On the 16th and 17th of September – a Friday and Saturday – Charlie Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA, hosted an event in Phoenix, which was called “Defeating the Great Reset.” Hey, I thought, that’s what I want to do. I told my publisher about it. He decided to pay my way – and his, which I didn’t know about until the day of. “Car pool?” Sure, why not. The first day started in the afternoon. For this event, I decided to dress up a bit. I had picked up a bowtie some years earlier, but it had lay dormant in a drawer. Might be a good time to take it out. Yes, I felt overdressed, but at least the pictures got a good reaction.
The publisher picked me up and we headed out. We arrived – what was the name of this hotel? – and then went searching for the party. As soon as I saw the people, I realized I was overdressed, and so took off the tie. Still, a black jacket and a white button up is more than I’ve worn all summer. My publisher estimated there to be about 400 people in the room we were all soon to gather inside of. That sounds about right. We stood in a line for check-in; one has to get registered, then get a lanyard with their name on it.
Alongside the line was a guy campaigning with several posters. Vote for Kari Lake! Well, okay, maybe, if I did vote. And also vote Blake Masters! Upon hearing that second name, I felt the urge to argue. “I don’t trust him,” I said. “His boss, Peter Thiel, started a surveillance company that was used by the CIA.” Actually – common mistake – it was the NSA, which is much more secretive and globalized than the CIA. The guy tried to get a word in, but I talked through him. “He’s also been all over the place with abortion.” These two facts get the Master-baters every time. “He’s better than Mark Kelly,” said another woman in the line. “It’s always lesser evilism,” I said, “Isn’t it?” You don’t vote for someone; you vote against someone.
“This is why I’m a principled nonvoter,” I said finally. The guy then castigated me, saying how it’s my responsibility as an American, then asking something like: “So what do you do to change things?”
“I’m a pamphleteer,” I answered, pulling out a copy of my booklet on the Great Reset and handing it to him. “I change minds – or hope to.”
“You wrote this?” he asked. “I did.”
Right before we got in the door, I turned around and saw who I had come to see – James Lindsay, author of Cynical Theories, among others, and who has made a name battling “the woke.” Lindsay had no bodyguards orbiting him. How human! He shook my hand and I mumbled some kind of hellos. Then he heads in; he’s one of the speakers. Me and the publisher got inside, checked in, got our lanyards. The first room was the “merch room”: shirts and buttons and more shirts. Into the next door, the main room. Its dark in here, with two huge screens on each side of the podium. Doors were in the back, which were open for now, but were soon to be locked, and then used only as an exit. You’d have to get in through the front doors.
For now, most the people were outside, where three bars were set up. Why yes, I would like a margarita. But just one! And, seriously, no more than two. Those orangey margaritas were so delectably refreshing in the 95-degree blaze. I walked around, trying to find the restroom, should I need it. I then saw the host himself, Mr. Kirk, coming out from the back door, and accompanied by a security man. I followed them through the glass doors.
As we were walking, I asked Charlie: “Taking questions today, Charlie?” He turned his head: “Tomorrow.” Oh good. I limped behind – bad knee – until I saw them go into the restroom in the corner. Another security guard came out, and together they stood outside the door. “Do I have to wait outside until Mr. Kirk is done?” They said yes. A bit elitist, that. I couldn’t help but wonder if Klaus Schwab had similar protocols in place. I kid. No comparison to be seriously made.
Back outside. Met up with the publisher. By now, food was being brought around on trays: chicken and fish, mostly. My publisher enjoyed these appetizers, as did I, even if I didn’t “sample” as many as he had. The event was starting. Most of us went inside. It was sometime around 4.
Kirk was first on the mic. (It’s all there online, if one is curious.) Kirk is a smart guy, if a bit milquetoast for my taste. Some even refer to him as the face of Conservative Inc (although I only cite myself).
