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Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Tainted Electors in Post-Legal America
Tainted Electors in Post-Legal America
The American left has been working overtime to obfuscate the real issues at the heart of whether or not the 2020 presidential election is being stolen. For instance, when Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), announced in a statement on November 12 that the 2020 election was "the most secure election in American history" and President Trump fired him, the Left went berserk and cited the firing as just more evidence that Trump is an illegitimate tyrant or something.
On December 13, however, the Department of Homeland Security released Emergency Directive 21-01, a version of CISA's "Mitigate SolarWinds Orion Code Compromise." CISA is charged with protecting the nation's electronic infrastructure from foreign hackers, and it seems to be fairly incompetent at it. Inasmuch as the SolarWinds hacks had been happening for many months, perhaps when he fired Krebs, the president knew things the leftist media didn't.
In any event, the furor over Krebs's firing takes one to Wikipedia to gather some basic info on the guy. It appears that Mr. Krebs is not an information technology professional, an electrical engineer, a computer programmer, or any kind of techie whose opinion on cyber-security matters might carry some weight. You see, Chris Krebs is a lawyer. So his previous job at CISA could only be as a manager, and when he says the election was the safest ever, it means nothing. He's merely repeating what he's been told by his staff. And the opinions of his staff also wouldn't carry much weight, given the SolarWinds "compromise." (To lead CISA more effectively than Krebs, maybe the feds should have gone to the local BestBuy and hired someone from the Geek Squad.)
Given the above, it was heartening to listen to Steve Hilton's opening monologue, "Lack of government action has made people more skeptical about the 2020 election," on the December 20 edition of his FNC show The Next Revolution, wherein he briefly touched on Krebs:
Chris Krebs, the cyber guy, keeps saying it was the safest election ever. But that's like the security guard at the hospital telling you how great the brain surgeon is. The constitutionality of electoral changes, the validity of ballot-harvesting, the merits of signature-matching, none of that's got anything to do with Chris Krebs. His job was running the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in DHS. And oh, on his watch we had the biggest ever cyber-security attack and the worst ever assault on our infrastructure security. So frankly I don't think we need to hear from Chris Krebs on the election or anything else.
(Hilton's fiery monologues are always edifying and a pleasure, so do watch this one in its entirety; it's only 6 minutes and 37 seconds.)
Cyber-security isn't what's at issue in the 2020 election. Such claims are just more leftist obfuscation, similar to charges that the 2016 election was "hacked." The Russians meddled in the 2016 elections, but the feds have assured us that no vote counts were changed. The real issue in the 2020 elections is what seven battleground states did...in broad daylight.
There's an old observation that goes something like this: the problem is not what's illegal; it's what's legal. In other words, it is that which is allowed that plagues us. Just as vexing and corrosive as the issue of election fraud is that of whether or not the elections conducted in the battleground states were even legal. Indeed, legality may be the overarching central issue in the 2020 elections, not fraud, not cyber-security. So the MSM's droning on about the nonexistence of "widespread voter fraud" and the firing of Chris Krebs is just more of their obfuscations.
America's big problem of late is not just with the trashing of constitutional norms; it also involves the left's lack of appreciation for the very idea of law itself. America seems to be entering a "post-legal" twilight, where laws on the books are not enforced and where governors and mayors create capricious new "laws" out of whole cloth that are clear violations of inconvenient pre-existing laws.
Sometimes post-legal "laws" can have the imprimatur of the legal, as when a law has been enacted by lawmakers. So a new law that is contrary to already existing law is allowed until it receives judicial review and is struck down. But what if the courts don't grant certiorari and decline to review?
Where we see abundant evidence that America has entered a post-legal era is in the battleground states of the 2020 federal elections. Laws and even constitutions were ignored and superseded. The prime example is Pennsylvania. Act 77, the law that legalized mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, violated the state's own constitution. And then PA's own Supreme Court violated the U.S. Constitution by usurping the power of the state's Legislature. If that's all true, then the election in the Keystone State was illegal. So how can Congress accept the votes of Pennsylvania's electors on January 6?
