The most impressive intel psyop was convincing the libs into thinking they’re all on team reeeesistance together. Then again the libs aren’t all that bright...
it has long seemed to me that one of the key unifying characteristics of the "progressive" left is an inability to rotate shapes.
"when you do it it's tyranny, but when i do it it's justice!" never seems to seem like hypocrisy to them. they simply cannot see that it's the same thing turned 180 degrees. one might even go so far as to wonder if this inability is WHY they fell for these progressive narratives.
but i would caution on making this into too much of a partisan issue. it most emphatically is NOT and the right has been just as bad on letting and demanding that the "permanent state" take over by taking extra-constitutional power.
recall who created the DHS, the patriot act, and all the roughshod running over civil liberties that entailed.
the problem here is that both sides feed (and now probably serve) this machine.
and elected gov't loses power to the unelected by the day.
do not fall for the "the GOP are good guys/innocent here" narrative. hands are dirty all round and the partisan battles are more puppetshow than war. both sides are seeking to keep the debate and choice constrained and away from where it actually matters.
i'm not always a fan of chomsky, but he nailed this one:
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
keep in mind that the iraq was was extremely popular with both sides when they embarked upon it. the left's purported disapproval is a post facto white wash. they were raging for it. the left has traditionally been the party of war in the US. the neocons were an aberration.
the patriot act passed with near unanimous support as well.
the real damage comes not when the left and right fight, but when they agree.
Since the end of the 80s, at any given time, the Republican Party has at most had around 25 of its elected members who took their Oath of Office seriously. And the neo-fascist totalitarians who drive government have taken virtually full control of the media, so most people only hear about what the Ruling Class want them to hear. I have grave doubts that taking down the "intelligence" agencies is still possible. I fear we have waited far too long.
They aren't letting us go. Thus is one, big, unhappy family.
The California legislature talks about secession from the US, then realizes the entire north part of the state would leave the new nation and the south part would merge with Mexico, leaving the Bay Area, a region with hardly any water or food production, waiting to be starved.
Exactly. After 7 years of Evil W invading the world, not one theater of combat saw a decrease in presence under Obama. And I think 3 new fronts were opened up.
The lynchpin of the whole thing is participation in the system, picking the 'lesser of two evils' so that the other guy doesn't get in. It makes you bought in as surely as a jab in the arm makes you bought in to that Narrative. 'Refuse to support a pig just because he has your colors on' is step one to depigging our country.
Mises has a nice piece on Truman: https://mises.org/library/harry-truman-advancing-revolution who in many ways is the father of the Intelligence State. Within a year of his incorporating the Coup Insurrection Assassination(CIA) they launched their first coup. I know Wilson and FDR were in the same club but the Truman Admin is what firmly set us on this wrong path.
I think the cat's premise about lying eyes and ears is spot on, and it sounds frightening to be without them, but if we stopped making enemies of the world, overthrowing popular governments, feminizing their sons, radicalizing wives and daughters against them, building bioweapons, looting resources, and parking soldiers and sailors in their backyard, we might find the world is a more friendly place and we don't need quite so many shit-stirrers on the payroll as we once thought.
I agree this is beyond party, it's about integrity or not, and both "sides" have fallen for tragic manipulation .. but before /during the Iraq war there was at least a grassroots kind of left, who spoke and wrote and lobbied and marched and did actions against the war ... now most of them believe that, just like trying to keep innocent people across the world safe from the harm of US bombs, their duty is to keep the vulnerable safe from covid. And the way to do that, they still actually think, is to believe everything the CDC ETC says ...
Which one? Well, neither. Both were in fact "bipartisan" efforts. Authorized by congress via specific legislative authorizations supported by both dominant parties (well really I assert there is only one party, with two names to help the divide and conquer tactic going)
What we need is a distributed system of governance in with very limited centralized power, with very specific and well bounded purpose. There are a few things for which the regional governments must work together to achieve, such as providing for a common defense (including establishing and protecting borders), negotiating treaties with other nations, establishing uniform immigration and naturalization processes, and ensuring that land locked states have access to ports (the rational behind "regulate interstate commerce"). We might justify a federal government for these purposes. All other things should be distributed so that local and regional policies can match local and regional needs. Those governments too should be strictly limited and well regulated by the citizens. If we were designing this optimal union of states, we'd also make it very clear that all powers originate with the people, and except as explicitly authorized by the people, powers are retained by the people. Then we'd establish a power hierarchy with the people at the top, the states in the middle, and the federal government at the bottom. We would put in some checks and balance by creating three branches of government, one to legislate, one to execute, and one to oversee that the other two follow the rules. We would divide further the legislative part into two sub-parts, one in which each state had equal representation and one in which representation was proportional to a state's population, so that smaller less dense states would not become dominated by the fewer but more densely populated states. Because we would require that both sub-parts would be required to agree to any new law or action of substance, and further, the executive branch would have veto power over the combined legislature - but we'd include a means for override of an executive veto in the event both sub-parts of the legislative part had very strong consensus (say maybe 2/3rds or 3/4ths). Given that we'd need multiple places to house these different parts of government, we might call each sub-part of the legislature "houses" and even define a "house" for the executive part.
We might also recognize that centralization of power is very dangerous, and especially the concentration of power through accumulated armories needed to provide for a common defense. We would recognize that open debate, via public and private assembly, was essential to keep control of this government, and prohibit it from limiting such. If we learned from the experience of the past, we would certainly, especially if we had recent experience with abuses of governmental power used to suppress such a peaceful redress of grievances, that the we'd need a safeguard against our governments that we created from forgetting their power rightfully originates form us, the people, and using the superior forces and armament assembled for our common defense, to suppress opposition. To guard against such powers being used against us, the people, we would surely see that the ultimate regulation of such a force requires the people to to have the arms with which to defend against such abuses and attacks. If we had some really smart guys working on this, one might even say in open debate that "peaceful redress can only succeed when there is the present threat of an armed citizenry" and we might call that dude a catchy name like Thomas.
Ah but if only we had a document that captured these lofty concepts, and enumerated the powers, duties and limitations we the people bestowed upon such a government. If only....
Slow down there, Mussolini, are you insane? What you're proposing here is a threat to democracy, almost sounds like an insurrection. Where is this crazy talk coming from?
Much of what is happening in our government is unconstitutional and the corruption runs so deep as the only thing that will remedy it. The difficult part is doing it.
The first question I would think all people should ask themselves is:
"can i assess and verify the level of manipulation on myself?"
This tabletop exercise for yourself is quickly turning into a losing exhibition. Without some verification and trust method somewhere there is virtually(literal) no solution. That is the biggest problem we are facing as a species increasingly living in a digital world and a disconnect from the input of the physical world we were born into.
True. But we can (at least for now) verify some things. Such as look at who voted for what in Congress. But then, there's a lot besides votes that happens in congress and doesn't make it into the record. But there is a lot there.
To use my analogy, with a brain tumor, you don't know if what your brain records is what your eyes see or what is really out there. Once the tumor takes hold of the sensory centers, you can't trust any of your senses. It's worse than blindness, as the tumor provides false images (and sounds and smells).
It is a good question. The first answer to that is...for whatever it is I believe in, is there at least one other point of view, or the other side of the story. One of the first things you get to understand after awhile is that if there isn't a dissenting voice, then chances are you are being manipulated and coerced in a certain direction. A cousin to that is to present the appearance of an alternative view, but it has to be a caricature.
Mom used to say the only time you won't get an argument is when you're talking to yourself, and even then, it's not assured!
Another wise person once said to see who would rule over you, look at who cannot be questioned. Extend that to "what" cannot be questioned and you have a pretty good indication of purpose.
Maybe it's easier once you get into an echo chamber, but even then among us who agree on things, we have disagreements. For instance, someone responded to my assertion that a policy was a ridiculous one said in response "no, it's not ridiculous, it was adopted by multiple countries." That doesn't make a policy any less ridiculous.
Of course we can disagree. If we are having a reasoned discussion, at least. That's how you can tell a discussion from a sermon or politics :-).
My mom's point was that you should challenge your own ideas and opinions, and if you really think it may lead you to modify those opinions. That's what smart people do, she would say. Which is different from the people who think they are smarter than everyone else ;-)
Since ww2 the deep state always resided in the Rep party. Until their puppet Obama. When they realized how naive and gullible Dem voters were (obama totally neutered the dem antiwar, antinsa surveillance movements) they moved in wholesale. Its like a cult, the voters think they live in Mr Rogers Neighborhood where grownups never lie while the dem elite are anti democracy gangsters who lie, cheat, and steal.
Not true. The Dem party controlled congress perpetually and the presidency half the time from '45 until Gingrich in '94. The deep state developed under Dem administrations during WWII and Truman, solidified under the soft Rep presidency of Eisenhower, and grew into a robust, aggressive teenager under Kennedy and Johnson, at that point it was unstoppable. It's not Dem vs. Rep, it's the uniparty grift vs. the people.
Actually, Truman and especially Lyndon Johnson, were responsible for the unimpeded rise of the "intelligence" agencies and stealth socialism/totalitarianism disguised as the Great Society. The resistance to the Vietnam debacle was the excuse for a massive increase in spying on the American public.
Rand is still in the senate and continues to be the outsider. The GOP has tried to defeat him every run but failed and essentially shuts him down in the senate. I have renewed respect for the voters in Kentucky each time they reelect Rand. He's not always right, but he's always interesting. He does things like talk for an hour about why the senate should abide by the rules, instead of suspending the rules every session. Remember, the senate makes their own rules so it's not like the rules can't be aligned with whatever the F they want to do...but they don't. They continuously suspend the rules instead. Like the rule that says members must have at least 48 hours to review a bill prior to a vote - like that's unreasonable!
Ike saw this coming. Except he didn't appreciate the scale. He thought it was the Military-Industrial complex. Didn't realize that it would be the entire intelligence community.
It is only hypocrisy of you first assume that "the left" and you use the same metrics and definitions, and that one of those is that one should use the same such.
If you instead put one of your values as "It's wrong when they do it" (for a given definition of "they" of course), there's no hypocrisy at all.
It is to be frank rather naïve to think that all people needs must use the same set of moral, ethical, or other definitons even on the epistemological or ontological level.
There is always a framework of rationale around every action/reaction.
If you assume a position that all humans have the same basic unalienable rights by dint of belonging to the species, you will wind up with unnumerable unsolvable logical paradoxes, because for all humans to be viewed as having the above rights, they must also share the same basic fundamental belief-system (which your founding fathers did, hence why they put that in).
And where do we recognise that idea? In post-Enlightenment ideologies and ideals such as classic liberalism, laissez faire-capitalism, the ideals of the French and American Revolutions, the Russian Revolution, Marxism and Communism. All these share the presupposition that all of the humansare so similar they also have the same rights, dignities and responsibilities vis-a-vis one another.
And today with the globalists. To them it is not important if there's a comanche, a mexican, dutch-descended WASP, korean or moslem arab family living in Suburbia, as long as they perform their function as producers/consumers.
Any intrinsic value in belonging to a specific people is anathema to all those ideologies.
And as "the left", which really is a total misnomer but will do for shorthand since we all know what tribe is referred to, segregate and discrimate people into [Allies], [Tools], [Prey] and [Enemies] - are they hypocrites?
Accoding to you (and me), yes they are because what they and practice doesn't gel. But according to themselves they are not, since they have a rationale in place to handle the apparent paradox.
And as I said, that is something which all schools of thought have, always has had and always will: no model of reality can account for all of reality without being a 1:1 replica of reality.
