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
I’ve been reading a lot of realist fiction lately but I can’t ignore the grim reality of the hatred directed at Americans by the Left. This hatred is manifested with tactics no different than the “irregular warfare” used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to impose its will:
Elsa Kania, an adjunct fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security writes in a 2016 China Brief article about The PLA’s Latest Strategic Thinking on the Three Warfares. She says that “the application of the three warfares is intended to control the prevailing discourse and influence perceptions in a way that advances China’s interests, while compromising the capability of opponents to respond.”
She goes on to describe the three non-kinetic warfares and their functions:
2015 Science of Military Strategy:
The [2015 National Defense University (NDU) SMS] provides an overview of public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare and guidance regarding their implementation. According to the text, public opinion warfare involves using public opinion as a weapon by propagandizing through various forms of media in order to weaken the adversary’s “will to fight” (战斗意志), while ensuring strength of will and unity among civilian and military views on one’s own side. Psychological warfare seeks to undermine an adversary’s combat power, resolve, and decision-making, while exacerbating internal disputes to cause the enemy to divide into factions (阵营). Legal warfare envisions use of all aspects of the law, including national law, international law, and the laws of war, in order to secure seizing “legal principle superiority” (法理优势) and delegitimize an adversary. Each of the three warfares operates in the perceptual domain (认知领域) and relies upon information for its efficacy. (Emphasis mine.)
These tactics look very familiar. “Irregular warfare”, employed with aggression and deceit (“Force and fraud are the cardinal virtues of war.” –Hobbes), are at work in the Left’s attack on Americans. We are all well aware of one assault close to home.
During COVID (the spread of the China virus) we were subjected to the coordinated force of propaganda to influence and control public opinion. There was propagandizing through various forms of media in order to weaken the adversary’s “will to fight” against what we were told to believe.
There was also the psychological balkanizing that divided the nation into those who “follow the science” and “science deniers” and the “vaxxed” and “anti-vax”.
And there was the legal warfare of COVID mandates that put people in jail or quarantines and closed churches and businesses and put people out of work if not vaxxed. All done to delegitimize an adversary to what we were told to obey.
We were subjected to coordinated fraud in the messaging about the (flu-like) virus’ transmission and effects and the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine and the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. Multiple doctors and epidemiologists who spoke out against the narrative were silenced in the media and elsewhere. Force was used to stifle criticism and to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to “the science” and the purveyors of “the science”, the Left’s medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex (Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, CDC, NIH, big pharma et al.).
Each of the Left’s three warfares employed during COVID operated in the “perceptual domain and relied upon [the control of] information for its effectiveness.”
We continue to be subjected to the Left’s three-fold attack with the “force and fraud” climate crisis narrative. Public opinion is being swayed by climate crisis propaganda: “We need to act now to avoid catastrophe.” “Irregular warfare” is being used against fossil fuels, LNG, agriculture, and anyone who opposes the Left’s narrative.
The fact that nuclear power, a carbon-free and a safe energy source that can produce huge amounts of reliable electricity, is not mentioned by the Left should be an indicator that climate is not an issue – controlling you is. (There is no climate crisis. See video below.)
We continue to be subjected to the Left’s “irregular warfare” with its fraudulent narrative of Trump as a threat to “Democracy”. The apoplectic Left, desiring to influence and control public opinion, wants to put the fear of Trump into their viewers and readers. The want viewers and readers to hate Trump.
The psychological warfare element of this attack includes exacerbating internal disputes to cause the enemy – the Right – to divide into factions. Hence, the Left will showcase never -Trumpers like David French to speak against Trump.
The third element of the Left’s threefold “irregular warfare” is used to “delegitimize an adversary.” This is the reason for the lawfare being waged against Donald Trump. The Left is desperate. They have tried unsuccessfully to keep him off the ballot. They have sought to disqualify him. They are seeking to bankrupt him. The Left will use any means necessary to take down Trump through “legal warfare.”
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny that we have a legal system now that is being heavily distorted by politics and you cannot look at all of these cases and see blind justice, you see the opposite,” Turley told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, a former Trump administration official. “You see a justice that is being weaponized, and in many ways the Democrats fulfill the narrative of President Trump. He is now right. No matter what they thought about it at the beginning, they proved him to be right with this pile-on from Florida to Georgia, to Washington, D.C., to New York and most of the public gets it.”
The Left’s MSNBC and CNN and the NYT and WaPo and other media outlets of their ilk are so afraid that Trump will win in November that they are pulling out all the stops. They accuse Trump of promoting a lie (the stolen 2020 election) and calling illegals “animals” (Trump was talking about the murderer of Laken Riley). They will 24/7 you with “Trump is a threat to Democracy and our way of life. We will all become victims if Trump is elected (and blah blah blah).”
We continue to be subjected to the Left’s public opinion influence and psychological warfare via its constant fear-mongering. The Left conjures up end-of-the-world narratives, whether of COVID, climate, Trump or of people who don’t buy what they are selling.
Those who are taken in by Left don’t understand that they are targets of two elements of “irregular warfare”: influence of public opinion and psychological warfare. One reason they buy in is that the legal warfare component is directed at Trump and anyone connected with him. Another reason may be how they feel about the Left’s talking points: “I love the way you lie.”
A key component of the Left’s warfare against Americans is balkanization. The Left seeks to divide us into warring factions. There are those in the media who delight in dividing us rather than uniting us. They live for this. It is how they gain their power, their influence and their money. It is how they destroy America. As Jesus knew to be true, “if a kingdom is divided in two it can’t last.”
And so it is that the above media outlets present authors who foster division by writing that white Americans and Christian Nationalists (whatever they are) are a dangerous threat to “Democracy!”
The Left, to “delegitimize an adversary”, wants to put the fear of whites and of Christians who love their country into their viewers and readers – as if hating them along with Trump was a necessary condition for protecting “Democracy!”
Progressive Wallis was on MSNBC promoting his platitudes and inviting all who can be persuaded to reject and help dismantle a false gospel that propagates white supremacy and autocracy . . . and Christian Nationalism (whatever that is)
One Amazon commenter on White Rural Rage wrote something that applies to both books: “This book helps to explain the startling divide in America by showing just how profoundly uninterested such people are in understanding or accepting the views of anyone who does not accord with their own orthodoxy and must therefore be dismissed as anti-democratic.”
Waldman and Schaller portray rural people as passive, unthinking agents in the democratic process. Though “rage” features prominently in their title, they use the word fewer than ten times in the text, and only to belabor their claim that Republican leaders intentionally manufactured rural voters’ anger, as though these Americans would not be concerned about their situations without external manipulation.
“In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, [author Tom] Schaller gave this unvarnished assessment of the rage he sees overflowing in the heartland. Rural whites, he said, are “the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geo-demographic group in the country.” He called them, “the most conspiracist group,” “anti-democratic,” “white nationalist and white Christian nationalists.” On top of that, rural whites are also “most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse . . .
“But the thing about rage — I’ve never found it.
“The problem with this “rage” thesis is much larger than the fact that my research, and that of others, is being misinterpreted and misunderstood. What the authors are getting wrong about rural America is exactly what many Democrats have been getting wrong for decades — and appear to be doing so again in this critical presidential election year.”
The following is my response to the red meat those authors threw to the ravenous Left:
When spoken of from the High Chairs of Hubris and Condescension, those of us who love God and our family and our country and not what proceeds from the mouths of the elites are not just called “bitter clingers” and “deplorable”. We are called “extremists.” We are called every name in the Left’s style book. And therefore, more force and fraud are needed to be applied. Hence the shaming books of the fellow traveler intelligentsia.
One would think that loving God, loving your family and loving your country would be all good. But the Left hates all that. Leftist elites love themselves and the sound of their condescension.
How far will the Left go? Students of history know. History tells us that the Left will use any means necessary, including injustice, famine, show trials, gulags, and murder to get their way. How far did the Left go this week?
JUST IN: 'Praying grandma' Rebecca Lavrenz has reportedly been found guilty by a DC jury after she briefly entered the Capitol on J6.
Glad to see our 'justice system' going after some "hard-hitting criminals."
The Biden regime just convicted a 71-year-old great-grandmother on federal misdemeanor charges for entering the Capitol more than three years ago for ten minutes.
“Without God, there’s no justice.” -71-year-old great-grandmother Rebecca Lavrenz who faces four federal misdemeanor charges for entering the Capitol more than three years ago during the Fedsurrection. She spent about 10 minutes inside.
Wearing a red scarf and a white hat to the rally, which she said she attended by herself, Lavrenz encountered a group of people praying outside the Capitol, and she joined them for about an hour and a half.
