Biden is a Man of the Establishment

Biden has the seal of approval from the American Establishment. His minions are fomenting animosity with the Chinese as Biden slings mud at the Russians. The higher tensions thus produced are good for armament orders and the well being of the military/security complex.

Biden’s tax increase plan is designed to wipe out the remainder of the middle class. The reduction in estate exemption and the repeal of the basis adjustment for inherited property means more family businesses will have to be sold or taken public in order to pay taxes rather than being kept in the family. With US manufacturing jobs sent to Asia and American IT and software companies bought up by Indians who fire the American employees and bring in people from India on work visas, family businesses are the last bastion of the middle class. Biden’s tax plan will finish off the remnants of the American middle class.

Biden is Trump’s opposite, which is precisely what the Establishment wants. Trump is precisely what the Establishment doesn’t want. Normal relations with Russia would hurt the power and profit of the military/security complex, and bringing jobs back to America would strengthen the middle class and hinder the Establishment’s agenda of a new feudal order consisting of a few hyper-rich and a multitude of serfs.

A majority of America voters realized the stakes and reelected Trump, but Republicans acquiesced in the Establishment’s theft of the election, and Trump was ousted. Over the next four years the Establishment will flood the country with immigrants and block the prospect of the Establishment’s candidate being defeated.

Biden should be careful how much animosity he generates with Russia and China, because the FBI’s pursuit of Trump Supporters as “domestic extremists” and “enemies of democracy” means 90 million fewer Americans willing to fight for the power and profit of the US military/security complex. A government that sees its own white citizens as “America’s greatest threat” is in no position to fight a war with Russia or China.

Indeed, it is uncertain if there are any Americans willing to fight “foreign enemies” for Washington. As Sam Jacobs writes, the American educational system has succeeded in turning Americans into anti-Americans whose animosity is directed against America itself. https://hannenabintuherland.com/currentaffairs/american-education-child-indoctrination-to-hate-what-made-america-great/

The real question is: What is left of the United States other than the name?

Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review

“Don’t Be Selfish” — Say the People Who Want YOU to Sacrifice for Them

When people call you “selfish”, they’re trying to intimidate you into doing what they believe you should do.

Failing to do what THEY want you to do, they say, is selfish — and therefore automatically and always bad.

So, what happens if you do what they want you to do? It makes THEM happy. But isn’t this selfish of them, to intimidate you into doing what they want you to do?

Let’s say I want $1000. You have $1000, and I don’t. “Don’t be selfish,” I say. “Give me $1000. You have the money; and I don’t.” OK. Let’s say you give in. “I shouldn’t be selfish,” you think. “ANYTHING is better than being selfish. So I’ll give it to you.”

I now have my money. And I’m happy. It pleased MYSELF, selfishly, to get that money from you. I shamed you into it. But if it was morally wrong of you to keep that money and be selfish, isn’t it just as wrong for me to keep the money, and selfishly enjoy it?

Always be wary when a family member, a friend, a religious person, or a politician tells you not to be selfish.

Shaming is their game … and the accusation of “selfish” is their most potent weapon. It’s more powerful than gulags, guns, armies, or mobs of irrational socialists. Those things are powerful, but the shaming is the means through which they never, ever get held accountable for their evil. Because nobody wants to be the “selfish” one to say, “You’re bad, and you’re wrong.”

Today, the issue is all around us. “Don’t be selfish. Wear the goddammed mask!”

What if the mask doesn’t work? And if the mask DOES work, then aren’t you already safe by choosing to wear one? Your mask keeps the germs out, right? And if your mask doesn’t keep the germs out, then how will mine?”

“That’s not the point,” we’re told in a foaming-at-the-mouth response. “The point is not to be selfish.”

The vast majority of people caved, on masks. Even post-vaccine, we’re told, “You still have to wear masks, because the vaccine won’t be enough to stop the virus. But you better get the vaccine — or else!”

