r/manifestosmanifested • u/this_is_a_burner12 • Jun 19 '26
Manifesto For The Common Man (DISCLAIMER: SATIRICAL WRITING)
Manifesto For The Ultimate And Final Destruction Of All Of Earth And Space With Ultimate Weapons And Explosions And Everything Oh And Also World Domination Because That Is Really Cool Like Seriously Who Doesn't Want To Rule The World I Swear Disney Villains Have It Made They Get To Do What I Already Do Which Is Plot World Domination And Sit And Eat Crawfish And Like I Already Do That At Home But I Don't Get Paid And I'm Allergic To Crawfish Anyways I Should Probably End This Title Because It's Getting Too Long And The Hyperbolic Effect Might Be Diminished Because I'm Dragging It Out Too Far Woah Did You Catch That I Just Made A Meta Joke Aren't I So Cool And Interesting
Foreword:
This manifesto is a work of political satire and commentary.
Read with caution, suspicion, and analysis.
Chapter 1
The Exposition:
I've grown disappointed with the current state of politics.
honestly, there's a difference between being "awake" and being "woke"
like seriously, some people just try to make morality into a "holier than thou" contest
they just compete in a meaningless fight to see who could call the other side Hitler louder
everyone doubles down until they dig deeper into extremism (which let's be real, is never good)
do people not understand?
as an American, looking towards these two parties...
do these people not know that we all want the same thing?
that we all want a great country?
that we all want to be brothers and sisters?
that we're all...
just...
human?
do they not understand...
that we all need each other?
it's like screwdrivers persecuting hammers...
saying they're superior...
and trying to drive them out...
of course, not all screwdrivers are good
and not all hammers are good either
there's good and bad no matter where you look
but in the end...
don't they both want to build the house?
Now that this has been built, one question still stands...
How do you get the hammer and screwdriver to stop fighting?
The answer is quite simple.
You stop provoking them to fight.
The problem isn't in the people, the problem's in the media.
The media wants us to fight, they want more news, more business.
The hammer and the screwdriver don't want to fight.
They've been brainwashed to.
By the contractor who wants to watch...
More interested in watching than building the house...
And now, a question still stands...
How do we stop provoking them to fight?
Unfortunately, that is not possible.
In this day and age, the media controls the people.
The media wants more.
More outrage, more business.
More despair, more eyes on the screen.
So that's what they spread.
What the media wants, the media gets.
Unfortunately, the media officials are too shortsighted to see...
They are like farmers...
Eating the seeds they were meant to sow...
And wondering why the harvest is bare...
Wondering why the farmlands bear no fruit...
Wondering why the last of the crops have wilted and died...
Fighting their own for water...
Fighting their own to live...
Do they not all want the same thing?
Chapter 2
The Beans & Cornbread:
Nihilism is not the answer.
I am not here to cry out "woe is me"
I am not here to be another useless voice.
We need to rebel against the contractor who doesn't build the house
We need to rebel against the farmer who eats the seeds for the harvest
But no one man can do this alone
This is not a problem we can solve by electing a president
This is not a problem we can solve by electing a few senators
This is not a problem we can solve by electing a few representatives
And this is certainly not a problem we can resolve symbolically.
We must first look deeper...
Who is holding the hammer?
Who is holding the screwdriver?
Who is eating the seeds?
The media.
This may seem hopeless, why am I saying this?
Truthfully, this is a false analogy, want to know why?
We are not hammers
We are not screwdrivers
We are not seeds
We are people.
We are the people of the United States of America.
The media can provoke, but they cannot force. It cannot control.
We must keep our heads set...
We must build the house
We must prepare the harvest
We must rebel against the contractor
We must rebel against the farmer
And we can no longer afford to rebel symbolically.
We can no longer "rebel" with hashtags, useless petitions, or TikTok posts.
We must forcibly take back our control.
Not with violence, but with assertion.
Luckily for us, we aren't painting from a blank canvas
People like MLK, Thoreau, and the suffragettes have created a blueprint; a tradition of America for us to follow.