Anyone who denies that significant election fraud occurred in November is either dishonest or a fool (here and here). But the issue before Congress on January 6 should not focus on fraud; it should mainly be about the legality of the elections in the battleground states. Some have argued that it falls to the vice president to rule January 6 on the legality of the elections in the battleground states.
It would take a tremendous amount of courage for one man to "decide" the 2020 presidential election. But after their abysmal performance, that seems better than letting the courts decide. The prospect of the V.P. asserting his plenary power to reject the tainted electors of the battleground states has even got the attention of the old media. Mike Pence is a profoundly decent man, and he's been a terrific V.P. He should consider that if he accepts the tainted electors and hands the election to Biden, his political career will be over. On the other hand, if he rejects the tainted electors, he'll be seen as the savior of the republic. After all, haven't we all been saying this is the most consequential election of our lives?
This writer highly recommends Ted Noel's powerful December 26 article "It's for Mike Pence to Judge whether a Presidential Election Was Held at All" (if you've already read it, read it again). Mr. Noel's idea is for Pence to merely reject the electors in question, and it is the cleanest, quickest remedy. If Pence did as Noel suggests, it would send a stinging rebuke to the seven battleground states for their intolerable lawlessness. It might even provide the impetus for Congress to at long last legislate some real reform for federal elections.
If some fear that Noel's solution might trigger social unrest, then another remedy might be to have new elections in the affected states. However, Pence should not agree to such unprecedented elections unless they were strictly supervised. Sadly, the affected states are too corrupt and weak to be allowed to conduct such elections on their own. Another remedy might be to establish a commission to decide the election, as was done in 1876, which would also take much of the onus off Pence. But regardless of the remedy, the vice president should not accept the tainted electors and thereby ratify illegality.
How much longer can the American people be silenced?
How much longer can the American people be silenced?
If you're from the Southeastern United States, you are very familiar with hushpuppies, and I mean the food, not the shoe. If you're not, they are a blob of cornbread dough about the size of your thumb that has been deep-fried to a golden brown. They are delicious. Tradition tells us they were often used by Southern farmers as snacks thrown to their dogs to keep them quiet while sitting down to supper. Thus the name hushpuppy.
Politicians, it would seem, have developed their own breed of hushpuppy, thrown at their constituency to keep them (us) quiet while they sit at their tables and divide up the spoils from their charade of pretending to care about the same things we do. Theirs isn't fried; it's raw. Theirs isn't delicious, it's bitter and revolting. But, it seems to still do the job, namely, to keep us at bay and hushed. And, this political hushpuppy comes in two flavors; hearings and investigations.
Over and over, we are assaulted with what seems to be blatant criminal behavior of politicians, their family members, or their cronies. (The word "friends" is too soft to use here.) They make edicts, mandates, laws, regulations, codes of ethics, and even off-handed commentaries relating to proper "thought etiquette" and virtue-signaling, by which we are expected to live. Their claim is that these are by which we are all to live. Yet they do not seem to be able to remember them when applied to themselves. Like a steal from a Steve Martin routine (when you make a million dollars, don't pay any taxes on it, and the IRS comes calling, simply say, "I forgot!"), they claim they made a mistake. They didn't understand their own rules. They never saw anything in their own misdeeds as relating to the law. Oops!
The crowds begin to burble and boil. They foment. They protest. They demand. They march on Washington, by golly! They have speakers and celebrities out the wazoo! They spend millions on creating specialized crowds, supporting those crowds, and buying bigger crowds. They post in every nook and cranny of social media. They do interviews on sympathetic networks. They pontificate, warn, and threaten! And the politicians feel their pain of injustice and dismay. But what is a politician to do? "I know!" they cry. "We'll hold hearings!"
And with each passing day, week, month, the crowd withers and wanes. The puppies have been hushed. No one is indicted. No one is kicked out of office. No one is imprisoned. No one loses any of his ill gotten gains. The apple cart remains aright. And all goes back to business as usual.
