I just provided hard evidence that a board member at a drug company that has made $70 billion selling vaccines tried to censor me; NO major non-conservative media outlet has reported this news
Those in the MSM can't admit they were WRONG. They went along with every talking point about the covid response as if it were written in stone. Masks were necessary, lockdowns were good, vaccines don't prevent transmission they just make symptoms less severe, and most importantly, Fauci IS Science. All of this has been debunked, there is no science behind any of it. Dr. Birx admitted in her book that she made up the 6 foot distancing requirement. Conservatives were RIGHT. Those stupid leaders of red states were right and the "science" experts were wrong. This can't happen in the liberal, woke world of journalism because they are so much "smarter". Their egos won't let them admit they were wrong, it's too embarrassing.
This is to me is the simplest, least conspiratorial, and most likely correct explanation for what we are seeing. To the extent they know they’re wrong, they can’t admit it.
Pride is one of the seven deadlies for good reason.
Totally agree with pride. But let's not forget another deadly...greed. Whether it started with greed or not I don't know, but at some point they realized the massive money opportunity and they went all in. Now they are fabulously wealthy, above any liability and don't care.
I wish it was that simple but no. This explanation implies that they were trying to get it right and that is just not reality. They have an agenda that doesn't include truth, objectivity or getting it right. The journalists that care about truth, objectivity or getting it right don't work for MSM in 2022.
Imagine all the journalists who vaxxed their kids, it must be crushing for them now that the reports of severe side effects in children are coming out. How can they admit to themselves that they harmed their kids?
I honestly don’t think they know. You must be open to POVs and research that don’t validate your own. A lot of leftists will sacrifice their own children to escape the cognitive dissonance.
From the summer/fall of 2020 when you had many prominent Democrats declaring they wouldn't trust or take any vaccine developed under Donald Trump's administration to what Alex has written above, this is one of the strangest turns of events in the whole covid debacle. Suddenly the literal conspiracy theory propagated by the likes of Pfizer, Moderna, et. all is the "truth" and any objective scientific examination of actual data is the "conspiracy theory." I know it's getting trite to says so, but this could hardly be any more Orwellian.
I’ve thought about this. One scenario: vaccine danger to boys catches fire with MSM and bang we’re back to Trump foisted this evil upon us. Likely to happen if Trump runs in ‘24.
The same thought has occurred to me also. It'd be amazing to watch, matched only by the willingness of the NPCs to immediately switch positions and go along with it.
Once you are able to see this stuff, it's frankly quite amazing and terrifying at the same time.
This has been my long standing response to all the dissonance from doctors to journalists. They went all in on something they knew nothing about, but instead portrayed themselves as the end all authority. Misleading people by the hundreds if not thousands. Now they are liable and simply can’t look at the carnage they’ve left in the wake of their pride, greed and immense egos.
They've always thought they possess a superior intellect to the rest of us. They listen to the "science". First in line for the vaccine, they proudly displayed their status on their social media pages. Journalists especially were filled with glee at being able to shame the anti-vaxxers.
Disagree. If they really knew they were wrong, they would do what many European countries have begun to do which is move quietly away from their totalitarian ways and even begin investigations about the adverse reactions. They damn sure would not be doubling down on vaccines as they are now here in many blue states with children. So they are willing to kill children with a vaccine that has shown toxic to some and perhaps long term to many. Nope, like climate change, they have become devote disciples and if another virus pandemic erupts they will be twice as evil as before putting unvaccinated whom they hate into camps and take their children. The UK parliament suggested doing this with Covid. A good example of their extreme hatred is what they did to Djokovic.
95% of the people we call politicians are psychopaths. they should be getting mental treatment, not being elected. but psychopaths are good at lying and deceiving and when get the chance to push the doomsday button, theres no question, they'll do it.
Agree that pride and an inability to admit error are at the root of this journalistic malpractice. Also agree that greed drives Big Pharma. Doubt many journalists are getting wealthy off this, but certainly many fear the loss of their livelihoods if they don't go along. Which leads to my last thought -- that many journalists today don't understand that you can't exchange courage for safety and still tell yourself you are a journalist. I often think I might have liked a career in journalism if I had a do over, but am not sure I would have been sufficiently courageous either. Courage is hard, especially when every power structure is lined up against you.
When you consider that they didn't just encourage people to get "vaccinated" they demanded it. They mandated, coerced, people lost their jobs, many of them gave it to their own children, and demanded you give it to yours. To now admit that all that was wrong would be humiliating.
Yes and It is also that they are hypnotized by the vax narrative. Along with many other liberals. They literally can not believe that it could be false. They are told that anyone who questions the narrative is an infidel (aka antivaxxer) and automatically should not be listened to.
It is like a religious cult - if one person admits they were wrong they are instantly shamed and ostracized by all their liberal coworkers and friends the the Twitter-sphere. Or worse lose their job and maybe their marriage.
It is really rather similar to high school girls who group together and are mean to anyone who disagrees with the group. With all the same underhand power games. Name calling. Rumors behind their backs. Ostracized from the group. This keeps all the members of their "club" in line. More on how this works from Canadian journalist Tara Henley https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/gossip-girls
Hypnotism by the narrative is a central characteristic of mass formation as posited by Matthias Desmet. In his theory of mass formation, the covid narrative and the media's adoption of it is not a conspiracy--or not mainly--but it is also not mere pride or unwillingness to admit error. It is more like hypnosis, or like a deeply committed, "faith"-based mental/emotional inability to consider alternatives.
A family friend working on his PhD relating to flu and covid in children has had all his children take the flu vaccine every year, and had all his children vaccinated for covid absolutely as soon as they were EUA-eligible. From a background knowledge standpoint he is in a position (potentially) to know better, but from a social, emotional, worldview, commitment, and sunk-cost standpoint, he almost must be (and is) a true believer in the great and promising future of mRNA.
IMO, they don't *care* if they were wrong. They've been wrong about just about everything, for years. If being wrong mattered to them, we'd know it by now.
They don't GAFF if ANY of their reporting is wrong; they ONLY care to advance their preferred - that is, the Left's preferred - narrative. We've seen that perpetually since the Trump era most notably.
