I have been an ardent follower of Bret for well over a year. He and Heather have been nothing less than thoughtful and courageous since their days at Evergreen. We have no idea of what is going on in their lives. Maybe he has concerns about personal safety or maybe he’s tying to shield his teenage sons from abuse. I don’t think this one decision should turn from a mole hill into a mountain.
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I agree…don’t fight each other. It’s the corporations that need fixing
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Permiegirl wrote:
I can go to a protest without worry because I'm not really a target. I'm just another older woman who doesn't have to concern myself with losing my job. I can be aware of my surroundings and leave the minute something looks like it will go badly.That’s an interesting concept in 2022. Raise your hand if you know anybody who was charged with a Federal felony for the unarmed “insurrection” in DC on 1.6.21 who wasn’t even there that day. ?♂️ Raise your hand if you know anybody who was charged with a Federal misdemeanor on that same occasion who never entered the Capitol building. ?♂️You might want to revise your view of reality in 2022. These days, things aren’t that cut and dried. Or predictable. Or safe. I agree we shouldn’t reject Brett from “The Movement.” However, we’d all be wise to make a mental note of his role in this event. In the future, we may need to make decisions or take actions for which we’d be wise to factor in this incident. As an illustration from my career in the Philadelphia Police Department, this is exactly what happens when an officer is newly assigned to a unit (especially if they’re coming straight from the Academy). Every officer and supervisor who’s already there wants to find out what we can expect of “the new guy.” Does s/he engage in shady stuff and might get you into legal trouble? Does s/he work hard or does s/he slack off and dump work on other officers? And most of all, can you count on him/her in a violent situation? Is s/he fearless or timid? If s/he’s your only backup in a life-threatening incident can you count on him/her? I dare say we’ve moved into the stage of this fight in which we have to make similar assessments of our fellow travelers. I don’t mean final judgments that can never be revised or reversed, but step by step assessments to guide the risks we take and decisions we make. “Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.”
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I’d like to offer some perspective from the UK… protests start small and grow by word of mouth. The organisers are great at thinking about the march routes and getting the word out that a march will be happening. IT DOES NOT MATTER IF A FAMOUS NAME ATTENDS OR NOT. It’s actually more powerful when it is a mass of people across all spectrums who have self-organised.
With the US being such a large and disparate country it will be hard to bring people from all corners to the capital. In the UK you can drive to London on the same day from pretty much anywhere, so the focus can be on one location and the numbers can be big.
But some of the speeches made for really powerful viewing from what I seen. Particularly RFK in front of the Lincoln statue.
But the protests need to take on a festival feel for the people attending. Tight compact crowds, with drums, music and winding city centre streets, bringing traffic to a standstill. The media will ignore it, but the people on the streets will see it. Some will argue and some will be relieved to see others standing up for what they think but feel they can’t express. And that’s how the numbers grow each time.
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Imo, we should avoid demanding that people act in the way we want them to act. This got us in this shitty situation after all. This is characterizes the woke, the authoritarians and the psychopaths and sociopaths; everything that we want to avoid, all that we detest. I truly believe that we have to find the wisdom in ourselves to accept that we are a mothly crew, bound by a common believe.
I like the open discussions, the variety in opinions and views. But please, please let’s not demand that people act according to our, limited, view.
There are three kinds of stupidity. The Einsteinian one: repeat something over and over again, and expect a different result each time. The Kantian one: believe that people see the world as we see it. The stupidity of the Mass: demand that people act according to the morals and ideas of the group.
Currently these three forms of stupidity are easy to spot; let’s not fall in that trap. Let’s focus on our own contribution, we are in this together…
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After a couple days to reflect, and after spending some time checking out reports of the events on YouTube (even some falsely labeled ones), I saw so much support for all of us out there, so many people wishing they were able to be there, (a lot of people didn’t even know it was happening)…. thousands of comments all positive and in support of stopping the mandates and in favor of the right to choose. It was really uplifting and showed exactly what you said! That day basically went viral and showed people that they weren’t alone.
I think we need more of these events, maybe state wide, or at least regional.
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So Tom. Your framing is “front line police officer.” This model makes sense, if everyone involved is working a shift in a police force, and the problem they are solving is enforcing the law and keeping the peace in a city while not getting killed.
But - in our situation, we are not all self-selected, trained, and armed police officers working a shift in a structured police force environment. If this is the mentality required for admission to this group, the only people we will have in our group - are a bunch of cops and soldiers. That’s a pretty small group.
And I don’t think that’s enough people to get the job done. Nor is it a wide enough skill set. With all due respect to cops & soldiers.
I humbly suggest we might try to transcend our own life experience. In this struggle, I recommend that we allow everyone to contribute, in their own way, to they amount they are capable of, in their area of expertise. Weinstein’s Malone-Kirsch video was absolutely critical. I suspect it has had far more of an impact than anything either you or I have done.
