LOSING! – Page 20

The era of cynicism

Posted on November 24, 2020November 24, 2020 by Mike

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

Posted on November 24, 2020November 24, 2020 by Mike

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.

A matter of trust

Posted on November 12, 2020November 12, 2020 by Mike

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.

“Unite” this

Posted on November 12, 2020November 12, 2020 by Mike

It ought to happen, and it ought to be only the beginning of what happens. But it won’t.

With the media, establishment Republicans and Democrats calling for Americans to “unite” around the so-called “President-Elect,” Levin issued a scathing retort, “I’m part of the new resistance, God forbid if our president doesn’t win…I am not uniting around [Biden] any more than they united around our man.”

Levin is right on target. If Biden assumes the White House under these questionable circumstances, he should receive the same treatment from conservatives and Republicans that President Trump received from his multitude of political opponents. A political resistance should be launched against Biden and all the crooked forces that supported him.

Trump was not given a moment’s rest during his tenure. There was no honeymoon, no bipartisanship, and no acceptance of his presidency from his opposition. He endured coup attempts, a bogus impeachment, a Covid-19 hysteria designed to harm the economy and a fraudulent election process that resulted in millions of unsolicited ballots being mailed across the country.

Possibly, the enemies of the president have defeated him with this latest ruse, but his supporters must never forget what he had to undergo. It is only right and just that a President Biden be treated in precisely the same manner.

I proposed more or less the same thing myself a while back, with one slight difference: not just Biden but any and every Demonrat “president” from here ’til Doomsday should know not a single moment’s peace, respite, or comfort ever again. He should be hounded brutally and without mercy by every Republican in government, until the accumulated stress causes the douchenozzle to fall over stone dead from a brain aneurysm. For Biden-Harris, for Harris-Biden, and all their successors, the harrassment campaign should officially kick off with an Inauguration Day announcement from House Republicans that impeachment proceedings will begin no later than, oh, say, thirty fucking seconds after the echo of the oath of office’s recitation has faded into the ether.

Henceforth, here should be entire teams of GOP officials beavering away at nothing other than finding all the ways in which a Demonrat (p)Resident might be hopelessly bedeviled. Should any member of said teams evince any sign of discomfort or pangs of conscience over the Demonrat’s hellish ordeal, he would be dismissed without prejudice, warming the pines at least until he gets his mind right again, to be replaced by a less squeamish Inquisitor who has his heart more fully in the game.

Then, after Team Torquemada finally drives “President” Fuzznuts to keel over in his cornflakes, the “State funeral” will include a procession of Repubs gathering ’round to poke the corpse with sharp sticks, piss over it, drag it around the White House grounds by the wrists, and such-like abuse, until the mouldering carcass finally crumbles into a gooey, revolting mess. The pile of offal can then be wheelbarrowed out to the verymost edge of the White House grounds and dumped there without further ceremony or regard. Hey, crows and buzzards gotta eat too, y’know.

But like I said, it won’t happen, and we all know it. Not because the GOPe lacks either guts or smarts, as so many like to complain about when Vichy Repubs “accidentally” screw the pooch yet again. Nor is it because of any lack of commitment on their part; they’re just committed as all get out, and have demonstrated so all too many times in their battles with Trump. No, it’s because their commitment is exclusively to something diametrically opposite to what they falsely claim it is, that’s all.

I’d dearly love to be proved wrong about this, just as I dearly wish I’d trip over a sack full of thousand dollar bills on the sidewalk tomorrow afternoon. With McConnell, Graham, and other Repugnican swine already expressing their eagerness to “work with” “President-elect Biden” after a “peaceful transition of power,” I’m way more confident about the odds on the latter coming to pass than the former, alas.

Update! The good Rabbi Fischer has your fucking “unity”—swinging.

It is the clarion call, the siren call, from the Democrat-Media-Left Alliance: “Think of the good of the country. Now is a time for healing. Stop investigating ballot fraud. What we need now is unity.”

You want unity? That’s fair. We will give you unity:

1. In unity with you, we will follow your example of the past four years and deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election for the next four years.

2. In unity with you, we will follow your example of the past four years and investigate the Biden family’s every business dealing at home and abroad.

3. In unity with you, we will follow your example of the past four years and question Biden’s mental fitness to hold office.

4. In unity with you, we will follow your example of the past four years and question Biden’s physical fitness to hold office.

5. In unity with you, we will follow your example of the past four years and blame Biden for every person who dies from the coronavirus.

