Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

― Ronald Reagan

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/13915-freedom-is-never-more-than-one-generation-away-from-extinction

I posted a thread on X (formerly Twitter) this morning and I wanted to share it. I’m jumping ahead of my promised sort of book report, here, though. I am not done reading the novel I mentioned in a recent blog post. The dystopian novel that affected American history is, The Journal of David Q. Little, which was President Ronald Reagan’s favorite dystopian novel. Reagan gave Margaret Thatcher a copy of this novel. I read about this in Stella Morabito’s book, The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer. Her book is very interesting and has expanded my knowledge on totalitarianism a great deal.

Once I started googling a bit, I found this 2016 article, by Stella Morabito, President Reagan’s Favorite Dystopian Novel Has A Message For Us. Morabito is always ahead of the curve and I have learned so much reading her articles and her book. Her book is filled to the brim with footnotes, which I’m using as a guide for further reading on totalitarianism. During my Cold War era reading days, I read a lot of books on various aspects of the Cold War, but my main interests were military strategy and foreign policy, plus a lot of spy drama stuff. Here’s a bit from her 2016 article:

Here’s my X thread:

"MAGA extremists"

Oddly enough, I came across mention of President Reagan's favorite dystopian novel in a book I was reading. It's from 1967 & titled 'The Journal of David Q. Little.' Reagan gave a copy to Margaret Thatcher to read. I'm reading this novel right now. https://t.co/g6LckFUd8D

— libertybelle (@susan_heward) September 1, 2023

I like timelines, because it helps me to sort out events & try to see the big picture, which can get lost in mountains of details. So, the last democracy in Eastern Europe was taken down in 1948.

NATO was founded April 4, 1949https://t.co/OaLoT9GpV3

— libertybelle (@susan_heward) September 1, 2023

Here's the Wikipedia link to the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état: https://t.co/zrmcTvyKdI

— libertybelle (@susan_heward) September 1, 2023

Sorry for the repeated NATO post, but I can’t figure out how to copy the entire thread and post it, so I tried copying the links individually and ended up with this. Anyway, repeating the NATO founding timeline, which followed the Soviet Union takeover of Eastern Europe bears repeating.

Screaming “climate change” on the left or “diabolical global conspiracy” on the right seems to be the default response to every disaster or crisis in the news these days. With the rash of wildfires in Canada this summer, left-wing media ranted in unison about “climate change,” at the top of their lungs, while some in the right-wing media, especially on right-wing social media, ranted about an assortment of conspiracy theories, like the government set the fires, or it was part of the evil globalist plan and other such theories with no proof to back any of them.

Here’s a June 11, 2023 NY Post story, Canada’s wildfires are a reminder climate warriors have it all wrong, and in light of the recent wildfires in Maui, I think this information is worth considering:

“Indeed, the main stage-setter (as in California’s 2020 wildfires) looks to be forest mismanagement in the name of environmentalism.

Imagining that “natural” is always better, greens have pushed to stop controlled burns that clear out brush and debris and so make it less likely fires grow uncontrollable.

In a 2020 paper, scientists warned of a shortage of funding for Canadian forest-fire control, and in 2021 the Globe and Mail called for more small, controlled burns to avoid runaway blazes.

But Canada’s leaders bowed to enviro sentiment, ignoring the science.

Ironically, that’s led to fires spewing millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere.”

https://nypost.com/2023/06/11/canadas-wildfires-are-a-reminder-climate-warriors-have-it-all-wrong/

Here’s a June 8, 2023 story, Wildfire smoke: Canada blamed for forestry underfunding and mismanagement, from the Washington Examiner, offering more details of forest mismanagement:

“This trend is also only expected to increase, the report notes, since costs for fire protection in Canada have risen by an average of $150 million per decade since the 1970s, when data collection began.

But by many accounts, Canada’s leaders are not doing enough to respond to the rising crisis.

In the fire-prone area of Alberta, residents complained about the province’s decision to ax their firefighting crews, as part of a broader budget cut — noting that these teams could have been instrumental in helping extinguish the current fires.

