Category Archives: Governance

Education, Family, Responsibility

LETTER TO A GRADUATE

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Dear Jon,

Congratulations are truly in order.  This is a milestone.  You have a diploma, but what does it mean?

That is, what does it mean to those who do not know you?   The LACK of a High School diploma would mean a lot to people who knew only that much about you, but the fact that you have a diploma simply places you in a group of hundreds of thousands of young people who got one.  Now what?

Some kids are lucky.  They have a strong direction and interest by the time they finish highschool and they go right off to college to learn more about what interests them and some of them even wind up working at what interested them when they began college.

Many don’t.  They go to college, spend tons of money to get a degree and eventually wind up doing something entirely different.  However, the fact that they have that COLLEGE diploma, means a great deal to potential employers and colleagues.  That’s because there is no law that says a person has to attend college.

Gaining a college diploma means that an individual had enough drive and self-management to complete a course of study, and almost regardless of what the course of study was, that diploma marks the person as a good do-er – someone who could get his or her homework done even when parents weren’t there to nag and remind.  So, maybe that person can be trusted to do valuable work in exchange for money.

Some kids are even luckier.  They have a drive to learn and excel in a particular field and then go on to master that field and strive to “make a difference” in the “world.”

For many, the easiest way, or, at least, most certain way to make that difference is by becoming a teacher, and there is some truth to that.  As a teacher one is able to affect the minds and beliefs of dozens and hundreds of children – affects that will be part of them for the rest of their lives.  So teaching is pretty significant… but it’s not the path for everyone.

Sometimes the best difference that a person may make in the world derives from what he or she teaches just one or two other people – maybe children or grandchildren.  You never know.

The world, however, is still there, ready for all those “differences” to be made in it.  All those differences are not made only by high-minded diploma-holders:  the greatest ideas will evaporate if some do-er doesn’t make them real.  Often, the thinker and the do-er is the same person, and we celebrate those people.  Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Eli Whitney, Edwin Land, Thomas Edison, Clara Barton, Marie Curie, and a host of other industrial, military and political leaders are among that group.

Then there are those who are famous for having done what others dreamed up: people like Neil Armstrong.  He didn’t conceive of the machinery that took him to the moon,

but he had an ability of courage and good thinking, combined, to execute the great ideas and engineering of others.

Most of us are not like that.  Most of us are pretty-well occupied dealing with “life” as it comes along, earning a living and meeting our responsibilities.  Eventually, in the course of doing what’s best for ourselves and our families, many of us also give to others in time or money or otherwise, and make our own little, un-heralded “differences” in the “world.”  This applies to most, and is the greatest, cumulative force for good in the “world.”  Some turn criminal for whatever reasons, but most are good and civilization and society move haltingly, unevenly, even stumblingly toward an average better life for all people.  You can see there is a long way to go.

Which means there is plenty of room for you to make your own difference as you make your own way, your own life, your own living.  Eventually you will do your own good.  But, how?  Ay!  There’s the rub.

I know you didn’t have the most happy, care-free experience through school.  Neither did I.  But that’s done, now.  Now – right this instant – you are alive, healthy and strong, smart and good-looking and existing at the time of greatest opportunity ever!  Right now is when you can’t shuck your responsibility to yourself because you “deserve” a vacation or a little “rest” after your twelve grueling years slaving over textbooks.

Right now is when you have to make a map, of sorts.  It’s not a map that shows roads, trails, paths and correct turns at every intersection.  It’s a map of decision, though – definitely of decision.  You are very fortunate – lucky, even – that you are where you are with the people in your life who are here.  You have a smart brain.  And, it’s time to make a decision about making decisions.  Life on this planet is based on assumptions, beliefs and decisions.  And love.  It’s also based on love.

First, let’s examine what love has to do with it.  You are a product of love, for example.  Your mom and dad loved enough to go to the trouble of creating you, but not simply as a gift to YOU, but as a gift to each other, and with some expectation – an assumption, if you will, that whoever you were would give love back in return.  That is the real circle of life.

Love is not infinite.  It’s huge, but it has limits.  People who never return love that you send their way, can literally suck all the love out of you, leaving emptiness.  By returning love, you can multiply it, and the person to whom you returned that love not only has as much love as he or she originally had for you, but more than that.  Multiplication.  It’s a really cool phenomenon.  We don’t always call it love. 

Oftentimes the energy or effect that we might call love, is called and expressed as trust.  When you are trustworthy, when you keep your word, when you keep a secret, when you deliver on a promise, when you meet right expectations… you are expressing the force we call love.  People who learn to trust you develop an assumption about you that is called trust, but is a form of love.  Like love, trust given in return tends to

multiply trust between people.  There are very few “good” accomplishments that do not include a lot of trust between people.  It is the unwritten contract of honesty that enables most of the commerce of life, both monetary and personal.  Honesty, trust, love.  Obviously it’s important and you know you have already learned to trust quite a few people in your first eighteen years on Earth.  Have they all learned to trust you back?  That’s the first decision on your decision map: am I willing to do what it takes to be a person of trust?  Am I willing to sacrifice, sometimes, to maintain that trust?  Am I willing to do what it takes to deliver on promises I have made?  Will people who know me always know that I may be trusted to keep my word?  That’s the first decision, Jon.

People who live in accordance with that decision generally GIVE as much as they RECEIVE.  Like emotional love, people who accept the trust of others and don’t return it by action and discipline, will soon suck all the trust out of a relationship, leaving emptiness.  I hope you decide to be a trust generator.

You are bound to encounter people who are not worthy of your trust and you must be wise and careful of where you place YOUR trust.  You know someone like Frank Allen, for example, can always be trusted, but there are those who will lie to you, take advantage of your trust, even steal from you, and you must recognize when trust is the wrong thing to do with that person.  Trust is big but not infinite, and it’s extremely fragile.   A solid trust relationship is worth more than gold, and you are obligated to protect and nurture it.  It’s everything from doing what you said to saving the life of the soldier next you in battle – or him saving you.

We all live on a path built out of assumptions… assumptions that are part of our personal belief structure.  For example, we assume that the sun is coming up on time each morning; we assume that when we put our foot down on the floor that it will be firm and able to support us – same thing with the ground.  We expect – or assume – that tap water is safe to drink.  There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of assumptions that we have learned to depend upon.  Most accidents, surprises, shocks, injuries… the list is long, that happen, are when something we assumed to be true or real, is not.  Or it’s when something that we are in the habit of assuming, but which can actually vary, has varied and we fail to observe it – we fail to adjust our assumptions.

For example, a driver may assume that the person in the intersection who appears to be signaling for a turn is actually going to make that turn.  We have experienced enough instances when a turn is signaled and then actually made, that we “let down our defenses” and assume that the turn will be made this fine morning, too.  Unfortunately, sometimes the signaler is not aware he or she is signaling and instead drives right into you, or, worse, you drive right into him or her.

Assumptions can let you down.  Assumptions are created out of one-way trust.  Since the ground has always been solid, you can assume it will be today, also, but you can’t “trust” that the ground will be solid, can you?  The ground has no heart.  It can’t love you, it can’t “return” your trust.  You must recognize that making assumptions is strictly

a one-sided activity.  Make a decision, please, to never assume too much.  Maintain conscious awareness… and a sense of skepticism.  It is an old saying, but totally true: “Things are not always what they appear to be.”

The greatest pain and emotional injuries occur where someone has assumed a certain relationship exists – perhaps one of trust, or even love – when it does not, or that it is of a particular nature when it is something quite different.  The assuming party then acts or trusts in a certain way and is thunderstruck when what he or she expected would happen is completely different from what actually does happen – like assuming the other driver were going to turn – and great pain is the result.

From that might spring great anger or hatred, two things you want to avoid with as much power as you can muster, for they are corrosive, like a strong acid, eating away at your abilities to love and trust.  Don’t assume too much.

You know something about the “scientific method,” I’m sure.  An observer takes note of a phenomenon – maybe as simple as a pin dropping to the floor.  He or she measures how long it takes for the pin to reach the floor and creates an experiment where the same pin can be measured falling to the floor, again.  After two or three repetitions, the observer, armed with the recorded observations, may make a statement that gravity has a “rate” of attraction.  In other words, a weight equal to the weight of the pin will fall the observed distance in so many thousandths of a second, every time.  Others won’t even try the same experiment – they begin to assume the truth of the observer’s statement about falling pins.  Can you already see how many mistakes the others are making?  Let’s list a few:

  1. Does a square chip of metal the weight of that pin fall at the same rate?
  2. Does the pin dropped head down fall differently than point down?
  3. What if the pin is dropped sideways instead of head or point down?
  4. Is it different in a vacuum than in the air?
  5. What about if it were dropped in humid air, or bone-dry air?
  6. What if it were dropped in a freezer at 32 degrees below zero?
  7. If you climbed a mountain and dropped the pin the same height at an altitude of 10,000 feet above sea level, would it fall at exactly the same rate?
  8. What about if you went to the shores of the Dead Sea and dropped it there?
  9. What if you went to another place on Earth at exactly the same conditions, would it fall at exactly the same rate?

Wow.  Such a simple experiment with so many variables!   Who knew?  The point is, just like relationships in life, work, families and friendships, a single observation can’t be the basis of trust or love.  You must decide that you will test for some variables before you start assuming that something is true, real or honest – ie. trustworthy – between yourself and new acquaintances.  This also means that you can’t assume that you have the trust of other people, or that you have the right to be combative or quick to anger with others.  You have to find a pattern of truth from multiple observations.  When you have a basis for trust, your relationship with others will be the best it can be.  If you assume a level of trust and it proves to not be real, you will be hurt and so will the other person, and so will some around you.  Please, make a decision that you will be a wise observer: ready to trust, but only when it’s proper and good.

Of course, a lot of these decisions and observations and even skepticism, apply to you, yourself, as well.  Do you keep promises to yourself?  Do you trust yourself?  What if you said to yourself that you were going to become an expert at… gaming software, for example.  Are you willing to do what it takes to become that expert, to gain that expertise?  Will you keep your word to yourself?

Or, if you find that it is hard work to keep that promise, will you talk yourself out of caring about that promise?

Or, are you willing to find out what the steps will be to gain that expertise, so that you can then plan to achieve it?  In other words, are you going to become a great    do-er or simply dream about becoming one?

Maybe simpler terms are easier.  If you lived in an apartment and there was no food in the cupboards or the refrigerator, would you be willing to do what it takes to buy some food?  Or would you go to a soup-kitchen and beg for a meal?

Those are promises you make to yourself.  Everyone has relationships with others where he or she keeps a high trust level, protecting confidences, keeping promises, stuff like that, yet fails to keep a promise to him- or herself.  You are the only person who can make that trust decision; you are the only person who has the ability to observe whether you have proven to be trustworthy to yourself.

It is that tiny, tiny sliver of distance between trusting yourself or not, that determines how we live our lives.  “This above all, to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.”

So, you must decide, and now is when you must.  How will I live?  And you can’t leap, in one step, one experiment, one observation, from where you are to some ultimate dream or goal.  You need a number of observations.  You can try college or junior college and find it a perfect fit for your “map.”   You might observe that it is not.

You could “apprentice” yourself in a field you are interested in, and work for a while before going to college.  You’ll have a lot of observations on which to base your self-trust.

You could take a minimum-wage job and master it.  You will be amazed to see how many doors open up as a result.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  It is YOUR decision to be a drudge or a dynamo.  You took that job with Frank at the Elks and became a dynamo, gaining an excellent reputation, there, while helping a lot of people you don’t even know.  You TOOK the $25.00 but you GAVE much more.  It’s a formula for a good life.  You also gained many observations about cause and effect, work and rest, starting and finishing, cooperation and independence, expertise and apprenticeship.

You can do hard jobs.  You may not always like what has to be done, but you can do hard work.  That’s pretty important.  The greatest successes in America are based on starting at the “bottom” and working your way up.  Every famous general started at the “bottom.”

Finally, you must never stop learning, reading or teaching.  Learn things so that you can teach others about them.  I hope you make this decision / promise to yourself.  None of us knows enough.  The mind is always at a new level, having accumulated the education of yesterday.  Now, it’s today.  You can’t stay here, for tomorrow is coming.  You can try, but you’ll fail in everything if you think today is your forever.

Today is the only day in which you can prepare for tomorrow.  Whether you intend to (which I hope) or not, you ARE preparing for tomorrow.  It’s almost like magic.  No matter WHAT you do today, it is preparation for tomorrow.

The magic is in your soul.   It’s you.

Foreign Policy

BUFFETED

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General Xi’s chicken.

A world that has been buffeted for more than two years by a manufactured pandemic is now witness to a military assault on a neighboring country with full-blown invasion, bombings, heavy weapons and classical military pincer-movement on the neighbor’s capitol.  People and troops are dying, children are screaming and the citizens of the attacked nation are proving their mettle in the face of overwhelming force arrayed against them.  It is happening in the midst of what the World Economic Forum, an assemblage of ultra-wealthy bankers, actual and would-be dictators and global merchants, are hoping is the correct time to execute “The Great Reset” – a globalization of governance and finance and production that will cement the oligarchs into power, while redistributing some wealth to all the less-fortunate denizens of the planet sufficient to keep them from rising up against the idea of perpetual second-class-ism.

Given that the perpetrator is the dictator of Russia, an oligarch and grand grifter in his own right, it is likely that the military assault he is so proud of is happening with at least tacit permission of the “WEF,” if not its approval.  “Why?  And why now?” poorly informed Americans are asking.  Of greater concern to those same questioners: “What will this do to gas prices?”  And so it goes.

Russia is smashing Ukraine, one of the former Soviet “republics” that gained freedom upon the Soviet Union’s dissolution 30 years ago.  Dictator-in-fact, Vladimir Putin, an old KGB operator once stationed in East Germany, is redressing grievances he believes the Russian people have with an independent Ukraine.  The current U. S. leadership has not only hamstrung itself with ideological bindings that, so far at least, severely limit the options the U. S. has for countering or defusing this hottest stage of a war we barely understand.  There is danger at almost every direction we might go.

In other words, hobbling American oil and gas production to accomplish some fallacious climate modification, has exposed the utter “boobishness” of our foreign policy establishment.  The ability of these dopes to risk everything and surrender everything in Afghanistan, should have opened the eyes of those who engineered certification of Biden’s election in 2020.  In a just world, the people, including voters, who put the Biden administration into office would be begging forgiveness from their fellow Americans and from most of the Western world.  Elections have consequences.

Russia’s economy is not proportional to its geography, and it is heavily dependent upon oil and gas exports.  By reversing America’s energy independence and surplus, President Biden provided Russia with both increasing revenues, propping up Putin’s preparations for war, and with increased leverage over western Europe’s need for natural gas.  In short, kow-towing to ultra-leftists and believers in the Climate-Change faith has yielded utterly stupid national and international policies.  Can we hope that the Biden administration might reverse its worst ideas?  We can correct mistakes; it is more difficult to fix stupidity.

Biden, Crime, Economics, Education, Elections, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Politics 2022, Religion, Representation

THIS IS THE YEAR

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What can he see?

This is the year.  2022 has been forced by the left to be the fulcrum of history.  The perception of the left in 2020, faced with the likelihood of Trump’s re-election, was that the field was finally fertile enough to sow Communism (under a variety of euphemisms) in the sharply divided and guilt-ridden, formerly United States.  Cities were collapsing in 2020, “Black Lives Matter” had coordinated with thousands of weirdos, “antifa” thugs and students and other youth who had been taught to hate our nation and history.  The time seemed right to pull the trigger on revolution… besides, the media and a strange congress had many municipal leaders so consumed with hatred for Donald Trump and the Americanism he represented, that they too, agreed with “BLM” and allowed rioting in the name of myriad hatreds to destroy their communities.

The demise of George Floyd provided the spark as if written into a script.  If Derek Chauvin had not been so incredibly stupid, some other event would have happened, some other black man would have conflicted with police and drawn fire while unarmed.  Then his family would have become millionaires and Nancy Pelosi and a bunch of other dopes would have kneeled in the rotunda in that man’s memory, while the same cities – and hopes – burned.

The left engineered the answer to a big wish of theirs: dumping Donald Trump.  We can begin to grasp what leftists really have for an end-game, when we dissect their hatreds, and their hatred for Trump – and trump supporters – is instructive.  Trump, they decry, is a “populist,” which is to say, he only goes with what is “popular.”  “Populist,” however, actually means being a member of the “Populist Party,” which gained traction in the late 19th century over issues like initiating an income tax, public ownership of utilities, support for unionization to counter the power of large corporations and banks, and support for fair returns for farmers.  As a “people’s” party, the Populists were seeking to balance  economic freedom for small business and workers, against the explosion of industrial growth and price-fixing power of industrial and financial trusts.  Many of these issues were assumed by Progressives and the “Trust-Busters” in the first decade of the 20th century.

The more meaningful approbation of Trump is that of “Nationalist.”  This is supposedly terrible, and likened to Nazism, ostensibly because Hitler was a nationalist.  “America First” became pejorative in the view of leftists.  So, what is the alternative goal?  Globalism: the dissolution of national identities and, therefore, national heritage and culture.  Destruction of American culture was the primary effect of 2020 lawlessness.  It seemed to have many allies, one of whom is now president.  What were/are they thinking?

Anti-nationalism has only one goal, globalist, one-world government.  Is there any reason to expect that one-world government will be based on the American, Constitutionally limited  model?  We can learn a lot from the last 50 years of United Nations “enlightenment.”  The vaunted U. N. was a creation of liberals and leftists who sold war-weary Americans on the image of diverse peoples all getting along to spread peace, democracy and the end of hunger around the world.  Communists never accepted those premises, nor did other kinds of tyrants… nor Nazi-enflamed fundamentalist Muslims.  To poorer nations it was a way to get money from the United States; to Communists a way to weaken the United States, to Muslims, a way to get the U. S. to pay for oil for poorer nations while weakening Christianity.

Within a very short time the U. N. became an excusatory congress for the U. S. policy of containing Communism, and we were thrust into the Korean Conflict for that stated purpose, but at its heart that war was an excuse to pit the U. S. against the Soviet Union and, ultimately, against communist China, while weakening the only super-power.  It was the first war we won by losing: a new experience for the greatest generation.

Right on its heels the globalist C.I.A. and State Department leftists concocted what became the Viet-Nam War, the scars of which have never healed.  Still ostensibly “containing” Communism, the U. S. consumed about a $Trillion dollars (back when a Billion dollars was a lot of money) and destroyed Americans’ faith in their military.  So many lies were told about the conduct and success of that stupid conflict, that the Army had to hire hundreds of paid dissemblers to keep up with the flow.  Again, we lost by winning, and were shamed.

Since Viet-Nam we have embarked on numerous military adventures, most of which are unknown to Americans and better grasped by other nations, including our enemies, of which there is a considerable list.  At the same time we have exhausted our credit line with policies of welfare, corporate, family and personal, international and more. Nine administrations and 18 Congresses have seen fit to overspend – not at declining but at INCREASING rates.  We now have commitments that cannot be met, and devaluing the currency is the final effect.  Americans are seeking a political solution to a philosophical deficit: we have accepted the blandishments of socialists and communists for 60 years and mismanaged our industrial base so badly that we can barely afford to defend ourselves, much less project power to constrain tyrants.  Freedom is shrinking, everywhere.

Americans have swayed from responsibility to licentiousness, forswearing God and religion, turning instead to the perpetual debt-creation of government.  We are not able to sacrifice for a better future as our parents and grandparents did, automatically.  We have a plethora of foolish rights… and fewer freedoms.  The freedoms remaining are under assault, now that we have elected a tyrant of our own.

So, 2022 poses a host of problems that took a long time to gestate, but which need to be corrected in very short order.  It will take sacrifice on everyone’s part.  America has never been invaded, discounting the War of 1812, and we have not felt the devastation and losses of war.  But a war is brewing, here amongst us, and a welfare check won’t stave it off.  What do Americans have to do, now?  Learn Mandarin?

More than once over the past eight years we have considered our ballooning debt.  For the past two years elements of our deep state, agencies of the National Institutes of Health, elected leftists, George Soros’ minions and Communist China, have conspired to hobble capitalism about as rapidly as has ever been done – our hobbling of ourselves not having proceeded as quickly as they’d liked.  Brutal lockdowns and debt-defying welfare payments to locked out workers and free-loaders, fearful school closings and now mandated injections of ersatz vaccines or firings – even in the military and emergency domestic personnel – have stripped our workforce and businesses of the people needed to produce our goods and productive surplus.  We are broke and rushing to become poorer…, well, except for a few multi-billionaire-global merchants and money manipulators.  We have given up the capitalist opportunity society for an oligarchy of wealth and severe stratification into the rakers, the makers, the takers and the fakers.

Even more effectively, we have turned the “vaxxed” into haters of the “unvaxxed,” while formerly trustworthy doctors and hospitals, in thrall to the pharmaceutical manufacturers, have started denying medical care to those who choose to not be injected with mRNA poisons, whose safety and efficacy have been unknown, only now being revealed as neither safe nor effective.  Our barely recognizable “government’s” only offering is dissolution of the constitution and further expansion of the debt by another couple of $Trillion.  God save us.

It appears that a massive shift in political alignment is in the offing for the mid-term elections, but so what?  We are teetering, contemplating a preposterous war1 and swearing at one another.  Society is rending itself as it awaits the next free-delivery of goodies and gadgets from Amazon Prime and GrubHub, no longer even bothering to cook for ourselves.  We’ve demonized smokers, and glorified tokers.  Will changing control of Congress mean a tinker’s dam?  What do we expect a powerful new Congress to do?

Will a Republican congress cut the federal budget?  Will it use its “power of the purse” to force enforcement of the Constitution and of laws?  Will it impeach scurrilous Joe Biden?  Will it pursue exposure of the deep state and various collusions and corruptions that seem to have happened?  Will it force a complete house-cleaning at the Department of Justice?  Will it impeach Merrick Garland on Constitutional grounds?  Will it stop raising the debt “ceiling?”  Will it undue a host of bad laws and regulations?  Will Republicans eliminate clearly racist distinctions in the application of laws?  Will it pass a budget?  Will it resist any legislation of more than say, 30 or 40 pages in length?  Will it prevent the back-door passage of unrelated “wants” that certain Reps or Senators want to attach to true “needs” legislation?  Do we think either House will reform itself for the benefit of citizens or in defense of Constitutional rights and freedoms?  Given the last 40 or 50 years of congressional history, all these hopes… indeed, ANY of these, seems like a long shot.

We saw, upon the surprise election of both leftist and somewhat questionable Democrat Senators from Georgia, that the Democrat party was poised to push through utterly radical policies.  Indeed, their virulent attempts to “reset” American Constitutionality would lead patriots to accept the plausibility of concerted efforts to steal the presidential – and other – elections in 2020, in order to get the “reset” underway.  It, the rabid intensity for replacing the American system, seems to not be politics, anymore; it is no longer based on how to best represent the needs of the American people, but rather a mission to undo the last bastion of freedom in favor of a Chinese-led global tyranny.

The question, then, aside from “will we descend into war over Ukraine,” is how radically, how rabidly will the Pelosi-Schumer Democrats breach the bounds of law, custom and ethics to achieve victory in the mid-terms?  They have shown, repeatedly, that free and fair elections cannot be depended upon to maintain their majority in either house.

Consequently, given the building expectation of a Republican sweep of the mid-term elections, the threat to a Democrat majority anywhere is also building.  Watching the criminality guiding the Biden administration along our southern border, and the willingness of Merrick Garland to abridge the Bill of Rights, the threat to the survival of the United States will likely be experienced in 2022.  There is no one to our West who will save democracy for US.  We must save and defend it ourselves… right now.

1 There is really only one solution to the Ukraine standoff.  With consequences for invasion on the table, the U. S. must reach out to Putin and President Zelensky, not at the same time or place, but close, to commence negotiations.  Ukraine deserves respect, but not American blood.  Biden or Blinken or one of their apologists must make clear to Zelensky that neither NATO, or an assemblage of European states is going to risk everything to defend Ukraine from the Russian juggernaut.  Russia holds the military cards and killing thousands of them and more thousands of Ukrainians is not going to shift that balance materially.

Russia also must be respected, and assuaged.  The U. S. must assure Putin in no uncertain terms that war will not ensue over Ukraine IF an acceptable condition of neutrality for Ukraine: neutrality with sovereignty, can be established that is acceptable to Ukraine and Russia.  That may involve special trading status between those two nations, and sufficient flexibility for Ukraine to trade elsewhere as well.  It will have to recognize the special status of Crimea as a military enclave for the Russian Navy with some rights of veto by Ukraine for other than agreed uses and operations there, perhaps with a 99-year “lease” of the peninsula.  It could include a pact within which neither nation would take sides with any 3rd party against the other.  It must also recognize the cultural distinctions of ethnic Russians resident in Ukraine, and possible changes in the acceptance of the Russian language within Ukraine.

There is a diplomatic path that the U. S. could broker and cause to be recognized by the European Union and NATO itself, including NATO’s firm rejection of membership by Ukraine and agreement by Ukraine to cease negotiations with or appeals to NATO.  The U. S. should agree to recognize the neutrality of Ukraine and to lead the effort to have the rest of the U. N. similarly recognize the new status.  Russia must agree to exercise no military provocation or threat to Ukraine and to recognize, unequivocally, its independence, neutrality and sovereignty.  It’s possible.  All alternatives to this framework are disastrous.

Crime, Economics, Elections, Governance, Religion, Representation

dry your (T)(F)(Y)ears

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No one really looks forward to what others think may happen in a 12-month period when the calendar changes to a new year.  Given the past couple of strange, guilt-ridden years, many just say or think something on the order of, “Please, just let it be more ‘normal’ or ‘stable’ or ‘American’ than it was in 2021.”  Of course, the question is, Who’s doing the “letting” we’re hoping for?

When we think about it, we are asking some undefined “force” that (also hopefully) permeates all of life and reality, waiting for our entreaties to effect a needed change or “alignment” that will turn our pleas into pleasure, even if it is simply making a handful of traffic-light changes go green when we are running late.

Sometimes we question our very “right” to ask for help from the Universe (if that is where the help emanates), as though our own worth were questionable at that moment.  Perhaps we were really snippy with someone we love and said some regretted words as we were running late, leaving us unworthy until we have a chance to “make up” for the hurt we inflicted.  As that moment of opportunity approaches, we automatically ask the same “force” to put our loved-one in a good mood and able to accept our apology or peace-offering.  Is this religion?  What if we’re not particularly “religious?”  What if Sunday School was our last brush with Biblical things.  Chances are, when “things” seem out of our control or when a tragedy has struck someone we may not even know, we automatically (it seems) turn to a form of power outside of ourselves to adjust or rectify conditions for the better.

So, is there a Who?  Let’s hope it’s not the government.

2021, and 2020, for that matter, are examples in stark contrast of how government power can destroy the lives of millions, perhaps billions, in multiple countries while other millions, perhaps, billions, are pleading with the “government” to make life better, safer, more prosperous and less guilt-ridden.  Doesn’t seem like too much to ask.  After all, government has the money and power to do what needs to be done.  This attitude may not be the most Prudent: it exposes a feared failure of “the Universe” and the absence of hope.

Can’t the intercessor who changes lights from red to green also defeat a mere virus and balance the budget?  We say “who” because humans can’t conceive of an omnipotent being or force without a personality and, to complete the package, a face.  Whether it’s Jehovah or Jor-el, let’s hope the force is with us in 2022, ‘cause we’re running late.

Covid-19 was a creation of at least two governments and was released across the planet by government, as well, while governments insisted the fault lay within animals.  So far no one has been punished for the largely avoidable deaths of millions of people.  Is that the fault of us or of the “Force” itself?  We know government entities caused the plague, we also know that simple treatments can stop it, yet we fret and worry and wait FOR THE SAME GOVERNMENTS to make everything better.  This seems odd.  It’s virtually a declaration of helplessness on the part of millions of people who, if they perceived their place in the “hierarchy of the Force,” could take dominion over their corrupt governors and set things in proper alignment.  Is there a hierarchy?  Are we groveling observers and pawns or do we have a role to play in the direction of life and hope?

At this point we’re all saying or thinking, “Oh, please let us not be groveling observers or pawns.”  There’s that “letting” business, again.

We can’t avoid politics when discussing government actions and failures.  Political parties – or “factions” – are amazingly inept mechanisms for effecting the “general welfare” of the whole nation.  They must, by definition, serve themselves, first.  That is, by some convoluted instruction set, or “truth table,” partisans convince themselves of the welfare of their party being synonymous with the welfare of the nation as a whole.  It almost never is, although it might appear so in bits and pieces.  In any event, more and more of what the party has achieved always appears to partisans to be better for the majority of people than a mere leaving of things as they are.

Troubles accumulate, however, because each party inevitably promulgates some evils that serve key (ie. Powerful) partisans’ very local, even as local as their wallets’ interest, and the opposing party accepts those evils in order to obtain some “goods” that, in the arcane legerdemain of partisan politics, somehow balances out against the evils.

When the levers of power change partisan hands, the pent-up desires for self-interest are unleashed and the immediate saviors of the nation transform into evil-doers, albeit, in their own minds, at much more rational levels than those foul denizens of the other (yuck!) party.  And so it goes.  The “goods” instituted by this or that group of partisans, are replaced, little by little – or, sometimes, in huge gobs – by evils of the other group.  This fact of partisan life can be seen in the unimaginable mountains of debt with which the flocks of both producers and non-producers (who hope that bills are being paid in the background, but which are not, in fact) have been saddled while sloshing back and forth between partisan saviors.

It is most Prudent, going forward, that those of us who still have hope enough to ask for salvation from the What or Who that never employs evil, recognize that partisan politics and personages will never fulfill What’s or Who’s hoped-for intercessionary role.

Still, as with every New Year transition (many people revelers or not, miss the sound of the transition, which is a faint, barely audible ‘Ummm’ in low E) we have a “new beginning,” whatever that means for each of us.  We have, by the good fortune of living into a “new” year, a new set of opportunities to “make up for” things we have done that may have hurt someone else or, often, ourselves.  After all, as part of life, we also deserve to not be hurt or pushed out of alignment.  If we are fortunate enough to still hope that What or Who is listening to us, as it were, when we hope for improvement, we might want to forgive ourselves for errors and omissions or direct injuries we have suffered at our own hands – or hearts.  Perhaps our best hope is to adjust our lives so that we don’t “run late” in 2022.

What about the power we have to undo evils and effect good in the world?  You may have fallen prey to the popular notion that only by doing evil, like burning, looting and destruction… and by hating properly, can humans bring about good, but in 2022 you need not believe that.  If you know the difference between good and evil then 2022 could be the year when you agree to not support evil in the name of “progress.”

What if every adult in your town visited the city council or Board of Select Men and Women and stated, simply, that you want every act of vandalism, shoplifting and public drinking or drug abuse to be punished according to the law, including full restitution and public service by offenders.  That’s it: no shouting, no anger, no hatred or petitions dropped off.  Everyone appears and states his or her desire for good change.  Is there any doubt that our “governors” or erstwhile “representatives” would effect those changes?

The same would work for bad and unfair laws that should be repealed or modified.

We saw this work before school committees in Virginia and elsewhere.  There are no representatives who have as much power as their constituents; there are no elected officials who have as much power as their constituents.  Gandhi showed us that there is no military/police force that has as much power as a people with a unified purpose.

Clearly we cannot allow our self-fulfilling governments to keep heading downward on the same paths they have taken us over the past two years.  We are smarter than that – and smarter than they.  The public good will be more perfectly realized when our government is again restricted by the Constitution, when it is as small as practical for the defense of our nation, and when it costs about a third of what it costs, now.

Over the past 6 decades it ought to have become clear that no government can ever provide sufficient “welfare,” as public charity is known.  Nor is it really charity, since it is not given freely by anyone.  It is taken from supposedly “free” people who never intended to grant sufficient power to the governments they formed to take their personal property under threat of loss or punishment (ie. Police power) so that it could be given to others who did not work for it or, to put it more starkly, who would be arrested if they took it from its owners, themselves.

Is governance so complex that it cannot be reformed?  Is it our nature – or curse – that mistakes, once made by elected “representatives” of we, the people, cannot be undone amidst bountiful proofs of failure or error?  What is it about Americans that we are hide-bound to repeat mistakes made by other Americans who were elected to some office or another?  Why?  Does the happenstance, no matter how dearly sought, of election perform some immutable purification that raises those so blessed above responsibility for their mistakes?  Or, does it transform their mistakes into the most beneficial policy decisions, the perpetual financing of which confirms their near-miraculous properties?

Why is it that we, the people, who caused – nay, granted – the election of mistake-makers are perpetually bound to PAY for those mistakes, and suffer from them?  Is there no means of correction?

One factor we have permitted and even encouraged is “career representation.”  With a 95% re-election rate for federal representatives and senators, and similar rates for state-level reps and senators, the decline in governmental and budgetary quality – honesty – has to be reviewed through the lens of longevity.  Connections and relationships among other denizens of capitol buildings become much stronger than the periodic and temporary connections to voters.  Combined with influence over the spending of billions and billions of dollars – and billions of dollars’ worth of regulations – the personal, rather than representative value of elective office eventually outweighs the higher ethical requirements of representation.  Soon, reps and senators at every level become elected bureaucrats.  Their voters tend to ignore their work until an issue makes the news.  When an opponent runs against a sitting (there is a lot of sitting) rep or senator, there is a desire to not “take away ‘Tom’s’ or ‘Jane’s’ job.”  Can we change these attitudes?

If a thousand people showed up for legislative hearings do you think representatives could be tricked into representing, again?  One of the key problems that inhibit citizen participation in their own government is the simple issue of parking.  Boston, in Massachusetts’ case, has for a variety of reasons, not least of which is some ephemeral effect on global climate, made it more and more difficult to park in the city and most particularly anywhere near the State House on Beacon Hill.  What if there were a 600-car parking lot reserved at certain times of the year for hearing attendees.  It could be where people could take the “T” or commuter rail into Boston at low cost.  With car-pooling there could easily be 1,000 citizens attending hearings. 

Do you not believe that 1,000 testimonies about a topic would get “representatives” attention? 

Is this 2022 a new year…, or less?

Biden, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2021, Race, Representation, Trump

TIME NOT ON OUR SIDE

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Time may not be on our side.  One cannot overview the world and our political circumstances… and the calendar, without realizing a little fear for where things might go from here.  Where is that?

Let’s look at some of the pressures building up.

First, the political time-line.  Mid-term elections are the historic relief valve for sometimes hasty or confused political decisions made during presidential elections two years earlier.  There certainly were those in 2020.  Because the national conscience is so, well… impacted by beliefs concerning the 2020 elections – stolen or not stolen – the release of tensions in the 2022 mid-terms is a little harder to predict than what a lot of pundits are trying to foresee.  Most are making judgements on “normal” political considerations and it doesn’t seem Prudent to do so.

The weird eminence that most have already discounted, but who is the key to millions of voters’ decisions, is Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House.  She has been a unique Speaker, at least.  For decades she has appeared to be simply a fierce partisan and has been appreciated, if not revered, by partisan Democrats who were happy to be “winning” barely-understood battles through her slick machinations.  By rights, she should be at the end of her career, and she probably is, but it’s a career that descended into a previously unrecognized socialism starting under Obama and deepening with hatred under Trump.  In those 12 years, Democrats became uneasy.  While enjoying victories Nancy engineered, no matter how messy, Dems also became concerned about the leftward lurch, yet had no other port in which to seek refuge.  Over the Trump years, leftist hatred for “America First” left many Democrats adrift.  What are they going to do in 2022?

If “centrist” or “American” Democrats abandon the Pelosi-led leftists (not that Pelosi was elected to lead the leftists: she has run, skipped twisted and kneeled as needed to stay ahead of them) will they suddenly vote Republican?  That doesn’t seem Prudent.  Will they fail to vote in standard numbers?  That question forces Prudence to wonder about what “the Black vote” might do.

Blacks have slowly been drifting away from their Democrat plantation, with an interesting increase in that trend in 2020.  Despite Covid, Blacks did well economically under Trump since 2017.  Despite, also, a perpetual anti-Trump media blitz accusing Trump of racism, Blacks could see that his policies helped all races.  Like all underdogs, Trump was seen somewhat sympathetically by Blacks who understood too well how prejudice hurts.  Have Blacks been treated better by increasing leftism?  Were they advanced by BLM-led riots and Antifa hatreds that damaged so many black businesses and jobs?  Have they been helped by Democrats’ union-led resistance to school choice?  Has weakening public safety served Black families or neighborhoods in any way?  Are they particularly likely to “reward” Pelosi’s weird coalitions with more power, more votes?  That doesn’t seem Prudent, either.  But, will they vote for anyone else?

So, on the backdrop of multiple failures of the “Biden” administration and severe economic news, what will be the “shape” of the change in fortunes for our two parties?  Over the next 11 months, how virulent will the Pelosi Left become?  Clearly their anger has been kindled by the loss of legislative momentum thanks to West Virginia Senator, Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator, Kyrsten Sinema.  Even 3 counties of Maryland would like to become part of West Virginia.

In 2020 we suffered through months of cultural destruction and destructive rioting and looting and economic despair in numerous cities.  Many strange, leftist mayors and governors have been exposed as feckless, ignorant and ideologically foolish.  Americans are practically fleeing their jurisdictions for states that seem to honor the Constitution more.  Yet the Pelosi House insisted on passing the enormous, so-called “Build Back Better” bill that would have transformed fundamental freedoms and democratic-republic structures created by the Constitution.  Against the backdrop of systemic failure at the southern border and the flood of illegals swept into the country by administration policies, the congress spent inordinate time on the “BBB” plan and the pointless “January 6th” commission.  Not a word is spoken in congress about what Americans are truly upset about, not least of which is the southern border.  With that legislation apparently doomed, what will the 117th Congress do to improve Democrats’ re-election chances in 2022?  Most options are likely to do damage to the republic at least domestically.

_________

Internationally, the Biden bindlestiffs have made a mockery of leadership and of honesty.  Without fundamental honesty, there are no diplomatic maneuvers that will work, almost regardless of what’s at stake.  In matters of war and alliance, conditions, tensions, and opportunities for gross, deadly errors, can spiral out of control quite abruptly.  Let’s look at the simplest area of tension: Iran.

The postulate is the following: Iran hates the United States as much or more than it hates Israel.  Iran is a theocracy determined to correct spiritual wrongs to the point of suicide.  To correct those wrongs, Iran will use nuclear weapons.  The inherent danger is that first the Obama regime and now the Biden regime DON’T BELIEVE THESE THINGS.  That is, they’d rather believe that Iran is as rational as other nations, desirous of better living standards for its people, better economic conditions internally, and willing to negotiate to achieve those ends.  All this talk about “death to America” and wiping Israel off the map is just talk, just posturing.  Because they don’t believe the United States can be guided by religious concepts of good and evil, neither can any other nation.  The United States can show them how love is better than hate and kindness and generosity will prove that the U. S. can be a reliable partner in seeking a better life for Iranians.

As the imbecilic John F. Kerry, onetime Secretary of State once said: “Would that it were, would that it were.”  For a man who has but the mildest relationship with truth, he places a lot of faith in the words of Iranian negotiators.  He apparently believes that Iran is enrichening Uranium purely for domestic power production… to improve the standard of living for Iranians.

Trump, to his America-first credit, had a sense of when he was being lied-to, and that extended to Iran.  He recognized that the “Iran Nuclear” agreement (never proposed as a nation-binding Treaty because it would never pass the Senate) was a pack of lies, which, naturally, Biden has been begging Iran to renew under his administration.  Iran has refused, so far.  With all the cash and lifting of sanctions that Obama and Biden have given them, the Iranians no longer need to negotiate further concessions under the agreement – they received what they needed for free.  Now it is merely a matter of time before Iran starts issuing nuclear-backed threats toward Israel, which the Biden regime will perceive as opportunities to go “back to the negotiating table.”  To their credit, Israel (and other nations in the Mideast) will take steps to prevent an Iranian strike.  The U. S. won’t, failing to realize that Iran will likely strike both the Little Satan and the Big Satan simultaneously. 

PRUDENT JUDGMENT: VERY DANGEROUS UNDER THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION.

The next simplest, as in somewhat more complicated, problem area is the Western Pacific, including both Taiwan and North Korea, but also India, unfortunately.  Here is the postulate: China intends to take over Taiwan; China virtually controls what North Korea does at any point; China will not move against Taiwan if it believes the U. S. will fight for Taiwan’s independence; China is beginning to think that the U. S. will not make any serious moves to stop China (the Biden family’s compromised position vis a’ vis China is a factor, here); and, finally, North Korea will make some sort of military moves against South Korea at the same time, seriously complicating United States’ response to the Taiwan crisis.  There has been shooting along the frontier of China and India within the past 18 months.  It is not inconceivable that China would stir that pre-heated kettle at the same time or before, that it moves against Taiwan.  This feint would likely involve Pakistan, as well, another nuclear power that hates India.  Every nation in the arc from the Arabian Sea to Qinzhou will suddenly be seeking a side in the conflict.  The failure of the U. S. to decisively defend its allies will transform the entire region and its oceans… and world trade.

PRUDENT JUDGMENT: EXTREMELY DANGEROUS UNDER THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION.

Finally, of the 3 hottest spots, Ukraine and Russia are preparing for some level of shooting.  The U. S., thanks to Obama and Joe Biden’s family, has meddled in Ukraine for years.  Ukraine is a big country that encompasses wide swaths of fertile land, great waterways, warm-water coastline on the Black Sea, huge coal deposits and iron ore, manganese ore, and other ores, which yield a large steel industry, heavy machinery manufacturing and, its greatest political weakness, a natural, relatively unimpeded pathway for oil and gas products to be transported to Western Europe.  The same can transport armies, too.

For more than a thousand years the Russian people have had strong cultural and religious ties to Kyiv, now the capitol of Ukraine, and to Crimea, Odessa and Sevastopol.  Strategically, the naval value of Crimea is perceived as so crucial to Russia, as with the USSR, that taking the Crimean peninsula “back” from a recently independent Ukraine was worth the international condemnation.  It’s a done deal and will never be negotiable.

In addition, the industrial heartland of Ukraine in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnetpropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya, covers much of eastern Ukraine from the Dneiper River to the Russian border.  Russia depends on many of the manufacturers in the region for not just machinery, but military and aerospace equipment.  Not having complete control of them is a sore spot.  Further, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson districts have significant Russian populations and Russian-speaking populations, which has formed an excuse for Russian regulars posing as irregulars or subversives, to create an enclave of sorts with a militarized line facing Ukrainian army regulars.

Sensing weakness and indecision from the Biden administration, and determined to not have Ukraine join NATO, Putin and the Russian Federation is looking for the opportune time to, in effect, take control of eastern Ukraine, if not all of Ukraine, by military force or forced federation.  When they move, what will Biden do?  Both Democrats and some Republicans have made tough-sounding statements about standing firm with Ukraine as if the status of Ukraine were a vital national interest.  Perhaps it is.  But setting up a line of U. S. troops to deter Russia seems unduly provocative.  If the situation were reversed and the Russians were placing troops to deter the U. S. from taking over cartel-dominated Mexico, let’s just say, we would certainly not find that a reason to stand down, would we?

What seems “small” to most Americans, in geopolitical terms, could place us in a hot confrontation with a huge nuclear power, 4,000 miles from our border, where both the land location and the naval one make us the underdog.

PRUDENT JUDGEMENT: VERY DANGEROUS UNDER THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION, and more dangerous than it appears.

____________

The shift away from “America First” thanks to the 2020 “elections,” has caused friends and foes, alike, to re-evaluate their relationships with the U. S.  The brutal withdrawal from Afghanistan, apparently executed by military idiots and a bumbling president, has changed strategic calculations by many nations.  The English-speaking world no longer reveres the U. S. as the leader of their coalition, and certainly does not respect Biden as it did Trump.  A strong, pro-national leader is not only respected, but understood by other nations, including adversaries.  There is a profound logic to leadership that clearly is patriotic and who speaks clearly of his – or her – intentions.  No nation likes surprises, internationally, nor confusing messages.  Every leader can make clear judgments about clear leaders, even about those they view as opponents.  This is not our current situation.

It has been said many times that the most dangerous circumstance is when other nations are unsure about what America will fight for; it is yet even more dangerous when America, itself, is unsure.  God save us.

Culture, Education, Elections, Governance, Politics 2021, Religion

LEX SINE VERITAS

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Pick a meaning, any meaning.

For all the efforts at controlling language and the meaning of words, new words and new lies, the actual purposes behind the “Great Reset” or “Build Back Better,” or behind “equity” and “anti-racism,” “social justice” or “vaccine” can be clearly seen and understood.  Indeed, it is amazing how quickly actual Americans can grasp the truth should it be placed before them.  We do have to overcome the problem of various media outlets – digital, broadcast, print – being so wedded to agendas, even “narratives,” that truths and facts that belie them must be suppressed.  Some will literally purvey the opposite of those truths in order to defend their adopted positions.

The impact of a dishonest “press” is immense.  The value of a “free press” in a republic cannot be overstated; a large part of that value is informed skepticism of those in power.  Implicit in that value is honesty… truthfulness.  The historic tendency of government types to arrogate ungranted (by ‘we, the people’) powers, is legendary.  In the presence of tyrannical government an obsequious press makes good business sense; an investigative, “muck-raking” press is in danger.  Our present circumstance provides a lens through which to view the nature of “news” and information-media, today.  But a bit of historical perspective, first.

No functional constitutional republic has ever been successfully subverted by socialist tyranny, or fascism.  There have been many constitutional republics by description, but they were, or are, responses to earlier military or revolutionary governance periods.  Their populations never have shared beliefs in economic or moral philosophies; their factions have not been able to compromise for the national good.  Some do exist today, having rejected mainly socialist/fascist tyranny –those for the decades since the Second World War.

The United States is the oldest and most successful of them, all.  This nation grew from primarily Christian sources.  Despite a history of conflicts in Europe, competing royal “houses” and kingdoms, the moral philosophy of Europe was part of every country, as was, essentially, economic philosophy.  The greatest “inventions” to come out of Judeo-Christian Europe were democracy, banking, double-entry accounting, and civil structure like courts and republicanism.  In other words, the means for civil order and dispute resolution among disparate peoples were imported to the New World.  The concepts of the Magna Carta, parliamentarianism and private property, trade and profit, and of social welfare, were planted in America’s soil.  Combined with a sense of freedom and individuality abetted by physical separation and insulation from Europe, all the components of a new way to govern and organize were here.  Enter the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

However, like any contract or covenant, the Constitution is only as good as the integrity of its “parties.”

The “Founding Fathers” could never have conceived of the divisions that have been created since 1789.  Divisions, or “factions” in the 18th century were more, well, practical than those that have erupted since the mid-nineteenth century.  Madison and others were developing a people-up granting of power to a limited government.  The alternatives were monarchy and militarism.  The “world-view” was formed within a basically Christian belief structure.  It was obvious – essentially unquestioned – that people would strive for freedom.  It was equally obvious that individuals would exercise responsibility for themselves and their families.  There were no alternatives and no concepts of alternatives.  That a large minority of Americans might agitate and even riot FOR the imposition of tyranny, was an idea virtually no one held upon the ratification of the constitution.

No one should hold it today, either, but here we are.

Since the Garden of Eden, mankind’s ability to dilute the Thesis with Antithesis has proven artful, intricate and continuous… until Marxism.  For thousands of years humans have managed to compare their individual sins to those of others that seemed worse, placing the former, psychologically, more on God’s side than the latter, yielding levels of tolerable civilization and sanction that enabled generally better conditions and real “progress.”  Looking back, the wise observer can see that great evils were unleashed as monarchical and theocratic institutions grew in sophistication and military prowess.  Each advance in technology enabled advances in control of populations and economies while fitfully improving living conditions.  As communications became individualized and less architectural, via printing, so did the growth and refinement of grandiose theories of control.  Theories of government, economics and philosophies spread from many minds, not just religious or powerful ones.  Western civilization entered a period of revolution that has not ended.

The concepts of Communism represent the final step of antithesis, or opposition to the Word of God.  Most avowed Marxists are too ignorant to know that Marx, himself, proclaimed the existence of God and his, Marx’, declared opposition to God.  Marx was destined for Hell, in his own words.  His mission was going to be realized through revolution based on economics and he defined “oppression” based on owners of production, as a class, and workers, as those oppressed, as a class.  It was too neat and could not destroy freedom, either economically or spiritually.  It did provide the basis for the death of 100 Million to 200 Million people – murderous enough to disprove Marxist theory, one might conclude.

The ability to subvert freedom, which is to say, to subvert the Constitutional Republic known as the United States of America, required a long-term plan on 5 fronts: education, religion, elections, law and communications.  The means to accomplish Marxist subversion did not exist until the digital age, or, essentially, since 1980. 

The “Press” had been transmuting itself since Watergate, moving closer and closer towards advocacy for leftist points of view.  As leftists are wont to do, owners of leftist media became more concerned with the social/political change that would encourage more widespread leftism among the population, than about the business aspects of their publications.  As a group they were ready for the ability to shift America to the left.  Computerization and, since 1983, the internet, completed the needed toolkit.  News and web-based information has both proliferated and become less-trusted since then.  Indeed, Americans are divided, in one way, simply by the name of the news source we watch or read.  News has become a matter of belief and, sadly, hatred.

Education has enjoyed over 100 years of subversive transformation, first as so-called “public” education and, as leftists and anti-Christians took over teaching and the certification of teachers, states’ licensing and teacher education at the college level, private education became infected, too.

We are reaping that whirlwind, now manifesting in the epidemic of transgenderism and public policies of removing parents from the education and even development of their children.

Our system of laws is the fundament of our successful survival as a Constitutional Republic.  Further, EQUAL justice under the law, which is to say, equal application of the laws, is our basis for equality of individual citizens and for the basic honesty of our business and other contracts.  Interleaved amongst all of our legal relationships is equal responsibility of every adult, parent, employee or business owner, public employee or elected official, to follow the laws and bear the consequences of their actions, good or bad.  With the grossly tilted elections of District Attorneys who so disagree with law enforcement as to ignore crimes rather than prosecute them, and with elected officials, even Presidents, who blithely ignore the Constitution they swore to uphold, the rule of law has become tattered and misshapen and, now, only barely the basis for the protection of citizens or their civil rights.  Watching riots and un-restricted looting in many cities, promulgated by a political hatred for a president and by communist efforts to dissolve society, and specifically NOT resisted by municipal and state elected authorities, leads any observer to wonder what directives or orders from elected authorities or their police forces even are worth. Mob violence and threats of violence, as in the weird case of George Floyd, penetrates into courtrooms and juries.  When they cannot uphold the laws, then any citizen might wonder whether the laws he or she doesn’t agree with may also be ignored?

As for law, itself, we are staring down a steep slope toward social disintegration.  Without equal application of the laws, there is only tyranny.  When illegal aliens are not held even to the laws that govern citizens, but to looser ones, or where individuals arrogate the power to undo legislated legal codes and refuse to enforce laws of their own choosing, as many District or State’s attorneys are now doing, there is only tyranny or anarchy – sadly, the goal of militants amongst us.

Subverting elections became a science in 2020.  The leftist media uniformly deny that the election could possibly have been stolen; “there is only the occasional error or attempted voting by a few ineligibles, but nothing of any significance.”  Subverting elections is almost the perfect crime.  Not only are there but a few weeks in which to investigate and examine “evidence” that has passed through many hands, and the same short period within which to files lawsuits against people who are only tangentially responsible for pieces of the evidence and who have no interest whatsoever in helping a complainant find evidence against their employer(s), but there is equally as much intransigence among courts and jurists who may have to run for their positions and who can’t / won’t avoid political realities.

Added to the built-in difficulties and limits to the ability to bring a case, are the media who have already proclaimed a winner, particularly when the winner is on “their” side.  Immediately upon “calling” a race the media are aligned against a challenger who claims the election to be fraudulent.  After all, everyone “knows” that claiming fraud is merely a right wing conspiracy theory.  Who wants to be seen as helping those crackpots – or, in the case of Donald Trump, that crackpot above all?  Careers are on the line, small and large.  In a presidential election, cases must be brought in multiple states all within a 5- to 6-week window.  Once an election result is “certified” by the state involved, the likelihood of proving statewide fraud or even fraud in a few cities, is essentially gone.  If a state IS found to have certified a fraudulent total, there exists no mechanism of enforcement – or agency of enforcement – to require deeper investigation or recalculation or re-certification of its votes.  A perfect crime, and all the criminals are hapless bureaucrats.

All of the “new disintegration” of America is both abetted and celebrated by modern media.  Even social media – ostensibly non-press – must be included in this wave of anti-Americanism and anti-Christianity.  Because media companies have their butts on the scales, the information that screen-addicts absorb is tilted severely leftward and anti-morality.  Social media, combined with the mostly leftward tilt of cable and broadcast “news,” leave large swaths of Americans receiving partial, yet “comfortable” information that need not threaten even the oddest beliefs.

So, on the 5 key institutional frontiers, while things look far from rosy, there are scattered bright spots.  Disappointingly, churches are largely becoming more liberal, more “politically correct,” when what is needed is a more unified adherence to gospel.  The jury is out on the mid-term success and survival of organized Christian churches.  Because of this, the same question applies to Western civilization.  The role of the United States of America and its citizens, is exceptional.  As we rush to dis-avow that role, we seem oblivious to the consequences to the whole world and to ourselves.  God bless us and save us, everyone.

Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2021

THE VELOCITY OF CARBON

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Masking won’t help…

In terms of money, economists measure the health or activity of an economy using “velocity” of money in an economy.  There are a thousand measuring tools measuring the same parameter, whether it’s investment dollars generating new production or a change in policy like a tax cut or increase that either releases money to or sucks money from, an economy.  Supply-chain snags can certainly reduce the velocity of money; building road, rail or air infrastructure can speed it up.  If you’re seeking real understanding of this kind of velocity you’ll have to ask someone else: I know only how rapidly $20 bills move out of my pocket these days, converting themselves to a few coins in a blink of an eye.

Let’s talk about the climate… a place where velocity is never discussed as a “good.”  It’s always “bad,” and it’s everybody’s fault, which means “climate change” by today’s – or this morning’s – definition, is going to increase a lot of financial velocities while slowing or stopping others.  These effects will affect everybody and his or her $20’s like we’ve never seen.  In any case, the velocity of “change” in the Earth’s climate seems to always be too fast, potentially the end of humanity, often in a very small numbers of years, and the result of conservative politics.  That is, unless the “conservative” in question is neither European nor English-speaking.  The Earth knows.

Very quickly, climate change discussion centers on carbon: carbon dioxide, carbon-based fuels, “carbon-neutrality” by 2030, 2050 or next week.  Anyway, the other day, at a point when no other useful actions were possible, Prudence led to an interesting question about climate that we’ve never heard asked: “What is the velocity of carbon in the Earth’s climate-economy?”  And this will be followed in most people’s minds with, “What the Hell is wrong with this person?  There’s no such thing as carbon velocity.”  Ahhh, but there is, my friend… there is.

The Earth has about as much carbon on it as it has ever had.  A lot of it is buried deep underground, but a lot more is in the biosphere between, say, 20 feet below ground and, maybe, 200 feet above ground, although with 1,000-foot high rise buildings we’re certainly stretching those limits.  Then, there’s the ocean – definitely part of the biosphere, so… cripes!  We live in a gigantic biosphere!  And, it’s carbon-based, which is to say that molecules with carbon in them are the fundamental building-blocks of life, including seaweed and us.

Now, the CLIMATE we all live in has been “changing” for billions of years, which is a very good thing.  The simplest example of a climate-change “good” is the endings of ice-ages, of which there have been several.  Humans were impacted by only the last couple of them: they’re not very frequent, thank goodness, and the impacts of the last one are still with us, even being enjoyed by us, like the Great Lakes, Cape Cod and so forth.

For the average ersatz vaccine-loving supplicant to climate-change fears, the movement of carbon from safety underground to horrific, polluting, crime above ground is a cumulative, onrushing white-man-caused threat to life.  Why, the USGS (U. S. Geologic Survey) tells us that upwards of 36.5 TRILLION TONS of carbon spewed (probably, “spewed”) into the atmosphere worldwide in 2019!  That is a hu-u-u-u-ge number, but there are lots of huge numbers involved when measuring worldwide things.  A small amount was in the form of methane, other ethanes, ordinary “anes” and the majority of it from CO2 which is a lot heavier than average, breathable air.  Fortunately for all concerned, plants “breathe” CO2 in and oxygen, O2 out.

“Oh, my Gawd!  Everybody stop breathing!”  Also, stop mowing your lawn, heating your homes, cooking, refrigerating, making plastics, driving cars and trucks and, for God’s sake, stop flying back and forth around the world on those terrible jet planes… just stay home.

Quite a bit of CO2 derives from cute little woodland creatures that, since Walt Disney gave them names, we must love and protect, along with every other sort of elk, antelope, bison, bear, reindeer, POLAR bears, for heaven’s sake, whales, dolphins, dogs, cats, protected tigers, elephants and, of course those evil cattle who do little but eat and fart, don’t you know?

Still more comes from rotting vegetation in the normal cycle of plant life and the bacteria and bugs, termites and ants that live off of the trillions of tons of IT.  Government types, those who really like to apply rules for living to most everyone else – rules derived from superior intellects like theirs – hold, without fail, concepts of perfection for humanity and how humanity should live, among which are rules against eating animals that Disney may have named or which provide substantial amounts of nutrition for sub-perfect humans, nutrition those same humans may be “taught” to live better without.

Just the same, carbon in various chemical combinations moves into and out of the atmosphere at rates that could be measured, extrapolated, closely estimated, and measured again for more or less controllable impacts humans might want to have.  Except no one asks the velocity question.  There are no grant millions for calculating how fast carbon churns in what kinds of weather, over what kinds of land or waters. Or, in what levels of the atmosphere.  Grants are plentiful if researchers – or advocates – can add to climate panic; only a level of panic enables political control, after all, which is a large part of making grant monies available: find out something that makes specific political or taxation controls possible.  If you find out something else, give it a good leaving-alone.

No matter how carbon moves around, whether from volcanoes seen and unseen, or burning forests to yield cropland, or propelling planes at 35,000 feet, or burning trash at ground level, moving trucks and things, or, pushing ships with both vital and frivolous container loads, joy-riding passengers or militaries setting off to war, not all climatological consequences are of the same value.  Some are just plain pollution, spreading dirt where we live in ways that we could control if the value were better understood.  Others are “necessary evils,” tolerated, temporarily, for lack of cleaner alternatives.  Over the past 130 years, say, humans have quite consistently moved away from “dirty” ways to improve life and living standards, towards much cleaner ones.  Only a relative handful of people on Earth burn cattle dung to keep warm – too many, and a very controllable problem – but a handful.

Cars and trucks get phenomenally better mileage compared to 40 or 50 years ago, as do even those jet planes at 35,000 feet.  More and more electricity is generated without coal, and “scrubbers” can mitigate particulates and sulphur compounds, which are actually bad to have in the air, along with some CO2, making even coal much cleaner.  New buildings are built to be far more thermally efficient.  New lighting and electronics are far more efficient, too.  Watch for the impact of solid-state batteries in making almost everything electrical more efficient, including cars and trucks.

The point is, CO2 in the air is not, per se, a bad thing, but if you ask the average, fearful, climate-change crybaby what he or she is afraid of and the answer will be that we have to stop spewing CO2 or else the world is going to end… possibly even before illegal aliens and polar bears get the vote!

In a sense, we are constantly reminded that the CO2 from last year, and the year before that, and before that, and ever since the first automobile burned gasoline, is hanging over our heads ready to destroy the PLANET, including my daughter’s recycling science project!  All it will take to tip the balance is for a few more Trump voters to drive through drive-up windows for a cheeseburger and some Freedom Fries, when they could have had a hand-picked kale salad.  The time to act is now, now, now!

But it isn’t, is it?  The CO2 building up in the atmosphere, I mean.  It churns around, dissolving into bodies of water, like oceans, of which there are a lot, and if not dissolved right away, generally CO2 sinks down to near ground level because it’s quite a bit heavier than air.  This, alone, is a good thing, because that’s where most plants that we can eat, grow.  Whoever thought of this system was a very smart Dude.

Mankind, however, is both brilliant and ignorant, wise and foolish, scientific and superstitious, and clean and dirty.  We used to think that God had provided convenient sewers in the form of rivers, but we have become smarter about that foolishness – we could be and will be much smarter about that.  We used to think the atmosphere was a big river to dump effluents into, too, but we’re coming around quickly on that foolishness.  Politically, however, we are being propelled to ever greater foolishness over CO2, not because we can “save the planet” and keep ocean levels and weather right where WE want them by limiting it, but so that we can, politically, control how people live, prodding them ever closer to the perfection models government-types have clung-to since Miss Hannigan’s 4th grade terrarium with the turtle in it.

Just like fraudulent COVID-19 statistics, if the government and compliant media focus on single numbers, a lot of fear can be ginned up, quickly modifying sovereign individuals’ actions, beliefs and willing abandonment of freedoms… like the number of COVID “cases,” as they “spike” from time to time.  Most are simple positive results from testing, and what they have detected are remnants of spike proteins, mostly not actual infections.  If you run enough cycles of PCR tests you can detect a lot of “cases.”  Everyone can be made to change his life through the police-power of the state or municipality because of largely meaningless numbers like these.  Fixating on how much CO2 goes into the atmosphere is much the same.  That we should be happy it’s there, for the most part, is never part of the news.  Do you have any concept of where we’d be without global warming?

Respecting our home planet by not dirtying its air and water is a noble thing to do – not from baseless fears but from purpose.

There are satellites watching the whole earth, now, measuring CO2 for places where it comes from and goes to at different times of year.  These are fine data to have and will, little by little, improve recommendations for spewing less CO2 .  Which we probably should… spew less, that is.  But we never will, or never will fast enough, if we don’t adopt a worldwide perspective on being clean or dirty in how we live, prosper and move ourselves and things about, starting with how cleanly we can generate electricity.  This will have to include nuclear power at its best, for urban areas, and solar collection and energy storage at its best in rural areas.  Cleaning up the planet need not, and should not require forcing people into cities, for example, or forcing ever tighter regulation on freedom (quite the opposite) or directing whole economies from a dictatorial, tight-control top.

It does involve honest education and a recognition that fouling where we live is anathema to both God and to humanity.  Economic mobility is prime in terms of balancing needs and wants and increasing qualities of life.  That comes from freedom.  Any “plan” for defeating – pick any – COVID, inflation, climate change, crime, ignorance, poverty in every other country in the world, that also includes restricting personal freedom or sovereignty, is the absolutely wrong move to accept.  A political party that identifies with restricting freedom and which villainizes those who don’t, does not deserve any American’s vote.

Culture, Economics, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2021

WILLS AND TRUSTS

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How America Works

It is difficult to find an area of American culture, education, economics, race relations, security and, one might say, expectations, that is hopeful or uplifting.  The Biden administration seems to be creating threats in all these areas and in areas that are increasingly personal… like health.  The unsettledness seeping through the American people, even through Biden supporters, is going to manifest in other than political arenas – primarily economics.  Underlying all of it is the loss of Constitutionalism and trust, which many in the political business have decided to take advantage of for their own power and benefit.

There are many dangers to the Republic.  There are dangers to families, schools, students in particular, to our supplies of basic necessities, and to our ability – or willingness – to believe advice from any level of government.  With the corrupt connivance of tech platforms, there are dangers to truth, itself.  Can a nation that is unable to withstand Dr. Suess and must bury his books to “protect” fragile psyches, be trusted to raise children, at all?

The greatest and newest threat to integrity is the reaction of the United States, at many levels of “authority,” to COVID-19, the Chinese-spread, engineered coronavirus.  As of today, the misinformation / disinformation and literal tyranny surrounding the mis-named “vaccines,” developed in extraordinarily short time-frames, has reached its highest pitch.  Hundreds of thousands of employees in every sort of business, industry and professional service, are going to lose their jobs if they fail to accept the Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson anti-covid injections.  It appears that as the efficacy of these shots is revealed to be increasingly temporary and NON-protective from Covid-19, the harder the President and various agencies of government, including OSHA, are pushing, indeed, forcing workers to accept them, no matter their legitimate objections.

It turns out that one of the big lies about the injections, at least for Pfizer, is that no aborted fetal cells were used in the development of the shots.  In fact, there were such cells, sparking intense religious objections from many whose employers, private and government, are forcing the objectors to take the injections.  The penalty is their livelihood, religious objections be damned, so to speak.

To sugar-coat the threats involved in the “forcing,” there are constant claims of “safety” and “protection” conveyed by the injections.  More and more these claims are proving to be false.  Worse, the mountain of evidence of negative reactions to the shots, including over 16,000 deaths, is ignored and suppressed, even as approvals are rushed through the “FDA” to require the shots be mandated for schoolchildren as young as 5.

Across the country parents are raising strong objections at their elected school board meetings, to mandated mask-wearing and mandated injections.  Unfortunately, the reaction to this opposition (and to objections about Critical Race or Gender Theory) by the mendacious Biden administration and our odd Attorney General, Merrick Garland, is to assign the F.B.I., of all agencies, to investigate angry parents as if their concern about their own children were criminal.  It would seem Prudent to investigate treasonous actions by key people in the military rather than moms and dads.  To institute policies like these, a lot of lies have to be firmly held as either true or so crucial as to become policy regardless of fallacy.  These are un-American times.

Still, COVID has proven the perfect foil for proto-tyrants, and it takes a lot of lying to keep it going.  For example, the U.S. claims a total of 711,000 “Covid deaths.”  Unfortunately, due to financial pressures, virtually all primary reporters – mainly  hospitals, with government connivance – have overstated the numbers of deaths since Spring of 2020.  How much overstated?  At least 25% and possibly by as much as 50%.  Hospitals are paid more for treating Covid-19 patients.  Anyone who expires in hospital and who can be described as a Covid patient, will be claimed to have died “from” Covid-19.  Craven politicians, accommodating their only two motivations, imposed lock-downs, closed churches, stopped all sorts of family gatherings and prevented relatives from visiting patients in hospitals and nursing homes.

What are those motivations?  Re-election and avoiding blame.  “Making the tough decisions” helped the first, blaming “CDC” recommendations helped the second.  “Following the science” provided enough confusion to keep news on the side of the new tyrants.  That there was little science, in fact, supporting how the country dealt with Covid, and even less, now, supporting Biden’s un-Constitutional dictates on “vaccination,” simply makes clear, we hope, why federal structure and control must be replaced.

Covid-19, distributed for free by the Communist Chinese, is far along the process of destroying our democratic republic, our civil rights, health-care system and educational establishments, public and private.  First, inordinate fears of infection were used to bring suits in multiple states to change voting regulations.  Despite the clear instruction in the written words of the Constitution, Article 1, Section 4 (“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators.”) these lawsuits, brought by lawyers working for the Democratic National Committee and others, shifted voting to mailed ballots and extended voting periods, all to avoid “spreading” Covid-19.

A large fraction of Americans has been led to believe that BIG problems can be solved only by BIG GOVERNMENT.  Chief among these is so-called health care.  “We” think health care is a “problem,” (meaning that government is lurking in the shadows ready to take it over with “solutions” to the “problem”), when, in fact, it is a RESPONSIBILITY that each individual citizen is obliged to solve for him or herself and for his or her family.  Recognizing millions of potential customers’ responsibilities to stay well and seek licensed, knowledgeable services from health care providers when less than well or injured, health care providers would compete for those customers’ health care dollars by offering improved services, ever better response and invention and innovation to make “care” ever more successful.

Health-care customers could also “shop” for best providers and best prices, perhaps with licensed advisors… like buying stocks.  The “problem” lies in paying for health care, regulating quality of healthcare, assuring access to care in rural areas, and catastrophic medical costs.  None of these requires federal dominance of the entire system / industry.   It requires creative licensing and subsidies / incentives to assure access, and licensed professionals working for / advising individuals and families.  It requires transparency from and among providers, clear, advertised pricing, and the ability to negotiate with patient-oriented groups and their advisors.  It DOESN’T require politicians issuing threats and promises about personal responsibilities for their own advantage; nor does it require blanket policies for diverse individuals and circumstances.  Governments may serve as partners with individuals in playing its proper roles; government can be a partner when an individual or family is facing catastrophic expenses, by loaning money to that person or family.  That loan can be repaid over a lifetime by the person, his relatives, friends, mutual healthcare group, or religious, charitable or fraternal groups.  Decision-making will be left to those who care, who are also able to negotiate and understand the costs and the invoices for the services and products to be consumed.

Keep in mind, that despite all the claims of “fighting for working families,” our favorite congress-people have managed to pretend to do OUR BUSINESS and OUR BUDGETS over the past 60 years and put us nearly $30,000,000,000,000 IN DEBT!  With all the skim that disappears into the maw of bureaucracy to control where and to whom all those dollars flow, is the federal waste machine where the future of health care, OUR HEALTH-CARE, should be entrusted?

If you believe in government health-care as better than private, you will, unfortunately, believe that socialism is “better” than capitalism, the greatest current lie.  In fact, capitalism is a whole lot better than the economic mess we function under, now.  When communists point out the flaws of “capitalism” that will be improved by socialism, they are easily able to poke holes in the unequal distribution of wealth that our mendacious governors have allowed to replace practical, opportunity-based, Christian-ethic limited, free-enterprise capitalism that was integral to America’s founding.  Americans, generally, should have the wisdom to disassemble our globalised, government-monopoly, over-licensed and regulated business model that is inhibiting success for millions of citizens.  We must do better and stop accepting outright lies from government tax hyenas and regulators.

To whom can we turn when virtually every agency of government, from the President on up, is un-trustable?  The only “institution” in society that must deal with reality and truth every day and with every customer/client, and that is largely untainted by government shenanigans, is small and independent business.  No other group is committed to LESS regulation and MORE freedom than the millions of small businesses and the business owners and workers who go to work every day.  As an adjunct to them are the hundreds of chapters of service clubs comprised of mainly small businesses and their key employees.  These are they who focus on needs and marshal resources from non-government sources, and who deliver solutions to points of need from the heartfelt desire to serve.  These are the motivations that need to expand throughout society in order to restore America.

Small businesses are where the best Americans work and produce.  Statesmen and women who will fight for their own, their employees’ and their customers’  interests, not Amazon’s, or Apple’s or Communist China’s.

Small businesses, UNITE!  Or, cries to that effect.  Can the best of America regain power, or shall we succumb to professional politicians and national-scope organizations that prefer to play ball with impersonal, largely un-American federalized forces whose answer to problems is ALWAYS TO TAKE MORE FROM THE PRODUCTIVE CLASS?  Small businesses must form, in effect, our own “party,” based on defense and re-empowerment of our founding documents.  America, AWAKE!

Biden, Crime, Education, Elections, Governance, Health Care, Immigration

LYING WITH PURPOSE

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“The Border is closed.”

President-in-name-only, PINO, Joe Biden, day by day, confounds Americans.  Americans who intend each morning to fulfill the obligations of motherhood and fatherhood, who intend to see that their children are educated and advanced just a little, along their paths to balanced, successful adulthood, and who intend to perform their best at work or service, providing for their families and communities, are assaulted by ideas foreign to our culture and to our fundamental legal, moral beliefs.  Some of these are freshly minted, like the attempt by Attorney General, Merrick Garland to criminalize parents objecting to some of the crap being taught to their children, most particularly a parent whose daughter was raped at school by a boy claiming an identity that “allowed” him into the girls’ room where the attack occurred.  As this father was being arrested for yelling at the local school committee who had participated in covering-up the attack due to their agenda of promoting “trans-genderism” ideology, the committee members, the Superintendent and the principal of the high school claimed the attack was unknown to them!

Normal citizens find this hard to process.  We grew up trusting our public schools, entrusting our children to them for 5, 6 or 7 hours a day.  When did we have to become fearful of everything they do?

Some of what assaults us is several months old and only lately reported upon by even some of our “media” who typically ignore issues that don’t fit within their own agendas, as untoward as the concept of agenda-driven news, is.  When did we have to become skeptical of everything our “news” sources tell us?  One of these issues is immigration.

Most of media – and the high-tech censors like Google, Facebook and Twitter, don’t allow coverage of the illegal actions of the Biden administration at the southern border.  Millions of Americans are unaware of the ongoing crimes Biden, himself, has caused.  This odd man has proclaimed that a constant flow of “immigrants,” illegal, unvetted, often disease-ridden entrants, is a source of strength for the United States.  His reasoning: he was the grandson of Irish immigrants and look how great he turned out!  What a scurrilous dope.  His party engineered an illegal, fraudulent election to make sure he got certified for enough electoral votes to put that party and its socialist benefactors into power. Lie upon lie upon lie.  And they lie about the illegal entrant invasion that they have CREATED.

We have laws, including laws that limit and control immigration.  The disingenuous President swore, on January 20th, that he would “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” among his other responsibilities and obligations, not least of which by any measure, is “to the best of (his) Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  None of what he promised during that inauguration has been fulfilled: he lied, outright, to the American people.  In particular, on the matter of Immigration, Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution he has sworn to uphold, there is a clear directive to the “United States” nation, as follows:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Pertinent to the time of the writing of the Constitution, the term, “Invasion” applies exactly to the organized breaching of our defined borders, including the borders of States, by hordes of non-citizens who have NO LEGAL RIGHT TO OCCUPY any portion of those states.  Now, not only has Mr. Biden directed the Border Patrol and ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to NOT ENFORCE the laws that define those agencies, but he has marshaled military and domestic transportation systems to distribute the flood of illegal aliens across the nation – without consultation with States’ governors – and, interestingly, significantly into states that typically vote Republican.  One is justified in wondering why that would be so.

Surely it wouldn’t be to distort the voting patterns in favor of Democrats, would it?  Despite the occasional admission of this being the purpose of rampant illegal entry, no real American, sworn to “uphold” the Constitution of the United States, would ever sink so low as to disrupt the rights, freedoms and safety of U. S. citizens, or steal their income and wealth as the result of illegal entry, would they?  Say it isn’t so.  You’d be lying.

Biden, Crime, Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Immigration, Obama, Politics 2021, Representation

THE TRUTH WILL SET US APART

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The statue of Goddess Athene on the top of the famous Pallas-Athene-Brunnen
in front of the Austrian Parliament in Vienna. Built by Theophil Hansen 1898-1902.

For a free people, freedom becomes increasingly harder to realize or defend when knowledge is limited by twisted education (which is to say, by the government) and by outright, calculated lying by that same government.  To maintain control at the most fundamental levels, a government bent on Fascism will weaken the economic standing of most Americans and, equally as powerfully, create dependency upon the government for health care.  Nearly $30 Trillion debt clarifies the former; elevating Anthony Mussolini, errr… Fauci, to prevaricating pandemic potentate, makes obvious the latter.

To whom does a citizen turn to counter a government that lies?  Does he or she try to work more often with local or state government because they are more likely to tell the truth – no certainty, just greater likelihood – because he or she may know someone whose best friend has met someone working at that level?  Like all contracts and covenants, only the honesty and integrity of their guarantors can give them force or value.

“Official” lies have become more creative since the Viet-Nam War.  Viet-Nam exposed the mendacity of our well-respected military, whose veterans we have always revered.  That period also revealed the ease with which our “free press” could be co-opted to push a leftist agenda.  In the case of Viet-Nam this meant reportage of destruction and failure, terror and war-criminality, while beleaguered marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen are winning every battle of the conflict, an untold story.  Trust in officialdom began to crumble.

Governments lying about, obfuscating or withholding truths from those governed is nothing new.  History is a series of stories about conspiracy and secrecy within and between governments, not populations.  The U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence that gave it flight, formed a shift toward honesty between government and citizens, culminating in the Civil War, in which both sides were brutally, murderously honest about their purposes and positions.  It has been mostly downhill ever since, as the forces of tyranny, the more comfortable theory of governance for government-types, rubbed and abraded the notions of citizen sovereignty and bottom-up authority – liberty, itself.

The threshold events and actors are well-known: Teddy Roosevelt; Wilson; Hoover; FDR-Cordell Hull; Johnson-Humphrey-Rusk-McNamara; Nixon-Kissinger; Carter- Brzezinski; Bush the 2nd; Obama-Clinton-Kerry-Rice-Jarrett; Biden-Blinken-MIlley, and many of their hangers-on, of whom some were/are virtual if not avowed communists.  Numerous congressional leaders steadily pushed American government further and further left, now to an accelerating rate by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer-Adam Schiff-Jerrold Nadler, A.O.C., Eric Swalwell, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and other fellow-travelers, many of whom literally seem to hate the United States.  Here we are in 2021.

Gently speaking, the only federal agency whose pronouncements are accepted as true is Amtrak when they inform erstwhile passengers that thus-and-such train will be late by some number of minutes or hours.  We also believe the Federal Aviation Administration is truthful, we hope.  But anything coming out of any Cabinet department or the White House, or the House or Senate, or the “Pentagon,” is now taken with so many grains of salt.  Since the phenomenal lies told during the Summer of Hate in 2020, and through the federal elections, there is very little that is trustworthy coming from any spoken or printed communication of the federal government.

Not a whole lot from state governments, either.

To whom does a law-abiding citizen turn when he or she is governed, cajoled or tyrannized by his or her government?  A church?  In a few cases, yes.  But even normal conversations are rare among ordinary civilians, in 2021.  Until one can discern or deduce what news sources a correspondent pays attention to, conversation is superficial at best.

Most Americans achieve respect for a politician who promises certain actions or efforts when running for office, and then does those very things.  Even in disagreement, honesty by an office-holder is respected.  Trump, for his braggadocio, embellishments and “mean tweets,” still pursued – and accomplished many of – the things he promised to do.  His fundamental philosophy of “America First” never wavered, and his foreign policy held true to his philosophy.  Americans learned to love “America First.”  Under the Biden regime, whomever is the leader of it, We have learned to hate “America Last.”

Biden and his strange, far-left crew, have realized one distinct accomplishment.  By reducing Americans’ expectations from the President and from any of his cabinet officers and functionaries, they are now meeting Americans’ expectations on a daily basis.  When the Press Secretary speaks, everyone expects her to lie on behalf of the Biden cabal and she never disappoints!  When Secretary of State Anthony Blinken testifies before Congress or holds a press conference, everyone, even including Congress, where most members are well adjusted to prevarication, expects him to avoid answering reasonable questions, to provide only partial scraps of information when he does answer, or to repeat lies that the regime has already spewed.  No one is disappointed!

If the reader thinks that “all politicians lie” and Joe Biden is just being a “politician,” then he or she should pay attention to the southern border, which has spawned lies so grotesque as to place political lies in a wholly separate category of simple mendacity.  Biden administration words, phrases, sentences and non-answers about the border and illegal immigration, are so crooked and twisted as to fold back upon the truth!  How is this possible?

It seems as though the military, Homeland Security, the President and the president’s spokeswoman stay up late – well, not the President – just thinking up how to explain or avoid explaining to the American people that what they are seeing and experiencing at the southern border with Mexico is actually NOT what they are seeing and experiencing.  Every action taken by the Biden regime regarding border protection, immigration policy, public health, “Homeland Security,” drug interdiction, human trafficking, child abuse and sexual slavery, makes clear how gross were the lies Mr. Biden told when he swore to uphold the Constitution and promised to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.  With nearly hourly disingenuousness from media sycophants (formerly known as fellow-travelers) Biden cruises along, seemingly oblivious to the conditions at the border.  When a question is tossed to him about “the border,” he turns his back and walks away.

Biden’s Secretary of “Homeland Security,” Alejandro Majorkas is in an impossible position… at least in terms of public relations.  He does face questions and is required to claim that “the border is closed” while the Border Patrol tries to keep count of 200,000 or more illegal entrants PER MONTH.  On the other hand, he has dropped the ultimate truth bomb: “…things are being handled according to plan,” or words to that effect.  The sad truth is, an open border and flooding the country with unskilled criminals IS the plan – a plan the most crass, cynical and hateful aspect of which is no more than to first make the U. S. a one-party nation and second to tear down the United States as a stumbling block to global communism.  Millions of Americans voted for these poop-heads, who claim that we “need” immigrants to fill jobs that are not getting done by citizens.  It’s as though they might actually expect most of our invited illegals to actually work.

Joe Biden has never been at a loss for some prevarication or another.  The first time he ran for president he contrived an elaborate story of his father’s mining career in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Lunch-bucket Joe, father was a miner.  Unfortunately the story was untrue and, worse, had been “lifted” from a speech given by a British politician, Neil Kinnock, about HIS father.  It was such a good story and Joe’s mental capacity being so limited, even in his 40’s, that “borrowing” it for his own campaign just seemed the best path.  Rather odd, that.  But Biden was uninjured by what should be seen as a gross lack of honesty.  Somehow the father-was-a-miner whopper became part of the élan of Joe Biden.  “That’s just Joe being Joe.”  Well.

Joe was being Joe when he voted for the Iraq war and the Afghanistan invasion, but speaks forcefully against both actions, now.  He worked as Vice President to help Saudi Arabia fight Yemeni fundamentalists, but speaks against it now.  He advised Obama not to attempt to “get” Bin Laden in Pakistan, but he’s proud of it, now  He was opposed to busing in the 70’s and 80’s, even working with Jesse Helms on legislation, yet was offended when Kamala Harris called him out on it during the 2020 campaign.  Now, as Obama was, he is in favor of eliminating single-family zoning everywhere in the country.  Millions of Americans voted for this poop-head.  Now his title is POTUS: Poop-head Of The United States.

So, the fundamental question remains: To whom can a citizen turn in a supposedly Constitutionally limited Republic?  Federal agencies and officers, top congressional leaders and most states have been lying to Americans while generating irrational fears about the Chinese-spread pandemic of 2020-21, while denying use of effective treatments for Covid-19 infection, and while destroying small businesses in the name of “stopping” Covid-19.  Federal agencies, including the White House, and several state officials and agencies are colluding with media companies to censor news and opinions about alternatives to the “party line” on the pandemic, the “vaccines” and treatments, not to mention questions about vote fraud in the presidential election of 2020 – quite arguably in contravention of the First Amendment – and citizens are wondering where to turn for “redress of (their) grievances?”

What is a greater threat, lying outright or preventing the dissemination of truth?  Perhaps the President will set that straight for us.