Article by Leo Hohmann of the World Net Daily News Services

 

'Treasonous' enemies within: 3-star general pushes Trump to use emergency powers

Calls on president to 'honor your oath of office' to defeat Deep-State coup

Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney [U.S. Air Force Retired] said in a no-holds-barred interview that he doesn't believe the courts are likely to come through for President Trump.

Despite massive amounts of evidence of widespread irregularities, many judges appear either unable or unwilling to sort through allegations of rigged voting machines and dozens of affidavits from eyewitnesses to ballot stuffing, denial of Republican poll watchers from observing the process, evidence of more votes cast in hundreds of precincts than were registered to vote, and a host of other irregularities.

The general placed the burden squarely on President Trump to use the emergency powers at his disposal and put down what he described as a coup d'état in progress.

"When you coordinate six to ten states, using cyber warfare, to change the outcome of the election in favor of whoever you want, these are treasonous acts," McInerney said in a Nov. 29 interview with Brannon Howse of Worldview Weekend TV.

Not just fraudulent acts

 "These are not just fraudulent acts, they are treasonous acts, because it means changing the government," the general said. "And then when you add Russia, China and Iran, foreigners into it, you complicate it and make it even more treasonous. So, cyber warfare, and the Dominion Voting Systems, which we're talking about in Georgia, Michigan and several other states, Pennsylvania as well, using Hammer and Scorecard [ballot manipulation software attacks]. Plus, has anyone seen the Justice Department or FBI in any of this? That is very worrisome.

McInerney is not just any retired general making these claims.

He is highly decorated, having flown 400 combat missions over Vietnam. He was in charge of NORAD for Alaska and had a top security clearance with responsibility for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. He spent 16 years as a military analyst with Fox News.

"He is not only a patriot he is a historian and he understands the massive threat now faced by America," Howse said.

McInerney said the fraud seen on Election Day could easily be repeated in Georgia to steal the two U.S. Senate seats up for election there on Jan. 5, giving Democrats full control of the government.

McInerney said that after listening to President Trump talk with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday morning, he was concerned that the president "sounded kind of down."

"What startled me was, he kept talking about fraudulent votes, and then I heard Rudy Giuliani talking about fraudulent votes. It's not fraudulent votes. The American people must understand, we are talking about treason."

The oath must be fulfilled

McInerney said President Trump must be compelled by his supporters to "honor his oath of office" and employ the tools available to him to quash the insurrection that he believes is in progress.

He said U.S. Marshals should have immediately seized the voting machines in Georgia and every battleground state as soon as it became apparent that ballot numbers were skewed in favor of Joe Biden.

According to attorney Sidney Powell, speaking in an interview with Lou Dobbs, the Dominion Systems machines were set to give Biden a weighted count of 1.25 votes for every one vote he received, while Trump's votes were set at 0.75 percent of each vote he received. This means that 2.7 percent of the votes were switched from Trump to Biden in multiple battleground states.

Massive fraud was also reported with the mail-in ballots in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and now Arizona.

At a public hearing Monday held by state legislators in Arizona, witnesses reported their state had 1.9 million mail-in ballots that were separated from envelopes without any signatures that could be verified. Similar reports dripped out of Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

"We had the director of the CISA, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, who was fired two weeks ago by President Trump say this was a perfect election. Please," said McInerney. "This was the worst election in the history of any democracy, and he comes out and says everything was perfect. So you can see the work of the deep state, which is complicit in this treason."

The retired three-star general was very specific in what he said Trump must do to put down the coup. He must invoke the executive order that Trump signed on Sept. 12, 2018, allowing the president to declare a state of emergency related to foreign intervention in U.S. elections.

"He has got to declare a national emergency …He should also use the Insurrection Act because we have an insurrection right now in this country when you look at Antifa and BLM, plus other groups. He must suspend habeas corpus as President Lincoln did in 1861 and Franklin Roosevelt did in 1942 when World War II started."

McInerney said a silent coup is being perpetrated in plain view. It could turn violent but so far it remains bloodless.

The Chinese military doctrine of warfare includes six stages, the first five of which are focused on informational warfare tactics. If those asymetrical tactics should fail, the sixth and final stage involves traditional kinetic warfare.

Americans not falling for the propaganda

It's becoming more evident with each passing day that the psychological warfare tactics are failing, as more Americans are waking up to the fact that the 2020 election was neither free nor fair.

