Thank you, Junaid Cheema. May your article be read and re-read.

Maybe it's just me. But what exactly is the author saying here?

"Let us ask a few questions before swallowing that blue pill of compliancy"

I dutifully clicked the link.

And got the message "This video is unavailable. Sorry about that".

What next. Oh yes. Who is Neo? From the context, he (she?) is a character in a movie. Unfortunately, that does not provide a clue to the purpose of addressing him/her. Again from the context, he/she is someone unaccustomed to listening, and averse to taking drugs.

"So tell me do you care to listen - Neo?... But first tell me…are still you listening Neo?... So tell me Neo…will you still take the blue pill?"

I am sure there is a simpler way to say "there's a lot of bad people in this world." And a clearer way to illustrate that helping one side to beat another isn't always a productive strategy, especially when it is in pursuit of profit, rather than principle.

But perhaps even now I have the wrong end of the stick.

Oh, and I may have missed it too, but is there any semblance of a suggestion as to how things could be better handled, from the point of view of the ordinary Syrian citizen?

Could Neo be neo-conservative? Just a suggestion, but fairly clear to me from the context.

Yes, good essay.
She was of course referring to Alice in Through the Looking Glass and the the Matrix Trilogy films, both of which pointed out and the then (and always) consensus "reality" is not at all what the ordinary well-adjusted citizen has been "educated" or more correctly, brain-washed into believing.

Neo of course was the hero of the Matrix Trilogy whose prophetic function was to break the collective trance which had brought living-breathing-feeling humankind to the point of destruction via the relentless seemingly unstoppable momentum of the replicant machines. In the last part of the film the humans are at the point of being completely overwhelmed and therefore terminated by the replicants in the last desperate battle.

Some of the characters in the film such as Morpheus and his fellow conspirators were still awake outside of the collective trance. They had taken the RED pill. They knew how deadly it was and how the replicants were on the verge of destroying Real humankind. They also knew that they did not have the power to stop this process. They also knew and hoped that a prophetic figure existed who was destined to do so. They somehow recognized that NEO was the ONE. The first step in his preparation for this purpose was for Neo take the trance-formative RED pill - as distinct from all of the dreadfully sane normals who chose the BLUE pill.

In the film Agent Smith represented the thought police whose function was to systematically track down and eliminate anyone who was involved in the subversive RED pill movement.

After much drama etc Neo, fulfilling his prophetic function as TRANCE-formative TRANCE-breaking prophet confronts the immense power of the machine full on, and breaks its power. The power that had created the replicants and their relentless destructive power. Thus dis-empowered the replicants were stopped dead in their tracks - and real living-breathing-feeling humanity survived.

Agent Smith represents ALL of the usual "authority" figures whose function is to clone everybody to the unconscious consensus of the hive-mind. Such "authority" figures begin with mom-and-dad, all of the "official" propagandists

Junaid even if, as Robert Holmes wrote in 1976 for Doctor Who in the first appearance of 'the Matrix' in The Deadly Assassin, "I reject your reality and substitute my own"; we only circle around the issues...

Maybe, in this scenario of yours, The Borg are the good guys?

barbarity in Syria only rivalled by the Western worlds treatment of the unborn.