They're not journalists; they haven't been journalists for years and years. They're propagandists. They're the de facto propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.
I think that the Soviet had a similar m.o. - it didn't matter how many died as a result of the USSR's central planning fiascos - they were just collateral damage, as Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic."
My variant of Occam's razer is that the most prosaic explanation is usually (not always) the correct one. This is certainly the most prosaic explanation and I believe to be the correct one.
However, I would take it one step further. Most people treat medicine as a religion and doctors as priests. From a bio-medical perspective (not surgery to repair trauma injury) modern medicine has only two major claims to fame, anti-biotics and vaccines. Antibiotics are not used much because the kind of infections that require them are not that common. That leaves vaccines. To question the safety and efficacy of vaccines in general, not just the covid-19, is really to question the safety and efficacy of the entire edifice of modern medicine. Most people associate modern medicine, along with electricity, as the only things separating us from the nasty brutish life of medieval period. Thus to question the efficacy of modern medicine is very frightening to a lot of people.
Let me correct your statement: the MSM originally said that the vaccines prevent transmission and infection. Later, when it was clear that the vaccines don't prevent infection or transmission, they said "The vaccines only make the infection less severe -- we never said that it prevented infection or transmission". Then when we found out that the majority of severe outcomes were among the vaccinated and the vaccines may actually exacerbate negative covid outcomes the MSM said " Well, there's a new Delta variant and that's why the vaxx doesn't work at all, so you need a booster and then the vaxx will work". When the first booster didn't work at all, the MSM said, "well, there's a new omicron variant, so you'll need a second booster." Absolutely absurd levels of doublethink and cognitive dissonance are required to give the MSM any credibility at all.
That 6 feet of distance had to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, especially for a virus that is airborne. It doesn’t take much thought to see how stupid it was to have to go down one grocery store aisle one way and the next one in the opposite direction. Then, stand in line 6 feet behind someone and then move into their air space once they have checked out? Well, I just thought of the other stupidest thing. People washing and disinfecting their groceries - outside.
The 6 feet stupidity got even worse. You were supposed to stay 6 feet apart and avoid confined indoor spaces but somehow, it was deemed OK to be packed like sardines in the cabin of a plane as long as you were wearing a mask. Getting on the plane, you were told to stand 6 feet apart.
When the plane finally landed, they told you to again go back to maintaining 6 feet of distance. During the flight, you were told to keep your mask on unless you were eating or drinking but then you should put your mask on between bites or sips. Stupidity really is infinite.
Southwest didn't want you talking to the FAs to tell them your choice of beverage. They had laminated cards with instructions, and you were to use fingers to indicate your choice. 1 for water, 2 for Coke, 3 for etc.
It's about control. The distance and the mask rules were both made up without any evidence that they work. The empirical evidence is out and the masks do not work. The 6 feet of distance was clearly a load of horseshit so I don't even need empirical evidence to show the 6 feet didn't work.
Another reason people push masks is to remind you how deadly the virus is before you realize that no one around you is dying. Covid is supposedly very deadly and contagious and yet I know of no one that died of it. People around me tell me they get covid all the time and not one of them is worried that they are going to die. When I hear someone got covid, it's like hearing that they have the flu or a common cold.
And yes, it's a swiss army knife: Cases going up -- better use masks or it will get worse. Cases going down -- look the masks work. Cases staying about the same -- if we didn't use masks, things would be worse.
"It doesn’t take much thought to see how stupid it was to have to go down one grocery store aisle one way and the next one in the opposite direction"
And not only that, but if the aisle I needed to go down had a "wrong pointing" arrow, I was supposed to go down the adjacent aisle and come up the "correct" aisle...thus passing/interacting with TWICE as many other shoppers (shoppers in 2 aisles rather than 1 aisle).
(FWIW, I never, ever paid attention to the arrows.)
It's always best to disregard those rules and go out of your way to do exactly what they say not to do. Start by not wearing a mask, even when security tells you to wear one. When store security asked me to wear a mask I just said, "I don't wear masks" and the security guard went away. Don't be so quick to comply with such idiocy.
I stopped wearing a mask in airports a year before the airport mask diktat was lifted. No one ever gave me trouble. Even in a largely-deserted Logan Airport in Boston one night I walked past about a dozen city cops/TSA/state troopers within about a 30-second stretch of time, just they walking one way and me going the other way, we passed within a few feet of each other, I made a point of looking AT them, not away, as we passed. None of them said a thing.
That's what I tell people all the time. At least try to not wear the mask. At least give some sort of rebellion, even if it requires having an uncomfortable conversation with an officer or store security guard or employee. I know a woman who refused to wear the mask in a park in Miami in 2020. The park ranger said that he was going to call the police if she didn't comply. She told him to go ahead and call. The police showed up and she still refused to wear the mask. The officers told her that they were going to arrest her if she didn't leave the park. After about a half hour of back-and-forth, she finally left the park. Her kids got a good example of what defiance means.
Yeah, when some airport authority told me to put it on, I'd put it on only until I was no longer in their "jurisdiction" so to speak, then I'd take it off again. I'd enter the airport with no mask, go to the ticket counter to check a bag. Half the time an agent there would tell me to mask-up (jetBlue agents were particularly paranoid and scaredy-cats). Then I'd leave that area and take it off.
Then at the TSA checkpoints, sometimes the person looking at my ID and boarding pass would tell me to mask-up (and sometimes they wouldn't!), so I would, until I was past them. Lather rinse repeat. Once I was in the airport itself, I stayed unmasked until I was in the queue to board the plane, and no one ever confronted my unmasked face between getting through security and the boarding process.
And it's especially apparent how stupid it is to anyone with at least half a brain, when the WHO's guideline is "one meter" or 3 feet (essentially). And neither one of them has yet produced the science or the studies for either one.
So one health "authority" says 6 feet, another health "authority" says 3 feet, obviously to any sentient being the "social distance" guideline is total, unadulterated bullsh*t.
Sure they can't admit they were wrong, but we can't forget that journalists. reporters, media presenters, actors, comedians, musicians, and all manner of social media "influencers" were PAID to promote the government's propaganda.
