The sad lessons are about who we are as a nation, as a people.
Today John Daniel Davidson reviews the lessons we've learned in 2020:
5 Big Things We Learned About Our Elites In 2020
It’s been a hard year but at least we know, beyond all doubt, that our elites despise us and will do anything to expand their power.
IMO, I think we can go a bit further and state that these lessons--while driven home with a vengeance in 2020--tell us things about ourselves as a nation that stretch back certainly to the beginning of the Obama era. However, here are the 5 lessons that Davidson lists:
1. Democrats Don’t Care About Science—Or Religious Liberty
2. Lockdowns For Thee But Not For Me
3. Lockdown Elites Don’t Care If Small Businesses Die
4. Silicon Valley Wants You to Shut Up
5. Elites Are Okay With Chaos and Violence From the Left
I'm sure you can gather a pretty good idea of where he goes with those. Here's how Davidson leads into his 5 headings:
the past year has ... helped to illuminate and clarify certain things about the state of our country.
Above all, 2020 has illuminated and clarified the relationship between America’s elites—in government, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, corporate America and the corporate press—and everyone else. In short, our elites believe, ..., that most people were born with saddles on their backs while a favored few were born booted and spurred to ride them, legitimately.
...
We like to think we live in a country where everyone, rich and poor alike, is equal before the law. But we know now, thanks to the exigencies and emergencies of 2020, that isn’t true—or at least it’s only true sometimes, ...
But left unchecked, as many of our leaders were over the past year, we all know what they will do.
I think that's a fair assessment. Another way to put it would be to say that we now know, beyond a doubt, that we live in a sort of Potemkin republic--a make believe republic. If at times it seems to work as envisioned in certain hoary old documents, that's more or less coincidental.
Take lesson #1, Science. As we've discussed previously, the mantra of the Left--variously, "It's settled science" or "Let science decide" or some such--is nothing but a device to end fact based debate in favor of ideological mandates. The really telling reality in this, however, is the number of "scientists" who have been willing to lend their names to the ongoing Covid hoax. As one truly qualified scientist in the field, Michael Yeadon, noted: Some of his colleagues were saying things they knew to be untrue, and that they knew other scientists knew were untrue. Because ... go along to get along. That's our Potemkin science establishment, working hand in hand with our "elected representatives." Where did such sheeple come from? Look around you. None of this is any coincidence.
Andrea Widburg hits on this at the end of her It's unlikely that there's a super-contagious Wuhan virus floating around. She closes by recalling G. K. Chesterton's famous dictum:
G.K. Chesterton famously said, "When a man stops believing in God, he doesn't believe in nothing, he believes in anything." Somehow, I feel there's another aphorism lurking near that concept. Perhaps one could say that "When a society starts believing that science has replaced God, it mindlessly believes anything prefaced with the word 'science.'" Certainly, that's what we're seeing with the new panic coming out of England and infecting the rest of the world.
Certainly that's what our rulers are counting on. To put it a bit differently, the lesson that our rulers have taken to heart in our new Age of Hoaxes can be expressed in a paraphrase of Abraham Lincoln: True, you may not be able to fool all of the people all of the time, but it appears you can fool enough of the people enough of the time and thus you will be able to get what you need. Of course, YMMV depending on what you think you need, but within somewhat elastic limits this new and debased maxim has certainly paid dividends for our rulers. If they had any doubts that they could pull off a Big Steal of a presidential election, those doubts must have been put to rest by the ongoing supine response of the subject population to the social devastation wrought by a hoax casedemic without scientific justification.
What is it that our godless society has put in place of God? Science? Or maybe our new god is simply self-preservation. That seems to be the motivation behind the compliance with lockdowns that I see expressed in so many ways. For a very telling contrast of past and present, see Most Healthcare Workers Are Not Heroes, Many Are Sociopaths ...
