lewrockwell--2020-12-10--What Happens When the Suspension on Evictions Ends

International Man : Earlier this year , CDC was able to extend its powers unprecedentedly by issuing a nationwide suspension on evictions .
What ’ s your take on how a public health agency grew to be in the position of telling property owners what they can do on their properties ?
Doug Casey : Health paranoia is an excellent method of control .
People put their health above almost everything .
I ’ m only surprised it hasn ’ t been used as a lever up until now .
It ’ s part of a trend toward mass control @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 20th century and has been increasing exponentially over time .
First was the income tax .
If you didn ’ t comply , it was not only seen as a legal crime but also promoted as a moral sin .
The prohibition of liquor from 1919 to 1933 got under way as a moral failing and then was turned into a crime .
It ’ s the same with the prohibition of some drugs ; Nixon started that hysteria in 1971 , and it was put on steroids , so to speak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the war on terror , especially since 2001 .
These were all promoted with both legal and moral taboos .
Everybody is supposed to line up with them shoulder to shoulder , like in one of those old socialist realism propaganda posters the Soviets and the Nazis specialized in .
The public is supposed to self-police under the supervision of the authorities , like they did in Salem in 1692 .
Swarovski Ocean Advent ... Buy New $ 89.00 Public health is the current impetus for mass hysteria and paranoia .
All of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ownership of private property , including your own body , which is the primary form of property .
The public health angle is potentially the most dangerous and invasive one from the viewpoint of freedom .
Busybodies—the type of people who work for and actively support the State—always need an excuse to control others en masse .
This pandemic provides an excellent template for the future .
Wearing a mask—whether or not you want to or think it helps—isn ’ t just about virtue signaling .
It also shows whether you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told—whether you ’ re “ politically reliable ” , as the communists like to say .
It ’ s like wearing the Party ’ s armband .
In fact , wearing a mask and social distancing in stores , bars , restaurants , and gymnasiums shouldn ’ t be up to the government .
It should be strictly up to the property owner .
Decisions that the individual makes regarding his own health are his own ; it ’ s between the individual and his doctor .
I have no problem if the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to keep me out if I ’ m not wearing a mask .
It ’ s his property .
He makes the rules .
I can go elsewhere , where it suits me better .
It ’ s an affront and an imposition on restaurateurs and storekeepers to be told what they and their guests can and can not do .
This isn ’ t , incidentally , about a technical or medical problem .
The value of wearing masks , social distancing , and obeying quarantines and lockdowns is questionable at best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ real problem is ethical and that there ’ s no moral pushback from either the public or the property owners .
People are arguing on strictly technical grounds : “ Yes , you have a right to tell me what to do , and even close my business .
But you shouldn ’ t because it ’ s not ‘ fair ’ , or your solutions aren ’ t optimal ” .
They accept the busybody ’ s premises .
The argument is over before it even begins .
Americans are truly acting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , distancing , and the rest of it work or not , isn ’ t the point .
My own belief is they ’ re at best of marginal value and may well be counterproductive .
But that ’ s beside the point .
The point is that it ’ s immoral and destructive for the State to tell people how to relate to each other .
Swarovski Ocean Advent ... Buy New $ 89.00 As for the CDC , it ’ s just another government bureaucracy concerned with putting itself in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its budget , and the number of its employees—and making Fauci , a lifelong but previously insignificant swamp creature , into an international celebrity .
International Man : Currently , over 18 million Americans are currently behind on their mortgage or rent payments .
That temporary suspension on evictions ends December 31st .
What do you think will happen next ?
Doug Casey : Just as with the financial markets , the government has no alternative but to “ do something.
” They will—they have to—print more money to keep the rotten house @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Democrats have already said that they want to increase the next stimulus to over $ 3 trillion .
The fact that most of the last round of stimulus was either overtly wasted , went to cronies , or can ’ t be accounted for , is completely lost on them .
They recognize that unless they give a lot of money directly or indirectly to the hoi polloi , there are going to be millions of them on the streets .
Approximately 11 million renters and 4 or 5 million mortgagees are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be kicked out of their houses and apartments come January 1 , barring a huge bailout .
Where are those people going to go ?
If Obama had made good on his ridiculous promise about shovel-ready projects , there ’ d be a lot more bridges that they could camp out under .
But he didn ’ t .
They have a real problem on their hands .
Millions of people have been living above their means and have no savings .
At this point , if they let landlords and banks kick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of things will happen .
Residential property prices will collapse .
Millions of people will be scrambling for somewhere to live .
Lots of banks and landlords would go bust .
The longer the government kicks the can down the road , the bigger the inevitable bust will be .
The stimulus money will have to continue because Biden doesn ’ t want it all to come unglued on his watch .
The State is not only going to have to pay individuals and business owners that their idiotic policies have busted .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ landlords , and utility companies—because you can ’ t live in a house or an apartment without water and electricity .
Swarovski Ocean Advent ... Buy New $ 79.00 It ’ s worse than that because even if you cover the bare essentials , there ’ s no money leftover for maintenance .
There will be millions of buildings across the country suffering from deferred maintenance .
The South Bronx , East St. Louis , and Baltimore will be replicated across the country .
And no one ’ s talking about how to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these properties .
Many local governments are already bankrupt .
Their expenses are going way up even while their tax income collapses .
The whole country has painted itself into a corner at this point .
That ’ s what happens when you adopt a collectivist economic policy , as the Soviets , the Chinese , and scores of other countries have discovered .
I ’ m not sure how they ’ re going to get out of it because the economy itself has just started to collapse .
Of course , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they see that as a solution when it ’ s actually a cause .
It ’ s going to worsen the collapse .
International Man : For the tens of millions behind on their mortgage and rent payments , will their back rent and overdue payments ever be repaid ?
Doug Casey : The government will not only have to pay the rent for the future , but it ’ s going to have to cover landlords ’ previously unpaid rent—if they don ’ t want lots of bankrupt landlords and banks .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ income , which they ’ ve been thinking about for some time .
In some cases , the government will take over properties .
It ’ s nothing new .
Most major US cities already have significant public housing .
None of it ’ s good , but most isn ’ t as bad as Cabrini-Greene or Pruitt-Igoe .
Who knows where this daisy chain will lead ?
With all the unemployed people who can ’ t pay their rent , perhaps the government will develop something like national service .
Then there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the government , doing god knows what .
It will lead to the socialization of society .
Remember , this COVID hysteria is just the pin that broke the bubble .
The Greater Depression was already in the cards .
Americans will beg the government to cure it , which is guaranteed to make it vastly worse and longer-lasting and invite some charismatic authoritarian to be their savior and take charge .
International Man : Assuming the COVID hysteria and lockdowns are behind us in 2021 , what lasting effects could we see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s going to destroy the restaurant , retail , and travel industries all at once .
SWAROVSKI Women ’ ... Buy New $ 61.12 Stores , restaurants , and small businesses are always failing—maybe 15 % of them annually— and new ones are starting up in normal times .
It ’ s the circle of life .
The problem is that about half of these businesses are failing all at once .
That makes it much harder to recover .
The economy is a lot like a body .
If you burn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ ll recover .
But if you suffer burns on over 50 % of your body all at once , it might kill you .
That ’ s what we ’ re looking at right now .
Commercial real estate is another area that is going to be devastated because a lot of people will continue working at home and prefer it over working in an office .
Who knows what ’ s going to happen to all that commercial real estate and how it ’ s going to be repurposed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a huge amount of capital .
Another area that will change is schools .
I would have been happy to have a year off from school because classes bored me .
I would have read many more things on my own .
But today , most kids don ’ t read books .
Public school kids are lucky to absorb a few things by osmosis .
Now they ’ re mostly playing video games or are on social media—mostly doing nonproductive things on their computers at home .
I don ’ t know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ associate with other kids .
For most kids , it may be damaging .
On the bright side , many parents have decided that school is a waste of time and have started homeschooling their kids .
That ’ s generally a positive thing .
Here ’ s the important thing , we don ’ t know how long this hysteria is going to last .
People are so scared that they ’ ll be easy to control for fear of the next real or imagined virus that comes down the road .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ t know what to do , they will want somebody to kiss it and make it better .
So , I expect we ’ re heading towards a genuine strong man for president in the US , whether that ’ s Kamala Harris or somebody else .
If the 2020 election was bad , the 2024 election would be worse .
The Best of Doug Casey

