You and I being are being directed to change our behaviors.
Felt a Nudge lately? A reminder to do something to better your health, your finances, the environment? Felt a Nudge during COVID to mask and social distance and sanitize and to be vaccinated?
Felt a Nudge Down With RYBELSUS? A Nanny State Nudge to buy into a government service? A pop-up nudge? A click-bait nudge? A text nudge? A nudge to buy something before its gone? A nudge to pay for something using only digital payment and not cash? A Nurge (Urgent Nudge) to decarbonize to prevent “climate catastrophe”?
Behavioral science is being used to direct our decisions.
Influencing behavior in a libertarian paternalistic way with active engineering of choice architecture is behind the concept of nudge theory developed by Richard Thaler, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Chicago.
Why influence behavior in a libertarian paternalistic way? It has been said that . . .
The “nudge”, a gentle prompt that influences people’s behavior in a predictable way, was popularized in the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by behavioral economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. The book discusses how it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behavior, while maintaining freedom of choice, to help steer people to people make better choices in their daily lives, because in Thaler’s and Sunstein’s assessment . . .
“People often make poor choices—and look back at them with bafflement!” And . . .
“We do this because, as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself.”
Nudge theory is based upon the idea that by shaping the environment, also known as the “choice architecture” – a term coined by Thaler and Sunstein in their Nudge book – one can influence the likelihood that one option is chosen over another by individuals who feel in control of the decisions they make.
Terms
Choice architecture is the framing of different ways choices are presented. These would include the number of choices presented, the manner in which attributes are described, and the presence of a “default.” One example: how food is displayed in cafeterias. Offering healthy food at the beginning of the line or at eye level can contribute to healthier choices.
Libertarian paternalism is an oxymoronic term coined by Richard Thaler. Being “Libertarian” “means being free to make your own choices about your own life, that what you do with your body and your property ought to be up to you. Other people must not forcibly interfere with your liberty, and you must not forcibly interfere with theirs.”
Paternalism is “A policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities. Paternalism can be “excessive governmental regulation of the private affairs and business methods and interests of the people; undue solicitude on the part of the central government for the protection of the people and their interests, and interference therewith.”
A Libertarian approach preserves freedom of choice and being able to opt out. A paternalistic approach assumes a restriction of choice. Libertarian paternalism is “an approach that preserves freedom of choice but that authorizes both private and public institutions to steer people in directions that will promote their welfare.”
Nudge is a gentle prompt that influences people’s behavior in a predictable way to make better decisions. It doesn’t mandate, order, enforce, or control. It uses motivational techniques most people respond to – such as the need to fit in with social norms. A nudge is meant to move people toward the best decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society, without restricting our freedom of choice.
“Nudging, like persuasion, can be used with more or less ethical intentions. When it is less ethical it is known as Sludge. A lot of nudging involves changing a choice architecture that people are faced with.”
Nudging supposedly makes it easier for improved access to public services and help people achieve their goals in life.
In the UK the Nudge Unit was established in the Cabinet Office in 2010 by David Cameron’s government to apply behavioral science to public policy. The Behavioral Insights team, or “Nudge Unit”, plays a big role in helping the government formulate its response to coronavirus. “The Nudge Unit is working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care in crafting the government response. The most visible manifestation of its influence to date is in the communication around hand-washing and face touching – in particular the use of “disgust” as an incentive to wash hands and the suggestion of singing Happy Birthday to ensure hands are washed for the requisite 20 seconds.” -Jill Rutter, “Nudge Unit” | Institute for Government
Boris Johnson’s government tried to fight the coronavirus pandemic by using the nudge theory to encourage “herd immunity”.
The Canadian Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), established in 2014, emerged from the original “Nudge Unit” in the British government, which was founded in the Cabinet Office in 2010. It uses a consultancy model to support government and the not-for-profit sector to support BI [behavioral insights] policy interventions. Nudging the way to better public policy (irpp.org)
One example in Canada is to make Elections and voting day need an injection of fun and celebration. Nudge theory illustrates ways to inspire anyone too busy, too “irritated” to vote.
Personal freedoms are a fundamental value of our liberal democracy. Citizens have the choice to opt out of participating. Thus, we should focus on making voting easier to opt into but not mandatory. We should act in ways that will nudge, not force, people to the voting booth.
Both David Cameron and Barack Obama employed the nudge theory to advance domestic policy goals in their countries.
In the U.S. . . .based on research from University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard law school professor Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar. . . who argued in their 2008 book “Nudge” that government policies can be designed in a way that “nudges” citizens towards certain behaviors and choices. . .
On September 15, 2015, Obama issued Executive Order 13707 “Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better serve American People” directing Federal Government Agencies to apply Behavioral Science Insights to design their policies and programs.
“President Obama established the unit—officially known as the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST)—to use insights from psychology, behavioral economics, and other decision sciences to improve federal programs and operations. Those social sciences increasingly appreciate what regular folks have long known: people are imperfect. We procrastinate. We avoid making choices. We get confused and discouraged by complex forms. We forget to do things. We sometimes lack the energy to weigh decisions thoroughly, so we act based on what we think our peers do or how choices are framed. And we sometimes cut corners when we think no one is looking.”
The Executive Order also charges the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST), a cross-agency group, to make it happen.
“Ultimately, knowing what drives us puts us in the driver’s seat.” – Susan M. Schneider
The Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST) is a small, but mighty group of leading behavioral scientists and innovators from across the country. Housed within the Office of Evaluation Sciences at GSA, the SBST realizes that “seemingly small barriers to engagement…can prevent programs from effectively reaching the people they are intended to serve” and that “an effective and efficient government must, therefore, reflect our best understanding of human behavior.”
“President Obama’s federal health care law, Obamacare, is replete with “nudge” language and experimentation. . .
“Another nudge contained in Obamacare was brought to light in the debate over whether the individual mandate contained in the law was a tax hike.
“Republicans insisted that it was a tax increase, but the White House portrayed it as a penalty on the logic that the word “tax” has a negative connotation.
While the Obama administration touted nudge policies, others were hesitant to get on board.
““I am very skeptical of a team promoting nudge policies,” Michael Thomas, an economist at Utah State University, told Fox News in 2013.
““Ultimately, nudging…assumes a small group of people in government know better about choices than the individuals making them.”” (Emphasis mine.)
The purpose of this post is to provide a simplified overview of behavioral science manipulation tactics being used and to make readers aware of “nudging”. The little pokes and prods to improve behavior sound benign:
“Sunstein defines nudges as “simple, low-cost, freedom-preserving approaches, drawing directly from behavioral economics, that promise to save money, to improve people’s health, and to lengthen their lives”—small pushes in the right direction, like a restaurant disclosing the calorie count of each dish so patrons are more likely to order healthy food, or a company setting up its 401(k) plan so employees are automatically enrolled in the savings program and must choose to opt out.”
Who’s nudging me? Who’s arranging my choices? Who’s engineering my “choice architecture” and by what values?
Using motivational techniques most people respond to – such as the need to fit in with social norms to positively change people’s behavior, I’m OK with. Automatically enrolling employees in an optional 401(k), for instance, or easily allowing organ donors to opt out, I’m OK with. But what about the motivational techniques behind consequential choices like healthcare or the COVID vaccine or whether I need more government decision making in my life? Can I opt of the choices given me?
As employed by government policies and programs, behavioral science “nudging” seems to be making big government more attractive and more conducive for an individual to rely on government for more and more decision making. Nudge’s low intensity manipulation seems to always advance the goals of the federal government while couched in ways as helping people make good decisions. As such, “nudging” seems to be growing the Nanny State.
Certainly, there are concerns about the ethics of nudging. Nudges can engineer people’s choices to reach certain ends desired by a policy maker. A policy “choice architecture” can, by design, make certain options have a greater chance of being chosen. Ergo, the government should be transparent in its behavioral approaches to ensure that policymakers, media, and the public have the evidence they need to judge their merits. Yet, I don’t every government agency will be transparent with its manipulation or propaganda.
When nudging seeks to frame behavior with limited choices to achieve a political outcome, then formerly well-intentioned nudges give way to outright manipulation. We will then be influenced to do whatever those in power want done. Example: When “We’re all in this together” becomes the stigmatizing “The pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
What happens when the owners of a technocratic control group known as social media shrink your choice architecture” on the inter-web and you do not see all there is to know? Such frames are difficult to combat because we are not often presented with the alternative frame, and thus we often don’t realize how the frame we see affects our decisions.
When information leading to truth is censored by technocrats with government approval, tyranny is slowly being put in place to rob common people of their health, savings, freedoms, and their futures. In other words, “Freedom of choice be damned!”
What happens when sensible “choice architecture” that nudges people toward the best decisions for themselves, their families, and society without restricting freedom of choice, shrinks to “choose this or else” as with a mandate? “Honey, they shrunk the Choice Architecture and have grown the size of their influence!”
A [San Francisco Democrat’s] bill before California lawmakers would require new cars sold in the state in coming years to beep a warning whenever drivers exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph
“From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs [under Obama], and after that, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioral Insights Team in the United Kingdom.”
Laura Dodsworth is a photographer, artist and author. In her most recent book Free Your Mind: The New World of Manipulation and How to Resist it, Laura draws on the Nudge Unit, behavioral psychology and fact checking services to analyze the range of ways in which our minds are manipulated. On the podcast, Laura talks about the government propaganda machine and how this all relates back to issues such as climate catastrophe, the pandemic and free speech.
Laura Dodsworth: How to protect yourself from government propaganda
Learn how to recognize and resist the daily attempts to control and manipulate your mind.
There is a war on for your mind. You may not notice, but you are surrounded by manipulators: advertisers, politicians, big tech, even the humble waiter who asks, ‘Still or sparkling?’
Free Your Mind is your field manual to surviving the information battlefield. In this indispensable book, Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan draw on interviews with mind-control experts ranging from monks to magicians, infiltrate cults and forums to uncover their most deceptive techniques and expose the hidden tactics used to influence you, from social media to subliminal messages.
This is a book about fear. Fear of a virus. Fear of death. Fear of losing our jobs, our democracy, our human connections, our health and our minds. It’s also about how the government weaponised our fear against us – supposedly in our best interests – until we were one of the most frightened countries in the world.
I am cynical about those who seek to control us for “our own good.” There are always people in the world who want to manipulate and control others to have them make ‘better’ decisions, i.e., think like them. And this is true in the church:
There’s a growing list of the controlled opposition’s shaming screeds promoted on MSNBC to influence voters by making them feel morally superior if they make the ‘right’ choice: to not support and vote for Trump.
These Nudge-mental authors want to move you in the direction of being an ‘acceptable’ Christian and to be politically ‘acceptable’ in their eyes.
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
Ironically, these holier-than-MAGA disparagers no doubt benefitted from Trump’s presidency. There was peace and prosperity. There were no wars. Look at Trump’s Middle East peace deal. There was no invasion of our southern border. Inflation was around 2%. People had money to support themselves and to give to charitable causes like The Roy’s Report and The Trinity Forum, (where these guys hawk their wares.)
During those four years and since, these guys sit around and nitpick about people who are not like them at great benefit to themselves.
And please don’t tell me they are writing these things to protect Jesus from the rabble. “Put down your sword, Peter.” Jesus – very God – is not beholden to anyone for protection.
~~~~~
Well before Nudge, the book of Proverbs talked about those who act out of impulse, impatience, or ignorance. Proverbs talked about people who often make choices that are not the best or even good for them. What Does the Book of Proverbs Say About Fools? – Bible Gateway Blog
Wisdom was in place long before Nudge came along:
The Lord Created me [Wisdom] at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old, Proverbs 8:22-31
Wisdom, personified as a female in the book of Proverbs, aspires to produce much more than a nudge toward a rational self-interest maximizing approach to decision making. Wisdom’s desire is to expand one’s personal bandwidth with the experience of the knowledge and fear of God.
Wisdom wants you to tap into God’s creation.
Wisdom is coupled with humility – you don’t have all the answers. (I get the image of a wife telling her husband to ask for directions when they are lost.)
You can ask God for wisdom in your decision making and God will supply you with wisdom.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD and turn away from evil.
This will bring healing to your body
and refreshment to your bones. Proverbs 3:5-8
“The wise shall inherit glory (all honor and good) but shame is the highest rank conferred on [self-confident] fools.” Proverbs 3:35
“A foolish person will believe anything. But a wise person thinks about what he does.” Proverbs 14:15
You don’t need to be a tenuous reed in the wind, nudged in every direction. Seek wisdom from God.
~~~~~
Nudge them not before a TV screen:
“. . . while screen time may be harmless or even enriching in moderation, it’s still rife with pitfalls. Screens can tempt kids away from physical activity and imaginative play, for example, and could stunt development of critical skills like emotional self-regulation if overused.
“According to a new study, screen time for babies and toddlers is also linked to an additional risk many parents may not have considered: developing atypical sensory-processing behaviors. . .
“The behaviors include “sensation seeking” and “sensation avoiding” – when a child seeks out more intense sensory stimulation or is more averse to intense sensations, respectively – as well as “low registration,” a lower sensitivity or slower response to stimuli.”
