Category Archives: Politics

Confusing Free Market Capitalism with the Corrupt Interventionist State

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It is difficult to see the difference between an actual free market and the interventionist system under which we live because so many across the political spectrum refer to ours as a “capitalist” society. 

When most people put on their “reality” hats about politics, there are few among them who do not cynically see the power-lusting, the corruption, and the hypocrisy in most of what is said and done by those running for or sitting in political office. A constant point of dispute and disagreement is over how and why it is that governments have this seemingly inescapable tendency. The all too frequent answer in modern democratic societies is the claimed nefarious influences of businessmen to use government at the expense of most others everywhere around the world.

The latter is a near permanent theme in literature, movies, and the mass media. Widely used political and ideological rhetoric is portrayed as a false cover for what is really an often-successful attempt to dupe most people into thinking that what is “good for business is good for America.” Far too many politicians are the partners and accomplices to these private sector abusers of the public trust, it is said, since government is supposed to assure fairness and “social justice” for the many rather than privileges and favors for the capitalist few.

While mostly left unstated in any explicit or direct manner in movies and on television, the implicit message is that businessmen are inherently exploiting oppressors and abusers of their workers, their customers, and “the earth” due to their physical harms to the planet that threaten environmental sustainability. “Business” has to be heavily regulated and restricted if public harm is not to be done. Or . . . maybe there are just some if not many sectors of everyday life that must be placed outside of private reach through government production and provision of publicly necessary and needed goods and services. Otherwise, not just public harm, but human death and destruction will come in the wake of allowed private enterprise.

“Roadkill’s” Twisted Conception of a Libertarian

One example of these views may be seen in the recently aired four-part Season One of “Roadkill,” broadcast as part of Masterpiece Theater on PBS, starring Hugh Laurie (known to many American television viewers for his role as the medical doctor, “House,” which ran from 2004 to 2012). In this latest outing, Laurie plays Peter Laurence, a British Conservative Party cabinet member who serves, at first, as Minister of Transportation.

He is “hip” and “progressive,” saying that in his personal life and in his politics, he always looks at what’s ahead, and not at what has happened or what might otherwise tie you to the past. He regularly appears on a radio talk show with glib remarks outside of the seeming mainstream of even his own party’s politics. The first episode opens with him having won a libel case in which a newspaper reporter had accused him of corruption and bribery in the service of a consortium of businessmen wanting to make the world safer for their ill-gotten profits.

It seems that our Minister of Transportation may have been in cahoots with American medical companies who want to “privatize” parts of the British National Health Service (NHS). What could be more damning than the idea of replacing socialized medicine with private enterprise health care and service? Oh, the horror!

At one point when he is challenged about whether he is really innocent of the accusation, he insists that the charge was absurd, since, after all, what he is all about is personal freedom and choice. He declares, how could he be guilty, why, he views himself as a “libertarian.” When he is mildly injured in a car accident with a deer, he praises the heroes of Britain’s NHS as he leaves the hospital where he has been treated. Clearly, there are limits to his public libertarianism.

Personal and Political Corruption Envelops the Main Character

In his personal life, he cheats on his wife, lies to his two daughters, views his mistress as a convenience rather than a commitment, and faces a new potential scandal just as he is made Minister of Justice in a cabinet reshuffle, when he discovers that he has a previously unknown daughter from an illicit relationship with a black woman 20 years earlier, a daughter who is in prison for major bank fraud. But don’t worry, he gets ahead of it by going public on television saying he is pleased to find out about this daughter and hoping to get to know her better; after the show, Peter Laurence tells his personal assistant that that should get his public support up a bit.

But things are not all blue skies for our main character. The news reporter who brought the corruption charges against him won’t give up; she finds a witness who can confirm that Laurence was where he said he wasn’t, working for an Anglo-American lobbying group and earning a $500,000 “speaker’s fee” for an hour’s presentation; but the witness mysteriously dies. However, the news reporter doggedly heads over to Washington, D.C. to still get the goods on Laurence; alas, she is killed in a hit-and-run on the streets of the U.S. capital.

Not that Peter Laurence is, himself, behind the murder of the young reporter. Oh, no, that has been taken care of by an arms consortium and others, because they have bigger plans for our Minister of Justice. When it turns out that weapons used by the Saudi Arabian government that have killed three British NGO representatives in war-torn Yemen were sold by those U.K. armament manufacturers to the Riyadh government, the Conservative Party Prime Minister orders a temporary arms sale embargo to calm public outrage.

British Prime Ministers may come and go, but the pursuit of private profits never comes to an end, even if it kills innocent fellow citizens doing humanitarian work in a faraway country. The armament consortium engineers a vote of no confidence in the British Parliament to oust the current Conservative Prime Minister from 10 Downing Street.

Your Political Friends Can Get You to 10 Downing Street

Peter Laurence meets with the head of the British Conservative Party and one of the leading U.K. armaments manufacturers; he is reminded about how the three of them have been such good friends for, oh, so long a time. Yes, what a tragedy about the unfortunate death of that British reporter while she was over in the States. But, well, that just means one less thing for everyone to worry about. They just need to remember that without the tourist trade and the armaments industry there is no British economy, so what’s good for armament manufacturers is good for Great Britain. They just know they can count on Laurence not forgetting that.

The final episode of Season One ends with our “hero” stepping into 10 Downing Street as the newly elected Prime Minister of Great Britain. What could go wrong? The betrayed wife is beside him as they enter their new residence, many in the public look on him as that “progressive” forward-looking Conservative Party leader, and, clearly, his “friends” in British industry have shown their appreciation for his right-thinking by helping his arrival at that lofty political position of power and privilege.

But shadows of his personal and professional past that he says he always tries to put behind him are still looming just ahead. So how and what will bring about the downfall of Peter Laurence, or the misstep from his past that he says might make him the next “roadkill” in the processes of political power-lusting, corruption, and abuses of positions in high governmental authority?

The answers await Season Two, if there is one, because the show’s producers have not yet announced whether it will be back next year.

All the Marxian Messaging About “Capitalism” is There

All the elements of the standard anti-capitalist tale are here, with its subliminal Marxian presumptions. Public statements of believing in personal choice and individual liberty, and a claimed “public good” arising from profit-pursuing private enterprise are all part of the rhetorical “false conscience”-creating manipulators of public opinion. It is all a smokescreen to hide the “real” power relationships of greedy businessmen using politicians and government organs of power to acquire their ill-gotten gains by wanting to undermine national health care and make millions by manufacturing the means by which innocent people are killed in various conflicts around the world.

Self-labelling libertarians like Peter Laurence in “Roadkill” are corrupt and manipulative people using the rhetoric of freedom to live their own comfortable lives in government positions that are theirs only because they serve and work with the “real” power behind “the system,” that being evil, murdering businessmen. The honest people, like that truth-seeking reporter, end up dead as their reward for trying to unmask the powers-that-be. Governments are put in place and torn down by capitalist wire pullers behind the curtain.

It is of note that far less frequently in such movies and on television is corruption and abuse of power shown to be in socialist or left-of-center governments in office. Rarely if ever is their rhetoric portrayed as the cover to advance the special interests of labor unions wanting closed shops, or leftist-friendly businesses wanting subsidies to cover their unprofitable enterprises, or socialist ideologues hungry for power to coercively socially engineer the lives of tens or hundreds of millions of ordinary people.

The heroic person in almost all movies and television shows with some political message imbedded in it is the lone person trying to stand in the way of lumber companies destroying the rainforests, or oil companies poisoning the land, sea and air, or businessmen willing to murder their own grannie for an extra buck. If there is a “good” businessman, he is always someone who in some way sacrifices his profits for a higher and more socially just cause. But even one of these is few and far between. Or if there is a good businessman, he is the small underdog enterpriser who, also, is a victim, just like the other “little people” against “big” business.

