Victor Davis Hanson: Mar-A-Lago Raid and the Rule of Law

 

The interview took place on August 9, but I only just now came across it.  Michael W. Chapman at CNS News reports on Victor Davis Hanson take on the Mar-a-Lago raid:

When asked about the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump's home in Palm Beach, Fla., professor, author, and political commentator Victor David Hanson said, "right now, we don't have the rule of law in Washington," and added that, "The FBI is beyond redemption."

Hanson, who was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush, made his remarks on the Aug. 9 edition of FNC's Tucker Carlson Tonight, guest-hosted by Will Cain.  

Cain asked Hanson why the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and why were they targeting Trump.

"Well, they're afraid in the short term," he said, in reference to the Democrats and the left, "but in the long term they believe they're morally superior to America, and therefore any means necessary or justifiable for their morally superior ends."

"And right now, we don't have the rule of law in Washington," said Hanson. "Whether you're targeted or exempt depends on your ideology."

. . .

As for the FBI, Hanson remarked, "I never thought I would say this: The FBI is beyond redemption. It is -- all of its bureaus and its institutions that have to be farmed out and broken up. If you have a warrant, an FBI warrant, there is no guarantee that that has not been altered. If you subpoena and you want FBI records on phones ... they will be wiped clean."

"We just saw [FBI Director] Christopher Wray and he just stonewalled every question and then he flew on an FBI plane, our plane, a luxury jet because he had to go to his own vacation spot. He took over, remember, from Andrew McCabe -- what did he do? He lied four times to federal investigators, and his wife was running for an office with Clinton-related PAC money while he was investigating Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal."

. . .

Read the rest here.

# # #

Klaus Schwab channels Karl Marx

Meme seen at Bookworm room:

 

# # #

Daniel Greenfield on policy: deliberate destruction

 

Daniel Greenfield cross-posts his Front Page commentary at his blog, Sultan Knish.  He weighs in on the subject of the Biden administration's policy of deliberate destruction of America's economy and society. Here’s Mr. Greenfield’s conclusion:

This is not a conspiracy theory. The only assumption being made here is that the Left is achieving its stated goals as the result of a plan rather than a series of accidental coincidences.

Too many Republicans are failing to hold the Left accountable by refusing to state what is going on. Hanlon’s Razor, “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” is fine when it’s not being applied to an ideology that is achieving its objectives through its actions.

That’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s policy.

Pasting Biden’s “I Did It” stickers on gas pumps is fine, but he’s completely expendable.

If Americans don’t understand that our misery isn’t an accident or incompetence, but part of a plan, then the downward cycle will continue to play out with increasingly worse outcomes.

Until the Left finally gets what it wants. And then the rest of us won’t have anything left.

Read the rest here. Hard to argue with Mr. Greenfield’s assessment.

# # #

Never Talk About Marxism - but it's in the schools

At andmagazine.substack, Sam Faddis describes the decline and fall of the American education system.  If you have kids or grandkids in school, this will be of interest (read: reason for alarm):

. . . Apparently, Marxists, at least in modern-day America, have the same rule. The first rule about Marxism is you don’t talk about Marxism.

Americans hate Marxism. They understand it is a failed ideology that has killed hundreds of millions of people and laid waste to entire nations. They do not want it here. So, even as the revolutionaries spread their doctrine and feed it to your children they color it as something else.

. . .

Our schools are under the control of an educational establishment completely infiltrated by Marxists who detest this nation and everything it stands for. They are not attempting to teach your children to read, write or do arithmetic. They are training them as revolutionaries for the express purpose of destroying this nation from within.

That is the obvious truth. And, yet, somehow, it cannot be said. The first rule of Marxism is as we know – you can’t talk about Marxism.

Read the full article here. Do you know what is being taught in your neighborhood schools?

# # #

The dystopian state of our nation

 

Patricia McCarthy sums up the “Dystopian State of Our Nation” at American Thinker:

"If you want to know who controls you, look at whom you are not allowed to criticize."

—Voltaire

The signs of decline are everywhere: violent crimes, corruption, riots, all with little or no consequences for the perpetrators, election fraud, and medical mandates for vaccines that do not work.

. . .

All of this is part of the left's grand plan to "transform" American society from the free nation of our founding into something resembling communist China.  The one thing they did not plan on was the presidency of Donald Trump.  His four-year term in the White House was unexpected because the Democrats were certain that they had that election in the bag.  Hillary was on board with their globalist/Marxist plan, and they just knew that all their plans were a go.  But they underestimated the America First movement and were gobsmacked by Trump's thoroughly unpredictable victory.  That is how blinkered they are. 

. . .

The leftists "know" that if they are doing it, it is the right thing to do.  Convince people that there are multiple genders, that men can get pregnant, that it is fair for men to compete against women as women, and that small children can be "trans."  Anyone who publicly notes their destructive bent will be called a racist or homophobic or transphobic.  That is how they roll, our left.

