While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government (2020–…): Season 1, Episode 6 - Legacy of Lies - full transcript
The elite's Cold War plan for doomsday fueled the rise of conspiracy theories.
-Former Vice President
Joseph R. Biden
is projected to win
the state of Pennsylvania
and will become the 46th
president of the United States.
-This is a fraud
on the American public.
This is an embarrassment
to our country.
We were getting ready
to win this election.
we did win
this election.
-How did we get here...
-It's legal for them to count
votes in Pennsylvania
two days after the election
on November 3rd?
- Yes.
- You're wrong. Go.
I don't even want
to talk to you.
- where counting ballots as a
battle between good and evil...
the battle of righteousness
versus Satan.
-The Wuhan outbreak...
Bill Gates did this.
- where science is met
with righteous ignorance...
-You literally cannot mandate
somebody to wear a mask
knowing that that mask
is killing people.
It literally is killing people.
we can't agree
on fundamental truths?
This is a legacy of decades
of lies by the richest
lies to mask the real threats...
-[ Crying ] Put your masks on.
Don't go out if you don't have
to.
lies designed to enrich
and protect those in power
while the rest of us die.
[ Cheers and applause ]
our leaders have told us
one thing
under the bright lights.
-The protection of the lives
and property of Americans
is the responsibility
of all public officials.
-I care. We're trying.
-And it is my first duty
as president
to protect the American people.
-We have it
so well under control.
-But America's shadow government
has spent trillions of dollars
on secret plans
that serve one premise...
we're on our own.
-I have nothing. Nothing.
now truth itself
is under attack.
-We will not cower down to evil!
We're Americans!
♪♪
♪♪
[ Alarm blaring ]
-That signal means to stop
whatever you are doing
and get to the nearest
safe place fast.
so it was pretty dramatic.
I could tell the teachers
were scared.
There had just been a speech
by the president
saying we might go to war.
-It shall be the policy
of this nation
to regard any nuclear missile
launched from Cuba
against any nation
in the Western Hemisphere
requiring a full retaliatory
response upon the Soviet Union.
-And so we did what we were
supposed to do.
and prepared
for the blast to occur.
and I don't really want to die
in my high-school basement.
So can I make it if I bolt?
and can I make it home in time?
And I did the math
and I couldn't.
And there was no way
I could get home
on the subway in half an hour.
I was deciding
where I wanted to die
during a nuclear war.
-Your survival chances against
dangerous fallout are excellent
if you take suitable shelter.
-As the Cold War
reaches a boiling point
Richard Clarke and his
classmates are fed a double dose
of terror and deception...
-An attack could come
without warning.
- sold on the fear
of an imminent Soviet attack
and the lie that citizens
in American cities
could survive a direct hit.
000 times
more powerful than the bomb
dropped on Hiroshima
means civil defense drills
are becoming
increasingly meaningless.
massive propaganda effort
that bore almost no relationship
to reality whatsoever.
dig a foxhole
and make a cover
of branches or board.
Don't let radioactive dust
talk to your skin.
-There was something called
Operation Alert
that would happen every year.
Everyone would have
to find shelter
and it was all done
to persuade people
they would be safe.
-And while Americans
are distracted
the government
and military contractors
get busy acquiring
the real power and wealth
that comes from manufacturing
tens of thousands
of nuclear weapons
submarines
and bombers to deliver them.
-And all these civil
defense programs
were really a form
of emotional management.
It was to maintain support
for our nuclear-weapon
strategy and programs.
-The deception goes deeper
into the secret massive
underground complexes
those at the highest
reaches of government.
The workers who maintain the
bunkers are told their families
so they'll follow orders
even though their loved ones
will be left out on their own
when the bombs drop.
-One of the things that bothered
me about this whole process
was that we had planned out what
you'd need at the facility...
it had to have food.
someone
needed to have thought through,
"Are these people going to be
fully attentive
to the very trying jobs
they're going to be asked to do
if their families are
under the fallout cloud?"
even
with civil-defense planning.
-But President Eisenhower
knew privately
that this was all bullshit.
there was a phrase
that was used to describe
radiating ruin."
it wasn't just nuclear war.
It was the arms race itself
that was leading to the rise
of something that could
threaten American democracy.
So in his farewell address...
- We have been compelled
to create a permanent armaments
industry of vast proportions.
that Cold War planning
is secretly transferring
all unaccountable to the people.
-We must guard against
the acquisition
whether sought or unsought,
by the military
industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists
and will persist.
We must never let the weight
of this combination
endanger our liberties
or democratic processes.
-But we do.
The newly formed Central
Intelligence Agency is tasked
with containing and rolling
back communist expansion.
the CIA will often act
as the secret army
of the military
industrial complex
using any means necessary.
This top-secret CIA report
lays out the plan...
Commence aggressive covert
operations across the globe
in which the rules of normal
human conduct don't apply.
War would now be fought
in the shadows.
murderers.
Often their operations
end up serving
America's corporate interests
and undermining democracy.
The CIA orchestrated coups
and assassinations in Guatemala
to protect
the United Fruit Company
and in defense of big oil
in Iran and Indonesia.
♪♪
While Norman Rockwell paints
America's shadow warriors
leave the streets
of the so-called
Third World red with blood.
-It corroded the soul of America
in totality.
It led to a situation
where the idea of freedom
and liberty and human dignity
was cast aside in the pursuit
of power and influence.
for the elite
to maintain control,
it's crucial Americans
are considered the good guys.
So deception is essential.
Cold War strategist
Hans Morgenthau
a democratic state
that operates in the open
and an amoral security state
which exercises secret control
and a veto
over democracy itself.
-We know that the American
government has engaged
in the covert overthrow
of democratically elected
leaders across the world.
We know that the government
has engaged
CIA agents setting up brothels
in San Francisco
to test the effects of acid
and other drugs
on unsuspecting Johns.
-The CIA tries to bury the dirty
tricks under a blanket of lies
and engages in a massive project
to influence popular culture.
The agency places editors
at major newspapers
across Western Europe
and secretly funds
prominent literary magazines
in Europe and Latin America.
and even James Baldwin
are unwittingly writing
on behalf of
America's shadow government.
Major European exhibitions
of America's most famous artists
are secretly funded
by American spies.
