1. Watch Out for False Dichotomies
Is it true, as an article in Europe Reloaded recently claimed, that “liberal democracy is really totalitarianism?” [1] The article purports to support its conclusion by citing the work of Russian political philosopher Alexander Dugin, whose book The Great Awakening vs. the Great Reset seems to be trending. I wonder if he will become this generation’s Solzhenitsyn. However, this article is rather too limited to properly convey his ideas, and falls into the logical fallacy trap known as the false dichotomy. A false dichotomy “oversimplifies a complex issue by suggesting there are only two mutually exclusive outcomes or choices. This ignores the fact that there may be multiple variables, compromises, or alternatives that could potentially resolve the situation. By framing the debate in this way, it forces a person to choose between two extremes, often leading to hasty, uninformed decisions.” [2] It’s a common rhetorical tool in politics, as cognitive linguist George Lakoff explained in his books. Often the first person to speak in a debate frames the terms of discussion—a trap laid for the unsuspecting, especially if logical fallacies such as the false dichotomy are used.
Not having read his work yet, I hope that Dugin isn’t using the kind of broad-brush condemnations of liberal democracy that this article indulges or I’m likely to be disappointed with his book. The discussion needs to be much more nuanced than what is presented by Europe Reloaded. Specifically, what is currently being represented by the West as “liberal democracy” is a deviant and corrupted version of what was envisioned by the founders of the American Republic. This is what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been saying right from the start of his presidential campaign. I completely agree with RFK Jr. that what we have now in the West is a captured democracy, a corporatocracy that indeed shares totalitarian values with fascism and Nazism. And in fact, the author of the Europe Reloaded article, Xavier Azelbert, makes my point when he relates how France has misused a rare tenet of its constitution allowing it to pass laws without a vote in parliament.
This has become increasingly common since the pandemic, with Canada shredding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ provision for free speech and peaceful protest by quashing the Truckers Convoy with extreme prejudice. As the last living framer of the Charter, Brian Peckford, has repeatedly tried to explain, this is an abuse of the constitution. Azelbert also notes that, allowing for “non-registered voters, abstainers and blank ballots,” President Macron’s government is effectively supported by only 25% of the French population. Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system perpetuates similarly skewed election results, with only 32.6% of votes cast for the Liberal party [3] of Justin Trudeau in the 2021 election. This election was itself an abuse of democratic process since Trudeau took the unprecedented step of calling an election only halfway through his term of office. This is why advocacy groups such as Fair Vote Canada have been campaigning for decades for a more truly democratic electoral process such as some form of proportional representation.
2. Individualism vs. Collectivism: A False Dichotomy?
“Good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
The issue of individualism vs. collectivism is raised in the Europe Reloaded article, but again not successfully illuminated. Is Dugin suggesting that we need to abandon democracy in favour of some form of collectivism? If so, that’s the same argument as the World Economic Forum with its One World Government concept and a dubious one given Russia’s history of collectivism over the past century. The problem with politicians arguing for collectivism is that it’s often a cover for totalitarian agendas, as we saw with Covid and the “get your shot for the sake of your neighbour” psyop. This is the West recycling the kind of narrative that the Bolsheviks used under Lenin, who openly stated his willingness to kill anyone who got in the way of the Revolution—all for the sake of the communist collective. Of course, the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” never materialized; instead we had the dictatorship of Stalin with its mass murders of his own citizens.
I devoted an entire chapter in Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age [4] to Karl Popper’s masterwork, The Open Society and its Enemies, written when fascism, Nazism and communism were being rolled out under the banner of collectivist ideals. Popper traced the germ of the collectivist ideal back to “the spell of Plato,” who conceived of society as best organized under a ruling elite and a hierarchy of lower classes, all supposedly designated by nature, their places in society cast in stone. Having watched the short-lived Athenian democracy collapse into the 27-year Peloponnesian War, Plato doubled down on a more authoritarian philosophy of governance in hopes of restoring order.
“In politics, it is the opposition between the one collective, the state… and the great mass of the people—the many individuals… whose particularity is to be suppressed for the sake of the unity of the state,” was how Popper summed up this Platonic ideal. He took it a step further: “…I believe that Plato’s political program, far from being morally superior to totalitarianism, is fundamentally identical with it.” [5]
In my view what was most admirable about the American Constitution and the Enlightenment is its emphasis on protecting the individual from the State. The Constitutional framers, emerging from British monarchy with its continual abuses of its subjects, realized that this MUST be the pillar of any constitution worthy of the name. Otherwise, “the collective good” can be weaponized far too easily. Again, the past three years ought to have taught us this critical point. Former US President Herbert Hoover warned us: “Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of EMERGENCY.” Witness the unbridled and ongoing use of “emergency powers” at all levels of government.
