Category: The Government You Deserve

Sit back and suck on it, serfs

Mythbusters

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2020 was the year many of the fairy-tales Americans have turned to for comfort and reassurance took it on the chin.

Perhaps the saddest casualty of 2020 is the myth that average Americans cherish their personal freedom. Politicians continually shifted the rationale for lockdowns – from flattening the curve, to ending “community spread,” to reducing cases to near zero. Regardless of the proclaimed rationale, most people submitted without a fight, and usually without even a whimper. Politicians and bureaucrats fanned mass fears which quickly ripened into hatred of anyone who did not comply with the latest edict.

States and cities across the country set up snitch lines that were soon deluged with complaints of people outside without a mask, meeting friends, or having more visitors in their homes than could fit in a phone booth. Many, if not most, people quickly acquiesced to the “new normal” where any government hack who recited the phrase “science and data” became entitled to rule their lives with an iron fist.

As the Harvard International Review warned, “The very methods that liberal democracies are currently using to effectively fight the virus are the same tactics that authoritarian leaders use to dominate their people. The tools that have been temporarily deployed in the fight against a once-in-a-lifetime disease may become permanent.” That was written on May 23, more than 15 million Covid cases ago – proof of the failure of lockdowns and pervasive restrictions to make Covid-19 vanish. But the miserable batting average of officialdom will vanish into the Memory Hole if politicians launch a campaign to make Covid vaccinations mandatory, complete with boundless vilification of anyone who balks at the injection.

Perhaps it has long been a myth that we live in a self-governing republic rather than a Leviathan Democracy where citizens merely make cameo appearances every few years at the voting booth. It is still possible that the catastrophic and pointless losses imposed by Covid crackdowns will finally awaken enough people to their growing subjugation. But the most dangerous myth is that Americans will finally become safe after they cease making any efforts to leash their rulers.

That’s the biggest myth of them all, one which desperately needs busting.

“Do We Have What They Had in 1776?”

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The biggest question of them all, one that will be answered for all time very soon.

In 1776, 56 brave patriots signed their names at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence — a document that spelled out the specifics as to why the thirteen colonies were making a break with England and King George.

Signing that document was treason against the British, and every single man, some with names you know — Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams, and of course John Hancock — and some you may not, such as Thomas McKean, Button Gwinnett, and Arthur Middleton, risked literal life, limb, and property by doing so. Had the British prevailed, they very well may have ended their days in front of a firing squad or at the end of a hangman’s noose. Yet still they signed.

The interesting thing is, only about a quarter of the population actively supported the break with England at the time the Declaration was signed. Another quarter, largely those whose fortunes benefited greatly from the connection with England (which some of the signers did themselves), wanted to remain part of the Empire, while fully half the population were what we’d call today “undecided.”

The reality is, leaders do what these men and others did: they led, they fought, and they went home and convinced their fellow citizens about the righteousness of their cause and inspired others to join the fight. In the end, they prevailed, and in doing so, they set forth a path that changed the course of human history, much for the better.

Today America finds itself in a place not so different from what the thirteen colonies faced 246 years ago. While the thirteen disjointed colonies faced the greatest empire the world had ever known, patriots today face the greatest propaganda machine in human history: the Democrat-Media-Tech Industrial Complex.

There are two big differences, however. The first is that the thirteen colonies had the benefit of 56 men who were willing to stand up and challenge the king and parliament in order to do what they knew to be right. Today, patriots find a largely barren wasteland devoid of leaders willing to stand up as the Democrats and their cabal seek to steal an election in broad daylight.

The other difference is that in 1776, war was the last option available to the patriots. In 2020, patriots still have one last option before something drastic…and the odds of it succeeding are as slim as those faced by the thirteen tiny colonies taking on the most powerful empire in the world.

You know what’s coming next, don’tcha? You should.

As The Hill detailed earlier in the week, there is a constitutional tactic through which the Republic can be saved — and make no mistake: that is exactly what is at stake here.

The tactic involves senators and representatives using the procedures outlined in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act (ECA) to delay the acceptance of the electors to a point where the House would then choose the president, with each state having a single vote. Given that Republicans control a majority of the state delegations, Donald Trump would be declared the winner.

Sigh. And if that doesn’t work, why, Trump can run again in 2024! Right?!? And when THAT doesn’t work, why, we’ll just keep on FIGHTY-FIGHT-FIGHT-FIGHT-FIGHTIN’, until the Democrat-Socialists finally agree to give our petitions for redress a fair and honest hearing before the beatings resume! YAAAY, ‘MURKA! WE WON!!!

Looks like the title question got answered a lot sooner than I expected.

Pinochet’s legacy

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He was effective. His reversal of the disastrous policies implemented by his socialist predecessor made his country a far better place to live. One of his very first moves after taking over was to dismantle and ban all Marxist political parties, just as every nation which aspires to freedom and prosperity must do sooner or later. No wonder the American Left hates Augusto Pinochet so bitterly, and has slandered him ever since as one of history’s greatest monsters.

Chile was appeared to be hurtling toward a bitter, emotionally charged civil war. So, in September of 1973, to prevent a violent upheaval with the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of Chileans, the military stepped in.

The coup was not the act of an individual power-mad opportunist, as Pinochet is sometimes depicted. The heads of all three branches of the military, plus the caribineros (national police), participated in the takeover. The junta had shown considerable restraint, holding back for roughly a year in the hope that a constitutional solution could be found. Pinochet, as head of the most powerful branch, the army, emerged as the ultimate authority.

Among the junta’s initial acts was the elimination of Marxist political parties. To restore the market economy, they relied on the advice of a group of economists from Catholic University in Santiago who had studied at the University of Chicago where free market guru Milton Friedman dominated the economics department.

Even so, the economy did not immediately spring back. It took several years to get inflation down to its historical (but still very high) levels. Income also did not rise immediately, since Pinochet had to institute austerity measures first. Allende had created artificially low unemployment rates through government featherbedding; among other measures, the junta had to eliminate many unnecessary government jobs to allow market forces to operate.

But eventually, in the mid-1980s, the Chilean economy took off. Today, Chile is the most prosperous country in Latin America, with a per capita income of $15,111 in 2018 (it was only fifth-best in 1970). Inflation for 2018 was a paltry 2.56 percent. Chile ranks 15th worldwide in the Heritage Foundation’s 2020 “Index of Economic Freedom”; the next closest country in Latin America is Colombia in 45th place. It also ranked first in Latin America in the Cato Institute’s “Human Freedom Index,” last published in 2017. And it is just edged out by Costa Rica for having Latin America’s longest life span: 79.57 years to 79.52 years.

Those statistics — not the numbers but the human flourishing they represent — are Pinochet’s real legacy. Would most Venezuelans today — who live in a failing totalitarian state with a popularly elected Marxist government — prefer that a military junta had wrested control from Hugo Chavez and eliminated a few thousand of the most hardcore Marxists? They would likely jump at the opportunity. Pinochet took over an equally nightmarish state that was racing toward either bloody civil war or totalitarian communism (or both), made hard decisions to correct the problems, nurtured the government for 17 years, and voluntarily relinquished power in 1990 when the nation’s practices and institutions were strengthened so that it could flourish democratically.

For that, the international left has damned him for all time.

The Chilean coup of 1973 offers hard lessons that many will not accept because these lessons do not appeal to superficial norms of fairness and tolerance. For one, electoral politics do not always equate to human flourishing but can instead bring repression. For another, a nation must deal harshly with those who would deny liberty to the rest.

Precisely so. America That Was’s failure to do so was the costliest of errors, with the bill now due and payable. It would have been A-okay with me if Trump had taken a page or three out of Pinochet’s book, especially the chapter on the proper treatment of malignant Commies. Instead, we got our own coup, which won’t have nearly as congenial an outcome as Chile’s.

Truth hurts

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Your friend and mine SteveF kindly does the gang here a solid by reminding us of a depressingly clear-eyed DP post of his, from nine (!) years ago.

