We don’t need more humility. We need more accuracy. More intellectual honesty. More objectivity. The world is perishing from an insane orgy of arbitrary conclusions, unchecked emotions, self-conscious virtue-signaling and rampant, even willful irrationality. Humility will not stop it. Only the confident, decisive strength of SANITY and reason will.
*************
“Anonymous Patriot” writes on Twitter: “In a REAL pandemic, there are no haircuts. There are no dinners in Napa. There is no protesting. In a real pandemic there is ONLY death. If you’re still able to go to places like Target and live relatively uninterrupted due to the actual virus itself, you are not in a pandemic.”
*************
From my Facebook post: When an individual loses his reason, we call him mentally ill. When a whole society loses its reason, we call it “progressive.”
*************
Nikki Haley says, “The free world must stand strong against China.” WHAT free country? I don’t live in a free country. Free countries don’t have permanent curfews, mandatory vaccinations, permanent lockdowns, fraudulent elections, threatened gun confiscation and virtual censorship. Yes, we should stand up to China. But we must stand up to our own authoritarian government FIRST.
The French writer Jean Raspail died this summer. It was somehow fitting that the man whose dark novel The Camp of the Saints foretold the end of western civilization should pass at a time when everything seemed to be falling apart.
As a summary of the state of the world at the time of his death, one could hardly do better than to quote a passage from Raspail’s prophetic book:
“Day by day, month by month, doubt by doubt, law and order became fascism; education, constraint; work, alienation; revolution, mere sport; leisure, a privilege of class; marijuana, a harmless weed; family, a stifling hothouse; affluence, oppression; success, a social disease; sex, an innocent pastime; youth, a permanent tribunal; maturity, the new senility; discipline, an attack on personality.”
Three major events intersected in the tumultuous year of 2020: the coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter/Antifa-inspired riots that occurred after the police killing of George Floyd, and the vigorous assault on free speech that became known as “cancel culture.” These all preceded a presidential election that degenerated into a calamity.
When the coronavirus first appeared, the neo-Thought Police in the media took pains to refrain from referring to the virus by its place of origin (the “Wuhan virus” or the “China flu”) for fear of being politically incorrect. Notwithstanding the fact that West Nile Virus, Ebola, and Lyme Disease, among other maladies, are named after the geographic origins of the disease, there was an exception made for this one. Using the term Wuhan flu was simply not permitted.
Starting with the contretemps over the name, the virus became entirely a creature of politics: a useful crisis that could serve as the springboard for the progressive agenda. During the first two months of the year, as the virus was spreading from China to the rest of the world, the progressives in the media minimized it.
In the early spring, the Imperial College of London model predicted 2.2 million deaths in the United States and 500,000 in Great Britain. This became the scientific basis for a large-scale abrogation of personal and economic liberty. The models were later adjusted and by May it had become obvious that the death totals would be far short of that forecast, but by that point it was too late. The lockdowns originally sold as a temporary expedient to “flatten the curve” remained a feature of much of the U.S. economy for the remainder of the year.
On dubious authority, numerous state governors and city mayors forcibly shuttered all businesses they deemed “nonessential” to society and enforced the edicts with penalties, including threats of imprisonment. “Safetyism” became the order of the day. By the end of the year, emboldened politicians were telling people how to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The lockdowns dealt a devastating blow to the private economy, causing the GDP to tumble and wiping out 14 years of job gains. “Never before had public officials required millions of lawful businesses to shut their doors, throwing tens of millions of people out of work,” Heather Mac Donald wrote. “They did so at the command of one particular group of experts — those in medical and public health fields — who viewed their mandate as eliminating one particular health risk with every means put at their disposal.”
To deal with the economic distress, the federal government approved spending of trillions of additional dollars, dramatically increasing the dependence of private individuals and businesses on government. But in practice the lockdown policy was ruthlessly regressive. It most adversely affected those in lower-income occupations and small business owners, those with limited capital and limited opportunities to borrow, and rewarded politically connected big businesses.
Then in the summer of 2020, the cities erupted. Following the death of George Floyd, thousands of people took to the streets (in the midst of a pandemic) to protest “systemic racism,” whatever that was. However, while “mostly peaceful protestors” ran amok, church attendance was strictly limited. George Floyd, who had a long criminal past, was practically turned into Mother Theresa. At a time when normal people couldn’t have funerals for their family members, Floyd managed to have four. The violence that fanned out across the country led to a huge spike in crime in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, and other major cities.
