A Blood Poisoning of the Body Politic (Foul Deeds Arising). In an
early essay “Symbols of Transformation”, archetypal ‘poster-boy’ of the
collective unconscious Carl Jung noted:
‘There’s no adequate protection against psychic
epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of
natural catastrophes. The supreme danger which threatens individuals
[and] whole nations is a psychic danger.’
Though history is littered with the
mortal remains of the countless victims of such dangers, it’s hard to
recall an event in recent times where Jung’s insight has carried such
portent.
The much-touted microbial perils aside for now, possibly not since
September 11, 2001 have we witnessed or experienced such a sweeping
psychic contamination of the global body politic implicit in Jung’s
maxim, as with the emergence of the Coronavirus (or Covid-19). Both
events were game changers: disparate to be sure yet ‘transformative’,
both have underscored the man’s insight indubitably.
It informs much of what follows. With everything in varying degrees
from uncertainty, fear, anxiety, suspicion, hysteria, intolerance,
paranoia, despondency, animus, dread, and panic in the ascendancy,
infecting ever more deeply our already ‘overloaded’ psyches, and some of
our most basic, hitherto presumed freedoms and liberties abruptly
curtailed or suspended ostensibly for the greater good (by some earnest
accounts, temporarily), all of us have been affected in some measure.
For the most part and for most people, this has not been in a good
way. The true calculus of the effects will be some time in coming, if in
fact we can expect such. Irrespective of whether one views Covid (and
mooted mutations thereof) as a) as bad as we’re told it is or could be;
b)[as] real an existential threat to humanity as our established and
establishment sources of news and information would have it; or c)
whether it is even real at all*, it is the all too human propensity for
irrational thought and illogical action that gives rise to the
psychopathology implicit in Jung’s assessment.
This is decidedly the case when such propensities are combined with
our easy willingness to accept prima facie the proclamations of our
ruling elites, fuelled as they are by their own hubristic ambitions,
almost all of which are fiercely echoed and mirrored by their news and
information intermediaries. All this brings to mind that memorable
couplet via Hamlet: ‘Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth
o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.’
Whilst it seems the global populace has stoically accepted the
official narrative of ‘experts’ in such matters, there is all the same a
highly credible, eminently qualified, and eclectic mix of folks who’ve
declared themselves at least quite sceptical of the whole business. As
events and developments triggered by Covid unfold, significantly more
individuals and groups are coming forward and crying ‘foul’, about the
severity—indeed the very authenticity—of the crisis, and the official
responses to it.
Indeed, there’s credible evidence the virus was not a naturally
occurring phenomenon, but man-made.To understand why this acceptance has
been so ‘contagious’, a slight digression at this point is useful. In
his slyly subversive 1995 tome The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of
Aggressive Common Sense, philosopher John Ralston Saul offers us a
useful view: he presents doubt as‘the only human activity capable of
controlling power in a positive way’. For the eminent Canadian, doubt
is‘central to [our] understanding’. Ralston Saul also suggests: ‘…it is
curious just how easily [our elites] set about serving only themselves,
even if it means…they or the society will self-self-destruct’.
For his part British philosopher John Grayhad this to say:‘When
belief systems are contradicted by facts, beliefs are rarely
renounced…More often they’re reinterpreted and thereby reinforced.
Humans are more interested in preserving an internally coherent
worldview than in testing their view of things against events. Nearly
always, faith trumps facts.’As with Jung’s earlier insight, such musings
are crucial to our fuller understanding of what’s taking place at
present. They’re further critical to providing an insight into the
implications of ignoring the portents therein. In the Age of The
‘Coronapocalypse’—with doubt amongst the populace an increasingly rare
commodity—it seems clear we’re not only ‘over’ it as an instinctive
response to the machinations of our political, economic, media,
technocratic, financial, and intellectual power elites. To the extent we
do embrace doubt, we’re doing so inwardly, not outwardly. In the wrong
direction as it were!
All of which is to say, it is our own judgment we more readily apply
such doubts to than [to] those who govern us. In its place, we’re
second-guessing our “aggressive common sense”, substituting a misplaced
trust in authority. These wielders of great power known and unknown,
elected and unelected, for whom the quaint notion ‘with great power
comes great responsibility’ is both anathema and risible, know this: as
such, they leverage—politicise, weaponise and/or monetise—our (self)
doubts, our fears, insecurities, anxieties, even our primal instincts
against us in the service of their own agendas and individual and
collective self-interest.
It is said: ‘Never let a good crisis go to
waste…’. Putting aside the inherent ambiguity and cynicism of this trope
and the fact that the sentiment underpinning it (if not the actual
wording) has been doing the rounds for some time in one form or another,
the phrase not by chance shoehorned itself into the political lexicon
in the wake of 9/11. Yet the obvious subtext of this meme was then and
remains now,‘if we get tired of waiting for [a good crisis[ to show up,
go the extra mile and have one tailor-made and fit-for-purpose…’.
That this possibility should be apparent to all
is, well, without doubt! To re-mint an old adage, we don’t need to be
paranoidto see this. In any case, it may even be too late to help us.
Such are the stakes with this particular crisis, such is the zeitgeist.
This is not idle hyperbole. And for those who
might be tempted to view this as bordering on conspiratorial musing, as
author Lance de Haven-Smith has suggested, our ready acceptance of the
edicts from on high is predicated on a misplaced ‘sentimentality’ about
our political leaders, public figures and institutions ‘rather than’ he
says, ‘on any unbiased reasoning and object observation. One supposes
here then we’re talking about the benefit of a reasonable doubt versus
the disadvantages of unreasonable suspicion or even unreasoned
certainty.
