FEAR OF FREEDOM

       In our last two posts, we've sought to clarify the false dichotomy which has emerged in American public discourse over the emotions and reason. For the last several decades, opinion leaders among Conservatives have tried to paint Liberalism as 'emotionally-driven' and that emotion, or feeling, is a sign of weakness. We must be on our guard against this type of propaganda. Just as we shouldn't allow others to do our thinking for us, we shouldn't allow the Crowd to dictate our feelings either. 

     A major part of the problem is that too many on the Right have fallen into the trap of dismissing emotions as categorically wrong. This leads us to two fatal errors: one it absolves us of responsibility for the consequences of an ideology; and secondly leads the dangerous doctrine that Laws must be upheld simply because they are the Law. Both of these are roads to Absolutism, because all human circumstances don't fit so neatly into a box. 

   An example of this tendency came from the pen of Conservative pundit Victor Davis Hanson, who in another incredibly hypocritical article opined that "What the Left now fears most is the revolutionary model it has bequeathed to America—and what might happen if its monstrous creation falls into politically incorrect hands." Aside from this being very wishful thinking; as Conservative myself, I prefer to see this 'monstrous creation' dismantled than to fall into anyone else's hands. 

   A second major problem is that too many on the Right have accepted the Left's redefinition of various terminologies. InsanityBytes brought up this point in a recent article, explaining how, for example, the Whacko Left Wing has distorted the concept of 'love' to defend such loathsome policies as homo 'equality.' Of course, anyone who is actually cognizant of the facts understands that it is both an act of love---and yes, that horrific term 'social justice' to suppress such movements for the national good. Stripped of those awful feelings and emotions it's difficult to justify a pro-family with little more than the same arguments the pro-Rainbow crowd employs: "It's right because everybody says so." 

  The Radical Left is also notorious for exploiting the Right's weakness in denying emotions by protecting their own negative emotions onto their opponents. They frequently accuse our side of being motivated by hate and fear. The Third Rail that goes unsaid is that hatred and fear is precisely what motivates both the LGBTQ leadership and, most importantly, the NPCs who fall in line with accepting it. It hardly needs explanation or elaboration that the 'Gay' activist leadership is driven by a hatred for normal sexual relationships, but nobody wants to discuss the fact that fear is what drives the anomalous public acceptance of it. 

   As we've stated before, the Herd Mentality is focused on a fear of responsibility by deferring to a consensus. For the past 30-40 years, as part of the Strategy of Tension and the deployment of fear tactics were widely disseminated via the so-called 'Gender Wars' fomented by the Clinton Co-Presidency. What all of this led up to was a Climate of Fear within interpersonal relationships. Men were conditioned to walk on eggshells for fear of the consequences of 'offending' someone; women began seeing every man as a potential rapist or serial killer. Normal sexual attraction was demonized and scandalized; micromanaged in every conceivable way. Families were depicted as undesirable, largely because of unequal applications of the law, paedohysteria, and constant negativity from media propaganda outlets. Parents grew to dread that Midnight knock-at-the-door from those charming folks at Child Protective Services; and couples learned to meet in secret knowing that a 'scandal' could break out at any moment over whatever the cultural censors deemed inappropriate behavior. 

   In this Climate of Fear, it wasn't a difficult matter for the Gay Mafia to step in and offer freedom from responsibility and the approval of the Crowd. Naturally, they've backed this up with suppression of opposition; but if anybody's wondering why the homo lifestyle has gained such resounding approval from the public (and little opposition from so-called Conservatives), there is the answer. Or, as Insanitybytes says:  "it is a bit of universal truth we all agree on it is just that, the tyrants are us. WE are actually the ones who fear love because it creates a world we can’t control."

   Therein lies the truth of the matter: the unspoken fear that too many on our side of the aisle won't face. They'd rather hide behind the safety of the consensus, and justify it with appeals to 'reason' and 'realism;' all the while seeking an 'Alpha' superman who'll come to the rescue and break the chains of freedom while he's at it. 

