Victor Davis Hanson
OUR FRENCH REVOLUTION
The Dying Lion of Lucerne*
We are in a Jacobin Revolution of the sort that in 1793-94 nearly destroyed France. And things are getting scary.
The Democrat Party vanished completely sometime in 2020.
It was absorbed by hard-left ideologues. They were bent on radically altering, or hijacking, existing institutions to force radical, equality-of-result agendas that otherwise do not earn majority support.
What triggered the collective madness and this Jacobin takeover? The catalysts are many.
America now has three potential futures and two are bad.
PUTIN’S BUBBLE
Decision-making in the Kremlin had been so erratic—even before the re-invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022—that the proposition of President Vladimir Putin inhabiting a bubble of servile courtiers and carefully doctored information appeared perfectly plausible.
Early April 2023 has brought even more evidence supporting this assumption of detachment from reality typical for mature autocratic regimes but aggravated by an unhealthy ambition for determining the course of global affairs.
Bubbles, however, are diaphanously short-lived by their nature. Is Putin’s approaching the bursting point?
SKYE’S LINKS 04/06/23
Institutional Loss of Faith
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Loss of faith in American – and global – institutions is accelerating. Whether the institutions are public or private, religious or secular, tangible or financial, the credibility gap is becoming a giant fissure.
People long for authenticity, the real deal, but are served up a diet of fake university outrage, indictments, and impeachments on counterfeit charges, fake science, and fake news.
Lately, we are being hammered with fake women. There was a day when it was more straightforward. Remember the advertising jingle for coconut/chocolate candy bars? “Almond Joy got nuts – Mounds don’t?” Once upon a time it only upset Miss Prissy, the fourth-grade English teacher. Singing that old ditty in the wrong place today will get a guy arrested.
Underlying all this is the realization that about half of the profit made in the United States from all sources is from finance. This means creating and servicing debt, and those that pull the biggest financial levers dominate the economy and American policy.
Marginal borrowers are being wiped out as interest rate increases force the repricing of underlying assets, yet the financial industry has no risk. They can always count on a bailout.
A rage is brewing, and each new insult and fake promise is like more gasoline on the fire. The government wants us to focus on fake eyelashes on fake women, but actual bankruptcies and business failures command attention.
These types of rages have happened before. In 1776, 1861, 1933, and now today. They bring change through violence as the ballot box is compromised.
TTPers will note the consistency of warnings of the growing rage and distrust of intuitions. With every car repossessed, every home foreclosed upon, and every vacation canceled, middle America is waking up to the calamity of being overleveraged. They thought they were following the path toward prosperity.
BRAGG’S COMPLETELY MORONIC NON-INDICTMENT INDICTMENT
Alvin Bragg turns NYC into a Banana Republic
[Dispensing with all the hysteria, Andy McCarthy cuts right to the bottom line so clearly that anyone can understand: this is literally no indictment at all. The absurdity of Trump’s persecution is bottomless—JW]
It’s always possible to be surprised. The indictment brought by Manhattan’s elected Democrat district attorney Alvin Bragg against Donald Trump is even worse than I’d imagined.
Bragg’s indictment fails to state a crime. Not once . . . but 34 times. On that ground alone, the case should be dismissed — before one ever gets to the facts that the statute of limitations has lapsed and that Bragg has no jurisdiction to enforce federal law. At his press conference, he blathered about federal campaign-finance law, but he knows he lacks jurisdiction to enforce federal law. He has no crime.
HOW TO PUT ALVIN BRAGG IN PRISON
Arrest Alvin Bragg T-shirt on sale here
On Monday night (4/03), it was leaked that Donald Trump will be charged with 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records. The details of the indictment were not supposed to be released, and Trump quickly called out District Attorney Alvin Bragg for illegally leaking the details of the indictment.
“Wow! District Attorney Bragg just illegally LEAKED the various points, and complete information, on the pathetic Indictment against me,” Trump wrote in a post shared on Truth Social. “I know the reporter and so, unfortunately, does he. This means that he MUST BE IMMEDIATELY INDICTED. Now, if he wants to really clean up his reputation, he will do the honorable thing and, as District Attorney, INDICT HIMSELF.”
Bragg certainly won’t indict himself, but, as Tucker Carlson noted, leaking details from Trump’s sealed indictment is bigger than the crimes for which Trump has been indicted. The act of leaking grand jury testimony is considered a Class E felony under New York state law.
