Thread by @ThyConsigliori

11 January 2020 #MAGAanalysis #Overturn

Information, Disinformation, And Overwhelm

In these weeks since the election, I feel like I've begun to come to understand the world of intelligence officers and analysts a great deal more than ever before.

2) For instance J. E. Dye has a new article out. Reading it last night her tone and process felt newly familiar. Many of you will recall I've posted 11 analyses on the previous 2 articles she released. You may also recall how difficult her method of attack was for me to decode.

3) I will still have to read it a second time before commenting on it more deeply. I can say that the question of cyberwarfare remains critical. J. E. follows nuclear materials and arsenals around the world, and the geostrategic significance is great. But...

4) But, the information warfare that attends her geo-strategic analysis is, essentially, an end run around nuclear arsenals. Why fight out a nuclear war, or even fight over the resources required, if you can take over another nation's arsenal by cyber war?

5) To my own eye, and perhaps J. E.'s too, what's even more horrifying is the thought that an enemy's political leaders can be bought and owned so that they employ their arsenal on your behalf as partners against their own people. Should Biden ascend, that's what we face.

6) Following J. E.'s story of the nuclear factor in our post-election condition is well worth the effort. I'll like come back to that tomorrow, or later this week. (All such comments always assume I'll still have a Twitter account, which we all know may be gone in a moment.)

7) Up in the middle of the night, I watched my first episode watching Simon Parks. The episode for January 10th, and certainly not my last! He triggered a familiar response. I LOVED him and his information. The problem is I SO BADLY want him to be right.

8) Later today, I will watch a 50:00 minute show by Scott McKay, that my friend Tricia introduced to me, after I reposted Simon's video. Apologies to Dr. Bill, I forgot about my no-more-links policy, but I am getting better at remembering! Note I'm not tagging people, either.

9) I have to say how angry these changes in my communications protocols make me. Free Speech, eh? More like Unfree Speech, isn't it? There is a direct connection between the Unfree Speech we're suffering right now, and the questions of Information vs Disinformation and Overwhelm.

10) Even as I watch an information show, part of my mind and heart is utterly distracted by the question, will this show get shut down right while I'm watching it? And all these sources are, at least for me, very new. I never heard of J. E.'s work until, what, a month ago or so?

11) Simon Parks was yesterday and Scott McKay is just from early this morning. I never heard of these people before and that matters. We are rightly hardwired to place a time function - getting to know you - in front of the establishment of trust.

12) Our son Nicholas (called Nico) has for years teased us about our trading cards knowledge of every FOX reporter or analyst. We truly had the emotion of friendship with them. And positively of gratitude. I often disagreed with even my most favorite, Bill O'Reilly.

13) Who remembers his book, Who's Looking Out For You? I found that book to be absolutely profound. It is the very question of the watcher. It is also the very question of responsibility and obligation in relationship. I ask myself continuously, am I looking out for my family?

14) A phrase we have not propagated adequately is: the opportunity of responsibility. To be responsible IS to look out for someone or something outside yourself. That meditation is a gift that Bill O gave me. The depth of his thinking was an act of leadership.

15) No, I never considered Bill to be MY leader, per se. But he absolutely WAS a leader and that is what got him fired. The world we live in now punishes leadership as the plague to its evil interests that true leadership really is. Look at our leader Trump if you need proof.

16) Where have I been able to turn since his ouster? The truth is that for me, there is no replacing Bill O. I do not have the emotion of trust for anyone else at all that I had with him. Remember, I often disagreed with him greatly. No matter. I trusted to include that.

17) What did I trust? The man himself? No, stories of his personal peccadillos were credible to me. I don't imagine I'd even like the Bill O of reality. No, it was the Bill of the show that I liked. And I knew that. When Bill broke a story, I trusted his "reportage."

18) It is precisely that that we do not have, that I do not have, now. I do not trust the stories I watch or read. I mistrust them all, now. I confess, it may be that my previous trust was not wise. It may be that NOT trusting is far superior. But I'm not quite used to it yet.

19) Not only does Simon tell me that Trump will be President for four more years, he indicates that he will likely be inaugurated in the White House, and that he's not the first President to be inaugurated there. Hey, I meant to look that up! Better go do that now...

20) Here's a perfect example of the research burden. When you search for presidents being inaugurated "in the White House," the term White House is more symbolic than literal. So, you have to play with your search terms, and then, check out article after article in hopes of...

21) So here's the question of a fact. A single fact. And that brings us right up to the fact checkers. They've outworn their welcome! Fact checking has become so high a propaganda artform that it has obliterated the slightest hope of credibility...of trust.

22) Now that I'm a fact sleuth, which I never was before, it's bugging me. Which exact presidents were inaugurated IN - as in literally in - the White House, and which were inaugurated the way I think of an inauguration? I never did pay attention to the where. Now I am. Alas.

23) My purpose in the illustration is Overwhelm. When nothing can be trusted everything must be tested, measured, weighed in the balance of truth or falsehood. Who knows? Knowledge. It is easily faked, easily manipulated. Who knows? What do we know, and how?

24) My own personal method of learning, when faced with such overwhelm, is to simplify. I have to put away all my sources and ask myself what I remember, what I believe in such a manner as to retain the information in my own mind, happily. Not happy over content, over belief.

25) Not belief by dogma or policy, oh no. I am happy if I can believe something no matter how much I dislike that thing, and no matter how much I would have hoped its contrary. Here's a terrible for instance. Trump's "concession speech." Truth is, he did NOT concede, at all.

26) Yet when I first watched his video speech I believed he had conceded and I granted him the right of his concession. Posting as much I was inundated with contradictions. Good people saw what I had missed and let me know. I am grateful to them, greatly. They were right!