The Free Market and Its Institutional Premises

What all such films and shows are portraying are the intrigues and workings of the Interventionist State, not the nature and reality of a functioning free market economy in which governments actually are limited to the few functions of securing and protecting the individual rights of each person to their life, liberty and honestly acquired property. And a system of an impartial rule of law, under which there are the same equal individual rights for all, but privileges and favors for none.

Under such a true political-economic system of classical liberalism, politicians like Peter Laurence in “Roadkill” have no role to play because there are no special favors to give or take away. A way to see the difference, perhaps, is by laying out an eight-point contrast between the liberal free market economy and the interventionist state. The institutional presumptions and premises of a liberal market economy are:

  1. All means of production are privately owned.
  2. The use of the means of production is under the control of private owners, who may be individuals or corporate entities.
  3. Consumer demands determine how the means of production will be used.
  4. Competitive market forces of supply and demand determine the prices for consumer goods and the various factors of production (including labor).
  5. The success or failure of individual and corporate enterprises is determined by the profits or losses these enterprises earn, based on their greater or lesser ability to satisfy consumer demand in competition with their rivals in the marketplace.
  6. The market is not confined to domestic transactions and includes freedom of international trade.
  7. The monetary system is based on a market-determined commodity (for example, gold or silver), and the banking system is private and competitive (neither controlled nor regulated by government).
  8. Government is limited in its activities to the enforcement and protection of each individual’s life, liberty and honestly acquired property under impartial rule of law.

Under such a system there are no possibilities for corrupt acts by politicians to bestow special privileges and favors on some at others’ expense, since by definition and institutional constraint there is nothing to politically buy or sell from the government, for as long as these “rules of the game” are recognized, abided by, and enforced.

The Interventionist State and Its Institutional Premises

Contrast this with the institutional presumptions and premises of the interventionist state that more closely resembles the type of world with its personalities and incentives as represented in Masterpiece Theater’s “Roadkill.” In the interventionist state:

  1. The private ownership of the means of production is restricted and abridged.
  2. The use of the means of production by private owners is prohibited, limited or regulated.
  3. The users of the means of production are prevented from being guided solely by consumer demands.
  4. Government influences or controls the formation of prices for consumer goods and/or the factors of production (including labor).
  5. Government reduces the impact of market supply and demand on the success or failure of various enterprises, while increasing its own influence and control over market outcomes and earned incomes through such artificial means as pricing and production regulations, limits on freedom of entry into segments of the market, and direct or indirect subsidies, and compulsory redistribution.
  6. Free entry into the domestic market by potential foreign rivals is discouraged, restricted, or prohibited through import bans, quotas, or tariffs, and other means.
  7. The monetary system is regulated by government for the purpose of influencing what is used as money, the value of money, and the rate at which the quantity of money is increased or decreased. These, and other policy instruments, are used for affecting employment, output, and growth in the economy.
  8. Government’s role is not limited to the protection of life, liberty, and property.

Here, in the political arena, is a potential cesspool of corruption and abuse. With the government’s hand increasingly in more and more aspects of everyday economic life, the future of every enterpriser’s business now depends on what, how, and for whom the political interventions are introduced and secured. Politics rather than markets more and more determines the fortunes and fate of any private enterprise. Businessmen find it necessary to cultivate the qualities of political entrepreneurship, rather than simply that of a market-oriented entrepreneur.

Ludwig von Mises on the Workings of the Interventionist State

This was explained nearly 90 years ago by Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), at the twilight of the interventionist and corrupt Weimar Republic in Germany, shortly before the coming to power of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party. In 1932, during the Great Depression and amid a wide belief that the prolonged and severe economic downturn was “proof” of the failure of a capitalist economy, Mises explained the institutional nature and behavioral characteristics of those attempting to get ahead in the interventionist state:

“In the interventionist state it is no longer of crucial importance for the success of an enterprise that the business should be managed in a way that it satisfies the demands of consumers in the best and least costly manner. It is far more important that one has ‘good relationships’ with the political authorities so that the interventions work to the advantage and not the disadvantage of the enterprise.

“A few marks’ more tariff protection for the products of the enterprise and a few marks’ less tariff for the raw materials used in the manufacturing process can be of far more benefit to the enterprise than the greatest care in managing the business. No matter how well an enterprise may be managed, it will fail if it does not know how to protect its interests in the drawing up of the customs rates, in the negotiations before arbitration boards, and with the cartel authorities. To have ‘connections’ becomes more important than to produce well and cheaply.

“So the leadership positions within enterprises are no longer achieved by men who understand how to organize companies and to direct production in the way the market situation demands, but by men who are well thought of ‘above’ and ‘below,’ men who understand how to get along well with the press and all the political parties, especially with the radicals, so that they and their company give no offence. It is that class of general directors that negotiate far more often with state functionaries and party leaders than with those from whom they buy or to whom they sell.

“Since it is a question of obtaining political favors for these enterprises, their directors must repay politicians with favors. In recent years, there have been relatively few large enterprises that have not had to spend very considerable sums for various undertakings in spite of it being clear from the start they would yield no profit. But in spite of the expected loss it had to be done for political reasons. Let us not even mention contributions for purposes unrelated to business – for campaign funds, public welfare organizations, and the like.” (Ludwig von Mises, “The Myth of the Failure of Capitalism” [1932] in Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises, Vol. 2 [2000], pp. 188-189)

Ayn Rand and the Mindset of the Politically Privileged and Powerful

The psychological atmosphere of the interventionist state and its users and abusers was also captured in Ayn Rand’s famous novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957), when a group of the business plunder participants meet for a drink to discuss how they cannot be held responsible for the bad times through which the country is passing. That their failing businesses and falling profits, their inabilities to meet contractual obligations and commitments, are not the fault of the poor management of their enterprises.

No, it’s “the system,” it’s the unreliability of others, it is due to business rivals not willing to sacrifice for the “common good” and contribute a “fair share” to others in the industry, with, instead, those “selfish” rivals attempting to compete more effectively for consumer business that leaves these others financially less well off. “The only justification of private property,” one of them says, “is public service.” Another insists that, “After all, private property is a trusteeship held for the benefit of society as a whole.” One other points to “the blight of unbridled competition,” while still another argues, “It seems to me that the national policy ought to be aimed at the objective of giving everybody a chance at his fair share . . .” (pp. 49-50)

Represented here are the politically oriented businessmen about whom Mises was referring. People not focused on making better and less expensive goods, or whose attention is directed at meeting consumer demands, and at those from whom they buy and to whom they sell as the basis upon which any profits may be earned. No, their interest is in gaming the interventionist state to hinder their competitors, gain subsidies and protections through government regulations, and to weaken respect for and belief in private property rights by insisting that coerced sharing and service to a “common good,” as the ideological means of rationalizing the political interventions to win those privileges and favors that without the government would never be theirs on an open and free market.

Confusing Free Market Capitalism with the Corrupt Interventionist State

This points to one of the most commonly made and dangerous confusions in modern society, that being the assumption that the economic system under which we have been and currently are living, represents and reflects a liberal free market economy. It is difficult for many people to see the difference between an actual free market and the interventionist system under which we live because so many across the political spectrum refer to ours as a “capitalist” society.

If we use as a benchmark the institutional characteristics defined, above, as the meaning of a free market economy, the U.S. is very far from that conceptual idea and ideal. Our system possesses and operates in the context of all the institutional characteristics outlined as defining the interventionist state.

Is there favoritism and privilege? Is the “system” manipulated by those who know how to “play the game” of political entrepreneurship at the expense of consumers and competitors? Do politicians rise to and retain power and position in government through political pandering and offer plunder to those special interests who can get them elected? Are false promises, often outright lies, and frequent appeals to irrational emotionalism and primal envy frequently the avenues to political success?

Yes, to each and every one of these. The events of the last year under the coronavirus crisis have only reinforced and intensified this trend down the interventionist road. No corner of society or the economy has been free of a hyper-politicization in which governments have determined who may work and under what conditions, what goods may be manufactured and sold and at what prices, and who may stay open for business and with what restrictions on how they may operate their enterprise.

