Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
— Dostoyevsky
Honesty is not a selfless trait. It’s not a sentimental gesture befitting a Boy Scout.
Honesty means adherence to reality. When you’re honest, you’re sane.
You don’t necessarily owe everyone the truth. You don’t owe someone the truth just because they say so. You never owe the truth to someone with a gun pointed at your head. Nor to a gossip, nor to anyone else without proper respect or boundaries.
But you have an allegiance to yourself, to your own survival, and to the well-being of anyone you love to know what’s true, as best you can. That’s how honesty is connected to love. If you are unable or unwilling to be honest with yourself — to let yourself KNOW facts, know reality — then your love and allegiance to another will not be worth very much.
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Turns out that evidence was factual, and polling later showed had it been reported as other issues during the runup to the election, Joe Biden almost certainly would have lost the election.
Now Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime Democrat but running as an independent because of Democrat party allegiance to Biden as a candidate, says if elected president, he’d have a special counsel look at the disputes.
And he debunked the standard Democrat talking point against Trump and his voters.
“January 6 is one of the most polarizing topics on the political landscape. I am listening to people of diverse viewpoints on it in order to make sense of the event and what followed. I want to hear every side,” he said.
“It is quite clear that many of the January 6 protestors broke the law in what may have started as a protest but turned into a riot. Because it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection.
I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protestors carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully,'” he said.
But he does have concern for how Joe Biden and his appointees have manipulated the situation.
“Like many reasonable Americans, I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment. That would fit a disturbing pattern of the weaponization of government agencies — the DoJ, the IRS, the SEC, the FBI, etc. — against political opponents,” he warned.
“One can, as I do, oppose Donald Trump and all he stands for, and still be disturbed by the weaponization of government against him,” he said. “As president, I will appoint a special counsel — an individual respected by all sides — to investigate whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends in this case, and I will right any wrongs that we discover.
“Without the impartial rule of law, there is no true democracy or moral governance. That’s why John Adams, a staunch patriot, defended the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre in court. If we betray justice in pursuit of an ideal, that betrayal will corrupt anything we accomplish,” he said.
He said political opponents in America should be defeated “at the ballot box,” rather than through “legal maneuvers and dirty tricks.”
In fact, Democrats have launched a multitude of criminal charges, often on the shakiest of foundations, against President Trump, trying to hamstring his 2024 presidential campaign.
Kennedy said political parties now appear to be campaigning “on the demonization of their opponents and all who support them.”
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President Joe Biden’s welcoming Easter Sunday message posted on X that, “Today, on Transgender Day of Visibility, I have a simple message to all trans Americans: I see you…” was shocking. Most could not understand how the President’s judgment can be so skewed on the most holy day for Christians.
As offensive as this was, it provides a window through which all can see what’s happening. With Biden’s cognitive decline being so obvious, there can be little doubt that he is being used by internal and external enemies of America intent on breaking down the constitutional republic of the United States without firing a shot. And it’s not hard to recognize the plan being followed is parallel to the blueprint plan revealed forty years ago by Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who explained the four stages of communist subversion: 1) Demoralization, 2) Disorientation, 3) Crisis, and 4) Normalization.
The United States has been under prolonged internal attacks of demoralization for several generations, through the educational system and the culture which have delivered messaging that disparages the United States and derides traditional values.
The second stage, known as disorientation, is most successful after a large portion of the population has been demoralized. Covid-19 brought about disorientation through mask mandates, social distancing, quarantines, lockdowns, and the abandonment of best medical practices of preventative and therapeutic treatments. Another important part of disorientation that was inflicted on America at that time was the ginned-up racism after the death of George Floyd, which triggered rioting, looting, and destruction of several billion dollars’ worth of property and the tearing down of historic statues and memorials in many cities across the United States.
What added to the disorientation of Americans at that time was that for weeks nobody seemed able to do anything about the rioting, lawlessness, and destruction going on in big cities across America. There were few arrests while some 1,000 police officers were injured and 33 were killed. At the same time cities with the most lawlessness like Minneapolis, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore initiated efforts to defund their police and law enforcement.
When nothing makes sense, the subliminal message is, “This is not the America you know, it’s a new world that you have entered.” This was as close to a mass state of disorientation in a time of relative peace as Americans have ever experienced.
The stage that follows “disorientation” is the “crisis” stage. The crisis stage would come in November 2020 with election rigging. The fear factor of Covid contagion was exploited by Democratic operatives who brought change to swing state election rules that greatly expanded mail-in ballots and drop boxes, which everyone knows facilitates vote fraud.
Simultaneous to the changes to election rules to facilitate stuffing the ballot boxes, a social media censorship and cancellation campaign was undertaken by the Stanford University-based NGO Election Integrity Project (EIP) in consultation with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a unit within the Department of Homeland Security.