Meanwhile, cancel culture went from tearing down statues and public art to censoring speech. Suddenly, words or expressions innocently used for decades and centuries, were deemed to have “racist connotations.” These included, for example, “Peanut gallery,” “Eenie meenie miney moe,” “Gyp,” and “No can do.” The term “master” was viewed as problematic because it supposedly related to the relationship of master and slave. Did anyone ever think such a thing when praising a performance as “masterful” or conferring a “master’s” degree? Does it matter? Liberal writer Andrew Sullivan observed that the use of the term “white supremacy” to mean not the KKK or the antebellum South but American society as a whole in the 21st century is now routine on the Left. The word “women,” is now being replaced by “people who menstruate.”
Political commentator Yoram Hazony noted that George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm had been taught in schools for decades. It was all in vain, he concluded: “Liberals never dreamed that when they opened their institutions to ‘Social Justice’ and ‘Identity’ politics, they were setting off down the exact road Orwell had warned against.”
Against this backdrop we held an unprecedented presidential election. COVID provided the pretext for the country to adopt a new system of voting. While it was deemed entirely safe for people to cram into a Wal-Mart, voting in person was deemed to be so unsafe that a new regime of mail-in voting was adopted, at the urging of the Democrats.
Hans von Spakovsky, an election law expert at the Heritage Foundation, previewed all of the potential problems with mail-in voting back in August: mail-in ballots are more vulnerable to being altered, stolen, or forged; they run the risk of being miscarried or not delivered by the postal service; and they run the risk of not being not being postmarked, making it impossible to determine if they were mailed on time. For the Democrats, of course, these irregularities were a feature, not a bug.
Moreover, Big Media and Big Tech, acting as official enforcers of cancel culture, censored and suppressed pro-Trump views and news stories that could be harmful to Biden.
It was little wonder that millions of Americans concluded that the election was a farce.
If the progressives’ cultural revolution is successful, Victor David Hansen predicted, “[t]he special targets will be the self-employed successful business class… those
…who run local insurance agencies, the store owners, salespeople, the successful medical practices, car dealerships, large family farms, the millions who keep the country competitive, innovative, and prosperous. All of them lack the romance of the poor and the cultural tastes of the rich, but for the most part, they are just too damn informed and stubborn to be tolerated.”
These were precisely the folks that Hillary Clinton called “the basket of deplorables.”
All year, these deplorables have been told: “Keep your heads down, your mouths shut, and obey the designated experts.”
Their New Year’s Resolution for 2021 must be to respond loudly and forcefully:
“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.” ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The focus of the worldwide public’s attention on masks, lockdowns, infection rates, and vaccines serves to prevent any investigation of Covid’s origin.
Did a disease of bats or some other creature mutate so that humans became susceptible?
If so, why was research on how to make pathogens more infectious going on at the University of North Carolina and allegedly at a US military lab and then transferred to Wuhan where it was financed by Fauci at N.I.H.?
Is the justification for this research—to prepare for a pandemic—a cover for covert bioweapons development? If so, why was Washington working with China on a bioweapon?
Did Covid escape from the Wuhan lab, or did Americans take it to Wuhan during the military games there?
Why were Western countries so slow to stop travel from infected countries?
Is the rapid worldwide spread of Covid an indication that it was intentionally released everywhere almost simultaneously? Are new strains new releases?
Flu vaccines are specific to a flu. How can a Covid vaccine protect against mutating strains? Does vaccination mean a never ending series of vaccinations for each new mutation?
Is public health the focus of mask mandates, lockdowns, and vaccinations, or are other agendas being served?
I am sure that there are more questions.
But none are being officially addressed, and the presstitutes have zero interest. This suggests that the origin of Covid is being kept a secret and that a wider agenda than public health is being served.
Sounds like we are being prepared for more control over our behavior, travel, and livelihood. A country in which people are easily regimented is not a place to be living.
As there is money to be made in a “Covid Passport,” private business will lobby it through and help build the Total Police State (TPS). Between the private sector’s greed for money and the public sector’s greed for power, we can kiss freedom good-bye.
America is the “land of the free”? What a sick joke. Most of us are living under “emergency orders”. What is an “emergency”? An emergency refers to a TEMPORARY, brief state. An emergency is outside of the norm, i.e., the rarity, the unfortunate, the painful but brief. We have been living under “emergency” orders for going on a year now. And they’re even telling us the worst is yet to come, and we can expect at least many more months of even worse restrictions to come. For details, look at Britain, our Mother Country where it’s now proposed to restrict the contact among family members WITHIN A HOUSEHOLD. Neither the Nazis nor Orwell ever dreamed of totalitarianism on this scale.