This is the breeding ground for even more of the political hypocrisy and corrupt privilege and favoritism portrayed in programs like “Roadkill.” How can it be otherwise when everyone’s life and fate are in the hands of politicians like that fictional Peter Laurance, and the ideological and special interest groups that want to use government to get what might never be theirs under a real system of free market capitalism?

The important task for those who value personal freedom, economic liberty and the free market economy is to disabuse our fellow citizens from thinking that what we have is a fully capitalist system, and to appreciate that what critics of capitalism call for and want in the form of even more and bigger government would only magnify the corrosive trends already in play in the modern world.

Richard Ebeling, Capitalism Magazine

Mob Law: Time to Put the Foot Down Firmly

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When America was infested with “righteous” mobs who took the law into their own hands in the early 1800s, Lincoln left a remedy to future generations on how to defend against it: “… cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason.”

An utter disdain for mob law is encoded onto the DNA of the body politic, thanks to men like Lincoln.

No grievance is fit to be redressed by mob law, he said. When men “burn gamblers” and “hang murderers” unlawfully, the day will come when they will hang people who are neither gamblers nor murderers.

“[W]henever the vicious portion of the population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend on it, this government cannot last,” he said.

Government will collapse, Lincoln warned, when good men who obey the laws become so disgusted with a government that no longer protects them, that they feel they have nothing to lose.

We’re getting there.

Today, we’ve seen the “vicious portion” of our population loot, burn buildings, and beat innocent people “at pleasure” and – shockingly – “with impunity.” They do it in plain sight, repeatedly, and are applauded by political vultures as peaceful protesters.

It’s made the legs of government a bit wobbly.

But the street mobs are small beans compared to America’s most dangerous hordes: High-level, white-collar mobs who work like maniacs to uproot the philosophical underpinnings of the American Revolution and the Judeo-Christian ethic. They are politicians, judges, rogue intel alums, media, activist organizations, celebrities, leftist billionaires, tech companies, and educators who butcher our history, defy our laws, and give moral and financial support to the thugs who loot and burn things to enforce white-collar mob law.

These dignified mobs don’t swarm streets in farmers britches while carrying nooses, torches, and pitchforks. They take the law into their own hands from seats of government, courtrooms, newsrooms, big corporations, and inside algorithms of the world’s most advanced computer systems.

These are the people who got away with Russian collusion. They got away with impeachment. They got away with exploiting the pandemic. They got away with using Chinese-inspired algorithms to suppress speech. And they’ve gotten away with a hundred other disgusting schemes to take down Trump.

They are not the majority, but they’ve hijacked the wheels of the American ship, and they’re steering it toward La-La Land at flank speed against our wills. We’re starting to feel bound, gagged, and kidnapped in our own country.

And how have we dealt with all the chaos? By appealing to the cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason of “sober courts” and “ministers of justice,” as Lincoln called them.

It’s not working.

So now they’ve stolen Trump’s election. Packs of thieves, under the command of white-collar mobs, took voting laws into their own hands. We know it. The media knows it. Democrats know it. The Supreme Court knows it! Yet, our deranged institutions are incapable of dealing with the cold, hard realities of the biggest election theft in American history.

Why?

Because otherwise sober-minded men are terrified of running into a political buzz saw. They fear the mobs. “Good” men like John Roberts have a primal fear of being tarred and feathered. These are weak-minded men with no “iron in the blood” who “shrink from strife,” as Teddy Roosevelt put it. They believe that peace is the end of all things and strife is the worst of all things.

Fighting Democrats and leftists has become outrageously more expensive than fighting Republicans. Democrats have become unscrupulous, amoral, and crass. They’re at war. If the gods of Utopia wills that they deceive, cheat, intimidate, destroy lives, commit violence, and break laws – well, so be it. They are a high-level version of the “vicious portion of the population” that Lincoln talked about.

Something else primal is going on.

Journalist Walter Lippman, in 1955, quoted philosopher William Hocking as saying that human nature is “the most plastic part of the living world – the most adaptable, the most educable,” which also means that human nature can be the most “mal-adaptable” and “mis-educable.”

The cultural heritage must be acquired, Lippmann wrote in The Public Philosophy. We’re not born with it. If a country’s heritage must be acquired, it can also be rejected. It can be acquired badly, or not acquired at all.

“The ancient world … was not destroyed because traditions were false,” Lippman wrote. “They were submerged, neglected, lost. For the men adhering to them had become a dwindling minority who were overthrown and displaced by men who were alien to the traditions …”

Will Alexander, Townhall.com

White Racism as the Mother of all Evils

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Since the 1960s the federal government has initiated countless programs to close racial gaps. All have failed, some have even exacerbated these gaps, but failure aside, all posited logical connections between the program and the intended beneficial outcome. Head Start, for example, rested on the plausible idea that blacks disproportionately suffered early childhood deprivations, and this limited their future accomplishments, so enrich early childhood. The Empowerment Zones of the early 1990s offered tax incentive to entice urban businesses to hire unemployed blacks. Yes, these and countless other nostrums came up short, but they were logical and fact-based and did not, by themselves, aim to transform American society.

Matters have drastically changed with the emergence of the White Racism theory of the crime. It is now no longer necessary to link cures and the intended outcomes; whites by their very existence are now responsible for all black tribulations. Why even try to prescribe one ameliorative fix after the next to target a particular ill when eliminating whiteness is the Mother of All Cures? Nor is it necessary for blacks to take any responsibility for their misfortune—whites must do the job. How simple and seductive for social justice warriors exhausted by plain-Jane incremental politics and having to change their own behavior.

This “white racism did it” theory can be understood as a form of mental illness, specifically magical thinking, “ a disorder of thought…[that] denotes the false belief that one’s thoughts, actions, or words will cause or prevent a specific consequence in some way that defies commonly understood laws of causality.” In other words, every black problem, no matter how miniscule or gigantic can be traced back to toxic whiteness. Even more bizarre, the logic of this “theory” of evil exclusively stresses thoughts, even unconscious thinking, as opposed to overt behavior. An odd parallel exists with some religions where “bad thoughts” themselves are a sin, so thinking about discriminating against African Americans its tantamount to actually discriminating against them. This is a transformation that not only awards immense magical power to brain waves but contrives America’s legal tradition that criminalizes behavior not (with miniscule exceptions) “bad thinking.”

Since whites and their legacy are everywhere, and their toxicity resembles inescapable background radiation, blacks must energetically stamp out this evil wherever they find it. Nothing is too small in this crusade. The picture on Uncle Ben’s box of rice is tantamount to a physical assault. Why else would removing Robert E. Lee’s name from a largely black school become so urgent? What’s the concrete benefit? Did black students fail because they daily observed General Lee’s name cut in stone and this damaged their self-esteem? Logic doesn’t matter—Lee’s name just somehow radiates whiteness, even if students don’t know who he is, and like gravity, his very whiteness invisibly pulls blacks down.

The opportunity costs of embracing this faith are huge. The supply of crackpot solutions to any problem are infinite, and provided ample funding is available, foolishness can persist forever and thus there is never any need to align solutions to tangible tribulations let alone admit that the problem is intractable. Ridding society of white racism is the equivalent of a full-time job with an unlimited budget for inventing an anti-gravity automobile engine, and rest assured, success will be just over the hill, around the corner, at the end of the tunnel, awaiting one adjustment to the devise, tweaking the fuel etc. etc. Just obverse how many blacks at college campuses devote their existence to overcoming omnipresent white racism versus actual learning.

