“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
― G.K. Chesterton
People are fed up with experts. Understandably too. Many of the people who are billed as experts are lackluster cogs in the government administrative state. Chesterton was correct in the statement above, but there is another truth that ought to be held in parallel.
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking uneducated people seriously.
What we have today are two types of uneducated people. We have one set who take the experts super seriously, hanging on every word as if it was an infallible revelation from God. We have also another set who believe that their total lack of understanding of a topic gives genuine support to their opinions.
In reality, knowing nothing about a topic, and then discussing it, makes you an idiot. Almost every topic has a set of knowledge without which you cannot even approach knowing what you do not know. This applies from the arcana of nerd games to the workings of geo-politics; from questions of deep theological importance to the nature of the physical world.
I present now two examples:
There are many people convinced that masks will save them from the horrors of the new Black Death — COVID. There are others convinced that masks are entirely pointless, and nothing more than a humiliation ritual exerted by tyrants. The first uneducated set believes the CDC implicitly, and the second haven’t even stopped to consider why surgeons always wear a face mask. Masks don’t do everything, neither do they do nothing. The relative legality or constitutionality of mask mandates has no bearing on whether masks help or not. Equally irrelevant are the pronouncements of the cut-rate lab-coat wearers at the CDC and the WHO. The reality is like mail-in ballots – if you wouldn’t mail $500 dollars in cash to someone, you shouldn’t trust the mail with your ballot. Likewise, if you would be horrified by a surgeon operating without a mask, you cannot also claim that masks are pointless.
The mask example is one, and here is another. I have found many people believe that vaccines can be used to introduce genetic modifications into an adult. These people also tend to believe that in making COVID, NWO scientists tried and failed to make a bioweapon. They honestly believe that Bill Gate’s scientists can edit their entire genome with a single shot, but failed to make a disease that kills more than 0.1% of the people who get it. This is a perfect example of people believing that their lack of education grants them greater understating and insight. Yet these people do not even have a clue about the relative difficulties involved. They do not even realize that if scientists could edit a persons genome, they could make a disease with whatever CFR they wanted. The one thing is so very much more difficult than the other. Now, I honestly believe that Bill Gate’s vaccines are fundamentally untrustworthy, but for the reason that there are a lot of nasty things that can be done that are much simpler than editing genomes.
Having credentials does not make someone trustworthy, but we should keep in mind that the lack of credentials also does not make a person trustworthy.
The following statements are commonly believed at the same time, by the same person:
1) The coronavirus cases are inflated: to make COVID look worse.
2) The COVID deaths are inflated: to make COVID look worse.
3) COVID is a lab-generated disease.
4) The COVID pandemic was planned, and organized by NWO types.
5) Parenthetically, many people who believe 1-4 also believe that NWO types want to dramatically diminish the global population.
6) It is then concluded that COVID is no big deal.
I also think that #1-5 range from possible to probable. So let us consider what these mean, logically. Item #1 being true drives up the true CFR with respect to the official one, while item #2 being true drives down the CFR (CFR = known deaths/known cases). We have no real world information as to which item (#1 or #2) has a stronger effect. You can make the equation:
Who is to say, though, whether the effect of X is greater, or less than, than that of Y? For practical decision making, these two items are a wash, leaving an estimated CFR of 3-5%. The conclusion of believing both 1&2 isn’t that the disease is less dangerous than advertised, but that it spreads less quickly than advertised. This is a trait it would share with more deadly diseases, not less deadly ones. The disease being relatively deadly, but spreading rather slowly, also be consistent with the need for the NWO types in #4 to occasionally do things to boost the spread of the virus – like encourage people to party for Chinese new year, or to riot and protest due to the Floyd death – both of which items were essentially bio-terrorism.
Item #3 was obvious back in February; someone used CRISPR to make a boutique virus. This is one of those things, the type of gene editing required to insert some HIV genetics into a SARS base is not complex compared to the state of the art CRISPR experiments. The only real question here is not if COVID came from a lab, but which lab it came from. While a treatment or vaccine may or may not ever be found for a disease, you can give scientists a little bit of credit when making new creepy-crawlies for bioweapons. I’d image somewhere there is bubonic plague spliced with genetic code to make it resistant to most or all known antibiotics… These things could be done, and by the observed rules of our world, someone therefore has done it. It is always easier to make something that destroys than something that protects.
Item #4 is certainly not a stretch of the imagination, and #5 is well documented. People openly discuss ‘overpopulation’ etc.
And here, therefore, is the cognitive dissonance. I cannot understand how anyone could believe with conviction items #1-5 and confidently conclude #6. At the very least, some part of the mind should open to the possibility that when COVID comes rolling through the area, precautions should be taken.
And notice, none of this argues that COVID has been handled appropriately by government authorities. It is actually possible to believe that there is a real event, even a crisis, occurring; and at the same time to believe that the government is screwing up the response.