Year after year, election after election, the public is brought to a fever pitch over issues that were supposedly fixed in dark backrooms. Every cycle, it's as predictable as the run up to a Super Bowl. There are warnings from the last cycle. There are smart has-beens giving their take on how this will be different. There are public officials of every stripe and polka dot telling us that they're on it, don't worry. Then we have our game. Some win, some lose, but in this case, the game's been rigged. In every new event we come to find that the rules never apply to the players. The referees are all in on the fix. They argue and pitch a fit for the cameras, then they hold hands and go have a few beers at their favorite watering hole on Mount Olympus.
One day, the puppies will not be hushed anymore. We will hear them howl. And some will feel their bite.
A Call to Arms for All Patriots to Come to the Aid of Their Country
A Call to Arms for All Patriots to Come to the Aid of Their Country
Our founders were visionary and provided ways to resolve disputed Presidential elections. Constitutional law expert Attorney Jenna Ellis, a Trump legal team member, outlined this procedure. The most straightforward solution is for the six contested states' legislatures to convene on their initiative by a simple majority vote without being called into session by a reluctant governor. Then by a resolution by a simple majority vote, reclaim their state’s electors pledged for Biden and appoint electors for Trump before Congress meets Jan. 6, 2020.
Patriots in the contested states should immediately deluge by phone, fax, and email their representative to demand the retraction of the electors pledged to Biden. Warn the representatives there are 74 million disenfranchised voters who voted for Trump who are not going away, “. . . come back with your shield or on it!” Links to representatives in AZ, GA, MI, NV, PA, and WI. While not yet time for pitchforks and shovels, this has been done before. Shortly after WWII, Tennessee citizens faced a similar vote fraud by a corrupt government in McMinn County, “The Battle of Athens, Tennessee 1946.”
Nov. 3, 2020, a new day of infamy, a devious covert attack shook the United States of America to its core. This attack was worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The perpetrators were our elitist aristocracy and political class that reject the concept of self-governing by We the People. Complicit were our unelected administrative state, the Deep State, the mainstream media (MSM), Big Tech, The New World Order (Globalists – The Great Reset), and hostile foreign governments, specifically China. This evil coalition seeks to subvert the People's will by undermining our core beliefs, sovereignty, and overthrowing our government as created by our founders. As President Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
As President Trump said, this coalition stole the 2020 Presidential election to prevent a duly elected President from serving a second term. This action was yet another coup to conceal the many past criminal acts of these perpetrators, e.g., treason, misprision of treason, rebellion or insurrection, and advocating the government's overthrow. Including violating the People's civil rights under the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments and many other serious federal felonies that so far have gone unpunished.
This coalition's collective actions are a criminal conspiracy or a criminal enterprise, as defined in RICO, as I wrote previously in this article. See this article by Glenn Reynolds (AKA, Instapundit), a University of Tennessee law professor. Our law enforcement and other government agencies covered up these crimes - the Secretary of State, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, Director of National Intelligence, and others. They all went rogue and failed to defend the United States against all foreign and domestic enemies.
Is Joe Biden a compromised Manchurian Candidate? A puppet used by dark handlers to implement the radical agenda of the Leftists and Marxists? Their manifesto is the antitheses of the People’s rights, “. . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” as declared in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution - the free will of men and women. These allegations pose severe national security consequences from China to the United States should former Vice President Joe Biden serve as President.
Before the election, organized domestic terrorist organizations would magically appear that committed acts of murders, riots, arson, insurrection, and destruction of both public and private property (BLM and Antifa). These organizations are akin to Hitler’s Brownshirts. These organizations have ties and are funded by the perpetrators. The MSM colluded with outright lies and disinformation to suppress the vote in support of Biden. Big Tech censored social media to thwart the free flow of information and discussion of these issues.
COVID-19 mandates for masks and lockdowns were and are a sham. The hysteria generated was used to suppress the vote and to facilitate vote fraud. Whether accidentally released or not from a Chinese viral lab, China knew this virus was in the wild but hid this fact with the WHO's assistance. China banned travel from Wuhan within China but allowed international flights from Wuhan to continue. There is evidence to suggest China created COVID-19 as a bioweapon. The intentional release in either manner was an act of war.
