Great analysis Tereza. Tell everyone it is not gut feeling. Speaking for myself and probably most others we are going off of past experience which gave us anti-vaxxers an advantage in the covid situation, but most of that past experience came with a price tag.
Thank you Helene! Yes, I was just interviewed by Jeff Brown and they couldn't come back from France to see their new grandchild in the US because his wife is only a US citizen by marriage. And my daughter's friend has a British wife and she has to show she's injected by Feb to stay in the US. If I had to choose between my marriage (because of immigration), my children or losing my house if I lost my job, I'm not sure what I would have done. I have no judgment, except of those forcing us into these hard places.
Yes and that's not mass formation you are describing, its mass extermination. If you haven't read this already here is a link to an expose news article: Letter to the editor. I found it insightful because no one has mentioned these arguments previously to my knowledge. https://expose-news.com/2023/01/24/six-mistakes-of-the-freedom-movement/
Nice article from Expose News. As an idiot who succumbed to taking the jab (daughter in public health, trip to Cancun with travel restrictions looming) I fell for some flimsy rationalizations that I personally made and ended up as a "vaccine-injured victim" (all in quotes for myriad reasons) according to the inferences made by my medical team which encouraged me to compete a VAERS finding--on my own because of the threat of repercussions by the medical systems under which my physicians were bound. I must say, only in retrospect, that the six rules mentioned by the letter writer weren't fully at play at the time of my decision. They sure as hell are now so I support these parameters moving forward:
"So before you get more people killed, understand and uphold…
1. All medical coercion is outlawed eternally, whatever the circumstances.
2. Medical confidentiality is eternally sacred.
3. The word “No” is exemption enough.
4. Refuse the tests!
5. Bring justice, regardless of acts and statutes, and stop bending the knee to unlawful legislation."
What a mess we've gotten ourselves into. The mass formation hypothesis is worth exploring. Can it explain my own personal circumstances? Maybe not but I may simply be one of those Desmet-described 10%-ers who simply made a silly (albeit life-threatening--lacunar infarct of the ventral posterolateral thalamus) mistake and resisted to the best of my ability at the time I made my fateful decision to take the jab (howbadismybatch.com Pfizer EN 6204 and EW0162). Atrocities were committed but my mistake was, largely, mine alone...notwithstanding the illicit psychopaths in Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Government.
This is a good article, and I've seen some of these arguments elsewhere, though not as often as I'd like.
I do think that focusing on data, as I've been doing lately, can still be useful. The point of my study of Vermont death certificates is to show that government agencies are lying to us and do not deserve our trust. It is not to say that I'd be happy with the loss of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms if we were actually in a real pandemic and the jabs were safe and effective.
The problem is that when I have tried to persuade people based solely on the issues of morality, ethics, and freedom, I've been accused of being a freedom zealot, as if that is as bad as being a Nazi or baby killer. Or when I I've tried to use data, I've been accused of being a murderer and conspiracy theorist. There is no point of continuing the conversation at this point. Nothing will persuade people who trust experts and mainstream news.
I say don't give up yet Mark, they are only recently, (six months or so) starting to see the light (in this case darkness). I am new to Tereza's empire thinking and I think its a great tool to decipher whether or not the information I am receiving is a keeper or going in the trash or just on a shelf for later re-examination. PS I vacationed in Vermont every summer as a kid. Beautiful!
What an excellent article and analysis! Thank you for pointing it out to me, Helene. The author is correct, either we have rights of sovereignty over our own bodies or we don't. Any time that's conditional, like the CHD victory, it concedes that we don't have that right. I hope that expose news sticks around long enough to spread this clear perspective.
Interesting idea, that we are one mind and are the dreamers. But then what's real? Feelings are real: vibrations. Some of these turn into thoughts and words.
You asked how we convince someone that their belief systems are wrong? That's where logic comes in. That's how we make people see. But if people don't want to listen there's nothing we can do.
