patrick.net

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/americans-with-phds-are-most-reluctant-to-get-vaccinated-against-covid/ar-AANjRHh?source=patrick.net



I don't quite know the explanation for this. I think of PhD's as the most conformist, being the most "educated", but maybe they have also learned a bit of heathy skepticism.

Patrick says

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/americans-with-phds-are-most-reluctant-to-get-vaccinated-against-covid/ar-AANjRHh?source=patrick.net



I don't quite know the explanation for this. I think of PhD's as the most conformist, being the most "educated", but maybe they have also learned a bit of heathy skepticism.

PHDs have to write a thesis, correct? I assume a thesis is one's own view of what they've learned, no? Could it be that the PHD process gave them self insight?

Patrick says

https://dailysceptic.org/macron-says-no-vaxx-no-citizenship-as-france-unveils-new-stricter-vaccine-passports/?source=patrick.net

The vaccine is being treated as a mystical state or collective substance that incorporates people into the collective body. Vaccination now is like a sacrament, a transubstantiation ritual; through the vaccine we are receiving the body of the state into our body and therefore joining the community.

I think this is really central to the cult of the vaxx. I changed the title of the post to reflect this.

Patrick says

they are on complete tilt and every new “fact” that proves them wrong makes them more fervent and aggressive in their faith because feeling it slip away feels like ego annihilation.

Like when you wear a surgical mask for two years and don't get sick and then when they tell you the masks don't work, instead of breathing freely, you put on an n95 to further restrict the oxygen getting to your brain.

Patrick says

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/americans-with-phds-are-most-reluctant-to-get-vaccinated-against-covid/ar-AANjRHh?source=patrick.net



I don't quite know the explanation for this

Midwits.

The really smart people realized school was bullshit when they were 16 or younger. The smart but gullible people never realized it was bullshit until they had nothing else to learn, THEN they realized it was bullshit. You think Fauci is stupid? He's not, but he's a shyster for certain - HE realizes this is all bullshit.

Midwits can't get further in education for some reason, but they wanted to. They are the "pretty smart" people, who remain gullible. They still think it would have been worthwhile to get their PhD in whatever bullshit degree they graduated with.

Onvacation says

Patrick says

they are on complete tilt and every new “fact” that proves them wrong makes them more fervent and aggressive in their faith because feeling it slip away feels like ego annihilation.

Like when you wear a surgical mask for two years and don't get sick and then when they tell you the masks don't work, instead of breathing freely, you put on an n95 to further restrict the oxygen getting to your brain.

Well, the DON'T work - what you might be missing, is what the authorities expected them to do. Did the authorities expect the masks to help the population or to hurt the population? Maybe, they aren't hurting the population enough...

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/canada-the-talking-points-vs-the/comments?source=patrick.net

I have heard elsewhere that one very common emotion among the vaxxed whose eyes are opened to reality is shame. That's a tough emotion to deal with, both for them and for those of us to whom they confess it. It's difficult to watch someone experiencing shame; there's little we can do to help them deal with it, and the pain is almost palpable. Better that they wake up and deal with the shame, if that's what they all feel, than for them to remain asleep.

Saw an elderly but not too old couple in the community, since we just got back from Tennis and he was British or Aussie we started chatting about Tennis and he reminded me that it's Australian open final and I happen to mention that it's a shame that we don't have Djokovic in the mix (as the best player) and he immediately went full npc tilt and just angrily said "I have no sympathy for this guy". It's amazing how well the covid propaganda has worked, esp. on leftoid npcs. Didn't have time for argument so I just ended the convo. You could literally see the npc.exe interrupt triggered in his head on input='djokovic' lol

Patrick says

Better that they wake up and deal with the shame

That's what's nice about being a psychopath or sociopath: NO SHAME! and also reduced fear of consequences.

Do any of the older folks (50+) on PatNet remember that early '80's TV miniseries "The Wave"?

From IMDB (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083316/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_4):

An experiment in an American High School where students learn how easy it is to be seduced by the same social forces which led to the horrors of Nazi Germany. Based on a true story.

It's surreal, and Nietzschean in its prophesy (History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce). Needless to say, we're living through the farce.

Ceffer says

Patrick says

Better that they wake up and deal with the shame

That's what's nice about being a psychopath or sociopath: NO SHAME! and also reduced fear of consequences.

I really don’t think I fit that description, but I AM extremely rebellious when laws, policies, rules, or orders don’t make sense. I’ve been frustrating teachers, HOAs, cops, and preachers all my life.

