Facebook strikes again. Last week, they flagged one of my posts. It was a Mussolini quote. They said it violated their Community Standards, and suspended me for a week. Interesting, because when Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and AOC say the EXACT SAME THINGS that Mussolini used to say about the supremacy of the state over the individual, Facebook has no problem with it. Nevertheless, I posted the quote in order to disparage Mussolini, not to uphold him. I disputed their suspension, and they wrote back in agreement, saying they got this one wrong. My 1 week suspension was reversed. Then, mysteriously, about 8 hours later, the suspension was put back on. No reason given. When I inquired, the reason they gave for the resumption of my suspension was the original Mussolini quote post. I wrote them with screenshots of their having reversed my suspension earlier that day for that very post. All I got were form letter-type replies saying that various posts of mine over the past year had violated their Community Standards, blah, blah, blah. Interestingly, the PAST posts they say violated their Community Standards were also reversed by them, in many cases.
So it seems that Facebook can suspend you now for any reason it feels like, whenever it feels like it, with no internal consistency required. The “Community Standards,” aside from being unintelligible to anyone who lives outside the socialist woke Mecca of Silicon Valley, are not standards at all. They are merely feelings and whims. No surprise to me. That’s the mentality of any fascist totalitarian. Right now, they’re running a very influential company that most of us still use; they dominate the culture, although they don’t yet have an absolute monopoly on the dissemination of information and ideas. Imagine when, and if, these fascist totalitarians get control of the entire government. They’re on their way. Unless we find a way to stop them.
Build Back Better” — the Orwellian name for Biden’s monster proposal for fascism and socialism — illustrates everything that’s wrong with our government and culture.
Consider the type of person who exploits or creates crises in order to feel superior and useful. Families are full of people like this, as are businesses.
“Build back better” refers to rebuilding after a disaster caused by government interventions — lockdowns, mask mandates, mass fear-mongering, etc. Government is praising itself for cleaning up ITS OWN MESS. And it’s spending trillions of dollars belonging to THE VERY PEOPLE IT VICTIMIZED.
The narcissist, the sociopath, the psychopath or the borderline personality — these are all the personality types who create and exploit problems in order to make everything about THEM.
That’s precisely what our elites, politicians and their media are doing — only there’s no escaping it. If you have a toxic boss or co-worker, you can change jobs. You can divorce a toxic spouse, and minimize your contact with (even cut ties with) toxic family members or friends.
But you can’t escape the consequences of “Build Back Better” and its many equivalents — inflation, supply chain crises, vaccination passports, vaccination mandates, and all the rest of the totalitarian nightmare unfolding.
Whether Biden’s monster bill passes or not, you can be sure we’ll get all or most of its provisions. In words and deed, Biden has made it clear that what he can’t get legislatively or through the courts, he’ll simply issue by executive edict. And if a court stalls or strikes down his executive edict, he’ll simply ignore it.
Totalitarianism ONLY flourishes where self-esteem, self-respect and individual assertion are on the decline (or dead). It’s safe to say that rational individualism is dead at universities, in the media, in big corporations and in other arenas of elite culture. Rational individualism is not dead in the rest of America. It’s not exactly flourishing, but it’s clearly not dead, and in the hearts and minds of some it’s flourishing. But it’s under attack as never, ever before in American history. It remains an open question how much longer individualism can survive, much less flourish, in the face of relentless governmental, media, educational and cultural attack.
America, right now, is undergoing its own Maoist Cultural Revolution. Build Back Better is only one small component of that. How well will this cultural revolution succeed, even when backed up by brute force, as it increasingly is? We will soon know.
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What is behind recent pessimistic appraisals of democracy’s future, from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams and other elite intellectuals, media personalities, and politicians on the Left? Some are warning about its possible erosion in 2024. Others predict democracy’s downturn as early as 2022, with scary scenarios of “autocracy” and Trump “coups.”
To answer that question, understand first what is not behind these shrill forecasts.
They are not worried about 2 million foreign nationals crashing the border in a single year, without vaccinations during a pandemic. Yet it seems insurrectionary for a government simply to nullify its own immigration laws.
They are not worried that some 800,000 foreign nationals, some residing illegally, will now vote in New York City elections.
They are not worried that there are formal efforts underway to dismantle the U.S. Constitution by junking the 233-year-old Electoral College or the preeminence of the states in establishing ballot laws in national elections.
They are not worried that we are witnessing an unprecedented left-wing effort to scrap the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year tradition of 50 states, for naked political advantage.
They are not worried that the FBI, Justice Department, CIA, Hillary Clinton, and members of the Obama administration systematically sought to use U.S. government agencies to sabotage a presidential campaign, transition, and presidency, via the use of a foreign national and ex-spy Christopher Steele and his coterie of discredited Russian sources.
