Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Deception & Propaganda
"On every question of construction [of the Constitution], let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823
Editor’s Essay: The conspiratorial efforts on the part of totalitarians to denigrate the term “conspiracy”
The kindly and humble Mary Easty was burned as a witch, Massachusetts Colony, 1692. Today, modern politically-motivated Inquisitorial boards as special prosecutors, with no desire to honor the truth, act in the same spirit of witch-hunting.
Dan Drasin on the psychology of "debunking" - how anything, even Mother Teresa, can be so-called "debunked" by employing kangaroo-court methods of judgment.
Attorney Adrian Smith: how Post-Modernism, one of the most pernicious cults, erodes personal liberties and undermines the West’s heritage of the rule of law
'The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied... chains us all, irrevocably.'
STNG, season 4, episode "The Drumhead"
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The Day Jesus Became God: How a church-council vote, over 300 years after the birth of Christ, changed the course of history.
The Gospel Of John was written as a polemic against the Gospel Of Thomas. The ‘John Christians’ were threatened by the teachings of the ‘Thomas Christians’ and attempted to marginalize this earliest view of the nature and mission of Jesus of Nazareth.
'What is belief? - a state, not an act, of the mind.'
Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871)
British mathematician, with contributions to logic, set theory, probability theory, computer science, and numerous other fields; founder, London Mathematical Society (1865)
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'It is not in the power of anyone to alter his state [of mind] by will. [There is] a tendency to suppose that profession [of mental position] might be taken for belief; the dishonest wanted only profession.'
The Gospel Of John commands belief; without which, it says, one is “damned already.” But there is no such thing as authentic belief led by will power. Human beings are constitutionally unable, lack the ability, to offer credulity on demand, even if they wish to do so and try very hard. Belief arises naturally, from the evidence, or not at all, even in spite of settled opinion.
And the fact that John suggests otherwise - indeed, commands - offers clear signal, to the objective reviewer, that this writing must be counted as fraudulent, an effort to engender fear in order to gain followers - a scheme of "the dishonest," warned De Morgan - and could never represent the mind of the real Jesus.
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John Stuart Mill on the censorship of "misinformation":
“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”
“...there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.”
H. L. Mencken: “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” Editor’s note: Totalitarian governments attempt to regulate the thinking of a populace by imposing taboos, that which, according to their power-and-control agenda, is prohibited. It’s what, they say, we ought not believe, or speak of, as proper and acceptable. A complicit lapdog media serves as megaphone of despotic government’s schemes by either condemning, ignoring, lauding, or otherwise disingenuously, disproportionately, but always selectively, presenting various aspects of the news.
Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night: "The proportion and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves; and if you get those wrong, you falsify the picture really seriously."
'If a government can censor its critics, that’s a license for every atrocity. It is the beginning of totalitarianism.'
“If a government can censor its critics, that’s a license for every atrocity. It is the beginning of totalitarianism." Robert F. Kennedy Jr., oral testimony to the House Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing, July 20, 2023
“The corner foundation stone of our system is freedom of speech. All of the other freedoms depend on it. If we lose that, not only do we lose our democracy in this country, but in the entire world.”
From internet news sources:
It was a hearing on censorship — and 102 members of Congress signed a letter asking the committee to censor RFK Jr.’s testimony on censorship.
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Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice: “… truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son may, but at the length truth will out.”
Paul Johnson, A New Deuteronomy: "When we are dealing with concepts like freedom and equality, it is essential to use words accurately and in good faith... beware of those who seek to win an argument at the expense of the language. For the fact that they do is proof positive that their argument is false, and proof presumptive that they know it is. A man who deliberately inflicts violence on the language will almost certainly inflict violence on human beings if he acquires the power. Those who treasure the meaning of words will treasure truth, and those who bend words to their purposes are very likely in pursuit of anti-social ones."
Darrell Huff's classic book, How To Lie With Statistics
Raw data is message-neutral, but statistics represent an interpretation of the data. This is where the fun begins.
If you're a propagandist with a party-platform to sell or impose, it's not difficult to make the data appear as a rising or falling trajectory, or a flat line, whatever is required to offer "proof."
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Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Alinsky's propaganda tenets, to state the obvious, constitute a form of warfare against civilized society. Those who employ his ends-justify-the-means philosophy, a willingness to do anything and say anything to advance a Small-Ego agenda, reveal and build, within themselves, an anti-humanistic shamelessness, a light-expunging mindset, a base level of consciousness, which, as we are informed by the scientific evidence of the afterlife, fits oneself for the lowest quarters of the rat-cellar Dark Realms.
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George Orwell: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
Apostle John, Revelation: "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth ...[which had the appearance of] a lamb [but] spoke as a dragon... and deceives them that dwell on the earth" (chapter 13, verses 11, 14).
George Orwell, 1984: "If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say ... it never happened ... [then] where did that knowledge exist?... if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -- if all records told the same lie -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. Who controls the past, ran the Party slogan, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past... 'Reality control,' they called it ... "Winston sank ... into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly forget it again... "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words... Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible ... The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect... "It was necessary ... to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened... This day-to-day falsification of the past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability of the regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love."
Benito Mussolini, London Sunday Express, Dec. 8, 1935: "The masses have little time to think. And how incredible is the willingness of modern man to believe." ... "Another weapon I discovered early was the power of the printed word to sway souls to me. The newspaper was soon my gun, my flag -- a thing with a soul that could mirror my own."
“To do anything that suggests a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity.” George Orwell, 1984
"The Wizard [of Oz, metaphor of society's thought-police] is threatened by the inner journey. The whole administrative structure of the manufactured reality is threatened." Adrian Smith
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Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf: "The German people have no idea of the extent to which they have to be gulled in order to be led" ... "The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one" ... "All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it" ... "Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister: "The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious."
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister: "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly... it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
Stephen Hawking: The Pope told me to stay away from the life-after-death subject.
MICHAEL ROLL
British political activist against censorship
of the scientific evidence for the afterlife
Michael Roll is an activist afterlife-researcher with whom I've had the privilege of communicating several times. Michael regularly sends information to British MPs and other influential individuals in an effort to stop the suppression of the scientific evidence for the afterlife. His efforts have been instrumental in changing British censorship laws.
The following are excerpts from letters I've received from Michael:
You will see that a great deal has happened on the scientific front since I did my first radio broadcast in the London area on November 3, 1988.
At this time it was against the radio codes to talk about life after death in England in a serious scientific manner. In England the Church and the State are still established, and our Queen is head of the Anglo-Catholic Church.
However, I did manage to get the Radio Authority to remove these clauses against free speech in February 1994. I found this out when the Bristol radio presenter Dave Barrett telephoned me to say that the radio station had just had a memo from the Radio Authority. He said, “Mike, you have won.” Lord Chalfont, the chairman of the Radio Authority at the time, did not bother to tell me.
I also managed to get the Royal Navy to remove the First Article of War. When my son entered Dartmouth College a sinister card was thrust into his hand. In effect it said either you agree to indoctrinate the ranks under you with the Christian religion or you can forget any promotion in the Royal Navy.
I could then understand what happened to me in 1956 when I did national service in the Royal Navy. Religious services were compulsory. When my son’s ship HMS Illustrious invited families on board for a short cruise there was I pipe that said “A religious service is about to take part on the Quarter Deck.” I went along to see how many would turn up. About ten out of a thousand people on board.
We have to fight for freedom, it is not easily obtained. I have it easy compared to others in the past. In 1600 the scientist Giordano Bruno was arrested by the Roman Catholic Church. He was tortured by the priests, forcing him to renounce his findings. He spat in the faces of the priests. He was burnt at the stake while still alive.
