From the Brownstone Institute

By  Josh Stylman  

I’m not suggesting we accept every contrarian position, but rather that institutional credibility must be earned through rigorous analysis rather than assumed through authority.

As I often do on Sunday mornings, I was drinking my coffee and scrolling through my news feed when I noticed something striking. Maybe it’s my algorithm, but the content was flooded with an unusual amount of vitriol directed at Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s nomination as HHS Secretary. The coordinated messaging was impossible to miss—talking heads across networks uniformly labeling him a “conspiracy theorist” and “danger to public health,” never once addressing his actual positions. The media’s concerted attacks on Kennedy reveal more than just their opinion of his nomination—they expose a deeper crisis of credibility within institutions that once commanded public trust.

The Credibility Paradox

The irony of who led these attacks wasn’t lost on me—these were largely the same voices who championed our most destructive pandemic policies. As Jeffrey Tucker aptly noted on X :

The Coordinated Response

This hypocrisy becomes even more glaring in the New York Times’ recent coverage, where dismissive rhetoric consistently replaces substantive engagement. In one piece, they acknowledge troubling trends in children’s health while dismissively declaring “vaccines and fluoride are not the cause” without engaging his evidence. In another, Zeynep Tufekci—who notably advocated for some of the most draconian Covid measures—warns that Kennedy could “destroy one of civilization’s best achievements,” painting apocalyptic scenarios while sidestepping his actual policy positions.

Meanwhile, their political desk speculates about how his stance on Big Food might “alienate his GOP allies.” Each piece approaches from a different angle, but the pattern is clear: coordinated messaging aimed at undermining his credibility before he can assume institutional authority.

The Echo Chamber Effect

You can almost hear the editorial conveyor belt opening as senior editors craft the day’s approved reality for their audience. The consistent tone across pieces reveals less independent analysis than a familiar pattern—mockingbird media still in action. As I detailed in How The Information Factory Evolved, this assembly-line approach to reality manufacturing has become increasingly visible to anyone paying attention.

What these gatekeepers fail to grasp is that this smug dismissiveness, this refusal to engage with substantive arguments, is precisely what fuels growing public skepticism. Their panic seems to grow in direct proportion to Kennedy’s proximity to real power. This orchestrated dismissal is more than a journalistic flaw—it reflects a larger institutional dilemma, one that becomes unavoidable as Kennedy gains traction.

The Institutional Trap

The Times faces an emerging dilemma: at some point, they’ll need to address the substance of Kennedy’s arguments rather than rely on dismissive characterizations—especially if he assumes control of America’s health apparatus. Just this morning, MSNBC anchors were literally shouting that “Kennedy is going to get people killed”—yet another example of using melodramatics and fear instead of engaging with his actual positions. Their reflexive ridicule strategy backfires precisely because it avoids engaging with the evidence and concerns that resonate with parents and citizens across political lines. Each attempt to maintain narrative control through authority rather than evidence accelerates institutional credibility collapse.

Beyond Kennedy: Redrawing Political Lines

The NYT’s analysis about Kennedy potentially alienating GOP allies particularly highlights their fundamental misunderstanding of the shifting political landscape. As a lifelong Democrat who still champions many traditional progressive values, Kennedy transcends conventional political boundaries. His message—”We have to love our children more than we hate each other”—resonates precisely because anyone who dismisses this crusade to restore American vitality as mere political theater is blind to the groundswell of people who’ve grown tired of watching their communities crumble under the weight of manufactured decline.

This isn’t just about Kennedy—it’s about the media’s inability to address the legitimate concerns of a disillusioned public. When institutions refuse to engage with dissenting voices, they deepen mistrust and fracture the shared foundation necessary for democratic discourse. While RFK, Jr.’s message has resonated across political boundaries, the media’s inability to address core issues—like regulatory failures—reveals just how out of touch they’ve become.

The Art of Missing the Point

Consider this fact-check from the same article: The Times attempts to discredit Kennedy’s Fruit Loops example, but inadvertently confirms his central point: ingredients banned in European markets are indeed permitted in American products. By focusing on semantic precision instead of the broader issue—why US regulators allow unsafe ingredients—the media deflects from substantive debates.

