The Individual Mind

This seems a monumental statement from many people whom I follow, admire and from whom I learn. It is a sad state of global affairs that requires such an extreme resistance to censorship, cancellation, intimidation and misrepresentation by overly powerful minority voices and forces that so ardently strive to control dialogue, media, minds, resources, political movements, education, medicine, science, war,… in sum, the totality of human existence. There is an abundance of historical evidence in the past century alone as to the outcome of the attempts of total control. What typically begins as a facade of utopian promises under the guise of humanitarian interest has ended in starvation, displacement and mass murder (e.g. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, practically every war,…) . I applaud and support the signatories of this Westminster Declaration. The below is copied from their website:

The Westminster Declaration

We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.

Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.

This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world.

Such interference with the right to free speech suppresses valid discussion about matters of urgent public interest, and undermines the foundational principles of representative democracy.

Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’

This complex often operates through direct government policies. Authorities in India[1] and Turkey[2] have seized the power to remove political content from social media. The legislature in Germany[3] and the Supreme Court in Brazil[4] are criminalising political speech. In other countries, measures such as Ireland’s ‘Hate Speech’ Bill[5], Scotland’s Hate Crime Act[6], the UK’s Online Safety Bill[7], and Australia’s ‘Misinformation’ Bill[8] threaten to severely restrict expression and create a chilling effect.

But the Censorship Industrial Complex operates through more subtle methods. These include visibility filtering, labelling, and manipulation of search engine results. Through deplatforming and flagging, social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance. They have done so with the full support of ‘disinformation experts’ and ‘fact-checkers’ in the mainstream media, who have abandoned the journalistic values of debate and intellectual inquiry.

As the Twitter Files revealed, tech companies often perform censorial ‘content moderation’ in coordination with government agencies and civil society. Soon, the European Union’s Digital Services Act will formalise this relationship by giving platform data to ‘vetted researchers’ from NGOs and academia, relegating our speech rights to the discretion of these unelected and unaccountable entities.

Some politicians and NGOs[9] are even aiming to target end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.[10] If end-to-end encryption is broken, we will have no remaining avenues for authentic private conversations in the digital sphere.

Although foreign disinformation between states is a real issue, agencies designed to combat these threats, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States, are increasingly being turned inward against the public. Under the guise of preventing harm and protecting truth, speech is being treated as a permitted activity rather than an inalienable right.

We recognize that words can sometimes cause offence, but we reject the idea that hurt feelings and discomfort, even if acute, are grounds for censorship. Open discourse is the central pillar of a free society, and is essential for holding governments accountable, empowering vulnerable groups, and reducing the risk of tyranny.

Speech protections are not just for views we agree with; we must strenuously protect speech for the views that we most strongly oppose. Only in the public square can these views be heard and properly challenged.

What’s more, time and time again, unpopular opinions and ideas have eventually become conventional wisdom. By labelling certain political or scientific positions as ‘misinformation’ or ‘malinformation,’ our societies risk getting stuck in false paradigms that will rob humanity of hard-earned knowledge and obliterate the possibility of gaining new knowledge. Free speech is our best defence against disinformation.

The attack on speech is not just about distorted rules and regulations – it is a crisis of humanity itself. Every equality and justice campaign in history has relied on an open forum to voice dissent. In countless examples, including the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement, social progress has depended on freedom of expression.

We do not want our children to grow up in a world where they live in fear of speaking their minds. We want them to grow up in a world where their ideas can be expressed, explored and debated openly – a world that the founders of our democracies envisioned when they enshrined free speech into our laws and constitutions.

The US First Amendment is a strong example of how the right to freedom of speech, of the press, and of conscience can be firmly protected under the law. One need not agree with the U.S. on every issue to acknowledge that this is a vital ‘first liberty’ from which all other liberties follow. It is only through free speech that we can denounce violations of our rights and fight for new freedoms.

There also exists a clear and robust international protection for free speech. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)[11] was drafted in 1948 in response to atrocities committed during World War II. Article 19 of the UDHR states, ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ While there may be a need for governments to regulate some aspects of social media, such as age limits, these regulations should never infringe on the human right to freedom of expression. 

As is made clear by Article 19, the corollary of the right to free speech is the right to information. In a democracy, no one has a monopoly over what is considered to be true. Rather, truth must be discovered through dialogue and debate – and we cannot discover truth without allowing for the possibility of error. 

Censorship in the name of ‘preserving democracy’ inverts what should be a bottom-up system of representation into a top-down system of ideological control. This censorship is ultimately counter-productive: it sows mistrust, encourages radicalization, and de-legitimizes the democratic process. 

In the course of human history, attacks on free speech have been a precursor to attacks on all other liberties. Regimes that eroded free speech have always inevitably weakened and damaged other core democratic structures. In the same fashion, the elites that push for censorship today are also undermining democracy. What has changed though, is the broad scale and technological tools through which censorship can be enacted. 

We believe that free speech is essential for ensuring our safety from state abuses of power – abuses that have historically posed a far greater threat than the words of lone individuals or even organised groups. For the sake of human welfare and flourishing, we make the following 3 calls to action.

• We call on governments and international organisations to fulfill their responsibilities to the people and to uphold Article 19 of the UDHR. 
• We call on tech corporations to undertake to protect the digital public square as defined in Article 19 of the UDHR and refrain from politically motivated censorship, the censorship of dissenting voices, and censorship of political opinion.
• And finally, we call on the general public to join us in the fight to preserve the people’s democratic rights. Legislative changes are not enough. We must also build an atmosphere of free speech from the ground up by rejecting the climate of intolerance that encourages self-censorship and that creates unnecessary personal strife for many. Instead of fear and dogmatism, we must embrace inquiry and debate.

