Blog Article 200:
My Political Reflections and Transformation, Part 2
It seems like I was just writing my 100th blog (article), and now, here I am looking at my laptop thinking about the message that I would like to convey one hundred articles later. Back when My Political Reflections and Transformation Over the Years was written in April 2021, the writings were more of my thoughts on topics as they came up, and this came out to about two blog articles per month, starting in January 2017. In 2022, I launched a roughly weekly article and have since moved to Substack as my primary platform.
Though counting the number of articles written seems less important when you consider that from 2020 onward, I have been writing several shorter blogs (generally under 500 words and covering analysis on a mainstream article or a very defined topic). I wrote about 102 such mini blogs in 2020, about 173 in 2021, about 269 in 2022, and about 150 so far in 2023 (all available on MeWe and Facebook, as well as recent material on Substack Notes and Twitter). All-in-all, I have written approximately 700 short pieces and 200 long pieces, plus my book, The Global Bully (written mostly in 2015 and some in 2016, with the latter year mostly being the editing and publishing phase), a twenty-four essay series in 2013 of my observations on various topics (still unpublished), and a fourteen-part series on developing events in Ukraine during 2014 (along with a few other essays written in 2015, these were published as an eBook).
As previously discussed, my political transformation began in 2009 when I was a twenty-year-old Airman stationed in Huntingdon, England (where Oliver Cromwell was born in 1599). During the next few years, I was influenced by people such as Alex Jones, Aaron Russo, Chalmers Johnson, Ron Paul, Andrew Napolitano, Mohandas Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson, and John Locke. Thus began my search for truth and understanding in this world, and my journey is continuing, especially as I begin to realize more and more that many things I learned as a child or in the history books were manipulated or straight-up false.
I may not be as cynical as to say that everything I had learned was a lie, but many of the things that we take for granted under current propaganda should at least be questioned. If governments, institutions, corporations, politicians, and elites lie about almost everything and knowingly push through falsehoods to deceive us and make us believe things that they themselves do not, it is difficult to put faith in any of those things. Science, philosophy, history, and politics are all built on studying the works of the past and the contributions of people who have existed over the course of time, so if their work is faulty or based on the manipulated propaganda of their day, perhaps our understanding of the world is inaccurate, or at least partially so.
From researching my book, I quickly realized that articles and headlines that you read on a daily basis have an ounce of truth in them, but you have to read between the lines (or at least to a random sentence buried toward the end of an article) to realize that there is another side to the story. In realizing this, you begin to break apart every piece of propaganda thrown at you and gain a healthy dose of skepticism in everything that you read and watch.
For example, back in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and supported Donetsk and Luhansk, all of the corporate media would parrot the idea that Russia was threatening the territorial integrity of Ukraine. This sentiment would be echoed for almost the entire article, but then toward the bottom, you might get one sentence suggesting that there was a referendum of the people and that they chose to leave Ukraine and join Russia or become independent. If this was acknowledged, it would be followed or preceded by unsubstantiated claims emphasizing to readers that the referendums were illegal or invalid. Yet, the CIA and FBI manipulate foreign and domestic elections, so why should we dismiss the Donbass or Crimea elections and take our government’s word for it? You can also listen to interviews of the citizens in those regions and easily come away with the conclusion that the people there are much more sympathetic toward Russia than Ukraine.
Yet, the same media and government officials will rattle off the same talking points of how democracy matters. So, you want people to choose their leaders and government, just not the people of Crimea or any territory that belongs to an allied state? The United States government was happy to strip Kosovo from Serbia or support al-Qaeda in attempting a takeover of Syria, but the people in Donetsk and Luhansk, who are not happy with the current governing structure and are being bombed by Kiev, must remain under Ukrainian rule forever.
It is this type of logic (or lack thereof) that gets you thinking. The corporate media conditions people to accept certain agendas, and it creates narratives that mislead the public for political and financial purposes. As I mentioned, you might get a degree of reality buried in an article or news segment, but most people will not be able to comprehend it in the context of the propaganda surrounding it. It is disinformation being pushed by official sources, and yet, the people who challenge the narrative are considered the ones spreading harmful and misleading information.
The Covid-19 pandemic was almost the perfect example of this. The slogans included: “two weeks to flatten the curve,” “you’re doing this for others,” “follow the science,” “trust the experts,” “safe and effective,” “lockdowns save lives,” “if we could only save one life, it will have been worth it,” “you’re selfish if you don’t wear a mask or get vaccinated,” and “Ivermectin is horse paste.” The lines were sold to the public, and they were eagerly eaten up and repeated. If you constantly bombard people’s brains with lies and propaganda, eventually, people will believe it all and be willing to turn on their fellow citizens in an effort to fit in with the “collective good” and send out virtue signals for their own benefits and praises. Almost nothing the experts and authority figures preached to us was truth, and it has become abundantly apparent with the benefit of hindsight. Yet, some of us saw through the propaganda even at the time, but we were just selfish, unintelligent grandma killers who were harming society with our unvaccinated blood and disinformation. The scapegoating and shaming were clear to anyone who had not sold their soul to the pharmaceutical industry and the authoritarian conditioning that was taking place.