International Man: Earlier this year, CDC was able to extend its powers unprecedentedly by issuing a nationwide suspension on evictions.
What’s your take on how a public health agency grew to be in the position of telling property owners what they can do on their properties?
Doug Casey: Health paranoia is an excellent method of control. People put their health above almost everything. I’m only surprised it hasn’t been used as a lever up until now. It’s part of a trend toward mass control that has started in earnest early in the 20th century and has been increasing exponentially over time.
First was the income tax. If you didn’t comply, it was not only seen as a legal crime but also promoted as a moral sin. The prohibition of liquor from 1919 to 1933 got under way as a moral failing and then was turned into a crime. It’s the same with the prohibition of some drugs; Nixon started that hysteria in 1971, and it was put on steroids, so to speak, by Nancy Reagan. Next came the war on terror, especially since 2001. These were all promoted with both legal and moral taboos. Everybody is supposed to line up with them shoulder to shoulder, like in one of those old socialist realism propaganda posters the Soviets and the Nazis specialized in. The public is supposed to self-police under the supervision of the authorities, like they did in Salem in 1692. Swarovski Ocean Advent... Buy New $89.00 (as of 05:32 UTC - Details)
Public health is the current impetus for mass hysteria and paranoia. All of these things impinge upon your right to ownership of private property, including your own body, which is the primary form of property. The public health angle is potentially the most dangerous and invasive one from the viewpoint of freedom. Busybodies—the type of people who work for and actively support the State—always need an excuse to control others en masse. This pandemic provides an excellent template for the future.
Wearing a mask—whether or not you want to or think it helps—isn’t just about virtue signaling. It also shows whether you’re willing to do as you’re told—whether you’re “politically reliable”, as the communists like to say. It’s like wearing the Party’s armband.
In fact, wearing a mask and social distancing in stores, bars, restaurants, and gymnasiums shouldn’t be up to the government. It should be strictly up to the property owner. Decisions that the individual makes regarding his own health are his own; it’s between the individual and his doctor.
I have no problem if the owner of a bar or restaurant wants to keep me out if I’m not wearing a mask. It’s his property. He makes the rules. I can go elsewhere, where it suits me better. It’s an affront and an imposition on restaurateurs and storekeepers to be told what they and their guests can and cannot do.
This isn’t, incidentally, about a technical or medical problem. The value of wearing masks, social distancing, and obeying quarantines and lockdowns is questionable at best, as Sweden has shown. The real problem is ethical and that there’s no moral pushback from either the public or the property owners. People are arguing on strictly technical grounds: “Yes, you have a right to tell me what to do, and even close my business. But you shouldn’t because it’s not ‘fair’, or your solutions aren’t optimal”. They accept the busybody’s premises. The argument is over before it even begins. Americans are truly acting like whipped dogs.
Whether the masks, distancing, and the rest of it work or not, isn’t the point. My own belief is they’re at best of marginal value and may well be counterproductive. But that’s beside the point. The point is that it’s immoral and destructive for the State to tell people how to relate to each other. Swarovski Ocean Advent... Buy New $89.00 (as of 05:32 UTC - Details)
As for the CDC, it’s just another government bureaucracy concerned with putting itself in the limelight, gaining more power, enhancing its budget, and the number of its employees—and making Fauci, a lifelong but previously insignificant swamp creature, into an international celebrity.
International Man: Currently, over 18 million Americans are currently behind on their mortgage or rent payments.
That temporary suspension on evictions ends December 31st. What do you think will happen next?
Doug Casey: Just as with the financial markets, the government has no alternative but to “do something.” They will—they have to—print more money to keep the rotten house of cards from collapsing on itself.
The Democrats have already said that they want to increase the next stimulus to over $3 trillion. The fact that most of the last round of stimulus was either overtly wasted, went to cronies, or can’t be accounted for, is completely lost on them. They recognize that unless they give a lot of money directly or indirectly to the hoi polloi, there are going to be millions of them on the streets.
Approximately 11 million renters and 4 or 5 million mortgagees are now in forbearance. They’ll be kicked out of their houses and apartments come January 1, barring a huge bailout. Where are those people going to go?
If Obama had made good on his ridiculous promise about shovel-ready projects, there’d be a lot more bridges that they could camp out under. But he didn’t. They have a real problem on their hands. Millions of people have been living above their means and have no savings. At this point, if they let landlords and banks kick all those people out, a number of things will happen. Residential property prices will collapse. Millions of people will be scrambling for somewhere to live. Lots of banks and landlords would go bust.
The longer the government kicks the can down the road, the bigger the inevitable bust will be. The stimulus money will have to continue because Biden doesn’t want it all to come unglued on his watch. The State is not only going to have to pay individuals and business owners that their idiotic policies have busted. They’ll be subsidizing banks, landlords, and utility companies—because you can’t live in a house or an apartment without water and electricity. Swarovski Ocean Advent... Buy New $79.00 (as of 05:32 UTC - Details)
It’s worse than that because even if you cover the bare essentials, there’s no money leftover for maintenance. There will be millions of buildings across the country suffering from deferred maintenance. The South Bronx, East St. Louis, and Baltimore will be replicated across the country.
And no one’s talking about how to cover the real estate taxes due on these properties. Many local governments are already bankrupt. Their expenses are going way up even while their tax income collapses. The whole country has painted itself into a corner at this point. That’s what happens when you adopt a collectivist economic policy, as the Soviets, the Chinese, and scores of other countries have discovered.
I’m not sure how they’re going to get out of it because the economy itself has just started to collapse. Of course, they’ll print up more money because they see that as a solution when it’s actually a cause. It’s going to worsen the collapse.
International Man: For the tens of millions behind on their mortgage and rent payments, will their back rent and overdue payments ever be repaid?
Doug Casey: The government will not only have to pay the rent for the future, but it’s going to have to cover landlords’ previously unpaid rent—if they don’t want lots of bankrupt landlords and banks.
It will lead to a guaranteed annual income, which they’ve been thinking about for some time. In some cases, the government will take over properties. It’s nothing new. Most major US cities already have significant public housing. None of it’s good, but most isn’t as bad as Cabrini-Greene or Pruitt-Igoe.
Who knows where this daisy chain will lead? With all the unemployed people who can’t pay their rent, perhaps the government will develop something like national service. Then there will be millions more people working for the government, doing god knows what. It will lead to the socialization of society. Remember, this COVID hysteria is just the pin that broke the bubble. The Greater Depression was already in the cards. Americans will beg the government to cure it, which is guaranteed to make it vastly worse and longer-lasting and invite some charismatic authoritarian to be their savior and take charge.
International Man: Assuming the COVID hysteria and lockdowns are behind us in 2021, what lasting effects could we see taking place?
Doug Casey: It’s going to destroy the restaurant, retail, and travel industries all at once. SWAROVSKI Women’... Buy New $61.12 (as of 05:32 UTC - Details)
Stores, restaurants, and small businesses are always failing—maybe 15% of them annually— and new ones are starting up in normal times. It’s the circle of life. The problem is that about half of these businesses are failing all at once. That makes it much harder to recover.
The economy is a lot like a body. If you burn your finger, it hurts, but you’ll recover. But if you suffer burns on over 50% of your body all at once, it might kill you. That’s what we’re looking at right now.
Commercial real estate is another area that is going to be devastated because a lot of people will continue working at home and prefer it over working in an office.
Who knows what’s going to happen to all that commercial real estate and how it’s going to be repurposed. It’s certainly going to consume a huge amount of capital.
Another area that will change is schools. I would have been happy to have a year off from school because classes bored me. I would have read many more things on my own. But today, most kids don’t read books. Public school kids are lucky to absorb a few things by osmosis.
Now they’re mostly playing video games or are on social media—mostly doing nonproductive things on their computers at home. I don’t know the effect of not being able to associate with other kids.
For most kids, it may be damaging. On the bright side, many parents have decided that school is a waste of time and have started homeschooling their kids. That’s generally a positive thing.
Here’s the important thing, we don’t know how long this hysteria is going to last. People are so scared that they’ll be easy to control for fear of the next real or imagined virus that comes down the road. When people are scared and don’t know what to do, they will want somebody to kiss it and make it better.
So, I expect we’re heading towards a genuine strong man for president in the US, whether that’s Kamala Harris or somebody else. If the 2020 election was bad, the 2024 election would be worse.
Reprinted with permission from International Man.
The Best of Doug Casey


lewrockwell--2020-12-10--Was the Now-Forgotten Murder of One Man on September 9, 2001, a Crucial Pre-Condition for 9/11?

Peter Dale Scott , with assistance from Aaron Good , breaks new ground with this exclusive investigation into the two-decades-old assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud and may identify his murder as the green light—not only for Osama bin Laden ’ s attack on the World Trade Center—but also for the Bush/Cheney team ’ s long-planned invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq .
[ The following complex argument is organized around five salient historical developments preceding September 11 , 2001 : ( 1 ) the incremental penetration of American military , political , and economic power into Central Asia following the dissolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) the drafting in New York and London of the letter of introduction used by assassins to kill anti-Taliban leader Ahmed Shah Massoud , on September 9 , 2001 , ( 3 ) U.S. Government knowledge of the letter , ( 4 ) Massoud ’ s opposition to a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan , and ( 5 ) White House planning for military involvement in Afghanistan on September 10 , the day after Massoud ’ s murder and one day before 9/11 . ]
Hodedah HI70DR White C ... Buy New $ 149.99 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Asia , in the decade before 9/11 , are two major uncontested facts .
The first is that Central Asia was then of great interest to America because of suspected massive but unproven oil reserves in the region .
The second fact is that U.S. approaches to the region were “ stove-piped ” —an assessment of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld , later endorsed by the 9/11 Commission .
[ 1 ] This is to say that different agencies of the government had different policies , based on compartmentalized intelligence which they refused to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. attitudes toward Ahmed Shah Massoud , the leading anti-Taliban resistance leader .
Massoud was the chief of the Northern Alliance in the part of Afghanistan north of the Hindu Kush .
A Tajik known as “ the lion of Panjshir ” for his skill as a guerrilla fighter , he received support from the CIA beginning in the 1980s when he fought against the Soviet occupation .
[ 2 ] His assassination by Arab terrorists on September 9 , 2001 was a key event preceding the 9/11 attacks and an important precondition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ October 2001 .
MyGift Set of 3 Artifi ... Best Price : $ 26.13 Buy New $ 29.99 Much of what I will have to conjecture about that scenario will remain unproven , unless and until key pieces of evidence are declassified .
First among these would be the documentary history of National Security Presidential Directive ( NSPD ) 9 , the record of Clinton and Bush planning for operations in Afghanistan .
These were originally plans—including a “ Pol [ itical ] -Mil [ itary ] Plan ” —against bin Laden and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ released to the American public on October 25 , 2001 , NSPD-9 bore the global title “ Defeating the Terrorist Threat to the United States .
”

