Author Archives: Garry Rodgers

About Garry Rodgers

After three decades as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police homicide detective and British Columbia coroner, International Best Selling author and blogger Garry Rodgers has an expertise in death and the craft of writing on it. Now retired, he wants to provoke your thoughts about death and help authors give life to their words.

DR. DEATH—THE KILLER SURGEON

Dr. Death sounds like a horror story title. In the case of Christopher Daniel Duntsch, it’s a true horror story. Christopher Duntsch was an American doctor and specialized as a spinal surgeon—a deadly spinal surgeon—who killed three of his patients and maimed 31 others during a two-year span. Today, Duntsch is serving a life imprisonment term in a Texas prison, and he’s now the subject of an NBC Peacock netstreaming series featuring some big-name, A-List actors like Alex Baldwin, Christian Slater, and Kelsey Grammer. The series is rightly titled “Dr. Death.”

The story of this psychopath with a scalpel is shocking. But what’s equally shocking is how the “medical system” allowed this monstrous medical menace to operate on completely innocent and critically ill people. It was no secret in medical circles that Duntsch was a clear and present danger to patients. In fact, it was peers within the system who nicknamed him Dr. Death, but few did anything about it.

The Dr. Death tragic story is that of major systemic failure. It’s a common theme in true crime stories, and there’s nothing truer than the tragic damage done by Christopher Duntsch to unwitting patients. It’s a story of incompetence. It’s a story of cover-ups. And it’s a story of corporate greed within the medical business community.

To understand how Christopher Duntsch turned into Dr. Death, it’s necessary to know his background. Let’s first look at Duntsch’s upbringing and his training before examining the carnage created by turning Dr. Death—The Killer Surgeon—loose in the hospital O.R.

Christopher Duntsch was born in 1971 in Montana. He was raised in Memphis, Tennessee in a stable, middle-class, evangelical Christian home. Duntsch was an average student and sports player. However, Duntsch was driven in his football interest and, despite his lack of natural ability, he trained far harder than other players and made the college team when he enrolled at Colorado State University. One of his teammates later said, “Chris lacked talent but he worked harder than the rest of us.”

Duntsch carried this drive back to Memphis when he was accepted into medical school at Memphis State University. He completed the ambitious MD-PhD program then entered the neurosurgery residency program at the University of Tennessee. Following graduation as a doctor at U of T, Duntsch completed a spine fellowship at the Semmes-Murphy clinic in Memphis.

A later investigation determined Duntsch only juniored in around 100 minimal-invasive surgeries when the typical neurosurgeon completes 1,000 during their residency and before they’re considered competent to lead a surgery. Cracks were obvious during Duntsch’s training time which was plagued with drug use and a suspension period served in a rehab facility. One colleague later testified that Duntsch regularly used LSD and cocaine at night and then go to work performing spinal operations in the morning.

During his university years, Christopher Duntsch married Wendy Renee Young with whom he had two children. Duntsch also racked up a half-million in debt and a drug dependency. Then he formulated a fraudulent curriculum vitae. In a 12-page, single-spaced document, Christopher Duntsch looked eminently qualified as a neurosurgeon. One, of many, false claims was  stating he’d graduated magna cum laude from a prestigious doctorate in microbiology.

One of the reasons Duntsch focused on neurosurgery was its lucrative salary of approximately $600,000 per year. It’s also why so many medical facilities conveniently overlooked his background checks—neurosurgery was their most lucrative (ie profitable) division. Neurosurgeons were in short supply and corporate greed ultimately trumped patient safety while Christopher Duntsch preyed on poor people propped up by pools of money. A later investigation determined the average cost of a US spinal surgery exceeded $75,000 with much of that being profit for the hospital.

Duntsch’s first solo surgical employment was at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Plano, Texas. This was in 2011. He was under the watchful eye of a very experienced neurosurgeon, Dr. Randall Kirby, who was immediately suspicious of Duntsch’s surgical ability despite Duntsch’s boasting and alleged credentials. Dr. Kirby later testified that, “Dr. Duntsch had no business in the operating room, and he could not wield a scalpel.”

