When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things and a group of people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?”
Objective reality – the existence of things as they are – is obvious to everyone. And so are the values, accumulated over several millennia, of what is true and of what works and what hasn’t. But not everyone accepts the obvious and the values based on time proven objective reality. Some see themselves as Progressive in rejecting both.
Today’s academic, artistic, media, and political elites, a vanguard of Progressive Groupthink, reject the existence of things as they are and do so within the safe space of their ranks thereby creating an illusion of invulnerability and inherent morality. Members of this vanguard suppress dissenting opinions and avoid critically evaluated alternatives so as to maintain the group’s shared illusion of unanimity.
The vanguard’s conformity is maintained with mind guards – the media reports “right thinking” about a matter – and with self-censorship of deviations from shared beliefs and with shared views of the enemy – those who present a reality contrary to the groups’ notion of reality.
When we hear the vanguard’s irrational take on what is going on in the world, its roiling Doublethink, its name calling and shunning of voices outside its collective choir, and its dysfunctional decision-making which objective reality tells us will result in disastrous, dehumanizing, and even deadly outcomes, we ask “Where is this coming from and where is this going?
Those of us who keep an ear to the ground in order to hear what is approaching will answer “History is repeating itself.”
The objective reality of the murderous totalitarian regimes of the last century, which Progressives willfully ignore to promote their glorious future of equality via the same means, will help us understand the denial-of-reality collaboration of today’s intelligentsia – those who hold to one way of thinking – and their quest for total domination of the body, mind, and soul with Progressive Groupthink.
Specifically, Russian Soviet history will help us understand the conformity dynamic behind today’s intelligentsia. For this understanding I turn to one of the most informed scholars of the Russian history of ideas as communicated in its literature: Northwestern Professor Gary Saul Morson.
He describes Soviet thinking that rejected the realism and the real people depicted in nineteenth-century Russian fiction and required that reality be written to include “not only of the observable present but also the inevitable future in the making” and with Socialist Realist heroes – utopianism made flesh.
Writers of Russian realism – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, and others – wrote about what they saw and experienced. They are the “wonder” in the title. They represented the world as it was in their writings about the Gulag, mass starvation, torture, unspeakable violence, about how people thought about and dealt with what was going on, and about how many succumbed to the imposed Soviet mindset.
Russian realist authors confronted those of the “certainty,” those who wrote redefined reality in terms of the “observable present and the inevitable future in the making” and in terms of “positive heroes.”
The “positive hero” was to set an example for the reader’s behavior. A Soviet cosmonaut, for one example, became a “positive hero.” A cosmonaut’s space trip was seen as science, materialism, and atheism triumphing over the transcendent values held in the U.S., the enemy of the Soviet Union.
The “certainty” writers followed the lead of the embodiment of “certainty” – Vladimir Lenin. Lenin mocked his opponents’ self-characterization as ‘seekers’ of truth. He held that dialectical materialists do not seek truth; they already possess it. And so, the party-minded “positive hero” refused dialogue, refused to see any alternatives to the Marxist-Leninist-materialist-atheistic “truth” espoused by the party, the representatives of Karl Marx’s class-struggling proletariat.
From Wonder Confronts Certainty:
“The Soviets would label fidelity to present facts “bourgeois objectivism.” It was the best that could be expected from the age of realism, but must give way to socialist realism, which shows the ideal world inevitably coming. The socialist realist author was expected to focus on the people of the future, “positive heroes” exhibiting complete “Party-mindedness.” True positive heroes do not have bring their thinking into accord with the party, a process requiring effort; they exhibit Party-mindedness so thorough that no effort is required”
“Party-mindedness”, we learn from the writings of Russian realist authors, was propagated through the means of propaganda, show trials, random arrests, and the constant terror that there might be any hint, any innuendo, any false statement that would convict one of not being party-minded.
The “party-mindedness” of the 20th century Russian intelligentsia, its conformity to only one way of thinking, is replicated today.
“I happened to witness two professors waiting for an elevator. To make conversation, one voiced an opinion on some political question to see if the other agreed. When she did, they chattered away on a dozen other topics with perfect assurance that they agreed on those, too. Evidently, their beliefs came as a package. Subsequently I noticed this way of thinking many times, as I imagine many of my readers have.
The process works something like this: a person first chooses the group with whom he wishes to identify and then adopts its opinions. He believes as strongly in gun control, let us say, as he does in supporting Planned Parenthood, defunding the police, and banning fossil fuels. It is evident that no arguments or evidence can shake his opinions on any of these topics because arguments or evidence had nothing to do with why they were adopted.
To be sure, a person who thinks this way can cite facts and reasons to justify his opinion, but they have been acquired in the same way as the opinion itself. They are the same reasons others in the group have learned to give. I used to find it eerie to hear repeatedly the same arguments expressed in the same phrases, as if I were listening to a recording rather than to highly educated people who imagined that, unlike their intellectual inferiors, they had arrived at opinions rationally and would change them as evidence warranted. I thought of Jonathan Swift’s observation that no one was ever talked out of an opinion he was not first talked into.”
***
Reading Morson’s article, I was reminded of the easy-going liberal mindset of the Stiva Oblonsky character in Tolstoy’s Russian realism novel Anna Karenina.
Behind Stiva’s smile, his self-possessed mannerisms and hedonism is what Tolstoy described as “the liberalism of the blood.”
From the novel:
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science, nor art or politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him . . .
“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”
Stiva, we learn in in the novel, does not recognize his conscious when it speaks to him. And that is aided by his living-in-the-moment forgetting. He did not want to remember any unpleasant thing.
Self-deception and romantic ideology play key roles in Anna’s life.
***
Czeslaw Milosz, Polish American poet, novelist, translator, critic, and diplomat, is best known for The Captive Mind (1953). His essay collection focuses on intellectuals, specifically poets and other writers.
As Charles Haywood writes in his 2019 article The Captive Mind (Czeslaw Milosz), [Milosz’s] “book shows how mental gymnastics, rather than coercion, caused writers under Communism to adhere to Communism. Thereby, indirectly, it congratulates writers who believe their minds free from such, or other, contortions.
“The West incorrectly sees “might and coercion” as the reasons those in Eastern Europe submit to Communism. But, rather, unwilling to face either physical or spiritual death, many choose instead to be “reborn” through taking these metaphorical pills, because “[t]here is an internal longing for harmony and happiness that lies deeper than ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.” Intellectuals, and artists especially,do not want to be “internal exiles, irreconcilable, non-participating, eroded by hatred.” So they swallow the pills and adopt the “New Faith” (a term Milosz uses throughout the book) which offers the intellectual the certainty he is both correct and virtuous, and therefore gives him a sense of belonging, gives him a feeling of being “warm-hearted and good . . . a friend of mankind—not mankind as it is, but as it should be.”” (Emphasis mine.)
Returning to Morson’s article about package thinking, Morson relates
“What really matters, [Czeslaw} Milosz explains, is “the intellectual’s feeling of belonging.” His defining “characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.” For this reason, as well as to prosper, he must root out all the old ways of thinking. Milosz describes a phenomenon with which university people are all too familiar, the always incomplete process of teaching oneself to say the right things (in the right words), and avoid saying the wrong ones, so that one never makes a slip entailing ostracism or worse. Of course, the best way to do this is to get oneself actually to share the prescribed views. Milosz describes how
after long acquaintance with his role, a man grows into it so closely that he can no longer differentiate his true self from the self he simulates, so that even the most intimate of individuals speak to each other in Party slogans. To identify self with the role one is obliged to play . . . permits a relaxation of one’s vigilance. Proper reflexes at the proper time become truly automatic.”
***
One obvious feature of our culture’s downward trend toward mindless conformity is critical thinking’s easy alternative: clicking on a machine to receive packaged thoughts.
Why think when packaged thoughts are there for the clicking? And why expand one’s personal bandwidth when you can reaffirm your tribal identity with a click?
Why research and consider a range of ideas and thoughts when clicking on machine AI is ready to do away with mystery and your curiosity, wonder, and impatience? And why think outside package thinking when life is short – shortened by every minute clicking on a machine.
Why read classic literature to gain wisdom, insight, and understanding from other people in other places and in other times, when you can click on a remote for package thinking entertainment.
Have you bought into the globalist, academic, secular and progressive (GASP) package (a feature of Wikipedia) that censors alternative views as “extremist” or “fringe theories” or “conspiracy theories” or “racist?”
Did you buy into the globalist open borders “welcoming the stranger” package where millions of unvetted illegal invaders entered the country as simple or criminal or terrorism opportunists? Did you accept the package thinking that allows third world invaders into our country to replace American workers and American values and do all manner of harm to its citizens as empathy, as what Jesus would do? Take a look at the strangers welcomed: Arrested: Worst of the Worst | Homeland Security And, there’s this: They Called It ‘Compassion’ — But it was Child Trafficking – American Thinker
Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package where everyone, except certain individuals who hold more power and privilege, must be made equal no matter the human cost? Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package and willfully forgetting the objective reality of the horrors of socialism/communism? Are you willfully handing over your life, your thoughts, to “Party-mindedness”?
Did you accept the “don’t question the science” COVID package thinking of mandates, masking, social distancing, vaccine passports, isolation camps, vaccine efficacy, and of COVID’s origin lies? America’s COVID Response Was Based on Lies
Likewise, did you not question the package thinking of “climate experts” who announced their verdict that the world would end if we didn’t act now. Not long ago, woven into almost every weather report on local and mainstream media when major weather events (floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires) occurred was the narrative that climate change was behind them – without ever mentioning large-scale natural phenomena such as solar cycles, ocean currents and volcanoes that have been affecting weather for many millennia.
Do you go along with the package thinking of the [John] Rawlsian theory of ad hoc justice that, for example, releases someone arrested 40 times, is not considered a “criminal” because of their minority status, and is released by a judge back onto the street where he sets a woman on fire?
Do you buy philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” – the package thinking that says that people are entirely products of their environment, of their society, of their age, and that’s why they do what they do. Therefore, they are not responsible for what they do because of external influence. That’s the package thinking behind the Rawlsian theory of justice and behind the executions and horrors of the French revolution working to change social environment.
Have you agreed with the insurrection thought package being espoused by The Seditious Six imploring military service members to “refuse illegal orders” thereby implying that orders coming out of the Trump administration are considered illegal by them and therefore military service members should disobey their commanding officer and join the club of the “Party-minded.” Remember, package thinking has only one train of thought – gaining and maintaining power over reality.
Have you agreed with the insurrection package thinking espoused previously by NYT’s op-ed columnist David Brooks? Do the values of your party-minded package thinking allow you to hamstring a DEMOCRACY! elected president with the rulings of party-minded federal court judges that will be overturned. Do the values of your party-minded package thinking justify the deep state, in the labyrinth of government, to sabotage the efforts of a Democratically elected President?
Do the values of your package thinking allow you to call for uprisings by any means necessary, to burn down buildings, to destroy property, to destroy businesses, to steal, do violence on others, to defund the police, to create pipe bombs, to assassinate? To ignore your conscience?
Did you accept the “Danger to our Democracy” thought package the media delivered during the last presidential election cycle? It should be obvious from the likes of David Brooks, that the “guardians of democracy” are the ones who want to tear it down.
Have bought into the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) playbook that conforms and coerces everyone to identify with Soviet style party-mindedness package thinking?
Have bought into viewing everything including humans through the lens of materialism?
Have you bought into package thinking so as to not be considered an outsider? Have you bought into conformity for conformity’s sake?
Is censorship the worst thing that can happen to a people? Or, is it “Party-mindedness?”
When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things with the smug air of certainty and people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?” and “Where is this coming from and where is it going?”
What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia. And a mind is still a terrible thing to hand over.
You can put your ear to the road and hear what is quickly approaching. Download and listen to the following podcasts:
London is falling – or has it fallen already?
Liz Truss, the 56th prime minister of the United Kingdom, in her very first episode of The Liz Truss Show discusses how bad things are in Britain with a mass migration and economic doom loop – and how to defeat the deep state who have let this happen
Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, Package Thinking, and The Importance of Critical Thinking
Professor Gary Saul Morson shares his thought-provoking definition of an intellectual—someone who seeks truth independently, values ideas for their own sake, and stands apart from identity-driven thinking. Whether discussing classic Russian Literature or analyzing modern society, Professor Morson is one of the most insightful and consequential scholars of our time. Discover how this interview, and its exploration of timeless topics, can inspire bold, principled leadership and innovation within today’s business environment.
Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, Package Thinking, and The Importance of Critical Thinking
Vladimir Lenin’s ideas are alive and well today: Party-ness, politics as win-lose, zero-sum game, Who-Whom, rejection of truth, ideology, violence, philosophical materialism, adherence to lying.
Is Hope Naïve in a World Like Ours? | Esau McCaulley & Gary Saul Morson at Northwestern
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Quotes:
In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea … gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage – if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries. I have had some experience of this myself. … No good can come of dealing with such people, especially to the extent that their company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous. Galileo Galilei
If the Brave New World cannot insert a square peg into a round hole, it will redefine “roundness” until a perfect fit results.
-Jerome Meckier, from Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure
…a sense of unity is opposite of a sense of uniformity. Uniformity, where everyone “belongs”, uses the same cliches, thinks alike and behaves alike, produces a society which seems comfortable at first but is totally lacking in human dignity. Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, realizes that it is man’s destiny to unite and not divide… Unity, so understood, is the extra dimension that raises the sense of belonging into genuine human life.
-Northrop Frye, from The Bush Garden
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. -Plato
“The past is our always-available counterculture, and it’s a rich one. Every minute you spend attending to something not-immediately-present, you are helping to build a counterculture.” ― Alan Jacobs
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Links:
Why are intellectuals — those whose thinking is supposed to be most refined — so susceptible to totalitarianism? Gary Saul Morson offers three explanations from the treasury of Russian literature.
