stoicism - the ability to regulate one's own emotions - is more important now than ever, especially as more people are staring into their slave devices and receiving curated content designed to erode them entirely. again, check out the pinned post about logical fallacies on this board to see some of the most common tactics that are being used to deprive you of hope, or so those who deploy these tactics wish. then we can update with some of the more recent tactics & strategies, and become inured to them as well.
tl;dr top-down control is gained via attacking the emotions, rather than rationality, of the targets. this applies to societies as well as individuals.