Regarding this whole Desmet thing, I wonder if it even matters? It's just a distraction, something for us to debate about. But if I can allow myself an insult, my opinion is that his thinking is pure junk. He's just making things up to support his theory: it's a narrative. Why does he want us to believe we're all mechanistic thinkers, bad people to whom bad things will happen unless we turn to the glory of narratives? Something is very weird in all this. And why on earth is he being promoted so heavily when the flaws in his thinking are so transparent? Prime example: Desmet says that totalitarianism is “the belief that the human intellect can be the guiding principle in life and society”. That makes no sense at all. That doesn't fit with any definition of totalitarianism that I know.
Yes, strange people with money and power might believe in a tranhumanist empire that they can control, but this is certainly not "the masses." Most of us just want to be left alone to live our lives.
The question is, what do we need to do in terms of our choices for the rules under which we agree to live? We can't just all go off in our little encampments; if they succeed in monitoring and managing us all, then our encampments only go so far.
What do we do for the future? What should we focus on? I have a few ideas but nothing complete.
1. Respect informed consent to medical treatment with no penalties for refusal. If they can control our bodies then they can control us. If we can accomplish this then that stops many abuses.
2. Free press, free speech, free expression of opinions. Abolish any government interest in "misinformation": the government should not be in the position of sanctioning information. Social media companies should be treated as public utilities that may not censor opinions.
3. Individuals should be opaque to the government. The government should know as little about us as possible. Tech companies should know as little about us as possible.
4. The government should be transparent to, and accountable to, the voters.
As technology becomes more powerful it become more able to be weaponized. This is what we're seeing now with GOF viruses. We have to come to terms with the weaponization of technology and with it's abuse as it's used to manipulate individuals and society.
Then there's the question of money. We have to come to terms with the idea of the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. But what if a very few people have nearly all the gold? Money is power: let's not shy away from this as it's a basic truth. As we allow money to accumulate in fewer hands, we also necessarily allow power to accumulate in fewer hands regardless of the laws that we, the people, decide on, unless we have massive checks to that power. How do we do that?
Hi Jim! Thanks for responding here too. I make the distinction that we're the dreamer to emphasize that we, the collective we, is real. I talk a lot about that in my What is Reality? playlist on YT, some of which are on Substack but not organized together.
I agree with you about logic being the method but I think you also need a touchstone, a starting place for logic. That's where my core dogma comes in, that I'm no better than anyone else. Someone can be internally consistent in their belief that they and others like them are superior.
Your question on Desmet is spot on--why is he being promoted so heavily? Something is VERY weird in all this. Joe Atwill sent me this reaction video to Malone on Tucker Carlson re: Project Veritas: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1719973063. Looking at the whole Veritas video, it's so obviously staged, and badly acted. There's zero doubt in my mind that Malone and Kirsch are both in on it. And then Steve Kirsch says he's starting a super-PAC to get RFK elected. How does that fit?
My solutions are all about small-scale sovereignty, so that if you can't get what you need in one place, you can go to another. But I'll leave that for another playlist ...
I liked the bit in your last video about looking at reversing the situation and seeing how you feel about it. I've used the same Cuban missile crisis and "nukes on the Mexican border" examples in conversation with two friends who parrot the mainstream talking points about "Russia bad, Ukraine virtuous". I'm not sure if I convinced them, but it did make them stop and think for a few seconds.
I'm not sure I can be as optimistic as you are at the end of that video, where you talk about letting go of anger and enjoying the process. The Covidians have destroyed a good chunk of what give my life meaning and pleasure (classical music) and I'm still angry about it. I can try to hope that the fearful people who run the concert series and piano camp that I used to attend will eventually wake up and recognize the insanity and immorality of their jab mandates, but I'm not counting on it happening any time soon.
Mark, your Substack is fantastic! Even when you say, "Sarcasm is OFF for this post," you're very funny. From the title alone I had to check it out. One of my subheaders in my book is 'truthish lies and legal fictions,' and I stole the former from Steven Colbert (back when he was funny).
