Nice list. Off the top of my head I would include:
"Flat-Earther". Obviously this refers to people who think the earth is a pancake but like "anti-vaxxer" it is being expanded to denigrate anyone who challenges the orthodoxy.
The same situation applies to Covid/9-11/moon-landing "denier". There are many different opinions about these topics but throwing them into the bucket of "denier" simplifies and misrepresents most of them while simultaneously erecting a straw man position that can be dismantled without much inquiry.
I stumbled upon your substack a while ago by way of Gavin's newsletter. I have read a number of your essays find your efforts illuminating. Keep up the good work.
Now, on to this post.
You're right: the five words/phrases you've chosen to dissect here are indeed the tip of the iceberg. I would go further than to say these terms have been weaponized. They have become militarized.
In fact, what we have experienced now for three years...going on four...is a full-spectrum subversion of reality itself through the mutilation of meaning. Language is a doorway to perception, and language has been used as a kind of cognitive meat tenderizer to induce a state of collective, societal, indeed planetary state of existential vertigo upon the masses.
As heinous, crazy, inchoate and nonsensical as it all is, I am astounded that more alarm bells have not been ringing in people's vacuous heads.
Rewinding to the period when the vaccines were "rolled out" at "warp speed", one remembers how we were veritably carpet-bombed with the hypnotic "safe and effective" slogan ad nauseam. Virtually everyone - both morons and high IQ people alike - fell for it. And yet, all it would have taken (and all it took for some) were a few search engine queries that any 7-year old could undertake to realize that there was no possible way this statement could be true given the established precedents and history of vaccine development. How could these novel interventions (gene therapies) be claimed as "safe" when their simply wasn't any evidentiary basis for the claim? Well, apparently it didn't matter. We tossed reason, rationality, science, and common sense to the wind in favour of the consensus trance. We were played like fiddles, and it worked!
What concerns me more than the overt examples of Orwellian language mutilation you reference above are the perhaps more subtle, nuanced and covert forms of language propaganda, which are carefully chosen so as to seem "plausible" to those lacking the basic ability to discern utter bullshit.
You'll recall, for example, that the word "eligible" was used copiously as the vaccine was "rolled out" to various age cohorts. It became creepier and creepier as they finally zeroed-in on 6-month old infants, the supporting evidence for which involved vague references to "immuno-bridging" or "rigorous" 8-mice studies or simply nothing at all. I weep to think how many parents were sufficiently terrorized to think they would "save" their infants by effectively running into the arms of their murderers.
As a case study in the use of language manipulation and mutilation, one couldn't do better than to visit this page:
COVID-19: Social media and promotional resources for Health Canada and Public Health Agency of Canada
This page reads more like a recruitment drive or a conscription program to harness mindless drones as disseminators and promulgators of Orwellian doublespeak.
As yet another case study, fast-forward to statements by Biden at timestamp 1:30:00 in the following documentary:
2020 - A Propaganda Masterpiece : Perspectives on the Pandemic. Mark Crispin Miller Professor of Media Studies at New York University 2021
Biden uses militarized language in the service of getting a shot in every arm, and it is utterly chilling. You'll notice the words combat, arsenal, execute, fighting etc. I have to ask myself - "What sort of mind or audience does language such as this function effectively upon?"
If you really want to follow the snake to its head, it's "nerve center", try listening to Herr Klaus's recent full speech at the World Government Summit. It is patently insane, reminiscent of Goebbel's himself, (notice the Giant Screen) and rife with the kind of weaponized language of which you speak in your post. Get out the barf bag I suggest! But also, take these maniacs seriously - they mean business and yearn for absolute global control.
First, great and fitting name. Thanks for the valuable references and potent words as well as the words of encouragement. You are absolutely right about what you say and it is unfortunate that is the case.
I believe this has been a long process of subtle manipulation to get the masses, morons and high IQs, to the point they are now where you can basically spoon feed them BS and they celebrate it.
I often wonder if some people are born with an advanced critical thinking ability or life provides it because it certainly is not consistently mirrored in IQ levels or educational accomplishments.
Keep up the dissent and resistance. We need as many of us as possible.
First off: I don't *want* to necessarily be right. I often hope or wish I wasn't. I will openly say that I am bewildered and befuddled, and often wrong. And so I seek some kind of meaningful clarity. I don't really care if Alex Jones, for example, is the messenger. It behooves me (or for that matter anyone) to exercise the discipline and responsibility and to simply care enough to evaluate on the basis of the merit of a purported "truth" or any given idea. All while bearing in mind that we are each a "work in progress". And also bearing in mind that we are living in a time - to channel Orwell's memorable phrase - of Universal Deceit.
