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6/7/23: EMPIRE OF THE GROOMED W/ GARETH GWYN

Posted on June 7th, 2023 by Clyde Lewis

A recent survey indicates that many of the GenZ crowd are saying they are okay with the government surveillance state. Today, as new drugs and other technologies are being developed for augmenting, monitoring, and manipulating mental processes, it is more important than ever to ensure that our legal system recognizes and protects cognitive liberty as a fundamental right.  The authoritarian state is concerned with, above all, preserving ideology – defining the “right” way to think and behave so that we can unquestioningly conform to it. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with author, Gareth Gwyn about EMPIRE OF THE GROOMED.

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The CATO institute ran a few surveys about surveillance and government overreach and surprisingly, many of the GenZ crowd are now saying they will be okay with the government surveillance state.

The question is would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity?

A surprising 14 percent said yes undefined now before you say that this is negligible, keep in mind that the propaganda today tends to focus on what can be seen as a minority with fringe ideas.

However, Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984‐​style in-home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor “the government installing surveillance cameras in every household” in order to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.” Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44-year-olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.

Given that many American high school students read Orwell’s 1984 for English classes, Gen Z should be the group who read it most recently. Did they somehow miss the message of the novel?

One of the people who responded to these results on Twitter highlighted another poll taken back in 2020. This one was a poll of favorable views of Marxism taken in 2020.

The number of young Americans who have a favorable view of Marxism has increased five-fold in just one year. According to the new survey, nearly one-third of the members of Gen Z – Americans between the ages of 16 and 23 – deem “Marxism” worthy of support. The term’s favorability has skyrocketed to 30% among Gen Z respondents, up from 6% in 2019.

Gen Z’s approval of socialism also crept up nine points since last year (49% favorable in 2020, compared to 40% in 2019). The results come from the newest edition of the “Report on U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism” – which is commissioned annually by the Victims of Communism Memorial (VOC) and conducted by YouGov.

So maybe the 1/3 of Gen Z that are fans of Marxism don’t really see the problem with in-home government surveillance. As some on the left like to say, the government is just the name for things we do together.

It’s definitely worrisome that so much of Gen Z is clueless when it comes to some pretty basic ideas built into the foundation of America. Then again it’s a safe bet most of these people hate America and are squarely in the burn-it-to-the-ground camp.

There is a word that has been used lately to describe what pedophiles do to young children to brainwash them into sexual entrapment.

The word is groomed. In fact, the word groomer has been used as a prerogative by the right-wing against the LGBTQ community. I would suggest that we shouldnundefinedt be to smug in using this word towards one group when in a sense we have all been groomed.

Not necessarily into immoral acts undefined but we have been groomed into accepting a surveillance state and a biometric existence.

The definition of grooming for the sake of this argument is the practice of preparing or training someone for a particular purpose or activity. It is the process of groupthink where people are infantilized to the point of not thinking for themselves and allowing a government or an authority figure push them into accepting behaviors they once saw as abhorrent.

It is the same technique they use to groom a child. There seems to be this establishment of an emotional connection using political ideologies. Political trust is lowering the inhibitions of people and with enough pressure from the fringe elements of their parties, we begin to see people believe in the most outrageous things even when the truth shows them otherwise.

The truth is that COVID-19 was a perfect example of how this can be done.

Using the threat of death narrative as cover, the privileged, power-mad parasites who pilfer the world’s wealth have sharply accelerated their longstanding plan to create a single global empire that is completely under their command.

The unknown was enough to be exploited by a small group of billionaires, that thrived off of the narrative while people were being convinced that they would die if they did not comply to their lockdowns, and dehumanization process.

This single global empire will ultimately employ the services of all the transnational institutions on the planet in order to regulate and control every aspect of human life.

It is a global empire run by an exclusive club, perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 strong, whose members do not pledge allegiance to any national flag, who snobbishly view themselves as superior to their countrymen, and who are indifferent to political ideology so long as they can control the political structure from within. They aim to erase all national borders and are well on their way to shredding the constitutions of every nation-state.

Their mission is being accomplished through a sophisticated information warfare campaign, which is designed to monitor and manipulate our every thought, word, and deed.

This offensive attack on us is intended to suppress and stamp out freedom in every aspect of our lives—economic freedom; political freedom particularly the freedom to impart and receive information and to accept or reject information; physical movement freedom; healthcare decision freedom; and, above all, the independence to think for ourselves—what can be called cognitive liberty.