And whom do they blame for all the chaos they incite?  The deplorables of course: Trump supporters, patriots, constitutionalists, conservatives of every stripe.

. . .

This is their overall strategy.  It is right out of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

So, we now are confronted with the result of at least fifty years of the left's official campaign against all things traditionally American: family, biology, freedom of religion, reverence for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, equality under the law, and respect for civil society.  They have succeeded wildly. . . .

Much more at the link here.  Reader comments below the article are thoughtful, if distressing.

# # #

 

Documentary: 'Capitol Punishment'

 

J6 photo credit: Jon Cherry/Getty Images via Daily Signal

There’s an interview at The Daily Signal with the two producers of Capitol Punishment. You’ll remember Nick Searcy from the film Gosnell, or in Cast Away as Tom Hanks’s buddy.  I was not familiar with Chris Burgard’s work.  Robert Bluey, executive editor of The Daily Signal, is the interviewer. 

The full transcript is disturbing and devastating.  Our household plans to watch the film online over the weekend.  For now, here’s the conclusion of the interview with links to the film itself (online @ $9.99):

Movie ‘Capitol Punishment’ Tells Stories
You Won’t Hear From Jan. 6 Committee

Searcy: Well, to be honest, I must say, at the beginning I was reluctant because I was scared. And so many of the people that we talk to, we interview a number of people in the movie, but there’s an equal number, if not more, that were afraid to speak to us.

Because when you see the way the government is treating these people, it makes you wonder, “Is it worth it?” But as we kind of got going, and Chris and I, “OK, we’re going to make this movie,” and we started talking to people as it went on, it became something that I knew I had to do. We had to finish this. We had to see it through. …

I was appalled at my own government and I really never wanted to think this. I never wanted to think that this is what my government is like, but it is. And we have to expose it. We have to get the truth out there and people need to confront it.

I’ve always said from the beginning, even if you disagree with us, please, would you just please watch this movie and tell me if you think this is the way Americans should be treated, no matter what side they’re on.

Even if they were there protesting a Republican president, do you think this is correct? Do you think this is the way our government should operate? And a lot of the problem that we have is a lot of people on the left, they’re afraid to look at it. They don’t want to see the movie. They call it propaganda. They’re just afraid to look at something that might disturb their worldview.

But I really believe that if more people will confront the truth of what happened about Jan. 6 and see through the government’s lies, we’re all going to be better off for it. We can still save this country, but people have to confront the truth of what is actually happening right in front of their faces.

 . . . Right now, there’s a number of places, but the best one right now is: Go to givemelibertynow.org. [to buy] … And you can also find it at capitolpunishmentthemovie.com. [to watch online]

Full interview transcript is here.

# # #

Build Back Better: another misnomer

In an article at American Thinker titled “The Sinister Roots of Build Back Better,” E. Jeffrey Ludwig offers insights and contexts on Biden's campaign slogan.  Mr. Ludwig begins:

President Joe Biden and the puppeteers who control his teleprompter are weakening the country in order to gain more power and restructure the country based on classical Marxism (government ownership of the means of production) as well as woke cultural Marxist lines – destruction of the family, depreciation of male vigor and determination, and demonic sexual perversion throughout all classes and segments of society.

The motto of the interloper now serving in the White House is “Build Back Better” – and the trillions to “build back” is an updated version of the New Deal on steroids.  . . .

And Mr. Ludwig concludes:

The Build Back Better plan superficially appears to be an updated and extravagant Keynesian or New Deal-style spending program, but the endgame is not economic recovery that forever establishes federal government dominance over the states in the socio-political realm. Rather, this BBB is the connection of an enlarged federal government and authority with a depreciation or elimination of U.S. sovereignty in favor of global, communist-style governance. But as if the endgame were not sinister enough, we see this updated Keynesian expansion of expenditures is not a result of economic collapse due to a devastating Depression, as was the justification in the 1930s.

Rather, simultaneously with expanded spending, the goal of the BBB plotters is to weaken the economy and usher in economic and socio-political chaos and mayhem. The southern border hands-off policy is literally facilitating the entrance of millions of unvetted persons. By limiting or eliminating natural gas and oil production in the territorial U.S. under the guise of protecting the environment, the feds incentivize other countries to expand their production of these energy sources. That production, which still means higher energy prices here in the U.S., has an equally negative effect on the world climate as fuel production in our country. But the brooding minds behind BBB want to see inflated prices. They want to see shortages. They want to see racial unrest. They want to see upsurges in crime as new theories of law inform the release of repeat offenders and shorter sentences to destabilize society. The BBB autocrats want to see a society that increasingly identifies as LGBTQ because this radical individualism weakens the social fabric. They want to see Chinese fentanyl imported to kill our citizens who are weak-minded and susceptible to drug use. 