Everywhere I look, I see compliance. ANYTHING is better than being shamed by a minority of people who are control freaks, “Karens”, sociopaths, narcissistic twits who would never, ever have achieved anything of value in any other way.

Now the powers that be — nearly all of them sociopaths and narcissists — realize they can get away with anything. “People will wear masks in order not to be selfish. So we can get them to do all kinds of things, in order not to be selfish.” Like what? Well, lockdowns that are permanent, as they are now in most states. (There are no plans to reopen, and you will not ever see reopening, in most states.) And gun confiscation, which has already begun, including in my own state of Delaware — where they won’t even pay you to hand over the guns. They’re saying (and legislating), “Hand over the guns in 90 days. If you don’t, you’re a felon.” They’ve started with “ghost guns” (guns without serial numbers), and they will move up the chain until all weapons of self-protection (including from the government) are gone.

There’s literally no end to what people can be coerced to do … when they’re afraid of being called selfish. Prove me wrong. Show me noncompliance, show me justified anger, show me even small acts of disobedience. You cannot find any. And the reason is: shaming.

If you stop being afraid of being called selfish, and you start seeing the self-refuting contradiction and inherent injustice in the whole catastrophe of our era, the game of the tyrants and nutjobs is over. There can be no manipulation in your personal relationships, and there can be no tyranny with your government, if you stop apologizing for being “selfish”.

At least, not without a major, major fight. And I’d much rather see fighting than the placid, fearful and morally pale compliance spreading — like the worst form of cancer — throughout our once vibrant, free society.

Fear of being called “selfish” is a far greater virus than any COVID germ could ever hope to be.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Taxation and Regulation Won’t Help America Heal

How will the passage of Biden’s sweeping COVID relief bill affect our futures and those of our children? What does $1.9 trillion mean for the national economy and your investments?

In a word, inflation.

And trust me, the government is just getting started.

The Fed is engaged in a dangerous bit of fiscal table-setting, creating an environment where asset prices will surge at a rate that’s inconsistent with our economy’s fundamentals.

Cue the bubble bursting… Ready yourself for the likes of the dot-com implosion or 2008’s financial crisis.

Plus, as many are getting vaccinated and heading back to work, this stimulus spending appears to be too much, too late – what sort of economic hangover should we expect in the coming year?

On the American Consequences podcast this week, I sat down with famed publisher Steve Forbes, chairman and editor in chief of Forbes Media, who thinks we’re poised for a real comeback in the American economy… if only the government would get out of the way.

Washington in Its Own Way

Steve believes the American economy could right itself organically if given a chance. Even California’s looking like it could rebound, as the threat of a recall seems to have pushed Gavin Newsom into action.

But Washington’s putting barriers in the way of our recovery… The government hasn’t even spent the money from the past two relief bills… And we’re looking at another almost $2 trillion on top of that, along with chatter about trillions more in spending bills down the pike.

All of this spending will only dampen an economy trying to thrive. We have nearly 7 million job openings, yet we’re giving people a reason not to work.

Steve says, “If the government took a six-month vacation, the economy would boom.”

And all of this is compounded with Biden’s new aggressive taxation. We’re talking hiked income and business taxes, a capital gains tax up to 44%, and even carbon taxes (thereby raising the cost of energy).

From Steve: Jerome Powell, head chair of the Fed, is Titanic’s captain right now – and we have an inflation iceberg straight ahead.

The Fed thinks prosperity causes inflation… No, weak monetary policy as summoning trillions from the ether causes inflation. Click here to see how Steve Forbes would fix the Fed.

And it’s going to be a wave of destruction when the Fed suddenly raises interest rates. Remember, due to these low rates and high debt, a 1% increase in interest rates would cost the economy $280 billion annually, putting real pressure on government finances and businesses. And Steve has no confidence that the Fed will navigate this properly.

An Endangered Dollar

While central banks and the Fed flail around the marketplace and the U.S. dollar potentially flounders, other currency options will be even more appealing – from blockchain to Swiss francs.