It’s difficult though reconciling such “sentimentality” with any
known, rational reason for it being so. For those of us not naturally
inclined towards sentiment when we contemplate the general character,
mindset, integrity and scruples of our average political and public
figures, this especially might be the case.
Here’s the thing: If we don’t use doubt—a measure of political
agnosticism wherein we question that misplaced trust—to control the
psycho-pathologically derived misanthropy and the collective
totalitarian mindset of these people, they’ll have little compunction in
using our inability, refusal, or unwillingness to doubt [to] control
us. As indeed they are, and will continue to do!
Picturing the Prince (The Ballad of ‘Bogus Bill’)We’ll return to
these themes later. But any meaningful discourse of Covid requires us to
critically examine the integrity of the chief architect of the
existential milieu in which we find ourselves. For those looking into
our current malaise (how did we get here?), it is to Bill Gates and the
Bill & Melinda Gates (BMG) Foundation we must turn our attention.
In reporting on his much-touted philanthropic endeavours, James
Corbett of The Corbett Report is one who’s nailed the essence of Gates,
and dared to challenge the accepted narratives of the public relations
exercise which has crafted them. For those who haven’t seen Corbett’s
expose, suffice to say there are many takeaways, most of which may be
difficult to digest for those disinclined to doubt. But essential
viewing it is. Along with being an admirer of the man’s work, it’s worth
noting I’ve rarely seen him as animated as he has been about the Covid
agenda. This in itself is a most telling observation.
From Microsoft to microbes of the life-threatening kind, from
viruses of the digital to the less metaphorical variety, Corbett’s own
finely tuned doubt receptors have rendered us a compelling portrait of
Gates and his backstory, along with the myth, his agenda, and his
‘business model’ for humanity.
Once such are revealed, doubt impels us to question many aspects of
the Covid phenomenon, not least the disruptive and destructive
impositions, edicts, and directives we’ve come to blithely accept from
those purporting to manage the ‘crisis’ in our best interests. The
wearing of masks, social distancing, lockdowns, border closures,
self-isolation, and draconian penalties for infringements of any of the
above are just a few of the countless examples.
Tobe sure, this purportedly philanthropic—and on its face
off-piste—career ‘redirection’ for one of the world’s richest and most
ruthless of capitalists had many folks reassessing their views of the
man. After experiencing a ‘come to me Lord’ moment, Gates had
recalibrated his values, mended his ‘wicked ways’, and set out on the
road to redemption. Doubtless it was one he presumably felt would, like
St Paul’s, in the fullness of time lead him to a higher moral ground and
a ‘salvation’ of sorts. And one expects, an immortality of the type few
folks might reasonably aspire to much less anticipate.
Sounds fair enough. Using one’s massive, somewhat ill-gotten
fortune to eradicate the world’s diseases, reduce poverty along with
economic and social inequality, and in general make the planet a better
place for the masses (of whom there are far too many in the ‘gospel’
according to Gates), sounds like a grand idea, a selfless goal, taking
the whole concept of noblesse oblige to another stratosphere entirely.
Some might say it is quixotic, though in his case absent‘the Don’s’
altruism, the windmills, suit of armour, sceptical off-sider, and trusty
steed. It seems to have worked a treat.
To reiterate, there are many who didn’t buy Bill’s ‘bill of
goods’from the off, and remain consistent still; as noted even more now
are, if not rejecting it outright, applying suitable mechanisms of
doubt.
For those doing so, the Covid agenda has revealed Gates’ apparent
Damascene conversion all those years ago to all-round good guy, the
prince 0f the pathogenic epoch as it were—in his case, the penultimate
humanitarian of our era, making John D Rockefeller look like a
curmudgeonly ‘scrooge’ even after his not dissimilar re-baptism back in
the day—as a fraud, a phony, a chimera of charitable intent.
The Parasitic Profiteers of Adversity. Few people one imagines have
transformed the act of giving away their money such a consummately
profitable business model. We only need follow the money, or ask: Who
benefits? Cui bono? as we say.As with 9/11, the dramatis personae in
Covid’s ‘cattle-call’ of beneficiaries is a ‘cast of thousands’, and
then some! The parasitic profiteers of angst, adversity and misfortune
are rarely in short supply.
And whilst a more complete picture of the ultimate goals of the BMG
Foundation, along with the agendas of its various ‘franchisees’ and
subsidiaries, might remain unclear for some, it’s enough to say that if
its much-touted altruistic aims are to be accepted, there is much more
work to be done. In the PR domain that is.
This even if the results thus far are quite impressive to say the
least. Public relations (one of whose notable pioneers was no less than
Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who leveraged then monetised his
uncle’s conclusions about the inner working of the human mind to
stunning effect), doesn’t as a rule seek to provide objective insights
into contemporary events.
It is about manipulating and moulding (sorry, “managing”) our
perceptions of people, situation and circumstance, and doing so by
deception, either by omission or commission, by misinformation or
disinformation, or both, in each case! This ‘alchemical’ myth-making
aims to poison—indeed mutate—the core narrative of our history, as well
as the more contemporary political and civil discourse.
Now I feel I can say all this with some measure of authority as
I’ve an insider’s grasp of how PR works, a previous life having afforded
me such. Being able to match one’s own knowledge of history in general
with the history of PR and how it has become such an omnipotent force
governing the management of our political economy and our society
provides such insight.
For those who might challenge the substance of Freud’s own ‘warts
‘n all’ insights into the human condition, the effectiveness of PR is
the best evidence we have that the fabled former Viennese ‘shrink’knew
his id from his superego.
