Tag Archives: tyranny

Democrats Launch Their Assault on Red State America

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The opening salvo against red state America is the article of impeachment against President Trump introduced on January 11 by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrat Representatives David Cicilline, Ted Lieu, and Jamie Raskin. So much for Biden’s promise to “unify the country.”

What is the intent of this article of impeachment? It cannot possibly be to remove Trump from office. Trump will have left office before the Senate could vote on impeachment. There is no such thing as impeaching a person who is not in office. Clearly impeachment has nothing to do with getting Trump out of office.

How does it unify the country to follow up an election believed by half of the US voting population to have been stolen with impeaching the president who is regarded as the victim of a stolen election? Adding insult to injury will only further enrage 75 million or more Trump voters, and many honest Democrats, who regard the election as stolen. If the Establishment and its Democrat, Republican, and media allies truly believe the election not to have been stolen, why wasn’t the evidence permitted to be examined so that the controversy could be settled instead of ignored? Ignoring the evidence deepens the suspicion as does labeling those who challenged the election “enemies of democracy.” Democrats are now trying to censure Republican members of the House and Senate who supported having the evidence presented to Congress. Why censure someone who wants evidence to be examined?

What many Americans and people abroad do not comprehend is that in the 2020 election Trump officially got 74,222,958 votes. This is the official number, which is understated by the 10 million vote suppression used against him. In “losing,” Trump’s 74,222,958 official votes are more votes than any elected president has ever received with the exception of Biden whose vote count was raised by 10 million fraudulent ballots. How is the country unified by demonizing half of it? Are the Democrats’ threats and reprisals against Trump and his supporters unifying?

I watched the presentations by independent experts to three state legislatures of the detailed evidence showing without any doubt that the election was stolen in the swing states. Some of the experts explaining the election’s theft were people of color as were many of those who signed affidavits under penalty of perjury of the electoral fraud that they witnessed. This information has never been presented by the media to the public, nor has any media, election officials, Department of Justice, or Congress examined the evidence. It is overwhelming evidence ignored.

Whether of not you believe that Biden—the most uninspiring presidential candidate in American history—got 81 million votes (the largest in American history), why do Pelosi and the Democrats want to make themselves even more hated and distrusted by half of the country by impeaching the president whose reelection they stole?

This is rubbing salt in the wound. Half of the country already regards Biden as an illegitimate president and regards the Democrats as power-mad totalitarians hostile to democracy. What does Pelosi achieve by furthering this image of Democrats? She is damning her party and herself. Why?

The answer is to generate fear in Republicans and Trump supporters.

The Democrats are using open unabashed retribution to scare Republicans and Trump supporters into compliance. Everywhere you look Republican members of Congress both House and Senate, Trump’s present and former cabinet members, and present and former members of the White House staff are denouncing Trump and putting distance between Trump and themselves. The latest is Fiona Hill, formerly of Trump’s National Security Council. She denounces Trump for having “put us on the brink of civil war.” Note that for Republican Fiona Hill, it is not a stolen election that puts “us on the brink of civil war,” but the protest against the election theft. This is the position of the Republican Party. In other words, the Republicans have surrendered. They are useless to the people.

As a large number of videos made available online by people who attended the rally show, the Capitol police allowed protestors into the Capitol. The Trump supporters were not smart enough not to take the bait. Once inside, the Democrats had their “insurrection” and “storming of the Capitol.”

It achieved its purpose. It stopped presentation of the evidence showing Congress a stolen election. Scared by the presstitutes one voice proclamation of an attempted coup, the Republicans wilted and ran for their political lives knowing that they would be blamed for “aiding and abetting Trump’s insurrection.”

The Democrats intend to keep them running, and that is what the impeachment is about.

Trump supporters are in for it as well. The FBI, which has been hand-in-hand with Democrats throughout the Russiagate and impeachment hoaxes, is now hunting down those who attended the Trump rally. Those for whom the FBI cannot invent grounds for arrest have their names turned over to the presstitutes who agitate for their firing from their jobs. Already policemen, corporate employees and executives, including a chief financial officer, have been fired for attending the Trump rally, and recording artists dropped because they attended the rally. Dumbshit indoctrinated school children have impoverished their own families by ratting out their parents for attending the rally and causing them to be fired.

Children squealing on their parents to the media is the worst part of the Democrats’ assault on America, because it shows that the liberal propaganda that passes for education in the schools has destroyed solidarity and loyalty in the family. Without the family, there is no society. Essentially, without family there is no country.

In so many ways Americans are now people without a country.

