A wee ‘quibble’ before a strong affirmation: Wendell Krossa
I am not with Shellenberger and Jordan Peterson in their arguments (in other forums) for the general restoration of religion/Christianity in society. They appear unfamiliar with Historical Jesus research and the critical distinctions between Jesus’ message and Paul’s Christ myth. But where Shellenberger is good, he is real good. Notably in probing the psychopathology of elite domination in our societies, as in, for example, the Censorship Industrial Complex. He was a main figure in exposing the Twitter Files corruption of liberal democracy.
This from actress Justin Bateman, posted below in Shellenberger’s article: “I am neither one extreme or the other,” wrote Bateman, “but am one of the millions of people who believe in common sense, and that everyone should be free to live their lives however they want, unless that freedom interferes with someone else’s freedom to live their own life.”
“We Are Only Now Starting To Recover From The Madness: Its political power has broken, but Wokeism is still ruining the culture”, Michael Shellenberger, Nov. 10, 2024
https://www.public.news/p/we-are-only-now-starting-to-recover
Shellenberger is responding to posts on X by actress Justin Bateman…
He quotes from Bateman’s posts: “Decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years,” she wrote. “I have found the last four years to be an almost intolerable period. A very un-American period in that any questioning, any opinions, any likes or dislikes were held up to a very limited list of “permitted positions” in order to assess acceptability.”
Shellenberger notes that Bateman is not conservative and, in fact, writes from a more liberal perspective. Bateman says that over the past decade Wokeism discarded common sense, demonized intellectual discussion and only permitted certain speech and behavior.
Shellenberger continues with Bateman’s comments on Wokeism where “Complete intolerance became almost a religion… and one’s professional and social life was threatened almost constantly. Those that spoke otherwise were ruined as a warning to others.”
He notes that many other liberals agreed with Bateman’s assessment of how Woke especially took over Hollywood. “We spoke to more than 25 writers, directors, and producers—all of whom identify as liberal, and all of whom described a pervasive fear of running afoul of the new dogma.”
He adds: “The dominant emotion was fear: fear of being attacked by the Woke. While the latter was far more violent, the fundamental characteristics were the same — including the desire to remake society and the tendency of particularly weak individuals to join in with the mobs created by the bullies.”
Shellenberger ends his references to Bateman’s posts, noting “Bateman closed her thread by referring readers to the classic 1841 book about the psychology of mobs, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay — another touchstone Gen Xer book.”
Then he continues: “As my colleague Alex Gutentag and I wrote on November 6, only now are we starting to get over what happened over the last 10 years. By “we” I mean the two of us and the rest of the country. There needs to be accountability for what happened. We need to undo all of the awful policies put in place, including the racist quotas. And we need to get all the truth out about what happened, from governmental abuses of power to the damage done to individual people, our institutions, and the culture….”
Shellenberger says, “At bottom, Bateman was right. What happened in America over the last 10 years was un-American. It wasn’t who we really are, at bottom. The election was as much a vote against Harris, and the awful totalitarian Wokeism she represented, as it was a vote for Trump.”
Open the Dore to some interesting discussions…
Unbelievable, as Dore plays varied world leaders (Putin, Houthi leader, Xi, etc.) calling for peace now. As Jimmy says, this is the opposite of what mainstream media have been telling us that no foreign leaders respect Trump. He notes that lying mainstream media are run by the war machine that doesn’t want peace. Listen to the clip of J. D. Vance calling for a new more respectful US approach to other countries.
Vance says, “We have built a foreign policy on lecturing, hectoring, and moralizing foreign countries and they don’t want anything to do with that… I believe we should pursue a foreign policy that is rooted in respect…” That from the man they tried to smear as “weird”.
