Instead, Trump used the dying moments of his presidency to pardon white-collar criminals and his own crooked allies. Bribe-takers, insider-traders, liars, and thieves made up the list. Even Kwame Kilpatrick was set free — the notoriously corrupt Detroit mayor who let the already indebted city pay for his extravagances and wild parties and was serving a 28-year sentence after being convicted on 24 felony counts, including racketeering, bribery, and fraud.
But Edward Snowden and Julian Assange? Two whistleblowers who risked everything to reveal the abuses and corruption that that our own federal government commits on a regular basis behind the scenes? Well, sorry, but that’s too big of an ask.
Word is that Trump was considering pardons for them both, but then Mitch McConnell, arguably the biggest snake in the pit of vipers that is Congress, allegedly threatened to vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial if Trump pardoned Assange.
Did Trump call his bluff? Did Trump decide that standing up for the truth was more important than his own political hide?
Nope. In the end, Donald Trump bent the knee to the same swamp that he claimed to be fighting for four years. He let corrupt government officials walk free, while leaving those who expose government corruption to twist in the wind.
Trump revealed his true colors on his way out the door. Americans, he took you for a ride. He was in it for himself and always was. He’s the same raging narcissist he always was. And now Snowden will remain in exile in Russia, while Assange will probably die in prison.
Signs of What’s to Come
Word is that Nancy Pelosi wanted “crew-manned machine guns” on top of that — and was flatly told no by Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli.
“That was rejected because there’s simply no use for that in a security arrangement for a civilian undertaking,” he said, adding that “some of this has gone beyond any legitimate security need.”
Gee, ya think?
And all this for what? An inauguration that the public wasn’t even invited to?
I don’t know about you, but if you have to hide from the people behind fences and swarms of soldiers to take the oath of office, only after vetting those same troops surrounding you to ensure their loyalty, then maybe you weren’t really elected by the people. The only thing it tells me is that you’re afraid of your own citizens.
I mean, let’s be honest: This is what a genuine coup looks like. Not people questioning the outcome of some very fishy election results.
Of course, the excuse for all of this is the protest at the Capitol that’s being characterized as something far worse than it actually was. With breathless hysteria, our ruling elites are using the incident as a pretext for shutting down alternative social media, silencing conservative news outlets, “deprogramming” Trumpers, and using federal intel agencies to begin a 9/11-style crackdown on “domestic terrorists,” a.k.a. Trump supporters — and “even libertarians,” in the words of former CIA chief John Brennan.
But let’s not forget that unlike the BLM/Antifa riots last summer — where homes, businesses, and entire neighborhoods were torched to the ground, looting was actually defended, and people lost their lives — the Capitol protest resulted in a few broken windows, and the only person who died during the actual protest was an unarmed protester herself. One guy puts his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. Another guy in a Viking outfit leads a prayer at the Senate podium, and then the cops politely ask him and his pals to leave the chamber.
And yet this is the protest we’re supposed to be terrified of. The one where some Trump true believers forced their way into a house that We the People own, a lot of them stayed inside the velvet ropes, a few took selfies with the cops who pretty much let them in, and most just stood around just chanting slogans and waving flags.
But while the media kept insisting that last summer’s violent, fiery riots were “mostly peaceful protests,” the protest that actually was mostly peaceful is the one characterized as a riot, a violent insurrection, an invasion, an assault on our very democracy.
Here, consider what the Associated Press has instructed writers and editors to say in the wake of both incidents. Back during the summertime riots, the AP urged journalists not to call them riots, because that was somehow racist. Instead, the AP urged more “vague” terminology, like “unrest.” (Because vagueness is something journalists should always strive for.) But now the AP is telling journalists that the word “riot” is perfectly acceptable to use, as are things like “violent protest,” “mob,” even, yes, “insurrection.”
Words matter. And that’s why The Washington Post is now erasing history to make an administration that they favor look good. WaPo, whose motto, ironically, is “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” was caught red-handed deleting a passage in an old article in which Kamala Harris mocks prisoners. And so, just days into the new presidency, we see mainstream media taking on the role of the Ministry of Truth, which tasked itself with constantly rewriting history to make it square with Big Brother's current narrative. In the world of 1984, as in every dictatorial regime that has ever existed, there is no past — just an eternal present in which whatever the state says is true, has always been true, and can never be questioned.