What all this means for the sad, hollowed out remnant of our constitutional order is becoming clearer by the day. Our rulers can barely conceal their delight at the prospect of a return to business as usual--for them. A return to normal life, as they live it. That the presidency as a constitutional institution has--after decades of decline--been conclusively hollowed out by the Big Steal, with the true ruling class inserting sickeningly corrupt figureheads, to enable their own corruption is of no apparent concern to them. That the SCOTUS as a constitutional institution has voluntarily delegitimized itself in the face of the threat is likewise of no apparent concern. They count on supine compliance from the subject populace. How far that will go remains to be seen, but prospects are not heartening at this point. Certainly, the delegitimization of our elected representatives is now plainly apparent for a massive percentage of the population, including all thinking people.
Don Surber absolutely knocks this one out of the ballpark, in a must read blog:
Biden would be the Godfather in Chief
As you can tell from the title, framed in the conditional mood, Surber still holds out hope for a Trump comeback. But for a sober--and sobering--look at our sad future, read it all:
For 4 years, the media has parroted the Democrat line that President Donald John Trump is not a normal president. And as Biden prepares to steal the presidency from the American people, we now see what the media meant by normal.
...
CNBC reported, "The brother to one of President-elect Joe Biden’s closest advisors just picked up Amazon as a new client.
...
... the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, just took care of the family of Biden's consigliere. There is no need for the brothers to speak. We all know what just happened. ...
And, as Surber will make clear, it's not just WE who know--We The People, We The Subject Population. The ruling class, who pretend not to know, who pretend what just happened is normal in a representative republic? They know, too. The senators, represenatives, SCOTUS justices, Bill Barr. They all know.
Red China already paid off Biden via his idiot son. Biden's brother shares in selling influence.
But everyone in Washington it seems is connected to Ukraine, which hired Pelosi's son to promote soccer in a soccer-mad nation.
...
No one except President Trump and Rudy Giuliani care. The latter broke up the mafia in New York City. The Five Families were amateurs compared to our government.
The senators and representatives and judges and justices are all in on the deal. ...
...
They impeached President Trump for blowing the whistle on this.
Yes, this is a point that was made before, but it bears constant repeating. Everyone in DC who mattered knew about the Ukraine corruption. They all knew that what was going down was a Fake Impeachment, a parody of a constitutional proceeding.
That was why Senate Republicans failed to act when Comey let Hillary off the hook for espionage. Those emails were not missing. She sold state secrets to Red China and others. No one in DC cared.
...
The steal of the election will do one of two things. Either it will break this stranglehold corruption has on our government, or it will not.
...
I really do not mean to depress readers but I try to tell the truth as best as I know it. ...
And we will come out better.
But it requires time, resolve, and a lot of thinking outside the box. ...
As Ted Noel discussed in his recent post at THE AMERICAN THINKER, there is a constitutional way to steal back the election which, when supplemented with cyber information from our intelligence agencies, should produce the desired outcome. Rudy said right after Christmas. Let’s roll.
ReplyDeleteAletheia
As Animal said in Stalag 17, "When you find the hammock, let me know."
DeleteI'm starting to lose a lot of confidence in everyone connected with Trump, to include Trump but excluding Powell and Flynn; I just haven't made up my mind about those two.
K***C
Easy to do, K***C. I go back and forth myself. And each passing day cements in the public mind that Biden is on a glide path to the inauguration. But there are many signs of significant activity just beneath the radar. So, for now, I’m staying on the sunrise side of the mountain.
DeleteAre you at liberty to elaborate, on the many signs of significant activity just beneath the radar?
DeleteDo you see these signs on the web (and can you post links?), or do you have pvt. sources?
Just breaking in Epoch News: Louis Gohmert is challenging the 1887 Electoral Count Law and in effect return to the 12th Amendment and the earlier 1800 precedent in which the VP, as President pro tem of the Senate has plenary power to declare which electoral votes to count. As is typical, the reporting isn’t all that clear, but it tracks the Noel essay noted above, as well as the historically grounded analysis by Alexander Macris linked in the post. The case has been
ReplyDeletefiled in the Eastern District of Texas, and will be argued before a Trump appointed federal district judge. Will he show more integrity than the Supremes?
Aletheia
I voted for Trump happily, and I think he has been abused and cheated.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think he made serious mistakes that cost him the election.
During the past four years, he could have made some effort to at least give the impression that he was concerned well-informed about the climate-change and medical-insurance issues. These two issues are not my own top priorities, but I know they are top priorities for many voters.