We stand for your right to ask questions. Heated arguments, even those that may cause distress, are far better than no arguments at all. 

Censorship robs us of the richness of life itself. Free speech is the foundation for creating a life of meaning and a thriving humanity – through art, poetry, drama, story, philosophy, song, and more. 

This declaration was the result of an initial meeting of free speech champions from around the world who met in Westminster, London, at the end of June 2023. As signatories of this statement, we have fundamental political and ideological disagreements. However, it is only by coming together that we will defeat the encroaching forces of censorship so that we can maintain our ability to openly debate and challenge one another. It is in the spirit of difference and debate that we sign the Westminster Declaration.

Signatories

• Matt Taibbi, Journalist, US
• Michael Shellenberger, Public, US
• Jonathan Haidt, Social Psychologist, NYU, US
• John McWhorter, Linguist, Columbia, Author, US
• Steven Pinker, Psychologist, Harvard, US
• Julian Assange, Editor, Founder of Wikileaks, Australia
• Tim Robbins, Actor, Filmmaker, US
• Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law, NYLS, US
• Glenn Loury, Economist, USA
• Richard Dawkins, Biologist, UK
• John Cleese, Comedian, Acrobat, UK
• Slavoj Žižek, Philosopher, Author, Slovenia
• Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University, US
• Oliver Stone, Filmmaker, US
• Edward Snowden, Whistleblower, US
• Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, USA
• Stella Assange, Campaigner, UK
• Glenn Greenwald, Journalist, US
• Claire Fox, Founder of the Academy of Ideas, UK
• Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, Psychologist, Author, Canada
• Bari Weiss, Journalist, USA
• Peter Hitchens, Author, Journalist, UK
• Niall Ferguson, Historian, Stanford, UK
• Matt Ridley, Journalist, Author, UK
• Melissa Chen, Journalist, Spectator, Singapore/US
• Yanis Varoufakis, Economist, Greece
• Peter Boghossian, Philosopher, Founding Faculty Fellow, University of Austin, US
• Michael Shermer, Science Writer, US
• Alan Sokal, Professor of Mathematics, UCL, UK
• Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology, Oxford, UK
• Jay Bhattacharya, Professor, Stanford, US
• Martin Kulldorf, Professor of Medicine (on leave), Harvard, US
• Aaron Kheiriaty, Psychiatrist, Author, USA
• Chris Hedges, Journalist, Author, USA
• Lee Fang, Independent Journalist, US
• Alex Gutentag, Journalist, US
• Iain McGilchrist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher, UK
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Human Rights Activist, Author, Netherlands
• Konstantin Kisin, Author, UK
• Leighton Woodhouse, Public, US
• Andrew Lowenthal, liber-net, Australia
• Aaron Mate, Journalist, USA
• Izabella Kaminska, Journalist, The Blind Spot, UK
• Nina Power, Writer, UK
• Kmele Foster, Journalist, Media Entrepreneur, USA
• Toby Young, Journalist, Free Speech Union, UK
• Winston Marshall, Journalist, The Spectator, UK
• Jacob Siegel, Tablet, US/Israel
• Ulrike Guerot, Founder of European Democracy Lab, Germany
• Heather E. Heying, Evolutionary Biologist, USA
• Bret Weinstein, Evolutionary Biologist, USA
• Martina Pastorelli, Independent Journalist, Italy
• Leandro Narloch, Independent Journalist, Brazil
• Ana Henkel, Independent Journalist, Brazil
• Mia Ashton, Journalist, Canada
• Micha Narberhaus, The Protopia Lab, Spain/Germany
• Alex Sheridan, Free Speech Ireland
• Ben Scallan, Gript Media, Ireland
• Thomas Fazi, Independent Journalist, Italy
• Jean F. Queralt, Technologist, Founder @ The IO Foundation, Malaysia/Spain
• Phil Shaw, Campaigner, Operation People, New Zealand
• Jeremy Hildreth, Independent, UK
• Craig Snider, Independent, US
• Eve Kay, TV Producer, UK
• Helen Joyce, Journalist, UK
• Dietrich Brüggemann, Filmmaker, Germany
• Adam B. Coleman, Founder of Wrong Speak Publishing, US
• Helen Pluckrose, Author, US
• Michael Nayna, Filmmaker, Australia
• Paul Rossi, Educator, Vertex Partnership Academics, US
• Juan Carlos Girauta, Politician, Spain
• Andrew Neish, KC, UK
• Steven Berkoff, Actor, Playright, UK
• Patrick Hughes, Artist, UK
• Adam Creighton, Journalist, Australia
• Julia Hartley-Brewer, Journalist, UK
• Robert Cibis, Filmmaker, Germany
• Piers Robinson, Organization for Propaganda Studies, UK
• Dirk Pohlmann, Journalist, Germany
• Mathias Bröckers, Author, Journalist, Germany
• Kira Phillips, Documentary Filmmaker, UK
• Diane Atkinson, Historian, Biographer, UK
• Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck, University of Buckingham, Canada
• Laura Dodsworth, Journalist and Author, UK
• Nellie Bowles, Journalist, USA
• Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Law, Swansea University,  UK
• Julius Grower, Fellow, St. Hugh’s College, UK
• Nick Dixon, Comedian, UK
• Dominic Frisby, Comedian, UK
• James Orr, Associate Professor, University of Cambridge, UK
• Brendan O’Neill, Journalist, UK
• Jan Jekielek, Journalist, Canada
• Andrew Roberts, Historian, UK
• Robert Tombs, Historian, UK
• Ben Schwarz, Journalist, USA
• Xavier Azalbert, Investigative Scientific Journalist, France
• Doug Stokes, International Relations Professor, University of Exeter, UK
• James Allan, Professor of Law, University of Queensland, UK
• David McGrogan, Professor of Law, Northumbria University, UK
• Jacob Mchangama, Author, Denmark
• Nigel Biggar, Chairman, Free Speech Union, UK
• David Goodhart, Journalist, Author, UK
• Catherine Austin Fitts, The Solari Report, Netherlands
• Matt Goodwin, Politics Professor, University of Kent, UK
• Alan Miller, Together Association, UK
• Catherine Liu, Cultural Theorist, Author, USA
• Stefan Millius, Journalist, Switzerland
• Philip Hamburger, Professor of Law, Columbia, USA
• Rueben Kirkham, Co-Director, Free Speech Union of Australia, Australia
• Jeffrey Tucker, Author, USA
• Sarah Gon, Director, Free Speech Union, South Africa
• Dara Macdonald, Co-Director, Free Speech Union, Australia
• Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive, Free Speech Union, New Zealand
• David Zweig, Journalist, Author, USA
• Juan Soto Ivars, Author, Spain
• Colin Wright, Evolutionary Biologist, USA
• Gad Saad, Professor, Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist, Author, Canada
• Robert W. Malone, MD, MS, USA
• Jill Glasspool-Malone, PhD., USA
• Jordi Pigem, Philosopher, Author, Spain
• Holly Lawford-Smith, Associate Professor in Political Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Australia
• Michele Santoro, Journalist, TV Host, Presenter, Italy
• Dr. James Smith, Podcaster, Literature Scholar, RHUL, UK
• Francis Foster, Comedian, UK
• Coleman Hughes, Writer, Podcaster, USA
• Marco Bassani, Political Theorist, Historian, Milan University, Italy
• Isabella Loiodice, Professor of Comparative Public Law, University of Bari, Italy
• Luca Ricolfi, Professor, Sociologist, Turin University, Italy
• Marcello Foa, Journalist, Former President of Rai, Italy
• Andrea Zhok, Philosopher, University of Milan, Italy
• Paolo Cesaretti, Professor of Byzantine Civilization, University of Bergamo, Italy
• Alberto Contri, Mass Media Expert, Italy
• Carlo Lottieri, Philosopher, University of Verona, Italy
• Alessandro Di Battista, Political Activist, Writer, Italy
• Paola Mastrocola, Writer, Italy
• Carlo Freccero, Television Author, Media Expert, Italy
• Giorgio Bianchi, Independent Journalist, Italy
• Nello Preterossi, Professor, University of Salerno, Scientific Director of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies, Italy
• Efrat Fenigson, Journalist, Podcaster, Israel
• Eli Vieira, Journalist, Genetic Biologist, Brazil
• Stephen Moore, Author and Analyst, Canada