“Global Leaders React To Trump Win By Calling For Peace”, The Jimmy Dore Show podcast with guests Roseanne Barr, Drew Pinsky, and others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g262RL3bNw0
Restore the place of religion in society? Nah. Wendell Krossa
Contrary to George Bush’s recent comment, among similar others, we don’t need a generalized return to, or revival of, religion. We need a clear understanding of the best and highest ideals ever offered to inspire and guide the better angels of our nature to overcome tribalism, domination, and punitive retaliatory response to differing others.
Wherever we get these ideals clear, whether through religion or from non-religious sources, they will point us toward how we tower in stature as maturely human. Mandela framed ideals like unconditional love non-religiously (“It brings out the best in others… It turns enemies into friends”).
Honing the issue a bit more: We need the best definition of our defining ideal- love. As per, for example, Bob Brinsmead’s comment that if love is not unconditional then it is not authentic love. That fundamental nature of love as unconditional is self-validating as true.
We need a clear grasp of the highest reach of love as universal (i.e. nontribal), serving (non-dominating), and restorative (not retaliatory, punitive eye for eye justice).
Before probing more the topic of tribal dualism, Wendell Krossa (This is a response to a recent interview of Tucker Carlson where he suggested there was a greater cosmic spiritual battle between good and evil that was expressed in the battles of good against evil in this world. Nah.)
To fully understand the problem of tribal dualism we do need to recognize the Zoroastrian myth of the cosmic dualism of a Good God versus a satanic spirit, and how that metaphysical dualism has been used to validate much of human tribal dualisms in history.
But I do not believe there is some great spiritual battle behind our earthly struggles of good against evil. I do not believe that some evil spiritual entity or force exists behind the evil that we confront in life. I could be wrong, but I think that the evil in life can be explained well enough in terms of the animal inheritance inside us, particularly by the evil triad of animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive retaliation to harm and destroy differing others.
Others have suggested this also. See, for example, “Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil”, by Lyall Watson.
Amazon advertising blurb on this book:
“At a time when violence threatens to become epidemic and genocide takes the place of diplomacy in many regions of the world, it is no longer enough to simply dismiss such dark behavior as “human nature.” People need to know why such atrocities and horrors take place, and the usual moral, religious, political and philosophical explanations have proved inadequate.
“With Dark Nature, world naturalist Lyall Watson presents a scientific examination of evil. Drawing on the latest insights of genetics, evolutionary ethology, anthropology and psychology, he takes the discussion of evil out of the realm of monsters and demons to reveal it for what it truly A biological reality that may be terrifying but can be controlled. Groundbreaking, fascinating and eminently readable, Dark Nature is a vital and timely antidote to modern despair.”
Further, add here Jeffrey Schwartz’s book “You Are Not Your Brain”, and apply that title to the animal inheritance in our brain. That inheritance of animal impulses is not the real us, it is not our true human self. We are something higher and better with a human spirit that is inseparable from the God that is love.
The overall story of humanity is the story of exodus from our animal past to become human. And our human consciousness and human spirit are something uniquely different from the animal. We are not our animal inheritance, despite the residual influence of that in our brains.
Continuing…
I do not believe there is some great cosmic dualism expressed through the battle of good against evil in this world. Historical Jesus rejected that in claiming that ultimate “spiritual” reality was only Love, unconditional Love. There was no ultimate metaphysical cosmic dualism of good and evil.
And hence, there was no “spiritual battle” behind this-world tribal dualisms of good people versus bad people. Behind the this-world struggles of tribe versus tribe, all people were included in the love of God as one human family. Therefore, we were urged to love our enemies as family. As Joseph Campbell cautioned us, when we engage what our intellect tells us are battles against evil, we must remember that those we term “enemies” are still our family. If we forget that then we lose our humanity.
The animal inside us all, is enough to explain good versus evil. And that explains the real battle of good against evil that takes place inside every human heart, the real battle against evil that we must all win.
The worst of evil that we see in life can be understood as the psychopathic-like reversion to a more purely animal emotion or state that cannot or will not feel the harm done to others. Evil in this world is the cruelty of people giving way to their predatory instincts inherited from our animal past, giving way to the impulses to tribal separation, domination of weaker others, and retaliatory, punitive destruction of others.