During the past four years, Trump should have spent less time watching TV news and more time educating himself about those two issues.
His winning issue in 2016 was illegal immigration, but he did not try to make it a major issue in the 2020 election.
He should not have interrupted Biden in such a buffoonish manner during their first debate. That gratuitous rudeness cost him hundreds of thousands of votes.
His aggressiveness, narcissism, show-boating, bragging and puffery made him a successful businessman and helped get him elected, but they did not help get him re-elected.
His speech is generally inarticulate, sloppy and confusing. His opponents were able to twist, distort and misinterpret his statements constantly.
In regard to the COVID issue, he should not have spent so much time arguing with reporters at press conferences. He should have made a brief opening statement, introduced the experts, and then departed without answering questions.
DeleteAlso, he should not have tried to conduct any mass rallies.
If we allow for every one of your points, I think we are still in the same place today.
DeleteTrump's likability isn't the primary issue. The issues aren't even the primary issue.
It's the Reset, stupid! :)
Seriously, the steal was done in full view of everyone. They simply don't care what you or I think.
I'll agree he isn't Mitt Romney. I would say it's up to each of us to decide if that is a feature, or a bug; but that is moot since the selection system is clearly are not based on "one man, one vote".
DeleteTom S.
The only mistake Trump made was not crushing the attempted coup.
DeleteRob S
@ Rob S.
DeleteWhich one?
Good grief! How could such an awful, boorish incompetent ever been elected president? And how did he pull off the great things he accomplished during his four years - with one hand while the other was fighting off attackers from both sides?
DeleteSpare me Mitt Romney, the Brilliantined, money-grubbing, grandstanding egomaniac. He has never accomplished one beneficial thing for us or our wonderful country. And spare me the critics.
I still believe Teddy Roosevelt got it very right when he said:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
I have a hunch old Teddy would have approved of President Donald J. Trump.
You have to give credit where credit is due: Romney always surrendered politely, without all that messy belligerent rhetoric, at the least sign of discomfiture on the part of the opposition. Many long for a return to those heady days of collegial reach-arounds across the aisle.
DeleteTom S.
If Trump ends up going down, the primary reason will be his general (ongoing) unaccountable failure at assessing personnel. He would have been better off having 9 or 10 truly trusted souls run EVERYTHING than allowing traitors inside the circle. Even if it meant that only a few things got done. And he sure as hell should have fired every last person associated with Obama and Bush--even if it meant knee-capping the CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA, and DoD. And those he couldn't fire and did not know to be trustworthy, he probably should have pulled National Security Letters on and spied on. Most importantly, he needed an outsider FBI Director—preferably one who hated the FBI—to build an “Untouchables” leadership team that would investigate and inspire fear in D.C. —and who would destroy the careers of any subordinates who stonewalled or dragged their feet. Even if that meant cleaning out the entire DCHQ and replacing them with hard SOB's from the hinterlands.
DeleteThe secondary reason was a fatal tactical error—his failure to declassify and un-redact all the documents covering up the DoJ and FBI corruption and scandals. (This failure was probably due to his flawed assessment of AG Barr). Had this been done in early 2018 the Dems would never have taken the House, the SCO would have been shut down immediately, and Biden might well be in jail. Barr screwed Trump by heading off a declassification. He sold PDT the chimera of Durham indictments and convictions—that would be compromised by the public disclosure of the evidence.
“We caught them all!” Maybe, but that, 74 million votes, and $5 buys you Café Mocha at Starbucks, Mr. President.
"Barr screwed Trump by heading off a declassification. He sold PDT the chimera of Durham indictments and convictions...."
DeleteQuite so.
Esp. once it became clear, that Barr was ducking his vow of post- Labor Day fireworks, the Dems had leash that should've already been gone.
And, his failure to act days after the election, to seize the machines and paper ballots, and validate his fraud claim in public, where everyone could see them.
DeleteUnless he does have some of them, and will publish this in the next few days or so.
Mr. Trump is our Horatius at the bridge.
ReplyDeleteThe elites are not the only -- or even the major -- problem.
