History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

~ Martin Luther King, Jr. – “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 16 Apr. 1963

We are all terrorists now. This is the new paradigm that has consumed this country. This is why a fake ‘virus pandemic’ has been successful in capturing the bodies and minds of the public, and why this blatant conspiracy based only on the total control of this entire population continues to be advanced with little resistance. The ‘new normal’ is not as it is described, and is not just the temporary disallowance of freedom; it is so much more. The idea that is being used as the major control measure of this takeover coup is fear; not fear from monsters from afar, but fear of each other. Every citizen is now considered a threat to every other citizen. Every citizen is considered a threat to the country, and therefore a threat to national security. What a brilliant scheme this is, but it is brilliant only in its deceit and indisputable malevolence. We are experiencing pure evil, an evil that is being used to pit all against all, turning a country once united into a country filled with hate and distrust.

The pre-planned 9/11 attacks were used in order to instill an illegitimate and ghastly fear of terrorists, and once this was accomplished, unholy wars against innocent countries were unleashed. This heinous act was not only used to vastly restrict the rights of Americans, especially considering mass surveillance, but it was a setup for the current virus conspiracy. Nothing that happens in government is natural, accidental, or organic, it is always by design. This should be evident to all, but is evident to only the very few with the desire and capability to think critically, and to question everything. Unfortunately, that leaves out most in this country today. Because of this, we now all face a life of tyranny and slavery brought about by needless fear, passivity, cowardice, and ignorance. The state is winning, and doing so without revolt.

There is no need to create a false enemy any longer, as now we have all been conditioned to consider our family, friends, neighbors, and countrymen as mortal enemies due to fear of a common cold. I have said on more than one occasion that the controlling top tier and their enforcers in government must be sitting in back rooms laughing out loud at the general population’s gullibility, and what idiotic orders they are willing to religiously follow. We have been told to not gather together, to not have parties, to not listen to live music, to not go to weddings and funerals, to not go to church, to not participate in art and theatre, to not enjoy any restaurant experience, to not travel, or get within six feet of any other human. In other words, we have been ordered to abandon all aspects of love and life. Recently, many have been ordered to not celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, treasures of this society, and been given ludicrous orders of behavior that defy logic and sanity. We have been told to not work, to give up our livelihoods, to imprison ourselves in our own homes, and to avoid all contact with older loved ones locked away in what are now state-controlled nursing home prisons. We have been told to wear deadly and worthless masks that hide all human expression while stealing life-giving oxygen, which causes much more sickness and death. The lockdowns and long-planned response to this manufactured false pandemic threat will kill millions upon millions of people, while the claimed killer virus is in reality non-existent, but then that is all part of the plot.

There are very many individual agendas, but they all lead to one end; that end is the global takeover, or “Great Reset” of society as described by the evil Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum. All humanity, all economic activity, all control of every aspect of life are at risk, but the sinister aspects of this conspiracy go much deeper. Eugenics plays a major role in this new world order plan. In other words, many will be doomed to death if this takeover is allowed to materialize and come to completion. This can and will be done in order to achieve the world sought by those overseeing this reset of society. Already, the old and infirmed are literally being murdered by the state due to the effects of this lockdown madness. Those weak of mind, stressed, scared, and those faced with isolation and poverty are committing suicide at rates not seen in the past. Fear and despair have taken center stage, and that can only lead to an increase of unnecessary deaths.

This of course is all part of the agenda, but with dangerous untested vaccines coming, vaccines that may be mandated for all, these injections can easily take advantage of large populations. Biological agents, implants, sterilization technology, dangerous adjuvants like mercury and aluminum, unknown viruses, nanotechnology components like fluorescent biosensors injected by hydrogel, and under-the-skin electronics that transmit to databases are all possible if not probable. In addition, how do any know how much combining of nanotechnology and vaccines will actually take place? It is well known that this technology not only exists, but also is being developed continuously, much in secret. Immunity passports are already in use in many parts of the world, but how could they work without the ability to track every single individual electronically?  They could not, so it stands to reason that using a vaccine to inject biosensor technology would be compelled by this vile and malicious state.

Every nefarious agenda considered by this and other governments in the past is evident in this current takeover plot. All is tied together into one major agenda of control, whether climate change, market and monetary restructure, economic destruction and reorganization, ‘sustainable development,’ technocratic oversight and control, transhumanism, energy monitoring and allocation, and 5G smart cities filled with those that have been forcibly eliminated from the working sector. This is the future anticipated by the state.

According to the state, you are all terrorists now, and a risk to everyone you meet. You are being told that you are a danger to everyone, and everyone is a danger to you. By accepting this lie, the populace at large becomes incapable of mounting any legitimate defense against the evil and murderous state, and its plans for global domination. Those in charge know this intimately, and are using this knowledge to cause society to destroy itself voluntarily from within. You are considered the enemy of the state in that all of you as individuals are all that stand in the way of the claimed master class and its desire to rule the world. What happens in the U.S. could change the entire planet, because what happens here will happen around the globe. Americans have more responsibility to stop this madness than any other country, because the head of this snake lives and breathes in America.