EIP had an inordinate influence on the 2020 election by convincing major social media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, You Tube, Reddit, and Pinterest to change their customer terms of service policies to incorporate language about “delegitimization.” Once that was accomplished, according to Mike Benz, a former U.S. State Department communications policymaker and an expert on propaganda, the door would be open to instantaneous algorithmic mass censorship and cancellation. EIP then exerted pressure on all the social media companies to adhere to their customer service policies and censor, cancel, or deplatform any content that contained “delegitimized” terms such as: ‘new election protocols and processes,’ ‘issues and outcomes,’ ‘mail-in ballots,’ ‘early voting,’ ‘drop boxes,’ and ‘Antifa.’ And when the Hunter Biden laptop story broke in mid-October 2020, it was immediately delegitimized, and taken down from every social media site.
In the end by EIP’s own admission, Twitter was forced to cancel 22 million tweets that contained “misinformation” associated with delegitimized terms that violated the company’s terms of service prior to the November 2020 election. After the election, when many Americans felt disenfranchised and had many questions about perceived irregularities, they found that social media effectively thwarted discussion about election fraud, again facilitated by censoring and canceling any content containing new delegitimized terms such as ‘Stop the Steal,’ ‘dead voter rolls,’ ‘Sharpiegate,’ ‘manufactured ballots,’ ‘stolen election,’ and ‘Postal Service’ to name a few.
While America is still in the crisis stage, some subversion experts argue that the censorship and cancellation regime that now exists is also part of the last and final stage of communist takeover known as “normalization.” If Americans are denied access to information, become accustomed to rigged elections, accept limitations on free speech, and acquiesce to the rewriting of history facilitated by cancellation and deconstructing the past, the constitutional republic that was America will be gone, and the new world of government elite control will be normalized. As John Adams, the second president, warned, “Liberty once lost is lost forever.”
With information narratives coming from government agencies that have direct portals to social media, combined with information and voices being blocked, canceled, or deplatformed on social media by NGOs like Election Integrity Partnership, the result is an Orwellian thought control.
Censorship is not just a violation of the First Amendment and an assault on the Constitution. It is a betrayal of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Our entire way of life is protected by the First Amendment, which is the firewall against abuse of power and tyranny.
Scott Powell is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger China and senior fellow at Discovery Institute. His timeless book, Rediscovering America, was a #1 Amazon new release in history for eight straight weeks. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org
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Of course the proclamation that Christianity’s most holy day had been replaced by National Day of Visibility for the Mentally Ill and/or Perverted was intended to offend. Understand that communism is really a manifestation of hatred for others – the others being us – and that part of the fun is exercising power over the normals. They intend to insult us, then they gaslight that it was just a coincidence. But everyone – us and them – know that it is, in fact, a disgusting and disgraceful blasphemy designed to disrespect us.
The real problem is that we notice. Why are you Jesus people so triggered? This comes from people who scream like little girls when you point out that they are not actually little girls.
But do not get wrapped up in the right or wrong of it, at least when dealing with the communists. There is no right or wrong for them; there is only what is required right now, this minute, to solidify or increase their power. You cannot reason with them and you will not talk them out of anything. Their rejection of reason and facts and objective truth is really their greatest advantage. It puts normal people on the defensive because normal people’s tools are utterly ineffective since those tools include debate and argument and analysis.
Understand that it is about power. But it’s not the optimal type of power, not usually and not yet. The optimal power is a gun, and while they do have federal law enforcement, there are still barriers to their full exercise of the kind of power to imprison and murder their opponents, like their heroes in Stalin’s Russia or China or the fake nation of Palestine or Cuba or wherever. They can’t just kill you, not en masse, not yet, though make no mistake – that is where they want to end up. And this is why you need to buy guns and ammunition to have in reserve to lawfully defend your freedom against open tyranny.
But that’s a long way away. We are going to beat these creeps on their own terms. What is happening now is more subtle. Their real power today is solely to manipulate you. They exercise power by making you act as they wish. This means you can only be ruled by them if you are, voluntarily or involuntarily, complicit.
Don’t be complicit.
The first step is to understand the enemy. Understand the nature of their power. The fat mutant womyn shrieking on the streets, the chestless femboys throwing paint on paintings, the credentialed cretins in the regime media – they cannot make you do anything. They can only convince you to do their will. They are nothing unless you give in, unless you buy into their premises and accept their paradigm.
Don’t.
Let’s look at the Easter blasphemy. They get an erotic thrill from insulting you, sure. Remember, communism is largely driven by the stunted, immature emotional chaos of its practitioners. It’s a daddy issue writ large as an ideology. That’s communism’s weakness – it overreaches because its adherents do not have the mental strength or discipline to forgo the giddy thrill of showing their contempt for you before they have fully locked-in their power. We can still resist, and their short-term jollies will inspire normals to do so. Biden and the rest just could not pass up a chance to get in your face and compare their weirdos buddies with our Savior. As a bonus, if we do nothing and accept it, we are trained in submission. Their next atrocity will be even worse. Eventually, we will be serfs.
So don’t give in.
Our reaction determines how this goes. Do we freak out? No, we point out the insult not to reaffirm to each other the badness of our enemies – we are based and already know how bad our enemies are – but to awaken those who are not yet based. Remember, there is a default to normality on the part of normal people. They assume the system is working, that people are operating in good faith, and that everyone functions on the basis of objective truth. The communists exploit this default assumption of normality, knowing that normals will assume that the communists’ actions cannot be as crazy or evil as they seem. But they are as crazy or evil as they seem.