The World Health Organization is working with the European Union to roll out international, interoperable digital IDs. If you go to the World Economic Forum website these digital IDs are touted as means to enrich our lives by making the following tasks easier: Accessing healthcare, opening a bank account, traveling, engaging in online transactions, accessing Medicare/Medicaid, voting, and paying taxes. Without these IDs, you won’t be able to do any of those things. Or, if you step out of line in some way (say, if a certain vaccine is mandated that you refuse), the WHO could interfere with your digital ID to limit your access to any of these very basic activities. (Emphasis mine.)
From parents pampering their progeny (Indulging “I-Me-Mine”) to priests and pastors preaching Progressivism (‘Inspired’ “I-Me-Mine”) to professors promulgating political propaganda (Ideological “I-Me-Mine” & Illiteracy) to the phenomenon of ‘political correctness’ (Ideological Conformity & Indulgent Illiberalism) to policies promoting pseudo pronouns (Indulgent Illusions of “I-Me-Mine”) to protestors pronouncing “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” (Indulgent Intifada), the Left’s Long Maoist/Marxist/ Marcusean March through institutions has left a trail strewn with social pathologies and pogroms. Ptooey!
The humorless Left, a product of its own Polarizing and Infantilizing Process, is self-absorbed but not self-examining. The Left refuses to learn from anything outside itself including history to account for its own dysfunctional and belligerent ways. If it did, it would turn from its deceptions – the filtering mindsets of victim-oppressor and of passion as morality – and it wouldn’t continue the Long March, inchoate, with those who have been patently processed like themselves to destroy whatever is in its path including “Democracy!”
Today’s products of the Polarizing and Infantilizing Process, disconnected from history and reality and preoccupied with self, are working diligently to take down Western civilization and its Judeo-Christian foundation. In its place they want to build sand castles, imagined communist and Islamic utopias, from the river to the sea.
Yet, as history has recorded as happening under all preceding totalitarian impulses, the season of indulging one’s passions and the rush to violence will soon pass. The revolutionary impulse inevitably turns inward, as the “I-Me-Mine” of the leaders begins to indulgently purge all dissent including thought crimes in order to impose mindless uniformity. Thus, the season of torture, torment, and tedium begins for the disconnected ones.
~~~~~
Retired prison psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple (pen name for Anthony Daniels) speaks and writes with keen insight gathered from his experience of the human condition and of its surrounding culture.
Having read several of his books, I recommend two books to start with:
The New Criterion’s Roger Kimball takes the audience through a history of America’s cultural revolution of the 1960’s and its effects on American politics and culture today.
Per Italian communist Antonio [ Gramsci] “If the Left truly wanted to win, it needed to first seize the “cultural means of production”: the culture-forming institutions such as the media and universities and even churches. He saw societal transformation coming about by a “march through the institutions.” …
“Gramsci insisted that leftist intellectuals needed to question everything, including moral absolutes and the Judeo-Christian basis of Western civilization. They needed to frame seemingly benign conventions as systematic injustices that must be exposed. This is where we got professors fulminating against everything from “the patriarchy” to “white imperialism” to “transphobia.””
“The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency — the belief that the here and now is all there is.” ― Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
. . . because . . .
“We live in an age of full spectrum deception.” — Edward Dowd
Why I read novels . . .
“The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place.” ― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
~~~~~
The Way I Heard It, Mike Rowe podcast:
382: Individualism Rightly Understood with Scott Mann 1:19:03
The former U.S. Army Green Beret, NYT bestselling author, leadership consultant, and perennial storyteller talks about the division and tribal behavior that permeates our country now, the death of honor, shame, and consequence, and why Alexis de Tocqueville was right when he observed that America succeeds because she puts the individual ahead of the collective. You can preorder Scott’s newest book here.
Individualism Rightly Understood Mike Rowe with Scott Mann
The growing list of the controlled opposition’s shaming screeds promoted on MSNBC to influence voters by making them feel morally superior if they don’t vote for Trump:
Apparently, the only way to be a Christian is to be a Democrat like the author/s and to vote for all of the things that your faith disagrees with and for the continued destruction of our country. Got it.
“Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.
Mark 9:38-41
Apparently, there are people who are very ‘concerned’ about Trump being associated with Jesus because Trump “was not one of us.”
~~~~~
You realize, don’t you, that what’s going on in our country is the collapse not just of an empire, or an economy, but a comprehensive paradigm of human progress. The hallmark of post-war life in Western Civ was supposed to be a return to sanity after the mid-twentieth century fugue of mass psychotic violence. The wish for just and rational order was not entirely pretense. But that was then. Now that we are going medieval on ourselves, the not-so-ironic result will be our literally going medieval, sinking back into a pre-modern existence of darkness, superstition, and penury, grubbing for a mere subsistence in the shadow of scuffling hobgoblins, our achievements lost and forgotten. . .
The source of anguish in all that is the struggle to understand why they [the “governing apparatus”] would want that to happen. What debauched sense of history would drive anyone to such lunatic desperation? It’s a cliché now to say that the Democratic Party has turned its traditional moral scaffold upside down and inside out. It acts against the kitchen table interests of the working and middle classes. It’s against civil liberties. It demands mental obedience to patently insane policy. It’s avid for war, no matter how cruelly pointless. It’s deliberately stirring up racial hatred. It despises personal privacy. It feeds a rogue bureaucracy that has become a veritable Moloch, an all-devouring malevolent deity. And now, rather suddenly, it aligns itself with a faction that seeks to exterminate the Jews.
George Washington University @GWtweets tonight at University Yard on H Street. President Ellen Granberg & the BoT stated that this would be shut down yesterday by 7pm. It’s still going & getting more dangerous by the hour. Watch with sound on. These students & faculty don’t want… pic.twitter.com/ooeXj4eXj2
At a far-left rally for Gaza at George Washington U @GWtweets, an extremist on the microphone says: “There’s only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the United States of America.” pic.twitter.com/RGJ5J1EKE5
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
“One, if by land, and two, if by sea”, and three, if by One Health.
Who can forget COVID tyranny? Who can forget the constant fear porn driving people to disarm themselves of critical thinking to allow entry of the COVID narrative into their lives?
Who can forget that our churches, our businesses, our relationships, and our lives were masked and quarantined for a flu with a 99% recovery rate? Who can forget the horrific mandates imposed upon us? Who can forget the threats made to induce vaccine submission? Who can forget the severe adverse events that have occurred and will continue to occur from the untested mRNA vaccine?
Who can forget that the CDC banned the use of effective repurposed drugs – Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine – so that an “emergency use authorization” could make it possible to flood the country with the untested mRNA vaccine? Lives were lost because of this ban.
And, who can forget that before the COVID plandemic the country was rapidly bouncing back from Obama’s anti-America years?
As I write this, a worldwidetotalitarian medical police state is being formed that will make the COVID plandemic’s years of oppression look like a maskless walk in the park. I’ve posted warnings about what’s coming – digital ID’s and digital currency – at least twice before. What is coming is hundreds of times more oppressive than what happened during the COVID plandemic. (They are planning to release another pandemic soon – as a test of our response and the overlords authority.)
Tell me. Have you heard about any of this in the main stream media? Have you heard anyone in the media talk about what the CCP-backed World “Health” Organization (WHO) is up to? Have you heard anyone mention digital passports and digital currency? Have you heard about One Health, a global biotech surveillance state, complete with surveillance and censorship of virtually every aspect of life on earth?
Have you heard about any of this from your rep or senators? No? Why not? Is this off their radar? Could our rep or senators be all in on global governance? Could the Uniparty, aka the Swamp, which is made up of both Dems and Republicans, be all in on the subjugation of the U.S. to global governance? Could it be: “It’s a BIG club and you ain’t in it!”
Nothing in this post is conspiracy theory. What is taking place is mostly out in the open. You can read what they doing on websites. For example, One health (who.int):
“By linking humans, animals and the environment, One Health can help to address the full spectrum of disease control – from prevention to detection, preparedness, response and management – and contribute to global health security.”
And here is WEF’s Klaus Schwab praising the CCP – communist China:
🇨🇳Klaus Schwab: "We must recognize China as the best superpower in the world"
🗣World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab ordered world leaders to accept China as the world's new leading superpower and hailed their tough "COVID measures" as a role model for other… pic.twitter.com/tKSWoxPNxI
Frank Gaffney, Chairman, Center for Security Policy; Co-Chair, Stop Vaccine Passports Task force; Co-Founder, Sovereignty Coalition.
Co-Host and Panelist
Reggie Littlejohn, Founder and President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers; Co-Chair, Stop Vaccine Passports Task force; Co-Founder, Sovereignty Coalition. – Topic: The WHO’s new “Bureau’s Draft” of the Pandemic Treaty: Surveillance, Censorship and Loss of Sovereignty
Panelists
Hon. Michele Bachmann, Member of Congress (2007-2015); Presidential candidate (2012); Dean, Robertson School of Government, Regent University – Topic: What I observed in Geneva at the World Health Assembly. Once sovereignty is lost, it cannot be regained. No one is a more powerful speaker on that topic than you.
Dr. David Bell, M.D., Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute; public health physician and biotech consultant in global health; former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) – Topic: Deferring to the WHO regarding Pandemic Preparedness Makes No Sense.
Dr. Francis Boyle, Ph.D., Professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law; JD degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard University; Former Board Member, Amnesty International; Draft author, U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, that was approved unanimously by both Houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush – Topic: Any agreement coming out of the WHO is already baked into U.S. law. It will not have to wait for the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate to be implemented here.
Dr. Kat Lindley, D.O., family physician and president of the Texas branch of the American Academy of Physicians and Surgeons; co-Founder, Global Health Project; member – Topic: The constitutional, legal and legislation protections we have depended on will not work to stop the WHO power grab.
Alex Newman, Contributor, The Epoch Times and other diverse publications; award-winning international journalist, educator, author, and consultant who co-wrote the book “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children” – Topic: The dangers of digital heath passports and their connection with the ability to buy or sell.
Dr. Karladine Graves, D.O., Private Family Physician in North Kansas City, MO; Advocate for physicians – Topic: If the Pandemic Treaty goes through, it will injure or destroy the doctor/patient relationship and give the WHO power to force vaccinations.
A May 15th webinar provides insight into “a global biotech surveillance state, complete with surveillance and censorship of virtually every aspect of life on earth under the One Health approach”:
Frank Gaffney, Chairman, Center for Security Policy; Co-Chair, Stop Vaccine Passports Task force; Co-Founder, Sovereignty Coalition.
Co-Host and Panelist
Reggie Littlejohn, Founder and President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers; Co-Chair, Stop Vaccine Passports Task force; Co-Founder, Sovereignty Coalition. Topic: One Health and the Bio-Medical Surveillance State
Panelists
Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D., President and CEO of the Truth for Health Foundation; Member of the International Society of Gynecologic Endocrinology. Topic: One Health: The Vise of Totalitarianism
Dr. Kat Lindley, D.O., family physician and president of the Texas branch of the American Academy of Physicians and Surgeons. Topic: One Health and the Disruption of the Physician/Patient Relationship
Dr. David Bell, M.D., Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute; public health physician and biotech consultant in global health; former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO). Topic: The Hijacking of One Health
Dr. Meryl Nass, M.D., Board-certified internist; biological warfare epidemiologist and expert in anthrax. Topic: One Health – W.H.O. land grab?
Brian O’Shea, Private investigator and security expert. Topic: One Health: Global Public Health’s & The CCP’s Authoritarian Trojan Horse.
This is at least my third alarm about what is coming to our shores to destroy life as we know it. Globalist overlords are intent on redistributing money, resources, and control to themselves. They use highfalutin sales rhetoric from “ESG” to “stakeholder capitalism” to “conscientious capitalism.” But all the gibberish, for those of us not in the globalist “club”, leads to “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
Globalist overlords are intent on using every world crisis they create (pandemics and Climate Change) to “reset” the lives of people to their own vagary. They act to crush our wills and claim our children. They tell us what to think and do from sun up to sundown, everything from “Cut carbon” to “No stone-fired pizza” to “Eat bugs” to “You’ll own nothing and be happy.” And yet most Americans love their trucks, their home, and eating real meat. Most Americans have faith in God, but the intelligentsia, aka politically connected radical socialist atheists, want nothing to do with God in any form or fashion including “In God We Trust” America.
The destruction of our lives and all we hold dear is their creative inclination. The suits acting to “reset” our lives act in line with what Mikhail Bakunin, revolutionary socialist, social anarchist, and collectivist anarchist once said:
“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”
And they will creatively destroy quietly. Consider that with digital technology, no one has to be sent to a gulag or shot for not going the way of the tyrants. None of that KGB stuff needs to happen as was done in the past. Except for some public figures, there will be none of that public messy stuff that would make globalists look like Stalinists. Digital technology will do all the dirty work. Your digital device will be a KGB agent looking in on you.