See? Look for yourself. There’s nothing there. Kamala never said anything bad about anyone. The election was totally free and fair. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
See? Look for yourself. There’s nothing there. Kamala never said anything bad about anyone. The election was totally free and fair. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Biden As the Opening Act
And so now we have Joe Biden, the doddering grandpa who just wants all us kids to get along. To help his administration get off on the right foot, Amazon — the same woke corporate behemoth that nuked Parler, don’t forget — wrote Biden to say the company would be happy to help him distribute vaccines. I guess they couldn’t have done that under Trump all along? Giving Trump the middle finger was more important than helping people?
That just proves what we’ve always known about how COVID has been wielded as a convenient political weapon every step of the way. After all, why else would Andrew Cuomo in New York state, Lori Lightfoot in Chicago, Muriel Bowser in D.C., and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan all suddenly decide that it’s now magically OK for people to go back to bars and restaurants? Remember, bars in particular had to close because they were hotbeds for viral transmission. But now we have to worry about the economy all of a sudden, after untold numbers of small businesses have already gone under.
But Trump’s gone now, so it’s OK.
Brittany Hughes, incidentally, would like a word with all you leftist hypocrites:
And so now we have Joe Biden, the doddering grandpa who just wants all us kids to get along. To help his administration get off on the right foot, Amazon — the same woke corporate behemoth that nuked Parler, don’t forget — wrote Biden to say the company would be happy to help him distribute vaccines. I guess they couldn’t have done that under Trump all along? Giving Trump the middle finger was more important than helping people?
That just proves what we’ve always known about how COVID has been wielded as a convenient political weapon every step of the way. After all, why else would Andrew Cuomo in New York state, Lori Lightfoot in Chicago, Muriel Bowser in D.C., and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan all suddenly decide that it’s now magically OK for people to go back to bars and restaurants? Remember, bars in particular had to close because they were hotbeds for viral transmission. But now we have to worry about the economy all of a sudden, after untold numbers of small businesses have already gone under.
But Trump’s gone now, so it’s OK.
Brittany Hughes, incidentally, would like a word with all you leftist hypocrites:
This all appears to come on the back of a study showing what we already knew, and that the WHO and the Great Barrington Declaration already said: that lockdowns haven’t worked any better than voluntary measures in controlling the spread of the deadly virus-with-a-99%-plus-survival-rate. Better late than never, but again, it’s painfully obvious that these decisions to start opening back up things that Sweden and South Dakota showed should never have been closed in the first place are politically motivated in their timing.
Meanwhile, speaking of hypocrisy, Biden is caught violating his own executive order mandating masks on federal property. And just like every time leftists are caught violating the edicts they place on everyone else, his press secretary cavalierly blows off the double standard by saying the inauguration was a “historic day” and he had “bigger issues to worry about.”
OK, so which is it? Are masks necessary life-savers and you’ll kill Grandma if you don’t wear them, or can you just toss them aside if it’s a big day and you have other stuff on your mind?
But then this is Jen Psaki, who also thought it was no big deal to wear a hat with a hammer-and-sickle emblem given to her back in 2014, while on a diplomatic visit with Russian officials in Paris. Back then, Psaki was a spokeswoman for John Kerry’s State Department.
Meanwhile, speaking of hypocrisy, Biden is caught violating his own executive order mandating masks on federal property. And just like every time leftists are caught violating the edicts they place on everyone else, his press secretary cavalierly blows off the double standard by saying the inauguration was a “historic day” and he had “bigger issues to worry about.”
OK, so which is it? Are masks necessary life-savers and you’ll kill Grandma if you don’t wear them, or can you just toss them aside if it’s a big day and you have other stuff on your mind?
But then this is Jen Psaki, who also thought it was no big deal to wear a hat with a hammer-and-sickle emblem given to her back in 2014, while on a diplomatic visit with Russian officials in Paris. Back then, Psaki was a spokeswoman for John Kerry’s State Department.
When critics pointed out the inappropriateness of her headwear, it was blown off as part of an awkward exchange of presents, in which Kerry gave some Idaho potatoes to the Russian diplomats. Har-har, sure. You can just imagine the 24/7 media uproar if a Republican official wore, say, a Confederate flag hat given to him as a gift. At some point, common sense should kick in and say, “You know, a hammer and sickle was the emblem of a tyrannical empire that extinguished freedom for millions and killed millions more. Maybe I shouldn’t pose for the camera with this thing on.” But no.
To any normal person, it’s every bit as inappropriate as wearing a swastika. But hey, at least it telegraphs to us where the sympathies of this administration clearly lie behind its figurehead, as if there was any doubt.