Thus, despite its resemblance to the New Deal, the BBB's so-called governance (properly called betrayal) is at the front end linked to global health, green initiatives, and “interdependence” as an excuse for diminishing U.S. sovereignty. Initiation of these policies was not to combat financially depressive conditions but rather designed to undermine the freedoms and economic viability of the U.S. This might be likened to prescribing chemo to a patient who did not have cancer, and then, in order to justify the perverse treatment plan, injecting the patient with cancer cells in order to justify that plan. The goal of the sinister and aberrated “plan” would not be the recovery of the patient and return to normal living, but to place the “cured” individual into custodial care rather than independent living. That is the equivalent of a United States with diminished sovereignty in a world governance system.

Full column is here.  Ugly.

# # #

Food Security vs Food Control

 

William F. Jasper at The New American identifies yet another imminent threat, this one thanks to “Bond villain” Bill Gates:

Bill Gates, Davos Elites
Pushing Global Food Control
Under Guise of “Food Security”

The same globalists who have been supporting and promoting the tyrannical Covid agenda are also driving the world toward a global food crisis and famine. The recent dramatic increases in food prices together with shortages of baby formula and other foods are already pointing to a looming food crisis, and even the prospect of famine. In certain parts of the world, famine is not merely a prospective future to be feared but a present reality that is being experienced now. In Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, Burundi, Eritrea, and other countries, millions of people are already dying of starvation, and tens of millions more face the same fate. This comes on the heels of the Covid-19 pandemic and, in fact, it turns out that much of the food crisis and starvation is the result of government policy responses to the virus. The famine death spiral is being hastened by the Covid lockdowns and mandates that disrupted planting and harvesting cycles, destroyed crops and livestock herds, bankrupted crucial businesses, and crippled supply chains.

. . .

During the months that followed the initial viral outbreak, more and more people around the globe began to realize that there was something terribly amiss with the official narratives that were driving us toward medical dictatorship. Physicians, virologists, epidemiologists, biologists, and other scientists — many of whom are world-recognized authorities in their fields — were being censored and “canceled” for daring to challenge government policies as unscientific and harmful, for daring to challenge Anthony (“I represent science”) Fauci. But, despite the censorship, the warnings by these courageous experts were leaking out and confirming the dire misgivings that the average thinking, freedom-loving layman already harbored in his soul. It was becoming daily more evident that Fauci “science” was transforming us — politically, socially, and economically — into a frightening replica of the Orwellian Beijing regime ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Apropos of this growing recognition, Covid is increasingly referred to as the “CCP virus,” a term popularized by The Epoch Times.

WEF: Globalist-Communist Convergence

For many observers, one of the most astonishing developments to accompany the CCP virus is the way in which leading “capitalists” have enthusiastically embraced and praised China’s totalitarian “solutions” to the pandemic. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Ray Dalio, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Carlyle, Citibank, and other Wall Street behemoths and their corporate clients have happily cheered on the Covid bandwagon. Of course, as “essential” businesses they have prospered mightily during the pandemic while their smaller, less-politically-connected competitors have been crippled or wiped out.

. . .

Under Covid, the denizens of Big Pharma, with their allied investors and bought-and-paid-for politicians, have gained control over much of our medical and health sectors. Now we are seeing a similar concentration of control over our agriculture and food sectors. Bill Gates, one of the four wealthiest men in the world, is the single most influential person on the planet in directing global health and vaccine policies, with fingers in all aspects of private and public activity. In the past few years, the Microsoft billionaire has become the largest individual owner of American farmland, buying up more than 240,000 acres across eighteen states. 

. . .

 

If one controls the food, one can totally control the population. It is a simple concept — one that all would-be dictators understand full well. History amply testifies, and the government-induced famine experiences of Ukraine, China, and Ethiopia demonstrate, that allowing any government to gain such control is an invitation to mass murder by famine.

The people and institutions leading the push for “food security” should give any sensible person cause for grave alarm. . . 

Read the full article here.  And keep stocking up.

# # #

Andrea Widburg: Russia, Ukraine, & Nazis

 

At American Thinker, Andrea Widburg brings some historical clarity to the word “Nazi” as it is being bandied about in the reporting on Russia and Ukraine:

The word “Nazi” is suddenly everywhere. This isn’t the modern habit of calling everyone we don’t like a “Nazi.” Instead, because of events in Ukraine, the word is showing up in the news, where it has real-world ramifications. . . .

. . . Communism and fascism are the two bastard children of the socialist ideology. Communism calls for the destruction of private property, with the government owning and controlling the means of production, ostensibly for the people’s benefit. Fascism allows private property to exist, provided that the property owners understand that they have no rights separate from the state. Both are totalitarian systems that call themselves “democracies” because people are required to vote for pre-approved chosen candidates. These governments are inevitably repressive.