As I said, I was here for Mr. Lindsay. And when Lindsay got up there, he gave us all an education. He went from Marx to Marcuse, China to the Club of Rome, from Schwab’s founding of the World Economic Forum to what we’re now dealing with today. Excellently informative and informatively excellent. I took more notes, details to follow up on.
The last speaker was the man who helped Number 45 get into the White House: Steve Bannon came to Kirk’s event. Unlike the other speakers, who gave us all lessons, Bannon’s speech was meant to rally the troops. He called us an “Army of the Awakened,” which is involved in “spiritual warfare” against the “demonic” party of Davos, with their appendages on Wall Street and in the City of London. What’s their endgame? Well – and we must thank Kirk and Bannon for taking this issue into the mainstream – those elites want to eventually merge with machines, thus becoming immortal, while the rest of us wither and die on the vine. Our “battlefield,” said Bannon, “is the ballot box and the precinct.” I wasn’t so sure.
Bannon laid it out: Advanced chip design, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum computing, CRISPR gene editing, and nanotechnology – these will converge into Homosapien “Plus” or “2.0.” (I think Bannon listed five, but actually stated a few more. I’m unsure if any of these are the same thing.)
I wondered if any of the pro-lifers in here – which certainly there were a few of in this crowd – would be in favor of the transhumanist agenda. At least then a few of us will have the “luxury” of never dying. The retort would still likely sound like “protecting innocent life” – which the elites are not. But not everyone at the top of the totem pole is guilty of genocide. Right? Why wouldn’t the ultra-wealthy (and hell, maybe even Blake Master’s mentor) recognize the ultimate investment: that of immortality? After all, the dream of achieving godhood can’t be all that uncommon. As for me, being trapped in this material realm with no exit has always sounded like hell to me. Talk about “life without the possibility…”
President Biden hopes to help someone get their wish. His recent executive order, signed in mid-September, was titled: “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy.” The order calls for the development of: “Genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers; unlock the power of biological data, including through computing tools and artificial intelligence…” Whew, boy.
“We’re living in the biggest inflection point in human history,” Bannon said. He then asked that most important of questions: “Why did divine providence put me here and now in this place? Every generation coming down the road is going to look back at this time and say: ‘Who stood up and fought?’” That one hits any parent in the gut.
That was it for this evening. The publisher and I went outside. We wanted to see if we couldn’t find Mr. Bannon, so as to get a picture with him. We walked around the back of the building. Nobody. Then a door opened. Tall guy comes out. “Is Mr. Bannon around here?” I asked. “We wanted a picture.” He said: “I can neither confirm nor deny, but you can’t be back here.” We kept walking. He walked with us. Then he got a call on the radio. “Bring the car back?” And then a black SUV backed up and into the area we just were. No luck tonight in getting a picture with a leader of the revolution. The publisher and I agreed to drive separately tomorrow, as he wanted to get here early for the breakfast.
II
I arrived around 11 on that Saturday. The second day was scheduled to be longer than the first, and so it featured more speakers. No margaritas today, as there were no bars set up outside. My option for alcohol was to make a small walk to the hotel lobby, where a bar was off to the side. Three beers and no more! The pierced and tatted bartender girl did not seem like she was having a good day. I was, but still I did not tip her merely for taking my credit card, ringing up 9 dollars for a single bottle of Heineken, then popping my cap.
So I would make my rounds: walking into the event room, standing in the back, listening to the speaker; if he – I don’t think there was a single female speaker – caught my attention, I’d listen for a while. Then I’d go outside, make that walk to the lobby, or maybe use the restroom or sit outside and make notes or try to finish reading an article I’d started earlier.
One of the first panels of the day was a joint interview with Charlie Kirk and James Lindsay. I struggle to remember the details of their conversation, and can’t seem to find it online. As promised to me, Charlie was going to take a few questions. I jumped up, ran over to the mike. Two other people were front of me. Boring questions. Then me. “Hey guys, I appreciate it,” I started.