Anti-Communism Week has been marked for November 2025. Writer-producer Julie Behling’s documentary “Beneath Sheep’s Clothing” warns of communism’s devastation: “Globally, communism claimed the lives of approximately 150 million people in the 20th century.”
Totalitarian governments cannot afford that its citizens remain autonomous persons. This poses a threat to their quest to consolidate power. Individual liberty threatens the theoretical, utopian foundations of promising the re-distribution of goods, and equality; communism ultimately fails to re-distribute the essence of human nature.
New York City, home to about one million Jews, voted in the Democratic mayoral primary for a Shia Muslim deeply critical of Israel.
Zohran Mamdani wants to “globalize the intifada” – a slogan used by pro-Palestinian activists that calls for worldwide support for Palestinian resistance against Israel and Jews involving violence. Mamdani does this with the handwashing tact of standing up for Palestinian human rights.
The hook for NYC’s wealthy champagne socialists who need to virtue signal eyes away from their wealth and for the young and restless urbanites who can’t afford rent in NYC: Mamdani is a 33-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Andrew Cuomo dominated the voting among those making under $50K, but Mamdani beat Cuomo by 20 points among voters earning more than $100,000 a year.
Americans were stunned last week when foreign-born, self-proclaimed socialist Zohran Mamdani used CNN as a platform to denounce capitalism—the very system that transformed this country from frontier towns into a global superpower. Capitalism has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, built a middle class, and fueled rapid technological innovation—outcomes impossible under socialist regimes, as evidenced by an imploding Europe adopting welfare-state models or failed communist states like Cuba.
Like all communist organizers (cf. Obama), the 33-year-old progressive democratic socialist promises an anticapitalism world (with no rising seas or costs) if you just give up all common sense and any understanding of free-market economics (I, Pencil provides understanding) and vote (and pay dearly later) for the revolution. (It’s no secret that capitalism’s profits pay for socialism’s follies.)
Mandani, in order to control costs (read seize the means of production and central planning), says that he wants to freeze rents and provide free transportation and universal childcare, create city-owned grocery stores and construct 200,00 affordable housing units.
He also wants to raise New York City’s minimum wage to $30 by 2030, thereby pricing people out of jobs.
“Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods.” – Zohran for New York City policy memo.
Mamdani, using the narrative of the left, wants to defund the NYPD and abolish prisons.
He promises to work against U.S. laws to continue Welcoming the Stranger/Fellow Traveler from other failed socialist countries. He will double down on sanctuary city protections for illegals and end cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Welcome to the revolution.
Like fellow travelers Tim Waltz and Kamala Harris, Mamdani defended the Black Lives Matter riots in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020. He described the violence (read intifada struggle) as necessary and grounded in racial justice solidarity.
Did NYC Democrats not see the destruction of the palisades and LA by the incompetent leadership of California’s Governor Gavin Newsom and inclusion’s DEI hire Mayor Karen Bass? With this recent vote, do NYC Democrats also approve of the wholesale destruction of their blue city?
Do Democrats in NYC not remember Gavin Newsom eating without mask or social distancing at the French Laundry during the COVID lockdowns? With this recent vote, do NYC Democrats also approve of the hypocrisy of a society that claims to promote equality while allowing a ruling class to dominate?
Mamdani was born in Uganda and briefly lived in South Africa. He became a U.S. citizen in 2018. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Africana studies from Bowdoin College.
No doubt the 33-year-old has been steeped in the anti-American anti-Capitalism rhetoric and Islamic Jihad teaching. It appears that he knows nothing of American history or of Communism’s deadly and destructive track record.
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana
From Welcoming Jihad in NYC to Globalized Intifada – The Holy War Against Christians in Nigeria
I’m sure you’ve heard the following reported in the main stream media.
But then again, the reactionary MSM is busy defending the globalist Jihad of the “Welcoming the Stranger” open borders narrative and dissing the law-and-order activity of the Trump administration done to secure the integrity of the United States and the wellbeing of its citizens.
(No doubt some, including some Christians, believe that the morally relativistic “social justice” is a permissive that allows them moral authority to break laws created by representatives of our Republic’s Democracy to maintain order and the common good.)
What’s happening and been happening in Nigeria is Jihad. But it’s not the ghetto-uprising kind of a NYC socialist Jihadist. Here are five articles describing the horrors of Islamist Jihad:
Beneath the silence of the Western press, a genocide is unfolding — one that has claimed the lives of over 3,100 Christians in Nigeria this year alone. And yet, for all the blood spilled, for all the churches burned and children slain, one would be hard-pressed to find even a whisper of coverage from CNN, the BBC, or The New York Times. The slaughter of Christians, it seems, is not newsworthy in today’s media economy. (Emphasis mine.)
In a horrifying escalation of violence, between 100 and 200 Christians were murdered by Fulani jihadist herdsmen in Nigeria’s Benue State, according to multiple sources. (Emphasis mine.)
Jihadist violence continues to escalate in Nigeria, and Christians are particularly at risk from targeted attacks by Islamist militants, including Fulani fighters, Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province). These increased under the rule of former president Muhammadu Buhari, putting Nigeria at the epicentre of targeted violence against the church. The government’s failure to protect Christians and punish perpetrators has only strengthened the militants’ influence. (Emphasis mine.)
Nigeria, the most populated country in Africa, faces a harsh reality for its Christian population. Since the early 2000s, over 62,000 Christians have lost their lives to violence driven by extremist groups like Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Fulani militias. (Emphasis mine.)
[Bishop Wilfred Anagbe] added that for his people, their experience today “can be summed up as that of a Church under Islamist extermination.” (Emphasis mine.)
Nigerian martyrs cry out in a loud voice, “Holy and true Master! How much longer are you going to put off giving judgement, and avenging our blood on the earth-dwellers?” -Revelation 6:10
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No more word games. How are we to understand intifada and jihad? As merely a personal struggle against, say, cigarette smoking? As a struggle against an oppressor? As a non-violent ghetto uprising involving work stoppages, boycotts and demonstrations that might involve small weapons such as rocks or Molotov cocktails, and on some occasions firearms or grenades?
Are we to understand intifada as the October 7th attack on Israel when Gaza militants fired thousands of rockets towards Israeli towns killing more than 1,400 people, including civilians and soldiers, and took up to 150 hostages.
Some, like Daniel Lefkowitz, consider “intifada and genocide” in the same sentence to be “an unreasonable stretch.” But looking at what happened on October 7th and at what has been happening in Nigeria, is it a stretch?
“Globalize the intifada” is a call for a Muslim holy war or spiritual struggle for the propagation or defense of Islam that involves genocide and now wants to employ the unholy terror of Communism.
The New York mayoral Democratic primary candidate defends “Globalize the intifada.”
(I don’t hear pro-Israel war hawk “Tel Aviv Levin” decrying the violence done to Christians in Nigeria by Jihadists.)
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AI – Act Now Before the Bill Passes!
Email your senators and ask them to remove a 10-year moratorium on enforcing state and local artificial intelligence laws from the GOP’s megabill. The moratorium infringes on states’ rights.
Removing the 10-year moratorium on enforcing state and local artificial intelligence laws
-will protect citizens from the harm the technology could cause, and the lack of “thoughtful” public debate over the measure.
-will protect our citizens from the misuse of artificial intelligence.
Toru Takemitsu (1931-1996) was a self-taught Japanese composer who combined elements of Eastern and Western music and philosophy to create a unique sound world.
(I played the trumpet for many years. My ears perked up when I heard Paths.)
Witold Roman Lutosławski was a Polish composer and conductor. He was one of the major composers of 20th-century classical music.
April 1961. The first human to travel into space returned to Earth after traveling 17,500 mph for 108 minutes. He circled the earth once at a maximum altitude of 203 miles.
About 4.35 miles above the Earth, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin ejected from Vostok 1, a pressurized spherical capsule just two meters wide. He parachuted to the ground.
This first of its kind scientific event made Gagarin a space hero and made for a compelling narrative for the Soviet system to promote socialism and scientific atheism:
“For Soviet Communism, cosmonauts were utopianism made flesh – Socialist Realist heroes come to life – and Socialist Realism and socialist reality were never closer than during the Soviet space age.”[i]
After Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, Soviet leaders during the Khrushchev era (1953-1964) were eager for a return to party purity. Stalin had given up trying to purge religion from Soviet Russia. He had wanted to produce an atheist society. But after seeing that the stubborn religiosity of the masses could not be eradicated, he finally decided to maintain authoritarian control over it. He heavily regulated churches and church leaders to keep them politically impotent.
“Under Khrushchev, then, the party realized that it was not enough to eliminate the political and economic base of religion. In order to transform the Soviet society of the present into the Communist society of the future, religion had to be eradicated not just from Soviet politics and public life but also from Soviet people’s consciousness.”[ii]
Khrushchev’s focus on party purity meant a return to campaigns to eradicate religious “survivals” and the promotion of a scientific materialist conception of the world as outlined by Marx-Leninism. The latter, in the form of secularist rituals, was supposed to fill the void left behind by a life without religion.
Soviet space flights were thought to show the world that the Soviet’s scientific, materialist, and atheistic worldview was superior to that of the religious and capitalist U.S. After all, wasn’t science the only path to knowledge, and matter the fundamental reality? And wasn’t it reason and not God who put a man into space? And a space-hero cosmonaut who didn’t see God in space, well . . .
Before a plenary session of the Central Committee, Russian Premiere Nikita Khrushchev gave all the Party and Komsomol organizations [Young Communists] the mission of promoting anti-religious propaganda. With that directive he said: “Why are you clinging to God? Here Gagarin flew into space and didn’t see God.”
Yuri Gagarin’s close friend and colleague, Colonel Valentin Petrov, denied that Gagarin ever said that. The words put in Gagarin’s mouth by Russian Premiere Nikita Khrushchev and Gagarin’s supposed godlessness became popular folklore and a party narrative created to support atheism. The party knew that people would have believed more in Gagarin’s words than in Khrushchev’s.
“There Is No God.” (Boga net!)
From out of the heavens, Yuri Gagarin, a baptized member of the Russian Orthodox Church, reentered into a world system that set itself up opposed to God. Gagarin was made a caricature of the atheistic propaganda the party wanted to propagate.
Khrushchev: “Why should you clutch at God” (you cannot see when you look out the capsule window into space when you can envision a materialist utopia in the successful figure of our own cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.)
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A view through a window into heaven . . .
At the end of the first century CE, seven churches of Asia received a circular letter sent from the island of Patmos. The author composed the letter “in the spirit” on the Lord’s Day. The letter was to be read out loud in full on the Lord’s Day when Christians met for corporate worship. Their circumstances served as a type of inset in the letter’s cosmic space-time mapping.
The churches were situated in a Roman province in what is now western Turkey. Some twenty years before, the Roman Empire unleashed its full power against a Jewish rebellion resulting in the fall of Jerusalem and the complete destruction of the Second Temple.
Though Christian persecution had been sporadic, the oppressive nature of the Roman Empire made for distressful times for these early Christians. Devotion to and worship of only one Lord and God kept these Christians under suspicion by Roman authorities.
The surrounding Greco-Roman culture was polytheistic. The official state religion, headed by Jupiter, was the Roman pantheon of gods. Temples to Jupiter, Mars, and Venus were built throughout Rome. Being able to add your god or goddess to the local pantheon of gods worked to keep a diversity of religions in check for Pax Romana.
The Roman empire operated under ‘divine’ authority. The emperor, both a political and a deified religious figure, held absolute power. He maintained authority through political alliances, military might and a dutiful citizenry.
Public support for the imperial cult worked to solidify the emperor’s authority. Citizens were expected to show loyalty to the ‘divine’ emperor by participating in religious festivals, rituals, and emperor worship. Neglecting the imperial cult was considered treasonous.
Throughout the empire Roman power and political influence were on display with monuments, mosaics, iconography, frescos, and image-stamped coins. Adding to perceptions of Rome as a formidable world power was literature, inscriptions, myths, architecture, and elaborate public ceremonials.
All eyes on the emperor.
Roman imperial propaganda was also used to shape the public’s perception of the emperor. His presence, like Rome’s, was to be sensed everywhere – in public places and in the sanctuaries of the imperial cult in provincial towns.
Emperors were depicted as tough warrior and general types and as benevolent paternalistic protector and statesman types. At the time of the Patmos letter Emperor Domitian governed (81 to 96 CE) as divine monarch and benevolent despot. As such, he saw himself as a cultural and moral authority able to guide every aspect of a citizen’s life.
The expectation for everyone under Roman rule was to respond to Rome in its terms and beyond that, to show devotion to the sovereign emperor. Or, feel the force of the empire. Fear was the motivation. “Bread and circus games” were the distractions used to deflect from the fact that Roman emperors were selfish and incompetent tyrants.
The Patmos letter was sent to those who held an expectation of God’s coming universal rule and to those who lost that focus. A clash between an all-powerful Sovereign and his kingdom and the ubiquitous domineering emperor and empire was expected. The letter, with vivid prophetic imagery, did not disappoint.
Every eye will see him.
Christians in the seven churches, upon hearing “Look! He is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, yes, even those who pierced him. All the tribes of the earth shall mourn because of him. Yes! Amen,” looked out the window of their imagination to see Christ and the coming of God’s universal rule.
As the letter was read, they recognized the “satanic trinity” fighting against them and God’s kingdom on earth: “the dragon or serpent (the primeval, supernatural source of all opposition to God), the beast or sea-monster (the imperial power of Rome), and the second beast or earth-monster (the propaganda machine of the imperial cult).”[iii]
And they heard a devastating critique of Roman power dynamics. The letter recognized “the way a dominant culture, with its images and ideals, constructs the world for us, so that we perceive and respond to the world in its terms. Moreover, it unmasks this dominant construction of the world as an ideology of the powerful which serves to maintain their power.”[iv]
They also envisioned their role in saying “No” to the idolatries of Rome (Babylon) and to be a witness of the truth worth dying for to all tribes of the earth. And then the Day of the Lord.