The US Constitution is the “contract” which authorizes the federal government to exist, which gives the government its sole legitimacy. That seems obvious when stated like that, but many people don’t think about it. The US federal government is there and always has been there and does whatever the President says it does.

That way lies tyranny.

I’d argue we’re already there. The federal government blatantly disregards the document, the contract, which authorizes it.

The US federal government has no legitimacy.

The US federal government now operates only by chicanery and naked force.

Given this, what is the moral obligation of the citizenry to support the US federal government?

None whatsoever.

As it was then, orders of magnitude worse now, which renders it damned nigh impossible to argue with a single word. I haven’t the least intention of making myself look foolish by attempting to, either. That way lies self-beclownment.

Take it off

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Defiance is the only option, and there ain’t but one way to do it.

Previously I had labeled the masks that our control-freak society is demanding everyone wear, wherever they go and whatever they do, as a mask of ignorance. While the evidence is still uncertain on whether high quality masks, used properly, can stop the spread of COVID-19, the improper use of masks guarantees that they will contribute to the virus’s spread.

I however no longer see masks as simply a symbol of ignorance. I now see masks as a symbol of oppression, and the willingness of Americans to submit to that oppression, without a whimper. In fact, the mask will prevent anyone from really hearing that whimper. It tells everyone you are willing to be silenced and subjugated, like a dog.

Yet, everywhere I go almost everyone is masked. Even more ridiculous, I have seen Trump supporters get out of their car, put their mask on to enter a restaurant, walk to their table and take it off for the rest of the meal. They then put it back on when they got up for that short walk back to their car.

This is not only irrational, it is downright stupid. That mask they put on is often coming from their pocket, and is not antiseptic. The odds it is a carrier of the virus is not trivial. Putting on your face, even for a few minutes, is counter to everything the mask control-freaks claim.

So why do they do it? They do it because they want to avoid trouble. They don’t want to risk an argue about the mask, with anyone. And they also tell me they fear the possibility of being verbally accosted by a control freak, and want to avoid that above all.

Worse, no one believes me when I tell them that none of that happens. No matter how many times I tell them that no one will question them about their lack of a mask, they still put the mask on, in fear.

For conservative Trump voters who claim to be lovers of freedom to bow so easily to fear and bullying bodes badly for the future of our free society. Seeing everyone wearing muzzles enforces the belief that peer pressure rules, and that you must obey the orders from on high. It makes it easier for the power-hungry to demand more, knowing from the sight of all those masks that no matter how unreasonable their demands, their servants will obey.

The thugs in power will take full advantage of this voluntary muzzling. They will know that if they can get away with that, they can get away with anything.

Seeing how brazenly, how audaciously they just stole a presidential election in open view of the entire fucking world, I’d say they know it full well, and no longer have the slightest concern about what anybody might think or do about it.

Update! I have to admit, this here is a mask I might actually consider wearing. Everywhere I went, all day, every day.

BagMask.jpg

Hat tip to Brack.

The era of cynicism

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It’s the only thing that makes sense anymore.

The Soviet Union, like all radical experiments, went through several phases in its roughly three generations of existence. The first phase, of course, was the revolution, in which the old order was toppled and a battle ensued to fill the void. This initial phase of revolution is always the one that attracts the most attention. This is when the great heroes of the revolution and the great villains of it are made. It is in this phase we get both Lenin and Stalin, hero and villain.

There is a phase that gets little attention and that is when the people come to terms with the irrationality of the world that has been created for them. One reason Stalin was able to send so many to their deaths or to labor camps is so many people kept thinking there was some rationality to the world being created. Some remained idealistic believers in the cause, while others became critics of the cause. They assumed the revolution would bring clarity and rationality when it brought only the opposite.

In time, the people came to terms with this. The humor of the Soviet Union reflected the fact that one got along by accepting the irrational in the same way you accept that the grass is green or the sky is blue. You don’t think about it. The jokes were often about these daily contradictions and how the unfortunate were those who did not get the joke that was at the heart of those contradictions. In other words, the joke was always on the fool who was not cynical enough to anticipate the lie.

This is relevant in our current age as we may be past the revolutionary stage and into that time when the people adjust to the irrational. The legacy conservative media keeps pounding the drum about how “we’re lurching into socialism” when we have been a socialist society for generations now. There is no aspect of our economic life outside the grip of the now semi-permanent ruling class. Telling people otherwise is just part of the way the ruling class controls the population.

Of course, this reality is dawning on even the dullest people, so we are being told that the bad guys are planning a “radical revolution.” The truth is, that revolution is well past the planning stage. It has already happened. From top to bottom, despite party labels or rhetoric, the system is stacked with people committed to the great reordering of society into the egalitarian paradise. The expulsion of Trump from office like a foreign body is the proof that the organism of state is wholly alien now.

In other words, a revolution has occurred out of view from the rest of us and now we are seeing the revolutionaries step out of the shadows. This is not a lot different than how Stalin took control of the party and government. He quietly consolidated his hold on the party, while his rivals were thinking the revolution was still ongoing. By the time they realized what had happened, it was too late. This realization was probably (the) penultimate thing that went through Trotsky’s head.

GREAT line, that one. Onwards.

Now we are in the phase where we get used to the often-bizarre contradictions in the rules being imposed by the new rulers. Some are easy, like the fact that states have put mentally disturbed Jewish men in sundresses in charge of public health. These are ornamental positions, so putting a crazy person in the role allows the governor to display his piety at little cost. Until the Covid hysteria, no one had any reason to know their state had public health officials.

Other bits of the new normal have no explanation. For example, states are now telling people they cannot make noise in their home, as part of the alleged fight against the spread of Covid. In Europe, they are banning the sale of alcohol at certain times, claiming this is to fight Covid.

Hate to bring it up and all, Z, but it ain’t just Europe.

On Wednesday, Nov. 25, restaurants and bars (in Pennsylvania—M) are ordered to suspend alcohol sales at 5 p.m. until 8 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 26. Gov. Wolf says the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the “biggest day for drinking” and acknowledged bars and restaurants have been hit hard by the pandemic, but this one-night ban is needed.

Uh huh. Now as it happens, this grotesquely un-Constitutional decree was actually issued by the very “mentally disturbed Jewish man in a sundress” ZMan mentioned above (utterly ludicrous photo of said headcase at the GP link), which is pretty funny all by itself. But El Supremo Wolf’s follow-on “don’t blame meeee!” whine is one for the record books.

“The thing that we can’t do is ignore reality and say ‘yeah you folks, for no fault of your own, have been hit hardest by this virus.’ But the virus is what’s doing this. It’s not me. It’s not the administration. It’s not the government,” said Gov. Wolf.

Oh no no no, of course not. As everyone knows, tyranny is never, EVER the fault of an invasive, too-powerful government, even less so of the overreaching crawly things in charge of running it! Why, who could ever countenance making such an outlandish, irrational claim as that, for goodness’ sake? Such talk really ought to be against the law, if you ask me.

My GOD, the balls on these oxygen thieves. But honestly, how can you not love it just the same? Consider:

  • The ability to spew patent claptrap with a straight-face: “The thing that we can’t do is ignore reality…”WHEN “IGNORING REALITY” IS PRECISELY WHAT HE’S DOING
  • Alcohol sales must be banned—because, as has been firmly established by extensive research, testing, and observation, THEVIRUSTHEVIRUSTHEVIRUS!!!™is a bigger lush than Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and the ghost of Ted Kennedy put together, and just looooves itself a good, solid toot—but only between the hours of 5pm and 8am Thanksgiving Day. After 8am, humanity will BE SAAAAAFE!!! again, and can enjoy a snort if it likes. But not a moment before. Because, y’know, SCIENCE!!!
  • A nonsentient cluster of RNA strands and other such granular material—without authority, official standing, or even the ability to speak or sign the unlawful order—is somehow, some way, “what’s doing this.” Again: uttered with a straight face, with as much fake conviction as any lower-tier American pro-pol slime mold can scrape up, as if the man actually expected sensible people to believe it
  • BE SAAAAAAAFE!!! Also, do as you’re told, or else

Please pardon me, all, but I need to ask a simple question at this point:

WHY IN THE EVER-LOVIN’ BLUE-EYED WORLD AREN’T THESE WORMS EITHER LOCKED UP OR SWINGING BY THEIR NECKS FROM A FUCKING LAMPPOST, ANYWAY?