As the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics warns,

The right of a person to liberty, autonomy, and privacy over his or her own intellect is situated at the core of what it means to be a free person. This principle is what gives life to some of our most well-established and cherished rights. Today, as new drugs and other technologies are being developed for augmenting, monitoring, and manipulating mental processes, it is more important than ever to ensure that our legal system recognizes and protects cognitive liberty as a fundamental right.

Not only is the right to “liberty, autonomy, and privacy” being undermined by militarizing the life sciences, but the legal system itself is ill-equipped to deal with advances–and emerging threats–to “cognitive liberty” as America’s corporatist surveillance state seek new means to elicit compliance and control over individuals as biological science is securitized under the rubric of “national security.”

In Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense bioethicist Jonathan Moreno lays out a frightening scenario where various Pentagon agencies with DARPA leading the charge, have been funding neuroscientific and biological research in the following areas:

Mind-machine interfaces, also called “neural prosthetics.” Living robots” whose movements can be controlled via brain implants. Research has successfully been carried out on “roborats” and “robodogs” for mine clearing and other dubious purposes. “Cognitive feedback helmets” provide commanders or their medical surrogates the ability to remotely view an individual soldier’s mental state. MRI and fMRI technologies for what has been called “brain fingerprinting” as an interrogation tool or screening for “terrorists.”

So-called “non-lethal” pulse weapons and other neurodisruptors for deployment in global south or “homeland” cities as “riot control” tools. “Neuroweapons” that use biological agents to stimulate the release of neurotoxins. Research into concocting new pharmaceuticals that inhibit the urge to eat, sleep, suppress fear, or repress psychological inhibitions against killing.

The potential of neurologically interactive technologies to “enhance” human capabilities, indeed to invade the privacy of human thought, and infringe on the independence of our minds for “reasons of state,” transform biological/medical research into a subset of weapons development.

To be sure, science, and in particular the cognitive sciences, have been seduced by the Pentagon and the CIA in the past. The literature on unethical CIA and Army research into quixotic quests for “mind control” over “enemy” agents and “target” populations–MKULTRA and their perverse offspring–are replete with the horror stories of their abused victims. Indeed, MKULTRA became the ideologically-charged basis for current interrogation and torture practices by the CIA, the military and their “outsourced” partners.

US Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming have introduced Senate Bill 884, also known as “the Improving Digital Identity Act of 2023.” If this bill passes both chambers and is signed into law, it will require all Americans to have a valid digital ID if they want to connect to the internet, open and maintain a bank account, obtain a passport, and gain access to medical care. In essence, it will mimic the social credit score system the government of China uses to track and control its citizens. It is the very vehicle that the WEF is so eager to deploy across the rest of the world.

SB 884 is the latest, most obvious, and most concerning evidence of the US government’s ongoing public-private partnership with Big Tech. It points to the intent of the corporate-controlled, highly centralized and security-conscious government to surveil the movements of the entire US population.

Of course, the panopticon created by the Improving Digital Identity Act will allow US federal and state agencies to not only monitor everyone’s actions but also to block, silence, and sideline dissenters who disagree with the official narrative. All layers of government will be able to openly, actively, and legally censor citizens and ignore their rights as codified by the constitutions of the US and its 50 states.

This is exactly what Google and its YouTube, Meta and its Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have been doing to their users in their attempts to silence anyone who presents inconvenient facts about politically sensitive agendas.

What we are seeing at this time in history is a new form of science.

It is the science of coercion undefined weaponized grooming for the new empire.

DARPA, the Pentagon agency that brought us the internet, are now searching for the means to militarize the human mind itself, viewed as the ultimate platform for imperialist domination and social control.

There are countless examples of past and present monstrous regimes in the real world. And they all raise the question of why people didn’t just rise up against their rulers. Some of us are quick to judge those who conform to such regimes as evil psychopaths or at least morally inferior to ourselves.

But what are the chances that you would be a heroic rebel in such a scenario, refusing to be complicit in maintaining or even enforcing the system?

Let me just say history dictates the answer is very low.

All the talk of a massive rebellion against this tyranny is all talk. It is cheap talk undefined as we now see how propaganda pushes the idea that any rebellion armed or otherwise creates a proposed threat of domestic terrorism.

