The lure is relatively simple, but unexpectedly adaptable, and thus effective. There is, you see, a great untapped store of agony hidden in the American people. And that mass can be captured by catering to insecurity, fear, anger, pain, entitlement, and self-aggrandizement, and the urge to scapegoat.

It captures the feelings of terrible injustice, shame, victimhood, illness, isolation, frustration and shame… by creating representations… ready-made projections… that relieve the recipient of the necessity of forming them. And the work.

A perfect lure, really. In the sense that, given modern technology, one can get real-time intelligence about its efficiency, and modulate it accordingly to succeed… and penetrate new populations… faster, and with increasing effect.

It’s dire, in truth. But something like the opposite exists within us. And comes to life whenever we are inclined to agree to proceed for the sake of understanding, mutual benefit…

… and actual liberation. The opposite can wildly outperform its shadow, but is rare… and most of the available terrain is already deeply dominated… by the lures and those who produce them.

A lure simulates something that stimulates. It becomes more effective the more lifeless the context… and those it captures.

Let us consider what is being simulated, and how it came to be that most of the time, most of us… became compelled by lures, instead. Then, perhaps, we can develop both a kind of natural resistance… and the insight necessary to recover what is being counterfeited in our representations.