More coming on the liberation that was aborted by Paul’s Christ myth, the short-circuiting of the greatest potential liberation ever that could have occurred if the stunning new theological insight of Historical Jesus had been embraced. Again, if you claim to “believe in Jesus” then honor him for who he really was and what he actually taught. Start taking him seriously. Many secular/materialist types have and thereby got his message right. Note for example, Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy.
More framework for comments on this site, Wendell Krossa (A bit of theology for the “Christmas season” that should have been the “Historical Jesus season”)
This site is fundamentally oriented to liberation. Thorough liberation. Deeply rooted liberation. The greatest-ever potential liberation of human mind, spirit, and life. It’s about how we understand reality and what or understanding does to our minds, emotions, motivations, and behaviors.
A critical insight to a profound liberation in human understanding was offered two millennia ago by Historical Jesus.
(Insert: I use this term “Historical” repeatedly to emphasize the real historical person who was entirely opposite to Paul’s Christ. Again- My reference to Historical Jesus has to do with the most dominant ideas/icons that have shaped Western consciousness and civilization.)
Continuing…
The profound insight offered by H. Jesus was almost immediately (two decades later, circa 50 CE) short-circuited by the man who emerged as the chief opponent of Jesus, the apostle Paul who created the Christ myth that overturned entirely the central “Q Wisdom Sayings” message and insights of Jesus.
Subsequently, we in Western civilization got Paul’s Christ-ianity with the buried “Jesus-ianity” barely still present but hardly recognizable because of the larger New Testament context that contradicts it. The essence of Jesus-ianity (the message “of the man”) has been distorted by the dominance of Paul’s Christ in that same context (Paul’s contrary message “about the man”).
In the central Jesus message, humanity was offered the single most critical insight to liberate human minds from the primitive mythical themes that had long enslaved human psyches. And no theme was more critical to transform and enable liberation than the human understanding of deity- long the cohering center of complexes of primitive myths.
In the core theme of the Jesus message, the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel, we were offered the “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory deity” (James Robinson), a non-threatening God who exhibited only universal, unconditional love for all humanity.
That stunning new theology was presented in this statement (my corrective summary): “Do not respond to offenders with ‘eye for eye’ retaliation but instead love your enemies because God does. How so? God gives the most basic elements for survival in agrarian life- sun and rain- to both good and bad people”.
That breakthrough theme and insight of Jesus offered the potential to transform human narratives entirely and liberate humanity from the worst of primal fears, none more primal and potent in generating fear than the dominant ancient belief in punitive, destroying deity. That belief had long been summarized in the myth that gods were behind natural disasters, disease, accidents, and predatory cruelty. Those retaliatory gods manipulated the harsh elements of the natural world to punish people for their “sins”.
Paul embraced that mind-deforming myth and repeated it in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, stating to the Corinthians that God was making them sick and killing them as punishment for their sins. Paul re-enforced the worst of primitive slavery of mind, spirit, and life. But then, what did we think, he was the guy who urged “slaves to submit to masters”. (Note: Yes, I am aware of the arguments that letters like Ephesians may not be authentically Pauline. But I accept that most Christians, and others, understand the New Testament as basically Paul’s book. That is the general public perception that I am referencing.)
And further exacerbating Paul’s error, with his Christ myth he re-enforced the worst features of primitive threat theology, projecting the myths of lost paradise, angry deity punishing people for ruining paradise, life declining toward worse, toward apocalyptic ending as ultimate punishment of human sin, demand for sacrifice/payment, suffering as redemptive, demand for purging of evil in a violent apocalyptic cleansing of the world, and promised salvation for true believers in a renewed communal utopia. See details of Paul’s main themes in the varied New Testament books.
