When my mother was preparing her will she came to a curious decision. “Kent,” she said, “there’s a section in which I have to name a person to decide, if I’m incapacitated, whether heroic measures should be made to save my life. I think your father and brother would get too emotional about it. But I think you’d make the rational choice.”
Kind of a dubious honor, don’t you think? Getting to decide whether your mother lives or dies? And does this mean I was her favorite? Luckily, we had a family discussion and decided it would be a group decision between the three of us.
I tell this story to underscore the point that throughout most of my life I’ve been regarded as the calm, rational one. A nickname for me in the family is “the diplomat” because of my ability to see both sides of a dispute, and not offer offense to anybody.
Which is why it was absolutely puzzling to me when I started raising questions about the harm from vaccines, so many of my friends and family acted like I’d gone completely nuts. After all, what happened to the previous thirty-nine years of being the calm, rational, honest to a fault person?
Which is why when I read Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book, it was as if a light went off in my head. The main question raised in his book is why interactions with people often go spectacularly wrong.
One of the most interesting parts of the book was his discussion of the disgraced financier, Bernie Madoff, who stole billions from investors. It should have been an open and shut-case. Madoff was reporting consistent returns for his clients, regardless of what the stock market was doing. Could he really be that good? I mean, is there anything more black and white than a balance sheet?
Default to Trust?
Gladwell posits the idea that the vast majority of us have a “default to trust.” That means people looked at Madoff’s past as founder of the very successful Madoff Investment Securities, his elegant office tower in Manhattan, his service on the board of prestigious financial industry associations, and how he moved between the wealthy of the Hamptons and Palm Beach, and they couldn’t see a crook, even when his financial statements made no sense.
Gladwell says this “default to trust” serves us extremely well in most of our lives, except when we come up against somebody like Madoff. We do not see the wolf in our midst.
How about “Default to Distrust?”
But Gladwell takes the question even further. Are there those among us who are uniquely tuned to root out deception? Let’s say these people have a “default to distrust.”
Among the first people who raised questions about Bernie Madoff was a guy named Harry Markopolos. It seems among those who have a “default to distrust”, most had early experiences which showed them people were often dishonest. For Markopolos, it was working in his family’s chain of restaurants, where people would often “dine and dash,” and he’d chase after them.
In business school, Markopolos told a professor he’d miscalculated his grade.
He’d earned an A-minus, not an A. In his first job out of business school, at a brokerage house, he reported that many of his fellow brokers were NOT reporting their trades within 90 seconds, as required by law.
Given his background, it’s not surprising that in 2002, when Markopolos started investigating Madoff’s clients and practices, he raised alarms. In 2008 Madoff was arrested and in 2009 he pled guilty to several charges. The size of Madoff’s fraud is estimated at somewhere between $10-17 billion dollars.
So, is Markopolos our shining hero? Is he somebody to whom we should always listen? Well, when Madoff was convicted, don’t you think that would provide a measure of relief to Markopolos?
The answer is no.
Markopolos was convinced that his records of negligence by the Securities and Exchange (SEC) commission made him a target of the government.
Markopolos now sleeps in his house with a twelve-gauge shotgun, modified to hold an additional six rounds, and a gas mask from his army days, waiting for the assault he believes is coming to get his records of SEC mismanagement.
And so I understand a little better the failure of people, even those closest to me, to understand my warnings about vaccines. They aren’t bad people. They simply have a “default to trust,” which makes most of their life work very smoothly.
It’s also a warning to me. Yes, I’ll continue to work to bring down this corrupt Big Pharma empire, but I should probably hold off for now on getting that shotgun and gas mask.
Be sure to pre-order Kent Heckenlively’s new book with Dr. Judy Mikovits, PLAGUE OF CORRUPTION from Amazon which you can do RIGHT NOW!em>
Kent’s book PLAGUE was released by Skyhorse Publishing, in 2014 and is now available in paperback with NEW material.
The book is co-authored with Judy Mikovits PhD. It is an indictment of the “Fake Science” we find so prevalent in the US.
OUTSTANDING!! You literally took the thoughts/words out of my head/mouth!! Age too! Same goes for what is happening In VACCINES, I try to tell others(family, spouse, friends, etc….) in the world today with our radical left democrats, satanic- luciferian -deepstate -cabal, NWO, END TIMES PROPHECY, President Trump, Qanon… etc….. and NOONE wants to hear it! They went from always coming to me… to calling me crazy…. or in a cult… disowned me… and literally projected on to me… that I caused family division…. yet none will come listen to why I believe what I believe…. and so vocal about it… what seems like over night… ♀️ Ugh!