“We could have been difference-makers” in stopping some of the fires, which began in Alberta in early May, Jordan Erlandson, a former member of the aerial firefighting crew, told the Calgary City News.

“Wildfire management agencies in Canada are at a tipping point,” the editorial board of Canada’s Globe and Mail wrote in 2021, urging the country to conduct more prescribed burns and forest thinning. “Presuppression and suppression costs are increasing but program budgets are not.””

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/wildfire-smoke-canada-blamed-for-forestry-underfunding-and-mismanagement

Poor management and environmentalist-driven policies leading to disastrous environmental outcomes seem to have played a large role in the devastating wildfires, along with, “And conditions across the country are drier. Data from the Canada Drought Monitor shows the 10 provinces experiencing the worst wildfires to date are all experiencing abnormal dryness, or “moderate to severe drought” conditions.” according to the Washington Examiner story.

Both sides have a bit right – the unusually dry weather and the bad forestry management driven by global environmentalist extremism appear to have contributed to the large number of wildfires in Canada

The crazy conspiracy theories now seem as much a fixture on right-wing media as the left’s climate change hysteria and we’d all probably be better off if we didn’t leap into buying into all this drama.

There were also wildfires in Greece in the news and a few days ago Fox News reported: Greek authorities arrest 79 ‘arsonist scum’ in connection with devastating wildfires. The article didn’t include more information on these ‘arsonist scum’ as Greece’s Civil Protection Minister, Vassilis Kiklias, called them, so it’s not clear if they were a part of some organized group or acting alone.

I’m still sticking with my theory that where the influential “globalist” big idea people pose a threat is with getting governments to sign onto crazy policies and international agreements. Certainly, as we found out during the pandemic, those policies can lead to miserable and deadly outcomes, but another part of the equation with the globalist big idea people is just like with all the “central planner” big idea people before them – their ideas invariably don’t work and their ranks are filled with a whole lot of incompetent nincompoops.

At least in America, we are still allowed to speak out and challenge the groupthink, “majority opinion,” and the “experts.” I know that free speech is a very good thing for me, as someone who often holds unpopular opinions. We should all be paying attention to the “hate speech” laws spreading in Western democracies, because that’s a very disturbing trend and one we should speak out against here in America, if we value our personal liberties.

I’ll be doing a book report blog post soon on a dystopian novel from the 1960s I’m reading. It’s about “global governance” and “central planners” run amok. This novel actually influenced American history in a way and until recently I had never even heard of this novel or this bit of history. I don’t want to spoil this story, so when I finish reading it, I’ll tell you more.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had COVID at the end of July. I know several people who have had COVID recently, so yes, it’s going around. There have been reports in the media trying to drum up fear and alarm again – some hyping a “new variant”, some hyping an increase in hospital admissions and along with all of that is the same people, who wanted to keep the social mitigations in place forever, are back at it trying to push masking again.

Here’s CNN today – using a photo of a kid in a mask, even though children are at a very low risk. Yep, I’m still quote-tweeting on X some.

So, CNN uses a photo of a kid masked, even though kids are at very low risk…

Leave kids alone.

They've suffered enough at the hands of the COVID "experts." Emotional problems increased, learning disabilities increased, suicide increased, education performance plummeted. https://t.co/M51RSBoApT

— libertybelle (@susan_heward) August 23, 2023

In the beginning of the pandemic, I was pretty trusting of health “experts” and by nature, I’m a rule follower – in public, especially. My Miss Rules personality has been a family joke at times. I recall when I was in my 20s, one of my sisters was visiting my husband and me, and I became the brunt of a joke with my driving. My husband related the story of me asking who had the right–of-way when he was teaching me to drive on the backroads of Fort Bragg. A Blackhawk helicopter swooped down and landed in the road and I asked my husband who had the right-of-way. He laughed hysterically at me. I got what he meant immediately – our Subaru was no match for a helicopter. I tried to explain that I hadn’t read about that situation, of a helicopter landing on the road, in the driver’s manual. That made my husband laugh even more. So, there was my sister telling my husband that I’ve always been a stickler for following all the rules. She asked me, if a traffic light stopped working, how long would I wait to drive through the intersection? I didn’t have an answer and my husband said – “forever” and started laughing.

