Remembering Freedom and Finding Truth

I started off today with a plan to do a comparison of people under tyranny and under freedom, before going down a slightly different rabbit hole. But let’s start with a few quick visuals.

I came across this photo of Girl Scouts in Iran in 1969.

Girl Scouts in Iran, 1969, before the Islamic Revolution
image found here

Somewhere near that time, maybe a decade earlier, Mr. Spherical Model’s grandparents lived in Iran for several years. Grandpa was an educator, near the end of his career (he had been president of a college), and was contributing to education in Iran. At the time, it was a modern and thriving part of the world. People looked and dressed much like people elsewhere. An organization such as Scouting could thrive and be seen as a positive contribution to society in such an atmosphere.

Then there’s this photo, from much more recently, where women not only look oppressed; they feel it. They want to throw it off, and return to the freedom they had before the oppression.

Women in Iran, October 2019
image found here

There are similar comparisons for Venezuela, before and after socialist reforms imposed by Chavez, and then Maduro. Venezuela had been the wealthiest, most prosperous and forward looking nation in South America. Only about a short decade later, toilet paper shortages are the least of their problems. People are literally starving, while the nation’s wealth has disappeared, offshore, into accounts belonging to the rulers' family members.

Destitution in previously thriving Venezuela
photo by Claudia Guadarrama/Polaris/Newscom, found here

In a 2018 piece on socialism, David Harsanyi says this:

After all, socialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery in human existence. Whether implemented by a mob or a single strongman, collectivism is a poverty generator, an attack on human dignity, and a destroyer of individual rights.

In both the Iran and Venezuela cases, the implementation of tyranny happened quickly enough that the memory of previous freedom and prosperity remained. But, in time, would the societal memory disappear? Then what?

A comparison of North and South Korea can give us a pretty good look at the differences between relative freedom and tyranny. The ethnicities and cultures started out the same. The dividing line is artificial. The North has almost no access to the outside world, or any news beyond what the government tells its people. And this has been going on for 70 years, pretty nearly a lifespan. In other words, anyone who remembers previous freedoms has probably died off by now. Societal memory is virtually gone.

North Korea, left; South Korea, right
comparison photos found here

In our social media world, we often see funny memes comparing things to olden days—when we didn’t have internet, and phones were connected to the wall, and you went to the library or opened the set of encyclopedias to look up information. Enough of us remember those “olden days” that it’s still societal memory.

Lately there have been memes talking about the good old days of 2019, back when we used to go to restaurants or get together with friends.

I was thinking through these comparisons when a friend posted something about a Scott Adams podcast from Saturday, October 24. My friend pointed us to around minute 16. So I listened. I’ll summarize the data afterward, but it’s fun getting the data a bit at a time, with a tad of misdirection and suspense, as Adams reveals it. So here’s a transcript of that section. He’s talking about national daily polling numbers, by Rasmussen, for black likely voter job approval for the president:

So these are likely voters who are also black, how much they approve of the president. Back on—this is just not long ago; this is October 19^th, not that long ago, right? Just last week? Black likely voters have a 25% approval rating for the President, which would be crazy, like off-the-charts crazy. Because he only got like 11% of the vote, so you’d expect his approval would be closer that 10% range, right? 10-11%. But 25%! Last week? That close to the election?

Oh, I’m not done yet. That was last week. So, that was the 19^th. On the 20^th it dipped a little bit. OK, that’s back to normal; it dipped to 24%. Still really high, but at least you can see it trending down where you’d expect it to trend, right? You kind of expect it to sink back down.

Except, oh, what happened on the 21^st? Huh. It reversed directions and went to 31%. What? Thirty-one percent of black likely voters have given the President—who is considered by his enemies the worst person in the world—they’re giving him 31% approval? On the 21^st? That was only a few days ago.

But, you know that’s not going to hold, right? That’s the kind of number where, you hear it, and you say, “OK, that’s not gonna hold.” And it didn’t. It didn’t hold.

So, the very next day it was pretty different. It was up to 37 frickin’ percent. Black likely voters, 37% approved of the President, on the 22^nd. What’s today? Today’s the 24^th. That was only 2 days ago. 37% of the black likely voters approve of the President? What’s happening here?

So, one thing you can say for sure, again, the 25% was crazy, so you didn’t really expect that to hold. But when it reaches 37%, you know that number’s not going to stay there, right? ‘Cause that’s just crazy. It’s not going to stay at 37%. And, indeed, sure enough, the very next day, the 23^rd, it changed again by quite a bit—to 46%. Forty-six percent!

I feel like I have to keep reading this again, because you won’t believe you heard it right. Let me say it again, to make sure you heard it right. The national daily black likely voter job approval for the President, according to Rasmussen, went from 25%, which was sky high, on the 19^th, just a few days ago, to 24%, 31%, 37%, then 46%.

What the h— is happening? What the h— is happening?

Here it is in quick-to-digest chart form:

National daily black likely voter job approval for the President—Rasmussen polling
date	%
Oct 19	25%
Oct 20	24%
Oct 21	31%
Oct 22	37%
Oct 23	46%

Estimates are that, if Republicans can get 15% of the black vote, they win. So, while job approval doesn’t equal votes, it tends toward that direction—bigly, as the President would say.

Scott Adams went on to speculate about why this is happening. Maybe because of the influence of prominent blacks: 50 Cent for one—who quipped that Biden’s tax increases would make him only 20 Cent. Ice Cube for another, who asked questions of both sides and got better answers from President Trump's side. Also Kanye West—hard to tell whether his write-in campaign is to give blacks a transition alternative away from Democrat Biden, or if he legitimately wants to run, even though he has expressed great approval of President Trump in the past. And former Obama adviser Van Jones said aloud that Trump isn’t getting enough credit for what he is accomplishing for blacks.

All of that could contribute. But Adams has his own theory. He says there’s a crack in the media silo, “the news silo that keeps the left in their bubble—I feel like it cracked.” Actual news is seeping out. He goes on to talk about this theory:

My world view is that our opinions are assigned to us by our chosen media. And if the media you’re absorbing is telling you Trump is a monster, you go away believing it—and you believe you’ve made up your own mind. But you didn’t. And I would say that my world view has all of the scientific backing, that people can be convinced to believe anything, just about anything, if their news source is consistent.

And, so, my world view is completely intact. The people who watch the wrong news get the wrong feeling about the world. The people who watch the correct news, or at least they’re smart enough to recognize fake news when they see it, have not been brainwashed. And that’s it.

And that’s what we see. We see some brainwashed people, some not brainwashed people. It’s all perfectly consistent. And scientifically backed, I would say.

That part where he says “people can be convinced to believe just about anything, if their news source is consistent” brings me back to North Korea, and probably other tyrannies—where memory is gone and current beliefs are controlled by the government. I don’t think North Korean’s know the rest of the world is far and away better off than they are; they see no evidence. 

This past week we saw the blatant partisan media attempt to black out news about the Biden family crime corruption. NPR—which we taxpayers pay for—decided to avoid all mentions of the story, to dismiss it as unproven, even as one source after another comes out. And all the “legacy” media sources blacked it out or repeated the “Russian meddling with our election” line, preventing their followers from even hearing about the story—while all the intelligence say there has been no Russian connection at all.

I continue to wonder about the news related to COVID-19, the virus from China. Why has it been so difficult to get accurate, or even consistent reports? I collect data myself—I’m dependent on government sources, but at least I can see trends for myself. News lately claims we’re in an upsurge in cases right now. But the rates I’m seeing (I ignore cases, except in my own zip code) are essentially flat or lowering slightly, as they have been for months. Death rates are a lagging indicator, so I’ll have to wait to chart that. But here’s the current epi curve chart for cases, on the Harris County Public Health site, looking pretty much the way it has looked for the last couple of months:

Harris County Epi Curve of Cases Over Time, October 26, 2020
image from here

This doesn’t look like a surge in cases. It doesn’t look like we should expect a sharp rise in deaths within a couple of weeks. With the county level still at red, no matter how low the cases and death numbers, it looks like someone is ignoring the data—ignoring the science—to keep us in fear and confusion, and under control.

Who would want to control other people? Tyrants. People who don’t understand that there’s a whole northern hemisphere on the model, where you find freedom, prosperity, and civilization—those people look only at who’s in charge; and they want to either be in charge themselves, or have someone in charge who has promised them special treatment.

I believe the principles of freedom, prosperity, and civilization will work every time they are tried. I see evidence that bears that out. It's in our history. And it's what we see when we examine the truth in real time.

But people who never see that higher possibility are brainwashed to think that no better possibility exists. It looks like intentional blindness to those of us who see, who are trying to show them, mostly without success.

I don’t know what our country is going to look like after this election. I hope we have beautiful freedom and all that comes with it for a good and righteous people.

But if we don’t, I won’t think it’s bad luck; I will see that it is bad choices by tyrannical, corrupt overlords, who managed to get their power—not by telling the truth, but by obfuscation and outright lies.

I'm hoping that Scott Adams is right about a crack in the fake news silo—through which truth will flow. And people who love truth will move toward it, and find that truth is easier to find when their eyes are open.