#115 Don’t Say Anything at all (Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying DarkHorse Livestream)
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7LB9DkxkwNK2em5lphKHfo*****In this 115th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.This week, we talk about the two tiers of society: vaccinated and unvaccinated. Then we discuss the more hidden, and more dire, tiers being introduced first by the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, and now by Homeland Security, in its crackdown on mis-, dis-...
Hey, folks, welcome to the Dark Horse podcast live stream.
I now know for sure it's episode 115.
I can surmise just by staring at it that 115 isn't going to be prime.
Right.
I mean, not even close, really.
And we're coming to you 20 hours late.
Sorry about that.
And before I forget, top of the hour, we're not going to be here next week.
We may sneak in an extra episode somewhere, but we will not be here next weekend.
Yep, but I should say before we get any further, congratulations, we have accomplished something substantial.
We are... well, no, we have half accomplished something substantial.
We are more than halfway through winter.
This is true.
Which is wild.
I mean, you know, we've gone around the corner, it's warming up, the days are getting longer, it's quite something.
Yeah, this is the time in the season where the photo period is palpably changing daily, like the days are getting longer.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, we've had a couple of just completely glorious spring-like days, which does a lot to help with the mood, even when the rest of the world seems very dark.
And of course, what is happening in Ottawa also does a lot to help with the mood.
We continue to hear, and we'll be talking A little bit about this today, but really just continue to encourage people.
We've been hearing from people there.
I will continue to post about it on my Substack, on Natural Selections, and what is happening in Canada with the Freedom Convoy, Truckers for Freedom.
It's going by a lot of different names.
I think, you know, history has not yet decided what it will go down as, but The Legacy Media's take on it seems to be being disbelieved by more and more people, so far as I can tell.
It is demoralizing to see the absurdities that they are spouting continue to be spouted, but there are now many, many people who are live streaming from Ottawa.
I've mentioned Viva Frye here before, and I think he's the biggest, and he's just extraordinary at what he does.
There are a lot of people doing it, also from the Ambassador Bridge.
And going there and watching just the footage on the ground of what people are experiencing and who these people are is beyond heartwarming.
That's just such a triviality.
This is humanity in action.
This is democracy in action, but that's too small.
This is sort of the best of what humanity can bring, I think.
Yes, it's great and it is also marvelous that the authoritarians appear not to have considered that there would come a day when people would start waking up to their bullshit and so they keep doubling down and, you know, Trudeau, bless his heart, says really fascistic sounding stuff and you can just kind of read it there, you can say, Well, gee, I wonder if these are the good guys.
They don't really sound like the good guys, and the fact that, you know, we have armed police descending on the bridge, you know, it's all pretty... The Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan.
Yeah, it's quite clear who the...
Who the good guys are in this case.
And anyway, it's also amazing that this is an international movement.
This rebellion against the authoritarian instincts of our various federal governments is it's it's important.
Yes, indeed.
Just keep talking for a minute.
Right.
All right.
Sorry.
I'm going to keep talking about, well... Oh boy, I'm not going to be able to find it.
Someone in my Twitter feed, I don't like to do that very often, but posted an excellent response with regard to sort of, you know, who are the good guys here?
And I could summarize it, but I was hoping to find it, and I'm not finding it.
Well, here's the thing.
It just so happens that this week, the universe has delivered us a completely unambiguous signal about who the good guys aren't.
And we are going to go there.
So to the extent that people may be a little bit hazy on this concept, by the end of this broadcast, you will no longer be hazy because they have effectively announced we are not the good guys.
Indeed.
All right, so just logistics before we continue on content for today's show.
We are streaming as usual on both YouTube and Odyssey, and Odyssey is where the chat is if you are here live with us.
You can ask questions for the second hour, which we'll be doing after we're done here now, at darkhorsesubmissions.com.
We never get to all the questions, but we encourage you to ask them and we get to as many as we can.
You may consider joining us at our Patreons.
Brett had your conversations for your Patreons last weekend, and they were, as usual, spectacular.
Spectacular.
Amazing how many really interesting people show up, and I know the purpose of these conversations is not for me to learn stuff, but I do every time.
It's like a really good There it is, like right there.
And that indeed is one of the distinctions between what so many people are craving and what I believe we were doing both in the classrooms and are trying to do here.
And what the legacy institutions are informing us that we absolutely need to sit down and be responsive to.
Both the public health officials wielding their scientific credentials and the educational system saying, sit down, shut up, receive the wisdom, and then unto you shall be educated, or public health, or whatever it is.
Of course, that's not the way you get educated, that's not the way science works, that's not the way a democracy should work, and that's not how humans wander around their worlds trying to make it better for other people and themselves by simply taking in information, not questioning it, and accepting it, and having it add to what amounts to an ideology as opposed to a working model of how the universe works and how they should behave.
Yeah, what you describe as your patron conversations is, you know, it's funny that you, you know, that you have to almost apologize, or that you felt compelled to say, well, you know, it's not for me, because these are people showing up and, you know, in this case, paying some money, just like with college education, right?
You're showing up, you're paying some money, therefore it's not supposed to be for the professors.
But for God's sake, if the professors aren't learning something from the interaction, then it's probably not much of an education, is it?
Yes, absolutely right.
And although it was not my plan, I would like to revisit This question about how education should work in light of MDM, and I realize most of you don't know what MDM is, but you're gonna know.
I don't think I do.
Right, you don't, do you?
All right.
Right, you're gonna be amazed, but I think if we take the MDM taxonomy, and I'm not saying MSM, mainstream media, we all got that one, right?
Are you gonna remember this or should I be taking notes?
You don't have to take notes, we'll take mental notes.
You take mental notes.
Done.
Okay.
Okay, so when we return to the MDM taxonomy, we can map it on to the very high quality model of education that we have just discussed and, you know, take it out for a spin.
All right.
We'll be spinning it.
We have, as usual, if you're interested in Dark Horse merchandise or direwolves or epic tabbies or digital book burnings, that stuff is available at store.darkhorsepodcast.org.
As I mentioned already, Natural Selection is my substack, which is at naturalselections.substack.com.
I haven't had nearly as much this week as last week, but this week I did post some of the remarkable portraits that a Canadian photographer by the name of Dan Aponte, boy, he and I have been in a lot of conversation.
I'm not actually sure I'm pronouncing his name correctly.
I hope I am, Dan.
I posted some of the remarkable portraits that he took on the second Saturday of the truckers convoy of the Truckers for Freedom protests in In Ottawa, which I've now begun to hear people calling an occupation in a good way.
Like, we're here.
We are here, and we're going to stay here until the Band-Aids go away.
And that is part of what we'll be coming back to after we do our ads and such here.
Well, I feel like occupation actually is a little bit like, I think, the term woke.
Some of us were not sure what to call the woke revolution back when people typically called it social justice warriors, right?
Because social justice warriors is pejorative.
And if you want to just simply say this thing fails on its merits, I don't need to, you know, I don't need to label it badly in order to reveal how broken it is.
The point is woke is a term that's actually viewed positively inside the movement.
And those of us on the outside can use that term and say, look, this is nonsense.
It's not what woke used to mean.
And I think occupation, you know, I've seen a lot of battling around.
It doesn't strike me as negative because of course, you know, I will speak for myself.
I was part of the Occupy movement, which became an absurdity, but it started out as a legitimate complaint about the TARP program and the financial collapse of 2008 and what it revealed about corruption.
And the point was, Occupation Was a method when we didn't have a method to get the attention of the government and say actually this is unacceptable You can't do this to us right too big to fail as an excuse to bail out people who caused this and it's falling on our backs occupation was the method and I must say I'm Excited to see that occupation has been
Upgraded by clearly, clearly working class people who have a legitimate gripe with the federal government, which has obviously captured the imagination of many, many millions of people, not just in Canada, but across the globe.
And this is part of where we'll be going shortly.
An invitation to web developers out there.
We are looking for one, someone who is, you know, hopefully beyond competent, who is both creative and technically skilled, and who can potentially build some sites for us, such that we can then do updates and maintenance on them ourselves, or have someone else do that on our behalf.
Anything you want to add to that?
We encourage you to send your information along with links to some of your work to darkhorsemoderator at gmail.com.
Do you want to add anything?
Sorry, the reason we delayed yesterday's podcast is I have had a gluten reaction, a cough, which I think owes to a big hit of gluten that I accidentally ingested.
Anyway, it's much better than it was, but I will try not to cough through the broadcast.
But yes, I would say in looking for this web developer, we're looking for somebody who has skills enough to take
What we're looking for and figure out how to problem-solve around these things So there are obviously lots of people who can put up a web page but it needs to be a web page that we can modify that we can make specific requests and That you have the skill to Bring it into reality rather than to force what we're looking for into some mode that you have experience building
And we're looking for a few, so this could be an ongoing relationship that was beneficial to all, hopefully.
All right, so then without further ado, we will bring you our three sponsors for the week.
As usual, we are grateful for them.
They help provide a serious financial buffer for us in an era when There is deplatforming and demonetizing going on all over the place, so we are grateful for their support of us and their enthusiasm for what we're doing.
Okay, our first sponsor for the week, first of three, is Sol, a sustainable orthopedic footwear company.
Sol is one of two footwear sponsors that we have, and we love them both.
They are quite different from one another, while both being focused on creating shoes that help feet get and stay healthy and people become more mobile.
Our other sponsor, Vivo Barefoot, specifically aims to give you the sense of being barefoot in your shoes.
Hence the name.
Sole, S-O-L-E, with both their shoes and their footbeds brings structure back with intention, which may well be a better move on specifically hyper-novel environments like the concrete and asphalt that so many of us are mostly working on, uh, working on, walking on.