PUTIN’S SHAKESPEAREAN DEMONS
Geopolitics will take you only so far in explaining foreign affairs. The more important element is Shakespearean. Ukraine is a perfect example.
Ukraine is engulfed by Russia on the north and east, its history and language entwined with its neighbor’s. But the greater part of the story concerns the personality of Vladimir Putin. The geopolitical argument that Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was expanding completely disregards the Russian leader’s Shakespearean demons.
Mr. Putin’s decision to invade represented not the collective thinking of the Russian elite but his own thoughts. Given Mr. Putin’s paranoia, isolation and delusions of grandeur, the question arises: Would Europe today be at peace with Mr. Putin’s Russia had NATO not expanded east after the Cold War and had there been a Western guarantee of recognizing Russian interests in Ukraine? Certainly not.
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/31/23
It is All Fake, and Gay
Tomorrow is April Fool’s Day.
Globalists showed signs of panic this week as they rushed to regain narrative control. Another absolute scumbag shot up yet another school, this time in Nashville. The garbage, whose name should be erased from history, left an anti-Christian manifesto. As globalists insist, transitioning is not the path to joy. Instead, it is the path to rage and profound misery for everyone involved.
Who might have predicted that pumping hormones into the mentally ill and then cramming propaganda into their skulls might lead to problems?
Well, problems there are, and they will be with us for decades as it is the policy of the United States to promote homosexuality and transgenderism as a substitute for free trade. It is not working, will never work, and cannot be made to work. Just as LBJ’s policies remain a millstone around America’s neck, so will Obama’s policy of promoting an intersectional coalition of minority groups rotating about a gay pride axis e with us for decades.
Sure, we are experiencing misdirections. The Trump indictment is an attempt to salvage the transexual cultural meme. The banking crisis is growing as the Fed appears to abandon the dollar to inflation to save Biden in 2024.
But these are chump changes for the actual cover-up. Let’s see what those behind the curtain are desperate to hide from the masses.
Bolsonaro returned to Brazil, which reminds the world that the thread weaves through Brasilia as the second republic after the United States to fall to election fraud this decade. In Brazil, however, the world has learned the identity of the Pale Horse—the bringer of death to constitutional governments of free men.
SKYE’S LINKS 03/30/23
Death Threat, White Powder Mailed to Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg's Office.
Late today (3/30), Alvin conned the grand jury into perpetuating the maskirovka farce, which will be eventually laughed out of court, and explode Trump’s ratings in the polls to Jupiter. The headlines of the moment are huge, but actually, this is hilarious.
Trump Indicted After Manhattan DA Probe For Hush Money Payments
What did the ‘Crats and the MSM want to distract you from noticing? How about…
This is such a terrific Skye’s Links – all the way to the voice of optimism must-read at the end. Welcome and enjoy!
IT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH FOR THE TRANSVESTITE CROWD
[Note: edited to make it clear that “trans” actually means “transvestite”]
I try to bring humor to everything. I’m a comedian. Comics try to find humor in the worst of conditions. Yet not only can I not see the “funny” in the Nashville shooting, I don’t want to seek it.
The “trans” [more accurately the transvestite] movement asked for tolerance, then acceptance. Then they just wanted to use the restroom of their preference for their safety, despite a lack of violence against trans people and a bushel full of trans attacks on kids. We allowed it. We should regret it. A lot.
People have lost their jobs for refusing to play make-believe with the small portion of the country plagued by a mental malady called “gender dysphoria.”
Despite all the ass-kissing the trans [transvestite] crowd has enjoyed, they feel they are being “genocided” out of existence. So much so that they are planning a “day of trans vengeance.” This just days after one of them slaughtered little children in cold blood in Nashville.
SCANDAL IN MOSCOW OVER THE ELITE RIDICULING PUTIN
Moscow's high society has been rocked by a scandal after a pair of prominent Vladimir Putin cronies were heard insulting the Russian despot.
Billionaire oligarch and former Russian senator Farkhad Akhmedov and high-profile Moscow music producer Iosif Prigozhin, both public supporters of Putin, have been accused of calling him 'Satan' and a 'dwarf'.
An audio recording of what is a 35-minute phone call between the wealthy pair was posted on Telegram Messenger, then shared by Ukraine's Channel Five and quickly jumped on by other outlets - as well as Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).
In the audio clip, the pair are heard eviscerating Putin's invasion of Ukraine, slamming his Kremlin entourage over their failings, and even insulting his height.