Collective panic and fear will be the death knell of American society, while individual resolve, dissent, disobedience, and a joining together to reclaim freedom will destroy the beast that is the real terrorist called the state.  It is time to stop this assault on us all before it is too late!

Gary D. Barnett

I learned from Don Boudreaux this morning that Walter Williams died either this morning or last night. For those of you who don’t know, he was a long-time economics professor at George Mason University.

I’ll have more to say later but I want to give one appreciation.

Walter liked smoking and he also hated the TSA. Some years ago, the combination of no-smoking regs on planes and intrusive groping by the TSA caused him to vow never to fly by commercial airline again. When he received offers to give speeches that were far enough away that driving was infeasible, he negotiated for a private airplane to take him there.

David Henderson, Library of Economics and Liberty

It has been quipped that the only thing people learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.  In that regard, while it may be tiresome to draw analogies to Adolf Hitler, his example reveals how little we have learned.  Perhaps it is better instead to compare his followers of then to the people of today.  They can teach us much.

To that point, in a televised documentary of Hitler’s rise to power, one of the most poignant anecdotes concerned a German father and son.  In the early days of Nazism, the father opposed Hitler’s rise to power, but the son was enticed by the dictator’s charisma.  He persistently begged his father to allow him to join the Nazi Party.  After a long period of time, when it became clear that the Nazis would prevail in the political power struggle, the father relented.  He believed that the boy would be better off as a member of the majority.  

Months later, the entire German 6th Army was annihilated at Stalingrad.  Of a quarter-million men, only about 5,000 ever returned alive to Germany, and only years after the war.  The others died in combat, froze to death, or perished in captivity at the hands of the Russians.  As German cities were bombed, up to two million civilians died.  

We can reasonably imagine that many a son, and many a father, regretted his decision to yield to tyranny.  Their fates could not have been worse, even if they had rebelled against the dictator.  

Again, while it may be tiresome, the lesson we should have learned is that passivity against tyranny is a fatal mistake.  In such a struggle, there is no neutrality, but only its illusion.  The adage is true — that the only realistic hope, of those who yield to authoritarian rule, is that they will be eaten last.  However, their children will not survive that long.  

We have ample warning of what the radical left will do to us should it prevail in today’s power struggle.  Leftists have boldly announced it.  They will trash our past; indoctrinate our children; and invite millions of noncitizens, who have no regard for our values, to vote.  They will wreck our economy with predictably disastrous regulations in the name of saving the planet.  Our enemies, correctly sensing weakness, will go to war against our national interests.  Finally, the system will be rigged so there will never be another honest election.  Having seized power, the left will never relinquish it without bloodshed.  It never has.  History testifies to it.  

What is more valuable to a free man than his freedom?  Is it safety?  Comfort?  Love?  His very life?  Whatever treasures one can name, each of them, without freedom, is sooner or later forfeit.

Have we learned that ?

Robert Arvay, American Thinker

Scan the sports headlines, and it’s not hard to see that the NFL and college football are increasingly in the crosshairs of the radical left’s bid to take down America through COVID.  And if recent history is any indication, Roger Goodell will soon fall all over himself to show that the NFL and he should be patted on the back by Dr. Fauci and the rest of the ruling class elites, in step with the leftist trends they all (wrongly) believe to be sweeping America. 

Football has always been reviled by the left.  It is quintessentially American: invented in this country; played by high-testosterone, masculine men; and operating almost entirely as a super-competitive meritocracy — i.e., the test of whether someone gets to play in the NFL is whether he can play, and play better than the other guy.  In the NFL in 2020, there’s no time to humor racism or any other “ism” in fielding a winning team; there’s only the all-defining imperative priority to put the best players on the field and “coach ’em up” to play the game well.

All of those attributes of the sport are precisely why it has been so popular in America; it has been aligned with American cultural norms and preferences for decades.  The sport’s popularity is in fact proof that America as a whole is not racist — systemically or otherwise.  Americans don’t root for their team or watch the NFL in huge numbers based on a team’s compliance with racial hiring quotas; they root and watch because they appreciate the best playing the best using talents that most of us don’t have, and deciding on a level playing field who wins a competitive game and who loses. 

That’s the essence of free people — players and fans and owners and broadcasters and advertisers — enjoying free markets.  And that’s what the left hates.

The cancelation of the remainder of this season would likely be just a starting point for the left.  Fauci has already declared the world to be in a new era of pandemics.  He’s already said he understands the spirit of independence among Americans, but that “now is the time to do what you’re told.”  And if COVID is serious enough to ban singing as a devastatingly dangerous activity, surely every competitive football play in practice or in a game — with large bodies in close proximity and colliding and piling up — is much more dangerous. 

