“Extending the TAT to cruise passengers threatens to deter visitors whose spending fuels this economic engine, risking job losses and eroding the financial stability of businesses dependent on tourism,” CLIA added.
The lawsuit points out that the state’s counties each add their own 3% surcharge on top of the state’s tax – bringing the tax to 14%.
Portions of the newly raised revenue would go into the “Climate Mitigation and Resiliency Special Fund” and the “Economic Development and Revitalization Special Fund,” according to the bill.
stock here: I had no idea who Jeffrey Sachs is. He started this long interview in the dark, and the sunrise occured in the background as it went on. He gives Trump more shit than I do.
I added this video on to another Duran video as an afterthought, but really, this is beyond important. Truth benefits the receiver, in almost all cases. Here is a summary, in my prior article is the full transcript.
———————————-
A New Global Reality
The world has entered a new era, marking the end of Western dominance that began around 1750. This shift is driven by the rise of a multipolar world, led by the rapid growth of countries like China and India, as well as the emergence of groups like the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The End of Western Hegemony
The Western world’s share of global population is only around 12%, a stark contrast to its historical dominance.
The idea of a “unipolar” world led by the United States is a dangerous delusion, a clash between arrogance and reality.
Many nations, particularly in the Global South, reject the idea of an “emperor” and unilateral demands from the U.S.
China’s economy is now larger than the U.S.’s when properly measured, and it is a leader in key technologies like electric vehicles and solar power.
The West’s perception of global power is based on a historical mirage, failing to recognize the fundamental changes in economic and technological power.
Europe’s Outdated Mindset
Europe is still operating with a foreign policy based on 19th and 20th-century delusions and fears.
The idea that Russia aims to invade Western Europe is an “insanity” with no basis in historical fact or current reality.
European leaders are making decisions in a vacuum, without communicating with their Russian counterparts.
Europe’s focus on this outdated conflict is a distraction from its own potential and a waste of its valuable resources, such as its great universities and culture.
The Cold War narrative, as taught in the West, is a one-sided story that ignores Russia’s legitimate security concerns stemming from historical invasions.
NATO’s eastward expansion, despite promises not to, is a key driver of current tensions and a direct result of a “block mentality” in the U.S. and U.K.
The U.S. and its allies treated post-Soviet Russia as a “third or fourth rate country,” fueling resentment and a return to primitive Russophobia.
Critiques of U.S. Leadership
The current U.S. presidency is described as having a lack of depth and knowledge regarding global affairs.
The U.S. military-industrial complex is a powerful force that the president is unable to resist.
U.S. foreign policy, as demonstrated by demands on countries like India to stop buying Russian oil, is perceived as stupid, arrogant, and diplomatically inept.
The “buck stops” with the president, and the current administration is seen as failing to perform its job effectively in a changing world.
The U.S. continues to pursue “primacy” and “full spectrum dominance,” a stated policy that is unrealistic and provokes other nations.
The U.S. is the biggest obstacle to global peace because it clings to an outdated notion of being the sole superpower, hindering effective diplomacy.
This video is relevant because it features Professor Jeffrey Sachs discussing U.S. foreign policy and the challenges to global peace, aligning with the core themes of the provided text.
Comment summary
The comment section for this video, featuring Professor Jeffrey Sachs, is overwhelmingly positive and reflects a strong agreement with his analysis of geopolitics. Many viewers praise Sachs as a “brilliant scholar,” a “maestro of geopolitics,” and a “hero of the truth.” The discussion is frequently described as a “masterclass” and an “amazing show” that provides a “breathtaking” and “thorough” history lesson.
Key Themes and Viewer Sentiments
Praise for Professor Sachs: A recurring sentiment is the high regard for Sachs’s intellect and integrity. Comments like “Professor Jeffrey Sacks walks on water” and “I would follow Mr Sachs into battle because I know he would have tried everything to prevent a battle to begin with” highlight the immense respect he commands. One user notes a shift in Sachs’s perspective from a more pro-US view to a more critical one, which they applaud.
Critique of Western Foreign Policy: Many commenters echo Sachs’s analysis that Western policy is based on “delusion” and “arrogance.” The phrase “A clash of reality and arrogance” from the video is frequently quoted. Viewers feel the West’s continued Cold War mentality, particularly the expansion of NATO and the use of sanctions, has been self-defeating and has ironically pushed Russia and China closer together, leading to the formation of BRICS. One commenter notes, “It was the west that created BRICS, by giving BRICS the impetus to unite. To escape sanctions destructive policies.”
Historical Context and Ignorance: There’s a shared sense of frustration that the Western public is largely ignorant of the historical context of the Cold War and post-WWII events. Comments reference the Soviet Union’s immense loss of life in WWII and its subsequent quest for security. One viewer, identifying as a “Boomer,” admits to being “schooled on official US Gov Propaganda” and appreciates Sachs’s alternative perspective. Several comments note the contrast between learning about “the crimes of communism” but never being taught “the crimes of capitalism” or the West’s continuous interference. This is a strong theme, suggesting a desire among viewers for a more balanced and complete historical education that acknowledges Western imperialism and meddling, not just in the Cold War, but throughout history.
Europe’s Predicament: Viewers agree that Europe is caught in a self-destructive loop by following the U.S. and its outdated policies. The phrase, “Europe will learn it the tough way,” captures this sentiment. One particularly poignant comment from a user in Flanders, Belgium, expresses concern that Europe is being “remade” through mass migration, which they tie to a “revenge for the events of WW II,” and urges the hosts to discuss this topic. This comment touches on a sensitive and controversial topic, reflecting a view among some viewers that current events are part of a larger, long-term geopolitical and social engineering strategy.
Humor and Personal Connections: The comments are not all serious. There’s a running joke about the phrase “you such a Lindsey Graham” becoming a new insult, reflecting Sachs’s characterization of the senator. Another commenter playfully suggests that Sachs sounds like an “anti-depressant,” highlighting the calming and reassuring nature of his analysis for those feeling overwhelmed by the news. Some commenters express personal gratitude, with one user stating they are “55 years young” and feel like a student listening to the professor. Another mentions the beautiful sunrise visible from Sachs’s window, showing a personal connection to the interview’s setting.
In summary, the comment section reveals a community of viewers deeply engaged with the geopolitical analysis presented. They see Professor Sachs as a beacon of reason and truth in a world they feel is dominated by propaganda. They agree with his assessment that the West’s policies are based on arrogance and an outdated worldview, and they are hungry for more complete and honest historical narratives.
stock here: If you want truth about Ukraine and Europe Politics, and also how the USA is complicit in this plot
from a comment:
The killer before turning himself in called in various media & made a statement that: #1 A 52yo Ukrainian national NO hasn’t been approached by Russian Intelligence, but was targetting ANY & all Zelenski hunta official as a revenge for his son MIA since 2024 on the front & Zarubii just had bad luck to be easily approached. #2 He hopes that thx to a future prisoner exchange he will be allowed by the Russians to search for his son’s body in order to give him proper burial… My guess other father & mothers will start following his example… soon!