I mean, I could be wrong about you - you could well have done some amazingly impactful things in this struggle that I know nothing about - but Weinstein has definitely had a much bigger impact than I have had. So speaking just for myself - who am I to sit in judgement? Because I went to one protest and he didn’t?
I still owe him for that Malone-Kirsch interview. He’s got a lot of credit with me just from that one thing alone.
We’re trying to break this Mass Formation thing. Everyone has a part they can play. “They also serve, who don’t kick down doors.”
My opinion, of course.
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I saw this substack post from Dr. Paul Alexander, one of the speakers. Below is an excerpt.
“…this battle now is for the safety of our children…there comes a time in our life when all we ever did, all about us is for that moment and the arc of our life will be measured on this time mainly…this time is now…we will damage and likely kill many of our children with these vaccines, this be the hill we be prepared to die on…our prep meetings involved b----t proof vests, b----t proof glass all sorts of issues for these are dangerous times…the honor it was to stand with the other doctors and scientists…this be America, the greatest nation and she is in trouble and sure is worth fighting for…so I am in the battle…I always dreamed of being a soldier and I guess, where I fell short, I am trying to give in this way…as are you, so thank you for supporting me and sharing and helping in this period in our history…where America goes next, the world goes in this.”
https://palexander.substack.com/p/ok-not-too-good-a-shot-but-here-is
The highlighted portion would be frightening for anyone to hear. Bret has previously stated that he has PTSD from the Evergreen experience. Maybe this was a factor for him. The way it worked out, perhaps the event could have been a liberating experience.
This information makes me admire the speakers who came out even more, along with Tess Lawrie, who spoke via live feed, and the marchers who were aware they were not immune from risks. You are all heroes and will continue to be.
To me, Bret has been, and will continue to be a hero and leader based on his intelligence, conviction, knowledge, and skills. I was disappointed that he was not there, but your thoughtful comments from all angles have provided many great prospectives.
This was a watershed moment. Hopefully, there will be more.
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i watched the #112 darkhorse podcast. i watched the darkhorse podcast with chris martenson. i watched the #112 q&a.
brett is an analyst. he is a college professor. he is not in any way a take it to the streets activist.
does he and has he done good stuff around the plandemic? yes. he has done a very good job of bringing information out to lots of people. that is a necessary role.
on reflection i am really happy he didn’t go. the purpose of the march or any demonstration is to inspire. this gets done by people who speak with the passion of pierre kory. i have a hard time visualizing brett standing on those steps and saying anything in a way to inspire anyone. it isn’t a college classroom.
i never suggested brett be “thrown out” of anything. what i said was he “punked out”. his excuse was lame. his podcast hardly addressed the march or his role. i never once heard him encourage any of his viewers to go to dc. i never heard him promote it. if he did and i missed it then i stand corrected. also i never once heard him on a darkhorse podcast promote the pp seminar or his appearance . it was only mentioned on the podcast with chris when chris asked to mention it . this is one week before it is scheduled.
it was billed as a peaceful demonstration. if there was going to be any violence it was going to be perpetrated by outside agencies. brett’s excuse could have been used by everyone there. what happens then? if violence would have happened (unlikely) then it would have outed the perps just as the fire hoses and dogs of bull durham in the 60’s.
brett has a role. he can be trotsky. he aint lenin.
we are at a critical point in history. 100’s of thousands are protesting around the world. we are rapidly careening into a totalitarian nightmare. this is not an intellectual exercise for extra credit.
now people are saying brett may have other reasons. well i can only go by what he said. i can’t assign any other motives. he is healthy, heather is healthy. the kids are healthy.
am i throwing the baby out with the bath water? no. but it is important to know who it is you put your faith in. people i will go into this battle with? rfk jr, pierre kory, del bigtree, izza islam, rabbi epstein, robert malone, jp sears and everyone who stood on those steps. and thc and westcoastjan
it was a defining moment.
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I’m so happy you are on this site.
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The rally “permit” ran out of time & they cut the power to the podium before many could make their speeches. I transcribed the speech Max Blumenthal was going to make if Big Brother had allowed him to.
