Oksana, Eddie and Zoriana are out Christmas caroling for Orthodox Christmas. They will travel around Kyiv singing the program that they practiced this morning.
Everything is right about this. It's real community, an increasingly scarce commodity. It is making their own music instead of listening to it. It is passing on traditions and religious belief. It comfortably embraces children of all ages. There is even a role for me. I don't sing Ukrainian, but I do get to cook and make movies for them.
I have signed up to do a speech at Toastmasters on January 15. My topic is Mass Formation, a concept that none of us had heard of just a month ago and now seems to be on everybody's lips. It provides a framework on which I can hang a lot of observations, not only of the current Covid 19 situation but of the societal changes of the last half-century.
Mattias Desmet has been interviewed by just about everybody short of Joe Rogan. I find it interesting how repetitive he is – he says the same thing over and over again. The other guys who are getting a lot of exposure such as Robert Malone, Peter McCullough and Reiner Fuellmich always have something new to say. When it comes to Desmet, if you have seen him once, you have pretty much seen the whole show. It is nonetheless a fascinating and valuable theory.
Since the very heart of his message is what makes people vulnerable to propaganda and the way it works on them, I have to feel that he is quite aware of the repetition and is doing it on purpose. It will take a lot of pounding before everybody understands what he is talking about. Anyhow, here he is with the above-named McCullough and Malone, both of whom kind of say that they are sitting at the feet of the master. This is true only in one sense. These guys themselves are the true masters of the most significant fields of medicine when it comes to the Covid 19 situation. But, as they conclude, this is now more about psychology than science or medicine.
I sense we are at a turning point. Half the world has been vaccinated, and the other half is increasingly less likely to be. It is becoming more and more clear that the vaccines are not effective at doing what they were advertised to do – preventing disease. They are not effective at preventing transmission. The omicron variant is running rampant in highly vaccinated populations. Despite the fear porn being broadcast it is not doing much damage.
At the same time the adverse effects of the vaccines are becoming more and more evident. Facebook has been one of the most stalwart supporters of the government narrative and has broadcast fear as widely as anybody. Yet they have not taken down this post. Yesterday it had 20,000 likes and 53,000 comments, just about all negative. Today those numbers are 23,000 and 63,000. Though it is not the easiest thing in the world to do, please scroll through the comments. They are horrifying.
The commenters cannot be the alt right. We deplorables gave up on Mark Zuckerberg long ago. These are the ordinary people around whom Zuckerberg still has his tentacles. These are cries of anguish from Middle America. Average people who feel they have been sold out and are finding their voice.
I wrote that the Overton window is shifting. Here is a thoughtful article from an academic living in South Africa, insulated and isolated from the madness in the United States, commenting on what he sees in his native land and in South Africa, ground zero for Omicron. His points of view are becoming more mainstream.
Meanwhile, out toward the fringes the tinfoil hat people have gotten a lot of things right over the last two years and are getting clearer about what they really think. Paul Craig Roberts looks more like a prophet than a raving maniac and Mike Whitney, on a roll of having correctly predicted a great deal so far, is making even bolder prognostications.
My take is that Bill Gates, who has been out of sight for a while, has achieved most of the goals he has long espoused and is quietly retreating into the background. If Roberts and Whitney are right, the train has left the station. The world will be changed dramatically despite whatever we do now. Gates is probably sitting in his bunker/mansion chortling.
My task, on the fringes of Western civilization, is just to keep on keeping on. Pass down our traditions, as we are doing this very day, and prepare the next generation for a lot of hard work.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the good looking women are spreading the good news of Christ's birth, with handsome husbands and cherubic children in tow.