Extinction Burst
What you’re seeing with Trump, regardless of his flaws, is a massive, concentrated psyop.
Joe Rogan
Of the many things I love about the Holiday Season, Christmas music and Christmas movies top the list. Both help me get in the Christmas spirit. And you may find it strange, but I also love Claxton fruitcake. Yes, I’m particular.
We’ve been playing holiday music for several weeks, but the rule in the Ferguson household is no Christmas movies until after Thanksgiving. Then, like old friends we haven’t seen in a year – George Bailey, Ralphie, Kevin, Scrooge, Cousin Eddie and Buddy the Elf – join us for good Southern visits.
Becky is the CEO of our home, and although I am retired and underfoot more than during my working years, she remains the manager of our abode. And it is Becky who makes our house a home.
Now that Thanksgiving is over, we’ve also begun our Christmas decorating. It’s a lot simpler these days because our kids are grown and have their own homes and families. So we no longer put up a big, live Christmas tree. We have a friend in Townsend who has a Christmas tree farm where we used to cut our own tree for one modest flat price. One year I brought home a Clark Griswold size tree that touched an eleven-foot ceiling even after cutting three feet off the bottom. These days our small, artificial Charlie Brown tree is good enough.
Last week Becky brought out the Christmas china and coffee mugs. Some of you may find it strange, but I love china, so we alter our dinner place settings regularly. We have five senses and I’ve found that food tastes better when presented well on a nice plate rather than plastic. The same goes for wine in a nice stem rather than a styrofoam cup.
I have too many favorite Christmas songs to list, but I’ll suggest just three for you to consider. Go to YouTube and search for The Drifter’s rendition of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” Then try Nancy Wilson singing “That’s What I Want for Christmas.” This musical standard is sublime and the lyrics embody love. And the last is the somewhat obscure Christian folk hymn, “I Wonder As I Wander,” attributed to John Jacob Niles. The haunting melody and contemplative lyrics can also be experienced on YouTube. You won’t be disappointed.
I refuse to let “wars and rumors of wars,” the political crisis in South Korea or the lying, corrupt Joe Biden who just pardoned his impaired son, Hunter, ruin my Christmas spirit.
People often ask me if I ever worry about finding a topic for this column. It hasn’t become an issue after almost 900 essays over fourteen years. Fortunately, there is a dearth of topics that interest the essayist in me. And unfortunately, there are so many problematic issues in the world today that warrant comment.
Actually, I have some sympathy for Hunter who was apparently the black sheep of the Biden family. A caring parent would have maneuvered Hunter into drug rehab rather than sending him to Ukraine to negotiate “business deals” or sit on Ukrainian energy boards, like Burisma, without any energy expertise. What could Hunter have been selling to justify his multimillion-dollar salary other than information and access to his vice president father? What could go wrong in a country legendary for corruption?
The charges of influence peddling by the Bidens were leaked to The New York Post during the 2016 election season, threatening not only Hunter, who never registered as a FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) lobbyist for Ukraine but also Joe Biden. Even more importantly, the potential scandal threatened Obama’s administration and reputation. Either Obama knew of Biden’s shenanigans or was unaware of the problems under his nose. I don’t know which is worse. You now begin to understand the 10-year pardon of Hunter who knew the details and could topple this house of cards if he was imprisoned. So the pardon was less about protecting Hunter and more about protecting the Big Guy and Obama. As one news blogger said, the “vengeful old man is the perfect symbol of his dying party.”
Biden has destroyed faith in virtually every government institution and now his party. But for another seven weeks, he is still the president because the Democrat coup to supplant him was a dismal failure evidenced by President Trump’s historic reelection.
There were many losers in November, but the legacy media (ABC, CBS, NBC, NYT, Washington Post, etc.) went down with their Democrat Party. Media gurus seemed surprised by Hunter’s sweeping pardon. But were they shocked because they were clueless or did their ideology blind them? It doesn’t matter. We are wise to their biased presentation of “a story” rather than “the story.” Their lies have destroyed them because after suppressing the Hunter Laptop story, promoting Hillary’s Steele dossier, support of Russiagate and the Covid lies regarding virus origin, vaccines, masks, distancing, censorship and lockdowns, no one believes them any longer. They have been replaced by the alternative media (examples: talk radio, Rumble, Truth Social, and podcasters like Joe Rogan, etc.) just as the Democrats have been replaced by MAGA.
I learned two new terms recently. Psyop is a shortened term for a psychological operation using, for instance, propaganda to manipulate people. Psyop techniques are used by the military, but the legacy media’s manipulation of Americans with propaganda has now been exposed.
The second term is extinction burst, defined as “a sudden and dramatic increase in behavior when reinforcement has been removed.” An example is screaming at or kicking a vending machine when you don’t get your soda. After all, inserting money in the machine always produces a soda … until it doesn’t.
In the election fallout, don’t expect the Democrats and their legacy media to reform. Their lies will continue until consequences force change. We’ll see if the Democrats moderate their policies and become more centrist. We’ll see if the legacy media can once again report the facts and regain our trust. In the meantime, even the loons who used to listen to them are leaving in droves. Their expectation was the truth and they were lied to.
Even the Wisconsin women screaming at Lake Michigan because of President Trump’s election expected a return on their investment of money, time and effort. They should have just bought a soda.