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Our two boys are wearing these shoes so much of the time now.
They take some getting used to.
The structure under the arch is unusual, but once you get used to them, they provide great support for feet.
They really do.
I'm wearing a pair too.
And again, they look great.
Sole shoes look terrific, but if you're just looking for footbeds to make shoes you already own be healthier for your feet, try the footbeds.
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And this offer is applicable to all items on the Seoul Store, be it footbeds or footwear.
All right, number two.
Our second sponsor is Ned.
No, not Ned the Dude.
Ned is a CBD company that stands out in a highly saturated CBD market.
Ned was started by two friends who discovered that their hypermodern lives were leaving them feeling empty, bewildered, and disconnected.
Something about this way of life, they say on their website, just wasn't working.
So they started Ned.
You can buy CBD products in nearly every coffee shop, grocery store, but Ned's blends stand out.
Their De-Stress Blend, in particular, really impressed us.
Ned's De-Stress Blend is a one-to-one formula of CBD and CBG made from the world's purest full-spectrum hemp and also features botanical infusion Oh goodness.
Ashwagandha.
Ashwagandha.
I think you got it.
I think I got it.
Ashwagandha, cardamom, cinnamon, CBT is known as the mother of all cannabinoids because of how effective it is at combating anxiety and stress by inhibiting the reuptake of GABA.
The neurotransmitter responsible for stress regulation.
I will say that reading about this does induce stress.
The product itself does not.
Sounds like what you need is...
Too late!
Many of the CBD companies out there source their hemp from industrial farms in China.
Just like with low-quality alcohol, however, low-quality CBD can have undesired effects.
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Thank you, Ned, for sponsoring the show and offering our listeners a natural remedy for some of life's most common health issues.
Our third sponsor for today is Relief Band, a product that can help with nausea.
First though, a little bit about nausea.
As we've talked about before, under ancient circumstances and some modern ones, nausea was generally a useful signal that something is off.
You had eaten something you shouldn't have or were near something emanating a bad smell, itself a signal that you should not get near it.
We talk about this actually a bit in Undergatherer's Guide.
In modernity, we still need to track our bodily sensitivities.
We should not always choose to simply erase discomfort like nausea whenever we feel it.
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You know, I never used to have car sickness, but as I get older I find that I do.
I'm just totally sick of cars.
Yeah, I don't think, I don't think this will help with that.
I think it's, I think, that's a shame.
I think that's different.
That's different.
Yeah, I think not driving could help.
Maybe you could put one of the bands around the car.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I heard Zach groaning with appreciation for your comment.
Maybe appreciation.
Maybe exasperation.
Could be.
Could be.
Yeah.
You just don't know when you've got an amazing teenage producer.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Here we are.
As always these days, there are practically an infinite number of places we could go.
And so we'll miss many of the things even that we had decided we really wanted to cover, no doubt.
But I was thinking maybe we start by talking about what you and I are both seeing, but have somewhat different perspectives on, although I don't think that they are incompatible perspectives.
I think we are just kind of filing them differently.
With regard to the creation, explicit really, creation of tears in society.
So, I've been alarmed, frankly, and part of this is just obvious.
Much of the reason that there is so much pushback against vaccine mandates by the vaxxed and unvaxxed alike is that many people are seeing accurately that this has created a society in which some people have access to all of the things that we have always had access to, and some of us do not, and that this creates an opening
And indeed an opening that many in the media are eagerly pushing as many people through as they will take to suggest that those of us who are therefore excluded by virtue of mandates are dirty, are carriers of disease, are less worthy, are perhaps not quite up to the challenge of being full participants in democracy even.
And for those of you who would suggest that's hyperbole, just wait till we get to what Brett has to bring to you.
But I will say that the thing that is, and it's not the most alarming thing, because what you're going to talk about is the most alarming thing, but the two-tiered society that is happening all around us, that the city that we live in, Portland, Oregon, does not have mandates in place.
There are many restaurants where we can still go, but there are many that we can't.
Whereas in cities like New York City and Los Angeles and Seattle and many others, I am sure, but those are the places where I know people who are there, who are, you know, good, honest people.
who have accepted the vaccine mandates without hardly looking at what it means.
And so I personally have been encouraged to come to these cities and just be there and, you know, enjoy the fruits of, I don't know, enjoy the cultural offerings of the cities and the people, and this is many, many people, I'm not pointing my finger at anyone in particular, but there are many people at this point who have not even realized that I'm not invited.
They can invite me, but having gotten there, I would not be able to do any of the things that you would want to do in a city. - The city is announcing that you are not welcome.
Right.
And that's the vaccine mandate side of it.
The part that is so alarming to me is how many people, even people with, you know, recent history in their families, of having been through the introduction of a two-tiered society in which people became dirty and untouchable and unmentionable and then not there.
Can't see this for what it is.
Feel that it is, at best, a minor inconvenience.
A fly buzzing around that, yes, that's unfortunate, but... And it is this
I don't know if it's an inability to notice or an unwillingness to notice, but a not noticing of the thing that is happening in front of us, which is part of why so many of us are utterly thrilled that the truckers and their supporters and their allies in Ottawa and at Coates and at the Ambassador Bridge in Canada are holding the line, are there on behalf of so many of us.
Saying no to mandates.
No to mandates.
Yeah, it's a beautiful thing for many reasons.
For one thing, the hypocrisy couldn't be made more obvious by anybody other than truckers, right?
The truckers who were heroes, you know, have now become villains because they're standing up for just simple rights.
And the idea that this thing will pivot on you And if you are, you know, keeping civilization afloat, then they will hold you up as a hero, but then they won't even listen to you, right?
It's like what we do to veterans.
Yeah.
Where we beckon them into, you know, National Service fighting on our behalf, and then we pretend that they're not sick with what they're sick with, and we abandon them when it comes to taking care of them once they get home.
And that hypocrisy, you know, I detest it as I know you do, but it is very revealing to the extent that it allows us to see who we're dealing with.
They weren't serious about these being heroes.
They are heroes, but the point is that was cynical, and this is cynical, and it is important that we recognize who these folks are.
It reveals, and later on I do want to talk about what it means to What the elite and the aspirational to the elite think working class means and what they think it looks like.
And this has been said often, including by us, but the cynicism reveals the disdain.
that reveals the disdain for the people who think that they're writing history, think that they're in charge because they work in the quote-unquote knowledge sector.
Knowledge sector?
My god, the misinformation sector perhaps?
And there are There are a tremendous number of people, and I dare say if it's a minority, it's a giant minority, and I'm not certain it's a minority, who have their eyes wide open and who don't have the financial power but are actually doing the work of society.
And at the point that they say, enough, It is shocking to those who are actually contributing little beyond words, and most of those words aren't honest, to see them scramble, and to see them tell lies.
Well, and to see them reveal how little they understand about the world.
I don't know if you caught, I don't remember her name, but a Harvard professor was shouting this week on Twitter about how the obvious solution to the bridge problem was to slash their tires and drain their gas tanks and then remove the trucks.
This revealed a complete failure to understand what would be necessary to remove the trucks in the first place.
Among other things, the high pressure in those tires would make that a particularly dangerous activity.
Okay, but I guess I want to say, you know, both how perfect it is that it's a Harvard professor, but I fear that this, you know, all of our understanding that, you know, the ivory tower really is a tower out of which people like to peer.
And, you know, what made us different as professors was that we insisted on not doing that.
And it made us unfathomable to many of our peers, but also actually education, educating students and approachable and interacting with the people with whom we were supposedly, you know, in a power relationship with, right?
So I would say it's not just The people at Harvard, right?
If we're just limiting this to the academics, how confused most of the people in academia are, it's not just the elite institutions.
It's everywhere.
This thing is everywhere.
This belief in, I have this terminal degree, which just means I could be In academia, when we say that, we just mean it's the last degree that is offered in that field.
degree.
It's a degrees that will cause you to be so stupid, it could end your life.
Yeah.
But yeah, in academia, when we say that, we just mean it's the last degree that is offered in that field.
So in general, it's a PhD, but it could be an MD or a JD as well, a law degree.
Or I mean, I guess an MFA, maybe a terminal degree as well, a master's of fine arts, because there's no PhD in fine arts.
Anyway, I digress.
Those people who have gone as far as they can in school and gotten their terminal degree, the last degree that they can possibly get, often just run to more school because it's the only thing they know, and because school wasn't about educating or knowledge of the world, that means that what they then feed to the next generation is Even more limited.
This partially explains the narrowing and narrowing and narrowing and less and less relevant and actually mind-expanding and eye-opening version of higher ed that we're seeing.
That people are not just being canalized into ever more specialized fields, but they look around and they're like, well, I don't understand what's going on out there.
Wow!
Nature is complex.
And the actual interactions with people, how about I just categorize them as, I don't know, deplorables, or Nazis, or whatever it is, and go back to my little room where I can say that all you need to do is slash the truckers' tires and we'll solve this problem.
It's not hilarious, and it is.
This was obvious to us when we were working academics, right?
You could walk into a faculty meeting and you could ask yourself the question, how many people in this room actually know something that would be good for students if they were to pick it up, right?
Yep.
It was not a high enough percentage to make sense of a college or university.
You know that I adopted a bar for what you should have in order to be qualified to teach college students?
Yes.
And it was a really low bar.
It was two things.
You should It's kind of three things, maybe.
Maybe it's a slightly higher bar than I thought.
You should know something real that you can communicate, and I thought of those as one thing.
Know something real that you can communicate and fundamentally believe in the humanity of your students.
And the number of academics I've met who fail on one or all of those fronts is astounding.
Utterly astounding.
And even if you think, oh, well, they do, they know something really, they're kind of dynamic as a lecturer.