Asking for a friend, that’s all.

Cynicism? You better believe it, chum. It’s the last refuge sane people have at this late date.

“Evidence” and “proof” are NOT synonyms

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Codevilla explains.

Now, black letter law.

The Trump campaign are plaintiffs. They have no obligation to prove anything. Nor do they have the power to subpoena things, documents, and persons, nor to compel testimony that might be dispositive regarding the sufficiency of fraud. Nor do they have the right to adjudicate disputes any more than the press has the right or power to do so.

The plaintiff’s only burden is to establish in the minds of persons who are empowered by law to subpoena evidence, compel, testimony, etc. what the semi-sacred words of American law call “probable cause” that fraud may have been committed. These persons are courts, principally federal, as well as state legislatures that possess investigative powers, as well as the U.S. Justice Department. These institutions (other than Justice) are also the only ones that have the right to decide what constitutes sufficient proof of what.

The Trump campaign has spoken in ways that suggest that it can prove fraud. It cannot. Not as a matter of law nor, given its lack of subpoena powers and compulsive power, can it do so as a matter of fact. Giving that impression, it has tended to discourage the persons who should be seized by their duty to follow “probable cause” of fraud—and there is plenty of that.

The Enemedia wretches cawing about the “lack of any evidence” are perfectly aware of the distinction between “evidence” and “proof,” of course. Likewise, they also know full well that Trump’s legal team is under no obligation whatsoever to reveal any part of the probable-cause evidence to them, nor to any other living soul on Earth not directly involved in the investigatory and/or litigation process.

Yes, Tucker too. He was dead wrong when he jumped all over Powell after she repeatedly declined to make her case and present her evidence, in full or in part, for his TV audience. Sorry, Tucker, but you have neither the right nor the weight to make such a demand. By persisting well beyond the point where you should have just backed off and let it go, all you accomplished was to make yourself look like a petty, petulant, over-entitled jackass. Hate to say it, but that’s the long and the short of it.

But while we’re excerpting Codevilla, let’s all follow along as he delves into the underpinnings of the whole damnable 2020 mess, a blatantly stolen election being only the ne plus ultra of this shaggy-ass goatfuck of a year.

For four decades beginning in the mid-1960s, a class of rulers grew in America. They became ever more uniform socially and intellectually, ever more opposed to the rest of Americans, and ever more powerful. This happened as government took upon itself the tasks of eliminating poverty and harmonizing the races, and as it controlled ever greater shares of the national income.

Increasingly, their powers were based on claims of expertise coming from the universities. These underwent a fourfold increase in size (from 9 percent of Americans with four-year degrees in 1965 to 36 percent in 2015). Their connection with government conferred both wealth and additional prestige. Few paid attention to President Eisenhower’s warning about the connection between government and academic elites.

Elsewhere, I have discussed how inherently pregnant with peril the existence of such a class was for constitutional life. Suffice it to say, by the beginning of the Obama Administration in 2009, the rest of Americans had sensed that American public life had ceased to revolve around the struggle between Democrats and Republicans, and was more between those who lived by the ruling class’ privileges, and those who did not—between the “ins” and the “outs,” between the ruling class and what had been known in English history as the country class.

During the Obama years, the American country class’ budding resistance spurred the ruling class further to become conscious of itself, to increase its own privileges, its cohesion, and above all its contempt for and demands on those below them. Political correctness ceased to be bemusing for the country class and came to be seen as the threat to freedom that it is. Corporate America became indistinguishable from government in its demands for compliance. That is why the 2016 presidential primaries and election revealed a substantial anti-ruling class majority among Americans, though it was split between opposite ends of the political spectrum.

In short, during the Obama years the ruling class was becoming an oligarchy that ruled by exercising the powers of government and of incumbency in corporations as well as all manner of social institutions. Private institutions, allied with government and inspired by government-supported universities, increasingly exercised arbitrary powers.

But by November 2016 this oligarchy had yet to articulate itself into something capable of acting for a common purpose. That is why the 2016 election may prove to have been the last more-or-less bona fide free election in America’s history.

Count on it. The one and only amusement Real Americans can savor from the situation, bitter though it is: the Gentleman Losers of the GOPe seem to truly believe that, now that the horrible Orange Man will soon be disposed of, we can all get back to business as usual straightaway, just like it was back in the good old Before Times. Gee, too bad for them that Codevilla is perfectly correct about 2016 being the last relatively free election this country will have, until/unless the rotten and illegitimate FederalGovCo is toppled and replaced with something entirely else.

The Democrat-Socialist crime cartel is now large and in charge, and they aim to keep it that way too. So can anyone really be so obtuse as to imagine that, having successfully swindled their way back into absolute power, they’ll balk at any conceivable skullduggery to do it over and over again from now on? Because what, they’re just too nice, too morally upright, too honorable to stoop to such chicanery more than just this one time?

It is to laugh. Say it with me: They will not stop. They will have to BE stopped. Until such time as we muster the yarbles to do it, we’re all in for a rough, rough ride, folks.

The Venezuela-ing of America

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Banana republic is as banana republic does.

By now, the election has displayed numerous “tells” that our own State Department uses to highlight fraudulent vote tabulation in countries like Iran and Ukraine: statistical anomalies, blocking and obscuring official observers, procedural irregularities such as stopping vote counts, suspicious software “glitches,” and social media blackouts when citizens raise the alarm.

Thankfully, litigation, hand-recounts, and even federal investigations of fraud are all underway—a process that other countries with questionable elections like Syria don’t have. But if proof of systematic meddling is uncovered, Americans must still rely on the justice system to act on this proof, and the media to ensure the rightful winner is declared.

But what if these hallowed institutions don’t deliver?

It might be terrifying to admit, but American democracy depends on authorities who have lost the public trust: unbiased state and city officials to ensure procedural fairness, unbiased election workers to ensure vote integrity, unbiased judges to enforce that integrity, and unbiased media to inform the American people about the other three. Who will audit the auditors? To examine one test case, the Georgia GOP has already raised alarms that the promised audit in their state does not meet crucial evidentiary criteria. Will something be done?

This election represents the ultimate test of our system and its resilience in a partisan age. If partisans can seize levers of power that impact election results, and they’ve shown they’ll stop at nothing in their revanchism, why engage in elections at all? 

And what other recourse, short of revolution, can right the situation? 

I’ve been trying really hard, but I can’t think of a single one. So it’s Amerizuela or bust.

Sidney Powell explained one of the many alleged anomalies of the 2020 presidential election on the Rush Limbaugh show: “Trump votes were programmed to switch to Biden ahead of time, but Trump’s votes were so high, it didn’t work right because they didn’t set their algorithms high enough.” Could that explain the sudden pauses in the counting of votes in crucial swing states on election night? Trump was too far ahead, and adjustments had to be made to ensure a Biden victory? Powell has also released information claiming that Smartmatic voting software, which was used extensively in the United States in the 2020 election, was manipulated in Venezuela to ensure the victories of socialists Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Maduro.

That isn’t evidence that this software was used in a fraudulent manner in the United States, but it raises the question, and we will likely not get definitive answers until the disputed election reaches the Supreme Court, and even then the arguments will go on. Nevertheless, the ongoing revelations about the 2020 election are more than enough, if not to overturn the result, then at very least to underscore the fact that whether or not President Trump’s efforts to throw out illegal votes and stop voter fraud this year succeed, America will have no more free elections if this problem is not thoroughly addressed, and concrete actions taken to ensure that future elections are tamper-proof.