According to a Rasmussen poll conducted Nov. 17-18, 75 percent of Republicans believe the election is being stolen. But a surprising number of Democrats, 47 percent, believe it is either likely or very likely that their own party won by cheating.

"The Democratic perpetrators of this, plus the Russians, Chinese and Iran, have not disguised this cyber warfare on America," McInerney said. "As a matter of fact, they have been blatant about it and open about it, cocky about it, in all the things they've done and all the people they've employed."

He said he has personally seen pictures of people unloading truckloads of mail-in ballots that hadn't even been folded and put in an envelope.

"It's a printing press operation. And yet we have judges that are challenging that, saying that's not enough. And so that's why it's so important that this national emergency be declared and the president start arresting these people right away; this is a national emergency. I would declare martial law."

McInerney said the decisions made to allow massive numbers of mail-in ballots were made by secretaries of state and courts, not by state legislatures as required by the U.S. Constitution.

"And then on election night they decided to cease ballot counting in five states," he said.

In Atlanta, a supposed water-main break was cited as the reason to stop the counting at 10:30 p.m., only to continue once all observers were gone. The broken water pipe has since been found to have never occurred.

"This has never happened before, it's unprecedented, and shows there was pre-planning across several states to do these treasonous acts. That's why it's not fraudulent voting, it's treason. They are trying to overturn this government," McInerney said.

He said the new acting secretary of defense, Chris Miller, should make use of the National Guard as well as active-duty military personnel to crush the insurrection.

"Until this gets cleaned up, until we have all the facts, the president should suspend the Electoral College meeting on the 14th of December and the inauguration on the 20th of January."

The general said that because the courts have shown themselves "unable to figure out what is going on" the use of military tribunals will be necessary to deal with the coup plotters and participants.

"That's why martial law is so important," he said. "We need to set up military tribunals because the judiciary has shown us they're not capable of figuring this out.

"In Pennsylvania the local judges couldn't figure it out because the state sent out 1.8 million ballots and they got 2.5 million mailed back in. My goodness, someone had to have a printing press that was printing all these votes, yet the judiciary couldn't figure it out and stop them. That's why we need military tribunals and have these people arrested and charged, and the evidence should be presented there."

A historical perspective

If America doesn't "wake up" and realize what's happening it will soon be too late, he said.

This is corroborated by people who in earlier decades lived through the socialist revolutions that took over Cuba, Venezuela, China, Germany, Russia, Vietnam and Cambodia.

When asked "how did this happen" and "did you see it coming," almost to a person, they will tell you that, yes, they saw it and they knew their country was heading in a bad direction. But, at the end, confusion reigned as events transpired so fast that the people felt paralyzed and unable to stop the fall of their government.

Some Trump voters are already hanging their heads and posting memes on social media that say, essentially, "Trump 2024: We'll get them next time."

But what if Gen. McInerney is right? What if there is no next time?

"The president has got to start having rallies, talking to the people primarily in these six states. He must use the executive orders and suspend all action of the Electoral College," McInerney said, with a sense of urgency in his voice. "And the 85 million people must demand that you, Mr. President, clean this up, make it happen."

If the courts fail to act, and Trump fails to act, he said the election in Georgia will simply be a repeat of the fraud, allowing the Democrats to take the two senate seats and total control of the government.

"They're going to win that election in Georgia, using Hammer and Scorecard and the Dominion voting machines," he said. "I heard a prominent Republican say ‘we really need a large turnout.' It doesn't matter what your turnout is when they're using cyber warfare. They always beat it by three percent. That's why it's important we suspend even those votes down in Georgia until we clean this up."

McInerney said the Founding Fathers had no way of anticipating the concept of cyber warfare.

"But they did have the oath that the president and all the people like myself took to support the Constitution of United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic. These are domestic enemies and they must be treated as such. This is hybrid warfare in the 21 century, this is how it's done. That's how you destabilize. You don't have to have combat troops. You do it through a country's own democratic processes. Like Stalin said, it doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes."

He said the perpetrators knew their massive assault on the voting process would confuse the American people, including judges in the judicial system.

With Fox News, for years the only large mainstream news outlet that served a conservative audience, now flipped to the other side, the only way Americans can hear the truth is through small independent news providers.

The FBI and DOJ have been missing in action, as the president himself noted on Sunday.

Trump sits in a lonely place, all by himself in the valley of decision.

"I sensed he was down and I want him to know that the American people are demanding his leadership; he's the only person in America today who can turn this around, and win it. It's bigger than Lincoln had, and if he turns this around it will rank him right up next to George Washington if he saves this union by taking the emergency action that he needs to take."