Next, two sets of data for consideration. (link to FT page) Think about these.
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Finally, perspective: This is from a while ago, that ‘novel corona virus’ dot is now bigger than everything at the bottom, and halfway to the Hong-Kong flu. It isn’t Spanish flu yet, although that got worse on mutation which caused most of the deaths. But the Kung Flu is actually something: not black death, but something.
In the story, the boy who cried wolf, was right once… the fact that H1N1 etc turned out to actually be ‘just another flu’ doesn’t mean that this will do the same.
I suspect he was right about both the predatory publishing (a method of inflating one’s academic credentials) and the new program… after all, in response the university: 1) Told him that faculty, staff, and students were afraid of him 2) refused to give him access to complaints against him 3) ordered him to take a psychological evaluation or be forced onto medical leave 4) banned him from campus and confiscated his keys… which seems more like what you’d do with someone making threats of mass murder or something…
He messed up, he thought that the university cared about excellence…
I have thought a lot about how people in the modern world can separate fact from fiction, how to determine who is lying, and get at some semblance of the truth. Since Qanon suddenly became the massive story (as predicted…by Q… maybe that wasn’t a hard prediction to make, but it is a data point), and I have been tracking the Q story for a while I thought it would make a great test case in Internet Epistemology… Mostly because if it is true, it is the biggest thing happening today, and if false, is an amazing example of narrative building.
But first, a couple of points.
A conspiracy theory is just the derogatory term for the idea that a large number of people make plans in private. This idea is not actually false: see the Bolsheviks, the Borgias, political campaigns, business deals… calling it a ‘conspiracy theory’ is just the modern way to make it so that people don’t have to think, they can just dismiss something as ‘tin foil hat’.
There are pedophiles and evil people do evil things. Rich, powerful, evil people almost certainly have the means to get away with an amount of evil that most Christians cannot imagine.
The Hollywood gossip blog Crazy Days and Nights (CDAN) has accurately called a number of ‘surprise’ sex scandals long before the news broke, including Weinstein.
That CDAN has for a long time been posting about large scale procurement and delivery methods for pedophiles is a data point not easily dismissed, especially in light of the NXIVM cult. A demand for something produces a market and logistics…
So, that Qanon spends a decent amount of time talking about cracking down on pedophiles does not disqualify the group.
So first, who is Qanon? Somebody is posting in places like 8chan somewhat cryptic posts. You can see all of them archived here: Q posts. Here is an example:
I won’t try to unpack it. The idea is that Q is someone, probably military intelligence, who is close to President Trump. This person, or team, is using the obsessive types who spend time on sites like 4chan and 8chan to process hints into real intel that the wider public could digest in order to prepare the country for what it actually means to ‘drain the swamp’.
If you think these internet types are useless… check out this…
So, if these obsessive types could be pointed at the right targets, they could become a kind of minuteman intelligence agency. Not really for gathering intelligence for the government, but taking hints about what the Military types and Trump know and running it down so that people know. These are the same types who brought down James Gunn…
That guy is a creeper… a very wealthy powerful creep… at minimum.
Qanon basically states that the powerful swamp types are often pedophiles and the frequently members of (or associated with) a kind of loosely-knit satanic movement that at least occasionally also indulges in human sacrifice. (I know, most readers are now busting out their tin-foil to mock Q, but wait, for now, until at least the end of our Internet Epistemology.) And that Trump is moving through a massive, tedious, and tricky process to root out as much as possible i.e. ‘Drain the Swamp’. The role of Qanon is 1) keep the Trump supporters engaged and motivated 2) help prepare people to come to terms with the evil that is just out of sight around every corner (would make the Catholic Priest scandal seem little in comparison) and 3) spread some disinformation to the ‘black hats’ when necessary.
Is this impossible? Well, the Devil whishes to be worshipped and has always really enjoyed pedophilia and child sacrifice. Over at ‘The Other McCain’ (a site you should read often…) McCain writes:
Just yesterday, I wrote about a CIA leaker busted for child pornography. It is very easy to write a phrase like “obviously unhinged” to dismiss suspicions about “child sex rings” as a way to imply that (a) such things don’t exist, (b) no Democrats or celebrities could be involved, and (c) Trump couldn’t actually be working to bust “child sex rings.” Isn’t it a curious coincidence, however, that celebrities were involved the NXIVM sex cult, which didn’t get busted until Trump became president? And let me remind you of a few headlines:
That’s just a small sample of creeps who’ve been busted the past few years, and don’t forget about this story from 2014:
A new lawsuit has revealed the extent of former President Clinton’s friendship with a fundraiser who was later jailed for having sex with an underage prostitute.
Bill Clinton’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, who served time in 2008 for his illegal sexual partners, included up multiple trips to the onetime billionaire’s private island in the Caribbean where underage girls were allegedly kept as sex slaves. . . .