And another well respected guy from Columbia University of all places!!! Like Mr. Mersheimer from University of Chicago, great intellects from the bellies of the liberal / leftists hell holes.
The end of an Era, the end of the Western Dominance, 1750 to around 2000. In 1500 European expansion began.
Here is a cleaned up transcript:
Gemini
All right, we are live with Alexander Mccuris in London, and we are happy and honored to have with us once again on The Duran, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Professor Sachs, how are you doing today?
Great to be with you guys. Great work you’re doing.
Thank you. Likewise, great to have you on. And I have the links to uh to Jeffrey Sachs’s work in the description box down below. I will also add those links as a pinned comment when the live stream is over. So, a big hello to everyone that is watching us on all the platforms. A big thank you and shout out to our chat moderators. We have a lot of news to get to. So, Alexander, Professor Sachs, let’s jump right into it.
Let’s indeed because as Alex said, an awful lot of news and we’ve had a whole succession of very big summits and meetings in China. And the most important things for me are two. Firstly, India and China starting to get on good terms with each other. To repeat again a point I’ve made in my last program on my channel, I think this is unequivocally a good thing. I don’t understand why we don’t see it in those terms in the West. An unequivocally good thing and it opens up enormous possibilities.
The second which is a commercial agreement is Power of Siberia 2. Gas which was flowing to the west is now going to flow to the east. Now contrast the spirit and atmosphere of the meetings in China, and by the way, Professor Sachs, who is of course with us, was a person whom I remember last year telling us that he thought that India and China were going to start to sort out their differences. I remember that he said it on one of our programs that we did with him. Anyway, contrast the positive forward-looking approaches being taken in these meetings in Tianjin between all of these various Asian leaders, East Asian leaders and Central Asian leaders and the backward-looking views that we have in Europe.
Um, another meeting tomorrow of the coalition of the willing in Paris, moving troops around who we don’t have to fight, whom? To fight the Russians or not to fight the Russians or to deter them to me. I mean, the other thing about this is it is so 20th century in the worst possible sense.
And Professor Sachs has made, I think, some extremely pertinent and important points about Europe needing a new foreign policy, a new foreign policy approach. More than that, actually, I’d say a philosophy and a framework. So, since we always are so keen to have you, Professor Sachs, but we know how busy you are, maybe after that introduction perhaps you can go straight in and make your comments about Europe. What what’s happening now?
Yeah, thank you so much. You know what what is happening now is of course the end of an era. It’s the end of a actually two a sub-era and an era. The end of the era is is the end of the Western dominance over the world system. And this is a dominance that began with the European empires and then transferred to the US empire after World War II. But that dominance essentially lasted from around 1750 to around 2000. So around 250 years, you could add one more 250-year period. Helpfully, starting in 1500, European imperial expansion began.
That’s with the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama. So the voyages both to the west and to the east from Europe led to the beginning of the European global expansion. But Europe had its rivals especially in the old world. In the new world, people succumbed to the old world diseases mainly. But in the old world, Asia didn’t simply succumb to Europe. But over a period of around 250 years, European powers gained their ascendancy and Britain became the dominant of all of the European empires by the 19th century with the defeat of Napoleon.
So we all grew up in the age when it was taken for granted that Europe and then after 1945 Europe and the US quote ran the world. And indeed in 1950 if you looked at the global landscape, the vast wealth, the financial power, the technological power, the new atomic age, everything was in this western world plus the Soviet Union. But China, India, Africa, Latin America had no discernable role. Actually quite interestingly the western world also reached a peak of its share of world population.
Not only power but we should remember that Europe relative to Africa and the Middle East was much more populous then than today in relative terms. Europe was a larger population than Africa and its Middle East neighborhood. Now it’s half the population of those two. So, I was born in 1954 in a European-led world. There was a cold war and a very dangerous one between the Soviet Union and the United States world, but there was absolutely no doubt that this was a western dominated world.
The main point I think we see it in a hundred different ways is that that is over and it ended actually probably a quarter century ago but it wasn’t noticed as such it after the demise of the Soviet Union while a new multipolar world was actually emerging especially with the rise of China but not only the rise of China also the economic growth of India and others.
The United States was asserting something quite different, which is not only is it the western-led world, the US now is the only superpower in the world, it became the unipolar world. And this was a great delusion and a great arrogance and very badly mistimed because people in Washington are not very clever to begin with. I can absolutely assure you it’s not a snide remark. They just absolutely don’t know what they’re doing. But in any event, they asserted their unipolarity at precisely the time that the western led world was coming to an end.
And so we’ve been at a clash of reality and arrogance for a quarter century where the United States and even vestigially Europe and within Europe I have to say Britain which is the craziest of all in terms of the gap between reality and and um and image or delusion thought the west runs the world. We can tell Putin what to do. We can tell Xi Jinping what to do. We can tell Modi what to do.
We can tell Lula what to do. We can tell anyone what to do because we are the West. We are the United States and the reality of a world in fundamental change. Two points about the fundamental change that I think are worth noting. First and I find it stunning and counterintuitive because of the bubble that we live in in the west. But if you add the population of the United States, which is about 340 million people right now, the population of the European Union, the population of the UK, so that North Atlantic world, you come to something around 900 million people, slightly more than 10% of the world population. If you want, and I think it’s wrong, but if you want to say that the US-led world includes Japan and Korea, because I don’t think that will be true for long. If you want to add Australia and New Zealand, and you can add Singapore if you want and a very few other places, you get to around 12% of the world population.
Well, this should tell us something to begin with. How could 12% of the world population in today’s world in which technology is everywhere in which the internet is everywhere in in which capacities nuclear weapons have spread to nine countries in the world and on and on. How could it ever be that 12% of the world thinks that it runs the world anymore? that the others don’t have a view, don’t have power, don’t have capacity to resist unilateral demands.
This is the backdrop for me of everything that we’re seeing that we are in a delusion in our English language, Western media, uh, ignorant, politically ignorant world in which Washington, Brussels, London, Berlin, Paris think that this is the center of the world and honestly 100 years ago it was for good and for bad but it ain’t now not even close and so we have two major groupings uh you discussed them at length yesterday beautifully uh the BRICS which is nearly half the world population and half the world GDP and that is a grouping that includes the original five Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, but now includes Egypt and Ethiopia, Iran, the Emirates, Indonesia, and that’s a worldwide group stretching from Brazil to China.