Not only are federal law-enforcement agencies standing down, but so are many Republican politicians.

"GOP leaders, where are they? Mitch [McConnell], we haven't heard from you. Let's hear from you senators, let's hear from you House members. Let's stand up and be counted," McInerney pleaded. "Wake up America. Let's demand our representatives, let's send messages to each one of them and tell them, wake up. We want a full investigation on this. This is so obvious."

McInerney is recommending that people email or tweet to the president a message asking him to invoke the Insurrection Act and the September 2018 executive order, declare a national emergency and suspend the meeting of the Electoral College on Dec. 14 until a full investigation by military tribunals can be conducted into the many election irregularities that, if found to be true, would constitute a blatant act of treason against the republic.

You can email the White House by going to Whitehouse.gov/contact, and the president's Twitter handle is @RealDonaldTrump.

"It's important for every America citizen to understand that you are now facing, for the first time, hybrid modern warfare, where the enemy is unseen, it's stealthy. Be aware America, be afraid, be concerned, rise up. We cannot let this election, these treasonous acts, this coup d'état, to stand."

 

https://www.wnd.com/2020/12/treasonous-enemies-within-3-star-general-pushes-trump-use-emergency-powers/ 

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Puerto Rico: Iconic Arecibo Observatory telescope collapses

 

A huge radio telescope in Puerto Rico has collapsed after decades of astronomical discoveries.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) said the telescope's 900-ton instrument platform fell onto a reflector dish some 450ft (137m) below.

It came just weeks after officials announced that the telescope would be dismantled amid safety fears, following damage to its support system.

The Arecibo Observatory telescope was one of the largest in the world.

 

 

It was a key scientific resource for radio astronomers for 57 years, and was also made famous as the backdrop for a scene in the James Bond film GoldenEye and other Hollywood films.

The NSF said there had been no reports of injuries following the collapse.

 

 

What happened to the telescope?

The telescope consisted of a 1,000ft-wide radio dish with a 900-ton instrument platform hanging 450ft above. The platform was suspended by cables connected to three towers.

Two cables had broken since August, damaging the structure and forcing officials to close the observatory.

A review last month found that the telescope was at risk of catastrophic collapse and said the huge structure could not be repaired without posing a potentially deadly risk to construction workers.

Officials said the structure would be dismantled.

 

 

Following the announcement, three members of Congress, including Puerto Rico's representative Jenniffer González, requested funds "to enable the NSF to continue exploring options to safely stabilise the structure".

Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory and still lives near it, told the Associated Press news agency of the moment the telescope collapsed on Tuesday.

"It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was," he said. "I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control... I don't have words to express it. It's a very deep, terrible feeling."

The NSF said it was "saddened" by the collapse and would be "looking for ways to assist the scientific community and maintain our strong relationship with the people of Puerto Rico".

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55147973?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_custom3=%40BBCWorld&at_medium=custom7&at_custom2=twitter&at_campaign=64&at_custom4=C7E02B70-33FF-11EB-8E29-5EAF4744363C 

 

 

 

 

 

Article by Robert Arvay in The American Thinker

 

Will the courts help America on the road to suicide?

I recall a case in which a criminal had murdered a child, then buried her.  A complication arose, and the question came up — might the victim still be alive?  There was a limited time to find the little girl.  If indeed she had been buried alive, according to suspicions, then it was important to get the criminal to show where he had buried her.  He led the police to the grave; the poor child was already dead.  

The criminal was released, since he had not been read his Miranda rights.  Some law enforcement officials voiced outrage, noting that once the criminal was set free, he was able to murder further victims.  There was a strong likelihood that he would, based on the behavior of other pedophiles.  Lives could be saved by keeping the murderer imprisoned.  The court, apparently, did not consider the threat to the public.  It adhered to what it regarded as the letter of the law.

We now have strong evidence of massive electoral fraud.  Crimes were committed.  There is a limited amount of time to correct the matter.  State legislatures are holding hearings and might save the republic by awarding electors to the candidate who in fact did get the most votes in their respective states.  