   

RIGHT AND REASON

      So, yesterday was the 4th of July, which is still celebrated despite actual Independence Day officially being changed to mid-June by the Putschists and their Republican enablers. Based on some recent debate going on in the Blogsphere, we're certain that the 'Conservatives' who voted for the change back in 2021 didn't let their feelings or emotions get in the way of their realistic reasoning in opting for the new date. July 4th is just another day, after all---who cares what holidays symbolize? 

    The intellectual divorce between Reason and Emotion (as if the two were mutually exclusive in the first place) really largely began among the Punditocracy with the rise of Neoconservatism during the 1990s and was reinforced with the rise of the Alt-Right during the 2010s. The concept was deeply tied to the mythos that "Rugged Individualism Built this Country," (a belief which ignores things like citizens' militias, pioneer communities, and Constitutional Conventions). Actually, the reasonable people acting upon enlightened self-interest back in the 1770s were the pro-British Tories. 

    As we've demonstrated here many times; what the Neocon actually means by  'Reason' and 'Rugged Individualism' is the cost-benefit principle as the basis of society. It's basically the inversion of Radical Marxism; not its opposition. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" simply has been modified to "From each according to his ability, to each according to his greed." The 'parasitic capitalist' is now the 'parasitic proletariat.' If Communists believe that capitalist exploitation of the farmers and workers of the world is killing them, then the Neocons argue that capitalists producing value is the only thing keeping the farmers and workers of the world alive. If the Communists ideal is collective ownership, we are told, in contrast, that there is no such thing as society, only individuals. In the ideal of the New Right, we have a small group of men in charge of the whole economy. They are above the law, they can kill those who stand in their way so long as the trains run on time and 'stakeholders' see a return. That is very similar to how the Soviet Union's economy operated; except that Neocons replace Politburo-appointed apparatchiks with the Lords of High Finance and the Wizards of Wall Street. Dissent from the agreed-upon deterministic economic model isn't tolerated either. 

   Arch-Neocon Dennis Prager even went so far as divide ethics into economic terms of Macro and Micro values. "The human being is composed of two moral components—the micro and the macro. In a truly good human being—”good” is not the same as “nice”—one is good in both realms. It is therefore quite possible to be nice in the micro and hold awful values for society; and it is quite possible to have excellent macro values and not be a particularly nice person." Sophistry like this is how it's possible for so many on the contemporary Right to look the other way at gross injustice while justifying it all because Might Makes Right.

   Citizen Tom, who's been defending the position that feeling has no place in statecraft makes this astonishing analogy: 

  "The whole debate got started because insanitybytes22 doesn’t think some Christians are loving enough. Does that seem silly? Neither insanitybytes22 nor The Night Wind are crazy enough to do such a thing, of course, but imagine living in a totalitarian state. What if we don’t cheer the Dear Leader with sufficient enthusiasm?"

  I wanted to highlight this statement because it reflects the thinking of many who hold this position. In his hypothetical example, I would surmise that fear is the dominant emotion during such displays: a good percentage are applauding Dear Leader because they fear whatever bogeyman he's supposed to be defending them against; or because they fear insufficient enthusiasm might draw the attention of the secret police. Likely though a large percentage are applauding enthusiastically because everyone is. 

  Therein lies the core of the problem with such thinking: the people who criticize emotion in social policy fail to differentiate between positive and negative emotions. They don't grasp the fact that our emotions are expressions of our values. Such have been codified in various ways, but since these positive values are based in the Positive Attributes of the Divine, they form the basis of Law in a just society.

    While the natures of Virtue and Vice can be defended with reasoned arguments, we have within our Nature the instinctual ability to discern right from wrong, although we also have Free Will to choose between them (or not make any choice at all; which is what most seem to do). 

   Since these Virtues come from an Absolute and we all have knowledge of them, the idea of Equality before the Law is related to the idea of Equality before God. If people would simply exercise this kind of discernment, it would be apparent that most of the 'reasoned' Sophistry coming from the 'established experts' are nothing but a tissue of lies used to justify their own vices; or to evade responsibility for the damage their policies cause. 

