Praying for Praying

"No Way to Prevent This," Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens (Headline from The Onion)

I'm a big fan of thoughts and prayers. I bestow thoughts and prayers all the time. It's fashionable, it doesn't take much time, and it fits my budget. The only drawback to bestowing thoughts and prayers is that I don't seem to lose a lot of weight while doing it. All that being said, however, I've been trying to come up with a way to reduce hail-of-bullets mass slaughters, and I must admit that my very sincere thoughts and prayers don't seem to be having much effect. I don't appear to be making a dent in the body counts.

I'm not the only one at a strategic impasse, either. The Onion, with its fine, consistent reporting of Uvalde, has been covering these massacres for a decade. Here's what The Onion had to say. The fact that this is what The Onion always has to say doesn't lessen the utility of its reporting:

"This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them," said Idaho resident Kathy Miller, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world's deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than other developed nations.

Alternative Facts

I want to point out something science-y that many liberal anti-gun journalists may have missed because they postulate that Americans are hateful, psychotic, irresponsible, held hostage by the gun lobby, irredeemably evil, or complete idiots. I want to point out that correlation is not causation. 

Americans may suffer more mass casualties because we are better shots that any other nationality. This is, after all, the land of Annie Oakley and Wild Bill Hickock. A country where each major comics company has beloved gun-toting assassins as featured characters. Children of all ages aspire to be comic book mainstays Deadshot, Bullseye, and the Punisher. One nation, undoubtedly under God, where rites of passage include buying a car, an assault rifle, and voting (in that order). Americans are simply better shots -- faster, more accurate, with a tradition of accuracy unmatched by other nationalities. 

And that is why we lead the world in casualties from mass shootings. It's not because we're psychotic.

Thoughts and Prayers

I've invested a great deal of thoughts and prayers in how to stop these assault weapon massacres. My investment of thoughts and prayers pointed me to one possible explanation as to why thoughts and prayers haven't been working too well. 

Now hear me out. Is it possible that thoughts and prayers combined have a set limit? In other words, if you do X amount of praying, 1-X is all the thinking you can do. And if you do Y amount of thinking, 1-Y is all the praying you can do. What I'm suggesting is that there's a cap on the useful combination of thinking and praying, and that cap amount just isn't enough to come up with a rational solution (thinking) to gun violence, and it's not enough to get God's attention (praying) to stop the gun violence.

When you think (or pray) about it, my theory of the combined thoughts/prayers limits makes a lot of sense. Republicans, who pray a lot, seem to have some thinking deficiencies. And we all know that the profane American Democrats seem to think too much and pray too little. Thus, thoughts and prayers aren't enough to solve the assault weapons problem. It's a mathematical law of nature. We can label it "Dietz's Sacred/Profane Theorem."

My Solution

I have a workaround for Dietz's Theorem, however. It's genius if I say so myself.

Praying by itself doesn't seem to solve America's massacre problems. Maybe Americans don't pray well. Maybe cell phone towers disrupt prayer waves enroute to God. Whatever it is, we have an issue. 

But what if we augment our prayers? What if we pray for having more effective prayers? If we all pray about praying, God will amplify our prayers so that He can hear our prayers.

Praying about praying should be our new national mantra. Set aside an increasing chunk of your prayer time each day to pray for our praying. Churches should also set aside a portion of each service every week to pray for praying. If the assault weapon massacres continue, we should just devote more and more of each church service to praying about praying. And there's a built-in backup plan if our praying for praying doesn't impede the slaughter. I know it's a bit radical, but we could consider praying to improve our praying to improve praying.

These are just my thoughts on the matter. And my prayers, of course.

Bob Dietz

May 29, 2022 

Cocytus to Lethe to Cocytus

The United States leads the world in per capita gun ownership. We're the only nation with more than one gun owned per person. Serbia, which is a pretty rough place, is second at roughly one gun for every two people. 

I've been unable to reorient after the Uvalde massacre. Living in a red state, I perceive myself as surrounded by "the other." What kind of human being thinks that owning an assault weapon should trump preventing the slaughter of children in a classroom? I am at sea, or more accurately, the River Styx. But, as Steve Kerr pointed out in his presser the other night, 90% of Americans want some kind of red flag federal gun laws. So maybe American life is not as insane as Republican politicians would have us believe.

