MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS
This morning I made the mistake of watching CNN – I do it every day. I watch CNN then Fox News, MSNBC and Bloomberg.
But today, CNN was especially annoying.
CNN actually is reporting now that Donald Trump’s incessant assertion that the election was fraudulent is killing more people. They are literally reporting that since Trump will not capitulate and let Biden in to start the transition he is literally killing more Americans as COVID-19 has unexpectedly spiked putting a strain on our hospitals and killing thousands daily.
CNN reports that the longer Trump waits, the death tolls will continue to rise. It is starting to sound like a threat – as it is most concerning and coincidental that most of these new lockdowns are to continue until the Electoral College confirms the vote on December 14.
CNN reported that “All of this constitutional chicanery is coinciding with a pandemic that Trump ignored, denied and downplayed and is killing many thousands of Americans a week is only adding to the surreal sense of political purgatory in Washington caused by an outgoing President who is putting a bruised ego ahead of the health of hundreds of millions of Americans.”
Joe Biden is even saying that He and his administration are going to be behind by weeks and months being able to put together the whole initiative relating to the biggest promise he claims to have made and that is to distribute a vaccine from two drug companies that have a 95% effectiveness,
So in other words, they are holding back the distribution of the vaccine until Joe Biden becomes President.
They could release it now as it would be a panacea for those who are terrified – it would push us towards a semblance of normal – but no it again shows itself as yet another political football.
If Trump is playing so cavalier with human life as the media and the experts say then it appears that Joe Biden is too – what is stopping him from just handing out the vaccine like Santa hands out candy canes?
This is not science – this is not facts over fear – this is retaliation and vengeance.
CNN claims that they follow the science, so if it is a scientific fact that Trump’s investigation into election fraud is killing more Americans and that more will die if he does not concede, then perhaps we should conclude that there is fraud and negligence of another kind going on.
I still can’t figure out why so many Americans put faith in mainstream, corporate outlets for an accurate summary of the news. I guess people think they have no choice but to assume that what they are hearing or watching is being doled out by some commentator that has the monopoly on truth.
When it is said that the mainstream controls the narrative – it isn’t just an understatement. Six corporations own 90 percent of all media platforms in the U.S., effectively controlling the narrative, whether on foreign policy, legislation, or any goal fitting its needs.
Real news in the past was supposed to be objective, and people were not paid to go on national news programs to spew combative and scandalous drivel.
For decades there has always been this silent fear that America would adopt philosophy that lean towards real fascism. I’m not talking about the fascism where uneducated justice warriors define it as really bad people doing really bad things – I am talking about the true definition of living in a fascist state.
I know that we hear on the news every day that the resistance reminds us that Trump is a fascist, a racist, a white supremacist, and another Hitler.
Well if he is he is pretty bad at it. If people would actually read something like history or other books that describe true oppression and fascism they would understand that a true fascist president would have everyone in the so alleged resistance shot in the streets for insurrection.
So far, I have not seen that in this country but what I have seen are those who are quick to call out so called fascism have pretty detailed ideas on how to eradicate anyone who does not agree with them.
Fascism should not be used as a description for something we don’t like, but thanks to the media, and newspeak we have been able to accept the word without the means to define it.
For example if you Google, “fascism,” you get a very interesting definition of the word:
Google defines it as an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. In general use extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.
If you look up the Webster’s Dictionary definition, you get a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who drew upon left-wing and right-wing political views.
The Fascisti were the members of an Italian political organization that controlled Italy under the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini from 1922 to 1943.
Mussolini defined the three principles of a fascist philosophy.
1.”Everything in the state”. The Government is supreme and the country is all-encompassing, and all within it must conform to the ruling body, often a dictator.
2.”Nothing outside the state”. The country must grow and the implied goal of any fascist nation is to rule the world, and have every human submit to the government.
3.”Nothing against the state”. Any type of questioning the government is not to be tolerated. If you do not see things our way, you are wrong. If you do not agree with the government, you cannot be allowed to live and taint the minds of the rest of the good citizens.
The use of militarism was implied only as a means to accomplish one of the three above principles, mainly to keep the people and rest of the world in line. Fascist countries are known for their harmony and lack of internal strife. There are no conflicting parties or elections in fascist countries.
Nazi Germany was extreme Fascism; better examples of fascist countries were Mussolini’s Italy, Iraq, Iran, and many Middle Eastern countries.
Throughout my younger years I have read some pretty bleak books on the subjects of despotism, fascism, and dystopia.
“It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis is a work of dystopian fantasy, one man’s effort in the 1930s to imagine what it might look like if fascism came to America.
At a moment when instability seems to be the only constant in American politics, “It Can’t Happen Here” offers an alluring if not terrifying certainty: It can happen here, and what comes next will be even ghastlier than you expect.