And again, avoiding the logical fallacy of false dichotomy, Doug Bandow has something important to say in this context: [6]
“Collectivism takes on many guises and seldom uses its own real name. Words like ‘community’ and ‘social’ soothe us into thinking that collectivist decision-making is somehow higher and nobler than individual or ‘selfish’ decision-making. But the cold fact is that communities do not make decisions. Individuals who claim to speak for the community impose their decisions on us all.” —Doug Bandow
The fact is, individualism in the Enlightenment sense has become perverted in the West. It was hijacked by political and commercial operatives to become pure narcissism, for multiple reasons: 1) appealing to the selfish impulse sells way more products; and, 2) it makes it easier to divide and conquer people. On this last point, we have to remember that since World War II, our intelligence agencies have deployed a concerted campaign for control of the public mind. Agencies that had been designed to combat our enemies in wartime became weaponized against their own populations. I cannot recommend highly enough in this regard David Talbot’s book, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government.
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the public believes is a lie.” —former CIA chief William Casey [7]
Thus, the now seemingly infinite divisions of humanity into not just male/female, black/white, Christian/Muslim, etc. have been finessed into even more fine-grained divisions such as those being promoted by the “woke” agenda. This has even split apart the feminism movement, so that women who protest the trans movement are branded TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists). It has also split apart the Gay Rights movement, divided between those who promote the SOGI curriculum in public schools and those who don’t, as for example the Gays Against Groomers movement. Now the Israel-Hamas war is splitting apart what little remains of the Peace movement, mostly along “pro-Israel” vs. “anti-Semitic” lines. Sadly even Rebel News in Canada, which did such excellent work calling out the Liberal government for its abysmal pandemic policies and mandates, has succumbed to this either/or narrative—once again, the false dichotomy.
All of this is no accident. It is by design. It is social engineering to maintain a power elite, who fear what could happen if the populace ever united against them. In this context narcissism was the best social engineering tool they ever used. It destroyed the Enlightenment concept of the individual as a rational thinker who seeks to self-educate and transcend base human instincts in favour of more intellectual or spiritual ones. Instead, what we get is, as stated in the Europe Reloaded article, the individual “put on a fake pedestal and enticed into creating whatever identity they deem for themselves.” [8] Social media poured gasoline on the already smoldering fire of narcissism. Another essential book in this context is The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement by Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, two psychologists who specialize in adolescent psychology. They also track declining levels of empathy in the West, which has plummeted decade by decade, a deeply disturbing development in itself that they link to the cultivation of narcissism. No wonder the Peace movement is dead. Hard to care about the murder and suffering of Palestinian civilians or Israeli hostages when you’re out on the streets screaming “fascist” at parents who oppose forcing your transgender ideology on their children.
Thus, the virus infecting our age is not Covid but ideology—a dogged determination to see reality through the lens of our beliefs in contradiction to all real world evidence. One could argue it has reached religious proportions. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. Our unexamined assumptions—our ideology—if not constantly challenged, will lead us astray. While it’s comforting to have a fixed set of conclusions in the face of chaotic and confusing times, it may or may not have anything to do with reality. And it’s ideology that has been a key tool in the manipulation of the public mind.
3. Psyop #1984: The Forever Wars
Although George Orwell is ubiquitously quoted these days—deservedly—his observation in Nineteen-Eighty-Four about the political and economic role of war deserves repeating:
“War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards... But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous... though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs.” —George Orwell [9]
We are now living the paradigm of endless war pictured in Orwell’s novel. Recall too that the US in its Project for a New American Century wrote of its plan to invade or subdue 7 countries in the Middle East, including Iran. This has already happened in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. For all we know, the Hamas assault on Israel October 7th could be yet another “false flag” operation incited by CIA and Mossad agents provoking Palestine into its Armageddon, with the US and Israel ticking off Palestine and then Lebanon and Iran next on their bucket list of subjugated countries. The problem, as military analysts such as Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson and Col. Douglas Macgregor point out, is that this time they’ve badly miscalculated, uniting nearly the entire Arab bloc in the Middle East against Israel. If this escalates into all-out war with these combatants, we face the very real risk of a nuclear Armageddon.
