United We Stand, Divided We Fall

Now is the time for each of us to begin making America Healthy Again

I am a big believer in the phrase “united we stand, divided we fall.” As such, having watched a lot of infighting over the last few years, I have tried to support those who I believe are doing good work, and avoided attacking anyone else. Now that we are getting closer to something most of us never imagined being possible—health activists being able to change decades of destructive Federal policies, the stakes for unity are much higher and the forces working against it much more aggressive.

Recently, I shared an article by Dr. Malone about the critical need to move beyond that infighting which highlighted the recent attacks upon Calley Means (e.g., he recently was on a viral podcast where another participant relentlessly tried to tear Calley and, to a lesser extent, MAHA down).

As I’ve previously been in very similar situations to what Calley encountered there, I felt it was more appropriate to have someone else (who would be less biased) comment on it. However, after posting it, many readers asked me to open the discussion here so they could comment on the points Malone raised.

As such, I felt an appropriate way to do that was to address some of the issues and concerns I’ve repeatedly seen crop up over the last few years and some of the strategies I believe can be beneficial for us to consider as we move from the fringe to the mainstream.

Non-Linear Social Change

In studying the history of movements that lead to social change, I typically find a fairly consistent pattern. For a long time, there is an endless toil by a group of dedicated but marginalized group of people who can see the dire need for the change to happen but are mostly ignored, and then all of a sudden, in a brief period of time things rapidly shift and what had long seemed impossible suddenly happens. In essence, they follow the same curve you see in many other areas of life (e.g., this curve resembles the trajectory of many successful online influencers and stocks).

Sometimes the shift (e.g., in the stock market) instead follows a parabolic curve (which is less steep).

One of the best historical examples of this was the Berlin Wall, a hated structure which separated East (communist) Germany from West Germany that arose from agreements made at the end of World War 2. The wall was manned by guards authorized to use lethal force against anyone who attempted to cross it, and had remained unassailable for almost 40 years.

However, due to a series of events that had happened in the two preceding months, on November 9^th, the government accidentally gave a message to the media that undermined the collective mindset that had held the population in check:

After hearing the 9 November broadcast, East Germans began gathering at the Wall, at the six checkpoints between East and West Berlin, demanding that border guards immediately open the gates. The surprised and overwhelmed guards made many hectic telephone calls to their superiors about the problem. At first, they were ordered to find the "more aggressive" people gathered at the gates and stamp their passports with a special stamp that barred them from returning to East Germany—in effect, revoking their citizenship.

However, this still left thousands of people demanding to be let through "as Schabowski said we can." It soon became clear that no one among the East German authorities would take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so the vastly outnumbered soldiers had no way to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens.

Note: those events are very similar to the ending scene of V for Vendetta (which is one of my favorite movies)—and I suspect may have been the inspiration for that scene.

Before long, the guards yielded to those wishing to cross, citizens with flowers gathered to greet them on the Western side, people began scaling the wall, and by the end of the day, citizens began dismantling the wall. Over the next few months, guards gradually gave up on trying to stop this or repair the wall, and half a year later, official demolitions of the wall began.

Mary Elise Sarotte in a 2009 Washington Post story characterized the series of events leading to the fall of the Wall as an accident, saying "One of the most momentous events of the past century was, in fact, an accident, a semicomical and bureaucratic mistake that owes as much to the Western media as to the tides of history."

To reach the exponential phase, three typical things are needed:

•The foundation to be laid by years (if not decades) of arduous work.
•The societal circumstances to unexpectedly change so those dormant seeds can sprout.
•The right people to get involved who know how to sprout those seeds.

For example, in the case of this publication, most of the content I use comes from the lifework of many brilliant and pioneering individuals who came up with remarkable discoveries that could have profoundly benefitted humanity, but had emerged in eras where those seeds simply could not sprout (e.g., because market monopolies could suppress them with impunity). It always deeply bothered me that those discoveries were not able to see the light of day, so I sought them out, both to use them in my immediate circle, but more importantly, in the hope that I could somehow preserve them for the time when they were ready to emerge.

Note: one of the most remarkable people I learned from (who had an uncanny aptitude for seeing the future) stated that it was not the time for his life’s work to emerge, but in the future it very much would.

The Seeds Sprout

For most of my life, I’d been involved in the vaccine safety field and a lifelong Democrat. As such, it was extremely disheartening to watch the profound shift which occurred in the Democrat party after Obama’s election where the entire Democrat party suddenly became pharmaceutical lapdogs, best demonstrated by a string of abhorrent childhood vaccine mandates that were pushed across the nation in 2015.

After SB277 was legalized (due to a measles “emergency” where no one died), a push to mandate vaccinations emerged throughout the country. In each state, I watched the same process play out. A massive grassroots protest greeted the state legislatures, the legislature remarked that they had never had this much public opposition to a bill before, and in every single case, the legislators voted down party lines: all Democrats unilaterally supported the mandates and all Republicans eventually listened to their constituents and opposed them (Colorado was the closest as the Republicans had a narrow majority in the Senate which defeated the bill). From this, I distinctly remember a Colorado activist who reported that they witnessed a pharmaceutical lobbyist typing messages on her laptop the Democratic legislators that were then repeated verbatim during a public hearing on the proposed law in response to testimonials against it.