The event has been great. Charlie, last night you said that every in the room agreed basically on two things: that we all believe in God, and that we are not God. You’re standing next to a man who a little while ago you said is not a Christian. I know James has written some books that are quite critical of Christianity. Question for either one of you: What would you say to we secularists, those who don’t necessarily believe that America was founded on Christian values – we read Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, of course he edited the bible down to a quick pamphlet – where is our place in this fight? We would like to have a place as well.
Kirk replied by telling me that I am “always welcome aboard the ‘truth train.’” But, he quickly caveated, America is “undoubtedly a Christian nation.” After thanking me for being here, he provided some evidence. “Fifty-five of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence were bible-believing, church-attending Christians,” he says. “John Adams was very clear – he spoke fluent Hebrew – and said the United States Constitution was founded by and for holy and religious people, and was wholly inadequate for the people of any other.”
Kirk then told us that George Washington was a “very devout and a very focused Christian.” America didn’t come about only through the work of Thomas Jefferson, he says. It was also who “mentored them and who actually laid the foundation for it”: Johnathon Edwards, and May Hugh, and George Whitfield. These guys gave “anywhere between forty and fifty thousand sermons that talked about how God, not King George, should actually be the person in charge, the head of your government.” In the Declaration of Independence, Kirk reminds us, “god” is mentioned four times.
Then he says something that’s inaudible to my ears. “But all that aside, despite the fact that America was a Christian nation, that every single state, state-by-state, had Christian laws, not just the federal government.” What’s the place of those like myself and Mr. Lindsay? “We need to build coalitions for liberty and for truth. Liberty is God’s idea, not man’s idea.” More inaudibility. “And if James, who I consider to be the world’s most expert on these issues, we might have theological differences, is going to come here and just drop the bomb on the evil people…are you kidding me?”
He then gives an airplane analogy – people do like their airplane analogies: “Okay…you get on an airplane and say, ‘Hey, I only have Christians as pilots.’” Now a doctor analogy. “Or, when you have heart surgery, you say, ‘I only have Christians as heart surgeons.’” Not at all. “You want the most qualified, and you want the best, for your mission, for your goal. And I can say this: I wish American Christians had as much clarity, wisdom, and courage as James.” Whew.
James then chimed in. “I’ll be brief,” which he was: “But you actually said it: if you don’t believe in God, you don’t believe you’re God. Their religion is that Man, as a collective, has forgotten that he’s God. If you don’t think you’re God, you’re on the right side. That’s all it takes.” Charlie made one last comment: “All are welcome, unless you’re a Marxist.” I had stepped aside after asking my question, but was right there listening intently to their replies. “I’m not a Marxist,” I said loudly enough. The room laughed. With me or at me, I don’t know, but I laughed as well.
Though I did regret walking away, as I wanted to argue a bit more with Charlie over America’s founding. For one thing, George Washington’s diaries indicate that he had attended church no more than twelve times a year. And in the last three years of his life, he went as few as three times. More, although it was custom at the time, Washington made no request to have a man of God present at his deathbed, and so he heard no prayers as he took his final breaths.
As for John Adams, Kirk might have missed his other opinions. Like this one: “Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.” Or another: “Books that cannot bear examination certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws.” The last was in reference to an “embarrassing” law that punished blasphemers. (These selections come from Brooke Allen’s Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers.)
To sum up, Kirk has the story exactly backwards. Prior to the Constitution Convention in 1787, the individual states had an assortment of laws that discriminated against one religion or another. The Framers purposely chose Thomas Jefferson’s revolutionary new law in Virginia, which guaranteed freedom to both believers and nonbelievers, as the model for the new American government. Madison, very much concerned about the possibility that the individual states would become tyrannical, even tried to include in the Bill a Rights an amendment that would prohibit the states from making laws that interfered with freedom of conscience. That amendment did not pass, but less than a century later we got the 14th Amendment. (This information comes from Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.)
