By a tremendous effort of complicated conspiracy, the American Left has elected a demented old man to the presidency of the United States!

 

When President Trump succeeded, after bitter struggles, in establishing a majority of conservatives in the Supreme Court, his voters felt enormously relieved. They and he trusted that now the country would be protected from the worst the revolutionary globalist Democrats could do to destroy the free Republic.

But as it turns out, they were mistaken. With the shining exception of Clarence Thomas, the George W. Bush appointee who has proved to be staunchly conservative (supported to some extent by Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito), the justices chose to let the free Republic go.

Margot Cleveland writes at The Federalist:

On Feb. 22, the Supreme Court refused to hear two 2020 election-related appeals, falling one vote short of the four needed for the high court to agree to hear the case. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the denial of certiorari, as did Justice Samuel Alito in a separate dissent, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

With Joe Biden now a month into his office as president of the United States, Americans may shrug at the court’s decision, but we shouldn’t: the Supreme Court’s abdication of its authority to answer important constitutional questions only encourages further lawlessness by state election officials and courts, undermines voter confidence, and threatens even more chaotic federal elections.

The two cases the Supreme Court rejected on Monday both involved the 2020 election in Pennsylvania and the constitutionality of a state court decision overriding an unambiguous deadline the Pennsylvania legislature established for the receipt of mail-in ballots by 8 p.m. on election night. As Justice Thomas explained in his dissent, “Dissatisfied, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline by three days. The court also ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a post mark—that the ballots were mailed by election day.”

The Republican Party of Pennsylvania and several members of the Pennsylvania House and Senate attempted to challenge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in the U.S. Supreme Court before the election, but, at the time, the justices refused to expedite the case, leaving the petitions for review to proceed under the normal briefing schedule. But following briefing, the court denied the petition on Feb. 22.

Thomas dissented from the court’s denial of the petition for certiorari, calling the court’s refusal to hear the case “inexplicable”. In his dissent, Thomas explained both the problem with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision and why it was imperative for the U.S. Supreme Court to enter the fray.

“The Constitution gives to each state legislature authority to determine the ‘manner’ of federal elections,” Thomas opened his dissent, citing Article I, § 4 clause 1 and Article II, § 1 of the national Constitution. “Yet both before and after the 2020 election, nonlegislative officials in various States took it upon themselves to set the rules instead,” the originalist jurist continued.

Whether such nonlegislative actions violate the Electors Clause of the Constitution, as Article I, § 4 clause 1, has become to be known, or Article II, § 1, which governs the selection of the president, is the essence of the exercise of self-government, Justice Thomas wrote, because “elections are ‘of the most fundamental significance under our constitutional structure’.”

Elections, however, “enable self-governance only when they include processes that ‘give citizens (including the losing candidates and their supporters) confidence in the fairness of the election,” the dissent continued. “Unclear rules threaten to undermine the system. They sow confusion and ultimately dampen confidence in the integrity and fairness of elections.” … The Supreme Court should make clear “whether state officials have the authority they have claimed” [and]  “if not,” then the Supreme Court should “put an end to this practice now before the consequences become catastrophic”, Justice Thomas wrote.

Yet the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. But why? Both constitutional and prudential principles weigh in favor of granting certiorari.

Constitutionally, while federal courts only have the power to hear a “case or controversy,” meaning the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to hear “moot” cases, here there is a well-established exception to the mootness doctrine: the capable-of-repetition-but-evading-review exception.

This exception to the mootness doctrine provides that federal courts hold authority to resolve cases where “the challenged action is in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to cessation or expiration” and where “there is a reasonable expectation that the same complaining party will be subject to the same action again.”

Both criteria exist here, Justice Thomas wrote, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision came a mere six weeks before the election, and the petitioners in the cases—the state Republican party and state legislators—are likely to “again confront nonlegislative officials altering election rules”.

In his separate dissent, Justice Alito also concluded that certiorari should be granted because the cases “present an important and recurring constitutional question.” His dissent, joined by Justice Gorsuch, focused mainly on the mootness question.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision was so broad, Alito wrote, that the questions presented to the U.S. Supreme Court are “surely capable of repetition in future elections”.  “That decision,” Alito explained, “held that a state constitutional provision guaranteeing ‘free and equal’ elections gives the Pennsylvania courts the authority to override even very specific and unambiguous rules adopted by the legislature for the conduct of federal elections.”

“Indeed, it would be surprising if parties who are unhappy with the legislature’s rules,” Justice Alito continued, “do not invoke this decision and ask state courts to substitute rules they find more advantageous.”

Not only were the cases not moot, but as the dissents both made clear, the cases both “call out for review”, as Justice Alito put it. The cases present “an important and recurring constitutional question” [one that has] “divided the lower courts”. … Further, as Justice Thomas stressed, “postelection litigation is truncated by firm timeliness,” which “imposes especially daunting constraints when combined with the expanded use of mail-in ballots.”

Thomas’s dissent highlighted another significant reason for review. “Because fraud is more prevalent with mail-in ballots,” Justice Thomas wrote, “increased use of those ballots raises the likelihood that courts will be asked to adjudicate questions that go to the heart of election confidence.”

Here Justice Thomas wisely noted in his dissent that “settling rules well in advance of an election rather than relying on postelection litigation ensures that courts are not put in [the] untenable position of either potentially disenfranchising a subset of voters or ignoring the rules the legislature believes necessary to ensure election integrity”.

Yet the Supreme Court denied review.

Maybe the six justices who voted against certiorari believe the country will be better off without re-litigating the election. The denial, however, will not heal a country that witnessed state officials and courts changing the rules mid-vote—not just in Pennsylvania, but in Wisconsin and Michigan too. Then her citizens saw the Supreme Court seemingly ignore those violations of the Electors Clause when Texas sought relief in the Supreme Court.

Worse yet will be the damage done to our republic when the bending and breaking of election laws repeats in the future.

For now, as Justice Thomas concluded, by doing nothing, the Supreme Court invites erosion of voter confidence.

“We citizens deserve better and expect more.”

It is one of the worst of our – the citizens’ – disappointments.

Considering that, in the perception of half the voters, constitutional law had been broken, and considering what was at stake – nothing less than the free Republic itself – and how confidently we had looked to the Supreme Court as the most dependable and incorruptible of the Constitution’s protectors, its refusal to do what was to us clearly right was worse than a shocking and painful blow, it was crushing.

And it is hard to believe that the refusal was for reasons of constitutional law and not political choice.

As more and more information emerges on how wide and deep and zealous the opposition to President Trump was throughout his four years in office, it becomes more and more astonishing that he was able to accomplish anything at all, let alone the enormous amount that he did.

He was still president and head of the executive branch of government when agents provocateurs led a few of his supporters in a raid on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 – so that the Democrats could accuse him of inciting an insurrection. Yet none of the officials who worked under him and in theory for him did anything at all to counter the resulting onslaught against him by the legislative branch, including his second impeachment by the House and the farce of a trial by the Senate.

Even his vice president, Mike Pence, who seemed exceptionally loyal, has been exposed as a Swamp denizen.

William B. Allen writes at American Greatness:

Where was Trump’s national security team, and what counsel did they provide? The gravity of this obvious lacuna should instantly appear to anyone who considers this was a national security event of the greatest significance …

That it was a national security event is apparent from the immediate and since daily repeated descriptions of the riot as an attempted “insurrection” or “coup’. It is also apparent what protocols prevail in such an event: a national security team exists precisely to appraise and respond to such threats.

But where was FBI Director Christopher Wray? Where was the director of national intelligence? Where was the director of homeland security? Where was the attorney general? Where was the secretary of defense? Where was the director of central intelligence? Were they gathered in the White House within 30 minutes of the development of an event that lasted for hours? What counsel did they give? Were they rebuffed by the president? If the president were guilty of criminal negligence (a “high misdemeanor”), here would be the irrefutable proof of the fact.

