marker is 9/11, under the Patriot Act when they scared us about all those terrorists that might fly planes into your cities buildings next. They did it with bipartisan, supposedly “patriotic” backing. And the people cheered as they gave away their rights, their privacy, and their future for the illusion of security.

I was in that great number, hoodwinked. Bush is not Clinton! He’s a Republican! He’s telling the truth!

I invite you to read this article from October 2023 in full if you have time, but here is an applicable snippet for today:

Back in 2001, my lack of discipline and dearth in critical thinking positioned me to hand over my trust to the Bush war machine simply because I was raised conservative, because Bush was Republican and counter to the Gores and Clintons of the world, and, well, because somebody’s got to be the winner in this little binary trap I’ve set for myself.

I was a slave to the tribe and a lot of Americans still are. I even have to fight it. Hence my delay in writing this piece.

So I trusted Bush. And twenty years later Afghanistan was still a money-making machine for crooks in Washington before the Biden debacle in leaving the country in 2021. When something like the Hamas bombing happens, our instincts practically force us to one of two camps, an arbitrary binary that has proven incredibly manipulative and dangerous to the American people. In other words, patriots who want justice are quick to automatically think that we’re “the good guys” and the other side is “the bad guys.” It is incredibly wrong thinking, and one need only consider how he or she feels about the administrations of Obama and Biden to realize that America isn’t always on the noble path. Why would it be so if these politicians we so distrust and despise are in charge? How can we separate them from the notion of “America” when these suspicious events continue to take place?

–When it is the Obamas and Bidens of the world who are the ones who keep these terrorist organizations strong in the first place?

I was a moron back then too.

Twenty years later, the tech’s just better. Now they don’t need the NSA and warrantless wiretaps. They don’t even need a Tulsi Gabbard. We gave them our metadata with every app we downloaded. Every selfie, every tweet, every like, every post. We fed the beast. They just gave it a name.

Facebook.

Instagram.

TikTok.

I’m guilty of it all. The only comfort I have is that I am now using those very tools to teach. Combating that comfort is that hardly anyone sees it–because the already established surveillance is in place.

And we’re supposed to panic because Trump might do it too?

Here’s where things get dangerous.

Here’s why I’ve been teaching about controlled opposition, even using lines of Socratic questioning to keep us off the Trump spell, even though I have openly supported Trump. How could I write for The Hayride and RVIVR otherwise? I’ve been labeled a Trump-hating liberal and have lost conservative friends over it.

This is how spellbound people are. It’s like addictions. We don’t go to the root to mend the problem; we simply shift the allegiance.

In 2015 it was Trump vs The Swamp. Then the term “Deep State” became vogue. The Outsider vs The Swamp, vs the Deep State. The chosen wrecking ball who will clean house, take names, and fix it all for us.

The new binary wasn’t R vs D. With Trump, we thought we’d stumbled on the ultimate truth in exposing the “RINOs,” and making the new binary Dems/RINOS vs MAGA, but in doing so, we missed the point. We fell for the same trick. We got hoodwinked again.

The hoodwink is why so much of what is going on right now seems confusing. The latest in the Elon Musk narrative illustrates this too.

You know the Musks and Trumps of the world, in addition to this often strange theatre deployments, have been telling us this the whole time, right?

Think Autopen.

Think some of his recent posts about raising the question on who was behind the Autopen, because the real Joe Biden would never have signed off on all of those things.

Wait, “real” Joe Biden?

What does that mean?

Who is that question directed at?

As I’ve been saying, who is all of this about?

US.

If we knew how deep and dark this goes, some folks say people would drop dead of a heart attack. I don’t go anywhere near what I’ve come to see and know from parts of that Internet that go well beyond Fox News and the ever-trusted Jesse Watters.

It doesn’t matter if Trump is good or not. That isn’t the point. The point is for all of us to see what they’ve all been doing to us for decades and decades. If Trump is the lightning rod hero waking us up, great. But it doesn’t matter if enough of us don’t actually do the waking up and staying up.

The controlled opposition model hasn’t been dismantled. It’s just been rebranded.

Is Trump a part of that? I have no idea.

Again, it doesn’t matter.

And the surveillance itself? Old news. The government knows everything about us already. They used the chaos of 9/11 to justify their omniscience, and we let them. We posted our lives online and called it “connection.” They harvested it and called it “protection.” You think Palantir is new?

Here is Jon Herold and Chris Paul on the issue:

They’ve been watching. The only question is: why remind us, or even reveal it to some, now?

That’s the game. This isn’t revelation—it’s narrative deployment. Just like when the Democrats floated the idea of a “shadow government” to watch Trump a few weeks ago. You think that’s a threat? That’s already been happening for years. They’re just naming the monster.

Why?

Because people only wake up when the threat seems new. Abstract truth doesn’t rouse the mob. Emotional headlines do.

So instead of warning us outright about digital chains or biometric prisons, they say, “Trump might build a surveillance machine,” and wait for your side to either freak out or justify it.

Either way, the net tightens.

That’s why I’ve addressed the purpose of limited hangouts so much in my work. The population is waking up in waves.

But it is also time for an end to the limited hangouts. It’s time for something to actually happen, to actually change.

I’ll be honest. My hope in the American mind took a major hit when they released the truth about JFK and the people shrugged. “Too long,” we said. “Just give me the bullet points.”

We don’t want truth. We want entertainment.

And yes, I’m in that number. Because I’ll be rooting for LSU baseball this weekend and as long as they stay in it even though I know sports is one of the main cogs of the cultural Marxist bread and circuses machine.

And that’s why the vigilant must live differently. Expect nothing from the masses. Guard everything. Don’t look for salvation in the state, or in your favorite candidate, or in the next election cycle, or even in the American people.

They’ll never save you.

Only Christ can do that.

And until He returns, the wolves will keep circling.

And if enough of us can think this way and live this way, maybe…just maybe…

Don’t be a sheep.

Be watchful.

Be free.

And stop pretending you didn’t already know.

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May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well after all, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.