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Author Archives: theartfuldilettante
People Who Tell You What to do are Doing You no Favors
COVID fascism is evil. COVID hysteria is a sickness — a mental one, not a physical one. Increasingly, I see evidence in support of an underlying cause for the mental sickness. People — millions of them, perhaps 30-40 percent or more of Americans — WANT a calamity. Things were going SO well in 2019. Those who miss those times are NOT the mentally sick ones. The mentally sick ones are the ones who don’t feel there’s meaning or purpose in their lives unless there’s a disaster. They WANT a modern-day Great Depression; or World War II. These are the people who use the word “pandemic” over and over and over again…And these are the same people who want everyone to know they got vaccinated; but they also LIKE telling people, “Oh, I tested positive for COVID.” Sure, in 99 percent of cases or more either they don’t get sick, or their sickness is no worse than an aggravating cold or flu. But they never used to tell the world they had a cold or the flu. With COVID, it’s different. COVID is a badge of honor. “Look at me. I’m suffering. I’m sacrificing. I mean something. My life means something. It’s all for the Cause.”
It’s deeper than politics. Of course, the type of people I describe are overwhelmingly if not exclusively Democrat-Communist. That’s because the Democrat-Communist “progressive” movement is all about suffering, sacrifice and giving up. They hate capitalism — even though they happily accept its comforts and wealth — so COVID gives them an opportunity to undermine and disparage prosperity. “Oh, it’s a terrible thing. The world is suffering. So much selfishiness! People are so bad! But what an opportunity for us to pull together.” Of course, it’s B.S. The same people who spout this crap are the ones now on the verge of creating political dissension camps for the unvaccinated, those who voted for Trump, and those who don’t want their children taught Marxism and racism in government-run schools. They don’t care anything about community spirit. But they love the opportunity to see people suffer because — well, because they are sick. And they are sick because they feel life isn’t worth anything unless people are suffering — perhaps even themselves.
I have known and written of all these themes for three decades now. I have seen these themes play out in the clinical depression and anxiety disorders I have counseled people for over many years. But I never, ever envisioned that I would be living in a time when America would be so consumed by such a mentality that we would almost overnight morph into something very close to a totalitarian dictatorship.
Mental health matters. I’m a psychotherapist, and I always knew that. But I never knew how much until I lived through America, and the whole Western world, going insane.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Watch “Is Government the New God? – The Religion of Totalitarianism” on YouTube
America’s Next Pendulum Swing Had Better Be a DOOZY
American history has been full of pendulums swinging, not just politically but culturally. Unless we’re heading into a dystopian, totalitarian, long-term nightmare (which we MIGHT be), the next pendulum swing will be momentous. Picture a tidal wave with all the Democrats, all the RINOs, all the news networks, all the lying newspapers and websites, all the traitors in the military brass, all the corporate and Hollywood phony, hypocritical elites….being swept away.
If America is true to its prior pattern, it will happen. The Civil War was followed by the Industrial Revolution. WW I was followed by the Roaring 20s. WW II was followed by I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver. The 1960s upheaval was followed by Reagan’s morning in America and the bombastic 80s and 90s. But if a majority continues to tolerate the viciously dishonest and ruthless authoritarianism we have been getting relentlessly the last few years, it will surely be the end.
America has seen battles between good and evil before; and in every case, good has defeated evil. What we’re dealing with now is a snickering, mocking, psychosis-induced evil on steroids. It HAS to lose. We cannot let any of it prevail. It has to be decisively and ruthlessly DEFEATED.
Failure is NOT an option.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
The Revolution Has Begun and it’s not Being Recognized
Revolutions have a funny characteristic: they’re unpredictable.
The general assumption is that revolutions are political. The revolution some foresee in the U.S. is the classic armed insurrection, or a coup or the fragmentation of the nation as states or regions declare their independence from the federal government.
By focusing on the compelling drama of political upheaval we’re missing the real revolution, which is social and economic: the Great Resignation , a global movement which in the U.S. has largely unrecognized American characteristics .
The Great Resignation is the real revolution which few if any recognize. The status quo is going to great lengths to dismiss it, for example, The Great Resignation: Historical Data and a Deeper Analysis Show It’s Not as Great as Screaming Headlines Suggest , because this revolution is not controllable with force and is therefore unstoppable.
The sources of the revolution are in plain sight: you rig the economy to enrich the already-rich top 10% and super-size the already bloated wealth of the top 0.1%, and then you wonder why the bottom 90% are indebted, broke, burned out and disgruntled? The hubris of the ruling elites and their lackeys is off the scale, as this structural exploitation is presumed to be not just acceptable but delightful to the bottom 90%.
Alternatively, the more cynical view of those at the top looking down is: they have to work at the wages we pay in inhuman conditions because they have to: all the debt-serfs and tax donkeys must accept our pay and conditions or starve.
This is neoliberal neofeudalism with the kid gloves of PR removed.
Secondly, it’s rather obvious what happens to public protests against systemic exploitation and disempowerment of the bottom 90%: they go nowhere. Anyone remember Occupy Wall Street ? This is the fate of any quasi-political movement: co-option, suppression, etc., and then benign neglect as the full-court press eventually wears out the peasants.