After five majorly botched operations, the hospital allowed Duntsch to resign rather than be fired. The later investigation learned the Baylor hospital administration feared Duntsch would win a wrongful dismissal lawsuit if forcibly dismissed that could cost the institution millions of dollars. This deal was devastating to future Duntsch patients at other facilities because the hospital could not report Dr. Duntsch to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) which kept easy-access records of flagged problematic physicians.

Christopher Duntsch escaped what should have been mandatory NPDB registry for malpractice situations like:

  • Operating on the wrong part of the back leaving Kenneth Fennell in permanent chronic pain with debilitated mobility.
  • Cutting an unnecessary ligament in Lee Passmore as well as leaving stainless screws in incorrect positions and stripping the threads so they could not be removed.
  • Leaving bone fragments in Barry Morguloff that worked their way into his spinal cord leaving him paralyzed and in a wheelchair.
  • Causing Jerry Summers to suffer so much blood loss that he died from an infection from excessive transfusions.
  • Severing a major artery in Kelli Martin and causing her to bleed to death without adding blood during her surgery.

It was no secret at Baylor that Christopher Duntsch was dangerous. Many even wondered about his sanity. But that didn’t stop his medical career.

Dallas Medical Center hired Dr. Dirtsch as a temporary neurosurgeon in 2012. Almost immediately, hospital staff questioned Duntsch’s qualifications and suspected him of being under drug influence while operating. Some of Duntsch’s catastrophes in Dallas were:

  • Severing Floella Brown’s vertebral artery and allowing her to bleed to death without medical intervention.
  • Maiming a senior, Mary Efurd, and causing her excruciating pain—rated as ten-plus on a 1-10 scale.

Longtime neurosurgeon, Dr. Robert Henderson, performed a salvage surgery on Mary Efurd. Henderson realized what an awful job Duntsch did, and he began investigating Duntsch’s history which was now following him around. Dr. Henderson contacted Dr. Kirby of Plano. The two pacted to do their own investigation and put a stop to Dr. Death.

Because Duntsch was a temporary employee, he was immediately dismissed after these two incidents. And because Duntsch was a temporary employee, Dallas Medical Center was not required to report Dr. Duntsch to the NPDB. They didn’t, and Duntsch moved on to two more Texas medical facilities, the South Hampton Community Hospital in Dallas and the Legacy Surgery Center in Frisco.

By 2013, Christopher Duntsch’s behavior was getting bizarre. He caused a string of devastating surgeries and, thankfully, no one else died. However, many folks suffered significant and long-lasting trauma. University General Hospital in Dallas was Duntsch’s last operation. Here, he severed Jeff Glidewell’s esophagus and the neighboring artery. To stop the bleeding, Duntsch stuffed a surgical sponge down Glidewell’s throat and sewed him up with the sponge still inside. The poor man nearly choked before others intervened and removed it.

On June 26, 2013, the Texas Medical Board suspended Christopher Duntsch’s practitioner license. This was after appeals by Dr. Kirby and Dr. Henderson who told the board Duntsch was a sociopath and a clear and present danger to the citizens of Texas. The board slowly investigated with most of its members not believing that any medical doctor could be this bad and incompetent. They found out otherwise and revoked Duntsch’s license on December 6, 2013.

Meanwhile, Kirby and Henderson lobbied the Dallas DA to file charges against Duntsch. This investigation lumbered along at a tree’s pace. Duntsch then left town. He moved to Denver, declared bankruptcy for over $1 million in debt, got arrested for DUI and shoplifting, and was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation.

Private lawsuits began against some of the medical facilities that allowed Duntsch to operate. Finally, in July 2015, the DA filed six felony counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, five counts of aggravated assault causing bodily harm, and one count of injuring an elderly person—Mary Efurd. Murder charges weren’t laid as the DA felt the state couldn’t prove Duntch’s clear intent to kill anyone. This was despite a piece of evidence turned over by Duntsch’s now ex-wife—an email to her from him stating, “I am ready to leave the love and kindness and goodness and patience that I mix with everything else that I am and become a cold-blooded killer.”