Why is the United States plagued by these repeated mass slaughters? Perhaps how we entertain ourselves, how we occupy our time, is at the heart of it. I went to two local bookstores, Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million, to survey the kinds of magazines sold. At Barnes and Noble, I counted 44 science/nature magazines, 20 travel, and 34 magazines devoted to guns and ammunition. I did not count hunting magazines with the guns and ammo. At Books-A-Million, I counted 14 science-y magazines, 50 travel, and 33 devoted to guns and ammunition. I'm not sure if I caught Books-A-Million on a bad science inventory day or something.  In any event, I was mightily impressed with the number of guns and ammo mags. They outnumbered all sports mags combined. 

First Person Shooter Games

Back in the 80's and 90's there was quite a debate among sociologists and psychologists regarding whether first person shooter games led to violence or, conversely, were some kind of escape valve catharsis. No firm conclusions were reached.

Now we are in 2022, and I don't think pre-teens and teens spending hundreds of hours as first person shooters is a helpful thing. The games are ubiquitous and boringly similar, regardless of whether you're killing zombies, aliens, or soldiers with uniforms different from your own. Training hundreds or thousands of hours at killing simply can't be a healthy psychological endeavor. 

No matter the conclusion to the debate about whether these games are amping up or defusing violent behaviors, one fact is clear. Since all branches of the American military use simulation training, training to kill must make one better at it. Practice makes perfect. The more experience one has as a first person shooter, the more damage one can do as a first person shooter. I don't see how one can argue differently.

Conclusion

Every Disney/Marvel film ends with some kind of extended massive conflagration. The routine blueprint is frankly annoying to true comic buffs, because not all comics are written this way. These movies all have two-hours plus of action culminating in an over-the-top battle royale where characters survive through implausible means during unwinnable battles. My point is, every real life showdown with police is also an unwinnable battle.

For more than a generation, we have been training our children to shoot at figures on a screen as entertainment. To kill, over and over, for hours and hours, and to be graded on effectiveness and mass casualties. Points for casualties. We have also inundated our children with television shows and movies where probability is suspended and the self either miraculously survives or sacrifices itself for a greater purpose.

We've trained our children to go out with a bang. And an invoice of casualties.

Bob Dietz

May 26, 2022

Death and Basketball

 

I was in first grade, and the teachers sent us home around lunch time, as I recall. I lived just a block from the school, and when I got home, I still didn't know why we had been sent home, but my mother was crying. My grandmother was there and said nothing. The date was Friday, November 22, 1963, and President Kennedy had been shot. My mother, who was Catholic, tried to explain it to me. Being six years old. I didn't understand how a president could be killed or why.

Two days later, the NFL went ahead with their schedule of games. Pete Rozelle, then NFL commissioner, said later that it was his biggest mistake. 

On Tuesday, May 24, a newly minted 18-year-old, sporting body armor and bullets bought with birthday money, went on a sociopathic rampage that killed 22 people, including 19 children, most 10 years old. The NBA decided that their playoff game between Golden State and Dallas scheduled for that night should be played. The game was in Dallas.

Golden State head coach Steve Kerr gave a pre-game presser commenting on the insanity of American gun laws. He said the game was irrelevant. The game was indeed irrelevant, but they played it anyway. I wrote "played it anyway," which is active voice, rather than "it was played anyway," which is passive, because I want to underline the fact that the playing of the game didn't occur via the hand of God. People decided that the game should be played, which I find somewhat nauseating.

Yesterday's Questions

That brings me to my question, "How many children need to die before the NBA cancels a game?" I'm going to email various league officials to try to pin down some kind of specific answer. Obviously, 19 children wasn't the answer. Is the answer 30, 50, a thousand? How anaesthetized are we to these deaths, these outrages, these terrors?

American institutions can't cancel a basketball game? Or a slate of regular season baseball games? What exactly are the priorities of this great U.S. culture that seeks to set an example for the world?

Horror and Prayers

Immediately after the massacre, many Republican politicians took to Twitter and other social media. Their messages seemed to unsurprisingly follow some kind of style guide. The words "horror" and "prayers" appeared in most messages, a kind of mantra written by zombies for zombies. 

Personally, I don't think the word "horror" covers it, and I'll tell you why. Back around the same time JFK was shot, my favorite magazine was Famous Monsters of Filmland, edited by Forrest J. Ackerman. Famous Monsters featured reviews, still photos, and interviews regarding classic horror and sci-fi films of the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's. One line from Ackerman stayed with me through all these years.

