"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth" (Albert Einstein)

"It isn’t the questions that cannot be answered that bother me; it is the answers that cannot be questioned" (Richard Feynman)

"We are now in a world where many things are 'unquestionable' – if you want to keep your job, your house and your freedom" (Someone)

"Nothing is ‘unquestionable’ in Science, other than the basic axioms in Mathematics and Logic" (Someone)

"Censorship is the last refuge of the panicked scoundrel" ('Samuel Johnson' redivivus) [a satirical variation on the well known: "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" (Samuel Johnson, 7 April 1775)]

"All warfare is based in deception" (Sun Tze ['respectful address' pen name] 孙武, born Sun Wu, 'courtesy name' (deeply-honoured name) 長卿, c. 544 BCE -- c. 496 BCE (traditional style)) [Note: Please, boring so-called 'fact-checkers' from wherever, do not try our already sorely strained patience with all the 'corrections' about "fugitive warrior", etymology, crossbows, cavalry, philosophy, techniques, etc. We are fully aware, conversant, have delved extensively, we are linguistically capable, constantly considering, and do not need to 'educate ourselves'. Thank you, however, for your very selfless and well-paid attention and 'Poynter Institute' prize-winning effort to 'reach out'. "... There is no agreement among scholars how to intepret these relics [allusion to bamboo strips, of course] ... Allegorical sets like this one can be found buried all over the Desert ..." J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians]

The philosophy outlined on this page guides the PSR / Baywolf Press alone. It is not necessarily espoused in whole or in any part by our LSA partner, or by any specific LSA member(s). They have their own fully developed guiding rules and philosophies, for individual or collective reasons of their own. It is not our place to inquire about the latter. We would not be true to our own principles, and thus quite seriously remiss, if we implied in any way that others somehow endorse these principles, or that others should somehow feel constrained by such principles. The PSR / Baywolf Press entity is a scholarly and welcoming Open Convivium. By now, though, we [i.e. PSR / Baywolf Press] tend to shudder at using the term "Open" in this formulation: "Open" has acquired a very bitter and sardonic subtext. The 'Open Society' projects that initially looked so lofty are literally becoming the polar opposite of what "open" used to mean once upon a time, when language still was not deliberately manipulated 24/7/365. This 'mission drift' conflicts with our fundamental values, which are plain and simple -- be VERY courteous, listen to others, consider multiple viewpoints, document everything precisely, do not lie, do not malign, do not distort, do not misquote, do not exaggerate, do not 'cook' evidence -- and above all do not fabricate data (leave that to major corporations and media, who will do that anyway), do not suppress data you 'dislike', do not 'disappear' data so that others could not find them or access them [doing so because the data 'might offer others an argument' is especially objectionable], using any Position of Authority to materially alter [i.e. fake and falsify] raw original data is utterly beyond the pale of any acceptable behaviour, using ultra-highly-paid Positions of Authority to literally gut & digitally burn & purge bona fide historical records on grounds that said records are "outdated" is not only beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour: it is a programmatic 'Cultural Revolution' & Pol Pot-style intellectual 'culturecide'. Yes, we are not naive at all. Surprise! We comprehend the essence of the Project with perfect lucidity: it is in every detail the same as what was enunciated by General Keitel, 13 May 1941, "Treatment of Alien Peoples in the East"; “Decree on Exercising Military Jurisdiction in the Area of Barbarossa and Special Measures for the Troops": i.e. “Take away a nation’s history, and after only one generation, it will turn into a crowd, and after another generation we will be able to rule it as a herd”. That is what we adamantly and irreducibly OPPOSE. Clarity, honesty, absence of ideological Agitprop, and strict truthfulness must prevail, for the sake of us all (yes, we guess that makes us sort of vile 'Truthers'). Whatever, already, literally, whatever -- our position is amply justified. If current world events do not focus your mind, then nothing will. We have compassion for you, but we are not going to follow you into an engineered mental Abyss. We refuse.

Where the PSR / Baywolf Press are concerned, Universal and unconditional Human Rights and Civil Liberties are NOT negotiable under any circumstances whatsoever. And -- to safeguard everyone's freedoms -- they must be solidly and unattackably anchored in irremovable Constitutions or Charters (essentially a 'Contract') that cannot easily be tampered with, subverted, or overturned by any given Party or Political Establishment or an Enforcement Apparatus.

The dire existential need for such a safety-valve 'Contract' has been understood exquisitely well for many centuries. And for innumerable centuries all sorts of ambitious political forces, under an obfuscating plethora of labels but always pursuing the exact same goal of Absolute Rule, of a declared Absolute Monopoly on 'Truth', and of purported Absolute Infallibility, have sought to dilute and then functionally nullify or outright gut and abrogate the all-important 'Contract'. It really does not matter at all whether the hinge of each such trend or episode was a dictator, a despot, a tyrannos (τύραννος), a victorious invader, a general, a theocrat, a satrap, a rising emperor, a zealotic religious reformer, a High Priest, a Pope, an aspiring Absolute Monarch (Roi Soleil), an increasingly entrenched and totalitarian Administrative State, a One-Party ideological movement, a Party or Movement afraid of losing control over its Narrative, etc. All of that is pure smokescreen and nothing else. Once impaired, the 'Contract' was typically restored only with extreme difficulty. Holders of Extraordinary Powers rarely if ever consent to diminish them or, horribile dictu, relinquish them -- unless they are in their turn proscribed and banished from the Civitas. Which is something objectionable, in a way, yes. But the question arises of where does one draw The Line. Legally, intellectually, Constitutionally. This is, very simply, extremely basic political science, extremely basic long-run Human history (the kind of history that -- by deliberate politically partisan mandate and in the hot heat of explicitly ideological battles [pure and triple distilled AGITPROP] -- is no longer taught in schools, or even many so-called universities). Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469 -- 1527), for instance, exposed all of this a long time ago and -- yes -- quite cynically outlined the uses, in a very slender volume that should not pose any reading difficulty -- namely The Prince. The Prince was really a work of political despair and Realist political disgust, in a sense. As we all know from working assidously through the more consequential Discourses on Livy, from the same author, who once upon a time was an honoured Secretary to the Second Chancery of the city-state Republic of Florence (1498 -- 1512).

The critical areas of freedom of research, expression, publication, and access to data / information without any political censorship and without any existential threats designed to compel unthinking political or ideological conformity, must always be protected and defended. They are the inner redoubt within the 'Contract'. Without them, the 'Contract' simply crumbles. Not only that -- it becomes null and void in both directions, State (or Regime) to Citizens and Citizens to State (or Regime). We (the PSR / Baywolf Press) fully stand behind the need to defend vital freedoms against any dilution, undermining, obfuscatiuon, and concerted nullification. From this Line we simply cannot budge, especially as it has become more than painfully obvious -- over the last two decades or so -- that the relevant freedoms are under attack everywhere on Planet Earth and that those who uphold them are deliberately cast in the role of 'dangerous subversives'. Let us put it this way. We have zero sympathy for anyone who deliberately obfuscates data and research, self-servingly censors inconvenient but true and precise "emerging narratives", holds raw data back, seeks to avoid complying with entirely legitimate FOIA requests, 'edits' raw data post factum, 'adjusts' them to suit a clearly partisan Narrative, denies access to raw data 'because it [the data] might be used by those who argue differently' (the usual claim is the data might be 'misinterpreted'), 'disappears' official data of public interest, or quite frankly lies on camera so egregiously that the truth embarrassingly surfaces within hours or even mere minutes of a statement having been made, etc. At the present time, it would be extremely difficult to find a bank, corporation, so-called 'social media' platform, official spokesperson, educational system, university, or media 'outlet' that is not to some extent guilty of the above, in one way or another. The same goes for e.g. 'moving pictures' studios [fantastic analogy -- Plato and the ghost shadow-play on the back wall -- i.e. silver screen -- of The Disney-like Societal Cave (a movie theatre)]. Yes, indeed, it has always been thus. This, for instance, is why the famous iconic author of Manufacturing Consent is by now himself thoroughly caught, in old age, in the trap of "Manufacturing Consent", even though he will never willingly acknowledge it. Why is he thus caught? We are not going to evoke any stale verbiage about 'Hegelian' dialectics and so on ad infinitum. Let us just point out that every single documented 'People's Democracy' that initially sought to liberate has in its turn manufactured consent through absolute fraud and savage repression. All of this has grown tiresome. Let us therefore invoke, instead, an imperfect yet fairly candid thinker -- Ibn Khaldūn (1332 --1406).

