Readers of the Daily Sceptic will no doubt be familiar with the ongoing debate between ‘Team James’ and ‘Team Toby’ on the London Calling podcast. The former seeing conspiracies everywhere, the latter maintaining most problems are due to sheer incompetence, rather than elaborate malice.
I now believe I have found the resolution to this conflict (you’re welcome, guys).
In the last couple of years my Twitter feed, and what passes for my real life, has become radically divided between naive normies (Team Toby) and ‘awake’, ‘red-pilled’ types (Team James), the latter often spilling over into ‘black-pilled’ doomerism.
If you didn’t understand that sentence, then you are a normie. Congratulations — your life is probably quite pleasant (unlike, say, Andrew Bridgen’s, who is currently suffering the consequences of a hefty overdose of red pills).
For those who have taken the red pill, things do tend to get pretty bleak. These people see through the facade of the normal world, into the apocalyptic reality lurking beneath… well, almost everything.
Politics (all globalist shills), the sky (chemtrails), water (fluoride), Paul McCartney (died in ’66, replaced by a ringer), etc.
This leads to situation whereby one cannot even talk about normal normie things, like, say, party politics, without getting a flurry of comments explaining “they’re all WEF anyway”. But I believe we can still talk about these normie things within that limited framework, identifying the least bad option. Red-pillers may scoff at this stance, but let me explain.
Even though my sympathies lean towards the red-pilled side, I find myself at times equally frustrated by both positions, and thus I have come up with a way to exist that incorporates both, which for now I’m calling ‘conspiracy moderate’.
And, if one returns to the original Matrix movie, which is of course where the red pill metaphor originated, it looks like I am onto something.
In the movie, Neo takes the red pill, and is suddenly ejected from the ‘normal’ world he has always known, and thrust into the “desert of the real”. There, he gets to eat gruel, wear austere clothes, and learns that humans are now just batteries feeding AI bots that have taken over the world. It’s not a lot of fun, but at least he knows the truth.
The normies, meanwhile, stay in the Matrix, content in their appalling ignorance.
But what some of my angrier Twitter followers appear to be missing is that Neo still returns to the Matrix to fly around and shoot guns and generally f*** s*** up.
In other words, I believe it’s okay to engage in the normie world, as long as one does it from a point of awareness.
Of course, the worst thing would be to try to go back to being a blue-pilled normie. This is shown to us in the movie via the character of Cypher. He betrays his fellow red-pilled warriors to the evil agents (the embodiments of the malevolent AI bots). He does this in exchange for being plugged back into the Matrix with total ignorance, as long as he can become “someone important, like an actor”.
He is both Judas and Peter, giving up the saviour while choosing to deny all knowledge of our redemption because it is too hard, too painful to bear. He is simply too weak to sustain a moral conscience.
To deny what we know for an easy life is evil. But that is very different from exploring the Matrix, as Neo does, in order to fight back against the system, and just because it’s fun to do Kung Fu.
Because one problem with the red-pilled world is that it is very boring.
We see this in the recently ‘awake’, especially those who have ‘overdosed on red pills’. Every conversation ends with ‘it’s all planned’; all discussion and playfulness is curtailed; there is no point in anything.
It’s especially frustrating for those of us who have been on a steady diet of red pills for many years. We know about Bohemian Grove and the Bilderbeg Group. We know about the Georgia Guidestones (RIP) and, yes, we know about the gay frogs. (Sorry to the normies for all the Googling you just had to do.)
Meanwhile the red pill neophyte, high on reality, suddenly lectures us with their new-found knowledge, often veering into what is more like an apocalyptic ‘black pilled’ vision of the world, offering no hope.
One such example is my friend who, becoming convinced the Covid vaccine was simply intended to kill us all and reduce the population, decided there was no hope for the future. I asked why, in that case, she was still sending her children to an elite Hampstead prep school. She replied that she was just doing the best she could for them now, even though we would all surely perish in the coming vaccine genocide, either poisoned by taking the deadly vaxx, or offed by the state for refusing.
Dark. But of course, her theory wasn’t totally crazy. For a while there it looked like those who refused this experimental medical treatment of questionable efficacy would indeed be treated like second class citizens, segregated from society via a vaccine passport.
However, the civilised conspiracy moderate, though resolutely unjabbed (an ‘antivaxxer’ or ‘sceptic’ to different shades of normie, a ‘pure blood’ to the red pilled), allows that the jab itself, while it may give you heart trouble or that side-of-face thing Justin Bieber has, *may* not be designed to kill billions of people.
