I mentioned in a comment in Fauxlex’s post how if this were the 1960s, people might be gathering in the streets in protest. I am not sure I believe that. Even as we do not have “protests” anywhere these days unless organized by professional agitators and staged for news cameras, I don’t know if it was different then. But I could be wrong. It could be that people were less submissive back then.
One of the treatments administered on a mass level in the 1960s was the ingestion of drugs by “hippies,” that is, people who imagined they had broken free of control. I hope most of them recovered, but one of the more insidious drugs that might well have done them permanent damage was LSD. Above we have “Paul” McCartney (actually, the one I call Mike) doing his best to encourage young people to take LSD.
He is saying just the opposite, of course, and was most likely well-advised by his handlers never to take LSD himself. But his handlers wanted to promote the drug, and what better way than to take the most famous pop star in the world and have him say publicly that he had taken it four times.
That is the subliminal message of this staged interview: “I have taken LSD. You should too.”
McCartney is a phony, as anyone who reads of his real identity on this blog knows. I doubt he wrote any of the songs attributed to him (maybe some of the dogs, like Vanilla Sky). Over time he has become a polished performer, but who is to say anything he does on stage is real. Technology these days allows for a whole concert to be ghosted.
That’s not my point, of course. I digress. This man in 1967 deliberately urged his massive following to ingest LSD. I regard that as a crime against humanity, one for which he should have served time in jail. He’s a pig.
Piece of Mindful 
What irks me at the moment… Even if one accepts the official storyline, how does it justify closing bars and restaurants? Which is now starting in my area of Birmingham and its county.
That is, they claim that most healthy people have little risk personally, but could spread it to elderly and compromised. So, why not advise that latter group to isolate and get assistance with food delivery. How does it justify such a wrench in economic activity for everyone else.
I don’t expect regular people to question the premise… But I’m disappointed they don’t even question the the illogical actions being taken, based on that premise.
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TimR, I did not delete your comment out of any unkind motive … I assumed you meant it to go under the Coronavirus thread beneath, and asked you to copy and move it there, telling you I’d be back to take it down in an hour or so. Apparently you did not come back for a long time, so only saw that it was deleted. Please copy it and place it in a more appropriate thread. The Coronavirus thread is exhausting, and I don’t want it carried over to this post, which offers people an alternative.
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Sorry Mark, I did miss that request. I’m on a phone, kind of difficult to copy and stuff. I understand if you want to delete.
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Thanks for restoring this comment. I want to add that I have been hearing this argument more from callers to local talk radio now. They reject the need to shut down the economy and damage the 99% for the sake of the 1%. Reasonably suggest that a more focused support of those people be advised, and of course make the comparison to flu and other common sense points.
The hosts badger them, but with poor arguments. A caller “Dusty” to Birminghams Matt Murphy show this morning (avail on podcast, second hour) was revealing. The hosts walk a fine line, as they try to maintain their “conservative” small biz cred, but primarily enforce the larger official line.
The mighty Rush himself has dismissed the hype. NPR reports initial buy-in from C’s at around 70%, but dropping now to 40%. “Dusty” said he voted for Trump, but sees him as under political pressure to cave to the dogma. My takeaway is that calling this “overreaction” or overblown, is being branded as a conservative base view, and sort of contained as a minority partisan position. Not for polite company. A nasty view, that can be irrationally smeared as desirous of wanting old people to die.
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To clarify, the NPR poll of conservatives was whether they feel the response is overblown.
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Mike….eh, eh Paul fits your Damon face template as well. You can include Stallone….cough, cough, also… Is there only “ONE” real person left in this reality?
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I’ve not run the comparisons. We have written about Stalone, a poor kid of meager origins whose favorite sport as a child was polo.
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Paul (Mike) and the rest of the mop-heads never appealed to me. I recall saying out loud that “they can’t play and they can’t sing, and that’s what all the screaming is about.” That was not popular at the time. I went to many, many concerts in the 1960s, fell for the project hook, line and sinker eventually. I did walk out of one concert: The Doors w/ Jim Morrison, nodding, boring, and off key. The other event I walked out of was a Timothy Leary (and his entourage) event promoting LSD and the whole faux “Eastern Culture” (for white, middle-class 2-S-deferred college students) nonsense.