They are not worried that the Pentagon suddenly has lost the majority support of the American people. Top current and retired officers have flagrantly violated the chain-of-command, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and without data or evidence have announced a hunt in the ranks for anyone suspected of “white rage” or “white supremacy.”
They are not worried that in 2020, a record 64 percent of the electorate did not cast their ballots on Election Day.
Nor are they worried that the usual rejection rate in most states of non-Election Day ballots plunged – even as an unprecedented 101 million ballots were cast by mail or early voting.
And they are certainly not worried that partisan billionaires of Silicon Valley poured well over $400 million into selected precincts in swing states to “help” public agencies conduct the election.
What then is behind this new left-wing hysteria about the supposed looming end of democracy?
It is quite simple. The Left expects to lose power over the next two years – both because of the way it gained and used it, and because of its radical, top-down agendas that never had any public support.
gaining control of both houses of Congress and the presidency – with an obsequious media and the support of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, higher education, popular culture, entertainment and professional sports – the Left has managed in just 11 months to alienate a majority of voters.
The nation has been wracked by unprecedented crime and nonenforcement of the borders. Leftist district attorneys either won’t indict criminals; they let them out of jails or both.
Illegal immigration and inflation are soaring. Deliberate cuts in gas and oil production helped spike fuel prices.
All this bad news is on top of the Afghanistan disaster, worsening racial relations, and an enfeebled president.
Democrats are running 10 points behind the Republicans in generic polls, with the midterms less than a year away.
Joe Biden’s negatives run between 50 and 57 percent – in Donald Trump’s own former underwater territory.
Less than a third of the country wants Biden to run for reelection. In many head-to-head polls, Trump now defeats Biden.
In other words, leftist elites are terrified that democracy will work too robustly.
After the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the staged melodramas of the Kavanaugh hearings, the Jussie Smollett con, the Covington kids smear, and the Rittenhouse trial race frenzy, the people are not just worn out by leftist hysterias, but they also weary of how the Left gains power and administers it.null
If Joe Biden were polling at 70 percent approval, and his policies at 60 percent, the current doomsayers would be reassuring us of the “health of the system.”
They are fearful and angry not because democracy doesn’t work, but because it does despite their own media and political efforts to warp it.
When a party is hijacked by radicals and uses almost any means necessary to gain and use power for agendas that few Americans support, then average voters express their disapproval.
That reality apparently terrifies an elite. It then claims any system that allows the people to vote against the Left is not people power at all.
The majority of the Supreme Court, that is. The ones who refused to even consider a hearing for the avalanche of evidence of election fraud claims.
Who knows if the small number of people who stormed the Capitol were actually Trump supporters, or hired guns by left wingers, Biden supporters and Never Trumpers. We’ll never know, because exclusive control over the “objective” investigation is in the hands of left wingers, Biden supporters and Never Trumpers. It’s a worse than worthless exercise.
Regardless, the Supreme Court is to blame. Most especially, the turncoat John Roberts, who will never, ever permit an open hearing for election fraud claims — not when such a hearing has the potential to benefit Republicans.
Stephen Baskerville, a writer I have followed for many years, explains in the June 2021 issue of Chronicles that it is the US welfare system constructed by the “Great Society” programs, not racism, that explains the plight of many black Americans. Democrat US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned at the time that the welfare system Democrats were putting in place would destroy the black family. As Moynihan predicted, the “war on poverty” decimated the African-American family and created a self-perpetuating underclass of single mothers and fatherless children.
Moynihan spelled it out for his colleagues:
“A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, that community asks for and gets chaos.”
But the welfare bureaucracies set in place were not about to let go of what was valuable to them. Baskerville says the real problem was not waste and “Welfare Queens” living extravagantly at public expense as conservatives complain, but money spent on turning black children into criminals, addicts, dropouts, and rioters, thus creating more problems requiring more government intrusion.
The appearance of radical feminism exacerbated welfare’s destruction of the black family by glorifying female independence and single-mother homes. Barbara Ehrenreich, for example, declared that “Independence, even in straitened and penurious forms still offers more sexual freedom than affluence gained through marriage and dependence on one man.”
Having driven away black fathers with financial bribes to women, the welfare system then shifted costs to fathers. “Deadbeat Dads” were criminalized and imprisoned under child support laws.
Next feminists used “no fault” divorce laws to extend the destruction of the family into the white component of society. “No fault” divorce destroyed marriage as a legally enforceable contract and replaced it with the ability of one spouse to unilaterally end a marriage without any grounds. Baskerville says that this feminist achievement extended family destruction into white middle class ranks. The resulting bitterness among women created more hatred of men and gave rise to the #MeToo movement which has spread chaos and bitterness.