Most of the world’s governments today are fascist. All power rests in the government, which allows private property to exist but subordinates that property to government control. In China, the control is militaristic and obvious. In Europe, through the EU, it’s bureaucratic and someone more subtle. The current American system—a dominant political party disdainful of the Constitution working hand-in-glove with massive corporate, technocratic interests—is increasingly fascist.

Not all fascists, though, are Nazis. The National Socialist Party in Germany added a few twists to baseline fascist totalitarianism: A quest for world domination and racial obsessions. These two factors led Nazis to believe it was their right to enslave all inferior races except for the Jews, whom they intended to exterminate entirely.

. . .

In the fight for control in Ukraine, both governments are European-style right wing (i.e., totalitarian) governments and both are nationalists. Putin is showing an unnerving yen for regional domination. However, neither the governments nor their troops are Nazis, although each has the potential to be.

Full column is here (includes her chart of forms of government measured by individual freedoms). 

# # #

Fighting fascism

 

J.B. Shurk at American Thinker offers a glimmer of hope:

Surely the victors over communism, fascism, and Nazism cannot then fall victim to the madness of those same philosophies collapsing their systems from within.  This "Us/Them" self-delusion has kept the citizenry from recognizing tyranny inside its gates.

. . .

The growing tyranny in the West has not happened overnight.  It did not suddenly arrive at our doorsteps with the Chinese Flu.  It has been a nightmare decades in the making.  The difference today is that previously slumbering citizens once sublimely content in the normal humdrum of their lives are waking up to realize that the enemies from our past have returned with a vengeance.  Free speech is treated as dangerous.  Western governments, corporations, and social media platforms engage in rampant censorship.  Race and sexual identity are used as the defining attributes of a person to the exclusion of talent, character, and achievement.  Teachers' unions openly demand the right to indoctrinate children according to the interests of the State.  Parents are threatened for believing that their children belong to them.  The criminal justice system is used as a place to punish political opponents and to protect political friends.  Religious expression is outlawed.  Leftists' "secularized religion" is imposed.  Freedom is disparaged as "right-wing."  Coercion has replaced consent.  Victimhood has replaced virtue.  Conformity has replaced individuality.  "Correct" thinking has replaced freethinking.  "Social justice" has replaced real justice.  And the protection of government has become more important than the protection of human rights.

For the newly awakened, there is a tendency to see all this carnage for the first time with fresh eyes and become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the rot.  The corruption, criminality, and chaos have infiltrated everything once held dear, and the future seems hopelessly lost.  That hopelessness, however, is not based in reality but rather the "Us/Them" self-delusion that tyranny could not happen here.  It's not easy to accept that the great sacrifices of the past made in the struggle for human freedom have once again been squandered by a new generation of despots.  It is a necessary first step, though, before the righteous can throw themselves into the fight and get back to work.  And once people come to terms with the fact that tyranny not only could happen here but that it is happening here, then they will realize that the struggle has only really begun in earnest.

. . .

Now consider all of the slogans we daily encounter from government and corporate mouthpieces alike: Black Lives Matter!; Build Back Better!; Trans Rights Are Human Rights!; The Science Is Settled!; Save the Earth!; Stop Global Warming!; The War on Women Is Real!; We're All in This Together!; Abortion Is Health Care!; My Body, My Choice!  It doesn't matter how vapid, factually incorrect, or contradictory the political slogan.  What matters is that all of us repeat them obediently to prove our allegiance to and faith in the system.  And therein lies the key to our salvation.  

Lots more here.

# # #

Marxists: getting what they want by any means

 

Steve Hecht is a new name for me.  From his bio:  Mr. Hecht is a businessman, writer, and film producer, born and raised in New York. He has lived and worked in Guatemala since 1972. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Master of Business Administration in Banking and Finance, both from Columbia University. His article about the Saul Alnksky tactics being used to divide Americans is on point:

The deceitful portrayal of the January 6 protest as an insurrection is a tactic to divide the nation and impose a dictatorship. With big-tech censorship and regime-media manipulation, the false narrative has garnered momentum and is paving the way for further erosion of the electoral and judicial systems.

The January 6 event could not have been an insurrection. It had zero chance of overthrowing the government, which was not even the intent of the protest. They wanted to restore electoral integrity and transparency. Those who assert otherwise are boldfaced liars or blind followers of the liars.

In his 1971 work, Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky wrote, “All issues must be polarized … One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.” By making opponents devils, followers of radical manipulators need not even consider an issue’s merits. They follow party dogma to avoid empowering the evil ones.

