And the truth will set you free...

Truth by a thousand cuts

Nothing which was being done, no matter how stupid, no matter how many people knew and foretold the consequences, could be undone or prevented. Every event had the finality of a last judgment, a judgment that was passed neither by God nor by the devil, but looked rather like the expression of some unredeemably stupid fatality. (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism)

For the past five years, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of lying in the political, commercial and information spheres of western society.  This is not an observation unique to me. It is showing up in all kinds of articles and year end commentary. It is like we are forced to wander, disoriented in a forest of mirrors as we are being lied to without pause or moral concern.  In a world slavishly devoted to sustainability, is this sustainable?

It was one of history’s most unlikely human encounters.  In it, Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, was confronted by Jesus who said that he came to bear witness to the truth and that everyone who is of the truth would hear and understand.  Pilate, the successful but cynical and jaded apparatchik, sighed, “What is truth?”  It is a good question. In an earlier exchange with religious leaders Jesus had made the same challenge to their world view and said that knowing his truth would set them free. They then set out to kill him. Exposing truth can be a dangerous business.

[cartoon thanks to “Bob” at bobmoran.co.uk]

In fact, there is a new cottage industry in books and articles about how the normalization of lying leads to a weakening of social bonds.  In true doublespeak, the words of Jesus are engraved on the original CIA headquarters, "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" even as new evidence accumulates about the mendacious nature of that agency. Jordan Peterson regales his audiences with injunctions to not lie to others and certainly not to oneself.  He quotes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn who demonstrated what can happen when one person refuses to participate in the lies.  There is a renaissance in people buying and reading Orwell’s “1984”.  There are websites devoted to “the top ten books about lies”.  Rod Dreher, also drawing on Solzhenitsyn, has written a book called “Live not by Lies” based on interviews with people who lived through the Pravda-esque life of the Soviet Union.

The book, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, describes the fascinating hypothesis of the Strauss-Howe generational theory of historical cycles.  The theory was made eerily prescient by the authors’ 1996 prediction of a major generational Fourth Turning sometime between 2022 and 2025 that might result from a major pandemic.  If their hypothesis is correct, then the barrage of lies to which we are being subjected is a cyclical phenomenon and the outcome of this phase of the cycle will be the collapse of those institutions supported by a bed of lies and the strengthening of those institutions supported on trusses of truth.  Getting to the end of the decline cycle and the beginning of the rebuilding cycle will take us through some rough waters.  Get used to being disoriented in that forest of mirrors.

A lot of people are writing about this phenomenon and many attempt to scare us about the Armageddon to come. “Buy gold (or crypto or other)!” they say.  I am not a believer in Dispensationalism and I have lost too much money buying gold.  Instead, I spend my time wondering how else I can position the family finances to make a lot of money on what is coming at us. I will keep you posted. 

When I worked adjudicating energy infrastructure projects, the people who gave evidence before our panel always argued that the project in question represented a “death by a thousand cuts”.  These were adjacent landowners and communities who were tired of being told that the project had a minimal footprint and so impacts would be small.  “While this is true,” they argued, “this is the twentieth project in the area and the cumulative impacts are tearing our land apart.”  I often thought they had a point.  In an academic sense, it is the tragedy of the commons.  This argument was first made in 19th century England when ever larger numbers of sheep fought for the grass on the village commons.  When would one more sheep bring the whole enterprise to a crashing halt? The thousandth cut as it were. Aristotle perhaps summed it up best,

"That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common."

Along with Pontius Pilate, do we experience a “commons” in lying? If environmental conditions can become supercritical leading to collapse one cut or sheep at a time, is it possible that social conditions can likewise become supercritical one exposed lie at a time?  As confusing as the last several years have been, the past six months or so have been revelatory in often unexpected and unusual ways.  In the Canadian context, who expected the Conservative leadership to change?  Who expected the Alberta premier to change?  In the depths of covid authoritarianism, who expected a group of truckers to chase the Prime Minister out of Ottawa? 

In the communications context, who expected Elon Musk to buy Twitter?  In Fourth Turnings, the one constant is that the events cannot be predicted in detail. Beware the Black Swan events.

