By Eric Stogner January 2024
“Can we talk?” was a simple catchphrase that the American comedian Joan Rivers used as a regular part of her comedy routines. It was her signature way to ‘tee up’ a topic that she would then discuss to bring out the comedic aspects about whatever or whoever she was talking about.
Do you remember Joan Rivers? She passed away in 2014 and was famous from the 1960’s until she passed away. She was a female pioneer in the field of American comedy, and she made us laugh with observational comedy and political satire. Here’s perhaps a more basic question: Do you remember comedy? Comedy was a form of entertainment that began with the ancient Greeks and existed right up until the early 21st century when the woke cancel-culture killed it. They decided that it was no longer appropriate or acceptable to find humor in things that had always been fair game for comedians and polite company. So, now we live in a ‘safer space’ where we simply aren’t allowed to laugh at things that once were funny. And few people want to even try to be a comedian anymore. I will resist the temptation to write an entire essay on the death of comedy in our times and what it reveals about society, and instead try to stay on topic.
So, Can We Talk? Or better yet, can we agree on a few things? Because like comedy, even agreeing with others, or ‘disagreeing agreeably’ is another thing that the cancel culture has all but eradicated. With the advent of social media, it has become far too easy to foment division, demonize your opponent, and basically shut down and stifle the voice of anyone who speaks a point of view that someone disagrees with. People are viciously targeted in a mob-mentality style attack if they don’t go along with the prevailing narrative as dictated by some ‘force’ we are contending against in society. Those who control the media, both mainstream and social media, seem to have a controlling interest in what opinions and information is allowed to be shared. And they wield their content and editorial control under the guise of protecting people from misinformation and dis-information. When, what they truly mean by misinformation is anything that differs or opposes their prescribed narrative. Media is pretty much all propaganda. Can we at least agree on that?
This groupthink and crowd bullying has the effect of shutting people up and shutting down people’s minds. The dimming of the mind has reduced people’s attention spans and their ability to tolerate any thoughts, opinions or facts that challenge their own ideas. People are intimidated into silence and maneuvered into a passive state of acceptance. It is simply too much work to ‘do the math’ or think critically anymore. No one wants to resist the crowd. We want instant answers like we get from a google search, and we don’t want to have to challenge the status quo.
What makes this trend worse is that many of the ideas that people accept and embrace today are not the sort of firmly held convictions or principles that once guided people’s life choices and world views. Everyone has been worn down as a society so that they just accept what the authorities tell us and accept things that we never would have accepted a generation ago. Once people held a world view that was based upon some amount of rigor, logic and education. But today, most people seem to be driven by shallow ideas that were spoon-fed to them by their favorite affinity group via a kind of ‘required official narrative’ that members of that group are expected to follow in order to retain their unofficial membership in that particular group. It is a culture driven by feelings and special interest groupings of mostly mindless followers of illogical ideologies. This is why we find ourselves in such chaotic times. Not only are people being trained NOT to think, but they are simultaneously being programmed with ridiculous and dangerous ideas by ‘thought police’ enforcing the agendas of nefarious agents that are deliberately tearing society apart.
This is actually how a cult works. The cult leader or ‘influencer’ appeals to a category of people and entices them with some emotion-driven technique. And then, they convince their people to tune out other voices and listen only to them. They encourage their followers to no longer think for themselves, but simply to relax and follow their instructions. They expect group members to adopt and ‘parrot’ the talking points they are fed, and to shut off contact with family or anyone who doesn’t endorse the dogma that they are espousing. The members of the group become self-policing, stamping out any sign of deviation from the established group norms. This can be done by an individual over a small group of people, or when done to an entire population, this is called ‘mass formation’. Can you think of any recent events where a narrative was advanced and people were manipulated to follow the dictates of the leaders – even if it violated common sense or established science?
Do you know where the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” came from? It became famous due to the events in Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978, in which over 900 members of the ‘Peoples Temple’ movement died. Jim Jones was the cult leader of this movement who literally got people to live in a commune, isolated from the rest of society under the tyranny of his leadership, and who eventually poisoned them all via the ritualistic drinking of a poisoned sugary beverage. Technically it wasn’t Kool-Aid, but some other local sugary-sweet beverage – (a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine, I mean poison, go down! )
Talk about isolating people and controlling their thoughts to the detriment of the masses! This is a pretty extreme example, but are things really that much different today, except that it is happening on a global basis. In both Jonestown and in our day, it is clear that most people have lost their capacity to think for themselves and chose the easier path of just letting someone else do their thinking. Which turns out to be the wide pathway that leads to destruction.