I'm sure some of them went along simply because of the money. Others believed everything they were told because, science! Now that they found out their devotion to the religion of covid was wrong, they can't admit the "Neanderthals" were right. It's embarrassing.
Can we all agree that the concept of "public health" is seriously flawed and that all governmental entities have been captured by for-profit entities that would happily kill millions, as long as their stock prices goes up? The notion that a benevolent bureaucracy will protect you & your family is plain lunacy. The sooner we get to the day where we, as individuals, acknowledge that WE are responsible for our own health, this madness will end. All of the "recommendations" by a captured bureaucracy become meaningless with an informed, educated & wily citizenry. This, of course, in no way obfuscates the criminal liability that is due to all of those who have pushed the phony gene therapies. Their day will come, no matter how hard they try to pretend it's business as usual.
Government endorsement of any product, procedure, or position is now a contrary indicator.
Also, $400K/yr seems small change for such a massive selling-out. I'm sure that's the token visible payout. A golden stock option package is probably the happy ending for these revolving door criminals.
I am not at all convinced that "their day will come". Seems to me that this whole disaster has been so clouded through misinformation and censorship that most people have given up on "research" and just locked in their beliefs ("safe and effective") and moved on. People like me trying to show people the facts are dismissed out of hand as "conspiracy nuts" or just plain "crazy". And I am actually pretty articulate and normally quite credible...
Someone should do some hard digging and reporting on what appears to be an ever increasing number of young people who "died suddenly". Some kind of historical analysis of how many kids have "died suddenly" in the past and how many are now. I feel like it is rising dramatically, but I don't have the data to back that up.
Simple duckduckgo search for "died suddenly" shows these recent results under "news":
Agree. Very rarely are people held accountable. More like - "round up the usual suspects". It will be like how we look at the Viet Nam war now. Realizing slowly that we made all the wrong moves.
The sad reality is that the constitution has a loophole, and its healthcare and public health. Now politicians are taking advantage of it and they are directing money power and resources in a political direction. Medicine is being corrupted by a "new mafia".
Yep. Public heath was simply the vehicle chosen to advance the tyranny. It could have been any number of other things. (national security is the usual go-to.)
Somehow all the wankers who are afraid of Trump need a real wake up call. Trump is scary because he called people out and then others, like reporters, had to deal with the rottenness of the benevolent state. It’s simply proven to be too much. Trump is NOT the problem. He’s loud, bombastic, emotional and annoying. He’s also usually right. Especially about the big stuff. The corruption between go and business must be broken. Soon.
I would like to welcome you to what conservatives have been dealing with for a long time. It has now gotten so bad (which we warned would happen) that you have finally noticed. Thanks for getting us to this point - hopefully you can talk to some of your old cohorts and convince them to change.
Gottlieb the hack has been obvious since about March 2020.
It used to especially gall me that CNBC would have him on (and still does, I guess, I quit watching) and took everything he said credulously, with no pushback at all. He pushed fear and panic ("Looks like ______ (state) is about to get hit hard... this isn't over") instead of, you know, data and reason.
I do wonder why a Pfizer board member was so visible for so long, well before the "vaccines" were ever released or publicized. And he was never introduced that way, it was always, "Former FDA commissioner".
I personally quit watching the news years ago. The "big stuff" trickles through. And where journalism is a failed institution, "alternative" media is nicely filling the void.
I kept waiting for all the anti establishment hippies to raise the hue & cry over the evils of big pharma and gov coercion & collusion for $$$. Crickets. Sellouts. Not sure how they can look in their mirrors or their children’s eyes.
You would get the same reaction objecting to Google or daring to suggest that out involvement in the Ukraine is wrong. mSM is bought and sold on all major issues.
The state of American journalism can be precisely described from the old joke...
A man on an airplane asks the young lady sitting next to him if she would sleep with him for one million dollars. She is taken aback by the question but starts to think it over. He's not so bad looking. Why not?
"Yes, sure."
The man smiles engagingly and then asks "Would you sleep with me for one dollar?"
She is shocked and enraged by the question. "What do you think I am?"
He smoothly answers... "We've already established what you are, now we are just negotiating the price."
So too with American journalists. Despite all their protestation of high moral certainty and ethics, they are a bunch of street corner whores available to the highest bidder. This is why they are less popular than rectal cancer.
It is astonishing how this huge blanket of willful ignorance and greed have overtaken almost all people of influence. Thanks Alex for keeping up this fight. And, thanks for letting me know about Substack-I had never heard of it before you said you had your own Substack.
It’s not just cowardice, it’s literal brain washing for so many who no longer possess the ability to question or think critically. The accepted premise of any discussion on the topic, is “only crazy people question vaccines”. That’s it.
They believe that. Full stop.
So they are not cowards, or foolish, in their minds, but righteous warriors defending the faith.
The Apple TV series “See”, starring Jason Momoa, that just wrapped up the second season a week ago, demonstrates this phenomena perfectly: the setting is a future where human beings have lost the sense of sight, everybody is blind. Seriously, that’s the setting. Other senses supposedly are heightened for some, to keep it interesting, but literally everyone walks with a stick they tap a few paces out in front of them to make sure they don’t trip on a chicken, or something, because as a consequence many things sight related - driving, air travel, electricity - have long been lost to humanity - so the cities were abandoned and people moved back out to the wilderness and formed small tribes where they cooperate to hunt and provide shelter for themselves. Okay, some interesting dynamics going on there, but wait! All of sudden we learn of a mysterious character who claims he can “see”! And not only that, apparently he is going around impregnating women so they’ll give birth to seeing babies and bring sight back to the world! *GASP!!* The immediate response is that this “witch” must be stopped! Vision is an evil that evolution removed so the species would survive, after all, the results of a sighted human race almost wrought it’s own extinction! And so the powers that be set off on a course to hunt down the sighted “witch” and his progeny....which of course grow to adulthood over the course of the series and mount a resistance and proclaim their innocence and usefulness to society...and are almost immediately undermined in doing so by an evil, power hungry blind guy who harnesses the sighted and their children to make bombs with the information they discover in old books from the sighted age. End result: sighted folks have to flee sufficiently far away to create their own society where they won’t be flogged and hung, and the last heroic sighted guy who decides to remain with his blind family, chooses to gouge his eyes out so he can remain among them, as clearly sighted and blind people cannot live peaceably together, since suspicion of each other is greater than their ability to reason and cooperate. That is literally the entire story arch. Makes for an interesting discussion in light of our current cultural environment. If you wanted to watch it, I apologize in advance if I ruined the ending for you; it’s worth watching for the parallels we can draw for the situation we find ourselves in, and I left out enough interesting stuff so in case you decide to watch it, it will still be enjoyable, I hope. The point being, having the ability to see things differently is almost never accepted when the entirety of the population is convinced of their own correctness and what you are saying contradicts them. Maybe if we start looking at strategies for turning the perceptions from that standpoint, we can start to make some inroads and change people’s thinking - because clearly “evidence” alone is not enough. They need “convincing”, not evidence. Evidence can be dismissed and questioned - but once you’re convinced of something, even the impossible, things start to change.