My youngest daughter got this trait from me and BOY is she a handful! Only way to change her mind is to have a serious talk with her where I explain things until she understands.

stereotomy says

Do any of the older folks (50+) on PatNet remember that early '80's TV miniseries "The Wave"?

From IMDB (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083316/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_4):

An experiment in an American High School where students learn how easy it is to be seduced by the same social forces which led to the horrors of Nazi Germany. Based on a true story.

It's surreal, and Nietzschean in its prophesy (History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce). Needless to say, we're living through the farce.

Yeah I do remember the book. It's on many lesson plans in Germany as well. Doesn't mean that they learn(ed) from it

Patrick says

I have heard elsewhere that one very common emotion among the vaxxed whose eyes are opened to reality is shame. That's a tough emotion to deal with, both for them and for those of us to whom they confess it. It's difficult to watch someone experiencing shame; there's little we can do to help them deal with it

Oh BS!

That's simple to deal with:

"Don't worry about it buddy! We all can be brainwashed, and here's several example of how I was myself" - and you rattle them off.

People are embarrassed when they've been tricked - well, who the fuck hasn't been? And if you don't think you ever have been, that just means you haven't realized HOW you have been. WMD's in Iraq, Climate Change, global warming causing forest fires in California, either party not being crap..

Maybe this is a good summary:

Boomers using kids as human shields

The offspring of the Greatest Generation — the Baby Boomers — have become the Worst Generation and are now poisoning children in the misguided hope that it will help them to live longer (it will not).

https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/thinking-points-memo-feb-2-2022?source=patrick.net

https://markchangizi.substack.com/p/cooties-drives-the-covid-beliefs?source=patrick.net

Is this because there are puppeteers guiding the mass delusion, introducing these beliefs because they know we’re susceptible to believing them?

No. That would be to entirely miss the point.

Cooties find their way into how in-groups stereotype out-groups in many, most or all societies not because there is a super-cagey cabal creating the perfect narrative.

Rather, the moral here is that these beliefs get selected for over time because they fit our innate preconceptions so well. The mainstream narrative ends up fitting the physics of cooties — as it often does for out-groups — because societies evolve, and the beliefs that conform more closely to our instinctive biases get selected for.

Cooties, cooties everywhere because humans humans everywhere. It’s convergent evolution. Covid hysteria stumbled its way, as all societies do, to treating the out-group in similar, cooties-driven ways.

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/59-year-old-hypervaccinated-corona?source=patrick.net

It’s all there. The narcissism, the relentless fear and hysteria (now totally unmoored from anything actually happening), the emotional self-indulgence, the moral certainty, even towards the end a glimmer of self-awareness: I couldn’t have written a better parody had I tried. You have here the archetypal Corona hystericist, an increasingly obscure species consisting mostly of upper middle-class, morally self-superior insular urbanites – the kinds of people who Trust the Science, buy overpriced granola at the Biomarkt, and derive their opinions from the very state media organs that have spent the last two years carpet bombing our culture with Corona fear porn.

People like this woman spent 2020 and the first part of 2021 being afraid, but then they got vaccinated, and when that didn’t kill the virus, they got angry. They got angry because the virus didn’t go away even though they really really wanted the virus to go away, and because the press and politicians told them that all of this was the fault of the unvaccinated. The article goes into a little more detail about this woman’s anger, not only at her husband, but at all of the unvaccinated – anger at them over their noncompliance, deepened by her powerlessness to make them receive vaccination.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/manipulation-guilt-shame-vaccine-compliance/?source=patrick.net

The ‘Science’ of Manipulation: Researchers Craft Messages of Guilt, Shame to Foster Vaccine Compliance
There’s an entire field of research dedicated to developing messaging designed to persuade “vaccine-hesitant” individuals to get the COVID-19 vaccine — and none of it has anything to do with facts.

https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/thinking-points-feb-4-2022?source=patrick.net

The Best and the Brightest(TM)

I’m struck by the parallels between the failures of The Best & the Brightest(TM) in the Vietnam War and now in the Covid War.

They begin with high-minded ideals (perhaps).

But their attempts to quantify progress create structural incentives for barbarity. In Vietnam it was body counts in the Covid war it’s vaccine counts.

Eventually as the original goal (winning) slips from their grasp, they throw up their hands and regress into savagery:

“Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.” —Generals in the Vietnam War

“Vaccinate ‘em all and let God sort whether these things are safe and effective.” —the FDA in the Covid War

https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/thinking-points-feb-4-2022?source=patrick.net

This really is a class war.

What few people realized before the invention of the internet was that most bourgeois gatekeepers were always illegitimate. They weren’t smarter, better, nor more talented than the rest of us. Our society was a series of cartels within cartels within cartels.

