America’s New PsyOp: Numbing You to Human Suffering
How the White House is training Americans to stop flinching at brutality, and why that’s the most dangerous shift in our national psyche.
America’s New PsyOp: Numbing You to Human Suffering
How the White House is training Americans to stop flinching at brutality, and why that’s the most dangerous shift in our national psyche.
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #680: Sunday, December 7th, 2025.
Author’s note:
For paid subscribers who are looking forward to today’s paid article, it will be in your inbox later this evening.
Let me warn you upfront, friend: what I’m about to walk you through isn’t theory… conjecture…or paranoia. It’s not the stuff of spy novels…or DC cocktail-hour whispers.
This is observable…repeatable…measurable psychological conditioning…rolled out in broad daylight by a White House that has discovered one of the most dangerous truths in political power:
If you can train a nation’s nervous system to feel less…you can rule that nation with more.
And the most chilling part?
They’re not even hiding it.
For months, the public has been fed a steady diet of video clips…short…punchy… adrenaline-drenched pieces of “content”…showing boats blown apart in the Caribbean.
Explosions captured from drones. Lethal force…turned into a visual snack-sized broadcast.
And the captions?
Drenched in Hollywood swagger.
“Another one down.”
“Mission accomplished.”
“Don’t mess with us.”
Do you notice what they never say?
They never say:
“There were human lives on those boats.”
Because the point of PsyOps isn’t to make you cheer the violence.
It’s to make you get used to it.
Come with me for a minute…straight into the arena I’ve obsessed over for three decades: how people actually behave…and why.
The New Language Of Power: Death As Content
Politicians used to run campaigns.
Now…they run content calendars.
But content alone…isn’t enough.
Not for an administration whose power…depends on narrowing the emotional bandwidth of the country…until empathy becomes an inconvenience…and moral outrage becomes a liability.
So they’ve shifted to something darker:
Weapons-grade psychological conditioning…disguised as national security updates.
Let’s break down the telltale signs…because once you see them…you can’t unsee them.
Sign #1: The Repetition Loop
Ask any marketer, therapist, or neurolinguistic trainer: Repetition rewires the brain.
Show Americans:
One boat blowing up?
Shocking.Five boat videos?
Concerning.Ten?
Odd.Twenty?
“Eh. Another one.”
That’s the point.
When a violent stimulus becomes predictable…the amygdala stops firing as loudly.
Your nervous system begins to dull.
Just like children who grow desensitized to violent video games.
Just like soldiers…who stop flinching during live-fire drills.
Only this time…it’s civilian Americans being conditioned.
With their consent?
Hardly.
With their awareness?
Not a chance.
Sign #2: The Cinematic Aesthetic
These clips aren’t raw, unfiltered documentation.
No.
They’re edited.
Stabilized.
Trimmed.
Color-balanced.
Presented from an angle that makes the strike look clean…efficient, decisive…almost beautiful.
That is not journalism.
That is production.
Hollywood does this to make you cheer the hero.
The White House is doing it…to make you stop caring about the bodies.
The music is only missing.
Give it time.
Sign #3: Removal Of Human Faces
Notice how not a single clip shows:
The people on the boats
Their fear
Their surrender
Their attempts to flee
Their bodies after impact
The psyop works…because the public is never forced to make eye contact with its own conscience.
It’s a massacre…with the camera pointed away from the victims.
This is not accidental.
This is design.
If they showed human beings…the conditioning would break.
If they showed the aftermath…the country would recoil.
If they showed the families left behind…the political narrative would collapse.
So they show you what they need you to see:
The boom.
The splash.
The aftermath…that conveniently erases the inconvenient.
Sign #4: Timing That Matches A Larger Strategy
Look at the broader pattern of messaging over the last year:
• Constant threats of military crackdowns
• Promises to use “toughness” against American citizens
• Language portraying dissenters as “enemies”
• Rhetoric romanticizing force…domination…submission
• Open fantasies about expanding presidential power
Now layer on top of that:
• A stream of sanitized destruction videos
• Couched in “national security” language
• Shared with pride and performative bravado
• Released in a predictable rhythm to feed the nervous system
You begin to see the shape of the operation:
Train the American public to accept…or at minimum ignore…state violence.
If you can normalize killing at sea…you can normalize crackdowns on land.
If you can make destruction look clean…you can make cruelty look justified.
If you can eliminate empathy over there…you can weaponize authority over here.
And if you can get half the country to shrug at brutality…
You can do…almost anything.
The Neurological Fact: Desensitization Is Real
Let’s talk brain science…because this isn’t metaphor…it’s biology.
When you repeatedly expose the human nervous system to violent stimuli without consequence or moral framing:
• The amygdala decreases its threat response
• The prefrontal cortex stops flagging it as morally relevant
• The mirror neuron system dulls
• The emotional centers reduce activation
• The entire empathy circuitry begins to down-regulate
In plain English:
You stop caring.
You stop noticing.
You stop flinching.
And eventually…
You stop resisting.
This is how regimes soften a population.
Not through fear first…
but through numbness.
A numb population doesn’t protest.
A numb population doesn’t ask hard questions.
A numb population doesn’t balk when the definition of “threat” quietly widens to include… them.
“But Jack… Maybe They’re Just Showing Transparency?”
No.
Transparency is when you show the WHOLE truth.
This is the opposite.
This is curated destruction packaged as heroism.
This is morally selective storytelling…disguised as public accountability.
This is theatrical force…repurposed into political entertainment.
And let’s not kid ourselves…
political entertainment is the beating heart of authoritarian strategy.
Regimes don’t need mass approval.
They just need mass desensitization.
If you’re numb…you won’t resist.
If you’re numb…you won’t question.
If you’re numb…you’ll look away at the critical moment.
Other Pieces Of The PSYOP Campaign
These boat-strike videos are one tentacle of a much larger creature.
Let’s list the others:
1. The constant wave of “enemy within” language
This creates a mental split:
There are “real Americans”… and there are “others.”
Once you define an Other…you can justify force against them.
2. Public “toughness theater”
Leaders mocking compassion…empathy…decency.
Leaders ridiculing diplomacy.
Leaders celebrating cruelty.
This conditions the population to associate kindness with weakness.
3. Emotional exhaustion through crisis overload
When people are overwhelmed…they tune out.
When they tune out…they become malleable.
4. Militarized aesthetics in political messaging
Uniforms.
Badges.
Hard shadows.
Authoritative posture.
These visuals…bend the limbic system…toward submission.
5. Dramatic promises of sweeping force against domestic groups
This is the logical endpoint of the PsyOps campaign:
Prepare the population for internal crackdowns.
Boat videos are the appetizer.
The main course?
You know.
And they’re counting on you…to be too numb by then to object.
Why I’m As Certain As One Can Be
Because I’ve spent years learning how the human mind reacts to:
repetition
emotional triggers
sensory overload
strategic exposure
targeted desensitization
authoritarian rhetoric patterns
neuro-conditioning techniques
And I know what it looks like…when the government starts using these tools on its own citizens.
The telltale signs are unmistakable:
• Violence framed as “toughness.”
• Victims erased from the narrative.
• Messaging synchronized across platforms.
• Emotional numbing rewarded.
• Moral discomfort mocked.
• Empathy portrayed as disloyalty.
This is not PR.
This is not comms.
This is the architecture…of authoritarian psychology.
And anyone pretending not to see it…is lying to themselves…or protecting their paycheck.
The Danger If We Ignore This
If we do nothing, here’s what happens next:
1. The threshold for state violence drops.
Once the public is conditioned not to care…force becomes politically easy.
2. The definition of “threat” expands.
First it’s smugglers.
Then protesters.
Then journalists.
Then political opponents.
History makes this pattern clear.
3. The moral center of the nation collapses.
A society that stops valuing human life…cannot sustain a democracy.
4. Future atrocities become easier to justify.
Desensitization…lays the psychological runway for bigger abuses.
5. Opposition loses the emotional energy needed to resist.
Numbness is not just a symptom…it’s a weapon.
What We Must Do Now: A Counter-PSYOPS Campaign
If Democrats do not run a counter-psyops campaign immediately…they will be walking into the 2026 and 2028 battles defenseless.
