The Great Game of Let’s Pretend

What everyone knows but no one in power will say

Apparently, some issues are so big, so all-consuming, and so unbearably obvious, that no one in the highest reaches of opinion formation can speak about them. The elephant in the room becomes a taboo. That’s where we are today on the lockdowns and mandates that wrecked so much of American liberty and human rights around the world. 

This fundamental dishonesty has enveloped public life today. It is unsustainable. And Brownstone is determined to put an end to it. It is essential that we do so as the storms of lockdown 2.0 seem to be gathering all around us. 

We’ve added a new fellow this week, made progress on two new books, planning a fellows retreat in a few weeks, and looking forward to a blowout event in Dallas on November 4 that we hope you can attend. As always please know of our gratitude for your faithful support of our work. 

Here is some content since our last email:

The Great Game of Let’s Pretend By Jeffrey A. Tucker. It’s a very strange time in American political history, no doubt. We have one line of thinking sweeping through the population – which is based on mass incredulity and fury – and then another which is a veneer of normalcy that is slathered on top of our anger by all official institutions, which work hard to keep all these topics out of respectable conversations. Meanwhile, the whole of academic, mainstream social media, major mainstream media, and all of government seems to agree that all these obvious topics are too incendiary to be raised in polite company.

CDC Now Refusing New COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports in Its V-Safe Program By David Gortler. In George Orwell’s 1984, characters were told by The Party to “reject the evidence of your eyes and [your] ears.” Now, the CDC isn’t even allowing that evidence to be collected for viewing (and prospective rejecting). It’s a terrible idea for any product, let alone novel mRNA technologies.

The Positive Feedback Loop: How Totalitarians Instill Fear and Restrict Human Rights By Scott Sturman. We are informed that free speech is dangerous and that it leads to hate, instability, and mayhem. But this disingenuous argument is the argument of tyrants, who gaslight and use words as weapons to disable a free people. Free speech is the salvation of an open, prosperous, and civil society and the embodiment of the sustaining benefits of negative feedback loops. 

The Dangers of Self Censorship During the Covid Pandemic By Joseph Fraiman. To compound this any expert or publication that dared raise a challenge would be investigated by fact-checkers and predictably labeled as misinformation and subsequently censored. Everyday citizens, on the receiving end of this distorted information machine, were left without any previously respected outlet for any well-founded skepticism. A few spoke out and were virtually ostracized from mainstream society. Many others saw the writing on the wall and, wishing to maintain their relationships and avoid uncomfortable situations, kept their opinions to themselves.

In New Interview, Fauci Defends Lockdowns and Forced Shots By Jordan Schachtel. Recently retired government bureaucrat Anthony Fauci just appeared at a university virtual event titled, “Pandemic Lessons and Role of Faculty in Pandemic Preparedness with Dr. Anthony Fauci.” During the conversation, Fauci, who is now affiliated with Georgetown University, made it clear that he still supports locking down society in the name of a virus, adding that lockdowns are a great tool to forcibly “vaccinate” people.

If I Interviewed Trump About Covid… By Debbie Lerman. Were you aware of the massive censorship and propaganda that were happening to make people accept the lockdowns and vaccines? Do you feel like you were part of that campaign to convince people? Or do you feel like you were somehow forced to participate in it?

The Questions Crying Out for Answers By Jeffrey A. Tucker. There are a whole host of questions about those fateful days leading to lockdowns. We are not getting answers because no one is asking the questions. All the people who are in a position to end the silence have a strong interest in perpetuating it for as long as possible, in hopes that mass amnesia takes hold and grants them all amnesty.

Hi Doc, How’s It Going?  By Thomas Harrington. Given that you and the majority of your colleagues showed no moral and intellectual ability to mount a counterargument this time, what makes you think you’ll be able to do so the next time they decide to pressure you all from above to do this again?

Australia’s Misinfo Bill Paves Way for Soviet-Style Censorship By Rebekah Barnett. History tells us that censorship regimes never end well, though it may take a generation for the deadliest consequences to play out. The draft legislation is now under review following a period of public consultation. Hopefully, the Australian Government will take the historical lesson and steer Australia off this treacherous path.

Anatomy of the Administrative State By Bruce Pardy. The COVID-19 train wreck unfolded before their eyes. One senseless government diktat followed another. Close your business. Keep your kids home from school. Stay out of the park. Wear a mask to go into the store. Take a vaccine to keep your job. These edicts destroyed lives. They caused vaccine injuries and deaths, cancelled jobs and education, and tore families apart. They eviscerated civil liberties. Society unravelled.

Germany Has Partnered with Gates Foundation to Tune  of Billions – not Millions – of Euros By Robert Kogon. A more detailed analysis of the German government data is undoubtedly in order. What is clear, at any rate, is that Germany is a crucial partner – not funder – of the Gates Foundation and that the co-funding it has provided both to projects and to programmes in this capacity runs into the billions, not the millions.

A True Account of Covid in Israel By Eyal Shahar. An American journalist once wrote that unaccounted excess deaths were related to “the circumstances of the pandemic.” These circumstances have been created by officials in Israel and elsewhere: panic, fear-mongering, lockdowns, disruption of normal life, coerced vaccination — with all of their consequences, including death. None of that happened in a previous pandemic.

The Brilliant Legal Mind of John Sauer By Aaron Kheriaty. On July 20, our attorney John Sauer—a brilliant legal mind and a force of nature in the courtroom—testified before a Congressional hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Emma-Jo Morris, the journalist who originally broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was subsequently censored under pressure from the FBI, also testified. In a “you can’t make this stuff up moment,” one committee member began this hearing—a hearing on the topic of government censorship—by calling for a vote to censor the hearing itself, shielding it from public view and removing it from the public record.

Covid Controls, the Cello, and Me  By Charles Krblich. We played badly at the park for whomever had the courage to leave their house and brave our music. I thought of every note I played into the world as an impenetrable shield against the Sword of Damocles threatening our existence.

FDA Head Admits “Cheerleading” Pfizer’s Drug Paxlovid By Maryanne Demasi. Califf boasted on social media that he took Paxlovid after contracting covid and said the drug could reduce the risk of “long covid” despite it never being validated by robust trials, leading some to criticise him for being “a billboard for Pfizer.”