The world's arts and culture
becomes a psyops battleground.
it's the FBI's mission
to preserve
the rigid social order
that protects
America's ruling class.
sometimes they're blackmailed
and even killed by police.
started by the FBI in 1956,
and then very quickly added
into that are African-American
civil rights organizations.
J. Edgar Hoover picks out
Martin Luther King
to infiltrate and disrupt
the efforts of
the civil rights movement.
-The Vietnam War is the military
industrial elite's
and it's built upon
two fictions...
That Southeast Asia is essential
to American security
and that we're defending
the Vietnamese people.
-After almost three weeks
the end is in sight.
-The war has been raging
for years
revealing perhaps the biggest
and certainly
the deadliest lie...
Few of the military planners
actually believe
the U.S. will have lost.
♪♪
205
dead American servicemen
and women with hundreds
of thousands wounded
with nations
in Southeast Asia destroyed.
many Americans'
as well.
The loss of trust leads to
a flourishing
even the moon landing.
-A plane has crashed into
one of the towers
of the World Trade Center.
These remain fringe ideas.
there'll be a chance
to unify the country
and win back the trust
of the American people.
and there
are lots of theories about why,
the Bush administration
was intent on invading
even though it had nothing to do
with the war on terrorism.
♪♪
and I was at one end
of the range
and they had
a .22 caliber silver pistol.
And I'm shooting my gun
with aimed fire slowly.
"Bang,
bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang, bang, bang, bang."
"Who's down there?
Who's the idiot
who's just shooting that pistol
like a machine gun?"
and I realized
they were the hijackers
from the San Diego cell.
-Former intelligence officer
Malcolm Nance
believes the 9/11 hijackers
were able to infiltrate America
so easily
because of where they came from.
very large,
vast amounts
of Gulf state oil money.
And that is the blind spot
that allows people
to exploit our system.
♪♪
[ Sirens wailing ]
Americans are united
in their horror and grief
despite the trillions
notably in the months
leading up to the 9/11 attack.
-We began to receive lots of
intelligence indications
that there was going to be
a major terrorist strike
by bin Laden's organization
against the United States/
Richard Clarke is
working in the White House.
His job... advise the president
about terrorist threats.
-The Bush administration
did very little in response
to that intelligence.
Despite the CIA director
telling him repeatedly
the Bush administration didn't
try to find Al-Qaeda people
didn't ask all the agencies
didn't try to preempt the attack
by going after bin Laden
in Afghanistan.
-Why Clarke's warnings to Bush
were ignored
but some believe it had to do
with the fact
Saudi Arabia.
the Saudi royals had
been playing a dangerous game,
funding a strain
of radical Islam
that inspired the son of one
of the country's
richest construction tycoons
to become a terrorist leader
while cozying up
an oil family that produced
two presidents.
-The Saudis have always wanted
a president
who could play by their rules.
"Let's just keep pumping oil.
Let's get things stable."
the Saudis move over a billion
dollars to the Bush family
and its allied companies
and institutions.
-These people essentially
are Bond villains
who are running countries.
and bin Laden knew
Saudi Arabians
were treated well
in the United States
and they could just walk
right into the country
and learn whatever they wanted
and the Americans
would worship them.
rather than allow
an open investigation,
the Bush White House demands
the congressional committees
redact 28 pages
of their 9/11 report
related to the question
of whether the Saudi government
was involved in the attacks.
they detailed extensive links
between men
the FBI thinks could be
Saudi intelligence officers
including the
two men Nance saw in San Diego.
But the report stopped short
of finding conclusive proof
of a connection between
the Saudi government and 9/11.
And rather than own up to the
immense intelligence failure
that allowed 9/11 to happen.
The Bush administration executes
what is perhaps
the 21st century's
greatest feat of misdirection.
They shift blame
from the actual perpetrator
Saddam Hussein.
-George W. Bush was guided
by George Herbert Walker Bush's
Dick Cheney.
not liberate Iraq for the sake
of liberating Iraqis.
the government creates
the illusion
suggesting that Iraq is a dire
threat to the United States.
One of the most trusted figures
in American society
is rolled out
to level the accusation
that Iraq has been hiding
weapons of mass destruction
and is prepared to use them.
-The facts and Iraq's behavior
show that Saddam Hussein
and his regime
are concealing their efforts
to produce more weapons
of mass destruction.
Americans are told
that the Iraqi people
want us to invade their country.
and bloody battle?
Tim,
because I really do believe
we will be
greeted as liberators.
-But these are lies
on a massive scale
and will lead
to countless deaths
and kill faith in government
for a new generation
of Americans.
and there are lots of theories
the Bush administration
even though it had nothing to do
with the war on terrorism.
weapons of mass destruction
are never found and another
false promise is exposed.
[ All chanting
in native language ]
American soldiers are seen
as an occupying army.
- Go away! Go away!
- Go away! Go away!
-We moved hundreds of thousands
of American targets
closer to people with guns
and bombs
and that's what
happened in Iraq.
[ Gunfire ]
- Watch out!
[ Indistinct shouting ]
-You had a political leadership
people who had never
served themselves.
They're sending other
people's kids off to war.
They're not sending
their own kids.
[ Gunfire ]
the intelligence failure,
some take these strands
and weave
a wild conspiracy theory
that Bush and his cronies
orchestrated 9/11
to justify the Iraq invasion.
-September 11th was not
just a terrible tragedy
that took the lives
of thousands of innocent people.
It was a violent and aggressive
seizure of power
and a transformation of both
foreign and domestic policy.
It was an American coup.
the 9/11 conspiracy theorists
make the bizarre claim
and it was planted bombs
that destroyed the Pentagon
and Trade Center.
they would
call themselves 9/11 truthers.
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-What had been
only on the fringes
people who believe
everything they're being
told by authority is a lie.
-It was the head of CIA!
FBI! Homeland Security!
-Their views are amplified
by the Internet
and seep into the mainstream.
'cause if that... if it's...
[stammering]
I was like,
"Why does that collapse
like that?"
it's just strange.
-And I'm sure you've seen
the BBC reporter
who was speaking on camera
"World Trade
Center 7 has just fallen.
It has fallen.
It is the third building..."
and it's still standing.
delusion paints
the attack as a false flag,
a covert government op
designed to look like the work
of someone else.
And suddenly false flags
are seen everywhere.
-Can you imagine being a parent
of a little child
who saw this scene that
you're looking at right now?
even school shootings
are labeled hoaxes perpetrated
by the government to justify
taking away Americans' guns.
dead young people
that had their lives
taken from them.