So, it includes South America, it includes Africa, it includes the Middle East, it includes Russia and Asia. And we have the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which began very much as an Asian Eurasian group but an East Eurasian group of China, India, Russia and the four of the five countries of Central Asia, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, Usbekiststan and Tajikiststan and Belarus added Indonesia and a number of partners. ers, but that’s an Asian grouping. And as you said, these two are very closely related. They each have nearly half the world population, not exactly the same membership, but they have two overriding realities to them.
One is they’re the fast growing part of the world economy, and that itself is worth the saying something about. And second, they don’t want to be told what to do by Donald Trump. And the best phrasing of that was by President Lula of Brazil, who said a few months ago, we don’t need an emperor. And this is the basic point, which is they’re not they’re not even anti-American, by the way. That is a basic fundamental misunderstanding. They’d actually like normal relations.
The point I’ve been making to all of them for years is you can’t trust the United States on this because the US till today in its delusion is aiming for hegemony. Clearly, it’s not a propaganda. It’s the stated policy of the United States to have what they call primacy or what the military calls full spectrum dominance. This is the idea I’m trying to say in Washington for 20 years. You guys are crazy because you’re the US alone. Okay, you’re 4.2% of the world. We are not in 1945 or 1950 or even 1990.
China is bigger than the US economy properly measured. That’s not a myth. That’s a reality. China is far bigger in industrial capacity. And if you go to China, as I do several times a year, China is ahead of the United States on many technologies, not all, but many technologies and notably technologies that the world really needs right now. It will dominate electric vehicles for 20 years to come. It will absolutely dominate solar power production of which it has essentially no rivals in the world.
It will dominate zero emission ocean shipping, something of interest to Greece and interest to to the world. Because it makes the ships. The United States doesn’t make the ships. Europe doesn’t make the ships except in much much smaller numbers and you could go down a long list of technologies like this. So the point is to just realign our understanding and our delusions of grandeur that come understandably from several hundred years of actual power.
Not power nicely wielded, not power responsibly wielded in my view. So I think from a moral point of view, nothing very attractive about it. And as an economist, I have followed Adam Smith all my life because he was an anti-imperialist very explicitly said, “Give up the US colonies and trade with them. You don’t need to own them. You just need to trade with them.” And that’s a very good point of view.
Those who say, “Well, at least Europe spread its knowledge and science and so forth.” Well, yes, Europe did that, but it didn’t have to do that through empire and war and conquest and forced famines and many other things that went along with European Empire. It could have done that through trade, commerce, decent human relations with other countries. So we have the world now much more equal in of course in literacy, in schooling, in technology, in industrial capacity, even overtaking the western world in in many different areas.
And we still have in the west this idea that this is a we’re preserving the western-led world, but that’s over. And then we ha happen to have one of the most sorry to say it but one of one of the least knowledgeable conceivable presidents in the United States who sorry but knows nothing about any of this. He was a real estate developer. He has no training in anything of this sort. I granted he knows how to build golf courses I think in many places in the world but understanding these changes in the world actually requires something more.
Strangely, in Britain, the idea that the British Empire still exists through the US Empire and it’s going to be defended and we can use every means from MI6 and covert operations to global dominance and so forth somehow still persists. I marvel at it. As you say every day, better to take care of the national health system rather than worrying about running the world 80 years after losing the empire. But that mirage still exists and France still has it and God knows what’s in the German mind of Mr. Mertz right now, but none of it makes any sense.
And when you come to Europe, the point of my article is precisely what you said. Europe is still battling its 19th century and 20th century delusions and wars well into the 21st century. And the idea that Russia’s greatest aim in the world is to invade Western Europe is an insanity. and such a violation of any basic knowledge of history that you cannot believe a grown-up could say this, much less a grownup in a position of any responsibility.
Yet Europe is twisting itself into a pretzel that is completely useless because of fears that have no basis in reality whatsoever. And those fears are not dispelled because Europe doesn’t understand anymore. I mean European leaders I should say do not understand anymore. If you want to understand the other side, pick up the phone, take a flight, invite a counterpart to sit down and have a cup of coffee.
They’d actually learn something. So bottom line, the reality is a multi-olar world. You see it in the economics, you see it in the technology, you see it in the military force. The delusions are still western dominance and within that US dominance. That gap between reality and delusion is large and extremely dangerous. Donald Trump illustrates it almost every day by giving orders to the Chinese or to the Brazilians or to the Indians or to the Russians. Literal orders.
You must have a ceasefire unconditional by August 8, he tells Russia. You must stop a court case, he tells Brazil. you must stop buying Russian oil, he tells India. And these are not only not put diplomatically or intelligently, they’re on a social post where he’s demanding of supposed vassels which vastly are outnumber Americans.
He’s telling them what to do every day. And then he has these completely ignorant minions around him, completely ignorant, who blow up any last vestiges of diplomacy. Like this Peter Navaro who is I’m sure I claim it every day. I think he’s the most incompetent person that my economics department at Harvard ever gave a PhD degree to. I do not remember the guy. I’m almost sure he could never have been in my class because of the utter nonsense that’s spouted. But this guy’s trotted out every day to make it worse in breaking up US relations with 1.5 billion people in India. The the only slight thing, Alexander, that I would take I’d quibble with you on a point you made yesterday.
You attributed a lot of this to Lindsey Graham. I agree with that. I call him, by the way, I’m sorry. I hope I don’t upset the show or anything else, but I call him absolutely the stupidest senator in the US Senate because I’ve watched him for a long time and he’s an idiot and he’s just a fool.
Not only a war monger, but an idiot. But in any event, it’s not right to say that this is his doing, not Donald Trump’s doing. Because ultimately, I don’t agree with Truman on many things with our President Truman who needlessly dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and rather blightly did so.
But he was right when he said the buck stops here in the presidency. And we need a presidency that functions that really functions. And we don’t have it right now. and it’s just swinging in the wind every day because they don’t have even the depth of knowledge with inside the White House to know what they’re doing right now. And so, yes, you’re right. Trump is responding to these I mean basically to the military-industrial complex which is you know 80 years built into the US system. He is responding to that, but it’s actually the job of the president to say no. That’s really the president’s job and he doesn’t he he can’t do it.
That is a very good point and I accept it completely.
Just a sec. Yeah. No, it’s just a little a little quibble.
Can can I can I take up on a few of the points that you said because of course I was born in 1961, an interesting year. It was the year of Gagarin’s flight. It was also the year of the Berlin crisis. And of course, the first half of my life was lived through the Cold War. And I think the thing that many people don’t understand about the Cold War is that the Cold War was ultimately a struggle for Europe. It was a contest between two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, with different ideological perspectives about Europe.