Steve thinks bitcoin believers will wake up and realize how to leverage their cryptocurrency for daily transactions or long-term investments. Forbes finds the flaw of crypto in that it’s finite, as he suggests that suppressing supply isn’t the best use of a currency – it’s value stability.

And Steve lauds the Swiss franc as the best national currency for maintaining value for the past century. Then there’s that other 5,000-year-old store of value: gold. Cryptos could back themselves with either gold or the Swiss franc in a fiscal shotgun wedding of the analog and digital – folding in the former’s gravitas with the ease of use of the latter.

In terms of the inevitable digitization of money, the U.S. government has mismanaged paper currencies, and it’ll do the same with digital currencies – and China’s certainly more aware of this than the Fed.

Hear Steve Forbes’ investing tips for when the dollar is low.

A Plea for Economic Peace

Biden says we’re at war with COVID and that we need these trillions of dollars to combat the virus– but guess what?

The battle is nearly over, everyone… This is D-Day, and we’re storming the beaches of Normandy armed with pharmaceuticals. We have not one, but three vaccines between Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, and so far, more than 100 million vaccinations have been administered nationally.

With spring and summer upon us, new life blooms, and fresh opportunities beckon. From Connecticut to even California (I know), the country and its businesses are reopening – even Disney World is back in action. It’s time for something approaching hope, America.

But the Biden administration doesn’t want to hear it. It seems bent on convincing the American people that we’re far worse off than reality would suggest.

The Dems continue to leverage the pandemic for their political agenda, thereby deterring the economic freedom that’s intrinsic for Americans. We have to ensure prosperity for our children… And unfortunately, taxation, inflation, and regulation won’t get us there.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Trish Regan

Publisher, American Consequences

With Editorial Staff

U.S. vs. America

Another respected veteran, now labeled a domestic terrorist, has been caught in the FBI’s “1/6” dragnet — the largest criminal investigation in the history of the Justice Department.

Jeffrey McKellop, a former Green Beret, gave 22 years of his life up to serve his country. His government is thanking him by threatening to take 20 more if he is convicted.

McKellop is one of more than 30 veterans out of 300 protesters arrested by militarized federal agents for briefly entering the lightly guarded Capitol building and then leaving on their own. He is facing the most serious charges to date in relation to the incident.

Aside from entering the building with countless other protesters, FBI Special Agent Jeffrey F. Johannes is claiming McKellop threw a flag pole he found on the ground at a Metropolitan police officer. The cop suffered a small cut on his face, but Agent Johannes is saying McKellop threw the flagpole like a “spear” and is charging him with assault with a deadly weapon.

The Department of Justice’s choice to assign his case to Muslim judge, Zia Mustafa Faruqui, doesn’t seem like a coincidence . Whatever one may think of the implications of such an arrangement on their own merits, for a man trained by his government to believe Muslims were his enemy during his two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan to come home and be scorned on trumped up charges of being a violent anti-American terrorist by a Muslim man is a twisted Twilight Zone reveal when seen from McKellop’s subjective point of view. It’s part of the punishment.

Judge Faruqui, who has been assigned numerous Capitol related cases, has revealed himself to be nothing more than a token and an imbecile.

During a pre-trial release hearing of Riley June Williams, who is accused of stealing Nancy Pelosi’s laptop, Faruqui decided to make it impossible for her to find a job (a previous condition of her release recommended by federal prosecutors) by completely banning her from using the internet.

His logic, based on claims that Williams sought to sell the computer to Russian intelligence, was that accusations against the defendant reminded him of something scary he once saw in a fictional television show. Because of that, Williams, who is now in the custody of her mother, will be sent to jail if she dares access the internet to look for work.

The depths of depravity of the FBI, federal judges, and federal prosecutors in their quest for vengeance — who on this subject have no daylight between them — doesn’t end there.

On March 15th, Faruqui ordered that a Texan named Guy Reffitt be held without bond until his trial after his children betrayed him.

