"PsyOps Until Proven Otherwise"
Bret Weinstein has a point-- Liberalism and conservatism, as well as reality and morality, are being coopted and inverted
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”— George Orwell in Animal Farm.
“PsyOps” is a military term short for “psychological operations”. It involves the use of psychological, cultural, and media influence to capture public minds and decisions. It is SUPPOSED to be enacted against an enemy, NOT domestically, but that appears to have changed, expanded, and accelerated since the war in Afghanistan.
An NBC News article showed the U-turn. A high ranking superior officer apparently illegally ordered psy-ops to be used on visiting U.S. senators, rather than the enemy, to induce these politicians to support the war.
Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops, ordered the operation, Rolling Stone Magazine reported in a story published late on Wednesday.
An officer in charge of the unit objected when he was ordered to pressure the visiting senators and was harshly reprimanded by superiors, according to the magazine.
"My job in psy-ops is to play with people's heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," the officer, Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, told Rolling Stone.
"I'm prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you're crossing a line," he added.
As with torture and nearly every other abomination in the military (and finance, and media, and science, etc.) grievous breaches of law, ethics, or duty are excused. Caldwell was “cleared” of wrongdoing (despite the copious evidence), much like Pfizer’s repeated alleged frauds in its testing and delivery of mRNA Covid vaccines.
Psy-ops has since gone mainstream in American society and culture. We can now add to the toolbox of psy-ops: interagency collusion, outright censorship, professional retaliation, dismissal of inconvenient evidence, and the delegitimization of valid competing science as “conspiracy”. From the false suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop as supposed “Russian propaganda” to the censorship and dismissal of the Covid Lab Leak discussion, inconvenient truths are made to be “misinformation” and disinformation, while outright official lies, trumpeted as factual, are cloned and circulated in major media outlets.
[The Covid lab leak “theory”, by the way, has essentially been confirmed as true, but you will never hear about that. Infected “patient zeroes” at the heart of the Covid epidemic origins, include Ben Hu, the lead researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), and two other WIV researchers.]
Psy-ops attempts to determine not only what is official and what can be construed and reported as true (even if it is verifiably FALSE) but what will be ALLOWABLE in public discussion and action. The use of psy-ops has so invaded nearly every quarter of public discussion and participation, that evolutionary biologist and podcast host, Bret Weinstein, came up with a maxim: “PsyOps until proven otherwise”. In other words, it is the DEFAULT condition in the war for people minds, NOT an exception or special operation. Politicians use it, social media uses it, marketers use it… Nearly every domain of public interaction is competing for your emotions and attempting to not only influence your choices but define your very understanding of reality itself.
Psy-ops is basically a psychological blitzkrieg or a “shock and awe” aimed at the stability and sanity of the human mind. Why is there this destabilization effort, even when no military war of nation against nation has been declared? Because the new battle terrain involves attention, focus, concern trolling, and the harvesting of idealism for nefarious ends. It has been noted by many that EVERYTHING has been turned into a war— the “War Against… TM”… against science, against drugs, against Covid, against misinformation and disinformation, even against poverty, racism, and climate change.
In a war, you just dutifully and patriotically follow whatever the leaders or experts say. That’s why the war metaphor is so often used. It is an enticing combination (for would-be power consolidators) of public unification, unquestioning loyalty, lack of critical thinking, and willingness to “sacrifice.” And this works even better if you “unify” large public factions against each other— black vs. white, liberal vs. conservative, younger generations vs. older generations, Alien vs. Predator?
However absurdly arrayed, this symbolic, emotion-driven outrage keeps attention off the real problems and enemies— endless multi-trillion dollar wars that enrich weapons manufacturers, corrupt officials who get everything wrong and remain not only employed but promoted and showered with money (i.e. Anthony Fauci and Peter Hotez).
What psy-ops does NOT provide is reason “for” anything, except to conquer that other entity “out there”, abstract as that may be. What psy-ops never provides for is comprehensive evidence and debate over its proclamations. It purely targets feelings, because it knows that feelings nearly always triumph over the facts in the struggle to discern and establish reality.
This once was a neo-conservative game
Roger Ailes, founding chairman and CEO of Fox News summarized this mentality succinctly:
If you tell people what to think, you’ve lost them. But if you tell them how to feel, they’re yours.
The same Equal Times article from which the above-derived quote was sourced conducted an intelligent discussion and warning as to the shift from a so-called reality-based community to one driven by emotion, and lacking any real knowledge of the past or vision for the future (i.e. is susceptible to emotional influence in the present):
We are living in a society where the past has lost its consistency and seems to be of little interest, while the future has become unpredictable. What we are experiencing is an expansion of the present and emotions are oriented to this, to living and experiencing the moment. The instant, the ephemeral, is the only thing that counts.
