“Fear of the virus is more dangerous than the virus itself?” Mattias Desmet, psychologist, University of Ghent, Belgium

A New Level of Hostility

Many Americans, gripped by existential fear and anxiety, are experiencing a new, shocking degree of hostile intolerance towards people who question the dominant US Covid narrative.

Lifelong friends, relatives and colleagues, people loved and admired for years or decades are suddenly deemed to be ignorant, deluded, reckless and dangerous because of one opinion. Formerly decent people assume the right to be hostile, insulting and rejecting.

Almost everyone is gripped by fear of someone or something all the time. People are more dangerous when afraid. Fear shuts down higher level cognitive functions and people may regress to more primitive thoughts and emotions.

People are hardened in their continually polarizing belief systems. Many have absolute certainty about things they have never studied directly – even progressive intellectuals. They are sure that people who have studied in depth are completely wrong. Curiosity is dead. There is no complexity, nuance, dialogue or perspective taking.

How did it come to this? I do not think it has to be this way.

“It is an act of evil to accept the state of evil as either inevitable or final.”

                                                                     Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

I do not believe that this conflict is arising from within us. Emotions and beliefs are being successfully manipulated by forces who benefit from our fight. There is no inherent psychological necessity for most people to hold some specific beliefs. Under other circumstances people might be willing and even eager to revise their opinions with new factual information. They could shift their anger away from each other and direct it towards the actual source of our suffering.

Upon this gifted age in its dark hour,

Falls from the sky a meteoric shower

Of facts ... they lie unquestioned, uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill

Is daily spun; but there exists no loom

To weave it into fabric.                           Edna St. Vincent Millay

In this article I will strive to analyze dynamics of fear and division, to get beyond dualistic “Us vs. Them” thinking to more accuracy, detail, diversity of views and reasons for them, to explore use of messaging and framing around Covid, and to describe two competing narratives, scientific foundations for beliefs and policies.

As a psychologist, my task is to make the unconscious conscious. As a political psychologist I aim to demystify and analyze the collective psyche.

Despite political differences we share common goals of health and freedom. I believe that there is a knowable underlying scientific reality that is in our mutual interest and benefit to understand. Demystifying the causes and methods fueling our polarization and understanding the dynamics is a prerequisite for healing and ultimately our survival.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” – Rumi

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Let’s explore ….

The Division of All Fears

Under the global shadow of Covid-19, in the US we have become divided over whether we are

·      More afraid of Covid or more afraid of the “vaccines”

·      Afraid of the “unvaccinated” or afraid of government control

·      Afraid of reckless, “anti-vax” Republicans or afraid of authoritarian Democrats

·      Afraid of freedom or afraid of the lockdown

·      Disdainful of FOX News or contemptuous of MSNBC, CNN, NPR, etc.

·      Supportive of mandates or afraid of surveillance

·      In favor of media control or afraid of censorship

·      Seen as the threat to existence or seen a threat to freedom

·      Focused on only on victims of Covid or also on lockdown collateral damage victims suffering from anxiety, depression, suicide, financial destruction, educational setbacks, etc.

·      Trusting of media and authorities (Gates, Fauci, WHO, CDC, FDA, NIH, NIAID, WEF, NPR, CNN, PBS, etc.) or distrusting of designated authorities with conflicts of interest

·      Reliant on mainstream US media or seek out alternative sources of data around the world

·      Accepting the dominant narrative or questioning the narrative

Divide and Conquer: “Let’s You and Him Fight”

Our cultural environment has degraded to a free-for-all in which people demonize, censor, punish and attack those with opposing beliefs. It feels like we are being pitted against each other by an outside force.

"I knew I couldn’t kill them. More powerful men than me have tried. But if I could get them to kill each other …".     — Colonel Helmut Zemo, Captain America: Civil War

My fellow Baby Boomers might recall Eric Berne’s Games People Play, about patterns of social interaction called Transactional analysis (TA). “Let’s You and Him Fight” is one of the most destructive “games” used to manipulate others. The instigator benefits from manipulating parties to fight each other. The phrase is from the Popeye comic strip.