This is the globalist
crime syndicate
that has funded the radical
Islamic takeover of North Africa
and much of the Middle East.
-The price is high.
we're drawn into a debate
over paranoid fantasies.
-Do you see the "666"
right here?
Do you see all of
the subliminal messages?
-Now anything is possible.
Like the racist falsehood
that the Hawaiian-born
African-American president
was really born in Kenya.
and in so doing
is now on the fast track
to destroy America.
fueled in part by decades
of government lies
wades a real-estate mogul
and reality-TV star
who becomes the champion
of the Obama birther movement.
-I think it's a terrible pale
that's hanging over him.
He should show
his birth certificate.
again,
Americans are distracted
from real political debates
like growing economic inequality
as the country struggles to
recover from the 2008 recession.
he leverages the mistrust
accrued from the falsehoods
of Democrats
and Republicans alike.
-They lie. They said there were
weapons of mass destruction.
and they knew there were none.
enrobing
himself in aggrievement
but that it's been stolen.
-The establishment
protected itself
but not the citizens
of our country.
they savior battling
a cabal inside government.
and Trump discovers that
decades of lies and mistrust
can be very useful indeed.
because if you actually believe
they would probably warrant
some pretty dramatic responses.
-I want to tell you
that this marks the start
of the second
American Revolution.
chant "freedom" ]
living on
a constant war footing,
under the looming cloud
all of it has a profound effect
on the American mind.
and if the communist
Chinese agent Joe Biden
siege until we're brought
to our knees.
we've pretty much always existed
often a military aggression,
people develop belief systems
help them maintain,
you know,
you are part of a battle
between good and evil
ultimately,
good will prevail.
-One communist on the faculty
of one university
is one communist too many.
[ People cheer ]
the government masters
the art of misdirection.
The damage control when official
lies come to light...
Blame the Soviets
and other internal enemies.
it is somehow or another
the result of traitors.
Rambo embodies
the country's rage over the lies
but he transfers blame
from the government
that orchestrated the war to
the protesters who opposed it.
-But somebody
wouldn't let us win.
spitting,
calling me "baby killer"
and all kinds of vile crap.
-It's a result of columns
within the country
who are obsessed
with destroying America.
They are themselves evil.
you come to believe that America
itself has been infected
with corruption
and traitors and evil
so much
that democracy is untenable.
♪♪
-Fueled partly by the mistrust
conspiracy movements
proliferate after 9/11
they have found their champion.
Even a Fox News ally wonders
if he's gone off the rails.
-Who do you think is pulling
Biden's strings?
Is it former Obama officials?
people that...
-What does that mean? That
sounds like conspiracy theory.
Dark shadows?
What is that?
people that you
haven't heard of.
They're people
that are on the streets.
They're people that are
controlling the streets.
is called QAnon.
It begins with a series of posts
on an Internet bulletin board
starting in October 2017.
-This mysterious person
who called themselves Q
was claiming that Donald Trump
was engaged in a secret war
and that soon Donald Trump's
enemies would be arrested
or put to death.
-Are you kidding me?!
We will not cower down to evil!
We're Americans!
which is an ancient
anti-Semitic concept
that Jewish people
are eating Christian babies.
they've changed
that a little bit.
-QAnon's version of the blood
libel has Donald Trump at war
with a deep-state cabal
that's abducting children
and drinking their blood.
Barack Obama,
and Joe Biden,
billionaires George Soros
and Bill Gates
Ellen, and Oprah Winfrey.
-The first event predicted
by Q...
Claiming that Hillary Clinton
was going to be arrested
within 48 hours of the post.
but this did not stop QAnon
in any way.
will do
some pretty extreme things.
And it's not that surprising
because if you actually believe
they would probably warrant
some pretty dramatic responses
purveyors of the patently false
QAnon conspiracy theory
have attracted
millions of new adherents
with online videos full of
quasi-religious prophecies
about a coming storm
and a great awakening.
-What if I told you
it was done on purpose?
and igniting
conflict were themselves about
to be permanently
eradicated from the Earth?
its narrative expands with
increasingly outlandish claims.
000 children
being kept beneath
the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Another claims instead
that these "mole children"
are being held
beneath Central Park.
QAnon believers take typos
and even the act
of the president
drinking a bottle of FIJI Water
as messages that are coded
and being sent to them
across the airwaves for them
to figure out on their own time.
-The QAnon lie
about a deep state cabal
is the legacy of decades
of official lies.
QAnon serves the purposes
of the current government elite.
If you paint your opponents
any action against them
is justified.
"
"survival of the fittest"
right?
It's a way of bringing
about the apocalypse now.
That's why they call it
the Great Awakening.
They want to bring it on.
Let's get there.
[ Cheers and applause ]
thanks in part to decades
of lies by leaders before him.
we may remain divided
and find that stamping out
hateful conspiracies
is like fighting shadows.
-The Cold War was the first time
that the American
intelligence state
launched into a full-scale
psychological operation
designed to modify human
behavior and human reaction
to American power.
The result of this large-scale
psychological operation
is QAnon.
we developed an A.I.
but it came back home
and consumed us.
[ Both shouting indistinctly ]
and we are neck deep in it.
-2020.
How do I characterize 2020?
-A horror story.
Plain and simple.
just worse and worse
all the time.
-2020 is the year disaster
struck and threatens Americans
the president hasn't even
pretended to protect us.
-It's going to disappear
one day.
It's like a miracle.
It will disappear.
and we have largely failed it.
-We really reached
a kind of maximum brittleness
as a society.
-The lie that the government
is there
to defend us is laid bare.
Other falsehoods designed
to reinforce the president's
power accelerate.
-2020 is bad.
will 2021 be worse?
♪♪
-The way that Donald Trump
has faced the pandemic
or failed to face the pandemic
is the greatest national
security blunder
we've ever seen
in American history.
It dwarfs Vietnam.
It dwarfs the Iraq war.
It's killing our citizens.
It's occupying our military.
It's eroding our economy.
The pandemic is hurting America
in ways that Osama bin Laden
could have only dreamed of.
-As the pandemic first bears
down on the country...
-The Democrats want us
to fail so badly...
-...Donald Trump sees
the virus
as a political ploy
by Democrats...
-...and this is their new hoax.