I attended a Vermont piano camp 20+ yrs ago! Run by a woman whose name I'll remember if I hear it. In fact I mentioned it in one of these episodes as part of a story.
Yea for data analysis! I'm a spreadsheet junkie myself. In videos I link, I say that it would only take one county to analyze its own data and compare it to what they got back from the CDC to show the lie to this whole thing. It was someone in 2021 arguing that the results for WA state and AZ showed that unvaxxed were dying at a multiplied rate that made me get up in the middle of the night and look at the reports they'd attached. It was clear from their glossy exec-level 72-pt take-away points that these weren't done by some backroom data flunky. The only difference was the formatting. And then I read the fine print to show that 2 weeks post-vax was counted as unvaxxed, flipping safety results under the guise of efficacy. A first-year stats student couldn't get away with such a poor design. My video on How to Lie with Statistics got taken off YT but I buried it in with this one (and put it on Rumble):
That piano camp is called Sonata (adults) and Sonatina (kids), and it's run by a fantastic pianist and teacher, Polly van der Linde. I attended five times in the years 2005 to 2010, and it was one of the things that got me to move to Vermont (from Silicon Valley). Unfortunately the camp is still continuing their jab mandate for 2023.
You've probably seen the El Gato Malo article about how to lie with statistics, including the two-week "gotcha" you mentioned:
Yes! It was Polly! By some quick calculations, I think it would have been 1999 or 2000 when I attended. I talk about it in the incident that caused me to develop my parenting system: "It came to a head when I returned from a piano camp in Vermont. I’d left my engagement ring at home, so I wouldn’t lose it by taking it off when I played. It was in an ornate tooth fairy box that I kept on the piano in the garaj mahal. When I opened it on my return, there was a glittering pipe cleaner ring in its stead."
If it tempers your anger at what Polly et al have done to you, remember that what they've done to themselves is much worse and probably hasn't yet fully manifested.
That's a really interesting Bad Cattitude article! I hadn't even thought about the baseline fraud that you're changing the numerator over the denominator. My middle-of-the-night eureka moment was just that the most vulnerable hospitalization and death window was being misattributed in a way that couldn't be an accident.
I read Mattias' article but it doesn't address the issues over which the Breggins criticize his theory, which have nothing to do with who originated the term. Here's a quote:
"What you are being told is a mass psychosis are individual people terrorized and traumatized by a totalitarian state that has invaded medicine, seized control of it, bureaucratized it, and terrorized individual members so that they are afraid to whisper a word of dissent for fear of ostracism, loss of employment, and even legal actions. This has nothing to do with psychosis; it is the normal or natural reaction to totalitarian abuse.
"This normal response to severe, personalized oppression with loss of autonomy stifles free will and real freedom, and suppresses the human spirit. It is further characterized by every imaginable emotional misery, depending on the individual’s vulnerabilities. It includes guilt, shame, anxiety, chronic irritability, apathy, depression, paranoia, demoralization, and denial. As most of us have experienced, these victims of oppression have very considerable anxiety and a negative reaction to anything that stimulates awareness of their dreadful circumstances and their feelings of hopelessness about ever going free."
I could be completely wrong but there appears to be a little too much bad jacketing going on in here. I think it's best that I step aside. Thanks, Tereza, but the whack-a-mole approach isn't serving my needs anymore. There's too much attacking inside the group--a group that I felt was headed towards some common ground in this new digital age in which we find ourselves.. Call it 5G warfare or simply infighting amongst like-minded individuals but I'm moving on. Thanks for the memories. Remember: they are the few and we are the many.
John Waters used that term and Jim (?) Reagan accused him of using it pejoratively, Tereza. I wanted to be certain that everyone knew that I was just using it as shorthand for the three critics who prompted all of this back-and-forth. Frankly, I wasn't bothered by the term. That trio was a bit brutal, imo. I share some of John's take on it. That should clear up your question.