Our politics and media were not always so divisive. They need not remain so.

“They want us to fight.” -- Dr. Henry Ealy, at Covid Conference21, 10/16/21

Mystification

Conflict can be successfully incited through the process of  mystification, explained by R.D. Laing as a “plausible misrepresentation" of reality.  “By representing forms of exploitation as forms of benevolence, the exploiters bemuse the exploited into feeling at one with their exploiters, or into feeling gratitude for what (unrealized by them) is their exploitation, and, not least, into feeling bad or mad even to think of rebellion.”

Mystification maintains stereotyped roles and power relationships. It induces confusion, using false constructions to mask what a conflict is actually about. People may not feel confused. They often feel absolutely certain about their position.

Laing concluded that, “before enlightened action can be taken, the issues have to be demystified.”

Terror Management Theory

Conflicts between groups are intensified by awareness of death which creates profound existential anxiety. Humans have a powerful need to find ways to protect themselves to ward off existential anxiety.  Confronting people with their mortality increases fear and suspicion of outgroups, attachment to one’s ingroup, nationalism, prejudice, and support for violent solutions and greater attraction to charismatic leaders believed to protect them.

Techniques of magnifying fear, beyond the scope of this article, include inflating death rates from Covid by financially incentivizing hospitals to diagnose Covid and put people on ventilators, denying people of effective early treatments, hospital protocols, by listing causes of deaths from other conditions as Covid, and more.

Weaponizing Fear

We are being manipulated by fear which provokes people to regress to simplistic, concrete, black-and-white thinking. There is no discernment, no stratification of risk. Everything feels like a random crap shoot. Anyone can die, no matter how young and healthy. No matter the actual data. People are afraid of the wrong things. The media induces people to feel terrified, passive, helpless and hopelessly vulnerable, lacking in personal agency over their health. This magnifies feelings of being threatened by anyone who challenges the chosen narrative.

Some people adapt by self-censoring out of fear of rejection and punishment. Few risk speaking up. Many go along with the crowd. Their silence becomes part of the problem.

Somehow, areas of disagreement have become weaponized and artificially politicized to all or nothing terms, reduced to right/left, Republican/Democrat.

People jump to wild conclusions about what they think you think. If they know one thing about you, they make automatic, false, extrapolations with certainty about your religious, political, psychological attributes and influences.

This is all highly orchestrated and reinforced by media censorship and disinformation, including disinformation about disinformation. Each side sees disinformation on the other side, but not their own.

In a “psychological gain of function” manipulation, public discourse has been engineered to be more contagious and more lethal to the point of mass political hysteria. Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet  describes conditions producing mass hypnosis and mass formation.

The four conditions are

1. Social isolation,

2. Meaninglessness

3. Free-floating anxiety

4. Pent up, free-floating frustration and anger.

Then the crisis, the pandemic, provides an answer to all of these. It produces an intense focus and meaning, a target for the frustration and rage and unifies one with other people aligned to eradicate the cause. This leads to what Desmet calls “mass formation” or “mass hypnosis.”

In addition to political hysteria and mass hypnosis, I diagnose a problem called “poor reality testing,” in which objective evaluation, judgment and perceptions of the world outside the ego or self and judgment of real, external factual events is colored by one’s emotions, fantasies and internal representations. It is also heavily colored by the media.

This fuels a collective cognitive disorder in which our impaired cognitive functions interfere with the normal functioning in society, and for which treatment is needed – i.e., political therapy.

This disorder does not arise solely within us, although we provide fertile ground for manipulation. It is deliberately and skillfully incited and brilliantly manipulated with billions in funding by Big Pharma and Big Tech, employing behavioral scientists to research and design techniques to infect our psyches, replicate, and infect each other.

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Escalating Frames

A most common incitement of fear propagated 24/7 on mainstream media is fear of vaccine hesitancy. Bill Gates, asserting himself as our savior, incites global existential fear by insisting that the pandemic won’t end until everyone on the planet is injected with experimental mRNA and DNA technology, technically not “vaccines.”