  Human beings are fallible; and it's no argument that people in democracies get carried away with emotions at times and do stupid things like enacting Prohibition or imposing Mask Mandates. The Third Reich's euthanasia program was totally logical---completely unjust, but quite reasonable and cost-effective based on the settled science of Eugenics. Both runaway emotions and runaway reason are products of failing to see others as human beings; and things like Greed, Pride, Envy, and Wrath quickly find an opening to join the debate. I've often said that the Seven Deadly Sins have become America's Postmodern Moral Code: and that's largely because the Seven Cardinal Virtues are no longer socially rewarded or enforced. 

   The net result of this false dichotomy has been the creation of a divided society where neither side is interested in fixing actual problems, but is ruthlessly engaged in a dogfight to sacrifice the nation, if need be, to hold onto their powers and privileges. The only way that we're going to reverse that trend is to stop and think about people are actually impacted by what is being proposed.

    

THE PARTY LINE VS. LIBERTY

      Over the weekend, I spent considerable time in the sunshine out in the hammock reading a book I'd looked for for a long time---it was written by a Dead White Male who'd written extensively on things like mob-psychology, the dangers of propaganda, and the need for an educated electorate. In virtual time, I've been reading some of the debates going on at InsanityBytes' blog. Over the last 3-4 posts, she's apparently deviated too far from the official Postmodern Conservative Party Line by suggesting that Conservatism (at least in its current incarnation) is failing because of its lack of concern for humanity in general.

    I can relate to this. I've been called a 'Liberal' many times for opining heresies like considering immigrants as human beings, stating that a Social Safety Net is moral, that American working conditions and wages should be a little higher than say, Bangladesh's, etc. Actually, we're not alone here. Both Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley said during the 1990s that there really wasn't a Conservative Party left in Washington anymore. Any of the top GOP leadership of the mid-20th Century: Wendell Willkie, Thomas Dewey, General Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole---all of these would be considered 'Liberal Republicans' if they were alive today. So would Buchanan and Buckley, BTW. 

   The 'New Breed' of Conservatism is basically the mirror-image of the 'New Left.' Both are centered on waging effective propaganda campaigns instead of acknowledging that real problems exist; and like all propaganda campaigns, both appeal to the lowest common denominator. This is known in modern parlance as "controlling the narrative" but it comes down to debasing public discourse to the benefit of vested interests. 

   As the aforementioned Dead White Male (who happened to be a pastor) stated: "The crowd mind is essentially a conformist mind; and this is so even when the crowd is openly indulging itself in antisocial behavior. Crowds seldom interpret their motives correctly. Each crowd fabricates a system of obsessive ideas which serves to disguise its real motive, to disarm opposition, to justify its behavior in the minds of its members and to hold them together in 'the Movement.' The ideas of the crowd become stereotyped, standardized. Having made up its mind, it refuses to listen to dissenting opinions. Objectors are thrown out, howled down, thrust aside, and trampled. As the crowd thinks and acts in a pseudo-social environment created by its own rationalizations, it can sustain its purpose only by remaining deaf to the voice of conflicting reason. Dissent on the part of its members is disloyalty, treachery. Dissent of those outside the crowd, or any criticism of its noble experiments is devilish enmity of righteousness and truth. Every crowd, if it has the power, will resort to censorship and will ruthlessly destroy those who resist it."

   Does that sound familiar? Go to nearly any major 'Conservative' website and we see a perfect description of it right there. 

   Now we grant that there are issues on the Left which genuinely are evil and admit of no compromise (e.g. abortion, homo 'equality', 'woke' corporate social engineering); but it doesn't follow that every one of their concerns are without merit or justification. Likewise, the Left also engages in cultivating a Herd Mentality, but too many on the Right overlook the fact that that strategy is a weakness---not a strength---on their part. The Democrats' policy of pandering to the crowd during the 1960s and 1970s led to a powerbase within their Party of some of the most extreme Left-Wing crackpots imaginable---which in turn led to the Democrats being wiped out in five elections during the late 20th Century. 