John's first comments about Mattias's work appeared in September of last year I'm doubting that anyone had a chance to read them. I added them into this string for context purposes more than anything. This topic isn't of much interest to me any more. Disagreements with people who are pretty much on the same side can become a distraction. Myths of superiority, indeed. Out.
No, Reggie, I accused Waters of using the term pejoratively in my article, and I pointed out several insults that leave no doubt he meant the term that way. If Waters is accusing Hughes, et al, of attacking Desmet rather than critiquing his ideas, yet Waters does exactly what he accusing them of--yet they do it not at all--that should bother you. When you say the trio was brutal but the only thing they ever did was critique Desmet's ideas using citations and logic, it's merely saying that their arguments are sound.
Tereza, once again, does a wonderful job with opening our minds as to how we may wish to approach slicing and dicing another's ideology with this multiple "myth of superiority" piece. The stranger-than-fiction rift that I believe is truly a manufactured one comes from the over-the-top attack of Mattias Desmet's motivation extrapolated from his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Jim Reagan, in his support of the Hughes, Kyrie and Broudy ("the troika" per the John Waters' Substack piece: https://johnwaters.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-a-hatchet-job) takedown of Desmet's mass formation hypothesis includes a swipe at John Hughes's defense of Desmet from the criticism of "the troika" (not to be taken pejoratively) as being an "ad hominem" (see: the YouTube comment section under Tereza's Third Paradigm "Ideology Is Everything" segment). For context only, one may wish to temper Reagan's assessment of the Waters's rebuttal of "the troika's" 15,000 word treatise with the past September's interview of Desmet by Waters: https://johnwaters.substack.com/p/mattias-desmet-a-public-conversation?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email. Bear in mind that I have "no dog in this fight" and, apparently, neither does Tereza, but this is embarrassingly devolving into what the Malone v Breggins nonsense has become. I hope it doesn't come to that.
Hi, Reggie. I'm not sure why you'd say that 'the troika' isn't pejorative? I have a chapter on Greece in my book and it was used to describe the European Commission, IMF and European Bank. It's an odd choice to describe people but he does it throughout. A neutral word might be trio although the usual standard might be 'the authors.'
But we don't really have to get that subtle. His title calls their article 'a hatchet job' and the subtitle calls them 'lesser-spotted academics' while it says they're "rooted in envy or something more sinister." He continues "the criticism has frequently been accompanied by grotesque insinuations concerning his motives and loyalties." Isn't that an implication of motives? In the first paragraph, Waters is more explicit in calling it 'cannibalization' and those who engage in it 'willing agents' of the Establishment. So he very blatantly says that by disagreeing on Desmet's ideas, they are knowingly and willingly agents. Waters says that detractors of PT "seek to suggest that he is controlled opposition." Doesn't that seem contradictory, Reggie, that he openly says 'the troika' are willing agents of the Establishment but he needs two qualifiers--seek and suggest--in order to discern what they're NOT saying about Desmet's motives?
I've just scanned through Mass Formation or Mass Atrocity? again and I can't find a single slur against Desmet in the 15,000 words that Waters said "might be just a tweet, for it has the character and integrity of a shitpost of 240 characters." In contrast, what they say about Desmet is "With its eloquent analysis of psycho-political malaise in contemporary societies, and its elegantly simple language with which to capture the trance-like split from reality that segments of the population have exhibited since 2020, Desmet’s book, released in 2022, whet an immense global appetite for psychological understanding. He has been hailed as “one of the most sincere, thoughtful, and important intellectuals of the twenty-first century,” who “stands shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Arendt, Jung and Freud”.
And I can't agree that a $25M lawsuit is nonsense. I can't imagine the Breggins feel that way.
Great analysis Tereza. Tell everyone it is not gut feeling. Speaking for myself and probably most others we are going off of past experience which gave us anti-vaxxers an advantage in the covid situation, but most of that past experience came with a price tag.