Tales of orgies and young girls being shipped to the island, called Little St. James, have been revealed as part of an ongoing lawsuit between Epstein and his former lawyers Scott Rothstein and Bradley Edwards.
A billionaire friend of Bill Clinton had a private island with teenage sex slaves, but it’s “obviously unhinged” to suspect that other Democrats and celebrities may eventually be exposed as pedophiles? Is it far-fetched to think President Trump may be getting Justice Department briefings about ongoing investigations of child sex rings? Is it a crazy conspiracy theory to believe that some administration “insiders” might know who’s under investigation, and that they might anonymously post tips on Internet forums?
Also, that Jeffrey Epstein has this on his private island.
That is a temple, as per admission… and well, its not anything good. Zoom in of the statues…
Alright, now that you know a tiny taste of what Qanon is about (For a further, very detailed, introduction see: Neon Revolt). We have now started our Internet Epistemology (IE). We must not dismiss something just because all the news outlets over the last 48 hours have called it crazy. We can check background issues like the existence of NXIVM, Epstein, and the apparent increase in crackdown on pedophiles. And reasonably can conclude that more consideration is needed. We can continue with our IE experiment.
Let us investigate the claim that Q is close to President Trump. Sometimes, Q signs off as Q+ and that is intended to mean that Trump himself posted that post. That is how close we are talking. Lets take Q post #1776. Being an America First type, Q obviously had to commemorate that number somehow. He posted this picture.
The question is: is that or is it not, Donald Trump’s signature under the pen. (And why cover half the signature?) If you compare, it is reasonable to accept that the signature is Trump’s. Does that prove that Q could step over to Trump and say ‘Hey, I need to post #1776, could you sign it?’ No, it really doesn’t. With phenomenal planning, the President’s signature is not impossible to come by.
Next, we have a video of the presidents motorcade passing some supporters, one of whom has a sign asking Q to honk. and… listen, it is towards the end of the 1 min clip.
Many Q followers point out that the Morse code for ‘Q’ is dash – dash – dot -dash… what the white van at the back of the motorcade beeped… Does that mean that Q is real?
.
.
.
Not really, but it probably does prove that someone travelling with the president knows about Q, at least.
How about Trump recognizing a Q shirt?
Or… or… or… if you believe Q, the evidence is everywhere (there are many, so called ‘Q confirmations’). It could be brilliantly engineered confirmation bias, or it could be real. If you don’t believe it, every proof has deniability. And then again Q would say that was on purpose so that the plan could be followed. Q often reminds people to ‘Trust the Plan’
How can we know? What is real? Every Christian epistemology must start with what we know from what scripture teaches us. We know that throughout the old testament the Israelites bounced between sacrificing their children and fornicating by the Ashtaroth poles and begging God not to destroy them utterly. We know that the Prince of this world is powerful and real. We also can infer some of his favorite things: such as Child Sacrifice. Why would he give that up now, knowing the depravity and wickedness of the current generation? We also know that God raises up men from time to time to punish the wicked and bring comfort to His people. Is that Donald Trump? Maybe, maybe not. But I can say this: the narrative that has been masterfully built by Qanon fits reality far better than the narrative built by the MSM.
OK, maybe that’s all tinfoil-hat stuff, but you can’t just call it “baseless claims” and pretend you’ve proven that everything about #QAnon is false. Because for all you know, next week’s headlines will be a new scandal you never imagined in your wildest dreams, and the #QAnon guys will point to a previous tip and say, “See? We told you so!”
One of the best parts about the Qanon is that predictions are made, and sometimes seem to come true. Also, Qanon has an expiration date of November of this year. We will know one way or another. Either a lot of powerful (whether you know their names or not, like Tony Podesta) people go to jail or they don’t.
I think that Qanon is near the president and is at least a counter narrative. Maybe some or many things are not true, but the narrative is truer than that found in the MSM. I think Qanon works to build a back-channel between Trump and the American people so that the conspiratorial monopoly of the MSM cannot destroy the country. (If you think they are not in a conspiracy, look up Journ0list)
I think that Qanon is part of the show that our realty TV president is putting on, all while working for peace in Korea and 4.1% GDP growth and high employment. Whether it is more than that remains to be seen. Internet Epistemology at his point is at least well begun. And as they say, well begun is half done.
Either way, as Q would say, ‘Enjoy the show’.
Update: Q has been posting “Something BIG is about to drop. Q” on and off for a couple of days… so maybe the timeline for knowing the truth is sooner than November…
Maybe the conquistadors reported relatively accurately the horrors of Tenochtitlan. (It also clearly explains why so many neighboring tribes joined the Spanish… at least they weren’t making skull mountains… Maybe modern anthropologists ought to leave off the noble savage propaganda…
I deleted my account today. No more Facebook. (I had to do one of those prove you are not a bot enter the letters thing… almost couldn’t do it. I have trouble with them for some reason.
When you get fed up with Facebook too… here is a nice description of how to delete your account.
The Dusty Thanes 