After a 15-day trial, a Texas jury found Christopher Duntsch guilty on all counts. The Appeals Court upheld Duntsch’s sentence of life imprisonment. Currently, he’s held in Huntsville and won’t be eligible to apply for parole until 2045 when he’ll be 74 years old.

Duntsch’s conviction was precedent-setting. It was the first time in United States history that a medical practitioner was convicted of criminally harming their patients. In Duntsch’s defense, his lawyer told the jury, “The only way this happens is that the entire system failed the patients.”

Primum non nocere is a Latin phrase that means “First, do no harm”. This is med-school 101 along with taking the Hippocratic Oath. The oath is as old as the ancient Greeks and the modern version goes:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

  • I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
  • I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
  • I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
  • I will not be ashamed to say “I know not”, nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
  • I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
  • I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
  • I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
  • I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
  • If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

Christopher Duntsch—Dr. Death, The Killer Surgeon—had blatant disdain for primum non nocere. He took a scalpel to his Hippocratic Oath.

WAS AMANDA KNOX REALLY INNOCENT OF KILLING MEREDITH KERCHER?

The Amanda Knox story captured worldwide attention during the years she passed through the Italian legal system and was convicted—twice—of complicity in murdering her college roommate, Meredith Kercher. Now, the international spotlight is again upon Amanda Knox with the new Matt Damon movie Stillwater being based on her case. In Stillwater, Matt Damon’s fictional  character pursues justice for his daughter who is wrongfully accused and falsely imprisoned for murder. It leads to questioning if this was the truth in the real Amanda Knox story and that Knox was really innocent of killing Meredith Kercher.

There’s a lot of internet information on the Amanda Knox murder case. Some of it’s factual. Much is sensational tabloid junk about “Foxy Knoxy”the “Ice Lady”—disseminated by socially dysfunctional trolls operating from surplus metal sea-cans converted into dwellings via an extension cord hooked to one bare light bulb. To find out the truth, it’s necessary to first look at the overall facts and then examine how the Italian legal system handled the case through a dragged-out, eight-year-long process.

In 2007, Amanda Knox was a 20-year-old student from Seattle, Washington. She moved to Perugia in central Italy (slightly north of Rome) to further her journalism studies as Perugia was well-known for outstanding universities and educational opportunities—a popular place for foreign students. Here, Knox met a British exchange student, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, and they shared a ground-floor, four-bedroom apartment with two other young ladies.

Quickly, Knox became romantically involved with a young Italian man, Raffaele Sollecito, and Kercher did the same with Giacomo Silenzi. At the time, Knox also worked part-time in a nightclub run by Patrick Lumumba. It was this pentagon of five that the Italian prosecutors would present as a sex game gone wrong that resulted in Meredith Kercher’s death.

Meredith Kercher

On the evening of November 1, 2007, Knox, Sollecito, Silenzi, and Kercher socialized with others at Sollecito’s apartment near to where the ladies roomed. Present was a man named Rudy Guede who was invited by one of the group but who was unknown to Knox and Kercher. Around 9 pm, Kercher excused herself from the gathering and walked back to her residence alone. Bit by bit, the gathering broke up leaving Knox and Sollecito to overnight there together.

At midday on November 2, Knox repeatedly tried to phone Meredith Kercher. She got no answer and became concerned so Knox and Sollecito went to the co-habitation and found Kercher’s bedroom door locked. Knox tapped on the door and called out but Kercher didn’t answer. Then Knox and Sollecito noticed some bloodstains, including a bloody footprint, in the bathroom.

Being alarmed, Knox called her mother in America who directed Knox to call the Italian police. She did so. However, there was a significant delay which was advanced as part of the prosecution’s later case against Knox and was supported by a timeline presented through cell phone records.

The first attending police officers were not homicide detectives. They were an Italian version of postal inspectors crossed with communication fraud investigators. There hadn’t been a murder in Perugia in over twenty years, so it was a considerable time before “competent” scene processors and trained murder cops arrived. Naturally, the scene was contaminated and the ensuing DNA evidence used in convicting Amanda Knox of murdering Meredith Kecher was compromised.