Thank you Helene! Yes, I was just interviewed by Jeff Brown and they couldn't come back from France to see their new grandchild in the US because his wife is only a US citizen by marriage. And my daughter's friend has a British wife and she has to show she's injected by Feb to stay in the US. If I had to choose between my marriage (because of immigration), my children or losing my house if I lost my job, I'm not sure what I would have done. I have no judgment, except of those forcing us into these hard places.
Yes and that's not mass formation you are describing, its mass extermination. If you haven't read this already here is a link to an expose news article: Letter to the editor. I found it insightful because no one has mentioned these arguments previously to my knowledge. https://expose-news.com/2023/01/24/six-mistakes-of-the-freedom-movement/
Nice article from Expose News. As an idiot who succumbed to taking the jab (daughter in public health, trip to Cancun with travel restrictions looming) I fell for some flimsy rationalizations that I personally made and ended up as a "vaccine-injured victim" (all in quotes for myriad reasons) according to the inferences made by my medical team which encouraged me to compete a VAERS finding--on my own because of the threat of repercussions by the medical systems under which my physicians were bound. I must say, only in retrospect, that the six rules mentioned by the letter writer weren't fully at play at the time of my decision. They sure as hell are now so I support these parameters moving forward:
"So before you get more people killed, understand and uphold…
1. All medical coercion is outlawed eternally, whatever the circumstances.
2. Medical confidentiality is eternally sacred.
3. The word “No” is exemption enough.
4. Refuse the tests!
5. Bring justice, regardless of acts and statutes, and stop bending the knee to unlawful legislation."
What a mess we've gotten ourselves into. The mass formation hypothesis is worth exploring. Can it explain my own personal circumstances? Maybe not but I may simply be one of those Desmet-described 10%-ers who simply made a silly (albeit life-threatening--lacunar infarct of the ventral posterolateral thalamus) mistake and resisted to the best of my ability at the time I made my fateful decision to take the jab (howbadismybatch.com Pfizer EN 6204 and EW0162). Atrocities were committed but my mistake was, largely, mine alone...notwithstanding the illicit psychopaths in Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Government.
This is a good article, and I've seen some of these arguments elsewhere, though not as often as I'd like.
I do think that focusing on data, as I've been doing lately, can still be useful. The point of my study of Vermont death certificates is to show that government agencies are lying to us and do not deserve our trust. It is not to say that I'd be happy with the loss of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms if we were actually in a real pandemic and the jabs were safe and effective.
The problem is that when I have tried to persuade people based solely on the issues of morality, ethics, and freedom, I've been accused of being a freedom zealot, as if that is as bad as being a Nazi or baby killer. Or when I I've tried to use data, I've been accused of being a murderer and conspiracy theorist. There is no point of continuing the conversation at this point. Nothing will persuade people who trust experts and mainstream news.
I say don't give up yet Mark, they are only recently, (six months or so) starting to see the light (in this case darkness). I am new to Tereza's empire thinking and I think its a great tool to decipher whether or not the information I am receiving is a keeper or going in the trash or just on a shelf for later re-examination. PS I vacationed in Vermont every summer as a kid. Beautiful!
What an excellent article and analysis! Thank you for pointing it out to me, Helene. The author is correct, either we have rights of sovereignty over our own bodies or we don't. Any time that's conditional, like the CHD victory, it concedes that we don't have that right. I hope that expose news sticks around long enough to spread this clear perspective.
Interesting idea, that we are one mind and are the dreamers. But then what's real? Feelings are real: vibrations. Some of these turn into thoughts and words.
You asked how we convince someone that their belief systems are wrong? That's where logic comes in. That's how we make people see. But if people don't want to listen there's nothing we can do.
Regarding this whole Desmet thing, I wonder if it even matters? It's just a distraction, something for us to debate about. But if I can allow myself an insult, my opinion is that his thinking is pure junk. He's just making things up to support his theory: it's a narrative. Why does he want us to believe we're all mechanistic thinkers, bad people to whom bad things will happen unless we turn to the glory of narratives? Something is very weird in all this. And why on earth is he being promoted so heavily when the flaws in his thinking are so transparent? Prime example: Desmet says that totalitarianism is “the belief that the human intellect can be the guiding principle in life and society”. That makes no sense at all. That doesn't fit with any definition of totalitarianism that I know.