At no point … since the events of January 6 has this question been raised in a publicly visible forum. It stands to reason that it should have been raised by virtue of the clear fact that the president’s conduct has been repeatedly described as “criminally negligent”. This would have been a credible charge of misconduct that could have supported impeachment. That such a charge was not filed, and such questions not posed, indicates the high likelihood that to pursue the inquiry on that line would have proved embarrassing—and even condemning—for the officials involved and for those pursuing the impeachment on the weak and inappropriate grounds of “inciting an insurrection”. 

One is forced to think that an obvious path to secure conviction was not pursued solely because it could not be sustained. If that is so, however, it also means that something far more significant happened. Namely, the president was not in control of the government.

The Democrats’ enormous exaggeration of the danger in the raid, their determination to make it seem that Donald Trump had tried to overthrow the legislative branch of government and that he is the leader of some 74 million “white supremacist terrorists” actively threatening American “democracy” – and therefore equivalent, they imply, to an alien enemy – gives them the pretext to take every step they can think of to make it impossible for him, or anyone like him, ever to come to power again. They will destroy him personally by any means  they can, and make it criminal to be on his side.

And they are destroying all his accomplishments. Every problem, domestic and foreign, that he solved, they are returning to its problematic condition. Everything he saved from ruin, they are ruining.

William Levin writes at American Thinker:

The Democrats are pursuing a multi-prong strategy to cement a permanent majority.  To accomplish the goal requires upending the constitutional design.  Until the scope of this effort is seen in its entirety, it can proceed in the shadows.

It has six astonishing elements:

1. 1. Enable Congress to determine who can run for President,
   2. Eliminate the Electoral College without amending the Constitution,
   3. Override the states’ constitutionally mandated authority to determine presidential election rules,
   4. Grant statehood to the District of Columbia by statute,
   5. Rewrite the First Amendment to limit political speech, and
   6. Enable open border immigration through executive agreement instead of Congressional action.

Taken together, the program represents a comprehensive challenge to representative democracy. …

Right. It is they who want to end democracy in America. As usual, they accuse their opponents of the wickedness they themselves really are plotting and doing.

Two more articles at American Greatness explain what is happening.

Christopher Roach writes:

Trump thought if he was a loyal American running for president, it would not be possible the CIA and FBI would wiretap him and destroy his supporters’ lives in the process. Similarly, he thought he could talk to foreign leaders or make changes to executive branch policy, and those subordinate to him would do what they were told.

His supporters thought elections mattered, and that they had a right to protest when those elections appeared fraudulent.

But he and they were wrong. Those expectations were aroused by advertisement. They are advertised in the Constitution and its Amendments. But the reality is, as always, different:

The rules, procedures, and priorities of the bureaucrats determine which laws get enforced and which ones don’t … [and] which companies, donors, and groups are entirely exempt from the rules that apply to everyone else.

In other words, these are the real laws, determining what is permitted and what is forbidden. … The mandarin class that writes and interprets them, decides when a riot is “mostly peaceful” or a dangerous “insurrection”. They determine when democracy means the opposite of democracy.

Dan Gelernter writes:

The Left’s hatred of Trump is merely a symptom of their guiding philosophy, which is … gradually to exclude people from government. The Left is in favor of any action that will expand the authority of bureaucrats by taking decisions out of the hands of citizens.

With the coronavirus, the Left is beside itself with glee: This is the first crisis since 9/11 broad enough to make possible a fundamental transformation of American society. …

The reason coronavirus so delights today’s Left is that the public response to their power grab has been overwhelmingly docile: The numbers of deaths are vastly below historic health panics, even with generous inflation via guidelines encouraging doctors to record anyone who previously had the virus as having died from it.

Even so, the government was able to lock people in their homes for a “two-week period” that turned out to be roughly a year, destroy much of the hospitality sector of the economy, force people to cover their faces in public as though living under a secular sharia, and, perhaps best of all, they got neighbors to snitch on neighbors and children to report their parents when these edicts weren’t followed.

It has been a bonanza. The everyday American citizen will always remember 2020 as a painful, terrible, soul-crushing year. For the Left, that makes it one of the best years on record. It is one of those great years in which they changed how Americans live….

They need only to cement this victory by making those changes permanent. …

The Left wouldn’t want you to think that the danger has lessened. This is why the Biden Administration suggested that social distancing and mask-wearing will continue to be vital, even once the entire population is inoculated. They don’t want the pandemic to go away: A successful Biden Administration is not one in which coronavirus disappears, it is one in which Americans accept wearing masks for the rest of their lives. …

These are incremental steps on the road to tyranny: They don’t necessarily increase public safety—they may harm it. But they do give the government more power, and that is the important thing, the operative goal. Europe is a few steps ahead of America in its gradual dissolution of democracy, but America will follow just as fast as the public is willing to tolerate.

Tolerate the process of decline and fall?

Is there a choice?

Hasn’t resistance proved futile?

Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek were two great 20th century thinkers who argued for freedom. They differed on one point: Popper held freedom to be in itself the highest value; Hayek thought freedom is valuable, indeed essential, because it enables innovation.

Innovation comes from the minds of individuals. A government controlled society in which the individual’s only – and enforced – duty is to serve the collective, does not allow origination. The organized mass is sterile. It cannot invent. That’s why it’s wrong to call socialism, communism, any shade of leftism,”progressive”. A socialist society cannot advance. It can only stagnate.

That’s why Communist China has had to steal new ideas and devices from countries in which free thought and its expression are permitted.

What many people who live in countries that are still comparatively free find attractive about socialism is that it promises “free stuff”. Vote the socialists into power and you will get free school, free health care, free housing, free strawberries with free cream. Well, okay, maybe not the cream. And maybe also not the strawberries. And maybe you will have to share a house. And the health panel will decide whether you may live or must die. And what you’ll be taught will be adherence to doctrine not search for truth. But still – it will all be free. At the time it is dispensed to you, whatever it is, you will not have to pay for it. The rest of your time you’ll be working for it.

Natan Sharansky was born in Soviet Russia and lived the first decades of his life there. He eventually escaped to live in freedom in Israel.

He writes about the torture of the mind in the prison of Communism:

My father, a journalist named Boris Shcharansky, was born in 1904 in Odessa, the cultural and economic center of the Pale of Settlement, where the Russian empire stuck most Jews. He studied in the Jewish Commercial Gymnasium, because most other gymnasiums accepted very few Jews, if any. By the time he was 16, he had already lived through the Czarist Regime with its anti-Semitic restrictions, the “February” Socialist Revolution, the “October” Bolshevik Revolution, and the years of civil war when power in Odessa seesawed back and forth from faction to faction, as hunger, pogroms, and destruction decimated the population.

When the Soviets finally emerged from the chaos, therefore, my father was hopeful. The Communists promised that a new life of full equality was dawning, without Pales of Settlement, without education restrictions, and, most important, with equal opportunities for all. Who wouldn’t want that? … [He]  was excited about building a world of social justice and equality closer to his home. …

Lucky for him, Odessa was emerging as a center for a new cultural medium—cinema. As silent Charlie Chaplin-type movies started evolving into more scripted sketches, my father put his storytelling talents to work. …

Of course, to succeed in his career as a screenwriter, he had to follow certain rules. His scripts, like every other work of art, had to follow the script of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, seeing the world through the lens of class struggle and class exploitation. As Karl Marx argued, and the Bolsheviks now decreed, “the history of all hitherto-existing societies is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight”.