Anyhow, a little later, I went to get another beer. Coming back, I saw Lindsay standing outside the door talking to a woman. He looked at me as I walked up. I approached, interrupting with little guilt. “I think you’re great, James,” I said. “I read your book Cynical Theories.” Then I asked for a selfie, which he was happy to grant me. I handed him a copy of my Great Reset booklet, which he was also took. “How about an interview sometime?” I asked. James seemed open to the idea. “Sure,” he said. “We’ll try to make it work.”
The woman he was talking to then turned to me. She was also something of a researcher, and if I remember correctly – because I was still trying to talk to Lindsay – we began a joint criticism of Masters and his mentor, Peter Thiel. Another man joined us, getting into Lindsay’s ear. Eventually I walked into the merch room, asking someone who was now speaking. “Alex Jones.” No way! So that was the special guest! I walked into the main room and was greeted with the sound of Jones’ trademark gravel. He was visiting us via video. Charlie was at the podium.
And I’m sure Charlie knows who Alex Jones is, and what he has said in the past. As soon as someone says “9/11 was an inside job,” you know you’re talking to someone who has a very different set of politics. Those politics go far beyond mere partisan bickering: we’re talking the real “deep state” here, the kind of evil that transcends political parties. (For the record, I also believe 9/11 was an inside job, with Bush and the Neocons at least knowing the Attacks were soon to happen). Jones had a few more interesting things to say today. “Energy is the Queen,” Jones told us. “If you know anything about chess, you know that the queen is the most powerful piece on the board. It can move in any direction.”
Now I went into the hotel’s main lobby and found a cushioned bench to lay down on for a few minutes. When I went in this time, there was a gentleman explaining how Christian institutions have “gone woke” – which means they’ve taken up the social justice, anti-white agenda. He then showed a clip of Schwab talking about one of his main influences, a priest named Dom Helder Camara. “Values cannot be justified by the intellectual process alone,” Schwab is quoted as saying, “faith must be included.”
Suddenly I recalled something else about Jefferson, a quote he made: “In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own.” For the attendees here, learning of such corruption within their church will only embolden them to reclaim it. For me, it only further demonstrates as to why people should question, if not their faith, certainly their congregations. The true freedom fighter would never be persuaded either by exciting oratory or the colorful fabrics worn by their church leader.
Next came one of the most interesting speakers of the event, a gentleman named Terry Schilling. He’s the president of the American Principles Project, which he described as “the NRA for the family.” Living up to the project’s name, Schilling told the audience that he and his wife just welcomed baby number six.
Schilling wants us to know that the elites wish to abolish the family, and that the plan is nothing new. He tells us how, in 1963, a Congressman from Florida had entered a list of 45 goals, Communist in nature, into the U.S. congressional record. Oddly, Schilling doesn’t name that politician. It was Albert S Herlong Jr.
What are those goals? Schilling tells us some of them: promotion of pornography and obscenity; presenting homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as healthy and normal; infiltration of the churches; eliminating prayer from schools; discrediting the constitution as outdated; same with the founding fathers; and the family, with the state eventually taking complete control of their upbringing. Schilling also mentioned the dismantlement of the FBI, something that a few Trump supporters might be in favor of in the aftermath of the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Schilling’s tactic of fighting the Great Reset was predictable: get married young and have a lot of babies. Then “raise your children to value family and child-rearing the same way you teach them to love America and our founding fathers, the same way you teach them to love God, teach them to have large families and to be open to letting God determine how many children they have.” Noted: I will educate my child about the Founder’s thoughts on religious tyranny! For it seems the Founders and the Communists had at least one thing in common.
The last speaker at the event was the reporter Jack Posobiec. He was here to debut the first episode of TPUSA’s minidocumentary on…well, the Great Reset. The barely 30-minute film wasn’t horrible. My publisher and I laughed in terror when we saw Yuval Harari, Schwab’s top advisor, acting as his usual sinister self. “Look how excited he gets!” my publisher said. “He loves what he does,” I said.