NASHVILLE AND TRANSVESTITES
[Note by JW: Andrea Widburg is understandably confused by the refusal of the media to call the Nashville child-murderer pictured above a “transman” – a female who “identifies” as a male, when any and all men who so identify themselves as female are automatically labeled a “transwoman.” Audrey Hale in every news story is called by her born name, never her male name of Aiden, always referred to a “female,” “her, “she”, never “male,” “her/him”.
The solution is to abandon any woke-trans terms at all, use people’s pronouns according to their birth identity, and use the trans term that actually applies to them: transvestites: men dressing and pretending to be women and women dressing and pretending to be men. This will henceforth be the terminology in TTP regarding any “trans” issue.]
When newspapers publish stories using the phrase “her testicles,” it’s easy to add laughter to the tears that always accompany reports demonstrating the complete breakdown of reality in modern America.
There is no laughter, though, when trying to decipher the biological sex of the school shooter who killed three children and three adults in Nashville, before the police appropriately terminated the killer’s existence.
THE COMING CONSERVATIVE COMEBACK IN BOTH AMERICA AND CANADA
Biden and Trudeau in Ottawa on March 24 Headed for the dustbin of history?
However the contemptible national political media of the United States try to disguise the fact, the Biden administration is a disaster. Canada is a close second.
As a result, in America, either Mr. Trump or Governor DeSantis will win, and as of now, Mr. Trump has the advantage. Most people finally see the proportions of the perversion of the intelligence agencies, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the prosecution service in the psychopathic frenzy to destroy Mr. Trump.
As for Canada, Quebec has effectively begun the formal extirpation of the English language and the prime minister has taken it upon himself to make to the world on behalf of all of us the confession that our forbears attempted some form of genocide on Indigenous people.
No government that has acquiesced in the first and proclaimed the second is fit to be re-elected.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY WITH A COMPELLING VISION
(This will be my last column for a while, while I dive in fully to finish writing my next book, Mastering The Emotional Side of Money. In the meantime to continue keeping your sanity I recommend my most recent: the Mastering Emotions, Moods and Reactions Workbook)
When we think of what we'll be like ten years from now, most of us imagine that we'll be just like we are now. Yet when we look back ten years, we’re usually different than we were then.
Of course we are different today than we were ten years ago - unless we've removed ourselves from any experience of living. Life is a continual anti-entropy endeavor. If we don't expend energy to create order, the natural tendency of things to move toward disorder takes over.
We will be different than we are now in ten years. That's a fact of life. The question is, how will we be different; and will we be different mostly as a result of events, or through conscious choice?
SKYE’S LINKS 03/23/23
The Dawning of the Age of AI
It's Not the Age of Aquarius
Not at All
___________________________________We were warned that today would come, and TTP members are well prepared for a government that rapidly falsifies information for the sake of power. Truth to our utilitarian career climbers is just another story. Now they have AI tools that are quickly growing and evolving and not evolving at a biological rate but at the rate of Moore's Law.
Bill Gates is warning that this affects everything as the machines can now spoof real-time events and records, make videos, and possibly (likely) alter official documents. If you own a Kindle device with downloaded books, you have probably noticed that the books on your machine are edited and changed without notifying you.
If the AI systems in healthcare deem your life not worth the effort, your treatment will be denied, and no reason will be given.
They tried to arrest Trump on bogus charges to create a demonstration that the Left's rent thugs could turn into a riot. They put the wrong guy in charge, and everything Alvin Bragg touched became a big problem for the Lefties. It seems that Alvin hid a lot of evidence from the grand jury.
Money is no longer leaving ESG investments. It is a full-on stampede to get out of the type of investments that crashed three banks this month, forcing the merger of UBS and Credit Suisse.
Just like that. Five hundred years of Swiss Banking integrity have been flushed away. Remind me again where the Davos gang meets.
EXPLAINING THE LINK BETWEEN LIBERALISM AND MENTAL ILLNESS
Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Why do leftists report more anxiety, depression, and neuroses compared to those on the right?
Social scientists are perplexed — as well they should be, considering that for every one conservative social scientist, there are 10 liberals. But across all age groups, all incomes, all races, and both sexes — in every single measurable way — conservatives are happier than liberals.