Thankfully, in its final stage of class struggle, following Karl Marx’s teaching, the proletariat had seized power from its masters, establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat who would build a classless society of equals. So-called bourgeois freedoms, minor matters like civil liberties and human rights, were nothing more than facades for exploiting others. The old world and its retrograde values had to be destroyed in order to bring forth social justice. Today, such a singular vision might be called Critical Class Theory—or maybe The 1917 Project.

Everything had to serve Communist ideology: every institution, every medium, every art form. Lenin particularly appreciated the propaganda potential of movies, declaring, “Cinema for us is the most important of the arts.” So while all creative artists had to subordinate plot, character, and complexity to advancing the Bolshevik political agenda, movie-makers endured extra scrutiny. The term “politically-correct“, which is popular today, emerged in the late 1920s, to describe the need to correct certain deviants’ thought to fit the Communist Party Line. Any positive characters with bourgeois origins had to eventually check their privilege, condemn their past as oppressors, and publicly take responsibility for their sins.

At first, True Believers who championed the Revolution’s noble aims easily accepted these restrictions. But as the Red Terror grew … the number of True Believers kept shrinking …

I was born … in 1948. My father had fought as a soldier in the Red Army in World War II for four years, and had returned a hero. … (Our] family which had lost so many friends and relatives in the Holocaust, then watched so many friends suffer during Josef Stalin’s political and anti-Semitic purges …

Every day, my father went to work [as a journalist] …  seeking interesting stories. But, when it came to writing them up, his imagination had to shrink, his mouth had to be wired shut, his hand had to clamp tight, as he produced what the Party required. He knew the handicapped journalism he created was not true journalism, the art that resulted was not true art, the thoughts triggered were not real thoughts and the conversations surrounding it all were not real conversations. Yet my father remained a storyteller at heart—and now he had an audience—my older brother by two years and me.

When my father came home from work, he could leave the suffocating grey false universe he helped to create behind, and welcome his beloved family into a full-color world. From the time we were very young, he would tell us stories on three levels—explaining to us what the author said, what the author wished to say, and what the author could not say. When we started, from a very young age, our ritual of weekly outings to the movies, he would recreate the movie for us on the way home, filling in what the screenwriter probably wanted to write, and explain what he could not write. …

No [professional writer] was ever quite sure what would be permitted or not, what red line they might cross tomorrow; what “macro-aggression” or “micro-aggression” they might suddenly be found guilty of committing. To be a man of letters in a sea of fear was to worry about drowning constantly. …

Looking back at the history of Soviet literature, it’s hard to find any of the thousands of writers [who conformed] … who wrote anything worth reading or remembering. Their books, published on a massive scale—often selling millions—simply disappeared. … Eventually, their lies consumed both the characters and their authors, leaving nothing behind.

By contrast, the works that lasted defied Stalinist orthodoxies in the service of truths, both immediate and internal. Stalin killed some of these honest writers, like the poet Osip Mandelstam. Some killed themselves, like the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. Some lived daily with the fear of arrest, or under the shadow of purges, like Anna Akhmatova. Some, like the novelist Mikhail Bulgakov, accepted the fact that their books would go unpublished in Russia—his classic The Master and Margarita didn’t see the light of day for decades. Others, like Boris Pasternak, who smuggled Dr. Zhivago to the West, sought readers elsewhere and paid the price back home ….

By my generation there were few True Believers left. Your field of vision had to be very narrow indeed to still see the crumbling society around us as some kind of Communist paradise. …

I spent my high school years as an academic grind, drowning in problem sets, working around the clock to amass five out of fives in mathematics and physics. Because I knew that I had to follow a very specific script to get the character reference I needed from the local Komsomol authorities, I also spouted the right slogans, participated in the right youth activities, and sang the right songs. Yet even after I fulfilled my young dreams and made it to MFTI—Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, the Soviet equivalent of MIT—the scrutiny continued. We math and science students had to keep paying lip service to the Soviet gods, like everyone else. We kept taking tests on Marxist doctrine every semester, even when studying at the postdoctoral level. …

Our professors subtly encouraged us to brush such annoyances aside. We were the elite, they kept telling us, racing toward a golden future. It was all worth it. I was luxuriating in the sanctuary of science, an asylum protected from the daily insanity the Soviets imposed on nearly everyone else. I decided that the deeper I was into my scientific career, the less stressful this double life would be.

It was a comforting illusion—until I read Andrei Sakharov’s manifesto.

Sakharov was our role model, the number one Soviet scientist sitting at the peak of the pyramid each of us was trying to climb so single-mindedly. In May 1968, this celebrity scientist circulated a ten-thousand-word manifesto that unleashed a wrecking ball which smashed my complacent life. “Intellectual freedom is essential to human society,” Sakharov declared. Bravely denouncing Soviet thought-control, he mocked “the ossified dogmatism of a bureaucratic oligarchy and its favorite weapon, ideological censorship.”

Sakharov warned that Soviet science was imperiled without “the search for truth”. … At the time, there were few who could understand the depths of this critique. The Soviet Union wasn’t just relying on its scientific wizards to develop nuclear weapons; we now know that the research ran in tandem with an elaborate spying operation that stole as many of America’s atomic secrets as it could.

The message was clear for us. Sakharov helped us realize that the Soviet restrictions on free thought ran deep. You not only have to control your political opinions, but every interaction with your colleagues, every new insight, has to be checked and rechecked, for fear of ideological implications that could destroy a career in this world where even entire fields of inquiry were cancelled for being politically incorrect. Soviet scientists spent so much time looking over their shoulders and in their rear-view mirrors that they could not plunge ahead and catch up with their Western peers.

Long before most others, Sakharov saw in the Soviet scientific community the equivalent of the literary mediocrity we all saw in Soviet Realism. … Life in a dictatorship offers two choices: either you overcome your fear and stand for truth, or you remain a slave to fear, no matter how fancy your titles, no matter how big your dacha.

Natan Sharansky made the decision to stand for truth.

He applied to emigrate to Israel.

As a result of both decisions, he was jailed for nine years.

Once I had done it, once I was no longer afraid, I realized what it was to be free …

And that was why, during nine years in prison, when the KGB would try tempting me to restore my freedom and even my life by returning to the life I once had, it was easy to say “no”. …

Over the last three decades in freedom, I have noticed that … the feeling of release from the fear … is universal across cultures. This understanding prompted the Town Square Test I use to distinguish between free societies and fear societies: Can you express your individual views loudly, in public, without fear of being punished legally, formally, in any way? If yes, you live in a free society; if not, you’re in a fear society. …

[Today] nearly two-thirds of Americans report self-censoring about politics at least occasionally … despite the magnificent constitutional protections for free thought and expression enshrined in the Bill of Rights

To preserve our integrity and our souls, the quality of our political debate and the creativity so essential to our cultural life, we need … a test [that] asks: In the democratic society in which you live, can you express your individual views loudly, in public and in private, on social media and at rallies, without fear of being shamed, excommunicated, or cancelled?

A lot of American voters – even if not as many as the socialist Democratic Party claimed in order to seize power –  recently voted against freedom. They voted for the political party that promised free stuff. And already masters of the social media, most of them politically correct social justice warriors, refuse to let opinions they disagree with be expressed on their forums. Free speech is deeply unpopular with the Leftists now in power in America. Freedom itself is not valued. Those “magnificent constitutional protections for free thought and expression enshrined in the Bill of Rights” are being swept aside.

You will not be free – and the stuff you get from government won’t be free either.

Anything that costs you your freedom, costs too much.

By their own confession, the Democrats won the presidency of the United States in the November 2020 election by organizing a vast conspiracy to use illegal methods. (See our post immediately below, How the election was stolen, February 7, 2020).

Now that they have the power they are legalizing the methods by which they got it.

A bill to achieve this, called H.R.1, has been introduced in the House of Representatives.