Chomsky's been decent with some intellectual observations over the years. Note, though, that when it comes to his 'anarchism' he never once actually did anything for such a cause other than write books. This would be like someone who wants to write about cooking who has never used a recipe. Same with linguistics. A linguist who can't be bothered to learn at least second language can only provide so much insight.
In other words, he had a number of decent ideas throughout his very long, overly pampered career. However, when push comes to shove, he has shown over and over that he is all talk, no walk.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
You mean like covid, the jabs, trump and not trump? Maybe like the psyop began in 2016 and we've all been arguing in that spectrum since?
One tactic commonly used by politicians is to create the wrong debate. Pick a hot topic. You'll find an example. How about same sex marriage? We debate if we need a federal law to endorse same sex marriage. We don't debate why federal law governs marriage and why married persons are treated differently under the law today.
We can debate the various ways we can reduce "carbon emissions". We can't debate whether such reductions are good or bad, or even if the notion of "carbon emissions" is a legitimate thing. Ask those questions and you are a "denier".
"one might even go so far as to wonder if this inability is WHY they fell for these progressive narratives"
Well yeah. They 'fell' for them because for the most part they're just normal, religious people. They believe in Science and Democracy. And they're not bad people for doing so, nor even dumb---just normal. They outsource their metaphysical speculations to religious authorities so they can do more important things, like get along with their neighbors and feed their children, etc. Only difference is their priests wear lab coats.
Trust me; I know these people. I'll be spending time with them in a few days. And I will be very delicate when I bring up the Twitter Files. Imagine sitting your elderly Italian grandmother down to watch Spotlight: "No grammy, you'll love it! Rachel McAdams is in it! (And yes, the Catholic church really did this.)" Similar vibes.
They know, abstractly, that 'power corrupts.' But because they're nice, normal people, they cannot actually wrap their minds around this level of power and corruption.
"recall who created the DHS, the patriot act, and all the roughshod running over civil liberties that entailed."
It was congress, with total support of both D and R parties. With almost no opposition in either house. This can be verified by review of the congressional record. The so called patriot act and the extension to the war powers act went through in days, requiring suspension of rules of conduct in both houses, with little opposition. The war powers extension had 1 abstention in the senate and 1 no vote in the house.
There really are not two parties. 2017-2020 showed this clearly.
Paul did oppose both measures and the creation of the DHS. I recalled incorrectly that he was identifying as libertarian at the time, not D or R. He was in fact identified as Republican at that time. My recollection (which may be flawed) is that he did not vote on the war powers act, and spoke against the vote as it was being conducted without the notice requirements or properly suspending the house rules and therefore was invalid. Paul voted NO vote on the patriot act as well as on the specific authorizations for military operations in Iraq. There were a few other no votes on the patriot act but not many. As I recall, there was only Paul in opposition to the specific authorizations for military action in Iraq.
BTW, while the war powers extension did grant unlimited power to the president to bypass congress (the "all means necessary" clause), Bush never invoked that clause.
Widely misrepresented by the media the truth is that Bush sought and received congressional authorizations via the "specific legislative authorization" clause that had been in the war powers act since it's enactment in 1973 to legitimize what had been done in southeast Asia. Ironically the stated intent of the act was to limit presidential powers, which was less than honest at the time. It created an alternative to a declaration of war (the "specific legislative authorization" clause) with a means for the president to act immediately when deemed (by the president) as necessary to address an immediate threat. Subsequent amendments expanded the powers of the president to act, but retained the requirement that any "immediate" action had to be followed by seeking authorization from congress which in theory would prevent an extended engagement. So even before 2001 the actual effect of the act was to expand presidential powers. The 2001 extension added the "any means necessary" clause which is as far from the stated intent of the act as one can get.
Ironically and counter to the popular narrative, Bush never invoked the "any means necessary" clause. He sought and received specific authorization from congress before any troops were deployed in Iraq. And renewed that authorization regularly. Many Bush opponents like to call it "Bush's war" but the truth is congress authorized every action at every step. That there was no serious opposition in congress at any point demonstrates IMO that the 2001 extension was as unnecessary as it was unwise. BTW, the first and to my knowledge only president to invoke the "any means necessary" clause was Obama.
The vast majority of them, yes. Whether they have been to the young global forum, or otherwise know it, they are. As soon as they put their snouts in the public trough, they are part of the WEF-controlled deep state/cabal.
Few are strong enough to resist the temptation of evil and corrupt power. Fewer still will speak out about it -- just ask Madison Cawthorne.
They don’t care about hypocrisy because modern progressivism is essentially a pseudoreligion. And since they, like all religious nuts, believe they are in possession of sole moral truth, the ends (social justice) always justify the means (hypocrisy, slander, fascism, whatever) because they are in service of the ultimate good of “social justice”.
On Twitter the other day, someone tried to change my argument that masks were not effective to "the red states handled the pandemic worse than the blue states" based on adherence to mitigating adherence protocols. Much easier to tackle the partisan fight rather than admit the very methods were ineffective. Just more ineffective in red states?
great example of the tactic of having the wrong debate, or in this case, the wrong metric.
In 2020 the fine people of North Dakota announced that the 80th annual Sturgis rally would go on as planned. The media reaction was overwhelming - millions would die! Some even reported afterward that ND had a "spike" in COVID and all sorts of other evils attributed to those "reckless" people (bikers, who lets face it, the media loves to hate all the time). Well the data, even that available at the time from CDC, showed no spike (when properly computed normalized to actual population of ND at the time - remember attendees at Sturgis nearly double the population of North Dakota). ND was one state that did not outlaw public assembly (or live music). From most vantage points it looked as well attended as ever. The only bodies dropping were from tequila, not COVID ;-).
Oh and let me add another 2020 milestone: I never thought in my life time that bikers would be labeled "conservative" by any metric. Think that through for a minute ;-)
Yes, I remember that well. They did the same thing with Football games in Florida or Texas. These were going to be "super spreader events." Again, I use the example of Ricky Bobby running around his race car tearing off all his clothes crying "fire" which his car was smoking. There was no fire...but I am sure some people in close quarters here and there managed to catch Covid, but then silence.
I think weatherman were more correct about weather forecasting than journalists were about Covid.
One of the craziest aspects of Covid was how liberals, adamantly opposed to injecting themselves with the "Trump vaccine" not only got onboard the Vaccine Express, but became huge evangelists for it.
Those who spent time in the grocery store poring over labels and boxes to make sure they're not consuming genetically-modified food became genetically-modified organisms.
very few people think in real logic and can extrapolate opinion and ethics around concrete issues from abstract precept or data. it's simply a fact and always has been (well, at least since humans settled down for agriculture).
they generate views in tribal fashion then find ways to tell themselves it was rational afterwards. but it basically never is.
this is why the modern age where the contenting sides have become so badly and totally separated and robbed of cross cutting loyalties gets so nasty especially in conjunction with highly customized and segmented news: we no longer only have our own opinions but our own "facts"
Well I remember when the two sides would cross over and sometimes agree with each other on various issues. Been a while but it looks as though they are all owned now. We need to get rid of all the money in politics and find a way to limit the power. Those are the two reasons many go into politics and most stay in politics. Lofty goal but the alternative is unthinkable.
You guys might not remember but at the very tail end of the Obama regime, they were pushing hard for the TPP (Trans pacific partnership) and the TAA or Atlantic version. Essentially what we were able to learn about these bits of legislation was that it was going to create an international court, which if a country made laws that a corporation didn't like, they could then challenge in this "court". So you know, no national sovereignty anymore after that. Do you remember your local rep complaining about that? Or abortions and blah blah blah?
Thank you. I have been saying that ever since the jabs rolled out and my organic foodie acquaintences were tripping over each other to get it. I had lived literally in the back yard of Organic Valley in Western Wisconsin for years. I could not believe what I was witnessing. When I go back there, to this day I see many of them still walking around outside masked up.
That's my mom. I can't wrap my head around her masking. I'm an engineer and I work with hazardous chemicals, I have tried to explain the real science to her about respirators, no avail.
I have worn dust masks for wood working and sanding. I have worn respirator masks for spray painting, and worn a respirator mask for working with metal acid etching in jewelry making. All the particles and fumes being dealt with are much larger than viruses. What I was told at the beginning of the covid plandemic: if you properly attach your face diaper (even a N-95 mask) and spray some perfume or sniff an onion, if you can smell it the mask does nothing to block a virus. The only plus for a mask is to block aerosols from a sneeze or cough. (so does coughing into you shirt sleeve or using a tissue).
I came into adulthood during the War on Terror and, in my educated liberal community, really had it drummed into me the importance of civil liberties and the dangers of government overreach and hubris. I sorta thought all those who opposed the W./Cheney/Rumsfeld regime really internalized these lessons, as I had. So it has been incredible to watch how these agencies exploited Obama's popularity, Trump's unpopularity, George Floyd, and Covid to get liberals to completely abandon all of the principles they cited in their opposition to W. and become unrepentant authoritarians. The civil libertarians of the W. era are now unwavering supporters of the CIA, FBI, CDC, surveillance, censorship, foreign military involvement, lockdowns, coerced injections of experimental medical products, etc.
I realize now it was never about principles and always about raw tribalism for these people. Perhaps I wasn't "all that bright" to not have figured it out before. Meanwhile, the deep state has known this all along and taken full advantage.
For the lefty civil libertarians at the time, W and Cheney ran the most evil regime in the history of "Amerikkka" ... and they were bad. Terrible actually. Horrendous.
The libs and progs were quick to forgive and forget the crimes of the W administration when Trump showed up on the scene. Bush went from dimwitted Shrub the butcher of Iraq to an honored elder stateman. And Cheney's daughter is start of the democrat party.
Coincidentally, in 2001 Joe Biden took credit for writing the Patriot act. He claimed "that's my bill!" Apparently he wrote it, or said he wrote it, around 1995 and it was put on the shelf until the time was ripe to enact it.
Those weren't principles, not for thos people. That is the thing about principles, the are immutable, they don't change. Sounds like your friends had a couple of ideas they abandoned for perceived safety.
How is any of this different than the CCP forcing party members on to company boards? Seems U.S.A. have them the idea ... what’s that say about the current situation 🫣
I believe (from the Shellenberger tweet with the JPG of the email) that the bribes to Twitter went under the heading of "reimbursement for responses to federal legal requests," so that's probably an offset to operating expenses, officially...
That's entirely probable. Just as we remember that the majority of the people who read the comments we post are other than the person we are responding to, we should keep in mind as well that deep-state folks are also part of the audience we are addressing. This is not altogether a bad thing.
Back in '50s China, the CCP tried to infiltrate the Christian churches. They gave up when their spies kept getting converted.... To the alphabet agency agents: You're being used by powers that don't care about you! Join us! :-)
Thank you for so eloquently articulating what many of us have been thinking for some years now.
I agree with your thesis that razing the “security apparatus” is imperative -- it can’t be fixed.
But I would not stop there: name one federal agency whose existence hasn’t become an end in itself. Education? Don’t make me laugh. Ok well then how about the SEC? Now that’s a shakedown operation if ever there was one. Energy? Commerce? Housing? “Public Health”? They’re all the same smash-and-grab operation simply with different coats of paint.
The bow has slipped below the waves, so who wants to be captain?
