“At a time when political dishonesty is rampant, we should remember 1984s most important lesson: The state can occupy your mind.” – Matthew Feeney, June 5, 2019 commentary titled Seventy Years Later, It’s Still ‘1984’

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I watched the latest Matrix film titled “Resurrections” and saw on the silver screen the true meaning of Eric Blair’s dystopian novel “1984.”

According to Warner Brothers The Matrix Resurrections is a struggle:

To find out if his reality is a physical or mental construct, Mr. Anderson, aka Neo, will have to choose to follow the white rabbit once more. If he’s learned anything, it’s that choice, while an illusion, is still the only way out of — or into — the Matrix. Neo already knows what he has to do, but what he doesn’t yet know is that the Matrix is stronger, more secure and far more dangerous than ever before.

QUESTION: But is this true? Is Resurrections about “constructs” and “choices” or something else?

The Matrix Resurrections is about Language

After watching and reflecting overnight about this latest in the Matrix series of dystopian films, I came to the realization that Mr. Anderson, a.k.a. Neo, learned that the real danger of the Matrix is language.

Eric Blair, pen name George Orwell, published his novel “1984” in 1949 yet the lessons in his seminal work are still applicable today. Many who have read “1984“, including myself, had a false notion of the true meaning of Orwell’s work.

In a June 5th, 2019 op-ed published in the Fredericksburg Free Lance‐​Star titled “Seventy Years Later, It’s Still ‘1984’” Matthew Feeney wrote:

The main lesson of “1984” is not “persistent surveillance is bad,” or “authoritarian governments are dangerous.” These are true statements, but not the most important message.

“1984” is at its core a novel about language; how it can be used by governments to subjugate and obfuscate, and by citizens to resist oppression. [Emphasis added]

It seems that The Matrix in its latest evolution “Resurrections” has addressed this core dystopian notion of how the state can occupy your mind.

Resurrections’ main character is The Analyst played by Neil Patrick Harris. The Analyst is the consummate wordsmith. He uses language to subjugate Neo and Trinity. As George Orwell wrote,

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

The Analyst is a master at tearing apart human minds and putting the pieces back together again to maintain the myth of the Matrix. You see the Matrix is the ultimate myth!

Resurrections it is not a love conquers all story between Neo and Trinity. It is neither about persistent surveillance nor about authoritarian rule by machines. It’s not even about choice.

It is all about how language is used to create an alternate reality that even the citizens of IO cannot resist.

IO is a human city led by Niobe. Niobe believes that IO is the second chance for machines and humans to coexist together peacefully. This is a false flag used to suppress resistance. IO is a sub-state created by Niobe to keep its people from dissenting.

In Resurrections we see Bugs, played by Jessica Henwick, who is the blue-haired gunslinger with a White Rabbit tattoo and captain of the hovercraft Mnemosyne, as the true leader of the dissidents and the resistance against the Matrix.

Bugs understands that Niobe has been subjugated using the language of coexistence, the language that has kept Niobe from resisting the Matrix.

In order to be set free the people of IO must resist the oppression of the Matrix’s (government’s) ability to subjugate and obfuscate using words like coexist. Coexist is a word seen on car bumpers. Coexist is a myth.

The Real Lesson of The Matrix Resurrections 

We are now in an era where political dishonesty is rampant. It’s name is not The Matrix but rather the Cancel Culture.

QUESTION: Who are the Cancel Culture’s enemies?

ANSWER: Those who dissent and speak truth to power.

As The Analyst uses language to subjugate and obfuscate, so do todays politicians and world leaders. Political dishonesty is the new normal.

The media, social media and even Amazon’s Alexa use language to lull you into not thinking but rather obeying. Because if you think then you will resist their efforts to subjugate you via their language. Like Bugs, Neo and Trinity you must first dissent and then revolt in order to change the world.

George Orwell in 1984 wrote,

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

Neo and Trinity were not mad when they suddenly realized the truth. The truth that they were being told untruths by The Analyst using obfuscated language. So to must we all be alert to being subjugated by the state that uses obfuscate language. For you see in Orwell’s dystopian world, and in The Matrix Resurrections,

“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

Today we have the new language of the Cancel Culture, its the language of “the woke.” The Cancel culture or “call-out culture” is a nuevo form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those subject to this nuevo ostracism has then, by definition, been “cancelled.”

Woke is a mythical language created by people so that other people are first ostracized and then cancelled. It is the nuevo Matrix.

