Sky Links, 7-11-20


-Kevin Smith
Groupthink is described as follows:

Groupthink is a term first used in 1972 by social psychologist Irving L. Janis that refers to a psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group. In many cases, people will set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group.

People who are opposed to the decisions or overriding opinion of the group as a whole frequently remain quiet, preferring to keep the peace rather than disrupt the uniformity of the crowd’.

Groupthink is common where group members have similar backgrounds and particularly where that group is placed under stress, resulting in irrational decision outcomes.

These are the main behaviors to watch out for:

1. Illusions of invulnerability lead members of the group to be overly optimistic and engage in risk-taking.
2. Unquestioned beliefs lead members to ignore possible moral problems and ignore the consequences of individual and group actions.
3. Rationalising prevents members from reconsidering their beliefs and causes them to ignore warning signs.
4. Stereotyping leads members of the in-group to ignore or even demonise out-group members who may oppose or challenge the group’s ideas.
5. Self-censorship causes people who might have doubts to hide their fears or misgivings.
6. "Mindguards” act as self-appointed censors to hide problematic information from the group.
7. Illusions of unanimity lead members to believe that everyone is in agreement and feels the same way.
8. Direct pressure to conform is often placed on members who pose questions, and those who question the group are often seen as disloyal or traitorous.





I stopped listening to secular music. Here's what happened
-Vihan Damaris
I used to love secular music. I even wanted to be a secular rock star one day. God met me and changed everything. Initially, I hated it. But, over the years I began to understand why He was doing things a particular way in me. 
I've explained my experience briefly, and grossly simplified some truths for the sake of making things clear. There is more to life and God and the spirit world that cannot be explained in 12 minutes.




The Left-wing Plot to Cause a Race War in America
-Mr. Reagan 






Perspectives on the Pandemic | The (Undercover) Epicenter Nurse | Episode Nine
Erin Marie Olszewski is a Nurse-turned-investigative journalist, who has spent the last few months on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, on the inside in two radically different settings. Two hospitals. One private, the other public. One in Florida, the other in New York.

And not just any New York public hospital, but the "epicenter of the epicenter" itself, the infamous Elmhurst in Donald Trump's Queens. As a result of these diametrically opposed experiences, she has the ultimate "perspective on the pandemic". She has been where there have been the most deaths attributed to Covid-19 and where there have been the least.

Erin enlisted in the Army when she was 17. She deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Part of her duties involved overseeing aid disbursement and improvements to hospital facilities. While in country she received the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service, and was wounded in combat. Erin eventually retired as a sergeant, and became a civilian nurse in 2012.
Erin is a medical freedom and informed consent advocate. She co-founded the Florida Freedom Alliance but no longer has any connection with the organization.




-Joshua Mitchell
Why did millions of Americans don surgical masks, insist on an inviolable national quarantine to keep death at bay, then suddenly remove their masks, take to the streets, and protest in close quarters in the name of racial justice? Hypocrisy is one answer. The desire to unseat President Trump by any available means is another. But neither answer goes deep enough. The explanation is identity politics, a fever making America delirious.  
Identity politics is an American Awakening without God and without forgiveness. Like Christianity, it seeks to overcome the curse of death. Like Christianity, it seeks to overcome sin. Like Christianity, it recognizes that the problem of sin is deeper than the problem of death, and has precedence over it.

Identity politics does not overcome death, as Christianity does, through faith in Christ, so that man may again have eternal life as he did in the Garden of Eden. Identity politics overcomes death by attempting to build an Edenic world protected from death. Augustine wrote that all reasonable beings understandably shrink from death. But that is not what is happening here. Citizens captivated by identity politics quarantine so that they may remain isolated from death until a vaccine arrives that will inoculate them from death. In the interim, they are content to be served by the least among us, service industry workers who cannot quarantine. This is not medical science doing triage in a world where death is always near; it is a religious longing to be saved from death, no matter the collateral damage done to the livelihoods of millions along the way.

Identity politics does not overcome sin, as Christianity does, through Christ, the sacrificial scapegoat who takes upon himself the sins of the world. Identity politics overcomes sin by offering up a mortal scapegoat: the white heterosexual man, who, if sacrificed and purged, will cleanse the world of stain. The Democratic Party's pushback against national borders; its insistence that fundamental political and economic transformations are necessary to address climate change; its disgust with “dirty” fossil fuels; its demand for wealth redistribution; and its resolve that every mediating institution in which citizens gather must be altered so as to become “inclusive”—all of these have at their root the supposition that the nation-state, market commerce, the petrochemicals that fuel it, the conventional generative family, our civic institutions, and our religious institutions are unclean or obsolete because of the hand white heterosexual man has had in building and maintaining them. Members of this group are not individuals, some very good and some very bad. Instead, each stands for the crimes of the worst among them, just as Adam stands for the sins of all mankind.



Dennis Prager talks to Julie Kelly (senior contributor for American Greatness, about her new book, Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried and Failed to Take Down the President):

 

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