What the scene processing showed was Kercher had been attacked, raped, and had her throat cut in her bedroom. Her official cause of death was exsanguination (bleeding out) after being injured with a sharp-edged weapon. Kercher’s bedroom window was open and the investigators deduced that to mean that a break-in had been staged with the real killer setting the crime up to appear that a stranger was involved.

Police initially treated Amanda Knox as a witness. She was questioned on different occasions, but the homicide investigators slowly formulated a theory that Knox was lying to protect the actual murderer. They also developed a motive theory that Kercher was killed because she refused to take part in a multi-person sexual trist. An orgy.

On November 6, the Italian homicide detectives again brought Knox in for questioning. This time it turned into a full-on, hard-core interrogation that lasted hours. This is a complex and controversial part of the Amanda Knox story and precise details—at least as precise as possible because the authorities did not audio or video record it (rather they elicited a written confession from Knox)—can be read on the website amandaknoxcase.com under The Interrogation of Amanda Knox.

In Amanda Knox’s written confession, she states to have been present while her nightclub boss, Patrick Lumbumba, raped and murdered Meredith Kercher. Knox did not supply any motive or any details which only an involved person would know. Lumbuba was arrested on the strength of Knox’s statement and it was shortly proven, beyond all doubt, that Lumbumba had an air-tight alibi and he was flat-out innocent.

Rudy Guede

 

Amanda Knox was held in custody while the prosecution put an indictable case together. Meanwhile, the scene forensic evidence identified a DNA profile from semen on Kercher’s body. They conclusively linked it to Rudy Guede who had been at the social gathering on the evening when Kercher was last seen alive. Guede was arrested in Germany where he confessed and indicated that Amanda Knox had nothing to do with Kercher’s murder.

By now, the Italian legal system had a freight train rolling along the justice track. Instead of applying the brakes, the police, prosecutors, and judges threw more coal on the fire and kept on persecuting Amanda Knox. This was due to the archaic inquisitional system Italy was trying to gentrify into a western adversarial legal framework.

The common US-style evidence rules didn’t apply in the Italian arena. Despite Amanda Knox being hardline interrogated for hours without legal representation, being informed of her rights, denied food, water, and toilet facilities, slapped around, and breaking down in the middle of the night, the Italian court accepted Knox’s coerced confession as solid evidence that had to be admitted under their law structure. It didn’t matter that the prosecution’s perceived motive—some kinky sex game—had no factual basis, and it didn’t matter that Knox’s boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, provided Knox with her air-tight alibi. No, the Italian legal machine went right on persecuting Amanda Knox.

Knox stood trial through the summer and fall of 2009. Her case received massive public attention and the British tabloids sensationalized it like nothing ever seen. This was now the day of the emerging internet where chatrooms and social media made a spectacle of the trial and a massive mess of Amanda Knox’s life.

Amanda Knox was convicted of Meredith Kercher’s murder on December 4, 2009. She was sentenced to 26 years in jail. She appealed and had her murder conviction overturned on October 3, 2011, now having served nearly two years in an Italian prison.

In March of 2013, Italy’s Court of Cassation ordered a new trial and on January 30, 2014, she was once again convicted for killing Meredith Kercher. By now, Amanda Knox was back in America and was not returned to Italy during her new appeal. On March 27, 2015, Italy’s highest court again overturned her conviction and her legal persecution was over.

Any rational person would have to ask how this miscarriage of justice could possibly happen. The answer to that is as complicated as the Amanda Knox story, if that’s possible to fully tell. It’s a murky mix of systematic incompetence and utter lack of regard for the truth. In the high court final ruling, the judge cited “sensational failures”, “glaring errors”, “investigative amnesia”, “guilty and culpable omissions”, “ignorance of expert forensic testimony that demonstrated contamination of evidence”, “outright falsification of forensic evidence”, and “a case without any foundation”.

The horrific Amanda Knox wrongful conviction story is best told by Amanda, herself. In a recent interview with The Atlantic titled Who Owns Amanda Knox? , Amanda says:

Does my name belong to me? Does my face? What about my life? My story? Why is my name used to refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions again and again because others continue to profit off my identity, and my trauma, without my consent. Most recently, there is the film Stillwater, directed by Tom McCarthy and starring Matt Damon and Abigail Breslin, which was, in McCarthy’s words, “directly inspired by the Amanda Knox saga.” How did we get here?