Faith, cultural 'allegiance' and all of that does not matter here. Ibn Khaldūn, in an era of brutal despots, fickle dynasties, sudden reversals of fortune, obscene court eunuchs, fanatical proselytes, compromised factions, military regimes, invader tyrannies, and cults morphed into 'dynasties', saw one thing clearly. Viscerally. There are cycles in history -- and everything finally morphs into its very opposite in loathsome, corrupt, and further corruptible ways. Thus, a 'People's Democracy' becomes a brutal Police State snitch-tyranny that instead of keeping out any puported external threat is really all about keeping the 'enserfed' and increasingly unwilling 'citizen-slaves' within, by force and 'rule of law' -- behind an Iron Curtain of searchlights, watchtowers, minefields, and barbed wire. Thus, a freedom-seeking middle cadres revolt leveraging popular discontent produces a military dictator (Napoleon Bonaparte). Thus, a religious reform directed against an admittedly corrupt and obscenely nepotistic Church produces fanatically zealotic and totalitarian repressive and stifling City-States of Righteous Saints. Thus, a 'purification of behaviours' induces a mindless book-burning youth gang frenzy directed by a Girolamo Savonarola. Thus, a 'reform' (one of a series of such) of a corrupt but still -- all right -- pragmatically workable system making it possible for ordinary people to live without much difficulty yields a system of Inspections, Denunciations, Inquisition, and ultimately obscene repression of thought that condemned Galileo Galilei for stating the astronomically utterly obvious and documentable. (Yes, we are aware of all the permutations of the Galileo story(ies), for instance -- thank you -- and we take due note of any 'fact checking' from the Poynter Institute or such. We do read relevant documents in all relevant languages and in the original archival manuscript versions entirely fluently. We trust that you do likewise. Thank you again for your collegial concern and for 'reaching out'). Thus, a system reform aiming to create something more superficially 'egalitarian' and explicitly Unitarian and Centralist -- 'we are all tickled by the same tiny fingers of the Sun and thus all of us are children and 'slaves' of the same Deity [Aten], i.e. Akhenaton's reform of cult and governance (1353 -- 1336 BCE or 1351 -- 1334 BCE depending on Dynastic chronologies) produces and unworkable and unstable but 'artistically fruitful' nightmare. Thus ... well, we shall reserve further examples for later, even though it is probably redundant because all of us know all of them except when we deliberately refuse to see, for partisan reasons. Thus, the activists and teachers and Party functionaries of 'People's' systems and factions that are purportedly New and Democratic paradoxically end up thoroughly hating The Actual People and end up declaring The People to be an 'internal enemy' of The People, to be hunted down, destroyed, ruined, and 'punished' in an exemplary fashion -- a fine 'Inversion' Paradox. Thus, 'Democracy' and 'rule of law' become merely a thin smokescreen for factions eager to rule by 'Divine' Right and Indefinite Infallible Insight. Francis Fukuyama (End of History) was a fool and a tool. A very exemplary 'useful Idiot' (term fondly used by V. I. Lenin, for others, in another era). History keeps running in its very accustomed way.

The hallmarks of the entire 'inversion' political process that produces Tyranny have been known very long. Entire centuries:

(1) Fraud over force -- manipulate one's way into supreme power

(2) Defamation and 'cancelling' of formerly respectable persons, intellectuals, or institutions; discouragement of refined thinking ('do not do your own research')

(3) Absence or minimization of collective input, bargaining, or debate (assembly, 'gathering', conference, etc.)

(4) Military activity for the purposes of public distraction

(5) Tit-for-tat ideological symbiosis: finding ideas permissible as long as they are useful to and flattering of the Tyrant(s)

(6) Pretenses of infallibility or omniscience

(7) Pretenses toward a love of Greater Good

(8) Public impoverishment to remove the efficacy of the people's will

(9) Use of Bills of Attainder (Act of Attainder or Bill of Penalties or Civil Forefeiture) or any functional equivalent thereof, mainly in order to expropriate assets as 'deterrent punishment' for 'political crimes' (NB: This crosses the line very very far into Pre-Modern temporal territory -- e.g. the eras of Sulla- or Seianus- or Caligula- or Nero-like political proscriptions, ideological purges, and existential gutting of other-thinking 'citizens'. At that point, it becomes 100% impossible to call the relevant primitively punitive 'Regimes' and their servants or components even vaguely a 'Democracy'. Society regresses to a 'theft and plunder economy' exploited by 'ruling factions', mercenaries, hired goons, rapacious invaders, and 'robber barons'. Did you know this? Historians know this! Please, educate yourself (is that not your very own slogan?). When, moreover, the confiscatory measures impair a Regime's own supply abilities, against a backdrop of major global crises and conflicts, there are no fitting words to describe such measures, other than 'eerily and totally detached from Reality'. Ultimately, any Regime (regardless of the ostensible nature of its "ideology") that is either incapable or unwilling (or both) to ensure livable conditions for its people -- affordable basic food, warmth, reproduction, social continuity, basic social decency -- is not going to survive, whether 'sustainably' or not -- and Good Riddance! This is a balanced, measured, and reasoned historians', political scientists', cultural scientists' very calm conclusion. If you cannot and will not supply even basic grain, grossly inferior 'vegetable oils', fuel, other essentials, at a decent price, because of all the Ever So Pure 'ideological commitments', then you do not deserve to 'govern' at all. You are NOT fit to govern or manage anything at all. Even Ancient Rome knew this perfectly well. The numerus will want its dolea. You, however, are evidently far worse than even Ancient Rome. And that extends to Superior Court so-called judges and the entire glorified and 'awarded' rest of the politicized and highly ideological Camarilla.

[Note: The Constitution of the United States declares that no State shall pass any Bill of Attainder -- wisely and for very excellent Natural Law and general equity and stability reasons. Even Sun-Tze advised that it is necessary to leave one's perceived opponents a graceful way out. The opposite is ... we are not going to say that here lest we be censored. You can read Sun-Tze for yourselves -- he has not been officially 'cancelled' yet, by 'mandate', with all copies being burnt on righteously 'correct' bonfires. Let us just say this. The acquirers of confiscated property existentially become utterly corrupt Lumpen-Proletariat partisans and mercenary vested-interest supporters of any Regime issuing Bills of Attainder, for they have ipso facto sordidly benefited from crude organized theft and will continue to benefit for decades from the use-value of stolen assets. Already Machiavelli -- and his numerous Classical Antiquity predecessors -- understood this perfectly. Government sale of stolen property is compounded aggravated theft. Now, of course, as every single working historian knows, once a society descends to this level of decline, the resulting issues can NEVER be resolved by any standard means. Absolutely NO 'healing' once Crisis is over. That would merely be a sickening comedy. A nauseating farce. It never worked in Ancient Rome, it did not work in seventeenth-century England, it did not work in Ireland under Lord Protector Cromwell, it did not work in the Polish-Lithuanian Pierwsza Rzeczpospolita (1569-1795), it did not work in the religious (ideological) conflicts that led to the Thirty Years' War, it did not really work even in post-1789 France, it did not work ... you can take your pick, at will. 'Reconciliation Commissions' are an utterly hypocritical and altogether futile travesty in this respect. Our comment would be -- which part of the general History of Planet Earth did you fail to read in school, and why, in particular, if we may ask ?]

which are everywhere under attack and under political pressure from those who have discovered that they love the raw power they can wield if they impose censorship and ideological dictatorship, and that they love suppressing people via haptic and other 'warnings' until they 'obey' and 'submit', totally. I.e. "Totalitarianism". 1984 plus 'Morlocks' and 'Elois' (1895), plus also The Eyes of Heisenberg (1966). 1895, 1966, 1984, 2022-2023 -- all of it always the same relentless trajectory and program. Always echoing the same agenda, the same talking points, the same 'adjusted' data, the same agit- and -prop push. Invariably the same, provably so, until one cannot fail to see the sameness. Failure to see is no longer an excuse. After 100 years and more, failure to see becomes impossibility. Not only that, it becomes a manifest total self-contradicting absurdity. Thus the hot frenzy to 'censor', 'censor', 'censor'. A sign that the messaging is moribund. On ideological life-support. No amount of 'fact-checking' will save it. And yes, chess is a cutting-edge, inspiring game, with a time-deep military, meditational, and archaeological tradition. No one -- absolutely no one -- cares any more what a Google-scripted 'algorithm' may conceivably interpret things as. "Chi se ne frega / diceva il mago alla strega / mi chiamo Merlino ...". No one, at least not where we are concerned, is going to beg in any way whatsoever to be 'reinstated' after having been 'removed mistakenly'. The only possible response is to walk away, entirely. Just like the PSR and Baywolf Press simply walked away from Google Books and such. Shrug. Ignore. Go and create an alternative to censorship and exploitation. Atlas Shrugged.

(and thus which part of any perfectly and meticulously suppported research might or might not be simply ruled 'misleading' or 'harmful', for entirely arbitrary reasons, by some unqualified bureaucrat with only one mission: to enforce the will of a Government and uphold a 'preferred' narrative)

This page is now, given the increasingly dramatic current events, officially under construction. Below the page separator, you can read a part of the evolving previous version. It was too prolix and too scattered, yet entirely pertinent. We are resetting it, and shortening it substantially, very soon -- there is nothing much more that really needs to be said about the rapid and technology-assisted rise of utterly retrograde, bureaucratic, Party-Line, dysfunctional, totalitarian, schematic, amazingly tone-deaf, inept, incompetent, underqualified, duplicitous, hypocritical, and control-loving Despotisms, all around Planet Earth.

There was a time, way back in the late 1970s and then 1980s, when the concept of "freedom" was being officially and unofficially pushed and extolled far and wide. Various 'Velvet Revolutions' and 'Gentle Revolutions' were celebrated and promoted, and even as late 2013-2015 some libraries and institutions still occasionally held exhibits in memoriam of 'Velvet Revolutions'. That is a bygone era. In 2022 and 'going forward from here', "freedom" has become a designated 'dirty word' -- it only denotes treason, extremism, obtuseness, criminality, crudeness, anti-social tendencies, absence of "deep thought" and, piled up in an avalanche of adjectives, everything that could possibly be vile and utterly reprehensible in a Human being. 'Open Society' does not include "freedom", by definition. Mention "freedom" and you quickly find yourself on a 'surveillance list', 'no-fly list', 'de-bank list', etc. All around Planet Earth, entire populations are sytematically being trained to fear, loathe, and despise freedom, and to instinctively recoil from the very concept. Children are being taught that those who speak of "freedom" are 'very bad people' and 'criminals'. If one conducts sustained impartial research into the relevant trends, tracking on a daily basis the flows of information in multiple languages, as well as the synchronicity of administrative tendencies and legislation, it quickly becomes obvious that the drift is overwhelming. Every single day, in a great many countries, there are politicians, journalists, TV anchors, media personalities, social media executives, CEOs of electronics firms, police chiefs, lawyers, Attorneys General, teachers, account managers, TV comedians, talk show hosts, union representatives, actors and actresses, singers, academic personalilties, etc., who contribute to vocally dismantling the notion of "freedom". The drift entails an avalanche of funding and guidelines, and is supported by all key media, banks, and corporations. The unison of presentation and programming can hardly be 'unseen'. No, we do not argue that there is any 'conspiracy'. It would be banal and naive. No 'conspiracy' notion is even necessary, on such a gigantic scale. Too much partisan alignment and too many interlocking mechanisms are at play. There simply has been a 'sea change' in how societies are being shaped through systematic propaganda, and where they are headed, Planetwide. A potential era of Absolutism and Centralism and strict Top-Down Control. The race is on, essentially, to find ways how to impose a government by New 'Absolute' [earlier 'Divine'] Right while keeping only the thinnest possible veneer of 'Democracy in Name Only [DINO]' / 'Freedoms in Name Only [FINO]'. Make no mistake -- "freedom" has now been designated as 'inconvenient' and punishable. Yes, the 'stellar' future for genuine Humans on Planet Earth is "Building Back(ward) Better" -- simply "nevolník tělem i duší (Czech)" [trans. 'Bonded Serf, Body and in Soul']), The Third Serfdom, a sickening fantasy of the current so-called Elite, a political elite that has climbed up through partly plagriarizing even its own College theses, because it is utterly incapable of doing any better. A pure Kakistocracy -- rule of the least apt. A 'revised' Peter Principle -- people in a hierarchy will be promoted way past the moment of their actually being competent in anything whatsoever.

