Class, Influence, Power

Today's news features multiple stories that reveal the structure of the international--but mostly US based--Power Elite. It's an establishment that includes Deep State elements of government--intel, military--as well as the indispensable financial underpinnings that are increasingly concentrated in Big Pharma and Big Tech. The links below feature many different angles, but above all the fear of the Orange Man and the populist movement that propelled him to the White House.

Here we go.

Victor Davis Hanson gets the ball rolling by addressing Class, and what it means for politics in the US. The Elite Class has every reason to be concerned about developments in American politics.

Class—the Word We Dare Not Speak

The Left does not wish to admit it has become the party of wealth. 

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So why are we not talking about class? 

First, we are watching historic changes in political alignment. 

The two parties are switching class constituents. Sixty-five percent of Americans making over $500,000 are now Democrats. Seventy-four percent of those who earn under $100,000 are Republicans. Gone are the days of working people voting automatically Democratic or Republicans caricatured as a party of stockbrokers on golf courses. 

By 2018, Democrats controlled all 20 of the wealthiest congressional districts. In the recent presidential primaries and general election, 17 out of the 20 wealthiest zip codes gave money overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates. 

Increasingly, the Democrats are a bicoastal party of professional elites of corporate America, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the media, universities, entertainment, and professional sports. All made out like bandits during 21st-century globalization. 

 

"Like bandits." A very traditional style of banditry. Take from the poor and give to the rich. And the retainers to the wealthy. 

Democrats have lost the most support among working-class whites, especially in the interior of the country. But they are also fast forfeiting backing among the Hispanic middle class, and just beginning to lose solidarity among similarly situated African-Americans. 

The Left does not wish to admit it has become the party of wealth. All too often its stale revolutionary speechifying sounds more like penance arising from guilt than genuine advocacy for the middle class of all races. 

The wealthy leftist elite has mastered the rhetoric of ridicule for the lower middle classes, especially struggling whites. Multimillionaires Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden wrote off their political opponents as supposedly crude, superstitious, and racist, in smearing them as “clingers,” “deplorables,” irredeemables,” “dregs,” and “chumps.” 

Class is also fluid; race is immutable. So by fixating on race, the Left believes that it can divide America into permanent victimizers and victims—at a time when race and class are increasingly disconnecting. 

The wealthy of all races are the loudest voices of the woke movement. ...

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What's fueling anxiety among the Elite? The Orange Man is going nowhere and retains his influence among the non-Elites. Special election results--as in GA earlier this week--are demonstrating that fact. If anything, Trump's influence may be increasing. Pushback against Wokeism is increasing in broad swaths of America, even among liberals--as is opposition to the Covid regime, including vaxxing. Dem analysts are openly panicking about Election 2022, and the facade of the Baidan regime is fooling few.

Other developments that fuel anxiety among the Elites is the continuing and even growing influence of Tucker Carlson. Carlson seems to have picked up on the fact that many Americans are focusing on two issues that strike at the heart of the Elite's hold on power: election fraud and border security. Carlson's address of both issues in one show may be a signal to us of Middle American sentiments and concerns--as they feel their country being stolen from them.

You can listen to Tucker at these links, or to save time read Andrea Widburg's summary. The substance is quickly absorbed--it's not rocket science, but it is highly revelatory of the crossroads at which American finds itself:

It looks as if there was massive election fraud in Fulton County, Georgia

Really, this is news to no one--it's simply confirmation. But that's important in keeping the issue before voters. It confirms what Widburg concludes with:

On November 3, Democrats conducted a fraudulent election in several key swing states. The result was that Biden, a man of exceptional stupidity and corruption now occupies the Oval Office. His Veep, Kamala Harris, is a woman fully as stupid as he is who is anxiously awaiting him to vacate that office. What stands in her way is probably Mrs. Joe Biden, a woman with the soul of Lady Macbeth and the practices of Edith Wilson.

America is an incredibly resilient country and it had better be to survive this banana republic madness.

To use a phrase from my youth, it's mind blowing that our Power Elite--including the likes of Bluto Barr, leading legislators, and even the SCOTUS--believed that this is what Americans deserve.