27) But there again you have a conundrum. It did look exactly like a concession speech. In a better day, Trump would not have chosen to make a non-concession speech LOOK exactly as if it WERE a concession speech. I'm telling you that is overwhelming to the brain.

28) Let's talk about sources and the act of sourcing. As you know I do public sources exclusively. I break no scoops and offer no inside angles, no information that I found all on my own by my own means. I just use information that is the public world freely available to all.

29) People like Simon have sources. I do not have sources. I source my information, but my sources are not MINE. They are everyone's. Simon has HIS sources. So also J. E., although she uses a lot of publicly available information. Hey, what about General McInerney?

30) We watched his encounter filmed by Ann V, and in it he states that he saw Nancy's laptop, himself. Obviously that would be a SOURCE! His source for which we're asked to trust him. I do. But people right here questioned that assertion. Did he tell the truth, or did he lie?

31) Does Sidney have overwhelming evidence of voter fraud, or is she a lunatic/conniver manipulating information for whatever reason she may? Does she have the president's trust, is she a member of his team? Or has she been expelled from his inner circle and enjoys no trust?

31) What if she is 100% right but evil actors have blocked her from the president or worse have poisoned her reputation with him when he - and we! - need her the most?

On and on it goes.

32) I have often put forward my great friend David Shestokas' work on topic. He spent weeks in PA observing the vote and testifying when allowed as an expert witness. He went to GA also. I know him, personally. I trust him explicitly. He tells me the election was stolen. It was.

33) An artist formerly known as Dr. Cancerous Toejam, account suspended, is also a personal friend. He tells me of his conversation with his family. How do you know the election was stolen, they ask him. Are you aware, he returns, that election observers were expelled?

34) Now that's a fact. No one disputes it. How can you have a free and fair election when election count observers were blocked or expelled even for a moment? We know, we're not guessing, that it was far more than just a moment. Here's a silly example.

35) You're watching a baseball game on TV. You've bet $10 that your team will win and are talking crap about your friend's team as your team is now up 7 runs having closed out the bottom of the 7th inning. The TV goes blank. 15 minutes later the image is back.

36) It's now the bottom of the 8th inning and your friend's team is up by 5 runs. You never saw any of that happen but you're expected to believe that in 15 minutes his team completed 12 runs and now you're about to be out your $10 and ego rights to boot. You're okay with this?

37) It doesn't pass the smell test. And there you go. Now that is something you can believe. You can reduce everything to the smell test and I do mean EVERYTHING. Here's a specific example you already know. Trump won 18 out of 19 bellwether counties.

38) To believe he lost the election means you have to convert a bellwether winning county into a bellwether losing county. Suddenly in 2020 counties that always predict the winner this time predicted the loser. 94.7% of bellwether counties flipped their predictive meaning. Yeah.

39) It doesn't pass the smell test. You can reject that right out of hand. Maybe if you only had the observer expulsions it might not be enough. Maybe. But when you add a second smell test and it still points the same way, now you have something you can actually know. Trump won.

40) There a seeming million steps from those two smell tests to where we are today. We're going to skip them and land right here right now. Let me go check my followers count. I'll be right back...

41) Assuming both my memory and my math are correct, my recent high in followers was 31,300. Right now my follower count shows as 23,000. That is 8,300 fewer. That is a fact. It represents a follower loss of 26.5% from peak, in less than a week. No dispute is possible.

42) The current purge is a fact. It is a bald grab of control over communications between members of a political outgroup as defined by Big Tech, in this case by Cap'n Jack's team. They have purged the account of the President of the United States. A purge. Beyond dispute.

43) Let's go back to yesterday's question. Will Trump act between now and the 20th, or will he allow Biden to ascend unchallenged? Assuming - hopefully wrongly - he allows Biden's ascent, will Trump give us guidance or leave us dangling, unled? If unled, for how long?

44) Be clear, the Trump I know and trust would NEVER allow a fraud the joy of his theft, and would NEVER leave us, his faithful followers dangling. But I do not know what I do not know. Not only do I not know it, I don't know what it is that I do not know. Alas.

45) Far from flawless, I am far better at analyzing the past than foreseeing the future. I'm hardly alone. The past offers facts. The future? Not so much. The future offers parameters of possibility. We can analyze them, and must. Even there, we - I - often miss parameters. Alas.

46) When I go to the grocery store, now, I buy more stuff. I buy more cans of stuff that will hold their "freshness" longer. I buy less stuff with nearby sell-by dates. I think about shelf life, now. In my home I'm moving stuff around to start survival stocking. Alas.

47) The fact is we face uncertainty. The fact is we do not know who will populate the Oval Office on January 21. You may know. I don't. So that means WE don't. but as an existentialist I return to the simple statement I don't know that I'll even be alive on January 21.

48) I plan to be. I certainly want to be. I'll be surprised if I'm not. But I do NOT know that I will. That is not granted. It is not a gift within our receipt. This uncertainty is given, the certainty not given. And that is where we are with information today.

49) It's easy to be overwhelmed, not easy to know what to do about it. But if anyone tells you that you will never die, don't believe them. It doesn't pass the smell test. As you've seen, the smell test is where I stand. Long as I have a schnoz with which to smell, I'll use it.

50) I don't know why Twitter lets me sound off, still. Nor why you're still here and not purged as so many of our friends have been. While here, let's use the smell test together. And when not here, let's do it elsewhere together.

That's the best answer I know.

Thread ends at #50.

Happily for me, I feel less overwhelmed now than I did when I started today's thread. I hope you too feel the same.