"Horror," he said, "is when you walk into a dark alley and see someone being murdered. Terror is when you realize that you're next." The children in that Uvalde classroom experienced something far worse than horror before dying. They experienced the very essence of terror. Every one of them, over and over and over again. 

No child should have to experience that kind of unadulterated terror. All because the world's most technologically advanced nation can't vet 18-year-olds buying body armor and semi-automatic weapons.

Welcome to America.

Bob Dietz

May 25, 2022

Propaganda Files: An Inconvenient Theory

Well, they didn't take long to show up, and they've been entertaining in their premeditated spin, their convolution, and their delicacy in what to not say. I'm talking about corporate America's homogeneous reactions to "Replacement Theory" having become a feature on American evening news (and front pages to boot).

The written reactions have been so homogeneous and simultaneous as to suggest an Attack of the Clones, so to speak. That's what happens when writers think The Force is With Them and editors are all spin and manipulation and very little editing (of arguments, of illogic, of opinions presented as facts).

This will be one of those boring, line by line analyses of propaganda. If you have something exciting to do, please go do it and come back when you crave some literary forensics to help put you to sleep. From my perspective, it had to be written, so I'll get to it, as Chris Cuomo used to say.

I'll be taking a hard look at three pieces that were all published in the last 72 hours. What I'm going to do is pull quotes from each piece that highlight the manipulation of readers. Anyone can do what I've done here. A journalism degree is helpful but not necessary.

CNN

I'll start with CNN. An opinion piece updated yesterday by Jane Greenway Carr is titled "Opinion: What a Nobel laureate's take on Donald Trump reveals about today." The Nobel laureate in question is Toni Morrison. I want to quote and briefly review Carr's second paragraph. Here's the first sentence:

In Morrison's formulation, fear-driven devotion to racial status is more powerful to many White Americans than even self-interest, shame, or any belief in humanity.

I think Carr is laying it on a bit thick here with a touch of Disney and a touch of hyperbole (all Disney films end with big culture or universe-saving showdowns), but I have no qualms with the logic or sentiment. Then we get to the second sentence:

And it is this reality, that White Americans' anxieties in the face of a changing country have been and continue to be weaponized with disastrous and violent results, that has been instrumental in fueling the spread of so-called "replacement theory," the false and bigoted claim that elites are conspiring to replace Whites with minorities.

Now this sentence is interesting. I'm okay with the use of the word "weaponized" here. Understand, however, that using "weaponized" clearly means that the weaponization is not just happening free of human influence or planning. Saying that the violence is a result of a population segment being weaponized points the finger at human planning and design, and U.S. politics with its human avatars, as pre-meditating the disastrous results and massaging the violence into reality. If Carr wants to present things this way, I'm good with it, but I will circle back to it in a moment.

The line that serves as the backbone of Carr's piece and with which I have issues is the clause that closes the second paragraph, "...so-called 'replacement theory,' the false and bigoted claim that elites are conspiring to replace Whites with minorities." It must be nice to write whatever you want about something because you're so on the side of justice and The American Way. Here are the problems with that final clause:

1) Whites ARE being replaced by minorities. If not directly tit for tat, then outnumbered and replaced in terms of voting counts and political power. So the falsity alleged by Carr must lie not in the argument that Whites aren't being replaced, but in the claim that "elites are conspiring."

2) "Conspiring" has quite a few definitions, so please review them yourself. My point is that if a writer is going to claim that there is no "conspiring," he has a tall, tall task. Because every law, ordinance, speech, and meeting that affects racial policies or immigration policies is a form of conspiring. It would be difficult to place interactions and activities by elites regarding these policies as outside a Venn diagram defining "conspiring." Carr seems to want to define "conspiring" as membership in Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil.

If Whites are indeed being replaced, and elites are indeed having meetings and forming policies that affect and control the pace of it, where exactly is the falseness of the claim? And if these things are true, how are such claims "bigoted?" I don't even know if claims can be bigoted in and of themselves, but I learn something new every day.

My problems with that last clause are simply these:  Whites ARE being replaced. Elites ARE affecting the pace of it, regardless of whether they are card-carrying evil mutants. Basically, it's disingenuous for writers to present the whole demographic shift as some kind of natural law that's happening in a political and influence vacuum. Carr is on a moral high horse, and she's going out of her way to spin her presentation and manipulate her readers. The giveaway to her writing dishonestly is that she never broaches the actual numbers regarding immigration or demographic shifts. This ignoring of numbers and trends seems to be a strategy all of these writers employ, and it's not a coincidence. Maybe it's a conspiracy?