But Tucker didn't stop there, and took in as well the military branch of the Deep State. The public has been getting an earful about the Woking of the military, but now they're learning that the military is participating in the demographic transformation of our country, without--as Tucker emphasizes--either the sanction of law or the permission of the people:

Biden is using the military to ship illegal aliens across America

Tucker Carlson opened his show Wednesday night by announcing that he’d gotten information from a whistleblower about Biden’s latest activity to bring illegal aliens into America. It turns out that the military has been involved in secretly transporting illegal aliens (or as the military coyly calls them, “undocumented non-citizens”) to resettle them in America’s heartland. The administration is acting illegally and there’s a good argument every person involved – the President, Vice President, congressional Democrats,  and the military officers signing off on this scheme – must be impeached.

As Tucker explains, in the last six months, despite explicit laws detailing orderly immigration (laws that reflect the will of the people through their legislature), the Biden administration has opened America’s southern border. Under Biden’s aegis, one million Latin Americans (plus people from African and the Middle East) have flooded into America...and then they’ve vanished. We know that the administration has been shipping them to Red states. What we learned from Tucker is that the United States military, which is sworn to protect America against invasions, is complicit in this conduct.

Trump and other GOPers have been speaking out about some of this, and the message appears to be resonating with Middle America. How else to explain the continuing Left hysteria directed at Trump? And, of course, our woke military is in the forefront:

New Revelations Show How Absolutely Dangerous Our Military Leadership Has Become

The descent into leftism of our current military brass has been a much-discussed topic lately. As RedState reported previously, the woke ad campaigns belittle the mission and make a mockery of the readiness of our military. ...

But just in case you thought our military leadership was delusional enough, a new book reveals just how insane they were and continue to be.

The nation’s top military leaders discussed a plan to resign one by one rather than carry out dangerous orders in the event of an attempted coup by then-President Donald Trump and his allies after the November election, new book reveals https://t.co/epzvLdia08

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 15, 2021

Apparently, Gen. Milley, most recently made famous for backing critical race theory in the military, and other generals hatched a plan to resign in sequence had Donald Trump tried to stage a coup. Yes, these absolute imbeciles seriously believed the former president was going to order them to institute a military takeover of the country. All this was happening while they were ignoring orders to help bring peace during the riots summer of 2020.

I have to take issue with one part of the above. I don't for a moment believe that Milley and others seriously thought Trump would "stage a coup." We're talking about thoroughly corrupt and cynical men who have taken sides in politics for their own benefit.

The media, too, continues to carry water for the Power Elite. Almost beyond belief, the buffoonish Luke Harding is front and center again with--are you sitting down?--a new iteration of the Russia Hoax:

Media Bites Hard, Yet Again, for Another 'Russia, Russia, Russia' Story on Trump

Almost as incredibly, New York magazine is portraying the MSM as having been "duped" by Glenn Simpson and Chris Steele and their Russia Hoax. The total partisan unprofessionalism exhibited by the media, we're to believe, all flowed from good intentions. They were "duped" in spite of all their professional ethics. Right:

To pick the worst press failure of the past half-decade would be a daunting assignment, but the coverage of the Steele dossier would have to be high on any list. ...

The Steele dossier is just one recent instance of the media presenting the public with information that originated in a vast and opaque industry of private spies and operatives for hire who do business without all the rules and ethics of traditional media outlets, but who often inject their version of events into the mainstream press by feeding tips and scoops to reporters.

It's all about power, and here's an article that sums that up:

Here’s More Proof The Left Is Willing To Burn Everything Down For Power

The left’s response was a scorched earth policy to destroy Trump. Five years into their implacable opposition, we now see the earth the left scorched was America.

America has been torched by the left’s scorched-earth strategy to defeat Donald Trump. While Trump was still in office, the price was already high. With Trump gone, we are learning that high price was just a down payment.

Today, America is paying in full in its cities, in its schools, on its southern border, and abroad. Seemingly behind every shameful headline is a leftist lowlight.

This is what's at stake. Our country. Our way of life. Our freedom to thrive in a truly human way.