At the time this was happening, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny (who has been one of the pioneers in the vaccine safety field and who I considered to be amongst the most knowledgeable of the political realities it faced) shared something I was really taken aback by. She insisted the actual purpose of the vaccines mandates sweeping the country was to lay the ground for the Bill Gates WHO plan to usher in a decade of vaccines (discussed here) and that we would soon see adult vaccine mandates.

Note: Sherri Tenpenny DO also has a Substack (which is one of the ones I recommend).

When I heard this, my immediate thought was “that’s impossible, there is absolutely no way it’s politically viable to mandate adult vaccines for the general population. It would take something like the 1918 influenza to shift that.”

Nonetheless, while I doubted her prediction, for some reason I just couldn’t forget it, and I began searching for something that might be able to counteract this agenda. Before long this led me to the Tea Party (which by 2016 had largely disappeared from public view). For example, in 2015, the Washington Post highlighted that the Tea Party had the lowest trust of scientists of the issue of vaccines:

Shortly after, Trump announced his candidacy for presidency and when I watched how he handled his first debate (specifically due to how he was able to turn around a question that would have likely ended any other candidacy and that there was no else running who had a comparable aptitude for debate) I realized that there was a high likelihood he would become the next president.

At that moment, three things dawned on me:

•Many of Trump’s populist positions came from the Tea Party.

•Trump had previously spoken out on vaccines.

•Trump typically did not like to backdown when challenged by the media, and hence had a realistic chance to be able to become elected while openly challenging the vaccine schedule (which was essentially political suicide and hence never done by a major candidate).

For example at the following September debate, I saw an exchange I never in my life imagined would reach that stage:

Note: every video in this article was edited down to its essential parts.

Because of this, after the first presidential debate, I put all my focus into trying to make questioning the pharmaceutical industry and health freedom be associated with Making America Great Again, and while it’s hard to know if what I did mattered, it may have helped plant a few of the seeds that later sprouted.

Four years later, in December 2019, I started seeing reports on anonymous forums about concerning virus breaking out in China which I initially thought had be an internet hoax as there no mainstream coverage of it (since the media and the government always hypes up inconsequential “pandemics”). However, before long, it became clear to me it was very real and that it was being deliberately covered up (which suggested this was done to allow it to spread—consider for instance how much protest Trump’s travel bans got, or how prominent San Francisco and New York Democrats decried “racist” calls to call off large Chinese New Year gatherings).

Hearing Sherry Tenpenny’s warning in my mind, at the end of 2019, I quickly had a flash of how everything was going to play out (which was fairly accurate, in part because I had expected Fauci to orchestrate something similar to what he did during the HIV crisis).

As such, I felt the only way to head off the coming catastrophe would be to pray the health freedom coalition in the Republican party mobilized against COVID-19 and to have a viable treatment become available for the illness. Sadly, despite the immense efforts both I and many others made, every path to get the therapies out was blocked and it went nowhere except within the parallel medical system (e.g., at private practices of integrative medical doctors).
Note: given how monolithic the forces we were against were, I had expected my efforts to be for naught, but nonetheless, I still tried because I didn’t want to have to live with the knowledge I’d done nothing once the inevitable catastrophe happened.

Once the vaccines hit the market, I realized I’d greatly underestimated how dangerous they were going to be, as I had thought they would cause significant issues for some and lead to a large number of long term chronic health conditions, but I had not expected to see multiple patients every day with serious reactions to the vaccine or have friends from around the country I’d warned about the vaccine start calling me up to ask if the COVID vaccines could cause heart attacks and strokes (all of which for some reason I felt I had to document—and ultimately collected 135 instances of).

Following this, give or take everything Sherri Tenpenny predicted came to pass, and one of the most challenging experiences for me was not being able to find a way to stop it no matter how hard I looked for a way to. Likewise, it was so painful to watch close friends fold to the social pressure and mandates despite me pleading for them not to and then develop severe and permanent vaccine complications. In essence, I just felt like a grain of sand on a beach that was powerless to stop the immense waves from washing us back and forth and I cannot begin describe how much I loathed it.

Note: one of the lasting effects of the Trump presidency was to create widespread distrust of the mainstream media with the Republican Party (dropping it from 32% of them trusting the media to 12% now). Because of this (and the Tea Party influences to question vaccination) many Republicans were reluctant to get the vaccine in spite of Trump’s assurances, and when the media used their standard playbook of slandering and gaslighting those who disagreed with its narrative (by not wanting to vaccinate) it backfired due to that already been greatly overused over the last 4 years.

Fortunately however, these abhorrent events convinced many others who had also been trying to fix things behind the scenes to begin publicly speaking out, such as this July, 11, 2021 Podcast that rippled across the internet (after which YouTube banned it):

In my eyes, this podcast was immensely important because on one hand it seemed to be the turning point where the internet’s attention switched to seriously considering the dangers of the vaccines. More importantly, it occurred in concert with other professionals and public figures beginning to have the courage to speak out publicly about the vaccines.