Information control is essential to convince a large proportion of the public that a lie is true. Legacy and social media partner with Democrats by lying to and hiding the truth from their audiences. A scan regarding any issue important to Democrats reveals complete lockstep representation in legacy outlets and on social-media platforms. Without media partners, the Biden regime could not have achieved power; the truth stands in the way of the Biden agenda.

Since 2016, Democrats and their media partners have falsely demonized Trump and his supporters as white supremacists, xenophobes, and any epithet they can pile on.  . . .

Legacy and social media, Democrats, and federal bureaucrats (the cabal) together created false narratives about Trump-Russia collusion, a call to Ukraine, Hunter Biden’s computer, and finally, the January 6 events. Using typical Marxist self-projection onto the enemy, the cabal falsely portrays Trump supporters as cult followers. The purpose is to keep cabal followers angry, fearful, and ready to support any action, including crimes, against the enemy.

Some pundits say Democrats are hypocrites for condemning the January 6 event as an insurrection while viewing the violence between June and August of 2020 in many cities as peaceful. Totalitarians go beyond hypocrisy and double standards. They have only one standard: getting what they want by any means.

. . .

The (Not) for the People Act must not pass. Democrats support it because they cannot win free elections. If America-first Republicans succeed over RINOS, such as Democrat facilitator Liz Cheney, and limit electoral fraud, Americans will have a chance to recover in 2022 and 2024.

. .

Read the entire article here.

# # #

Cloward-Piven Plan is happening now

 

image credit: pinterest.com

Wayne Allyn Root is a contributor to Townhall.  He’s taken controversial positions in the past, but I personally find his logic and reasoning in this article to be persuasive.

Vaccine Mandate Is Cloward-Piven Plan To Destroy USA and End Capitalism  

Mr. Root starts off:

Back in the 1980s, I was a Columbia University student learning about a plan to destroy America and end capitalism. It was called Cloward-Piven -- named after a Columbia University husband-and-wife professor team. Their insane goal was to turn America into a socialist, communist hellhole.

They planned to do it by overwhelming and collapsing the U.S. economy with massive debt, created by getting as many Americans as possible to depend on welfare, food stamps and unemployment benefits. In the ensuing economic catastrophe and collapse of our country, every business owner would get on their knees to beg government to save them.

At that moment of crisis and chaos, we would become a socialist, communist country.

Don't look now, but it's happening. The communists of Columbia (and every other elitist Ivy League school) have tried for decades to force a majority of Americans to rely on welfare benefits. They failed. But they won't give up. They've modified the plan. It's now a powerful one-two punch.

First, they've opened the borders to let millions of migrants and refugees into this country -- almost all of whom want cradle-to-grave welfare. Also, don't forget they all need free health care for themselves and their kids, and their new babies, and their extended families. That alone could overwhelm the system and collapse the economy. That's before welfare and food stamps. And then there's free public school for all their children and expensive English-as-a-second-language programs that cost billions of dollars but make teachers unions filthy rich.

Open borders is Cloward-Piven strategy updated for 2021. 

. . .

Part Deux of Cloward-Piven is the vaccine mandates. . .

Read the full column here. As I said, I have a hard time finding a flaw in his reasoning.  More scary stuff.

# # #

David Horowitz’s "I Can’t Breathe"

At FrontPageMag.com, Mark Tapson  reviews David Horowitz’s new book I Can’t Breathe, a book that takes a deep dive into the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization. "The self-proclaimed trained Marxists who founded that subversive movement exploited, and continue to exploit, [26 black] victims in order to incite a civil war in America by hyping a false narrative of the systematic targeting of blacks by law enforcement.”  

I have not yet read Mr. Horowitz's book, but Mr. Tapson’s review provides solid information on the many race hoaxes and propaganda that are tearing apart America’s social fabric.  Here’s part of the review:

Horowitz’s aim with the book is to puncture BLM’s grotesque narrative, which is supported by the Democrat Party and amplified by its media enablers. He begins the book with a summary of our current racial divide, which was exacerbated by deadly, nationwide BLM rioting – “a summer of insurrections” – in 2020 that constituted “the costliest sustained acts of civil disorder in American history.” The siege of Portland by violent leftist activists, the Democrat movement to defund police departments and the subsequent crime waves that swept the nation, the anti-American messaging, the 2016 massacre of five white cops in Dallas at the hands of a BLM-inspired black extremist – Horowitz weaves all these ugly threads and more to create a dark tapestry of the devastation that Black Lives Matter’s myth-making has wrought:

The casualties of the scorched-earth war unleashed by Black Lives Matter dwarf the total casualties of all the alleged racial injustices the organization has protested. The atrocities instigated and inspired by BLM encompass scores of innocent wounded and dead, both black and white… Surveying these disasters, one could reasonably conclude that, thanks to Black Lives Matter campaigns to abolish police departments, advances in both race relations and protections for urban black communities have been set back fifty years.

