Gangster Government

Curioser and curioser

Posted on November 3, 2020November 3, 2020 by Mike

Historians of the future, pan-frying sowbugs over their campfires, will recollect in wonder and nausea the election of 2020 and the attempted controlled demolition of the USA by the Woke Rebellion and its incongruous avatar, Joe Biden, the Holy Ghost of Grift and Gaslight. All the forces of empire were arrayed in his support, as behind some sacred effigy of an obscure saint in a church processional, and yet all the voting public saw was a pitiful figure ranting at an audience of cars, an old dog barking pointlessly in a parking lot in the gathering darkness.

And then there was Trump… one word, Trump… no honorifics, as the Woke Legions spoke of the hated POTUS… Trump, who violated all their norms, threatened their perqs, and disputed their laughable identitarian shibboleths of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia… the Golden Golem of Greatness summoning the deplorably un-Woke in their ghastly red hats from the hills and hollows by the thousands to hear him speak of “rounding the corner” and watch him do that charming dance thing to the disco tunes of his boomer youth, and the sheer high spirits of it all worked to dispel the Woke curse cast upon him by the legions of angry suburban wiccans, till we arrived at the electoral reckoning of November 3 — and then the real contest began.

Now what…? everybody is asking him, her, and theyself. Why should anyone believe the polls, given the craven corruption of all other news media branches — and polling is one of them, of course. The Biden family’s overseas “business” capers still smolder in the background, though, like a root fire in the piney woods, waiting to burst back into flame. Turns out the Chinese company the Bidens were courting as “partners” (CEFC China Energy) could not have been more obviously agents of the Chinese Communist Party’s intel apparatus. Even Hunter knew that — as his deal to build a natgas terminal in Louisiana with CEFC unraveled late in 2017.

Yeah, yeah, ho hum, how shocking. Get back to me when any of these scummy Swamp creatures, in or out of the Biden Crime Family orbit, is actually facing hard time. But there is one small item of interest here, albeit a depressing one.

Oh, here’s a strange Swamp sidelight to all this: CEFC’s main exploit during the Biden hook-up years was the purchase of a 14 percent stake in Russia’s oil-and-gas giant, Rosneft, to help China circumvent US sanctions on Russia’s oil sales. Guess who was one of the lawyers working for Rosneft: Christopher Wray, just before he became FBI director. And guess who has been sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop since at least December of 2019. Oh, the FBI. And guess what else: the Rosneft files have since been deleted by Mr. Wray’s old law firm, King and Spalding.

Now, the question is, will this hairball of grift explode into official proceedings following the election?

The question answers itself quite handily, I’d say. Trump should’ve cleaned the DoJ rat’s nest out long, long ago. It highlights the one major letdown, the one campaign promise he failed to come anywhere near fulfilling in his first term: he has most definitely NOT “hired the best people” for his admin. Not by a long yard, he hasn’t. It’s baffling, and has already cost him dearly. Should he be re-elected it will go right on costing him too, until he rolls up his sleeves and cleans some serious house.

“In This Election the Establishment Is Playing for Keeps”

Posted on October 30, 2020October 30, 2020 by Mike

If you unpack it, the URL for this piece directly asks: Will the presidential election bring chaos and an irredeemably torn American political fabric? But I’d put it a little differently: Because the American political fabric has already been irredeemably torn, the presidential election will almost certainly bring chaos.

The widespread use of mail-in voting in this presidential election makes it unlikely that a winner will be declared on election night unless it is Biden. The reason is that polls indicate that a majority of Democrat voters intend to vote by mail. As long as the ballots are postmarked by November 3 (election day), they are considered valid. As mail-in votes will be delivered after November 3, unless one candidate wins the in-person vote by a landslide, the outcome will not be known until days later.

If the outcome seems favorable to Trump, this gives Democrats and the media, which is uniformly against Trump, days to make propaganda that Trump is stealing the election (with Putin’s help). Rioting and looting will be encouraged in cities under Democrat control in order to create more chaos and charges against Trump. If enough confusion can be sown, an “investigation” can be demanded and/or Democrats can demand the outcome be put in the hands of the House of Representatives where the Democrats have a majority. It is entirely possible that Trump can win and be denied inauguration.

This, of course, would be more than an attack on Trump. It would be an attack on the Constitution.

There is circumstantial evidence that more than opportunism is involved and that this scenario is an orchestrated plot to prevent a second Trump term.

Gee, ya think? Please note how, even after the Mueller Report explicitly and definitively dispensed with the “Russia collusion” hoax, the Usual Suspects are still flogging away at that same expired equine. TPTB never even broke stride after that unexpected reversal, much less changed their course. Which is one of the things that makes this such a vital proposal:

If Trump Wins, There Must Be a Reckoning for the Destructive Left
It doesn’t take a fount of political wisdom to say that if Biden and the Democrats carry the Electoral College, America is lost, perhaps forever. The U.S. will become a Leninist country. Madness and ignorance will have triumphed.

If Trump and the Republicans survive on November 3, as I hope and suspect they will, certain policies will have to be enacted to ensure that the country never again approaches the brink of social, political and economic perdition as it has in recent times, most emphatically engineered by the administration of Barack Obama premised on the “radical transformation” of America. And these policies will need to be draconian. Leftist sentiment will always exist, but the institutional left will have to be extirpated root and branch.