Yes, strange people with money and power might believe in a tranhumanist empire that they can control, but this is certainly not "the masses." Most of us just want to be left alone to live our lives.
The question is, what do we need to do in terms of our choices for the rules under which we agree to live? We can't just all go off in our little encampments; if they succeed in monitoring and managing us all, then our encampments only go so far.
What do we do for the future? What should we focus on? I have a few ideas but nothing complete.
1. Respect informed consent to medical treatment with no penalties for refusal. If they can control our bodies then they can control us. If we can accomplish this then that stops many abuses.
2. Free press, free speech, free expression of opinions. Abolish any government interest in "misinformation": the government should not be in the position of sanctioning information. Social media companies should be treated as public utilities that may not censor opinions.
3. Individuals should be opaque to the government. The government should know as little about us as possible. Tech companies should know as little about us as possible.
4. The government should be transparent to, and accountable to, the voters.
As technology becomes more powerful it become more able to be weaponized. This is what we're seeing now with GOF viruses. We have to come to terms with the weaponization of technology and with it's abuse as it's used to manipulate individuals and society.
Then there's the question of money. We have to come to terms with the idea of the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. But what if a very few people have nearly all the gold? Money is power: let's not shy away from this as it's a basic truth. As we allow money to accumulate in fewer hands, we also necessarily allow power to accumulate in fewer hands regardless of the laws that we, the people, decide on, unless we have massive checks to that power. How do we do that?
Hi Jim! Thanks for responding here too. I make the distinction that we're the dreamer to emphasize that we, the collective we, is real. I talk a lot about that in my What is Reality? playlist on YT, some of which are on Substack but not organized together.
I agree with you about logic being the method but I think you also need a touchstone, a starting place for logic. That's where my core dogma comes in, that I'm no better than anyone else. Someone can be internally consistent in their belief that they and others like them are superior.
Your question on Desmet is spot on--why is he being promoted so heavily? Something is VERY weird in all this. Joe Atwill sent me this reaction video to Malone on Tucker Carlson re: Project Veritas: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1719973063. Looking at the whole Veritas video, it's so obviously staged, and badly acted. There's zero doubt in my mind that Malone and Kirsch are both in on it. And then Steve Kirsch says he's starting a super-PAC to get RFK elected. How does that fit?
My solutions are all about small-scale sovereignty, so that if you can't get what you need in one place, you can go to another. But I'll leave that for another playlist ...
I liked the bit in your last video about looking at reversing the situation and seeing how you feel about it. I've used the same Cuban missile crisis and "nukes on the Mexican border" examples in conversation with two friends who parrot the mainstream talking points about "Russia bad, Ukraine virtuous". I'm not sure if I convinced them, but it did make them stop and think for a few seconds.
I'm not sure I can be as optimistic as you are at the end of that video, where you talk about letting go of anger and enjoying the process. The Covidians have destroyed a good chunk of what give my life meaning and pleasure (classical music) and I'm still angry about it. I can try to hope that the fearful people who run the concert series and piano camp that I used to attend will eventually wake up and recognize the insanity and immorality of their jab mandates, but I'm not counting on it happening any time soon.
Mark, your Substack is fantastic! Even when you say, "Sarcasm is OFF for this post," you're very funny. From the title alone I had to check it out. One of my subheaders in my book is 'truthish lies and legal fictions,' and I stole the former from Steven Colbert (back when he was funny).
I attended a Vermont piano camp 20+ yrs ago! Run by a woman whose name I'll remember if I hear it. In fact I mentioned it in one of these episodes as part of a story.
