"All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice." โ George Orwell, 1984Let's be clear about one thing: the impeachment of Donald Trump is a waste of time and money.
Impeaching Trump will accomplish very little, and it will not in any way improve the plight of the average American. It will only reinforce the spectacle and farce that have come to be synonymous with politics today
While the nation allows itself to be distracted by yet more bread-and-circus politics, the American kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians and corporate thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of the people) continues to suck the American people into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry are powerless to defend themselves against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.
So here's what I propose: let's impeach the Deep State and its cabal of government operatives from every point along the political spectrum (right, left and center) for conspiring to expand the federal government's powers at the expense of the citizenry.
We've been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long โ sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs โ that it's hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we're certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.
Even now, we are being pushed and prodded towards a civil war, not because the American people are so divided but because that's how corrupt governments control a populace (i.e., divide and conquer).
These are dangerous times.
These are indeed dangerous times but not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because the borders are being invaded by foreign armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute, or because a pandemic is spreading like a contagion, or even because raging mobs of so-called domestic terrorists are trying to overthrow elections.
No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing armies to rob, steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill American citizens with immunity.
The danger "we the people" face comes from masked invaders on the government payroll who crash through our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and terrorize our families.
This danger comes from militarized henchmen on the government payroll who demand absolute obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and ask questions later.
This danger comes from greedy, power-hungry bureaucrats on the government payroll who have little to no understanding of their constitutional limits.
This danger comes from greedy politicians and corporations for whom profit trumps principle.
This danger comes from a surveillance state that grows more and more ominous.
Consider, if you will, all of the dastardly, devious, diabolical, dangerous, debilitating, deceitful, dehumanizing, demonic, depraved, dishonorable, disillusioning, discriminatory, dictatorial schemes inflicted on "we the people" by a bureaucratic, totalitarian regime that has long since ceased to be "a government of the people, by the people and for the people."
Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What remains all-too-usual, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.
Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you're talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.
Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Likewise, by subjecting Americans to full-body scans and license-plate readers without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the scans for later use, the government โ in cahoots with the corporate state โ has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.
Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. In the wake of various shootings in recent years, "gun control" has become a resounding theme. Those advocating gun reform see the Second Amendment's right to bear arms as applying only to government officials. As a result, even Americans who legally own firearms are being treated with suspicion and, in some cases, undue violence. In one case, a Texas man had his home subjected to a no-knock raid and was shot in his bed after police, attempting to deliver a routine search warrant, learned that he was in legal possession of a firearm. In another incident, a Florida man who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm found himself detained for two hours during a routine traffic stop in Maryland while the arresting officer searched his vehicle in vain for the man's gun, which he had left at home.
Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure โ it belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you're no longer the owner of your property.
Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police. In early America, citizens were considered equals with law enforcement officials. Authorities were rarely permitted to enter one's home without permission or in a deceitful manner. And it was not uncommon for police officers to be held personally liable for trespass when they wrongfully invaded a citizen's home. Unlike today, early Americans could resist arrest when a police officer tried to restrain them without proper justification or a warrant โ which the police had to allow citizens to read before arresting them. (Daring to dispute a warrant with a police official today who is armed with high-tech military weapons and tasers would be nothing short of suicidal.) As police forces across the country continue to be transformed into outposts of the military, with police agencies acquiring military-grade hardware in droves, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield.
Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, strip search us, and probe us intimately. It's no longer unusual to hear accounts of men and women being subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of "routine" traffic stops. What remains to be seen is how the emerging hypervigilance over COVID-19 vaccines will impact that right to bodily integrity.
Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans' phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., little to nothing has been done to counteract these abuses. Instead, we are daily being accustomed to life in this electronic concentration camp.
Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the government's agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.
Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age, let's call it the age of authoritarianism. In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called "economic elite." Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.
It is not overstating matters to say that Congress, which has done its best to keep their unhappy constituents at a distance, may well be the most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in America.
In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism: a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.
Sound familiar?
Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests. We have moved into "corporatism" (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism. Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests โ not elected by the citizenry โ rule over the many.
History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a totalitarian state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.
Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America's new normal.
From Clinton to Bush, Obama to Trump, and now Biden, it's as if we've been caught in a time loop, forced to re-live the same thing over and over again: the same assaults on our freedoms, the same disregard for the rule of law, the same subservience to the Deep State, and the same corrupt, self-serving government that exists only to amass power, enrich its shareholders and ensure its continued domination.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the powers-that-be want us to remain distracted, divided, alienated from each other based on our politics, our bank accounts, our religion, our race and our value systems.
Yet as George Orwell observed, "The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians."
Reader Comments
Prior to the formation of the Confederation there was considerable thought given to the size of a Republic.Those political knobheads at the time knew that a large Republic would fall to despotism. (See the Anti-Federalist papers) The only way any civilization has managed to maintain a stable government is to keep it small and local. (re Native American tribal councils) The other most critical factor is local currency control. Everyone knows what Mayer Rothschild said about money and governments.
The "Founding Fathers" (only a select few) tried to prevent the rise of the deep state scenario with the division of powers. Tripods are known to be highly unstable, and trilateral divisions of government are no different. Inevitably, two departments will side against the third. For the last century, all three houses have been aligned to the same major objectives, only differing in methodology fueling internal bickering--like what we're seeing now among the Democratic party coalitions. Once the Federal Reserve and the federal tax laws went into effect, our political representative have been subborned the moment they took office. Originally the Senate was supposed to guard against violation of the BofR and preserve adherence to the Constitution. This they have never done since Georgie Porgie took office. He vainly tried to call them out in his farewell address, ignoring the fact that it was through political pandering he got to be president, both at the Convention and of the Federal Republic.
"Philosophical historians had worked out a regular life cycle, or more properly death cycle, of republics. Manhood gave way to effeminacy, republican liberty to licentiousness. Licentiousness, in turn, degenerated into anarchy, and anarchy inevitably led to tyranny.โ p70-1
"...by 1787 a number of Americans had come to believe that even that modicum of democracy was incompatible with security for liberty and property. In thinking the subject through, James Madison and various others focused upon a feature of republics that had always been troublesome, namely, the tendency of men to divide into factions or parties and to put the interests of the parties ahead of those of the public. David Hume, whose ruminations on the subject were most influential upon the Framers, held that the tendency was universally operative, even under despotism; but it was generally agreed that factions occurred more frequently and were more dangerous in republics and, indeed, that factionalism was the most common proximate cause of their downfall. Factions were not, it is true, entirely inevitable. In those miniature republics, the towns of New England, unanimity often prevailed: town meeting after town meeting, in choosing selectmen, settling local issues, electing representatives, and even voting for governor, repeatedly turned in unanimous votes-187 to 0, 243 to 0, 121 to 0. Moreover, throughout the United States, juries of the county courts, which may also be regarded as miniature republics, disposed of astonishing numbers of civil and criminal cases rapidly and, of course, unanimously. But that kind of public harmony was rare in the larger history with which Americans were familiar.โ p162 Novus Ordo Seclorum , Forrest McDonald
Alexis deToqueville in his Democracy in America (1835) observed that the obsession with equality would be the downfall of the USofA:
โThere are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make man and woman into beings not only equals but alike. They would give to both the same functions impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights, they would mix them in all things,-- their occupation their pleasures, their business. It may readily be conceived, that, by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded; and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature, nothing could ever result but weak men and disorderly women.โ P244
The American people need to start thinking and learning about what kind of government--NON-government society they want to live in if they're going to stop this wheel of plunder and tyranny. Laws are necessary, but government is not. Only law enforcement. Read Anthony deJasay on the role the American west sheriff played in local townships.
Forrest McDonald:
Novus Ordo Seclorum
We the People
E Pluribus Unum
Merrill Jensen:
The New Nation
Rosenfeld:
American Aurora
Anthony deJasay
Against Politics
1 a) the exercise of authority over a state, district, organization, institution, etc.; direction; control; rule; management b) the right, function, or power of governing
2 a) a system of ruling, controlling, etc. b) an established system of political administration by which a nation, state, district, etc. is governed
Freedom exists only where there is no attempt to control the actions and behavior of others.This basic idea is where the Framers in the Convention had their heads in dark places when they wrote the preamble to the Constitution. Bastiat discussed this dilemma at length, suggesting that government itself should be done away with, and only a system of laws held inviolate could preserve incursion against freedom, by protecting the liberty, property, and persons against plunder and aggression.
Good eye.
RC
I came back - no it happily turns out. That piece of evil is obviously planned for video watchers who are not even aware that they apparently 'listen to' the form, not the function. Sad.
RC
Oh well.
R.C.
[Link]
A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America, by Victoria Collier, 2005
[Link]
Votescam book:
[Link]
This is manual how to steal elections that was followed 3 years later:
How to rig an election in three not-so-easy steps
[Link]
"the bewildered herd" (Walter Lippmann) has attained the ideal observed by James Baldwin: the amerikan ideal is that everybody should be the same"...Simmel found that only in primitive individualistic tribes where individuality was absent were genders homogenized and fashion brought closer to the body (tattoos/colored hair)
Hochschild observes the masculinized US female as does Lasch....Gorer wrote in 1948, "only in amerika is the father vestigial: the amerikan mind and conscience is feminine". when Riesman described amerikans as "over-conformist semi-automatons" only the lowest ranks US Navy, biker gangs, criminals had tattoos
"the wolf cares not how many the sheep there may be". Virgil
As Klockman says supra: The folks here at SOTT (even and especially the Americans) are much more in that final group than I think that you might imagine.
R.C.