“It was a patriotic, joyful time to be around so many people who love their country,” she said. “I felt a strong presence of the spirt of God fall over me, and I started crying.”
At one point, she took the microphone to speak about a document that became known as the 1620 Mayflower Compact. Included in the agreement that pilgrims had signed before they set foot on American soil was that the country would be dedicated to the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith.
“My mission in life is to know God and make his ways known and restore the country back to its godly foundation,” Lavrenz said. “Without God, there’s no justice.”
This post is meant to alert you to the Left’s three-pronged warfare directed at Americans. There is more that could be said, but there is enough here, I believe, for the reader to understand the hatred directed at us.
I haven’t even mentioned the Biden inflation and the cost of living or how hard it will be for our children to buy a house and property because of the human-hating financial policies of the Left.
I haven’t even mentioned that the Biden regime’s human-hating open border policy will drive wages down for minorities and put Americans out of work. It is a policy that allows in deadly fentanyl and deadly gangs and deadly terrorists and deadly diseases to kill people. You won’t hear or see any of this from Rachel Maddow. All you’ll hear from her is “orange man bad.”
The Left hates us. And so does the Satan.
~~~~~
I see the Left – its hatred and evil schemes – depicted in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy. Having control and imposing its will are essential to the Left, as in the story. Violence, mental and physical, are their means.
In the novels Dr. Peter Teleborian is the psychiatrist at St. Stefan’s Psychiatric Clinic for Children. Teleborian is a sadist who abuses his patients.
The child Lisbeth Salander was committed to St. Stefan’s after she tried to kill her evil father for beating and raping her mother. While in the clinic Teleborian kept Lisbeth strapped down each night for over a year and tried to force feed her psychiatric drugs. Salander later described him as the most evil man she ever met.
Lisbeth is later released from the clinic and put under guardianship. Her guardian suffers a heart attack and she is given another legal guardian – Nils Bjurman.
At their second meeting Bjurman informs Salander that she has to give over access to all of her bank accounts. Her first guardian Palmgren allowed her to control her own finances but Bjurman wants to control every aspect of her life.
Bjurman, to prove who’s in charge, molests her and forces her to pleasure him sexually. Because of her previous problems with the police, Lisbeth decides to take matters into her own hands. At their next meeting, she comes prepared with a hidden video camera. But, to her horror and dismay, she realizes she has misjudged Bjurman; he attacks and brutally rapes her.
Then The Section, an ultra-secret division of the government that reports to no one, tries to have Lisbeth recommitted to Dr. Teleborian’s clinic. This was to be done to protect the members of The Section. Dr. Teleborian is assigned by The Section to write a false report about Lisbeth Salander.
The Section harbored and protected the evil Zalachenko, ex-Russian spy who defected to Sweden. Alexander Zalachenko is Lisbeth’s abusive father.
We later learn that Dr. Teleborian kept thousands of child porn photos on his laptop. He is arrested during Lisbeth’s trial.
Looking at the nature of the people on the Left and their way of doing things with the caveat “for your own good”, it is easy for me to see similarities to the evil characters above.
~~~~~
They hate you. They hate your children. “Irregular warfare” is being waged in our public schools:
Public school “experts” are trashing traditional education in virtue and citizenship in favor of victimhood and dependency. The inheritance of Western Civilization has been officially discarded by irresponsible intellectuals, determined to advance their “progressive” ideologies. These ideologies, pushing kids to discover “their own truths,” are generally varieties of “subjectivism” or “relativism.” Critical theory deliberately undercuts our natural commonsense, the shared foundation of a free society, by teaching children that their homes, communities, and even their own physiology are their worst enemies, the foes of their real identities. Ideologues do this by “reducing” our natural experience of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty to “no more than” materialistic “animal instincts” (Modernism), that then give rise to oppressive “social constructs” (Postmodernism), and, presto, an epidemic of anxiety.
They hate you. The Open Border Means Open Season on You – thanks to gov’t paid NGOs like Catholic Charities and others; thanks to Mayorkas and Democrats in need of votes who ignore what is happening.
Illegals are coming, not to assimilate but to plunder.
REPORT: Chilean gangs are taking advantage of the U.S. Visa Waiver Program and are coming to the U.S. just to burglarize luxury homes.
The U.S. Visa Waiver Program allows tourists to enter America for 90 days or less.
🚨🚨BREAKING: Colombian Gang Leader Suspected of Murder and Drug Trafficking Arrested Near San Antonio.
Aderbis Segundo Pirela Pirela, a 29 yea-old Venezuelan native is allegedly second in command for the gang Satanas was most wanted in Colombia for a slew of horrific crimes,… pic.twitter.com/rcBTAKeBwP
If you allow people from all over the world to come here by the millions in violation of our laws, you make no effort to screen them for infectious diseases and you push them into our largest population centers, you are going to see outbreaks of disease. People are going to die. The health of all Americans is going to be negatively impacted.
That’s exactly what is happening now. U.S. cases of tuberculosis, a deadly infectious disease have soared to their highest level in a decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). After 27 years of declining tuberculosis rates in the United States, cases of the disease started to climb again in 2020. They have continued to rise every year since.
2024. What does it mean when Americans vote for the destruction of their country? For the destruction of their own children through abortion?
If you consume what is fed from the above media outlets you may be living in a bubble the Left has created for you. You won’t see the destruction of civil society and justice within our land. You will learn, instead, to blame Trump and those on the right for problems.
The following is from a statement from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, “on the scandalous proclamation of March 31 as ‘Transgender visibility day’ by ‘president’ Joe Biden.”
All humanity is awakening from a slumber that has lasted far too long:
-the lives of the innocent are threatened by abortion, euthanasia, manipulation, and abuse;
-the health of citizens is deliberately compromised by experimental serums revealed to be a biological weapon of population decimation;
-the total moral corruption of the top echelons of civil authority, enslaved to criminal lobbies in a global coup, is now evident;
-the increasingly arrogant display of Satan worship by the media and the world of culture and entertainment show us a world awash in execrable perversions that cry out to Heaven for vengeance;
-the mad provocation of a world conflict claims lives in order to bury the horrendous sexual and financial scandals of a power that is now the enemy of its citizens.
They hate you. The Left’s medical-pharmaceutical industry’s reign of terror:
Multiple laboratory studies now confirm that Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is heavily contaminated with plasmid DNA. The latest analysis finds that one dose of the Pfizer vaccine typically contains over 200 billion DNA fragments. These DNA fragments can incorporate into the DNA of the vaccinated individual and interfere with the expression of oncogenes and tumor suppression genes. This DNA contamination has cancer implications for millions of people who were manipulated to take part in this biowarfare experiment. (Emphasis mine.)
Small chains and mom-and-pop businesses simply can’t compete. Larger chains raised prices but have also been forced to reduce employees and labor costs through automation, but the layoffs are just getting started.
If your situational awareness is well-tuned, you can put together a political weather report from the swirl of events that otherwise seem to confound the degenerate simps who pretend to report the news. Events are tending in the direction of self-reinforcing, ramifying chaos, and the people running the show are obviously insane as they do everything possible to hurry chaos along.
Politics, law, and culture collide as Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer charts a path forward for American conservatism and exposes the woke Left. A voice for the New Right, Hammer delivers blistering commentary and weekly interviews with today’s top conservative thinkers.
We are entering a season of celebrating Good News. But hold on. There are some, the same some since before 2016, who are now heralding a disastrous 2024.
Today, at the top of media’s Richter scale of catastrophic “Oh Nos!” and bumping “climate crisis” to number TWO is word of a disastrous new year as speculated in The Economist magazine article Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024 !!!!
To add to the hysteria known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, unhinged Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe said that Trump “will end democracy as we know it.” Wow!!! What a power calculus!!
Joe, hyperbolizing on a New York Times Op-Ed [“Trump’s Dire Words Raise New Fears About His Authoritarian Bent”] went beyond calling Trump an authoritarian. He implied that Trump’s a murderous fascist: “he will imprison” “he will execute” enemies if reelected. Scarborough knows this because of “his past”. (I’d like to see those press clippings. Anyone?)
N.B.: MSNBC is where people go to completely lose all touch with reality because Orange Man Bad.
Here’s Mika man:
Joe Scarborough:
"Trump will imprison, he will execute whoever he is allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country. Just look at his past. It’s not really hard to read.” pic.twitter.com/NC0vo48xAe
And there’s more from the ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’ MSNBC:
“Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Inside” that “everybody should vote for” President Joe Biden if they wanted democracy to survive.” Wow!!! Again!!!