Digital governance will decide if one eats, travels and leaves their home. So, when people are deprived of liberty, of choice, of movement and of hope, they will go mad. They can then be institutionalized if they don’t commit suicide first. Like Pontius Pilate, globalists can then wash their hands of the matter.
If you still doubt the extremes to which a global biotech surveillance state will deal with you, then recall the authoritarian-directed days of COVID. And look now at the two-tier system of justice under the Biden regime’s DOJ and Merrick Garland. And look at how J6 political prisoners are being treated. Each example brought together is but a small preview of what digital global governance will become.
With the extra time you have this Fourth of July weekend, Iurge you to view the videos posted here. Then take action. There may not be another election.
I urge priests, pastors and leaders of the church to warn people of what’s coming and to help parishioners put a stop to it. I have no doubt that the godless globalists will restrict all Christian activity by calling it a global health “concern” (see communist China, the globalist’s role model for suppression of religion). Send a link to this post to church leaders.
Will you resist tyranny, or will this be the last Independence Day? Will you act to defend our injured, bleeding Country and insure its independence?
*****
“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” –Captain Nathan Hale, an American soldier and spy for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He was hanged by the British.
“However, at the gallows, he made a sensible and spirited speech; among other things, told them they were shedding the blood of the innocent, and that if he had ten thousand lives, he would lay them all down, if called to it, in defense of his injured, bleeding Country.”
-Captain Nathan Hale’s execution, as reported in the Essex Journal (13 February 1777).
Tell your reps that you do not consent to a bio-tech totalitarian state under the WHO and the WEF.
Tell your reps that you do not consent to a digital health passport.
Note: Twenty states, all with Republican governors, prohibit proof-of-vaccination requirements. In eleven states, governors banned proof-of-vaccination requirements through executive orders. In nine states, legislators passed laws banning proof-of-vaccination requirements.
Six states—California, Illinois, New York, Hawaii, and Oregon, and Washington—have facilitated the creation of digital vaccination status applications or passed laws or enacted orders exempting fully vaccinated individuals from some COVID-19 restrictions if they can provide proof of vaccination. All six states have Democratic governors.
“CEO Larry Fink says he is going to stop using the term “ESG.” BlackRock is setting itself up to be an intermediary to help “rebuild” the Ukrainian economy. Also, James O’Keefe recently exposed an employee of BlackRock saying some really frightening things.”
The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus– who did the evangelists turn to for their record of these events? They relied on the testimony of several women – supporters and disciples – who had been with Jesus from the earliest days of his Galilean ministry and followed him to Jerusalem. The women were authoritative apostolic witnesses of these events in the early Christian community. Their telling and retelling of these events shaped the Gospel tradition.
The four gospel accounts variously record the women’s eyewitness testimony of the exceptional events in spite of what is alleged about a first century woman’s testimony not considered credible in a court run by men.
The gospel writers, as did other ancient historiographers, set great store in the role of eyewitnesses.[1] First-hand accounts of what was seen and heard and its interpretation were the most reliable. As a matter of record and for a connection to the sources, the identities of the women who witnessed the events of the Passion and resurrection are clearly identified by the gospel writers (see Women as Eyewitnesses below). The women were present and accounted for in the gospels.
The-Three-Marys-Henry Ossawa Tanner
Across the four gospel accounts, two or three women are noted to be at the cross, at the burial and at the empty tomb. This would fulfill Torah’s requirement (Deut. 19:15) for two or three witnesses for evidence to be substantiated.
We can be thankful that the women’s eyewitness testimonies, even if rejected by a first century court of men, provides for us today the historical reality of the extraordinary events. Those who have not seen the risen Lord are dependent on those who have such as Mary Magdalene, an apostle to the apostles, who said “I have seen the Lord!”
The women’s testimony, even if rejected by men, certainly didn’t preclude women in the community from accepting it. The women’s firsthand account of the events spread throughout the Christian community, where as many women as men, and likely more, were drawn to early Christianity. And where the role of the women as benefactors and disciples of Jesus was already well-known.[2] That a woman was commissioned by Jesus to be his “go and tell” witness – this was no surprise. The resurrection was the “Do you know what this means!” surprise.
For the women involved, it wasn’t a matter of passive observation. It involved active understanding, as Richard Bauckham, in Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels writes [3]:
“It would be a mistake to envisage the women’s role of eyewitnesses as a passive one. As participants in events that radically changed their own lives, the women, in telling and retelling the stories of the events of the passion and resurrection, were also interpreting the significance of the events.”
It would also be a mistake to assume that what the women were relating had to reinterpreted and retold by men.
Again, Richard Bauckham[4] :
“I conclude that there is no evidence to suggest that the role of women in the resurrection stories has been depreciated or limited in the Gospel narratives of Matthew, Luke, and John. Where male prejudice against the credibility is explicitly evoked (Luke 24:11), this is so that it may be decisively overturned.
“Where readers may bring such prejudice to the texts, even though the texts give no pretext for doing so, again the effect of the narratives will be to refute and to reverse assumptions of male priority and female unreliability.
“. . . it suggests that within the Christian communities themselves the role of women as witnesses was highly respected. There seems to be no evidence that it became less so over time. It is one of a variety of striking aspects of early Christianity that belong to the countercultural nature of the Christian communities as societies in which God’s eschatological overturning of social privilege was taken very seriously.” (Emphasis mine.)
Present but not accounted for: women, apostolic traditioners and eyewitness guarantors of not only the Passion and resurrection events but also of the incarnation, are not included in the kerygmatic summaries of Peter and Paul.
(Kerygmatic summaries can be thought of as basically sermon outlines open to improvisation and amplification from gospel tradition influences.)
Kerygmatic summaries in sermons (Acts 2:14-36, 3:12-36, 10:34-43, 13:16-41) and in Paul’s resurrection discussion (1 Cor. 15) do not mention the role of women. That they are not mentioned doesn’t disavow the women’s roles as apostolic traditioners and eyewitness guarantors of the gospel tradition. The sermons are an overview of the gospel story meant for a crowd not aware of it.
(Did Peter and Paul have concerns about mentioning the role of women to a patriarchal assembly? Where they concerned that their message would be rejected by male listeners? It’s a real possibility.)
What may be seen as a snub, though, is not being accounted for in Paul’s resurrection appearance list (1 Cor. 15:3-7).
Here ‘s Richard Bauckham’s take on that [5]:
“. . . we should notice that the women are not in fact, as so often assumed, absent from 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. Paul distinguishes between an appearance to the twelve and one to all the apostles, since, unlike Luke, he does not confine the term “apostle” to the twelve. At this appearance, he would have assumed that other apostles he knew, such as Barnabas, Sylvanus, and James the Lord’s brother, were present along with the twelve. Now that it is generally recognized that Paul knew and had a great respect for at least one woman apostle, Junia (Rom 16:7), we must certainly also conclude that he would have taken for granted that women were included in an appearance to “all the apostles.”
(The apostle Paul calls Andronicus and Junia (Rom 16:7) “apostles”, likely meaning that they had been present at a resurrection appearance of Jesus. The name Junia was probably the Latin name of Jesus’s disciple Joanna (Luke 8:3; 24:10).) Andronicus (Junia’s husband Chuza?) and Junia (Joanna), Palestinian Jews, were likely members of the Jerusalem church before going to Rome.
Present today but not accounted for: Women as apostolic traditioners and eyewitness guarantors of the gospel traditions in today’s sermons AND women of the same caliber and devotion to the Lord in our pulpits.
We need more women traditioners, like those who followed and supported Jesus from the earliest days of his Galilean ministry and then followed him to Jerusalem and to the cross, the burial, and the empty tomb. We need more women traditioners like those who sat at Jesus’s feet and were discipled by him: “[Martha’s] sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught.” (Luke 10:39). But women today have been “roled” into submission with the weight of out of context scripture verses.
The apostle Paul, in 1 Timothy 2:14, alludes to women being deceived and about divine order needing to be observed. Does anyone think that the women supporters and disciples of Jesus were deceived and out of order? Does anyone think that women were deceived in the tomb garden as Eve had been deceived in Eden’s Garden? What I see in scripture is a reversal of status – from women easily deceived to women rightfully believed.
Paul wrote to Timothy alluding to the female only cult of Artemis (Diana) in Ephesus. The women of the cult had been deceived. The women of the cult subordinated men. Paul didn’t want that deception and disorder brought into the church community at Ephesus. Ephesus and the Diana cult were the context for “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” (1 Tim. 2:12). Paul’s words to Timothy were of a parochial concern, intending to make Timothy be aware of what’s around him and how he could confront it.
Paul’s words to Timothy were not a universal injunction against women believing them to be unreliable in discerning what is true and good and thereby disqualified as an authoritative voice in the church. If Paul thought that, then the female apostolic traditioners and eyewitness guarantors of the birth, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus would also be suspect. That would fly in the face of reality.
Consider that throughout scripture we find that God used lowly salvation agents to bring about a reversal of status, not just for the agents e.g., Hannah and Mary, but also for Israel and the world. And, as mentioned, women – Mary and Elizabeth – were also apostolic traditioners and eyewitness guarantors of the incarnation. (Read Luke chapter 1 where events are related from a gynocentric perspective, rather than the typical androcentric perspective. Quite a pulpit!)
The narrative of women communicating the word of God is so clear in the New Testament. Women were present and accounted for in the Gospels, in the epistles and in extrabiblical sources. Today, women are being accounted for in a role, a designated role, a pre- “countercultural nature of the Christian communities as societies in which God’s eschatological overturning of social privilege was taken very seriously” role.
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[1] See Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2017) for the role of testimony in ancient historiography and in the gospels.
[2] See chapter 5, Joanna the Apostle, in Richard Bauckham’s Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2002) for the background behind the financial support given Jesus by Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza (Luke 8:3) and for background of women in the first century being in possession of independent financial resources.
[3] Richard Bauckham, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2002) 302
There are sermons and books on the roles for men and women. There are sermons and books about male-female hierarchy. There are sermons and books explaining gender roles in egalitarian or complementarian terms. “Roles!” “Roles!” “Roles!” There are voices so contentious and acrimonious demanding “Roles” that schisms result. The apostle Paul would be a-Pauled!
“Sarah Clatworthy, a member of Lifepoint Baptist Church in San Angelo, Texas, who has called on the SBC “to shut the door to feminism and liberalism,” said she supported the ban on female pastors.
“We should leave no room for our daughters and granddaughters in the generations ahead to have confusion on where the SBC stands,” she said. “Let them know Scripture is our authority and not the culture.”’
The first century women were not feminists or liberals, though it would look that way to the legalists. They saw and reported what they had witnessed and learned. They were active in the “countercultural nature of the Christian communities as societies in which God’s eschatological nature overturning of social privilege was taken very seriously”.
Many think of Scripture and the church in androcentric terms. How could they not when they see men on a platform expounding, in male voices, what the scripture says. Have these interpreters rightly divided the word of God regarding men and women in the Kingdom of God? Have they wrongly divided men and women in the Kingdom of God into superficial roles?
Remember Genesis 2? Adam (‘adam, a generic term meaning “human person”) was split in two and Eve was formed from one half of Adam. We read that this was done to form an equal partnership that would work to bring form and function to creation, a work God started and handed over to mankind. I find this partnership emphasis continued in the apostle Paul’s writing.
As I read Paul’s letters to the individual Christian communities, as I read his explanations and guidance of how to think and relate as new creations where they’re at, I hear his admonitions: “Get your act together! The world has its way of thinking! The world has its own form and function! But you are of different stock! Think and act like it! Work together for the sake of the gospel!”
The Spirit of God has been released into the world. The Spirit of God will go where it will. Did you really think that anyone could domesticate the Holy Spirit with theology and dispensationalism and policies of roles? Sure, those things tend to make one feel safe and secure, like you have a handle on things. But as we have seen with Jesus and now with the Holy Spirit, neither one “plays” by our rules.
Finally, note that Paul wrote to the Corinthian “brothers and sisters” that God gives His gifts as He determines (1 Cor. 12:1, 11). No further distinction is made regarding their allotment.
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Women as Eyewitnesses
In the gospel narratives of the Passion, burial and resurrection of Jesus, there are five named eyewitnesses and two unnamed but specified eyewitnesses: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, Salome, Joanna, and Mary of Clopas, the mother of the sons of Zebedee, and the mother of Jesus. Each evangelist mentions the women significant to their readers.
These had active roles as eyewitnesses. You see, they were there in person at the cross, at the burial, and at the empty tomb, as we learn in Matthew’s gospel account:
“There were several women there [at the cross], watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee, helping to look after his needs. They included Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.” (Matt 27: 55-56).
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary [the mother of James and Joseph] had watched the burial of Jesus. They had been sitting opposite the tomb (Matt. 27:61). They returned on the first day of the week to look at the tomb. (Matt: 28:1). There, they encounter an earthquake and an angel. They receive divine revelation: “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.” (Matt. 28: 5-6). The women then receive a command to proclaim (“Go and tell”) the Lord’s resurrection to the disciples (Matt. 28: 7). As they start running to herald the news, they are suddenly met by Jesus who says “Hello!” and “Don’t be afraid” and “Go and tell my brothers that they should go to Galilee. Tell them they’ll see me there.”