   Unfortunately, in recent years, the Republicans have followed down the same path to the point where they are actually defending criminal behavior on the grounds that its based and red-pilled (the Right's antipode of being a 'Woke Liberal'); including---but not limited to---scammers, as well as architects of voter-fraud schemes and international Corporate crooks,  and corrupt Congressmen, and even convicted murderers. There has been nothing but effusive praise on the Right for Governors who take the inhumane action of forcing legal migrants onto buses and planes and dumping them in people's yards. During the recent baby-formula shortage there were calls to confiscate formulas from immigrant detention centers and presumably let babies starve. On at least two occasions---one in Arizona and one in New York, Conservatives have raised bail for two murder suspects who caused a loss of life under highly questionable circumstances. 

    These are not the attitudes of real Conservatives or, for that matter, even of civilized human beings. In the comments section to InsanityBytes' post, I mentioned the indifference Conservatives felt for problems that happen in so-called 'Blue States.' The answer I got was that it's basically our problem and of no concern to the nation as a whole. A genuine Conservative like Eisenhower or Reagan would say that problems like rampant crime, proliferation of tent-cities, and epidemics of drug overdoses were beyond the capacities of local governments to deal with them and that intervention at the Federal level was necessary. 

   The fact that both political factions appeal to the worst instincts of the Herd is having the double effect of creating political polarization around rigidly ideological lines and of marginalizing the better elements of society who could actually come up with solutions. It's obvious why vested interests promote a Herd Mentality and social division: they can hide their activities behind 'majority rule' or 'popular consensus' (which they themselves have largely manufactured). But what is the impetus for average, well-meaning people to fall in line with these trends? Ironically, it's for the same reason that the Elites promote them: the sanction of a crowd allows men to evade responsibility for the results of their own behavior. We saw this played out disastrously in Hitler Germany. In a situation like that, a fanatic with control over a crowd can effect the crowd's identification with himself, if he's a skillful enough propagandist. To quote our author again:

   "Let a man be convinced that he has a sacred mission in the execution of which he is accountable neither to his fellow-men nor to reason, but only to a god made in his own image, and he will practice the brutalities of a Calvin or a Robespierre if he has the power. Men who thus deify their own wills and give themselves divine prerogative {note: we would add today Scientism or Ideology alongside religious fanaticism here} are, I believe, the most dangerous people in the world. We have but to see the historic examples of this kind of self-righteous enthusiasm writ large in the biographies of those who have been most distinguished for it, to be convinced that nothing so completely destroys a man's moral sense. An ambitious realist like Napoleon will commit many crimes. But a man whose brain is on fire with a holy zeal will often stop at nothing. His passion places him beyond good and evil, as these concepts are understood by reasonable men. Beyond the outposts of sanity, morality at once degenerates into messianic delusion and homicidal mania."

    Herein lies the problem. While the above description is quite obvious when analyzing the Far Left, many on the Right are utterly blind to the fact that we are falling into the same pattern. That this description fits WEF-controlled thugs like Gates, Trudeau, Macron, and Zelensky is apparent: but there are Republican Senators, Governors, Candidates for President, and many pundits whom I have no doubt whatsoever would behave with just as much contempt for human rights and civil liberties than these 'woke' fanatics do if they ever got into a position of real power. 

    By and large, we have become a nation which has forgotten our founding principle: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If any man made a statement like that today in certain Conservative circles, he'd be hooted down as a sentimental Liberal who puts his feelings ahead of rational thought. 

SUPREME COURT SLAPS DOWN REVERSE DISCRIMINATION

      So yesterday morning, while checking out the news headlines, I actually saw some good news that was so shocking that I thought I was still asleep and dreaming the whole thing.

    "The US Supreme Court has ruled that colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration when choosing who to admit. The decision overturns a system that critics say has unfairly penalized whites and Asians for almost four decades."

   

    Yes, I did go out and celebrate. It's not every day that an injustice that one's fought against for over three decades gets vaporized by the Supreme Court. I was one of the early victims of this abominable policy which literally has disenfranchised probably millions of American men---cheating them out of positions they'd earned and marginalizing them in favor of more compliant and more easily manipulated mediocrities willing to serve vested interests. Although various schools have been doing this since the 1970s, Reverse Racism didn't become national policy until the Administration of that great Conservative George Bush Sr in 1991 and expanded vastly during the Clinton Co-Presidency.