I like this idea of convincing, because no matter how many facts or articles I produce they don't care. After a thousand examples over 3 years, one friend is listening. But that kind of energy and persistence isn't a practical solution. I remember changing my viewpoint 6 years ago because I was convinced. It took two hours. I think I was ready to hear answers.
I submit that you do it by actions - like the characters in the show - you leave behind the old system/society and build a new one with like minded people willing to cooperate and live by common sense, respect for each other and honor for basic values like freedom, honesty and integrity.
One of problems with ‘online’ movements is that they’re, well, online. A group of 100,000 people may be a large one online, but when these people attempt to make real-world change, they tend to find they are actually quite spread out. This is something we discovered during the Ron Paul years, and something that Bernie supporters faced during his election runs.
So goal #1 in moving a movement from online into meatspace is finding meatsuits in your area. It sounds simple, but without this step nothing else matters. Connecting with like-minded people in person not only grows the support network, it’s also incredibly cathartic after a couple years of being forced apart and bullied by our peers!
Some people are doing networking like this as we speak. Robert Malone is constantly running around giving talks and meeting with local groups, as is Steve Kirsch. But it’s time we all made a concerted effort to ‘take the next step’ and form real-life bonds with those in (or out of!) our area.
The form this will take is likely to be different for everybody, because everybody has different circles. Some of you may find allies in church or your already-existing monkeysphere. Maybe you can dust off the contacts of those old Ron Paul buddies. Perhaps you play beer league softball or are in a pool league or sewing circle or a million other groups that give humans a reason to gather.
I've been trying to figure that out for almost 3 years. I keep flubbing in my efforts to inform them, either seeming agitated, driven, or wrong about some one fact among many. I think that they'll have to eventually realize something is amiss with their worldview. Only then will they open to someone helping them figure things out. I also think that the less one cares what they think the less defensive they are. I'm about 80% to not caring/minding. It's not my job to open their eyes. It's theirs.
I used to be a liberal before COVID, and even then one of the things that mystified me about my fellow bubblers was how they were missing the fact that big pharma corruption is so similar to say big oil or big military industrial complex (absolutely same mechanism)… then of course they went completely nuts to the point where now I became an one issue voter. I used to explain this cognitive dissonance by the fact that the attitude towards pharmaceutical products/vaccines was motivated by fear of death but now I think it’s just political and how people are programmed by the uni party to pick a side and get the illusion that they are making positive change.
I think they all follow a similar course of action. Big Pharma also models a lot of their playbook on Big Tobacco. Some of BT’s many tactics include providing their products free to the military, getting them addicted early in life. They designed and funded studies that put their product in a favorable light and paid doctors for ghostwritten medical journal articles that were nothing more than marketing pieces. As actual studies showing harm piled up - in the thousands - they doubled down on their obfuscation efforts, as in one memo a tobacco company exec wrote: “doubt is our product”.
Those in the MSM can't admit they were WRONG. They went along with every talking point about the covid response as if it were written in stone. Masks were necessary, lockdowns were good, vaccines don't prevent transmission they just make symptoms less severe, and most importantly, Fauci IS Science. All of this has been debunked, there is no science behind any of it. Dr. Birx admitted in her book that she made up the 6 foot distancing requirement. Conservatives were RIGHT. Those stupid leaders of red states were right and the "science" experts were wrong. This can't happen in the liberal, woke world of journalism because they are so much "smarter". Their egos won't let them admit they were wrong, it's too embarrassing.
This is to me is the simplest, least conspiratorial, and most likely correct explanation for what we are seeing. To the extent they know they’re wrong, they can’t admit it.
Pride is one of the seven deadlies for good reason.
Totally agree with pride. But let's not forget another deadly...greed. Whether it started with greed or not I don't know, but at some point they realized the massive money opportunity and they went all in. Now they are fabulously wealthy, above any liability and don't care.
Greed is a function of pride.
I wish it was that simple but no. This explanation implies that they were trying to get it right and that is just not reality. They have an agenda that doesn't include truth, objectivity or getting it right. The journalists that care about truth, objectivity or getting it right don't work for MSM in 2022.
Imagine all the journalists who vaxxed their kids, it must be crushing for them now that the reports of severe side effects in children are coming out. How can they admit to themselves that they harmed their kids?
I honestly don’t think they know. You must be open to POVs and research that don’t validate your own. A lot of leftists will sacrifice their own children to escape the cognitive dissonance.
From the summer/fall of 2020 when you had many prominent Democrats declaring they wouldn't trust or take any vaccine developed under Donald Trump's administration to what Alex has written above, this is one of the strangest turns of events in the whole covid debacle. Suddenly the literal conspiracy theory propagated by the likes of Pfizer, Moderna, et. all is the "truth" and any objective scientific examination of actual data is the "conspiracy theory." I know it's getting trite to says so, but this could hardly be any more Orwellian.
I’ve thought about this. One scenario: vaccine danger to boys catches fire with MSM and bang we’re back to Trump foisted this evil upon us. Likely to happen if Trump runs in ‘24.
The same thought has occurred to me also. It'd be amazing to watch, matched only by the willingness of the NPCs to immediately switch positions and go along with it.
Once you are able to see this stuff, it's frankly quite amazing and terrifying at the same time.
I think a lot of parents are now experiencing this mental process.
