Courtney mentioned that bad et's are experts at "mimicking" good et's. From watching many of bashar's videos, he (bashar) advocates regularly for things that could be described as feel-good, primarily "following your highest excitement." (This also seems to be reflected in the ET PSYOP project.)

On its surface, this seems like easy advice. However, the way it's used may be a "bad et" giveaway. For example, the process being of use for the "school" or "lessons to learn in this life," a way of diverting framing away from the prison and back towards a school.

Additionally, we can frequently be misled by fleeting emotions, which makes the ability to calm the mind and understand emotions important. That doesn't mean withdrawing or dulling them, but rather understanding them.

As an example, one might be absorbed in a large personal project, but feel an itch to pursue a new one. This is not always a bad thing, as it's good to record ideas and be flexible, but it's also good to build personal resilience if you ever want to finish anything, and situational discernment to know which ideas are worth pursuing or diverting from (to avoid sunk cost fallacies). Effectively, avoid ceding intuition to a yolo mindset, while also avoiding analysis paralysis. It's a tough rope to walk, but I'd imagine if it was easy it'd also be easy to manipulate.

The advice is very similar to Bashar's painting of the Galaxy itself, with an overly rosy nature that can blind you to reality. Basically, the excitement teaching might serve double duty in both reducing your resilience and, by extension, your discernment. Understanding excitement is useful for your own alignment, but is likely an example of seemingly useful advice being co-opted by bad et's.

Edit: The teaching may also serve as a defense of the bad et's way of thinking. They can justify seeming atrocities by arguing they were simply "following excitement," an excitement which is also possibly impressed onto them by the empire's hierarchy itself (in the way peer pressure can lead one to a life of crime). The idea of ideological capture in that sense could be an entire new post itself though, and Courtney's already touched on it in a spotlight.

The connection between how real world crime and gangs occur and bad et factions are created or recruit might be an interesting topic for a future spotlight. Although it might more accurately explain space crime in general rather than autocracy via the empire, it seems the empire is relying on said space pirate or criminal groups for recruitment (perhaps out of necessity, beggers can't be choosers, an alliance of convenience, etc).