My husband also carried around a jaywalking ticket in his wallet for many years. A Unit Police officer gave him that ticket outside our kaserne in Germany, when I was pregnant with our first daughter. An American kid had been hit by a German driver, for crossing that street, between the housing area and the kaserne, against the crosswalk light. That light took a long time to change and many adults crossed while the light was red, my husband included. After that kid was hit, the commander wanted the UP guards to ticket adults, so they would set an example for the kids. My husband crossed against the light and he was yelling across the street urging me to just cross, because there were no cars coming. I kept yelling back that I wasn’t crossing until the light was green and I waited. The UP guard laughed and told my husband that he should have listened to his wife. Yes, I am a bit stuck on “following the rules,”

With the pandemic, I believe my husband got COVID towards the end of February 2020 and he had acute respiratory failure, ended up on hospice care and never recovered. So in the beginning of the pandemic craziness, I had already had it strike my home. Of course, my husband was in very poor health and had late stage COPD – he was at very high risk for complications from any respiratory bug. At the first sign of any respiratory illness, I got him to the doctor quickly. He was already on antibiotics from our primary care doctor, when I took him to the ER when his condition got worse.

Some people brag about how they were right about COVID all the time and brag about not getting “the jab” and smugly talk about how so many people were sheep, etc. However, I think there are a lot more people like me, who trusted in America’s medical community and public health officials. And over time, I think a lot of those people lost trust. I know I lost trust, as I began to think the social mitigation efforts were about partisan politics more than public health.

I hope more Americans think about the pandemic “rules,” especially the efforts to silence differing views, by labeling them “COVID misinformation or disinformation.”

This video is over 4 minutes long, but it’s illuminating, to see the Dem/liberal media repetitive messaging spin attack in action. In this video President Trump is attacked over commenting on the fatality rate from COVID probably being below 1%, while the media and medical experts were hyping 3.4%. The death rate was well below 1%:

Great video of mainstream media talking heads parroting the lie that COVID had a “3.4%” fatality rate, though early data clearly showed this was dozens of times too high. The lie that started it all.pic.twitter.com/8RE8zKKQrU

— Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) August 23, 2023

“However, at the global level, if viewed in terms of percentage of the global population effected, the corona crisis is (so far) one of the least deadly pandemics the world has experience over the last 2000 years. In all likelihood, unless the pandemic evolves in an unforeseen way, the consequences of COVID-19 in terms of health and mortality will be mild compared to previous pandemics. At the end of June 2020 (at a time when the outbreak is still raging in Latin America, South Asia, and much of the US), COVID-19 has killed less than 0.006% of the world population. To put this low figure in context in terms of lethality, the Spanish flu killed 2.7% of the world’s population and HIV/AIDS 0.6% (from 1981 to today).”

So, they knew this was one of the least deadly pandemics over the last 2000 years and at the same time pushed to shut down economies all over the world and impose all these draconian “social mitigation” policies – to set the world stage for… ta da… The Great Reset, an accelerated green (and social and governance) transformation. We were massively manipulated and lied to, I believe.

To keep this blog post from getting overly long, here’s one final point about, what I refer to as these Dem/liberal media repetitive messaging spin attacks – they’re always about setting and driving a narrative. Schwab’s Book 2 to the Great Reset is called, The Great Narrative. The left keeps hitting us with talking points and narratives to incite us, to evoke emotional responses and especially to sell fear, because fear is one of our most powerful responses. Here’s Schwab in the conclusion to the Great Reset:

“Two points are pertinent to the Great Reset in this:1) our human actions and reactions are not rooted in statistical data but are determined instead by emotions and sentiments – narrative drives our behaviour; and 2) as our human condition improves, our standards of living increase and so do our expectations for a better and fairer life.”

Setting and driving these narratives is the lifeblood of the Left’s effort to fundamentally transforming the world. Mass media is probably their largest megaphone, but they have also targeted the educational system and entertainment, because those are also big drivers of our culture.

With that video about the COVID fatality rate above, what Trump was saying was information he obviously heard in meetings with the “experts,” but then the media and “experts” went into a full-blown spin effort attacking him – even though assuredly, most of those experts knew he was right. This is what we’re up against with the “expert” class in America, especially the COVID rulemaking crowd.