After hearing the letter read, the church community once again reentered into a world system opposed to their Sovereign. But now they had something their imaginations could clutch – a view of God’s throne room and of “what must soon take place” – and a counter-cultural approach for the church.
More about John’s Apocalypse or The Revelation of John in the next post.
[i] Smolkin, Victoria. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism. Princeton University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1zgb089. PP 86-87
In this parable of Jesus, recorded in the gospel of Mark (chap. 4), notice how the kingdom of God grows -not by power, might or militancy:
“This is what God’s kingdom is like. Once upon a time a man sowed seed on the ground. Every night he went to bed; every day he got up; and the seed sprouted and grew without him knowing how it did it. The ground produces crops by itself: first the stalk, then the ear, then the complete corn in the ear. But when the crop is ready, in goes the sickle at once, because harvest has arrived.”
~~~~~
Melanie Hempe, founder of Screen Strong, joins host Scot Bertram of Hillsdale College to discuss how to prevent your children from forming a lifelong screen addiction, simple tips for reducing screen time, and how to answer questions from other parents.
“They start from a desire for unity, and they are taught a contrived notion of right and wrong through criticism and struggle so that we can arrive at a new, contrived unity on a new, contrived basis. Everyone outside of the desire for unity is an enemy of the people.” ~Maoism.
There’s a project afoot pre-election 2024. Maoist in nature, it’s formula – unity, criticism, unity – is being used to transform the faithful into having “correct” political opinions.
Gurus have come out of their ashram bubbles to tells us how to be good little political Christians because . . . “You people are so extreme. We must address divisive forces and soften your stance on everything. You must rid yourself of old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas that get in the way of fundamental transformation. We will free you from wrongthink. We have books, podcasts, MSNBC media spots, and church seminars to stretch you beyond what you know. The goal is to expose you to voices you need to be following so you can learn to love each other better.” So goes the hectoring.
(Submit to our purpose-driven struggle session and over your personal spiritual journey with us you too will soon agree with us on critical race theory, liberation theology, queer theory, climate change, open-borders, gun control, same-sex marriage, abortion, hating Trump, and saving “Democracy!” by any means necessary. We want you to love God and the State!)
I don’t know the motive of these moralizing gurus other than they want to “reclaim Christianity from right-wing extremism” or some such thing such thing. (David French, who has an extreme case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, says he wants to pry away the conservative movement from a deranged man [Trump]. That’s why he’s all in on the radical Leftist Kamala-Walz duo – to save conservatism from itself.)
Is there mal-intent by these evangelists of the Left, these missionaries of Progressivism – for Progressivism is a political religion? Maybe not. They likely have turned their eyes and ears away from reality to follow Wide Way myths – contrived notions of right and wrong. Some have become paid influencers who find ways of being in the spotlights of media’s Great White Way. In any case, they have become disciples of Mao and the Left.
And the Left, like Mao in support of his Cultural Revolution, has shown that it will do what it wants by any means necessary including rig elections, creating hoaxes, spreading lies, censorship, purging of political opponents, and unjust lawfare in the name of “Democracy!” to bring about its own Cultural Revolution.
The Left’s spiritual guides employ the Maoist formula of unity, criticism, unity. They’ll start by talking about wanting to unite Christians in a better way of love and then they’ll criticize in Saul Alinsky-like fashion. You’ve heard the ad hominems: “deplorables” “bitter clingers” “extremists” “conspiracy theorists” “homophobes” “xenophobes”, “authoritarians”, “fascists”, “threats to Evangelicalism” AND “DEMOCRACY!” and the latest put-down: “they’re weird.”
(They finally got something right: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor)
They ridicule “Christian Nationalists” as being backward reactionaries and project a threat to Democracy on to them. And it’s no wonder: would-be dictators, Marxists, fascists, autocrats, and MSNBC use the word “Democracy” the most. It’s used by them in a bait and switch scheme.
These “purveyors of Democracy” offer to sell “Democracy”, which they do not actually intend to sell. This is “the bait.” They switch customers from buying the advertised “Democracy” that the seller initially offered into buying a different product or service that is usually at a higher price (loss of freedom including free speech – vox populi – and therefore Democracy!) and has advantageous effect to the advertiser (dictatorship). This is the “switch.”
From a Marxist perspective, the Left wants to subvert the nation-state and nationalism. Marxists think that the Proletarians who embrace nationalism do so out of false consciousness. The working class should therefore abandon their parochial worldview and understand that their struggles against the bourgeoisie, the means of production and capitalism, transcend national boundaries. Nationality would disappear as people come to identify by class instead. So goes Bolshevik theory. The working class has no homeland!
. . .the political projectionist knows best his own hazardous or off-putting conduct and policies. And so, he can most skillfully attribute just these liabilities to those who have had no experience with them.
Shaming people till they break down and pledge Progressive values or to at least get them so muddled in their thinking that they back off and become controlled opposition is their means to their unity.
Below are some of the long-form journalistic revisionist (and unsubstantiated) works (ala The 1619 Project) that takes a critical view of backwater Evangelicals living in flyover country (“the ragged edge of the universe”- Nick in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby).
You see, sneering elites and the literati decided that anyone not like them was not worth knowing–an attitude reflected in such quotes as this one from H.L. Mencken, who said of Willa Cather, “I don’t care how well she writes, I don’t give a damn what happens in Nebraska.”
To wit:
Tim Alberta and The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, published December 5, 2023
Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman with White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy published on February 27, 2024
Jim Wallis: The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy, published April 2, 2024
The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics, Nancy French and Curtis Chang, based on project by David French, Russell Moore & Curtis Chang, published April 23, 2024
And before the 2020 election:
Kaitlyn Schiess: The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor, published September 8, 2020
I wonder. Did these spiritual guides come to their conclusions about people they don’t agree with and are irritated by through Leftist media sources?
Certainly, if one were a disciple of MSNBC, CNN, the NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic, Christianity Today, Trinity Forum, and other Progressive Left sources, one could easily conclude that Christians who are not like them are “enemies of the people.” For, media disciples are an enlightened bunch but everyone else – they don’t know any better, and worse. They are racist rubes, are in a cult of personality and are involved in political idolatry. Christians in this sad group, so they tell us, are making Christianity look bad. But THEY have the answer – be discipled by the Left!
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris (more below) are OK with the disastrous record of destructive monetary and fiscal policies under Biden-Harris. Are they OK with the modern monetary theory of spending and dollar printing that has created high inflation and massive debt for future generations? To pay off the huge debt, the government will come after retirement funds and checking and saving accounts.
Are they OK with people unable to pay their bills and not able to buy a house or maintain their business? How does this show love for your neighbor? Are Evangelicals for Harris OK with soviet-style price controls as proposed by Kamala Harris? David Brooks actually gets something right.
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris are OK with the current inversion of justice: criminals without bonds are released to do harm again, great grandmothers are sentenced for praying, political opponents are brought to trial on spurious charges. Many of the political prisoners of J6 are still awaiting trial. This is equity in Harris world. How does this show love for your neighbor?
Tucker at his best. He picks apart Kamala word by word.
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris are OK with a stolen election and a stolen candidacy and stolen valor. How does this show love for your neighbor?
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris are OK with the current geo-political nightmare of wars and potential wars on several fronts that have come about under Biden-Harris. How does this show love for your neighbor?
One has to wonder – are they OK with the Afghanistan debacle? Joe and Kamala (of the party of gun control) had the U.S. flee Afghanistan, leaving behind $80+ BN in weapons and equipment and “a security vacuum into which all the Islamic terrorist organizations on the planet flooded. The results will be catastrophic for the entire world. Joe and Kamala never speak of it and do nothing to stave off what is at this point the inevitable.” The Terror Factory Joe And Kamala Built – Afghanistan (substack.com) How does this show love for your neighbor?
It's the 3rd anniversary of 13 American service members dying during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris are OK aligning themselves with those who want to destroy Western civilization? They might not view themselves as pro-Hamas protestors, but the party they are joining is showing its hatred toward Israel, that in truth, is also hatred of Western civilization and America. How does this show love for your neighbor?
Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson:
Foreign Policy cites what it calls Harris’ “mantra” of favoring “what can be, unburdened by what has been.” In practice, this “mantra” and her public statements show a pronounced indulgence toward Iran and a hostility to Israeli efforts to ensure its own survival. . .
A Harris foreign policy promises genuine departure— “what can be, unburdened by what has been”—acknowledging a multipolar world by retreating from its friends in the face of its enemies.
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris (more below) are OK hitching their wagon to the party of anger and grievance? To identity politics, victimhood and the need to constantly produce guilt? To condemnation and holding a grudge? To a party that reconciles itself to all manner of evil and refuses to be reconciled to people not like them? How does personal animus toward Trump and MAGA folks show love for your neighbor?
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris are OK with scientism, with masks and mandates, with lockdowns, with the closing of schools, churches and businesses, with snitching on your neighbor, and the ill treatment of the elderly that happened during COVID? Are they Karens? Do they want vaccine passports and everyone to be monitored 24/7 by some government entity? How does this show love for your neighbor?
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris are OK with censorship, when Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” How does censorship show love for your neighbor?
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris are OK with abortion used as Satanic ritual? Are they OK with the guy who identifies as a Christian and was the former head of NIH, Francis Collins, doing Mengele-like experiments with aborted baby parts. And what about fetal tissue trafficking? How does this show love for your neighbor?
▶️WATCH: In new full undercover video, Planned Parenthood NYC seeks $1,500 "financial incentive" per aborted fetal liver, which can be harvested from "intact D&Es"—criminal partial-birth abortions.@KamalaHarris seized this footage to cover up for @PPFApic.twitter.com/6pbuo7kpHe
Recently released videos from a citizen journalist who went undercover to expose Planned Parenthood’s involvement in fetal tissue trafficking — and was subsequently investigated by then-California Attorney General Harris — reignited criticism of her role in his prosecution. As prosecutions of pro-life activists have increased under the Biden administration, Harris’ past actions amplify concerns that her administration would take an even more aggressive stance, using the Department of Justice (DOJ) to selectively target political opponents.
One has to wonder how it is that groups such as Evangelicals for Harris are OK with open borders that allows in deadly fentanyl and murderers and all kinds of terrorists and disease. Gang leader wanted for 23 murders was released into US: ICE (youtube.com) Do they pretend that Scripture makes it all OK? How does this show love for your neighbor?
Did Evangelicals for Harris join up out of feelings for and a myopic obsession with DEI, CRT, and climate crisis myths coming out their “higher-education” ashrams?
Do they identify with identity politics? Are they Marxist and socialists?
Did Evangelicals for Harris join up to show their hatred of all things Trump like good little foot soldiers of MSNBC? To show their disdain of Trump’s now-distant past remarks and behavior while aligning themselves with characters of all kinds of unscrupulous and perverse behavior? To show their contempt for patriotism and America just like the Left? How does this show love for your neighbor?
Added 8-24-2024:
Democrats are pretending to embrace patriotism and the American flag.
It seems to me that all such groups like Evangelicals for Harris see themselves as freed up thinkers and Rousseauian in the sense that they feel good about themselves and what they do for they think they are morally good apart from any outside reference except for their tribe. And more so.
They believe that the “politically correct” views they hold would create a perfectly unified democracy. And so, they ply Evangelicals to transfer allegiance from what they hold to be true to what they say is true. As such, they reveal themselves to be the prophets of “totalitarian democracy” – the majority living under the tyranny (“unity”) of a one absolute and perfect political truth.
By any measure – facts, science, Scripture, common sense, and the common good – groups such as Evangelicals for Harris are at war with reality. And, it’s no wonder. They are the products and facilitators of the struggle session known as The 2024 Project.
In Paul’s last letter (II Timothy) he tells his young protégé Timothy what to look out for:
For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires. So they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. II Timothy 4:3-4
Evangelicals for Harris, formerly Evangelicals for Biden, is a project of Faith Voters, a 501(c)4 organization. It is a group claiming to represent evangelicals who are voting and advocating for Harris-Walz.
Apparently, they are running interference for Harris-Walz while seeking to downplay their radical agenda on issues like the economy, race, climate change, open borders, abortion entrenchment and expansion, LGBTQ promotion, destroying the nuclear family, and trans-ing the children – all in the name of Evangelicalism.
Even Billy Graham’s granddaughter has joined Evangelicals for Harris: ‘Voting Kamala, for me, is so much greater than policies.’ Apparently, wisdom need not be applied to issues beyond her wrinkled nose. The country can go to hell so long as Trump is not elected. A Faustian bargain, indeed.
A recent Evangelicals for Harris Zoom event was hosted by an activist who has a long history of bashing “Whiteness” and calling for the destruction of police departments.
Ekemini Uwan hosted the Zoom call, one of many identity-based online Zoom meetings in support of the new Democratic Party nominee that have sparked controversy.
Uwan describes herself on her website as a “reparations activist whose work spans the globe, as she has advocated for global reparations on behalf of Africans and African Descendants on the floor of the United Nations three times.”
Uwan spoke at Sparrow Conference 2019 where she gave “a historical, sociological, political, theological and gospel-saturated clinic on racial identity.” At that conference, she said we have to talk about what whiteness is:
In 2019, Uwan spoke at a conference where she declared that "whiteness is rooted in plunder, in theft, in slavery, in enslavement of Africans, [and] genocide of Native Americans."
“The reality is whiteness is rooted in plunder. theft. In slavery – enslavement of Africans. Genocide of native Americans. We’re sitting on stolen land. Everywhere in America we’re sitting on stolen land. This is the reality of land that was stolen from native Americans. We’re Americans we have to recognize and acknowledge that. It’s a power structure, that’s what whiteness is . . .”