So, can we talk? Because here at the beginning of 2024, we have A LOT we should be talking and thinking about.
And first on my list to talk about is the plandemic that we all have just lived through. Well, not everyone lived through it, but those of you reading this article have. We should be talking about these things – our survival depends on it. And yet, what I hear is a deafening silence.
And by plandemic, I do mean a planned pandemic. All the evidence shows that this was all planned from the start – every aspect of it. The virus itself, the media hype around it, the coordinated government reaction, the lockdowns, the emergency use and warp speed development of the new ‘vaccines’ and the program to manipulate people into taking the experimental serum, as well as all the downstream effects of the lockdowns. It seems clear that the whole thing was a planned set of events, to be enacted in lockstep across the globe to accomplish a whole range of objectives by the New World Order. There, I said it. Perhaps really talking about the plandemic is like comedy – something that is no longer socially acceptable to say out loud. And it is something that gets people cancelled or worse for daring to speak truth in an age of deception.
It feels like it is some kind of a thought-crime to even consider the events surrounding the covid disease, the governmental over-reach taken, and the global vaccination program. This is the most significant event humanity has experienced since WW2, and perhaps since the rise and fall of civilizations like Rome or the birth of Christ. And yet, all I hear are crickets. A great big nothing-burger. “Move along people – there is nothing to see here” that is the prevailing sentiment. Even though the entire globe underwent a collective experience of biblical proportion and yet there is almost no discussion, reflection, debate, or corrective action taking place about it.
What is happening is just more of a cover-up and a continued psy-op on the masses. There is a deliberate censorship of real information and critical thinking. As Tony Koretz reported on episode 486 at ‘A Minute to Midnite’, that a whistle blower named Barry Young from New Zealand has been arrested and charged in Wellington District Court for dishonestly accessing the databases of the “Te Whatu Ora” company that he worked for and helped create a national database on Covid data. He is being accused of spreading misinformation simply because he disclosed actual data on the excess death rates in that country. They say he has no clinical background or experience with vaccine knowledge – so the message is clear, only their trusted experts can be allowed to share information. He could face years in prison for trying to get real data, actual information out to the public. And the data he shared has been mostly scrubbed from the internet by the powers that be.
Richard Vobes, on his YouTube channel out of the UK, reported on the debate (or lack thereof) by parliament of the IHR (International Health Regulations) as they have been conducting a sham of a review of the covid response in that nation. It is a sham because they are evaluating how they could do a better job controlling the next pandemic, rather than looking at actual data showing things like excess deaths and the various other ways the policies followed have hurt the people. Richard has had his voice muted and events cancelled because suddenly the venue doesn’t want to host anything ‘political’. Clearly, dissenting voices are being shut down.
There is another truth teller from the UK, Dr. John Campbell, who recently released a video discussing excess deaths where he shares numbers of ‘all-cause’ and covid death. The data shows clearly that the numbers are up dramatically. He reveals an increase of between 14-18% in most western nations for 2022 and 2023 of deaths from all causes above the normal death rate. And he compares these increases to the deaths from major events, like the numbers the Americans lost in the entire Vietnam war, or the number of Brits (civilian and military) lost in the bombing campaigns on the Homefront during WW2. The excess deaths that are happening all around us are many times larger in real numbers than the deaths from those military conflicts. And yet people are ignorant of this reality and he is beside himself as to why this is not being discussed. His data even pulls out the number of excess deaths that are claimed to be from covid and still the excess deaths in these last two years is off the chart. Clearly covid to a small extent, the vaccines to a large extent, and even the other harmful effects on mental health, immunity, etc that are the indirect impact of the covid policies are all having a cumulative effect that is harmful to the masses and leading to depopulation. But, hey, there is nothing to see here.