The Hunter Biden investigation was kept secret from the voters for over a year by the DOJ and FBI. Evidence from this investigation contained exculpatory information that was withheld from the defense in President Donald J. Trump's sham impeachment trial. The DOJ should have disclosed this evidence no matter what its policy was. The People's interest far outweighed the DOJ’s policy of nondisclosure. The co-conspiring MSM refused to cover the Hunter Biden story. Instead, they called it Russian disinformation until very recently. Twitter de-platformed the New York Post that broke the story. Why?
The Dominion vote system is a well-known corrupt vote tallying system within the cybersecurity community. Dominion was used to flip votes at will (here, here, and here). A forensic analysis of the voter machines in Antrim County, Michigan revealed “. . . [were] not the result of an error by the Republican clerk, as claimed, but ‘machine error built into the voting software designed to create error.’” Dominion has been accused of being financed by hostile governments. At a news conference in Georgia on 12-02-2020, Attorney Lin Wood accused both the Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia of taking money from China (YouTube at 11:40).
Where are the DOJ and the FBJ? Late out of the gate again -- like 9/11? Why? Time to pay the piper, either do your job or get off the pot. Time for real police work instead of playing to the media with dog and pony shows, e.g., the NASCAR garage door noose. The FBI’s NASCAR response is the type of action necessary to root out and prosecute this conspiracy to commit organized and systemic vote fraud across many states in this election. The FBI has the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), Fusion Centers, and the forensic financial and cyber resources to confirm these crimes were committed and identify the perpetrators.
At stake is whether our country survives as a constitutional republic from this covert, insidious attack both from within by the aid and comfort by elected and unelected officials and others owing allegiance to the United States and by the assistance of hostile foreign governments and The New World Order. As Benjamin Franklin said, our government is, A republic, if you can keep it. As explained by Richard Berman, “. . . democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.” [My emphasis] We must preserve the rule of law and put an end to this unequal system of justice — rules for thee, but not for me. As John Adams said, “[We are] a Government of Laws, Not of Men.”
2020: The Year the Tree of Liberty Was Torched
2020: The Year the Tree of Liberty Was Torched
“The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon
No doubt about it: 2020—a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for freedom—was the culmination of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad decade for freedom.
Government corruption, tyranny, and abuse coupled with a Big Brother-knows-best mindset and the COVID-19 pandemic propelled us at warp speed towards a full-blown police state in which nationwide lockdowns, egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, and pay-to-play politicians were accepted as the norm.
Here’s just a small sampling of the laundry list of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government over the past two decades and in the past year, in particular.
The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.
The American President became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers that have been amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.
Militarized police became a power unto themselves, 911 calls turned deadly, and traffic stops took a turn for the worse. Lacking in transparency and accountability, protected by the courts and legislators, and rife with misconduct, America’s police forces continued to be a menace to the citizenry and the rule of law. Despite concerns about the government’s steady transformation of local police into a standing military army, local police agencies acquired even more weaponry, training and equipment suited for the battlefield. Police officers were also given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons and subject them to forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases.
The courts failed to uphold justice. With every ruling handed down, it becomes more apparent that we live in an age of hollow justice, with government courts more concerned with protecting government agents than upholding the rights of “we the people.” This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution. A review of critical court rulings over the past two decades, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
COVID-19 allowed the Emergency State to expand its powers. What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) became yet another means by which world governments (including our own) could expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents. While COVID-19 took a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, it also allowed the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, with talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports, forced vaccinations, snitch tip lines and onerous lockdowns.
The Surveillance State rendered Americans vulnerable to threats from government spies, police, hackers and power failures. Thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Americans have become sitting ducks for hackers and government spies alike. Billions of people have been affected by data breaches and cyberattacks. On a daily basis, Americans have been made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.
America became a red flag nation. Red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws generally push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless. Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention. In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States. Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.
