This Is Only A (Beta) Test

Poke. Then Nudge. Then Shove. Then Confine. Then...

"The clear lesson here is that consistent and unwavering people, in the private or public sector, can move groups and practices in their preferred direction."

"Small interventions and even coincidences, at a key stage, can produce large variations in the outcome."

Quotes from “Nudge” by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. See cliff notes version here.

About two weeks into lockdown, it hit me…this is a beta test.

I desperately wanted to be wrong, but the longer it went, the more sure I was that we were all in the middle of the greatest social human experiment in the history of mankind. Those thoughts haven’t changed and have only been amplified these past two years. I wish I was wrong, and this was all just a cosmic clusterfuck and a comedy of errors and incompetence.

Alas, if only it were that option.

Make no mistake, there has been a lot of that element. The staggering levels of utter ineptitude at every single level and in every single institution are of epic proportions. To watch people who you once believed to be somewhat competent, responsible, and logical, completely short circuit and devolve right before your very eyes has been horribly fascinating. Train wrecks are always tough to look away from, and boy have we seen and felt some massive machines run right off the rails.

Yet anyone with eyes to see at this point knows that what we’ve gone through - and continue to go through - goes well beyond ineptitude and incompetence.

Many of us have been turned onto the higher powers at work here, both in the spirit and in the flesh. We better understand now who owns and controls most of the world. In knowing this exists behind the veil - and now in many cases right out in the open - it’s clear that there is a very real path that the puppet masters are taking us down. And like the speedboat dashing out towards the horizon, incompetence and ineptitude are just part of the wake left in that path.

I was walking around my neighborhood on one welcomed, sunny early April afternoon in 2020, just thinking about what the hell was happening to the world. Any initially happy and welcomed thoughts I had about the lockdowns had already worn off, and all the red flags on my dashboard were now completely on. It was in fact on this walk when I got an alert that my governor, Tom Wolf, was extending the lockdown until the end of April.

By that point, I hadn’t seen the Walking Dead scenario play out where bodies were dropping in the streets. This was not, as Steve Deace calls it, Captain Trips. To hear that “two weeks to flatten the curve” was now being extended, when there was no evidence that I could see to justify further lockdowns and infringement of my rights, sent me careening into some dark and angry territory that took a real toll on me for the next year +.

It also set me on a path that has allowed me to grow in massive ways during that same time. The dots I’ve been able to connect - with a TON of direction from many here on Substack - have me seeing much clearer. I don’t love what I see, and in fact am sometimes very overwhelmed with that vision. Yet I want to see my enemy clearly and face to face.

But as I was walking on that bright April day, it hit me like a truck that we were experiencing some sort of new kind of unwitting, involuntary global boot camp. A training the likes of which we’d never experienced. The general global population was clearly being reconditioned for…something. And it made my skin crawl.

My next thought was “people aren’t going to put up with this shit though. At least not here in the USA. We’re going to raise hell, and we’re going to set this right and get back to normal, and we’re going to lead the world in this.”

How wrong and horrified I was - AM - with how that reality turned out.

As I’ve watched the events unfold around the world, I keep going back to a book I read years ago called Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, which I referenced at the beginning of this article.

While much of the book itself can be seen as benign, the concept that’s discussed is anything but, if used for the wrong motives. And boy, our social architects were listening to the lessons in this book and have put them into practice.

The basic point is this: in order to move people - individuals, but especially large swaths of society - there needs to be a subtle process. Punching someone in the face is a lot less subtle than one gentle suggestion upon another less gentle suggestion.

Essentially this book discusses how to boil the frog. If you’ve ever been interested in manipulation and persuasion, it’s a good book for you, because it’s expert level technique and instruction.

For instance, some of the mild examples they discuss are things like adding speed bumps to slow traffic, or creating a roundabout. With these somewhat subtle changes, social designers can completely change the dynamic of a community.

When you blow that concept out to the scale of a global pandemic, the implications become staggering. For instance, by now, anyone who’s been paying attention knows that masks are utter nonsense. Up until March of 2020, for most of the world, a shitty mask was laughable. Now, it’s become a talisman, a religious symbol of dedication to a frightening section of humanity.

But how did that happen? The precursor was “there’s this crazy virus sweeping the world. We’re going to shut down travel from X place.” Videos started circulating of people in other countries (apparently) dropping dead on the streets. Images started becoming more prevalent of masses of masked crowds. And most of use still laughed, although a little more nervously.

Tiny poke.

Then, “we’re going to close down society. JUST for two weeks.” Which quickly lead to “stay the fuck home.” Eventually an entire portion of the population has become “Lockdown4evs”. These people aren’t coming back to the surface. Ever. They’ve been retrained.

Nudge.

Then, “hey, these masks might help.” Which went to “if you don’t mask, you’re going to kill grandma.”

Side note: no one cares about grandpa.

Harder nudge.

Then, “We’ll only need to keep things shut down until the vaccine, which is on the way! THEN, we can party like it’s 2019! And it’d be great if everyone got one.” Which, now we all know, people literally can’t eat at a restaurant or travel or a thousand other things without your proof of vax. Lives have been lost and destroyed forever.

SHOVE.

If you haven’t seen this short video, please check it out. It’s one of the best representations of the nudging that I can think of. It’s actually frightening, but it’s spot on.

It's for the greater good.

With every push, poke, prod, and shove, there’s recalibration. Right now, as I write, this, the vax mandates and push for booster is (seemingly) going out of vogue. In some ways, the tide seems to be rolling back out for those of us who value our freedoms and liberties.