The problem with all of this is that, in a general sense, the dwindling Rights and Liberties that we have mentioned above are important in a twofold way.

(A) They are the very last thing that still makes us more or less acceptably Human -- as opposed to eking out a false existence as shapeless Mass Ideology constructs arbitrarily manipulated by The System (i.e. utterly expendable Mass Ideology 'humaniforms' defined and redefined at will, 'authorized' and 'deauthorized' at will, and heavily psycho-propagandized by Handlers in every way known to the documentably dark and corrupt history of authoritarianism and of One-Party / One-Ideology totalitarian social models). Natural Law Rights and Liberties are not and never have been mere gracious 'concessions' by The State. They pre-date The State by entire millennia. They cannot be abrogated by The State's arbitrary will, by peremptory decree.* It is unacceptable for a polity to impose on its temporary or permanent members any mandatory and all-pervading Mass Ideology that implies or involves a de facto abrogation of these inherent Rights and Liberties.

*Note: We are perfectly aware of the fact, of course, that numerous currently sitting and lavishly remunerated Senators, Judges, Lawyers, Law Theorists, so-called Ethicists, Police Commisioners, CEOs, 'Think-Tank' Personalities, etc., truly dislike and oppose the justified and well rooted notion of inalienable Natural Rights. Just as WE, correspondingly, oppose THEIR notions, on at least equally (if not infinitely more) solid, rational, valid, as well as historically amply justified grounds, documented in a plethora of scripts and languages (current as well as long extinct). The commonplace gambit -- a 'savant ex cathedra denigration' of the concept of Natural (Inherent) Rights -- cannot abrogate the reality that no Human being is a priori and inherently born a Subject-at-Will of The State or Property of The State. Or of anyone and anything else. Yes, legally or customarily defined categories of Humans born as Property existed in a broad variety of societies. We all know the circumstances, the legal contexts, the archaeological data, etc., reaching all the way back to the fourth millennium BCE and earlier, even before the first securely recorded legal decrees on stone monuments and clay tablets. Yes, to a Free Human mind, being born as Property and being treated as Property has always been objectionable and abhorrent, and Humans have instinctively resisted being reduced to such a condition. In every cultural and historical and custom-based context. Enough said. The bare historical truth is that typically, at least in the vast majority of Ancient and pre-modern socieities, only those who could no longer actively and with vigouir defend their Natural Inherent Rights as Free Humans were reduced to Property or to Dependents-at-Will -- the defeated, the captives, the subjugated, the starving, the isolated, the disarmed ... and those who under a variety of harsh (even ritual or ceremonial but nonetheless unfair) circumstances acquiesced, against their will and natural tendency, to behave as Property.

(B) They are one of the key protective mechanisms that preserve a 'safety-valve' -- the vital and necessary separation between State, Ideology, and Science (whether the Ideology is religious or secular). This is not at all a trivial issue where science, research, and scholarship are concerned. Individual scientists and researchers, or small groups of these, still can fairly easily abandon unsustainable theories and research. They still can fairly easily, even though at a personal reputational cost, admit that data, results, or methods have been wrong. With large scientific institutions, this becomes more difficult, but it is not impossible to overcome groupthink and factional allegiance and admit errors. But when research becomes thoroughly politicized and research data, programs, and theories become an integral component of the propaganda platforms and identities of major Parties -- or even worse, core components of Mass Ideologies imposed on societies by The State -- it becomes virtually impossible to admit that certain data, theories, results, or interpretations might in fact be wrong. Both 'Science' and Ideology now are The State and vice versa. Risks to 'political survival' simply will not permit admitting that anyone has erred, ever, no matter how glaring any scientific flaws might be. Everything is at stake, politically -- prestige, 'approved and correct' attainment, careers, patronage networks, mechanisms of 'ascent through Party Ranks', awards and rewards, medals and symbols, vested interests, and the perceived authority of The Party's 'essential institutions'. Political forces will quickly move to block any urgent and justified scholarly retractions, and will act to silence and ridicule and then demonize and existentially destroy all dissenting voices. All 'Revisionism' will be crushed. For Ideological reasons -- not scientific ones. The ostensible argument will be that countering 'Revisionism' is utterly vital in order to avoid further 'proportionate and clearly justified' bans on 'Revisionism'. Data and facts and impartial research will be replaced by "narrative stories", because "narrative stories" can be altered at will, to suit the politically mandated Party Line. After all, The Party is the key Narrative, and The Narrative is The Party. If need be, all research on anything outside The Narrative will be declared a 'criminal deviation', or even Treason and 'anti-State subversion'. This, however, is a perfect recipe for potential society-wide or even Planetary disaster if things do indeed go wrong and it turns out that Ideology-muzzled and officially mandated research was flawed ... or fraudulent. The pertinent societal dynamics, partly mentioned further on, are exceedingly well documented.

If the protective mechanism outlined in (B) fails, there is real and present danger. State-controlled Science is notoriously compliant Science. It is not driven by scientific questions, but by Ideological programs. If ordered, it will readily and happily affirm that the Sun orbits the Earth, and it will 'virtuously' excoriate and demonize anyone who disagrees. And get them dismissed, monitored, and then sent to a GULAG. Because the only 'valid thoughts' come from "Pure Citizens" shaped and stamped using "any tool whatsoever" to ensure 100% Ideological compliance. Echelons at lower than 'designated Expert' level will have to cope. And compensate for programmatic obtuseness. The result, however, can be unpredictable. The Chernobyl Disaster (April 1986) comes to mind all too readily, but perhaps it is not the best example ever-- one could indeed spend days analyzing and re-analyzing the ostensible design flaws and related / unrelated operator errors. Let us use another and much less dramatic incident, quite apt in its utter banality. The story circulated across the whole of Eastern Europe before 1989 -- Smell in the river. Fish dying. Vehicle after vehicle after vehicle driving up to a given spot on the river bank, and just dumping its load there. Turns out it was fertilizer. Turns out the Five-Year Plan, driven by Expert 'models', foresaw a given quantity of fertilizer to ensure 'People's Health' and lush bumper crops that would 'celebrate' and 'empower' the Five-Year Plan. No Collective Farm could actually absorb the quantity of fertilizer prescribed by The Great Statistical Model, even remotely. The Model was utterly insane and politicized. It would have in fact poisoned the crops. Still-somewhat-sane and self-preserving Collective Farm managers (poisoned crops would have of course been 'blamed' on them, never ever on the Five-Year Plan Modellers, all 'Leaders of the Future that Sings, Just Sings' and products of the best Party schools) had to devise a solution. Challenging The Narrative and The Model was impossible. Existentially suicidal. Therefore, quiet instructions to drivers: 'just take the load, have it recorded, and then promptly dump it in the river where we tell you and return for more'. I.e., no one will be any wiser and all of the Quantitative Indicators will have been complied with. The whole thing of course looked stellar on paper and received the highest Party Committee approval and ensured that those pushing it would get promoted, awarded, rewarded, medal-bedecked, and would get chits entitling them and their families to vacations at State Vacation Havens. More Fertilizer! Who cares about the fish or the people or whatever ... A journalist will always duly write whatever is necessary about the Glorious Quantitative Indicator Achievement and the greatest and never equalled 'leadership' victory in the Battle of The Fertilizer. 'Setting standards' for the whole World in rapid deployment of fertilizer ...** Quite frankly, it makes utterly zero 'functional' difference whether such a 'dysfunctionality trap' of 100% blind compliance with Centralist directives is that of a 'People's Democracy' or of an 'Enlightened' Monarchy (e.g. Frederick the Great of Prussia, with all his automaton-like Grenadier regiments on 'parade' -- 'mere' humans acting like little mechanical lead-soldier figurines marching in perfect unison upon El Supremo's command). It still is the same Managerialist 'trap'. In this sense, Science, Scholarship, and Research can become broken and no longer 'fit for purpose' if most scholars merely move like Frederick's 'Nutcracker' figurines and knowledge of alternatives is widely suppressed.