Horowitz compiles the names of 26 black victims BLM claims were murdered or maimed by the police since the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 sparked the launch of the movement. They include the aforementioned Martin, Floyd and Taylor, as well as Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Race, and Freddie Gray, to name some of the most well-known. Then – in chapters on how the BLM movement began, grew, and went national and then international – Horowitz goes on to dissect all 26 incidents according to the facts, backed up by over 70 pages of endnotes. He demonstrates how BLM has lied about every single one in its quest to aggravate racial tensions and rip America apart at the seams. . . .

The full review is here.  Highly recommended.

# # #

The Four Stages of Ideological Subversion

 

image of dystopia via dystopia wallpapers

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has been my go-to source for years -- for in-depth analyses and reporting on significant current events.  I first discovered his website when he was digging through the evidence, and manipulation of evidence, in the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case.  That was in 2012-13.   Here’s his take on what we’ve been witnessing over the past dozen+ years, especially as it relates to the current COVID-19 hysteria and government over-reach:

It has been almost ten years since CTH first outlined the 1984 interview between Yuri Bezmenov and G. Edward Griffin titled “Deception was My Job”.  [2013 CTH Article Here] However, it is worth revisiting the interview as we find ourselves increasingly influenced by a deliberate effort to control U.S. society.

Mr. Yuri Bezmenov was a Soviet informant and KGB operative who defected to the United States in the early 70s.  Within the interview [full video here], Bezmenov lays out the four stages of “ideological subversion” created by radical Marxists to indoctrinate and weaken nations from within.

It is my contention the Chicago Marxists aligned with Barack Obama (revolutionary communists) were/are following this ‘four stage’ roadmap.  The U.S. State Department is filled with like-minded travelers who align with this approach.

Some researchers have identified the objective as connected to the Fabian Socialist goal, others have called it “The Color Revolution”, but the names do not matter much; what matters is the map they follow, the four stages:

♦Stage One: Demoralization – Elimination of American Exceptionalism, fundamental change of national identity, structural deconstruction of foundational principles, elimination of religion. Embedding a new societal design upon the psyche of generations through ideological academia. Peer pressure by elites upon academics and society to convince that prior values were inherently flawed, racist, prejudiced etc. National identity is diluted with aspersions toward historical references. National history is re-written, re-defined, and molded to fit the new intended behavioral model and create the new values.

♦Stage Two: Crisis – Creation of economic, financial, and national security crisis. Also includes social crisis and breakdown of previous self-evident restrictions on moral behavior. Cloward Piven approach to overloading the system, ie more takers than producers. The crisis produces benevolent leaders who will promise to deliver “things” (Hope and Change) to meet people’s needs through Social and Economic Justice. False illusions that the situation is under control if certain strategic directions are followed (Bailouts, Stimulus, Jobs Bills, Regulations of industry, Unconstitutional Power Grabs, Dismissal of Historical Laws, Changes in legislative processes, Changes in checks and balances of power etc).

♦Stage Three: Normalization – The uncomfortable feelings of change including losses of freedom are absorbed and accepted. Lost national identity becomes accepted as the norm within the new societal model. A period of national rebranding transition where people are so overwhelmed by the change they become numb and begin to accept a ‘new normal’. This period of normalization lasts indefinitely as the progression is continually advanced and acceptance takes place in small controlled doses. (New limits on behavior, Regulations, TSA Patdowns, Intrusions into privacy, Controls into daily life) These things begin to be accepted as “just the way it is now”.

♦Stage Four: Destabilization – Unlike the period of “Crisis” the people who helped orchestrate the change are now no longer needed. The new overarching centralized governmental model begins to take control. Leftist usurpers who initially thought they were going to be part of the new power structure begin to realize they were used and manipulated and they themselves become the new enemy. Because they have first hand knowledge of the agenda they are the primary target for elimination. They may simply be disregarded, obfuscated, thrown out, or they may be collected, imprisoned, or worse killed. There is no longer room for dissention. Dissent is only possible within the free system that has now been deconstructed. Therefore the leftist purpose is served once the destabilization is complete. Totalitarian Government takes control.

Perhaps a reasonable person would argue that elimination of economic capacity (to live freely) is just as restrictive as living inside a walled camp. If you cannot live freely, earn a living freely, move about without restrictions, and determine for yourself your choices, then what really is the difference between being thrown in an internment camp and having the invisible chain link fence of diminished freedom built around your home?

If government can control your income through taxation, employment and redistribution; tell you what to eat by deciding your choices for you; tell you how much energy you are allowed to consume through rules and regulation; tell you what kind of car you can be allowed to drive; tell you what type of toilet you can buy; tell you what kind of detergent you may wash with; determine what information you have access to through the TV media and internet access; and then control your capacity to receive the healthcare of your choice; then really what is the difference between living in a collective camp under such rules and living where you are now but following the same rules ?