Consider how this escape from a difficult reality plays out in the “diversity industry.” Thanks to the Faith, why ask embarrassing question about why blacks cannot move up the corporate ladder despite putting the screws on whites to promote diversity and huge investments in education? Far easier to cleanse the workplace to toxic whiteness by hiring black experts to spend thousands of hours eradicating hidden bias, structural racism and countless other sins afflicting whites. The website compiled by SHRM lists some 83 such diversity consultants happy to toil long hours to exorcise evils debilitating African Americans. The firm OutSolve, for example, “… gives companies the advantage of effective affirmative action solutions that are comprehensive, customizable, and budgetable.” OutSolve, moreover, offers “… experienced consultants are ready to help, with the most comprehensive affirmative action planning services and consulting programs available” and services range from developing affirmative plans, devising bias-free compensation standards and navigating government rules and regulations. Keep in mind that these 83 firms are in addition to the hundreds of in-house departments in larger firms and especially universities, that likewise provide professional exorcisms. Now, thanks to the availability of all these exorcists, discussion can focus entirely on details of detoxification, so why bother with black IQ, work habits and similar awkward question?

Quackery also attracts those eager to accept endless failure provided the pay is decent. White racism is a pesky pathogen, so there can never be a “Mission Accomplished,” and a lifetime can be spent pushing the rock up the hill and, after a point, rock pushing is all the rock pushers know. Think all the Deans of Diversity and Inclusion spending careers seeking out racism in undergraduate admissions, choice of majors, grade point averages, faculty hiring and retention, research funding, and every other university function. And who knows what persistent digging will eventually uncover? Gaps in student participation in class discussions? Access to local stores selling black personal grooming supplies? Perhaps holistic admissions are insufficiently holistic or STEM textbooks ignore scientists of color but whatever the alleged defect, rest assured it will be scrutinized, assigned to some committee’s agenda, a report written and discussed, a few cosmetic changes suggested and when that, too, fails, onward to the next putative time-wasting panacea.

Most importantly, embracing the centrality of whiteness as the all-encompassing evil virtually guarantees totalitarian creep. Or to use the Soviet vocabulary, you have to break ever more eggs to make the omelet.

To understand this progression, suppose that white racism can be calibrated on a 0 to 1.0 scale, with 1.0 being totally racist society, e.g., apartheid-era South African. Further suppose that by daily mandatory anti-racism seminars, school textbook propaganda, fantasy interracial TV commercials, speech codes, de-platforming heretics, hate crime laws and lots more, racism among non-blacks is reduced from, say, .6 to .1, a seemingly momentous accomplishment. Is this reduction sufficient to eliminate racial gaps and all other inequalities? Can victory be declared? The answer is, sad to say, indeterminant since the theory of white toxicity fails to specify a numerical relationship between the causal agent (white racism) and any specific outcome. This is social engineering sans any benchmarks. Everything is just fighting white racism.

Conceivably, white racism resembles plutonium and an infinitesimal amount in the city’s water supply can kill the entire population. Or lethality depends on huge levels of whiteness. Of course, nobody can specify levels of lethality and, tellingly, this murkiness is hardly a problem for those insisting on the evil of whiteness. Toxic whiteness is toxic whiteness is toxic whiteness. The result of this scientific muddle-brained thinking is that the white-racism-is- culprit- theory is beyond falsification.

Actually, to be fair, theory confirmation can occur when the levels of Racist evil fall to 0.0 on the Racism Scale but how do we empirically establish this “0” point? Not easy given the belief that society might only appear free of white racism, especially since blacks can unknowingly internalize it despite their blackness (think black teachers in all-black Detroit to explain bad test scores). And whites can be asymptomatic or guilty of imperceptible dog whistle racism.

Here’s the answer to establishing zero white racism: it will be zero only when blacks and whites have identical average SAT scores, bar exam pass rates, out of wedlock births rates, murder rates, home ownership levels, infant mortality rates, drug abuse levels, identical life expectancies and incomes, proportional Nobel Prize awards and lots, lots more. Any remaining gap, regardless of where found and size, would be proof of lingering white racism since, after all, that is the source, and only source, of all gaps. Put formally, the independent variable (white racism) is thus measured by values of the dependent variable (gaps). The new frontier of statistical analysis.

A further fly in the ointment is that since the existence of toxic racism is often necessarily subjective, the likelihood of everybody agreeing on the extinction of racism is nil. Surely the Theory does not permit confirming the Utopian 0.0 level of venomousness by majority vote. Now, since there will always be white racism, and since any (unspecified) level of this toxicity drives black misery, de-toxification must necessarily be ongoing, if not perpetual, and with every greater coercion as past failure mount.

A racial version of Zeno’s Paradox is inevitable—America can go from .5 racism to .25 to .125 and even .00078125 on and on, but it will never be free of racism since the effects of racism will always be evident, somewhere, in unequal outcomes or beliefs about unequal outcomes. To paraphrase George Wallace, White racism today, white racism tomorrow, white racism forever.

Needless to say, assuming that zero racism, like zero degrees Kelvin, is reachable, the cost of attaining zero white racism would, in all likelihood, be exponential given past experience with narrowing gaps. What would it take, for example, to cut the black/white homicide gap by a factor of eight? Or asset differences by a factor of ten? And on and on across multiple substantial and enduring race-related gaps?

Chasing this unreachable fantasy of total de-toxification necessarily requires enormous coercion since not even spending the entire GNP would suffice. Only draconian laws and administrative dictates could ensure that blacks and whites were educationally identical, earned the same salaries, were equally incarcerated, suffered equal drug addiction rates and on and on. Remember, any gap “demonstrates” the persistence of white racism and thus achieving racial justice requires harsher and harsher exorcisms.

Can fervent racial egalitarians ever be convinced to abandon this fantasy? Reasoned discussions are pointless. Forget arguing about financial constraints—money from white taxpayers is never a restraint, especially among the innumerate. Ditto for demonstrating the unscientific nature of this “theory” of Great Evil–too complicated and would probably be interpreted as a white ruse (”white science”) to subjugate blacks. What about empirically demonstrating that whites are not especially racist or that racism has seriously declined? Irrelevant since, as per theory of toxicity, a racism score of .25 or even .05 is just as debilitating as a score of .5 (and who can disagree given zero data or, for that matter, no efforts to collect these data). Nor will the failure of this “white racism did it” theory-of-the-crime vanish simply because anti-racism efforts fail. If anything, shifting the blame entirely to whites will reduce “agency” among blacks and probably only widen racial gaps, but this irony hardly disturbs the faithful. Actually, increasing pathology will be a boon for the close-the-gap anti-racism industry.

Extinction will arrive politically. Whites will eventually realize that putting the onus on whites for all black woes is but extortion and, as for all similar tactics, it has its political limits. There are inescapable budgetary constraints, legal barriers governing racial preferences and norms regarding fairness. More important, American politics is Newtonian–pushes and counter-pushes, and African American activists are not the only players in the game. The pay-me-for-my-victimization game is highly permeable, and those dispensing the goodies regularly confront cries of sexism, homophobia, ageism, Islamophobia and countless other claims on the public trough. In all likelihood The Great White Racism theory of the crime will eventually gradually loose its allure, just as religious fervor wilts with time, and today’s believer will move on to some new, more exhilarating dogma.

Robert Weissberg, American Thinker

Devin Nunes Channels Thomas Paine as Patriots Fight Deep State

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Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has always stood up for justice.  He has written a pamphlet book, Countdown to Socialism in the style of what Thomas Paine had distributed preceding the Revolutionary War. In the late eighteenth century, pamphlets electrified the colonies and helped to forge American democracy, ringing the alarm for what was wrong and what needed to be done. Now, Congressman Nunes is warning Americans that something needs to be done before this country loses its morals and values.  American Thinker had the privilege of interviewing him.

In Chapter One, he wrote, “the Left has wholly rejected the fundamental principles that bound Americans together and allowed us to work out our differences democratically and peacefully. They now reject free speech, a fair voting system, private property, and the rule of law. They don’t dare yet admit it publicly, but as you’ll see in this book, their policies and rhetoric are incompatible with any of these principles as we understand them today.”