The book talks about a would be candidate for president named Berzelius (Buzz) Windrip, a man that swoops in after the Depression –who calls himself champion of “Forgotten Men,” determined to bring dignity and prosperity back to America’s white working class. Windrip loves big, passionate rallies and rails against the “lies” of the mainstream press. His supporters embrace this message, lashing out against the “highbrow intellectuality” of editors and professors and policy elites.
Many opinionated Left wing writers have encouraged people to read the book and compare it to what President Trump has done in the last four years – but I would say that the protagonist in the story is hardly a stand in or even a facsimile of the president. On the surface it all sounds familiar but as the book continues we learn a lot about Windrip that detours away from what Trump is or stands for.
Windrip sweeps into office as a quasi-socialist, promising $3,000 to $5,000 for every “real American family.”
Upon moving into the White House, Windrip immediately declares Congress an “advisory” body, stripped of all real power. When members of Congress resist, he locks them up without the slightest semblance of due process, the beginning of the end for American democracy.
The rest of the book describes one long, disorienting nightmare, a national descent into martial law torture chambers and concentration camps. The camps were established to incarcerate and reeducate people to accept the new order in America.
“It Can’t Happen Here” is an argument for civic education and journalism as a basic pillar of democracy. Many Americans lack this today, regardless of their convictions.
Keeping people in an echo chamber and not allowing them to think openly makes them easily exploitable.
We have learned about several dystopian ends in Books like 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World how as they paint a bleak picture of totalitarian control that is intolerant of freedom of expression.
In 1984, Orwell gave us a perfect rendering of a totalitarian state’s use of violence and language to keep a people enslaved. However, quite contrary to the spirit and intention of its author, the book has been transformed by Americans into something worse than a metaphor — a cliché which does our thinking for us whenever we struggle to understand “something not desirable” in our politics.
The statement that Trump is a fascist or Orwellian pins the problem on one man when the fascist evolution has been taking place for decades.
In fact, beyond the fascist definitions provided by those who don’t know history are the more appropriate definitions of despotism and pathocracy.
Whereas 1984 was a dystopia built on the subjugation of a boot eternally stomping on a human face, Brave New World was a dystopia built on the idea of people that are too drugged and entertained to tell that they are living a lie.
The masses were, more or less, endlessly drugged and entertained and so that their opinions never had a chance to develop, or impaired at birth so they could never think. The tyranny in Brave New World was the tyranny of a vapid public who never thought beyond the most recent mindless and sexual encounter (strongly encouraged by the state) and the latest movie.
There is so much familiarity in these books because they are simply portents to human behavior and how absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Expressing one’s disdain for the way the media handles and election, or perhaps theorizing that perhaps we are seeing election fraud or that the COVID-19 pandemic is being exploited politically os now beingh condemned by an overzealous media that has more times than not called itself –“the resistance’.
We best be asking ourselves what is it that they wish to resist and what lengths will they go to to further their agendas –could they lie in order to hardened the resolve that the end justified the means?
How many times do we lie to ourselves because of our partisanship affiliation? It is happening more now than before and the frightening part is people believe the lies they tell themselves about what they think their choices in political preference gives them.
Subtlety has been part of the success of pathocracy and people ignore it because it is not obvious to them.
Pathocracy is the result of a macro social infestation of a viral meme that is detrimental to the consensus and weakens it. The problem that faces us is not the outward face of tyranny. We see the obvious indicators that there is a path being laid towards pathocracy however the success of tyranny is not based in the threat of rights being taken away, violence or being imprisoned in FEMA detainment camps.
The threat is how low we will lower the bar to tolerate evil and wickedness to eliminate those that our political party doesn’t agree with.
What I am about to tell you is terrifying –and it should hopefully shake you into understanding how subtle real fascism is.
On the same day that the World Economic Forum heralded “The Great Reset” as a positive way to build “future resilience to global risks,” the New York Times declared the entire thing to be a “conspiracy theory.” The NYT was apparently upset that “The Great Reset” was trending on Twitter and published an article declaring it to be “A baseless conspiracy theory about the coronavirus.”
In reality, the WEF, NGOs and world leaders have for months been hyping the need to exploit the “opportunity,” in the words of Justin Trudeau, provided by the pandemic to achieve “The Great Reset”.
The NYT report mentioned Trudeau, but buried the fact that he had openly labeled COVID-19 an “opportunity” during a UN conference call.
On the same day the Times asserted that the issue was a fever dream of “far-right internet commentators,” the World Economic Forum itself celebrated “The Great Reset” as a way to build “future resilience to global risks.”
The NYT report then calls it an “unfounded rumor” that elites are using the pandemic “to impose their global economic control on the masses,” despite the fact that Davos globalist Karl Schwab specifically announces this very agenda in his recent book, COVID-19: The Great Reset.
