There has always been a hunger for new discoveries and revelations of the truth, but often, in the past, it took great effort to get past the “agenda”—there has always been an agenda. Think of the Daniel Ellsberg exposure of The Pentagon Papers as well as many pieces coming out of Viet Nam during the ‘60s by a group of idealist journalists covering the war there. None of these were popular publications with the editors (or the powers that be), and had their difficulty getting published, but they were not altogether censored.
Aug 24, 2022·edited Aug 24, 2022Liked by Todd Hayen, PhD, RP
One thing I have learned in the past few years is to pay special attention to those who are banned from Twitter, Facebook etc. I especially paid attention to Biden’s “dirty dozen - 12 most dangerous people in America. Possibly the intense censorship is backfiring??
Thanks for mentioning Julian Assange and Edward Snowdon. I so hope Julian lives to see the light of day. What heroes they are..
"domestic terrorism needs to be addressed [by DHS] the same way we've addressed the foreign terrorist challenge." All they need to do is connect "conspiracy theory" with "domestic terrorism" and we risk getting rendered to camps.
The main point that I took away from your piece is: "...sheep believe are trusted sources."
It's all about *Legitimacy*.
These past two years have been a crash course on logical fallacies. The one fallacy that's become the most relevant is Appeal to Authority. This is a tricky one. I remember, before Covid when my brother-in-law was the "crazy conspiracy theorist" (which is really saying something, since I'd been a 9/11 activist for almost a decade by then)...he would say things like, "well, you can't trust your doctor, just because he's a doctor...you can't trust a peer-reviewed paper just because it's peer-reviewed. I called BS on this statement and told him to come to *me* instead of a doctor if he got appendicitis. Boy was I wrong! The truth is we *can't* trust doctors just because they are doctors. We still need to do our homework, which is crazy because who has the time to learn about immunology?! Even *doctors* don't have time to learn about immunology and apparently only get about 2 hours-worth during all their years of training.
So, how do we negotiate this modern-world terrain, where we have to know enough to decide where we get our information? Because this is the question that might shed light on people and "facts" that the "sheep believe are trusted sources," and it's the only justification for the elite to burn books. The only way the establishment can burn books is if they call them dangerous (every despot's line), and *dangerous because they are *illegitimate*. This is why we don't hear CNN talking about ADE or antigenic sin or any number of actually dangerous concerns of the vaccine, because it would add *legitimacy* to the debate.
We need to give people opportunities for new affiliations. People do not usually go from one allegiance to nothing. Soviet citizens were offered liberalism and they took it. That offer has not worked in the Muslim world because they correctly see how decadent liberalism has become. Communist China gives its people just enough freedom to keep them from rebelling. North Korea uses the iron fist. Our governments use propaganda and need to belong. Thus, we would change hearts and minds by offering different propaganda and different affiliations.
75% of people are not critical thinkers nor do they have the capacity for abstract thinking (I may have guessed at this percentage but seem to remember something like this from graduate school). Most will move to the next powerful opinion when the current opinion is no longer perceived as cool.
One thing I have learned in the past few years is to pay special attention to those who are banned from Twitter, Facebook etc. I especially paid attention to Biden’s “dirty dozen - 12 most dangerous people in America. Possibly the intense censorship is backfiring??
Thanks for mentioning Julian Assange and Edward Snowdon. I so hope Julian lives to see the light of day. What heroes they are..
Great article and links. That Unesco link is super creepy. Here's another one:
https://youtu.be/BTOW8iWoR2E?t=840
"domestic terrorism needs to be addressed [by DHS] the same way we've addressed the foreign terrorist challenge." All they need to do is connect "conspiracy theory" with "domestic terrorism" and we risk getting rendered to camps.
The main point that I took away from your piece is: "...sheep believe are trusted sources."
It's all about *Legitimacy*.
These past two years have been a crash course on logical fallacies. The one fallacy that's become the most relevant is Appeal to Authority. This is a tricky one. I remember, before Covid when my brother-in-law was the "crazy conspiracy theorist" (which is really saying something, since I'd been a 9/11 activist for almost a decade by then)...he would say things like, "well, you can't trust your doctor, just because he's a doctor...you can't trust a peer-reviewed paper just because it's peer-reviewed. I called BS on this statement and told him to come to *me* instead of a doctor if he got appendicitis. Boy was I wrong! The truth is we *can't* trust doctors just because they are doctors. We still need to do our homework, which is crazy because who has the time to learn about immunology?! Even *doctors* don't have time to learn about immunology and apparently only get about 2 hours-worth during all their years of training.
So, how do we negotiate this modern-world terrain, where we have to know enough to decide where we get our information? Because this is the question that might shed light on people and "facts" that the "sheep believe are trusted sources," and it's the only justification for the elite to burn books. The only way the establishment can burn books is if they call them dangerous (every despot's line), and *dangerous because they are *illegitimate*. This is why we don't hear CNN talking about ADE or antigenic sin or any number of actually dangerous concerns of the vaccine, because it would add *legitimacy* to the debate.
We need to give people opportunities for new affiliations. People do not usually go from one allegiance to nothing. Soviet citizens were offered liberalism and they took it. That offer has not worked in the Muslim world because they correctly see how decadent liberalism has become. Communist China gives its people just enough freedom to keep them from rebelling. North Korea uses the iron fist. Our governments use propaganda and need to belong. Thus, we would change hearts and minds by offering different propaganda and different affiliations.
75% of people are not critical thinkers nor do they have the capacity for abstract thinking (I may have guessed at this percentage but seem to remember something like this from graduate school). Most will move to the next powerful opinion when the current opinion is no longer perceived as cool.