Starting Over (and Finding Hope)

Steven Yates

April 12, 2022

“ … in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those—dead sure, as our phrase is—but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor where they are, nor how many of them there are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you know, and no more: first, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight, and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.” —Albert Jay Nock, “Isaiah’s Job” (1937)

Every so often something happens to give me encouragement — hope, that even if the America I grew up in is gone, all is not lost!

A recent missive by Tom Woods, libertarian educator, historian and author who sends out a daily email (it is worth getting on his list, trust me), reports how a university freshman tore a veteran CNN anchor up one side and down the other with a few simple questions.

The setting was a conference with a typical Regime title: “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy,” April 6–8, sponsored by the Establishment Atlantic Monthly and the University of Chicago Center for Politics.

The conference theme, obviously, was narrative control — by those who know that outside the big cities and mass media centers they do not control the narrative. Naturally CNN was present.

During the Q&A the young man rose and addressed Brian Seltzer (3:42:10):

“My name is Christopher Phillips. I’m a first-year at the college. My question is for Mr. Seltzer.

“You’ve all spoken extensively about FOX News being a purveyor of disinformation. But CNN is right up there with them. They pushed the Russian collusion hoax, they pushed the Jussie Smollett hoax, they smeared Justice Kavanaugh as a rapist, and they also smeared Nick Sandmann as a white supremacist. And yes, they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop affair as pure Russian disinformation.

“With mainstream corporate journalists becoming little more than apologists and cheerleaders for the regime, is it time to finally declare that the canon of journalistic ethics is dead or no longer operative?

“All the mistakes of the mainstream media, and CNN in particular, seem to magically all go in one direction. Are we expected to believe that this is all just some sort of random coincidence, or is there something else behind it?”

Tom Woods: “BOOM! I wouldn’t change a single word of that.”

I wouldn’t either. I would only sum up: five items and Corporate Media, which CNN exemplifies, either got all five spectacularly wrong by accident, or brazenly lied about them. Which do you think it was?

Seltzer’s nonresponse response began with a quip: “Too bad it’s time for lunch!”

When he got around to attempting a serious reply, it was embarrassing: “I think you’re describing a different channel than the one I watch. But I understand that that is a popular right-wing narrative about CNN.”

He then went off on a word-salad tangent on how journalists don’t always get things right, how hard it is to get things right, and how we all need to work together because people want to know what is true.

The student’s point stood unrefuted.

I guess we weren’t supposed to notice.

Journalistic“ethics” is not only dead, but has been dead for a very long time if it ever existed at all.

Would the Brian Seltzers of protected Corporate Media enclaves like CNN know the truth if it walked up and bit them?

In previous articles I listed the things Corporate Media has lied about going back to the 1950s (and it is possible to go back further). You cannot undertake any serious study of how these institutions work without reaching the conclusion that in so-called “democratic” societies lying to control the narrative is the rule, not the exception.

The Internet disrupted corporate de facto monopolization. Hence the massive censorship now in evidence on all the Big Tech platforms, passed off as “fact-checking,”fighting “disinformation,” etc., with conferences such as the above now a dime a dozen.

Surely it is the height of naiveteto expect CNN to report honestly about the origins of covid, the 2020 election, what happened on January 6, 2021, adverse effects of the mRNA gene-therapy shots (or their real purpose which probably has nothing to do with public health), and why Putin went to war in Ukraine.

What Mr. Phillips’s being in that place and speaking up tells me, though, is that there are people out there — some of them Gen Zers — who have a clue. They have figured out that they’ve been lied to and are courageous enough to call it out.

I am unconvinced that there are enough such people. Unlike most other writers on this site, I tend to think it too late to “save America.” I would be happy to be proven wrong. But the means of “saving America” have been readily available for a very long time now.Few will do what it takes, and few others will listen.

Dr. Ron Paul’s career in Congress proves this decisively.

Corporations large and small are too materialistic and busy enriching themselves, often at the expense of others and the country. The masses are too busy following celebrities, so that when one brainless celebrity slaps another brainless celebrity onstage, it makes headlines.