In the fall of 2007, a British student named Meredith Kercher was studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. She moved into a little cottage with three roommates—two Italian law interns, and an American girl. Less than two months into her stay, a young man named Rudy Guede, an immigrant from the Ivory Coast, broke into the apartment and found Meredith alone. Guede had a history of breaking and entering. A week prior, he had been arrested in Milan while burglarizing a nursery school, and was found carrying a 16-inch knife. He was released. A week later, he raped Meredith and stabbed her in the throat, killing her. In the process, he left his DNA in Meredith’s body and throughout the crime scene. He left his fingerprints and footprints in her blood. He fled to Germany immediately afterward, and later admitted to being at the scene.

I am the American girl in that story, and if the Italian authorities had been more competent, I would have been nothing more than a footnote in a tragic story. But as in many wrongful convictions, the authorities formed a theory before the forensic evidence came in, and when that evidence indicated a sole perpetrator, Guede, ego and reputation led them to contort their theory to maintain that I was still somehow involved. Guede was quietly convicted for participating in the murder in a separate fast-track trial, and then I became the main event for eight long years.

While I was on trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher, from 2007 to 2015, the prosecution and the media crafted a story, and a doppelgänger version of me, onto which people could affix all their uncertainties, fears, and moral judgments. People liked that story: the psychotic man-eater, the dirty ice queen, Foxy Knoxy. A jury convicted my doppelgänger, and sentenced her to 26 years in prison. But the guards couldn’t handcuff that invented person. They couldn’t escort that fiction into a cell. That was me, the real me, who returned to that windowless prison van, to those high cement walls topped with barbed wire, to those cold, echoing hallways and barred windows, to that all-consuming loneliness.

Ten years ago, at the age of 24, I was acquitted, and I tumbled into a kind of purgatory. I left one cell and immediately entered another: the quiet of my childhood bedroom. Outside, the telephoto lenses were fixed on my closed blinds. Prison had given me an appreciation for all the freedoms I’d taken for granted. Freedom showed me how many I still lacked.

As I walked back into the free world, I knew that my doppelgänger was there alongside me. I knew that everyone I would ever meet from then on would have already met, and judged, her. I had been acquitted in a court of law, but sentenced to life by the court of public opinion as, if not a killer, then at least a slut, or a nutcase, or a tabloid celebrity. Why doesn’t she just go away already? Her 15 minutes are over.

In freedom, I had become a pariah. Looking for work, going back to school, buying tampons at the pharmacy, everywhere I went I met people who already thought they knew who I was, what I’d done or not done, and what I deserved. I was threatened with abduction and torture in broad daylight; I was threatened with having Meredith’s name carved into my body. Strangers sent me lingerie and bizarre love letters. All over the world, people believed they knew me, a warped assumption that turned me into a monster to some and a saint to others. I felt like I was always standing behind that cardboard cutout, Foxy Knoxy, saying, Hey, back here, the real me! Even most of the strangers who offered kindness and support didn’t truly see me. They loved her.

It’s hard to make friends, to date, to be a regular person when everyone you meet has a preconceived notion of who you really are, whether positive or negative. I could have chosen to hide out, to change my name, to dye my hair, and hope no one recognized me ever again. Instead, I decided to embrace the world that had dehumanized me, and all those who turned me into a product.

From the moment I was arrested, my name and face and trauma became a source of profit for news organizations, filmmakers, and other artists, scrupulous and unscrupulous. The most intimate details of my life, from my sexual history to my thoughts of death and suicide in prison, were taken from my private diary and leaked to journalists. Those journalists turned my darkest fears into fodder for hundreds of articles, thousands of blog posts, and millions of hot takes. People speculated about my mental state and sexuality, they diagnosed me from afar, they used my predicament as a metaphor, they made TV movies about me, based characters in legal shows on me, and the worst of them took every opportunity they could, while I was in prison and while I’ve been out, to shame me for something I didn’t do, to shame me for living while Meredith is dead, to shame me for being in the very headlines they write, for being in the photographs they take without my consent. The hypocrisy and the cruelty are maddening. And yet, being under that microscope has given me insight into how wrong a media narrative can be, how easy it is for all of us to consume other people’s lives as if they were mere content to fill up our Twitter feeds.

