Notes from the edge of civilization: Oct. 8, 2023
What's worse than conspiracy theorists: MAGA cult members. The First Amendment steps up to protect citizen journalists and the doctor-patient relationship. Plus, dangerous medical consensus.
This blog is dedicated to helping people make sense of a fast-moving and turbulent world. Unfortunately, we are at a loss when it comes to trying to understand the senseless events unfolding in Israel this weekend. All we can do is pray for an end to the violence, for mercy on those who are suffering, and for wisdom to ultimately prevail.
We wrote this week about how easy it has become to disparage or belittle an opponent these days. You just need two words: conspiracy theorist. Once those words emerge, people stop listening. You can come back with all the truth, facts, context, or history you want, but if they’ve made up their made that Joe Schmo is a conspiracy theorist, nothing is going to move them.
It comes down to confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and the enigma of reason. And it is a great summation of where we are today in society. No one wants to admit they are wrong or allow something to seep through that could fundamentally rock their worldview, even if their current beliefs have been thoroughly refuted.
We went down a rabbit hole this week to make the case.
READ MORE:
The Trouble With "Conspiracy Theorists"
Even when seemingly wild claims are proven to be valid and truthful, people’s minds have already been made up.
‘Conspiracy theorist’ is so 2022, though. Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton found a new way to disparage her opponents this week in a conversation with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Speaking about the MAGA extremists she once called “deplorable,” Clinton now suggests there may be a need for a “formal deprogramming of the cult members.”
“‘Make America Great Again’ was a bid for nostalgia,” she said. “To return to a place where people could be in charge of their lives, feel empowered, say what they want, insult whoever came in their way… And that was really attractive to a significant portion of the Republican base.”
“Maybe they don’t like migrants,” she suggested. “Maybe they don’t like gay people or black people or the woman who got the promotion at work they didn’t get. Whatever the reason.” In a few short seconds, she suggested anyone who supports Donald Trump is anti-immigrant, homophobic, racist, and sexist. If Donald Trump had done something similar, CNN would have called it a ‘dog whistle.’
People such as Hillary Clinton choose words very carefully. So we must listen equally carefully when she suggests that being in charge of our lives, feeling empowered, and being able to say what we want are simply elements of a bygone era, a “nostalgia” in which we sentimentally yearn for a period that is forever gone to us.
Like us, you may be thinking “over my dead body,” a thought to which Hillary Clinton would likely not object.
Actually, the failed presidential candidate just gave us an idea for the next iteration of our business plan: forget Collapse Life, how about Gulag Life? See you there.
WATCH:
The fact that the interview with Clinton was on CNN says a lot. The network’s average audience for the prime time news slot (8-11 pm) decreased by 25% in 2022. No one is watching anymore.
Do you know why? Because trust in news organizations has plummeted to near-record lows. Social media platforms like Rumble, Twitter (X), Telegram, Instagram, and Gab have instead empowered so-called ‘citizen journalists’ to step up and do the job that mainstream reporters have stopped doing.
As The New Yorker reports:
Last week, [Elon Musk] visited Eagle Pass, Texas, for a firsthand look at the unfolding migration crisis, and streamed it live on his social-media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter), so that his 150 million followers could “see what’s really going on.”
Many media outlets have described Musk’s visit to Eagle Pass as “citizen journalism,” a term that Musk himself has used. In contrast with “legacy media,” as Musk has called it, citizen journalism promises an unmediated flow of information, allowing everyone to have a voice in public discourse and to make their own judgments about what’s important and true.
Since citizen journalism puts the power back in the hands of the people, it represents a big threat to the powerful forces working overtime to limit free speech.
Thankfully, here in the United States our Constitution still protects our right to free expression. If citizen journalism is to take a role in producing public accountability, it is very important for us to know and understand the rights we enjoy under the First Amendment.
We took a deeper look at that issue this week, too.
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Citizen journalism and the right to free speech
With the media’s dereliction of their duty to objectively report the day’s events, citizen journalism puts the power back in the hands of the people.
Thanks to the First Amendment, California has had to back down from multiple laws signed in late 2022 because complying with those laws could violate the Constitution. Most notably, Governor Newsom last week quietly and without comment repealed a troubling medical censorship law (AB 2098) that mandated action against doctors “charged with unprofessional conduct,” including those who spread “misinformation or disinformation” about COVID-19.
The law sought to punish doctors for disseminating COVID-19 information to their patients that does not align with so-called “contemporary scientific consensus.” Giving a patient true informed consent about the risks and benefits of, and alternatives to, the mRNA COVID shots would have been seen as actionable under the law.
Although it has been repealed for now, that doesn’t mean the spirit of AB 2098 is gone forever. It will likely return in a more bulletproof form. Watch this space.
Obviously, consensus can be a very bad way to make decisions, especially when it comes to science. Good science is built on making observations and asking questions. If asking questions is made illegal, bad things can happen. Consensus can often be very, very wrong.
Take, for example, lobotomy — also known as leucotomy. It was once a common method to treat mental illness in the United States. Scientific consensus at the time held that severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex by drilling holes in the skull and pushing sharp instruments into the brain tissue was more effective and less expensive than other treatments.
In 1937, the New York Times referred to the operation as "the new surgery of the soul." In 1949, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Egas Moniz, who introduced the procedure in the mid-1930s.
During the lobotomy ‘boom’ of the 1940s and 1950s, tens of thousands of people were lobotomized. Their symptoms often returned or worsened within months, at which time they were returned to an asylum and often given another lobotomy.
Those decades are now considered dark times in medical history.
With this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023 going to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries “that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19,” one wonders if the 2020s will also be considered dark times at some point in the future. Is mRNA our generation’s lobotomy?
The poor results of lobotomies became apparent after a few years, and consensus soon began to shift. By 1941, the American Medical Association denounced the lobotomy as ineffective. Nevertheless — thanks in large part to perverse government incentives handed to public asylums — the practice persisted until the 1970s, several decades after science decided it was ineffective.
Let’s hope the same thing never happens again.
This woman is either purposefully evil, totally bought or mentally deranged.