Scowling once held power. As a young man, I always felt properly chastised when an older man in my family would scowl at me. I knew I had done or said wrong even if I did not understand what. In society writ large scowling as well as equivalent social controls once had power – back when we understood that normal existed, that truth was real and that things were done the way there were for reasons, even if we did not understand.

Our world is upside down, the young not only do not respect their elders, but they also revile them. Truth is no longer just doubted by some, it is denied by most. Once solid institutions, subsidiary agents that stood betwixt absurdity and the masses have fallen. And perhaps worst of all – lies are everywhere, even when truth is told it is very often polluted by lies and absurdity as to make it unrecognizable. We truly do live with the tyranny of the asylum.

-- Greybeards spoke truth and nobody listened, from Jul 2021 --

Scowling has no power in the face of all that – the absurd among us, doing and saying whatever bizarre things that necessitated the scowl are operating in a world and using a language that cannot even understand how alien, weird and abnormal they are. I do, however, resolve to continue to scowl.

I further resolve to stop writing and disappear from the internet at the end of 2022. Unless of course, a miracle happens and we, as a civilization collectively seek the normal and the true and abandon the abnormal and the lies.

A question has gnawed at my mind, repeatedly over the last several months.

Why are the only people – people with an audience and a voice – that speak truth so objectionable, so problematic? Why do almost all of them mix in absurdities and falsehoods with the truth they speak?

Most of us know the answer to this, it is pretty obvious now. It seems simple, and yet, the simple answer seems insufficient. I think it would be proper to call this phenomenon the “Alex Jones Effect”, he being the loudest and most outrageous of the genre. It would be a mistake to believe it is just Alex Jones or people like him – it would be a mistake not to include those social media personalities that have a million followers - these seem more palatable and less over-the-top to many, some assume that AJ is nuts but not the “guy I like to listen to”.

If we focus just on Alex Jones, for this discussion, and if you could stomach listening to him, and parsing through his drama and rants, you would find that he says much that is true. In reality, he ought to be considered ‘the most dangerous man in America’, he should have been arrested on a made-up charge, bankrupted, and taken out of the public square – if the things he says are true, and many things he says are true; he ought not be here. And yet, there he is.

He built his own video hosting service; a service that appears to function with very high uptime. This is not a mere website, he essentially recreated YouTube, and hackers seem unable to take it down. Ponder that for a moment, think of how much that has to cost. Think of the billions of dollars in vitamin supplements he would have to sell to fund that, to pay the security experts. AJ is the CEO of a mail-order company (a company that would have to sell a billion dollars a year to fund what he has), and he is on the air four hours a day. He could be a brilliant genius, managing all of that, or he could have outside help.

But he speaks a lot of truth, and then he says crazy things or has a wingnut guest on. He also hosts a lot of people that may or may not be anything other than they appear, truth-tellers. But the question remains – why in all of human history, in perhaps the most dangerous and transformative time we have ever faced, why would AJ be the biggest face of truth-telling; him with all of his baggage, absurdities, and flaws?

Just looking at the nature of the thing, it seems contrived, controlled, and planned. It seems like a limited hangout on a massive scale, one designed to present truth that people with discernment are bound to see regardless and to do so in a way that makes it unpalatable to the masses.

AJ is not alone, he is just the biggest fish – there are hundreds of others. How can truth prevail when people are afraid to be associated with truth because truth itself has been polluted?

In late 2019 I began writing that I was observing certain methodologies at play, methodologies associated with state capture and color revolution. A small group of friends and I, all retired military men, began discussing the issue in earnest. By early 2020 we were certain that what we were seeing was state actor level methodologies at play. This was several months before Revolver News and Beattie wrote about the subject. To this day Color Revolutions Explained remains the highest search result on this site, by a large margin.  The first article posted on the subject, 21 November 2019, literally laid out the template for one of the approaches (tools) that would be used so effectively in 2020.