Substack writer Sarah Swain writes a brilliant piece called “War’s Greatest Weapon—The Heart,” [10] which uses the age-old effective tool of allegory to picture these manufactured divisions between people, using the Israel-Hamas conflict as the setting. Her conclusion? “To be awake doesn’t cut it anymore. Leading from the heart is the new standard. Consciousness is the standard. Humanity is the new standard.” While I believe this is true, I responded to her that in order for the heart to awaken, sometimes the intellect must first receive an epiphany—an awareness that “something just isn’t right here” about all we’re being told. I explained about Talbot’s book and the ongoing post-WWII universal psyop. I also wrote in the comments:
“Your idea of healing personally is important. But to heal requires first breaking the spell. I tried to do this in my 2022 book, Words From the Dead, not just debunking falsehoods but taking people right back to Socrates and his method of inquiry—trying to give people the tools so they can spot the scams for themselves. Thus, as the old saying goes, ‘If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.’” —Sean Arthur Joyce
I believe with RFK Jr. that rather than abandon wholesale the model of truly liberal democracy, what we need is a return to and a strengthening of those principles. His vision is the one last chance democracy has to save itself from oblivion, slim as that chance often seems to be. I’m disappointed in his stand of unqualified support for Israel, however. If nothing else, it illustrates that the Israeli lobby is the true force majeure of American politics above all others—you defy it at your political peril.
4. Does the Magnetic Pole Shift Play a Role?
As a final and more personal note, I’ve been blessed to have received a recent “download from the universe,” or what I’ve often described as a “gift poem,” since I wrote an entire new sequence of 12 poems titled Pole Shift in just three days. It was prompted by another Socratic question: Could the crazy, upside-down clown world we’re living in now be affected by the magnetic pole shift somehow? As Swain writes: “This war will flip everything obscure as we know it into the land of lucidity, at a quantum rate of speed. Right now, down is up. Up is down. Right is left. Left is right. Awake is woke. Woke is awake.” In my research I discovered that scientists do not dispute the shifting magnetic pole, in fact, it has been moving toward Siberia at an increasing rate in recent decades, about 34 miles per year. Here’s a quote from one of several sources reporting on this phenomenon:
“Our planet’s magnetic field is predominantly created by the flow of liquid iron inside the core. It has always been a feature of our planet, but it has flipped in polarity repeatedly throughout Earth’s history. Each time it flips—up to 100 times in the past 20 million years, while the reversal can take about 1,000 years to complete—it leaves fossilised magnetisation in rocks on Earth.” The article concludes that, “The last (complete) reversal occurred between 772,000 and 774,000 years ago,” so we’re overdue for another one. [11]
A temporary pole shift happened more recently according to recent research:
“About 41,000 years ago, something remarkable happened: Earth’s magnetic field flipped and, for a temporary period, magnetic north was south and magnetic south was north. …We recently detected its signature in Australia for the first time, in a 5.5 metre-long sediment core taken from the bottom of Lake Selina, Tasmania.” [12]
Naturally, scientists don’t speculate on the psychosocial implications of this geomagnetic pole shift or reversal. But as humans we’re affected by various forms of electromagnetism, just as birds use it to navigate to ancestral nesting grounds. There’s a huge body of scientific literature on the pathogenic implications of microwave frequency radiation—the type being emitted by our cellphones and wireless devices. And indeed, scientists say that animals too are likely to be affected, along with the environment at large:
“With the help of new, precise carbon dating obtained from ancient tree fossils… researchers correlated shifts in climate patterns, large mammal extinctions and even changes in human behaviour just before and during the Laschamps excursion, a brief reversal of the magnetic poles that lasted less than a thousand years… There may also have been increasing use of caves between about 42,000 and 40,000 years ago, possibly as shelter from the more intense sun, the researchers report… Red ochre is thought to have been used as a sunscreen.” [13] They speculate that this may explain the cave paintings that began appearing around this time.
While scientists don’t believe there’s enough solid evidence to prove that mass extinctions were triggered by these pole reversals, it remains a point of concern, as if the spectre of a looming nuclear Armageddon weren’t disturbing enough. Sarah Swain concludes with an astute observation:
“But because the veil is lifting, and it is registering en masse, that none of it matters if we don’t right the wrongs within our own hearts. This cycle will continue for the entirety of time itself if we don’t collectively come to this knowing. The hypocrisy of this war is undeniable and even the slickest politicians and state-funded media outlets are beginning to feel the burn of their words and positioning, as their typical supporter bases are upended and inverted in a way that will stump even the most qualified publicists, producers and speech writers. This is providing the ultimate opportunity for open, respectful dialogue, with unlikely groups that you may all of a sudden see a glimpse of commonality with. Follow this light.” —Sarah Swain [14]
As a poet, I try to make myself an open receptacle, or what some Indigenous peoples call a “hollow bone” through which the universe can sing. That requires honing one’s craft so that when the “download” comes, you can get out of your own way—your own ego—long enough to let the message come through unimpeded, with the most concise, precise words possible. Thus, I offer in closing this essay one of the poems from Pole Shift:
War is peace, peace is war.
