Centralisation and Decentralisation
Democracy is supposed to be the pinnacle of decentralised rule, just as the free market is supposed to be the apex of decentralised social economy. Have these connections been distorted? Is using decentralisation in connection with our current systems now just vapourware?
To explain more and get to my point, I want you to cast your mind back to the start of 2020.
I am an avid armchair economist. I am pretty crap at debating economic theory and events, but I have a deep feeling that I have a rather good overall picture of what our western version of free markets really is. The word Free may not be appropriate anymore.
Being the quintessential armchair economist in the 21st century with a small pot of capital that I want to grow, means I have to navigate a torrent of financial propaganda to seek out those golden puzzle pieces that really help build my mental picture of the true financial terrain. Financial media is a special beast with all the arcane terminology and deliberately entangled mess of numbers and statistics which I suspect are designed to keep people from figuring out how it really works. The powers that be (TPTB) know that their empires are built on fragile piles of sand, they just have to keep enough of us confident that its far more solid that it is.
I mention this because navigating financial news means identifying and correctly parsing the coordinated messaging coming out of the TPTB and their media stenographers masquerading as critical journalists. Its not to say that I know better than they, but understanding their motives is all the edge I need to be ahead of the pack. This is relevant because I saw this same playbook turned up to 11 and applied in 2020 to a serious health issue. The voices you hear are the attack of the Parrot Zombies.
Parrot zombies are media outlets or pundits that on the surface seem to be independent and respectable, critical sources of news and information (decentralised), but are in fact just cardboard cutouts parroting a supplied narrative (centralised). Spotting them is easy once you get the knack of it, like the magic eye posters popular from the 1990’s. The incredible way they exposed themselves in March 2020 was hard to not notice for people like me, but so many fell for it. No matter which newspaper, TV show or other MainStream Media (MSM) outlet you looked at, they all seemed to parrot some pre-digested headlines and talking points. It was an astoundingly coordinated and homogenised performance. Not a single one of them strayed from this hidden script. A highly centralised narrative masquerading as decentralised critical journalism.
It got more freaky when they likewise coordinated on who to demonise and all used the precise same flawed talking points to do it. It was a twilight zone episode come to life. I was shocked at the choreography. No critical investigations, or alternative views, just a highly choreographed fear hyping machine. What happened to the fourth estate. The decentralised press whose job it is to question the narrative, to weed out and expose corruption from our public institutions, with the goal that the truth will prevail in the marketplace of theories and evidence.
I learnt valuable lessons over those 2 years of covid madness.
As we saw the true extent to which the MSM has been compromised, we also saw the true extent of critical doubt in that same MSM. which exists in the general public, especially the non western world (most of it). I am glad to see that there are more of us uncompromised critical thinkers out there than I thought. I also learnt that “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” Thank you Abraham Lincoln for that piece of timeless wisdom. The longer this surreal news stream went on, the more they discredited themselves.
Then it flipped in Feb 2022. Corona had lost its fear mojo on the public, and conveniently the Minsk agreement to resolve the brewing civil war in Ukraine quickly unravelled and Russia militarily crossed the border into Ukraine. I won’t go into what I learnt about all of this, it will distract from the topic of this piece. What is relevant though was the sudden coordinated messaging coming out of the western MSM. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Russia was suddenly the cause of the inflation problems everywhere, Putin is an evil dictator, and he is behind every problem anyone faced, whatever it was. I heard it called the: “Putin ate my homework” excuse. The MSM avoided any discussion of events in Ukraine prior to Feb 2022, everything that came before was memory holed, another tell tale sign of coordinated centralised narrative management.
A trend is forming. A toxic cocktail,
one part: amazingly coordinated messaging in the MSM
one part: frighteningly coordinated demonisation of any alternative theories or analysis.
Add a dash of linguistic cavortions like: malinformation, misinformation, fake news, etc… to taste
and Hocus Pocus, Alakazam - FULL SPECTRUM PROPAGANDA.
Repeat the lies often enough and from enough different directions and Voila, the truth has been changed. At a certain point it gains enough momentum to drive itself.
So do we, affluent and comfortable westerners, proud of our social democratic achievements, actually live on a spaghetti western movie set? Are democracy and free market economics only a paper thin façade? Is the only difference between us and evil centralised dictatorships like China, our naivety?
I know that all sounds quite hyperbolic, but I think we need to become a little more alarmed at this slide toward centralised autocracy and fascism in our own democracies.
Let's lighten the mood.
The nice thing about propaganda is that, once you see it, and you have gotten over your own embarrassment at believing it, you realise how childishly unsophisticated it is. It is simply lying on a huge scale.
Think of when you discover a person you trusted is in fact lying, and you finally accept their capacity and willingness to lie. You become automatically inoculated. You form a healthy scepticism from that moment on. It's a kind of natural immunity.
Groups and organisations can feel like they are less likely to collectively lie, but in fact the opposite is true. They find it easier because each individual person does not feel their own personal integrity is under threat, while fear of losing their membership in the group makes those same individuals more likely to conform to a group lie. Quite insidious when you think about it.
So organisations are in fact inherently more likely to lie, and engage in propaganda. So they should be, at the very least, similarly discredited when they are caught lying and have capacity, willingness and motive to keep lying.
There is more good news. Once you are inoculated, it gives you a huge advantage over the masses that are still held in the grip of the lies. As I told you early in this piece, I am an armchair economist with a little pot of capital that I want to shepard and preserve for the future. Turns out you don't need degrees in finance and economics to do this competently. All you need is a functioning memory and a healthy dose of logic and scepticism.
So to distil what to watch out for
Identify organisations like news and media outlets that seem too coordinated in their messages and behaviours. It is very likely that they are only stenographers for TPTB or at the most innocent, useful idiots.
Keep your eyes and ears open for narrative shifts. These are the times when you can sneak a peek behind the curtain. Btw - useful idiots are likely to apologise for getting it wrong at this point.
Let your logical mind lose. Analyse the messaging, and do you best to clear your mind of any preconceived ideas and biases. Be willing to accept you got things wrong before and don’t let them stand in the way of getting closer to the truth.
Collate a list of logical questions that you have, and then search out the answers online. You will find a plethora of independent uncompromised voices of those that have preceded your awakening who want to help you. Find those that make sense to you and check how accurate they are at getting things right over time.
Use your awesome memory. Lies do not survive the harsh logic of the truth for long. All you need to do is be honest with yourself.
Be sceptical of information sources that prove themselves to be either incompetent, or compromised.
I’ll end this with a short heads up.
The narrative around Ukraine winning against Russia is shifting fast.
A new narrative is bubbling to the surface.
Have you heard of Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)?
There is something afoot with central banks all over the world. Seems they are shit scared of Bitcoin (virtually a pure form of decentralised money), and are hatching a plan to create their own version which flips Bitcoin’s decentralisation almost exactly 180° into a centralised dystopian form of currency.
They seem to be eagerly waiting for a crisis to exploit, so be vigilant. The 50 years of pure fiat currency system we have lived in is past its use by date. There is always volatility and violence when reserve currencies flip.
If you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for some digits in an online banking system, and trust those digits will remain honest and will buy the same amount of stuff to live as they did yesterday and tomorrow, I would ask the question: why so sure? Does your bank deserve such trust?