Reffitt’s own son and daughter were brought forward by DoJ ghouls to testify against their father. Jackson Reffitt, Guy’s son, decided to become an outspoken collaborator against the man who gave him life and nurtured him in exchange for 15 minutes of fame from the jackals in the Jewish media. Such behavior doesn’t even exist in the animal kingdom.

Yesterday, the wife of a Pittsburgh detective assigned to an FBI joint task force was picked up and charged by the feds for a glorified trespassing charge. The cowardly rent-a-fed is publicly disavowing his spouse through an intermediary.

The post Capitol sweep is bound to further undermine public trust in the US government and its FBI political enforcers. While FBI agents are deliberately recruited from social classes and circles where Trump supporters are rare, they rely heavily on help local police officers and help from patriotic citizens to project power. The latter group is full of people the Department of Defense has classified as “white supremacists.”

The extreme gap between this situation and how the federal government has allowed anarchists who killed and rioted for months to go unpunished is not lost on the public. A poll released earlier this month found that a much larger portion of Americans were concerned about the rioting in cities over the summer than they were what happened at the Capitol.

There is a minority of cooler heads at the FBI and even the DoJ who understand that what they are doing could lead to scores of acquittals and the hardening of at least 50% of the population against them. They want to leave the non-violent people at the Capitol alone. But these moderate voices have been shouted down by their frothing at the mouth extremists and career whore colleagues. The new Jew Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed to be ruthless and selectively target right-wing white people.

As for Trump, he has a moral obligation to use the hundreds of millions of dollars raised through his Stop the Steal PAC — which has only spent $8 million on legal battles challenging the election result– to provide legal support for his fans. Instead, he is pocketing the cash and living his best life helping save the careers of useless establishment GOP figures like Mike Crapo.

The consequences of America’s most fervent and loyal patriots being betrayed by their government has the potential to, in the long-term, end the country as we know it.

Mediocre neo-liberal managers are creating the conditions for their own demise. No ruling system as unresponsive and discriminatory as Americas can last much longer.

Eric Striker, UNZ Review

Delaware’s Unconstitutional “Ghost Gun” Law: And So Begins the Dictatorship

Delaware is about to outlaw so-called “ghost guns”, firearms that are difficult for the government to trace due to a lack of serial numbers. What’s striking about this isn’t the legislation itself so much as the way it’s being implemented. The law, which easily cleared committee in the one-party Democratic state, makes it a felony to possess such a gun after a 90 day period. The law will almost certainly pass. No euphemistic “buyback”; just hand over your property, or it’s jail for you. This fails to take into account the Second Amendment and property rights of the vast majority of “ghost” gun owners who possess such weapons for self-protection, and would easily pass any criminal background check. Furthermore, the law brazenly violates the First Amendment by outlawing any discussion of, or instructions about, how to make these kinds of guns. The Delaware government is essentially saying, “You don’t need to own such a gun. The needs of the government come first. Forget your First and Second Amendment rights.” This is a horrible precedent. And it’s just the beginning. We no longer live in a free country. #NotMyDictatorship

The Resurrection of the Third Reich in America

Yes, the Third Reich is undergoing resurrection, but not by white supremacists. It is the white liberals in the Democrat Party and their presstitute propaganda machine—New York Times, CNN, NPR, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the rest of the presstitute whores— that comprise the new Nazi movement. The only difference is that this time the target is white gentiles.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says that “the goal of Nazi propaganda was to demonize Jews and to create a climate of hostility and indifference toward their plight.” In actual fact, the purpose was more severe. The purpose was to deprive Jews of their dignity and the protection of law. This has now happened to white gentiles in the United States. For example, as I reported earlier today, Jodi Shaw, a white female staff member of Smith College, in former times a prestigeous women’s college, now an anti-white propaganda institution, resigned, accusing the college of creating a “racially hostile environment” for white people.