With the introduction of broadband and then ubiquitous mobile phones, the peasants were able to find each other and compare notes about the various cartels we were living under. Social media gave us a megaphone. Barriers to entry came down. True talent started to emerge. Avenues emerged to challenge power and people started pointing out that the various emperors have never had any clothes. The gatekeepers could no longer control the narrative, the facts, nor the public. And those who had always held the reins of power throughout the developed world started freaking out.

So the gatekeepers instinctively reached for digital book burning and poisonous injections, propaganda, demagoguery, surveillance, and totalitarianism — their every action motivated by defending their crumbling class position. Society must be defended. It’s the hiss that fills every CNN broadcast and every utterance from the mouth of Leana Wen, Michael Osterholm, and Peter Hotez. It’s Gollum hissing my precious as he gazes lovingly upon the idolatrous ring. It’s the mantra of the fascists and the justification that they will use to do literally anything to stay in power. It’s the idea that we must smash.

The ruling class makes the laws.

The laws create massive tension and unrest in the population.

The ruling class uses the media to turn a minority group into the scapegoat for all of society's problems.

The citizens blame and attack each other, instead of their government.

The ruling class gains more wealth, power, and control over society. As the 99% get weaker and more poor.

Divide and conquer 101.

https://t.me/greatreject/29853?source=patrick.net

https://freedomalliance.co.uk/elementor-2743/?mc_cid=ea1038fd4d&source=patrick.net

The reason this causes me some considerable trepidation is two-fold: first of all, I am profoundly worried about the mental health of those who were deceived, and what the psychological consequences will be for them as they are confronted with the truth in a way that they can’t dismiss, ridicule, or deny. It’s extremely difficult for any of us to admit we were duped, because it’s such a huge threat to our self-perception and our ego. As Mark Twain so astutely observed, it’s much easier to dupe someone in the first place, than to convince them thereafter that they’ve been deceived. That’s why the “normies” are so absolutely impervious to any amount of evidence that their beliefs are wrong, but, when it comes to the point that all the mainstream channels, all politicians, scientists, doctors, and media talking heads, converge on a narrative-flip and confirm everyone’s been duped – well, denial won’t be an option any more, for anyone, and I don’t know how the collective national psyche is going to process that, because such a monumental, horrifying act of deception has never, to my knowledge, been perpetrated on a people before.

Patrick says

but, when it comes to the point that all the mainstream channels, all politicians, scientists, doctors, and media talking heads, converge on a narrative-flip

Are we sure they are going to do that...flip?

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/containment-collapse-reader-reports?source=patrick.net

In Czechia:

The jazz clubs were slow to reopen last summer, and then only on weekends, badly patronized due to mass media induced fear throughout the country. We started playing monthly house concerts in our loft apartment, hoping to play our new repertoire to maybe 10 people, throw in some vino, make a night of it. From the first concert we had more people than we’d ever hoped, and it continues. We played our first house concert of the year this last Saturday and could have filled the place three times over. People are desperate to live their lives again. The unvaccinated are in good company here. And never has a drop of wine been spilled, a glass been broken or a toilet seat been peed on. By now even those who had been holding out for the safer Novavax have decided it’s just not necessary, or worth it. An underground network of Free Spaces, the Volná Zóna, has sprung up, and we’ve discovered a whole new world of pubs, eateries and venues which we never would have considered before, filled with smiling, maskless, people.

I like it! Places where the sane can go to be with other sane people.

https://www.hennessysview.com/p/the-difference-between-narratives?source=patrick.net

Narrative is the use of “facts” to create an alternative “truth.” It’s a lie protected and advanced by recognizable facts, usually presented by an accepted or presumed authority figure. Both the “facts” (which may or may not be accurate) and the authority figure combine to bypass the amygdala—the part of the brain responsible for fear, suspicion, and anger. Persuasion psychologist Robert Cialdini identified authority as one of the six principles of persuasion.

Cialdini likes to cite a study from the 1970s. Researchers placed a handwritten sign on the night-drop box of a bank saying, “Out of Order: Place Deposits in Bag.” Beneath the sign was a canvas back with a metal frame to hold it open.

Would people really drop their cash deposits in a canvas bag?

In one treatment, the bag was left alone. In a second, a man in a suit stood a few feet away. In a third, a man in a rented security guard costume stood a few feet away.

No one left a deposit envelope in the unguarded bag. A few left it next to the man a business suit. Everyone who came by left their bags in the treatment with fake guard.

The guard made no pretense of protecting the bag. None of the subjects asked if he was there to guard the deposits. They simply dropped the night deposit envelopes and carried on.

