Nuclear Power and the Demonic

Tucker Carlson wondered aloud if nuclear power was given to us by demons seeing how destructive it is and how hard it is to trace out who really came up with the technology.  He also thinks it’s not an accident Christians were targeted by its usage (the main Christian community in 1945 in Japan was Nagasaki). 

At the very least nuclear power as a weapon is something only the devil would love. 

The line between inspiration and perspiration is often thin like the line between divine assistance and human effort in someone like Mother Teresa. Where man ends and the supernatural begins is often a hard to determine but in reading about nuclear history there are some interesting nuggets. 

If there was a conduit between the natural and supernatural one could start with British scientist Frederick Soddy (and look at Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick as well). None of these men would be allergic to demonic influence, being atheists and one an anti-Semite. Soddy especially seems friendly to the occult. 

Interesting that the book of Genesis and Enoch have parts in which it is said that an alien or ancient race communicated scientific knowledge.  

From an article: 

In 1921, Frederick Soddy won the Noble Prize in chemistry for his research into radioactive substances and his studies of isotopes, yet curiously this Oxford scientist mused about a ‘forgotten race of men’. What were the relations between Soddy, the Theosophical Society of Madame Blavatsky and Atlantis, if any? There have been many speculations on the theme of highly advanced ancient knowledge, leading to an abundant number of works that border, unintentionally, on fiction. Authors such as Charles Hapgood, for example, put forward conjectures as to lost ancient civilizations that were capable of mapping the entire globe.

Radium is not a substance that one readily connects with mysticism; but through a peculiar series of connections between science, speculation, and spiritual beliefs, one can trace a direct line from a scholarly work on the characteristics of radium from the Oxford professor Frederick Soddy’s The Interpretation of Radium and the Structure of the Atom, all the way to the Theosophical doctrines of Blavatsky and ideas on lost knowledge.

In 1875, Blavatsky and two colleagues founded the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky was deeply interested in the origins and meaning of various world religions, the beginnings of human civilization, and the connection between esoteric knowledge and contemporary science and technology. She believed in Atlantis as an historical fact, and held that part of the human race had its origins there. 

Theosophy’s rise in a period of intense scientific and technological development, during the late 19th century is not as contradictory as it might seem. As the historian of science Jeff Hughes notes: ‘One of a number of systems of belief that came to prominence in this period as alternatives to organized religion and scientific rationalism, theosophy drew on ideas from Eastern philosophy, mysticism and ancient occult traditions dating back to Pythagoras. Its blend of esoteric wisdom and spiritual philosophy... appealed to Victorian audiences disenchanted by the materialism of much modern science... In particular, theosophy’s emphasis on esoteric wisdom gave it a strong appeal to intellectuals. They saw in it a way of exploring and expressing hidden realities in an increasingly materialistic world...”

Gallows Humor in Our Soviet State

So Biden has suddenly developed late stage cancer where with decent medical care you get a diagnosis years ahead of time. But his docs sure caught that tiny basal cell he had removed in 2023. 

I remember in 2022 Biden suddenly declared a new “war on cancer” and it seemed like it was coming out of left field. Er, maybe not so much? 

What’s also interesting to me is how Biden can say things that could be taken as a gaffe, or maybe something true that he’s not supposed to say. With the dementia you lose some of your ability to lie because your brain isn’t filtering thoughts correctly. The frontal cortex needs to be overridden if telling a lie, and the cortex loses some of its governing function with dementia.  

So when Biden announced he had put together “the most extensive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics”, it might - or might not - have been a gaffe. But what about how in a 2022 speech he announced he had cancer? Hmm....

As Will Chamberlain wrote, “Bone metastasis is a late stage cancer. Prostate cancer is slow-growing. The deep irony here is that they are revealing that they likely covered up Biden's cancer diagnosis in order to distract from news that they covered up Biden's cognitive decline.” 

The lying by the Biden family and media astounds and astonishes with its length and breadth and width. It’s weird living in late Soviet Union times in our own country. 

As was someone joked recently: “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”

That is the sort of gallows humor that was popular in the Soviet Union in the ‘70s and ‘80s. And the American people are learning as the Soviet people did to discount everything the government says and figure that the opposite is likely true. 

Mark Shea, Back in the Day

Two early Catholic presences on the web were blogger Mark Shea and John Zmirak. Both come from working class backgrounds and have a bit of a chip on their shoulder regarding elites. However, Zmirak ended up fiercely on the Right and Shea fiercely on the Left. Ironically they agreed on at least one thing: the folly of the Iraq War. 

The Iraq War seems to be the precipitating cause for Shea's turn from disdain for country club Republicans to red-hot hatred for all Republicans. You can see his blog turn back around 2004. 

The war began in March 2003.  "On November 1, 2003, the Associated Press presented a special report on the massive human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. The scandal came to widespread public attention in April 2004, when a 60 Minutes II news report was aired on April 28 by CBS News, describing the abuse, including pictures showing military personnel taunting naked prisoners. "

Shea called himself an "old yellow dog Catholic labor Democrat" but later said he was an Independent. From his blog: 

May 31, 2003 — "When history is written, years from now, this war will be the one major black mark on the Bush presidency.... Are we prepared to be bogged down in Iraq, for years to come, fighting a religious war? History will not judge this whole adventure very kindly." 

Jun 30, 2003 — "Hear anybody beyond a few zealots who are even aware of the Dem schemes to keep Bush nominees out and apply anti-Catholic litmus tests? ... The Liberals champion abortion (very, very, Me) and the Great Society (strongly We.) Republicans idolize both the rugged individual AND the ..."

Aug 29, 2003 — "He says we won't be in Iraq for 50 years. We'll be there for about 5, with endless stuff like this going on, until enough American troops die ... Bush's simple piety is not rocket science ("WWJD?") but sincere. When he expresses it, he earns brickbats as a one-dimensional think who . ... ...Were we to confine our diet to creatures that lacked sense and do not even respond to light, we could only eat liturgists and liberal Democrats."

Oct 31, 2003 — "Speaking of which, here's a nervous Chattering Class Take on Bush's Evangelical Faith. It's always difficult to read stuff like this..."

Nov 26, 2003 — "It's almost credible as an effusion of leftist hysteria, full of all the normal 'conservatives are nazis/destroy Rush Limbaugh blah blah--until ... Bush for solar flares. Then you start sensing that you've been had. A fun read if you enjoy parodies of looney leftist rhetoric."

Jan 30, 2004 — "Support for Bush must be total and unequivocal. Anything less makes you a Yellow Dog Democrat. And they say conservatives are not ideologues."

