The Lab Rat That Survives Is The One Who Escapes

News & Current Events Public News & Current Events
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If you're feeling like a lab rat in a science experiment, manipulated by shadowy forces for unknown purposes, that’s because you're waking up to the reality of the situation.

We are a nation of lab rats.

Tough news to hear, I know. But it’s true, nonetheless.

We're subjected to daily doses of propaganda and social conditioning, reinforced by technology, designed to:

  1. distract and burden us by keeping us consuming as much as possible, preferably while taking on debt to do so
  2. keep us isolated and socially fractured, to prevent any effective organization against the existing system of power and control
  3. block information that might make awaken us to the various manipulations in play

I’ve written consistently about these forces over the years seeking to help you see the structure of the cultural walls that contain us all. I've been doing this because achieving success, as well as finding deeper meaning and purpose in life, rests upon increasing our awareness of the forces shaping our beliefs and actions.

This includes being aware of the propaganda, the sophisticated marketing ploys, and the controlling nature of our dominant cultural belief system. Once you can recognize them for what they are, you free yourself from their influence over you.

These systems of diversion and distraction have gotten orders of magnitude more potent over the recent years, pacing with advances in technology. Our brains' biological wiring is so well-understood now that it's routinely used against us.

For example, at one particular video gaming company, as part of their orientation, newly-hired developers are required to attend a “dopamine boot camp” in which they learn the best ways to deliver paced rushes of "brain pleasure" chemicals to video game players. Just as a caged rat quickly learns how to depress a bar in order to receive a sip of cocaine-infused water, video game players are intentionally hooked on the carefully-tuned dopamine stimulations that video games are designed to provide.

The stereotype of the non-stop gamer who ignores everything else in life to play videogames throughout the night? There's a lot of science behind that. Gamers are simply being intentionally turned into addicts by the video game companies. Addicted customers are profitable customers.

The mega-popular Instagram app is similarly designed. Study after study show that it breeds envy, addiction and loneliness in its users.

You might think that such outcomes are the unfortunate, unplanned side-effects that emerged after its well-meaning developers attempted to create an app that would bring people together. After all, it’s a “social media” app, right? So maybe these are accidental outcomes?

Not at all. These were precisely the effects sought by the developers. Why? Because insecurity and dependence result in more usage of the app. Instagram and its parent, Facebook, are deliberately exploiting our biological social wiring to capture our focus (and our money).

This video does a great job explaining how. It’s worth your time to understand even if you don’t use Instagram (because you certainly know someone who does).


Once you start to see how the mechanism of control works in one instance, you’ll soon be able to notice how it's being used everywhere.

The hijacking of our wiring by Instagram, principally the mirror neuron pathway that seeks to learn and quickly adopt the behaviors of the successful people around us (very useful in a tribal setting), leaves us ultimately depressed and deflated when presented with the unattainable visual images endlessly posted by celebrities and the ultra-wealthy -- most who have professional help carefully crafting their posts using Photoshop and careful staging.

The problem is, these images provide our brains with no helpful information on how to mirror the success of these individuals. Yet our wiring keeps firing away, trying to sort it all out, like a moth bumping into a lightbulb at night.

The result? Lots of frustrated, addicted people whose use of social media only results in deeper feelings of loneliness, despair and insufficiency. If you think any of this is by accident, then you're missing the point entirely. Addicted customers that are in a perpetual state of wanting are the very best customers.

The incredible documentary 'HyperNormalization' by Adam Curtis (released on Oct 16, 2016 on BBC), provides one of the best exposés I've yet seen on the intentional and deliberate strategy to keep the populace numbed and subjugated, so that it will be easier to manipulate. It really is a "must watch":

This film reveals and describes in detail the latest sophisticated methods for steering public opinion, most of which build upon the concepts of the engineering of consent (Bernays, 1920’s) and manufacturing consent (Chomsky 1990’s). Where Bernays sought to create a public consensus through propaganda resulting in a conduit for political will to exert itself, HyperNormalization aims to cut political will off at the knees.

