Deciphering The Motivations That Drive Us

October's Open Thread

Since I no longer have the time to respond to all the correspondences I want to respond to, I began doing monthly open threads where I could focus on addressing the remaining questions that had accumulated over the last month and tagging each open thread to a topic I’d wanted to write about but didn’t feel quite merited its own article.  In this month’s open thread, I’ll share my thoughts on a question many ask; what motivates the public figures we listen to and how can we know who to trust?
 
Unfortunately, one of the most challenging aspects of human interactions is accurately assessing someone’s character, especially when you can only observe them from a distance, and in turn, one of the most common errors I see people make is to ascribe beliefs or motivations to someone they don’t have a strong basis for (and often are completely wrong).

Ultimately, I believe this arises because humans are complex beings with so many good and bad facets that the way someone is perceived by someone else is primarily a product of which facets of them are being seen rather than who they actually are. In turn, one of the things I’ve always found immensely frustrating about politics is how someone I know is a destructive sociopath is seen as a saint because the media highlights a positive facade of them while another person I know is genuinely interested in making the world a better place is instead seen as a monster because the undesirable aspects of their personality are continually focused on by the media.

Note: given how much many of the wonderful and dedicated people I’ve gotten to know throughout this movement (e.g., Robert Malone) have been attacked for things that are not at all reflective of who they are, I often feel it’s unfair my anonymity has allowed me to never have my own shortcoming be subjected to widespread scrutiny. Likewise, from the start, I made the decision I did not want the Forgotten Side of Medicine to be about me, so I’ve made a point to only share the aspects of myself which I feel are helpful for readers to know (e.g., because it will inspire them to do what they were always capable of or because it makes them see they aren’t the only person who feels the way they do).

However, while it’s largely impossible to know what ultimately motivates someone, I often put a lot of thought into this as when I get it right (which normally requires discarding any biases or preconceived notions I have), that insight is valuable as it allows me to accurately predict what they will do in the future (e.g., past actions are the best predictor of future behaviors). Since the subject of “motivations” is such a common topic in discussions I see, I wanted to dedicate this month’s open thread to it—particularly since I’ve found the prominent figures in our movement I’ve gotten to know personally all share very similar motivations.

In turn, I’d like to start by sharing a few of my own motivations.

The Archivist

Although I generally reject labels, the one I’ve always been drawn to is being an “archivist.”

This arose because when I was much younger, I noticed the common thread underlying the problems in most people’s lives was that they’d never done the work to choose a unifying purpose for their life and instead were anxious and desperate for an ideal to follow (especially since our culture had systematically removed many of the things which previously provided that meaning), and so would adopt whatever was presented to them, regardless of how detrimental it was to their lives or how unhappy it made them.

Since I’d just started high school when I realized this, I knew I still didn’t know enough of the world to feel confident in the purpose I’d commit to myself to. So as a stopgap, since I noticed my peers were filling that void by adopting a harmful addiction, I decided to become addicted to information under the rationale that it wouldn’t create an actual addictive dependency (making it easy to quit when the time was right) and when it was all said and done not be a complete waste of time (which is wasn’t as if I hadn’t done this for decades I could not have written this Substack).

Once I started diving into that field, I found I was drawn to important information which had been lost in the sands of time, especially as I kept on finding a recurring pattern—amazing technologies that could revolutionize our lives had instead been buried to protect an existing monopoly.

As my actual purpose was ultimately shifting to trying to understand the truth of the world, my interest grew to focus on if these technologies were legitimate. A large part of my desire to be a doctor in turn was founded in it being a concrete way to ascertain if they indeed worked (whereas with many other “conspiracy theories,” I couldn’t see a way to prove or disprove them).

Note: my essential conclusion is that some of those technologies (e.g., DMSO and UVBI) performed as claimed, some were overblown (but still are quite useful if utilized appropriately), some used to work but no longer do because of the increased toxicity of our modern environment, and many others were simply overblown hype.

I came to see how easily these technologies were lost and how many of their inventors who dedicated their lives to promoting them had all said the same thing—in the future there will be a time when the world will be ready for their work and it will sprout from the ashes. As such, I gradually decided I wanted to be an archivist who could help keep the candle of that knowledge alight during my time on the Earth so that far into the future when the time was right, someone else could use it to ignite a flame everyone would see.