Peter Dale Scott, with assistance from Aaron Good, breaks new ground with this exclusive investigation into the two-decades-old assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud and may identify his murder as the green light—not only for Osama bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Center—but also for the Bush/Cheney team’s long-planned invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
[The following complex argument is organized around five salient historical developments preceding September 11, 2001: (1) the incremental penetration of American military, political, and economic power into Central Asia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, (2) the drafting in New York and London of the letter of introduction used by assassins to kill anti-Taliban leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, on September 9, 2001, (3) U.S. Government knowledge of the letter, (4) Massoud’s opposition to a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and (5) White House planning for military involvement in Afghanistan on September 10, the day after Massoud’s murder and one day before 9/11.] Hodedah HI70DR White C... Buy New $149.99 (as of 05:37 UTC - Details)
Underlying the complex U.S. covert intrigues in Asia, in the decade before 9/11, are two major uncontested facts. The first is that Central Asia was then of great interest to America because of suspected massive but unproven oil reserves in the region. The second fact is that U.S. approaches to the region were “stove-piped”—an assessment of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, later endorsed by the 9/11 Commission.[1] This is to say that different agencies of the government had different policies, based on compartmentalized intelligence which they refused to share.
This stove-piping led to conflicting U.S. attitudes toward Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leading anti-Taliban resistance leader. Massoud was the chief of the Northern Alliance in the part of Afghanistan north of the Hindu Kush. A Tajik known as “the lion of Panjshir” for his skill as a guerrilla fighter, he received support from the CIA beginning in the 1980s when he fought against the Soviet occupation.[2] His assassination by Arab terrorists on September 9, 2001 was a key event preceding the 9/11 attacks and an important precondition for the U.S.-NATO invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. MyGift Set of 3 Artifi... Best Price: $26.13 Buy New $29.99 (as of 04:37 UTC - Details)
Much of what I will have to conjecture about that scenario will remain unproven, unless and until key pieces of evidence are declassified. First among these would be the documentary history of National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 9, the record of Clinton and Bush planning for operations in Afghanistan.
These were originally plans—including a “Pol[itical]-Mil[itary] Plan”—against bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. But when finally released to the American public on October 25, 2001, NSPD-9 bore the global title “Defeating the Terrorist Threat to the United States.”
Read the Whole Article


lewrockwell--2020-12-10--That Touch of ‘Mank’

That Touch of ‘Mank’

The best movie comedies of the 1930s were largely written by former newspaper reporters who had also tried their hand at writing for the New York stage before being seduced by Hollywood ’ s sunshine and lucre .
Today , we think of journalists as PR staffers for the conventional wisdom , killjoys intent on instructing us in the appropriate tone with which to regard the passing parade .
But reporters a century ago , as former Chicago newsman Ben Hecht explained , were of a less dignified social stratum : “ They sat , grown and abuzz , outside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ windows.
” Now showing on Netflix is the biopic Mank by ace director David Fincher ( Seven , Fight Club , The Social Network ) , the story of how the dean of Hollywood ’ s ex-journalists Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote the screenplay of the most famous newspaper movie , Citizen Kane .
Amazon eGift Card - Ch ... Buy New $ 50.00 In the mid-1920s , Hecht , who co-wrote with Charles MacArthur the influential newspaper play The Front Page ( which received its most perfect movie incarnation in 1940 as His @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Broadway journalist Mankiewicz the most quoted telegram in showbiz legend : During the lucrative transition to the talkies , Mankiewicz lured many of his New York gambling buddies to write movies with him , an assemblage Pauline Kael called “ some of the most talented alcoholics this country has ever produced.
” She went on in her 1971 essay “ Raising Kane ” to explain : Mankiewicz and his pals became enormously successful dialogue writers , but tended to burn out young ( although his more reliable younger brother Joe enjoyed a long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1950 before being ruined by Cleopatra in the early 1960s ) .
Writers , while extraordinarily well paid under the movie studio system , were treated as disposable technicians by the executives .
Relays of writers were assigned to work on scripts in sequence .
For example , Markiewicz was one of ten writers on The Wizard of Oz , contributing the key idea that Kansas should be filmed in black and white and Oz in color , before moving on without a credit .
This was a huge comedown in status @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role of New York playwrights , who in the 1919 Broadway strike had won extraordinary intellectual-property rights over their plays .
To this day , playwrights get to veto casting choices in any production anywhere , even after they are dead .
For instance , in 2017 , the estate of Edward Albee denied a producer in Portland the right to put on Who ’ s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?
in a 35-seat micro-theater on the grounds that the late Albee wouldn ’ t have wanted a black actor cast in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they joke about the blond starlet who was so dumb she slept with the writer , but Marilyn Monroe married playwright Arthur Miller .
In the theater , the writer is , contractually , The Man .
Mankiewicz was said to be the highest-paid writer in Hollywood during the early 1930s , and his wit made him a regular at the San Simeon dinner table of William Randolph Hearst , America ’ s most powerful newspaper baron .
But then his drinking , the accompanying car crashes and falls , and his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1940 he had been reduced to ghostwriting radio dramas for young Orson Welles when he suggested writing a biopic of Hearst for Welles ’ movie debut .
NOMA Pre-lit 24-Inch L ... Buy New $ 47.99 Hearst was a big man , so Mankiewicz repaying his hospitality this way was fair game .
But his treatment of Hearst ’ s mistress , actress Marion Davies , was deplorable .
Citizen Kane portrays her as a talentless shrew , when in reality she was a delightful comedienne beloved by San Simeon ’ s endless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a black-and-white period piece for grown-ups starring Gary Oldman , has been one of the more anticipated movies of this blighted year .
Amanda Seyfried lights up the flat screen as Marion Davies , but otherwise it ’ s a little disappointing .
( Of course , I ’ m not even all that much of a Citizen Kane fan : To me , Mankiewicz ’ s wisecracking script and Gregg Toland ’ s German Expressionist horror-movie camerawork are individually impressive , but don ’ t meld well . )

The best movie comedies of the 1930s were largely written by former newspaper reporters who had also tried their hand at writing for the New York stage before being seduced by Hollywood’s sunshine and lucre.
Today, we think of journalists as PR staffers for the conventional wisdom, killjoys intent on instructing us in the appropriate tone with which to regard the passing parade. But reporters a century ago, as former Chicago newsman Ben Hecht explained, were of a less dignified social stratum: “They sat, grown and abuzz, outside an adult civilization, intent on breaking windows.”
Now showing on Netflix is the biopic Mank by ace director David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network), the story of how the dean of Hollywood’s ex-journalists Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote the screenplay of the most famous newspaper movie, Citizen Kane. Amazon eGift Card - Ch... Buy New $50.00 (as of 05:38 UTC - Details)
In the mid-1920s, Hecht, who co-wrote with Charles MacArthur the influential newspaper play The Front Page (which received its most perfect movie incarnation in 1940 as His Girl Friday), received from former Broadway journalist Mankiewicz the most quoted telegram in showbiz legend:
Will you accept three hundred per week to work for Paramount Pictures? All expenses paid. The three hundred is peanuts. Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.
During the lucrative transition to the talkies, Mankiewicz lured many of his New York gambling buddies to write movies with him, an assemblage Pauline Kael called “some of the most talented alcoholics this country has ever produced.” She went on in her 1971 essay “Raising Kane” to explain:
Mankiewicz spearheaded the movement of that whole Broadway style of wisecracking, fast-talking, cynical-sentimental entertainment onto the national scene.
Mankiewicz and his pals became enormously successful dialogue writers, but tended to burn out young (although his more reliable younger brother Joe enjoyed a long career, peaking with All About Eve in 1950 before being ruined by Cleopatra in the early 1960s).
Writers, while extraordinarily well paid under the movie studio system, were treated as disposable technicians by the executives. Relays of writers were assigned to work on scripts in sequence. For example, Markiewicz was one of ten writers on The Wizard of Oz, contributing the key idea that Kansas should be filmed in black and white and Oz in color, before moving on without a credit.
This was a huge comedown in status and creative control compared with the exalted role of New York playwrights, who in the 1919 Broadway strike had won extraordinary intellectual-property rights over their plays. To this day, playwrights get to veto casting choices in any production anywhere, even after they are dead. For instance, in 2017, the estate of Edward Albee denied a producer in Portland the right to put on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in a 35-seat micro-theater on the grounds that the late Albee wouldn’t have wanted a black actor cast in a white role.
In the movie industry, they joke about the blond starlet who was so dumb she slept with the writer, but Marilyn Monroe married playwright Arthur Miller. In the theater, the writer is, contractually, The Man.
Mankiewicz was said to be the highest-paid writer in Hollywood during the early 1930s, and his wit made him a regular at the San Simeon dinner table of William Randolph Hearst, America’s most powerful newspaper baron.
But then his drinking, the accompanying car crashes and falls, and his self-destructive cynicism damaged his reputation. By 1940 he had been reduced to ghostwriting radio dramas for young Orson Welles when he suggested writing a biopic of Hearst for Welles’ movie debut.
NOMA Pre-lit 24-Inch L... Buy New $47.99 (as of 05:38 UTC - Details) Hearst was a big man, so Mankiewicz repaying his hospitality this way was fair game. But his treatment of Hearst’s mistress, actress Marion Davies, was deplorable. Citizen Kane portrays her as a talentless shrew, when in reality she was a delightful comedienne beloved by San Simeon’s endless roster of superstar guests.
Kael sums up the irony:
And so Hearst, the yellow-press lord who had trained Mankiewicz’s generation of reporters to betray anyone for a story, became at last the victim of his own style of journalism.
Mank, a black-and-white period piece for grown-ups starring Gary Oldman, has been one of the more anticipated movies of this blighted year.
Amanda Seyfried lights up the flat screen as Marion Davies, but otherwise it’s a little disappointing. (Of course, I’m not even all that much of a Citizen Kane fan: To me, Mankiewicz’s wisecracking script and Gregg Toland’s German Expressionist horror-movie camerawork are individually impressive, but don’t meld well.)
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lewrockwell--2020-12-10--Spilling Ink and Spilling Blood

