It seems like every high-chair tyrant operation has got to have a number of apologists, hucksters, and self-proclaimed experts on the payroll. The purpose of these people is to waste the public’s time by distracting, misleading and deceiving them, so the public won’t get wise to what’s really going on. This is a vital function, because high-chair tyrants are understandably insecure about their positions, and need to keep the “vulgar masses” from doing anything such as thinking for themselves. God forbid!

I know them under the collective title of false prophets, the supporters of the wicked leader, whose purpose is to lead you astray and convince you that whatever they are saying is of the utmost importance. All I can say is avoid them like a plague victim. There’s no sense in listening to them, attempting to reason with them, or otherwise changing their minds. It’s highly doubtful your part in the story is to turn them from the Dark Side, and only the bravest of minds should attempt to wrestle with them, and then only when it is the dramatically appropriate time. One look in their eyes, and you will magically turn into a Scotsman and run off to Scotland like in that Monty Python skit. Meanwhile, the alien blamanges will win Wimbleton and take over the Earth!

And it seems like everywhere I turn, there are false prophets. As Bob Dylan once said, “I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken.” On the radio, on the TV, in the newspapers and magazines, you can’t escape the barrage. I’m at my folks watching some show that might as well be a Monty Python skit:

False Prophet 1: Hello, and welcome to Ethel the Frog. Tonight on Ethel the Frog, we discuss the topic of “Is There Enough Of It Around?” With me are two false prophets, one from the left and one from the right side of the business party to give us the official line. What do you think, False Prophet 2?

False Prophet 2: I think we should kill them all.

False Prophet 1: Amazing. False Prophet 3, your response?

False Prophet 3: Oh, I really don’t agree. I think we should kill them all only if it doesn’t cost too much. Remember, we’re in this to make money, not just crush people because we can.

False Prophet 2: That is just the kind of treasonous, leftist nonsense that is interfering with our God-given right to do whatever we want to…

False Prophet 3: I’m sorry, let me finish. Did I interrupt you? As I was saying, we should look at the cost analysis…

False Prophet 2: Great, there you go bringing money into it again. We have all the bullets we need. This is Atlantis, the greatest country in the world and if we want to kill them all, then that’s what we should do.

False Prophet 1: That’s a pretty tough position to refute. False Prophet 3, don’t you think you’re being too negative in your assessment of the situation, I mean, it looks like we have plenty of bullets to kill them all with. Maybe if we used bombs instead…

False Prophet 3: I’m not saying we shouldn’t push ahead with killing them all, but we need to realize that bullets and bombs cost money, and I don’t know about you, but I want to save some money for buying that yacht for my mistress.

False Prophet 2: You go ahead and do that; I don’t need your bullets.

False Prophet 3: I will, but don’t come knocking on my door because you didn’t take the time to shoot each one of those people between the eyes.

False Prophet 1: I’m sorry, that’s all the time we have. Tune in next time to Ethel the Frog, when we ask the burning question, “Drop a ten ton weight, or release the tiger?”

It’s enough to make me pull my hair out. Listening to this stuff lowers your intelligence significantly, yet I know people who eat this nonsense up as if it were mother’s milk. I tell you, one look in the eye of this horror, and it’s automatic lowering of the life experience. Which is kind of the point. Hard to raise shields or maneuver on reduced power. That’s why I disengage and avoid these temporal anomalies. I’ll just get angry and upset about something that doesn’t matter at all. The only way I know of to defeat a false prophet is to not be a member of their audience. “The only winning move is not to play.”

That’s a tough one, because the false prophet pushes emotional buttons. They want you to engage them, like the ancient sirens luring sailors to the hidden rocks that will bring shipwreck and misfortune. Steer clear! The real prophets are out there where they’ve always been: In the wilderness and on the outskirts, demonized and ridiculed by the false prophets into obscurity. I know, I know, who has time to go out in the boonies searching for wisdom? You have to pick the kids up from practice, buy the groceries for tonight’s dinner and make everything before your part time job later tonight at Dump Beach Mall. There’s no time to stay current with the real problems in the kingdom when you’re working that extra hour so your car payment won’t bounce. That’s the point, though. Most people are too busy to have the time to overcome the daily propaganda.

Well, start by trusting your instincts and learning to be skeptical. That’s all it takes. That runs interference with the propaganda channel, and you get a few points of Warp Power back that were being siphoned off by the energy field modulation. Put it into your sensor and communications arrays, and catch an occasional transmission from the boonies. You’ll get a few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and that will help too.

Then start identifying the false prophets in your immediate life. Don’t stress the big icons out there; you can’t handle those ultra-sized dragons by yourself anyway. Tag those personal false prophets in your patrol zone with mental antibodies, and wait for the sludge-removal service to lessen their hold on you. When you get some more points back, put them into the array and keep the feedback loop going. Pay for a dodge maneuver if you can afford it now. That’s all personal stuff relative to your own problems. There’s no formula for every contingency.

What, you never heard of a sludge-removal service? You didn’t think you had allies in the kingdom, did you? The world isn’t static all the time, even though it may seem so. You aren’t alone. Yeah, you got to be responsible for your own Federation of Planets, but out there are the Elves and Dwarves, and other ancient friends of people removing themselves from the false prophet audience to get their lives back on course. Start small, and don’t give in. Don’t look those false prophets in the eye and make up your own mind. A change of mind is sometimes all it takes.