Note: having gotten to know quiet a few of those dissidents, I’ve found their stories were remarkably similar. They all were talented enough to succeed within the system, but simultaneously awake enough to tell what was happening wasn’t right. However, again and again they saw that if they spoke out, nothing positive would come of it and they’d just get crushed. As such, they tried to do what they could from behind the scenes to make things better. However, what they saw during COVID was so unacceptable they eventually felt they had to (e.g., Malone eventually spoke out, despite knowing what it would entail for him, because he felt he would not be able to live with himself if he stayed silent) and because a critical mass of other dissidents emerged that began making it safer to speak out.

Once this happened, I realized we were potentially on the cusp of an exponential shift, as for years, the vaccine safety movement had wanted prominent physicians and philanthropists to speak publicly on the issue. However, that still was not enough (due to how powerful the propaganda we were up against was) and it took the mandates for the seeds to begin sprouting (as much of the country was already aware the vaccine was unsafe and ineffective, so by being subjected to the mandates, they could no longer ignore the issue).

At this point, it dawned on me that the pharmaceutical industry’s greed with the COVID vaccine (along with the increasing possibilities for free speech within online media) had created a once in a lifetime window to open the public’s eyes to the other predatory practices of the pharmaceutical industry, as in essence, everything done during COVID was not that different from what had happened before—COVID simply was a much more extreme iteration.

As such, I floated the idea to a few people I knew who were trying to bring attention to the dangers of other pharmaceuticals to connect what they were exposing to the COVID vaccines, particularly since I felt the vaccines failing (and if anything making you more likely to get COVID) might be the one thing that could get through to those most deeply invested in the Democrat party’s devotion to pharmaceutical products.

Sadly things continued to get worse and over the winter of 2021-2022, I hit one of the most depressing points in my life, in part because of what I was watching unfold, and in part because I couldn’t see anything I could do to stop it. Shortly after, I decided to try publishing an anonymous article online (which I did not expect to go anywhere) because it didn’t sit well with me that I was doing nothing, and before long, a series of lucky circumstances resulted in Steve Kirsch publishing it and (without knowing who I was) encouraging his followers to subscribe to me, along with a subsequent article I published (about all the vaccine injuries I’d felt compelled to log over the last year) going viral as well.

After a bit, it dawned on me that I had a platform that could reach people, and I gradually rearranged my life so that I could maximize getting information out there that I felt people needed to know and I believed the time was right for it to burst into public awareness.

If you take a step back, it’s quite extraordinary (and almost unbelievable) that an anonymous author who began with nothing could have become so well-known in such a short space of time. This is my eyes was due to:

•Luck (I was in the right place at the right time).
•A unique stage being set that made it possible for these ideas to burst into public awareness.
•Using a heart-centered writing style that prioritized the experience of the reader (as life had taught me that was necessary).
•Putting a lot of thought into the most effective way to get each message out, and publishing at a slower pace so that I could maintain those standards.
•Not covering topics I felt were divisive or unproductive.

This worked, many others felt comfortable supporting me, and about 3 months ago, this publication hit the parabolic growth curve.

I highlight this because most of the people I know in the movement who “appeared out of nowhere” had very similar histories to mine and then out of nowhere suddenly found themselves in the position where they unexpectedly got thrust onto the national stage and had to figure out on the fly how to responsibly handle their new position (e.g., Pierre Kory told me after he testified from the heart to a Senate Subcommittee about ivermectin he suddenly gained a massive influx of followers—something he did not expect to happen and was not prepared for—and quickly became a public figure in the health freedom movement).

Note: Senator Ron Johnson (who invited Pierre Kory to speak to the subcommittee) was elected by the Tea Party, and since COVID started (echoing the values of the Tea Party) made the decision to put his entire career at risk to lead the charge against the COVID cartel (as someone had to create the initial infinitesimal momentum against it so that the exponential growth phase we are now in could eventually occur).

The Insiders

One of the most common attacks I see floated against people who I know are doing a lot of good work (and I frequently know on a personal level are very good people) is that they actually can’t be trusted, they were artificially placed here, and are actually trying to undermine the entire movement (e.g., they are “controlled opposition” or a “limited hangout”).

While this can be a valid concern (e.g., I have seen this happen in activists groups I was involved with in the past), in almost all cases, I see it taken way too far, as that label can easily be affixed to anyone who worked inside the system (e.g., all whistleblowers) and never takes into account how much individuals have to put on the line to speak out.

A Midwestern Doctor @MidwesternDoc

Whistleblowers are critical for righting the wrongs in government and healthcare. They always pay a steep price, but still would choose to do it again. Gøtzsche's presentation provides the best explanation I have ever seen on what drives the heroes we need now more than ever.

Most importantly, it is virtually impossible to change things (especially in a complex and treacherous bureaucracy like Washington DC) without the help of those who have a great deal of experience navigating it. Likewise, in almost all cases where I’ve seen a social movement hit its exponential phase, that growth was made possible by insiders feeling safe enough to use their talents to make that shift possible.

As such, my belief has been that it’s critical to create the environment where the old and the new members of a movement can work together, and each party fulfills the role they are best suited for.

Unfortunately, the unique circumstances we faced created a window to allow many new faces to suddenly rise to prominence, and as such raised questions about how this could have happened “organically” (rather than being funded by someone), as many of those who had toiled for years to lay the foundation of the movement did not experience that same boost.