I gravitated toward the “darker,” harder rock, thinking it was more “honest” than the rose-colored-glasses, “Strawberrry Fields Forever” fantasy of what I thought were essentially “chick bands.” I realize now, of course, that the whole cultural menu of the era was carefully crafted by evil psyche-minds the same way MacDonalds selects food items on its menu. Nothing personal, it’s only business. Whatever sells!
The cultural/emotional pendulum swings with great force for the fences, while the underlying global feudal structure (laws and rules) seems to remain securely anchored in bedrock. Like any good magic trick, we see the motion, not its source.
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And who’s the BIG Handler of the ‘PieceOfMindful’ mirage?
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NonV,
That’s a little like taking a key to the side of a car in a parking lot when nobody’s looking. Could you be a little brave and tell us more about why you think we suck?
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What if NonViral stopped bullshit writing here?
What if?
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No worries. I’ll get rid of him if he doesn’t sweeten up.
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At least the stuff was “clean” back then. No telling what’s really in it these days.
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Not sure why my comment got removed..? It was relevant to the post, talking about absence of protests, and was an interesting angle on it.
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it seems to be in humans nature to want to join if others starts to do something together. I see that in our holidays, which usually happen in big club hotels (we like it that way). There are always this animation teams and they start to suggest something silly like Zumba (google if you don’t know what it is), first there is one or two persons bashful following their instructions and then within minutes dozens of people who just did nothing else but lie lazy in the sun join in and follow and then there suddenly is a crowd of happy and proud tourist doing Zumba. Same for any demonstrations. All it takes is to call via media and there always will be enough willing participants. I don’t think it was different back then. The posibillities were limited compared to today but something like Woodstock also started with a call via media. If media didn’t reported so broadly about Woodstock back then, there won’t be any Woodstock.
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Yes… For many people this is not so much a “novel virus” as a novel social game to play… A big role-playing game. “Imagine you’re in the movie Contagion… Do little spatial dances with strangers in stores… Experiment with long periods of little human contact… Affirm your group solidarity via facebook posts and emoticons…”
It’s a sort of inverse or anti-holiday. So it has the appeal of xmas for the workaday world, except more novel… A modern holiday, an innovation in silly social ritual. But yes good point, aside from the fear, there is great appeal for many in herd behavior, in following along with whatever “game” the bossiest kids or “adults” (scientists, officials) suggest. Just like in the schoolyard. Or a holiday resort with a group of bored strangers.
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TimR, please see my response to your comment at the very top of this thread.
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I remember all of the Women’s marches after Trump assumed office, all planned in advance and organized from below and then featured in the media. What if they gave a demonstration and no one came?
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I wonder if my parents or grand parents in their younger years would take to the streets, head to city hall and the local news stations with shotguns and demands…NOPE! They believe everything they are told by authority figures. Can’t argue about JFK, shooting hoaxes, fake moon landings, 9/11 or anything we talk about here on POM. I’ll get slapped or yelled at and have been. Looking at the Paul/Mike video he did say if the media shuts up about his drug use so would he, and even though he is a public figure the news media are the ones responsible for any encouraging yet he wouldn’t have the gig otherwise. The Governor of my state has shut down all bars, schools libraries, etc..until March 31st like a deadly pathogen is going to just go away after a couple of weeks. Yet Walmart, other stores and restaurants are open, employees are not wearing masks or gloves. The polls were open yesterday and I voted.
I noticed many empty spots on the ballot, just one person to vote for, same people as last time.
No longer care about this hyped up flu event as much as what is in store later on down the road for everyone. Problem, Reaction, Solutions. We’ve seen and discussed the problem, and the reaction.
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If you realize that the interview with “Paul” is staged, then perhaps you might agree that it is being done so that the biggest pop star on the planet can suggest to his followers that they take LSD. I assure you, McCartney never touched the stuff.
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I agree that’s why I said he wouldn’t have that gig otherwise. Just like Joplin, Winehouse, Keith Richards, Morrison, Ozzy and a slue of others, they weren’t drugged out or alcoholics. They are Celebs used to promote the substances, fashions and mind think. It works too, I as well as many others in my area bought into it when younger thinking certain things were cool. The fashion and haircuts were innocent fun.
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now celebs promote the corona hoax and claim to be positive tested. They accuse people who do not participate of spreading the “virus”. Even if you’re not sick at all you’re supposed to be responsible for somebody else’s sickness?
That’s middle age again. “She’s a witch, lets burn her” Or “he put a spell on me, lets burn him too”
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Maybe that’s one reason that his brother, the real Paul, got out. He didn’t want to be apart of the sleazy promotion of LSD.
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Yes, Paul/Mike McCartney is liable for pushing youngsters towards drugs, but so are people, cos people are sheep.
They don’t think, they just follow and conform to the current trends dictated by their “heroes”.
But heroes do not exist: They’re created by the mediocre in my opinion.
Always do what’s right for you no matter what and you’ll be a hero in your own right.
Young people have always wanted to identify with the models that were presented to them : In the Middle Ages it was probably about being a knight in a shiny armour and rescue a princess in danger, in this time and age it’s all about celebrities as old values are no longer seen as something to treasure.
I never liked the Beatles, only Lennon but apart from that, the girls’ hysteria in front of the guys playing still makes no sense to me to this day.
Were they hypnotized? Possibly.
I’m in my late forties and was a teenager in early 80s, I used to have my favourite artists and I had a couple of posters stuck to my closet door but that was it. I bought vinyl’s, cassettes and then cd’s, I went to gigs but never once I thought I wanted to emulate those people’s lifestyle (the one they promoted I mean, not the real one).
That’s because I always tried to use my brain and never wanted to be part of a group or have experiences I knew by instinct could be bad for me.
Celebrities have always been the product of a mindless society that thinks living in a huge mansion with a pool and having a six figure bank account is what makes someone “cool”.
They’re hopeless.
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Maybe a self-serving comment, as it is about a time in my life when I knew nothing important. I had no special insight. I joined the Boy Scouts on urging of a friend, and my parents, strapped for cash, put out the necessary funds to buy me the full regalia of uniforms shirt, pants, scarf. I went to meetings, which I must have found very boring, as the following memory shows. One evening, sitting on a hard tile floor in a church basement, we were asked to suggest a game we could all play. I said “How about ring around the rosie?” I don’t recall the group response, but in short order a troop leader took me aside and said “We don’t talk like that here.”
I have but two other Boy Scout memories. One was a week-long campout north of Bozeman, Montana, which many years later would be my home. I was in the “Flaming Arrow” patrol with four or five others. In retrospect I suspect we were the low-downs, the ones who didn’t really fit in. During that week, one by one, each member of our patrol got sick and went home, so that in the end, I was alone in a far off corner of our camp every night. It was a long, long time to be alone, as I recall. One night as I tried to sleep an the hard ground (no sleeping mattresses or pads), there was a noise outside my tent (tents with sealed bottoms were not in use). A mouse wandered in, and as I lay frozen in fear, climbed aboard my face, sat on my nose, climbed off the other side, and left. I got up and went looking for someone … I found an “Eagle” scout sitting by the fire, told him the tale, and he didn’t have the time of day for me. I went back to my isolated outpost,
The other memory was my older brother, a role model, coming home from school for Christmas . I was to attend a meeting that night and had on my full uniform as we four brothers sat and played gin rummy, him to my right. He looked at me, and I read his attitude clearly. His look was scoffing me, as I looked ridiculous in a uniform. I am still grateful for that reproach, as it must have had some impact in ending my one-year membership in Boy Scouts. I still don’t know my knots.
My self-serving point is that I did not “fit” and still don’t. The only other uniform I have ever worn was a green apron when I worked in a grocery store. I got fired from that job. It would take me decades to understand that not fitting in is an important distinction in a world where most people do not read or know how to think. Having this blog, which I hope is a refuge for others who do not fit, may be my only notable accomplishment when I leave this whackadoo planet down the road.
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We all fit in. Perfectly, in fact, just not into the man-made, hierarchical legal system of mammon we have all been kidnapped into and conditioned to accept. The way out is simple. As Nancy Reagan used to say, “just say no.” The journey leads us to choice, and the choice is yours, always. Nature bats last.
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