Such is our blind obedience to authority, real or perceived.

The note on the bank’s night-drop box was a lie, of course. Just like most of the pandemic narrative. And, like the researchers in the 70s, the designers of the Covid narrative relied on our knee-jerk response to authority. Instead of a man in a guard costume, DARPA used Dr. Anthony Fauci, not to bypass the amygdala, but to redirect it.

It’s possible to bypass the amygdala in a neutral mind (hypnosis), but if the person is already scared—if the amygdala are already twitching, attempts to “talk down” the frightened person will only increase their fear response. With a fearful person, you always double down on their fear—and redirect it. Like I wrote a few days back:

People who are scared believe they have good reasons to be scared. If you deny the validity of their fear, they see you as an idiot who doesn’t recognize the danger staring you in the face.

Scared people are attracted to scary things. They want to be scared. Over many years of practice, their minds have determined that the absence of the big scary thing happening is evidence that fear, worry, and conformity work. They see a causal relationship between their feelings of terror and disaster avoidance. Therefore, if you ask a scared person to stop being afraid, you’re asking them to trigger a disaster, at least in their minds.

No. The way to win over a fixed-mindset Useful Idiot: begin with a scary story—the more dangerous, the better.

Where do you think I learned that technique? It’s what the government has been doing since March 2020. Think back to that DARPA project, the Narrative Network. It’s obvious what was meant by “narrative.” But what was the “network?”

How about CNN, the New York Times, Johns-Hopkins Medical School, and University of Washington. The World Health Organization.

How many times did you hear the word “pandemic” in the first two weeks of March?

It was natural and proper to have some fear of the Coronavirus. We should always approach the unknown with caution. But the known facts in March 2020 did not support the narrative that emerged the second week of that month.

As Alex Berenson writes in Pandemia:

On March 16, the Imperial College report, Neil Ferguson’s masterpiece, came out. I read it that night. Reread it. Reread it again. I kept coming back to the table on page 5, the one that had estimates of the infection fatality ratios by age. At the top of the table:

Age 0–9, 0.002%—2 deaths in 100,000 infections.
Age 10–19, 0.006%—6 deaths in 100,000 infections. (Both of those estimates were probably high.)
At the bottom: Age 80+, 9.3%–9,300 deaths in 100,000 infections.
I had known the elderly were more vulnerable to Covid than the young. I hadn’t had any idea how much more. This gold-standard report said the oldest people were thousands of times as likely to die as the youngest.

I could almost feel the scales dropping from my eyes.1

The very report that triggered the lockdowns (its conclusions were shared with governments before it was released on the 16th) proved the lockdowns were unnecessary. But you didn’t hear that part, because no one read is aloud. It was “the quiet part.”

We were afraid. They wanted to manipulate us. How do you manipulate a frightened person whose amygdala are all aglow?

You double down on their fear.

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/containment-collapse-reader-reports?source=patrick.net

A sizeable chunk of the population still thinks the passports would be nice, but this is mostly because they want to uphold their priviledges as vaccinated Good Citizens.

Hadn't really occurred to me that some people love the vaxx because they think it will give them some kind of legal superiority over the unvaxxed.

An argument that the problem is indeed credentialism:

This winter has seen the Omicron variant spread like wildfire among students, faculty, and staff. In response, Dartmouth has reimposed restrictions on socialising on fraternities and sororities, but these are unevenly enforced. Public announcements from the administrators heading the university's Covid response have a detached and unconcerned air about them, as though they accept at last the inevitability of the virus. However, boosters were mandated for all students by the end of January, so they haven't fully seen the light yet. It remains to be seen if masks will disappear from classrooms - professors are some of the most neurotic people when it comes to Covid, as they are also some of the most fervent believers in credentialism. Their graduate degrees got them where they are, after all.

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/containment-collapse-reader-reports?source=patrick.net

Over the long term, I don't see any Narrative Collapse at all. My aforementioned coworker made it clear that he wants universal mandates and restrictions, he just doesn't see the point in doing them halfway. My peers here are graduate students and newly-minted PhDs with excellent credentials, and they will be the technocrats of tomorrow. They will sit on committees to ‘manage the climate emergency’ and 'fix the misinformation problem,' and they will advise politicians with their myopic opinions. They will look for the next crisis.

Many of them clearly relish the power given to the scientific establishment over the past two years, and they will grab that power for themselves as soon as possible. The coworker I already mentioned thinks that cows should be banned because of global warming. Another told me that he thinks anyone who refuses any sort of yearly booster or vaccine for any disease should be mandated to wear masks indefinitely "so that we know who to avoid and shame." Another highly educated peer is trying to get "the trifecta" of all three available US shots, and literally get the J&J shot, followed by Pfizer and then Moderna boosters. I think he believes that the shots each develop different antibodies, so he'd be protected from more strains.