The authoritarian government of Orwell’s Oceania doesn’t merely punish dissent severely—it seeks to make even thinking about dissent impossible. So too does the dystopian Cancel Culture.

Don’t be cancelled like Neo and Trinity were. Stand up, like Bugs, and understand the language of the cancel culture’s myths. The Matrix is a myth. The Cancel Culture is a myth. So don’t submit to a world driven by the language of myths.

As Plato wrote, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.”

Howard Rotberg wrote, “Any strong ideological belief carries with it a risk of denying those facts that do not support the ideology.”

QUESTION: What do we do to cancel the cancel culture?

ANSWER: Tell the truth using indisputable facts.

Seek the truth at all cost. The truth will set us all free.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

“There are no extraordinary men… just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.” – William Frederick Halsey Jr., fleet admiral in the United States Navy during World War II.

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I went to see the latest Spider-Man film titled “No Way Home.” After thinking about it I began to connect with and embrace what the fictional character Peter Parker went through and what I went through upon returning home from Vietnam in December, 1968.

You see, I, and my Vietnam brotherhood of veterans, like Spider-Man had no way home.

It’s ironic that I watched this film exactly 53 years after my flying home from Vietnam back to my wife and family in St. Louis, Missouri.

It’s also ironic that the sub-title of the film is No Way Home.

You see my fellow Vietnam veterans, my brothers in arms, like Peter Parker, were ostracized upon our return home. We were called baby killers, spat upon and canceled by our nation. We were even shunned by WWII and Korean War veterans as unworthy. That is why we had to create our own veterans organizations like the Vietnam Brotherhood.

As Peter Parker was demonized by the media so too were we Vietnam veterans. Just as Spider-Man was attacked for fighting evil on the streets of New York City, so too were we attacked for fighting the evils of Communism in the streets of Hue and Saigon, and in the rice patties and the jungles of South Vietnam.

Today a Vietnam veteran greets a fellow Vietnam veteran with the phrase “welcome home brother.” Why? Because we weren’t welcomed home by our fellow countrymen and women. Even our government turned against us.

To this day the names of Jane Fonda and John Kerry will live in infamy to those who served in Vietnam. “Hanoi” Jane and Kerry colluded with the communist regime, which allowed South Vietnam to fall to our communist enemies.

It seems we are seeing the same thing happening today with North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.

To this day I know that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines won the Vietnam war on the ground.

Where we lost the Vietnam war was on the streets of America and in the halls of the U.S. Congress.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

It’s ironic that the film depicts past actors who played Spider-Man in previous films fighting together against their common enemies who have returned from the past.

You see we Vietnam veterans fought against the Communist North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong. They have now returned to Washington, D.C. not as Vietnam War protestors but as elected political leaders bent on fundamentally changing the United States of America into the Communist States of America. We all now once again have a common enemy and its name is Marxism.

I never thought, like Peter Parker, that I was doing something wrong by fighting the evils of Communism. But I, like Peter Parker, was pushed, pushed aside by my fellow Americans for serving in perhaps the greatest cause possible – the defence of the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The famous phrase first spoken in the original Spider-Man was restated in Spider-Man: No Way Home, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Unfortunately, today’s political leaders do not take responsibility for their own actions but they are demanding more and more power. Ironic to say the least?

In the film Peter Parker, with the aid of Dr. Strange, erases all memories of Spider-Man.

We Vietnam veterans cannot erase all the negative memories of those who protested against the war and against our participation in that great crusade against Communism in Southeast Asia. A crusade that was started by President Eisenhower, expanded by President Kennedy and further expanded by President Johnson.

What we, unlike Peter Parker, can do is remember why we fought and how we won the war in Vietnam but lost the war on the streets of Washington, D.C. and in the halls of Congress. I will never forgive nor forget how our elected leaders abandoned our South Vietnamese brothers and sisters who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with us.

In August I sadly watched as we left our citizens behind in Afghanistan after the collapse of Kabul.

History really does repeat itself. The collapse of Saigon in 1974 looks eerily like the collapse of Kabul in 2021.

It is also ironic that there are three Spider-Men in the film “No Way Home” which mirrors the three Vietnam soldiers in a statue titled The Three Servicemen, by Frederick Hart, located near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The Bottom Line

I served in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division as a field artillery forward observer with A Company, 2nd Battalion, 501st Airborne. I was there from December 1967 to December 1968. I was there for the 1968 Tet Offensive.