As the blatantly public theft of a presidential election shows, democracy is a dead value among elites and institutions in the United States. The word will continue to be used as cover for oligarchic rule in the interest of the few. All who find the courage to challenge rule by the few will be demonized as “enemies of democracy.” We are already seeing it. President Trump and his “deplorables” are already declared “enemies of democracy.”

Whether or not Americans believe Trump and his supporters are enemies of democracy, many will be caused by fear to go along with it. Otherwise, they will be the next to be outed, fired, and prosecuted.

I am not optimistic. One reason for my lack of optimism is the age of disinformation in which we live. Disinformation is used by the Establishment to conform the public to its agendas. Disinformation is used to reconstruct white society. Disinformation is even used by Trump supporters in efforts to keep alive hope that the stolen election will be overturned or that Trump will win reelection in four years.

Another reason I am not optimistic is that I read comment sections of websites that host courageous and insightful commentators in hope of encountering intelligence and a rising awareness that could result in effective resistance. But what do I find? Inability to comprehend what they have read. Narcissists hiding behind fake names. Nit-picking in place of weighing a well-stated presentation. And the ever-present trolls demeaning the authors with ad hominum accusations that are spread into social media.

I am also not optimistic when I see that Trump, who has experienced the evil power of the Establishment, has not come to the realization that the last blow he can strike against the Establishment is the pardon of Assange and Snowden, two who are persecuted for telling the truth. Perhaps the reason is that many of Trump’s patriotic supporters have fallen for the Establishment’s line that Assange and Snowden are Russian agents who acted against America.

In the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and all of Western Europe, telling the truth is being criminalized. The result will be the destruction of the truth-teller. This is true as well within the universities. Identity politics and Establishment agendas rule. If you cross them, you are out.

Objective truth has been redefined as a “white construct” that serves “systemic racism” and misogynists. White people, especially heterosexual white males, have been assigned the role that Karl Marx gave capitalists. They are hateful, exploitative creatures that must be destroyed by demonization and indoctrination. The process has been going on for some time in the schools and in work place “sensitivity training” sessions.

This is the ideology of the Democrat Party. Imposed ideologies wear down facts.

As the Native American tells the elderly woman in the Clint Eastwood film, The Outlaw Josey Wales, “Hell is coming to breakfast.” White people can expect hell. To see this, all you have to do is to look at Biden’s Department of Justice appointments.

Americans are only now beginning to realize that the expensive educations they have paid for their children have resulted in their children being stolen from them. A friend told me recently that his son and son’s girlfriend had left their brutally lockdowned Democrat state to come to him in a Republican state where life still went on not too far from normal. Having heard their conversations with him and among themselves, he has concluded that they regret that they were born white.

To his dismay, he understands that their regret at having white skin is not because of employment and promotion quotas that limit their success as white people, or the demeaning racial training sessions they have to endue as “systemic white racists.” Their regret is due to their successful indoctrination that, as white racists, they are responsible for the lack of success of black Americans. Perplexed, he asked me, “how can we resist the tyranny that is being imposed on us when the younger generation believes we are quilty and cannot be trusted with our freedoms.

Yes, good question. How?

Note that the outpouring of support for Trump in the Washington Rally, which Democrats easily turned into a liability for Trump, consists largely of older adults. Where were the young people? They stayed home and ratted out their parents.

America’s young were not born into a free society. They have never experienced a free society. They are not socialized into a free society. They have no idea what one is beyond access to the Internet.

It was two decades ago that the Bush regime orchestrated the PATRIOT Act. It was two decades ago that the Republican President of the United States threw habeas corpus out the window and claimed executive authority to detain American citizens indefinitely without presenting evidence before a court. No bar association, no university law faculty, no court, no Congress, and certainly no presstitute media demanded Bush’s impeachment for unilaterally exercising unconstitutional executive authority.

During the subsequent Obama regime, America’s First Black President, who got less votes than Trump did in 2020, executed American citizens without due process of law. No one demanded Obama’s impeachment for his unconstitutional and illegal murder of American citizens.

If cancelling the Bill of Rights isn’t insurrection, what is?

In contrast, President Trump who challenged the media monopoly for its censorship, who challenged the military/security complex for its orchestration of Russia as an enemy, who challenged various “trade agreements” for sending Americans’ middle class jobs abroad—in other words, a rare president who represented the American people—this President was destroyed by the Establishment and its media and intellectual whores.

The corrupt and evil Establishment, acting through the Democrat Party with the backing of the monopoly over all communications and the monetary and power interests of the military/security complex and Wall Street, and strengthened by the Identity Politics hatreds, which extend into the universities, public schools, bar associations, corporations, and judiciary, and the indoctrination seminars that white males are forced to undergo, has achieved more power than Stalin and Hitler could imagine.