Note: this is analogous to how doctors I know who spent decades of blood, sweat, and tears trying to bring the public’s awareness to the vaccine safety issue (and whom much of my work is built upon) ultimately have only had a fraction of the reach newcomers to the vaccine safety field have had since the world was awoken by the disastrous COVID vaccines and hence the time was right for that truth to ignite.

In turn, I kept on running into very unusual situations where I met the previous custodians of that knowledge and took it as a sign fate was entrusting me with the opportunity to preserve it (while simultaneously rewarding my service by drawing me closer to my goal of understanding the fundamental truths of our world). However in doing that, I was left with one major issue—I wasn’t sure what an effective way was to pass it on enough that the right person would be able to find it when they searched for it. As such, my focus had been primarily on knowledge accumulation in the hope an answer to the other question would eventually present itself.

As such, when I realized Substack had put me in the rather unexpected position of being able to widely disseminate this information (something I had not expected would be possible in my lifetime), that became my goal—hence the title I chose for this publication.

That essentially is why I have put so much work into writing fairly detailed articles on a variety of subjects (now comprising millions of words) but simultaneously have been quite methodical in how I’ve approached that gargantuan task and not covered subjects I don’t yet feel it’s the right time to divert my available energy into writing about them (especially if the information is essentially already out there for anyone who looks for it).

In turn, I continually receive correspondences asking me to cover (or look into) specific topics that are already in the queue (but realistically will take years to get to). Put differently, because of how many things I feel compelled to cover, I know that in the long run it’s actually faster for me to go at a slow methodical pace than a fast one which leaves a lot of holes I’ll have to go back and fix later.

Note: early in my knowledge accumulation process, I realized it saved me a lot of time to strongly consider both sides of argument, since if I allowed myself to become biased and only see what I wanted to see, it would lead to a lot of faults in my understanding of a topic which would take a lot more work to correct down the road once I ran into data that clearly disproved my existing beliefs on a subject.

Likewise, this is also why I struggle so much with how time to put into each article, as I feel for what I’m trying to do, it’s incredibly important for them to be accurate, free of bias (e.g., I will always seriously discuss the merits of both sides of an argument—especially if I initially disagree with one side but a lot of people believe it) but on the other hand, if I spend too much time doing that, it becomes impossible to produce content at a rate where it’s realistic for me to complete the goal I set out for this publication (sharing the Forgotten Sides of Medicine).

For instance, once I saw the timelines in motion and the course of the wave that was propagating through the society, I realized it would be incredibly important to write a piece about the most important aspects of Hurricane Helene the day after the Vice Presidential debate (as that was when I expected the wave to crest), and to be able to do so in a manner that was objective and impartial (which was a bit challenging as I had very strong feeling about the situation due to my direct connections to it). Since Wednesday ended up being a busy work day and every day mattered for the people stranded there, at midnight, I made the call that I needed to skip a detailed edit and just send the article out—which led to three unfortunate typos in it that dozens of people then pointed out since those errors reversed my intended meaning (i.e., in the subtitle I said it was bad to “put people before profits” and in the article I wrote 2020 instead of 2024 which implied trust in medicine significantly increased rather than decreased from the COVID response). Overall, given how everything’s worked out, I feel I made the right call, but I run into this situation all the time, and it’s immensely frustrating!

Similarly, throughout my medical training, I had to deal with the same situation hundreds of times—a patient shows up with debilitating chronic pain (e.g., from a spinal surgery, a severe injury or arthritis) which was being poorly managed by physical therapy and (toxic) pharmaceuticals who over and over was told nothing else could be done for them regardless of how unlivable their life was—and while I knew most of them could get their lives back with DMSO, the only thing I was ever allowed to do was manage the frequent side effects of their current drugs. I cannot begin to describe how frustrating this was, and that was why I vowed to myself that if I ever got the chance to do it (which I never thought would happen), I would make the public aware of the alternative DMSO offered for those patients. In turn, that’s why now that I can, I’ve been willing to put so much time into presenting the case for DMSO (e.g., in this article).

