The Ship Isn’t Going to Sink After All

I don’t expect this to be read by many people who need to hear this, but things are not as bad as you fear. Watch and wait. You’ll see. If you’re not ready to hear this yet, OK; maybe we’ll come back to it when you’re ready. I’ll just leave it here.

The ship will not sink after all.

I’m talking to those who aren’t celebrating after last week’s election—or maybe I’m talking to those who care about those who are not celebrating.

Here are a couple of examples. This first one, I like the person who posted. I think she’s a good mom and generally a good person. But I do not engage her on political issues. She reports having this uncomfortable conversation—which she believes should not be something she should have ever had to anticipate, let alone face—with her tween-age daughter. She assured her daughter that she and her husband would keep the children safe. They didn’t need to worry about the outcome of an election. The daughter then said, “Well, they don’t like childless cat ladies. I NEVER want to have kids, and I like cats. So, I guess they don’t want me here [in America]. And if they don’t want me here, fine—I will leave.”

This mom says they do not speak of politics around the house. The girl picked it up, essentially, from the milieu. The mom explains this burden “we” have put on her and her daughter, and ends with, “The coming generations will hold us accountable for what we do today, and if we are conveying that they don’t matter, that they cannot have a voice or live their lives in the abundantly free country many of us grew up in, they will abandon a country that their parents and grandparents forced them to suffocate in.”

By comparison to others, this was relatively mild. For example,

meme found on a Facebook here

I’m OK with history judging me on this vote, by the way, since I have neither those lacks nor those bad character traits.

And this one:

[Someone at] church told me my son would be deported, because he was born when I lived overseas, and that I’d be deported with him [4 laugh/crying emojis] all because [someone on TV] ran her mouth about nonsense. These oldhead liberals at church crack me up.

One more: This is from a HuffPost article called, “My Husband and His Family Voted for Trump, So I’m Canceling Thanksgiving and Christmas,” which then goes on to explain to the husband,

I am sorry about the holidays, but I cannot bite my tongue like I did with Hillary. I don’t want to disrespect your parents or your brother and his family in their home, or our home, so it’s best this way. No scenes. You can go see them. Seriously—I will not be in a room of 15 people who voted for Trump.

What a relief for the other 15 people!

We are not dealing with rational people right now. Just for clarity, J.D. Vance never said we should deport, or ignore, or “cancel” childless cat ladies; he said people with no children, and therefore no stake in the future of the country, should not be overrepresented in leadership positions. And he said it as an offhand remark in 2021 in an interview with Tucker Carlson. (Read more at your trusted NPR source here). It got dredged up by the Harris campaign, and taken out of context, to foment anger, which apparently worked on the demographic they aimed for—those who were already voting for her. The milieu in my home would not have caused such distress on a pre-teen girl, but then, our milieu is really very different—the sources for news, entertainment, conversation topics, etc. I think I wouldn’t have started the conversation with, “Don’t worry about the outcome of the election; we’ll protect you,” and then blamed the rest of us for the daughter’s distress.

As for the church person telling a US citizen that they’d be deported along with their child for allowing their child to be born while they were temporarily living outside US boundaries is so laughably ill-informed, I almost shouldn’t dignify it with the explanation, but children born to US citizens are considered US citizens, regardless of where they are born. Otherwise, you couldn’t get service members in their child-bearing years to live abroad with their families. Nor would ambassadors or even US workers in international companies. So, “oldhead liberals at church,” get a grip.

We—the majority of the country who are Trump voters—are, for the sake of love of country and our fellow Americans, being patient during this mourning process. We have been in that place of overwhelming loss, with a great deal more good reason.

Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, screenshot from here

Bret Weinstein and wife Heather Heying did a thoughtful podcast a few days after the election.  They come from a liberal background—up until “the science” was so obviously wrong, in 2020 and beyond concerning the pandemic, that they felt they had to speak up. And for that, even though she had been voted favorite professor at Evergreen College in the northwest, they were both fired for speaking the truth about actual data. So, yes, they were red pilled, and in this election strongly supported Trump. But they also remain close to a sizable number of people who cling to the left (bitter clingers?)

Bret Weinstein uses a metaphor of a ship that is being badly captained, in such a way that the ship is going to go down, along with everyone aboard. So there’s an honorable mutiny—the capable sailors come forward and restrain the captain and take over. There are also sailors who do not mutiny, who stay loyal to the captain no matter what. They’re angry with those who stepped in and changed the sails and set the ship aright. In fact, they insist the captain is saving them and these sailors stepping up to make the necessary changes are going to kill them all. Those angry ones are wrong, but they will nevertheless benefit from the lifesaving actions of those who took over.

Metaphors always have limits. The American voters are not mutineers nor insurrectionists; they abided by the law and used their vote for a peaceful transition of power. There is, nevertheless, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who insist these pro-American voters are killing democracy and inflicting us all with fascism. But they are wrong, fortunately.