I would argue that we are solidly in the middle of stage #3 (normalization), while all around us Stage Four (destabilization) is beginning, perhaps as planned. We talk about the new “isms” all the time. Heck, most of what we discuss is our reluctance to engage in acceptance of the “normalization”, and our seeming frustration to be able to influence “it” to stop presenting us with new acceptance challenges.

And here is the kicker:

♦Everything you just read above was written in 2013.  If we consider the constant nudges, probes and pushes from the leftists in government and society (BLM, Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, etc.), we can consider them as different approaches, tests or probes per se’, toward the same totalitarian outcome.  Then if we overlay the weaponization of COVID-19 fear as the biggest effort so far, well, from that perspective SARS-CoV-2 takes on a new strategic dimension.

There is much more at the link here.  I’d recommend the whole thing for weekend reading and re-reading.

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Trump rally in Phoenix last Saturday: Rumble livestream

 

Last weekend, President Donald J. Trump headlined a TurningPoint USA rally in Phoenix. Our household was unable to watch it live, but we linked to the Rumble livestream and watched it yesterday evening.  We were especially interested to hear Trump mention “communism” by name a few times, LeBron James, America Last, and the team formerly known as the Cleveland Indians.  And of course he talked about election fraud. This Rumble link here allows you to move back and forth if you so choose:

Nick Arama at Red State posted a good report of the event, "Trump Eviscerates the Democrats in Rip-Roaring Rally in Arizona," and it is much shorter.

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Socialism's seductive appeal

 

Roger Kimball has good history and philosophical lessons for us at American Greatness. He concludes:

For centuries, prudent political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom. That species of benevolence underwrote the tragedy of Communist tyranny. The rise of political correctness has redistributed that lust over a new roster of issues: not the proletariat, but the environment, not the struggling masses, but “reproductive freedom,” gay rights, the welfare state, the Third World, diversity training, and an end to racism and xenophobia. It looks, in Marx’s famous mot, like history repeating itself as farce. It would be a rash man, however, who made no provision for a reprise of tragedy.

Such attitudes are all but ubiquitous in modern democratic societies. Although of relatively recent vintage, they have spread rapidly. The triumph of this aspect of Enlightened thinking, as [philosopher David] Stove notes, marked the moment when “the softening of human life became the great, almost the only, moral desideratum.”

The modern welfare state is one result of the triumph of abstract benevolence. Its chief effects are to institutionalize dependence on the state while also assuring the steady growth of the bureaucracy charged with managing government largess. Both help to explain why the welfare state has proved so difficult to dismantle. The governments that support the welfare state, Stove points out,

are elected by universal adult franchise; but an electorally decisive proportion of the voters—in some countries, approaching a quarter—either is employed by government or is dependent to a significant extent on some welfare programme. In these circumstances it is merely childish to expect the welfare state to be reduced, at least while there is universal suffrage. A government that did away with free education, for example, or socialised medicine, simply could not be re-elected. Indeed it would be lucky to see out its term of office.

Is there an alternative? Stove quotes Thomas Malthus’ observation, from his famous “Essay on Population,” that “we are indebted for all the noblest exertions of human genius, for everything that distinguishes the civilised from the savage state,” to “the laws of property and marriage, and to the apparently narrow principle of self-interest which prompts each individual to exert himself in bettering his condition.”

“The apparently narrow principle of self-interest,” mind you.

Contrast that robust, realistic observation with Robert Owen’s blather about replacing the “individual selfish system” with a “united social” system that, he promised, would bring forth a “new man.”

Stove observes that Malthus’ arguments for the genuinely beneficent effects of “the apparently narrow principle of self-interest” “cannot be too often repeated.” Indeed. Even so, a look around at the childish pretended enthusiasm for socialism makes me think that, for all his emphasis, Stove understated the case. Jim Carrey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (not to mention a college student near you) would profit by having a closer acquaintance with the clear-eyed thinking of Thomas Malthus.

It’s the same lessons that gave America its first Thanksgiving;  when collective socialism failed, the settlers learned that freedom, incentive, and private property harnessed self-interest to the greater good.

Read Mr. Kimball’s entire essay here.

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Beware the not funny cartoon

Not funny cartoon via Patriot Post:

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Pushing back against Socialism

A.F. Branco cartoon credit: Townhall 

There are a lot of good editorials online this week comparing capitalism and socialism. But Alicia Colon is always one of my favorite contributors, and her column today begins

If Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez had grown up as I did during the Cold War in the 50's the very last thing she would be promoting would be socialism.

Granted our circumstances were very different as my family was dysfunctional, poor and we lived in the tough streets of Spanish Harlem; unlike the new Democrat congresswoman who spent most of her teen years in a more posh neighborhood.