For a slightly different take, one which focuses on the scorched earth tactics being used against us, to freeze the opposition and disarm it, there's this:

How the Left Weaponized Race in Its War on the West

We shortchange the ambitions of the left and minimize the perils of our time when we focus on race. Race is just a weapon the left is using in its ongoing cultural revolution, which aims to dismantle the pillars of Western culture.

Academic activists and corporate apparatchiks who advance cancel culture and critical race theory in the name of racial reckoning are either sympathetic collaborators or useful idiots being manipulated by the left for their far broader and destructive project.

The left, which is dominated by the white intelligentsia, has seized on race because it is so fraught with the emotion of history and identity. It’s a narrative that enables revolutionaries to exploit the founding principles of equality and fairness that define America and Americans. It allows race and gender theorists to prey on the guilt many feel about shameful aspects of our past to camouflage their ideological program as a moral crusade.

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At bottom, the left has embraced a wrecking ball ideology that seeks to raze all in its path. The main impulse is not to build a better world but to destroy all that exists. It might not be long before these postmodern Robespierres follow their archetypes in the French Revolution and propose a new calendar, erasing the past and restarting human history at Year One

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The gist of their analysis is that the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism was a disaster for Marxists in the academy. In response to the debunking of their own historical narrative, they set about tearing down every other one. Their project was largely destructive: They sought to “deconstruct” and “problematize” long-held ideals to render them untenable. Nothing is beyond their denunciations and cancellations. Social justice, race and identity politics have given them a powerful weapon in their quest to destroy the status quo and rehabilitate their failed Marxist doctrines in new guises: primarily race and gender.

I understand why conservatives are focusing on the rise of critical race theory and its sister concepts such as systemic racism, implicit bias, privilege and “white fragility.” It provides a meaningful shorthand for a hydra-headed movement that is hard to define because of it scale and unquenchable ambition. But the emphasis on race is counterproductive. It allows the left to define the terms of the debate in a manner that gives its efforts a moral legitimacy they do not deserve.

What’s going on is about much more than race. It is long past time we recognized that we are in the midst not of a culture war, but a cultural revolution, and muster the resistance it demands.

And finally, this, to illustrate the extent to which the Left has corrupted virtually every societal institution:

Inside The Vatican’s Surprising Alliance With Biotech Venture Capital

A this-world agenda displaced Christianity’s distinctive mission: cultivation of a higher understanding of the purposes of life.

The pressure for universal injection with a biological agent still under probation is unprecedented. Equally remarkable is the papal embrace of vaccine politics and its network of commercial partners and global governments. Propelled by COVID, the military-industrial complex of 60 years ago has its parallel in the medical-industrial complex. And the Vatican approves.

In January, Pope Francis suggested we are morally obligated to take an experimental coronavirus vaccine. Not to take it was “suicidal denialism” and an offense against love of neighbor. A needle in every arm is the only decent thing.

Addressing the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on April 4, he advocated “global governance” to enforce “a justly financed vaccine solidarity.” It was a good day for stakeholders in the global market for the newly patented vaccines.

The Fifth International Vatican Conference on cell therapies followed weeks later. Conducted over Zoom this year, it was co-hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture under Cardinal Ravasi, and Robin L. Smith’s Cura Foundation and its subsidiary, Stem For Life.

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The Vatican is not to blame for putting its assets to work. But by shilling for a volatile, cash-strapped industry the Vatican conspires with a cartel of necessarily self-interested entities: competitive drug companies, lobbyists, academics, grant-seeking scientists, and research institutions, plus government bureaucracies. It aligns with a research leviathan beholden to the benefit of its paymasters.

This same aggregate of interests is rife with the jockeying for position, careerist ambitions, self-dealing, and eye for market opportunities as any other industry. It can serve a broad range of purposes, many of them unsympathetic to a Judeo-Christian vision of man.

In his 1961 farewell address to the nation, President Eisenhower warned against the power of money on research, particularly federal money. He foresaw the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific/technological elite.” Willing captive to that elite, the Vatican forgets that Jesus of Nazareth did not heal the sick to abolish disease.