The idea of a democracy, on the surface, sounds ideal: rule of the people. But over the past century and more, what’s clearly evident, is that the people have been consistently and persistently manipulated and socially engineered. Elements and factions of various industrial complexes have trained us to think in certain ways, believe in certain ways, and ultimately, to behave in certain ways.
This is, perhaps, the essential and critical failure of the notion of a fair and just democracy. Yet, we are led to believe that we must defend it at all costs, equating it with lofty ideals such as freedom of speech, autonomy, liberty, and the power of self-determination.
And so, the very things we’re trained to trust and depend upon, cherish and declare proudly to have fought and died for, are quite obviously the very things systematically weaponized against us.
Today, a fragmented and increasingly fractious society has devolved repeatedly into mob rule, and consensus decision-making, resulting from well-paid actors, nefarious influencers, and vested interests carefully shaping the narrative. Through the power of ubiquitous, unceasing flows of modern media – and the power to limit, censor, or unify every aspect of the messaging process toward profitable or otherwise predetermined ends – the public isn’t entirely aware of their complicity in their crimes against…themselves.
Eugyppius puts it quite eloquently:
No other political system could have given rise to containment, as we experience it in the West. First-world democracies are anything but systems for channelling the will of the people. Instead, with the rise of mass media and mass society, they have become elaborate ‘consensus-farming’ operations. Unique in history, they are governing systems that use mass media to call into being the phenomenon of public opinion, which is then shaped by a combination of propaganda and political participation into a tool of governance and consensus in its own right. The majority is thus first acclimated to the agenda of the state, and then deployed to enforce governmental directives and to repress dissidents, the non-compliant and, increasingly, even the disinterested. Corona containment is an obvious product of a system like this, depending as it does on widely distributed consensus policies that are enforced less by the police than by enthusiastic majorities deputised by the media.
With ever-increasing amounts of data, and the ability to surveil and collect information as to the most intimate details of our lives, why and how we make decisions about everything important to us is up for grabs.
All companies and corporate interests, all leaders of any capacity, and especially the public policymakers of the world, hire consultants and data-mining entities. Information from polls, social media, blogs, forums, and other “free and open platforms” are critical to the process of gathering our valuable data, and achieving the aims of a successful – or perhaps a greedy, insatiable, malicious few.
On the ground, in 2020, we were convinced that there was a pandemic, yet another “outbreak” of an ever-changing, novel contagion that threatened to wipe us all out. In reality, under the aegis of emergency acts and authority, efforts to centralize absolute power, and to gain further control over the finances and assets and creative energies of every man, woman and child, are being implemented methodically.
We were all told recently to work from home, and another lockdown is on the cards. A midnight curfew has recently been imposed on pubs and nightclubs. This is odd, as only vaccinated people have been allowed into them for months, and we have repeatedly been assured that vaccinated people are safe to be around.
In an honest society, all of this would have been subject to robust public debate. We would have seen scientists of all opinions openly debating on TV and radio and in the press; views of all kinds aired on social media; journalists properly investigating reports of both vaccine successes and vaccine dangers; serious explorations of alternative treatments; public debates about the balance between civil liberties and public health, and what ‘public health’ even means. But we have not seen this and we will not see it, for debate, like dissent, is out of fashion. The media here in Ireland has not asked a critical question of anyone in authority for at least eighteen months. Google’s algorithms are busy burying inconvenient data, while the social media channels from which most people receive their worldview are removing or suppressing critical opinions, even if they come from virologists or editors of the British Medical Journal.
We’re nearing the end of 2021, and still the virus narrative persists, while increasingly, aggressive propaganda of a “climate crisis” looms. It’s one destructive, terrifying story after another, yet this is the mainstay of centralized, corporate, and state-funded media of the past century. The greater truth – the science and facts, counter to the curated, coordinated story – is systematically buried, censored, misrepresented, and ignored. Worse, the frenzy, hysteria, and paranoia we now find ourselves operating within does not allow for any reasonable discussion nor decisive, curative action. The only solutions are the strikingly limited, arguably extreme options offered by those who were, of course, instrumental in creating the fearful narrative.
…I mentioned that deliberate lies and propaganda, and overtly corrupt individuals, are the tip of an iceberg. Yet they are still significant. Even if the bulk of narrative maintenance resides underwater, submerged in the collective unconscious, the tip is relevant too, indicative of what lies beneath. Unscrupulous people can gain and maintain power by exploiting the…mechanisms of conformity and mob psychology. They can loudly broadcast orthodoxy and ridicule and intimidate those who would be the first dissenters. If no one dares to stand with the dissenters, they appear a tiny, crazy minority.
Checks and balances: How are we to discern the best ways forward, if those whom we elect (and their cronies and appointees) are more concerned with protecting their careers, and their in-group, closed-loop ethics, than with the concerns and demands of their constituents? If lobbyists and corporate agendas are more heavily weighted and influential in the highest offices, and in the critical arenas of policymaking that direct and affect our daily lives, the true, democratic voice will never be heard. In fact, I would argue the true voice of the people – the genuine intentions, beliefs, and life-affirming truth and integrity – isn’t even known by the people.
To all appearances, it seems there is a small, yet growing, percentage of the population declaring that one true voice. Unfortunately, armchair activists, and the critically unthinking masses, will be quick to label them conspiracy theorists, or extremists; the crazy ones who should just get with the program; the uneducated rabble who are keeping us all from getting “back to normal.”
And therein lies another failure of the democratic ideal; a fragmented, polarized, divided people, made so by the stories and fiction that they’re perpetually enveloped within, are an easily misguided, fearful, distrusting people.
This is not by accident. The results are evident, playing out now in this mad, mad world. I agree with Charles:
Drug companies, regulators, public health agencies, doctors, and scientists have to stop patronizing us if we are ever to trust them. They have to stop manipulating us. They have to stop cheating and hiding, bullying and censoring, bribing and coercing the public. Then, if honest research shows us that the vaccines are necessary and safe, we will trust that research and happily comply. Until then, we will not merely “hesitate”; we will obstinately refuse to receive an injection pushed upon us by people we do not trust.
We are better than this. We are more. We are the power. We need to remember, to see it in our own eyes, staring back at us from the mirror, and to witness it in the eyes of everyone we believe to be “other”…and to own it.
Solvitur ambulando