This suppressed scientific case for survival after death is all set out on the website of The Campaign for Philosophical Freedom: www.scsad.afterlifeinstitute.org
Exposing this appalling deception of the British people must go right across party lines. Discoveries in physics belong to every man, woman and child on Earth. It is just too bad if they upset the pope and Professor Stephen Hawking. Hawking actually went to see the pope. On his return, at a press conference that was televised, a journalist asked Hawking what the pope said to him. This was Hawking’s reply:
“The pope said to me that he did not care what I did in science just as long as I never encroached on his subject, life after death.”
I asked Michael, "Was this reported in the popular press? How did the journalist make this known?"
Wayne, I was in the right place at the right time. I was at home watching lunchtime TV news. The cameras were at the press conference. I am sure it was cut after this. I did not see it in the evening news. As far as I know it was not reported in the press. Don’t forget the Telegraph, for example, is owned by Roman Catholic brothers [as opposed to] The Times owned by born-again Christian Rupert Murdoch.
[I gave an interview on Malta TV.] Sadly, Lou Bondi, who interviewed me, got the sack. I think we got a bit too close to the truth in a Roman Catholic country. Understandably, the priests are not keen to lose their lucrative monopoly on the life-after-death industry.
[It's as Brian Josephson said:] “It’s hard to change how people think. People have vested interests, and their projects and reputations would be threatened if certain things were shown to be true.” Professor Brian D. Josephson, Nobel Laureate for physics, Mind-Matter Unification Project at Cambridge University. Interview in the New Scientist on 9 December, 2006.
See Michael Roll's Malta TV interview on youtube
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Paul Johnson: "Hitler's artistic approach was absolutely central to his success. Lenin's religious-type fanaticism would never have worked in Germany. The Germans were the best-educated nation in the world. To conquer their minds was very difficult. Their hearts, their sensibilities, were easier targets" ... "In a rare moment of frankness, Lenin once said that only a country like Russia could have [been] captured so easily ... as he took it. Germany was a different proposition. It could not be raped. It had to be seduced."
Martin Luther King, Jr: "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Paul Johnson: "It was a decade of illusion, in which eager spirits were led by continued prosperity to believe and propagate many Utopian notions: that poverty could be abolished, cruelty and violence legislated out of existence, every freedom infinitely extended and voraciously enjoyed, and some kind of democratic and egalitarian paradise established on earth. The vast and unconsidered expansion of higher education was both a product and accelerator of these illusory forces, pouring on to the scene countless armies of your graduates, who shared these fantastic hopes and set about elbowing aside the obscurantist and authoritarian elders who alone, it was argued, prevented their realization."
they bought and sold you... controlled you...
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
I look at you and see the love there that's sleeping...
I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you...
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Dr. Bill Bennett, President Reagan's Secretary of Education: "Social regression and decadence are glaringly obvious in the current presidential administration. Now, whenever I make a comment these days criticizing Bill Clinton, someone inevitably asks, 'Aren't you casting stones?' It shows how far we've fallen that calling for the President of the United States to account for charges of adultery, lying to the public, perjury, and obstruction of justice is regarded as akin to stoning" ... "The problem is not with those who are withholding judgment until all the facts are in, but with the increasing number of people who want to avoid judgment altogether... We are hesitant to impose upon ourselves a common moral code because we want our own exemptions."
George Will, Dec. 17, 1998: "Serial contrition, carefully calibrated, is oxymoronic."
it's not the color of skin, but the heart of darkness
slavery in every country of the globe, in all ages
Spirit Guide instructing Franchezzo in the Dark Realms:
“If you will but recall the history of your Earth and think how men in all ages have enslaved, oppressed, and tortured their fellow men in every country of that globe…”
READ MORE of Franchezzo's channeled testimony concerning the Dark Realms.
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Ken Burns’ Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, the search for the fabled Northwest Passage, is one of my very favorite documentaries. It’s really thrilling, with the four dozen adventurers, to trudge up the Missouri, against the current, sometimes literally getting out and pulling the boats, all the way to Helena, Montana, where the great watery path finally divides itself into competing rivulets, revealing its origins in hidden mountain springs.
Along the way, the two famous captains encountered many Native American tribes. Some of these were the “bullies in the neighborhood,” brutalizing, grossly violating, and lording it over other tribes: not only were other men killed, with their scalps paraded as trophies, but women were stolen as prized plunder, now to live out their lives as non-entity sex-slaves and beasts of burden.
This all changed in a moment in 1804. Lewis and Clark, as part of their mission, announced to all they met that there was “a new kid in town” who would overturn old power structures and bring a new pecking order to the warring tribal factions.
Fast-forward 200 years. There are unscrupulous politicians today, in a page written by Marx, ever setting one societal group against another, attempting to buy votes by currying favor with that one at the expense of that other. And they want to apologize for what the Evil White Males have done in history. And it’s true, there’s a lot of apology to go around, that any now-enlightened person might tender.
However, to suggest that white males somehow are more evil than other two-legged creatures is just vote-buying propaganda. The issue of brutality, pillaging, and atrocity, is not a “white” problem, as such, but a “human” problem. Every person, led by the “false self,” if unimpeded, if not constrained by a sturdy rule of law, will sink as low as necessary, do whatever it takes, to appease the inner chantings of “I don’t have enough” because “I am not enough.”
What the Whites did to the Reds, or the Blacks, or any other color that got in their way, is unforgivable; but, within the abused groups, and every group of every nation in history, we will find reports aplenty of intra-group barbarity -- just ask Will Durant in his "Story Of Civilization."
The Whites weren’t more evil – they just had better technology, so it was hard to stop them. And to frame the issue in terms of one group being more evil than another is not only a new form of racism but an utter sophistic misconstruing of the universal problem of “the heart of darkness” among all peoples.
Editor’s note: As I recount on the “Reading” page, I lived on “the reservation” as a teacher for a time. And I will tell you for a fact, from first-hand experience, that, within that little insulated microcosm, the Native “elites” took advantage of, made merchandize of, their less-educated brethren, just the way, in principle, their bellicose forebears had done it prior to 1804. They intentionally and purposefully kept their fellows dependent and ginned-up against the Whites, to control them via a spirit of envy and victimhood -- as much as they could get away with, as far as the law allowed, and then some.
European slave-traders were aided and abetted by warlike African tribes, which possessed large numbers of Black African slaves, their own countrymen and women.
We don’t hear much about this from the vote-buying demagogues who want to portray slavery as an inherently White infraction. Do some research, for example, on the Imbangala or Nyamwezi African tribes who plundered their own racial brethren, enslaving them, and, at times, sold them for profit to the slave-trading Whites.
Editor’s note: Blacks enslaving Blacks, not only a matter of historical record but, according to current Black sources, continues to be practiced in Africa even today. Further, this intra-racial slavery is also referred to in popular-culture media such as the movie “Amistad.”
The issue of slavery, so common in history among virtually all peoples, is what the dysfunctional ego will allow itself if granted sufficient power and control over any who get in its way.
In 1787, a young Englishman, William Wilberforce, became aware of the atrocities of the African slave trade. So moved was he that, against all odds, against powerful political and economic interests, often working alone, he began to wage war on this barbarity. Very slowly, by inches, as prosecuting attorney for the truth, he would turn public opinion against the great inhumanism. Finally, after decades of crusade, during which he was constantly attacked, threatened, and vilified by the privileged, Parliament set as law The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 throughout the entire British Empire. Wilberforce's struggle was not unique: every reformer, as guardian of sacred freedoms and human dignity, intent upon overturning the vested totalitarian interests, the "money-changers' tables," will face kangaroo-court treatment in this world. See William Wilberforce in the motion picture, Amazing Grace, and read more on the "Economics" page.