Spilling Ink and Spilling Blood

If you have a moment , how about joining two retired officers , Bill Astore and me , Danny Sjursen , as we think about this country ’ s catastrophic forever wars that , regardless of their deadly costs and lack of progress , never seem quite to end ?
Recently , in a podcast chat about our very different but somehow twin journeys through those wars , he and I got to thinking about what might have happened if our paths had crossed so much earlier .
Both of us , after all , have been writing for TomDispatch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to me , thinking about his post-military writing career , “ You know , Danny , in my small way I was trying — and failing — to stop the wars you were heading into.
” Now that ’ s an interesting , if disturbing , thought .
But Bill , what would you have said to Lieutenant Danny ( that was me once upon a time ! )
and how might he have responded then ?
Who could know now , of course ?
Still , here ’ s our retrospective attempt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which we track about 15 years ’ worth of this country ’ s unending wars .
HEYHOUSE Wreath Hanger ... Buy New $ 21.99 The Frankenstein and Star Trek Years of American War Bill : When you were graduating from West Point in 2005 and shining your lieutenant ’ s bars , Danny , I was putting my uniform away after 20 years in the Air Force and driving to Pennsylvania for a new career as a history professor .
I thought I ’ d teach and maybe write a book or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a dissenter , and I ’ d never spoken out publicly against the wars we were in .
The one time I was interviewed about them , in 2005 when I was still the military dean of students at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey , I remember saying that I preferred our troops use words rather than rifle butts to communicate with the Afghans and Iraqis .
Of course , we had so few troops who spoke Arabic or Pashto or Dari that we leaned on our rifles instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alienated people in both countries .
In the summer of 2007 , I was increasingly disgusted by the way the administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney was hiding behind the bemedaled chest of Iraq commander General David Petraeus .
Our civilian commander-in-chief , George W. , was avoiding responsibility for the disastrous Iraq War by sending Petraeus , then known as the “ surge ” general , before Congress to testify that some sort of victory was still possible , even as he hedged his talk of progress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ reversible.
” So I got off my butt and wrote an article that argued we needed to end the Iraq War and our folly of “ spilling blood and treasure with such reckless abandon.
” I submitted it to newspapers like the New York Times with no success .
Fortunately , a friend told me about TomDispatch , where Tom Engelhardt had been publishing critical articles by retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich .
Luckily for me , Tom liked my piece and published it as “ Saving the Military from Itself ” in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ article put me on the path of dissent from America ’ s forever wars , even if I wasn ’ t so much antiwar as anti-dumb-war then .
As I asked at the time , how do you win someone else ’ s civil war ?
Being a Star Trek fan , I referred to the Kobayashi Maru , a “ no-win ” scenario introduced in the second Star Trek movie .
I saw our troops , young lieutenants like yourself in Iraq , being stuck in a no-win situation and I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much Petraeus talked about “ metrics ” and “ progress , ” it wasn ’ t going to happen , that “ winning ” really meant leaving , and we haven ’ t won yet since , god help us , we ’ re still there .
Best Choice Products 4 ... Best Price : $ 178.99 Buy New $ 109.99 Of course , the so-called surge in Iraq back then did what it was actually meant to do .
It provided an illusion of progress and stability even while proving just as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said it would be .
Worse yet , the myth of that Iraqi surge would lead disastrously to the Afghan version of the same under Barack Obama and — yet again — Petraeus who would prove to be a general for all presidents .
Lucky you !
You were on the ground in both surges , weren ’ t you ?
Danny : I sure was !
Believe it or not , a colonel once told me I was lucky to have done “ line duty ” in both of them — platoon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Baghdad and Kandahar .
To be honest , Bill , I knew something was fishy even before you retired or I graduated from West Point and headed for those wars .
In fact , it ’ s funny that you should mention Bacevich .
I was first introduced to his work in the winter of 2004 as a West Point senior by then-Lieutenant Colonel Ty Seidule .
Back then , for a guy like me , Bacevich had what could only be called bracing antiwar views ( a wink-nod to your Bracing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ classroom of burgeoning neocons just about certain to head for Iraq .
Frankly , most of us couldn ’ t wait to go .
And we wouldn ’ t have that long to wait either .
The first of our classmates to die , Emily Perez , was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb in September 2006 within 18 months of graduation ( and five more were to die in the years to come ) .
I took a scout platoon to southeast Baghdad a month later and we didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is — for 15 months .
My partly Bacevich-bred sneaking suspicions about America ’ s no-longer distant wars were , of course , all confirmed .
It turned out that policing an ethno-religious-sectarian conflict , mostly of our own country ’ s making , while dodging counter-counterinsurgent attacks aimed at expelling us occupiers from that country was as tough as stateside invasion opponents had predicted .
On lonely outpost mornings , I had a nasty daily habit of reading the names of our announced dead .
Midway through my tour , one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ J. Bacevich .
When I saw that name , I realized instantly that he must be the son of the man whose book I had read two years earlier , the man who is now our colleague .
The moment remains painfully crystal clear in my memory .
COCOBOO 22 Inches Chri ... Buy New $ 45.99 By the way , Bill , your Iraq War take was dead on .
During my own tour there , I came to the same realization .
Embarrassingly enough , though , it took me seven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in my first book , fittingly subtitled “ The Myth of the Surge.
” By then , of course , ISIS — the Frankenstein ’ s monster of America ’ s misadventure — was already streaming across Syria ’ s synthetic borders and conquering swaths of northern and western Iraq , which made an anti-Iraq War screed seem quaint indeed , at least in establishment circles .
But Bill , do go on .
Bill : It was also back in 2007 when something John McCain said on PBS really ticked me off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if the U.S. military lost in Iraq , it wouldn ’ t be the generals ’ fault .
No , it would be ours , those of us who had questioned the war and its conduct and so had broken faith with that very military .
In response , I wrote a piece at TomDispatch with the sarcastic title , “ If We Lose Iraq , You ’ re to Blame , ” because I already found such “ stab-in-the-back ” lies pernicious beyond words .
As Andy Bacevich noted recently when it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American military disaster : we didn ’ t lose the Vietnam War in 1975 when Saigon fell , we lost it in 1965 when President Johnson committed American troops to winning a civil war that South Vietnam had already lost .
Something similar is true for the Iraq and Afghan wars today .
We won ’ t lose those conflicts when we finally pull all U.S. troops out and the situation goes south ( as it most likely will ) .
No , we lost the Afghan War in 2002 when we decided @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and al-Qaeda into an occupation of that country ; and we lost the Iraq War the moment we invaded in 2003 and found none of the weapons of mass destruction that Bush and his top officials had sworn were there .
Those were wars of choice , not of necessity , and we could only “ win ” them by finally choosing to end them .
We lose them — and maybe our democracy as well — by choosing to keep on waging them in the false cause of “ stability ” or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Early in 2009 , I had an epiphany of sorts while walking around a cemetery .
With those constant deployments to Iraq , Afghanistan , and dozens of other countries globally , the U.S. military , I thought , was becoming a foreign legion , almost like the quintessential French version of the same , increasingly separated from the people , and increasingly recruited from “ foreign ” elements , including recent immigrants to this country looking for a fast-track to citizenship .
N/J Christmas Wreath D ... Buy New $ 16.99 Danny @ @ @ @ @ @ @ soldiers fit the mold you just mentioned .
Private First Class Gustavo Rios-Ordonez , a married father of two and a Colombian national .
Partly seeking citizenship through service , he was the last trooper to join my command just before we shipped out and the first killed when , on June 20 , 2011 , he stepped on an improvised explosive device within sight of the Afghan outpost I then commanded .
Typing this now , I stare at a framed dusty unit guidon , the pennant that once flew over that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gifted to me by my soldiers .
Bill : So I wrote an article that asked if our military was morphing into an imperial police force .
As I put it then : “ Foreign as in being constantly deployed overseas on imperial errands ; foreign as in being ever more reliant on private military contractors ; foreign as in being increasingly segregated from the elites that profit most from its actions , yet serve the least in its ranks.
” And I added , “ Now would be a good time to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , our troops are currently fighting and dying in the urban jungles of Iraq and the hostile hills of Afghanistan.
” A few people torched me for writing that .
They thought I was saying that the troops themselves were somehow foreign , that I was attacking the rank-and-file , but my intent was to attack those who were misusing the military for their own purposes and agendas and all the other Americans who were acquiescing in the misuse of our troops .
It ’ s a strange dynamic in this country , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supporting our troops without ourselves having to serve or even pay attention to what they ’ re doing .
Indeed , under George W. Bush , we were even discouraged from commemorating the honored dead , denied seeing footage of returning flag-draped caskets .
We were to celebrate our troops , while they ( especially the dead and wounded ) were kept out of sight — literally behind curtains , by Bush administration order — and so mostly out of mind .
I was against the Afghan surge , Danny , because I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unsustainable .
In arguing that case , I reached back to the writings of two outspoken opponents of the Vietnam War , Norman Mailer and Mary McCarthy .
As President Obama deliberated on whether to surge or not , I suggested that he should confer with broadminded critics outside the government , tough-minded freethinkers cut from the cloth of Mailer and McCarthy .
Mailer , for example , had argued that the Vietnamese were “ faceless ” to Americans ( just as the Iraqis and Afghans have been all these years ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a people and cared even less .
He saw American intervention in “ heart of darkness ” terms .
McCarthy was even blunter , condemning as “ wicked ” the government ’ s technocentric and hegemonic form of warfare with its “ absolute indifference to the cost in human lives.
” Predictably , Obama listened to conventional wisdom and surged again , first under General Stanley McChrystal and then , of course , under Petraeus .
Danny : Well , Bill , paltry as it may now sound , I truly thank you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decency — even if those efforts didn ’ t quite spare me the displeasure of a second stint in a second theater with Petraeus as my supreme commander for a second time .
By the way , I ran into King David ( as he came to be known ) last year in a long line for the urinals at Newark airport .
Like you , I ’ ve been tearing the guy ’ s philosophy and policies up for years .
Still , I decided decorum mattered , so I introduced myself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once at a Baghdad base in 2007 .
But before I could even kid him about how his staff had insisted that we stock ample kiwi slices because he loved to devour them , Petraeus suddenly walked off without even making it to the stall !
I found it confusing behavior until I glimpsed myself in the mirror and remembered that I was wearing an “ Iraq Veterans Against the War ” t-shirt .
Okay , here ’ s a more instructive anecdote : Have I ever mentioned to you that my Afghan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was then known , featured prominently in the late journalist Michael Hasting ’ s classic book , The Operators ( which inspired the Netflix original movie War Machine ) ?
At one point , Hastings describes how Petraeus ’ s predecessor in Afghanistan , Stanley McChrystal , visited an isolated base full of war-weary and war-exasperated infantrymen .
In one of the resident platoons , all but seven of its 25 original members had “ been killed , wounded , or lost their minds.
” And yes , that was the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of years later , an outpost the Taliban was then attacking almost daily .
By the time I took up the cause of “ Enduring Freedom ” ( as the Afghan operation had been dubbed by the Pentagon ) , I had already resigned myself to being one of those foreign legionnaires you ’ ve talked about , if not an outright mercenary .
During the Afghan surge , I fought for pay , healthcare , a future West Point faculty slot , and lack of a better alternative ( or alternate identity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough : patrol as little as possible , kill as few locals as you can , and make sure that one day you ’ ll walk ( as many of my scouts literally did ) out of that valley called Arghandab .
I was in a dark headspace then .
I didn ’ t believe a damn thing my own side said , held out not an ounce of hope for victory , and couldn ’ t even be bothered to hate my “ enemy.
” On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sent a Reuters reporter deep into the boonies to profile the only commander around from the New York City area and I told him just what I thought , or close enough in any case .
Suffice it to say that my colonels were less than pleased when Captain Sjursen was quoted as saying that “ the war was anything but personal ” and that he never “ thought about 9/11 at all ” or when he described the Taliban this way : “ It ’ s farm-boys picking up guns .
How @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that article now , I feel a certain sadness for that long-gone self of mine , so lost in fatalism , hopelessness , and near-nihilism .
Then I catch myself and think : imagine how the Afghans felt , especially since they didn ’ t have a distant home to scurry off to sooner or later .
Anyway , I never forgot that it was Obama — from whom I ’ d sought Iraq War salvation — who ordered my troops on that even more absurd Afghan surge to nowhere ( and I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forgiven him either ) .
Still , if there was a silver lining in all that senselessness , perhaps it was that such a bipartisan betrayal widened both the breadth and depth of my future dissent .
Bill : Speaking of surges , Danny , even the word is a military misnomer .
It ’ s dishonest .
Real generals advance and retreat .
They reinforce .
They win ( or lose ) .
They occupy the battlefield .
Lines move on maps .
Foes are beaten and surrender .
None of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ generals just added more troops to exert temporary control over an area in what was nothing more than a fallacious face-saving gesture .
A mask .
A conceit .
All those surges did was sustain a losing cause and reinforce failure .
Consider them a fundamental mistake of military strategy , like throwing good money after bad or doubling down on a losing hand .
Why didn ’ t they listen to me ?
Why didn ’ t they stop the Iraq and Afghan surges and end those wars ?
And now that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re both in the Eisenhower Media Network ( EMN ) you organized , continuing to speak out against the twenty-first-century American way of making war , why do they still not listen to us ?
I fear that the answer ’ s simple enough : they have a trillion reasons not to .
After all , roughly a trillion-plus dollars is spent each year on the Pentagon , on so-called homeland security , on nuclear weapons , on intelligence and surveillance , on buying weaponry and then more of the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they listen to us ?
We threaten their bottom line , their profits .
And why should we get invites to CNN and MSNBC and other mainstream media sites when they already have Pentagon cheerleaders on their staffs and retired senior officers who spout the party line , as journalist David Barstow revealed in his Pulitzer-award-winning series ?
We aren ’ t really in EMN , Danny , we ’ re in the IMF , the impossible missions force .
I remember reading old newspapers from the 1930s that were quite blunt about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ profit motive out of it .
That was when the standing U.S. military was fairly small and Americans were skeptical of weapons makers , the “ merchants of death ” as they were so rightly called back then .
Almost a century later , we ’ re the leading merchant of death , the country that arms the world .
Domestically , we ’ re awash in weaponry , with a gun for every American and a mini-tank for every police force .
I ’ ve attacked this creeping militarism , this degradation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ success .
So welcome to the IMF from the classic TV show Mission Impossible .
Unless we smarten up and end these perpetual wars , this democracy will self-destruct in five seconds .
The odds are long , but it ’ s a mission we just have to accept .
Danny : I couldn ’ t agree more , Bill .
The militarism problem is cyclical and systemic with a backstory that ’ s sure to ping our shared historian ’ s radar .
I hinted at this two months ago in remarks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Butler ’ s graveside ( the former major general I wrote about at TomDispatch in February ) .
Highlighting his prophetic aspect , I noted that the two-time Medal of Honor-recipient had diagnosed core components of the military-industrial complex a quarter of a century before our new organization ’ s namesake , former president Dwight D. Eisenhower , coined the term in his Cassandra-like 1961 farewell address .
If that isn ’ t proof our forever-war problems are systemic rather than discrete , I don ’ t know what is .
That short @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 19th anniversary of our absurd Afghan War , the conflict you couldn ’ t singlehandedly stop in time to save me from a second surge excursion .
Anyway , don ’ t beat yourself up about that , Bill .
Like you said , the war-state beast is humongous and our buddy Bacevich has been beating this drum since you were still wearing Air Force blue .
Under the circumstances and in these pandemic times , what could be more appropriate than a buck-up from that ever-cheery French novelist of plagues and philosopher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is enough to fill a man ’ s heart.
” And you won ’ t believe this , but I had to stop there a moment to field a tortured text from an ex-student of mine turned Army lieutenant who ’ s now straddling those spheres of doubt and dissent that you and I know all too well .
You may recall that I penned a piece last year for our mutual friend Tom Engelhardt on “ Watching My Students Turn Into Soldiers of Empire.
” Damned if that wasn ’ t a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think of it , that must be precisely the feeling of failure you ’ ve described in our recent correspondence .
Well , at least the military dissent gestation period seems to be shortening .
I commissioned exactly 20 years after you .
The last crop of cadets from the freshman history class I taught at West Point after I returned from those wars were just 15 years behind me and some of them are now in doubt deep .
The thing is , I fear you ’ re a better man than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can see the script that ’ s coming down the dusty and well-trodden trail , but I ’ m not sure I could stomach writing a co-column with one of those kids — let alone attending one of their funerals .
I guess we old hands had better get to work .
In the battle against endless war , our motto has to be : no retreat , no surrender .

