Big Brother 2025
The role of mass and social media is to condition you to feel and spend, one way or another
Like if you want using the keys below; only I can see who you are.
The stories about former President Biden’s physical and cognitive issues have an eerie ring to them, as if we’d heard it before. Mainstream and social media (MSM) report being shocked! Shocked! Our Commander-in-Chief was a doddering old man all along!
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
Winston Smith, 1984
Who knew of Biden’s decline? From the reports, everyone who had eyes. Yet, before June 2024, no one could speak of it. Critics excoriated Robert Hur for saying the quiet part out loud in 2023. Then the audio of Hur’s interviews came out in May and Hur’s critics/Biden’s cheerleaders went suddenly silent.
We were told that he just got a Stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis that had metastasized to the bone this May. Prostate cancer may be aggressive, but it’s not 100-days-to-the-bone aggressive. But MSM insists it’s a new thing, that he didn’t know, and he hadn’t had a PSA test in eleven years (all other sitting presidents since Bush I have). All those "journalists" found his June 2024 debate performance astounding. Look! They’re peddling books about how surprised they were that the leader of the free world’s cognitive powers were so degraded in just a few short days! Look how surprised they are now!
MSM has conditioned you to believe this.
If you don’t, you’re a MAGA Trumplican fascist racist, misogynistic, homophobic conspiracy theorist who follows Truth Social and X-formerly-Twitter whose only source of news is Fox and AM radio. Or you are mentally ill—or both. The MSM machine, profiting from monocultural thought driven by ad revenues, conditioned you to believe this. On both “left” and “right” you have been told what to think. No one allows moderation. Both “wings” deem acceptance of both sides of an argument treasonous. Those who insist on dialogue between opposing factions and multiple points-of-view face shunning and often attacks, canceling, and de-platforming.
“Social Media” Users Know The Truth!
Sometime early in this century, people started believing that what they were eating and doing and feeling was everyone else’s business and started posting commentaries about it on “social media” platforms. Then they started posting pictures taken by their phones, which gradually became so ubiquitous (for this reason) there’s now a camera of some sort with instant access to a global audience about every three feet in urban and suburban areas. Pictures of everything, from clothes to jewelry to the candy bar they just bought to the beatings of people by law enforcement, gangs, and just the average Joes and Janes walking by someone who smacks them to draw attention to themselves, broadcast globally to eager mobs who rarely know what they’re looking at are re-sent to the unsuspecting. This is important because they get “likes” and followers and money by being “influencers”—an alternate term for shill. This makes the “social media” outlets to explode in popularity and wealth. They steer opinions by making certain ideas and images more acceptable/lucrative than others. And, politically, they usually steer to the “left.” Broadcast and print media have been happy to follow along…for the ad money.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is a thing…for the ad money.
While some mental health professionals dither and argue, at least one study suggests that people who identify as “progressives” have higher instances of self-reporting mental illness. Yet another claims the mental health profession is rife with “progressive” ideology. “Conservative” media outlets chirp about Trump Derangement Syndrome that distorts the worldview of “leftist” politicians and commentators who shrill and cry about practically everything the 45/47th president does, says or even thinks…probably. At this writing, the “conservative” news outlets outsell the “progressive” outlets by 10-1. But venture from the accepted “narratives” of either “wing” and you could end up canceled, or worse. You can also consult a local mental health professional trained to believe men can bear children, and that racism is a mental illness affecting only “white” people, that “black” people cannot be racists because they have no power in the “white establishment.”
And the ad rates keep going up.
America’s 21st Century Big Brother isn’t an abstract figure on a vid-screen, but it is all over our “social media” that’s become anything but “social,” and our “mental health establishment” peopled by those who believe nonsense codified in their books written by people selling their lectures for ten grand a pop. People are self-reporting feeling lonely after scrolling through “social media” for ten hours at a stretch. You might read this screed on LinkedIn, or X, or Bluesky, or even direct on Substack or your e-mailbox, but that’s only for distribution. (Sorry, Facebook, but some Vietnamese guy hacked my account years ago and now I can’t get back in.) And yes, I’d like you all to upgrade/subscribe so I can sell more books and make more money, but at least I’m honest about it. But I don’t charge per click, and the surrounding ads don’t benefit me at all. I don’t have thousands of followers, just a few hundred. That’s OK.
I don’t connect cameras to the Internet.
Nor do I listen to podcasts because my mind doesn’t work that way. Nor do I watch videos on the Internet…except a few, mostly on Babylon Bee. I follow a few Substacks and I get a few newsletters, but I prefer one-on-one personal communication either by e-mail or phone or, yes, face-to-face. That way, I can cut out Big Brother “social media” that is just driving us both nuts and broke, and as for “mental health professionals”...no.
Freedom is the freedom to believe what you see, not what you’re told you see. Be free.
Why The Samurai Lost Japan: A Study In Miscalculation And Folly
While Japan’s fortunes declined from 1937 through 1945, the common Japanese suffered, yet propaganda assured them that all was well, victory was near, and the Emperor was pleased with Japan's progress. Why The Samurai Lost is a failure analysis not of propaganda, but of a polity that consistently denied reality until it was too late to stop its destruction. Some Japanese only knew the war was lost when American vehicles drove into their villages.
And Finally...
On 23 August:
1899: The first ship-to-shore radio message is sent from Lightship 70 to a receiver in San Francisco, California. The first message of its kind sent or received in the US stated, “Sherman is sighted,” announcing the return of the troopship USAT Sherman after the Spanish-American War.
1942: Germany’s Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army begin their attack on the city of Stalingrad on the Volga River in Russia. Three German planners reported to their commanders they would take the city in three weeks. One of those planners survived the battle; the Soviets took him prisoner at the end of the battle. He was never heard from again.
And today is NATIONAL RIDE THE WIND DAY, commemorating the Gossamer Condor winning the Kremer Prize for the first human-powered takeoff, half-mile figure-eight course, and landing on this day in 1977 in Salinas Valley, California. Some bike ride, eh?