Or-Else Clause Made Clear

Things that were once common place or even benign now come with an ultimatum and the Or-Else Clause is becoming rather clear.

September 19, 2022

B​y: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP

I​f we could look back at the real-time radar of the Titanic moving toward the iceberg , what would you say?

You would see one large object moving toward another large object, probably screaming at the moving object to either stop or divert.

O​ne of the greatest selling points of decentralization is, if something goes sideways with one tactic, you don’t lose everything. In the case of a sinking ship, the solution is in fact to decentralize into smaller life rafts. The problem with the Titanic was it didn’t have enough rafts.

Seems like very obvious and logical advice when it comes to investments. No one ever fights that. No one looks at a stock portfolio and screams when there’s more than one investment listed… as if I were a bigot for keeping my options open.

But people do tend to do that on political matters. They insist on a centralized government. So much so, that it’s becoming more and more dangerous to speak against it. As the country sinks, only a fraction of the people are seeing merit in a decentralized solution.

Noam Chomsky wrote in his book “Common Good”:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

H​ere are some examples:

T​here are some sacred cows we can’t cook at all.

Social Issues

Ironically, the very people who admonish corporate power, are the first to harness it and demand these corporations take a side on social issues. Why should a corporation that makes breakfast cereal need to take a position on a matter totally irrelevant to their product?

S​o if a company doesn’t take a position, they are slammed. If they do take a position, they are slammed by one side. And the question is: are the people demanding these corporations take a position even patronizing their business in the first place?

T​his is a horrible form of public discourse. Tow this line, or else. Or else we’ll figure out where you work and live and dox you? Or else we’ll call you all these pejoratives in the public square and humiliate you? Or else we will characterize you as this horrible person and drag your reputation?

I​t seems like a bad idea at most deserves disagreement… maybe even disassociation if it’s bad enough. But the stakes are so high, people are afraid to lose their careers over disagreement.

I​f you buy waffle fries at Chick-fil-A, you’re now a de facto homophobe. The shortest distance between to points is a short irrational line, I suppose.

While this is bad, it gets much worse.

Quashing News Stories

T​he United States was dangerously close to starting a “Department of Misinformation”. With at least two full generations of people still very much alive who actually read Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World”, it was fortunately a non-starter.

T​he New York Post’s Account was shut down, and its Facebook account was shadow banned because of the story they had on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Turns out the story was true, but no matter. The impact of the story is long defused.

Which means, large social media platforms are demonetizing and de-platforming people for strong dissenting views. As insensitive or wrong as they may or may not be, the idea of a central entity being the arbiter of that is unnerving to say the very least.

Health Policies

Out of all the covid lock-downs came a wave of people who posited Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. HCQ was already a long tested and successful anti-viral used as a prophylactic against malaria. Ivermectin showed some promise.

A​s a novel virus, nothing was known about it, but the fact that cheap accessible and safe options were being offered up, and summarily shut down as “disinformation” was shocking. How would they know if it was wrong if they didn’t test it? We were never really allowed to find out.

W​e can talk about solving the Covid-19 problem, but only in the scope of vaccines and public policy. Not in alternative, non-indicated methods that were possibly more efficient.

Even then the Great Barrington Declaration consisted of very reputable doctors who insisted lock-downs, masks, and distancing were not a scientific approach to handling this virus, and they too were called “fringe doctors”.

I​f you didn’t mask up, you wanted granny to die. If you didn’t get vaccinated you should be pulled of your insurance. If you don’t mandate these things you don’t care about public health.

These are the unhinged conclusions being slung around, rather recklessly I might add.

In an attempt to come out of the lock-downs, parents became very upset over extended closures of schools, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates. Now this contingent is called the anti-vax extremists.

Redefining Extremists

Initial reports coming out of the DHS is claimed that the greatest threat to the United States is white supremacy… they dialed it back a bit to instead read “domestic violent extremists”. Then you have President Biden making what was supposed to be a unifying speech, claiming that those who voted for Trump are extremists, that takes things to another level.

Domestic Extremism as a term that could include the protests in 2020, but considering the original phrasing was “white supremacy” it’s doubtful. No one is calling the attacks on government buildings by Antifa an “insurrection”. But they are calling a group of people who were lead into the capitol building on January 6th insurrectionists.

T​he danger in having DHS heightening the threat levels on “domestic extremism” and then having the POTUS labeling more than a quarter of the population “extremists” should be rather obvious.

N​o one will come out and say “book burning is a fine idea!”. But they will burn the books just the same. The reason why there was book burning in the first place was because of the ideas in them. It’s an attempt to silence or stop certain ideas from entering the discourse.

T​he fact that the government sees its constituents as threats was supposed to be a call to do better lest they be voted out. Instead, “anti-government” sentiment is being treated as a form of heresy, and a threat to the entire country.

Over a mere 245 years, the country that was founded on treason is now saying any divergence from the state sanctioned narrative is tantamount to terrorism.

Digital Lockdowns and Silencing?

T​his is dangerous. Now couple this with everything people do digitally: communications through email, texting, and social media; banking and investments; applying for jobs or your job itself; obtaining licenses and permits; watchlists and passports. It suddenly becomes a tinderbox, a social credit score doesn’t seem so unfathomable anymore. The rhetoric suggests we are not far from losing it all with a click of a button.

W​e watched what happened to the truckers in Canada. Their assets were frozen, their donations were frozen, and they were called “extreme”.

Dave Smith and Rob Bernstein in their podcast “Part of the Problem” discuss how the government is doing what comedians often do: test the material to see if it’ll take. It’s fine if it’s a joke. But as a matter of public policy, people need to feel more empowered to “boo” it offstage as were.

T​he covid era was a grand experiment. They were testing a lot of new and heavy material on the masses to see if it would take, and it did. Governments around the world exploited the fears of people and their positions of authority to get people to stay inside, close their businesses, stop seeing their friends and family, cover their faces, and turn on those who dissented.

S​o much so, that the sympathy for those who were ostracized for their dissent was nonexistent. They deserved to lose their jobs, and friends, and everything else. In the same way people say those who don’t play Simon Says with the police deserve to die over a seatbelt or air freshener.

You didn’t play by the rules, and you should lose!

And no sooner does the covid wave wane that a new agenda comes rolling in for a Net Zero Environmental Agenda. If we can get people terrified to leave their homes, we can also get them terrified to turn on their central air and heat.

T​he two large entities are about to collide heavily: Characterization and Agenda. They have clearly spelled out the “or else” clause, and asked nicely. It’s going to get very heavy handed, in a very short period of time.

O​ne parting analogy: Libertarians have often insisted that people stop taking the plea, and go to trial. If everyone did this, the courts would be overwhelmed and would ultimately drop the more petty cases. The government hedges that people will choose a plea for their lives back over jail enough to where they can successfully shake them down. Much like a company hedges that people won’t mail in for a rebate. And they are right.

People just want to live their lives, and that’s largely why they are compliant. If you just do this, if you just do that… The list of demands have been going on for generations and I think it’s time for all people from all countries to recognize, that list will only keep growing.

People actively and some even eagerly participated in these policies thinking they were doing their part to help others. They were indeed doing their part, but it wasn’t about helping others at all.

Staying home, losing a job, going deep into debt, masking up, vaccinating, signing up for tracking services, distancing, not seeing friends or family, cutting people off for disagreeing… Their compliance will be called upon again, for the next round of emergencies.

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