The tyrants don’t believe in their own vaccine, something they WILL impose on us without any liability whatsoever for the vaccine-makers; yet they will also continue to impose controls as if the vaccine doesn’t even exist. The “stimulus” debate over whether we get $600 or $2000 is a metaphor for how it will be once nobody has any income or money, except for the elite. For details, check out Venezuela or North Korea.
Anyone who actually believes these “emergency” orders won’t continue indefinitely if not permanently into the future, under some other rationalization when the media tires of the COVID hysteria — well, anyone who actually believes that will gladly do the 21st century equivalent of hopping on the cattle cars and going to the concentration camps, once the Governor’s directives arrive. You think I’m exaggerating. Have you learned nothing from 2020? And under a one-party (Communist Socialist Democratic) rule with no possibility of losing power in any future sham elections, you can be sure something along those lines will be coming. Going forward, it will either be fight, or die.
Our Founders were visionaries and provided ways to resolve disputed Presidential elections. Constitutional law expert Attorney Jenna Ellis, a Trump legal team member, outlined this procedure. The most straightforward solution is for the six contested states’ legislatures to convene on their initiative by a simple majority vote without being called into session by a reluctant governor. Then by a resolution by a simple majority vote, reclaim their state’s electors pledged for Biden and appoint electors for Trump before Congress meets Jan. 6, 2020.
Patriots in the contested states should immediately deluge by phone, fax, and email their representative to demand the retraction of the electors pledged to Biden. Warn the representatives there are 74 million disenfranchised voters who voted for Trump who are not going away, “. . . come back with your shield or on it!” Links to representatives in AZ, GA, MI, NV, PA, and WI. While not yet time for pitchforks and shovels, this has been done before. Shortly after WWII, Tennessee citizens faced a similar vote fraud by a corrupt government in McMinn County, “The Battle of Athens, Tennessee 1946.”
Nov. 3, 2020, a new day of infamy, a devious covert attack shook the United States of America to its core. This attack was worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The perpetrators were our elitist aristocracy and political class that reject the concept of self-governing by We the People. Complicit were our unelected administrative state, the Deep State, the mainstream media (MSM), Big Tech, The New World Order (Globalists – The Great Reset), and hostile foreign governments, specifically China. This evil coalition seeks to subvert the People’s will by undermining our core beliefs, sovereignty, and overthrowing our government as created by our founders. As President Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.“
As President Trump said, this coalition stole the 2020 Presidential election to prevent a duly elected President from serving a second term. This action was yet another coup to conceal the many past criminal acts of these perpetrators, e.g., treason, misprision of treason, rebellion or insurrection, and advocating the government’s overthrow. Including violating the People’s civil rights under the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments and many other serious federal felonies that so far have gone unpunished.
This coalition’s collective actions are a criminal conspiracy or a criminal enterprise, as defined in RICO, as I wrote previously in this article. See this article by Glenn Reynolds (AKA, Instapundit), a University of Tennessee law professor. Our law enforcement and other government agencies covered up these crimes – the Secretary of State, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, Director of National Intelligence, and others. They all went rogue and failed to defend the United States against all foreign and domestic enemies.
Is Joe Biden a compromised Manchurian Candidate? A puppet used by dark handlers to implement the radical agenda of the Leftists and Marxists? Their manifesto is the antitheses of the People’s rights, “. . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” as declared in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution – the free will of men and women. These allegations pose severe national security consequences from China to the United States should former Vice President Joe Biden serve as President.
Before the election, organized domestic terrorist organizations would magically appear that committed acts of murders, riots, arson, insurrection, and destruction of both public and private property (BLM and Antifa). These organizations are akin to Hitler’s Brownshirts. These organizations have ties and are funded by the perpetrators. The MSM colluded with outright lies and disinformation to suppress the vote in support of Biden. Big Tech censored social media to thwart the free flow of information and discussion of these issues.
COVID-19 mandates for masks and lockdowns were and are a sham. The hysteria generated was used to suppress the vote and to facilitate vote fraud. Whether accidentally released or not from a Chinese viral lab, China knew this virus was in the wild but hid this fact with the WHO’s assistance. China banned travel from Wuhan within China but allowed international flights from Wuhan to continue. There is evidence to suggest China created COVID-19 as a bioweapon. The intentional release in either manner was an act of war.