. Fauci would no doubt express his compassion for football and its fans, but he alone can determine what constitutes “following the science,” and they will just have to do what he tells them to do.  And he’ll likely tell them he has no choice but to strongly recommend ending the sport.  By then it will be too late for the NFL.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Mr. Goodell could push back now.  if he did, he’d be doing great things, not only for the NFL, but for America.

Take a look at this video from a Las Vegas Raiders player.  Here’s a tip: the evidence this player exposed as to the fraud and manipulation at the heart of COVID testing is not random or anecdotal.  It’s everywhere.  (A court in Europe recently found that the evidence indicated that PCR testing is reliable in about 3% of the cases — meaning that the tests are unreliable 97% of the time.  America’s media ignore this decision.)

Then take a look at this article about the former chief science officer of Pfizer — one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the world and manufacturer of one of the soon-to-be-released COVID vaccines — in which he said (in a video subsequently taken down from YouTube) that “the pandemic is over.” 

Then read a thorough and thoughtful analysis of COVID by M.D. and Ph.D. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University.  He is one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration regarding COVID — signed by 43,000 physicians but ignored or scoffed at by the media.  If Goodell takes nothing else from Dr. Bhattacharya’s remarks, he should at least understand that COVID is not and never has been a mortal threat or even a serious threat to the health of NFL athletes.  The NFL has played through decades of flu seasons; there is nothing in the COVID data — i.e., the COVID “science” — to suggest that it can’t play through this one.

These links probably aren’t to be found among any of the ruling class–approved sources of news and information.  (And they soon may not be found at all, if Big Tech’s censorship techniques are comprehensive enough.)  But at some point, away from the camera lights and the NYC left-wing bubble, and in the privacy of his own home, Mr. Goodell should ask himself: why do people in the MSM and Big Tech companies take down such videos and suppress such information?

There’s only one answer to that question, and it is not that they are following science.  They are following a radical-left political agenda, and that political agenda will include the end of football. 

The legends of the NFL are known for toughness.  In 2020 and inside America’s mainstream media bubble, calling “BS” on COVID tyranny requires the ability to see it for what it is and the toughness to say so.  Here’s hoping Mr. Goodell wakes up to what is happening and has the toughness it takes to stop it.

Eric Georgatos is a football fan; he blogs at America Can We Talk?

Philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote about the banality of evil, and there’s never been a more banal bunch than the foreign policy and security state crew Barak Obama surrounded himself with for eight years beside the possible exception of Bush’s own Neocons.

Now after three years screaming about “Russian collusion” it appears the Evil Empire is about to regain its lost ground, championing new wars and more interventionist expansionism with a much greater role for the US military in the world.

Let’s name names.

Pentagon

For the defense chief post, the Washington Post has portrayed the banal face of Michele Flournoy as the pick to ‘restore stability’ to the Pentagon, an entirely false assertion. Recall that Fluornoy promotes unilateral global US military intervention, and advocated the destruction of Libya in 2011. By the military-industrial revolving door, Flournoy enabled many Corporate weaponry contracts amounting to tens of millions. Likewise Fluornoy is on the Booz-Hamilton board, where the swamp cannot get any deeper. As if this wretched example of an agent-provocateur for war and destruction were not bad enough, Biden is reportedly considering Lockheed-Martin banal kingpin Jeh Johnson for the DoD position, too.

Lockheed director Johnson was employed by Rob Reiner and Atlantic editor arch-Neocon David Frum to run the Committee to Investigate Russia which mysteriously blew up as soon as the Mueller Report was released. Jeh Johnson has continued to warn of “Russian interference” in the US presidential election until now. Biden’s anointing as president-elect has ended that. As Homeland Security head, Johnson authorized cages for holding immigrant children. He also supported the assassination of General Suleimani, and has voiced support for US wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

State

From Libya to Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and beyond, the banality of evil is perhaps best personified by Susan Rice – apparently Biden’s premiere pick for Secretary. Rice was an abject failure at the United Nations, but all seems forgiven, probably at the behest of Biden’s donors. After her failure at the UN, Obama kicked Rice upstairs to be his National Security Advisor, a position that does not require Senate approval.

An obvious war hawk in the mold of the Democrat’s donor class, a Rice appointment could reinforce the liberal mantra that women can be just as good at interventionism as men, and ensure full re-establishment of the Neoliberal agenda in Washington. John Kerry has been flagged as a potential for State (again) too, but at age 77 and subsequent to the failure of the JCPOA Kerry is an unlikely pick.

Another potential pick among the banal Daughters of Darkness is Victoria Kagan-Nuland, architect of the 2014 debacle in Ukraine (among other things). Outed at State in an embarrassing act of what she called impressive statecraft and other embarrassing incidents, Nuland seems an unlikely choice. But Kagan-Nuland is as banal as banal can be, and Biden may somehow wish to reinforce his solidarity with the JTF and his donor class, on Israel.