The gospel of John, chapter 20, records that Mary Magdalene, after seeing the stone rolled away from the Jesus’ tomb, runs off to tell Peter and John, the one closest to Jesus, that the body was missing. Peter and John run to the tomb and check it out. Mary Magdalene must have shown them the way because she – not them – had watched the burial.
Back at the empty tomb, Mary begins crying as she looks inside. She then sees two angels who ask her why she is crying. Mary then turns and sees a figure standing nearby. She thinks it’s the gardener. The figure asks why she is crying. She explains and then Jesus reveals himself to her. Jesus then tells her “Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I’m going up to my father and your father – to my God and your God.”
Mary Magdalene, an apostle to the apostles, went and told the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord!” and that he said these things to her. Later, when the disciples see the Lord, they corporately say what Mary said: “We’ve seen the Lord!” Seeing is followed by belief.
Jesus told the group “God’s blessings on people who don’t see, and yet believe!”
Notice in the following synoptic gospel texts how “women” and seeing verbs are emphasized.
Matthew 27:55-56
Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.
Mark 15:40-41
Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.
Luke 23: 49
But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.
“Atrazine [a herbicide] is an endocrine disrupter, which is able both demasculinize (chemically castrate) and completely feminize adult male frogs as well as other aquatic life. It has been documented to affect murine (mouse) reproductive systems.
“. . . common foods which are endocrine disruptors can cause feminization in adult human males:
“. . . Secondary hypogonadism caused by the excessive intake of isoflavones in soy milk was diagnosed. In men, an excessive intake of isoflavones may cause feminization and secondary hypogonadism.”
Something is looming on the horizon. Dark clouds of suffocating monoculture are forming to blanket the earth. Finite gods – the elites – have been gathering in their Geneva temple to decide how shall we then live under their shadow.
Yes, One World Governance, aka central planning, is ominous unless, of course, you like being told what to do, what to eat, what to drive, how far you can drive, how you can spend your money, that you’ll have to give up your property, when you can leave your assigned housing, what you cannot say, that you’ll have to wear a mask and be locked down and take multiple vaccines and have your digital health passport constantly updated so you are allowed to leave your assigned housing and purchase your assigned allotment of vegan and bug-based food (cf. North Korea tyranny).
Yes, One World Governance is ominous unless, of course, you are OK with elites picking winners and losers based on a social credit score and existing merely on their whim.
If you walked around with a mask on as one of my neighbors did up until the NYT came out with the February article Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned? you may one of those who truly like to be dominated by someone who does your thinking for you. Based on public behavior witnessed since March 2020, there are earthlings who like this kind of commandeering of their life. And like the rest of their ilk, they want to make sure that everyone is commandeered as well. They feel safe when authoritarian rule keeps others in check. They feel safe when others are made to think like them.
Suffocating monoculture? Certainly you are aware of political correctness and Wokeness and the censoring of public discourse. You may a victim of such suppression or the applier of such suppression via indoctrination programs such as DEI and CRT. No doubt, you are also aware of the repudiation of Christianity and all things America as being culturally fashionable.
Well, stultifying homogeneity didn’t just show up one day. It’s been on a long march through the institutions, as prescribed by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937). The family, churches, schools, the media, and corporate and governmental bureaucracies – Marxist rhetoric and thinking has infiltrated every level of our society by its sympathizers and fellow travelers.
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
And so it is that we continually hear stereotypical representations of a “Climate Change Crisis”, of “Trust the Science”, of “Critical Race Theory”, of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”, of “LGBTQ+ advocacy”, of “Environmental Justice”, and of a “Build Back Better” future.
And so it is that behind the “in” language masking are Marxist elites who are eager to strip you of your property and freedoms and to take over the means of production – for “a better future”. (Listen to podcast below to learn about the life, death and resurrection of Marxism.)
And so it is that any questioning of the elite’s social canon of judgments is suppressed. Debate, therefore, is out of the question and “the science is settled” is the nail on argument’s coffin. Keeping people ignorant of opposing views works to produce a monoculture receptive of more reinforcing sameness.
And so it is that cultures and lifestyles (not Christian, not American) are promoted as equal. And the sexes, like our southern border with its child and drug trafficking promoted by the Biden regime, must not have a border wall.
And so it is that merchandisers communicate their moral viewpoint, aka social canon of judgments, via their products: Bud Light, Target, North Face, Harley to name a few.
And so it is that a Christian worldview must be silenced by any means necessary. The elites believe they have gained, with institutional pedigrees, esoteric knowledge of all that is. Hence the social canon of judgments (Woke doctrine) and “the science” pronouncements. They are the enlightened ones. They are the seers. And they operate with a volitional rejection and contempt for Christianity ala Nietzsche.
(“In 1889, at the age of 44, Nietzsche suffered a psychotic breakdown and was admitted to the mental asylum in Basel, Switzerland. He was later transferred to the asylum in Jena, Germany. For over a year, Nietzsche lingered in a state of complete mental collapse, and he died in August 1900.
Today, Nietzsche’s relativism, naturalism, and nihilism continue to impact philosophy, art, and culture. His defiant rejection of religion, especially Christianity, and his advocacy of violence and self-seeking make his ideas the antithesis of biblical love and self-sacrifice.”
And so it is that in America a two-tier system of justice exists – one system of justice for the elites and for those they chose and another one for the rest of America. Justice, as practiced by the elites, is not a process of agreed-upon law. Rather, it is outcome based.
And so it is that elites label those who don’t embrace their Globalist/Marxist worldview as “extremists”, “threats to democracy”, and, with regard to the debt ceiling, “economic terrorists”. Their idea of democracy is a say-and-do-as-I-say monoculture. In other words, a “no dissent” Democracy.
“The Biden administration is doling out taxpayer money through an anti-terrorism grant initiative to a university program that has explicitly lumped the Republican Party, as well as Christian and conservative groups, into the same category as Nazis, according to documents shared exclusively with Fox News Digital.”
And so it is that the suffocating monoculture of bureaucrats is advancing and covering the earth with party-line tropes learned in educational institutions and reinforced in cultural gatherings, mutual admiration society meetings, e.g., Ted Talks, and organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF).
(I see the WEF as akin to C.S. Lewis’ The National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (“N.I.C.E.”) as described in That Hideous Strength. “N. I. C. E.’s symbol, devoted as it was to “Technocratic and Objective Man” (That Hideous Strength, 259), was a muscular male nude grasping a thunderbolt (That Hideous Strength, p. 215).” – The Devils in Our World – Official Site | CSLewis.com
I also see the WEF as akin to the fictional criminal enterprise Spectre).
And so it is that so-called economist Paul Krugman will produce nonsense NYT op-eds about the economy revealing that he is all in with monoculture thinking. And Democrat politicians, e.g., Marxist AOC, while defending their bizarre version of reality, will spout monoculture platitudes. And professors and school boards and teachers repeat the monoculture “in” language with the result that our children repeat the monoculture “in” language and way of thinking. Businesses are requiring training programs in mastering monoculture’s dogma of DEI. (That is one main reason I decided to retire at the end of last year.)
And so it is that CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. drone on with monoculture insipidities, as they have been taught and paid for by paying elites.
And so it is today that a diverse group who have been pressed and formed to be exactly alike in thought word and deed have come off the assembly line ready to tell you that they have a solution for you. It involves central planning with you as data for the coming Clim-demic.
“Climate change is increasing both the risk of another global pandemic and the need to collaborate and share data,” said Dr. Rajiv Shah, President of The Rockefeller Foundation.
From COVID Containment to Climate Change Containment, from Pandemic Preparedness to pandemic treaty, and from guidelines to global governance, the days when you can freely choose and make your own decisions are quickly coming to an end. With monoculture tropes as breadcrumbs, you will find yourself walking into a social engineering experiment conjured up by a consortium of busy bodies: the World Health Organization (WHO), the World economic Forum (WEF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the United Nations (UN). All this, because the New World Order needs saving from you, independent free-to-make-decisions chaotic you.
Monoculture tropes from the WEF website (Emphasis mine.):
The World Economic Forum’s network of Global Future Councils is the world’s foremost multistakeholder and interdisciplinary knowledge network dedicated to promoting innovative thinking to shape a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable future.
Sounds wonderful, eh? The idea of going along with WEF’s central planning seems so agreeable especially when fellow travelers are all the right buzz words.
Let’s take a look at what some of the WEF central planning involves:
Now, let’s look at a bit of history. If you are not into history, then at least consider that the following might indicate that your future on social media may end with death by central planning.
From 1960–1962, an estimated thirty million people died of starvation in China, more than any other single famine in recorded human history. Most tragically, this disaster was largely preventable. The ironically titled Great Leap Forward was supposed to be the spectacular culmination of Mao Zedong’s program for transforming China into a Communist paradise. In 1958, Chairman Mao launched a radical campaign to outproduce Great Britain, mother of the Industrial Revolution, while simultaneously achieving Communism before the Soviet Union. But the fanatical push to meet unrealistic goals led to widespread fraud and intimidation, culminating not in record-breaking output but the starvation of approximately one in twenty Chinese. (Emphasis mine.)
As you watch the following video, think Climate Change Policies. When central planning doesn’t work, humans are the tradeoff in the experiment.
Mao: “Human beings will fight nature and win.” (Mao would be great as a climate scientist. I wonder if John Kerry uses Mao’s play book)
Central planning. Why would any intelligent person would oppose it? After all, individuals plan. But hold on. Individuals freely make tradeoffs each and every day such as to what to eat, how to spend their money, etc. Central planning’s solutions, which involve a social credit score, make you the tradeoff. Do as you are told and you may live to see another day. You see, the New World covenant in your blood is the ultimate solution to the problem of humans.
Tell me. How would someone who sits on some council in Geneva Switzerland know what a person living in central Indiana needs? These people are not the paraclete, one who come beside you – the Holy Spirit. These are anti-Christ figures who want to lord it over you.
Please don’t fool yourself into thinking that science and technology and mankind have so evolved that central planning and Marxism will succeed this time around. Don’t rationalize that some good will come of it. Don’t be fooled by central planning objectives.
Don’t be fooled by WHO’s One Health initiative – “By linking humans, animals and the environment, One Health can help to address the full spectrum of disease control”. Yet, with evolved science and technology, you will not be considered human. You will be data to be surveilled. And like with the untested COVID mNRA vaccine that has caused so much harm, you will become WHO’s science project. (A test of pandemic preparedness is being planned for this fall. Be prepared for more mandates.)
And don’t be fooled. The destruction of the U.S. has been planned. Our open southern border is no mistake. What’s happening is being coordinated by globalist central planners. Running the compromised Biden regime are globalists Barack Obama, Susan Rice, Eric Holder and a cabal of America haters. They direct the “fundamental transformation” gutting of America while Biden slurps ice cream, sniff girl’s hair, and proclaims “White supremacy is America’s greatest threat” (an obvious projection of his own behavior).
The administrative state – most of them are incompetent ruinous idiots, e.g., Janet Yellen and Pete Buttigieg. These functionaries and other useful idiots will destroy America with their uselessness.
The Green New Deal is central planning shoved down our throats. It’s the present cause of high inflation, the devaluing of the U.S. Dollar and national security, and is behind the $1.7Tn Omnibus spending bill of 4,155 pages that burdens the nation with crushing debt.
Yes, a One World Government is ominous unless, of course, one is apathetic and doesn’t care about being grist for the New World mill. It’s hard to believe that so many voted for the destructive Joe Biden and members of the globalist Uniparty.
Remember. Central planning has a history, past and present, of using humans as tradeoffs in its ideological project. Forcing people to live paycheck to paycheck due to high inflation is just one tradeoff. Keep in mind, elites love themselves and have a “wonderful” central plan for your life. So, what should one do?
Walk away from the WEF, the WHO and the central planning of your life now. Tell your representatives and senators that you want the U.S. out of the WHO right now. Tell them that you want nothing to do with the WEF, digital currency, social credit scores, digital tracking, and health passports. If they send you a boilerplate response then keep sending and calling in your message. So many reps are lazy and find it easy to let others, e.g., the WHO, take the responsibility. And don’t buy into the daily fear mongering in the media. Get off social media and go touch some grass.
Here’s Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament, with words you should heed:
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“Both constrained and unconstrained visions are ultimately concerned with social results. The unconstrained vision seeks directly to achieve those results socially – that is, through collective decisions prescribing the desired outcomes. The constrained vision considers it beyond the capability of any manageable set of decision-makers to marshal the requisite knowledge, and dangerous to concentrate sufficient power, to carry out their decisions, even if were possible.”
“Clearly, only very unequal intellectual and moral standing could justify having equality imposed, whether the people want it or not, as Dworkin suggests, and only very unequal power would make it possible.” ― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
“In short, attempts to equalize economic results lead to greater—and more dangerous—inequality in political power.” ― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions
Fundamentalist religion is the most pervasive vision of central planning, though many fundamentalists may oppose human central planning as a usurpation or “playing God. This is consistent with the fundamentalist vision of an unconstrained God and a highly constrained man.
