Dakota Beacon

Disclaimer:  We are fully aware that the coronavirus discussed herein is both real and can cause grave illness and/or death in some.  Much like mumps.  Much like the Hong Kong flu.  But until now, no disease has really controlled us.  We are suffering a serious social and psychological illness here, not just a virus.

Are large numbers, perhaps even a majority, of Americans becoming indoctrinated into a cult?

As time goes by and we have had time to learn a lot more about the virus which was weaponized against the west by the communist regime in China, we are seeing some manifestations of cult behavior among our own countrymen.  While this is not restricted to the issue of coronavirus-related matters, by focusing on this we can consider certain cult behaviors and then, perhaps, whether they are also part of other socio-political patterns.

I’m not a “scientist” in terms of educational degrees, but I think we all are to some extent in that we have the capacity to question and draw logical conclusions, even if we are being deliberately discouraged from doing so.  The more time I have had to think about it and ask myself (and others) questions, the more I have arrived at the conclusion that the covid hysteria is really part of a cult mentality.  I looked up various descriptions of cult behavior and most of them offer a sort of checklist.  Many of them refer directly to religious cults, so they reference Chrisitan beliefs or the rejection of them by cults.  But most of the items that seem to be common to cults are strikingly familiar if we put them in the context of our current conversation, if we can even call it that, of the “pandemic” (and the scare quotes are intended as such).

This virus has fundamentally changed our lives over a very brief span of time like nothing in history ever has.  Basic human behavior has completely changed.  People no longer physically show affection - no hugs in greeting each other - instead those who would normally express pleasure in meeting do some kind of elbow-bump or make phantom gestures approximating a hugging motion without approaching closely.  People carefully measure and try to stand six feet apart in checkout lines, we avoid each other in aisles while shopping.  Normal instinct is being suppressed.  

Most of the criteria given to define a “cult” are fairly similar.  Here are some of the most common ones:

1. Acceptance of the “leader” as the final authority.  Criticism of the authority is not permitted even if it is logical or true.  Some typical cult leaders have been CEO’s, politicians, self-help gurus, military leaders and of course religious leaders.  Who comes to mind?  Well, I think first of Anthony Fauci.  Have you noticed that one of the first targets to be closed has been churches?  Churches and synagogues and religious services are being banned.  It’s been observed that it is considered all right to go into a casino but not to church.  Religion invokes a higher authority.  Can’t have that.  

2. Suppression of skepticism is required.  Cult members are strongly discouraged from consuming information from sources which may be critical.  We see this every hour of every day.  Social media aggressively suppresses information which calls into question the numbers/statistics given out by “official” sources, little warnings are attached to anything which might cause someone to question information provided by the “authorities”.  We have access to information which tells us clearly and without doubt that masks do not keep the virus out or in.  They are like an iron gate to a fly or a screen door on a submarine.  Useless.  Yet if shop owners do not oppressively and obnoxiously attempt to enforce mask mandates they are fined or shut down.  We also know that a virus, if airborne at all, will travel across a distance of 11.5 feet - and yet everyone stands a ceremonial 6 feet apart like pawns on a gameboard.  Why?  We can’t stand twelve feet apart in a checkout line or sit twelve feet apart in a waiting room or space tables in a restaurant twelve feet apart.  We can’t really do anything spaced twelve feet apart.  We know all of this and yet people persist in the weird stage blocking.  Look at our “outdoor dining” - mandated for our “protection”.  Instead of dining at tables in a restaurant we see people huddled over a kerosene lamp in a tent.  Instead of a ten-foot ceiling they are stooping to get in the opening and can’t stand upright inside.  It’s cold and dark and very close.  The porta potty next to the tent was designed for emergencies in outdoor gatherings and the tent intended for a camper who spends the day outdoors and only sleeps in it at night.  If distance is a real factor we would dine indoors where the cubic space per person is infinitely greater.  As to those dirty little masks, they will require an article all by themselves.  We know all of this and yet people comply with a sort of cow-like complacence.  Is this normal?  Is it normal to do things we know are meaningless and pointless?  To do things that are uncomfortable, unnatural and even harmful - just to comply with a senseless mandate?  

3. Former cult members are “de-legitimized” - if you have an epiphany and realize that someone who is leading is wrong or untruthful and break with them you are labeled no longer reliable or legitimate, you are “othered” by the authorities.  Shunning is a typical reaction to someone calling a leader into question and anything that can be used to disparage the person is put to use.  If other cult members shun the dissident or former member they can continue to be controlled.   Well, we have seen the doctors who participated in the “white coat” press conference, where they called upon healthcare providers to employ successful treatments basically de-platformed.  Some doctors have been threatened with losing their licenses for prescribing safe and effective drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and other safe treatments or have actually lost their licenses.  In some cases pharmacies have been pressured not to fill prescriptions  by qualified physicians for these drugs.  Why?  These doctors have not harmed anyone and have shown good results.  Why would they be silenced and shunned by the medical community and the media?