Whether they do or not, the question remains: can the courts restrict themselves to the narrowest interpretation of the law, without regard for the consequences — the consequences of permitting the presidency to be occupied by the favored candidate of a massive criminal enterprise?  Can they ignore the strong likelihood that a Biden presidency (followed within days or weeks by a Harris presidency) will open the floodgates of illegal immigration?  Can they ignore the evidence that the Democrats will award citizenship to millions of them?  Can they avert their gaze from a future in which the levers of power will be controlled by a party that can illegally ensure never losing another election?  Can the Supreme Court, indeed, disregard that it will soon be swamped by additional justices who will impose socialism on the nation?

In other words, will the criminals be set free to perpetuate their crimes?  Will the Republic itself be murdered?  

It can be argued that none of this is any business of the Supreme Court, and in ordinary times, that would be correct — but these are not ordinary times.  It has been said that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."

We may be about to find out.  If the state legislatures do not send the proper electors to vote for President Trump, and if the Court does not step outside its otherwise proper box, we may not need to be told where the bodies are buried.  They will be ours.

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/will_the_courts_help_america_on_the_road_to_suicide.html

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Article by Matt Philbin in mrcNewsBusters

 

WashPost: The Horror of Teaching Redneck Children About the Election

 It’s always fun when the brave journalists of the Washington Post put on their pith helmets and venture forth to do some anthropological reporting from the hinterlands. You never know what kind of hair-raising stories they’ll file about sky god-worshippers in podunk hamlets over an hour’s drive from decent artisanal cheese.

For example, education reporter Hannah Natanson Nov. 29 article describes the horrors of teaching about the presidential election in “West Virginia’s deep-red McDowell County, where some 80 percent of the votes went to Trump in the November election.” They’re also, she is careful to point out, 90 percent white.

Thankfully, Natanson didn’t actually have to talk to any of those savages. She found a civilized native in the form of teacher and Biden supporter Greg Cruey. 

“Cruey,” Natanson begins, “thought he knew how to walk students through a presidential election. The social studies teacher has been working inside public-school classrooms for about two decades, guiding children through history-making 2008, as well as tumultuous 2016,” or, as they’re known around the Post, the Good Election and the Bad, No-Good, Horrible Election. 

“But 2020 shocked him:

Never before, Cruey said, has he seen such a high level of emotion from children — such blind devotion to their preferred candidate, most often Donald Trump. Nor has he seen anything like this level of mistrust, which he said is persisting among students weeks after the results of the election supposedly were finalized.

Yeah, blind devotion to a politician is weird. Just ask MM, MM, MM Barack Hussein Obama. And maybe -- just spit balling here -- it’s not easy to trust an establishment that continually calls you, your family and everyone you know backward hicks and bigots. 

Natanson should know that. She drips disdain for Trump’s “baseless claims of sweeping voter fraud” and posits that the villain’s “campaign of misinformation is affecting the nation’s youngest, too.” See, the dumb-as-stumps MAGA parents parrot conspiracy theories and their kids pick up on them. 

“Teachers,” Natanson reminds readers, “are always on the front lines of the fight against misinformation.” That’s right. And teachers’ unions are always on the front lines of electing Democrats. Cruey himself is a union man and a Hillary fanboy. Natanson said “He already considered himself ‘a first responder to poverty’ before anything else.” So he’s more of a missionary or social worker?

Trump’s claims may be specious, but an activist member of the American Federation of Teachers profiled by a lefty Post reporter is hardly the best messenger to make the argument. But Natanson isn’t arguing. She and her editors and her readers are just as insular as the rednecks in McDowell County, but their insularity comes with the arrogance of the elites (Natanson has a B.A. from Harvard).

Cruey, the liberal missionary out in the jungle, has it too. It’s implicit in his complaints about having to teach the election remotely (thanks largely to -- wait for it! -- teachers’ unions). Normally, there’s nobody around to challenge whatever he tells his captive audience. But with distance learning, “you’re basically speaking through a microphone into people’s homes, so you might have 20 kids but actually 60 people listening to you,” he told Natanson. 

That means there could be adults “who are stomping their feet and gritting their teeth as I teach — that’s their right.” Yes it is. Thank God for it.

 

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/matt-philbin/2020/11/30/washpost-horror-teaching-redneck-children-about-election 

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At least two dead and several injured after car drives into pedestrians in southwest Germany

 

Several people have been killed and others injured after a car drove into pedestrians in the German city of Trier, police say.

Police are urging people to avoid the city centre as emergency services are at the scene of the collision, which happened in a pedestrianised area.

One person thought to be the driver has been arrested and a vehicle seized, a force spokesperson said.

It is four years since a terrorist drove a truck through a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 shoppers.