I wonder. Did the whites on that Wednesday Zoom call, including Wheaton College prof. Amy Peeler, divest from their whiteness?
Just more greed, envy, racism, and class warfare but now encapsuled in the virtue-signaling ‘respectability’ of anti-racism rhetoric. This Christian-coated pill gives groups like Evangelicals for Harris a way to swallow Marxist Progressivism.
~~~~~
Get to know the Evangelicals for Harris Mind Games at work to woo voters away to their liberal agenda.
For many Christians, “Evangelicals for Harris” sounds like an oxymoron but there is a simple political strategy behind it.
The strategy is this: Harris doesn’t have to appeal to a lot of Republican-leaning churchgoers. She just needs to win over a few, David Brody, chief political analyst for the Christian Broadcast Network, said on American Family Radio Wednesday.
(The following Harris campaign Mind Games clip is meant to shame Trump and those who vote for him.)
EXCLUSIVE: Evangelicals For Harris drops their first media spot TODAY in an effort to win over some of those “on-the-fence” Conservative Evangelicals in swing states who are lukewarm when it comes to Donald Trump. You can watch it here first before it’s officially released. Many… pic.twitter.com/zhLUpA3CWU
Victor Davis Hanson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College, Pepperdine professor, syndicated columnist, bestselling author, and fifth-generation California farmer, argues in his July 29, 2024 article that American society is treating its citizens like lab rats, resulting in harmful outcomes. Read the article here: https://victorhanson.com/americas-lab…
Half the country thinks something has gone drastically wrong in America, to the point that it is rapidly becoming unrecognizable. Millions feel they are virtual lab rats in some grand research project conducted by entitled elites who could care less when the experiment blows up.
Mao Zedong wanted to thought-reform, that is, brainwash, the whole Chinese population, and he had a formula (https://www.marxists.org/reference/ar…) for doing it: “Unity – Criticism – Unity.” That is, he sought to induce in people a “desire for unity” so they would join his socialistic cult, and then once that desire was strong enough, criticism and struggle sessions (https://newdiscourses.com/2022/12/sur…) would begin to cement adherence. Finally, through criticism, struggle, and study, unity with the socialist cult would be achieved.
A “study, conducted by McLaughlin & Associates on behalf of The Media Research Center, found that on ten aspects of Harris’s political record, between 71 percent and 86 percent of respondents were either unaware or unsure of her positions.
“The issues surveyed include her support for the Green New Deal, abolishing ICE, and eliminating private health insurance. Additionally, the data reveals that many voters obtain their political news primarily from broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) and cable channels (CNN, MSNBC). The lack of voter knowledge of Harris‘s record suggests these outlets have not provided adequate coverage of the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.”
26. Kamala Harris is a communist and her word choices give it away. “Equitable distribution” “equity”
It’s a repackaged version of Karl Marx’ popularized slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” meaning a redistribution of wealth. pic.twitter.com/WlETamsJUy
We are entering a season of celebrating Good News – the birth of a good King, the King’s establishment of a good kingdom and the King’s means for new creation. But hold on. Have we been invaded by body snatchers?
They look like us. Exactly like your loved ones or even possibly yourself. Replacement people. Exact copies yet devoid of empathy and humanity.
The 1978 film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers takes place in San Francisco. The plot involves Matthew Bennel and Elizabeth Driscoll. Both work for the Health Department. Elizabeth is the first to suspect that something strange is going on. She awakes one morning to find her boyfriend Geoffrey being cold and distant and doing odd things. And it’s not just him. Everyone now seems strange to her.
Elizabeth Driscoll: I keep seeing these people, all recognizing each other. Something is passing between them all, some secret. It’s a conspiracy, I know it.
Matthew Bennel: There can’t be a conspiracy!
Elizabeth Driscoll: Matthew, I’m telling you something is going on here.
Matthew suggests they speak to his friend, pop-psychiatrist David Kibner. They drive over to the bookstore where Kibner is promoting his new book. On the way they encounter “They’re coming!”
Dr. David Kibner:
Elizabeth, could you please tell me, in your opinion, what is going on?
Elizabeth Driscoll:
People are being duplicated. And once it happens to you, you’re part of this… thing. It almost happened to me!”
Kibner confirms that several of his patients are claiming that their spouses are not who they seem to be. But he puts it down to mass hysteria until Jack and Nancy Bellicec, Matthew’s friends, discover a mysterious embryonic adult-body resembling Jack in the mud spa they run.
Elizabeth Driscoll:
I have seen these flowers all over. They are growing like parasites on other plants. All of a sudden. Where are they coming from?
Nancy Bellicec:
Outer space?
Jack Bellicec:
What are you talking about? A space flower?
Nancy Bellicec:
Well why not a space flower? Why do we always expect metal ships?
Jack Bellicec:
I’ve NEVER expected metal ships.
Together they figure out that humans are being replaced with flawless biological copies who are emotionless. The cold unthinking replicant has one quest – its survival. It must bring others into the fold . . . of the alien plant pods.
How does replacement happen? Organically over time. Strange spores drifted to earth from space. Mysterious pods began to grow. The pods begin replacing the dominant species by spawning emotionless replicas. The original bodies disintegrate into dust after the duplication process. The pod people outwardly resemble the people they have replaced, but are completely empty and soulless.
This happens to San Francisco’s residents one body at a time – when the citizen falls asleep near the pod. The ‘Podified’ then distribute the pods for more replication.
Spores en route to your home.
A ‘Podified’ Professor David Kibner explains the why of Pod Life:
“We came here from a dying world. We drift through the universe, from planet to planet, pushed on by the solar winds. We adapt and we survive. The function of life is survival.”
And so it is that when the credits roll, apparently there are no more humans left in San Francisco. Alien pods have consumed human’s emotional individuality for their survival. Only hollow replacement clones and a screech remain:
Pod people, alike as “two peas in a pod”, have a collective mindset and are extremely persistent. They want to replace humanity with a replicant humanity for their own survival. So America be warned. Pod people – They’re coming! Welcome to 2024 and communism.
Body Snatchers have invaded Progressive San Francisco. We see empty and soulless people acting in weird parasitic ways for the survival of the Left’s Pod People collective.
These had been lulled into replacing their humanity with an invitation for mindless wellbeing. We watch a ‘Podified” Elizabeth Driscoll try to pacify Matthew into acceptance:
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. They were right. It’s painless. It’s good. Come. Sleep. Matthew.”
People who fall asleep with media ‘pods’ wake up different people. These are the people Leftists want.
Leftist’s want Pod people who are devoid of individuality and filled with a collective consciousness. Free will and human agency are to be subsumed to create a monolithic culture. Take away one’s voice (except for the screech) and one’s power, and one’s free will and you have compliant Pod people.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers? There are several indicators:
Queer theory and critical race theory seek to Pod people with an alternate universe.
And there is Google which plants pod seeds. People who search with Google wake up as different people. For Google’s strange seeds drifted into cyberspace from the deep state. Mysterious pods begin to grow and take over minds. See The Big Brother of Silicon Valley video below.
(One disturbing aspect of the movie I noticed is that the men, including the male lead, disbelieve and gaslight the females. I don’t know if this was intentional or just indicative of society.)
Moderna ADMITS That DNA Contamination Can Lead to Cancer
• Moderna has a patent that acknowledges RNA is preferable to DNA in vaccines due to risks of insertional mutagenesis, which might activate oncogenes or inhibit tumor suppressor genes, Dr. @RWMaloneMD explained.
A whistleblower from New Zealand has gone public with vaccine data from the New Zealand Ministry of Health.
New Zealand: a COVID vaccine administrator has gone rogue and turned into a full-blown whistleblower, revealing, for the first time, the actual number of deaths related to a “bad batch” of the Pfizer vaccine.
Professor Dr. Didier Raoult and colleagues pioneered the use of hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin for treatment of COVID-19 disease.
Conclusion (Fauci lied people died)
Although this is a retrospective analysis, results suggest that early diagnosis, early isolation and early treatment of COVID-19 patients, with at least 3 days of HCQ-AZ lead to a significantly better clinical outcome and a faster viral load reduction than other treatments.
Not your usual Thanksgiving fare . . . If you live in Disneyworld, then don’t bother reading further.
May 19, 1925. Saloth Sar, as the eighth of nine children, is born into a well-off and well-connected farming family, landowners in Kompong Thong province in central Cambodia. He arrives in a time when the kingdom of Cambodia is a French protectorate within French Indochina.
Sar’s childhood is strict and sheltered in the capital city of Phnom Penh. He spends a year at a Buddhist monastery prep-school before attending a French Catholic primary school. He involves himself with the violin, drama, soccer and carpentry. His Cambodian education continues until 1949.
Having won a scholarship to study abroad with a group of some 200 students, Sar journeys to Paris to study radio technology. During the one-month boat trip in 1949, Sar meets Mey Mann. Mann would later describe Sar at that time as being a pleasant man who showed little interest in politics. But in Paris during the early 1950s, Sar becomes a different man. He turns his conscious into consciousness.
What Happened? Marx and Mao happened.
“Though a Roman Catholic and a devout Jeffersonian [preferring agrarian life over city life] coming out of high school, Sar attended university in Paris, 1949-1953, where he came under the influence of several Marxists, especially the radical former nazi-collaborator Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980).”
In Paris, Sar is in the company of fellow travelers – radicalized Cambodians. He joins their reading group and immerses himself in the writings of Marx, Lenin and Mao. Sar connects with the ruthless ways of Lenin and Mao. He joins France’s Stalinist Communist Party.
As a result of neglecting his studies, Sar loses his scholarship. He then returns to Cambodia in 1953 to bring revolution to Cambodia. Mey Mann, who also went off to Paris as a young college student, also came back a leftist revolutionary.
Back in Cambodia, Saloth Sar joins Vietnamese communists who were intent on ridding South East Asia of western influence. When he becomes the leader of the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) he takes on the nom de guerre Pol Pot, which means “the original Cambodian.” His family’s ancestry traced back to Cambodian royalty.
William Branigin, who spent 19 years overseas, reporting in Southeast Asia, Central America, the Middle East and Europe, provides background to Pol Pot’s growing revolutionary activism and his Maoist leanings in his article ARCHITECT OF GENOCIDE WAS UNREPENTANT TO THE END – The Washington Post:
After years of secret communist activity in Phnom Penh, Pol Pot rose to the leadership of the underground movement in 1962. The following year he fled to the countryside to escape a crackdown by the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who dubbed the revolutionaries “Khmers Rouges,” or Red Khmers. . ..
Ensconced in the Cambodian northeast in an isolated jungle base protected by Vietnamese communist guerrillas who were then his allies, Pol Pot and his followers concocted a strange ideological brew of Marxism and what one scholar described as “badly digested Maoism.” During this period Pol Pot was apparently influenced by a five-month trip he made to China at the beginning of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and his economic “Great Leap Forward.” It was marked by the partial evacuation of Chinese cities and purges of “class enemies.”
. . .
Pol Pot then launched his own version of the “Great Leap Forward,” but with an apparent determination to jump even farther. The Khmer Rouge promptly emptied the cities, viewed as breeding grounds of capitalism, and began slaughtering old-regime soldiers and officials. The aim was to establish an agrarian Utopia in a single giant bound over the various stages of Marxist development. It was “Year Zero,” and people were entirely expendable. . ..
Pol Pot combined Stalinist and Maoist models with a focus on an agrarian society. With support from rural Cambodians, North Vietnamese, and the Chinese, Pol Pot was able to take control of the country in 1975. The Khmer Rouge began inverting the entire structure of Cambodian society.
Children, indoctrinated into the new ideology, were given power. Taught to “harden their hearts” toward their countrymen and their own families, they decided who was ideologically pure and who must be purged. But that was not enough for Pol Pot. He remained obsessively paranoid, as Branigin writes:
But soon the revolution began devouring its own children, as Pol Pot launched repeated purges of those he believed were plotting against him or working for his Vietnamese or American enemies. Thousands were tortured into making “confessions” at Tuol Sleng, a Phnom Penh school-turned-jail whose director reported to Pol Pot.
In pursuit of their dreams of a communist Utopia, the Khmer Rouge abolished money, commerce, religion and traditional education. They suppressed family relationships, individualism, intellectuals and ethnic groups, slaughtered anyone who showed recalcitrance and enforced unquestioning obedience to “Angka,” the organization.
Thousands were beaten to death, then dumped in mass graves in the regime’s “killing fields.” Many more succumbed to starvation, disease and overwork. Out of a population of about 8 million, demographers and researchers estimate, at least 1 million, and possibly as many as 1.7 million, died.
But as the killing intensified, the revolution increasingly turned on itself, targeting “enemies” whom Pol Pot perceived to be multiplying like germs, creating what he called a “sickness in the party.”
There is much to the Pol Pot murderous legacy that is not written here. This brief intro describing Saloth Sar’s fundamental transformation into genocidal dictator Pol Pot is meant to open eyes to the fundamental transformation -subtle and not so subtle – that is taking place in our country right now.
I want my readers to recognize the signs of the coming onslaught on humanity. The Biden regime, the Merrick Garland DOJ, Leftist judges and the media, are showing signs of demanding ideological conformity to their form of totalitarian “Democracy!” The Left’s constant lawfare against Trump is just one indicator of this.
And though implemented in more efficient ways today, e.g., digital technology, the same Lennin Think and Maoism is being used by the intelligentsia to control every aspect of our lives – from thought to word to deed, from sunup to sundown and throughout the night.
To understand Pol Pot’s way of thinking and that of today’s intelligentsia, listen to the podcast below – Thinking Like Lenin with Gary Saul Morson.
