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I’m guessing that Javier Milei can.

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Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/ingegnerizzare-il-dissenso)

Come spesso faccio la domenica mattina, stavo bevendo il mio caffè e scorrendo il mio feed di notizie quando ho notato qualcosa di sorprendente. Forse era il mio algoritmo, ma i contenuti erano inondati da un'insolita dose di veleno contro la nomina di Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a Segretario dell'HHS. Il messaggio coordinato era impossibile da ignorare: voci di corridoio su tutte le reti lo etichettavano uniformemente come “complottista” e un “pericolo per la salute pubblica”, senza mai affrontare le sue reali posizioni. Gli attacchi concertati dei media su Kennedy rivelano molto più della loro opinione sulla sua nomina: espongono una profonda crisi di credibilità all'interno di istituzioni che un tempo godevano della fiducia del loro pubblico.

Il paradosso della credibilità

L'ironia di chi ha guidato questi attacchi non mi è sfuggita: si trattava in gran parte delle stesse voci che hanno sostenuto le linee di politica pandemiche più distruttive. Come ha giustamente osservato Jeffrey Tucker su X questa mattina:

It's really something to see hordes of high-paid journalists and intellectuals who championed Plexiglass Nation, 6-feet mysticism, playground closures, sanitizer baths, and plastic face coverings now denouncing dissidents as "anti-science." Unbelievable.

La risposta coordinata

Questa ipocrisia diventa ancora più evidente nella recente copertura del New York Times, dove una retorica sprezzante sostituisce sistematicamente un impegno concreto per la notizia. In un articolo recente il quotidiano riconosce le tendenze preoccupanti nella salute dei bambini, dichiarando con disprezzo che “vaccini e fluoro non sono la causa”, senza però prendere in considerazione le prove. In un altro pezzo, Zeynep Tufekci – che in particolare ha sostenuto alcune delle misure più draconiane contro il Covid – avverte che Kennedy potrebbe “distruggere una delle più grandi conquiste della civiltà”, dipingendo scenari apocalittici e ignorando le sue reali posizioni politiche.

Nel frattempo la loro redazione politica ipotizza come la sua posizione sulle grandi aziende alimentari potrebbe “alienare i suoi alleati repubblicani”. Ogni articolo affronta il tema da una prospettiva diversa, ma lo schema è chiaro: messaggi coordinati volti a minare la sua credibilità prima che possa assumere la carica istituzionale.

L'effetto camera di risonanza

Si può quasi sentire il nastro trasportatore editoriale che si apre mentre i redattori elaborano la realtà approvata del giorno per il loro pubblico. Il tono tra gli articoli non rivela un'analisi indipendente bensì un modello molto familiare: i media beffardi ancora in azione. Come ho spiegato nel mio pezzo L'industria dell'informazione, questo approccio a catena di montaggio rispetto la produzione della realtà è diventato sempre più evidente a chiunque presti un minimo di attenzione.

Ciò che questi guardiani non riescono a comprendere è che un tale e compiaciuto sdegno, questo rifiuto di confrontarsi con argomentazioni sostanziali, è proprio ciò che alimenta il crescente scetticismo del loro pubblico. Il panico sembra crescere in modo direttamente proporzionale alla vicinanza di Kennedy al potere reale. Questo sdegno orchestrato è più di un difetto giornalistico: riflette un dilemma istituzionale più ampio, che diventa inevitabile con l'aumento del consenso per Kennedy.

La trappola istituzionale

Il Times si trova di fronte a un dilemma: a un certo punto dovrà affrontare la sostanza delle argomentazioni di Kennedy piuttosto che affidarsi a caratterizzazioni sprezzanti, soprattutto se assumerà il controllo dell'apparato sanitario americano. Proprio stamattina i conduttori della MSNBC urlavano letteralmente che “Kennedy farà uccidere delle persone” – l'ennesimo esempio di come si faccia ricorso a melodrammi e paura invece di confrontarsi con le sue reali posizioni. La strategia della ridicolizzazione si ritorce loro contro, proprio perché evitano di confrontarsi con le prove e le preoccupazioni che coinvolgono genitori e cittadini di ogni orientamento politico. Ogni tentativo di mantenere il controllo narrativo attraverso l'autorità, piuttosto che attraverso le prove, accelera il collasso della credibilità istituzionale.

Oltre Kennedy: ridefinire le linee di politica

L'analisi del NYT sul potenziale alienamento degli alleati repubblicani a causa di Kennedy evidenzia in particolare la loro incomprensione del mutevole panorama politico. Da democratico di lunga data che continua a sostenere molti valori progressisti tradizionali, Kennedy trascende i confini politici convenzionali. Il suo messaggio – “Dobbiamo amare i nostri figli più di quanto ci odiamo a vicenda” – viene accettato proprio perché chiunque liquida questa crociata per ripristinare la vitalità americana come mero teatrino politico è cieco di fronte all'ondata di persone stanche di vedere le proprie comunità sgretolarsi sotto il peso di un declino artificiale.

Non si tratta solo di Kennedy, ma dell'incapacità dei media di affrontare le legittime preoccupazioni di un pubblico disilluso. Quando le istituzioni si rifiutano di confrontarsi con le voci dissenzienti, accrescono la sfiducia e incrinano il fondamento condiviso necessario per un dibattito democratico. Mentre il messaggio di RFK Jr. ha risuonato oltre i confini politici, l'incapacità dei media di affrontare questioni fondamentali, come le carenze normative, rivela quanto siano ormai fuori dal mondo.

L'arte di mancare il punto

Prendete in considerazione questa verifica dei fatti tratta dal sopraccitato articolo. Il Times tenta di screditare l'esempio di Kennedy sui Fruit Loops, ma inavvertitamente conferma il suo punto: ingredienti vietati nei mercati europei sono in effetti consentiti nei prodotti americani. Concentrandosi sulla precisione semantica invece che sulla questione più ampia – perché le autorità di regolamentazione statunitensi consentano ingredienti non sicuri – i media distolgono l'attenzione dai dibattiti sostanziali.

La senatrice Elizabeth Warren ha dichiarato questa settimana: “RFK Jr. rappresenta un pericolo per la salute pubblica, la ricerca scientifica, la medicina e la copertura sanitaria per milioni di persone. Vuole impedire ai genitori di proteggere i propri figli dal morbillo e le sue idee accoglierebbero con favore il ritorno della poliomielite”. Eppure questa inquadratura allarmistica elude la semplice domanda che Kennedy in realtà solleva: perché non dovremmo volere test di sicurezza adeguati per le sostanze chimiche che dovremmo iniettare nelle vene dei nostri figli? Il silenzio in risposta a questa domanda la dice lunga sulle priorità istituzionali e sulla loro paura di qualcuno con il potere di esigere risposte.

RFK Jr. poses a danger to public health, scientific research, medicine, and health care coverage for millions.

He wants to stop parents from protecting their babies from measles and his ideas would welcome the return of polio.