The article goes on to reference research which confirms that critical thinking takes more time and energy. Reason itself may filter some choices but “the final decision is emotional,” according to David Bueno, Chair of Neuroeducation at the University of Barcelona. The article also delves into the role of social media and its algorithms in intensifying emotions and creating emotional contagions. Many attribute the rise in transgender ideology, especially among adolescent girls, to this social-emotional contagion.
It does seem as if concretely verifiable, fact-based reality is being hijacked for “preferred realities” (i.e. delusions and fantasies) that can make one FEEL correct or justified without any concrete, verifiable evidence, fact, or reasoning needed. Why consider when you can react and get an emotional charge that feels so clear and edgy in an uncertain world? Why go to the gym and work out and get endorphins the natural way when you can simply pop an opioid or a psychiatric drug and feel splendid without any effort? Just click that TikTok video (or eighty videos in a row), and get the dopamine hit right now in the isolated present.
This evolution was not an accident. It was an actual influence strategy accelerated and developed initially in the United States by Karl Rove and the neo-conservatives (many of whom were former Marxists), but it has been adopted to a far more extensive degree by the neo-liberal Biden administration, which is converging with neo-conservative efforts and is chock-full of disgraced neo-cons like Avril Haines and Anthony Blinken in its war policy departments.
Ron Suskind conducted a well-known interview (Oct. 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine) with an anonymous government official that many have identified as Karl Rove, the architect of weaponized political psy-ops (though Rove himself denies he is the source). Here is the infamous quote, reproduced in a The Week magazine article:
The aide said that guys like me [Suskind] were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." [The New York Times Magazine]
This effort to recreate reality for the masses, according to an increasingly and alarmingly narrow band of so-called “global elites,” threatens the very foundations of the democracy, perennial values, and the constitutional principles and language on which Western civilization itself rests. Religion is falling away. Morality is becoming whatever you make it. In this climate, PornHub and OnlyFans become viable sources of cash flows in an increasingly “gig” economy rather than the degenerative addictions they embody. If reason and morality or no longer “a thing”, then NO critical thinking need be applied as to the separation and concentration of wealth. No one need look at why we are being forced into a “gig economy” in the first place, and in which world governance is dominated by opportunistic, self-dealing and morally corrupt billionaires like Bill Gates.
Disorientation and memory-holing are just two of the new coins of this realm. If you can simply redefine the world, make the good bad, or a loss a win, then you can claim success, truth, and The ScienceTM without having to look back. You can become comfortably ignorant of a common human future AND the suffering you may cause others in your self-chosen actions today. The good life devolves into never having to say you’re sorry and never having to admit you are wrong.
The inversion of liberalism: How a former “progressive” becomes gleefully fascist
Without psychological, emotional, and media training, almost anyone can yield to psychological operations, EVEN the intellectually oriented liberal, perhaps ESPECIALLY the intellectual liberal. The Achilles heel of one so educated lies in the fact that the conscious mind can be made to SERVE unconscious emotion according to certain conceits and tropes around EMOTIVE desire, self-image, and self-belief.
These vulnerable liberal progressives are not so much weak-minded as weak-hearted and weak-gutted. They place such faith in their intellectual minds that they delude themselves and RATIONALIZE AND PROJECT irrational and unconscious emotions as factually adjudicated by the mind. Such weak pseudo-liberal progressives fail to see that their own fear and self-concern for survival is driving the psychological bus.
Typically these alleged progressives have enough mainstream collegiate training to believe they are “smart,” mixed with a dose of abstract, emotional idealism to make them believe they are also “good.” Therefore anything that gets under the shield of those unreferenced conceits becomes incorporated into a mythos of virtue no matter how obviously vicious and abominable their actions may become.
Case in point. A former friend, colleague, and community member, Vicki Lee, who co-served with me on grass-roots political organizing in the Berkeley/Oakland California area decided to aggressively target people (including me) who chose against being vaccinated. She HAD worked with me steadfastly to transition (Howard) “Dean for America” to “Democracy for America” and then “East Bay for Democracy.” However, in the midst of a concocted panic around Covid, she went straight-up fascist with the zeal of the converted. Here was her Facebook profile picture. I had to screenshot it, because I knew it would be erased in her mind and the mind of other amnesiac pseudo-progressives:
It is horrifying, is it not? Take a good look and see what you can find? How many psy-ops tropes can you find that are actually anti-progressive. I can spot at least five. Answers below.