If my theory of “the death of lies by a thousand cuts” is accurate and the speed of exposing the lies is accelerating, then we may be in for some very entertaining events over the next year or two. Over the next few weeks I will examine some of the larger nodes of controversy with a view to shining alternative light on “truth” as articulated by our governments and legacy media.  I cannot tell you what is true but with different light frequencies to filter the data perhaps you will be more sure-footed in the forest of mirrors. For example,

We have been told for the past nine months that the war in the Ukraine will result in the downfall of Vladimir Putin and the end of any hopes of Russian hegemony in that or any other part of the world.  But there are differences of opinion.  Recently Ukrainian President Zelensky was flown to Washington for an address to Congress at which he was lauded as another Winston Churchill.  It was a standup performance, but someone might have reminded him that, in 1957 South Vietnamese President Diem was also flown to Washington to address Congress and was also compared favourably to Mr. Churchill.  His wife later remarked that it is dangerous to be a friend of the United States. 

One of the largest Black Swan events perhaps of my lifetime was the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk.  More interesting than his expensive purchase are the surprising revelations about the degree to which the US government has been breaking the First Amendment through its social media proxies.  Some are calling it a soft coup. Who predicted that such an unlikely person would be willing to spend that amount of money for an unprofitable company?  Who predicted that the new owner would then throw the closet open so that others could report independently on what that closet contained?  Certainly Hunter Biden has to be a bit disconcerted by these events. Mr. Musk has accepted that his unforeseen attachment to free speech and truth comes at the cost of death threats, but will those threats weaken his attachment?  We may not have too long to wait for the answer to that question.

The fallout from the covid injection mandates is starting to show up on data tables around the world and the rise in all-cause mortality is difficult to ignore.  With video reels of athletes dropping dead on basketball courts and playing fields around the world questions are being asked from a wider audience.  Prominent cardiologists, having changed their views about mRNA injections, are demanding that all injections cease immediately due to their danger.  One might wonder why the health profession has such a low level of curiosity about why healthy people suddenly die from blood clots, heart problems and fast-growing cancers but maybe such clinical sangfroid is normal. 

Recently the Florida Supreme Court agreed to establish a grand jury with a one-year window to investigate possible fraud and malfeasance by the manufacturers of mRNA injections.  It is a surprising and bold strategy by Governor DeSantis. One of a thousand cuts perhaps.  Rand Paul, a Senator from Kentucky is determined to find out where the SARS-Covid2 virus originated and whether the US government was involved in gain of function experiments at the Wuhan laboratory.  There are increasing numbers of peer reviewed studies showing that hydroxy chloroquine and ivermectin are, in fact, effective early use drugs for covid. It is worth noting that Emergency Use Authorizations can only be given in the absence of other treatments.

As winter temperatures settle in Europe, millions of residents are reduced to burning wood to heat their homes.  Net zero policies have resulted in an overreliance on “sustainable” energy from the sun and wind while electricity and heating from carbon rich fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil have been shut down.  People from affected countries are taking their anger to the streets in significant numbers.  When the true costs of net zero are finally balanced against the environmental gains of that policy will citizens acquiesce to those who insist upon flying private jets around the world?  If there continues to be no indication of global calamity as we approach 2030 how will the energy starved populations in the developing world accept Western finger wagging?

There is a long list of other topics that could be addressed as part of the “death by a thousand cuts”.  Election tampering has become a science in the United States and this accusation is spreading to countries like Brazil.  Or so argue unhappy citizens in those countries.  One could discuss the potential outcomes of continued utilization of modern monetary theory.  Does money indeed grow on trees?  The rhetoric around transhumanism is worthy of further exploration given that there are legitimate, opposing views to be taken on that topic. Should we be afraid or welcoming of government sponsored cryptocurrencies? Do we really think that governments can monitor our every purchase and cut off our credit when we buy too many Big Macs?

My purpose in undertaking this investigation is not to provide answers to the questions raised above.  Rather I want to point out that we are given an “official line” on a great many topics and those official lines are turning out to be unsupported by more recent data.  So, I will highlight that data and you can further investigate and decide for yourselves.  Clearly, I believe that much of what we have been told these past number of years has been nonsense and that a lot of this nonsense will soon be cleared up.  But that is an opinion, and you may come to a different conclusion.  I hope you will push back when I become polemical and offer other sources that I have missed.  Please pass this along to others who might be interested or have something to contribute.

As Jesus said, truth can only make us free when certain a priori conditions are met. In the spiritual sense, we become free when we recognize Jesus as saviour. In the political sense we become free when we have the data to challenge the besetting lies.

The forest of mirrors can only be destroyed as more data is collected and disseminated.  Contributing to this dissemination is my modest goal.