4.  The cult takes on the aspect of a refuge from the outside world and shames those who are not in accord.  This one really rings true for the virus cult.  Have we ever seen such incivility in our normal everyday activities?  If you go into a store or even a restaurant you are ordered to put on a paper mask or pull it up if it has slipped down on your face.  You are followed about the aisles of the grocery store by trolls who are employed to police you.  You are subjected to the lecturing of other shoppers whom you have never met.  A year ago you would have passed each other in the aisle, perhaps with a friendly smile or even a casual greeting.  No more.  The store’s staff which used to be helpful if you were looking for something or at least friendly when you made eye contact now bark at you.  They’d rather you didn’t even shop there.  Everywhere you go there is someone who is more virtuous - whose mask fits her better, someone who is willing to show how much better she is because she wears her mask outdoors and even in her car.  The infamous and now discredited Dr. Deborah Birx had advised that people should be wearing their masks around their homes, inside, that is.  Such behavior combined with cruel loneliness apparently drove her own parents to the brink of suicide - they stopped eating and drinking, which was her excuse for breaking her own rules and visiting them in person.  Dr. Theresa Tam of Canada and the WHO concurrently (how does that even work?) went further.  She said people should be wearing masks when in bed with their mates.  Ohhhkaaaay.  That would seem really, really virtuous.  Maybe too virtuous.  Maybe too creepy. In case you haven’t been out much lately and were not aware of the level of hysteria we have, look at this.  This could possibly be explained by hypoxia and hypercapnia from obsessive mask wearing.

5. Manipulation through “shame cycles” is used to control cult members.  The leader sets up expectations and then severely shames those who do not meet them.  Then they can relent if the person is repentant enough.  We see a sort of form of this where a governor, a sort of cult lieutenant, who relies on the Main Authority for his own authority, will open and close businesses willy-nilly.  Cuomo in New York has done this, as well as Bill de Blasio, and the two of them have just about destroyed New York’s economy.  Governor Whitmer has done this in Michigan and has wound up closing down 32% of her state’s businesses.  California’s governor is doing the same thing.  In Minnesota Governor Tim Walz plays this yo-yo game.  Today the rules say everything is shut down.  Tomorrow things will be sort-of open again.  Woops!  Now the “case numbers” are up again!  Time to close again!  Time to jerk the chain again.  No business is able to predict whether they dare employ staff again or stock up on supplies and food.  They may be open next week on Monday and then by Friday or the next Monday their food will be rotting and staff laid off again because things are closed up.  This is killing business. It’s killing people who need to earn a living.

6. Isolation from the “outside”.  We have all kinds of isolation now that we have never seen before.  People are isolated from each other in their own families.  Elderly people are left alone to cope “for their protection”, kids are kept away from extended family.  Family dinners are discouraged in some places, outlawed altogether in others.  Holiday celebrations are mostly banned.  We shop online now.  My elderly relatives call in their grocery order and then go to the store where some masked, gloved employee runs out to the car with the order.  They have not seen a human face in months, except each other’s at home.  With bars and restaurants closed people don’t socialize with friends.  Weddings and other family-oriented events have been indefinitely postponed, are scaled down to nothing or even handled “virtually” (what does this mean?) - another blow to restaurants, caterers, florists, venues, musicians and of course to our communing with friends and relatives. Schools are closed and young kids are plunked in front of their computers to be monitored from afar.  They don’t play with friends anymore, they don’t visit the library or the local museum.  Concerts are off.  Movies are off.  Music and dance lessons are cancelled.  No recitals anymore.  No proud parents watching their kids perform all that they practiced all year.  The county fair is cancelled.  All pleasure has been clinically removed from our lives.  This also is related to:

7. Asceticism:  People rejecting all worldly pleasure in order to purify themselves and the drive to also purify others in the process for their own good.  There is scorn for those who don’t believe and act as you do.  Even the natural instinct to want to breathe the  air freely is to be denied.  In Wales, known as the Land of Song, their cult leader ordered that there was to be no singing.  In England a couple out walking their dog, hiking alone in the hills was arrested.  Beaches are closed.  People are being denied sunshine and fresh air “in the name of science and health”?  When we know that Vitamin D helps protect us from the virus?  When we know that breathing through masks puts us at risk?  There is a drive here to subordination of the individual - the “self” - to the collective.  You are expected to do things not because they are good for you but because it is perceived as in the interest of the “collective”.  Much like the human sacrifices of pagan religions, where sacrificing the individual to the volcano is believed to benefit the rest, the “collective”.  You can’t breathe?  You haven’t seen your family in eight months and you are 98 years old?  Too bad - you must be sacrificed.  You know that a vaccine will harm you?  Too bad - you must submit for the “good of society”.  This is a very dangerous mindset and it is becoming all too prevalent in our society, accelerated if not spawned, by the virus.  When we are told that our bodies do not belong to us but rather to the collective, we should become very concerned - and this is the message in much of this response.