Um, now whether the Soviets ever really had any actual ambitious aggressive plans to take over Europe, I personally very very much doubt. But the entire rhetoric of the time was that this was a conflict about Europe. And when we thought about the rest of the world in Europe at that time, it was always seen as part of the game about Europe. In other words, the superpowers maneuvering for advantage in the rest of the world in order ultimately to advance their objectives in Europe. So even the Cuban missile crisis, for example, was often framed by many people, perhaps rightly, perhaps probably wrongly, as being ultimately about Berlin. that Kruev moved his missiles to Cuba so that he could force us to make concessions about Berlin.
Now what that did was that it made us in Europe feel very important. It was very frightening but it also made us feel very important because we seemed to be right at the center of the great events in history. Um, this is where the contest, the great contest for the future was being played out. the cold war ends and suddenly we discover that you know we’re not that important after all and um the rest of the world has moved on and is continuing to move on and that is very very difficult for many people in Europe particularly the political leaders to accept and understand so I get the sense sometimes that what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to take ourselves back to that world of the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s when the conflict was there in Europe.
We continue to be imported in the same way that we were. We trot out all the same rhetoric. We have the same kind of policies and things of that kind because that made us feel important. And of course it is a colossal a disastrous distraction from the realities of the world which you have just described far more aly and with far more knowledge than I can possibly have. And what worries me as a European and I am one I’m a European to my call is that by doing that we are frittering away in Europe those things that we still have which we can bring constructively to the table that will help to shape the future in a way that I think would be positive for all of humanity because we have contributed so much in Europe.
I mean I’m sometimes very critical of what the Europeans done but they’ve done amazing extraordinary things. So we are failing to bring that and of course at the same time we are marginalizing ourselves and your point about the need for a new foreign policy.
It’s not just about breaking with the United States which is absolutely something we have to do. It is also about thinking about Europe, its role, what it could constructively do. And there are so much which we could constructively do. We still have great universities, great science, extraordinary culture, all of that is being frittered away. So anyway, any any I I was just in mind now to make some points about this.
No, no, exactly right. But let let me add a couple of uh points to this because this struggle for Europe itself needs to be unpacked. I as I said was born in 1954. um and so I’m completely a cold war baby. I grew up absolutely in the midst of this and was trained and embued uh the all of the the the legends of the Cold War.
And my wife, by the way, was born in Prague. So she was born in Soviet dominated central and eastern Europe. We know all about that. She shook hands with Gagarin actually after his orbit as a young pioneer in in Prague when he came for a heroic visit. So this was absolutely the millieu now of of my upbringing. The American idea and the European idea and the NATO idea was that we faced a an implacably expansionist ungodly totalitarian communist international movement and that we were defending freedom and democracy against the expansion of the Soviet Union.
I would say that was taken as 99.9% of Americans and and Europeans at the time. And I crossed Checkpoint Charlie twice in Berlin. I saw the Berlin wall with my own eyes as a young person of course on many occasions. Um, so the world seemed to be divided and the foe on the other side seemed to be implacable. And just to translate till today, communism is gone, Soviet Union’s gone, but the rhetoric about Russia is almost identical to the rhetoric of the cold war period. As if there’s no change. Okay. But my point is even that cold war vision if you grow up and spend decades studying learning working on both sides working in Moscow as I have working all over the world but especially in these two sides of Europe.
The whole Cold War narrative is a huge blunder and tragedy in its way because there’s another story to it that’s completely different from the one that you and I grew up with. And that story is the Soviet at the time until today, the Russian search for security. And we don’t give this one moment’s thought. And I can tell you, I didn’t even hear one minute of it growing up or going through university. And I had a good university education at Harvard, undergraduate and graduate school. I didn’t hear one day, not one day in my life as a student that there was another side to the Cold War story. Now, I may have taken the wrong classes, but I’m telling you what the what the atmosphere was, which was an implacable foe. We read Solzhenitsyn we knew about the the crimes of the Soviet Union and so forth.
We never stopped to ask one moment, well, 27 million people in the Soviet Union died at Nazi hands. What is the implication of that for the aftermath of World War II? What might have been done? What were the Soviet or the Russian security concerns at the time? Now, since then, I’ve spent 30 years pretty much in depth in in understanding these issues, and it’s a point that I really want people to understand. when you lose 27 million lives or China by the way with its military victory parade today. China lost a comparable number of lives in its war with Japan which by the way we never discussed one day in my youth.
The fact that China I mean I knew that that China was invaded by Japan but anything about the actual war or the scale of loss not a moment. Okay, coming back to Europe, the Soviets or the Russians said, “How do we protect ourselves against another invasion, against a remilitarized Germany, round three?” Because after all, the first world war was a German war in part on Russia. The second world war was Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union. 27 million dead. And the Soviet side said, “We need a peace agreement that addresses our security interests.” And the United States essentially said no. And Britain said no.
And we know even in the spring of 1945, Mr. Churchill was already asking about the possibility of maybe just the possibility of invading the Soviet Union, our wartime ally, in Operation Unthinkable. It’s pretty much unthinkable that your ally has just lost 27 million people, and you’re asking your war command about maybe we should invade this fall because the implacable hatred of Russia went way back. And in Britain, it went back to the 1840s. And this is part of our story. The United States absolutely rejected a core agreement made in Potsdam at the end of the Second World War for a demilitarized unified Germany. And instead it said, “We’ll take our part, the three occupied zones by Britain, the US, and France, so-called. We’ll build that into a new Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany.
We will remilitarize it and it will join NATO, our new military organization, in 1955.” And all of this time from 45 onward, the Soviet Union rightly is saying, “But excuse me, what what about our security? We just lost 27 million people.” That wasn’t a distant history. That was an immediate reality in which the US was remilitarizing Germany. And if you go back now, as I have for many, many years, and look at choices that were made, we had many diplomats led by George Kennan in the United States who said, “Take the deal. A neutral, demilitarized Germany will end the cold war.” The Soviet Union tried to prove it again and again, including most notably in Austria in 1955 when there was an agreement Austria would become neutral. It would not join NATO.
The Soviet occupying forces left Eastern Austria and never bothered Austria again. They were saying to the US, “Do the same for Germany and the cold war ends.” But the US UK idea was block mentality. And this is why what’s happened in the last 35 years is so poignant because what President Gorbachev at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s was about fundamentally was ending that division by ending the two military blocks. And to do it, he went first and disbanded the Warsaw Pact. And in the US and UK mentality, which is crazed in its way, I have to say, they said, “Oh, that’s not peace. We just won. We won.
Now we can do all that we’ve always wanted.” And so formally, World War II was ended in 1990 because the United States had rejected a treaty to end World War II up until the reunification of Germany. In that reunification, the US and Germany explicitly unambiguously said that NATO would not enlarge. It should have said NATO is ended, but they said NATO will not move one inch eastward. Terribly, Gorbachev did not put it into the 4 plus2 treaty because he said this is a treaty not about NATO but about Germany. So there’s a reason it’s not in there. But the commitment was no more NATO. But the American and British mentality, and I add the British, they had no weight in military terms, but in psychological terms, we were living the British imperial dream.