Those who are “vaccine hesitant” are conveniently demonized and portrayed as stupid, dangerous threats in media and TV show plotlines. Rhetoric has escalated from a pretense of understanding and patronizing the “vaccine hesitant” to a tone of hostility towards “anti-vaxers.”  Policies have shifted from rewards with Krispy Kream, money, lap dances, joints and million-dollar lottery tickets to punishment by shunning, coercion, job loss, exclusion, defamation, restrictions, fines and more. Mass hysteria is increasing.

Many believe that all anti-vaxers are selfish, reckless, fundamentalist Christian, Trump-loving, right-wing Republicans, this degenerating the conflict into a left right food fight. Attempts at dialogue are rejected.

Reframing Vaccine Hesitancy Beyond Right and Left

Many believe that “vaccine” refusers are stereotypically selfish, Trump-loving Republicans, valuing their freedom over endangering others. We see each other as cartoon figures.

According to Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet, the 20 – 30% of the population who question the narrative are very heterogeneous [2].”[3]   Numerous groups, less useful for propaganda, have reasons for refusing.

In a survey of 5 million Americans, a  Study Finds Most Highly Educated Americans Are Also the Most Vaccine Hesitant, mainly PhDs. You would never know this from the media who portray all vaccine refusers as reckless, right wing, Trump-loving Republicans who pose a threat to the “vaccinated” and impede the end of the pandemic.

Ironically and anecdotally, other PhDs and highly educated progressive intellectuals are among the most hostile, incredulous, condescending and terrified believers that all “vaccine hesitants” fit the monolithic “anti-vax” stereotype, constantly promoted on liberal media (NPR, MSNBC, CNN, Democracy Now, etc.), all highly funded by Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation.  

The study also found PhDs to be most well-informed and resistant to persuasion, unlike other groups who eventually succumbed to the influence of the $3 billion “vaccine compliance” campaign. Behavioral scientists were employed to psychologically manipulate the public to believe these “vaccines[4]” are “necessary, safe and effective” for everyone[5] despite mounting global evidence to the contrary.  It is more accurate to describe them as “vaccine risk aware[6],” “vaccine literate[7]” who go deeper into data from other countries, reports on adverse reactions, injuries and deaths censored by the media, information on success of early treatments, immune boosting and more.

• Blacks and others aware of medical experimentation (sterilization, castration, Tuskegee experiment) distrust authorities.

• People with Medical Risk/Benefit Analysis

Medical exemptions, risk of adverse reactions

Chemical sensitivities to polyethylene glycol, polysorbate 80

Hypercoagulable blood

• Covid survivors with natural immunity

• People with no co-morbidities, healthy immune system

• People with loved ones with adverse reactions, injuries and deaths

• Nuclear Scientists - Dozens Of Top Nuclear Scientists With "Highest Security Clearances" Being Fired From Los Alamos Lab After Vax Mandate  

Engineers and scientists are protesting the mandate ordering them to get their first dose of the Covid vaccine or face termination. The Hill wrote, "Workers at the New Mexico laboratory, which created the atomic bomb, filed a lawsuit claiming that exemptions to the mandate have been denied without proper justification."  The Associated Press had detailed that "The plaintiffs include scientists, nuclear engineers, project managers, research technicians and others who have some of the highest security clearances in the nation for the work they do." "Thirty-four of them are named in the lawsuit and 80 have opted to remain anonymous, citing fears of retaliation."

• Health-conscious people who use naturopathic, functional, integrative, and regenerative medicine, anti-aging and longevity

• University Students –low risk for severity, greater risk for adverse reactions

• People of all races, colors and political stripes [8](blue & white collar) who seek out alternative media sources and primary sources of information” and see through the dominant narrative.

