Think. Speak Up.

A Few Items

1. I recently read In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park.

I highly recommend this book about her journey defecting from North Korea. And after that, her newest book

While Time Remains .

In it she writes about how going to Columbia in NYC was similar to growing up in North Korea. I’ll let that sink in for a second.

I learned the term emotional dictatorship, which is the only way I was able to describe a recent incident in my LA County suburb. I had to calmly negotiate not wearing a mask in a health facility, precisely one year and one month after the mandate to wear them in health facilities ended in California. We spent 3.5 hours waiting in a practically empty facility while a security guard stood before us and stared us down like a threat, staff members attempted to wear us down, and clinicians prioritized everyone but us. It didn’t work. My son was eventually seen, and all of it was unnecessary. We did not compromise our values, and despite it being illegal to force someone to wear a mask and breathe in their own excrement, we courteously lived in accordance with the lifted mandate. I spoke truth to power and lived out a day in reality in the United States, demonstrating that I am free. That mattered. I ask you to join me. We have all shrugged and been like ‘whatever’, and put it on for a minute, moving it to the chin. (Several in the waiting room did just that during my recent debacle, and were left alone, proving this is a game of control, not rooted in facts or common sense.) I have done this too, especially to stay on schedule. (I cannot believe I’m still writing this in 2023.) I get it, but it is more important than ever to think and speak up.

Of emotional dictatorship, where people are enslaved in their mind, Ms. Park said “in N. Korea I was afraid to even think”. I think a lot of people are covertly bullied in situations like the one I was in this past week. It’s hard to think under irrational pressure. If you’re under pressure, or just afraid to even think, you’re not speaking up.

Let that stop with YOU. While you still can stop it. Right here, right now, in this incredible free country, the United States.

Think.

Speak up.

Losing friends or being “offensive” is not as bad as true freedom becoming a memory in a dystopian open air prison with your phone as penitentiary warden, big tech as your “government” and AI as your new “god”.

Why isn’t Yaonmi Park required reading in our public schools? (We know why, don’t we).

I am taking Eric Metaxas’ advice and paying my high schooler to read it. I’ll make an offer to the college student too, once he gets home. Find Eric’s interview of Yeonmi here.

2. This Essay from Last Year is Sadly Still Relevant.

Rational Communication is Hate Speech to the Indoctrinated

What was missing from that piece is the concept of emotional dictatorship. Through the use of propaganda against its own citizens here in the USA, ensured by the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, and weaponized institutions and regulatory agencies at the ready, the covert emotional dictatorship was ushered in.

We have a lot of phony pretending to burn off. It’s still pure madness out there. It’s time to exercise Emotional Intelligence and remain Emotionally Fit. People still surrender to groupthink, and false bonds of affection over a false decorum. Collapse points in personalities who just don’t want to get kicked out of their mahjong club are still hostages to a form of emotional dictatorship. It’s difficult and confusing to face, that a dictator can be a daughter or a spouse or a co-worker or a pal. But if the principle is faced first, not the personality, the details and the path will be revealed.

Think. Speak Up. Speak Truth to Power.

It’s easier if no one holds power over you.

3. A quick search on “Crimes Against Humanity” got me to this tweet.

https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1654526347371216910?s=61&t=ib6Llr5prpv4AZr2csyOSg

Agreed, Simon. No amnesty.