Why subscribe?
I am a cybersecurity business owner and expert witness. That is how I make my living. I write as a hobby and as a way of “thinking on paper” (how I used to describe my writing process). Writing for me is like breathing. And if I want to think something through - perhaps experimenting with ideas - I do so at the keyboard.
But I will not charge a subscription fee for my Substack newsletter. I do not contribute enough content, nor can I scrub it as well as I should, to merit payment. (God knows there are too many goofy typos and usage errors in my first drafts.)
I get paid to dig into network architectures and software code to flesh out security holes and vulnerabilities. Or I get paid even more to walk lawyers through the in’s and out’s of cybersecurity and technology so they can effectively represent their client. That is where I add real value - so that is where I charge real money.
I don’t add enough value here with my writing to justify charging for it.
But this is important. I am old enough to remember life before the digital age and when freedom of speech actually meant something. This is why, more than anything else, Thomas Paine’s Blog is where we Occupy the Language. We refuse the totalitarian domination of the language, and use words however we damn well please.
They know they no longer control the media - so they want to control the language itself. Ever wonder why “anti-” has all of a sudden become a thing? Consider the subtlety: If someone claims to be “anti-fascist” and you disagree with them, that makes you “pro…” does it not? Or now it is “anti-racist”… If you disagree with them, are you not “pro…”?
This is Propaganda 101… It isn’t said outright, but left silently implied. But it requires a totalitarian domination of language which must start in childhood. Consider Bertrand Russell’s observation in the 1950’s:
The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will be arrived at. First, that the influence of the home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity…
Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The population will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.
Do we recall watching reports from the riots with something in flames in the background while being told it is mostly peaceful? Camera angles and background scenes are not an afterthought in media. It is not an accident that we are actually expected to believe what is said when what we see is the exact opposite.
I’m sure there is a blizzard somewhere. They need to just get on with it: Set the camera shot up to show the whiteout haze of blowing snow and report to us that the snow is black. That is where they want to go. We know it. They know it. And they know that we know it. So I say just get on it with already. We’ll just set up our lawn chairs, pop the popcorn and draw a pint of beer and watch the show.
That is why you should subscribe.