I have a lot of questions for his Senate hearing. https://t.co/YlpqO4dBdO

Un referendum sull'ingegnerizzazione del consenso

Dite quello che volete di Trump, ma le sue dichiarazioni sulle “fake news” hanno toccato un nervo scoperto che emana sempre più dolore ogni giorno che passa. Chi un tempo derideva queste affermazioni ora osserva con gli occhi spalancati le narrazioni coordinate che si diffondono sulle piattaforme mediatiche. Il gaslighting è diventato troppo evidente per essere ignorato. Questo risveglio trascende i tradizionali confini politici, gli americani di ogni estrazione sociale sono stanchi di sentirsi dire di non credere ai propri occhi, che si tratti di linee di politica pandemiche, realtà economiche o soppressione delle voci dissidenti.

«Il partito vi ha detto di rifiutare l'evidenza dei vostri occhi e delle vostre orecchie.

Fu il suo ultimo, e più essenziale, comando.»

~ George Orwell, 1984

Il momento della verità

Con Kennedy a capo dell'infrastruttura sanitaria americana, le istituzioni mediatiche si trovano di fronte a un punto di svolta cruciale. Campagne di paura e attacchi ad hominem non saranno sufficienti quando le sue posizioni politiche richiederanno un esame approfondito. Il meccanismo del licenziamento coordinato – visibile in identici punti di discussione su tutte le reti – rivela più sulla fedeltà istituzionale che sull'integrità giornalistica.

Questo momento richiede qualcosa di diverso. Quando Kennedy solleva questioni sui test di sicurezza farmaceutica o sulle tossine ambientali – questioni che coinvolgono famiglie di ogni orientamento politico – un dibattito critico deve sostituire la ridicolizzazione delle posizioni altrui. Le sue posizioni reali, ascoltate direttamente piuttosto che attraverso i filtri dei media, spesso si allineano con le preoccupazioni di buon senso sull'influenza delle aziende farmaceutiche riguardo la salute pubblica.

Questo modello istituzionale di autorità artificiale si collega direttamente ai temi che ho esplorato in un altro articolo intitolato Tutto svuotato: sistemi basati su decreti piuttosto che su un valore dimostrato. Non vendono armi, vendono paura. Le stesse forze che controllano la politica monetaria ora cercano di dettare il dibattito sulla salute pubblica.

Rompere la macchina del consenso

La soluzione non verrà dai guardiani istituzionali (sono loro che ci hanno portati fin qui), ma da un esame diretto. Dobbiamo tutti:

• Ascoltare i discorsi completi di Kennedy piuttosto che frammenti audio editati;

• Leggere le sue posizioni politiche piuttosto che le caratterizzazioni dei media;

• Esaminare le prove che cita piuttosto che i riassunti dei fact-checker;

• Capire perché alcune questioni relative alla sanità pubblica siano considerate off-limits.

Non sto suggerendo di accettare ogni posizione contraria, ma piuttosto che la fiducia e l'autorevolezza debbano essere guadagnate attraverso un'analisi rigorosa piuttosto che essere presunte tramite l'autorità. Fino ad allora, articoli come quelli segnalati qui continueranno a esemplificare gli stessi fallimenti istituzionali che alimentano i movimenti che cercano di screditare. Con l'avvicinarsi del vero potere istituzionale di Kennedy, aspettatevi che questi attacchi si intensifichino: un chiaro segnale di quanto i guardiani del nostro consenso artificiale e ingegnerizzato abbiano da perdere.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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Imagine a very likely scenario, of civil order collapsing and a martial law being imposed over the entire nation. As a survivalist, you cherish your personal freedom. Therefore, you should be concerned regarding what the safest place during martial law is.

In this article, I will list the safest places during martial law, as well as the best spots to hide your survival supplies. But first, a few words about martial law and what it means. Let us begin, shall we?

What Is Martial Law?

Martial law takes place when a government suspend everyday civil laws and rights. In some instances, a military is the one that imposes its control over the civilians. Martial law is declared during nation-wide or region-wide emergencies, such as war, natural disasters, civil unrest, and so forth.

According to the established U.S. legislations, a country-wide martial law can be declared by either the Congress or the President. In addition, any State Governor can declare martial law in their state. Similar laws can apply to almost any country, with varying levels of strictness of the said law.

Martial law is not a rare phenomenon by far. In the USA alone it was declared almost 70 times, while only 2 of these times are related to a war against a foreign nation. A large portion of these instances is, in fact, related to riots, civil unrest, or even labor disputes.

The situation can be even more harrowing outside the United States, especially in the countries where democracy and personal freedom are completely unheard of.

As you understand by now, martial law, even if it’s seemingly necessary, can hinder your rights, privacy, and independence. We will now take a look at what measures can be taken during martial law. Please keep in mind that I do not support physically resisting governmental or military forces.

Top 10 Safest Places During Martial Law

1. An Off-Grid Cabin or Tiny House

A small and remote house is the ideal location during martial law. This could be a cabin, a tiny house, or some sort of a secret retreat. It should be off the grid for two reasons:

• An off-the-grid house does not depend on external power sources, such as the national powerlines. You can produce your own energy by using solar panels, hydropower, or wind power. You can read more about these natural electricity sources from the linked articles. If you produce your own electricity independently, no one can control you by turning the power off.
• Every house and apartment usually have an address. Eventually this makes the things easier for the military and the government, as they go from door to door, checking on everyone. An off-grid house does not need to have an official address. You can remain almost anonymous and disappear off the grid, as you wait out whatever caused the martial law to be deployed.

A classic location: your bug out shelter or any other bunker can definitely function as a safe haven. You will need to ensure that it’s appropriate stocked with such supplies and items as:

• Water
• Canned and unperishable food
• Fuel for the generator. Alternatively, you can use a portable power station, it’s much more reliable and quieter.
• Spare clothes
• Radio
• Blankets
• First aid kit
• Self-defense weapons
• Flashlights

Once you have the place prepared, never disclose its location to anyone outside your small group. If the martial law is imposed, choose the most inconspicuous route to get to your bunker. Listen to the radio to stay updated when the things have cooled down and you can go back home. You will need a radio that does not require batteries and can last for a long time. I recommend getting American Red Cross Emergency Radio. It can be powered by hand crank or solar panel. This radio also includes a smart phone charger, flashlight, flashing beacon, and an alarm clock.

Unlike the specific places on this list, this one is a general recommendation. Staying away from other people and the cities could be the solution you’re looking for. As history proved time and time again, it’s not just the military or the invading forces that you should be concerned about. It’s also the people next door.

When the supplies run low, the unprepared people will start looting their neighbors. The civilized ones will quickly become uncivilized. The urban streets will be unsafe, with riots and looting everywhere. It’s understandable on some level, since everyone wants to survive. But it’s also a good reason to look for a shelter elsewhere, as far from the urban centers as possible.

That’s right, your house can be more than enough during the martial law period. Think about it, you already have all the supplies and comfort, why look for it in remote places? As long as you do not confront the authorities, you might do just fine by staying in your house.

The trick to staying home is laying low. Continue your life as if nothing happened. This might go against your beliefs, but your survival should be the priority. Stock your house with extra food and water, and simply behave “normally”. Going outside could be dangerous because of two major reasons: the military presence, and whatever disaster or disorder that forced the military presence to appear. Staying home could be the wisest thing to do.

If you don’t have a bunker, tiny house or cabin, any abandoned building might do. You still need to ensure that its location is as removed as possible from the military and governmental presence. If it’s outside the city, then it’s even better. This can be an abandoned factory, farm, barn, warehouse, and so forth.