Voting does not work as government itself is the problem. Once you grant power to individuals over others it is only a matter of time before they become tyrants.
it has to be a push pull from both sides as the two enable each other.
the idea that we're just going to builds a parallel society and escape the US government seems pretty fanciful.
but the idea that we can create enough space to get leverage and stymie leviathan enough by cutting budgets and agencies acting in tandem might be enough to work
Wait. You are saying that somehow the tyrants who already have the power will act like less tyrant-like because more peasants woke up to the scam? Amusing <insert Darth Vader laughter>
Agree. With only a few good apples (at best), congress will never fix this. I've seen Massie even say that all these small govt 'republicans' come in and at best sustain the current govt bloat, but don't really ever work to reduce it.
So really the only way to control the power of the purse and reduce the federal bloat is to do it ourselves. Pay no more (federal) taxes. We stop paying all at once and then they have no $ to spend.
The dissolution of the United States is a near certainty at this point. I originally thought within 10 years (about a year ago) and now I think it might be 5. States will just start ignoring the Feds, just as RDS has started to do.
Kurt Schlichter has a whole series of "fictional" books describing (prophesying) a second Civil War and a splitting of the US into "Red" and "Blue" states. Great books! Kelly Turnbull series.
Pournelle's Law - "In any bureaucracy, people devoted to the benefit of bureaucracy itself ALWAYS achieve control, and those dedicated to the goals that bureaucracy was formed to accomplish exert less and less influence, until they are eventually eliminated entirely".
Which is where we are at now with virtually ALL government departments.
"develop parallel structures of...." Absolutely This! I know this is the way forward. I also recognize that in our current state, most attempts to develop these structures will be recognized as foreign and dissolved. So be it. Food and Commerce it is. I'll leave Money up to Mathew Crawford because I trust him.
I fail to see how this would work with the amount of surveillance in place. With the spatial web being built as we speak no-one will be allowed to live off the grid.
Another fantastic read from Gato Pal. '20 was my red pill moment and prior I was aware of intelligence agency scandals and the Oliver Stone JFK work, believing those things in the past and deserving of skepticism. Like most things pre '20, I completely underestimated the pervasive nature and reality of what it means for all of us. My dad was a graduate of a top journalism school and spent his whole career as a news anchor with science reporting interests. I'm a GenXer that grew up playing in news rooms. My dad passed in '21 and never recognized what was going on even in the media for himself - he was so ingrained in his own left leaning personal biases. As all this comes to to the collective awareness, the alphabets will just continue wielding power and too many people will go along believing it only conspiracy theories - because it indeed is so ridiculously wild and evil. Just finished podcast interview with author of a book on the NYT history. Where do we go from here?
My question is Why Now? Why are all these things now just being acknowledged? Our biggest problem here is we do not follow our Constitution. That law has been on the books for centuries. And then there are also those who say there is no God. Well, we are now seeing the fruit of that false statement in the degenerate behavior of those who tell us that too. What happens next? I have no idea. But the large intestines and colon of this country and much of the world is growling like Krakatoa Volcano before it blew its top. LOOK OUT BELOW.
ironically, i'm starting to wonder if it will wind up being covid that saves america.
it was just too much, too fast. everyone saw the game, the puppet strings, the stringpullers, etc. between that and the loss of trust in agencies and agents and the aggressive actions around trump etc, it slipped out of the shadows and became starkly visible.
i suspect a lot more people became cognizant of just how bad it had gotten, just how dishonest the game was, and just how brutally it was played.
Did you ever read the book, "The Long Walk" about a Polish officer who escaped from the gulag? In it, he recounts seeing the Yeti as he crossed across the Himalayas.
I have not; it sounds very interesting. Presumably the Yeti and the Bigfoot/Sasquatch, if they exist, are variants of the same species. The Bigfoot's habitat seems to be the northern coniferous and mixed forests of North America, but I've always wondered what the Yeti would find to eat up on those snowy mountains. Do you recall what type of landscape the officer was passing through at the time? Is there any sort of woodland there in the Himalayas?
Excellent. Then you won't ever fall back into the one cause/one disease/one cure trap and the injections that Rockefeller/Flexner "medicine" peddles.
The Medical-Industrial Complex is equally, if not more, destructive to our lives as the Military Industrial Intelligence Big Tech Complex. They're all part of the same death machine.
The virus is real, but something else is causing the hysteria. They're using the virus as a scapegoat for something else, something they cannot bring themselves to see or acknowledge. Same with Trump. Trump, the man, in no way deserves such demonization. Something else is being projected onto him, something they cannot identify, something enflaming their subconscious, but their conscious mind refuses to see. It's our sacred role as individualists to figure this out. What's lurking in darkness that's driving collectivists into a blind panic? What has their subconscious so distressed that it's assumed control of their actions. What's the real Covid? What's the real Trump? If we can't figure this out, then we deserve their hostility towards us. We deserve whatever comes.
In late 2002, I swapped cheirality in outrage over the Bush-Cheney neocon "right" and its impending assault on Iraq, and sent my email address to the Clintonist-Democrat front group, MoveOn, which seemed then to be on our side. I soon learned the shallowness of whatever positions they claimed to champion, but they seemed to be a fairly responsible, if boring, left-wing organization, and I signed a lot of petitions for them over the years. They had no real principles, and sent out frequent petitions and polls mainly to assess what angles would work for them to fire up their base, but they weren't especially rabid either.
This changed with the 2016 election. Early in the year, they sent out a poll to find out which candidate they should endorse for President, and were bemused to discover that 80% of their base supported Sanders, vs. only 20% Clinton. Nevertheless, they gave their endorsement to Sanders as agreed, and luke-warmly pretended to support him for a while. Before the Democratic Convention, they were already preparing to jump to Clinton, and did so vigorously the moment Sanders rolled over. From there on, they were fanatically gung-ho for Clinton, and were obviously devastated when she lost.
Trump himself had won the Republican nomination because the Clinton-supporting mainstream media had given overwhelming media attention to him from the beginning. This was Clinton's own campaign strategy, to pull strings not only to get herself the Democratic nomination despite widespread support for Sanders at the base, but also to interfere in the Republican nomination process to make Trump that party's candidate. Her reasoning was that Trump could win the Republican primaries with a little media promotion, but couldn't possibly win the general. When, after years of carefully fixing that election to be hers, she lost it to her own chosen ringer, she was mortified.
Trump was barely sworn into office when MoveOn sent us another poll. The question was grotesque. Should we 1) work with Trump on occasions when he was doing the right thing; or 2) unconditionally oppose him even if he was doing the right thing? Well, of course, if the issues matter to you, then you should work with whomever is in power when they are doing the right thing. MoveOn reported the next day that 80% of us had voted to oppose him unconditionally, and immediately settled into that policy. Two and a half years later, when the Mueller investigation was winding down with nothing, they again made reference to that poll, with the figures reversed. So they had lied the first time, and 80% of us had in fact favored working with him when he was doing the right thing. But despite all their best efforts, he still made himself impossible to work with, is how they spun it.
I think most people do not recognize how much control Hillary Clinton has come to exercise over the Democratic Party, its MSM, and perhaps the deep-state. There is only one person in the world for whom it really made sense to oppose Trump even when he was doing the right thing, and that is her, his personal rival for power. The rest of it follows from Democratic tribalism. Democrats might be defined as people who turn to MSM and Democratic propaganda sources for their daily political shot, just as we do to El Gato and our favorite Substack writers, and they have just consumed six or seven years of constant, unconditional hatred for Donald Trump, to the extent that they don't even know where their hatred for him comes from any more. There is nothing he could ever have done to please them, because there was nothing he could do to please his disappointed rival whose personal malice feeds into and poisons the springs that they all drink from. To them, his very existence is now the basis of their outrage.
Covid is just the frosting on the world of malevolant lunacy the Democratic Party has become. When Trump moved to stop flights in from infected Wuhan, the Democrats cried racism and assault on human rights. When he later opposed much more extreme measures to shut down the economy and lock people in their houses, then he was irresponsible and didn't care about the elderly. When he fast-tracked a vaccine against the illness, Democrats threatened not to take a vaccine with his fingerprints on it. When Democrats took the Presidency, then they wanted to mandate that same vaccine and steal credit from Trump for ending the pandemic. For them, it is all about Trump, because it is all about Trump in their party's propaganda, which in turn channels it from the malevolant mind of one spiteful person with far too much power.
I agree. I think this is the best its ever been. They’ve ALWAYS been doing this, and they’ve always had plausible deniability. Now we have receipts. As I wrote below, if I could wave a wand and silence it all, I would not. The time for revelation is now.
Even the Normies are starting to pay attention. Wokesters messing with their kids is why. That's another part of it -- the kids. First C19 lockdowns, now 'all age drag shows.' They turned up the heat on the frog too fast.
I agree. If it had been any less blatant and outrageous, it could have inched along even further without anyone but a handful of people even noticing.
How do I know this? I've been watching medical overreach and corruption go unchecked for 40 years of my own life. It's THAT bad, and it wasn't possible without incredible corruption at high levels of government beyond the reach of any political party, with the full support of both major political parties.
I ponder the French Revolution more than I want to these days. Back in the day it was required reading, now probably banned. The pitchforks and torches folk came together to fight the common enemy. I can only pray that will be true.
Dr Malone had a cartoon today? Where the King on the castle turret is told by his advisor that we don’t have to fight them sire—we just have to have to tell the pitchfork folk that the torch people are going to take their pitchforks.
Fair enough, Doc. Personally I don't despair but I'm not going to depend on or hope for a French Revolution- we are too affluent and contented overall. I can only resolve and make the determination that they can never defeat or crush ME. I assume that in any fight I will prevail only because I have the fundamental presupposition that I cannot be defeated. Why? Its my WILL. I control that- not them.
What? "war is not the answer"? It sure was in 1776, 1860, 1941. They want to kill us. War settles issues- one way or the other. If there is going to be an injustice done I prefer it done to them.
Gatito, my handicapping of this fight says they(the whole mess of them) will prevail. Besides holding the high ground of the educational systems, the judiciary and the media, they have the one thing that determines these outcomes- the WILL. They want it more. We have the awareness of what's actually going on but not the will to actually make the walk up the ring steps into the ring and throw punches with bad intentions. Show me where we have ever done that and I will change the odds on the board. regards, Ace Rothstein
There is a bit of a wild card here-- what happens when even MORE people start dying and it gets out that the vaxx is the cause? Many liberals aren't emotionally stable. What will they do when they realize their loved ones were murdered by the government?
I dunno really. I don't think like them- they're unbalanced and maladjusted. What do you think they will do? Or more precisely- what are they most likely to do?
I really don't know. There's this guy by the name of Clif High that does what he calls "predictive linguistics." His work from years ago, which started manifesting in 2020, does note people from Israel forming hit squads for the higher ups in this.. plot, for want of a better word.
As for the normal people, if it comes out they their loved ones were killed by the vaxx and they know they are damaged, they could go after the people who gave them the shots as well as those who authorized them in the gov.
Came here to say the same as shibumi — they messed up when they jabbed their faithful. They will lose many and the survivors will finally wake the hell up.
I pray you are right. maybe covid was a blessing in disguise...for maybe 10 percent of us who are paying attention. it was a huge wake up call to me, anyway.
The works of Antony Sutton and Gary Allen from the 1960s and 1970s should be required reading that provide context as these writers were warning America back then of where we were heading. Others like the now defunct Spotlight/American Free Press also were also sounding the alarm.
Oh, I don’t know. I am on the faculty of a mid-tier state university. Last I checked, my lemming colleagues were lining up for their boosters at the start of the school year.