• Professional athletes, including NBA players. Young males with risk of myocarditis who witness fellow athletes being disabled, including many around the world dropping dead on the field

• People familiar with propaganda, who remember tobacco, Thalidomide, Vioxx, Paxil, Tamiflu, opioid epidemic, the War on Terror ("Code Orange, Red)", lies drumming support for the cataclysmic wars

• “Small business owners (restaurants, shops) opposing mandates for customers, working people, Democrats who question the Covid fear narrative and coercion. [9]

• Nature-loving, community-minded, health-conscious folks who challenge corporate over-reach of Big Pharma and Big Tech. [10]

PROFESSIONALS RISKING JOBS FOR BODILY INTEGRITY AND NUREMBERG CODE

•  Doctors and Nurses - formerly heroes, now demonized and threatened with job loss. Many had Covid.  Witnesses to “vaccine” injuries and deaths.

• Critical Health Care Workers

• Pilots – Due to flying at high altitudes have increased risks for blood clots, cognitive impairments and deaths, leading to mass cancellations.

  https://www.usfreedomflyers.org

and this just in.

• Firefighters 

• Truckers

• Teachers - https://teachersforchoice.org

• Military -  4 hour testimonies of soldiers, Marines, operators, IC members, police, sheriffs, marshals, veterans, doctors, nurses and patriots risking everything to defend the American people and freedom worldwide.

• Navy Seals - The Navy is threatening SEAL’s seeking religious exemptions from the mandate with severe punishments, demotions, pay cuts, a travel ban, intimidation, harassmen

EXEMPTIONS

from “A SHOT OF TRUTH THAT NEEDS TO BE KNOWN” by Jeff Rense

Why are politicians and people in pharmaceuticals not taking the shots they are coercing the rest to get? What they might know that they are not telling?

• All of US Congress, all Congressional staff, House and Senate*

• 6,000 White House employees

• 2,500 Pfizer, 1,500 Moderna, and 120,000 Johnson and Johnson employees

• 15,000 CDC and 14,000 FDA employees

• 8 million Chinese students in the US

• 2 million illegal aliens exempted

“the rest of us, must get injected or lose our job”

Competing Narratives

The conflict is between the US dominant narrative is promoted on mainstream media. It is funded by Big Pharma, by far the biggest lobby in congress, in collusion with Big Media and Big Tech with revolving doors between industries and captured government agencies.

Beyond the scope of this article, the dominant narrative is also orchestrated on a global level by Klaus Schwab, author of the Great Reset, World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, (WHO, GAVI), Anthony Fauci, NIAID, NIH and others.

·      Hegemonic Narrative 1. Covid is a deadly, rapidly spreading, novel virus that arose naturally, causing high rates f severe illness and death, requiring a global state of emergency. All are vulnerable. No treatments exist until the vaccine. Masks, distancing and lockdowns are necessary. The pandemic will end when everyone in the world gets vaccinated. Refusers endanger others and prevent an end to the pandemic.

“You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan

·      Counter Narrative 2. Covid was patented earlier and is not novel. It was manufactured under gain-of-function research to be infectious and lethal to humans. PCR tests run at higher amplifications show false positives, inflating numbers of infections, manipulating fear and helplessness. Effective early treatments could have prevented 85% of deaths. Hospitals were paid to diagnose cases and record causes of deaths from other conditions as Covid. DNA and mRNA shots do not prevent infection and transmission. “Vaccine” immunity fades. Boosters will be required. The viral load is the same in “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated.”  The shots cause many adverse reactions, injuries and deaths which are falsely attributed to coincidences or scrubbed. Only 1 – 10% of adverse reactions are reported.

Evidence for the Counter Narrative

·      There is no emergency or basis for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)

- It is Not a Novel Virus

            David Martin interview about 1000s of early patents

- Covid 19 is a very treatable virus. Effective early treatments are suppressed. About 85% of deaths could have been prevented with early treatments.

            Dr. Peter McCullough’s testimony

            Pulmonary Nurse testimony on Hospital protocols

            Suppressing Ivermectin

·      Inflation of Covid Diagnoses

             Financial incentives to hospitals

·      Inflation of Covid Cause of death

            Whistleblower testimony, Abrien Aguirre Hawaii nursing facility

·      Numbers Games

       *   “Pandemic of the unvaccinated”

• 95% effective Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data

Dueling Beliefs and Policies

 The “divide and conquer” method manipulates us into opposing beliefs about policy and science.  Objective reality is knowable.