** Note: The 'victorious battle' of course does not mean at all the 'War of The Fertilizer' will stop [or literally whatever else is construed as 'emergency' by The State]. Not on The State's 'watch'. The 'emergency' is PERMANENT. By design. It is namely baked into The System. It becomes a political technique. Ruling by Emergency Decree (aka Enabling Law), keeps the Nomenklatura and The Apparatus in money and in 'total power' (you know well which historic Enabling Law we are alluding to -- it means 'Democracy' is dead, prone on the pavement under the "jackboot"). 'Emergency' quickly becomes a fundamental 'ritual of cohesion' that justifies the very existence of The Apparatus and their control over 'means of repression'. A technique finely perfected in the now defunct USSR, GDR and 'elsewhere'. Naturally, all violent suppression of dissent and all enforcement must be performed strictly 'off camera' and followed only by stage-managed 'media opportunities' -- no independent reporters permitted, so that repression would not 'offend sensibililties' or 'alarm and upset the people'. Tiananmen Square Massacre [the various euphemisms like 'Incident' are utterly irrelevant], 4 June 1989. The brutality must be 'unseen', no 'enforcer' must become an identifiable individual. Just faceless 'Nutcracker' figurines. Automatons. Truth always comes out, however, regardless of all the frantic attempts to 'maquillage' and 'mask'. History NEVER is kind and NEVER will be kind to repressive regimes and their faceless 'Nutcracker' figurines. They are on the wrong side of History. There will come a day, finally, when it will be possible to ask -- without much fear -- polite questions. Then, do nothing. NOTHING at all. Just walk away. Turn your back on all those who were involved in repression. Cross the street. Do not interact or even 'lock eyes' in any way. Do not smile. Have no expression at all. Just turn away. If they sit down in a place, get up right away and leave. Politely. Silently. No one can compel you, by law or mandate, to interact and / or socialize. Never forget and never ever forgive ... Indefinitely ... Absolutely indefinitely ... Forever ...They wanted you to 'unsee' what they did? 'Unsee' them! 100%. If you write and publish, always render word for word whatever they say, with 100% courtesy and accuracy. Take extra care that it be 100% precise and documentable. But 'unsee' -- Their agreed codeword is 'Indefinitely'. Just apply it."Indefinitely". Further Note of Advice to Women: In repressive scenarios, a Pretorian Guard usually makes a choice. It has now picked a side. But, as a real woman, you do not have to follow. Was your officer boyfriend involved in repression and brutalities? Was your officer boyfriend engaged in actions that by the Geneva Convention constitute War Crimes or Crimes Against Humanity? Even if the information is suppressed by The System and is 'strictly off-camera', you have ways of making him tell you. Genuine women have had that power for millennia. That in fact is exactly what States and Systems are afraid of. You know exactly how to make him speak the truth. Then YOU have to make a choice -- what do you want. What exact values do YOU uphold. You can be a cog in the wheel of The System and pretend to yourself that you just love that. Or ... Telling your officer boyfriend: "No, we are not doing it tonight" is effective. No cooking and no sex. It has become clear, has it not, that this is not a 'hero'. Just a "line formation" Nutcracker paid marionette. Just a tool of The System, that will follow and execute any orders at any point, in any manner whatsoever, and brag and laugh about it. And you know what that basically means, even for you and your children, down the road. You have now seen the true face of the person you date or live with. On duty, did he take his name tag and badge number off so he could not be identified later on? Did he wear a 'neon-green' ski mask during operations to hide his identity? YOU, as a woman, know who he is! You have seen his true face now, and it is unspeakably ugly and monstrous. A mere cheap mercenary thug. Chances are the 'hero' is only 'brave' against unarmed civilians and old women. A typical brutal SA-style bully and a fundamental coward. In genuine action, this marionette would not last even ten minutes. The sound of its "jackboots" would be that of "running away". You do not have to follow The Party Line. 'Uncontact' the person. Divorce, and sue for the house and car and assorted assets. You really need something better than this! Seriously! Inflict woman-style "financial sanctions" on it and never let the pressure fade. You know precisely how to do this, 24/7/365. Lock the house. Get all its money. Sue for the custody of children. Invoke psychological stress. Your officer boyfriend surely has been "exhibiting assaultive behaviour" towards you, either in tone of voice, or demeanour, or in other authoritarian ways. Ditch. Stop messaging. Do not return calls. Ever again. 'Unfriend'! Yes, women DO have that kind of power, and it is beautiful. The State Courts cannot jail all of the women. Social and marital interaction cannot be compelled by The State. You can refuse to cook, you can deny the bed, you can deny affection. This is not controlled by The State, yet. Your bodies do not belong to The State, yet. The full truest possible assertion of Woman Power. Woman Power is extolled left, right and center. And Woman Power has in fact always been such, for millennia. So use it. The State and 'educators' now say children belong to The State? Let The State then take care of all that. We would call this: #WomenOnStrike! "Oh, there are no Aldous Huxley-style genetics-adjusted 'children-growing' State Vats in use yet? Soooo bad! Such tough luck! Bye, honey! Don't call me! Ever! You made your political bed, sleep in it. I am not going to fluff it for YOU! Why should I? Are you on some sort of Patriarchy power-trip, by any chance, with your black fatigues and balaclava and helmet and face-shield?" Unsocialize 100% anyone, regardless, who is involved in senseless brutality. As women, you have that POWER. And the sting of it is worse than anything ... Disdain. SHOW YOUR UTTER SCORN! Women KNOW how to do that when the moment is right! If those engaging in repression and brutality were dying of thirst in a desert, you should NEVER offer any one of them even a single drop of water ... EVER! For a million years ... Do not engage. Do not speak. Do not fraternize. Unfriend. Cancel. 'Uncontact'. 'Social Distance'. UNSEE! Keen banter and intellectual sparring are one thing, but open brutality is another. Never forget, and never ever under any circumstances forgive ... EVER!

Apart from a fascinating historical research issue, an important question arises here. If sweeping policies that happen to be grounded in flawed, incomplete, hasty, yet to be completed, self-serving, perhaps corrupt, or even outright fraudulent research driven by Ideology do lead to unintended and disastrous consequences -- e.g. famine, demographic 'hollow cohorts', systemic dysfunction or collapse of the infrastructure, etc. -- who shoulders Liability? The Party will try to blame 'misguided zeal' or 'misunderstanding' by Cadres, the Cadres will try to blame 'excessively zealous' Activists, Activists will try to get The Party to blame The Scientists, The Scientists will try to shift the blame onto Institute Managers and 'unclear instructions', etc. It has happened before, over and over again. Ultimately, however, there is no escaping the fact that The Party / The State must be held liable, because they were the ones who acted on the advice of hotly promoted and Ideologically trusted Experts. But the State cannot be held liable because it can by defintion exempt itself from all liabillity. What happens then if The State turns out to be a Criminal ... ? Can The State simply jail everyone, so that The State, together with its Ideology, would remain shielded and immune from all systemic blame ... ? We are here in the Realm of The Absurd. Yes, indeed, The State can decide to impose its own Ideological version of "Reality" by force and by decree. It can decide to seize private property at will, confiscate funds at will, use politically biased Bills of Attainder (peremptory seizure of all 'treasonous' assets) in order to dispossess all 'deemed' Ideological enemies and replenish its own foolishly depleted Treasury, engage in systematic campaigns of nominal proscriptions (e.g. the Sulla or Seianus regimes in Ancient Rome), adjudicate solely by means of subservient and utterly corrupt Star Chambers and Troika Committees, order that 'vital' services must be rendered with zero compensation and instantly. I.e. "War Communism", or whatever one might want to call it -- let us clearly note here that most tyrannical societies of the past (including the Persian Empire and others, with their provincial satraps -- σατράπης, شهربان, क्षेत्रपाल, אֲחַשְׁדַּרְפָּן) proceeded in the exact same manner. But, at that point, The State ceases being a 'legitimate State' in any pseudo-'Democratic' sense at all and begins to derive 'legitimacy' exclusively from its exercise of arbitrary Absolute Power. Examples required? They are too numerous, throughout history, to provide any list here ... The only thing we can say is -- never forget and never -- ever -- forgive: forgiving is Divine, but mere humans have no such grace and thus have absolutely no corresponding obligation.

Cyclical metaphors of human history, going all the way back to the very roots of various world philosophies and attempts at a 'General History' are eminently useful and applicable in this context. Let us put it this way. Initially, every 'Mass [Ideological] formation Ponzi scheme' -- whatever its nature -- runs relatively smoothly. So many people are successfully co-opted, inducted, propagandized, browbeaten, coerced, cajoled, 'incentivized', shamed, and indoctrinated (usually through slogans reduced to zippy and utterly simplistic Agitprop in order to 'reach the masses'), that overt enthusiasm runs high, group self-censoring mostly works, and 'ideological compliance indicators' are high even amid the initial atrocities. There comes a moment in the life of virtually every System, however, when an Official Party-Line Narrative runs head-on into the brick wall of Reality and does not wash any more, if it ever did at any point at all. The timing and configuration of the Moment depend on how vocally Messianic, sweeping, and inflexible the core Mass Ideology message happens to be, and how adulated and Deified the System's initial heros, authors, prophets and embalmed relics had become. If the effective 'Deification' index is high, increasingly desperate twists in the Narrative will be deemed necessary in order to (a) maintain Purity of Doctrine and (b) maintain momentum ('the glorious struggle continues'). This usually involves altering what words mean, 'clarifying' what the 'core scripts' really were all about, 'adjusting data' (and the 'core scripts'), 'raising consciousness' in ever more strident sessions of 'mandatory training', etc. The Science and The Scholarship will of course obediently twist with every twist of Party politics, exactly as needed. E.g. first (Phase A) Trofim Denisovich Lysenko the biologist and agronomist was 'hero', beyond any criticism; he viciously suppressed and discredited and marginalized and demonized anyone who disagreed with him (he also managed to get them dismissed and jailed and packed off to psychiatric institutions or the GULAG -- to claim, as some still do, that Lysenko "was not responsible" for the deaths and torture is disingenuous fraud: he indeed was responsible much more than 'indirectly'), result: (Phase B) -- millions died of starvation; then (Phase C) Lysenko finally became such an embarrassment to the Party that he was 'downgraded', then 'demoted', then all too quietly 'disgraced', and when he died the Party did not even announce his demise -- he rated only a footnote in the Izvestia (the Mechanism of Soft Vanishing, because the entire Leadership had fallen for his ideas and thus the entire Leadership and all the relevant Enforcers would essentially have had to arrest and jail themselves -- and of course they were not going to abolish and arrest themselves for what in all respects amounted to pure "mis-, dis-, and mal-information" spread by none other than the Leaders and by every single 'engaged' Activist and Enforcer over a period of some 24+ years) (Comment: quite realistically, Lysenko should have ended up rotting in exactly the same GULAG system that he had sent others to, just to ensure some poetic balance -- with various added imaginative 'punishments').