From my perspective in most cases, the process was organic and due to the fact an experienced party with a large platform recognized that that they had the right message for the time and hence promoted them (e.g., consider my experience with Steve Kirsch).
Note: the media has always been heavily biased towards promoting whistleblowers who recently became public (e.g., consider Peter Rost’s story as a Pfizer executive who blew the whistle—who not many know was greatly supported by New York Times Journalist and fellow Substack author Alex Berenson).

Likewise, Calley Means followed a tract many disgusted insiders (e.g., Robert Malone or Pierre Kory) have followed and decided to leave the establishment to try and expose the tactics being used on us. He had the good fortune that Tucker Carlson’s team (who almost certainly specialize in identifying compelling interviewee candidates) recognized he had a unique talent to get a message across Tucker had wanted to promote (likely due to his background in PR), after which Tucker gave him a platform, he performed as expected (12.4 million views—much more than a typical episode’s viewership) and very rapidly became a major voice in this sphere.

Note: most of the people I know who became well-known during COVID-19 (including anonymous content producers like the Vigilant Fox) all discovered their existing skillset made them well suited to producing content that reached people, and as such they shifted their focus to communicating the messages they felt would be the most likely to impact the public (which amongst other things required them not covering many topics others wanted them to).

In short, I believe there are three very important things to take from this process:

•There are a lot of people who want to speak out but don’t because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by doing so.

•When the circumstances are right, they will go public, and frequently pave the way for others to go public (hence laying the foundation for the exponential phase of the curve).

•Social persuasion is incredibly difficult (e.g., one of the reasons I am not a public figure is because I am just not good at public speaking) and in most cases, the ones who are the most talented at doing it are the ones who were able to rise through the establishment. As such, the new wave of whistleblowers are often able to finally get a message out that’s never been listened to before and be heard by the public.

In many ways, this is deeply unfair to those who worked for years if not decades to lay the seeds of a movement, but simultaneously reminds me of a Truman quote I’ve lived my life by:

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

In turn, I’ve found all of those I gravitated to tended to be those who prioritized getting things shifted in a responsible manner rather than attracting attention to themselves (and frequently shared with me that they did not want to become a public figure and hoped that they could get back to their previous lives a few years later). In contrast, those I have developed an aversion to the blowhards who engage in a variety of excessive self-promotional tactics (which often include tearing down someone else to attract their following).

Note: I find in most cases, the ego-driven individuals are able to exist within the ecosystem (so you inevitably run into them), and while I disagree with some of their ideas, they normally also adopt insightful and appealing ones. However, in almost all cases, they never experience an exponential surge in popularity as their means of attracting attention relies upon linearly pressuring people to follow them and their program rather than offering a self-replicating pool of value (e.g., I periodically meet people who have spent a lot of money on private retreats with these figures but experienced no real value from them and eventually leave).

The Art of the Possible

In my opinion, the greatest problem in American politics (largely due to the media egging it on) is that there is often no room for nuance or a palatable middle ground. Instead complex subjects are broken into simplistic black and white extremes, and individuals are encouraged to chose one of these extremes and vehemently reject anyone who allies with the other one.

While I too was prone to doing this at a much younger age, I gradually came to realize the other side frequently had very valid points, and that my peers had mislead me by insisting the other side was completely wrong. In turn, I now believe that for virtually any divisive issue which has persisted for a long time, there are normally reasons both sides are correct, and the only way the dilemma can be resolved is with a nuanced perspective that takes both into account. As such, a key goal of this platform has been to create the space where that can occur.

Unfortunately, the political process trains members of each side to not only attack those with of the opposite polarity, but also those who present the nuanced perspective (as it’s harder to mentally process and somewhat supports the opposing side). In my eyes, beyond this being extremely unfortunate (as it keeps us divided and prevents critical problems from being solved) it’s often deliberate, as debates are frequently framed so that a point everyone could agree with that underlies the issue at hand (e.g., that the problem is ultimately result of predatory practices from the upper class) never enters the discussion.

From a young age, I heard the phrase “politics is the art of the possible” and that getting anything done requires being able to intelligently work with the other side to find a compromise that is palatable for them. In contrast, dogmatic thinking and having no tolerance for the opposing viewpoint typically leads either to nothing getting done, or what is done rapidly getting erased the moment the political winds shift.

Because of this, all of us are trying to figure out what are the most viable political strategies to get things permanently shifted, as everyone I’ve spoken to essentially feels the most unforgivable thing that could happen at this point would be for nothing to get done. Generally speaking, the strategy that has been settled on is:

•Start with important issues most of the public agrees on (e.g., cleaning up the food supply) and present them in a professional and persuasive manner that politicians on both aisles can feel amenable to supporting.

•Leverage the unprecedented political support for MAHA to push individuals on the fence over to supporting these policies.

•Educate and empower the public so that they demand further change (both through effective media campaigns and by the government offering greater transparency on many of these issues—the latter of which is one of the single most important things MAHA will do).

•Use the momentum from the previous three to enact the greatest amount of change that is possible.

In turn, my “role” in this process is to be one of the people who works to help educate and empower the public and I’m terrified by this responsibility (which is relatively simple compared to the minefield many entering the Washington DC will have to navigate correctly) as I can see so many different ways to mess it up but simultaneously, I can’t use that as an excuse for inaction.