Afterwards, Posobiec told a story about a visit his family took to the “holy land” of Israel – sponsored, of course, by TPUSA. During their walk up Via Dolorosa, his father broke down and cried. “Do you honestly think,” Posobiec said, “that Klaus Schwab, and these programs and these agendas, can ever compete with that? With true belief in the risen Christ; true belief…in something greater than ourselves.” Recently, Mr. Trump “retruthed” (shared) an article on his “truth social,” which gave a subtle comparison of himself with the Lord Christ. Certainly, Mr. Schwab, aware of the power of faith – as we’ve seen – intends to give Christ a run for his money, just like the man adored by so many in this crowd.
III
In the weeks after the event, I’ve done some more reading and reflecting. I think we should take Bannon at his word, and thus acknowledge that the human species – indeed – stands at a precipice. We are living in a time unlike any other, this due mainly because of the kind of technology that has never before existed. Not hearing that last part, one will then argue that mankind has always suffered war and slavery and “manmade horrors beyond our comprehension,” as the meme goes. But then we’d have to acknowledge that the agenda of Klaus Schwab isn’t really all that unexpected. Since Schwab is still a man and not yet a robot, it would not be surprising that someone should aspire to be the world’s first ever fully-realized techno-tyrant.
Where does that put us, other than inside of rooms filled with more faith-based individuals who wait patiently for their own god to come back and thus cast Schwab into eternal hellfire? As for myself, Schwab only serves as my weekly reminder of an observation made by the late Eric Hoffer: “The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.”
Guilty. For I am a misanthrope, a hater of mankind, and don’t dare think I shield myself from that hate. Trusting my neighbor is already difficult enough, but I trust them even less if they refuse to at least admit to the evil they’re capable of unleashing. Luckily, even Charlie Kirk can say as much. Everyone at the event received a short booklet, “The American Response to the Great Reset.” On page 10, quote: “Indeed, one look at human history suggests that man’s nature is at best volatile and at worst vicious.” To put it mildly, say we who had realized that a while ago.
One might think of this as an obscure worldview, but that’s hardly correct; all activists, changemakers, and curmudgeons have their favorite evil to focus-in on.
This would then assume the most disturbing of all dilemmas: What if Homo Deus actually managed to put an end to these evildoings? I can’t be the only madman who’s ever wondered that. For instance, wouldn’t it be nice if the annual baby genocide that is abortion (9 million abortions every year – in just America alone) was a thing of the past? A good development. But what if that was because mankind was made completely sterile, this due to plastics or radiowaves or whatever? Wouldn’t it be worth relinquishing our most natural of all rights if it meant that no more fetuses were ripped apart inside the womb? If otherwise, can we then come to accept that we will continue to give in to the third most natural impulse (aside from eating and excreting), thereby resulting in a lot more unwanted humans? I would argue for what I’ve deemed “responsible natalism,” but then that sounds eerily close to eugenics.
Or, what if the old arguments for World Government was shown to have merit, and then warring between nations soon made a relic of a time when homosapien ran the show? Then let me remind everyone that we are again teetering on the edge of nuclear exchange.
I myself could be tempted by such proposals. But then I would sober up and realize that such lofty outcomes would not come without a high moral cost and no absolute guarantee.
Contra my friends on the Right, life is a lot more than a heartbeat. Children have a right to life, they’ll argue; and I’d argue that children have a right to an upbringing that wasn’t deliberately made painful. Which is pretty rare.
In my view, the primary role of parents should not be that of imparter of values. Rather, the main roles of parents should be that of custodian and guardian, ensuring that children are brought up mostly unharmed and able to come to understand certain truths by his or her own faculties. (This is not to say that we should not impart values to our children. Only that it raises more questions, like what those values are: big government or small government? Christianity or Islam? Which school, tradition or denomination? Subjectivity!)