This has been my long standing response to all the dissonance from doctors to journalists. They went all in on something they knew nothing about, but instead portrayed themselves as the end all authority. Misleading people by the hundreds if not thousands. Now they are liable and simply can’t look at the carnage they’ve left in the wake of their pride, greed and immense egos.
They've always thought they possess a superior intellect to the rest of us. They listen to the "science". First in line for the vaccine, they proudly displayed their status on their social media pages. Journalists especially were filled with glee at being able to shame the anti-vaxxers.
Disagree. If they really knew they were wrong, they would do what many European countries have begun to do which is move quietly away from their totalitarian ways and even begin investigations about the adverse reactions. They damn sure would not be doubling down on vaccines as they are now here in many blue states with children. So they are willing to kill children with a vaccine that has shown toxic to some and perhaps long term to many. Nope, like climate change, they have become devote disciples and if another virus pandemic erupts they will be twice as evil as before putting unvaccinated whom they hate into camps and take their children. The UK parliament suggested doing this with Covid. A good example of their extreme hatred is what they did to Djokovic.
I would call it hubris more than simple pride.
95% of the people we call politicians are psychopaths. they should be getting mental treatment, not being elected. but psychopaths are good at lying and deceiving and when get the chance to push the doomsday button, theres no question, they'll do it.
Agree that pride and an inability to admit error are at the root of this journalistic malpractice. Also agree that greed drives Big Pharma. Doubt many journalists are getting wealthy off this, but certainly many fear the loss of their livelihoods if they don't go along. Which leads to my last thought -- that many journalists today don't understand that you can't exchange courage for safety and still tell yourself you are a journalist. I often think I might have liked a career in journalism if I had a do over, but am not sure I would have been sufficiently courageous either. Courage is hard, especially when every power structure is lined up against you.
Could end up like the ABC guy whose was raided and is now missing. It’s dangerous to expose the truth. Agreed.
It's a religion, and one is forbidden from blaspheming what the cult declares holy.
He has experienced a religious conversion and has left behind his old ways.
https://brownstone.org/articles/mitigation-is-the-golden-calf/
Love your work. I would like to see you investigate medical malpractice deaths.
When you consider that they didn't just encourage people to get "vaccinated" they demanded it. They mandated, coerced, people lost their jobs, many of them gave it to their own children, and demanded you give it to yours. To now admit that all that was wrong would be humiliating.
Maybe so - but there is alot of arrogance combined with stupid too.
Yes and It is also that they are hypnotized by the vax narrative. Along with many other liberals. They literally can not believe that it could be false. They are told that anyone who questions the narrative is an infidel (aka antivaxxer) and automatically should not be listened to.
It is like a religious cult - if one person admits they were wrong they are instantly shamed and ostracized by all their liberal coworkers and friends the the Twitter-sphere. Or worse lose their job and maybe their marriage.
It is really rather similar to high school girls who group together and are mean to anyone who disagrees with the group. With all the same underhand power games. Name calling. Rumors behind their backs. Ostracized from the group. This keeps all the members of their "club" in line. More on how this works from Canadian journalist Tara Henley https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/gossip-girls
She just wrote about "belief perseverance", especially among journalists and govt officials https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/when-you-think-youre-right-even-if
Hypnotism by the narrative is a central characteristic of mass formation as posited by Matthias Desmet. In his theory of mass formation, the covid narrative and the media's adoption of it is not a conspiracy--or not mainly--but it is also not mere pride or unwillingness to admit error. It is more like hypnosis, or like a deeply committed, "faith"-based mental/emotional inability to consider alternatives.
https://rumble.com/v1ja623-mattias-desmet-and-tucker-carlson-discuss-mass-formation-complete-interview.html
A family friend working on his PhD relating to flu and covid in children has had all his children take the flu vaccine every year, and had all his children vaccinated for covid absolutely as soon as they were EUA-eligible. From a background knowledge standpoint he is in a position (potentially) to know better, but from a social, emotional, worldview, commitment, and sunk-cost standpoint, he almost must be (and is) a true believer in the great and promising future of mRNA.
Exactly what I argued: https://brownstone.org/articles/mitigation-is-the-golden-calf/
IMO, they don't *care* if they were wrong. They've been wrong about just about everything, for years. If being wrong mattered to them, we'd know it by now.
They don't GAFF if ANY of their reporting is wrong; they ONLY care to advance their preferred - that is, the Left's preferred - narrative. We've seen that perpetually since the Trump era most notably.
They're not journalists; they haven't been journalists for years and years. They're propagandists. They're the de facto propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.
And propagandists don't GAS about being right.
I think that the Soviet had a similar m.o. - it didn't matter how many died as a result of the USSR's central planning fiascos - they were just collateral damage, as Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic."
Yes, and it's proven by their rewriting of history.
BINGO!
My variant of Occam's razer is that the most prosaic explanation is usually (not always) the correct one. This is certainly the most prosaic explanation and I believe to be the correct one.
However, I would take it one step further. Most people treat medicine as a religion and doctors as priests. From a bio-medical perspective (not surgery to repair trauma injury) modern medicine has only two major claims to fame, anti-biotics and vaccines. Antibiotics are not used much because the kind of infections that require them are not that common. That leaves vaccines. To question the safety and efficacy of vaccines in general, not just the covid-19, is really to question the safety and efficacy of the entire edifice of modern medicine. Most people associate modern medicine, along with electricity, as the only things separating us from the nasty brutish life of medieval period. Thus to question the efficacy of modern medicine is very frightening to a lot of people.
the people must never find that most all the good we attribute to vaccines was due to advancements in providing clean drinking water
modern "medicine" is a cartel. it should be prescuted for racketeering.
and investigated under anti-trust
It should be done away with entirely.
Let me correct your statement: the MSM originally said that the vaccines prevent transmission and infection. Later, when it was clear that the vaccines don't prevent infection or transmission, they said "The vaccines only make the infection less severe -- we never said that it prevented infection or transmission". Then when we found out that the majority of severe outcomes were among the vaccinated and the vaccines may actually exacerbate negative covid outcomes the MSM said " Well, there's a new Delta variant and that's why the vaxx doesn't work at all, so you need a booster and then the vaxx will work". When the first booster didn't work at all, the MSM said, "well, there's a new omicron variant, so you'll need a second booster." Absolutely absurd levels of doublethink and cognitive dissonance are required to give the MSM any credibility at all.