I come at this issue from the left, I come from the left, and it's really unfortunate that some people on the left don't want me to be here today. So, I just want to make one thing clear. When people all around the world are marching against the mandates in their own societies, from the indigenous Bolivians of El Alto & La Paz, to Moroccans of Casablanca, to Iranians in Tehran, from Beiruit to Berlin to Boston, it's pretty clear that this is not a left / right issue. This is not about left and right, it is about OUR rights. Our basic rights that we've fought for. This is about decent working people trying to hold onto their humanity, their bodily autonomy, their rights, and their very sanity against a cold and ruthless corporatist machine that seeks to reduce every individual to a QR code, and condition their participation in society on their compliance with a mandate. And it won't be the last mandate. Now let me make something clear to my friends on the right, because I hear this a lot. The extraconstitutional biomedical regime being imposed on us, is NOT socialism. It's not socialism. If we lived under actual socialism, we the people would control the means of production, and we would be able to expropriate the pharmaceutical industry and frog march the CEOs of Pfizer, Moderna, and the Sackler family at Perdue Pharma, off in handcuffs to federal prison. In reality, when big pharma and its investors control our governments, when they own the FDA, when they've turned our politicians into sales reps so now Pfizer and Moderna make combined profits of 65 thousand dollars per minute, while working class Americans suffer the sharpest increase in poverty in fifty years. When the wealth of the world's ten richest men has doubled since the lockdowns began, while the wealth of the global 99% has declined precipitously. We are living under corporatism. Not socialism. Corporatism. Under a ruthless, imperialist, corporatist state, that exists in a permanent state of war. And now, the forever war has come home. And it shouldn't be surprising to those who know this corporate state, that bombs and sanctions people across the globe in the name of human rights, that it would instantly lock down millions of people at home, depriving them of work and schooling, driving them into desperation and insanity, and to justify all of that in the name of public health. The same corporate state that lied about weapons of mass destruction to manufacture consent for a war in Iraq, had no problem lying about gain of function research sponsored by the Pentagon's DARPA research unit and the US Agency for International Development. The same corporate state that's holding journalist and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a political prisoner because he exposed its secrets, has set about to censor and demonize and blacklist and suppress every dissenting voice that gets in the way of its draconian biomedical agenda. So a corporate state with so little legitimacy, must divide its citizens to conquer them, and that's why it's polarized us between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Scapegoating the latter group, and blaming it for its own failures, in order to shatter the solidarity of the 99%. This corporate state has given us two corporate parties, hundreds of corporate media outlets "brought to you by Pfizer" the arms industry and wall street, and only two medical options when it comes to the coronavirus. Pfizer and Moderna. So here's my message to the corporate state, and its media stenographers. Covid might have temporarily taken away our sense of smell, but we can smell the steaming pile of bullshit that you're cooking, and we're not buying it. –Max Blumenthal
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am i throwing the baby out with the bath water? no. but it is important to know who it is you put your faith in. people i will go into this battle with? rfk jr, pierre kory, del bigtree, izza islam, rabbi epstein, robert malone, jp sears and everyone who stood on those steps. and thc and westcoastjanI expect, if things got unpleasant in some real life street situation, I'd like Tom there to help me out. I know I could contribute too. I've got skills, he has skills, I think it would go all right. I'd follow his lead because he's got a lot more real life experience than I do. You? From what you say, you have medical issues. So - even with all your tough-sounding words, you aren't much use if we have to "go into battle." Of course, if "going into battle" means posting snarky things about other people who didn't do the same thing that you didn't do, using a keyboard behind a screen without leaving your room, then you will definitely be "there." I mean, if I saw you at the march, I might cut you some slack. I saw other people there. Not you though. Here's my viewpoint: criticism of Bret in this specific instance should be limited to those who got off their asses and went to the event. If you didn't get off your ass and go - for whatever reason - I suggest you just remain quiet. Glass houses, stones, etc. Just my opinion, of course.
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i appreciate your response.
whether i am much use or not is not the issue.
my medical issues do not prevent me from pulling a trigger at which i am very adept.
they also do not prevent me from taking part in local demonstrations. dc is a 3 day drive one way for me. then 3 days back. having been on the no fly list and refusing to go through a scanner makes me a target for harassment. you may have seen me at an airport. i am the guy who mooooos very loudly going through the security checkpoint. i am also the one who hands out copies of the 4th amendment to the tsa goons. btw dave what do you think of those tsa “massages”? makes you feel like a real amerikaan don’t it?
they do not prevent me from contributing money.
how much money did you donate? you are incredibly wealthy from all your investments.
as far as snark? well could this be the pot calling the kettle black?
so as far as you are concerned my criticism of brett has no validity. okay
but i don’t think you wish to be snarky and eliminate me from the minority.
i laid out the case pretty well.
1- his excuse is pretty lame. it could have been used by anyone. shows a distinct lack of courage and a huge amount of paranoia.
2-he did nothing to promote the march on his podcast. in #112 and #112 q&a there was no other mention of the march
3- brett is a college professor. he is not a street activist. we are 2 years into this plandemic. what more analysis do you need?
4- brett is an analyst. he does however suffer from analysis paralysis.
5-he still thinks the system can be reformed. on his podcast w/chris chris said “the system cannot be reformed” brett agreed then said the exact opposite. thus i said brett is 15 years behind chris in realizing that we don’t have a “problem” we have a “predicament”
6-the optics were terrible and i am not alone in that assessment.