The three videos below reveal the man Pol Pot and the political horrors of his regime. Learn about the brutalities of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and the genocide, one of the worst in recorded history, of about half the Cambodian nation. Learn from the firsthand accounts of Dith Pran and Haing S. Ngor.
Dith Pran, a Cambodia-born journalist, helped bring to light the brutalities of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. His three brothers were killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Haing S. Ngor, Cambodian physician and actor, is best known for his Dith Pran role in the movie The Killing Fields (1984), which depicted the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia that Ngor himself had also lived through.
Watch Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields to see what is coming our way under the growing despotism.
Also, you may want to watch the third in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Tribology, The Dark Knight Rises, to get a sense of the anarchy and destruction just beginning to be released upon the world to bring about change. Gotham’s (Western Civilization’s) infrastructure is set apart for destruction by Bane and his “social justice” henchmen.
And learn about dehumanizing Marxism:
“Marx’s mechanical theory of society reduces real individuals, with their hopes and fears, beliefs and desires, to mere abstract “classes”. He subordinates reality—messy, limited, and all too human—to a perfect model in which utopia is the only possible outcome. As [Theodore] Dalrymple puts it: “Marx’s eschatology, lacking all common sense, all knowledge of human nature, rested on abstractions that were to him more real than the actual people around him.””
You say you want a revolution . . . so, with bloodlust, you can rid the world of monarchy and colonialism, of Christians and Jews, of the West, and of “oppressors” and replace it with an oppressive murderous regime and a descent into hell; to create a colony of insect peasants, war slaves, and execution squads, of senseless brutality, mind-numbing torture and purges; to create a society where indoctrinated children decide ideological purity among its members and where families cease to exist . . . well, you can count me out.
Mey Mann on the origin of Pol Pot’s murderous ways:
“On many occasions, Mey Mann said he tried to understand why the Khmer Rouge had turned to the killing fields. He asked Ieng Sary and Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea many times when Pol Pot had changed, when Saloth Sar turned into the leader of a murderous regime, but he never got a clear answer.
““Nobody knows. I don’t know why it happened like that, why they tried the extreme way,” Mey Mann said. “When we were students, we thought in a good way and did everything step by step. I don’t know which year Pol Pot changed his attitude.
““Maybe Pol Pot wanted to follow China and be strict like that. He was too biased to China and needed support from them because he hated Vietnam,” he said. “But Pol Pot forgot that Cambodia has only 10 million people. If China goes the tough way and kills 100 people, they have many more people so it doesn’t have a big effect. But here, that’s a big killing.””
“What influenced me most was the actual situation in Cambodia,” Pol Pot told American journalist Nate Thayer. When he came home from Paris, he found that his family had fallen on hard times. A once prosperous uncle had become a rickshaw puller, and other relatives had lost their land and livestock.
”I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people,” the infirm, 72-year-old Pol Pot argued to Thayer. ”Even now, and you can look at me: Am I a savage person?” he asked, adding: “My conscience is clear.”
“In order to survive you have to pretend to be stupid.” -Dith Pran, about life in Cambodia under Khmer Rouge
“I see … a pile of skulls and bones. For the first time since my arrival, what I see before me is too painful, and I break down completely. These are my relatives, friends and neighbors, I keep thinking … It is a long time before I am calm again. And then I am able, with my bare hands, to rearrange the skulls and bones so that they are not scattered about.”
— Dith Pran, writing about his return to Cambodia for The New York Times in 1989.
“This is sad for the Cambodian people because he was never held accountable for the deaths of 2 million of his fellow countryman. The Jewish people’s search for justice did not end with the death of Hitler and the Cambodian people’s search for justice doesn’t end with Pol Pot.”
— Dith Pran, upon the death of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1998, quoted in The Times.
“Let us not be charlatans and let us state openly that you can’t figure out anything in this world. Only fools and charlatans know and understand everything.”
There’s an old curse that goes something like “May you live in interesting times.” Well, we certainly live in interesting times. High drama, not peace and tranquility, seems to be what is desired by many and readily offered by “fools and charlatans”. Our world is vexed with constant convulsive commotion.
Why would some seek the dramatic instead of peace and tranquility? I’ll answer with conjecture so as to not be considered a fool or charlatan: there seems to be, by the amount of anger and discontent portrayed in the media, to be many unhappy people in the world.
Could it be that unhappy people have a need to remain unhappy? Could it be that unhappy people thrive on passion-evoking conflict to give them something to rage against and to feed their emptiness? A melodramatic life has a history – a story of critical moments that can be exploited and readily referred back to. The unhappy never let a crisis go to waste. And misery loves fellow travelers.
A prosaic life, on the other hand, has no dramatic history. Someone I just came across on social media noted the difference:
“When I look at the world on social media, life has never been worse. When I look at my real life (family, career/finance, general enjoyment, etc), life has never been better.”
Is high drama readily offered by “fools and charlatans? Here’s Bill Nye: “It’s very difficult to tie any specific weather event to climate change, but if you like to worry about things, this is a great time.”
“After Tropical Storm Hilary hit California this week, MSNBC ran to TV children’s show host Bill Nye to hype climate change, a typical move by the far-left cable news outlet. . ..
BILL NYE ON CLIMATE CHANGE
"People like to throw around the expression 'new normal.' It's not going to be normal, it's going to get worse and worse, probably," @BillNye says of landmark tropical storm #Hilary.
Dog bites man. Not news. Man bites dog. Front page news.
Westerly winds dry out non-native grass on Maui. Not news. Downed power line sparks wildfire. Westerly winds cause rapid spread of wildfire. Climate Change!!!!
Below, some of the Lies for the Taking being served up for the frustrated unhappy people who desire to bring everyone down to their level of misery. (Conjecture?)
(See previous posts for links that debunk many of the lies coming out of the mouths of “fools and charlatans”.)
The Lies of the Climate Concerned:
We’re all gonna die unless . . .
King Charles III has launched a catastrophe countdown clock. It will tick until 2030, a year in which he predicts “serious consequences” if the world doesn’t effectively address “climate change.”
“As President Joe Biden prepares to visit Maui, the Hawaiian island devastated by the deadliest wildfire in U.S. modern history, lawmakers and climate groups are begging the White House to do more to prevent future climate-related disasters.
Their argument: If the latest environmental catastrophe won’t spur the president into action, what will?”
Here’s Tedros, Director-General of the World Health Organization, with more climate crisis fear porn to bring about centralized control.
The Lies of the Optics Concerned – Maui:
“While en route to Maui, three weeks after the wildfire that devastated the Hawaiian island began, White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton said President Joe Biden will “make sure that he communicates to that not only have we been there since day one, has he been there since day one.””
During his speech in Milwaukee, the president appeared to forget the name Maui, referring to the island as 'the one where you see on television all the time.' 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ pic.twitter.com/Ao5DWp8PJb
NEW: President Biden once again tries to make the Maui fire that killed ~500 people about himself by telling a story about how he almost lost his corvette in a house fire.
You can always count on Biden to tell a story that didn’t happened.
Judge Jeanine Pirro GOES OFF over Biden's visit to Maui:
"He has a lack of empathy, he is egocentric, he has got a condescending smirk whenever anybody asks him a question from the press, he is lying, and he's narcissistic." pic.twitter.com/wCbzLvDtpe
Dr. Gottlieb is connected to the FDA, to Pfizer, to the CIA, and more. See Dr. Malone’s article at link below for more on the “pretty concerned” Dr. Scott Gottlieb.
Dr. Malone writes . . .
“Propagation of Fear porn based on fake news and hype is now a validated method for Big Pharma to control governments and their populations. But are people buying it this time around?
“One of my primary care physician colleagues wrote this to me yesterday:
“Who would’ve thought that Covid would resurge as a concern for so many! I’m getting bombarded with calls and request for ivermectin, folks who are testing unnecessarily. Absolute panic out there once again.
“To further the suggestion that another lockdown scare is in the forecast, yesterday the US Department of Health and Human Services announced funding of $1.4 billion to “support the development of a new generation of tools and technologies to protect against COVID-19 for years to come” according to a press release” (Emphasis mine.)
How do we prepare for the typical fall flu season? With “a physician that will help you determine the correct dosing of Vitamin D3 and zinc, as well as be willing to prescribe multi-drug, early treatment protocols against COVID, and one that isn’t going to pressure you or your family into unnecessary shots.”
“We employ doctors who aren’t afraid to utilize effective, simple, and safe treatments for viral infection through the intelligent use of prescription medicines that have been around for years, and in some cases, decades. By focusing on the pathology of the toll that viral infections take on the human body, we’ve discovered that some off-label medicines can be more consistent, effective, and safe than new experimental treatments.”
“We’ve already been over everything you need to know about “Eris” here. Long story short, “Covid” is just another made up name for the flu, and the “variants” are coats of paint they slap on the narrative to try and keep it looking fresh.
“In that same article I theorised Eris’ existence was a need to keep Covid alive, and that is part of it…but I also missed something obvious: The next round of Covid “vaccines” hits the shelves next month.” (Emphasis mine.)
The Biden administration has announced a plan to encourage all Americans to receive a Coronavirus booster shot during the upcoming fall season to respond to an apparent wave of infections.
Despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noting a rise in virus-related infections and hospitalizations, the White House highlighted that the overall infection rates remain relatively low.
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the overall levels of COVID-19 in the country are very low. (Emphasis mine.)
Santa Monica, which is in Los Angeles County, has an extremely low rate of COVID-19 hospital admissions.”
“Positivity rates for the COVID-19 test are similarly low across the country, including in California.”
But that doesn’t stop fools and charlatans imposing mask mandates and people going along with the drama.
Do Not let them do this to your children. Say “NO!” to masks and mandates.
“College students and others across America should be preparing for mass protest against mask mandates citing a First Amendment right to engage in political speech, which refusing to wear a mask can be construed as in any environment attempting to mandate it. The second they mandate wearing a mask, it’s a political issue, so refusing to wear one in such a condition can be construed wholly as a political statement. The First Amendment provides strong protections for political speech.” – James Lindsey (Emphasis mine)
The new Covid regulations are a test. Are we unified in our distrust of them? Will we fight each other? Are we still controllable? Will we take it? Overreact? They will come in waves of escalating provocations that take more and more while making less and less sense.
“A brief list of some of the COVID lies we have heard over the last couple of years (with thanks and acknowledgment to Dr. Scott Atlas):
-SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than influenza virus by several orders of magnitude
-Everyone has a significant risk of death from COVID-19.
-No one has immunity, because this virus is new (“novel”) and so expedited vaccine development and deployment is essential.
-Everyone is dangerous and spreads the infection
-Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread of disease.
-Locking down- closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel will stop/eliminate the virus.
-Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread.
-Immune protection can only be obtained with a vaccine.
-Natural immunity conferred by infection and recovery is short lived and inferior to vaccine-induced immunity.”
“Who was responsible for these lies?
Deborah Birx (who was trained by Anthony Fauci).
She wrote virtually all official White House guidance to state Governors.
This usurped constitutional authority of states to set public health policies.
Not a lie: “The President took office determined to move beyond these failed trickle-down policies and fundamentally change the economic direction of our country.” (Emphasis mine.)
No conspiracy theory: Bidenomics is high inflation and high interest rates – for Democrats and Republicans; people going back to work after COVID is not creation of new jobs.
The U.S. dollar has been so mishandled and degraded under the Biden regime – by Janet Yellen, Jerome Powell and Congress – that countries are turning to other currency.
There’s a pervasive attitude held by many Washington insiders – respectability. Put in a turn of phrase from Princess Bride, they would say “We are men of respectability, MAGA doesn’t become us.”
The “respectable” hoity-toity see themselves as morally and intellectually superior over the rather distasteful hoi polloi. They are disconnected from the common folk. They relate to them with contempt, with sneering media comments, and through opinion pieces – prescriptions as to how the little people should think and act – like them.
The “respectable” see themselves as lofty and undeniably important – as ruling class. Washington and the media abide them because they are controlled opposition.
Who are these “respectable” people? They include National Review writers, Bill Kristol, David Harsanyi, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, David French, Mike Pence, Indiana Senator Todd Young, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Chris Wallace, and Bret Baier.
Three presidents – Nixon, Reagan, and Trump – were threats to the administrative state that had incubated during FDR’s three terms and has grown enormously since. The administrative state reacts aggressively when its tentacles, that reach into all sectors of society, come under attack.
And so it was that Nixon was assailed with Watergate and left office. Reagan’s focus on the Cold War may have been the reason why Washington didn’t mess with him.
Today, with unjustifiable impeachments and indictments, a hostile constantly sniping media, and a stolen election, Trump has been mercilessly attacked by the leviathan administrative state that wants not only to maintain its status quo but, even more so, wants to increase its scope of influence over every citizen.
The “respectable” people mentioned above are in on the attack. Justice for them is that which leaves them feeling smug.
‘You’re Wrong’ With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 59: ‘Rich Men North Of Richmond’
The Lies that Indict Saying Contesting Elections is a Crime:
Common knowledge. Hillary Clinton contested an election. Al Gore contested an election. Stacy Abram contested an election. Amy Klobuchar contested an election. And others. None of these were indicted.
“The victims this time are Trump and his friends. But it could be you next time, and it will be. “A boot stomping on a human face forever,” as Orwell said. Again, it’s happening now, and it can kill America as we know it.” (Emphasis mine.)
“The Democrats are so far out of line that I can barely comprehend it. They’ve created an incredibly tenuous racketeering charge and indicted lawyers who were legally representing their clients for practicing law. This is beyond the pale.
“The Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law.”
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.
— Exodus 23:1-3
If you have been on the receiving end of a lie, you know that lies are meant to manipulate. We’ve recently seen that lies pervert justice and indict. We’ve also seen that lies are involved in stealing elections, defrauding voters and dividing the public.