6. In unity with you, we will follow your example of the past four years and blame Biden personally for every Black person who is shot anywhere in America.

7. In unity with you, we will follow your example of the past four years and never stop publicizing that Biden has been accused of grabbing a woman’s crotch against her will.

8. In unity with you, we will follow your example of the past four years and emphasize that, any time a woman makes a claim of sexual harassment against Biden, she must be believed.

9. In unity with you, we will follow your example of the past four years and continue publicizing that Kamala Harris, like Evita Perón, slept her way into public life…

…Al Gore fought and denied the 2000 results for more than a month and litigated all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. So in unity with you, we pledge to follow your example of litigating the results as far and as high as the courts permit. Unity is a good thing. It binds us as one American people, tied together in pursuit of a common cause, a shared purpose. We already are learning to think identically. We even have ordered our reams of paper to tear in halves at the next State of the Union address. The healing already has begun. We look forward to continuing this healing for the next four years — at least. How could we…Resist?

Several more between my ellipses, all of which add up to some “unity” I could REALLY get behind.

The “glitch” ain’t a glitch

Posted on November 9, 2020November 9, 2020 by Mike

A feature, not a bug.

Let’s Be Clear About That Michigan “Computer Glitch”
The computer glitch that was found to have turned 6000 Trump votes into Biden votes in Michigan. Software that’s used in 47 other Michigan counties, not to mention pretty much all the states with miraculous vote changes for Biden.

That was not a computer glitch. That was a programming decision. Whether that was some sort of programming error, which seems highly unlikely, or if it was deliberate cheating I don’t know, but I highly suspect deliberately bad software. Let’s face it; adding integers is just about the easiest thing to get a computer to do (and if you’re thinking of adding votes as floating point numbers, go back to school).

Let’s get one thing clear. Computer “glitches” cause a system to fail, or cause it produce random-looking outputs. They can even possibly reboot the system. If it’s good software, it gives some sort of indication that something bad happened. If it changes the results of a count, or moves it to another candidate that’s something else.

What I’m saying is if the computer “glitched,” it would have done something far more random looking and easier to detect than moving votes from Trump to Biden. That’s no glitch. It’s a software feature.

SiG has been working in this field since the 70s, and knows whereof he speaks. But having been fooling around with these infernal machines for many a long year now myself, and having poked around a fair-ish bit deeply into the innards (back in the Mac’s System 7- thru 9 era, I learned machine language for purposes of GUI customization, among other nefarious activities) of the things, my initial thought upon hearing about the so-called “glitch” was the same as SiG’s: that it was no such thing, merely a ploy based on an assumption of total wet-brained stupidity on pretty much everybody’s part when it comes to how software actually works.

Better throw “coincidences” that are no such damned thing into the mix as well.

This is nuts. And I just read Dominion’s DC lobbyist is Nancy Pelosi’s aide?? https://t.co/TP2mjk1rJn

— Roz al Gulag 🇺🇸 (@PolitiKurd) November 7, 2020

Well whaddya know, a Pelosi connection. How very curious. But I’m sure it’s really nothing, right? Certainly no reason to be at all suspicious or anything. Probably just a one-off thing, right?

Dominion Voting Systems tied to Clintons, widely used in battleground states

Ruh-roh. There goes my youthful doe-eyed innocence, right out the friggin’ window.

Bloomberg reported in April of last year that Dominion Voting Systems hired a high-powered lobbying firm that includes a longtime aide to Pelosi. They hired Brownstein Farber Hyatt & Schreck. Nadeam Elshami, Pelosi’s former chief of staff, is one of the lobbyists on the account.

In 2014, Dominion was listed in the Washington Post table as having donated between $25,001-$50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Anybody out there still kidding themselves that the American election system is still basically sound, instead of rotten from the roots up? If so, may I please have some of what you’re smoking?

I repeat: when all the “mistakes” and “errors” and “glitches”—EVERY GODDAMNED ONE OF THEM SO FAR—only go one way, always to the benefit of one side and never the other—then they are NOT mistakes. They’re part of a plan.

But hey, tell me the one again about how there’s “absolutely no evidence” of fraud, whydon’tcha. That one’s my favorite.

Flight 93 augers in

Posted on November 7, 2020November 7, 2020 by Mike

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.

The King of Thieves claims his crown

Posted on November 7, 2020November 7, 2020 by Mike

An Enemedia coronation.