A scroll through the WEF website and you’ll soon realize that Schwab and his cohorts are also disqualified from fulfilling any of these roles. For starters, the WEF has articles on its website that promote vaccine passports. We’re just starting to find out how dangerous the COVID vaccines are. There’s an abundance of stories and studies coming out about myocarditis and the harm done to the female reproductive system. If Schwab really did care about people, as he always insists, he would advocate caution and recompense and better reporting systems.
There’s also a slew of articles dealing with “gender affirming” healthcare. Puberty blockage is a chemical maiming of children, and Schwab’s organization is all in favor of it.
Finally, there’s an emerging atrocity, one that was hinted at during the event but not elaborated upon. In both Kirk’s booklet and in their film, carnivores were demonized. “It’ll become a treat,” the WEF says in regards to meat. And how do they plan on forcing us to go meatless? How do they intend to curb our consumption of cow, our feasting of fish, our devouring of fowl? No writer of horror could invent the forthcoming answer.
I have a friend that I’ve known on Facebook for many years. Some months back, she told me that her middle child, a boy, had developed “alpha gal” after being bitten by a tick. Alpha gal, or alpha gal syndrome, refers to the name of a sugar molecule found in mammals, which one can become allergic to. Her son’s symptoms are typical for an allergic reaction, except that he’s allergic to meat, which is something that would seem odd to most of us. (He’s receiving a combination of allopathic and homeopathic medicine, and seems to be recovering slowly. He’s even gradually reintroducing meat back into his diet.)
My friend then passed along some articles discussing the WEF’s work with bioengineering, a favorite item on the agenda. One of these articles, written by Alicia Bittle at Evie Magazine, tells us about Bill Gates’ investment into “mosquito research.” Accordingly, this research has the end goal of ending malaria worldwide – the lethal virus carried, of course, by mosquitos. Turns out, mosquitos also have the potential to induce alpha gal syndrome.
So we find it odd that the WEF has hosted a bioethicist who believes this might be necessary in order to get the population to go meatless. Dr. Matthew Liao, director of the College Public Health Center for Bioethics at New York University, says “people eat too much meat,” and if we could curb our consumption, it would help save the planet. Humans must become a “cat-eyed, meat-allergic, semi-genius, hobbit” creature. (Really, that’s what’s reported). In short, if they can’t convince us to stop eating meat, then they’ll just have to make us allergic to it.
This is all so very depressing – is it not? – and I’ll soon be told not to be so negative. I would reply that the depressive state is a consequence of “being awake” – because “Army of the Awakened” cannot be just a longer way of saying “woke.” Nowadays I happily call myself “black-pilled,” or even admit to being a misanthrope.
However, I take issue with any comparison between the extreme forms of cynicism and that of nihilism. I reject entirely the notion that being aware to evil automatically means that we have submitted to it.
Think back to that most allegorical of Hollywood films: The Matrix. Neo escaped his simulacra prison, then joined up with others who had also escaped. They who had plugs in their bodies now lived in the shoddy conditions of Morpheus’ ship, eating gruel while constantly on the run from the machines who wanted to attach them back to the machine. Did these awakened warriors appear “happy”? They looked downright miserable. The sense of loneliness was also hard to miss.
One member of the team even found life “awake” too unbearable to endure. He then turned on his friends by making a deal with the machines, giving them access to the ship in exchange for a blissful life back inside the Matrix. This would be 90% of us, I assume. Slumbering along in our daily existence, we generally like to be lied to. As I like to say, for the intelligent creature that is not quite perfected, deception must be the most precious commodity. Such as we are, such as it is.