Weinstein offers a main point, which maybe will help us move forward: we all want the ship to stay afloat.

I think the irony of the moment is you have something like half the population convinced that something terrible has just happened. And that half the population, I think, does not appreciate that, actually, the terrible thing was already well underway. We were living under what was at least a turnkey totalitarian state in which, actually, the key had begun to be turned, and we had all sorts of examples of political prisoners, of lawfare being wielded, people being disenfranchised, borders being open for cynical reasons that we can't know, the costs were accumulating for the insane captain's perspective on how the civilization—or the ship, in this case—was to be run.

And so, at some level, the fact that you believe that something terrible has happened in this mutiny doesn't mean your life wasn't just saved by the mutineers. You may not get that. But we should all be able to agree that we are bound together, and that what we need is for the ship to be well governed. And what we disagree over is which of these prospects was the terrifying one.

I may disagree with him slightly here; I think there are some, in power positions, who were rooting for the malaise and eventual demise of our beloved constitutional republic—for the ship to sink, as it were. But most of the people have been what Stalin (or was it Lenin?) called “useful idiots.” They believe what they’re told by the tyrannical state, without question, and they act accordingly.

I continue to puzzle over why they believe what they’re told, without questioning. They even seem to see a different reality from actual, provable reality. Some of it must be the sources they use for information. In fact, that must be a lot of it. But some of it must be choosing to believe what they believe, against the evidence.

As Mark Twain said, “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

I am, of course, working under the assumption that reality as I see it is close to the actual reality. I aim for that, anyway.

A day or so before the election, Chris Martenson put out a short Peak Prosperity video. He began with a clip of Oprah saying, “We don't get to sit this one out. If we don't show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”

Chris Martenson, upper right, shows clip of Oprah,
screenshot from here

Martenson then said, “I agree. Just, we have— It's just amazing how fundamentally different we are.” We thought it was entirely possible that, had Harris won, the totalitarian state would have moved so far down, we might never have seen a way out of the tyranny. Seriously. Martenson pointed out that this administration oversaw shadow banning and actual banning, censorship—so much that it filtered down to regular people on Facebook. (My BIL had his post taken down when he told his own personal experience with COVID and the eventual treatment—which included hydroxychloroquine. Several Facebook friends had posts removed and were put on some sort of time out or probation they call Facebook jail. Many of us, including me, had those ubiquitous misinformation warnings placed under our posts.)

In the Weinstein video, they put out some of what we faced. A January 2022 report shows what people from the two parties believed should happen:

·        Find/identify the unvaxxed.

o   20% REP             55% DEM

·        Unvaccinated should be locked in homes.

o   20% REP             60% DEM

·        Unvaccinated should be sent to quarantine camps

o   20% REP (way too high)               40% DEM

·        Take children from unvaccinated parents.

o   Near 0% REP                    30% DEM

·        Imprison critics of the vaccine.

o   10% REP             50% DEM

This is not to say these things happened in the US; they didn’t. But Democrats wanted them to at much higher rates than Republicans. There were, however, actual CDC plans to carry them out. The day Weinstein and Heying recorded the video, they noticed a piece by Jeffrey Tucker, of the Brownstone Institute, saying that the CDC had plans built for quarantine camps, which plans remained on the CDC site until 2023. Tucker says this was called “interim operational considerations for implementing the shielding approach to prevent COVID-19 infections in humanitarian settings,” in case you didn’t get terrified enough by this year’s Halloween.

The Blaze put out a piece in their Lifestyle section called “Every Lie They Told You about Trump: A Brief Overview.”  It’s way too brief to touch on “every lie,” but I’ll let you explore that one on your own.

Tom Woods, in his email from Thursday (November 14), quoted Dave Smith, who reminds us of this story from eight years ago:

The US intelligence agencies framed the sitting US President for treason. They all knew that Donald Trump wasn’t involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, but they lied.

Well, that President is back AND the boss of the Intelligence agencies is now, not only someone completely outside of that conspiracy, but someone who was slandered with that same accusation, by the same nasty woman whose campaign came up with the whole Trump frame job to begin with.

It turns out there are people who should fear a Trump presidency—not because he’ll be a tyrannical dictator; clearly they weren’t afraid of tyranny (or "loss of our democracy," as they put it), as long as they were the tyrants. But they should fear that Trump will hold them legally and lawfully accountable for their actions. They will call any such legal actions the political retributions of an authoritarian dictator, but the myriad of Trump voters know what it really is.