The conspiracy moderate also retains hope, believing it is inherently immoral to discourage one’s fellow soldiers. (Remember, Morpheus in The Matrix lived by his faith in ‘The One’, and his faith was eventually rewarded).
The moderate knows the elites have gathered for decades at Bohemian Grove for a bacchanalian festival in which they worship an owl. The Red Pill OD case says they are sacrificing children to said owl god. The normie says, “What?!?”
The humble conspiracy moderate does not believe the sacrifice part, but politely points out we now have concrete evidence that this event happens, and that while the elites may just be having a high old time together and the owl thing is largely theatre, it is at the very least ‘a bit weird’.
Similarly with the Bilderberg Group. For years they denied that world leaders met in a secret location to discuss their globalist plans. Eventually the deception became impossible to sustain, and we now know that not only is it real, but that even David Lammy gets invited (it seems even the global elite is suffering a decline in the quality of applicants).
Of course, attention has now shifted to the World Economic Forum.
Normies either haven’t heard of it or will claim it’s an overhyped think tank. The extreme red pilled and black pilled will say Klaus Schwab rules the entire world and resistance is futile. The conspiracy moderate will concede Schwab certainly seems to be attempting that, with his boast that his organisation “penetrates the cabinets” of leaders the world over, but that we also need to allow for the possibility he’s just a deluded idiot, as are most of these global leaders, and that their ideas may be more stupid than sinister.
Though I admit on this one I am more red pilled than normie, and I even wonder if Schwab is there to troll us, with his absurd dystopian ruler outfits, and if he is in fact a front for other, less comically Bond villain-esque, but even more sinister forces. However, we don’t have time for that particularly rabbit hole just now.
Anyway, hopefully all this has explained my position so that I won’t have to keep replying to disgruntled doomers on my twitter feed.
Normies undoubtedly live in a cosy but unreal world. Although it must be said even our current illusory Matrix is pretty grim compared to the world of 1999, when the first movie came out (I watched it twice in the cinema). Post-Covid, culture war torn 2023 is itself a bleak “desert of the real” compared to those simpler times.
The red pilled, on the other hand, sometimes fail to apply the same scepticism to their new red-pill findings as they do to the normie world. Thus they essentially enter a new Matrix where everything can be explained only by the most extreme conspiracy. They also tend to tip over into a disempowering, black-pilled nihilism.
The only truly honourable position, therefore, is that of the conspiracy moderate, living uncomfortably between the two worlds, sceptical of both, moving forward with courage and eyes wide open.
And guns. Lots of guns.
And for the normies out there, that was a Matrix metaphor, not a call to arms. You guys really need to wake up.
Nick Dixon is Deputy Editor of the Daily Sceptic. You can follow him on Twitter and Substack.
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What problem is this “warming” meant to cause?
The kind of ‘warming’ that resolves when you throw money at it.
The straight answer is, of course, that some people have read in the news that some other people in places like India have died of being too warm – and they therefore think we should all do something about it.
Every country that publishes short term (weekly) mortality data shows that cooler/colder seasons coincide with increased mortality and vice versa. I wouldn’t claim nobody ever died of being too warm but the numbers are far outweighed by the count of deaths from being too cold.
India does not produce reliable weekly mortality stats. If they did I expect that cooler seasons would see higher mortality than hotter seasons. They are not well enough developed; they have only just cracked giving almost all their citizens electric power for lighting and phones – let alone enough power to run fridges to keep food safe to eat and cookers to cook it properly (though they have got a space industry).
What the policies against warming seek to achieve is incompatible with many countries’ drive to develop further. At best they’re misguided. At worst, evil.
Indeed; thanks.
I thought the bullshit reasons were to do with coastal areas being submerged by the oceans, maybe certain areas getting less rain than they used to, others more, not being able to grow what you used to grow – the kind of changes that have always happened, to which humans (and the living things that came before us) have had to adapt.
I don’t think they grow much in the way of food in Delhi. The urban heat island effect will be something fierce though. Something like 34m people in the metropolitan area:
Source
No wonder Delhi’s power consumption has hit an all-time high.
Indeed
Perhaps rather than destroying our economy they could spread out a bit more or build homes that manage temperature more efficiently
When I visited Sri Lanka in 2015. in the middle of nowhere, I was amazed that this small rural hut had a TV. They had hydroelectric Dam in the area.
Hydro seems like a smart option – always on. Don’t know what the lifespan is though and whether you get your money back over the lifespan, nor what the environmental impact is.