Scout this location before deciding whether or not this will be your shelter. Ensure that it’s not visited by other people throughout the day. Check its general state and structure. Rotting or infested buildings are too unsafe to stay in.

Once you decide on a building, stash essential supplies there. This way, whenever you need to relocate, the supplies will already be there, waiting for you.

The mountains are a very secluded and inaccessible location. No law representative will bother climbing a cliff just to reprimand you for leaving the city.

Retreating to the mountains can also feel like going back to the roots, to your true self. While the martial law limits you as individual, the mountains free you. The air is fresh up there, and no law is enforced on you.

Of course, you need to be completely prepared to spend some time in that challenging environment, especially during the winter. The supplies might get very low and scarce. The weather makes it even more difficult, and you need to know how to treat frost injuries.

Read the Whole Article

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Folks who believe the current political atmosphere is uniquely hateful have forgotten the boundless vitriol prevailing a few decades ago. During the George W. Bush administration, Republicans relied on push-button rage to suppress all criticism of the war on terror. After I appeared on a 2006 Fox News panel and criticized the Bush administration’s secret illegal financial surveillance regime, I was peppered with hostile emails including this gem: “Every know-nothing lying jackass like you should be rounded up and gassed with the Iraqi poison gas that does not exist according to you.”

I’ve never enjoyed poison gas so I eschewed following that suggestion. Unfortunately, most media outlets remained reticent about publishing frontal attacks on President Bush’s most outrageous policies. So, with a hat tip to Monty Python and Jonathan Swift, I sought to satirize my seditious thoughts into print.

On August 27, 2006, the Los Angeles Times ran my “Modest Proposal: Coerce Congress to Tell the Truth.” That piece was accepted and deftly edited by assistant op-ed editor Matt Welch, who is now the Editor at Large for Reason Magazine. Following is a tweaked version of that piece.

What about Congress?

Do Americans deserve the truth about their members of Congress? If so, citizens should be entitled to use the most advanced fact-finding methods approved by the US government.

Many people are unaware of the revolutions sweeping American jurisprudence. In June, the Supreme Court condemned the Bush administration’s torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and declared that the president is “bound to comply with the Rule of Law.” The Bush White House was outraged and is browbeating Congress to enact legislation overturning that court ruling and unleashing its interrogators.

Last month, Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury notified Congress that the administration seeks to use “coerced confessions” in military tribunals at the Cuba base. Bradbury stressed that “there are gradations of coercion much lower than torture.” Those “gradations” veered away from a 400-year trendline against using brute force to determine facts in judicial proceedings.

Congress will likely pass Bush’s Enemy Combatant Military Commissions Act, approving heavy-handed measures to get the truth from people suspected of bad things. Under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, American citizens should be permitted to use the same methods to pry the truth out of their congressmen, many of whom are also suspected of bad things.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has approved a dozen extreme interrogation methods previously banned by the Pentagon, including hooding, forced nudity, and exploiting fear of dogs. When photos from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq leaked out in 2004, Sen. James Inhofe proclaimed that he was more “outraged by the outrage” than by the pictures of detainees forced to pile into a naked pyramid and a US Army private female dragging a naked Iraqi guy wearing a dog collar.

Inhofe should be blindfolded, put in a straitjacket, and left in a room full of crazed chihuahuas until he explains why the US military should not be constrained to follow the Anti-Torture Act of 1996.

The most iconic Abu Ghraib photo showed an Iraqi man covered in a shroud, standing on a box, with wires attached to his body as if he were awaiting electrocution. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist spearheaded the coverup of the CIA’s use of secret prisons that pummeled detainees. Frist could be similarly wired and attired and compelled to balance atop a rickety box until he explains why he believes the Geneva Convention prohibition on making detainees “disappear” is null and void.

Exposure to extreme cold is another favorite tactic for US interrogators, despite occasional detainee deaths from hypothermia. Sen. Joe Lieberman has been the biggest Democratic apologist for Abu Ghraib in the Senate. He could be strapped to a block of ice until he explains how scandals over Bush’s torture regime helps the US win hearts and minds in the Muslim world.

But if you really want the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then you can’t go wrong by replicating the Spanish Inquisition. Waterboarding involves strapping a person to a board and pouring water down their throat and over their nostrils to make them feel like they are drowning. CIA Director Porter Goss assured Congress that waterboarding is a “professional interrogation method,” not torture. CIA agents proved their professionalism by waterboarding one detainee more than 80 times—and didn’t kill him once.

Citizens should be permitted to bring splintery planks, leather straps, and water tanks to interrogate any member of Congress who denies the Iraq war is becoming a debacle. Any public interrogations of elected representatives should strictly follow the same rules that Bush proposes for military tribunals. Anyone could make anonymous accusations against a member of Congress, and no representative would be allowed to see or cross-examine their detractors. Secret evidence would be allowed but only if it incriminated the accused. Medical doctors would be on hand for any interrogation, ready to formally certify that any resulting fatalities were accidental.

Some people may object that giving Gitmo-style equal treatment to members of Congress could tarnish the dignity of democracy. But that is rather quaint, considering all the outrageous tactics that Congress has already rubber-stamped for Bush’s war on terror. Besides, no one is forcing politicians to approve the use of coerced confessions for everyone else in the world. They still have time to avoid reaping what they sow.

No Shame on Capitol Hill

My mockery failed to shame Congress into decency. In the following weeks, legislators rushed to approve Bush’s barbaric interrogation wish-list. The Boston Globe reported that “because of the Bush administration’s restrictive policy on sharing classified information with Congress, very few of the people engaged in the debate will know what they’re talking about.” Fewer than 50 members of Congress knew what actual interrogation methods were being debated. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)—Trump’s first attorney general—boasted, “I don’t know what the CIA has been doing, nor should I know.” Legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick declared, “We’ve reached a defining moment in our democracy when our elected officials are celebrating their own blind ignorance as a means of keeping the rest of us blindly ignorant as well.”

On September 30, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA), retroactively legalizing torture that occurred prior to December 30, 2005. The act also blocked torture victims from suing the US government. In the weeks before the midterm elections, the Republican Party vilified any Democratic member of Congress who failed to vote for the MCA as a terrorist lover. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill) claimed that Democrats who opposed the MCA had “voted in favor of new rights for terrorists.” Hastert’s cachet suffered after a federal judge condemned him as a “serial child molester” and sent him to prison for bank fraud.

Shortly after the MCA was signed, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that there was no such thing as habeas corpus rights for American citizens. Gonzales previously declared that President Bush enjoyed a “commander-in-chief override” regarding laws prohibiting torture.

The following year, the New York Times published classified documents revealing that the Bush torture program explicitly imitated Soviet interrogation methods from the Cold War, including manacling detainees in painful poses for long periods and pummeling them into submission. Gen. Barry McCaffrey complained, “We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA.” But shortly after Barack Obama became president, he effectively issued a blanket pardon for all US government torturers and torture policymakers (this means you, Dick Cheney).

In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released a 600-page summary of its report on the CIA torture regime. CIA abuses included death resulting from hypothermia, rape-like rectal feeding of detainees, compelling detainees to stand long periods on broken legs, and thrashing them to stay awake for seven days and nights straight. In some cases, interrogators didn’t know the language of the person they were questioning so they compensated by beating the hell out of them. Psychologists aided the torture regime, offering hints on how to destroy the will and resistance of prisoners. Many detainees were innocent but that didn’t save their skin.