Weinstein brought back the ship analogy an hour further into the podcast. It had taken some bravery to stand up publicly as they had, along with many others. He says,

If we had failed, we would have been made to walk the plank, and the ship would have gone down somewhat later. There was no escape. And this is why I think so many people took what they at least perceived to be such risks with their own personal well-being, was that we didn't have a choice, right? We really believed—and I still believe—that the other outcome was utterly intolerable, and that this was probably our last shot to gain control of the helm and steer the ship back on a reasonable course.

But I was imagining the ship, if the other outcome had happened, the ship would go down, and a lot of people would be scratching their heads at the last moments as to whether the mutineers might have been onto something, which is a—that's a terrible screenplay I don't want to live.

The Constitution had been hanging by a thread. The repair is going to feel kind of severe and crazy for a while. Coming to know the truth will help with the healing; it really will.

image from a Christian Homestead video

I put a new book on my reading list: Political Ponerology: The Science of Evi, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism. In a recommendation of this book, David Solway, for PJ Media says, 

In effect, you cannot change a mind that was never properly formed or classically educated or a mind devoid of any vestige of common sense or practical smarts. A coalition of conservative thinkers and ordinary working families constitutes a winning combination.

For those who eventually find your way here at a time when you have become open to it, I suggest adding a full list of conservative thinkers to your content providers. Check out Epoch Times, The Blaze, The Daily Wire, PJ Media, Tucker Carlson—just for starters. And check out free Hillsdale courses, particularly Constitution 101. And then have some open-minded discussions with those 15 people who voted for Trump who are at your holiday table (maybe you’ll be ready for this step next year). Maybe you will unlearn some of the untruths that have been making you so panicked/angry/over-emotional, miserable, and miserable to be around.

And, once you’re ready to add some levity back into your life, use the Babylon Bee as your news source; while they are a satire site, they do hit on the truth more accurately than the sources that led you astray before. And if you don’t understand the satire, well, that will put you on a journey toward truth too.

image from a Babylon Bee story on Facebook

One more Weinstein quote, about how the rest of us are feeling right now:

I just want to try to just capture the fact that something took place that I think all of the people, whose names you know, who took a risk on this were feeling, simultaneously, the day after, and it was not vitriolic; it was not angry; it was not any of the things that you might imagine; it was this feeling of “I can't believe that I feel hopeful. And I can't remember how long I've been living under this feeling of pressure, that we cannot afford to lose, because we are in the bullseye.”

I’m sorry there are people feeling lost and afraid the ship is sinking. But it’s not. And those of us who had witnessed the peril, we just feel so relieved. And we’re ready to help right the ship and sail forward.

Bonus: three lists (with some repetition) of progress in President-elect Trump's first week:

found on Facebook, here

 A facebook story, original credited to
@the_typical_liberal and dc_draino

found on Facebook here

Get Used to Living in Zion

I don’t mean for the title to be misleading. I am not referring to Zionism—the movement of Jews to a homeland of Israel. The word Zion is used in a lot of ways in our scriptures (the standard canonized scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). I’m picking out a few that will apply to what I’m writing about today: “the pure in heart,” “the cause of Zion,” and in the geographical sense somewhat, “all of North and South America.”

from the Bible Dictionary, here

To lay the groundwork: I wrote a couple of months ago (toward the bottom of this post) about the 42 months during which “the beast” reigned over the saints. And I speculated that these 42 months could coincide with the likely illegal administration of Joe Biden, or whoever was pulling the strings during his administration. As it turned out, he stepped down from the race for reelection exactly 42 months after his inauguration.

I just called the Biden administration illegal. While I'm not
writing about that today, this new graphic is additional evidence.
Found here and here.

So, in that sense, “the saints” were the good people of America who were living under the tyranny of “the beast”; i.e., the sea beast of Revelation 13, or the worldwide cabal, secret combinations, worldwide Deep State, Whore of All the Earth, or whatever symbolic name you want to apply to that entity. I posited that, with the conclusion of those 42 months, the beast would still be dangerous, in its death throes, but would be losing power. And then last week I wrote about the propaganda beast—the land beast of Revelation 13, which supports and gives the illusion of power to the sea beast—that it was losing power also.

And then we see the election. The sea beast is significantly disempowered by the election of Donald Trump to a second term.

I have been looking toward this election all year, trying to imagine what would happen going forward from the election, depending on various outcome scenarios. I couldn’t see beyond it. If the cabal won, America was essentially doomed. But I was hopeful that wouldn’t be the case—because of what I was seeing symbolically. But if Trump won, wouldn’t the sea beast and the propaganda beast stir up a lot of trouble, maybe riots or violence? I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine that they would concede peacefully and allow the incoming administration to uncover all their secret works of darkness. I still can’t see them allowing that. And yet, at this point, two days after the historic landslide election, the results are so clear that accusations of cheating to get this result are meaningless. So protests have no basis of complaint.

In fact, the losing side, rather than self-reflection, is saying things like, “America is more fascist than we had realized.”