I want to take a moment to return to Carr's declaration that White Americans have been weaponized. Her perspective doesn't assume that violence is simply happening as a natural result of cultural fault lines and a snowballing of frictions. No, it posits people and organizations as key parts of the provenance of the violence. Carr assigns cause-and-effect rather than accepting some naturalistic explanation sans specific boogeyman individuals and organizations. What's interesting, however, is that she refuses to explore or even mention the fact that individuals and organizations are part of the cause-and-effect of White Americans becoming a minority. She employs different perspectives, language, and questions depending on what suits her sermon when. And to repeat, she mentions no numbers, no historical markers and trends regarding the demography of Whites becoming a minority. She ignores laying out the statistical details for replacement theory's claims. She recognizes that NOT stating the numbers helps what effect she's trying to have on her audience.

Business Insider

The second piece I'll examine is by Yelena Dzhanova, published about 48 hours ago by Business Insider. The gist of Dzhanova's piece is about Tucker Carlson and how he should be held accountable in some legal sense for promulgating the idea of replacement theory. First, let me explain the structure of the piece. Dzhanova is writing about an interview conducted by CNN's Jim Acosta. Acosta's subject was former Fox political correspondent Carl Cameron. Cameron had some strong declarative opinions regarding how Tucker Carlson should be held accountable for "lying."

I'm going to start by quoting two paragraphs and then taking a look at them. Here's the first paragraph:

As Insider's Connor Perrett and Kieran Press-Reynolds reported, police say they found a document belonging to the Buffalo shooting suspect that was rife with conspiracy theories such as white nationalist "replacement theory," which claims immigration by non-white people is an attempt to replace the white population in the United States.

Now here's my issue with this paragraph. Saying that replacement theory "claims immigration by non-white people is an attempt to replace the white population in the U.S." is not a problem. The problem lies in implying, assuming, or declaring that the line itself is somehow wrong. Non-white people are replacing white people. They are enroute to outnumbering them, first of all. Second, if you're talking about political power, then overwhelming immigration flooding does replace white political power with non-white political power. One doesn't necessarily need an Invasion of the Body Snatchers body-for-body direct substitution for the word "replacement" to be appropriate. Third, demographers do predict that in a few years, the white American population will actually begin to decline. White deaths will outnumber white births. When that happens, there is an almost Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe to foreign born citizens replacing dying Caucasians.

This brings me to an important point that I'll explore more fully in future entries:  If a theory is more or less correct, what is the true utility in labeling it a "conspiracy theory?"

Moving along, I want to highlight the author's somewhat torturous use of the phrase "is an attempt" in this paragraph. The author tries to anchor the falseness of the theory in the falseness of the words "an attempt." "An attempt" suggests coordination, planning, policies, and effort mustered in pursuit of a goal. If this is what "an attempt" means, then in reality there is "an attempt." Demographic shifts that are primarily fueled by policies are not acts of God or laws of nature that occur without man's hand on the wheel. There are indeed plans and policies and attempts involved. To argue otherwise is absurd. 

Dzhanova's next paragraph states:

Carlson latched onto that theory in his coverage of the Buffalo shooting, said Cameron, adding that the US government has to take action against people who spread and amplify misinformation.

I am no fan of Tucker Carlson, but since when is telling it like it is spreading and amplifying misinformation? If the information being spread is for the most part factually correct, what trick of linguistics, logic, or morality allows one to label accurate information as misinformation? 

Next, I'd like to comment on Dzhanova's second bullet point at the opening of the article. Here it is:

* Carl Cameron said Carlson has been "screaming fire in a crowded movie house for years."

If the movie house is on fire, is it lying to shout fire? Or are we to blithely accept the occasional movie house fire as the natural progression of things, propelled by laws of nature best left unimpeded?

I want to wrap up the Business Insider discussion by pointing out that this piece curiously avoids demographic numbers or laying out immigration trends. What it does not say is wholly in lockstep with the CNN piece examined previously.

USA Today

Written by Will Carless, the title is "Yes, American voter demographics are changing. No, that's not what Replacement Theory is." The piece was published 24 hours ago. At the top of the piece are three bullet points. Here they are:

*  Last week's mass shooting in Buffalo has drawn renewed attention to a racist conspiracy theory known as "replacement theory."