Granted, Biden is already tossing bones to the neoliberal warmongers and the insurance companies, by respectively ramping up the Syrian conflict and bailing on a healthcare public option. He’s also frozen a Trump order to lower prices for insulin and epinephrine, in a nod to Big Pharma’s ability to maximize its profits on the backs of sick people.
Killing off the Keystone XL pipeline wasn’t even a surprise — though you know you’ve really stepped in it when the labor unions that backed you are pissed off and even Canada’s far-left PM says he’s disappointed in you. With the stroke of a pen, Biden destroyed thousands of jobs, weakened America’s energy independence, and will most likely cause gasoline prices to rise. Remember the good old days of $4-a-gallon gas in the Obama years?
Still, all that kind of stuff is expected from corporate neoliberal Democrats, which I think in the early days of his administration is going to be the point — to lull the masses into not paying attention. (Oh, there go those wacky tax-and-spend, tree-hugging Democrats again.) Because we know that Biden’s real purpose is to serve as a Trojan horse for the woke far left, whose members dominate his administration. They’ll be ready to take over with Kamala Harris as the smiling face of authoritarian rule once old Uncle Joe is put out to pasture. My guess is the establishment will let him hang around long enough to get the virus under control, so he can look like a conquering hero as he rides off into the sunset.
The thing is, Biden is an old-school liberal with questionable mental faculties, so one even wonders if he understands the consequences of some of the insanely woke executive orders he’s already signed.
Consider, for example, that Biden signed an order that strips women of their sex-based rights in the name of defending “gender identity.” In short, women can say goodbye to their own sports and their right to private spaces to accommodate men who identify as women.
Another of Biden’s orders, equally disturbing, openly allows for reverse discrimination in federal hiring. What Biden proclaims to be a system of “equity” is really just government-enforced equality of outcome, with historically “privileged” groups taking it on the chin.
I’m going to defer to Andrew Sullivan, who recently summed up the situation well:
We’ve been heading in this direction for years, and it was only a matter of time until it worked its way up to the federal level. And Sullivan is right to call it “illiberal,” because it all flies in the face of the classically liberal ideals that shaped not just the American nation but Western civilization as a whole. It’s tragic enough that we’re reverting to a pre-Civil Rights era, when blacks were pushed to the back of the bus, and replacing it with revenge-based policies that push whites to the back of the bus. But to enforce the notion that men can be women and vice versa simply by saying so undermines our entire foundation of objective and rational thought.
None of this is to say that people deserve to be treated unfairly, or that past discriminations didn’t happen. The point is that two wrongs don’t make a right, and that all people are guaranteed equal protection under the law through the 14th Amendment and civil-rights legislation. That is as it should be, and that ideal ought to remain the goal we strive toward. We need nothing else.
Anyone who says we do wants to lead us down a dangerous road that we may not recover from.
And none of this even takes into account the potential for ending the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, adding Democrat-friendly new states to the union, or ending the Electoral College. People say it won’t happen, that there would be a backlash and Democrats would end up losing the Senate and maybe even the House in 2022. Yeah, sure. Let me know how those free and fair elections work out. No, I don’t think we’ll ever again be free of the rule of these people. Trump was the last gasp of the America we once knew, and it didn’t help that he was the wrong person for the job all along. For all practical purposes, he was the final nail in the coffin, as the old republic gives way to the People’s Republic.
Buckle up. The next few years are going to take America into some pretty ugly places.
To any normal person, it’s every bit as inappropriate as wearing a swastika. But hey, at least it telegraphs to us where the sympathies of this administration clearly lie behind its figurehead, as if there was any doubt.
Granted, Biden is already tossing bones to the neoliberal warmongers and the insurance companies, by respectively ramping up the Syrian conflict and bailing on a healthcare public option. He’s also frozen a Trump order to lower prices for insulin and epinephrine, in a nod to Big Pharma’s ability to maximize its profits on the backs of sick people.
Killing off the Keystone XL pipeline wasn’t even a surprise — though you know you’ve really stepped in it when the labor unions that backed you are pissed off and even Canada’s far-left PM says he’s disappointed in you. With the stroke of a pen, Biden destroyed thousands of jobs, weakened America’s energy independence, and will most likely cause gasoline prices to rise. Remember the good old days of $4-a-gallon gas in the Obama years?
Still, all that kind of stuff is expected from corporate neoliberal Democrats, which I think in the early days of his administration is going to be the point — to lull the masses into not paying attention. (Oh, there go those wacky tax-and-spend, tree-hugging Democrats again.) Because we know that Biden’s real purpose is to serve as a Trojan horse for the woke far left, whose members dominate his administration. They’ll be ready to take over with Kamala Harris as the smiling face of authoritarian rule once old Uncle Joe is put out to pasture. My guess is the establishment will let him hang around long enough to get the virus under control, so he can look like a conquering hero as he rides off into the sunset.