Here’s an explanation of it we have taken from the Western Journal:

Democratic Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland has introduced the first bill of the 117th Congress, a bill that would profoundly transform the way America conducts its elections. H.R. 1 is a breathtaking power grab by the Democrats and threatens the very bedrock of our democratic republic by nearly guaranteeing one-party rule in Washington for years to come.

According to a statement on Sarbanes’ website, “The 2020 election underscored the need for comprehensive, structural democracy reform. Americans across the country were forced to overcome rampant voter suppression, gerrymandering and a torrent of special-interest dark money just to exercise their vote and their voice in our democracy.”

Sarbanes tells his constituents that “H. R. 1 is a transformational anti-corruption and clean elections reform package” intended to “clean up corruption in Washington, empower the American people and restore faith and integrity to our government”.

The stated purpose of H.R. 1, ironically called the “For the People Act”, is: “To expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.” The full text of H.R. 1 can be viewed here.

The real purpose of the bill is to make permanent many of the changes made to state voting systems and procedures ostensibly to facilitate voting in the age of COVID-19.

One of the most notable features of H.R. 1 is that it strips states of the right to set their own standards for how elections are to be conducted. Election laws will be determined at the federal level.

Under this bill, states would be required to promote the use of mail-in voting, to offer online applications for voter registration, and to provide automatic and even same-day voter registration.

H.R. 1 would all but eliminate voter ID laws. It would prohibit states from “requiring identification as a condition of obtaining a ballot”. …

All of the practices that handed victory to the Democrats in the 2020 election would become law.

If this legislation passes, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for Republicans to ever win another election.

But why? That doesn’t necessarily follow.

Why can’t Republican supporters work the fraud too? They’ve now been told in detail how it’s done. They have only to copy every kind of cheating, all the ruses, and add as many new ones as they can invent.

If that is made the only way they can win back the House, the Senate, and the presidency then they must do it.

Conservatives have only to set aside their principles of integrity and probity. They must stop saying “I couldn’t do that!” every time an act of dishonesty is required of them to save the free Republic. Just one time. Only for one election they must forge, cheat, lie, so tenaciously, so well, that they surpass the Democrats in blatant immorality. It’s a high bar, but it is perfectly possible.

Yes, Conservatives, it does mean that the USA has been turned into a South American style “banana republic”. Yes, it does mean that you will have to endure feelings of guilt and shame. But think of the cause – saving the nation! Make sure you elect only such Republican candidates that will also feel guilt and shame but be selfless enough to do things that go against their natural inclinations and hurt their consciences. If you can find them. There are some already known, and a thorough search will almost certainly turn up others.

Look, you shrinking violets of the Right! You have to win another election. You have to win it when the only way is outrageously wrong. Do it, and once you have done it, change everything back to the way it ought to be.

Here are some more useful tips collected by the Western Journal:

In August, New York Post reporter Jon Levine interviewed a self-described “master at fixing mail-in ballots” who was willing to share his secrets on the condition of anonymity.

Levine begins by telling readers, “a top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he’s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.” …

[He] “not only changed ballots himself over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.”

He claimed, “There is no race in New Jersey — from city council to United States Senate — that we haven’t worked on.” …

[He] also told Levine that many postal workers are in on it. “You have a postman who is a rabid anti-Trump guy and he’s working in Bedminster or some Republican stronghold … He can take those [filled-out] ballots, and knowing 95% are going to a Republican, he can just throw those in the garbage.”

Sometimes, the operative said, he worked with mail carriers. He said they would “sift ballots from the mail and hand them over”.

Another easy mark for election fraudsters are nursing homes, which the Post’s source referred to as “a gold mine of votes.” This man described “hitting up” these facilities and helping the patients complete their ballots.

“There are nursing homes where the nurse is actually a paid operative,” he explained. “And they go room by room by room to these old people who still want to feel like they’re relevant. [They] literally fill it out for them.”

And more, direct from the Levine interview:

It begins with a blank mail-in ballot delivered to a registered voter in a large envelope. Inside the packet is a return envelope, a “certificate of mail in voter” which the voter must sign, and the ballot itself.

That’s when the election-rigger springs into action. 

The ballot has no specific security features — like a stamp or a watermark — so the insider said he would just make his own ballots.

“I just put the ballot through the copy machine and it comes out the same way,” the insider said.

But the return envelopes are more secure than the ballot. “You could never recreate the envelope,” he said. So they had to be collected from real voters.

He would have his operatives fan out, going house to house, convincing voters to let them mail completed ballots on their behalf as a public service. The fraudster and his minions would then take the sealed envelopes home and hold them over boiling water.

“You have to steam it to loosen the glue,” said the insider.

He then would remove the real ballot, place the counterfeit ballot inside the signed certificate, and reseal the envelope.

“Five minutes per ballot tops,” said the insider.

The insider said he took care not to stuff the fake ballots into just a few public mailboxes, but sprinkle them around town. …

The insider would [also] send operatives to vote live in polling stations, particularly in states like New Jersey and New York that do not require voter ID. Pennsylvania, also for the most part, does not.

The best targets were registered voters who routinely skip presidential or municipal elections — information which is publicly available.

“You fill out these index cards with that person’s name and district and you go around the city and say, ‘You’re going to be him, you’re going to be him’,” the insider said of how he dispatched his teams of dirty-tricksters.

At the polling place, the fake voter would sign in, “Get on line and … vote,” the insider said. The impostors would simply recreate the signature that already appears in the voter roll as best they could. …

The insider said any ballots offered up by him or his operation would come with a bent corner along the voter certificate — which contains the voter signature — so Democratic Board of Election counters would know the fix was in and not to object.

See, you upright decent honest honorable voters on the Right? It’s easy as pie. And at least what you will be doing will not be illegal. H.R.1 is making sure of that.

Now climb down from your moral high horses, lower yourselves into the dirt and fight them by every foul means needed.

Get  back into power, repeal H.R. 1 – and save America!

Time magazine recounts in detail how the November 2020 US election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Time calls it  “saving” the election.

Also “protecting” it and “fortifying” it.

But the report is nothing less than a confession of fraud and theft. 

Why? It seems that the busy people who did the dirty work are giving all away now because they cannot help boasting. They’re cock-a-hoop and gloating. They obviously have no idea that they were being used, or by whom.

While the authors (several are mentioned beneath the article though only the name Molly Ball appears at the top) boldly state that there was an anti-Trump conspiracy, they yet seem genuinely to believe that President Trump was organizing a conspiracy of his own to steal the election. In the course of describing what their heroes did to prevent the democratic process from working in the normal way, they indignantly accuse him of an “assault on democracy”.

There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

So the forces of labor and capital were inspired by the destructive protests of the “racial-justice” enemies of President Trump to “conspire” together to keep the peace –  by also opposing President Trump, not the destructive protestors.

The account is ludicrous. But it sufficiently lays bare what needs to be known about how the election was stolen.

It identifies many of the toilers for the cause, and a plethora of their organizations.

They believe one man started it on his own initiative.

Sometime in the fall of 2019, Mike Podhorzer became convinced the election was headed for disaster–and determined to protect it. He is a “senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union federation” who has “marshaled the latest tactics and data to help its favored candidates win elections”.

He was soon joined by others:

It turned out Podhorzer wasn’t the only one thinking in these terms. He began to hear from others eager to join forces. The Fight Back Table, a coalition of “resistance” organizations, had begun scenario-planning around the potential for a contested election, gathering liberal activists at the local and national level into what they called the Democracy Defense Coalition. Voting-rights and civil rights organizations were raising alarms. A group of former elected officials was researching emergency powers they feared Trump might exploit. Protect Democracy was assembling a bipartisan election-crisis task force. …

Then COVID-19 erupted …

In his apartment in the D.C. suburbs, Podhorzer began working from his laptop at his kitchen table, holding back-to-back Zoom meetings for hours a day with his network of contacts across the progressive universe: the labor movement; the institutional left, like Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace; resistance groups like Indivisible and MoveOn; progressive data geeks and strategists, representatives of donors and foundations, state-level grassroots organizers, racial-justice activists and others. …

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.

