Doing a Mind Meld

There’s something Spock could do, on Star Trek, that would come in handy. He used to be able to put a couple of fingers on a person’s head—or other body part if it was a headless alien—and understand what the person was thinking. When we’re as unlike one another—or at least when we think so unlike one another—as now, this would be a useful tool.

Spock doing mind meld with Horta
image found here

I can’t actually do that with people who think very differently from me. Some of them are dangerous to even be around. But I can imagine—which, in reality, is what the writers of Star Trek did; spoiler alert: there wasn’t a real live Spock, just an actor playing a part.

So we’re about to do an interview. Actually several. Sort of a poll. We’ll ask the same question—with the possibility of followup, to several different individuals, to see if we’re understanding what they’re thinking. Remember, this isn’t what they say; it’s what they actually think. My speculation of that, of course.

Then, if you get a chance to encounter one of these kinds in the wild, maybe you can help us verify, or add to our data.

The Question: What are you doing this for?

Rioter—looting, burning, destroying: We have to tear down everything. You can’t start something new unless you level everything and build from scratch.

Follow-up Q: What is it you want to build from scratch?

Rioter: A new kind of society, where we’re in charge. We’ll make it fair—to everyone who does what we say. That's the really important thing—that we're in power.

 

________________

Protester—shouting, chanting, yelling, demonstrating: We have to make everyone aware of the wrongs in this society. We have to keep this up until there’s actual change.

Follow-up Q: What is the change you want to see?

Protester: People who have been oppressed, like blacks, will never be looked down on again. They’ll have all the opportunities of anyone else. And those who haven’t been oppressed—they’ll have to be taken down from their comfortable positions of privilege.

Follow-up Q: Have you, or have you seen anyone personally who has been oppressed?

Protester: Every black has been oppressed. It’s everywhere. It’s systemic. It’s in the air we breathe.

Follow-up Q: Can you give me an example?

Protester: I don't need no stinkin' example. It's everywhere you look.

 

________________

Politician (or other elite)—claiming it’s all Trump’s fault: We have to get him out of power. That’s the only way we can have the power to do what we want to do?

Follow-up Q: What is it you want to do?

Politician: Fundamentally transform this country into a socialist nation, so it will be fair.

Follow-up Q: What would “fair” look like under socialism?

Politician: No rich or poor. Everyone the same. We decide who gets what, and who does what. It’s good for everyone who goes along with us; it might be bad for some—but only those who don’t do whatever we say. That’s how we get unity—we get rid of dissent.

Follow-up Q: Will your personal wealth be the same as everyone else’s?

Politician: Well, as an elite I’ll need some additional resources, just to make things happen, after all. You can’t expect me to let lack of resources get in my way.

 

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Woke Supporter—social media demonstrations and expressions of support: I’m showing I’m hearing the oppressed. I recognize I’ve been privileged, which exonerates me from the guilt that those who aren’t woke are guilty of. We need society to change.

Follow-up Q: Have you ever intentionally treated someone as less than you because of their race?

Woke Supporter: Not intentionally, no. But I’m sure I wasn’t aware of stuff I did before I got woke, so I’d be guilty of that if I hadn’t become woke.

Follow-up Q: What would a changed society look like?

Woke Supporter: Everyone gets along. We’re all happy all the time. No one says anything that offends someone else. All the un-woke people just shut up.

 

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Always Been a Democrat—voting Democrat: We’re the good guys. We’re for the little guy. We’re against unfairness.

Follow-up Q: How do you know what the Democrats pursue is good for the little guy and against unfairness?

Always Been a Democrat: It just is. By definition. Republicans are racist, bigoted, xenophobes, homophobes, and fascists. They’re the bad guys.

Follow-up Q: What Democrat policies show they’re the good guys, and what Republican policies show they’re all those bad things?

Always Been a Democrat: I don’t get into the details. But that’s just common knowledge. All the news says so.

 

I already know what I think. But I’m interested when I hear someone unexpected—someone who looks like they ought to fit into one of the above categories but doesn’t—say what they think.

There was a video I came across this week. The interviewer is Jess Weber. He’s at a freedom rally in Beverly Hills, CA. And he’s talking with four black men, two wearing MAGA hats, asking them about interactions they had with protesters earlier. 

 

screenshot from here

They’re articulate. They’re clear. And they’re absolutely not oppressed. Here’s some of the exchange.

Interviewer: Tell me— The BLM movement was here earlier. What were you guys all debating about? What was the problem?

[There’s a call to let a man speak. I think they call him The Slayer. But I’m not sure, so I’ll just call him Man 1. He's the one in sunglasses.]

Man 1: He wanted to talk some nonsense about where this country really is, that it’s stolen land. I asked him, “Well, then, who do we give it back to?” He had no answer, which—most of their arguments have no answer.”

[footage from earlier, then back to main interview]

Interviewer: He kept saying that he built this land.