'What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.' – Mark Twain

Opposing beliefs around Covid –

A. Counter Narrative vs.

B. Hegemonic Narrative

“We share the same biology, regardless of ideology”

Song by Sting, Russians on Dream of the Blue Turtles

Early Treatments

A.    Worldwide physicians developed successful protocols that accelerated recovery, prevented hospitalization and long haul Covid.

B.    There are no early treatments for Covid. People are told to wait and come to the hospital when it gets worse.

Natural Immunity (NI)

A.    NI is superior, enduring and robust against variants. Covid survivors are at a higher risk for adverse reactions from “vaccines.”

B.    For those with NI, the “vaccines” will make their immunity so much stronger. Covid survivors are not exempt from restrictions and mandates.

Herd Immunity (HI)

A.    Pandemics historically end when enough develop NI, reached when enough healthy people acquire NI. The Pennsylvania Amish quicky achieved herd immunity without restrictions. So have the Haredi Orthodox communities in Israel.

B.    Covid “vaccines” did not provide promised HI.

Pandemic of the Unvaccinated?

A.     “Vaccines” do not prevent infection or transmission. “Vaccinated” and “unvaccinated” have equal viral loads. A majority of new cases and deaths are among the fully vaccinated.

B.    False claim: 99% of hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated. Trick: People are listed as "unvaccinated until 14 days after last dose. Most adverse reactions and deaths occur within days.

Vaccinating Pregnant Women

A.    It is unethical to vaccinate populations not tested for safety. “Vaccines” cause excessive miscarriages. Impacts on the fetus are unknown.

B.    “Vaccines” are recommended for pregnant women.

Vaccinating Children

A.    No healthy child has died from Covid. Most have mild cases, acquire natural immunity, and provide herd immunity. Children are at higher risk for injuries or death from the shots.

B.    Children should get “vaccinated” to protect them and others.

Transcending Covid

 “…. before enlightened action can be taken, the issues have to be demystified.” R.D.

Being pitted against each other into an artificial conflict increases polarization, magnifies differences, exaggerates threats, and hardens us in our positions.

We share the goal of ending the pandemic, becoming healthier, and creating a vibrant, healthy, open society. We do not have to be enemies.

We still have differences but they don’t have to be threatening. We need to wake up, dialogue, stop politicizing health, be curious about our differences and unite to overcome the true threat to our health and freedom. The stakes are as high as can be.

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[1] “Let’s You and Him Fight” from Eric Berne’s Games People Play, about Transactional analysis (TA)   describes patterns of social interaction. “Let’s You and Him Fight” is one of the most destructive “games” used to manipulate others. The instigator benefits from manipulating parties to fight each other.

[2] Personal communication from Marilyn Langlois, fellow convener of Transcend US

[3] Here are 2 more enlightening interviews with Desmet.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/RIzxcU8nBYQX/

[4] Calling them “vaccines’ has 2 functions. 1 – psychological, a deep, powerful, concrete association equating them with smallpox and polio and a belief in saving the world and 2 – Big Pharma manufacturers and all parties making or administering vaccines are exempt from any liability for adverse reactions, injuries and deaths. By categorizing VINOs as vaccines, they too are immune from liability.

[5] It is not one size fits all. Each person has a specific risk/benefit ratio. Healthy people with no co-morbidities have an extremely high rate of survival which confers natural immunity. Vitamin D, zinc, C, A, etc. boost the immune system. There are many effective early treatments as well. Frequent adverse reactions, injuries and deaths from the shots are attributed to coincidence, censored and underreported.

[6] Term by pediatrician Paul Thomas, MD, co-author of The Vaccine Friendly Plan

[7] Term by Gary Kohls, MD

[8] Personal communications from Elizabeth Murray

[9] Personal communication from Marilyn Langlois, fellow convener of Transcend US

[10] Personal communication from Marilyn Langlois, fellow convener of Transcend US