He explained in the book, “Socialist regimes tend to excel at propaganda. By necessity socialism is a resentful ideology that exploits and widens class conflict, racial strife, and other social cleavages, pitting countrymen against one another. Their proposals have one thing in common: they will increase the Democrats’ vote count. At both the state and national levels, they are working hard to fundamentally change the voting system by abolishing the Electoral College, greatly expanding mail-in voting, enfranchising felons, legalizing vote harvesting, lowering the voting age, and allowing current non-citizens to vote through mass amnesties and other means,” not to mention packing the Supreme Court by expanding it.

Chapter Two “Collusion Delusion” outlines how the investigation into Russian collusion attempts to influence the election. It really is Chinese collusion done by the Bidens.  The news media and social media used cancel culture to make sure nothing was reported.  It is only now, one month after the election that some Americans are hearing for the first time about an email from 2017 that reveals how Hunter Biden referred to both his father, Joe Biden and his Chinese business partner, as well as his stepmother and uncle as “office mates” at his former office building in Washington D.C. and asked keys to be made for them. In addition, there is a probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, including with CEFC. The company is out of business now, but at the time, it was China’s fourth-largest energy company.

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has always stood up for justice.  He has written a pamphlet book, Countdown to Socialism in the style of what Thomas Paine had distributed preceding the Revolutionary War. In the late eighteenth century, pamphlets electrified the colonies and helped to forge American democracy, ringing the alarm for what was wrong and what needed to be done. Now, Congressman Nunes is warning Americans that something needs to be done before this country loses its morals and values.  American Thinker had the privilege of interviewing him.

In Chapter One, he wrote, “the Left has wholly rejected the fundamental principles that bound Americans together and allowed us to work out our differences democratically and peacefully. They now reject free speech, a fair voting system, private property, and the rule of law. They don’t dare yet admit it publicly, but as you’ll see in this book, their policies and rhetoric are incompatible with any of these principles as we understand them today.”

He explained in the book, “Socialist regimes tend to excel at propaganda. By necessity socialism is a resentful ideology that exploits and widens class conflict, racial strife, and other social cleavages, pitting countrymen against one another. Their proposals have one thing in common: they will increase the Democrats’ vote count. At both the state and national levels, they are working hard to fundamentally change the voting system by abolishing the Electoral College, greatly expanding mail-in voting, enfranchising felons, legalizing vote harvesting, lowering the voting age, and allowing current non-citizens to vote through mass amnesties and other means,” not to mention packing the Supreme Court by expanding it.

Chapter Two “Collusion Delusion” outlines how the investigation into Russian collusion attempts to influence the election. It really is Chinese collusion done by the Bidens.  The news media and social media used cancel culture to make sure nothing was reported.  It is only now, one month after the election that some Americans are hearing for the first time about an email from 2017 that reveals how Hunter Biden referred to both his father, Joe Biden and his Chinese business partner, as well as his stepmother and uncle as “office mates” at his former office building in Washington D.C. and asked keys to be made for them. In addition, there is a probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, including with CEFC. The company is out of business now, but at the time, it was China’s fourth-largest energy company.

Elise Cooper, American Thinker

WHAT WOULD CHINA HAVE TO DO BEFORE WE REALIZE WE ARE UNDER ATTACK?

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Will it another Pearl Harbor to make us understand we are at war with China ?

I wasn’t around on December 7, 1941. I’m not quite that old. But I live in Hawaii and I have paid respects at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor many times. President Trump and First Lady Melania have also done so. I often see Pearl Harbor as I drive on the H-1 freeway from West O`ahu toward downtown Honolulu. I have watched the old black-and-white newsreels of the attacks by the Japanese zeros on that Date That Will Live in Infamy. Today Japan is no longer our enemy in the current era. But, the Chinese Communist Party is our enemy today. Note that I did not say that nearly 4.5 billion Chinese in China and many more around the world are our enemies because they absolutely are not. My dear wife from the Philippines has some Chinese ancestry. So do many of our closest friends. But the blood-thirsty and power-hungry regime of Xi Jinping is the most deadly foe which the United States of America has faced since the Revolutionary War.

In this ersatz age of technology and self-indulgence, most of my fellow countrymen have a very short attention span. They are also guilty as charged of being very provincial and geographically illiterate. As one who loves maps, I can guarantee you that most of them couldn’t even point to Hawaii on a world globe. That would include quite a number inside the DC Beltway! While it is 6,921 miles from Beijing to Washington, DC via the Pacific route, the Chinese Communist Party is already here permeating our entire American homeland. They are in our educational institutions. They are most definitely the controlling factor behind our mainstream media. They have subordinated our economy. If you want to buy a baseball cap with the name of your hometown on it, the chances are overwhelming that it was made in China.

But the most insidious penetration of America by the CCP is within our entire federal as well as state/local political infrastructure. Not everybody is as foolish and as brazen as Congressman Eric Swalwell whose zipper was more active than his brain. But the pandas’ claws sink deep into the flesh of not only U.S. Representatives, U.S. Senators, members of the Administration and possibly even the U.S. Supreme Court, they also control governors, state legislators, mayors, police chiefs, sheriffs and other local officials. Much of the technology that we use even within our government and law enforcement systems was, you guessed it, made in China. Made in China doesn’t just mean manufactured in China. It also means maintained by China and monitored by China. That’s why I refuse to even do Zoom calls. Xi Jinping is welcome and invited to read this article if he’s so inclined, but I really don’t want his regime listening in whenever the local GOP or other organization is discussing what they think are just internal matters.

That’s just a suggestive rather than exhaustive look at what China is doing in America today. But my question is what would they have to do to get your attention that they are attacking us on every front possible? Hopefully not bomb Pearl Harbor. Hopefully not launch a nuke at Washington, DC or New York City. That would be just a wee bit too late for us to respond effectively. So what is the threshold to be considered an Act of War with an appropriate response?

We have had naīve diplomats for as long as I can remember which would definitely include Henry Kissinger & Zbigniew Brzezinski [“Polish-American diplomat and political scientist who served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981”]. Yes, I am old enough to remember those two feckless Democrat Administrations along with those of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. So, you can add Madeleine Albright as well as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to that list of useful idiots who subjugate American interests to those of our avowed enemies abroad. I can guarantee you that Mike Pompeo does not fall into that category!

Secretaries of State are both a source and a reflection of the understanding [or lack thereof] of the President and Commander-in-Chief whom they serve. Here late in the first term of President Donald Trump, our current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien do all understand the threat. But, do you? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t! Their political appointees, some of whom they have prematurely named, would be a recipe for disaster.

So, since we’re not waiting for Pearl Harbor 2020, what exactly are we waiting for?

DNI INTEL REPORT ON FOREIGN INTRUSION INTO OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has inexplicably delayed this report required by President Trump’s executive order issued two years ago which was due yesterday, December 18th. Last I heard, he says sometime in January. Is he thinking perhaps of January 21st so he can hand it to “President” Joe Biden who will have fraudulently taken the oath of office the day before? If so, Mr. Ratcliffe is in the wrong job. If not, what the heck does he think he’s doing by not submitting this crucial report on time? Sometimes, I think these people’s brains just don’t work right. Either that or their hearts are just in the wrong place. More likely it’s a combination of both factors.

Either way it’s time for Donald Trump to clean house. Attorney General William Barr is already leaving. Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was replaced in a timely manner by Christopher Miller. But, why is Gina Haspel still at CIA? Why is John Ratcliffe being allowed to delay a report which is needed right now, not just next month?