… the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.  …

Protecting the election would require an effort of unprecedented scale. As 2020 progressed, it stretched to Congress, Silicon Valley and the nation’s statehouses. It drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests, many of whose leaders were a key part of the liberal alliance. And eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his [Trump’s!] attacks on democracy.

… the most urgent need was money …

That came chiefly from a much higher sphere, where the truly powerful enemies of President Trump were working on their own plans to overthrow him:

An assortment of foundations contributed tens of millions in election-administration funding. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chipped in $300 million. …

In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement,” says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others.

They needed a meeting over dinner before they decided to cut out pro-Trump opinion from the social media they controlled? Hmmm.

The protectors and fortifiers of democracy thought of everything, anticipated every possible complication.

What if ballot forms carrying votes for Biden were thrown out because they showed signs of fraud?

The Voting Rights Lab and IntoAction created state-specific memes and graphics, spread by email, text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, urging that every vote be counted. Together, they were viewed more than 1 billion times. Protect Democracy’s election task force issued reports and held media briefings with high-profile experts across the political spectrum, resulting in widespread coverage of potential election issues and fact-checking of Trump’s false claims. The organization’s tracking polls found the message was being heard: the percentage of the public that didn’t expect to know the winner on election night gradually rose until by late October, it was over 70%. A majority also believed that a prolonged count wasn’t a sign of problems. “We knew exactly what Trump was going to do: he was going to try to use the fact that Democrats voted by mail and Republicans voted in person to make it look like he was ahead, claim victory, say the mail-in votes were fraudulent and try to get them thrown out,” says Protect Democracy’s [Ian] Bassin. Setting public expectations ahead of time helped undercut those lies. …

Fearing that Trump, being against democracy, might instigate violent protests, they would “harness the momentum” of “the racial justice uprising”; recruit the Antifa-BlM rioters, arsonists, cop-killers who had been thus “peacefully protesting” for months, to be active in their cause:

The racial-justice uprising sparked by George Floyd’s killing in May was not primarily a political movement. The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election … Many of those organizers were part of Podhorzer’s network, from the activists in battleground states who partnered with the Democracy Defense Coalition to organizations with leading roles in the Movement for Black Lives [BLM]. …

They planned huge street demonstrations to counter those that they just knew Trump would launch the day after he lost the election to effect a coup against … against … against the administration that would take over in January 2021 (as a result of their efforts):

More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned post-election demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets. …

Now enter, out of the global mists and high boardrooms, down into the well-lit bustling scene, more of the people who do know – are verily part of – the real vast inexorable movement of the truly powerful against President Trump’s re-election. Their eagle eyes had spotted the useful workers down there:

About a week before Election Day, Podhorzer received an unexpected message: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wanted to talk. …

Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer … reached out to Podhorzer, through an intermediary both men declined to name. Agreeing that their unlikely alliance would be powerful, they began to discuss a joint statement pledging their organizations’ shared commitment to a fair and peaceful election. They chose their words carefully and scheduled the statement’s release for maximum impact. As it was being finalized, Christian leaders signaled their interest in joining, further broadening its reach.

We wonder how the Christian leaders got to know about it if the preparation for the statement’s release was as quietly confidential as the story suggests.

The statement was released on Election Day, under the names of Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and the heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African American Clergy Network.

It was a carefully worded appeal to American voters – long accustomed to a day of voting, a pause while votes were counted, and a result declared – not to be surprised, not to ask questions, not to object if votes were added and counted for days or even weeks after election day. The statement is  quoted:

It is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws. We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual. … We are united in our call for the American democratic process to proceed without violence, intimidation or any other tactic that makes us weaker as a nation.

Podhorzer knew that only if late counting was accepted, Biden could be made to win:

Election night began with many Democrats despairing. Trump was running ahead of pre-election polling, winning Florida, Ohio and Texas easily and keeping Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania too close to call. But Podhorzer was unperturbed … the returns were exactly in line with his modeling. … He could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.

Towards the end of the confession, the question is asked: who should get the credit for thwarting Trump’s plot?

Liberals argued the role of bottom-up people power shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly the contributions of people of color and local grassroots activists. Others stressed the heroism of GOP officials like [Aaron] Van Langevelde [Republican member of the Michigan Board of Canvassers] and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who stood up to Trump at considerable cost. The truth is that neither likely could have succeeded without the other. …

Democracy won in the end. The will of the people prevailed. But it’s crazy, in retrospect, that this is what it took to put on an election in the United States of America.

Well, anyway, that’s what it took to put over a fraud of an election in the United States of America.

The full ingenuous article provides the names of many perps and their organizations. And after all, why not? Since the conspirators succeeded and their man won, nothing will be done about any law-breaking that went on. It was all in the great cause of fortifying democracy.

Their self-congratulation is not unwarranted. They worked diligently and efficiently – and they brought off their cheat. Who would grudge them their celebrations, their happy faces, their loud cheers? Only the mean-spirited would want to rain on such joy.

Let them rejoice while they can. It won’t be long before they experience the consequences of their achievement. Most of them will be just as oppressed by their chosen government as those of us who voted honestly for Donald Trump.

… is worse than you fear.

Now the revelation bursts upon us that Donald Trump never really stood a chance of being re-elected, even if every living citizen had voted for him.

And Americans stood no chance of remaining free. 

The vast movement to dissolve the founder’s Republic of America was begun long before the 2016 election of Donald Trump. His four years were an unexpected interruption of the reorganization of the human world into a global community of helots ruled by an oligarchic dictatorship.

America will now have a system not only like China’s oligarchic dictatorship, but in partnership with it.

It took decades for China to gain the subservience of an American government. It was finally achieved with the defeat of President Trump and the election to the presidency of Joe Biden.

Trump had seen the danger and had tried to counter it. But the forces ranged against him were far too numerous and far too powerful.

It suits Communist China very well to have Joe Biden as a figurehead president of the United States. For the Chinese, his senility is an asset. In any case, they own him. They own his son, they own his family. They have filled the Bidens’ coffers. It was probably they who chose him to be the Democratic Party’s candidate. They own the Democratic Party.

Does all  this seem too far fetched?

Lee Smith, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, explains how the process and the triumph were worked. The article is long. We select the telling points – which requires some change of the original order – and strongly recommend the reading of the whole thing.

The poisoned embrace between American elites and China began nearly 50 years ago when Henry Kissinger saw that opening relations between the two then-enemies would expose the growing rift between China and the more threatening Soviet Union. At the heart of the fallout between the two communist giants was the Soviet leadership’s rejection of Stalin, which the Chinese would see as the beginning of the end of the Soviet communist system—and thus it was a mistake they wouldn’t make.

Meanwhile, Kissinger’s geopolitical maneuver became the cornerstone of his historical legacy. It also made him a wealthy man selling access to Chinese officials. In turn, Kissinger pioneered the way for other former high-ranking policymakers to engage in their own foreign influence-peddling operations, like William Cohen, defense secretary in the administration of Bill Clinton, who greased the way for China to gain permanent most favored nation trade status in 2000 and become a cornerstone of the World Trade Organization.

The Cohen Group has two of its four overseas offices in China, and includes a number of former top officials, including Trump’s former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who recently failed to disclose his work for the Cohen Group when he criticized the Trump administration’s “with us or against us” approach to China in an editorial. “The economic prosperity of U.S. allies and partners hinges on strong trade and investment relationships with Beijing,” wrote Mattis, who was literally being paid by China for taking exactly that position.