Most hydro installations – small or large – are custom built, and involve significant civil engineering works. So they are expensive to build. When there were subsidies for wind and solar, which hydro also received, hydro could be a successful investment, albeit with a breakeven p/kWh somewhere in the high 20’s and upwards [of which the subsidy typically provided 75%]. Hydro could still be successful now – the technology is very mature – but with electricity prices going up and down like a whore’s drawers on Navy Day, no-one will risk the capital. Certainly, no user of electricity will commit to pay >35p/kWh for 20 years when, in the last year [and despite the MSM rubbish about Ukraine and whatever latest crisis the MSM are promoting] there have been times when it has almost been impossible to give electricity away in the UK
Norway, who use a lot of hydro, seems to have reasonably low wholesale electricity prices but that might not reflect recouping the initial investment cost. It may depend on geography.
Slightly unique case – huge mountains, lots of rain, very old established infrastructure [payback achieved many years ago], low population/demand. Norway has everything!
And I believe a large sovereign wealth fund from oil & gas which they have not frittered away, yet….
The environmental impact can be very damaging if too many dams are built on one river. The Mekong is a case in point.
Maybe but in actual fact there is nothing at all unusual about current temperature or climate. —–Climate is just the excuse for the policies that seek to control the worlds wealth and resources amidst concern about population growth. ——-There is this Malthusian type of fear that there are too many people in the world using up a finite fossil fuel resource in the ground, and the western world who have used up mor than their fair share of that are to stop doing that first and use wind and sun instead. This ofcourse involves a huge lowering of living standards for the wealthy western populations, and therefore a massive propaganda exercise is required by politicians and their supporting media to convince us all there is a “climate emergency” where real world data indicate there is NONE.
The problem of “the little people” having a living standard which the self-selecting “Elite” thinks is too good for them.
Loved this – a tour de force!
The problem is the relentless nature of the propaganda that the planet is warming and we’re all doomed. It comes from (nearly) all politicians, broadcast media, schools and colleges, big corporations, “luvvies” et al. Most people seem to have an unshakeable belief in this false “consensus”. How we open more peoples’ eyes – and quickly – is the challenge.
They must open their own eyes. And there are as many triggers as there are people on the planet. But I have come to see that using calm, reasoned argument is never one of those triggers.
It’s easier to fool someone than to convince them they’ve been fooled.
No man-made global warming, instead a man-made scientific wilderness. Faith and belief seemingly more important than empiricism and observation; egotism, self, and ‘my truth’ have become the mainstream. As I reflect on my life, I was one of those given hope by Wilson’s speech in the early 60s about harnessing the white heat of technology. What we did not see, did not realise, was that there was another group harnessing the dead hand of stupidity. During the 60s the philosophies of the followers of the Frankfurt School and individuals such as Gramsci and Derrida, were insidiously influencing the teacher training colleges and the humanities departments of our universities with the results that we see today. Yesterday’s attack on Stonehenge is just one graphic example of how far we have fallen.
A huge part of the problem is that there’s no political choice to be exercised on the issue. Climate change was decreed an important issue to be dealt with and End use of fire by humans! was decreed to be the solution to it by legal fiat. Hence, all activist astroturfers need to do is to collect money for lawfare actions from well-oiled international NGO and put them in front of the usual political judges to get another Fiat justicia, pereat mundus! verdict.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxwwzmn12g9o
The simple way to handle this problem (and quite possibly, the only way) would be to pass a bill of attainder against Tony Blair and decree everything ever done by any New Labour government against the law of the land, effective today at noon. Any attempt to continue any of these politics by anyone to be dealt with by forced shipment to the colonies. The UK has enough overseas territories left to keep thousands of loons busy with subsistence agriculture for the remainder of their lives.
‘Ere! What have the colonies ever done to you?
The people living on the Falklands probably wouldn’t be very happy about this and rightfully so. But that was figuratively spoken and supposed to mean It must be made absolutely clear that future attempts to waste trillions of pounds of other people’s money to try to do something that’s impossible in order to accomplish something that’s not going to matter will not be tolerated.
Insofar the UN was concerned, we’d still all be running around with face masks all day, would still all be doing regular proactive Sars-CoV2 PCR tests and would all line up for a new COVID shot every three months. What stopped them was a resolute We won’t be doing this! in January 2022. And the Global Boiling Project needs to be dealt with in the same way.
The Supreme Court here reversed the 2 lower courts decisions. What can one do when the judges on the Supreme Court go woke. Legatt who gave the main judgement educated at Eton, son of a rather old school Court of Appeal judge, barrister in top commercial chambers, seemed quite sensible when junior counsel in a case I was involved with.