Threat theology drives my project to go to the deepest roots of what enslaves us to fear and then liberate our minds from fear at the deepest levels of the human psyche. I mean, liberate especially from fear that is generated by false narratives that distort the true state of things, that distort the true state of life. Liberate from narratives that lie to us with apocalyptic-scale exaggerations that are intended to incite our survival impulse, apocalyptic narratives that manipulate us in order to control us and render us subservient to elite salvation schemes that destroy our lives in order to “save some world”. The irrational and destructive salvation schemes of manipulating alarmists are buttressed with claims that life is under threat from their opponents, some great evil enemy.
Just a bit more marinating on the Jesus insight:
Imagine the core of all reality, the Ultimate Reality, the reality that creates and sustains all material reality and all other realms, the reality behind all life here on this planet, imagine that reality is love. And not just love as we commonly know it, but the highest and best form of love- no conditions love of transcendently infinite quality. That is the central insight and theme of Historical Jesus, the heart of his message.
Historical Jesus tried to reveal that inexpressibly amazing love in his stunning new theology that was a profound reset or reframing of the real nature of God, an entirely new and contrary theology to all previous theologies across past history. He was trying to do what Joseph Campbell said about the term “God”, that it was just a penultimate term pointing to an infinitely transcendent reality beyond- the “God beyond God”. Something infinitely beyond comprehension. Something far more than just “God is love”. A “God beyond God” as in “love beyond love”, transcendently beyond terms, words, definitions, categories, or comprehending thought.
And add that Jesus said that the reality of divine no conditions love was inside each of us- “The kingdom of God is in you”. Meaning that God is immediately present as Love inside all human life and experience. The God incarnated equally in all humanity as inseparable from our human spirit. And that divine love constitutes our essential self. Add further, that love is then our ultimate home, we are all ultimately safe in that love.
That removes the sting of death that has long been based on the idea that death was divine punishment for human imperfection (i.e. the Eden fall of man myth). No, death is the transition back into infinite Love.
Some will protest that the Jesus message is speculation on the “spiritual” or metaphysical, hence, lacks credibility as an insight. But look at the content of what the man said. The type of love that he argued for is self-validating as the highest good- i.e. unconditional love. Most people get that unconditional love is the highest form of love (highest form of good) from personal experience with family members and friends. It’s an intuitive conclusion for most people.
Unconditional is simply our best understanding of what is right, good, and true. So do a theodicy thing with this- If God is ultimate “Good” then that means God is not just “God is love” but God is the ultimate reach of love- unconditional love. Unconditional, for all the problems and misunderstandings that accompany this term (i.e. that it promotes pacifism in the face of evil), is still most useful for orienting minds toward the highest form of good or love. This is one way that we get to what is then most true and most real (another approach to TOE).
Continuing with the irrational panic that is generated by exaggerated threats…
Apocalyptic-scale exaggeration is repeatedly disgorged by the “climate crisis” crusade and its propaganda arm, the mainstream media across the world, notably the BBC, CBC and Global in Canada, and most of US mainstream media. These and other media obsessively push an insane “madness of crowds” movement that is destroying societies with its salvation scheme of Net Zero decarbonization. The apocalyptic climate crusade has incited fear, anxiety, and depression that is ruining young people. That is the psychopathic element that ignores and denies the harm that is done to others.
A central element in my “fighting fear” project- The concern to pushback against fear that is based on fraudulent narratives that are intended to manipulate and control people. This is the great evil of alarmists who try to panic and thereby dominate others. Such panic-mongering is all the more egregious in light of such things as the Jesus insight to the opposite- that a non-retaliatory God is a non-apocalyptic God. This is “big background narrative” input.
Add to the egregiousness of alarmist panic-mongering the fact that amassed physical evidence has revealed there is no decline of life toward apocalyptic ending but, to the contrary, life continues to improve toward a better future.
The “spiritual insight” stuff, along with physical evidence on the trajectory of life, point us toward liberating new themes for our narratives. Toward true liberation from fear.
Note to the Hollywood public story-telling machine. Apocalyptic has been rightly termed “the most violent and destructive idea in history” (Arthur Mendel in “Vision And Violence”). So why does apocalyptic still dominate Hollywood film-making, as well as the propaganda of the news media and its leftist Woke Progressivism?
My interest is- Where and when did this all start in history?
I heard and experienced apocalyptic millennialism firsthand (felt its impact on human consciousness and life) during my few years in Evangelical Christianity back in early 70s. That detour into apocalyptic religion was due to family pressure.
Why does apocalyptic alarmism continue endlessly across human history in both religious and secular/ideological versions? I probe history to understand the root contributing things to such mental and emotional pathology and its persistence in our narratives.
For example, I look at the themes behind the “climate crisis” crusade and I see the same old outline of reality-distorting themes from our primitive past, themes of (1) original paradise ruined by bad people, (2) life then declining toward something worse, toward apocalyptic ending, (3) demand for two-part salvation- sacrifice/payment and purging of evil threat to life, then (4) the promise of restored paradise or communalist utopia.
And I see historians detecting these themes as the driving factors behind the general ideology of Declinism, the most dominant and influential theme in our modern world (i.e. Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”). I read the other historians who have also traced the apocalyptic millennial ideas that drove Marxism and Nazism and are now driving environmental alarmism.
I see the historians noting that apocalyptic millennial myths are Christian ideas. And that Christian influence on apocalyptic alarmism then takes me right back to the great contradiction between the messages of Historical Jesus and Paul.
Jesus had outright rejected the myth of an apocalyptic God by stating that there should be no more eye for eye retaliation against enemies based on the belief that God did not retaliate against enemies (the old “behavior based on validating belief” relationship). There should, instead, be love for enemies because God loved enemies as evident in the fact that God gave the two most critical gifts of agrarian life- sun and rain for crops- to both good and bad people alike. God did not punish the bad people with retaliatory justice. God was a non-discriminatory, non-retaliatory reality. God was therefore non-apocalyptic because apocalypse is the ultimate expression of retaliation in the destruction of all life to punish people’s sin.
The non-retaliatory, non-apocalyptic God of Jesus was the “stunning new theology” that would have liberated people from the monster deities that had generated so much fear across all previous millennia of human mythmaking and religious belief.
But then Paul rejected that new theology of Jesus and retreated to revive the theology of retaliatory, apocalyptic deity in his apocalyptic Christ myth. See his first letters to the Thessalonians, among others- i.e. Lord Jesus will return inflaming fire to punish and destroy all who don’t believe my apocalyptic Christ myth. See also the book of Revelation for the graphic portrayal of the apocalyptic Christ violently destroying the world to punish human sin. This theme of violent apocalyptic destruction has dominated our Western narratives, consciousness, and societies for the past two millennia.
Paul’s Christ myth was the singular major factor at the turning point of the BCE/CE era, in further solidifying the basic primitive archetypes of the human subconscious (Jung’s “collective unconscious”), especially for us in the Western tradition.
Further- There is a psychopathic element to apocalyptic-scale fear- and panic-mongering that harms people with the intention to manipulate and control them, to dominate them with the intention to coerce them to support the alarmist’s salvation schemes.
H. L. Mencken got this right, that…
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”.
Apocalyptic-scale panic-mongering is the great psychopathology in our societies that validates elite totalitarianism. It is the elite tool, or formula, of “Fear=control”. All to re-establish and re-enforce the elite/commoner divide in our societies.
Many today are doing a great job analyzing pathologies like narcissistic virtue-signaling of compassion for oppressed groups, that is actually the deformity of “cruel compassion” because of the outcomes of policies that destroy lives (i.e. Net Zero decarbonization). The virtue-signaling based on a deformed narrative permits the narcissist to identify as a hero engaged in a righteous battle against evil enemies.