If you have a moment, how about joining two retired officers, Bill Astore and me, Danny Sjursen, as we think about this country’s catastrophic forever wars that, regardless of their deadly costs and lack of progress, never seem quite to end?
Recently, in a podcast chat about our very different but somehow twin journeys through those wars, he and I got to thinking about what might have happened if our paths had crossed so much earlier. Both of us, after all, have been writing for TomDispatch for years. As Bill once said to me, thinking about his post-military writing career, “You know, Danny, in my small way I was trying — and failing — to stop the wars you were heading into.”
Now that’s an interesting, if disturbing, thought. But Bill, what would you have said to Lieutenant Danny (that was me once upon a time!) and how might he have responded then?
Who could know now, of course? Still, here’s our retrospective attempt to sort that out in joint correspondence in which we track about 15 years’ worth of this country’s unending wars. HEYHOUSE Wreath Hanger... Buy New $21.99 (as of 05:39 UTC - Details)
The Frankenstein and Star Trek Years of American War
Bill: When you were graduating from West Point in 2005 and shining your lieutenant’s bars, Danny, I was putting my uniform away after 20 years in the Air Force and driving to Pennsylvania for a new career as a history professor. I thought I’d teach and maybe write a book or two. I never pictured myself as a dissenter, and I’d never spoken out publicly against the wars we were in. The one time I was interviewed about them, in 2005 when I was still the military dean of students at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey, I remember saying that I preferred our troops use words rather than rifle butts to communicate with the Afghans and Iraqis. Of course, we had so few troops who spoke Arabic or Pashto or Dari that we leaned on our rifles instead, which meant lots of dead and alienated people in both countries.
In the summer of 2007, I was increasingly disgusted by the way the administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney was hiding behind the bemedaled chest of Iraq commander General David Petraeus. Our civilian commander-in-chief, George W., was avoiding responsibility for the disastrous Iraq War by sending Petraeus, then known as the “surge” general, before Congress to testify that some sort of victory was still possible, even as he hedged his talk of progress with words like “fragile” and “reversible.”
So I got off my butt and wrote an article that argued we needed to end the Iraq War and our folly of “spilling blood and treasure with such reckless abandon.” I submitted it to newspapers like the New York Times with no success. Fortunately, a friend told me about TomDispatch, where Tom Engelhardt had been publishing critical articles by retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich. Luckily for me, Tom liked my piece and published it as “Saving the Military from Itself” in October of that same year.
That article put me on the path of dissent from America’s forever wars, even if I wasn’t so much antiwar as anti-dumb-war then. As I asked at the time, how do you win someone else’s civil war? Being a Star Trek fan, I referred to the Kobayashi Maru, a “no-win” scenario introduced in the second Star Trek movie. I saw our troops, young lieutenants like yourself in Iraq, being stuck in a no-win situation and I was already convinced that, no matter how much Petraeus talked about “metrics” and “progress,” it wasn’t going to happen, that “winning” really meant leaving, and we haven’t won yet since, god help us, we’re still there. Best Choice Products 4... Best Price: $178.99 Buy New $109.99 (as of 05:39 UTC - Details)
Of course, the so-called surge in Iraq back then did what it was actually meant to do. It provided an illusion of progress and stability even while proving just as fragile and reversible as the weaselly Petraeus said it would be. Worse yet, the myth of that Iraqi surge would lead disastrously to the Afghan version of the same under Barack Obama and — yet again — Petraeus who would prove to be a general for all presidents.
Lucky you! You were on the ground in both surges, weren’t you?
Danny: I sure was! Believe it or not, a colonel once told me I was lucky to have done “line duty” in both of them — platoon and company command, Iraq and Afghanistan, Baghdad and Kandahar. To be honest, Bill, I knew something was fishy even before you retired or I graduated from West Point and headed for those wars.
In fact, it’s funny that you should mention Bacevich. I was first introduced to his work in the winter of 2004 as a West Point senior by then-Lieutenant Colonel Ty Seidule. Back then, for a guy like me, Bacevich had what could only be called bracing antiwar views (a wink-nod to your Bracing Views blog, Bill) for a classroom of burgeoning neocons just about certain to head for Iraq. Frankly, most of us couldn’t wait to go.
And we wouldn’t have that long to wait either. The first of our classmates to die, Emily Perez, was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb in September 2006 within 18 months of graduation (and five more were to die in the years to come). I took a scout platoon to southeast Baghdad a month later and we didn’t leave — most of us, that is — for 15 months.
My partly Bacevich-bred sneaking suspicions about America’s no-longer distant wars were, of course, all confirmed. It turned out that policing an ethno-religious-sectarian conflict, mostly of our own country’s making, while dodging counter-counterinsurgent attacks aimed at expelling us occupiers from that country was as tough as stateside invasion opponents had predicted.
On lonely outpost mornings, I had a nasty daily habit of reading the names of our announced dead. Midway through my tour, one of those countless attacks killed 1st Lt. Andrew J. Bacevich. When I saw that name, I realized instantly that he must be the son of the man whose book I had read two years earlier, the man who is now our colleague. The moment remains painfully crystal clear in my memory. COCOBOO 22 Inches Chri... Buy New $45.99 (as of 05:39 UTC - Details)
By the way, Bill, your Iraq War take was dead on. During my own tour there, I came to the same realization. Embarrassingly enough, though, it took me seven years to say the same things publicly in my first book, fittingly subtitled “The Myth of the Surge.” By then, of course, ISIS — the Frankenstein’s monster of America’s misadventure — was already streaming across Syria’s synthetic borders and conquering swaths of northern and western Iraq, which made an anti-Iraq War screed seem quaint indeed, at least in establishment circles.
But Bill, do go on.
Bill: It was also back in 2007 when something John McCain said on PBS really ticked me off. In essence, he warned that if the U.S. military lost in Iraq, it wouldn’t be the generals’ fault. No, it would be ours, those of us who had questioned the war and its conduct and so had broken faith with that very military. In response, I wrote a piece at TomDispatch with the sarcastic title, “If We Lose Iraq, You’re to Blame,” because I already found such “stab-in-the-back” lies pernicious beyond words. As Andy Bacevich noted recently when it came to such lies about an earlier American military disaster: we didn’t lose the Vietnam War in 1975 when Saigon fell, we lost it in 1965 when President Johnson committed American troops to winning a civil war that South Vietnam had already lost.
Something similar is true for the Iraq and Afghan wars today. We won’t lose those conflicts when we finally pull all U.S. troops out and the situation goes south (as it most likely will). No, we lost the Afghan War in 2002 when we decided to turn a strike against the Taliban and al-Qaeda into an occupation of that country; and we lost the Iraq War the moment we invaded in 2003 and found none of the weapons of mass destruction that Bush and his top officials had sworn were there. Those were wars of choice, not of necessity, and we could only “win” them by finally choosing to end them. We lose them — and maybe our democracy as well — by choosing to keep on waging them in the false cause of “stability” or “counterterrorism,” or you-name-it.
Early in 2009, I had an epiphany of sorts while walking around a cemetery. With those constant deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and dozens of other countries globally, the U.S. military, I thought, was becoming a foreign legion, almost like the quintessential French version of the same, increasingly separated from the people, and increasingly recruited from “foreign” elements, including recent immigrants to this country looking for a fast-track to citizenship. N/J Christmas Wreath D... Buy New $16.99 (as of 05:39 UTC - Details)
Danny: Bill, one of my own soldiers fit the mold you just mentioned. Private First Class Gustavo Rios-Ordonez, a married father of two and a Colombian national. Partly seeking citizenship through service, he was the last trooper to join my command just before we shipped out and the first killed when, on June 20, 2011, he stepped on an improvised explosive device within sight of the Afghan outpost I then commanded. Typing this now, I stare at a framed dusty unit guidon, the pennant that once flew over that isolated sandbagged base of ours and was gifted to me by my soldiers.
Sorry, Bill, last interruption… scout’s honor!
Surges to Nowhere
Bill: So I wrote an article that asked if our military was morphing into an imperial police force. As I put it then: “Foreign as in being constantly deployed overseas on imperial errands; foreign as in being ever more reliant on private military contractors; foreign as in being increasingly segregated from the elites that profit most from its actions, yet serve the least in its ranks.” And I added, “Now would be a good time to ask exactly why, and for whom, our troops are currently fighting and dying in the urban jungles of Iraq and the hostile hills of Afghanistan.”
A few people torched me for writing that. They thought I was saying that the troops themselves were somehow foreign, that I was attacking the rank-and-file, but my intent was to attack those who were misusing the military for their own purposes and agendas and all the other Americans who were acquiescing in the misuse of our troops. It’s a strange dynamic in this country, the way we’re cajoled into supporting our troops without ourselves having to serve or even pay attention to what they’re doing.