Jun 1, 2004 — [Republicans] are every bit as much ideologically driven dissenters regarding Church teaching as the most pro-abort Democrat. " 

Emerald Robinson's Post

So more follow-up from Emerald Robinson the 2020 election hack:

....The researchers collected all the Internet website information related to Smartmatic and Dominion in a database to preserve records before it was all wiped by the bad guys.

That's when they found the ultimate source: the anonymous Japanese guy.

It turns out: ONE GUY tracked all Internet traffic flowing between Dominion, Serbia & Hong Kong on Election Day 2020.

And that one Japanese guy posted that info on his little anonymous account. They contacted him to get all the IP addresses that Dominion used.

What did the anonymous Japanese guy want for a full file of all the IP addresses that Dominion used inside the USA on Election Day 2020?

He wanted a donation: $20.

To this day, nobody knows his name.

Now here's the most important part: the IPs obtained from the Anonymous Japanese Guy on Twitter/X were crucial in stopping the steal of the 2024 election.

Literally could not be done without that information.

So that guy helped save America. 

He might not even know it too.

This IP info led to an astonishing discovery that the traitors at CISA deny to this day: the primary data center for the 2020 election was hosted in a foreign country on a Huawei server.

That's right: America's election system is in the hands of its enemies.

CISA is supposed to be the place inside DHS that "protects" America's vital infrastructure.

But CISA is actually the nerve-center where America's elections are stolen. 

In fact, CISA actually "partners" with Smartmatic to practice beforehand.

On Losing My Pro-Life Single Issue Voting Badge

There’s a lot of angst in Catholic world over Trump’s pro-IVF executive order. I can’t really share their anger since Trump could hardly be expected to be more Catholic than most Catholics (who approve of IVF). Sure, you could blame Vance, a Catholic convert (since we all hold coverts to a higher standard since they often know more about Catholicism), but ultimately it’s not the reason I voted for either of them. Indeed, I’ve surrendered my badge as a single-issue voter. 

My excuse, such as it is, seems less defensible now that Trump actually took office. The idea was that without accurate elections, we couldn’t get accurate votes on things like, say, abortion. First order priority was to stop rigged elections, but perhaps the 2020 election was a one-off due to the covid mail-in voting. But it’s also hard to focus on abortion, a perennial scandal of the country, when the other side is perpetrating a new one by jailing Trump supporters (and trying to do so to Trump himself!). 

I have to admit the Ohio vote to legalize abortion was tremendously demoralizing. It’s hard not to give up in the face of a red state voting that way. Certainly Trump and Vance have. They’ve pretty much stayed away from the issue like vampires do garlic. 

The first principle of life, that it is precious and a gift from God, no longer obtains for most people. So trying to prohibit abortion seems like declaring that women can be men and vice-versa. Sure you can enact some law but no one believes it. 

Political Catholicism

I’m puzzled by tweets by serious people who are appalled at the introduction of religion into the public square by Trump and Vance. They call it “the instrumentalization of religion” or “political Catholicism”. 

It feels like a lot of people wouldn't take their own side in a bet if it meant surrendering their right to virtue signal.

It’s hard to know what they mean exactly from a random X post. Likely they’re taking issue when someone has a stand on a political issue and they defend it by quoting out of context from the Bible or the Catechism. Apparently this just started this year, go figure. Those suddenly complaining about the politicization/instrumentalism of religion seem like they didn't much complain when it was done by the Left, or when it was not done at all (since, after all, Christians are supposed to be like the children in the old days, seen but not heard). 

Perhaps it’s that they don’t like the messenger and feel Trump’s giving a bad image to Christianity by associating himself with it. It’s as if the Church has a brand and we don’t want to tarnish it with sinners let alone political leaders. If George W. Bush made Christians nervous, those who belong to the creed of “winsomeness” and “a marketable witness”, then how much more Trump and Vance! But in the end conversions don’t happen via the good or bad examples of political leaders but by God’s gratuitous grace. 

God seems to have less a problem with Trump and Vance than the complainers since he seems to have put his thumb on the scale given Trump miraculously survived a couple assassination attempts. Maybe it’s actually not His will to bring back the Obama/Biden years and keep religion in the closet and privatized.

**

Wheaton, a Christian college, recently came under fire for congratulating an alumnus who was confirmed to a White House post. They took down the X post and apologized. 

I puzzle over the apology and explanation. It fascinates me because it's related to my own Catholic high school's praise of a Kamala Harris aide (I complained and received a boiler-plated a non-response response). 

Is there any hypothetical point at which the Democrat Party can be seen as functionally irreligious and incompatible with the Catholic faith, i.e. on par with the masons? Is there anything more they can do to communicate that? Have they not tried their best?  Harris herself said take that Jesus stuff out to the Trump rally down the street. If David French were fed to the lions would he cry, "If MAGA had been more winsome and accommodating, this wouldn't be happening!" 

So Wheaton said this: 

"The recognition and prayer is something we would typically do for any graduate who reached that level of government."

In other words, it is completely irrelevant if the graduate is working hard for abortion on demand, transsexual rights, the suppression of free speech, or even the abolition of Wheaton College. Got it, though I don't quite understand it. 

"It was not our intention to embroil the College in a political discussion or dispute."

Ahh, well, you might not be interested in politics but alas politics is interested in you. 

"Our institutional and theological commitments are clear that the College, as a non-profit institution, does not make political endorsements [...and is a] deliberately non-partisan institution." 

Yes, as a 501 3-c you need to get the tax deductions for donations. LBJ approves. 

"This is both for missional purposes and legal reasons. Within the evangelical community—both domestically and internationally—we encompass a spectrum of political perspectives..."

So the goal of the college is to mirror the political perspectives of the evangelical community? Then why go to Wheaton if it has no wisdom to impart of its own? Or does the college prefer to appeal to the broadest range of people purely for remunerative purposes? 

"The College’s moral commitments on the sanctity of life, human sexuality, ethnic diversity, racial unity, justice, poverty, and stewardship intersect with politics complexly, not simplistically, especially in a two-party system."

This was the least offensive part of the statement. Yes no party has a monopoly on truth. I do wonder if there's anything one of the parties could do, hypothetically, that could draw out Wheaton to make a choice, to take a stand.  Perhaps if the student body was mostly drawn from only one of the political parties. Then, it seems, it would be an easy call...

Drinking Trees and Other Random Thoughts

A famous political philosopher said, "There's a lot of ruin in a nation." The question is how much is too much ruin. I think that was answered when we shut down the economy during covid, gave billions out to people, triggered huge inflation which allowed Trump to come back in office. In other words, "too much ruin" is when the middle class feels the pinch.