The Woke Progressive and climate crisis crusades, more than others, illustrate the deluding power of the fraudulent apocalyptic narrative that ignores or denies the horrific harm that is caused to real people, especially to the poorest sectors of the population. Look, for example, at Keir Starmer in Britian zealously pushing Net Zero decarbonization that is further impoverishing the poorest people the most and ruining the entire British society. So also, observe the same climate apocalypse myth driving the destruction of German industry and society. Both examples of “destroying life to save the world” illustrate the delusional impact of apocalyptic narratives that grant people validation to narcissistically virtue-signal as heroes righteously fighting evil enemies to save the world. Its such an entire deformity of the hero’s quest.
So I look at our contemporary social/political issues/movements for themes that drive them, that shape them, and what such issues and movements illustrate about greater background themes and movements across history. I see common and fundamental narrative themes, notably themes that validate the totalitarianism of the elite/commoner divide in our societies.
I see once again, today’s elite alarmists terrorizing populations with apocalyptic scenarios to coerce people to submit to their salvation schemes that demand commoners embrace subjection to just another version of the same old collectivism, where enlightened elites dictate all areas of life for commoners- i.e. what people can eat or not, what energy people must use even if it destroys their societies, whether they can travel or not, how many children they can have or not, and on and on.
The basic themes of apocalypticism must be understood and countered if we are to break the endless eruptions of destructive apocalyptic hysteria that ruin our lives and societies.
There, I’ve finished my rant on how to engage the greatest liberation possible, liberation of mind, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior from the worst of primitive mythologies. Liberation at the depths of the human psyche, at the level of subconscious archetypes.
Point? Our contemporary “madness of crowds” climate apocalypse crusade is the direct offspring that has descended from Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth. And this need not have happened. We had the stunning alternative offered to us two millennia ago. That breakthrough non-retaliatory, non-apocalyptic theology of Historical Jesus could have liberated us from apocalyptic lunacy once and for all. But we accepted the burial of that mental/emotional liberation in the New Testament that re-enforces Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth.
Just a note: Wendell Krossa
This writer has read a lot of general research on how people have thought across history, how they have structured their narratives, the main themes that they have embraced to explain reality and life, the influence of their narratives on themselves, and the outcomes in their societies. Of particular interest is how a complex of common themes has persisted across history in all human narratives, both religious and in more recent history in “secular/ideological” narratives. Joseph Campbell: “People have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world”.
Understanding the complex of common themes is critical to problem-solving as per the military guy’s advice that you can tamp down eruptions of religious violence like ISIS but that form of madness will only keep re-erupting until you go after the ideas that drive such violence.
More on two great influencers, Wendell Krossa
The central issue to get clear with the Christian tradition, and what went wrong there, is to get clear the profound contrast between the core message and themes of Historical Jesus and the entirely opposite theology of Paul.
This is critical because it deals with the very essence of human narratives and meaning. The different theologies of these two religious icons deal with humanity’s highest ideal and authority, the most dominant element in our belief systems- i.e. the reality that, as ultimate ideal and authority, most prominently shapes and guides our lives. The theologies of these two people frame the most influential of all realities- i.e. the nature of Ultimate Reality, and that more than anything else provides the most critical input into the meaning of all else, and therefore also insight into the purpose of all reality and life.
The nature of Ultimate Reality- i.e. theology- informs everything else, and in the case of the breakthrough insight of Historical Jesus, it transforms and liberates like nothing ever before.
The great contradiction between Jesus and Paul is about such fundamental differences as retaliation versus non-retaliation, domination versus non-domination, tribal hate versus oneness love, fear versus hope, and so much more.
As Arthur Herman argued that Plato and Aristotle battled for the soul of Western civilization (“The Cave and the Light”), so I would argue that Jesus and Paul battled for even higher stakes- for TOE, for all the marbles. Jesus and Paul were/are far more influential in terms of the outcomes on societies from their differing messages, than the differing narratives and positions of Plato and Aristotle.
The differing theologies of Jesus and Paul is TOE-level stuff. The meaning and purpose of everything.