Casting Doubt

Many of the tactics we see used against America’s health on a regular basis were pioneered by the Tobacco industry (e.g., Calley Means has repeatedly pointed out how Big Food was acquired by Big Tobacco and now uses many of the same tactics the tobacco industry pioneered).

Imagine for example that you have a heavy ball rolling along that is on course to collide with and destroy something you want to protect. On one hand to stop it, you could get in front of the ball and try to stop it (which would likely take a lot of force). Alternatively, you could hit the ball from the side and simply change its trajectory (thereby using far less force).

This realization I believe is what created one of the industry’s most notorious tactics—rather than directly try to dispel damning science (which is often quite hard to do if the data is robust), it’s much easier to simply put out information that casts doubt on all of it. As a result, it is frequently extremely easy for industry to overturn data which should have resulted in its products being taken off the market years ago.

In turn, I frequently see this same tactic utilized within social circles of every scale, as toxic gossip is one of the most tried and true methods to destroy someone’s reputation.

That reality is particularly problematic, because much like political positions, no human is entirely black and white, and everyone has both good and bad sides. As a result, once you know enough about almost anyone, it’s possible to focus on what you don’t like about them and successfully share those aspects (along with salacious rumors) to paint them as a horrendous person.

Note: this mirrors an experience I had in my childhood; I loved to debate opposite positions of arguments and found that I frequently could rearrange the available data to “win” both sides of the argument. This left a deep impression on me as I came to see that “right” and “wrong” are often a process of someone’s rhetorical skill rather than anything remotely approaching the truth (which is why, while time consuming, I try very hard to objectively present both sides of the topics I cover rather than painting a highly selective picture of it).

The ability to paint anyone in a bad light (due to our culture’s intolerance to the nuances in their stories) has a variety of profound consequences for the country. Everyone I’ve talked to in Washington DC for example has told me this describes the environment there, and for that reason, those who want to speak out typically don’t (as they will immediately get their reputations and career prospects destroyed regardless of their character and career accomplishments). Likewise, I believe this is a key tool used to keep politicians in line, as there is almost always a way to construct a repugnant narrative about them.

Similarly, within the medical freedom movement, while I feel that most of the prominent figures I’ve gotten to know are remarkable human beings who are genuinely devoted to making things right and have expended a lot of energy to do it both effectively and ethically—none of them are perfect humans. As such, were I to focus on their negative aspects, I could craft a fairly circumspect narrative about them, especially if I filled it with a variety of half truths and unstated assumptions which would have a real chance of destroying their reputation.

In turn, while I resolutely avoid that type of behavior, in almost every activist group I’ve been in (excluding smaller ones with a very astute leader), I’ve witnessed a process like that unfold, and again and again, have it fracture the group. As such, once I became involved in this movement, I wanted to do all that I could to prevent that from happening, as it has been so painful to watch cause after cause I put a lot of work into get ripped apart by internal strife.

Note: a common question is if this fragmenting happens from bad actors outside the movement, bad actors inside the movement who are doing it for power (a very common human tendency), or it simply being a naturally emergent process. In my lifetime, I have seen all three, but I believe it is to a large extent a naturally emergent process, as those who are marginalized and traumatized often start vital social causes (as they want to stop others from falling victim to a predatory practice) and likewise, they tend to be hyper-attuned to the red flags in others, in turn leading to excessively negative perceptions forming of their group members. However, at the same time, I have seen numerous cases where deliberate outside sabotage happened—I just have not found it to be as common as others believe it is—although that could easily change now that MAHA is posing an existential threat to the pharmaceutical industry.

Wedging

If a wedge is pounded into a piece of wood, the wood will split on either side of the wedge. This gave rise to one of the most common tactics in politics; seeding a highly divisive idea (wedge issue) within your political opposition and then forcing everyone to be for or against it, thereby fracturing their coalition and winning the election.

For instance, childhood gender transitions (and transgender players in women’s sports) played a large role in Trump’s 2024 victory as it was too extreme for much of the Democrat base and independent voters, but because it was polarized, a purity cult emerged within the Democrat party where members of the party who did not endorse it were demonized (in turn leading to them simply leaving the party and flipping the election).

Classically, wedging is most commonly used by a minority political party to gain political power by fracturing and taking the support of a ruling party and hence has been used by demagogues throughout history (or likewise on a smaller scale by power hungry members of a social group to gain control of it). For example, in 1947, to prevent Nazism from taking root in America, the War Department published one of the most truthful propaganda pieces I’ve ever seen (which urged the American public to not fall for the divisive tactics Hitler had used in Germany):

Note: the key reason I previously shared this video was because the tactics they described were remarkably similar to was currently doing to split the country (e.g., through the way DEI was being pushed) and because the zealots being mobilized for that power grab were being exploited in the same way Hitler exploited his followers.