For those who feel sad that their team lost this election, I’m not without sympathy. I remember consoling myself with Philippians 4:8 after the 2012 election: “whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Thinking on the demise of the country was too devastating to contemplate. I was in mourning. Turning to lovely things (like Christmas music) helped me get through. Essentially, I turned to God for comfort, as I do, and life went on. I suggest the same for those mourning today, but I’m guessing that’s not their natural go-to.

It turned out reports of the demise of our constitutional republic were premature. We had some temporary improvement from 2017-2020. Then we’ve been hanging on by a thread, as it were, on limited life support. America might now be waking up from its near-death coma.

But those voters who have listened to the propaganda, that has been telling them a Trump victory was the end of life as we know it, and the beginning of fascist tyranny (which they didn’t recognize under Biden) are mourning what they think is a serious blow. In a year or two, many of them may come to realize, hey, things aren’t as bad as we were told. This may especially be the case if the propaganda beast is indeed weakening. They may start getting information from sources of truth, and that could make all the difference for them.

So what do I mean about getting used to living in Zion?

Maybe "shining city upon a hill" is another way of 
describing a Zion society, and it can be America.
Gif image found here

We are told to prepare the world for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, our Savior. We know this is coming. We don’t know precisely when. But soon—whatever soon means.

There’s so much to fear about the run-up to the Second Coming: earthquakes, fires, floods, famine, disease, wars. All of which we have seen, in case you hadn’t noticed. To those who keep saying, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” maybe what we have been seeing has been something.

I have wondered a couple of things. First, why the warnings from ancient prophets if there is no way to avoid the tribulations? And second, how are we to prepare the world for the Savior to come and live among us, if we’re too hampered by tyranny to make free choices to benefit ourselves and others?

I expect the tribulations will continue. But with each one, there will be people who turn to God for support in those times. And—this is important—they will find Zion. They will find people living in a way that shows their love for one another. People step up to help those in trouble, and to get them to more spiritually solid ground—as well as housed and fed and comforted until they can become self-sufficient again.

During the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, we saw glimpses of Zion—people stepping up to help those in need. These Zion people sometimes had to do it despite being hindered by the government.

Elon Musk provided Starlink service to people who had lost their communications. But they weren’t allowed into some areas—the areas with the most need—without names and contact information of the people they were going to see. Well, it kind of defeats the purpose of going in to reach those people who can’t tell you who they are—because they have no communications to let you know who they are!

Glenn Beck experienced frustration with FEMA and other government agencies, who were following directions, but hadn’t thought of ways to actually get food and water and supplies to the people who couldn’t get to their in-town centers—because they lost transportation, bridges, and roads, and couldn’t get to those places. People had to do the jobs that government couldn’t or wouldn’t do.

And, even without natural disasters, people are struggling to pay for groceries and gas for their cars. These things were called “malaise” under Obama (as with Carter a generation earlier), and were considered permanent. Then we found out they weren’t permanent; we just needed better policies. So we had better days under Trump—until the pandemic allowed the sea beast to exert control over the people in ways that were more frightening than the illness (which was easily treatable at home, if they hadn’t outlawed such treatments). Then things turned bad again under Biden. But now we know those things don’t have to be permanent.

It will take some work to build Zion. But I think we can actually do it.

Another way of talking about this is building civilization, which I’ve written about. On the Spherical Model website, I describe civilization this way:

The Social Sphere of the Spherical Model

What Does Civilization Look Like?

In the northern circle that is the goal—Civilization—families typically remain intact, and children are raised in loving homes, with caring parents who guide their education and training, dedicating somewhere between 18 and 25 years for that child to reach adulthood, and who then remain interested in their children’s success for the rest of their lives.

Civilized people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor. Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear.

There is a thriving free-enterprise economy. Poverty is meaningless; even though there will always be a lowest earning 10% defined as poor, in a civilized society these lowest earners have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing—and there’s the possibility of rising, or at least for future generations to rise.

Creativity abounds; enlightening arts and literature exceed expectations. Architecture and infrastructure improve; innovation and invention are the rule.

People feel free to choose their work, their home, their family practices, their friendships and associations. And they generally self-restrain before they infringe on the rights and freedoms of others. Where there are questions about those limits, laws are in place to help clarify boundaries of civilized behavior. When someone willingly infringes on the rights or safety of another, the law functions to protect that victim as well as society from further uncivilized behavior from the offender.

America is set up to be such a civilization—to be a Zion.

The losing candidate, if you’ll recall, declared herself against Zion. It was at a rally shortly before the election. She was praising her favorite “right” of abortion, and two people in the crowd called out “Jesus is Lord” and “Christ is King.” And she went off script—one of the only times—and quipped, “You’re at the wrong rally. You must want the smaller rally down the street.” She is anti-Zion, anti-civilization—she is anti-Christ.