**

Jack Cashill on the moment the earth changed axis

"Even a child could pinpoint the moment the grand illusion shattered. That would be, of course, the evening of June 27, 2024, when Biden took the stage to debate former President Donald Trump. In a flash, even the dissemblers at MSNC could see the emperor had no clue and that their empire of lies had no future."

**

This was from 1971 from a publisher of a conservative magazine and it rings true:

"Since Catholic parents in general are more concerned about behavior than about orthodoxy, they cling to the Catholic schools as lesser evils. The Catholic high schools cling to their constituency by maintaining a measure of their traditional discipline.”

Catholic schools don’t have to be Catholic so much as offer discipline and better behaved students since parents have nowhere else to turn. It's like the two-party political system: you normally have no choice except the lesser of two evils.  Fortunately this time I actually got to vote for the candidate I supported in the primaries. 

**

My favorite all-time politicians: Pat Buchanan, Rand Paul, Donald Trump, Tom Coburn and JD Vance. 

**

The closest thing for a tree-lover to indulge their love for trees is to drink bourbon. 

Whiskey is aged in wooden barrels, which accounts for up to 70% of its taste and all of its color. 

The wood goes back, etymologically, a long way. From the Old English “ac”, begotten by the Proto-Germanic “aiks”,  Hence “oak”. 

For years the fermented corn lies fallow, soaking tannins, waiting for the bridegroom and the intimate consumption. 

Bourbon’s slogan: "Drink trees via fermented corn."

Emerald Robinson on How the 2024 Election Wasn't Stolen

Journo Emerald Robinson posted a long thread/timeline with an explanation for how the deep state lost the 2024 election: 

It's time to explain exactly what happened on Election Day 2024 to stop the steal.  

It involves quite a few people over 4 years.  A dozen sources.  We must begin just after the rigged 2020 election, in December 2020. 

Why? Because President Trump wanted election fraud investigated.    

He told his team to hire someone to discover the truth about the voting machines.  

Multiple sources tell me an ex-CIA investigator was hired for the job.

That investigator reported that claims of election fraud were overblown.  

Some DOJ lawyers also wanted election fraud investigated. 

Those efforts were blocked by AG Bill Barr's staff including Barr's CoS Will Levi.   

Levi threatened to quit if any cases were launched.

Also in Dec 2020, a group of NatSec analysts briefed the White House that enough evidence of election fraud existed to launch a full USG investigation.  

In Jan 2021, several GOP Senators were briefed as well.

Neither the WH nor the Senators authorized the investigation.

A few people tried to alert President Trump about the NatSec analyst briefing and the need for a full investigation in late 2020 but those efforts were blocked by WH Counsel Pat Cipollone - according to two sources.  

Cipollone joined Bill Barr's law firm on Jan 17, 2024.

Chris Krebs, the head of a small agency called CISA (which is inside DHS) sent out a press release in late 2020 claiming the 2020 election “...was the most secure in American history."  

Krebs was not a cybersecurity expert.   

Who hired him? 

The head of DHS: Chad Wolf.

Krebs was hired because he was Chad Wolf's close friend. He worked at CISA coordinating with leftwing orgs like Democracy Works to "prepare" for the 2020 election.  

Trump fired Krebs a week after he dismissed Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

Trump removed Esper. Chris Miller and Ezra Cohen were rushed in to Pentagon on Nov 11th because Esper stopped responding to WH.

WH officials feared a "soft coup" was taking place.

On Nov 18th, Miller put all Special Forces under his direct command.

When I was deposed by Dominion lawyers in 2024, I was asked specifically about this tweet from Nov 10th 2020 because it was (I was told) the first mention on social media of a link between Smartmatic and Dominion. That's an important point.

On Nov 11, 2020 I noted on Twitter that Mark Malloch Brown — the best friend of global villain George Soros — was listed on the board of directors for  Smartmatic.

By Nov 12 2020, any mention of Mark Malloch Brown and his leading role with Smartmatic had been wiped from the company's website.

On Nov 19 2020, Rudy Giuliani & Sidney Powell held a press conference at RNC headquarters. 

Powell claimed that Dominion-brand machines were using Smartmatic software. She also claimed Smartmatic’s software was developed in Venezuela for dictator Hugo Chavez.

By mid-November, public network scans of Dominion made by military intel analysts were available through legal filings in Michigan.

What these documents revealed about America's election system was damning.

On Dec 18, Trump met with Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn & Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne at WH. 

They urged Trump to launch an investigation of the voting machines.

WH staffers Pat Cipollone, Eric Herschmann & Derek Lyons all argued against doing it.

December 18th was also the due date for DNI Ratcliffe to submit a report to President Trump on foreign interference in the 2020 election.

Ratcliffe missed the deadline. He did not release his report until Jan 7th, 2021. Note the date of release.

His report stated that CIA management actively suppressed intel that China interfered in the 2020 election.  

That's right: the CIA was hiding China's role in the 2020 election!

Treason.

Ratcliffe confirmed that China interfered in the 2020 election & that CIA had tried to hide that fact but this info arrived too late to help President Trump.

Here's a link to Ratcliffe's letter: https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/6d274110-a84b-4694-96cd-6a902207d2bd/note/733364cf-0afb-412d-a5b4-ab797a8ba154.#page=1

On Jan 6th, almost 100 House Republicans and more than 12 GOP senators were ready to object to election results in Congress.

Only an emergency could override and halt that day's session.

When an emergency happens, special rules apply in Congress.

Less than 10 minutes before two reps called a vote for motions to suspend the election certification, capitol police claimed that a protest outside might breach the chambers. 

Key leaders were escorted out. Speaker Pelosi then halted Congress using emergency rules. January 6th was staged. 

Tier-1 operators & FBI agents present that day in the crowd (exercising their 1st Amendment rights) saw a red starlight shell fired over the Capitol just before the fake “insurrection” began.  

That shell is used to signal the start of battle.

After Jan 6th, the FBI WFO emailed all employees that, if they were on the Mall, they were required to give a statement. Some agents who didn't volunteer were identified by others. They were required to give statements against their will. 

Those FD-302s are still secret.

The DOJ's OIG later found the FBI had at least 26 Confidential Human Sources (CHSs) who were present at the Capitol on January 6th.

None of the CHSs were ever prosecuted. https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/25-011.pdf

On Jan 7th, 2021: President Trump was banned from Twitter.

On Jan 8th, 2021: Sidney Powell & Michael Flynn & Patrick Byrne were banned from Twitter.

The coup was complete. The era of government censorship began.

On January 8th, Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Sidney Powell for $1.3 billion in damages.