“The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me. But it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph! Visibly, irrefutably for all! Lies can prevail against much in this world, but never against art.”
Dr. James Lindsay speaking about woke culture and its relationship to Marxism
Dr. Lindsay writes about his work:
I was recently asked how I sleep at night. Now, I intentionally misinterpreted this question and answered “like a baby.” I say that I misinterpreted it because the guy was blown away and uncomfortable after hearing my perspective on everything that’s going on right now with Woke Marxism and the related bid for tyranny over the West and the world.
The reason I told him I sleep like a baby is that I’m doing something about it and know I’m doing something about it. This sort of sleep-stealing anxiety comes from being nervous and feeling unable to do anything, or through the gnawing of your conscience when you know you should be doing something but can’t. If you know you’re doing what you should, it won’t chew at you and keep you up at night.
*****
What you need to know about the World Health Organization:
Left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) very evident today:
“Costello and colleagues conceptualized LWA as a tripartite construct consisting of three correlated dimensions: anticonventionalism, top-down censorship, and antihierarchical aggression.
“Authoritarianism can be found on both sides of the political spectrum,” Krispenz and Bertrams said. “Indicators of authoritarianism on the political left are anticonventionalism (i.e., the absolute endorsement of progressive moral values), top-down censorship (i.e., the preference for the use of governmental and institutional authority to suppress any speech that is considered as offensive and intolerant), and antihierarchical aggression (i.e., the motivation to use force and aggression to overthrow established hierarchies).””
“Everyone will have to ratchet down their standard of living by over 75%”
Become a sovereign individual in whatever manner suits you: own gold, stack sats, have a Plan B, work for yourself, not somebody else and for God’s sake, turn off the TV and stop subjecting yourself to the corporate media. Connect with like-minded individuals and form both virtual and real communities and networks.
The defining tension of Late Stage Globalism will not be between “left” and “right” but between sovereign individuals and collectivists, decentralization vs centralization.
*****
Informed Dissent:
Microbiologist Kevin McKernan discovered concerning levels of DNA contamination in Pfizer and Moderna vials, including Simian Virus 40 (SV40) promoters tied to cancer development in humans.
This is the most important video you will watch this year. Millions were killed with Covid-19 for profit.
“Covid-19 was an act of biological warfare perpetrated on the human race. It was a financial heist. Nature was hijacked. Science was hijacked.” pic.twitter.com/1sYnVMaIRN
“Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes.
They shuttered businesses and schools public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. . ..
Federal executive officials entered the act too. Not just with emergency immigration decrees. They deployed a public-health agency to regulate landlord-tenant relations nationwide. They used a workplace-safety agency to issue a vaccination mandate for most working Americans.
They threatened to fire noncompliant employees, and warned that service members who refused to vaccinate might face dishonorable discharge and confinement. Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social-media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed.”
“Climate issues and pollution issues are being exploited by … mega billionaires” like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Kennedy told radio host Kim Iversen over the past weekend. “The same way that COVID was exploited to use it as an excuse to clamp down top-down totalitarian controls on society and then to give us engineering solutions.”
I saw myself standing before a parchment. It was Sandro Botticelli’s Map of Hell based on Dante’s Inferno. Or, was it? The illustration matched Botticelli’s – a structure of an inverted cone, like a funnel, which degrades with its nine circles to the center of the Earth, where . . .
But as I looked closer, I saw that this Abyss of Hell was a perverted version of Botticelli’s illustration. All that held what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable – the root and the branch of the good and sublime – had been torn up and thrown into the circles of punishment which spiraled downward to the mouth of the drain and into perpetual exile.
Millions upon millions had been ripped from their homes, their farms, their businesses, and their churches. For, it was determined that the abolition of property, families, and religion was necessary for the one true faith of Globalist/Marxist revolution.
Above the pit– the Overworld –was deep darkness and an overpowering stench. It was the darkest of ages, filled with ignorance and propaganda and saturated with a kind of speech that is purely instrumental and devoid of all sincerity and honesty. The smell of death arose from the wars, bio-plagues and famines.
With light shining up from the pit I saw a pair of towers called “Violence” and “Lies”. They stood at the edge of the pit, one at each end of its diameter. Between the towers along the perimeter of the pit stood the corrupt, the slanderers, the licentious, the liars, the moral relativists, the self-righteous ideologues, and fanatics of all sorts.
The mob howled and laughed as they tossed “the enemies of the people” and “those cockroaches!” into the pit. Some danced with signs: “Democracy!” “Progress!” “Revolution!” “Diversity! Equity! Inclusion!” and “No Enemies to the Left”.
I saw myself journey downward. Entering the first circle I saw many wringing their hands. Here were scientists, doctors, and academics required to work on Overworld projects in exchange for better provisions and gentler treatment than others in the lower circles. One doctor whispered in my ear, saying that if she fell into disfavor with the Overworld authorities, she would lose privileges and be sent down.
In circle 2 were people sentenced for their lust for truth and tradition. I saw one man tightly clenching a book – “The Rule of Law” – and another, the U.S. Constitution. I saw many holding onto the Holy Scriptures. Others clutched scores of classical music and others held great works of art and literature. One man held a photograph of his dead mother and father. All of the past had been banished from society, for the past was being rewritten for the future.
In circle 3 were the gluttonous. These had an insatiable appetite for “misinformation” – that which isn’t authorized and allowed by the Overworld.
In circle 4 were placed the greedy. These had kept to themselves and wouldn’t join in the Overworld marches and campaigns. They hid their money from the central bank of the Over Lords, bought and sold in the black market, and gave to the poor. Both the use of the black market and charity had been outlawed. All currency was to pass through the State for its approval and distribution.
In circle 5 I found those who had made the Over Lords angry. These were considered belligerent and useless. For, these had had a life of their own and were unwilling to collaborate and turn in their neighbors. These were also unwilling to vote in and steal the vote for the Overworld elections.
In the 6th circle held those known for heresy: deniers of “the science”, climate apocalypse deniers, the unvaccinated, the “misinformation” repeaters and those who believed in a “kingdom of God”. One of the Overworld commandments: “Thou shall not question”.
The 7th circle held those who acted with violence. These had used “hate speech” against those in the Overworld. These had blasphemed the Over Lords with memes, political cartoons, and jokes. Also held here, those who were believed to hold thoughts of animus against the Over Lords.
The 8th circle held the frauds. These can’t be trusted in the Overworld. They had said good things about the Over World up top but in private they ridiculed the Over World and called for revolt. These had been turned in by a neighbor.
The 9th circle was reserved for the treacherous. These included whistle blowers, “extremists”, and political subversives -those “truth-tellers” who spoke and acted against the Overworld regime. Those who called Jesus “Lord” were considered treasonous. All in the 9th circle were sentenced to perpetual exile at the bottom of the funnel gulag and eventual death.
When I came out of this most disturbing trance, I wrote down all that I had witnessed and understood.
There had been a radical reversal of the moral universe: evil was being hailed as “good” and “progressive” in its work of uniting the Overworld with One Ideology. The truly good was vilified as an evil that kept the “good” of the One Ideology from uniting the Overworld.
The rainbow, a pure reflection-of-light symbol of the Creator’s over-arching love for his creation, had been forced to the ground and spoiled by the self-deified. Light was banished, sent underground and out of sight. The One Ideology was declared “the way, the truth and the life”.
I understood that the “fundamental transformation” tempest had so shipwrecked the created order and function of the world that one could say “Hell was empty and all the devils were here” in the Overworld.
I understood the Overworld as a capricious, violent, and lawless place filled with insanity and terror-imposed ideology. The true nature of reality had been subverted by a “two plus two equals five” compulsory mentality. Pamphlets promoting scientism, determinism, collectivism, and the core “ism” – materialism were handed out with the daily ration. As people fed on this “bread” and the gruel of the media, the unthinkable was normalized and so were gulag camps. Squalid personalities, whose conviction of their own vanity and power came from their urge to destroy and their grandiose talk of building a “New World Order”, ruled the Overworld with the steamroller of their ideological enterprise.
And finally, I understood that into the darkness and stench of the Overworld there rose sparks of the human spirit and the incense of prayers from the pit’s soul-destroying circumstance of suffering and repression. I understood these phenomena as the ascent of the human soul in its struggle against the forces of evil. These in the pit had not given up their souls to the Ideological Lie.
I understood that in the man-made Abyss of Hell, created to overcome the light, that night, darkness, and despair could be purged from the soul with suffering’s catharsis. I saw light overcoming the darkness. And I saw the rainbow once again . . . in the glimmering tears of the suffering, the sad, and the longing.
*****
“Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations…. Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
*****
Violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with lying.
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
*****
Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit.
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
*****
“Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in volume I of The Gulag, argued that totalitarianisms share ten things in common:
Fear. “Fear was not always the fear of arrest. There were immediate threats: purges, inspections, the completion of security questionnaires—routine or extraordinary ones—dismissal from work, deprivation of resident permit, expulsion or exile.”
Servitude. Internal passports, legal prohibitions on buying, selling, or renting housing stock greatly limited one’s ability to escape, the right to exit was denied.
Secrecy and Distrust. “This universal mutual mistrust had the effect of deepening the mass-grave pit of slavery. The moment someone began to speak up frankly, everyone stepped back and shunned him: ‘A provocation!’ And therefore anyone who burst out with a sincere protest was predestined to loneliness and alienation.”
Universal Ignorance. Because of number three, no one could trust the information of another, or trust another with information. This resulted in true isolation of the right-thinking person.
Squealing on one another, further eroding any trust that might exist. Without trust, civilization proved impossible.
Betrayal, therefore, became a norm. Sons betrayed fathers, daughters betrayed mothers, husband betrayed wives, and supposed best friends betrayed one another.
Corruption, as a result, became endemic, as the betrayers became professionals, earning positions, status, and wealth for their inside information, true or false. Frequently, one informed on a person simply to acquire something the other person had or had created. The informer then became the owner and the “creator.”
Lies. “The permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence, in the same way as betrayal. Every wag of the tongue can be overheard by someone, every facial expression observed by someone. Therefore every word, if it does not have to be a direct lie, is nonetheless obliged not to contradict the general, common lie. There exists a collection of ready-made phrases, of labels, a selection of ready-made lies.
Cruelty. “And where among all the preceding qualities was there any place left for kindheartedness? How could one possibility preserve one’s kindness while pushing away the hands of those who were drowning? Once you have been steeped in blood, you can only become more cruel. . . . And when you add that kindness was ridiculed, that pity was ridiculed, that mercy was ridiculed—you’d never be able to chain all those who were drunk on blood.”
Slave psychology. The system, ultimately, made men impotent.”
The advent of high-speed large volume (5G) digital technology leading to world-wide digital communications leading to almost unlimited interface will be used for totalitarian control. The advent of this technology is already being developed to bring about ultimate control via smart devices, digital health passports, digital implants and the coming Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
Previous totalitarian leaders controlled everything they could – the media, the church, the education, production, etc. – with physical terror and show trials. But they didn’t have the omnipresent terror of digital control of communications, commerce, and currency. Digital technology will be the ultimate totalitarian and will bring about the scenario above.
If the Biden regime turns over U.S. sovereignty to the World Health Organization, our health freedom and all of our freedoms, will become dependent on a few people at the WHO. Right now, I am seeing elected leaders and local governments turning over authority to public health agencies in the state. Local public health authorities do not want the responsibility or the liability of public health, so they will accept WHO’s authority.
Green energy/climate change/environmental justice tyranny. Laws are being passed, regulations are being issued from the administrative state, and the Biden regime has signed an Executive Order that will define and incumber life for Americans. We are living with an energy crisis of Biden’s own making. Inflation is just one of the destructive outcomes of Biden’s policies.
The administrative state, where the likes gain-of-function Anthony Fauci come from, bypasses laws to regulate every part of our lives.
The weaponized DOJ and FBI under Merrick Garland are assailing private citizens in their use of the First Amendment to speak against the government and setting them up for arrest.
The CIA is tracking U.S. citizens, collecting data to be used against them.
Quarantine camps, employed during COVID, will be built and used for the next pandemic – a deadly bird flu bioweapon pandemic.
Media outlets are given the same narrative so Groupthink is established. The bought-and-paid for media will repeat what it is told. (The same and more will occur when the WHO takes over our health!)
*****
Podcasts:
2017-10-03 – Daniel J. Mahoney – Hillsdale College (The Gulag Archipelago Reconsidered)
Instead of spending time on Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, and TV, spend time reading about what actually took place the last century and what will take place again if one is more disposed to spend time on Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, and TV.
In the 1980’s I read the three volumes of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. For some reason I was draw to these works during the Reagan era. Now I understand that these accounts prepared me for the tyranny of COVID mandates starting in 2020 and the totalitarian days ahead.
General note: In order to clear up memory for future podcasts, videos, and documents, I will need to remove older podcasts and documents in the coming weeks. Please download as you see fit. Thank you.
It has been said by those who have gone on before us that in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. The Left, with its love of death and taxes and underworld ideology, have added to what is said to be certain: racism and climate change.