Editor’s note: A great-great grandson of the great, great man, Father Gerard Wilberforce, states, “I am often asked what would be the campaigns Wilberforce would be fighting if he were alive [today] … at the top of the list would be the issue of abortion.” The historical ironies and echoes of the slavery-abortion connection sickens us. Recently, a top US government official stated at a press conference that, if Roe vs. Wade were overturned, the national economy would be adversely affected. We not only gasp at the putridly mercenary reasoning but remind ourselves that this was the same venal argument made in pre-Civil War days concerning the freeing of Blacks.
Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm, David Peat: “In high school he had been interested in the sweep of history and the rise and fall of civilizations; he had argued politics with [friend] Mort Weiss’s father and the local rabbi. Nevertheless he had still retained his faith in the power of democracy and Roosevelt’s New Deal. But now, as he took stock of the political groups around him, from the Young Communist League on the left to the Nazi-saluting German-American Bund and Father Coughlin on the right, he became more cynical. It seemed to him that people only paid lip service to the ideals of democracy and freedom but were privately motivated by self-interest, while powerful groups were willing to employ repressive measures to attain their ends. In short, America seemed fertile ground for the rise of fascism.” Editor’s note: The spirit of America has not improved. Today we “pay lip service to the ideals of democracy” as we witness “repressive measures” concerning what used to be Constitutional privilege. We endure censorship, the death of free speech, rigged elections, high-tech surveillance, a two-tiered system of justice with drumhead jurisprudence for those who attempt to reform. Yes, it is even more true today than in the 1930s: America is fertile ground for the rise of fascism. It’s already here.
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the problem of slavery is not centered in, not the product of, one specific "evil" race but is part of the unenlightened human condition at large
It’s become fashionable today, within certain circles, to excoriate the “evil white male” – but only among those seeking for totalitarian control. Promoting enmity and class warfare, setting group against group, is the ploy of those who would install themselves as savior of societal chaos.
These vote-buyers would have you believe that slavery was invented by the “evil while male,” conveniently forgetting that, throughout history, all racial groups have engaged in the practice of slavery – vis-à-vis other groups and also within their own group.
How terribly ironic that the person who virtually single-handedly achieved the outlawing of the African slave trade is revealed as one of those “evil white males.” It is an unconscionable travesty of justice to fail to honor William Wilberforce as the man who signaled the beginning of the end of the great barbarity.
Editor’s note: Recently, I watched a movie on the life of Malcolm X. He was an angry young man, but justifiably so. None should blame him for not winning a Miss Congeniality Award. As the movie progressed, I grew to admire him more and more as he courageously stood up for the divine rights of his people. If director Spike Lee offered accurate portrayal, then it seems that, in latter years, just before he was killed, Malcolm began to soften his stance on the “evil white male” and took a more universalist approach toward the nature of evil in the world. Incredibly ironic, however, is how he died. It seems that Malcolm had grown too popular and was now a threat to the once-mentoring religious Dear Leader. They sought to kill Malcolm, and apparently it was they who brought him down. We have spoken of the universal problem of slavery, of violence and oppression, which respects no racial divide. How tragic that Malcolm himself would become an example, a victim, of blacks enslaving and brutalizing fellow blacks. It should also be pointed out that the religious Dear Leader, having used his influence to sexually exploit his young secretaries, justified his actions by comparing himself to Old Testament prophets who had many wives and concubines. This is an old and well-worn pretext. The Dear Leader of the old church, attended by Adrian Smith and myself in our younger years, was also involved in sexual misconduct, as were others in the hierarchy, and, from the pulpit, I still recall, the same Old Testament defenses being made. It's had a long run. Read about the spirit of fundamentalism/cultism extant in all true-believer societies. Malcolm learned of this too late.
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more than drinking the koolaid
The long reach of cultism encompasses much more than crackpot churches. The root idea of cult offers the sense of "cut." This core concept of "cut" leads us to images of refinement and refashioning and, by extension, development, control, pattern, order, and system.
Cultism as systemization finds a ready home in religion and philosophy which seek to regulate and redistill the patterning and ordering of ideas. However, in a larger sense, the spirit of cultism extends to every facet of society. We find it scheming and sedulously at work in politics, academia, family, corporations, entertainment, science, artistry – anywhere power might be gained by capturing credulous and fear-based minds.
See the “cultism” page for a full discussion.
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the US Founding Fathers, with their emphasis on personal liberties, are attacked by totalitarians because they're a threat to power-and-control schemes
Thomas Sowell, an incredibly wise black man, is a voice of reason cutting through totalitarian propaganda: Slavery, for thousands of years, has been the norm, in every age, in every society, of this perverted world: whites have enslaved whites, reds have enslaved reds, yellows have enslaved yellows, blacks have enslaved blacks – and do so, even today, in Africa.
In the movie Spiderman: Homecoming we find a group of high school students touring the Washington Monument.
Someone says, “Oh, we can’t go in there, it was probably constructed with slave labor.” Well, that's quite an air-head comment - what a victim of Dear Leader propaganda. Because, as we peel back the layers of deception, bamboozling, fraud, hokum, and flimflam of sanitized views of how society works, we quickly discover that virtually everything we see around us, the entire world civilization, issues as a product of greed, vested interests, half-truths, injustice, brutality, despotism - every shade of diminution of human rights.
there are all kinds of slavery, all kinds of exploitation, doing very well in the world today
Think of Big Pharma, uninterested in any healthcare solution which cannot be sold in a bottle. They spend huge amounts in political lobbying efforts that natural remedies be made illegal. It's all about money and corporate profits, not saving lives.
Think of Big Energy, the polluting fossil fuels, not only poisoning the environment but buying up patents for alternative ways of delivering energy, only to shelve and bury the information.
Think of Big Religion, with its anti-humanistic, cultish and guilt-laced doctrines of you're no good, God could never love you, you were born in sin and cursed, your only job is to pay-pray-obey.
Think of Big Tech, and the trashing of privacy rights. See how they tag and flag, watch and surveil, collect data on you, merchandise the details of your life, invade your right to be anonymous.
Think of Big Science, its smug claim that you're nothing but a machine, just a collection of sub-atomic particles in deterministic dance, there's no free will, no virtues of love, joy, peace, no real consciousness and intelligence, the universe and your life have no meaning.
Think of Big Food, the polluting and genetic engineering, the coating with pesticides, of the food supply, leading to various health issues for the population.
As we investigate every aspect of commerce, politics, education, technology, religion, science, we find oppression, greed, fraud, deception, hoodwinking, "how can we fool'em today," a trampling of human rights.
I speak of this here as it’s become fashionable, by socialists, by totalitarians, to suggest another gross prevarication that the US Founding Fathers were uniquely evil, requiring that we put away all that they stood for – in favor of a new utopia, led by the totalitarians, of course.
The US Founding Fathers were not perfect. And some of them, especially from the South, sought to protect their region’s economic interest in slave labor. And there were slaves in the North, as well, but not to the same extent. All this acknowledged, it was the way things were done; all over the world, in every society, and for thousands of years, this was business as usual.
'all men are created equal'
versus
Editor's note: Have you noticed that, what used to be a rarity, today, we often hear of SWAT teams breaking down doors to enforce Dear Leader's will. National security, of course.
Editor’s note: The proclamation of every oppressive Ministry of Truth, the threadbare pretext for trampling upon personal liberties, the age-old cry of the totalitarian: “national security,” “for the people,” "censor misinformation to protect.”
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Some of the Founders, however, had had enough of despotism, of buying-and-selling people like animals, and desired to create a new world of freedom for everyone, even for the slaves. In all of history, this had never been attempted; not even in ancient Greece where the “rule of law” was invented, as slaves were very common there.