This focus on me led many to complain that Meredith Kercher had been forgotten. But whom did they blame for that? Not the Italian authorities. Not the press. Somehow it was my fault that the police and media focused on me at Meredith’s expense. The result of this is that 14 years later, my name is the name associated with this tragic series of events I had no control over. Meredith’s name is often left out, as is Rudy Guede’s. When he was released from prison in late 2020, the New York Post headline read: “Man Who Killed Amanda Knox’s Roommate Freed on Community Service.” My name is the only name that shouldn’t be in that headline.

I never asked to become a public person. The Italian authorities and global media made that choice for me. And when I was acquitted and freed, the media and the public wouldn’t allow me to become a private citizen again. I have not been allowed to return to the relative anonymity I had before Perugia. I have no choice but to accept the fact that I live in a world where my life, and my reputation, are freely available for distortion by a voracious content mill.

———

There is no doubt—no doubt whatsoever—that Amanda Knox really is innocent of killing Meredith Kercher, She’s a true victim of crime, a victim of commercial tabloids, and a victim of vicious trolls.

TYRANNY IN CANADA: CALLING OUT JUSTIN TRUDEAU

I rarely get political on DyingWords but there comes a time when I must criticize a political regime with a tyrannical agenda. I’m not talking China, or North Korea, or crumbling Afghanistan. No, it’s the Canadian Federal Liberal Government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Today, I’m sharing a highly thought-out and articulate YouTube video presented by my daughter, Emily Rodgers, who calls out Justin Trudeau for his increasingly tyrannical actions. First, let me rant about what’s happening to free speech in Canada under Trudeau’s watch.

Merriam-Webster defines tyranny as:

  1. Oppressive power exerted by government.
  2. A government in which absolute power is vested in a single leader.
  3. The office, authority, and administration of a tyrant.
  4. A rigorous condition imposed by a ruler or government.
  5. An oppressive, harsh, or unjust act.

I’m not going to list Justin Trudeau’s faults other than say he’s a procrastinating autocrat officially cited three times for unethical behavior—each of which should have had him removed from power. I’m going to directly speak to two tyrannical legislative bills intentionally drafted by Trudeau’s inner circle to curtail Canadian free speech.

One is Bill C-10 — An Act to Amend the Broadcasting Act and to Make Related and Consequential Amendments to Other Acts. It’s disguised as a protective action against tech giants like Netflix and TikTok to compel them into conforming to traditional Canadian broadcasting regulations by financing and promoting Canadian content (ie. propaganda approved by the federal government’s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—the CBC.) In reality, what Bill C-10 does is curtail Canadians from hearing too much foreign content and reduce domestic criticism against their reigning government.

The other is a forthcoming disaster. It’s proposed as Bill C-36 and hides behind the mask of preventing hate speech. Should Justin Trudeau’s government be reelected in the current and completely unnecessary federal election, Bill C-36 is on the table. It will allow any person who remotely thinks someone else might publish, promote, or even propose an idea that might constitute “hate speech” to drag their target into court for a preemptive strike. Talk about open-season for witch hunts.

Enough of my rant. Here are Emily’s thoughts calling out Justin Trudeau. She’s saying what a lot of Canadians think but are progressively being restricted to say. A transcript follows Emily’s video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IOLEJaxc3E

Hello/bonjour Justin,

Either you’re oblivious to the imminent fallout of this carefully curated hysteria campaign of yours, or you know exactly where it’s headed, and you’re hoping you’ll get away with it.

Either you haven’t thought through the philosophical, moral, societal, psychological, and spiritual implications of the agenda you’re pushing, or you know exactly what those implications are, and you’re just hoping most people won’t figure them out.