That 6 feet of distance had to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, especially for a virus that is airborne. It doesn’t take much thought to see how stupid it was to have to go down one grocery store aisle one way and the next one in the opposite direction. Then, stand in line 6 feet behind someone and then move into their air space once they have checked out? Well, I just thought of the other stupidest thing. People washing and disinfecting their groceries - outside.
The 6 feet stupidity got even worse. You were supposed to stay 6 feet apart and avoid confined indoor spaces but somehow, it was deemed OK to be packed like sardines in the cabin of a plane as long as you were wearing a mask. Getting on the plane, you were told to stand 6 feet apart.
When the plane finally landed, they told you to again go back to maintaining 6 feet of distance. During the flight, you were told to keep your mask on unless you were eating or drinking but then you should put your mask on between bites or sips. Stupidity really is infinite.
Southwest didn't want you talking to the FAs to tell them your choice of beverage. They had laminated cards with instructions, and you were to use fingers to indicate your choice. 1 for water, 2 for Coke, 3 for etc.
I always gave them one finger.
This whole shit-show grew deep roots when the PHA's and boards of large corporations figured out you could substitute mask for distance.
Voila!; mask it is. This is often overlooked, and is perhaps the most critical inflection point that allowed this nonsense to continue unabated.
The distancing hogwash would've eventually died a quiet death. It is unenforceable. The mask were enforceable.
It is one thing to be restricted by distance, but quite another to be restricted in society. The mask were a Swiss Army Knife in that respect.
That's why I've always said; We were in a fight for time and space in society. Period. Full. Stop.
It's about control. The distance and the mask rules were both made up without any evidence that they work. The empirical evidence is out and the masks do not work. The 6 feet of distance was clearly a load of horseshit so I don't even need empirical evidence to show the 6 feet didn't work.
Another reason people push masks is to remind you how deadly the virus is before you realize that no one around you is dying. Covid is supposedly very deadly and contagious and yet I know of no one that died of it. People around me tell me they get covid all the time and not one of them is worried that they are going to die. When I hear someone got covid, it's like hearing that they have the flu or a common cold.
And yes, it's a swiss army knife: Cases going up -- better use masks or it will get worse. Cases going down -- look the masks work. Cases staying about the same -- if we didn't use masks, things would be worse.
PLEXIGLASS was right up there.
All this stuff will end up being relics of shame in the history books
I remember being in a store and not paying attention to the arrows in the aisles. Boy did I get dirty looks from the double masked.
"It doesn’t take much thought to see how stupid it was to have to go down one grocery store aisle one way and the next one in the opposite direction"
And not only that, but if the aisle I needed to go down had a "wrong pointing" arrow, I was supposed to go down the adjacent aisle and come up the "correct" aisle...thus passing/interacting with TWICE as many other shoppers (shoppers in 2 aisles rather than 1 aisle).
(FWIW, I never, ever paid attention to the arrows.)
It's always best to disregard those rules and go out of your way to do exactly what they say not to do. Start by not wearing a mask, even when security tells you to wear one. When store security asked me to wear a mask I just said, "I don't wear masks" and the security guard went away. Don't be so quick to comply with such idiocy.
I stopped wearing a mask in airports a year before the airport mask diktat was lifted. No one ever gave me trouble. Even in a largely-deserted Logan Airport in Boston one night I walked past about a dozen city cops/TSA/state troopers within about a 30-second stretch of time, just they walking one way and me going the other way, we passed within a few feet of each other, I made a point of looking AT them, not away, as we passed. None of them said a thing.
That's what I tell people all the time. At least try to not wear the mask. At least give some sort of rebellion, even if it requires having an uncomfortable conversation with an officer or store security guard or employee. I know a woman who refused to wear the mask in a park in Miami in 2020. The park ranger said that he was going to call the police if she didn't comply. She told him to go ahead and call. The police showed up and she still refused to wear the mask. The officers told her that they were going to arrest her if she didn't leave the park. After about a half hour of back-and-forth, she finally left the park. Her kids got a good example of what defiance means.
Yeah, when some airport authority told me to put it on, I'd put it on only until I was no longer in their "jurisdiction" so to speak, then I'd take it off again. I'd enter the airport with no mask, go to the ticket counter to check a bag. Half the time an agent there would tell me to mask-up (jetBlue agents were particularly paranoid and scaredy-cats). Then I'd leave that area and take it off.
Then at the TSA checkpoints, sometimes the person looking at my ID and boarding pass would tell me to mask-up (and sometimes they wouldn't!), so I would, until I was past them. Lather rinse repeat. Once I was in the airport itself, I stayed unmasked until I was in the queue to board the plane, and no one ever confronted my unmasked face between getting through security and the boarding process.
And it's especially apparent how stupid it is to anyone with at least half a brain, when the WHO's guideline is "one meter" or 3 feet (essentially). And neither one of them has yet produced the science or the studies for either one.
So one health "authority" says 6 feet, another health "authority" says 3 feet, obviously to any sentient being the "social distance" guideline is total, unadulterated bullsh*t.
Sure they can't admit they were wrong, but we can't forget that journalists. reporters, media presenters, actors, comedians, musicians, and all manner of social media "influencers" were PAID to promote the government's propaganda.
I'm sure some of them went along simply because of the money. Others believed everything they were told because, science! Now that they found out their devotion to the religion of covid was wrong, they can't admit the "Neanderthals" were right. It's embarrassing.
They can't admit it because their paid to push a narrative.
Can we all agree that the concept of "public health" is seriously flawed and that all governmental entities have been captured by for-profit entities that would happily kill millions, as long as their stock prices goes up? The notion that a benevolent bureaucracy will protect you & your family is plain lunacy. The sooner we get to the day where we, as individuals, acknowledge that WE are responsible for our own health, this madness will end. All of the "recommendations" by a captured bureaucracy become meaningless with an informed, educated & wily citizenry. This, of course, in no way obfuscates the criminal liability that is due to all of those who have pushed the phony gene therapies. Their day will come, no matter how hard they try to pretend it's business as usual.