Nevertheless, to change all of society, in one stroke, one generation, was asking too much of egoic human nature, and so compromises, by the best of the Founders, were grudgingly allowed. The most enlightened of them didn’t get everything they wanted. Imperfect as it was, it was a start, a political birth of freedom, never before seen in the chronicles of the world, in terms of declaring and enshrining human rights.
our problem is, this world is the only one we have right now
We have to live in this world, for now; though a better one is coming. For the moment, however, we might have to own a polluting car or ride in a polluting jet; but we don’t have to like it, and we wish for better days to come.
And we might buy a bottle of pills, or take some chemical treatment, even though we wish for more natural, more healthful, solutions to disease.
And we buy things at the grocery store that we know are laced with artificial components, and some of it is genetically altered. We have all kinds of ailments which our population never had a hundred years ago. Where have these diseases and disabilities come from? We don’t like any of this, but our resources are limited, and we try to choose the most healthful options we can.
We use cellphones, we use search engines, which spy on us, track us. We hate this "big brother" shadow in our lives, but, for now, we have to go along with it, until we can do better.
And some of the products we buy in the big "box stores" were made by virtual slave labor in third-world countries. The Big Corporations, in many cases, moved manufacturing operations to third-world countries for the express purpose of exploiting illiterate masses -- the neo-plantations. All this to enhance corporate profits - but it's a form of slavery.
Some of the immature students, with mush for brains and no sense of history, complaining about the Washington Monument, might have been wearing items, t-shirts or track shoes, or with gizmos in their backpacks, produced by the abused and exploited plebeians on the other side of the world.
Where is the outrage over this kind of slavery? - happening here, right now! not 250 years ago! Why are these products purchased, produced by the sweat and oppression of a neo-slavery?
We do all these things, and more, but, for many of us, it doesn't mean we're cheerleaders for all this rubbish, it doesn't mean we're proactively complicit with the evil on planet Earth. This despotic world is the only one we can live in right now, so, unless we're going to hide in a cave somewhere, we do our best.
And so it was for some, not all, the most enlightened, of the Founding Fathers. They hated slavery. They didn't like what was happening. They wanted everyone to have a good life, personal freedoms. And were the first in the history of the world to take a step in the right direction. And just as we, in our day, cannot rid ourselves of the oppressive Mega-Institutions, they couldn’t abolish slavery in their day; and, in some cases, if they owned or inherited slaves, the best temporary solution - with society arrayed against you, with no schools, no job opportunities open to any freed blacks - might simply have been that of allowing it and treating humanely all those in their household.
Editor's note: See more discussion on the "clear thinking" page. Anarchists redefine the word "racist" to further their usurpation agendas.
To suggest that we cannot tour the Washington Monument because slaves might have contributed labor is not only narrow-minded but Orwellian thought-control, a propaganda effort by totalitarians.
Editor’s note: When I was a teacher working on an Indian reservation, to my shock, I witnessed and lived under the only law-approved and institutionalized racism in America. A white could not go to one of their health clinics, even if one was a service-provider to the tribe! I had to drive nearly 100 miles to the nearest city for a healthcare item because whites were not allowed in their tribal health facilities! Many of those on the reservation indulged in open racism, proud of it, and as one fellow-teacher confided, “the kids are taught at home to hate the whites.” Further, I saw that the few educated tribal elites who ran the local government were exploiting their own people, ruling over them for private gain – just as the totalitarian whites do in Washington today on the macro-scale. We’re reminded that when Lewis and Clark passed through regions of the tribal indigenous, they found the natives exploiting, brutalizing, and, in some cases, enslaving, their own brethren. Nothing, in principle, has changed in 200 years – because, in the history of the world, the dark side of human nature has always been this way, the strong exploiting, enslaving, the weak. And to suggest that “we can’t go into the Washington Monument because the Founders had slaves” is an extremely ignorant, a propagandized and mentally conditioned, point of view.
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The Founders are big targets by those with despotic intent because the writings of the Founders represent some of the highest laudation of human rights in the history of the world. And this is exactly what totalitarians are rabid to expunge, on their way to worldwide power-and-control. And this is why, on a national basis, we no longer celebrate the birthdays of Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln; instead, now we have the grey-gruel, watered down "Presidents Day" - well, how inspiring to honor Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, and James Buchanan.
see the irony
The high school students touring the Washington Monument, mouthing totalitarian slogans, are, of course, not high school students at all but actors – young actors in the employ of mega-corporations intent upon totalitarian agenda – and now, I’m afraid, I must once again indulge an impoliteness – young actors, with mush for brains, air-heads, bought and paid for, serving as agents and mouth-pieces of an autocratic elite seeking for worldwide power. See the irony: air-head young actors, with words having been put into their mouths, now mechanically decrying slavery, but, in reality, they themselves living as puppets, pawns, slaves of propaganda masters.
the 'misinformation' attack
As a final note, let me draw attention to a particularly offensive term in current use by totalitarians – it’s “misinformation.” This word serves as prelude to censorship, to shutting down and stifling debate. If you don't want it known what you're really doing, if you can't answer a charge in an open forum, with other opinions to hone, then you call the other view "misinformation."
When totalitarians fear that their malfeasance might be exposed, they’re quick to label any opposition as “misinformation.” Think about what this really means. To declare any point of knowledge as “misinformation” would require a super-human, a divine-like grasp of all facts. See my articles on “Quantum Mechanics” and the history of science, and you will discover many examples of new theories and concepts, later proven to be correct, but originally flatly denied by the establishment as heresy, error, and “misinformation.”
"Is your position so weak that it cannot withstand debate?”
Star Trek: Next Generation, season three
episode #50, “The Ensigns Of Command” (1989)
“I called this meeting to replace the android’s misinformation.”
Data: “I wish to speak.”
“No, leave now.”
Data: “Is your position so weak that it cannot withstand debate?”
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Let's understand this: When you hear someone spewing sophistry of "misinformation" and the need to censor, we can be certain that a totalitarian is speaking.
the essence of the US Constitution has been mimicked by virtually all countries of the West; if it weren’t for the Founders, the entire world today - what we call 'the free world' - would be far less free, and this fact is not lost upon totalitarians wishing to take us back to a darker autocratic time of history which denied human rights
Only a self-appointed “Infallible Dear Leader” would speak of "misinformation," an attempt to censor and assert a high-handed authoritarianism. Totalitarians care nothing for truth and progress but only to maintain their grip of power-and-control on the world. This is all very Orwellian.
the new 'book burners'
All this "misinformation" charge becomes neo "book burning" - concerning any idea which contradicts the totalitarian narrative. Think of the last time in history, in the twentieth century, that book-burning was considered right and proper, was given Dear Leader's approval - and see what happened in the aftermath.
Everyone should be allowed to speak; no one, no self-appointed Infallible Dear Leader of Truth, has the right to censor anything; or, as Abraham Lincoln said, to rule over another without that person's consent.
Only in an open forum of freely-flowing ideas can we determine what's right and wrong. Only thinking minds in dialectic dynamic, only in the purging fires of a rigorous induction, might we come closer to, and discover the nature of reality - but never by a heavy-handed process of inquisition, book-burning, and censorship.
John Stuart Mill on the censorship of "misinformation":
“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”
“...there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.”