Just ahead of Trump’s presser in Philly, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the Associated Press and Fox News have all called the election:

Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States, CNN projects, after a victory in the state where he was born put him over the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

The alleged President-elect has allegedly issued a statement:

I am honored and humbled by the trust the American people have placed in me and in Vice President-elect Harris.

In the face of unprecedented obstacles, a record number of Americans voted. Proving once again, that democracy beats deep in the heart of America.

With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation.

It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.

“Unite” under YOUR glorious rule? I hereby pledge that I’ll personally see you in Hell first, motherfucker.

“Joe Biden is a unifier,” says Nancy Pelosi. If that’s so, it seems odd that, in the small number of precincts that decided the election, Democrats needed to steal it.

Animatronic Joe is whatever the grey men behind the curtain wish him to be at any given moment, and will do exactly as he’s told.

As I laid out in this weekend’s Mark Steyn Show, election fraud in American cities has deep roots – far deeper than anywhere else in the west – and everything they’re doing in Philadelphia, for example, they’ve been doing since the nineteenth century. Biden’s biggest margins of victory (why, in some enthusiastic precincts he won 100 per cent of the vote!) are in the old familiar places that surprise no one…In the nation at large, there was a modest red wave – but not in a half-dozen Democrat fiefdoms in purple states that take days to count and whose poll workers suspend counting arbitrarily until new boxes of ballots are delivered at three in the morning. To reprise my Thought for the Day from the late Reverend Canaan Banana of Zimbabwe:

While you were sleeping, we helped ourselves.

Decisively.

Did they ever.

I find it amusing as all get-out that the media—the fucking MEDIA, for Christ’s sake!—has “officially” anointed Biden the “President-elect” before a single state has declared, and well before a single electoral vote will be cast. Even more astounding, both Biden-Harris and Harris-Biden are even now delivering their “victory/acceptance speeches,” as if this whole charade had anything whatsoever to do with either reality or the proper course of the American election process.

This is all just a Democracy Theater production, nothing more. Mark my words: by tomorrow, all Enemedia outlets—most emphatically to include the despicable turncoats at Faux News—will be referring to him as President Biden. He’ll probably have himself sworn in sometime next week, then demand Trump’s removal from the White House so he can move in to commence “doing the work of the American people” without delay.

The idea behind this absurd Kabuki maneuvering is two-fold: first, to benumb Trump supporters into demoralization and despair, leading them to give up the ghost and accept their raw disenfranchisement without further resistance; second, to set things up so that, should his jury-box Hail Mary unexpectedly yield a game-winning touchdown for Team Trump, Shitlib Inc can then shriek to high Heaven that TRUMP STOLE THE ELECTION! rather than them.

Which, admittedly, would take a pair of big brass ones that are orders of magnitude larger than any beheld before on this Earthly plane. Doesn’t matter, though. I mean, when have these vermin ever demonstrated a lack of shamelessness or chutzpah? OF COURSE they’ll do it. You just watch and see if they don’t, I tell ya.

Update! Rudy’s reaction on learning of the Enemedia crowning of Biden is too funny.

… rudy giuliani was giving a press conference when the election was called.

here’s how that went. pic.twitter.com/eGf0023eLi

— fake nick ramsey @ 🏡 (@nick_ramsey) November 7, 2020

Via Hoft.

Treachery never sleeps—or not for long, anyway

Posted on November 7, 2020November 7, 2020 by Mike

The vultures, sensing a freshly-deceased meal, descend.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell anticipates there will be a peaceful transition of power if former Vice President Joe Biden beats President Donald Trump, The Hill reports.

We’ll just see about that, now won’t we?

“Of course,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky when asked about the possible scenario. “We’ve had a peaceful transfer of power going back to 1792, every four years, we’ve moved on to a new administration.”

We have. What we HAVEN’T had before is a Democrat-Socialist attempt to steal an election that was as blatant and audacious as this one.

On Friday, McConnell tweeted that “every legal vote” should be counted and that “all sides must get to observe the process.”

Which they most certainly have not. Got anything to say about that, Yertle? Anything at all?

The Power assumes that everything will now just go straight back to Mordor on the Potomac business as usual, ante Trump. Will Real Americans disabuse them of that arrogant presumption? Only time will tell.

Reaping a most bitter harvest

Posted on November 7, 2020November 7, 2020 by Mike

The consequences of no consequences.