Footnotes

1. Pahwa, Nitish. ‘Twitter Blocked a Country.’ Slate Magazine, 1 Apr. 2023, slate.com/technology/2023/04/twitter-blocked-pakistan-india-modi-musk-khalistan-gandhi.html.
2. Stein, Perry. ‘Twitter Says It Will Restrict Access to Some Tweets before Turkey’s Election.’ The Washington Post, 15 May 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/13/turkey-twitter-musk-erdogan/.
3. Hänel, Lisa. ‘Germany criminalizes denying war crimes, genocide.’ Deutsche Welle, 25 Nov. 2022, https://www.dw.com/en/germany-criminalizes-denying-war-crimes-genocide/a-63834791
4. Savarese, Mauricio, and Joshua Goodman. ‘Crusading Judge Tests Boundaries of Free Speech in Brazil.’ AP News, 26 Jan. 2023, apnews.com/article/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-government-af5987e833a681e6f056fe63789ca375.
5. Nanu, Maighna. ‘Irish People Could Be Jailed for “Hate Speech”, Critics of Proposed Law Warn.’ The Telegraph, 17 June 2023, www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/1  7/irish-people-jailed-hate-speech-new-law/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_psc_ppc_us_news_dsa_generalnews.
6. The Economist Newspaper. (n.d.). Scotland’s new hate crime act will have a chilling effect on free speech. The Economist. https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2021/11/08/scotlands-new-hate-crime-act-will-have-a-chilling-effect-on-free-speech
7. Lomas, Natasha. ‘Security Researchers Latest to Blast UK’s Online Safety Bill as Encryption Risk.’ TechCrunch, 5 July 2023, techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/uk-online-safety-bill-risks-e2ee/.
8. Al-Nashar, Nabil. ‘Millions of Dollars in Fines to Punish Online Misinformation under New Draft Bill.’ ABC News, 25 June 2023, www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-25/fines-to-punish-online-misinformation-under-new-draft-bill/102521500.
9. ‘Cryptochat.’ Meedan, meedan.com/project/cryptochat. Accessed 8 July 2023.
10. Lomas, Natasha.’Security Researchers Latest to Blast UK’s Online Safety Bill as Encryption Risk.’ TechCrunch, 5 July 2023, techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/uk-online-safety-bill-risks-e2ee/.
11. United Nations General Assembly. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). New York: United Nations General Assembly, 1948.

This article by Brandon Smith at Alt-Markets.us seems an apt impression of SOME of the society-controlling mechanisms and perpetrators on display through the years of COVID chaos (as much, or perhaps more of that chaos being man-made rather than biologically viral in etiology).

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When I think back to the first days of the covid pandemic lockdowns, I suspect the majority of people, even many conservatives and liberty movement types, had a healthy concern about the effects of the virus and the potential for structural upheaval if it turned out to be as deadly as the World Health Organization initially claimed. If covid had an Infection Fatality Rate of 3% or more as global health officials warned, then the damage would be substantial enough to change our world for many years to come.

