Knowing the Cage Exists Doesn’t Set You Free

Everyone talks about waking up. Nobody talks about what comes after — when you see the scale of the manipulation and still have to show up, pay bills, and talk to people who think the news is real.

“Gate” by Paweł Kuczyński

What a week this has been. This has to be the absolute dumbest timeline in history. The world has seen its share of horrors, but we might be living in the most profoundly stupid timeline since Adam and Eve. Not the most violent, not the most tragic. The dumbest.

Every Sunday that I wake up still semi-sane, not yet driven to bang my head against a wall, I count it as a victory. Another week endured under a ruling class that is both comically clueless and disturbingly violent.

This week’s collection hit me for exactly that reason: the combination of an absurd, comical display — paired with a total disregard for human life beyond one’s own circle.

Why do I do this to myself? A stranger on Instagram asked me today: ”How’s your mental health with all this? You seem to process so much news, and then you write about it, to contextualize it all. Serious question: what do you do to keep sane and normal?” I was startled, as no one usually asks me how my mental health is — honestly, I’m just on a loop, churning out information without thinking about the cost to my body or psyche.

Writing is not passive.

I remembered a bit I wrote this year for a magazine that featured a piece on me:

Today, writing is not passive; it’s a labor of witnessing in real time, documenting fractures as they form, refusing erasure, and standing inside history while it unfolds, rather than explaining it safely after the fact.

It’s nauseating. Every day. Not just for writers, but for every single person posting bits and pieces on social media, trying to awaken the masses, sharing the atrocities, and hoping accountability finally reaches the perpetrators.

To everyone choosing to live on the inside of this grotesque timeline, witnessing it so it can be documented, choosing clarity over comfort — I know the price of your clarity. We’re not on the front lines; our loved ones aren’t dying. Yes, we’re privileged, and we got the better end of the stick, but we still need to acknowledge we’re part of it. Because the seed for revolting must come from us. People in America. People in the West.

Holding the truth without letting it hold you hostage.

I read something great today. This is how I help myself, and try to help others: I find sources, other writers and creators who have uncovered something, and bring it back to the community. It’s about clarity, knowledge, passing the information. I look for it, I share it. My articles heal me as much as they might heal my readers. This is how I cope — by documenting everything.

I will give you a source for this at the end of this article. Read it:

Everyone talks about waking up. Nobody talks about what comes after, when you see how deep it goes, and you still have to show up to your life, pay bills, talk to people who think the news is real. The worst part isn’t knowing, it’s knowing and having nowhere to put it.

And here’s what happens to most people who start seeing clearly: the nervous system doesn’t distinguish between a physical threat and an existential one. When you understand the scale of what’s happening, the manipulation, the layers, your cortisol spikes every single day, that’s not enlightenment, that’s a trauma response. Can seeing the truth actually break you?

About this past week.

What is it about this past week that had me specifically irked about this timeline forced on us? It’s the accumulation, the totality of it all.

It’s the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that offered us a visual into the most grotesque nature of the U.S. administration. The ducking under the tables with the phones in their hands, everyone with an agenda of their own, with a supposed active shooter in the building. What in The Garden of Earthly Delights was that?

It’s Erica Kirk doing her bit in front of the perfectly positioned camera, followed by an appearance on a podcast, complaining about rumors of killing her husband while dressed as a sniper.

It’s Pete Hegseth testifying before a US House Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, grifting lawmakers for another $1.5 trillion in military spending, not answering one single question he is elected to answer, while parroting but what about Ukraine, but what about October 7, but what about the Islamic regime for hours on end.

It’s someone in the White House pressing send on Trump’s messianic, self-mythologizing memes, every hour of every day.

It’s Trump giving a statement about the Iranians “who executed three young people for protesting” the same year ICE executed Renee Good, Alex Preti, and Keith Porter.

It’s about IDF militarily attacking the twenty-two Global Sumud Flotilla ships off the coast of Italy and Greece, kidnapping and beating activists to the pulp, without a word of condemnation from one single government in the European Community.

It’s the Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Warren Goldstein, publicly stating that “Pope Leo has blood on his hands” for criticising the US-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon, and not respecting the “noble and brave soldiers of the State of Israel,” the actual people, with actual blood, on their actual hands.

It’s Bibi Netanyahu going on air to tell the world Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian community is thriving, while we’re watching an Israeli settler punch a French nun, kicking her with his feet, after he knocked her down.

It’s about Michael Jackson being exploited and repurposed by the same people who took him out, now, in death, when he’s not a damger to their system anymore.

I reached the end of the news. I do not know where to go anymore with all this. I do not know where to store it anymore.

As I reached a proverbial wall this week, watching this grotesque display of human rot suffocate everything sane and civilized, I came across a media platform called The End of News, and their bio validated every bone in my body:

Reporting from the frontlines of civilization’s descent into stupidity. Perspectives on the news from the dumbest timeline imaginable.

If you need to watch one thing this Sunday night, let it be this video, and this reporter’s perspective on the news from the dumbest timeline imaginable.

“Oh no, someone tried to shoot the president again, just as his poll numbers are tanking, oh no, what a coincidence. Everything he touches, everyone he surrounds himself with are fake. Fake lips, fake tits, fake gold, fake pools, fake Bible verses, for crying out loud. False promises to voters. False prophets in his cabinets. False flags for the cameras. No one cares anymore. And maybe that’s the point, I don’t know, not to convince you of anything, not to win; just to make reality so exhausting. So exhausting to hold onto, that we just give in and play along.”

The truth doesnt set you free, it tests you.

What happens when the illusion cracks, but life keeps going like nothing changed? When patterns appear everywhere, trust dissolves, and the people around you still believe the script? Do you go back to sleep — or risk losing yourself trying to hold a truth no one else sees?

This question is asked by a profile on Instagram called Daily Conspiracy Peter X. Don’t let the name fool you; this profile offers some of the best investigative research on crucial events I’ve come across. The excerpt I quote in this article comes from their think tank, and you need to absorb it.

Check this out:

“I see patterns everywere now, in the news, in history and people I used to trust and I genuinely don’t know what to do with that. That’s what nobody warned you about. Everyone talks about waking up. Nobody talks about what comes after when you see how deep it goes and you still have to show up to your life pay bills talk to people who think the news is real. The worst part isn’t knowing it’s knowing and having nowhere to put it.

And here’s what happens to most people who start seeing clearly, the nervous system doesn’t distinguish between a physical threat and an existential one. When you understand the scale of what’s happening, the manipulation, the layers, your cortisol spikes every single day, that’s not enlightenment, that’s a trauma response.

So seeing the truth can actually break you?

It breaks most people one of two ways. They go back to sleep - comfort over clarity. Or they spiral, consumed, angry, isolated, losing relationships, losing themselves. Both are traps, and a person who sees everything but can’t function is just as controllable as someone who sees nothing. Actually more useful to the system. Exhausted and alone is a great look for someone you want neutralized.

Knowing the cage exists doesn’t free you. Losing your mind inside it definitely doesn’t either.”

Are we there yet? Has the seed of a real, physical revolution taken root? What exactly are we waiting for?