"There you go again! You grumble about being given nothing to do, and as soon as I suggest a bit of real work you expect to have the whole plan of campaign told you before you do it. It doesn't make sense. That's not the way to get on here. The great thing
is to do what you're told. If you turn out to be any good you'll soon understand what's going on. But you've got to begin by doing the work. You don't seem to realise what we are. We're an army."
"Good Lord!" said the Fairy, "where are your eyes? Look at what the weeklies have got away with! Look at the Weekly Question. There's a paper for you. When Basic English came in simply as the invention of a free-thinking Cambridge don, nothing was too good
for it; as soon as it was taken up by a Tory Prime Minister it became a menace to the purity of our language. And wasn't the Monarchy an expensive absurdity for ten years? And then, when the Duke of Windsor abdicated, didn't the Question go all monarchist
and legitimist for about a fortnight? Did they drop a single reader? Don't you see that the educated reader can't stop reading the highbrow weeklies whatever they do? He can't. He's been conditioned."
"Anyway," said Mark, "I'm not a journalist. I didn't come here to write newspaper articles. I tried to make that clear to Feverstone at the very beginning."
"The sooner you drop all that talk about what you came here to do, the better you'll get on. I'm speaking for your own good, Studdock. You can write. That's one of the things you're wanted for."
"Then I've come here under a misunderstanding," said Mark. The sop to his literary vanity, at that period of his career, by no means compensated for the implication that his sociology was of no importance. "I've no notion of spending my life writing newspaper
articles," he said. "And if I had, I'd want to know a good deal more about the politics of the N.I.C.E. before I went in for that sort of thing."
"Haven't you been told that it's strictly non-political?"
"I've been told so many things that I don't know whether I'm on my head or my heels," said Mark. "But I don't see how one's going to start a newspaper stunt (which is about what this comes to) without being political. Is it Left or Right papers that are
going to print all this rot about Alcasan?"
"Both, honey, both," said Miss Hardcastle. "Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E.
is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's properly done you get each side out-bidding the other in support of us--to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we're non-political. The real power always is."
"I don't believe you can do that," said Mark. "Not with the papers that are read by educated people."
"That shows you're still in the nursery, lovey," said Miss Hardcastle. "Haven't you yet realised that it's the other way round?"
"How do you mean?"
"Why, you fool, it's the educated readers who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his
paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem: we have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don't need reconditioning.
They're all right already. They'll believe anything."
"As one of the class you mention," said Mark with a smile, "I just don't believe it."
From "That Hideous Strength", by C.S. Lewis, 1945
Before I begin, I'd like to welcome Landon to the readership, who takes the number to 33.
Confidence games are not an all-powerful force. Confidence games have a lifespan, just like propaganda does.
The only way to defeat a confidence game is to "get wise".
The great news is that, once you've learned something, you cannot un-learn it.
My wife, an eye surgeon by trade, has never shared my views that the whole Covid thing is a gigantic confidence game.
Last week, with no involvement or conversation by me, she "got" it. She had the 'a ha' moment at which she knew she'd been had.
Remember, when the school of fish, the flock of birds turns, they do so apparently as one.
And when cons collapse, they do so in a rush, like a house of cards.
Jeff Miller, Brooklyn, New York, September 1, 2020
September 25, 2018 - Monsanto Weed Killer Is Killing Bees, New Research Shows
April 19, 2020 - Why
Some People Don't Believe the Coronavirus Numbers
Bukacek refers to a March 24 CDC memo from Steven Schwartz, director of the Division of Vital Statistics for the National Center for Health Statistics, titled “COVID-19
Alert No. 2.”
“The assumption of COVID-19 death,” she says, “can be made even without testing. Based on assumption alone the death can be reported to the public as another COVID-19 casualty.”
There is a question-and-answer section on the memo.
One question is, “Will COVID-19 be the underlying cause?”
The answer is: “The underlying cause depends upon what and where conditions are reported on the death certificate. However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are
expected to result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause more often than not.”
Another question is, “Should ‘COVID-19’ be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?”
The answer is:
“COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.” [Boldfacing in original]
This is why some people don't believe the official coronavirus numbers
June 24, 2020 - Over A Third of Russians Don't Believe the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Real
July 21, 2020 - Court upholds Monsanto cancer verdict, slashes award again
July 25, 2020 - Bayer's stock price has collapsed by 40%
July 26, 2020 - Collapsing Confidence in Public Health/Macroeconomic Management.
August 28, 2020 - With COVID Vax in Works, 20% Don't
Believe in Shots
As many as 20% of Americans don't believe in vaccines, a new study finds.
(Uses "vax" in the headline, because the word "vaccine" is past its sell-by date)