Editor’s note: Freedoms might erode by inches, but the effect of censorship and the diminishment of free speech is cumulative over time, leading to a generalized disrespect for human dignity. In the end, unless checked, it will result in what we've seen throughout history - in this:
Restatement: Totalitarians today, through strategic propaganda efforts, have worked hard to sully the images of the Founders. When stellar names such as Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or James Madison are spoken of, they want you to immediately charge, “slave owners!” This recasting of character is part of the totalitarian agenda of diminishing the reputations of the greatest defenders of personal liberties in the history of the world! No one did better than they, and the frothing minions today are fooling themselves to suggest that they would have done better. The Founders were not saints, and some of them may not have treated their slaves humanely in all cases, but they lived in a world where slavery was as common as McDonalds or Home Depot in our world. In all of history, it was that common! On the WG site we have reviewed the teachings of philosophers and mystics who explain how the masses, the entire world, for thousands of years, including today, are caught up in mind-control, of dysfunctional identification with a Dear Leader, of living from levels of irrationality and base passions. The totalitarians play upon this tendency to live inauthentically, according to these lower impulses. The motives of totalitarians -- while assuming the mantle of the super-righteous, wearing the mask of piety -- are that of worldwide power and control, a total elimination of personal freedoms, and global slavery of the surviving plebs. How do we know this? It’s very plain. Look at the message of world history, but, more revealingly, also the whisperings of one’s own dark side, and be instructed.
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Abraham Lincoln: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
Thomas Jefferson: "I have sworn, upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
George Orwell, Animal Farm: "We pigs ... are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples... All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."
Edward Zehr, The Washington Weekly, Oct. 9, 2000: "It seems that the media have managed to so distort the character of political discourse that malfeasance in high office has now become acceptable while public criticism of it is considered to be an inexcusable breach of etiquette."
George Orwell: Circumstances have "sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of the intelligent man."
Spike Lee, 1996-Sept-4: "As we move toward the millennium, the year 2000, the most powerful nations are not those that have nuclear bombs, but those that control the media. That's where the battle is being fought; that is how you control people's minds."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "There is nothing quite so terrible as evil masquerading as virtue."
J. P. Morgan: "A man always has two reasons for the things he does - a good one and the real one."
take the red pill
Take the red pill, said Morpheus, see the prison for your mind, and find out how far we’ve fallen down the rabbit-hole of illusion.
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Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn: "Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?"
Albert Einstein: "If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew."
Adolf Hitler: "The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one... What luck for rulers that men do not think."
Sign over the entrance to Auschwitz: "Work Brings Freedom."
Senator Margaret Chase Smith: "The Senate has been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity."
Henry David Thoreau: "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."
Western civilization at a crossroads; weapons of censorship now forbid discussing or questioning, reducing all dialogue to puritanical conformance versus non-conformance
Professor Mark Crispin Miller
Professor Mark Crispin Miller of New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development has taught classes on mass persuasion and propaganda for the last two decades.
He has been accused of “hate speech” in the course of explaining to his students the workings of deception and propaganda.
Dr. Joseph Mercola, on his site, reviewed the case of Professor Miller:
“Miller recently sued 19 of his department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the school dean demanding a review of Miller’s conduct. He points out that his course on propaganda is not focused on historical examples of mass persuasion but, rather, teaches his students to recognize and resist propaganda in real or recent times.
‘This can be quite challenging,’ he says. It’s rather easy to identify examples of propaganda that you do not agree with. It’s much more difficult when it’s something you care about, agree with or believe in; when it pushes your buttons. It requires you to detach, to take a bird’s-eye view and develop impartiality. You have to ‘make an attempt to think about it, critically,’ Miller explains, and to look at both sides of the issue.
Unfortunately, as noted by Miller, getting the other side of the story is now becoming increasingly difficult, thanks to Big Tech censorship, which oftentimes filters out or blocks all but one viewpoint… If this scenario strikes you as typical of the kind of intellectual and scientific censorship we’ve seen all around the world over the past year, you’re not alone.
Miller recognized it too, and created an academic freedom petition, which at the time of this writing has been signed by nearly 36,000 people. ‘All it asks is that NYU respect my academic freedom and set a good example for other schools,’ Miller says. ‘But I did it in the name of all professors, all journalists, all scientists, all doctors, activists and whistleblowers who have been gagged or punished for their dissidence, not just last year, but really, for decades.’ He goes on to list 'the censorship trifecta' — repressive tactics — that he was hit with:
1. ‘Assailing my students with non-evidence-based arguments.’ Basically, they accused him of being a ‘conspiracy theorist,’ which is ‘the oldest and most effective means of silencing inconvenient opinion,’ Miller says.
Indeed, the CIA weaponized this catchphrase in 1967 to discredit writers who questioned the veracity of the Warren Report about the Kennedy assassination. To learn more about how conspiracy theory became ‘a thing,’ read Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance deHaven-Smith.
Editor’s note: Today, 60 years after the JFK assassination, classified documents have still not been released – even though Congress mandated this to be done. For “national security”? All those involved at the time are now dead! Who or what are we protecting by the secreting of documents? Or are we protecting institutions and, as JFK called them, “secret societies” of power and corruption? After all this time there can be no “national security” reason for secrecy – there never was – but only a protecting of rogue institutions, and those controlling them, who safeguard their abilities to do the same thing all over again.
2. ‘Hate speech and microagression,’ which are a form of ‘social justice puritanism’ that forbids discussing or questioning certain ideologies. Doing so means you’re mocking or ridiculing certain groups of people. This too is simply a way to shut people up and dissuade honest discussion that might reveal problems or chinks in whatever one-sided argument you’re told to blindly accept.
3. Spreading ‘dangerous misinformation.’ Presently, and since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, questioning any part of the official narrative, no matter how incongruent, scientifically baseless or socially destructive it may be, means you are putting people in danger. Of course, at any other time, ‘dangerous misinformation’ could refer to any narrative that the ruling class wants to maintain.
Part and parcel of all three of these tactics is the labeling of any science that deflates or disproves the propaganda narrative as ‘alternative science’ or ‘fringe science.’
Editor's note: This is why Dr. Sheldrake is often introduced as a "controversial biologist," and Wikipedia says that Dr. Mercola practices "alternative medicine." These are pejorative labels. It's a form of "poisoning the well," a subtle smear tactic.
It doesn’t matter if it’s published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals. It’s still dismissed as unreliable at best and misinformation at worst, incapable of standing up to the wisdom of the Dr. Fauci’s of the world.
The Deeper Significance of This Case
The problem with normalizing these weapons of censorship is that it makes education impossible, it makes science impossible, it makes democracy impossible. Everything is reduced to compliance versus noncompliance.
As noted by Corbett, Miller’s case goes beyond mere freedom of speech, which everyone ought to have, it goes into the issue of freedom of inquiry itself — the freedom to ask questions and ponder an issue or problem from multiple angles. Without the ability to think freely and express those thoughts, life itself becomes more or less meaningless.
You Can’t Resist Propaganda if You Can’t Recognize It
‘I can’t imagine a more important moment for the study of propaganda than the present,’ Miller says, because we are bombarded with it every moment of every day now. Once you learn to recognize it, you’ll find there’s hardly anything else. ‘I used to think it was vulgar to compare the contemporary American media with Dr. [Joseph] Goebble’s practices [editor’s note: a German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945],’ Miller says. ‘I no longer think so. I don’t think that’s a stretch at all. The daily dissemination of absolute 100% falsehoods by The New York Times on every single page, and by CNN and the rest of them — it’s breathtaking to me.’
30 tv monitors, all selling the same lie, and with the same phrases
Editor’s note: On his Twitter/X feed, Elon Musk featured a startling and disturbing example of conspiratorial fake-news.
There was an image of an entire wall of tv monitors, something like 30 or more. Each featured a tv news station from around the country. And as one focused on individual monitors, one discovered that all of these news anchors were telling the same lie-of-the-day! But, even worse, each of them, like some soul-less robotic drone, was essentially mouthing the same words, the same phrases, to broadcast the lie!