Before we exit the land of the unhinged, there’s another unbalanced MSNBC political contributor who weighs in on Trump: former Democrat U.S. Senator of Missouri, the very rich Claire McCaskill.
McCaskill claims that Donald Trump is “even more dangerous” than dictators Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler!!! In the process of loathing Trump, McCaskill also has to mock MAGA supporters. You should know that the schtick of MSNBC contributors – our hoity-toity betters – is making their viewers feel superior to the deplorable hoi polloi.
The above insanity should tell you that the Left – Wokes, LGBTQ+ mafia, Antifa, the climate overwrought, BLM, race hustlers and all – are terrified of Trump. And they want you to be terrified of him, too. They see their world, supported by the vast administrative State that sustains their power and control over America, as threatened by Trump. For, in Trump’s next term, he will begin to pull apart the leviathan deep state apparatus that destroys Democracy and America itself.
That and the Left’s constant lawfare against Trump is an indicator to me that Trump is the right man for the job. He’s about saving what’s left of our Republic – namely, the Constitution, free speech, the right to bear arms, religious freedom, and due process which prohibits the states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” (14th Amendment).
The Left, on the other hand, want to abandon all that. The Left wants to seize life, liberty, and property and create a system of producing and distributing collectively owned goods via a centralized government that plans and controls the economy. The left’s economic reforms increase centralized state control to the extent that private ownership becomes virtually impossible.
See Mao’s Great Leap Forward for one example of the effects of collectivization. A Progressive’s collective communist State means that all labor, money, and production go to the State and the State determines who benefits and who must go without based on political loyalty.
And see North Korea for the Left’s brand of “Democracy!” which the braying MSNBC crew says is under threat and not because of their dictatorial ways but because of the guy who wants to keep them from their dictatorial ways.
Trump has also shown that he wants to ensure our country’s sovereignty. And that means a closed border with legal immigration. He also wants to safeguard America from another war. The Left, under the Biden regime, has shown us that open borders with constant war and anarchy are its will.
Another indicator that Trump is right for the WH job is that there are those, not just domestically but internationally, who want Trump and those around them out of the picture, e.g., Iran-linked hitmen. Trump is bothering all the right (evil) people.
Going forward, I sure don’t want someone representing me in the WH who folds or capitulates under pressure. I sure don’t want appeasers and accommodationists like members of Congress. I sure don’t want someone who, at one time in Indiana, looked the part of a respectable Christian leader but turned out to be a squish: Don’t Ever Forget That Mike Pence Threw Religious Liberty Under the Bus | National Review
Results, not presentation, earn my respect.
And though New Yorker Trump could always pick out better words and phrasing to explain his thoughts and his frustrations with the stolen 2020 election, he wasn’t chosen to be president in 2016 and 2020 and once again in 2024 because he’s a poet laureate or a pastor or a prefab politician. Trump’s a producer for the American people.
The firing-on-all cylinders low-inflation economy (before the subterfuge of COVID) and the strong dollar Trump delivered – both are being destroyed by the Biden administration’s willful neglect of the American people as are the times of peace Trump fostered.
Since the illegitimate President took office in January 2021, our southern border has been invaded. Biden-Mayorkas have allowed in (6 million +) all kinds of illegal immigrants including narco-terrorists, gangs, CCP migrants, Hamas terrorists, and more unsavory types along with fentanyl and disease. 2024 will be disastrous as the effects of the open border hit home.
Under the corrupt, compromised, incompetent, and incorrigible Joe Biden, Americans now risk getting pulled into wars on three major fronts: Europe, the Asia Pacific and the Middle East. That didn’t happen under Trump.
But MSNBC stands by their man Biden . . .
Unlike those who are “ashamed” or “embarrassed” by Trump and want to condemn his unrefined ways as being beneath them, my working life was spent in the real world outside the cloisters of academia, religious organizations, and armchair punditry. I learned which people get things done and what needs to get done.
As a business partner in a multi-million-dollar manufacturing enterprise for many years, I found out who was needed and what was needed to bring success to both employees and the bottom line. The things that Trump got done during his first term allowed me to get things done in the Kingdom of God.
N.B.: There are imperfect people like Trump and tax-collector Matthew in the kingdom of heaven. (Mk. 2:15-17). So, it is best for the offended and the ‘high-minded’ to stick with the gospels and to stay away from tea leaves.
Consider a Trump economy. With a thriving economy, I am able to support myself and give to help others in need in a closely tied relationship. But under a Leftist Joe Biden economy, disposable personal income shrinks. Financial survival kicks in. And worse.
You should be aware that Leftists are intent on neutralizing Christianity and its charity. As mentioned above, the Left wants everything to be funneled through the State and the State to be the only effect on society. This is what Progressives do. They make everyone and everything dependent on ruling class ‘good will’. And that is the substance of State media’s MSNBC and their ilk.
So, while the prophets of Baal, enflamed with Trump Derangement Syndrome, shout louder and slash themselves with swords and spears in the hope that viewers will pay attention to their frantic prophesying and let their fire rain down on Trump, let’s turn to the Good News that has already come down from the heavens with its fire poured out through the Holy Spirit.
The beginning of Mark’s Gospel (εὐαγγέλιον or euaggélion – literally, “God’s good news.”):
This is where the good news starts – the good news of Jesus the Anointed King, God’s son.
Everything in Scripture (and specifically Isaiah 40-55) up to this time pointed to the Kingdom of God on earth. Mark writes (vs.14-15):
After John’s arrest, Jesus came into Galilee, announcing God’s good news.
“The time is fulfilled!” he said; “God Kingdom is arriving! Turn back and believe the good news!”
“Turn back”? When Jesus launched the long-promised kingdom of God on earth, allegiances and lifestyles began to change direction, as he began to talk about and show what that meant.
Jesus spoke of kingdom of God in parables and directly, as in Matthew 5-7. He showed what the kingdom of God meant – unclean spirits are cast out (Mk. 1:39), people are healed (Mt. 4:23), there is restoration (Lk. 15) and resurrection (Jn. 11:38-44). And, that the kingdom of God on earth was a fulfillment of the Law and Prophets (Mt. 5:17-18).
When he taught his disciples how to pray, he prayed
May your kingdom come,
May your will be done
As in heaven, so on earth
I wonder. Is that prayer being realized? Instead of allegiance to King Jesus the ultimate restorer and to the kingdom of God on earth, have the followers of Jesus become accommodationists of the world to fit in and find ease?
Have the followers of Jesus understood what the good news is? Have they reduced the gospel (euaggélion) to the formulaic four spiritual laws and an escape from the world into heaven?
Below are two podcasts that offer an understanding of the Good News and the kingdom of God on earth. Download and listen as you enter the season of celebrating the birth of a King who brought us good news and a kingdom.
But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever. Daniel 7:18
We, the King’s holy ones, are to herald the good news of God’s Kingdom with a new way of life to a world that sees answers in profoundly short-sighted ways rather than in the Way of King Jesus. And then . . .
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.” Rev 11:15
~~~~~
On Earth as it is in Heaven
Anglican Bishop, and New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright makes clear, Jesus’ good news wasn’t about giving advice, or founding a new religion, or even where a soul goes when the body dies. Jesus was inviting his hearers into a new way of understanding Israel’s ancient story and the cosmic significance of its sudden fulfillment.
A year of determination, the help of world-renowned doctors, and this mother’s research exposed the world to the known toxins in the Covid-19 vaccines that nearly killed her son.
“In 2021, after my then 21-year-old son went from running miles a day to walking with a cane, diagnosed with a rare, catastrophic blood disorder, this mom knows it is time for vaccine injury victims & families to ignite an intelligent, rational conversation about what the mRNA vaccines put into our bodies. We don’t buy food or health products without reading the labels and knowing the ingredients, and it’s time we do the same with the vaccines for our children.”
Livestock raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are routinely given a range of veterinary drugs to prevent disease, and some of those drugs could potentially impact the health of those who eat their meat.
Thousands of vials of biological substances — including some labeled “HIV” — and a freezer marked “Ebola” were found inside a secret Chinese-owned biolab in California which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FBI initially refused to investigate, according to a House committee report released Wednesday.
“This is really a massive cover-up. And I suspect it’s because there’s many more links to the funding, and there was probably discussion of the funding,” says Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).
“Let us not be charlatans and let us state openly that you can’t figure out anything in this world. Only fools and charlatans know and understand everything.”
There’s an old curse that goes something like “May you live in interesting times.” Well, we certainly live in interesting times. High drama, not peace and tranquility, seems to be what is desired by many and readily offered by “fools and charlatans”. Our world is vexed with constant convulsive commotion.