Trump attempts to gaslight
the nation with false optimism.
the virus that we're
talking about having to do,
a lot of people think
that goes away in April
with the heat
as the heat comes in.
that will
go away in April.
though.
-But the U.S.
is in the worst shape.
Could a reason we make up only
4% of the world's population
but account
for over 20% of the deaths
the legacy of decades
of government lies?
-All Trump's assurances
about the coronavirus going away
and that it's just going
to disappear
I think those efforts
are propaganda.
They're very similar
to the Eisenhower-era propaganda
you know,
we can survive a nuclear war,
if you just get
in your basement.
and your family could be okay.
-Behind closed doors
in conversations
Trump shows he understands
how deadly the threat is.
misinformation
creeps into the mainstream.
QAnon followers claim the
pandemic is an elaborate ruse
to increase authoritarian
control over their lives
and to undermine
their fearless leader.
-The COVID hoax was in the works
but they started
fast-tracking it.
he holds large
in-person rallies...
-I hear from your two great
senators and your governor
that we're doing very well
in Oklahoma. That's the word.
-...superspreader events
that a Stanford study
at the time,
000 infections
and over 700 deaths.
-President Trump
was ridiculing the notion
is a pathological,
but for the people he works with
in his own administration.
yet he takes his recovery
as proof
that taking steps to avoid COVID
is somehow a moral failure.
-Don't let it dominate you.
Don't be afraid of it.
and we are neck deep in it.
- We're on our own...
uh,
whether it's ultraviolet
or just very powerful light.
-...but there's
this illusion
that there's someone
in charge...
-And then I see
the disinfectant.
- and that's the worst
of both worlds.
-And is there a way
we can do something like that
by injection inside or...
Or almost a cleaning?
♪♪
-The coronavirus crisis
is exposing failures
even deeper than a president
refusing to protect us.
ma'am.
-It reveals a mistrust
of authority so profound
and it lays bare
the government's inability
to protect the vulnerable.
we're witnessing a loss of faith
in America itself.
I was shocked by how complacent
people were with
because I've seen that history
can go into reverse.
unfortunately, when that
happens, it can be brutal.
-Americans are starting
to realize more and more
and we can start to build
something real and true
and human and reject
this militarism of the Cold War.
Palo Alto, 1950s.
A psychological experiment is
being conducted that will shape
the shadow government's
dark view of human nature.
which would guide
we got to win.
-Game theory was
a burgeoning study
prisoner's dilemma,
in which two opponents
took each other on
with their moves
hidden behind a structure.
-Each prisoner has to decide
whether to rat out the other guy
in exchange
for a lighter sentence.
the safe thing to do
is betray your fellow prisoner
because they may betray you.
to always act in bad faith.
You had to always assume
that your opponent
was seeking to destroy you
and was going to lie
and not communicate
or negotiate.
game theory is embodied
in the doctrine
" or MAD.
we're going to nuke them
right back.
Our bombs are on autopilot.
♪♪
-The 1964 film
"Dr. Strangelove" parodies
the insanity
of mutual destruction
with a so-called doomsday
machine...
- Doomsday machine.
- That can't be stopped
once it's triggered.
- Doomsday machine?
What is that?
- A device which will destroy
all human and animal life
on Earth.
-All human and animal?
the opposites of
us, the ideology that we hate,
those guys are coming for us.
The threat is out there.
It's external.
in division,
in the failure of
our own leaders to protect us?
-The opposite of mutually
assured destruction
is self-destruction.
That's the path we're on now.
-We are in the middle
of something that I am not sure
that we're going to get out of.
We are probably more divided
than we've ever been
in the United States.
We're in the grip of a pretty
devastating set of circumstances
that are going to
probably affect us
for [sighs] generations.
and it's very
difficult not to be.
But what we can do
is exercise our agency.
We have to make our choices.
but we also have to be active.
you know,
to go out
and make good and
necessary trouble.
maybe there's one upside
to the horrors of 2020.
We're finally facing the legacy
of lies that got us here.
Americans are starting
to realize more and more
that they don't have
to be powerless.
They do not have to accept
a world
particularly when the state
doesn't hold up
its end of the bargain.
Americans are starting
to wake up from this mythology
that they have been taught
and realized that power can come
and we can start to build
something real and true
and human and reject
this militarism of the Cold War.
-So what would real security
look like?
It would look like embracing
the general welfare
of the American people
and the general welfare
of the species.
-This is what democracy
looks like!
-That would involve cutting
all of the spending on warfare
and surveillance and policing
and we need to be thinking
about all fantasies
of individual survival
in the face of some sort
of atomic apocalypse
or environmental apocalypse
are just that.
and
they have no basis in reality.
we are... from our days
as hunter gatherers to today,
we are a group species.
We're all totally dependent
on each other.
that's our greatest peril.
♪♪
in fact, nobody did.
And as it thought that it then
began to build history's
most perfect killing machine.
it neglected itself,
decent jobs,
incomes, savings,
nothing.
30 years later,
we have capitalism
collapsing America.
some people used to joke
that there were bread lines
in the Soviet Union.
too.
-Being poor and Black in America
is a lot like living
in a collapsed economy.
Being young in America
is a lot like living
you know,
and you can't afford
health insurance.
America has collapsed already.
The apocalypse is here.
It's just not
evenly distributed.
a shadow America that benefits
one group of people
at the expense
of the greater good.
all they need
is for you not to know
where America's sons
and daughters are dying
or how much money they spend
on a weapons system
or where they're
deploying troops.
They hope
you don't pay attention.
that's how this happens,
that's how pandemics spread.
♪♪
-QAnon is the most advanced
form of interactive fiction
I've seen.
this hint
and that hint,
and then you as
the audience member
have to find ways of connecting
these different things.
So it's like child abuse
and a government thing and COVID
and 5G cellular technology.
Go. Right?
and they have to try to
connect them on stage at once.
beautiful thing
that the QAnon culture
and..." technique.
The whole idea in improv
is one person says something
"Yes, and..."
anti-government
fervor flourishes
on the counterculture left.
The right backs the military
and the anti-communist state.
much of this
has been turned upside down.
And a new right wing
mysticism summons
monsters from the last century
that we thought we defeated
the belief
in a secret cabal of Jews
the invention
of an indispensable leader
to save the world
from the cabal.
the festering at the edge
where ideas become sublimated
into something more ethereal
or even cosmic.