So how do we get to become Zion? We follow the rules for civilization. Again, this is from the Civilization article on the website. There are two rules:

1.     Not all religious societies are civilized (according to my definition), but every civilized society is a religious society. This absolutely does not mean state-sponsored religion or lack of religious freedom; in fact, the opposite is true. Freedom of religion is essential, and the flourishing of religion in general must be encouraged.

2.     The family is the basic unit of civilized society. Whatever threatens the family threatens civilization. So preserving and protecting the family is paramount in laws and social expectations in a civilized society.

 

There’s a fair amount more detail for each of these, which we won’t fully cover here today. For those of my faith, you might look at this as moving from savagery a telestial society (telestial referring to the brightness of the stars at a distance), which is a fallen world, to a civilized, terrestrial world (referring to the relative brightness of the moon, which is much brighter in the sky than a star). If we can get portions of the world—maybe even whole countries, but at least many communities—to be of that higher level, that would be a place Christ would visit. We want to eventually become celestial (comparative brightness of the sun)—where God dwells. But that can come later. Terrestrial, as I understand it, will be the nature of the world during Christ’s millennial reign.

The Ten Commandments, at
the Texas State Capitol

How do we become terrestrial—or civilized—now, while the world itself is still telestial? By living by those two rules. The kind of religion may still vary widely. But it will require being accountable to a higher being for your behavior in this life. And it will require living a certain way. We need to live by the Ten Commandments. We can summarize these with these five things: Honor God, family, life, truth, and property.

·        We honor God: We put God first, and recognize our adherence to His law will affect our afterlife beyond this life.

·        We honor family: We have family loyalty and fidelity. This requires, by the way, no sex outside of man-woman marriage—no arguments about that. Family is how civilization gets passed from generation to generation. Family, as defined by God, is the basic unit of civilization.

·        We value life: We value our own life and the lives of all others. We would take human life only in self-defense situations, which includes defensive war, and in protection of society from someone who has murdered. In a just, civilized society, those exceptions become more and more rare.

·        We value truth: We do not lie, or bear false witness; truth is sacred to us.

·        We value property: We do not steal or even covet, which means wanting what belongs to another—not just wanting something like theirs, but actually wanting to deprive them for your own satisfaction.

The only thing not specified there to love your neighbor. The Savior summarized all the law and the prophets (the sum of what became Old Testament scripture outlining the law and then the teachings of the prophets) as to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and strength, and then to love your neighbor as yourself.

His is an even higher way—which we’ll have an easier time choosing from a terrestrial (civilized) society than from a telestial (savage) society. He asks us to control even our thoughts and feelings. There are summaries of what this behavior entails in places like I Corinthians 13, where the apostle Paul describes charity, the pure love of Christ: kind, not envious, not self-important or self-aggrandizing, not unseemly, not selfish, not easily provoked, no evil thinking, no rejoicing in iniquity, but rejoicing in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. This love never fails.

A government leader can’t make such a society happen. But such a leader can get out of the way of a free and righteous people. If we return to our Constitution, and limit government to those specified things that protect our life, liberty, and property, the rest is up to us.

Maybe this was the plan all along—to give an example of Zion to the world. Then people can self-select based on whether they love God or not. Those who choose Zion get to live a much better life—more like living in the Garden of Eden eventually—than those who choose symbolic Babylon, or the savage, telestial world.

As Trump might eventually say: “Come to Zion—but do it legally.”

There’s more celebration of the victory I’d like to write about, for the sake of history. But this will do as my first impression.

The Propaganda Beast Is in a Doom Loop

The propaganda beast is weakening in its ability to create the illusion of power for the sea beast.

If that sounds cryptic to you, we’re looking at the beasts of Revelation 13 as either symbols or pretty accurate metaphors for what we’re seeing. In short, the beast coming up out of the sea, or sea beast, is what we also call the worldwide cabal, the whore of all the earth, the great and abominable church, the deep state, secret combinations, or simply evil corruption for power. This beast is controlled by the dragon—Satan—which means it is powered by evil and has evil intent.

The second beast, on the land, is a false-speaking beast, and it is also controlled by the dragon. It supports or creates the illusion of power for the sea beast. I call this land beast the propaganda beast. It is made up of news media, entertainment media, academia, government and business entities—all of which create a narrative, or image, that supports the power elite.

from the Dürer Apocalypse woodcut "The Beast with the Lamb's Horns
and the Beast with Seven Heads," this segment found here

With that brief primer behind us, what I think we’re seeing is both the weakening of the sea beast (which I wrote about here) and the weakening of the propaganda beast to make us think the power elite still have power.

