One's Name Is Mud

by

Gadfly

            The title of this essay is an idiom that can be traced to several sources.  The one most common to Americans relates to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth.  After shooting the President, Boothe jumped from Lincoln’s box seat onto the stage at Ford Theater, breaking his leg.   Doctor Samuel Mudd provided medical aid and was later accused of being a co-conspirator in the crime.  To this day, individuals receive the moniker, “one’s name is Mud,” when determined to be “in disgrace or embroiled in scandal.”

            Today, at a no Q & A nine-minute speech, Robert Mueller may have earned the “one’s name is Mud” moniker as his legacy.

            No doubt, in the short-term, Mueller is a hero to the impeachment-obsessed Democrats.  His speech did not put his 400+ page report to rest.  He sent a clear signal (“dog whistle”?) to House Democrats that he failed to complete a legal assassination but that his report was deliberately worded to fuel a political assassination.

            In the longer term, Mueller’s tactic will be trampled by clear and overwhelming evidence (contrary to his “insufficient evidence” distraction) that members of the Administrative State actually conspired to remove a duly elected President.  As some of the evidence becomes public, it is inevitable that “the law” will prevail over politics.  The challenge will be organizing the abundance of evidence along a timeline that tells the real story.  And as Democrat-led, House committee chairs issue their abusive subpoenas, they might soon be surprised when the DOJ investigating net reaches into Congress, where Congressmen and staff members may also receive subpoenas to testify as to what they knew and when they knew it.  Democrats will quickly learn that, as they love to say, “No one, even the President, is above the law,” the same maxim applies to members of Congress and the Administrative State.

            Two very well-researched articles provide a lot of the emerging evidence.  One of the major strawmen in the political assassination attempt is the notion that Russia hacked into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server.  After the Wikileaks release, Russia was blamed for providing this information after allegedly hacking into the DNC server.  Hillary Clinton and the DNC refused to give FBI forensic experts access to their server to verify the Russia hacking.  Rather, Clinton and the DNC hired a private company called Crowdstrike to do the analysis.  So, when you hear Brennan, Comey, and Clapper say Russia hacked into the DNC server, they are repeating what the DNC and Crowdstrike want the public to believe.  For a very credible analysis that debunks this claim, read “A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack,” The Nation, August 9, 2017.  Drawing upon technical analysis provided by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), their conclusion was that “the theft of the DNC e-mails was not a hack, but some kind of inside leak that did not involve Russia.” Here is a lengthy excerpt for the article:

In the meantime, VIPS has assembled a chronology that imposes a persuasive logic on the complex succession of events just reviewed. It is this:

·        On June 12 last year, Julian Assange announced that WikiLeaks had and would publish documents pertinent to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

·        On June 14, CrowdStrike, a cyber-security firm hired by the DNC, announced, without providing evidence, that it had found malware on DNC servers and had evidence that Russians were responsible for planting it.

·        On June 15, Guccifer 2.0 first appeared, took responsibility for the “hack” reported on June 14 and claimed to be a WikiLeaks source. It then posted the adulterated documents just described.

·        On July 5, Guccifer again claimed he had remotely hacked DNC servers, and the operation was instantly described as another intrusion attributable to Russia. Virtually no media questioned this account.

It does not require too much thought to read into this sequence. With his June 12 announcement, Assange effectively put the DNC on notice that it had a little time, probably not much, to act preemptively against the imminent publication of damaging documents. Did the DNC quickly conjure Guccifer from thin air to create a cyber-saboteur whose fingers point to Russia? There is no evidence of this one way or the other, but emphatically it is legitimate to pose the question in the context of the VIPS chronology. WikiLeaks began publishing on July 22. By that time, the case alleging Russian interference in the 2016 elections process was taking firm root. In short order Assange would be written down as a “Russian agent.”

Note: DNC staffer Seth Rich was assassinated on July 12, 2019.  He was a Bernie Sanders supporter and apparently not happy about how the DNC rigged the primary.

Excerpt continued:

But its certain results so far are two, simply stated, and freighted with implications:

·        There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5 last year—not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system. This casts serious doubt on the initial “hack,” as alleged, that led to the very consequential publication of a large store of documents on WikiLeaks last summer.

Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them, they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language. Guccifer took responsibility on June 15 for an intrusion the DNC reported on June 14 and professed to be a WikiLeaks source—claims essential to the official narrative implicating Russia in what was soon cast as an extensive hacking operation. To put the point simply, forensic science now devastates this narrative.

            The second major article with abundant evidence is far more recent:  “Joe diGenova Discusses Declassification and Origin of Obama Political Surveillance Operation…,” The Last Refuge, May 27, 2019.  It is a lengthy article with links to sources/evidence.  It implicates the usual suspects, to include Robert Mueller.

            What the left continues to count on is a complicit media that is doubling down on the removal of President Trump and an unwitting public that remains somewhat content in learning only part of the story.

 

The left’s tortured logic can only last so long.  When someone does something dishonest, lying about it is not counterintuitive behavior.  Of course, it helps to be so corrupted by power that being unscrupulous is a necessary trait.  Here are just two examples of the left’s tortured logic.

            First, on Mueller’s obstruction logic, he says that, because the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel claims a sitting president cannot be indicted, he chose not to decide on the obstruction evidence, which is an insult to jurisprudence because intent to commit a crime is an antecedent to an actual crime. If there is no crime, intent is irrelevant.  No evidence that a crime was not committed is something to be found only in Alice and Wonderland.  The legal standard is sufficient evidence to support a crime, which is consistent with the legal standard that one is presumed innocent until and only when sufficient evidence determines a crime has been committed.  To say that he could not exonerate the President because there was no evidence to prove his innocence is not the way jurisprudence is supposed to take place in America.  Even the President is entitled to due process, despite his real crime of getting elected.

Mueller claimed that because there could be no court conviction from an indictment against the President, he would not decide on obstruction; yet, he still indicted Russian players who will never see a day in court.  Is this an example of Orwellian Doublespeak?

 

Part II of Mueller’s report consists of over 200 pages of text, citing many news articles based on anonymous government leaks (and manufactured evidence) as their source.  Mueller established a compelling picture that there “appeared” to be obstruction, so he clearly signaled to the Democratic House that even though there was insufficient evidence to support a charge of obstruction, he was passing the baton to Congress for a political trial, called impeachment.  On the notion of colluding with Russia, he did decide, based on “insufficient evidence,” that there was no collusion.  In other words, although there was some evidence, it did not rise to an indictable threshold.  To even the most casual observer, there is blatant incongruity in the decisions for Parts I and II of the Mueller report.  In pursuing this path, Mueller is demonstrating that in today’s America, politics can trump the law.

            The second example of tortured logic is the reminiscing about past impeachment experiences such as Nixon and Clinton.  The only thing these two experiments had in common was an intent to impeach by the U.S. House of Representatives.

 

In the Nixon case, he had just won a landslide reelection, both in the popular vote (60.7% to 37.5%) and Electoral College (520 to 17).  Against this backdrop, some who were associated with this apparent wave of political power engaged in tremendously stupid stunts, the most egregious of which were orchestrated by John Dean (an older media darling on the scale of today’s Michael Avenatti).  There was no crime by Nixon as the predicate for impeachment proceedings.  While the House made a strong case for a cover-up by Nixon of crimes committed by others, Nixon was essentially tried in the court of public opinion thanks to “show trial” hearings (something Congressman Nadler has already teed up) and strategic releases of information to the media.

 

There is a far more accurate story about the Watergate scandal, revealed by others who, unlike anonymous sources cited by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, interviewed actual people and mentioned them by name.  Len Colodny, among other reputable investigative reporters, published incriminating details in his book, Silent Coup:  The Removal of a President.  Dean, Woodward, and The Washington Post sued Colodny and St. Martin’s Press unsuccessfully to keep the actual truth silent.  Geoff Shepard in his book, The Real Watergate Scandal:  Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down, argues that based on new evidence members of the judicial system conspired with the House Judiciary Committee to engage in illegal activities to remove Nixon.  By the way, the FBI’s Mark Felt was conveniently outed as “Deep Throat” by Bob Woodward when he passed away.  As they say, “dead men tell no lies.”  For those who have taken the time to read Colodny’s book, “Deep Throat” was General Alexander Haig, serving as Nixon’s Chief of Staff at the time.  I discuss details in another essay, “A Praetorian Guard?”

So, how was the William Clinton impeachment different?  After an independent counsel’s investigation (which reported to the US House of Representatives, not the Attorney General), Clinton was found to have committed felony crimes.  The Kenneth Starr report found 11 grounds (criminal evidence) for impeachment.  The Republican-led House forwarded two charges for impeachment—perjury and obstruction of justice-- to the Senate for conviction.  Sixty-seven votes were needed for a conviction.  There were insufficient votes to convict because votes were based mostly on political party affiliation.  Not a single Democrat voted to impeach Clinton—for actual crimes.

         

During his impeachment proceedings, Bill Clinton was defended by Cheryl Mills.  Sound familiar?  Mills was also involved in Hillary Clinton’s legal issues with the DOJ and FBI.  Lawyer-client confidentiality were sanctified in this case while perverted for Trump and his lawyers.

Why did Mueller call for a press conference today?  He wanted to send a signal.  He failed to find a legal means for removing Trump, something he clearly wanted to happen.  He allowed or ensured his 400+ page report to keep the political coup alive.  It is now a race between the Attorney General’s investigation into the investigators and Nadler’s show trials.

 

          Two years ago, I suggested a more plausible Mueller report.   Regardless of the outcome of the race between Nadler’s show trials and Barr’s investigation of the investigators, Mueller chose a side.  He will forever be known as “one’s name is Mud.”          

Resisting America’s Ruling Class

by

Gadfly

I watched the Andrew McCabe interview on 60 Minutes. My reaction: Andrew McCabe meet John Dean.

If anyone has had a chance to read the incredibly well-documented book, Silent Coup, by Len Colodny who does not use anonymous sources, they will see how ambitious and unvirtuous people can generate such malignancy.  Even today, most Americans have no idea of the real Watergate story.  For example, see Jim Hougan’s Secret Agenda and Geoff Shepard’s The Real Watergate Scandal.

 

John Dean, Nixon’s General Counsel, orchestrated the Watergate break-ins and then orchestrated the cover-up.  In the process, numerous Nixon-associated officials became collateral damage (as in the Mueller investigations) and Nixon was forced to resign (certainly the American left’s goal for Trump).  These activities took place months after Nixon won reelection in a landslide, taking every state except for Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.  The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward also played a key role, and his “deep throat” source was General Alexander Haig while serving as Nixon’s Deputy National Security Advisor in Nixon’s first term and as his Chief of Staff in the second term.  As Colodny reports in the 25^th anniversary edition of his book, Dean and Woodward sued, unsuccessfully, to prevent the books original publication in 1991.  In the current era, we see numerous Bob Woodward wannabes in the left-leaning media.

McCabe was a small player in America’s ruling class. Inexperienced but “horny” for the orgasm of power, McCabe was arrogant and careless in his attempt to apply power against a duly elected President.  Other players, big (Obama, Biden, Clinton) and small (Clapper, Brennan, Rice, Powers, Comey, Ohr, Crowdstrike, GPS Fusion, etc.), are now at great risk of being held accountable for subverting our Constitution and the rule of law.

 

Yesterday, a day following McCabe's 60 Minutes “cover-up” performance, President Trump gave a speech on Venezuela in Miami, Florida. I watched the speech real time on Fox News, the only network that covered the speech. As I flipped channels to CNN and MSNBC, in particular, pundits were expressing sympathy for McCabe, “the victim.”  Later in the evening, there was not one second devoted to the speech by any of the networks except for Fox's Hannity.

Coincidentally, yesterday I watched Evita, with Madonna playing the role of Eva Peron, the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 to 1952.  Like America’s First Lady Melania Trump, she was beautiful.  Unlike Melania, Eva was practically worshiped by Argentina’s people.  Peron was a champion for her husband’s political agenda, which was modeled after Mussolini’s.  Like Venezuela, Argentina was once one of the most thriving nations in the world until it was afflicted by socialism.

The most significant part of President Trump’s speech was about socialism. This is the first time of which I am aware that a prominent public official in American politics, let alone the President, has had the backbone to call out this ideology and to explain why it is so antithetical to the American dream. Without ever mentioning Democrats, any objective observer will notice how President Trump’s description of socialism closely aligns with today's Democrat Party (as I explicitly discussed in “Defining America’s Democrat”). 

President Trump pulled no punches in his speech:

 

We know that socialism is not about justice, it's not about equality, it's not about lifting up the poor -- it's about one thing only: power for the ruling class. And, the more power they get, the more they crave. They want to run health care, run transportation and finance, run energy, education, run everything. They want the power to decide who wins and who loses, who's up and who's down, what's true and what's false, and even who lives and who dies.

The timing of President Trump’s Venezuela speech is critical for two reasons.  First, President Trump is showing leadership in his support for the Venezuelan people, primarily, and for Cubans, Nicaraguans, and other Western Hemisphere people seeking freedom.  Second, President Trump has put the growing cohort of Democrat Presidential candidates on notice that he will ensure the American people truly understand the left’s “ruling class” agenda.

The Democrat “ruling class” agenda is hiding in the open.  There are no secrets here.  In a lengthy article, “Winning Is Not Enough,” published this past summer, Paul Glastris, Editor in Chief of the Washington Monthly (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation), used the following as the subtitle:  “Democrats are focused on taking back power—but our democracy depends on them keeping it. To do that, they have to start thinking differently.”

President Trump is the culmination of an alienated America:  the result of the left’s concerted efforts to agitate and divide Americans, beginning in the Progressive era at the turn of the 20^th century and accelerating in the 1960s.  President Trump brings hope for the unity that once provided the political refuge Americans counted upon.

 

Today’s Washington Examiner article, “How the Collapse of Communities Gave Us Trump,” by Timothy Carney adeptly captures this phenomenon.  President Trump does not believe in a ruling class.  He believes in sovereign people--“We the People” that believe in a Constitutional Republic and the rule of law—not the rule of men.      

America’s Dreyfus Affair

Abstract:  Making sense of the political tension and division within America is no easy task.  For most Americans, we are experiencing conditions without precedent.  Yet, history has documented similar circumstances in the past.  Why not examine these recorded observations to ascertain what ever wisdom might be derived from such an analysis?  This article attempts such an examination in a conversation between Old Gadfly, an American citizen with an inquiring mind (IM), and a seasoned combat aviator with an inquiring mind (AM).  Gadfly then summarizes the discussion and offers two predictions.

Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, are you familiar with the Dreyfus Affair?

IM:  Yes, in 1894, a French Jewish artillery officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, was accused of spying, court-martialed, convicted of treason, and sentenced to life in prison at Devil Island.  Before imprisonment, he was paraded before the public where they shouted, “Death to Judas, death to the Jew.”  Two years later, evidence eventually surfaced that another French (non-Jewish) officer, Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, was the actual traitor; Esterhazy was court-martialed but not convicted.  In 1899, Dreyfus was again court-martialed and again found guilty, yet was quickly pardoned.  Finally, in 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated in the French army.

AM:  This sentiment coincided with the anti-Semitism that permeated Western Europe, Russia, and even the United States.  For example, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a widely circulated publication that claimed Jews were colluding to dominate the world.  In Europe, the Rothschild family was particularly singled out because of its vast wealth.  In America, Henry Ford purchased and then distributed 500,000 copies of The Protocols within America.  Ford even published a series of anti-Semitic articles in the Dearborn Independent, a newspaper he owned.  In hindsight, historical facts now show that Ford materially contributed to a false narrative.

IM:  Ironically, today Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.  The nearly wealthiest man in the world is deliberately and aggressively consolidating the retail industry and possibly the news industry.  Bezos’ consolidation efforts crush competition and the novelty of diversity of ideas—not the left’s arbitrary distinction in terms of ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so forth.  Where is the opposition from the left?  Perhaps the answer is because The Washington Post is clearly anti-Trump.

Old Gadfly:    Do you see any similarities between The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and any other publication in America?

IM:  Yes,  the so-called “Russian Dossier” is a similar publication.  The Protocols document was a complete fabrication of lies; yet it had a huge impact in fueling anti-Semitism.  Hannah Arendt, in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, identified the phenomenon of anti-Semitism as a critical seed in the emergence of totalitarianism, which included both forms of socialism--communism and Nazism.  Like The Protocols, the Russian Dossier also fabricated lies for effect.  The Dossier fueled the Russian collusion sentiment that still exists, especially in the justification for the current Mueller investigation. 

Old Gadfly:  In regard to the Russian Dossier, here are some questions the public deserves to know:  How did Senator McCain get word of the dossier?  Why did he unilaterally dispatch an aide overseas to get a copy?  Was this an act of collusion?  Should he be questioned in the same manner as Donald Trump, Jr., who met with a Russian lawyer by invitation?

AM:  Great questions, Gadfly.  It appears anti-Trump Republicans initially paid GPS Fusion (headed by Glenn Simpson) for opposition research against candidate Trump.  The research was then handed off to another paying customer—the Hillary Clinton campaign.  Further, “British-American businessman and anti-Kremlin crusader Bill Browder” claims GPS Fusion took money from the Russian government.  This is why Congress is now investigating the Russia GPS Fusion connection (collusion?).

IM:   Do you know who Bill Browder is?  He is a billionaire who, after the fall of the Soviet Union, has done extensive business in Russia.  He is now an anti-Putin activist, seeking justice for the conviction, torture, and murder of his Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.  Browder’s grandfather, Earl, headed up the American Communist Party, twice running unsuccessfully for President of the United States in 1936 and 1940.  Browder tells his story in his recently published book, Red Notice:  A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.

Old Gadfly:  Let’s get back to Arendt’s book, The Origins of Totalitarianism.  She does an excellent job explaining how anti-Semitic sentiment contributed to the phenomenon of totalitarianism.  After the book’s release, she was very careful in responding to critiques to point out that “seeds” may have been more accurate than “origins,” because it is difficult to establish precedents for the unprecedented.  Yet, it was the hatred and contempt that coalesced against a perceived enemy that allowed the seed to crystallize over time.  In the early 1900s in Europe and Russia, the hatred and contempt crystallized among those on the collective left against those who had different beliefs and values such as those who appear to be aligned with individual liberty, private property, and free-market capitalism.  In today’s America, there are groups such as the New Black Panthers, Occupy Wall Street, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and other leftist groups characterized by anger and hatred. The left loves to claim the KKK and white supremacist groups are far right; but, they are not.  Historical records explain the true nature of these groups and they tend to be leftist—Marxian, Nietzschean, and so forth.  To suggest a white supremacist group is right-wing, conservative, or Republican is political heresy.  It is like certain politicians (e.g., Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, or Tim Kaine) advocating for abortion or same-sex marriage rights while also claiming to be devout Catholics.  In this case, progressive orthodoxy trumps church orthodoxy.

There is a new leftist hate group called Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (check out the video).  Notice also, the accelerated aggressiveness of the Communist Party USA (until it’s taken down, the homepage has a headline:  “Can Trump Forge a New White Supremacist Governing Coalition?”).  Here is a print screen image of the homepage:

IM:  Another “seed” discussed by Arendt was imperialism--in the form of ideological world domination.  Arendt’s first chapter under the section on imperialism had an interesting title:  “The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie.”  In this case, the bourgeoisie represented those who controlled the centers of production (and wealth).  Bourgeoisie did not include the “aristocracy”—those in government roles—or the labor class (the proletariat in socialist orthodoxy).

Old Gadfly:  What can we learn from this?  How does it apply to today’s circumstances?

AM:  Obviously, it is very dangerous for business leaders to align with a particular political ideology.  And by ideology, I do not mean a political philosophy; I mean orthodoxy or dogmas that become moral truths.  Progressivism in America is an ideology—it believes in secular humanism, the redistribution of wealth, and other man-made rights (e.g., reproductive rights to justify abortion, sexual orientations) that are contrary to the laws of nature and the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Progressivism is coercive in that progressive values must become everyone’s values.  Those that resist are punished.  This is why the left, and not the right, has invented moral slurs for those who possess different values:  slurs such as homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, misogynist, and so forth—modern equivalents of the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.  In 2006, Bernard Lewis argued antisemitism represents a special case of prejudice and hatred, that it is directed against people who are different from the rest and deemed to represent “cosmic evil.” This is why progressives such as UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff feel compelled to indoctrinate the masses by publishing books with such titles as:  Moral Politics:  How Liberals and Conservatives Think.  Lakoff’s framework justifies explaining that conservative views are not only wrong, they are immoral.  This is also why those who are skeptical of the anthropogenic theory and so called “settled science” for climate change are labeled “climate deniers” and considered evil.  For interesting contrary “evidence” on the subject see recent Congressional testimony by Dr. John R. Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Alabama’s State Climatologist and Director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

IM:  Given the rampant crony capitalism and corporate welfare that characterizes the current situation in America, there are now perverse incentives for the government aristocracy and the business sector to collaborate for the expansion of power and the perpetuation of that power.  Remember the “business world” reaction when then Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law?  The act was eventually amended to accommodate the demands of the LGTBQ special interest group who pressured businesses to boycott Indiana.  There have been other cases as well.  Last year the Seattle Seahawks chef faced similar pressures.  Recently, President Trump gave Congress six months to provide legislation related to the unconstitutional Presidential policy known as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).  A 31-year old Millennial, who happens to be the fifth wealthiest man in the world (for inventing a gossip platform—arguably a modern Marxist opium for the alienated masses), quickly organized a joint letter with roughly 300 business leaders representing the politically emancipated bourgeoisie to demonize Trump’s adult, well-reasoned constitutional action.  After all, authority for immigration policy rests on the legislative powers of the U.S. Congress, specifically articulated in Article I of the Constitution.

Old Gadfly:  It seems as though secular humanistic movements are aligning against America’s Judeo-Christian tradition.  Is this a modern “anti-Semitic” development?

IM:  If it is such a development, then it reflects concerns Arendt shared in a reply to a letter from Professor Eric Voegelin, another prominent political philosopher, in 1953.  The excerpt below talks about a lack of common interest and the atomization of society (something clearly reflected in social media phenomena):

For similar reasons and for the sake of distinguishing between ideas and actual events in history, I cannot agree with Mr. Voegelin's remark that "the spiritual disease is the decisive feature that distinguishes modem masses from those of earlier centuries." To me, modern masses are disintegrated by the fact that they are "masses" in a strict sense of the word. They are distinguished from the multitudes of former centuries in that they do not have common interests to bind them together nor any kind of common "consent" which, according to Cicero, constitutes interest, that which is between men, ranging all the way from material to spiritual and other matters. This "between" can be a common ground and it can be a common purpose; it always fulfills the double function of binding men together and separating them in an articulate way. The lack of common interest so characteristic of modern masses is therefore only another sign of their homelessness and rootlessness. But it alone accounts for the curious fact that these modem masses are formed by the atomization of society, that the mass-men who lack all communal relationships nevertheless offer the best possible "material" for movements in which peoples are so closely pressed together that they seem to have become One. The loss of interests is identical with the loss of "self," and modem masses are distinguished in my view by their selflessness, that is their lack of "selfish interests" (p. 81).[1]

In the following excerpt, Arendt emphasizes the danger of atheism:

I know that problems of this sort can be avoided if one interprets totalitarian movements as a new--and perverted--religion, a substitute for the lost creed of traditional beliefs. From this, it would follow that some "need for religion" is a cause of the rise of totalitarianism. I feel unable to follow even the very qualified form in which Professor Voegelin uses the concept of a secular religion. There is no substitute for God in the totalitarian ideologies - Hitler's use of the "Almighty" was a concession to what he himself believed to be a superstition. More than that, the metaphysical place for God has remained empty. The introduction of these semi-theological arguments in the discussion of totalitarianism, on the other side, is only too likely to further the wide-spread and strictly blasphemous modem "ideas" about a God who is "good for you"-for your mental or other health, for the integration of your personality and God knows what-that is "ideas" which make of God a function of man or society. This functionalization seems to me in many respects the last and perhaps the most dangerous stage of atheism (pp. 81-82).[2]

Old Gadfly:  How would you characterize these observations in relation to the American culture?

IM:  The idea of America, “our nation,” has been deeply rooted in an understanding of human dignity and the need for a political system to protect that dignity.  Donald S. Lutz, a political scientist at the University of Houston, conducted an analysis of archived documents between 1760 and 1805 to determine the source of influence in political thought during the founding of our nation.[3]  The number one source cited was the Bible with 34% of the citations.  The number two source, representing 22%, was a set of Enlightenment authors with Montesquieu topping the list.  The implication is that political thought inherent in the Declaration of Independence was heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition.  It was the Judeo-Christian tradition that championed tolerance for faith, regardless of the religion or lack of religion.  The Declaration clearly established “self-evident” truths and rights—all men are created equal, endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  There was no implied source for these truths and rights.  Our founders explicitly identified the source:  “their Creator.”  In the early 20^th Century, members of the U.S. armed forces received citizenship training that was grounded in ethical and legal foundations.[4]  This 179-page manual includes an explicit explanation of the role philosophy and religion play in understanding individual liberty and the moral duty of citizenship.  Culturally, Americans predominantly affiliated with the Judeo Christian tradition, peaking in 1956 with 99% of surveyed Americans—71% Protestant, 25% Catholic, and 3% Jewish.[5]  Since 1956, the number of Americans affiliating with the Judeo-Christian tradition now represent 72%, a decrease of 27%--37% Protestant, 10% Christian nonspecific, 22% Catholic, 3% Jewish.[6]

Old Gadfly:  Arendt’s explanation of the decline of the Christian tradition combined with the political emancipation of the bourgeoisie established conditions for imperialism.  Imperialism for many is commonly understood to represent the colonization that European nations engaged in during previous centuries.  How would you explain imperialism in the 21^st Century?

AM:  Progressives in America and Europe believe in the power of central planning.  This is why they are strong advocates for the United Nations and other international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.  In today’s vernacular, they are not imperialists; they are globalists.  This is why it is becoming more common to hear globalists, such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders, call themselves “citizens of the world.”  International institutions can be useful if understood as collaborative instruments in support of sovereign nations and people.  Unfortunately, progressives (globalists) see them as primary authorities.  Arendt reminds us that Soviet Communism and German Nazism were intended for world domination.  Progressivism and its central planners have a similar intent.  By the way, Hillary’s recent book title is What Happened.  A quick glance at the content reveals a lot of complaints about her struggle-bound presidential campaign and all the great ideas she had for policies across the board for social, political, and economic life for the masses.  I could not help but think that a better title for the book would have been My Struggle, but another figure in history already used that one.

IM:  Pretty clever, AM, on the book title observation!  But, then again, I noticed Samantha Power wrote the “Introduction” to the 2004 edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism.  The “Introduction” has two parts.  The first was a brilliant analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of Arendt’s thinking.  The second part revealed Power’s progressive and globalist nature.  I was not surprised then to recently learn that she participated on behalf of the Obama Administration in the “unmasking” of individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

Old Gadfly:   Let me summarize this excellent discussion and then close with two predictions:

Summary:  First, America’s Dreyfus Affair is an attempt by the leftist progressives to create anger, contempt, and hatred against Donald Trump and all that he symbolizes—to include Americans Hillary Clinton demeaned as “deplorables.”   Second, there are anti-Semitic-equivalent movements that need to be called out and diminished.  Third, there is an imperialistic manifestation in the form of the business sector aligning with the political ideology of progressivism, further compounded by the unholy alliances of crony capitalism and corporate welfare.  These developments should also be called out by virtuous customers and politicians.[7]   

          Prediction:  First, it is now becoming apparent that moral (not political) courage helped Trump get elected.  Ninety-three percent of Americans classified as “Spiritually Active, Governance Engaged Conservative Christians” voted for Trump.  Only 1% voted for Clinton. If Donald Trump survives the manufactured Russia collusion scandal, those who believed in his sincere and authentic vision of the American idea (“Make America Great Again”) will become greater in number and more courageous in fulfilling their moral duty, grounded in our Judeo-Christian tradition. Second, virtuous Democrat leaders will realize the opportunity they have to “heal” the anger, contempt, and hatred that is so prominent (and rampant) among those who vote Democrat.  However, this will only come about after a serious evaluation of the progressive “ideology” and its dogmatic principles that are intolerant of other ideas and values.

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[1]  Arendt, H.  (1953). [The Origins of Totalitarianism]: A Reply, The Review of Politics, 15(1), 76-84.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Robert S. Lutz, The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 78, No. 1 (March 1984), 189-197.

[4] See Training Manual 2000-25, Citizenship, November 30, 1928.  Retrieved on August 30, 2017 from http://constitution.org/mil/tm/tm_2000-25/tm_2000-25.pdf

[5] Gallup Poll on Religion.  Retrieved on August 30, 2017 from http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx

[6] Ibid.

[7] See for example, Ken Buck, Drain the Swamp:  How Washington Corruption Is Worse Than You Think, (Washington, D.C.:  Regnery Publishing, 2017).

Obama's High Horse and Fuzzy History

Old Gadfly:  Since the Orlando shooting incident, do we now see Obama using a bully pulpit or simply riding a high horse?  He accuses Trump of violating American values by wanting to ban Muslim immigration to America and that using the term, “radical Islam,” serves no purpose.  Obama seems to have created a meme that Trump is anti-Muslim and anti-immigration by extension—you know, one of those leftist labels called xenophobia.  With a complicit media, he expects others will imitate the meme. 

IM:  My understanding is that Trump is against illegal immigration (he’s married to a legal immigrant after all) and especially concerned about not being able to vet a swarm of Muslim refugees into America from an Islamic region that is far from peaceful.  This is a completely different mental frame than “anti-Muslim.”  I would say that Trump strikes me as an individual who believes that a just society is based on a system of laws and that America welcomes immigrants of all backgrounds through a legal process.

AM:  Obama’s message is crystal clear.  He believes his angry oration via a bully pulpit, where he, the self-righteous preacher with good public approval ratings (thanks to a horrific media slant and spineless Republicans who seem to have lost a grip on reality), rebukes the presumptive Republican presidential candidate for sinfully warning the public that there was a radical Islamist connection to the shooting.  Obama counts on an incredibly naïve public to swallow what he says on face value.  As we discussed in the last conversation, he has a colluding and fully complicit media to amplify the message.  Just this morning, I marveled at how George Stephanopoulos, on ABC Good Morning America, facilitated clips of Obama, Clinton, and Trump, shaping the message in favor of Obama and Clinton.  This is the same man who served as a senior advisor in the Clinton Administration, and then later donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation.  I’ll say more about connections later.

IM:  Sadly, at last year’s national prayer breakfast he sat on a high horse while accusing others of sitting on a high horse because an increasing number of Americans (and Europeans) are concerned about the increasing death toll stemming from radical Islam.  He lectured us about Christian violence in the name of Christ but refused to suggest there might be violence in the name of Muhammad.

Old Gadfly:  I remember he mentioned the Crusades.

IM:  He counts on fuzzy history.  Our progressive public education has done a great job in creating a mental frame that blames Christians for the Crusades.  A deeper look shows that the Crusades spawned in defense of Muslim aggression.  And when he sanctimoniously mentioned Jim Crow laws, he failed to mention that these were Democrat policies that are similar to much of the progressive inspired regulatory regime and rulings that pick winners and losers as we speak.

AM:  In the current Foreign Policy Magazine, Moscow-born Julia Ioffee wrote an article with this title:  “If Islam Is a Religion of Violence, So Is Christianity.”  Leftists are already pushing similar themes (see Dr. Paul Kengor’s excellent analysis here).  Let’s just stick to the current issue and I’ll ask, during high horse Obama’s reign, how many Christian-associated casualties have we recorded?  Aside from the thousands of casualties, to include many on American soil, and the millions of refugees stemming from radical-Islam, politically correct imitators like Ioffee want us to play make believe; just as George Lakoff advises all progressives, “if the facts don’t fit the frame, then they are irrelevant” (Read Lakoff’s Thinking Points, a Handbook for Progressives, here).  I think Mitt Romney may have received the Lakoff training based on his “trickle down racism” assertion the other day.  And, I’m sure Barry Goldwater would assure Trump to stay the course despite Mitt’s father, George Romney, going to great lengths to undermine Goldwater after his nomination by suggesting he was unfit to be president (jumping on the bandwagon of leftist efforts along these lines).  The major issue here was that Goldwater believed the issue of civil rights exceeded federal authority and belonged within the realm of the states.  George Romney, showing progressive colors, wanted the federal government to take on extraconstitutional authority. 

IM:  Back to Ioffee, politically correct imitators like Ioffee, who also wrote the GQ hit piece on Melania Trump, do not like their frame being challenged.

Old Gadfly:  Obama seems angry that the presumptive Republican nominee is personally challenging him on this topic.

IM:  God forbid anyone should challenge Obama because any such sacrilegious act would clearly be racist.  Ironic, isn’t it?  I remember a Democrat presidential nominee saying very derogatory things about his predecessor.  In fact, I recall that he did this to rally his political base, to get them angry and hungry for his special antidote of “hope and change.”

Old Gadfly:  So, what do you think he had in mind for change?

AM:  You mean more specifically than his vision to “fundamentally change America” ?  Wayne Allyn Root, a Columbia University classmate of Obama’s told us what the change was in 2010.  Here is an excerpt from an article he penned:

Rahm Emanuel cynically said, "You never want a crisis to go to waste." It is now becoming clear that the crisis he was referring to is Barack Obama's presidency.

Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos — thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.

Barack Obama is my college classmate (Columbia University, class of '83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University. They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival ... and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.

Old Gadfly:  I remember reading about this strategy in the 60s, going into Johnson’s Great Society agenda.  Later in graduate school, I read Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward’s book, Regulating the Poor:  The Functions of Public Welfare.  Notice the action described:  regulating; not elevating or empowering, or some other uplifting strategy.  The authors described the importance of “stabilizing” the masses as a function of the welfare state.  This is very consistent with the growing administrative state that we now have, where a powerful central government continues to expand a regulatory regime that is becoming more and more coercive, controlling the centers of wealth production and significantly chipping away at individual liberty.

AM:  Which brings us to motivations for “hope and change” and the connections I mentioned earlier.  First, let’s start with Obama’s connections:  besides his mentoring by communist Frank Marshall, Obama’s key advisors, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod have their own direct connections with communist mentors.  See, for example, the evidence provided by Dr. Paul Kengor.  In his recent book, Takedown:  From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, Kengor explains (with powerful evidence) how important it was to destroy the traditional institutions of family and marriage to allow communism to flourish.  This is the fundamental change Obama had in store for America.

IM:  Just like V. I. Lenin, Obama knew that he needed to grow a Bolshevik-style grassroots to imitate his “vision” for a transformed America.  To achieve this, he instituted an initiative called “Organizing for America.”  Here is the video he released on January 15, 2009 announcing this grassroots initiative.  Today, his organizing machine is now named BarackObama.com.  At this renamed site, Obama imitators/followers can watch over 30,000 videos.

Old Gadfly:  In terms of “connections,” are there any concerns about Hillary Clinton?

AM:  Aside from the apparent corruption associated with the sleazy pay-to-play connections at the Clinton Foundation, a more sinister set of connections--especially in light of what happened in Orlando--begins with Huma Abedin, Hillary’s former aide at the State Department with access to Top Secret information and now vice-chair for her presidential campaign.  A recent expose’ by Roger Stone is very troubling!  According to Stone, Huma Abedin, a Muslim (ironically married to former, penis-texting Jewish Congressman Anthony Weiner), was the assistant editor for 12 years of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, an academic journal published by the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a family business founded in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with the patronage of Abdullah Omar Naseef of the Muslim World League.  Naseef’s connections go beyond this.  Naseef was involved in creating Rabita Trust in 1988.  Here is an important excerpt from Stone’s article:

Just a month after the 9/11 jihadist attack left thousands dead and brought down the World Trade Center, President George W. Bush’s Executive Order designated the Rabita Trust as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity and the Treasury Department froze its assets on October 12, 2001.

Naseef founded the Rabita Trust and remains involved with it to this day.  A Treasury Department press release issued when Rabita Trust’s assets were frozen indicated that Rabita Trust is headed by Wa’el Hamza Jalaidan, one of the founders of al-Qaida with bin Laden.  He was the logistics chief of bin Laden’s organization and fought on bin Laden’s side in Afghanistan.  Jalaidan himself was branded a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity by the United States Treasury Department, and his assets have been frozen, as well.

But the connections between Abedin’s Saudi benefactor, the Muslim World League, and al-Qaeda don’t end there.   (To read more, see here).

IM:  The Washington Post assigned 20 journalists to scrutinize Trump.  When do you think they might consider doing the same for Hillary Clinton?

Old Gadfly:  Not likely.  Fuzzy history is an asset for the left.  I realized this last year when a USAF Academy cadet admitted to me that he had no idea what communism is.  We need a modern Max Eastman to refresh people of real history. 

Eastman was a socialist activist in his early years and a close associate of John Reed, a fellow intellectual, Greenwich Village Bohemian who tried to bring socialism to America in the early 1900s.  You may have watched Warren Beatty’s movie, Reds.  Beatty wrote the screenplay and played the role of Reed in the movie.  I saw it when it was first released in the 80s and mostly treated it as fiction.  Then I watched it again last month.  After serving over 34 years defending America against the threat of communism, I truly understood the message of this biographical and historical movie this time.  In his book, The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek relied heavily upon Max Eastman observations.  Here is Hayek’s opening paragraph in Chapter 11, “The End of Truth”:

The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends.  To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends.  It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends.  Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants.  If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries is in general less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine, this is because the totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in making people think as they want them to.

AM:  Obama, the planner, must be pleased because even Republicans are acting “spontaneously in the way the planner wants.”

Old Gadfly:  Yes.  About 35 years after Hayek’s warning, in the 1983 edition of George Orwell’s 1984, the venerable Walter Cronkite provided the Preface.  Here is an excerpt:

If not prophecy, what was 1984?  It was, as many have noticed, a warning:  a warning about the future of human freedom in a world where political organization and technology can manufacture power in dimensions that would have stunned the imaginations of earlier ages.

Orwell drew upon the technology (and perhaps some of the science fiction) of the day in drawing his picture of 1984.  But it was not a work of science fiction he was writing.  It was a novelistic essay on power, how it is acquired and maintained, how those who seek it or seek to keep it tend to sacrifice anything and everything in its name.

IM:  Pretty powerful observation from a respected journalist.

Old Gadfly:   Are there any living American journalists worthy of the title?  They seem to have lost their sense of duty and their soul.  And they have good company with imitating Democrats and spineless Republicans who lack the courage to support Trump, who clearly understand what Hayek and Cronkite warned us about.  Trump has a realistic understanding of history and is not on a high horse—he’s out front leading Americans who refuse to relinquish their God-given liberty.