Under real capitalism, there is no government policy at all regarding how people are to conduct themselves in a pandemic. With no barriers to innovation, production, and distribution, the pharmaceutical industry would be rocketing us into an almost disease-free future.
Before we start taking for granted the statist perspective on the vaccine and its delivery, let’s look at how a free, rights-respecting government and society would be behaving right now.
Prices of anything in short supply (where I am it’s Bounty paper towels) rise until supply meets demand. The supermarket shelves remain full. The businesses producing and selling these items reap windfall profits, which draws capital to ramp up production, so that in a few weeks prices fall back to where they were.
The same is true of medical services: in a free society doctors are not licensed; consequently, their supply can be expanded; hospitals are not regulated, so they can handle surges in demand as they wish. No fire marshals, building inspectors, environmental impact assessors can interfere with any temporary build-out a hospital decides to make. In fact, no one would dream of even asking to be informed of any decision a hospital makes regarding how to use its own property on its own land.
Tests and vaccines are developed by pharmaceutical companies, in their labs, and get whatever private voluntary certification they choose to get (probably none—why do Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson need any stamp of outside approval?).
As they develop these new tests and vaccines, they distribute early versions of them to their own network of forward-looking individuals, including doctors, medical staff, and researchers, willing to take a little extra risk to get innovative products sooner.
The new tests and vaccines are sold for “all the market can bear.” That means: high prices to early-adopters; then, as safety and efficacy become established by tracking the experience of the early-adopters, the items are sold at progressively lower prices to wider and wider segments of the general population.
Since a free society’s government never compels anyone to get a doctor’s prescription, there are no such things as pharmacies in the traditional sense. Rather, CVS, Walmart, Walgreens have a pharmaceutical area, perhaps staffed by specially knowledgeable people (who don’t require a government license) to advise you. If you don’t need this kind of service, and just want pills to swallow, you can just grab a bottle off the shelf and go to the cash register. Or you can go on Amazon or other sites and buy them just the way you do books, T-shirts, and canned peas.
The “delivery system” for the new vaccines and tests is the same profit-making firms that already deliver everything in a capitalist society. Think: UPS, Amazon, FedEx—but even better, because they are not regulated.
To get products, new or old, we don’t need four-star generals to be in charge of “logistics.” Even today, under semi-capitalism, the task is handled by purchasing managers, inventory managers, buyers, and vendors—and no shortage ever develops, except where government holds prices below market.
Under pure capitalism, there is no such question as: “Who is going to get the vaccine first?” If it were asked, the answer would be the same as for “Who is going to get the new C8 model Corvette first?” Whoever shows up with the money. If there’s a rush, the price goes up to where demand matches supply. Then supply is expanded to reap the resulting high-profit rate.
And there is no such question as: “What if a segment of the population is afraid to take the vaccine?” People are thinking, not of collective outcomes, but of individual ones. It would never occur to them to worry about people who don’t take the vaccine, because they know that by choosing to get vaccinated, they themselves will be protected.
Under real capitalism, there is no government policy at all regarding how people are to conduct themselves in a pandemic. Not only are there no lockdowns, no curfews, no group quarantines (on the basis of group statistics), but also no thought of government having any role to play. “Public health” is no more connected in people’s minds to government than is “public entertainment.” Health is understood to be a personal matter—just as entertainment is.
Even where there are “social problems,” free citizens of a free society regard it as widespread individual problems, not as problems justifying government coercion.
Take the rising divorce rate, which is widely regarded as a “social problem.” Even today, no one thinks divorce is something to be combatted by government directives. The prospect of government getting involved in marital problems would fill us with horror. For the citizens of a laissez-faire society, the idea of government dictating people’s behavior in a pandemic would be equally as horrifying.
In practice, the laissez-faire utopia I’m envisioning would be tremendously healthier than the regulatory state we live under in America today. Without the dead hand of the FDA, medical experimentation and data-collection from ordinary citizens (via their smartphones, perhaps) would produce vastly more data for AI to use in discovering what works and what doesn’t. With no barriers to innovation, production, and distribution, the pharmaceutical industry would be rocketing us into an almost disease-free future.
The article, “The Separation: A Proposal for a Renewed America,” was apparently written under the pseudonym “Rebecca,” which the author indicates was taken from a series of letters written by Abraham Lincoln using the same pseudonym.
The author surely knows that Lincoln was challenged to a duel by James Shields, the sitting senator from Illinois, as a result of the “Rebecca letters.” Lincoln accepted the challenge—he chose broadswords as the weapons, and actually took instructions from a military officer in preparation. Shields was an experienced Army man in his own right, considered an expert with the broadsword. But Lincoln designed the proposed combat arena in such a way as to give his size and considerable reach an advantage over the shorter Shields.
Though the matter was amicably settled before the duel could be fought, I invite all readers—including the second “Rebecca”—to ponder Lincoln’s ingenious and highly amusing design. It provokes reflection on the comedy and tragedy of politics.
Dueling was against the law in Illinois, so the plan was to stage the event in Missouri where it was permitted. Planning or conspiring for a duel either by principals or seconds was also illegal, and Lincoln surely broke the law in doing do. Had plans for the duel been carried out, Lincoln’s political career might have ended in 1842.
In any case, Lincoln did not write all of the “Rebecca” letters: some (and the most scandalous) were written by Mary Todd, his fiancée and future wife. Surely “Rebecca” was an odd choice on the part of our pseudonymous author: it wasn’t Lincoln’s finest moment and he never again resorted to the use of a pseudonym. He had learned his lesson!
A Sparring Match
I will not challenge our author to a duel, but I will challenge this holder of “multiple Ivy League degrees” on his understanding of the American regime. Our author rightly notes the deep division that has arisen in the nation between the Red States and the Blue States. He or she proposes, not a divorce, but a trial separation that may eventually lead to a reconciliation of differences.