Today the United States is not only a threat to its citizens but also a threat to the world. The American Establishment’s belief in its hegemony makes the United States the greatest threat that the world has ever experienced.

The forces in control of the United States deny the existence of objective truth. As the Establishment defines truth, truth is what serves the agendas of the ruling elite.

There is no other truth.

Among other terrors, this means that an accused person can mount no defense. As the trial of the surviving brother of the alleged Boston Marathon Bombing demonstrated, the proof of his innocence according to the FBI’s own evidence was not allowed to be introduced into the trial, only the fabricated “evidence” of his guilt. When this happened, it was clear that the United States government regarded the rule of law as dispensable whenever it interfered with its agenda.

As journalist Ekaterina Blinova instantly recognized, the effect of the stolen election is to create one-party rule in the United States. Of course, the Democrats won’t rule. Rule will be by the interest groups for whom the Democrats will front. As the Republicans abandoned the American people and joined in the denunciation of the “insurrectionist Trump,” there are few voters left who will vote Republican. By its cowardice, the Republican Party has destroyed itself.

What can be done. I am open to answers. If you think about it, you wonder if Americans have the intelligence and awareness to survive. Consider Parler, a social media alternative that does not censor. Why did Parler think it could be independent when it was dependent on Apple, Amazon, and Google? It must be a new high water mark of American insouciance that Parler executives thought the ruling Establishment would allow them free speech. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/09/tech/parler-suspended-apple-app-store/index.html

America is in collapse on all fronts—morally, economically, socially, politically, and militarily. Every American institution is corrupted. America’s collapse will be a large collapse, and it will affect the entire world.

Paul Craig Roberts

The Ultimate Betrayal

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Western Christians commemorate Jan. 6 as Epiphany, the day Jesus Christ became known to the world through the Three Wise Men, according to tradition. One definition of “epiphany,” per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure.”

So the timing was perfect for Americans to receive just such a powerful revelation about their government. It is a revelation both nauseating and frightening.

What is that revelation? The people Americans elected and trusted to run their government are incorrigibly and irredeemably corrupt.

Congress certified Joe Biden as President in the dead of night Jan. 7 with the rest of Washington, D.C. under curfew and despite massive evidence of electoral fraud in his favor.

Congress thus wrote the latest act of a two-month drama that featured judges in starring roles. Those judges – including Supreme Court justices — arbitrarily used technicalities to deny President Donald Trump the chance to make his legal case as an aggrieved party victimized by fraud.

The only reason — the only reason – for those authorities’ behavior was their own contempt for Trump.

The implications are stunning, and go far beyond any one man or Presidential election. Now, every American — regardless of race, creed, class, gender or any other category — can become a target for the capricious disregard of due process if that American is unpopular with the powers-that-be.

Americans have seen this before. They saw it in Judge Emmet Sullivan’s unprofessional behavior during Gen. Michael Flynn’s trial. They see it now in the lockdowns and mandates issued solely by executive fiat and based on medical quackery, despite scientific evidence showing that masks and social distancing create more harm than good.

But the events of Jan. 6 in Washington drained the last remaining drops of formaldehyde from the nation’s political corpse.

As Congress met to decide Biden’s fate, as Trump rallied thousands of supporters to demand a fair hearing, several protesters breached Capitol security. As a result, Congress had to be recessed and Congressional offices evacuated.

Many entered without resistance because Capitol security — which Congress directly oversees — allowed them to enter. Protesters walked through passages marked by security cords and acted with carte blanche in the empty building.

Regardless of who these protesters were or what cause they represented, people with local experience believe the episode was an inside job — especially given the heavy security normally protecting the Capitol.

“My dad worked for both DOD and Homeland Security,” Chris James tweeted. “You can’t just take over a federal building, and do what we saw today without some help from the inside. This was orchestrated by members of the Senate and members of the capital police.”

“Cosign,” Lisa Edouard tweeted in response to a different comment. “Worked on the Hill. I barely remembered where my Member’s hideaway was located. Total inside job.”

If it was an inside job, it had its desired effect.

At 2:40 p.m., about two hours after the incident started, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered a 12-hour curfew starting at 6 p.m. The overwhelming majority of Trump’s supporters dispersed without incident.

At 6:55 p.m., Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, announced Congress would continue certification. At 8:10 p.m., Sen. Mitch McConnell announced the Senate resumed debate.

Conducting such activity during a curfew meant that not only legislators received special dispensations. So did their staff members, security guards, journalists and any required support personnel.

Besides, the Constitution does not demand that Congress certify a Presidential election in one day. The situation warranted an audit, regardless of any protesters’ behavior.

Though the Electoral Count Act requires Congress to start tabulating electoral votes on Jan. 6, the counting “need not end that day,” said Michael Thorning, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s associate director.