Well, get them behind closed doors where you can't, where the students can't hear them.
And the kind of talk that goes on is It's horrifying.
Yeah.
And you know what?
People can feel this.
Just like people who are actually working class actually doing work that needs to be done can feel the disdain dripping off the legacy media and the academics and the elites in government and public health, so too can students in a classroom feel when their professors have no respect for them at all.
And they don't show that.
The students know better to not show it, but it's a big theatrical game.
I also adopted a bar that I would go to after faculty meetings in order to try to shake it off, you know, apply to go a long way.
You didn't, but that's, you could have, well.
Yeah.
But yes, it's a...
It's a fascinating puzzle, but I think it also, you know, if you go back to your original point about, look, I don't really want to go to New York.
New York is broadcasting.
I am not welcome for phony reasons of my being a hazard to somebody, which I am not, right?
And of course, this does unavoidably allude to, you know, Jude and Frey and all sorts of historical circumstances that we now understand clearly in retrospect.
But, I also think it is worth understanding how we got here.
Yeah.
Right?
And how we got here means how you and I got here, and it also means how those people who don't understand that they're inviting you to a city that is broadcast and you are not welcome, don't see it.
Right?
Yeah.
Because what happened to us, as our longtime watchers and listeners will know, Is that at the beginning of the vaccine campaign, you and I were alarmed by the fact that the public health authorities were saying these things are safe and effective.
And we knew there is no way they could know they are safe.
It might turn out that they were harmless.
But it's not safe because they couldn't say anything about the long-term impact.
Nobody on Earth could.
And so to tell us there's no risk here, when we can tell there's no way you could know there's no risk, was alarming.
Out of the starting gates, we know you're lying to us.
Maybe the lie has no effects, but the fact that you are doing that right away tells us we can't trust what you say.
Right.
And people will remember the example that if you walk into a room and there's a gun on the table and you put it to your head and you pull the trigger and it goes click, was it harmful?
No.
Was that a safe activity?
Absolutely not.
Right.
And so the point is those two things are distinct.
We all know what they mean if we think carefully about it.
And you and I were alarmed and that caused us to delay.
What we thought we were going to do, which was get vaccinated, but the point is let's give this some time and see if anything emerges that suggests this isn't a good idea, and then those things did emerge.
Now many people, understandably, did what one does in light of a vaccine that they are told has passed safety tests, is useful in fending off a disease that we know is dangerous, and they got vaccinated quickly.
Well, and I think more to the point.
They were told That if you do this, and enough of your countrymen do this, everything goes back to normal.
You get your lives back.
And that was clearly never going to happen.
And I don't know if it actually would have happened had these been the safe and effective treatments that we were told they were.
And presumably, Hopefully, no one knew how not safe and not effective they were at the time we were being told that.
But it was not just, oh, the public health authorities tell me to do this, therefore I'm doing it.
It wasn't that kind of acquiescence.
It was also a desperate need to return to people's lives.
And people bought it.
People believed.
Because they needed to believe.
Because they were done being in lockdown and being kept from each other and being scared of a thing they couldn't see.
They were convinced.
They convinced themselves that this was the panacea.
This was going to be the thing.
They believed because it was inconceivable that they would be lied to in this way.
Many thought they were being lied to as a matter of noble lies, but it was inconceivable that somebody was going to misrepresent these things at this level.
I think you and I are saying two different things, and I think they're both true.
What I'm saying is not about the lie, whatever it was.
It is about why people wanted to believe.
Yeah.
We're going to get to what you want to talk about here with regard to the other kind of tier being created in society.
The place where you and I – and again, I don't think it's that we aren't seeing things I don't think it's not that we're not saying things eye to eye.
It's that I think we have a fundamentally sort of like different first interest in the story.
Obviously, what does the science say?
But I keep trying to figure out why are people behaving the way they are?
And why are people behaving the way they are?
From talking to people, I can see how desperate they were to get their lives back.
And overlay that with the narrative of, well, this has to be true.
They couldn't possibly be lying to me at that level, but that's an overlay.
That's a cover story.
And what they were actually driven by, I feel certain many people was, just give me my fucking life back.
Right, of course.
Just give it back to me.
Okay.
And this language, and I think I was taken to task at one point Here, not by you, but by the audience, for using that kind of language.
Just like, you know, give me my rights.
And, you know, give me my life back.
No.
I'm taking what is mine.
You did not have the right to take this from me in the first place.
These are inalienable rights, right?
That's why our Constitution is special, is it spells that out.
These are your rights, and here are the onerous requirements that the government has to reach in order to take them away from you.
There's a reason it is structured that way.
And amazing that Canada, albeit much more recently, has something very similar in its constitutional charter.
Right.
Now, the point I wanted to make about our friends who I think are having what is apparently a natural reaction where they are failing to notice that we, their friends, are not being welcomed by the city they live in because of some Absurd story about us being a hazard to people like we all know enough about these vaccines that they fail to To prevent people from contracting this disease.
They don't reduce viral load They don't prevent you from passing it on so the point is on what basis are you actually not welcoming me?
But but my point is There is a process, which I am certain that the people engaged in manipulating us understand, in which if you have complied, even accidentally, you complied months ago because you thought you were going to get your life back for doing so, and now you are in the state of having complied.
That it is very hard to see those who are excluded by this thing, right?
And so it is actually exactly parallel to the idea that when there is a structural bias in society, if you are on the winning end of it, you may not like the idea that there's a bias.
You may not have put it there.
You may not defend it.
But the point is, you are much less exercised about it.
Then if you were on the losing side of it, right?
And so I believe that this is where we are, that people have complied because it was because the inertia pointed in that direction.
And now they are surprisingly deaf to the fact that, you know, American cities differ in how welcome people are.
At restaurants, based on whether or not they accepted an experimental medical treatment that we now know doesn't work to prevent contracting disease.
Like, did I just say that sentence?
Right.
Right?
Yeah.
Okay, so you wanted to go somewhere beyond this.
Yes.
So, just maybe I can set it up.
We had a disagreement.
We went on a nice bike ride on Friday.
Just as you were about to get hit by a gluten bomb.
And on the way out there, in the car ride, we did not start from our house as we normally would, but we went out to Arosa Trails.
And I was talking about this two-tiered society, and you said, well, it's really three-tiered.
And I end up disagreeing with you that this, I feel like these are two categorization schemes that can be mapped onto one another, but not a single categorization scheme.
But in that light, why don't you introduce Well, I think, you know, I was alarmed because you were spreading malinformation.
Malinformation?
Malinformation.
Is that like malocclusion or somewhat different?
Well, you know, it's interesting.
I don't know.
I know that it's a thing.
I was alerted to its being a thing this week by the federal government.
So anyway... Malinformation?
Malinformation.
That's what they're talking about now?
Well, sure.
Okay.
But we're gonna need to look it up because... Oh, are we?
Okay.
Yeah, it's probably nothing.
It's probably just a synonym for, you know, missing disinformation.
But it's good to check.
You want me to do that?
Well, yeah, why don't you go to this?
I think Heather's going to do it here.
Is it this one you want or the other one?
Is it the screen you want?
- Yeah. - Okay, so there's a lot of quiet now on air while you're looking at this.
I don't know what we're doing.
We are going to this paragraph.
Do you want him to put up my screen or not?
Sure, yes.
Yes.
OK.
No, apparently-- I don't know what just happened.
Okay.
I don't know what's happening.
Can you read this paragraph?
Which one?
The one that starts, while?
The United States.
So.
So this is a Department of Homeland Security advisory that they put out, I believe, on February 7th.
Yep.
Alerting us to a hazard to the homeland that we should all be aware of.
Okay.
And I think we should start at paragraph three.
Paragraph three reads, the United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis, dis, and mal information.
Whoa.
MDM.
Introduced and or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.
These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.
Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation.
Okay, now notice that they... This is the first time I'm seeing this.
This is terrorism that they are talking about, and their point is that there are foreign actors, oh yes, and domestic actors who are spreading mis...
MISDIS and MAL information.
What the hell is MAL information?
Should I click through there?
Well, we'll get there.
Okay.
And these threat actors, terrorists, are in a position to create unrest by sowing the MISDIS and MAL information online, which could potentially inspire acts of violence, right?
So that's an amazing, amazing threat.
That's a lot of weak links.
It's a lot of weak links, but, you know, maybe they're going to rescue it with malinformation, whatever that is.
Maybe malinformation is the concept we have been waiting for in order to separate the terrorists from the rest of us.
Let's see.
Okay.
Here we go, Zach.
We're back on this page at the issuance on February 7th of the National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin.
Now, they have very helpfully hotlinked mis, dis, and mal information.
That's where I am now.
Now scroll down and they will give you a taxonomy.
So actually go down a little more.
What is MDM?
Okay, so misinformation.
Do you want me to read it?
Yeah, would you read the definition of misinformation?
Misinformation is false, but not created or shared with the intention of causing harm.
So wait, some of these terrorists are guilty of spreading misinformation, but it's not intentionally misinformation, they're just kind of, you know, wrong.
Doesn't this make Both Walensky and Fauci terrorists?
No, no, no, no, no.
Because they are part of the federal government that is deploying – everybody knows that they're not terrorists.
Come on.
Anthony Fauci is a terrorist?
Oh, there's an exclusionary clause in here somewhere.
It's not really a clause, but it's kind of a come on, right?
It's a come on.
No, they're not.
Right, so basically what this does is it defines as terrorists – And actually we have no idea about their intentions.
I have no idea.
No, I think their intentions are good.
Well, then it's mere misinformation that they have.
Right.
Yes.
So, the science changes, we keep on being told now.
Having been led down this idiotic primrose path to follow the science, and a bunch of us in the beginning were like, that's not how science works.