Either you’re so short-sighted and inept at crafting viable long-term policies based on a thoughtfully weighed cost-benefit assessment, or you know exactly the price that will be paid and the clear benefit you hope it will afford you.

Either you’re incompetent, or you’re evil.

These two things aren’t mutually exclusive; your incompetence does not exempt you from moral responsibility.

You have a duty, as a leader of a Western nation, to have an explicit understanding of the philosophical basis for our civilization. You have a duty to be able to argue for our basic principles, our basic worldview, and our basic moral beliefs. It is your job to be able to explicitly explain and describe to people why Canada is a free Western nation, what freedom means, and what the implications are of failing to thoroughly define and stick to a moral worldview that fundamentally accepts the worth, dignity, and value of every human life, beginning and ending with the guiding belief that we are free; that our very identity as individuals is God-given liberty itself.

Western nations all operate on the fundamental tenet that the default nature of the world is tyranny, and that unless societies organize themselves politically to agree on the best way to beat back its looming control, we will eventually fall into tyranny’s possession.

This means that you have an obligation as the voice who represents a Western nation to describe to people what this vision is and to continuously reinforce it. This vision has altogether become far too distant to too many in our society. We act as if we are many generations removed from a significant and overt threat of tyranny. Our society has gotten to a place that is so free, so equal, and so abundant that we have developed a devastating blind spot. We are blind to the ease at which tyranny can swoop in and take over, reducing us to nothing more than a herd of obedient, lifeless zombies.

Some people accuse you of being a communist plant. But not all of us believe you are intelligent enough for this to be a coordinated, calculated plan whereby you are chiefly orchestrating a tyrannical takeover. You haven’t earned that kind of credit. Your critical thinking skills—your knowledge of core philosophy—are so woefully deficient that your undirected and feckless worldview has simply been smoothly supplanted by the resilient ideological virus that is tyranny. You are so excruciatingly incompetent at having an essential understanding of what makes our civilization so great that you have become an easy host for the parasite of tyranny.

You are weak. You are compromised. You are defenseless against its invasion because you haven’t done the hard work of contemplating the universal political truths that are required to defend us against it. You don’t understand how we got here; to the most successful and prosperous civilization ever.

You are in no position to guide a Western nation as significant as Canada because you don’t have the fully-developed faculties of reason, logic, and understanding that are needed to defend the good, true, and beautiful worldview that Western civilization stands for.

What’s worse, Justin, you don’t seem to have the heart for it.

You are permeable to mental infiltration by insidious, evil, immoral, unconscionable ideologies that seek to keep people imprisoned within their own hearts and minds.

You have neither the fortitude nor the intellectual rigor that are necessary to defend us and our way of life that we hold dear.

And because of this glaring weakness, you are also too arrogant to know just how many people see right through you. We see exactly where you are ineffectual and exactly how petty you are.

There is an immutable truth about the human being, and that’s that inside each of us is imbued a spiritual compass that points us toward reality itself. Call it a conscience, call it a soul, call it a moral ought, call it whatever you want. But this immutable truth that each of us possesses will always ultimately conquer the lies that tyrants try to weaponize against our dignity and autonomy.

We’re being told not to trust the truth that we see before us.

We’re being told that our reasonable and warranted skepticism is unwarranted and irrational.

We’re being told that to question the insult to reality that’s being inflicted on all of our psyches makes us the bad guys.

You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time. And don’t think that just because you have the media machine helping you distort reality that the majority of us will continue to play along. There is a significant number of us who see what’s happening; we smell the disingenuousness, and we know we’re being manipulated.

Here’s another immutable truth: Once people wake up and realize how they were played, they tend to counteract by showing their teeth. We have an innate predisposition to defend our personal dignity, which is why tyranny begins its strategy by attacking a person’s self-respect.

Don’t think you’ll get away with this game forever. Don’t think the charade will last. You’re dealing with people raised by the Western heart. Conquering tyranny is our religion. It is our worldview. It is our philosophy. It is our way of life. It’s in our blood.

Justice will prevail in the end. And tell me, Justin, will your blatant, cheap power-grab be worth it when the sentencing inevitably gets handed down?

Sincerely,

The no-longer-silent majority