Anyone who was not at least partially concerned about a biological disaster (or biological warfare) was probably an idiot. Anyone who was smart was prepared.  However, after a few months of the spread of the virus and after the first flurry of scientific data, several facts became evident:

1) The lockdowns did nothing to stop the spread, they were simply destroying our economy.

2) The masks were useless and did nothing to prevent transmission of the virus.

3) The IFR of covid was a tiny 0.23%, and that’s not accounting for all the co-morbidity deaths that were falsely labeled as covid deaths.

4) The vaccines did not prevent transmission for millions of people. They did not prevent infection in many cases and numerous vaccinated people have died from the virus. Not only that, but unvaccinated people with natural immunity were better protected than those that took the vaccine and boosters.

5) Studies show that the vaccines cause dangerous side effects at a much greater rate than the CDC admitted.

Everything government officials told us during the pandemic was a lie. It was not a mistake, it was not bureaucratic confusion, it was a lie. Even after this information became available, they KEPT GOING – They kept people locked down, kept them masked and they even tried to force-vaccinate the population. There were some Republican politicians that also went along with the panic, many of them Neocons (fake conservatives).  However, the majority of red states quickly ended the restrictions once the contradictory data was made public.  In the meantime, the blue states looked ridiculous and paranoid as they desperately clung to the mandates.

I believe the only reason Biden, the Democrats and globalist institutions eventually stopped was not because they realized their science was incorrect; it was because they realized millions of conservatives and independents were ready start a shooting war over the mandates and they knew they would lose.

Even today, months after Biden was forced to finally end the national emergency status on covid, there are still a lot of people out there running around with masks, still isolating in their homes and still complaining all over social media that the public has moved on from the pandemic hysteria. Where does this behavior originate? And why did so many Americans (mainly leftists) jump on the authoritarian bandwagon when it comes to lockdowns and forced vaccination?

I want to explore the psychology of such people here, because I think it’s the natural inclination of the public today to move on quickly from the discomfort of terrible events and ignore the deeper implications. We cannot move on from this, because the ultimate problem was never solved. These same leftists and globalists were never admonished for their behavior, they never had to admit they were wrong and they WILL attempt the same draconian measures again in the future if left unchecked.

Here is what I think happened during the covid cult frenzy…

A Useful Weapon Against The Constitution

Leftists are quick these days to change the subject or outright deny their authoritarian activities during covid. It makes sense, they view the next election as a defining election and they want people to forget that we almost lost what remains of our constitutional rights because of their policies. But again, we can’t allow these things to fade into the ether. Here’s a list of the worst trespasses on the part of leftists and globalists during the pandemic:

They lied about the effectiveness of the lockdowns.

They lied about the effectiveness of the masks.

They lied about the effectiveness of the vaccines.

They lied about how extensive the testing was for the covid vaccines.

They lied about the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

They enforced lockdowns OUTSIDE where it is nearly impossible to contract a virus.

They tried to put the population under house arrest.

They put legislation in motion in some states to build “covid camps” in the US.

In some countries, they did build covid camps, not just for travelers, but for everyone.

They conspired to suppress ample evidence linking the Wuhan Lab in China with the outbreak.

They (Government and Big Tech) conspired to use social media as a tool for mass censorship of conflicting data.

They exploited algorithms through search engines to bury any and all contrary information.

As many leftists openly admitted, the goal was to make life so difficult for the unvaccinated that they would eventually comply in order to survive. In this way, establishment elites and leftists could claim that people “volunteered” for the vaccines and no one was forced. What they really meant was, no one was forced at gunpoint, but we all knew that threat was coming next.  In fact, polling showed that a large percentage of Democrats were willing to scrap the Bill of Rights altogether and declare war on the unvaccinated…

Finally, the vast majority of leftists supported Biden’s vaccine passport executive orders for workers in companies with 100 employees or more, which would have ultimately led to vaccine passports for everyone. This would have destroyed the constitution as we know it and created a society in which economic participation is completely controlled by the government. Keep in mind, all of this was being justified by a virus with a tiny 0.23% median death rate.

Since the political left views the Bill of Rights as an obstacle to the majority of their political goals, I argue that they simply saw the pandemic as a vehicle they could exploit to remove constitutional protections they always wanted to get rid of anyway.

The Mentally Ill Took Over The Country

Around 23% of the US population is estimated to have at least one mental illness. On average, around 3% of the population suffers from psychotic episodes and 1% of the population is full blown psychopathic (incapable of empathy and takes joy in the suffering of others). America is a sick nation full of psychologically disturbed people, and there is currently no recourse for fixing the problem.

Instead, under the leftist methodology, the mentally ill are elevated, idolized and enabled while violent criminals are released onto the streets over and over again. Take one look at all the major cities on the west coast of the US where progressive policies rule and see the disturbing decline. But what does this have to do with medical tyranny under covid?

The political left uses the mentally ill as a bludgeon, an easily manipulated tool for chaos. During the lockdowns and restrictions the establishment and the media stoked the fires of paranoia.  By themselves they have no power; they need the crazed mob as a weapon to keep the rest of the country afraid and in line. They needed good little Stasi, always watching, always correcting, always screaming at those without masks, attacking those that refused to get vaxxed and mocking those that spoke out about scientific inconsistencies.

And, in return, the establishment made the mentally ill feel as if they were normal. For a fleeting moment in time, the most unstable and narcissistic people on the planet were made to feel like THEY were on the right side of history and rationality. It was a parasitic feedback loop that almost destroyed the last vestiges of America.