Note: somewhat analogously, I’ve found it very frustrating that the management for sports injuries has always essentially been “throw NSAIDs at them,” despite the fact they often do very little, they create chronically weakened tissue at the repair site and have significant toxicity—whereas DMSO rapidly treats musculoskeletal injuries and has none of those issues. Similarly, I’ve seen so many sad cases of permanent disability from a stroke, spinal cord injury or head trauma that I know could have been prevented (or partially healed after the fact) if the FDA had not maliciously buried DMSO, and it is so immensely painful to live with that knowledge as you care for these patients (or to be labeled as insane and met with hostility if you try to explain it to your colleagues).

Finding Joy

While being an archivist is my goal, it would be very difficult to motivate myself to write as much as I do if I didn’t enjoy what I do. In turn, there are three key sources of joy I get from writing.

First, I really like to help people. For example, a major motivation for me to go into medicine was that I would frequently expend a lot of time into helping people. Still, over time I realized what I was doing just wasn’t very efficient (e.g., I’d spend dozens of hours on one person I felt was in need but it wouldn’t really go anywhere) so my hope was by becoming a doctor I could do it a lot more efficiently. In turn, a lot of the knowledge base I bring to this publication came from everything I learned from a lifetime of trying to help people and the many failures I encountered along the way. Because of that, I really like using this platform to help people (given efficient the scalability of it), but simultaneously, regardless of how I scale things up, I still run into the same problem I’ve always run into—too many people, too little time.

Second, I like to know if things I believe are actually true. In turn, one of the things I’m using this platform is to get data on things I’m curious about (e.g., I’m blessed to have a very awake group of readers here, so there are often very insightful stories shared about topics I’m interested in).

For example, these comments from a recent article about using DMSO for chronic pain and arthritis highlight both of those sources of joy:

My husband is 100% disabled Vietnam vet, agent orange. He's got diabetes, neuropathy, torn rotator cuff, bursitis in hips & PTSD. He's in pain all the time despite taking 12 different meds, including 800 mg Gabapentin 4x's/day, Lidocaine patches & diclofenac sodium gel.

He's had 5 back surgeries, 4 in just the past 4 years:

2013 - first lumbar surgery

2021 - cervical neck surgery;

2022 - lumbar surgery again;

2023 - re-do of 2022 lumbar because bone didn't heal properly & screws came loose;

2024 - redo of 2021 cervical because bone didn't heal properly & screws came loose.

As soon as I read your article I drove to Tractor Supply & bought DMSO gel for animals. I came home & lathered it on hubby's feet, shoulder & lower back & hips. He finally got relief - better than all the other pain meds he's taking! He's cheered up.

[Note: I advise using forms designed for humans]

Thank you for telling us about DMSO!

My husband has damaged nerves in his leg and foot from a surgery 2 months ago. He has been in excruciating pain every day since and has tried different pain relief approaches to help relieve the pain and burning (those mostly didn't work). He has been using the DMSO 70/30 with aloe (little odour) for the last 3 days and has finally found some relief..it's like a miracle actually. Thank you so much MWD!!

Note: I fully admit that even now, I still have some degree of disbelief that a widely available substance almost no one knows about actually can do this, which is ultimately why comments like this are so helpful to me.

Third, I like to feel what I’m doing is meaningful. For example, when the Rescue the Republic Rally was announced I realized that it would be critical to effectively promote it on Twitter, so I reached out to the organizers for some resources and then worked with The Vigilant Fox to do just that. Then on Weds, Pierre Kory received this message from one of the organizers and forwarded it to me (who wanted me to share the rally with the readers here):

Note: the rally can be viewed here and Tulsi’s speech here.

Fourth, I like to stand up for people I feel a personal connection to. For example, when I started this project, I really didn’t expect it to go anywhere (hence why I chose such a plain username) as a final attempt to get a message out I felt was important for the moment. However, since Steve Kirsch felt what I had to say was important, without knowing who I was, he gave me a platform to share it and furthermore encouraged his supporters to give me a permanent voice—which in just two and a half years have grown into something far larger than I could have ever imagined. Because of that, whenever I see people who I feel are in a similar situation to where I was, I try to pay it forward and publicize their message so it gets heard (e.g., the horrible treatment of the unvaccinated James Miller witnessed at his hospital and tried to stop—which ultimately forced him to leave the state).