I’m observing what I’m seeing now, not predicting what will happen next week or next month or year. I think we’re seeing something like an illusion show, a magician, whose props fail and suddenly the trick is revealed to the audience. The people no longer believe what the magician was tricking them into believing. In a magic show, being fooled—and figuring it out—are both part of the fun. But in real life, when we didn’t consent to the deception, we’re just being lied to. And it’s a good thing to recognize the deception and awaken to the truth.

So, what am I seeing? A lot of what other people are seeing as well. Mainly this is about the news media, which has enjoyed some decades of control over what we the people believe. Until the internet. Now there are other voices we can go to.

 

The Broken Shards Piece

There was an Axios piece this week, trying to describe what’s happening, albeit from their view as one of the narrative controllers. In “Behind the Curtain: The big media era is over” by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, October 28, 2024, the authors describe a broken shards scenario: our news sources used to be solid glass panes that we all saw fairly equally. Now there are a multitude of diverse “shards,” and we all get a different combination of sources. They explain:

The big picture: When we speak around the country, we often tell audiences that when you're sitting at a table of people of different ages and politics, several of them probably get their information on platforms you've never visited ... from popular influencers you've never heard of ... on topics that might seem exotic or totally new.

They’re looking mainly at how this affects the presidential campaigns:

Former President Trump reached way more potential male voters with his three-hour Rogan conversation (33 million views over the weekend) than he could have with a dozen or more appearances on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined. All three cable news networks skew very old in viewership, with median ages ranging from 67 to 70.

They give a list of podcasts, etc., that Kamala Harris has gone to, and that I literally have not heard of:

·        A Nueva Network radio interview with Stephanie “Chiquibaby” Himonidis aimed at a young Latino demographic.

·        “All the Smoke” NBA-focused podcast aimed at young Black men.

·        “The Shade Room” culture podcast aimed at young Black women.

·        “Club Shay-Shay” podcast with NFL player Shannon Sharpe, aimed, I assume at Black men.

There was also the "Who's Your Daddy" podcast, an explicit sex discussion, which Kamala deemed important while Hurricane victims in North Carolina were without power or without homes. I hadn't heard of this before she did it, but I had heard of it before reading the Axios piece.

There’s a list of some more obscure places Trump has been as well, also many of which I had previously been unaware of, but as well as many I’ve long known. A difference the article might have noted but didn’t was that Trump’s schedule has been packed, and has included many larger rallies, and he talks at each of these as a real, authentic person. Meanwhile, most of Kamala’s scheduled days (which are publicly accessible) show her taking days to prepare for each one. She keeps them brief. She says essentially the same things over and over, often claiming things that are provable lies. Her campaign is counting on these people seeing only news that is curated with the power elite’s narrative.

Her brief attempt at “crossing the aisle” with Fox News’ Bret Baier did not go well for her. She failed to answer direct questions that should have been the “of course” anticipated questions. She circled around. And this was after arriving late for the interview and then cutting it short—which we now also know about her and her handlers. Trump has been willing to talk with people of opposing views, as long as it’s a real conversation and not an attack pile-on. So he has actually reached more people who didn’t previously know him except the way the propaganda beast had labeled him. 

After the Harris campaign called all the attendees at the MSG 
event racist Nazis, someone showed yet another Babylon Bee
satire that becomes actual news, this one from July. 

Axios is also wrong to call Joe Rogan right-wing. He had never been anything of the sort—until he told his actual personal experience with Ivermectin after having COVID, and got cancelled. Which led to the rise of Rumble (a non-censoring platform), where Rogan’s viewership far eclipses the network news sources put together. People who watched Rogan’s interview with Trump—for three hours—saw that Trump was personable, interesting, well-versed on many topics, interested in the person he was talking with, and by extension interested in a whole lot of regular Americans. And he is clearly not Hitler.

My favorite line—this was in reference to environmental damage caused by offshore windmills—was, “I’d like to be a whale psychiatrist.” The Rogan interview with VP candidate J. D. Vance is out, and I’m interested in watching it later today. Vance, by the way, has been a force in taking on the media. He has the facts at the ready, remains unruffled, and does it with aplomb. This belies the “he’s weird, mean, and angry” depiction of him proffered by the propaganda beast.

The meme was shared on the Viva & Barnes Sunday livestream October 27, 2024

Back to that article. Here’s how you know Axios isn’t about truth. They say:

Threat level: When attention is scattered across scores of shards, it’s easier to propagate conspiracy theories and manipulate “news.” It’s way harder to catch Russian misinformation campaigns when they are unleashed inside a dozen different information bubbles.

What they mean is, it’s much easier to manipulate “news” when you control the whole pane of glass than when you can’t control all those shards. And, by the way, while Russia is willing to put out disinformation on a whim, their efforts have not been a force in our elections. But there are supposed Russian misinformation campaigns that have:

·        Trump colluded with Russia—an invention of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, for which they were fined but were otherwise not held accountable. Based on this invention, they spied on Trump before and after he was in the White House. The media elites went along with it, and Axios apparently still wants to push it as true.