Tiny Tyrants Begging For Scraps From The Globalist Table

There are generally two kinds of people in the world – Those that want power over others, and those that just want to be left alone. The progressive ideology seems to be a breeding ground for “tiny tyrants”: People who have no individual power, little accomplishment and no influence to speak of, but are still stricken with an obsession to micromanage the world around them. These folks see crisis and government overreach as an opportunity rather than a threat.

There are also those people who view their existence as so devoid of interest or excitement that they tend to live vicariously through calamity and conflict. They saw the covid outbreak and the lockdowns as a moment that gave their lives “meaning.” Yes, it’s sad and pathetic, but this is how many people out there cope with obscurity and lack of merit.

These opportunists didn’t want the pandemic to end. They wanted it to go on forever, because if it did they could feed off the establishment power shift. They could gather scraps from the globalist table, and like carrion, feast on the corpse of our Republic. The motive? Selfish vanity, that is all.

All of this could very well happen again. The big tyrants and tiny tyrants are still out there, waiting for the next crisis; the next panic event to take the public off their guard. Another viral event is unlikely, but they do seem anxious to use climate change, war and economic turmoil as the next great “reset” button. In the end, there will have to be a dramatic shift in how the liberty minded interact with the authoritarian left. It is clear that we cannot share the same country, or the same civilization. Our values are fundamentally at odds. It’s only a matter of time before a single spark ignites a firestorm.

Yesterday, I was talking to a colleague about the ongoing deterioration of health care economics – a common topic among us doctors – and referenced Dr. William C. Waters’ book, Two Days That Ruined Your Health Care. I remembered having written an essay about this topic a decade ago, and I post it here for posterity and the interested. Of course, systems and finances have deteriorated significantly since the 2012 writing, but the fundamentals of economics and legislation persist.

As a physician, still relatively new to private practice (about 6 years), I have found my greatest challenge has not been in the practice of medicine, in providing patients with safe anesthetic experiences throughout their surgeries, or in keeping up with the pace of medical advancements, but in working my way through non-medical bureaucracies and their endless streams of complicating consequences. Some of those bureaucracies include the third party payors that “reimburse” doctors for their services. These payors may be private insurance companies, like Aetna, Blue Cross and United, for example. Increasingly, payors are government entitities: Medicare, Medicaid, State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (CHIPS), Tricare (for the present and former military personnel), etc. In addition to the dictates of the payment intermediaries, there are innumerable layers of rules, regulations and advisories heaped upon the medical community primarily by government-related agencies such as the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Health and Human Services (HHS), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA ), Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the state Department of Health, and the state Department of Public Safety, to name those that quickly come to mind.

As a result of all of this interference between a doctor and the patient, and one of the surprising realizations for which I received no real preparation neither in medical school nor in my four year anesthesiology residency, is that I have no idea how much you pay me when I keep you asleep and alive for your appendectomy, or your elective knee replacement, or the emergent 2:00 AM ruptured abdominal aneurysm repair. I don’t know how much I will be paid for my service to you. I couldn’t tell you how much you would owe to me or to the hospital or to the surgeon. They probably don’t know either, at least not readily. Sure, I have a rough idea of what I will average in income over the course of a month, but what you personally will pay is a mystery to both of us. How could that possibly be? Is there another industry in which costs are hidden from both the provider and the recipient of the service, in which some non-present third party that lies outside of the interaction governs its financing and influences its specifics? How did this system come to exist?

It has taken a good deal of investigation, personal experience and not an inconsequential degree of angst, to begin to piece together how medical payments and economics work. While it is still beyond my complete comprehension, I would like to share some of the points that I’ve learned. I invite others to follow the references that I provide. I hope they can verify for themselves how this perverse system developed and identify the best solutions. Certainly, just as in politics or foreign relations, we cannot move to repair a situation without first understanding its history. Like mine, your view will be influenced by your personal ideologies, moralities and politics, e.g. your concept of individual rights, of the appropriate role of government in our lives, of your impression of man’s ability for self-sufficiency versus a need for significant external assistance, etc.

For myself, one of the most significant insights into the history of medical financing was gained when I came across a short book by William C. Waters, III, MD entitled 2 Days That Ruined Your Health Care (And How You Can Provide the Cure). I highly recommend the book to any interested in the topic. You can buy a cheap, used one at amazon.com.

(Click to continue reading the .pdf file. It’s 9 pages, so grab a snack.)

This morning, Zerohedge pointed me to a recent article that Jim Quinn wrote on his site, The Burning Platform. He does an excellent and singular job of summarizing the current era of U.S. pathologies: societal, political, economic. He gives a rundown of decades of consequences of war, currency manipulation, debt, foreign interventionism, media corruption, increasing national and global controls, and the creation and mismanagment of perpetual crises,… in sum, the culmination of “folly.”

He starts by analyzing U.S. folly in the pursuit of empire by reviewing some of the works of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and historian Barbara Tuchman, of whom I should probably be embarrassed to admit I was unaware. So, not only is Mr. Quinn’s article excellent for understanding our current state, but he inspired me to order 7 of Ms. Tuchman’s books (mostly used and very affordable from thriftbooks.com). Time to pick up the reading pace!

I highly recommend a thoughtful review of the article. Here’s just one nugget:

“Foolish acts, foolish interventions, and foolish policies are enacted by fools and supported by fools. The history of government folly makes perfect sense when you realize mediocre men with small minds and a lust for power are drawn to politics and passionately inflict their idiocy on the masses who were too stupid or too apathetic to care about who they chose to lead them.”

In my opinion, these days, as in certain perilous times throughout history, call for healthy skepticism, a dedicated pursuit of information and insight, and a proactive plan for self-preservation. Wishing you productive reading! – mtr

The human experience is perplexed, as well as driven by, the search for purpose and meaning. I think I’ve written elsewhere of physician psychiatrist Viktor Frankl and his excellent short book, Man’s Search for Meaning – inspired by his survival of WWII-era concentration camps. I recently listened to a Lex Fridman podcast that also added something significant to my perspective on meaning – shifting the primary question from “What is the Meaning of Life?” to “How do I live a meaningful life?”