Government endorsement of any product, procedure, or position is now a contrary indicator.
Also, $400K/yr seems small change for such a massive selling-out. I'm sure that's the token visible payout. A golden stock option package is probably the happy ending for these revolving door criminals.
I’m sure he gets more than that in stock .
I had the exact same thought. Or a super powerful / high visibility government position.
Just take a look at Pfizer’s 10K from 2021.
I am not at all convinced that "their day will come". Seems to me that this whole disaster has been so clouded through misinformation and censorship that most people have given up on "research" and just locked in their beliefs ("safe and effective") and moved on. People like me trying to show people the facts are dismissed out of hand as "conspiracy nuts" or just plain "crazy". And I am actually pretty articulate and normally quite credible...
Someone should do some hard digging and reporting on what appears to be an ever increasing number of young people who "died suddenly". Some kind of historical analysis of how many kids have "died suddenly" in the past and how many are now. I feel like it is rising dramatically, but I don't have the data to back that up.
Simple duckduckgo search for "died suddenly" shows these recent results under "news":
https://ijr.com/healthy-28-year-old-man-dies-suddenly-home-four-months-wedding-day/
https://ijr.com/mississippi-state-university-football-player-dies-suddenly/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/parenting/teen-who-died-suddenly-during-choir-performance-hoped-to-sing-on-broadway-family-says/ar-AA137D21
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsscotland/young-scots-chef-dies-suddenly-as-family-pay-tribute-to-one-in-a-million-lad/ar-AA13dG2e
https://6abc.com/andrew-drew-ruehlicke-york-college-of-pennsylvania-mullica-hill-new-jersey-student-dies/12315449/
https://www.wpri.com/news/local-news/east-bay/hundreds-attend-vigil-for-two-barrington-elementary-school-teachers-who-died-suddenly/
https://www.nj.com/mercer/2022/10/missing-princeton-university-student-found-dead-authorities-say.html
No follow-up... just a collective shrug.
It’s unprecedented. It might be noticed years from now, once all the current stakeholders are dead.
Agree. Very rarely are people held accountable. More like - "round up the usual suspects". It will be like how we look at the Viet Nam war now. Realizing slowly that we made all the wrong moves.
The sad reality is that the constitution has a loophole, and its healthcare and public health. Now politicians are taking advantage of it and they are directing money power and resources in a political direction. Medicine is being corrupted by a "new mafia".
Nothing new under the sun.
China now, Soviet Union then, 3rd Reich...: see New England Journal of Medicine =>
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp048136
Yep. Public heath was simply the vehicle chosen to advance the tyranny. It could have been any number of other things. (national security is the usual go-to.)
Yep. Back to personal responsibility for health. Green veggies and exercise. There isn’t any easy way.
Somehow all the wankers who are afraid of Trump need a real wake up call. Trump is scary because he called people out and then others, like reporters, had to deal with the rottenness of the benevolent state. It’s simply proven to be too much. Trump is NOT the problem. He’s loud, bombastic, emotional and annoying. He’s also usually right. Especially about the big stuff. The corruption between go and business must be broken. Soon.
I would like to welcome you to what conservatives have been dealing with for a long time. It has now gotten so bad (which we warned would happen) that you have finally noticed. Thanks for getting us to this point - hopefully you can talk to some of your old cohorts and convince them to change.
Gottlieb the hack has been obvious since about March 2020.
It used to especially gall me that CNBC would have him on (and still does, I guess, I quit watching) and took everything he said credulously, with no pushback at all. He pushed fear and panic ("Looks like ______ (state) is about to get hit hard... this isn't over") instead of, you know, data and reason.
I do wonder why a Pfizer board member was so visible for so long, well before the "vaccines" were ever released or publicized. And he was never introduced that way, it was always, "Former FDA commissioner".
It's crooked and corrupt all the way down.
If you'll read The Man Who Broke Capitalism, you'll likely find that Gottlieb followed the same model Jack Welch established with CNBC years ago.
But books like that don't get published until years after the deeds are done.
As Alex knows, I have a journalism background.
I am also a devout Christian.
I know that God detests liars, evildoers and “the rich who oppress you”
I know that God hates child sacrifice.
I know that judgement day will come — no matter how bad things look at the moment.
I know in this instance that AB is the “voice of one crying in the wilderness.”
Thanks for upholding the truth this morning on my birthday.
Amen!
I personally quit watching the news years ago. The "big stuff" trickles through. And where journalism is a failed institution, "alternative" media is nicely filling the void.
Which is why I'm a paid subscriber.
A billion dollars (that we know about) from the gubbamit will get you to do pretty much whatever they want.
Not too long ago POTUS fantastically said the gun manufacturers were the only industry with “liability protection.” 🙄
We have a major problem with the vaccine manufacturers and it started in the late 80s.
It’s something parents of vaccine injured kids have known for a couple decades at least.
When you go against this industry it’s spitballs off a battleship. It will not change until liability indemnification is removed.
Glad you see it Alex; hope you have more compassion for people who saw it a long time ago.
I kept waiting for all the anti establishment hippies to raise the hue & cry over the evils of big pharma and gov coercion & collusion for $$$. Crickets. Sellouts. Not sure how they can look in their mirrors or their children’s eyes.
I am an audiophile.
I can hardly listen to so many of the artists because of their cowardness.
Many of them demonized people who thought for themselves.
You would get the same reaction objecting to Google or daring to suggest that out involvement in the Ukraine is wrong. mSM is bought and sold on all major issues.
AB thinks the billions sent to Ukraine are necessary.
We're not even trying for peace.
I wonder how he'll feel about that if this if his children are up for the draft in the future.?
The state of American journalism can be precisely described from the old joke...
A man on an airplane asks the young lady sitting next to him if she would sleep with him for one million dollars. She is taken aback by the question but starts to think it over. He's not so bad looking. Why not?
"Yes, sure."
The man smiles engagingly and then asks "Would you sleep with me for one dollar?"
She is shocked and enraged by the question. "What do you think I am?"
He smoothly answers... "We've already established what you are, now we are just negotiating the price."