Ironically, after all the shocking disclosures about the Bush-era torture regime, some people still consider my 2006 Los Angeles Times satire to be in bad taste. Instead, plenty of folks likely agree with the conclusion of the Iraqi poison gas email dude: “The reason this country is so screwed up is because of arrogant liberal bastards like you who think they are just so much smarter than anyone else…. Your whole pathetic agenda is to attack the president. I think it is time for you to commit yourself you need serious help.”

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

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Recently, I was in a pharmacy and overheard the pharmacist say to someone, “There’s so much unpleasantness on the news these days, I’ve stopped watching.” The pharmacist has my sympathy. I’d love to be able to ignore the deterioration of the First World. It is, at turns, tedious, depressing, disturbing, and infuriating.

Unfortunately, we’re now passing through what, before it’s over, will be the most life-altering period in our lifetimes. As much as we’d like to behave like ostriches right now, we’d better keep our heads out of the sand and be as honest with ourselves as we can if we’re going to lessen the impact that these events will have on us.

I cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of a possible shortage of food. History is filled with examples of cultures that would endure most anything and still behave responsibly… but nothing causes greater, more unpredictable, or more violent behaviour in a people than a lack of food.

Interesting to note that whenever I converse with people on the finer points of the Great Unraveling, when I mention the words “famine” or “food riots,” even those who are otherwise quite comfortable discussing the subject tend to want to discount the possibility that these will be aspects of the troubles that are headed our way. For this very reason, I believe that we should shine a light on this eventuality.

The Present State of the Industry

In America, the food industry is not in good shape. Normally, the food industry relies on a low-profit/high-volume basis, leaving little room for error. Add to this fact that many business owners and managers in the food industry have given in to the temptation to build up debt over the years. Inflation has made that task especially difficult. Some have been keeping their noses above water; others have gone under.

Hyperinflation

Hyperinflation is a very real possibility. Historically, whenever a government creates massive debt and greatly increases the printing of currency, dramatic inflation, if not hyperinflation, results. Those businesses that are already on the ragged edge will find that when they’re paid, they cannot buy the same volume of goods for the same amount of dollars. This will be true throughout the entire food-supply chain. Of course, little inflationary blips are the norm in business, and businesses adjust to them. The problem comes when there are large increases that continue steadily over a period of months. When this occurs, we’ll see a greater frequency of food-supply businesses going belly up.

In a normal business climate, the failure of some businesses would aid the competition, as they would have new markets to take on, but if the remaining businesses are already having trouble, they will not be in a condition to expand. The disappearance of large numbers of providers will result in a failure of delivery to the next business down the chain. Nationwide, distribution will become inadequate. This, of course, will not be uniform. Some areas will suffer worse than others. Those types of areas that are already chronically problematic will be hit hardest.

Those who are the most likely to go down the earliest will be those who have the highest overheads and the lowest volume. Typically, these are the small stores—the ones on street corners in every city.

These stores are critical. If a supermarket in the suburbs experiences a shortage, purchasers may drive across town to another supermarket. Not so in the city. If a corner store has empty shelves, or worse, closes completely, the purchasers in that neighbourhood must walk to the next neighbourhood to buy, and they might not be welcome there if the people in that neighbourhood are already having problems with supply at their local store. Worse, should the second store also close, the number of purchasers is redoubled. When the shoppers from two stores arrive at the third store, physical conflict between shoppers is a near certainty.

Food panic doesn’t necessarily occur if a retailer carefully assesses his increased market and rations sales so that everybody gets a slightly lesser share. In fact, I’ve personally seen this work well in the event of a natural disaster in my home country. The panic does occur when the availability suddenly becomes non-existent (even for a brief time) and the shoppers are unsure when it will be resumed. In an inner city, this is exacerbated by three factors:

1. Shipments from suppliers become erratic and insufficient.
2. A significant increase in the number of shoppers cleans out the store.
3. Individual shoppers become unreasonably demanding.

This last factor, in any inner-city situation, is almost always responsible for the chaos that evolves into a riot. It works like this: A mother complains that there is no bread for her children to have a sandwich. Her husband becomes angry at the problem and goes down to the corner store, demanding a loaf of bread. The store manager says that he cannot release the bread until the next morning, when the neighbourhood knows they can each come and buy one loaf only. The man, becoming angrier, goes in the back and takes a loaf of bread. The manager resists and is shot.

The man, on his way out, grabs a carton of cigarettes and a couple of six-packs of beer for good measure. The store, now unmanaged, is looted. Those shoppers who are normally peaceful people begin to panic and realize that it’s time to grab what you can. In these situations, the food stores are generally cleaned out quickly. In a very short period of time, a full-scale riot may be in play. In most inner-city riots, the liquor stores are hit early on, then the appliance stores, and so on down the line.

But this is no ordinary riot. Unlike a riot triggered by, say, a TV news clip of some policeman beating a seemingly innocent man, the trigger is ongoing and, more importantly, it is not, at its heart, anger-based—it is fear-based. And it is self-perpetuating. Shipments are not resumed to a store that has no one running it. Worse, additional store owners close for fear that they’re next. The situation escalates very fast.

Enter the Cavalry

While the US and Europe have seen many riot situations and we can therefore study how they play out, a series of self-perpetuating riots has not taken place before. It’s likely that, within weeks, a national emergency would be declared, and rightly so. But how to deal with it?

Certainly, the president and state governors would quickly begin to work with wholesalers to ensure that food got to the cities (and any other locations that are also troubled). Needless to say, suppliers will refuse, stating that, in such a situation, they cannot get paid for any food that they deliver. Truckers will state that they cannot accept the danger that their drivers will be exposed to.

Politicians, feeling the pressure from their constituencies, will want to act decisively, even if their decisions prove ineffectual. In such cases, those politicians who are more conservative may decide to send in truckloads of food to be handed out for free, with the control of the Department of Homeland Security to (hopefully) keep order. Those politicians who are more liberal will believe that the right solution is to nationalise food supply in their states (and possibly nationally)—to take over the control of delivery.

As can be imagined, the results will vary from suburban situations in which the store staff are still in place and the provision of food at the retail level remains orderly, to inner-city situations in which trucks will be routinely ransacked. The evening news will show a clip of a “shopper” running down the street with a case of boxes of cornflakes while heads of lettuce roll on the pavement, some to be picked up, others to be trampled.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the supply chain, the wholesaler is trying to explain to the politicians that if he’s not paid in some way for the food he sends out, he simply cannot continue. Politicians (especially the more liberal ones), not understanding the workings of business, regard the businessman as simply being greedy and fail to understand that, without an orderly flow of money, business stops. The politicians place a temporary ban on all food containers being shipped overseas (even though the overseas customers may be the only truly reliable payers). The politicians advise the wholesalers that they will be paid “eventually.” If the money does not exist in the state’s treasury, some politicians may even promise future tax credits as payment. As a result, the supply of food breaks down on a major scale.

How It All Shakes Out

Historically, there’s nothing so chaotic as famine. As long as people have a crust of bread and as long as it arrives regularly, there’s a chance that events may be controlled. It’s the very unpredictability of supply that causes panic. And the greater the concentration of potential recipients, the greater the panic.