*  The theory is often mischaracterized and confused with demographic changes that are happening in the United States. 

*  True "replacement theory" posits not just that demographics are changing, but that this change is being orchestrated by a sinister cabal.

Let's review Carless' bullet points one by one. I'm going to get a little bit snarky with the first two.

Regarding the first bullet point. Ahem. I am not a fan of using "racist" as an adjective, especially when the noun is not human. This is a relatively new thing. I have issues with the word "racist" attached declaratively as an adjective to theories and events. If you want to use "racists' theory," be my guest. I'm better with that.

Regarding the second bulletin point. Ahem. We have two uses of passive voice in the second bulletin point. Hard for a reader to not notice that. This second bullet feels like it's contorting itself to make some oblique point. When writers resort to passive voice, it usually means they prefer to not spell out who is doing what to whom. The best use of passive voice I've ever encountered was while trying to edit an army report about a tank that was accidentally driven into a swamp. It took three pages before I had any idea what the report was about or that tanks were involved.

Once again, as in the CNN and Business Insider pieces, "demography changes that are happening" tries to passively ignore that they aren't occurring purely through laws of nature. No mention of policies or people formulating policies. No numbers or trends. Same as the two pieces previously discussed. 

The third bullet point attempts to impose a particular straw man definition of replacement theory. Carless has decided to define "true" replacement theory as one that requires demographic change "being orchestrated by a sinister cabal." And we're back to Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil once again.

Frankly, I don't know what to do with this. Carless is an expert on extremism, so perhaps he has a sense of what percent of people who espouse replacement theory are "true" replacement theory believers. From my perspective, and I did a fair share of cult research in my youth, Carless is generating a false dichotomy.   I see replacement theory as anchored in facts. I also see advocacy as existing on a large continuum. Assigning belief in a "sinister cabal" as necessary for being a "true" replacement theorist seems quite a stretch. It's almost as if Carless is attempting to undermine any legitimacy, any reasonable conversation, about the topic by defining all "true" believers as paranoid psychopaths. I think this exacerbates the problem and is the wrong approach. I do wish him luck with this endeavor (and yes, Sheldon, that was sarcasm).

Looking back on Carless' piece, again there are no clearly stated demographic numbers or trends. No math to make real the replacement theorists' concerns. No mention of policies and people making policies as being part of the American demographic process. 

Conclusion

A big chunk of the people who read this will decide that I'm somehow defending Tucker Carlson and a psychotic murderer. The fact that some readers may react to this entry that way is why I'm writing it. The behavior of the Buffalo shooter isn't the debate; the debate is why corporate media responded in predictable and journalistically inappropriate ways regarding a complex subject, replacement theory. 

The propaganda that's most insidious is propaganda that you don't notice because you're already on board with the emotions it's trying to generate. You're resonating with it, and amplified by it, and you don't notice what it's not telling you. I anticipated how American media would respond, and I was correct. I didn't go searching for these three pieces to make my own argument. They all popped up at the same time, written with the same emphases and the same holes highlighting what they don't want to publicly acknowledge, much less discuss. 

In some ways, these are the best examples of current American propaganda. They manipulate, they influence, and they avoid mentioning anything that may clog their filters. I'll return to this subject next week, featuring my own bullet points.

Bob Dietz

May 23, 2022

 

 

Debunking "Replacement Theory"

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say I would be debunking replacement theory? My apologies. Since I see no rational, logical way to debunk replacement theory, I'll take a shot at debunking the debunking of replacement theory. This way, I'll contribute mightily to this blog's mission, stated many times, to offend as many as possible in the time I have left. Let's get the ball rolling.

Since the Saturday, May 14, attack on the Buffalo supermarket by a white 18-year-old in body armor, replacement theory has been all the rage on the nightly news. Every broadcast mentions it but doesn't really seem to explain what it is. The attack left 10 dead, and based on the screed left by the shooter, and the fact he had "nigger" painted on the barrel of his weapon, the attack appears to have been your classic Caucasian dude on a psychotic rampage in service of keeping America majority-white.

Replacement Theory

If I'm going to explore the debunking of the debunking of replacement theory, I'd best first attempt to define replacement theory. To make my argument, I'll divide replacement theory into what I see as two separate components. The first argues that whites in the United States are being replaced over time by non-whites. Is this really happening? Well, gosh darn it, yes indeedy.