    I'm certain that, even as we speak, the Academic Mafia is working overtime to devise new ways of circumventing the law. But it's going to be a lot tougher for them now. This wasn't a milquetoast ruling like the one overturning Roe vs. Wade that shifted the problem to the States. The Supreme Court ruled that university admissions policies are in violation of the 14th Amendment---which means that this applies universally, across the nation. Hopefully this will mark the first step in a long-overdue cleaning of the Augean Stables that postmodern Academia has turned into. 

  Thanks go out to all the individuals, organizations, attorneys, and judges who fought to make this day possible. Have a great 4th of July weekend everybody: the holiday's taken on a whole new hue. 

RULE BY REASON...OR NOT

      A debate of sorts has popped up in our corner of the Blogosphere recently about the relative position of reason and emotion driving social thought these days. It's an old debate, one side argues essentially that emotion (or intuition) can tell us things beyond what our reason can grasp, there is truth to that. The other side argues that perception frequently doesn't equal reality, and there's truth to that view also. Human beings are mixture of the two: emotions are often instinctual and act as a check on cold reason, while reason is developed to solve problems and seek solutions. In our structure of complimentary genders, it's noted that each gender has a particular strength towards one or the other. 

   As for the debate itself, my position might surprise some, but I believe that in our postmodern society---which I don't by any means believe is an advanced one---is that neither reason nor emotion is driving much of anything. To set this up, let's look at an assessment of postmodern American culture that I published a few weeks ago:

   "Postmodern Americans, by and large, are an ignorant and spiritless race, where the Rule of Law is no longer respected but instead people are governed entirely by the arbitrary will of a handful of petty political satraps who rule over them for the sole purpose of sponging from them as large a share of their property and production as possible to support the grandees in Supranational Commerce...

  "Utterly apathetic to either political or social affairs, and considering ourselves (as we really are) the despised subjects and de facto slaves of the Moneyed Interests, we have no national or community spirit to keep from falling into the most degraded intellectual poverty and moral degeneracy imaginable. In fact, all throughout human history and even in most of the world today it would be difficult to find a nation more devoid of character than the 21st Century United States has produced...

  "The current race of Americans are always agog for anything novel or scandalous in sexuality and also for new and increasingly potent narcotics: if news headlines and the entertainment media are any indication, they seem to care for little else. In this depressing atmosphere, these credulous fools are easily imposed upon by celebrities, influencers, or any con-artist who knows how to 'work' a crowd."

     Concerning reason; we only need consider the depressing fact that the top-selling new technology in America in 2023 is Artificial Intelligence. The very idea that we actually need machines to tell us what to think or what decisions to make speaks volumes. We're not talking here about machines of convenience: computers which can calculate complicated mathematical formulae, online archives or encyclopedias and such. A great example is the so-called smart home, where apparently a computer can take over such complex tasks as operating dials, switches, faucets, etc. They can even enforce Cancel Culture in some instances. 

    AI is even being widely deployed in relationships---Heaven forbid one should have their own tastes and interests. Not surprisingly, even AI partners are starting to be reported. 

    Reason is a very personal thing; and we're obviously a culture which doesn't rely very heavily upon it. I've literally seen people standing outside in the rain checking their smartphones for a weather report. For the most part, no one will have an unqualified opinion on anything unless 'experts' tell them they should. Who's paying these experts or what their agendas might be, no asks nor cares to know. In cases like the recent submarine disaster or the numbers of casualties from the Loyalty Vaxx, this rejection of reason sometimes has fatal consequences.

  What about feelings and emotions? Many Conservative pundits argue that our culture is too 'feelings-driven.' I disbelieve that. I don't believe that feelings play any more part in our collective national meltdown than Reason does. As evidence of this, consider Americans' astronomical rates of narcotics consumption and addiction (both the illegal and prescription varieties). Narcotics are designed to blunt emotions and feelings. 