And so it’s all on the line now with Sidney Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, and the rest of Trump’s legal team. Those who are dismissing even the possibility that the presidential election could have been rigged lack a historical sense. America has had fraudulent elections before, even at the presidential level: as Rating America’s Presidents details, Andrew Jackson raged (although he almost certainly wasn’t as unhinged as Hillary) for four years against what he called the “corrupt bargain” that he charged John Quincy Adams had made with Henry Clay to secure victory in the 1824 election, which went to the House of Representatives; he then rode that rage to a landslide victory over Adams in 1828.

Then in 1876, the election dispute dragged on until March 2, 1877, two days before what was then Inauguration Day. In exchange for Democrat acquiescence to his victory, the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to remove federal troops from the South, disenfranchising black Americans and creating the Democrats’ segregationist “Solid South” that lasted until the next fraudulent election, that of 1960. In that one, Democratic Party machines manufactured enough votes to deliver Illinois and Texas to John F. Kennedy. JFK’s opponent Richard M. Nixon opted not to contest the results, despite having evidence in hand, because of the disruption a disputed election would have caused to Cold War America.

But now the Cold War is long over, the Solid South is a distant memory, and the “corrupt bargain” is the one Trump referred to in a late October rally: “Joe Biden has made a corrupt bargain in exchange for his party’s nomination. He has handed control of his party over to the rage-filled socialist Marxist and left-wing extremists. And could we put another name in there? Starts with a ‘C.’ Communist. Yes. No, we got a couple of them too, unfortunately.”

Yes, we do. And we could have more very soon. If they’re victorious now, we may not get another chance to challenge their hegemony. We have seen how that works in Venezuela.

And now, thanks to the systemic corruption and megalomania of the Democrat-Socialist criminal cartel, we’re seeing it at work here too.



“Avoiding death is not living”

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Julie Kelly says give ’em the bird.

There’s only one response to anyone suggesting families shouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving together this year because of COVID-19: Go to hell.

Actually, there IS one other response available for Real Americans who still retain the gumption to countenance using it: SEND the bastards there.

“Encourage guests to avoid singing or shouting, especially indoors. Keep music levels down so people don’t have to shout or speak loudly to be heard.”

That is not a passage from some dystopian novel or a command by a Marxist dictator or a parody in The Onion. It’s guidance posted on the Centers for Disease Control website courtesy of the United States government. Think about that: Some federal bureaucrat, probably a highly credentialed “expert” with a messianic complex, is telling 330 million Americans that they should not sing. In their own homes. So they don’t spread a mostly harmless virus to other people.

It’s beyond laughable, but this isn’t a joke. These people are serious. And they should receive a collective middle finger from the American people.

If there’s any upside to this God-awful year, it’s the revelation that the people in charge are inhumane sociopaths consumed with their own egos and lust for power. The nation—and the world—is being subjected to a destructive pseudoscientific experiment that has failed spectacularly in its stated mission to “stop” COVID-19 while inflicting an economic, educational, and personal toll that never will be fully calculated.

Everyone has suffered but no one has been punished for unleashing this slow-moving catastrophe. To the contrary, the cabal of culpable government leaders are digging in their boot heels to crush the collective spirit of the country. At a time when people need to be with their friends and families the most, a time when the soul-soothing routine of the holidays has never been more necessary, the government’s soulless apparatchiks seek to strip away our last vestiges of joy.

These people are not healthy. They don’t care about you or your child or your elderly parent. They care only about power and control. They should be mocked then ignored. Sadly, however, millions of brainwashed Americans will dutifully comply. Cherished moments will be forsaken without any guarantee they’ll return next holiday season.

With ya one hundred and ten percent there, Jules. Alas, thanks to the panic-ninnies’ hysterical overreaction to the Red Death—and the audacity with which our new overlords so eagerly exploited it for nefarious purposes—all too many Americans proved all too willing to give up essential liberty to purchase a wholly-false security. In perfect accordance with Benjamin Franklin’s unheeded warning, they have now lost both, and deserve neither.

A matter of trust

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This. This right here.

It is impossible to overstate how serious a stolen American presidential election is. It is literally the end of the Republic if that is what has happened. And it cannot be remedied, because there are 70 million people who will never trust or respect the federal elections process again without drastic reforms that would effectively constitute a new social contract.

America will become ungovernable. The cash economy will overtake the legitimate economy. Lawlessness will become rampant as once-lawful citizens give up and begin chiseling out whatever they can. Without a social contract, there is no peaceful transfer of power in any political office, and violence will reign.

We could be literally facing the end of America.

Actually, we’re facing the aftermath of the end of America, which occurred when we permitted the Left to get away consequence-free with the manifest criminality and corruption we’ve passively witnessed for so long.

This can’t be allowed. A stolen election in the United States of America is unthinkable. That one side would so blatantly violate the social contract is beyond the pale.

The president and his team will be making the case this week that the irregularities and defects in this failed election changed the outcome. They must be allowed to make that case, and to present evidence for it. If that evidence is indeed compelling and shows itself to be material to the outcome, then legislators in those states where the fraud has been decisive are obligated to invalidate the posted, fraudulent results and choose their own slates of electors as provided in the Constitution. Failing that, the House must vote on Jan. 3 to invalidate an Electoral College result decided by fraud.

The Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, demands no less. It provides remedies against a stolen election. If those remedies are not acted upon should the president win his case, the Constitution is dead and the Republic with it, and the abyss beckons.

Oh, the abyss isn’t beckoning. It now surrounds us, its darkness has engulfed us. Sad to say, the only possible path back into the light is as perilous as it is tortuous.

Flight 93 augers in

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Anton takes stock.

The 2020 election in particular, and our electoral process in general, have been badly compromised.

First there have been the successful efforts by Democrats to loosen electoral administration standards and practices by legalizing ballot harvesting (where partisan “volunteers” go out and collect ballots as well as “assist” voters in filling out their ballots), allowing same-day voter registration, mass mail-in voting, and the like. On the flipside we have Democrats tenaciously fighting any efforts to shore up the integrity of the system, such as requiring ID and proof of citizenship to vote.

Couple all of this with unprecedented last minute rule changes on the eve of what was sure to be the most contested election in generations, if not in American history: all changes designed to favor one side over the other.

Theoretically, none of these measures guaranteed a compromised vote. Theoretically, it’s possible that a system designed to be gamed and abused won’t be. But a party concerned about the integrity of the system wouldn’t expend so much effort making it easier to rig elections; it would do the opposite. The other party, the one trying to do exactly that (if all too often in a desultory, half-hearted way) nevertheless gets attacked as the enemy of “democracy.”

No matter what he does, President Trump will get no credit from his enemies, who are already demanding that he concede before the counting is even over—to say nothing of the lawsuits and potential recounts. If he does, a new standard will have been set, or an old one reaffirmed: in any close election, if the Democrat appears to be ahead, and irregularities appear to be present, they are to be dismissed as nonexistent and the Republican must go gently into that good night.

That may well work in securing the White House this time. But if they just ram this through without explaining what really happened, then the legitimacy not just of our electoral system but of our entire government will have suffered an extreme, and possibly fatal, blow. 
No one will really know who won. Partisans on both sides will insist they do, but they won’t—not really. Unless all the anomalies are explained, every count and recount conducted in a fair and transparent manner, the occupant of the White House on January 20, 2021—whoever he is—will sit under a cloud. If he’s Joe Biden, that cloud will be entirely of his party’s own making.

But far more ominously, one half the country—or to be more precise, the class that rules in the interests of (at most) half the country—will surmise that it can rule by fiat. The other half will conclude that they are subjects.

Whether that conclusion resigns the latter to apathy or stirs them to rebellion is the question that will determine the course of our politics going forward.