On January 25th, Dominion filed a similar lawsuit against Giuliani. Suits against Fox, OAN, Newsmax & others soon followed. Dominion's lawyers are: Susman Godfrey LLP

On Feb 4th, Smartmatic filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News for $2.7 billion in damages.

On Nov 3rd, Smartmatic filed similar lawsuits against Newsmax & OAN. I was named as a witness in both the Dominion & Smartmatic cases against Newsmax.

In discovery, Dominion & Smartmatic were allowed to search the personal phones & private emails of TV hosts, TV producers & journalists.

Not just emails but texts. This had never been allowed before in the history of American journalism Courts ignored all press freedoms.

Trump was impeached for the 2nd time on January 13, 2021, one week before his term expired. The House adopted 1 article against him: incitement of insurrection.

The Senate trial began on Feb 9.

Final vote was 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required to convict.

No GOP senator stated publicly at the time that January 6th was fabricated by the national security state to halt lawful investigations of election fraud.

Instead, they went along with the coup.

Most of them voted to confirm all of Biden's Cabinet picks in 2021.

The illegal Biden regime started on Jan 20, 2021. As one of its first acts, the Biden regime rescinded Trump's executive order banning Chinese involvement in the U.S. power grid. This made it clear: Joe Biden was owned and operated by the CCP. 

Meanwhile, Dominion hired Clare Locke LLP to send letters to 150 people demanding they cease & desist from “taking part in defaming Dominion" and "to preserve all documents." 

The voting machine companies were trying to make discussions of election fraud illegal or actionable.

On Feb 5th, Fox News pulled Lou Dobbs off the air. He was the highest-rated host on Fox Business. The day before, Dobbs and Fox were named in a $2.7B defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic.

Any public figure who discussed election fraud was now a target to be fired.

That same day, TIME magazine reporter Molly Ball published a cover story touting "the inside story of the conspiracy" which confirmed the 2020 election had been "fortified" by America's elites to install Biden.

The story had the opposite effect of what the author wished.

By Feb 2021, Rasmussen found 61% of GOP voters agreed "Biden did not win the election fairly."

Voters were already turning against GOP officials who called the election "secure."

House Republicans held their first vote to oust Liz Cheney as a leader. She was gone by May.

The illegal Biden regime knew its public support was already shaky in Feb 2021, so that month the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) contacted Trump to return "some documents" to them.

This setup would lead to the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid in 2022.

On May 19, the House voted to form a "Committee on Jan 6th Attack" with 35 Republicans voting for it.

Pelosi later made it a "select" committee with only two GOP members: Cheney & Kinzinger.

A former CIA inspector general, David Buckley, served as its "staff director."

By June, the Biden regime tried the ultimate power grab by putting all state elections under the control of the federal government through the "Freedom to Vote" bill. 

When the bill was blocked by GOP, Dems pressured Manchin & Sinema to end the Senate's filibuster rules.

In Sept 2021, the Jan 6th Committee worked to change the 1887 Electoral Count Act. 

This was done to answer the "Dr. Eastman memo" which laid out a legal plan for how VP Pence could have certified the 2020 election in Trump's favor.

Congress passed the Reform Act in 2022.

On Nov 12th, Stephen Bannon was indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with Jan 6th Committee subpoenas.

The Jan 6th Committee recommended contempt charges against Mark Meadows on Dec 13th.

By Dec 13th, the Jan 6th Committee had already obtained & leaked the text messages of Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to left-wing media outlets.

The illegally leaked texts included messages from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham & Sean Hannity & Brian Kilmeade.

By fall 2021, the Biden regime was widely hated by the American people. The crowd at a NASCAR race chanted “F—- Joe  Biden” on live TV in Oct & that same chant spread quickly to sports events at every venue in America. 

The Biden regime's answer was to increase the tyranny. Lawfare through our court system was used to destroy critics. News outlets were forced into major settlements to stop coverage of election fraud. People were silenced on social media by CIA & FBI agents giving orders through proxies.

Only a small group of people had paid close attention to the voting machine companies Smartmatic & Dominion before the 2020 election.

Only a few people knew that certain companies were actually international criminal organizations.

In fact, there was a news segment by Lou Dobbs in 2006 that you should watch.

On Aug 8 2024, a federal grand jury in Florida indicted top Smartmatic executives for bribery & money laundering related to the 2016 elections in the Philippines: Roger Alejandro Pinate, Jorge Miguel Vasquez, Elie Moreno.

Election officials in the Philippines also wanted Smartmatic investigated for "changing the script in a transparency server without informing the Commission on Elections" since that change "put into question" the results of their May 9, 2016 election.

Sound familiar?

Which bogus NGO was chosen to "observe" those 2016 elections? It was The Carter Center, headed by former President Jimmy Carter. It also "observed" the 2006 election in Venezuela.

Carter himself later claimed that Venezuela had the "best electoral system in the world."

In March 2005, Smartmatic acquired Sequoia Voting Systems which gave it significant control over U.S. elections.

Smartmatic's new machines were used in the Chicago primaries in March, 2006.

The vote was halted in a key race there due to "problems" with the new machines.

After the issues in Chicago, an investigation of Smartmatic began in Oct 2006 by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (Cfius).

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) asked Bush Admin to review the Sequoia deal.

Why? Smartmatic's ownership was hidden in foreign trusts.

Smartmatic did not divulge its owners to Congress.

Instead, it sold Seqouia to a small company in Canada called Dominion in Dec 2006.

That ended the probe by CFIUS. 

But Dominion and Smartmatic were always linked.

In 2008 both companies worked together to "automate" the Philippine election system.

In fact, Smartmatic once sued Dominion in Delaware for breaching a licensing agreement between them. So they were in bed together from the very beginning.

Just look at Smartmatic's Venezuelan senior developer David Moreno who moved over to work at Sequoia in 2006 and then became "Director of Election Production & Testing" at Dominion.

That's how Smartmatic-Sequoia-Dominion got into our elections in 307 counties in 16 states.

In fact, Leamsy Salazar (ex special ops & security for communist dictator Hugo Chavez) had already provided an affidavit with the details of the Smartmatic-Dominion connection in Nov 2020.

Four years after Salazar's affidavit, a highly decorated CIA agent provided similar testimony about the election fraud scheme just before the 2024 election.

So a narco-terrorist state was actually in charge of  our elections since 2006. The goal: to place communists into power & destroy America from within.

But there was a small group of people who stopped this nightmare. 

Probably less than 30. 

They saved the world.

The first big mistake for Smartmatic: Juan Andres Bautista got a divorce.