Certainly, our definitions of “meaningful” will differ, but I believe the distinction moves the question from one of esoteric, philosophic, perhaps unanswerable existentialism towards something more measurable, visible and understandable.

Scrolling through Mr. Fridman’s podcast list last month, I found episode #227 with Harvard’s Sean Kelly, PhD. Topics include existentialism, nihilism, evil, meaning, classical authors on the topics,…. The entire conversation is worthwhile, but in the last few minutes, Dr. Kelly said some things that will resonant with me forever more.

Referencing the wisdom of a prior teacher, Albert Borgmann, Dr. Kelly says that he may not know the Meaning of Life, but he has some ideas about how to create a meaningful life. He says that one can hope to fill one’s life with moments about which it may be said:

There’s nowhere I’d rather be.

There’s no thing that I’d rather be doing.

There’s no one I’d rather be with, and

This, I will remember well.

My hypothesis: Perhaps there is no single, simple or consensus Meaning of Life. Perhaps the Meaning is to create a life lived meaningfully.

My questions: How do I create the conditions in my life to frequently meet these four criteria of meaningfulness? What do I need to do less? And more? How do my associations, activities, choices and behaviors hold up in light of those criteria? Are there impediments that should be minimized? What can I do to optimize all of these conditions to tend more towards a meaningful life, one in which fulfillment and positive legacy far outweigh errors and regrets?

I opened my PayPal account in the year 2000. I closed it today. Humanity must find a path around censoring, cancelling, narrative controlling, de-platforming, and centralizing entities, and work towards transparency, openness, dialogue, free movement and commerce, decentralization, and exposure of power structures.

Bad ideas are driven out with better information and transparency. Centralizing and controlling forces tend to entrench bad ideas, if they aren’t, in fact, the very source of them. Of course, it is apparent to me that the supposed desire to control “bad ideas” or “dangerous” information is merely a fearmongering excuse to attempt to mass-control narratives, opinions and behaviors towards preferred political and social agenda. The PayPal de-platforming of dissident voices is merely one more in the incessant stream of de-banking, de-voicing, and de-activating attacks against ideological foes.

From Matt Taibbi’s insightful article: “In the last week or so, the online payment platform PayPal without explanation suspended the accounts of a series of individual journalists and media outlets, including the well-known alt sites Consortium News and MintPress.”

Caitlin Johnstone also wrote on the topic. Both of these are independent writers and journalists (like Glenn Greenwald) that moved to substack in order to escape the controls of editors and censors.

From Caitlin’s interview with the Executive Director of MintPress News, Mnar Adley: “In the era of a declining US empire, censorship has become the last resort of an unpopular regime and its forever wars to make the truth disappear and critical thinking all but dead. With the war in Ukraine raging on, we’ve entered war time and Big Tech giants, including Paypal, are working hand in hand with the New Cold War architects themselves to sanction dissenting journalists.”

Here, Jimmy Dore (yet another of the previously left-leaning podcasters and journalists that was abandoned as his political group veered to bizarre extremes over the past few years) discusses the de-banking/de-platforming topic on his show.

I will continue to search for ways to free and decentralize my finances, interactions, relationships, employment and information flows. Cryptocurrency (NOT centralized bank digital currencies!), independent journalists and open source social media are part of that quest.

Extracting ourselves from government dependence and controls, mainstream legacy media, corporate influence, and the non-stop stream of socio-politically driven narratives, official-only explanations, selective data sharing and intimidation tactics will serve us well for the advancement of humanity, peace, prosperity and personal development.

Excellent mashup of Dr. Weinstein’s Dr. Seuss tribute with some lo-fi and art by Akira The Don. As background, Dr. Seuss was a target of Cancel Culture this past year. (see here and here.) Bret would have none of it. And that’s why I love the guy.

Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, is a hematologist, oncologist and epidemiologist at University of California – San Francisco.

In recent months, Dr. Prasad has been providing excellent analysis of some of the flawed studies that the CDC has promoted throughout the pandemic. (His YouTube channel is a treasure for true scientific review of the studies and issues promoted by the media and health agencies – which often turn out to be of very poor quality, if not antithetical to reality.)

In this article here, published in The Tablet, he summarizes a few of them and asks how the public health sector got so far off track. In doing so, he risks the common response that media, universities, government agencies and Big Tech have imposed on those with heterodox opinions counter to the approved Narrative: public intimidation and ridicule, job termination, license investigation, cancellation of social media accounts.

Excerpt: “So why does the supposedly impartial CDC push weak or flawed studies to support the administration’s pandemic policy goals? The cynical answer is that the agency is not in fact impartial (and thus not sufficiently scientific), but captured by the country’s national political system. That answer has become harder to avoid. This is a precarious situation, as it undermines trust in federal agencies and naturally leads to a trust vacuum, in which Americans feel forced to cast about in a confused search for alternative sources of information.”

“Once that trust is broken, it’s not easily regained. One way out would be to reduce the CDC’s role in deciding policy, even during a pandemic.”

Here’s Dr. Prasad’s website.

He’s also been on a number of podcasts that can be searched. My opinion is that he is well-informed and attempts to find the best interpretation of the data that he can offer, absent any ulterior motive, conflict of interest or political agenda. That type of discussion has been rare these past few years.