Nevertheless I benefited from a solid parochial education taught by anti-Marxist nuns.

AOC, as she is now known, is a product of academic indoctrination by Marxists professors who have obviously never read Animal Farm or 1984 and are enthralled with the socialist agenda.

. . .

As poor as we were, we felt fortunate to live in this great country where we had the freedom to become whatever we chose to be. Most of us wanted to become wealthy enough to leave the inner city and raise healthy families. That was not possible under communism where the state ruled over everyone's lives.

. . .

AOC and so many poorly educated millenials have become useful idiots for the progressive Marxists disciples of Saul Alinsky and the Frankfurt School that Andrew Breitbart warned us about. We, who lived in the ‘50's, learned how to think and reason so that the very idea of global warming smelled to high heaven. How on earth could we plan to save a planet that old based on data that has only been around for a few hundred years?

. . .

Unfortunately, the feeble-minded have the stage right now and it is up to us older citizens in the silent majority to cut through the lies of the progressive and lamestream press and recognize that it is no longer viable for Americans not to get involved with politics. One of the major parties has been hijacked and supports infanticide, anti-Semitism and boos when it hears the name of God.

The full article is here. And Roger L. Simon at PJ Media comes to the same conclusion:

Those of us who believe in the market, even with the usual reservations, should be preparing for battle. We have in our corner that some Democrats (Omar, AOC, etc.) are heading off a cliff. That's to the good, but complacency is our enemy. As the left would say, the struggle continues (la lucha continua). Let's turn it back on them.

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The War Against Trump

David Horowitz of the Freedom Center was raised a Communist. He rejected Communism in favor of freedom, and his perspective is always inspiring and insightful. And he knows how to call them [the Progressive left] out. Here’s his short piece on Front Page Magazine today (I’d bookmark it or email it to yourself for reference when you anticipate a discussion around the dinner table!):

the Democrats and their media accomplices have declared all-out war on the Trump White House. Under the guise of “resistance” – as though the Trump was the head of an occupying army rather than an elected president - they have set out to destroy his administration. They are not “sore losers,” as many had surmised when their hysterical attacks on Trump as an American Hitler began, they are an army of saboteurs bent on destroying the government the voters preferred. Their general, Barack Obama, is an unrepentant radical who abused the office of the presidency when he was in power, and as ex-president is now leading a war to overthrow his successor.  

With the election over, the Democratic Party is now in the hands of the Bernie Sanders-Tom Perez-Keith Ellison-Barack Obama radical left. Abetted by a corrupt media, funded by the anti-American billionaire George Soros, egged on by Obama’s corrupt attorney general, Loretta Lynch, and a collusive press, the left has launched vile and violent demonstrations in the streets, rancid witch-hunts in the halls of Congress posing as “confirmation hearings,” and treasonous intelligence leaks, which have already claimed Trump’s National Security advisor General Michael Flynn as their victim. Their next target Attorney General Jeff Sessions is already in their crosshairs, the object of character assassinations by senators Schumer, Warren, and other Democrats, and by their disgraced and disgraceful media accomplices. 

For none of this would have been possible without the active collusion of the Washington Post, the New York Times and the media networks who have promoted the false narrative of an alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians to fix with the election. There is zero evidence of such collusion but plenty of evidence that Obama and his cohorts have disregarded the Constitution and the law to spy on reporters they don’t like, to use the IRS and other government agencies to take down their opponents and undermine the democratic system.

As I explained in my book Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America, the source of this civil war mentality is a profound rejection of the American idea. This is the idea that we are equal citizens regardless of our origins, and that we are accountable as individuals for what we do. The left’s creed – identity politics – is an anti-American, racially charged determination to reject individual accountability and individual freedom, and to establish in their place group privileges, and racial/gender hierarchies. These hierarchies are based on the malicious premise that whites, heterosexuals and males are oppressors and - in the words of the Democratic platform - America is a society governed by “systemic racism,” which needs to be fundamentally transformed.

This collectivist, racial creed is the heart and soul of today’s Democratic Party and its allies in the mainstream media. It is the inspiration for the war Democrats have declared on the newly elected government of Donald Trump. In his inaugural address, Trump addressed the war in uncompromising but thoroughly American terms. “Through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other…. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice…. Whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.” This is the American creed, and it is the voice of the American people who elected Trump in November 2016.

A War Against Trump??? Surely that is an overstatement. Um, ask Monica Crowley. (And for back-up on CNN's Crowley hit job, see here.) And look what CRTV / Mark Levin / and “a billionaire named Cary Katz” just did to Mark Steyn. And that’s on top of  Michael “Hockey Stick graph” Mann’s lawsuit again Steyn -- that is still stuck in the circuit court.

Unfortunately, it does not seem possible to overstate the case, and Horowitz sums it up.

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