National Security Advisor

Banality is certainly the mark of the beast here, in the form of Tony Blinken. Well in with Michele Flournoy (above) Blinken typifies the type of banality the Deep State engages in to promote its evil, with Blinken as successful as any other Deep State actor. A major hawk on Russia and war hawk in general, Blinken is an apologist for Israel. Blinken is a war hawk on Afghanistan and Syria too, and Blinken was directly involved in CIA operation Timber Sycamore. Oh, the banality.

Another model of banality is Leon CIA Panetta who so far claims that cruising the Monterey peninsula is more fun that being in Washington. But we know that’s false and Panetta would be a logical pick. Besides being a hawk on everything, and laughing about the fact he has no idea how many wars Obama’s America was fighting – because he lost count – Panetta is simply another sycophant for evil like Hannah Arendt portrayed in her study of Adolf Eichmann.

CIA

Banal of the banal is of course Mike Morell. This incredibly vacuous excuse for a human being has been hate-mongering for years. Beside his blatant pandering support for another banal and brutal warmonger – Hillary Clinton – Mike Morell is one Neoliberal who still maintains that Saddam Hussein actively aided and abetted al Qaeda with regard to the 911 attacks. But Morell simply and ultimately represents the banality of evil, just as Arendt depicted Adolf Eichmann, but in Morell’s case succinctly summarized here by Ray McGovern.

United Nations

Outing the banality of the banal would be incomplete without mentioning Jen Psaki. Although a potential pick for White House Communications Director, why not promote an accomplished liar to a venue where accomplished lying really matters?

Conclusion

There is no indication that the United States as an entrenched warfare state will ever change its course until forced to. Mr Trump was incapable of enforcing that change. Sidelined by Russiagate psychosis, as a Beltway Neophyte and his own worst enemy at times, that sank Trump’s agenda.* The actions of Mr Trump now – to end the wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen — should have been undertaken in earnest and without compromise years ago. Point being that Mr Trump’s new appointments to the Pentagon – and let’s hope CIA – will hopefully blunt the efficacy of Biden’s bad actors going forward.

Regardless, characters the same or similar to the ones listed above will definitely infest Washington’s infernal Beltway cesspool once again via Joe Biden … make no mistake. …And they will be meaner and nastier than ever before! Guaranteed.

*Beside his appointment of dreadful characters like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliott Abrams, apparently at the behest of his own donor class!

Follow Steve Brown on twitter @newsypaperz

Aristotle’s philosophy was the intellect’s Declaration of Independence. Aristotle, the father of logic, should be given the title of the world’s first intellectual, in the purest and noblest sense of that word. No matter what remnants of Platonism did exist in Aristotle’s system, his incomparable achievement lay in the fact that he defined the basic principles of a rational view of existence and of man’s consciousness: that there is only one reality, the one which man perceives — that it exists as an objective absolute (which means: independently of the consciousness, the wishes or the feelings of any perceiver) — that the task of man’s consciousness is to perceive, not to create, reality — that abstractions are man’s method of integrating his sensory material — that man’s mind is his only tool of knowledge — that A is A.

If we consider the fact that to this day everything that makes us civilized beings, every rational value that we possess — including the birth of science, the industrial revolution, the creation of the United States, even the structure of our language — is the result of Aristotle’s influence, of the degree to which, explicitly or implicitly, men accepted his epistemological principles, we would have to say: never have so many owed so much to one man.

One of the most interesting aspects of political 0psychology concerns the gap between the reasons people give for their political opinions and the real causes of their holding those opinions.

Typically, that gap generates another one – that between the content of arguments a person makes for her political position and the real motivation for her holding that position.

Recent work in moral and political psychology indicates that the moral drives that cause people to favor various policies can be understood as lying on a few axes, such as care vs. harm, justice vs. injustice, and liberty vs. oppression. The first of each of those pairs is universally favored, but people weigh these axes differently.

These moral axes, or “dimensions,” provide an incredibly powerful framework for understanding and communicating with those who hold views that differ from one’s own, as they can be used to think – and, importantly, to feel – like them.

The moral psychology of political progressives, for example, tends to be dominated by the care vs. harm axis. A progressive will likely react to harm inflicted on a perceived victim more strongly than to any other aspects of the situation (such as the extent to which the perceived victim might have been responsible for creating that situation). A libertarian, in contrast, would react just as strongly to the perceived rights violation of an individual even when others would regard that violation as entirely justified by a reduction of greater harm elsewhere.

Such moral instincts particularly come into play when we are standing back to consider policies in general and/or situations that involve other people. Obviously, though, when we feel that a policy or situation affects us directly, we have an even more immediately felt, visceral reaction that precedes any conscious thinking about what is going on.

When we feel directly affected or “threatened” by a policy (whether we truly are or not), we react instantly and pre-consciously.