Lies used politically are meant to produce homogenized thought. Lies were used during COVID and now with the Climate Crisis narrative. And what better fear porn drama can be conjured up than a campaign to “combat online misinformation” (that works to keep truth from getting a foothold)?
Who better to deliver the fear porn drama of lies than know-it-all “fools and charlatans” or as they’re called today “the experts”? They were paraded out for the COVID “pandemic” and for the Climate “crisis”. And now for the COVID “variant crisis”.
If you accept and submit to the lie, you’re in the club. If you reject the lie, then the lie has set you up to fail and power sweeps in to “correct” you. If you don’t accept the lie, you’re considered to be an extremist, a cult member:
John Kerry now says you’re in a “cult” if you disagree with his views on climate change. pic.twitter.com/ymDh3bAK4c
Lies set you up to fail – being called names, being indicted, exclusion, etc. – if you do not accept them.
Lies blend contexts, as if they were the same thing, e.g., slavery at one time in the U.S. and all whites are racist.
Lies project onto others. (Watch CNN & MSNBC for examples.)
Lies create anxiety. (“Is he or she telling me the truth? What should I believe?)
Lies oppose human growth and well-being.
Lies destroy the spiritual growth of others and work to preserve and protect a sick world, the world of the unhappy.
When a lie is found out you may find yourself cursing the lie and the liar. Or you may vote for more lies and more drama, interesting times being desired.
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Mask mandates will not fly; tell your lawmakers we will not comply.
Mask mandates, and even Covid jab mandates to attend school seem to be returning in some states. And the rumor mill is churning that even more are coming down the pike from the Biden administration.
Regardless if these rumors are true or not, or if more colleges and more hospitals follow suit, one thing remains the same: We will not comply.
Mandatory medicine and mandated interventions such as social distancing and mask-wearing have no place in a free society. Citizens have the right to make responsible decisions about what is best for themselves and their children based on their own unique circumstances.
Email your lawmakers now to urge them to do their part to make sure that mask-wearing remains voluntary. Use link below.
I sent the following Word Doc, composed from the Stand For Health email to lawmakers, to the Governor of Indiana and Indiana’s Health commissioner. Use the document to send to anyone in your state that needs this message.
The German government has embarked on an advertising campaign to brand mothers as ‘climate killers’. You absolutely know that this is all part of the ‘depopulation agenda’.
The only solution to the alleged “Climate Crisis” the Left will accept is Communism. What a surprise.
Property tax means you never own your property. It means you rent it from government.
Truth, beauty and happy go together.
By the Riverside by Belgian artist Emile Claus 1920
Impending doom. It’s in the mouths of Climate Change activists and environmentalists. It’s in the mythos eschatology of those who want to return to primitive times – proponents of the axial age, the age of a dark green religion and Degrowth. It’s in the marketing of the WEF, WHO, and ESG. With a select focus on impending doom, the need for sweeping “solutions” follows. And with sweeping “solutions” follows chaos and destruction.
I have previously posted about the WEF, the WHO, and ESG. Let’s now take a brief look at the thinking behind Degrowth with its impetus of impending doom.
On economic anthropologist Jason Hickel’s web site we learn that “The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse” and “There is only one solution that will lead to meaningful and immediate change: degrowth.”
On the Degrowth website we find a definition (with sweeping conjecture):
“Degrowth is an idea that critiques the global capitalist system which pursues growth at all costs, causing human exploitation and environmental destruction. The degrowth movement of activists and researchers advocates for societies that prioritize social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. This requires radical redistribution, reduction in the material size of the global economy, and a shift in common values towards care, solidarity and autonomy. Degrowth means transforming societies to ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries.” (Emphasis mine.)
Elsewhere . . .
What is ‘degrowth’ and how can it fight climate change?
The cure for a changing climate could be a stagnant economy. (Emphasis mine.)
“Parrique says to picture economies like people with metabolisms—when you’re young, you need to eat lots of food, and as a result, produce lots of waste, to get big and strong. But if you keep eating like a rapidly-growing human well into adulthood, that’s probably not the healthiest way to be. As an adult, it makes more sense to balance out your diet for sustaining your body’s current needs.”
Economic growth is leading to overconsumption and climate change. Degrowth argues that shrinking our economies can have benefits.Degrowth – BBC Worklife
Degrowth Buzzwords: Beyond Growth, Net Zero, Absolute Zero, Emissions, Sustainability
In short, degrowth, “an alternative to capitalism”, is communism. Degrowth is Marxism with Malthusian planning. Its outworking is as a Communist death cult. Its premise: Too many people and too much consumption means the end of Mother Earth. So, you must stop living, i.e., become Net Zero, to produce a sustainable earth.
Is Degrowth something new or has its death-force always been around? Look around and see how human life has been handled and is now being handled.
Degrowth is Anthony Fauci prohibiting Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin – highly effective low-cost repurposed drugs -being used to treat COVID and save lives.
Degrowth is using Remdesivir to treat COVID patients in hospitals.
Degrowth is sending COVID-19-positive patients into nursing homes.
Degrowth is an mRNA vaccine that produces deadly adverse effects.
Degrowth is digital currency – the means to limit consumption.
Degrowth is ESG deciding who has access to capital.
Degrowth is forced social transformation.
Degrowth is employing a pandemic psyop. The creation of fear leads to submission to Degrowth “solutions”.
Degrowth is employing a climate crisis psyop. The creation of fear leads to submission to Degrowth “solutions”.
Degrowth is the WHO, the UN, and the WEF – globalists organizations that want complete control of life on earth.
Degrowth is inflation, Biden’s Green energy tax imposed upon Americans.
Degrowth is engineered scarcity. “You will own nothing and be happy.”
Degrowth is population control using abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, euthanasia, and bioweapon pandemics.
Degrowth is sending billions of tax-payer dollars over to one of the most corrupt nations on earth while Biden offers $700 to Maui residents.
Degrowth is wasting billions of tax-payer dollars for unreliable renewable gizmos and not using the money to build reliable nuclear reactors.
Degrowth is creating stifling economic conditions leading to exhaustion, despair and suicide. (Suicides reached an all-time high in 2022.)
Degrowth is incompetence, lack of foresight, neglect of infrastructure, not clearing brush and flammable grass, letting things go. (See Maui headlines below.)
Last century there were those who wanted to change the world to their vision of the world. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao used fear to generate “cooperation” towards those ends. In the process of social transformation to produce results, millions were killed. Little wonder that the entry on ‘mass killings’ under Communism may one day be deleted. The entry won’t help the “reduce inequality and share national and global income more fairly” Degrowth narrative.
The gospel of Degrowth has all of last century’s collectivist trappings and propensity to snuff out life for the sake of a “sustainability”. The reach of last century’s tyrants didn’t cover the earth. Today, digital technology covers the earth. So now a message of “impending doom” and Degrowth “salvation” will reach across the globe and bring death and destruction to more lives. And that’s because . . .
Degrowth, like Marxism, is a God-less perspective. There is no mention of God in its prospectuses. Degrowth takes no account of God or of God’s providential care of His creation or of humans as the collective image of God acting as agents to continue to bring order and function to creation as they work with God. Degrowthers want none of that. They are their own gods.
Degrowthers, as did Marx, picture human existence after everything has been “rectified” through long struggles, a series of historic processes, and transformation of circumstances and men, to be something like that of carefree Eloi sitting around with the lion and the lamb eating fruit and reading poetry.
If we “picture economies like people with metabolisms” then Degrowth is a deadly virus.
The sub-title of my blog: Walking around on Resurrection ground. These words are not some sappy sentiments. These words speak of an eye-witnessed historical reality – God, very God, is personally involved with His creation. Jesus, in going to the cross, gave us the example we are to follow – not employing an authoritarian program of Degrowth (the wisdom of this world) but choosing the paradoxical path of self-denial leading to true life.
We are to put off our old self, which belonged to our former manner of life that was corrupted through deceitful desires, to find true life. Doing away with lack of self-control, covetousness, greed, etc. has implications not just for the individual but for the world.
“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to come after me, they must give themselves up, and pick up their cross, and follow me. Yes: if someone wants to save their life, they must lose it; and if anyone loses their life for my sake they will find it. What use will it be, otherwise, if you win the world but forfeit your true life? What will you give to get your life back? -Jesus, the gospel of Matthew 16: 24-26
Degrowth takes its toll:
Degrowth is Communism:
Degrowth is growing:
Think about how Degrowth will be implemented when you read this.
“This is a catastrophe beyond imagination and the response of the State governments has been appalling. Surprisingly, local rescue workers have high praise for the FEMA response team. They are doing the work the State government refused to do. Instead of transparency it looks like the outside world is being fed disinformation by the local government in order to down play the scope and scale of the disaster.” (Emphasis mine.)
Trying to take land away from our people before we’ve had a chance to grieve and rebuilt is not pono, and we will not stand for it. pic.twitter.com/gZczd1oLTo
“As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, the devastating wildfires across Maui are a classic toxic combination of liberalism, corruption and inexperience all rolled into one.”
“Hawaii’s biggest crime scene is being white washed by politicians congratulating themselves on what a fine job they did maintaining control and civil order.”
“M. Kaleo Manuel, former deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, waited for more than five hours to release water during the wildfires that devastated Maui, according to reports…. A former Obama Foundation leader — part of a program by the former President’s non-profit to help participants with coaching and “practical skill building for social change” — Manuel said he considered water an important tool for social justice.” (Emphasis mine.)
(Over a loudspeaker) “Professor Smith, you’ve been brought to this college auditorium, not to deliver the lecture you’ve prepared, but to stand before the student body, your colleagues, alumni and the governing board to answer for your lack of unity with the people sitting in this room.
“Professor Smith, you would not be here if you were not guilty of something. We wouldn’t go after an innocent man. Face it. We know everything about you. But for every problem there is a solution, Professor Smith. I’m sure you can discover a solution!
“We are here to help you resolve the tension you now face. It’s up to you to explain yourself. If you confess you will be treated with respect.
“Professor Smith, we believe in the rule of many voices. One of your students, Mary, will read your crimes against the people in this auditorium. (Thunderous applause.)
(Mary, over the loudspeaker) “Professor Smith, you’ve liked tweets critical of coronavirus vaccines, gender-affirmation surgery and college diversity, equity and inclusion offices. (Loud Boos!)
“You’ve spoken in public forums against Critical Race Theory, diversity, equity and inclusion, environmental, social, and corporate governance, and LGBTQ+ books and drag shows in school libraries. (Loud Boos!)
“You’ve ridiculed the 1619 Project in opinion pieces. (Loud Boos!)
“On your Substack you have consistently denied that there is a climate change crisis. (Loud Boos!)
“You continue to question the validity of the 2020 election when speaking with your colleagues. (Loud Boos!)
“You are not one of us!” (The assembly, “NOT ONE OF US! NOT ONE OF US!”)
(Over the loudspeaker) “Thank you, student Mary. Now Smith, look at all those faces before you. Don’t you see that we are all in this together? Don’t you want unity?”
“I . . .I . . . I”
(Over the loudspeaker) “Every time you open your mouth, little man, nothing good comes out!”
(The assembly “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Over the loudspeaker) “We are respectable people Smith, but you . . . you are a reactionary, an extremist and deplorable.
“Understand this Smith. Your position and privileges will be taken away unless you renounce your wrong thoughts and come around to the correct way of thinking. Confess your thoughtcrimes and you will be respectable. You want to be respectable, don’t you Smith?”
“I . . .I . . . I”
(The assembly “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Over the loudspeaker) “Don’t you want to be respectable like doctors Collins and Fauci and like climate scientist Michael Mann?
“Don’t you want to be respectable like David French, Mike Pence, and Mitt Romney?
“Don’t you want to be respectable like everyone on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News? You could be respectable just like them. (Someone shouts “RESPECTABLE PEOPLE BUILD CONSESNSUS!)
“You hear that Smith? Why do you spread lies and toxic words that are contrary to what everyone here knows? (Loud Boos!) You want to fit in, don’t you Smith?”
“I’ve taught here over 40 years.”
(Over a loudspeaker) “Student Mary has told you that you do not fit in Smith. Let’s find out if you can.
“Do you accept that Joe Biden won the 2020 election?”
“There were irregularities.” (Loud Boos!)
(Over a loudspeaker) Do you still hold to the conspiracy theory that the election was stolen?
“Well . . . “
(The assembly “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Over a loudspeaker) Let Smith answer.
“Molly Ball said . . .”
“Words, Smith, just words. Don’t you care about our democracy!Your words don’t protect our democracy! (The assembly “PROTECT OUR DEMOCRACY! “PROTECT OUR DEMOCRACY!)
“We have a surprise for you little man. Bring out Lousie.” (Thunderous applause.)
“My neighbor?”
(The crowd shouts “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Over a loudspeaker) “Your neighbor Louise is respectable little man. She harbors no thoughtcrimes. Even better. She told us about conversations she had with your son.”
“My son? Louise? Why?”
(The assembly “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Louise, from a dark corner of the platform) “Professor your heart is not in the right place. We want to save you from yourself. This is as much for your family’s sake as anyone else’s. (Thunderous applause.) You don’t want to lose everything for the sake of some odd reactionary ideas, do you?”
(Over a loudspeaker) “We have another surprise for you Smith. Sitting in the audience is your banker Mr. Barrows. He’s a respectable man. He wants to do business only with respectable people. Will you join us in being respectable Smith?
(How did it come to this? If I resist, I will lose my position and even my bank accounts. I will lose everything I’ve built up over the years. My reputation! –what will happen if I resist? But if I confess and renounce everything I believe to be true then I can live to fight another day. Just not today. But if I do that, I put my life into their hands. Do I give them power and authority over my life for me to be called “respectable”? What would I become? Are my words just words? Oh God, what should I do?)