Racism’s certainty, as claimed by those who seek to benefit, is the Heart of Darkness inherent in all white people from time immemorial – a sweeping generalization that ignores vast accounts of reality. (Union troops killed in action: 110,000. Total dead: 360,000. Wounded: 275,200. And you need reparations? You need your head examined!)
As wielded by the Left, racism is that which does not accord with that which comes out of the Left’s mouth or pen. That is a well-documented documented certainty. A charge of racism is meant to silence dissent and to proclaim the above forgone conclusion. For, one is even deemed “racist” just for opening one’s mouth in utter disbelief upon hearing the Left speak.
Regarding the other certitude candidate, the Left is working the climate change apocalypse narrative up to a fever pitch of do-or-die certainty. Do what you are told or the world will end. This they know, for The Science tells them so. The media and classrooms are the Sunday Schools of the climate religion.
“Climate realists should gird their loins in preparation for the pending onslaught of stories in the mainstream media proclaiming this or that seasonal weather event is being enhanced by anthropogenic climate change to some degree somehow or other.
For the past two decades, every year as winter wanes and spring springs, the media has engaged in its contemporary rite of spring: climate fear.”
The first day of spring this past week and, lo and behold, rain is forecasted. Heavy rains and flood warnings are noted for certain areas. Low lying areas, flood plains, areas close to existing water and sewer systems that cannot handle the runoff will see flooding, as expected.
TV viewers will again see pictures of flooded streets and videos of some reporter dude flapping his jaw in flapping rain gear in a flapping storm. No one likes flooding. Some have incurred it and have dealt with it. We can’t control weather but we can control what we do with the weather given us. But hold on! Climate bookies are telling us the stakes have been raised.
“Never before extreme weather” is being forecasted based on the certainty of assumptions:
The hydrological cycle is expected to intensify with global warming, which likely increases the intensity of extreme precipitation events and the risk of flooding. (Emphasis mine)
As global warming increases the likelihood for more extreme weather events to occur, risks will expand beyond the high-risk areas known today. More extreme flooding must be expected, and for the towns and cities where flooding has already occurred, theirs will no longer be a ‘once in a lifetime’ risk but now far more frequent. (Emphasis mine)
Will the risk of flooding in your area soon be media-ascribed to an anthropogenic-caused risk level of RED based on the transmission of rain drops in your area? Anything is possible as we have seen with the COVID plandemic. Flatten the curve of that nonsense.
H. Sterling Burnett, PhD recommends that “when you see stories this year claiming climate change is causing an apocalypse of allergies, maple syrup disappearance, floods, hurricanes, drought, and wildfires, check the facts. It will make you feel better. The Heartland Institute provides the fully referenced data on these and other extreme weather trends at ClimateRealism.com and ClimateataGlance.com.”
Here’s a podcast discussing green imperialism and what myopic climate activism does to poor
Manmade extreme flood conditions, not of the hydrologic kind, are upon us. Economic flood waters, digital flood waters and cultural flood waters are rising quickly around us. They are devasting in nature.
Economic Flood Waters:
Food costs, fuel costs, declining and stagnant wages, high interest rates, the inverted yield curve, and increasing levels of personal debt are some of the major indicators of the catastrophic effect of the reckless control of the economy.
The Fed is ‘trying’ to get the flood waters of inflation under control while the Biden regime along with Democrats and feckless Republicans are flooding the economy with massive inflationary spending. The $1.7 trillion Omnibus bill is the latest torrential rainfall. More dollars are chasing fewer goods. The dollar is being devalued. It makes perfect nonsense.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell are incompetent in their roles. They should never have been put into their respective positions.
When it comes to inflation incompetence, look no further than Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. In her powerful position, Ms. Yellen is supposed to advocate sound economic policies that help the American people. But when millions of hardworking families were struggling with out-of-control inflation not seen in 40 years, Ms. Yellen helped pave the way for the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which had nothing to do with reducing inflation. Even Paul Krugman at The New York Times admits: “The strategically misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act is mainly a climate bill.” –In Biden’s incompetent Cabinet, how has no one been fired or asked to resign? – Washington Times
Jerome Powell has no economic background. Both Yellen and Powell talk the talk as they are Washington insiders. They are also puppets of the Biden regime and that doesn’t bode well for Americans who are under water. And there’s this:
The people entrusted to secure the U.S. dollar and the financial system are incompetent and politically biased and that means that low and middle class people like you and me will be soon overwhelmed by the extreme financial events pouring out of bad decisions.
For people who are acutely aware of their debts, higher rates intensify the woes, said Ashley Agnew of Centerpoint Advisors in Needham, Mass. “It feels more like a punishment than an interest rate,” she said.
Keep in mind: the people who are mishandling the economy and bringing about the managed decline of the country are some of the same people who call you names and want to control the climate.
Digital Flood Waters:
We immerse ourselves in digital streams. We own handheld devices for texting, paying, playing, watching and talking. We are walking data streams. And driving data streams.
Late model cars have digital tracking. It’s there for “roadside assistance” and to track your wear and tear on the car. Drive Safe & Save type apps used to monitor your driving habits and to automatically record trips. The app will give you feedback about your acceleration, braking corner, speeding and distracted driving. The insurance company rewards you (premium discount) for being enrolled in their data stream.
To Enjoy an “Easier and Better Life With Smart Home Devices” we buy smart TVs, smart appliances, smart thermostats, smart cameras, smart locks, smart security systems, smart speakers, etc. etc. We are embedded in data streams and may have them embedded in us. And that’s a problem.
There are enormous risks in involved with online data. For example, at the end of last year I learned that the company I had been working for had received a ransomware attack. I received a letter from the company saying that my personal information had been stolen. The company set me up with a credit monitoring company but my personal information is out there in the cyber underworld.
There are home title thieves who can go online and steal your title and leave you holding enormous debt and no title.
On the receiving end of your data are people and/or AI systems monitoring you. Neither consider you a person. You are a data stream that for one, can be monetized and for another can be controlled to be the perfect consumer. You already know this and go along with it with every click.
So, you should know that when the Fed comes out with Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and replaces physical cash, your whole life will then be a data stream not under your control.
Your purchases of food and gas, of everything, will be monitored and controlled by ESG AI algorithms who don’t give a hoot about you and your situation. A social credit system will be employed to the end that you will be made to submit to whatever the gods of this world decide atop the DAVOS ziggurat.
Many have been seduced by the programmable digital world. Many spend their time knee deep in digital streams. But the manmade digital flood that is coming will overtake them. They will be left hanging on to whatever non-digital flotsam you can find to hold on to.
Below is a brief summary of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and how they can be wielded against society to enforce ESG compliance. From Digital Dollars – The Heartland Institute:
A digital dollar’s threats to privacy and freedom are real. First, the government could easily block transactions. This already happens as government pressure has led banks and PayPal to cancel accounts. The Canadian government blocked funding for the Freedom Convoy truckers. A CBDC empowers government micromanagement of our transactions.
Second, digital dollars could have expiration dates or automatically lose value. This undermines money’s ability to serve as a store of value, or let people hold onto purchasing power. Non-counterfeit money represents unconsumed production, the accumulated pay you never spent. It should not expire, ever. (Emphasis mine.)
Tell your representatives that you do not want CBDC and to kill UCC modification bills. Tell your representatives that you are not all happy with the managed decline of America that they are taking part in.
Open wounds and rashes exposed to floodwater can become infected. Vibrios, for example, are naturally occurring bacteria that live in certain coastal waters and can cause skin infections when an open wound is exposed to them. This can happen during floods. To protect yourself and your family: Avoid exposure to floodwater.
It is difficult to avoid the bacterial flood waters of our culture. Without proper borders, it flows in and infects.
The culture’s bacterial flood waters have entered our home via TV, the internet, and smartphones. Children are babysat by TV programs that infect and wound young susceptible minds. It is no different for teens and adults, as they passively invite in the bacterial flood waters with its deteriorating effect on their being.
Bacterial flood waters have entered our education systems via the degenerate sponsors of CRT and the sexualization of children. Our school children are becoming infected with gay porn that is promoted in the classroom and in school libraries.
Bacterial flood waters have entered our churches via “acceptance” and “inclusion” policies and via mega church structures that hid sin. Catholic congregations are becoming infected by priests who promote open borders and homosexuality. Moral failings, abuse, toxic internal structures, and the utter hypocrisy of leadership as seen in mega churches like Hillsong and Willowcreek reveal the church has been infected with the cultural bacteria.
Sewers have backed up from torrents of hedonism that rain down on us from the digital clouds. One is easily infected, via devices, with the bacterial sewer water of a hedonistic lifestyle. “You need such and such or so and so to be truly happy. Click here.”
Those who practice abortion, homosexuality, and “affirming care” leading to permanent mangling of children’s bodies have crossed a cultural Rubicon, unaware that they have been led there by Malthusians.
Those who are forced to use pronouns that do not match a person’s gender are being forced to lie to their neighbor.
Our culture has been infected by bacterial flood waters brought about by the manmade deluge of the misuse, disordering and dysfunction of Nature – a product of cultural climate change activism.
Gay Iconoclasm: Holding the Line against the Radical LGBT Agenda
The massive flood of illegal immigration created by the Biden regime’s manmade open border policy is altering the cultural landscape of our country. The U.S. will soon be covered in the flood waters of economic opportunists (not refugees), terrorists, gangs, drugs dealers, pedophiles, criminals, and fentanyl.
As such, the U.S. will become a third world country – just what the fundamental-transformation-hate-America ideologues have so desired. Then U.S. citizens will be ordered around like Venezuelans are dictated to by Nicolás Maduro and Brazilians by CCP controlled Lula de Silva.
The open border’s flood of illegal immigrants is not being done as an act of compassion and generosity on the part the Left. It is being done to destabilize America. It is being done to flood the zone of American’s resolve against a New World Order leadership that wants to own America, with those who come in depending on government, aka the Biden regime.
A very brief history of back in time:
In the beginning the cosmos, established by God, was non-ordered. The primary act of creation was bringing into existence the ordering of the material cosmos and human society. God brought order to our world and at the same time left non-order for humans to “subdue and rule”, i.e., work with God to bring about order.
“God didn’t produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself.” – John Polkinghorne
Disorder stands in opposition to order. Disorder works to move the center of order from God to man who says “I will order life my way”. Order and the yet-to-be-ordered are affected by the inherently evil disorder. Chaos – out of order – ensues, as evidenced in our world today. Human disorder flooded the days of Noah and is flooding our lives today.
“The suffering and evil of the world are not due to weakness, oversight, or callousness on God’s part. But rather, are the inescapable costs of a creation allowed to be other than God.” – John Polkinghorne
Hyperbole was used by a Hebrew author to describe a devastating flood just like other Ancient Near East (ANE) account authors did. For example, reading these accounts one gets the idea that the flood was universal and covering the earth. But there is no geological record of such a worldwide flood. The flood is certainly wide-ranging in its devastation, so it is not a local flood either. Hyperbole was used to make important theological points.
In ANE accounts the gods were dependent on humans to supply their needs. They became unhappy with unruly mankind and decided to flood the earth and wipe away mankind. A remnant was saved to continue serving the gods’ needs.
The Hebrew flood account can be understood as a God “order-bringing event” to the creation he once ordered. Noah is to be the order-preserving remnant.
“The connection of Noah’s name to the flood suggests that besides being presented as an act of judgement, grace and deliverance, the narrator is recounting this event as a sort of “reset button.” God uses non-order (the waters) to eliminate disorder (pervasive violence) and then to reestablish optimal order (even as he recognizes that disorder remains [Ge. 8:21]).” – Tremper Longman III & John Walton, The Lost World of the Flood, Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate, 118
What I see happening in our world today is similar to the ANE accounts of the flood. The gods of this world, who are dependent on humans to supply their needs, specifically wealth and power, have become unhappy with mankind. Mankind is too independent and not organized the way they want. They have decided to flood the earth and bring about a Great Reset: “We will order life our way”. A flood of disorder, they assume, will wipe away the God-ordered world. But they are off center . . .
The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established. -Proverbs 19:21
The climate apocalypse narrative is hyperbole. It is being used as hyperbole to produce a theological point: that transformational change, not of the climate but of humanity, away from the image of God, is necessary. The gods of this world will use any means necessary, including and not limited to the above, to bring about devasting disorder that they believe leads to a New World Order.
As we have seen, the NWO gods used “The Science” for the COVID plandemic to move people to a place of submission. Consider the devastating disorder brought upon people with mandates and the untested mNRA DNA altering vaccine.
They are now using “The Science” in the climate change narrative for the same reason. “The Science” will be used again and again to bring about the NWO.
Now, because I don’t accept NWO theology and won’t submit to NWO gods does not mean that I reject science. That is an oft used criticism used by NWO gods to say that I’m not thinking straight or that I’m not thinking about the right things. I don’t reject science. I reject the NOW’s “The Science” hyperbole.
Having said all this, what are you prepared to do . . . about devastating disorder?
*****
Climate Change – What is the science behind this?