The Hunter Biden investigation was kept secret from the voters for over a year by the DOJ and FBI. Evidence from this investigation contained exculpatory information that was withheld from the defense in President Donald J. Trump’s sham impeachment trial. The DOJ should have disclosed this evidence no matter what its policy was. The People’s interest far outweighed the DOJ’s policy of nondisclosure. The co-conspiring MSM refused to cover the Hunter Biden story. Instead, they called it Russian disinformation until very recently. Twitter de-platformed the New York Post that broke the story. Why?
The Dominion vote system is a well-known corrupt vote tallying system within the cybersecurity community. Dominion was used to flip votes at will (here, here, and here). A forensic analysis of the voter machines in Antrim County, Michigan revealed “. . . [were] not the result of an error by the Republican clerk, as claimed, but ‘machine error built into the voting software designed to create error.’” Dominion has been accused of being financed by hostile governments. At a news conference in Georgia on 12-02-2020, Attorney Lin Wood accused both the Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia of taking money from China (YouTube at 11:40).
Where are the DOJ and the FBJ? Late out of the gate again — like 9/11? Why? Time to pay the piper, either do your job or get off the pot. Time for real police work instead of playing to the media with dog and pony shows, e.g., the NASCAR garage door noose. The FBI’s NASCAR response is the type of action necessary to root out and prosecute this conspiracy to commit organized and systemic vote fraud across many states in this election. The FBI has the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), Fusion Centers, and the forensic financial and cyber resources to confirm these crimes were committed and identify the perpetrators.
At stake is whether our country survives as a constitutional republic from this covert, insidious attack both from within by the aid and comfort by elected and unelected officials and others owing allegiance to the United States and by the assistance of hostile foreign governments and The New World Order. As Benjamin Franklin said, our government is, A republic, if you can keep it. As explained by Richard Berman, “. . . democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.” [My emphasis] We must preserve the rule of law and put an end to this unequal system of justice — rules for thee, but not for me. As John Adams said, “[We are] a Government of Laws, Not of Men.”
Ron Wright is a retired detective from Riverside PD, CA. BA in political science CSUF, M. Adm. University of Cal, Riverside.
Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live–that productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one’s values–that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others–that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human–that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind’s full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay–that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live–that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road–that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up–that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.” ― Ayn Rand
The upcoming year should be interesting. The Establishment “Deep State” has won a major victory in the United States with the election of Joe Biden as president. What remains to be seen is whether or not there will be significant bloodletting as a consequence, revenge for the presumed misdeeds that constituted the core legacy of four years of Donald J. Trump as chief executive. Many in the Democratic Party harbor deep resentments that go back to the election of 2016, which spawned the myth that foreign interference by the Russians was responsible for the upset victory by the GOP candidate. Even at this distance, few if any Democrats are willing to admit that Hillary Clinton was a deeply flawed candidate whose condescension towards whole categories of voters ultimately inspired many “undecideds” to vote against her.
Indeed, Trump came closer to repeating his improbable victory in 2020 than anyone would have predicted and the stench of possible widespread fraud continues to hang over the result. Donald Trump entered office with a pledge to “drain the swamp,” something that he found more difficult to actually do rather than just talk about doing. The Democrats will surely now work hard to methodically eliminate all political appointees in the vast bureaucracy guilty of Trumpism.
That replacement of bureaucrats is referred to as the “spoils systems” and it is to be expected, but there is something more sinister in the works with leading Democrats and some journalists calling for heads to roll, metaphorically to be sure but with real impact on the lives of those who supported the losing side. The Washington Post’s resident Trump-hating Zionist Jennifer Rubin summed it up nicely in a tweet three days after the election, posting “Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not to follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite’ society. We have a list.”
And Bill Clinton’s former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has been even more explicit, tweeting a demand to create a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” The commission borrows the name and would be modeled on the organization set up in South Africa after the fall of the apartheid government and the establishment of majority black rule, an exercise in attempted democratization that has nevertheless failed to put an end to extremely high levels of corruption and communal violence in the country.
Reich’s objective is not limited to punishing the Trump White House’s top officials who may have promoted policies considered anathema by the incoming Democratic administration. He has also tweeted “When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.” The Reich proposal would potentially mean punishing thousands of otherwise innocent individuals who had little influence over what happened during the past four years. “Enabled” covers a lot of ground, and is prone to devolve into something like a witch hunt.
One Reich supporter wrote in defense of the proposal “As long as unresolved historic injustices continue to fester in the world, there will be a demand for truth commissions” and there have been numerous comments on social media sites like Facebook insisting that “something be done” about the “deplorables” who voted for and supported Trump. Interestingly, even though the comments constitute actual threats, Facebook has not deleted them, unlike the elimination of posts that run afoul of the censors by questioning the validity of the election or challenging conventional wisdom on COVID-19.