Hello, hello, hello.
And now they're saying, well, the science changes.
So, at the point that the science changes, What's the period during which you're allowed to still be believing the past science before you convert to the future science, before you are a purveyor of misinformation and therefore a terrorist?
You, my dear, are missing the glory of malinformation.
Oh, I'm not there yet.
You're not there yet.
You have not understood that although it sounds preposterous that these people would be defining as terrorism the Being mistaken and not realizing it and saying stuff out loud that didn't turn out to be true.
That's misinformation.
Sure, sure, sure.
Let's go to the disinformation.
Yeah, yeah.
Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.
Okay, so let me give you an example of disinformation.
Do.
So let's say that the Tide Corporation says that- You mean like Procter & Gamble?
I don't know who makes Tide, but- But you're talking about the laundry detergent.
Well, sure.
Okay.
Let's say, for example, that they were- I don't actually know if it's Procter & Gamble.
That they were to say, no laundry detergent gets clothes brighter than Tide, right?
Now the fact is, They might say that, and it might be true, but it's meant to mislead you.
It's meant for you to hear that actually Tide gets clothes brighter than other detergents, when really what it says is maybe there's no difference between these detergents.
They all kind of do the job, right?
So all advertising.
I think all advertising is now terrorism.
Which, you know, I've always kind of felt that way about advertising.
But anyway, but you know, here's the problem.
The rubber really meets the road.
The whole taxonomy kind of, you know, so you've got people who are unintentionally wrong about stuff.
Terrorists.
Here's the thing.
I'm just gonna say it.
I have been unintentionally wrong about stuff at various points in my life.
I feel like I should have known this.
I feel like you did know, and sometimes you're the person who points it out.
But in any case, that puts me squarely in the crosshairs of this, but you know, frankly… Here's the thing, though.
Sometimes those shoes are on the other feet.
Which hurts like hell.
I'm also in the crosshairs.
Shoes on the other feet, in the crosshairs.
It's a mixed metaphor, but we're going with it.
It was your crosshairs metaphor.
Right, but they're my shoes.
I have also sometimes been wrong unintentionally, and you have been the one to point it out, and therefore I am also in the crosshairs.
Here's what I'm imagining.
Many in our audience will also have been wrong about it.
Who knew terrorists could be so silly?
That's the thing.
They're sneaky, sneaky people.
And, you know, humor.
We're going to get to humor, actually.
But here's the point.
Many in our audience will have been wrong at various occasions.
Right?
Do better.
Do better.
Right.
Be wrong.
I mean, not even less, because you don't want to really be a terrorist.
Play better tennis while you're at it.
Right.
Okay.
And then, you know, disinformation.
That does seem to cover not only advertising, but a huge fraction of comedy.
Courtship, also?
Uh oh, what don't I know?
It's been a long time since we were courting.
That's true.
A charm offensive, eh?
Make yourself look better than you.
I mean, this is what all non-human organisms engage in, disinformation.
Crypsis is disinformation, right?
Crypsis, oh god, you're right.
So, it's even non-human terrorists.
Oh, for sure, yeah.
Yep.
Okay, but the glory of this really has to be rescued by malinformation.
Let's go there.
A term that I think nobody until this memo had ever heard of, right?
So it's gotta be pretty good.
It's so good.
Let's see.
Malinformation is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.
You got it?
Should I read the last three lines, or should we just stick with that?
I think we should.
That's the definition of the malinformation.
So, this is great, because malinformation- So, I'm thinking about, and indeed, I was just reminded of, I went back and looked at my Fact Checkers Aren't Scientists piece, which was my very first post on natural selections.
And I walk through I think it was you and Robert Malone being fact-checked in PolitiFact, which is Facebook's fact-checking arm.
Scientists don't belong to anyone they're not supposed to if they're doing science, but fact-checkers can belong to people.
Okay.
PolitiFact fact-checked you, and I believe it was this claim that got a pants-on-fire rating, that the spike protein is toxic or cytotoxic.
And meanwhile, research out of Scripps, which Scripps' own PR department posited said that the spike protein is toxic.
Yeah, the spike protein is toxic.
Is toxic, but that, seeing that based on fact.
So for a while, no, it's not, no, it's not, no, it's not.
And apparently, okay, it is, but that's malinformation.
Because how dare you talk about that here?
How dare you talk about that here?
Because what I was trying to do was raise people's awareness that the public health authority was misleading them about safety.
And the fact that I was accurate is no defense, because I'm still a terrorist, because it doesn't matter that it's based in fact.
Even true stuff is malinformation.
That's the beauty of this definition, is that the fact that it's true is no defense, right?
How dare you say it?
Okay, so misinformation is false.
False, but accidentally false.
Accidentally false.
Disinformation is bad, but it includes crypsis and advertising and such, and courtship, a lot of it.
But malinformation just includes – malinformation is even more than mis- or disinformation in the eye of the beholder.
That's the distinction, right?
Malinformation is in the eye of the beholder, and when the eye – when the beholder is the government, And the government gets to behold you and make a claim about whether or not you're a terrorist.
And this is all it needs, then anyone, all of you, anyone at any time can be declared to be engaging in terrorism.
Anyone at any time, and that's just the beginning of the fun.
All good.
But let's go back and map this onto, for example, the teaching environment.
Okay, let's do it.
For example, let me just point out that I, in teaching, used all three of these techniques.
I was sometimes wrong.
Now, when I was wrong, somebody would sometimes raise a question that would reveal that I was wrong, and I would then correct what I had done.
But I was still guilty of information terrorism in my teaching.
Let me just say that another way that happened for both of us was we'd say something, and no one would call us out because no one knew.
And then we'd go back to our lives and go, like, wait, no, actually, that wasn't right.
And then we'd return.
of our own, of our own volition and say, that thing that I said was wrong, correct your model.
Yep.
Okay.
That's, that would have been misinformation.
Misinformation, right.
In an educational environment.
Right.
Shame.
Now, I was actually voted misinformation in high school, as you'll recall.
Back when you were a woman?
No, I don't know.
I think they were making fun of me.
But in any case, Disinformation.
So I used to use disinformation as a teaching tool.
- Yes. - Disinformation.
So I used to use disinformation as a teaching tool.
Sometimes I would-- - You would lead them down a path I would lead them down a path that I knew to be wrong.
And I would do so while hinting with my eyebrows, or whatever, that this was a good direction to go so that they would pick up steam.
And then at the point they got someplace, I would start asking them questions like paradoxes that were raised by all of the stuff that they just signed on to.
And the point is, Stop listening to authority.
Stop reading the social cues.
Pay attention to what...
Use your logic.
Use your analytical and creative faculties in order to assess what is right, rather than paying attention to the social cues of the authority in front of the room.
Great eyebrows, though he may have. - Some will argue eyebrow, but never mind.
But anyway, it was a very useful technique.
One does it with humor, one does it with generosity in their heart.
Nobody ends up upset about it because it actually ends up educating them.
And then malinformation, of course, who doesn't use malinformation in their teaching?
Because basically, malinformation are facts, and when you use facts like, let's say, the Brett's flood scientific calamity, right?
You teach about how science is a fallible process and how sometimes your heretics are actually right.
And so anyway, all three of these are.
Yeah.
So, you know, again, malinformation, the definition out of the terrorism arm of the United States government.
Which I'm sure is not how they like to be referred, but I think that's basically it.
Terroristic.
No, I'm going to call it the terrorism arm.
Okay.
Male information is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.
And A, two.
There's a lot hidden in two.
Like, how do you know the intentions of the person?
But mislead, Ought be perhaps a minor crime.
Harm.
We don't want people using facts to harm others, although obviously it's not as simple as all of that.
But manipulate.
To manipulate.
What were you trying to do?
I was trying to manipulate them because they're my students, and I was trying to make them more educated so that they could see this sort of thing, this sort of tactic, when it is done by people like you in the future and can be better immune to it, thank you very much.
How do you become immune to this sort of thing except by having fallen prey to it in the environment that is actually safe?
An actually safe environment in which, oh my god, I got duped by a professor who's got great eyebrows!
How did that happen?
Like, well, now you know, and now you're going to have to do it a number of times because, you know, we all too often when, you know, when we've been duped once, we've been fooled once by the public health authorities or the professor or whatever it is, we take that as the instantiating thing.
Like that is, that is the generalized thing, right?
And just, and I'm reminded of, this is going to seem like a, No, but I'm reminded of being in Costa Rica.
The second time for us, but with a bunch of grad students and our professor, and we said something, and it was the first time for all the other grad students, but we had traveled through Central America on our own.
A few years earlier, and we said something about, well, when we were here before, the weather was.
And Professor Vandermeer, who we were there with, said, yeah, the first time you come to a place in the tropics, that's the weather system that you think holds- Now he says, that year is normal.
Every year thereafter is not.
Exactly, yeah.
That's the thing that you then imagine is normal, and there is not a normal year afterwards, and you're always trying to track what happened.
Like, well, what happened was you happened to arrive at that moment, and had you arrived at any other moment, you would think that was normal.
So, you know, we need ourselves.
To expose ourselves to our own failings and failed thinking multiple times, because just doing it once means that that's the only thing that we look for.
It's like people looking for jackbooted thugs for evidence of tyranny, right?
I mean, that's the problem with history as well.
We go, oh, well, I know what tyranny looks like.
I've seen the documentaries, and no, A, that's not what it looked like as it showed up, and also it will never look exactly the same.
You have to familiarize yourself with multiple kinds.
And by the way, at the point that you've got some number of people in society who aren't allowed to participate and are being slandered as dirty and evil and not up to the job, That's tyranny coming.
That is what it is.
Right.