"I believe this has been a long process of subtle manipulation to get the masses, morons and high IQs, to the point they are now where you can basically spoon feed them BS and they celebrate it."
There is a frightful truth in this and there will be serious existential consequences if it is not thwarted or remedied before it escapes those possibilities. There already have been for many - lives ruined, livelihoods lost, children dead, the "eligible" medically destroyed. It's heinous.
Your statement doesn't just apply to the Covid debacle, but to much of what we take as recorded history and the meta-narrative we are fed.
But, in trying to make sense of it all - its patent and demonstrable absurdities and cruelties - I am of the opinion that accords with your own that the difference between those who see and don't (or apparently can't) isn't so much a question of intelligence such as can be measured by IQ (which I think is bullshit by the way) but a question of integrity of character, among other things. So this wasn't so much a 3-year IQ test as it was a test of character integrity or the possession of a moral compass.
I have no trouble acknowledging there is a "cabal" at the top of this pyramid, who are really orchestrating the madness. What I have trouble with is how so many fell like limp dominoes in the face of fear and perceived threat.
It seems that anyone associated with an institution - be it academic, medical, judicial or corporate or whatever - and whose very identity was grafted to the groupthink of the relevant institution was under enormous peer pressure and institutionalized coercion to just suppress their better judgement and comply with coercion. There are innumerable examples of this throughout our sordid history.
anyhow, many other thoughts on this but it is only a comment in a box online and i don't want to try your patience!
It seems accurate to me to frame the test as one based in integrity rather than intelligence, though I do think critical thinking played a part in being able to make it as far as the integrity portion of the test - at least at first.
The institutions certainly laid down heavy pressure. I know firsthand. However, I know for myself and a few others I am personally connected to that it was possible to resist.
Nice list. Off the top of my head I would include:
"Flat-Earther". Obviously this refers to people who think the earth is a pancake but like "anti-vaxxer" it is being expanded to denigrate anyone who challenges the orthodoxy.
The same situation applies to Covid/9-11/moon-landing "denier". There are many different opinions about these topics but throwing them into the bucket of "denier" simplifies and misrepresents most of them while simultaneously erecting a straw man position that can be dismantled without much inquiry.
Very good points and additions.
Hi Bear,
I stumbled upon your substack a while ago by way of Gavin's newsletter. I have read a number of your essays find your efforts illuminating. Keep up the good work.
Now, on to this post.
You're right: the five words/phrases you've chosen to dissect here are indeed the tip of the iceberg. I would go further than to say these terms have been weaponized. They have become militarized.
In fact, what we have experienced now for three years...going on four...is a full-spectrum subversion of reality itself through the mutilation of meaning. Language is a doorway to perception, and language has been used as a kind of cognitive meat tenderizer to induce a state of collective, societal, indeed planetary state of existential vertigo upon the masses.
As heinous, crazy, inchoate and nonsensical as it all is, I am astounded that more alarm bells have not been ringing in people's vacuous heads.
Rewinding to the period when the vaccines were "rolled out" at "warp speed", one remembers how we were veritably carpet-bombed with the hypnotic "safe and effective" slogan ad nauseam. Virtually everyone - both morons and high IQ people alike - fell for it. And yet, all it would have taken (and all it took for some) were a few search engine queries that any 7-year old could undertake to realize that there was no possible way this statement could be true given the established precedents and history of vaccine development. How could these novel interventions (gene therapies) be claimed as "safe" when their simply wasn't any evidentiary basis for the claim? Well, apparently it didn't matter. We tossed reason, rationality, science, and common sense to the wind in favour of the consensus trance. We were played like fiddles, and it worked!
What concerns me more than the overt examples of Orwellian language mutilation you reference above are the perhaps more subtle, nuanced and covert forms of language propaganda, which are carefully chosen so as to seem "plausible" to those lacking the basic ability to discern utter bullshit.
You'll recall, for example, that the word "eligible" was used copiously as the vaccine was "rolled out" to various age cohorts. It became creepier and creepier as they finally zeroed-in on 6-month old infants, the supporting evidence for which involved vague references to "immuno-bridging" or "rigorous" 8-mice studies or simply nothing at all. I weep to think how many parents were sufficiently terrorized to think they would "save" their infants by effectively running into the arms of their murderers.
