Going to write this out, knowing full well that what I am about will make me sound insane, or something I should be sharing with a personal diary or a therapist or something but if I don't get this outside of my body and put it back in the atmosphere, not confined to a page 1/

where it is locked away safe inside ink and a cover of cardboard. I cannot step away, unless I can teleport like Dr Manhattan to Mars, where I am breathing another air, where the world through which I must navigate is not charged with rage and anger 2/
I have long thought but always denied that I am a weird sort of absorber, and today I am just overwhelmed and not coping. I took a long long break, I tried to work through this. It did not help, because it is in the air that I breathe. 3/
This feels like what insanity must feel like, what having insane thoughts feel like, like madness, like paralysis, like one of those people who don aluminum hats to prevent whatever the fuck they're trying to stop from getting in. Am I fucking losing my mind? 4/
I tell myself this cannot be, that this is not real, that I am only imagining it, yet I cannot explain how I know what I know because I should not know or feel these things. What is wrong with me? /
I cant sleep for more than a few hours. I wake and it feels like there is an electric charge running through my body and I can't ground it to dissipate it. I tell myself it is a lie, that it isn't really happening, that it's imagination, not real. And today it wouldnt stay in. /
It was an ancient anger. It was my father's anger, every I saw his eyes. It was the eyes of the man who attacked me as a boy, the same eyes, wild blue circles ringed in white. It was the anger that caused him to put a bullet in his own brain. /
It was rage and fear that had no wear else to go and he sent it into me. I must be insane
You see, I went on a walk, to cope, to get outside of myself, and it was there, on my walk, waiting for me, just under the surface, and it broke loose, I could no longer keep it in. /

More from For later read

The common understanding of propaganda is that it is intended to brainwash the masses. Supposedly, people get exposed to the same message repeatedly and over time come to believe in whatever nonsense authoritarians want them to believe /1

And yet authoritarians often broadcast silly, unpersuasive propaganda.

Political scientist Haifeng Huang writes that the purpose of propaganda is not to brainwash people, but to instill fear in them /2


When people are bombarded with propaganda everywhere they look, they are reminded of the strength of the regime.

The vast amount of resources authoritarians spend to display their message in every corner of the public square is a costly demonstration of their power /3

In fact, the overt silliness of authoritarian propaganda is part of the point. Propaganda is designed to be silly so that people can instantly recognize it when they see it


Propaganda is intended to instill fear in people, not brainwash them.

The message is: You might not believe in pro-regime values or attitudes. But we will make sure you are too frightened to do anything about it.
I should mention, this is why I keep talking about this. Because I know so many people who legally CAN'T.

How do I know they have NDAs, if they can't talk legally about them? Because they trusted me with their secrets... after I said something. That's how they knew I was safe.


Some of the people who have reached out to me privately have been sitting with the pain of what happened to them and the regret that they signed for YEARS. But at the time, it didn't seem like they had any other option BUT to sign.

I do not blame *anyone* for signing an NDA, especially when it's attached to a financial lifeline. When you feel like your family's wellbeing is at stake, you'll do anything -- even sign away your own voice -- to provide for them. That's not a "choice"; that's survival.

And yes, many of the people whose stories I now know were pressured into signing an NDA by my husband's ex-employer. Some of whom I *never* would have guessed. People I thought "left well." Turns out, they've just been *very* good at abiding by the terms of their NDA.

(And others who have reached out had similar experiences with other Christian orgs. Turns out abuse, and the use of NDAs to cover up that abuse, is rampant in a LOT of places.)

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