Why would some seek the dramatic instead of peace and tranquility? I’ll answer with conjecture so as to not be considered a fool or charlatan: there seems to be, by the amount of anger and discontent portrayed in the media, to be many unhappy people in the world.
Could it be that unhappy people have a need to remain unhappy? Could it be that unhappy people thrive on passion-evoking conflict to give them something to rage against and to feed their emptiness? A melodramatic life has a history – a story of critical moments that can be exploited and readily referred back to. The unhappy never let a crisis go to waste. And misery loves fellow travelers.
A prosaic life, on the other hand, has no dramatic history. Someone I just came across on social media noted the difference:
“When I look at the world on social media, life has never been worse. When I look at my real life (family, career/finance, general enjoyment, etc), life has never been better.”
Is high drama readily offered by “fools and charlatans? Here’s Bill Nye: “It’s very difficult to tie any specific weather event to climate change, but if you like to worry about things, this is a great time.”
“After Tropical Storm Hilary hit California this week, MSNBC ran to TV children’s show host Bill Nye to hype climate change, a typical move by the far-left cable news outlet. . ..
BILL NYE ON CLIMATE CHANGE
"People like to throw around the expression 'new normal.' It's not going to be normal, it's going to get worse and worse, probably," @BillNye says of landmark tropical storm #Hilary.
Dog bites man. Not news. Man bites dog. Front page news.
Westerly winds dry out non-native grass on Maui. Not news. Downed power line sparks wildfire. Westerly winds cause rapid spread of wildfire. Climate Change!!!!
Below, some of the Lies for the Taking being served up for the frustrated unhappy people who desire to bring everyone down to their level of misery. (Conjecture?)
(See previous posts for links that debunk many of the lies coming out of the mouths of “fools and charlatans”.)
The Lies of the Climate Concerned:
We’re all gonna die unless . . .
King Charles III has launched a catastrophe countdown clock. It will tick until 2030, a year in which he predicts “serious consequences” if the world doesn’t effectively address “climate change.”
“As President Joe Biden prepares to visit Maui, the Hawaiian island devastated by the deadliest wildfire in U.S. modern history, lawmakers and climate groups are begging the White House to do more to prevent future climate-related disasters.
Their argument: If the latest environmental catastrophe won’t spur the president into action, what will?”
Here’s Tedros, Director-General of the World Health Organization, with more climate crisis fear porn to bring about centralized control.
The Lies of the Optics Concerned – Maui:
“While en route to Maui, three weeks after the wildfire that devastated the Hawaiian island began, White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton said President Joe Biden will “make sure that he communicates to that not only have we been there since day one, has he been there since day one.””
During his speech in Milwaukee, the president appeared to forget the name Maui, referring to the island as 'the one where you see on television all the time.' 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ pic.twitter.com/Ao5DWp8PJb
NEW: President Biden once again tries to make the Maui fire that killed ~500 people about himself by telling a story about how he almost lost his corvette in a house fire.
You can always count on Biden to tell a story that didn’t happened.
Judge Jeanine Pirro GOES OFF over Biden's visit to Maui:
"He has a lack of empathy, he is egocentric, he has got a condescending smirk whenever anybody asks him a question from the press, he is lying, and he's narcissistic." pic.twitter.com/wCbzLvDtpe
Dr. Gottlieb is connected to the FDA, to Pfizer, to the CIA, and more. See Dr. Malone’s article at link below for more on the “pretty concerned” Dr. Scott Gottlieb.
Dr. Malone writes . . .
“Propagation of Fear porn based on fake news and hype is now a validated method for Big Pharma to control governments and their populations. But are people buying it this time around?
“One of my primary care physician colleagues wrote this to me yesterday:
“Who would’ve thought that Covid would resurge as a concern for so many! I’m getting bombarded with calls and request for ivermectin, folks who are testing unnecessarily. Absolute panic out there once again.
“To further the suggestion that another lockdown scare is in the forecast, yesterday the US Department of Health and Human Services announced funding of $1.4 billion to “support the development of a new generation of tools and technologies to protect against COVID-19 for years to come” according to a press release” (Emphasis mine.)
How do we prepare for the typical fall flu season? With “a physician that will help you determine the correct dosing of Vitamin D3 and zinc, as well as be willing to prescribe multi-drug, early treatment protocols against COVID, and one that isn’t going to pressure you or your family into unnecessary shots.”
“We employ doctors who aren’t afraid to utilize effective, simple, and safe treatments for viral infection through the intelligent use of prescription medicines that have been around for years, and in some cases, decades. By focusing on the pathology of the toll that viral infections take on the human body, we’ve discovered that some off-label medicines can be more consistent, effective, and safe than new experimental treatments.”
“We’ve already been over everything you need to know about “Eris” here. Long story short, “Covid” is just another made up name for the flu, and the “variants” are coats of paint they slap on the narrative to try and keep it looking fresh.
“In that same article I theorised Eris’ existence was a need to keep Covid alive, and that is part of it…but I also missed something obvious: The next round of Covid “vaccines” hits the shelves next month.” (Emphasis mine.)
The Biden administration has announced a plan to encourage all Americans to receive a Coronavirus booster shot during the upcoming fall season to respond to an apparent wave of infections.
Despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noting a rise in virus-related infections and hospitalizations, the White House highlighted that the overall infection rates remain relatively low.
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the overall levels of COVID-19 in the country are very low. (Emphasis mine.)
Santa Monica, which is in Los Angeles County, has an extremely low rate of COVID-19 hospital admissions.”
“Positivity rates for the COVID-19 test are similarly low across the country, including in California.”
But that doesn’t stop fools and charlatans imposing mask mandates and people going along with the drama.
Do Not let them do this to your children. Say “NO!” to masks and mandates.
“College students and others across America should be preparing for mass protest against mask mandates citing a First Amendment right to engage in political speech, which refusing to wear a mask can be construed as in any environment attempting to mandate it. The second they mandate wearing a mask, it’s a political issue, so refusing to wear one in such a condition can be construed wholly as a political statement. The First Amendment provides strong protections for political speech.” – James Lindsey (Emphasis mine)
The new Covid regulations are a test. Are we unified in our distrust of them? Will we fight each other? Are we still controllable? Will we take it? Overreact? They will come in waves of escalating provocations that take more and more while making less and less sense.
“A brief list of some of the COVID lies we have heard over the last couple of years (with thanks and acknowledgment to Dr. Scott Atlas):
-SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than influenza virus by several orders of magnitude
-Everyone has a significant risk of death from COVID-19.
-No one has immunity, because this virus is new (“novel”) and so expedited vaccine development and deployment is essential.
-Everyone is dangerous and spreads the infection
-Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread of disease.
-Locking down- closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel will stop/eliminate the virus.
-Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread.
-Immune protection can only be obtained with a vaccine.
-Natural immunity conferred by infection and recovery is short lived and inferior to vaccine-induced immunity.”
“Who was responsible for these lies?
Deborah Birx (who was trained by Anthony Fauci).
She wrote virtually all official White House guidance to state Governors.
This usurped constitutional authority of states to set public health policies.
Not a lie: “The President took office determined to move beyond these failed trickle-down policies and fundamentally change the economic direction of our country.” (Emphasis mine.)
No conspiracy theory: Bidenomics is high inflation and high interest rates – for Democrats and Republicans; people going back to work after COVID is not creation of new jobs.
The U.S. dollar has been so mishandled and degraded under the Biden regime – by Janet Yellen, Jerome Powell and Congress – that countries are turning to other currency.
There’s a pervasive attitude held by many Washington insiders – respectability. Put in a turn of phrase from Princess Bride, they would say “We are men of respectability, MAGA doesn’t become us.”
The “respectable” hoity-toity see themselves as morally and intellectually superior over the rather distasteful hoi polloi. They are disconnected from the common folk. They relate to them with contempt, with sneering media comments, and through opinion pieces – prescriptions as to how the little people should think and act – like them.
The “respectable” see themselves as lofty and undeniably important – as ruling class. Washington and the media abide them because they are controlled opposition.
Who are these “respectable” people? They include National Review writers, Bill Kristol, David Harsanyi, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, David French, Mike Pence, Indiana Senator Todd Young, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Chris Wallace, and Bret Baier.
Three presidents – Nixon, Reagan, and Trump – were threats to the administrative state that had incubated during FDR’s three terms and has grown enormously since. The administrative state reacts aggressively when its tentacles, that reach into all sectors of society, come under attack.
And so it was that Nixon was assailed with Watergate and left office. Reagan’s focus on the Cold War may have been the reason why Washington didn’t mess with him.