In other words, the gloves will have to come off and the institutional power sources engaged in the destabilization of the country must be put to bed once and for all. A reckoning must come.

Oh, the gloves will have to come off all right. But the big problem for Trump, as for all Real Americans, is that he/we are facing not just one enemy here, nor even two or three of them. Since so many of those enemies are so deeply buried underneath layer upon layer of Establishment camouflage, it’s difficult to even calculate how many of them must be confronted and destroyed. The DC Swamp entire, comprised of the GOPe, the Democrat-Socialists, and the federal bureaucracy from top to bottom. The Fake News media establishment. The “education” megalith, from K-12 to university-level. The arts/entertainment/pro sports sector. Big Tech, along with most other American corporations, from Coca-Cola to Nike to Disney to Intel and beyond—all of them “woke,” all of them on the other side.

Just trying to list them all is a daunting task in itself, to say the very least. Nonetheless, despair is NOT an option for Real Americans. Likewise lethargy, dithering, or half-measures. Solway couldn’t be more right: no matter how monumental an undertaking it undeniably will be, a reckoning is essential, and long overdue too. One way or another, whether Trump wins or loses, the effort must begin no later than January 21st of the coming year.

Yes, the Establishment IS playing for keeps here. Could any among us have been so credulous, so foolish, as to think that they wouldn’t?

Update! Think I’m kidding here? They aren’t.

Many leftists have directed some deeply disturbing rhetoric at conservatives and Trump supporters in recent months, claiming President Trump’s bombast is responsible for the political polarization of today’s America. This is pure nonsense.

Sure, Trump talks about MS-13 as “animals,” Antifa as “thugs,” and Hillary Clinton as crooked enough to “be in jail.” His supporters know his presentation to be a bombastic and theatrical schtick, but he never threatens any group of voters.

By contrast, some ominous tones, even homicidal and terrorist tones, are coming from the mainstream left. Increasingly, through mainstream media and Big Tech, high-profile leftists are speaking openly about violence to be inflicted on Trump and all his supporters.

I’m not talking specifically about the Antifa and Black Lives Matter street violence we’ve seen in places like Denver and Portland, which includes outright murders of Trump supporters. I’m referring here to voices that normalize and promote open terror against any freedom-respecting person who has different views from those blessed by left-wing leaders, media, and Big Tech. Seven examples are included below.

Funny how so many of these seven examples involve flatly-stated threats of violence posted on Twitter…none of them censored, deleted, or otherwise screwed around with.

A man of (no) honor

Posted on October 29, 2020October 29, 2020 by Mike

Another self-styled “courageous hero” of the Left turns out to be a miserable, slimy little worm.

In 2018, the New York Times proudly published an anonymously written piece from a purported “senior official in the Trump administration,” knowing that this statement was a lie. “Anonymous” claimed that Trump was an idiot, but that a brave band of “senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda.” In fact, the author was Miles Taylor, a low-level functionary in DHS when he wrote the hit piece.

The anonymous article, published on Sept. 5, 2018, bore the lofty title, “I Am Part of the Resistance inside the Trump Administration: I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” As noted above, to give the piece heft, the New York Times claimed that it came from a “senior official in the Trump administration.” We now know this statement was an outright lie, for the Times admitted that the author’s “identity is known to us.”

The article was a nauseating glue of arrogant piety and self-serving condescension. On the one hand, “Anonymous” insisted that he and others like him “want the administration to succeed” and even agreed that “many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.” Nevertheless, his brave little band of saboteurs loathed Trump, and no matter how effective he was, they were going to thwart him. It was paragraph after paragraph of smug, self-righteous glop.

And a confession to having committed numerous acts of sabotage intended to hamper and undermine the Trump admin’s policies and initiatives that, were there any justice in America, would leave the cringing pantywaist wide open to indictment for sedition.

Taylor accompanied his confession with yet another pompous screed in which he explained why he’s so much better than everyone else. If I had to imagine purgatory, it would be sitting in a room listening to this guy trash other people and justify his higher morality and intelligence.

I hope you caught Taylor’s assertion that “Trump is a man without character.” Let’s talk about character. Taylor lied when CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked him if he was “Anonymous”…

Even worse than that, Taylor allowed a terrible smear to lie against Victoria Coates’s name. And while he’s acknowledged that he owes Coates an apology, none has been forthcoming.

Nor will it ever be, I’d bet. Oxygen thieves like Taylor don’t apologize for their misdeeds; the most anybody ever gets out of them is one of those too-familiar “I’m sorry if you were offended” pseudo-apologies which, true to form, satisfies no one but themselves. Contrition? Honest admission of guilt? Don’t make me laugh. Bottom line:

Miles Taylor is why the American people voted for Trump in 2016 and why, with all due disrespect for the polls and the pundits, it looks as if he’s going to win again in 2020. Americans have had it up to here and beyond with the self-righteous, dishonest, hypocritical, arrogant, self-serving professional governing class. These people are a plague on the American political body, and they need to go find an honest living in the private sector where they cause less harm.