Likewise, many people I am close to have been severely injured by pharmaceuticals (I do not believe should be on the market) and then were gaslighted and abandoned by the medical system. For this reason, I try to prioritize articles that give them a voice.

Fifth, I really like to share things with that others that create joy for me. For example, I like ephemeral music, and one of my favorite songs is an ephemeral song that accomplishes something that’s often quite difficult to do—having that quality in tandem with an upbeat (joyful) melody. Since it was inspired by the area Hurricane Helene hit, I felt it was appropriate to share, and then was delighted to find this comment on the song!

In my case, one of the things that has always given me the most joy is the experience of coming across a piece of information that gives me some type of profound insight about the world we live in because of expansion I feel within myself (e.g., in my mind) when that happens. In turn, one of the things I aim to do here is provide the things that have the potential to do that for each of you. Because of this, one of the things I always struggle with is covering topics I feel are more likely to do this (e.g., things that shows how spirituality is intertwined with science and transform our concept of reality—such as the wealth of evidence that personalities transfer from donor to recipient with organ transplants or forgotten Russian research showing the heart is a conscious organ connected to the entire body that both regulates and protects the rest of the body), or focusing on topics that are more likely to directly help people (e.g., a dissection of the great blood pressure scam).

Past Present and Future

One of my favorite movies is V for Vendetta (e.g., I write an article each year on the Fifth of November about the movie’s remarkable parallels to the modern age). While there many things I like about the movie, the key reason it’s my favorite movie is because one scene (and the cinematography behind it) encapsulates how I experience reality.

Note: this scene somewhat spoils the movie—so I have a redacted transcript of the key part below for those who have not seen it yet.

“The problem is, he knows us better than we know ourselves. That's why I went to [redacted], last night.”

“But that's [not allowed]!”

“I had to see it. There wasn't much left. But when I was there it was strange. I suddenly had this feeling that everything was connected. It's like I could see the whole thing, one long chain of events that stretched all the way back before [redacted]. I felt like I could see everything that happened, and everything that is going to happen. It was like a perfect pattern, laid out in front of me. And I realized we're all part of it, and all trapped by it.”

“So do you know what's gonna happen?”

“No, it was a feeling. But I can guess.”

Ever since I was young, I perceived time differently from most of my peers, and more and more as I got older, the past, present, and future began to blend together (e.g., I’d constantly see how an event I was witnessing in the present would ripple into the future and again and again I’d feel as though what I was dealing with in the present was an echo of something which had begun long in the past). On one hand, this has been why I’ve been so interested in studying history (e.g., of medicine) but on the other hand, it’s made life somewhat challenging because I would constantly have to watch people make decisions which would inevitably harm them in the future and nothing I said could stop them from doing it because they simply couldn’t see those ripples.

Note: the siblings who wrote and directed V for Vendetta (and The Matrix) are the only people I know who have been able to interweave the malleable dimensionality of time into their movies (e.g., they also did it with Cloud Atlas).

In turn, two types of events often catch my attention.

•Events that appear to be a direct ripple of a past event which was disastrous. For example, I knew COVID would be a disaster and exactly how it would play out because I immediately felt a déjà vu of what Fauci did during the AIDS crisis, and once the vaccine rollouts began, I immediately began feeling a déjà vu of what had happened more than a century ago with the abhorrent smallpox mandates and the working classes increasingly violent (and ultimately successful) struggle to overturn them (which is what actually ended smallpox).

•Events that appear to be another repetition of an existing ripple that’s propagated throughout history, but unlike its other iterations, go much further and take an extreme trajectory outside the existing wave that exists. For example, the ultimate reason I decided to focus on the Lahaina fires and spent a while trying to dig up information about it was because I immediately recognized that what I was hearing sounded much worse than the typical disaster capitalism I came across and hence signaled something much worse was in the works.

So, throughout the pandemic, I tried to warn people about what was happening, but outside of my immediate relatives, most didn’t listen to me, and since then I’ve had to deal with people I begged not to vaccinate be severely injured by the vaccines (e.g., one relative recently died suddenly from a vaccine injury).