Shaw said that Smith College’s anti-white racism left her “physically and mentally debilitated. I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of my employment. I endured meetings in which another staff member violently banged his fist on the table, chanting ‘Rich, white women! Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. I believe such a curriculum is dehumanizing, prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young people who are just beginning to find their way in the world.” https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/02/22/the-demonization-of-white-americans-is-official-educational-corporate-and-government-policy/

Thinking she was protected by the Civil Rights Act, she filed a complaint. The result? “I was told that the civil rights law protections were not created to help [white] people like me,” she wrote. She was stripped of duties, which was a retaliation for her filing the complaint.

President Trump tried to stop the discrimination against white people, who are being forced out of their jobs just as Jews were in Nazi Germany. But the election thief, Biden has restored and elevated the discrimination against white Americans. The “racial sensitivity” classes in the military and government agencies in which white people are taught to acknowledge their “systemic racism,” and thus to understand any correction of a person of color is an act of racism and must not occur if you are to avoid retribution for being a systemic racist. Thus, all standards collapse.

David Flynn, the football coach at Massachusetts Dedham High School for the past decade was fired becaus he complained that his 7th grade daughter was being propagandized against her white race in her school classes. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/02/22/the-demonization-of-white-americans-is-official-educational-corporate-and-government-policy/

The demonization of American white people is a hard undeniable fact. They have been discriminated against for decades because of racial quotas in university admissions, hiring, and promotion. But now discrimination against whites has become persecution, and it is more scary. In Germany Jews were a tiny minority. In the United States whites are still a 60% majority. In the US it is the majority that is being demonized. Moreover, it is white liberal Democrats who are demonizing white people.

The election thief, Biden, has staffed his administration with anti-white racists, and has put anti-white racists in positions where they can best demonize white Americans. All of this is happening in plain view, and insouciance prevails.

White peoples are still a majority in the Western World, but they comprise a small minority in terms of world population. As anti-white propaganda has originated in the white Western world, the white world has set itself up for demonization by the world majority. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared today at the UN Human Rights Council that white supremacy is “becoming a transnational threat.” The UN Secretary General believes that there is a “growing danger” from white people of “ethnically motivated terrorism.” He calls on the world for “coordinated action” to counter this threat that is “growing by the day.” https://www.rt.com/news/516277-unitednations-white-supremacy-nazi/

Obviously, the Western world has no moral authority when it is seen as a racist threat that is “growing by the day.”

Western civilization is the first civilization to demonize itself and, thereby, reduce itself to an immoral entity and perceived threat by the rest of the world.

The Western world has become disconnected from reality and from truth. Last Saturday a hyphenated American, a Filipino-American, was viciously slashed on a New York City subway by a black attacker. Protests were immediately organized against white nationalism: “End the violence toward Asians. Let’s unite against white nationalism.” https://www.rt.com/usa/516245-new-york-asian-attack-protest/

I cannot find in any American institution or any institution in the Western world any respect for truth and any integrity. The Western world is devoid of any sustaining values. There is nothing there. It has devoured itself. Western civilization has been caricatured out of existence.

Western civilization has stamped itself out. The process began with stamping out Southern culture, literature, history and creating a false history that serves the orchestrated story of white racism. In recent days, the Virginia military Institute was forced to remove the stature of its most famous professor—Stonewall Jackson—where it stood on the parade ground. The stature had to be removed because of the unsupportable lie that Jackson fought to preserve slavery when in documented fact he fought because Virginia was invaded by Lincoln’s Empire Legions. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/02/jacob-hornberger/the-vmi-controversy/

Today like all other Southern educational institutions VMI has been destroyed. Southern university and college presidents were too weak. They were too intellectually and emotionally weak to stand up to the demonization of the South. They tried to prove their validity by staffing their institutions with graduates of Northern universities and refusing to hire their own graduates. Their weakness turned the South against itself. Southern culture has been essentially extinguished.

In the US the 14th Amendment—equal treatment under the law—has been extinguished by “affirmative action.” Today in the US only white people can be demonized without it being a hate crime. No more proof is needed that white Americans are second class citizens in the country that they built and in which they are still a majority.