I, and my brothers in arms, served with honor at the behest of our nation. The majority of those who served in Vietnam, like me, volunteered to fight against the communist incursion.

A good friend sent me the video below, a tribute to our Vietnam veterans narrated by Mr. Sam Elliot. The video tells only part of the story.

The story that I know is that the media was against the war and supported our enemies. They printed everything bad they could find, some true,  but most were lies. I personally witnessed a civilian war correspondent demanding to get on a medevac helicopter to report on a story about how our unit suffered casualties from a friendly fire incident. The helicopter was sent to evacuate the severely wounded. The embedded correspondent wanted to take the place of one of our wounded so he could file his story. The company commander had a different view point. While his story did get filed we save our wounded first and foremost.

This was the first time in U.S. history that the media began using “fake news” to bring about the defeat of U.S. wartime policy in a foreign land.

It began when Walter Cronkite visited Vietnam during the 1968 Tet Offensive and upon his return to the United States declared on CBS Evening News that the Vietnam war was “unwinnable.’

Never forget the lessons of cancelling an entire generation of American soldiers.

Just like all the criminals that Spider-Man fought against were brought back to the present day. So to have those, like the ghosts of Ho Chi Min, Stalin and Mao, who wished to turn American into a Communist regime returned but this time to Washington, D.C. in 2021.

Sad but true.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

“Lia” Thomas, the “transgender” University of Pennsylvania swimmer who has become famous, and infamous, for making women in the pool seem like manatees racing a barracuda, recently said that he just tries to tune out the negativity directed his way. After all, not only do many people say it’s unfair he’s competing with females, but his recent boast that winning was “so easy, I was cruising” truly raised hackles. But even though he’s not really a damsel in distress, I’m here to help as his knight in shining armor.

No, as my above paragraph indicates, Mr. Thomas, I won’t play the pronoun game. I won’t stop mentioning that your birth name is “Will.” I also can’t in good conscience call you “transgender” as opposed to the more accurate acronym I originated, MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status). No, those things I can’t, or won’t, do. But there’s something I will, Will.

I understand how, contrary to your bad press, you weren’t being braggadocious and rubbing salt in the wound when boasting of beating the girls; rather, you were rightfully proud. But you do need to learn how to articulate why. So I’m here to help put what must be your feelings into words.

When, Mr. Thomas, you’re asked about your celebratory remarks, simply say (I realize you may alter my terminology a tad):

I always knew I’d have my work cut out for me if I were going to compete with the gals. When I was little, I learned from the feminists, those sage purveyors of bubble-bursting reality, that as ex-vice president Joe Biden put it a while back, “There’s not a single thing a man can do that a woman can’t do as well or better — not a single thing.” I watched movie after movie and show after show in which, art imitating life, 125-pound ladies would toss around 250-pound men like rag dolls. These facts of life in question were, of course, reinforced in school with various “girl power” messages, though for the life of me I could never figure out why they had to rub in females’ superiority. Wasn’t it enough just being better?

So I didn’t know if I could ever compete as a “woman” given my inherent male disadvantages. I realized that, if I could even qualify for a women’s swim team, I risked complete and utter humiliation. That’s why I’m so proud that — through hard work, determination and blood, sweat and tears — I’ve overcome those disadvantages to triumph over my more naturally gifted competitors. I mean, it’s just like David slaying Goliath.

Of course, I understand the girls’ feelings, the bruised egos resulting from losing, consistently and publicly, to the weaker sex. But with all due respect, I think they just need to suck it up and work harder. If I can climb my mountain, they can, with their inherent advantages, leapfrog the speed bump that is an innately inferior male in the pool.

And, Mr. Thomas, when it’s pointed out that your swimming times in years past on UPenn’s men’s team were “women’s records,” set ‘em straight. To wit:

I hear irrelevant points like that repeatedly. We all know that time is relative and that it is, as Albert Einstein put it even with his inferior male brain, “a handy illusion.” So I don’t think it’s right to apply our white-supremacist and white-male-linear-logic fancies here. I prefer feminist thinking: Just because the guys’ times are lower doesn’t mean they’re better.

Anyway, that’s my “truth.” Don’t impose your values on me.

Remember, Mr. Thomas, you proved that where there’s a Will there’s a way — and you shouldn’t be denied your voice just because you’re a man in a woman’s world. You go, boy!

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©Selwyn Duke. All rights reserved.