Clearly, they were all reading from the same script, obviously handed down from some hidden despotic Elite who’d decided what they needed to spew today. How disgusting, but – there’s no such thing as conspiracies; or is it that there’s little else?
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To learn more about the journalistic failures and staggering fabrications published by The New York Times, read The Gray Lady Winked by Ashley Rindsberg. Miller wrote the foreword to this book.
‘We have to talk back,’ Miller says. ‘We have to take the bull by the horns and say, ‘Yes, we’re conspiracy theorists if the alternative is swallowing this preposterous narrative you’re trying to push. That’s a badge of honor as far as I’m concerned. It’s people like us, who insist on telling the truth, who are really essential to the survival of not just democracy but humanity itself. I know that sounds a bit grandiose, but I sincerely believe that now, because we are at a very dire crossroads in the history of Western civilization and have got to fight back for our children’s sake and the sake of everything we hold dear.’”
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Marcus Tullius Cicero: "When you have no basis for argument, abuse the plaintiff."
Joaquin Setanti: "Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk."
Adolph Hitler, Sept. 1, 1939: "Polish regular officers fired on our territory. Since 5:45 a.m. we have been returning the fire."
George Orwell, 1984: “Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together in new shapes of our own choosing.”
Homer Simpson: "We come in peace - we take'm your land."
Thomas Sowell: "Anyone who expresses any skepticism about claims that Head Start is a great success will be denounced as someone who doesn't 'care' about the low-income and minority children that this program supposedly helps. One of the great propaganda tricks is to change questions of fact into questions of motives."
Editor's note:
the essence of ‘violence’ is ‘violation’ - not gross physical contact
To construe the definition of “violence” narrowly, limiting it to gross physical contact, would suggest that one’s right to defend oneself is also something immoral. And, of course, this is what some people believe – but this is absolute nonsense.
The word “violence,” itself, reveals its nature and underpinnings. “Violence” is part of the concept “to violate.” Those upon whom “violence” is inflicted have been “violated” in terms of human rights and sacred dignity.
And when defense is mustered to stop an attack of “violation” of human rights, this resistance is not “violence” because there is no “violation.” In fact, far from "violation," it is our duty to push back against evil. The form of this reaction becomes a matter of judgment and wisdom, but to allow evil and “violence,” the attacks of “violators,” to proceed unchallenged is grossly immoral.
There are many forms of “violence” which have nothing to do with gross physical contact. Your rights and dignity, as a human being, might be "violated" in numerous ways. But all of it is "violence."
One’s response to “violence” will, of course, be measured against the degree of “violation.” Some issues are small, mere slightings, and the response should be small; but some “violations” are egregious and life-threatening and, in such cases, all necessary force is an appropriate answer.
There are many “Hitlers” in life and in history, big and small, and when they come on the scene to "violate" you or the ones you love, you are well within your rights to resist, in some commensurate manner; and sometimes, if the “violation” threatens human life, then resistance might take the form of deadly force.
To do otherwise is to allow monsters to rule the Earth, as the "utterly shameless" will not stop gathering power to themselves until they are stopped. This is the lesson of history. These "violators" are run by the dysfunctional ego. The "Course In Miracles" explains this pathology to us.
Special note: In these few paragraphs, I have emphasized the morality, one’s right, of defending oneself as counter-balance to foolish people who say that self-defense is immoral. However, allow me to take back some of my polemic, not to side with radical pacifists but to appeal to a higher law. Some of the most famous, and possibly most misunderstood, phrases in the entire Bible are those of “turn the other cheek” and “resist not evil.” These statements by Jesus from the “sermon on the mount” have technical, very specific definitions, linked to particular antecedent accounts in the Old Testament. These terms have nothing to do with becoming doormat or sacrificial lamb to the world and its ego-insanity. All this acknowledged, however, Jesus meant to say that there are situations and times in life when the enlightened, spiritual person will agree, with him or herself, to lay down personal rights to self-defense, will decide to suffer wrong and injustice, if such harmlessness serves the greater good. How to know when to “turn the other cheek” or to put up a fight? There’s no catechism or pat answer to help you with that, you’ll have to consult with God directly via the inner whisperings of your own sacred soul. See more discussion of “turn the other cheek” on the "Forgiveness" page.
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Brit Hume, 12-17-03: The Fox News anchor reported that Nancy Pelosi (D), House Minority Whip, had communicated to her constituants in San Fancisco that the recent appropriations bill would greatly aid the Bay Area - she failed to mention, however, that "she voted against the bill."
Daniel Defoe, An Essay on the Regulation of the Press, 1704: "Whatever Party of Men obtain the Reins of Management, and have power to name the Person who shall License the Press, that Party of Men have the whole power of keeping the World in Ignorance, in all matters relating to Religion or Policy, since the Writers of that Party shall have full liberty to impose their Notions upon the World."
E. W. Scripps, 1951: "The press of this country is now and always has been so thoroughly dominated by the wealthy few of the country that it cannot be depended upon to give the great mass of the people that correct information concerning political, economical, and social subjects which it is necessary that the mass of people shall have, in order that they shall vote and in all ways act in the best way to protect themselves from the brutal force and the chicanery of the ruling and employing class."
Mysterio fakes a crisis, employs the media and grand illusion, to grab worldwide power-and-control
I’m probably one of the few who still remembers Mysterio as a comic-book baddie of the 1960s. But in a recent Spiderman movie, Far From Home, we find Mysterio concocting a grand charade of crisis, allowing him to burst on the scene as the invincible one and savior. But, it’s just a gimmick to justify his plans to be accepted as world potentate.
This is an old strategy by totalitarians, often in use in modern history, but going back anciently to the likes of Naram Sin and others of the BC world.
The playbook reads thus, “Create a crisis, or exacerbate some small issue, fake it if you have to, make much of it, beat the drums, do a rain-dance, say the sky is falling, then posture and position yourself as the glorious hero, God’s agent of righteousness in the world.”
Marvel movies are stealth freedom-fighters. Read between the lines, see what’s happening. Virtually every plot has to do with some egomaniac trying to take over the world. Art mimics reality.
Some of the totalitarian-supporting media scoff with, “Today you can’t have a successful movie unless there’s a superhero in it”; meaning, the dull-witted masses require fantasy.
But let me explain this: Marvel movies are popular not just because they feature heroes with exploits, but, primarily because, in each movie, totalitarian forces, deception and propaganda, high-handed rule-by-whim, are routed. And I guarantee you this, if the plots were to glorify socialism, a diminishing of personal freedoms, those movies with good-guys-in-capes would very quickly bleed red ink and suffer washout.
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Constitution of the USSR, 1924: "In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law: (a) Freedom of Speech; (b) Freedom of the Press; (c) Freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; (d) Freedom of street processions and demonstrations."
Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513: "He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted ... must at least retain the semblence of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions."
Charles de Gaulle: "In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant."
John Kerry, October 16, 2004: Hunting for votes in hickville-Ohio: Can I get me a hunting license here? he asks Youngstown, Ohio store owners, Paul and Debra McKnight - in down-home talk which, he presumes, matches the local-yokal hayseed mentality. Late-night wag Conan O'Brien responds: After hearing about it President Bush said, It should be Can me get me a hunting license here?
Ann Coulter, May 17, 2006: "Bush referred only once to 'jobs Americans are not doing' - which I take it means other than border enforcement and intelligence-gathering at the CIA."
Albert Schweitzer: "Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it. A new public opinion must be created privately and unobtrusively. The existing one is maintained by the press, by propaganda, by organization, and by financial influences which are at its disposal. The unnatural way of spreading ideas must be opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer's receptiveness of new truth."