  Many of the Conservative critics of 'feelings' are mistaking cause-and-effect. They mistake the hysteria and outrage often exhibited by the Whacko Left Wing (although there are expressions of it on the Right too) as a genuine outpouring of sincerely felt emotions. That's not what it is at all: to put it bluntly, it's mob psychology reinforced by mass and social media. In other words, it's feelings by consensus. 

   

   The last three years have shown hysterical reactions to carefully managed viral stories from the Floyd Riots to the 'I Stand with Ukraine' nonsense resulting in all sorts of chaos. It's obvious that nearly everyone engaging in these outbursts were impervious to reason; but it doesn't follow that they blindly were following their feelings. They were simply reacting. The reaction came because others were reacting, and if everyone's terrified of a Chinese weather balloon---that's simply how one is supposed to feel.  Just as Ameroboobs are content to let others do their thinking for them, they let everyone do their feeling for them as well. 

   This largely postmodern phenomenon of Consensus-driven culture is a self-reinforcing loop. That's why controlling the narrative is a concept so important to our would-be cultural elite. Pay off some 'experts' and manipulate a few algorithms and one can run the table with no regard for either reason or feelings because they effectively control both. Anybody who actually thinks or feels gets marginalized as a crank because---everybody, including the experts, all agree.

  So it's not really a contest anymore about Reason or Emotion, it's getting people at large to start using both again. How we do that, I don't know. 

TRASH CULTURE'S TITANIC FAILURE

   This morning, we're all being greeted with the news that a debris-field has been spotted by our brave xhes in uniform where a privately-owned tourist submarine went missing. Given the Pentagon's recent history with weather balloons, UFOs, and expertise in the Ukraine Conflict, we shouldn't jump to any conclusions; but, that aside, the critical levels of oxygen onboard are nearly exhausted and the outlook for the passengers isn't looking especially promising.

  The company that owns the submarine and offers tours for a quarter-million dollars per trip is OceanGate, which is based in Everett, Washington. For those not living on the West Coast, let's just say that that fact alone raised a red flag. Seattle-area businessmen have a certain reputation well-known to any independent contractor; and the ones catering to exclusive clienteles are among the worst. Whenever one gets involved with a company like this, it's best to guard both one's back and one's wallet. 

   So it wasn't much of a surprise to learn that CEO Stockton Rush---who is among those trapped on board---once boasted that the submarine could be navigated "with a cheap Amazon video game joystick." Rush also signalled his commitment to Political Correctness by stating publicly that he "didn’t hire 50-year-old white guys with military experience to captain his vessels because they weren’t inspirational." Apparently Rush forgot that he himself was a 60-year-old White guy. 

  My intuition tells me that being trapped on a submarine with panicked and probably vengeful customers facing death is not going to be a pleasant way to end one's life, but there's some poetic justice to it. As if this all weren't bad enough, the US Coast Guard---which was too busy celebrating Pride Month to monitor a submarine in American waters---has botched the search from start to finish: even blocking a British team which actually had some expertise from assisting. From what I can tell, this submarine had less safety regulations and licensing involved than any local owner of a canoe would have to deal with.

  This is one of those situations where one doesn't know whether to feel sad or exasperated. All morning long, lyrics from an 80's hard-rock band keep playing in my head: "History shows us again and again that Nature undoes the follies of men." I haven't been deep-sea diving (yet); but places like the Sea and even Outer Space are a lot like our wildernesses. Nature has a lot to offer Mankind---provided one plays by Nature's rules. Nature can be quite unforgiving to those who don't: and one's status among men doesn't enter into Nature's equation of things. When I do get around to exploring the deep waters, I'm certainly not entrusting my fate to a rich dunce with an Xbox controller who thinks that experience is irrelevant. Nor should one rely heavily upon the US Coast Guard in case things go wrong. 