Small wonder that, when I speak to friends and associates about the Great Unraveling, this one facet often makes them recoil in a desire to avoid the subject entirely. Once this particular house of cards begins to fall, it will fall much faster than the economy in general, and the results will unquestionably be extreme. So, if the politicians are unlikely to effect a workable solution (at least in the short term), how does this all play out? After all, no famine lasts forever.

What historically happens during a famine is that chaos ensues for a period of time. Some people are killed in attempting to take food from the authorities who control the distribution. Other people are killed on their way home by others who want the food they are carrying. Others are killed in their homes when raided by those who are hungry. Still others die of starvation. It’s horrific to say, but, after a time, in such situations, famine becomes “the new norm” and, as illogical as it would seem, this is the turning point. Chaos eventually devolves into hopelessness and listlessness, and the panic disappears. Then, at some point, the lines of supply are slowly restructured, generally on a more limited scale than before.

Is there a timeline for the above to occur? This is for the reader to decide. Each of us will have some general picture in our heads regarding the likelihood and timing of a second crash in the stock market, the rapidity and degree of hyperinflation, and the many other aspects that make up the Great Unraveling of the economy.

Therefore, those who accept that harder times are looming but would rather not consider the likelihood of food riots and famine would be advised to read the above article a second time and then begin to plan. Those who do not presently have “backdoor” situations in place may wish to set the wheels in motion and to internationalise themselves. One thing is certain: Once riot situations begin, there will not be enough time to plan.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Food Crisis—The Greatest Threat to Social Stability appeared first on LewRockwell.

Hector is tricked into combat and killed beneath Troy’s city walls. Trump might well heed the moral to The Iliad story.

Presentation at the XXIII International Likhachev Scientific Readings, St Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, 22-23 May 2025 – Transforming the World: Problems and Prospects’, XXIII International Likhachev Scientific Readings, St Petersburg

Last year in St Petersburg, I asked the question: Will the West come out of its cultural war as a more amenable potential partner? Or will the West disaggregate, and resort to bellicosity in an effort to hold things together?

Well, that was then. The ‘counter-revolution’ is now underway in the form of the Trump ‘Storm’. And the West already has come apart: Project Trump is turning America upside down – and in Europe, there is crisis, desperation and a fury to overturn Trump and ‘all his works’.

Is this then ‘it’? The anticipated revolt against ‘Progressive’ cultural imposition?

No. This is not the extent of the creeping, thunderous changes underway in the U.S. Those are provoking far more complicated political shifts. It will not be some courteous red versus blue affair. For there is yet another ‘shoe’ to drop – beyond the MAGA revolution.

The real action in the U.S. is not happening in seminars at Brookings or in op-eds in the New York Times. It is happening backstage, out of sight; beyond the reach of polite society, and mostly off-script. America is undergoing a transformation more akin to what befell Rome in the age of Augustus.

Which is to say, the main happening is the collapse of a paralytic élite order and the consequent unfolding of new political projects.

The collapse of global liberalism’s intellectual paradigm – its delusions together with its associated technocratic structure of governance – transcends the red/blue schism in the West. The sheer dysfunctionality associated with western culture wars has underlined that the entire approach to economic governance must change.

For thirty years Wall Street sold a fantasy – and that illusion just shattered. The 2025 trade war has exposed the truth: Most major U.S. companies were duct-taped together by fragile supply chains, cheap energy, and foreign labour. And now? It’s all breaking.

Frankly put, liberal élites simply have demonstrated that they are not competent or professional in matters of governance. And they do not understand the gravity of the situation they face – which is that the financial architecture that used to produce easy solutions and effortless prosperity is well-past its ‘sell-by’ date.

The essayist and military strategist Aurelien has written in a paper entitled, The Strange Defeat (original in French), where ‘defeat’ consists in Europe’s ‘curious’ inability to understand world events:

“… i.e. the almost pathological dissociation from the real world that [Europe] displays in its words and actions. Yet, even as the situation deteriorates … there is no sign of the West becoming more reality-based in its understanding– and it is very likely that it will continue to live in its alternative construction of reality– until it is forcibly expelled”.

Yes, some understand that the western economic paradigm of debt-led, hyper-financialised consumerism has run its course and that change is inevitable; but so heavily invested are they in the Anglo economic model that they stay paralysed in the spider’s web. There is no alternative (TINA) is the watch phrase.

Thus, the West is continually out-pointed and disappointed when dealing with states who at least make an effort to look to the future in an organised fashion.

The West is in crisis, but not in the way Progressives or the bureaucratic Technocrats think. Its problem is not populism or polarisation or whatever is the chosen ‘current thing’ of the week on the MSM talk shows. The deeper affliction is structural: Power is so diffused and fractured that no meaningful reform is possible. Every actor has veto power, and no actor can impose coherence. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama gave us the term for this: “vetocracy” – a condition where everyone can block, but no one can build.

American commentator Matt Taibbi observes:

“Pulling back, in a broader sense, we do have a crisis of competency in this country. It has had a huge impact on American politics”.

In one sense, the lack of connection to reality – to competency – is ingrained in today’s global neo-liberalism. In part it may be attributed to Friedrich von Hayek’s Road to Serfdom’s acclaimed message that government interference and economic planning leads inevitably to serfdom. His message is regularly aired, whenever the need for change is mooted.

The second plank (whilst Hayek was fighting the ghosts of what he called ‘socialism’) was that of Americans sealing a ‘union’ with the Chicago School of Monetarism – the child of which was to be Milton Friedman who would pen the ‘American edition’ of The Road to Serfdom, which (ironically) came to be called Capitalism and Freedom.

Economist Philip Pilkington writes that Hayek’s delusion that markets equal ‘freedom’ has become widespread to the point of all discourse being completely saturated. In polite company, and in public, you can certainly be left-wing or right-wing, but you will always be, in some shape or form, neoliberal – otherwise you will simply not be allowed entry to discourse.

“Each country may have its own peculiarities, but on broad principles they follow a similar pattern: debt-led neoliberalism is first and foremost a theory of how to reengineer the state in order to guarantee the success of the market– and that of its most important participants: modern corporations”.

Yet the whole (neo)-liberal paradigm rests on this notion of utility-maximisation as its central pillar (as if human motivations are reductively defined in purely material terms). It postulates that motivation is utilitarian – and only utilitarian – as its foundational delusion. As philosophers of science like Hans Albert have pointed out, the theory of utility-maximisation rules out real world mapping, a priori, thus rendering the theory untestable.

Its delusion lies in making man and community well-being subservient to markets and presumes that excess ‘consumption’ is sufficient recompensation for the inherent vassalage. This was taken to an extreme with Tony Blair who said that there was, in his day, no such thing as politics. As Prime Minister, he presided over a cabinet of technical experts, oligarchs and bankers, whose competence allowed them to steer the state accurately. Politics was over; leave it to the technocrats.

“The British Conservative government elected in 1979 thus decided– rather than to imitate Britain’s successful competitors to do the opposite of what they did– and essentially to rely on magic. “Thus, all the government had to do was to create the right magical environment (low taxes, few regulations) and that the “animal spirits” of entrepreneurs would spontaneously do the rest, through the “magic” (interesting choice of words, that) of the “market.” The magician, however, having summoned up these powers, should make sure to stay well away from its workings”, as Aurelien has written.

The ideas were taken from the American Left, but cosmopolitanism spread them across Europe.