Yeah, well, they aren’t gonna do that on their own initiative. Tragically, it becomes more apparent each and every day that Real Americans are going to have to take direct and forceful action to root them all out if the country is to survive relatively intact.

The binding chains of history

Posted on October 26, 2020October 26, 2020 by Mike

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?

Another victim of Fauxvid tyranny

Posted on October 24, 2020October 24, 2020 by Mike

Well, damn.

Ninety years after it opened its doors for the first time, Nat Sherman is closing down. Nat Sherman International Inc., which has been owned by cigarette giant Altria Group Inc. since 2017, will cease operations by the end of September, shutting down not only its midtown Manhattan cigar store but also its entire wholesale business.

The decision comes several months after Altria began looking for a potential buyer for the cigar subsidiary; the company announced it was considering the sale of Nat Sherman International Inc. in October.

“We worked hard to successfully transition Nat Sherman International to a new home. The Covid-19 pandemic created new challenges that were unfortunately too big to overcome,” said Jessica Pierucki, general manager, managing director for Nat Sherman.

Back in the 90s there was a little Nat Sherman store on Broadway, if I remember right, a couple of blocks from Union Square. I was working at Cheap Jacks close by at the time, and used to stop in on the walk to work now and then to grab a pack of their cigarillos, which I liked a lot. Hate to hear they’re gone. But this is only one of many, many chapters in an ever-lengthening tale, with no happy ending in sight.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

Bad cop, no donut

Posted on October 24, 2020October 24, 2020 by Mike

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.

Tocsin, rung

Posted on October 24, 2020October 24, 2020 by Mike

I’m sure most of you here know me well enough by now to have heard my oft-repeated declaration: “No cop-sucker, I.” That said, you no doubt are also aware that I don’t harbor any reflexive distrust or dislike for the po-lice either. I’ve known and been around cops my whole life long: as neighbors, as friends, as family, even. Around a third of the customers in the Harley shop I turned wrenches and busted knuckles in for years were cops; another third was black guys, and the last consisted of a mix of what we used to call RUBs (Rich Urban Bikers) and the more authentic and likeable old-school Harley trash. Almost all the cops I’ve spent any time around were perectly decent guys, although it must be admitted that I and my cop buds alike were all too aware of the existence of some wrong ‘uns in the law enforcement field.

Thankfully, bad cops tended not to last very long on the force in those days. They usually wound up either fired because of some variety of excessive-force hassle; being shot, whether rightly or wrongly; or just going mental from the stress and frustration, enough so to make them walk away from the job more or less voluntarily. The ones that did hang in would find themselves patiently schooled by the older, more experienced heads, resulting in a much more relaxed and professional attitude that served both the officers and the public much better than the eager-beager, gung-ho aggression ever would have.

So no, I don’t really have a problem with cops. Most cops, anyway. My cop friends are all retired now, and they tell me it’s a whole different ballgame out there nowadays. Without exception, they say that they wouldn’t take the job now for any money, and are damned glad to be out of it.

As y’all know me and my opinion on the police by now, we all likewise know Angelo Codevilla to be one of our most sober-minded and judicious pundits. He’s a bona fide intellectual heavyweight, with not an ounce of the wild-eyed, snarling radical about him. He constructs his arguments meticulously, according to the facts as he perceives them, then presents those arguments passionately but without excess heat. He unflinchingly confronts difficult or unpleasant truths, without ever lapsing into bomb-throwing or inflammatory rhetoric.

All of which means that when Codevilla expresses alarm about something, we are obliged to listen, and listen well.

Turkeys cheering the arrival of Thanksgiving would be only marginally more pathetic than the conservative luminaries on Fox News who cheer for the police as civilization’s saviors. The police. You know—the heroes who stood aside as mobs looted and burned Minneapolis, Portland, Kenosha, Chicago, Macy’s in New York, downtown Chicago and so on while organized mask-wearing Antifa thugs beat whoever got in the way? Yes, the police we watched tase a woman for not wearing a mask in a stadium and arresting people for singing Christian hymns in a park. The police, who don’t answer calls from people who are being threatened in their homes. Those police.

Ah! the conservative luminaries tell us: the cops really would rather protect us. They don’t want to hurt us. Yes, the police fine us and jail us on behalf of politicians who hate us. Yes, effectively, they are protecting the mobs. But that’s only because they are duty bound to obey the duly constituted authorities who also pay them. They’re just doing their jobs even if they don’t like what they are doing. What should they do, disobey orders and get fired? So, let’s give them more money and more power.

The more we think about that, the more we realize that this attitude corrupts citizens as well as police. Let us reflect.

Begin by dismissing the idea that serious repression, criminalization of people for their religious and social identity, or for political opposition, can’t happen in America. It is happening. And it is sure to get a lot worse because the people in charge of the permanent government, the media, and corporate entities, increasingly are united in making it happen. More so than just about anywhere, ever.

And that includes Germany in the 1930s.

We have already experienced that, unlike even in Nazi Germany—and much like in the Soviet Union, China, etc.—the farther up the ordinary citizen looks in the hierarchy of the American ruling class, the more likely one is to find all manner of corruption and enmity. Dangerous to our health and liberties as the police and judicial system of California may be, the FBI and the Department of Justice are worse.

