5/21/20: HEARSAY HERESY – HOW TO BURN COVID HERETICS
MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS
Social psychology is defined as “the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.” We are social beings. Most of us communicate with others every day, spending large portions of our waking hours in some form of communication. One lesson from social psychology is the influence others have on us. Research shows we do not have as much control over our thoughts and behavior as we think. We take cues from our environment, especially other people, on how to act.
Consider the concept of group polarization. This means that like-minded people reinforce one another’s viewpoints. Group polarization strengthens of the opinions of each person in the group. Clearly, others affect our behavior. One reason for this is that we live in a complex world. We use the decisions of others as a mental shortcut, to navigate our lives.
Many people have not really absorbed what they have been taught in school and so they rely on others who they are told have some sort of authority in matters of survival. Most people are not capable of making bold decisions on their own — they are now influenced by what the media chooses to report to them. They also tend to believe in the flavor the week and eventually like a shirt or underwear they change their minds again because of either a political whim or some other option that media tends to indicate is keen to the intellect.
It becomes dangerous when the media claims to be an authority and it is also dangerous when they declare that only the people they choose to spotlight have all of the answers. There have been competent doctors and other very rational and educated people that have gone to social media to give opinions about COVID-19 and have been dismissed, censored, shut down and even shunned because their views are not shared by the mainstream narrative.
This is a dangerous practice.
In 2006, Canadian psychologist Bob Altemeyer wrote a book called ‘The Authoritarians’ detailing his research on the subset of the population that seem to thrive on following orders. They have a high degree of submission to established and legitimate societal authorities, display high levels of aggression in the name of these authorities, and a high level of conventionalism.
With the recent lockdown, it would seem the whole world is getting a lesson in authoritarianism, and the authoritarian followers are all out in force. Snitching on neighbors, calling the police for any slight discretion against stay at home orders, screeching, both on social media and in person at anyone not staying at home, (whether they have a good reason or not) and actually demanding the lockdown stay in place, despite the harm it’s doing. It seems these times were made for authoritarian followers, while the rest of us, independent thinkers as we are, suffer their wrath.
There are many people that are having an enhanced sense of awareness that even though there are a lot of reasons to help in the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 there are also those who are using excessive measures to push people into a dangerous form of conformity.
This awareness has come with a degree of alienation. Not buying into the same consensus narratives about the world as your friends, loved ones and peers comes with an inability to relate to them on some levels, which can cause you to feel a lack of intimacy in those areas. It is bad enough that we are told to physically separate, but alienation is also leading to isolation and despair. Those who have not been affected by this are calling what is happening an inconvenience– well there is more to this than just an inconvenience – there seems to be a driving force that wishes to declare a form of heresy against those who question the arbitrary rules that are pushing acts of security theater urging people to be satisfied and complacent calling it the new normal.
This new normal should not be called normal in any fashion because the behavior that is being programmed is far from normal. Many of you who take the time to listen to alternative views are shunned. Many of us are told to pick a side and the sides we are told to choose are extremist. What is most disconcerting is that people don’t use the strength of their numbers to force an end to the oppressive, homicidal status quo, because they aren’t interested in doing so. Many have not felt enough pain to do something about it.
They see suffering as an inevitability or they see it as the new normal.
Fear and uncertainty have dominated the media coverage of the COVID-19 epidemic. The novel coronavirus is depicted not as a pedestrian pathogen certain to be beaten into submission by the miracles of modern science any day now, but as an invisible evil lurking everywhere, formidable enough to inspire a respectful terror even in the leading lights of the medical establishment. And in case Americans had any doubt about how they were supposed to regard this viral threat, the establishment talking heads rely upon for the self-assured delivery of their so called experts that give no hope, no solutions, and no quarter.
They only give us dread. Dread is now part of the American diet in 2020. The reason is because it is effective in breeding compliance. If the framers of the narrative were capable of giving us any form of good news about the virus – it would immediately cease the successful cult dynamic that they sadistically push on the American people as they use it to peddle the latest drug from big pharmaceutical companies.
If you do not notice that ads for new experimental drugs on the major news networks then you are not really paying attention as to who is paying for this dangerous propaganda.
If you haven’t noticed the popular response to the pandemic has taken on a religious cast. Protective measures like masks have taken on a talismanic quality, hand-washing has been elevated to a ritual performance, and a cult built on naming and shaming ‘heretics’ has seized the minds of many while their rights are quietly stripped away and a paternalistic police state substituted in their place.
In fact, there are memes that have been directed at various leaders like President Trump comparing him to cult leaders like Jim Jones urging people to drink Clorox or other memes that show Bill Gates as the Antichrist. COVID-19 has become a religious sign of the times as cult like behaviors are now becoming obvious and terrifying. You must choose the cool aid you wish to drink and you are hoping that no one is going to slip you the poisonous choice.
