Can you see the fnord?
In a private email, my friend gustavolacerda, tells me that he begins to realize how people see Government as a magic provider of goods for free, that turns whims into reality simply by pronouncing sacred words. (They dub such pronouncements enacting laws -- but, as Frederick Mann remarks, that is but an instance of the Ghost Not phenomenon.) He asks me if that was what I was trying to tell in my essay Government is the Rule of Black Magic. It looks like he's beginning to see the fnord!
In the Illuminatus! trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson reveals that the worldwide conspiracy of the Illuminati is maintaining the world under tight oppression (or are the Illuminati the counter-conspiracy seeking to free the world from that oppression? that's unclear; rumors go both ways). Anyway, whichever conspiracy is ruling the world has conditioned human beings into reacting to the omnipresent word FNORD as a subliminal message that makes them gladly accept their subjection. There are fnord everywhere, but most people don't realize they see it, for they suppress it as part of their conditioned response to this submission-reinforcing message. However, a few people have broken their conditioning, and can clearly see the fnord everywhere in all places controlled by the establishment (and that's more places than you think). Even people that you would fnord never think are fnord part of the fnord establishment actually participate fnord in the general brainwashing. But fnord when you are deconditioned fnord you can see through them. Ever fnord watched that John Carpenter movie, They fnord Live!? That's fnord how it feels.