I believe a key reason why wedging “works” is a result of the ego always having a desire to dominate others (and be right), along with the fact it is typically much easier to see things in black and white then to try and understand the perspective of the person you disagree with. Because of this, I constantly see people try to force others to agree with the particular wedge issue they are attached to, and once that fails, to get more and more aggressive in pressuring them to adopt it by saying you are the enemy if you don’t agree with them. In my eyes this is extremely shortsighted because:

•Most people overestimate their power and think just because strong people can force others to agree with their ideas, they can too—whereas in reality they are simply someone trying to stop a heavy boulder from rolling down a hill and at best they might be able to slightly slow it down or make its motion a bit more jolty. This is why so many people will waste hours going in circles over an argument online (as each believes they can force the other to submit to their viewpoint) and why I almost never confront someone deeply wedded to a viewpoint head on (rather, like the ball rolling down the hill, I try to gently redirect their course to something I feel we can both agree on).

•It frequently leads to cult like mentalities where people are forced to agree to more and more extreme wedges to avoid being the “enemy,” which frequently leads to purity spirals forming.

•It greatly limits the reach of a group’s message to independents (whom the group needs to attract for their message to be heard) as independents will reject the extreme positions of the group alongside all of the more moderate ones they could agree upon. This in turn touches upon the philosophy most of us share: it is more important to get mainstream acceptance for the politically viable ideas than it is to endlessly struggle for the ideas that are presently for too outside the mainstream for them to ever get accepted.

Because of all of this, one of my central goals has been to diffuse wedges as I see forming in the community. For example, the behavior (and morphology) of microbes within your body is highly influenced by the health (terrain) of the body, and as such, there has been a longstanding belief in natural medicine infection management should focus on the body’s terrain rather than just trying to eliminate the infectious organism (something I agree with, particularly for chronic infections).

This gave birth to an erroneous belief within a subset of the terrain theory community that viruses do not exist, and that all proof of their existence was the result of elaborate misinterpretations of existing data. This belief was mostly ignored until (as Igor Chudov later discovered) it was seeded in this community to destabilize it (as its adoption creates an easy way to dismiss everything we said). Once that happened, a vocal swarm of commenters started trying to wedge everyone into admitting viruses didn’t exist or accuse them of secretly working in concert with the pharmaceutical industry to spread the destructive lie that they did.

Since I’d extensively studied this subject (as I am highly skeptical of many of the mainstream virology positions), I wrote an article (and a followup) addressing both sides of the common arguments being raised. It reached those not deeply invested in the theory and the topic mostly disappeared (although I still periodically receive controlled opposition accusations for holding the position that viruses exist).

Similarly, a segment of our community believes that the everyone involved with COVID-19 should be subject to mass executions or sent to Guantanamo Bay. However, while I believe serious accountability is needed, the only thing advocating for something like that accomplish is alienating most of the electorate and making those in power fight to the bitter end to avoid being tried (in other words sabotage anything from getting done). As such, its another wedge issue we’ve periodically run into where we’ve been told told unless we accept that extreme position, we are the enemy.

Note: there are a lot of other wedge issues that have also been promoted over the last four year and I specifically cited these two as they illustrate the character of many of them.

Creating Permanent Change

One of the major problems in American politics is that if a change is created through executive decisions rather than through laws being enacted, the policies are fleeting and temporary (e.g., Trump reversed many of Obama’s most consequential policies, Biden reversed Trump’s, and Trump will most likely reverse Biden’s on his first day in office).

Because of this, our “goal” is to use the once in a lifetime opportunity MAHA has to instill permanent structural changes as a similar opportunity is unlikely to appear again in our lifetimes (I cannot understand how unprecedented the position RFK in is).

In turn, the focus MAHA has on informing the public essentially comes from three key points:

•If the public is more informed, it will be much harder for lobbyists and public relations firms to create a backlash against any of MAHA’s initial attempts to clean up the food and drug supply—as for context, industry has long had a remarkable success rate in mobilizing public outrage to sink laws every member of the public should to the contrary fully support.

•As the MAHA policies become more and more mainstream, that will create the pressure for legislators to pass the critical laws that are required to instill permanent change in the system (and possibly a constitutional amendment—although that may be to challenging to ever pass).

•One of the primary barriers to awakening the public has been having official confirmations (e.g., from government sources or mainstream media reporting) corroborating what those outside the mainstream already know. This is because official confirmations shift the ideas from being ‘theories’ or ‘conspiracies’ which can be subject to doubt (regardless of how robust their evidence) to self-evident truths everyone can agree on. In my opinion, the most powerful tool MAHA has at their disposal is to open up that spigot of knowledge, as once the poisoning of America fully enters the mainstream consciousness, much of it simply will no longer be possible to do.

This in turn has led to another wedge issue occurring; how do we go about getting the mRNA technology permanently off the market?

My opinion (shared by many others) is that there is so much money behind it (and future emergency mRNA products) that the only possible way to stop it is if the public completely rejects it and simply refuse to purchase it in the future (which to a large extent has happened—for instance updated data isn’t available, but previous surveys showed only 15-20% of Americans are still boosting).

Note: most of the mRNA holdouts are Democrats. For this reason, I believe Trump’s reluctance to condemn the vaccines (despite many asking him to) may actually be the most effective way to remove the remaining public trust in them (as this will galvanize the left who had previously been unwilling to criticize the shots into doing so and linking their harms to his previous presidency).

Conversely, many others feel vehement rejection of the mRNA vaccines is a necessary purity test for individuals in our movement. As such, another wedge issue has emerged.