     Meanwhile, the Ameroboobs are flooding social media alleging that an episode of The Simpsons from 2005 predicted the disaster.   I would say that the truth is, that when a society thinks that The Simpsons are normative, the results are what's predictable. Unfortunately, that aspect of the situation will be ignored; and the subject of moneyed dilatentes putting human lives at risks and the incompetence of our Coast Guard will get swept under the rug. 

    At least here, the sun is shining, there's a cool breeze outside, and a jaunt to the river sounds in order. Maybe some Indian artifacts and a enough clams for some chowder tonight would put Nature in a proper perspective. 

THE HOURGLASS OF REALITY

     Last weekend was an extended 'holiday weekend', I suppose. It was sort of an interesting juxtaposition: the more-or-less obsolescent Fathers Day next to the Great Reset's redefined American Independence Day (for that is exactly what it is) called 'Juneteenth.' The irony of the fact that 2/3 of Black families are fatherless and that Blacks had little or nothing to do with winning American Independence seemed lost on everybody. I think that I summed up my feelings on Fathers Day last year; as well as saying all there needs be said about Juneteenth.

   Meanwhile, the Great Reset marches on. So, nonetheless despite the unseasonably chilly weather, I pitched the hammock under a windbreak next to the barbecue pit and caught up on some reading before watching Westerns to spareribs and corn-on-the-cob. 😋 Who knows how long such things will be legal/available these days? 

    I was reading through some old 'outdoor' magazines and came across a brief article with three drawings. It was written by dead White male G.L. Herter who owned a major (now-defunct) sporting-goods store and was a conservationist and ecologist who testified before Congress and the UN long before the 'Green' scam came along and perverted the whole movement. Have a look at these three drawings and bear in mind that this was written in 1966:

      Considering the breadth and scope of today's Surveillance State, the grip that the Tech Lords have on the Mass Media, and the current movement towards a Social Credit System, a de facto control over thinking is already here and becoming more sophisticated. Corporate America, Academia, and Big Tech have already implemented Social Credit to a large extent through Cancel Culture and using social media to vett prospective employees, students, etc. For a specimen of what it will look like here in a few years, check out this analysis of a country where it's become more mainstreamed.

    While Religion hasn't disappeared completely, Christianity and Judaism in particular are not even shadows of their former selves: they're more like ghosts haunting the sociopolitical landscape. In fact Klaus Schwab and his merry-men at the WEF have proposed using AI to write a new and improved Bible. That's "creating god in man's own image" with a vengeance! Given how many of the top echelon of such organizations are affiliated with dangerous religious cults and Scientistic superstitions---I guess we can all imagine the outcome of such a project.

     While most food wasn't synthetic in 1996, we saw the beginnings of what's being described, with mass-outsourcing of our agricultural base, regulatory capture of the FDA, CDC, and USDA,  and consolidation into the hands of Agribusiness Combines. In our decade, the destruction of the independent farmer and the move towards forcing synthetic foods upon the population is too obvious to be denied any longer.

    The author was certainly on target about the I-phone, and wasn't off by much about the use of electronics and computer technologies to rig elections. 

     This one has yet to be fulfilled, but don't imagine for a moment that it won't be. The Elites have somewhat done the opposite: they've used drugs and computers to make people as unintelligent as they desire them; but the point is the same. The year 2023 has seen an upsurge in Artificial Intelligence---which, given the American public's utter lack of use of the native variety, has caught on. Elon Musk recently won approval to use AI in human guinea pigs test subjects and no sooner had he done so than he was in China getting the factories set up. Willy Gates showed up in Beijing about a week later. 

    It must always be borne in mind that the Oligarchy's imposition of these programs in no way applies to themselves. Fake Bibles, AI, free dope, synthetic foods, social credit---all of these things are intended for us, to make us more manageable for convenience of the Oligarchy themselves. What this also shows is that people were warning about these things before many of us were even born.

   In fact, what Mr. Herter is describing is what we would call today Scientism and Technofascism. The term 'Scientism' in its modern sense was coined by economist Friedrich von Hayek in his 1947 book, The Counter-Revolution of Science but wasn't in wide use during the 1960s. Throughout the Postwar Period, more than a few thinkers on both the political Right and Left---men who saw firsthand what 'scientific dictatorships' like Hitler Germany were capable of doing---but, of course, nobody listened to them any more than they listen to us today, and here we are. 