Throughout the essay, the author makes a mistake that Lincoln never made: Lincoln never forgot that politics is the architectonic art. We have often heard from conservatives that “politics is downstream from culture” and the way to reform political life is first to reform culture. Lincoln never made this foolish error, nor do the progressive ideologues who drive the politics of the Red States. These leftist radicals are deadly serious; politics is their avocation. For them culture, while an important part of political calculus, is eventually determined or shaped by politics because politics is always a contest for rule.
Conservative Republicans who believe that the battle for culture takes precedence over politics will always lose because they don’t know where to drawn the main battle line: they prefer to fight skirmishes. Progressives count on the apolitical character of conservatism, its preference for private life over the political. This is why the leftist radicals saw Trump as such a threat: he was a political man and understood the supremacy of politics.
Lincoln in the 1850s
Our author rightly notes, as many commentators have, that our current situation resembles that of the 1850s and the election of 2020 appears eerily similar to the election of 1860. Lincoln’s great speeches of the 1850s all sought to reconcile the nation by restoring the principles of the Declaration of Independence as the authoritative source of the Constitution’s authority. He tirelessly reiterated that the Constitution, understood in the light of the principles of the Declaration, had put slavery on the “course of ultimate extinction.”
These speeches—the Peoria Speech in 1854, the Dred Scott Speech in 1857, House Divided (1858), Cooper Union (1860), and the First Inaugural (1861)—were all masterworks of reasoned logic and persuasion. But they were political failures! Why? Simply because the slaveholding states were consumed by their passions and so unable to listen to reason. The First Inaugural, for example, appealed to their self-interest: there would be no interference with slavery in the states where it already existed, Lincoln averred, because there was no constitutional power to do so. If the South left the Union it would lose its representatives and Senators and would therefore be unable to protect its interests in the government.
Secession was folly. It occurred only because the South had refused to listen to reason—reason, in other words, no longer informed public discourse. Today, too, reason has been driven from the public sphere. The era of the sound-byte and media manipulation has replaced reasoned discourse. The election of 2020 has sunk to the lowest level of public discourse in modern times and perhaps in history.
The real reason that no compromise with slavery was possible was that any compromise would have been a rejection of the first principles of the nation announced in the Declaration. Slavery was incompatible with the central principle that “all men are created equal.” Slavery could not be abolished all at once at the founding because compromises were necessary to secure the support of the slaveholding states: if they had formed their own nation, the prospects of ever ending slavery were remote. But as Lincoln noted, those compromises were not the principles of the Constitution: they were the exceptions.
When read in the light of the principles of the Declaration, it was clear that the protections for slavery in the Constitution were merely compromises with those principles, temporary expedients to be observed until political conditions (and public opinion) would accept the abolition of slavery. Read in that manner—in the manner the Founders intended—the Constitution had doomed slavery to eventual extinction.
The public mind had rested with that assurance until the passage of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, which allowed local majorities in the territories to determine whether to have slavery or not. Stephen Douglas, the architect of the measure and Lincoln’s main political rival, maintained that it was not a matter of principle but simply of whose interest was served. If a majority of the people found it in their interest to “vote slavery up,” then they should do so. If not, they should vote it down. Lincoln, with his inimitable ability to convey complex matters simply, said it was like two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch—by majority vote!
Lincoln’s response to Douglas revealed the essence of republican government: if natural rights are only a matter of whose interests are served, then no one’s rights are secure. It will always be in someone’s interest to disenfranchise the rights of others—whether it be the interest of a majority, an oligarchy or a tyrant. Douglas’s claim that interest is the only basis for rights put everyone’s rights in danger. If rights are not grounded in “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” then it simply becomes a matter of whose interest is being served. The Missouri Compromise, in Lincoln’s true estimation, repealed the principles of the Declaration.
In the House Divided Speech, Lincoln made it clear that no further compromise on the issue of slavery was possible—or desirable. What would it profit to lose the soul of the nation—its animating principles? The body might live on, but without a soul it would be a nation indifferent to justice, that sine qua non without which no constitutional regime or the rule of law can exist. And in the Cooper Union Speech Lincoln revealed that the South did not want mere tolerance for its “peculiar institution”; it wanted the North to stop condemning the immorality of slavery and even demanded its recognition as a moral good, something that could not happen without repealing the Declaration.
Conflating the Timeless with the Timely
Our author recognizes that “[o]ur times are Lincoln’s.” But Lincoln’s times “attempted to accommodate the ‘peculiar institution’ with individual liberty.” This was an attempt “to reconcile irreconcilable ends…that could not be resolved within the system.” Indeed these were incompatible ends, but the “system” had “resolved” them, by putting slavery on the “course of ultimate extinction.” Read the Constitution in light of the principles of the Declaration and enforce the Constitution: that was the “system” as Lincoln understood it. The slaveholding states no longer wanted the resolution prescribed by “the system”; as Lincoln said over and over again, there was nothing inadequate, as our author seems to think, with “the system” itself.
The author admits that our current problems, however serious and dangerous they are, do not compare to slavery—although, I might add, some kind of tyranny (which amounts to enslavement of the people) might be in prospect. The author is correct that the people are currently deeply divided—“we are two people.” But here is the surprising observation: “The current political system cannot bridge the divide between the two Americas.” “The Constitution is not broken,” we are assured, “rather “the People for whom it was created are broken.” In order to address this problem our author suggests a “separation” that will allow Red and Blue America a “political living space.” This will allow the “people to relax the political bands connecting them.”
We are told that this strategy surely will be productive since “both sides still claim fealty to the Constitution.” This outrageous claim will be examined in short order. If suffices to ask now: Which constitution is our author referring to?
Our author assures us that the founders would not frown upon this innovation, since change was “not an affront” to them: “it was their expectation.” It is true, as our author suggests, that the Constitution was grounded on “timeless principles” which had to “adapt [to] the times.” But our author has done something incredible by changing a “timeless principle.”