“The statute recognizes that this process could be lengthy and imagines the process could take in excess of five days in some cases,” Thorning said. “The statute does not provide a deadline to complete the counting but requires that the joint session not be dissolved until then and until the results are announced. Even if the counting went beyond January 20th, when a president and vice president’s term would end, the presidential line of succession would be activated.”

But once Congress reconvened, several Republicans who planned to challenge electors from six states where fraud dramatically influenced the results announced that they changed their minds. Only electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania received challenges, and Congress rejected both challenges decisively.

Under such conditions did Congress certify Biden as the winner at 3:41 a.m. Jan. 7.

But reporters failed to examine the suspicious circumstances surrounding Biden’s certification. Instead, they followed the lead of many officials and blamed Trump for supposedly inciting violence.

Reporters also failed to note two disturbing similarities. It was also in the dead of night when Biden received a sudden vertical spike in votes during the Presidential election. The two Democratic candidates in Georgia’s Senate runoff Jan. 5 also received similar nocturnal spikes.

Such extended subterfuge proves Trump’s assertions about the “deep state” and its allies in the boardroom, the newsroom and the classroom.

Americans now can see that this collection of politicians, bureaucrats and judges is an entitled, professionally-inbred caste of grifters who will suck money and power from lobbyists, foreign nations, corporations, foundations and anything else — and try to preserve their privilege at all costs.

If doing so means sabotaging the Constitution or enslaving their fellow Americans, so be it.

That point became even more apparent immediately after Biden’s certification. Congressional leaders desperately want to remove Trump through impeachment or the 25th Amendment, and to prevent him from seeking office again. Social media corporations rushed frantically to de-platform Trump and his supporters, and suppress any views that contradict the prevailing narrative.

Why the panic? Because the powers-that-be fear that Trump will use any information he might have to expose and destroy them.

The next move is Trump’s. What he might do remains unclear. But one thing is certain:

Unless radical surgery is performed — and soon — the metastasizing cancer of unfettered corruption will kill the American republic.

Joseph Hippolito, frontpagemagazine

The “War on Terrorism” Comes Home

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Last week’s massive social media purges – starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets – was shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas. The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two “offending” Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.

Many Americans viewed this assault on social media accounts as a liberal or Democrat attack on conservatives and Republicans, but they are missing the point. The narrowing of allowable opinion in the virtual public square is no conspiracy against conservatives. As progressives like Glenn Greenwald have pointed out, this is a wider assault on any opinion that veers from the acceptable parameters of the mainstream elite, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans.

Yes, this is partly an attempt to erase the Trump movement from the pages of history, but it is also an attempt to silence any criticism of the emerging political consensus in the coming Biden era that may come from progressive or antiwar circles.

After all, a look at Biden’s incoming “experts” shows that they will be the same failed neoconservative interventionists who gave us weekly kill lists, endless drone attacks and coups overseas, and even US government killing of American citizens abroad. Progressives who complain about this “back to the future” foreign policy are also sure to find their voices silenced.

Those who continue to argue that the social media companies are purely private ventures acting independent of US government interests are ignoring reality. The corporatist merger of “private” US social media companies with US government foreign policy goals has a long history and is deeply steeped in the hyper-interventionism of the Obama/Biden era.

“Big Tech” long ago partnered with the Obama/Biden/Clinton State Department to lend their tools to US “soft power” goals overseas. Whether it was ongoing regime change attempts against Iran, the 2009 coup in Honduras, the disastrous US-led coup in Ukraine, “Arab Spring,” the destruction of Syria and Libya, and so many more, the big US tech firms were happy to partner up with the State Department and US intelligence to provide the tools to empower those the US wanted to seize power and to silence those out of favor.

In short, US government elites have been partnering with “Big Tech” overseas for years to decide who has the right to speak and who must be silenced. What has changed now is that this deployment of “soft power” in the service of Washington’s hard power has come home to roost.

So what is to be done? Even pro-free speech alternative social media outlets are under attack from the Big Tech/government Leviathan. There are no easy solutions. But we must think back to the dissidents in the era of Soviet tyranny. They had no Internet. They had no social media. They had no ability to communicate with thousands and millions of like-minded, freedom lovers. Yet they used incredible creativity in the face of incredible adversity to continue pushing their ideas. Because no army – not even Big Tech partnered with Big Government – can stop an idea whose time has come. And Liberty is that idea. We must move forward with creativity and confidence!