This is not optional.
This is strategic survival.
Here’s what that counter-campaign must include:
1. Re-humanize the victims.
Show the faces.
Show the families.
Show the stakes.
Make empathy a patriotic act again.
2. Break the repetition loop.
When they broadcast destruction…interrupt it with context.
Force the brain to reassess what it’s seeing.
3. Expose the manipulation.
People hate being manipulated…particularly against their own best interest.
Show them the psychological mechanisms behind what’s happening.
4. Reframe “toughness.”
Redefine strength…as restraint.
Redefine patriotism…as humanity.
5. Create emotional counterweights.
Tell the stories they won’t.
Highlight the moral cost of numbness.
6. Train Democrats in strategic communication.
Because let’s be blunt:
Republicans run circles around Democrats in messaging.
It’s not even close. It just isn’t.
A counter-psyops program is not just protective…
it’s essential to any hope of reclaiming the nation’s emotional and moral compass.
The Final Warning
Every authoritarian project begins with a gradual dimming of the national conscience.
They don’t need to turn Americans into monsters.
They just need to train Americans to stop caring when monsters take charge.
And that, my friend…is exactly what this PsyOps campaign is designed to achieve:
Strip away empathy
Normalize violence
Blur moral boundaries
Desensitize the nervous system
Prepare the population for escalated force
The videos are not the end.
They are the onboarding.
If we fail to resist this psychological manipulation now, we may not have the emotional capacity left to resist what comes later.
Don’t become numb.
Don’t become desensitized.
Don’t let them rewire your humanity.
Because once a nation stops caring about what happens to human beings in the shadows…
The shadows grow wider.
And darker.
And closer.
If the government is teaching you not to feel human pain… what do you think comes next?
You’re not crazy for noticing it.
You’re not overreacting.
You’re awake…and that’s why you’re here.
It’s why you read these breakdowns.
Because you know…something is deeply wrong in this country…and you refuse to pretend otherwise.
Inside the paid-subscriber edition that will be released in a couple days…I’m breaking down the specific psychological mechanisms the administration is using…
the same techniques militaries have used for decades to train soldiers, now deployed on civilians.
You’ll also see the exact emotional-defense strategies we must deploy… to keep our own nervous systems from being hijacked.
If you value analysis that cuts through the fog…
that translates PsyOps…propaganda…and power plays into plain English…
then upgrade to paid and join the inner circle.
This work is too important to keep behind a curtain of polite silence.
Paid subscribers aren’t just supporting me.
You’re fortifying a community of Americans…who refuse to bow…bend…or break.
You’re helping build the counter-PsyOps that democracy desperately needs right now.
#HoldFast
Stay strong.
Back soon,
-Jack
P.S. You and I both know what’s coming if we don’t expose these psychological tactics now.
We’ve crossed the line…where apathy becomes an accomplice.
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Jack, I have no intention of becoming numb to what is happening. I just sometimes get supremely sad that this is happening. #HOLDFAST
Jack, I don't think that there has ever been a sentence that more clearly encapsulates what is happening. "A society that stops valuing human life…cannot sustain a democracy."
So, they are dehumanizing us, or trying to, not just by calling us the enemy or vermin, but by deadening our emotions, as you so clearly discuss.
I am trying to fight against them with every fiber of my being. Every time I see those boats destroyed I make myself see the victims being murdered under the smoke, and my tears for them and their families are very real, and my hate and disgust by those orchestrating the slaughter ratchet up. Every time I see the ICE goons treating people like they don't deserve compassion, that they have been convicted by trump, I remind myself that they do and are just like me: Mothers being dragged from their children, pastors being shot with "less lethal" bullets, fathers and grandfathers being beaten for the crime of daring to want a better life. Every time I see the people of Gaza being treated like an infestation and the atrocities being carried out by a people who should damn well know better, I see the Palestinians' humanity and their right to life. Every time I see the destruction of Ukraine and the pride of its people as they fight for their nation, my heart goes out to them. AND this is just this week.
It isn't by chance that we are being bombarded with so much pain and suffering.
Sue
#HoldFast