ReplyDeleteToo many voters are poorly educated and poorly informed about political issues. They vote mostly on superficial impressions, ethnic and sexual resentments, and personal advantage.
Because the electorate's ignorance is becoming worse and worse, the politicians' demagoguery is becoming worse and worse.
The poorly educated, poorly informed portion of the electorate is a growing problem, because they are voting more and more.
That too many voters are poorly educated and poorly informed is almost exactly what the Elite have wanted.
Delete@ mike
DeleteAnd yet, in this land of supposedly uneducated and uninformed voters, almost 100 million of them (by some accounts after correcting for the fraud) managed to figure out how to vote for President Trump. They chose wisely, notwithstanding the incessant propaganda of Demokrazi Media, the peer pressure of cancel culture, the demonization of all Trump supporters etc...
No, the voters are NOT to blame here. The fact that Demokrazis were forced to expose their decades long vote fraud to overcome the Trump landslide is proof. The problem is a runaway criminal culture that has seized power in federal and some state governments, aided by the CCP no doubt.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it mattered how many votes Trump got, Biden would have gotten more in the key states.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am curious about, is why the GOP/ Trump were not better prepared to fight voter fraud. My guess is voter fraud prevention was deliberately ignored by the GOP due to fears of being labeled racist, and nobody expected this scale of voter fraud. I think Trumps actual numbers were much larger than anyone expected, so they had to go to extreme measures to get Biden to “win”.
I wonder how big the voter fraud organization was/is. It’s across state lines, and had a lot of moving pieces. I wonder how involved the Democratic Party was/is.
>However, I think he made serious mistakes that cost
>him the election.
"My guess is voter fraud prevention was deliberately ignored by the GOP due to fears of being labeled racist...."
DeleteI disagree. I think a deal was cut. The D machine would get rid of Trump, the R lay-abouts would not make a fuss if they were thrown a crumb of being to look good down ballot. Everything could get back to "normal". Precisely the kind of deal the Godfather would make, as has been alluded to in another post. Make no mistake the R masters are the same plutocrats that are the D masters, the Uniparty.
examples: 1) not nearly enough R poll watchers
2) the poll watchers they had were woefully undertrained.
3) no provision/training in documenting anomalies. What video evidence was compiled was ad-hoc. Along with this is no organized effort to ensure that security cameras were in place, functional, and copies obtained for all counting areas.
4) R Governors, election officials, and legislators were sitting on their hands for 6 months while the D's practically bragged about the organization they were growing.
5) R Governors, election officials, legislators functionally conceded election night.
Really, the Black Sox of 1919 made a better defense of not throwing the World Series that R's can the election of 2020.
Tom S.
How does one win an election with either personality or policies when the other side has the capacity to pad their vote when they saw one getting ahead? Rolling their tally up throughout the day/night to match and surpass the real winner’s vote count?
DeleteMy guess is that one of the dirty little secrets of this election--in quite a number of states--is the complicity of the local GOP organizations. Looking the other way. We saw that very clearly in Michigan--the clear NeverTrump attitude of many in the local party. It's also apparent in GA. These are people who have been basically bought off by wealthy interests.
Delete@Tom S, Bebe, Mark,
DeleteMakes sense to me. Republicans at the state and local level are far too likely to be Country Club Rs, who had no stake in upsetting the Apple cart. Someone as transformative as Trump did not sit well with them. The return to normalcy they quietly supported is really a return to the corrupt world they could navigate.
So there is Greg Jarrett, who styles himself an expert on constitutional matters spouting off on Lou Dobbs that Goemert’s law suit has no merit. He really should read the 12thAmendment and review his history of presidential elections. As someone recently posted, Americans know very little,if anything, about the complex architecture of our constitutional republic. Jarrett added another layer of ignorance to that already shaky store of civic education.
Deleteonward through the fog
ReplyDeleteless the republican smog
IMO, GG has been doing some of his best writing/journalism since leaving "The Intercept". Similar article out today along similar lines for those of you interested. A bit lengthy as are most of Glenn's work. Fascinating how he spells it out.
