America's Failure to Imagine
...when the unthinkable is horribly real.
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” Arthur Schopenhauer
In 2002, I tried to warn the American public [via the biotech testimonies copied to this Substack’s homepage] that it was being led to support embryonic stem cell research and human cloning not because they would lead to miracle cures but rather the reverse—they’d cure no one of anything while cementing our medical, research, non-profit and pharmaceutical status quo for decades.
According to my crazy conspiracy theory, the purpose of this vast deception concerned billions of dollars yearly in drug revenues, research funding, non-profit incomes, and biotech investments and growth.
Understandably, very few Americans took me seriously. After all, consider what I was saying:
Without spelling it out, my articles and testimonies suggested:
the drug, research, non-profit, and biotech industries would intentionally mislead all mankind concerning the future of Medicine for the sake of profits, funding, patents, industry growth, and security.
these industries hoped to steer vast public resources away from practical paths to cures while suppressing or blocking anything that threatened their long range financial goals.
these industries meant for many millions of people around the world to die, become disabled, or remain disabled indefinitely—people with multiple sclerosis, diabetes, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, stroke, spinal cord injury, and ALS—all for the sake of money.
Of course, such thoughts were incredible…too ugly for belief!
And yet, here we are in 2025, and the above former pretexts for stem cells and cloning have yet to be cured. Between 2006 and 2023, they generated $1 trillion dollars in revenues for pharmaceuticals. Between 2025 and 2034, Marketplace Projections expect them to earn them $1.3 trillion more.
Can you imagine how many people died or suffered for years—possibly decades—in order to generate $1 trillion (a thousand billion dollars) in drug revenues?
But those deaths and crushed lives weren’t the worst of it. Beginning immediately after taking office in 2001, President George W. Bush made it his unstinting priority to support and entrench the embryonic stem cell and human cloning agenda at the NIH. Meanwhile, he triggered the national ‘stem cells’ debate through his purported moral objections to killing embryos.
Why would he do such a thing? In 2002, the top ten pharmaceuticals in Fortune 500 made more profits than the other 490 corporations combined. Bush did what America’s politicians do. He told his grass roots ‘believers’ what they wanted to hear while giving Big Business and the ultra rich whatever they wanted.
In other words, Bush used and betrayed the religious Right through their moral beliefs. He tricked and betrayed the liberal Left through their empathy and scientific trust. He exploited America’s social division and worsened it through an emotional charade that promoted the financial aims of America’s richest industry.
It’s my view that Bush’s ‘divide and exploit’ stem cells betrayal was more harmful socially than all the suffering it caused, because it became the GOP blueprint for controlling Americans like a human herd and bringing us to where we are today.
Stem cells, climate change, gun control, covid-19, DEI, immigration, everything ‘Trump’...the battles change, but the winning strategy never does. It wins by controlling and dividing us through our hopes, fears, beliefs and biases…through how we want to see our world, ourselves, and those who differ from us.
It wins through our failure to imagine that we can be controlled and often are through the things that make us ‘us.’
For most Americans, this portrayal of social control is unthinkable. How could anyone conceive of such a diabolical scheme let alone carry it out? Anyone who would do it for money or power would need to be a monster, a dangerous psychopath, a sociopath, or a malignant narcissist.
And yet, our failure to imagine that we’re being played has allowed us to be played again and again and our democracy to be corrupted and possibly destroyed.
Concerning manipulative strategies that are too ruthless, too immoral, or too self-serving for most of us to conceive, others not only imagine them but consider them clever. When they enact their ‘unthinkable’ schemes, we can’t believe they meant to cause the harm they invariably cause. For example:
Surely fossil fuel industries wouldn’t knowingly wreck Earth’s climatic balance, ruin our air quality, threaten the survival of future generations, and lie about it simply to ensure their continued profits?
Surely the mainstream media would not have withheld Trump’s dangerous mental pathology (malignant narcissism) from the public before the 2024 elections to promote the political and financial wishes of the media’s oligarch owners, investors, and major corporate advertising clients?
Surely Trump hasn’t withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization and crippled the ability of the NIH, the CDC, and academic researchers to respond effectively against new pandemics to make us desperate for him to do ‘something’ in an emergency and be grateful for whatever he does?
Surely all that Trump and the GOP have done since the inauguration cannot be aimed at making Trump dictator for life and ensure that democrats never again gain control of Congress, the White House, or the Supreme Court?
Surely industries that profit from sickness, disabilities, and fatal diseases would never deceive the public intentionally to ensure their profits would continue to grow for decades?
Surely U.S. government paramilitary thugs wearing face masks to hide their identities would never invade a Congressional office and handcuff its staff for no reason other than illegal harassment and intimidation?
Surely a U.S. President would never knowingly endanger American lives during a lethal pandemic rather than endanger his re-election campaign…and having lost that election, surely that president would never incite a mob of thousands to storm the U.S. Capitol in a violent insurrection to somehow keep him in office?
And yet, ALL of the above unthinkable scenarios are factual realities that are taking place in America today or have already occurred.
Before Trump regained the White House, few Americans could have imagined America as it is today. And yet, it’s exactly what it appears to be if we’ve the courage to look—a democratic nation falling headlong into dictatorship. It’s why we need to fight this fascist regime like there’s no tomorrow, because if they have their way regarding our democracy and our rights there won’t be.
#ResistNow
James P. Kelly
James’s Bio
A unique set of circumstances brought me to a point in 2002 when I picked up a phone, called a switchboard in Washington D.C., and dramatically changed my life’s focus and path. These circumstances included:
the problem-solving and communication skills I developed through a twenty-year railroad career as a signals installer, locomotive electrician, and train dispatcher.
my lifelong total disinterest and non-involvement in politics, religion, or worldview issues.
a 1997 auto accident that left me paralyzed and determined to use the above-mentioned skills to study and understand scientific research involving spinal cord injury (SCI).
my alarm over inaccurate statements regarding stem cells and SCI research made in testimony to the U.S. Senate on March 5th 2002.
That phone call led to my becoming a “pro-cures” patient activist for several years in the stem cells and cloning debates. My involvement included:
thrice serving as a White House surrogate stem cells spokesperson,
debating the medical value of cloning at the New York Academies of Science,
debating the medical worth of embryonic stem cells and cloning on CNN,
testifying before state and federal government committees,
communicating daily for several years with lobbyists, congressional staffs, members of the President’s Council on Bioethics, and White House staff.
Just as my becoming paralyzed led to my intensive study of SCI research, which led to my ‘stem cells’ involvement, I remain socially active against economic fascism and wrote a non-fiction book (“Weaponized Division: Exploiting Beliefs for Profits and Power”) due to:
what I learned through my former exposure to Conservative lobbyists, politicians, and the research industry,
my continued and expanded study of peer-reviewed research,
my observations during the stem cells debates and since of how politicians, industry spokespersons, worldview leaders, and the media target our hopes, fears, and beliefs in order to promote and exploit social division,
America’s harmful and tragic continued division over climate change, clean energy, gun control, Covid-19, and Donald Trump.
I remain socially active and am hosting this site because I’ve witnessed how a universal aspect of the human psyche renders us vulnerable to manipulation and social control by people who deceive themselves (through the same aspect of psychology) to see nothing wrong with their actions, goals, or beliefs. I’m doing this because my conscience insists that I do it.