Rush Limbaugh, June 21, 2006: "Dan Rather's legacy is forged documents. The same people who made careers judging Richard Nixon on one event tell us that we must look at the entirety of Dan's career..."
Mark R. Levin, June 28, 2006: "What are we to do when media outlets knowingly and willfully divulge classified information that is critical to our winning a world war? Self-serving media bureaucrats like the New York Times’s Bill Keller can wrap themselves in the First Amendment, but these are the same people who editorialized about the limits of political speech which is covered by that same amendment (and political speech, as opposed to, say, pornography, was the kind of speech the framers were most concerned about protecting). Moreover, these media outlets are hostile to judicial nominees who embrace originalism, preferring activists who view the Constitution as 'living and breathing' - except, of course, when it comes to a free press. Then they demand a strict constructionist approach in which the words of the First Amendment are applied literally. But even under an originalist analysis, which I won’t do here, speech was not considered a boundless right. And that’s especially the case where the very survival of the country, in the midst of a war, is at stake. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has been all over the map in trying to define the limits of speech, e.g., flag-burning is covered, cross-burning is not covered, and so forth … the judiciary has become increasingly brazen as it expands its reach into war-making policies. And the reason is that the elected branches have showed political cowardice in refusing to respond. Unfortunately, today it’s left to the executive branch to press the issue as too many members of Congress have sought to assist the judiciary in weakening the presidency rather than defend it. Indeed, the likes of Arlen Specter insist that the commander-in-chief voluntarily surrender certain of his war powers, including whether to intercept enemy communications, to the judiciary. But the president’s oath to uphold the Constitution is no less solemn than a judge’s, and rather than giving up ground, the president should press ahead. And he’s on solid ground. The judiciary, up until now, had been reluctant to intervene in war-making decisions. And the media, up until fairly recent times, have been reluctant to reveal top secrets during war. The executive branch should stand on fundamental constitutional principles in defense of a country at war. It should fight to retain the president’s traditional war powers, which are now under assault."
storming the gates of Twitter
April 25, 2022
Elon Musk: "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential - I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it. I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means."
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN): "Today is an encouraging day for freedom of speech. I am hopeful that Elon Musk will help rein in Big Tech's history of censoring users that have a different viewpoint."
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA): "This deal is dangerous for our democracy. Billionaires like Elon Musk play by a different set of rules than everyone else, accumulating power for their own gain. We need a wealth tax and strong rules to hold Big Tech accountable."
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Dick Morris, July 21, 2006: “Congress's pay is indexed to increases in the cost of living, but the minimum wage is not. And whose fault is that? In 1996, I asked President Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) if they would consider accepting an indexation of the minimum wage as an alternative to the one-shot increase that eventually passed. Lott said yes. Clinton said no. Had the president agreed, the minimum wage would now be closing in on $7, not enough to live on but a lot better than its current, paltry level. Now Hillary Clinton is attacking the administration and the Republican Congress for raising congressional pay while turning down a minimum-wage increase. But it was her husband's desire that the minimum wage not be indexed. The Democratic Party likes the annual fight to raise the minimum wage. It uses the issue to keep its base united, loyal … and poor."
Peter Brimelow, Hoover Digest: "The current wave of immigration is wholly and entirely the result of government policy. Specifically, it is the result of the Immigration Act of 1965 and the further legislation of 1986 and 1990. Today it is astonishing to read the categorical assurances given by the 1965 Immigration Act's supporters. What the bill will not do, summarized its floor manager, Immigration Subcommittee chairman Senator Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.):
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First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same. . . Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset. . . Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia. . . In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.
"Every one of Senator Kennedy's assurances has proved false."
Rush Limbaugh, June 12, 2007: "There's already legislation on the books to handle illegals. That's why they're still called illegals. Now, the point about this is, you have to understand, and this is a pretty stark statement I'm going to make here, but the political class wants to change their bosses. Bosses right now are us. The Democrats want to change their bosses to more and more dependent victims. This never-ending flow of illegals fills that bill well... The political class wants to change the electorate, folks. They want to deemphasize or reduce your power over them at the ballot box. This immigration bill is an assault on us. It's an assault on the American people. And you know it, and that's why they're having trouble. You don't trust them; you don't believe them; and you don't think the government as it's currently constructed and constituted can do what it says it's going to do…You don't believe that they can perform 24-hour background checks on 12 million people; when it takes you five days to get a gun; when they can't issue a passport in three months. McCain-Feingold, that was passed to shut us up, and they made no bones about it. McCain-Feingold was expressly about eliminating criticisms of politicians at certain points in election cycles via television commercials. Taxes are raised, that's an attack on liberty. It's about control."
Rush Limbaugh, June 28, 2007, the 2nd defeat of the Amnesty Bill: "The McCainification of Lindsey Grahamnesty: I think that I can explain Senator Grahamnesty. He was a really solid conservative member of the House of Representatives. He was part of the Freshman Class of 1994, of which I was made an honorary member. During the impeachment of Bill Clinton, Senator Grahamnesty, then-Congressman Graham, served as one of the House managers prosecuting the case against Clinton in the Senate trial. I think this ended up affecting him in a way that he didn't understand and didn't appreciate. He was tagged as a kook and so you know what the Drive-By Media did to those guys. So he runs for the Senate in South Carolina, and on the basis of his solid performance as a member of Congress, he wins -- and it was appreciated, by the way, by the people of South Carolina that he served as a House manager. When he gets to the Senate, he feels compelled to change his image with the Drive-By Media and with Democrats. He wants to erase this House manager experience, so he throws in with McCain. He sees how McCain does it. That's why we refered to him here as 'Vice President Lindsey Graham' before he became Senator Grahamnesty. So McCain's out there doing everything he can to get noticed in Washington, and the way you do that is you turn against your own party; you turn against your own president; you make the Drive-By Media your best buddy. You make deals with liberals in the Senate, and you make the Democrats in the Senate think that you're 'growing' and that you're expanding your universe and area of knowledge. Senator Grahamnesty, I think, threw in with Senator McCain and they became a team and a partnership and so forth. I think that's what happened to him." Editor's note: How often we've seen this pattern. It takes an incredibly strong person to stand up against incessant personal attacks by the media.
Richard Nixon, Six Crises: "...those who are lying or trying to cover up something generally make a common mistake – they tend to overact, to overstate their case."
Joseph R. Fornieri, The Lincoln Forum, Lincoln Revisited (2007): Fornieri, in this collection of Lincoln essays, helps us to understand Judge Douglas’ central undergirding platform, the doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” which would allow new territories to extend or deny the institution of slavery. This precept of self-determinism is “perfectly logical,” responded Lincoln, “if there is no difference between hogs and negroes… [but the question is] whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man … he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man [shall he not] also govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man [without that other man’s consent], that is more than self-government – that is despotism.” Lincoln went on to explain how the European “Divine Right of Kings,” something from which we had recently extricated ourselves, employed, in principle, this same notion of privileged and superior certain ones ruling over a lesser class of beings. All of this violated the “ancient faith,” a term by which Lincoln referred to the precepts of the Declaration of Independence, the moral foundation of the nation, in its statements that “all men are created equal.” “No man,” Lincoln asserted, “is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle -- the sheet anchor of American republicanism.” Douglas weakly responded with a claim that God had placed Adam and Eve in the garden and had told them to make their choice – exalting “choice” as a universal trump card. Lincoln bashed this sophistry with “God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his choice. On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree, of the fruit of which, he should not eat, upon the pain of certain death.” Fornieri, speaking even more plainly: “If taken to its logical conclusion, Douglas’ reading of the Bible would obliterate any firm basis for moral judgments by making them entirely relative to personal choice.” Lincoln then goes further and eviscerates notions of choice and prattle of self-government as nothing more than an undisguised policy of “self-interest” masquerading as morality. Lincoln began speaking of these issues with earnest in 1854, after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. His continued insightful commentary culminated in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Judge Douglas won the Illinois senate seat in ’58 – but Mr. Lincoln, his punch-and-jab speeches gaining the respect of some and the attention of all, found himself catapulted to the Presidency only two years later.