After many years of being told that we are doomed, we are now acting like we are and this will continue until we find an abrupt and swift end to our existence. You can call it the end of the world if you like but you won’t be around to call it anything.
That will be up to the historians – those who inexplicably survive the inevitable holocaust brought on by an internal war over strange and cult like ideologies.
We all feel that war is coming – we just don’t know when, we just feel that it is soon. Certainly before the election or soon thereafter. There is another war however that seems to be happening and that is an all-out war on faith. We all know that authorities have been telling us to let science be our guide but science has become an extremists reason to act like they are in a mad cult and have completely if not blatantly have declared war on faith.
Unable to see the microscopic “enemy” they are told threatens the lives of them and their family, and deprived of a scientifically proven cure, individuals seeking deliverance from COVID-19 are left with only their faith that the protective measures prescribed by health experts – our scientific priest class can keep it at bay. If it ended there, the Corona Cult would merely be a curiosity – humans have turned to religion in troubled times since before written history began. But its dark side has already reared its ugly head – those who buck the new orthodoxy are already being blamed for the plague. Those who wish to use faith in God to get through the crisis are the new heretics.
The new orthodoxy of the Cult of Corona has replaced wearable crosses, yarmulkes and burkas with masks. Face masks have become both the visual symbol of the COVID-19 epidemic and the dominant religious fetish for the Cult of Corona.
While cities from New York to Los Angeles have adopted regulations mandating them in public places and chain stores like Costco have barred unmasked customers from their premises, it’s hard not to notice those individuals so devoted to the mask-wearing ritual that they sport the face-coverings in their own cars, with the windows rolled up and when running down epidemic-emptied streets. However the truth is ignored for the new faith in the Cult of Corona and it is hard to separate the hearsay from heresy.
The Centers for Disease Control have repeatedly changed their narrative on who should wear masks, from “sick people” to “only healthcare workers” to “everyone.” However, the Cult of Corona’s devotion to the mask extends far beyond following the recommendations of a mere public health agency.
The mask has taken on a supernatural significance that far outweighs its utility in disease protection. Even the N-95 masks health authorities have recommended to protect society from virus-positive individuals have been found largely ineffective in protecting the uninfected from carriers in their surroundings, and the flimsy surgical masks that have become ubiquitous for sale on American street corners are next to worthless in stopping virus transmission. Indeed, some doctors have warned that wearing a mask is counterproductive due to the false sense of security it creates, while others suggest it’s actually dangerous due to the risk of hypoxia and hypercapnia.
Yet it’s impossible to walk into a supermarket in many cities without something covering the mouth – even though one’s eyes remain unprotected and ready to receive whatever viral particles are lingering in the air. Mask requirements thus have nothing to do with health and everything to do with religious faith. They provide a way for the faithful to telegraph their virtue at a distance and recognize one another instantly, while flagging the non-compliant as infidels to be avoided.
The mask is now the garlic and the cross that used to ward off the vampire — now it is the talisman that protects you from the invisible enemy and shows that you are now a member of the priest class that follows the appointed authority that watches over a cult of pessimistic followers.
Sitting in your car alone with a cross and garlic hanging from your rear view mirror would look silly to observers but a mask is now accepted and a way to fight off an enemy that appears to be ambiguous and randomly lethal.
American organizational theorist James March and Norwegian political scientist Johan Olsen argued back in 2004 that human behavior is governed by two complementary, and very different, “logics”. According to the logic of consequence, we choose our actions like a good economist: weighing up the costs and benefits of the alternative options in the light of our personal objectives. This is basically how we get what we want.
But there is also a second logic, the logic of appropriateness. According to this, outcomes, good or bad, are often of secondary importance – we often choose what to do by asking “What is a person like me supposed to do in a situation like this?”
The idea is backed up by psychological research. Human social interactions depend on our tendency to conform to unwritten rules of appropriate behavior. Most of us are truthful, polite, don’t cheat when playing board games and follow etiquette. We are happy to let judges or football referees enforce rules. A recent study showed we even conform to arbitrary norms.
The logic of appropriateness is self-enforcing – we disapprove of, ostracize or report people who lie or cheat. Research has shown that even in anonymous, experimental “games”, people will pay a monetary cost to punish other people for being uncooperative.
We also have learned through the example of the Milgram Experiment how people are okay with torturing someone if they are told to do so by someone who appears to be an authority.
Stanley Milgram, whose papers are held in Manuscripts and Archives, conducted the Obedience to Authority experiments while he was an assistant professor at Yale University from 1961 to 1963. Milgram found that most ordinary people obeyed instructions to give what they believed to be potentially fatal shocks to innocent victims when told to do so by an authority figure.