·        Hunter Biden laptop—claimed by 51 former intelligence officers to have had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, even though at the time the FBI had it in their possession and had already authenticated it. Information was censored from social media platforms. Accurate information about this could have meant a 17% swing in the election away from Biden.

Axios predicts that the outcome of the election could slow the movement toward broken up media if Harris wins: “she and her staff are much closer—and responsive—to traditional media.” But if Trump wins, the shift toward more “shards” will accelerate.

 

The Doom Loop of Distrust in Media

There was an opinion piece in Bloomberg a week ago talking about the distrust of institutions in general, and the media in particular. Alas, if only we could go back to the days of Walter Cronkite, when he would said, “And that’s the way it is,” and people believed it really was—even when it was not.

This same week Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, put out a piece explaining (?) why his WaPo decided not to endorse in elections, starting suddenly now—as part of an effort to bring back trust in media, to make it appear less biased. Here’s something accurate from his piece:

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

What is not working is feeding us propaganda and trying to get us to believe it as fact. Bezos uses the analogy of an election:

Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.

Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement.

You know how not to get people to believe your machines count accurately? Let them be connected to the internet when that is illegal. Have counting stop because of “leaking pipes in the building” and then have a sudden inexplicable jump in numbers for one particular side. Refuse to allow observation during the counting. Change rules at the last minute, always in favor of less security. Refuse to allow forensic examination of ballots. Refuse to do signature verification. OK, we could go on and on with that; they tried them all in 2020, and mostly got away with them. What you need to be believed is to follow strict rules, be totally transparent, and have people from opposing sides observe at every step. What doesn’t work is telling people they’re election deniers when they call out your errors and your obfuscation.

That goes as well for the media. If they had a long record of being accurate, they would be believed. They’re failing on the first requirement, and that’s why they’re failing on the second. It seems obvious.

In reaction to both these three pieces in Axios, Bloomberg, and WaPo, the Badlands News Brief (a somewhat Q-related group of writers—this one by Burning Bright—reacting to things in the news) offered this (highlights are mine):

Our Take: The picture would be worth a thousand words, but Amazon owner and self-described elite Jeff Bezos did us one better, and actually WROTE 1,000 words to defend his decision to NOT interfere in an election.

This comes on the heels of Op eds that have been flooding the Info War over the course of the last week, wherein the screeching communist harpies that have decreed themselves official narrative-setters for the entire country realize with mounting dread and panic that they've lost complete control of the story, which, as I have been saying for over two years, IS the war.

Bloomberg actually referred to the media death spiral as a "doom loop," while Axios put it so directly in their own panic piece, it could have been written by an Anon: "the mainstream media's dominance in narrative and reality-shaping in presidential elections shattered in 2024."

Now, we have Bezos being swarmed by the very communist worker bees he once lorded over.

In Game Theory, chaos begets control.

Enjoy it. — Burning Bright

The propaganda beast has "lost complete control of the story." Indeed. 

I came upon this podcast yesterday (literally hadn’t heard of it before, although she’s conservative and has been around for a while). I think it was linked in an email. Tracy Beanz, for UncoverDC,  is responding to the Jeff Bezos op-ed. When Bezos says, “Something we are doing is clearly not working,” Beanz responds,

Yes. Let me tell you what it is. You’re lying to people, continuously, over and over again, every single day. And people, given that they have ways to get information now that are not you, are figuring it out. They don’t want to be propagandized anymore. They don’t want to be spoken down to anymore. They want the truth of what’s going on in the world around them so that they can make informed decisions.

What you’re doing wrong is that you became a fifth branch of the intelligence community for the United States government, and it’s the intelligence community that has been weaponized against the people of America in favor of, I guess you could call it, a globalized campaign to destabilize this country from within. And you, unbeknownst to you or not—and I cannot imagine how you couldn’t realize it, unless you were that retarded (excuse my French)—have just gone along with it hook, line, and sinker. And for a long while it worked. It stopped working at around 2015. And the snowball has just continued to roll down that hill since then.

She’s right about the lying. Is her assessment of the media being an intelligence arm of the US government? I’m not sure that’s how I would word it—intelligence arm. It is definitely a propaganda tool of the US government—or more precisely, of the global elite cabal that currently runs the US government: the sea beast.

It caught my attention that she says this all stopped working around 2015. She may be right. I had been thinking 2020, when the COVID shenanigans, on top of the election shenanigans, were just too obvious to ignore. But maybe it was even earlier, once we all got on the Internet. 

Anyway, there’s more evidence of the doom loop underway.