  Technofascism actually arose as a concept between the World Wars, and was put into practice to a great extent by the Nazis and to a lesser extent by the Soviet Union. As the memories of the Second World War and the Cold War fade, the doctrine has seen a strong comeback with combinations of Silicon Valley nouveau-riche Tech Lords and old-money financial autocrats and landed aristocracies. Groups like the World Economic Forum are the launching pads for the policies of the new totalitarianism; while their Corporate henchmen's financial controls over Governments, economies, media, and academia implement them under the cover of political or social agendas. 

  The new twist to this New Order is that, unlike Nazi gauleiters or Communist commissars, the ideology isn't enforced by a dear leader with a personality cult. The new system has employed the structure of democratic republics and free-market economics to create the illusion of a free society while they manage everything behind the scenes. Instead of Unity, they promote division, and sow fear and employ Controlled Opposition to serve as scapegoats when necessary. The Media promotes acceptance of their agendas as 'mainstream' and what the 'in-group' is doing. Thus, people fall into line with their policies because it offers short-term gain while those who oppose them are marginalized. 

   Fear and Paranoia---with a stiff admixture of Envy and Opportunism---are carefully cultivated among the general public to accept increasingly deeper cuts to our Rights and greater concentrations of power to the Oligarchs themselves. Their Social Engineers have learned that by creating a crisis to seize 'emergency powers' they can create the illusion of social cohesion (i.e. "we're all in this together"). They punctuate these with brief interludes of less dramatic power grabs---all designed for our 'protection' of course---before moving on to the next crisis. In this century, they employed threat of terrorism (2001) before unleashing the threat of a global pandemic (2020). In each of these dramatic (and manufactured) events, they find some group to scapegoat; and when the next 'crisis' comes, the Regime will consolidate its power even further and have another 'consensus' when they do. 

   Scientism basically is weaponized science. The social engineers in the employ of the moneyed Oligarchy have studied the methods which---for example---domestic abusers employ to control their victims. However, instead of using these techniques to help others overcome abuse, they use them for their own purposes to control even large populations themselves. Those who've studied the subject probably noticed that the techniques described in the preceding paragraph as intermittent reinforcement, as one psychologist described it: "In this powerful variant, ambiguous, chaotic and unpredictable stimuli are used, in addition to other direct psychological abuse, to create feelings of helplessness, passivity, and dependence in the victim." We saw this during both 9/11 and the Scamdemic, where officials gave conflicting reasons for their crackdowns; as well as conflicting information about the so-called threats---while at the same time reacting with repressive measures against the slightest violations of their authority. As the same psychologist said: "Psychopaths are aware of the fact that shocking realities are unacceptable for most people and that they, therefore, may get away with it." This is why children are especially susceptible to abuse; because it goes against their instincts which see parents, teachers, and authority figures in general as protectors. Abused children often reason along these lines: "The abuse is terrible; but these people are doing it for my own good," because their reason is imperfectly developed and can't comprehend authorities being evil or even wrong. Sadly, too many adults think the same way when it comes to 'experts', politicians, media figures, and other authorities. 

    From 1966 to 2023, we've seen the Scientistic/Technofascist movement grow from a threat to a reality. Assuming that we have an 'election' in 2024 and not a pre-emptive power-grab before (nota bene: watch the upcoming trial of the President-in-Exile very carefully); the Great Reset is going to go into overdrive about mod-decade. The Oligarchs have already set the early 2030s to have their system in place---don't imagine for one minute that they're giving up this close to realization. Don't imagine either that the death of any of their aging members (e.g. Schwab, Soros, Kerry) is going to stop or even slow them down. They've carefully cultivated new crops of Young Global Leaders just as fanatical and ruthless as they are. 

    We need to come to grips with these unpleasant realities, and act accordingly. Networking and forming parallel communities is a vital step. We're not part of the Big Club, and we're not even going to be part of the labor force maintaining the Big Club before long.