As many parents all around the U.S. have spoken out in their local school board meetings about the negative effects and uselessness of force-masking their children in school (a very contentious topic with angry parents on both sides of the argument), the ubiquitous video of these events found online tends to demonstrate an absolute disregard and disdain that school boards have for parents, their opinions, and arguably, the children themselves. Why is that? Probably too many reasons to detail here, but we’ll look at one area of financial incentives for that behavior.

Regarding viral risks and mitigation strategies, the cost/benefit ratios, negative and adverse effects, case and death numbers by age group, etc. those can be discussed elsewhere. As I have been digging into the seemingly unlimited U.S. government’s financial incentives for COVID compliances across society and economy, I came across the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) Act and its subsequent supplements. As of January 2022, every state has submitted a plan (and all have been approved) to access the current allotment of $190 BILLION in additional taxpayer funding for their compliance. (Those plans, details and dollars allotted by state, can be found on the U.S. Department of Education’s corresponding website.)

Not surprisingly, this money comes with a series of strings attached. One of those requirements is that schools follow CDC guidelines for masking of all children, age 2 through 12th grade. (The highly flawed CDC “studies” that show any masking benefit for viral transmission or illness can be described in multiple places, but is very well done by Dr. Vinay Prasad MD, MPH who is “a practicing hematologist-oncologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco” per his bio. Check out his quick YouTube explanation on the topic – while it remains uncancelled – and his substack article.)

With roughly 49M kids enrolled in U.S. schools (per the National Center for Education Statistics), that $190B in additional ESSER funding works out to over $3,800 per masked child. Masking your kid and putting up with your complaints are very small prices for schools to pay in order to access that money. Your parental preferences do not carry that kind of weight. There is no option for you to withhold your local school or federal taxes in protest. That money is theirs regardless, and you’ll have to comply with their mandates, curriculum and treatments unless you can afford to take your kid to a like-minded private school, or to home school them. Your opinion is nothing but a nuisance to the people you fund, who impact your child for 8 hours a day, most days of the year.

Out of curiosity, I reviewed the ESSER plan for my current state of residence, Pennsylvania. Masking is mentioned throughout the document, and the state has received over $5B in distributions from this particular fund to date. So, it’s unlikely that parental complaints are going to counterbalance that weight.

This issue was introduced to me by an interview I came across while researching another blog post idea: the unintended consequences and economic distortions of the COVID financial incentives to the healthcare workforce – which has been severely disrupted with the wash of dollars flowing into health care organizations, allowing an escalating bidding war between them for their beaten down and exhausted staff, after years of crushing, COVID working conditions and resented mandates. This has resulted in staffing shortages all across the country. If I were a nurse and could make $4,000 per week as a traveler (the number I was quoted from a nurse at my current hospital yesterday), especially if I were even slightly disgruntled and exhausted, I would give that SERIOUS consideration.

Back to the school masking topic. The article embedded the aforementioned interview by The Highwire’s Del Bigtree with Tennessee Liberty Network’s AJ DePriest. (I’d love to reference a Legacy Media discussion of such topics, but we all know that these points would be labelled as misinformation, dissidence or conspiracy by the likes of all of the alphabet networks.) I wasn’t familiar with any of the interview’s entities or persons, but watching from the 11 minute mark, Ms. DePriest mentions sufficient points of reference and explanation to begin to piece evidences together, which I’ve done this morning. (“Thank you!” to her for researching and reporting on this topic.)

Her takeaway is that parents at school board meetings need to stop trying to reason with those board members. Rather, they should bring these evidences to the meetings and demand funding transparency, exposure of conflicts of interest, and explanations for policies in order to “unmask” these distorted incentive structures that negatively impact their children.

As the Peter G. Peterson Foundation tabulates, there is roughly $4.2 TRILLION in U.S. COVID funding sloshing its way through society and the economy right now. Imagine how each aspect of our lives might be impacted by the unintended(?) consequences and distortions of such largess. We might consider seeking similar transparency and conflict disclosures from every institution and organization that touches us.

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Addendum, Feb 12th

A long-time social media friend asked me: “What about all the schools that don’t have mask mandates? Are they forfeiting the money?”

My response: “That’s a good question! Maybe they got it and moved on. It looks like the last supplement to the fund was in March of 2021. Or, I wonder if the CDC masking rules were different earlier on. I’ll be interested to see what kind of feedback comes in on that topic.

“Here’s the actual application packet/guidance. – https://oese.ed.gov/files/2021/04/ARP-ESSER-State-Plan-Template-04-20-2021_130PM.pdf – Pg 7, Table B1 requests the state to address the Universal and Correct Wearing of Masks. I looked at Florida’s application ( – https://oese.ed.gov/files/2021/12/FL-ARP-ESSER-State-Plan-Final_Redacted.pdf – ), which specifically includes Gov Ron DeSantis’s executive order allowing parents to unmask their children. That state’s plan was accepted, but the topic was clearly addressed. Maybe the federal government didn’t want to pursue some of these governor level exemptions. Unclear!

“The PA application (linked in my blog above), for example, clearly states that masking will follow CDC guidelines, so it may be assumed by the state and local education agencies that their funding is dependent on that compliance.”

I just started looking at this topic yesterday and cannot claim to grasp the eventual compliances or outcomes of all of the enticements, inducements and financial coercions. Clearly, they have effects – as do all economic, political and social interventions. My end message would be to have caution with such interventionism and to be alert to the subsequent (often unseen) consequences and impacts around us. It is always helpful to ask “qui bono?” – who benefits? – when assessing situations that are difficult to understand. (Check out the great essay by Frederic Bastiat, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, written in 1850… and timeless.)

There is definitely a financial inducement for universal masking of kids in schools, but there are many other reasons it has been pushed, as well. Much of it seems politically motivated and inordinately fear-driven, in my opinion, rather than out of an honest concern to keep children healthy… noting that healthy children without comorbidities are in the lowest possible risk stratification for the pandemic virus.