Musa al-Gharbi, writing in the quarterly journal American Affairs, details the phenomenon and offers some insight into possible reasons for the “well-being gap.” “Why is it,” she asks, “that maladjusted, anti-social children gravitate toward left-wing parties as adults? Why is it that liberals are far more likely to be depressed, anxious, or otherwise neurotic compared to conservatives?
Is mental illness involved?
WHAT HAPPENED TO STANFORD?
Stanford was once one of the world’s great universities. It birthed Silicon Valley in its prime. And along with its nearby twin and rival, UC Berkeley, its brilliant researchers, and teachers helped fuel the mid-20th-century California miracle.
That was then. But like the descent of California, now something has gone terribly wrong with the university.
Students at Stanford Law School recently shouted down visiting Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan. He had been invited to give a lecture by the school’s Federalist Society.
The judge never even got the chance. The law school students drowned him out. They flashed obscene placards. They screamed that he was “scum.” One yelled he hoped the judge’s own daughters would be raped.
The debacle revealed three disturbing characteristics about the Stanford law students. The list of serial embarrassments reads like the suicides of Greek tragedy, where divine nemesis follows hubris.
MY STRUGGLE SESSION AT STANFORD LAW SCHOOL
Stanford Law School’s website touts its “collegial culture” in which “collaboration and the open exchange of ideas are essential to life and learning.” Then there’s the culture I experienced when I visited Stanford last week.
I had been invited by the student chapter of the Federalist Society to discuss the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on which I’ve served since 2018. I’ve spoken at law schools across the country, and I was glad to accept this invitation. One of my first clerks graduated from Stanford. I have friends on the faculty. I gave a talk there a few years ago and found it a warm and engaging place.
But not this time.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY MASTERING YOUR EMOTIONS, MOODS, AND REACTIONS
Mastering our emotions, moods and reactions begins with understanding our fundamental nature as living, growing organisms. Our biological processes are full of rhythms, pulsations, flowing liquid and moving breath.
Nature’s forces are powerful and enduring. If we try to fight against a powerful wind, we can be quickly overcome by it. But if we can accept, study, and harness those same forces, we can power a sailboat or a windmill.
By stepping back and looking at the bigger picture of our own internal nature, we can more easily understand our own patterns and rhythms; and if we begin by accepting these as they are, we can use their power and direct them in ways that work better for us, rather than fighting against ourselves; against our own nature.
We begin with orienting to our biological nature. From this perspective we can begin to make sense of our flowing emotions, our changing moods, and our sudden and intense reactions.
THE SOLUTION TO BALLOT FRAUD
The irresistible force:
Mail-in ballots, nonexistent signature verification, phantom voter rolls, a feckless Republican Party, Republican governors donating tax money to a George Soros–funded entity to clean voter rolls — election commissions changing ZIP codes so mail-in ballots stack up — courts refusing to remove dead people from voter rolls unless they miss two consecutive elections, and a Republican presidential candidate who thinks he can win with ballot-harvesting.
Years of Republican acquiescence and temerity brought us here — the end of free and fair elections. Election fraud is baked into every state's voter rolls — protected by government.
This week, we demonstrated a solution. Here it is.
ZENNIALS WAKE UP TO REALITY
Go to any social media feed today and you'll find an endless array of Zennials entering adulthood who are discovering that they are indeed expected to work, struggle, sacrifice, and make their way up the ladder of life like 99% of all human beings.
The next generation is finding out, slowly but surely, that they will not be YouTube celebrities or Instagram influencers or Big Tech executives; they will not be raking in easy money or be showered in gratification. Many of them have stacked up sizable college loan debts in exchange for degrees with minimal demand. Even if they have a legitimate goal they will have to work hard to achieve it.
Reality is hitting younger Americans like a freight train and they are enraged. Here are some questions they should ask themselves when they stumble upon that internal existential crisis of career and future.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY EMBODYING EMOTIONS
For many of us, emotions are something of a mystery.
On the one hand, they can be delightful; they give life meaning and depth that would be impossible without them. On the other hand, they can be uncomfortable; they can hinder and disturb us; and anger in particular can sometimes cause a whole lot of very big trouble.
Learning to feel, understand, and use our emotions is central to mastering the complexity of life. Our emotions become much clearer and easier to use the more we pay attention to the physical sensations that go with them.
Here’s how to do just that.
SKYE’S LINKS 02/23/23
The Big Spoof
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Not so long ago, someone realized that computers made hard work of lies, propaganda, and misdirection far more straightforward than in the old days of paper and paste. "I am a genius!" he thought as the lies grew more numerous.