8. “Thought reform” is employed - this is related to othering of skeptics in a way.  But it uses certain tactics to shut down discussion.  “Sit down and listen” is the attitude here - don’t question what the leader says, don’t allow yourself to doubt the narrative.  Doubting is “dangerous”.  Just don’t do it.  Well, when is the last time you had a conversation about this virus or our public response to it with someone who held a different opinion from yours?  “Just don’t.”  

9. Elitism - there is a belief in the higher virtue of the cult - well, just look around and you will see that non-believers are considered lesser beings for their lack of faith in the cult.  

10. Leaders are exempt from the rules laid down for the masses.  Well we sure have seen this.   Dr. Fauci, upon ordering everything stopped and mandating social distancing and mask wearing is next pictured sandwiched between two jolly comrades at a baseball game, no mask, enjoying himself.  He is usually seen in a Washington Nationals baseball cap to remind us that he goes to baseball games.  Governors and lawmakers and their families don’t need to pay attention to the fascist lockdowns.  If they want to travel they travel.  If they want to celebrate a birthday at a fancy French restaurant like Gavin Newsom and various Hollywood celebrities did, they will.  The masses be damned.  Dr Birx was a classic.  She cautioned the rest of us that we must have no family get-togethers.  She began saying this early last summer and never let up on it.  She couldn’t care less that people are suffering and their health actually declining because of this.  Until her own parents began to go into a mental and emotional decline and shut down.  Then it seemed right to her to break all the rules and go to spend time with them.  (Maybe she has a better effect on them than she does on the rest of us.)  She was tearful in her excuses.  But she has been consistently stoic about our families and disrespectful of the needs of our parents and grandparents.  This is a sign of a cult -  leaders who are above the law.

Following World War II, natives of some South Pacific islands - people who had until then been isolated from the “modern world” began to believe in “cargo cults”.  The idea was that certain behavior would bring them technology, that this technology would, in turn, bring them the things they needed and wanted.  They believed that the gods of technology would be pleased by their efforts to simulate technology.  Cargo cults tend to develop in times of unusual social stress.  In some of these cults, it was common to mimic technology which was not available in reality - marching drills with sticks instead of rifles, making “radios” out of coconuts or whatever they had, “aircraft” and “radar dishes” out of bamboo.  (They didn’t work of course.)  It is very much like six-foot social distancing, the ineffective and cumbersome plexiglass curtains between us and a store clerk and our paper masks.  None of this does anything - it is purely superstitious ceremony. There is no place for science or logic in this - it is purely superstition and wishful thinking.  The idea is if the people do these things it will somehow please the gods and benefits will be bestowed.  

We might find this amusing in a sad sort of way.  But we all know that masks do not work.  We even have a good deal of evidence that they are doing us harm.  We know that social distancing is not working - yet we subscribe to these superstitions.  We allow our cult leaders to play God with our businesses and our livelihoods.  We wait for them to tell us what we must do next - some want to mandate vaccines, even though there is strong evidence that they are not really effective and they are capable of doing us grave harm.  We look to others to tell us what to do, how to behave, and some of us act as surrogate “leaders” when no other is present to keep us in line, especially with regard to wearing of pointless and harmful masks.  We tolerate shutdowns which destroy our businesses and life’s work, imposed at the whim of a governor (now maybe a president).

When people act without thinking, going through motions, obeying mindless dictates from self-proclaimed “leaders”, when they know from the behavior of these same leaders that what they are ordering us to do is not right or they would be doing it also - and yet they obey, obey, obey, they are part of a cult. This cult behavior is in some ways like a Jim Jones pseudo-religious cult, in other ways like a primitive society’s cargo cult.  None of it is grounded in logic or one’s own sense of balance  

So if we recognize that this is cult behavior, what should we do?  We must do as the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s story did - say it loud and clear:  “The emperor has no clothes!”  Should we ignore the virus?  Of course not.  We should be cautious and careful that if we aren’t feeling well we should stay home, and if it persists, seek medical advice.  We should encourage the discovery and development of treatments and medications for those who fall ill.  We should do all we can to ensure that everyone has proper nutrition.  But we should also question what we hear, share information, condemn those who would stifle discussion and debate.  To silence our discussion and debate of this is the sign of a cult and it is also potentially deadly.  

Comments:  (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)