November 22, 2020 | By James Corbett | The Corbett Report | Source
“Pop quiz: What’s the most powerful weapon ever invented?
The MOAB? you ask, quizzically. No, I respond authoritatively.
The H-bomb? Of course not. The A-bomb, then. Wrong again. The neutron bomb? No.
I’ll give you a hint: it’s not a bomb at all.
Ahhh, the Rods from God! No.
The mysterious new Chinese microwave weapons? Directed energy weapons generally? Whatever world-destroying technology that DARPA is playing with in Area 51?
The DoD and their MIC brethren in China, Russia and elsewhere are doubtless in possession of weaponry that would boggle our minds if it were revealed to the public, but without even knowing what those weapons are I can unequivocally tell you that none of them qualify as the most powerful weapon ever invented.
OK, last guess: F—I. W.
What a fantastic guess. You get bonus points for a very apt FLNWO callback if nothing else. And, as it turns out, you’re almost right. Or, at least, you’re on the right track.
Certainly the most powerful weapon ever invented is not traditionally viewed as a weapon at all. In fact, it is almost completely overlooked by everyone—even by the savvy sort that have found their way to The Corbett Report. Nevertheless, we don’t stand a chance of stopping the Great Reset, ending the COVID scam, halting the erection of the biosecurity state or de-throning the powers that shouldn’t be without it.
Do you give up? Alright, I’ll tell you. The most powerful weapon ever invented is . . .
Wait. Hold on. Rather than answering right away, let me tell you a story instead.
By the 1770s, tensions between the American colonies and Mother England were at an all-time high. The Stamp Act. The Townshend Duties. The Boston Massacre. The Tea Act. The Tea Party. Protests were sweeping the colonies and no one could deny that American anger at King George III and the English parliament was reaching a boiling point.
But still, even as the shots heard round the world rang out in Lexington and Concord to mark the beginning of what we now call the Revolutionary War, few understood that the American colonies were engaged in a war for independence at all. Even the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms sought “to relieve the Empire from the calamities of civil war,” not to achieve independence from England. Although the ranks of those agitating for independence were growing, it was still a fringe idea; the average colonist in 1775 believed themselves to be loyal subjects of the British crown seeking to secure the rights afforded them as Englishmen.
So what happened? Common sense happened, that’s what. Or, more accurately, Common Sense happened.
Thomas Paine’s political pamphlet, Common Sense, was published on January 9, 1776, quickly becoming one of the most important political tracts in history. Some even hold it to be the real founding document of the United States, not the Declaration of Independence. (There are even those who claim that Paine himself was the author of the Declaration of Independence, but that’s another story.)
It’s difficult to overestimate the impact that Common Sense had in shaping the course of American history. It sold 120,000 copies in the first three months alone, equivalent to 5% of the colonies’ total population of 2.5 million. By the end of the year, it had sold 500,000 copies, or one pamphlet for every five men, women and children in the colonies. To put that in perspective, a book today would have to sell 66 million copies in America to achieve the same status, and with those sales figures it would be the thirteenth bestselling book of all time.
But it’s important to note that Paine did not achieve this monumental success by dishing out dumbed-down, mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy platitudes or by regurgitating the type of “common sense” that would have been held by most of his readers. No, he did it by completely and utterly changing the narrative about the colonies’ struggle against the crown. In Paine’s view, the colonists were not aggrieved Englishman seeking redress from their king, as many at the time believed; they were a nation of free peoples engaged in a war of independence from a foreign ruler.
Paine did not couch his argument in fluffy rhetoric or condescending patter. On the contrary, he confronted his readers head-on with his radical view.
Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of Great Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, Come, come, we shall be friends again for all this. But examine the passions and feelings of mankind: bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honour, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honour, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.
Incredibly, by the mere force of his words, Paine succeeded. If he had picked up a gun and taken some shots at some British soldiers, he may have taken one or two out before he was subdued. But by picking up his pen, he did something incalculably more effective: he roused an entire nation into open rebellion against the largest and most fearsome military and economic power on the planet.
Obviously, we do not live in not the world of 1776. But it is worth reflecting on the story of Common Sense because embedded within it is the answer to the question: What is the most powerful weapon ever invented?
Have you figured it out yet? Story is the most powerful weapon. Narrative. Ideas presented in such a way as to provoke certain thoughts or actions.
With a gun you can kill a man. With a bomb you can kill a family. With a nuke you can level a city. But with a story you can control the world.
This is how billions of people around the world have been locked up as prisoners in their own homes this past year. Not because there is an inexhaustible supply of police thugs standing on every street corner ready to shoot anyone who steps outside of their home, but because a narrative has been constructed such that the vast majority want to stay home. Give a society the right narrative and they will gladly lock themselves inside their own prison and hand over the key.”
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