Under HyperNormalization, the populace is polarized via isolation, conflicting data, or false information (“aluminum tubes!”) so that no public consensus can be reached. That, of course, is the point. And while confusion reigns, laws that protect the financial and political elites are busily being passed with no effective opposition or even basic inquiry happening at all.

Ultimately, public will is neutralized. The masses devolve into perpetual arguing among themselves over trivial matters while their life energy and financial well-being is sapped by an increasingly totalitarian and predatory state.

Sound familiar at all? It should. It's happening around us on a daily basis.

If we weren't so terribly distracted by social media or bickering over inane political issues, would we really tolerate:

Each one of these violations (and many dozens more I can list) shares one common feature: they're the deliberate outcome of corporate policy operating within a captured political system. They are not accidents! They didn’t "just happen".

Further, based on the observations presented in HyperNormalization, it’s also no accident that there are no organized protests or effective citizen engagement on any of these issues. Public will has been neutralized. The masses are too isolated, dispirited, and numbed to mobilize.

A particular frustration I have is when politicians spout off about the importance (the sanctity!) of democracy when there’s no evidence that any remains in America. Our country is run by the few for the few. The rest of us are just tax donkeys/debt slaves/mindless consumers to be harvested from.

Meanwhile, the past twenty years of data proves that there’s literally zero correlation between what US citizens want/don’t want and the passage of any particular piece of legislation.

(source: 20 years of data reveals that Congress doesn't care what you think)

How is it possible that there’s literally zero correlation between what the public wants and the laws that are passed? How can any politician get away with talking about how much they value “democracy” without being hounded off the stage for ignorance, dereliction of duty, or both?

Conclusion

I highly recommend that you watch the above videos on Instagram and HyperNormalization.

One, I’d like you to understand the world and its rules a little bit better -- with the hope that this knowledge affords you a better chance of charting an independent destiny and living a life filled with purpose.

True connection and being in service to others are what give our lives meaning. The research is crystal clear on that.

Two, the world is figuratively and literally on fire. While there are still spoils to be had, the powers that be are racing to secure them for themselves, at the expense of the unsuspecting masses. In order to avoid ending up inheriting a future with no resources and no prospects, we each need each other -- and the world needs us, as well -- to bring our very best selves to the story.

There are powerful forces at work that want the exact opposite of that. Not because there’s an equally valid competing philosophy they offer, but because they want your money for their bank accounts and they want their social power to remain uncontested.

But make no mistake: the trajectory we are on ends very badly. It ends in collapse -- of our economy, of our ecosystems, of society. Whether the final pin that pricks the current bubble is a resource crisis, a crash in the financial markets, or a sudden shortage of fossil fuels -- it makes no difference at all. The endgame will be the same.

Reclaiming our time, our attention, and our integrity is vital.

In Part 2: Breaking Free we take back our lives from a system that has lost our trust, does not serve our interests, and no longer deserves our full participation.

It’s time to escape our cages. The future belongs to those who can break free from their lab rat existence and become free and fully-expressed individuals again.

It’s time.

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access).

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/the-lab-rat-that-survives-is-the-one-who-escapes/

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Nunes: The Russian Collusion Hoax Meets An Unbelievbable End
Authored by Rep. Devin Nunes, op-ed via The Washington Examiner,As the Russia collusion hoax hurtles toward its demise, it’s important to consider how this destructive information operation rampaged through vital American institutions for more than two years, and what can be done to stop such a damaging episode from recurring.
While the hoax was fueled by a wide array of false accusations, misleading leaks of ostensibly classified information, and bad-faith investigative actions by government officials, one vital element was indispensable to the overall operation: the Steele dossier.
Funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee, which hid their payments from disclosure by funneling them through the law firm Perkins Coie, the dossier was a collection of false and often absurd accusations of collusion between Trump associates and Russian officials. These allegations, which relied heavily on Russian sources cultivated by Christopher Steele, were spoon-fed to Trump opponents in the U.S. government, including officials in law enforcement and intelligence. The efforts to feed the dossier’s allegations into top levels of the U.S. government, particularly intelligence agencies, were championed by Steele, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, and various intermediaries. These allegations were given directly to the FBI and Justice Department, while similar allegations were fed into the State Department by long-time Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal. Their efforts were remarkably effective. Officials within the FBI and DOJ, whether knowingly or unintentionally, provided essential support to the hoax conspirators, bypassing normal procedures and steering the information away from those who would view it critically. The dossier soon metastasized within the government, was cloaked in secrecy, and evaded serious scrutiny. High-ranking officials such as then-FBI general counsel James Baker and then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr were among those whose actions advanced the hoax. Ohr, one of the most senior officials within the DOJ, took the unprecedented step of providing to Steele a back door into the FBI investigation. This enabled the former British spy to continue to feed information to investigators, even though he had been terminated by the FBI for leaking to the press and was no longer a valid source. Even worse, Ohr directly briefed Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, two DOJ officials who were later assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. In short, the investigation was marked by glaring irregularities that would normally be deemed intolerable.

