Bright Brief – The Red Sermon

Optics Are Important

They say defense wins championships.

That may be true, but it’s also true that a championship has never been won with defense alone.

When watching two opposing sides in any conflict or engagement, from the most literal definitions of war to friendly—if competitive—sports, to a game of, say, chess … it is generally easy to see which side is winning based on which side is acting and which is reacting.

Applying this lens to the Game Theory aspect of the Fifth-Generation War we analyze around these parts, after ‘our side’ played a significant amount of defense during the first Trump Administration, which side appears to be playing defense these days?

The subject of this treatise on Narrative Acceleration and even desperation is last week’s ‘Red Sermon,’ address, which, even if you didn’t watch, you no doubt saw circulating on social media—even in the normiesphere—to a truly viral level in comparison to most Biden-focused political events.

While many have written about the subject matter of said address, from labelling MAGA Republicans threats to American Democracy to vague, angry and aggressive calls for unity in the midst of divisive rhetoric, the lasting image from Biden’s unhinged address is the image itself.

Red lights on white columns. Soldiers. A tall podium with a diminutive, shriveling man behind it, fists clenched and jaw shaking.

The optics of the speech—to say nothing of the aforementioned subject matter—WAS the story of the event, meaning we just witnessed one of the fastest bits of Narrative Whiplash we have yet seen as we continue to plow the waters in a roiling ocean of rapidly-accelerating narrative deployments and their ensuing counters.

That’s right. For the rare occasion on Burning Bright, we’re not going to use optics in quite as metaphorical a context as we usually do. Instead, we’re going to focus on the key driver of social media engagement from the night—because many of the major networks were airing reruns of crime dramas rather than a speech by the most popular President of all time—that being the literal optics of the speech.

Allusions to the Empire from Star Wars to more literal historical parallels to the Third Reich may be tired and overused, but in the context of the Red Sermon, they are undeniable. This has been rendered stark not just by the flood of anti-Biden memetic energy that swelled out of the event like a White Squall, but even in the too-defensive responses of Biden’s AI-prodded and largely AI-comprised online support system.

In defending the optics of the situation RATHER than the subject matter—not that either is a tenable position to take in a rational mind—the Twitterati and Mainstream Media Industrial Complexes further solidified the obvious and instantaneous emotional impact of the “set dressing” Biden and his handlers cooked up for this narrative deployment.

The speech was a warning just as much as the presentation was. Aesthetics are intentional in the way they are framed. All political administrations—good and bad—are optics drives. Presentation is often even more important than content, largely because, in the modern world, political presentations are so often empty and vapid affairs, devoid of meaningful direction or guidance.

The very fact that an untold number of bots, MSM politico’s and very real unawakened minds trapped in the Nu-Prussian Matrix the western Collective Mind has become immediately accepted our framing of the optics as problematic confirms the immediate and unconscious impact of the header image in this piece.

If [they] wanted to put a fright into a portion of the American population, I dare say they accomplished it with that bit of drama. The thing is, I don’t think they hit the population they were targeting.

MAGA is done being afraid. MAGA has been ridiculed, mocked and lately even threatened, though we have ever and always been peaceful and peace-loving. MAGA has transformed into America First, leaving behind even the vestigial attachments of the Republican Party—more pretenders to add to the metaphorical pile we’ve burned in our growing counter psyche.

But the reachable, unawakened mind is frightened by what they see. Not necessarily by the speech or the colors—though none of that helps—but by the undeniably fractured state of the country, and more so, the population of the country. From a deteriorating domestic economy to a tense and boiling convergence of international affairs and an openly-hostile media environment, the mood of the nation is, frankly traumatized.

And as we have discussed in one of the most popular pieces on Burning Bright, out of trauma comes catharsis … IF the right folks control the narrative.

You see, what the optics of Biden’s blood-red address does is enflame tensions. The set of his fiery remarks is dressed in the colors of domination and violence. His tone has gone from conciliatory, to tired to incensed. Whether the unawakened mind wants Trump back or not is beside the point.

They do not want tension. They do not want conflict. They do not want war, least of all in our own lands.

But after watching the most recent confused, tremor-ridden address from their would-be savior, can that same unawakened mind feel secure in the knowledge that their chosen leader wants the same? Does the Joe Biden who appeared framed in the most openly-fascist imagery in the twenty-first century want peace? Does he want to calm … or rile?

We have been told that Optics are important, but the truth is, we’ve never needed to be told. Of course they are. Optics are everything. The narrative IS the story and the story is a picture. A picture in the mind. A picture in the heart.

In a recent appearance on Chris Paul’s Be Reasonable Podcast, I argued that, in order to ‘win’ a narrative war, you do not have to get the majority of your ideological opponents or subjects to adopt YOUR paradigm; you simply need to get a majority to disengage from their own paradigm.

Disengagement does not automatically signal disagreement or opposition. It signals exhaustion. It signals fear of the psychological conflict to come, like the soldier dropping his shield and turning tail. He may love his country, his ‘side,’ but not over his own life, especially if his ‘side’ is enflaming the very tensions he feared in the first place.

The disengaged mind is the malleable mind. The malleable mind is the changeable mind. The changeable mind is the winnable mind.

Those who have studied historical battles and war strategy understand the incredible importance many of the greatest commanders of all time, from Alexander to Hannibal of Carthage placed on morale.

Namely, breaking it.

I'm not the only one to suggest to you that the last two years have been an attempt to break morale.

But here's something you won't see many arguing:

This movie hasn't been to break OUR morale. It's been to break theirs.

I often say that the door to the Mind opens both ways. Sometimes, in order to reach the Mind within, and in order to make allies out of enemies, the door must be broken down, and this cannot and should not be done through violence, but rather through stories, which brings us back around to the name, and the title of this piece.

The ‘Red Sermon’ was not coined by me. I first saw it posted by the Anon account TheSharpEdge, and I don’t know if it originated with them. That said, the origins of a name are less important than the effect it has. The power.

Do not underestimate the power of names.

I focus on Narrative Deployments for a reason: we are in a war of stories, and as has been evidenced with particular zeal in the last week, our side has better storytellers.

In naming the Actual Event for our own narrative purposes, Anons have created a Potential Event and, once again, have turned [their] psychological weapon back around on them in record time.

Anons have become so versed in 5th-Gen Warfare, we’re now winning it before consciously attempting to engage in it.

Whether the quote originated with Napoleon or not, it is a commonly-held believe in the realm of warfare that you should ‘never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself.’

And I don’t mean to.

Until next time, stay Positive, stay Based and most importantly … stay Bright.

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