Dr. Richard Feynman: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that." Feynman once said that if a principle of physics could not be explained to a freshman class, it was not yet well understood. I seem to recall Einstein, as well, saying that if one could not clearly explain a concept to one's grandmother, then one did not fully understand the concept.
Lord Acton: "Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas."
"If you can’t explain what you’re doing in simple English, you’re probably doing something wrong."
Alfred Kazan
a tribute to David Kenyon Webster, a member of the famous Band Of Brothers
David Kenyon Webster
2 June 1922 – 9 September 1961
An English literature major at Harvard University, Webster interrupted his studies to volunteer as paratrooper. He was part of the D-Day invasion and was wounded. Later he rejoined Easy Company.
“From a wealthy and influential family, Webster could have arranged an officer's commission stateside, but he wanted to be a ‘grunt’ to see and document the war from a foxhole. By most accounts, he did not like what he saw and had great disdain for Germany's audacity in creating the war.” (Wikipedia)
There is a noteworthy vignette in Band Of Brothers, sometimes referred to as “Webster’s Mini-Speech.” Near the end of the War, with German soldiers surrendering in their hundreds of thousands, we find the defeated Axis troops, marching in formation toward detention.
The Allied soldiers, transported in trucks, pass these vanquished. Deeply moved by the futility, the stupidity, of what he’s witnessing, Webster, aback a truck, stands to deliver a stinging oration to these members of the National Socialists Party:
David Webster: [beginning to shout at a passing formation of Nazi prisoners]
“Hey, you! That's right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That's right! Say hello to Ford and General fucking Motors! [i.e., as opposed to the German horses.] You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives... For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?"
David Webster’s diatribe is not about being German. I’m German, and I agree with Webster. It’s about being “ignorant, servile scum.” It's about being a boot-licking order-taker, with no quarter given to the whispering directives of the soul. It's about being human.
The socialists, the totalitarians-at-heart, since World War II, have tried to explain away what happened in Hitler’s Germany as an aberration, the result of one evil man, a one-time occurrence that could never happen in the good old USA where we’re much smarter, much more sophisticated. However, the truth is, you have to have serious leanings toward being “ignorant, servile scum” to believe or promote this kind of propaganda.
Our educational system today in the US, crafted by totalitarians to purposefully dumb-down a populace, with a view toward making it more “ignorant, servile,” and illiterate, is probably only 10% as good as that of Germany in pre-War days.
German society was the most cultivated and cultured, the best educated and most sophisticated, from that day to this. Never in history - certainly not since ancient Greece - had so many intellectual and artistic luminaries dominated: Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach; Einstein, Mach, and Braun; Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Kant -- we could go on for some time here. And to suggest that what happened there could never replicate itself in the United States - here, in our "dumbed-down" little educational system - is just wishful, shallow-thinking, a dysfunctional denial of the seeds of Evil that reside in the dark recesses of every human heart.
analyzing the “ignorant, servile scum”
What’s really bothering Webster? It’s the mindless servility. It’s the self-disrespect. It’s the unwarranted deference to authority. He saw those hapless soldiers – even in defeat, even when Dear Leader was kaput – still wanting to march in their little goose-stepping ways, so neatly, so obediently, like f****** good little boys. This made him want to shout and spit nails.
Webster was witnessing the end of line of socialistic-totalitarian sentiment. This is how it all ends, when power-grabbing and "I'm better than you" burns itself out. But, it seemed so sophisticated, so reasonable, in earlier days. Were they not the smartest people, with others so beneath them, not even deserving a modicum of civility? Well, "if we are better, if we have no duty to treat others in a civil manner" – as our Dear Leaders preach to us today – "then we have a right to rule over others, and oppress them."
Having drunk the kool-aid of this totalitarian party-platform, which is now accepted in our country in certain sectors, they stupidly follow each other over the dystopian cliff into perdition. They didn’t believe the message of Hayek and his “Road To Serfdom.” The lessons of history don’t apply to them, because they’re better and above. And in this “ignorant, servile scum” mentality, they carve out one more rise-and-fall in the sordid story of humankind.
therapy sessions for recovering “ignorant, servile scum”
How will you, if you're a totalitarian, feel someday when you meet David Kenyon Webster? I’m sure he’ll be too polite to say it to your face, but we’ll know what he’s thinking.
The apostle Paul spoke of living in the presence of, being surrounded by, a great host of witnesses, those who have gone before us, those who have endured the insanity of this world and have done well. But the totalitarians at-the-gate will never allow this kind of sentiment. For them, it's a power-haircut, they're all that is, they're against anything they can't control, and to direct any thought of deference toward those who might teach us something is too humbling for them. Why would they? -- they're the smartest people of history.
the mirror of Dorian Grey
Many years ago I had to look in the mirror and admit that I’d been selling out my own soul to various infallible gurus. I'd been a goose-stepping good little boy, denying my own judgment, disrespecting my own thoughts, ignoring my own counsel, in favor of some ******* Dear Leader in my life.
Are you willing to enter that kind of scorching self-evaluation? Who do you take orders from? – be it in a religious, political, or some other “ignorant, servile scum” promoting ego-organization.
I’m reminded of Jesus’ warning concerning those who inhabit the Dark Realms – an assessment which has been corroborated by thousands of afterlife reports. He spoke of two psychological profiles: those who (1) “weep and wail” and those who (2) “gnash teeth.”
The first group are the “goose-stepping, ignorant, servile scum” who live in a mindset of guilt and self-loathing, following some infallible Dear Leader. They “weep and wail” in a “victimhood” state of mind, thinking themselves unjustly treated: “Didn’t I live like a good little girl, trying so hard to keep all the rules, and never missing a goose-step? And now this happens to me. It’s so unfair.”
The second group are those who think they’re “better” and “above.” They want to reduce your personal freedoms because you're too foolish and incompetent to govern your own life, and so you need their supervisory services just to get you by. And later, in the Dark Realms, they'll “gnash teeth,” that is, they'll want to fight. They’re belligerent because they deserve to win, because they’re so much smarter, and, because you're so stupid, they have a moral obligation to rule over you. They're just trying to help.
The “victims” and the “elites” cannot enter Summerland. Not yet. They have “unfinished homework to hand in.” They need to access the “true self” and imbibe of the common humanity, a sense of the tremendous potential of each human being “made in the image.”
With the liberation of a concentration camp, Easy Company searches for food in a nearby village to distribute to the starving zombie-like inmates. David Webster (portrayed by Eion Bailey) angrily confronts the town baker who objects to donating his storehouse of bread. With the camp but a mile or so away, and with excuses of exculpation threadbare, Webster, pistol brandishing, comes close to abruptly ending the conversation.
They’ll be no rationalizations on the other side; at least, none convincing. In elitist-and-victimhood Germany, no one had any idea of the pandemic atrocities; and in the Shadowlands, no one has any idea that Dear Leaders were unnecessary, that whisperings of the soul might have directed us, leading us, into all truth.
And let's be very clear. The "Allies" will yet liberate all strongholds of darkness and dysfunctional ego -- no matter what your local Nice Young Man pontificates.
The Band Of Brothers of our world, though incredibly noble, are but forerunners of a vast host of Liberators who do not take kindly to the thought of ever losing any good thing; so much so, that a certain song speaks of their steel-resolve with "rest assured."
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