Americans know, both those who doubted and opposed Covid-19 hysteria, and those who stoked it and helped a conspiracy of journalists, politicians, scientists, bureaucrats, corporations, and citizens to pull off the smoothest and most total hostile takeover of a nation of millions in the history of planet Earth. They took our constitution away from us in 2020 without firing a single shot! And we let them!
With this book, I hope to stay the maelstrom of literal gunfire and civil war that I fear lays in wait for us in our very near future, if someone doesn't put a sharpened journalistic stake right to the heart of the vampire, and drive it all the way home. Get a copy for your most hysterical Covidiot friend or family member, and dare them to continue believing the lies and spreading the fear, after reading this clear and thorough presentation of the facts—— the truth and nothing but the truth.
Do you remember what life was like in Janurary 2020? Everything is different now. Our entire society has gone mad with Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. And it feels as if as an entire society we have completely lost faith in others and ourselves, in our ability to discern the truth from so much endless talking by people who we regard as authorities, saying so many contradictory things and making such a mess, it seems a hopeless task to untangle it all. We are in great danger of becoming a post-truth culture, one that sets aside truth–– and the meaningful, useful, vitally important difference between right and wrong–– in the futile service of power.
We have become a fractured civilization of warring gangs clinging to each other for protection, desperately uttering each other's shibboleths and wearing each others' visible signs of affiliation (ones invented practically last week), hoping our tribe will protect us and provide for us. "Never mind" the truth anymore, is the attitude our actions reveal in us, but instead find the group with the most power that you can pass for as a member of the most easily, and join them for your protection. That's what's been going on in our new platforms for culture-making, value-making, future-making. And it's a game we're all going to lose if we keep playing.
Sure, the news pages, and the social media timelines have always been full of this FUD. And populated with people acting in bad faith, people chasing after attention, pageviews, shares, and comments in a mad dash for clout, and willing to say anything to get it. This vain hope of going viral by any means has led to an arms race of relentless, remorseless deception. Online it seems so many people are even more false than so many are to each other in person. Because others reward it with viral attention when it quickens their pulse and raises their hackles.
Though it seems like a lifetime ago, an epoch ago, some distant "before times" that we will never be able to go back to, I still remember what life was like in America in January 2020. Before the Covid Deception went super-ultra-mega-giga-tetra viral in a flash, the most viral meme in Internet history, an even more surprising and more fiercely unstoppable Black Swan event in online meme history than the Trump phenomenon that rocked the entire country and world in the 2016 elections.
Why did this happen? How could everything have changed so suddenly? Was it really for the benefit of public health as the various interested parties and industries pushed on, full-speed-ahead, for these radical changes? Or did this happen for tragically stupid reasons? And for intolerably evil ones? And can we ever go back now? Can we go back to the way things were before the Covid Deception?
Really the most important thing in this crisis is we refer to coronavirus by its proper pronouns. Don't say "China Virus." That's ignorant and wrong. Please call it the People's Virus of China. Now that we got that out of the way, let's get down to whose fault this was. That's the next most important question. We got to hold the ones responsible accountable. And we're not going to let them get away with this.
By the time it had gotten beyond any of our control, the pandemic war hawks had essentially shouted fire in a theater leading to a stampede that caused enormous devastation, far more than any from coronavirus they purported to mitigate.
Let's take a survey of the damages:
A mass hysteria of media alarmism around a single news story like no other in history–– wait, no, that's how the hysteric speaks–– a mass hysteria of media alarmism like many others in history, many of them in living memory.
And they also caused catastrophic damages measured in billions, no trillions, of dollars of destroyed capital and lost opportunities; widespread global social unrest, uncertainty, and instability; and the loss of human lives numbering in the millions.
Is that also how the hysteric speaks? In the pages of this book, I will present to you the hysterics' arguments in their own terms and with their own best supporting evidence.
Now I will also make a compelling case, with absolutely damning evidence and legal analysis, that the norms and practices of the news industry are at fundamental enmity with the goals of a free society of prosperous individuals, families, businesses, and institutions.
Understand that I'm speaking as an insider, who engaged in these practices, not wittingly, with no idea of the destruction I was helping to cause until after I had already played my role in it. My hope is to damn the sin, by apprehending, dismantling, and reconstructing the hyper-vigilant modalities at work within the news industry complex; and find a way to exonerate the sinner, by showing how they are individuals responding to systemic incentives with true costs and real world effects that are hidden from the view of the participants. If they are guilty personally, I can at least tell you from my case how being willing to tell little lies quickly gets out of hand, and becomes fuel for The Big Lie.
Drawing from examples like:
-The Global War on Terror
-The Climate Doomsday Cult
-Trump Derangement Syndrome
And many others like them...
I'm going to share with you how I think we can avoid spreading misinformation to others that results in real world harm to living creatures or property, as users and participants in social media ecosystems, and as systems administrators, planners, and visionaries.
And throughout the chapters of this book, I'm going to make the following three points, and back them up with evidence and reason, not exaggerations and stupid arguments, like the industry experts, journalists, and social influencers who brought you the Covid Deception:
1. It's reasonable (and better for public health) to think of and treat COVID-19 as we have always understood and handled the reality of seasonal flu and other upper respiratory infections.
2. The extraordinary response to coronavirus in 2020 was the product of the madness of crowds and journalists, not a principled implementation of scientific information.
3. In our confusion and panic, we hurt ourselves and others far more than coronavirus infections did, by undoing centuries of bedrock promises built in to the social contract.