The thing is, Biden is an old-school liberal with questionable mental faculties, so one even wonders if he understands the consequences of some of the insanely woke executive orders he’s already signed.
Consider, for example, that Biden signed an order that strips women of their sex-based rights in the name of defending “gender identity.” In short, women can say goodbye to their own sports and their right to private spaces to accommodate men who identify as women.
Another of Biden’s orders, equally disturbing, openly allows for reverse discrimination in federal hiring. What Biden proclaims to be a system of “equity” is really just government-enforced equality of outcome, with historically “privileged” groups taking it on the chin.
I’m going to defer to Andrew Sullivan, who recently summed up the situation well:
[E]equity means giving the the named identity groups a specific advantage in treatment by the federal government over other groups — in order to make up for historic injustice and “systemic” oppression. Without “equity”, the argument runs, there can be no real “equality of opportunity.” Equity therefore comes first. Until equity is reached, equality is postponed — perhaps for ever.Biden even wants to push “equity” in economics. Imagine opening up your tax forms one day, and you see tax brackets based not on income but on your pigmentation, your sex organs, and who you sleep with. That is quite literally how these people think.
[…] The paradox, of course, is that to achieve “equity” you have to first take away equality for individuals who were born in the wrong identity group. Equity means treating individuals unequally so that groups are equal.
[…] Biden is therefore enforcing the Ibram X. Kendi view that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” And he’s enforcing it across the entire federal government and any institution the federal government funds. To show he’s serious, he’s appointed Susan Rice to enforce equity in a “whole-of-government” approach. America is no longer about individual freedom; it’s about identity group power, and its constant management by government.
Biden’s executive order on “LGBTQ+” is also taken directly from critical gender and queer theory. Take the trans question. Most decent people support laws that protect transgender people from discrimination — which, after the Bostock decision, is already the law of the land. But this is not enough for Biden. He takes the view that the law should go further and insist that trans women are absolutely indistinguishable from biological women — which erases any means of enforcing laws that defend biological women as a class. If your sex is merely what you say it is, without any reference to biological reality, then it is no longer sex at all. It’s gender, period. It’s socially constructed all the way down.
[…] I wonder if Joe Biden even knows what critical theory is. But he doesn’t have to. It is the successor ideology to liberalism among elites, a now-mandatory ideology if you want to keep your job. But Biden’s emphatic backing of this illiberal, discriminatory project on his first day is relevant. He has decided to encourage “unity” by immediately pursuing policies that inflame Republicans and conservatives and normies more than any others.
And those policies are obviously unconstitutional. The federal government cannot actively discriminate on the basis of race, sex or group identity under the Constitution. It cannot strip women of their rights as a distinct biological class. It cannot void religious freedom for individuals. Biden’s woke rampage in the federal government won’t last, because it cannot last if our constitution means anything.
We’ve been heading in this direction for years, and it was only a matter of time until it worked its way up to the federal level. And Sullivan is right to call it “illiberal,” because it all flies in the face of the classically liberal ideals that shaped not just the American nation but Western civilization as a whole. It’s tragic enough that we’re reverting to a pre-Civil Rights era, when blacks were pushed to the back of the bus, and replacing it with revenge-based policies that push whites to the back of the bus. But to enforce the notion that men can be women and vice versa simply by saying so undermines our entire foundation of objective and rational thought.
None of this is to say that people deserve to be treated unfairly, or that past discriminations didn’t happen. The point is that two wrongs don’t make a right, and that all people are guaranteed equal protection under the law through the 14th Amendment and civil-rights legislation. That is as it should be, and that ideal ought to remain the goal we strive toward. We need nothing else.
Anyone who says we do wants to lead us down a dangerous road that we may not recover from.
And none of this even takes into account the potential for ending the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, adding Democrat-friendly new states to the union, or ending the Electoral College. People say it won’t happen, that there would be a backlash and Democrats would end up losing the Senate and maybe even the House in 2022. Yeah, sure. Let me know how those free and fair elections work out. No, I don’t think we’ll ever again be free of the rule of these people. Trump was the last gasp of the America we once knew, and it didn’t help that he was the wrong person for the job all along. For all practical purposes, he was the final nail in the coffin, as the old republic gives way to the People’s Republic.
Buckle up. The next few years are going to take America into some pretty ugly places.
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