What then shall we do with and about the police?

He has some ideas about that, and you must read them.

Mask on, mask (never) off

Posted on October 22, 2020October 22, 2020 by Mike

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.

The grifter class

Posted on October 18, 2020October 18, 2020 by Mike

The crooks are in charge of the jailhouse.

Hunter’s family is his only asset. How else did someone with no special skills manage to collect such huge payments from foreign companies with deep interests in US policy? He has no knowledge of Ukraine or China, no experience in energy or banking, and a crack pipe full of personal problems. So, how exactly did he get rich?

For that matter, how the hell did Joe get rich? Or hapless Nevada real-estate failure Harry Reid? Or Obama, the “community organizer” who never did a second’s worth of productive labor his entire life? Or Stretch Pelosi? John Dingell? Or any of thousands of other Career Politican slimewads, from all across this once-great nation?

Last I looked, a US Senator makes (not “earns,” mind you) 200 grand a year. The POTUS gets 400k. That might be the stuff of wistful dreams for those of us who have to spend the closing days of every month choosing which bills they’ll be able to pay and which they’re going to have to skip this pay-period. But given Morder On The Potomac living expenses, along with the requirement that Congresscreatures maintain some sort of pied a terre in whatever state they pretend to hail from to be eligible to run for office, it still does NOT add up to leaving that cushy DC sinecure a multi-multi-multi millionaire. No way. The math just doesn’t work. No matter how you slice it, it’s still baloney.

And yet. There is no further evidence needed to show just how badly out of whack and off the rails the Amerika v2.0 system of government really is than the simple fact that so very many of the amoral, conscience-free arachnoids among us disdain True Crime as a profession to instead go into “public service” (HA!) with one purpose in mind, and one only: to get stinkin’ rich.

I hasten to add that there ain’t a damned thing in the world wrong with getting rich, despite how strenuously the Church Ladies of the Left preach a different gospel. Nor should any Real American have a problem with anyone harboring ambitions towards same. But ain’t it funny how every last one of these Demo-Marxist Swamp critters—all of them comfortably afloat themselves on a mighty sea of decidedly ill-gotten personal liquidity—spends so many of their “working” hours passionately denouncing “capitalist greed”; the “heartlessness” of free-market economics; the corruption of Big Business.

And all the while, these virtuous souls are also piously extolling the dire need to palliate the brutality by exorbitantly hiking taxes on “the wealthy”; zealously over-regulating all private businesses, both great and small; and advocating the “equality” and “fairness” of some form of barely-disguised Marxism, of all things. Inexplicably, the Savior Left carefully avoid any mention of how the self-same Proles they copiously weep crocodile tears over consistently fare whenever their self-proclaimed betters have finally contrived to bring those unfortunates under the grinding, bloody heel of it.

Should you or anyone else try to helpfully correct the oversight and stimulate discussion by bringing such a distasteful subject up yourselves, you might just get shot in one of their “mostly peaceful” riots or run over or maybe Arkancided, depending on what’s most convenient. Then there’s doxxing, SWATting, hounding you out of gainful employment forever, and wee-hours bullhorn-wielding mobs on your front lawn issuing threats of violent retaliation, starting random fires, shitting all over the begonias, and generally despoiling the neighborhood.

At the very least, you’ll never be posting another goddamned thing on Twatter or Fakeblecch again, you evil fascist Nazi.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the answer. Joe Biden himself could figure it out. The money was meant to open doors in the Obama administration and potentially a future Biden one. It was meant to inform mid-level US bureaucrats and diplomats that these companies had very powerful connections. The message: your bosses will be happy if you meet with these fine folks and even happier if you can help them.

These damning facts were well known before the New York Post published its latest cache of documents, supposedly to and from Hunter Biden. (The word ‘supposedly’ is used here since the documents must be verified.) What’s new about these documents is their avalanche of details, their list of additional companies and specific executives, and the scale of payments, some which were simply for Hunter making ‘introductions’.

The logic here is simple: outsiders purchase access and influence from insiders who sell it. That has long been the story of Washington lobbying and revolving-door politics, which grows in tandem with the size and scope of the federal government. Economists call it ‘rent-seeking behavior’.

The Clinton Foundation set a new standard for this rent-seeking. Its scale was unprecedented, and so was the cleverness of making it a tax-deductible charity. It worked smoothly when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and the favorite to succeed Barack Obama. How do we know the money funneled to the Foundation and the Clintons personally was designed to buy access and influence? Because it all dried up after Hillary lost. As politicians in the old Chicago Machine used to say, ‘don’t back no losers.’

It is easy enough to see this as corruption, pure and simple. That’s because it is. The recipients are grifters, even though they wear Hermès scarves and ties. They are paid by companies seeking influence in government and the profits associated with it. This is Washington’s Circle of Life. Trump calls it ‘the Swamp’. Retired politicians and generals call it a living.

“Easy enough” to see it? Only a willfully blind man or a pure-tee dumbass could possibly miss it. Read the whole thing, depressing and maddening though it surely is.