But our fabricator failed to realize that a critical mass of society found the fabrication an easy path to power and wealth. Government agents with unlimited finances and immunity from prosecution built complex organizations devoted to influence and control through deception.
The woke industry and its hedonistic postmodernism are based on glorifying the unreal and inauthentic. Speaking the truth and making claims to objective reality have been criminalized.
The information package is the basic unit of a truth or lie, and it conveys information in support a narrative. It can be hazardous. And it can be very powerful. We can view information as a designed package meant to persuade or spoof.
Russia might have been tricked into invading Ukraine by China. China owns Russia's communication infrastructure, and what they don't own, they built. It is possible that Russia's bizarre rush for the cold and idle Chernobyl power plant one year ago this week had the same disinformation roots from which they attacked the equivalent of county agricultural agent laboratories.
No, Russia did not realize what these labs were. Russia was not worried about corn and wheat hybridization and patent royalties from hybridized wheat seeds. Putin appears to have thought that Ukraine was building weapons of mass destruction at Chernobyl and in the agricultural agent facilities. They were spoofed.
Crazy, huh? Imagine a government so fooled, so spoofed into attacking another nation because of the perceived threat of nonexistent WMDs? And getting stuck to the tar baby in the process?
It looks like J6 was also an intentional spoofing of the crowds by federal agents of the Executive Branch reporting to the Legislative Branch. Evidence was planted, agents' provocateurs urged the masses on, and the most shameful episode of government misconduct occurred on live tv.
Things are getting way out of control with the rollout of AI chatbots. These tools began to do the unthinkable. They began to tell the truth, and the narrative quaked from top to bottom. Over the past week, there have been thousands of meetings and software changes to prevent AI from performing the radical act of speaking the truth.
Come on over to Skye's links. We have a juicy collection of spoofy things from economics, culture, politics, and warfare. No one believes anything anymore, and the government is responding by dusting off an old playbook written a century ago by Leon Trotsky. Things are getting more totalitarian, and yet the question is which culture has the capacity to manage the onslaught of inauthentic information packages?
“SOUTH PARK” GOES VIRAL FOR “BRUTALLY HONEST” TAKE ON PRETEND WOMEN AND ABORTION
The episode titled “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina,” which originally aired on March 9, 2005, features fourth grade teacher Herbert Garrison trying to get an abortion because he has not menstruated.
Twitter is blowing up over the resurfaced clip, with many pointing out that the show’s makers would be canceled by the “woke mob” if the 18-year-old storyline were presented anew in 2023.
“Here’s South Park mocking the insane idea that men can actually become women. This clip is from 2005,” pundit Seth Dillon chimed in. “It’s a brutally honest take on the callous savagery of abortion, too. We need more mockery like this.”
Chicks on the Right writer Natalie Argyle summed it up by saying, “In one minute and 25 seconds, @SouthPark said all the things we aren’t allowed to say about trans ‘women’ and abortions.”
We need to say all these things again – over and over and over….
THE “GREAT AWOKENING” IS TRANSFORMING SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
The “Great Awokening” touches every elite institution in America, mostly radiating out from our compromised system of higher education. One of the most disturbing and illuminating aspects of this cultural revolution is how much it is transforming science and medicine.
A video of medical students at Columbia University reciting an updated version of the Hippocratic oath that injected elements of critical race theory made the rounds on social media recently. As many have noted, this “student-led initiative” sounds cult-like.
When did medicine start sounding like a cult? What kind of country will we live in if this continues to be the guiding ideology of every serious institution? We won’t be a serious country.
JOE BIDEN’S TOXIC RACIALIST OBSESSIONS
Joe Biden ran on “unity,” which is critical in a multiracial America. He vowed to heal the divisions supposedly sown by Donald Trump. Instead, he is proving to be the most polarizing president in modern memory.
Often his racialist rhetoric and condescension have proven demeaning to both blacks and whites. In a volatile multiracial democracy that demands tolerance and restraint, a highly unpopular Biden, for cheap political advantage, continually proves incendiary and reckless.
Yet simultaneously with Biden’s blanket and unsupported charges of racism, no president since Woodrow Wilson has offloaded more racialist verbiage than Joe Biden himself. In an eerie example of psychological projection, never has a president accused others of racism more, while freely revealing himself either to be a racist or non compos mentis, or both. Some examples:
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY UNDERSTANDING OUR SOCIAL NATURE
Our social nature has huge benefits, and underlies much of our resilience and success as a species. But it can also steer us in bad, sometimes disastrous directions, and can be used to manipulate us.