But just as the American Empire, as soon as Germany was reunified, the United States, without losing a beat, said, “Now NATO goes eastward. We won. We are the military alliance. And we would never listen one moment to the Russians say, “But we’re we’re not at war. We just disbanded. Why are you pushing NATO? Why we’re we’re not supposed to have any NATO enlargement?” And the US attitude was, as you absolutely know, you are a third or fourth rate country. You count for nothing. We’d like to pump your oil for you. So, we want Chevron and Exxon to be there. Other than that, you are a quote gas station with nuclear weapons.
You will listen to us. You have no choice. And the grand puba of that theory in the 1990s was Brzezinski who was by the way to me a very nice man because I was advising Poland and he helped me in the advice you know to get my advice actually implemented and and it worked. But when it came to Russia he was a true Polish patriot. He hated Russia. that goes back to the 17th century. And he hated Russia. So in 1997, he laid it all out as clearly as it can be laid out. Expand NATO, expand Europe, Russia will have nothing to do but to exceed because it could never join with China. That’s unthinkable. He has a whole chapter in his book about why Russia won’t sign up with China.
So we have falsehood and delusion, a complete one-sided story about the cold war itself, which is really wrong historically. And then after 1991, we have the grandiosity of supposed unipolarity. And now we have the idea since that unipolarity didn’t exist and Russia has its security interests. Now we have the return of the most primitive kind of rousophobia imaginable. So Europe meets as as you note every two or three days in terror of Russia with these fools around the table without talking to the Russians at all.
And so it is this self-fulfilling, grandiose, delusional sense of power and vulnerability together and thinking that the United States will you know pull them out of bail them out pull them out of this fire and protect them from the the Russian bearer. And as you said completely rightly this incredibly stupid set of demands for example on India which I think is probably the single stupidest single stupidest moment of foreign policy of modern America that I know of that was promoted by the Europeans. so you were completely right to point out that yes, Lindsey Graham had the idea, quote unquote, Donald Trump implemented it, but the Europeans were desperate for it.
Secondary tariffs, secondary sanctions, stop the Indians. So all of it is such a bad misreading of history, of current events, of tying yourself in knots, of failing to look at a map, of failing to do the most basic arithmetic of world population or technology or industrial production or direction of trade. And you just watch these people, they don’t know anything. and they don’t want to learn anything and they don’t want to hear anything and especially in Euro
Data on the number of foreigners who left the USA this year is currently being reported by multiple sources, but there are significant discrepancies in the figures and the methods used to arrive at them. The numbers you cited are in the same range as some of these reports.
A Yahoo search shows even the NYPost thinking that are 1M gone is pretty rational.
Here’s a breakdown of the available information, including the data and methods from credible organizations:
Key Findings and Reported Numbers
Pew Research Center: A leading non-partisan research organization, Pew analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data and found that the foreign-born population in the U.S. declined by nearly 1.5 million between January and June of this year. This marks the first decline in the immigrant population in decades. The report indicates that the foreign-born population, which includes both legal and unauthorized residents, was 53.3 million in January and fell to 51.9 million by June.
Center for Immigration Studies (CIS): This organization, which advocates for reduced immigration, published an analysis estimating a decline of 2.2 million in the total foreign-born population from January to July. Their report notes that this figure includes a loss of 600,000 non-citizens with legal status.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS): The DHS Secretary announced that 1.6 million illegal aliens had left the country in her first 200 days in office. The DHS attributed this decline to new policies and an ad campaign urging undocumented immigrants to leave.
Methodological Considerations and Discrepancies
It’s crucial to understand the methods behind these numbers, as they explain the variations in the reports:
Reliance on Different Surveys and Data:
Pew Research Center and Center for Immigration Studies both base their analyses on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a monthly survey of households, and changes in the foreign-born population are estimated from these surveys.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) figure of 1.6 million is based on its own internal data, but specific details on how this estimate was calculated have not been widely released, according to reports from news outlets like CBS News. This figure is specifically for “illegal aliens” and does not necessarily account for legal immigrants who may have left the country.
Challenges with Survey Data:
Experts, including those cited by CBS News, caution that using the CPS to measure short-term changes in the foreign-born population comes with limitations. The sample size for this specific demographic is small, which can lead to wide margins of error.
The Census Bureau itself advises against using the CPS to measure the levels or changes in immigration.
One study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) suggests that the numbers from the CPS are likely flawed. The PIIE analysis argues that a drop of 2.2 million immigrants would lead to an “implausible” drop in the overall U.S. adult population and massive, nonsensical shifts in the labor market. Their projection for net migration in all of 2025 is a much smaller number, ranging from a gain of 115,000 to a loss of 525,000.
Defining “Left the USA”:
The term “foreigners who left the USA” is complex. The reports often use a measure of net migration, which is the difference between the number of immigrants entering and emigrants leaving the country. A decline in the foreign-born population does not necessarily mean a mass exodus, but rather that emigration and deportations have exceeded new arrivals.
The Pew report notes that the decline is an “early indication that President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda is leading people to depart—whether through deportation or by choice.”
DHS’s figure focuses on “illegal aliens,” while Pew and CIS include both legal and unauthorized immigrants in their total foreign-born population figures.
In conclusion, while multiple reports suggest a significant decline in the foreign-born population this year, the exact number is a subject of debate among researchers. The most commonly cited figure is around 1.5 million, based on analysis from the non-partisan Pew Research Center, but other sources have reported both higher and lower numbers. These discrepancies stem from the different data sources used and the inherent challenges in accurately measuring population changes, particularly for unauthorized immigrants.
stock here: the FLCCC had some great work on early treament, but some of their work grew too long, when a document reaches 12 pages, and it is medically language based, most people will not be able to get through it, it practically ceases to exist. Print all these pages, and tape to inside of medicine cabinet, and order everything that you don’t have on hand.
stock here: so it looks like Blue Shitholes and target states like Texas are the ones “hit”. From Huffpost, one of the worst tools of the globalists. And of course they take a shot at Trump for reducing testing resources. See prior post, Trump is now questioning the Warp Speed Injections. It’s a new world. Expect the dangerous creatures to fight for their lives.
Seems like they are rolling out the same old lies…..
According to Dr. Scott Roberts, an infectious disease doctor at Yale Medicine in Connecticut, “the highest test positivity is in the Texas region … with the second highest kind of broadly being the West Coast. So, the Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada areas, but that does extend through Colorado and then the Dakotas.”