Another commenter on twitter agreed with Reich, though complaining “But it doesn’t go far enough, clearly. Trump’s assets and those of his voters should be seized by the state through legislation and distributed to those he’s harmed as reparations. Surely that’s the only way to heal our nation. Land of the free!” And finally, still another cheerleader enthused “Robert… you’re right. And after we win… we’ll come for you all… we’re pretty much over trying to share a country with you anyway. Four years ago I thought you were people with bad ideas. I was wrong: YOU’RE BAD PEOPLE.”
To be sure, Trump invited much of the hostile response to what he represents when he held rallies where supporters called out Hillary Clinton with chants of “Lock her up!” So the anger is there on both sides and momentum is building not just to replace or ignore Trump’s associates and his supporters, but to punish them for their alleged inability to comprehend the many benefits derived from Democratic Party rule. As no mechanism actually exists to enable the new regime to punish supporters of the previous administration, unless they have actually committed a crime, one suspects the process of purging the bureaucracy and voters rolls will pretty much be improvised while Biden and Harris get settled in.
Donald Trump also does not help either himself or the cause he represents. His insults and abusive language invite hostility, having his tweets turn allies into enemies and making friends of the “revolution” that he represents wish that he would just shut up. Current media reports suggesting that he might not vacate the White House on January 20th as he continues to be convinced that he won invite a nasty response from the Democrats. Ex-president Barack Obama has warned, possibly in jest, that Trump might need to be removed forcibly by Navy SEALS.
And, of course, violence could beget violence. If denigration of Trump supporters followed by a real purge does take place it will impact on the tens of millions of voters who still believe President Trump should have won re-election but for fraud. They are ready for a fight, and not necessarily limited to the metaphoric. As I said in the beginning, it could be an interesting year here in America.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.orgaddress is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
Last week Congress passed a massive coronavirus relief and omnibus spending bill. President Trump threatened to veto the bill, saying he wants an increase in the amount for “stimulus” checks authorized by the bill from 600 dollars to 2,000 dollars. The checks are designed to help those harmed by the lockdowns. President Trump also demanded a cut in some of the wasteful spending contained in the bill, such as the ten million dollars for gender programs in Pakistan.
At the 11th hour, however, President Trump signed the bill.
President Trump’s veto threat came after many people complained that a 600 dollars one-time payment was insufficient, and that the payment could be higher if Congress cut spending on militarism, foreign aid, and corporate handouts.
The text of the 5,593-page bill was made available hours before the votes in the House and Senate. Representatives and senators were told the bill had to pass immediately or else government would shut down around Christmas. This does not excuse voting for the bill. Congress should have refused to vote for this bill until members had time to read it. Those who voted “yes” should not get away with claiming the bill needed to be passed before members could read it.
While it is understandable that many are outraged over the way this bill was rushed through, the real outrage is that the rushed passage of omnibus bills has become a yearly Christmas tradition on Capitol Hill. These spending bills are always full of outrageous special interest giveaways. This practice denies the average member of Congress a meaningful role in carrying out one of Congress’ two most significant constitutional duties — funding the government. Congress long ago abandoned its other main constitutional responsibility — declaring war.
Whether 600 dollars or 2,000 dollars, a one-time stimulus payment is hardly adequate compensation for the suffering the government lockdowns have inflicted on the American people. Stimulus checks will not reopen closed small businesses or stop increases in domestic violence and substance abuse. A government check will not restore educational and development opportunities denied to children stuck at home struggling with “virtual education.” A one-time check will not compensate workers for the health problems developed due to having to wear a mask for eight hours a day. The only just solution is to end the lockdowns, and never again allow overblown fears to justify shutting down the economy.
Funding the government via massive omnibus bills drafted in secret and rushed into law concentrates power in the hands of a select few representatives and senators. It also gives the president excessive influence over the appropriations process. This is exactly the opposite of what the Framers intended when they gave Congress power over government spending.
This situation is the inevitable result of a government that tries to maintain the fiction that republican institutions are compatible with a welfare-warfare leviathan. Congress will continue to indulge this delusion until the system collapses. This collapse will likely be brought on by a collapse in the dollar’s value.
The combination of the high-profile coronavirus bill with this year’s omnibus spending bill has brought new attention to Congress’ practice of funding the government via massive, unread appropriations bills. Hopefully, the anger people are expressing, instead of just disappearing once people receive their checks, will strengthen the movement to return to free markets and limited constitutional government. Liberty is a far better option than descent into economic chaos and totalitarianism.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 