So the real revolution takes place out of the spotlight, as one person at a time opts out . They opt out of the unwinnable rat-race, of burnout, of debt-serfdom, of powerlessness, of accepting exploitive work conditions and all the tiresome trappings of neofeudalism.
After 45 years of losing power, the workforce finally has a bit of leverage. Some of the leverage results from demographics–the Baby Boom generation is retiring en masse and so the workforce is shrinking–and from the revolution of opting out, as millions of individuals quit, creating a labor shortage unlike any in living memory.
As millions of workers opt out of conventional employment / exploitation, individuals have leverage due to the labor shortage to reverse the game employers have been winning for 45 years. Corporate America dropped the pretense of rewarding loyalty long ago, and nobody believes the corporate PR about “we’re a family”–unless Corporate America is referring to an abusive, dysfunctional “family.”
Here’s a depiction of the typical corporate workplace: a “torture room” where the overlords are obsessed with bogus feedback from employees and customers.
American workers are awakening to the reality that they only way to get ahead is to get out. Stop playing the rigged game and start playing the players.
Workers are now in a position to quit and demand better pay and conditions, and then quit again to gain more, and then quit again. The employers are gnashing their teeth at this loss of power, but that’s what happens in revolutions: the pendulum swings from one extreme to the opposite extreme.
Workers are realizing that they are powerless to change a rigged system at the ballot box or by conventional means. The only freedom that’s still available is to quit amd game the system to the hilt, or drop out into the informal economy, try one’s hand at the rigged casino of rampant speculation or give up the whole unattainable dream of the McMansion on the golf course and build yourself a micro-home on a cheap rural parcel and work your own micro-enterprise.
A great many workers are done dealing with the abusive American public who seem to feel they have a right to abuse employees. The government has the monopoly on force but it doesn’t have the power to force individuals to tolerate abuse from employers, co-workers or customers.
Those quitting give conventional reasons, obfuscating the revolution. The structural dynamics driving the Great Resignation are not entirely conscious; the awareness that the ground has shifted beneath our feet is not easily discernable or described, but we sense it and act on it nonetheless.
American ingenuity is increasingly turned to playing the players via individual initiative. While the financial elite focuses on stripmining the next rigged game, the workers are focusing on bailing out in one form or another.
Revolutions have a funny characteristic: they’re unpredictable. The global revolution is being written off as “transitory” because it’s terribly inconvenient for the rigged-against-the-bottom-90% status quo. But it isn’t transitory, it’s gathering momentum.
Watch “Why ‘Fairness’ is Impossible | Thomas Sowell” on YouTube
Hooray for the Supreme Court….for now
A good result, finally, from our Supreme Court. The leftists will go absolutely insane and foam at the mouth. Roberts and Kavanaugh wobbled and went with the leftists on mandating health care workers, which is obscene because health care workers have individual rights too. But it could have been worse, I guess. Now watch for the Democratic meltdown. I predict the Biden regime and blue state governors will simply ignore it, and triple down on their tyranny.
Using OSHA to force medical treatment on individuals? Biden should not merely be impeached. He should be arrested, tried and convicted. Along with his entire regime. They are lawless, violent and utterly at war with the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights — as much as the Soviet Communists and Hitler’s National Socialists were. As I keep saying: We are an occupied country.
I will take the Supreme Court decision. But in the bigger picture, it’s not going to matter a whole lot with a bunch of corrupt, bought-and-sold tyrants (Biden, and the people he works for) who are ruthlessly at war with man’s rights. Until we literally overthrow them, we are in serious trouble.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Watch “The Promise of Free Enterprise” on YouTube
Watch “Are Electric Cars Really Green?” on YouTube
The FBI’s Broken Relationship with Us
All large organizations suffer from the occasional presence of bad actors. The FBI is no exception. But it managed to retain a good relationship with the public in spite of its flaws because it was still solving rather than creating crimes.
But something fundamentally changed in the last five years. The Comey clown car arrived in the center ring and unloaded under the spotlight. As the public watched the comedy of James “The Cardinal” Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, searching for phantom Russian colluders under the bed, while actual Russian colluders cheered them on, we knew we needed to take a closer look. The examination has been shocking.
The “Midyear Exam,” the bureau’s name for the Hillary Clinton email investigation, was a farce. No subpoenas were issued, central figures were given immunity without cooperation, evidence was destroyed by the FBI, and then the attorney general had a clandestine meeting with “Slick Willy” Clinton — the husband of the target. Surprise: No charges were filed. “The Cardinal” Comey held a press conference and announced that even though Hillary had broken numerous laws, she didn’t mean it, so he was giving her a pass. It must have been an accident that an email server, containing classified documents, appeared in her bathroom — with a support staff.
“Crossfire Hurricane” was the investigation into alleged Trump collusion with Russia to steal an election. Within a couple of months, the bureau knew that the whole thing was a hoax created by Hillary, yet the investigation continued for three years — eventually transitioning into a special counsel investigation. Peter Strzok called “Crossfire Hurricane” the bureau’s insurance policy — against a Trump presidency. It was a good way to show off for his mistress, Lisa Page — a rabid anti-Trump FBI lawyer.