Senator Elizabeth Warren declared this week: “RFK Jr. poses a danger to public health, scientific research, medicine, and health care coverage for millions. He wants to stop parents from protecting their babies from measles and his ideas would welcome the return of polio.” Yet this alarmist framing dodges the simple question Kennedy actually raises: Why wouldn’t you want proper safety testing for chemicals we’re expected to inject into our children’s bodies? The silence in response to this basic inquiry speaks volumes about institutional priorities—and their fear of someone with the power to demand answers.

A Referendum on Manufacturing Consent

Say what you want about Trump, but his “fake news” remarks struck a chord that resonates deeper with each passing day. People who once scoffed at these claims are now watching with eyes wide open as coordinated narratives unfold across media platforms. The gaslighting has become too obvious to ignore. As I explored in We Didn’t Change, The Democratic Party Did, this awakening transcends traditional political boundaries. Americans across the spectrum are tired of being told not to believe their own eyes, whether it’s about pandemic policies, economic realities, or the suppression of dissenting voices.

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. 

It was their final, most essential command.”

–George Orwell, 1984

The Moment of Truth

With Kennedy potentially overseeing America’s health infrastructure, media institutions face a crucial inflection point. Fear campaigns and ad hominem attacks won’t suffice when his policy positions require serious examination. The machinery of coordinated dismissal—visible in identical talking points across networks—reveals more about institutional allegiance than journalistic integrity.

This moment demands something different. When Kennedy raises questions about pharmaceutical safety testing or environmental toxins—issues that resonate with families across political lines—substantive debate must replace reflexive ridicule. His actual positions, heard directly rather than through media filters, often align with common-sense concerns about corporate influence on public health policy.

This institutional pattern of manufactured authority connects directly to themes I explored in Fiat Everything earlier this week—systems built on decree rather than demonstrated value. They don’t sell weapons—they sell fear. The same forces that control monetary policy now seek to dictate public health discourse.

Breaking the Machine

The solution won’t come from institutional gatekeepers (that’s what got us here) but direct examination. We all need to:

• Listen to Kennedy’s complete speeches rather than edited soundbites
• Read his policy positions rather than media characterizations
• Examine the evidence he cites rather than fact-checker summaries
• Consider why certain questions about public health policy are deemed off-limits

I’m not suggesting we accept every contrarian position, but rather that institutional credibility must be earned through rigorous analysis rather than assumed through authority. Until then, coverage like these recent Times pieces will continue to exemplify the very institutional failures that fuel the movements they seek to discredit. As Kennedy approaches real institutional power, expect these attacks to intensify—a clear signal of just how much the guardians of our manufactured consensus have to lose.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Josh Stylman

Joshua Stylman has been an entrepreneur and investor for over 30 years. For two decades, he focused on building and growing companies in the digital economy, co-founding and successfully exiting three businesses while investing in and mentoring dozens of technology startups. In 2014, seeking to create a meaningful impact in his local community, Stylman founded Threes Brewing, a craft brewery and hospitality company that became a beloved NYC institution. He served as CEO until 2022, stepping down after receiving backlash for speaking out against the city’s vaccine mandates. Today, Stylman lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and children, where he balances family life with various business ventures and community engagement.

From the Brownstone Institute

By  Josh Stylman  

When Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, announced during Event 201’s pandemic drill in 2019 that they would “flood the zone with trusted sources,” few understood this preview of coordinated narrative control. Within months, we watched it unfold in real time—unified messaging across all platforms, suppression of dissent, and coordinated narrative control that fooled much of the world.

But not everyone stayed fooled forever. Some saw through it immediately, questioning every aspect from day one. Others thought it was just incompetent government trying to protect us. Many initially accepted the precautionary principle—better safe than sorry. But as each policy failure pointed in the same direction—toward more control and less human agency—the pattern became impossible to ignore. Anyone not completely subsumed by the system eventually had to confront its true purpose: not protecting health or safety, but expanding control.

Once you recognize this pattern of deception, two questions should immediately arise whenever major stories dominate headlines: “What are they lying about?” and “What are they distracting us from?” The pattern of coordinated deception becomes unmistakable. Consider how media outlets spent three years pushing Russiagate conspiracies, driving unprecedented social division while laying the groundwork for what would become the greatest psychological operation in history. Today, while the media floods us with Ukraine coverage, BlackRock positions itself to profit from both the destruction and reconstruction. The pattern becomes unmistakable once you see it—manufactured crises driving pre-planned “solutions” that always expand institutional control.

