Baited Into Asking The Wrong Questions
To Get The Right Answers, We Have to Ask The Right Questions
What if straw men have been expertly used to muddle our understandings of the last decade’s events - and to misdirect our ire?
Then we would be incapable of discerning what’s actually underway, what forces are acting upon us, and for what purpose.
Of course, such an effort would have to be built upon a carefully prepared foundation. A foundation, for instance, that might include an education system that long ago ceased to teach developing adults either how to think critically or the ideals upon which our republic was constituted; a cultivated faith in government replacing Faith in God and the individual; a disconnected elite class; a country in economic distress with a hollowed-out industrial and manufacturing core; and a dissolution of the family unit and ethos of self-sufficiency.
We have those conditions. Whether they were deliberately created or evolved coincidentally is almost immaterial now. Here we are.
And our condition is complicated by another factor. We’ve been conditioned to consider every situation through a binary lens. We’ve allowed our capacity to consider a continuum of conditions in complex and interrelated systems to atrophy.
So we’re susceptible to manipulation (instead of fiercely independent) and to misdirection. Feed us the two binary options for our consideration and we’ll vigorously debate and argue without ever reflecting on whether the issue is indeed binary or whether the two options we’ve been fed are the real ones.
It’s past time to stop accepting the questions as they’re framed for us and to start digging for the important but unasked questions that will help us arrive at the critical answers that seem elusive but increasingly appear to be intentionally obscured.
The “ruling class”, being better students of history than us their subjects, has anticipated that we might begin to question pervasive apparent corruption and abuse of power. So they proactively worked to innoculate themselves and their system against skeptical inquiry. They’ve encouraged labeling as “conspiracy theorist” anyone who doesn’t blithely accept the tropes they feed the media. Anyone with the temerity to even obliquely question the official line is reflexively tainted, deranged, dangerous, and extremist.
Compliant people will simply pick from the proscribed pair of options and expend their energy on the divisive and rancorous debate (which conveniently further ossifies the dissolute American foundation) rather than working to divine true answers.
This was most clearly distilled into the inane “Orange man bad” vs. good debate.
It’s More Confusing in the Short Term
When you fall for this rhetorical trick, you end up in the weeds; overwhelmed by so many mind-blowing contradictions that it’s hard to weave them all together into a rational model. Nevertheless, it’s important as an exercise in recognizing the pervasiveness of the “false dilemma” approach.
For the sake of that excercise we can begin to consider what questions should be asked. For instance:
Instead of asking “Whether the COVID19 virus was passed naturally from animals or leaked from a lab”, we should ask “Whether the man-made COVID19 virus accidentally escaped from the lab or was deliberately leaked.”
Instead of asking whether “all lives matter” disrespects black lives, we should ask how a narrative came to be that a country with a black president, black attorney general, black secretary of defense, black females holding the two spots of greatest wealth among female entertainers, a black Supreme Court Justice, etc., etc. is “systemically racist.” Or how the implication that blacks lack the ability to achieve on their own merits isn’t inherently vile.
Instead of asking where substantial evidence was for the second Trump impeachment, we should ask why the FBI suddenly announced on August 20th that there was no conspiracy on January 6th. (Certainly not because any facts changed. Rather, because all of the coordinating and conspiratorial correspondence and planning between various bodies to incite and allow violence would be damning, and, the narrative having served its purpose to incite antagonism toward veterans and conservatives, could be allowed to languish lest further inquiry require damning disclosures.)
Instead of asking which of Swalwell’s donations might be tainted by Chinese influence, we should ask what could possibly explain Nancy Pelosi’s deranged support for Swalwell’s remaining on the intelligence committee despite his obvious compromise.
Instead of asking whether 3 or 5.5 trillion dollars is the right amount of stimulus, we should ask why the true state of spending and the critical ratio of debt to GDP are obscured.
Instead of asking about the virus status of illegal migrants crossing the border, we should ask why those who proudly carry their passports for their own border processing as they arrive in foreign countries on private jets, are determined to cede our sovereignty via unregulated borders here.
Instead of asking whether human influence may raise temperature .25 or 1.5 degrees at some date in the future, we should ask why the US is intent on hampering industry and retarding its prosperity while exporting heavy manufacturing to developing countries that proceed without regard for pollution.