The United States has had its own Kristallnacht with the lootings and burnings of businesses in many American cities encouraged and forgiven by Democratic administrations that instead of punishing the criminals defunded the police and brought prosecutions against white people who defended their property. White Americans are so intimidated that it is not only the South that permits monuments to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson to be removed, but also the entire country where all monuments even to Lincoln, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson are obliterated.

The US military, whose most effective fighting force has always been men from the South, is removing all names of bases that have Southern connections. It has always struck me as strange that the South, abused by a northern invasion, by Reconstruction, by a second Reconstruction, and now by removal of all Southern connection to the US military, has been the most effective military component in the US Army. Has the South been so deracinated that the South despite its demonization will continue to be the backbone of the US military? Why would white males fight for a country that hates and demonizes them?

Once a people are demonized, how do they recover? Can they become a victim group and claim the protection that their enemies used against them? Not if their enemies control the explanation via the media, which they do.

Look at America today. The country has massive unemployment due to job and investment offshoring and lockdowns, and the election thief is opening the borders in order to drive wages of white people lower while building the voter rolls of Democrat voters. The Republicans as we have seen from McConnell and Romney are as anti-American as the Democrats. In America today neither political party represents the white American people who built the country and gave it civil liberty.

How can a people survive demonization and destruction of sense of itself?

They cannot. And they sit there, insouciant, sucking their thumbs, sheep ready for slaughter.

Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review

Is there a Deep State ?

As a former intelligence officer, I find it amusing to read articles in the mainstream media that blithely report how the latest international outrages are undoubtedly the work of CIA and the rest of the U.S. government’s national security alphabet soup. The recurring claim that the CIA is somehow running the world by virtue of a vast conspiracy that includes the secret intelligence agencies of a number of countries, using blackmail and other inducements to corrupt vulnerable politicians and opinion makers, has entered into the DNA of journalists worldwide, frequently without any evidence that the current crop of spies is capable of doing anything more complicated than getting out of bed in the morning.

One problem with the theory about total global dominance through espionage is the sheer logistics of it all. Directing political and economic developments in two hundred nations simultaneously must require a lot of space and a large staff. Is there a huge office hidden in Langley? Or the Pentagon? Or in the White House West Wing itself? Or is it in one of the secure facilities that have been popping up like mushrooms just off of the Dulles Toll Road in Herndon Virginia?

To provide evidence that intelligence agencies extend their tentacles just about everywhere, the other claim that is nearly always made is that all former spooks are part of the conspiracy, as once you learn the secret handshake to join CIA, NSA or the FBI you never stop being “one of them.” Well, that might be true in some cases but the majority of former spooks are quite happy to be “former,” and one might also observe that many voices in the anti-war movement, such as it is, come from intelligence, law enforcement or military backgrounds. Of course, the conspiracy theorists will explain that away by claiming that it is a conspiracy within a conspiracy, making the dissidents little better than double agents or gatekeepers who are put in place to make sure that the opposition doesn’t become too effective.

Given the fact that how the so-called American “Deep State” actually gets together and plots is unknown, one would have to concede that it is an organization without much structure, unlike the original Turkish Deep State (Derin Devlet), which coined the phrase, that actually met and had centralized planning. I would suggest that the problem is one of definitions and it also helps to know how the national security state is structured and what its legitimate mission is. The CIA, for example, employs about 20,000 people, nearly all of whom work in various divisions that collect information (spying), analysis, technology and also are divided into staffs that work transnationally on issues like terrorism, narcotics, and nuclear proliferation. The overwhelming majority of those employees have political views and vote but there is a consensus that what their work entails is apolitical. The actual politics of how policy comes out the other end is confined to a very small group at the top, some of whom are themselves political appointees.