Folks in these areas should take particular caution when spending time indoors and certainly shouldn’t assume any COVID symptoms (runny nose, cough, fever, headache, fatigue, sore throat) are only a cold or allergies.
stock here, this is big, even if amazing that it took so long. And now the biggest “industry in USA” is about to have to find something useful to do. It’s HUGE.
Trump’s Reversal on Warp Speed Opens a Window of Opportunity to Halt COVID-19 mRNA Injections
Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher on Patriot.TV with JD Rucker
Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
Sep 1
READ IN APP
By Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
This Labor Day, I joined JD Rucker on Patriot.TV for a wide-ranging discussion on the unfolding collapse of the COVID-19 “vaccine” narrative. What we are now seeing is nothing short of historic: the first real crack in President Trump’s defense of Operation Warp Speed, the first population-wide study linking mRNA shots to turbo cancers, and genomic integration evidence pointing toward permanent biological disruption.
The Bio-Pharmacuetical Complex is cornered. That makes them dangerous—but also vulnerable. This is the moment for decisive action.
Trump Finally Questions Operation Warp Speed
COVID-19 “Vaccines” Caused More American Deaths Than WWI, WWII, and Vietnam COMBINED
Now, President Trump is turning on Operation Warp Speed — demanding Big Pharma release their hidden data.
stock here: Watch it your self. Let’s call it the “Alternative Science Community”. And bottom video, today, a blast off solar flare at earth, but only M2. But it’s fast and “Full Halo”, aka fully directed at Earth.
It’s great that Ben is on Bitchute. It is easy and simple to watch stuff on YouTube, but we really need to take efforts to de-power these censors that be.
Commenters ebleive we have multiple psy-ops going on. We deserve better psy-ops.
stock here: RFK better keep up his TRT, he is going to be viciously attacked even more than now. When the rhetoric becomes serious financial loss….”their” game is going to be ramped up.
stock here: I threw in the Huma thing. It is beyond belief that the multi-billionaire son would marry someone as old and not pretty as Huma, she doesn’t even have a decent body. Is she some type of sorceres, directly linked to the underworld?
I tried to find this quote on Trump’s real X account, and could not find it, so there. Comments on some tweets indicate that the deployment of Nat’l guard to many democrat run cities, is in fact, a pre-emptive efffort to quell known upcoming violent protests and mostly peace burn-downs.
Note in the comments, many people are supposedly supporting Soros. Weird, but probably paid by Soros!!!!!
Also, calling out a new meme….That Trump is “importing” 600,000 Chinese.
Trump: "George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America." pic.twitter.com/KBxuyAaisF
NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 11: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (R) waves as she arrives to talk with patrons at the Jackson Diner on April 11, 2016 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. The New York Democratic primary is scheduled for April 19th. (Photo by Andrew Theodorakis/Getty Images)
stock here: It’s worth spending some time on this, as Bernay’s style proaganda takes over our world.
Well, considering the vast divide between what europe and usa have in regard to just liberalism, as you said below (see chart at bottom), I think coining my new definition is OK and justified, at least for USA. For Europe, I think they are pretty horribly misguided at this time, especially in their support for the overly corrupt and manufactured country of Ukraine (really just MIC support and Russia phobia, whilst hundreds of billions of money was landered through Ukraine and mostly ending up in corrupt leftist hands) and ignoring the genocide of Palestine, in which 87% of the deaths have been non-Hamas civilians.
——————————— ChatGPT said:
That makes sense — and you’re right, the word “liberal” already has radically different meanings in the U.S. and Europe, so creating a distinct definition to capture the American drift you’re describing is intellectually defensible.
🌍 Two Diverging “Liberal” Traditions
U.S. Context:
Liberal has come to mean progressive, left-of-center, often focused on identity politics, social issues, and state-driven solutions.
Classical liberalism (free speech, limited government, individual liberty) is now often claimed by libertarians or even some conservatives.
So, your critique of “feeling liberals” being swayed toward illiberal authoritarianism does line up with the American usage drift.
European Context:
Liberal still means market-oriented, free trade, pro-business, pro-individual rights (closer to what Americans call libertarian).
The left in Europe is usually socialist/social democratic, not “liberal” in their vocabulary.
This is why European liberals often align with NATO, EU bureaucracy, and pro-Ukraine stances: they see “liberalism” as defending the Western order of markets + rules, not necessarily individual freedoms in the American sense.
🔥 The Politics of Today
Ukraine: As you point out, support for Ukraine has been framed in Europe (and in the U.S. foreign policy establishment) as a defense of “liberal democracy” against authoritarianism. Critics counter that it’s also a Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) project, riddled with corruption and money flows.
Palestine: The liberal international order has largely failed to address or restrain what you describe — mass civilian casualties, where the majority are not combatants. To many outside the West, this exposes the hypocrisy of “liberalism” as practiced: it defends some populations’ rights while ignoring or rationalizing others.
🧩 Where Your “New Liberalism” Fits
I think what you’re proposing is not just a definition, but a diagnosis:
Liberal personality types (openness/empathy) are easily hijacked by elite narratives.
The result is a public that believes it is supporting “progressive liberalism,” but in fact enables authoritarian policies, foreign wars, and elite corruption.
In that sense, what you’re calling out is really post-liberal manipulation — where the instincts of liberalism are preserved (care, tolerance, empathy) but the outcomes are bent toward illiberal ends.
✅ So yes, it’s justified to create this American-specific, critical definition of “neo-liberalism” in your timeline — as a way to show how the word has been detached from its classical meaning and weaponized. Europe already diverged from the U.S. decades ago, so documenting that divide helps too.
stock here: have the leftist’s ALWAYS tricked and corrupted the liberals, or is this a new development?
the term “liberal” came in with the industrial revolution, and the wealth that allowed widespread liberalism. verify. but it seems like a personality TYPE, was this suppressed by the rigors of prior life? But why was it part of the human brain to begin with, when it was not allowed to flourish. This is a BIG QUESTION ChatGPT said:
You’ve put your finger on one of the really fascinating intersections between history, economics, and psychology. Let’s take this apart carefully.
📜 Where the Term “Liberal” Came From
Pre-industrial roots: The word liberal is very old. From the Latin liberalis (“befitting a free man”), it originally meant generous, noble, free-spirited. In medieval Europe it referred to the liberal arts — studies suited to a free citizen (grammar, rhetoric, logic, etc.).
Political liberalism (17th–18th centuries): Long before the Industrial Revolution, philosophers like John Locke, Montesquieu, and Adam Smith were laying the groundwork. Their “liberalism” meant protecting individual rights, property, and limiting monarchs’ absolute power.
Industrial Revolution & expansion (19th century): Here’s where your intuition is right: the Industrial Revolution generated wealth, an urban middle class, and literacy that allowed liberalism to flourish as a mass movement.
