During my life, I’ve been involved with numerous marginalized groups opposed to something horrific being done by the establishment (including many that had nothing to do with medicine). Throughout that, I’ve seen those groups (many of which I deeply believed in) fragment and fracture again and again. As such, I’ve put a lot of thought into why this always happens and became much more selective about confronting these conflicts since it’s rarely productive to engage with them.
One of the few things that still gets to me is when I see people I know are remarkably dedicated to a cause (and frequently made significant sacrifices for it) be torn apart by the people they’re trying to help. This is in part because I feel its unjust, but more because I know so many instances of idealistic leaders who genuinely wanted to do the right thing, but gradually had their hearts close down (hence becoming like typical politicians) because of all of the attacks they’d received over the years. As such, while there have been a lot of people I’ve wanted to defend due to the vitriol they’ve received, the only people I’ve directly spoken up for were Calley Means and Robert Malone.
Note: years ago, I knew someone who worked in Libya’s government for decades with Gadaffi (a highly eccentric dictator who was known for diverting Libya’s oil wealth to its people and creating one of the highest standards of living in the region until NATO took him out in 2011). One of the things he shared with me was that in his younger years, Gadaffi was very idealistic and eager to do all he could for Libya, but after surviving numerous failed assassination attempts, gradually became much more bitter and closed down.
Recently, an unexpected announcement shook the MAHA community—Trump’s November Surgeon General nominee Nesheiwat (who MAHA briefly protested for a few days due to her past COVID vaccine promotion and then forgot about) was replaced with Casey Means. After hearing about this, my first thought was a huge sigh of a relief which was immediately followed by “oh dear, this going this is going to stir up a lot of drama.”
Note: everyone I’ve spoken to who’s directly connected to the HHS wants Casey Means as the Surgeon General (due to her ability to communicate to the public and her genuine interest in MAHA) and feels that she is the best candidate they have that can pass a Senate confirmation.
The Origins of Evil
One of the main debates throughout human history has been where evil comes from and if humans are intrinsically good or evil. My own conclusions from decades of considering this are as follows:
• Many of the detestable things I see play out on the national stage I’ve seen very similar variants of occur in many smaller groups I’ve belonged to.
• Most of the horrific things we see happen have occurred throughout history in many different societies, suggesting evil is an intrinsic aspect of humanity.
• While many things we are seeing now are appalling, the degree of cruelty and depravity we witnessing now is much less than it was earlier in recorded history. However, while this general evolution of human consciousness and regard for ethics is profound, it is counterbalanced by the fact modern technology has made it possible for small numbers of people to commit cruelty and destruction on a scale that never before was possible.
• Many of the worst things people do are not due to malevolence but rather strong emotions, egos never wanting to be wrong and deeply ingrained fixations.
• In many cases, you can link a horrific action someone does to an unresolved trauma in the past (or in some cases a neurological injury such as those caused by the DPT vaccine). In many others, you can see how media propaganda or spiritual forces (both on an individual or societal level) can precipitate evil in those who are unbalanced enough to be susceptible to these subtle influences.
• In many cases, people are not fully conscious of their actions, and due to outside influences or retained patterning, will frequently force themselves to say or do things they are internally conflicted about.
Note: years ago, I read an excellent body language book on detecting deceit and then began gently asking people who displayed clear signs they were conflicted about what they’d just said to see if they actually believed it, and found in most cases, they did not (but frequently did not realize until I pointed it out).
• Some of the worst things which have happened throughout history were well-intended but ended up being catastrophic because their advocates could not see the full picture (e.g., why the action was a bad idea) and refused to change course once their peers or real-world results showed them they were causing more harm than good.
• Generally speaking, most people want to do the right thing and help others, but due either to their circumstances or the difficulty of doing the right thing, most won’t. Likewise, the majority of people I observe do “evil” things I do not deem to be evil people who wish to harm others.
• In most cases, evil follows a slippery slope, so once people acclimatize themselves to doing something wrong (e.g., for the “greater good” or to protect a “vital” institution), their resistance to doing it again gradually each time they repeat the act.
• It is very easy to design social systems which uses some combination of the previous to force well-intentioned people to do bad things and many institutions do just that.
• A small portion of the population does not have this resistance to hurting others, commonly characterized with labels such as “sociopaths” or “psychopaths” which for context are defined as:
Psychopath (0.5-1% of the population): A person with a severe form of personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy, shallow emotions, manipulativeness, and a tendency to engage in calculated, predatory behavior. Psychopathy is often considered to have a biological or genetic basis, with traits present from an early age.
Sociopath (1-4% of the population): A person who exhibits similar antisocial behaviors but whose traits are thought to be more environmentally influenced, often developing due to trauma, abuse, or social factors. Sociopathy is often less severe than psychopathy and may involve more impulsivity.
Note: psychopathy often goes hand in hand with narcissism and Machiavellianism.
• While some people take joy in hurting others (e.g., masochists) I find most of these monsters don’t wish to hurt others, they just have no concerns if others need to suffer for them to get want, hence making apathy far more destructive than malice.
• One of the major flaws in government is that its structure is extremely vulnerable to psychopathic individuals grabbing the reins of power and then forcing everyone else to go along with their prerogative. Because of this, I believe the best form of government humanity has developed is one of checks and balances where those individuals are continually forced to compete with each other for power (hence preventing any one of them from going to far off the deep end).
Note: the major problem with a bureaucracy full of robust checks and balances designed to impede government abuse, is that it also ofter prevents anything from getting done (which in turn begets corruption as that is often the only way to move things through the bureaucracy).