Agreed, right down the line. The past week’s heinous events have revealed what kind of country America really is. From here on out, we will find out what kind people Americans really are—or if they can still rightly even call themselves Americans at all. I shudder to contemplate what the answer will be. The only thing we can all be certain of is that nothing will ever be the same again. No matter what, politics, elections, the people, their relations with each other, the country as a whole, EVERYTHING has changed—profoundly, irrevocably, and NOT for the better.

Update! Bill, too, is taking stock.

You know, the real problem here isn’t that we have embarrassed ourselves. It is that the Ruling Class and its Ruling Party – the American Oligarchy, in other words – has come out of the shadows in which it customarily operates and, on the third try, managed a naked, but successful coup against Donald Trump.

People thought this was a game. They thought there were rules. There weren’t. There was only win, or lose, and they intended to win.

As I predicted, the tech oligarchs shut down all effective opposition to the coup on their platforms, and put all their expertise to work guaranteeing the success of the coup. The Enemy Media (and that part of the media we thought was not the enemy, but it was too), went all in. The billionaires opened their wallets wide and poured a tsunami of money into the cause. And the politicians loosed Blackshirt storm troopers onto our locked down cities, while we cowered behind closed doors, afraid to breathe free air because of a plague that doesn’t actually exist.
 
Nor did the designers of the coup intend to settle for half measures. Apparently now control of the Senate is at risk as well. Bucket loads of late ballots manufactured from God knows where are flowing into states in the middle of the night, and suddenly a Senate majority that looked safe for the GOP is teetering on the brink. Make no mistake, if the Senate ends in a tie, Kamala Harris will be there to decide every tie vote to favor the Democrats.

We will end up with a Democrat sweep of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.

And then they’ll do away with the filibuster in the Senate, pack the Supreme Court, and start to work on rendering the constitution itself an irrelevant document. The Second Amendment? Forget about it. And if you think the cops won’t enforce the gun confiscation orders from their bosses, well, you probably thought our elections were honest, too.

And we will take it. We will accept the new order. Why? Because we have become a weak and flaccid nation, addicted to the numb buzz of our social media habits, brainwashed by the tech lords and the media minions of the progressive juggernaut. Our Founders bet their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on America. We won’t risk the time it takes to get out of our chairs, away from the juice of FB and Twitter wired directly into our brains, or ten bucks out of our wallets to support candidates who support America. As for honor, that’s so old fashioned. We don’t do honor any longer. And our children have been “educated” to despise everything America once stood for.

We didn’t lose our nation this week. We lost it years ago. And the GOP helped.

Sad to say, I can’t argue with any of that either. As I said last night: although the long downhill slide began long before, we lost our country fully and for good back in the 60s when we complacently declined to kick Proggy Red’s scroungy ass to the curb, tacitly granting space for his diseased ideology to fester and metastasize. The Founders explictly laid out what would ensue should Americans ever relax their vigilance and become derelict in their duty to defend liberty, to “preserve its blessings for themselves and their posterity.” And now their warnings have been realized, their prescient genius confirmed for all time.

All that’s left now is to pay the tab for that gross laxity. It ain’t gonna be fun.

What comes after every communist revolution?

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Why, the purge, of course.


The above response to AOC’s query, Tweeted by a former Ogabe capo named Michael Simon, has since been deep-sixed—one suspects out of sheer COURAGE!™ and heroism—but there are plenty of other Leftist/Deep State polyps on board the We Have A List train, to include the loathsome David French’s “beard” Eggin McMuffin and frothing lunatic Jennifer Rubin. The Stalin wannabes even have their own websty:

On the website’s landing page, it urges urges that “[w]e must never forget those who helped further the Trump agenda,” adding that “the world should never forget those who, when faced with a decision, chose to put their money, their time, and their reputations behind separating children from their families, encouraging racism and anti-Semitism, and negligently causing the unnecessary loss of life and economic devastation from our country’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The site is a self-described “permanent record” of those who elected the president, including Trump campaign staffers, Republican National Committee members, and affiliated PACs in 2016 or 2020.

Individuals who donated a “significant amount”—$1000 or more—in efforts to re-elect the president and related campaign committees are also blacklisted.Others who worked in the Trump administration; endorsed the president in a public light; were appointed to federal boards, commissions, or the judiciary; and staffed law firms that represented the Trump name in any capacity are named.

Former Pete Buttigieg national surrogates director Emily Abrams wrote before her account went private: “We’re launching the Trump Accountability Project to make sure anyone who took a paycheck to help Trump undermine America is held responsible for what they did.

In response, Human Event‘s Will Chamberlain quipped: “Leading Democrats like @AOC and @JRubinBlogger apparently want to treat Trump supporters like China treats the Uyghurs.”

And why wouldn’t they, pray tell? They’re just following the historical pattern set by their respected comrades and ideological forefathers, after all.

During the USSR’s Great Purge, from 1936 to 1938, it’s estimated that anywhere from 600k to 1.2 million people were slaughtered by the monstrous Soviet regime. No one really knows for sure—the body count has never been refined beyond that, and there’s zero chance it ever will be now. But it’s reasonable to assume that even 1.2 million might be lowballing it.

Now, Americans have always prided themselves on doing everything bigger, harder, and to greater extremes than anyone else. Knowing that, is there any plausible reason to tell ourselves that the Great Amerikan Purge of 2021-??? will fail to live up to that tradition of excess, leaving those Soviet numbers in the dust?

Lessons

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There are all too many, and it’s way too late to bother learning ’em now.

Elections are one of those windows into the nature of a society, like the roads or public transport systems. It is a manifestation of the real nature of society. In the case of elections, it is not about the results, but about how the election is run. Orderly, well run societies have orderly, well run elections. The results are known soon after the votes are cast and no one questions them. In disorderly, low-trust societies, the vote is messy and chaotic and no one takes the results at face value.

It used to be that America would send international observers to a country to make sure their elections were free and fair. The claim was the government was either too crooked or too inept to manage an election, even if they wanted to do it. A gaggle of experts from the West would be sent in to help organize the voting and make sure everything was done properly. These international observers would supervise the counting so that everyone could trust the result.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot. The UN should probably step in and start supervising American elections, because the government is so corrupt and incompetent, no one can trust them to run an election. Iraq now has more orderly and honest elections than most states in America. Iraq actually requires voters to present an ID and they make voters do the purple finger thing to prevent ballot stuffing. Maybe the Iraqi government can send supervisors to Pennsylvania.

In the coming weeks, as this circus drags on in the courts, lots of people will compare it to the so-called banana republics. That is not fair, as those banana republics did not ask for democracy. It was imposed on them. Left to their own devices, they would have been happy with some form of big-man government. It was Western business that demanded democracy, so they could more easily exploit these countries. It is easier to bribe parliamentary mediocrities than an oligarch or despot.

The United States does not have that excuse.

Oh, I dunno. Bribing our homegrown parliamentary mediocrities, as well as our own oligarchs and despots, has always been simplicity itself. But Z’s underlying point about gratuitously insulting banana republics with invidious comparisons to the wholesale corruption endemic to Amerika’s integrity-bereft elections is a good one.

Here are three more lessons that will almost certainly go unlearned:

Election night revealed a few disturbing items that should trouble freedom-loving Americans.

If any. Ahem.

First that the race is even this tight speaks to disturbing number of Americans who are woefully uninformed. Second, Fox News has gone over to the dark side, or, rather, the left. And third, the level of coordination to make this race close is stunning.

That the senile and corrupt Joe Biden could finish so strong speaks to either the gullibility or unseriousness of far too many Americans. Biden obviously has mental acuity issues and has a history of corruption, but that did not seem to be a big deal to the Americans who voted for him. I guess the probability of more lockdowns are lost on a number of Americans who are more frightened by the Wuhan virus than the probability of America becoming a socialist, if not communist, nation under a Biden presidency.

Frightened by the prospect of a Marxist Amerika? Dude, are you serious? It has just been demonstrated, beyond all debate, that far from being “frightened” by such a thing, a clear majority of “Americans” are all for it. At least fifty-sixty million of ’em just cast their ballots for exactly that, after all. No one can claim that those people were ignorant or misled about what they were voting for, either; it’s not as if Harris-Biden and the rest of their fellow Democommies have been trying to keep it a secret from anybody.