Man 1: Yeah, he didn’t build anything. He did build— I mean, right now, if you want to build something, you get a job, so you put your taxes back into your city. That’s called building something. Or start your own business. That’s what this country’s about. It’s not about getting some kind of like minimum wage job that you hope pays for your life. It’s about you getting out there and making your own way. But if you look at—where is it harder to make your own way? Blue states. Where they’re making it hard?

I talked to a guy last week that was going, “Well, the only reason our jobs went up is ‘cause the regulations got cut.” I go, “Yeah. More people got money in their pocket, huh?” Right?

 

Then they discuss the wrongness of being forced to honor people who were actually criminals.

Man 1: They want me to say some guy’s name who multiple, multiple times beat up his girlfriend. Multiple times, sexual assault.

Man 2: He’s not my Martin Luther King. He’s not my Martin Luther King.

Man 1: That’s who I’m supposed to die for? That’s who I’m supposed to sit there and get in a fight with my fellow citizens for?

 

They get into examples of other black lives that really should matter. Here, he’s talking about kids in Chicago who have been killed.

Man 1: Teenagers. In Chicago that died just in the month of July alone. Thirty-eight, if no one knows, 38 children in Chicago alone through this defunding BS that Black Lives Matter has been pushing. 38 kids in the month of July.

Man 2: What about those black lives? What about those black lives? What about all black lives?

Man 1: When have you seen a poster? When have you seen any of those faces on the cover of any magazines? But Oprah Winfrey is going to put someone on there who was working with her boyfriend in the drug trafficking trade down there. But we don’t want to talk about that.

 

The interviewer turns to a really big guy in a MAGA hat behind the others, refers to him as Megahulk. I don’t know if that’s his name, but it will do for now.

Interviewer: Megahulk, you almost turned green over there. Now, I want to know, what were you telling those guys?

Megahulk:  Well, I was trying to get them to understand, like, just, first, answer the question. We would give him a question, for him to answer, you know, ‘cause— “Donald Trump is racist.” “So, how is he racist?” “Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.” That’s it.

[footage from earlier, then return to main interview]

Megahulk: That’s it. And then they just repeat it and repeat it. I’m like, “Look, just answer the question.” But they can’t answer the question, because they have no facts on their side. They have no facts. They don’t do any research. They don’t do any type of higher learning when it comes to what they believe. All they know is what the media narrative tells them to believe, and that’s all they parrot.

 

We need to get to the other man in the group; I’ll call him Man 3. His is good. He’s saying Black Lives Matter is not about helping black lives at all.

Man 3: The whole organization is fake. I believe, I personally believe that the BLM movement is fake. It has nothing to do with advancing the lives of black people.

Man 1: They actually say they want to break up the family home.

Man 3: Exactly. Like, their main goal is to break up the patriarchal, like, nuclear family. They want the men removed out of the family, which is what Democrats want also.

If BLM really cared about black lives, why would it be solely isolated to incidents where a black life is taken at the hands of a white cop? That happens less than 1%....

Now, I like to equate this to— It’s the same as if I’m in a horrific accident. I have a massive head wound. I have a leg fracture, and a scratch on my finger. And here come the first responders, and they want to tend to the scratch on my finger. And I’m telling you, “What about the wound on my head? What about my fractured leg?” That’s what the BLM movement is. They’re tending to the scratch on my finger, and that’s not even what it’s about.

If you want to help us, let us tell you how you can help us. Don’t come in and tell us how you want to help us.

And don’t tell me that I’m oppressed. Because I’m not oppressed. I’m a black American. I’m a proud black American. And I’m not oppressed. I am not oppressed. I’m one of the freest persons on this world.

Man 1: I kneel for no man. I only kneel to God.

There’s a good finale to the whole segment.

Man 2: As you can see, black conservatism is the new punk rock. You know what I mean.

Megahulk: We’re the rebels. We’re the rebels. You want to be cool? Come join our cause.

Interviewer: One question: Who are we voting for in 2020?

All: Trump 2020!

 

This kind of clarity, this kind of positive energy—from people who are so much like me in ways that matter—this makes me happy to see.

Sometimes Spock was able to mind meld to place his thoughts into the minds of others. It would be handy to be able to do that. Take the thoughts from these positive, articulate men, and place them into the minds of people who are calling them—and us—all kinds of negative names. I don’t think that would overcome the rioters, the protesters, or the political elites. But it might have a persuasive effect on the woke supporters and the Democrats who do what they do because they don’t know better.

Counterfeits

I propose that, for every principle that leads to Spherical Model northern hemisphere freedom, prosperity, and thriving civilization, there is a counterfeit southern hemisphere claim. Here are just a couple of examples.

Rights

Our Constitution does a good job of spelling out many of our God-given natural rights relating to life, liberty, and property: freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom to defend self and others with arms, freedom to feel secure in our persons and papers, and more. The counterfeit was put forward by FDR, using the word rights that we were used to recognizing as a positive part of our free country. But he skewed it.

