Day: 6 September 2024

Most of us tend to think that we are lucid. Those who have been blindfolded are the others.

I am no exception. I believe I see clearly what is happening. I see, for example, disinformation campaigns and internecine narrative warfare that is tearing the so-called West to pieces. But I don’t see what I don’t want to see.

We are told “your vote matters”, we are told that Democracy itself is at stake. Frankly, I believe that Democracy has long since been skinned to the bone in the USA and that the bones are brittle. We are fighting for the carcass of Democracy, grandiloquently cancelling each other left, right and centre.

Meanwhile, there is hardly any mention of the restless elephants in the room, the global room, that is. We are facing impending stampedes, but the press is not pressing the point. It is focusing on the upcoming US elections, when voters will be asked to choose between Scylla and Charybdis. not knowing the true nature of either Scylla or Charybdis. “Words! Words! Words!” (My Fair Lady) is all we ever get from them, oratorical tap-dancing and basically b-s.

This I clearly see, but what I just discovered is that notwithstanding my eloquent anti-cancelling posture, I too am just an ordinary “bloke”, as it were: I cancel!

There is this guy, I read, an eminent psychologist, who claims to have discovered that Google cheats. So I look up the “eminent” psychologist and Wikipedia confirms he is very eminent, indeed. This eminent psychologist has devoted much of his effort these past 8 years or so to research into Google’s methods. A documentary has been made that explains his findings.

I look up the documentary in Wikipedia and find that it “… features headshot interviews with Robert Epstein, Jaron Lanier, Jordan Peterson and Peter Schweizer.”

Two of the persons in that list are known to me: Jordan Peterson and Peter Schweizer. They are both non-people for the liberal left. So much so that I don’t want to watch the documentary. I have to fight a long battle with myself before I finally manage to press “play”.

The psychologist is Robert Epstein, founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Concord, MA; editor-in-chief of Psychology Today magazine 1999–2003, no less! His research on Google methods is referred to as “Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME)” The film is: The Creepy Line. It is available in full on Youtube.

Let me make it clear at once: I found the views expressed in the film by Jordan Peterson and Peter Schweizer sound and sensible. Let me also make it clear that I am not qualified to assess the research underpinning Dr Epstein’s conclusions. But the conclusions are crystal clear and rather terrifying. He also presented them to Congress in a hearing in July 2019. (I would also recommend a speech he made in 2020, to Hillsdale college.)

What is also rather terrifying, if Dr Epstein’s conclusions are correct, is that they have not made headlines. True, even without Dr Epstein, we have seen that if keeping Trump out of the White House requires sacrificing freedom of the press, that and other civil rights and liberties will be sacrificed without so much as a hiccup, in “defence of Democracy”.

In any case, I would recommend

• not using the Chrome web browser
• not using Google as a search engine
• not using Whatsapp, Messenger, Skype…
• and last but not least, not using Gmail

rather, use

• Firefox or Brave or Vivaldi as web browsers.
• Duckduckgo or Brave as search engines
• Signal as a messaging app
• Protonmail or Tuta

And use a VPN!