Summer 1999, I arrived in Neumarkt am Wallersee Austria as part of my missionary service. President Roth of the Salzburg Stake met with my companion and me and tasked us to perform what he dubbed Operation Ammon (referencing this story). In conjunction with this assignment he told us about how, during the Austrian Imperial time, the Emperor sent his soldiers into the Flachgau region of Austria to ask the residents a single question- what their religious affiliation was. Anyone who failed to give the correct answer (Catholic) was immediately executed. Consequently, he believed that many of the people living in Flachgau were secretly protestant but identified as Catholic. Then, as now, the powers that controlled the wheels of politics and the dissemination of information did whatever it took to silence their opponents. The morals of this story are simple. First, it is dangerous to establish a society in which there is a central authority that decides what people can say or think or believe. Secondly, it illustrates the fact that people will seek peace at any price and that tyrants know this. Finally, it illustrates that a government that is willing to silence critics by whatever means necessary can and will continue to do so and occupies any place besides the moral authority.
The information companies are generally either biased towards liberals or outright owned by/allied with them. Although most of these are technically publically traded entities, they only consider public property to be property to which they don’t own the deed, so they generally only tolerate the public disseminating information through their venues as long as it doesn’t affect their agenda or hurt their potential profits. Most profit is actually made in the public sphere, by securing grants, preferential treatment or exclusive contracts for YOUR platform/product/publication in a political manner, i.e. by convincing a politician to pass laws that favor YOU. The ties between media companies and a particular political philosophy are well documented, and while people like to point out Fox News, as if it’s somehow biased 180 degrees completely, is only an attempt to address an outlier as if it were representative of the entire information climate. With the election of 2020 ceding control of every branch of the legislature and executive to a single party confederate with the companies and the information they disseminated, we now live in a country where a single authority will decide and possibly dictate conscience and expression.
To this day in Flachgau, or at least in 1999, if you asked the people their religion, they will still answer “catholic”. It became automatic for the people, in order to continue with some semblance of a life, to help maintain the status quo. For generations, the easy answer was to say “I agree with whatever the central authority says”. The people go through the motions of a life. In this way they think they have peace. Talk to them about other things, and you find it is anything but. They dislike oppressive taxes as much as we do. They just don’t vote against it because, particularly in Austria, the defamatory titular association with the Nazis drives their decisions. Any “right wing” entity is associated with the fascists of yore, and even in this nation, starting this month, we have a president elect making direct comparisons between his political opponents and the nefarious villains of that wretched stain on history. Of course, history is written by the victor, and they are already slandering and libelling their opponents in order to establish a peaceable flock of sheep they can herd this way and that. Tyrants learned long ago that if you provide people with food and entertainment, the great majority will simply go through the motions. Whether in the Napoleonic Era, the Crusades, or the Plandemic of 2020, the tyrants give people enough to satiate their immediate needs (like sufficient toilet paper), distract their minds, and know that they will comply.
Like President Trump or not, he is correct about one thing. HE once said, “They are not after me. They are after you. I’m just in the way.” If you disagree with him, fine, but the bigger issue here is what they did to him. At least as of today, Donald Trump is the sitting president of the United States, and he has been censored by and banned from a slew of social media platforms, including ones of which I was not even aware until today. If they can shut up the President, then they can shut you up too. Maybe it won’t be today, but if the day comes that you don’t give the correct answer the Gendermerie of Political Correctness will ride through the countryside and ask you one question, what your political affiliation is. If they don’t like your reply, they will censor you; if you refuse to be silent, then they will silent you PERMANENTLY, just like they did in Austria centuries ago. Like Trump or not, the fact that the media companies censored him carte blanc means that they feel empowered enough to silence anyone anytime for any aberrant or divergent opinion. For them, the ends always justify the means. For them, a docile population is the easiest one to manipulate. So, they will stop at nothing especially in the absence of pushback to force action, and I would not be surprised if they killed Trump just to end his influence once and for all. Despite the fact that yesterday Trump called for unity, conceded the election, and asked us to look forward to and work towards better days, the only place you will hear that is HERE until Youtube deletes the video as part of their purge. When it goes away, know that they have escalated it to the next order of magnitude.
Tyranny and deception are the rule of governments. It has probably always been this way, and it will probably always be this way. Politicians like to promise that they will change it, but people in power rarely keep power unless they maintain the status quo. In order to maintain the status quo, you must control the information and control the people who resist or denounce the information you choose to disseminate. When they own the information, they can bend it all they like. In order to bend the information to their wills, they must silence anyone who publishes any information that defies their political wills. If they must, eventually, they must put those critics to the sword. For now, it suffices to simply put them to the censor. Elsewhere, I have written ad nauseum that Liberalism is the philosophy of hell. It will eventually create a world where everyone is preoccupied with himself, with his own survival and advancement, because although it promises cooperation and fairness its fruits generate everything but what it promises. They shut up and shut down a sitting president. They will try to shut up anyone and everyone who opposes them. In a village near Lambach Austria in 1998 an old man told me about his own capitulation sixty years earlier to the SS. The Waffen SS ordered his company to execute a group of naked women and children (probably Jewish) standing in a field, and when his Lieutenant refused, the SS officer shot the LT on the spot. He looked at me and said, “To my everlasting shame, I shot those people. God will never forgive that.” I cannot speak for God, but that man speaks for many who wish they had done something other than fold. Eventually our time will come to decide if we let the British march on Lexington, if we let the Gendermarie ensconce political Catholicism in America, if we let our own government dictate our thoughts and conscience. At that point, we will discover who we really are and what we really deserve.