It all should have been a bigger deal, it should have been read more widely. Those of a progressive worldview of course were never going to read it; but what of conservative Americans? Why were they not interested?  Perhaps it is because I wrote very often, my entire groups of collaborators agreed, that none of it was possible without a whole of government approach and that included Trump. Trump was either the biggest dunce in history or part of it, either way, it was impossible that he was the hero people wanted him to be. I am half inclined to post a wall of shame, all those that blocked me on social media because of that viewpoint – a viewpoint that becomes more obviously true every day.

We also stated, firmly, that QAnnon was clearly a state-run operation and that many elements of MAGA were influenced by or controlled by something nefarious. Those with discernment can now see that the first was absolutely correct, and if we are honest, the latter is too. The right was not alone, ANTIFA and BLM were also controlled constructs. If there is good news for the right, those duped by QAnnon did not loot and burn DC on JAN 6^th; I am not sure ANTIFA and BLM would have just walked between velvet ropes if the situation were reversed – but all of those people, both sides were fooled and used.

It is odd, even my little group, we few retired military men, talking this through – we were not unique. How many retired colonels and generals were rolled out by both sides to be used or say absurd things? My little groups talked about the things we knew and saw, I suspect there are others out there and yet the entire concept of retired military truth-tellers was coopted and polluted in 2020. Almost like someone thought all that out beforehand. We told the truth as we saw it based upon our experience and previous observations. Did whoever ran this entire operation know there would be people just like us, and preemptively acted to poison the well?

After watching the entire color revolution play out, complete with the enabling event (Reichstag moment) on January 6^th I was both done and mortified, no written words mattered, the end result of the whole of government approach was as predicted – and amazingly, people really did not wake up in anger at their former masters and heroes. A friend enticed me to venture down a rabbit hole of one small part of the greater drama. It was an interesting story, one that began perhaps in 2011, or 2014 at the latest building a narrative of vote fraud (via absurd means, truth wrapped in lies). It involved a group, all AJ-lite types. It seemed that ought to have been a big story, it presented enough questions that some serious journalist ought to have taken it up. It demonstrated that the groundwork for significant events in 2020/21 was laid long before. It flashed and fizzled, too many lies mixed with truth are in the water, too much confusion and deception for people to notice.

I have, intermittently, and constantly written about the subversion of organized Christianity, and particularly about the megachurch. I think a Primer in Truth is the best I can do with my abilities to explain what was wrong with 2020 theologically. If one peels back the onion layers to Peter Drucker and the ideological and philosophical underpinnings of The Leadership Network and contrasts that with all the other trends in other institutions, you see a pattern, you see synergized efforts toward a common goal. You see connections to dark things. I recant nothing I ever wrote about false teachers. My plea to reformed pastors remains, and it remains unheard and unanswered.

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We remain divided and confused, the separation between political parties is imperceptible in real terms but the division between the people is real – and that is by design. I wrote of these conditions in 2018, compared them to the 1850s, I stand by that. Our ideologies, insofar as they divert from truth are constructs. Our division based upon class and race is likewise a false dialectic. The danger remains, the elements of ideological division, hatred combined with what people call a Great Awakening is not unlike 1850. Awakenings have always been a harbinger of death and destruction.

I miss the simpler times, that time – true or not – where one believed we could still talk of truth, tradition, and principles as if they had power to right the course. Manifesto of Old Men and Simple Preachers, originally written in 2012, remains my firmest statement of how I wish things turned out – that before I fully came to comprehend just how much of the narrative(s) for all sides are controlled by those that want full control of us. Speaking to two young male relatives over Thanksgiving and Christmas I was reminded of just how far afield even my own kin are in seeing reality and the world as it is.

The Alex Jones/Maddow (not sure who their AJ really is but she is unhinged) Effect is real and by design. The confusion and division are real and by design. Meager words from a simple man will not change any of that. But by God I can still scowl!! I remain undeterred, on a personal level, but I have low confidence that enough people can break away from their preferred deceptions to fix this.

I am just happy to have taken a road trip across this beautiful land before the powers that be make it too painful for me.