One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals — justice or progress or the happiness of future generations, or the sacred mission of emancipation of a nation or race or class, or even liberty itself, which demands the sacrifice of individuals for the freedom of society.
This is the belief that somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution.
— Isaiah Berlin, from Two Concepts of Liberty (1969)
The bottom line is that I am an old liberal.
I am using the word 'liberal' in the old philosophical sense. To prevent people in a large, pluralistic human society from killing each other, to prevent unchecked predation among different groups, humans came up with the idea of generalized tolerance for all viewpoints (political, religious, etc.). To that end, humans established "natural" or "god-given" rights which every individual had as a birthright. These included the right to free speech, the right to peaceably assemble, the right to worship any god you wanted, and so forth.
An old liberal like me thinks this kind of freedom is the best possible solution to the obvious problems presented by human nature.
Unfortunately, elites in the Western world have lost sight of the wisdom of this best possible solution. Power and unrestrained self-interest have deranged them. These corrupt, amoral elites, who run nearly all of our most fundamental institutions, are now promoting and implementing intolerance through the creation and vilification of scapegoats. The Nazis had first the communists and then later the Jews, the "leftist" neoliberal/globalist elites in contemporary America have Trump and his supporters. It's always the same story historically.
Yesterday the "wrong-think" purges began on social media, which forms the "public square" in contemporary life. The elites disseminate and strictly control a self-serving "narrative" which is used to control the thinking of the little people. This manipulation is carried out on corporate and social media by those who own and run it.
This works because the vast majority of humans are incapable of independent thought and lack the ability to question authority (the narrative). That weakness (incapacity) is part of human nature, too. It is also paramount to keep people in a continual state of fear to make controlling them much easier (e.g., fear of COVID, lockdowns). Places where free speech still exists must be destroyed (and here). Those being scapegoated must be accused of doing the very thing predatory elites are in fact doing (psychological projection). The weak-minded will always believe these unreal accusations. The little people thus become deranged and full of hated for those scapegoated. This divisive result is the principal goal of the elite's manipulations (via the narrative).
All this is simply Fascism 101 or Totalitarianism 101 (in 2020, the merger of corporate and state power). Try this link.
The predatory Elites and the Sheeple, their prey. An old human trick. Works every time. George Orwell understood all this.
Donald Trump = Emmanuel Goldstein.
Emmanuel Goldstein = Donald Trump.
And now, for comparison, watch this Trump vilification montage, from Calderon Pool. Those carrying out the elite propaganda and disinformation campaign in Hollywood and on corporate and social media have been advocating violence against Donald Trump and his supporters for 4 years now. For the Sheeple, such threats have become normalized, which was the idea all along.
The worst is yet to come. Perhaps you think I've overstated the crisis here, but trust me, it's coming. I tried to warn you in posts earlier this year. I knew those warnings would fail, but I felt obligated to try. In fact, I received a lot of hate for writing what I did. I expected that, too. No good deed goes unpunished here on the Monkey Planet.
As Luke Rudkowski says in the video below, Orwell's 1984 actually started yesterday, though the groundwork was laid for many years before now. This is an historical podcast and I hope you will watch it all the way through. There are weak moments in this very long discussion, but predominantly you will see young, liberal-minded people trying to come to grips with the terrible and evil fact that they no longer live in a free society.
It is very sad but it is also instructive if you have the awareness to appreciate this well-informed discussion. In 2020, that's a Big If.