So I think: Here we are, living on the brink of nuclear annihilation; WEF is pushing ahead with its transhumanist project, with all its mandates and allergies and goofy flesh-and-blood puppets; inflation is skyrocketing, with people unable to afford food or gas; politicians and teachers are telling children that they might have been born in the “wrong body,” thus selling them extensive surgeries in the hope they’ll get it right; there’s still hundreds of millions of babies conceived by irresponsible parents, thereby finding themselves in the predicament in which they’ll either die in the womb or else live with an increased chance of being abused or drugged or trafficked, thus possibly making them fantasize about that missed abortion; and, worst of all, Kamala Harris might very well be the next president of the United States, because Joe Biden, loyal servant to what used to be called the New World Order, is seriously unwell.
So maybe I should be offended when someone tells me not to be so negative. As far as I’m concerned, to be “black pilled” is simply to realize how bad things are. After all, it was Kirk who welcomed me aboard the Truth Train. But as written by “depressive realism” scholar Colin Feltham in his book Keeping Ourselves in the Dark: “[W]e all know that we have to be judicious in the truth, that we must exercise utmost discretion in determining to whom we may speak openly.” To put that more poetically, we zip our lips so as not to risk an offense.
Therefore, we’re living in something of a delusion, which for some is a pleasant dream and for others a monstrous nightmare. For the latter, we must scream – and, by all means, feel free to make a buck or two by perfecting your pitch (I’m still trying!) But how to get out, and how to make sure the same thing isn’t repeated a second time? We can hardly claim to be slapping ourselves awake when we continue to push snooze on all the alarm clocks set by other truth-seekers. Some of those alarms are not “clocks,” but bells, which could be too far away. If I haven’t already, perhaps I could nudge a few of them closer to those still asleep.
Alarm one: Posobiec had regaled us with his trip to the Holy Land of Israel. Kirk has also been to the country, multiple times. And one of the speakers did say that Americans should not be more concerned about Pakistan’s borders than we are our own borders. Myself, I would have added two more borders: those belonging to Iraq – and to Israel. Number 45 had agreed with me on the first, calling that disastrous and illegal war a “beauty” of a blunder, and telling his fans that the Bush administration deceived the people about WMDs. For a Republican, that was quite contrarian! Yes, veterans, you fought bravely in defense of our country; but no, the whole war was based on a lie. These are the ways in which conservatives like to approach the question of the imperial state – delicacy to the point of elusion. I can forgive anyone trying to find their way on the right side of that murderous mistruth.
And who helped goad us into the Iraq War? It was all about oil, wasn’t it? I too had always assumed this to be “the truth,” before I learned that there was more to the story, a story that includes our “close ally” in the region, Israel. According to Mearsheimer and Walt, in their excellent book The Israel Lobby, the Iraq War was “intended as the first step in a larger plan to reorder the Middle East in ways that benefit long-term American and Israeli interests.”
This wonderful work of scholarship provides a great deal of evidence showing how Christian Zionists in America, as well as the many groups that lobby on behalf of the state of Israel, made sure that Saddam Hussein was deposed – even if that meant lying to the whole world about his potential to acquire weapons of mass destruction. “For the sake of Israel,” you say. I say, that as long as American Christians believe they have a sacred duty to protect “God’s Chosen people,” the policy will always be “America Second.” (“I’m a big supporter of Israel,” the god-fearing Jones reminds his host on this afternoon.)
Alarm two: I think it was Bannon, at this event, who had called our political leadership the “Uniparty.” It’s a term often invoked, so much so that it seems redundant at this point. How many activists and commentators throughout the decades, and from all “sides,” have explained how both parties are corrupt to the core?
Yet here we are, almost a quarter into the New Century, when we’re certain to face a future that will witness irrevocable changes, and still we plead with our neighbors to vote for one of these two parties. This would be the doctrine of “lesser evilism.” And how exactly do we measure what amounts to “lesser” evil, especially when Republicans and Democrats have always come together whenever there’s a new war waiting for the green light? War is the great unifier. Along with their fellow major players in Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry, the menace spelled out by President Eisenhower provides the very definition of bipartisanship. They don’t disagree when it comes to asserting dominance around the globe, and only when negotiating the best deals on all that oil and territory, all those guns and drugs.