He was chief of elections in the Philippines (Comelec). In 2017, his wife disclosed docs which showed he was worth $1 billion. The DOJ launched an investigation. Bautista was impeached. He fled to the USA.He refused to return to the Philippines amid a Senate probe. His wife entered the DOJ's witness protection program. Money laundering & conspiracy charges against Bautista were filed on September 19, 2023.

Bautista (allegedly) received bribe money from top executives at Smartmatic for assistance in their bid to secure multimillion-dollar election contracts.

But Smartmatic was NOT NAMED in US court records in 2023.

Philippines officials wanted to know WHO HELPED Bautista.

In 2024, US authorities "dismissed reports that Bautista had been arrested" after money laundering & conspiracy charges were filed in August.

"Bautista is not in US custody and we decline to comment further," said Nicole Navas Oxman at Biden's DOJ. 

What was going on?

According to my sources, Bautista disappeared because the CIA is hiding him.

Why? Because USAID gave money to COMELEC to hire Smartmatic for the 2016 election in Philippines.

Bautista can't testify in US court that the US government provided the money.

After all, the CIA doesn't want the American people to know that USAID is actually funding Smartmatic.

That would be crazy, right?

The CIA wouldn't still use USAID to fund Smartmatic even AFTER the DOJ itself had charged 15 of Venezuela's top communist officials with running a "narco-terrorism conspiracy" in 2020?

The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton

Trump is the most anti-war president we've had in at least five decades and sees through the now absurd notion of NATO.  Anti-war folks tend to get killed or shot at -see Jesus, Pope John Paul II, Robert F Kennedy, MLK, Trump...

We can probably add to the list Thomas Merton, whose death is convincingly shown as a homicide in a book whose title shares this post's title. 

In 1962 one of Merton's most popular books came out: "New Seeds of Contemplation". Perhaps there was a sense that this monk had some "juice", some influence, and he was writing against the Vietnam War. In those days he crossed the rubicon into the political and prophetically wrote, "[I'm] walking into a known and definite battle. May God protect me in it." He later said that non-violence is "not a tactic that allows you not to be dirtied with blood." Also prophetic, as he himself was dirtied with blood and likely killed for his anti-war views. 

From the book:

In The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton we identify four men who have been most instrumental in imprinting upon the public mind the wholly unsupported notion that Merton died from accidental electrocution...Merton, with his trenchant observations about the propagandistic nature of the American press—observations that were far ahead of his time—would not have been at all surprised to learn that two of those men were professional journalists.

Arriving in Thailand, Thomas Merton landed, in effect, in the middle of the Indochina War that he opposed. The Thai government was closely allied with the United States in pursuing the war [including allowing US military bases]. Thais were on the CIA payroll and collaborating with the agency that ran the Phoenix Program training camps in Thailand...

Before any investigation, Dr. Nakvachara concluded that “cardiac failure” had caused “accidental falling into the fan.” When investigators know the result of an “investigation” before it even begins, there is a better word for it. That is “cover-up.”

There was every reason to suspect criminal causes. Even without de Grunne’s extremely suspicious behavior, Merton’s violent unexpected death per se is reason enough to suspect homicide. The defective electric cord installed in the fan appeared to be evidence of a crime. The unnatural position of Merton’s body prompted the first witnesses not to touch anything and to take photographs to preserve the evidence of foul play. The conflicting statements of witnesses, as well as one very nervous witness whose actions and statements were peculiar, to say the least, amounted to compelling evidence that something was badly wrong.

What could be more ridiculous after all, than the notion that a person should have a fatal heart attack and then fall into a fan that happens to be short-circuited?

It was such a joke, in fact, that virtually everyone reporting on Merton’s death in the English language has chosen either to misconstrue it, to ignore its contents, or, what is most common, to pretend that it doesn’t exist.

Remembering Our J6 Patriots

In the Woody Allen comedy “Bananas”, Howard Cosell narrates a live assassination attempt in a South American country. Everyone knew about the assassination ahead of time except for the president. Reminds me of how CNN showed up for Trump’s Butler rally joined by a Pulitzer Prize winning AP photographer.  Life imitating fiction.

I listened to "A Coffee and a Mike" podcast and it occurs to me to wonder about when using the DoJ and FBI as a political weapon became a thing. Martha Stewart might be ground zero, serving time in prison for a nothing burger (not for insider trading but for the FBI categorizes her statements to them as deceptive). That was 2002. 

Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was on the docket in 2008.  Obama managed to get him indicted and he ended up serving 7 years for a nothing burger. James Comey was a part of this, just as he did later with Martha Stewart, Trump, and Hillary. 

This scary visage of the federal government was ignored by most, including me. For one thing, I wasn’t a Stewart or Blagojevich fan. 

The famous line from a German during Hitler’s reign: 

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

So for me it was: 

“First they came for Martha Stewart, but I wasn’t a homemaker…then they came for Rod Blagojevich but I wasn’t a Democrat….Then they came for Trump and his supporters and there was no one left to speak for us.” 

When they came after Trump supporters it hit too close to home. By 2021 I was a fervent Trump fan, mostly in antipathy to the response to him, but had I been retired I could've seen myself there in Washington on that fateful day. I wanted to be there, and I envied the refrigerator repairman who came the next week mentioning he had been in D.C. to support Trump.

It would’ve been absurdly easy for me to have walked on the “restricted” Capitol grounds, and thus suffered the consequences. I much doubt I would’ve entered the Capitol itself but I still would’ve been fined, sentenced, and perhaps done a month in jail just for being in a restricted zone (the grounds) as other Trump fans experienced. Certainly would’ve had a “permanent record” with the government and perhaps later be subject to increased scrutiny on flights.

It would have seemed harmless to me to walk around the Capitol since the barricades and wire fencing had been (suspiciously) taken down by perpetrators well before the Trump speech was over (and those perpetrators were naturally never found despite video evidence). It turned out to be an elaborate entrapment trap (the dry run being the Whitman “kidnap” case in October).  The only thing as surprising as the government being a sworn enemy of her people was that her people saw through it enough to elect Trump in ’24. 

The government’s reaction to Trump tells you everything you need to know about the government. As people in the old Soviet Union used to say, “a government hiding something is one with something to hide.”

The Grad Who Worked for Kamala

I thought about how disappointed a high school alum who worked as the chief aide to Harris must be now that his ticket to the top has lost. Sorry, not sorry. But he’ll land another job, they always do. 

His career well illustrates the parasitical nature of the D.C. swamp: he’s held 9 jobs in 13 years and currently owns the verbose title of: “Special Assistant to the President & Senior Advisor for Congressional Affairs and Strategic Outreach”. 