We presume that the “timeless principles” to which our author has referred are contained in the Declaration of Independence and its invocation of “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” We remember that the Declaration appeals to those same laws when it says it has become necessary for “one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” Our author treats these “timeless principles” as flexible and adaptable, i.e., as if they were not sacred “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” but merely matters of convention which can be modified at will. Thus they can be reinterpreted to “relax the political bands” of the “one people” instead of becoming a foundation for the principles of a new separate and equal nation dedicated to the “safety and happiness of the people.”
Something is wrong here! The timeless and the timely have been confounded and the Constitution is now bereft of permanent principles. But is this the price that must be paid so the two separate people, Red and Blue, have their “space?” It might be separate, but it certainly will not be equal.
Understanding Regime Politics
Our author, I believe, shows a fundamental misunderstanding about the American regime, beginning with the assertion that the Constitution was “itself a course correction from the Articles of Confederation.” It was indeed a “course correction,” but somewhat more than that: Madison regarded the Constitution as an act of revolution because it not only rested on wholly different principles than the Articles but was ratified by the supreme authority of the people, not the states.
In Federalist #39, Madison wrote that the Constitution must be republican because that was the only form of government consistent with the principles of the Revolution, by which he meant the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Our author says that today our “current system” is inadequate to bridge the divide that separates the people.
Presumably our author believes that the “current system” or some reasonable facsimile is the regime of the founding that both sides of the political divide, Red and Blue, still adhere to. But what evidence does the author have that the Blue States still adhere to the same constitution that the Red States appeal to? The most advanced elements of the Blue states— the ruling elites, composed of the most progressive law professors, academics, the minions of the deep state, media, corporate elites, the tech oligarchy—don’t adhere to the Constitution of the founding; rather, they routinely refer to a post-constitutionalism in which the Constitution of the Founding will be rendered superfluous, having been replaced by the administrative state and bureaucratic rule.
What Would BLM Say?
Our author even seems to agree that the two Americas are operating according to different basic principles: Rebecca calls for a revitalization of the 9th and 10th amendments that might inspire some kind of decentralized federalism to encourage social experimentation in our separation. This can only mean that Red and Blue would be invited to govern themselves in quite different ways.
The 9th amendment’s provision for “unenumerated rights” might help soften the abortion debate that motivates much of our division. It might perhaps provide some new rights to be free from pollution and climate degradation, since climate change seems to be another source of unbridgeable division. Separations can be fruitful times for reimagining all manner of things that could lead to reconciliation. It might prove beneficial in reconciling Black Lives Matter and blue lives matter, for example, although it is difficult to see how any amount of relaxed reimagining might meet the non-negotiable demand of BLM and left-wing progressives—backed by Blue State Democrats—to defund the police.
Blue lives matter seems to be equally resolute and, not surprisingly, to have strong support among non-oligarchic, urban lower-class blacks and Latinos as well as whites and other ethnics. Mirabile dictu! BLM seems to be a part of the ruling oligarchy! A truly helpful reimagining might suggest a defunding the military wing of BLM, but this kind of creative reimagining would undoubtedly be stigmatized as “racist,” for which even the most active imagination seemingly has no defense—even among the “woke” ruling elites who tremble before the slightest charge of racism, real or imagined, conscious or unconscious.
Our author seems to be perplexed that the statement that “all lives matter” has been deemed “racist” by BLM. Doesn’t BLM realize that as a matter of logic “all lives” includes “Black lives?” But here is the rub. Logic and reason are a Western imposition on the world, invented by white supremacists and white imperialists. To say that black lives are included in all lives is demeaning—it pushes black lives into an invisible background. Logic is not life.
The assertion “Black lives matter” is a statement of racial superiority. It cannot be judged by “racist logic.” “All lives matter” is therefore racist—no logic necessary, only reimagination. BLM has considerable responsibility for driving reason out of the public sphere with its claims that Western logic is racist and imperialist. If you think BLM doesn’t have that much influence on elite opinion, I invite you to think again. Mull that one over in your separation and “relax.” Get back to me when you figure out a reconciliation. Do your best: our marriage may depend on it!
Is America Still a Republic?
The fundamental error in our author’s analysis, however, is still more glaring: America has not been a constitutional republic based on the consent of the governed for many years. It has, in fact, been a thinly disguised oligarchy, dominated by ruling class elites in the media, in academia, both political parties in government (where politicians freely make promises to voters but find it easy to evade and ignore), the bureaucracy, the deep state (including the intelligence agencies), corporations, Silicon Valley, and other centers of influence.
Aristotle in the Politics noted the tendency of democracies and republics to become oligarchies. On occasion, he noted, one of the oligarchs appealed to the support of the people to overturn the oligarchic class and return to the old regime. Is this how we are to understand Donald Trump’s rise and fall? He said during his primary campaign that he was a wealthy insider and he saw what was happening to the people, especially how the oligarchy was profiting from China at the expense of the middle and working class. He believed that the people were being defrauded to enrich the wealthy and that this was simply unjust. He wanted to act on behalf of the people to restore the constitutional republic in which they, not the oligarchy, held sovereign power.
Trump didn’t know about Aristotle, or Aristotle’s dictum that it is justice above all which preserves regimes. But he did understand that it takes an insider to understand oligarchy.
Why would Trump betray his own class—the oligarchy? Self-interest is not always the dominant motivating force in some men—sometimes an instinct for justice prevails, or sometimes a reputation for justice might be a primary self-interest. But it took an oligarch—an insider and a traitor to his class. In turn, his class reacted to his effrontery with deadly purpose. How dare he take the side of the people! How dare he invoke justice!
The Oligarchy’s Grand Strategy
The elites, in an out of government, mobilized against Trump with resources that he could not match. The so-called Masters of the Universe dogged him unmercifully, censoring him at crucial moments that had a significant, if not decisive, impact on the election.