In America we are being bombarded with a Truth Laxative in an extremely high dose. All lies are being laid threadbare and exposed simultaneously. Wars, Vaccines, Politics, History. Most of this was suspected and already known but now it’s all coming out (sorry for bad pun there).
“We are facing times that feel more fraught than any I remember. Like waves of toxic sludge, the technocratic horror rolls down, white-coated and masked, dead-eyed grinning and unfettered by human feeling. It is the long fetch of disease that has been growing bloated on the accumulated travesties of the modern past, metastasizing beyond nightmare proportions. How easy it would be to despair in this moment!
But is it disease, or is it healing?
If I had a wand to wave, a magic plaster to silence the mouths and pens from which this darkness flows, would I use it? Would I stop this process of monstrous revelation?
I would not. All of these impulses of control and destruction that we are seeing are not new. They are buried deep in the psyches of all of us; any of us who have ever had a moment of wishing that the world could be remade to our specifications contains the seeds of this. Seeing it revealed in its hideous march wakes us up and reminds us that what we are facing is within as well as without.
When I was lying in my hospital bed in terrible pain, I remember asking of my illness (for it was mine, custom made for me, specially designed to call forth the dragon and demand my courage in its face), “What are you asking of me? How can I help you so that we both get what we need before you kill me?”
I find myself asking that question again, except, instead of a physical hurt that I can hold in my hands, it is an existential pain that threatens to drown me. And I know, more deeply than I’ve known anything since those dark moments in that hospital bed, that it is here to help me heal, to demand that I heal. Its face is deceit and a maniacal, anti-human world where people are considered a liability, a cancer, something to render miserable and subordinate.
If that is the mirror, then my deepest imperatives are truth and love. How honest can I be with myself, with others? How open can I be to the humanity with which I am surrounded? How surrendered can I be to the great current, that I trust enough to act when I am shown right action?
The portal is open. The moment of healing is here.”
The structure itself is the disease. Our only hope is that the money dies and we the people stay ahead of the demagogues with a better offer and better leadership for a peaceful and productive society. This whole disaster is baked in; as Spooner told us, the Constitution either enables it or fails to prevent it. I would go with the former, although I’m not sure they knew that.
We HAVE to build parallel societies. When they crush us and grind us down we have to dust ourselves off and get back up. There needs to be something light-filled to enter the vacuum of the coming chaos, or people will beg for more of the same. The majority of people you ask have no problem with these agencies because they still believe they only target bad guys. That is so deep in the marrow that nothing other than the physical inability of the alphabet soup to function will end it.
Stream “The Chosen” by Dallas Jenkins. He just released the 3rd season. It is the parallel structure you may be seeking. It has changed everything for us. Via amazon prime and now Angel Studios.
There is no authorization in the Constitution for a Federal Police Force. Which is what the FBI has become.
There is a reason for that. The Constitution specifies exactly what are to be considered ‘Federal Crimes’. Those are very few in number, treason and counterfeiting, being the most recognizable.
The framers did not believe a Federal Police Force to be necessary or warranted.
I would argue that the FBI is not just a rogue agency, totally out of control, it is unconstitutional on its face. It was unconstitutional on the day it was formed, and remains so today.
And while we are on the subject, 99% of the Federal Criminal Code is also unconstitutional. Unless the crime was specified in the Constitution, it cannot be a Federal Crime.
Mint Press ran a great investigative piece earlier this year, naming names of various 'assets' who'd moved into the social media companies. It explains why that whole "TikTok is a national security threat and we are considering banning it" thing just went away quietly. Instead of shutting down such a powerful spying and propaganda tool, they just stuffed it full of spooks and started using it too.
This is what explains the unyielding allegiance to Trump by a faction of people and it is understandable why. Trump has A LOT of flaws (paving the way for Fauci to terrorize us for three years running is a horrendous pock mark) but he has stood up to the "intelligence community" and that fiend Schumer gleefully described that revenge was coming...and what have we seen since?
There are so many outrages with respect to "Trump/Russia" and the subsequent bullshit impeachments but look no further than the first 100 days of Trump's presidency. The DC establishment knew there was nothing to "Trump/Russia". It was absurd on its face (if Trump really was in cahoots are you telling me our NSA/surveillance state did not have the goods and would have figured out a way to get said evidence into the proper hands to take Trump out?) and yet despite the absurdity, the GOP part of the DC mafia went along with the charade. You expected that out of the democrats but the GOP? Mitch and his thugs KNEW it was bullshit but they all wanted President Pence in the spring of 2017. Pence was part of the controlled and controllable DC gang and Trump was not.
It is a crying shame that it was Trump that broke through and shocked the world and not Ron Paul but part of me pulls for Trump despite his warts. The man has balls and he did try to expose some of this even if he was not up to the task.
The plan was rejected by Kennedy, a bona-fide war hero who promptly had his head blown apart in front of his wife in Dallas TX, for the crime of loving the American people.
Listened to Robert F Kennedy Jr talk about this. The Kennedy family knew what was happening. I would assume they are all surveilled to make sure they behave. Like what he stands for or not, RFK Jr is a hero for standing up.
reading suggestion for anyone with the time to do so - to see the start up history of the CIA read a) Poisoner in Chief and b) Devils Chessboard ... roots of the tree started off horrible
Where do we go from here? Not violence - that’s their game and they are salivating at the thought of us trying it. Begin today creating community w everyone in your vicinity (hint: quit using divisive derogatory terms) and parallel systems. Grow food! Learn skills : wiring, mechanicing. Relearn primitive ways of staying alive that don’t rely on systems that can fall apart or be turned off look for role models Amish for example and learn what you can NOW
"quit using divisive derogatory terms" -- absolutely. It's not required to get 'them' -- true-blue dems for instance -- to engage with 'our' paradigms. It is only necessary to get them to disengage with theirs. By helping them to understand that the bureaucrats have never had We the People at heart -- only their own cold-blooded lust for power.
They are waking up. Connecting the dots, a little at a time. They say that hell hath no fury like a jilted lover. Or a 'team player' who has just figured out that they've been played for a fool.
This is also the optimal strategy when dealing with the control crisis — simply cease consenting to be ruled by idiots.
Recently LA country was forced to backtrack on reinstituting their mask mandate, and Jay Inslee was forced to back off his booster mandate for state workers. In both cases, the people simply proclaimed that they would ignore the ‘experts’ and keep on keepin’ on. If there’s one thing that bureaucrats hate more than not being in control, it’s being so obviously ignored (and therefore obviously not in control). When faced the the possibility of outright indifference to these edicts, the bureaucrats typically back off the demand rather than be embarrassed.
Intelligence agencies are all powerful but they are themselves subservient to global imperial interests. Empire rules directly through the Deep State. That means the nominal government is just a facade left standing to fool us into believing we still have the Constitutional Republic. Republic is long gone. There are no checks and balances; there is no oversight. Everything is subverted and controlled by “GlobCap”, “Mr. Global”, call you what you want. We live within a criminal enterprise. If you have any doubts, read Whitney Webb’s latest book in two volumes.
"The function of hegemony is to transform ideology into culture, into a "world view" that is seen as "normal" and "natural" by everyone from the controlling classes to the subordinate classes. Today, the major means of establishing the hegemony are the mass media"
- Rupert Woodfin
I think this quote explains why the relationship between the media, the state and the Intel Communities are circular, symbiotic and incestuous.
The end result: MANIPULATION AND CONTROL
IMO this is why they are censoring and crushing dissent.
One problem with the CAPTCHA meme. America is a republic not a democracy. There is a huge difference. In a republic the rights of the individual come first. A democracy sells itself as "for the greater good", when in fact it is just a small cabal at the top getting rich off the backs of the proles.
The most impressive intel psyop was convincing the libs into thinking they’re all on team reeeesistance together. Then again the libs aren’t all that bright...
it has long seemed to me that one of the key unifying characteristics of the "progressive" left is an inability to rotate shapes.
"when you do it it's tyranny, but when i do it it's justice!" never seems to seem like hypocrisy to them. they simply cannot see that it's the same thing turned 180 degrees. one might even go so far as to wonder if this inability is WHY they fell for these progressive narratives.
but i would caution on making this into too much of a partisan issue. it most emphatically is NOT and the right has been just as bad on letting and demanding that the "permanent state" take over by taking extra-constitutional power.
recall who created the DHS, the patriot act, and all the roughshod running over civil liberties that entailed.
the problem here is that both sides feed (and now probably serve) this machine.
and elected gov't loses power to the unelected by the day.
do not fall for the "the GOP are good guys/innocent here" narrative. hands are dirty all round and the partisan battles are more puppetshow than war. both sides are seeking to keep the debate and choice constrained and away from where it actually matters.
i'm not always a fan of chomsky, but he nailed this one:
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
Spot on. The Iraq war was covid for the GOP. Now Ukraine has “bipartisan” support.
keep in mind that the iraq was was extremely popular with both sides when they embarked upon it. the left's purported disapproval is a post facto white wash. they were raging for it. the left has traditionally been the party of war in the US. the neocons were an aberration.
the patriot act passed with near unanimous support as well.
the real damage comes not when the left and right fight, but when they agree.
Since the end of the 80s, at any given time, the Republican Party has at most had around 25 of its elected members who took their Oath of Office seriously. And the neo-fascist totalitarians who drive government have taken virtually full control of the media, so most people only hear about what the Ruling Class want them to hear. I have grave doubts that taking down the "intelligence" agencies is still possible. I fear we have waited far too long.
I think you are probably right. I actually prefer secession, as the NEW country can start over.
They aren't letting us go. Thus is one, big, unhappy family.
The California legislature talks about secession from the US, then realizes the entire north part of the state would leave the new nation and the south part would merge with Mexico, leaving the Bay Area, a region with hardly any water or food production, waiting to be starved.
Decentralization is a definite way to go, and based on the polarization of the country sounds a more peaceful way out of this.
Exactly. After 7 years of Evil W invading the world, not one theater of combat saw a decrease in presence under Obama. And I think 3 new fronts were opened up.
The lynchpin of the whole thing is participation in the system, picking the 'lesser of two evils' so that the other guy doesn't get in. It makes you bought in as surely as a jab in the arm makes you bought in to that Narrative. 'Refuse to support a pig just because he has your colors on' is step one to depigging our country.
Mises has a nice piece on Truman: https://mises.org/library/harry-truman-advancing-revolution who in many ways is the father of the Intelligence State. Within a year of his incorporating the Coup Insurrection Assassination(CIA) they launched their first coup. I know Wilson and FDR were in the same club but the Truman Admin is what firmly set us on this wrong path.
I think the cat's premise about lying eyes and ears is spot on, and it sounds frightening to be without them, but if we stopped making enemies of the world, overthrowing popular governments, feminizing their sons, radicalizing wives and daughters against them, building bioweapons, looting resources, and parking soldiers and sailors in their backyard, we might find the world is a more friendly place and we don't need quite so many shit-stirrers on the payroll as we once thought.
I agree this is beyond party, it's about integrity or not, and both "sides" have fallen for tragic manipulation .. but before /during the Iraq war there was at least a grassroots kind of left, who spoke and wrote and lobbied and marched and did actions against the war ... now most of them believe that, just like trying to keep innocent people across the world safe from the harm of US bombs, their duty is to keep the vulnerable safe from covid. And the way to do that, they still actually think, is to believe everything the CDC ETC says ...
