Psychological Warfare

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe United States of America does social media
too, you haven’t heard. Not just @POTUS, oh no, 
but real influencer vibes—making Filipinos distrust
the Sinovac vaccine as a retaliatory low blow—
China started it with their anti-American
propaganda, that we started COVID. World empires, 

the Philippines in the crossfire; no umpire
to call it. Their prez threatened jail on balitang media
to vaccine refusers. Meanwhile, ‘Murica’s
president suggested people inject disinfectant, no
big deal, knock COVID out in a minute. He likes to blow
hot air, yet somehow the majority of us trusted

him enough to elect him. Again. Filipinos didn’t trust
Duterte, though. Less than 2% of their entire 
population was fully vaccinated in June, 2021, well below
their goal. This American intrigue deserved wide media 
coverage, but weeks after Reuters released the story, no
one was picking it up. At least, no major American

outlet. WSWS, yes, but nothing’s more un-American
than socialism. An anti-vax campaign of distrust
led by the Pentagon via secret operatives—no
surprise it played on Filipinos’ fears and their ire
at the health sector through social media
posts with #ChinaAngVirus. We blow

fear around like shimmery bubbles blown
by a ruthless dad, so attractive to American
and colonial kids, so easily peddled by the media,
so simple to share. The residue erodes trust
displaced from kith and kin to corporate empires
who love our brand loyalty, who know

our lives in great detail, who convince us no-
body cares more about us than them. Like blow
releases dopamine and leads you to seek a higher
high, we can’t get enough of Amazon and the American(’t)
dream. We’re stuck in a dead beast that belches, “Trust 
me,” as we feed it apathy, while targeted social media

ads inspire us to buy, baby buy—this is Amerikkka
after all, land of consumeristic bloat and trussed
workers, no clue about psyops unless seen on social media.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFrom the author:
I wrote this sestina in response to reading this article. I couldn’t believe this hadn’t received wider coverage; I wrote the poem partly to share this story, partly to challenge myself to the form of a sestina, which uses the same six end-words in different patterns until the final stanza, when three of the words are the end-words and the other three get incorporated into the three lines. It deals with secret government psychological warfare operations and surveillance.