We can all hope that President Trump has a plan of action that just isn’t ready to be revealed. I’m not old enough to remember FDR’s Fireside Chats during World War II. Candidly, I’ve never even heard an audio recording or read a transcript of one of them, if such exist. But as a precocious child born during the baby boomer era, I was very alert and very inquisitive of my parents’ generation about what they had gone through. That was an age in which there was just the ubiquitous living room radio, but no television and no inkling there would ever be such a thing as the internet or social media. But President Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept the American public informed during very dark days. We know now that there is such a thing as VE day and VJ Day. But there was a time in the early 1940’s, when there wasn’t such an assurance. So, here we are in 2020 with no assurance that our constitutional republic will survive into the next Presidential Administration. That’s why we need to hear from President Trump on a regular basis, without revealing sensitive information to the enemy, assuring us that there is a plan, even if he cannot specifically outline the details of that plan.

That erroneous headline that blared “Dewey Defeats Truman” was superseded by the inauguration of President Harry Truman for a full term of his own. That’s where we are today, folks! The media and the world want us to believe that Joe Biden is President-Elect. With U.S Supreme Court cases still pending and the U.S. Congress yet to count votes and verify the winner of this election, we are not ready for 20/20 hindsight.

THE CCP MUST BE STOPPED IN ITS TRACKS NOW

I didn’t even mention earlier how China is conducting cyber warfare against many of our governmental and military agencies. This is nothing less than part of an attempt to overthrow the legitimate government of the United States and install a subservient puppet regime with Joe Biden or Kamala Harris as its titular head. So I challenge you, in all due respect, to tell me if that is not an Act of War, what is the threshold as you define it? While I haven’t watched his Fireside Chats, I have seen the old black-and-white video of FDR standing before Congress asking for a Declaration of War. That was just over 79 years ago. Since then we have fought wars which we did not carry through to a conclusion such as Vietnam, in which many young Americans of my generation gave their all and perished to do their duty because our leaders did not have the guts, the gumption or the decency to finish what they started. Yes, it’s obvious now that the Domino Theory didn’t hold up and that we did not have a true national interest. But we needlessly sacrificed American patriots for no reason at all. When an actual attack on our homeland occurred on 9/11/2001, George W. Bush probably would have wanted to declare war, but there was no nation state that he was able to identify responsible for the act.

So, now today we have a hostile Act of War by a nation state, the People’s Republic of China [a misnomer if there ever was one] which is controlled by and under the bloody thumb of the Chinese Communist Party. As I previously stated, the vast majority of the Chinese people are not our enemy, but they are being persecuted by their own evil regime in Beijing. So, what are we going to do about it?

MY PREVIOUS ARTICLES

I have authored 149 previous articles for NOQ Report since February of 2019. As a veteran and retired federal officer, most of them understandably have to do with national security and foreign policy. Those written before early January of 2020 were hit by a cyber attack from the Middle East shortly after NOQ Report provided timely coverage of the assassination of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani. Some have been reformatted with graphics restored, but many others have not yet been. If there is a particular article you’re interested in, it can be reformatted upon request. If you seek, for instance, those relating to China, here is the link.

INFORMATION AND ACTION

First, I call upon President Trump to inform the American public, not only the probably 80 million of us who voted for him, but perhaps more importantly the few who actually voted for Joe Biden, as to what we are dealing with. Forget about Hunter Biden’s laptop or the scandal in Ukraine for the moment. Just focus on the fact that China used covert means to change votes away from Trump toward Biden in this election. Cases filed by Sidney Powell in Georgia and Michigan are docketed for the Supreme Court, but they are being slow-walked to the point of not being able to either prevent the stealing of this election in a timely manner or to defend us from further acts of aggression by the CCP. President Trump needs to clearly outline in no uncertain terms what the CCP has done, is doing and still intends to do. He doesn’t have to signal what he is going to do to retaliate at this point.

Second, or actually simultaneously, President Trump needs to demand that DNI John Ratcliffe submit that required report by next Monday, December 21st. Give the President what he has and then augment and supplement it to the degree necessary as a follow-up. It is inexcusable, repeat inexcusable, as well as indefensible of the DNI to try to put this off until some unspecified date in January. If Ratcliffe can’t or won’t do the job, fire him and get his Deputy or the most qualified person to finalize that report this weekend.

Then, with that documentation in hand, Donald Trump as President and Commander-in-Chief will be able to fully justify to Congress and to the American public, even if not to the demented mainstream media or to equally demented Joe Biden, what he is ordering to be done to counteract China immediately. President Trump knows whom he can trust and whom he cannot. That small cadre has undoubtedly already been apprised and the gears of retaliation already set in motion. Those who need to be ready are ready for action. XI Jinping and the CCP must be the last to know!

WAR IS ALWAYS A LAST RESORT

The attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor could not be ignored! Neither can the very deliberate kinetic attempt of the Chinese Communist Party to overthrow the legitimate government of the United States of America! We won that war and our national survival depends upon winning this one, too!

David Ware, NOQ Report

Wisdom of Ayn Rand: The Trader Principle

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There is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.

The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice.

A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange—an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others.

In spiritual issues—(by “spiritual” I mean: “pertaining to man’s consciousness”)—the currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same. Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues.

The symbol of all relationships among [rational] men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws. A trader does not squander his body as fodder or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit—his love, his friendship, his esteem—except in payment and in trade for human virtues, in payment for his own selfish pleasure, which he receives from men he can respect. The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the traders and held them in contempt, while honoring the beggars and the looters, have known the secret motive of their sneers: a trader is the entity they dread—a man of justice.

The trader and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout history. Trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble. Capitalism is a society of traders—for which it has been denounced by every would-be gunman who regards trade as “selfish” and conquest as “noble.”

Year Zero

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2020 was GloboCap Year Zero. The year when the global capitalist ruling classes did away with the illusion of democracy and reminded everyone who is actually in charge, and exactly what happens when anyone challenges them.

In the relatively short span of the last ten months, societies throughout the world have been transformed beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored. Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.

The authorities have assumed control of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives. We are being managed like inmates in a prison, told when to eat, sleep, exercise, granted privileges for good behavior, punished for the slightest infractions of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules, forced to wear identical, demeaning uniforms (albeit only on our faces), and otherwise relentlessly bullied, abused, and humiliated to keep us compliant.

None of which is accidental, or has anything to do with any actual virus, or any other type of public health threat. Yes, before some of you go ballistic, I do believe there is an actual virus, which a number of people have actually died from, or which at least has contributed to their deaths … but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any authentic public health threat that remotely justifies the totalitarian emergency measures we are being subjected to or the damage that is being done to society. Whatever you believe about the so-called “pandemic,” it really is as simple as that. Even if one accepts the official “science,” you do not transform the entire planet into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare in response to a health threat of this nature.

The notion is quite literally insane.

GloboCap is not insane, however. They know exactly what they are doing … which is teaching us a lesson, a lesson about power. A lesson about who has it and who doesn’t. For students of history it’s a familiar lesson, a standard in the repertoire of empires, not to mention the repertoire of penal institutions.

The name of the lesson is “Look What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want.” The point of the lesson is self-explanatory. The USA taught the world this lesson when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. GloboCap (and the US military) taught it again when they invaded Iraq and destabilized the entire Greater Middle East. It is regularly taught in penitentiaries when the prisoners start to get a little too unruly and remember that they outnumber the guards. That’s where the “lockdown” concept originated. It isn’t medical terminology. It is penal institution terminology.

As we have been experiencing throughout 2020, the global capitalist ruling classes have no qualms about teaching us this lesson. It’s just that they would rather not to have to unless it’s absolutely necessary. They would prefer that we believe we are living in “democracies,” governed by the “rule of law,” where everyone is “free,” and so on. It’s much more efficient and much less dangerous than having to repeatedly remind us that they can take away our “democratic rights” in a heartbeat, unleash armed goon squads to enforce their edicts, and otherwise control us with sheer brute force.

People who have spent time in prison, or who have lived in openly totalitarian societies, are familiar with being ruled by brute force. Most Westerners are not, so it has come as a shock. The majority of them still can’t process it. They cannot see what is staring them in the face. They cannot see it because they can’t afford to see it. If they did, it would completely short-circuit their brains. They would suffer massive psychotic breakdowns, and become entirely unable to function, so their psyches will not allow them to see it.