And basically what's protecting them is that they have learned not to goose step or put skulls on their helmets this time.
Right.
It didn't take much.
We're watching tyranny.
But if that sounds like an exaggeration, we'll get to the next part.
But we're going to give you links to this memo.
I would encourage people to click around this site.
We go down to the resources.
You want Zach to be showing the MDM resources?
MDM resources.
I got to say, MDM, I keep on expecting the A at the end.
It's the best.
Right, exactly.
Now scroll down, you've got a list of MDM resources.
War on Pineapple?
Yes, War on Pineapple is on there.
I did not hack the site and put War on Pineapple there.
It's there of its own accord.
But, there are other delightful things on this list.
War on Pineapple, I know, I know.
They do say tongue-in-cheek.
This is the first time I've been here.
I'm just looking at a government site that has border security, cyber security, and disasters in the left menu, and war on pineapple, and I really don't know what I've landed into.
Just because these people are fascists doesn't mean they don't know how to have fun.
Go back to that list of resources.
Okay, there's something about quashing rumors.
Start your own rumor control page.
Where?
Rumor control page.
Oh, rumor control page!
Startup guide!
Sorry!
Oh, so here you've got a nice handy graphic in which they effectively- Oh, this one has a bull- malinformation has a bullhorn.
Facts!
Yes, facts.
A bullhorn broadcasting facts that is nonetheless a terrorist threat.
But you want to- okay, and the news is the misinformation- You did a good job not to point me to this before we were on air.
What, the news is misinformation?
Right.
Wait, okay.
Anyway, it's kind of glorious.
We don't have time to go through all of this, but it, you know, it's the site that keeps on giving.
This one has the creepy eye, so that's good.
The creepy eye, but scroll down a little bit.
Okay, I'm scrolling.
What is a rumor control page?
Oh, another graphic?
Well, a rumor control page is how you can brownshirt your own site to control rumors, which includes malinformation, which are facts, right?
But presented out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.
Out of context, right.
If I remember correctly.
Am I doing well?
You're doing pretty well.
Is this going to be on the test?
It is the test, darling.
All right, go over here to this myth graphic.
Do you want me to click it?
Yeah, would you describe it?
Something happens?
Okay.
It's all right there.
It is a – it's got myth with a – So this is how do you communicate effectively on a rumor control page, which is, again, your brown shirt site designed to quash malinformation, which, again, are facts that are presented out of context so as to lead people to understand the corruption of their federal authority who put out this document.
Yeah.
So what you do is you use a – I mean, I define class.
Yes, a magnifying glass.
A magnifying glass is the debunking magnifying glass.
Oh, yeah.
Magic debunking magnifying glass.
No, not debunking.
It says debunk.
No.
It says debunk right there.
The magnifying glass says it.
You asked me to describe it.
But that's not how you're going to use it.
Preemptively debunk or There you go.
Wait, I haven't even said it.
For those listening, it says preemptively debunk or pre-bunk?
Yep, pre-bunk.
Yes, your federal authorities are now advocating on your brown shirt website that you pre-bunk so as to fend off facts that are being distributed by other people.
Pre-bunk?
Pre-bunk.
Also, preemptively pre-bunking seems redundant.
No, it's pre-pre-bunking, I think.
No.
Exactly!
- Basically preemptively comma bunk. - No, no, no, parentheses around ventively debunk or parentheses around prebunk. - Look, and if you don't do that, the reason that you would want to prebunk is because you might have to rebunk, right?
You might need to re-bunk because the science can change.
Well, if somebody debunks your bunk, Then you're going to need to re-bunk, and it's much better to pre-bunk in order to avoid that awkward situation.
I know, that's what I like to do.
Pre-bunk.
Okay.
So, your question earlier about what happens when you're right, and you say the true thing, and they say the wrong thing, and then later they have to admit that they were wrong, what was the grace period?
The answer is there is no grace period.
You're not allowed to contradict them, even with the facts.
Right.
Right?
Because that's malinformation that has apparently not been effectively pre-bunked.
Right.
Now, among the things that our listeners and viewers will find on the site, which I do encourage them to look through very carefully because really it's one jaw-dropping revelation after another, is how blatantly unconstitutional this is.
This is a clear violation of the First Amendment.
And it gets worse because not only are they encouraging people to brownshirt against facts, right, which is clearly bad, but they are also, they willingly acknowledge that what they are doing is they are partnering with people in the private sector, you know, tech platforms and the like.
It's a private-public partnership.
It's a private, you know, it is fascist.
Largely innovated by NIAID with Fauci.
Oh, not innovated, because they had historical precedent.
Because this, of course, is the sine qua non of fascism.
Not innovated, but made mainstream, publicized with great glory associated with it by Fauci and then head of the NIH Collins.
Right.
Now, all of this glorious fascism has a beautiful cherry on top.
Does it?
Which we are not going to show.
Do we like fascistic cherries or do we not?
Well, we like that they are revealing themselves.
And while they are not going to goose step or put skulls on their hats, they have published a couple of graphic novels about these terrorist misinformers or malinformers.
It's a cherry with a Nazi hat on now.
I think that's perfect.
It's probably coming.
I don't know.
But anyway, do check out their graphic novels.
There's a graphic novel.
I've only looked at one of them.
This graphic novel is about, I think it's about 5G conspiracy theorists.
But the hero... Do you want me to go back through?
Scroll down to the resources.
Wait, here?
This?
Or not?
Yeah.
Real Fake Graphic Novel?
What does that mean?
Real- Oh, Real Fake is their first graphic novel.
The other graphic novel, though, is the- Oh, Bug Bites?
Yeah, Bug Bites, exactly.
Do you want to actually be showing this?
Yeah, you can just show that.
Okay.
So this, again, is MDM, not MDMA resources, in case you were wondering.
Yeah, I'm not feeling warm and fuzzy at all about this.
Well, show it.
We're still in the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency.
Resilient Series Graphic Novels.
Graphic Novel Real Fake.
Graphic Novel Bug Bytes.
Click on it.
Just that?
Yeah.
Yeah, there you go.
Yep.
Bug Bytes.
Okay, so here is... Bug Bytes with a Y. Bytes.
B-Y-T-E-S.
Yeah, just scroll through a little bit.
Disclaimer.
Yeah, so this is a graphic novel.
Now, this attractive white woman, her father works for a communications company and was viciously attacked by terrorists, and she Terrorists engaging in malinformation, was it?
Well, I don't know.
It's somehow being distributed by the people who are exercised about malinformation.
But if you keep scrolling down, you will see her as the hero of this story.
See, she puts on her mask here.
Where?
Bottom of the page there.
Right.
And then anyway… Outside.
Look at her walking alone outside with her mask on.
Right.
I know.
And anyway, there's a marvelous trailer for this on YouTube, which you can click to.
We're not going to do it here.
But anyway.
This is hard to parse in real time.
But oh, yeah, those do look like terrorists.
Yeah, they really do.
I mean, they are.
They blew shit up.
But the point is, that's what it leads to.
That's the thing.
That's like, when you hear terrorist, you think, People looking like that, doing those sorts of things.
And that just as I want to talk about before we're done here today, the image of what the working class are is, you know, it's factory workers.
And, you know, our pet little images of who particular who belongs to particular categories, is helping us be controlled and is going to help, you know, if that's what we all have in our mind, oh, you're not only showing the screen, but if, you know, bottle rocket hurling, what are those called?
The balaclava?
No.
Balaclava wearing?
No, no, no.
The explosive.
I don't know what explosive.
It's a fire.
Oh, a balaclava cocktail.
Thank you, yes.
So Molotov cocktail throwing terrorists is what we all have in our heads about what terrorists look like.
And then everyone, frankly, everyone has just gotten slotted into at any moment that we want to, we call you a terrorist.
But as soon as we do so, then this is what is going to be called up.
Okay.
In people's heads.
So let us get to where the rubber really meets the road here.
Okay.
Because everybody listening to this is going to say, yes, okay, this is crazy.
The federal government is declaring people, even people who are distributing facts out of what the federal government decides are context, whatever that means.
Yep.
Right?
That those people are terrorists.
So yes, this is very ominous stuff, but come on.
Nobody's actually going to believe that somebody's saying true things on the internet as a terrorist.
So in the end, as awful as this is, what does it matter?
And here's the problem.
Can you show the other page I sent you?
Okay, so this is the ACLU.
Scroll down.
Do you want Zach to be showing my screen?
Scroll up.
Let's get rid of their fundraising thing.
Okay, this?
Now you want Zach to show?
Yes.
This is the ACLU.
Here's the problem.
In 2012, actually in 2011, the Omnibus NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, which is a giant omnibus bill that we yearly use to refund a lot of things, the military being primary among them, had two provisions slotted into it.
This was signed by Obama on the last day of the year, 2011.
Yes, and the last day of the year, 2011, is significant, not because it was a legally significant date, but it contained these two provisions, 1021 and 1022.
Okay.
The provisions, well, let's start with the signing.
So he happened to be in Hawaii on December 31st.
That's where his home was.
Right.
It's a very good reason for him to be in Hawaii.
However, by signing in Hawaii, Late in the day, on New Year's Eve, that ensured that the rest of the world would have moved on to New Year's Eve celebrations as was not paying attention to the news.
At least the rest of the U.S.
Right.
And arguably, these two provisions end the U.S.
Constitution.
Now, I know how preposterous that sounds, and I agree that there are interpretations by which that would not be the case.
But the problem is what these provisions do.
If I remember correctly, him signing this is part of why you could not bring yourself to vote for him a second time.
It is absolutely sufficient reason right there.
And I will tell you a little bit of the history.
So these provisions allow indefinite detention without charge or trial of any person, including American citizens, picked up anywhere on earth for effectively engaging in terrorism or supporting those who do.
