The Vaccine Passport and the Dynamics of Domination

(Note: This is the second in my “Imperfectionist series” - better to do something half-assed that not to do it at all. This was published on Medium in April, 2021, and then censored - my first censorship, a badge of honor, sadly. It was also published on Transcend Media Service, an excellent weekly compilation which I recommend. This is imperfect because I wanted to update and shorten it, and we know more now, If it is too long you can scroll through and look at the headlines.)

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“Probably never before in history has anything or any event mixed fact, fiction, fear, and confusion like the COVID-19 pandemic of 2019-2020.” – Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD

“We are conditioned to believe, not to understand.”   Marcelina Cravat

“It’s Easier to Fool People Than It Is to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled.”

– Mark Twain

 Note: I recommend this amazing 19-minute testimony by Dr. Peter McCullough, MD,  the most published person in history in his field as a context for this piece.

Cartoon by Large + JIPÉM

Mouse No 1: “Are You Going to get Vaccinated”,

Mouse No. 2: Are You Crazy, They Haven’t finished the Tests on Humans”

An earlier version of this article censored on Medium in April. Much gratitude to Medium for driving me to Substack.

The Vaccine Passport (VPP)

            The latest in Covid’s 14-month “shock and awe” mission creep campaign is the VPP. Many are persuaded by Bill Gates’s self-serving proclamation that civilization will never emerge from this terrifying pandemic - despite all of human history – until 7.9 billion humans, and some animals, receive a series of shots – including endless boosters for mutations that policies are causing.

            These lucrative, patented, experimental synthetic gene injectables are not technically vaccines. I call them VINOs – “Vaccines in Name Only.” Those who opt out of this unapproved experiment are demonized and pathologized as threats to humanity.

            Coercive VPP’s are promoted by Big Tech and Big Pharma, not health providers. Interestingly, European Plans for 'Vaccine Passports' Were in Place 20 Months Prior to the Pandemic. Coincidence?. 

·       The End of Human Liberty?

            We are warned by Holocaust survivor, Vera Sharav, Israeli citizen Ilana Rachel Daniel, living under Israel’s “Green Passport,” and Naomi Wolf, granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, author of “The End of America,” and tech company CEO describing potential use of VPP  for surveillance, control, access to personal data, and creation of second-class citizens from which “there is no coming back.” Russel Brand adds Vaccine Passports: THIS Is Where It Leads. 

            Even those in favor of mass VINOs have reason to worry about the VPP. It violates the Nuremberg Coderequiring informed consent to medical interventions.

            If the concern was TRULY about health we would have quarantined the vulnerable, promoted immune boosting supplements and diets, delivered immune support to front line workers, teachers and all, allowed the young and healthy to safely provide herd immunity for the rest of us, provided prophylactic and early treatments with ivermectin and other remedies, and allowed those recovered with robust natural immunity to work, be free, and contribute to society. 

            This would have saved lives and harms, including depressions, suicides, preventable medical deaths, financial devastation and educational setbacks caused by locking down healthy and recovered, immune people. 

            In “Latest vaccine flip-flop gives the vaccine game away, ” Meryl Nass, MD convincingly concludes, “The purpose of the vaccines is obviously not to protect us. The vaccines enrich Pharma. The vaccine passports enable much greater control over the citizenry. There may be additional agendas.  But this is clearly not about our health.”

My Duty to Warn 

            I have studied manipulation of fear since college when I wrote about anti-Semitism and protested the Viet Nam War. I pursued psychology to understand the psyche of perpetrators and how society allows this.

            Perplexed by the Nazi Holocaust, I was plagued by the concept of inevitability. People could not prevent what they could not imagine. This motivated me to overcome my shyness to become a speaker for Physicians for Social Responsibility on the psychology of enmity, exaggerated threats and the nuclear arms race. Since we knew nuclear war could happen, we could “prevent the inevitable.” 

            As a clinical and political psychologist, I analyze, diagnose, make the unconscious conscious, and promote therapy. My ethical code requires me to warn if someone is dangerous to oneself or others. I unsuccessfully  warned about the cataclysmic consequences of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

The Power of Fear

            A compelling fear-based narrative saturates the US airwaves. Few investigate hidden forces, abuses of power, and vested interests orchestrating this highly designed drama – not an inevitable path this virus had to take. 

            The dominant narrative heightens fear. It censors, disinforms, induces helplessness, ignores immunity, disregards who dies and why, and allows unnecessary harms caused by a lockdown that impedes natural herd immunity among the healthy, creating immune pressure escape and mutations. 

            Fear impairs the questioning of unnecessary destruction of small businesses and transfer of wealth and power to billionaires who induce us to passively wait in terror for Big Pharma to save us.   

Photo by Author of The Highwire, March 19, 2021

            Disinformation and manipulated ignorance have obscenely created a reality in which we are told that those who choose not to participate in the VINO experiment, not only threaten the lives of their loved ones, but stand in the way of freedom and survival for all humanity – thus driving support for the VPP.

Truthiness of the Dominant Narrative

            “Truthiness” is a term coined by Stephen Colbert, comedian and late-night talk show host.  It is defined as “the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.”

            The dominant narrative is so successful and powerful due to many factors described below, but along with censorship and fear, the observable phenomena lend themselves so well to a compelling “truthiness” that is incredibly hard to dispel. Facts and data that seem obvious on the surface, promoted by massive messaging campaigns, are contradicted by facts and information that are obvious below the surface, Independent data, promoted by people who are censored, requires more discernment, education, and curiosity.  Things like the workings of the immune system, the role of viruses in evolution, how many pandemics become more contagious and less lethal in the process of waning, robust immunity of the recovered, the suppression of cheap, effective, early treatments, the greater harm of lockdowns and so on. These have been hidden from the masses and require curiosity and some effort to detect.  

 '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

A Parallel Universe

            A network of conventional, integrative, functional, naturopathic and regenerative doctors and scientists investigate treatments and clinical trials around the world. Most are not well-funded or promoted by lobbyists. Successful, protocols using repurposed, safe, non-patentable (not profitable) treatments are ignored or censored in the US. Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of new, patentable, profitable drugs and VINOs cannot be granted if alternatives exist. 

            These professionals are not crazy, reckless or stupid. They investigate different bodies of knowledge and facts, including suppressed reports of adverse reactions and deaths following shots. The media calls them “coincidences” and refuses to investigate. Successful protocols that stop cytokine storms and promote recovery are also dismissed as coincidences. Beloved doctors with grateful patients are being censored and having licenses suspended. The public is deprived of their data and wisdom. 

Goldilocks Fear – Not Too Much, Not Too Little

            We are flooded with debilitating existential fear. People are more dangerous when afraid and more vulnerable to manipulation. People regress and lose higher cognitive functions, capacity for logic, the ability to anticipate consequences and to understand cause and effect.

            Too much fear can render people vulnerable to exploitation. Too little fear allows recklessness and freaks out people with too much fear.

            With healthy, optimal fear we can evaluate risks and take appropriate, differentiated precautions, including protecting the vulnerable and for all promote immune boosting and prophylaxis with diet, supplements and effective treatments on hand. Having solutions available reduces fear. 

            In the US, and elsewhere, fear is being hyped in ways that cloud thinking and feeling.

Dynamics of Domination  

            We are living in a powerful forcefield that generates a coherent, internally consistent, irresistible version of reality, akin to movies like The Matrix and The Truman Show. (see Beyond the Red Pill ) How is this done? 

            A variety of techniques combine to create something like a collective hypnotic induction which creates the illusion of a consensus that cannot be challenged. They include censorship, exaggeration of threats, manipulating numbers, distortion, misinformation, disinformation, mystification, intimidation, shaming, and social control.

            Many respond with helplessness, passive compliance, disbelief, psychic numbing, fear, cowardice, conformity, denial, cognitive laziness, willful ignorance, avoidance, and submission to authority. These items are inter-related. The list is not exhaustive.

            Few have the motivation, access to suppressed information, insight, training, and resources to see through the manipulation. Fewer have the courage. Social support is helpful and there is safety in numbers.

Here are some concepts to explain.

·        Cultural Hegemony and Hegemonic Belief Systems

           We are now living under a dominant cultural narrative that is portrayed as an absolute, undeniable truth accepted by all sane people. It is so obvious. Those who don’t believe it and challenge “conventional wisdom” are stupid, crazy and dangerous and must be convinced at all costs. In the US billions are being spent to “enlighten” and coerce the hesitant.

            Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci described how the ruling class establishes and controls class relations, wielding “invisible power” by manipulating the culture’s ideology, beliefs, values and social norms, maintaining the status quo. People accept the ruling class’s worldview as a natural, inevitable, beneficial cultural norm without question.   

            How is such a convincing worldview maintained? Preceding psychological explanations, we must acknowledge the overwhelming ignorance of facts in the mainstream media, hugely funded by Big Pharma. Ignorance is reinforced by social techniques and psychological factors that induce a lack of desire to know the facts, and avoidance of the awesome responsibility that comes with knowledge.

·      Censorship

            If we were aware that SARS Cov2 was a simple virus that could be easily treated early with inexpensive, safe, available drugs and remedies, with high recovery rates, there would have been far less fear. With success of inexpensive, available treatments, we would not be obsessed with vaccinations.

            We would have reached herd immunity, the way every respiratory virus has ended earlier, and not suffered devastating, fear-induced lockdowns. We would not have been persuaded to wait helplessly in fear while people had to die until Big Pharma saved us with VINOs. Attempts to find new patentable treatments were half-hearted, though well-funded. Vaccines, we were told, were the only end to this trauma and have a path to a “normal” life.  Collectively terrified and traumatized, accurately reported facts in the mainstream media would have allowed a calmer, healthier public response.

            Regarding disinformation, scientist Denis Rancourt was asked what we can learn from mainstream media. He responded, “It is a very good information source about what they want you to believe.” People who expose or contradict the dominant narrative and strategy for endless global mass vaccination, social control and failure to address healthy immune function are ignored, censored, falsely defamed, accused of spreading fear and misinformation.

·      Suppression of Information about Effective Early Treatments

-       Drs. Pierre Kory, Paul Marick, and Peter McCullough, Frontline Doctors and others testified, practically in tears, over suffering and unnecessary deaths by refusing to investigate, rejecting promising results and withholding life-saving treatments.

-       Dr. Vladmir Zelenko’s effective, world renowned protocol with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), zinc and azithromycin was suppressed with a fake study by vested interests designed to discredit HCQ. The Lancet and British Medical Journal retracted those fraudulent articles.

-       Meryl Nass describes How a false hydroxychloroquine narrative was created, and more

-       Remember all money and hype about almost useless Remdesivir while non-patentable treatments were being withheld?

-       Consider that billions are being poured into patentable new drugs and that VINOs would not be permitted by EUA, Emergency Use Authorization if effective, inexpensive drugs were available.

·      Mission Creep

            Last year, would you have imagined being locked down for 15 months? It crept up on us in unexpected, barely tolerable doses, less shocking than what we eventually realized. 

            We first had the impression that it might last a few weeks or a month. Then we had to wait until we “flattened the curve.” Remember?  Like the frog slowly boiling in the water, the heat was gradually turned up. We became habituated to a fate that many might have rebelled against had they known what was coming.

            Now we are told we have to wait until everyone is “fully vaccinated” while wearing masks, distancing, etc. Since misguided people are “vaccine hesitant” we have to convince, coerce, reward, threaten and now require a Vaccine Passport. Without the VPP they will be restricted from social activities, work and travel. All people on Earth can be subject to control of data and inescapable surveillance. But wait! Plans for the VPP were in place 20 months before the pandemic!    

            Is getting 7.5 billion people and some animals fully “vaccinated” the endgame to a bright future?  What about the variants likely caused by the lockdown? We will be required to take boosters, and then annual shots. How many for how long? No one knows the long-term effects of the mRNA VINOs, let alone cumulative effects of multiple, repeated shots of synthetic genetic materials with toxic encapsulants and adjuvants over the years.

            Fear-mongering Big Pharma-funded media, along with silenced voices, withheld treatments, unnecessary deaths, exaggerated infection rates, including false positives and a many asymptomatic, recovered, naturally immune people, and lockdown trauma all work together to fabricate a convincing illusory reality.

            Thankfully we have two selfless expert heroes to save us - altruists Gates and Fauci. We hear little of their history with vaccines, patents and conflicts of interest.

Photo by Author of The Highwire, March 19, 2021

·      Mystification 

          RD Laing defines mystification  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 power dynamics of stereotyped roles by inducing confusion and masking truth with false constructions of what is actually happening and what a conflict is actually about, though people may not feel confused. In fact, they may feel quite assured of their position. 

            Laing concluded, “Implicit in Marx’s formulation is that before enlightened action can be taken, the issues have to be demystified.” 

·       Terror Management Theory (TMT)

          Playing on our fear of death, exaggerating its randomness and our helplessness drives the framing of the Covid narrative. TMT is a body of social psychology research. Awareness of death creates profound existential anxiety. To protect ourselves, we mobilize an “anxiety buffering system” providing illusions and meaning systems of transcending death. Confronting people with their mortality disrupts this anxiety buffer, increases fear and suspicion of outgroups, attachment to one’s ingroup, nationalism, prejudice, and support for violent solutions and greater attraction to charismatic leaders. 

