Let me ask these questions:
1. How do you awaken the people?
2. Can it be done purely for the sake of truth and not for ulterior motives?
3. What happens when people wake up?
Some reflections.
For me, Monty Python helped wake me up when I was a teenager. They coated their needle of truth in the cotton of comedy. Nowadays, the BBC or NBC would never air Monty Python-- except in some sort of nostalgic wrapping that would destroy the punch. But some comedians still wake people. Some movies help wake people. Most good art of any form should sensitize people to reality. What has happened is that the counter-force of fantasy has colonized so much of daily life that people have become infantile and stupid perfectionists of what Heidegger called "the age of world picture." The rule of artifice and decorum. Everyone knows what it is, and they dare not say a word against it for fear of offending those most heavily invested in the fantasies.
To see the colonization of fantasy in action, watch TV commercials-- as I really don't need to remind anyone here. What is most interesting is that this colonization has become so complete that TV ads nowadays seem to be colonizing their previously colonized territories. And if this is the sole "real" world for the subject, then the world appears to be running down or living on hope--- hope which can only be preserved with silence. The often violently imposed silence is a reflection of fear. When released, the fear can be explosive. "
My brain hurts!" made me laugh so hard; it was explosive. There were a thousand things like that for me. But many, maybe most, were never open to the implications of their predicament or their complicity in its maintenance and rule. They always return to the suckling security of pre-fab fantasy.
I can recall waking people up to their fantasies-as-bullshit when I was in college. And I can recall that sometimes people lost their minds. One young woman tore down all her posters, started screaming, and when I was totally mortified by the outburst, turned to blame me-- as if to say: "Is this what you really want from me?" A kind of extortion, where I'm supposed to say "Oh yes, please go back to your slumber; it is much more comforting and appealing."
When I got into teaching, I thought it was my real job to do this. And the universities let me until about 2005. The students changed and the administrations had no intention of working at their students' return to the world of the living.
What if your goal was to disabuse an entire population of their self-enframing fantasies, such that they could realize the true power of themselves as humans (who, I believe all have the divine spark)?
The biggest danger would be an explosive outburst that eventually extorts you into putting them back to bed-- lest you be scapegoated in the operation.
The Phoenician trick is that of Dr. Freud: pull the rug from under the subject (ignite a "dark night of the soul") but then guide the subject into a new subject position in which you, good doctor, become the object of "positive transference." In this position you can profit. But this is not what a true teacher should do. Ultimately, a true teacher or revolutionary cause should seek to liberate for the goods of truth and justice and creativity. Socrates and Jesus are both good examples. And, while perhaps literary creations, well, we know what happened to them...
Is this what is happening? Is this adherence to the fantasies of daily life so pervasive that it is hopeless? Is Trump being protected from the backlash? That is, of being made into the scapegoat? Actually, I think this is more likely than simply corralling us into alternative media chambers. I don't like what I see, of course, because I know Trump is lying about vaccines-- only perversely so. Perversely? Everyone knows he is lying. Even the vaxx pushers know he is lying. Is he trying to trying to show us that it is all a lie and avoid the violent backlash against himself?
