The dominant US headlines for the fall of 2025, in both mainstream and big-alternative media, involve the assassination of Charlie Kirk. As expected, people are taking to social media, politicizing what seems to be a horrific murder. Americans are deeply fixated on this event, ignoring global changes such as the collapse of the government in Nepal. Everything about the media narrative concerning Kirk feels deeply unsettling. There are various conflicting statements from the FBI. The video evidence concerning the shooter and murder weapon make little sense. Comments are being made from every single sphere of both big-alternative and small-indie podcasts.
The framing of this as a left-right issue has led to unhinged individuals glorifying this murder on social media, further pushing a divisive wedge to keep Americans fighting among one another instead of those who are covering up Epstein documents. The news cycle for the past several months has also ignored the Roman Storm legal battle, a criminal case that could have been a precedent-setting linchpin concerning new cryptocurrencies and free software development. Although the shooting of Kirk is a tragedy, the way he impacted so many in independent media, and the way his killing has overshadowed other major events, should make everyone pause and carefully assess the propaganda we’re being fed. All of us are likely being manipulated into the emotions we are currently experiencing.
Last month, a shooter opened fire in a Catholic church. The immediate backstory of the shooter being transgender fit the current social fears of ideological conservatives. Almost immediately, news media seemed to forget about the current administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Conservatives also seem to be heralding Trump’s commitment to expand military deployments in American cities, something they would have raged against had the previous administration engaged in the same practices. Why was the media covering this particular shooting, with a near orgy of evidence released immediately, while completely glazing over the assassination of a Blackstone executive whose industry has been ravishing the consumer housing market? Now we see another assassination of a prominent conservative speaker, in full view of hundreds of students at a university. Immediately there is polarization and massive coverage of the event from every media outlet. Examining what the major outlets are covering and what they’re downplaying can paint a picture of what may be coming later this year.
Earlier this week, a friend of mine sent me an invitation to a “community resistance gathering.” It came in the form of a text message with a link to a website called Mobilize dot US. My friend was likely unaware of my complex political views, specifically that the two-party system is an illusion made to fragment Americans against one another. I declined her invitation, but examined this organizing website and its backers. What I found was very troublesome, and I also noticed the link she sent me contained tracking information that could potentially violate the privacy of all the people she sent the link to. Many of the large-scale protests over the past year have been backed by questionable organizations with very deep pockets. Gone are the days of truly grassroots organizations, and most people should do considerably more research before buying into protest groups that may just be fronts of Political Action Groups (PACs), big tech tracking and US intelligence agencies.
It’s been a busy few weeks when it comes to domestic and international politics. Both conflict and propaganda are escalating. People are divided further than they ever have, and it should be obvious that the divide is intentionally being accelerated by social media algorithms and the 24/7 news cycle. Although I’ve previously covered immigration and the LA riots, there’s been a lot more information I’ve discovered regarding the funding of these protests. I also don’t think there was significant coverage of the fall of Syria by major media outlets, an event that has massive significance when viewed through the lens of the current escalations between Israel and Iran.
A lot of shouting has been made from the modern propaganda boxes known as social media, the news and classic TV broadcasts. Elon Musk and Donald Trump have engaged in what can only be described as a silly, and very likely staged, ridiculous slap fight. Epstein narratives are making their way into the news again as Los Angeles moves from forest fire season to riot season. Meanwhile, Congress has become functionally illiterate as they continue to vote for bills that they do not read. Bills that are ushering in an era of magical wrong answer language machines (a.k.a “AI”) permeating their way through state and local governments. There are a lot of distractions out there, so it’s important to understand why it’s all most certainly propaganda and surveillance narrative.
A lot of major events, disruptions and tragedies are flooding in with 2025. I’ve already talked about the numerous new year’s events, as well as the continued narrative of vigilantism carried over from the previous year. In just a few short weeks, a lot has been added to the bizarre outrage frenzy of the new quarter-century. Elon Musk has shown his true colors with the censorship on Xitter over H1-B visa arguments. Meanwhile, people are actually believing the insane nonsense Zuckerberg is spewing about how Facebook will now reduce censorship. Los Angeles has had a devastating fire that’s destroyed thousands of homes and lives—a disaster that is only made worse by political exploitation of the entire situation. All of this domestic news overshadows the ongoing conflict in much of the Middle East, which threatens to spill over into the rest of the world. We’re not even through January.
I think some of my early thoughts on the CEO killer have panned out. The story of Luigi’s Mansion has become even more ridiculous as time has gone on. The news concerning drones is laughable dribble. As 2025 has started out, we’re greeted with an exploding Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel, along with someone driving through a crowd in New Orleans. Whether these events were truly random acts or they were carefully planned and orchestrated is completely irrelevant. The media has latched onto these events, directing a narrative over domestic issues. It helps to ignore and overshadow the toppling of Syria’s government by the American, Israeli and Turkish support of terrorist organizations. If this is just the first week of 2025, we’re in for a bumpy ride.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down while on a business trip in Manhattan on Wednesday, December 4th. Almost immediately, security camera footage was released of what appears to be a targeted assassination. All over the Internet, jokes and memes were made praising the shooter for what appears to look like an act of vigilantism by a citizen upset by American’s broken health insurance system. A narrative was built by the media almost immediately. The whole story, and the reaction to it, has really brought out the absolute worst in people and generally lowered my hope for humanity.
The Internet Archive was allegedly hacked, and their crawler stopped updating conveniently prior to the election. Although the Wayback Machine was partially restored, most of the archive’s services were down for a considerable amount of time. The Internet Archive has recently gone through a substantial amount of legal trouble, and some of their content has disappeared after they restored all their services. For an organization that has preserved so much of the old Internet, the recent events are quite troubling. They bring into question the entire integrity of the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine.
In 2016, I had returned to America after several years outside the country. I did an amazing job of avoiding most, but not all the election season. I didn’t see any meaningful difference between either candidate. Hillary Clinton was evil and corrupt, and her name is associated with a “two to the back of the head” suicide. I joked with a friend that I hoped Trump won, just so that people on the left would finally get angry about endless wars again. I don’t think I was quite prepared for the absolute media fueled-hatred of those who opposed the Orange Man, nor was I prepared for those who saw Trump as America’s only hope. In the years since that election, I found myself on a journey, both across America and through an insane political landscape.
