Tom Lehrer claimed to have given up songwriting because the US political situation had become too ridiculous for satire. Things are so much worse now that satire itself has virtually died (apart from woke virtue signalling posing as satire, and distinguished by provoking vomiting rather than laughter). Likewise, a blog like this, which currently majors on pointing out societal evils, is in danger of having simply to say, “Everything around you is insane – there’s nothing else to say.” But I’ll try for now to keep on at least making some sense of things.
One “black pill” trend is to realise how much governments now work predominantly against our interests, rather than for them. Life becomes a matter of outwitting the authorities in daily life rather than supporting them. That’s a shame because it disassembles society, but is better than suffocating it in superglue.
An illustrative case from the past comes from the YouTube channel of Candace Owens, who has divided conservatives by taking a strong anti-Israel (and possibly antisemitic) stance on the Palestine affair. She recently publicised a notorious episode during the 1967 Six Day War, in which the USS Liberty was, apparently deliberately, attacked and torpedoed by Israeli forces posing as Egyptians, killing and wounding many US servicemen. Worse still, it appears that the US government may have deliberately sacrificed these patriots, calling off support from the ship it had ordered into harm’s way. It is said that the decisions went up to Lyndon Johnson on the one hand, and Moshe Dayan on the other.
Wikipedia’s page shows that the affair is much more complicated than Owens may like, but nevertheless there are strong suspicions that both governments may have engineered the affair as a false flag to give America popular leverage to join the war, much as happened in Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria and, probably, at Pearl Harbour. If so, the attempt failed only because the Liberty failed to sink with all hands, so the incident had to be explained away as an accidental attack.
Once one suspects that governments are even willing to murder their own courageous servicemen for political purposes, then questioning all their motives becomes an unfortunate necessity. Yesterday the courageous evidence-based medicine pair, Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan, revealed that the UKHSA has purchased for us peasants five million doses of a new flu vaccine whose trials resulted in 17 deaths in the treatment arm, compared to just one in the placebo group. The fact that the trial researchers (working for the manufacturers) decided that none of these deaths was due to the vaccine is about as convincing as tobacco company doctors deciding that none of the lung-cancer deaths in their trials was due to the cigarettes. Their judgement is scarcely, shall we say, disinterested.
Before COVID this would have been a scandal – now it is just what we expect. As Jefferson and Heneghan’s article mentions in passing at the end, the evidence that any flu vaccines make much difference is doubtful – and they documented that years ago in an exhaustive Cochrane review. So what are UKHSA’s motives for ignoring red flags and waving through the vaccine for mass medication? We can’t know, of course. But “incompetence” is wearing rather thin as an excuse, just as it is in explaining why US fighter jets were specifically recalled from their support mission to the USS Liberty back in 1967.
Similar consideration must be given to the government’s determination (we hear) to make the feeding of the drug Bovaer to all UK cattle a legal requirement by 2030. Supporters argue, of course, that it is proven to be quite safe both for cattle and humans who consume them or their milk – rather like the new flu vaccine, I suppose. But I am scarcely the first to point out that this stuff is not being dosed into our national dairy herd, and into the food chain, for the health of the cattle. Nor is it for human health – which is surely the only legitimate reason for the mandatory adulteration of food, and a contentious one in these days of organic farming and the suspicion that processed foods are one cause of the chronic disease pandemic in the West. It’s not even to help the farmers by, say, increasing food yields.
No, this “safe and effective” (a direct quote from the publicity of the Big Pharma manufacturer, Elanco, formerly a subsidiary of Eli Lilley) propylene glycol mononitrate, a petrochemical derivative, has as its sole purpose the artificial blocking of the cattle’s natural digestive process of methane formation. And that is in order to benefit “the planet.” We will all have to eat contaminated food because a few idiots think that ungulate digestive systems cause global warming. The possibility that it will instead cause chronic vasodilation in cattle, and hence cardio-vascular problems, may be safely ignored if the government can virtue signal. And if the corporation can make billions in profit from increasingly impoverished farmers, forced to buy the stuff, and increasingly impoverished taxpayers, forced to pay more to have our bodies polluted.
Like Tom Lehrer’s political angst, there’s not that much any individual can do to counteract this stupidity and malice. But I’ve found that the most stressful response is impotent inactivity, so that you may find you can marginally increase your serotonin levels (and decrease your Bovaer levels?) by signing a few online petitions. Robert Sinclair has started one at YouGov, which I’m proud to say I was one of the first five to sign (hence it hasn’t yet “gone live” so you can actually read it – but trust me, it’s OK!). There are also a couple at Change.org here and here.
Now for a black coffee…
I’ve just shared the petitions on Facebook. Now I wait to see whether I get a misinformation warning; it’s possible, especially if the industry involved is exerting any influence (surreptitiously of course, but entirely justifiably on account of the ‘climate crisis’).
Today I got a warning about a climate change post I shared: ‘We added a notice to your post. The post doesn’t [sic] include information that independent fact-checkers said was false, partly false, altered or missing context.’ Weird.
I hope that any packaged beef we buy from the supermarket will contain information about whether it ‘may’ contain ‘small amounts’ of Bovaer (no doubt in tiny writing); I’d like to be able to choose. My next task is to visit the local butchers (we have some) and ask them what they know about their products.
One good thing about the blog is that so far there are no algorithms policing it. That’s not to say it’s not monitored by “them,” judging by the number of cyber attacks I get!
Your opening paragraph, reminded me of this:
https://babylonbee.com/news/reality-criticized-for-not-more-clearly-distinguishing-itself-from-satire
(For Peter) I think I’d recommend X if you want to be able to stop worrying about being censored (though that doesn’t protect you from the state putting you in prison, apparently). That said, one’s ‘reach’ is generally rather limited on X, so you can feel like your pi… shouting into the wind, so that’s back to impotence Jon mentions.
Is it reassuring to know the world doesn’t make sense, that it doesn’t matter whether it’s incompetence or orchestrated malice at large, that a sense of impotence can deprive us of momentum in our attempt to manage even the purity of our food and drink? But to have civilisational governance which actively seeks to destroy its people? That’s cause for concern but how do we break the spell? Is the essay below useful? Can Candy Musk and Farage save us?
https://open.substack.com/pub/instapundit/p/the-clock-strikes-thirteen?r=72sog&utm_medium=ios
A good essay, and an encouragement indeed.
One sentence stood out to me: “The election gave them permission.” It is God alone who saves, not politicians (so we pray above all things) – but God has always worked through politicians from Abraham’s pharaoh, and godly Davidic kings, through to Electors of Saxony at the Reformation, and, dare I say it, the newly-crowned Jehu-figure in the US. And so even faulty politicians like Farage, Le Pen, Gorbachev and so on can be catalysts for true reform.
I would add one thought to the essay. My impression is that only a minority (20%?) of people are fully conscious that they are being lied to, and fully experience the angst of feeling isolated and marginal. I think the sudden reversals that occur are mostly the result of the people who don’t consciously understand the deception until the system collapses suddenly “seeing the light.”
These people are unhappy, but don’t know why (and maybe swallow the explanations that it’s their racism, their gas-boiler or the other political party to blame) until Hezekiah or Pope Gregory gain power and truth illuminates the scene. That, I suggest, explains at least some of the scrabble in America for former critics to get on board with MAGA, rather than its being pure opportunism.
The role of the common man who does see clearly is what it always was – to speak truth boldly, despite the cost, and so to provide the fly in the ointment that eventually causes the delusion to collapse. “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”