Pandora's Pryzm

Jessica A. Marshall

Monday 27 April 20:36:01 1777340161
Undisclosed location #3

JM: A lot happens when you take a few days off. This time it was just another assassination attempt on President Trump. At some point it doesn't surprise me, and we may be at that point.

AS: Yeah, me neither. It's more like wondering when the next one will occur.

JM: On a scale of one to ten where does this one fall?

AS: Still early but worse than Butler and Mar-a-Lago. Is that all or did I miss one?

JM: There could be some we don't know about but that seems to be the official count.

AS: OK, figure that Butler and Mar-a-Lago were more or less serious attempts - they groom a clay pigeon like that and if they get lucky no more Trump.

JM: This one was a pigeon?

AS: He seems to fit the profile. Someone not that bright but thinks he is and thus easily manipulated. They just program him and indicate the target - actually the target is part of the conditioning. And as you said if he gets lucky...

JM: This guy seemed smarter than the other two - Routh had high SAT scores or something but so have plenty of people I've known who didn't act smart. He was definitely effed-up in the head judging from the way he lived. The one at Mar-a-Lago attracted their attention and they used him. This guy had a seemingly more more regular life, had a couple of degrees and a career.

AS: As I said I've known people with high test scores and education who weren't bright. You have a spreme court justice with the intelligence of a woodlouse and has law degrees and passed the bar somewhere. People in some classes get a pass.

JM: DEI?

AS: In most cases.

JM: What's a woodlouse ?

AS: Little thing lives under debris in the forest. Six or seven pairs of legs.

JM: Got it. OK. Yeah, they're not very smart. You think this most recent one isn't?

AS: I see the manifesto is out. Assuming it's the real deal and with the feds being in charge it probably is. And someone in his family turned it in. In this case being told that he's smart and having degrees - if there's an opening those types are relatively easy to turn.

JM: You have a high IQ and while you have only a degree in computer science you are educated by supposedly normal standards. Where is the weakness?

AS: I'm autistic and Aspbergers is part of that. Maybe we're more analytical... probably the failure in analytical skills is part of the problem. Maybe a big part, and if you've never been challenged or held accountable for failure it makes you weaker, more vulnerable to being exploited. This guy on the surface looks like that.

JM: You've said that DEI is bad because of the harm it does to those it is intended to benefit, something like that.

AS: They used to call it affirmative action and maybe should have left it at that. It was less corrosive but... don't ask a white guy. How about a drink?

JM: Stop twisting my arm.

pause, background noise

JM: Nice, what's the whiskey? There wasn't a label.

AS: My own blend.

JM: You have your own blend?

AS: (laughs) Nah, half and half Beam bourbon and rye.

JM: I like it. So as a white guy... your experience is unlikely to be unique.

AS: Back then they called it affirmative action, same thing only it was black people and women of any color but preferably black. Then they could count them twice. So I missed a few job opportunities because there was a woman of some color or a black person of either sex. These days trannies get special treatment too but they weren't a thing back then... important thing anyway.

JM: Did you meet any of the ones who were hired in your place?

AS: Two or three, sometimes I checked later to see who they hired. And there was once they called me back a few months later and wanted to hire me... to do the job they hired the other one for but they were keeping the dud. In fact the dud would be my boss.

JM: I bet that was an interesting conversation.

AS: The manager was an older guy and was probably disgusted with what he was told to do but almost did it with a straight face. I told him I'd think about it and call later. When I did call him I asked him if he actually expected me to take it and he said no but it's what they told him to do. I suspect he retired at the earliest opportunity.

JM: I saw enough... I'm a lot younger than you so it was pretty much the standard by them. I sometimes wondered if they hired me because I'm a woman and knew that had at least something to do with it, and that men were probably passed over so they could hire me. I do know of men who were rejected and later offered the job, as in your case hiring extra people to get the job done. Some took the offer - in the tech world competent people can pick and choose - and probably they got more than originally offered because they were needed.

AS: Yeah, a lot of times competent people found themselves working for managers who knew nothing - I was in that position briefly at [REDACTED] before I bailed. You probably wouldn't be surprised to know that they often sabotaged their bosses. They were dependent on us getting the job done and making them look good and writing a presentation for them to recite at meetings. Create a few problems that couldn't be proven were our fault, push back deadlines and run up costs, if they were too dumb to figure out what we were doing that was their problem. It was funny seeing them go down. (laughs)

JM: I see what you did there.

AS: Yeah. You can separate most of them into two people - away from work most pretty likeable, even at work as long as everything is going their way. Things go wrong... whatever the reason... they get nasty.

JM: Yeah, in management I saw a lot of that. Any psychological theories?

AS: How about you?