His 1963 article on the initial findings and a subsequent book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View and film, Obedience, catapulted Milgram to celebrity status and made his findings and the experiments themselves the focus of intense ethical debates. The debate continues over whether or not people would rebel against authority now and again, the overall opinion is no.
Both logics are required to create and maintain an authoritarian regime. To ensure that we make the “right” personal choices, an oppressive state’s main tools are carrots and sticks – rewarding conformity and punishing even a hint of rebellion.
But personal gain (or survival) alone provides a fragile foundation for an oppressive state. It is easy to see how the logic of appropriateness fits in here, turning from being a force for cooperation to a mechanism for enforcing an oppressive status quo. This logic asks that we follow the “rules” and make sure others do too – often without needing to ask why the rules are the way they are.
Cult like regimes, therefore, supplement rewards and punishments with self-policed norms, rules, and conventions.
Are you following orders or ordering followers?
That is the question and now there are plenty of people out there that are ordering followers to do all sorts of crazy things that challenge what can be called appropriateness.
Are you part of the party, comrade? Are you part of the cult? Always remember a good cult member or party member follows orders no matter how crazy they sound.
A bevy of rituals has sprung up among Corona Cultists, from the benign if eccentric swabbing all exposed surfaces with Lysol wipes, to the sinister reporting neighbors for perceived violations. Even the simplest, most scientifically-sound measures like hand-washing have taken on a ritualistic cast, as the virus-fearing infuse them with a terrified zeal.
How else to explain the popularity of the dozens of “hand-washing apps” available for smartphones but that the shock of the epidemic has caused us to question that which we once took for granted? Just as peasants of a previous era might have been spooked into regular church attendance by the specter of the Black Death, their descendants pore over videos of hand-washing on YouTube, determined to live a “cleaner” life.
But another holdover from the Dark Ages has risen its ugly head. While our ancestors might have turned in their oddball neighbor as a “witch,” claiming to have seen the merry old spinster cavorting with Satan under the full moon, modern-day snitches are picking up their smartphones and dialing specially-designated lines to report violations of social distancing orders.
Snitches come in several stripes. There have always been busybodies who call the police when their neighbor’s music is too loud rather than knocking on their door and politely asking to turn it down. But in the Cult of Corona, these miscreants are joined by those driven half-crazy with fear, convinced that the act of turning in rule breakers will somehow protect them from contracting the virus. They’d never say such a preposterous thing out loud, of course – if asked, they merely claim to be concerned for the community, or worried their victim’s irresponsible behavior is spreading COVID-19 willy-nilly, perhaps even stating that their decision to turn their neighbor in was “for their own good.”
Just as the Inquisitor’s concern for those they tortured on the rack was supposedly for their victim’s “immortal soul,” so does the modern snitch rationalize their betrayal of their neighbors by reasoning that the virus police are concerned only for the health of the heretics they rat out – while secretly breathing a sigh of relief that they aren’t the ones being tortured or placed on a ventilator, this time. Following orders becomes a source of comfort for the snitch deprived of life’s normal pleasures by the lockdown, providing an avenue for transformation from victim to hero.
A good member of the cause obeys orders, roots out opposition and does not question authority and enforces these norms on their fellow party or religious members; in this case, the Cult of Corona. The authoritarian state is therefore concerned above all with preserving ideology – defining the “right” way to think and behave so that we can unquestioningly conform to it.
George Orwell once made the statement that, “Circus dogs jump and do somersaults when the trainer cracks his whip. But the really well-trained dog is the one that jumps and does somersaults when there is no whip.”
Look around at how everyone just goes with what is ordered without even thinking of the long term consequences. This is how pogroms begin.
The atrocities of the Holocaust were made possible by normal people, manipulated into conforming to a horribly abnormal set of behavioral norms ot dare we say a new normal. People conformed – some felt discomfort about it and others were easily manipulated into seeing Jews as less than human and that they needed to be eliminated because they were taking up too many recourses.
Just think of the fervor with which people are now enforcing social distancing, prohibitions on normal human autonomy– Think of how we still adapt to how Facebook censors free speech and yet we conform. If we really wanted to we could put them out of business… but it is their rules and their terms of service—you don’t have to obey – but you do. You don’t question it.
Ever ask yourself why? It is because the discomfort does not outweigh the compulsion of having access to people you care about or your ability to post news headlines and memes. It is digital graffiti and we love it so much that we don’t care about the restrictions they have put in place. It is all we have in an era of social distancing — maybe if it was gone for good people would rise up and demand that they socialize.
But maybe the fix is in and the rituals we do out of fear are far too powerful in the Cult of Corona.