7- brett is not above criticism. i acknowledged he has done good work. he has skills. his skills are no longer useful. we are in a different phase. we are now in the action phase. he is not a leader. he is not in any way inspirational. i was glad he wasn’t there. he clearly is not someone to rally troops. chris on the other hand has progressed to the action stage. he still does excellent analysis but he has taken the red pill.
you are free to disagree with me point by point and give your rationale for your opinion and maybe even add some qualifications for your position.
if you wish to make this about me and get into a “snarky flame war” then your efforts will not bear fruit. after all opinions are like body parts everyone has some.
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this probably won’t get seen by many this far down the thread but here it is anyway for future reference.
a lot of the early comments had to do with not being able to meet up with other pp people. i don’t know why i didn’t think of it sooner but if anyone has been to a large music festival in particular jazz fest in nola you will see a multiplicity of flags and banners.
if someone had been carrying a pp flag maybe “resilience” or a bitcoin logo (just kidding. it would have been a rallying point. anyway this is just for future reference and hopefully it will be useful in the future.
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thanks kevin back atya
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So “joe” - you were bagging on someone for not doing something you didn’t do either! That’s hypocrisy.
To be truthful, I didn’t really have any hope of you stopping the hypocrisy - hypocrits gonna hypocrit, after all - but I valued Bret’s contribution so much, I felt the need to call it what it was.
Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.
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I’m here because I value the truth, integrity, honesty, & un-propagandized discussion & analysis of information. That and the possibility of a real world community coming to exist that can keep those core values. Whether to better exist within a world that is being changed by outside forces too big to reckon with, to exist if that world crashes, or to steer change towards the betterment of all through the sharing of knowledge & establishing relationships and communities.
This talk of “taking actions”, “violent situations”, “fights”, “going into battle”, “pulling triggers”, being “in the action phase”, and “rallying troops”, can easily be misinterpreted as something besides goals of resiliency & peaceful non compliance. Those who do not care for the existence of groups of people who question what they are told, aim to live differently, or who raise questions they don’t want asked, would be all too happy to use talk like that to shut this whole place down and put the Eye Of Sauron on anyone here, and criminalize those who have nothing put peaceful intentions.
I think I’m safe to speak for most, in stating that I would be very unhappy if Men in Black showed up at my door to “ask me some questions”, or “take me for a little ride”. Try being more aware that everything is under a microscope and we live in a world where no matter the context, any little soundbite or statement by a few can be used against a whole group.
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I was there as a Parade Marshall in a yellow vest (I was in front of the WWII Memorial at the beginning of the pond), there were quite a few people there. The march organizers say it was 40K plus and it was every bit of that. For every one marcher, there were probably 10 who did not attend due to fear or just inability to attend. This is a beginning not the end game. Yes, the parallel economy will be the way forward but don’t give up on people yet. More and more will join us as they see the tide turning. Remember the “3.5% Rule”, that is the threshold that has never failed to force change by nonviolent means…never failed. (BBC had an article about this in 2019) I met a few PP members while there and one even offered a free hotel room because he couldn’t make it to the march. Let’s not get too negative about it all, 40,000+ in DC in January when so many have been scared into not participating and at relatively short notice, is not a bad turnout at all. The next one is in California in March (at least that is the rumor). Hang in there, we can do this.
Irish
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Chris,
The march organizers estimated 40k plus. I was there as a Parade Marshall and saw the entire parade march past me and it was every bit of that. For a march in DC in January only one year after what was done to the January 6th people, I think it was pretty good. I talked to a lot of people while I was there (I had a yellow vest on so a lot of people thanked me and stopped to talk to me), what I noticed was that there were very few people who came from a long distance. When I told them that I traveled from Colorado for it, they were quite surprised. Many, many people asked me not to go before the event because of fear. The chilling effect of the state power that has been abused in imprisoning the Jan 6th rally attendees truly cut down on the number of people who were willing to attend. I estimate 10 people did not attend for every person who was there. The march was also organized on relatively short notice and frankly, it costs quite a bit of money to travel from a long way to DC. Only the die hards and the locals attended this one…but this is an excellent start. Next one is being proposed in California in March…maybe you’ll be able to attend that one? We can not let up, we must do this for ourselves and especially for the future generations. I will not give up hope on this great country and its people. COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS! All it takes is one courageous person to stand…and then two…and then four. Remember the 3.5% Rule, “Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
With Great Admiration,
Irish
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Joe,
I was there, traveled from Colorado. Only met 4 PP people but I decided to help out the organizers as a Parade Mashall (I just stood along the route and tried to keep people moving and cheered them on). I too am disappointed in Bret Weinstein, frankly I see him as a coward. All talk and no action. I still like his podcast but it’s mostly theory, he and his wife will just continue to hide in Oregon and tell us all how “courageous” they are. As Veteran of two wars, that makes me giggle.
Irish
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