Democrats have succeeded in shifting the blame for the consequences of their work to “white racism,” and feminists have succeeded in demonizing men. Curiously, feminists blame men for taking advantage of the sexual promiscuity of women that feminists advocated. With the relations between races and the relations between the sexes so badly damaged, what hope is there for society?
Hanne Herland’s examination of feminism and its consequences bolsters Baskerville’s. The ease with which ideologies prevail over facts is an unheeded lesson.
Stephen Baskerville, a writer I have followed for many years, explains in the June 2021 issue of Chronicles that it is the US welfare system constructed by the “Great Society” programs, not racism, that explains the plight of many black Americans. Democrat US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned at the time that the welfare system Democrats were putting in place would destroy the black family. As Moynihan predicted, the “war on poverty” decimated the African-American family and created a self-perpetuating underclass of single mothers and fatherless children.
Moynihan spelled it out for his colleagues:
“A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, that community asks for and gets chaos.”
But the welfare bureaucracies set in place were not about to let go of what was valuable to them. Baskerville says the real problem was not waste and “Welfare Queens” living extravagantly at public expense as conservatives complain, but money spent on turning black children into criminals, addicts, dropouts, and rioters, thus creating more problems requiring more government intrusion.
The appearance of radical feminism exacerbated welfare’s destruction of the black family by glorifying female independence and single-mother homes. Barbara Ehrenreich, for example, declared that “Independence, even in straitened and penurious forms still offers more sexual freedom than affluence gained through marriage and dependence on one man.”
Having driven away black fathers with financial bribes to women, the welfare system then shifted costs to fathers. “Deadbeat Dads” were criminalized and imprisoned under child support laws.
Next feminists used “no fault” divorce laws to extend the destruction of the family into the white component of society. “No fault” divorce destroyed marriage as a legally enforceable contract and replaced it with the ability of one spouse to unilaterally end a marriage without any grounds. Baskerville says that this feminist achievement extended family destruction into white middle class ranks. The resulting bitterness among women created more hatred of men and gave rise to the #MeToo movement which has spread chaos and bitterness.
Democrats have succeeded in shifting the blame for the consequences of their work to “white racism,” and feminists have succeeded in demonizing men. Curiously, feminists blame men for taking advantage of the sexual promiscuity of women that feminists advocated. With the relations between races and the relations between the sexes so badly damaged, what hope is there for society?
Hanne Herland’s examination of feminism and its consequences bolsters Baskerville’s. The ease with which ideologies prevail over facts is an unheeded lesson.
Barely a week goes by where somebody doesn’t ask me what mistake people make most often when dealing with family and friends. Regular readers of this page can probably predict my answer: The biggest mistake people make is trying to control others.
We can’t control the weather. We can’t control businesses, other than by spending or withholding our dollars. Nobody expects to control government or politicians, other than by exercising personal responsibility. Their power evaporates if they can’t control us with the promise of freebies (paid for with our money, of course).
In spite of that, people still expect to control others; their spouses, kids, family, friends and, if they’re really ambitious, even “society” in general.
People will piously declare that they don’t want to control others, but they go right ahead and try anyway. They’ll say something like, “I know I can’t control John. But I’d like to find a way to make him behave differently.” Oops … there’s that control. You can’t change someone’s behavior just because you want to.
The best you can do to (possibly) change a person’s thinking is to persuade them with reason. But it’s still up to them whether to listen or not. It takes an active choice to open one’s mind, to focus and to think. If they choose to ignore you, even the most brilliant reasoning will have no effect.
Some people not only expect others to change, but they feel entitled to it. In a personal relationship, “This isn’t the person I married. I’m entitled to change his or her behavior.” If somebody ends up not being the person you thought you married, then maybe you were misled, or maybe you rushed into a commitment without all the facts.
You may be able to prove beyond a doubt that your daughter, wife, husband, son, spouse or friend should act differently – not just for your sake, but for his or her own self-interest. But if he or she thinks they’re just fine as they are, there will be no change.
Certain politicians expect people to change, and feel entitled to it. So much time, energy and money is wasted on this impossible quest. A prime example is “The War on Drugs.” Three decades and billions of our dollars into it, are drugs any less popular than before? (No.) Are there fewer people abusing them? (No.) It’s no different than Prohibition back in the 1920s, and we all know how well that worked out. “The War on Poverty” has degenerated into a daytime TV platitude. Did poverty go away? (No.)
Think of the religious fanatics who try to use coercion to get their way. How many were converted by the events of 9/11? In fact, how many new enemies did they actually make on that day? It’s no different than the lingering stigma of the Crusades. In spite of all that sword rattling, I look around today and I see people of all religious denominations. Organized attempts to change people’s thinking will continue to be gross failures.
How well did it work out for Hitler to force people into racial and nationalistic boxes? Are we all Nazi today? No. In fact, Nazi is a dirty word. Communist dictators such as Stalin murdered millions in order to force a doctrine of economic equality on a population that was still just as poor 50 years later.