·       Groupthink

           Yale psychologist Irving Janis defined groupthink as, “A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.” TMT shows that preoccupation with death increases group attachment. With groupthink, few dare to challenge the dominant mindset. 

            Groupthink pressures for conformity and discourages independent thinking and expressions of doubts. Overconfidence and failure to consider alternative views, facts and bodies of knowledge impairs sound decision making, leading to flawed decisions. With fear, groupthink is more extreme. Conformity and herd mentality are similar phenomena.

            For example, in January1986 scientists tried to stop the launch of the Challenger space shuttle, warning that the O-rings would freeze and endanger the mission. Due to groupthink this idea was rejected and the Challenger, with the first teacher in space, exploded shortly after launch.

·       Overconfidence and Denial

           Before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, there was much overconfidence about success – the war would be a cakewalk, it would pay for itself, it might last a few weeks or months, we would create a democracy. It is common in promoting agendas to exaggerate the potential for success and denial and minimization of negative, catastrophic consequences and blowback.

·       Induced Helplessness

            Psychologist Martin Seligman's theory of learned helplessness explains how when one's repeated actions have no effect, people learn that what they do doesn't make a difference and give up, even in situations where they can potentially make a difference. Learned helplessness is also associated with elevation of levels of cortisol and immune suppression--suggesting it is ultimately not adaptive or healthy to give up.

            The media and government’s messaging around Covid actually induces and helplessness fear by depriving people of information of many immune supporting, health enhancing, proactive, protective and prophylactic measures people can take to reduce severity of disease, promote recovery, stop cytokine storms and prevent deaths. Doctors who advocate these measures are ignored, censored or called quacks. Some of these measures are promoted in the UK and other countries. People are robbed of a sense of agency over their own health.

Personality Factors

            There are personality styles, biases and differences in critical thinking, receptivity to messaging, curiosity or lack thereof, openness and susceptibility to psychological manipulation.

            Interpersonal difficulties in communicating may be related to these differences.  I had a déjà vu experience with some of the literature I reviewed for my doctoral dissertation in 1980 related to psychoneuroimmunology and mind-body medicine.

·       Hypnotic Susceptibility and the Tellegen Absorption Scale

            There are individual differences in hypnotic susceptibility, related to absorption “… an individual’s cognitive capacity for involvement in sensory and imaginative experiences in ways that alter an individual’s perception, memory, and mood with behavioral and biological consequences.” (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974).

            This explains differences in the depth and quality of subjective responses to the dominant, compelling, emotional Covid narrative. “Persons who score high on absorption … are emotionally responsive to engaging sights and sounds, are readily captured by entrancing stimuli, and think in images (Tellegen, 1981). Such individuals seemingly can … become absorbed in vivid and compelling recollections and imaginings and can experience episodes of expanded awareness. Persons with low absorption are not as emotionally responsive as those with high absorption.”

·       Information Seeking or Avoiding

            Whether facing a diagnosis, a procedure, climate breakdown or Covid, there are some who talk to everyone they can and read everything available from a variety of sources, while others don’t want to know anything.

·       Submission to Authority 

            Some are more inclined to question authority than others. Those who grow up in authoritarian families or cultures may adapt and survive by submitting to authority. Others may be afraid of challenging authority during a crisis. Many people who challenge authority in other areas of their lives surprisingly now accept what they are being told. Understandably, people without specific knowledge in the area of health and immunity cannot discern misinformation. Furthermore, many regress when afraid and desire an authority they believe will protect them. After 9/11 attacks President Bush’s popularity shot up. 

       Cowardice, Rational Fear of Being Shunned

            Most people are cowardly conformists, which is why we reward and honor courage. Sometimes it is reasonable to fear sticking one's neck out and challenging the powers that be. There may be legitimate reasons to fear speaking up with such consensus and fear of being disbelieved, rejected and punished, with real social consequences. But this becomes part of the problem and rewards domination.As long as people remain silent and isolated from one another, we don't realize the safety implicit in concerted collective action. The safety in numbers can reduce fear.

            Recognizing the dangers of the VPP, hopefully more people will find courage.

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A Collective Cognitive Disorder

            Fear also impacts cognition. I read long ago that 50% of the US population has not achieved abstract thinking. Much of what people are told is illogical and disprovable.

·       Hypocognition

            Hypocognition means "low thinking." Cognitive psychologist George Lakoff describes “our inability to perceive things that we’re not conditioned to see or comprehend, ideas for which we have no framework.” “Hypocognition” was coined by psychiatrist, anthropologist Robert Levy. He observed in his study of emotions in Tahiti’s Society Islands that people had no words for “grief" and “sorrow.” Since their culture and social systems did not support a healthy grieving process, when loved ones died, they “somaticized,” converting grief, into physical symptoms, describing themselves as feeling "sick" or "strange” after a significant loss.

            Steve Bhaerman informs me that Lenape descendent Steven Newcomb, claims his tribe had no word for domination.

·        Black-and-White, Dualistic, All or Nothing Thinking

            Absolutist thinking divides the world into opposites, creating false dilemmas and fallacies that eclipse curiosity and exploration of differentiated, life-saving policies.  Ignorant all or nothing lockdowns cause harm and impede natural herd immunity.  

·       Concrete Thinking 

            Literal, superficial emphasis on physical objects is the opposite of abstract thinking. Things may not be as they appear. Policies that seem obviously effective, like masks and lockdowns, may be contradicted on the level of microscopic phenomena, immune function, nutritional status, air pollution, viral behavior, natural herd immunity, adaptation and the role of natural progression of pandemics in evolution over two hundred years.

·       Poor Reality Testing 

            “Reality testing” is an ego function of evaluation of the world outside the self. With “poor reality testing” emotions, desires, beliefs and socialization impede accurate perception, evaluation, and judgment of external events. Many assume false beliefs are real. 

·       Public Health is not Metabolic Health

            Public health primarily addresses contagion and behavior – masks, washing, distancing, lockdowns. It has a significant role, but does not concern metabolic health and immune function. In addition to germ theory, health is impacted by “host resistance” – immune strength and resilience to exposure, and “terrain theory” regarding air quality, richness of soil, and one’s microbiome. The best defense against

 the virus is a healthy immune system.

Compulsory Medical Experimentation and the VPP

            The US media is hegemonically promoting an absolute belief in VINO’s necessity, safety and efficacy, despite the fact that some epidemiologists believe we are approaching herd immunity, which would render the shots unnecessary, as would effective early treatments. Propaganda and disinformation about disinformation is masterful. People can be forgiven for believing what they are told by everyone all the time.

            Fears are validated by manufactured illusions with false positive infections, misdiagnoses, over-attributions of deaths to Covid, as well as up to 80% of unnecessary deaths by withholding early, effective treatments.            

            Existentially terrified and misinformed, most believe that all will suffer forever until everyone gets VINOs. Social life and the survival of humanity depend on the VPP.  They are not informed about viable routes to immunity, health, freedom and survival and how the VPP is a Trojan Horse for surveillance and control of personal data.

            Despite rising opposition to the VPP, coercion will be applied by businesses, industries, colleges, airlines, etc., curtailing freedoms for second class citizens without resolving the pandemic. The goal post will keep moving. Pressure will be inescapable. We have a daunting challenge before us.

Demystification

            Dumbed down, fear-induced, concrete, black-and-white, all or nothing thinking about Covid deprives us of categories of knowledge, facts and ways of thinking necessary for enlightened policies that can save lives, livelihoods, capable of guiding us out of this pandemic.

            Perhaps rising opposition to the VPP, along with emerging data on lack of VINO’s effectiveness, adverse reactions, and deaths, testimonies by credible doctors, and class action lawsuits for preventable deaths and disabilities, information about withheld treatments and corporate corruption will expose the dance of domination. Repeating R.D. Laing, 

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

A New Reality

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."   Buckminster Fuller

            SARS Cov2 is a simple, easily treatable virus. We can reduce fear with education. As facts and lawsuits challenge the dominant narrative, let’s promote a compelling narrative grounded in interdisciplinary sciences leading to a viable endgame. Every respiratory virus has ended with natural herd immunity.

             We must identify, protect and treat the vulnerable, encourage immune enhancing lifestyles, supply immune boosting supplements, and provide effective treatments early, open schools and society. Provide educational remediation and support to recover lost businesses. Address all causes of increased mortality among minorities and the poor, including nutrition, environment and healthcare.

            Let the VPP provoke its own demise by revealing its true sinister intentions. Let us promote wisdom, truth and justice to heal from our trauma and rebuild society based on health, nature, community and love.