Indeed, under George W. Bush, we were even discouraged from commemorating the honored dead, denied seeing footage of returning flag-draped caskets. We were to celebrate our troops, while they (especially the dead and wounded) were kept out of sight — literally behind curtains, by Bush administration order — and so mostly out of mind.
I was against the Afghan surge, Danny, because I knew it would be both futile and unsustainable. In arguing that case, I reached back to the writings of two outspoken opponents of the Vietnam War, Norman Mailer and Mary McCarthy. As President Obama deliberated on whether to surge or not, I suggested that he should confer with broadminded critics outside the government, tough-minded freethinkers cut from the cloth of Mailer and McCarthy.
Mailer, for example, had argued that the Vietnamese were “faceless” to Americans (just as the Iraqis and Afghans have been all these years), that we knew little about them as a people and cared even less. He saw American intervention in “heart of darkness” terms. McCarthy was even blunter, condemning as “wicked” the government’s technocentric and hegemonic form of warfare with its “absolute indifference to the cost in human lives.” Predictably, Obama listened to conventional wisdom and surged again, first under General Stanley McChrystal and then, of course, under Petraeus.
Danny: Well, Bill, paltry as it may now sound, I truly thank you for your post-service service to sensibility and decency — even if those efforts didn’t quite spare me the displeasure of a second stint in a second theater with Petraeus as my supreme commander for a second time.
By the way, I ran into King David (as he came to be known) last year in a long line for the urinals at Newark airport. Like you, I’ve been tearing the guy’s philosophy and policies up for years. Still, I decided decorum mattered, so I introduced myself and mentioned that we’d met once at a Baghdad base in 2007. But before I could even kid him about how his staff had insisted that we stock ample kiwi slices because he loved to devour them, Petraeus suddenly walked off without even making it to the stall! I found it confusing behavior until I glimpsed myself in the mirror and remembered that I was wearing an “Iraq Veterans Against the War” t-shirt.
Okay, here’s a more instructive anecdote: Have I ever mentioned to you that my Afghan outpost, “Pashmul South” as it was then known, featured prominently in the late journalist Michael Hasting’s classic book, The Operators (which inspired the Netflix original movie War Machine)? At one point, Hastings describes how Petraeus’s predecessor in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, visited an isolated base full of war-weary and war-exasperated infantrymen. In one of the resident platoons, all but seven of its 25 original members had “been killed, wounded, or lost their minds.” And yes, that was the “palace” I took over a couple of years later, an outpost the Taliban was then attacking almost daily.
By the time I took up the cause of “Enduring Freedom” (as the Afghan operation had been dubbed by the Pentagon), I had already resigned myself to being one of those foreign legionnaires you’ve talked about, if not an outright mercenary. During the Afghan surge, I fought for pay, healthcare, a future West Point faculty slot, and lack of a better alternative (or alternate identity). My principles then were simple enough: patrol as little as possible, kill as few locals as you can, and make sure that one day you’ll walk (as many of my scouts literally did) out of that valley called Arghandab.
I was in a dark headspace then. I didn’t believe a damn thing my own side said, held out not an ounce of hope for victory, and couldn’t even be bothered to hate my “enemy.” On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, staff officers at brigade headquarters sent a Reuters reporter deep into the boonies to profile the only commander around from the New York City area and I told him just what I thought, or close enough in any case. Suffice it to say that my colonels were less than pleased when Captain Sjursen was quoted as saying that “the war was anything but personal” and that he never “thought about 9/11 at all” or when he described the Taliban this way: “It’s farm-boys picking up guns. How do you hate that?”
Rereading that article now, I feel a certain sadness for that long-gone self of mine, so lost in fatalism, hopelessness, and near-nihilism. Then I catch myself and think: imagine how the Afghans felt, especially since they didn’t have a distant home to scurry off to sooner or later.
Anyway, I never forgot that it was Obama — from whom I’d sought Iraq War salvation — who ordered my troops on that even more absurd Afghan surge to nowhere (and I’m not sure I’ve forgiven him either). Still, if there was a silver lining in all that senselessness, perhaps it was that such a bipartisan betrayal widened both the breadth and depth of my future dissent.
The Struggle Itself
Bill: Speaking of surges, Danny, even the word is a military misnomer. It’s dishonest. Real generals advance and retreat. They reinforce. They win (or lose). They occupy the battlefield. Lines move on maps. Foes are beaten and surrender. None of this happens with a “surge.” Our generals just added more troops to exert temporary control over an area in what was nothing more than a fallacious face-saving gesture. A mask. A conceit. All those surges did was sustain a losing cause and reinforce failure. Consider them a fundamental mistake of military strategy, like throwing good money after bad or doubling down on a losing hand.
Why didn’t they listen to me? Why didn’t they stop the Iraq and Afghan surges and end those wars? And now that, with other retired military types, we’re both in the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN) you organized, continuing to speak out against the twenty-first-century American way of making war, why do they still not listen to us? I fear that the answer’s simple enough: they have a trillion reasons not to. After all, roughly a trillion-plus dollars is spent each year on the Pentagon, on so-called homeland security, on nuclear weapons, on intelligence and surveillance, on buying weaponry and then more of the same after that. Why won’t they listen to us? We threaten their bottom line, their profits. And why should we get invites to CNN and MSNBC and other mainstream media sites when they already have Pentagon cheerleaders on their staffs and retired senior officers who spout the party line, as journalist David Barstow revealed in his Pulitzer-award-winning series? We aren’t really in EMN, Danny, we’re in the IMF, the impossible missions force.
I remember reading old newspapers from the 1930s that were quite blunt about how to end war: get the profit motive out of it. That was when the standing U.S. military was fairly small and Americans were skeptical of weapons makers, the “merchants of death” as they were so rightly called back then. Almost a century later, we’re the leading merchant of death, the country that arms the world. Domestically, we’re awash in weaponry, with a gun for every American and a mini-tank for every police force. I’ve attacked this creeping militarism, this degradation of our democracy, but with little success. So welcome to the IMF from the classic TV show Mission Impossible. Unless we smarten up and end these perpetual wars, this democracy will self-destruct in five seconds. The odds are long, but it’s a mission we just have to accept.
Danny: I couldn’t agree more, Bill. The militarism problem is cyclical and systemic with a backstory that’s sure to ping our shared historian’s radar. I hinted at this two months ago in remarks I made at legendary antiwar vet Smedley Butler’s graveside (the former major general I wrote about at TomDispatch in February). Highlighting his prophetic aspect, I noted that the two-time Medal of Honor-recipient had diagnosed core components of the military-industrial complex a quarter of a century before our new organization’s namesake, former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, coined the term in his Cassandra-like 1961 farewell address. If that isn’t proof our forever-war problems are systemic rather than discrete, I don’t know what is.
That short speech of mine was occasioned by the 19th anniversary of our absurd Afghan War, the conflict you couldn’t singlehandedly stop in time to save me from a second surge excursion. Anyway, don’t beat yourself up about that, Bill. Like you said, the war-state beast is humongous and our buddy Bacevich has been beating this drum since you were still wearing Air Force blue. Under the circumstances and in these pandemic times, what could be more appropriate than a buck-up from that ever-cheery French novelist of plagues and philosopher Albert Camus: “The struggle itself… is enough to fill a man’s heart.”
And you won’t believe this, but I had to stop there a moment to field a tortured text from an ex-student of mine turned Army lieutenant who’s now straddling those spheres of doubt and dissent that you and I know all too well. You may recall that I penned a piece last year for our mutual friend Tom Engelhardt on “Watching My Students Turn Into Soldiers of Empire.” Damned if that wasn’t a hard pill to swallow. Come to think of it, that must be precisely the feeling of failure you’ve described in our recent correspondence.
Well, at least the military dissent gestation period seems to be shortening. I commissioned exactly 20 years after you. The last crop of cadets from the freshman history class I taught at West Point after I returned from those wars were just 15 years behind me and some of them are now in doubt deep.
The thing is, I fear you’re a better man than I am, my friend. I can see the script that’s coming down the dusty and well-trodden trail, but I’m not sure I could stomach writing a co-column with one of those kids — let alone attending one of their funerals.
I guess we old hands had better get to work. In the battle against endless war, our motto has to be: no retreat, no surrender.
Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com.