Type the words into your search bar and guess how close we are to nuclear exchange with Putin-controlled Russia. Perhaps the most frightening report is about the Biden Administration purchasing $290 million worth of radiation sickness drugs. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure.
Then we remember how Republicans in congress joined with the Democrats (who are leading the war) in giving some – how many billions was it now? – of U.S. tax dollars to the Ukrainians in their fight against Russia. Together, they escalate the conflict. They do battle against Putin by pushing buttons and pulling levers on their surrogate, the Ukrainian resistance as controlled by a bunch of Neo Nazis, and themselves led by some salesman/showman named Zelensky. And that’s America…First? The American people did not have a proper debate as to what we’re committed to with these countries. My own assumption is that their national defense is not our concern.
“But this time it will be different,” says they who could be paying their mortgage by stating it. After the Republicans sweep this election, we’re told, they will at last shrink the State! It will cut the hose that feeds all these corporate parasites! Why anyone would be shocked if this doesn’t happen – especially since Republicans often assert the opposite objective – I do not know. Surely, there’s someone out there who can feel their IQ lower whenever they utter the sentence: “I will help elect a Republican and they will fix the country’s problems.”
Alarm three: Throughout this essay, and appropriately coming right after some notes on war, I’ve hinted at the possibility that mankind could stand to use some improvement. Specifically, I mean moral improvement, this as opposed to technological improvement, which is something desired by people with massive bank accounts and a lot of connections. The first is something we’ve all expressed at one time or another. We’ve all been dismayed when seeing our neighbors behave in ways untoward to their fellow man. When that polite husband slaps his wife around, we say “how could he?” When that father is found to be shooting dope in front of their kids, we think “that slime!” When the 20-something female high school teacher is raping her teenaged male student, we…well, too many of us shrug.
When they want to give us the full blueprint of their plans, the inability of mankind to act as wonderfully as we should will be the reason asserted most forcefully by the technocrats. As I’ve tried to show here, in some respects, that’s obviously true. Their reasons will include our diet, which includes a strong element of carnivorism. And they won’t let us forget our “carbon footprint,” seemingly the main “wire” that hooks us all up to the rest of the industrial machine.
For me, I’d say it was the penchant for inflicting pain upon our children. After living with corporal punishment for eons now, we’ve had time to study the results. They’re not good. Despite the absurd premise that inflicting pain and fear upon young minds will result in peaceful and rational adults, the evidence points very much to the contrary. Hitting your kids gives them one lesson alone: that, under the right circumstances, violence is perfectly acceptable.
This has broader implications, the importance of which affects all of us. We always hear about crime, and how best to prevent it. “More cops!” It almost seems that civilized society is willing to accept a number of criminal actions so long as it has institutions capable of prosecuting and locking away those who commit them. How many have actually said “I wish they had not murdered, raped, or abused in the first place”? Silly utopian thinking impels me to find a way to have a world with little violence, addiction, or malfeasance – because that world was full of individuals who just behaved better. A whole world full of human beings that are not defined by their trauma: think of the possibilities!
This thinking is, to be sure, utopian; but I did say I wanted to be part of this Great Awakening. I also agreed with those at the event, who explained how the elites are already laying the groundwork for their own utopia. If it’s a race between us and them, why not try to beat them to it?
I consider the real cynics to be those who merely want to change who’s in charge of the government, or who heads the newest tech company or weapons manufacturer. As for me? I’d like to change our understanding to the point where we hardly even need a government. Nor any makers or weapons of war, or tools of mass surveillance, or bioengineered insects. These schemes would be inconceivable if the human race truly understood peace, negotiation, and nonviolence. This could be a new, and perhaps last, avenue for anyone who calls themselves an activist.