Bahr goes on to discuss Biden’s corruption, senility, and role as a mere figurehead, along with Harris’s hardcore Leftism, all of which topics are unworthy of further interest in light of last night’s national disaster. The real fun is in the Faux News denunciation.

Fox News should be forever viewed by conservatives as the enemy. Its early calls for states for Biden that had not finished voting such as Arizona and Virginia and their slow–walking of states which Trump decisively won like Florida, Texas and Ohio, was an absolute disgrace. By sitting on the results of states like Georgia and North Carolina, states that, of this writing, showed Trump with narrow leads with 99 percent of the precincts in, Fox allowed Biden to gain momentum while slowing Trump’s dominance. It looks like the influence of RINO Paul Ryan as a Fox Corporation board member and the legacy of analyst Bill Sammon (Fox News VP Politics) resulted in a psy-ops (psychological operations) campaign against conservative morale. Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs should go to other networks rather than being associated with this betrayer of its conservative audience. Fox News should be shunned by all conservatives from this day forward and they should throw viewership to OANN (One America News Network) and Newsmax.

Too, too true. Fox willingly hurled itself into the maw of the Lefty leviathan to be swallowed whole, abandoning the organization’s unique position in American media to become just another insignificant cog in the shitlib deception machine. Nice thing is, that betrayal will buy them not a single friend on the Left. No matter how subserviently they cringe and grovel to please their new masters, the Left will forever despise them as the treacherous curs they are, just as they always have. To hell with them.

Update! Did somebody make disparaging mention of the nonexistent “integrity” of Amerikan “elections” earlier? Why yes, I believe someone did.

Right now on the telly, Rudy Giuliani (a man who, for all his qualities, speaks only to the diehards) is announcing litigation and raging against the Philadelphia machine: “Do you think we’re stupid? Do you think we’re fools?”

Meanwhile, the Dementia Kid has just been given Michigan. So he stands at 264 electoral votes. In the next couple of hours he’ll be given Nevada and will hit 270, so I may be preempted tonight by the you-know-the-thing victory speech.

4.35pm Re the toughing vignette from the frontlines of Georgia, Sal Tessio writes:

How is it possible that the concept of ‘closing up for the night’ exists when you’re counting ballots for any election, let alone a presidential election?

Because, election-wise, America is a dysfunctional craphole. The more respectable Third World dictators would regard the above as a little too obvious.

Probably so. But then, they’re well aware that they run the very real risk of provoking an uprising by their subjects should they try to cheat in such a stupidly obvious way, leading to said dictator being summarily beaten, poked with sharp sticks, set afire, and/or lynched. In America, we’re far too “civilized” to ever insist on reasonably honest and above-board elections in such a ghastly fashion as those savages, the poor devils.

A brand new day, a brand new way

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Humble congratulations and a servile tug of the ol’ forelock to the new FUSA “president,” Kamala Biden-Harris. After all, she “won” the “election” “fair and square.” Now we must all bow down and acknowledge her as the “legitimate” “president” chosen “fair and square” to be the leader of all “Amerikans,” for the good of our beloved “country.” It’s the RIGHT THING TO DO.

In a motherfucking pig’s eye. *spit*

I won’t bother going into the details, nor risk getting lost in the weeds of linking/excerpting stories cataloging the numerous examples of election fraud being committed even now, all across the country. They’re easy enough to find out there, if you haven’t seen ’em already; the fraud is blatant, brazen, and entirely obvious. There is no way for any honest person to contend otherwise with any credibility.

But this is what it all boils down to: The hard fact is that the corrupt, power-mad Democrat-Socialist Party machine has successfully stolen the 2020 election. They announced specifically and upfront what they intended to do, they’ve been openly declaring their intentions for months. And now, right this very moment, they are indeed proceeding to steal a fucking election right before our very eyes.

Which, in turn, raises a difficult question, the only one that truly matters anymore: What, if anything, are we going to do about it?

The Masked Society

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The Magickal Mask of Mystic Virtue ye shall have with you always.

According to a recent study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 70 percent of the people who tested positive for COVID-19 wore masks regularly. By contrast, under 4 percent of those testing positive never wore masks.

Coupled with this was an extensive review of mask studies worldwide in which the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) determined that typical cloth masks did little to stop the transmission of COVID-19. Although experts like to claim that cloth masks will prevent droplets carrying the virus from reaching others when a person sneezes or coughs, the reality is that most people are probably better off using their elbow and turning away from others. Moreover, the virus can still pass through a cloth mask, and the eyes, which aren’t covered, can act as “a portal of entry.”

The scientific evidence here strongly suggests that masks do nothing at best, and may actually increase the spread of infection at worst. This is probably why countries that haven’t imposed mask mandates do just as well or better than those that have required them.

And yet, the symbolism behind masks is significant enough for mask mandates and mask-shaming to continue. 

No one should underestimate how strong and widespread the belief in masks is. For many, they are a source of profound security. They are secure from the virus, immorality, and in the promise of societal approval. Their masks even empower them to become puritanical and judgmental. With full-throated conviction, they will blame victims of COVID-19 for not wearing masks and for lacking sufficient faith in the mask. They will insist on quarantining them and their family members for two-weeks no matter what. In most cases, it’s difficult to determine whether this is a health precaution designed to mitigate spread or a punishment for being near the virus in the first place.

Many people who are frustrated with the masking simply want to return to mask-free normality. It isn’t so simple anymore. Asking a person to take off his mask now means asking him to take off all that the masking has come to mean. Removing it means removing one’s safety, one’s sense of belonging, and one’s values.

Better get used to it, folks. Because this nonsense isn’t going away anytime soon, assuming it ever does.

The binding chains of history

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This one’s going to require a lot of excerpting, but I’m not going to tuck any of it under the fold. It needs to be up front and in easy viewing reach, in its entirety.

Seated at his kitchen table, finishing off the remains of a Saturday breakfast, Hunter Hollingsworth’s world was rocked by footsteps on his front porch and pounding at the door, punctuated by an aggressive order: “Open up or we’ll kick the door down.”

Surrounded on all sides of his house, and the driveway blocked, Hollingsworth was the target of approximately 10 federal and state wildlife officials packing pistols, shotguns and rifles. And what was Hollingsworth’s crime? Drugs, armed robbery, assault, money laundering? Not quite.

Months prior, in 2018, the Tennessee landowner removed a game camera secretly strapped to a tree on his private land by wildlife officials in order to monitor his activity without apparent sanction or probable cause. Repeat: Hollingsworth’s residence was searched by U.S. government and state officials, dressed to the nines in assault gear, seeking to regain possession of a trail camera—the precise camera they had surreptitiously placed on his private acreage after sneaking onto his property at night, loading the camera with active SD and SIM cards, and zip-tying the device roughly 10’ high up a tree—all without a warrant.

Can the government place cameras and monitoring equipment on a private citizen’s land at will, or conduct surveillance and stakeouts on private land, without probable cause or a search warrant? Indeed, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Welcome to Open Fields.

The vast majority of Americans assume law enforcement needs a warrant to carry out surveillance, but for roughly a century, SCOTUS has ruled that private land—is not private. Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” expressed in the Bill of Rights only apply to an individual’s immediate dwelling area, according to SCOTUS.

However, SCOTUS’ Open Fields doctrine has been bucked in Mississippi, Montana, New York, Oregon and Vermont through protections granted by state constitutions, and for many American landowners, the more they discover about Open Fields—the more questions they have regarding the bounds of government power.

In Tennessee, Hollingsworth and Terry Rainwaters, another landowner who discovered multiple trail cameras on his property placed by the state, are taking their cases to state court, claiming violations of the Tennessee State Constitution. The Rainwaters and Hollingsworth stories contain alarming claims regarding the behavior of wildlife officials and raise a bevy of questions over Open Fields, states’ rights, and the sanctity of private property.