Mainstream media operates on twin deceptions: misdirection and manipulation. The same anchors who sold us WMDs in Iraq, promoted “Russia collusion,” and insisted Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation” still occupy prime time slots. Just as we see with RFK, Jr.’s HHS nomination, the pattern is consistent: coordinated attacks replace substantive debate, identical talking points appear across networks, and legitimate questions are dismissed through character assassination rather than evidence. Being consistently wrong isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. Their role isn’t to inform but to manufacture consent.

The template is consistent: Saturate media with emotional spectacles while advancing institutional agendas with minimal scrutiny. Like learning to spot a fake smile or hearing a false note in music, you develop an instinct for the timing:

Money and Power:

• While the media fixated on January 6th, BlackRock and Vanguard quietly tightened their grip on the residential real estate market
• While coverage obsessed over Trump’s Twitter ban, Congress passed the largest upward transfer of wealth under cover of “Covid relief“
• While breathless reporting tracked every move of the Johnny Depp trial, the Fed printed more money than in the entire previous century
• While media flooded us with Ukraine coverage, unprecedented restrictions on energy production reshaped the global economy
• While reporters breathlessly tracked Trump indictments, central banks accelerated plans for programmable digital currency

Medical Control:

• While media focused on celebrity vaccine promotion, unprecedented numbers of young athletes collapsed on field
• While networks ran wall-to-wall coverage of school shootings, documents revealed Pfizer knew about hundreds of side effects
• While coverage fixated on anti-vax “misinformation,” insurance data showed alarming excess death rates

Digital Control:

• While media obsessed over Twitter content moderation, digital ID infrastructure was quietly built worldwide
• While coverage focused on TikTok privacy concerns, central banks accelerated digital currency development
• While endless AI chatbot debates dominated headlines, biometric surveillance systems expanded globally

As these deceptions become more obvious, different forms of resistance emerge. The truth-seeking takes different forms. Some become deep experts in specific deceptions—documenting early treatment successes with repurposed drugs, uncovering hospital protocol failures, or exploring the impact of vaccine injuries. Others develop a broader lens for seeing how narratives themselves are engineered.

Walter Kirn’s brilliant pattern recognition cuts to the heart of our manufactured reality. His tweets dissecting the United CEO murder coverage expose how even violent crimes are now packaged as entertainment spectacles, complete with character arcs and narrative twists. Kirn’s insight highlights a critical dimension of media control: by turning every crisis into an entertainment narrative, they divert attention from deeper questions. Instead of asking why institutional safeguards fail or who benefits, audiences become captivated by carefully scripted outrage. This deliberate distraction ensures that institutional agendas move forward without scrutiny.

His insight reveals how entertainment packaging serves the broader control system. While each investigation requires its own expertise, this pattern of narrative manipulation connects to a larger grid of deception. As I’ve explored in “The Information Factory” and “Engineering Reality,” everything from education to medicine to currency itself has been captured by systems designed to shape not just our choices, but our very perception of reality.

Most revealing is what they don’t cover. Notice how quickly stories disappear when they threaten institutional interests. Remember the Epstein client list? The Maui land grab? The mounting vaccine injuries? The silence speaks volumes.

Consider the recent whistleblower testimonies revealing suppressed safety concerns at Boeing, a company long entangled with regulatory agencies and government contracts. Two whistleblowers—both former employees who raised alarms about safety issues—died under suspicious circumstances. Coverage of their deaths disappeared almost overnight, despite the profound implications for public safety and corporate accountability. This pattern repeats in countless cases where accountability would disrupt entrenched power structures, leaving crucial questions unanswered and narratives tightly controlled.

These decisions aren’t accidental—they result from media ownership, advertiser influence, and government pressure, ensuring the narrative remains tightly controlled.

But perhaps most striking isn’t the media’s deception itself, but how thoroughly it shapes its consumers’ reality. Watch how confidently they repeat phrases clearly engineered in think tanks. Listen as they parrot talking points with religious conviction: “January 6th was worse than 9/11,” “Trust The Science™,” “Democracy is on the ballot” and, perhaps the most consequential lie in modern history, “Safe and Effective.”

The professional-managerial class proves especially susceptible to this programming. Their expertise becomes a prison of status—the more they’ve invested in institutional approval, the more fervently they defend institutional narratives. Watch how quickly a doctor who questions vaccine safety loses his license, how swiftly a professor questioning gender ideology faces review, how rapidly a journalist stepping out of line gets blacklisted.