Likewise, in the article on Lahaina, I concluded it by saying that the key lesson from Lahaina was that something like this was going to happen again, that if anything, as hard as it might seem to believe would be even worse, so it was critical to learn from what the people did there to protect themselves so each of us would be prepared when something similar showed up on our doorsteps.

In turn, it just really messes with you to have to watch these slow motion train wrecks happen and be powerless to stop them—especially as you become more and more aware of the power of the waves behind those ripples (e.g., that describes my experience throughout COVID-19). As a result, one of major struggles I’ve always faced is the conflict I feel between accepting the inevitability of these events and withdrawing from suffering I feel from all of it or trying to bear witness to what’s happening and searching for anything I can do to change it (e.g., this came up a lot when I had to watch children be injured by pediatric vaccinations during my medical training).

Because of this, one of the guiding principles in what I do here is to prioritize publishing anything I feel has a chance of breaking each “inevitable” wave I watch propagate throughout society—while simultaneously accepting it is almost impossible to actually pull this off and trying to not get too emotionally distracted from the greater goal.

To illustrate: the current disaster with Hurricane Helene (especially in North Carolina) hits especially close to home, and it’s hard to put into words how upsetting and enraging it is for me—especially since once Lahaina happened, I kept feeling something even worse would happen to people I cared dearly for. Yet (even though I really want to), I also know that constantly posting about the horrors there (e.g., people I know in the area are now finding dead bodies “stacked up like logs”) was not the most productive thing I could do on the issue and as a result, in my recent article on it, I instead tried to focus on the broader cycle this all was a fragment of as I knew that was the most helpful thing I could do for both the present situation and similar ones in the future.

Note: it’s important to not forget that many other states besides North Carolina (e.g., Tennessee) have also been severely impacted by the hurricane.

Overton Windows

The Overton Window is a theoretical construct that denotes what is currently acceptable to talk about and what is so “unacceptable” that discussing it will immediately get one canceled (or worse). From having gotten to know quite a few of the prominent “dissidents,” I’ve come to appreciate that we all share a common characteristic—we are acutely aware of the Overton Window and are always trying to figure out just how far we could go without violating it.

Note: similarly, in public, I often am much less polite (e.g., I prefer profanities to euphemisms as the former are often the most effective to unambiguously articulate a point) but I deliberately avoid doing that here as I know all it does is prevent the beneficial message I want from being heard by others and hence is a selfish act. This in turn arose from realizing that in many situations, the way I was responding to them (e.g., getting outraged over someone else’s suffering) was primarily an emotional catharsis I was doing for myself rather than for the person who really needed help.

As a result of Overton Window, many of the things we believe we don’t say publicly because we know doing so would be incredibly counterproductive to our goal to move things in a positive direction (although I will acknowledge Pierre Kory is a lot less restrained than most of us and has somehow found a way to make it work)—but simultaneously we are always watching for the Overton Window to expand just enough that we can.

For instance, I’ve spent years studying geoengineering (weather modification), and I have a few intelligent colleagues who have now spent decades doing a deep dive into it. However, despite the fact the sky is different now from what I clearly remember how it was in the early 1990s and I strongly suspect a lot of the “climate change disasters” we are facing aren’t completely natural, I’ve avoided discussing the subject here (e.g., in relation to the recent hurricane). I’ve done that because despite my best efforts, I simply don’t understand the subject well enough to be able to present what I feel is a solid case for it rather than one full of speculations that would only serve to discredit anything else I put forward (e.g., the rock-solid case that FEMA is killing people by blocking aid to North Carolina while simultaneously doing almost nothing to help the people there).

Note: one of the most common tactics used to discredit anti-establishment viewpoints is to seed it with questionable “conspiracy theories” and then wedge the group apart by attacking leaders in it (who want to stay within the Overton Window) for not endorsing those more radical ideas. The most overt example I’ve seen of this recently was bad actors promoting the idea “viruses are a hoax“ to fracture our movement, which since then has taken on a life of its own (e.g., I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been accused of actually working for Pfizer because we are perpetuating the “lie” viruses exist, or from the opposite end how often the label “virus deniers” is used as a way to write off the vaccine safety advocates regardless of the evidence they bring forward).

In turn, while I don’t believe “viruses are a hoax,” (which I addressed here and here) there are a lot of fringe ideas (i.e., “conspiracy theories”) I ascribe to, but generally speaking, I’ve avoided mentioning them here either because I can’t adequately back them up or because they are too controversial (and ultimately not that important) so I don’t feel injecting them into the discussion is helpful for moving things forward in a positive direction.

In my eyes, the concept of Overton Windows is critically important to understand because there is always a sizable portion of people in society who can see things for what they are and realize the society they are trapped within has “gone mad” but simultaneously, if they share those observations (hence violating the Overton Window) they instead will be seen as the insane ones. Because of this, I constantly find legit (“awake”) people hiding in plain sight who are happy to open up about what they’re actually seeing (and help you) once you make it clear it’s safe for them to share what they actually feel with you.

Note: one of the main ways society controls us is by making each person believe they are crazy and no one else can see what they are seeing—when in reality that is anything but the truth.

In turn, each COVID dissident I’ve spoken to was one of those people who never felt things were quite right and for years had tried to subtly spread the truth where they could (and sometimes started minor conflicts over it with their peers) but mostly had stayed silent and felt trapped and alone by the system they are within. However, during COVID, they gradually realized what was happening was so abhorrent that it was worth taking on the personal sacrifice that would be required to speak out against it.

Note: while some of them were fully aware of what they were getting into, others like Pierre Kory (who went viral after he testified in front of the Senate about ivermectin) weren’t expecting to become a lightning rod for controversy and had to rapidly adapt to the new mission they’d been dragged into.

Similarly, in addition to someone appearing to be one of those awake people who can see what’s really going on and the web we’re trapped in (along with being hypersensitive to the malleability of the Overton Window), one of my main criteria for who to trust in this movement has been to ask: “If my primary goal was to make things better, how would I handle things if I was this person’s shoes.” For example, do they prioritize doing things that are good for the movement over things that are good for themselves and do they make an effort to steer the movement towards or away from divisive subjects that typically break apart movements apart. Similarly, a big part of why I chose to trust the people I did (e.g., Malone, Kirsch, and Kory) was because they would consistently use their larger platforms to promote other upcoming voices they felt were important for the movement rather than viewing them as competition—something that would only be done if their intentions were pure.

In turn, I’ve found this behavior to be a fairly reliable metric for assessing people as it’s very rare to meet a bad actor who will think two steps ahead and act in a manner that would be seen as genuine by another genuine person. Conversely, I’ve consistently seen the people who later ended up turning into a problem have that be preceded by what I’d consider to be questionable conduct. Simultaneously however, this metric only goes so far. A lot of what one does also has to factor in the gut read you have of someone (e.g., I can normally tell if people believe what they are saying, and it’s fairly rare to meet a liar who can muster a sincere conviction while uttering something they don’t actually believe).

Note: somewhat analogously in medicine, while certain (high paying) specialtieslike dermatology are a cut-throat endeavor to get into, current medical students have shared with me that a few specialties also exist (e.g., physical medicine and rehabilitation or PM&R) where everyone is really supportive of those who want to enter it. In turn, I find those specialties tend to have a much higher proportion of doctors who are happy with their lives and go out of their way to find ways to help their patients (which makes it particularly frustrating the PM&R field does not know about DMSO as it would greatly benefit the majority of chronic patients they see).

Public Figures

Even though it’s impossible to read people’s minds, I still like to try! In turn, I always keep an eye out for opportunities to evaluate if my assessment of the individual was correct.

For instance, I was quite curious to see who RFK Jr. would chose to pick as running mate, and once Nicole Shanahan was announced, not knowing anything about her, I watched her nomination speech and was left with the impression she stood for the right things, was dedicated to bringing them to fruition and was competent enough to do it (a fairly rare combination). I then looked into her background and noted that it was both congruent with the assessment and that it had numerous things that would jump out as red flags to some conservative voters (e.g., her past affiliations) and lead to unproductive distrust and animosity towards her. Based on this, I decided it would be prudent to do what I could to head that off by writing a relatable and reasoned endorsement for her.

That endorsement understandably received significant criticism here (something I’d expected given her past affiliations), but in the months since, data to evaluate my assessment became available and Nicole has proven to be a dependable ally of Team Humanity and gradually won the trust of many of Trump’s supporters.

Likewise, I am constantly asking people I know who have crossed paths with influential figures what things are like behind the scenes (since any narrative you get in the media is almost guaranteed to be biased to the point it’s worthless).

In the entertainment sector, while I often hear awful stories about what well-known celebrities are like in private (e.g., contacts who traverse the same social scenes or are friends with former romantic partners really don’t like many of them) my physician colleagues who’ve treated well-known celebrities have all told me a fairly similar story—once you get past all the images created around the celebrities, they are pretty normal (and often quite nice) people who struggle with all the same things the rest of us do. Unfortunately, because they are hounded by the paparazzi (which is quite stressful), it’s very hard for them to show most of that to the public.

In government, a lot of what I hear is quite depressing as many of the people in Washington simply don’t care about the American people (let alone feel connected to them) and are only focused on doing what’s necessary to maintain the facade they care so they can continue to advance within the power structure. For example, someone I knew was in the Congressional cafeteria when the botched Afghanistan withdrawal happened and was appalled that most of the staffers weren’t the least bothered by it—in fact quite a few of them instead made rather callous jokes about the situation). Likewise, I’ve heard numerous stories from someone who worked with a “popular” governor and saw numerous things happen behind the scenes that would have made them unelectable if the public knew.

However, while things like that may seem shocking, they should come as no surprise as the ruling class consistently adopts policies that pointlessly kill large numbers of people for power and profit, and you can’t support things like that if you have a shred of empathy. Conversely, one of the first things that drew my attention to Trump was him repeatedly saying he thought the wars in the Middle East were a tragedy that needed to stop and unlike most politicians who say that (but then never do anything), he had a real conviction behind his words. In turn, in 2016, I told many of my left-wing friends (who had previously protested against Bush’s wars) that I was pretty sure if Trump won he would be the most anti-war president of their lifetimes (whereas in contrast Hillary Clinton was already a known war criminal).

Sadly, the media did such a remarkable job brainwashing them, most of them never recognized this once it happened or even continued to be concerned by our overseas wars (e.g., I heard many formerly antiwar liberals spout neocon talking points when Trump wanted to withdraw from the Middle East and then turn a blind eye to the carnage Biden unleashed overseas).

Note: I’ve never forgotten this because war is my number one political issue and I hold so much sadness and disgust for how effectively the military industrial complex has desensitized the American people to one of the most horrific and tragic things in existence.

Behind the Veil

Over the years, I’ve gained an ability to tell if someone’s heart is behind what they are saying (because remarkably, a lot of the time, it’s not), and my rule has always been to gravitate towards people where it is. In turn, I’ve found it’s quite rare to have a politician who both espouses positions I agree with and who is actually behind what they are saying. For example, there were a few well known politicians who were held in high regard for their willingness to advocate for important positions the ruling class didn’t support who I nonetheless never could get behind because regardless of what they were saying, their words felt hollow—and as time went forward they gradually adopted reprehensible policies that left many of their supporters in disbelief.

Conversely, I have been a longtime supporter of both Ron Paul and Tulsi Gabbard, because in addition to me agreeing with their positions (e.g., both of them are anti-war), their hearts are actually behind what they’re saying, and if you watch the trajectory of their political careers, unlike most politicians, they haven’t wavered on their core values despite getting immense pressure to do so.

Note: while I do not know Tulsi directly, I’ve spoken to close friends of hers (some of whom I trust completely) who all affirmed her integrity (along with her frustration with the cruelty and apathy of our political process). Likewise, my friends who directly know RFK Jr. and Ron Johnson (the leading Senate advocate against the COVID vaccines) have all vouched for the sincerity and integrity of these men (which is why I’ve supported them here).

In the last part of this article (which primarily exists as an open forum for you to ask any questions that have been on your mind) I will share the good and the bad I’ve heard from people (I felt were trustworthy) who were directly connected to key political figures (e.g., Trump, Clinton, Biden, Gates, Obama, Newsom) and what they saw actually motivated these people. Given how polarized these figures are, I’ve gone back and forth on if it’s helpful or appropriate to share what I’ve dug up over the years, and I ultimately decided the best option would be to have it at the end of an open thread shortly before the election and hear your thoughts on what I’d learned.