This is by no means intended to be a political tirade. But these historical examples of organized attempts to change attitudes and opinions are too compelling to ignore. Whether it’s trying to change your husband, your kids, your wife or millions of people, coercion is not the answer.
Physical or verbal abusers in a marriage, as well as dictators and “spiritual” gurus can sometimes intimidate bodies to do what minds will never accept. It might even look for a while like it’s working, but history has proven again and again that it never lasts. And the abusers, dictators and gurus will end up as nothing more than dirty words.
Prices charged by businesses for goods and services purchased in the U.S. rose 9.6 from a year ago in November, their highest annual pace in records going back nearly 11 years, the Labor Department said Tuesday. [Breitbart News]
Inflation is scary. But what’s even scarier is that the people in charge don’t understand what causes it; or, worse than that, they don’t care.
At the root, prices are a result of supply and demand. As demand increases for a product without increasing supply, then prices will go up. As the market provides more of that product, and demand stays the same, then prices will go down. It’s a constant fluctuation, in most cases.
High or low prices are not simply a function of whether people charging for their goods and services are “mean” or “nice.” It all boils down to supply and demand. Everyone, to one degree or another, wants to get the best price possible for their goods or services.
If you own a restaurant or a store, and people are lined up around the block every day, then you know you don’t have to lower prices; in fact, you probably need to raise them. Or get a greater supply of your product or service, if you can. Or both.
In a government-run currency, which we have, the actions of government officials and politicians are very important. Starting in 2020, the government shut down the economy. The economy shut down because the government (I would argue) massively overreacted to a flu. Regardless of what you think about that, the government did it. But at the same time the government shut down the economy, the government injected trillions of dollars into that stalled economy. This had to create pent-up demand. And it did. So now the demand cannot keep up with the supply. What do you get? Rising prices.
It’s complicated, but that’s part of the story. The other part of the story is what free market economists have said for decades. When the government puts “too much” money into the economy, because they think that by doing so they can stimulate economic growth, then you get inflation. Inflation is not defined by rising prices. Rising prices are a symptom of inflation. The definition of inflation is government giving more money to people than the market (i.e., real people) want or need. The ultimate extreme of this example was in 2020, and into 2021, when the economy had shut down yet the government injected trillions of dollars into the economy.
Given the big spending policies of Trump/Congress in 2020, and later the Democrats and Biden on a much bigger scale, inflation was inevitable — according to everything that would have been predicted by free market economics. The problem is that nobody in power subscribes to free market economics. They subscribe to monetarist and other socialist-leaning policies which say the solution to every problem is to inject more and more and more government dollars (fiat currency, it’s called) into the economy.
Give people money they don’t have and that nobody has actually created — and you get inflation. It’s spiraling out of control. Yet nobody seems to care. Biden minimizes and laughs at it. He’s demented and creepy, but he speaks for the powers that be. These powers that be do not care what happens to the vast majority of us. That’s our biggest problem: Even bigger than inflation. But make no mistake. Inflation, especially hyperinflation, will ruin us all because nothing we have will be worth anything.
Big government is not free. And inflation is the price we’re paying.
A Russian foot has come down. The euphemistic language “our Western partners” is discarded for the realistic “our opponents.” Russian patience with Washington has come to an end.
“If our opponents go against us, they will see that their security is not strengthened. The consequences for them will be dire. . . . Lack of progress towards a political and diplomatic solution to this problem [Ukraine] will lead to our response being military and technological.” –Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov
Excerpts:
As a pretext, the West is using the situation in Ukraine, where it embarked on encouraging Russophobia and justifying the actions of the Kiev regime to undermine the Minsk agreements and prepare for a military scenario in Donbass.
The course has been chosen of drawing Ukraine into NATO, which is fraught with the deployment of strike missile systems there with a minimal flight time to Central Russia, and other destabilising weapons. Such irresponsible behaviour creates grave military risks for all parties involved, up to and including a large-scale conflict in Europe.
We insist that serious long-term legal guarantees are provided, which would exclude NATO’s further advancement to the east and deployment of weapons on Russia’s western borders which are a threat to Russia. This must be done within a specific timeframe and on the basis of the principle of comprehensive and indivisible security.
To ensure the vital interests of European security, it is necessary to officially disavow the decision taken at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest about “Ukraine and Georgia becoming NATO members” as contrary to the commitment undertaken by all the OSCE participating States “not to strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States.”
We insist on the adoption of a legally binding agreement regarding the US and other NATO member countries’ non-deployment of strike weapons systems which threaten the territory of the Russian Federation on the territories of adjacent countries, both members and non-members of NATO.
We also insist on receiving a concrete response from NATO to our previous proposals on decreasing tension in Europe.
