The Language of Control
Exploring the Dark Side of Democracy and the 'Rule of Law'
The political establishment in the West, the network of institutions and operatives who maintain the status quo, seems to have a language all its own. On the outside, this language looks a lot like English, but certain words and phrases have a sort of steganographic or dual meaning.
One common example of a term with dual meaning is the word “democracy” especially oft repeated terms and phrases like “democracy promotion” or “dangerous to our democracy.”
For the lowly, uninitiated plebs, the word “democracy” refers to a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. For the ruling class, democracy is a word they use specifically to refer to their rule.
It’s the perfect cover.
When the uninitiated hear the word “democracy,” they think “rule by the people,” which fills them with warm feelings and fools them into complacency, thinking that they are actively participating in the fate of their nation.
But it’s a bill of goods; what the average person fails to realize by design is that they are living in a highly curated, Truman show-esque materialist world, shaped by your friends at the Pentagon, the CIA, USAID, the NGO/GONGO swarm, Wallstreet and their good friends in the private sector, like the Big Six who own 90% of the media.
The phrase “danger to our democracy” was popularized and repeated ad nauseam as populist sentiment began to spread among the people of the West, namely after BREXIT in the UK and the rise of Donald Trump in the U.S..
When they say “threat to our democracy,” it is not the collective “our,” but rather their democracy.
Do you see? It’s not OUR democracy, it’s their democracy, since they possess the tools to steer the mob in whatever direction that desire.
You don’t have to love Nigel Farage or Donald Trump to see that the political establishment in the West, the very institutions perpetuating the miserable conditions on this planet, are doing everything they can to impede the rising tide of anti-establishment, anti-globalist populist sentiment.
They are losing control over large swaths of “the mob.”
If everyone were educated about, and resilient to, the emotional and psychological manipulation ceaselessly waged against us by outside forces, democracy would probably function much more effectively and fairly than it does today. The reality is that the interplay between large corporations, big bureaucracy, intelligence agencies and civil society institutions has long since perfected the ability to herd the masses using external stimuli; in this case, it is the media, social media, predictive programming, etc., that directs the thinking of the public in a way that ensures the continuation of the ruling class.
Another example:
As we mentioned earlier, one of the operative phrases used by this monstrosity is “democracy promotion.”
The phrase is often associated with Western foreign policy, particularly U.S. and European strategies since the Cold War.
The whitewashed, Wikipedia definition of “democracy promotion” is:
“Democracy promotion, also referred to as democracy building, can be domestic policy to increase the quality of already existing democracy or a strand of foreign policy adopted by governments and international organizations that seek to support the spread of democracy as a system of government. In practice, it entails consolidating and building democratic institutions”
In reality, “democracy promotion” is often used as a pretext by the U.S. to justify interventions, including censorship, election interference, and regime change operations (either militarily or through “nonviolent” (color) revolutions), both abroad, and even here domestically.
When the American empire wants something from another country and that country refuses—these are typically referred to as " closed societies”—we stage operations in that country and call it “Democracy promotion.” Ironically, this brand of Democracy promotion usually involves ousting a democratically elected leader in favor of one who is more sympathetic to the “Liberal international order,” making it an “open society.”
The brand of “democracy” they are “promoting” is their democracy. They Westernize a country, install a sympathetic leader, get them hooked on massive loans from international institutions like the World Bank, IMF, or U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and get them trapped in unpayable, debt making them beholden to their creditors.
It’s a very predatory act, but giving it a name like “democracy promotion” softens the image in peoples minds.
A couple of recent and notable examples of “Democracy promotion” at work were the Euromaidan coup in Ukraine, and the ousting of Evo Morales in Bolivia, which were largely funded and orchestrated by the US State Department, the CIA’s National Endowment for Democracy, and USAID.
This is all to show that innocuous terms can be charged with additional meaning.
In my effort to understand how the so-called “deep state” operates, I’ve come to realize that it’s not really that deep at all; it’s staring you in the face everywhere you look.
It’s what they call the “whole-of-society” approach, meaning they have assets embedded in every aspect of society. Of course, there are hidden aspects, but the lion's share is hidden in plain sight, obscured by vague jargon and terms with dual meanings.
The judicial system is one of the most important sectors in this whole-of-society approach. The legal minions tasked with utilizing the judicial system as a tool to suppress populist upheavals frequently use the phrase, "the rule of law."
Norm Eisen and the "Rule of Law" as a Mechanism for Global Control
Google’s Gemini will tell you,
The rule of law is a fundamental principle in democratic governance, ensuring that all individuals, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced, and independently adjudicated. This means no one, including the government, is above the law.
However, as with the term “democracy,” this is merely the traditional surface definition that disarms the public when they see people like Norm Eisen on MSNBC talking about rule-of-law programs. The unspoken definition here is the utilization of the judicial systems at home and abroad to maintain control of the levers of power.
To put it simply, "the rule of law" means that the law governs us rather than a monarchy or an oligarchy. Therefore, the true rulers under the "rule of law" are those who have the authority to regulate and interpret the law, or who are in the best position to change it to suit their needs—specifically, the legislators, judges, prosecutors, and the financiers to whom they are indebted—think Soros-funded district attorneys and prosecutors like Alvin Bragg (Manhattan, NY), George Gascon (Los Angeles, CA) and Kim Foxx (Cook County, IL) to name just a few.
And so, there is a race to control the court systems, the judges, and the prosecutors. Beyond the DA’s and prosecutors, there are operatives who create legal frameworks, “rule of law programs” and organize lawfare campaigns.
If you are curious what these “rule of law programs” really represent, it’s the control over a vast network of judges and prosecutors around the world. Again, this is all done via USAID, the US State Dept, the US Institute of Peace, etc.
If you’re racking your brain trying to think of somebody who fits the mold of a “rule of law” henchman, think elections lawyer Marc Elias, Media Matters founder, lawyer and Democrat operative David Brock, or ACLU executive director Anthony Romero—another lawyer.
Our readers should be aware of Elias, the man who used legal tactics to undermine voters’ faith in election integrity and used lawfare to influence outcomes in favor of establishment Democratic candidates.
Some of you may be less familiar with Romero. In early December, after the 2024 election but before the inauguration—at a time when the establishment was still trying to wargame how they would impede Trump’s presidency—Romero went on Rachel Maddow and outlined a plan he and others were working on:
“Local governments, you know, the states Attorney’s General, the Governors, the Mayors—we have this whole plan around what we call a ‘firewall for freedom.’ The idea that these local officials can really play an important role…
…for instance, when they’re going to try to detain and deport hundreds of thousands, up to a million people, that’s an operation that they have the legal power to do, to do the raids, but the logistics—and their going to need Mayors or Governors or City Council to either give them access to police officers or not, jails, I mean where are you going to house all these folks?
And so part of what we’re doing is we’re preparing executive orders and we are organizing our folks to put pressure on these elected officials…”
This MSNBC spot is the perfect example of what I’m trying to get across—using a knowledge of the law—in tandem with text-book color revolution tactics—to undermine the president from making good on what is perhaps his most popular campaign promise.
Here you have an NGO—one that is deeply tied to the college of deep political institutions—working to undermine the democratic process. It doesn’t matter whether they, or you or I like the idea of mass deportations; it’s what the people of this country overwhelmingly voted for, it’s the democratic process playing out.
The idea that a legal mafia can impede the democratically elected president is repugnant to the concept of “democracy,” which they claim to hold so dear.
Romero’s career, like so many operatives, started at the vaunted deep political proving ground, the Rockefeller Foundation. He also had a tenure at a similar notoriously CIA-adjacent institution, the Ford Foundation.
Imagine my shock.
Another such “Rule of Law” foot soldier you might have become aware of in recent years is a man named Norm Eisen.
Eisen flew beneath much of the public’s radar for many years—that is, until Darren Beattie and Mike Benz brought his name to the public in a big way, shaping a lot of the narrative around him and his “rule of law” work.
In 2020, Revolver News released an article titled, “Meet Norm Eisen: Legal Hatchet Man and Central Operative in the ‘Color Revolution’ Against President Trump.”
Prior to this article’s release, Eisen was little known by the public, but well known in Washington DC.
Some of Eisen’s greatest hits include: amplifying the Russiagate hoax, drafting 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats RE the Ukrainian call before the call ever happened, serving as special counsel litigating the Ukraine impeachment, and creating a template for the Internet censorship of populist world leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic election results.
Naturally, Eisen is one of the key figures leading the lawfare crusade against the Trump administration in his second term.
Here’s a clip from a couple months back of Eisen excitedly laying out aspects of his plan of attack:
In the span of two minutes, he mentions “rule of law,” and then encourages the use of color revolution tactics to fight “autocracy.”
These tactics aren’t reserved for populist leaders here at home, they were perfected while being used abroad.
Eisen wrote a classic color revolution regime change manual and conveniently titled it, “The Playbook.”
Just to refresh the reader's memory, when we refer to the "Color Revolution," we do not mean any kind of revolution in general. In fact, one of the main benefits of the Color Revolution framework is that it provides a precise and tangible heuristic for comprehending the operations against populism that goes beyond the precise but more ambiguous term "coup."
The following methods and tactics are used in a Color Revolution as opposed to the overt, harsh method of full-scale military invasion, which was used in the Iraq War:
A “Color Revolution” in this context refers to a specific type of coordinated attack that the United States government has been known to deploy against foreign regimes, particularly in Eastern Europe deemed to be “authoritarian” and hostile to American interests. Rather than using a direct military intervention to effect regime change as in Iraq, Color Revolutions attack a foreign regime by contesting its electoral legitimacy, organizing mass protests and acts of civil disobedience, and leveraging media contacts to ensure favorable coverage to their agenda in the Western press. — Revolver News
Long before the advent of Norm Eisen, there was a man named Gene Sharp, sometimes referred to as the “Guru of nonviolent resistance.”
Sharp was the author of the book, “The Politics of Nonviolent Action” and is often credited as being one of the masterminds behind the Arab Spring.
In order to give readers an idea of Sharp's importance and pertinence to this conversation, the following selected passages are taken from his biography.
The bold print is particularly relevant to the scope of this SubStack:
Gene Sharp, the “Machiavelli of nonviolence,” has been fairly described as “the most influential American political figure you’ve never heard of.”1 Sharp, who passed away in January 2018, was a beloved yet “mysterious” intellectual giant of nonviolent protest movements, the “father of the whole field of the study of strategic nonviolent action.”2 Over his career, he wrote more than twenty books about nonviolent action and social movements.
His how-to pamphlet on nonviolent revolution, From Dictatorship to Democracy, has been translated into over thirty languages and is cited by protest movements around the world. In the U.S., his ideas are widely promoted through activist training programs and by scholars of nonviolence, and have been used by nearly every major protest movement in the last forty years.3
For these contributions, Sharp has been praised by progressive heavyweights like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, compared to Gandhi, and cast as a lonely prophet of peace, champion of the downtrodden, and friend of the left.4
Gene Sharp’s influence on the U.S. activist left and social movements abroad has been significant. But he is better understood as one of the most important U.S. defense intellectuals of the Cold War, an early neoliberal theorist concerned with the supposedly inherent violence of the “centralized State,” and a quiet but vital counselor to anti-communist forces in the socialist world from the 1980s onward.
In the mid-1960s, Thomas Schelling, a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear theorist, recruited 29-year-old Sharp to join the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, bastion of the high Cold War defense, intelligence, and security establishment. Leading the so-called “CIA at Harvard” were Henry Kissinger, future National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and future CIA chief Robert Bowie.
Sharp held this appointment for thirty years. There, with Department of Defense funds, he developed his core theory of nonviolent action: a method of warfare capable of collapsing states through theatrical social movements designed to dissolve the common will that buttresses governments, all without firing any shots.
From his post at the CIA at Harvard, Sharp would urge U.S. and NATO defense leadership to use his methods against the Soviet Union.
These were cloak and dagger tools used and perfected abroad, but in the last ten years have been turned inward and used against the largely unwitting American people.
Again, whether you are for or against Donald Trump is irrelevant, here. Supposing Bernie Sanders or some similar hypothetical future anti-establishment Democrat candidate were to enter the fray and somehow get elected, the same playbook would be used against them.
Back to Norm Eisen.