“The Anglo-Saxon (now more broadly western) fixation with archetypal heroic entrepreneurs and university dropouts has obscured the historical fact that no significant industry, and no key technology, has ever been developed without some level of planning and government encouragement”.

Clearly such globalist liberal systems of ideas are ideological (if not magical), rather than scientific. And one ideology, when no longer effective, will in future be replaced by another.

The lesson here – when a state becomes incompetent, someone eventually arises to govern it. Not by consensus, but by coercion. One historical cure for such political sclerosis is not dialogue or compromise; it is what the Romans called proscription – a formalized purge. Sulla knew this. Caesar perfected it. Augustus institutionalized it. Take the élite interests, deny them resources, strip them of property, and compel obedience … or else!

As U.S. political and cultural critic Walter Kirn has predicted:

“So, looking forward, it’s what are people going to want? What are people going to value? What are they going to prize? Are their priorities going to shift? I think they will shift big time …”.

“[Americans] They’re going to want less concern for the philosophical and/or even long-term political questions of equity and so on, I predict; and they’re going to want to lay in a minimum expectation of competence. In other words, this is a time when the priorities shift and I think that big change is coming: big, big change, because we look like we’ve been dealing with luxury problems, and we’ve certainly been dealing with other countries’ problems, Ukraine or whoever it might be, with massive funding”.

What does Brussels make of all this? Absolutely nothing. The EU technocracy is still entranced by the America of the Obama years – a land of soft power, identity politics, and cosmopolitan neoliberal capitalism. They hope (and expect) that Trump’s influence will be expunged at next year’s Mid-Term Congressional elections. The Brussels ruling strata still mistake the cultural power of the American left as being synonymous with political power.

American conservatism then, it seems, is being rebuilt as something rougher, meaner, and far less sentimental. It aspires to emerge too, as also something more centralized, coercive, and radical. With many families in the U.S. and Europe skirting bankruptcy and possible dispossession as the real economy implodes, this segment of the population – now including an increasing proportion of the Middle Classes – despises both the oligarchs and the Establishment and is moving ever closer to a possibly violent response. Then the culture war will move from the public arena to the street ‘battleground’.

Today’s U.S. Administration is, above all, attached to the ancient notion of greatness – to individual greatness and the contributions that greatness makes to all of civilization.

The individual transgressive, for example, plays a significant role in Ayn Rand’s theories of the industrialist and the genius (in her novels, there is always a strong element of the outsider being this kind of criminal transgressor who bring a new measure of energy, which insiders cannot provide), political scientist Corey Robin writes.

There is, in short, a not-so-secret affinity between today’s populist conservatism and radicalism. However, as Emily Wilson in her book, The Iliad, sets out, loss of ‘greatness seldom’ is easily recouped.

One cannot escape The Iliad’s analogy for today – in which Trump seeks to recover his country’s ‘greatness’ (and in the process achieve undying personal kleos (reputation). Today, we might refer to it as one’s ‘legacy’. In The Iliad, it is definitional and gives mortal leaders the metaphorical ability to surpass death through honour and glory.

However, it does not always end well: Hector, the protagonist, also seeking kleos, is tricked into combat and killed beneath Troy’s city walls. Trump might well heed the moral to The Iliad story.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The post A Storm in the West: The Liberal Intellectual Paradigm Is Broken appeared first on LewRockwell.

Do you remember when Joe Biden brought us to the brink of nuclear war by allowing the Ukrainians to fire long-range missiles provided by the United States deep into Russian territory?  Unfortunately, western leaders have decided to do it again.  I honestly have no idea what they are thinking.  Every long-range missile that is fired deep into Russian territory brings us even closer to nuclear war.  Just think about how we would respond if someone was firing long-range missiles at New York, Boston, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles.  We would nuke them.  Let us hope that the Russians show restraint, because western leaders are now crossing a very dangerous line.

When I first learned what German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had said, I had a hard time believing it.  According to Merz, all of the western nations that are providing Ukraine with long-range missiles have now given Ukraine permission to fire those missiles deep into Russian territory…

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Ukraine has been given permission to use weapons supplied by its allies to launch strikes deep inside Russia.

“There are absolutely no range limits anymore for weapons delivered to Ukraine, not from Britain, the French or from us — also not from the Americans,” Merz said at a conference in Berlin on Monday. “That means Ukraine can defend itself by attacking military positions also in Russia.”

I’ll say the same thing that I said when Joe Biden originally gave Ukraine permission to fire long-range missiles provided by the U.S. deep into Russian territory.

This is literally insane.

And guess who will be picking the targets and providing the targeting information?

It won’t be the Ukrainians.

NATO is now on the verge of a full-blown war with Russia, and a full-blown war between NATO and Russia would inevitably go nuclear.

President Trump is our last hope for peace with Russia, but now it appears that he has totally lost patience with Vladimir Putin.

In fact, just hours ago he posted a message warning about “the downfall of Russia” on his Truth Social account…

I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever. I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia! Likewise, President Zelenskyy is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop. This is a War that would never have started if I were President. This is Zelenskyy’s, Putin’s, and Biden’s War, not “Trump’s,” I am only helping to put out the big and ugly fires, that have been started through Gross Incompetence and Hatred.

In response, the Russians tried to calm things down…

The Kremlin responded Monday to President Trump’s criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing “emotional overload” at this “very important moment.”

“We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organizing and launching this negotiation process,” said Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov when asked about Trump’s remarks, according to Reuters.

“Of course, at the same time, this is a very crucial moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reactions.”

But if the Russians really wanted to calm things down, they would stop sending hundreds of attack drones deep into Ukraine…

Russia’s Sunday night attack included the launch of 355 drones, Yuriy Ihnat, head of the Ukrainian air force’s communications department, told The Associated Press. The previous night, Russia fired 298 drones and 69 missiles of various types in what Ukrainian authorities said was the largest combined aerial assault during the conflict. Overall, from Friday to Sunday, Russia launched around 900 drones at Ukraine, officials said.

Night after night, Russia has been terrorizing Ukrainian cities with these drones.

According to Newsweek, last night’s drone barrage resulted in NATO jets being scrambled “near Poland’s eastern border”…

NATO fighter jets were scrambled near Poland’s eastern border on Monday as Ukraine was struck by a Russian missile and drone attack.

Poland’s Armed Forces said that Polish and allied aircraft had taken off amid “renewed activity of the Russian Federation’s long-range aviation carrying out missile strikes on facilities located in the territory of Ukraine.”

Of course the Russians are simply responding to what the Ukrainians have been doing.

Last week, the Ukrainians sent hundreds of attack drones into Russian territory, and at one point there was even an attempt to kill Vladimir Putin…

The Kremlin as well as Russian state media are alleging a huge, potentially conflict-altering incident which will surely escalate the war in Ukraine – an attempted attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.

A high-ranking Russian military commander on Sunday described that last week, as Putin traveled to the Kursk region for the first time since is liberation after 6+ months of Ukrainian occupation, Ukraine tried to attack Putin’s helicopter mid-flight, sending a wave of drones to swarm the flight path of the chopper.

The Ukrainians have been trying to push the Russians over the edge for a long time.

It looks like this attack on Putin may have finally achieved that goal.