Today, with unjustifiable impeachments and indictments, a hostile constantly sniping media, and a stolen election, Trump has been mercilessly attacked by the leviathan administrative state that wants not only to maintain its status quo but, even more so, wants to increase its scope of influence over every citizen.
The “respectable” people mentioned above are in on the attack. Justice for them is that which leaves them feeling smug.
‘You’re Wrong’ With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 59: ‘Rich Men North Of Richmond’
The Lies that Indict Saying Contesting Elections is a Crime:
Common knowledge. Hillary Clinton contested an election. Al Gore contested an election. Stacy Abram contested an election. Amy Klobuchar contested an election. And others. None of these were indicted.
“The victims this time are Trump and his friends. But it could be you next time, and it will be. “A boot stomping on a human face forever,” as Orwell said. Again, it’s happening now, and it can kill America as we know it.” (Emphasis mine.)
“The Democrats are so far out of line that I can barely comprehend it. They’ve created an incredibly tenuous racketeering charge and indicted lawyers who were legally representing their clients for practicing law. This is beyond the pale.
“The Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law.”
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.
— Exodus 23:1-3
If you have been on the receiving end of a lie, you know that lies are meant to manipulate. We’ve recently seen that lies pervert justice and indict. We’ve also seen that lies are involved in stealing elections, defrauding voters and dividing the public.
Lies used politically are meant to produce homogenized thought. Lies were used during COVID and now with the Climate Crisis narrative. And what better fear porn drama can be conjured up than a campaign to “combat online misinformation” (that works to keep truth from getting a foothold)?
Who better to deliver the fear porn drama of lies than know-it-all “fools and charlatans” or as they’re called today “the experts”? They were paraded out for the COVID “pandemic” and for the Climate “crisis”. And now for the COVID “variant crisis”.
If you accept and submit to the lie, you’re in the club. If you reject the lie, then the lie has set you up to fail and power sweeps in to “correct” you. If you don’t accept the lie, you’re considered to be an extremist, a cult member:
John Kerry now says you’re in a “cult” if you disagree with his views on climate change. pic.twitter.com/ymDh3bAK4c
Lies set you up to fail – being called names, being indicted, exclusion, etc. – if you do not accept them.
Lies blend contexts, as if they were the same thing, e.g., slavery at one time in the U.S. and all whites are racist.
Lies project onto others. (Watch CNN & MSNBC for examples.)
Lies create anxiety. (“Is he or she telling me the truth? What should I believe?)
Lies oppose human growth and well-being.
Lies destroy the spiritual growth of others and work to preserve and protect a sick world, the world of the unhappy.
When a lie is found out you may find yourself cursing the lie and the liar. Or you may vote for more lies and more drama, interesting times being desired.
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Mask mandates will not fly; tell your lawmakers we will not comply.
Mask mandates, and even Covid jab mandates to attend school seem to be returning in some states. And the rumor mill is churning that even more are coming down the pike from the Biden administration.
Regardless if these rumors are true or not, or if more colleges and more hospitals follow suit, one thing remains the same: We will not comply.
Mandatory medicine and mandated interventions such as social distancing and mask-wearing have no place in a free society. Citizens have the right to make responsible decisions about what is best for themselves and their children based on their own unique circumstances.
Email your lawmakers now to urge them to do their part to make sure that mask-wearing remains voluntary. Use link below.
I sent the following Word Doc, composed from the Stand For Health email to lawmakers, to the Governor of Indiana and Indiana’s Health commissioner. Use the document to send to anyone in your state that needs this message.
The German government has embarked on an advertising campaign to brand mothers as ‘climate killers’. You absolutely know that this is all part of the ‘depopulation agenda’.
The only solution to the alleged “Climate Crisis” the Left will accept is Communism. What a surprise.
Property tax means you never own your property. It means you rent it from government.
Truth, beauty and happy go together.
By the Riverside by Belgian artist Emile Claus 1920
Impending doom. It’s in the mouths of Climate Change activists and environmentalists. It’s in the mythos eschatology of those who want to return to primitive times – proponents of the axial age, the age of a dark green religion and Degrowth. It’s in the marketing of the WEF, WHO, and ESG. With a select focus on impending doom, the need for sweeping “solutions” follows. And with sweeping “solutions” follows chaos and destruction.
I have previously posted about the WEF, the WHO, and ESG. Let’s now take a brief look at the thinking behind Degrowth with its impetus of impending doom.
On economic anthropologist Jason Hickel’s web site we learn that “The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse” and “There is only one solution that will lead to meaningful and immediate change: degrowth.”
On the Degrowth website we find a definition (with sweeping conjecture):
“Degrowth is an idea that critiques the global capitalist system which pursues growth at all costs, causing human exploitation and environmental destruction. The degrowth movement of activists and researchers advocates for societies that prioritize social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. This requires radical redistribution, reduction in the material size of the global economy, and a shift in common values towards care, solidarity and autonomy. Degrowth means transforming societies to ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries.” (Emphasis mine.)
Elsewhere . . .
What is ‘degrowth’ and how can it fight climate change?
The cure for a changing climate could be a stagnant economy. (Emphasis mine.)
“Parrique says to picture economies like people with metabolisms—when you’re young, you need to eat lots of food, and as a result, produce lots of waste, to get big and strong. But if you keep eating like a rapidly-growing human well into adulthood, that’s probably not the healthiest way to be. As an adult, it makes more sense to balance out your diet for sustaining your body’s current needs.”
Economic growth is leading to overconsumption and climate change. Degrowth argues that shrinking our economies can have benefits.Degrowth – BBC Worklife
Degrowth Buzzwords: Beyond Growth, Net Zero, Absolute Zero, Emissions, Sustainability
In short, degrowth, “an alternative to capitalism”, is communism. Degrowth is Marxism with Malthusian planning. Its outworking is as a Communist death cult. Its premise: Too many people and too much consumption means the end of Mother Earth. So, you must stop living, i.e., become Net Zero, to produce a sustainable earth.
Is Degrowth something new or has its death-force always been around? Look around and see how human life has been handled and is now being handled.
Degrowth is Anthony Fauci prohibiting Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin – highly effective low-cost repurposed drugs -being used to treat COVID and save lives.
Degrowth is using Remdesivir to treat COVID patients in hospitals.
Degrowth is sending COVID-19-positive patients into nursing homes.
Degrowth is an mRNA vaccine that produces deadly adverse effects.
Degrowth is digital currency – the means to limit consumption.
Degrowth is ESG deciding who has access to capital.
Degrowth is forced social transformation.
Degrowth is employing a pandemic psyop. The creation of fear leads to submission to Degrowth “solutions”.
Degrowth is employing a climate crisis psyop. The creation of fear leads to submission to Degrowth “solutions”.
Degrowth is the WHO, the UN, and the WEF – globalists organizations that want complete control of life on earth.
Degrowth is inflation, Biden’s Green energy tax imposed upon Americans.
Degrowth is engineered scarcity. “You will own nothing and be happy.”
Degrowth is population control using abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, euthanasia, and bioweapon pandemics.
Degrowth is sending billions of tax-payer dollars over to one of the most corrupt nations on earth while Biden offers $700 to Maui residents.
Degrowth is wasting billions of tax-payer dollars for unreliable renewable gizmos and not using the money to build reliable nuclear reactors.
Degrowth is creating stifling economic conditions leading to exhaustion, despair and suicide. (Suicides reached an all-time high in 2022.)
Degrowth is incompetence, lack of foresight, neglect of infrastructure, not clearing brush and flammable grass, letting things go. (See Maui headlines below.)
Last century there were those who wanted to change the world to their vision of the world. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao used fear to generate “cooperation” towards those ends. In the process of social transformation to produce results, millions were killed. Little wonder that the entry on ‘mass killings’ under Communism may one day be deleted. The entry won’t help the “reduce inequality and share national and global income more fairly” Degrowth narrative.
The gospel of Degrowth has all of last century’s collectivist trappings and propensity to snuff out life for the sake of a “sustainability”. The reach of last century’s tyrants didn’t cover the earth. Today, digital technology covers the earth. So now a message of “impending doom” and Degrowth “salvation” will reach across the globe and bring death and destruction to more lives. And that’s because . . .
Degrowth, like Marxism, is a God-less perspective. There is no mention of God in its prospectuses. Degrowth takes no account of God or of God’s providential care of His creation or of humans as the collective image of God acting as agents to continue to bring order and function to creation as they work with God. Degrowthers want none of that. They are their own gods.
Degrowthers, as did Marx, picture human existence after everything has been “rectified” through long struggles, a series of historic processes, and transformation of circumstances and men, to be something like that of carefree Eloi sitting around with the lion and the lamb eating fruit and reading poetry.
