Escaping The Cave: The Toddzilla X-pod

  The Sacred Lie: Enlightened Masses, Media Manipulation & Digital Pentecostalism In this sharp-edged, high-density solo episode of the Toddzilla X-Pod: Escaping the Cave, Todd Thompson takes a sledgehammer to the sacred myth of democratic wisdom. Are “the people” really wise and self-governing—or are they dopamine-driven echo chambers manipulated by narrative engineers? Using thinkers like Walter Lippmann, H.L. Mencken, Edward Bernays, Jacques Ellul, Jonathan Haidt, and Neil Postman, Todd dissects the machinery of consent and the myth of the Enlightened Voter. He explores how social media rewires brains, how propaganda evolves into an ecosystem, and why moral outrage trumps rational thought in the Age of the Algorithm. Highlights include: The myth of the rational electorate and the machinery that exploits it Bernays’ vision of democracy as a theater of persuasion Jonathan Haidt’s “elephant and rider” model as the operating system of tribal politics Tristan Harris, humane tech idealism, and why yo