Pollsters did not use the wrong methodology in conducting polls; almost certainly they misreported results on purpose to suppress turnout. The media was uniformly against him, suppressing news—which the FBI said was credible but not worth investigating—about Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings, trading on his father’s connections with Russia, China, and Ukraine. The role of the Dominion Voting system, an easily manipulated system that can change results in real time without a trace, may be revealed in the future. But it is clear that the election was in fact stolen from Trump by the oligarchy he dared oppose. The likelihood that there will ever be another free election in America is remote.
Perhaps most important was the Wuhan virus, which provided an unexpected weapon for the oligarchy not only to consolidate their power but to terrorize the public into accepting oppressive government regulations that will probably extend into the indefinite future. Some of the regulations have been exercises in raw power, having little or no rational basis and little effect on curbing the pandemic.
Most telling, however, is the fact that the pandemic has resulted in the greatest transfer of wealth in history from the lower and middle classes to the wealthy and corporate classes. Whether the pandemic was an accident or not, the massive transfer of wealth was intentional. The reaction to the pandemic was the beginning of the end of President Trump’s attempt to survive the all-out assault mounted against him by combined forces of oligarchy. Without the pandemic, Trump, in all probability, would have won reelection, and would have been better positioned to deal directly with the minions of the deep state, the Masters of the Universe, and those who supported them.
Oligarchy and Regime Change
Oligarchy is not a permanent; it too is subject to regime change. It can become a democracy, or it can become a tyranny if one or a small segment of the oligarchs becomes predominant in wealth and power. In the near future, the latter prospect is most likely. What is clear however is that no “trial separation” will alleviate our situation, even when our highly educated commentator learns to recognize the politics of regime change.
Politics is a contest for rule—the people or the oligarchy in our current situation. It is not helpful to think of the relationship of the Red and Blue State as a marriage that needs a “trial separation.” Even if a separation was secured, I can assure you that the Blue State oligarchs—and for that matter the many Red State oligarchs and politicians who are content to return to status quo ante Trump—would not use it to work on the marriage. And they certainly won’t tolerate a divorce. Like all domineering partners who abuse their consorts, they want to rule.
Edward J. Erler is Professor of Political Science emeritus at CSU San Bernardino. Previously a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hillsdale College, he is a senior fellow of The Claremont Institute and a member of the Board of Directors. His new book, The United States in Crisis can be purchased here.
The presidential postelection period unfolding now in the US is having a big impact on the political class in Europe. Historically speaking this is nothing new. Every politician in Europe knows that any major political change in the US is bound to have, the day after, an effect on his own decision-making policy and likely determine the time span of his career. This mode of mandatory pro-American mimicry among European politicians has been playing out in full force since 1945.
Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that the mainstream media in Europe, seconded by EU high officials, with a very timid exception of Poland, Hungary and Slovenia, are piggybacking on US media outlets in a joint effort to unseat Trump and his legacy. The German political class, with Chancellor Merkel at the top of the EU System, is at the forefront of this anti-Trump pro-Biden mimicry.
The good news for some — and probably the bad news for others — is that both in the USA and Europe there is a rising divide between the rulers and the ruled, with a good chance of pitting the one against the other, with civil unrest becoming a highly likely scenario — Trump or Biden notwithstanding. Not just nationalist parties of all stripes in Europe, but more and more average citizens, due also to bizarre and ever-changing Covid19 confinement regulations, are increasingly becoming suspicious of System decrees, no longer taking at a face value the palaver about tolerance and a multicultural shining future. Many people in Europe like Trump’s words — more by default, and less by their knowledge of how the American electoral system works.
It must be pointed out that Trump was and still is the American exception to the rule of the post-WWII global liberal System. Predictably, Trump’s lambasting the mainstream media and its mirror image, the Deep State, does not square at all with the post-WWII liberal or communist antifascist and postcolonial narrative which all White Europeans and Americans have been subjected to since 1945. In contrast to America, however, European nations have a very slim margin of political maneuvering, which is largely due to their former colonial, authoritarian, totalitarian and antiliberal past. Consequently, European conservative and nationalist-minded politicians can only offset the burden of their past and escape the haunting shut-up word ‘fascism’ through their penitent behavior and through constant self-flagellating sermons on White Man’s Guilt. This self-effacing behavior translates today in a massive import of young non-European migrants with all of Europe rapidly becoming a giant hospice of take-a-knee repentant Whites.
The masochistic White Man mindset can be directly traced to the post-WWII Auschwitz political theology designated not just as deterrent for the defeated Germany, but also as a warning sign for former US and UK victors. Having this in mind, any tentative endorsement at this stage of Trump-like policies by a putative high EU politician means his/her running the risk of being accused of fascist or revisionist sympathies. It is a kiss of death in his/her career.
In order to grasp the fawning conduct of European leaders toward the System, or let’s call it the Deep State embedded in the East Coast of the US, one must always put things into a larger historical perspective. With his critical remarks about the mainstream media and his anti-immigration rhetoric, Trump seriously damaged the System narrative and along the way raised, without even realizing it, some disturbing questions about the legitimacy of the World Order established in the aftermath of WWII.
In Europe the System — i.e., the Deep State — has its major outlet in Germany. Being the heartland of Europe, Germany after 1945 was preordained to serve as a role model for all future EU member states. Today the German government functions therefore as the loudest mouthpiece of anti-Trump and pro-Biden rhetoric. Given Germany’s neurotic process of post-WWII nation-state building, such penitent behavior is comprehensible. Germany was designed as a Europe’s new shining example of a successful Allied-Antifa social and racial multicultural engineering, which has spawned by now hundreds of thousands of self-censored, servile and atoning politicians and academics across the board, all of them deadly afraid that any minor dissident voice of theirs could result in their removal from the public scene. In day-to-day contemporary politics, German politicians and academics must be therefore constantly on a high alert and they must endeavor, metaphorically speaking, to be more Catholic than the Pope, i.e., more the American Biden lookalikes than Biden and his crew themselves. The same goes for all non-German European politicians, albeit to a lesser extent.