As we previously highlighted, Schwab also openly endorses a technocratic dictatorship whereby people would accept implantable microchips that can read their thoughts as well as brain scans to be allowed to travel.
Suffice to say, the Times completely failed to mention Schwab’s book at all.
The NYT then evidently contacted both Twitter and Facebook in an attempt to get information about “The Great Reset” removed, but Twitter refused to do so and Facebook didn’t respond.
So in other words, in its attempt to persuade people that the elite aren’t pursuing a nefarious “Great Reset.”
He especially focused his ire against those who indulge in conspiracy theories about COVID-19.
‘Conspiracy theorists’ who refuse to wear masks and embrace lockdowns are the victims of their own scientific illiteracy, which has fundamentally damaged their brains to such an extent that they cannot understand the science of COVID-19, People who believe in so-called conspiracy theories about COVID-19 are actually suffering from “neuropsychological impairments.”
I remember saying a while ago that experts and so called scientists will find a way to abuse their power and make statements that spin political views with their own scientific opinions. This leads to exclusion, accusations of heresy, and what was seen as Soviet-era weaponized psychiatry.
Bruce Miller leverages his formidable credentials – he’s both director of the Memory and Aging Center and co-director of the Global Brain Health Institute at UCSF – to legitimize a baseless and frankly dangerous theory that could potentially be used to lock those same “conspiracy theorists” away in psychiatric facilities indefinitely. His questionable paper takes the pathologization of dissent even a step further than recent bogus “anti-maskers are sociopaths” studies, to a very dark, totalitarian place – ironically, the exact same endpoint feared by the conspiracy theorists he so glibly patronizes.
Miller equates “anti-mask behavior,” “anti-vaccine beliefs,” and “conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19” with “denial of science,” blaming the whole package on low levels of science literacy rooted in poor-quality education. While the quality of US science education is certainly dismal, Miller’s reductionist viewpoint leaves no room for the many intelligent, educated people who hold these views.
His area of expertise may be in delusional disorders, but writing off informed dissent as delusion born of ignorance is, well, ignorant and delusional.
Again, Miller is a scientist and it is terrifying to think that this is the science he pushes –and the question is how far can a scientist take this knowing that now we may have a new President that says he follows the science?
Does he support this science? If he does then we have a lot to fear.
Bruce Miller’s paper goes one step beyond the usual establishment sneering, however. Tracing the origin of “conspiracy theories” to an organic brain defect reeks of the Soviet weaponization of psychiatry, a dark chapter in history that seems – if papers like this are any indication – poised to repeat itself. During the 1960s and 1970s, the USSR weaponized psychiatry to institutionalize political dissidents, diagnosing them with mental illness – because after all, one would have to be crazy not to embrace communism! – and locking them away. The practice served to neutralize the targeted individual, marginalize others who shared his opinions, and terrify the rest of the population into keeping their doubts about the system to themselves.
If Miller’s scientifically baseless theory that belief in conspiracies represents an organic brain defect is embraced by the medical establishment (and there’s no reason to suspect it won’t be), dissidents could find themselves locked up indefinitely as incurable “cases.”
Countries are also changing their laws to make it easier to institutionalize political targets. One of the changes to UK law rammed through in its emergency legislation package reduced the number of medical professionals signing off on the decision to “section” (institutionalize) an individual from two to one. And now, American doctors are licking their lips at the possibility of sidelining those troublesome conspiracy theorists once and for all.
They are just waiting for the go ahead from leaders who follow the science and want to put down those who do not follow the science they do.
Are these the behaviors of governments that have nothing to hide? To assume that there is a fixed definition of the term “conspiracy theory” is ludicrous – that is why it is obvious that what is being proposed is to jail heretics and dissidents—what is being proposed is literally the Orwellian equivalent of “Ignorance is Strength.
If the treatment of those labelled as “conspiracy theorists” in our culture is analogous to the treatment of those labelled as “heretics” in medieval Europe, then the role of psychologists and social scientists in this treatment is analogous to that of the Inquisition.
Whenever we use the terms “conspiracy theory”, “conspiracism” or “conspiracist ideation”, we’re implying, even if we don’t mean to, there is something wrong with believing, wanting to investigate, or giving any credence at all to the possibility people are engaged in secretive or deceptive behavior.
One bad effect of these terms is they contribute to a political environment in which it’s easier for conspiracy to thrive at the expense of openness. Another bad effect is their use is an injustice to the people who are characterized as conspiracy theorists.
When someone asserts that a conspiracy has taken place (especially when it is a conspiracy by powerful people or institutions) that person’s word is automatically given less credence than it should because of an irrational prejudice associated with the pejorative connotations of these terms.
When professional psychologists imply these terms it can constitute a form of gaslighting; that is, a manipulation of people into doubting their own sanity.
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