Yea for data analysis! I'm a spreadsheet junkie myself. In videos I link, I say that it would only take one county to analyze its own data and compare it to what they got back from the CDC to show the lie to this whole thing. It was someone in 2021 arguing that the results for WA state and AZ showed that unvaxxed were dying at a multiplied rate that made me get up in the middle of the night and look at the reports they'd attached. It was clear from their glossy exec-level 72-pt take-away points that these weren't done by some backroom data flunky. The only difference was the formatting. And then I read the fine print to show that 2 weeks post-vax was counted as unvaxxed, flipping safety results under the guise of efficacy. A first-year stats student couldn't get away with such a poor design. My video on How to Lie with Statistics got taken off YT but I buried it in with this one (and put it on Rumble):
Domestic Truth Agents Unite! https://youtu.be/kOIVjqS2-ms
That piano camp is called Sonata (adults) and Sonatina (kids), and it's run by a fantastic pianist and teacher, Polly van der Linde. I attended five times in the years 2005 to 2010, and it was one of the things that got me to move to Vermont (from Silicon Valley). Unfortunately the camp is still continuing their jab mandate for 2023.
You've probably seen the El Gato Malo article about how to lie with statistics, including the two-week "gotcha" you mentioned:
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/bayesian-datacrime-defining-vaccine
Yes! It was Polly! By some quick calculations, I think it would have been 1999 or 2000 when I attended. I talk about it in the incident that caused me to develop my parenting system: "It came to a head when I returned from a piano camp in Vermont. I’d left my engagement ring at home, so I wouldn’t lose it by taking it off when I played. It was in an ornate tooth fairy box that I kept on the piano in the garaj mahal. When I opened it on my return, there was a glittering pipe cleaner ring in its stead."
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-caret-system
If it tempers your anger at what Polly et al have done to you, remember that what they've done to themselves is much worse and probably hasn't yet fully manifested.
That's a really interesting Bad Cattitude article! I hadn't even thought about the baseline fraud that you're changing the numerator over the denominator. My middle-of-the-night eureka moment was just that the most vulnerable hospitalization and death window was being misattributed in a way that couldn't be an accident.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mattiasdesmet/p/why-robert-malone-didnt-make-up-the?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android
I think this piece directly from Mattias Desmet might defuse the criticism he's had to endure on various platforms on Substack.
Hi, Reggie. I'm surprised that you posted this here and not on the most recent, #12, article I've done on Robert Malone or maybe the one where I cite the Breggins' four articles on Desmet: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-the-breggins-part-one.
I read Mattias' article but it doesn't address the issues over which the Breggins criticize his theory, which have nothing to do with who originated the term. Here's a quote:
"What you are being told is a mass psychosis are individual people terrorized and traumatized by a totalitarian state that has invaded medicine, seized control of it, bureaucratized it, and terrorized individual members so that they are afraid to whisper a word of dissent for fear of ostracism, loss of employment, and even legal actions. This has nothing to do with psychosis; it is the normal or natural reaction to totalitarian abuse.
"This normal response to severe, personalized oppression with loss of autonomy stifles free will and real freedom, and suppresses the human spirit. It is further characterized by every imaginable emotional misery, depending on the individual’s vulnerabilities. It includes guilt, shame, anxiety, chronic irritability, apathy, depression, paranoia, demoralization, and denial. As most of us have experienced, these victims of oppression have very considerable anxiety and a negative reaction to anything that stimulates awareness of their dreadful circumstances and their feelings of hopelessness about ever going free."
I could be completely wrong but there appears to be a little too much bad jacketing going on in here. I think it's best that I step aside. Thanks, Tereza, but the whack-a-mole approach isn't serving my needs anymore. There's too much attacking inside the group--a group that I felt was headed towards some common ground in this new digital age in which we find ourselves.. Call it 5G warfare or simply infighting amongst like-minded individuals but I'm moving on. Thanks for the memories. Remember: they are the few and we are the many.
John Waters used that term and Jim (?) Reagan accused him of using it pejoratively, Tereza. I wanted to be certain that everyone knew that I was just using it as shorthand for the three critics who prompted all of this back-and-forth. Frankly, I wasn't bothered by the term. That trio was a bit brutal, imo. I share some of John's take on it. That should clear up your question.
