I think I’m sympathetic to some of the ethical principles you guys are alluding to, but your mental constructions of covid government policy and execution is foreign to me. Similarly for LGBTQ civil rights. I’m guessing that you are constructing your views from sources different from the ones I use. I wonder if you might give me a few references?
I'd be glad to share some references! I have a huge war chest of references relating to the Nonsense from the past three years, too much to share it all, so I'll give you a quick tour of some of the high points.
Let's start with Dr Jay Bhattacharya's congressional testimony from March 27th of this year, as it's an excellent summary of what has been going on with regards to the attempt by the current administration to censor scientific voices:
Next, let's nip over to the British Medical Journal, which of all the big names in medical publishing is the only one to have not disgraced itself in recent years (either by purposefully supressing part of the evidence base, or by publishing letters that create a premature illusion of consensus). I'll start with the whistleblower from Pfizer's original trial:
Rather than read the paper, I recommend you read this commentary from Dr Vinay Prasad, which captures just how damning to the CDC/FDA it really is that other nations are having to do the safety testing that they were honour-bound to conduct:
...who once again makes the point: they have still not shared the original trial data (the data that, you may recall from above, entailed fraud).
On lockdowns, the data is difficult to work with as so much of the analysis has to be performed on incomplete information and with quite considerable variation of assumptions. However, I will go with the work of John Ioannidis, who published this piece in March 2022, which covers the ground well:
Ioannides is also one of the few people to have worked diligently on the difficult problem of the IFR (infection fatality rate) of SARS-CoV-2, here is an October 2022 piece addressing this:
The key point here is that IFR was always lower than governments and media insisted on presenting it, and rather than it looking like a dangerous infection from the outset, it was comparable to an influenza epidemic in the first instance, and with further data it is starting to look less dangerous than conventional ILIs (influenza-like infections).
On lockdowns globally, Toby Green has done brilliant work. Here's a nice summary in Prospect magazine:
I also have a great many articles from Toby Green where he interviews representatives from different African nations, for example this interview with Mamadou Ndiaye in Senegal, which was effectively taken over by corrupt politicians in the wake of the Nonsense:
As I say, I have plenty more on a variety of topics, from the lack of evidence for community masking through to government and industry censorship efforts, the role of iatrogenic deaths in contributing to fatalities in the 'first wave', and on into the utterly unjustified demonisation of the unvaccinated.
If there's any particular topic you want more references for, just let me know and I can provide more for you.
Well stated. No doubt many were taken in by the "saving lives" perspective. But something smelled off following the "two weeks to flatten the curve." I'm reading Robert Cialdini's book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and the tactics laid out there fit a little too well with how the lockdowns came about and led to the massive sale of experimental and dangerous pseudo-mRNA interventions. No doubt there are two camps, but I fear in designating them equally legitimate, we risk sanctioning a group of scoundrels who deployed psychological manipulation to gain all manner of compliance and power... and not just as a one-off, but as ongoing "new normal."
I like that you attempt to present the alien worlds in a manner that might open us up toward those who live in alien worlds. I see a lot of potential in that sort of thinking. But I am concerned that such a perspective might be misplaced. When someone is in the act of taking something from you or of forcing something upon you, or of punishing you for refusing to have certain things taken from or forced upon you, I'm not sure trying to see things from their perspective will prove valuable.
No doubt during pride month, plenty of folks are horrified to think about what their neighbours get up to in the privacy of their bedrooms and certain night clubs. But what's stoking the pushback isn't any of the horror at these alien worlds. It's that the aliens have landed and have raised their flag over every business, municipal building and school. It's that whether those of the traditional world want it or not, they are being compelled to accept things, change their habits, and moreover to like it.
Unlike the counter-culture days of the beatniks and the dirty hippies, this cultural revolution is a product of institutions (state and corporate). No one forced folks to become beatniks. People left their suits and fedoras behind to join that counter-culture. It was about individuation. What's different now is how this whole thing is being engineered using well researched marketing and compliance principles. This new counter-culture is the reverse of the 1950s and 60s. It's about following and doing what you're told because only stupid people ask questions.
Thanks for your thoughtful commentary here. Some responses:
"I like that you attempt to present the alien worlds in a manner that might open us up toward those who live in alien worlds. I see a lot of potential in that sort of thinking. But I am concerned that such a perspective might be misplaced. When someone is in the act of taking something from you or of forcing something upon you, or of punishing you for refusing to have certain things taken from or forced upon you, I'm not sure trying to see things from their perspective will prove valuable."
So my approach is to distinguish between those who have intentionally manipulated the situation and those whose worlds have been tampered with by those very people. Not maintaining this distinction is disastrous, and if we make this error then the resistance to the abomination that I can only call 'the Nonsense' is doomed because it will never claim the centre.
Adam Kotsko, Agamben's translator, was not in any way responsible for the censorship and deceit at the heart of what was done. He represents in a very tangible sense the faction that does not know it has been misled. If we do not make peace with this faction, democracy is almost certainly finished (if it is not already so). So it is important to try to see the tentpoles of their world, and to challenge them in a way that has a chance of 'crossing the borderline'.
This is parallel to the situation with whatever we should call the replacement for the Rainbow Alliance (as discussed previously, this coalition has been shattered, so it is now more of 'the Rainbow Dominion', alas). Yes, there is a social engineering component at work here - but the youth, having been exposed to a very limited discourse on these issues thanks to censorship, believe in the necessity of rallying around the trans community, and do not see the problematic dimensions of this actually quite admirable (if naïve) protective instinct.
The irony of this, which again, we are not allowed to discuss, is that the trans people I know have had their situation made *far worse* by trans activism, which has no interest in forming a counter-culture (great choice of word here) but rather wishes to forcibly install a new mandatory culture. This, as you say, is radically different from what was attempted in the 60s: it is not a counter-culture at all, it is (dare I say?) an insurgent-culture. And key here seems to be that the trans activists (quite apart from the trans people I know) demand censorship. This, it seems to me, is precisely the political appeal to approaching trans rights in such a disastrous and ill-considered fashion.
The danger in all these cases is to mix up those who are responsible for the censorship and the manipulation from those who support the narrative that has been grown as the 'fruit of the poison tree'. If we do not make our case here, in the centre, the resistance fails. I can see no other viable way to look at our situation.
I hear you, and I've been attempting to figure out how to reach the aliens. It certainly doesn't come naturally, and I admire those who are good at turning folks around. Have you heard of Daryl Davis? He's the black fella whose been turning KKK members and they mail in their robes. He's interesting to listen to, but I haven't been able to learn anything. Something inherently obtuse in me? How about you? Have you had any luck?
Well no miraculous conversions, if that's what you mean - but I get people who had been firmly on the interventionist side to come back to the centre quite often. With my reach of a few hundred people, I'll just need a few centuries to solve the problem. 🙂
I think I’m sympathetic to some of the ethical principles you guys are alluding to, but your mental constructions of covid government policy and execution is foreign to me. Similarly for LGBTQ civil rights. I’m guessing that you are constructing your views from sources different from the ones I use. I wonder if you might give me a few references?
Hey Frank,
I'd be glad to share some references! I have a huge war chest of references relating to the Nonsense from the past three years, too much to share it all, so I'll give you a quick tour of some of the high points.
Let's start with Dr Jay Bhattacharya's congressional testimony from March 27th of this year, as it's an excellent summary of what has been going on with regards to the attempt by the current administration to censor scientific voices:
https://www.illusionconsensus.com/p/my-congressional-testimony-on-march
Next, let's nip over to the British Medical Journal, which of all the big names in medical publishing is the only one to have not disgraced itself in recent years (either by purposefully supressing part of the evidence base, or by publishing letters that create a premature illusion of consensus). I'll start with the whistleblower from Pfizer's original trial:
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635
But I'll also include two editorials from Peter Doshi, one from January 2021 asking for access to the raw data on the mRNA trials:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-we-need-more-details-and-the-raw-data/
...and the other a year later, asking for the same thing. If you only read one of these two, I recommend reading this second one.
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o102
On vaccine side effects, there's a huge and ever-growing, ever-more-depressing paper trail, but I'll highlight one particular paper, from Thailand:
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202208.0151/v1
Rather than read the paper, I recommend you read this commentary from Dr Vinay Prasad, which captures just how damning to the CDC/FDA it really is that other nations are having to do the safety testing that they were honour-bound to conduct:
https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/what-does-the-thailand-myocarditis
Here's a few more on side effects the CDC and FDA could not be bothered to investigate:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00177-8
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/10/10/1651
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004222017515
And one more, this time from a research team including Peter Doshi:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22010283
...who once again makes the point: they have still not shared the original trial data (the data that, you may recall from above, entailed fraud).
On lockdowns, the data is difficult to work with as so much of the analysis has to be performed on incomplete information and with quite considerable variation of assumptions. However, I will go with the work of John Ioannidis, who published this piece in March 2022, which covers the ground well:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13782
Ioannides is also one of the few people to have worked diligently on the difficult problem of the IFR (infection fatality rate) of SARS-CoV-2, here is an October 2022 piece addressing this:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.11.22280963v1.full
The key point here is that IFR was always lower than governments and media insisted on presenting it, and rather than it looking like a dangerous infection from the outset, it was comparable to an influenza epidemic in the first instance, and with further data it is starting to look less dangerous than conventional ILIs (influenza-like infections).
On lockdowns globally, Toby Green has done brilliant work. Here's a nice summary in Prospect magazine:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/37626/for-poor-countries-lockdowns-cost-more-lives-than-they-save
I also have a great many articles from Toby Green where he interviews representatives from different African nations, for example this interview with Mamadou Ndiaye in Senegal, which was effectively taken over by corrupt politicians in the wake of the Nonsense:
https://collateralglobal.org/article/interview-mamadou-ndiaye-toby-green/
As I say, I have plenty more on a variety of topics, from the lack of evidence for community masking through to government and industry censorship efforts, the role of iatrogenic deaths in contributing to fatalities in the 'first wave', and on into the utterly unjustified demonisation of the unvaccinated.
If there's any particular topic you want more references for, just let me know and I can provide more for you.
Thanks for taking an interest!
Chris.
Well stated. No doubt many were taken in by the "saving lives" perspective. But something smelled off following the "two weeks to flatten the curve." I'm reading Robert Cialdini's book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and the tactics laid out there fit a little too well with how the lockdowns came about and led to the massive sale of experimental and dangerous pseudo-mRNA interventions. No doubt there are two camps, but I fear in designating them equally legitimate, we risk sanctioning a group of scoundrels who deployed psychological manipulation to gain all manner of compliance and power... and not just as a one-off, but as ongoing "new normal."
I like that you attempt to present the alien worlds in a manner that might open us up toward those who live in alien worlds. I see a lot of potential in that sort of thinking. But I am concerned that such a perspective might be misplaced. When someone is in the act of taking something from you or of forcing something upon you, or of punishing you for refusing to have certain things taken from or forced upon you, I'm not sure trying to see things from their perspective will prove valuable.
No doubt during pride month, plenty of folks are horrified to think about what their neighbours get up to in the privacy of their bedrooms and certain night clubs. But what's stoking the pushback isn't any of the horror at these alien worlds. It's that the aliens have landed and have raised their flag over every business, municipal building and school. It's that whether those of the traditional world want it or not, they are being compelled to accept things, change their habits, and moreover to like it.
Unlike the counter-culture days of the beatniks and the dirty hippies, this cultural revolution is a product of institutions (state and corporate). No one forced folks to become beatniks. People left their suits and fedoras behind to join that counter-culture. It was about individuation. What's different now is how this whole thing is being engineered using well researched marketing and compliance principles. This new counter-culture is the reverse of the 1950s and 60s. It's about following and doing what you're told because only stupid people ask questions.
Hey Asa,
Thanks for your thoughtful commentary here. Some responses:
"I like that you attempt to present the alien worlds in a manner that might open us up toward those who live in alien worlds. I see a lot of potential in that sort of thinking. But I am concerned that such a perspective might be misplaced. When someone is in the act of taking something from you or of forcing something upon you, or of punishing you for refusing to have certain things taken from or forced upon you, I'm not sure trying to see things from their perspective will prove valuable."
So my approach is to distinguish between those who have intentionally manipulated the situation and those whose worlds have been tampered with by those very people. Not maintaining this distinction is disastrous, and if we make this error then the resistance to the abomination that I can only call 'the Nonsense' is doomed because it will never claim the centre.
Adam Kotsko, Agamben's translator, was not in any way responsible for the censorship and deceit at the heart of what was done. He represents in a very tangible sense the faction that does not know it has been misled. If we do not make peace with this faction, democracy is almost certainly finished (if it is not already so). So it is important to try to see the tentpoles of their world, and to challenge them in a way that has a chance of 'crossing the borderline'.
This is parallel to the situation with whatever we should call the replacement for the Rainbow Alliance (as discussed previously, this coalition has been shattered, so it is now more of 'the Rainbow Dominion', alas). Yes, there is a social engineering component at work here - but the youth, having been exposed to a very limited discourse on these issues thanks to censorship, believe in the necessity of rallying around the trans community, and do not see the problematic dimensions of this actually quite admirable (if naïve) protective instinct.
The irony of this, which again, we are not allowed to discuss, is that the trans people I know have had their situation made *far worse* by trans activism, which has no interest in forming a counter-culture (great choice of word here) but rather wishes to forcibly install a new mandatory culture. This, as you say, is radically different from what was attempted in the 60s: it is not a counter-culture at all, it is (dare I say?) an insurgent-culture. And key here seems to be that the trans activists (quite apart from the trans people I know) demand censorship. This, it seems to me, is precisely the political appeal to approaching trans rights in such a disastrous and ill-considered fashion.
The danger in all these cases is to mix up those who are responsible for the censorship and the manipulation from those who support the narrative that has been grown as the 'fruit of the poison tree'. If we do not make our case here, in the centre, the resistance fails. I can see no other viable way to look at our situation.
As ever, I appreciate the engagement!
Chris.
I hear you, and I've been attempting to figure out how to reach the aliens. It certainly doesn't come naturally, and I admire those who are good at turning folks around. Have you heard of Daryl Davis? He's the black fella whose been turning KKK members and they mail in their robes. He's interesting to listen to, but I haven't been able to learn anything. Something inherently obtuse in me? How about you? Have you had any luck?
Well no miraculous conversions, if that's what you mean - but I get people who had been firmly on the interventionist side to come back to the centre quite often. With my reach of a few hundred people, I'll just need a few centuries to solve the problem. 🙂