“Because getting people to act against their own self-interest is what I do for a living” ― Amanda Waller, Suicide Squad.
The analogy of The Frog and the Melting Pot is probably one of the most accurate depictions of how the ruling class get the public to accept all kinds of drastic measures against their own self-interest.
The story goes like this:
You want to eat some frog, but you don’t want to do it in broad daylight, so you wait until the sun sets down to start hunting.
You wait for midnight, you grab your headlight, and camouflage yourself with the dark cover of night.
You spot the prey, stalk it, sneak behind it and then you point, aim and shoot.
With the LED beams of your high-powered flashlight.
That’s how you catch frogs, by blinding them into immobilization. The bright gleaming light of the beacon is deadly efficient in keeping their natural instincts at bay. For a moment there, they’re unable to move.
Which allows you a few seconds to slide your net right under their noses.
Don’t Blink
That’s how you got them in the bag, and that’s how you’ll cook them alive.
By playing their own instincts against them and getting them to act against their own self-interest.
“Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.” ― Edward Bernays, Propaganda.
You’re in the kitchen now, your prey is packed, bagged and too scared to act.
You reach for a pot, grab the lid, snatch the matches and head towards the stove.
Your first instinct is to throw the frog in the pot right away, turn the heat to the max and get it over with... After all, they’re only food for you.
But let’s think about this for a second.
If you put the frog on a high powered flame then it’s gonna immediately feel the burn and jump out of the pot without hesitation, right?
Sure, it can’t jump out of the pot right away, but it certainly can climb through the pot walls which above all are much cooler than the base surface it’s standing on which is pretty much scorching at this time.
You see, the extreme and sudden change of temperature would inevitably put the little animals into alert and activate their survival instincts.
The way to do it is actually is by setting the heat at a very low temperature first so that you keep those survival instincts in check.
It’s just a slight temperature change, what is there to be alerted about, right?
After all, it’s just a slight increment in heat, there’s no reason to be scandalized.
Why not try this for a change? After all, it’s warm and toasty here, and if we spend a little bit of discomfort on that, then that’s a small price to pay for a little warmth and coziness.
A few minutes have passed and now you go check on the frog again. You realize that it has totally been acclimatized to the current temperature and now is totally programmed into accepting its new habitat as the new normal, so much so that it can no longer conceive another possible scenario.
In fact, you’re pretty much certain that at this stage, it can’t even remember how things were before.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." ― George Orwell, 1984
So, how about raising the temperature just a little bit more, just to keep things interesting, shall we?
What are a few more degrees going to do anyways?
Now it’s getting slightly uncomfortable all around, but at the same time there’s nothing that would tip the frog’s survival instincts off and put them on alert mode.
The plan has been so brilliantly executed in such manner that the slow increments would keep the frog totally oblivious of the risks that are to come.
And remember, you want to cook them just cold enough so they don’t realize they're being cooked, and just hot enough so their organs are failing them without even realizing it.
And finally, when all said and done, when they’re too weak to act, and when they’ve invested so much time in the very trap they thought was built for their own comfort.
It’s then and only then when you set the flames full-heat ablaze.
It’s at that moment that they finally face what they were too afraid to face, when it’s damn too late to do anything about it.
When it’s too late to escape.
The Final Act
That’s the only moment where you get to see the whole picture, when the curtains are being pulled down only to discover the brickwall they were masking with the red silky covers.
It was a trap all along.
The show is over now. The band is no longer playing and the music has long stopped.
You reach under the chair and you find a mirror underneath your seat.
Don’t look.
What you see raises the little hairs on your arm and sends chills down your bone.
You are the frog in the melting pot.
Luckily for you, this is just a fictional tale… Maybe.
… To be Continued.