“Oh Sammy Boy (Tim Obert)”, Wendell Krossa
Sam Harris provides a contemporary example of how a deformed narrative twists minds into irrationality and blinds people to reality. Note his defending the great lie of “Russian disinformation” that was used to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. That was unprecedented interference in an election that influenced the outcome of that election and made a lie of free and open democracy and fair elections in the US.
https://nypost.com/2022/08/19/sam-harris-defends-silencing-the-post-on-hunter-biden/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsSlobq8aoc
Harris supported that lying, censorship, and interference, that rejection of democracy, because he sincerely believed the narrative that the Republican candidate for the presidency was a threatening evil monster and that consequently the sky was falling. Such delusion in a PhD mind. Rejecting democracy, corrupting democracy to “save democracy”. Huh? WTF?
That is what apocalyptic exaggeration does to even self-identified intelligent minds- i.e. that there exists some evil enemy destroying your world, a grotesquely exaggerated monster posing existential threat to your world. Apocalyptic deforms consciousness. It deforms human personality, morals, and actions. Then anything goes, any corrupt “desperate measures” are legitimated when you imagine that your world faces apocalyptic ending.
Remember also Stephen Hawking falling into apocalyptic delusion over the last 2 years of his life. Sheesh, eh.
More on how exaggeration of the big bad wolf incites panic, deforms minds, and creates hysteria and delusion. Meaning that Sam Harris is “mentally ill” in terms of what Dr. Drew outlines below. Yikes, and that PhD did not protect him from the worst virus of all- the Woke Progressive infection.
This is another illustration of how exaggerating imagined threats incites irrational fear in people, inciting more hatred and tribal division, and the consequences are never good for any society.
“Dr. Drew bashes mainstream media and left’s ‘hysteria and delusion’ over Trump, says media is changing: Drew says that the left’s ‘extreme hysteria and delusion’ is a result of mainstream media,” Jeffrey Clark, Nov. 13, 2024
Clark’s article begins, stating that, “Dr. Drew Pinsky analyzes the left’s reaction to President-elect Trump’s victory and how to handle people experiencing ‘extreme delusion’ on ‘Hannity.’”
He notes that Dr. Drew Pinsky called the media’s reaction to President-elect Trump’s election victory “hysteria and delusion”.
“The source of this has been mainstream media,” Drew told host Sean Hannity. “The American public has been propagandized to the point that they literally become mentally ill.”
He adds that Pinsky says, “The thing about delusionality is it can’t be reasoned with… We have literally been through a stage of delusion that started with the first Trump presidency. It was put into absolute orbit with Covid.”
Pinsky recommends “compassionate firmness” as the best response to this hysteria and delusion.
“Argumentation will not work,” he continued. “They’re delusional. But firmness. Because the reality is this is like a cult. What do cults do? They separate families. They separate the cult member from the family. And this is how they get their way. We must fight against that.”
We are well into a new totalitarian eruption across Western liberal democracies and one of the tools of the current wave of totalitarianism is to constantly propagandize, lie, and distort reality with “misinformation/disinformation” programs. Here is an essay on this trick of the totalitarian trade.
“Misinformation: The Fictional Foe of Free Thought”, Charles Rotter, Nov.12, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/12/misinformation-the-fictional-foe-of-free-thought/
Rotter says that the term “misinformation… is a linguistic cudgel, wielded to discredit opposition and enforce adherence to a narrative.” It is just the latest attempt “to control thought under the guise of protecting it.”
He notes a study where the author explains that misinformation “is deployed not as a genuine concern for truth, but as a rhetorical weapon aimed squarely at dissent. By labeling contrarian perspectives as dangerous misinformation, the authors effectively close the door on debate and entrench themselves as arbiters of what can—and cannot—be discussed.”
He then asks the critical question in regard to freedom of speech- “Who gets to decide what is true and what is false?”
He emphasizes the critical point that there has been “a relentless campaign to delegitimize dissent, particularly in climate science… a consistent pattern: framing opposition as irrational or conspiratorial rather than engaging with their arguments.” This has been a project to “pathologize dissent”, to “consolidate power by silencing opposition”.