The 70-year-old university president, a molecular immunologist, made the mistake of liking tweets critical of coronavirus vaccines, gender-affirmation surgery and college diversity, equity and inclusion offices.
Critics told the newspaper that the president’s likes sent “an anti–public health message.” [President] Tykocinski, a molecular immunologist, also serves as dean of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College. (Emphasis mine.)
Thomas Jefferson University president Mark Tykocinski has apologized after coming under fire for liking tweets critical of coronavirus vaccines, gender-confirmation surgery and college diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week.
Struggle session example #2 – lacking awareness of wrongthink:
Thoughtcrime per Thought Police:
“New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees said Wednesday during an interview with Yahoo Finance that he “will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country”
“In an attempt to talk about respect, unity, and solidarity centered around the American flag and the national anthem, I made comments that were insensitive and completely missed the mark on the issues we are facing right now as a country,” he said. “They lacked awareness and any type of compassion or empathy. Instead, those words have become divisive and hurtful and have misled people into believing that somehow I am an enemy. This could not be further from the truth, and is not an accurate reflection of my heart or my character.”
“Special counsel Jack Smith revealed four felony charges against Trump on Tuesday, including three conspiracies and one count of obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. Prosecutors allege Trump continued to peddle lies about the outcome of the 2020 election despite knowing that he lost.
“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false,” the 45-page indictment read. “But the defendant repeatedly and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”
Not going to happen. And, per Constitution legal scholar Jonathon Turley:
“Trump followed the advice of a second, albeit smaller, set of lawyers who told him there was a basis for challenging the election.
“That is not a crime. It is, in my view, protected political speech. Presidents routinely lie on matters great and small. Many of those lies cost citizens dearly, from “keeping your doctor” under ObamaCare to losing your life in Vietnam. Criminalizing lies in campaigns because of the spread of disinformation or disorder is a slippery slope that vests unprecedented power in the Justice Department.”
Struggle session example #4 – disseminating wrongthink:
Thoughtcrime per Thought Police:
“During a Sunday prayer, the priest asked God to “work a miracle and bring these great peoples together: Ukraine and Russia.” He also beseeched the Lord to make Russians and Ukrainians “stop exterminating and killing each other” and help them “build the kingdom of heaven here, on Earth” to eventually “ascend to the skies together.”
“These words did not sit well with local journalist Darya Sipigina, who was the first to publish videos from the sermon, along with a Facebook post in which she blasted Kurach’s words as “shocking.” “How is this even possible a year and a half [into the conflict]?” she asked in her post, while accusing the Uzhhorod Greek-Catholic Church of a lack of “respect for those who defend the Ukrainian land and die for it.”
“A call for peace between Russians and Ukrainians has landed a Ukrainian priest in hot water. Roman Kurach, who serves with the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, has had to apologize publicly after his words prompted an intervention by some Ukrainian journalists and sparked what the local media called a “massive scandal.””
~~~~~
Struggle sessions and re-education camps.
Is the following happening where you work? Are you told, under threat of dismissal, to believe lies? Are you forced to do DEI and CRT Training – told to believe harmful nonsense under threat of dismissal?
“These workers were subjected to a struggle session in the guise of diversity training, during which the white males on the staff were made to apologise for their white privilege. They were also made to acknowledge a connection between white male culture and mass killings. This closely mirrors how educated people were made to apologize for all the ills of the world during the Maoist struggle sessions.”
“One specific kind of public humiliation is what’s called “The Struggle Session.” It was a punishment reserved for people who committed wrong-think. The point was to publicly degrade the person until they swore allegiance to the Communist Party. Their focus is on the elimination of the power base and/or class position of enemy classes or groups. It was also a warning to everyone watching: If you don’t bend your knee to communism, you will be destroyed.”
Mao’s formula for transforming society- unity, criticism, unity- underlies DEI, social emotional learning and more.
“They start from a desire for unity, and they are taught a contrived notion of right and wrong through criticism and struggle so that we can arrive at a new, contrived unity on a new, contrived basis. Everyone outside of the desire for unity is an enemy of the people.” ~Mao.
“Richard Wurmbrand was imprisoned and tortured for 14 long years in a Communist Romanian prison. . .
“Not only did Richard undergo physical torture, but also brainwashing. According to Richard the brainwashing went like this, “Communism is good! Communism is good! Communism is good! Christianity is stupid! Christianity is stupid! Christianity is stupid! Give up! Give up! Give up!” For 17 hours a day, Rev. Richard went through this brainwashing with his faith intact.”
Struggle sessions or denunciation rallies were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where people accused of being “class enemies” were publicly humiliated, accused, beaten and tortured by people with whom they were close. Usually conducted at the workplace, classrooms and auditoriums, “students were pitted against their teachers, friends and spouses were pressured to betray one another, [and] children were manipulated into exposing their parents”.
At what point, exactly, does one risk one’s comfort, one’s career, one’s safety, and even one’s soul, for a matter of principle?
~~~~~
Remember the two years of the COVID struggle session? The globalist overlords and are planning another pandemic/struggle session. And the Biden regime is going to soon announce a climate emergency – another struggle session.
A struggle session uses fear (fear of isolation is used among other tactics) to tear down perceived systems of power, e.g., whiteness, maleness, Christianity, tradition, science, so that only ideology and those in power remain. Power, not truth, is sought after these days. For, it is believed that power can decide what is true.
Acton Institute: Bishop Robert Barron speaking on “The Philosophical Roots of Wokeism.”
“I will argue in my presentation that “wokeism” is a popularization of critical theory, a farrago of ideas coming out of the French and German academies in the mid-twentieth century. Until we understand its origins in the thinking of Adorno, Horkheimer, Derrida, Marcuse, and Foucault, we will not know how critically to engage this dangerous philosophy.”
A review of White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo & How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.
“DiAngelo has apparently made a career of anti-racist struggle sessions in which ordinary employees of various organizations must confess publicly to their racism however hidden it might be, as university professors, primary school teachers, doctors working in slums, etc., had once in China to confess to bourgeois propensities and counter-revolutionary ideas. They may never have uttered a racist sentiment, they may never have been rude to a person of another race, let alone violent towards one, they may have friends of other races or even be married to a person of another race, but they carry racism deep within them like Original Sin, with this difference: there can be no redemption from it even after having read DiAngelo’s book and attended her struggle sessions.”
“One is reminded of the type of psychoanalysis which after thirty years of hourly sessions four times a week fails to get to the root of the analysand’s problem, let alone solve it, because it doesn’t even know what the problem is. But failure is also an opportunity, because, like psychoanalysis, the more anti-racist training fails, the more it is needed.”
“By demonstrating how bad a person she is, DiAngelo demonstrates how good a person she is. A story that she relates towards the end of her book illustrates to perfection her self-satisfaction and moral grandiosity that masquerade as confession of sin.”
“Apart from the massacres, deaths and famines for which communism was responsible, the worst thing about the system was the official lying: that is to say the lying in which everyone was forced to take part, by repetition, assent or failure to contradict. I came to the conclusion that the purpose of propaganda in communist countries was not to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate and emasculate.”
No struggle session here. They’ve gone straight to the slaughter. Coming to a neighborhood near you?
South African EFF leader Julius Malema calls for his supporters to go out and kill white farmers.
“You must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing because the killing is part of a revolutionary act.” pic.twitter.com/Lc7rJOZGIN
“In almost every death certificate that identifies a covid vaccine as a cause of death, the CDC committed data fraud by not assigning the ICD 10 code for vaccine side effects to the causes of death listed on the death certificate.”
“The TIME article’s writer, Molly Ball, gleefully makes claims that a secret cabal joined forces across the country to stop Donald Trump from winning re-election, using methods such as manipulating legacy and social media coverage, getting elected officials to change election laws, and using a network of big business and union workers to manipulate voting machines, vote counts, and to push back against anyone questioning the integrity of the vote. (Emphasis mine.)
“For peaceably assembling to petition his government for one day last year, Ristau says, he was threatened with the removal of his security clearance and government confiscation of his retirement nest egg, kids’ college funds, and other life savings. Ristau says he’s also experienced serious damage to his reputation, career, and friendships after the government used anti-terrorism measures against peaceful protesters.”
You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He’s a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he’s built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in The Twilight Zone.
Why were you and I born in these times? Was it so we could surrender our wills, our human agency, our property and our lives to the lies of the totalitarian state? To the lie of a “Climate crisis” sequel to “climate change” sequel to Henny Penny? To the lie of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” sequel to racist Affirmative Action? To the lie of “Stakeholder Capitalism” and “ESG” sequels to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its endless mistrust of capitalism in the hands of simple (non-elite) humans? To the lie of the Davos vision of “The Great Narrative” sequel to “The Great Reset” sequel to atheistic and murderous regimes such as the world’s first Marxist state the U.S.S. R., Marxist–Leninist and Khmer ethnonationalist Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and the Cultural Revolution of Mao’s China?
Were you and I born in these times to subject ourselves to constant revolution, upheaval, paranoia, mass hysteria, chaos, show trials, and purges – to allow the State to have its way with us with its lies?
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Lies have become the pillars of our current State. The State’s lies require corrupt power structures to keep them in place. The State’s lies require double standards of justice. The State’s lies require manipulation of data. The State’s lies require violence. The State’s lies require more and more sleight of hand. The State’s lies require daily self-deception.
We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Truth requires nothing of this world to support it. Truth stands alone. Truth is not a thing of this world. Truth is power from a different world. Jesus made this clear to Pontious Pilate, the power of this world, before being sentenced to crucifixion, the State’s method to keep lies and systems of power alive.
Romney Wordsworth did the same. He spoke truth to power in The Obsolete Man. He was content to die holding on to the truth he gave witness to during his life.
I will do the same as a follower of the Way, the Truth and the Life.
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
~~~~~
2+2=5 Radiohead
Are you such a dreamer To put the world to rights? I’ll stay home forever Where two and two always makes a five
I’ll lay down the tracks Sandbag and hide January has April showers And two and two always makes a five
It’s the devil’s way now There is no way out You can scream and you can shout It is too late now Because
[Chorus] You have not been Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention You have not been Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention You have not been Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention You have not been Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention
Blackrock – a totalitarian assetDr. Francis Boyle talks about bioweapons, population control.
Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, talks about bioweapons, population reduction of “useless eaters”, the racist use of bioweapons, transhumanism.
“Information warfare conducted by the US government includes covert propaganda, controlled opposition, chaos agents, divide & conquer operations, false flags, disinformation campaigns, bad jacketing, advertising and more. These are being combined with neural-linguistic programming, subliminal messaging, nudge technology, hypnosis and propaganda.”
“Commenting on climate alarmism, [Nobel Prize laureate Dr. John] Clauser has said that “The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.””
“Yuval Harari, Klaus Schwab’s right-hand man has called for so-called “conspiracy theorists” to be banned from the Internet because of their “dangerous” belief that a global clique of elites controls the world . . .”
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
*****
“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
*****
“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
*****
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
*****
Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
*****
If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
*****
“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
*****
Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
*****
“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
*****
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
*****
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
*****
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
*****
God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
*****
From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
*****
“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
*****
One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
*****
“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
*****
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
**
“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
*****
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
*****
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
*****
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*****
This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
*****
“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
*****
Cindy Wity 
A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Hand Over
December 8, 2025 Leave a comment
When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things and a group of people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?”
Objective reality – the existence of things as they are – is obvious to everyone. And so are the values, accumulated over several millennia, of what is true and of what works and what hasn’t. But not everyone accepts the obvious and the values based on time proven objective reality. Some see themselves as Progressive in rejecting both.
Today’s academic, artistic, media, and political elites, a vanguard of Progressive Groupthink, reject the existence of things as they are and do so within the safe space of their ranks thereby creating an illusion of invulnerability and inherent morality. Members of this vanguard suppress dissenting opinions and avoid critically evaluated alternatives so as to maintain the group’s shared illusion of unanimity.
The vanguard’s conformity is maintained with mind guards – the media reports “right thinking” about a matter – and with self-censorship of deviations from shared beliefs and with shared views of the enemy – those who present a reality contrary to the groups’ notion of reality.
When we hear the vanguard’s irrational take on what is going on in the world, its roiling Doublethink, its name calling and shunning of voices outside its collective choir, and its dysfunctional decision-making which objective reality tells us will result in disastrous, dehumanizing, and even deadly outcomes, we ask “Where is this coming from and where is this going?
Those of us who keep an ear to the ground in order to hear what is approaching will answer “History is repeating itself.”
The objective reality of the murderous totalitarian regimes of the last century, which Progressives willfully ignore to promote their glorious future of equality via the same means, will help us understand the denial-of-reality collaboration of today’s intelligentsia – those who hold to one way of thinking – and their quest for total domination of the body, mind, and soul with Progressive Groupthink.
Specifically, Russian Soviet history will help us understand the conformity dynamic behind today’s intelligentsia. For this understanding I turn to one of the most informed scholars of the Russian history of ideas as communicated in its literature: Northwestern Professor Gary Saul Morson.
***
In Morson’s magnum opus Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter Morson details how politics and literature, in the writings of realists, idealists, and revolutionaries, played against each other during the Soviet period.
He describes Soviet thinking that rejected the realism and the real people depicted in nineteenth-century Russian fiction and required that reality be written to include “not only of the observable present but also the inevitable future in the making” and with Socialist Realist heroes – utopianism made flesh.
Writers of Russian realism – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, and others – wrote about what they saw and experienced. They are the “wonder” in the title. They represented the world as it was in their writings about the Gulag, mass starvation, torture, unspeakable violence, about how people thought about and dealt with what was going on, and about how many succumbed to the imposed Soviet mindset.
Russian realist authors confronted those of the “certainty,” those who wrote redefined reality in terms of the “observable present and the inevitable future in the making” and in terms of “positive heroes.”