Others, who see it, can’t quite accept the simplicity of it (i.e., the lesson being taught), so they are proposing assorted complicated theories about what it is and who is behind it … the Great Reset, China, the Illuminati, Transhumanism, Satanism, Communism, whatever. Some of these theories are at least partially accurate. Others are utter bull-goose lunacy.

They all obscure the basic point of the lesson.

The point of the lesson is that GloboCap — the entire global-capitalist system acting as a single global entity — can, virtually any time it wants, suspend the Simulation of Democracy, and crack down on us with despotic force. It can (a) declare a “global pandemic” or some other type of “global emergency,” (b) cancel our so-called “rights,” (c) have the corporate media bombard us with liesand propaganda for months, (d) have the Internet companies censor any and all forms of dissent and evidence challenging said propaganda, (e) implement all kinds of new intrusive “safety” and “security” measures, including but not limited to the physical violation of our bodies … and so on. I think you get the picture. (The violation of our bodies is important, which is why they love “cavity searches” in prison, and why the torture-happy troops at Abu Ghraib were obsessed with sexually violating their victims.)

And the “pandemic” is only one part of the lesson. The other part is being forced to watch (or permitted to watch, depending on your perspective) as GloboCap makes an example of Trump, as they made examples of Corbyn and Sanders, as they made examples of Saddam and Gaddafi, and other “uncooperative” foreign leaders, as they will make an example of any political figurehead that challenges their power. It does not matter to GloboCap that such political figureheads pose no real threat. The people who rally around them do. Nor does it make the slightest difference whether these figureheads or the folks who support them identify as “left” or “right.” GloboCap could not possibly care less. The figureheads are just the teaching materials in the lesson that they are teaching us.

And now, here we are, at the end of the lesson … not the end of the War on Populism, just the end of this critical Trumpian part of it. Once the usurper has been driven out of office, the War on Populism will be folded back into the War on Terror, or the War on Extremism, or whatever GloboCap decides to call it … the name hardly matters. It is all the same war.

Whatever they decide to call it, this is GloboCap Year Zero. It is time for reeducation, my friends. It is time for cultural revolution. No, not communist cultural revolution … global capitalist cultural revolution. It is time to flush the aberration of the last four years down the memory hole, and implement global “New Normal” Gleichschaltung, to make sure that this never happens again.

Oh, yes, things are about to get “normal.” Extremely “normal.” Suffocatingly “normal.” Unimaginably oppressively “normal.” And I’m not just talking about the “Coronavirus measures.” This has been in the works for the last four years.

Remember, back in 2016, when everyone was so concerned about “normality,” and how Trump was “not normal,” and must never be “normalized?” Well, here we are. This is it. This is the part where GloboCap restores “normality,” a “new normality,” a pathologized-totalitarian “normality,” a “normality” which tolerates no dissent and demands complete ideological conformity.

From now on, when the GloboCap Intelligence Community and their mouthpieces in the corporate media tell you something happened, that thing will have happened, exactly as they say it happened, regardless of whether it actually happened, and anyone who says it didn’t will be labeled an “extremist,” a “conspiracy theorist,” a “denier,” or some other meaningless epithet. Such un-persons will be dealt with ruthlessly. They will be censored, deplatformed, demonetized, decertified, rendered unemployable, banned from traveling, socially ostracized, hospitalized, imprisoned, or otherwise erased from “normal” society.

You will do what you are told. You will not ask questions. You will believe whatever they tell you to believe. You will believe it, not because it makes any sense, but simply because you have been ordered to believe it. They aren’t trying to trick or deceive anybody. They know their lies don’t make any sense. And they know that you know they don’t make any sense. They want you to know it. That is the point. They want you to know they are lying to you, manipulating you, openly mocking you, and that they can say and do anything they want to you, and you will go along with it, no matter how insane.

If they order you to take a fucking vaccine, you will not ask what is in the vaccine, or start whining about the “potential side effects.” You will shut up and take the fucking vaccine. If they tell you to put a mask on your kid, you will put a fucking mask on your fucking kid. You will not go digging up Danish studiesproving the pointlessness of putting masks on kids. If they tell you the Russians rigged the election, then the Russians rigged the fucking election. And, if, four years later, they turn around and tell you that rigging an election is impossible, then rigging an election is fucking impossible. It isn’t an invitation to debate. It is a GloboCap-verified fact-checked fact. You will stand (or kneel) in your designated, color-coded, social-distancing box and repeat this verified fact-checked fact, over and over, like a fucking parrot, or they will discover some new mutant variant of virus and put you back in fucking “lockdown.” They will do this until you get your mind right, or you can live the rest of your life on Zoom, or tweeting content that no one but the Internet censors will ever see into the digital void in your fucking pajamas. The choice is yours … it’s is all up to you!

Or … I don’t know, this is just a crazy idea, you could turn off the fucking corporate media, do a little fucking research on your own, grow a backbone and some fucking guts, and join the rest of us “dangerous extremists” who are trying to fight back against the New Normal. Yes, it will cost you, and we probably won’t win, but you won’t have to torture your kids on airplanes, and you don’t even have to “deny” the virus!

That’s it … my last column of 2020. Happy totalitarian holidays!

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volumes I and II of his Consent Factory Essays are published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.

The Yahoos Who Stole Christmas

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Christmas in California has effectively been cancelled by Emperor Gavin Newsom.

And now it looks like here in L.A. we’re going to be locked in our basements by the local yahoos in charge until February.

But the continuing destruction of normal social and economic life in California in the name of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic is old news.

Instead, let’s talk about the yahoos in Washington who are continuing to screw up the whole country.

The federal yahoos, it’s no surprise, are the slippery politicians in Congress.

Mostly Democrats but also some Republicans, for a decade they haven’t had the decency or courage to pass an annual appropriations bill to pay for the bloated and wasteful federal government they’ve built.

By midnight Friday these yahoos have to pass another one of their short-term continuing resolutions to avoid a government shutdown.

It’ll be nothing special. For fiscal year 2021 – which began Oct. 1 – continuing resolutions have already been needed twice.

Last week Congress passed a continuing resolution that lasted only a week. If they sign a third “CR” Friday at midnight, it’ll probably last as little as two days.

It’s all pretty embarrassing, but continuing resolutions and midnight voting deadlines are how the annual federal budgeting process works these days in the world’s richest nation.

The process should be for Congress to pass 12 specific spending bills to pay for government things like transportation, the military, etc., by Sept. 30 every fiscal year.

But for ten years our public servants in Congress have not been able to get their act together to pass the 12 appropriations bills.

Instead, what they’ve done is combine several of the spending bills into gigantic omnibus bills that are packed with all kinds of goodies to reward donors and special interests or to fund federally funded local boondoggles that otherwise would never have the votes to pass.

It’s been a sweet racket for these yahoos.

They’ve found out that if they don’t pass the omnibus bills by Sept. 30 like they’re supposed to they can use a continuing resolution and the threat of a government shutdown to scare the public and get their crappy stuff passed unnoticed in huge spending bills.

The sad thing is these yahoos have been playing this dirty game in Washington for a long time, but no one ever holds them accountable and the media never tell the story.

Both parties do it. Both are to blame. It’s mostly Democrats who engage it, but it’s Republicans that don’t say anything. They all play along.

The same yahoos in Washington who’ll be passing the latest continuing resolution late Friday night are also at this moment dragging out the passage of a COVID-19 stimulus bill to the last possible minute.

It looks like they’ll be wheeling and dealing through the weekend to pass the much needed $900 billion bill.

The COVID-19 stimulus bill would have been passed several months ago but the Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used it as a political weapon.

They didn’t want Donald Trump’s re-election campaign to benefit from a second stimulus package.

Plus, imitating the way they operate on annual appropriations bills, they took advantage of a national crisis and tried to load up the stimulus bill with hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of presents for their pet special interests and to bail out badly run Democrat cities and bankrupt states like Illinois.