To be sure, one can and probably should oppose the policies of regime change that the Agency is engaged in worldwide but there is one important consideration that has to be understood. Those policies are set by the country’s civilian leadership (president, secretary of state and national security council) and they are imposed on CIA by its own political leadership. The Agency does not hold referenda among its employees to determine which foreign policy option is preferable any more than soldiers in the 101st Airborne are consulted when they receive orders to deploy.

Nearly all current and former intelligence officers that I know are, in fact, opposed to the politics of U.S. global dominance that have been pretty much in place since 9/11, most particularly as evidenced by the continued conflict with Russia, the ramping up of aggression with China, and the regime change policies relating to Syria, Iran and Venezuela. Those officers often consider the invasions and exercise of “maximum pressure” to have been failures. Those policies were supported by truculent language, sanctions and displays of military readiness by the Trump Administration but it now appears clear that they will all be continued in one form or another under President Joe Biden, likely to include even more aggression against Russia through proxies in Ukraine and Georgia.

The officers engaged in such operations also observe that regime change has basically come out of the closet since 2001. George W. Bush announced that there was a “new sheriff in town” and the gloves would be coming off. Things that the intelligence agencies used to do are now done right out in the open, using military resources against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria while the biggest change of all, in Ukraine in 2014, was largely engineered by Victoria Nuland at the State Department. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was also active in Russia supporting opposition parties until the Kremlin forced them to leave the country.

So, it is fair to say that the Deep State is not a function of either the CIA or the FBI, but at the same time the involvement of John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey in the plot to destroy Donald Trump is disturbing, as the three men headed the Agency, the Office of National Intelligence and Bureau. They appear to have played critical leadership roles in carrying out this conspiracy and they may not have operated on their own. Almost certainly what they may have done would have been either explicitly or implicitly authorized by the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, and others in his national security team.

It is now known that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan created a secret interagency Trump Task Force in early 2016. Rather than working against genuine foreign threats, this Task Force played a critical role in creating and feeding the meme that Donald Trump was a tool of the Russians and a puppet of President Vladimir Putin, a claim that still surfaces regularly to this day. Working with Clapper, Brennan fabricated the narrative that “Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.” Brennan and Clapper promoted that tale even though they knew very well that Russia and the United States have carried out a broad array of covert actions against each other, including information operations, for the past seventy years, but they pretended that what happened in 2016 was qualitatively and substantively different even though the “evidence” produced to support that claim is weak to nonexistent.

I would, nevertheless, argue that their behavior, though it exploited intelligence resources, was not intrinsic to the organizations that they led, that the three of them were part and parcel of the real Deep State, which consists of a consensus view on running the country that is held by nearly all of the elements that together make up the American Establishment, with its political power focused in Washington and its financial center in New York City. It should come as no surprise that those government officials who are complicit in the process are often personally rewarded with highly paid sinecure jobs in financial services, which they know nothing about, when they “retire.”

The danger posed by the Deep State, or, if you choose, the Establishment, is that it wields immense power but is unelected and unaccountable. Even though it does not actually meet in secret, it does operate through relationships that are not transparent and as the media is part of it, there is little chance that its activity will be exposed. One notes that while the Deep State is mentioned frequently in the national media there has been little effort to identify its components and how it operates.

Viewed in that fashion, the argument that there exists a cohesive group of power brokers who really run the country and are even able to coopt those who are ostensibly dedicated to keeping the country safe becomes much more plausible without denigrating the many honest people who are employed by the national security agencies. The Deep State conspirators don’t have to meet to plot as they all understand very well what has to be done to maintain their supremacy. That is the real danger. The Biden Administration will surely demonstrate over the next several months that the Deep State is still with us and more powerful than ever as it operates both inside and outside the government itself. And the real danger comes from the Democrats now in charge, who are if anything more given to playing with consensus politics that involve phony threats than were the Republicans.