It shouldn’t be shocking, I know. All of us should be fully cognizant by now of the boundless reach of the State, at every level. Certainly this past summer has provided confirmation aplenty of even the wildest, most out-there conspiracy theories when it comes to the audacity and omnipotence of the almighty government. Nonetheless, somehow, I have to admit to being shocked by this one.

On bottomland squeezed in the rolling hills of northwest Tennessee’s Benton County, a short walk from the banks of the Big Sandy River, Terry Rainwaters, 53, owns 136 acres of land containing two homes, farmland and an equipment shed. Rainwaters and his son, Hunter Rainwaters, 20, live in one of the homes; a tenant occupies the other. The acreage is the physical center of Rainwaters’ life—a small place to farm, hunt and reside—with one way in, one way out, and a gate that stays locked, backed by “no trespassing” and “posted” signs.

On his way to hunt on his father’s land during the first week of December 2017, Hunter Rainwaters was driving a side-by-side through the property when he noticed an oddity positioned roughly 4’ off the ground. He popped the brakes, backed toward the object and looked in surprise at a trail camera belted to a tree.

“I didn’t see any words or stickers on it, but I knew right away it wasn’t ours,” Hunter Rainwaters recalls.

Following the hunt, he drove back onto the family property and spotted a second trail camera attached to a tree with several branches removed to allow for an unimpeded lens view. Rainwaters dialed his father’s cellphone, and described the two cameras: “I was shaken up when my son called and I knew immediately it had to be the TWRA (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency),” Rainwaters recalls.

Deeply disturbed, Rainwaters arrived home later in the afternoon and took a look at the two cameras, mulling over whether to remove the pair. Two days later, with Rainwaters in limbo on what action to take—both cameras disappeared.

“Ask TWRA how many cameras they have on people’s private land right now watching their every move,” Rainwaters says. “I’ll bet they won’t answer that question and we all know why. No warrants, no judge, and no crime necessary, just set up surveillance and do whatever they want to.”

And guess what. Go on, just guess.

(Farm Journal asked TWRA multiple questions related to the use of trail cameras in surveilling Tennessee residents, including, but not limited to: Does TWRA have a list of past camera locations and current, active cameras? Who in TWRA is allowed to view the footage? How long are the cameras allowed to operate in place? Does TWRA recommend prosecution for a landowner for breaking or removing a camera? TWRA declined comment: “The Agency cannot comment on matters in litigation, nor can we provide comment on issues that are currently being litigated.” TWRA directed all questions to the Tennessee Attorney General’s office. However, the Tennessee AG office declined comment.)

Okay, I’m NOT shocked by that. Not in the least, I ain’t. But now we accelerate right on past merely shocked, to flat-out pissed the fuck off.

The vast majority of Americans assume law enforcement needs a warrant to carry out surveillance, but for roughly a century, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has ruled that private land—is not so private. Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” expressed in the Bill of Rights only apply to an individual’s immediate dwelling and curtilage, according to SCOTUS. Curtilage is an arcane term loosely translated as the area directly around a home, or the yard.

In 1924, Hester v. United States set up the Open Fields framework and said the U.S. Constitution does not extend to most land: “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.” Significantly, Open Fields is translated beyond its literal sense, and basically is defined as general acreage: woods, fields, farmland, barren ground, and more.

Further, in 1984, SCOTUS gave additional strength to Open Fields in Oliver v. United States: “open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance. There is no societal interest in protecting the privacy of those activities, such as the cultivation of crops, that occur in open fields.”

Disturbing, infuriating, and downright frightening as it is, you need to read all of it. Once you have, you need to do another thing. Distasteful and unpleasant as they are, you must accept and internalize a few realities:

  • You have ONLY whatever liberty Government deigns to allow—which liberty may be denied, wholly or in part, summarily and at Government’s whim, with neither notice nor explanation
  • You have NO rights
  • You have NO privacy
  • You have NO security
  • You own NOTHING, and “private property” is a misnomer; it is NOT private, and is under the control NOT of the putative “owner” but of the State
  • You are NOT in any meaningful sense a “citizen” of the US and your state of residence; you are the wholly-owned PROPERTY of those entities

One needn’t be in the least doubt as to what Thomas Jefferson would have had to say after discovering government surveillance cameras strapped onto trees around Monticello—placed there clandestinely, his permission unsought, by trespassing government spies skulking about in the night like contemptible house-burglars. But it is incumbent upon us—upon ALL of us—to ponder his inevitable response to such an affront thoroughly, and most gravely.

Jefferson and his fellow Founders would have been apoplectic, of course. But there’s no reason at all to think any of them would have been shocked. Those men had a deep and thorough understanding of exactly what government, ALL government, really is. Of how every government throughout history—no matter how well-intentioned, carefully conceived and constructed, and competently administrated—eventually devolves into corruption, despotism, and petty bureaucratic abuse. Having been schooled in the classroom of first-hand experience, they paid strictest attention to the lessons taught there.

Alas, their complacent and oblivious descendants have done no such thing. The lessons of history having been ignored, the explicit warnings of far-wiser ancestors spurned, the inattentive students wound up in precisely the straits foretold for them. Not really shocking at all, is it?

Bad cop, no donut

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Remember last night when I said as a general thing, I don’t have any problem with cops?

There are exceptions to that general rule. This would certainly be one of them.

A video showing a police officer arguing with a group of Orthodox Jews in a New York town has drawn angry reactions from people online, who see it as evidence of persecution and harassment of the US Jewish community.

The confrontation apparently happened in Monsey, a place in Rockland County famous as a major center of Orthodox Judaism in the US. It shows a police officer standing on the doorstep of a house, engaged in a heated argument with a group of people, one of whom apparently owns the property.

The officer says his patrol was responding to a complaint about cars parked in front of the house and noticed that a gathering of more than 10 people was underway inside, which he called “an issue.”

Perhaps so. It wouldn’t be in America, but this obviously is not that place. Not even close, it ain’t.

The owner, who is dressed as an Orthodox Jew, disagrees that “a few friends” calmly coming together is an issue requiring police intervention. Both parties speak angrily, suggesting that the dispute has been going on for some time without progress. It was not immediately clear how the situation was resolved.

The argument apparently stems from Covid-19 social distancing rules that are in place in the county. A gathering of over 10 people would not be allowed in a public space – even a park – in the town of Ramapo, to which Monsey belongs.

Orthodox Jews in the US, as well as in other parts of the world, have been notably resistant to lockdowns designed to slow the spread of infection. They say the rules are incompatible with their religious practices.

Oh, it’s a lot bigger than that; the Fauxvid clampdown edicts are incompatible with the most fundamental values and ideals of the former US—every last one of them. Actually, they’re not just incompatible with those values; they are a direct violation of them. Which of right ought to be considered wholly unacceptable—the stuff of uprisings and overthrows, of pitchforks, torches, and state and local would-be despots swinging by their necks from trees and lampposts in every place these unlawful edicts, enforced by Gestapo/Stasi tactics, are imposed.

Sadly, if there’s one thing we all should have learned by now, it’s that if you don’t immediately rise up and shut such goddamned outrages down, you’ll be getting more of them until such time as you do. You either nip the insidious weed of tyranny in the bud with a quickness, or you watch it grow until the garden of liberty has been taken over and strangled to death by it. Sorry and all, but there simply is no middle ground here.

Now why don’t all you fascist-fellating panic ninnies out there just go ahead and tell me the fairy tale claiming this arrant horseshit is aaallll about a virus (because BE SAAAFE!!!) again. That one’s my favorite.

Mask on, mask (never) off

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You weren’t really fool enough to think they were ever going to take the jack-boot off of our necks, were you?

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said on Wednesday that the state will extend Phase 3 of the coronavirus reopening plan for three more weeks.