 

https://news.sky.com/story/at-least-two-dead-and-several-injured-after-car-drives-into-pedestrians-in-southwest-germany-12148078 

 

 

Blue America Needs Red America

Michael Anton writing at the American Mind

A reply to Chris Caldwell.

In a recent essay in The New Republic, Chris Caldwell predicts the coming crackup of the Blue coalition. Since I argued something very similar in my recent book, The Stakes, I naturally agree with the thrust of his thesis.

Except, I think, with the conclusion. Caldwell notes in the last paragraph that

in the 1860s, three major Western countries—Germany, Italy, and the United States—each fought similar wars of national unification, in which the more dynamic part of the country subjugated the more bucolic (or backward) part. In our time, Democrats are the party of relatively greater technological and demographic dynamism, Republicans the party of relatively less. This is not the same type of relationship as the one that obtained until half a century ago, when Republicans were (roughly speaking) the party of capital, and Democrats the party of labor. Capital and labor need each other in a way that dynamism and tradition do not. One fears the present conflict will differ accordingly.

The point about the three great examples of the advanced part of a nation subjugating the backward part is insightful and chilling. I do believe that is what Blue America intends for Red.

But Caldwell further says that dynamism does not need tradition in the same way that labor needs capital and vice versa. I suppose the qualification “in the same way” makes that statement true, but Caldwell’s implication seems to be that they don’t need each other at all. Is that really true?

I doubt it, for a number of reasons. In our specific context, “dynamism” is not what it was in the 1860s, when “dynamism” was quite materially, physically productive. Contemporary “dynamism” is productive on paper but not in the physical world. Blue elites have bet their entire project, and all their status and wealth, on the proposition that this distinction doesn’t matter. No, even more: they’re entirely convinced that “knowledge” productivity is inherently superior to physical productivity. But what if that bet doesn’t pay off? What if physical productivity is inherently more valuable economically, socially and politically, more conducive to civic life? What if virtual productivity depends decisively on its physical counterpart?

To what extent, also, is our paper productivity simply fake? I’m no expert on high finance, but our whole economy seems to me to be jury-rigged, smoke-and-mirrors—dependent as it is on debt, fiat currency, etc.

The Blue Economy

Mass financialization seriously drives the Blue economy. This seems to be based on a few factors, all of which are inherently unstable. The first is a reliance on monetary policy, which is mostly chicanery—zero interest rates for more than a decade now?—and which depends on the dollar’s status as a reserve currency, on the willingness of foreigners to lend us money, and on our ability not necessarily to pay them back (we almost certainly can’t, and even more certainly won’t) but to meet the interest payments.

All of these are interconnected and will go on until they don’t, or can’t. But they seem to have much less staying power than the massive economic expansion from roughly the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th, which was driven by concrete innovation and delivered real gains in standards of living for all classes.

A related but hardly irrelevant point: financialization seems to amount in large part to creating new “products” and markets at the high end, which enrich elites based on…what? Rents excreted out of government monetary policy, outsourcing, immigration, globalization, etc.—all of which make the middle and the heartland poorer. In particular, financialization means finding new ways to stoke consumerism from people who can’t really afford “stuff” like they (or their parents) used to and so must pay for with debt, which obviously benefits banks, in two ways. They make money on the front end through “market-making” and financing the global expansion of big business, and on the back end by lending (and charging usurious interest rates and late fees) to consumers. This is, of course, parasitic.

The other major pillar of the Blue economy is Big Tech, the actual rewards accruing to which appear to be wildly out of proportion to the benefits conferred. When you think back to what the Industrial Revolution accomplished in the transportation sector and manufacturing alone, all of it was vastly more “concrete” than what tech is doing. And the earlier expansions’ benefits were far more transformative and widespread. 1900 looked far less like 1860 than 2020 looks like 1980. Tech is powerful today because of how it can throttle information flows, but information flows are as old as writing. Tech is an effective instrument of tyranny but it does not yet provide benefits for most people that aren’t merely frivolous or enstupefying. Which is in itself a problem for the “dynamic” coalition.

The last element of the Blue economy is media, broadly understood, which either doesn’t make money but is subsidized by Tech or Techies, or does make money but only through its tight alliance with Big Tech, to which it is an appendage. Media (to be more specific, propaganda) is the pillar of the Blue regime, in the sense that it is in effect its army and police force. But as such, it is fundamentally a cost center, not a profit generator.

