"It's easier than you'd think," he said as he popped a shrimp with lemon sauce in his mouth. "Most people don't think for themselves any more. They take what they hear on TV as gospel."

He too\k a sip of his drink as the other man considered what he'd said.

"Can you give me an example?"

"Sure. Need a new, deadly pandemic? Just call the flu something else - Captain Tripps, the blue virus, the coof, whatever... Have the beautiful people at the networks talk about it all the time and it becomes truth even though the flu numbers drop to nothing. Where did it go?

"And when that gets old, turn to something else. Keep everybody afraid.

"You need people worried about climate change? Start talking about all sudden unexplained deaths and point to the cause as being climate change.

"It's insane. You can get people to believe anything... and the more insidious it is, the easier it is. People want to be scared."

"What about the people that don't buy into it?" asked the other man.

"Those will have to eventually be liquidated - preferably through incitement of mob violence."

Image by Robert Owen-Wahl from Pixabay

Freewrite prompt: shrimp with lemon sauce