Instead of asking whether it was appropriate for Biden to beg OPEC to boost pumping, we should ask who benefited by eviscerating the US’ strategic energy independence.
Instead of asking whether Twitter (which is banned in China anyway) was deferring to the communist regime by limiting discussion of the incriminating laptop three weeks before the election, we should ask why the FBI failed to act on one it had for 1.5 years, why the “intelligence community” preemptively released a letter saying it was disinformation, and why virtually the entire media and analyst class simply hid the story.
Instead of asking whether federal mandates requiring companies to fire employees who refuse vaccination are proper, we should ask why there is a maniacal push to administer vaccines which are quickly being shown to have a negligeable statistical impact on infection rates.
And then to the proximate cause of many people suddenly awakening to how rotten things are…
Instead of asking whether we should still be in Afghanistan, we should ask why we have conducted the withdrawal as we have; failing to notify NATO that we were withdrawing from a NATO mission, leaving the Afghans with no air support, exposing American civilians, and jeopardizing American military. While there’s no doubt that the ideological putrification of the State Department has been ongoing, and Obama’s “decimation” of the military’s flag officer ranks has created a pathetic and laughable environment, it is simply implausible that the conduct of this operation can be attributed to ineptitude. It is so fundamentally flawed from strategy through tactics that one must conclude it was conducted this way intentionally.
If Biden is recognized by his senior staff to be non-compos mentis, then they would have intervened. Military and State leadership would have resigned to avoid complicity. Yet none of that happened. They have deliberately emasculated the United States in a way that will reverberate for years, hamper alliances, and erode morale.
And as you start to ask these alternative questions you might not easily find answers to each, but the pattern in aggregate suddenly does start to reveal a pattern.
China’s quest for dominance is a thread very likely woven throughout.
Our Most Important Question
With this context, suddenly the sole pressing question becomes clear.
How did our nation become so thoroughly compromised and infiltrated by the ChiComs?
It’s important to note that the compromise might not be in the classic blackmail way.
In some cases, it may. It’s reasonable to conclude that the press, counterintelligence groups, and the FBI are compromised. That’s evident from Swalwell’s honeypot involvement (and lack of consequences when he apparently tipped his spy lover Fang Fang off to the FBI investigation, allowing her to flee) and the treatment of a laptop full of first-party information that seems to likely incriminate the entire Biden family, including Joe.
In most cases, though, the players have been subtly financially compromised. The Chinese and their operatives haven’t paid them for secrets, but rather just granted access and funds in ways that allow the culprits (whether Fink, Dalio, Cooke, LeBron, Disney, and others) to believe that they’re savvy business people. Flush with profits and self-regard, these folks simultaneously become shills for a horrible system and strategic foe, and become financially beholden to it. In many cases, they’re completely unaware of their manipulated role in this epic struggle. Hubris leads these pawns to delude themselves that they’re giants.
When Incompetence Is No Longer an Adequate Explanation
Is compromise by China the only explanation for so many aspects of American life seeming to simultaneously run off the rails?
No.
It’s entirely possible that the Military-Industrial Complex is every bit as evil as President Eisenhower warned. After all, we know the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin moved from General to Raytheon board member and Pine Island SPAC promoter to a government official. While mind-boggling to consider, it’s not implausible that some helped to create our Afghan disaster with the goal of keeping us embroiled in conflict. #FollowTheMoney
It is similarly possible that the vaccine debacle has been fomented for the benefit of the pharma industry just as the exploding “gender industry” might not be driven by Black Rock financial interests. And perhaps Biden’s elimination of Fentanyl related criminal penalties isn’t a capitulation to Chinese handlers to abet the epidemic scourge addictions and death that they foment with their fentanyl exports and with which they’ve blighted industrial America.
And of course, the players in these vignettes may not even realize the roles they’ve been coopted to play. Their intent may be as pure as it’s misguided.
However, when you look at the breadth of issues that are boiling simultaneously AND the financial interests of many of the officials and influencers, it’s a reasonable conclusion that we’re marionettes in a Chinese effort.
It’s not definitive, but one can gradually start to eliminate other theories that explain the full panoply of crisis. And like the science that we’re exhorted to trust, eventually, as we eliminate other explanations we can start to more reasonably accept the one remaining - no matter how implausible it might feel.
That’s why it’s critical for us to start to ask the right questions.