Perhaps most important, those most emblematic of Blue America, and of the Blue economy—coders, app developers, financiers, VCs, senior managers, foundation grant-makers, professors, vice chancellors for diversity, bloggers, Vox editors, sous chefs, hairstylists, interior decorators, handbag designers, etc.—do not constitute a majority, or even close, of Blue America. They are in fact a minority—and a small minority.

The Blue coalition is something like a layer cake in which the only visible part is the frosting. But underneath that veneer is a light, airy, spongy, not very filling mass that constitutes (spit-balling here) something like 80% of the cake. It doesn’t contribute much to Blue America’s self-congratulatory wealth or “dynamism.” It is, like Blue America’s propaganda arm, a cost center—only much, much more costly. The one thing it contributes is votes. But those votes, even when obtained lawfully, are very expensive. It is at the very least an open question how long “productive” “dynamic” America can generate enough wealth to fund the accustomed lifestyle of the frosting and enough to cover the subsistence of the crumbs sufficiently to keep them turning out to vote the “correct” way.

Blue Subjugation

All of this suggests that the “dynamic” Blue part of the country needs the “backward” Red part a lot more than Caldwell estimates, for a few fundamental reasons. One, the latter are consumers of the stuff the Blues are selling: pixels, bytes, and debt. Second, to the extent that anything gets made any more in this country (other than, perhaps, motherboards), Red people make them. Third, they grow all or most of the food. Fourth, they do the lion’s share of so-called “dirty jobs” or grunt work. Granted, they aren’t hotel maids in Blue cities. But all kinds of other things get done by them and only by them—both Red people in Blue areas and Red people in Red areas, whose work product gets transported into Blue areas also by Red people.

More fundamentally, “dynamism” is inherently parasitic on stability, which is to say virtue. Yes, I know Red America with its opioid crisis, obesity epidemic, welfare usage, etc., is not as virtuous as it used to be. And in some ways—high divorce and illegitimacy rates—it’s in worse shape than the Blue upper and upper-middle classes. But it is also more religious, patriotic and tradition-minded. These traits provide some measure of continuity to a society that is otherwise continually in the process of upheaval owing to the “dynamic” half of the country. What happens when that brake on dynamism is gone, or becomes so weak that it can no longer slow down the car?

Dynamic America has a few ways to address this problem. It can subjugate, as Caldwell says, Boring America. Or it can try to import or develop a Boring class of its own that it can boss around within the confines of Blue America. But the latter solution presumably will, sooner or later, lead to the same problem. “Blue helots” will still be helots. Eventually they will see themselves as such and develop similar interests and political impulses. At which point they will have to be subjugated, too.

Subjugation—whether of a Red class within Blue borders or of Reds where they live now—carries the same risks. One is a reaction that breaks the system and ends the subjugation. That end could take the form of a new settlement that keeps the whole together, perhaps via a kind of radical federalism and regionalism. Or it might lead to a formal separation. Or it might simply end the United States altogether, to be replaced by God-only-knows-what. Barring overt rebellion, the other likely outcome is a kind of implicit general strike in which the Reds’ output and contributions decline.

Aren’t we already seeing at least nascent signs of both? Isn’t the Deplorable support for Trump a sign of rebellion, while the opioid crisis, etc., are signs of apathy and despair?

No one—at least not I—can say which reaction will prevail. But it seems to me that one eventually must if Blue subjugation continues. Which it surely will. The Blues have all the power now, with precious few exceptions, and I see no sign of moderation or circumspection in any of them whatsoever.

Blues sense, at a deep if subconscious level, their need for Reds. Much of their talk about the superiority of their society, economy, and way of life is cant. They may not want to think about where their grubby necessities come from, but they know it’s not from themselves and hence intuit that it must come from somewhere—and someone.

Then there is the unpleasant fact that Blue America wants to rule Red in a way that the latter does not want to rule Blue. To borrow from Machiavelli, in the present-day United States, these two diverse humors are found, which arises from this: that the Blues desire to command and oppress the Reds, while the Reds wish to be neither commanded nor oppressed. Machiavelli offers two solutions to this perennial, inherently irreconcilable conflict. To a prince (sitting or would-be), he recommends becoming the leader-vindicator of the backward or bucolic or less dynamic side and sticking it to the dynamos. To the founder of a republic, he urges the creation of institutions through which both sides harness their mutual enmity to team up and wring the good life out of foreigners.