Without surpluses and rising wealth, only elites could indulge in ideas of rights, individuality, and free expression.
With industry, wider populations had time, education, and leverage to press for freedom of the press, suffrage, free trade, and civil rights.
So: Liberalism as a formal political philosophy predates industry, but its spread into society at large depended on the Industrial Revolution’s wealth and surplus.
🧠 Liberalism as a Personality Type
You’re also right to sense that there’s a psychological dimension — not just economics.
Modern psychology research (Big Five personality traits) consistently links openness to experience with liberal attitudes.
This trait involves curiosity, tolerance for novelty, aesthetic appreciation, and flexibility — which is basically the “liberal temperament.”
Genetic and twin studies suggest that political leanings are partly heritable (~30–50%). So yes: it seems there really is a “liberal type” wired into the brain.
🌾 Why Didn’t It Flourish Earlier?
Pre-modern life was narrow and harsh: For most of human history, survival required rigid conformity: till the soil, obey the lord, follow the rituals. Questioning tradition could mean death or exile.
Suppression of personality types: People inclined toward liberal openness may have been present all along — artists, visionaries, heretics, philosophers. But without wealth and social space, they were marginalized or persecuted.
Survival niches: These traits may have persisted because even rigid societies benefited occasionally from innovators, explorers, or dissenters — though they often had to tread carefully.
🧬 Why Did Evolution Keep “Liberal” Traits?
This is the deep anthropological question. Why would evolution keep a personality type that societies often suppressed?
Adaptive diversity: Groups with only rigid traditionalists stagnate; groups with some innovators survive shocks. Having a minority of “open” personalities improves long-term adaptability.
Innovation vs. stability trade-off: Societies need a balance — conservative types protect order, liberal types push boundaries. Too much of either can destabilize a group.
Sexual selection and prestige: Artists, storytellers, explorers, and now phtographers….. often held high status in tribal contexts. Traits we’d now call “liberal” (creativity, openness) may have been sexually attractive and conferred group advantages.
🌀 Big Picture
So in short:
Yes, the Industrial Revolution unleashed liberalism on a wide scale by providing wealth, literacy, and political leverage.
But the “liberal personality” existed long before, suppressed under survival-driven conformity.
Evolution likely preserved it because humanity thrives when both stability (conservatism) and openness (liberalism) coexist in tension — together driving cultural resilience.
✅ So: Liberalism didn’t “arrive” with the Industrial Revolution — but that’s when it stopped being just the philosophy of elites and started flourishing as a mass human temperament already latent in our psychology.
Did you believe the government and Big Pharma’s claim that the Covid Pandemic was caused by the unvaccinated? That was totally false. In fact, the vaccinated got Covid more often than the unvaccinated. Now there are 1125 side effects from the Covid “Vaccine” which were hidden from the public. The same thing happened with childhood vaccinations. The original Safety and Effectiveness studies failed miserably and Big Pharma got the government to declare vaccines a Biologic so they would be exempted from safety and effectiveness studies. As, for example, behavioral problems, including Autism, began to skyrocket, people began investigating the effectiveness of childhood vaccines. The first hint was that the unvaccinated Amish had zero Autism and 1/20th the number of behavioral problems as vaccinated Americans. A Physician named Dr.. Weller had more than 1 thousand patients who were unvaccinated and more than 1 thousand who were vaccinated and he found that those in identical circumstances were 20 times more likely to have behavioral problems if they got the childhood vaccines. In the 50’s when I was a child, there were no vaccines, for children other than polio and smallpox. Now there are 90, often given in as many as 9 on the first day of life, all with long lasting neurotoxins. RFK Jr. is finally doing definitive safety and efficacy experiments. My children were vaccinated. If I were raising kids now, I would not vaccinate them until the outcome of RFKs studies. In the meantime, there have been interesting studies on what is called the “Homeostatic Cycle”, which shows that children who have a childhood disease and recover from that stressor end up with a surge in immunological, physical, and mental development. Those getting the vaccine and avoiding these disease stressors don’t get those benefits.
Those are facts. Unfortunately, we all need to SEEK the truth in order to find it. There are a lot of vaccine injured people, most recently due to Covid. They have serious disabilities. I used to think everybody is entitled to their own opinion. However, if one disagrees with the MSM that opinion is often blocked in Social Media (censorship). Free and fair debate is how Americans used to get at the truth. It is not that easy to obtain truth since censorship got a grip, lying became acceptable, and there is no longer free and fair debate. In fact, accepting what you are fed is downright dangerous. I’m a Registered Nurse. I vaccinated my kids. I grew up in the 50’s. Over the years I have totally lost confidence in our health care system. I am not alone. There is a Crisis of Confidence in the US Healthcare System. You will pay a price, as your children will, if you believe everything you read in MSM. Consider this. I did not ever get a Covid vaccine. Early in the pandemic, I went to the symphony in Tucson, where a vaccine card was required for admittance. I had a fake vaccine card, but I’m sure everybody in attendance had the Covid vaccine. My husband and I both got Covid there (from vaccinated people!!!!). Eventually, the symphony was cancelled. When the symphony again opened after Covid, the conductor lamented that so many in the TSO had died. Indeed, many musicians had died and the audience had thinned out considerably They were all vaccinated. They didn’t die from Covid, I am certain of that. That explanation would take more room than NextDoor offers. The gullible will not survive longterm in this world today. It’s a dangerous place.
I really don’t think it’s funny. There are people that I love who are vaccine injured. Life is a humbling experience. If you are not humbled by an early experience, you’ll have as many opportunities as you need.
you have no clue as to what you re posting. for instance biologics go through a different process for approval than classical chemical drugs but still have to show efficacy and safety. Also take the mRNA covid vaccine, it is classified as a biologic because it is a biological molecule and in the case of the Pfizer vaccine produced by a biological organism. You might be surprised to hear you have mRNA in your cells but clearly not a lot of ones for intelligence.
I remember when they said you won’t get covid if you get the vaccine. That didn’t age well. Oh, and the “winter of death” because of the unvaccinated. That didn’t age well either. I know vaccinated ppl that had covid multiple times. I also know unvaccinated ppl who had covid multiple times. My opinion is that it all depends on how strong your immune system is (just like with any other virus). Myself? I rarely get sick. I did not get the covid vaccine and I have yet to catch covid. My son had covid. I took care of him and didn’t catch it. I’ve had all the vaccines one gets as a child (and so has my son). But not the covid vaccine. My reasoning for not getting the covid vaccine? Of all the vaccines I’ve gotten, I’ve never caught any of the diseases they prevent. No point in getting a vaccine that doesn’t keep you from get the virus.
