As IF Times

link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram

Why do people in societies behave the way that they do? If you consider the myriad of choices that people must make on any given day, from the trivial to the consequential, it’s logical to assume that most will act in ways that would be most self-serving. That seems logical….but real life experience shows that this is not necessarily the case.

The societies I am referring to aren’t those run by notional despots with all kinds of surveillance and controls on their populace.  We can understand the motives of people in those states.  No, what’s more puzzling is the behavior of people in what are accepted as ‘free’ societies, ones in which citizens are supposed to expect some level of self-determination over their lives.  Aren’t people allowed to freely vote for their rulers here?

A quick survey will reveal that these types of societies are rapidly disappearing. Where once you could say categorically that ‘western’ nations were the ones with explicit freedoms, this is certainly not the case anymore. In Europe, both the UK and France have implemented strict prohibitions on what can be said both in public and online and in the case of the UK, even to thoughts! These kinds of restrictions were once thought to be characteristics of autocratic regimes such as China, Russia or North Korea.  In those surveillance states, citizens are spied upon, their speech is limited and the concept of personal rights is non-existent.

However this form of citizen behavior control has made its way into the toolkits of most heretofore free Western nations.  Canada is the most recent example of this erosion of freedoms.

Recently, the Canadians held an election after a prolonged period in which the previous ruler had destroyed virtually all the sacrosanct Canadian traditions of freedom and ethical behavior on the part of government. Finally, the nation could end their 10 year nightmare.  This nightmare included a collapse of virtually every metric of national performance, the skyrocketing of debt, the explosion of illegal immigrants, housing crises in every city, the proliferation of criminal activity and the crushing of personal freedoms.

But, thanks to the relentless and effective gas-lighting campaign by all media outlets (taxpayer supported) a large part of the population apparently voted to keep the same guys in office; the equivalent of ‘please sir, may I have another’.

Even casting aside the rumors of election manipulation, this kind of behavior is not organic.  It is planned.

Politicians and media may be un-liked by the majority of the population, but they are not guileless. At the very core of their being, they know what a very insightful psychologist named Stanley Milgram discovered over 50 years ago in a series of perhaps surprising studies on human behavior, especially in the field of obedience behavior.  He found that if a subject can be convinced that harmful actions on his part are not his fault, then he will continue to perform such actions and separate himself emotionally from those actions just because an authority figure instructs him to do so.  Thus, even as electric shocks applied to control subjects caused obvious distress, the subjects continued to apply them when instructed to do so.

His experiments were driven by an examination of the treatment of Jews by Germans during the Second World War, but what he discovered was that this behavior was not confined to Germans.  It had implications for all populations.

We saw this implemented on a large scale very recently with the massive Covid-19 psyop in the 2020-2023 period.  Doctors and other professionals continued to press on with harmful vaccinations because of the enormous pressure from peers and ‘authorities’.  What chance did the average citizen have of refuting the tidal wave of mandates?

In the case of the recent Canadian elections, naïve people were convinced that US President Trump imposed a more serious existential threat to the nation than 10 years of an inept Liberal government.  With the aid of virtually all media outlets, the story was effectively sold to a large part of the voters.  The knowledge derived from Stanley Milgram worked as it always has and the same government that had been applying electric shocks to the populace was returned to power.

We can expect to see more of this kind of incongruent behavior as time goes on because those in positions of influence are quite aware of Milgram’s work…even as the public is not.  Policies and laws don’t need to have any merit or make any sense, they just need to be sold. When you observe populations acting against their own existence, someone is harnessing Milgram.

link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg0m79gm10o

The biggest news of the week was the imposition of tariffs by the US on its heretofore best trading partners, Mexico and Canada.  The expected outcry ensued from the respective governments about the unfair bullying tactics of the US and then the knee jerk retaliatory actions followed..

What could have precipitated this action on the part of the US?  General bullying? Manifest Destiny? Regional hegemony?  Well it took root with Donald Trump’s pledge to protect American citizens and their borders from infiltration of illegal migrants and associated with that, a continued flow of drugs, particularly fentanyl and of course, the associated crime.

It’s the national equivalent of having your neighbors with whom you share a fenceless property line, allowing their dogs to defecate on your lawn.

The rational response should be, “Wow, that is a problem, we’ll do better to stop that kind of activity, since we’re good neighbors and all”. Of course, that didn’t happen.  The response has been more like, “what dog?” Canada and Mexico took umbrage at the mere accusation of being un-neighborly and imposed sanctions of their own back at the US.

In the case of Canada, which at the moment is led by nobody, but nevertheless, the recently resigned Prime Minister Trudeau still presents himself as the savior and champion of Canada’s interests by invoking patriotism and the Team Canada flag. While this is entirely laughable and tragic, some delusional Canadians are voicing their national pride in denouncing the Americans and rallying around some of Canada’s political leaders.   They’ve already coined an expression for this: Stockholm Syndrome.  Some may recall that in the 1970’s, the heiress to the Hearst fortune, Patty Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.  After a period of captivity, she wound up sympathizing with her captors and acted on their behalf in committing various crimes.

Just a few years ago, Trudeau’s government imprisoned citizens daring to protest his Covid mandates, sending the police in to forcefully break them up, arrested organizers of the trucker’s convoy, garnished their bank accounts and labelled them enemies of the state for not complying with unjust vaccination mandates. Court cases surrounding this exist to this day.  In addition, Canadians were prevented from entering or leaving the country and made to walk only in the direction of arrows in grocery stores.  Some may also recall Trudeau proudly declaring Canada a post national state and that allegiance to the pride flag was more important than the maple leaf.

Suddenly as the nation is soon to be under the pressure of US tariffs, he invokes the patriotism flag….and the quadruple vaccinated are falling for it.

What is the tariff?  The tariff will be 25% on all goods entering the US unless the border issues are addressed.  People with short memories are reminded that the Liberal government themselves had plans to implement a carbon tax of at least that much to ALL Canadians in a few weeks time in order to fight the quixotic battle against climate change.  This was the entire reason for the unpopularity of the governing Liberals in the first place.  I’m convinced that Trudeau is annoyed that tax money would go to Americans instead of their own coffers.  As we know, all socialist regimes only use taxation in the most creative ways to fund their existence. Recall that the mayor of Toronto wanted to tax rain.

Like all demagogues, he invokes the classic “we’re all in this together” bleat to signify solidarity with all Canadians. Nothing says “in it together” like having your food, shelter, travel, vacation  and alcohol paid for by the taxpayers while also enjoying pay increases at will. This is reminiscent of Oprah Winfrey, a billionaire, imploring the little people to donate money to help re-build Maui… since they’re in it together.

The financial and cultural lives of Canada and the US are inextricably tied together. Are Canadians not going to use Amazon? Netflix? NFL? Trash TV? McDonald’s? Not travel to Palm Springs and Hawaii and Florida?

This tariff battle is the equivalent of staying with one card in blackjack when the dealer has a face card showing.  He cannot win. The good consequence of this period of stupidity is that now the conversation will be re-ignited on the larger issue of nationhood. The regions of the nation will have to consider in greater depth the terms of the confederation and the distribution of power….or even if Canada continues as a nation.  If a visionary cannot make the case for nationhood but only demagogues continue to be elected pushing the latest shiny thing, there is no future as a nation.