As you may have noticed lately, my posts here have been taking on a more political dimension, and with good reasons, of which I will give two. For one, trends in culture do have a personal dimension - what is happening in the wider culture will affect individuals on a personal level one way or another. Secondly, it is a practical thing on my part, as over the next few years I am seeking to more or less consolidate three blogs into one, as my doctoral dissertation and other responsibilities are not affording me the opportunity to write as much as I once did. That being said, let me get into the topic at hand.
Over the past couple of weeks, two very high-profile individuals - online influencer Andrew Tate and actor Russell Brand - have become targets of sexual scandals. In recent decades, this has been an effective weapon to wield by certain people against others, especially when it entails discrediting what they say because the powers-that-be disagree with them. It is a fruit of what we call now "cancel culture," and it is running rampant. I know very little about either Tate or Brand, except that they are eccentric figures who are saying things that certain people don't agree with, so these certain people are trying to shut them up. The presumption of guilt or innocence is not even the issue in this instance, but rather the fact that someone obviously is uncomfortable with what people like these guys are saying - by what I have seen of both Andrew Tate and Russell Brand, they tend to talk about the need for men to act like men for instance, and they also have said some other things that resonate with most normal people but the elitists in the major institutions find unsettling because it could be a threat to the power those institutions hold. Institutions such as the media, Hollywood, the major universities, mega-corporations, and the Federal bureaucratic Kraken that controls our government. Many of those institutions are in the hands of an elitist group of oligarchs who all think alike, and they have an agenda that seems to be lifted right out of the playbooks of Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World. We heard it recently when one of these high-profile oligarchs, the sinister-looking Klaus Schwab, declared at a meeting in Davos in Switzerland of the World Economic Forum in so many words what the agenda - they call it "The Great Reset" - entails. In the creepy German accent he has, Schwab essentially said this "You vill eet zee bugz, you vill live in ze pods, and you vill own NOTHING and be happy!" While Schwab has all the charisma of a fictional cartoon villain from the 1970s, it must be understood that these guys are dead serious about what they want to do - many of them are multi-billionaires, and they are trying to envision and make a world in their image that the majority of normal human beings would find dystopian. And, they have many world leaders in their back pockets to experiment with their ideas - I am of the opinion that the whole COVID-19 mess was a test run for what they wanted to do. Therefore, if anyone stands in the way of their vision of "progress," they must be removed, especially if the offending individual happens to be a high-profile celebrity who dares break from the "herd" as both Tate and Brand have done. It is one reason also I believe why Donald Trump has been targeted with a virtual litany of indictments, and it is also a reason why one other prominent billionaire who also broke with the "herd," Elon Musk, is a target for destruction. The powers-that-be do NOT like being challenged for their dystopian fantasies, and they throw their wealth and influence around in order to eliminate any potential threats to the agenda they want to impose on mankind. One effective means of doing this is sexual misconduct allegations, and that is their weapon of choice against certain celebrities and others who break rank with the accepted narrative.
I am a regular viewer of Michael Knowles' podcast on The Daily Wire, and in watching that one day last week, Knowles made a very important observation. He essentially said that the sex allegations really don't mean much in the greater scheme of things, as many of the accusers are guilty of worse stuff in many cases. Many of these individuals, for instance, had season passes to Epstein Island, and some reports I have heard have suggested that the meeting places of these oligarchs - Davos, the UN headquarters in New York, etc. - often prove to be lucrative business opportunities for the local pimps and pushers, as these billionaire playboys like to indulge in copulation with whores and indulging in copious amounts of mind-altering drugs in the orgies many of them attend. Despite the fact that they themselves engage in such practices, they are also astute enough to know that most of the general public still is disapproving of these behaviors and activities. So, what they will often do is encourage their "friends" to indulge in as much sex, alcohol, drugs, and other activities as they want, and as long as they tow the official line no one bats an eye. But, if one of them breaks ranks, then all of a sudden there are pictures, spurious witnesses, etc., who allege that such an individual took advantage of them with sex and drugs, and this then tarnishes that person's reputation and in turn "cancels" them. In his book Speechless - Controlling Words, Controlling Minds (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2021), Michael Knowles notes that many of these twenty-first century leftist ideologues get this idea from the writings of Herbert Marcuse, and the premise is rooted in Marcuse's idea that dissenting opinions are somehow "dangerous" and "violent" and therefore are not to be tolerated and disagreement with the established narrative is to be eliminated by any means necessary (Knowles, 64-65). The effective tactic of doing so, it seems, is to exaggerate charges of "immoral conduct" (despite the fact the accusers are essentially amoralist), and thus in the eyes of a shocked public, it effectively neutralizes any opposition to the agenda. Brand and Tate are not the first ones to be targeted in this way, as it seems to be a tactic employed over several decades, and even goes back to Saul Alinsky utilizing fake "Klan" outfits to discredit Nixon and other Presidential candidates as "racists." One other prominent example who parallels Brand in particular is the case of Bill Cosby a few years back, and I want to talk about that now.