Which one? Well, neither. Both were in fact "bipartisan" efforts. Authorized by congress via specific legislative authorizations supported by both dominant parties (well really I assert there is only one party, with two names to help the divide and conquer tactic going)
I call it Government, and Goverment Lite™.
What we need is a distributed system of governance in with very limited centralized power, with very specific and well bounded purpose. There are a few things for which the regional governments must work together to achieve, such as providing for a common defense (including establishing and protecting borders), negotiating treaties with other nations, establishing uniform immigration and naturalization processes, and ensuring that land locked states have access to ports (the rational behind "regulate interstate commerce"). We might justify a federal government for these purposes. All other things should be distributed so that local and regional policies can match local and regional needs. Those governments too should be strictly limited and well regulated by the citizens. If we were designing this optimal union of states, we'd also make it very clear that all powers originate with the people, and except as explicitly authorized by the people, powers are retained by the people. Then we'd establish a power hierarchy with the people at the top, the states in the middle, and the federal government at the bottom. We would put in some checks and balance by creating three branches of government, one to legislate, one to execute, and one to oversee that the other two follow the rules. We would divide further the legislative part into two sub-parts, one in which each state had equal representation and one in which representation was proportional to a state's population, so that smaller less dense states would not become dominated by the fewer but more densely populated states. Because we would require that both sub-parts would be required to agree to any new law or action of substance, and further, the executive branch would have veto power over the combined legislature - but we'd include a means for override of an executive veto in the event both sub-parts of the legislative part had very strong consensus (say maybe 2/3rds or 3/4ths). Given that we'd need multiple places to house these different parts of government, we might call each sub-part of the legislature "houses" and even define a "house" for the executive part.
We might also recognize that centralization of power is very dangerous, and especially the concentration of power through accumulated armories needed to provide for a common defense. We would recognize that open debate, via public and private assembly, was essential to keep control of this government, and prohibit it from limiting such. If we learned from the experience of the past, we would certainly, especially if we had recent experience with abuses of governmental power used to suppress such a peaceful redress of grievances, that the we'd need a safeguard against our governments that we created from forgetting their power rightfully originates form us, the people, and using the superior forces and armament assembled for our common defense, to suppress opposition. To guard against such powers being used against us, the people, we would surely see that the ultimate regulation of such a force requires the people to to have the arms with which to defend against such abuses and attacks. If we had some really smart guys working on this, one might even say in open debate that "peaceful redress can only succeed when there is the present threat of an armed citizenry" and we might call that dude a catchy name like Thomas.
Ah but if only we had a document that captured these lofty concepts, and enumerated the powers, duties and limitations we the people bestowed upon such a government. If only....
Slow down there, Mussolini, are you insane? What you're proposing here is a threat to democracy, almost sounds like an insurrection. Where is this crazy talk coming from?
Much of what is happening in our government is unconstitutional and the corruption runs so deep as the only thing that will remedy it. The difficult part is doing it.
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Send more billions $ as Zelensky's wife goes on a 40K Euro shopping spree in Paris.
Anyone remember the video of Lindssszzzzay Graham and Kamala fist bumping on the Capitol floor when Biden was announced the winner
Greatest lesson in American politics I’ve ever received
The first question I would think all people should ask themselves is:
"can i assess and verify the level of manipulation on myself?"
This tabletop exercise for yourself is quickly turning into a losing exhibition. Without some verification and trust method somewhere there is virtually(literal) no solution. That is the biggest problem we are facing as a species increasingly living in a digital world and a disconnect from the input of the physical world we were born into.
It would be great if someone could come up with a quiz entitled "Am I a victim of the psyop?"
Here's the mantra part of the quiz:
You might be in a psyop if...
You've said "Two weeks to stop the spread."
"It's not for you it's not everyone around you."
"You don't want to kill grandma"
"We're all in this together."
"The vaccine is safe and effective."
True. But we can (at least for now) verify some things. Such as look at who voted for what in Congress. But then, there's a lot besides votes that happens in congress and doesn't make it into the record. But there is a lot there.
To use my analogy, with a brain tumor, you don't know if what your brain records is what your eyes see or what is really out there. Once the tumor takes hold of the sensory centers, you can't trust any of your senses. It's worse than blindness, as the tumor provides false images (and sounds and smells).
It is a good question. The first answer to that is...for whatever it is I believe in, is there at least one other point of view, or the other side of the story. One of the first things you get to understand after awhile is that if there isn't a dissenting voice, then chances are you are being manipulated and coerced in a certain direction. A cousin to that is to present the appearance of an alternative view, but it has to be a caricature.
Mom used to say the only time you won't get an argument is when you're talking to yourself, and even then, it's not assured!
Another wise person once said to see who would rule over you, look at who cannot be questioned. Extend that to "what" cannot be questioned and you have a pretty good indication of purpose.
Maybe it's easier once you get into an echo chamber, but even then among us who agree on things, we have disagreements. For instance, someone responded to my assertion that a policy was a ridiculous one said in response "no, it's not ridiculous, it was adopted by multiple countries." That doesn't make a policy any less ridiculous.
Of course we can disagree. If we are having a reasoned discussion, at least. That's how you can tell a discussion from a sermon or politics :-).
My mom's point was that you should challenge your own ideas and opinions, and if you really think it may lead you to modify those opinions. That's what smart people do, she would say. Which is different from the people who think they are smarter than everyone else ;-)
Since ww2 the deep state always resided in the Rep party. Until their puppet Obama. When they realized how naive and gullible Dem voters were (obama totally neutered the dem antiwar, antinsa surveillance movements) they moved in wholesale. Its like a cult, the voters think they live in Mr Rogers Neighborhood where grownups never lie while the dem elite are anti democracy gangsters who lie, cheat, and steal.
Not true. The Dem party controlled congress perpetually and the presidency half the time from '45 until Gingrich in '94. The deep state developed under Dem administrations during WWII and Truman, solidified under the soft Rep presidency of Eisenhower, and grew into a robust, aggressive teenager under Kennedy and Johnson, at that point it was unstoppable. It's not Dem vs. Rep, it's the uniparty grift vs. the people.
IMO you both are correct. There's really only one dominant party. It takes on two symbols to promote division. It's worked pretty well, too.
Don't forget the corporations! They're also against the people
Actually, Truman and especially Lyndon Johnson, were responsible for the unimpeded rise of the "intelligence" agencies and stealth socialism/totalitarianism disguised as the Great Society. The resistance to the Vietnam debacle was the excuse for a massive increase in spying on the American public.
Which is why I can’t imagine any federal politician ever having the cahones to pull the plug.
Well, the other day, Ron Paul came out and said we need to get rid of the FBI.
Ron Paul was always the exception. Too bad he's not in office any longer.
RON PAUL 2024!!!!
Rand is still in the senate and continues to be the outsider. The GOP has tried to defeat him every run but failed and essentially shuts him down in the senate. I have renewed respect for the voters in Kentucky each time they reelect Rand. He's not always right, but he's always interesting. He does things like talk for an hour about why the senate should abide by the rules, instead of suspending the rules every session. Remember, the senate makes their own rules so it's not like the rules can't be aligned with whatever the F they want to do...but they don't. They continuously suspend the rules instead. Like the rule that says members must have at least 48 hours to review a bill prior to a vote - like that's unreasonable!
See Chuck Schumer video. And Tucker on JFK.
Ike saw this coming. Except he didn't appreciate the scale. He thought it was the Military-Industrial complex. Didn't realize that it would be the entire intelligence community.
He probably knew the FBI was in on it, but was (justifiably as it turns out) fearful of J Edgar Hoover.
Probably. Unfortunately, his successor had no clue.
Random stray thoughts awoken (awakened?):
It is only hypocrisy of you first assume that "the left" and you use the same metrics and definitions, and that one of those is that one should use the same such.
If you instead put one of your values as "It's wrong when they do it" (for a given definition of "they" of course), there's no hypocrisy at all.
It is to be frank rather naïve to think that all people needs must use the same set of moral, ethical, or other definitons even on the epistemological or ontological level.
There is always a framework of rationale around every action/reaction.
If you assume a position that all humans have the same basic unalienable rights by dint of belonging to the species, you will wind up with unnumerable unsolvable logical paradoxes, because for all humans to be viewed as having the above rights, they must also share the same basic fundamental belief-system (which your founding fathers did, hence why they put that in).
And where do we recognise that idea? In post-Enlightenment ideologies and ideals such as classic liberalism, laissez faire-capitalism, the ideals of the French and American Revolutions, the Russian Revolution, Marxism and Communism. All these share the presupposition that all of the humansare so similar they also have the same rights, dignities and responsibilities vis-a-vis one another.
And today with the globalists. To them it is not important if there's a comanche, a mexican, dutch-descended WASP, korean or moslem arab family living in Suburbia, as long as they perform their function as producers/consumers.
Any intrinsic value in belonging to a specific people is anathema to all those ideologies.
And as "the left", which really is a total misnomer but will do for shorthand since we all know what tribe is referred to, segregate and discrimate people into [Allies], [Tools], [Prey] and [Enemies] - are they hypocrites?
Accoding to you (and me), yes they are because what they and practice doesn't gel. But according to themselves they are not, since they have a rationale in place to handle the apparent paradox.
And as I said, that is something which all schools of thought have, always has had and always will: no model of reality can account for all of reality without being a 1:1 replica of reality.
Man, this is probably all the reading in philosophy that any rational person needs.
Really beautiful hard-headed summation of reality.
Chomsky's been decent with some intellectual observations over the years. Note, though, that when it comes to his 'anarchism' he never once actually did anything for such a cause other than write books. This would be like someone who wants to write about cooking who has never used a recipe. Same with linguistics. A linguist who can't be bothered to learn at least second language can only provide so much insight.
In other words, he had a number of decent ideas throughout his very long, overly pampered career. However, when push comes to shove, he has shown over and over that he is all talk, no walk.
He also felt non jabbed people shouldn't be allowed in society and is on video saying it.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
You mean like covid, the jabs, trump and not trump? Maybe like the psyop began in 2016 and we've all been arguing in that spectrum since?
Not bad examples at all.
One tactic commonly used by politicians is to create the wrong debate. Pick a hot topic. You'll find an example. How about same sex marriage? We debate if we need a federal law to endorse same sex marriage. We don't debate why federal law governs marriage and why married persons are treated differently under the law today.
We can debate the various ways we can reduce "carbon emissions". We can't debate whether such reductions are good or bad, or even if the notion of "carbon emissions" is a legitimate thing. Ask those questions and you are a "denier".
As a trump voter I totally agree
"one might even go so far as to wonder if this inability is WHY they fell for these progressive narratives"
Well yeah. They 'fell' for them because for the most part they're just normal, religious people. They believe in Science and Democracy. And they're not bad people for doing so, nor even dumb---just normal. They outsource their metaphysical speculations to religious authorities so they can do more important things, like get along with their neighbors and feed their children, etc. Only difference is their priests wear lab coats.
Trust me; I know these people. I'll be spending time with them in a few days. And I will be very delicate when I bring up the Twitter Files. Imagine sitting your elderly Italian grandmother down to watch Spotlight: "No grammy, you'll love it! Rachel McAdams is in it! (And yes, the Catholic church really did this.)" Similar vibes.
They know, abstractly, that 'power corrupts.' But because they're nice, normal people, they cannot actually wrap their minds around this level of power and corruption.
Anyway, Merry Christmas!
"recall who created the DHS, the patriot act, and all the roughshod running over civil liberties that entailed."
