Signal & Spirit

Part 1: The Language of Dragons

With her new album In Times of Dragons, Tori Amos is telling a story in myth—but the forces she’s pointing to are not imaginary.

When Tori Amos talks about dragons, she is not talking about fantasy.

She is translating something she feels into a language people can see.

Billionaire tech moguls.
Lizard demons.
A small, powerful network shaping the direction of the world.

It sounds mythic. It sounds exaggerated. It sounds like a story.

But if you slow down and listen carefully, something else becomes clear.

She is not inventing a threat.
She is compressing one.

Because the forces she’s pointing at are real—but they don’t arrive in a single form. They arrive fragmented, layered, and distributed across systems most people never look at directly.

So the mind does what it always does under pressure.

It turns structure into story.
It turns systems into characters.
It turns complexity into something that can be held.

Dragons are easier to see than networks.

But something is lost in that translation.

Because once multiple forces are folded into a single image, clarity begins to blur.

And clarity is the only thing that protects you here.

So instead of arguing with the dragons, it is more useful to ask a quieter question:

What are they made of?

Part 2: What She’s Actually Pointing At

Strip away the imagery, and the structure underneath is not hidden. It is documented, funded, and operating in plain sight.

Start with influence—not conspiracy, but organization.

In 1971, Lewis Powell wrote a memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce arguing that business interests needed to more aggressively shape public opinion, academia, and law. That document did not create a movement, but it accelerated one.

Over the following decades, institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute became central hubs for developing and promoting policy frameworks built on deregulation, privatization, and reduced government intervention.

At the same time, donor networks expanded.

The network associated with Charles Koch and David Koch funded universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and political campaigns across decades. These efforts were not hidden—they were structured.

Money moved through nonprofit organizations, many classified under 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4), which are not required to disclose donors publicly. That structure allows political influence to operate with limited transparency.

This is one of the central findings of Dark Money:
not a single conspiracy, but a long-term, well-funded ecosystem designed to shape how policy, law, and public understanding evolve.

Now add the legal layer.

Organizations like the Federalist Society have played a major role in shaping judicial philosophy in the United States. Their influence is visible in the selection and development of judges who interpret the Constitution through originalism and textualism—approaches that have direct consequences on issues like regulation, voting rights, and federal authority.

This is not secret.

It is organized.

Now add data.

Firms like Cambridge Analytica used data harvested from Facebook to build psychological profiles of millions of users. That data was then used to deliver targeted political messaging designed to influence behavior at scale.

This was investigated publicly. It resulted in hearings, fines, and global scrutiny.

And it revealed something important:

Persuasion is no longer just broadcast.
It is personalized.

Now add platforms.

Companies like Google, Meta Platforms, and TikTok operate algorithmic systems that decide what information is seen, repeated, amplified, or buried.

These systems are not designed primarily for truth.

They are designed for engagement.

And engagement rewards:
speed
emotion
novelty
repetition

Not accuracy.

What you are looking at is not a hidden cabal.

It is a layered system.

Money influences institutions.
Institutions shape policy.
Policy shapes environments.
Technology shapes perception.

And all of it feeds back into how reality is understood.

That is what sits underneath the metaphor.

Part 3: Where the Story Starts to Drift

This is where things require discipline.

Because what Tori Amos does next is understandable—but it comes at a cost.

She compresses all of this into a single narrative.

One force.
One direction.
One unified threat.

That move makes the situation feel clear.

But it makes the reality less precise.

Market-driven economic philosophy is not the same as authoritarian governance.
A donor network is not a centralized command structure.
A data firm is not an ideological institution.
A platform algorithm is not a political doctrine.

They overlap.

They interact.

They sometimes reinforce each other.

But they are not one thing.

And when they are treated as one thing, something subtle happens.

Analysis gives way to story.

Stories are clean.
Stories resolve tension.
Stories assign intent.

Reality rarely does.

In reality, motivations diverge:

Some actors advocate deregulation because they believe it increases freedom and innovation.
Some pursue influence because it benefits their economic position.
Some build technologies to optimize engagement without fully accounting for long-term effects.
Some respond to ideological movements they perceive as dominant or threatening.

There is no single center.

There is a system of incentives.

And systems can produce powerful outcomes without requiring a unified plan.

That distinction matters.

Because once everything becomes a single story, it becomes harder to see what is actually happening—and easier to react to what merely feels true.

Part 4: The Reality That Matters More Than the Myth

The deepest risk here is not located in any one group, ideology, or network.

It is located in the environment those forces collectively create.

An environment where:

information moves faster than verification
interpretation arrives before evidence
narratives compete more than facts
authority is judged by confidence rather than accuracy

And increasingly—

where reality itself can be constructed convincingly enough to pass.

Reality doesn’t have to be destroyed. It only has to be outpaced.

You have already seen the early form of this.

A real event.
Wrapped in an artificial narrative.
Delivered with precision and authority.
Accepted, at least momentarily, as something that happened.

That mechanism does not stay contained.

It scales.

Into news cycles.
Into political narratives.
Into reputational damage.
Into public belief.

And when it does, the human response begins to change.

People stop asking:

Is this true?

And begin asking:

Does this fit?

Does it match what I already believe?
Does it feel coherent?
Does it align with what I’ve seen before?

That shift is small.

Its consequences are not.

Because recognition is faster than verification.

And faster systems dominate slower ones.

Think about how often you’ve felt certain about something you never verified.
Not because you’re careless—but because it arrived already shaped.

The most powerful version of an event is no longer the one that happened. It’s the one that spreads.

This is where influence becomes easier—not because people are controlled, but because they are saturated.

Not because truth disappears, but because it becomes harder to isolate.

And in that environment, the advantage goes to whatever is:

repeated most often
framed most clearly
delivered most confidently
aligned most emotionally

You do not need dragons to produce that condition.

You do not need secrecy.

You do not need a single controlling force.

You only need a system where it is easier to generate a convincing version of reality than it is to confirm a real one

Final Movement

What Tori Amos is sensing is not imaginary.

Power exists.
Influence exists.
Narratives are shaped.
Systems are designed.

But the deepest shift is not contained inside those forces.

It is happening in the space between them and you.

The place where reality is received.

Because if that layer becomes unstable, everything built on top of it becomes easier to move.

Not just opinions.
Not just beliefs.
Decisions. Reactions. Trust itself.

That is the real risk.

Not that one group controls the world.

But that the ground people use to understand the world becomes soft enough to reshape.

She turned it into dragons so you could feel it.

The work now is to see it clearly enough that you don’t need them.

Because once you can see the structure without the story—

you are much harder to mislead.

But you are not immune.

You are simply no longer blind to how it happens.

— Jason Elijah
Author of philosophical books on perception, identity, and reality
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