lewrockwell--2020-12-10--Being an Enemy of the State

Being an Enemy of the State

It isn ’ t easy being a contrarian , to instinctively go against the grain .
It certainly isn ’ t financially rewarding .
I would love to support something about our society , or someone who has a hand in running it .
But I just can ’ t .
The corruption is so immense , and so prevalent even at the local level , that it can not be confronted by anything less than hundreds of thousands of coordinated opponents .
This situation has always existed .
Think of the very accurate old canard “ You can ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is that now the tyranny has grown well beyond crass political rivalries or even feuds between organized crime families .
The mafia and more recent offshoot intercity gangs at least have some kind of twisted code , and lines they won ’ t cross .
The elite that rule us appear to have no such lines .
The entire world was basically shut down in March of this year , over an alleged deadly virus .
There were no overt signs that something dangerous was afoot .
No bodies being carted away , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Great Plague that wiped out so many in Europe centuries ago .
Most of us personally knew no victims .
And yet all were quarantined to some degree .
As a few critics pointed out , you don ’ t quarantine healthy people .
Well , not until now .
Sports , movies , churches , and schools were cancelled .
Millions lost their jobs .
The public donned ridiculous masks and followed “ social distancing ” rules that have no scientific basis .
LifeAround2Angels Bath ... Buy New $ 25.80 ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this was accomplished without any country needing their police to enforce it .
No troops in the streets .
Without a single shot being fired .
The opposition to such unprecedented state control was confined to “ conspiracy theorists ” on the internet .
Like me .
Those of us who pointed out the emperor was stark naked lost many friends , and angered close family members .
Our skepticism made us second-class citizens .
I was called “ dangerous , ” and it certainly didn ’ t help any potential career @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Facebook .
So did some of my celebrity friends , like Candy Clark of American Graffiti and Barry Livingston from My Three Sons .
Oh well , at least I know they were reading .
It ’ s always easier to second a popular motion , to be a well-paid “ Yes ” man .
After all , if you ’ re saying the president , Congress , the Supreme Court , state and local officials , corporate America , the medical profession , the insurance profession , the educational system , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the entertainment world are all hopelessly corrupt , you ’ ve alienated yourself from a lot of people .
You ’ re no fun at parties .
Most people used to enjoy it when I pontificated and ranted in social gatherings , or at work .
If we still had social gatherings , I wouldn ’ t be invited .
And I would be fired pretty quickly from any job , if I simply conducted myself the way I did for 44 years , until experiencing one of the most unjust terminations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do anything about , because of that corrupt system .
Reason hasn ’ t prevailed in any battle since perhaps the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 , which established the forty hour work week , overtime , and other employee benefits Baby Boomers like me took for granted .
Every war pushed for , since JFK stood up against the Military Industrial Complex during the Cuban missile crisis , has been given the green light .
Well , I guess we should count that as a victory for reason as well .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ debate since 1962 .
The list of losses for the people is lengthy .
NAFTA , open borders immigration , coverups of every important state crime from the JFK assassination to 9/11 , the Patriot Act , the NDAA , the Supreme Court upholding tyrannical asset forfeiture laws , and many others .
We are left now to fight a forced vaccination we don ’ t remotely need , perhaps even being forcibly chipped .
Or to try to counter the creeping sprawl of “ hate speech ” and “ hate crime ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m not a White Supremacist.
” To argue for schools , businesses , churches , and cultural events to be reopened .
But only with proper precautions , of course .
Must keep up that “ social distancing.
” Spa Gifts for Women , Bo ... Buy New $ 26.99 We lost the culture war that Pat Buchanan warned us about .
I mean , we were slaughtered .
Shut out .
And so we watch helplessly as the “ educators ” who have such influence over our kids devise ideas like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Or “ gender reveal ” parties where parents often manipulate their very , very young children into “ identifying ” as the opposite sex .
If that ’ s not child abuse , what is ?
For years , I argued that this casino economy of ours had to inevitably collapse .
In my youthful idealism , I imagined something better emerging from the ruins .
Now I ’ m much older , and have no such expectations .
They appear to be able to keep this mess afloat on life support , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it hasn ’ t collapsed after thousands of businesses were forced to close , millions were thrown out of work , and huge parts of the economy like sports and movies were effectively cancelled , is very telling .
They will just keep creating money out of thin air under their counterfeit banking system .
Maybe we ’ ll get another $ 1200 check .
Our “ representatives ” in the Senate just voted unanimously to eliminate the cap on foreign Visa workers .
That ’ s quite a strange thing to do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and when millions of American citizens have lost their jobs due to the unconstitutional lockdown .
Don ’ t expect a veto from Donald Trump , who of course pledged to eliminate the unnecessary foreign worker programs .
Maybe we ’ ll get an exasperated tweet .
The people have actually been losing ever since the tyrant Lincoln crushed that whole “ consent of the governed ” thing .
You know , the main premise behind the War for Independence .
We lost every time when their laughable false flags , from “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the “ weapons of mass destruction ” lie was believed by a gullible majority of the public .
That ’ s our problem- that gullible majority .
They ’ re the ones phoning the authorities to report “ social distancing ” violations , or screaming “ there ’ s no evidence !
” of voting fraud , and they will be first in line for the mandatory vaccine .
They have been trained , like Pavlovian dogs , to be skeptical of the “ conspiracy theorists , ” not any authority figure or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been brainwashed to hate him , like Orwell ’ s fake opposition leader Goldstein in 1984 .
Speaking of Orwell , his dystopian world is here .
What exactly is the distinction between his Thought Crime and the “ woke ” Left ’ s “ hate crime ?
” That gullible majority again parrots the phrase “ hate speech ” without understanding how such a concept is incompatible with free speech .
The majority of Americans now don ’ t believe in free speech for those they disagree with .
Since that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they really don ’ t believe in free speech .
Period .
And since they don ’ t consider a thousand or more witnesses signing sworn affidavits about electoral fraud , to be “ evidence , ” they don ’ t appear to believe in free and secure elections , either .
But they hate “ racism.
” And they support every war .
Bath Set for Women - B ... Buy New $ 27.99 ( $ 3.50 / Count ) If the Founders could see what a shocking Banana Republic we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heartbroken .
They didn ’ t secede from British rule so that society could celebrate 57 different genders .
Or claim that even the poorest residents of Appalachia have some kind of “ White Privilege ” that Black billionaires don ’ t .
Or permit our militarized police to abuse their authority and confiscate the property of those who haven ’ t even been charged with a crime .
Or give benefits , public schooling , job preferences , and legal favoritism to noncitizens , including those who entered the country illegally .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a centralized permanent armed forces , and shadowy intelligence agencies with secret budgets .
Our “ representatives ” still swear allegiance to a Constitution they don ’ t believe in , or pay attention to .
The gargantuan federal government is as far removed from what the Founding Fathers intended as a One Percenter is from a timeclock and a demanding boss .
And yet , while it ’ s taken on a power and scope it ’ s not supposed to constitutionally have , it provides virtually no services in return @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We are like a boxer , who ’ s been beaten relentlessly for fourteen rounds .
We ’ re in the fifteenth and last round , trying desperately to hold on to the ropes .
The referee is openly against us , and the judges are not scoring the rounds fairly .
The fans , who stand to lose if we do , are wildly cheering on our ( and their ) opponent .
Our only hope is if those fans storm the ring and save us ( and themselves ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ If there was hope , it must lie in the proles , because only there , in those swarming disregarded masses , eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania , could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated .
The Party could not be overthrown from within.
” We are the Proles , and we outnumber our corrupt and incompetent leaders by the millions .
But if we don ’ t come together , that ’ s irrelevant .
As we enter the holiday season , that same gullible majority is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are surging- we must cancel Christmas !
It ’ s like we ’ ve gone through the looking glass- where the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge is being celebrated .
We ’ re all in this together .
Take your vaccines .
Trust the “ science.
” Listen to the “ fact checkers.
” Embrace the “ great reset ” and the “ new normal.
” Yes , Virginia , there is a conspiracy .
God bless us , everyone .
The Best of Donald Jeffries

It isn’t easy being a contrarian, to instinctively go against the grain. It certainly isn’t financially rewarding. I would love to support something about our society, or someone who has a hand in running it. But I just can’t. The corruption is so immense, and so prevalent even at the local level, that it cannot be confronted by anything less than hundreds of thousands of coordinated opponents.
This situation has always existed. Think of the very accurate old canard “You can’t fight city hall.” The difference is that now the tyranny has grown well beyond crass political rivalries or even feuds between organized crime families. The mafia and more recent offshoot intercity gangs at least have some kind of twisted code, and lines they won’t cross. The elite that rule us appear to have no such lines.
The entire world was basically shut down in March of this year, over an alleged deadly virus. There were no overt signs that something dangerous was afoot. No bodies being carted away, and death visiting every family, ala the Great Plague that wiped out so many in Europe centuries ago. Most of us personally knew no victims. And yet all were quarantined to some degree. As a few critics pointed out, you don’t quarantine healthy people. Well, not until now. Sports, movies, churches, and schools were cancelled. Millions lost their jobs. The public donned ridiculous masks and followed “social distancing” rules that have no scientific basis. LifeAround2Angels Bath... Buy New $25.80 ($2.15 / Count) (as of 05:46 UTC - Details)
And all of this was accomplished without any country needing their police to enforce it. No troops in the streets. Without a single shot being fired. The opposition to such unprecedented state control was confined to “conspiracy theorists” on the internet. Like me. Those of us who pointed out the emperor was stark naked lost many friends, and angered close family members. Our skepticism made us second-class citizens. I was called “dangerous,” and it certainly didn’t help any potential career opportunities. My own niece deleted me on Facebook. So did some of my celebrity friends, like Candy Clark of American Graffiti and Barry Livingston from My Three Sons. Oh well, at least I know they were reading.
It’s always easier to second a popular motion, to be a well-paid “Yes” man. After all, if you’re saying the president, Congress, the Supreme Court, state and local officials, corporate America, the medical profession, the insurance profession, the educational system, the legal system, the media, and the entertainment world are all hopelessly corrupt, you’ve alienated yourself from a lot of people. You’re no fun at parties. Most people used to enjoy it when I pontificated and ranted in social gatherings, or at work. If we still had social gatherings, I wouldn’t be invited. And I would be fired pretty quickly from any job, if I simply conducted myself the way I did for 44 years, until experiencing one of the most unjust terminations imaginable. Which I am helpless to do anything about, because of that corrupt system.
Reason hasn’t prevailed in any battle since perhaps the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established the forty hour work week, overtime, and other employee benefits Baby Boomers like me took for granted. Every war pushed for, since JFK stood up against the Military Industrial Complex during the Cuban missile crisis, has been given the green light. Well, I guess we should count that as a victory for reason as well. So sanity hasn’t won the debate since 1962. The list of losses for the people is lengthy. NAFTA, open borders immigration, coverups of every important state crime from the JFK assassination to 9/11, the Patriot Act, the NDAA, the Supreme Court upholding tyrannical asset forfeiture laws, and many others.
We are left now to fight a forced vaccination we don’t remotely need, perhaps even being forcibly chipped. Or to try to counter the creeping sprawl of “hate speech” and “hate crime” laws. To meekly mutter “I’m not a White Supremacist.” To argue for schools, businesses, churches, and cultural events to be reopened. But only with proper precautions, of course. Must keep up that “social distancing.” Spa Gifts for Women,Bo... Buy New $26.99 (as of 05:46 UTC - Details)
We lost the culture war that Pat Buchanan warned us about. I mean, we were slaughtered. Shut out. And so we watch helplessly as the “educators” who have such influence over our kids devise ideas like transgender story hour in elementary schools. Or “gender reveal” parties where parents often manipulate their very, very young children into “identifying” as the opposite sex. If that’s not child abuse, what is?
For years, I argued that this casino economy of ours had to inevitably collapse. In my youthful idealism, I imagined something better emerging from the ruins. Now I’m much older, and have no such expectations. They appear to be able to keep this mess afloat on life support, no matter what. The fact that it hasn’t collapsed after thousands of businesses were forced to close, millions were thrown out of work, and huge parts of the economy like sports and movies were effectively cancelled, is very telling. They will just keep creating money out of thin air under their counterfeit banking system. Maybe we’ll get another $1200 check.
Our “representatives” in the Senate just voted unanimously to eliminate the cap on foreign Visa workers. That’s quite a strange thing to do during a deadly “pandemic,” and when millions of American citizens have lost their jobs due to the unconstitutional lockdown. Don’t expect a veto from Donald Trump, who of course pledged to eliminate the unnecessary foreign worker programs. Maybe we’ll get an exasperated tweet.
The people have actually been losing ever since the tyrant Lincoln crushed that whole “consent of the governed” thing. You know, the main premise behind the War for Independence. We lost every time when their laughable false flags, from “Remember the Maine” in 1898 to the “weapons of mass destruction” lie was believed by a gullible majority of the public. That’s our problem- that gullible majority. They’re the ones phoning the authorities to report “social distancing” violations, or screaming “there’s no evidence!” of voting fraud, and they will be first in line for the mandatory vaccine. They have been trained, like Pavlovian dogs, to be skeptical of the “conspiracy theorists,” not any authority figure or institution. Except Donald Trump. They have been brainwashed to hate him, like Orwell’s fake opposition leader Goldstein in 1984.
Speaking of Orwell, his dystopian world is here. What exactly is the distinction between his Thought Crime and the “woke” Left’s “hate crime?” That gullible majority again parrots the phrase “hate speech” without understanding how such a concept is incompatible with free speech. The majority of Americans now don’t believe in free speech for those they disagree with. Since that is the significance of the First Amendment, they really don’t believe in free speech. Period. And since they don’t consider a thousand or more witnesses signing sworn affidavits about electoral fraud, to be “evidence,” they don’t appear to believe in free and secure elections, either. But they hate “racism.” And they support every war. Bath Set for Women - B... Buy New $27.99 ($3.50 / Count) (as of 05:46 UTC - Details)
If the Founders could see what a shocking Banana Republic we’ve become, they would be heartbroken. They didn’t secede from British rule so that society could celebrate 57 different genders. Or claim that even the poorest residents of Appalachia have some kind of “White Privilege” that Black billionaires don’t. Or permit our militarized police to abuse their authority and confiscate the property of those who haven’t even been charged with a crime. Or give benefits, public schooling, job preferences, and legal favoritism to noncitizens, including those who entered the country illegally. Or spend most of the federal budget on a centralized permanent armed forces, and shadowy intelligence agencies with secret budgets.
Our “representatives” still swear allegiance to a Constitution they don’t believe in, or pay attention to. The gargantuan federal government is as far removed from what the Founding Fathers intended as a One Percenter is from a timeclock and a demanding boss. And yet, while it’s taken on a power and scope it’s not supposed to constitutionally have, it provides virtually no services in return. It just takes. And mandates.
We are like a boxer, who’s been beaten relentlessly for fourteen rounds. We’re in the fifteenth and last round, trying desperately to hold on to the ropes. The referee is openly against us, and the judges are not scoring the rounds fairly. The fans, who stand to lose if we do, are wildly cheering on our (and their) opponent. Our only hope is if those fans storm the ring and save us (and themselves).
As Orwell stated in 1984, “If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within.” We are the Proles, and we outnumber our corrupt and incompetent leaders by the millions. But if we don’t come together, that’s irrelevant.
As we enter the holiday season, that same gullible majority is embracing even more tyrannical restrictions. Cases are surging- we must cancel Christmas! It’s like we’ve gone through the looking glass- where the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge is being celebrated.
We’re all in this together. Take your vaccines. Trust the “science.” Listen to the “fact checkers.” Embrace the “great reset” and the “new normal.” Yes, Virginia, there is a conspiracy. God bless us, everyone.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
The Best of Donald Jeffries