Many of us grew up with Bill Cosby's talents - as a child, I remember the Fat Albert cartoons, in my early days of collecting vintage records I also amassed a good collection of his comedy LPs, which I still enjoy, and in my later teens The Cosby Show was one of the biggest and most popular sitcoms on TV. Also, there was his marketing of the Jello Pudding Pop, which really did a lot to boost sales. Cosby was a legend of his time, and honestly, he was a real role model for Black kids in particular as he always communicated positive values to kids in a humorous way. Now, around the year 2007, Cosby wrote a very insightful book entitled Come on People - On the Path from Victims to Victors (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007). One thing Cosby really makes a point driving home is in regard to the situation of young Black males in the US, and on page 25 of the book, he comes out and says this: "It's much more comfortable to have someone to blame other than ourselves. That's just human nature." Of course, he is right, but in the context he said it, and we see that on pages 46-47: "But for all the talk of systemic racism and governmental screw-ups, we must look at ourselves and understand our own responsibility." What Cosby is saying is simply this - we have to stop playing the victim, blaming things that don't exist, and take responsibility for our own actions and own it. The Political Left hates this mentality, because what it does is it liberates people to be who they should be as individuals and not be stuck in some sort of societal pigeon-hole that blames external factors for something we have the power to change ourselves. If you want to know the real reason for Cosby being cancelled, there it is - he said something the oligarchs did not like. This now deserves more reflection.
Like Russell Brand, who said something similar in regard to men in general, Cosby is not necessarily personally a paragon of perfection. As a flawed human being, he may have done some stupid and irresponsible things in his younger years - who hasn't? I think too even Cosby himself would be quick to acknowledge that. But what happened was almost beyond belief - they more or less soiled Cosby's reputation, stripping away many of his honors he rightly received over the years, and they threw the poor man (who was approaching his 80s) into jail! Ironically, though, another Bill and his wife were literally getting away with murder on a free pass from their friends at the same time - we are talking about the Clintons. If there was actually a case for "White privilege" that everyone seems to scream about on the Left, this is it - Bill Cosby was thrown in jail in disgrace due to a lot of stuff that I believe was spurious at best, yet Bill Clinton and Hillary still act corrupt, and God knows how many women Bill Clinton actually molested. That also doesn't take into account how many "accidental deaths" (Vince Foster, Jeffrey Epstein, etc.) happened to individuals closely associated with the Clintons. Is that conspiracy theory perhaps? Maybe, but there are things that just don't calculate. Apparently, to the Leftist elites, a Black actor is not as important to them as a White demagogue who happens to be part of their little elitist club. Bill Clinton still has his billions of dollars, all his ill-gotten honors, and he is still looked upon as a "statesman." Yet, what of Bill Cosby?? Ahhh...the classic tale of "Two Bills!" Recently, Cosby was released from jail, and as it turns out, many of the things he was accused of may not actually be true. Yet, you don't see all the big universities restoring his honorary degrees, nor do you see his career being vindicated either. As a matter of fact, I find it disturbing that even conservatives among us still presume Cosby's guilt, and I find that unsettling. Many of those same conservatives basically ignore what Cosby actually said in his book just before all these allegations began to crop up, nor did they listen to a speech he gave just prior to these things surfacing which would immediately cause questions to be raised about the allegations themselves. I feel that Russell Brand is at least getting a fairer shake, but maybe it is time to re-examine our position on Bill Cosby too based on the same situation. I think that once responsible conservatives start examining the evidence for themselves (and I would encourage them to read Cosby's book as a start) they will come to a different conclusion about Cosby and maybe stop parroting the talking-points against him which originated largely from the Left yet were gobbled up by lazy conservatives who failed to do their due diligence. As a professional paralegal, the sloppiness in which many conservatives have adopted the "official" narrative about Bill Cosby would get them fired if they were in my profession. Crap like that has sent innocent people in the past to the electric chair. If recent events and the proliferation of this "wokeness" crap taught us anything, it should be that perhaps it is time we exercise some "fact-checking" of our own against established narratives. We might surprise ourselves.
Any rate, I just wanted to address this, as you can also read an earlier article a few years back specifically dealing with Cosby for more information. Have a good week ahead and thank you for allowing me to share.