Just as a review, I’ll include a graphic from the CDC this morning that shows cumulative COVID-associated hospitalizations from the inception of the pandemic (does that mean persons hospitalized because of COVID pneumonia, or incidentally positive by test on admission for an unassociated reason?… can’t know, that data isn’t collected) by week, with age distribution percentages. Kids 17 and under tend to make up less than 4% of the hospitalized, and those will tend to be kids with other significant health issues – perhaps not even in the general population of schools.

Here’s another CDC table screenshot from today which shows that of all the U.S. pandemic deaths to date with an associated COVID label, 795 of those 898,699 deaths were in the age group of 0-17. Doing that calculation: 795/898699 x 100 = 0.088 percent of the COVID mortality numbers were school-age kids.

What national intervention measures should be justified to chase those 795 deaths, which while certainly tragic, pale in comparison to other causes of death in that age group, like the 4,000 or so motor vehicle deaths per year? Should we also prohibit travel to keep the kids safe? The public health apparatus, aided by media-generated fear, has suffered a complete divorce from the concept of risk/benefit analysis. Glenn Greenwald has a great article and video on this failure from August of 2021.

Lend our society’s accepted practices a skeptical eye. Ask some questions. Make sure what we participate in carries benefit over costs. Stay safe out there, friends.

Caveat: I haven’t endorsed any of the two-party system U.S. Presidential candidates in 20 years or more. They have been (and likely always will be) insufficient human beings to represent, solve, or think at a level to benefit society. So, my post here isn’t a partisan attack, although admittedly, I think the guy is a disingenuous moron at baseline, and in some stage of dementia for years.

This news video montage popped up in a social media feed today, from 1988. There’s a reason that Biden was not elected President when he ran 30+ years ago. It was heavily documented by video capture that he was a serial liar and plagiarizer, from his school years and into his time as a U.S. Senator (D-Delaware).

Somehow, this knowledge all went down Orwell’s memory hole. The historically illiterate, easily swayed, philosophically void, emotionally led public elected and now has the Leader it deserves. Our dysfunctional, distracted, fragmented, angry, self-victimized Society is the averaged sum of its individuals.

There’s no need to pick on a single man. Biden’s fatal flaws are not an exception found within the most embedded systems upon which we depend, but are emblematic of the universal rot, corruption, conflicts of interest, ineptitude and self-aggrandizement that characterize that which governs and most impacts us: politics at all levels and brands, large corporations, universities and their “educational” product, The Academy and the research/journal articles it filters out or selectively promotes, the funding sources (like the NIH) which determine just what will be researched, the Organized Medicine and Health Insurance cabal of non-transparency, Pharma, Big Tech, Finance,… and Legacy Media to protect it all.

In many instances, we find these dysfunctional components acting in concert to their mutual benefit and to the detriment of the rest of us. One example that will become more apparent with time is the uniform defense of the Covid Narrative – vilifying any discourse that strays from the changing rhetoric of accepted therapeutics and mandates, censoring, canceling, threatening, intimidating, slandering, obstructing discourse and debate. All of this to protect certain interests, positions, power structures and agenda.

Glenn Greenwald has a nice article out on his Substack today that touches on this, particularly illustrating the ideologues’ battle against Spotify to censor the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for sharing “misinformation” in his hosting of a multitude of experts (almost universally silenced by mainstream interests) that express heterodox opinions against the Covid Narrative (from masking to jab issues to early treatment – all of which I find entirely appropriate areas of discussion… especially as a practicing physician). If someone is wrong, or an idea is flawed, the very best way to dispel it is to bring it out into the sunlight for exposure and thorough examination. Otherwise, what the f*** are you hiding?

One of the most important answers to every illness that afflicts us – be it societal or physical – is more discussion, debate, openness and transparency. We are at a global juncture in the highly pressurized tension between Centralized Control of Everything (speech, language, information sharing, centralized “digital currencies”, economic exchange, physical movement, medical therapeutics, social credit scores, vax passports for the most basic of human interactions, education curricula,…) versus Decentralization towards free discourse, open debate, criticism of Power Institutions, decentralized crypto and DeFi, personal choice, even the ability to leave one’s home in some instances (ask the Australians and so many others during this Lockdown Era).

It can be difficult to identify the source of these seemingly very united efforts to exert totalitarian control, but looking at bedmates, we often find the Big Tech billionaires, celebrities, media representatives, large universities (like Johns Hopkins), the seemingly philanthropic Bill Gates, world politicians, and global institutions like the World Economic Forum (headed by Klaus Schwab, proctering its select Young Global Leaders that become more world leaders, promoting the Great Reset) bedding up around the globe, emitting gobs of carbon trails in their private jets to arrive at their secret meetings, like the annual one in Davos, Switzerland.

For decades, they’ve held simulations of all kinds of disasters, like the October 2019 Event 201 (highlights here) that conveniently simulated how to mass control in a coronavirus pandemic… just months before a coronavirus pandemic in which essentially all world power structures followed the extreme lockdown and mandate prescriptions of the Event 201 playbook.

Just maybe it is people like these with large control ambitions that might have an interest in stifling your dissent and choice. Maybe it is people like these, technocrats with outsized influence and questionable ambitions, that are able to unduly affect, if not infiltrate and subvert, democratic and societal processes in a form of coup d’etat. Maybe this situation is among the most important that should be brought out into the sunlight for close examination (as if your basic run-of-the-mill government and bureaucrat corruptions and failures weren’t already enough to deal with).

As the brilliant George Carlin was wont to say, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!”

And how this little blog started with a Biden video, and expanded to this, I’m not sure. But now that we’re here,… you’re damn right.