The “Midyear Exam” was a cover-up, and “Crossfire Hurricane” was a setup. Both were exposed by the clown show the FBI put on. Now the public is paying attention. Conspiracies that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago seem entirely plausible now.
We were told that the FBI heroically thwarted a kidnapping attempt of Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Then we learned that there wasn’t one informant involved. There were twelve informants — involved in every aspect of recruiting and planning. Next, the lead agent, Richard Trask, was fired from the FBI after being arrested for beating his wife after a swingers’ party. Prior to his arrest, Trask was the public face of the investigation — and filed the original criminal complaint under oath. Last month, Will Cain, sitting in for Tucker Carlson, revealed that two more agents (unnamed) have been removed from the case and will not be testifying. Was the kidnapping a thwarted crime or a setup? It seems fair to ask, doesn’t it?
Then came the “January 6 insurrection” investigation and the mystery of the missing provocateurs. A number of individuals are seen on video inciting the riot. Yet none of them is among the hundreds who have been arrested. One such individual, Ray Epps, is clearly seen on video encouraging the crowd to enter the Capitol. Epps was included on the FBI’s “most wanted” list — that is, until internet sleuths identified and located Epps. Was he summarily arrested? Nope, he was removed from the “most wanted” list and is a free man to this day. Again, we have to ask — was January 6 a set-up?
The fact that these are reasonable questions to ask shows how damaged the FBI’s relationship with the public has become. Corruption within the FBI is undeniable — to everyone but Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland. The Democrats aren’t raising the issue because the bureau is currently doing their dirty work. That’s shortsighted and will not last. A corrupt organization eventually evolves to serve only itself. Everything else must be broken to its will — including the Democrat party.
How badly has the FBI damaged its reputation? Quentin Smith and I recently did a series of articles proposing rehabilitation of the bureau (here, here, and here). The emails we received were telling. Many told us we were nuts, that the FBI is beyond repair and must be shut down. Here’s a representative example from a private citizen:
They do not serve we the people. We are treated like we are their property, as slaves to plunder. Slaves who think we are free. There is no way in hell you can convince honest hard-working Americans that all of a sudden, our police state just started to become corrupt.
Here’s another one:
I read your article, and although you and your retiree Bureau co-author would hope to rehab the FBI – those of us seeing the internal work know it must be eliminated. … This place is corrupted to the fundamental level. And much of the FBI I have seen in the past 6 years is beyond saving. … “Shut it all down” needs to be the resounding message. Forget probation. Suspension without pay. The FBI needs to give up badge and gun while we root out all of the failed culture of oath violations. If it never can be reestablished, so be it.
That one is from a current FBI agent. The bureau’s problems are quite real. Once corruption has taken root — and it has — it will grow like a virus until it burns itself out.
If left unchecked, what does the dystopian future of the FBI look like? When the trust of the public is lost, the cooperation of the public will also be lost. Eventually, people will not know if the agent standing at their door is asking a question about a legitimate crime or attempting to set someone up for political purposes. The standard answer to any question will become, “I have nothing to say, get a subpoena or talk to my lawyer.”
As the FBI’s credibility crumbles, so will its conviction rate. It will be harder to obtain warrants, and judges will find their evidence inadmissible (as the Rittenhouse judge recently did). Juries will find their testimony unconvincing. Jury deliberations will come to include discussion about how much the testifying agents were lying and how much of their evidence was tampered with.
The FBI currently provides technical services to law enforcement throughout the country. With a reputation of evidence tampering (looking at you, Kevin Clinesmith), police activities nationwide will be set back. Thousands of “solved” cases may need to be re-examined.
The agency’s faults will become too obvious for even the Democrats to ignore. Just as they’re trying to back away from the defund movement now, they’ll eventually need to back away from a corrupt bureau for political expediency. Americans will not elect politicians (outside San Francisco and Minneapolis) who appear to support a police state. Then things will get really interesting.
Organizational paranoia will grow in the FBI. Survival will become the bureau’s primary motivator. An agency with no integrity will recruit only thugs with no integrity. Anyone suggesting reform of the agency will be targeted. Criminal traps will be set for the citizenry and blackmail used against the Judiciary and political class. The bureau will move from investigating to instigating and, finally, to conducting crimes.
This would have been the thinking of lunatic conspiracy theorists just a few years ago. With the targeting of protesting parents and Trump supporters we’ve seen in recent years, it is entirely plausible.
The FBI will cease being the “plumbers” (the nickname for Nixon’s henchmen) for the Democrats and become the enemy of both parties. Then either it or America will die. A free people cannot coexist with a secret police force, using investigations for purposes other than law enforcement. The contest will be epic.
A recent Zogby poll found that by 46 to 31 percent, members of the public think their sheriff’s department has more legal authority than the FBI. Obviously, the legal authority of the bureau is not subject to opinion. It is defined by statute. But there’s an important message in that poll. We are self-governed. Legal authority, without moral authority, equals no authority — at least not over free people.
John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He currently writes at the American Free News Network (afnn.us). He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 