There is the obvious one, pure fascism: “I’m vaccinated. Why aren’t you you stupid f*cking f*ck.” Intimidation. Verbal abuse. Bullying. Soooo progressive.
There is the “good cop” to the bad cop of the bullying “We Can Do It!” partially concealed on the inner border of the profile picture. It’s all a kumbayah. Let’s “come together” and “do the right thing!”
There are the rainbow colors which connote liberal progressivist “rainbow coalition” of inclusive society all working together to accomplish something greater. We do this exactly how?: By making Pfizer the most money in the history of the world off one drug (100 billion dollars) on an rushed injection in which they have no liability? That’s progressive? No it’s the opposite.
Cartoonish arms extended and hands clasped connote childhood and the innocence associated with children. Not only should you not kill grandma, but but you are obligated to vaccinate your kids for their own protection, even though there was little to no risk from Covid FOR kids (and the vaccine has since been proven fatal to kids (myocarditis, etc.). I have yet to hear of a single CONFIRMED case of a healthy child dying from Covid). Will there be contrition and admission of error to learn from this and TRULY protect our children? I have not heard a single apology or admission from any of my former friends and colleagues.
Finally look at the background banner, in which the symbol for Big Pharma (the partially obscured Caduceus) is fighting personified Death, the Grim Reaper. Turns out that reality confirms the opposite. We now have truly epidemic excess mortality right after this vaccine campaign and the rate is unfortunately remaining high. I anticipate when all is said and done that the injury and death created by these toxic vaccines will far outstrip any alleged benefit. If you have been vaccinated with Pfizer’s mRNA jabs just hope you are in the placebo-like “yellow” batches and not the “blue” batches that were less than 5% of the doses but over 70% of the adverse events to the tune of 1 in 20. (This is astronomically inflated risk by orders of magnitude. Not even 1/1000 (green batch) would be acceptable and would be immediate grounds to suspend these vaccines according to past standards).
The inversion of conservatism: “Kennedy democrats” are now “conservatives”
So now it appears that if you are, like Bret Weinstein, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and me anti-war/pro-peace, pro-medical freedom (“my body, my choice”), pro-Title IX (protecting women’s sports from male intrusion), pro-accountability, anti-corporatocracy, anti-monopoly, anti-censorship, and pro-Constitution (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure) you are now “conservative”? There was a time when the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, attempted to protect even Nazi’s speeches in Skokie, Illinois. Now they are a reverse shell of their former selves: protecting the “rights” of males to compete in female sports.
This alleged conservatism arises from the assessments of TwitterGPT, and AI program which summarizes and evaluates your tweets: According to TwitterGPT, I follow “conservative figures” like my fellow libertarian progressives Bret Weinstein and Robert F Kennedy, Jr. This laughable redefining (political reassignment surgery?) demonstrates clearly how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to rewrite history and linguistic definitions overnight. It you manipulate algorithms and use enough bots, you can tweak AI to call whatever is artificially manufactured as the new reality even, if it is only supported by a few puppet-masters posing as billions of people and accounts, including internet “influencers” like the fake Twitter account for “Erica Marsh”. Facebook alone has removed some 25+billion fake accounts since 2017.
This demonstrates a real weakness of AI, which appears to be instantly mutable and blind to history. If concentrated power can command fake accounts (and therefore fake people) to pretend to believe something at odds with what the VAST majority of people believe, AND MAKE IT STICK, we no longer have democracy. We have Bot-world. We have 1984. We have Brave New World.
Yes, if preserving peace, science, debate, critical thinking, classical virtues, a sense of history, morality, excellence, spirituality, competence, accuracy, accountability, and the environment makes me a conservative, then call me a conservative, but really I am simply a man who wants to preserve the best wisdom of the past to equip present change for a hopeful future. In my lexicon that is perhaps labeled as being a perennialist, libertarian progressive: Respect uniting truths and eternal virtues (especially freedom), formed and developed in the past, applied in the present, for the purpose of creating a healthier, more possible future. That comes through struggle, joy, and work, not through political correctness, delusion, or wish.
It’s time to get back to being inspired, reality-based, and generous in our desire to work together. .
Give me your questions and examples of the current craziness and inversions in the comment section.
Between the world and the internet, the world wins. The digital world of 1's and 0's runs on 110v electricity, it is inherently fragile and inherently fake-able, these will undoubtedly be it's downfall. It has become a barrier between people and real life, a barrier more formidable than any wall. It is a tool no less than a hammer or shovel or a pencil. We need to stop it from hitting us, burying us, or erasing us, and that may mean we dismantle it, if that cannot be achieved.
Lots to think about Zeus. I agree with most of this.