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

Posted on October 17, 2020October 17, 2020 by Mike

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.

Settling the accounts

Posted on October 14, 2020October 14, 2020 by Mike

Malpractice.

So, now that we know lockdowns have prompted an international tragedy comparable only to miseries suffered in times of war, and that almost none of it was warranted, who pays?

Three guesses, first two don’t etc.

Will the unrepentant taskmasters of “social distancing” be forced to defend this disastrous Stone Age-era approach to a world in despair? How can small business owners in states demolished by capricious decrees imposed by power-hungry governors seek recompense?

Who will ask Anthony Fauci or Deborah Birx to step away from the media spotlight long enough to witness first-hand the dystopian climate their guidance has created on desperate college campuses or the empty hallways in high schools or vacant kindergarten classrooms?

Wrong question. The right one: why the hell does either of them still have a job?

Fauci, after all, again this week bragged that he advised the president back in March to “shut the country down.” His only regret is that the country wasn’t shut down “completely.”

But Fauci isn’t living with the repercussions of his wrongheaded advice. To the contrary, he still receives fawning media coverage and now is embroiled in a battle with Team Trump over the use of his comments in a campaign ad. Ironically, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an editorial on Tuesday, Trump might lose the election because the president “listened to Dr. Fauci too much on lockdowns.”

Birx just warned that holiday family gatherings might be iced as she pondered aloud “how to bring that safety into the household.”

The “science!” and the experts we heeded in a moment of crisis turned out to be dead wrong; the world will suffer the aftermath for years to come. And their legions of victims deserve answers and accountability or, at the very least, an apology.

Quoth Judge Smails:

How a nation was lost

Posted on October 13, 2020October 13, 2020 by Mike

In case anybody out there isn’t up to speed already.

You may have heard the terms “Cultural Marxism,” “Critical Theory” or “Frankfurt School” bandied about. And while you might have an intuitive approximation of what these terms mean for America in the 21st century, there’s a good chance that you don’t know much about the deep theory, where the ideology comes from and what it has planned for America – and the world.

The underlying theory here is a variant of Marxism, pioneered by early-20th-century Italian Marxist politician and linguist Antonio Gramsci. Gramscian Marxism is a radical departure from Classical Marxism. One does not need to endorse the Classical Marxism of Marx, Engels and others to appreciate the significant differences between the two. He is easily the most influential thinker that you have never heard of.

Whereas Classical Marxism located what has been called “the revolutionary subject” (the people who will overthrow capitalism and usher in socialism) within the broad working class, primarily in what is now the First World, Gramscism takes a very different approach. This approach underpins most of the social unrest that is gripping America and the West today. In a sense, we are living through the endgame of a Gramscian revolution.

There are two important diversions that Gramscism has from more traditional Marxist thought: First, that economics was the base of culture and politics. Second, philosophical materialism in the Marxist sense where reality is effectively formed by the means of economic production.

For Gramsci, culture was more important than either economics or politics. This was what needed to be changed for there to be a revolution. As such, the weapon to be used for revolution was not the economic might of an organized working class, but a “long march through the institutions” (a phrase actually coined by German Marxist Rudi Dutschke), whereby every institution in the West would be subverted through penetration and infiltration.

I’ve said it many times, and I’ll keep right on saying it: Gramsci was a damned genius, albeit a diabolical one. Marx’s original idea was that Communism was a historical inevitability, an evolutionary transition that would lead to a bottom-up eruption of revolutionary violence sparked by the Proletariat’s frustration and fury over having been used and abused by the Bourgeoisie for long enough to have gotten themselves a solid bellyful of it.

Gramsci, on the other hand, held that such a revolution was unlikely—particularly in the West, where general prosperity and the lassitude of relative contentment would tend to dull the Workers’ passion for any bloody, bothersome overthrow. Instead, in successful Western nations a Marxist state is far more likely to be brought into being through a slow, patient process of incrementalist takeover of the cultural institutions—the arts, entertainment, and news media, and most especially the schools and universities—followed by thorough brainwashing of the benighted Sheeple via said institutions. Gramsci’s divergence from Marxism v1.0 was nothing short of brilliant; certainly, the results speak for themselves.

This is a long ‘un, and quite ably covers one hell of a lot of ground. In fact, it’s good enough that I immediately bookmarked it myself for future use as reference material; no matter how well-versed you may be in this stuff, I’d bet nearly everyone will find something here they didn’t already know. Originally put up by our friends at Ammo.com, this one is strongly recommended reading. Many thanks to the good folks at AP for re-posting it, and to WRSA for kindly bringing it to our attention.

Liberty not defended is liberty lost

Posted on October 9, 2020October 10, 2020 by Mike

This. This right here. X eleventymillionbajilliongazillionkadillion.

I am so grateful that President Trump is on the mend. As Mark pointed out last week on The Mark Steyn Show, the Chinese coronavirus has actually affected the leaders of three out of seven G-7 countries: Boris Johnson, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau (wife of PM Justin Trudeau) and now President and Melania Trump. That’s a very worrisome number. Without firing a single shot, the evil Chinese government has directly threatened the lives of our leaders, all the while murdering hundreds of thousands of innocents with their repulsive biological warfare.