The problem with the latter solution Machiavelli partly illuminates in another passage where he describes Ferdinand and Isabella’s expulsion of the Jews from Spain as an act of “pious cruelty,” that is, cruelty allegedly in the service of God. Pious cruelty is perhaps the animating impulse of the average Blue’s outlook and behavior toward the average Red: the spirit of the Grand Inquisitor, who, as he flogs you for heresy, really believes he is saving your soul. This, too, is not a recipe for long-term stability. Even—especially—if the Blues win.

In sum, my contention is that dynamism needs tradition more than the reverse, and that tradition may not need dynamism at all—if it’s willing to live a little poorer and with slow or no WiFi.

I leave to the reader to decide for himself whether this short missive has ended on a hopeful note or gives cause for alarm.

Fauci Flip Flops On In-Person Learning After Ignoring Data On Low COVID Spread In Schools

Jordan Davidson reporting for The Federalist

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is finally following the science on the low-risk of spreading COVID-19 in schools, now urging schools to reopen so children can learn in-person.

“The default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week. 

“If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all, not like one would have suspected,” he added. “So let’s try to get the kids back, but let’s try to mitigate the things that maintain and just push the kind of community spread that we’re trying to avoid.”

According to Fauci, bars and restaurants are some of the main propellers of community spread and should remain the focus of lockdowns.

“Close the bars and keep the schools open is what we really say,” Fauci continued.

Despite many experts and GOP lawmakers noting early on that data shows COVID-19 spread in schools is not a large problem, Fauci did not always support school reopenings.

In August, Fauci echoed the mainstream media’s concerns about coronavirus spread in schools and urged them to adopt new scheduling and virtual learning.

“There are some areas where the level may be low but not absent and maybe a little trouble so you might want to modify the schedule,” Fauci said. “A hybrid taught online, taught in-person, morning, afternoon, alternating days, whatever it is that the local authorities [say].”

“There may be some areas that the level of virus is so high that it would not be prudent to bring the children back to school,” he added. “So you can’t make one statement about bringing children back to school in this country. It depends on where you are. And we’ve got to be very flexible.”

This isn’t the first time Fauci has changed his position about COVID-19 health and safety guidelines.

During the first presidential debate, Joe Biden falsely claimed that Fauci had not changed his stance on the efficacy of mask-wearing.

“Masks make a big difference,” said Biden. “His [Trump’s] own CDC said if we just wore masks between now- if everybody wore masks and social distanced between now and January, we’d probably save up to a hundred thousand lives. It matters.”

In March, however, Fauci said in a “60 Minutes” interview that “people should not be walking around with masks.”

“There’s no reason people should be walking around with a mask,” Fauci said. “Wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not proven to be the perfect protection that people think that it is.”

MO Doctor Says People Who Don’t Mask Are Like ‘Enemy Combatants’

Professional discussion of the harms and benefits of masks and mask mandates cannot even happen privately among doctors without vitriol. This kind of atmosphere kills science.

by Laura Martin in The Federalist

My 18-year-old son, who has Down Syndrome, had a dental procedure last week. We were supposed to have it done in March, but due to the cancellation of outpatient procedures, it was postponed until then.

His teeth needed major cleaning, and since he has a ton of oral sensory issues, sedation has become necessary. All went well, thankfully. However, that night the dentist called and talked with my husband, who is an urgent care physician, about another condition he discovered. Our son has a yeast infection around and slightly inside of his mouth. 

The dentist said in 25 years of practice, he had only seen about five cases of this, until 2020. This year alone, he has seen at least 30. Some dentists sounded the alarm about this six months ago, but it doesn’t fit the narrative, so you probably didn’t hear about it. The working terminology for this new condition is “mask mouth.”

My son has other medical conditions that make extensive mask wearing counter-indicated. However, he’s been at the hospital several times lately, where he’s had to wear his mask, and we recently learned it’s required at a place his class volunteers and works for about three hours a day.

We thought his health could tolerate this, but unfortunately, it appears we were wrong. His oral hygiene issues make extended mask-wearing even more detrimental than we realized.

You’d think this might stir up an important discussion, and this rash of mask-related conditions might cause us to reconsider mask mandates, or at least to have a reasonable discussion about this issue. But no. Dissenting opinions are not tolerated, even—and especially—within professional medical associations. 

My husband participates in an online discussion group of physicians. I’ll not name the group; suffice it to say it’s full of Missouri physicians. Last week’s discussion centered on some members of the group’s desire to encourage Missouri Gov. Michael Parson to issue a statewide mask mandate.

This went much farther than a simple discussion of medical viewpoints. One physician in that group said, “I view those who would not mask as equivalent to enemy combatants.” Whoa.

He went on to say he would have the same enmity toward such a person as he would toward a neighbor who chose to ignore the “no lights after dark” rule in a city under night-time bombardment. He expressed disdain for his fellow citizens. While he noted that he would still treat these individuals as his oath required, he said he would do so while mindful of their selfishness.

My husband, ever kind and thoughtful, and not one for debates, pondered this man’s words for a day or so and then voiced his dismay. He wasn’t surprised when several other doctors jumped on the “enemy combatant” bandwagon. He expected that. 

What troubled us was that several physicians messaged Steve privately and thanked him for speaking up. They were concerned about the professional ramifications of speaking up, and understandably so! Dissent is not tolerated in this Orwellian nightmare we find ourselves in.

Intelligent, well-educated, accomplished men and women who have attended college and medical school and completed back-breaking, sleep-deprived residencies so they can care for American citizens cannot have a discussion about the science behind wearing masks. Physicians are well-aware of the fact that numerous medications, procedures, and treatments that were once considered “scientifically proven standard of care” a few years ago are now considered malpractice!

That’s the “science” of medicine: it’s ever-changing, not settled. Research is needed, and hypotheses, questions, and discussions drive that research—unless the questions aren’t allowed and the discussions are prohibited and the ones who dare to simply wonder are doxxed.

I’m not here to debate the merits of mask wearing, truly. I’m here to decry the current state of affairs. The mantra “First, Do No Harm” means, at least in part, weighing the risks and benefits of a medical treatment. 

I am here to argue that any medical intervention, including mask-wearing, should be a decision made by the individual in consultation with their physician. And that physician should be allowed to review the evidence, scant or great as it might be, on the efficacy of mask wearing versus the risk or benefit to their particular patient, and decide what’s best.

In fact, I would argue that many individuals are capable of making that determination as well. In my son’s case, he has multiple conditions for which mask wearing is counter-indicated. We are fortunate, because his awesome extra chromosome shines for the world to see and sometimes causes people to show some grace.

However, many individuals’ conditions aren’t as obvious, yet apparently they are now viewed by some inside (and outside) the medical profession as “enemy combatants.” People who do not wear a mask have been determined to literally be trying to kill people.

The difference between a patriot and an “enemy combatant” has now been defined for us by a piece of paper attached to our ears by stretchy string. Dear Lord, what has happened to us?

This article originally published with LakeExpo.com, a local outlet. It is republished at The Federalist with permission.

Media Gives Biden a Kid Glove Sponge Bath Headline About His Broken Foot

Nick Arama reporting for RedState

Joe Biden isn’t president-elect yet. And yes, that mask looks silly. Get a real N95 mask, Joe.

But we’re already seeing liberal media doing the fawning “dear leader” nonsense that they did with Barack Obama, maybe even more so, because he needs propping up more, with stories you never would see them give President Donald Trump.

Everything that Trump did was to be spun to a negative. But Biden is gold, just by his mere existence.

The first came stories about his socks.

Then came how we was going to bring dogs, and yes, even a cat back to the White House.

Hunter Biden? Who? Scandal? Biden incoherence? What? Nope, nothing bad about Joe Biden exists. At least not until Kamala Harris could then take over.

But we have to give today’s suck up to Biden and the Democrats award to Slate for their headline on Joe Biden breaking his foot over the weekend. Biden had multiple hairline fractures midfoot. His team claimed that he “slipped” while playing with his dog, Major.

How did Slate describe it? Take a look at this description.

“Biden Breaks Foot Engaging in Tried-and-True Expression of Presidential Vigor.” Wait, what? Are they kidding?

Because nothing Biden does bespeaks of vigor, they have to overdo it to this level. And because once again it raises questions about Biden health, they have to paint whatever happened as somehow “vigorous.” Sorry, “slipped” while playing with his dog doesn’t sound “vigorous” guys, sell it somewhere else. But imagine someone actually sitting down to write such things. Did that person ever want to be a real journalist or were they happy with being a Democratic operative/party scribe?

But they’re not biased, no siree.

If Trump had broken his foot and then withheld the story for a day, then tried to block press from seeing him go into the doctor’s office, as Biden in fact did, can you imagine how the media would have responded?

Yet, Biden did that and you get “presidential vigor.” With Trump they would make up some story about what happened, say the dog attacked him or that he kicked the dog.