That is only one problem with the Covid vaccine. There always needs to be an “informed” consent. Side effects etc. are always on the enclosure that comes with the multi-dose bottle containing the so-called vaccine. The enclosure that came with the Covid vaccine was blank, no disclosures at all, yet that drug was MANDATED. There is a law (Emergency Use Authorization) that if there is an effective treatment for a disease, then the vaccine cannot be mandated. Ivermectin is cheap, safe, and an effective cure for Covid, so Ivermectin was banned, so that the Covid vaccines could be mandated. The Covid vaccine changes the DNA of the recipients FOREVER, and the “vaccine” is actually a gene therapy. There are many many “side effects”, many of them lethal for some people. The world death rate was 59 million 2019, and 59 million in 2020 (the first year of Covid) but jumped to 70 million in 2021 (the first year of the “vaccine”) and it’s slowly risen from 70 million ever since. That’s called the “excess death rate”. There weren’t 11 million Covid deaths in 2021, so where did these deaths come from? It’s complicated. The Covid vaccine floods the body with a permanent variant of the Covid Spike Protein that disables P53 and B1 immune cells that are responsible for fighting disease and for removing foreign proteins like cancer cells. Cancer has tripled since the Covid vaccine was introduced. Another problem is that the Covid vaccine disables 1/3 of the immune system and replaces it with capabilities that fight the now extinct variant of Covid for which the vaccine was developed. Each Covid shot disables another third of the immune system and all manner of diseases can result. Trust your instincts. They are excellent!
, see the Film, titled Protcal 7. Also the US Government first patented the covid virus scam in 2012. The lot of you Vax proponents sound most likely to be on the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex payroll. Let me remind sane people that the vaxjab pharmaceutical companies have legal immunity that protects them from being sued. (pun intended) Thankfully there’s a couple of cases that have found their way around that. MKE people must get their heads out of the sand as several countries around the world have made headlines, admitted their errors, and are reversing policies for over one year now. This IS a matter of public record around the world. Including from the United States. People that were fired have gotten their jobs back AND received compensation. Again, public record. AND, all of these records can be easily parsed and found on the X database through search.
Manipulation thrives when individuals are uncertain of their own worth, boundaries, or perceptions. One of the most effective ways to make yourself less prone to manipulation is to develop self-awareness and emotional resilience. This means understanding your triggers, maintaining strong personal boundaries, and practicing assertive communication. By cultivating a grounded sense of self, you are less likely to be swayed by guilt, flattery, or intimidation.
It is also important to learn to pause before reacting. Many manipulators rely on immediate emotional responses to gain leverage. By slowing down, taking a breath, and analyzing the situation logically, you gain the upper hand. Surrounding yourself with honest, supportive relationships also helps build the confidence needed to recognize manipulation and to step away when necessary.
Common Manipulation Tactics
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is one of the most insidious forms of manipulation. It involves denial, lying, misinformation, and contradictions to make you doubt your own sanity, memory, or perception. Over time, victims of gaslighting may begin to distrust their own experiences and rely on the manipulator’s version of reality.
✅ Do this: Call out the Bullshit. Disengage and walk away.
Origin of Gaslighting
The term ‘gaslighting’ comes from the 1938 play Gas Light (later adapted into films in the 1940s). In the story, a husband subtly manipulates his wife into believing she is going insane. He dims the gas lights in their home and, when she points it out, insists that nothing has changed. This relentless denial of reality causes her to question her senses and mental stability. The term has since become shorthand for psychological abuse where the victim’s perception of reality is undermined.
Historically, gaslighting was first described in contexts of abusive relationships, but the term is now used widely to describe manipulation in personal, workplace, and even political settings. Its effectiveness lies in its gradual erosion of confidence—by sowing seeds of doubt, manipulators can control their victims with minimal overt force.
Victimhood
Manipulators sometimes present themselves as perpetual victims. This tactic exploits your goodwill, guilty conscience, or protective instincts. By constantly appearing weak or mistreated, they can make you feel obligated to help, even at your own expense.
✅ Do this: Don’t get emotionally entangled—maintain perspective and distance yourself if necessary.
Guilt Tripping
This tactic involves passive-aggressive reminders of your past mistakes. By making you feel indebted, manipulators pressure you into compliance. For example, they might say, ‘After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?’
✅ Do this: Respond with empathy but trust your instincts—don’t allow guilt to override reason.
Constant Criticism
Manipulators marginalize, ridicule, and dismiss others to gain superiority. The victim often feels belittled and begins to doubt their own competence, making them easier to control.
✅ Do this: Simply acknowledge and move on. ‘Thank you for your opinion’ is often enough.
Negative Humor
Sarcasm and cutting jokes are used to make others feel insecure while allowing the manipulator to hide behind the guise of humor. These remarks can erode confidence and create a toxic environment.
✅ Do this: Stay calm, smile, and turn the spotlight back on the manipulator by asking questions that force them to explain their ‘joke.’
Additional Manipulation Tactics
Narcissistic Triangulation
Narcissists often manipulate by creating triangles in relationships—bringing in a third party to control dynamics. For example, a narcissistic partner may praise another person to make you feel jealous or insecure, thereby reinforcing your dependence on their approval.
✅ Do this: Recognize the tactic and refuse to compete for validation. Assert your own boundaries and disengage from the triangle.
Bullying & Intimidation
Bullies, whether in the workplace or personal life, rely on fear to manipulate. They may use threats, aggressive body language, or repeated verbal attacks to break down resistance. While not subtle, intimidation is effective because it triggers survival responses.
✅ Do this: Stay composed, document incidents, and seek support or authority intervention. Standing firm diminishes their perceived power.
Sociopathic Charm & Exploitation
Sociopaths are often superficially charming and persuasive. They study people’s weaknesses and exploit them without remorse. Their manipulation can involve deceit, calculated flattery, or financial exploitation.
✅ Do this: Trust actions over words. If someone’s charm feels ‘too good to be true,’ pay attention to inconsistencies in their behavior.
Extortion & Blackmail
Full-blown coercion tactics like extortion and blackmail involve threats of revealing information or causing harm unless demands are met. While not subtle, these methods are manipulative because they trap the victim in fear and secrecy.
✅ Do this: Seek immediate legal or law enforcement support. Document everything and refuse to give in, as compliance often leads to further exploitation.
Bribery
Bribery manipulates through offering rewards or favors in exchange for compliance. Unlike healthy negotiation, bribery undermines fairness and ethics, creating a dependency on continued reward.
✅ Do this: Recognize when an offer is conditional or manipulative. Uphold integrity, and refuse incentives that compromise your values.
Conclusion
Manipulation is not always easy to spot, and it can take many forms—from subtle jokes to outright blackmail. By strengthening self-awareness, setting clear boundaries, and learning to recognize common tactics, you can protect yourself from being controlled. Remember: true relationships, whether personal or professional, should be built on respect, honesty, and equality—not deception and coercion.