There are so many “make work” jobs in Washington. Spigots of money froth like the cascades of the Trevi fountain. He spent time as “executive director of the New Democrat Coalition” and another as “political director at Serve America PAC”. Utterly useless. Reminds me of the tens of millions that Kamala’s “consultants” got paid for helping her lose the election. It’s no wonder the Maryland has the highest median income of any state in the country. 

I’m still puzzled by what it would take for Catholics to recognize, en masse, that the Democrat party is not a viable voting option given their stands on abortion, LGBT and trans issues, sex ed and porn in grade schools, deep state targeting of pro-lifers and traditionalist Catholics, etc... I suspect part of it is the Catholic culture at the higher levels understands that the Democrat party is the wing of our government that facilitates our cash cow, in the form of providing millions of dollars to the church in return for settling illegals. 

His own case is probably the same old song: a disaffected fallen-away Catholic who grew up during the disaffected '80s.  And gay. His tweets reveal passion about the wedge issue of the moment: abortion rights after Dobbs, patriotism towards Ukraine, gay rights (it's personal for him, so that might be his own legit belief).  He has a special love for Adam Kinzinger, one of only two people he follows on Bluesky. 

Regardless, my alumni magazine's glad-handing interview with an architect of destruction was eyeopening. Could be ignorance, could be the diocesan culture, could be that I’m just too partisan. 

I looked up a respected old catechism from about 100 years ago, in a less polarized time. It didn't give guidance on Catholic schools providing friendly interviews with Democrats (a much different party back then!)  but it had this to say more generally: 

“And since matters closely connected with the essentials of religion are often the subject of debate, it is the duty of Catholics to vote for such candidates as will act justly in dealing with ecclesiastical questions, and have the interests of the Church at heart. If a Catholic, by giving his vote to a candidate who is hostile to the Church, or by abstaining from voting, makes himself in part responsible for the success of that candidate, he has much to answer for.”

Grey Mirror Substack Excerpt

Interesting perspective and explains why American voters have so little power. From Grey Mirror Substack:

**

Power has a very nice trick. The trick is: it convinces you that it belongs to you. But actually, you belong to it.

What is power, in our country? Let’s call it—Washington. We don’t know what it is. Never assume you know what power is. Power never wants you to know what it is. Respect how good it is at this! But you can usually figure out where it lives.

Fundamentally, if “democracy” means anything, it means a regime in which elections are important. Here are two easy tests for whether a phenomenon is important.

First: if no one told you about it, would you know it existed?

Second: how much more important could it become?

If we only listened to the language of the 2024 election, we would be very convinced—by the arguments of both sides—that something important was happening. This is more true than ever in any recent American election. But suppose we magically had zero access to political news. Could we tell, through our daily lives, that something had happened? What about after 2016, when similarly incendiary rhetoric was used?

Trump and his followers borrow liberally from the language of “regime change.” Yet in fact, across history, when a regime actually changes, everyone’s life changes. If you lived in East Berlin in 1985 and 1995, you did not need a newspaper to know that the regime had changed.

An obvious way to define the importance of an election is to ask what percentage of power over the state it grants. This definition is nice because it is on the unit scale: from 0 to 1. 0 means: no power. 1 means: all the power.

How democratic is your regime? How much power, as a percentage of absolute power, can a realistic political movement capture by realistic political actions?

Who has the rest? Someone always has the rest. Power is conserved. Of course, the idea of American political science is the opposite: we believe in limited government—as if some paranormal power constrained the actions of an otherwise sovereign regime.

If we define law professors in black polyester robes as not part of the government, then we do have limited government. If we define them as spiritually incorruptible, like the Pope, except that his robe is white and theirs is black, then we do have limited government.

However, if we define the judiciary as part of the government then our regime is most definitely unlimited. I’m sorry if you’re learning this for the first time.

If winning gives you 1% of absolute power, the election is 1% of a democratic election. Since winning the 1932 election gave FDR way more than 1% of absolute power, we can’t even say that absolute democracy can be new to American history. Since all our political factions today are FDR respecters, none of them can argue that an absolute election, like that of 1932, is impossible, or illegitimate, or un-American, today. 

At a rational level that Washington would function just as well, if not better, without any politicians. Certainly, the last days of the Biden administration demonstrate that Washington does not need a President. And the President himself is only one small part of the White House. Washington needs a White House, but only to resolve interagency conflicts. But it could always just flip a coin.

In a sense, America does not have a President. If it had a President, it would have a chief executive of the executive branch. For that, it would have to have an executive branch. In an executive organization, every node in the organizational chart has a goal and a set of resources, including direct reports who can be given goals and resources. This is how a company works. This is how an army works. This is not how Washington works. Until you understand this about Washington, you are in Don Quixote world.

America has no executive branch. It has a procedural branch: the administrative or “deep” state. In this procedural branch, every employee in every agency, from top to bottom, has not goals, but duties. These duties are set by rules and procedures. These rules and procedures are set not by the executive branch, but the legislative branch.

But the legislative branch is elected, too! Yes—elected with a 98% incumbency rate (in the House), and 90% (in the Senate)—then subjected to a seniority-driven committee system mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. 

You might think of our legislative branch as a parliamentary body. Indeed, at its center is a classic parliamentary debating chamber. But if this chamber was literally filled in with concrete, if nothing like what happens there now ever happened anywhere again, the actual work of Capitol Hill could continue undisturbed. This is true, too, of every parliamentary body on Earth. There is no body of statesmen that decides on policy by open debate. There are no statesmen at all. There are politicians. If they debate, it is to pretend. Generally their function is to raise money so they can keep getting elected. And if they do keep getting elected, they rise in the bizarre Venetian seniority system.

Yet the Hill is an extremely functional sovereign bureaucracy. Legislation still works. It can still make serious changes to Washington. Politicians are mostly fundraisers and PR fronts, but Hill staffers do actual, serious governance work. It’s a career that can be a career in itself, but that can also point into the agencies, lobbying, or activism. But—

Not only do the legislators not proactively drive legislation, the staffers do not even generally write it. The role of the Hill, in “our democracy,” is to select, from the vast arena of ideas championed by some lobby or movement, whose language becomes law.

This is Capitol Hill. It actually runs the country. Hardly anyone in America has any real idea what does. It has a 13% approval rating. It is totally impervious to elections. “Our democracy,” folks.

So the Congress is a kind of breakwater against democracy. Behind this wave-barrier is—true sovereignty, which is inherently permanent. Inasmuch as Washington has a center, that center is the Hill. The Hill is the matador. The White House is the cape. Sorry, voters.

Legislation is how anything really serious gets done in DC. Legislation may even be a way to compel an agency to do something it doesn’t want to do. It will at least have to pretend. It may not do it quickly, cheaply, or effectively. It will have to do something.