So my point, since this moment, since the moment that this thing was signed, was terrorism is a magic word.
When the executive branch uses that term, they are declaring your rights null and void.
You don't have a second amendment right if the federal government has the right to put a black bag over your head and haul you off and not tell your family where you've gone and not There's no rid of habeas corpus.
They don't have to charge you.
You don't get the right to see the evidence against you.
You don't have a right to privacy.
All your rights- We thought you were a citizen.
No, you're a terrorist.
Right.
And this is the reason that you and I had a disagreement in the car is because with them using the term terrorism, there are now three tiers of citizens.
There are fully compliant citizens who can go to whatever restaurant they want.
There are uncompliant citizens who have resisted, let's say, vaccines that they are mandated to take and are now forbidden to go certain places.
And then there is a third category, which is terrorists.
And the problem is, you have now seen what the federal government does with this definition.
So, as you know, and as I think I've even made clear already here, this is By far worse than not being able to go in a restaurant because you're not vaccinated.
But it feels to me like it is unnecessarily confusing and will actually make it hard to make the point to put these into a single category.
You have, I think there's two categorization schemes here.
You know, vaccinated versus unvaccinated.
And then you also have, has been declared or has not been declared a terrorist.
And maybe, you know, maybe that's not quite the right naming of the categorization scheme over here.
And there is, I think I said that wrong, but maybe you have to flip that one over.
There is a lot of overlap.
Between those two categorization schemes or at least a lot of potential overlap between the of course you're still a citizen and you're vaccinated groups in the two categorization schemes and they know you're not vaccinated and oh yeah at any moment we might declare you a terrorist group.
I think there is likely to be some considerable overlap there.
But they're not, as it is with the two different categorization schemes, they really are complete categories.
There's not muddiness between them.
You aren't members of two things within a single categorization scheme.
You either are or you are not.
Vaccinated, and of course there is some muddiness there, you know, some places are now not letting you in if you're not boosted.
So, you know, what does fully vaccinated count for?
That definition will move.
But the, you know, could you be declared a terrorist?
Well, everyone could be, so everyone's in that could you be, given their definitions of mal, mis, and disinformation.
But, have you been is the category, and are you at risk of being is a squidgier category here.
And I guess I would say this, between the NEAA of 2011 and the new thing from February 7th from the Terrorism branch the government or whatever it is.
We are in trouble.
We are in a lot of trouble as a country, as a democracy.
The fact that most people, the vast majority of people, won't have any awareness of either of these things.
NDAA from end of 2011 years, from just over 10 years ago, still most people don't have any idea of it, right?
And You could.
Any random person on the street could legitimately claim, well, I just honestly don't know about that, right?
And that doesn't make it okay, that doesn't make it any less terrifying, but they could honestly declare, and it could be true, and I think it is true for the vast majority of people, they don't know.
Whereas that first tier, that first categorization of two tiers that I'm describing, the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, In most places in this country, as far as I know, although I think that there are places like Florida and Texas where this is much less true, at least in the blue cities and the coasts, you actually cannot be existing in society and not know.
That there are now two tiers.
If you have ever been asked to show your papers, and no, they don't use that language, but if you have been asked to just show your fax board, then you know, and you have no excuse.
And the fact that you are pretending not to know, or pretending that it's not a big deal, that paves the way for this.
This NDAA, followed by the February 7th declaration, or whatever it was called.
And that is far worse, but what I'm saying is the thing that everybody does know, that there is no excuse.
You can't ask someone on the streets of New York City or L.A.
or Seattle or a whole bunch of other cities, did you know that there, you know, that if you don't have, you know, vaccine, evidence of vaccine, you can't get into restaurants?
Of course they know, because they've shown their papers every time they have gone in.
Of course they know.
And so they are complicit.
I think they don't have any right not to know.
It's in front of them.
They know if they are showing their passports, which they are.
Well, there's a question about what no means.
And look, I'm not, obviously, I'm as troubled about this as anyone, but the question is, how is the magic trick done?
And this is falling into people's... But it's these two things, and they're distinct strategies, I believe.
That's fine.
But to the extent that people are hearing about the NDAA 2012 for the first time here.
So why do we call it the NDAA 2012?
Because it was the 2012 bill in which these were inserted.
Oh, so he signed it on the last day of 2011, but it's- It's the 2012 bill.
Okay.
Here's the thing.
You should check out the New York Times from the following day, right?
The New York Times has complete PDF versions- From January 1st, 2012.
Yes.
Now, many of us- Oh, you pulled it off?
You're going to have a hard time finding it, but I've been through it.
With a fine tooth comb.
Now, if somebody can find it in there, great, I'm all ears.
But my claim is, you can see the ACLU, which used to be a civil rights litigation organization, it's now become a woke monstrosity.
But the ACLU will validate that at least the interpretation I've given you is a credible interpretation.
It's not just me and the ACLU saying that.
What you will also be unlikely to know is that Chris Hedges And Noam Chomsky sued the Obama administration over these two provisions.
A federal court ruled that Chris Hedges had standing to sue, that he was in fact in danger of being targeted because he had interviewed members of Al-Qaeda.
And the way these provisions are written, that could plausibly put him in danger of being indefinitely detained.
So let me just, since you had me show this site before, the ACLU says, and this is again from 2012, back when the ACLU was doing the honorable work the ACLU was formed to do rather than becoming the, what did you call it?
The woke monstrosity it has become now.
The breadth of the NDAA's worldwide detention authority violates the constitution and international law because it is not limited to people captured in an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war.
And then just next paragraph.
Although President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had, quote, serious reservations about the NDAA's detention provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use them and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations.
Yes.
And the provisions, parenthetical, are inconsistent with fundamental American values.
They are inconsistent with absolutely fundamental values that actually go way before the U.S.
Constitution, right?
Rid of habeas corpus, for example.
Right.
Among other things, what we know is that a federal court ruled that this was a plausible interpretation enough that they were willing to hear it, right?
The law was suspended as a result of that and then a three-judge federal panel reversed that and put it back into force.
Now, here's the problem.
An ordinary law Were it to be used against you, there would be a mechanism for dealing with it, right?
There would be a court and you could argue that this was unconstitutional.
In this case, what the executive branch has effectively done is it has given itself the ability to declare someone a terrorist, have that person disappear, not explain where they've gone until The end of hostilities.
So presumably, that's the moment at which on a planet of nearly 8 billion people, there are no more terrorists.
It is an implausible moment.
They have given themselves the ability to detain somebody without explaining where they went, without showing anybody evidence.
And so... Did you say it's until hostilities cease?
The end of hostilities.
The end of hostilities.
The end of hostilities, which is obviously an absurdity.
They've declared the entire world a battlefield.
They've said terrorism is the style of battle.
They get to define who's a terrorist.
And then you will be returned at the end of hostilities, which couldn't possibly ever happen because there will always be terrorists.
I mean, there's no description of how the COVID pandemic ends.
It's the same thing with the war on drugs.
It's all of these things.
We establish something which we then use to grant ourselves special powers, and there is no termination condition.
Right.
So, again, this is the most special of laws because there's no check on it.
Even if you say that's impossible that any court would listen to such a law, the question is, well, if you disappear and your family doesn't know where you've gone, Right?
Because they've decided that you're a terrorist and they can detain you someplace and never tell anyone what happened.
You're just a missing person.
How do you get to a court and say the federal government has violated, you know, my right to see the evidence against me?
There's no court.
Yeah.
And so anyway, again, you can say that's preposterous, your interpretation is bizarre.
But the point is, first of all, a federal court said that Chris Hedges had standing to sue, that he was in danger of this happening to him.
So it's that credible, right?
And I will also point out that when the Obama administration responded, their Bizarre response to this suit was not we don't have those rights.
That's not what it says.
Their response was we already had those rights.
It does point out also how much the disintegration of once honorable and absolutely necessary organizations like the ACLU has also paved the way for what we're living through now.
There were plenty of people who disagreed with particular things that the ACLU may have done, but they were consistent.
They defended everyone who was having their rights trampled, and now what they're doing is shutting you down if you think men can't become women.
Right.
That seems to be the reigning issue of the day for them.
Well, men can't become women is malinformation.
I don't… It's a fact.
Ah.
You see?
I don't think it's malinformation in this case, because malinformation requires out-of-context.
So, is saying anything without context inherently malinformation, because it needs to be their context?
All I said was men can't become women.
What context?
Right, but that's what I just said.
So, malinformation requires that it be out-of-context, I believe.
Well, first of all, the opinion in this case of whether or not there is or is not context, coming as it does from a mystice and malinformer herself, Indeed is effectively null and void because I mean look the reason that you haven't yet been hauled off to be indefinitely detained Without the right to see the evidence against you is simply the good graces of the federal government which you apparently still exist in Indeed.
Anyway, look, yeah, it's a Kafka trap, right?
And it's right there on this Department of Homeland Security website.
They're not hiding it.
It's written in garbages, but you can sort your way through it.
And the answer is, look, This is actually the thing we were warned about.
It just is, right?
This is the tyranny.
It's not ambiguous, right?
This is them declaring factual information that might cause people to be upset and not trust the federal government as terrorism, and then declaring that they have rights when it comes to terrorists that extend up to everything, right?
Sorry, that's check and mate, right?
They just did it to us, right?
You can't say facts without them declaring you a terrorist, and if you're a terrorist, they can do anything they want to you.
You have no constitutional rights.
You know, this isn't tyranny.
How is that not tyranny?
Right.
You could talk about the weather.
No!
Probably not.
No.
Here's what you do.
If you don't want to fall under their definition of mis, dis, and mal information, the MDM of it all, if you want to avoid that, you take the thing that we used to be told, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, and you just do the last part of that.