Ron Paul

No, It is Not Trump’s Fault

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Many Americans have reached a boiling point and the media now wants you to believe this is all due to President Trump and his rhetoric. They want to shame this President and all who support him. They want you to focus on this one occurrence at the Capital on Wednesday and forget about everything leading up to this event. Do not let them :

  • Academia has been indoctrinating our children to be Marxist radicals, to hate themselves and this country, to believe we are whatever gender we choose, to worship our planet not God – and that is not Trump’s fault.
  • Democrat politicians have knowingly started false hearings and an impeachment, wasted millions of tax payer dollars, lied to the American public, called Republicans ‘Nazis’ based on false narratives – and that is not Trump’s fault.
  • China knowingly allowed a deadly virus to be released throughout the world while they locked down all of their domestic flights to protect their people – and that’s not Trump’s fault.
  • Scientific/Medical ‘experts’ recommended no face masks and then mandatory face masks, to not take hydroxychloroquine and then to take hydroxychloroquine, to lockdown society without regard to the effects to our psyche / health / economy – and that is not Trump’s fault.
  • State Governors and mayors created ‘mandates’ no longer allowing people to go to church, bars and restaurants, weddings, funerals, vacations, or celebrate holidays with family – and that is not Trump’s fault.
  • Democratic influenced Social Media giants have stopped our free speech online by deciding for Americans what is true and what is false, who can speak online and who can’t, debunking stories harmful to their liberal allies only to retract after the damage is done – and that is not Trump’s fault.
  • The cancel culture and Hollywood elite has ruined many lives by shaming people who do not believe as they do, act as they do, or support who they do – and that is not Trump’s fault.
  • BLM / Antifa burning down businesses, causing injuries and death, terrorizing communities while getting bailed out of jail by liberal politicians and the liberal elite – and that is not Trump’s fault.
  • The media has been sitting on disparaging stories regarding Joe Biden’s family, they’ve praised unruly protests by democrats that have destroyed innocent lives, they only report on stories that follow the narratives they want the public to believe – and that is not Trump’s fault.
  • The DOJ and ‘deep state’ have held back information that is damning to individuals in the Democrat party and their family members while falsely investigating the President – and that is not Trump’s fault.
  • And now, the votes of millions of Americans have been stripped away and their voices have been stifled by politically corrupt individuals – and that is definitely not Trump’s fault.

Yes, many Americans have reached a boiling point but it is not President Trump’s fault. This President has exposed the deep corruption within our country and the people who our currently blaming him for our anger are part of this corruption he exposed. They are the ones who should be ashamed – they are the ones ruining this country. We have been gaslighted for far too long. Do not let them continue with their false narratives.

Thanks to Biden Voters, California Government Censorship Coming to All of America

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A preview of what’s coming nationally. And you can forget the Supreme Court. The totalitarian premise: Any speech that threatens the authority of the presiding government is DANGEROUS and therefore must be silenced and punished.

Daniel Greenfield, from Front Page online:

“Report misinformation,” a flier from California’s Office of Election Cybersecurity blares. Social media users are urged to report “misleading” materials to the Secretary of State’s office.

A government office created by California Democrats is monitoring hashtags, classifying political speech it opposes by “threat level”, taking screenshots of posts, and then storing the information indefinitely, before reporting the offending speech to social media companies for censorship.

“Election Security is our number one priority,” the Office claims.”

The Biden regime (it’s NOT an administration; it’s not a President; it’s a REGIME) will be partnering with social media giants, telling them of posts to be removed. Donald Trump’s removal from Facebook and Twitter was the opening shot. Government-directed censorship is already happening in California, and it will now go national. Don’t be so sure about running to Parler or a social media company started by Trump. The Biden regime WILL go after them. Remember the friends, family and neighbors who voted for this. This was YOUR freedom. And THEY stole it. I don’t know about you; but I do not plan on forgiving them.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

There is No Next Time

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Written by me yesterday, on 1/6/21, the day Congress validated Joe Biden’s fraudulently obtained election:

Today didn’t go well, and I didn’t think it would. Pence was a disaster. Trump’s Twitter account (I just read) was suspended. The violence in D.C. was understandable, though it accomplished little and some are saying it was done by Antifa or BLM masquerading as Trump supporters. The leftists have hijacked the Constitutional system, which deserved legitimacy, and are now using it against us. They got the U.S. Senate the same way, which obliterates the Fox News/RINO idea that we preserve the system, let Trump go, fight Biden in the Senate and win next time. There is no next time.

Once they get away with fraud, all elections become meaningless. Project for a moment Trump running again in 2024. He would just lose again. So will any meaningful candidate. There’s really no way out that I can see–either it’s submission or secession. We are now trapped in a choice between dictatorship or civil war. And THEY are the ones who hijacked America! It’s the greatest victory for evil, maybe ever. In the long run evil still cannot win; but these horrible fascist-Communists have gained ground unlike ever before seen in America. It’s kind of like 1945…and the Japanese and the Nazis won.

