Addicted to Outrage

by Glenn Beck

  Fewer and fewer will be willing to speak out about this as time goes on. Already a Chinese journalist, Liu Hu, saw his score downgraded because of social media posts. When the government demanded that he take those posts down, he immediately apologized and removed them.

  The government felt that his apology was insincere, and he and his family are no longer allowed to buy any property, and his child is no longer able to go to private school.

  Driving past the NSA data storage vault just outside Salt Lake City, Utah, you sometimes can wonder which side we as a nation are on. In June, at an AI conference at MIT, the administration was asked what its view was regarding AI. The response was a little shocking. The administration was looking for partners to whom to give “all of the data the U.S. government has” to allow them to reach AGI before anyone else. Does that mean the NSA data? If not, it shows how disconnected Washington is from the AI issue. If you remove the NSA data, all of the government’s “data” would fit into Google’s shoe.

  We must not be dismissive or cavalier about what is happening.

  The New York Times and others are reporting on the massive facilities that China is building for “reeducation camps,” which will hold up to half a million people, for its new “transformation through education” project. It has just put out for bids another 880,000-square-foot reeducation center, complete with steel doors, barbed wire, guard towers, and housing for hundreds of police. This information is going to get harder to come by as sources dry up or vanish.

  But it also may get harder to report on things here. I have reported on how Media Matters is now advising YouTube on which groups should have a voice and which should not. Just for balance, YouTube is also consulting the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which currently classifies my mild-mannered friend David Barton as an “extremist” and has come close to labeling the Mormon Church a terrorist organization. The ADL teamed up with UC Berkeley’s D-Lab to create an algorithm that is learning to identify “hate speech” to further combat it. Initial results found that the algorithm was reliable 78 to 85 percent of the time, which is great—unless of course they’ve defined “hate speech” too broadly and it includes speech with which they happen to disagree. My friend Edwin Black, who wrote IBM and the Holocaust, told me that his book cannot now be sold in Europe because the algorithm will not allow any book to have a swastika on the cover, even if it is a very critical look at history. He told me that he feared “digital ghettos” or “algorithmic ghettos” where you can deliver information, even post it online, but no one will see it, and you will never know.

  Don’t fear the robots, fear the algorithms.

  But this isn’t the only issue. Just as it was when the Chinese announced their plans for 2020, it was again the same with the press here. There was a job posting last April from the Department of Homeland Security seeking a contractor to develop what it called “Media Monitoring Services.”

  It caught my attention, as it did Amy Russo’s. She writes for Mediaite, which is a mainstream media-centered news site that almost all NYC and DC journalists read. In June she published a follow-up piece, and the details are disturbing. Among the vague details that went with the original posting was the explanation that the database would compile a list of “media influencers,” including their contact information, social media conversations, articles, the “sentiment” of those articles, and where they were published. The DHS press secretary dismissed the worries with a tweet calling those who questioned the plan “tinfoil-hat-wearing, black-helicopter conspiracy theorists.”

  Amy reports that in one of his signature tweetstorms in early May, roughly a month after reports of the database broke, President Donald Trump went so far as to float the idea of stripping reporters of press credentials, suggesting that be the penalty for those reporting unflattering stories about him. “91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake),” he wrote, directly linking sentiment to perceived veracity.

  According to the DHS, story “sentiment” is exactly what its database will track.

  Of course, in our era following “the most transparent administrations in U.S. history,” the agency will inform media personalities and journalists about who is considered an influencer and who is being tracked, right? No, it turns out, but . . . move along, move along, nothing to see here. . . . As Russo points out, the Obama administration did the same thing early on, when it tracked stories about terrorism, the BP Gulf oil spill, and the U.S. rescue and rebuilding efforts following the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. After a 2012 congressional investigation pointed to concerns with impacts to privacy and the First Amendment, Russo reported, the program was suspended and posts removed from the DHS Federal Business Opportunities website.

  PART THREE

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  Finding Our Unum

  In the early 1770s, Ben Franklin, a true bon vivant, stated that he could no longer spend time with most of his friends or attend social gatherings because the times called for honest, serious, and deep thinking, ideas, and conversations, and too few were willing to engage. He could no longer tolerate surface conversations or “party talk.” I find myself feeling this way most of the time.

  It is not hyperbole to say that we may be facing a civil war in America. Over 50 percent of Americans now believe it is probable or almost certain that it will happen in the next five years. We also could see the collapse of the Western world or the rise of a fanatical Islamic global caliphate, nor is it unreasonable to believe the world could be plunged into war and darkness by Russian psychopaths intent on reviving and perfecting the world of blood and horror left unfinished by Mao, Stalin, and Hitler. We are already seeing the makings of a 1984-style “superstate” that has the means and desire to pick winners and losers and will “reeducate” or punish those who refuse to fall into line. The frightening path that China has taken is part of its preparedness for another likely outcome, a “total global economic collapse” deeper than the Great Depression. This would affect every nation on earth in a way that we cannot yet even imagine, as it would come at a time when there are no global leaders. How could we even begin to move forward or come together, when we no longer remember where we have been or who we are? We have lost our heroes, principles, and even men’s natural affection for one another.

  I am a student of history, and because of that I know that man survives, but what does life look like on the other side of this mess?

  (This does not include “the End of Humankind”/Killer ASI option that Musk, Hawking, and Gates predict. On this I happen to agree. If ASI leads us to a singularity, Homo sapiens will fall by the wayside, but that is another book, as first we must defeat our ignorance, apathy, and doubt.)

  I would ask that you pray for my wife, as she has to hear about this all the time. She would just like some “normal friends” and a husband who doesn’t make them cry on their way home. I try not to be that guy, but shouldn’t we all be talking about these things? In our “collective gut” a warning is going off in all humankind. It has nothing to do with party or politics. It is our God-given “alarm system” going off. Gavin de Becker describes it best in the title of his bestselling book on security, The Gift of Fear. Everyone has it; in fact, all life has it. If your dog doesn’t like someone, you should listen to it. It doesn’t have anything special, doesn’t have the balance of the gift that we do: reason. It is the paradox of our day: Because we no longer use reason to make big decisions, we are headed toward cataclysmic chaos. But, as our own internal alarm system goes off, warning us of the danger, our politicized outrage twists our reason and encourages us to dismiss the warning.

  We know something is coming—we just don’t know when and what form it is going to take. And as we all learned in the first Ghostbusters, it isn’t enough to say, “Okay, let’s just not think of anything. Clear your minds.” Because there will always be someone who will have food pop into their heads, and the next thing you know there is a hundred-foot marshmallow man stomping on ch
urches in your town.

  These are conversations we must have with our families, neighbors, friends, and, frankly, anyone willing to engage in deeper thought and quieter conversations.

  Just two years ago, the right felt we were on the brink of financial collapse, which could lead to a fascist government. Today, many on the left feel that we are on the verge of civil war and are now seeing the roots of a fascist government. Let’s think this through; scientific polls tell us that nearly 100 percent of Americans have felt that some sort of catastrophic collapse could be near, and that the result would be a fascist government. Even if the margin of error is 80 percent, something significant is going on. Well, perhaps it is just the MSM and social media stirring things up. Well, yes, that is part of it, but as anyone who is really paying attention can tell you, this is different. I don’t know how we have survived this long, but there are too many stress fractures to think that we won’t begin to see real system failure in our near future. So, if we feel a “warning,” we assume people mean it when they call each other “Nazis,” and each side is fearing the other will create a fascist state, what are we doing to prevent that? What can be done? We all know what we are currently doing isn’t helping, right? Does this system of government even work? Do we want to change it?

  If so, is a system of redistribution run by an inefficient government the answer? If it is, how can we ensure that the state, which is already dangerously close to fascism, doesn’t become even more powerful, especially when we hand it the power of life and death with health care, or when it becomes the final arbiter of which speech is protected and which is dangerous or hateful? How can we trust a media that will owe its protector and benefactor?

  On the other hand, how can we trust a banking system that has repackaged garbage to sell and resell as virtual gold just to enrich itself? Insurance companies that more and more often serve the shareholders over the policyholders? How do we survive corporate giants like Google and Amazon?

  To be honest, I have always laughed at the futurist dystopian movies that refer to the government as “the corporation,” but I was wrong. How are so many of us blind to the potential for total control of our lives when we are seen as nothing more than customers and products by these two giants alone? Who controls them, when they control all of our most private and personal information, habits, location, interpersonal relationships, fingerprints, email, documents, pictures, and videos? Our DNA is not far behind, and yet they already possess the algorithm of our thoughts while also acting as our personal supply chain. All of this we have handed them gladly, without hesitation or even discussion. We didn’t even read the contract before handing it over; we just dutifully clicked “accept.” They have already stormed the gates of entertainment and brought the giants of old to their knees, and are now about to launch “news,” fully funded by “the corporation.” It bears saying again. I was wrong.

  If we are worried about the future, then there are a few really important questions whose answers will naturally guide us toward a solution. What the world looks like in 2030 will depend on how we answer these questions right now. We can try to avoid it, but they will be answered by each of us soon—for it is true that not to speak is to speak, not to stand is to stand. No answer will count as an answer. We are all involved, and we will all be remembered as “winter soldiers” or complicit with what I believe will be remembered as the greatest crime against humanity: standing by and waving your finger or the flag as the Western world burns.

  1. Is America a force for Good or a force for Bad?

  2. Is the Declaration of Independence still a viable mission statement, and is the Constitution the best way to implement it?

  3. Is the belief in a God or “higher power” important or not?

  4. Is the Bill of Rights something we actually believe in, or is it just window dressing?

  If we cannot have a civil national conversation and answer these questions, then we do not need to even ask the fifth:

  5. Is the Western way of life worth saving?

  A failure to find enough citizens in the West to engage in a meaningful and actionable discussion means that no matter how deeply you or I may feel about this outcome, we must individually find ways to preserve this new Western “library of Alexandria” in the hope that a future generation will be searching for self-evident truth.

  If we do believe that the West is worth saving, then our next question is:

  6. What is our unum?

  What is the one thing that brought us all together and bridged that huge divide in the first place? Not only will it be easier to find but we will also be well on our way to rebuilding it by simply honestly, thoughtfully, and thoroughly answering the first four questions.

  I will give you only a taste of each of these answers, for they are a book in themselves, but for those who are honestly seeking deeper truths, we will search deeply for those answers with those who are willing to stand against the mob and have dangerous conversations on my national radio/TV show and my podcast at theblaze.com/tv or iTunes.

  Let’s begin by first sharpening our skills on how one goes about even finding the truth.

  24

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  And the Truth Shall Set You Free

  To find that “one ring that can unite us all,” we first must find out how to be able to recognize the truth.

  If we do not want to be the generation that declares the American experiment a failure and carve into America’s headstone the words “We tried and we failed; Man cannot rule himself,” then we must begin to educate ourselves on critical thinking, honesty, and integrity, and reject the idea that anyone can be trusted to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Even the most honest men will see situations differently from one another. It is up to you and you alone to do your own homework, dive in, and find the truth.

  But as I have repeatedly said, don’t take my word for it, nor anyone else’s; look to the original source and those who witnessed it firsthand. You might just find a very different story from the one you were taught.

  When my daughter Hannah was attending a liberal university in NYC, I was on the air at Fox, and, needless to say, was not popular. Very few of Hannah’s friends knew that I was her father, and certainly none of her professors did. At one point, I had done a segment on art history and the fascist imagery of Rockefeller Plaza. I had spoken about the facade of the “Italy” building, which has a glass relief of a horse pulling a chariot with a strong man holding its reins and a young boy in front of the horse pointing the way toward the sunrise. I explained that the man was the fascist leader holding the reins of the horse (industry), with the youth directing the way to a brighter future.

  One day Hannah came into my office, which overlooks the Empire State Building and Bryant Park. “Dad, do you really know what you are talking about when it comes to Rockefeller Center?” What an odd question, I thought. “Uhm, pretty sure, why?” She then proceeded to tell me how one of her professors spent quite a bit of the day mocking and making fun of me. Not knowing my daughter was in the class, he proceeded to use this art history as a lesson on how you cannot trust the people on Fox News, as they just do not know what they are talking about.

  Now that I knew what she was referring to, I told her I wanted to restate my earlier answer. “Yes, honey, 100 percent, I know what I shared was accurate.” She looked relieved and said, “Good, because I told him I wanted to do a report on it and he agreed. He told me, however, that I should only use one book, as it was the authority, but I have been to the libraries and they are all checked out. What book did you use, and do you still have it?” I said, “I think so,” as I glanced at my library shelves. “I have many books on it, but there is only one that had that story in it . . . oh, here it is.” As I pulled it from the shelf, her eyes lit up, and it looked as if she were about to cry. “OMG! That is the book he told me was the only one I could use.” We both paused, and a small smile began to form on my face. I remember us both feelin
g a bit like the Grinch with his little dog, Max, as we just knew “how the Whos down in Who-ville would cry boo hoo.” Let’s just say that our story does end on the top of Mount Crumpit with a bag full of elitist dog—and boy, she did dump it. She received the highest grade he gave: B+. My segment on Fox had been correct. The media that had mocked that segment apparently didn’t have a curious mind like Hannah’s in their employ, or perhaps they did, but they just couldn’t tolerate the thought of correcting their error instead of mine.

  Sometimes the bias and outrage is so thick that even the “experts” cannot see the error of their ways because, in their mind, nothing the opposing side says can possibly be right.

  But if we are really seeking the truth, we are not on opposing sides.

  ORIGINAL SOURCES AND HUMILITY

  If you know how to find the original source, why would you begin your search anywhere else? Most of our history books, since the beginning of the progressive era, have been bad examples of the game of Telephone. One scholar will interpret an event or person, and the next will write his book, quoting that scholar, and by the third or fourth author, it becomes “scholars believe” and later just an accepted “fact.” Media are no different from or worse than you. If people hear me say something, many will accept it as fact and quote it, sometimes without attribution, as now we are bombarded by so many different stories and opinions that we honestly cannot remember where we first heard something, and if we heard it more than once we know it to be true. So, before we bring out the torches to breach the gates of Manhattan and pitchfork the media elite, remember, most of them are doing exactly what we ourselves are doing: relying on those we trust to shape our opinions.