Yet somewhere, in some giant bunker, there is an army of analysts with live feeds from the street and airports, watching us all like hawks. There are eyes on social media, raking in data through the algorithms, looking at trends. Ears pouring over audio from our Alexas and Siris.

At every turn, we the people are under the microscope. Somewhere, there are thousands of these behavioral scientists and social engineers saying, “let’s introduce a riot here” or “what happens if we tell parents at this school district they’re terrorists for wanting to unmask their kids?”

It’s like the control room for The Hunger Games.

Then they introduce these things into the wild and observe. And recalibrate. And observe. And recalibrate. Etc.

These people are masters of moving the ball down the field. They know that one small tap on the bell here will reverberate out into the universe into infinity. They sometimes don’t understand the consequences or eventualities of that ringing, but they know the bell will toll, it will change things, they’ll recalibrate, and they’ll do it again.

Please get this through into the deepest recesses of your mind…

YOU AND I DO NOT MATTER TO THEM.

In this control room, we are just a mass of variables. Pawns on the chessboard. We don’t really have children that have been killed and mangled with a vaccine. There’s no mental health issues, and the suicides and deaths of despair aren’t real. The fights over masking only serve as a sick, perverted video game that they can play against us, and they’ll do it for as long as it takes for them to get their bit of data they need from that battle. Once they have what they need, they’ll be done with it, and probably will laugh at the writhing carcasses they’ve left in their quest forward.

We are the giant lab experiment. Cells under a microscope. Rats in a cage. And they are clinical in their experiments, and when they’re done, they will toss the waste material aside.

Our only hope, aside from divine intervention, is to recognize that The Hunger Games is our reality now. If we know that, we know there’s a control room, and somewhere in that control room, there are games and experiments being played, and we are the unwitting participants, the pawns on the board. And if we know this, then we need to find that control room, break in, and smash it to smithereens.

We need the media back. We need real journalists to stand up as one. And I don’t care if these journalists are credentialed or not. Any objective, critical thinking voice will do at this point, screaming as loud into the night as we can. But we need platforms, thousands of them, ripping off the mask and pointing all barrels towards this control room.

We need people in all kinds of high positions of influence to speak. For every one brave soul who’s speaking out, there are a 100 right behind them thinking and feeling the same thing who aren’t, and if they only stood, that wave would send shock waves through that control room.

We need doctors to do the same. Get past the CDC sham studies and the “standard of care” bullshit and be doctors and scientists. Have an original thought about treatment and care. Engage your curiosity, and for God sakes, FULFILL YOUR HIPPOCRATIC OATH. Yeah, they might take your medical license. But you’ll go to your grave knowing that the lives you saved were much more valuable than that piece of paper.

Politicians…if you stand, we will stand with you. I don’t care what you have or haven’t done at this point. I mean I DO, but I’m a pragmatists, and we can talk about that at another point. Right now, stand up for the people you represent. STOP TRYING TO SEE WHAT WAY THE WIND IS BLOWING AND JUST TAKE A STAND FOR HUMAN LIBERTIES. We the people WILL reward you. Be aware though, don’t burn us, because we will treat you with the level of respect or scorn you deserve. We’re done with your political games and finger-to-the-wind posturing. Your time of slinking through the raindrops is over. We’re paying attention, and we WILL hold you accountable.

Academics, stop cowering in your ivory towers. So you don’t get that bloated grant. Fine. Expose the corruption. Publish the AUTHENTIC FINDINGS of your study. Speak, shout, ring the bells, and we will have your back, as will thousands of your peers. You will find a new voice, a new tribe, a new purpose, and it will FREE YOU because it will be just and true.

Finally, every single on of us needs to push back. They’ve nudged us too far, for too long. If you have a voice, use it. If you know someone that has a voice and they’re NOT using it, you are responsible for nudging them until it’s so uncomfortable there’s nowhere for them to go.

Will there be a cost? Most likely. But guess what? There’s going to be a cost either way. The cost is your medical license vs your soul. Speaking the truth to thousands or speaking propaganda that is destroying lives. Losing a friendship vs. losing your and your children’s ability to move and live freely as they want without a digital leash.

I’m not saying you need to punch someone in the face (literally or figuratively), but I am saying to take the lessons of Nudge and ju-jitsu them back onto our opponents. They almost have us fully submitted, lying on the ground in a vice, so we must act.

Poke. Nudge. Push. One person, one action, one brave decision at a time, in your own way, but in unison.

We Stood Up - A Fine Frenzy

We are not frightened anymore
We stood up, we stood up
And there are two of us, there will be more
They'll show up, they'll show up, they'll show up

Blame a change of mind
A seismic shift in times
They told us not to fight
But we'll fight it till we die

'Cause we are not frightened anymore
We stood up, we stood up
And there are two of us, there will be many more
They'll show up, yeah, they'll show up

And so they sunk every ship we sailed
But we stood up, yeah, we stood up
And they fought hard but somewhere fighting failed
They're all shook up, they're all shook up, all shook up

Steel and concrete break
Beneath the steady waves
Of fearless hope and grace
In kindness there is strength

'Cause we are not frightened anymore
We stood up, we stood up
And there are two of us, there will be more
They'll show up, they'll show up, yeah, they'll show up

We are not, we are not, we are not, we are not
We are not, we are not frightened anymore
We are not frightened anymore