The Postmodern-CIA-Kant Playbook
Malicious Manipulations: Once You Understand (Easy), Their Game Is Up
The postmodern playbook, in essence, is to destroy every human value by propagating its antithesis. The postmodern playbook is to manipulate public perception through art, education, propaganda, PsyOp, and 5th GW to come to accept the antithesis of real values. Get the public to buy that shit is art, and you have succeeded in rendering them mentally, emotionally, and spiritually defenseless. Their other motive is to neutralize any independent sparks that could catch momentum and ultimately dissect and eradicate the PM playbook—the paramount weapon the postmodernist has. By propagating shit is art and every other anti-value, they destroy the public’s ability to clearly assess the heroes and geniuses that walk amongst us. That segment of the public then becomes the unwitting instruments of their own destruction. Quite a brilliant nefarious PM strategy!
This nefarious strategy has deep intellectual roots, and from my aesthetic perspective, with Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) serving as the intellectual mastermind of postmodern nihilism through his grotesquely inappropriately named “Concepts of the Sublime” from his book, The Critique of Judgement.1 When in fact it is a treatise on dismissing great art in preference to his view of the superiority of the mental violent agitation of contemplating a void. I discuss this in depth in my chapter on Kant from my book, Evolution Through Art.2 Kant's aesthetic framework paved the way for the postmodernist nihilistic agenda. But it wasn't until the CIA weaponized postmodernism and turned it into the greatest destructive intellectual force in the history of humankind, nearly destroying art and human evolution along with it. They salted the earth of every grassroots humanist movement that stood in their way by embedding operatives in countless cultural foundations, universities, think tanks, museums, and intellectual journals.3 Driven by their motto, “Glad the CIA is Immoral,” famously articulated by CIA official Thomas Braden in Look magazine in 1967,4 the CIA and their postmodern puppets like art critic Clement Greenberg turned Kant's aesthetics into psychological terrorism (BlackOp), with other postmodern lackeys serving as bootlickers to the powerful and sadists towards the good.
The personal goal of a postmodern predator parasite is to win at all costs. Amusingly, they don’t understand that “all costs” means that they lose their humanity if they ever had it, and it is replaced by nihilism, which they use to neuter every single value of human existence. The best metaphor is they are vampires sucking the life and vitality out of human prey. The unfortunate part for them is that in real life there is no sexy Hollywood glamour; rather, their soulful essence is a walking dead zombie while their outward appearance is a Gina Haspel-like, sexless, squeaky-clean, DC cubicle cog.
The sadly funny part is that on the world stage, a conservative becomes excited catching a postmodernist in a lie, contradiction, unethical behavior, or some other creepy stuff like Pedo Island. Then the normie/conservative is dumbfounded when the PMist laughs in their face and treats them as irrelevant. What the normie doesn’t get is: all of the insanely unethical behaviors are the postmodernists' strategic strengths. A PMist’s stance towards the universe is that only fools play by ethical rules such as being good, honest, and caring. To a PMist, ethics is a straightjacket that ties their hands from making a killing or enslaving the human race.
The fun and exciting part is, once you get the playbook, it is so easy to detect. Postmodernism is literally anti-value across the human spectrum of emotions, thoughts, and perceptions. Just name any value you treasure, and there will be a CIA operative, Yale professor, or contemporary art curator that is working overtime to replace it with its opposite.
I have compiled a partial list of values that postmodernists negate by propagating their opposites:
Postmodernism turns:
Perception into Psycho-dissociation
Reason into Disintegration
Eudaemonia into Psychotic Rage
Universals into Irrelevant Minutia
Ethics into Expediency
Assessment into Subversion
Science into Dogmas
Truth into Lies
Logic into Nonsense
Optimism into Nihilism
Love into Hostility
Reality into Oblivion
Know Thyself into Disassociation
Beauty into Void
Harmony into Destruction
Enlightenment into Subversion
Benevolence into Malevolence
Pride into Self-hatred
Evolution into Atrophy
Care into Stifling
Individuality into Conformity
Community into Isolation
Transparency into Deception
Knowledge into Willful-Ignorance
Freedom into Sadomasochism
Justice into Tyranny
Honor into Dishonor
Integrity into Perversion
Children into Pawns
Art into Shit
Now, if you visit almost any contemporary museum or elite university art department, nearly all of these negatives come into play as art themes—promoted as edgy, provoking, and courageous. Bear in mind that art is humanity’s greatest messaging system that covertly embeds itself into hearts and minds for either the good of human and personal evolution or for the bad, disintegrating the human spirit to a piece of shit.
When it comes to postmodern art, postmodernists, Kant, and the CIA just slap 'anti-' onto any value, and that will be their modus operandi. It's not art that is shit, it's them.
Michael Newberry, Idyllwild, February 12, 2024
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard (Project Gutenberg, 2015), ebook #48433, link.
Michael Newberry, Evolution Through Art (2021), Amazon link.
Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (November 5, 2013), Amazon link.
Bravo!! This is fabulous!! I love the list, Michael. It's succinct and digestible, straight to the point.
Everything you've written here speaks to my moniker of POST Post Modern, and to my devotion to the fundamental NATURAL ethical standards that keep us aligned in Love, Integrity, Truth and Beauty. XO
NAILED IT. And thank you for Eudaemonia. I looked that one up. I always appreciate a new word. It is so gross what they are trying to do. I can't believe other people don't see it. I remember that one of the first things I saw from you was something to do with this and I was SO GREALTY relieved to know it wasn't just me. I have seen some really bad "art" in the last few years. Keep calling it like you see it. Most people I talk to about this have no idea (and I never liked the soup can guy, so sue me.) :) It's clear what is going on in the art world. Nice list! The CIAs bitch image is funny. I mean, come ON>