But, never mind, Nirvana, Paradise, Total Justice, Harmony, all of that of course always will be just one more glorious Five-Year Plan away and just one more ornate and extravagant anhd textually turgid Party Congress away -- just a little more time to stabilize the economic indicators, iron out and flatten all the statistical curves, reach all the quantitative planning goals, 'deliver the Party's promises', 'demonstrate Great Leadership', etc. If things really are not working out, very palpably, by definition this never can be a fault of The System or The Ideology or any obvious a priori unworkabililty of preternaturally naive, limited and failing models. In other words, the enforcement and indoctrination systems are sytematically designed for 'auto-protection', so that The Ideology as such would be 100% shielded from any genuine critique, notwithstanding all contrary proof, all contrary data, all testimonies, no matter how precise and detailed and meticulous and even drawn from within The System itself (e.g. drawn from within in order to forestall any predictable defensive accusation of external 'enemy bias'). All and any obvious failures, in such a contrived scenario, are INVARIABLY declared to be the fault of a minority of "renegades", "saboteurs", "extremists', "traitors", vile "conspiracy theorists", 'uneducated' "psychotics","anti-socials", inveterate "malcontents" and all those afflicted with "insufficiently raised consciousness" (and there are Medications and Labour Camps for that!). The Vocabulary NEVER varies one single iota, and it still is fully in evidence today, even as we speak. Smiting more 'heretics' and 'witches' will assuredly address all (falsely) imputed failures of The System and of its Apostles. The Message is Always Pristine (at least in Intent), for a Glorious Greater Good. THAT, though, is neither philosophy nor scholarship -- THAT is a pure Ponzi scheme closely entwined with Cult-like racketeering.

The worst possible ultimate outcome involves a very prosaic step -- The System, with its unassailably entrenched bureaucracy and enforcement organs, becomes a full-blown Repressive Cult that deems itself to be 'under constant attack' by "domestic enemies". At the height of the Crisis -- a Crisis that may artificially and fraudulently be spun out for quite a long time -- it becomes not only impossible to break ranks but rationality as such becomes impossible. Rationality becomes Treason. Censorship and thoughtless Enforcement reign supreme. And The System to some extent begins to fracture by consuming itself in a self-immolatory frenzy. A great many people no longer have any viable individual identity at all, except that which is mentally and behaviourally defined by 'being in The System' and fitting into a Category 'approved' of by The System. Proving and demonstrating exactly that consumes all their time and all their energy. Nothing left for anything else. They are 100% 'invested' -- 'activated', 'engaged', always churning in one place: within a faked Universe of 'forms' and 'applications' and 'permits'. Independent questioning, remember, is Streng verboten! It is Treason! The only thing that is vaguely permitted is 'Constructive Criticism' -- an utterly empty and ritual simulacrum of critique, which must never challenge the core Ideological Premises and their vocabulary. In essence, this is an 'Ideological opioid' addiction, as deadly and poisonous as any other addiction. If by any accident The System -- The State, The Ideology -- collapsed, the very essence of the participants' Self would simply evaporate. Their experiential 'identity' -- their collectively and manadatorily constructed Self -- unfortunately often is no more than "processual behavioural individuality": it mostly is a tactical and strategic 'getting ahead' in The System in petty ways, by means of collectively 'approved' virtue signalling. If the framework System ceased, where would all these 'cadres' go, what would they do, how would they ever live, who would they be known as, what would become of them without The System to which they had sworn 'savvy' and 'smart' and 'forever' allegiance? Everything they at least overtly did, said, wrote, signed, complied with, enforced through fines and 'evaluations' and punishments and through endlessly pretentious high-horse censure, everything they constantly acted out in public as an 'approved' social playlet, only had value and currency within The One System. Remove all that in an instant, remove The One System, and all of them might just as well have never, utterly never, existed at all. 100% immediate devaluation of their ideological 'means of exchange'. For many, that is something unthinkable to contemplate, especially if the 'prized' Ideology had thus far been systematically extolled as the Most Advanced ever, the absolute Summa Summarum of Human achievement. They have nothing truly individual and separate and resilient and rugged and independent to fall back on, any more. They are self-declaringly compliant puppets.

Historical equivalents? Two of many? Let us invoke just some assorted material that those usually involved in 'prohibited categories of thought' (Querdenken, or 'do your own research' -- actually, well, do at least some research, period) will readily think of: (A) The abolition of monastic orders, the suppression of the Jesuits; (B) The ultimate fall of the Glorious Regime of Mongolian Field Marshal Khorloogiin Choibalsan (no actual substance beyond 'Activist and political Organizer' -- and, all right, political appointee Museum Director). There in fact are parallels between (A) and (B), although one has to (i) think independently to see them (which is of course 'prohibited') and one has to (ii) acknowledge that an average Jesuit was vastly more qualified than Choibalsan, albeit ideologically equally radical, vengeful, and intransigent. Yes, Regimes and Empires and Orders and Movements and Causes are prone to collapse, suddenly and catastrophically, like the rotten master beam of a bridge that snaps in three seconds -- a real instead of fake 'tipping point'. Desperate and panicked in-system players lacking any real choice will of course attempt to exonerate The System and thus themselves at all cost, in order to keep validating their existential essence to the last possible Moment -- they will lie, cheat, scheme, bluster, posture, denounce falsely, accuse falsely, threaten, double- and triple-down, twist themselves into transparent pretzels of lies, use every contrivance and every possible distortion of actual reality, just so that their compliance-based inner and outer existence -- plus political 'certificates' and 'qualifications' -- might not become meaningless. And that, of course, was the Game Masters' reasonable tactical calculation from the beginning. Just like today, and just like under the Roman Inquisition. If so many lied entirely willingly, denounced willingly, collaborated willingly, spewed nonsense willingly, manipulated data willinglyy, persecuted others willingly, sat on Cadre Committees willingly, committed crimes willingly, killed willingly, defrauded willingly, tortured willingly, arbitrarily destroyed lives and careers willingly, and behaved worse than what they initially contermplated -- all of it willingly and with 'enthusiastic engagement' , then EVERYONE is "in" and therefore complicit. Everyone is tainted! Just like in the Lysenko episode mentioned above. Super! Fantastic! It will be impossible to bring everyone to well deserved justice, ever. Just like when the GDR fell. Therefore, actually, "Victory"! "Our Glorious Struggle Goes On"! "We still won"! There is a sort of odd illusory safety in very large numbers, just like in an animal herd that furiously stampedes over the edge of a chalk cliff and plummets 120 feet, piled on top of each other, mangled. Buffalo Jump.

At an extreme, the sock puppets will unfortunately attempt to destroy not only evidence ('scrubbing' evidence so hard that stoves overheat, shredders seize up, 'sanitization' software cannot even handle the hard drive carnage any more) but they literally will seek to destroy everything and everyone else rather than to admit they were disastrously wrong. A pure 'Jonestown Moment' -- Reverend Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple. The Koolaid. 'Dear Leaders' of all sorts will always just tell us ".... nothing personal, pal". Comrade Nikolay Yezhov (Николай Иванович Ежов, head of the NKVD, for whom Stalin had an endearing pet name -- "Yezhik" -- for a while at least, but only as long as "Yezhik" remained 'useful') said the same -- in a Russian equivalent of "... nothing personal, pal ... " -- to various victims before they were 'processed'. That was before "Yezhik" himself was in turn 'disciplined' and 'disappeared' from all official photos. "Nothing personal, pal ... so sorry you have to go to a Re-Education Camp ... so sorry we have to 'disappear' you 'permanently' ... nothing personal, pal ... simply Reason of State ... Raison d'état. A Late Stage Systemic Crisis is thus chock full of panic solutions: one may mandate 'correct' speech, one may mandate 'correct' thought, one may mandate 'correct' behaviour, one may mandate 'correct' genuflections at all times, one may impose draconic and utterly cretinous Censorship (in which the Censors are The Cretins), one may mandate that scholars self-censor constantly or suffer house arrest and financially destructive fines and loss of employment, one may manipulate and Party-line all the news (so selectively and crudely ['Agitprop'] that very prosaic 'news' turns into a Daily Night Comedy Show Contest and that ordinary people take humorous bets on the nature of the very next round of obviously 'adjusted reality'), one may ban 'gatherings', ban any talk that is 'deemed seditious', scientifically 'adjust' entire swaths of stats and research data (including those that are part of the historical record) so that they would neatly align with Political Narrative, one may even declare -- by law -- that reality as we all know it simply does not exist -- and never has in fact existed. One may deploy SWAT teams under all sorts of government-faked scenarios. One may even order by entirely official municipal 'mandate' -- as already has happened -- that peaceful protesters be simply shot on sight (i.e. 'direct coercion' ['action directe'] -- purportedly 'proportionate and necessary' but really a 100% murderous and utterly criminal act ). And finally -- to compound the multi-level Ideological charade -- one may declare that even the last remnants of the Principles of Natural Justice (e.g. audiatur et altera pars ("let the other side be likewise heard") and nemo sit iudex in causa sua ("let none be judge in their own cause") must be abrogated. Thus giving free rein to Censorship.***

*** Note: Similarly, any semi-passive expression of dissent must of course be judicially quashed and criminalized -- e.g. banging pots and pans (Catalonia, plus many more historical contexts in medieval and Early Modern Europe and Russia -- or China and India), jangling keys (all of the so-called Velvet Revolutions in Eastern Europe -- every single one of them ), etc. As we are now being told, the equivalents of none of these were at any point in history the expression of "any deep thought" that an august sitting Justice would be "aware of". The nature of the relevant ruling is not at issue here -- it is whatever it is. What is at issue is this magnificently lavish 'lack of awareness'. The Justice in question (out of sheer decency we refrain from naming him, to spare him vast intellectual embarrassment) thus presumably is NOT "aware" (as he himself openly states) of the well documented history of Planet Earth. Presumably he has not had the leisure to peruse even the older and now 100% classic relevant historical literature on popular moods and social movements -- e.g. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie or Fernand Braudel (to mention only two names out of at least several dozen, in a variety of languages -- yes, many of the relevant works have been rendered into English way back in the 1960s and 1970s). This does cast quite a shadow over that Justice's aptitude to hold office or to sit on a Superior bench.