Peace activists jailed,war whores made kingsand queens while the planetshudders, Orwell’s ghostgone hoarse from screaming.Give peace a chance [15]yesterday’s dream, replacedby, More billions for bloodbaths!
Souls more numerousthan dust motes rushto leave the Earth.Of those who remain,the weak in spiritgo insane, possessedby demons of ideology,that holy book whose runesnever stop shifting.Meanwhile, the wisequestion everything,especially their own souls. [16]
[1] “Liberal democracy is really totalitarianism,” Europe Reloaded, October 27, 2023: https://www.europereloaded.com/liberal-democracy-and-or-totalitarianism/
[2] “False Dichotomy Examples,” by Dave Cornell (PhD) and peer-reviewed by Chris Drew (PhD), October 5, 2023: https://helpfulprofessor.com/false-dichotomy-examples/
[3] “Six charts to help you understand the 2021 federal election,” CTV News, September 24, 2021: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/federal-election-2021/six-charts-to-help-you-understand-the-2021-federal-election-1.5598419
[4] https://www.seanarthurjoyce.ca/words-from-the-dead
[5] Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, Volume 1: The Spell of Plato, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1962/1966, first Princeton paperback printing, 1971, p. 87.
[6] Doug Bandow, Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Bandow Cato Institute bio: https://www.cato.org/people/doug-bandow
[7] https://historyheist.com/william-casey-well-know-our-disinformation-program-is-complete-when-everything-the-american-public-believes-is-false/
[8] “Liberal democracy is really totalitarianism,” Europe Reloaded, October 27, 2023, ibid.
[9] Nineteen-Eighty-Four, George Orwell, Penguin Books, 1983 reprint, pp. 160–61.
[10] Sarah Swain, “War’s Greatest Weapon – The Heart,” Substack, October 15, 2023:
[11] Jonathan O’Callaghan, “Earth’s magnetic poles could start to flip. What happens then?” HORIZON: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine, December 7, 2018: https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/earths-magnetic-poles-could-start-flip-what-happens-then
[12] Agathe Lise-Pronovost, “We found the first Australian evidence of a major shift in Earth’s magnetic poles. It may help us predict the next,” The Conversation, February 14, 2021: https://theconversation.com/we-found-the-first-australian-evidence-of-a-major-shift-in-earths-magnetic-poles-it-may-help-us-predict-the-next-155040
[13] Carolyn Gramling, “A magnetic field reversal 42,000 years ago may have contributed to mass extinctions,” Science News, February 18, 2021: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/earth-magnetic-field-reversal-mass-extinctions-environment-crisis
[14] Sarah Swain, “War’s Greatest Weapon – The Heart,” Substack, October 15, 2023, ibid.
[15] “Give Peace a Chance,” John Lennon/Paul McCartney, recorded by John Lennon and Plastic Ono Band, Apple Records, 1969.
[16] Sean Arthur Joyce, Pole Shift, ©2023.
Art; I wrote this many years ago while living in the Talamanca Mountains of Costa Rica; in some ways it echoes your poem:
AN ODE TO A LATE GREAT PLANET
Deep in the core of the planet the magma stirred..... restlessly.
Imbalances on Its crust were being felt deep below the surface.
Increasing temperatures were altering delicate balances and the Earth was struggling to readjust Its magnetodynamic alignment.
On the surface a single species of the millions of lifeforms rushed around in manic disorientation....a species lost on its home planet!
A misunderstanding of their place and role, based on the twin illusions of Special Status and Power Tools had separated them from all other homeostatic lifeforms.
The Earth sighed......and a hundred hurricanes were born.
On the surface a single species manipulated its unconscious way around the carrying capacity of an area, and bred, and spread. The species unknowingly played with the natural controls on birth, death, and lifespan, and more and more they encroached on the living space of the other sharers of the planet.
The Earth groaned.....and a thousand earthquakes rumbled.
Arguing, fighting, cursing, polluting, this single species involved all other lifeforms in its demented concerns; all the while claiming that it had the blessings of the Planetary Creator in this megalomania.
The Earth shuddered....and ten thousand volcanos erupted.
Caring, uncaring. Concerned, unconcerned. Secure, insecure. Wealthy, impoverished. No one knew what was really happening or where they were headed. Oh, many made noises and beat loud drums. Many labelled their efforts Green or Eco, but even they didn't know. All were being swept along to an unknown fate.
The Earth shrugged.....and reversed Its magnetic field.
In this sterilizing process birds ceased to migrate, insects mutated beyond the boundaries of chemical control, and the great whales were lost.
The Earth cried......and all over the planet it rained or snowed for four hundred years.
Written in Costa Rica 40 years ago,; seems like yesterday.
Steve Friedman, West Kelowna.