12 Comments

Great analogy, if only it were just that. It’s not like there are whole industries out there that run on child slavery, right? Waaait: https://foodispower.org/human-labor-slavery/slavery-chocolate/ 😣😣😣

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Or Cobalt / Lithium mines. When I read this piece initially, I missed the part about this being an analogy and thought, shit this is much worse than I thought. It was only when it got to the bit about breeding child slaves that the penny dropped. And then today I read some story about a Republican politician who thought that women should have more babies so there could be more workers. The worrying thing to me is that we assimilate all this horror and it just becomes background noise that we get numbed to, maybe boycotting certain brands or signing a petition knowing that it makes little difference.

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Hey Tim, can you link that piece about the republican politician wanting women to have more babies?

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Hi Rachel, unfortunately I don't think I've found the original article. These give you the idea though:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/republican-baby-boom-trump-vance-hungary/

https://newrepublic.com/post/173684/republican-lawmaker-abortion-bad-losing-workers

The other theme that keeps coming up is Republicans wanting to reverse child labour laws. In Naomi Oreskes latest book she documents this struggle going back to the beginning of the 20th century, maybe before. The argument then was that families needed the income coming from their children.

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Wicked, thank you.

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Brilliant analogy... and yet as the comment below suggests, the World majority's children are indeed working their little hearts out, feeding the sickly, obese, all consuming Westerners - some 10 percent of the world population, consuming 8o per cent of its resources.

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Spoiler alert: governments and corporations have been modifying the weather since at least the 1940s. Weather modification has been weaponized since at least the Operation Popeye covert operation conducted throughout the Vietnam War. Currently dozens of countries and hundreds of corporations overtly engage in weather modification programs, and there is ample evidence of ongoing covert weather modifications as well. Any "scientific" discussion of climate change overlooking decades continuous of weather modification is not actually scientific. In light of the incomplete dataset the whole climate change agenda could be a form of pseudoscientific gaslighting subtly obscuring the psychopathic urge to oppress, enslave, and ultimately destroy less fortunate humans.

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Good, insightful explanation. Thanks.

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I heard that lies on the internet spread 7 x ‘s faster than the truth. So gaslighting is also very fast.

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I recall an old saying that: "A lie makes its way around the world before the truth gets out of bed."

I suspect that it originated because the lie often has a salacious or seductive quality to it that titillates the imagination (similar to gossip) along with providing the impulse to pass it on, so "you heard it from me first." Or, it somehow affirms a bias we have (conscious or not) that begs our acceptance. Whereas the truth is unwavering, demanding our attention and compelling us to confront our own values, biases and inclinations in ways that are often uncomfortable.

Thus, lacking substance (yet suggesting plausibility), the lie flits about - gaining traction here, there and everywhere - while the truth just sits there yawning, stretching, and saying: "When you're finished with wasting your time on all this nonsense, I'll still be here because, like it or not, I'm reality, and I'm not going anywhere."

All too often the big lies gain so much attention, and are repeated so often, that they acquire a pseudo reality of their own that is virtually impossible to irradicate (e.g. the stolen 2020 election) and the truth becomes obscured in the minds of those who are seduced by the lie.

To me, this means that those of us who grasp the vital necessity of uncovering, accepting, and dealing openly with the truth must work all the harder to bring it to light and insist that it be confronted so that it informs our decisions, as a society, going forward. It brings to mind another old saying: "Nothing that is really worth doing is ever very easy."

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Oct 27, 2023
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I interviewed Nate back when the podcast was just a fledgling thing :) Their work is great!

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Oct 27, 2023
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No apology necessary, although I appreciate the sentiment! Glad to have you here, April :)

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