Shared Illusions

Let me begin with an apology. Our blog is not intended to address political or social issues and I apologize for bringing this to an audience that did not request it. However, I feel what I have to say in this post is important.

It’s one in the morning and I cannot sleep.  Although I do not as a rule sleep well, I usually have no problem getting to sleep. I usually wake early, after enough sleep that sufficiently energizes my mind to consider all of the various ways in which the future will present its next calamity.  It is a lifelong practice that I know is unhealthy, but I’m addicted, probably because my body likes the adrenaline. Tonight, however, I am sufficiently worked up that I do not need to restore my energy before I fret.

My mental turmoil started around bedtime as I began to dwell on the fact that Paula and I have both recently lost longtime friends who have directly or indirectly communicated to us that they can no longer tolerate being exposed to toxic world views that threaten to contaminate their morally superior and virtuous belief systems.  Specifically, they appear to be greatly disturbed that we dissent from the political positions of our superiors.  We question the orthodox views expressed by the Biden Administration and are therefore heretics, espousing disinformation and anti-science rhetoric to undermine the legitimacy of the government and threaten the health and well-being of the society at large.  We have been accused of holding our positions from ideological preference rather than evaluation of substantial technical and, to use a word, scientific information that is currently only available through alternative information platforms.

I fret about the loss of what I thought were solid friendships, and it is not as though we have been loudly or continually broadcasting our thinking. We do not proselytize and generally we do not discuss politics or social issues without invitation or otherwise pester people with our take on issues. Suddenly, however it seems we are becoming social pariahs, and though we still have a number of good friends that have not abandoned us, I am concerned that this is only a small, personal experience of a larger social phenomenon. That is what has me awake.

Perhaps it is time to get to the point.  As I see it, the quantity and quality of dissenting scientific information regarding the government’s response to the COVID situation is clear and convincing.  The approach is not just wrong, it is incoherent.  The public health response has been virtually the opposite of what has been called for. The suppression of early treatment methods has resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in the US and the “vaccines” are neither safe nor effective by historical standards.  The lockdowns and mandates have seriously damaged our social fabric. The COVID response has resulted in substantial declines in public health due to increased isolation, depression, alcohol consumption, drug abuse, and undertreatment of medical conditions. It has undermined the education and socialization of children and has contributed to significant increase in all-cause mortality due to suicides, overdoses and homicides. The protocols have ushered in a period in which basic constitutional rights and liberties have been crushed by authoritarian dictates. You may agree or disagree with these conclusions, and I encourage you to question what you are told by any source, including me, and do your own homework on the matter. The authorities have the microphone, and their perspective is broadcast through the various administrative agencies, the Congress, the media, social media platforms, a host of non-governmental propaganda outfits and the Office of the President.  Dissenting positions are denounced as disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation.

In the last few days, the Surgeon General issued a statement that we are in a public health emergency characterized by the large amount of misinformation and disinformation that is obstructing the government’s efforts to control the pandemic.  Yesterday the Department of Homeland Security issued a terrorism advisory that accuses people who spread disinformation or otherwise encourage distrust of the government are, at worst, domestic terrorists and, at best, pawns of hostile foreign powers.  These assertions are amplified by the usual willing accomplices.

In essence, the administration’s response to the collapse of its narrative is to castigate dissenters as enemies of the state.   It should not be overlooked that this is occurring while momentum is building behind a working class uprising in opposition to the government’s authoritarian agenda.  The government appears unwilling to either listen to dissenting scientists or address the concerns of the citizens. 

I need to be clear about something, and I will make the next statement in ALLCAPS since that is how one accentuates a point in writing.  IN SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “MISINFORMATION!”  There are propositions, conjectures, and hypotheses that either do or do not stand up to scrutiny.  Scrutiny, in science, is an open debate and discussion regarding the results of experiments and studies in which various hypotheses are tested against measurable objective “facts”.  In that regard, there are two types of scientific statements: those that have been refuted and those that have not yet been refuted.  A proposition that is held to be a “consensus” truth, that cannot be questioned, and that is not questioned because all dissenting opinions are suppressed by the political structure of the state is not science, it is propaganda, pure and simple.

There is an agenda at work.  We do not know who or what is behind the exercise of power, and of course to assert there is a force behind these matters is categorized as a conspiracy theory.  It is likely not as simple as the pharmaceutical industry exerting its control over captured regulatory agencies to obtain billions of dollars in excess profits.  Nor can it be simply confirmed that it is the World Economic Forum pursuing its much advertised “great reset.” However, it cannot be denied that the government’s response to the pandemic has not only caused significant disruption of the economy, decimation of the nation’s small business infrastructure, and concentration of corporate power, but also resulted an historic transfer of wealth from the middle class to the economic elite.

It has been an approach that is reminiscent of Stalinist Soviet Union, the Maoist cultural revolution, and the dark period of McCarthyism and red scares in the United States.  These periods were characterized by centralization of authority, suppression of dissent, suppression of individual autonomy, and deprivation of rights. There was a time when people in the West had a name for a condition in which the societal institutions including government, industry, universities, the dominant political party, and media work in concert to suppress the population and advance the interest of the economic elite.  It might do us well to remember that name.