John's first comments about Mattias's work appeared in September of last year I'm doubting that anyone had a chance to read them. I added them into this string for context purposes more than anything. This topic isn't of much interest to me any more. Disagreements with people who are pretty much on the same side can become a distraction. Myths of superiority, indeed. Out.
No, Reggie, I accused Waters of using the term pejoratively in my article, and I pointed out several insults that leave no doubt he meant the term that way. If Waters is accusing Hughes, et al, of attacking Desmet rather than critiquing his ideas, yet Waters does exactly what he accusing them of--yet they do it not at all--that should bother you. When you say the trio was brutal but the only thing they ever did was critique Desmet's ideas using citations and logic, it's merely saying that their arguments are sound.
I read the trio's (no "troika' here, okay?) critique a few times and felt it contained fallacies (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman; https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem; https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic). I'm not condoning or criticizing Waters's efforts given what he said in September. If I used the word brutal, I'll take it back and soften it up if anyone sees the need.
Tereza, once again, does a wonderful job with opening our minds as to how we may wish to approach slicing and dicing another's ideology with this multiple "myth of superiority" piece. The stranger-than-fiction rift that I believe is truly a manufactured one comes from the over-the-top attack of Mattias Desmet's motivation extrapolated from his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Jim Reagan, in his support of the Hughes, Kyrie and Broudy ("the troika" per the John Waters' Substack piece: https://johnwaters.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-a-hatchet-job) takedown of Desmet's mass formation hypothesis includes a swipe at John Hughes's defense of Desmet from the criticism of "the troika" (not to be taken pejoratively) as being an "ad hominem" (see: the YouTube comment section under Tereza's Third Paradigm "Ideology Is Everything" segment). For context only, one may wish to temper Reagan's assessment of the Waters's rebuttal of "the troika's" 15,000 word treatise with the past September's interview of Desmet by Waters: https://johnwaters.substack.com/p/mattias-desmet-a-public-conversation?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email. Bear in mind that I have "no dog in this fight" and, apparently, neither does Tereza, but this is embarrassingly devolving into what the Malone v Breggins nonsense has become. I hope it doesn't come to that.
Hi, Reggie. I'm not sure why you'd say that 'the troika' isn't pejorative? I have a chapter on Greece in my book and it was used to describe the European Commission, IMF and European Bank. It's an odd choice to describe people but he does it throughout. A neutral word might be trio although the usual standard might be 'the authors.'
But we don't really have to get that subtle. His title calls their article 'a hatchet job' and the subtitle calls them 'lesser-spotted academics' while it says they're "rooted in envy or something more sinister." He continues "the criticism has frequently been accompanied by grotesque insinuations concerning his motives and loyalties." Isn't that an implication of motives? In the first paragraph, Waters is more explicit in calling it 'cannibalization' and those who engage in it 'willing agents' of the Establishment. So he very blatantly says that by disagreeing on Desmet's ideas, they are knowingly and willingly agents. Waters says that detractors of PT "seek to suggest that he is controlled opposition." Doesn't that seem contradictory, Reggie, that he openly says 'the troika' are willing agents of the Establishment but he needs two qualifiers--seek and suggest--in order to discern what they're NOT saying about Desmet's motives?
I've just scanned through Mass Formation or Mass Atrocity? again and I can't find a single slur against Desmet in the 15,000 words that Waters said "might be just a tweet, for it has the character and integrity of a shitpost of 240 characters." In contrast, what they say about Desmet is "With its eloquent analysis of psycho-political malaise in contemporary societies, and its elegantly simple language with which to capture the trance-like split from reality that segments of the population have exhibited since 2020, Desmet’s book, released in 2022, whet an immense global appetite for psychological understanding. He has been hailed as “one of the most sincere, thoughtful, and important intellectuals of the twenty-first century,” who “stands shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Arendt, Jung and Freud”.
And I can't agree that a $25M lawsuit is nonsense. I can't imagine the Breggins feel that way.