If we “picture economies like people with metabolisms” then Degrowth is a deadly virus.
The sub-title of my blog: Walking around on Resurrection ground. These words are not some sappy sentiments. These words speak of an eye-witnessed historical reality – God, very God, is personally involved with His creation. Jesus, in going to the cross, gave us the example we are to follow – not employing an authoritarian program of Degrowth (the wisdom of this world) but choosing the paradoxical path of self-denial leading to true life.
We are to put off our old self, which belonged to our former manner of life that was corrupted through deceitful desires, to find true life. Doing away with lack of self-control, covetousness, greed, etc. has implications not just for the individual but for the world.
“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to come after me, they must give themselves up, and pick up their cross, and follow me. Yes: if someone wants to save their life, they must lose it; and if anyone loses their life for my sake they will find it. What use will it be, otherwise, if you win the world but forfeit your true life? What will you give to get your life back? -Jesus, the gospel of Matthew 16: 24-26
Degrowth takes its toll:
Degrowth is Communism:
Degrowth is growing:
Think about how Degrowth will be implemented when you read this.
“This is a catastrophe beyond imagination and the response of the State governments has been appalling. Surprisingly, local rescue workers have high praise for the FEMA response team. They are doing the work the State government refused to do. Instead of transparency it looks like the outside world is being fed disinformation by the local government in order to down play the scope and scale of the disaster.” (Emphasis mine.)
Trying to take land away from our people before we’ve had a chance to grieve and rebuilt is not pono, and we will not stand for it. pic.twitter.com/gZczd1oLTo
“As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, the devastating wildfires across Maui are a classic toxic combination of liberalism, corruption and inexperience all rolled into one.”
“Hawaii’s biggest crime scene is being white washed by politicians congratulating themselves on what a fine job they did maintaining control and civil order.”
“M. Kaleo Manuel, former deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, waited for more than five hours to release water during the wildfires that devastated Maui, according to reports…. A former Obama Foundation leader — part of a program by the former President’s non-profit to help participants with coaching and “practical skill building for social change” — Manuel said he considered water an important tool for social justice.” (Emphasis mine.)
(Over a loudspeaker) “Professor Smith, you’ve been brought to this college auditorium, not to deliver the lecture you’ve prepared, but to stand before the student body, your colleagues, alumni and the governing board to answer for your lack of unity with the people sitting in this room.
“Professor Smith, you would not be here if you were not guilty of something. We wouldn’t go after an innocent man. Face it. We know everything about you. But for every problem there is a solution, Professor Smith. I’m sure you can discover a solution!
“We are here to help you resolve the tension you now face. It’s up to you to explain yourself. If you confess you will be treated with respect.
“Professor Smith, we believe in the rule of many voices. One of your students, Mary, will read your crimes against the people in this auditorium. (Thunderous applause.)
(Mary, over the loudspeaker) “Professor Smith, you’ve liked tweets critical of coronavirus vaccines, gender-affirmation surgery and college diversity, equity and inclusion offices. (Loud Boos!)
“You’ve spoken in public forums against Critical Race Theory, diversity, equity and inclusion, environmental, social, and corporate governance, and LGBTQ+ books and drag shows in school libraries. (Loud Boos!)
“You’ve ridiculed the 1619 Project in opinion pieces. (Loud Boos!)
“On your Substack you have consistently denied that there is a climate change crisis. (Loud Boos!)
“You continue to question the validity of the 2020 election when speaking with your colleagues. (Loud Boos!)
“You are not one of us!” (The assembly, “NOT ONE OF US! NOT ONE OF US!”)
(Over the loudspeaker) “Thank you, student Mary. Now Smith, look at all those faces before you. Don’t you see that we are all in this together? Don’t you want unity?”
“I . . .I . . . I”
(Over the loudspeaker) “Every time you open your mouth, little man, nothing good comes out!”
(The assembly “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Over the loudspeaker) “We are respectable people Smith, but you . . . you are a reactionary, an extremist and deplorable.
“Understand this Smith. Your position and privileges will be taken away unless you renounce your wrong thoughts and come around to the correct way of thinking. Confess your thoughtcrimes and you will be respectable. You want to be respectable, don’t you Smith?”
“I . . .I . . . I”
(The assembly “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Over the loudspeaker) “Don’t you want to be respectable like doctors Collins and Fauci and like climate scientist Michael Mann?
“Don’t you want to be respectable like David French, Mike Pence, and Mitt Romney?
“Don’t you want to be respectable like everyone on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News? You could be respectable just like them. (Someone shouts “RESPECTABLE PEOPLE BUILD CONSESNSUS!)
“You hear that Smith? Why do you spread lies and toxic words that are contrary to what everyone here knows? (Loud Boos!) You want to fit in, don’t you Smith?”
“I’ve taught here over 40 years.”
(Over a loudspeaker) “Student Mary has told you that you do not fit in Smith. Let’s find out if you can.
“Do you accept that Joe Biden won the 2020 election?”
“There were irregularities.” (Loud Boos!)
(Over a loudspeaker) Do you still hold to the conspiracy theory that the election was stolen?
“Well . . . “
(The assembly “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Over a loudspeaker) Let Smith answer.
“Molly Ball said . . .”
“Words, Smith, just words. Don’t you care about our democracy!Your words don’t protect our democracy! (The assembly “PROTECT OUR DEMOCRACY! “PROTECT OUR DEMOCRACY!)
“We have a surprise for you little man. Bring out Lousie.” (Thunderous applause.)
“My neighbor?”
(The crowd shouts “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Over a loudspeaker) “Your neighbor Louise is respectable little man. She harbors no thoughtcrimes. Even better. She told us about conversations she had with your son.”
“My son? Louise? Why?”
(The assembly “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!”)
(Louise, from a dark corner of the platform) “Professor your heart is not in the right place. We want to save you from yourself. This is as much for your family’s sake as anyone else’s. (Thunderous applause.) You don’t want to lose everything for the sake of some odd reactionary ideas, do you?”
(Over a loudspeaker) “We have another surprise for you Smith. Sitting in the audience is your banker Mr. Barrows. He’s a respectable man. He wants to do business only with respectable people. Will you join us in being respectable Smith?
(How did it come to this? If I resist, I will lose my position and even my bank accounts. I will lose everything I’ve built up over the years. My reputation! –what will happen if I resist? But if I confess and renounce everything I believe to be true then I can live to fight another day. Just not today. But if I do that, I put my life into their hands. Do I give them power and authority over my life for me to be called “respectable”? What would I become? Are my words just words? Oh God, what should I do?)
The 70-year-old university president, a molecular immunologist, made the mistake of liking tweets critical of coronavirus vaccines, gender-affirmation surgery and college diversity, equity and inclusion offices.
Critics told the newspaper that the president’s likes sent “an anti–public health message.” [President] Tykocinski, a molecular immunologist, also serves as dean of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College. (Emphasis mine.)
Thomas Jefferson University president Mark Tykocinski has apologized after coming under fire for liking tweets critical of coronavirus vaccines, gender-confirmation surgery and college diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week.
Struggle session example #2 – lacking awareness of wrongthink:
Thoughtcrime per Thought Police:
“New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees said Wednesday during an interview with Yahoo Finance that he “will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country”
“In an attempt to talk about respect, unity, and solidarity centered around the American flag and the national anthem, I made comments that were insensitive and completely missed the mark on the issues we are facing right now as a country,” he said. “They lacked awareness and any type of compassion or empathy. Instead, those words have become divisive and hurtful and have misled people into believing that somehow I am an enemy. This could not be further from the truth, and is not an accurate reflection of my heart or my character.”
“Special counsel Jack Smith revealed four felony charges against Trump on Tuesday, including three conspiracies and one count of obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. Prosecutors allege Trump continued to peddle lies about the outcome of the 2020 election despite knowing that he lost.
“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false,” the 45-page indictment read. “But the defendant repeatedly and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”
Not going to happen. And, per Constitution legal scholar Jonathon Turley:
“Trump followed the advice of a second, albeit smaller, set of lawyers who told him there was a basis for challenging the election.
“That is not a crime. It is, in my view, protected political speech. Presidents routinely lie on matters great and small. Many of those lies cost citizens dearly, from “keeping your doctor” under ObamaCare to losing your life in Vietnam. Criminalizing lies in campaigns because of the spread of disinformation or disorder is a slippery slope that vests unprecedented power in the Justice Department.”