Yet it’s unlikely that Kissinger foresaw China as a cash cow for former American officials when he and President Richard M. Nixon traveled to the Chinese capital that Westerners then called Peking in 1972. “The Chinese felt that Mao had to die before they could open up,” says a former Trump administration official. “Mao was still alive when Nixon and Kissinger were there, so it’s unlikely they could’ve envisioned the sorts of reforms that began in 1979 under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership. But even in the 1980s China wasn’t competitive with the United States. It was only in the 1990s with the debates every year about granting China most favored nation status in trade that China became a commercial rival”—and a lucrative partner. …

Just after defeating communism in the Soviet Union, America breathed new life into the communist party that survived. And instead of Western democratic principles transforming the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the American establishment acquired a taste for Eastern techno-autocracy. Tech became the anchor of the U.S.-China relationship, with CCP funding driving Silicon Valley startups, thanks largely to the efforts of Dianne Feinstein, who, after Kissinger, became the second-most influential official driving the U.S.-CCP relationship for the next 20 years.

In 1978, as the newly elected mayor of San Francisco, Feinstein befriended Jiang Zemin, then the mayor of Shanghai and eventually president of China. As mayor of America’s tech epicenter, her ties to China helped the growing sector attract Chinese investment and made the state the world’s third-largest economy. Her alliance with Jiang also helped make her investor husband, Richard Blum, a wealthy man. As senator, she pushed for permanent MFN trade status for China by rationalizing China’s human rights violations, while her friend Jiang consolidated his power and became the Communist Party’s general secretary by sending tanks into Tiananmen Square. Feinstein defended him. “China had no local police,” Feinstein said that Jiang had told her. “Hence the tanks,” the senator from California reassuringly explained. “But that’s the past. One learns from the past. You don’t repeat it. I think China has learned a lesson.” …

Clearly, big money was to be made from China. Democrats could overlook little matters like what happened in Tiananmen Square. It wasn’t the Communist government’s fault. They had no police, so they had to use tanks. Anyway, it was a learning experience for them and they’ll never do anything like that again. Look on the bright side, where the money glitters.

The American elite decided that democracy wasn’t working for them. …

[That] disenchanted elite … impoverished American workers while enriching themselves. The one-word motto they came to live by was globalism—that is, the freedom to structure commercial relationships and social enterprises without reference to the well-being of the particular society in which they happened to make their livings and raise their children.

Undergirding the globalist enterprise was China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. For decades, American policymakers and the corporate class said they saw China as a rival, but the elite … saw enlightened Chinese autocracy as a friend and even as a model—which was not surprising, given that the Chinese Communist Party became their source of power, wealth, and prestige. Why did they trade with an authoritarian regime and by sending millions of American manufacturing jobs off to China thereby impoverish working Americans? Because it made them rich. They salved their consciences by telling themselves they had no choice but to deal with China: It was big, productive, and efficient and its rise was inevitable. And besides, the American workers hurt by the deal deserved to be punished—who could defend a class of reactionary and racist ideological naysayers standing in the way of what was best for progress?

Returning those jobs to America, along with ending foreign wars and illegal immigration, was the core policy promise of Donald Trump’s presidency, and the source of his surprise victory in 2016.  … The only people who took Trump seriously were the more than 60 million American voters who believed him when he said he’d fight the elites to get those jobs back.

As Lee Smith sees it, Trump himself was the creator of the “China Class” – because opposition to him united disparate interests which were all the beneficiaries of Chinese patronage. It’s an accusation, and as such unfair since that was not the president’s intention. Smith explains:

What [Trump] called “The Swamp” appeared at first just to be a random assortment of industries, institutions, and personalities that seemed to have nothing in common, outside of the fact they were excoriated by the newly elected president. But Trump’s incessant attacks on that elite gave them collective self-awareness as well as a powerful motive for solidarity. Together, they saw that they represented a nexus of public and private sector interests that shared not only the same prejudices and hatreds, cultural tastes and consumer habits but also the same center of gravity—the U.S.-China relationship. And so, the China Class was born.

A great many Americans in technology, sport, commerce, academia, bureaucracy, politics …

…benefited extravagantly from the U.S.-China relationship. These strange bedfellows acquired what Marxists call class consciousness—and joined together to fight back, further cementing their relationships with their Chinese patrons. United now, these disparate American institutions lost any sense of circumspection or shame about cashing checks from the Chinese Communist Party, no matter what horrors the CCP visited on the prisoners of its slave labor camps and no matter what threat China’s spy services and the People’s Liberation Army might pose to national security.

Think tanks and research institutions like the Atlantic Council, the Center for American Progress, the EastWest Institute, the Carter Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and others gorged themselves on Chinese money. The world-famous Brookings Institution had no scruples about publishing a report funded by Chinese telecom company Huawei that praised Huawei technology.

They “gorged themselves on Chinese money” – not without a trace of shame in some cases?

The billions that China gave to major American research universities, like $58 million to Stanford, alarmed U.S. law enforcement, which warned of Chinese counterintelligence efforts to steal sensitive research. But the schools and their name faculty were in fact in the business of selling that research, much of it paid for directly by the U.S. government—which is why Harvard and Yale among other big-name schools appear to have systematically underreported the large amounts that China had gifted them. …

But then came a freebie from China that was not welcome:

China was the source of the China Class’s power, [and] the novel coronavirus coming out of Wuhan became the platform for its coup de grace. So Americans became prey to an anti-democratic elite that used the coronavirus to demoralize them; lay waste to small businesses; leave them vulnerable to rioters who are free to steal, burn, and kill; keep their children from school and the dying from the last embrace of their loved ones; and desecrate American history, culture, and society; and defame the country as systemically racist in order to furnish the predicate for why ordinary Americans in fact deserved the hell that the elite’s private and public sector proxies had already prepared for them.

So there was really no need for the China Class to feel shame or guilt. Ordinary Americans “deserved” unemployment and poverty. Because … because … they’re racist.

For nearly a year, American officials have purposefully laid waste to our economy and society for the sole purpose of arrogating more power to themselves while the Chinese economy has gained on America’s. China’s lockdowns had nothing to do with the difference in outcomes. Lockdowns are not public health measures to reduce the spread of a virus. They are political instruments, which is why Democratic Party officials who put their constituents under repeated lengthy lockdowns, like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, are signaling publicly that it is imperative they be allowed to reopen immediately now that Trump is safely gone.

… Democratic officials intentionally destroyed lives and ended thousands of them by sending the ill to infect the elderly in nursing homes. … The job was to boost coronavirus casualties in order to defeat Trump and they succeeded …

A startling accusation that – of human sacrifice on a huge scale! But it is true that it happened.

And the Chinese virus made no difference to the China Class’s opposition to President Trump:

The number of American industries and companies that lobbied against Trump administration measures attempting to decouple Chinese technology from its American counterparts is a staggering measure of how closely two rival systems that claim to stand for opposing sets of values and practices have been integrated. Companies like Ford, FedEx, and Honeywell, as well as Qualcomm and other semiconductor manufacturers that fought to continue selling chips to Huawei, all exist with one leg in America and the other leg planted firmly in America’s chief geopolitical rival. To protect both halves of their business, they soft-sell the issue by calling China a competitor in order to obscure their role in boosting a dangerous rival.

Nearly every major American industry has a stake in China. From Wall Street—Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley— to hospitality. A Marriott Hotel employee was fired when Chinese officials objected to his liking a tweet about Tibet. They all learned to play by CCP rules.

“It’s so pervasive, it’s better to ask who’s not tied into China,” says former Trump administration official Gen. (Ret.) Robert Spalding.