Aldous Huxley warned that the perfect dictatorship would be one in which the dictators allowed enough mass consumption and mindless entertainment that the masses loved their slavery.

Early last year I penned a series I keep coming back to, recommending that conservatives prepare to separate themselves from a corrupt and controlled mainstream society and form autonomous communities. And while unanticipated problems might come up — an increasing absence of available farmland, for example, as Bill Gates buys it up, or a false flag cyberattack (blamed on Russia) shuts down communications while globalists reconfigure the Internet — separation seems to me to have a better long term chance of success than trying,somehow,to retake the centers of power.

Haven’t conservatives been yapping about “taking our country back” for over 30 years now? What do we have to show for it?

Not zilch, but nowhere near what it takes.

We have a substantial homeschooling movement. There is visible dissent against official covid narratives. There are even a few people willing to talk about how the NATO / CIA axis has been poking and provoking the Russian bear in Ukraine for the past eight years.

The Establishment is terrified of another Trump victory in 2024. Hence my prediction that its denizens will do whatever it takes to keep that from happening! And I do mean whatever it takes!

I have little trouble envisioning alternatives to public schools demonized and shut down, just as I have little trouble envisioning a cyberattack that shuts off alternative media.

So it’s time to think in terms of starting over, and not just with “parallel institutions” but outside the doomed, GloboCorp-controlled mainstream altogether.

There is plenty of information on every aspect of what needs to be done, be it farming and food preservation, educating, or restoring localist economic activity based on trust, and embodying genuine free enterprise. Genuine free enterprise, like honest major media, has not existed on a large scale for so many decades you might as well stop counting. It does not mean corporations can do as they please without accountability because they are, well, “private companies.”

Getting a four-year degree is no longer a necessity. A learner can get better information on any number of websites for a tiny fraction of the price of a university education, and without all the gender-bending foolishness. There is a ton of educational content available on YouTube for free! Yes, yes, YouTube is Big Tech owned, but as long as it allows free access, make use of it!

But the question remains (I sometimes get this from readers): given my own admission that too few people are reading, or are likely to do anything likely to make much of a difference, is this all just whistling in the dark?

Whenever I find myself wondering if there is any point to writing these articles, I dig out my hard copy of “Isaiah’s Job” by early twentieth century iconoclastic author Albert Jay Nock. I close my laptop, grab an apple or something healthy to snack on, go outside and breathe the fresh air, find a shady tree to sit under, and read the words of someone wiser than I will ever be.

Paraphrasing the core message of this phenomenal essay (based on Isaiah 1:1-9):

God calls the Old Testament prophet to preach, to tell the masses how lost they are, how decadent they have become, that the Lord their God is more than merely annoyed, and that this is their last chance to clean up their act. The Lord then tells Isaiah, as if He’d had an afterthought: the masses won’t listen, and the Establishment will see him as a threat. It will demonize him and try to destroy him (sound familiar?). He will be lucky to get out of town with his hide intact.

“In that case,” one can almost hear Isaiah asking the Lord, “what’s the point?”

“The point,” Jehovah tells him, “is that there is a remnant out there you don’t know about. They are men and women of character, all plugging along as best they can, and are not subject to the cultural trance. They are steadfast and consistently do their best at whatever work they do even if the rewards are paltry. They are honest in their business dealings. They struggle to be kind to people even if they don’t receive kindness in return. They do all that they do not for mere personal gain but because it is right.

“And though they are invisible now, my Isaiah,” Jehovah continues, “when things go completely to pieces, as they will in a few years, the remnant’s work ethic, their resilience, their honesty and basic decency, and above all, their vision of a better future,will propel them into positions of leadership. They will then be the ones to build up a new civilization.

“You are preaching to the remnant,” God concludes. “Taking care of the remnant — encouraging them, shoring them up, giving them hope, is an honest job. So stop complaining,get about it, and stop wasting time.”