The “positive hero” was to set an example for the reader’s behavior. A Soviet cosmonaut, for one example, became a “positive hero.” A cosmonaut’s space trip was seen as science, materialism, and atheism triumphing over the transcendent values held in the U.S., the enemy of the Soviet Union.
The “certainty” writers followed the lead of the embodiment of “certainty” – Vladimir Lenin. Lenin mocked his opponents’ self-characterization as ‘seekers’ of truth. He held that dialectical materialists do not seek truth; they already possess it. And so, the party-minded “positive hero” refused dialogue, refused to see any alternatives to the Marxist-Leninist-materialist-atheistic “truth” espoused by the party, the representatives of Karl Marx’s class-struggling proletariat.
From Wonder Confronts Certainty:
“The Soviets would label fidelity to present facts “bourgeois objectivism.” It was the best that could be expected from the age of realism, but must give way to socialist realism, which shows the ideal world inevitably coming. The socialist realist author was expected to focus on the people of the future, “positive heroes” exhibiting complete “Party-mindedness.” True positive heroes do not have bring their thinking into accord with the party, a process requiring effort; they exhibit Party-mindedness so thorough that no effort is required”
“Party-mindedness”, we learn from the writings of Russian realist authors, was propagated through the means of propaganda, show trials, random arrests, and the constant terror that there might be any hint, any innuendo, any false statement that would convict one of not being party-minded.
The “party-mindedness” of the 20th century Russian intelligentsia, its conformity to only one way of thinking, is replicated today.
***
Here’s Morson in his Touchtone article Beyond Belief: Literary Reflections on Thoughtless Conformity:
“I happened to witness two professors waiting for an elevator. To make conversation, one voiced an opinion on some political question to see if the other agreed. When she did, they chattered away on a dozen other topics with perfect assurance that they agreed on those, too. Evidently, their beliefs came as a package. Subsequently I noticed this way of thinking many times, as I imagine many of my readers have.
The process works something like this: a person first chooses the group with whom he wishes to identify and then adopts its opinions. He believes as strongly in gun control, let us say, as he does in supporting Planned Parenthood, defunding the police, and banning fossil fuels. It is evident that no arguments or evidence can shake his opinions on any of these topics because arguments or evidence had nothing to do with why they were adopted.
To be sure, a person who thinks this way can cite facts and reasons to justify his opinion, but they have been acquired in the same way as the opinion itself. They are the same reasons others in the group have learned to give. I used to find it eerie to hear repeatedly the same arguments expressed in the same phrases, as if I were listening to a recording rather than to highly educated people who imagined that, unlike their intellectual inferiors, they had arrived at opinions rationally and would change them as evidence warranted. I thought of Jonathan Swift’s observation that no one was ever talked out of an opinion he was not first talked into.”
***
Reading Morson’s article, I was reminded of the easy-going liberal mindset of the Stiva Oblonsky character in Tolstoy’s Russian realism novel Anna Karenina.
Behind Stiva’s smile, his self-possessed mannerisms and hedonism is what Tolstoy described as “the liberalism of the blood.”
From the novel:
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science, nor art or politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him . . .
“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”
Stiva, we learn in in the novel, does not recognize his conscious when it speaks to him. And that is aided by his living-in-the-moment forgetting. He did not want to remember any unpleasant thing.
Self-deception and romantic ideology play key roles in Anna’s life.
***
Czeslaw Milosz, Polish American poet, novelist, translator, critic, and diplomat, is best known for The Captive Mind (1953). His essay collection focuses on intellectuals, specifically poets and other writers.
As Charles Haywood writes in his 2019 article The Captive Mind (Czeslaw Milosz), [Milosz’s] “book shows how mental gymnastics, rather than coercion, caused writers under Communism to adhere to Communism. Thereby, indirectly, it congratulates writers who believe their minds free from such, or other, contortions.
“The West incorrectly sees “might and coercion” as the reasons those in Eastern Europe submit to Communism. But, rather, unwilling to face either physical or spiritual death, many choose instead to be “reborn” through taking these metaphorical pills, because “[t]here is an internal longing for harmony and happiness that lies deeper than ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.” Intellectuals, and artists especially, do not want to be “internal exiles, irreconcilable, non-participating, eroded by hatred.” So they swallow the pills and adopt the “New Faith” (a term Milosz uses throughout the book) which offers the intellectual the certainty he is both correct and virtuous, and therefore gives him a sense of belonging, gives him a feeling of being “warm-hearted and good . . . a friend of mankind—not mankind as it is, but as it should be.”” (Emphasis mine.)
Returning to Morson’s article about package thinking, Morson relates
“What really matters, [Czeslaw} Milosz explains, is “the intellectual’s feeling of belonging.” His defining “characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.” For this reason, as well as to prosper, he must root out all the old ways of thinking. Milosz describes a phenomenon with which university people are all too familiar, the always incomplete process of teaching oneself to say the right things (in the right words), and avoid saying the wrong ones, so that one never makes a slip entailing ostracism or worse. Of course, the best way to do this is to get oneself actually to share the prescribed views. Milosz describes how
after long acquaintance with his role, a man grows into it so closely that he can no longer differentiate his true self from the self he simulates, so that even the most intimate of individuals speak to each other in Party slogans. To identify self with the role one is obliged to play . . . permits a relaxation of one’s vigilance. Proper reflexes at the proper time become truly automatic.”
***
One obvious feature of our culture’s downward trend toward mindless conformity is critical thinking’s easy alternative: clicking on a machine to receive packaged thoughts.
Why think when packaged thoughts are there for the clicking? And why expand one’s personal bandwidth when you can reaffirm your tribal identity with a click?
Why research and consider a range of ideas and thoughts when clicking on machine AI is ready to do away with mystery and your curiosity, wonder, and impatience? And why think outside package thinking when life is short – shortened by every minute clicking on a machine.
Why read classic literature to gain wisdom, insight, and understanding from other people in other places and in other times, when you can click on a remote for package thinking entertainment.
Have you bought into the globalist, academic, secular and progressive (GASP) package (a feature of Wikipedia) that censors alternative views as “extremist” or “fringe theories” or “conspiracy theories” or “racist?”
Did you buy into the globalist open borders “welcoming the stranger” package where millions of unvetted illegal invaders entered the country as simple or criminal or terrorism opportunists? Did you accept the package thinking that allows third world invaders into our country to replace American workers and American values and do all manner of harm to its citizens as empathy, as what Jesus would do? Take a look at the strangers welcomed: Arrested: Worst of the Worst | Homeland Security And, there’s this: They Called It ‘Compassion’ — But it was Child Trafficking – American Thinker
Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package where everyone, except certain individuals who hold more power and privilege, must be made equal no matter the human cost? Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package and willfully forgetting the objective reality of the horrors of socialism/communism? Are you willfully handing over your life, your thoughts, to “Party-mindedness”?
Did you accept the “don’t question the science” COVID package thinking of mandates, masking, social distancing, vaccine passports, isolation camps, vaccine efficacy, and of COVID’s origin lies? America’s COVID Response Was Based on Lies
Likewise, did you not question the package thinking of “climate experts” who announced their verdict that the world would end if we didn’t act now. Not long ago, woven into almost every weather report on local and mainstream media when major weather events (floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires) occurred was the narrative that climate change was behind them – without ever mentioning large-scale natural phenomena such as solar cycles, ocean currents and volcanoes that have been affecting weather for many millennia.
The Green New scam was behind Biden’s $93 Billion Crony Climate Heist. Will declassifying carbon dioxide (necessary for all of life) as a pollutant and the end of carbon dioxide regulation mean the end of the Green New scam? Are we now seeing The End of the Green New Scam? | The Rude Awakening? Matt Ridely thinks so: The end of the climate cult – The Spectator World
(A climate expert I trust: https://judithcurry.com/about/)
Do you go along with the package thinking of the [John] Rawlsian theory of ad hoc justice that, for example, releases someone arrested 40 times, is not considered a “criminal” because of their minority status, and is released by a judge back onto the street where he sets a woman on fire?
Do you buy philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” – the package thinking that says that people are entirely products of their environment, of their society, of their age, and that’s why they do what they do. Therefore, they are not responsible for what they do because of external influence. That’s the package thinking behind the Rawlsian theory of justice and behind the executions and horrors of the French revolution working to change social environment.
Have you agreed with the insurrection thought package being espoused by The Seditious Six imploring military service members to “refuse illegal orders” thereby implying that orders coming out of the Trump administration are considered illegal by them and therefore military service members should disobey their commanding officer and join the club of the “Party-minded.” Remember, package thinking has only one train of thought – gaining and maintaining power over reality.
Have you agreed with the insurrection package thinking espoused previously by NYT’s op-ed columnist David Brooks? Do the values of your party-minded package thinking allow you to hamstring a DEMOCRACY! elected president with the rulings of party-minded federal court judges that will be overturned. Do the values of your party-minded package thinking justify the deep state, in the labyrinth of government, to sabotage the efforts of a Democratically elected President?
Do the values of your package thinking allow you to call for uprisings by any means necessary, to burn down buildings, to destroy property, to destroy businesses, to steal, do violence on others, to defund the police, to create pipe bombs, to assassinate? To ignore your conscience?
Did you accept the “Danger to our Democracy” thought package the media delivered during the last presidential election cycle? It should be obvious from the likes of David Brooks, that the “guardians of democracy” are the ones who want to tear it down.
Have bought into the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) playbook that conforms and coerces everyone to identify with Soviet style party-mindedness package thinking?
Have bought into viewing everything including humans through the lens of materialism?
Have you bought into package thinking so as to not be considered an outsider? Have you bought into conformity for conformity’s sake?
Is censorship the worst thing that can happen to a people? Or, is it “Party-mindedness?”
When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things with the smug air of certainty and people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?” and “Where is this coming from and where is it going?”
What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia. And a mind is still a terrible thing to hand over.
What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia . . . Britain Is Lost | ZeroHedge
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You can put your ear to the road and hear what is quickly approaching. Download and listen to the following podcasts:
London is falling – or has it fallen already?
Liz Truss, the 56th prime minister of the United Kingdom, in her very first episode of The Liz Truss Show discusses how bad things are in Britain with a mass migration and economic doom loop – and how to defeat the deep state who have let this happen
https://justthenews.com/podcasts/liz-truss-show/london-falling-or-has-it-fallen-already
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Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, Package Thinking, and The Importance of Critical Thinking
Professor Gary Saul Morson shares his thought-provoking definition of an intellectual—someone who seeks truth independently, values ideas for their own sake, and stands apart from identity-driven thinking. Whether discussing classic Russian Literature or analyzing modern society, Professor Morson is one of the most insightful and consequential scholars of our time. Discover how this interview, and its exploration of timeless topics, can inspire bold, principled leadership and innovation within today’s business environment.
Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, and The Importance of Critical Thinking – The Profitable Table Fed by Woolco Foods | Acast
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The Moral Imagination – Michael Matheson Miller
Gary Saul Morson Ph.D.: Thinking Like Lenin
Vladimir Lenin’s ideas are alive and well today: Party-ness, politics as win-lose, zero-sum game, Who-Whom, rejection of truth, ideology, violence, philosophical materialism, adherence to lying.
Ep. 15: Thinking Like Lenin, with Gary Saul Morson
Is Hope Naïve in a World Like Ours? | Esau McCaulley & Gary Saul Morson at Northwestern
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Quotes:
In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea … gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage – if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries. I have had some experience of this myself. … No good can come of dealing with such people, especially to the extent that their company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous. Galileo Galilei
If the Brave New World cannot insert a square peg into a round hole, it will redefine “roundness” until a perfect fit results.
-Jerome Meckier, from Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure
…a sense of unity is opposite of a sense of uniformity. Uniformity, where everyone “belongs”, uses the same cliches, thinks alike and behaves alike, produces a society which seems comfortable at first but is totally lacking in human dignity. Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, realizes that it is man’s destiny to unite and not divide… Unity, so understood, is the extra dimension that raises the sense of belonging into genuine human life.
-Northrop Frye, from The Bush Garden
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. -Plato
“The past is our always-available counterculture, and it’s a rich one. Every minute you spend attending to something not-immediately-present, you are helping to build a counterculture.” ― Alan Jacobs
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Links:
Why are intellectuals — those whose thinking is supposed to be most refined — so susceptible to totalitarianism? Gary Saul Morson offers three explanations from the treasury of Russian literature.
https://tomklingenstein.com/mind-forgd-manacles-why-intellectuals-conform/
The greatest depiction of woke totalitarianism was written 150 years ago in Russia
Anti-Communism Week has been marked for November 2025. Writer-producer Julie Behling’s documentary “Beneath Sheep’s Clothing” warns of communism’s devastation: “Globally, communism claimed the lives of approximately 150 million people in the 20th century.”
‘Beneath Sheep’s Clothing’: Communism’s Capture Of America | ZeroHedge
Totalitarian governments cannot afford that its citizens remain autonomous persons. This poses a threat to their quest to consolidate power. Individual liberty threatens the theoretical, utopian foundations of promising the re-distribution of goods, and equality; communism ultimately fails to re-distribute the essence of human nature.
10 Habits of Mind to Avoid Ideological Thinking
Everyday Habits That Reveal a Low IQ (Backed by Psychology)
Everyday Habits That Reveal a Low IQ (Backed by Psychology) – YouTube
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Added 12-15-2025:
Sam Faddis (formerly with the CIA) sits down to talk about the reality of the ongoing Marxist revolution in America.
The Revolution Right Here At Home – by Sam Faddis
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Filed under 2025 Current Events, Communism, cultural Marxism, Culture, Democracy, History, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, totalitarianism Tagged with Communism, Democracy, groupthink, history, Marxism, mind control, package thinking, party-mindedness, politics, progressivism, russia, Soviet Union, totalitarianism, Valdimir Lenin