*****
Alarmism? I guess that I am somewhat inured to it. The year the United States detonated the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific, I was born. There were Duck and cover drills in my elementary school.
I have lived with a heightened state of alarm brought about by the prospect of nuclear war, the state of the Cold War, and the burgeoning unrest centered around the Viet Nam War. And, there was and continues to be the alarming outcomes brought about by the economic mishandling of policy makers.
And there was the end of the world eschatology alarmism of The Late Great Planet Earth and later, the Left Behind series.
I don’t know of anyone on the earth who is omniscient or all knowing. And that includes scripture and science prognosticators. False prophets abound. They over promise and under deliver.
All of the above situations and alarms were manmade.
On another familiar subject . . .
My own experience with flooding goes way back to the time my father was mayor of a suburban Chicago village. Continuous rain flooded a creek that runs from the Wisconsin border down into the Des Plaines River and right through the eastern section of the village.
The flooding caused significant damage to commercial and residential property. The overflow of the creek’s waters blocked the main throughfare through the village, preventing commerce.
Illinois Senator Charles Percy came down to meet with my father. The two of them got into a row boat to survey the damage. State monies came later to shore up the creek, to pay for the damage, and to help with storm water management. A year later a tornado hit our village and tore up some apartment buildings. Extreme weather happens.
The village was situated on a flood plain. Our basement flooded every spring until my father put in a sump pump. He saw what would happen again and adapted.
*****
Informed dissent:
Notice the increase. These terms and “white supremacy” are used more and more to silence dissent and to program you to react the same way.
🚨 Fmr. CDC Director Dr. Redfield: "This Pandemic Was Caused by Science"
"I think it was done probably as part of a biodefense program that largely was trying to make a vaccine vector…but unfortunately that virus escaped…probably somewhere in the September [2019] timeframe.… pic.twitter.com/Gm841fLuk7
What Ed Dowd says here is the most powerful assessment of the humanitarian catastrophe wrought by public health authorities (& those who control them) via their demonstrably & increasingly insane policies of mass toxic vaccination with denial of effective, cheap early treatments. -Dr. Pierre Kory
Informed Dissenter:
These “public health” hoodlums (Fauci & Bowser) come to the hood to push vaccines but not Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to save lives.
January 2020. Chicago. J.P. is at work when word of a Beast– afierce and untamable infectious agent created by science gods in Red China – is unleashed upon the world.
The Beast crosses the globe. Disorder dysfunction and dread ensues. The non-stop reporting on sightings of the Beast causes widespread alarm. Deep rotting fear begins to possess people. They become infected with it. J.P., on the other hand, won’t let fear run his life.
Holding on to the long-standing wisdom of his tribe, he understands that fear is a paralyzing sickness that crawls into the soul of anyone who engages it. He was not raised to live with fear. “I’ll strike it from my heart, he said. “I’ll not bring it home. I’ll run my life with the understanding I’ve been given.”
March 2020. The satrap of Illinois tells residents that priests of The Science have spoken: “All tribes and all villages must perform certain rituals for two weeks to ward off the Beast.”
Residents are told that they must wear masks, social distance, shut down their small business and church, and lock themselves down in their homes. They are not to be in close company with anyone, not even the elderly or dying. Then and only then, citizens are told, will panic be flattened and the Beast quashed.
But after two weeks the Beast is still roaming the land.
So, the priests of The Science begin using incantations to bring about obedience to The Science: “We’re all in this together” ‘Follow The Science” “We must flatten the Curve”.
When not cajoling for submission, The Science magistrates threaten with business license forfeitures, fines and, jail time. False tests are used to quarantine many in isolation camps. Vivid and horrifying tales, not of the Beast but of the fierce and untamable priests of The Science, set the stage for their next ritual.
“You want to slay the Beast and be accepted by the priests of The Science? Then you must drink the blood of babies sacrificed to Molech!” “Then and only then,” citizens are told, “will The Science be satisfied and the Beast put down”. “Then, and only then, will you be allowed to get back to normal.” “Then and only then, will you get their stuff back.” And so came the saying “The Science gives and The Science takes away. Blessed be The Science.”
The media acolytes of The Science said “You must follow what the priests of The Science tell you. Follow us for their words of wisdom.” And many did. Many walked around sheepishly wearing masks. And many drank the cup of salvation promoted by the acolytes who were paid to promote it. But J.P. would not drink the beastly potion. So, his head was to be put on the chopping block.
J.P. was told that he would lose his job if he did not drink the cup of salvation. J.P. resisted. He said that his god wouldn’t allow him to drink it. It was unwise to do so, he said. Such a drink would hollow you out, he said. And finally, hoping to eclipse the glaring scorn the priests of The Science focused on him, he said that he worshipped an almighty god, one who spoke into the darkness and created the light. He would serve that god.
Now, none of what the priests had ordered, deemed the height of wisdom by media oracles, seemed wise to J.P. And none of what the priests signaled they were doing –pursuing the Beast – was true. They were actually chasing after J.P. to take him down.
The fierce and untamable priests of The Science, you see, were not happy with those who wouldn’t worship The Science. The priests mocked and stigmatized those unwilling to submit to their rituals. They painted them as outliers, social outcasts and, weirdos. As such, they were used for media target practice. J.P. outran the media arrows and kept running.
Before it all and through it all, J.P. stayed the course of his imago dei tribe. He continued to order his life with a health regimen of vitamins, good food, and exercise outdoors. He didn’t wear a mask. Doing so was unwise.
J.P. told himself “If I get the virus, my body will deal with it. If I get the virus, then I’ll have immunity just like every other time. And, more importantly, I will not have served a foreign god”.
He continued to function by working from home. He refused to be tested and to wear a mask and to sit isolated from everyone as the workplace required. He stayed the course. That was wisdom of practice.
Looking back, J.P. questioned who created more chaos and suffering– the Beast or the predatory priests of The Science? The Beast attacked had his tribe. Some suffered and a few died. Wisdom remains with the remnant.
On the other hand, it was the madness of the fierce and untamable priests of The Science that had created the Beast. It was these priests who sanctioned threats, and the capture and sacrifice of people everywhere. It was these priests who demanded subjugation to the unholy cup of salvation the wizards of The Science had created.
And, just like the gods of ancient tales, the priests of The Science sought destruction for the purpose of reconstruction. They attempted to reduce the population because of their discontent with humans. They loved data and their own thoughts more than humans.
Tactics of fear and chaos theory were employed to see how people would react to the creation of a new world order under The Science. With all this, the priests of The Science revealed themselves to be the Beast.
The Beast continues to grow larger. It feeds on lies, vows of submission and money. It will arrive on our shores again.
And J.P., guided by wisdom, will again be led down straight paths where his steps will not be hampered. He will run again and not stumble. He will hold on to wisdom and not let it go. He will guard it well for it is his life.
*****
“Happy people have no history . . . of mNRA vaccination.” A 2023 proverb.
.@RobertKennedyJr Explains Why Fauci Had Such a Problem With Early Treatment
"Tony Fauci's problem is this: there's a little known federal law that says, 'You cannot give an emergency use authorization to a vaccine if there is any medication approved for any purpose that is… pic.twitter.com/qffF1BIWDU
🚨 Breaking: Former CDC Director testifies that he was excluded and kept out of the loop by Fauci and the rest of the establishment because he had a different opinion about Covid origins, which he believes came from a lab.pic.twitter.com/LDkL2NskbL
Z codes for underimmunization status (Z28 series) were introduced in 2016 by the World Health Organization. One code used for religious exemptions was labeled “patient decision for reasons of belief or group pressure.” . . .
The CDC also specified that “underimmunization status” can be documented in a medical record by a clinician other than their provider. Most ICD codes can only be documented by the provider “legally accountable for establishing the patient’s diagnosis.”[ix]
Make no mistake, this is about tracking the unvaccinated. “Track” is the exact word used by those discussing this addition to the ICD-10 on the September 2021 National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) call.
HR79, the WHO Withdrawal Act, has been introduced in Congress but has not yet been scheduled for a hearing by the Foreign Affairs Committee, despite ongoing negotiations and proposed adoption of the new treaty in May 2024.
“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 
Honey, They Shrunk the Choice Architecture
May 26, 2024 Leave a comment
You and I being are being directed to change our behaviors.
Felt a Nudge lately? A reminder to do something to better your health, your finances, the environment? Felt a Nudge during COVID to mask and social distance and sanitize and to be vaccinated?
Felt a Nudge Down With RYBELSUS? A Nanny State Nudge to buy into a government service? A pop-up nudge? A click-bait nudge? A text nudge? A nudge to buy something before its gone? A nudge to pay for something using only digital payment and not cash? A Nurge (Urgent Nudge) to decarbonize to prevent “climate catastrophe”?
Behavioral science is being used to direct our decisions.
Influencing behavior in a libertarian paternalistic way with active engineering of choice architecture is behind the concept of nudge theory developed by Richard Thaler, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Chicago.
Why influence behavior in a libertarian paternalistic way? It has been said that . . .
“In recent decades, behavioral economists have shown that, out of impulse, impatience, or ignorance, people often make choices that are not the best or even good for them: we are not the rational self-interest maximizers that conventional economists have long assumed [see “The Marketplace of Perceptions,” March-April 2006].” Cass Sunstein on the constitution in the 21st century | Harvard Magazine
The “nudge”, a gentle prompt that influences people’s behavior in a predictable way, was popularized in the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by behavioral economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. The book discusses how it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behavior, while maintaining freedom of choice, to help steer people to people make better choices in their daily lives, because in Thaler’s and Sunstein’s assessment . . .
“People often make poor choices—and look back at them with bafflement!” And . . .
“We do this because, as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself.”
Nudge theory is based upon the idea that by shaping the environment, also known as the “choice architecture” – a term coined by Thaler and Sunstein in their Nudge book – one can influence the likelihood that one option is chosen over another by individuals who feel in control of the decisions they make.
Terms
Choice architecture is the framing of different ways choices are presented. These would include the number of choices presented, the manner in which attributes are described, and the presence of a “default.” One example: how food is displayed in cafeterias. Offering healthy food at the beginning of the line or at eye level can contribute to healthier choices.
Libertarian paternalism is an oxymoronic term coined by Richard Thaler. Being “Libertarian” “means being free to make your own choices about your own life, that what you do with your body and your property ought to be up to you. Other people must not forcibly interfere with your liberty, and you must not forcibly interfere with theirs.”
Paternalism is “A policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities. Paternalism can be “excessive governmental regulation of the private affairs and business methods and interests of the people; undue solicitude on the part of the central government for the protection of the people and their interests, and interference therewith.”
A Libertarian approach preserves freedom of choice and being able to opt out. A paternalistic approach assumes a restriction of choice. Libertarian paternalism is “an approach that preserves freedom of choice but that authorizes both private and public institutions to steer people in directions that will promote their welfare.”
Nudge is a gentle prompt that influences people’s behavior in a predictable way to make better decisions. It doesn’t mandate, order, enforce, or control. It uses motivational techniques most people respond to – such as the need to fit in with social norms. A nudge is meant to move people toward the best decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society, without restricting our freedom of choice.
“Nudging, like persuasion, can be used with more or less ethical intentions. When it is less ethical it is known as Sludge. A lot of nudging involves changing a choice architecture that people are faced with.”
10 Important Nudges: Simple Things That Can Change Behaviors – The World of Work Project
Examples of using “choice architecture”:
In Retail:
1. Placement of items in a store
2. Use of scarcity and social proof in marketing
3. Use of loyalty programs and rewards
In Technology:
1. Default settings on devices and apps
2. Push notifications and reminders
3. Gamification of tasks and activities
In Health and Wellness
Use of reminders and goal-setting tools
Design of workout spaces and equipment
Use of social support and accountability
In Finance
1. Automatic savings and investment plans
2. Design of banking apps and websites
3. Use of behavioral economics in financial education
Nudge Theory: Definition and 10 Examples (2024) (helpfulprofessor.com)
Small nudges to giant leaps: Examples of nudging in the workplace (applaudhr.com)
Examples of Nudge Theory in Public Policy:
Nudging supposedly makes it easier for improved access to public services and help people achieve their goals in life.
In the UK the Nudge Unit was established in the Cabinet Office in 2010 by David Cameron’s government to apply behavioral science to public policy. The Behavioral Insights team, or “Nudge Unit”, plays a big role in helping the government formulate its response to coronavirus. “The Nudge Unit is working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care in crafting the government response. The most visible manifestation of its influence to date is in the communication around hand-washing and face touching – in particular the use of “disgust” as an incentive to wash hands and the suggestion of singing Happy Birthday to ensure hands are washed for the requisite 20 seconds.” -Jill Rutter, “Nudge Unit” | Institute for Government
Boris Johnson’s government tried to fight the coronavirus pandemic by using the nudge theory to encourage “herd immunity”.
The Canadian Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), established in 2014, emerged from the original “Nudge Unit” in the British government, which was founded in the Cabinet Office in 2010. It uses a consultancy model to support government and the not-for-profit sector to support BI [behavioral insights] policy interventions. Nudging the way to better public policy (irpp.org)
One example in Canada is to make Elections and voting day need an injection of fun and celebration. Nudge theory illustrates ways to inspire anyone too busy, too “irritated” to vote.