According to Ohr’s congressional testimony, he told top-level FBI officials as early as August or September 2016 that Steele was biased against Trump, that Steele’s work was connected to the Clinton campaign, and that Steele’s material was of questionable reliability. Steele himself confirmed that last point in a British court case in which he acknowledged his allegations included unverified information. Yet even after this revelation, intelligence leaders continued to cite the Steele dossier in applications to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
It is astonishing that intelligence leaders did not immediately recognize they were being manipulated in an information operation or understand the danger that the dossier could contain deliberate disinformation from Steele’s Russian sources. In fact, it is impossible to believe in light of everything we now know about the FBI’s conduct of this investigation, including the astounding level of anti-Trump animus shown by high-level FBI figures like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as well as the inspector general’s discovery of a shocking number of leaks by FBI officials.
It’s now clear that top intelligence officials were perfectly well aware of the dubiousness of the dossier, but they embraced it anyway because it justified actions they wanted to take - turning the full force of our intelligence agencies first against a political candidate and then against a sitting president.
The hoax itself was a gift to our nation’s adversaries, most notably Russia. The abuse of intelligence for political purposes is insidious in any democracy. It undermines trust in democratic institutions, and it damages the reputation of the brave men and women who are working to keep us safe. This unethical conduct has had major repercussions on America’s body politic, creating a yearslong political crisis whose full effects remain to be seen.
Having extensively investigated this abuse, House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in these matters.

These people must be held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future.The men and women of our intelligence community perform an essential service defending American national security, and their ability to carry out their mission cannot be compromised by biased actors who seek to transform the intelligence agencies into weapons of political warfare

 

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You’re on fire today!!! This article is filled with quotable insights that I can’t wait to share… thanks for all you do. I’m very grateful for your insights because according to everyone else I know, the world is better than ever.
 

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The above is a painfully marvelous effort, so true, but with little hope for a “democratic,” or concensus solution.
I could, unnecessarily, coment on practically every paragraph.
I worked for 37 years for one of the largest food manufacturers, producing 10% of what you see in the grocery store. My company lost a lawsuit against them and similar companies for funding the researech of scientists who sit on the USDA board that publishes the nutritional guidlines used in all aspects of US society. Basically, they were and I’m sure still are, paying to have the USDA recommend and subsidise their products.
I sat in uncounted product development meetings over decades talking about taste, texture, packaging convenience and appeal. When nutrition was mentioned, it was about making sure that the nutritional value was not so bad that shoppers would not buy the product.
This ties in with the “Medical Sickcare System” you talk about. It is estimated that more than 70% of the the health care cost in Western Society is because of the ludicrous Western Diet.
This can be branched out into energy and ecology. It takes 10 times more energy, water and land to produce the diet we are addicted to, than it would take to produce a healthy diet.
I’m just guessing, but I’d extrapolate that to mean that it takes in the ballpark of 10 times the amount fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides to produce the Western Diet. That translates into greater impact (perhaps 10 times) on the declining insect population, soil errosion and water polution.
This information is readily available to the public, but it will rarely be mentioned on any news media source that gets comercial funding from agriculture, food manufacturing, chemical manufacturers, pharmacutical or healthcare companies.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
You talked about addiction. The term “denial” comes up frequently in a variety of addiction recovery programs. Humanity has denial down to a science. If we don’t want to see something, we are very good at not seeing it.
“People prefer to believe what they prefer to be true.”

