Freedom is the ability to enact your own will for your own life. If anyone is preventing you from doing this, you are not free. If anyone is manipulating you into enacting their will instead of your own authentic will, you are not free. Freedom and manipulation cannot coexist.
There is tyranny by brute force, and there is tyranny by manipulation. In both cases the victim winds up enacting the will of the manipulator, but in the latter there is the erroneous belief that that action was freely chosen. It was not. You are not free if you're manipulated.
You see this play out in abusive relationships: "She can leave whenever she wants, door's right there."
You see it in abusive cults: "Everyone is here of their own free will."
You see it in abusive governments: "Things are the way they are because of how people keep voting."
You see it in abusive cults: "Everyone is here of their own free will."
You see it in abusive governments: "Things are the way they are because of how people keep voting."
And it's always a lie. Forcing someone's mind in a given direction is the same as forcing their body in a different direction; only difference is one makes you look like an abusive tyrant and the other form of tyranny is less obvious. They're both forms of tyranny though.
The fact that tyranny by manipulation is less obvious is why it's the chosen route for tyranny to take place in the western empire. Vast fortunes are poured into controlling the way people think, act and vote via mass-scale psychological manipulation, better known as propaganda.
We will not be truly free until we free ourselves of this psychological domination. We will not free ourselves of this psychological domination until we see it the same way we see tyranny enacted by physical brute force.
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