Moreover, legislation has effectively unlimited power upside. Congress could very easily abolish the Department of Education. Or the Department of State. It won’t, though—not because America needs these agencies but because no such action is in the interest of any legislator, staffer, lobbyist or activist.

Congress dictates not just the budget, personnel and policy of the so-called “executive branch,” but even of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) within it. It’s a wonder the “leader of the free world” can even decide when to take a dump.

While no one in Washington particularly has an incentive to care about saving money—some people still care anyway. The worst thing about Washington is that it’s not just that some of them are good people. Most of them are good people. Washington is made of good people. That’s the most appalling thing about it.

Moreover, because the Republicans still do not see themselves as seeking power, only good government, any spending wins are dead-end wins. 

Ultimately, their mindset is still the mentality of Boxer in Animal Farm: “we must work harder.” I do not agree. Yes, it is always better to work harder. All things being equal. But all things are not equal—and here, I think, we must work smarter.

First of all, the true tiny micro-reality of this trench warfare, as compared to the huge fake macro-realities it is used to sell, is inherently a deception. Yes, you can get a little done. In some areas—like immigration—where large parts of the old government still want to do their old job and know how to do it—you can get a lot done. But…

Taking these micro-victories seriously has a serious cost. The harder a Republican administration fights, and the small more victories it wins, the better it sells the illusion that it is in control of the government—allowing the Congress, which is actually in control of the government, to evade any accountability. It’s actually a beautiful design in a sense.

Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing: elections matter. Do they, though? Suppose you spend the next four years ignoring politics and living your life. Even if the biggest, best plans of the new administration come true—even if DOGE is all Enrico Dandolo and no J. Peter Grace, even if Elon can save two trillion dollars—

Will you notice that anything happened? If not, do elections matter?

Trying to save the country by making the government smaller, better, etc, is a lot like trying to go to space in a balloon. You can get really technical about it. With a big Mylar envelope and a lot of other space-tier gear, you can get to like 100,000 feet. The sky is pretty black up there! It’s almost like you’re in space.

In terms of your lungs, you’re in space. In terms of gravity, you’re on earth. What we normally mean by space is orbit. Orbit is not about altitude. Space is not a function of being really high up.

Making the government smaller is great. Making the government better is great. You do have a beautiful view of the stars.

But actually, space is a function of going really fast. Also, power is a function of being in charge of the government. Right now, they are in charge. 

The solution is obvious: capture Congress. Legally, of course. Make elections matter.

Congress is a pretty attractive startup target. First, it actually runs the country. It has all the power everyone thinks the President has. The Senate can even overrule the Supreme Court (by “packing” it).

What it chooses to do with that power is mostly just to delegate it to the agencies in vague language mixed with micromanagement—in the twisted, opaque, and not always pretty nexus of money and influence from which the Hill makes its “laws.” Congress is America’s seawall against democracy.

When enough of its incumbents win enough elections, our patriotic Congresspersons protect the whole noxious nexus of the “administrative state” from being swept away by one great wave of populist revulsion. This regime’s results are revolting indeed. Sadly, the people are almost as revolting. That’s why, in the 21st century, neither oligarchy nor democracy is a viable structure of government.

The solution is: teach Americans that the fundamental problem of their situation is not that their government is doing this, that or the other thing wrong—though it is—but just that they have almost no power over it.

Washington is not accountable to the voters, or to anyone else either. Even if it was accountable to the Jews—I can’t even tell you what a vast improvement that would be. At least someone would be in charge. Unfortunately, there are no “Elders of Zion.” It’s all up to you, dear American voter. If you can learn how to vote to take power, not to use power, you will win. Otherwise, you will lose.

Your problem is not inflation, abortion, immigration, or even fentanyl. Your problem is that you don’t have enough power. You’re not voting against fentanyl. You are voting for power. You are voting for the power to beat fentanyl—as well as inflation, abortion, immigration, and whatever else needs beating (but nothing that doesn’t).

The irony of our politics is that progressive ideas fit perfectly with progressive power. Every progressive idea makes progressives more powerful. If the real world changes so that the exact opposite idea is the powerful idea, progressives will change their mind.

On February 1, 2020, insouciance toward Covid was a progressive idea. On March 1, 2020, paranoia toward Covid was a progressive idea. What changed was not anything new we learned scientifically—but just that President Trump came out as insouciant. Suddenly, the only way to rebel was to be paranoid. So, instead of going to Chinatown to lick doorknobs, we all had to mask up. If Trump had gone the other way and talked about our precious bodily fluids, America and the world would have followed the Swedish model.

Progressives do not believe in the American system of government, only in power. Conservatives do not believe in power, only in the American system of government. Therefore, progressives always win and conservatives always lose. And as for the American system of government—how’s that working out for you, conservatives? Is it the best system of government in history, or the worst? Or, in some strange way, both?

Fascinating Look at the Powers That Be

Reading interesting book on the Greek debt crisis but a symbol of so much more (i.e. describing the deep state) called, “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis. Some excerpts. 

On Larry Summers, a kingpin of the universe and Epstein isle visitor: 

"[Summers] said ‘There are two kinds of politicians: insiders and outsiders. The outsiders prioritize their freedom to speak their version of the truth. The price of their freedom is that they are ignored by the insiders, who make the important decisions. The insiders, for their part, follow a sacrosanct rule: never turn against other insiders and never talk to outsiders about what insiders say or do. Their reward? Access to inside information and a chance, though no guarantee, of influencing powerful people and outcomes.’"

Explains the establishment hatred of Trump: he says what he wants (outsider) but he's also an insider (as only the president can be). 

He goes on to explain how black box non-transparency is knit less of conspiracy than this: 

When a large-scale crisis hits, it is tempting to attribute it to a conspiracy between the powerful...If our sharply diminished circumstances can be blamed on a conspiracy, then it is one whose members do not even know that they are part of it. That which feels to many like a conspiracy of the powerful is simply the emergent property of any network of super black boxes.

The keys to such power networks are exclusion and opacity.

**

Many decent Greek bank employees were worried sick by what they were observing and doing. But when they got their hands on evidence or information foreshadowing terrible developments, they faced Summers’s dilemma: leak it to outsiders and become irrelevant; keep it to themselves and become complicit; or embrace their power by exchanging it for other information held by someone else in the know, resulting in an impromptu two-person alliance that turbocharges both individuals’ power within the broader network of insiders. As further sensitive information is exchanged, this two-person alliance forges links with other such alliances. The result is a network of power within other pre-existing networks, involving participants who conspire de facto without being conscious conspirators.