It was congress, with total support of both D and R parties. With almost no opposition in either house. This can be verified by review of the congressional record. The so called patriot act and the extension to the war powers act went through in days, requiring suspension of rules of conduct in both houses, with little opposition. The war powers extension had 1 abstention in the senate and 1 no vote in the house.
There really are not two parties. 2017-2020 showed this clearly.
Paul did oppose both measures and the creation of the DHS. I recalled incorrectly that he was identifying as libertarian at the time, not D or R. He was in fact identified as Republican at that time. My recollection (which may be flawed) is that he did not vote on the war powers act, and spoke against the vote as it was being conducted without the notice requirements or properly suspending the house rules and therefore was invalid. Paul voted NO vote on the patriot act as well as on the specific authorizations for military operations in Iraq. There were a few other no votes on the patriot act but not many. As I recall, there was only Paul in opposition to the specific authorizations for military action in Iraq.
BTW, while the war powers extension did grant unlimited power to the president to bypass congress (the "all means necessary" clause), Bush never invoked that clause.
Widely misrepresented by the media the truth is that Bush sought and received congressional authorizations via the "specific legislative authorization" clause that had been in the war powers act since it's enactment in 1973 to legitimize what had been done in southeast Asia. Ironically the stated intent of the act was to limit presidential powers, which was less than honest at the time. It created an alternative to a declaration of war (the "specific legislative authorization" clause) with a means for the president to act immediately when deemed (by the president) as necessary to address an immediate threat. Subsequent amendments expanded the powers of the president to act, but retained the requirement that any "immediate" action had to be followed by seeking authorization from congress which in theory would prevent an extended engagement. So even before 2001 the actual effect of the act was to expand presidential powers. The 2001 extension added the "any means necessary" clause which is as far from the stated intent of the act as one can get.
Ironically and counter to the popular narrative, Bush never invoked the "any means necessary" clause. He sought and received specific authorization from congress before any troops were deployed in Iraq. And renewed that authorization regularly. Many Bush opponents like to call it "Bush's war" but the truth is congress authorized every action at every step. That there was no serious opposition in congress at any point demonstrates IMO that the 2001 extension was as unnecessary as it was unwise. BTW, the first and to my knowledge only president to invoke the "any means necessary" clause was Obama.
Is there a chance that Team R and Team D are both controlled by the WEF? As well as the alphabet agencies?
The vast majority of them, yes. Whether they have been to the young global forum, or otherwise know it, they are. As soon as they put their snouts in the public trough, they are part of the WEF-controlled deep state/cabal.
Few are strong enough to resist the temptation of evil and corrupt power. Fewer still will speak out about it -- just ask Madison Cawthorne.
They don’t care about hypocrisy because modern progressivism is essentially a pseudoreligion. And since they, like all religious nuts, believe they are in possession of sole moral truth, the ends (social justice) always justify the means (hypocrisy, slander, fascism, whatever) because they are in service of the ultimate good of “social justice”.
On Twitter the other day, someone tried to change my argument that masks were not effective to "the red states handled the pandemic worse than the blue states" based on adherence to mitigating adherence protocols. Much easier to tackle the partisan fight rather than admit the very methods were ineffective. Just more ineffective in red states?
great example of the tactic of having the wrong debate, or in this case, the wrong metric.
In 2020 the fine people of North Dakota announced that the 80th annual Sturgis rally would go on as planned. The media reaction was overwhelming - millions would die! Some even reported afterward that ND had a "spike" in COVID and all sorts of other evils attributed to those "reckless" people (bikers, who lets face it, the media loves to hate all the time). Well the data, even that available at the time from CDC, showed no spike (when properly computed normalized to actual population of ND at the time - remember attendees at Sturgis nearly double the population of North Dakota). ND was one state that did not outlaw public assembly (or live music). From most vantage points it looked as well attended as ever. The only bodies dropping were from tequila, not COVID ;-).
Oh and let me add another 2020 milestone: I never thought in my life time that bikers would be labeled "conservative" by any metric. Think that through for a minute ;-)
Yes, I remember that well. They did the same thing with Football games in Florida or Texas. These were going to be "super spreader events." Again, I use the example of Ricky Bobby running around his race car tearing off all his clothes crying "fire" which his car was smoking. There was no fire...but I am sure some people in close quarters here and there managed to catch Covid, but then silence.
I think weatherman were more correct about weather forecasting than journalists were about Covid.
No kidding.
Great idea - sign me up!
One of the craziest aspects of Covid was how liberals, adamantly opposed to injecting themselves with the "Trump vaccine" not only got onboard the Vaccine Express, but became huge evangelists for it.
Those who spent time in the grocery store poring over labels and boxes to make sure they're not consuming genetically-modified food became genetically-modified organisms.
Absolutely unreal.
perhaps not so much crazy as revelatory.
very few people think in real logic and can extrapolate opinion and ethics around concrete issues from abstract precept or data. it's simply a fact and always has been (well, at least since humans settled down for agriculture).
they generate views in tribal fashion then find ways to tell themselves it was rational afterwards. but it basically never is.
this is why the modern age where the contenting sides have become so badly and totally separated and robbed of cross cutting loyalties gets so nasty especially in conjunction with highly customized and segmented news: we no longer only have our own opinions but our own "facts"
Well I remember when the two sides would cross over and sometimes agree with each other on various issues. Been a while but it looks as though they are all owned now. We need to get rid of all the money in politics and find a way to limit the power. Those are the two reasons many go into politics and most stay in politics. Lofty goal but the alternative is unthinkable.
Ah but if you look at the legislation that counts, they always agree. Its only on the "culture war" where they ever differ.
Interesting observation
You guys might not remember but at the very tail end of the Obama regime, they were pushing hard for the TPP (Trans pacific partnership) and the TAA or Atlantic version. Essentially what we were able to learn about these bits of legislation was that it was going to create an international court, which if a country made laws that a corporation didn't like, they could then challenge in this "court". So you know, no national sovereignty anymore after that. Do you remember your local rep complaining about that? Or abortions and blah blah blah?
Thank you. I have been saying that ever since the jabs rolled out and my organic foodie acquaintences were tripping over each other to get it. I had lived literally in the back yard of Organic Valley in Western Wisconsin for years. I could not believe what I was witnessing. When I go back there, to this day I see many of them still walking around outside masked up.
That's my mom. I can't wrap my head around her masking. I'm an engineer and I work with hazardous chemicals, I have tried to explain the real science to her about respirators, no avail.
I have worn dust masks for wood working and sanding. I have worn respirator masks for spray painting, and worn a respirator mask for working with metal acid etching in jewelry making. All the particles and fumes being dealt with are much larger than viruses. What I was told at the beginning of the covid plandemic: if you properly attach your face diaper (even a N-95 mask) and spray some perfume or sniff an onion, if you can smell it the mask does nothing to block a virus. The only plus for a mask is to block aerosols from a sneeze or cough. (so does coughing into you shirt sleeve or using a tissue).
I am stealing that. What a wonderful reality check. I will be signing all my emails with that tag line.
You bet. Keep punching away, Dr. Linda.
I came into adulthood during the War on Terror and, in my educated liberal community, really had it drummed into me the importance of civil liberties and the dangers of government overreach and hubris. I sorta thought all those who opposed the W./Cheney/Rumsfeld regime really internalized these lessons, as I had. So it has been incredible to watch how these agencies exploited Obama's popularity, Trump's unpopularity, George Floyd, and Covid to get liberals to completely abandon all of the principles they cited in their opposition to W. and become unrepentant authoritarians. The civil libertarians of the W. era are now unwavering supporters of the CIA, FBI, CDC, surveillance, censorship, foreign military involvement, lockdowns, coerced injections of experimental medical products, etc.
I realize now it was never about principles and always about raw tribalism for these people. Perhaps I wasn't "all that bright" to not have figured it out before. Meanwhile, the deep state has known this all along and taken full advantage.
For the lefty civil libertarians at the time, W and Cheney ran the most evil regime in the history of "Amerikkka" ... and they were bad. Terrible actually. Horrendous.
The libs and progs were quick to forgive and forget the crimes of the W administration when Trump showed up on the scene. Bush went from dimwitted Shrub the butcher of Iraq to an honored elder stateman. And Cheney's daughter is start of the democrat party.
Coincidentally, in 2001 Joe Biden took credit for writing the Patriot act. He claimed "that's my bill!" Apparently he wrote it, or said he wrote it, around 1995 and it was put on the shelf until the time was ripe to enact it.
It was all emotional abuse - fosters Stockholm syndrome
Here's how it works.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/watch-biden-press-secretary-says-youre-smugglers-if-you-claim-border-open
"...abandon all of the principles..."
Those weren't principles, not for thos people. That is the thing about principles, the are immutable, they don't change. Sounds like your friends had a couple of ideas they abandoned for perceived safety.
How is any of this different than the CCP forcing party members on to company boards? Seems U.S.A. have them the idea ... what’s that say about the current situation 🫣
Ice bucket challenge, test the lumpen
"oh they're there, they're wearing yellow sticker dots on their foreheads"
Lucky the FBI and CIA have all us independent thinkers here on Substack. All in once place so there is less work for them to monitor us all!
They clearly financed Facebook and probably Twitter. What about Substack? Or have I just blasphemed?
why would they need to finance them when they can just subvert them?
They do both. The CIA invest in start-ups that can benefit them and the FBI subvert the ones they missed.
inqtel etc are pretty gormless and rarely manage to pick winners.
they're just a 4th rate VC firm that once had a bit of cache.
i've seen a fair bit of what they back. seems to be mostly garbage.
Interesting. At least they're trying bless them. Anyway, we're all here now so they don't need to try as hard.
Do they not pick winners or do they feather certain nests? Winning is often from the point of view
I’d be interested in knowing if any of the payoffs were reported in their quarterly reports - that seems problematic
What is this line item under the heading "30 pieces of silver"?
Judas /Benedict Arnold Foundations
Probably under Good Will donations 😂
I believe (from the Shellenberger tweet with the JPG of the email) that the bribes to Twitter went under the heading of "reimbursement for responses to federal legal requests," so that's probably an offset to operating expenses, officially...
That's entirely probable. Just as we remember that the majority of the people who read the comments we post are other than the person we are responding to, we should keep in mind as well that deep-state folks are also part of the audience we are addressing. This is not altogether a bad thing.
Back in '50s China, the CCP tried to infiltrate the Christian churches. They gave up when their spies kept getting converted.... To the alphabet agency agents: You're being used by powers that don't care about you! Join us! :-)
Oh they didn't give up. They won. Those churches are now all LGBTQ all the time.
I expect a very nice gulag room.
Unless they put us all in solitary, we will have a lot of like-minded friends to wile away the hours.
Yeah. Like the J6'ers.
I've often thought that is why substack is allowed to exist. All the craziness in one area. Oh, and controlled opposition.
Thank you for so eloquently articulating what many of us have been thinking for some years now.
I agree with your thesis that razing the “security apparatus” is imperative -- it can’t be fixed.
But I would not stop there: name one federal agency whose existence hasn’t become an end in itself. Education? Don’t make me laugh. Ok well then how about the SEC? Now that’s a shakedown operation if ever there was one. Energy? Commerce? Housing? “Public Health”? They’re all the same smash-and-grab operation simply with different coats of paint.
The bow has slipped below the waves, so who wants to be captain?