A little introspection reveals what drives many (or perhaps most) such reactions: it is a fundamental human instinct that is quite independent of matter or situation that is being reacted to.

This instinct may even psychologically explain about half of all the positions taken on all political issues. It can be stated thus.

One side (and sometimes both sides) of most political disputes is (are) a refusal to be imposed upon.

This refusal, or very strong resistance, may be implicit or explicit, and the imposition may be imagined or real – but in any case, it typically drives at least one side of very many contentious political arguments. And it is a basic element of human nature.

Its power is obvious to anyone who considers for a moment how they are likely to react to being made to do something in any aspect of their life – even something they usually enjoy. Moreover, we’ve all had the experience of feeling so much less motivated to do a task when it is required of us (perhaps as part of a job) than we feel about the very same task done out of choice in pursuit of our own ends.

Consider some of the greatest political issues of recent times.

Gay Marriage: In a world where almost everyone can experience the emotional and legal benefits of marrying the person they love, being denied that opportunity feels like an imposition (albeit a negative one in the form of a denial).

Abortion: The pro-choice position is a refusal to be told what one may and may not do with one’s body.

Taxation: The anti-tax position is a refusal to have one’s property taken.

Healthcare: Those against the Affordable Care Act were largely motivated by a refusal to be told what one may and may not have in the way of health insurance and services.

Education: Those for more forms of public education and/or private education and/or homeschooling resist the imposition of a single curriculum or worldview on their children.

Immigration: If you’re an immigrant, you likely favor more open borders because you don’t want to be denied your chance to live where you choose, which you’d experience as an imposition. If you’re for control of immigration, you likely regard the ability to choose who comes into your space (home, country) as a natural right, the disrespecting of which is therefore an imposition.

Race Relations: To be treated less favorably than anyone else for any reason is an imposition, to be resisted.

Gun Rights: Having someone take your guns from you is an imposition.

Free Speech: To be prevented from speaking one’s Truth is an imposition.

These are simple examples where the resisted imposition is clearly seen and easily stated. They tend to include more conservative or libertarian views – but by no means exclusively so.

Often, one side of a debate more clearly fits this rule of thumb, as in many of the above examples, but even in many of those cases, the other side of the issue indirectly manifests this rule, too, motivated by a refusal to accept an imposition.

For instance, many of those who supported the Affordable Care Act, which purported to make health insurance – and therefore essential health services – available to all Americans, did so because they felt their inability to have the peace of mind that comes with healthcare while working hard in a developed country as an imposition – a prevention of something that would naturally be available to them, just as all other essential goods are available to them in their wealthy home nation.

Similarly, for those who regard marriage as a sacrament that originated in the Church, being forced to accept a redefinition of both the institution and the word, that is imposed by an entity – the government – that was not responsible for marriage in the first place, naturally elicits refusal or resistance.

Identifying when this “don’t tell me what I can and cannot do” instinct is wrapped inside certain political positions is very powerful for those who wish, on the one hand, to understand others’ points of view, and, on the other hand, to be more effective at persuading others of their own point of view.

With regard to understanding others’ views, identifying this motivating instinct enables us to experience an issue as our opponents do, since we all know what it feels like to be imposed upon and recalling that feeling – and the opinions and passions it has motivated in us in other areas – allows us to appreciate the reasonableness of an opponent’s stance.

One of the strongest techniques for influencing others involves speaking directly to the underlying emotion, often unstated or implicit, that energizes an opponent’s argument. Doing so involves empathizing explicitly: for example, “It seems that [XYZ] feels like one hell of an unfair imposition to you, so I completely get why you have the view you do.”

To be able to reflect back to someone how they feel – rather than telling them what they should think – is the beginning of all effective political persuasion (and victory in many elections).

For that reason, the next time you’re in a political argument, take a moment to step back and ask yourself whether it’s you, or your opponent, or both of you, who are really motivated by that fundamental human desire just to be left alone. That single question can quickly unlock breakthroughs of communication on issue after issue.

Robin Koerner is a British-born citizen of the USA, who currently serves as Academic Dean of the John Locke Institute. He holds graduate degrees in both Physics and the Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge (U.K.). He is also the founder of WatchingAmerica.com.

The content of an ethical code is determined by its standard of value.⁶ “The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics — the standard by which one judges what is good or evil — is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man. Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.”⁷

The aspect of Objectivism for which Ayn Rand is best known — rational selfishness — is implicit in the preceding. It is one’s own survival needs that make values possible and necessary. And it is one’s own mind that has to function by one’s own choice to initiate and direct one’s own action to obtain and utilize those values.