For the last 10 years, the Census Bureau projections have consistently predicted the United States to become majority non-white in 2044 or 2045. The consensus is that the U.S. will, barring some virus that disproportionately kills non-whites or something like that, have a non-white majority by 2050. This should be no surprise to anyone. As early as 1990, the handwriting was clearly on the wall. The only debate was regarding whether it would be sooner, say 2035, or more like 2050. My late wife had a doctorate in demography, so I try to keep tabs on most of this stuff. Let me throw some numbers at you that are a couple of years old. To get absolutely up to date stats, I recommend visiting the closest university library and surveying the latest demography or population studies journals. As of about a year ago, the majority of Under 18 Americans became non-white. Also, non-Hispanic white Americans 15 years of age or less have now been confirmed as a minority. Back in 2015, just over half of American 1-year-olds were racial and ethnic minorities. 

There was absolutely no mystery about any of this. These demographic trends have been writ large in the American firmament for decades. Thus, if you want to refer to whites being replaced by non-whites as "Replacement Theory," my only argument would be that it's long past the theory stage and should be referred to as "Replacement Fact." Anyone who says this hasn't been happening and isn't going to happen is delusional.

The second component of "replacement theory" posits that liberal leaning elites have plotted and planned this all in advance. These evil elites are making it happen. 

I don't want to get into the nuances of some folks considering Jews as non-whites and the borrowing of storylines from The Elders of Zion. I just want to point out that to consider this replacement of whites by non-whites via money-driven policy as "just a conspiracy," one must decide that political actions by elites have no effects on the outcome. This is by definition not the case and frankly absurd. Of course politics plays into the pace of replacement.

In 2005, roughly one in eight Americans was a foreign-born citizen. That's about 45 million people, which is a lot by any metric or from any political perspective. If current trends continue and the great American racial see-saw pivots in 2050, one in five Americans will be foreign-born. Immigration policies have undeniably played and will continue to play a huge role in when the pivot occurs. Those policies are the result of political emphases and decisions driven by American elites. Thus, no matter to what degree replacement theory is presented as mean-spirited, parochial bordering on paranoid, and unfashionable, it's pretty much correct.

"Replacement Theory," stripped of sociopathic and white supremacist labels, checks most of the reality boxes.

Reality Check

If my stating the simple and obvious results in readers perceiving me as a white supremacist or conspiracy righty, I submit that such readers are victims of propaganda. In the days ahead, it'll be fascinating to discover how American media tackles the indelicate subject of replacement theory. Those foreign-born immigrant stats I mentioned -- will CNN discuss them? Will The New York Times? Will any American media attack the psychopathy of the Buffalo shooter while acknowledging that the shooter's perceptions and stated motives are not fantasies? 

Those numbers for the in-progress massive scaling up of foreign born immigrants -- how often in the last two years have those stats been delineated on CNN or MSNBC or major networks? And if not, why not? The projections are clean, clear, and unambiguous. Yet major corporate media desperately avoids spelling out the bald numbers. 

One of the ongoing themes of this blog has been that what is NOT mentioned usually tells you more than what is. The absence of information that's germane to policies is a powerful form of propaganda that too often goes unexamined. When the Buffalo shooter's motives are discussed by media, when his treatise is publicly analyzed, "Replacement Facts" need to be part of the conversation. Will they be? It'll certainly be interesting to find out.

Bob Dietz

May 21, 2022

Propaganda Files: Phil Harper, Dr. Been, and the Whore(s) of Babylon

As I mentioned on April 21, I intended to revisit Phil Harper and his substack.com publication, The Digger. Harper has bolstered his invaluable Ivermectin series with follow-ups and a podcast interview. After providing specific details regarding the whys and wherefores of the TOGETHER trials, Harper's continuing investigative journalism has framed the often-contradictory narratives surrounding Ivermectin in a context that features all of the right questions. And that really is all anyone can do -- legwork, ask the obvious questions, do more legwork, ask some less obvious questions, and then more legwork.

Harper has been patient, dogged, and in some respects lucky in following the threads that he weaves into an evidentiary and logical tapestry that any civilian can understand. I have great respect for both Harper's investigative patience and attention to detail. Had I been privy to some of the information he's uncovered, I think my head would have exploded before I was able to clearly communicate the storylines in an even-handed, logical manner. I salute Harper's Joe Friday-style connecting of the dots and his take on not just what's been available for analysis, but the implications of what's unavailable, and also what's implied by the timing and sequencing of events.