They did not come to these opinions through careful logic or research, and thus I don't see any reason why they would abandon these opinions as they climb the political ladder of academia and government science.

The cat is out of the bag. COVID showed them that it's possible to have immense power as an academic, and they'll reach for it. Hide your cows.

The progressive people I know and talk to really believe that the government they like is benign and would never do wrong. There is no voter fraud on the left, and no corruption, and health czars really do know best. They believe in experts, and they believe experts are entirely altruistic (at least when it comes to their expertise).

Whereas everyone from the center to the right tends to suspect government, including one's own candidates, I see an amazingly naive trust on the left. The further left they go, the more they seem to believe it, until you get to the fans of socialism: Socialists would NEVER do anything bad! They are all for the people, all the time!

People center and right tend to look at individuals, not groups, and so evaluate particular politicians, groups of politicians, and parties. Yes, that is an oversimplification. But I think it holds true. Anyway, I don't think the left needs reassurance. I think the left believes its vision of reality -- that experts can make what they want to happen come about by declaring that it is true, and are entirely altruistic -- and sees everyone else as preventing them from making their paradise real by stubbornly refusing to believe. If we won't say their reality is true, they will make us say nothing at all, and then it will BE true.

The leaders do not think this is true. But the average person seems to.

RikardFeb 6·edited Feb 6
"Why is it so hard for them to admit they've been duped?"

Being made to play the fool hurts, simple as that. Being made the fool by someone you trust is even worse, and being made the fool by someone you trust without ever having the chance of getting even sits like a barbed hook in the eylid.

Much easier to just keep trusting and defending that trust.

Psychopaths and predators love to cultivate idiotic wishful thinking and altruism because they regard them as fatal weaknesses that give them an advantage over their prey. You can see it when they make appeals to soppy, sappy emotionalism that they don't share i.e. virtue signaling.

In nature, predators, however, are alway outnumbered by the prey in a kind of evolutionary averaging function. Predators know and fear the herd reactions that transcend their stunts. When these herd reactions become dominant, or the prey evolve around the predator strategies, the predators themselves are decimated back into a minority or need to evolve counter strategies.

In nature, many predators and parasites eventually yield to the game theory version of altruism: tit for tat. They may actually provide some services to their prey and even become symbiotic over time. Human agriculture and animal husbandry are examples, although we don't think of farmers and herders as predators, but they are.

The Globalist predators want to cultivate the human race like passive farm animals in controlled settings. It is at present an insane and sclerotic fantasy left over from inbred aristocrats and dynastic survivors rather than any kind of workable scheme. The world allowed criminal predators to dominate the financial systems, which seems to be the main source of our present miseries.

'Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.' — George Carlin

“Howard Stern is a bunch of ugly sticks glued together with dried semen from one of his old wet dreams.

Once upon a time an abject failure as a broadcaster, he glimpsed a possible way out of Doom by taking on the role of psychological pornographer.

He’d assume everyone was obsessed by sex, and he’d force their inner dog to drool when he rang the bell.

Now, from a political perch, he’s decreed that all unvaccinated people should be locked in their homes and die.

That’s his style. Cut to the extreme chase. And also: see nothing, say something.

The mental midget status applies to Stern in spades. He knows zero about vaccines. He listens to the official doctors and the federal government like the kind of good little boy he hates.

As a young awkward schlub, he decided to rebel and burn down normal people by illustrating they were nothing more than prurient fish waiting to be shot in a barrel.

It was an easy choice. Once he found his radio style, he opened fire. His ratings soared; fame and fortune arrived.

He knows his success is nothing to be proud of. But success is all he has to hang his hat on. So he pretends it means something about his character.

It only means he’s one more person who’s tapped into a lowest common denominator and found dollars.

If Howard Stern tells you, you need to get vaccinated, you pretty much know it’s the wrong thing to do, on that basis alone. Directing people down bad alleys turns out to be one of Stern’s skills.

His notion of free speech is entirely self-serving. He wants to elevate his tired half-baked porn into a Constitutional issue.

He possesses a high degree of intelligence. He’s used it to recreate himself as mental midget. The only interesting moments in his career arrive when he laughs at himself because he knows what he’s done to himself.

He probably, on occasion, dreams he’s Field Marshal Fauci. And Fauci occasionally dreams he’s Howard Stern.”
~
Jon Rappoport