Breitbart News reports: The former president [Barack Obama] urged Americans to unite behind President-elect Joe Biden, who promised to restore unity. “It’s up to all of us as Americans, regardless of party, to support him in that goal,” Obama concluded. [I guess Biden was sleeping while Obama spoke for him.]

Nope. I won’t endorse my enslavement by a corrupt, left-wing totalitarian dishonestly “elected” cabal. I will kick, scream, subvert, lie, dissent, go underground, and do whatever else it takes to assist in the utter failure and ultimate defeat of this ridiculous charade. Unity? There is no unity in self-destruction.

I believe there are 75 million people who stand ready and dedicated to make the rulers taking over the former American republic just as miserable as they can be. You attack us, you insult us, you belittle us, you crush all our liberty, you place us under permanent house arrest and you create a situation where we have nothing to lose. Whatever happens is all on you, creeps.

Update on 1/7/21: President Trump has pledged an “orderly transition” to the Biden regime. Do NOT call it a “Biden administration”. Those days are over. America is now run by a cabal; in all honesty, it probably has been for a long time, even (in part) during the Trump years. The newly empowered legalized criminal enterprise undoubtedly stole the U.S. Senate and they’re coming for all of us next. It’s only a matter of time and specifics.

At least don’t pay them the dignity or tribute of civilized language or the respect of legitimate authority. These are not civilized people; they are barbarians in suits. I also hold the average people who voted for this catastrophe morally responsible for everything bad that happens going forward. I am talking of your neighbors, friends, relatives … all of them. They did it. Perhaps other countries, filled with ignorant and illiterate people can claim a partial excuse when falling for Communism, socialism or fascism. America, for the most part a free country for its 200-plus years as a republic, had no such excuse. WE (present company excluded) were the generation that lost it all.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

2020, 2021 & the Prospect of a Post-Republic, Post-Constitutional America

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Well, here’s the thing: If we DON’T oppose the Electoral College, then 75 million Americans will now be disenfranchised forever with no possibility of putting dissenters in office. It’s over. We are under one-party rule, forever. And if Biden supporters and RINOs carry the day, they will have 75 million REALLY PISSED OFF AND PERMANENTLY NONCOMPLIANT subjects to contend with. Sorry lefties. But when you practice fraud and deceit, as we know you’re about to do in Georgia again, you create a lot of problems for yourself. This will be a war, and there’s no getting around it. Not with rigged elections. We will not roll over and accept a dictatorship.

It will take a lot more than turning the calendar page for 2021 to be better than 2020. In order for 2021 to be better, the vast majority of us will have to embrace rationality over feelings; common sense and reason over the herd; resistance over compliance; independent thought over the mindless ravings of celebrities; personal responsibility over victimhood; and unapologetic freedom over tyranny. In other words: THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF EVERYTHING MOST OF US DID IN 2020.

George Orwell wrote that abuse of language led to dictatorship. “War is peace, slavery is freedom”. Ayn Rand went deeper, and said that the obliteration of concepts–the uniquely human method of cognition–would bring us dictatorship. And what do we see today? Exaggerated hysteria — mass obsessive-compulsive disorder — falsely labeled “science”. Government propagandists falsely called “doctors”. The imposition of an open-ended totalitarian regime worse than what Orwell or Rand projected as a way to “be safe”. When you wipe out the capacity for rational thought, you create the basis for tyranny. Well done, tyrants. You have turned America into a dystopian mecca of mask-wearing morons. Good luck with the results.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

An Uncertain Happy New Year

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We are not in a “pandemic”. We are in a media-generated hysteria combined with an unprecedented grab for world tyranny. All of this took place in a cultural-psychological climate of unearned guilt, overreliance on emotions as tools of cognition, and unleashed savagery and anarchy designed to break the spirit of decent people. Our crisis is so much greater and deeper than a real pandemic would ever be. It’s a spiritual pandemic of low confidence, where the good guys hide and evil triumphs. It may well destroy not only America, but EVERYTHING that civilization worthy of the name has generated for the last several thousand years.

Happy New Year. But this is no time to lie to ourselves about the gravity of what we face. As you sit at home under house arrest, carefully weigh your options.

Some thoughts from Winston Churchill:

“…if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

What the Lockdown Leviathans Don’t Get: We want to live, yes, but we also want to live lives of meaning, purpose, connection, and contentment

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After all, here’s just a starter list of things that were either banned or restricted this holiday season: Christmas family gatherings; Christmas concerts; Christmas tree lighting ceremonies; Christmas parties; Christmas worship services; Christmas sing-alongs; Christmas season sporting events; Christmas shopping trips; and even Christmas visits with Santa. 