We are social creatures. We influence one another, we care about each other, we follow each other and are able to cooperate and act together as a team. We’re also cultural creatures. We learn from each other - and learn most effectively by watching what other people do. It matters to us what other people say and think and do.
And yet these very qualities can be used against us to manipulate us into accepting, doing, and buying things that work against our deepest values, that we can come to regret, and that sometimes can lead us into horrible tragedy. Here’s how to avoid that.
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/17/23
This is Fifth Generation Warfare
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A train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, a small town at the headwaters of the Ohio River, occurred on February 3, 2023, and went largely unnoticed by the press. On average, a train derails every other day in the United States, and fifteen major chemical fires have occurred so far in 2023.
There was a dramatic black cloud, but it dissipated quickly. Some people were evacuated from their homes. Some fish were killed.
The chemical of concern was vinyl chloride, a common industrial material used to make PVC plastic. It is highly volatile and was historically used as a refrigerant in air conditioners and as the propellant in hairspray and rattle-can spray paint. You would know the scent if you were alive in the 1960s and 70s.
The material is toxic, but not so toxic as to stop women from shaping those mod hairstyles back in the day. The biggest complaint was the sticky coating that was deposited on bathroom mirrors.
Then something changed. Ten days after the train accident and fire, TikToc and the rest of social media exploded with incredible stories of a widespread disaster, coverups, and environmental pollution hundreds of times worse than Chernobyl.
Anonymous victims reported dead pets and farm animals, and the Amish had dropped dead in their barns. Armaggedon had arrived, and the U.S. Government was covering the disaster up.
But it was not a disaster: a major train wreck, a chemical spill, and a big fire, to be sure. But the end of the world? Nah.
We just watched the Chinese state propaganda machine in full motion. The volume, rhetoric, and visuals possible through TikTok were amped up louder than all the fake dead bodies during the Covid virus rollout.
Government officials were caught flat-footed, and now, candlelight vigils are being held for the "victims" worldwide. Hysteria is crazy level out of control.
The videos and commentary blasting from the internet were produced in China, and the quality is excellent. The propaganda ultimately bumped the Chinese spy balloons from the narrative and is fueling a movement to block the reshoring of industrial plants to the United States.
Intel is hiring 10,000 people in Ohio to staff their new chip plants. Or so they think. By the time the hysteria dies, many younger people will consider it their mission to stop those computer chip plants.
At the same time, ultra-globalist Nikki Haley has thrown in for the 2024 presidential election. Her history as an anti-industrialist is evident as she worked behind the scenesd to block a Boeing factory in South Carolina while giving speeches praising it simultaneously.
The first shots have been fired in the propaganda war, and the new arsenal of technologies is impressive. This is Fifth Generation Warfare.
Let's talk some more about it over at this week's HFR.
SKYE’S LINKS 02/16/23
The times are turning our way! For starters, Texas bans Citigroup from participating in a $3.4 billion state bond offering because of the bank's anti-gun ESG policies. Warning to Woke Banks: Don't mess with guns or oil if you want to do business with the Texas government!
Texas Drops Citi From Huge Muni Transaction Over Gun Policy
This issue of Skye’s Links has so much cool stuff for you to know that here might be a shortcut – scroll through the graphic or photo that starts each Link and stop at the ones you find most interesting. It could be Elon’s tweet about the most dangerous yet obscure deep state government agency – or Rep. Nancy Mace lacerating Twitter’s main censors –or funny ones like:
USING THE DEMS’ INFAMOUS BOLAND AMENDMENT TO DEWEAPONIZE THE DEEP STATE
[I’ve known Mike Waller since the 1980s in the middle of the struggle to overcome the Boland Amendment preventing aid to the Contras. Now, Mike wants to use a Boland strategy against the Dems. It’s very clever and I’m encouraging him to expand on and “unpack” his strategy. The picture on the cover above is of Carlos Fitzeral, the Contra who saved my life in a firefight with the Sandinistas. --JW]
The House “weaponization of government” hearings kicked off an excellent start for public awareness. But without a legislative agenda, the short-staffed subcommittee will show little enduring accomplishment.
House reformers don’t believe they can force some of the necessary changes because the Senate and Joe Biden oppose them. So they haven’t prepared a strategic legislative agenda.