Struggle session example #4 – disseminating wrongthink:
Thoughtcrime per Thought Police:
“During a Sunday prayer, the priest asked God to “work a miracle and bring these great peoples together: Ukraine and Russia.” He also beseeched the Lord to make Russians and Ukrainians “stop exterminating and killing each other” and help them “build the kingdom of heaven here, on Earth” to eventually “ascend to the skies together.”
“These words did not sit well with local journalist Darya Sipigina, who was the first to publish videos from the sermon, along with a Facebook post in which she blasted Kurach’s words as “shocking.” “How is this even possible a year and a half [into the conflict]?” she asked in her post, while accusing the Uzhhorod Greek-Catholic Church of a lack of “respect for those who defend the Ukrainian land and die for it.”
“A call for peace between Russians and Ukrainians has landed a Ukrainian priest in hot water. Roman Kurach, who serves with the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, has had to apologize publicly after his words prompted an intervention by some Ukrainian journalists and sparked what the local media called a “massive scandal.””
~~~~~
Struggle sessions and re-education camps.
Is the following happening where you work? Are you told, under threat of dismissal, to believe lies? Are you forced to do DEI and CRT Training – told to believe harmful nonsense under threat of dismissal?
“These workers were subjected to a struggle session in the guise of diversity training, during which the white males on the staff were made to apologise for their white privilege. They were also made to acknowledge a connection between white male culture and mass killings. This closely mirrors how educated people were made to apologize for all the ills of the world during the Maoist struggle sessions.”
“One specific kind of public humiliation is what’s called “The Struggle Session.” It was a punishment reserved for people who committed wrong-think. The point was to publicly degrade the person until they swore allegiance to the Communist Party. Their focus is on the elimination of the power base and/or class position of enemy classes or groups. It was also a warning to everyone watching: If you don’t bend your knee to communism, you will be destroyed.”
Mao’s formula for transforming society- unity, criticism, unity- underlies DEI, social emotional learning and more.
“They start from a desire for unity, and they are taught a contrived notion of right and wrong through criticism and struggle so that we can arrive at a new, contrived unity on a new, contrived basis. Everyone outside of the desire for unity is an enemy of the people.” ~Mao.
“Richard Wurmbrand was imprisoned and tortured for 14 long years in a Communist Romanian prison. . .
“Not only did Richard undergo physical torture, but also brainwashing. According to Richard the brainwashing went like this, “Communism is good! Communism is good! Communism is good! Christianity is stupid! Christianity is stupid! Christianity is stupid! Give up! Give up! Give up!” For 17 hours a day, Rev. Richard went through this brainwashing with his faith intact.”
Struggle sessions or denunciation rallies were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where people accused of being “class enemies” were publicly humiliated, accused, beaten and tortured by people with whom they were close. Usually conducted at the workplace, classrooms and auditoriums, “students were pitted against their teachers, friends and spouses were pressured to betray one another, [and] children were manipulated into exposing their parents”.
At what point, exactly, does one risk one’s comfort, one’s career, one’s safety, and even one’s soul, for a matter of principle?
~~~~~
Remember the two years of the COVID struggle session? The globalist overlords and are planning another pandemic/struggle session. And the Biden regime is going to soon announce a climate emergency – another struggle session.
A struggle session uses fear (fear of isolation is used among other tactics) to tear down perceived systems of power, e.g., whiteness, maleness, Christianity, tradition, science, so that only ideology and those in power remain. Power, not truth, is sought after these days. For, it is believed that power can decide what is true.
Acton Institute: Bishop Robert Barron speaking on “The Philosophical Roots of Wokeism.”
“I will argue in my presentation that “wokeism” is a popularization of critical theory, a farrago of ideas coming out of the French and German academies in the mid-twentieth century. Until we understand its origins in the thinking of Adorno, Horkheimer, Derrida, Marcuse, and Foucault, we will not know how critically to engage this dangerous philosophy.”
A review of White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo & How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.
“DiAngelo has apparently made a career of anti-racist struggle sessions in which ordinary employees of various organizations must confess publicly to their racism however hidden it might be, as university professors, primary school teachers, doctors working in slums, etc., had once in China to confess to bourgeois propensities and counter-revolutionary ideas. They may never have uttered a racist sentiment, they may never have been rude to a person of another race, let alone violent towards one, they may have friends of other races or even be married to a person of another race, but they carry racism deep within them like Original Sin, with this difference: there can be no redemption from it even after having read DiAngelo’s book and attended her struggle sessions.”
“One is reminded of the type of psychoanalysis which after thirty years of hourly sessions four times a week fails to get to the root of the analysand’s problem, let alone solve it, because it doesn’t even know what the problem is. But failure is also an opportunity, because, like psychoanalysis, the more anti-racist training fails, the more it is needed.”
“By demonstrating how bad a person she is, DiAngelo demonstrates how good a person she is. A story that she relates towards the end of her book illustrates to perfection her self-satisfaction and moral grandiosity that masquerade as confession of sin.”
“Apart from the massacres, deaths and famines for which communism was responsible, the worst thing about the system was the official lying: that is to say the lying in which everyone was forced to take part, by repetition, assent or failure to contradict. I came to the conclusion that the purpose of propaganda in communist countries was not to persuade, much less to inform, but to humiliate and emasculate.”
No struggle session here. They’ve gone straight to the slaughter. Coming to a neighborhood near you?
South African EFF leader Julius Malema calls for his supporters to go out and kill white farmers.
“You must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing because the killing is part of a revolutionary act.” pic.twitter.com/Lc7rJOZGIN
“In almost every death certificate that identifies a covid vaccine as a cause of death, the CDC committed data fraud by not assigning the ICD 10 code for vaccine side effects to the causes of death listed on the death certificate.”
“The TIME article’s writer, Molly Ball, gleefully makes claims that a secret cabal joined forces across the country to stop Donald Trump from winning re-election, using methods such as manipulating legacy and social media coverage, getting elected officials to change election laws, and using a network of big business and union workers to manipulate voting machines, vote counts, and to push back against anyone questioning the integrity of the vote. (Emphasis mine.)
“For peaceably assembling to petition his government for one day last year, Ristau says, he was threatened with the removal of his security clearance and government confiscation of his retirement nest egg, kids’ college funds, and other life savings. Ristau says he’s also experienced serious damage to his reputation, career, and friendships after the government used anti-terrorism measures against peaceful protesters.”
“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”
A totally controlled society will arrive in the next few minutes. It will be made possible by advanced digital technology that asserts “almost continuous surveillance over every citizen” and maintains “up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen”. Authoritarians will take what we have allowed and use it for their purposes.
“There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me’.”
― science fiction author Philip K. Dick
Biometrics, facial recognition systems, eye sensors and voice scanners record and track our unique physical characteristics. We have allowed our personal data and privacy to be plundered with our use of Smartphones, Smart home technology, and telemetrics in our cars. Smart devices are designed to interact with their environment using context awareness.
“Context-awareness is a system or system component’s ability to gather information about its environment at any given time and adapt behaviors accordingly. Cameras, microphones and Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receivers, radar and LIDAR sensors are all potential sources of data for context-aware computing. A context-aware system may gather data through these and other sources and respond according to pre-established rules or through computational intelligence.”
Note the last bit. “Computational intelligence” is AI or “Artificial Intelligence” (Thank you Kamala Harris!).
Digital gizmos, marketed to the end user as a means of greater control, convenience, and increased productivity and efficiency, will be used by a centralized system that is contextually aware of the end user and will “respond according to pre-established rules or through “computational intelligence.”
The “more controlled society” will be here in the next few minutes. Our individual privacy will be obliterated in the next few minutes. Smart devices will turn on us. Our future is being programmed for us. The digital controlling apparatus – a Big Brother police state with “pre-established rules” – is being completed as I write this.
Why isn’t any of this all over the news? Why aren’t we hearing about FedNow and the July launch of the central bank digital currency infrastructure? Why aren’t we hearing about 15-minute cities and social credit scoring systems like what is being used in Communist China? Why aren’t we hearing about being controlled with digital currency, digital IDs, biometric IDs, facial recognition, biased AI, and one’s internet history? Isn’t the media supposed to be exposing what is actually going on?
“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals.”
― Glenn Greenwald
Is what I am saying science fiction? Alarmism? Conspiracy theory?
“. . . a beast of a system is quietly being built that will be used to surveil humanity, severely limit human freedom, and coerce and control human behavior. This is not an isolated pet project by a handful of bad actors; it’s a coordinated movement to control and weaponize our data.”- They’re constructing the perfect beast: Who is able to make war with him? | Stand for Health Freedom (See pdf article below.)