You just don't say anything at all.
Could you please shut up already?
And next time we're not going to ask nicely.
That's what it is.
That's what we are being told.
Right, so shot across the bow.
Now, do I expect to be disappeared?
I do not, because that would cause a problem, which is that it would reveal what they're up to.
But, you know, there's a reason that they are moving the chess pieces around the board this way.
And we, of course, will be the last to know what the reason is.
And I guess just to return to what seems like a disagreement, but I don't think really is.
I think these are two sets of strategic moves that are happening in parallel.
One of them is not noticed by almost anyone because almost no one is paying attention to the NDAA and the terrorism declaration from February 7th of this year.
But the fact that everyone who lives in most of the highly populated areas of the United States has encountered either being asked to show their papers or knowing that because they have no papers, they cannot go places, knows damn well what is happening.
And if they are not looking that squarely in the face and going, "This harkens bad things," then they need to start doing that.
You need to at least recognize that this is exactly that serious.
And no, what's happening in Canada is not about people saying you should not be allowed to take a vaccine.
It is about vaccine mandates.
It is the mandates.
And, you know, obviously all of this conversation about NDAA and such has been US-specific, but You know, as Jordan Peterson's recent conversation with the Honorable Brian Peckford, who I mentioned on last week's live stream but didn't say a whole lot about, he is, Peckford is bringing, he's one of, he's the former first minister from Newfoundland who is the one remaining living member of the, of the framer of the constitutional charter from 1981 or 82 in Canada.
is bringing a lawsuit against Canada because what is happening there is fundamentally unconstitutional.
And I see no similar thing happening here, but it needs to.
And frankly, what's happening with Peckford in Canada is absolutely 100% supported and revealed to be supported by many Canadians by what is happening in Ottawa, And also at Kutz and at the Ambassador Bridge.
Okay, and for my part, I will say we have to return to William Binney's formulation here.
William Binney being an NSA officer who became a whistleblower.
And when interviewed, what he said was, holding his- This is when?
Would have been a decade ago.
Okay.
He said we are this close to a turnkey totalitarian state, right?
And the key insight here is turnkey.
A totalitarian state that doesn't feel like a totalitarian state until they turn the key.
And the point is the fact that that state is being erected around you is on the Department of Homeland Security's website, right?
Right down to their propagandistic graphic novels and their absurd invitation to pre-bunk stuff, right?
This is the turnkey totalitarian state.
Putting up the last little pieces of the structure that allows them, look, you've got a set of definitions that no one who has not taken a vow of silence could possibly escape, right?
You're going to be guilty of misdisc or malinformation, whatever you do, and that means that any day they can decide your constitutional rights are no longer rights at all, which means that your constitutional rights are a privilege.
They've rendered these things a privilege, and that's what a totalitarian state would do.
So, have they turned the key?
Will they turn the key?
We don't know, but we need to understand that the danger of the turnkey totalitarian state is not the turning of the key.
The danger is the erection of the thing which they've done.
Can we go back to what I was talking about though?
Sure.
With regard to Canada and what is happening there.
So I just, I wanted to, I was trying to segue and now we're back.
The elegant pivot.
Yeah, I don't know how to do this now because turnkey totalitarian state is, It is where we just were, and it's fucking necessary, but I want to talk about something else, which is related, but it's really not in that tenor.
Okay.
So what is happening with Peckford's lawsuit at the Ambassador Bridge and at Cootes and in Ottawa is critical in part because it seems shocking to the legacy media and the would-be elites, the elites and the would-be elites, because they can't imagine That the lower classes would ever rise up.
And this is this is the argument that this is actually effectively a class war and it does remind me of Occupy, right?
It does in many ways, that this is effectively the people who We don't have the power to write the scripts at the moment, but who are actually making the democracy run, saying, finally, fuck this, I am not putting up with this anymore, we have lost too much.
We have lost human beings, we have lost loved ones, we have lost economies, we have lost our jobs, we have lost our stores, we have lost our businesses, we have lost our friends, we have lost our agency, our ability to travel, we have lost too much, we are done.
And, frankly, the so-called knowledge workers who have lost far less.
By and large.
Far less.
Because they can afford to have the people who are actually doing the real physical work of the world bring all their stuff in and assume that the supply chains will just keep functioning because it's... I'm sure there are people there doing that.
Fundamentally neither understand nor respect the work that people who don't look like them do.
Okay, so I wanted to read just a little bit from this, David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, which I just finished.
And I will say, by way of sort of disclaimer, I think the numbers that I gave to you were, I find about 75% of what he thinks and writes extraordinary and deep and just pointed and accurate.
And there's a solid quarter, maybe it's less than that, but that I just completely disagree with.
So I will just say, I actually assigned his essay bullshit jobs to my class.
Which was the basis for this book.
And I think it is insightful.
I then encountered his understanding of adaptive evolution, and it was Yeah, and it's clear even in this book.
He doesn't speak about it directly, but it's clear that there's just some misunderstandings.
That's fine.
That is not relevant here.
Especially when I bring up books and I say, I really recommend this.
I really recommend a lot of the thinking here, and especially the reveal that I'm not going to go into here, although I may later.
His description of bullshit jobs, I don't remember where it is.
It's different from what he calls shit jobs, what everyone knows as shit jobs, where you're doing real work that needs to be done, but you're not being paid well enough, and you're not being honored well enough for the work, right?
Bullshit jobs are jobs that shouldn't exist at all, and they tend to pay better.
They tend to be white-collar, middle-class, or upper-middle-class, or upper-class jobs, and often no one, including the person doing them, can figure out why they exist at all, but they are dependent on them for a paycheck and healthcare and all of this.
That all is not exactly what I want to do here, though I want to read just a section from near the end.
Where is it?
Here we go.
No?
Oh, I forgot.
I read this without book darts.
Tragic error.
Okay, here we go.
I've actually marked up the book because I was missing book darts.
Just a page and a half here, okay?
Oh, he's talking about the turn of the last century, which is now... that's not actually how you would say it anymore.
It's sort of the robber baron era in As the Industrial Revolution was ramping up and the so-called capitalists were really taking over and monopolizing sectors and beginning to create the heavily tiered society that we have now.
So, from that point forward, for the next century or so, labor organizing tended to focus on factory workers, partly simply because they were the easiest to organize.
Which led to the situation we have now, where simply invoking the term working class instantly draws up images of men in overalls toiling on production lines.
And it's common to hear otherwise intelligent middle-class intellectuals suggest that, with the decline of factory work, the working class in, say, Britain or America, no longer exists.
As if it were actually ingeniously constructed androids that were driving their buses, trimming their hedges, installing their cables, or changing their grandparents' bedpans.
In fact, there was never a time that most workers worked in factories.
Even in the days of Karl Marx or Charles Dickens, working class neighborhoods housed far more maids, boot blocks, dust men, cooks, nurses, cabbies, school teachers, prostitutes, caretakers, and costumongers.
I don't know what that is.
than employees in coal mines, textile mills, or iron foundries.
Are these former jobs productive?
In what sense and for whom?
Who produces a souffle?
It is because of these ambiguities that such issues are typically brushed aside when people are arguing about value.
But doing so blinds us to the reality that most working-class labor actually much more resembles what we archetypically think of as women's work regardless of who's doing it, being looking after people,
seeing to their wants and needs, explaining, reassuring, anticipating what the boss wants or is thinking, not to mention caring for, monitoring, and maintaining plants, animals, machines, and other objects that it involves hammering, carving, hoisting, or harvesting things.
This blindness has consequences, so this is the point here.
Let me give an illustration.
In 2014, there was a transit strike when London's mayor threatened to close perhaps a hundred London underground ticket offices, leaving only machines.
This sparked an online debate among certain local Marxists about whether the workers threatened with redundancy had bullshit jobs.
The logic put forward by some being that either a job produced value for capitalism, which the capitalists clearly no longer thought these jobs did, or else it served a social function that would be necessary even if capitalism did not exist, which clearly these did not since under full communism transport would be free.
Needless to say, I was drawn in.
Asked to respond, I eventually referred my interlocutors to a circular put out by the strikers themselves, called Advice to Passengers Using the Future London Underground.
It included lines like these.
So again, this is the language of the people who were striking during the London Underground's closure in 2014, transit strikers.
Please ensure you are thoroughly familiar with London Underground's 11 lines and 270 stations before traveling.
Please ensure that there are no delays in your journey or any accidents, emergencies, incidents, or evacuations.
Please do not be disabled, or poor, or new to London.
Please avoid being too young or too old.
Please do not be harassed or assaulted while traveling.
Please do not lose your property or your children.
Please do not require assistance in any way.
Graeber continues, it apparently never having occurred to many advocates of proletarian revolution to investigate what it is that transit workers actually did.
This is so important.
So if we can go back to what we were talking about last week, comparing what is happening right now, which is an actual, honest, grassroots, massive protest in many places in Canada, that includes real people who are saying, enough, I will not.
I will not comply and this must stop.
This is anti-constitutional and anti-human.
Compare that to the mostly middle-class-led protests of the summer and fall of 2020, which had these fictitious, fantasy-like views of what it was that most people in the so-called lower classes were living like, and were speaking on their behalf because, what, they didn't believe that these people could speak for themselves?
So here we have right now people actually speaking for themselves, showing up, and as I've said before, God I wish I could be there, and of course we can't because we can't cross the border, but showing up and every word that I am hearing, and I will actually be hopefully publishing a few more words from people who are actually there and seeing it in Natural Selections this week, everything I am hearing is how much love there is,
How much gratitude, how much joy at being able to interact with people again and being able to see that people will stand up for their rights, for their freedoms, for their humanity.