Black Pills
“Taking The Red Pill” is a cultural idiom from the Matrix where the main character was given the choice to fully awaken to the nightmare around him everyone had lied about or lull himself back into a complacent reality which ignored all of it.
Once people become aware of the scale of problems around them, it frequently leads to a sense of despair, and in time, this hopeless realization began being referred to as “being black-pilled.”
One of the recurring themes in any alternative movement is there will be a black-pilled subset of the group which shoots down any proposal to make things better under the logic such as “it’s futile to ever make things better so if you try to, you’re just getting scammed,” “all the things being proposed are actually distractions to keep us from fixing the real problem,” or “the person proposing this terrible proposal is actually an enemy trying to sabotage the movement.”
Note: a key point often missed by this crowd is that there are a lot of people within the system who want to help and in many cases have spent years waiting for the chance to.
In turn, while initially I was immensely intrigued by understanding the full scale of how twisted the world was, as time went on, I got more and more frustrated by people who only wanted to complain about things but never fix them, so like many others I know who wanted to make things better eventually parted ways with many of those overly black-pilled groups. Likewise, over the years, I’ve known many black-pilled people who’ve complained about everything in the world for decades as their personal life, in tandem, fell apart (despite the issues in it being easily addressable).
Presently, I believe the black-pill is incredibly seductive because it:
• Gives you a way to feel in control of your environment (by declaring it’s hopeless to do anything) and superior to others (by knowing a secret truth they don’t know). Likewise, I believe this validation explains why individuals who believe in a black-pill (or outlandish interpretation of existing data) will so aggressive in trying to get others to submit to adopting their perspective.
• Emotional and mental patterns are self-sustaining and much more comfortable to repeat than repattern. As such, black-pills have a strong subconscious appeals to individuals with pre-existing trauma or longstanding marginalization (hence causing them to accumulate in marginalized groups).
• Since they rely upon speculative inferences (e.g., that someone we’ve trusted is actually our secret enemy), black pills are essentially impossible to disprove, and as such, always provide an endless stream of attention grabbing content for those who need it even if they’ve repeatedly make false allegations in the past.
Note: since this “works” tabloid media (and in some cases the MSM) also often does it.
For all of these reasons, I try to avoid diving into most black-pills, and when I catch myself starting to, I take a step back and inevitably find that tendency is simply an expression of my own current frustration with the world. As such, I instead try to focus on (truthful) things that give people hope and actionable steps to make things better.
Note: people will often be the meanest to those they are the closest to, as it’s a safe space for them to displace their unresolved frustrations without fear of being retaliated against for their hostile behavior (and likewise they can expect to be listened to). In parallel, I find something similar often occurs to leaders in groups.
Wedging
One of the most reliable methods to handicap an opposing side is to split it into two (or more) factions and have those factions fight against each other over the split rather than having everyone focus on the bigger issue they all share. This tactic has been used again and again throughout history (e.g., a strong case can be made that much of the white-black animosity in America originated from a 1676 rebellion where both poor white indentured servants [essentially slaves] and black slaves united against the colonial elite, after which the plantation owners passed a variety of laws to create divisions against whites and blacks so they would never join together again to rebel).
A variety of terms exist for this process, and in the last few years, many have noted that this splintering has plagued the medical freedom movement. Robert Malone for example recently wrote a detailed piece on it (using the terminology Balkanization in reference to the perpetual armed conflict which followed splitting up the Balkan peninsula into smaller rival states).
See: Cyber Balkanization- Welcome to the Splinternet
Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them…
In politics, wedge issues are contentious one which divide a political base (e.g., transgenderism on the left), and then much like a wedge against wood, will split the base along its fault lines into rival factions once enough force is applied to the wedge.
In turn, one of the recurring themes I’ve run into ever since this newsletter started getting traction was people demanding I take sides on a highly divisive issue, either of which would divide and alienate many of the people here.
Note: a common “double” wedge, is that salacious gossip about someone’s target (e.g., a leader) that sows doubt will first be seeded throughout a group and then once it’s entrenched, be followed by attempts to force everyone to pick a side on that person. What’s fascinating to me is how many different scales I’ve seen this same dynamic play out on (e.g., I knew two people in a small group I belonged to who were friends, then had a falling out, after which the psychologically imbalanced one spent months doing this in an increasingly extreme fashion to the other person [e.g., they repeatedly tried to drag me into it] before moving onto something else).
Unfortunately, once these rumors are planted, people often forget how they started, so even if the original lie is refuted, the emotional impression it created persists. For example, a few months ago “to help RFK” a large influencer, citing unnamed sources, broke a nonsensical story (based off an already debunked story) about how RFK was being sexually blackmailed into silence by Israel that would be proven by a media firestorm over in the next few days (causing it to go viral). We called it out at the time and the predicted firestorm (the proof for these allegations) never happened, leading to the lie quickly being forgotten. However, the emotion behind it stuck and as a result, many in the black pill crowd are still attributing all of RFK’s “treasonous” actions (e.g., not immediately banning all vaccines) to him being blackmailed by some unspecified party.
From engaging with the people who tried to tried to “wedge” me, I’ve noticed three common subsets of them:
1. There were those who seemed to be acting in good faith, but had a force and rigidity to their mind akin to the edge of a blunt axe (hence why I prefer the term “wedging”).
2. A portion of the people were engaging in bad faith and seemed to be primarily motivated to tear people down (e.g., to build themselves up or attract monetizable followers to their brand).
3. A portion seemed to be bots that were there to split people apart.
Note: black-pilled people and people who try to wedge groups tend be a very vocal minority. As such, they create the impression far more feel that way than actually do (which, in turn, leads to content producers feeling pressured to appease that audience and hence creates a self-reinforcing cycle of negativity you often see in the alternative genre).