That’s why incidents like the Trans Day of Nonsense are useful to us to help us break through the normals’ benefit of the doubt for the communists. There are red lines that normals will not cross, and when the communists do push over them – because they cannot help themselves – there is pushback. Look at the military – normals won’t join. Look at the school boards – normal people are firing them. The country is falling apart, and Donald Trump is ahead despite being framed and outspent. That’s pushback. The potential to fight back exists. And cultural abominations like this proclamation are powerful tools for us to radicalize the normals and let them see the truth they would prefer to ignore.
Their ruling class hates them, and it must be destroyed.
That’s why everything we do must persuade the normals to get off the sidelines. Don’t argue with communists – you cannot change them and it is a waste of effort to try. You are not going to convince them. You need to defeat them, and the way to do that is through the ruthless exercise of power. You get power by winning over the normals. If you address the communists at all, it must be purely performative, a show to demonstrate to the normals how contemptible the communists are. So, on Twitter, if you diss some pinko, it’s not for the joy of dissing a pinko (though it is a joy). It is to show the normals the truth and bring them to your side.
The communists are vulnerable to our power, ruthlessly exercised. Look at Ron DeSantis in Florida, scoring win after win, using his power without apology. Trump needs to do that when he wins – and he is promising to. The enemy will then try to do what it always does – leverage our values against us to get us to act as it wishes. They will seek to call us “authoritarians” who “hate democracy” whenever we exercise our power. Laugh at them. Suggest they cry more.
They can’t stop us; they can only try convince us to stop ourselves.
If you actually think Bidenistas and corporate Communists care about sexually confused individuals, gay/lesbian individuals, black individuals, Hispanic individuals or anyone else, you are WRONG. The ruling leftists are collectivists. Collectivists care about power. They also care about money, not legitimately earned wealth but money attained by political means.
Collectivists, Communists and “Democrats” do NOT care about individuals. They do not care about you. They do NOT care about your rights. Once they gain all the money and power they need through exploitation of a victim group on their toxic radar, they will toss the individuals who comprise that group into the gutter. Look at what they have done to black people in America for 160 years. The permanent welfare state proved to be just a different form of slavery, tyranny and impoverishment.
Communism and collectivism are not compassionate. The individual does not matter to them. Only groups, to be used and then tossed aside. If you do not care about INDIVIDUALS, then you are incapable of compassion or empathy.
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Last month, the US Senate passed a resolution saying the over 34 trillion dollars (and growing) national debt threatens national security. A few days later, a bipartisan majority of the Senate voted for a 1.2 trillion dollars spending bill. In addition to the usual increases in war and welfare spending, the bill funds gender transitioning for minors without parental consent and red flag laws, which allow law enforcement to seize an individual’s firearms without due process.
Before passage of the latest spending bill, the Congressional Budget Orifice (CBO) released a report predicting that the national debt would exceed the prior record of 106.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2028. Interest payments on the national debt are estimated to reach 870 billion dollars this year, more than the government will spend on the military. The CBO estimates that, unless Congress cuts spending (which is highly unlikely), by 2051 interest on the debt will exceed not just military spending but spending on the two biggest items in the federal budget — Social Security and Medicare.
As Eric Boehm of Reason magazine points out, the CBO report understates how much federal spending will grow in the next several decades since it cannot predict what “crises” future congresses and presidents will exploit to ramp up federal spending. As Boehm suggests, someone projecting 30 years ago how much government would spend in the future would not have included the increase in spending due to 9/11, the subsequent creation of a homeland security-industrial complex, the “forever” wars in Afghanistan and Iraqi, the housing meltdown, or the covid lockdown. The hypothetical budget projection would also not have predicted legislation like the Medicare prescription drug benefit or Obamacare.
The large and growing interest on the national debt puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low. The Federal Reserve’s rate increases, though relatively small, are one reason national debt payments rose by 32 percent since last year. The need for the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low will further erode the dollar’s purchasing power, subjecting more Americans to the insidious inflation tax. It will eventually cause a loss of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. This will result in a major economic meltdown that will likely lead to widespread civil unrest, the further growth of authoritarian movements on both the left and right, and new restrictions on liberty.
The only way out of this is for Congress to begin winding down the welfare-warfare state. A good place to start is by cutting spending on militarism and forgoing interventionism. Savings from these cuts could be used to ensure those dependent on entitlement and welfare programs are not harmed as Congress winds down these programs. Responsibility for providing support for the truly needy should be returned to local and religious charitable institutions, while responsibility for education should be returned to local communities and parents. Congress should also pass legislation requiring any new spending to be offset by cuts in other federal spending and forbidding the Federal Reserve from purchasing federal debt instruments. These steps will be opposed by the special interests that benefit from the current system, but they are the only way to ensure the blessings of liberty and prosperity to our posterity.
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, YOU suffer the consequences.”
— Ayn Rand
Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, Michael Hurd Ph.D. on LinkedIn, @DrHurd on TruthSocial
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 