The toxic words fascism and racism serve today as an ideal tool of self-censorship in Germany, also explaining why Germany has been over recent decades, and particularly over the last decade, the most fervent advocate of its self-destructive multicultural policy manifesting itself in its constantly importing non-European migrants.
Another example of Germany’s self-denial: Just recently the German minister of foreign affairs Heiko Maas, in typical German preemptive atonement mode, and in in order to counter any speculations that Germany might someday depart from the embedded post-WWII New World Order, issued the following statement: “I will proceed against the extreme right-wing venom for our democracy. “ (Ich will gegen rechtsextremes Gift für unsere Demokratie vorgehen).
Such a show of German and European atonement is a natural and logical outcome of the Allied brainwashing process that has been going on in the media and higher education, not just in the East, but also in the West since 1945. Hence, if Trump keeps accusing the mainstream media and the Deep State of political dishonesty in slanting coverage and covering up a stolen election, it inevitably raises the question as to how truthful, or rather how fake the whole System and its historical narrative have been over the last seventy years. Trump was a threat to the entire post-WWII narrative of the West.
The former Russian anticommunist dissident and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote long ago that we “should not live the Communist Lie.” Well, time seems to be ripe to raise the same question about the Lie of the Liberal System.
I have heard RINO types say, “We survived 8 years of Obama. We can survive 4 of Biden.” Good grief. How many faulty assumptions can you fit into one sentence? The Democratic Party is now hard Communist. AND fascist. Hitler and Stalin, rolled into one horrific 21st century hybrid. Obama needed a pretense of moderation. Biden, on the other hand, ran on Marx’s platform–and won, via fraud. It’s a far left takeover.
Elections no longer matter. The Supreme Court has given its nod and wink to future fraud. There will be no Donald Trump comeback in 2024. There is now one Party. The RINOs are so clueless–as clueless as Fox News. Some of it is sick, sad denial. Even as they’re fed to Kamala Harris’ wolves and the wolves swallow them, they’ll be whistling a tune and dreaming of President Romney in 2025.
In these times, even an atheist is forced to say: God help us all. Or: Secession, here we come.
The media and Democrats’ playbook is always the same.
Their radical big-government policies are not popular, so they hide the truth about them from the public.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were essentially kept in the basement while the media and other Democrats repeatedly attacked Trump.
While Twitter and Facebook executives were helping and contributing to Biden, they were censoring Trump and his supporters while burying negative stories on Biden. They never censored Biden, no matter how much he lied.
Currently, Biden and Obama are telling their supporters to shut up about defunding the police, a standard trope coming from the left, because voters don’t like it. They say they can get to it later. Defunding police is rephrased to call it reimagining the police or some other intentionally misleading term. When Republicans want to slow down the increase or freeze education spending, food stamps, Medicaid, or Medicare, the media and other Democrats call them drastic cuts and say Republicans don’t care about health care, or children, and that they want people to starve. When Democrats want to drastically cut police budgets, it is called “reimagining.”
In 2009, Obama, Biden, and the Democrats repeatedly lied to get Obamacare passed. They told everyone the known lies that Obamacare would allow you to keep your doctor and keep your plan and that your premiums would go down substantially. House speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats must pass the bill to see what was in it. The results of Obamacare showed that prices skyrocketed, and choice was taken away. Money was also taken from Medicare to fund Obamacare. Life expectancy unexpectedly dropped for three straight years. Through it all, the media cheer and want more government-run health care. Facts don’t matter.
Obama and other Democrats have also always wanted single-payer (or rather, government-run) health care but know they have to hide what they want from the public, so they attack the private sector incrementally with the full support of the compliant media. They truly don’t care how many jobs they destroy in the private sector as they move toward socialism. They also try to hide the word “socialism” from the public as much as possible.
Here’s just one example from the days of President Obama:
In 2003, Obama said he supports a single-payer health care system, and that the only reason we “may not get there immiediately” [sic] is “because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House” — which, of course, we have:
“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program…I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.” — Barack Obama, 2003
When power-hungry greedy Democrats want more money, they talk about people paying their “fair” share. They claim that the people who like lower taxes and smaller government are “greedy.” Doesn’t “fair share” sound nice? But there is never enough money for the politicians and bureaucrats.
Republicans are called anti-abortion and pro-life. Democrats are not called pro-abortion and pro-death. Nope, they are called pro-choice. That is so much more pleasant than pro-death. Democrats who say women have freedom of choice don’t think they should have freedom of choice on what health care to buy.
Democrats claim that their lockdown policies are based on science, but the statistical data do not support that. They do not determine who is essential or non-essential and what businesses to destroy, based on science. Why do they close churches but keep liquor and marijuana stores open? Could it be the tax revenue? There were no data to ever support closing schools, yet many children are still suffering.
Biden and Harris both said in debates that they would ban fracking, but in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, Biden lied and called Trump a liar for telling the truth. Twitter and Facebook never blocked Biden’s lies.
The Democrats claim that their policies to get rid of oil are based on science, but there are no scientific data that show a direct link among temperatures, storm activity, sea levels, and oil consumption. They just repeat the talking point that the science is settled to intentionally mislead the public. No matter how wrong the previous dire predictions of the last 100 years have been, they just act like as if they were telling the truth. People who tell the scientific truth, which is that the climate has always changed cyclically and naturally, are called liars, anti-science, climate change deniers, and stupid to beat them into submission.
The Democrat big government programs are called the Great Society programs and anti-poverty programs. They are neither. They are programs to move towards socialism and are meant to keep more people poor and dependent on government. They encouraged the breakup of the family which is the greatest indicator of who will end up in poverty.