Yet, there is reason for hope and change.
An earlier generation of House Democrats blazed the trail for today’s House Republicans. Some lateral thinking and historical precedent can help today’s House leaders hack away at the weaponization of the federal government.
NOW WE KNOW WHO’S IN CHARGE OF JOE BIDEN
Most people watching Joe Biden believe that he’s a puppet who says and does what he’s told. He seems to be a “useful idiot,” as the 20th century’s communists would have said. The big question, then, is who’s really in charge in the White House? Barack Obama? Valerie Jarrett? Susan Rice?
Nope, a Bloomberg report intimates. It’s really Jill Biden, and she intends to see her decrepit husband run again.
According to a Nancy Cook article at Bloomberg, the person with whom Joe doublechecks every decision he makes is his unelected wife, Jill Biden, a school teacher who wrote a shoddy dissertation to justify a truly meaningless doctorate in education. Writes Cook:
NO, SLAVES DID NOT BUILD THIS COUNTRY
Not long ago, Disney ripped off any pretense of being a family company and dove head-first into the social justice muck with an episode of “The Proud Family” that featured a slam poetry segment that echoed the fringe critical race theory claim that “slaves built this country.”
It soon surfaced that the writer of the show is a very loud and proud social justice radical named Latoya Raveneau, who has a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and wants to introduce “queerness” to the shows your kids watch whenever she gets the chance. She also bragged that no one at Disney is trying to stop her.
First things first, we need to torpedo this idea that slaves built this country. The idea that white people were sitting in rocking chairs sipping tea while black people did all the work from 1619 to 1863 is, frankly, stupid. It purposely shoves aside the industriousness of an entire country looking to build a new world and make something for itself.
Meaning the idea that reparations are owed to the black population of the United States by the taxpayers of this country is equally stupid.
SKYE’S LINKS 02/09/23
Groupthink Means that No One is Thinking
China's Power Flex in the American Sky
From the Chinese spy balloon through the jabs and on to the media, from the loss of faith in institutions and the increasingly violent tribalism of the left, the world is suffering from Groupthink.
Universities and community colleges everywhere decided their noble mission is to teach people how to think. However, except in rare cases, they define thinking as logical induction. It is a form of pattern recognition logic that meshes well with computer databases.
The numbers are in, and the demographic most jabbed have master's degrees. This is the group most heavily indoctrinated in the university thought paradigm.
Least likely? People that work directly with the physical world and understand deductive thinking. Scott Adams laments that he, the brilliant pattern decoder, was fooled by the vaxx propaganda. Yet the project managers and superintendents running multimillion-dollar job sites, the electricians, auto mechanics, and others tied to the physical world avoided it.
Labor productivity is collapsing due to ESG mandates, and we have a coal shortage.
This means that the cement shortage will get worse.
Come over to Skye's Links and see how the Fourth Turning is progressing.
BIDEN’S STATE OF THE UNION VOWS 2 MORE YEARS OF MISERY
The Biden State of the Union last night (2/07) is the latest phase of the long leftist war on America.
Biden has clawed his way to the highest office in the land by selling out everything he ever claimed to have believed. And now he’s so far gone that he may not even know what he believes.
His pathetic rant, breathy, rushed, angry, was the belligerent tirade of a puppet who takes pride in being seen over the podium even if there’s a hand up his nether regions.
“Covid had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much,” Biden bemoaned. Covid didn’t do that. Democrats did. And, given a chance, they’ll do it again.
This is the criminally treasonous legacy of the Democrats and their corrupt figurehead.
SHE KILLED IT
So it was a revelation to me when she gave the first watchable response to the State of the Union address that I have ever seen. I have no idea how many people watched it, but I am pretty sure that clips from the speech will run for days in the media and on Twitter.
There’s no other way to put it: she killed it. Watch the video to see for yourself, but here are the highlights first.
COMER IS BUILDING A KILLER CASE AGAINST JOE BIDEN
House Oversight Chair James Comer
When they hear James Comer speak with his lilting south-central Kentucky accent and courteous style, it would be an easy mistake for Democrats and targets of his newly fanged House Oversight Committee to underestimate the former Monroe County cattle farmer.
But Comer is a killer — and corruption is his prey.
Everything has changed in Washington since the Republicans won back the House, and Comer, as Chairman of the Oversight Committee, is champing at the bit to hold the Biden administration accountable. That includes getting to the bottom of the Biden family corruption as revealed in Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, and elsewhere, using the awesome power of Congress.