The system ensures compliance through economic capture: your mortgage becomes your leash, your professional status your prison guard. The same lawyers who prides themselves on critical thinking will aggressively shut down any questioning of official narratives. The professor who teaches “questioning power structures” becomes apoplectic when students question pharmaceutical companies.

The circular validation makes the programming nearly impenetrable:

• Media cites “experts”
• Experts cite peer-reviewed studies
• Studies are funded by industry
• Industry shapes media coverage
• “Fact-checkers” cite media consensus
• Academia enforces approved conclusions

This self-reinforcing system forms a perfect closed loop:

Each component validates the others while excluding outside information. Try finding the entry point for actual truth in this closed system. The professional class’s pride in their critical thinking becomes darkly ironic—they’ve simply outsourced their opinions to “authoritative sources.”

Most disturbing is how willingly they’ve surrendered their sovereignty. Watch them defer:

• “I follow the science” (translation: I wait for approved conclusions)
• “According to experts” (translation: I don’t think for myself)
• “Fact-checkers say” (translation: I let others determine truth)
• “The consensus is” (translation: I align with power)

Their empathy becomes a weapon used against them. Question lockdowns? You’re killing grandma. Doubt transition surgery for minors? You’re causing suicides. Resist equity initiatives? You’re perpetuating oppression. The programming works by making resistance feel like cruelty.

Something remarkable is happening beneath the surface noise: a genuine awakening that defies traditional political boundaries. You see it in the subtle exchanges between colleagues when official narratives strain credibility. In the growing silence at dinner parties as propaganda talking points fall flat. In the knowing looks between strangers when public health theatre reaches new heights of absurdity.

This isn’t a movement in the traditional sense—it can’t be, since traditional movement structures are vulnerable to infiltration, subversion, and capture. Instead, it’s more like a spontaneous emergence of pattern recognition. A distributed awakening without central leadership or formal organization. Those who see through the patterns recognize the mass formation for what it is, while its subjects project their own programming onto others, dismissing pattern recognition as “conspiracy theories,” “anti-science,” or other reflexive labels designed to prevent genuine examination.

The hardest truth isn’t recognizing the programming—it’s confronting what it means for human consciousness and society itself. We’re watching real-time evidence that most human minds can be captured and redirected through sophisticated psychological operations. Their thoughts aren’t their own, yet they’d die defending what they’ve been programmed to believe.

This isn’t just media criticism anymore—it’s an existential question about human consciousness and free will. What does it mean when a species’ capacity for independent thought can be so thoroughly hijacked? When natural empathy and moral instincts become weapons of control? When education and expertise actually decrease resistance to programming?

The programming works because it hijacks core human drives:

• The need for social acceptance (e.g., masking as a visible symbol of conformity)
• The desire to be seen as good/moral (e.g., adopting performative stances on social issues without deeper understanding)
• The instinct to trust authority (e.g., faith in public health officials despite repeated policy reversals)
• The fear of ostracism (e.g., avoiding dissent to maintain social harmony)
• The comfort of conformity (e.g., parroting narratives to avoid cognitive dissonance)
• The addiction to status (e.g., signaling compliance to maintain professional or social standing)

Each natural human trait becomes a vulnerability to be exploited. The most educated become the most programmable because their status addiction runs deepest. Their “critical thinking” becomes a script running on corrupted hardware.

This is the core challenge of our time: Can human consciousness evolve faster than the systems designed to hijack it? Can pattern recognition and awareness spread faster than manufactured consensus? Can enough people learn to read between the lies before the programming becomes complete?

The stakes could not be higher. This isn’t just about politics or media literacy—it’s about the future of human consciousness itself. Whether our species maintains the capacity for independent thought may depend on those who can still access it helping others break free from the spell.

The matrix of control deepens daily, but so does the awakening. The question is: Which spreads faster—the programming or the awareness of it? Our future as a species may depend on the answer.

Author

Josh Stylman

Joshua Stylman has been an entrepreneur and investor for over 30 years. For two decades, he focused on building and growing companies in the digital economy, co-founding and successfully exiting three businesses while investing in and mentoring dozens of technology startups. In 2014, seeking to create a meaningful impact in his local community, Stylman founded Threes Brewing, a craft brewery and hospitality company that became a beloved NYC institution. He served as CEO until 2022, stepping down after receiving backlash for speaking out against the city’s vaccine mandates. Today, Stylman lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and children, where he balances family life with various business ventures and community engagement.