Personal freedoms are a fundamental value of our liberal democracy. Citizens have the choice to opt out of participating. Thus, we should focus on making voting easier to opt into but not mandatory. We should act in ways that will nudge, not force, people to the voting booth.
We need to nudge joy into voting (irpp.org)
Both David Cameron and Barack Obama employed the nudge theory to advance domestic policy goals in their countries.
In the U.S. . . .based on research from University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard law school professor Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar. . . who argued in their 2008 book “Nudge” that government policies can be designed in a way that “nudges” citizens towards certain behaviors and choices. . .
On September 15, 2015, Obama issued Executive Order 13707 “Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better serve American People” directing Federal Government Agencies to apply Behavioral Science Insights to design their policies and programs.
Per Donald Marron at Forbes:
“President Obama established the unit—officially known as the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST)—to use insights from psychology, behavioral economics, and other decision sciences to improve federal programs and operations. Those social sciences increasingly appreciate what regular folks have long known: people are imperfect. We procrastinate. We avoid making choices. We get confused and discouraged by complex forms. We forget to do things. We sometimes lack the energy to weigh decisions thoroughly, so we act based on what we think our peers do or how choices are framed. And we sometimes cut corners when we think no one is looking.”
The Executive Order also charges the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST), a cross-agency group, to make it happen.
Per Megan Fella at Obama’s effort to ‘nudge’ America (politico.com)
“Ultimately, knowing what drives us puts us in the driver’s seat.” – Susan M. Schneider
The Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST) is a small, but mighty group of leading behavioral scientists and innovators from across the country. Housed within the Office of Evaluation Sciences at GSA, the SBST realizes that “seemingly small barriers to engagement…can prevent programs from effectively reaching the people they are intended to serve” and that “an effective and efficient government must, therefore, reflect our best understanding of human behavior.”
According to Meet the Social and Behavioral Science Team (usa.gov):
In order to create a better government, the SBST looks for opportunities in four aspects of program design:
Streamlining access to programs and benefits
Improving how government presents information to consumers, borrowers, and program beneficiaries
Enhancing how government presents and structures choices within programs
Examining the frequency, presentation, and labeling of benefits, tax credits, and other incentives
Chuck Ross, on September 15, 2015, voiced his concerns: Obama’s Nudge Brigade: White House Embraces Behavioral Sciences To Improve Government (forbes.com)
“President Obama’s federal health care law, Obamacare, is replete with “nudge” language and experimentation. . .
“Another nudge contained in Obamacare was brought to light in the debate over whether the individual mandate contained in the law was a tax hike.
“Republicans insisted that it was a tax increase, but the White House portrayed it as a penalty on the logic that the word “tax” has a negative connotation.
While the Obama administration touted nudge policies, others were hesitant to get on board.
““I am very skeptical of a team promoting nudge policies,” Michael Thomas, an economist at Utah State University, told Fox News in 2013.
““Ultimately, nudging…assumes a small group of people in government know better about choices than the individuals making them.”” (Emphasis mine.)
The purpose of this post is to provide a simplified overview of behavioral science manipulation tactics being used and to make readers aware of “nudging”. The little pokes and prods to improve behavior sound benign:
“Sunstein defines nudges as “simple, low-cost, freedom-preserving approaches, drawing directly from behavioral economics, that promise to save money, to improve people’s health, and to lengthen their lives”—small pushes in the right direction, like a restaurant disclosing the calorie count of each dish so patrons are more likely to order healthy food, or a company setting up its 401(k) plan so employees are automatically enrolled in the savings program and must choose to opt out.”
– Lincoln Caplan, Cass R. Sunstein – Harvard Law School | Harvard Law School
Richard Thaler – Nudge: An Overview (youtube.com)
My concerns:
Who’s nudging me? Who’s arranging my choices? Who’s engineering my “choice architecture” and by what values?
Using motivational techniques most people respond to – such as the need to fit in with social norms to positively change people’s behavior, I’m OK with. Automatically enrolling employees in an optional 401(k), for instance, or easily allowing organ donors to opt out, I’m OK with. But what about the motivational techniques behind consequential choices like healthcare or the COVID vaccine or whether I need more government decision making in my life? Can I opt of the choices given me?
As employed by government policies and programs, behavioral science “nudging” seems to be making big government more attractive and more conducive for an individual to rely on government for more and more decision making. Nudge’s low intensity manipulation seems to always advance the goals of the federal government while couched in ways as helping people make good decisions. As such, “nudging” seems to be growing the Nanny State.
Certainly, there are concerns about the ethics of nudging. Nudges can engineer people’s choices to reach certain ends desired by a policy maker. A policy “choice architecture” can, by design, make certain options have a greater chance of being chosen. Ergo, the government should be transparent in its behavioral approaches to ensure that policymakers, media, and the public have the evidence they need to judge their merits. Yet, I don’t every government agency will be transparent with its manipulation or propaganda.
When nudging seeks to frame behavior with limited choices to achieve a political outcome, then formerly well-intentioned nudges give way to outright manipulation. We will then be influenced to do whatever those in power want done. Example: When “We’re all in this together” becomes the stigmatizing “The pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
What happens when the owners of a technocratic control group known as social media shrink your choice architecture” on the inter-web and you do not see all there is to know? Such frames are difficult to combat because we are not often presented with the alternative frame, and thus we often don’t realize how the frame we see affects our decisions.
When information leading to truth is censored by technocrats with government approval, tyranny is slowly being put in place to rob common people of their health, savings, freedoms, and their futures. In other words, “Freedom of choice be damned!”
You will want to read this>> Exposing The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media | ZeroHedge
What happens when sensible “choice architecture” that nudges people toward the best decisions for themselves, their families, and society without restricting freedom of choice, shrinks to “choose this or else” as with a mandate? “Honey, they shrunk the Choice Architecture and have grown the size of their influence!”
A [San Francisco Democrat’s] bill before California lawmakers would require new cars sold in the state in coming years to beep a warning whenever drivers exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph
New cars in California could alert drivers for breaking the speed limit – ABC News (go.com)
According to the write up, the signal can be turned off – the driver’s choice architecture.
~~~~~
More information:
Richard Thaler won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his “contributions to behavioral economics.”
Cass Sunstein is an American legal scholar known for his work in constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and behavioral economics. Cass R. Sunstein – Harvard Law School | Harvard Law School
“From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs [under Obama], and after that, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioral Insights Team in the United Kingdom.”
How Nudging Can Change Customer’s Behaviour – Radiant Copywriting
Frontiers | Nudge politics: efficacy and ethics (frontiersin.org)
Nudge and Nudging in Public Policy | SpringerLink
Nudging in Public Policy | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
Behavioural Insights Team: ethical, professional and historical considerations | Behavioural Public Policy | Cambridge Core
Nudge theory: what 15 years of research tells us about its promises and politics (theconversation.com)
Nudge theory doesn’t work after all, says new evidence review – but it could still have a future (theconversation.com)
Barriers to Converting Applied Social Psychology to Bettering the Human Condition (tandfonline.com)
There’s a backlash against nudging – but it was never meant to solve every problem | Cass Sunstein | The Guardian
Freedom and Flourishing: Is economics becoming a branch of psychology?
Nudge: How Small Changes Can Significantly Influence People’s Choices – Effectiviology
~~~~~
Winston Marshall Matters
Laura Dodsworth is a photographer, artist and author. In her most recent book Free Your Mind: The New World of Manipulation and How to Resist it, Laura draws on the Nudge Unit, behavioral psychology and fact checking services to analyze the range of ways in which our minds are manipulated. On the podcast, Laura talks about the government propaganda machine and how this all relates back to issues such as climate catastrophe, the pandemic and free speech.
Laura Dodsworth: How to protect yourself from government propaganda | The Spectator
Learn how to recognize and resist the daily attempts to control and manipulate your mind.
There is a war on for your mind. You may not notice, but you are surrounded by manipulators: advertisers, politicians, big tech, even the humble waiter who asks, ‘Still or sparkling?’
Free Your Mind is your field manual to surviving the information battlefield. In this indispensable book, Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan draw on interviews with mind-control experts ranging from monks to magicians, infiltrate cults and forums to uncover their most deceptive techniques and expose the hidden tactics used to influence you, from social media to subliminal messages.
Free Your Mind: The must-read expert guide on how to identify techniques to influence you and how to resist them: Amazon.co.uk: Dodsworth, Laura, Fagan, Patrick: 9780008600945: Books
This is a book about fear. Fear of a virus. Fear of death. Fear of losing our jobs, our democracy, our human connections, our health and our minds. It’s also about how the government weaponised our fear against us – supposedly in our best interests – until we were one of the most frightened countries in the world.
A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic: Amazon.co.uk: Dodsworth, Laura: 9781780667201: Books
~~~~~
I have often posted about those who seek to engineer our lives – my previous post Central Planning or I Know What I Know?
I am cynical about those who seek to control us for “our own good.” There are always people in the world who want to manipulate and control others to have them make ‘better’ decisions, i.e., think like them. And this is true in the church:
There’s a growing list of the controlled opposition’s shaming screeds promoted on MSNBC to influence voters by making them feel morally superior if they make the ‘right’ choice: to not support and vote for Trump.
These Nudge-mental authors want to move you in the direction of being an ‘acceptable’ Christian and to be politically ‘acceptable’ in their eyes.
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
Ironically, these holier-than-MAGA disparagers no doubt benefitted from Trump’s presidency. There was peace and prosperity. There were no wars. Look at Trump’s Middle East peace deal. There was no invasion of our southern border. Inflation was around 2%. People had money to support themselves and to give to charitable causes like The Roy’s Report and The Trinity Forum, (where these guys hawk their wares.)
During those four years and since, these guys sit around and nitpick about people who are not like them at great benefit to themselves.
And please don’t tell me they are writing these things to protect Jesus from the rabble. “Put down your sword, Peter.” Jesus – very God – is not beholden to anyone for protection.
~~~~~
Well before Nudge, the book of Proverbs talked about those who act out of impulse, impatience, or ignorance. Proverbs talked about people who often make choices that are not the best or even good for them. What Does the Book of Proverbs Say About Fools? – Bible Gateway Blog
Wisdom was in place long before Nudge came along:
The Lord Created me [Wisdom] at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old, Proverbs 8:22-31
Wisdom, personified as a female in the book of Proverbs, aspires to produce much more than a nudge toward a rational self-interest maximizing approach to decision making. Wisdom’s desire is to expand one’s personal bandwidth with the experience of the knowledge and fear of God.
Wisdom wants you to tap into God’s creation.
Wisdom is coupled with humility – you don’t have all the answers. (I get the image of a wife telling her husband to ask for directions when they are lost.)
You can ask God for wisdom in your decision making and God will supply you with wisdom.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD and turn away from evil.
This will bring healing to your body
and refreshment to your bones. Proverbs 3:5-8
“The wise shall inherit glory (all honor and good) but shame is the highest rank conferred on [self-confident] fools.” Proverbs 3:35
“A foolish person will believe anything. But a wise person thinks about what he does.” Proverbs 14:15
You don’t need to be a tenuous reed in the wind, nudged in every direction. Seek wisdom from God.
~~~~~
Nudge them not before a TV screen:
“. . . while screen time may be harmless or even enriching in moderation, it’s still rife with pitfalls. Screens can tempt kids away from physical activity and imaginative play, for example, and could stunt development of critical skills like emotional self-regulation if overused.
“According to a new study, screen time for babies and toddlers is also linked to an additional risk many parents may not have considered: developing atypical sensory-processing behaviors. . .
“The behaviors include “sensation seeking” and “sensation avoiding” – when a child seeks out more intense sensory stimulation or is more averse to intense sensations, respectively – as well as “low registration,” a lower sensitivity or slower response to stimuli.”
Screen Time Could Have a Surprising Effect on Our Children’s Ability to Process Sensations : ScienceAlert
There be NO Health choice architecture if Dr. Tedros of the WHO becomes the health dictator:
Exposing WHO Chief Dr. Tedros: Militant Marxist and China Stooge (rumble.com)
The World Health Organization is working with the European Union to roll out international, interoperable digital IDs. If you go to the World Economic Forum website these digital IDs are touted as means to enrich our lives by making the following tasks easier: Accessing healthcare, opening a bank account, traveling, engaging in online transactions, accessing Medicare/Medicaid, voting, and paying taxes. Without these IDs, you won’t be able to do any of those things. Or, if you step out of line in some way (say, if a certain vaccine is mandated that you refuse), the WHO could interfere with your digital ID to limit your access to any of these very basic activities. (Emphasis mine.)
Reggie Littlejohn: “We Should All Be Worried About The WHO’s Pandemic Treaty”
Celebrity “Nudge-mentalism”:
Nudge-truth:
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Filed under 2024 Current Events, Culture, social commentary, social engineering Tagged with behavioral economics, behavioral policy, behavioral science, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, culture, Nudge, politics, Richard Thaler