JM: (laughs) OK, I thought I was asking the questions but... OK, the corporate world... Dilbert is sadly all too real but it's humor so the edges are not as sharp as the real world... people are insecure, all are at least a little, some more. If you got hired for a job you weren't qualified for it's scarier because every meeting... you're performing. If you fail... it's bad enough when the boss calls you in but worse when you flop in a room full of your peers...

AS: Yeah. Techs didn't have to worry about it, when we were called in we were the experts and rarely would one of the suits be foolish enough to challenge us. Rarely.

JM: Yeah, once in a while (laughs)

AS: Anyway most were at least smart enough to understand that they depended on us and it was best not to annoy us. It didn't bother us that they were paid so much, we were doing all right and had none of the pressure. But if they got too uppity or abusive little things started to happen, and if they didn't straighten up they happened more often. We could take them down any time and most knew it.

JM: DEI was near the end of your career so I guess you didn't have to deal with it much.

AS: No, just having to watch it happening and knowing good people were being screwed. Anyway tech types were less vulnerable and had more options.

JM: What did you think of the latest assassination attempt?

AS: Curioser and curioser. Something about this one.... not a sniper going after the president but someone trying to kill a while bunch of people, president and VP at once. If they could take the House in the midterms and take out the president and VP at the same time they would have the presidency.

JM: I was rather shocked that Vance was there. It's not like... I don't know if he wanted to go or someone persuaded him. It's not like most people in the administration would want to be there.

AS: Yeah, that surprised me. I hope they don't make that mistake again... I don't know how future attempts will go but even if the Republicans hold the House having the speaker become president would be a disaster and worse if it's a Democrat. Jeffries would be a tool running the autopen for the equivalent of junior high kids.

JM: How about the perpetrator in this case?

AS: Reportedly he has degrees in some kind of engineering and computer science. I've known plenty of people with those degrees and plenty without who were smarter so... education doesn't make you smart, especially if you're miseducated. Indoctrinated? Probably. The manifesto - assuming it's the real deal - just suggests that he's brainwashed of succumbed to the propaganda. Why he wanted to kill multiple targets, President Trump and others, suggests that the idea was to take out both president and vice-president at the same time.

JM: Do you think he was being directly manipulated, communicating with someone who gave him the idea?

AS: I'm generally inclined to believe so in these cases but whether or not it will be revealed... even if they know what to look for.

JM: What should they be looking for?

AS: As far as I know - and I don't know the details - but it seems they take computers and phones and go through them, looking at Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all, and base their conclusions on that. What I've never heard of is them combing through the data and seeing what small players are in there. Little blogs and sites that have only a few hundredf or maybe a few dozen users. So far under the radar that if you don't know what to look for you won't find it. And in my experience there are prococateurs in those places, looking for a chance to snag someone.

JM: You think that is part of.... some of these?

AS: I run about a half dozen personas... dedicated airgapped systems using VPNs and it's rare to go for a week without being hit on by someone who seems to want to get me to do something.

JM: What do you use for bait?

AS: I started years ago with the school shooters. I had some info on some of them, enough to troll for some of the sites. These are never in the news so you have to look for them. When I find one that looks likely I set up an account and lurk for a while to see what's happening. Generally if there's something going on I'll see it. Sometimes you see it happening - say a user by the name of KarmaVarmint. He commented on a post by someone who was showing signs of being unstable. Several other users were uncomfortable... at that point it was vague suggestions of violent behavior or suicide... and after a bit of this KarmaVarmint asks the user to do a private chat. The thread ended there and the other user didn't post anything new...

JM: Private chat? I can imagine what went on there. No way to find out?

AS: Unless you could get access to the computers, or subpoena the operator.

JM: Don't they do that sometimes? I mean with Facebook or some of them...

AS: Even then you don't get much more... but browser caches and history and account logins... you could find some of these little ones that few people know about. This one was a little homegrown thing, I never saw more than a dozen users active at one time, always the same ones. There are a lot of those, I run a couple, and the only way to track them down is to find out somehow, like having the computer or phone and knowing what to look for.

JM: They look for Facebook and Twitter and those, and maybe email accounts. But the goods are elsewhere.

AS: Right. If a disturbed person, say a high school kid with medication problems, is getting weird on those sites... first it would be visible to so many people that there's at least a chance of someone raising an alarm. Not always as we've seen and the stuff doesn't come out until afterwards but on these little boards unless you know what to look for so it never gets seen at all.

JM: This KarmaVarmint gets... whoever into a private chat and he's been giving signs of instability. Talking about killing people or himself....

AS: Right. He leads him, encourages him, confirms his beliefs. Later he may offer assistance in acquiring weapons, depending on whether it's needed - sometimes they have access already. Mainly though he (or she) pushes the mark towards doing the deed.

JM: That's evil but there are evil people out there.