And what is the response from the media that glorified an actually violent set of protests that reliably turned into riots, at least here in Portland in 2020?
They are slandering these people and this movement and claiming that this is an insurrection against democracy, when it is exactly the opposite.
Right.
And it is not independent of what we were just talking about, because of course, these very properties, the media and the tech platforms are being invited, in fact, strong armed into participating in this slandering and the point is, it doesn't matter if they're right.
Yeah.
Right.
Because malinformation is what it is.
Yep.
So I want to, if possible, pick up on your theme here.
And point people to something that is taking place in front of our eyes, where I think many people, traditional leftists, are finding themselves bizarrely excluded, self-excluded, from their own revolution that they've been waiting for.
So I've been watching Chomsky, who I've been shaking my head at for many, many months, because he embraced The authoritarian nonsense not in the strongest terms, but my sense is here.
You've got a guy who?
believes in Collectivist viewpoint hearing about a collective action problem, right the problem of vaccination and Embracing what seemed to him?
I'm sure to be the scientifically responsible collectivist answer to this and here he is and Now, on the opposite side of this organic workers' protest that is, in fact, quite international across the entire West, right?
You have these protests against mandates.
And so you have icons of the progressive left who are now opposite of the actual workers who are revolting from what appears to be the center-right.
And I wanted to put this in context because if you use...
Fascinating, incidentally, that the so-called working class should be identified as center-right when it has forever, at least in the United States, been the core voter base of the Democrats.
Right.
Now, my claim is that actually this does make very simple sense if you just simply track the parameters correctly, right?
And that what's happening is a lot of people are using a heuristic, right?
Like, well, if it's on the right, it's bad, you know?
But what's really happening, so I've heard and you've heard and we've all heard hundreds of people say, you know, left and right isn't really such a useful distinction anymore.
It's authoritarian versus libertarian, for example.
And no doubt there are other schemes that matter, but I don't think we should give up on left and right.
I think it still matters.
And if you map it correctly here, you'll see what's going on.
So, my claim is going to be that what defines the left is that it is biased in the direction of attempting to make progress.
And what defines the right is that it is resistant to attempts to make progress on the basis that unintended consequences are an ever-present risk.
And so the question is, why is it that the workers are on the right now?
In part, what's happened is good governance is something that the left is favorable towards, right?
This is a sympathy I have.
Good governance is an important fact of civilization functioning.
The government has been captured.
All of our governments have been captured by economic forces that exceed anything that our founders could have envisioned, right?
They couldn't envision the internet or economies of the scale or the kind of interdependence.
And so the point is those feedbacks.
Captured the government and put it in the hands of powerful Interests, which means that what could be good governance is actually not good governance at all It's governance being used against the people by those who have captured it, right?
And we could go into why those people would be against the public but basically the point is look anything that Corporations want that's also good for the people.
It's already done That means what's left for us to fight over are the things that would go one way if they were in the interest of the people, and they would go the other way if they were in the interest of the corporations, which is of course why they have corrupted these systems, was in order to get things done that aren't good for the people.
And it's part of why the idea of a private-public partnership Put so much fear into our hearts, because we know that what is meant by public there is not us, it's the government.
Right.
And the point that the private-public partnership gets invoked, it is the people who are out of the loop and who are not benefiting.
Right.
It's private in public clothing, right?
It's the wolf in sheep's clothing.
No, no, no.
A private-public partnership is actually private corporations with actually supposedly public institutions, which are the government.
Right.
But in this case, the public institutions have been captured.
And so it's really the puppet masters are Operating through both the private, and they are operating through the public, which they captured.
I mean, I think that's just a different way of saying the same thing.
The idea is that the public, government is supposed to exist for the people, not the other way around.
And this is a point that's been made in England with regard to the NHS, and in Canada and the US as well, that we are not, you know, the idea that we need to do things in order to protect, for instance, you know, the health system, like, no, the health system exists for us, we don't exist for it.
The government exists for us.
We don't exist for it.
But at the point the government decides that it has its own agency, it's the AI revolution that we've been dreading in different clothing.
Right.
And it's no accident that it's aligned with these interests that are out of phase with what's good for the public.
In any case, what I want to get at is, I think I said last week that conservatives are always in the business of defending the gains of past liberals.
That is to say, liberals push towards progress, conservatives... You didn't say it quite that strongly.
You said maybe.
Well, maybe I shouldn't even say always because they're obviously weird phases of history.
But say it again without quite... The conservatives defend the past gains of liberals.
Liberals push towards progress.
Some of that progress is foolish to pursue because the unintended consequences will be bad.
So there's a tension between conservatism resisting the unintended consequences and liberalism pushing towards solution making that can be done.
And what we have, the fact that civilization works at all, is essentially by definition, the result of progressives having actually pushed towards progress that was possible, made lots of mistakes along the way, which presumably were largely rolled back.
But we have a functional system.
But in the 20th century, we got workers' rights and children's rights and women's rights and civil rights and gay rights and on and on and disabled rights.
and on and on and on and on.
Those are the ones that come to mind right away.
All of these rights that, I think in all of those cases, are actively being dismantled by some branches of so-called liberalism.
And it's the conservatives who are standing up and saying, wait, no, we keep those.
And what they are arguing to keep is exactly what the liberals were fighting for anything from 10 to 100 years ago.
Right.
And even more than 100 years ago.
So I would argue that the founders, our American founders, were radicals, right?
They had a radical idea about good governance, and they inscribed it into our founding documents.
And the point is that you can see on the Department of Homeland Security's site, That they do not have that same opinion of those founding documents, right?
That they have an antipathy for those founding documents is some force rolling back the gains of past liberals, right?
And the point is, this is the natural role of conservatives, is to oppose it, right?
And the real mystery here is, okay, What are the progressives doing?
They should be pointing towards solving new problems.
They should not be on the side of unmaking the solutions to problems that we've already solved.
But what's happened is they have effectively been bought off.
That the corrupt governmental structure has offered people who are feeling shafted something.
And what they've offered them is they've offered to redistribute the well-being that exists among working people at various different levels.
This is why the left is targeting people.
Right?
They have been offered.
You can savage those people and you can have their stuff, right?
If you leave the rent-seeking elites alone.
Yeah.
Right?
So the left is now a regressive force, right?
It is not a progressive force.
It is not a conservative force.
It is a regressive force.
And in the face of a regressive left, you would expect conservatives to defend the gains of past liberals, which is what we're seeing.
And the really interesting thing is that Some people see this, right?
Glenn Greenwald sees it, but Noam Chomsky doesn't, right?
And that tells us something, which is that you can't use these superficial labels.
You have to look deeper into the puzzle.
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
Maybe that's it.
Maybe that's it.
I will say, I'll say one more thing.
Found solace this week.
Last week, there was a video going around that maybe I'll find and link to, in which the Twisted Sisters song, We're Not Gonna Take It, was put to a bunch of Canadian footage of the Freedom Convoy, and it was It was a little bit too well done.
It was very compelling.
And I've never listened to Twisted Sister.
It just wasn't what I listened to.
And I found myself listening this week to both Twisted Sister and Beethoven in roughly equal measure.
And they were doing different things for me.
But I found at some points when I was just the most overwhelmed with the tragedy, thinking again about Mila, Mila's story, whom I talked about last week.
And, shush.
Here we go.
Overwhelmed by that tragedy and by seeing what was happening on the ground in Canada, and also by how the people on the ground in Canada are being treated.
I played Beethoven's Ninth, blasted it myself both in the car and then through earbuds walking along the river on a very foggy morning.
And then his Pathétique Sonata, which is the last piece that I played when I was a pianist.
And so I found my fingers doing their old routines while I was walking along.
And it seemed to me so odd to be finding these two, you know, nearly polar opposite musical They're not traditions, they're just instances.
These three pieces of music, really.
Twisted Sisters, We're Not Gonna Take It, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and his Pathétique Sonata.
All of which reveal to me at the moment some of what we can be as humans, and also what we can be to one another.
And I recommend finding some deeply meaningful music and playing it.
Yeah, I think actually, I mean, I was never a Twisted Sister fan, but I think We're Not Gonna Take It is potentially going to go down in history as one of the great pieces of pre-malinformation.
Pre-malinformation?
Well, it's clearly malinformative, because We're Not Gonna Take It, and that's a fact.
But, you know, it's not an okay fact.
But the fact is, they wrote that song before anybody had invented the concept of malinformation last week.
And so it was, it's It's pre-mail information, and if you're out there, Twisted Sister, thank you.
You're not going to thank Ludwig?
Well, Ludwig is demonstrating the opposite part of the puzzle.
He, by not saying anything in his orchestral works, Except for in the ninth.
Right, exactly.
But with that exception, is that the only exception?
I think it might be.
I think so.
But in any case, he most of the time was not involved in mis, dis, or mal information, at least professionally.
I don't know what he said in his private life.
I know, I feel like given the definitions of mis, mal, and disinformation that have now been so nicely framed for us, I think the emotional response that one has to Beethoven's both his piano music and his orchestral pieces could be construed themselves as at least one of those things, that an emotional response.
Maybe it doesn't even take language to be engaging in malinformation.
You know what's going to happen.
This is going to be the next LGBTQI plus phenomenon, where as the Department of Homeland Security discovers modes of human interaction that are not covered by its definition of terrorism, it's going to add letters until everything is covered.
And at that point, I guess we can all rejoice in indefinite detention, wherever that's going to be taking place.
All right.
Maybe that's where we'll stop for today.
We will stop for as short a time as we can manage and then come back with the Q&A.
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Anything else?
Well, I think, you know, go pre-bunk something.
And also, be good to the ones you love, eat good food, and get outside.