All of the so-called People's Democracies (the GDR, for instance and the StaSi -- StaatsSicherheit), were absolute masters at this kind of 24/7/365 'social engineering' charade. Under a system of ideologically twisted penalties, Secret Police (basically Geheimstaatspolizei) enforcement, denunciations, ideological slyness, statutory sentences, emergency decrees, martial law and rotating curfews, psych 'assessments' for anyone who dissented even slightly, etc. In other words, one simply may opt for going the way of all One-Party States, 'Enlightened' Absolutist Empires, Pol-Potian regimes, and rotten Nomenklatura crony-systems known to human History. Kakistocracy -- rule by the demonstrably least qualified and the most unscrupulous (and at the same time, the most magnificently dogmatic). By the way, have you perhaps noticed that those who orate the most about 'the people'-this -- & 'the people'-that -- really detest The People intensely and tend to recoil with disgust at mere accidental bona fide encounters with Real Life? They do not want Real People -- they want silent and 100% compliant puppet-like robotic servants and 'festive' controlled crowds. They do not want Real People but a fake ideologized construct of 'The People' that would forever abjectly flatter their myopically 'constructed' histrionic political egos -- already in the 1950s Berthold Brecht (1898-1956) knew this quite perfectly, and then, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Czech dissident singer-songwriter Karel Kryl (1944-1994). This, exactly this, is why WE balk at a priori denying voice -- in blind obeissance to Government 'mandates' -- to various parties, why WE object to the Cancel Culture and oppose it in every way and fashion. This is why we support a level playing field of audiatur et altera pars, in very calm and balanced courtesy. Listen and gauge. Listen and evaluate. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, always. Think it through. Deprogram from The System. No dogma, no 'consensus through influence', or plain fault in reasoning, procedural misstep, misconception, methodological obfuscation, or even honest mistake can ever become The One and Only Forever Mandated Truth, no matter how many Comedians repeat it constantly and no matter how many Laws enforce it. Incidentally, the key problem with Kakistocracy is that it brings to the top, into key commanding positions of Absolute Power, those who actually have very dubious qualifications, who even partly or wholly plagiarized (demonstrably so) their MA Theses (or equivalent), who faked their actual skills and produced Only Propaganda or less (e.g., using past examples, to scrupulously eschew current ones, Khorloogiin Choibalsan or Nikolay Yezhov -- current examples would be more damning and would include Finance Ministers and highest officials). This problem of 'systemic rot' inherent to all Nomeklatura Kakistocracy both sparked off the French Revolution (1789) and was a key factor in the demise of the USSR (1990s). And the Fall of the Roman Empire, among other, and Byzantium, and countless long since forgotten regimes across the Ancient Middle East and broader Eurasia.

The repetitiousness of the 'Cancelling' rage is by now somewhat sickening, nauseating, revolting, despicable, and 100% predictable -- nothing new, nothing new at all. Every failed State, every failed ideology, every failed Narrative, every failed political theory, every failed 'social engineering' 'project' has gone this way, without even one single exception. But let us then stop pretending that The System still is -- in any conceivable way -- some sort of 'Democracy' or perhaps so-called People's Democracy or something along those purposely vague nominal lines. Because THAT is a very transparent LIE. The entire deep stack of historical evidence is unequivocal -- any time any System declared that there is exclusively ONE VERSION of permitted reality, i.e. the Official Censored Version, and that the Official Version may not -- under any circumstances -- be in any way questioned, challenged, disproved or even openly discussed regardless of what amply recorded data say, i.e. TOTAL SILENCE under a crippling muzzle of Government and One-Party censorship and on pains of loss of livelihood, fines, 'arrest', social depersoning, long-term incarceration without trial, etc., then all those who impose such ONE VERSION are manifestly in stark fear of truth. The more they act to enforce their Narrative the more they become not 'deemed' but actual criminals. Indeed ... yes, indeed ... "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

We therefore support: principled freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of research • freedom of data acquisition, processing and communication (all the things that Global Controllers detest viscerally) • freedom of religion (for ALL religions) • the right to full intrinsic self-determination of the private person • freedom of fundamentally 100% honest and 100% independent reasoning (i.e. freedom of 'world-view' -- we define such 'reasoning' as an acquired immunity from all ideological / corporatist / mainstream media 'content modification' or 'perceptual hashing') • freedom from being politically or existentially (loss-of-employment and other such sanctions) compelled to 'retract' one's well-founded and well-grounded and impeccably documented research conclusions merely to obey dogma and orthodoxy (something like this takes Planet Earth back to the era of Inquisitors General -- the step backward is gigantic and unacceptable) • freedom of the press (in all formats ranging from paper, digital, and future quantum formats, to as yet physics-indeterminate formats fully armoured against any overweening and ideologically obsessive Social Credit 'security apparatus / Government') • uncensored public and general access to and open unlimited scrutiny of all official and 'public service' data [no temporal or judicial statute of limitations] • strict preservation of all original 'data of record' on Planet Earth as well as on future Solar System stations and remote settlements, without any exception: no 'shadowbanning', 'memory-holing', 'purging', 'back-editing', social media ideological pressure, etc. -- this includes preserving all evidence, wherever possible, of corruption, fraud, data-'adjusting', wrongful statistical manipulation, etc. • 100% uncensored traffic in raw scholarly and scientific data of record, thus bypassing all data filtered or criminally adulterated through ideological 'hashing' mandates and / or government policy •

We advocate that all research data within the entire unexpurgated Human record on Planet Earth be studied honestly, willingly, rationally, and in a spirit of friendly yet sober and critical scrutiny, without any overt or covert ideological intimidation, 'mandates', strong-arming, compulsion, psyops, payola, 'arrest', or other coercion [including so-called 'speech codes'] • We hold, as a 100% self-evident and manifest truth, that imposing moratoria (e.g. 75 years [sic] or more) on research data and research documentation of pressing public interest and concern -- in particular data released or submitted to secure 'public' approval or to formulate and pre-eminently shape policy -- is 100% unacceptable, in any context: no one can reasonably seek such utterly extreme blanket 'protection', and should therefore explain fully, or disclose fully and instantly, or otherwise face a presumption of fraud (from an insurance industry perspective as well as from a transaction perspective "fraud eviscerates [i.e. renders null and void] ALL contracts", as per case-law, and the implications are very clear; whether, under very dramatic policy circumstances, State-level 'ideological fraud' may also eviscerateThe Implicit Social [and Political] Contract as such is a matter of philosophical debate -- we would be greatly inclined to hold that YES, it DOES eviscerate The Contract and it DOES open the ground for close scrutiny and for high-level criminal prosecution of State officials, 'experts', agents, as well as contractors) • We hold, as a self-evident and manifest truth, that any properly scientific process that benefits Humanity must rely on fully and openly discussed data, not on any secret and proprietary processes in which the underlying data is manipulated by an 'activist' or corporate lobby • We hold, as a self-evident and manifest truth, that no research that can possibly expand the range of Human awareness as well as knowledge and wellbeing may be labelled 'fake' by fiat and without proof and / or suppressed and 'memory-holed' by 'activist' or vested interest lobbies or any Government Agency or Secret Service outfit or Police Unit • We hold, as a self-evident and manifest truth, that highly qualified professionals are in the first place and above all beholden to an ethical code, and that includes telling truth and not obfuscating or concealing evidence for political or ideological purposes • We hold, as a self-evident and manifest truth, that scholarship is not and never should be a matter of unquestioning 'belief' or 'Party Line thought' mandated by an organization, an ideology, or The State • We hold, as a self-evident and manifest truth, that the trajectory of true scholarship cannot be governed by glib paid-for 'network talking heads', who all spout the exact same 'authorized version', in an exquisite synchrony of obvious manipulation •

We adamantly oppose the following: all current Censorship Bills or those to be 'tabled in the future' (especially legislation of the kind "you will have to pass this law in order to find out what is in it") • so-called Commissioners of Digital Safety, above all 'appointees' who have never competed for and campaigned for their positions in public, subsequently winning a free and open election in a general and above all 100% secret and tamper-proof ballotting -- in our view such 'appointees' simply have no lawful authority, their pronouncements or 'mandates' are ipso facto lawless, and their orders do not have to be and should not be obeyed • the so-called Commission on Information Disorder • all censorship-enforcing Police, Private Security, and Courts • the imposition of blatantly 'preferential' dogma through grossly manipulative vehicles of social media and lavishly funded mass propaganda and crass psychological warfare • repressive digital 'Social Credit' systems • fanatically ideologized corporations and 'Human Resources' Departments • surveillance-obsessed social engineers (aka "engineers of human souls") •

We further support decentralized power: presently, a giant conflict is playing itself out Planetwide -- one might call it "A Tale of Two Powers": (a) on one side, the supporters of Power that is obsessed with 24/7/365 micro-management (it often is corporate, lavishly funded by 'Enlightened' billionaires, dominated by a coercive Party 'Program' or by an ideological 'Uni-Party' [an ideological monolith masquerading as several "Parties" that de facto behave as one], and it relies on a vastly passé and effete bureaucratic and political nomenklatura that is locked in a giant maze of vested interests), (b) on the other side, those who favour "power" with a lowercase letter 'p': pragmatist, flexible, rational, honest (what an unusual concept), pro-Humanist and opposed to totalitarian and authoritarian thought (de facto these are the real idealists, who just want to live and keep evolving, and do not care about the lucrative word-splitting of sterile, stale, and control-oriented ideologies or the PR of Agitprop and ideological click-merchandising). We stand with the latter, with decentralized anti-Bureau(c)Rat "power". On every intellectual front we oppose slogan-driven overreach -- as well as censorship.