Trump’s economic programs took unemployment levels of people of all races and educations levels to record lows, substantially raised stagnant wages for those at the bottom and reduced poverty levels to record lows at the end of 2019. And most of the media and other Democrats show how little they cared about minorities and the poor by rooting against and seeking to reverse those policies. They intentionally lie when they say Trump’s policies only benefit the rich. They claim that the phrase “Make America Great Again” is racist and bad. But somehow an idiotic phrase “Build Back Better” is fine.
The media and other Democrats claim that they have always peacefully supported an incoming president, but that is a bald-faced lie. Many Democrats didn’t attend Trump’s inauguration. They started calling for his impeachment, based on the lies about Russian collusion before Trump took office. The Obama/Biden team was so helpful during the transition that they spent their time using their time unmasking, spying on, and targeting people like then-president-elect Trump’s National Security Advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn.
Democrats claim they believe in the law, the Constitution and that no one is above the law, but their actions and policies show they don’t care. They support sanctuary cities and states, don’t care that election officials violated their constitution and laws, and cheered wildly as Obama dictatorially and unconstitutionally changed immigration laws. Hillary Clinton, James Clapper, John Brennan, Eric Holder, and others were all above the law. Other Democrats let looters and arsonists go but you better not keep your restaurant or gym open in defiance of your masters.
If anybody wants to see the where the tactics of the media and other Democrats comes from just refer to Saul Alinsky’s Rules for radicals.
RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
Most of the people pretending to be journalists are worthless and dangerous to our prosperity, freedom, democracy, and survival as a great country. They are the existential threat because they have spent decades campaigning for Democrats and their leftist policies. They truly ramped up their baseless attacks the last four years.
The American colonists’ breakup with the British Empire in 1776 wasn’t a sudden, impetuous act. Instead, the banding together of the 13 colonies to fight and win a war of independence against the Crown was the culmination of a series of events, which had begun more than a decade earlier. Escalations began shortly after the end of the French and Indian War—known elsewhere as the Seven Years War in 1763. Here are a few of the pivotal moments that led to the American Revolution.
1. The Stamp Act (March 1765)
To recoup some of the massive debt left over from the war with France, Parliament passed laws such as the Stamp Act, which for the first time taxed a wide range of transactions in the colonies.
“Up until then, each colony had its own government which decided which taxes they would have, and collected them,” explains Willard Sterne Randall, a professor emeritus of history at Champlain College and author of numerous works on early American history, includingUnshackling America: How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution.“They felt that they’d spent a lot of blood and treasure to protect the colonists from the Indians, and so they should pay their share.”
The colonists didn’t see it that way. They resented not only having to buy goods from the British but pay tax on them as well. “The tax never got collected, because there were riots all over the pace,” Randall says. Ultimately, Benjamin Franklin convinced the British to rescind it, but that only made things worse. “That made the Americans think they could push back against anything the British wanted,” Randall says.
2. The Townshend Acts (June-July 1767)
An American colonist reads with concern the royal proclamation of a tax on tea in the colonies as a British soldier stands nearby with rifle and bayonet, Boston, 1767. The tax on tea was one of the clauses of the Townshend Acts.
Parliament again tried to assert its authority by passing legislation to tax goods that the Americans imported from Great Britain. The Crown established a board of customs commissioners to stop smuggling and corruption among local officials in the colonies, who were often in on the illicit trade.
Americans struck back by organizing a boycott of the British goods that were subject to taxation, and began harassing the British customs commissioners. In an effort to quell the resistance, the British sent troops to occupy Boston, which only deepened the ill feeling.
3. The Boston Massacre (March 1770)
Simmering tensions between the British occupiers and Boston residents boiled over one late afternoon, when a disagreement between an apprentice wigmaker and a British soldier led to a crowd of 200 colonists surrounding seven British troops. When the Americans began taunting the British and throwing things at them, the soldiers apparently lost their cool and began firing into the crowd.
As the smoke cleared, three men—including an African American sailor named Crispus Attucks—were dead, and two others were mortally wounded. The massacre became a useful propaganda tool for the colonists, especially after Paul Revere distributed an engraving that misleadingly depicted the British as the aggressors.
The Boston Tea Party destroying tea in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773.
The British eventually withdrew their forces from Boston and repealed much of the onerous Townshend legislation. But they left in place the tax on tea, and in 1773 enacted a new law, theTea Act, to prop up the financially struggling British East India Company. The act gave the company extended favorable treatment under tax regulations, so that it could sell tea at a price that undercut the American merchants who imported from Dutch traders.
That didn’t sit well with Americans. “They didn’t want the British telling them that they had to buy their tea, but it wasn’t just about that,” Randall explains. “The Americans wanted to be able to trade with any country they wanted.”
The Sons of Liberty, a radical group, decided to confront the British head-on. Thinly disguised as Mohawks, they boarded three ships in Boston harbor and destroyed more than 92,000 pounds of British tea by dumping it into the harbor. To make the point that they were rebels rather than vandals, they avoided harming any of the crew or damaging the ships themselves, and the next day even replaced a padlock that had been broken.
Nevertheless, the act of defiance “really ticked off the British government,” Randall explains. “Many of the East India Company’s shareholders were members of Parliament. They each had paid 1,000 pounds sterling—that would probably be about a million dollars now—for a share of the company, to get a piece of the action from all this tea that they were going to force down the colonists’ throats. So when these bottom-of-the-rung people in Boston destroyed their tea, that was a serious thing to them.”
The first Continental Congress, held in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, met to define American rights and organize a plan of resistance to the Coercive Acts imposed by the British Parliament as punishment for the Boston Tea Party.
In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British government decided that it had to tame the rebellious colonists in Massachusetts. In the spring of 1774, Parliament passed a series of laws, the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor until restitution was paid for the destroyed tea, replaced the colony’s elected council with one appointed by the British, gave sweeping powers to the British military governor General Thomas Gage, and forbade town meetings without approval.