As Mark put it, the virus (whether it was lab or wet-market born doesn’t matter) is a declaration of war. It is cowardly, ridiculous and pathetic that after almost seven months, we still aren’t discussing this seriously. In fact, the only things we in the West have been taking seriously are the disgusting, totalitarian, Chinese-inspired lockdown policies. We are destroying our lives for nothing. We are ignoring the New Cold War at our peril.

Every single person needs to reject “the new normal”. It’s the “new normal” of Communist China, terrorizing citizens and attempting to regulate everything about our lives, including the bits of food that we chew in our mouths. It’s repulsive.

Demand the regular normal. Every one of us mad about this needs to force our leaders to accept that terrorizing us about “cases” – and not hospitalizations and deaths – cannot go on. “Hospitalizations and deaths are the proper measure.” They must also be forced to admit and act on the fact that there is another way to manage this.

As has been widely documented, the “cure” (and it is certainly not a cure) is worse than the disease. We must, as President Trump rightly and bravely advised, stop living in fear, because it’s no way to live. We must focus our efforts on turning the tide of submissive, “safetyism” and understand that in addition to the physical ailments it causes, the Wuhan Chinese Communist Coronavirus has a very dangerous and deep ideological payload. That’s what we are up against. Are you up for the fight? The November election is a big part of this fight and we need to win. As Mark quoted Rush Limbaugh: there is no plan B.

No, there really isn’t. But as things continue to go ever more pear-shaped with every passing day, it becomes more and more apparent that the 2020 election, that ANY election, is not going to fix this. Laura links to a thread by the brilliant John Hayward, whose self-ghettoization to the Twitter shitpit—rather than carrying on with the longer-form blog posts he started out with back in his Doc Zero days—frustrates the hell outta me, blast it. Happily, though, there’s always good ol’ Threadreader to help me cope with that annoyance.

The Wuhan coronavirus carries a heavy ideological payload of conformity and submission to authority. The Chinese are aggressively using it to promote their model of fascism. Others of an authoritarian bent are making political use of it as well.

The basic idea that the virus is a form of divine punishment for failing to implement and obey the “right” policies is clearly false – there are far too many case surges in places that did everything “right” – but it’s irresistible for believers in centralized authority.

It also has some appeal to the public, because they want a frightening and confusing epidemic to be made simpler. Do X, Y, and Z and you won’t get the virus; if you got the virus, you must have failed to do X, Y, and Z. It’s comforting because it’s simpler than the truth.

This is a very old compulsion, going all the way back to using supernatural mythology to explain the weather and natural disasters. Please the gods and there will be no famine; if there is famine, you must have displeased the gods. We hunger for simplicity and assurance.

The inherent problem with such ways of thinking is they invite mob psychosis. People who think famine was caused by displeasing the gods become violently angry at suggestions to the contrary. Those who profit from the enforced belief system will eagerly fan the flames of anger.

The enforced belief system quickly acquires heavy moral overtones. Obedience is righteous; disobedience is sinful and evil. Debates become one-sided crusades. Information that contradicts the simplified, moralistic belief system is suppressed.

Human beings have a great appetite for living this way. It’s not entirely irrational. People working hard to provide for their families just want to know a simple formula for living safely, a clear set of procedures they can follow to make everything be okay.

The coronavirus is dangerously useful to people who want to create fusions of ideology and morality, people who seek to forcibly restore faith in authority after it fell to an all-time low, and those who assert the superiority of centralized control over individual freedoms.

In truth, the big advantages authoritarians have in such a crisis is their callous disregard for individual lives and their ability to lie without consequence. China was trapping sick people in their homes by welding the doors shut. They quarantined cities bigger than New York.

And of course they constantly lie about how many cases and deaths they really had, and even though everyone knows they’re lying, everyone implicitly treats the lies as truth by only comparing more honest and open societies in their “worst coronavirus responses” analysis.

You really don’t want to live under any of the authoritarian regimes that claim to have done a bang-up job of handling the coronavirus. Even if their claims were true – and they aren’t – you wouldn’t want to live through the measures they imposed on outbreak areas.

What the coronavirus DID reveal in many Western societies was bureaucratic sclerosis, bloated agencies that forgot about their core missions, hyper-politicization, and media-driven panicky stampedes. We should address those problems without becoming MORE authoritarian.

Indeed we should have. Alas, that ship left the dock and floated off beyond the visible horizon and away along about, oh, mid-April or thereabouts.

The sad reality is that the only truly “novel” thing about the Novel Coronavirus was the lowing complaisance Americans allowed themselves to collapse into in response to opportunistic and illegitimate official authoritarianism, enabled by what was quickly revealed as a grotesquely-oversold flu bug. Reclaiming any semblance of liberty after such a grievous error will be a long and arduous struggle—assuming such a thing is even possible in the first place, without requiring a surfeit of bloodshed and misery to accomplish it.

Update! The precedent is the problem.

Once whatever challenges Americans face are declared medical emergencies, it now appears they have no constitutional rights. All individual actions can now be controlled by executive fiat. If behavior that runs contrary to the objectives of America’s most powerful establishment institutions can be declared a pathology, the inconvenience of due process can be discarded. They’ll just put you in an asylum and throw away the key. They’ll lock you down. They’ll tell you where you can go, who you can see, what products you can consume, and what content you can watch.

