Brandon Version 1.0

Truth is a property of being because being is an entailment or radiation of the principle of creation. Or, you could just say that the Creator cannot not create; moreover, since we are in the image of the principle -- its prolongation herebelow -- it explains our own boundless creativity. Creativity ultimately exists for the same reason as do truth, beauty, and virtue: the conformity of reality to the Principle. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

But of course, man is free, so he is free to ignore or deny the universal principles that govern things -- including even the principle of freedom itself. 

However, doing so involves exchanging reality for fantasy, and we all know people who prefer to live in the comfort and safety of their own delusions. Living where I do, I am surrounded by these drones. Some of them even notice the ongoing descent into barbarism, but they see no connection between this and the one party rule they support. The hivemind by its nature has no insight into itself.

"The opposite of transcendental truth," writes Pieper, "would be a dream mistaken for reality." But a single dream isn't enough to cover the whole of reality, which is why the left has had to invade everything in academia, even areas you'd think would be unnecessary, such as sports, weather, and experimental vaccine mandates.  

For it seems that the opposite of "universal" is "totalitarian." Both approaches endeavor to account for everything, the former in an open-ended, spontaneous, and harmonious manner, the latter in a rigid, closed, and top-down manner. The university used to be a place to nurture open minds, whereas now it actively bans and persecutes them. Progress! 

Way back in the day, my doctoral dissertation was on the idea of the mind as a quintessentially open system. Open to what? Since publishing a couple of articles from the dissertation in 1991 and 1994, I've refined my thinking on the subject, but I don't recall ever having packed it all into a single post. Rather, it's more of a background assumption that colors my approach to everything, up to and including God.

A key point, I suppose, is that the mind is analogous to a biological system that maintains itself via openness to the surrounding environment, accompanied by an exchange of matter, energy, or information. This is obvious on the purely biological level, but it is equally true on the psychic level, and it is precisely this mechanism that is exploited by the media-academic totalitarians, who never stop farce-feeding us a stream of lies, especially in the post-internet "information age."

Information in-forms, meaning that its recipients take on the very form of the in-formers, i.e., media and academic gaslighters. As it so happens, Z Man touched on this subject this morning, and his reflections may even have provoked mine: 

From the point of view of the managerial class, it is perfectly sensible for the tech oligarchs to censure speech. It is the responsible thing to do. They are baffled as to why anyone is upset by this. Not only are they not offended by censorship, but they would also be shocked if these firms were not coordinating their efforts. It is why they mount pressure campaigns against holdouts. Teaming up to suppress speech is really just a good example of political unity when you think about it.

When you step back and look at what is happening, it is remarkable. Managerialism in the West has achieved something that the Bolsheviks and Nazis were never able to accomplish at their peak. The operation of the managerial class is entirely informal, a habit of mind, rather than a set of rules. The communists and fascists had to rely on physical compulsion to maintain control (https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=28250).

The other day I read a book called 1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder. Nothing new, it turns out, but it does have helpful review of Wilson's totalitarian sentiments and policies. You could call him Brandon v1.0, or you could call Brandon Wilson v2.0; but really, it's just the same old nightmare of progressivism. 

Remember Brandon's Disinformation Governance Board, headed up by that ridiculous woman who mindlessly propagated every word of leftist disinformation? Nothing new. Wilson created his own Committee on Public Information in April of 1917. And just like today, the purpose was to Save R Demokrisy! Its first head, George Creel, helpfully said that

It remains to be seen whether the people of the United States prefer facts to clamor, fairness to betrayal, and democracy to oligarchy; in a word, whether they are able to think for themselves.

Sounds good! Except, just like today, "It was precisely to ensure that the American people didn't think for themselves that Creel would throw himself into his job" at CPI, via propaganda and censorship:

America's media became the obedient conduit for the CPI's Division of News, which bombarded the public with six thousand press releases a week.... on any given week, more than twenty thousand newspaper columns carried material that the Division of News deemed fit to print. 

So, just like today, they had their own gaslight media. They also knew that politics is downstream from culture, so they didn't take any chances with the primary entertainment medium of the day: the Division of Films "turned to the motion picture industry" in order "to mobilize pro-war, anti-German sentiment," and "Hollywood jumped in with both feet."

Recruiting moviemakers was a farsighted policy, not unlike recruiting social media or Instagram to carry government propaganda today.

Progressives would never forget to pander to emotional woman and malleable blacks: there was 

an effort to recruit African American speakers, especially clergy, to carry the messages to their communities, and a Woman's Division to promote the same thing...

The result was a media-storm that was coordinated, comprehensive, and virtually around-the-clock.

The invention the 24-hour news cycle, or an unending Two Minutes Hate. Putin is the new Kaiser, as Trump is the new Debs, or at least will be when they indict him (Debs actually ran for present from behind bars in 1920, so Trump won't be the first).

The Espionage act of 1917 "gave government officials wide latitude in limiting the spread of undesirable opinions -- otherwise known as limiting free speech," as the Sedition Act of 1918 "made it illegal to speak, print, write or publish" any "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the government." It was "the single most restrictive gag on free speech and freedom of the press in U.S. history."

Until today.

There were even versions of Antifa back then, semi-vigilante groups such as the American Protective League and American Defense Society. 

The more things progress, the more they stay the same: the actions of Wilson and his henchmen

highlight the curious self-righteousness of the American Progressive mind, and the belief among Progressives that their views once arrived at were beyond criticism; as with Wilson, opposition itself became a sign of disloyalty, even of evil.

To bring the post full circle, this is not a dream mistaken for reality, but a nightmare propagated and enforced from on high. I mean, if I am a fascist, then Progworld is truly upside down and inside out.