AS: Yeah, plenty. And when they can hide behind a keyboard... and if they're part of an official operation it's easier.

JM: Official?

AS: Has to be in most cases. Unfortunately proving it is near impossible, unless you get an insider.

JM: OK, I get it, why the government wants to make bad things happen. Do they just troll for candidates? Select likely ones and work on them?

AS: Pretty much I suspect. Not just the school shooters - or mass shooters generally - local and state law enforcement have for a long time been running this scam to make child predator arrests. Just for publicity but it works.

JM: The mass predator arrests? Where they have people impersonate children... underage children... to snag potential predators.

AS: Right. You can argue efficacy... or effectiveness... or even ethics but that isn't the object of the exercise. Headlines and press conferences are the objective. They arrest a bunch of guys who took the bait and rarely if ever are any prior offenders.

JM: Really? I admit I don't do a deep dive on those things.

AS: Follow the cases... you have to dig because once the press conference is over it's not interesting to most. Most, almost all of the people are arrested aren't prior offenders. The real predators are harder to catch, they're suspicious and won't be taken in by someone pretending to be an underaged child. In fact that arouses their suspicion, scares them off.

JM: But the less experienced can be trapped that way.

AS: Right. The ones have never done it, might not ever do it unless someone pushes them over the edge. The ones who succumb get cuffed and and end up in the news as predators. Even if they wouldn't have ever done it otherwise.

JM: People thinking about going on a killing spree... they talk about it.

AS: Usually, or often. Sometmes a guy keeps it inside until one day he goes off.. And like the cops who try to push potential child molesters over the line.... do the same thing with unstable people. Only it's easier since child molesters aren't generally on psych meds... well some probably are... but the kids that have already been groomed almost always are.

JM: And when they go to school and kill a bunch of people... if they were talking to someone on a site with a couple dozen users...

AS: Bingo. And we'll never know. I've tracked a few dozen of these cases. No way to know if any actually did something since I don't know who or where they were. But it goes on and it goes on a lot.

JM: Would improved forensics help? Or would it matter?

AS: Depends on who is investigating. Usually the feds get involved but... they look for the easy stuff and generaly there is something there. Whether threre's something deeper... rarely if ever it revealed. And most people aren't as devious as me.

JM: You know a lot that most people don't so there's that.

AS: Yeah, if I had to guess is that sometimes it's there but when you have most of the picture.... this guy seems to have been radicalized in the usual manner. There are some pretty sick people out there and since there are rarely consequencies for lefties who do it it's pretty much a sewer and sewer water is toxic. Literally.

JM: Since we've got the SPLC thing - they were funding agents provacateur in marginal outfits to create incidents. Is grooming individuals out of the realm of probability?

AS: Not at all. The FBI did it to the point having an agent, or multiple agents, per "conspirator".

JM: That funny video where all of them are FBI and they pull their guns on each other at the same time. I think it was the Babylon Bee.

AS: Yeah, hilarious as usual because it was true. I don't know if the SPLC... there's really no difference, only they paid people to go in and try to start something. And they paid the expenses.

JM: They took this guy alive so we may learn something. I don't buy all of it so far. The guy had two degrees and supposedly was an inventor and game designer.

AS: You have Supreme Court justices with law degrees and passed the bar and don't have enough sense to come in out of the rain. Obviously they didn't do the work but were promoted because of quotas. If you're connected and a part of that part of the system....

JM: In this case the manifesto came out right away. Depending on whether he was being controlled or not, did his controllers know about it and did they want it found?

AS: They don't play 3D chess or even regular chess I wouldn't expect much depth. Whether they would want it found - if they had agents on him they could have sanitized the house when he left. But we don't know if he had a control.

JM: His actions were pretty irrational. He knew he couldn't escape, and whatever damage he could do - and it turned out not to be much - in the short time he had... was he trying to be a martyr, or hope he got lucky and could a martyr hero?

AS: We'll to wait and see what they get out of him. He's alive and so can talk - his lawyers will be a problem - and depending how sane he is or isn't it may not be worth much.

JM: I wouldn't count on anything useful having much impact, by the time the alleged news media is through with it.

AS: Same here. The usual twenty, thirty percent or so that will get it aren't enough. Too easy for the sheeple to go along with the conspiracy theorist label and go on grazing.

JM: How long until the next time?

AS: Your guess is as good as mine. This one... the fact that the guy - loopy as he was - got in the day before indicates some guidance. The Secret Service flunked again as badly as at the first two - you have to be pretty blind not to see that the buy at Butler had help but the one at Mar-a-Lago looks like general incompetence. The next one will be whenever someone thinks they have a chance. Probably one or more tools are being prepared even now... that's not even probably.

JM: That's scary.

AS: Yeah.