Yes, in this sense we indeed are what some have sarcastically labelled a 'screeching voice of the Minority', or a "small fringe minority", i.e. Mensheviks [Mеньшевики́]. This of course happens to be a vastly obsolete ideological slur that has been around -- at the very least -- since 1903 and the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP. And of course much longer: every single system all the way back to ancient Sumeria and other civilizations has had its 'Mensheviks' who in fact were The Majority. The RSDLP variant of this political playlet merely happend to unfold recently, exactly one hundred and eighteen years ago. At the time, Russia's 'Bolsheviks' simply dubbed themselvesThe Majority (большинa as a self-identified авангард -- Vanguard). If one's opponents are labelled a deprecated "small fringe minority", then ipso facto, by extension, one declares (facts be damned) that one holds the moral upper ground. By a magic trick of political vocabulary, one now constitutes the Majority: большинa, i.e. Bolsheviks. Minute documentary data show the exact numerical opposite, as amply documented in month-to-month prevalent electoral and even reluctantly conceded official Party reality in 1917 . What we have at play here is The Principle of Socially 'Mandated' [Fake] Inversions). What fostered the большинa Narrative were very arcane accounting issues of Party membership dues (if paid on time -- it always comes down to the money, even among Bolsheviks), Party hierarchy rosters, and -- poetically enough -- the inner sanctum of the Editorial Committee of Iskra, the key Party newspaper. At least some imaginative alternatives to the utterly stale meme of 'screeching voice of the Minority' should have been invented, a full 118 years after the fact -- but one clearly cannot expect too much.

Our principles, as outlined above, might be labelled 'lofty'. They indeed are moral, and they also possess ageless integrity. If you have any serious issues with them, then we regretfully and very politely must decline to concur. Or to follow suit. We of course respect and fully comprehend your awkward position -- diverse social 'allies' plus intersecting social, professional, career, monetary, policy, 'legal', existential, as well as routine and overriding Human Resources compliance factors quite probably prevent you from respecting our position in even the most elementary ways. Even so, we genuinely would like to believe that you in fact, at least in secret, do not (i) love to 'comply' with political and Party 'overlords' / 'managers'; and that you do not adore (ii) schematic Big Tech censorship, (iii) transparent ideological repression, (iv) stifling 'official' secrecy, double-talk and 'Newspeak', (v) invasive Alexa-style surveillance and Social Credit schemas, (vi) corporatist (e.g. Salazarist-like) socio-economic compulsion, (vii) enforced uniformity of thought, behaviour, and research (e.g. "compelling ... followers [i.e. obedient subjects] how to think, what to do, how to evaluate events, what to dream, and what language to use ..." [Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016)], (viii) utterly cynical paid-for 'expert opinions' [or, even worse, fact-checks by 'independent' 'fact-checkers' who in reality are infinitely less 'independent' than even the lowest-ranking common mercenary of past ages] as opposed to open broad-based public scrutiny of all relevant data form all relevant perspectives, (ix) a cynical 'I just follow Rules' tyranny by brick-in-the-wall Bureau-(c)-Rats ["... Because I am … because I am told to and that’s how … because I am told to and … I am told to …"], (x) 24-7-365 official and institutional and corporate 'perceptual-hash' lying, (xi) corporate and official obfuscation, (xii) endless ideological 'purity checks' and 'thought wellness' checks '.

One might surely ask why we adopt such 'unwise', 'problematic', and outright 'heretical' positions. We have three answers.

One: We of course selflessly do it 100% out of Love, "for the children, for all the future generations" (we have borrowed this specific phrasing from an interminable array of politicians, speech-writers, TV talking heads, 'personalities', and 'influencers', but quite unlike them we are sincere). It is in the highest interest of Human survival in the Solar System that we promote rational and independent thought. Without such thought, future generations are lost. They shall wither in a stink of dogma, unintelligent compliance, childish slogans, advertising catch-words, Police-organized psy-ops, Agitprop, and utterly repetitious lockstep pap served up by legacy "media". They shall wither in the grim shadow of a genocidal Pol Potian 'Brother Number One'. ALL historians, whether they openly admit it or not, know that compliance, deference to dogma, a career-seeking regurgitation of stale State ideologies, cowed 'submission' to slabs of purported 97% Consensus, and a lobotomized refusal "to do your own research" NEVER advanced Human ability or knowledge or safety even one iota.

Two: Viable scholarship develops and advances only through constant conflict between ideas and evidence. When evidence changes, ideas must likewise change. To reject this principle means that one is not a scholar but a turgid political advocate of static, invariant (i.e. fully dogmatic) ideologies. 'Adjusting' data in order to satisfy an ideological mandate is the fundamental opposite of scholarship. Altering, or selectively ignoring, or selectively suppressing data because "it [the data] would furnish others ['wrong-thinking' or 'dissident' others] with arguments" is not only utterly inconsistent with any real scholarship. It is an argument that has been used, verbatim, by Government Censors in the past -- across the span of the fourteenth through ninteenth centuries at a minimum, in numerous countries (inclulding Portugal and then Brazil) and under varied political configurations. It also is overt fraud. Lysenkoisim on steroids. The only thing it accomplishes is to signal that those who proceed in this fashion fear, genuinely and existentially, all real debate. But propositions that require this kind of 'extreme shielding' -- plus 75-year moratoria on access to data -- are so fragile, so broken, so utterly worthless, that their proponents are manifestly aware the ideas cannot stand and never would stand on simple merit. Even worse. That the ideas cannot withstand even accidental exposure to raw evidence. And, tragically, the more egregiously absurd and very easily disproved the Narrative becomes, the more vigorously many True Believers will ferociously cling to the peak absurdities, to lies stacked upon stacks of lies. It is tantamount to plodding forward in a trance, from one politicized vetting to another, frantically checking all the 'correctness' tick-boxes in a mind-twisting and utterly futile attempt to comply with goal-post-shifting permutations of a manufactured dogma. Already Savonarola and his fervid Morality-hit-squads of juvenile street-gang enforcers were prisoners of this Paradox. The trap is that one cannot ever 'comply' one's way to any 'safety' in any such system, whatever the relevant ideological Matrix happens to call itself (especially in a situation where words do not matter any more anyway and neither does their intrinsic meaning). That, namely, is not how the ideological Social Score (Credit) 'System Machine' is built. You will always be, by definition, a step -- or two -- behind the next mandated 'compliance' decreed by the Masters of the Game. And if you fall behind in the required steps of Compliance Theatre, as you inevitably will -- by mistake or because you simply cannot stomach the obvious lies -- you too will duly be declared an 'Enemy of the State'.

Three: "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar; you're only telling the world that YOU fear what he might say" (Tyrion Lannister). No need to point out where we borrowed this one from. The very same is true of all censorship, banning words and concepts, making taboo the investigation of specific data sets, carefully shaping and vetting the content of lectures -- at the level of a Dean's or Provost's Office, 'univiting' lecturers, 'unfinancing' specific research, pretending that Science is mostly a matter of 'correct messaging', 'communication', 'Narrative' and 'Consensus' and 'Optics' (what a preternaturally sick joke!), mandating that all dissenting analysis be preceded by 'trigger warnings' or ritual disclaimers touting the authorized narrative of the week (day, year, decade), 'apologizing' for any trace of 'deviationism', ritually denouncing yourself in prescriptive 'Struggle Sessions', passing fully viable manuscripts through rounds upon rounds of ideologically handpicked reviewers to ensure that the Party Line and 'Consensus' prevails, etc. None, not a single solitary puny one of those who operate thus, 'clear' the name of their so-called Cause. On the contrary, they damn and condemn (con-damn) their own Cause with tongues of fire and gullets of steel, in Indefinite infamy. No amount of pledged money to 'combat' "harmful disinfomation" is ever going to stop a groundswell deluge of sober, accurate, clear-sighted Disillusion. Goebbels tried it. It did not work. A hoary and ancient historical truism operates here -- any Party, clique, preferred 'affinity group', ideology, social scam, policing system, etc., that does not believe any more it can prevail politically (i.e. through gross scamming, persuasion, bribes, back-room deals, perks, and cajoling) will inevitably move to criminalize all adversaries, even the most benign ones -- or those merely 'deemed as such' (even though they may in fact not be so, and generally are not, at first -- before their minds get duly focused and their purpose justifiedly hardened ["radicalized"]). History, plain realist History, attests to the fact that this usually is the very last stage before a Storm -- a Storm that will obliterate the Regime in question and simply wipe it straight off the political and historical checquerboard, for the time being. The greater the number of officially 'deemed criminals' (as well as those 'designated' as such by a vomitoriously stinky-boot-shine-licking Banking and Finance 'industry') -- in fact quite ordinary people, at first -- that the Powers that Be utterly arrogantly declare they seek to "piss off" and 'unperson' or 'un-citizen' in a blanket and random fashion, as 'Enemies of the State', the more implacable, dedicated, inventive, informed, very specialized, ultra-highly skilled, 100% dedicated, relentless, and in the end utterly determined real Enemies of the State one is going to get. There is a choice -- to rule as a benevolent Figure of Comprehension, or to rule as dictator and tyrant supported by foreign mercenaries. The first has usually been hailed as 'saintly' by historians of all inclinations and eras. The second has usually been reviled, spat on (justifiedly), and lasted only a limited time. And met its deserved End.