Man the lifeboats and scupper the hulk.
very much so.
the "safety" state is pure inversion. it rapidly becomes the greatest threat of all to safety and individual and societal flourishing.
this is why i believe the only sensible approach is two pronged:
develop parallel structures of commerce, money, communication, and association to step outside of the regulated channels.
become one issue voters on eliminated the federal bureaucracy.
the two are synergistic and enable each other.
any bureaucracy rapidly becomes its own chief constituent. all grow pernicious, self serving, and toxic.
i cannot think of one in the US worth saving.
Voting does not work as government itself is the problem. Once you grant power to individuals over others it is only a matter of time before they become tyrants.
it has to be a push pull from both sides as the two enable each other.
the idea that we're just going to builds a parallel society and escape the US government seems pretty fanciful.
but the idea that we can create enough space to get leverage and stymie leviathan enough by cutting budgets and agencies acting in tandem might be enough to work
Wait. You are saying that somehow the tyrants who already have the power will act like less tyrant-like because more peasants woke up to the scam? Amusing <insert Darth Vader laughter>
Agree. With only a few good apples (at best), congress will never fix this. I've seen Massie even say that all these small govt 'republicans' come in and at best sustain the current govt bloat, but don't really ever work to reduce it.
So really the only way to control the power of the purse and reduce the federal bloat is to do it ourselves. Pay no more (federal) taxes. We stop paying all at once and then they have no $ to spend.
All the Rs do is talk about reducing the size of government; what they do is put in a hiring freeze. Never actually cut anything or fire anyone.
Then when the Ds come back they turn on the hiring spigots. And only hire loyal progressives.
Which is why the 'permanent government' ends up being ~100% progressive authoritarians.
As history proves!
The dissolution of the United States is a near certainty at this point. I originally thought within 10 years (about a year ago) and now I think it might be 5. States will just start ignoring the Feds, just as RDS has started to do.
Kurt Schlichter has a whole series of "fictional" books describing (prophesying) a second Civil War and a splitting of the US into "Red" and "Blue" states. Great books! Kelly Turnbull series.
Pick your state.
Pournelle's Law - "In any bureaucracy, people devoted to the benefit of bureaucracy itself ALWAYS achieve control, and those dedicated to the goals that bureaucracy was formed to accomplish exert less and less influence, until they are eventually eliminated entirely".
Which is where we are at now with virtually ALL government departments.
Ironically, the progressives seem interesting on turning off the Dept of Energy.
One less to worry about!!
More power to the States!
"develop parallel structures of...." Absolutely This! I know this is the way forward. I also recognize that in our current state, most attempts to develop these structures will be recognized as foreign and dissolved. So be it. Food and Commerce it is. I'll leave Money up to Mathew Crawford because I trust him.
I fail to see how this would work with the amount of surveillance in place. With the spatial web being built as we speak no-one will be allowed to live off the grid.
I've had this same thought - attempts would be squashed.
Another fantastic read from Gato Pal. '20 was my red pill moment and prior I was aware of intelligence agency scandals and the Oliver Stone JFK work, believing those things in the past and deserving of skepticism. Like most things pre '20, I completely underestimated the pervasive nature and reality of what it means for all of us. My dad was a graduate of a top journalism school and spent his whole career as a news anchor with science reporting interests. I'm a GenXer that grew up playing in news rooms. My dad passed in '21 and never recognized what was going on even in the media for himself - he was so ingrained in his own left leaning personal biases. As all this comes to to the collective awareness, the alphabets will just continue wielding power and too many people will go along believing it only conspiracy theories - because it indeed is so ridiculously wild and evil. Just finished podcast interview with author of a book on the NYT history. Where do we go from here?
Where can we find your podcast?
My question is Why Now? Why are all these things now just being acknowledged? Our biggest problem here is we do not follow our Constitution. That law has been on the books for centuries. And then there are also those who say there is no God. Well, we are now seeing the fruit of that false statement in the degenerate behavior of those who tell us that too. What happens next? I have no idea. But the large intestines and colon of this country and much of the world is growling like Krakatoa Volcano before it blew its top. LOOK OUT BELOW.
ironically, i'm starting to wonder if it will wind up being covid that saves america.
it was just too much, too fast. everyone saw the game, the puppet strings, the stringpullers, etc. between that and the loss of trust in agencies and agents and the aggressive actions around trump etc, it slipped out of the shadows and became starkly visible.
i suspect a lot more people became cognizant of just how bad it had gotten, just how dishonest the game was, and just how brutally it was played.
True. Covid is what laid it ALL bare for me.
Just wait till you discover that there isn’t even a virus. And that virology is as real as Bigfoot.
Hey! I believe in Bigfoot! :)
Did you ever read the book, "The Long Walk" about a Polish officer who escaped from the gulag? In it, he recounts seeing the Yeti as he crossed across the Himalayas.
I have not; it sounds very interesting. Presumably the Yeti and the Bigfoot/Sasquatch, if they exist, are variants of the same species. The Bigfoot's habitat seems to be the northern coniferous and mixed forests of North America, but I've always wondered what the Yeti would find to eat up on those snowy mountains. Do you recall what type of landscape the officer was passing through at the time? Is there any sort of woodland there in the Himalayas?
They also made a movie about it starring Ed Harris and Colin Farrell.
"There is no spoon."
It’s been on my mind. I’ve read Cowan’s latest book. Watched Dr Sam Bailey’s videos.
Excellent. Then you won't ever fall back into the one cause/one disease/one cure trap and the injections that Rockefeller/Flexner "medicine" peddles.
The Medical-Industrial Complex is equally, if not more, destructive to our lives as the Military Industrial Intelligence Big Tech Complex. They're all part of the same death machine.
The virus is real, but something else is causing the hysteria. They're using the virus as a scapegoat for something else, something they cannot bring themselves to see or acknowledge. Same with Trump. Trump, the man, in no way deserves such demonization. Something else is being projected onto him, something they cannot identify, something enflaming their subconscious, but their conscious mind refuses to see. It's our sacred role as individualists to figure this out. What's lurking in darkness that's driving collectivists into a blind panic? What has their subconscious so distressed that it's assumed control of their actions. What's the real Covid? What's the real Trump? If we can't figure this out, then we deserve their hostility towards us. We deserve whatever comes.
In late 2002, I swapped cheirality in outrage over the Bush-Cheney neocon "right" and its impending assault on Iraq, and sent my email address to the Clintonist-Democrat front group, MoveOn, which seemed then to be on our side. I soon learned the shallowness of whatever positions they claimed to champion, but they seemed to be a fairly responsible, if boring, left-wing organization, and I signed a lot of petitions for them over the years. They had no real principles, and sent out frequent petitions and polls mainly to assess what angles would work for them to fire up their base, but they weren't especially rabid either.
This changed with the 2016 election. Early in the year, they sent out a poll to find out which candidate they should endorse for President, and were bemused to discover that 80% of their base supported Sanders, vs. only 20% Clinton. Nevertheless, they gave their endorsement to Sanders as agreed, and luke-warmly pretended to support him for a while. Before the Democratic Convention, they were already preparing to jump to Clinton, and did so vigorously the moment Sanders rolled over. From there on, they were fanatically gung-ho for Clinton, and were obviously devastated when she lost.
Trump himself had won the Republican nomination because the Clinton-supporting mainstream media had given overwhelming media attention to him from the beginning. This was Clinton's own campaign strategy, to pull strings not only to get herself the Democratic nomination despite widespread support for Sanders at the base, but also to interfere in the Republican nomination process to make Trump that party's candidate. Her reasoning was that Trump could win the Republican primaries with a little media promotion, but couldn't possibly win the general. When, after years of carefully fixing that election to be hers, she lost it to her own chosen ringer, she was mortified.
Trump was barely sworn into office when MoveOn sent us another poll. The question was grotesque. Should we 1) work with Trump on occasions when he was doing the right thing; or 2) unconditionally oppose him even if he was doing the right thing? Well, of course, if the issues matter to you, then you should work with whomever is in power when they are doing the right thing. MoveOn reported the next day that 80% of us had voted to oppose him unconditionally, and immediately settled into that policy. Two and a half years later, when the Mueller investigation was winding down with nothing, they again made reference to that poll, with the figures reversed. So they had lied the first time, and 80% of us had in fact favored working with him when he was doing the right thing. But despite all their best efforts, he still made himself impossible to work with, is how they spun it.
I think most people do not recognize how much control Hillary Clinton has come to exercise over the Democratic Party, its MSM, and perhaps the deep-state. There is only one person in the world for whom it really made sense to oppose Trump even when he was doing the right thing, and that is her, his personal rival for power. The rest of it follows from Democratic tribalism. Democrats might be defined as people who turn to MSM and Democratic propaganda sources for their daily political shot, just as we do to El Gato and our favorite Substack writers, and they have just consumed six or seven years of constant, unconditional hatred for Donald Trump, to the extent that they don't even know where their hatred for him comes from any more. There is nothing he could ever have done to please them, because there was nothing he could do to please his disappointed rival whose personal malice feeds into and poisons the springs that they all drink from. To them, his very existence is now the basis of their outrage.
Covid is just the frosting on the world of malevolant lunacy the Democratic Party has become. When Trump moved to stop flights in from infected Wuhan, the Democrats cried racism and assault on human rights. When he later opposed much more extreme measures to shut down the economy and lock people in their houses, then he was irresponsible and didn't care about the elderly. When he fast-tracked a vaccine against the illness, Democrats threatened not to take a vaccine with his fingerprints on it. When Democrats took the Presidency, then they wanted to mandate that same vaccine and steal credit from Trump for ending the pandemic. For them, it is all about Trump, because it is all about Trump in their party's propaganda, which in turn channels it from the malevolant mind of one spiteful person with far too much power.
That's some great perspective. Thanks.
I agree. I think this is the best its ever been. They’ve ALWAYS been doing this, and they’ve always had plausible deniability. Now we have receipts. As I wrote below, if I could wave a wand and silence it all, I would not. The time for revelation is now.
Even the Normies are starting to pay attention. Wokesters messing with their kids is why. That's another part of it -- the kids. First C19 lockdowns, now 'all age drag shows.' They turned up the heat on the frog too fast.
The woo woo worked for so long
It did. But as Gato has pointed out (your point as well I am guessing) it can’t last forever or continue to be effective.
I agree. If it had been any less blatant and outrageous, it could have inched along even further without anyone but a handful of people even noticing.
How do I know this? I've been watching medical overreach and corruption go unchecked for 40 years of my own life. It's THAT bad, and it wasn't possible without incredible corruption at high levels of government beyond the reach of any political party, with the full support of both major political parties.
I ponder the French Revolution more than I want to these days. Back in the day it was required reading, now probably banned. The pitchforks and torches folk came together to fight the common enemy. I can only pray that will be true.
Dr Malone had a cartoon today? Where the King on the castle turret is told by his advisor that we don’t have to fight them sire—we just have to have to tell the pitchfork folk that the torch people are going to take their pitchforks.
I say this with respect, that's just wishful thinking.
Maybe so but despair is all consuming. I need at least a thin thread of hope. : )
Fair enough, Doc. Personally I don't despair but I'm not going to depend on or hope for a French Revolution- we are too affluent and contented overall. I can only resolve and make the determination that they can never defeat or crush ME. I assume that in any fight I will prevail only because I have the fundamental presupposition that I cannot be defeated. Why? Its my WILL. I control that- not them.
The French Revolution was no example to follow. Sorry.
What? "war is not the answer"? It sure was in 1776, 1860, 1941. They want to kill us. War settles issues- one way or the other. If there is going to be an injustice done I prefer it done to them.
I think about the songs from Les Mis a lot too nowadays!