In the USA, even secular and scientific voices like Bret Weinstein are being professional and socially isolated for voicing objections to and pointing out inconsistencies of the covid narrative and the ill-fated policies by authorities and medical governing boards. And in a few recent podcasts, Bret interviews people who were vaccine injured and who previously had been eager supporters and proponents of the covid narrative and the proposed vaccine solutions, but who now have changed their minds after suffering from vaccine injuries and investigating the stories and claims of others who had suffered similar fates. The main observation of his conversation is that, in spite of what now is overwhelming evidence of excess deaths, and high rates of injury, these people who suffer from these side effects are being marginalized, ignored, and made to feel as if they are crazy, even though the science and the data support their claims. He laments that the institutions we once turned to as trusted sources of truthful information are now unwilling to examine the recent past and make the necessary changes to avoid this from happening again.
Bret goes on to say what I also am noticing among the people around me as well. That, people are starting to wake up, but they are not fully awake yet. By that he explains that lots of people have changed sides on the debate about the vaccines but they are reluctant to talk about it. He points out that the fact that so many people are avoiding the booster shots, by definition shows that they no longer feel comfortable that the injection was safe or effective. But they also are very hesitant to talk about it. We all seem to know of people in our circle of acquaintances who have died suddenly, or been vaccine injured, or just have had bizarre adverse health events that go unquestioned and accepted as our new normal. Why is that?
I think this is part of the brilliance of the evil that has been inflicted on the masses. There was so much pressure – social pressure, economic pressure and even a false moral pressure placed upon the people to intimidate, coerce, and manipulate them into taking the jab, that people don’t want to talk about it now. It was designed to emotionally manipulate people into making a decision that they could not take back and that would be hard to even think about admitting was a bad decision later. Because an injection into your body that modified your DNA, is not like putting on a set of clothes that you can take off or return to the store if you decide later that you don’t want it. Taking the vax was more akin to getting a tattoo. It is probably there for life – so I hope you really thought about it. And people would be very reluctant to admit they made a mistake and look like a fool. No one wants to do that and few people are secure enough to do so. (Side thought- I wonder if the tattoo craze that has overtaken society over the past decade was designed to subtly get people used to the idea of receiving lasting changes to their own body without question)
But, back to the topic. Can we talk about this issue?
The answer to the question appears to be: NO. No, the powers that be don’t want us to talk about this. So, the question then becomes – can YOU talk about this? Will you talk about the covid experience we have all lived through, and can you accept conversation or information that challenges the official narrative. Can you at least admit to yourself that things went very wrong? If you can’t, then I really don’t know what to say to you. Because after all we have been able to observe, and now with the benefit of hindsight, surely the many inconsistencies and untruths that we have been fed are obvious. It is one thing to have been caught up in the moment and whipped up into an emotional frenzy by the media and our officials at the time everything was ‘unfolding” in 2020 – after all, that is what they were deliberately doing to everyone. But it is now 2024 and there has been plenty of time to digest and reconsider what we have all been through. Or have you been too eager to ‘get back to normal’ and take those vacation trips you missed out on in 2020 and 2021 to really give this subject any thought? Are you just one of the frogs in the pot that says, “hey, this is a great hot tub we are all in. Relax and go with the flow, dude.”
There is so much more to say, so much that a handful of voices have been saying and bravely trying to share to the world. We will explore these topics in future articles. We may not be able to control or influence most of what we see going on, but we can at least be aware and alert. And with that awareness, we can be better prepared to face what lies ahead.
I will close with a word of encouragement and hope. None of this is a surprise to the Lord. He is fully aware of the schemes of the evil one, and his minions, and that is exactly what is playing out. And, frankly, this is all in alignment with God’s permissive will. That is not to say that God is pleased with the evil that is unfolding, but he is aware and allows it for his greater good and his larger story of redemption. He has given us a pathway to escape these traps. Remember, he said I am the way, the truth and the life. My last essay was all about how he is truth, but now focus on the fact that he makes a way and is the way. The way that leads to true life. Now is the time to take your faith decision and journey very seriously. Things are not going back to normal, but you can make the decision to claim God’s offer of salvation and restoration. Don’t follow the masses who are in the wide path that leads to destruction, Jesus is the narrow path, and few find it, but those who do are led to the life that endures and truly satisfies.
Til next time, Blessings and Strength
Eric
Our audio podcast channel on 