Whenever a journalist refuses to slant their story in the politician’s favour, they risk losing a valuable source and being excluded from that network. This is how networks of power control the flow of information: through co-opting outsiders and excluding those who refuse to play ball. They evolve organically and are guided by a supra-intentional drive that no individual can control...

Once caught in this web of power it takes an heroic disposition to turn whistle-blower, especially when one cannot hear oneself think amid the cacophony of so much money-making. And those few who do break ranks end up like shooting stars, quickly forgotten by a distracted world.

He describes how to fight it, first saying to recognize we may be unwitting members of the network: 

Secondly, and this is the genius of Wikileaks, if we can get inside the network, like Theseus entering the labyrinth, and disrupt the information flow; if we can put the fear of uncontrollable information leaking in the mind of as many of its members as possible, then the unaccountable, malfunctioning networks of power will collapse under their own weight and irrelevance. Thirdly, by resisting any tendency to substitute old closed networks with new ones.

The backlash, as we've seen with Trump, is fierce and explains why the DoJ/FBI doubled-down rather than backed down when their lies were exposed:                

Insiders, I had written in 2012, would react aggressively to anyone who dared open up their super black box to the outsiders’ gaze: ‘None of this will be easy. The networks will respond violently, as they are already doing. They will turn more authoritarian, more closed, more fragmented. They will become increasingly preoccupied with their own “security” and monopoly of information, less trusting of common people.’

On the crisis in 2015:

...the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the Greek government organized the world’s greatest bankruptcy cover-up. How do you cover up a bankruptcy? By throwing good money after bad. And who financed this cover-up? Common people, ‘outsiders’ from all over the globe.

I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People – powerful people – listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: they don’t criticize other insiders. I had been warned.

Election Day/Month/Year

Election Day! The day (or week or month) we find out whether we’ll continue to be led by Obama and thugs or if we get a 4-year sabbatical. 

I think it says a lot when we think about who Obama has chosen or favored. Everyone he does is braindead-stupid, which suggests they would need to lean on him for his power and influence. First there was Biden as the VP pick back in ’08. In ’20 he favored Kamala in the primaries. Then this year he wanted Walz to be picked as VP over a guy who actually has an IQ above 100 (Shapiro). It can’t be accidental that he picks figureheads, “empty suits”. 

Political analyst Mark Halperin is center-left but even he can see it. Halperin is furious at his media for covering up Biden’s senility and letting Kamala be the candidate, saying it was very counterproductive. 

**

We went to the polls after, we thought, the pre-work crowds but around 9:30 to 10am it was jam packed. Never seen our voting station that crowded. Usually we’re out in 2-5 minutes and this time it took over 30. Not bad, of course, compared to places like Arizona. 

Meanwhile, this news is kind of surreal. ICE agents told they can’t wear uniforms or badges to vote today, per internal email obtained by journalist Ben Bergquam.  Seems they don’t want to intimidate all the illegal aliens voting.

I suspect Trump will win the American citizen vote but that might not be enough for him. 

It's almost sort of a catch-22: if the country was healthy enough to elect Trump this time then we wouldn't need him.  

For all our famed American “rugged individualism” we are incredibly interdependent and not just with regard to economics. Our freedoms depend on other people and certainly not on the Constitution or law.  If we’ve learned nothing over the past decade or two it’s that the government feels comfortable censoring our speech and limiting freedom via either third parties or direct edicts. We’re only an executive order or two away from tyranny so the Constitution can’t save us and neither can Trump --but he can at least delay the inevitable. 

**

The common thread of the past two decades can be summed up in one phrase: the weaponization of previously neutral instruments. Anything that can be weaponized/politicized has been, including the dollar, the judicial system, search engines, voting and medical systems. 

It’s hard to think of a single public-facing entity that hasn’t been weaponized. 

**

Quotable: 

"A time could come when, whether we want it or not, we'll have to live without churches, just as Christians lived without them in the first three centuries. May God preserve us from living to that time! But our task right now, for modern  Christians, is to think through and work out a form of life in the Church under any conditions, even when they take our churches away from us. After all, this could happen, sooner or later."

—Archbishop Theodosius (Snigirev) 

Is President Harris God's Plan?

One issue that seems neglected in the current Church, although it might be linked to inadequate catechesis on my part, is how Christians ought deal with government tyranny. 

In a way I realize I’m rather late to recognition of injustice. Millions of babies in the womb killed over the past decades asserts to the fact. Yet many people, like myself, have believed in the goodness of America and have been thrown off-kilter by recent events that threaten freedom of speech, religion, that undermine the rule of law and our justice system. Adam Smith said, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” but how much is too much ruin? How much corruption is acceptable? 

Particularly appalling is the injustice around non-violent offenders related to January 6th. This is such a visible affront that affects the lives of over 1,180 defendants and the lack of outrage is offensive, whether it comes from Democrats or comfortable country club Republicans. 

I sometimes wonder if virtue *has* to be the loser in the short and medium run, and winner only in the long run.  Evil has the benefit of no guardrails as well as the element of surprise. The Soviet Union thrived for some 70 years before dismantling.  Plus I read in an older catechism that bad leaders are sometimes sent by God to chastise a people — in which case it’s possible that President Harris is God’s plan! 

Equally confusing are such disparate Christian approaches to recent tyrannies. St Maximilian Kolbe’s view seems to have been the polar opposite of Alexander Solzenheitzen's, based on the latter's haunting quote: "And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive…?…They would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened.” Similarly there’s the example of Bonhoeffer in Germany. 

I read an interesting book called “Why All People Suffer”. The relevant and potent chapter was about non-violence and how the victims must show the victimizers what they are doing in order to provoke their conscience. God allows suffering as a third way to get sinners to change (the first two being their own conscience and the punishment that results from bad actions). Jesus was the premiere example of this. 

I think of this especially in regard to the "tale of two J6rs". One fled the country and received asylum from Belarus (to Belarus's credit, given the J6r would not have received a fair trial here) and another, named John Strand, who stayed and fought the charges and ended up getting a longer sentence by not lying and taking a plea deal.  

As much as I cheer and cherish the little guy who evaded the police state by fleeing (a David v. Goliath story, although this David was not nearly as good as David and Goliath surely not as nasty as our Goliath), I realize that in Christian terms Strand chose the better path. He *showed* the victimizers what they were doing and pricked the consciences of those who still have one. The other fellow did nothing productive in terms of the spiritual realm.

Are these two J6rs are, in a microcosm, the difference between Solzenheitzen's approach and St Maximilian Kolbe's? Or is the idea that one solution fits all wrong in itself and that different souls will discern differently but no less accurately?