In the next few minutes our world will be reconstructed and restricted with digital technology. Human dignity will be reduced to data bits and bytes. We are entering a new era of dehumanization – digital dehumanization.
You will definitely want to watch the videos below so you are informed and so you can take precautions. And so you can tell your representatives, with specific knowledge, that you do not consent to a digital takeover of your life.
~~~~~
On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 I attended webinar Two Sides of the Same Coin – Digital IDs and CBDC.
“WASHINGTON — In June, the WHO announced it is looking to adopt the European Union’s Digital COVID Vaccine Certificate (EU DCC) model for its proposed “Global Digital Health ID” as part of the new pandemic treaty. Furthermore, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is beavering away on a plan to establish a global Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) which when combined with a Global Digital ID will transform the way the international, national, state, and local economies function; enable non-representative, unaccountable, centralized, global governance; and promote the establishment of a social credit score like that oppressing citizens in Communist China.
Already in Europe, many of the proposed policies in the text are being rolled out by public health agencies and institutions. For example, the use of a “European Digital ID,” initially intended to track COVID vaccine status is rapidly expanding — and becoming mandatory — for many services like banking and transportation.”
Frank Gaffney, Executive Chairman of the Center for Security Policy; Vice-chair for the Committee on the Present Danger: China; Host, Securing America with Frank Gaffney on RAV, and author of “The Indictment: Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party and Friends for Crimes Against America, China, and the World”
Co-Host and Panelist
Reggie Littlejohn, Esq., President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, Co-Chair of the Stop Vaccine Passports Task Force; Member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, Graduate of Yale Law School. — TOPIC: Trapped in the Digital Gulag by Digital IDs and CBDCs
Panelists
Nick Corbishley, Journalist, Author of “Scanned: Why Vaccine Passports and Digital IDs Will Mean the End of Privacy and Personal Freedom” — TOPIC: Digital IDs, A Prerequisite for CBDCs
Kevin Freeman, Host of “Economic War Room with Kevin Freeman”; President, National Security Investment Consultants Institute; author, “Secret Weapon”, “Game Plan,” “According to Plan,” and “Pirate Money: Discovering the Founders’ Plan for Economic Justice and Defeating the Great Reset” (soon to be released). — TOPIC: Disrupting CBDC with the money used by Pirates
Leo Hohmann, Veteran Investigative Reporter; Author, “Stealth Invasion”; Contributor, FrontPage Magazine, LifeSite News, Zero Hedge, the Drudge Report, Technocracy.News, Canada Free Press, Global Research, The Gateway Pundit, World Net Daily — TOPIC: The Beast System Is Coming Whether You Want It Or Not
(Example to consider: new cars operate with telemetric software that is owned by the car company. Telemetric software monitors and controls the car. If globalists/WEF has its way with car companies, “15-minute cities” and Green Energy restrictions mean your car will not operate if you go beyond the boundaries set for you.)
Nothing You Own is Yours
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“The New Agenda” / “Agenda 2030” coming to a phone near you!
All new Samsung Galaxy phones come pre-installed with the UN Agenda 2030 app. “We are working on getting back on track for the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda” it says. Time to stop buying Samsung phones.
The above is worldwide control. Below, a discussion about what’s going on in the U.S. – the CIA is a world power that is not accountable to congress or the citizens of our country. Topics include virus/vaccine control, de-population agenda, WEF, Henry Kissinger, and more.
Don’t wait. Start now. Do not relent…Tell your representatives today that you will not abide digital tyranny! …Silence Is Assent. …Compliance Is Consent. …Cooperation Is Suicide. …Obedience Is Cowardice.
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Let’s take a close look at the Life Skills of the administrative state.
At a Brownsburg Community School Corporation meeting on Monday night, the school board approved the termination or resignation of four staffers involved in a lunchroom incident where a special-needs student was mistreated and subjected to eating his own puke.
According to the Brownsburg Police Department, Seymour advised a 7-year-old Life Skills student that, if he vomited, he would have to eat whatever he threw up.
The child, on a tray provided by Taylor, indeed vomited, at which point Kanipe provided the child with a spoon.
BROWNSBURG, Ind. — A law firm representing the family of a 7-year-old special needs student who was told to eat his own vomit by school staff at Brown Elementary revealed that the student’s family wasn’t notified about the abuse until two months later when media reports shed light on the incident.
[Attorney Catherine Michael of Connell Michael Kerr LLP] said the family has only been provided limited information about the abuse but was shown a video that shows the child being provided a spoon by Debra Kanipe, a Life Skills instructional aide at Brown Elementary. In the video, both Kanipe and Sara Seymour, a Life Skills teacher, stand on each side of the student as the child is told to eat his own vomit off a lunch tray. (Emphasis mine.)
The attorneys for the special needs student in Brownsburg say this whole situation is part of a much bigger problem.
You may remember the story of a seven-year-old boy at Brown Elementary School who police say was forced to eat his own vomit by two school staffers on February 16th, all while three others stood back and watched, never reporting the situation.
Attorneys for the family, Catherine Michael and Tammy Meyer, say this doesn’t surprise them and isn’t anything new.
“Special education abuse is actually becoming far more common,” says Catherine Michael on WIBC’s Kendall and Casey show, “we’re talking about this case now, but Tammy and I have handled many cases where unfortunately, it’s not caught on camera.”
Frequent private jet passenger, John Kerry, admits that destruction of the farming industry is essential to achieving 'Net Zero':
"Agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world. And we can’t get to net zero—we don’t get this job done—unless agriculture is… pic.twitter.com/1nlzrDFr6A
The Concordia Research Station in Antarctica recorded a provisional low temperature of -117.76ºF (-83.2ºC) on July 25, marking the world’s lowest temperature in six years.
You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He’s a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he’s built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in The Twilight Zone.
Why were you and I born in these times? Was it so we could surrender our wills, our human agency, our property and our lives to the lies of the totalitarian state? To the lie of a “Climate crisis” sequel to “climate change” sequel to Henny Penny? To the lie of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” sequel to racist Affirmative Action? To the lie of “Stakeholder Capitalism” and “ESG” sequels to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its endless mistrust of capitalism in the hands of simple (non-elite) humans? To the lie of the Davos vision of “The Great Narrative” sequel to “The Great Reset” sequel to atheistic and murderous regimes such as the world’s first Marxist state the U.S.S. R., Marxist–Leninist and Khmer ethnonationalist Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and the Cultural Revolution of Mao’s China?
Were you and I born in these times to subject ourselves to constant revolution, upheaval, paranoia, mass hysteria, chaos, show trials, and purges – to allow the State to have its way with us with its lies?
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Lies have become the pillars of our current State. The State’s lies require corrupt power structures to keep them in place. The State’s lies require double standards of justice. The State’s lies require manipulation of data. The State’s lies require violence. The State’s lies require more and more sleight of hand. The State’s lies require daily self-deception.
We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Truth requires nothing of this world to support it. Truth stands alone. Truth is not a thing of this world. Truth is power from a different world. Jesus made this clear to Pontious Pilate, the power of this world, before being sentenced to crucifixion, the State’s method to keep lies and systems of power alive.
Romney Wordsworth did the same. He spoke truth to power in The Obsolete Man. He was content to die holding on to the truth he gave witness to during his life.
I will do the same as a follower of the Way, the Truth and the Life.
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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2+2=5 Radiohead
Are you such a dreamer To put the world to rights? I’ll stay home forever Where two and two always makes a five
I’ll lay down the tracks Sandbag and hide January has April showers And two and two always makes a five
It’s the devil’s way now There is no way out You can scream and you can shout It is too late now Because
[Chorus] You have not been Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention You have not been Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention You have not been Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention You have not been Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention Paying attention
Blackrock – a totalitarian assetDr. Francis Boyle talks about bioweapons, population control.
Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, talks about bioweapons, population reduction of “useless eaters”, the racist use of bioweapons, transhumanism.
“Information warfare conducted by the US government includes covert propaganda, controlled opposition, chaos agents, divide & conquer operations, false flags, disinformation campaigns, bad jacketing, advertising and more. These are being combined with neural-linguistic programming, subliminal messaging, nudge technology, hypnosis and propaganda.”
“Commenting on climate alarmism, [Nobel Prize laureate Dr. John] Clauser has said that “The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.””
“Yuval Harari, Klaus Schwab’s right-hand man has called for so-called “conspiracy theorists” to be banned from the Internet because of their “dangerous” belief that a global clique of elites controls the world . . .”
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.
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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.
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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.”
“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
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“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
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“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
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“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
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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
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“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
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Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
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“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
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“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
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“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
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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
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
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“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
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“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
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
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“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
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“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
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“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
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“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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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