  • Sir Francis Bacon

 

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Thank you.
I’m sure it is difficult to find the right balance between conveying the absolute horror of our current system and keeping people from simply ignoring what you say. Personally, I think you hit the bulls-eye with this post.
The video from StoryBrain is fantastic – I especially highly recommend the last two minutes of it. It does a wonderful job of explaining the difference between having and giving, and how modern media hijacks our evolved attention away from what helps us connect with one another and towards a dead end. That sounds trite, but the video included one of the clearest expositions of this I’ve ever seen.
But thank you especially for pointing out that the current numbness is by design. That sounds at first glance as if it’s conspiracy theory – it’s not. It’s just a sane recognition that when you power a system with unregulated greed, you run the risk that the greediest will end up controlling the system and warping everything to satisfy their literally insatiable greed… and that this has already happened to our society.
We are destroying our planet because crazy people are in charge and in control of everything, even our desires. All to change some numbers on pieces of paper.

 

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I am sending you the code of honor. This is an ethical code that one chooses to keep of their own free will, that is its beauty. I believe this will be tremendously useful to both young and old. If you are in doubt about handling a certain situation, look over this code and see which precepts you may apply that will help you.
The code of honor
Never desert a comrade in need, in danger or in trouble.
Never withdraw your allegiance once granted.
Never desert a group to which you owe your support.
Never disparage ( undermine or belittle) yourself or minimize your strength or power.
Never need praise, approval, or sympathy.
Never compromise with your own reality ( what is true for you is true for you ).
Never permit your affinity ( liking for someone or something ) to be alloyed ( mixed with something
Inferior)
Do not give or receive communication unless you yourself desire it.
Your self-determinism and your honor are more important than your immediate life.
Your integrity to yourself is more important than your body.
Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your own tomorrows.
Never fear to hurt another in a just cause.
Don’t desire to be liked or admired.
Be your own advisor, keep your own counsel and select your own decisions.
Be true to your own goals.
Laurie G
 

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Watched the videos, three hours, my free Saturday afternoon gone. Don’t know what to make of them, need some thinking.
 

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Sorry for the brutal question but why? Why did you work 37 years for a company you knew was peddling garbage? Why did you give to that corporation considerable talent, energy, brain power instead of investing it in any other contructive pursuit? Indeed WHY? When did you know, and what did you do about it?
 

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Never withdraw your allegiance once granted. Even if the nation/organization/individual turns out to be sociopathic, evil, mendacious…
Never compromise with your own reality ( what is true for you is true for you ). Even if it doesn’t align with the objective facts, if it’s true for you, go for it! If you think those Arabs/Jews/Mexicans are the cause of your problems go ahead and attack them, they deserve it.
Do not give or receive communication unless you yourself desire it. This will go a long way to insuring mutual understanding and minimizing conflict.

Never fear to hurt another in a just cause. Collateral damage doesn't matter. We can bomb all those folks in Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Iraq/Libya/Syria, ours is a just war.
I don't see anything about service to others, about providing for future generations, etc. It's certainly not my ethical code.

 

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I would never try to answer for Les Phelps. I dothink it is an unfair question, not brutal, and since he had the courage to share the information now we get to take action too. Just food for thought.
 

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louisdoran wrote:
Sorry for the brutal question but why? Why did you work 37 years for a company you knew was peddling garbage? Why did you give to that corporation considerable talent, energy, brain power instead of investing it in any other contructive pursuit? Indeed WHY? When did you know, and what did you do about it?
I didn't know. Read The China Study last may. Eye opener. My employer is was no less ethical than any other large US food manufacturer.  
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I’ve deleted a wail or a screed, possibly both.
 