Many were hoping that President Trump would be able to finally bring an end to the war in Ukraine, but now Russian media outlets are proclaiming that the peace process is almost dead…

The Russian press had declared Donald Trump’s peace deal is “dying a slow death” as a key ally of Vladimir Putin mocked Western ceasefire plans by posting a map showing almost all of Ukraine occupied by Kremlin forces. The Moscow-based daily newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets ran an editorial on current ceasefire negotiations, commenting that it believed President’s “energy charge” had “gone flat” and that it would soon become “obvious” even to Mr Trump that any deal was in its “death throes”.

The bleak assessment was reported by the BBC’s Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg during his regular dispatch covering the nation’s headlines. He added that the piece in the Moskovskij Komsomolets said: “The Trump factor was significant and strong enough to get Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table, but judging by the current picture, it feels like Trump’s peace plan is dying a slow, but necessarily painful death.

Meanwhile, the Russians continue to get even closer to the Iranians…

Iran’s parliament ratified a 20-year strategic partnership with Russia on Wednesday, formalizing a broad alliance that expands military and economic cooperation between the two heavily sanctioned nations, according to state media.

The move comes as nuclear negotiations between Tehran and Washington are in doubt, raising fears of a renewed crisis in the Middle East with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening possible military action if no deal is reached.

Nobody can deny that 2025 has turned out to be a year of war.

Now western missiles will be raining down in Russian territory, and the Russians will certainly escalate matters even more in response.

Both sides are expecting the other side to back down, but that isn’t going to happen.

We are witnessing an extremely dangerous game of chicken, and the fate of the entire globe hangs in the balance.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post NATO Is on the Verge of a Full-Blown War With Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 1995, 30 years ago, Henry Regnery published my book, The New Color Line.  Henry told his son Alfred that my book was the second most important book, after Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, that the publishing house had ever published.

Reviewers agreed. Irving Kristol, the father of the neoconservatives, called attention in The Public Interest  to the important message of my book.  What had happened was the implementation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by the EEOC had overthrown the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, that required equal treatment of the law, by imposing racial quotas, explicitly prohibited in the statutory language of the 1964 CivilRights Act, against whites and in favor of blacks, against males and in favor of females in hiring, promotion, and university admission.  This, of course, made whites and white males into second class citizens under the law as it was enforced by the US Department of Justice and federal courts including the US Supreme Court. This practice of making white Americans second class citizens in law has continued for 60 years. 

Appreciative reviews from both right and left–Judge Robert H. Bork and Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz–attested to the non-ideological, non-partisan straight-shooting content of my book. 

The New York Times Book Review wrote “A forceful and convincing case . . . vividly dramatic.”

The Wall Street Journal said “There are important lessons to learn . . . not least how good intentions can go badly awry.”

The Washington Post said “Roberts and Stratton make a strong case that the civil rights legislation of the 1960s has been distorted beyond recognition.”

I don’t remember any conservative or libertarian magazines taking notice of the book.  Perhaps Regnery’s marketers did not think that endorsements from conservatives would be helpful, or perhaps conservatives saw my book as an assault on America’s virtue–“nothing that Roberts says could happen here!” This is the typical  conservative reply to anything that doesn’t read rah-rah America.

All I know is that Henry Regnery died a year latter in 1996, and with his death the publisher went death on the book.  It took another year of pressure by me to get Alfred to issue a paperback edition, and there was no marketing effort.

Someone told the publishing company to pull the plug on a well reviewed book. And the plug was pulled.  All the information I provided about the assault on  equal rights, was  discarded. The success in deep-sixing the book was so complete that Harmeet Dhillon knows nothing about it, and neither does Tucker Carlson.  They have learned of the problem by living it. See here.

So, where are we now after 60 years 0f  EEOC and Justice Department enforcement of illegal discrimination against white American citizens?  

We have Harmeet Dhillon as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice.  Every American, no matter your opinion or how indoctrinated or brainwashed you are from your “education,” should watch Dhillon’s interview with Tucker carlson.  You will learn the enormous extent to which racism against white people has been institutionalized.  For example, the black mayor of Chicago said publicly that he only hires blacks for positions of authority.  This seems to also be the policy of New York’s prosecutorial system.

Assistant Attorney General Dhillon reports that she came in as head of a US Justice Department division, that of civil rights, that had worked for decades to establish in law discrimination against white people and against Christians.

She sent correctly written memos to the 400 career lawyers and 200 staff under her in the Civil Rights Division specifying what the laws say, for which the Civil Rights Division was created to enforce, and told them that she required that the laws as written be enforced.

The result was organized “unhappy hours” and “struggle sessions” when 600 Justice Department employees complained  about the interference with their mission to elevate blacks above whites to make up for past alleged discrimination by whites against blacks.  These protests were followed by “Crying Sessions” in which 30, 40, 50 year old white civil rights attorneys literally cried on one another’s shoulders that the evil new Trump regime was preventing them from imposing “racial justice” on white people by discriminating against them to make up for past discrimination. 

Assistant Attorney General Dhillon says that in the US Justice Department “Racism against white people is institutionalized.” 

Dear fellow American, try to put yourself into the situation. Here are 400 career attorneys who are so upset that they are going to be prohibited from discriminating against white American citizens that 200 of them to show their support for privileges for “people of color” organized  themselves as a phalanx and marched together out of the  Justice Department in resignation as protest against the law’s requirement of equal treatment under US Law. These indoctrinated Justice Department attorneys are the products off American’s most prestigious law schools,  which are in fact anti-American indoctrination centers, as are the journalism schools and most university departments.

Tell me MAGA-Americans how President Trump with only a few appointees is going to govern  the vast anti-white government bureaucracy that numbers as of November 2024 over 3 million employees.

Systemic discrimination against white Americans is so institutionalized in America that privilege for non-whites has become a squatters’ right protected in  federal court decisions, including those of the US Supreme Court.  We have reached the point that federal judges are doing their best to give the rights of American citizenship to immigrant-invaders who have entered the US illegally.  American citizenship is meaningless if it can be acquired simply by illegally entering the country. Moreover, as immigrant-invaders are people of color their rights under a DEI Democrat regime will exceed those of white American citizens.

Americans have sat there, paying no attention, watching football games, shopping online, following  “celebrities,” while their  country was stolen from them.  They cannot get it back except through violent revolution for which they have no stomach.

It is unclear how long any rights protected by the Constitution will exist.  If the 14th Amendment can be ignored for 60 years, so can the entirety of the Bill of Rights.  It is entirely possible that the Democrats will steal the mid-term elections, impeach Trump, and prosecute him, his government and his supporters and impose tyranny in order to establish a DEI society of unequal rights based on race and gender.  Such a  society is the Democrat agenda. Until the arrival of Harmeet Dhillon the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice was committed to it.

The post Will the Effort To Restore Equal Treatment Under Law for White Americans Succeed? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Although our country has Protestant roots and is still predominantly Protestant, we are now accustomed to Catholics in high political office. Unfortunately, many of those Catholic politicians—people such as Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Richard Durbin—aren’t very good Catholics, showing disdain for fundamental Catholic teaching like the dignity of the unborn and the sacredness of marriage. Now, however, we have a Vice President in J.D. Vance who actually takes the Church’s teachings seriously and by all appearances works to integrate his Catholic faith into his political views (no “I’m personally opposed but…” for him). So all faithful Catholics are interested whenever Vance’s Catholic faith publicly intersects with his duties as Vice President of the United States.