To illustrate, in the recent podcast where Calley Means was subject to severe scrutiny for his unwillingness to call for the COVID vaccine to be banned on the first day of Trump’s presidency, Calley received many of the same unsubstantiated allegations I’ve seen be used to cast doubt on other figures in this movement). That exchange was challenging for me to watch, as while I deeply want the COVID vaccine to permanently outlawed (and hence have devoted a large part of the last 4 years of my life to trying to make that happen), I do not think Trump unilaterally banning them is politically feasible, nor do I believe he will do that.

As such, I fully support Calley’s stance that a politically viable strategy needs to be implemented (e.g., the one I outlined above) but it simultaneously it’s hard for me to hold back how much I despise the COVID vaccines and how often I just wished I could scream until they went away (which I’ve effectively had to hold back for the last four years as that would not have been an effective approach for taking them off the market).

Note: while the relatively slow pace of change we’ve witnessed on the ending the greatest medical disaster in history is understandably frustrating for many, I am actually astounded at how fast it’s happened (at the start I thought this nightmare would last for at least ten years), as the forces were up against were monolithic to the point doing anything seemed impossible. A variety of unprecedented factors however came together which made it possible to stop it—and it’s critical to never forget how improbable or fortunate we are that this happened.

Empowering Beliefs

Throughout my life, I have found that so many of the obstacles and difficulties people run into are a result of the subconscious beliefs they carry and how they emotionally react to situations rather than the specific circumstances they found themselves in. Consider for example that some people consistently thrive in abysmal environments while others struggle in far gentler ones.

More remarkably, I find that beyond those same patterns rippling out through an individuals life, I also see the same unhealthy emotional patterns playing out in organizations, governments and nations, in many cases in a manner that eerily parallels what’s happened throughout humanity’s past.

Likewise, I find that many causes and topics I’ve put a great deal of work into (e.g., I’ve spent more years than I can count reading conspiracy theories) tended to be defined by the emotional patterning of the group (rather than what it specifically brought to the table). That patterning, in turn, resulted in those groups often getting almost no mainstream traction despite many of their points having immense merit and importance.

As such, a significant focus in my writings is not the information being presented but rather how that information connects with each reader as I believe logic and data alone is not sufficient to break the perpetual cycles we find ourselves trapped within.

One approach that has been developed to address the repeating difficulties individuals run into is to identify the beliefs one carries that are disempowering and replace them with ones that empower the individual.

For example, many people view what happens to them as being due to factors beyond their control, which in turn leads to them adopting a victim mentality that leads to them not being able to learn from their mistakes and recreating the same disaster in their lives again and again. If those people are able to instead adopt a belief that tells them they have control over their life, and there is always a way to get a better outcome if they are willing to be honest with themselves about their mistakes and look for a new way to address a problem, you frequently find the quality of their lives dramatically improves.

Presently, I believe one of the best paths forward is for us to consider adopting empowering beliefs that can help move us forward in this critical time.

Some of these include:

1. Perfection is impossible; you can only try to do better. If we try to hold yourselves to a standard of perfection, we will be continually disappointed and loathe ourselves. Likewise, if we expect that of our leaders, we can either be fed a comforting lie where we accept a facade creating that illusion of perfection, or be perpetually disappointed (and will have much more difficulty working collaboratively with them).
Note: this also applies to focusing on a possible political victory rather than accepting nothing but a perfect (and impossible) one.

2. The obstacles you encounter are opportunities for growth, and in many cases, the universe’s way of providing you with exactly what you need to learn.
Note: in many cases, personal growth also follows the exponential growth curve where it can seem as though very little changes for a while despite immense work on your part, but then suddenly there is a rapid and unbelievable transformation which is built upon the work you did.

3. While things are quite challenging, overall, we live at one of the brightest points in human history. It is very easy to lose hope, focus on the negativity, see all that is wrong with the world and come up with a hopeless “black-pilled” view of it, but at the end of the day, beyond that being incorrect, it serves no benefit to you and can only trap you in a bad situation. For this reason, I tend to “trust but verify,” give people the benefit of the doubt and only become skeptical when I catch them either clearly lying or doing the shady tactics I’m used to unscrupulous individuals conducting (e.g., I have an innate aversion to domineering men who aggressively push forward claim after claim as I find in most cases some those claims aren’t accurate and are just being used as a means to assert control).

4. It’s important not to place your self-worth in what you know. For instance, frequently, I find people in the alternative genre obtain a “rare truth” and then become overly invested in its value, to the point they covet the knowledge and become hostile towards those who do not reciprocate their value of that truth. Presently, I feel this was a key motivation behind the no virus narrative (as by knowing that, it puts you on a higher pedestal than everyone else). Likewise, I’ve seen that same unhealthy attachment with many other controversies I too was interested in but ultimately abandoned (due to them not holding up) such as nanotech in the vaccines or COVID-19 being primarily due electromagnetic toxicity.
Note: one of the best illustrations of this psychological investment was the pushback Ryan Cole received (e.g., death threats) after he provided data showing graphene oxide was not in the vaccines (which I likewise received hostility for covering).