In my posts, we often talk about the college of institutions that make up the operative “deep state” milieu—the NGOs, GONGOs and think tanks that carry out the lions share of deep political skullduggery—and among them is the notorious Brookings Institute, whose membership has included such esteemed figures as Avril Haines (Spook, Biden’s DNI, instrumental to Russiagate and COVID narrative control), Lawrence Korb (Military-industrial complex functionary), and Tom Donilon (Bilderberg spook, Democrat operative) and many other card carrying members of the political establishment.
Naturally, the Institute has also housed Eisen, who chairs its color revolution planning arm.
Brookings published the 300 pg. book, "Overcoming Trumpery," with Norm Eisen as editor. Brookings also publishes Eisen's annually updated domestic color revolution planning guide, The Democracy Playbook.
Eisen’s “rule of law” work in the Czech Republic has had lasting consequences in that part of the world. He served as Ambassador to the Czech Republic from January 28, 2011, to December 2014, and claimed to have worked on several “rule of law programs” while staying in Petschek Palace (also known as the Petschek Villa,) one of the most lavish estates in Prague.
During his stay in Prague, he admits to being visited by none other than Chief Justice John Roberts, where they “worked together on rule-of-law issues.”
This is all to show you that Norm Eisen isn’t just some pro-Democrat lawyer; he’s a deep political operative who’s adept at utilizing “the Law” to his advantage.
Eisen and others like him are still at large, working tirelessly to preserve the old order and subvert the will of the American people.
Conclusion: Decoding the Language of Control
The dual-meaning language of “democracy,” “democracy promotion,” and “rule of law” reveals a stark truth: the words we trust to represent our collective power are being weaponized to preserve the dominance of a select few.
Operatives like Norm Eisen, armed with legal expertise and backed by a network of institutions—think tanks, NGOs, and government agencies—wield these terms not to empower the people, but to entrench a global corporatocracy.
From color revolutions abroad to lawfare at home, the playbook is clear: control the narrative, manipulate the law, and steer the masses while cloaking it all in the noble guise of democratic ideals.
This isn’t a conspiracy hidden in the shadows; it’s a system operating in plain sight, obscured only by the jargon it employs. The “whole-of-society” approach ensures that every institution, from the media to the judiciary, plays a role in maintaining the status quo.
Figures like Eisen, with their “rule of law programs” and color revolution tactics, are not outliers, but architects of a machine designed to suppress populist challenges—whether they come from a Trump, a Sanders, or any voice that dares disrupt the establishment’s grip.
The antidote lies in awareness and resistance.
By decoding the steganographic language of the ruling class, we can begin to see through the curated reality they’ve constructed. The public must demand transparency, reject manipulative narratives, and hold institutions accountable—not just in the voting booth, but in everyday discourse.
Only by dismantling the linguistic and legal tools of control can we reclaim the true meaning of democracy, a system where the people, not the operatives, hold the reins.
If you want to fight back, start by questioning the words you hear.
When you see “democracy promotion” or “rule of law” on your screen, ask: Whose democracy? Whose law?
The answers will lead you to the truth—and the truth is the first step toward breaking free.
Badlands Media articles and features represent the opinions of the contributing authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Badlands Media itself.
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Excellent and you’ve just likely ‘confirmed’ the distrust I hold for so-called Chief Justice Roberts. I wasn’t truly able to find anything that confirmed my suspicions, the adoption issue might be a deflection.
You’ve also confirmed the old Prussian playbook of infiltration and control of a country by (the Marxists’) #1 tactic….change the meaning of common words. ‘These tactics aren’t reserved for populist leaders here at home, they were perfected while being used abroad.’ This is another key point. The US has been (and still is, in spite of all the treasonous people within) too big of a country to use a color revolution; the rural people tend to value common sense and still (with good reason) distrust the ‘government’ or actually anyone in power. The CIA, et.al., had to rehearse elsewhere.
The media will have to share in the justice phase as they have been complicit all along; no matter how people like Bill Mayer have apparently changed their tune (likely turned for reduced sentence), they are complicit. The RICO method is probably at play, as there are layers of authority above a single individual in the media.
The people are being exposed and awakening to the fact that 1) the justice system is not here to serve the people, and 2) many of the intermediate levels are likely unconstitutional.
Thank you, Ryan, for covering the most basic tactic of covering their intent of tyranny by changing the definitions just enough to prevent us from realizing it!
Great article, Ryan!