One such intersection occurred on May 18, when Vance led the U.S. delegation to Pope Leo’s inauguration Mass in Rome. While the most important aspect of that visit was Vance’s private meeting with the pope, many eyes were on the public greeting between the two that occurred after the Mass. Specifically, many Catholics wondered: would Vance bow and kiss the papal ring?

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Life as a Catholic contains a myriad of customs and traditions handed down for centuries. I’ve taught RCIA (or whatever it is called currently) for many years, and one of the topics of most interest to new converts is these customs. When should I genuflect in a church? Why do I see people bow or genuflect when crossing the center of a church? What do I call the bishop? While converts want to know doctrine, they can look up most of the Church’s teachings in catechisms while many customs are not written down in any authoritative text.

Sadly, many of those customs were lost in the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, but they are still important. They give little signals of respect for underlying beliefs. They aren’t written in Canon Law and they typically hold no force of sin behind them, but their practice can reflect a deep commitment to the Catholic faith.

A set of customs that is always a challenge to Americans involves how a Catholic greets a bishop. In our casual culture, anything more than a handshake when greeting someone is considered awkward. However, traditionally a Catholic lightly kisses the bishop’s episcopal ring and calls the bishop either “Your Eminence” (in the case of a Cardinal) or “Your Excellency” (in the case of a non-Cardinal bishop). The same basic protocol applies when meeting a pope, except one would call him “Your Holiness” and makes a bow of the head (for a man) or a curtsy (for a woman).

Pope Francis, of course, famously resisted these conventions, even sometimes angrily pulling away his hand when someone tried to kiss his ring. Yet Pope Leo has shown no sign of this kind of rejection of Catholic customs.

So, when J.D. Vance, who takes his Catholic faith seriously, met Pope Leo for the first time, did he bow his head and kiss the ring of the fisherman? He did not; he simply shook the pope’s hand.

This led to a kerfuffle on Catholic social media (because of course it did), with some Catholics accusing Vance of essentially denying his faith, and others lamenting that this is yet another sign of our disordered world where not all nations subsist under the banner of Christ the King.

Vance himself addressed his failure to follow Catholic custom in a podcast with Catholic author Ross Douthat—in fact, he brought it up without Douthat’s prompting. Essentially, he said that he was there as the Vice President of the United States, not as an individual Catholic, and United States protocol dictates that the President and Vice President never bow to another head of state or kiss their rings (remember that the pope is the monarch of the Vatican City State).

So did Vance compromise his faith? Did he improperly put his duties as Vice President above his duties as a Catholic? Is this in effect equivalent to the Catholic Democrat who puts his faith aside when it’s not politically expedient?

I don’t think so.

When the Vice President meets a head of state, he is representing the President, but even more so, the whole country. The reality is that our country is only 20% Catholic, and in no way is America a Catholic country. The overwhelming majority of Americans (including many Catholics) would not want the Vice President to bow his head or kiss the ring of any head of state, including the pope. We might not like that fact, but it’s a fact nonetheless. J.D. Vance was elected to represent those people, and so it is fitting and proper that he would follow the protocols set up to represent the beliefs of the American people.

Further, we must remember that customs like bowing the head or kissing the ring are just that: customs. Yes, they are good for Catholics to practice, and I lament how many have been lost, but they are not moral teachings we are obligated to follow; it is not a denial of the faith to leave out these customs.

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The Democrat party viewed race politics as their ticket to one-party rule. They were going to run that play all the way to the end zone, until they turned enough states permanently blue that the GOP could never win another presidency. The race grift was bulletproof.

So they thought.

The Left believed they could do anything, not matter how destructive, no matter how degenerate, no matter how imbecilic, because as long as they spewed the right rhetoric they would never lose the loyalty of blacks and Hispanics.

The grift was simple: keep fooling minorities into believing Democrats care about them and keep telling them Republicans and conservatives are racist. All conservatives, all the time, even the black and brown ones. Yeah, they’re racist too.

And for a long time it worked.

But now, it seems, the jig is up. A recent analysis from The New York Times says Democrats are bleeding voters all over the country and across every race demographic:

Mr. Trump has steadily gained steam across a broad swath of the nation, with swelling support not just in white working-class communities but also in counties with sizable Black and Hispanic populations.

Counties that have become steadily more Republican exist in some of the country’s bluest strongholds, including New York City, Philadelphia and Honolulu. Mr. Trump’s party is still losing in those places, but by significantly less. …

In last year’s election, Republicans gained ground in 193 of the country’s 200 most predominantly Black counties — even as former Vice President Kamala Harris stood to become the first Black female president.

The overall picture is even worse for Democrats:

All told, Mr. Trump has increased the Republican Party’s share of the presidential vote in each election he’s been on the ballot in close to half the counties in America — 1,433 in all — according to an analysis by The New York Times.

It is a staggering political achievement, especially considering that Mr. Trump was defeated in the second of those three races, in 2020.

By contrast, Democrats have steadily expanded their vote share in those three elections in only 57 of the nation’s 3,100-plus counties.

(It’s not that staggering of an achievement when you know he legitimately won all three elections.)

A recent analysis by The New York Times signals the end of the race grift for Democrats.

The article cites a Democrat pollster who admits the goal, all along, had been to win the political monopoly game by owning all the non-white demographics. Ben Tulchin told the Times that “For years, the belief was Democrats have had demographic destiny on our side. Now, the inverse is true.”

It turns out that pushing policies that make people poorer is not a winning strategy, no matter how much propaganda you pump out saying the opposite: “The median American household income is around $80,000. Places with median incomes lower than that account for 95 percent of counties voting steadily more Republican, but only 25 percent of counties turning steadily more Democratic.” The Left frames this as a “diploma dilemma”; Republicans are enlarging their tent because there are more stupid people, they tell themselves. But who’s the dunce here—the overeducated and detached party elites, or the average person who see through their lies and collective sociopathy?

Not to brag, but I called this out years ago. I said the Democrats were mistaken in believing nonwhites would always be there for them. But my reason wasn’t based on economics, it was based on the Left’s downward spiral into evermore degeneracy. Hispanic and blacks cultures are generally socially conservative, more so than Western white culture. Leftist whites, and liberal women in general, are the largest purveyors of depravity. So when the Left completely lost it with the trans movement, that was it. It was too much. Blacks and Hispanics already looked down on homosexuality. The trans rage overreached.

Data indicating the trans craziness played a major reason voters chose Trump is pervasive. The Trump camp had it, for sure. In some cases, Trump’s people didn’t even create ads. They simply ran clips of Madam VP Karmella Harris talking crazy:

This is great news. It shows that the Left’s never ending quest for power is not a fait accompli. It indicates the political trajectory of this country may actually have a chance of being determined by issues and not inherent attributes. It also signals that there are still plenty of people in America with common sense. And it means that, at some point, if this trajectory becomes undeniable, the Democrat party will either remake itself to a less crazy one—or it will perish.

I prefer that latter of the options. I prefer the party disappears and a new political landscape emerges in which the current MAGA coalition is considered center left while an emerging Constitutional constituency, uncompromising purists who want to restore the Founder’s original vision of limited government, becomes the new right-wingers.

This article was originally published on Behind the Headlines and was reprinted with the author’s permission.

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