The state moved into Phase 3 on Oct. 2. Phase 3 allowed bars, amusement parks and movie theaters to reopen, but with limits on capacity and rules about social distancing and face coverings.

And in three weeks, there’ll be another extension. Count on it, people. But hey, at least I was wrong when I predicted that Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas would be suffering the same ignoble fate as Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and etc, wasn’t I?

Ummm. Kinda.

Halloween is not canceled, but the NC Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that people take precautions such as not sending kids out door-to-door to solicit candy.

The state also notes that having kids reach into a bowl for candy is a high-risk activity that should be discouraged. Large indoor Halloween or costume parties are also a bad idea.

Okay, I guess “recommended” is at least somewhat better than “forbidden.” In Amerika v2.0, we gotta take whatever scraps and crumbs our benevolent masters deign to throw us, it seems.

Free advice, from me to you: if you own a small business in a Democommie shitrapy like NC, particularly in the bar/restaurant/entertainment industry, and it hasn’t collapsed around your and your employees’ ears already: permanently shut that thing the fuck down IMMEDIATELY. I do not mean next month. I do not mean next week. I do not mean tomorrow. I mean friggin’ yesterday. Close the doors, bar the windows, and never look back.

If you can somehow conjure up a gullible, wet-behind-the-ears nimrod to buy the business off you, then sell it for whatever the mark is willing to give you. Don’t negotiate, don’t haggle, just take the sucker’s cash and run. Better to bite that bullet and take your financial lumps now, before things get even worse, which they almost certainly will. Then quickly move away to one of the handful of relatively free states that still remain, while that’s something you’re still permitted to do without being penalized for it. Take some small comfort in having denied Kount Koopula the opportunity to bleed you for any more of your hard-earned in taxes, fees, licenses, and the like, and be glad you escaped without further damage.

“Is the nation’s top law enforcement agency protecting society from sociopaths or is the bureau itself sociopathic?”

Posted on      by     

Take a wild guess.

After 9/11, the FBI spent few years going after very petty Islamists while covering its collective eyes to the work of major sources of trouble, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian Authority, and Saudi Arabia—each beloved by parts of the ruling class. But before and after this period, these profiles more often than not pointed to the ruling class’ favorite enemy: fellow Americans “excessively concerned with their liberties.”

The FBI’s method? Place agents among the target group, stoke their sentiments, and lead them to say or do something that could be characterized as a crime, then arrest them and claim credit for foiling a plot. In intelligence lingo, that is provocation. In legal terms, it’s entrapment. By whatever name, this is the work of cheap, dirty cops.

In the 1950s, the joke was that any meeting of a Communist Party cell in the New York area was likely to consist of two-thirds infiltrators, half from the FBI and the other half from the New York Police Department. But these FBI infiltrators, like those of the Vietnam era in the 1960s and early ’70s, and like those who penetrated organized crime were merely watching. Doing an honest job. They were not provoking or entrapping, not creating something that would never have been there except for their presence.

Fast forward to our time. The contrast between how the FBI behaves with regard to persons connected to the ruling class and those who are not speaks for itself. The 918 Americans who died in mass suicide in Jonestown Guyana in November 1978 were victims of a cult that had been closely associated with the California Democratic Party. Relatives of the people who were being drawn in had complained to the FBI. But the FBI had refused to keep an eye on the movement, and later officially argued that doing so would have infringed on its political and religious liberties.

And yet when the Tea Party movement arose to protest collusion between the Republican and Democratic parties against popular sentiment on a host of political issues, the FBI rushed to infiltrate it.

The FBI has been corrupt since its inception, and it always will be. Its officials, both high and humble, conspired to first rig and then reverse a legitimate election via a plethora of obviously illegal and unethical acts, for which they will suffer no consequences whatsoever. It is a rogue, unaccountable, out of control agency whose continued existence in any nation that dares to flatter itself with empty platitudes about “liberty” and “the rule of law” is an abomination. It should be dismantled. Period.

Update! Let’s not leave this out.

One of the strangest details of the exclusive New York Post story involving the recovered data from a computer linked to Hunter Biden is the story of the laptop itself and what is alleged about it. You can read about the evidence alleging that Hunter Biden was trading influence with foreign actors in Matt Margolis’s piece here. But what also interested me was the part of the NYP investigation where they claim there’s a sex tape and pornographic photos starring Hunter on the laptop—and the FBI knew about it in December.

Let’s forget for a moment that there’s reportedly a video of Hunter Biden smoking crack and romping with hookers on the laptop. That’s par for the course, isn’t it?

What about the part where the FBI had possession of this information back in December? Why didn’t the FBI come forward with this evidence about Hunter Biden’s emails, which appear to show collusion and influence-trading? Isn’t that something they should have told the president or members of Congress? Was the FBI deliberately covering it up? If the good citizen who came forward and alerted the FBI of the contents of the laptop had not made a copy of the information, it would still be under FBI lock and key. But the computer repairman did make a copy and sent it to Rudy Giuliani. If true, it’s a stunning indictment of the FBI that an American citizen—who alerted them to alleged multiple crimes involving a guy with the last name Biden—knew not to trust them and made other arrangements should they try to cover it up (which, apparently, they did).

That, too, is par for the course.

The tyranny of fear

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The esteemed and estimable Heather MacDonald bats around my new least-favorite phrase—Stay saaaafe!—safetyism generally, and asshat Frank Bruni specifically, like so many cat toys.

We set highway speeding limits to maximize convenience at what we consider an acceptable risk to human life. It is statistically certain that every year, there will be tens of thousands of driving deaths. A considerable portion of those deaths could be averted by “following the science” of force and velocity and enforcing a speed limit of, say, 15 miles an hour. But we tolerate motor-vehicle deaths because we value driving 75 miles an hour on the highway, and up to 55 miles an hour in cities, more than we do saving those thousands of lives. When those deaths come—nearly 100 a day in 2019—we do not cancel the policy. Nor would it be logical to cancel a liberal highway speed because a legislator who voted for it died in a car accident.

We could reduce coronavirus transmission to zero by locking everyone in a separate cell until a vaccine was developed. There are some public-health experts who from the start appeared ready to implement such radical social distancing. The extent to which we veer from that maximal coronavirus protection policy depends on how we value its costs and the competing goods: forgone life-saving medical care and deaths of despair from unemployment and social isolation, on the one hand, and the ability to support one’s family through work and to build prosperity through entrepreneurship, on the other. The advocates of maximal lockdowns have rarely conceded such trade-offs, but they are ever-present.

Under today’s safetyism mentality, sacrifice and risk-taking become unthinkable. The martial virtues of courage and stoicism have been sidelined and pathologized. When Trump briefly left Walter Reed on Sunday in a motorcade to greet supporters, a doctor at the hospital complained that the Secret Service agents in Trump’s limousine “might get sick. They may die.” These are the same Secret Service agents who are expected to take a bullet for a president. They were behind a plexiglass barrier in the car; all occupants were masked. Under our feminized ethos, showing resoluteness during a crisis, reassuring the public about one’s well-being, are no longer positive traits in a leader; they are violations of maximal risk aversion. (Of course, medical information about a president’s condition should be transparent.)

Reopening is still the right policy. Mandatory outdoor mask-wearing is merely a way for government to turn citizens into walking billboards of fear, sending the false message that danger is everywhere. Infection rarely leads to death. Most of the infected recover. Given his governmental duties, the surprise is that Trump—as president, another kind of front-line worker—has not gotten sick before now.

Last week, Trump gave a debate performance embodying what the Left likes to call toxic masculinity. Today, anticipating his departure from the hospital, Trump tweeted: “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.” The mainstream media blew its top, calling the tweet “dangerous,” “gross,” and “almost impossible to believe.” Let them fume. Trump is now modelling masculine leadership at its best: upbeat, rational, and unbowed.

Precisely so. And that’s also exactly why Proggy hates the man so viciously, with every fibre of his cowardly, emasculated being—the poor, sad little twerp-ass.

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