 

The Times and Tucker

A week before the election, Tucker Carlson (among others) received an inquiry from the New York Times, essentially asking him to be shamed into admitting he is at fault for not agreeing with the propaganda beast’s narrative. I got this from Tom Woods’s daily email, which even improves upon Tucker’s response, so I’ve included his before and after comments.

Tom Woods: Evidently a number of right-of-center influencers, including Tucker Carlson, just received a very similar ominous note from the New York Times.

I want to share that note, along with Carlson’s response, because it is an important lesson in how an institution like the Times is to be handled.

 

Tom Woods: So a week before the election, the Times is colluding with the crazies at Media Matters to try to shut down dissident voices.

Carlson's response was exactly right. Do not engage with these people as if they are acting in good faith, or in the hope that if you're reasonable and forthcoming, they have to treat you fairly. They don't have to do anything.

More people are going to see Carlson's response than will see the New York Times hit piece. (This is why they hate the Internet.)

Indeed, they hate the internet; it is so hard to control all of us with our varied voices and opinions. And they prefer control.

Almost daily, Dan Bongino says (I’m paraphrasing), “No matter how much you hate the media, you don’t hate them enough.” Hate is a strong word—for individual people. It is not too strong a word to use for the propaganda beast—an entity made up of many weak humans unwilling to stand for truth, but willing to lie for power, prestige, influence, or something else the dragon knows is their weakness.

 

Other Signals

As the Axios piece points out, there’s an election the media is focused on. What an inconvenient time for the media not to have the force it used to have. Granted, there’s not much for them to work with. The whole “Trump is Hitler” thing just isn’t working—because, as you might surmise by now, the media is lying about that along with everything else they lie about.

In fact, they’re so predictable at their lies, that the Babylon Bee made it a meme back in July (see above).  

This doesn’t stop them from doubling down on what’s not working.

And for some reason the media elites can’t seem to grasp, people don’t like being called racists and Nazis (all 100,000 New Yorkers who were inside and outside of the Madison Square Garden Trump rally), deplorables (that was Hillary, shortly before she lost), and garbage (Biden this week about all Trump supporters).

from the Madison Square Garden rally, top, pro-Israel and
pro-American, whom they call Nazis, compared to a Harris rally, bottom,
with Palestinian flag, but no pro-American anything; image from a Facebook story;
original source appears to be @naz_hashem and drsheilanazarian

One of the tools bringing down this propaganda beast has been mocking and meme-smithing. The Babylon Bee could be considered cultural heroes. But there are many unsung warriors. They took what were intended to be campaign-killing moments and turned them into inspiring images.

There was the iconic mugshot—representing Trump as the target to keep them from getting to the rest of us. There was the iconic “Fight! Fight! Fight!” right after Trump was shot, when they only grazed his ear, instead of leaving us without a candidate (their wish; whether it was planned with the assassin or not). Then came that happy few minutes of Trump working at McDonald’s, mocking Kamala for claiming she had worked there as a teen, although there’s no evidence she ever did. Then, after Biden called all of us “garbage,” Trump showed up as a garbage collector. Separately, any these makes a pretty iconic meme. Together, they show the power of images—something the opposition just can’t seem to muster this season.

collage found on Tom Glass's Facebook

"A campaign is snapshots and soundbites"—another Dan Bongino quote.

The Harris/Walz campaign has the full power of the propaganda beast at their disposal. But they can’t manage anything but humiliating snapshots and soundbites. The Trump team occasionally just takes clips of Kamala speaking, without editing, and adds simply, “I’m Donald Trump, and I approve this message.” The more we hear her, the less likely we are to vote for her.

Meanwhile, Trump and Vance come up with more positive snapshots and soundbites every day.

There’s some delight in seeing the “doom loop,” or death spiral, of the propaganda beast—it’s failure to create the illusion of power for the evil cabal—timed for this point in history, just before the election. After years of feeling oppressed, this feels hopeful.

That doesn’t mean I can predict the election outcome. My sense is that Trump could win, and maybe win big. But the evil cabal will cheat. We must win so big—and so widespread across the electoral college map—that they can’t cover the gap.

And then, what about when they protest, possibly even violently, against us “garbage” patriots? I don’t know. But, if I’m right and the propaganda beast is losing its power, then it will no longer be able to create the illusion that the sea beast (evil cabal) has power. Babylon falls in an our (Revelation 18:10, 17, 19). That’s how the story goes in Revelation. Those beasts are defeated. After all we can do, Christ the King—whom Kamala blithely declared not welcome at her rally last week; you should look for Him at the Trump rally—yes, Jesus Christ the Redeemer comes in and fights our battles.

That’s how the story ends. I do not know for certain where we are in the story. I only know that the sea beast may be beyond its reign over us, and it looks like that supporting propaganda beast is losing its voice. That may make them seem more fierce, temporarily. We shall see. We live in interesting times.