Since the course of action required to sustain one’s life is specific, since any action that does not profit oneself is a drain on one’s time, energy, motivation, and resources, all forms of self-sacrifice stand damned as anti-life. “‘Sacrifice’ is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values . . .”⁸ “You are told that moral perfection is impossible to man — and, by this standard, it is. You cannot achieve it so long as you live, but the value of your life and of your person is gauged by how closely you succeed in approaching that ideal zero which is death.”⁹

“The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one.”¹⁰

Since the rise of Christianity, only a very few philosophers have had the courage to challenge the morality of self-sacrifice and to uphold egoism — notably, Spinoza and Nietzsche. Nietzsche, however, merely replaced self-sacrifice with the sacrifice of others to self. Spinoza’s ethics does have some valuable points (if removed from the overall context of his philosophy), but it is laced with mysticism and is premised upon a rigid determinism, each man being driven by a “conatus” or “instinct” of self-preservation.

It is shocking to realize that, despite altruism’s monopoly in ethics, in the entire history of philosophy, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever attempted to offer a rational argument to justify altruistic self-sacrifice. Only faith (Christianity) or feelings (Kant) have been adduced to support altruism.¹¹

“Now there is one word — a single word — which can blast the morality of altruism out of existence and which it cannot withstand — the word: ‘Why?’ Why must man live for the sake of others? Why must he be a sacrificial animal? Why is that the good? There is no earthly reason for it . . .”¹²

Today’s philosophers have lost entirely the concept of a non-sacrificial morality. They go so far as to argue that an egoist morality is self-contradictory. Taking it as self-evident that men are emotion-driven brutes whose interests necessarily clash, these philosophers argue that an egoist would have to advocate altruism, in order to induce others to sacrifice themselves to him.

What is inconceivable to these philosophers is the ennobled view of man expressed by Galt:

“There is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires — if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical. There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another — if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn’t.”¹³

In Galt’s Speech, Ayn Rand demonstrated that, in reality, it is the morality of self-sacrifice that is riddled with self-contradiction. The code of self-sacrifice awards value to the destruction of values, places what it holds as the good (giving) in the service of what it holds as the evil (taking), and enshrines death at the apex of its value-hierarchy.

Ayn Rand’s ethics is egoistic not only in advocating self-interest but also in placing its focus on the essence of that which is one’s self: one’s mind. Where previous moralists were concerned only with such derivative issues as one’s actions, feelings, or motives, Ayn Rand went deeper, making one’s worth a matter of the choice to have a self or not — i.e., to think, judge, and will, or to stumble passively through one’s days with one’s ego suspended.

“This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.”¹⁴

She has given us a morality which speaks to, summons forth, and honors the “I.”

They call my people the White Lower Middle Class these days. It is an ugly, ice-cold phrase, the result, I suppose, of the missionary zeal of those sociologists who still think you can place human beings on charts.  It most certainly does not sound like a description of people on the edge of open, sustained and possibly violent revolt,” wrote the marvelous New York journalist, Pete Hamill in “The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class” in New York magazine.  He added:

The White Lower Middle Class? Say that magic phrase at a cocktail party on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and monstrous images arise from the American demonology. Here comes the murderous rabble: fat, well-fed, bigoted, ignorant, an army of beer-soaked Irishmen, violence-loving Italians, hate-filled Poles. Lithuanians and Hungarians….Sometimes these brutes are referred to as ‘the ethnics’ or ‘the blue-collar types.’ But the bureaucratic, sociological phrase is White Lower Middle Class. Nobody calls it the Working Class anymore.

He wrote that on April 14, 1969. Yesterday. Little changes.

Transferred from NYC to the middle of the country half a century later, these people are referred to as Trump’s “deplorables.” They comes in baskets, as Hillary Clinton said.  And even though they represent nearly half the voting public in the last two presidential elections – 70+ million Americans – their complaints are dismissed as the rantings of ignorant, conservative racists.

Name calling substitutes for understanding. This is not an accident.

Like Hamill, I am a NYC born and bred Irish-American – my working-class Bronx to Pete’s Brooklyn. We both attended the same Jesuit high school in different years. Unlike Hamill, known for his gritty street reporting, because I have been a college sociology professor, I could falsely be categorized as a northeastern liberal intellectual oozing with disdain for those who voted for Trump.  This is false, because, like Hamill, I see it as my intellectual duty to understand what motivates these voters, just as I do with those who voted for Biden.

didn’t vote for Donald Trump, nor did I vote for Joseph Biden, or Hillary Clinton in 2016.  I am not one of those sociologists Hamill refers to; I use the term Working Class and am acutely aware of the social class nature of life in the U.S.A., where the economic system of neo-liberal capitalism is constructed to try to convince working Americans that the system cares for them, and if they grow disgusted with its lies and inequities and rage against the machine by voting for anyone who seems to be with them (even a super-rich reality TV real estate magnate named Trump who is not with them), they are dumb-ass bigots whose concerns should be brushed off.