5. At a deep level, we all share the same goals and values and those are what truly matter. In this movement, the things that unite us (and for that matter most of the country) are so much more important than what divides us, so we should never let the rest (e.g., the highly divisive issues) distract us from that.

6. None of us are passive observers and each of us has a role to play. At this point, our country is very close to having a tipping point in its collective consciousness, and it is my belief that health is the wedge point that can break that open because everyone is directly affected by poor health (and hence can’t ignore those creating illness). As such, beyond MAHA being important, I believe it is also the gateway to addressing many of the other deep issues plaguing our country which result from a predatory upper class that prioritizes profits over people.

7 . We must never forgot that:

There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit (this was Reagan’s adaptation of Truman’s quote).

At the end of the day, what gets done matters much more than who does it, and all of the people I’ve come to trust (e.g., Kirsch, Kory and Malone) consistently made a point to build others up who they felt could move things in a positive direction rather than trying to keep the spotlight to themselves.

Note: I’ve also noticed the people who followed their approach tended to be much happier as the only way to create genuine self-esteem is to know you earned it (e.g., by getting the thing you knew needed to happen to happen), whereas external praise from others can never fill that hole (which unfortunately leads to many people endlessly pursuing it because they fail to realize this).

Conclusion

After the pandemic, two memoirs were written by members of the Trump White House (Peter Navarro and Scott Atlas MD) which provided an insider view of the pandemic response that mirrored what we saw inklings of from the outside. Both of them shared that:

•Trump had an extreme shortage of people who he shared his priorities and could effectively enact them (and from my perspective, it seemed that those who did were systematically picked off by the media).

•Trump’s agenda was continually sabotaged by Federal officials who did not share his priorities. The head of the FDA for example did a series of maneuvers to block Trump’s directive to make hydroxychloroquine available to America (which killed a significant number of Americans but got the bureaucrat an executive position at Moderna).

•Trump (who did not have a deep knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry) was repeatedly pushed by both his staff and the media into avoiding sensible pandemic policies and only to follow “masks, testing, lockdowns, vaccines.” For example, in the same way the media whipped up a hysteria about Trump promoting hydroxychloroquine, Atlas shared that whenever he was able to convince the White House Coronavirus Taskforce to adopt a slightly more sane policy (in line with what Trump had proposed), the national media would create a hysteria about how Trump was killing people and CDC or FDA would frequently not implement the policy that had been agreed upon

•As we got closer and closer to the election, Trump’s advisors stated that the polls favored Trump so it was urgent that he did not rock the boat by doing anything “scientists (e.g., Fauci) disagreed with” and likewise that the vaccines would make it by the election, and hence be Trump’s crowning achievement that would end the pandemic and get him reelected. For this reason, Trump continued to not take many of the bold policies that were necessary to end the pandemic and instead was boxed into a situation which (those who worked with him testified) he was not happy with and went against his gut hunch over what to do.

When he resigned from the Task Force in a telephone call to Trump, Atlas writes, the president told him, “You were right about everything, all along the way. And you know what? You were also right about something else. Fauci wasn’t the biggest problem of all of them. It really wasn’t him.”

Trump meant that it was Birx, and Atlas couldn’t resist a parting shot at the aides who had been so afraid of her. Knowing that they were listening on the speakerphone in the Oval Office, Atlas said, “Well, Mr. President, I will say this. You have balls. I have balls. But the closest people around you—they didn’t. They had no balls. They let you down.”

They let down the rest of the country, too.

I and many others felt that the primary reason Trump did not have a decisive 2020 election victory was because he failed to deliver on many of the policies he had promised (e.g., at the last minute Pfizer delayed their vaccine submission until after the election—which likely has severely hampered their ability to influence the upcoming presidency).

As best as I can gather, there has been a general admission this failure was due to Trump not being prepared to go to Washington and hence needing to rely upon the best available advice (which was bad advice) to pick his staffers and policies. Those individual in turn actively undermined his agenda (as they did not support it), and thus prevented Trump from delivering on many of his promised policies.

Trump’s team appears to have learned from this, and as such, they are conducing a very different approach to this presidency (e.g., Trump’s transition team has been largely silent about what they will do, have not relied on the establishment for staffing recommendations and are conducting the process away from the prying eyes of Washington).

In my eyes, MAHA is in a very similar position to where Trump was when he won the 2016 election—especially because this is such an incredibly rapid shift from anything we have dealt with before. As such, it is critical they fully utilize the once in a lifetime window they have now, as if they fail to deliver before the midterms (which in 2018 took away Trump’s control of government) there may not be a second chance to learn from their mistakes. Likewise, regardless of how much they can get done, to ultimately fulfill MAHA’s objectives, the cultural consciousness must change (e.g., by the public becoming aware of just how unsafe and unnecessary many pharmaceuticals are or how many life-saving therapies have been buried to protect the medical industry).

It is thus my hope that this article provides some of the perspectives which may be helpful for us going forward. There are a lot of good people working very hard behind the scenes to Make America Healthy Again, and for them to succeed, beyond doing all we can to inform the public (they need us to generate the grassroots support for MAHA), it is critical that we have the unity and heart that will encourage those on the fence to join us and create the exponential phase.

Lastly, I would appreciate your thoughts on an unrelated question I’ve been exploring.

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