The remainder of Nock’s piece admonishes: don’t try to find the remnant. Don’t advertise to them. If you are impeccable with your words and deeds, they will find you. And they will be encouraged and hopeful, knowing they are not alone.

So attract them with your vision of a better world — a world not run by power-hungry plutocrats/technocrats, but one where people deal with one another, teach one another, and care for one another freely instead of through coercion, through peace and not violence, via relationships built on consistent honesty and trust.

Conservatives need a grand vision, and it has to be something more than make America great again. It can’t be Utopian, because conservatives are by nature non-Utopian. It can draw on great documents such as the Declaration of Independence and Federalist 51, among others. It must appeal to what is best in us, and thus attract the interest of the remnant.

We should stress that this is not a movement of “aging white guys.” Is Christopher Phillips old? No, he’s probably Gen Z. This generation (who started to be born right around the time of 9/11 and has gone through times of crisis) is starting to look interesting!

There are plenty of conservative women firebrands of all ages, moreover.

Many Hispanics will come on board. Officially, a record number of Hispanics voted for Trump in 2020 (and who knows what the actual count was?).

Engaging African-Americans will be more challenging since so many have been so brainwashed to fixate on slavery and other mistakes of the past, about which we can do nothing except resolve not to make those mistakes ever again. Sadly, many black Americans have given up. They lack a vision. They lack real leadership. The phrase Black Lives Matter rings with desperation — born of fear that their lives don’t matter (and GloboCorp couldn’t care less how many black children die by gunfire in south side Chicago). Even worse, a few now violently attack Asians as fiercely as whites. They could learn from Asians, some of whom came to America’s shores with nothing but what they could carry and unable to speak English. If they didn’t build businesses, their children did.

All of us — white, black, Hispanic, etc.; males, female, or gender-confused; rebels who identify with the right and voted for Trump or who identify with the left and voted for Bernie Sanders — have a common enemy: GloboCorp! Elsewhere I outlined how I use this term:

Who or what is GloboCorp? Is there really such an entity? You’re kidding me, right? GloboCorp (short for globalist corporatism, for anyone who’s spent the last 50 years in a cave) consists of the 300 – 400 extended families who run the world. The ownership class, in other words, owning/controlling well over half the world’s wealth, beginning with leviathan investment banks and central banks; the CIA, other spook agencies; defense contractors and the war machine generally; “think tanks” such as the Atlantic Council, the Trilateral Commission, etc.; corporate media; Big Pharma; Big Tech. Then there are the several thousand administrators and technocrats under those top families, with thousands more functionaries including bought political classes, Ivy League academics, and presstitutes as Paul Craig Roberts calls them. GloboCorp’s hubs are in obvious places: Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the City of London, Basel and Davos, Tel Aviv, Brussels, Dubai, Singapore, probably Beijing, etc. I could name names, but it would take too long.

These people, I repeat, do not care what race/ethnicity you are, what religion you adhere to (if any), what political party you are in, or how you self-identify ideologically.

Nor do they care who you have sex with or what “gender” you claim to be — but your “fluidity” amidst the circus like atmosphere in present-day academia is a useful distraction, as is celebrity culture.

GloboCorp is our common enemy, and a formidable one!

We should oppose GloboCorp’s technocracy, “transhumanism,” and its other forms of materialism with our Christian humanity; its desire for power with our passion for freedom; its fundamental destructiveness with our creativity and enterprises of various sorts; and its hatred of common humanity with our caring and yes, love, for one another and even for those who hate us and everything we stand for.

Can this defeat GloboCorp? I don’t know. There are no guarantees. That doesn’t mean the fight is not worth fighting, that lies told and hoaxes undertaken are not worth exposing. My reading of Revelation suggests that a demonic world regime will eventually seize power. We may then be tested as never before! But if we believe Scripture, we know how the story ends and where our true reward lies. For:

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that the seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had the opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”

Hebrews 11:13-16, with our ultimate source of hope.

Steven Yates’s new book What Should Philosophy Do? A Theory (Wipf and Stock, 2021) is available here and here.

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E-Mail Steven Yates: freeyourmindinsc@yahoo.com