Harper and The Propaganda Files

People who have followed me awhile know that I've done some line-by-line analyses to create frames and connect dots. I've also gone where I felt evidence and logic demanded. Some examples include the August 17 and 18 (2020) two-parter regarding Louis Gohmert's radio show appearance, the February 1 and 10 (2022) two-parter analyzing media responses to Aaron Rodgers public Covid stance, and the February 23 and 25 (2022) two-part analysis of Apoorva Mandavilli's CDC expose'. As opposed to my brief analytical essays, what Harper has done is true investigative journalism. He has, as his publication's title suggests, dug up the details and given them to us.

The key question for me, from the perspective of writing "The Propaganda Files," isn't whether Harper is more right than wrong. The key question is why hasn't every major news organization already trotted him onto the public stage and interviewed him. His research is painstaking and precise with major implications for how the public has been manipulated during the pandemic. How is it that Phil Harper isn't front and center on CNN every blessed night until everything he examines has also been put in front of the American public? The fact that he isn't is unbelievably ominous. 

As cynical as I've been, as much as I've questioned pandemic narratives presented to us, I may have vastly underestimated the self-serving venality of all of the involved institutions. Given my normal baseline cynicism, to discover that I'm not cynical enough is a bit of a shock.

Dr. Been

I wanted to mention a particular lecture by Dr. Mobeen Syed (known as "Dr. Been" on YouTube) as a good example of a necessary line-by-line analysis of both a study and particular posted criticisms of the study. The paper was published in Nature on April 28. The title is "Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under-40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave." 

I recommend that everyone take a look at the study, but the study itself is not my focus today. I wanted to point out how Dr. Syed very patiently analyzed the posted criticisms of the study that were presented by an organization called Voices for Vaccines. Syed does a very thorough line-by-line analysis of what Voice for Vaccines has to say.

From my perspective with "The Propaganda Files," here's the scary thing:  Voices for Vaccines flat out lies about what the paper is saying. Personally, I can't call their ongoing comments misrepresentations, because "misrepresentations" doesn't cover it. In its posts, Voices for Vaccines declares that the study says various things that the study simply and clearly does not. The statements made by Voices for Vaccines are so consistently incorrect vis-a-vis the paper that the inaccuracy must be purposeful. 

I have rarely seen anything like this in science. The actual Voices for Vaccines posts are not signed by any individual but by Voices for Vaccines as an organization. If you go to Voicesforvaccines.org, you will see many familiar pandemic faces. Some, such as William Schaffner at Vanderbilt, I had considered reliable science sources for the general public. Now I don't. Whoever was posting criticisms of this paper in the name of Voices for Vaccines was trying real hard to impose a nuclear-powered spin to undermine the paper. Now remember, this paper appeared in Nature of all places, not some backwater niche journal.

Nature's papers undergo gold standard peer reviews. Perhaps comments by organizations that are supposed to have at least read the paper should undergo similar peer review. Fortunately for me, Dr. Syed did a line-by-line rebuttal peer review of the Voices for Vaccines' comments. If someone like Schaffner is lending his name and clout to these kinds of dishonest hit jobs on peer reviewed papers in Nature, imagine how bad the overall pro-vaccine spin and pro-vaccine pressure must be. 

I'm appalled at Scheffner's involvement. Schaffner is one of CNN's go-to talking heads. He's part of Vanderbilt's Medical School, which is a straight drive for me west on I-40 across the state. I am just horrified that some of the most respected experts are on board with this kind of over-the-top targeted hit job on a Nature paper. I'm flabbergasted.

The Whore(s) of Babylon

Since I've done the line-by-line analyses myself on a very limited scale, I sit up and take note when Dr. Syed (aka Dr. Been) does the same. I greatly appreciate his taking the time to do so, all without saying anything so blatant as to arouse the YouTube censors. 

I thought, coming from the realm of professional gambling, where everything is misdirection and concocted narratives and contextually The Sting, that I was cynical enough to handle (without barfing) whatever big pharma, American medical institutions, and the American government could throw at me. I was wrong. 

We are mired in an institutional hellpit, stuck in a quagmire of massive manipulation and outright lies. I'm relying on people like Phil Harper and Dr. Been to hold my head out of the propaganda toilet.

Bob Dietz

May 14, 2022