More broadly, nearly every conceivable social activity, aside from popping out to a grocery store to stave off starvation (or, possibly, suicide) for another week, was either banned or severely restricted this year for millions of us.about:blank

Don’t like it? Don’t worry, said the experts: If you’re feeling a mite lonely after nine months of house arrest in Papillon-like solitary confinement, just throw a rollicking Christmas “social” event in which you stare, all alone, at a computer screen on a Zoom call, as the most ruthless, repressive, imperialist regime on earth monitors everything you say, and then instantly disables your account if you dare to criticize it. (Soon, no doubt, it won’t only be the Chinese government doing the monitoring and disabling, but our own—supposing it hasn’t merged with the CCP by then).

House arrest for nine months, careers and dreams imploding all around you, relieved only by the odd Zoom call, isn’t exactly my idea of fun—or anyone else’s. Yet you’d never guess that listening to anyone with political power this year (aside from the few remaining non-useless Republicans). 

For months, these strange, power-mad robots have evinced zero indication they have any clue what it might feel like to be an actual human (with mouths to feed) suddenly placed under house arrest, forbidden from earning a living, stopped from pursuing activities which support his sense of identity, cut off from most (or all) social contact, fed reams of misinformation he knows is misinformation, and severed from a huge source of meaning in human life—namely, culture.

I’m not here arguing against the measures themselves (I will some other time). I am pointing out the inhuman indifference shown by the Lockdown Leviathans to the psychological, emotional, spiritual, and familial costs those measures have imposed, and continue to impose, upon their suffering subjects. 

There is simply no sign they care.

Above, I used the word “subjects.” I used it because although these thugs were all elected, they rule like ancient Asian potentates. No force checks or balances them. Certainly, no one’s heard a single word from any federal law enforcement official about the Incorporation Doctrine, or any federal plan to bring these thugs to heel.

I find that odd. 

Back in the 1950s, when the segregationist governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, tried to block black students from schools, President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked the Insurrection Act and sent in the 101st Airborne. Just like that, Faubus came to heel. Eisenhower secured those students’ fundamental rights.

But now, when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo kills off thousands of American citizens, and California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti deprive millions of American citizens of their most basic liberties, nothing happens. A space alien visiting America for a few weeks this holiday season would never imagine that America had something called a “Constitution,” and that it sets limits on how governments, state or federal, may treat citizens. He’d be shocked to learn otherwise.

But let me get back to culture. It is a vital source of meaning in human life. Cut humans off from culture—including important social/connecting rituals, like all those I mentioned above—and you inevitably begin draining their lives of meaning. Drain enough of that meaning away, and you wind up with despondent, purposeless human beings struggling to feel any sense of context for, or meaning or worth in, their lives. Their bone-deep existential anguish leads them to try to numb it through drugs, alcohol, or suicide.

A child could understand that. But there’s no sign the Lockdown Leviathans understand it, or care—not even when this sensible assumption passes into the realm of rock solid empirical evidence, which it now has done (see here, here, and here). about:blank

And so, you wonder just how many tears, say, Cuomo and his comrades in gubernatorial malfeasance have shed over the souls devastated—or the lives killed off—by their incompetence and control freakery this year. And then, you conclude it’s probably zero—with “probably” being generous. 

Presuming the talk of secession and national divorce subsides; presuming political calm emerges soon; there will be a lot to restore in the coming years. Between the riots and the lockdowns, the hard costs must be in the hundreds of millions. Buildings, businesses, inventories, houses, public monuments, educational careers, savings accounts . . . it’s a lot. 

But just as important—in some ways, even more important—will be the task of restoring culture, which is to say, restoring all the important sources of meaning for human life arrested or erased this year. Restoring our Christmas rituals will be one important part, but all the other communal rituals must return, too: the shared civic ceremonies and sporting events, the shared sacrifices, the shared stories and songs, the concerts and theatrical performances, the social clubs and worship services and funerals, the big family dinners, the weekly visits to the grandparents, the book club, the group prayers, the symphonies and parades and weekly date night for husbands and wives—all the natural rhythms of life, and all their infusions of transcendent purpose, worth, and meaning into human life. It all must come back. 

And it all must come back, because trying to save lives by demolishing all the things which make our lives feel worth living in the first place, doesn’t really get us ahead. We want to live, yes, but we also want to live lives of meaning, purpose, connection, and contentment. 

Sure, there are risks to that. But so what? There’s no point otherwise. That’s what the Lockdown Leviathans don’t get.