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Anyone looking for a code of conduct could do a lot worse than to follow the Scout Law.
I have been a member of the Boy Scouts since I was a young boy in England. I was a Scout leader in the USA and I have always thought that it would be a fine epitaph to have carved on my tombstone “He was a good Scout”
A Scout is:
TRUSTWORTHY. Tell the truth and keep promises. People can depend on you.
LOYAL. Show that you care about your family, friends, Scout leaders, school, and country.
HELPFUL. Volunteer to help others without expecting a reward.
FRIENDLY. Be a friend to everyone, even people who are very different from you.
COURTEOUS. Be polite to everyone and always use good manners.
KIND. Treat others as you want to be treated . Never harm or kill any living thing without good reason.
OBEDIENT. Follow the rules of your family, school, and troop. Obey the laws of your community and country.
CHEERFUL. Look for the bright side of life. Cheerfully do tasks that come your way. Try to help others be happy.
THRIFTY. Work to pay your own way. Try not to be wasteful. Use time, food, supplies, and natural resources wisely.
BRAVE. Face difficult situations even when you feel afraid. Do what you think is right despite what others might be doing or saying.
CLEAN. Keep your body and mind fit . Help keep your home and community clean.

 

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Boomer41 wrote:
Anyone looking for a code of conduct could do a lot worse than to follow the Scout Law. I have been a member of the Boy Scouts since I was a young boy in England. I was a Scout leader in the USA and I have always thought that it would be a fine epitaph to have carved on my tombstone "He was a good Scout" A Scout is: TRUSTWORTHY. Tell the truth and keep promises. People can depend on you. LOYAL. Show that you care about your family, friends, Scout leaders, school, and country. HELPFUL. Volunteer to help others without expecting a reward. FRIENDLY. Be a friend to everyone, even people who are very different from you. COURTEOUS. Be polite to everyone and always use good manners. KIND. Treat others as you want to be treated . Never harm or kill any living thing without good reason. OBEDIENT. Follow the rules of your family, school, and troop. Obey the laws of your community and country. CHEERFUL. Look for the bright side of life. Cheerfully do tasks that come your way. Try to help others be happy. THRIFTY. Work to pay your own way. Try not to be wasteful. Use time, food, supplies, and natural resources wisely. BRAVE. Face difficult situations even when you feel afraid. Do what you think is right despite what others might be doing or saying. CLEAN. Keep your body and mind fit . Help keep your home and community clean.
11/12 doesn't cut it. REVERENT. Be reverent toward God. Be faithful in your religious duties. Respect the beliefs of others.

 

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There’s a great book about the end of the USSR. I don’t hear hardly anyone talking about society collapsing ever reference the USSR at its end. I think Chris references it in his book Prosper with regard to the importance of emotional capital and how many people died from alcoholism. They definetely experenced HyperNormalization.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691121176/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_70?sm…
The book is called:
Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation.

 

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Perhaps we should give credit where it justly deserves to be. Being a good steward of your environment has great benefits beyond reduce, reuse and recycle. What our own physiology can tell us is the beginning of a gobal wisdom, once we get beyond our own human foibles:

 
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This was a great piece and probably a good opportunity to raise the issue of the endless “terrorist attacks” and “mass shootings” we have been subjected to over the last few decades, and why discussion of the role of these in our social conditioning was omitted.
From my studies I think the various incidents can be divided into 3 categories:
Complete hoaxes: eg, Orlando “mass shooting”, Columbine shooting, Nice truck attack, Canadian parliament attack, and many of the other more minor shootings that the media has peddled. You can tell that it’s fabricated when the entire world’s media instantly, in unison, focuses on the event, has all of the answers and a neatly packaged explanation of who did it and why, and then coverage quickly fades away. They have a Hollywood vibe to them, like they are being crafted for sensationalist consumption. Invariably there are immediate renewed calls for tighter gun control, often times with new laws conveniently waiting to be passed.
“Real” state sponsored events, where bad things actually did happen, but “the state” was behind it. Examples are 9/11 and the Las Vegas shooting.
Real events. You can identify these because the media is slow to pick up on them and it is only regionally reported. These are pretty rare these days. I can’t think of any off the top of my head. This is because people just don’t randomly go on shooting rampages, contrary to what we are being led to believe.
I’m still not quite certain about the recent New Zealand incident but it seems to be a Number 1.
Then the question is: why are they happening?
I see a few motives here. One is of course to increase gun control because the elites don’t want the masses having access to automatic weapons when the system collapses. They want full uncontested military control. Is it a coincidence that New Zealand was one of the last remaining countries not banning military style assault rifles? It is also suspected that the elites plan to set up there when the crash happens since it will be well away form the carnage the rest of the overpopulated world will be experiencing. It would not be in their interest to have New Zealanders with access to these kinds of weapons. I heard an interview on Democracy Now (a great show, but they too have been sucked into this mass shooting nonsense), where an Australian was explaining how, decades ago, after the Tasmanian shooting, Australlia brought in such gun control laws and she pointed that since then, Australia hasn’t had a mass shooting. Hmm, I wonder why? Would that be because the law was successful in protecting the people from crazy mass murdering lunatics with automatic weapons? Or is it actually because the Australian state got what it wanted – a ban on these weapons, so no mass shooting hoaxes were required? (note: I haven’t looked into whether the Tasmania shooting was a hoax – just pointing out the alternative viewpoint).
Additionally, the “war on terror” and other such nonsense uses these kinds of events as justification for bringing in laws that strip us of our constitutional rights in the name of fighting this supposed dangerous threat. If people can be convinced that stripping us of some of our civil liberites will make us safer from terrorists or whatever other boogeyman of the day is being peddled by the media, many people will accept that. Most people believe that we still have consitutional rights but we don’t. The elites are continuing the facade that we do, to keep us unsuspecting, but when things fiunally do go south, we will find that we no longer have individual rights.
There is usually a racial element to these events, often times with Muslims being blamed. The recent New Zealand incident was a flip on this as a white supremecist purportedly killed Muslims. This is a clear attempt to whip up racial divide and get people, as Chris explains, focusing and fighting about things other than what the elites have done and continue to do to our societies, economies, laws, and environment.
This also keeps the masses fearful of those other countries on the other side of the world, which is a great way to drum up public support for continued occupation of those countries for the purposes of extending the Anglo-American empire, and all the resources it brings, for as long as possible. And of course, it is the modern continuation of the age old war between the big three western religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Clearly the Christian and Jewish nations have aligned against the Muslim ones.
And the final question is why are these events not discussed on this website? I can think of a few possible reasons:
Fear of being ostracized into conspiracy theorist whacko land by existing and potential visitors to this site. I can appreciate this.
Fear of the consequences of discussing these topics as the state’s stranglehold on the internet increases. I can also appreciate this especially considering the draconian censorship that has occurred all over the internet over the last year or two which seems to be a desperate attempt by the state to eliminate from existence the videos showing clear evidence of the fakery of these events.
Chris and Adam aren’t convinced that they’re fake. I certainly hope this isn’t the case.
 

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Quote:
Chris and Adam aren't convinced that they're fake. I certainly hope this isn't the case.
I for one certainly hope it -IS- the case.
Quote:
this mass shooting nonsense
Mark, whose koolaid have you been drinking? I hope I'm not the only one to call you out on this, but YOU are the one spouting nonsense. Evil nonsense.

 

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Yoxa wrote:
Quote:
Chris and Adam aren't convinced that they're fake. I certainly hope this isn't the case.
I for one certainly hope it -IS- the case.
Quote:
this mass shooting nonsense
Mark, whose koolaid have you been drinking? I hope I'm not the only one to call you out on this, but YOU are the one spouting nonsense. Evil nonsense.
I formulate my beliefs based on hard evidence, not by what others tell me to believe because at my core I am a scientist. There is clear, irrefutable evidence that many of these events are hoaxes. Some of them are so pathetically blatant it's cominal. Unfortunately the videos showing this have been deleted out of existence. The narrative we are expected to believe is that we live in a free country. I disagree with that, but hey, you can believe what you want to believe, no skin off my back, it's a free country lol... I am not the kind of person who can deny evidence based on prior political prejudices and social conditioning. I am a red pill kind of guy. The question I would send back to you is: why do you find it so difficult to accept the possibility that they are hoaxes? Is it because you feel that it would be impossible to pull it off? Or is it really because it challenges your beliefs about how fake everything is that we are exposed to, and how low our leaders will sink? I would also suggest that it may be a little bit of... what's the right word here... embarrassment? Or foolishness, at having been duped? And the natural response to that is to flatly reject the possibility?  
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I am two degrees of separation away from someone who was present at one of the shootings you mention.
It was no fake.