The cost of policing the globe drove the nation deeper into debt. America’s war spending has already bankrupted the nation to the tune of more than $20 trillion dollars. Policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad hasn’t made America—or the rest of the world—any safer, but it has made the military industrial complex rich at taxpayer expense. The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Yet America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world. This is how a military empire occupies the globe. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is falling apart.
Free speech was dealt one knock-out punch after another. Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, shadow banning on the Internet, and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good. On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak. In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow. The reasons for such censorship varied widely from political correctness, so-called safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remained the same: the complete eradication of free speech.
The Deep State took over. The American system of representative government has been overthrown by the Deep State—a.k.a. the police state a.k.a. the military/corporate industrial complex—a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished. In its place is a shadow government, a corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House. Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry. This shadow government, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.
The takeaway: Everything the founders of this country feared has come to dominate in modern America. “We the people” have been saddled with a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.
So how do you balance the scales of justice at a time when Americans are being tasered, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, hit with batons, shot with rubber bullets and real bullets, blasted with sound cannons, detained in cages and kennels, sicced by police dogs, arrested and jailed for challenging the government’s excesses, abuses and power-grabs, and then locked down and stripped of any semblance of personal freedom?
No matter who sits in the White House, politics won’t fix a system that is broken beyond repair.
For that matter, protests and populist movements also haven’t done much to push back against an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.
So how do you not only push back against the government’s bureaucracy, corruption and cruelty but also launch a counterrevolution aimed at reclaiming control over the government using nonviolent means?
You start by changing the rules and engaging in some (nonviolent) guerilla tactics.
Take your cue from the Tenth Amendment and nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the principles on which this nation was founded. If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of juries and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
In an age in which government officials accused of wrongdoing—police officers, elected officials, etc.—are treated with general leniency, while the average citizen is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, nullification is a powerful reminder that, as the Constitution tells us, “we the people” are the government.
For too long we’ve allowed our so-called “representatives” to call the shots. Now it’s time to restore the citizenry to their rightful place in the republic: as the masters, not the servants.
Nullification is one way of doing so.
America was meant to be primarily a system of local governments, which is a far cry from the colossal federal bureaucracy we have today. Yet if our freedoms are to be restored, understanding what is transpiring practically in your own backyard—in one’s home, neighborhood, school district, town council—and taking action at that local level must be the starting point.
Responding to unmet local needs and reacting to injustices is what grassroots activism is all about. Attend local city council meetings, speak up at town hall meetings, organize protests and letter-writing campaigns, employ “militant nonviolent resistance” and civil disobedience, which Martin Luther King Jr. used to great effect through the use of sit-ins, boycotts and marches.
The power to change things for the better rests with us, not the politicians.
As long as we continue to allow callousness, cruelty, meanness, immorality, ignorance, hatred, intolerance, racism, militarism, materialism, meanness and injustice—magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets and government-sanctioned brutality—to trump justice, fairness and equality, there can be no hope of prevailing against the police state.
We could transform this nation if only Americans would work together to harness the power of their discontent and push back against the government’s overreach, excesses and abuse.
As IT makes clear in the book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the police state is marching forward, more powerful than ever.
If there is to be any hope for freedom in 2021, it rests with “we the people.”
Monday, December 28, 2020
What If the Christ Child Had Been Born in the American Police State?
What If the Christ Child Had Been Born in the American Police State?
“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.” ― Howard Thurman
The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.
The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.
Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?
What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?
A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.
Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.
The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do?
What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our modern age?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.
Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.
Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.”
Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.
After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.
When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.
Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?
Consider the following if you will.
Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.
Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.
Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.
Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.
From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.
Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.
Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.
From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.
Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”
While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.
Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.
Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.
Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.
Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.
Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.
Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.
Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.
Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.
Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.
Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.
Indeed, as I show in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.
Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebrations and gift-giving, we would do well to remember that what happened on that starry night in Bethlehem is only part of the story. That baby in the manger grew up to be a man who did not turn away from evil but instead spoke out against it, and we must do no less.