Bill Gates predicted a civil war after the midterms. If Trump gets convicted in a DC kangaroo court...
He won’t.
And if he is, there won't be.
Gatito, my handicapping of this fight says they(the whole mess of them) will prevail. Besides holding the high ground of the educational systems, the judiciary and the media, they have the one thing that determines these outcomes- the WILL. They want it more. We have the awareness of what's actually going on but not the will to actually make the walk up the ring steps into the ring and throw punches with bad intentions. Show me where we have ever done that and I will change the odds on the board. regards, Ace Rothstein
There is a bit of a wild card here-- what happens when even MORE people start dying and it gets out that the vaxx is the cause? Many liberals aren't emotionally stable. What will they do when they realize their loved ones were murdered by the government?
I dunno really. I don't think like them- they're unbalanced and maladjusted. What do you think they will do? Or more precisely- what are they most likely to do?
I really don't know. There's this guy by the name of Clif High that does what he calls "predictive linguistics." His work from years ago, which started manifesting in 2020, does note people from Israel forming hit squads for the higher ups in this.. plot, for want of a better word.
As for the normal people, if it comes out they their loved ones were killed by the vaxx and they know they are damaged, they could go after the people who gave them the shots as well as those who authorized them in the gov.
Or they'll shrug and say it's not real. IDK.
Yes- at this point I still don't know either. But I'm watching....
They'll just blame it on Trump and the Republicans as usual. The ones who stay in that ideosphere really are that tribal.
Came here to say the same as shibumi — they messed up when they jabbed their faithful. They will lose many and the survivors will finally wake the hell up.
Biggest reason for J6 prosecutions
I pray you are right. maybe covid was a blessing in disguise...for maybe 10 percent of us who are paying attention. it was a huge wake up call to me, anyway.
The works of Antony Sutton and Gary Allen from the 1960s and 1970s should be required reading that provide context as these writers were warning America back then of where we were heading. Others like the now defunct Spotlight/American Free Press also were also sounding the alarm.
I whole heartedly agree. Sutton and Allen knew what was happening and they both wrote about it in great detail. They tried to warn us.
That Hideous Strength
^ We are here
NICE!
What's the uptake on the boosters look like? If it's low, there's hope. Here in Vermont, they're advertising Covid shots for infants.
14% uptake as of now so that’s a good sign but should be 0%
Prolly healthcare workers under soft or hard mandates.
Oh, I don’t know. I am on the faculty of a mid-tier state university. Last I checked, my lemming colleagues were lining up for their boosters at the start of the school year.
Maybe they gave you a peak behind the curtain because it's all wrapped up now.
I have thought that for some months now, and nothing's coming up contra for me.
In America we are being bombarded with a Truth Laxative in an extremely high dose. All lies are being laid threadbare and exposed simultaneously. Wars, Vaccines, Politics, History. Most of this was suspected and already known but now it’s all coming out (sorry for bad pun there).
I wrote this last weekend:
“We are facing times that feel more fraught than any I remember. Like waves of toxic sludge, the technocratic horror rolls down, white-coated and masked, dead-eyed grinning and unfettered by human feeling. It is the long fetch of disease that has been growing bloated on the accumulated travesties of the modern past, metastasizing beyond nightmare proportions. How easy it would be to despair in this moment!
But is it disease, or is it healing?
If I had a wand to wave, a magic plaster to silence the mouths and pens from which this darkness flows, would I use it? Would I stop this process of monstrous revelation?
I would not. All of these impulses of control and destruction that we are seeing are not new. They are buried deep in the psyches of all of us; any of us who have ever had a moment of wishing that the world could be remade to our specifications contains the seeds of this. Seeing it revealed in its hideous march wakes us up and reminds us that what we are facing is within as well as without.
When I was lying in my hospital bed in terrible pain, I remember asking of my illness (for it was mine, custom made for me, specially designed to call forth the dragon and demand my courage in its face), “What are you asking of me? How can I help you so that we both get what we need before you kill me?”
I find myself asking that question again, except, instead of a physical hurt that I can hold in my hands, it is an existential pain that threatens to drown me. And I know, more deeply than I’ve known anything since those dark moments in that hospital bed, that it is here to help me heal, to demand that I heal. Its face is deceit and a maniacal, anti-human world where people are considered a liability, a cancer, something to render miserable and subordinate.
If that is the mirror, then my deepest imperatives are truth and love. How honest can I be with myself, with others? How open can I be to the humanity with which I am surrounded? How surrendered can I be to the great current, that I trust enough to act when I am shown right action?
The portal is open. The moment of healing is here.”
The structure itself is the disease. Our only hope is that the money dies and we the people stay ahead of the demagogues with a better offer and better leadership for a peaceful and productive society. This whole disaster is baked in; as Spooner told us, the Constitution either enables it or fails to prevent it. I would go with the former, although I’m not sure they knew that.
We HAVE to build parallel societies. When they crush us and grind us down we have to dust ourselves off and get back up. There needs to be something light-filled to enter the vacuum of the coming chaos, or people will beg for more of the same. The majority of people you ask have no problem with these agencies because they still believe they only target bad guys. That is so deep in the marrow that nothing other than the physical inability of the alphabet soup to function will end it.
And I have hope.
Stream “The Chosen” by Dallas Jenkins. He just released the 3rd season. It is the parallel structure you may be seeking. It has changed everything for us. Via amazon prime and now Angel Studios.
You can get the Angel Studios app on Roku. It's free.
Highly recommend The Chosen.
It’s even worse than you might think.
There is no authorization in the Constitution for a Federal Police Force. Which is what the FBI has become.
There is a reason for that. The Constitution specifies exactly what are to be considered ‘Federal Crimes’. Those are very few in number, treason and counterfeiting, being the most recognizable.
The framers did not believe a Federal Police Force to be necessary or warranted.
I would argue that the FBI is not just a rogue agency, totally out of control, it is unconstitutional on its face. It was unconstitutional on the day it was formed, and remains so today.
And while we are on the subject, 99% of the Federal Criminal Code is also unconstitutional. Unless the crime was specified in the Constitution, it cannot be a Federal Crime.
💯
Mint Press ran a great investigative piece earlier this year, naming names of various 'assets' who'd moved into the social media companies. It explains why that whole "TikTok is a national security threat and we are considering banning it" thing just went away quietly. Instead of shutting down such a powerful spying and propaganda tool, they just stuffed it full of spooks and started using it too.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-tiktok-pipeline-why-tiktok-employing-national-security-agents/280336/
We are F*#ked!
Yeah, all the pretty words are entertaining but those three sum it up. The powers that be are still arresting J6 protestors.
"Federal prosecutors have charged more than 920 people in 48 states with participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and arrests continue."
Just in case you were thinking about doing anything.
And wasn't Elon one of the WEF young global leaders? Pretty sure he's not one of the good guys.
Great article, thanks for sharing.
The DC three letter agency disease. And I mean every one of them.
This is what explains the unyielding allegiance to Trump by a faction of people and it is understandable why. Trump has A LOT of flaws (paving the way for Fauci to terrorize us for three years running is a horrendous pock mark) but he has stood up to the "intelligence community" and that fiend Schumer gleefully described that revenge was coming...and what have we seen since?
There are so many outrages with respect to "Trump/Russia" and the subsequent bullshit impeachments but look no further than the first 100 days of Trump's presidency. The DC establishment knew there was nothing to "Trump/Russia". It was absurd on its face (if Trump really was in cahoots are you telling me our NSA/surveillance state did not have the goods and would have figured out a way to get said evidence into the proper hands to take Trump out?) and yet despite the absurdity, the GOP part of the DC mafia went along with the charade. You expected that out of the democrats but the GOP? Mitch and his thugs KNEW it was bullshit but they all wanted President Pence in the spring of 2017. Pence was part of the controlled and controllable DC gang and Trump was not.
It is a crying shame that it was Trump that broke through and shocked the world and not Ron Paul but part of me pulls for Trump despite his warts. The man has balls and he did try to expose some of this even if he was not up to the task.
Ridiculous that so many focus on his personality and not his true character and what he did accomplish. Very short sighted of many
Read the description of Operation Northwoods, then think about the last 60 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
The plan was rejected by Kennedy, a bona-fide war hero who promptly had his head blown apart in front of his wife in Dallas TX, for the crime of loving the American people.
This what we are up against.
Listened to Robert F Kennedy Jr talk about this. The Kennedy family knew what was happening. I would assume they are all surveilled to make sure they behave. Like what he stands for or not, RFK Jr is a hero for standing up.
reading suggestion for anyone with the time to do so - to see the start up history of the CIA read a) Poisoner in Chief and b) Devils Chessboard ... roots of the tree started off horrible
Where do we go from here? Not violence - that’s their game and they are salivating at the thought of us trying it. Begin today creating community w everyone in your vicinity (hint: quit using divisive derogatory terms) and parallel systems. Grow food! Learn skills : wiring, mechanicing. Relearn primitive ways of staying alive that don’t rely on systems that can fall apart or be turned off look for role models Amish for example and learn what you can NOW
"quit using divisive derogatory terms" -- absolutely. It's not required to get 'them' -- true-blue dems for instance -- to engage with 'our' paradigms. It is only necessary to get them to disengage with theirs. By helping them to understand that the bureaucrats have never had We the People at heart -- only their own cold-blooded lust for power.
I'm amazed by the number of people who would rather play 'my team' than coalesce against the greater menace
They are waking up. Connecting the dots, a little at a time. They say that hell hath no fury like a jilted lover. Or a 'team player' who has just figured out that they've been played for a fool.
It's happening, and it will gather steam.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/countering-the-control-crisis
This is also the optimal strategy when dealing with the control crisis — simply cease consenting to be ruled by idiots.
Recently LA country was forced to backtrack on reinstituting their mask mandate, and Jay Inslee was forced to back off his booster mandate for state workers. In both cases, the people simply proclaimed that they would ignore the ‘experts’ and keep on keepin’ on. If there’s one thing that bureaucrats hate more than not being in control, it’s being so obviously ignored (and therefore obviously not in control). When faced the the possibility of outright indifference to these edicts, the bureaucrats typically back off the demand rather than be embarrassed.
yep.
Intelligence agencies are all powerful but they are themselves subservient to global imperial interests. Empire rules directly through the Deep State. That means the nominal government is just a facade left standing to fool us into believing we still have the Constitutional Republic. Republic is long gone. There are no checks and balances; there is no oversight. Everything is subverted and controlled by “GlobCap”, “Mr. Global”, call you what you want. We live within a criminal enterprise. If you have any doubts, read Whitney Webb’s latest book in two volumes.
"The function of hegemony is to transform ideology into culture, into a "world view" that is seen as "normal" and "natural" by everyone from the controlling classes to the subordinate classes. Today, the major means of establishing the hegemony are the mass media"
- Rupert Woodfin
I think this quote explains why the relationship between the media, the state and the Intel Communities are circular, symbiotic and incestuous.
The end result: MANIPULATION AND CONTROL
IMO this is why they are censoring and crushing dissent.
We live in perilous times.
Howdy friend, I’m still learning but sounds a bit like “reskilling?” For the “Green Revolution.”
For sure!
One problem with the CAPTCHA meme. America is a republic not a democracy. There is a huge difference. In a republic the rights of the individual come first. A democracy sells itself as "for the greater good", when in fact it is just a small cabal at the top getting rich off the backs of the proles.
You passed.
Super! Can I have my box of crayons now?
Usually we go with a decoder ring, but crayons may be more appropriate these days!