“I’ll leave you with three thoughts:
1. Any power that government takes from the people, it will never return voluntarily
2. Every power that government takes, it will ultimately be abused to the maximum extent possible
3. Nobody ever complied their way out of totalitarianism. The only thing we can do is resist.”
“American civilization has been turned upside down, and we have a rendezvous soon with the once unthinkable and unimaginable.” [Bud’s comment: this applies to almost all western cultures.]
by Victor Davis Hanson, January 8, 2024
Read the original here: https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/08/a-culture-in-collapse/
Archived here just in case.
In the last six months, we have borne witness to many iconic moments evidencing the collapse of American culture.
The signs are everywhere and cover the gamut of politics, the economy, education, social life, popular culture, foreign policy, and the military. These symptoms of decay share common themes.
Our descent is self-induced; it is not a symptom of a foreign attack or subterfuge. Our erosion is not the result of poverty and want, but of leisure and excess. We are not suffering from existential crises of famine, plague, or the collapse of our grid and fuel sources. Prior, far poorer, and war-torn generations now seem far better off than what we are becoming.
What is happening to us is not due to an adherence to a too strict conservative tradition but is almost exclusively the wage of the progressive project.
In short, we are seeing fissures that America has not experienced in our cultural history since the Civil War. The radical Left apparently feels such chaos, anarchy, and nihilism are necessary to topple past norms and customs and thereby adhere to a socialist, equity agenda that no one in normal times would stomach.
Some of the decay is existential and fundamental; some anecdotal and illustrative. But either way, while decline came about gradually over decades, its sudden and abrupt chaos during the three years of Biden’s presidency has shocked Americans.
Financial Implosion
As long as interest rates were de facto zero, both parties ran up gargantuan debt. Now the national debt has hit $34 trillion. But two odd things have also happened under the Biden administration that are beginning to undermine the very existence of the U.S. financial system:
1) Interest rates have soared from de facto zero and are on a trajectory to 5.5%—meaning that the interest on the debt, in theory, in the not too distant future will require 20 percent of the annual budget, squeezing out both entitlements and defense.
2) Yet the upcoming rendezvous with economic Armageddon has not slowed a Biden administration intent on borrowing nearly $2 trillion in the current fiscal year.
The public is baffled: is the Left playing chicken with us? Is the strategy to “gorge the beast,” thereby demanding even higher federal taxes, which, combined with many state taxes, now exceed 50 percent of one’s income?
Is the goal massive “redistribution” by ensuring “equity” by gouging the middle class and rich? Or is the left’s goal more nihilistic: to force a remedy for insolvency by ensuring high inflation, renouncing government debt, or government appropriation of private capital?
Military Crises
Americans have lost deterrence abroad.
Confusion reigns among the public over why the Biden administration fled from Afghanistan, leaving behind billions of dollars of munitions and equipment in the hands of Taliban terrorists. Why did it allow a Chinese spy balloon to traverse the continental U.S. with impunity?
And why did Biden signal to Russia when preparing an invasion of Ukraine that our reaction would depend on the magnitude of Putin’s offensive? Why has military recruitment cratered, shorting the Pentagon of thousands of soldiers?
Why do Iranian proxies attack almost daily U.S. installations abroad and ships in the Red Sea, apparently without fear of reprisal? Why did Hamas slaughter Israelis on October 7? What explains our indifference or ennui?
Is the answer a deliberate effort to curb supposed American “arrogance” by once more leading from behind? Are we rebooting the Obama Administration’s bankrupt idea of empowering an Iranian crescent from Teheran to Damascus to Beirut to Gaza to ensure “creative tension” between Israel and the moderate Arabs and Persian-led theocratic Shiites?
Why do our officer classes rotate in and out of lucrative military consultantships, lobbying billets, and board membership on corporate defense contractors—as if their innate talents rather than their lifelong contacts with current serving procurement officers earned their exorbitant fees?
Why did our retired four stars with disdain violate the uniform code of military justice by serially and publicly trashing the commander in chief? Why has the Pentagon revolutionized the entire system of recruitment, promotions, and tenure in the armed forces by predicating them in large part on race, gender, and sexual orientation rather than merit or battlefield efficacy? Did we learn anything from the old Soviet commissariat system? Would we prefer to lose a war by promoting equity than win one by ensuring liberty?
Why did the top brass go after supposedly “insurrectionist” white males (who died at twice their demographics during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan) in the military, only to discover from their own internal investigations that no such cabal of “domestic terrorists” existed, and only to drive out thousands more of the maligned by stupidly requiring COVID vaccinations from those with naturally acquired immunity?
In sum, the U.S. will either undergo a post-Vietnam-like revolution in the military or, in late Roman imperial fashion, our armed forces will be unable to defend the interests or indeed, the very safety, of the U.S.
Race
Why, when so-called non-white ethnicities and races were achieving parity with or exceeding the majority population in per capita income and when racial intermarriage was commonplace, did we blow up the values of the civil rights movement and revert to precivilizational tribalism? Who were the sophists who convinced us that racially segregated dorms, safe spaces, and graduations, or using race as an arbiter of admissions and hiring, were not racist?
When did we lump together an entire cadre of diverse ancestries, ethnicities, religions, politics, classes, and values and dub them all “white,” and then smear them collectively in stereotypical fashion? When did we calibrate race as the chief determinative factor in our identities? Have we become premodern tribal people—feuding clans right out of the Norse sagas, ghosts of the Balkans nursing ancient grievances and hatreds? Since when in history has a nation’s “diversity” ever been preferable to its “unity”?
The Sexes
Did anyone in, say, 2004 believe that in just twenty years, the Left would try to mainstream the previously rare medical malady of gender dysphoria into a transgendered civil rights issue by insisting on three rather than two sexes?
Would anyone have believed that leftists, gays, and feminists would have done their best to destroy a half-century of female athletic achievement by allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports and thereby erase the record performances of three generations of women?
Would anyone have believed that a feminist and accomplished swimmer like Riley Gaines would be cornered, swarmed, threatened, and barricaded in at a university for the crime of daring to state the obvious: that transgendered women are still, in terms of their musculoskeletal physiques and frames, males and thereby have no business competing in women’s sports?
Would anyone have believed that a gay senate aide would have engaged in passive, unprotected sex in a public and hallowed Senate chamber, filmed in graphic detail his act of sodomy, had it circulated among friends and social media, and then, when outrage followed, claimed victimhood by accusing those offended of being homophobic toward him and his active homosexual partner?
Lawlessness
We are witnessing the steady erasure of jurisprudence, both civil and criminal. Does the law as we knew it a mere decade ago still exist? Massive looting with impunity is now largely exempt from justice in our major blue-state cities. In Compton, a van slams into a Mexican bakery as waiting crowds swarm, loot, and destroy the business. And for what? Some free pies and cakes? Or the nihilist delight in ruining the livelihood of a hardworking family business?
Such smash-and-grabs rob stores of billions of dollars in revenue each year. Can we even comprehend that employees and security guards are now ordered to stand down, as if the apprehension of such thieves might in some way seem illiberal or racist?
Does anyone even care that pro-Hamas protestors—many in America as guests on green cards and student visas—shouted support for the October 7 massacre of Jews, screamed for the destruction of Israel and the Jews in it, shut down the Manhattan and Golden Gate Bridges, defiled the Lincoln Memorial and White House gates, and disrupted Christmas celebrations in our major cities with complete exemption? Is storming the California legislature, and disrupting it in session, now a felony in the manner of those convicted after January 6, or do we have two sets of laws, dependent on ideology, race, and party affiliation?
In one of the most chilling videos in memory, Las Vegas Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus was recently violently attacked by an unshackled career felon defendant (with three prior violent felony convictions and facing additional new felony counts). The assailant, Deobra Redden, leaped over the justice’s bench with ease and began beating her and pulling her hair before two bailiffs, with great difficulty, managed to restrain him. Why was Redden out on parole given his violent record, and why was he not shackled given his toxic past? His self-admitted effort to kill the judge, his ability nearly to pull it off, and the record of past leniency accorded him are a commentary on a sick society.
But then again, in our major cities, George-Soros-subsidized prosecutors have all but destroyed civil society. They have been systematically releasing felons with violent criminal records on the same day they are arrested, freeing convicted felons early from prisons and jails, and sabotaging the law by arbitrary enforcement on the grounds that it is inherently either unfair or racist.
The post civilization civil bookend to that precivilizational subterfuge was a systematic legal effort, for the first time in American history, to remove in an election year the leading primary and general election candidate Donald Trump from various state ballots. The Soviet-like charge was that he was guilty of “insurrection,” a crime he has never been charged with, much less convicted of. Meanwhile, three state prosecutors and one special federal counsel—all leftists and some previously bragging in their own election campaigns of their intention to destroy Trump—have charged candidate Trump with an array of felonies. The vast majority of Americans agree Trump would never have been so charged had he just not sought to seek reelection—or had been a liberal Democrat.
Education
In ancient times, the President of the Harvard Corporation was a signature scholar and intellectual, befitting Harvard’s own self-regard as the world’s most preeminent university. No longer.
Now-resigned president Coleen Gay’s meteoric career was based on a flimsy record of a mere 11 articles—the majority of them plagiarized. Her entire career was fueled by the tired pretext that the privileged Gay was somehow deserving of special deference given her race and gender.
Confronted with such corruption, the Harvard Corporation, its legal team, and 700 faculty sought to downplay Gay’s intellectual theft. Indeed, they smeared her critics as racist—only then to deal with her new billet as a professor of Political Science with a long record of plagiarism that was exempt from the sort of punishments dealt out to students and faculty for less egregious defenses.
How did Ivy League degrees so quickly become mostly certifications of ideological and woke orthodoxy? Or is it worse than that? Does a Stanford history major or Yale literature graduate know anything, respectively, about the Civil War or Shakespeare’s plays? Do they even know that we, the public, know that they don’t know?
Was Elizabeth Warren really Harvard’s first law professor of color? Was Claudine Gay truly an impressive and respected scholar of political science? Are the governing members of the Harvard Corporation the nation’s best and brightest?
How in less than five years did our elite universities destroy meritocracy, abolish SAT requirements, require DEI oaths and pledges, and mirror the worst commissariat institutions of the old Warsaw Pact nations and Soviet Union? How and why these elite universities blew themselves up in a mere decade will baffle historians for decades to come.
The End of Sovereignty
The Biden administration has shattered federal immigration law, as some 10 million illegal entries will have crossed unlawfully and with impunity in the first Biden term—all by intent. The southern border is not merely porous; it no longer even exists.
Did the Left want new constituents? New entitlement recipients to grow government and raise taxes on the clingers and deplorables?
Did it want a larger DEI base to replace the steady exodus of non-whites from left-wing agendas? Does it shun sovereignty, preferring a global village without arbitrary borders? Do these utopians in Malibu and Martha’s Vineyard similarly feel their own yards and grounds need no walls, no barriers, and no boundaries to deny the underprivileged their rights to enjoy what the predatory classes possess?
In this new America of ours, Joe Biden is hale and savvy, while Hunter did nothing wrong. Our heroes are Dylan Mulvaney, Gen. Rachel Levine, and the two Sams, Bankman-Fried and Brinton.
In today’s America, Karin Jean-Pierre is truthful, while Alejandro Mayorkas is honest. An innocent and saintly George Floyd was randomly murdered; his death proof of systemic police racism. And defunding the police brought calm and quiet, in the way our border is secure and the homeless are mere victims.
Dr. Jill is an impressive academic. Oprah and LeBron are the downtrodden and victimized. Gen. Mark Milley is a brave maverick, and so is Adam Schiff. The flight from Afghanistan marked a brilliantly organized retreat.
The Chinese balloon really did not take too many pictures of sensitive areas. January 6 was an armed insurrection, preplanned by fiery conspirators and revolutionaries. Ashli Babbitt deserved to be blasted in the neck for entering a broken window.
Kamala Harris is a wordsmith. Russian collusion really happened. So did Russian laptop disinformation. Christopher Steele’s dossier was mostly true, in the fashion of Claudine Gay’s dissertation and Barack Obama’s memoir. And 51 former intelligence authorities bravely came forward to offer their expertise in certifying that Hunter’s laptop was cooked up in Moscow.
With all this, what do we think the Iranians, Putin’s Russians, the communist Chinese, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas now think of the United States?
That we are the nation that won World War II or fled from Afghanistan? Did the eight million who broke our laws and simply walked across our border respect us, fear us, admire us, or come here to manipulate and use us? Did Hamas appreciate the hundreds of millions of dollars we gave them, in the same way Iran was friendlier after we lifted the sanctions?
In sum, American civilization has been turned upside down, and we have a rendezvous soon with the once unthinkable and unimaginable.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O’Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump and the recently released The Dying Citizen, and the forthcoming The End of Everything (May 7, 2024)..
  Tucker Carlson @TuckerCarlson  Ep. 60. Is the lesson of the Covid disaster that we should give its architects more power? Dr. Bret Weinstein on the WHO’s plans for you. pic.twitter.com/ku3O5BdeoF 1/5/24, 5:55 PM |
Don’t miss the above linked calm, cool and very informative interview of Dr. Bret Weinstein by Tucker Carlson. Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist, his website is https://www.bretweinstein.net/. If the Tucker Carlson interview link above on Twitter is blocked, you can also watch it here:
Before you watch the above longer interview, you may want to watch this 3 minute composite below by @Rapidsloth on Twitter, January 5, 2023. ”People are dying from the death jab daily and will continue to do so for generations to come.”
Bud’s comment: There is confirmation of DNA contamination in the mRNA covid shots and substantial evidence, testimony and studies that the S (spike) protein produced by mRNA covid injections is harming human immune systems and causing clots. Dr. Jordan Vaughn is interviewed below by journalist Sharyl Attkisson:
At least part of the contaminate DNA is designed to produce mRNA which in turn produces a part of the S (spike protein) and can be incorporated into your genome, into your chromosomes, where it can replicate. The DNA is used to mass produce the mRNA for the vaccine. Spike protein is known to be inflammatory to animal cells. Although human DNA and chromosomes have repair mechanisms, no one knows (yet, since it was never tested) whether these repair mechanisms will remove the inserted viral spike-producing DNA, nor how long the DNA inside human cell nuclei will continue to produce non-human, immune-system damaging spike proteins (or fragments thereof.)
Irresponsibly, governments are continuing to recommend injecting young children (infants) through seniors with mRNA covid gene therapy shots in spite of evidence that all-cause deaths are increasing even among young people when they should be declining, evidence that these mRNA shots are linked to increasing type 1 and type 2 diabetes, solid clinical evidence from Cleveland Clinic that more shots result in more infections, and evidence that cancers are increasing among the “vaccinated”.
Despite the evidence and risks, The American Association of Retired People (AARP) told its 38 million members to get an eighth (yes, EIGHTH!) shot of mRNA https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-aarp-just-told-its-38-million?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Charles S. Faddis served for 20 years as an operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, including as a department chief at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and as a chief of station in the Middle East. He earned his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Maryland Law School. He is the author of several books, including Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security and Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
We need the CIA, but we also need to recognize the uncomfortable reality that the CIA is not performing at the level we require. It is not keeping us safe. It must be repaired, and it must be repaired quickly.
The CIA was created after World War II with one overriding primary mission—to prevent a reoccurrence of what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We were never going to allow an enemy to surprise us on that scale again. We were never going to find ourselves blind regarding a threat of that magnitude and immediacy. We would be forewarned and forearmed.
Then came 9/11. Members of Al Qaeda hijacked four airliners. They crashed three of them into their targets. They were prevented from succeeding with the fourth only by the heroism of the brave American passengers.
Al Qaeda was not some unknown entity. It had been around for years. Osama Bin Laden had threatened to attack us on our own soil for years. Al Qaeda had blown up two of our embassies in East Africa. Al Qaeda had almost sunk the USS Cole in Yemen. Al Qaeda had tried once before to take down the World Trade Center.
Yet we had not a single source inside that organization capable of warning us of the 9/11 attacks that would kill almost 3,000 Americans.
On May 2, 2011, U.S. special operations personnel attacked a compound in Pakistan and killed the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. That operation in and of itself was clearly a success. But the fact that it took us almost ten years after 9/11 to find and kill Bin Laden should give us pause.
Bin Laden fully understood the technical capabilities of American intelligence. After his escape from Afghanistan, he established himself in a compound with no internet service. He had no cell phone. He communicated with his organization via a courier system and dealt with those couriers face to face. There were no emails, text messages, or phone calls for us to intercept.
Finding Bin Laden meant getting a source inside Al Qaeda at a level high enough to know his physical location. It took almost a decade for the CIA, with all its resources, to acquire such a source, even though this was probably the CIA’s single highest priority.
More recently, in 2020, we found ourselves amidst a worldwide pandemic that originated in China. Despite attempts to characterize this as a natural outbreak of a disease found in bats, it has become abundantly clear that COVID-19 was the product of gain-of-function research in a bio lab in Wuhan, China. It has also become clear that there were numerous warning signs regarding the dangers of the work and substandard lab practices in Wuhan.
Biological warfare threats are real and have been considered so for many years. Collecting intelligence about both state-sponsored and terrorist biological warfare programs is one of the CIA’s top priorities. The existence of the lab from which COVID emerged was not a secret. Neither was the fact that the Chinese were working overtime to make coronaviruses more dangerous to humans.
Yet we received no warning prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. When people began to get sick here and around the world, the CIA could apparently provide no useful information regarding the origins of the disease. Even now, years later, it seems unable to tell us precisely how the pandemic began. We had no sources inside China’s top bio lab. We apparently have no sources there now.
Why is that? Why is an organization staffed with highly talented people and provided with unparalleled resources failing to perform its core functions?
There are two reasons: bureaucratization and politicization.
Forget for a moment all the gadgets and technology. The core business of the CIA is recruiting spies inside target organizations, handling them securely, and producing intelligence for policymakers in Washington, D.C.
At its heart espionage is a very old business. Its essence has remained unchanged for thousands of years. And it is not a science—it is an art. There is a reason intelligence officers talk about tradecraft. Espionage requires innate skills. Not everyone can do it.
CIA case officers may be called upon to do many things during their careers, but when it comes down to it, their primary job is spotting, assessing, developing, and recruiting spies. That means getting close to people who are often very objectionable, figuring out what makes them tick, and convincing them to help you by betraying their colleagues and their countries and to trust that you can keep them alive while they do so.
That means getting a Russian intelligence officer to take actions he knows will result in his execution and the disgrace of his family if he is caught. It means persuading an Iranian nuclear scientist that working with you will make his countrymen safer and their future better. It means convincing a member of Al Qaeda that you are not the enemy of Islam and that you know your trade well enough to keep him from meeting a grisly fate.
All of this requires someone who has impeccable gut instincts, can make decisions on the fly, and can navigate through a maze of mirrors and tolerate extremely high degrees of ambiguity. When you are face to face with a very dangerous person on the street in a slum in South Asia or in a desert in the Middle East, you do not have time to deliberate. You can’t phone CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for guidance. You must know intuitively what to do and take immediate action.
The people in charge of our government, including those who run the CIA, have forgotten this. They have done their best to turn the CIA into just another federal agency. Recruiters no longer search for intangibles or focus on the key psychological traits critical to success in the world of spying. They look at academic degrees, existing levels of language proficiency, and increasingly at things like skin color and sexual orientation.
Training has been softened and is increasingly formbook in nature. We act as if anyone can be taught to conduct espionage—as if this is no longer an arcane craft to be practiced by a select group of unique people.
We have buried operations under endless layers of middle management. Case officers in the field may spend days just trying to complete the requisite paperwork for a single asset meeting. Every moment they are sitting behind a desk is a moment they are not out meeting sources, recruiting new sources, or learning the environment around them.
In Washington, the management ranks are increasingly filled with individuals who seldom travel far from Langley and have never demonstrated that they can accomplish anything on the street. They have laughed at the boss’s jokes. They have demonstrated their fealty to the prevailing groupthink. They have moved paper, attended meetings, and climbed the corporate ladder. But in large measure, they have no idea how to run an op or recruit a source.
At its core the CIA is meant to do what everyone else considers impossible. It is supposed to be run by people who want to steal the crown jewels and will do so if asked. Not anymore. Now it is run by people who look for ops with no possible downside and, therefore, no particular upside either.
The CIA has proved unable to put a source inside a Chinese bio lab, within the leadership structure of the Taliban, or next to Vladimir Putin. Those kinds of operations require the willingness to take risks and the ability to manage those risks. We no longer have either.
On September 11, 2012, two American compounds in the Libyan city of Benghazi were attacked by a well known Islamic militia with a history of attacking Western targets. One of the compounds, occupied by the Department of State, was overrun. The American ambassador to Libya, who was visiting from Tripoli at the time, was killed.
The other compound was occupied by CIA personnel and was better prepared to resist. Those inside held out long enough for an ad hoc relief force from the embassy in Tripoli to arrive and for the CIA personnel to be evacuated. No military relief force was sent by the Obama administration.
Throughout the attacks on the compounds, a continuous stream of reporting was sent to Washington from the field. All that reporting told the same story: a large-scale assault had been launched on two American-occupied compounds by a heavily armed Islamic terrorist group.
Nevertheless, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others in the Obama administration began to peddle the narrative that a peaceful demonstration in Benghazi had simply gotten out of hand—that this was not an act of terrorism. The backlash against this transparent lie was immediate. The Obama administration came under scathing criticism.
Enter Mike Morell, acting director of the CIA, who stepped forward to take the blame for the erroneous claims of a peaceful demonstration. Analysts at the CIA, Morell said, had written an assessment to this effect, and he had passed it on to the White House. Obama and company were blameless. The CIA had given them bad intelligence.
This was absurd on its face. CIA analysts do not review a mountain of reporting about ongoing attacks using heavy machine guns, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades and then write up an assessment saying, “We think they meant this to be peaceful.” Nor, obviously, has any evidence of such an assessment been produced.
In short, the Director of Central Intelligence had injected himself into a domestic political dispute, covering for a blatant lie concocted by the administration. He did so, presumably, because he believed that Secretary of State Clinton would become the next president and that he would be named to a senior post in her administration. Interestingly, when Clinton lost in 2016, Morell was given a post with a six-figure annual salary at a Washington think tank aligned with the Democratic Party.
In the runup to the 2016 election, people within Clinton’s campaign concocted the idea of smearing Donald Trump with false accusations of colluding with Russia, based on a dossier filled with lies, gossip, and innuendo. When this failed to prevent Trump’s election, they carried on the deception with an eye to destabilizing the Trump presidency and perhaps even removing Trump from office.
The involvement of the FBI in this effort, known by its FBI codename Crossfire Hurricane, has been extensively documented. What has been much less talked about is the CIA’s role.
The extensive investigation of what transpired during Crossfire Hurricane has shown that American intelligence sought the involvement of a number of allied intelligence services, most notably the British. It has also shown that with the passage of time, the British in particular became decreasingly enthusiastic about their involvement as it became clear to them that this activity was inappropriate and illegal.
Such interaction with close allies doesn’t happen without the involvement and assistance of the CIA. That is not the way it works. If you are in London, for instance, meeting with British intelligence and counterintelligence services, you are doing so not only with the knowledge of the chief of station in London, but also with his or her permission and assistance.
John Brennan, the CIA’s director at the time, not only had to know about Crossfire Hurricane; he also had to approve it. When Brennan stepped down as head of the CIA, he was replaced by Gina Haspel. She had been the chief of station in London throughout Crossfire Hurricane and had to have been directly involved in the interactions with the British services that were part of this plot.
We should also note that when news of Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” threatened to derail Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign for the White House, 51 former intelligence officers came forward and signed on to a now infamous letter branding the laptop as a product of Russian disinformation. I have seen the contents of that laptop and retain a copy to this day. I can assure you it was immediately obvious in looking at the laptop’s contents that it was real and that it suggested strongly that Joe Biden himself was compromised by a number of foreign actors—chief among them the Chinese Communist Party.
Five former directors or acting directors of the CIA were among the 51 signatories to this letter, whose clear purpose was to bury the contents of the laptop and get Joe Biden elected. Both Mike Morell and John Brennan were among those five.
If the CIA is critical to our survival—and I believe it is—we need to appoint someone to run it who knows the terrain. The new director will have to understand what is meant in describing espionage as an art. Some of what is needed can be taught—for instance, you can send people to language schools. But you can’t teach the critical skills required to reach across cultures, connect with people who belong to an organization that exists to murder people like you, and then get them to follow your orders. That takes raw physical courage. It takes perception. It takes instinct, insight, and immense self-confidence.
The new director will also need to have the full support of the president. When Wild Bill Donovan set up the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) in 1942, he faced intense opposition. He succeeded because everyone in Washington knew he had a direct line to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and would pick up the phone if he had to. A director seeking to reform the CIA today will need an equal level of backing.
The new director must, from the very beginning, make crystal clear that there is no more business as usual, that the organization is returning to its roots and getting back to basics, that there will be zero tolerance for any involvement in domestic politics—and that individuals who involve themselves in politics will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
A significant number of senior officers should be removed immediately. Some of those officers are complicit in the actions I detailed above. Many others have stood by silently as a great organization has decayed and laws have been broken. There must be a clear sea change. Everyone in the organization must understand that real reform is underway and there will be zero tolerance for foot dragging, slow rolling, or internal resistance.
The records of every single person in a command position in the CIA—both at Langley and in the field—should be reviewed. Those individuals who made rank by playing it safe and currying favor with superiors should be immediately removed. They should be replaced by individuals with the brains, guts, and audacity to do what is needed. If they don’t get the job done, they should be replaced in turn.
There can be only one measure of success—results. We must not be interested in more PowerPoint presentations or wiring diagrams. We must be interested solely in intelligence that gives us a decisive advantage over our adversaries.
Recruiting must be completely revamped. Quotas are absurd. Focusing on color, gender, and sexual orientation is at best irrelevant. We want the best, and that means those people who possess the unique blend of skills and abilities that enable them to do what everyone else considers impossible.
Training must be toughened. The world is getting more dangerous by the day. If we are going to expect the case officers in a retooled CIA to crawl into the belly of the beast, get the intel we need, and come back alive, they will need to be tough enough and well-trained enough to do that.
The structure of the CIA must be flattened and simplified. The organization must be field-centric. It is not the job of those in the field to wait for people in Langley to finish rounds of meetings and reviews before moving. It is the job of people in Langley to keep up. Anything and everything that impedes those in the field in the accomplishment of their missions must be eliminated.
All this needs to happen immediately upon the appointment of a new director. There can be no more blue-ribbon panels or interminable outside reviews. We know what the problems are. We know how to fix them. What we have lacked until now is the willingness to do what is needed.
Somewhere in the world right now a terrorist group is planning a deadly biological attack on the United States. The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban organizations are conspiring to seize functioning Pakistani nuclear weapons. The Chinese are putting the finishing touches on a plan to blockade Taiwan and crash the global economy. The Venezuelans are discussing with the Russians the idea of putting hypersonic missiles on their soil that can carry nuclear warheads.
The only organization that has a prayer of providing the necessary insight into these and many other threats is the CIA. We needed it in 1947. We need it even more today. We have no time to waste in returning it to fighting form.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/why-the-cia-no-longer-works-and-how-to-fix-it/
Bud’s comment: With all due respect, I disagree strongly with Mr. Faddis’ solution for fixing CIA. In fact, most of the solutions the author proposes have been tried before and failed. If you doubt that, then please read the book by former Director of Central Intelligence Admiral Stansfield Turner titled, “Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition.” 1985. https://archive.org/details/secrecydemocracy00turn
The first required action before any such proposed reform or re-creation could begin is congressional repeal of the Espionage Act. In today’s environment, DOJ, FBI, CIA and Congress it is highly improbable that a bill for such repeal would ever reach the floor of Congress. Without that repeal, CIA and the other alphabet intel agencies could not be audited to discover the problems and problematic people. The compartments of the agency cannot and do not communicate fully among themselves and with the directors and officers, Presidents, much less Inspectors General. The laundry list provided bravely by Mr. Faddis only scratches the surface. Can we expect CIA to lobby for repeal of the Espionage Act? [sarcasm]
By Larry P. Arnn, M.A., Ph.D. (in government) 12th President of Hillsdale College
The following is adapted from a talk delivered on the Regent Seven Seas Mariner on June 30, 2023, during a Hillsdale College educational cruise from Istanbul to Athens.
Hillsdale is often called a conservative college, and in an important sense it is, although it is not a label we regard as fundamental. The word “conservative” is referential, meaningless without a reference to what one wishes to conserve. No one thinks that everything should be conserved. A murder occurred in the first family of the Bible. We do not wish to conserve murder, but rather its condemnation. And some of the most important things to conserve today had their origins in revolution. Socratic philosophy marked a radical departure from tradition. So did Judaism and Christianity. So did the American Founding. These revolutions were opposed by the conservatives of their day, but they are the sources of our philosophic, religious, and political inheritance.
Hillsdale is also sometimes charged by its enemies—gaining enemies is a downside of becoming prominent—as narrowly partisan and a factory of activism. This is simply false. Anyone who visits our campus in Michigan or our satellite campus in Washington, D.C.—or for that matter any of the Hillsdale-affiliated K-12 schools around the country—will discover an atmosphere of serious learning, not of activism. We are the opposite of activist in that we believe that knowing is higher than doing. To act well, one needs knowledge, which comes of learning. We do not encourage our students to become activist either, especially while they are students. I have recently had a contentious exchange in The Wall Street Journal with a free speech group that criticizes Hillsdale for requiring its students to conduct themselves in a civil manner, conducive to learning, rather than in the activist and partisan manner we see roiling many other campuses these days.
That said, as I will explain, liberal education itself has become politically controversial in our time, drawing Hillsdale into politics broadly speaking. And Hillsdale has always been broadly partisan on behalf of freedom. Indeed we are required by the College’s charter document, written in 1844, to offer “sound learning” of the kind needed to preserve the blessings of “civil and religious liberty and intelligent piety in the land.” In the early decades of Hillsdale’s history, that meant opposing slavery. In recent decades, it has meant opposing the centralization of comprehensive power that corrodes our Constitution and undermines our American way of life. One learns in the classics and in the modern literature of totalitarianism that despotic rulers suppress the independent study of things that look beyond the commands of those rulers.
America’s Founders set out to build a government entirely upon the will of the great body of the people. This had never been done before. And they set out to accomplish this across a great continent—George Washington’s army was strikingly called the Continental Army—despite the prevailing idea at the time that popular governments could only work in small areas. They succeeded in doing both these things, and the way they succeeded is contained in the American Constitution, the longest living and the greatest constitution ever written.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution contains 18 paragraphs that enumerate the powers of Congress. Seven of these have to do with national defense, and one with piracy. The rest, save one, mostly have to do with commerce—weights and measures, currency, unimpeded trade between the states, post offices and post roads. The last power has to do with the federal government’s authority over the District of Columbia. Other powers were reserved to the states and localities.
In Federalist 63, James Madison writes proudly of the fact that ours will be the first purely representative government. This doesn’t just mean that instead of a king being sovereign, as in England, we would elect our rulers. It means that no one inside the government—none of the people carrying on the activities of the government—would be sovereign. The sovereign would be located outside the government. As Abraham Lincoln would later put it, the constitutional majority is the only true sovereign of a free people. All powers are to be delegated from the society to the government.
A diagram of this system would consist of a large circle representing American society. Inside that large circle, government at all levels would be represented by a much smaller circle, about one-tenth the size in terms of gross domestic product. This smaller circle would be divided then into parts. It would be divided vertically with the federal government on one side and states on the other—that’s federalism—and the federal side would be divided horizontally into the legislative, executive, and judicial powers. It was a brilliant and novel system for gathering authority to a national center for limited national purposes and distributing all other authority outwards. And it worked for a very long time.
Our system today looks radically different. The circle representing the public sector has grown at an increasing rate for many decades, and in terms of gross domestic product it now takes up over half the space in the larger circle. The divisions in the smaller circle, designed to keep it from growing, have been largely erased. In particular, the separation of powers has been neutralized by the rise of a fourth branch of government, the permanent and unelected bureaucracy or administrative state, which tends to subsume all three powers. This is not to say that the people who work in this administrative state are worse people than the ordinary. Probably they are not. But they are actuated by a common interest, and their accountability to the people for whom they make rules is so indirect as to be almost nonexistent. In any case, the resulting centralization of comprehensive power, all at the expense of the private sector, poses a serious threat to the sovereignty of the people.
To see how serious the threat, consider an important fact about our Constitution that calls increasingly for our attention—the fact that the electoral process is the sole constitutional means by which the American people can control the government. To protect the electoral process, the Founders set it up in a decentralized way. Regarding the election of the president, for instance, the Constitution says that state legislatures—not Congress, and not judges or governors—will devise the manner of choosing the electors for president in each state. This is at the heart of the controversy over the last presidential election, in which several governors and judges, using Covid as their justification, changed election laws and processes without consulting the state legislatures. It is impossible, in this light, to swallow whole the claim that the 2020 election was perfectly fair and aboveboard, although the establishment media is entirely untroubled by it.
Friends of popular government, of whatever party, should all be very troubled. Winston Churchill spoke beautifully of the greatness of Britain residing in “the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper” to decide the fate of the nation. Increasingly in America today, the man in the booth is no longer alone. It is not even any longer his initiative that causes him to vote. In many select areas, more often than not, somebody he doesn’t know mails him a ballot or knocks on his door with a ballot. That in itself is an important step toward the centralization and corruption of a process we simply cannot allow to be lost.
One of the most beautiful laws ever passed was the Homestead Act, signed by President Lincoln in 1862. It consisted of only 1,400 words, and it gave away ten percent of the land area of the United States to unknown people who would never be entitled to vote for anybody serving in the Congress that passed the law. Is it imaginable that the Russian Czar at the time, who in principle owned every inch of Russia, would have acted in such a way? Or the King of England, who in principle had approval power even over private lands in his realm? No. But it is hardly more imaginable that Congress or most of our state legislatures would act in such a way today. The force of centralization has come to seem inexorable. But it should be our highest political priority to reverse it.
What underlies the movement toward centralization and away from the constitutional system that placed sovereignty in the hands of the people and left them free to live their lives? It is the rise to dominance of a new philosophic idea.
The older philosophic idea, the idea that informs the Constitution, was described beautifully by Aristotle. It is the idea that human beings are fallen creatures, and yet partake of the divine. Human passions are strong and can lead us astray, but we are also capable of reason. We are born with knowledge of the good and the capacity to make choices or judgments for good or ill. We feel the pressures of our needs, of pains and pleasures, yet something outside these pressures in the human soul—some call it conscience—asks us if our intentions or actions are right or wrong. And it is through this process that each of us makes ourselves into what we are.
The new philosophic idea, introduced by Machiavelli and others, rejected the older idea of unchanging human nature and even nature in general. It denied the existence of objective truth and posited that everything is malleable. If something doesn’t seem good and yet you want to do it, you should do it and call it good. If something causes you pain, it can be fixed. Working hard enough, we can change anything and everything. There are no natural limits or boundaries. The central question in the older philosophic tradition is, “What is the good?” The central question in modern philosophy is, “How do you get it done?” And if you ask, “Get what done?” the answer is, “Whatever you want.”
This new philosophic idea becomes especially dangerous when combined with the power of modern technology. The word “science” comes from a Latin word meaning to see or gaze upon. The word “technology” comes from a Greek word meaning art. Technology means making something, as opposed to seeing something. It gives man the ability to get things done, even if it requires overcoming nature. Think of the limitation imposed by the fact that God created human beings male and female, and of the current technological, pharmaceutical, and surgical attempts to overcome biology and create new genders. Or think of the power to manipulate our thoughts and actions wielded today by the large technology companies collectively known as Big Tech. The closer we look at what these companies are doing—think of the “Twitter Files” released over the past year—the more it is clear that they are not using their power on behalf of human freedom, but on behalf of the centralized administrative state.
We live in serious times. It is not unthinkable that a totalitarian force could descend on us—that the world we know could collapse, never to return, as it did for so many in the last century during the period of the two world wars. What might it look like if that happens? In the course I teach on the literature of totalitarianism, two of the books we read are George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Orwell’s book is about the cruel side of totalitarianism—its most famous line conjures the image of the future as a boot stamping on a human face forever. We see hints of this today. Have you noticed how the FBI has taken to arresting people who are not dangerous and have no criminal record in the middle of the night and with the same force as if its agents were assaulting a heavily armed compound? Huxley, by contrast, presents a kinder and gentler version of totalitarianism—one in which technology and drugs are used to give enslaved people the illusion of happiness. In a letter to Orwell, Huxley predicted that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
We see hints of this today as well. In many areas of the country there seem to be more cannabis stores than stores of any other kind. In many places where churches were shuttered during the pandemic, these cannabis stores were allowed to conduct business as usual.
C.S. Lewis wrote a short and very great book called The Abolition of Man that describes the destructive character of the new philosophic idea I have described. The book begins by criticizing an English schoolbook written for young children. The schoolbook recounts a well-known story about the poet Samuel Coleridge at a waterfall. Coleridge heard one tourist call the waterfall “pretty” and another call it “sublime,” and he sided with the second tourist—the view of the waterfall was sublime, he said, meaning majestic and of great spiritual worth. According to the author of the schoolbook, however, Coleridge’s judgment simply reflected his “feelings” about the waterfall, because truth is subjective. Taking this story as his starting point, Lewis goes on to show that if the idea that there is no objective truth becomes dominant, it will lead to an abolition of man. Because how is man different from the beasts if he lacks the divine spark—the ability of reason to make judgments about what is beautiful and what is not and about what is right and what is wrong?
Other voices today warn us of a technological abolition of man that will result if we are careless about the rise of artificial intelligence. This technology can be useful, but human intelligence must control it. Government’s use of it must be monitored and controlled as well. China is famously using facial recognition and other AI technologies to create a total surveillance state. There is little doubt there are people in our government thinking along the same lines. In East Germany during the Cold War, it is said that one person in six was connected to the Stasi, the East German equivalent of the Soviet KGB. Governments today don’t need agents and spies. They can employ algorithms and AI to accomplish even greater levels of control.
The good news is that human beings, by their nature, don’t like tyranny. That is why, as Aristotle explains in Book Five of his Politics, tyrants must infantilize their people to maintain their hold. We are seeing uprisings of parents in our country these days. They are angry that schools are dividing their children into groups labeled “oppressed” and “oppressors” according to their skin color. They are angry that the schools are encouraging their children to believe they are a different sex than their biology dictates. Parents are pushing back because parents love their children. That is nature. Nature can be tortured and otherwise set upon, but it cannot be overcome in the end.
The main reason we can be sure that totalitarian control cannot be successful in the end is that it would violate a fact that undergirds the entire universe. Mankind will never have it within his power to make an algorithm that emulates the knowledge of God. It won’t work. I am told by AI experts who teach at the College that those of us who live another five years are going to encounter upright artificial beings who are going to talk to us and who are going to have better memories than we do and who will know everything about us individually. But there is a difference between what those beings are doing and saying and what occurs in the rational human soul. And to understand what the difference is, we’re going to have to go on giving people educations.
Next year we will have been doing that at Hillsdale College for 180 years. Integral to the teaching and learning at Hillsdale is the older philosophic idea, which is now under assault by the newer idea. The Constitution, informed by the old idea of unchanging human nature and natural law, is friendly toward (and even dependent on) precisely the kind of education we offer. The centralized comprehensive form of government that seeks to destroy and replace the Constitution, by contrast, is threatened by liberal education. Unlike very many institutions of higher learning in our country, Hillsdale has not accommodated itself to that new form of government. Hillsdale is thus caught up in the great political controversy of our time and has no choice but to stand for the side of freedom and limited government. This explains, for instance, why the College sends this newsletter to six-and-a-half million households and businesses. It is partly a matter of self-preservation—the conservation of the activity of liberal learning. It is also a matter of love: we are teachers, and we mean to keep teaching.
All the while Hillsdale’s core activity remains unchanged. The job before us is to make ourselves and our students into excellent human beings. That is an activity of joy, and it will make us stronger against any storm.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/hillsdales-mission-and-the-politics-of-freedom/
Larry P. Arnn is the twelfth president of Hillsdale College. He received his B.A. from Arkansas State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School. From 1977 to 1980, he also studied at the London School of Economics and at Worcester College, Oxford University, where he served as director of research for Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill. From 1985 until his appointment as president of Hillsdale College in 2000, he was president of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. From October 2020 to January 2021, he served as co-chair of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission. He is the author of several books, including The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government.
Bud’s comment: If you agree with me and Dr. Arnn that a good education is critical and rare in these dangerous times when so-called political leaders imperil individual liberties and sovereignty, then please join me and my friends in contributing to Hillsdale College.
#liberty #sovereignty #freedom #rights #humannature #woke #identitypolitics #tyranny #slavery #feudalism #USConstitution #moralrelativity #objectivism #oppressed #oppressors #privilege #education #liberal #conservative
“Okay, Houston … we’ve had a problem here.” Jack Swigert, Apollo 13 command module pilot, reported to NASA Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas. April 14, 1970
After Months of Silence Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes Calls Gateway Pundit – Tells Us the Biden Regime Is Now Sending Prominent J6 Prisoners to Mental Institutions to Keep Them from Talking Like in the Old Soviet Union (AUDIO)
By Jim Hoft at GatewayPundit (link below) Dec. 21, 2023 8:00 am 490 Comments
ENLIGHTEN YOURSELF! Scroll to the end of the article at this link https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/after-months-silence-oath-keepers-founder-stewart-rhodes/ and listen to the voice phone call by J6 political prisoner Stewart Rhodes.
On Wednesday Stewart Rhodes, the founder and president of the Oath Keepers reached out to The Gateway Pundit. This was the first time we have heard from Stewart in months since his Washington DC show trial. Stewart was on a 90 day phone restriction at the federal prison he is held at in Maryland.
** Please donate to Stewart Rhodes this holiday season to help pay for his attorneys and personal needs.
When I asked Stewart how he was doing and if he had any allies in prison he told me, “Almost every prisoner that I talk to here is a Trump supporter and is aware of the nonsense. And I get a lot of fist bumps, actually.” …That’s good! even the prisoners are pro-Trump today!
Stewart reminded me how he predicted that the Democrats were going to use the 14th Amendment to go after President Trump. Stewart predicted this two years ago!
Stewart Rhodes: “The narrative from day one, from the night of January 6th, was this is Trump’s fault. That Trump sparked an insurrection and incited an insurrection, or even plotted to carry one out. I was sued along with President Trump, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, myself as an individual. Enrique Tarrio and a few other individuals in both groups were sued in three different civil suits. They’re still pending in Washington, DC, in front of Judge Mehta, the same judge that presided over my trial, over the Oath Keeper trial. He’s hearing three cases by members of Congress, by a group of police officers in DC, and then also from District of Columbia itself, all alleging the same narrative that President Trump is the head of a conspiracy to attack the Capitol. And the first lawsuit was filed way back on February 16, 2021, by Benny Thompson and other members of Congress. That’s been the narrative from day one. So it’s not at all a surprise that across the country, in these different states, they’re trying to argue that President Trump committed insurrection and is no longer eligible to run for office….
…Their logic is he doesn’t need a criminal trial. He’s had a civil trial bench trial in front of a judge, and the judge has ruled that he did engage in insurrection. And that’s going to be repeated across the country in all the different states. I think anywhere you have a leftist judge, you’re going to get. It’s a foregone conclusion. You’re going to get a judge determining that he’s guilty. Same thing that happened to Cuoy Griffin from New Mexico…
…Trump hasn’t been charged with insurrection or suspicious conspiracy because there’s no basis for it. That’s got nothing to do with why they haven’t done it yet. I think they’re building a crescendo in the states.
Stewart Rhodes on the Supreme Court taking on the 1512 case – he prays they do the right thing.
Stewart Rhodes: It’s a ridiculous application, a misapplication of law, as has been said by many brilliant legal minds around the country. So I’m glad they picked it up. It’s a good sign. I hope, keep fingers crossed and pray, pray to God that the Supreme Court does the right thing.
Stewart on the Supreme Court’s cowardice in 2020.
Stewart Rhodes: I’ll remind everybody that they did not do the right thing in 2020 when Texas, when the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, sued Pennsylvania. When Texas sued Pennsylvania, that’s under the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction. When one state sues another, you don’t have to go to a district court judge, you go straight to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did not do its duty like they had done back in Bush v. Gore in 2000. They should have heard that case and decided it because the challenge was that Pennsylvania was violating article two of the Constitution and it was joined by, I believe, 23 other states. So they should have, should have settled it right then
Stewart Rhodes then broke this disturbing news.
The Biden regime sent Oath Keepers Attorney Kellye SoRelle to a mental hospital to keep her quiet.
Stewart Rhodes: Kellye SoRelle, the attorney for Oath Keepers. She sat with them (Liz Cheney’s J6 Committee), I believe, six different times for hours and hours and talked to them.
Jim Hoft: What is her predicament now?
Stewart Rhodes: She’s been put in a mental institution run by the BoP (Bureau of Prisons)… Sadly, she’s been placed in a Bop mental facility. She’s been ruled incompetent to stand trial.
Jim Hoft: Oh my God!
Stewart Rhodes: Like in the Soviet Union. They put you on trial. They put you in a mental institution. That’s where we are now.
Jim Hoft: I’m so sorry to hear that.
When we were reconnected Stewart commented on J6 Prisoner Jeffrey McKellop who was former Special Forces, a government contractor and a very intelligent man.
** You can donate to Jeffrey McKellop here.
Jim Hoft: Hey, Stuart. So I was going to ask you, when we were cut off the last time, there was a man who was arrested on January 6. His name is Jeffrey McKellop. Does that ring a bell?
Stewart Rhodes: Yes.
Jim Hoft: I spoke with him. He was very interesting, very intelligent person, had a really amazing story. He’s been through a lot in his life, and he was able to give me so much information. Now, Stuart, he told me during one of our interviews that what he saw on January 6 reminded him of something like crowd control, something that he saw take place in other countries. It was like something you would expect from the CIA or something…
Stewart Rhodes: He was in the CTF with a lot of the other guys in DC, and he was able to see all the video on evidence… He was able to look through it all, and he said, hey, I recognize this kind of operation himself.
** Please donate to Stewart Rhodes this holiday season to help pay for his attorneys and personal needs.
Jim Hoft: …The reason I thought about him is you just said that Kellye SoRelle was sent to a mental hospital and she was your lawyer.
Stewart Rhodes: Yes, lawyer for Oath Keepers. And she was also, remember, she was a whistleblower on election night in Detroit. She was there as a legal observer for Lawyers for Trump. And she was one of the very first people to blow the whistle and say that she saw and heard behavior that was consistent with what later on was coming out. What came out in Dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules, she overheard a conversation of a guy complaining to somebody on the phone that he needed more money. He’s already brought in this many votes. He’s going to bring in more. He needs more money. She heard that conversation…
Jim Hoft: …What brought this up was I heard that Jeffrey McKellop also got sent to a mental hospital. That’s why when you said that earlier about Kellye, it made me think of Jeffrey McKellop.
Stewart Rhodes: I don’t think he’s mental. Here’s the thing. It’s one thing to be, yes, going through what we’re going through. We’re going through a lot. But I don’t think that makes a man mentally incompetent. So it’s like the Soviet Union. Either they put you in a show trial like they did with me, or they put you in a mental institution. And I think there’s a reason why they chose that for Kellye SoRelle.
EXCLUSIVE: Independent Journalist Tayler Hansen: A Riot that Turned Deadly, What I Witnessed at the US Capitol Riot
By Tayler Hansen Jan. 28, 2021 9:24 am1381 Comments in the GatewayPundit. (Links below)
AN INSIDE LOOK: What really happened during the Capitol Siege – Insurrection or Setup?
On January 6th, 2021, The United States Capitol was overrun by what the mainstream “media” labeled as “insurrectionists” and “terrorists.” Everyone involved was supposedly motivated to breach federal grounds by President Trump’s “call to action” for supporters to rally in DC ahead of the Presidential Confirmation Vote.
Today the public is being told half-truths by biased media corporations to paint an unrealistic dream narrative against Trump and his tens of millions of supporters.
In this article, I will lay out the events I documented, which led up to the tragic deaths of Ashli Babbitt and 5 others.
John Sullivan, ANTIFA organizer, and BLM Activist is seen telling Officers to “Go home.” After being arrested he faced the following charges; civil disorder, disorderly conduct, and entering a restricted building without authority. Almost immediately after being detained, he was released with no bail.
John Sullivan is seen here attempting to make a Police Officer leave so they can further push into the Senate Chambers.
Not even a minute prior to the deadly shooting of Ashli Babbitt. pic.twitter.com/GZLwxYuVQ2
— Tayler Hansen (@TaylerUSA) January 16, 2021
A man shifted Ashli’s body after she fell from the window. Three Capitol Police Officers are seen on the stairs, none of which attempted to apply medical aide to Ashli’s gunshot wound. For a brief moment I attempted to provide light so the gunshot wound could be found. When located, pressure was applied but there was nothing we could have done to save her.
If Ashli Babbitt died in the hospital, why was she carried down the stairs, upside down, and with no pressure on her wound?
Video: Courtesy Sam with Infowars.com
In Conclusion
I, Tayler Hansen, in no way, shape, or form support the events that unfolded on the 6th. With that being said, it doesn’t take a genius to know it’s impossible for unarmed protestors to have successfully breached one of the most secure buildings on Earth, while the Vice President was inside. As time passes one thing becomes more clear, the Capitol was the perfect set up, and Trump supporters took the bait.
The Capitol siege was the biggest political power grab in modern-day history. The Left has officially shifted the spotlight, and this time they’re coming for Trump supporters. We’re witnessing the most intense roll out of Big Tech censorship we’ve ever seen. Which just so happens to be targeting President Trump, conservatives, and what’s left of real journalists. Big Tech told conservatives to create their own platform if they didn’t want to be censored, so they did. In response, Apple and Google removed that platform Parler, an app founded on free speech. Mainstream media is attempting to silence independent and fact-based reporting, forming the ultimate monopoly on the so-called “truth”. They have Americans right where they want them.
This was ANTIFA’s proudest, and most accomplished moment yet. Known ANTIFA provocateurs have been exposed for causing the initial violence and unrest at the Capitol, but it doesn’t matter. Left-wing extremist groups have caused over $2B in property damage, attempted to burn down Federal Buildings, and are responsible for over 30 deaths since last May of 2020. There were never any reports of an “insurrection” or “terrorist attack” when ANTIFA attempted to occupy Federal Buildings in Portland or the historic courthouse in Nashville. Left-wing terrorists have received nothing but praise from elected officials, celebrities, and mainstream media throughout their existence.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media has labeled everyone at the US Capitol “Domestic Terrorists” even the hundreds of thousands who were there in DC to listen to President Trump and then left the area after he ended his speech. We’re bearing witness to the ultimate double standard.
Original story here: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/exclusive-independent-journalist-tayler-hansen-riot-turned-deadly-witnessed-us-capitol-riot/
This tweet from Trump on January 6, 2021 appears in New York Post. The tweet was read live on January 6 by QShaman at the Capitol. https://nypost.com/2021/01/06/twitter-deletes-tweets-from-president-trump/
Hidden from Public: Jan 6 2021, QShaman Stands Outside Doors of US Capitol, reads a tweet from Trump which Tells Everyone to Go Home, Stay Peaceful and Go Home #Insurrection
The video was not played at QShaman’s trial nor so far in the Trump insurrection trials or House hearings. QShaman was convicted and jailed.
QShaman has strong criminal and civil cases against the court and prosecutors, including disbarment of prosecutors and judge.
Trump has exculpatory evidence to dismiss all insurrection charges and cases against him. Congress should punish the DOJ, FBI, Liz Cheney and the rest of the House January 6 Committee. U.S. Attorney General and the illegally appointed Special Prosecutor Smith should be impeached and disbarred.
We have the FBI, DOJ, Capitol Police, likely Pelosi and Schumer, Antifa and and others involved in instigating a riot on January 6th 2021 while President Trump and QShaman are asking people to go home peacefully. The criminals are free while the victims are convicted or being prosecuted by the criminals.
Story and also video at this link: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/new-video-hidden-public-q-shaman-stands-outside/
Francis Collins was head of the National Institutes of Health – Anthony Fauci’s parent bureaucracy – during the wreckage caused by the Covid response. Ultimately, Dr. Collins bears a huge measure of the responsibility for the disaster, even if he played the role of the stooge.
It was he who wrote Fauci with the demand for a “quick and devastating takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement that merely reasserted traditional public health wisdom in the midst of an insane science experiment being conducted on the whole population.
Five months ago, an organization that seeks political consensus hosted him for some frank talk about what happened. Here is what he had to say:
There is a sense in which he didn’t need to say this at all. We all knew it. They were thinking only about New York City. The rest of the country never had anything approaching a crisis. The Government, under Collins, emptied hospitals out from coast to coast to reserve them for Covid patients who only arrived much later and never came close to overwhelming health care services.
Meanwhile, the entire country was plunged into a grave crisis at every level – a man-made crisis of the worst sort.
Nor did they think about anything other than this one pathogen. It was a wild fanaticism that seized the whole of the ruling class for the better part of two years. None of it made sense, but those who objected could hardly get a hearing. Instead, they were smeared, censored and often fired for non-compliance.
Even as late as December 2021, Collins was still fear-mongering. He told NPR concerning Christmas celebrations: “We were planning to invite some of the trainees at NIH, who are far from home, to come for a brunch on Christmas Day at our house if they’re all fully vaccinated and boosted. Still planning to go forward, very carefully, with a small group, and everybody will be wearing masks except when they’re eating.”
Note that Collins doesn’t apologise. He takes no responsibility. He just continues his masquerade as a tennis-shoe wearing, guitar-strumming, Jesus-loving grandpa who is open and broad-minded, never mind that he wielded absolute power over all our lives only a few years ago.
Later in the interview, he is singing hosannas to the glorious vaccines and how perfectly they worked. We are nowhere near approaching the point where people like this, tell the truth. It’s almost like they cannot bear it.
Even in this interview, Collins’s nonchalant delivery is infuriating. You want to scream back: You wrecked the lives of hundreds of millions of people! And no one ever gave you the authority to do so!
Click on photo above for video
Meanwhile, it was incredibly obvious to many at the time that disaster would be the only result of lockdowns. The bit about masking was never serious; no one in the know seriously believed these things would protect anyone from a tiny pathogen with an animal reservoir. The only solution was the traditional one from public health wisdom: Preserve normalcy, treat the sick with known therapeutics and alert the vulnerable to stay away from large crowds until the virus becomes endemic.
Collins directly attacked this solution and demanded that government attack it and ultimately censor it!
As we approach the end of the year, we are surrounded by a cultural and economic darkness this generation has never seen before. Most incredibly, public health itself is wrecked.
Let’s just count the ways. Each consequence dates from the beginnings of the lockdowns. That was the turning point, the end of innocence, the great reset, the moment when the choice between freedom and despotism weighed heavily in the most inhumane direction.
Consider:
Homeless people are everywhere at record highs (650K), stemming from rampant mental disorder, substance abuse and incredibly tight leasing standards stemming from the eviction moratorium.
The middle class can no longer afford to buy a home thanks to high rates from the Fed, deployed in an attempt to mitigate against inflation which is still running hot.
Every merchant has hidden fees in everything, struggling to find some way to hide the hot potato of inflation that has eaten 20-plus percent of the dollar’s purchasing power since 2019.
Shoplifting is a major national problem to the point that thousands of stores have closed.
Shrinkflation affects everything. The groceries have shrunk and the bills have soared – a direct consequence of some $8 trillion in stimulus and money printing.
Office real estate in large cities is approaching an accounting crisis because people are not returning to work, their routines totally shattered by lockdowns.
Travel is uncertain, with endless delays and cancellations due to pilot shortages stemming from stay-at-home orders, vaccine mandates and rampant illness.
The ‘Great Reset’ is all around us, as we are constantly nudged to drive EVs, live without comforts, buy less meat and even eat bugs.
A wide-open Southern border has created an immigration crisis as government neglected its core duties in favour of insane methods of virus control.
Restaurants are unaffordable for most people.
Dependency on Government handouts is 28% higher than in 2019.
All stores close an hour or two earlier because they cannot get workers to stay later.
The learning losses among the kids are unfathomable, two years and rising, and perhaps an entire generation is lost.
There is a population-wide mental-health crisis, in addition to rampant substance abuse.
The federal budget has been blown to smithereens.
Political divisions are festering as never before, with neither party willing to discuss the Covid ‘elephant in the room’.
Our conception of what it means to live in freedom with a government that knows limits to its power has slipped away.
Arts venues are struggling for dear life to survive.
World trade is shattered, with new trading blocs replacing the old ones.
The rise of maniacal gender dysphoria of the young is probably connected with this: Endless hours online, loss of confidence in the world as it is, plus loneliness.
One could argue that even the war in Israel and Gaza is a result: Security concerns were neglected in favour of microbial activism and shot mandates, and the loss of a moral centre to policy then unleashed successive rounds of violence.
Finally, there is the loss of trust in everything: Government, public health, pharmaceuticals, academia, science, media and each other. Society cannot function without trust. Not even churches are immune from broad incredulity since most went along with the Covid response in every detail.
This only begins to scratch the surface of what we’ve lost and what has replaced it. Ultimately all such tragedies come down to individual lives. These days you hear them only among friends and families. And they are terrible stories of sadness and personal despair. The pain is only intensified by the silence on the part of all corporate media, government and other commanding heights. Because of the news block on the whole topic, there is mass and festering anger beneath the surface.
And yet, here is this granddad – the man ostensibly in charge over the whole operation – telling us old war stories of mistakes that were made. Does he have any idea of the carnage he caused? Does he even care?
In Dostoevsky’s version of The Grand Inquisitor, the nemesis predicts: “In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, ‘Make us your slaves, but feed us.’”
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, where this article first appeared.
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