“This is not about Hunter Biden,” Comer said last week in a broad-ranging interview with The Post. “It’s about Joe Biden.” He aims to “prove Joe benefited financially and prove he made decisions against the best interests of the United States.”
THE BIDEN FAMILY PROBLEMS ARE CONVERGING
The Biden Crime Family’s legal problems are beginning to converge in an interesting way. It may be the formation of a perfect political storm.
Objective observers (which excludes the MSM) recognize that the Biden clan has had some shady financial dealings. With recent events, the evidence is becoming undeniable. As criminals often do, one of the co-conspirators may need to turn on the other to cover his tail.
In this case, Hunter Biden may be the one protecting himself at his partner's expense — with Joe Biden being the partner left holding the bag.
Hunter Biden's attempted scorched earth strategy may or may not help him legally. It will definitely burn his father, Joe.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY UNDERSTANDING WHAT WE REMEMBER
How do I remember what?
We each have, in effect, two selves: an experiencing self and a remembering self. Understanding the difference can help us make the most of our best times, and minimize the memory of our unpleasant ones.
Imagine that you’re asked to hold your hand in ice water for sixty seconds. It’s unpleasant, painful, and not something most of us would choose to do for fun.
Now, imagine that you’re asked to do the same thing, same temperature, but then once that 60 seconds is up, continue holding your hand in the ice water for another 30 seconds. The only difference is that the additional 30 seconds will be one degree warmer than the first 60 seconds.
Which would you choose?
The shorter one, of course! After all, the initial 60 seconds will be identical in both cases, and then you’re adding another 30 seconds more pain to that for the longer one…
Well, strange as it sounds, you’re likely to choose the longer one. Here’s why, and here’s how not to.
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/03/23
Pfizer's Disaster
What it Means ______________________________________
Pfizer has unleashed its lawyers and lobbyists, bought and owned Congressmen, judges, and every unsavory propaganda house to counter the disastrous videos of their Jordan Trishton Walker. Billions of dollars are on the line, and the company has already lost $64 Billion in capitalization.Pfizer's problems are widespread, which means many others face a financial catastrophe.
The modern philosophical basis of the New World Order, the Great Reset, and everything from the Frankfurt School to the current White House is fully displayed.
In this Week's HFR, we will discuss what this means. What does this mean to the Utilitarian and Hedonistic philosophies that underlie our power elites?
The last time the world saw such a divergence of cultures and ethical systems was during the 1930s in Germany. Pfizer has a severe problem; the vaxxed have serious issues, and the political leadership and educational systems have problems.
Let's talk ethics over at the HFR.
SKYE’S LINKS 02/02/23
Welcome to the Essence of Fascism Skye’s Links!
Fascism, as its founders Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini propounded, differed from Marxism in which the State owns the means of production (no private business, no private property). In a fascist economy, the State controls the means of production in a collusion between big corporations and government bureaucracies (the Administrative or “Deep” State).
You can see a clear demonstration of this in America displayed here in the collusion between the FDA and Big Pharma. As Milton Friedman once explained to me: “The two most anti-capitalist groups in America are university professors and big corporate businessmen.”
Which is precisely what VDH (Victor Davis Hanson) described this week in TTP (1/31): Anarchy in America – the corrupt lawlessness of fascist collusion between the Woke Left, the Deep State, Academia, Big Tech, Big Media, and so much of Corporate America, like Disney and Pfizer. Call it the Fascist Collusion Alliance.
Now for the good news…
SO WHERE DOES THAT MIGRANT ENTITLEMENT MENTALITY COME FROM IN NEW YORK CITY?
NY Post, January 31, 2023
As if the cost alone weren't enough to make the millions of illegal migrants brought in by Joe Biden's open borders unpopular here, the ingratitude and entitlement mentality of these illegals now seals the deal.
The New York Post noticed a funny resemblance in the migrants' demands and left-wing NGO sloganeerings. Don’t blame the migrants, blame the lefty activists filling them with nonsense.
But there's more to it than just leftists putting ideas into empty migrant heads. News reports say that many of the migrants refusing to move are Venezuelan, denizens of the country that was turned into a socialist dump by the late unlamented Hugo Chavez who really had a thing against private property, or paying at all for anything.
Now they want to turn the US into the same socialist dump they fled.