ReplyDeletehttps://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-authoritarianism-in?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzk1NjcxNiwicG9zdF9pZCI6Mjk1MzM4NTAsIl8iOiJESjRKRiIsImlhdCI6MTYwOTIwNzU2NiwiZXhwIjoxNjA5MjExMTY2LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTI4NjYyIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.MbQIc-L2PK0Lg_2b-80Mre31SSzwV74CnBAEvB9Cavk
@American Cardigan
DeleteIt is fascinating that a classic liberal like Greenwald can see so clearly the authoritarian and, yes, fascist, impulses coming from the Left. He is to be applauded.
However, at one point Greenwald can't help himself and he describes Trump as "an ordinary and largely weak one-term president".
In this respect I think Greenwald seriously underestimates Trump and the (pick a number) 80 million voter strong movement he represents. As Ray SoCal noted recently somewhere else on this blog Trump's accomplishments in calling out the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the Elite add up well into the double digits. In some cases Trump was able to implement real policy change. In other cases, he has identified the issues and it will be left to his movement to see if change can be effected.
But this is not to say that I don't largely agree with Greenwald's analysis of the pernicious effects of neo-liberal hegemony in this country. In another passage, where he describes the impact of the covid on the fortunes of the Big Tech oligopoly, he writes:
"This is not free market capitalism rewarding innovative titans, but rather crony capitalism that is abusing the power of the state to crush small competitors, lavish corporate giants with ever more wealth and power, and turn millions of Americans into vassals whose best case scenario is working multiple jobs at low hourly wages with no benefits, few rights, and even fewer options."
Here, Greenwald's observation that the power of the corporate giants has turned millions of Americans into 'vassals' echoes Charles Hughes Smith's observations (which Mark posted a couple of days ago) about the importance of both capital and agency in defining and understanding the freedoms which the American Middle Class has up until fairly recently enjoyed. In respect of agency, a 'middle class' cannot be truly free if it gives up control of its lives and livelihoods to an overlord.
Interestingly, this is perhaps an area where a classic liberal like Greenwald and a classic conservative like Smith probably see eye to eye.
Greenwald was on Tucker's show tonite, but only for a minute+, as the Brit subbing for Tucker cut him off, on grounds of "too much background noise".
DeleteFor me, that was a rather lame excuse.
Cass, DJT indeed has identified the issues, and it will be left to his movement to seek change, but his failure to punish the DS has instead aroused/ emboldened most of the Left, to rally around the DS.
DeleteOnce the Dems again get their mitts on Sil. Valley/ DS power, his movement will likely be ruthlessly crushed.
Most SJWs implicitly hated Deplorables, but now that hate is becoming more and more explicit/ ferocious.
In the comments today about his article, reader Wally writes about changes amongst the DSA crowd:
"most of them have fallen into the establishment narrative. Trump and his supporters are neo-Nazis, and they are the enlightened saviors of humanity. You can find many of these folks sliding right into support for cancel culture and knee-jerk veneration of BLM...."
It won't take much, to get these folks to delight in assisting in the liquidation of the Deplorables, in, say, Stalinist-type ways.
WTF is this.....!!!:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.captainsjournal.com/2020/12/28/the-ukraine-unleashes-an-artillery-barrage-on-joe-and-hunter-biden/
Just finished watching. If this is true, Obama & Biden kept running a shadow government for the past 4 years.
DeleteProbably true, sigh...
ReplyDelete>complicity of the local GOP organizations
The widespread implementation / usage of the Dominion Machines is strange in the us. It smells of corruption / somebody pushing bit. And it seems the Dominion Machines favor Establishment Democratic Candidates. Suspicious coincidence. And Machines designed with a limited audit trail. So manipulating can be done undetected.
I wonder how many and who was aware of this fraud? It’s suspicious that those on the left that questioned the Democratic President Primaries stopped, as if they were bought off. Sydney Powell’s comments that Bernie was bought off sounds like part of a pattern.
Gut feeling the awareness of the fraud goes pretty high in the Democratic Party. Blue county level at a minimum.
Doesn't matter if it's LA, NYC, ChiTown, Philly, Motor City. Everybody knows the rules for a floating craps game. Hoyle doesn't need to write a rulebook.
DeleteTom S.