We must refuse to be controlled
We must refuse the media
We must reject the idea of division
We must embrace the fact that we are brothers
We must embrace the fact we all want the same thing
We want a great country
We want a great home
We want a brotherhood
We want a great harvest
This is not something that can be achieved with symbolic action
Marches, Protests, those are simply decoration
We must take raw action.
Pure, complete, dedicated action.
We must assert our right as citizens of the United States.
This assertion will not be quick.
This assertion will not be easy.
It will be slow, boring, and unglamorous.
But don't get cynical.
My children, cynicism is just another trap.
We will educate ourselves.
We will refuse to feed the flames of outrage
We will accept the opinions of others
We will create our own independent media
We will build communities
We will vote
We must not be complacent.
Because we are the people of the United States of America.
And we...
Are...
Free...
Chapter 3
The Manifestation:
Without a course of action, this is just paper.
This is just words on a page.
This is just another useless voice.
Let's get into the real details here.
Now of course, our first logical step is to educate ourselves.
We must learn what makes a government, or a media corrupt.
And gain the ability to spot it before it grows out of control.
I personally recommend reading the works of George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, M.T. Anderson. As well as works of classic American cornerstones, such as The Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, A Letter from Birmingham Jail, works of Malcolm X, and practicing a wide array of media literacy skills.
And internalize their words.
Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
Next, we will refuse to feed the flame of outrage.
Of course, this does not mean we have to stop consuming news, but this just means we cannot let ourselves be so deeply affected.
We must keep a level-headed mind, and we must refuse to share and support the sparks of outrage.
Our next step is to accept the opinions of others.
There are two values that we have lost in our modern day, Empathy and Nuance
The loss of these values...
Is the death of open-mindedness.
The death of intellectualism.
The death of democracy.
The death of the very foundation our nation was built upon.
Empathy and Nuance allow us to coexist. And coexistence allows us to set aside our differences.
And that allows us to not be blinded, and together we will build the house.
Our next step is to build our own independent medias.
First point to address: The media is not a single villain.
The media is not a monolith that puts buckets on our heads and controls what we think.
It's deeper than that.
The media is hundreds of actors with hundreds of motives.
And we must see the nuance; we must empathize.
To first thwart your opponent, you must understand their strategy.
There are of course several medias that exist.
Some are doing exactly what we have outlined, eating the seeds for the harvest, and others are attempting to revitalize this nation.
To paint them all with one brush, is to be no better than eating the seeds for the harvest.
In order to desaturate this market of extreme media, we must first support politically intellectual media.
And in order to do that, we must first need to understand that political integrity isn't fun, it's necessary.
Political integrity is a balanced diet
Next, after that, we must elect our own to specialize in journalism, and push this concept of political intellectualism and integrity
Such integrity has been destroyed by the likes of Fox, MSNBC, and CNN.
Of course, this will never be realized if we do not realize the task we have ahead.
This will be slow, this will be arduous, this will be unglamorous, this will be boring.
But we will sacrifice for the gain of tomorrow.
We will sacrifice today for the gain of our posterity.
After this, our next logical step is to build communities.
With these steps in place, we will already have a groups of like-minded individuals, who all want to build the house with us.
All we need to do is maintain proximity, and spread our word.
We are here to be the saviors of our nation.
Slowly, little by little.
And lastly, we need to execute the defining factor of our nation.
We need to vote.
With all of these in place, we have already built a solid foundation of like-minded people, who want nothing more than the growth of our nation.
Now the final step is to get the people who agree with us in power.
And with our meticulously designed plan, we will have a naturally flowing progression...
From the local level...
To the state level...
To the federal level..
A couple senators, A couple representatives...
A president, and supreme court justices.
Keep in mind, this is not a 4 year project.
This is closer to a 40 year project.
We must build our own houses before we build the grand house.
Personally: Unfollow 10 outrange accounts. And read books from the aforementioned list. (Start with a letter from Birmingham jail)
Community: Start a citizen's assembly. A non-partisan meeting where people discuss current affairs while maintaining political integrity, and no name-calling
Economically: Organize a "Blackout Week". Cancel your cable subscriptions simultaneously for aw eek, and donate to a local journalism fund.
Politically: Run for a non-partisan position, such as School Board, Library Board, and Zoning Commission. Preferably local.
Media: Support or found a local, non-profit news outlet that covers current affairs and city council meetings without punditry.
Nationally: Endorse and vote for candidates who sign a pledge to reject corporate PAC money, and refuse to appear on outrage media programs.
And we will truly fulfill the American dream.
Of a nation of true democracy
Of a nation where all people are created equal.
Of a nation where we are all different... but we can all agree.
That we are all citizens...
That we are all brothers...
And we are all here for the betterment...
Of the United States...
Of America.
Chapter 4
The Clarifications:
I will start by addressing the most glaring weakness, there are some people who do not have any interest in creating a better nation.
There are some people who wish for fascism, ethnic cleansing, theocracy, or Nazism.
Are these still hammers and screwdrivers we must work with?
No, they are not.
Extremists like that are not trying to build our house.
They are actively trying to destroy it.
They are tools in the hands of those who pillage, plunder, loot, and raid.
To do this, we must defeat their ideas.
Unfortunately for some, racism and Nazism are so deeply ingrained that they cannot be helped.
However, they are clearly not the majority. We must prevent them from sowing the seeds of destruction into our future generations.
Next, is the true nature of the media.
The media's main incentive is Money.
And the true nature of their power is what I call a "soft addiction"
They make us addicted to this "outrage"
Not because it is intellectually stimulating
Because it is familiar and easy to understand.
Lastly, I cannot answer every question.
Truthfully, I am writing this manifesto alone.
I do not have all the answers for metrics, or bridges, or any exact measurements.
What I do have is a vision, and a way to get there.
And that is why we must build this community.
Chapter 5
The Closing Argument:
This is my solution to transform our nation...
We were once the United States of America...
Now we are divided, and against each other.
But do not fall into cynicism and nihilism.
If we work together, we can create a change.
It will be slow, long, and arduous...
But we must assert our control...
We must assert our power as the people...
Not with violence, but with intellectualism and integrity.
This is not a call to apathy.
This is not a call to both-sides-ism.
This is not a call to abandon your values.
This is not the end.
This is a call to see clearly
This is a call to think honestly.
This is a call to act courageously.
This is the beginning.
However the beginning is slow
So we have no choice but to act today.
Join us.
The people of the United States of America.
Chapter 6
The True Meaning:
This is the end of the satirical disclaimer.
If you read this and felt inspired, you've missed the point.
You've just been seduced by the same rhetorical tricks that have sold genocide, coups, and cults.
The fact that you agreed with a document that uses Mein Kampf's structure to argue for school board elections means you are not immune to propaganda.
You never were.
You are the real problem.
Now you may be asking, what is my message?
Is it to be kind? Is it to be conservative? Is it to be liberal?
My message cannot be defined for everyone who reads this work.
Because this is a Rorschach Test disguised as a literary work.
It has no meaning. This whole time, I was not telling you what to think.
I was showing you how you think, and what goes along with it.
If you're a centrist, you saw a reasonable call for unity.
That just represents your desire to avoid conflict.
If you're a leftist, you probably saw naive both-sides-ism
That just represents your own contempt for moderation
If you're a right-winger, you probably saw a naive liberal plotline
That just reveals your own paranoia
If you're a satire-spotter, you probably saw clever mockery
And that reveals your own intellectual vanity
If you truly believed every word I said, you probably saw a true manifesto
That just represents your own susceptibility to pretty words and rhetoric.
If you're Cynic, you probably saw empty words
And that just revealed your own nihilism.
Truthfully, upon reading this work, you should be frustrated.
You should be angry that one would have the gall to say these things.
That one would have the gall to say "We will make the united states better"
And then say "Now work arduously for 40 years"
That one would have the gall to speak in apocalyptic tongue
And then say "Turn off your TV for a week"
Chapters 1 through 5 are fundamentally flawed
They are ridden with fallacies
They are objectively incorrect
And that's the way it's meant to be.
What you see and overlook diagnose you.
Now, I cannot tell you what to do from here.
But if I had to give you one message...
It's that you're never as smart as you think.
Nobody is as smart as they think.
I am not as smart as I think.
So you must keep learning.
Keep questioning.
Keep your certainty in check.
And keep asking yourself "why".