So too with American journalists. Despite all their protestation of high moral certainty and ethics, they are a bunch of street corner whores available to the highest bidder. This is why they are less popular than rectal cancer.
It is astonishing how this huge blanket of willful ignorance and greed have overtaken almost all people of influence. Thanks Alex for keeping up this fight. And, thanks for letting me know about Substack-I had never heard of it before you said you had your own Substack.
It’s not just cowardice, it’s literal brain washing for so many who no longer possess the ability to question or think critically. The accepted premise of any discussion on the topic, is “only crazy people question vaccines”. That’s it.
They believe that. Full stop.
So they are not cowards, or foolish, in their minds, but righteous warriors defending the faith.
The Apple TV series “See”, starring Jason Momoa, that just wrapped up the second season a week ago, demonstrates this phenomena perfectly: the setting is a future where human beings have lost the sense of sight, everybody is blind. Seriously, that’s the setting. Other senses supposedly are heightened for some, to keep it interesting, but literally everyone walks with a stick they tap a few paces out in front of them to make sure they don’t trip on a chicken, or something, because as a consequence many things sight related - driving, air travel, electricity - have long been lost to humanity - so the cities were abandoned and people moved back out to the wilderness and formed small tribes where they cooperate to hunt and provide shelter for themselves. Okay, some interesting dynamics going on there, but wait! All of sudden we learn of a mysterious character who claims he can “see”! And not only that, apparently he is going around impregnating women so they’ll give birth to seeing babies and bring sight back to the world! *GASP!!* The immediate response is that this “witch” must be stopped! Vision is an evil that evolution removed so the species would survive, after all, the results of a sighted human race almost wrought it’s own extinction! And so the powers that be set off on a course to hunt down the sighted “witch” and his progeny....which of course grow to adulthood over the course of the series and mount a resistance and proclaim their innocence and usefulness to society...and are almost immediately undermined in doing so by an evil, power hungry blind guy who harnesses the sighted and their children to make bombs with the information they discover in old books from the sighted age. End result: sighted folks have to flee sufficiently far away to create their own society where they won’t be flogged and hung, and the last heroic sighted guy who decides to remain with his blind family, chooses to gouge his eyes out so he can remain among them, as clearly sighted and blind people cannot live peaceably together, since suspicion of each other is greater than their ability to reason and cooperate. That is literally the entire story arch. Makes for an interesting discussion in light of our current cultural environment. If you wanted to watch it, I apologize in advance if I ruined the ending for you; it’s worth watching for the parallels we can draw for the situation we find ourselves in, and I left out enough interesting stuff so in case you decide to watch it, it will still be enjoyable, I hope. The point being, having the ability to see things differently is almost never accepted when the entirety of the population is convinced of their own correctness and what you are saying contradicts them. Maybe if we start looking at strategies for turning the perceptions from that standpoint, we can start to make some inroads and change people’s thinking - because clearly “evidence” alone is not enough. They need “convincing”, not evidence. Evidence can be dismissed and questioned - but once you’re convinced of something, even the impossible, things start to change.
Wow. The sad thing is that if that is an allegory of today the message is to be willfully blind or be an outcast.
I like this idea of convincing, because no matter how many facts or articles I produce they don't care. After a thousand examples over 3 years, one friend is listening. But that kind of energy and persistence isn't a practical solution. I remember changing my viewpoint 6 years ago because I was convinced. It took two hours. I think I was ready to hear answers.
But how do we convince people of something they adamantly refuse to believe, accept, or see?
I submit that you do it by actions - like the characters in the show - you leave behind the old system/society and build a new one with like minded people willing to cooperate and live by common sense, respect for each other and honor for basic values like freedom, honesty and integrity.
Ding ding ding ding!
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/this-is-not-a-drill-part-2
One of problems with ‘online’ movements is that they’re, well, online. A group of 100,000 people may be a large one online, but when these people attempt to make real-world change, they tend to find they are actually quite spread out. This is something we discovered during the Ron Paul years, and something that Bernie supporters faced during his election runs.
So goal #1 in moving a movement from online into meatspace is finding meatsuits in your area. It sounds simple, but without this step nothing else matters. Connecting with like-minded people in person not only grows the support network, it’s also incredibly cathartic after a couple years of being forced apart and bullied by our peers!
Some people are doing networking like this as we speak. Robert Malone is constantly running around giving talks and meeting with local groups, as is Steve Kirsch. But it’s time we all made a concerted effort to ‘take the next step’ and form real-life bonds with those in (or out of!) our area.
The form this will take is likely to be different for everybody, because everybody has different circles. Some of you may find allies in church or your already-existing monkeysphere. Maybe you can dust off the contacts of those old Ron Paul buddies. Perhaps you play beer league softball or are in a pool league or sewing circle or a million other groups that give humans a reason to gather.
I've been trying to figure that out for almost 3 years. I keep flubbing in my efforts to inform them, either seeming agitated, driven, or wrong about some one fact among many. I think that they'll have to eventually realize something is amiss with their worldview. Only then will they open to someone helping them figure things out. I also think that the less one cares what they think the less defensive they are. I'm about 80% to not caring/minding. It's not my job to open their eyes. It's theirs.
No integrity. Only cowardice in the face of overwhelming reasons to investigate.
I used to be a liberal before COVID, and even then one of the things that mystified me about my fellow bubblers was how they were missing the fact that big pharma corruption is so similar to say big oil or big military industrial complex (absolutely same mechanism)… then of course they went completely nuts to the point where now I became an one issue voter. I used to explain this cognitive dissonance by the fact that the attitude towards pharmaceutical products/vaccines was motivated by fear of death but now I think it’s just political and how people are programmed by the uni party to pick a side and get the illusion that they are making positive change.
I think they all follow a similar course of action. Big Pharma also models a lot of their playbook on Big Tobacco. Some of BT’s many tactics include providing their products free to the military, getting them addicted early in life. They designed and funded studies that put their product in a favorable light and paid doctors for ghostwritten medical journal articles that were nothing more than marketing pieces. As actual studies showing harm piled up - in the thousands - they doubled down on their obfuscation efforts, as in one memo a tobacco company exec wrote: “doubt is our product”.