Yet another provision protected British colonial officials who were charged with capital offenses from being tried in Massachusetts, instead requiring that they be sent to another colony or back to Great Britain for trial.
The Battle of Lexington broke out on April 19, 1775.
British General Thomas Gage led a force of British soldiers from Boston to Lexington, where he planned to capture colonial radical leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, and then head to Concord and seize their gunpowder. But American spies got wind of the plan, and with the help of riders such as Paul Revere, word spread to be ready for the British.
On the Lexington Common, the British force was confronted by 77 American militiamen, and they began shooting at each other. Seven Americans died, but other militiamen managed to stop the British at Concord, and continued to harass them on their retreat back to Boston.
The British lost 73 dead, with another 174 wounded and 26 missing in action. The bloody encounter proved to the British that the colonists were fearsome foes who had to be taken seriously. It was the start of America’s war of independence.
7. British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-January 1776)
Though the Revolutionary War’s hostilities started with Lexington and Concord, Randall says that at the start, it was unclear whether the southern colonies, whose interests didn’t necessarily align with the northern colonies, would be all in for a war of independence.
“The southerners were totally dependent upon the English to buy their crops, and they didn’t trust the Yankees,” he explains. “And in New England, the Puritans thought the southerners were lazy.”
But that was before the brutal British naval bombardments and burning of the coastal towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia helped to unify the colonies. In Falmouth, where townspeople had to grab their possessions and flee for their lives, northerners had to face up to “the fear that the British would do whatever they wanted to them,” Randall says.
As historian Holger Hoock has written, the burning of Falmouth shocked General George Washington, who denounced it as “exceeding in barbarity & cruelty every hostile act practiced among civilized nations.”
Similarly, in Norfolk, the horror of the town’s wooden buildings going up in flames after a seven-hour naval bombardment shocked the southerners, who also knew that the British were offering African Americans their freedom if they took up arms on the loyalist side. “Norfolk stirred up fears of a slave insurrection in the South,” Randall says.
Leaders of the rebellion seized the burnings of the two ports to make the argument that the colonists needed to band together for survival against a ruthless enemy and embrace the need for independence—a spirit that ultimately would lead to their victory.
Just a brief cruise through the conservative Blogisphere will reveal a hardening resistance forming to the violence being done to our Constitution by Marxist scum and the willingness of weak-kneed GOP leadership to accept the stealing of our election without a fight. Soon we who believe in freedom will not have that luxury.
I think most of us are again looking for a leader that shares our values and will lead us in this fight. Beyond doubt, President or not, Donald Trump is that person. If we had the time our movement would simply absorb the establishment Republican Party. 25% describes what’s left of the old Republican Party base; RINOS, Never Trumpers, and all. We are the remaining 75%. The Real Trumpers who also voted GOP down-ballot. This has been coming for a long time. Unfortunately we have run out of time.
Evan though we love Donald Trump and will continue to do so, it was a set of constitutionally based conservative principles that gave birth to a movement starting with the Tea Party which progressed over time into the Trump Presidency. It was this movement that found Trump, not the other way around.
It is because the President shares these values with us that well over 75 million of us RE-ELECTED him and will look to him for leadership even if he is no longer President. If the Marxist pig take-over is completed and/or the electoral system has been corrupted beyond repair we will look to him to lead us in Resistance.
Let us hope the GOP will come to its senses and realize what has happened to it before its too late to strike down the criminal electoral abomination that would crown a pawn of the Red scum, including the Communist Party of China, to be our President.
If they do not fight; no election can be trusted and we will soon be under the heel of a suppressive Marxist state. We have come to this place not because President Trump, he simply pulled the curtain away from the Swamp, the Deep State, the conspiracy of silence, and exposed its demonic face. We are here from generations of looking the other way and appeasing our mortal domestic enemies of the Constitution.
“The Donald” has taught us through his example how to fight. May he lead us in the Resistance that means the survival of our nation. No more nice guy. When they come against our Country they come against our families and from now on they must find that a very unpleasant experience.
JOHN Milton was one of the foremost English poets of history, and, according the Encyclopedia Britannica, “the most significant English author after William Shakespeare.” He is most famous for Paradise Lost, considered the finest epic poem in English. Perhaps Milton’s greatest contribution to the history of liberty, including his influence on the American Revolution, arose because he was a fully convicted and forthright defender of religious rights, civil liberties, and the English Commonwealth during a tumultuous time of religious and political change. His argument for free speech and freedom of the press and against government censorship in Areopagitica was also widely influential.
Milton’s political philosophy, which led him to oppose tyranny, and his theology, which advanced freedom of conscience and religious toleration, were powerful influences on America’s founding, seen most clearly in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Consider some of his words. None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants. License they mean when they cry, Liberty! For who loves that, must first be wise and good.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Though all winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple, who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter. There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.
He who thinks we … have attained the utmost prospect of reformation … by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth.
Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind. He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is … a king.
No man … can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself. [God] created them free and free they must remain.
The whole freedom of man consists either in spiritual or civil liberty. Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
What is strength without a double share of wisdom? When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained that wise men look for.
Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe. Nations grow corrupt, love bondage more than liberty; bondage with ease than strenuous liberty. [Those] with their freedom lost, all virtue lose.
Most men admire virtue who follow not her lore. John Milton’s stands against tyranny and government religion were principled stands taken during a maelstrom of change. Americans, in particular, have been major beneficiaries of his influence on our founders in those areas. Milton deserves celebration for that, as well as for his poetry.
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”
Ayn Rand continues to inspire and enlighten me. I’ve read “Atlas Shrugged” and “Fountainhead” so many times I’ve lost count. Let her inspire and enlighten you. A/D
China, Russia and Iran are the top three existential “threats” to the U.S., according to the National Security Strategy. Three features distinguish the top three. They are all sovereign powers. They are under varying degrees of sanctions. And they are the top three nodes of the 21st century’s most important, evolving geopolitical process: Eurasia integration.