No American should shed a tear for any member of Congress this weekend, even if they have to work 24/7 on the stimulus bill and eat vending machine food from now until New Year’s.

They haven’t missed a paycheck all year. They’re going to make sure they have a merry Christmas. But they’ve basically said “Bah humbug” to the rest of us.

Michael Reagan

Leftists Are Playing a DANGEROUS Game with Our Liberty

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If lockdowns are not ending, what’s the point of a vaccine?

Interesting. The vaccine will save us all, we’re told. (By the way, it’s Biden’s vaccine; Trump had nothing to do with it.) Yet we must triple down on lockdowns — into February, even beyond. No outdoor dining. No hair salons. Only for politicians. Clearly, vaccine or not, lockdowns are here to stay. I think it’s the Green New Deal — brought about by the excuse of the virus.

Leftists are playing a dangerous game. They’re telling dissidents to “shut up”. They’re shutting down our small businesses. They’re forbidding us from going to church, from traveling, dining out, or from going anywhere without a mask. They WILL force us to be vaccinated and to carry identity cards. They’re shutting down our government schools (good riddance), while still making us pay for them. They’re promising to take our guns away, come January 21. Free speech is mostly gone, and they will finish the job soon. Taxes will go up and retirement accounts could be seized and nationalized, like in a banana republic. Non-rigged elections are a thing of the past. Even nominal two-party government is over. Leftists are leaving nonleftists with NOTHING TO LOSE. Sooner or later, this will come back to bite them. Not all of us will remain submissive and quiet forever.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Trump as One-Term President Would Be DC’s Nightmare

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Even as the president’s legal team continues to dispute election results in battleground states with large numbers of questionable mail-in ballots and election anomalies, Establishment Washington is pushing Donald Trump out the door. What it failed to accomplish through four years of Deep State sabotage and bipartisan efforts at thwarting the MAGA agenda, the D.C. Club may have finally succeeded through good old-fashioned vote fraud. The District of Corruption is salivating over the possibility of freeing itself from a foe who has singlehandedly damaged the Swamp forever.

No victory could be more pyrrhic.

Forcing Donald Trump from the presidency while half of all likely voters believe the election was stolen from him (including a stunning one-third of Democrats) would backfire on Washington spectacularly. Trump is too ferocious a competitor and too powerful a cultural force to ever disappear into a retirement not of his choosing. At least 75 million Americans voted for the president because, among other reasons, he is seen as an “outsider.” Now Washington insists on making him a martyr, as well.

What will happen if President Trump leaves office in January? He will instantly become the most consequential and powerful ex-president Americans have seen. Making Donald Trump a one-term president will become Establishment Washington’s biggest nightmare.

(1) Biden’s Number One Critic

There’s no way that Donald Trump follows in the footsteps of George Washington by quietly retreating from public life and leaving his successor to lead unscrutinized. Obama has been the most vocal ex-president to date, both questioning Donald Trump’s judgment as president, as well as fanning the flames of the debunked Russia hoax. An ex-president Trump will make Obama look like a piker by comparison. 

Biden’s commitment to re-enter the Paris Agreement and backtrack from America’s hydrocarbon energy independence achieved under President Trump has the potential to take an American economy struggling to recover from a year of pandemic lockdowns and kill it overnight. Donald Trump will loudly blame his successor.

Biden has signaled his intent to breathe life into Obama’s Iran Deal after the Trump administration has spent four years weakening Iran’s influence in the Middle East. After helping to foster peace in the region by securing historic trade deals between Israel and many of her longtime adversaries, President Trump has a vested interest in making sure his efforts are not undone. Should Biden lift up a vulnerable Iran and harm Israel in the process, Donald Trump will loudly blame his successor.

President Trump has made cutting illegal immigration into the United States a priority. He’s made renegotiating trade deals that have benefitted communist China at the expense of American workers a priority. He’s made bringing troops home by ending “endless wars” a priority. He’s made protecting Americans’ First and Second Amendment rights important priorities.

Biden has promised to expand immigration and refugee resettlement, to end trade confrontations with China, and to leave foreign policy to the “experts.” And in direct conflict with any oath of office, Biden has promised to confiscate Americans’ guns while supporting the same Big Tech companies that have undertaken campaigns of outright censorship against conservatives’ speech.

Donald Trump will loudly blame his successor for the resulting harm — in all its forms — to Americans. He and his supporters will amplify every misstep made by Joe Biden. “Monday morning quarterbacking” will become a seven-day priority for the former president.

(2) King of a Media Empire

Should Twitter and Facebook decide to censor citizen Trump, he might just build his own media empire and create the largest megaphone for his opinions in the country. Businessman Trump has always enjoyed building things from the ground up. Now that Fox News has chosen to chase conservatives away, a market demand for Trump’s politics is waiting to be filled. Newsmax and One America News Network are expanding their audience shares, but a Trump News Network would dominate future conservative television. Social media and corporate news are now actively censoring conservative voices, and conservative voters would flock to whatever platforms Donald Trump constructs. It’s only a matter of time before the president seizes upon those opportunities. 

If Establishment Washington believes “Trumpism” will soon recede once its eponymous leader heads south to Florida, the Swamp is sorely mistaken. After leaving office, Donald Trump’s voice is only going to get bigger. Much, much bigger.

(3) De Facto Head of the Republican Party

If Establishment Republicans believe they can reclaim their party once President Trump leaves office, they are naive. Donald Trump just won more votes than any sitting president in history, shattering what Bush, McCain, and Romney were able to garner at the polls. Even before the 2020 election’s outcome has been decisively concluded, recent polling shows that 54% of Republican voters are ready to back President Trump in 2024. Even more striking is this: nearly 70% of Republicans view the president as standing up for their beliefs, as opposed to only 20% who see congressional Republicans as doing the same. If Donald Trump decides he’s running again in 2024, it will be his nomination to lose. If Trump family members or Trump administration veterans decide to run for office on their own, they will become instant frontrunners.

Donald Trump has shined a bright light on Establishment Washington’s failures to secure America’s borders and to protect America’s blue-collar manufacturing workforce. That bright light is not going to fade, and any Republican who thinks the party can return to propping up free trade’s twin mantras of endless immigration and overseas slave labor by proxy is denying reality. If “globalism” wasn’t a dirty word before, President Trump has made it one now. And for the foreseeable future, any Republican seeking higher office will have to respect the new party Donald Trump has created or suffer the consequences at the polls. Certain NeverTrump Republicans may hate him, but they’ll not survive without him.

(4) Potential Destroyer of Both Parties

For the first time since Lincoln’s Republican Party supplanted the Whigs in political power, Donald Trump has built a strong enough coalition of voters cutting across traditional party lines that he could choose to take his voters and erect a new party from the ground up. No Republican has done better with minority voters in the last sixty years than Donald Trump, and no Republican since Reagan has succeeded so strongly with blue-collar workers. If the president decides to “walk away,” he will take tens of millions of American voters disillusioned with both parties, too.

Traditional Democrats who resent their party’s embrace of socialism and working class Republicans who resent their party’s priority of Wall Street over Main Street would make natural allies in a new party. Kanye West, Ice Cube, and Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson have all made it clear that they are not happy with the Democratic Party’s direction, and Donald Trump is in a position to create a political home for those looking for something new. A new party that places a priority on protecting legal immigrants and American workers over foreign labor forces and that treats engagements in new wars as choices of last resort will attract a strong cross-section of American voters. As a master of branding, Donald Trump could choose to diminish permanently the parties as they now exist and build something else entirely from scratch.

Whatever else happens between now and January 20, Donald Trump is not going away. Washington insiders may finally succeed in removing him from office, but they will make him a formidable and powerful ex-president in the process. They may well regret what they’ve accomplished. It’s certain that they have no idea what they’ve created.

J.B. Shurk, American Thinker