The people that started all this in the Club Of Rome are all dead, but don’t assume the intentions have changed. Like with the Rockefellers’ their legacy is past down.
On the end of GB News last night Adam (think that’s his name) the Pub owner mentioned that the Planet warms in cycles, and Becky to his left said “do you deny climate change”. This stupidity is what we’re up against.
That’s not really stupidity. It’s thoughtlessness, ie, people repeating something which has been hammered into their brains through endless repetition.
But the entire Green charade isn’t about warming and it never has been. It is Eco Socialism pure and simple and here in the UK and all across the western world our parasite politicians (except Trump) are pandering to the UN Sustainable Development Agenda.
Sure, all the silly brainwashed activist groups run around throwing paint and soup at things because they have no clue about climate or energy and have swallowed the whole climate emergency propaganda down like a Herring Gull with your cheeseburger, but from the very start as the Club of Rome put it “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that famine, water shortages and global warming would fit the bill”
Since then the entire political class via the IPCC which was set up in 1988 have sought out and cherry picked everything that would seem to indicate a human influence on climate whist ignoring all of it that didn’t. It is “Official Science”, not “Science”.
The thing that powers Industrial Capitalism is cheap abundant energy, and in order to reshape the world away from the capitalist system the fossil fuels that power the world have to be removed. We see that in the pronouncements of the likes of Klaus Schwab when he talks about it being “our responsibility to bring about the collapse of Industrial Society”.
Just think about that for a second———THE COLLAPSE OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY—WOW. ———–Wake up people. It isn’t about the climate——IT NEVER WAS. ——Global warming is “the enemy to unite us”
Totally agree. I first noticed it in early 2000’s as an obvious route to subvert capitalism.
Interesting how the MSM or even GBN will talk about all the policies, yet when George Galloway sparks a chilling prediction, that we would see war in six months with Labour, nobody is picking up the batten apart from Dewbs on GBN for five minutes. If a hot war is n the cards, they would need to reverse the green agenda sharpish!
Net Zero is impossible. Politicians know it is, which is why they had no debate and no discussion of cost. There was not even a vote. They just waved it through in 2019. —–So a policy that affects every aspect of our lives, our prosperity, our health and well being, our life span, our ability to heat and power our homes, what we can eat or drink, where we can and cannot travel etc etc has all been decided by a Political Class poisoned with contempt for the people who vote for them and they went ahead with this eco socialist fraud regardless of what any of us think. We are to have GREEN forced on us, our energy rationed by the smart meter, our gas central heating removed, our perfectly good cars scrapped, our travel in planes stopped, our food intake decided by the carbon emissions it produces and on and on and on but they didn’t even discuss it of vote on it————————-How are they getting away with this? Are the public insane?
I love the comment ‘buggallology’ and Swedish doom goblin. I will remember and use them. Thank you Chris
Yes, an unusually aggressive style: I like it. “Buggerallology” – difficult to spell!
“Only in Britain it seems are citizens prepared to elect a Government obsessed with self-inflicted poverty and deindustrialisation.”
——–
It’s currently impossible to elect a Government which doesn’t intend this. I suppose, in theory, if everyone abstained and refused to vote there would not be a Government but in practice, if even one person voted for one of the Westminster Uni-Party candidates that person would “win.”
But as today’s Supreme Court judgement demonstrated, Blair/Brown’s politicised Big State will over-rule any policy which doesn’t conform to the Globalists’ Agenda and there isn’t a hope in hell of the Not-a-Conservative-Party doing anything about it ….. which is why it’s going to be obliterated on 4 July. It has made itself obsolete.
The best we can currently hope for is that Trump wins and stops the nonsense in the USA. The far less passive populations in continental Europe kick off big-time and the EU is forced to back-track. And the British people, when the Net Zero pain really starts, demonstrate their ability for passive resistance and dig their heels in.
Great article. You are doing such a good job, Chris, in promoting real science to counter the political science we are insulted with everywhere else.
Our half asleep, naive, gullible, brainwashed public suck up this group think climate crisis garbage and still don’t understand that this is not about saving the planet; it’s about money and control.
Carbon credits and bird flu coming down the tracks.
Another excellent article by the excellent Chris Morrison just a pity so few people are taking his arguments on board. “And some seed fell on stony ground” springs to mind except in this case it’s probably “most”.
Great to see some proper scientists wading in.
I have often marvelled at the way the world balances all its many aspects , and wonder if society’s ignorance will be compensated for by a demo of how serious things can really get if you push the envelope too far
Great article as usual Chris. I’m definitely adopting the phrase “with university degrees in buggerallology” by the way. Pure genius