The White Supremacy Trap

September 29, 2020, Washington, DC: A woman watches on TV first 2020 presidential campaign debate between U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. (Credit Image: © Gripas Yuri / Abaca via ZUMA Press)

Last night’s presidential debate revealed the faulty assumptions most media are using against President Trump. President Trump was right when he said to moderator Chris Wallace, “I guess I’m debating you, not him, but OK.” President Trump is debating almost all media outlets and journalists.

This morning, there are countless stories and tweets that President Trump “refused” to denounce white supremacy. Many people claim they are outraged because President Trump didn’t specifically disavow the Proud Boys. Tim Scott is also falling into this trap by saying the president “misspoke.”

 

 

 

 

That last tweet has almost 310,000 likes.

What did President Trump actually say?

Chris Wallace: (41:33) You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left wing extremist groups. But are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland.

Donald J. Trump: (41:57) Sure, I’m willing to do that.

CW: (41:59) Are you prepared specifically to do it.

DJT: (42:00) I would say, almost everything I see is from the left wing not from the right wing.

CW: (42:04) But what are you saying?

DJT: (42:06) I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.

CW: (42:08) Well, do it, sir.

Joe Biden: (42:09) Say it, do it say it.

DJT: (42:10) What do you want to call them? Give me a name, give me a name, go ahead who do you want me to condemn?

CW: (42:14) White supremacist and right-wing militia.

DJT: (42:18) Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what: Somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem this is a left wing.

JB: (42:28) He’s own FBI Director said unlike white supremacist; Antifa is an idea not an organization-

DJT: (42:35) Oh, you got to be kidding me.

JB: (42:36) . . . not a militia. That’s what his FBI Director said.

DJT: (42:41) Well, then you know what, he’s wrong.

CW: (42:42) We’re done, sir. Moving onto the next… [crosstalk 00:42:46]

DJT: (42:46) Antifa is bad.

JB: (42:47) Everybody in your administration tells you the true, it’s a bad idea. You have no idea about anything.

DJT: (42:53) You know what, Antifa is a dangerous radical group.

CW: (42:56) All right, gentlemen we’re now moving onto the Trump-Biden record.

DJT: (42:58) And you ought to be careful of them, they’ll overthrow you.

President Trump did say he was “willing” to condemn “white supremacists and militia groups.” However, he wanted specifics. Joe Biden named the Proud Boys. The Proud Boys are a multiracial group of civic nationalists. President Trump may have made a verbal fumble when he said, “stand back and stand by” instead of “stand down,” but he certainly didn’t call for them to march. In any event, why should the Proud Boys have to stand down? They aren’t the ones burning shops and attacking police.

Chris Wallace vaguely referred to “white supremacist and right-wing militia” but didn’t give specifics. However, he mentioned “Kenosha,” which is almost certainly a reference to Kyle Rittenhouse. Video evidence suggests Mr. Rittenhouse shot leftist protesters who attacked him.

What makes this even more absurd is that President Donald Trump specifically disavowed white nationalists after Unite The Right in 2017. “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally,” he said at the time. He simply added that there were “very fine people” on both sides and that antifa were “troublemakers.” Nonetheless, this lie that he supported white supremacists won’t die. Indeed, it’s the lie on which Joe Biden built his campaign. President Trump also said that if the Robert E. Lee statue was taken down, George Washington’s would follow. Journalists mocked him, but history has already proven him right.

 

Joe Biden said antifa were just an “idea,” not an organization. I’ve written a book on the subject; I speak with authority. “Antifa” is a brand, a front for leftist groups. However, those groups exist. They aren’t just an “idea.” There are specific antifa groups, with specific leaders, and specific sources of funding. They call themselves “antifa” because it is better than calling themselves anarchists or communists.

WND Antifa Book

Journalists know antifa groups exist. They have referred to antifa as a group. For example, CNN did so in 2018 and 2020. CNN referred specifically to the group Rose City Antifa in 2019. Vice embedded with antifa in 2018. Andy Ngo, at great risk to himself, tracks specific people and groups. Now, however, Mr. Biden expects us to believe such groups don’t exist.

Critical Race Theory was also an important topic in the debate, but Mr. Wallace misled viewers: “This month, your [President Trump’s] administration directed federal agencies to end racial sensitivity training that addresses white privilege or critical race theory. Why did you decide to do that, to end racial sensitivity training?”

Critical Race Theory is not “racial sensitivity training.” Critical Race Theory holds that American institutions are inherently racist. It says all whites are racist. It is openly anti-white. No country can survive if its own government teaches that its institutions are illegitimate. I wish President Trump called it “anti-white” but his essential point that he ended it because it was “racist” is correct. It is racist against whites. Most Americans would probably be horrified if they knew what their tax dollars were funding. However, if it is called “racial sensitivity training,” it seems harmless.

 

Mr. Wallace clearly wanted it to sound benign. “What is radical about racial sensitivity training?” he asked. President Trump, again accurately, said that the instructors receive a great deal of money to teach that America is a horrible place. Joe Biden’s response was simply to deny reality. “Nobody’s doing that,” he said. “He’s [President Trump] the racist.”

 

Mr. Biden’s campaign thinks that President Trump’s comments on race last night hurt the President’s chances for re-election. It put up an ad that linked Kyle Rittenhouse to white supremacists. This is a potentially defamatoryclaim.

 

Complaining about Charlottesville is absurd when American cities have been in chaos for months thanks to left-wing rioters. Furthermore, an independent report showed that state and local authorities allowed and arguably encouraged violence at the Unite the Right rally in 2017. However, many journalists either don’t know or pretend not to know. Mr. Biden’s campaign can act this way because media figures are covering for him.

President Trump has not done nearly enough to support white interests. He hasn’t defended the people who supported him so passionately in 2016. I wish President Trump were the pro-white, strong-willed nationalist of the Left’s nightmares. If anything, he’s far too weak. But President Trump is fair-minded. In a healthy country, this would be taken for granted. In 2020 America, it’s a scandal.

The ‘White Supremacy’ Trap

 

Marriage kills commitment?

MARRIAGE KILLS COMMITMENT?

My friend, Carol, has been married for over 49 years. When asked what their secret is to keeping such a strong and happy marriage they reply, “God is first, then the spouse, the children, then ministry for her and work for him, then self in this order.” In contrast, many couples today prioritize their marriages as self is first, then work, children, spouse, and then maybe God at Christmas and Easter.

According to Goldie Hawn, who has been living with her partner Kurt Russell for 37 years, marriage kills commitment. “Marriage is an interesting sociological thing. If you need to be bound to someone, then it’s important to be married,” Hawn said while sitting front and center on the show’s panel. “If you have independence, if you have enough money and enough sense of independence and you like your independence, there is something psychological about not being married because it gives you the freedom to make decisions.” She also said if she had wed her partner of 37 years, Kurt Russell, she would been “long divorced” by now.

Did you marry your husband to be “bound” to him? If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you sure did. What Hollywood fails to realize is that marriage was created and defined by God and this will never change. A man and a woman will become one flesh until death do they part. This is God’s definition no matter how much our culture tries to redefine it. When you become one flesh with your husband, you are bound for life through good times and bad times, sickness and health, poverty and plenty. God is first in your marriage and then your spouse.

“Marriage does take away your independence.” Ms. Hawn is right about this. When you get married, you are your husband’s help meet and live in submission to his leadership. “Blech,” says the world, “that sounds miserable!” (Yes, they use much worse expletives towards this teaching.) Interestingly, she does understand marriage as being bound and losing independence but wants some of the benefits (sex, security, and children) without the commitment.

I can’t tell you how their “relationship” is working behind closed doors, but they’ve been together a long time. Now, others will think this must be the solution since there are so many divorces all around them. It’s not the answer. Living together as an unmarried couple or marrying knowing there is always the option to divorce aren’t any different. But if you are a child of the Most High, we are different.

Yes, we are bound to our husband. We have taken his name, bore his children if blessed with them, and are growing old together through good times and hard times. We have willingly given up our independence and the freedom to make many of our decisions without our husband’s input. This is the way God designed marriage and it is good. It’s a sacrifice and denying ourselves, but this is how a believer in Jesus Christ should live their entire lives; marriage is no different. Self is last with a believer, just as Carol’s marriage has prioritized.

If you want a strong and godly marriage, put your priorities in the same order that Carol and her husband have put them. Hollywood’s priorities are upside down and destructive to the majority of marriages.

The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.
1 Corinthians 7:39

Marriage Kills Commitment?

UK Plans Massive COVID Testing & Digital Passport Regime

October 2, 2020

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On September 9, prime minister Boris Johnson announced the government’s landmark Operation Moonshot programme, which aims to deliver up to ten million tests a day – covering nearly a sixth of the entire population and return results within as little as 20 minutes. Coming at a cost of a reported £100bn, just shy of the entire annual budget for the NHS, it has the twin aims of boosting economic activity and avoiding a second national lockdown. But without better tests, it could end up creating more problems than it solves.”
 
Operation Moonshot is the name of the UK government’s newly proposed COVID-19 mass testing scheme. The plan, revealed by The BMJ,1 involves an expansion of testing from the current hundreds of thousands of tests each day to 10 million a day by early 2021. But how does the government propose to do this?
 
How will testing increase between now and early 2021? The documents show a proposed three-stage rollout. They state that the UK will carry out between 200 000 to 800 000 tests a day between September and December 2020. This might break down to:
 
200 000 tests a day on people with symptoms, 100 000 a day on people without symptoms in local areas to suppress outbreaks, 250 000 a day on people without symptoms in the NHS and care homes, and 100 000 a day through national prevalence studies. From December the plans propose increasing daily capacity to between two and four million. This would involve mass testing of all homes in local areas or whole cities when prevalence rises (430 000 tests a day), testing high contact professions such as teachers every week (100 000 a day), and testing people to allow them to enter high risk settings, such as visitors to the hospital and care homes.
 
The plan then states that there would be “full rollout” in early 2021 to 10 million tests a day, to “enable people to return to and maintain a normal life.” At this stage, weekly testing would be made available progressively to the whole population to allow people to go to high-risk events by using a “digital passport” to show they have tested negative for the virus.
 
‘PARTNERSHIPS”
 
How will testing capacity be increased? The documents talk about “buying large scale capabilities” from partners such as the drug company GSK to “build a large scale testing organization.” However, under “potential partners for increasing laboratory capacity,” the documents list only the company AstraZeneca. Under logistics and warehousing, the documents list potential partners as Boots, Sainsbury’s, DHL, Kuehne+Nagel, G4S, and Serco. Under the workforce are listed universities, the Society of Microbiologists, and the British Society of Immunology.
 
Alongside mainly commercial partnerships, the documents also state that a number of new tests and technologies would need to be used, including some that do not yet exist.
 
“Delivering testing at the scale and level of ambition set by the prime minister is likely to mean developing, validating, procuring, and operationalising testing technology that currently does not exist,” the plans state. Lower sensitivity testing for “screening/enabling purposes” could also be used, with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing then used to “confirm positive results or in situations where accuracy is needed for highest risk individuals.”
 
Testing technology listed in the documents includes qrt-PCR, Endpoint PCR, LAMP, LamPORE, lateral flow antigen test, and whole genome sequencing. Two of these tests–lateral flow antigen tests and LAMP–are listed as having a “lower sensitivity” of between 80% and 100%.
 
Where will people get tested? The documents propose venues such as general practices and pharmacies, workplaces and schools, and community based local testing sites. Testing may also be carried out on site at events before people can enter.
 
‘SANCTION-BASED’ MODEL TO FORCE PEOPLE TO BE TESTED
 
Are there any plans to get the public on board? The documents show that there have been discussions over how to incentivise people to be tested. They point to enforcing testing “via a sanction-based model” or through “offering individuals opportunities/access from being tested,” such as being able to attend events.
 
What is a digital passport? Testing for access to certain spaces features heavily in the documents, with reference to “immunity/virus free passports,” likely to be available through an app. The plans say that testing could be used to “give people assurance that, at least for a limited time, they are unlikely to have the virus and are at low risk of transmitting it to others.”
 
They say, “A negative test result (or potentially a positive antibody result) may inform not just whether you could attend an in-patient appointment, but if you go to work that day, access a venue, get on a flight or visit an elderly relative.” The documents also point to a “significant expansion” of testing funded and delivered by the private sector, such as in football stadiums to allow access.
 
Do the documents acknowledge any concerns? Yes, although not in great detail. In reference to the non-PCR tests, it is repeatedly noted that “new types of test are likely to be less accurate [than PCR], introducing some level of risk.” In terms of how testing would affect behavior, the documents say that regular testing “might make people behave in safer ways, by building covid-safe routines into their daily lives, or less safely by giving false a degree of comfort.”
 
However, the documents also say, “We will need to take some risks, experiment and evaluate carefully, and find out what works and what does not.”
 
How will the £100bn be spent? This figure is mentioned only briefly in the documents. They state that “opening up the economy” and allowing the population to “return to something closer to normality” would cost “over £100bn to deliver.” The figure is not broken down.
 
What reason does the government give for Moonshot? The documents state that the objective of the mass testing program is to “utilize the full range of testing approaches and technologies to help reduce the R rate, keep the economy open and enable a return to normal life.” They say that Moonshot has been described by the prime minister as the “only hope for avoiding a second national lockdown before a vaccine, something that the country cannot afford.”
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This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trademarks are retained.
 
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https://www.henrymakow.com

Saving the Golden State will save America.

As demonstrated by the torrent of executive orders issued by King Newsom in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, constitutional rights, and due process go out the window during a public emergency. In the coming years, with California’s one-party state leading the way, expect climate “emergencies,” systemic racism “emergencies,” and new health-related “emergencies” to shred what is left of representative government in America.

These “emergencies” are enabling the onset of political tyranny in California, with Governor Gavin Newsom as the figurehead. His most significant overseers are the teachers’ unions and Big Tech billionaires. These two blocs spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on political campaigns and lobbyists, along with funding powerful nonprofit groups that agitate for politically useful agendas with respect to the environment, homelessness, social justice, and race and gender equity.

All this well-funded advocacy is framed as “for the people” and “for the planet.” In reality, everything Newsom, his predecessors, and his puppeteers have done has failed ordinary Californians, while delivering more power and more profits to California’s ruling elite.

Instead of rounding up the homeless, sorting them according to their various problems or pathologies, and putting them in supervised tent encampments in low-cost areas in the state, California’s homeless advocates and profiteering “nonprofit” developers build taxpayer-funded “supportive housing” palaces that cost over $500,000 per unit in the middle of expensive residential neighborhoods, solving nothing. Meanwhile, cities descend into filthand anarchy.

Instead of implementing school choice, the teachers’ unions demand more funding for failed models of public education. And instead of going out and finally allowing property owners and timber companies to clear the dead trees out of overgrown forests—left there to rot thanks to years of suppressing natural fires and driving away the logging industry—Gavin Newsom issues an executive order to ban gasoline cars within the next 14 years. Meanwhile, the forests keep on burning.

There is only one way to save California and, by extension, save America. The democratic will of the people must reassert itself in a massive realignment of public sentiment. To win these landslides, too seismic to be challenged by executive fiat, political candidates must openly reject core premises of the Democratic party, and offer a new political agenda that promises to do the exact opposite.

In three fundamental areas, public education, land use, and energy infrastructure, California’s current policies are destroying lives, livelihoods, and land. And in all three of these areas, California’s Democrats claim the moral high ground. But Democrats do not actually hold the moral high ground on these questions. They are ruining everything, from California’s cities to its forests. How can that be moral?

Union Public School Monopolies Are Not Moral

The most obvious example, where a realignment tipping point has already almost been reached, is the moral imperative to nurture the next generation. Everyone agrees: Teach the children well, that they might all have a chance at a bright future. But California’s public schools are failing their students, and the problem is the worst in low-income neighborhoods where the importance of a good public education is the greatest.

The solution is equally obvious: Public schools need competition. Parents need to be able to choose from an assortment of accredited K-12 schools; public, public charter, virtual, parochial, private, homeschool, and micro-schools.

To implement school choice, education advocates need to stop trying to push whatever baby step their consultants and donors claim is politically possible, and do what is right. They need to demand school vouchers for parents to redeem at whatever school they wish. Voters have had enough. They’re ready to vote for vouchers.

The biggest barrier to vouchers is California’s teachers’ unions, whose state and local chapters combined collect nearly a half-billion in dues each year. These unions use hefty portions of that money to buy politicians and lobbyists, impacting legislation that protects their monopolies.

But they are not doing this “for the children.” They do not hold the moral high ground. They oppose school choice because as a monopoly they can perpetually acquire more members, more dues, and more power. And the parallel moral dimension, at least for the leadership of these teachers’ unions, is they can use their control over the public schools to indoctrinate California’s children.

Packing Population Growth Into Existing Cities Is Not Moral

If there is any area where years of indoctrination have turned ideologically driven opinions into supposed facts beyond dispute, it is in the area of environmentalism. And one of the most fundamental premises of environmentalism, often overlooked, is the delusion that higher-density urban areas are necessary to protect the planet.

The moral imperative is to save the earth, with “climate change” as the most urgent threat. But no matter what your opinion is about climate change, cramming California’s population into the footprint of existing cities will not have any impact whatsoever on the climate. All it will do is guarantee that housing is unaffordable forever.

If school choice is the revolutionary concept that will rescue K-12 education in California, more suburbs on open land is the revolutionary concept that will restore home affordability in California.

Almost every premise of the “anti-sprawl” lobby is ridiculous and must be challenged. Single-family homes of one or two stories are far less expensive per square foot than multi-story buildings. Building utility infrastructure for new suburbs is less expensive than tearing up streets and easements to retrofit utility conduits to accommodate higher density in cities.

The claim that expanding suburbs contributes to climate change is also ridiculous. Jobs will follow workers to new suburbs. People telecommute. Cars are becoming greener every year.

The idea that land is scarce is equally ridiculous. Using data drawn from 2017 USDA data, only 5.1 percent of California’s whopping 164,000 square mile area is given over to residential, commercial, and industrial use. California’s total urbanized land, 8,280 square miles, is insignificant compared to its 42,498 square miles of grassland, with about half of that used for cattle ranching and dryland farming. To develop a mere 20 percent of this grassland would allow California’s urban footprint to double.

The array of legislation and executive orders designed to prevent new suburban development in California is overwhelming. These laws and executive orders must be overturned, possibly through a constitutional amendment put before voters in the form of a ballot initiative. There is no environmentally compelling reason to block development of new towns and suburbs along California’s major freeways—Highway 101, Interstate 5, and Highway 99—especially if these developments are on rangeland which is of marginal agricultural value and of which only a fraction would be developed anyway.

Expressed as a percentage of California’s vast area, the amount of land necessary to unlock suburban development again on open land is trivial. If 10 million Californians moved into homes on spacious quarter-acre lots, four per household, with an equal amount of space developed for new roads and commercial development, it would only consume 1,953 square miles—this would only be a 24 percent expansion of California’s urban footprint, i.e., from 5.1 percent to 6.2 percent of all land in the state.

To deny this opportunity to make homeownership affordable to California’s hard-working low- and middle-income residents is based on misanthropic, cruel lies. Allowing suburban development on open land is a moralchoice. Until it is again permitted, housing in California will never be affordable.

“Renewable Energy” Is NotSustainable, Affordable, or Moral

California’s ruling elite has decided that its citizens will bear the brunt of being the bleeding edge of a global transition to “renewable” energy. But by forcing this advance via government decree, they risk impoverishing a generation merely to leave a legacy of obsolete technologies.

A perfect example is Newsom’s recent decree that new gasoline powered cars cannot be sold in the state after 2035, a mere 14 years from today. What if technologies are found to make gasoline-powered cars even cleaner? Or what about natural gas-powered cars? What about cars like the Chevy Volt, an extraordinary engineering achievement that allows all-electric driving for short commutes, but also delivers 50 miles to the gallon for city or freeway driving when in gasoline mode? The Volt died an unwarranted death because California’s green despots did not consider it sufficiently green.

And if California’s energy future is to be exclusively electric, why isn’t nuclear power an option? Why is Diablo Canyon, which could run for several more decades, being decommissioned? Why is California suing the federal government to stop them from increasing the height of Shasta Dam, which would increase hydroelectric capacity?

The selective use of facts to promote “renewables” in California is epic. What sort of analysis has been done to show how much of California’s solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries have to be imported? What about the negative environmental impact of solar farms, or wind farms?

What about lithium and cobalt, imported from nations where the environmental abuse and labor conditions are hideously worse than anything in the United States? Why aren’t mining concerns allowed to exploit the abundant lithium deposits in California’s Mojave Desert?

Then there is the question of what happens to all these “renewable” installations when they degrade and have to be replaced. How long will these solar panels and batteries last, and how will they be reprocessed? Even if California achieves a 100 percent renewable electric energy infrastructure, how could it ever be scaled to be applied worldwide, given the raw materials required and the fact that today solar and wind only supply 3.8 percent of global energy? What about new technologies that may come along and render this massive sacrifice obsolete?

Californians deserve reliable and cheap energy. This means nuclear power, hydroelectric power, and clean natural gas. Doing this makes life affordable for working families, and also makes it easier for manufacturers to come back to California, bringing high paying jobs with them.

Starting a Revolution Against Misery that Masquerades as Morality

Much more can be said about policies in California that harm people and the environment, but these three are foundational. If you fix the schools you reduce crime and enable upward mobility. If you deregulate so you can build new suburbs on open land you make housing affordable, reduce the overall cost-of-living, and reduce homelessness. If you back off these extreme renewable energy mandates you reduce the cost of living and stimulate economic growth.

The premises that must be challenged and destroyed, because they are utterly false, are the following:

1) More money to feed the teachers union monopoly helps children learn. Wrong.

2) Packing people within the footprint of existing cities helps people and the environment. Wrong.

3) “Renewable” energy is cheap and reliable, and it is helping the environment. Wrong on all counts.

The policies that must be promoted without reservations or apology, because they are moral choices that will make California livable again, are the following:

1) School vouchers must be implemented, so parents can choose whatever school they want for their children.

2) The regulatory barriers to suburban land development must be all but scrapped, so the housing that people want will be affordable.

3) Hydroelectric, natural gas, and nuclear power must be expanded in California, and renewables mandates must be reduced, so energy will be affordable and reliable.

California’s voters are ready to understand that these failed policies are pushed by special interests that benefit from misery. They’re ready to consider new politicians and new policies. But candidates have to be willing to stand up and tell voters the unvarnished truth about current policies, and promise do the opposite.

The teachers’ union has a monopoly on education, and the worse things get, the more money they demand.

The major corporations, the investment banks, and the pension funds are all in a position to benefit from artificial scarcity of land, because it pumps up the value of their real estate portfolios.

The tech giants and the public utilities love renewable energy because it drives a much larger percentage of consumer spending into paying for overpriced electricity, along with creating a mandatory market for the “internet of things” to manage energy consumption.

Politicians who advocate school vouchers, suburban expansion, and conventional energy will be viciously attacked by self-righteous zealots, backed up by self-serving billionaires. But the politicians with the courage to stick to this revolutionary agenda will win, because it serves the people instead of the bureaucracy and the billionaires.

California’s one-party state can be overcome. The people are ready. Where are the political leaders?

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/01/saving-the-golden-state-will-save-america/

The Biden Harris Billionaires

Last year, as the Democratic nomination fight fired up, America’s billionaires endured a short-lived social leprosy.

As they always have done, then-frontrunners Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) railed against the ruling class. Yet, this time the class warfare rhetoric found succour not only among convincing swathes of left-leaning Americans, but even some of the Right’s most notable such as Tucker Carlson.

Sanders and Warren, then considered the new beating heart of a Democratic Party just months from a full transplant, felt little inclination to dial down their mortaring of America’s moneyed.

Both boasted to their warping crowds of their financial cleanliness. To take donations from billionaires—those whom both attested were and remain the source of American sickliness—was akin to pocketing blood-speckled dollar bills.

Conventional wisdom assumed Bernie’s no-cigar 2016 bid had mainlined his radical “democratic socialism” into the vein work of the Democratic Party—“We are all Bernie now.”

Warren had a “plan for everything.” Her own brand of radicalism found unlikely admirers at times, including Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, and perhaps many of his viewers. Critics of and sympathizers with anti-corporate capitalism now share a spiritual plane with Warren and many they’d previously regarded as being on the other team.

Previous unsayables, such as a wealth tax on the richest Americans, has found majority support.

A key plank of Warren’s campaign proposedsuch a tax, scissoring two percent a year from Americans worth over $50 million, rising to three percent on billionaires.

Bernie’s plan went deeper. Those worth north of $32.1 million would pay one percent per year, with an additional percentage point clipping those bracketed above. Americans worth $2.6 billion or more would pay six percent—double Warren’s highest rate. Worth over $10.1 billion? Bernie’s plan would snip eight percent.

A majority of Americans supported Warren’s wealth tax, even more so than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y) 70 percent levy on those making over $10 million a year.

Follow the Big Money

Back then, it was Bernie’s time. Not only had he won the argument, but Bernie’s 2016 campaign had also transformed the Democratic Party.

Following February’s Nevada caucuses, Bernie and Warren led the pack, punctuating their dominance with skin-hardening play fights ahead of the inevitable battle to unseat the president. Warren enjoyed spates of insurgency, only to tap out through her own self-constricting donnishness.

That was February, in a year swirled with a generation of assured new histories.

Perhaps, the Democratic Party’s war machine feared Bernie with similar petrification as America’s billionaires feared Warren and her wealth tax. The brahmins paved a marble path for Joe Biden, while Bernie’s canter slicked dry.

Those billionaires seem to like Joe Biden and his vice-presidential pick, Kamala Harris.

Her brief candidacy resembled a clearing house for the billionaire class—47 of its members.

In its first two months, the junior senator from California and her “For The People” campaign took more money from billionaires than the rest of the Democratic field, including donations from Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder, and Salesforce mogul Marc Benioff.

At the time, Joe Biden placed third with the backing of 44 billionaires, just one behind Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

Kamala’s rise from 29-year-old lawyer to darling of the Bay Area machine depended on the finance and favor of San Francisco’s Pacific Heights powerbase—a storied neighborhood and home to $40 million mansions, as well as Democratic high priests Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, and Gavin Newsom.

The big money steamed in. Two-thirds of Kamala’s donors came from California’s ritziest ZIP codes, home to tech titans and Hollywood moguls. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg chipped in. One-third of Kamala’s cash came from the giants of finance. Another quarter from Silicon Valley fortune.

In May 2019, San Francisco oil billionairesGordon and Ann Getty held a fundraiser at their mansion on “Billionaire’s Row” reputed to be the world’s wealthiest stretch of tarmac. The cost to RSVP was reportedly $28,000 a head.

Billionaires Switched from Harris to Biden

Before the Iowa caucuses, Kamala’s campaign flamed out. Yet, the billionaire donations to the Democratic cause burned molten-hot, melting the thermometer when Harris got the vice-presidential nod.

Her billionaires swiveled their siphons to Joe Biden. By January 2020, 66 of America’s richest elites brigaded behind Biden, 10 times the whittling field of the other combined Democrats.

Since April, at least 36 billionaires have donated $100,000 or more to Biden-backing committees and the Democratic National Committee.

The names on the checks are the same as those once landing in Kamala’s campaign accounts.  Reid Hoffman has donated $1.5 million to pro-Biden super-PACs and committees. In June, Laurene Powell Jobs gave $610,600. George Lucas’s wife, Mellody Hobson, donated in June $307,800 to the Biden Victory Fund.

According to the Federal Election Commission, Biden’s top 10 donors resemble a roll-call of America’s ruling class, including: Twilio giants Jeff and Erica Lawson ($1.24 million) Chris and Crystal Sacca ($1.23 million) James and Marilyn Simons ($978,400) Mark Pincus ($626,200) Barry Diller ($620,600) Facebook billionaire Dustin Moskovitz ($620,600) Jeff Skoll ($620,600) Laurene Powell Jobs ($610,600) George Soros ($505,600) and Meg Whitman ($505,600).

Working-Class Rhetoric, Elite Action

Federal campaign finance laws allow individuals to donate up to $5,600 directly to the Biden campaign. Yet, donations max out at $620,600 to the Biden Victory Fund, and up to $360,000 to the Biden Action Fund.

Since April, $90 million has flooded the Biden Victory Fund, 10 percent coming from the checkbooks of billionaires. Another $12 million has funneled into the Biden Action Fund.

Big money in U.S. politics is nothing new. But the cross-party migration of America’s ruling class has upticked since the 1990s, reflecting the Democratic Party’s mutation from the party of working and middle-class Americans, to the preferred home of billionaires.

The Republican Party has long been seared by Democrats as the “party of the rich.” Yet, a blood swap of the two has been underway for decades, quickening with President Trump’s 2016 win.

Just two weeks ago, Joe Biden trotted out a once-familiar Democratic line in keeping with his party’s historical allyship with blue-collared and middle-class Americans.

In Wisconsin, Biden told an audience of aluminum plant workers: “You matter.”

He continued: “I don’t want to punish anybody, but instead of just rewarding wealth in this country, it’s about time we start to reward work.”

Such a statement would not be out of place in the old Democratic Party. Today, the audience would find themselves more numerous within the GOP. America’s college-educated classes were once reliably Republican.

Now, those without a college degree are more likely to vote for Republicans, while America’s knowledge economy workers are firmly Democratic in their voting patterns.

Between 2008 and Trump’s election, the Democratic share of white voters without a college degree crashed. In 2008, Republican John McCain took 11 points more among voters making $50,000 or more per year than those earning half that.

By 2016, Trump did nine points better among Americans with a college degree than he did among those without.

White voters with college degrees voted for Democratic candidates in 2018’s House elections by 53 percent to 45 percent.

This shift contrasts with the Bernie-Warren wing of the Democratic Party, whose antipathy toward billionaires seemed set for the nomination.

Both Bernie Sanders and his ideological protégé Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have questionedwhether a moral society should even tolerate such wealth: “Billionaires should not exist.”

Yet, neither is on the ballot. The billionaires who do exist aren’t on the ballot, either. Their money is.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/01/the-biden-harris-billionaires/

Big Tech’s Backing of the ‘Transition Integrity Project’ Lacks Integrity

During Tuesday night’s debate, while fielding yet another softball from moderator Chris Wallace, Joe Biden promised to accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. “I will accept it, and he will too,” Biden replied. “You know why? Once the winner is declared after all the votes are counted, that will be the end of it.”

But Biden, as usual, wasn’t telling the whole truth. The former vice president can publicly assure Americans he will abide by the voters’ decision this year because he knows his campaign team is part of a massive operation—cosigned by the most powerful media, business, and political interests in the country—performing Biden’s dirty work behind-the-scenes to make sure that he, not Donald Trump, takes the oath of office on January 20, 2021.

As I’ve reported for American Greatness, Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans earlier this year formed a group called the Transition Integrity Project, an outlandish misnomer, which has been “war gaming” a number of likely post-election scenarios. The same sore losers who, to this day, cannot accept the 2016 results fully intend to get their way this time around, the U.S. Constitution and boundaries of decency be damned.

According to its detailed battle plan, the Transition Integrity Project could extend Election Day all the way to Inauguration Day as it sows chaos across the country until Biden is installed in the White House, even if Trump is legitimately reelected.

“The purpose of this report is not to frighten, but to spur all stakeholders to action,” TIP warned. “It is 2 [sic] incumbent upon elected officials, civil society leaders, and the press to challenge authoritarian actions in the courts, in the media, and in the streets through peaceful protest.”

Up Against the Wall

But the report should frighten the American people.

One set of crucial “stakeholders” in this plot are Silicon Valley tycoons and other assorted billionaires hell-bent on taking down this president. Social media platforms and internet providers already are censoring content attempting to expose fraudulent voting; some of the president’s tweets have been flagged for violating Twitter’s rule against openly questioning “unsubstantiated” and “exceedingly rare” claims about mail-in voting.

A co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project is tied to Big Tech progressive activists with deep pockets and a personal vendetta against Donald Trump. Nils Gilman is vice president of the Berggruen Institute, a California-based think tank established in 2010 after the financial crisis. The nonprofit seeks “great transformations” to restructure “global institutions” such as capitalism and democracy. At a star-studded gala in New York City last December, Berggruen awarded its $1 million annual prize to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

 

 

Gilman made some news recently when he publicly called for the execution of author Michael Anton, a co-founder and occasional contributor to this site, who wrote an exposéabout the Transition Integrity Project in September. What riled Gilman enough to suggest Anton should face a firing squad is that Anton accurately reported how George Soros, the biggest donor to radical left-wing causes around the world, is funding the “coup”-like effort.

(Rosa Brooks, the other co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project, is connected to Soros. A TIP partner organization lists several Soros-funded outlets as sponsors, as I reported here.)

The Oligarchs Who Would Buy the Election

Just like every other Trump-hating nonprofit, the Berggruen Institute is led by what can fairly be described as Democratic Party tech oligarchs who heavily fund the relentless crusade against the president. These billionaire benefactors of #TheResistance undoubtedly will keep a steady stream of money flowing to a network of activists after November 3 while at the same time making sure Trump and his supporters are too technologically neutered to fight back.

Board members of Berggruen include:

Reed Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin: The 53-year-old is worth $2 billion and a “top sugar daddy of the Democratic anti-Trump resistance,” according to one report. He offered a $5 million reward for anyone who could produce Donald Trump’s tax returns during the 2016 election.

In 2018, Hoffman was caught funding a false flag operation against embattled Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore involving phony Russian social media accounts; Facebook investigated another Hoffman-backed outlet accused of creating fake news pages during the midterm elections as part of “coordinated efforts to mislead people about the origin of content.”

Hoffman also funds Alloy, a D.C.-based nonprofit headed by former Obama staffers, that produces high-quality data for “progressive” causes. Hoffman is advising the Biden campaign on digital advertising and plans to spend $100 million this election cycle. In conjunction with the NeverTrump sewer The Lincoln Project, Hoffman is producing a digital ad campaign that “uses memes, animation, battle rap, and influencer marketing to highlight the absurdity of Donald Trump’s presidency and the importance of voting this November.”

Eric E. Schmidt, former CEO and chairman of Google: The longtime Democratic activist and donor is worth $17 billion. The tycoon recently blamed the president for “people [dying] unnecessarily” from COVID-19 because people didn’t socially distance or wear masks even though most Americans have abided by that advice for more than six months.

Schmidt also is advising the Biden campaign and, like Hoffman, bankrolls a data science firm. “These tech billionaires…are also pouring millions into some of the country’s most ambitious voter-registration programs—almost all of it behind the scenes—hoping to emulate what worked for Democrats in 2018,” Voxreported in May, referring to Schmidt and Hoffman.

Google and YouTube (now both owned by Alphabet, Inc.) will ban political ads after November 3. “While this policy is in place, advertisers will not be able to run ads referencing candidates, the election, or its outcome, given that an unprecedented amount of votes will be counted after election day this year,” the company announced last week. Part of Transition Integrity Project’s plan is to prevent the Trump campaign from declaring victory before “all the votes are counted.”

Google also has halted its auto-search function for “phrases or sentences if people’s inquiry involves claims about one of the candidates, how to cast a ballot or the overall legitimacy of the electoral process” if the company deems the content “bad information.”

Evan Spiegel, co-founder of Snapchat: The 30-year-old husband of actress Miranda Kerr is worth $4.5 billion. Snapchat is one of the most popular social media platforms for teens and young adults with about 230 million monthly users. Spiegel announced in November the company will “fact check” all political ads.

After Trump’s comments about looting and rioting during the George Floyd “protests,” Spiegel censored the president’s Snapchat account under First Amendment protections. In a long, angst-ridden June 1 letter to Snapchat employees, the blessed millennial confessed he was “heartbroken and enraged by the treatment of black people and people of color in America.” Spiegel called for a “diverse, non-partisan Commission on Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations.” Until all racial grievances were compensated, Spiegel promised, “we will make it clear with our actions that there is no grey area when it comes to racism, violence, and injustice—and we will not promote it, nor those who support it, on our platform.”

The Trump campaign responded, calling Spiegel a “radical” and accusing the company of “trying to rig the 2020 election.”

Simply put, the entirety of Silicon Valley is working, and will work, against Donald Trump and Republicans this year. The power they wield to control post-election information and communication is beyond mind-blowing; the resources they possess are immeasurable; and their ability to sway the outcome of the presidential election is real—and terrifying.

It’s why Joe Biden can innocently claim in public that he’ll “accept” the results; he knows others are preparing to ensure the result is in his favor.

The Big Tech monster has been unleashed to disrupt the presidential election and silence tens of millions of Americans by extinguishing both their vote and their voice. Unfortunately, few realistic options exist to battle this insidious beast.

But Team Trump, the Justice Department, and the GOP must figure out a way to actuallyprotect the integrity of the election. Alternative communications networks must be quickly constructed; conservative media and political organizations need to bolster users of renegade sites such as Parler if it becomes the only public way to communicate. Big Tech companies should face immediate legal action for breaking campaign finance laws by donating essentially billions in in-kind donations to Joe Biden and the Democrats. And, obviously, everyone must vote and not submit either to despair or defeat.

Without a doubt, this is uncharted territory. The more the American people are aware of the enormity of this threat as Election Day nears, the better prepared we can be when the post-election mayhem arrives. We can hope.

About Julie Kelly

Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. She also has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and Genetic Literacy Project. After college graduation, she served as a policy and communications consultant for several Republican candidates and elected officials in suburban Chicago. She also volunteered for her local GOP organization. After staying home for more than 10 years to raise her two daughters, Julie began teaching cooking classes out of her home. She then started writing about food policy, agriculture, and biotechnology, as well as climate change and other scientific issues. She graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 1990 with a degree in communications and minor degrees in political science and journalism. Julie lives in suburban Chicago with her husband, two daughters, and (unfortunately) three dogs.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/01/big-techs-backing-of-the-transition-integrity-project-lacks-integrity/#comment-70137

When the media ask Trump questions about white supremacy, they’re accusing him of it.

No matter how many times Trump condemns white supremacy it will never be enough for the media because their motive is to smear Trump as racist.

When the mainstream media ask President Trump or Trump administration officials to denounce white supremacy, it’s not a question — it’s an accusation. That’s why they won’t accept Trump’s clear, unequivocal, numerous denunciations of white supremacy and racism. The point isn’t to get a clear answer, it’s to smear Trump as a racist.

Trump no doubt knows this, which is why he seems to resent being asked the question at this point. And who wouldn’t? No matter how many times he condemns white supremacy, the questions keep coming.

Hence one of the major media narratives spun out of the presidential debate earlier this week is that Trump “refused to condemn white supremacy.” Never mind that any honest person watching on Tuesday night, or who went back and read the transcript, knows that he did just that — although maybe not in the exact terms Chris Wallace and Joe Biden and the mainstream media demanded.

Nevertheless, the press latched onto this line and won’t let it go. John Roberts of Fox News harangued White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany about it Thursday morning, asking for a “definitive and declarative statement” on whether Trump denounces white supremacy.

McEnany replied, correctly, that the question had been answered by the president himself the day before, and on the debate stage Tuesday night, and many times over the past three-and-a-half years, directly quoting Trump’s denunciations of white supremacy from August 2019 and August 2017, and noting that just last week Trump said he’d like the Ku Klux Klan to be designated a terrorist organization. “He has condemned white supremacy more than any other president in modern history.”

But in a show of abject bias and buffoonery, Roberts and other White House reporters wouldn’t accept McEnany’s answer. One has to see the back-and-forth that ensued to believe it:

 

Later, Roberts threw a temper tantrum on camera about all the criticism he was getting on Twitter over his behavior, angrily defending his question on the grounds that some GOP senators — perhaps the most feckless and cowardly group of people in the country — happen to agree with him.

Then McEnany destroyed Roberts in a single tweet, saying his own wife, Kyra Phillips of ABC News, reported the day before that Trump had denounced white supremacy.

 

Trump’s Long Record of Condemning White Supremacy

This little dust-up is just the latest in a never-ending cycle. The press demands Trump condemn white supremacy, Trump condemns it, and the press pretends he didn’t, or that he equivocated, or that he dodged. The pattern is so obvious and so long-running it’s impossible to deny it unless, like most mainstream reporters, you’re a hopeless partisan hack.

Consider how many times Trump has been asked to disavow David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and failed politician who was briefly a member of the Reform Party when Trump considered running for president as its nominee in 2000. That February, Trump withdrew from the race, citing Duke, whom he called a “neo-Nazi” and a “racist,” as part of the reason he no longer wanted to be associated with the Reform Party. “This is not company I wish to keep,” he said.

The issue came up during the 2016 election when Duke endorsed Trump. Asked repeatedly about the endorsement, Trump repeatedly disavowed him. In February and March 2016, Trump disavowed Duke at least a half-dozen times, including on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he complained that he kept getting asked about it. “I disavowed him in the past, and I disavow him now. And it was very clear that I disavowed, but they—the press doesn’t want to go with it. They just love the story.”

It was more of the same after Trump won the presidency. After Richard Spencer’s alt-right conference in Washington, D.C., Trump was asked by New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet whether he thought he had energized the alt-right. “I don’t think so, Dean,” he said. “I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group.” Asked about it again by reporters, Trump said, “I disavow and condemn them.”

In August 2017, after a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., ended in violent clashes and the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer, Trump said from the White House, “Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

The next day Trump made his supposedly infamous remark about how there were “fine people” on both sides — a statement the media intentionally misconstrued as him saying there were fine people among the neo-Nazis even though Trump clarified in that same press conference he was referring to people on both sides of the debate over Confederate monuments. “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally,” he said.

On the one-year anniversary of Charlottesville, Trump called for unity and tweeted, “I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence.”

In the wake of racially-motivated mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, last August, Trump said, “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.”

Asked about white supremacy the next day, Trump said, “I am very concerned about the rise of any group of hate. I don’t like it, any group of hate, whether it’s white supremacy, whether it’s any other kind of supremacy, with it’s Antifa — I am very concerned about it and I’ll do something about it.”

On and on it goes. No matter how many times Trump condemns and denounces white supremacy, it will never be enough for the mainstream media because the point isn’t to get the president on record, the point is to accuse him of being a racist.

At this point, it would be understandable if Trump simply refused to answer these questions. If he did that, you can be sure media pundits the next day would pretend to be aghast and breathlessly report — you guessed it — that “Trump refuses to condemn white supremacy.”

It’s a stupid game that Trump can’t win, so he should stop playing. His record is clear — and the media know it.

John is the Political Editor at The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/02/when-the-media-ask-trump-to-denounce-white-supremacy-theyre-accusing-him-of-it/

Seeking American lessons from China’s Revolutionary Past

As international tensions with China increase and the American left pushes for its own cultural revolution, Frank Dikotter’s trilogy of books on Mao’s reign of terror is essential reading.

Frank Dikotter’s People’s Trilogy is a series of books describing the horrors inflicted on everyday Chinese men, women, and children by the Chinese Communist Party during the reign of Mao Zedong. Taken together or individually, the information within the pages is as illuminating as it is sobering. While the dictatorial regimes of Adolf Hilter, and to a lesser extent Joseph Stalin, are acknowledged, as are many lessons gleaned from their history, the realities of Maoist rule are not as well-known and we often fail to learn from the experiences of those who suffered in its wake.

From the day he ascended the Tiananmen Gate in 1949 to proclaim the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the fall of 1976 when his reign of terror ended, the death toll left in Mao’s wake is utterly incomprehensible: 40 to 80 million. That is the equivalent to at least the entire current population of California, and potentially the entire populations of New York and Florida as well.

It is hard to digest such numbers, but Dikotter’s masterful narrative weaves government archives with an unflinching view of the personal suffering on display. It is not an easy read. But it is a necessary one, given America’s increasingly tense relationship with China.

When 20th-century Chinese history is discussed and analyzed, the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution are almost uniformly treated as the unquestioned tragedies that they are. The years that preceded these twin pillars of evil, however, the time from the enshrinement of Communist Party rule and its first eight years in power, are glossed over as an era of ups-and-downs—the imperfect genesis of a new government trying to find its footing.

Dikotter’s research and prose eviscerates this idea. The People’s Republic did not have an innocent beginning. Violence and inhumanity were and are the chief tenets of the communist revolution, from the start to the present.

Dikotter’s first book in the trilogy, “The Tragedy of Liberation,” begins during the throes of the Chinese Civil War. Communist troops besieged the city of Changchun, starving to death an estimated 160,000 civilians. Zhang Zhenglong, a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army, summarized the experience this way: “Changchun was like Hiroshima. The causalities were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months.”

Tragedy lays out the 50 or so additional Changchuns that followed. The next two books, “Mao’s Great Famine ” and “The Cultural Revolution,” chronicle 100 more Changchuns to come. The study of 20th-century Chinese history is seemingly a never-ending swim downward, descending lower, and lower into the depths of human depravity.

One can ask how a series of historical books about Chinese Communist autocracy can be meaningful to everyday Americans. The People’s Republic of China is the current greatest threat to humanity, as it seeks to export its destructive Orwellian worldview as an alternative to the Western world.

By unmasking Beijing’s totalitarianism, one can better understand the scope of malfeasance inherent in PRC ideology. By reading the personal experiences suffered by those under the Maoist regime, one respects and honors the victims. Perhaps the most urgent of all, by reading how revolutionary zeal began to foment and then exploded into an orgy of violence, one can recognize revolutionary fringes within their own country — and combat the tactics they employ.

One of the great takeaways from “Tragedy is just how similar some of the specifics on the ground in China during the early days of the regime look to the current American landscape. The Cultural Revolution that followed some years later did not happen in a vacuum. It was merely an evolution from what had transpired beforehand.

Take, as an example, some excerpts from the book and see how they compare to what we are experiencing in our day and time:

  • “Mao achieved power by promising every disaffected group what they wanted most.”
  • “Everyone is learning the right answers, the right ideas, and the right slogans.”
  • “Some people were transformed into revolutionary zealots, ready to break the bonds of family and friendship for the cause. Drawn to an ideology that promised liberation, they relished becoming the champions of the exploited, forging a better world full of hope and light.”
  • “Most of the antiques had already been burned or consigned to the scrap heap, recycled as so many relics of an exploitative past. As an investigation carried out by the party revealed, ‘Everywhere old books that were considered to contain feudal ideas were thrown away or used as old paper.’”
  • “People lived harmoniously under the same sky in the same village for many years. Why did they act like this now? Why did they hate each other and torture each other like that? Was that what the Communist revolution was all about?”
  • “During the persecution, friend had been made to betray friend; family members had been forced to denounce each other. The traditional warm hospitality of the Chinese, therefore, disappeared. We learned that the more friends we had, the more insecure our position. We began to know the fear of being isolated from our own group and of standing helplessly alone before the power of the State.”
  • “Neighbors and friends denounced each other, often in the hope of reward, as people scrambled to prove their allegiance to the new regime.”

We all know what happened next in China. Thankfully, we can take a different path here in America. We need not give away the sacred principles of individual rights and the rule of law to the dictates of collectivization and revolutionary politics. But it will take courage to prevent it.

We will need courage to read from texts that might make us uncomfortable, courage to learn from those who have gone before, and courage to stand up for ideals that might make us unpopular in the elite circles of our nation. Dikotter’s masterful trilogy provides all Americans the opportunity to make these choices a part and parcel to citizenship. We would be remiss if we didn’t take advantage of it.

Zach Bloxham is an attorney and city councilman based in Layton, Utah. He enjoys sports, film, literature, and politics. The views expressed here are those of Bloxham in his private capacity. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/zblox.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/02/seeking-american-lessons-from-chinas-revolutionary-past/

Forced denunciations and “sensitivity training” mimic Communist brainwashing

Critical race theory looks like it’s all about race. But race is merely the tool used to stir up emotional responses that play into the hands of agitators who simply want to control minds.

Agitators for critical race theory have fanned out of academia into mind-hacking workaday Americans, trying to convince them the nation is unredeemably evil. They doggedly attempted to do this to federal employees as well as all big corporations.

Christopher Rufo, a research fellow with the Discovery Institute, has described how trainers for critical race theory (CRT) in the federal government are defying President Trump’s executive order to cancel their race-baiting training. In the State Department, for example, they are pushing a “’21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge,’ in which staff are asked to recite a racial equity ‘pledge,’ ‘select a different minority group daily,’ and engage in a ’10-15 minute challenge’ in ‘pursuit of racial equity.’”

 

Indeed, as Rufo has noted, the goal is to indoctrinate employees with neo-Marxist rhetoric that portrays America as a “white supremacist” nation. Critical race theory and communist tactics are pretty much interchangeable. It’s really all about brainwashing.

In critical race theory, as in communism, the concept of “social justice” quickly devolves into a smokescreen, an old-fashioned divide-and-conquer tool. They evoke hostilities between people in order to control them. While Karl Marx stoked divisions by trying to build “class consciousness,” today’s CRT trainers stoke divisions through its brand of race consciousness.

Sure, at first glance CRT looks like it’s all about race. But race is merely the tool used to stir up emotional responses that play into the hands of agitators who simply want to control minds. CRT really represents a classic, textbook case of coercive thought reform, otherwise known as brainwashing.

Similarities to Communist Brainwashing of U.S. POWs

During the Korean War, many American prisoners of war ended up in camps run by Chinese communists. Unlike the North Koreans, who used physical torture on prisoners, the Chinese used psychological methods to induce compliance in our POWs. Social psychologist Robert Cialdini describes the Chinese “lenient” techniques of gradual thought reform in his book “Influence.” He characterized these as:

Commitment and consistency pressures to gain the desired compliance from prisoners. . . . For instance, prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem inconsequential. (‘The United States is not perfect.’ ‘In a Comunist country, unemployment is not a problem.’) But once these minor requests were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests.

Today we see CRT agitators getting people to make the seemingly mild statement that “Black lives matter.” Most are unaware that the BLM organization is blatantly Marxist and does not believe people have a right to own property or to raise their own children. But we can see how many youths have been pushed to these further levels once invested in the BLM slogan. This is what Cialdini calls the “foot-in-the-door technique.”

Another tactic: get the American POWs to write things down, perhaps just by copying them from a notebook, which might seem harmless. But the act of writing is active, not passive. And the POWs were providing documents in their own writing which could be used to persuade others as well as affect the self-image of the writer.

Cialdini noted that when the POWs returned to the United States, the American psychologists who examined them were unsettled by the success of the Chinese brainwashing attempts, and found that “the Chinese were very effective in getting Americans to inform on one another.”

They Start With Things Anybody Is Willing to Do or Say

If you review the training sessions for CRT facilitators, the process is eerily similar to such communist processes of coercive thought reform. First of all, the employees are put into a controlled environment, isolated from other influences and under the complete supervision of the CRT trainers.

Writing is also a part of the process. The State Department program would have employees take part in “challenge activities” for 21 days that required them to keep a written log of activities such as reading, listening, “allyship,” and more, “with a focus on four minority groups.” They were also required to take part in “support groups” and “emotional validation” exercises, which sound a lot like Maoist-styled “struggle sessions,” otherwise known in communist history as “sessions of criticism and self-criticism.”

At the Environmental Protection Agency, CRT agitators planned to subject employees to a program in which they would be taught about “allyship, antiracism, white fragility, microaggressions, white privilege, and systemic racism.” The original source documents can be found here.

In her 1995 book “Cults in Our Midst,” cult expert Margaret Thaler Singer discusses how the brainwashing/thought reform process aims to destabilize a person’s sense of self in order to change his or her attitudes. But, she says, it is usual “a gradual process of breaking down and transformation.” No doubt CRT aids in this process.

The idea is to undermine individuals’ self-concept, to make them change their worldview and self-image to align with the cultic ideal and a new version of reality. They then become deployable agents to recruit others — and, in the case of BLM, to take part in mob violence.

Binary, Emotionally Charged Thinking

The teaching of critical race theory does exactly this. CRT fits the type of cult thought reform process that Singer classified as reliant upon “aversive emotional arousal techniques – guilt and fear induction, strict discipline and punishments, excessive criticism and blame.”

CRT requires people to think of themselves as either racists or victims or allies, nothing more and nothing less. The deeper you go into the mindset, the more you are invested in it, and the more your behavior is affected by it.

The good news is that these transformations are not permanent for most people as long as they can get out from under the influence. The road to recovery can be difficult for those who were deeply affected, of course. Although many could remain stuck, most can manage to clear their minds in a matter of weeks when removed from toxic influences. It took Patty Hearst a couple of weeks to remove the brainwashing effects imposed on her after she was kidnapped and held under the influence of the terrorist Symbionese Liberation Army for more than a year and a half.

She told Larry King in a 2002 interview: “I had no free will until I was separated from them for about two weeks. And then it suddenly began to dawn that they just weren’t there anymore. I could actually think my own thoughts.”

This is why the liberation of federal and corporate employees from these mind rape sessions is such good news. Let’s hope K-12 students, college students, and the rest of us are as fortunate in freeing our minds, our lives, and our relationships.

Stella Morabito is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow Stella on Twitter.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/02/forced-denunciations-and-sensitivity-training-mimic-communist-brainwashing-tactics/

10 Major DC lies Trump has shattered forever

With major institutions cutting against conservative values, exposing falsehoods has become a theme of the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump has shattered many things over the past four years, and many of them for the better, especially within Washington DC. Even the fact that a real estate mogul and government outsider swept the Republican primary then defeated his establishment Democrat opponent represents quite a political shakeup.

With every major social institution cutting against conservative values and the media waging a slanderous anti-Trump campaign since 2016, exposing falsehoods has also become a theme of this administration. Here’s 10 Washington lies Trump has shattered.

1. The Press Does Not Choose Sides

The Trump era has exposed the press for what it is: an army of propagandists and saboteurs advancing narratives designed by Deep State Democrats.

 

Hillary Clinton did collude with Russian agents. President Barack Obama did spy on the Trump campaign and transition team. Former CIA Director John Brennandid manipulate intelligence to remove evidence that Russia backed Clinton. James Comey did use the fraudulent Steele dossier to secure FISA warrants. Joe Biden did use political leverage on Ukraine to drop a criminal investigation into his son. A Chinese spy did chauffeur Sen. Dianne Feinstein for 20 years. And Biden’s family did take millions of dollars from the Chinese government.

These facts have been ignored by a mainstream media too busy using anonymous sources to advance one lie after the next in order to damage an American president they despise. With few exceptions, reporters are political operatives, and finally, a Republican leader has called them out for it.

2. There Is No Deep State

With the release of FBI agent William Barnett’s 302 interview describing the prosecution of Gen. Michael Flynn by the special counsel’s office as nothing but a means to “get TRUMP,” the evidence of vast misconduct by members of the federal government to orchestrate the removal of a legitimately elected president is undeniable.

Obama’s administration illegally unmasked and leaked the surveilled communications of Flynn and other Trump associates. Comey targeted the president in private meetings while pretending otherwise. Andrew Weissmann used the Special Counsel’s Office to protect Democrats’ “Russian collusion” narrative while attempting to entrap the president for obstruction of justice.

Eric Ciaramella and Alex Vindman appear to have used their national security positions to turn a Biden Ukraine scandal into a Trump impeachment. While prosecutors and judges have harassed Trump associates for four years, Americans continue to wait for the conclusion of John Durham’s investigation into this Deep State-attempted coup. There is no longer any doubt that a two-tiered system of justice exists, one for hunting Republicans and one for protecting Democrats.

3. Democrats Own Black and Hispanic Votes

Establishment Republicans predicted that Trump’s candidacy would destroy inroads with black and Hispanic voters for generations. Instead, the president has increased Republican support from both communities. Trump has proved that protecting legal immigrants, providing the conditions for robust economic growth on Main Street, and treating all Americans equally and without condescension — rather than as members of special racial classes — is a formula for success.

Democrats have taken black and Hispanic voters for granted for 60 years. Biden insists that voting for Trump proves “you ain’t black.” Americans of all colors and creeds are waking up to the reality that Democrats have used them for their votes and given them nothing in return.

4. MeToo Is About Protecting Women and Children

Who is Tara Reade? If she had accused a Republican of sexual assault, she would be well known. Because she alleges that Biden attacked her, she has disappeared from the MeToo movement, just as Democrats have ignored Juanita Broaddrick’s allegation of rape against Bill Clinton for decades.

The Me Too movement has little time for big-dog Democrat donor Jeffrey Epstein’sapparent sexual trafficking of young girls or the numerous Democrats, including Bill Clinton, connected to the “Lolita Express.” The movement does not care about Democrat donor Ed Buck, who is accused of injecting young black male prostitutes with methamphetamines before sexually assaulting them, leading to the deaths of two of his victims.

The MeToo movement imagines Republican crimes everywhere, while burying documented crimes by Democrats faster than Sen. Bob Menendez can allegedly engage in underage prostitution in the Dominican Republic and get back to New Jersey.

5. Climate Change Alarmism Isn’t About Raw Power

Carbon dioxide emissions in the United States have fallen more than in any other country in the world since 2000, as America has adopted clean coal technology and transitioned toward natural gas for electricity generation. The free market and energy innovation, not international governance, have accomplished this feat.

Regardless, climate change alarmists continue to insist that only a United States shackled by the Paris agreementwill save the planet from a temperature increase of less than one degree Celciusover the next century while ignoring China’s role as the No. 1 polluter in the world. This is, of course, due to Democrats’ desire to control more and more of American life, including through outlandish policy proposals like the Green New Deal.

6. Free Trade Requires Wrecking U.S. Manufacturing and Enriching China

Until Trump ran for president, few on the national stage questioned why fidelity to free trade required American towns throughout the Midwest to be sacrificed, so Wall Street companies could use slavery by proxy in China to slash labor costs. Few American leaders looked at those destroyed Midwestern towns and wondered if aiding and abetting illegal immigration across the southern border might be adding insult to injury.

Most of Washington looked the other way while Middle America suffered more than at any time since the Great Depression. Most of Washington laughed when these Americans asked for good manufacturing jobs to come home.

Trump didn’t laugh. He immediately understood that Americans had been abandoned so Wall Street and Washington insiders could make fortunes on the greatest intercontinental transfer of wealth in the history of the world. Trump asked Washington why America shouldn’t have the best blue-collar workforce on the planet, and nobody had an answer.

7. Defending Unborn Babies Is a Losing Political Issue

Trump is the first sitting president to speak at the annual March for Life rally in Washington. His presidency has unapologetically defended the lives of unborn Americans, and more voters are recognizing the fight for life as the most important civil rights issue in America today. During his tenure, Trump has appointed numerous judges who will uphold the constitutional right to life, and the pro-life movement was a feature of the Republican National Convention in August.

8. Judges Are Nonpartisan

Federal judges have overturned Trump’s legal orders at a faster rate than during any other presidency. While Obama somehow had the power to legislate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivalsinto existence, Trump somehow lacks the same power to undo Obama’s overreach.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has gone to great lengths to argue that there are no “Obama judges” or “Bush judges,” but after watching Judge Emmet Sullivan’s persecution of Flynn, Americans know too many judges have become political operatives and too few still adhere to the Constitution as written.

9. Democrats Aren’t Purging History or the Constitution

When some Republicans joined with Democrats to tear down Confederate flags and monuments, Trump warned that the emotional purge was just the camel’s nose under the tent. Since then, the “1619 Project” has rewritten American history, Antifa and the Black Lives Matter organization have targeted statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for destruction, and Democrats openly call for Congress and the courts toignore the Constitution. The political left’s “Cultural Revolution” against America is in high gear now, and it is not going away.

10. The Obama Administration Was Scandal-Free

Obama’s deliberate sabotaging of the peaceful transfer of power by orchestrating a “Russia collusion” hoax that nearly took down his successor is one of the most egregious political scandals in American history. His administration’s efforts to use a cabal of high-ranking intelligence and law enforcement officers to conduct a disinformation campaign designed to implicate a sitting president as an agent of a hostile country can be described as nothing less than an attempted coup.

Along with “Fast and Furious,” the IRS targeting of conservatives, the cover-up of the administration’s culpability in Benghazi, the use of consent settlementsto coerce companies to underwrite Democrat slush funds, and the Department of Justice’s cover-up of Hillary Clinton’s unsecured email serverand pay-to-play schemes through the Clinton Foundation, the Russia hoax secures Obama’s legacy as a singularly corrupt American president.

J.B. Shurk is a proud American from Daniel Boone country.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/02/10-major-dc-consensus-lies-president-trump-has-shattered-forever/