The matrix of interests, parties, and people styling themselves as The Resistance, who tried unsuccessfully to cough up Donald Trump like a hairball for four years, may finally succeed by harvesting the magical crop of mail-in ballots delivered by unicorns in the gathering darkness this post-election week of mathematical wonders.

America walked wide-eyed into this signal institutional failure, the one that lowers us to the level of places in the world where the loincloth is a business suit and the only instrument of persuasion is a machete. The Attorney General, Mr. Barr, warned the country months ago in so many words that mail-in voting would invite massive fraud, and so it has gone, but exactly as predicted, in plain sight, shamelessly.

The Resistance dared to work this operation because there were no consequences to their previous seditions and felonies. Nobody ever answered for the many crimes of RussiaGate (and possibly never will). The lying slattern Christine Blasey Ford slunk back to her cushy life in California with a big GoFundMe bundle after defaming Judge Kavanaugh. Eric Ciaramella and his UkraineGate accomplices, IC Inspector General Michael Atkinson and Col. Alexander Vindman, never even faced an inquiry over their janky scheme. Judge Emmet Sullivan still refuses to follow the DC Circuit order to close the General Flynn case. Rep. Adam Schiff never paid any price for knowingly lying his ass off, nor did The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg are allowed to suppress the news and deform the public conversation because they’re more important than the rest of us, and they know better, too.

No consequences for these actors in a rough and dirty game, but great consequences for the USA — a now lethal loss of faith in the essential fairness of American life and the institutions that were created to insure it. Shame on us for letting it get this far.

Indeed. And there’s no arguing that it is truly on us.

Really, the roots of our current fix can be traced to the 1960s. When normal Americans decided to sit passively back and allow the anti-American Left to use the First Amendment as a tool to destroy them—the self-same Commies, mind, whose seething hatred towards not only the 1A but the Constitution entire was openly and constantly declared—our war was already lost, our fate sealed. The filthy Reds demanded that their Constitutional right to free speech, protest, and dissent be respected even as they schemed to first weaken, then rend, then remove the Constitution entirely.

Everything else, all the dysfunction, depravity, and decay that besets us today, flows from that initial passivity, that collective shrugging of the shoulders. We denied the nature, the very existence, of a self-professed Enemy, Domestic, allowing him to flourish. As a result, he has overwhelmed us.

We overlooked Rule One for dealing with Communists: Thou shalt not suffer a Commie to live. Instead of letting our own principles be weaponized and then turned on us, we should have just been gunning the bastards down in job lots. We made a mistake, a huge and terrible one, when we so completely misread our Founding ideals as to become convinced that honoring them required us to tolerate the vipers breeding in our very midst—deadly, determined, coiling to strike—rather than obliterating them as we should have.

Now we get to pay for that mistake. The loss of our country is only the first installment.

Stop, thief, or you’ll get away!

Posted on November 6, 2020November 6, 2020 by Mike

Can a stolen election be unstolen?

The upshot is that it’s a lot easier to steal something than to unsteal it. And just because the thief is caught, doesn’t mean you’re getting what he stole back.

Republicans and conservatives are fighting on the ground to unsteal the election. This will be the largest such effort in American history. But that doesn’t mean that it will succeed. Stealing an election is a lot easier than unstealing it.

Conservatives often ask about New York, Baltimore, or any deep blue city, why the people there don’t just vote their way out of the problem. Now they’re getting a front row seat to the answer.

You don’t vote your way out of a corrupt rigged system. Cities run by Democrat political machines have meaningless elections in which the winners are picked early on by the network, to be occasionally challenged by lefties in primaries, and then rubber stamped in meaningless elections in which Democrat electioneering material is often illegally there at the polls.

No one wants Philly or New York City to become America. That would be the end of a free nation. And it’s why it’s important to unsteal elections, but even more important to keep them from being stolen.

The two big questions hanging over our heads going forward, even beyond what’s happening now, is how to deal with widespread Big Tech censorship and voter fraud.

Right now conservatives are chasing after the thief. What should also be done to keep elections from being stolen?

Well, right offhand I’d say hanging the fucking thieves by their necks until they’re dead, dead, DEAD might be a pretty good start. But that’s something that really should have been done a long time ago; sad to say, it’s too late for it now.

Lessons

Posted on November 4, 2020November 4, 2020 by Mike

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

Posted on November 4, 2020November 4, 2020 by Mike

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?

Curioser and curioser

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

The fix has never been more in.

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.

The Masked Society

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

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

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?

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