Anyways… you are not alone! Seems like this is the polarization that is happening…. Jonathan Cahn & Amir Tsarfati both talk about it as a factor in the BIBLE cluing end of days❣️❤️✝️
I also follow Del BigTree @ The Highwire & RFK Jr @ Childrens Health Defense❣️ Praise God more of us are speaking out…. even if they call us crazy…. they just don’t know the truth…
I will get these books for sure and definitely following. Thanks so much for all you do! God bless you and your family!
Its difficult to remain rational, grounded when the obfuscation-deceit is so apparent, but only to those looking. Kent, keep writing and we won’t need those shot guns or gas masks.
Kent, you may want to rethink your confidence a little bit… Granted i’m not advocating the gas mask and shotgun, unless you have the skill set presumably developed by Markopolos, rotfl.
Clearly, looking at the number of ‘accidents’ and ‘suicides’ of credibly successful alternate medical doctors and researchers who challenged the FDA fraud, there’s a sane reason for EXTRA CAUTION… namely STARTREK RULES FOR ‘AWAY MISSIONS’…..
As for the book and thesis by Gladwell, there would not seem to be a sane reason for accepting it based on my own background in ‘distrust’… It would be my contention that those of us that ‘distrust’ were at that first encounter with bad faith were at least marginally successful in challenging the perpetrator, or in developing a realized strength in defense.
The retention of the natural ‘trust’ default is for those that failed to successfully defeat that assault on trust and so their defense is to knuckle under as the way to succeed in life. Logically that works as you’ve described.
Your own defense as ‘diplomat’ with the outside the box viewpoint was your success strategy. TTYL
WANNA TRY SOMETHING NOVEL eh Kent? You’re the creative fellow who challenged the Aussie PM and their visa rules… well… Lots of your readers liked that gambit as well so maybe there would be multiple takers on this idea……
Remember that Trump EO on flu as a NATIONAL DEFENSE ISSUE since sick troops is not a good idea, and there’s that Desert Storm/ anthrax vaccine debacle… so TRUMP SPECIFICALLY put Secy of DEFENSE Mark Esper, PhD in charge of a portion of the EO’s execution to get MODERNIZED EFFECTIVE FLU VACCINES…. c\
A deviously clever way of insisting that the vax be SAFE since sick soldiers from bad vax is a disaster as well…. and no backlash from breathing the word ‘safety’, rotflmho
Also we have seen the treacherous VAERS and how that stymies any progress on safety… sh-h—
BUT we have KNOWLEDGE of the MAGIC SYSTEM to replace VAERS and it’s already developed [back in 2010 and hostilely shelved by CDC when it showed the huge 2.6% incidence of vax damage] in the medical records of 700,000 HMO insured patients in MA…. and it was a knockout so CDC stopped responding to the team leader Ross Lazarus and shut down anybody who had contact with him… He’s down in Aussie land as a prof at a university with a specialism in such medical IT…. And he’s open to contract work [TO PICK UP WHERE HE LEFT OFF]
Magic words like ‘modernization’ and ‘best practices’ and information tech wizardry like ‘cluster analysis’ should catch Secy Esper’s attention [whose PhD is in policy making] —
IF SOMEONE COULD GET THE INFORMATION TO HIM… so i have one request into my congressman [Dr Wenstrup, formerly serving in the military] but the DC shenanigans are eating up his attention, MAYBE, but he assigned a staffer to get info from HHS on such data and i’m waiting to see what materialized that route,…
Then it occurred to me that DIRECT ACTION might work…. so here’s the report of the MODERNIZED VAERS SYSTEM….
https://healthit.ahrq.gov/ahrq-funded-projects/electronic-support-public-health-vaccine-adverse-event-reporting-system
And here’s what google says is the proper way to reach him:
Esper’s contact data, phone, etc per google… [[anybody got better line on communication, post it here, kindly so we can benefit from those who score as well as from those that meet a wall]]…
Office of the Secretary of Defense. Dr. Mark T. Esper. Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000
AND alternatively, the DOD link said…………
‘Media with queries during our normal business hours should call (703) 697-5131.’
‘Questions from the public should be directed to Public Inquiries at (link to http://www.defense.gov/landing/comment.aspx) or call (703) 571-3343 ‘
AND hey all, don’t forget to let us know what you run into…….. We’re only trying to HELP him with the RIGHT ANSWER to the instant modernization of VAERS [just needs a push] in order to add to his resources for the mid-February reporting to Trump on Esper’s progress on the EO, and we understand how this Iranian and such would complicate work on the EO.. eh? ttyl