I was well equipped to challenge the Covid-19 narrative, as I had been researching topics related to foreign policy and individual rights for my book. Seeing the falsehoods and misleading texts from articles and segments in the mainstream news, I was able to perceive reality from fiction. I knew what keywords to look for and understood the propaganda being pushed by Anthony Fauci, Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsome, Joe Biden, the CDC, the WHO, and others.
Throughout the pandemic, people would consider my views radical and unreasonable, and yet, if you had asked people two years prior to the circulation of the virus whether they would have supported lockdowns, travel restrictions, and business shutdowns, almost everyone would have uniformly said that that sounds like something that only authoritarian countries do. Yet, two years later, those very same people were jumping in line for the vaccine and in the crowds shaming others for not complying, and they were willing to say that you were selfish for not wanting to shut down your entire livelihood or that of your community.
So, whose views really changed? Was it me, or was it you? Am I the radical, or did you embrace radical authoritarianism out of fear and because you were told that it was the right thing to do by those in charge? I did not agree with authoritarianism two years before the incident, and I did not agree with it during that time, nor do I agree with it now. My views were consistent, and you altered yours based on claims of emergency and a changing environment. Your views are arbitrary, wishy-washy, and based on dogma, not mine.
We failed the grand social experiment, but next time it does not have to happen in the same way. Although realistically, the reactions and measures taken will probably be similar, and perhaps more extreme. My hope is that I can reach people with persuasive arguments so that they will be able to resist the temptation of collectivism and decipher the propaganda pushed on us daily. We are all in this together but not in the way that the powers that be suggest. They want to force their will on us, make us wear a mask or get vaccinated, classify us as enemies of the state for resisting, take away our means to defend ourselves, send our fellow citizens into global conflict with Russia or China, and keep us trapped in an economic system where we just barely survive. They want the solution to be from the government. None of them want us to be free to make our own decisions and unite together for a common purpose, so they divide us by race, gender, economic status, and how much we support Ukraine, vaccines, transgenderism, or whatever new trend comes along. Currently, this is being pushed by liberals and progressives (though their agenda is not progressive at all), and the word that best describes this movement would the “Left,” as it is on the political left but is an actual organized movement funded by billionaires (like George Soros and Bill Gates).
This pro-state and pro-corporate movement does not want us to meet our true potential or reach a state of freedom. Historically, conservatives have also been used as tools for the betterment of corporate and political interests (think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the Patriot Act and War on Terror), but a shift has occurred. Some Republicans and conservatives have been challenging the state and the system built around it, and the old guard of the Republican Party is what is praised in the corporate media and by Democrats and liberals. This should be of no surprise. Status quo Republicans are very similar to their Democratic counterparts and only contrast on minor issues. There is no ideological differences between the two parties, but Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have changed this to some degree (though Trump also pushed status quo polices). It is no wonder that the deep state (including the FBI, CIA, DHS, ranking members of both parties, etc.) considers Trump a threat and will do everything it can to prevent him from being in power (even rig elections).
Average Democrats, liberals, and progressives are not the problem, and it is my hope that someday many of these people will see the light of what is happening. Bernie Sanders, for example, understands some of what is going on, but he does not go deep enough and stops with the corporations as the sole evils in society. Yet, these corporations form partnerships with governments in corporatist or fascistic arrangements.
The problem is actually with the state, as the corporations would be powerless and unable to compete in a free market without their benefits, subsidies, lobbying, revolving doors, profits through mandates, the Federal Reserve system, and defense contracts. So, the “Left” is different from average people who are on the left politically, and many who adhere to these types of beliefs are starting to wake up to reality and understand that the left that they once supported is not the same thing as the authoritarianism that is now being pushed.
In conclusion, it is up to us to decide what type of government we have. Do we want one that serves us, or do we want one that serves the interests of corporations, politicians, and bureaucrats? The more we are divided, the less likely we are to be free. If we keep slaving away in the system with our nine-to-five jobs (not caring about anything outside of sports, movies, celebrities, or videogames), real change cannot occur. If we take action, like those who entered the Capitol on January 6th in protest of the rigged election, we can shake up the system and make the elites squirm. It is up to us to get off the couch and do something.