In our day certain economic proofs have become accepted as self-evident: a second bill of rights, under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all, regardless of station or race or creed. Among these are:

·         the right to a useful and remunerative job, the right to earn enough to provide food and clothing and recreation;

·         the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return that will give him and his family a decent living;

·         the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom—freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

·         the right of every family to a decent home; the right to adequate medical care, and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

·         the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age—sickness, medicine, and unemployment;

·         the right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won, we must be prepared to move forward in the implementation of these rights to new goals of happiness and well being. For unless there is security here and home, there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

 

What is a right? Something you are entitled to just by virtue of being born a human. God has granted it to you. Others are required to respect your rights, but not to provide them out of thin air. So when Roosevelt uses the term, what does he mean? Something that we’d all like to have. And if you assume these things are rights—must be given to everyone—then government takes the place of God as the provider of rights. Government gets its power—and its money—from the governed. So, what FDR is saying is, you are required to give up whatever portion of your life’s work the government confiscates so that the government can grant that as a gift to someone else, in order to claim it is a better provider than God.

You do have the right to seek a good job; but if you have a right to a good job, regardless of your efforts or abilities, that means someone is required to hire you regardless of your efforts or abilities. That doesn’t square with the business freedom “right” he lists just below. You have the right to purchase a good home or a good education, but if you must be given those purchasable things, someone must be enslaved to pay for them.

Family

Family is the basic unit of society. It is the way we get a new generation, and pass along the values and principles required for civilization to that new generation. It is based on, and bound by, love for one another.

If there’s going to be a southern hemisphere counterfeit, it is going to appeal to the sense of belonging we crave. But instead of feeling the sense of belonging to parents, ancestors, siblings, and posterity, the counterfeit version is belonging to the collective—the state in the southeast quadrant, or the gang, mob, mafia, or other cabal in the southwest quadrant. The principle is the same: the collective wants/needs override the individual wants/needs.

I saw the latest Star Trek movie this past weekend, always fun. They re-enacted in a different way a scene from an earlier movie (that is set in a later time), where Spock had sacrificed himself by entering the hot nuclear reactor. He had said, “It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” But what has happened here? An individual sacrifices himself, because his love for the many he can save is greater than his love for his own life. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” John 15:13 (King James Bible). That is the northern hemisphere version. Our soldiers do this for us. Our police take this risk. Last week we tragically lost four Houston firefighters who were acting on this honorable premise.

 

The southern hemisphere counterfeit takes the choice of sacrifice away from the individual, and replaces it with, “Because the collective is more important than the few or the one, the rights/wants/needs of the few or the one can be overridden at the will of those in control for the benefit of the collective.” This shows up in health care. If the collective is paying for health care, a costly and limited resource, then it is to the benefit of the collective to refuse care to whomever it deems less likely to benefit the collective: the elderly, the handicapped, the mentally impaired, the seriously ill. Everywhere in the world there has been state-run health care, there has been rationing, poorer service, loss of service to the elderly and seriously ill, and enforced euthanasia. There is no sacrifice involved; there is imposed punishment for being ill or elderly.

I’m in the middle of yet another youth novel, with the enemy being some entity trying to take over the world, ostensibly to “help” mankind (while incidentally giving unlimited power to the controlling bad guys). This one is Michael Vey, by Richard Paul Evans. The bad guy says things like, “Want is a thing of the past…. It’s a brave new world… with endless opportunities.” There’s a collection of young people with special electrical powers. They’ve been kidnapped and manipulated, and are essentially imprisoned. But the collection of them is called the family. If they don’t use their powers as required, to harm people and even murder, then the young person is punished and imprisoned. Most of them have succumbed, and the ones found at earlier ages were more easily manipulated. They’re made to feel “special,” told that they are eagles, among the chickens, and shouldn’t choose to act like chickens, or even worry about the chickens—because eagles eat chickens, after all.

When confronted with the discomfort of being asked to do something harmful, one who had been there from a young age said, “You get over it. At first you might hate it but before you know it, you’ll volunteer to do it…. Why do you care? We’re better than them.”

Ah, the old “we’re the important people and the others are subhuman” ploy, found in all savage tyrannies, wherever there is mass murder, genocide, or halocaust.

Belonging to a real family is something we’re designed by our Creator to respect and enjoy—where we can develop loving relationships that will help us in everything we do. The counterfeit is belonging to some replacement collective, with controllers that either tell us why we can disregard the rights of those supposedly beneath us, or why we are too insignificant to have our rights respected. There may be an inculcation of adoration for the collective. But real love—giving and receiving love—is missing.

Find something good in a society of freedom, free enterprise, and civilization, and there will be a correlative counterfeit in a society of controlled behavior, controlled economy, and savage disregard of the value of human life.