Those who believe they are freedom fighters are called terrorists- and people tend to see this as fair warning to anyone who decides that the direction we are moving is not in line with constitutional values.

You are coerced into compliance.

American organizational theorist James March and Norwegian political scientist Johan Olsen argued back in 2004 that human behavior is governed by two complementary, and very different, “logics”. According to the logic of consequence, we choose our actions like good economists: weighing up the costs and benefits of the alternative options in the light of our personal objectives. This is basically how we get what we want.

But there is also a second logic, the logic of appropriateness. According to this, outcomes, good or bad, are often of secondary importance – we often choose what to do by asking “What is a person like me supposed to do in a situation like this”?

The idea is backed up by psychological research. Human social interactions depend on our tendency to conform to unwritten rules of appropriate behavior. Most of us are truthful, and polite, don’t cheat when playing board games and follow etiquette. We are happy to let judges or football referees enforce the rules. A recent study showed we even conform to arbitrary norms.

The logic of appropriateness is self-enforcing – we disapprove of, ostracize or report people who lie or cheat. Research has shown that even in anonymous, experimental “games”, people will pay a monetary cost to punish other people for being uncooperative.

Both logics are required to create and maintain an authoritarian regime. To ensure that we make the “right” personal choices, an oppressive state’s main tools are carrots and sticks – rewarding conformity and punishing even a hint of rebellion.

But personal gain (or survival) alone provides a fragile foundation for an oppressive state. It is easy to see how the logic of appropriateness fits in here, turning from being a force for cooperation to a mechanism for enforcing an oppressive status quo. This logic asks that we follow the “rules” and make sure others do too – often without needing to ask why the rules are the way they are.

Regimes, therefore, supplement rewards and punishments with self-policed norms, rules, and conventions.

Are you following orders or ordering followers? That is the question and now there are plenty of people out there that are ordering followers to do all sorts of crazy things that challenge what can be called appropriateness. Are you part of the party, comrade? Are you part of the cult? Always remember a good cult member or party member follows orders no matter how crazy they sound.

A good member of the cause obeys orders, roots out opposition and does not question authority – and enforces these norms on their fellow party or religious members.

The authoritarian state is therefore concerned above all with preserving ideology – defining the “right” way to think and behave – so that we can unquestioningly conform to it.

How can evil be embraced by the mass majority without a fight? It is simple people do not want to lose their homes, their property, or their lives.

The atrocities of the Holocaust were made possible by normal people, manipulated into conforming to a horribly abnormal set of behavioral norms.

People conformed – some felt discomfort about it and others were easily manipulated into seeing Jews as less than human and that they needed to be eliminated because they were taking up too many recourses.

Just think of the fervor with which people can enforce standards of dress, prohibitions on profane language or dietary norms – Think of how we still adapt to how Facebook censors free speech and yet we conform.

If we really wanted to we could put them out of business… but it is their rules and their terms of service—you don’t have to obey – but you do. You don’t question it.

This is probably why GEN Z has no problem with the surveillance state. They have been groomed for this proposal undefined the older generations know what this means undefined but they are too scared to fight against it.

Maybe that’s the most surprising part of this poll. It’s not that they believe something so egregiously awful, the really shocking part is that they were dumbed down enough to tell a pollster they supported this.

It appears that we have a lot of work to do to fight against the empire of the groomed.

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SHOW GUEST: 

Gareth Gwyn is the author of the book “You Are Us: How to Build Bridges in a Polarized World.” The 13 stories in the book are from the perspective of 13 people who are radically different but are also unified by having done the work of inner reckoning with their trauma, pain, and socialized identity. Through the vulnerable illumination of each story, we learn how inner work translates into liberated leadership that serves community, workplace, and ultimately societal transformation. We are also invited into a self-inquiry process, as an opportunity to illuminate our own unconscious patterns in the contexts of societal identities, and to catalyze our generative leadership potential in an increasingly polarized world.
In addition, she is the founder of Let’s See Labs, a think tank that is the leading advocate for the radical notion that polarity is a creative engine in organizations. This work recognizes that our differences in identity are highly compatible, and can be a source of connection rather than conflict. The generative methodology uses storytelling, authentic relating, and inductive growth-work to create teams who have been liberated to use polarities as a strategy to unleash unrivaled creative advantages.