Philip Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

Bravo, Rand Paul

Bravo, Senator Rand Paul. We’re supposed to blindly follow Fauci the Quack, because he’s a political animal who shapes his science according to political winds. Yet when Rand Paul, a physician himself, counters with ACTUAL science and medicine about the absurdity of wearing masks and locking down even after vaccinations, he’s greeted with righteous stammers and incoherent stutters. Although election integrity is gone and Rand Paul can never be President, at least, for the moment, we still have a few brilliant embers of rationality and dissension in the former republic of America.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

If You’re Thinking About the 2022 and 2024 Elections, You’re in Denial

It’s fascinating to watch denial.

I’m talking about denial by the good guys, the lovers of liberty — not the Communists and the socialists.

Lovers of freedom now talk eagerly of the 2022 and 2024 elections. Can Republicans take back the House and Senate? Will Trump run in 2024? Or will another prominent Republican, such as Florida’s governor?

To hear people talk, you’d think the fraud of the 2020 election never happened. You’d think they’re all confident in the integrity of elections, the same elections that gave us Joe Biden as an occupying ruler. As if nothing ever happened.

I understand that in human beings, denial serves a purpose. To a great extent, our subconscious minds won’t let us accept the awful, horrible truth of a profound loss. We all go through denial in the early stages of a devastating or life-altering loss, such as the death of a loved one. It’s a similar, devastating loss to lose your liberty, when you — and generations before you, in the United States — could always count on a good degree of freedom.

However, in cases like the death of a loved one, you still must confront the absence of the lost person every hour of the day. The denial helps soften the blow. But it doesn’t give you a free pass to pretend the lost person is still here.

Similarly, kidding yourself that elections even matter any longer, after what the leftist media and oligarchy pulled off in 2020 — well, that’s truly unhealthy. It’s like pretending the dead person is still alive.

You can counter, “What else are we supposed to do?” That’s kind of like saying, “Well, reality is terrible. So what else am I to do, other than get drunk every day, or abuse heroin?” Or, “What else am I supposed to do? I miss my spouse. I wish she wasn’t dead. So I have no choice other than to pretend she’s still alive.”

Whatever the solution to the loss of our liberty, self-deceit is not the answer. I’m not obliged to GIVE you an answer — that is, the alternative to self-delusion — when arguing that self-delusion is never a good idea. Even if we have no answers, self-delusion will never be an answer. Closing your mind to reality is not the way to figure out what to do.

I don’t know what’s going to become of our former republic. I don’t know what’s going to happen to those of us who dissent. So far, the issues are mask mandates and partial, indirect censorship by the government through compliant tech giants. In the near future, the issues will get tougher. There will be vaccination requirements. And gun confiscation. And deplatforming, i.e., being run out by your banks or credit card companies, or your jobs, for failing to appear woke. And outright censorship, perhaps even gulags or jail sentences for dissenters, as aides to Bernie Sanders — now the mainstream of the ruling Democratic Party — have openly recommended. The people who recommended these gulags are sitting in government offices in D.C, or are listened to by people who do. They’re not fringe figures, like they were even 5 or ten years ago. They have real power. And they know they’re staying in power. There will be no red wave, not if they pull off what they pulled off in 2020 and probably before then.

You don’t have to be paranoid to see these things coming. All of the known facts support it. President Trump is not only out of the White House; he’s effectively silenced. They will get him into prison, if they can, and with American Communists holding sway even over the U.S. Supreme Court (7-2), they will probably succeed.

Even if most former Trump voters and honest Republicans/non-leftists are mostly in denial, the dictators on the other side suffer from no such delusions. They know they have pretty close to a guarantee of retaining power — well, forever. But they’re not complacent about it. They’re actually quite afraid. And frightened dictators are the worst kind. They fear losing their power and will justify anything — absolutely anything — to hold on to it, as well as expand it. You see how they’re going after President Trump and anyone who went to the rally in D.C. on January 6. They mean it.

Self-delusion is not the answer. By pretending that the elections of 2022 or 2024 even matter, we’re bypassing the very important task of figuring out what our options really are — including, but not limited to, things like secession and mass civil disobedience. Clear your heads of the denial drivel so you can figure out what to do for yourself, because you’re now living under a dictatorship.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason