It is kinda a big problem when government asks social media to censor people opposed to masking toddlers, closing schools, mandating boosters in young men and people suspicious of the narrative of natural origin, and then turn out to be wrong on every single issue.
Far more truth-bombs are dropped by comedians (such as Dave Smith) than by modern day "journalists."
What's the next step now that it is undeniable that Anthony Fauci and his cronies lied to the American Public by writing the "Proximal Origin" paper, apparently to protect their roles in funding and facilitating dangerous gain of function research? How we proceed when NYT, WaPo, CNN, NPR and MSNBC won't discuss the recently revealed communications demonstrating that many of the nations most politically powerful scientists lied when they published the "Proximal Origin" article in Nature?
Michael Shellenberger sets forth the official narrative in his June 29, 2023 presentation, which you can view at Public. This is a detailed litany, a tour de force of the items of faith that our sense-making institutions (including the federal government, federal law enforcement, universities and "news" outlets) have been telling us that we must believe. If you fail to proclaim that you believe these things, you will pay a steep price. You will be ostracized by many of your friends, you will be less unemployable and you will be made invisible. You will be condemned to secular hell. If you give in and agree to proclaim the truth of these many false things, doors to public spaces will remain open to you and you can continue basking in the shallow warmth of social rectitude.
As various social media memes have recently pointed out, George Orwell's book, 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a recipe for revamping society. Despite that, we are now living in an age that is truly Orwellian, an era where our most fundamental civic principle, free speech, is being attacked by your Keepers so that they can maintain control over your thoughts and your vote. George Carlin saw this coming many years ago when he described "The American Dream," and it has arrived.
If you often find yourself sitting on your hands in silence, forcing yourself to swallow your doubts as our public institutions declare blatant falsehoods, please invest an hour in Michael Shellenberger's video. You will see well-documented disturbing facts on the ground. You are not alone. You are not crazy. It's time for you to begin speaking up when something does not make sense to you. Say what is on your mind even though an insecure person, an acolyte, will call you a mean name.
The Title to Shellenberger's presentation is "Escape The Woke Matrix: A pathological religion is destroying our civilization."
I had the pleasure on Monday of giving a keynote address to the students and faculty of the University of Austin titled “Escape The Woke Matrix.” In it, I argue that Western civilization is being rapidly taken over by a psychopathological religion, and that we must resist it by exposing it for what it is, and re-grounding our institutions in love of humanity, civilization, and freedom...
Behind the war on free speech is the same totalitarianism we have been watching sweep over the Western world for several years. It is relentless and uncompromising. It is driven by bullying people full of dogma and hatred of dissident views.
The totalitarians are well-resourced and powerful, while we have few resources and are just starting to find each other. But we believe our love of humanity, civilization, and freedom will conquer their hatred, as it has so many other times in the past.
It’s not enough to condemn, we must also seek to understand, and explain. We are going toe-to-toe with an opponent that would put us in prison for wrongthink. We must stand up to their bullying, and break their hyponotic trance over the population. That is how we will escape from the woke matrix.
How did it come to be that conservatives have become the most vocal defenders of traditional liberal values? At Public, Michael Shellenberger describes the challenge facing those of us who embrace traditional liberal values:
For most of the post-war period, liberalism in the United States was defined around freedom of speech, the needs of the working class, and the fight against racism and sexism. It was liberals who defended the right to burn the American flag, and of neo-Nazis to march through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors. It was liberals who fought against corporate power and for the rights of working people. And it was liberals who fought to end racial segregation and to protect girls and women, including in sports.
All of that has changed. Today, it is conservatives who are fighting the racial re-segregation of classrooms and workforces by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) administrators in thrall to Critical Race Theory (CRT). It is conservatives who are defending the right to freedom of expression online from progressives demanding greater censorship by Big Tech and the government. And it is conservatives who are defending the rights of girls and women to female-only spaces and sports from natal males...
A similar dynamic occurred with the natural environment. After World War II, both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, supported industrialization, economic development in poor nations, and nuclear power. Starting in the 1960s, the radical Left turned against industrialization, and started romanticizing peasant life in poor nations, while opposing nuclear energy in rich nations. The result was that Republicans were left holding positions that were once mainstream liberal ones...
As a result, conservatives find themselves in the paradoxical position of defending traditional liberal values like free speech and racial equality from progressives.... A big part of the reason as to why it has been left to conservatives to defend liberalism is because the radical Left, or what is sometimes called the Woke Left, had already defeated traditional liberals, first in major societal institutions and then in Congress, many years and some cases decades ago. [Christopher] Rufo attributes much of the radical Left’s success to its ability to manipulate language and emotions.
Traditional liberals didn’t understand who they were dealing with. The liberal university presidents, the newspaper editors, and the heads of various professional associations were committed to civil dialogue and democracy; the radical Left insurgents were not. The radical Left didn’t hesitate to use illiberal means, including making false accusations of racism, sexism, and homophobia, against their opponents...
Readers of Public know that I believe that the radical Left’s power stems from being able to offer a complete Woke religion to fill the vacuum left by declining belief in traditional religions ... Into the spiritual void emerged a new religion: victim ideology, or Wokeism.