Unsurprisingly, the once-reliably Republican U.S. Chamber of Commerce was in the forefront of opposition to Trump’s China policies—against not only proposed tariffs but also his call for American companies to start moving critical supply chains elsewhere …

Even the Trump administration was split between hawks and accommodationists, caustically referred to by the former as “Panda Huggers”. The majority of Trump officials were in the latter camp, most notably Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former Hollywood producer. While the film industry was the first and loudest to complain that China was stealing its intellectual property, it eventually came to partner with, and appease, Beijing. Studios are not able to tap into China’s enormous market without observing CCP redlines.

“In the Trump administration,” says former Trump adviser Spalding, “there was a very large push to continue unquestioned cooperation with China. On the other side was a smaller number of those who wanted to push back.”

Apple, Nike, and Coca Cola even lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. On Trump’s penultimate day in office, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States has “determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, targeting Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups”. That makes a number of major American brands that use forced Uyghur labor—including, according to a 2020 Australian study, Nike, Adidas, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and General Motors—complicit in genocide.

The idea that countries that scorn basic human and democratic rights should not be directly funded by American industry and given privileged access to the fruits of U.S. government-funded research and technology that properly belongs to the American people is hardly a partisan idea—and has, or should have, little to do with Donald Trump. But the historical record will show that the melding of the American and Chinese elites reached its apogee during Trump’s administration, as the president made himself [again we stress unintentionally – ed] a focal point [of shared hostility] for the China Class, which had adopted the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle.

That’s not to say establishment Republicans are cut out of the pro-China oligarchy—Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s shipbuilder billionaire father-in-law James Chao has benefited greatly from his relationship with the CCP, including college classmate Jiang Zemin. Gifts from the Chao family have catapulted McConnell to only a few slots below Feinstein in the list of wealthiest senators.

Riding the media tsunami of Trump hatred, the China Class cemented its power within state institutions and security bureaucracies that have long been Democratic preserves—and whose salary-class inhabitants were eager not to be labeled as “collaborators” with the president they ostensibly served. Accommodation with even the worst and most threatening aspects of the Chinese communist regime, ongoing since the late 1990s, was put on fast-forward. Talk about how Nike made its sneakers in Chinese slave labor camps was no longer fashionable. News that China was stealing American scientific and military secrets, running large spy rings in Silicon Valley and compromising congressmen like Eric Swalwell, paying large retainers to top Ivy League professors in a well-organized program of intellectual theft, or in any way posed a danger to its own people or to its neighbors, let alone to the American way of life, were muted and dismissed as pro-Trump propaganda.

Smith omits to mention a fact that is germane to his case and strengthens it – that President Bill Clinton had insistently sold American scientific, technological and military secrets to China.

The Central Intelligence Agency openly protected Chinese efforts to undermine American institutions. CIA management bullied intelligence analysts to alter their assessment of Chinese influence and interference in our political process so it wouldn’t be used to support policies they disagreed with—Trump’s policies. …

Smith notes that the CIA – the agency created to protect the United States from foreign intrusion of all kinds – stores its information with Amazon Web Services, owned by China’s No. 1 American distributor, Jeff Bezos.

Joe Biden is China’s man. He is now openly demonstrating his compliance with the CCP’s wishes:

As head of the Center for American Progress think tank, Biden’s pick for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, teamed up with a U.S.-China exchange organization created as a front “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority” of the CCP and “influence overseas Chinese communities, foreign governments, and other actors to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing”.

Biden’s special assistant for presidential personnel, Thomas Zimmerman, was a fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, flagged by Western intelligence agencies for its ties to China’s Ministry of State Security.

U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield gave a 2019 speech at a Chinese-government-funded Confucius Institute in Savannah, Georgia, where she praised China’s role in promoting good governance, gender equity, and the rule of law in Africa. “I see no reason why China cannot share in those values,” she said. “In fact, China is in a unique position to spread these ideals given its strong footprint on the continent.”

The Biden family … was reportedly given an interest-free loan of $5 million by businessmen with ties to the Chinese military. Hunter [Biden] called his Chinese business partner the “spy chief of China”. The reason that the press and social media censored pre-election reports of Hunter Biden’s alleged ties to the CCP was not to protect him—$5 million is less than what Bezos has made every hour during the course of the pandemic. No, for the pro-China oligarchy, the point of getting Joe Biden elected was to protect themselves. …

[For] the pro-China oligarchy [now in power in America – ed] … Chinese autocracy is their model. Consider the deployment of more than 20,000 U.S. armed forces members throughout Washington, D.C., to provide security for an inauguration of a president who is rarely seen in public in the wake of a sporadically violent protest march that was cast as an insurrection and a coup; the removal of opposition voices from social media, along with the removal of competing social media platforms themselves; the nascent effort to keep the Trump-supporting half of America from access to health care, credit, legal representation, education, and employment, with the ultimate goal of redefining protest against the policies of the current administration as “domestic terrorism”.

Yes, it all follows the Chinese example. The Democratic Party of America has fast become China’s star pupil.

Smith writes:

Witness their newfound respect for the idea that speech should only be free for the enlightened few who know how to use it properly.

And:

What seems clear is that Biden’s inauguration marks the hegemony of an American oligarchy that sees its relationship with China as a shield and sword against their own countrymen.

And:

The American oligarchy … are happy to rule in partnership with a foreign power that will help them destroy their own countrymen.

The writer concludes his article with a suggestion that the American oligarchy will not last long.

But why not? Now that Donald Trump has gone, who or what will work against it? Who or what can overthrow it?

… to save us from tyranny.

Two federal governments?

Two sets of vital institutions – government, the media, schools, large corporations … ?

Is it practical?

Is it already beginning to happen?

Professor Angelo Codevilla writes at American Greatness:

Right-leaning Americans are living as if occupied by a foreign power intent on denigrating and destroying our way of life, impoverishing us, and punishing us for objecting.

But to get away with this, the oligarchs who control America’s public and private institutions need us to respect their mastery of us. Hence the only way for us to preserve our way of life is to separate from institutions they have turned from common to all Americans to partisan instruments. By so doing, we deprive them of legitimacy, as we patronize or create alternative ones. The long list includes America’s largest corporations, educational institutions, the media, and government itself.

Separation between conservative America and the oligarchy is happening spontaneously as Americans sort themselves into mutually agreeable groups. It’s also a result of the oligarchs pushing dissenters into what they believe is the Outer Darkness.

It’s happening? We’re glad to hear it. What are the signs that it has begun?

Codevilla does not tell us. But he suggests how the process might be started:

In order to preserve republican freedoms, those of us who want them require leadership from our elected officials. We can start by boycotting an institution that undeniably, has become ruinously partisan: the House of Representatives. 

That is a very radical suggestion! We like the sound of it.

From Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), to committee chairmen such as Homeland Security’s Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), with no dissent in the ranks, the House Democrats assert their Republican colleagues are “enemies within”, accusing them of complicity in the January 6 Capitol riot, and claiming that Republican members endanger their lives. That the Democrats don’t believe a word of this lie only underlines why they repeat it ad nauseam: to pin the label “terrorist” on Republican leaders and voters, thereby depriving us of standing as citizens who must be respected and justifying all manner of oppression. …

This is deadly serious.

It is indeed. We desperately need saving.

To deny the legitimacy of elected officials is to deny that of the voters, and of popular government itself. … Elected officials who are willing to uphold the primordial authority that flows from elections are all that remains of the American Republic founded between 1776 and 1789.  

What, then, should congressmen and senators do about those who deem them ultra vires, illegitimate?

Denying their legitimacy, putting them beyond the pale, separating from them, taking no part in what they do, is the indispensable foundation of seriousness, for clarifying what we are about, and for building our own environment.

Being present in the House of Representatives as currently constituted and led can do no good, and only do harm to conservative voters. House rules allow the majority to do whatever it wills. Today’s Democrats have no intention of sharing any of the House’s powers with the minority.