Anyone who doubts this need only consider the events of the past nine months. A two-week “lockdown” to “slow the spread” has turned into a catastrophic shutdown with no end in sight. The entire nation has been turned into a medically supervised asylum as corporate elites mop up what’s left of independent businesses. Whatever chances America ever had of crawling out of debt have been drowned by trillions in new federal borrowing. Life in America may never be the same again.

The scariest thing about this medical usurpation of the constitutional rights of Americans is the precedent it has set. One may argue forever over whether or not the COVID-19 virus required this level of lockdown, but at least it was a virus. At least it was a genuine medical challenge. If this virus didn’t actually merit these measures, perhaps the next one will. But what if any agenda of social control can be medicalized?

Medicalization of political issues is sort of like the liberal rhetoric of compassion but more potent. It provides a powerful tool for self-aggrandizing opportunists, in an irony that utterly escapes rank and file liberals. For example, low-income multi-family housing, imposed scattershot into neighborhoods that were previously 100 percent single-family homes, offers financial windfalls to tax-subsidized investors. But now the hard-working residents who just want the people they live around to pay the same prices they did, and make the same sacrifices they did, aren’t just personally defamed as racists. Now they’re said to be suffering from a collective pathology. The cure, demanded because this is a health emergency, will undermine if not virtually erase their standing in court to object. Investors get rich. Residents get ruined. Racism is supposedly cured.

The Soviet Union also redefined dissent as pathology, ie, a mental disorder. PRO TIP: that is not a coincidence.

The “climate emergency” is also moving swiftly towards being defined as a health emergency, with all the streamlining of process and obliteration of constitutional rights inherent in such a declaration. It isn’t hard to see where this is going: micromanagement of virtually everything people do. To justify this, America’s elites, looking down from lofty heights, see a nation with a pathological need to overindulge in resource consumption. Sustainable options abound to address potential resource scarcity—clean natural gas, nuclear power, biomass conversion, hydropower, indoor agriculture, desalination, and eventually, commercial fusion. And of course, mass immigration is not inevitable, it’s a policy choice. More resources, slower population growth. Problem solved. But these options don’t allow opportunistic special interests to make more profit. They don’t allow America’s establishment elites to amass more power.

Everything put in place to combat the COVID pandemic is furthering the creation of a medical slave state. A medical emergency was declared, everyone was told to go on lockdown, and with fitful exceptions, everyone went on lockdown. The population is now desensitized to the term “lockdown.” That a medical emergency can erase constitutional rights is now a fact, not conjecture. And the technology of surveillance and control has taken a giant leap forward with contact tracing, facial recognition, the inevitable tiers of privileges that will be attendant to individual vaccination status, and the fact that the American people, by and large, accept this.

And THAT RIGHT THERE is our biggest problem of all—one that may prove to be insuperable, and ultimately lead to our undoing.

President Trump, on three critical issues—the pandemic, systemic racism, and climate change—has been a consistent voice of common sense. This fact, that Trump opposes alarmist overreaction to these issues, and without fear or hesitation exposes the hidden agendas behind the overreaction, is the real reason he is bitterly opposed by every establishment institution in America. President Trump is one of America’s last hopes to reverse the permanent medicalization of public policy, bypassing the constitution.

No one man can reverse all this, and none but a fool would hope for such. Wiser heads always recognized that Trump could only stave off the crisis temporarily, thereby providing a brief opportunity to brace ourselves for the coming firestorm.

FUD update! Fear is a weapon, and a mighty one at that. But it cannot be successfully wielded without the permission of those under its sway.

Democrats champion masks because masks acknowledge the rule of fear. They’re symbols of subordination and surrender — yes, subordination to fear of a germ, and surrender of rights and freedoms. In this scheme, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are to be scrapped in favor of contentment with security — however illusory — under the watchful eye and guiding hand of corporatist big government, which, of course, is to be led by the cabal that Biden fronts.

You see, fear is a means. It’s a weapon in the hands of Democrats. The mainstream media are eager henchmen. Power lust drives Democrats to use fear to gain what they covet. A virus, like a crisis, isn’t to be wasted. A contagion that helps manufacture a crisis is too tempting to pass up. Exacerbating fears, and full-on exploitation of whatever may stress the human spirit, are practically trademarked by cynical Democrats.

Fear has always been an ally to tyrants, whatever the stripe. How dreary that fact, and how tragic the history of the last century, in particular. Red terrors, pogroms, Kristallnacht, and Cultural Revolutions are the dramatic manifestations of weaponized fear. But there are more mundane applications of fear. With learning, experience, and advancements, tyrants are honing the means.

Tyranny is showing a blander face nowadays. Stalin’s stern look and Hitler’s glowering expression have given way to the corporate cool of Xi Jingping or the facelessness of U.S. corporate, sports, and education leaders who operate in a loose confederacy to impose “progressive” orthodoxy. Or via the checked-out expression of the Democrats propped up standard-bearer.

