Too many are still "just following orders"

(panic programming in full effect)

Last week, I told you about this:

Since then, while in a local health food store, I got a chance to watch the conditioning play out in real time:

I enter and see a female vendor standing behind a small table — hawking free samples of something or other. She’s in full service-industry-worker mode as she greets me with a big smile, compliments my “Trust The Process” t-shirt, and comments on the weather. This woman is friendliness personified.

I reply politely but stay focused on finding the items I specifically need and then getting in line to pay. It’s a small store — just two registers, side by side. As I approach the available cashier, the friendly vendor table is directly behind me.

That’s when the woman to my right — paying for her food at the other cashier — starts loudly yelling: “Kill it! Kill it!”

When I looked to see what creature was causing this reaction, I saw a spotted lanternfly calmly sitting on the counter.

The two female cashiers are puzzled, to say the least. They’re from Nepal and perhaps do not concern themselves with local news hype. One of them has grabbed a napkin but is not in any hurry to kill the colorful bug.

But the customer is shrieking now: “Kill it! It’s invasive! We’re supposed to squish them!” After a beat, she turns to me and less loudly asks, “Right?”

I start to speak but the woman doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she grabs the napkin from the employee. “Give me that,” she yells. “I’ll do it myself!”

From behind me, I hear the vendor screaming, “Kill it! Squish it!” I turn to look and she is no longer in service-industry-worker mode. Her face is a mask of panic, rage, and disgust.

Meanwhile, the customer is squashing the bug with such force that one of the Nepalese women asks, “Why are we supposed to kill it?”

“They say it’s invasive,” the woman declares without much confidence. “It, um… damages trees and stuff.”

Being a regular in this store, I know the two cashiers. We make eye contact and share our unspoken displeasure for the entire episode. As I exit, the vendor lady says to no one in particular: “We have to kill them.”

The contagious fear/anger I witnessed took me back to when the unjabbed were the “invasive” ones. The NYPD didn’t even have to enforce the mandates. After being given marching orders, the public was happy to do the heavy lifting — even if they couldn’t explain why.

“They, um… spread germs and stuff.”

As depressing as this might appear, none other than Stanley Milgram suggests that there’s hope to be found within such observed behaviors:

“It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”

The Powers That Shouldn’t Be can be rendered impotent the moment we become aware of the strings. That’s why it’s so crucial that we:

• Find ways to connect with those who’ve fallen prey to the latest programming

• Resist the temptation to seek out alternative programming in the form of virtue-signaling echo chambers

• Reject the superiority complex caused by believing you are fully immune to the enemy’s manipulation

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