"All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force" (George Orwell). Planet Earth is now increasingly an authoritarian and even an explicilty Totalitarian Planet. What is 'totalitarian', you ask? We do not need to offer any fake 'definition' here. You have the answer already. Consider, with at least minimal personal honesty, how you truly live. No, you actually do not live and are not permitted to live outside a narrow envelope of what is 'mandatory', 'obligatory' -- a matter of ever-changing social shaming and fake 'consensus', often paired with policing requirements to report regularly on your doings and on how you 'think'. With an obligation to 'apologize' and 'self-denounce' for the slightest 'deviation' from Norm. Are you truly allowed to think, write, teach, speak, conduct research, gather data, reach conclusions, and point out flaws in data freely? No, you are not. Not even remotely close. Attempting to do so will destroy you. Unperson you. Make you unemployable. A pariah. You must pretend, must ignore at all cost all the flagrant flaws and paid-for contradictions in official Narratives. You must 'follow orders', even when the orders fail to make sense and merely reflect baseless dogma. And if you object, you will be charged with 'incitement' or 'sedition'. And you absolutely must smile too (smile, but never laugh) -- 24/7/365, or some facial recognition AI camera system somewhere will conclude you are 'unsafe'. You might be an unconscious 'silent spreader' of dangerous uncontrolled ideas. You have rights on paper only, paper that is worth nothing -- just like your utterly worthless fiat money. In all too many respects, you are worse off now, in historical terms, than any previous prisoner of war, or galley rower chained to the oar, or hard-labour convict or penal colony inmate, or a bondperson, or an indentured servant.

Any initially viable Planet is already doomed if it bets on the 'ideal' of enthroning a dogmatic 'Forever System' ruled by a State-imposed ideology and set of behaviours. We maintain that classic works of social-historical-science fiction foresaw such Planet-wide issues, and warned about the dangers. In a quickly unfolding era of State / Corporatist totalitarianism, such prescient works cannot go unheeded. Random examples (out of hundreds): The Eyes of Heisenberg or the Dosadi Experiment. Those who have read deeply and reflected keenly will know instantly where we are going with this: an open-eyed and profound awareness of -- yet absolutely zero adulation for -- Caleb Saleeby (1909), J. B. S. Haldane (Daedalus, 1923 [and the "... ghastly mission ..." of which the dedicated 'scientific worker' of the future is 'proud' [i.e., as in 'we follow The Science' and 'this is who we are'] ), F. C. S. Schiller (Tantalus, 1924), Anthony Ludovici (1926), the dear old 'schoolteacher' Leonard the son of Thomas Huxley, Julian Huxley (the brother of Aldous Huxley), Olaf Stapledon (1931, and his If I were Dictator [1934]), the sequential X-risk crowds (as in 'Windows XP' and other innumerable Agitprop variations on the tiresome 'X-symbology'), and so forth. Yes, forestalling an 'X-event' might be of some significance, but NEVER on the terms and conditions proposed by these proponents.

Historians, please note that the dying Late Roman Empire with its turgid Law Code compilations followed exactly the same path as Planet Earth is following today. Also note, however, that effective enforcement did not last very long at all. Massive official fraud, collusion, and pervasive corruption became glaringly evident all too quickly. An application of crude policing force lasts only as long as the already demeaned, browbeaten, underpaid, unpaid, symbol- and honour-deprived enforcement squads -- treated as mere expendable 'servants' who likewise 'must comply' -- will continue to lift batons on behalf of 'Authorities' or 'Emperors' or 'Dear Leaders' or 'Legislators' or 'Experts'. That usually does not last, especially as the effete and utterly physically incapable Elite and 'Vanguard' get more and more arrogant and mesmerized by an illusion of crude power. Please do dip -- with awareness (but NOT a Wikipedia kind of 'awareness') -- into the works of Umberto Eco or Victor Olegovich Pelevin. A visual meme required? E.g. the lavish imperial-themed Silver Hoard of Roman Augusta Raurica (the 'late Roman' Kaiseraugst fortress, today in Switzerland). Not a single person -- not one -- returned to dig the silver up. Not worth sullying one's hands. Not for Germans, or Latins, or Lusitanians, or Iberians -- anyone. Those who still really could, they walked away from The System, in the low and cool morning mist. Yes: "Who is John Gault"? Many of us are, or will be in due course, very shortly, "John Gault". Our predecessors never looked back, despite nostalgic pangs of artistic and literary veneration for The Empire. We also shall not really look back. Not worth it. Full-on 'lateral thinking' -- the dreaded and forbidden Querdenken. The simple and utterly Human Shrug that historically has brought many previous Empires to a sorry end, 100% deservedly. Real loyalty can never be secured through 'mandate', snitching, 'mandatory' loyalty oaths, dismissal, punishment, purge, prison, and "consciousness-raising" camp. And fake loyalties, elicited through compulsion, are less than last year's snow. The System rapidly runs out of Players willing to play The Game

SOLO
The starboard pump is like the crew
Leave her Johnny, leave her.
It's all worn out and will not do
And it's time for us to leave her,

CHORUS
Leave her Johnny, leave her,
Oh leave her Johnny, leave her.
Oh the voyage is done and the winds don't blow
And it's time for us to leave her.

SOLO
The Rats have gone and We the Crew
Leave her Johnny, leave her.
It's the time be'damned that we went too
And it's time for us to leave her,

CHORUS
Leave her Johnny, leave her,
Oh leave her Johnny, leave her.
Oh the voyage is done and the winds don't blow
And it's time for us to leave her.

SOLO
Well I pray that we shall ne're more see
Leave her Johnny, leave her.
A Hungry Ship* the likes of she [*Human-wasting vessel, senseless wreck, corrupt system, uselessly expended effort.]
And it's time for us to leave her,

CHORUS
Leave her Johnny, leave her,
Oh leave her Johnny, leave her.
Oh the voyage is done and the winds don't blow
And it's time for us to leave her.

Those with real knowledge and actual practical skills simply shrugged -- unless they could be brutally physically compelled to continue 'servicing' The System. Atlas Shrugged. And the 'deplorable' Mere People? Oh, they mostly lived on, well indeed, in a way, as all actually honest Realist archaeologists know. As to the pompous functionaries, plethorous members of the Commentariat, and the shimmering array of 'prize-winning' stand-up comics, comedians, 'talk-show' hosts, PR-mavens, HR-gurus and enforcers, sports gladiators, and actresses -- a collective Elagabalus (referring to the 'Roman' barely juvenile 'High Priest' of El al-Jabal, a thoroughly fake, fraudulent and 'managed' Emperor)? The so-called 'Influencers' of 2022 'Social Media'? Well, to use pithy, 'deplorable', vernacular pre-modern Tuscan Italian,"Chi se ne frega: lo diceva anche il Mago alla Strega." As to regaining any sort of purported 'confidence in The System'? Let us simply deploy here some of the absolutely 100% favourite stock-in-trade phrases of our era: "we have no plans currently ", "it is an idea that is not under consideration", "not for quite some time to come", quite likely "not in our lifetime", probably not "forever" but perhaps -- 'going forward from here' -- in something like "two or three generations", or we might conceivably return to assessing it again in about "another 100 years", whichever is longer. Yes, all right ... you guessed it -- basically, "never". What more do you want to hear? It is our sober, well informed, evidence-based, and research-supported prudential conclusion that Planet Earth (i.e. most governments and institutions and corporations and enforcement or 'training' mechanisms [higher education included], at all internal levels) is moving in very remarkable and amply documented conceptual lockstep (partly driven by an 'administrative practices emulation factor'), and that this conceptual lockstep seeks to permanently and systemically curtail all rights and freedoms to a 'manageable' minimum.

Any temporary relaxation of this generalized 'emulatory' pressure will be a mere tactical retreat that will inevitably be followed by even more savage administrative repression, under one clever scenario or another. It would take a great deal of data to convince us of the contrary. We deem that no declared 'normalization' is to be trusted or believed. To rebuild any sort of rational 'trust' may take decades, if not entire generations. With all sides still de facto very much entrenched in their positions, more than ever, and with a great deal of conceptual baggage that is inextricably blended into very sharply defined political and cultural 'identities' and that simply cannot be jettisoned without compromising such 'identities', we see no encouraging evidence. Only fools 'trust', in such circumstances, and at their own dire peril. So much damage is being wrought and has already been wrought, all around, damage that no one will willingly admit to causing (i.e. no one will ever admit having been even minimally mistaken in the slightest degree or having misread and then 'adjusted' any data, etc.), the rhetoric has become so hot, and so many professional paths have been and are still being brutally destroyed without the slightest hesitation, that -- no matter how nice a thought this might be -- a "Let us just leave it all behind us and turn a page and be done with it" has become an utter impossibility. One may listen, courteously; observe, calmly; evaluate, warily; assess the value of pronouncements, with prudence; but 'trust'? -- hardly ever. "We know they are lying. They know we know they are lying. We know they know we know they are lying. But they are still lying.” (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1918 - 2008, once upon a time extolled as champion of freedom, even though designated by his own country as a 'subversive element', 'guilty of anti-State propaganda, 'founder of a hostile organization', and sentenced to eight years of GULAG, forced labour, forced work in a sharashka [Experimental Design Bureau] run by the Ministry of State Security, and then 'internal exile' in a remote location, for life; he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, something that would be entirely impossible today)