The truth is that both the Trump voters and the Biden voters have been taken for a ride.  It is a game, a show, a movie, a spectacle.  It hasn’t changed much since 1969; the rich have gotten richer and the poor, working, and middle classes have gotten poorer and more desperate.  Those who have profited have embraced the fraud.

The Institute for Policy Studies has just released a new analysis showing that since the start of the Covid-19 “pandemic” in mid-March and the subsequent transfer upwards of $5 trillion to the wealthy and largest corporations through the Cares Act, approved 96-0 in the U.S. Senate, 650 U.S. billionaires have gained over a trillion dollars in eight months as the America people have suffered an economic catastrophe.  This shift upward of massive wealth under Trump is similar to Obama’s massive 2009 bailout of the banks on the backs of American workers. Both were justified through feats of legerdemain by both political parties, accomplices in the fleecing of regular people, many of whom continue to support the politicians that screw them while telling them they care.

If the Democrats and the Republicans are at war as is often claimed, it is only over who gets the larger part of the spoils. Trump and Biden work for the same bosses, those I call the Umbrella People (those who own and run the country through their intelligence/military/media operatives), who produce and direct the movie that keeps so many Americans on the edge of their seats in the hope that their chosen good guy wins in the end.

I am well aware that most people disagree with my analysis.  It does seem as if I am wrong and that because the Democrats and their accomplices have spent years attempting to oust Trump through Russia-gate, impeachment, etc. that what seems true is true and Trump is simply a crazy aberration who somehow slipped through the net of establishment control to rule for four years.  To those 146 + million people who voted for Biden and Trump this seems self-evident.  But if that is so, why, despite their superficial differences – and Obama’s, Hillary Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s for that matter – have the super-rich gotten richer and richer over the decades and the war on terror continued as the military budget has increased each year and the armament industries and the Wall Street crooks continued to rake in the money at the expense of everyone else?  These are a few facts that can’t be disputed. There are many more. So what’s changed under Trump?  We are talking about nuances, small changes.  A clown with a big mouth versus traditional, “dignified” con men.

you were writing this script as part of long-term planning and average people were getting disgusted from decades of being screwed and were sick of politicians and their lying ways, wouldn’t you stop the reruns and create a new show?  Come on, this is Hollywood where creative showmen can dazzle our minds with plots so twisted that when you leave the theater you keep wondering what it was all about and arguing with your friends about the ending. So create a throwback film where the good guy versus the bad guy was seemingly very clear, and while the system ground on, people would be at each other’s throats over the obvious differences, even while they were fabricated.

Variety is necessary.  You wouldn’t want to repeat the film from 2008 when a well-spoken black man came into town out of nowhere to clean up the mess created by the poorly spoken white sheriff who loved war and then the black hero went on to wage war in seven countries while his fans sat contented in the audience loving the show and making believe they didn’t see what was happening on the screen even though their hero jailed whistle blowers and greatly expanded the surveillance state right in front of their eyes.

No, as the years passed, those two guys turned out to be buddies, and their wives hit it off, and a famous photograph appeared of the good guy’s wife hugging the bad guy, which was not a good thing for the script that has the Republicans warring against the Democrats.

A new story line was needed. How about an opéra bouffe, someone suggested, and the rest is history. Or pseudo-history. This is the real matrix. The most sophisticated mind control operation up to this point, with the coronavirus lockdown added to propel it to what the producers hope is a conclusion.

What more can I say?

Billy Joel said it:  “JFK blown away.”

The Towers pulverized. 

Minds of this generation destroyed, as Allen Ginsberg said in Howl: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”

It’s been many generations now.  There has been a form of social madness growing over the decades and it is everywhere now.  Look at people’s faces, if you can see them behind the masks; everywhere the strained and stressed looks, the scared rabbit eyes that you see on the wards of mental hospitals. The look that says: what the fuck has happened as they stare into a blank screen in a tumbling void, to paraphrase Don DeLillo from his new book Silence, where people speak gibberish once their digital world is mysteriously taken down and they wander in the dark.  We are in the dark now, even though the lights and screens are still shining for the time being.

Let those who think I am wrong about Trump and Biden being players in the same show, consider this. If Trump is truly the opponent of the Deep State, the Swamp, the corrupt establishment, he will pardon Julian Assange, Chelsey Manning, and Edward Snowden who have been persecuted by these forces.  He has nothing left to lose as he exits stage right.

The journalist Julian Assange has done more than anyone to expose the sick underbelly of the gangster state, its intelligence and military secrets, its illegal and immoral killings. That is why he has been hounded and locked away for so long. It’s a bipartisan persecution of an innocent man whose only “crime” has been to tell the truth that is allegedly the essence of a democratic society.

Chelsey Manning has also suffered tremendously for exposing the savagery of U.S. military operations.

And Edward Snowden has been forced into Russian exile for telling us about the vast global surveillance systems run by the NSA and CIA to spy on the American people.

Three innocent truth-tellers at war with the Deep-State forces that Donald Trump says he opposes.

