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Bribery, Blackmail, and Coercion

Forget God when you decide to do something that you'd be embarrassed about if your spouse, children, family, and friends were to find out. God will judge you when you're dead but if you can be judged my man for your proclivities and behaviors, then maybe you're important, right, powerful, or promising enough to blackmail, to extort, to coerce.

In the modern world of information, money is generally the least interesting ransom. If you've ever wondered why the U.S. Secret Service doesn't care about all the terrible things you'll admit to, they only care about those things you're so detached from that you'd rather lie to yourself than just get it off of your chest, consider stopping, and then move on (metanoia!). It's because our secrets are our sickness, it's because our secrets are our vulnerabilities.

These lies and secrets and denials add up like a pile of the m80s of legend that have the equivalent bang of a quarter stick of dynamite: soon enough, there's enough gunpowder piled up to blow up someone's entire Jenga life.

And these men and women who keep too many glass balls in the air would do anything to anyone, including betrayal and treason. Assume all brothels, sensual massage parlors, champagne rooms, and even the lavs at nightclubs and bars, have eyes in them. Assume that anything that drops right in your lap without requiring quite a lot of discrete pursuit is not only a honeypot but a setup.

We live in the age of Jeffrey Epstein, where every single too good to be true opportunity is a Kodak moment that, at some crucial point, at some point in the future, if and when you become critical, essential, strategic, tactical, rich, connected, or powerful, those dusty digital files will be dug up and you'll be at the mercy of someone or someones who are very much willing to blow up your entire world simply to get what they want, even if your entire life is only worth a very small and inconsequential throw away part of a greater plan.

That's how bribery, blackmail, and coercion works—and the only cure is doing a controlled demolition of your own life before anyone else has an opportunity to do it for you.

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