The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Can We Make Thursday ‘Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day’?

Posted on | January 23, 2022 | 8 Comments

Darren Beattie has a piece at Revolver talking about how the Biden administration is trying, without much success, to convince Democratic voters to let go of the COVID-19 panic narrative to which they are clinging like a toddler with a security blanket: Masks are useless, children are not at risk, schools should be open, et cetera.

All of this is just common-sense stuff that skeptics have been saying since mid-2020, but because Democrats and their media allies have devoted so much effort to portraying skeptics as villains — you’re “anti-science” if you oppose drastic measures to fight COVID-19 — the people who voted for Biden refuse to accept the message now that the administration is ready to “move on” from the panic. Beattie writes:

The Biden Administration wants its rank-and-file followers in public schools, colleges, and hospitals to calm down. Instead they remain as paranoid as ever. It is entirely possible that this will continue for all of 2022, or even longer. Covid and its variants aren’t going away. To the extent they were ever effective at all, vaccines appear to lose their potency with every new booster campaign. The virus remains as mild for most people as ever, but constant testing means that even the healthiest progressives have worked themselves into a permanent state of fear and paranoia.
This has fascinating ramifications for leftism itself. Through Mass Formation Psychosis, the ruling class left seems to have finally memed its true believers into a pattern that it can’t talk them out of. For two years, they sowed panic by promoting the cult of the mask, the cult of the lockdown, and the cult of the vaccine. Now, they can’t suppress the cults they have created. Similarly, they ignited a “racial reckoning” in 2020 and are now powerless to stop the frenzy of murder and crime that this “reckoning” unleashed in every major city.

Recall that people are trying to de-platform Joe Rogan for hosting Dr. Robert Malone, who has popularized the “Mass Formation Psychosis” theory to explain public reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Well, here’s some news for you: They can’t de-platform everybody.

If all of us with access to digital platforms — bloggers, columnists, people on Twitter and Facebook, etc. — will unite behind this idea, we can defeat these censors and make it impossible for them to suppress the idea.

Therefore, I propose that this Thursday, Jan. 27, be declared “Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day.” The objectives:

  1. Call attention to the censorship campaign by which COVID-19 panic brigades are attempting to suppress criticism. If you look at the Google results, you’ll notice that the first page of results (which is all that most Googlers ever see) is dominated by “fact checks” and people endeavoring to “debunk” Mass Formation Psychosis as a “conspiracy theory.” This obviously reflects manipulation of the Google algorithm in an attempt to support censorship of Joe Rogan and others.
  2. Explain what “Mass Formation Theory” really means. There is nothing outlandish about the theory that Dr. Malone has outlined. When the “dominant narrative” is promoted by politicians and major media organizations — when they’re all on the same page, so to speak — most people will believe what they’re being told and react the way they’re instructed to react. The theory is a bit more complex and nuanced than can be summarized in a sentence or two, but the basic idea isn’t at all crazy or “extremist,” no matter what the self-declared “fact checkers” claim.
  3. Most critics of COVID-19 policy are not “anti-science.” This has been the problem with public reaction to the pandemic from the start. Various “experts” (including Dr. Anthony Fauci and the science/medical commentators on TV news outlets) presented themselves as having all the answers to COVID-19, and advocated restrictive policies as the One Right Way to fight the virus. Because these experts were presented as being the voices of “science,” anyone who criticized the restrictive policies was implicitly accused of being “anti-science.” This involved an appeal to a common prejudice among college-educated people, who cherish a self-image of being on the side of enlightenment, and who view themselves as engaged in a war against ignorance. To such people, it was easy to see Dr. Fauci as a heroic knight doing battle against the dragon of “anti-science.”

It does not matter, in terms of “Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day,” what you believe about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Malone himself is deeply skeptical of mRNA vaccines, but that’s neither here nor there in regard to the importance of the free speech issue involved. I’ve gotten the vaccine, and have suffered no side effects worse than minor soreness in the arm where I got the shot, but I’m against making the vaccine mandatory, which is what the Biden administration has been trying to do, while demonizing anyone who refuses to get vaccinated, no matter their reasons.

A young woman of my acquaintance is a liberal and a mother of two sons. Like many other women of childbearing age, she is unvaccinated — that’s one of the dirty little secrets that the COVID-19 vaccine propagandists don’t want you to know. They keep trying to pretend that it’s us old white Republican guys who are the so-called “vaccine resisters,” but it’s really more common among women under 40 and among racial minorities. Furthermore, mothers especially are angry about schools being closed, and this is causing some liberal moms to declare themselves “politically homeless” because they can see that it’s Democrats who want to keep schools closed. So this young unvaccinated mom of my acquaintance, who lives in the Land of the Free — thank you, Governor DeSantis — has already had COVID-19 and thus has natural immunity. Yet she sees Joe Biden (whom she voted for) on TV demanding that everybody must be required to get the vaccination, as if natural immunity doesn’t exist.

The plural of “anecdote” is data, as they say, and I think there must be a lot of people like her out there. Two years into this pandemic, even liberal Democrats are sick and tired of the maximum lockdown mentality, and they are the real target audience for “Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day.” If they can be made to see how public perception can be manipulated by politicians and the media in this specific case, perhaps they will become more skeptical to other “dominant narratives” that are promoted in the same way. Who knows? Perhaps they’ll even start questioning Keynesian economics.

EVERYBODY BLOG ABOUT
MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS DAY

THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 2022

Let’s make this happen.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II: On Twitter, this idea has already been endorsed by John Hoge, as well as Lawrence Person and Don Surber, among others.




 

Category: Science

Comments

8 Responses to “Can We Make Thursday ‘Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day’?”

  1. Yes, let’s | gregormendelblog.com
    January 24th, 2022 @ 12:00 pm

    […] become ungovernable! I’m in. I’m ALL in. […]

  2. ‘Mass Formation Psychosis’ and the Censorship of COVID-19 Criticism : The Other McCain
    January 25th, 2022 @ 4:00 pm

    […] What the censors obviously fear about Dr. Malone is not “misinformation” (because anyone can look at the number of so-called “breakthrough” infections in vaccinated patients and see the problem with these vaccines), but rather that his discussion of “mass formation psychosis” is giving people a clue about how powerful institutions have been manipulating public opinion. Those engaged in that manipulation — including the executives at Twitter — don’t want the public to become aware of the propaganda techniques being used by the elites to promote their preferred narratives. And this is why this Thursday is “Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day.” […]

  3. What is this “Mass Formation Psychosis” thing that so many are suddenly fascinated with? « Quotulatiousness
    January 27th, 2022 @ 4:01 am

    […] linked to Robert Stacy McCain’s call for making today “Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day”, which in turn linked to this Substack post from Robert […]

  4. We Must Make Today‘Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day’? | nebraskaenergyobserver
    January 27th, 2022 @ 9:01 am

    […] picked this up from R.S. McCain, and that decided the timing, sometimes I’m a team player, but that doesn’t matter. The […]

  5. Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day | hogewash
    January 27th, 2022 @ 9:27 am

    […] podcasting partner Stacy McCain has declared today to be Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day with the following […]

  6. The real pandemic | Scott's Blog
    January 27th, 2022 @ 9:00 pm

    […] is Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day, in case you haven’t […]

  7. Mass Formation Psychosis: What Is It and Why Is Everybody Talking About It Now? : The Other McCain
    January 27th, 2022 @ 9:33 pm

    […] society, such censorship efforts always fail, if citizens understand what is at stake. Today was Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day, an effort to bring attention to a dangerous censorship effort. Last month, William Jacobson […]

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