In order to prove my point, polls are being churned out confirming upwards of 80% of Americans a support continuing the lockdowns. If you find this surprising then you have to at least understand that social media’s growing censorship of anti-lockdown speech gives the false impression of a universal public consensus that government policies are both popular and lifesaving. You also need to consider that there is also a majority of people who are now unwilling to work because stimulus checks and unemployment are now paying them more than their jobs. The rewards for complying are the blessings of being part of the cult.
Fanatical religious adherence is required to enforce belief in such absurdity, given the appalling track records of the High Priests of Lockdown. With all of the unfairness there is still the hope for some that someone will rebel.
How we react to unfairness affects our propensity to rebel. One study found that people who are risk-averse and easily trust others are less likely to react strongly to unfairness. While not proven in the study, it may make such individuals more likely to conform.
Another factor is social circumstances. The upper and middle classes in Germany during the 1920s-1940s were almost twice more likely to join the Nazi party than those with lower social status. So it may be that those who have the most to lose and/or are keen to climb the social ladder are particularly likely to conform. And, of course, if other members of your social circle are conforming, you may think it’s the “appropriate” thing to do.
You ask yourself how so many people believe in radical ideas and this is how it starts – this is how it has always been.
Nobody has taught you in school that throughout your entire life that behind the scenes an organized plutocracy will be working to control the thoughts in your head using a highly sophisticated arsenal of psychological operations funneled into your mind via their near-total control of the media. Nobody warned you as a kid that if you ever really want to grow up, you’ll first have to extricate the vast network of lies which have been deliberately sewn into your consciousness since birth.
This is why Americans do not value their freedoms enough to fight for them.
The cult of science and technocracy has propped up their leaders and there is a battle over whose expertise should be followed.
People always quote the obvious when they say that President Trump is no expert on COVID-19. But neither is Greta Thunberg and neither in Bill Gates. Bill Gates for some recon is some hero that people have somehow associated with philanthropy and sanity.
Bill Gates, of course, has been guilty of espousing eugenics attitudes because his father, William H. Gates was at one time the head of Planned Parenthood a re-branded organization birthed out of the American Eugenics Society.
Gates once admitted that his family’s involvement in reproductive issues throughout the years has been extensive, referencing his own prior adherence to the beliefs of eugenicist Thomas Robert Malthus, who believed that populations of the world needed to be controlled through reproductive restrictions.
Gates now claims he now holds a different view.
However, Gates power now moves from that of computer science to pharmaceutical and agricultural dominance.
The Gates Foundation, also known as the Gates Family Trust, is currently in the process of spending billions of dollars in the name of humanitarianism to establish a global food monopoly dominated by genetically-modified crops and seeds. Based on the Gates family’s history of involvement in world affairs, it appears that one of its main goals besides simply establishing corporate control of the world’s food supply is to reduce the world’s population by a significant amount in the process, now they have controlled interest in a company that genetically modifies foods and will most certainly be contended in pharmaceutical production and vaccines.
While controversial Ideas have always plagued Bill Gates there have also been under-reported activities that question whether or not his foundation is implementing a modified Malthusian approach to global sustainability.
Back in 2011, the Malawi Voice, reported that at least 131 Malawian children were vaccinated at gunpoint after having previously fled the country with their parents to avoid them because of religious beliefs.
Reports indicate that a number of children and their parents belonging to Zion and Atumwi Churches fled the southeast African country of Malawi to neighboring Mozambique a in order to avoid a measles vaccine campaign.
Upon returning, officials apparently learned of the unvaccinated children’s whereabouts and, with the help of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation forcibly injected them at gunpoint with the vaccines.
Anthony Fauci AKA Dr. Strangeglove – the face of the US’ pandemic response, has decades of epidemic failures under his belt at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Starting with the thousands of otherwise-healthy HIV positive people who died in the 1980s thanks to Fauci’s shameless advocacy for AZT, which refashioned the toxic drug that was even too poisonous for terminal cancer patients into a miracle pill for AIDS, and passing through at least one episode of perjury that saw him deny the existence of encephalitis as a possible side effect of the MMR vaccine before remembering he was under oath and acknowledging it was “rare”, Fauci has displayed such breathtaking greed and incompetence at the helm of the NIAID that US life expectancy has actually declined noticeably under his watch for the first time in history.
Yet like the followers of an end-times cult leader who remain loyal even as the appointed date for the end of the world comes and goes, devotees of these public health priests have not dared to learn their lesson.
The facts of a lab coat coup are evident and the Cult of Corona would rather worship their priest class and burn their witches in an effort to protect themselves rather than protect others.
The truth is evident in these times where the declared hearsay is heresy.