As a case study in the use of language manipulation and mutilation, one couldn't do better than to visit this page:
COVID-19: Social media and promotional resources for Health Canada and Public Health Agency of Canada
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/digital-resources.html#s1
This page reads more like a recruitment drive or a conscription program to harness mindless drones as disseminators and promulgators of Orwellian doublespeak.
As yet another case study, fast-forward to statements by Biden at timestamp 1:30:00 in the following documentary:
2020 - A Propaganda Masterpiece : Perspectives on the Pandemic. Mark Crispin Miller Professor of Media Studies at New York University 2021
https://sp.rmbl.ws/s8/2/Q/H/2/D/QH2Dg.caa.mp4?u=3&b=0
Biden uses militarized language in the service of getting a shot in every arm, and it is utterly chilling. You'll notice the words combat, arsenal, execute, fighting etc. I have to ask myself - "What sort of mind or audience does language such as this function effectively upon?"
If you really want to follow the snake to its head, it's "nerve center", try listening to Herr Klaus's recent full speech at the World Government Summit. It is patently insane, reminiscent of Goebbel's himself, (notice the Giant Screen) and rife with the kind of weaponized language of which you speak in your post. Get out the barf bag I suggest! But also, take these maniacs seriously - they mean business and yearn for absolute global control.
Klaus Schwab At The World Government Summit 2023
https://sp.rmbl.ws/s8/2/S/z/v/l/Szvli.caa.mp4?u=3&b=0
Neo,
First, great and fitting name. Thanks for the valuable references and potent words as well as the words of encouragement. You are absolutely right about what you say and it is unfortunate that is the case.
I believe this has been a long process of subtle manipulation to get the masses, morons and high IQs, to the point they are now where you can basically spoon feed them BS and they celebrate it.
I often wonder if some people are born with an advanced critical thinking ability or life provides it because it certainly is not consistently mirrored in IQ levels or educational accomplishments.
Keep up the dissent and resistance. We need as many of us as possible.
First off: I don't *want* to necessarily be right. I often hope or wish I wasn't. I will openly say that I am bewildered and befuddled, and often wrong. And so I seek some kind of meaningful clarity. I don't really care if Alex Jones, for example, is the messenger. It behooves me (or for that matter anyone) to exercise the discipline and responsibility and to simply care enough to evaluate on the basis of the merit of a purported "truth" or any given idea. All while bearing in mind that we are each a "work in progress". And also bearing in mind that we are living in a time - to channel Orwell's memorable phrase - of Universal Deceit.
"I believe this has been a long process of subtle manipulation to get the masses, morons and high IQs, to the point they are now where you can basically spoon feed them BS and they celebrate it."
There is a frightful truth in this and there will be serious existential consequences if it is not thwarted or remedied before it escapes those possibilities. There already have been for many - lives ruined, livelihoods lost, children dead, the "eligible" medically destroyed. It's heinous.
Your statement doesn't just apply to the Covid debacle, but to much of what we take as recorded history and the meta-narrative we are fed.
But, in trying to make sense of it all - its patent and demonstrable absurdities and cruelties - I am of the opinion that accords with your own that the difference between those who see and don't (or apparently can't) isn't so much a question of intelligence such as can be measured by IQ (which I think is bullshit by the way) but a question of integrity of character, among other things. So this wasn't so much a 3-year IQ test as it was a test of character integrity or the possession of a moral compass.
I have no trouble acknowledging there is a "cabal" at the top of this pyramid, who are really orchestrating the madness. What I have trouble with is how so many fell like limp dominoes in the face of fear and perceived threat.
It seems that anyone associated with an institution - be it academic, medical, judicial or corporate or whatever - and whose very identity was grafted to the groupthink of the relevant institution was under enormous peer pressure and institutionalized coercion to just suppress their better judgement and comply with coercion. There are innumerable examples of this throughout our sordid history.
anyhow, many other thoughts on this but it is only a comment in a box online and i don't want to try your patience!
Stay true!
Thanks again for more thoughtful words.
It seems accurate to me to frame the test as one based in integrity rather than intelligence, though I do think critical thinking played a part in being able to make it as far as the integrity portion of the test - at least at first.
The institutions certainly laid down heavy pressure. I know firsthand. However, I know for myself and a few others I am personally connected to that it was possible to resist.