What do the three sovereigns see when they examine the dystopia that took over Exceptionalistan?
They see, once again, three – discombobulated – nodes in conflict: the post-historic Pacific and Atlantic coasts; the South – a sort of expanded Dixieland; and the Midwest – what would be the American heartland.
The hyper-modern Pacific-Atlantic nodes congregate high-tech and finance, profit from Pentagon techno-breakthroughs and benefit from the “America rules the waves” ethos that guarantees the global primacy of the U.S. dollar.
The rest of America is largely considered by the Pacific-Atlantic as just a collection of flyover states: the South – which regards itself as the real, authentic America; and the Midwest, largely disciplined and quite practical-minded, squeezed ideologically between the littoral powerhouses and the South.
Superstructure, tough, is key: no matter what happens, whatever the fractures, this remains an Empire, where only a tiny elite, a de facto plutocratic oligarchy, rules.
It would be too schematic, even though essentially correct, to assert that in the presidential election, invisible campaigner Joe Biden represented the Pacific-Atlantic nodes, and Trump represented the whole South. Assuming the election was not fraudulent – and that remains a big “if” – the Midwest eventually swung based on three issues.
Trump, as much as he relied on a sanctions juggernaut, could not bring back manufacturing jobs home.
He could not reduce the military footprint across the Greater Middle East.
And, before Covid-19, he could not bring down immigration.
Everything that lies ahead points to the irreconcilable – pitting the absolute majority that voted Dem in the Atlantic-Pacific nodes versus the South and a deeply divided Midwest. As much as Biden-Harris is bound to isolate the South even more, their prospects of “pacifying” the Midwest are less than zero.
Whose ground control?
Beyond the raucous altercations on whether the presidential election was fraudulent, these are the key factual points.
A series of rules in mostly swing states were changed, through courts, bypassing state legislatures, without transparence, before the election, paving the way to facilitate fraud schemes.
Biden was de facto coronated by AP, Google and Twitter even before the final, official result, and weeks before the electoral college vote this past Monday.
Every serious, professional audit to determine whether all received and tabulated votes were valid was de facto squashed.
In any Global South latitude where the empire did “interfere” in local elections, color revolution-style, this set of facts would be regarded by scores of imperial officials, in a relentless propaganda blitz, as evidence of a coup.
On the recent Supreme Court ruling, a Deep State intel source told me, “the Supreme Court did not like to see half the country rioting against them, and preferred the decision be made by each state in the House of Representatives. That is the only way to handle this without jeopardizing the union. Even prominent Democrats I know realize that the fix took place. The error was to steal too many votes. This grand theft indicts the whole system, that has always been corrupt.”
Dangers abound. On the propaganda front, for instance, far right nationalists are absolutely convinced that U.S. media can be brought to heel only by occupying the six main offices of the top conglomerates, plus Facebook, Google and Twitter: then you’d have full control of the U.S. propaganda mill.
Another Deep State source, now retired, adds that, “the U.S. Army does not want to intervene as their soldiers may not obey orders.
Many of these far right nationalists were officers in the armed forces. They know where the nuclear missiles and bombers are. There are many in sympathy with them as the U.S. falls apart in lockdowns.”
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden’s dodgy dealings simply will not be made to vanish from public scrutiny. He’s under four different federal investigations. The recent subpoena amounts to a very serious case pointing to a putative crime family. It’s been conveniently forgotten that Joe Biden bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations that he forced Ukraine’s chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin to be fired exactly when he was investigating corruption by Burisma’s founder.
Of course, a massive army of shills will always invoke another army of omniscient and oh so impartial “fact checkers” to hammer the same message: “This is Trump’s version. Courts have said clearly all the evidence is baseless.”
District Attorney William Barr is now out of the picture (see his letter of resignation). Barr is a notorious Daddy Bush asset since the old days – and that means classic Deep State. Barr knew about all federal investigations on Hunter Biden dating back to 2018, covering potential money laundering and bribery.
And still, as the Wall Street Journal delightfully put it, he “worked to avoid their public disclosure during the heated election campaign”.
A devastating report (Dems: a Republican attack report) has shown how the Biden family was connected to a vast financial network with multiple foreign ramifications.
Then there’s Barr not even daring to say there was enough reason for the Department of Justice to engage in a far-reaching investigation into voting fraud, finally putting to rest all “baseless” conspiracy theories.
Move on. Nothing to see here. Even if an evidence pile-up featured, among other instances, ballot stuffing, backdated ballots, statistical improbabilities, electronic machine tampering, software back doors, affidavits from poll workers, not to mention the by now legendary stopping the vote in the dead of night, with subsequent, huge batches of votes miraculously switching from Trump to Biden.
Once again an omniscient army of oh so impartial “fact checkers” will say everything is baseless.
A perverse blowback
A perverse form of blowback is already in effect as informed global citizens may now see, crystal clear, the astonishing depth and reach of Deep State power – the ultimate decider of what happens next in Dystopia Central.
Both options are dire.
The election stands, even if considered fraudulent by nearly half of U.S. public opinion. To quote that peerless existentialist, The Dude, there’s no rug tying the room together anymore.
Were the election to be somehow overturned before January 20, the Deep State would go Shock and Awe to finish the job.
In either case, The Deplorables will become The Ungovernables.
It gets worse. A possible implosion of the union – with internal convulsions leading to a paroxysm of violence – may even be coupled with an external explosion, as in a miscalculated imperial adventure.
For the Three Sovereigns – Russia, China and Iran – as well as the overwhelming majority of the Global South, the conclusion is inescapable: if the current, sorry spectacle is the best Western liberal “democracy” has to offer, it definitely does not need any enemies or “threats”.