Donald Trump is a kind of beacon
a return to values of the past
and a cleaning of the country's
undesirable elements.
Joseph R. Biden
is projected to win
the state of Pennsylvania
and will become the 46th
president of the United States.
-This is a fraud
on the American public.
This is an embarrassment
to our country.
We were getting ready
to win this election.
we did win
this election.
-How did we get here...
-It's legal for them to count
votes in Pennsylvania
two days after the election
on November 3rd?
- Yes.
- You're wrong. Go.
I don't even want
to talk to you.
- where counting ballots as a
battle between good and evil...
the battle of righteousness
versus Satan.
-The Wuhan outbreak...
Bill Gates did this.
- where science is met
with righteous ignorance...
-You literally cannot mandate
somebody to wear a mask
knowing that that mask
is killing people.
It literally is killing people.
we can't agree
on fundamental truths?
This is a legacy of decades
of lies by the richest
lies to mask the real threats...
-[ Crying ] Put your masks on.
Don't go out if you don't have
to.
lies designed to enrich
and protect those in power
while the rest of us die.
[ Cheers and applause ]
our leaders have told us
one thing
under the bright lights.
-The protection of the lives
and property of Americans
is the responsibility
of all public officials.
-I care. We're trying.
-And it is my first duty
as president
to protect the American people.
-We have it
so well under control.
-But America's shadow government
has spent trillions of dollars
on secret plans
that serve one premise...
we're on our own.
-I have nothing. Nothing.
now truth itself
is under attack.
-We will not cower down to evil!
We're Americans!
♪♪
♪♪
[ Alarm blaring ]
-That signal means to stop
whatever you are doing
and get to the nearest
safe place fast.
so it was pretty dramatic.
I could tell the teachers
were scared.
There had just been a speech
by the president
saying we might go to war.
-It shall be the policy
of this nation
to regard any nuclear missile
launched from Cuba
against any nation
in the Western Hemisphere
requiring a full retaliatory
response upon the Soviet Union.
-And so we did what we were
supposed to do.
and prepared
for the blast to occur.
and I don't really want to die
in my high-school basement.
So can I make it if I bolt?
and can I make it home in time?
And I did the math
and I couldn't.
And there was no way
I could get home
on the subway in half an hour.
I was deciding
where I wanted to die
during a nuclear war.
-Your survival chances against
dangerous fallout are excellent
if you take suitable shelter.
-As the Cold War
reaches a boiling point
Richard Clarke and his
classmates are fed a double dose
of terror and deception...
-An attack could come
without warning.
- sold on the fear
of an imminent Soviet attack
and the lie that citizens
in American cities
could survive a direct hit.
000 times
more powerful than the bomb
dropped on Hiroshima
means civil defense drills
are becoming
increasingly meaningless.
massive propaganda effort
that bore almost no relationship
to reality whatsoever.
dig a foxhole
and make a cover
of branches or board.
Don't let radioactive dust
talk to your skin.
-There was something called
Operation Alert
that would happen every year.
Everyone would have
to find shelter
and it was all done
to persuade people
they would be safe.
-And while Americans
are distracted
the government
and military contractors
get busy acquiring
the real power and wealth
that comes from manufacturing
tens of thousands
of nuclear weapons
submarines
and bombers to deliver them.
-And all these civil
defense programs
were really a form
of emotional management.
It was to maintain support
for our nuclear-weapon
strategy and programs.
-The deception goes deeper
into the secret massive
underground complexes
those at the highest
reaches of government.
The workers who maintain the
bunkers are told their families
so they'll follow orders
even though their loved ones
will be left out on their own
when the bombs drop.
-One of the things that bothered
me about this whole process
was that we had planned out what
you'd need at the facility...
it had to have food.
someone
needed to have thought through,
"Are these people going to be
fully attentive
to the very trying jobs
they're going to be asked to do
if their families are
under the fallout cloud?"
even
with civil-defense planning.
-But President Eisenhower
knew privately
that this was all bullshit.
there was a phrase
that was used to describe
radiating ruin."
it wasn't just nuclear war.
It was the arms race itself
that was leading to the rise
of something that could
threaten American democracy.
So in his farewell address...
- We have been compelled
to create a permanent armaments
industry of vast proportions.
that Cold War planning
is secretly transferring
all unaccountable to the people.
-We must guard against
the acquisition
whether sought or unsought,
by the military
industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists
and will persist.
We must never let the weight
of this combination
endanger our liberties
or democratic processes.
-But we do.
The newly formed Central
Intelligence Agency is tasked
with containing and rolling
back communist expansion.
the CIA will often act
as the secret army
of the military
industrial complex
using any means necessary.
This top-secret CIA report
lays out the plan...
Commence aggressive covert
operations across the globe
in which the rules of normal
human conduct don't apply.
War would now be fought
in the shadows.
murderers.
Often their operations
end up serving
America's corporate interests
and undermining democracy.
The CIA orchestrated coups
and assassinations in Guatemala
to protect
the United Fruit Company
and in defense of big oil
in Iran and Indonesia.
♪♪
While Norman Rockwell paints
America's shadow warriors
leave the streets
of the so-called
Third World red with blood.
-It corroded the soul of America
in totality.
It led to a situation
where the idea of freedom
and liberty and human dignity
was cast aside in the pursuit
of power and influence.
for the elite
to maintain control,
it's crucial Americans
are considered the good guys.
So deception is essential.
Cold War strategist
Hans Morgenthau
a democratic state
that operates in the open
and an amoral security state
which exercises secret control
and a veto
over democracy itself.
-We know that the American
government has engaged
in the covert overthrow
of democratically elected
leaders across the world.
We know that the government
has engaged
CIA agents setting up brothels
in San Francisco
to test the effects of acid
and other drugs
on unsuspecting Johns.
-The CIA tries to bury the dirty
tricks under a blanket of lies
and engages in a massive project
to influence popular culture.
The agency places editors
at major newspapers
across Western Europe
and secretly funds
prominent literary magazines
in Europe and Latin America.
and even James Baldwin
are unwittingly writing
on behalf of
America's shadow government.
Major European exhibitions
of America's most famous artists
are secretly funded
by American spies.
The world's arts and culture
becomes a psyops battleground.
it's the FBI's mission
to preserve
the rigid social order
that protects
America's ruling class.
sometimes they're blackmailed
and even killed by police.
started by the FBI in 1956,
and then very quickly added
into that are African-American
civil rights organizations.
J. Edgar Hoover picks out
Martin Luther King
to infiltrate and disrupt
the efforts of
the civil rights movement.
-The Vietnam War is the military
industrial elite's
and it's built upon
two fictions...
That Southeast Asia is essential
to American security
and that we're defending
the Vietnamese people.
-After almost three weeks
the end is in sight.
-The war has been raging
for years
revealing perhaps the biggest
and certainly
the deadliest lie...
Few of the military planners
actually believe
the U.S. will have lost.
♪♪
205
dead American servicemen
and women with hundreds
of thousands wounded
with nations
in Southeast Asia destroyed.
many Americans'
as well.
The loss of trust leads to
a flourishing
even the moon landing.
-A plane has crashed into
one of the towers
of the World Trade Center.
These remain fringe ideas.
there'll be a chance
to unify the country
and win back the trust
of the American people.
and there
are lots of theories about why,
the Bush administration
was intent on invading
even though it had nothing to do
with the war on terrorism.
♪♪
and I was at one end
of the range
and they had
a .22 caliber silver pistol.
And I'm shooting my gun
with aimed fire slowly.
"Bang,
bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang, bang, bang, bang."
"Who's down there?
Who's the idiot
who's just shooting that pistol
like a machine gun?"
and I realized
they were the hijackers
from the San Diego cell.
-Former intelligence officer
Malcolm Nance
believes the 9/11 hijackers
were able to infiltrate America
so easily
because of where they came from.
very large,
vast amounts
of Gulf state oil money.
And that is the blind spot
that allows people
to exploit our system.
♪♪
[ Sirens wailing ]
Americans are united
in their horror and grief
despite the trillions
notably in the months
leading up to the 9/11 attack.
-We began to receive lots of
intelligence indications
that there was going to be
a major terrorist strike
by bin Laden's organization
against the United States/
Richard Clarke is
working in the White House.
His job... advise the president
about terrorist threats.
-The Bush administration
did very little in response
to that intelligence.
Despite the CIA director
telling him repeatedly
the Bush administration didn't
try to find Al-Qaeda people
didn't ask all the agencies
didn't try to preempt the attack
by going after bin Laden
in Afghanistan.
-Why Clarke's warnings to Bush
were ignored
but some believe it had to do
with the fact
Saudi Arabia.
the Saudi royals had
been playing a dangerous game,
funding a strain
of radical Islam
that inspired the son of one
of the country's
richest construction tycoons
to become a terrorist leader
while cozying up
an oil family that produced
two presidents.
-The Saudis have always wanted
a president
who could play by their rules.
"Let's just keep pumping oil.
Let's get things stable."
the Saudis move over a billion
dollars to the Bush family
and its allied companies
and institutions.
-These people essentially
are Bond villains
who are running countries.
and bin Laden knew
Saudi Arabians
were treated well
in the United States
and they could just walk
right into the country
and learn whatever they wanted
and the Americans
would worship them.
rather than allow
an open investigation,
the Bush White House demands
the congressional committees
redact 28 pages
of their 9/11 report
related to the question
of whether the Saudi government
was involved in the attacks.
they detailed extensive links
between men
the FBI thinks could be
Saudi intelligence officers
including the
two men Nance saw in San Diego.
But the report stopped short
of finding conclusive proof
of a connection between
the Saudi government and 9/11.
And rather than own up to the
immense intelligence failure
that allowed 9/11 to happen.
The Bush administration executes
what is perhaps
the 21st century's
greatest feat of misdirection.
They shift blame
from the actual perpetrator
Saddam Hussein.
-George W. Bush was guided
by George Herbert Walker Bush's
Dick Cheney.
not liberate Iraq for the sake
of liberating Iraqis.
the government creates
the illusion
suggesting that Iraq is a dire
threat to the United States.
One of the most trusted figures
in American society
is rolled out
to level the accusation
that Iraq has been hiding
weapons of mass destruction
and is prepared to use them.
-The facts and Iraq's behavior
show that Saddam Hussein
and his regime
are concealing their efforts
to produce more weapons
of mass destruction.
Americans are told
that the Iraqi people
want us to invade their country.
and bloody battle?
Tim,
because I really do believe
we will be
greeted as liberators.
-But these are lies
on a massive scale
and will lead
to countless deaths
and kill faith in government
for a new generation
of Americans.
and there are lots of theories
the Bush administration
even though it had nothing to do
with the war on terrorism.
weapons of mass destruction
are never found and another
false promise is exposed.
[ All chanting
in native language ]
American soldiers are seen
as an occupying army.
- Go away! Go away!
- Go away! Go away!
-We moved hundreds of thousands
of American targets
closer to people with guns
and bombs
and that's what
happened in Iraq.
[ Gunfire ]
- Watch out!
[ Indistinct shouting ]
-You had a political leadership
people who had never
served themselves.
They're sending other
people's kids off to war.
They're not sending
their own kids.
[ Gunfire ]
the intelligence failure,
some take these strands
and weave
a wild conspiracy theory
that Bush and his cronies
orchestrated 9/11
to justify the Iraq invasion.
-September 11th was not
just a terrible tragedy
that took the lives
of thousands of innocent people.
It was a violent and aggressive
seizure of power
and a transformation of both
foreign and domestic policy.
It was an American coup.
the 9/11 conspiracy theorists
make the bizarre claim
and it was planted bombs
that destroyed the Pentagon
and Trade Center.
they would
call themselves 9/11 truthers.
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-What had been
only on the fringes
people who believe
everything they're being
told by authority is a lie.
-It was the head of CIA!
FBI! Homeland Security!
-Their views are amplified
by the Internet
and seep into the mainstream.
'cause if that... if it's...
[stammering]
I was like,
"Why does that collapse
like that?"
it's just strange.
-And I'm sure you've seen
the BBC reporter
who was speaking on camera
"World Trade
Center 7 has just fallen.
It has fallen.
It is the third building..."
and it's still standing.
delusion paints
the attack as a false flag,
a covert government op
designed to look like the work
of someone else.
And suddenly false flags
are seen everywhere.
-Can you imagine being a parent
of a little child
who saw this scene that
you're looking at right now?
even school shootings
are labeled hoaxes perpetrated
by the government to justify
taking away Americans' guns.
dead young people
that had their lives
taken from them.
This is the globalist
crime syndicate
that has funded the radical
Islamic takeover of North Africa
and much of the Middle East.
-The price is high.
we're drawn into a debate
over paranoid fantasies.
-Do you see the "666"
right here?
Do you see all of
the subliminal messages?
-Now anything is possible.
Like the racist falsehood
that the Hawaiian-born
African-American president
was really born in Kenya.
and in so doing
is now on the fast track
to destroy America.
fueled in part by decades
of government lies
wades a real-estate mogul
and reality-TV star
who becomes the champion
of the Obama birther movement.
-I think it's a terrible pale
that's hanging over him.
He should show
his birth certificate.
again,
Americans are distracted
from real political debates
like growing economic inequality
as the country struggles to
recover from the 2008 recession.
he leverages the mistrust
accrued from the falsehoods
of Democrats
and Republicans alike.
-They lie. They said there were
weapons of mass destruction.
and they knew there were none.
enrobing
himself in aggrievement
but that it's been stolen.
-The establishment
protected itself
but not the citizens
of our country.
they savior battling
a cabal inside government.
and Trump discovers that
decades of lies and mistrust
can be very useful indeed.
because if you actually believe
they would probably warrant
some pretty dramatic responses.
-I want to tell you
that this marks the start
of the second
American Revolution.
chant "freedom" ]
living on
a constant war footing,
under the looming cloud
all of it has a profound effect
on the American mind.
and if the communist
Chinese agent Joe Biden
siege until we're brought
to our knees.
we've pretty much always existed
often a military aggression,
people develop belief systems
help them maintain,
you know,
you are part of a battle
between good and evil
ultimately,
good will prevail.
-One communist on the faculty
of one university
is one communist too many.
[ People cheer ]
the government masters
the art of misdirection.
The damage control when official
lies come to light...
Blame the Soviets
and other internal enemies.
it is somehow or another
the result of traitors.
Rambo embodies
the country's rage over the lies
but he transfers blame
from the government
that orchestrated the war to
the protesters who opposed it.
-But somebody
wouldn't let us win.
spitting,
calling me "baby killer"
and all kinds of vile crap.
-It's a result of columns
within the country
who are obsessed
with destroying America.
They are themselves evil.
you come to believe that America
itself has been infected
with corruption
and traitors and evil
so much
that democracy is untenable.
♪♪
-Fueled partly by the mistrust
conspiracy movements
proliferate after 9/11
they have found their champion.
Even a Fox News ally wonders
if he's gone off the rails.
-Who do you think is pulling
Biden's strings?
Is it former Obama officials?
people that...
-What does that mean? That
sounds like conspiracy theory.
Dark shadows?
What is that?
people that you
haven't heard of.
They're people
that are on the streets.
They're people that are
controlling the streets.
is called QAnon.
It begins with a series of posts
on an Internet bulletin board
starting in October 2017.
-This mysterious person
who called themselves Q
was claiming that Donald Trump
was engaged in a secret war
and that soon Donald Trump's
enemies would be arrested
or put to death.
-Are you kidding me?!
We will not cower down to evil!
We're Americans!
which is an ancient
anti-Semitic concept
that Jewish people
are eating Christian babies.
they've changed
that a little bit.
-QAnon's version of the blood
libel has Donald Trump at war
with a deep-state cabal
that's abducting children
and drinking their blood.
Barack Obama,
and Joe Biden,
billionaires George Soros
and Bill Gates
Ellen, and Oprah Winfrey.
-The first event predicted
by Q...
Claiming that Hillary Clinton
was going to be arrested
within 48 hours of the post.
but this did not stop QAnon
in any way.
will do
some pretty extreme things.
And it's not that surprising
because if you actually believe
they would probably warrant
some pretty dramatic responses
purveyors of the patently false
QAnon conspiracy theory
have attracted
millions of new adherents
with online videos full of
quasi-religious prophecies
about a coming storm
and a great awakening.
-What if I told you
it was done on purpose?
and igniting
conflict were themselves about
to be permanently
eradicated from the Earth?
its narrative expands with
increasingly outlandish claims.
000 children
being kept beneath
the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Another claims instead
that these "mole children"
are being held
beneath Central Park.
QAnon believers take typos
and even the act
of the president
drinking a bottle of FIJI Water
as messages that are coded
and being sent to them
across the airwaves for them
to figure out on their own time.
-The QAnon lie
about a deep state cabal
is the legacy of decades
of official lies.
QAnon serves the purposes
of the current government elite.
If you paint your opponents
any action against them
is justified.
"
"survival of the fittest"
right?
It's a way of bringing
about the apocalypse now.
That's why they call it
the Great Awakening.
They want to bring it on.
Let's get there.
[ Cheers and applause ]
thanks in part to decades
of lies by leaders before him.
we may remain divided
and find that stamping out
hateful conspiracies
is like fighting shadows.
-The Cold War was the first time
that the American
intelligence state
launched into a full-scale
psychological operation
designed to modify human
behavior and human reaction
to American power.
The result of this large-scale
psychological operation
is QAnon.
we developed an A.I.
but it came back home
and consumed us.
[ Both shouting indistinctly ]
and we are neck deep in it.
-2020.
How do I characterize 2020?
-A horror story.
Plain and simple.
just worse and worse
all the time.
-2020 is the year disaster
struck and threatens Americans
the president hasn't even
pretended to protect us.
-It's going to disappear
one day.
It's like a miracle.
It will disappear.
and we have largely failed it.
-We really reached
a kind of maximum brittleness
as a society.
-The lie that the government
is there
to defend us is laid bare.
Other falsehoods designed
to reinforce the president's
power accelerate.
-2020 is bad.
will 2021 be worse?
♪♪
-The way that Donald Trump
has faced the pandemic
or failed to face the pandemic
is the greatest national
security blunder
we've ever seen
in American history.
It dwarfs Vietnam.
It dwarfs the Iraq war.
It's killing our citizens.
It's occupying our military.
It's eroding our economy.
The pandemic is hurting America
in ways that Osama bin Laden
could have only dreamed of.
-As the pandemic first bears
down on the country...
-The Democrats want us
to fail so badly...
-...Donald Trump sees
the virus
as a political ploy
by Democrats...
-...and this is their new hoax.
Trump attempts to gaslight
the nation with false optimism.
the virus that we're
talking about having to do,
a lot of people think
that goes away in April
with the heat
as the heat comes in.
that will
go away in April.
though.
-But the U.S.
is in the worst shape.
Could a reason we make up only
4% of the world's population
but account
for over 20% of the deaths
the legacy of decades
of government lies?
-All Trump's assurances
about the coronavirus going away
and that it's just going
to disappear
I think those efforts
are propaganda.
They're very similar
to the Eisenhower-era propaganda
you know,
we can survive a nuclear war,
if you just get
in your basement.
and your family could be okay.
-Behind closed doors
in conversations
Trump shows he understands
how deadly the threat is.
misinformation
creeps into the mainstream.
QAnon followers claim the
pandemic is an elaborate ruse
to increase authoritarian
control over their lives
and to undermine
their fearless leader.
-The COVID hoax was in the works
but they started
fast-tracking it.
he holds large
in-person rallies...
-I hear from your two great
senators and your governor
that we're doing very well
in Oklahoma. That's the word.
-...superspreader events
that a Stanford study
at the time,
000 infections
and over 700 deaths.
-President Trump
was ridiculing the notion
is a pathological,
but for the people he works with
in his own administration.
yet he takes his recovery
as proof
that taking steps to avoid COVID
is somehow a moral failure.
-Don't let it dominate you.
Don't be afraid of it.
and we are neck deep in it.
- We're on our own...
uh,
whether it's ultraviolet
or just very powerful light.
-...but there's
this illusion
that there's someone
in charge...
-And then I see
the disinfectant.
- and that's the worst
of both worlds.
-And is there a way
we can do something like that
by injection inside or...
Or almost a cleaning?
♪♪
-The coronavirus crisis
is exposing failures
even deeper than a president
refusing to protect us.
ma'am.
-It reveals a mistrust
of authority so profound
and it lays bare
the government's inability
to protect the vulnerable.
we're witnessing a loss of faith
in America itself.
I was shocked by how complacent
people were with
because I've seen that history
can go into reverse.
unfortunately, when that
happens, it can be brutal.
-Americans are starting
to realize more and more
and we can start to build
something real and true
and human and reject
this militarism of the Cold War.
Palo Alto, 1950s.
A psychological experiment is
being conducted that will shape
the shadow government's
dark view of human nature.
which would guide
we got to win.
-Game theory was
a burgeoning study
prisoner's dilemma,
in which two opponents
took each other on
with their moves
hidden behind a structure.
-Each prisoner has to decide
whether to rat out the other guy
in exchange
for a lighter sentence.
the safe thing to do
is betray your fellow prisoner
because they may betray you.
to always act in bad faith.
You had to always assume
that your opponent
was seeking to destroy you
and was going to lie
and not communicate
or negotiate.
game theory is embodied
in the doctrine
" or MAD.
we're going to nuke them
right back.
Our bombs are on autopilot.
♪♪
-The 1964 film
"Dr. Strangelove" parodies
the insanity
of mutual destruction
with a so-called doomsday
machine...
- Doomsday machine.
- That can't be stopped
once it's triggered.
- Doomsday machine?
What is that?
- A device which will destroy
all human and animal life
on Earth.
-All human and animal?
the opposites of
us, the ideology that we hate,
those guys are coming for us.
The threat is out there.
It's external.
in division,
in the failure of
our own leaders to protect us?
-The opposite of mutually
assured destruction
is self-destruction.
That's the path we're on now.
-We are in the middle
of something that I am not sure
that we're going to get out of.
We are probably more divided
than we've ever been
in the United States.
We're in the grip of a pretty
devastating set of circumstances
that are going to
probably affect us
for [sighs] generations.
and it's very
difficult not to be.
But what we can do
is exercise our agency.
We have to make our choices.
but we also have to be active.
you know,
to go out
and make good and
necessary trouble.
maybe there's one upside
to the horrors of 2020.
We're finally facing the legacy
of lies that got us here.
Americans are starting
to realize more and more
that they don't have
to be powerless.
They do not have to accept
a world
particularly when the state
doesn't hold up
its end of the bargain.
Americans are starting
to wake up from this mythology
that they have been taught
and realized that power can come
and we can start to build
something real and true
and human and reject
this militarism of the Cold War.
-So what would real security
look like?
It would look like embracing
the general welfare
of the American people
and the general welfare
of the species.
-This is what democracy
looks like!
-That would involve cutting
all of the spending on warfare
and surveillance and policing
and we need to be thinking
about all fantasies
of individual survival
in the face of some sort
of atomic apocalypse
or environmental apocalypse
are just that.
and
they have no basis in reality.
we are... from our days
as hunter gatherers to today,
we are a group species.
We're all totally dependent
on each other.
that's our greatest peril.
♪♪
in fact, nobody did.
And as it thought that it then
began to build history's
most perfect killing machine.
it neglected itself,
decent jobs,
incomes, savings,
nothing.
30 years later,
we have capitalism
collapsing America.
some people used to joke
that there were bread lines
in the Soviet Union.
too.
-Being poor and Black in America
is a lot like living
in a collapsed economy.
Being young in America
is a lot like living
you know,
and you can't afford
health insurance.
America has collapsed already.
The apocalypse is here.
It's just not
evenly distributed.
a shadow America that benefits
one group of people
at the expense
of the greater good.
all they need
is for you not to know
where America's sons
and daughters are dying
or how much money they spend
on a weapons system
or where they're
deploying troops.
They hope
you don't pay attention.
that's how this happens,
that's how pandemics spread.
♪♪
-QAnon is the most advanced
form of interactive fiction
I've seen.
this hint
and that hint,
and then you as
the audience member
have to find ways of connecting
these different things.
So it's like child abuse
and a government thing and COVID
and 5G cellular technology.
Go. Right?
and they have to try to
connect them on stage at once.
beautiful thing
that the QAnon culture
and..." technique.
The whole idea in improv
is one person says something
"Yes, and..."
anti-government
fervor flourishes
on the counterculture left.
The right backs the military
and the anti-communist state.
much of this
has been turned upside down.
And a new right wing
mysticism summons
monsters from the last century
that we thought we defeated
the belief
in a secret cabal of Jews
the invention
of an indispensable leader
to save the world
from the cabal.
the festering at the edge
where ideas become sublimated
into something more ethereal
or even cosmic.
Donald Trump is a kind of beacon
a return to values of the past
and a cleaning of the country's
undesirable elements.