Tal Bachman, America Great

Your Christmas Present: Our Political Leaders are Killing off New York City

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It’s the week before Christmas, traditionally the best week of the year to be in New York City. This is the week when tourists by the thousands flock to town, hundreds of restaurants are full and festive, the theater does peak business, the symphony and opera and ballet put on their most popular shows, concert venues are fully booked, hotel rooms are impossible to find, stores are packed, and beautiful Christmas lights are everywhere.

Not this year. Don’t even think about coming here right now. Almost all of the best things are closed, by order of our political masters. The term “ghost town” is a fair description. Here’s a small roundup:

  • Restaurants. After a few months of graciously allowing restaurants to have outdoor dining plus indoor at 25% capacity, last week — just as fall was about to turn into full winter — Governor Cuomo ordered all restaurants in New York City completely closed for indoor dining until further notice. That’s right, all indoor dining at restaurants is closed in New York City. Outdoor? This is December! For most of the last week, the temperature has been well below 32F (0C); today it finally got back to a little above 40F (5C). In my neighborhood, normally the best restaurant area of the City, nearly all of the restaurants have given up. A handful have built elaborate “outdoor” structures where a few hardy patrons in parkas huddle beneath highly inadequate heat lamps. The evidence that indoor dining at restaurants is a significant source of spread of the coronavirus is non-existent.
  • Broadway theater. All of it is completely closed. Through May 2021!
  • Symphony, opera, ballet, Lincoln Center. Closed, closed and more closed. Lincoln Center is bravely talking about restarting shows some time in “Spring 2021,” but they don’t give any specific date. Carnegie Hall’s most recent proposed reopening date is April 5, 2021. Watch for that to get pushed back again, and then yet again.
  • Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Yes, it is there. You can even go to see it in person — provided that you are willing to put up with advance registration, a scheduled time, mask-wearing, social distancing, a five-minute time limit for viewing, etc., etc., etc. Or you can just watch their virtual live cam, safely from your home in Peoria — which is what they strongly recommend. After all, you wouldn’t want to get too near an actual live human being this year.
  • Concerts. Everything is canceled as far as I can find, mostly without any announced rescheduling dates at all. Madison Square Garden, which also runs Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theater, says “We are working diligently to reschedule as many of these events as possible for dates in the future.” When in the future? No word.
  • Hotels. I can’t find statistics for the most recent weeks, but according to this report from October, some 200 of New York’s 700 hotels have closed entirely, and the remainder had overall occupancy rates of well under 40%. I’m surprised that it is that high. Typical for this time of year would be 90% or higher. The good news is that prices have plummeted.
  • Streets. The usual festive throngs are nowhere to be seen. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but I don’t think so.
  • Subways. Still running! And at close to full schedule, if you can believe that. However, the authorities have done their best to scare away as many riders as possible, leaving the trains almost empty even at peak hours. On my line, trains that used to run irregularly, due to the difficulties of dealing with the crush of customers, now come every four minutes like clockwork. Word is that the MTA is about to get several billion in new “stimulus” funds from the latest Congressional bill, to keep the empty trains going. Thanks, flyover people! Here is a picture of the subway car I came home in this evening — with one other lonely passenger down at the other end. In normal times, this would be standing room only.
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Meanwhile our politicians proceed as if the infinite gusher of money will flow forever to fund the progressive program of perfecting the world. Allison Schrager in the City Journal has a collection of new and onerous labor regulation measures going into effect even as other government orders stemming from the virus are already crippling small businesses. Schrager calls her list “Another Stake in the Heart of New York’s Small Businesses.”

[D]on’t underestimate the capacity [of New York’s politicians] to make a bad situation much worse. The same week that Mayor Bill de Blasio threatened to shut down New York City for business [because of the virus], Albany increased the minimum wage across the rest of the state (New York City’s minimum wage is already $15 an hour), City Hall made it harder to fire fast-food workers, and the New York appellate division upheld a decision that Uber drivers could not be hired as contractors—they must get all the benefits of regular employees.

Up in the state legislature, the Democrats have just increased their majority in the state Senate. All the buzz is about a new “millionaire’s tax” of several additional percent for those with annual income exceeding $1 million. And in New York City, Mayor de Blasio on December 18 held a news conference where he blurted out these words:

“I’d like to say very bluntly our mission is to redistribute wealth,” the mayor said. “A lot of people bristle at that phrase. That is, in fact, the phrase we need to use.”

The purpose of the “redistribution of wealth” is supposedly to fix the City’s schools. Those schools currently spend about $28,000 per year per student on K-12 education, which is well more than double the national average. As usual, de Blasio takes no responsibility for the failure of New York City schools to achieve even near-average results for almost triple the cost elsewhere in the country, and just demands more and more and yet more money.

They are doing their very best to kill off our city.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian