Our Dying Republic

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Re: Our Dying Republic

''realizing what the problem is and how it came to be in the first place''....

20 years?...After 20 years Americans are 'slowly' and 'suddenly' realizing they are in the grip of a brutish level of corporate power?...Not even close...This process started over 50 years ago when the top tax rate started dropping,in that it was a time of prosperity the people didn't much notice,or if they did notice they didn't much care...Besides,we were distracted by Vietnam,Civil Rights,and the danger of the political landscape,so we remained oblivious as wages froze and the national debt began to climb...That millions were falling out of the 'middle class' was not a concern because they probably had it coming,or they weren't working hard enough,or they were just plain unlucky...

So here we are,in the latter part of 2021,a time of debt slavery,never ending wars,government overreach and surveillance,economic inequality,massive MIC propaganda,identity politics,hatred and division for the 'other' everywhere,corporate media,corporate and political power increasing by the day,the 'erosion' of our ''Constitutional Rights''....Greed and Corruption go unpunished and unrecognized by the brainwashed masses...

Meanwhile,'Profits' are at an obscene level,Wall St. Stocks are through the stratosphere,our goods,sitting out in the ocean on containers waiting to be unloaded,are made in Third World Hellholes,and the ''ELITES CONTROL'' what we See,Hear,Eat,Do,and NOW...INJECT into our bodies...This did not happen overnight,there was nothing 'slowly' and 'sudden' about it...The Deep State have come to realize their ''PSYOPS'' has been working like a charm for decades,and are treating us accordingly...If we continue to 'ignore' the danger they pose and DO NOT act to take OUR Country back from these sycophants and psychopaths,suffering will mount,tensions will rise,and we will continue our slip into ''FASCISM''!!!!!

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/10/1...wrence-psyops/

What can I say Wizard… I was a late bloomer… lol

Great article...

It’s been around 20 years for me personally... I didn’t follow politics before that because I didn’t see America as actually being destroyed per se even though I viewed most politicians as nothing but lying... conceited... narcissistic psychopaths but I had faith that my fellow man… having opposing parties being the watchdog over one another and a justice system keeping them in check along with the belief that there was this thing called investigative journalism that would report the truth if it came to the point it was destroying this country.

When I did start following politics… that’s when I started researching… a whole hell of a lot of it. That’s when I also realized that the more I learned on the subject… the more I didn’t know jack shit about what all is really going on in this country… and still don’t if I were to be completely honest about it because personally… I think that most of us just realize a fraction of what’s really going on with this country as well as the world. Isn’t it funny… and sad to tell you the truth… what makes people wake up and start paying attention to what’s going on around them? And what I found is that the process of destroying this country started more than 20 years until I started realizing it and even more than 50 years ago like you mentioned… probably since our country’s independence. We can start with the national banks… from the First Bank of the United States in 1791 to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 which it is said that President Wilson later regretted signing…

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." - Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Searching around the 'net, it seems that this is one of those "everyone repeats the quote, but no one seems to know the original source" phenomenons. If anyone can actually find the primary source for this quote (and it is indeed Woodrow Wilson) then by all means put it back in. It's possible that the source for the quote can be found here: Quoted in “National Economy and the Banking System," Senate Documents Co. 3, No. 23, 76th Congress, 1st session, 1939. I found the article referencing it [[1]]. It would be nice if somebody with the ability to actually look this up could do so. I can't travel to the National Archives in D.C. to do so myself, but If somebody could assure me that there are copies of all Congressional documents at a local university, I would be willing to try there. Umeboshi 23:48, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

The above quote is indeed true*. It is published in "The New Freedom" in 1913. The quote "I am a most unhappy man, I have unwittingly ruined my country" is added on commonly, but there is no source for it. Apparantly Wilson made this statement shortly before his death after his presidency, but there seems to be no hard source for it. However the rest of the quote is true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.206.160.18 (talk • contribs) on 25 April 2008.Kind of a specious observation since, as mentioned in the pre-amble: "The above quote is indeed true." (What real differences does it make if Woodrow Wilson was happy or not except perhaps to discern whether he had a conscience or not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3...al_Reserve_Act

Then we have Thomas Jefferson’s opinion about central banks…

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies,” Jefferson wrote. "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around (these banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered... The issuing power of currency shall be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertl...h=358b36fc2b18

If I recall correctly… the first time I got actually upset is when I noticed them screwing with our constitutional rights with the seat belt laws of the 80’s. I will always believe it is unconstitutional and the only reason the courts were able to rule it constitutional is because they have driving being a privilege and if you wish to partake in that privilege… you must obey. You just got to love the way some people actually believe that our government cares about them… what a joke. The only reason that became a law is because the insurances companies lobbied for it. That’s who they care about… people who put money in their pocket or influence their career in one way or another.

Then I started realizing our moral decline with Bill Clinton’s antics. Just one example that sticks in my craw is the way this POS draft dodger started demeaning the military with his “Don’t ask… Don’t tell” policy. Yes sir… that lily-livered POS who skipped to Canada so he wouldn’t have to serve was now intentionally poking the bear. Sure… there were always homos in the military but letting them go prancing around flaunting that fact was just asking for trouble and intentional. Don’t get me wrong… I don’t call all people who avoid the draft “lily-livered POS draft dodgers because there are people who are truly conscientious objectors and one in particular… Desmond Doss who still enlisted beside that fact… who became a medic who refused to kill an enemy soldier or carry a weapon but shown courage beyond belief in World War II while earning himself the Medal of Honor… 3 Bronze Stars and 3 Purple Hearts. Now… that was a man of courage when he faced adversity that was there to only help… not harm his fellow man.

And for all those out there who want to think of me as a homophobe… go right ahead… I don’t give a shit… but in reality… I could care less what sex people prefer and what they consensually do behind closed doors… I just won’t let people go around flaunting it in my face trying to get me to accept it as normal behavior by jamming it down my throat. And if that makes me a homophobe in some people’s eyes… so be it. And as for the transmen and transwomen… they can see themselves selves as anything they want… I don’t give a shit… but I’ll be damned if I’ll let them tell me how to see them. That’s the problem… they think their rights come before anyone else’s… just like those people think they have the right to dictate how other people live their lives.

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Re: Our Dying Republic

Will Governments Survive the Coming Peasant Revolt?

Let's talk big picture here. Why has the world been turned on its head these last few years? Why does it seem as if everything true is labeled false and everything false is labeled true? Why is it that, even in the absence of all-out global war, everything feels chaotic and uncertain these days? Why is it that at the height of global prosperity and peace, the world is going mad? What if I were to tell you that what we are experiencing has nothing to do with events currently unfolding in the present and everything to do with a future event that sits just over the horizon? What if I told you that everything the titans of government, finance, and technology do today is in preparation for something they are desperate to prevent tomorrow? What if I told you that this looming disaster for those who hold power now would one day be known as "The Global Revolt of the Peasants"? Would all the craziness around us make a little more sense if you knew that the only thing our "leaders" actually fear is we? Let's start with three premises:

(1) All governing systems (political, financial, technocratic) operate to preserve and expand their power.

(2) Catastrophic governing failure leads to complete loss of power for those in charge.

(3) Governing systems in the process of failing to compensate by eliminating competition and increasing overall control.

In other words, even the most free and dynamic social systems degrade over time as the people who govern those systems distort them in pursuit of greater personal wealth and power. Corrupted systems eventually lead to breakdown and collapse. As collapse nears, social systems become so vulnerable to unsanctioned actions and ideas that they close themselves off. Freedom is replaced with tyranny. This is by design. If post-WWII Western governance had a creed, it is this: increased taxation and increased regulation increase both asset wealth and inequality. By taxing labor, the value of hard work has plummeted. By regulating anything and everything, the entry costs for any new entrepreneur have skyrocketed. And because the Industrial Revolution's trends toward producing more and varied innovations at cheaper costs have hit the roadblock of government interference, fewer innovations, less competition, and increased monopoly ownership have logically resulted. Instead of assets going down in value over time as more are produced, they actually increase in value as it becomes harder to produce them. While people with assets see gains in wealth, people depending on income to survive have experienced more difficulty affording what is produced. This is why inequality has surged in the United States when America was not long ago the nation with the greatest intragenerational social mobility in the world.

But the government has had an answer to this misery! Simply tax people more in return for the promise to create a welfare system that pays off in the future. See what those with power did there? They actually stole from people who work for a living in return for nothing more than future promises to make them whole. And what happened with this extra tax revenue? Most of it got quickly spent buying things that the wealthy own and sell, thereby driving up the value of assets held by the rich while increasing the costs of ordinary goods to regular workers. The government used its power to steal from your paycheck, transfer that wealth to businesses owned by a small monied class, and artificially drive up prices, all while promising a future welfare payment that you may or may not receive decades in the future. This is how socialism's Ponzi scheme works.

But stealing an individual worker's labor wasn't enough to sate the avarice of Big Government and Big Business! Budgets grew bigger than tax revenues could afford, and the system of stealing from the peasants to enrich the lords was threatened. So what did the system do to preserve power? It de-coupled the dollar from any tangible value in the real world by ending the gold standard. Now paper dollars were worth more than the value of their paper only if people shared the delusion (or at least accepted their government's assurances) that paper is as valuable as gold. Without anything tethering the dollar to real-world assets, the government giddily used the last half-century to print and spend dollars until the value of a dollar today is worth only two cents compared to 1971. Again, those who own assets have seen their wealth in terms of dollars artificially rise, while those who work on salary have suffered, as everything has gotten more expensive. Local, state, and national debts ballooned. The rich benefited enormously. The middle class fell into poverty. And the fuse of an unavoidable debt bomb triggering a future financial collapse got lit. Everything the government does today is about lengthening that fuse in order to delay the explosion while preparing for the aftermath once it goes boom.

So how does a governing system survive catastrophic failure of its own making? It consciously causes division in society, distracts people with propaganda, and diligently replaces freedom with control. If prices are going up, that's because "capitalism is evil" and free markets promote "white supremacy" and "patriarchy." "Equity" is the answer, of course, and only government can provide the "equity" the people need. Don't you know that private industry and ownership are ruining the planet? It's true! Consumerism is boiling the world, and we're all going to die unless we willfully return to the living standards of the Middle Ages. Experts say so! What do you mean, uncontrolled illegal immigration is tearing communities apart and destroying the common bonds of shared culture? That's racist! Multiculturalism and diversity are our strengths! If a population influx happens to cause social friction while putting deflationary pressure on low-paying wages and mitigating the actuarial insolvency of the welfare system, that's purely coincidental. Believe me, wealthy elites worry about the plight of the weary immigrant more than they care about their own happiness. That's why the doors to their gated communities, country clubs, and private schools are always open to those in need.

Do you know what the global COVID-19 pandemic has exposed? The absolute need for governments to work hand in glove with Big Tech to eliminate harmful "misinformation," regulate communication, and create a new digital passport system that can be used to catalog each individual's movements, purchases, and interactions. Thank goodness we had this health scare, or people would never have learned how much they need to be controlled. Responsible people deserve to be rewarded! Those who do as the government commands may work and eat. Those who promote good "science" should be allowed extra servings of freedom. That's why it is imperative that a social credit system be instituted to benefit the virtuous and punish the wicked! Don't call it "government-enforced political correctness" or the "end of free speech" or "digital authoritarianism on steroids." This is nothing like the totalitarianism of the last century. This time it's for the people's own good because their leaders have only their best interests at heart. Individualism is selfish! Obedience will set you free!

In other words, the best way to survive the coming peasant revolt is to turn the peasants against each other, scare them into submission, and convince them to imprison themselves. It's still a hell of a gamble. Truth and freedom, even when smothered, have a tendency to burn back brighter when under assault. Is it possible the Davos crowd is so confident in its powers to shape history that it's ignored everything history has taught? Catastrophic system failure lies just beyond the horizon. Something big must happen next.

https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...nt_revolt.html

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Re: Our Dying Republic

First they came for Mike Flynn, but I said nothing...

History repeats itself. History repeats itself. History repeats itself. This is because human nature does not change. This is because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Today's America reminds us more and more and more of Germany in the early 1930s. With proper credit given to German pastor Martin Niemoller...

– They came after President Trump, but I said nothing because I did not like his tweets.

– They came after the J-6 protesters who have been locked up as political prisoners, but I said nothing because they seemed a little too "unwashed."

– They came after the Founding Fathers, but I said nothing because they're from an age a very long time ago.

– They came after soccer moms at school board meetings, but I said nothing because my kids are already out of school.

– They came after MAGA Nation, but I said nothing because I considered myself a college-educated moderate.

– They came after the Christians/constitutionalists/conservatives in the military, but I said nothing because I never served in uniform.

– They came after the citizens who carry 2A, but I said nothing because guns scare me.

– They came after the police, but I said nothing because none of my family wears blue.

– They came after the EMS/firefighters/nurses, but I said nothing because I was already vaccinated.

– They came after Christian white heterosexual men, but I said nothing because I'm not a Christian white heterosexual man.

– They came after the Evangelicals, but I said nothing because I don't think of myself as that devout.

– They came after Israel's right to exist, but I said nothing because I'm not Jewish.

– They came after the patriots who said the 2020 election was stolen, but I said nothing because I was scared and intimidated.

– They came after writers, authors, .coms, but I said nothing because I don't read negative news that much anymore.

– They came after the blue-collar workers who actually make things and build things, but I said nothing because the slave-labor goods from China were cheaper.

– They came after the farmers, but I said nothing because I thought "climate change" was real.

– They came after Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, and Roger Stone, but I said nothing because they can afford their own attorneys.

– They came after Governor DeSantis, but I said nothing because I live in Michigan.

– They came after Tucker Carlson, but I said nothing because I don't watch FOX News anymore.

– They came after Coach Jon Gruden, but I said nothing because I don't watch the NFL anymore.

– They came after the unvaccinated, but I said nothing, because I had already taken the vaccine (but really a therapeutic).

– They came after the pastors, the priests, and the rabbis (they came after God ), but I still said nothing. Nothing at all. Not one word.

Now they are coming after me. But there's no one left to speak for me, fight for me, and stand with me. I wish I had stood up, spoken up, and fought when this all first started. Now it's too late. Some lessons of history we never learn. Or we learn too late, again.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...d_nothing.html

While the vast majority of Americans once, perhaps 100 years ago, displayed a sense of virtue explicitly the same, now the majority disagrees on fundamental issues. Consider the “conservative-liberal” divide. There are...

* two “justice systems,” with conservatives punished harshly for what leftists do with impunity (Jan. 6ers vs. leftist rioters);
* two social-media standards, with conservatives censored and liberals elevated;
* two corporate-America standards, with conservatives fired for expressing their views while leftist advocacy is fostered;
* two “COVID nations,” with the vaxxed applauded and the un-vaxxed derided;
* two school systems (roughly speaking), with conservatives moving toward home- and private-schooling; and
* two media worlds, with conservatives seeking the Truth stream and liberals imbibing the mainstream.

Some may wonder how long a country that’s continually bifurcating can hold together. Whatever the case, you know you’re living in strange times when the differences between conservatives and leftists are thought more profound than the differences between boys and girls.

https://thenewamerican.com/girl-scou...n-differently/

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Re: Our Dying Republic

LAPD: City Residents Should “Cooperate and Comply” With Those Robbing Them

The inmates are no longer running the asylum — they’re running the entire city. In a release the Los Angeles Police Department tweeted out this week, authorities advised city residents to “cooperate and comply” with criminals while being robbed. “Due to an increase in violent street robberies, Robbery-Homicide Division has become aware of an ongoing crime trend of follow-home robberies,” the release begins. “Suspects have been locating victims in Los Angeles, following them, and then committing the robberies as the victim arrives home or at their business.”

LAPD then outlined seven points constituting the department’s advice for how people should react to the robberies described.

Point five reads, “If you are being robbed, do not resist the robbery suspects; cooperate and comply with their demands. Be a good witness.” Considering California’s gun laws, cooperating and complying with robbers may be the only thing citizens can do. The state has had universal background checks and an “assault weapons” ban since the ‘90s.

Other gun restrictions include a limit on the number of guns citizens can buy each month, a requirement that individuals show “good cause” in order to be approved for a concealed-carry permit, a prohibition on campus carry, a 10-day waiting period for firearm purchases, a ban on “high-capacity” magazines, and a red flag law. California also has ammunition controls, which includes background checks for ammunition purchases. But even while the Golden State has made it harder for law-abiding citizens to buy guns, it has taken a relaxed approach to actual criminals.

The ballot initiative Proposition 46, adopted in 2014, has turned places such as liberal San Francisco into shoplifters’ paradises by, among other measures, establishing that shoplifters must steal over $950 worth of goods to be charged with a felony. Thieves openly and brazenly fill their bags with items from shelves then walk out without paying while store clerks and security guards look on helplessly. Retail chains such as Walgreens are reporting that recent store closures are due, in part, to “organized shoplifting” rings cutting heavily into their revenue. “We’ve been sounding the alarm for a while that this issue is not getting better,” Rachel Michelin, president and CEO of the California Retailers Association, said in reaction to the store closures.

The Left claims legal gun owners are a bigger threat to public safety than telling criminals they can steal and rob with impunity. An article at Insiderexplains how the Left’s gun laws fail to help those most affected by gun violence — those in black and Hispanic communities.“In the communities that we’re working in and we’re advocating for, unfortunately a lot of them are already saturated with guns,” says Gregory Jackson, executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund. “And so frankly, when we look at addressing gun violence in Black and brown communities, we know that you can’t just focus on the hardware. We have to also focus on the people, and how do we make sure that they are in better living conditions.”

https://thenewamerican.com/lapd-city...-robbing-them/

My improvised copy of the bulletin...

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Re: Our Dying Republic

Whatever happened to "Proud to be an American" and proud to fight for and represent this great country of ours???

Why are iconic American brands Cadillac, Tiffany's and Visa still throwing money at Californian-born skier Eileen Gu, 18, who turned her back on Team USA to compete for China at 2022 Winter Olympics and handed Beijing a propaganda gift?

* Eileen Gu, 18, will represent China at the Beijing Winter Olympics later this month
* The teenager grew up in San Francisco with her Chinese-national mother Yan
* Her father, who has never been named, is believed to be American
* In 2019, Gu - aged 15 - announced her plan to compete for China at the Games
* She said she wanted to inspire a generation of young girls in China to get into skiing - a fast expanding sport
* It's unclear if she has renounced her American citizenship; China does not recognize dual nationality
* It is impossible for minors under the age of 16 to renounce American citizenship
* Gu still spends a large portion of time in the US; she has deals with Tiffany's, Victoria's Secret and Cadillac
* She is also 'everywhere' in China, where she is known as Gu Ailing or 'the snow princess'

Iconic American brands like Tiffany's and Cadillac continue to sponsor Californian skier Eileen Gu, the poster girl of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics despite her turning her back on Team USA to instead represent China and promote the Games for them worldwide.The 18-year-old was born and raised in San Francisco where she attended high school. She has also won a place to study at Stanford. Her mother Yan is a first-generation Chinese immigrant and her father, reportedly American, has never been publicly named. Despite competing as an American for most of her youth career in freestyle skiing, Gu will this year compete at the Olympics for China and she is now promoting the event for the Chinese, narrating videos online and appearing in commercials.

She made the decision in 2019 at the age of 15, claiming at the time she wanted to inspire a generation of young Chinese girls to pursue winter sports - which are comparatively less celebrated and glamorous in Asia than in the US. It is unclear now where Gu's American citizenship stands - China does not recognize dual citizenship and minors under the age of 16 cannot renounce their US citizenship because they are not deemed mature enough to make the decision. Gu's reps will not confirm whether or not she has given up her American citizenship, or if China has asked her to. While choosing to represent China - where she is known as 'Gu Ailing', 'the snow princess' and has 1.3million on Weibo - she maintains significant sponsorship deals from American brands like Cadillac, Tiffany's, Visa, Therabody, Victoria's Secret and Oakley.

In interviews, she doesn't seem to recognize or discuss the huge conflict of representing one of America's longest-standing foes while still cashing in on her celebrity.

'When I'm in America, I'm American. When I'm in China, I'm Chinese,' Gu, who speaks fluent Mandarin, said in an interview with Red Bull's Bulletin recently.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-Olympics.html

'When I'm in America, I'm American. When I'm in China, I'm Chinese,' Gu, who speaks fluent Mandarin, said in an interview with Red Bull's Bulletin recently.

I sure hope not too many American soldiers think that on those same lines.

Now for the update...

Zhu Yi, US-born figure skater competing for China, slammed for poor showing

An American-born figure skater who renounced her US citizenship to compete for China at the Winter Olympics is being slammed on the country’s most popular social media app Sunday after a disappointing performance. Zhu Yi, 19, who skated onto the ice to cheers, fell twice during the women’s short program team event, knocking the host country down from third to fifth place. “Zhu Yi has fallen” immediately became the top trending topic on Weibo — the Chinese equivalent of Twitter — after her poor showing, racking up 200 million views in mere hours, according to CNN.

The figure skater, who was recruited by China to join their team and gave up US citizenship to do so, crashed into the wall during her routine and fell again during the short performance.

“This is such a disgrace,” a commentator wrote on Weibo, receiving 11,000 likes, according to CNN. ‘I’m upset and a little embarrassed,” Zhu said in an interview after the performance, according to the Daily Mail. “I guess I felt a lot of pressure because I know everybody in China was pretty surprised with the selection for ladies’ singles and I just really wanted to show them what I was able to do but unfortunately I didn’t.” Social media users also criticized Zhu for not speaking fluent Chinese, comparing her to Chinese-American darling and freeskier Eileen Gu, who was recruited to play for China and charmed the country with her perfect Mandarin. “Please let her learn Chinese first, before she talks about patriotism,” a Weibo user wrote about Zhu. “’Zhu Yi, how ridiculous your performance is! How dare you skate for China? You cannot even hold a candle to an amateur!’ another griped.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/06/us-bor...-poor-showing/

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Re: Our Dying Republic

Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area is now so bad residents are being asked to house a homeless person in their OWN HOMES: Politicians and charities claim locals want to be part of the solution

* Charities are urging local families to take homeless people into their very homes, in their spare rooms, with little to no compensation
* Mayor of Richmond, a city 20 miles from San Francisco, has set up a program to match homeless people with local landlords who have empty apartments
* It will pay the landlords a year's rent up front to encourage them to forgo the usual credit, employment and background checks for tenants
* He claims he has not faced any concerns about the tenants from those housing them, because as the apartments were lower end in the first place
* Asked whether people expressed concern about welcoming homeless people into their homes, he insisted that people care about the plight of the homeless
* 'They are more concerned with the homeless camps,' he said. 'People want to see solutions, and want to be part of the solution'

Homelessness in the Bay Area has become such a problem people are being urged to give their spare rooms over to the homeless.Some charities have urged local families - who are sick of seeing the homeless crisis on their doorsteps - to do something about it personally by taking unhoused people into their own homes and spare rooms - and some schemes have little to no compensation.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...pare-room.html

And by all means... start with Pelosi

Where’s the beef? Video shows man stealing 10 steaks from NYC Trader Joe’s

Holy cow! A man was caught on Post video allegedly brazenly swiping about a dozen steaks from a Manhattan Trader Joe’s on Tuesday morning. The suspect — now wanted by cops — was at the grocery store’s East 14th Street location around 8:30 a.m. when he was caught on footage strolling out the door with 10 packages of meat piled up in his arms. Two helpless Trader Joe’s staffers had followed the man up an escalator leading to the store’s exit but only stopped him from taking a shopping basket outside — not the meat, the video shows. “They basically just tell us not to do anything, just let them go,” a Trader Joe’s worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, later explained to The Post. “We get in trouble if we do anything … It don’t bother me, I’ve been working here for two years, I see it happen every day. After a while, you just don’t care.”

Video...

https://nypost.com/2022/02/08/video-...c-trader-joes/

Families That Loot Together, Stay Together

Family Of Thieves Hit SF Yogurt Shop Twice In One Week

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) — A brazen family of thieves hit a yogurt shop in San Francisco twice in less than a week, according to the owner. Surveillance video shows a group of people, believed to be a family of eight, walking into Easy Breezy in West Portal on Tuesday January 25, just before closing.

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/20...e-in-one-week/

Stay tuned... after Pelosi takes in the homeless... AOC will be taking in the illegals and the liberal DAs and Judges will be recruiting the criminals.

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Re: Our Dying Republic

And by all means... start with Pelosi





Stay tuned... after Pelosi takes in the homeless... AOC will be taking in the illegals and the liberal DAs and Judges will be recruiting the criminals.

Where are those that elected the officials that allow this to happen day in and day out stand?? Awful quiet..

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Re: Our Dying Republic

Where are those that elected the officials that allow this to happen day in and day out stand?? Awful quiet..

Probably hiding in the same hole that the x TOL self-proclaimed history scholar and wannabe fact-checker is... lol

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Re: Our Dying Republic

Remember this...

Where’s the beef? Video shows man stealing 10 steaks from NYC Trader Joe’s

Well... here's...

Another shoplifter targets NYC Trader Joe’s — one day after thief took steaks

A day after a brazen shoplifter was seen walking out with a buffet-ful of stolen meat from a Manhattan Trader Joe’s, another thief has been recorded striking the location. The unnamed man can be seen on video, exclusively taken by The Post, in an aisle at the grocery store’s East 14th Street location shoving two cans of soda into his pants and casually strolling out of the store.



“I don’t have to,” Wednesday’s alleged thief told a Post photographer outside the store. “I used to have a job working all the time, ya know, not stealing, not having to really,” he continued. “No one knows with going on. This ridiculous nonsense, my family killed for nothing.” The man told The Post he is unemployed and uses EBT to buy food. On Tuesday, a so-called “Hamburglar” walked out the doors of the same store with 10 packages of meat in his arms. Frustrated workers said they were barred by their employer from stopping the man, who is being sought by cops. Manhattan’s DA Alvin Bragg said Wednesday his office trying to figure out how to stop people ” who are really going store to store and just taking.” “How we can kind of aggregate that conduct and so charge it at a higher level when appropriate,” Bragg said during an event for the Association for a Better New York.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/09/anothe...-east-village/

You know things have to be bad if even Al Sharpton starts to complain...

Al Sharpton calls on Mayor Adams to curb brazen NYC thefts: ‘They are locking up my toothpaste’

The Rev. Al Sharpton called on Mayor Eric Adams Wednesday to address the brazen thefts at New York City stores, complaining that businesses have been forced to such extreme security that retailers are even “locking up my toothpaste.” “There is no doubt about it,” Sharpton said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when asked about The Post’s exclusive story of a man casually shoplifting 10 steaks from a Manhattan Trader Joe’s and other thefts. “You go into a local pharmacy, a Duane Reade or Rite Aid, you got to get some help to assist you,” Sharpton said. “They have the little button, they get the buzzer and the guy comes over and unlocks your toothpaste. I mean we are talking about basic stuff here.”



Host Joe Scarborough pressed Sharpton on Adams, asking “just curious, is Eric Adams going to be able to do anything while he’s obviously surrounded by elected officials who want New York to remain chaotic?” Sharpton cut the new mayor some slack and added “there is a debate in the criminal justice system” on how to handle the issue at the moment. “There are those that are concerned, including me, about overloading the system in the jails with petty crime, but at the same time, you cannot have a culture where people are just at random, just robbing and stealing and is out of control, and is put on the front page of newspapers, which only encourages others to do it.” “In fairness to Eric, he’s only been there five weeks, but even as I’m fair to him, Eric, they are locking up my toothpaste,” the reverend quipped.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg acknowledged the issue during an event for the Association for a Better New York. “We have amongst us opportunists, who are repeat players, who are just taking goods,” Bragg said. “So we are brainstorming about how to respond to that as well… Thinking about things and people who are really going from store to store and just taking.” “I think we’ve all had the experience of picking up the paper and reading about someone having done some horrific act and then reading and seeing that it was their eighth interaction [with the criminal justice system],” he added.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/09/rev-al...en-nyc-thefts/

Hell... I didn't even know that you could use toothpaste on dentures...

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Re: Our Dying Republic

Time to worry: the Biden government is redefining core principles

Two odd little reports appeared in the past couple of days, both of which involve the federal government redefining things that, before the Biden administration, had mostly agreed-upon definitions that were not hostile to ordinary Americans and that recognized American sovereignty. One report concerns a changed terrorism definition from the Department of Homeland Security, while the other redefines the mission of the Department of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The Department of Homeland Security promulgated a new National Terrorism Advisory Systems (“NTAS”) Bulletin. The terrorists are no longer radical student groups seeking to blow up the government (groups such as the Weathermen, which Obama’s mentor, Bill Ayers, founded) or Islamic fundamentalist groups seeking a new caliphate bathed in American blood. The new terrorist threat is...you. It’s now official government policy that “misinformation”—which means disagreeing with the Biden administration, the media, and tech tyrants—is proto-terrorism.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...rinciples.html

Our Authoritarian Moment

In The Authoritarian Moment, Ben Shapiro warns of the rise of censorship, voter fraud, fake news, and other leftist tactics for seizing control. According to Shapiro, these authoritarian abuses have been especially prevalent since the start of Obama's second term, because it was in his second presidential campaign that Obama made the fateful decision to radicalize the Democrat party and tie its future to a coalition of so-called marginalized or minority groups. Shapiro prefers the term "authoritarian," but he might just as well have used totalitarian, dictatorial, fascist, Stalinist, or any number of other terms. It is clear that something very disturbing is afoot in America that we have not seen in the past, and that the progressive left, intent on exercising and holding on to power, is behind it. It is also clear from Shapiro's analysis that progressives are the enemies of ordinary Americans and that progressive values are opposed in every way to the thinking of decent, hardworking Americans who love family, country, and God. These decent citizens are hated by the left simply because they are decent and refuse to participate in the anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-white woke culture. Unfortunately, progressives have had the advantage. They are fervent, almost religious (or pseudo-religious) in their commitment to change. They comprise a small, cohesive group similar to the Bolsheviks in revolutionary Russia, and, like those revolutionaries, they believe that the righteousness of their cause justifies any sort of behavior ("by any means necessary," as they say). And, because they despise Middle America and its citizenry, they are motivated by the strongest of emotions: hate.

Nothing like this can be said of ordinary Americans, who still believe in fair play and following the law, and that is why so many key institutions have fallen into the hands of progressives, including government, corporations, education, the federal bureaucracy (including elements within the FBI and IRS), entertainment and sports, and even the church. As Shapiro has it, ordinary Americans are not focused on the culture war to begin with, and when they are, they are too polite to object. They lack the fanaticism and ruthlessness of the left, and so the left has been winning. Unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning conservatives fall into this "too polite" category. A lot of us have believed for too long that totalitarianism could never happen in America. We believed that our constitutional guarantees and system of checks and balances would keep us safe. We like to think Antifa and Black Lives Matter are simply fringe groups that will have their day and disappear, and that the left's takeover of government is temporary and that the midterm elections will restore constitutional government. The problem is that, after eight years of Obama and a year of Biden, authoritarianism has become deeply rooted. Now we are threatened with attempts by the left to seize permanent power through federal control of voting, executive orders, and a massive expansion of federal spending. Senators Manchin and Sinema may have blocked Build Back Better for the time being, but, even with the likelihood of a GOP victory in the fall, Democrats have another nine months and a lame-duck Congress in which to have their way. And we're stuck for another three years with a leftist president whose grasp of reality is questionable but who seems to be in the hands of radical handlers.

What the left has in mind is chilling, for it would transform America into an authoritarian nation similar to communist China, theocratic Iran, and oligarchic Russia. Like these dictatorships, America would then be governed by a permanent ruling class with no regard for our Constitution or our traditions of liberty and democracy. We would live under the tyranny of one-party rule, bureaucratic abuses, ideological censorship, fraudulent elections, show trials, and political prosecutions, aspects of the totalitarian state that are already too familiar. Ben Shapiro, in his books and popular podcasts, is doing a service by exposing the breadth of these abuses and the dangers that lie ahead. It's clear that he loves America and is dedicated to trying to save it. But the forces of authoritarianism are powerful, well funded, and influential, and it's far from certain that conservatives will prevail.

The November elections will be a good start, but even with Republicans in control of Congress, that leaves Biden in the White House for another two years, and it leaves an anonymous bureaucracy, most of it left-leaning, in control of nearly all of our government agencies and departments. And it leaves radicals in charge of our schools and colleges, and cowardly CEOs too frightened to oppose the extortion of radical leaders, and even scientists too afraid to speak out on matters like climate change and biological sex differences. It leaves us with a mainstream media establishment still in the hands of mindless leftists spewing the party line on everything from national defense to abortion to so-called gay rights. It leaves mayors, judges, state legislatures, governors, and bureaucracies at the state and local levels still in the hands of the left. And all of this progressive leviathan is intent on transforming America into what amounts to a fascist state. Just to have a chance, we must constantly oppose authoritarianism through legal and peaceful means, through voting and political organization, and through writing and speaking out, and we must be a little less polite in our resistance. If we fail, this really will be "the authoritarian moment" — or, more to the point, the establishment of a totalitarian communist state in America.

https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...an_moment.html

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Re: Our Dying Republic

Dystopia Disguised As Democracy: All The Ways In Which Freedom Is An Illusion

We are no longer free.

We are living in a world carefully crafted to resemble a representative democracy, but it’s an illusion. We think we have the freedom to elect our leaders, but we’re only allowed to participate in the reassurance ritual of voting. There can be no true electoral choice or real representation when we’re limited in our options to one of two candidates culled from two parties that both march in lockstep with the Deep State and answer to an oligarchic elite. We think we have freedom of speech, but we’re only as free to speak as the government and its corporate partners allow. We think we have the right to freely exercise our religious beliefs, but those rights are quickly overruled if and when they conflict with the government’s priorities, whether it’s COVID-19 mandates or societal values about gender equality, sex and marriage. We think we have the freedom to go where we want and move about freely, but at every turn, we’re hemmed in by laws, fines and penalties that regulate and restrict our autonomy, and surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. Punitive programs strip citizens of their passports and right to travel over unpaid taxes. We think we have property interests in our homes and our bodies, but there can be no such freedom when the government can seize your property, raid your home, and dictate what you do with your bodies.

We think we have the freedom to defend ourselves against outside threats, but there is no right to self-defense against militarized police who are authorized to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, and granted immunity from accountability with the general blessing of the courts. Certainly, there can be no right to gun ownership in the face of red flag gun laws which allow the police to remove guns from people merely suspected of being threats. We think we have the right to an assumption of innocence until we are proven guilty, but that burden of proof has been turned on its head by a surveillance state that renders us all suspects and overcriminalization which renders us all lawbreakers. Police-run facial recognition software that mistakenly labels law-abiding citizens as criminals. A social credit system (similar to China’s) that rewards behavior deemed “acceptable” and punishes behavior the government and its corporate allies find offensive, illegal or inappropriate. We think we have the right to due process, but that assurance of justice has been stripped of its power by a judicial system hardwired to act as judge, jury and jailer, leaving us with little recourse for appeal. A perfect example of this rush to judgment can be found in the proliferation of profit-driven speed and red light cameras that do little for safety while padding the pockets of government agencies. We have been saddled with a government that pays lip service to the nation’s freedom principles while working overtime to shred the Constitution.

By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect the constitutional rights of the citizenry while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government. Aided and abetted by the legislatures, the courts and Corporate America, the government has been busily rewriting the contract (a.k.a. the Constitution) that establishes the citizenry as the masters and agents of the government as the servants. We are now only as good as we are useful, and our usefulness is calculated on an economic scale by how much we are worth—in terms of profit and resale value—to our “owners.” Under the new terms of this revised, one-sided agreement, the government and its many operatives have all the privileges and rights and “we the people” have none. Only in our case, sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, we’ve allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp.

The problem with these devil’s bargains, however, is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions. We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all: the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.” In exchange for the promise of safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, lower taxes, lower crime rates, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization and government corruption. In the end, such bargains always turn sour. We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives. So far, we’re up to 4500 criminal laws and 300,000 criminal regulations that result in average Americans unknowingly engaging in criminal acts at least three times a day. For instance, the family of an 11-year-old girl was issued a $535 fine for violating the Federal Migratory Bird Act after the young girl rescued a baby woodpecker from predatory cats.

We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration. What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2.3 million people locked up, many of them doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates, who are forced to provide corporations with cheap labor. We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets—gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.” We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red-light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments. Despite widespread public opposition, corruption and systemic malfunctions, these cameras are particularly popular with municipalities, which look to them as an easy means of extra cash. Building on the profit-incentive schemes, the cameras’ manufacturers are also pushing speed cameras and school bus cameras, both of which result in hefty fines for violators who speed or try to go around school buses. We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls. With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, “we the people” are being reminded that we possess no rights except for that which the government grants on an as-needed basis. We can no longer maintain the illusion of freedom.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...eedom-illusion

Here's a thought... maybe this why our founding fathers made us a republic... not a democracy like the left is trying their damnest for decades now to convince us otherwise.

And why... I think that Marvin Simkin said it best... “Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99 percent vote.”

Along with many other reasons... like this letter from John Adams to John Taylor in 1814...

You Say I “might have exhibited millions of Plebians, sacrificed to the pride Folly and Ambition of Monarchy and Aristocracy.” This is very true. And I might hav[, Start insertion,e, End,] exhibited as many millions of Plebians sacrificed by the Pride Folly and Ambition of their fellow Plebians and their own, in proportion to the extent and duration of their power. Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy. It is not true in Fact and no where appears in history. Those Passions are the same in all Men under all forms of Simple Government, and when unchecked, produce the same Effects of Fraud Violence and Cruelty. When clear Prospects are opened before Vanity, Pride, Avarice or Ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate Phylosophers and the most conscientious Moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves, Nations and large Bodies of Men, never.

https://founders.archives.gov/docume.../99-02-02-6371

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Re: Our Dying Republic

The Power of the Powerless Is Real

One of the most challenging obstacles working against ordinary citizens in the West is the self-satisfying presumption that Western institutions and philosophies are inherently immune from the rise of totalitarianism. This is an understandable blind spot. Their identities have been forged, to various degrees, in the great traditions of Enlightenment notions of liberty, free speech, and natural rights. Surely the victors over communism, fascism, and Nazism cannot then fall victim to the madness of those same philosophies collapsing their systems from within. This "Us/Them" self-delusion has kept the citizenry from recognizing tyranny inside its gates.

It is good for people to take pride in the achievements and histories of their nation states. It is natural for the inhabitants of countries founded in fights for freedom to assume that the costs of obtaining that freedom are behind them and not ahead. It is easy to self-define the victors of WWII as cultures standing firmly opposed to authoritarianism, to believe that nations not bound by the Iron Curtain would never choose to build their own, and to assume that millions of graves and monuments attesting to the great human sacrifices over the last century in the defense of freedom are sufficient safeguards against future generations ever detouring from the blessings of human liberty. But all of these good and natural and easy mental prisms become mental prisons when they keep us from seeing what is happening in our own backyards.

The growing tyranny in the West has not happened overnight. It did not suddenly arrive at our doorsteps with the Chinese Flu. It has been a nightmare decades in the making. The difference today is that previously slumbering citizens once sublimely content in the normal humdrum of their lives are waking up to realize that the enemies from our past have returned with a vengeance. Free speech is treated as dangerous. Western governments, corporations, and social media platforms engage in rampant censorship. Race and sexual identity are used as the defining attributes of a person to the exclusion of talent, character, and achievement. Teachers' unions openly demand the right to indoctrinate children according to the interests of the State. Parents are threatened for believing that their children belong to them. The criminal justice system is used as a place to punish political opponents and to protect political friends. Religious expression is outlawed. Leftists' "secularized religion" is imposed. Freedom is disparaged as "right-wing." Coercion has replaced consent. Victimhood has replaced virtue. Conformity has replaced individuality. "Correct" thinking has replaced freethinking. "Social justice" has replaced real justice. And the protection of government has become more important than the protection of human rights.

For the newly awakened, there is a tendency to see all this carnage for the first time with fresh eyes and become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the rot. The corruption, criminality, and chaos have infiltrated everything once held dear, and the future seems hopelessly lost. That hopelessness, however, is not based in reality but rather the "Us/Them" self-delusion that tyranny could not happen here. It's not easy to accept that the great sacrifices of the past made in the struggle for human freedom have once again been squandered by a new generation of despots. It is a necessary first step, though, before the righteous can throw themselves into the fight and get back to work. And once people come to terms with the fact that tyranny not only could happen here, but that it is happening here, then they will realize that the struggle has only really begun in earnest.

Does anyone think the perverse and heavy-handed responses by the American government to the January 6 election protesters is a sign of strength? Does anyone believe that the Canadian government's decision to enact emergency powers and martial law to manhandle peaceful demonstrators protesting medical mandates showcases institutional confidence? Do the U.K. government's attempts to paint Brexit as a "Russian operation" project healthy trust in elections? When French president Emmanuel Macron feels compelled to go politicking with tear gas and heavily armored vehicles near his side, does he strike yellow vest–wearing Europeans as fully in control? Does the Department of Justice's habitual harassment of conservatives across the United States for their beliefs or its repeated attempts to put President Trump in criminal jeopardy really seem like the actions of a federal system secure in its future? Of course not!

Western governments are terrified of their people today. They are terrified of what their people believe, or else they wouldn't feel compelled to criminalize thoughts as "hateful." They are scared to death of what their people might say to each other, or else they wouldn't engage in mass surveillance and blatant censorship. They are fearful of free and fair elections, or else they wouldn't work so hard to manipulate and undermine them. And they are absolutely petrified of a future where cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies free their citizens from the consolidated control imposed by central banks and spendthrift treasuries. If discouraged and demoralized Westerners doubt that they have more power right now than their governments could ever possess, then take a hard look at the obscene lengths to which those governments have gone in order to maintain and preserve their jurisdiction. Embracing tyranny under the sickening pretense of "preserving democracy" betrays just how weak these governments have become!

Václav Havel — dissident, political prisoner, and eventual president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic — wrote a sledgehammer of an essay in the late '70s entitled "The Power of the Powerless." In that indictment against the oppressive nature of communist regimes, he demystified totalitarianism as a system that forces citizens to "live within a lie." What each citizen secretly believes does not matter. Whether a citizen privately contests in his mind the State's constructed truths is irrelevant. What is crucial for totalitarianism, however, is that each citizen repeat the State's lies, live within the system based on those lies, and perpetuate that system of lies in everyday life. He uses the example of a grocer displaying a Workers of the World, Unite! sign because failure to do so could be seen as a sign of disloyalty to the State. By displaying it, the grocer isn't expressing truth or personal enthusiasm for a cause, but rather proving his humiliating submission to a system of control.

Now consider all of the slogans we daily encounter from government and corporate mouthpieces alike: Black Lives Matter!; Build Back Better!; Trans Rights Are Human Rights!; The Science Is Settled!; Save the Earth!; Stop Global Warming!; The War on Women Is Real!; We're All in This Together!; Abortion Is Health Care!; My Body, My Choice! It doesn't matter how vapid, factually incorrect, or contradictory the political slogan. What matters is that all of us repeat them obediently to prove our allegiance to and faith in the system. And therein lies the key to our salvation.

Question the lies, and you question the system. Push back against the State's monopoly over truth, and you cripple the State's legitimacy. Celebrate individuality, and you fracture the mental prison of groupthink. Live "in truth," and you erode the control of State dogma. When people realize that they individually strengthen the State by submitting to its lies, people then understand that the whole artifice of the system survives purely through their individual consent. At that point, it becomes obvious that the small number of people at the top of the system are not really in control at all. It is the large population — psychologically abused and tormented by their government — that wield power when they choose. Once the powerless have this epiphany, they alone control their destiny.

Identify tyranny. Question lies. Resist oppression. Assert truth. Empower the powerless. Destroy the system's illusion of control. Be not afraid. It's that simple.

https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...s_is_real.html

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Re: Our Dying Republic

The Treason of the Ruling Class

Because of the egocentrism and megalomania of the current ruling class, our country is inexorably and stealthily marching toward a tyrannical one-party socialist oligarchy beholden to a globalist agenda. These elites, in their determination to achieve political and societal status in perpetuity, are willingly allied with the relatively small number of true believers in their midst whose sole focus is to transform America into another failed socialist nation.

In a major step toward accomplishing that goal, the ruling class in both Canada and the United States have calculatingly acquiesced to these ideologues maliciously exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic in order to permanently consolidate their political and societal status.The current and ongoing fascistic actions of the government in Canada in dealing with the trucker protest have revealed that this process is more advanced in Canada than it is the United States. However, this nation is not far behind as its government has also declared a de facto war on America’s unwashed masses they claim are marinated in white supremacy and racism as these “deplorables” endlessly plot insurrections and domestic terrorism.

Fearful of the spread of a populist uprising, the true believers in Canada’s ruling class, as personified by Justin Trudeau, convinced the rest of their fellow ruling elites that they must violently stifle a peaceful grass roots political protest fomented by their deliberate abrogation of individual freedom. They have brutally assaulted the demonstrators they refer to as domestic terrorists by invoking “emergency measures” designed for wartime. This has allowed the government to unilaterally and without any legal basis freeze bank accounts and seize assets, censor non-state-sanctioned media, jail people without due process and outlaw any political demonstrations opposed to the regime.

The true believers within the American ruling class, fearful of a populist uprising, convinced the rest of their alliance to go along with casting the January 6, 2021 protest as an “insurrection.” They have imprisoned many without bail or trial including those charged with misdemeanor trespassing. They have choreographed public displays of arresting those who legally entered the Capitol and some who did not enter the building. Their allies in the financial community have arbitrarily closed people’s bank accounts and businesses. They have recruited the social media conglomerates to censor speech. They have stereotyped of all who voted for Donald Trump as “domestic terrorists.”

Never in the history of this country has there ever been a more mal-educated, narcissistic, gullible, and avaricious ruling class. While unfortunately ignored by the bulk of the American citizenry for far too long, these traits were recognized and exploited by one of this nation’s most pernicious adversaries beginning five decades ago.The Soviet Union did not intend to conquer but instead to destabilize the United State through societal and political transformation so that it would no longer be an impediment to their plans for global hegemony. In the 1960’s and 70’s the KGB recognized that the quickest way to undermine the United States was through subverting those with elitist mindsets in the political, media, entertainment, education and corporate circles.

The operational tenets of communism/socialism are particularly attractive to these egocentrics because these statist philosophies necessitate a permanent one-party ruling class and relegates the unwashed masses to de facto servitude. Having to not answer to the “deplorable” citizenry and to wallow in one’s superiority is irresistible regardless of the reality of communism/socialism. These elites are oblivious to the potential devastation to the bulk of society in becoming co-conspirators with the true believers in their midst. As these destabilizing doctrines – the latest iterations focus on racial grievance and “equity” -- inexorably penetrate into societal leadership groups, they become the basis on which controlled opposition is structured. That is why the focus of the KGB was always on penetrating and influencing the elite power circles, as they recognized the egocentricity, gullibility and ignorance of so many among America’s ruling elites.

Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB agent and defector from Russia explained these tactics in an interview in 1984 when he tried to alert America to what was happening as well as the long term consequences:

Never bother with Leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. This was my instruction. Try to get into large circulation established media, the rich, filthy rich movie makers, intellectuals, so-called academic circles, cynical egocentric people, who can look into your eyes with angelic expression and tell you a lie. These are the most recruitable people, people who lack moral principles, who are either too greedy, or to suffer from self-importance, they feel that they matter a lot. These are the people who KGB wanted to recruit. Radicals serve only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States, all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders, they are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more.

The fact that the American ruling class was the primary target for the KGB speaks volumes about who they are and the accuracy of the Soviet strategy. The Communist Chinese adopted these same tactics beginning in the 1990’s. Their ongoing success in destabilizing the United States by effectively owning and manipulating many among the American elite class, including the current occupant of the White House, speaks for itself. Perhaps the most apt description of this cabal was penned by the best political humorist since Will Rogers. The late P.J. O’Rourke in his seminal work Give War a Chance wrote:

At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child -- miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.

One can thus easily conjure up the image of Justin Trudeau, the entirety of the Biden Administration, Nancy Pelosi and her Congressional minions, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, the denizens of major corporate boardrooms, the professoriate at any major university, the “journalists” at the New York Times and the Washington Post and a litany of Hollywood actors and producers among a sea of duplicitous faces within the ruling class. America, this is who is governing this country, this is who your leaders are. That is why it is no longer hyperbole to say what is happening in Canada can and in all probability will happen here unless a populist uprising turns on the major corporations, the legacy and social media, the dominant financial institutions, and the universities who are all dominated by the ruling elites. And in November this same populist uprising must turn on all politicians, regardless of party affiliation, who are beholden to or are members of this cabal.

It appears the final steps in the transformation of Canada into a one-party socialist oligarchy beholden to a globalist agenda is well underway. The warnings of so many have fallen on deaf ears in Canada; will they continue to do so here in the United States?

https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...ing_class.html

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Re: Our Dying Republic

Five for Freedom: A Simple Message For Reclaiming America

America is in a civil war. Not a cocktail party war like Vietnam or Afghanistan, where Americans stand around and talk about it but relatively few are personally affected. No, this is a WWII-level existential threat war where the difference between victory and defeat is literally freedom or tyranny. One need look no farther than what Adolph Trudeau is doing in Canada right now to understand what the future holds. This war has been simmering for decades and most Americans didn’t even notice. Now it’s obvious. Virtually every element of traditional American culture is being destroyed. The left has decided that the United States is a plague on humanity and must be eliminated. In this case, the “left” consists of government, media, big tech, big business, and academia, among others.

Here’s a short list of their targets:

* Turning schools into leftist Indoctrination centers
https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...n-our-schools/
* Government control of your neighborhood
https://imperfectamerica.blogspot.co...hboorhood.html
* Open borders
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/u...cord-high.html
* Money / Driver’s licenses / Voting for illegals
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bi...re/ar-BB1e7OYt
https://www.ncsl.org/research/immigr...mmigrants.aspx
https://www.judicialwatch.org/voting...al-immigrants/
* Legalizing crime / No bail
https://www.hoover.org/research/why-...gal-california
* Encouraging / Empowering homelessness
https://www.theblaze.com/news/newsom...lifornia-dream
* 2nd Amendment
https://nypost.com/2021/04/08/biden-...n-gun-control/
* Censorship
https://nypost.com/2021/07/20/bidens...ight-sinister/
* Gender reimagining
https://www.the-sun.com/news/3945472...nder-x-marker/
* Control over your body
https://nypost.com/2021/11/05/bidens...and-pointless/
* Free exercise of religion
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wire...-cake-76616998
* Peaceably assemble
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020...singing-music/
* Men having babies
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-...l_nbn_20190519
* Banking
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...bel-from-feds/
* Climate Change
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/21/u...ama/index.html
* CRT
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-dange...l-race-theory/
* Government spying on citizens
https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/17...ake-them-stop/
* Girls’ sports
https://newspunch.com/transgender-at...womens-sports/

And of course, most problematic of all is their successful coup d’état. With that and more, do we still live in a free country? Obviously not. Which brings us back to war. Ask yourself, if someone declared war on America, what more might they do in victory? Other than killing you or turning you into slaves, what more is there? Some argue we’re not in a war, citing polls that show a majority of Americans don’t like those leftist positions. That’s accurate, but it doesn’t matter. The majority doesn’t count. The people who “count”, the opinion-makers, those in academia, media, high tech, etc., are the hardcore leftists behind all of this and, as we all know, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Americans have traditionally been ambivalent about government. For most, politics was something to be endured every four years and, after the election, life went back to normal. But no longer. If you were a Teddy Roosevelt partisan or a fan of Truman or Ike, whether your guy won or lost didn’t matter tremendously to the average American. Maybe your taxes would go up or down a bit or maybe the price of gasoline or chicken might change a bit, but that was it for most people because government, particularly the federal government, had little impact on their everyday lives.

Today, not so much. In 2022’s America, the federal government daily affects almost every aspect of American lives; e.g., the price of gas, grades of meat, rate of pay at work, MPG for your car, Epi-Pens, not to mention vaccine mandates, gun regulations, and shipping illegal immigrants to your neighborhood. But it’s not just the federal government. It’s state and local government as well. From inane licensing requirements for hairdressers, bartenders, and Uber drivers to union-centric dysfunctional schools and gun laws that outlaw the Second Amendment in all but name, the fists of the federal fit perfectly into the state and local regulatory gloves, together strangling American freedom.

But government’s not the only front in this war. There’s culture too. From social media—the 21st century’s public square—to mass media to academia and big business, the left dominates. Not just dominates as in winning but dominate as in ruling over everyone else. Live and let live is not an axiom the left recognizes or exercises. No, the left demands fealty or will crush you. Leftists will destroy your business, get you fired or banned from social media, take your kids away, kick you out of college, and anything else they can think of.

Today, we’re seeing the government leviathan becoming even more powerful as it assimilates with the leftist borg. We saw it for four years as the FBI worked side by side with the media to tarnish Donald Trump’s name and destroy his presidency. Now, Joe Biden has encouraged silencing “misinformation”—that is, anything contradicting the leftist narrative. At the same time, the federal government has essentially established a gulag to house political prisoners who participated in the “insurrection,” despite the police inviting many into the building, some never entering the building at all, and most having been involved in no violence whatsoever. Some of these “terrorists” have been sitting, without charges or bail, in jails for over a year. That treatment stands in stark contrast to how Democrat-run states and the feds treated those who participated in the violent and deadly BLM / Antifa riots of the summer of 2020, most of whom were bailed out in the unlikely event they ended up in custody in the first place.

All of this points to a fractured America. Observations about “majorities” give one hope, but the reality is that unless the “majority” who reject leftism react, it won’t matter because, as we’re seeing in real-time in Canada, the wall between freedom and fascism is fragile and, once it’s breached, it’s likely game over. If the Republic is to survive, it will be up to that “majority” to do something to arrest the slide into tyranny. The GOP needs to take a page from Newt Gingrich and give them something to focus on, to talk about, and most importantly, to vote on. The Contract with America was pivotal in nationalizing the election, and that’s exactly what we need now—a message that patriots can rally around.

The fronts upon which the left is attacking are too numerous to defend against simultaneously. The battle lines need to be streamlined just as the Contract did. As such, here are Five for Freedom—five commonsense items that all GOP candidates or officials must agree with if they want to win. If candidates refuse on any one of them, they should be primaried or defeated in favor of someone who does support them.

1. The 2020 election was fraudulent and such fraud cannot be allowed to occur again.

2. Covid mandates are unconstitutional and must stop.

3. The #1 job of the federal government will be to seal the southern border.

4. The United States must be energy independent.

5. CRT has no place in American schools.

If any candidate running on the GOP ticket can’t support these five positions, he or she has no place in the GOP. The threats to liberty are too numerous and the threats to the Constitution too grave to elect someone who will waffle on these basic principles. If there is indeed a majority of Americans that is interested in saving the Republic, they have to have something to rally around. Thus far, the GOP has done an atrocious job of focusing America’s attention. The GOP needs to do that now and Five for Freedom is the tool to do just that. It’s likely it will have to happen over the objections of establishment Republicans like McConnell, McCarthy, and Ronna McDaniel, but so be it. At the end of the day, you’re either on the side of freedom or you’re not. As the last two years have demonstrated, liberty is fragile and without citizens willing to stand up for it, it vanishes.

This is the time, this is the place, and Five for Freedom is the weapon with which patriots can vanquish the Borg of woke leftism that has been seeking to assimilate America for decades. The only question is, does the GOP have the courage to wield it?

https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...g_america.html

[Docker]

Re: Our Dying Republic

Americans, go back to your roots!

You know, I used to listen to Biden, even though I knew he was lying. I got real tired of researching everything he said only to find that it was misleading or an outright lie. Now I put all the government information we receive in that category. I'm done wasting my time researching what they say or do. I am done being disrespected, insulted, threatened, and abused. Now he is talking about a war we all knew was going to happen, and I'm not listening. It's been going on since before the Afghanistan debacle, since the open border. All they had to do was continue our energy independence, keep the Russian pipeline on freeze, and continue our foreign policy, and Putin would never have considered invading Ukraine. That decision would be illogical, and Putin isn't stupid. He is KGB. He knows that if he doesn't invade Ukraine now, he may never have the opportunity to do it in the future. He knows that America will not stop him, as does China when it comes to Taiwan, or Iran when it comes to Israel, not to mention what North Korea is thinking of. We are in a critical situation here, and the government put us there.

It's amazing to realize, after all that, that we have many critical situations here in America. As dire as the world stage is, a lot of dire things are happening here in America, to Americans. If you don't believe we are living through a critical point in our history as a free republic, it is critical that you open your eyes. Back in Lincoln's day, there were thousands of Americans in the streets across the nation, known as "Wide Awakes." They were a beacon of the concept "all men are created equal" when it came to enslaved people. They loved Lincoln because they didn't see him as a part of the corrupt government; he was one of them and what America needed.

n early March, 1860, Abraham Lincoln spoke in Hartford, Connecticut, against the spread of slavery and advocating for the right of workers to strike. Five store clerks, who had started a Republican group called the Wide Awakes, decided to join a parade for Lincoln, who delighted in the torchlight escort back to his hotel provided for him after his speech. Over the ensuing weeks, the Lincoln campaign made plans to develop Wide Awakes throughout the country and to use them to spearhead large voter registration drives since they knew that new voters and young voters tend to embrace new and young parties. Members of the Wide Awakes were described by The New York Times as "young men of character and energy, earnest in their Republican convictions and enthusiastic in prosecuting the canvass on which we have entered." In Chicago on October 3, 1860, 10,000 Wide Awakes marched in a three-mile procession. The story on that rally occupied eight columns of the Chicago Tribune. In Indiana, one historian reported:

1860 was the most colorful in the memory of the Hoosier electorate. “Speeches, day and night, torch-light processions, and all kinds of noise and confusion are the go, with all parties,” commented the “independent” Indianapolis Locomotive. Congressman Julian too was impressed by the “contrivance and spectacular display” which prevailed in the current canvass. Each party took unusual pains to mobilize its followers in disciplined political clubs, but the most remarkable of these were the Lincoln “Rail Maulers” and “Wide Awakes,” whose organizations extended throughout the state. Clad in gaudy uniforms the members of these quasi-military bands participated in all Republican demonstrations. The “Wide Awakes” in particular were well drilled and served as political police in escorting party speakers and in preserving order at public meetings. Party emulation made every political rally the occasion for carefully arranged parades through banner-bedecked streets, torchlight processions, elaborate floats and transparencies, blaring bands, and fireworks.

By the middle of the 1860 campaign, Republicans bragged that they had Wide Awake chapters in every county of every northern (free) state.[3] On the day of Lincoln's election as president, it had grown to 500,000 members. The group remained active for several decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes

The point is, America is now at that point again, for the opposite reasons. Those who are Wide Awake should express how this government, with these policies, is not what is best for America or Americans. The other guys have "Woke"; we have "Wide Awake." I like our odds. Once again, I am compelled to go back to our Founders, to those men who created the Republic we all live in. If you haven't read about the Founders — their debates, their letters (the Federalist Papers) — and don't fully understand how this nation was created, you are depriving yourself of a great experience. Once you see their intent, fears, vision, all the safeguards created against an abusive government, you see their wisdom. Think about this: who else in the history of civilization created a nation where all the rights of citizens were given them by a God? When it comes to protecting your freedoms, it doesn't get more secure than that.

Believe me: it's a lot of reading. But it's not only our history; it's our ancestry. Get some coffee, a beer, wine, sit back, and have some fun. Check out your roots, check out America, and love her even more than you do today. Don't ever doubt this: American patriots are the majority, and we always win.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...our_roots.html