Submit and behave well, admonish today’s autocrats, or you won’t have a job, your reputation will be trashed, and your kids won’t have a future. Sound familiar? What other is cancel culture, now being practiced on these shores? A kid with a MAGA cap, Nick Sandmann, can attest to news outlets eagerness to destroy his future. How many Americans do their jobs in silence, dreading that one remark, one act of independence, can cost them their incomes?

Cancel culture is no more than a stop on the road to a greater smothering of rights and liberty.

He reels off another good line towards the end: “Courage is requisite to freedom.” Yes indeed. T’was ever thus, and ever shall be.

Hotting up

Posted on October 8, 2020October 9, 2020 by Mike

It’s about fucking time.

Federal agents said Thursday they thwarted a plot to violently overthrow the government as well as kidnap and harm Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — a conspiracy that included visits to her home in northern Michigan and training with firearms and explosive devices.

The alleged plot mainly involved six conspirators unhappy in part about Whitmer’s coronavirus restrictions, calling her a “tyrant.” They wanted to create a “self-sufficient” society free from they called unconstitutional state governments and discussed plans to storm the Capitol and take hostages, according to FBI documents filed in court.

Organizers allegedly met starting in June, including at a Second Amendment rally in Lansing and in a Grand Rapids shop basement accessed through a secret door hidden under a rug.

The plot also included at least seven members of a Michigan militia known as the Wolverine Watchmen accused by state officials on Thursday of targeting police, making threats to “instigate civil war” and helping to plan Whitmer’s kidnapping, according to state and federal officials.

The militiamen are, of course, correct: Whitler IS a tyrant, plain and simple. If there’d been any doubt about that before she brazenly declared her intention to defy a Michigan Supreme ruling officially confirming her tyrant-straight-up status, there damned sure can’t be any now.

The federal court filing alleges the conspirators twice conducted surveillance at Whitmer’s personal vacation home in northern Michigan and discussed kidnapping her to a “secure location” in Wisconsin to stand “trial” for treason prior to the Nov. 3 election.

“Several members talked about murdering ‘tyrants’ or ‘taking’ a sitting governor,” an FBI agent wrote in the affidavit. “The group decided they needed to increase their numbers and encouraged each other to talk to their neighbors and spread their message.”

If they’re tyrants, it ain’t murder. It’s no more than justice—a concept to which “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” to borrow a pertinent phrase, has rendered all too many Americans insensible.

After the charges were revealed, Whitmer slammed President Donald Trump for failing to condemn in strong enough terms hate groups, such as the far-right Proud Boys, whom he told to “stand back and stand by” during the debate last week.

“Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry, a call to action,” the Democratic governor said.

Yeah, fuck you too. Here’s hoping we’ll eventually learn whether you can sing that same skrawky tune of yours with a nice, stout length of hemp around your neck, bitch.

She also warned those who threatened violence: “We will find you, we will hold you accountable and we will bring you to justice.”

Not if the Wolverine Watchmen, God bless ’em each and every one, catch up with your malignant ass first you won’t. On that most frabjous of days, you’ll get a long-overdue schooling on what “accountability” and “justice” REALLY mean, or did before you and a whole sorry pantload of other evil bureau-rats warped and perverted those fine words beyond any real meaning. And just in case anyone out there has any concerns about the propriety or morality of such seemingly radical steps as these, may I remind one and all:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Seems clear enough to me.

Incongruous update! Well, that got weird awful quick.

Several media outlets, including the New York Times and the UK Daily Mail have attempted to cast the individuals as “right-wing” and “Trump supporters,” but at least one suspect, Brandon Caserta, held views more nuanced than that.

Breitbart News reviewed Caserta’s Facebook profile shortly before it was deleted.

In several YouTube videos, Caserta opined about rights and the illegitimacy of government.

“The Constitution is illegitimate,” he said in one posted on May 16, 2020, which was removed after Caserta’s account was terminated.

“Authority doesn’t exist, dude,” Caserta said, seated in front of an anarchist flag, “and, like, the law doesn’t exist.”

Other videos, including some Breitbart News reviewed on Caserta’s Facebook page prior to deletion, the suspect criticized the police, calling them “obedient order-followers.”

Hmmmm. FBI false-flag op, perhaps?

Something rotten update! Stinky, hinky, not on the up and up.

At least two of the six people indicted on Thursday were not right-wing militia members, Trump supporters, or Proud Boys, as Whitmer irresponsibly represented. According to information coming out on Thursday evening, one of the ring leaders of the plot is a leftist insurrectionist anarchist who hates President Trump. Another, Pete Musico, shares the same philosophy.

It makes you wonder what else do we not know about these Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Case Daniel Harris, Brandon Caserta, and others up on state charges in Michigan.

Producer Robby Starbuck, Reddit, and probably 4Chan went to work to trace back the social media breadcrumbs left behind by the feds, who likely “disappeared” most of the social media footprints of the men who’d been charged.

Either the Michigan militia boys need to tighten up their recruitment and security sharp-ish, or that’s the cold, ghostly hand of a false-flag op I feel on my shoulder all of a sudden.

The tyranny of fear

Posted on October 7, 2020October 7, 2020 by Mike

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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