Republican members cannot influence what the House does. They cannot call witnesses at hearings, never mind get bills or amendments voted on. As they and their constituents are called illegitimate, they are powerless. They cannot call the country’s attention to their case. Their presence in the Democrats’ proceedings makes them co-responsible, and gives the false impression that due process is being observed. Their presence is a pretense from which only the oligarchy benefits.

So what should they do?

The start Codevilla suggests for setting up alternative government is something of an anti-climax:

Far better for House Republicans to rent some D.C. hotel’s public rooms and there hold plenary and committee sessions that parallel and contrast the Democrats’ agenda as well as take up topics that the Democrats shun—e.g. the social media companies’ censorship, and their monopolistic practices.

Until they build another Capitol, presumably?  In another city, in a conservative state – Tallahassee perhaps?

Codevilla does not visualize the alternative government passing laws just yet. Only investigating issues.

They could run hearings on the naturally collusive relationship between, say, the White House chief of staff and his lobbyist brother, and between the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division and his former partner who runs Hunter Biden’s defense. As the media cover the House’s position on energy matters and on civil rights, they would be compelled to mention that these are strictly the Democratic Party’s doings. And when they refer to what the other near-half of House Members think on any governing matter, they would have to refer to fully developed positions.

In short, they would have to acknowledge the existence of legitimate alternatives.

Would they have to? How long before the alternative Congress is closed down, the hotel owners brought to trial on some outlandish charge, and the Republican representatives themselves  tried for sedition?

American government in general and Congress in particular were never meant to be purely partisan. James Madison wrote that congressional deliberations should draw “the deliberate sense of the people” out of a multiplicity of cooperating and contrasting factions. Since Woodrow Wilson, however, Progressives have touted what they call “responsible government”—meaning rule by a single party, wholly empowered to implement its agenda and for which it may be held wholly responsible.

Today’s Progressive Democratic Party has taken complete power over the whole federal government. The least that Republicans can do for conservative America is to hold them fully responsible for what they do.

“Complete power” in the hands of would-be totalitarians means that there is no freedom even merely to discuss the corruption of a “collusive relationship” or the Biden family.

But the idea that some states could choose to obey another law-making body, another executive, and acknowledge another supreme court is not unlike the proposal that conservative states disobey the existing legislative, executive, judicial branches of government by adopting a policy of “nullification” (explained in our post immediately below, A way to escape the tyranny, February 3, 2020). Both proposals would in effect be a form of secession.

Are there other cunning plans to save the free Republic?

… and not lose America?

There are two American nations owning the same country. One wants individual freedom and equality under the law; the other wants authoritarian gynocracy with a caste system graded by skin color. Each loathes and fears the other. Each wants to be free of the other. But territorial separation is not possible.

Is there a solution?

Selwyn Duke thinks there is. He writes about it at Canada Free Press:

With a stolen election, stolen culture, stolen courts and stolen dreams, many Americans are realizing that rule by the Left, absolutely corrupt even without absolute power, is unthinkable. Talk of secession, something continually entertained in various states throughout history, is again in the air. The problem is that for the most part, we’ve been supinely submissive in the face of burgeoning leftist tyranny. So it would help if there were something between secession and our current slouching toward servitude. And there is.

Too many conservatives are also waxing defeatist, saying “The republic is dead; our freedoms are gone.” And, yes, if we continue operating inside the box and being “conservative” — as in status-quo oriented — we can kiss our (remaining) liberties goodbye. But the Left isn’t constrained by any box, except what’s physically and politically possible; it doesn’t abide by rules, laws, social codes or conventions except when convenient. So why should we remain in any box … ?

Embracing Mao’s sentiment that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”, the Left trades in violence, violence done to political opponents and to our culture, history, heroes, Constitution and just liberties. Now having seized power in government’s executive and legislative branches via the violence of electoral theft, the Left aims to use that power to become autocratic. As to how we should respond, remember:

Only power negates power.

The Left has been able to steal a national election (and some down-ballot seats, no doubt) via massive vote fraud in, largely, a handful of big Democrat-run cities. Yet despite all the electoral theft, President Trump still won half the states, some by wide margins. It is these states where power should be exercised.The power I reference is what Thomas Jefferson called the “rightful remedy” for all federal usurpation of states’ domain: nullification. This is the process whereby authorities simply ignore federal dictates, whether handed down by Congress, a bureaucracy or the courts.

There’s nothing unprecedented about nullification. Leftists engage in it continually. For example, their localities often ignore federal drug or immigration laws, and more than a score of states nullified the REAL ID Act of 2005.

Only, leftists don’t call it “nullification” — they just do it. In contrast, conservatives busy themselves conserving the status quo even though it’s leftist-born and generally abide by even unconstitutional federal laws, mandates and court rulings because “this is the way things are done”.

This said, we have seen some pushback, with county sheriffs in recent times refusing to enforce irrational China virus restrictions and some opposition to anti-Second Amendment proposals. But this effort must become widespread and organized — “Nullification!” must become a rallying cry.

To this end, we need a nullification movement. When state officials, from governor to assemblymen and senators, run for office, the first and last question must be: Will you vow to nullify all unjust federal dictates? If they hem and haw at all, they must be immediately disqualified.

In addition, nullification-disposed states should make a compact with one another so that we can enjoy the strength numbers bring.

In reality, nullification … should have been pursued long ago; the federal government has, after all, been trampling states’ powers for at least the better part of a century, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. … We now require a ton of cure.

The cure of nullification is the obvious next step for anyone serious about combating the burgeoning leftist tyranny. We’ve no other recourse. …

Reasoned argumentation only works with those who’ll yield to reason (the Left won’t).

Constitutional constraints only matter to those who respect laws and national contracts (the Left doesn’t).

Appealing to courts only bears fruit when judges have a sense of justice and duty and the guts to act rightly even when pariah status results (most don’t).

Making this more tragically comical still is that when we seek redress for federal tyranny, we expect relief from the federal government’s own judicial branch!

This didn’t help us with the 2020 election, which the Left got away with stealing. Moreover, it knows it can not only replicate the theft in the future but can expand it; thus have the Democrats introduced a bill taking mail-in voting nationwide. … The states can just pass on it. …

The Democrats can hobble border enforcement so that they can further destabilize our country and import more future voters — and Texas can secure its border itself. Let the left-wing, black-robed lawyers issue their contrary “opinions” as we know they will. My response would be a paraphrase of the paraphrase of Andrew Jackson: “The judges have made their decision. Now let them enforce it.”

In sum: The power of the federal government would be nullified by conservative populist states ignoring federal laws their own majorities don’t like and don’t vote for.

But the conservative populist states are the rule-of-law states. Would it not be a betrayal of their own principle to do it?

Not if the federal government has abandoned the rule of law and become a dictatorship. The Democrats now in power have amply demonstrated their contempt for any law that stands in their way. They have gotten away with conspiring against an elected president, perjury in court, cheating in an election, encouraging violent riots. They have lost the right to be obeyed.     

So yes, defiance, or “nullification”, might be a  solution. It is the practical sort of solution that evolves in response to the exigencies of conditions (like the constitutional republic of the United States), rather than the sort conceived by theorists and arbitrarily imposed (like socialism).

Then what might a Leftist federal government do about it? Would it use the US army to enforce its will?

We suspect that the gang in power in D.C. now would not hesitate to use the army. They are already doing so in the federal capital. And the Democratic Party’s radical female novices in Congress almost certainly would as soon as they’ve risen to some seniority. Or even before.

What then? Civil war?

*

Note added three days later: The North Dakota legislature, alarmed by Biden’s extravagant issue of executive orders and their effects, is considering exercising its right of nullification.