If he is what his supporters claim, he will pardon these courageous three.  It’s all in his power. A simple, clear message as he goes out the door. If by the smallest chance he does pardon them, I will be very happy and publicly apologize.  If he doesn’t, as I expect, please don’t say a word in his defense.  My ears will be stuffed with wax.  For he won’t, because, like Biden, he is controlled by the very forces that these truth-tellers have exposed.

But back to the working class “deplorables” that voted for Trump. They aren’t going anywhere.  Their grievances remain. For decades, under Democratic and Republican administrations, their lives have been hollowed out, their livelihoods taken as corporate thieves have ravaged their towns and cities by closing down the factories where they worked and sending them overseas for greater profits. Small farmers have been “liquidated” for agribusiness.

As always, the coastal urbanites have considered rural people stupid, uncouth, and clownish, as the words clown, boor, and villain have all originally meant farmer or countryman or lower-class peasant.  Such hidden etymological social class prejudices have a way of persisting over the years.

Towns and small businesses disappear, traditional values are ridiculed, drug addiction and suicide increase, the fabric of traditions crumble, etc.  This list is long.  The people who voted for Trump feel betrayed; feel like victims. Of course, as Pete Hamill wrote of the NYC white working class in 1969, there are racists among them, and with all racists, they have their reasons, but these reasons are poison and despicable. But overall, these Trump voters are, in Hamill’s words, “actually in revolt against taxes, joyless work, the double standards and short memories of professional politicians, hypocrisy and what he considers the debasement of the American dream.”  Any politician, he added, who leaves these people out of the political equation, does so at a very large risk.  That risk has been growing over the decades.

Yet desperate people do desperate things, and for many Americans these are desperate times.  Everywhere you look, there are long lines at food pantries and soup kitchens.  The unemployment numbers are staggering. Homelessness. Suicides.  Drug and alcohol addictions rising.  Clear signs of social disintegration.  This is true not just in the United States but is happening around the world as neo-liberal economic policies are exacerbated by the widespread lockdowns that have given rise to massive protests worldwide, protests that the corporate press has failed to publicize since doing so would give the lie to their promotions of the lockdowns.

In England, the Mirror newspaper just printed the legendary Australian journalist John Pilger’s article about his 1975 interviews with impoverished English families with this lead:

John Pilger interviewed Irene Brunsden in Hackney, east London about only being able to feed her two-year-old a plate of cornflakes in 1975. Now he sees nervous women queueing at foodbanks with their children as it’s revealed 600,000 more kids are in poverty now than in 2012.

Vast numbers of people are suffering.

Many Trump voters no doubt know that Trump was never going to save them. But he said the right things, and desperation and disgust will grasp onto the slightest will-o’-the-wisp when disbelief in the whole rotten system is widespread.

Let’s not bullshit: everyone knows the game is rigged.

Trump is a liar.

Biden is a liar.

Great Britain’s Boris Johnson is a liar.

Fill in the names of the political charlatans.

The system is built on lies to keep the illusions brightening the screen of the great picture show, what Neil Gabler has rightly called “life the movie.”

Biden voters no doubt desperately hope that we can go back to some semblance of “normal,” even while knowing this is a losing game. Many of them try hard to conceal their true feelings, that their hatred for Trump and their love of living in times when imperialism is concealed as democracy is what they want. They don’t want to know. Concealment of the atrocious underbelly of normal is their hope and desire, even while they too are being fleeced and secretly know that the “new normal” will be far from their restorative dreams.  There are exceptions, of course, true believers who think Biden will significantly change things, but I would say they are a very small minority.  Many Biden voters say they have voted for the “lesser of two evils,” an old, worn-out excuse that in a rigged system will perdure.

Little changes. The past lives on.

Next year’s Academy Awards will be interesting.  A wit I know suggested that perhaps Trump and Biden will be nominees for the Best Actor in a Leading Role and they will tie for the Oscar.  That will be the second time that has ever happened.  The first was in 1932 when Fredric March and Wallace Beery shared the award.  March starred in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Beery in the boxing film, The Champ.

Both winners will be announced as starring in the same film, confusing the audience until it’s named: The American Nightmare.  Then raucous cheering will erupt from the jaded audience.  Dr. Jekyll will embrace Mr. Hyde and the melded Champ will take a bow as he winks for the cameras.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The Best of Edward Curtin

See? I told you so.

“Environmentalists in the United Kingdom are pressing for “economy-wide” lockdowns, similar to those put into place to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, in order to address the creeping threat of climate change.

In an op-ed published Monday, Mariana Mazzucato argues that the world is approaching such a tipping point on climate change that the only solution could be global economic lockdowns, temporarily — if not permanently — ending industry, travel, entertainment, and consumption in order to preserve the planet, even if it’s not clear that the effect would itself be permanent.” [The Daily Wire 11/30/20]

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason