Political Dark Side: Propaganda, Censorship, and Calumny

 

by

Gadfly

As a concept, “politics” is neither good nor bad.  Its application, however, is either good or bad.  My favorite political philosopher, David Eastman, had a simple definition for politics: “the authoritative allocation of values.” 

Values are not the same as virtues.  Values are preferences based on desire, which can be virtuous or vicious.  Virtues are principles that promote goodness and provide guideposts for virtuous behavior.  Vices represent evil passions and effects.

Power is a value, and a vicious behavior if it is sought as an end and not a means.  On the other hand, power can represent a virtue if it manifests the authority of moral behavior to achieve goodness.  Both forms can manifest in the character of the body politic of a nation.

These distinctions were recognized and understood centuries ago in the wisdom shared by St. Paul to the Galatians in Chapter 5 of the Judeo-Christian Bible.  In this short chapter, Paul reminds his followers of the difference between the liberty of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in contrast with earthly bondage.  It is amazing how clearly this liberty versus bondage choice is recognizable in the current true life drama playing out in America.

A political dark side dominates the American body politic, and it is patently observable in the form of propaganda, censorship, and calumny. 

In his book, Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler provided his observations about the importance of propaganda in this passage (I included this material in another previously published article “Evidence Is Overwhelming but There Is an Elephant in the Room”): 

 

The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses [this is why Democrats aggressively define the opponent; see also here]. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood [and Democrats/Leftists employ calumny with no limits].

Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice [i.e., the emphasis on social justice, fair share, equity, diversity & inclusion, dignity & respect, etc.]; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side [similar to progressive George Lakoff’s axiom that it is the frame that matters, and facts are only relevant if they fit the frame]. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas [e.g., racist, bigot, white privilege, misogynist, homophobe, Islamaphobe, etc.  In her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton argued that Trump followers fit into one or more of the standard progressive stereotypes.]. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion [does it not shock, let alone surprise, that Democrats/Leftists persist in their calumny against Donald Trump?]. The leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles [Trump dossier, impeachments, a raid on Trump’s home, etc.], but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula.[1] (Text in bold, italics is my editorial insertion)

With such bold actions in the form of propaganda, why not also censor?  Just today, Jonathan Turley reported that the AP press is in full denial of widely known facts.  See here.

More disturbing because of its subtle yet sinister behavior is the combination of propaganda, censorship, and calumny by Big Tech.  Dr. Robert Epstein, a registered Democrat, provides compelling evidence here.  This can be fixed by Congress and the Courts as threats to our First Amendment Rights.  “We the people” should insist that this happens.

Friends, mainstream media platforms are an additional instrument in advancing propaganda, censorship, and calumny.  Yet, there is a growing number of alternative news sources that still pride themselves on honest journalism.

What more can be done?  First, recognize this is a spiritual contest that cannot be avoided by denying the presence of evil intentions and behaviors.  Second, be on good terms with the source of our moral authority and pray for wisdom and courage.  Third, do what we can to rebuke evil and affirm good behavior.  Not only does the soul of our nation depend upon these actions, but our very own souls are at stake as well.

My articles have recently been sparse because I am attempting to do what can be done through a nonprofit called Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, Inc. (www.starrs.us).  I invite you to check us out, join the cause, and spread the word. 

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[1] Mein Kampf citations are from the Project Gutenberg-hosted 1939 English translation by James Murphy.

Authoritarianism

by

Gadfly

          In my lifetime, the only American President I have heard or read to be an authoritarian is Donald Trump.  For example, see here, here, and here.  Even worse is the example here:  The “evidence” offered to support the authoritarian premise is tautological (i.e., a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form) in its construction . . . but it sure reads like the truth.

          Most of Trump’s Executive Orders were designed to reduce the insidious authoritarian policies from previous regimes.  When progressive federal judges imposed injunctions, Trump honored them until they were overruled by higher courts in accordance with our Constitution.

          Yes, Trump did fire members of his staff when their agenda was not compatible with his.  Trump was the one elected by “we the people,” and his allegiance was to them via Constitutional authority.

          What is missing from the left’s domination of the public narrative is that while Trump did not accept the explanations for the 2020 election (e.g., we’re still waiting to hear the results of the Arizona audit) he voluntarily left the White House.  There was no coup. 

Yet, talk about insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, completely ignores or denies the actual insurrection that took place across America during the summer of 2020.  Here is an excerpt from Mike Gonzalez’s recently published book, BLM:  The Making of a New Marxist Revolution:

Today, the First and Fourth Amendments prohibit much of the domestic surveillance work that would have been necessary to know how much of the 2020 protests were organized by a tight-knit group of Marxists.  We don't have the liberal democracy village by letting others destroy the liberal democracy village.  But have we left ourselves without adequate protection?  The changes that the leaders of the BLM organizations want would erode or extinguish our liberties.  This presents a conundrum.  Any conservative who may be tempted to think that those constitutional protections leave us vulnerable must balance that very real concern with the equally valid consideration of what an unleashed FBI could do to conservative movements freely carrying out constitutionally protected activity [Note: consider, for example, the FBI manufactured “right-wing conspiracy” to kidnap a sitting governor].

As a result, there is no place in the federal government--not in the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, or the DNI--where one can find out how much the 2020 protests, and all the deep societal changes that have followed in their wake, were the work of a network of groups whose leaders are committed to implementing a communist blueprint in the United States.  PolitiFact's Tom Kertscher is completely right in saying that many Americans who reject communism support Black Lives Matter.  When my well-meaning neighbors put up lawn signs that both praise BLM and declare "silence is violence," they don't get the contradiction.  They don't know what they don't know (pp. xx-xxi).

          With all the hype about a leftist authoritarian characterization of Donald Trump (and Trump voters by association), Joe Biden is being celebrated for his actual authoritarianism.  His calls for unity belie the demand for surrender and cooptation.  As F.A. Hayek observed in his chapter, “Planning and Democracy,” in The Road to Serfdom,

The common features of all collectivist systems may be described, in a phrase ever dear to socialists of all schools, as the deliberate organization of the labors of society for a definite social goal. That our present society lacks such “conscious” direction toward a single aim, that its activities are guided by the whims and fancies of irresponsible individuals, has always been one of the main complaints of its socialist critics.

In many ways, this puts the basic issue very clearly.  And it directs us at once to the point where the conflict arises between individual freedom and collectivism.  The various kinds of collectivism, communism, fascism, etc., differ among themselves in the nature of the goal toward which they want to direct the efforts of society.  But they all differ from liberalism and individualism in wanting to organize the whole of society and all its resources for this unitary end and in refusing to recognize autonomous spheres in which the ends of the individuals are supreme.  In short, they are totalitarian in the true sense of this new word which we have adopted to describe the unexpected but nevertheless inseparable manifestations of what in theory we call collectivism (p. 100; bold, italics are mine).

           We are being told the greatest threat to America is domestic white supremacy.  Yet, despite the evidence of thousands killed via Islamist ideology and hundreds of riots in 2020 stemming from leftist BLM and Antifa ideology, we are led to believe the January 6 Capitol riot represented an existential threat of white supremacy led by Donald Trump (like Orwell's manufactured Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984).  

Hundreds of Capitol rioters have been incarcerated for months without bail for mostly misdemeanor charges.  Some are in solitary confinement.  One Capitol rioter was returned to jail after being released on bail with a mandate from the judge to refrain from use of the Internet (a form of censorship).  Eerily, this form of government power was emphasized by Orwell in 1984 when O’Brien lectured Winston Smith: “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”     

The FBI has already reported there was no conspiracy to incite an insurrection on January 6, but Congress presses forward with its "insurrection" meme via a special committee to investigate the Capitol riot, issuing hundreds of subpoenas.  

Americans (to include a former president) with unacceptable political views are being "deplatformed," some even denied banking service. 

Then, there is the complicated set of lockdowns, quarantines, and mandated vaccinations and masks.  Check out this Tucker Carlson segment from his September 14 program.  In addition to explaining the little known (media suppression) loss of medical personnel from hospitals because they choose not to be vaccinated, Carlson explains how this Administration further divides Americans in terms of those who comply with authoritarian dictates and those who do not.

Last week, in an unprecedented action, 11 members of the Academies' Congressionally mandated Boards of Visitors were illegally/unconstitutionally terminated because their "values" were not aligned with the current Administration.

This week we learn from Bob Woodward that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley conspired against President Trump (see my earlier articles about Milley here and here).  If true, Milley’s actions are far more egregious than the private letter General Douglas MacArthur sent to Massachusetts Congressman Joe Martin in 1951 expressing his disagreement with President Truman’s policies for prosecuting the war in Korea.  When the Congressman made the letter public, Truman fired MacArthur.  Expressing concerns about policy with an American Congressman is significantly different from undermining an elected president in communications with a foreign counterpart.

What does all this mean? 

Leftists (even some right of center politicians) keep calling America a democracy, even though our Framers deliberately formed a republic as an offset to the dangers of democracy (see for example Federalist Paper 10).  Alexis de Tocqueville predicted what happens in a democracy (bold italics added for emphasis):

After having thus successfully taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community.  It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.  The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided:  men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting:  such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.  I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described, might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom; and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.  Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free:  as they cannot destroy either one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once.  They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people (Democracy in America, 1840, p. 398).

Anyone familiar with communist/fascist regimes should recognize the signs of a similar regime emerging in America.  Hannah Arendt taught us about these dynamics in her books, The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition; F.A. Hayek shared his observations and analysis in The Road to Serfdom; and C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man.

If we fail or refuse to recognize authoritarianism so we can stop it, we will repeat 20^th Century totalitarianism, unified in collective misery in a wretched ash heap of history.

  

Evidence Is Overwhelming but There Is an Elephant in the Room

 

by

Gadfly

Dear Friend,

You appeared surprised to hear me speak or write about election fraud.  Yet, I sincerely appreciate your request for evidence.

Evidence

I have read many reliable sources on election fraud.  Here is one for starters that summarizes key indicators with links to other sources.

Here's another link to an assessment conducted by a Harvard PhD in economics:  Immaculate Deception: Election Fraud Evidence "Should Haunt This Country" - UncoverDC

Here are two involving our former colleague, Tony Shaffer:  Tony Shaffer on Election Anomalies: Late Night Spikes for Biden; Curated Ballots; USPS Whistleblower - YouTube and SHAFFER: Here’s The Evidence Of Widespread Election Fraud. (thenationalpulse.com)

Here is one from billionaire Patrick Byrne (founder of Overstock.com with a PhD from Stanford):  100% Certainty It Was Rigged!! - YouTube

Here is one from investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson:  What you’ve been asking for: A (fairly) complete list of (some of) the most significant claims of 2020 election miscounts, errors or fraud. | Sharyl Attkisson

Our close friend, Dennis, who is a top-tier mathematician and computer scientist, was recently given access to Colorado's Dominion platform.  He found significant vulnerabilities in the software.  Before the election cycle, Texas reviewed the Dominion system and chose not to use it for similar reasons.  Despite some evidence of irregularities (i.e., ballots sent to deceased members, etc.), I understand there is no intent to prove voter fraud in the recent Colorado election (likely because there would be no legal remedy); however, there is a desire to advance recommendations for future election integrity. 

Political Intent

To the heart of the problem, there was an uncoordinated swarming effect in the 2020 presidential election to influence the outcome.  Additional evidence includes:

a.     Contextual conditions, to include a four-year anti-Trump campaign described here; and a deliberate slant on how to report on Trump, see here and here).

b.    Algorithms to weight Google searches and to flag entries on Facebook and Twitter; for example, see here, here, here, and here). 

Closer to home, I was personally involved in the Hunter Biden hard drive story: from family efforts to get it to the FBI, to getting it in the news after the FBI sat on it.  The Hunter Biden hard drive story was deliberately censored, especially when Twitter blocked any mention of it when the New York Post broke the story. 

According to a Media Research Center survey of Biden voters, 45.1% were not aware of the Hunter Biden story; and had they been aware, 9.4% would not have voted for Biden.  The chart below provides the effect of broader censorship by the media.  Fair and accurate reporting would have shifted 17% of the vote away from Biden, who won by a 4% margin.

The media also defamed my nephew by calling him a Russian agent and/or hacker.  Here is J.P.’s story in an interview with John Solomon from Just the News.

The above evidence does not include hundreds of eye-witness affidavits regarding mail-in ballot irregularities and indications of algorithms to unequally weight actual votes.  There should be a lot more actual evidence forthcoming, unless a coordinated swarming effect keeps it out of the public domain.  Unfortunately, we are now witnessing such efforts to censor and cancel.  See Senator Josh Hawley’s recent article here.

The evidence of fraud and voter manipulation is overwhelming.

The Elephant in the Room

Despite the above discussion, for me, the “elephant in the room” is ideological propaganda.  The script for such an effort has already been well-documented:

The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses [this is why Democrats aggressively define the opponent; see also here]. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood.

Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice [i.e., the emphasis on social justice, fair share, equity, diversity & inclusion, dignity & respect, etc.]; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side [similar to progressive George Lakoff’s axiom that it is the frame that matters, and facts are only relevant if they fit the frame]. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas [e.g., racist, bigot, white privilege, misogynist, homophobe, Islamaphobe, etc.  In her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton argued that Trump followers fit into one or more of the standard progressive stereotypes.]. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula.[1] (Text in bold, italics is my editorial insertion)

The above excerpt is from Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My Struggle), published in1925. Eight years later, Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.  Here is important context from Wikipedia:  “As Chancellor, Hitler asked German President Paul von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call for a new parliamentary election. The date set for the elections was 5 March 1933. Hitler's aim was first to acquire a Nazi majority, to secure his position and to remove the communist opposition.”  But a fire at the Reichstag broke out on 27 February 1933.  A communist was blamed and executed.  This provided the justification for emergency actions, and Hitler assumed full dictatorial powers.  Years later, historical research revealed the fire was a false-flag operation, that was orchestrated by Hitler’s loyal followers.

Hitler was able to orchestrate this “peaceful” transition of power through deception and propaganda.  We know how it turned out.

I included this “elephant” because there is evidence of propaganda by the left.  They control mainstream media, social media, Hollywood, academia, and most of the unelected administrative bureaucracy of government at all levels.

For now, the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 is being blamed on Trump and his followers.  The rally was known well in advance.  It was ripe for a Saul Alinsky-style false-flag operation, and it was coordinated.  We are only being told what the left wants us to believe.  Contrary to the propaganda and censorship of the left, here is eye-witness testimony, via a media platform that is not mainstream, from an expert who follows false-flag operations and was present at the event on 6 January.  The agent provocateurs were members of Antifa.

As heinous as the left makes the 6 January Capitol incident, they either forgot and hypocritically care less about the M19 terrorist bombing of the U.S. Senate chamber on 7 November 1983 or the protestors storming the Wisconsin Capitol in 2011.  As Hitler said, “The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget.”  Some of us remember.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi celebrated the storming of the Wisconsin Capitol.

President Biden has claimed Antifa is just an idea, not an organization.  This is not an issue with memory.  He is either delusional or a propagandist.  I have a copy of their manual, it’s author, Mark Bray, is a university history professor. 

Black scholar Thomas Sowell wrote about the intellectual influence (subversiveness) on political elite in his books, Intellectuals and Society and Intellectuals and Race.  It should come as no surprise, then, that the Air Force’s new Chief of Staff, a black four-star general is so vocal about the need for diversity (fueled by Marxist inspired critical race theory), characterizing the 6 January Capitol incident as a white supremacist event. 

If he were still alive, I wonder how Manning Johnson would be assessing current events and advising the leader of the once greatest and most powerful Air Force in history.  I suspect he would admonish the younger man regarding how easy it is for power-hungry ideologues to use others as instruments for their causes. 

Johnson was all in as a communist.  He even traveled to Russia to attend the prestigious training programs.  He was trained to agitate the American Negro so they could then organize them for political action (sounds like a former American president who was trained as a community organizer under the Saul Alinsky school of thought).  When Johnson discovered America’s communist leaders could care less about the social and economic conditions of fellow Negros (like today’s inner cities), he felt betrayed and used.  He wrote about it here.    

In closing, was there election fraud?  Absolutely.  But lying and cheating before, during, and after the election pale in comparison to the elephant in the room. 

America is infected with a Marxist ideology, camouflaged as critical race theory--a poison that can be fatal to America.  The poison is even more potent if Americans no longer understand and comprehend the authentic idea called America:  A Constitutional Republic that protects the God-given rights enshrined in our Declaration of Independence with a system of governing with limited and enumerated powers delegated by the people.  And as Washington declared, our government would only be sustainable by and for a moral and religious people.  Lying and cheating are not moral.  Powerful leftist factions are attacking or deliberately diminishing our Judeo-Christian tradition. 

I have a duty to do what I can to preserve our Constitutional Republic and our Judeo-Christian tradition:  to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”  We all have an opportunity to prove Hitler was wrong, especially about Americans.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Gadfly

 

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[1] Mein Kampf citations are from the Project Gutenberg-hosted 1939 English translation by James Murphy.

Transformational Leaders and Christian Dissidents

by

Gadfly

           Most of mainstream media, Democrats, and others claim former Vice President Joe Biden is “the President-Elect.”  What does this mean? 

The left and anti-Trumpers claim the contest is over.  Biden won; Trump lost. 

Yet, none of the 50 States have “certified” voting results.  The Electoral College has yet to meet, which is the ultimate milestone to determine which candidate scored 270 or more votes.

           Trump has yet to “concede” the contest.  Biden calls this refusal “an embarrassment.”  Of course, tough guy Biden, who wants the mantel of President, does not mind the use of bullying tactics.  As much as one may despise the President of the United States, telling him to “shut up” or calling him “a clown” during a nationally-televised presidential debate does not sound presidential.  Feelings of contempt are difficult to hide, even during a nationally televised debate. 

And lest we forget, Biden was part of a January 5, 2017 meeting in the Oval Office with President Obama when they (led by the FBI and CIA) hatched a “Russia collusion” conspiracy against President-elect Trump.  The multi-year, multi-million dollar Mueller investigation followed to no avail; and a failed politically-driven impeachment further sought to undermine the Trump presidency.

More recently, a Hunter Biden hard drive surfaced with evidence of criminal activity (involving Ukraine, China, etc.), homegrown pornography, and other incriminating material.  The New York Post broke the story (and unfortunately revealed the name of the whistleblower), followed by extensive coverage by Fox News.  Not intended as an October surprise (I was personally involved trying to get the drive to the right authorities for a year), it was quickly censored by the mainstream and social media.  Worse, the shop owner involved has been slandered as a Russian agent and a hacker. 

Amazingly, this experience reminded me of Walter Cronkite’s prophetic preface in a 1983 Penguin edition of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Here is an excerpt of the preface: 

           “Big Brother” has become a common term for ubiquitous or overreaching authority, and “Newspeak” is a word we apply to the dehumanizing babble of bureaucracies and computer programs.

           Those coinages have passed into the language with lives of their own.  They are familiar to millions who have never read 1984, who may not even know it as a novel written thirty-five years ago by English socialist Eric Blair, who became famous under the pen name George Orwell.

           Seldom has a book provided a greater wealth of symbols for its age and for the generations to follow, and seldom have literary symbols been invested with such power.  How is that?  Because they were so useful, and because the features of the world he drew, outlandish as they were, also were familiar.

           They are familiar today; they were familiar when the book as first published in 1949.  We’ve met Big Brother in Stalin and Hitler and Khomeini.  We hear Newspeak in every use of language to manipulate, deceive, to cover harsh realities with the soft snow of euphemism.  And every time a political leader expects or demands that we believe the absurd, we experience that mental process Orwell called doublethink.  From the show trials of the pre-war Soviet Union to the dungeon courts of post-revolutionary Iran, 1984’s vision of justice as foregone conclusion is familiar to us all.  As soon as we were introduced to such things, we realized we had always known them.

           What Orwell had done was not to foresee the future but to see the implications of the present—his present and ours—and he touched a common chord.  He had given words and shapes to common but unarticulated fears running deep through all industrial societies.

           George Orwell was no prophet, and those who busy themselves keeping score on his predictions and grading his use of the crystal ball miss the point.  While here is a novelist, he is also a sharp political essayist and a satirist with a bite not felt in the English language since the work of Jonathan Swift.

           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 imagination 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.

           1984 is an anguished lament and a warning that we may not be strong enough nor wise enough nor moral enough to cope with the kind of power we have learned to amass.  That warning vibrates powerfully when we allow ourselves to sit still and think carefully about orbiting satellites that can read the license plates in a parking lot and computers that can tap into thousands of telephone calls and telex transmissions at once and computers that can do our banking and purchasing, can watch the house and tell a monitoring station what television program we are watching and how many people there are in the room.  We think of Orwell when we read of scientists who believe they have located in the human brain the seats of behavioral emotions like aggression, or learn more about the vast potential of genetic engineering.

           And we hear echoes of that warning chord in the constant demand for greater security and comfort, for less risk in our societies.  We recognize, however dimly, that greater efficiency, ease, and security may come at a substantial price in freedom, that law and order can be a doublethink version of oppression, that individual liberties surrendered for whatever good reason are freedom lost  (bold italics provided for emphasis).

           Biden campaigned with the slogan, “a battle for the soul of the nation.”  By its implications, he flaunts an image of moral superiority.  Yet, keep in mind, Satan also fights for our soul, whether individually or collectively.  Biden represents a political faction that fights for abortion, same-sex marriage, the demonization of those who oppose these notions, and a whole range of policies to give the national government almost total control of our lives—nationwide COVID-19 mandates are simply a dress rehearsal.

           With the context just provided, it is now time to talk about the essay’s title:  Transformational Leaders and Christian Dissidents.  To transform is “to make a thorough or dramatic change in the form, appearance, or character of.”  Former President Obama confessed that, under his leadership, his election would lead to the “fundamental transformation of America.” 

Evidence of America’s transformation under Obama’s leadership is already apparent.  While this would sound politically incorrect to the left, a racist nation would not have elected a black man to the presidency.  A survey by The Wall Street Journal revealed “Optimism over race relations in the U.S. has slid since its historic high in January 2009, when 77% of Americans polled—79% of whites and 64% of blacks—described such relations as good. In the new poll [July 2013], 52% of those polled felt that way, including 52% of whites and 38% of blacks.”

So, what happened since the January 2009 healthy view of race relations?

Obama took command of his first term in January 2009. 

The Trayvon Martin incident occurred in February 2012 (Obama told the public, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon”), which spawned the creation of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization. 

It was not until the Michael Brown incident in 2014 that BLM became a national force advancing the notion of systemic racism. 

The George Floyd incident (May 2020) provided the needed kindling for a political campaign (and the corresponding riots in mostly Democrat-controlled cities) against President Trump, who has been characterized as an obstacle to an “anti-racist” movement.

BLM leaders, and its fellow Marxist faction called Antifa, are set on transforming America.  Their leaders are anti-family and anti-Judeo-Christian. 

Political leaders, such as Biden, have acquiesced to an “instrument” role in advancing this anti-America agenda.  As I discovered from his complicity with foreign agents in Ukraine and China, Biden simply lusts for power.  In the process, the elder Biden prostituted his own son to carry out unethical and illegal foreign dealings for financial rewards.  This is the man who had a foreign prosecutor fired for trying to shine sunlight on Burisma corruption.  This is the man who battles “for the soul of the Nation.”

In the end, Joe Biden might be crowned as America’s President.  He may even enjoy the support of millions who join him in transforming America from the “shining light on the hill” to another political elite-ruled Venezuela. 

He will never own my soul, nor the soul of millions of Americans who believe in a just and merciful God and in the transformational leadership of a nonpolitician who fought to make America great again.

The ultimate transformation here might be spiritual, but not in the way Biden represents.  Many Christians have enjoyed a comfort zone of material plenty.  Now, many of us are recognizing the implications of secular humanism and its atheistic Marxist manifestation.  We have a moral duty to resist this dangerous transformation, to save our souls, to transform the way we live our lives, and to set an example for others. 

Live Not by Lies:  A Manual for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher (published this year and recommended to me by “Orville,” a Christian leader and close friend) greatly inspired me along these lines.  I highly commend it to you. 

The most significant take-away from this book is that those who lived under totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century unanimously observe that America in 2020 is manifesting pre-totalitarian conditions.  That is why I wrote this article.  Therefore, I am a Christian dissident.

It Can Happen Here

by

Gadfly

           A close friend sent to me a book review by Cass Sunstein, published in The New York Times.  The title of the review was, “It Can Happen Here.”  The implication of the article is that President Trump is like Hitler in his authoritarian tendencies.

Sunstein’s review includes books by other authors from a personal, “lived experience” perspective.  In my opinion (based on years of research), whether deliberate or accidental, presentations such as Sunstein's distract from a more sinister development in America.  He writes well and his arguments are compelling in an ideographic sense—that is, plausible analysis of a phenomenon within a very narrow scope.  In this case, the scope is a set of memoirs of ordinary people who lived during the rise and reign of Hitler.  These arguments become incidental, merely anecdotal, and diminished from a nomothetic perspective—that is, an understanding of a phenomenon within a much broader context.  In the more comprehensive nomothetic case, it is important to understand the conditions that enabled Hitler’s rise to power.

Simply put, the conditions that enabled the Hitler phenomenon were quite apparent.  First, Germany was a democracy.  Democracies allow for the manifestation of mob behavior and natural transition to socialism (and eventually the more extreme fascist form of national socialism).  Second, the signatory nations of the Versailles Treaty isolated, alienated, and shamed the German population.  Third, economic conditions agitated the population.  The population was ready for hope and change, and Hitler promised it.  He rose to power democratically.  Hitler and the German population sought reparations—that is, payback.  In other words, German lives mattered.  The Nazis and the SS were a minority of the overall population, they controlled the public narrative and the political agenda, not unlike what we see playing out in America.  A major difference of note:  Germany and Poland have not torn down residual physical remains of concentration camps.  To the contrary, they keep them to remember important lessons from history.

  

My friend is a decent and honorable man, and certainly not an outlier in the population of concerned Americans.  I have read many opinion pieces with similar implications advanced by Sunstein, even a booklet by Yale historian Timothy Snyder:  On Tyranny:  Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.  These authors seek evidence to support their belief that Trump is an authoritarian.  Yet, the evidence is normative in that what they present are unwarranted assertions about what they want to believe.  For example, in Sunstein’s review, he states:

If the president of the United States is constantly lying, complaining that the independent press is responsible for fake news, calling for the withdrawal of licenses from television networks, publicly demanding jail sentences for political opponents, undermining the authority of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, magnifying social divisions, delegitimizing critics as “crooked” or “failing,” and even refusing, in violation of the law, to protect young children against the risks associated with lead paint—well, it’s not fascism, but the United States has not seen anything like it before.

           Let us unpack this statement.

 

Constantly lying.  The left has been constant in their accusation that President Trump lies.  Sunstein provides no examples.  No need to.  If the left says it enough, it becomes true (Germany’s Goebbels was fully aware of this maxim).

 

There is no doubt that Trump exaggerates and says bold things, but this does not rise to the level of lies.  Trump may truly believe the things he says, even if they turn out not to be true.  We often hear politicians say, “I misspoke,” even when they lie.

 

Did President Obama lie when he repeatedly told the public, “you can keep your doctor” or that families would save $2,500 a year in health care premiums?  Now we know from Jonathon Gruber and Ben Rhodes that the Obama Administration deliberately lied to advance its agenda—in particular, Obamacare and the Iran Nuclear Deal, respectively.

    

Independent press is responsible for fake news.  Does any reasonable person believe the press is independent?  The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man in the world and a leftist progressive.  The New York Times fired an editor for allowing Senator Cotton’s op-ed to be published.  Except for Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and a handful of radio programs and other digital news sources, the mainstream media is leftist, progressive, and anti-Trump.  ABC’s Nightly News with David Muir has yet to cover any of the news related to exculpatory evidence in the Lieutenant General Michael Flynn case or the dozens of Congressman Schiff’s committee transcripts finally made public.

Calling for the withdrawal of licenses from television networks.  This was mere frustrated rhetoric.  No licenses were withdrawn.  Yet, under the Obama Administration, there was an attempt to place government monitors in news rooms.  This would have put a real damper on an independent press.

        

Publicly demanding jail sentences for political opponents.  This is true.  One individual who was singled out was Hillary Clinton.  The “exoneration” effort by FBI Director Comey was a gross violation of our legal system.  Comey not only delineated federal crimes committed, he circumvented the normal process for prosecuting them.  As Comey, Clinton, and others like to repeat, “no one is above the law,” unless you are a member of the political left.  How many prosecutions of criminals who happen to be political opponents have taken place under the Trump Administration?  Zero . . . so far.  Meanwhile, Obama holdovers have viciously prosecuted Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and several others who happened to be political operatives with the Trump campaign.

The Obama Administration put journalists under surveillance and censored conservative groups using the IRS.  The Obama Administration spied on the Trump campaign and orchestrated a silent coup through the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane operation, transitioned to the Mueller investigation, and then an impeachment.

    

Undermining the authority of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  It was the senior leaders of the DOJ and FBI that undermined President Trump’s authority. DOJ’s Yates issued a directive to DOJ officials not to enforce one of President Trump’s Executive Orders (a federal judge later placed an injunction on the Order and the Supreme Court ruled the Order constitutional); Rosenstein appointed Mueller as the Special Prosecutor and illegally authorized FISA warrants; and Ohr violated department protocols in advancing the fallacious Steele Dossier.  They were not loyal to the Office of the President; more accurately, they were seditious.  The FBI’s Comey, McCabe, Baker, Strzok, Page, and others were actively involved in illegally delegitimizing President Trump, but worse, targeting Trump’s political circle for manipulated prosecutions.  Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and other socialist leaders knew how to silence political opposition.  Yes, it can happen here—it already has.

Magnifying social divisions. Calling people racist, misogynist, xenophobic, homophobic, and so forth does not make them so.  It is the left that magnifies and celebrates social division with its emphasis on diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice.

Delegitimizing critics as “crooked” or “failing.”  If anyone is criticized based on false or fabricated information, then what is an appropriate response?  After millions of taxpayer funding spent over two years of the Mueller investigation and the extraordinary partisan impeachment fiasco, it is understandable that President Trump would consider these efforts to be crooked and failures.

Even refusing, in violation of the law, to protect young children against the risks associated with lead paint.  This allegation was good for generating political capital for the left’s agenda.  However, the same news sources advancing this narrative have not reported Trump Administration efforts to the contrary.

Sunstein and his like-minded cohort may not realize that they are members of America's intelligentsia.  The word “intelligentsia” originated in Russia about the time of the Bolshevik Revolution.  It describes an educated group that feels superior in its theories about progress and an imagined future utopia.  Their intentions are noble within the context of their self-proclaimed moral superiority.  They represent an echo chamber that is socially and politically isolated from the general population they seek to control.

    

           Ironically, the title of Sunstein’s article was inspired by Sinclair Lewis’s novel, It Can’t Happen Here.

 

Lewis’s wife was a journalist who followed Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.  So, Lewis wrote about the possibility taking place in America.  The lead character was modeled after Louisiana Governor Huey Long, a democrat, who wanted to defeat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential primary.  Long did not think FDR’s policies were left (socialist) enough.  Here is a sample of Long’s Share the Wealth movement and political agenda.  Sound familiar?

The left complains that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.  This would have sufficed in a democracy.  America is still a republic (founded as such because America’s Founders feared the extreme manifestations of democracy)—unless and until sufficiently destroyed by the left’s current deliberate and well-funded mobocracy.  That is why the Electoral College still determines the winner, to prevent large, government-centric metropolitan areas from dominating rural areas.

 

The fact that Trump advances a political agenda that is contrary to the left’s is a matter of values (i.e., personal liberty and responsibility, self-governance through a Constitutional Republic, truth and justice, religious freedom, freedom of speech, equal protection and due process, etc.) reflected by the political faction that supported his election.  Trump believes in personal responsibility and a government that protects individual rights, not a government that compels individuals to assimilate into a collective group (e.g., political identity groups) subsidized by the government.

 

In 2016, the Trump and Clinton campaign slogans said a lot: “Make America Great Again” (for all Americans) versus “I’m with Her” (appealing to one political faction).  This Trump campaign video (you will not find this on YouTube; and Facebook and Twitter will not allow it to be “shared”) was candid about the political landscape and his intent to preserve America’s republic.  One of his important arguments was about corporatism and the unholy alliance between large corporations and the media—one of the central features of fascism in Germany and Italy).  Clinton’s slogan and comprehensive litany of policy proposals spoke to an authoritarian perspective.

 

Trump’s message appeals to hard working, law abiding citizens.  The left’s message appeals to the power elite and those looking for government-provided (taxpayer funded) free lunches.

 

While Trump’s approach and language may be out of the ordinary, they are an attempt to restore republican statesmanship to an environment infested by democratically-corrupt politicians, from the deceitful to the feckless.  With eyes wide open, Trump does not bring an olive branch to a knife fight.  As Teddy Roosevelt understood in his day, Trump has fully embraced his duty as the man in the arena:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.