I’ve thought a lot about my Miss Rules personality since 2020 and I’m going to speak up more. And I hope more people begin to ask questions and reject all these efforts to silence views and information that run counter to the Dem/liberal media narrative.

We all should be free to challenge “The Narrative”.

—————————————————————————————————————

8/27/2023 NOTE: I wanted to add this bit of information about that video with the hype about the 3.4% fatality rate from the WHO. Timelines matter and this was the spun up hysteria to scare people into complying with all sorts of draconian “social mitigation” policies, including shutting down the economy in March 2020.

Here are a few links to 3.4% fatality stories from early March 2020:

The WHO Estimated COVID-19 Mortality at 3.4%. That Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

WHO says coronavirus death rate is 3.4% globally, higher than previously thought

Trump disputes WHO’s 3.4 percent global death rate for coronavirus

Here’s a February 27, 2020 story about how China was handling their COVID outbreak:

Sealed in: Chinese trapped at home by coronavirus feel the strain

There were reports of people in China being literally welded inside their apartments. Here’s an article that says it did happen according to a Chinese paper, but the government decided it was an overreaction:
Were COVID-19 patients in Wuhan welded into their apartments to enforce the lockdown?

Information coming out of China is often hard to verify.

Here’s an article on their zero Covid policy:

What Is China’s ‘Zero-COVID’ Policy?

So, for over two years people in China were living under these crazy lockdown policies, but in 2022, a deadly apartment fire in Shanghai led to protests and the government finally started easing some of their restrictions:

How a deadly apartment fire fueled anti-zero-COVID protests across China: ANALYSIS

I’m adding all this information about China for a reason. The policies that America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many European countries adopted after that WHO alarmist 3.4% fatality rate was dramatically wrong. The actual fatality rate is well under 1%.

Iran temporarily released prisoners due to COVID and then very quickly there were liberals in America proposing that. NJ did release prisoners.

Here’s the March 3, 2020 story about Iran:

Coronavirus: Iran temporarily frees 54,000 prisoners to combat spread

Here’s a March 24, 2020 story:

New Jersey Set to Release Up to 1,000 County Jail Inmates

Why was America adopting COVID policies from authoritarian regimes with terrible human rights records and also regimes where they routinely cover-up human rights abuses?

Even more disturbing in 2022, the Washington Post had a tech reporter still supporting China’s zero Covid policy and believes the US should adopt that policy:

WaPo’s Taylor Lorenz defends China’s ‘zero-COVID’ policy while blaming US for killing ‘millions’ by reopening

The new “zero” hysteria is Net Zero… and I fear the radical policy prescriptions for Net Zero will be even more deadly and draconian than the zero COVID efforts.

The deadly wildfires in Maui that erupted on August 8th have captured headlines every day, and also been the source of wild conspiracy theories that erupted and spread just as fast as the flames.

Let’s begin on Monday, August 7th with looking at this Maui wildfire tragedy. Per this NBC News report on August 15th, Timeline: How ferocious wildfires devastated Maui, hour by hour:

“9:52 a.m.: Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency (EMA) warns residents about winds whipped up by Hurricane Dora and other potentially dangerous conditions. “Red Flag Warning is in effect for leeward areas of Hawai‘i,” the agency says in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, “with low humidity, gusty winds and dry fuels creating risk of extreme fire behavior.””

I like timelines to try to help understand what happened. I’m not going to go through every detail, as information is still filtering out, but this NBC News starting point of August 7th, with winds kicking up from a hurricane, is also what I had read last week. I went back and looked at Hawaii weather reports on August 8th, when the wildfires erupted. I was curious what caused the high winds, so I checked weather reports from that day and found out about Hurricane Dora in the Pacific causing those high winds.

There’s been so much craziness flying across social media and especially the right-wing media, but there has also been a cold indifference to this disaster from the Biden White House and with President Biden responding to reporters with, “No Comment!” Former President Obama, an Hawaii native, waited almost a week to issue a statement and urge people to help the people of Maui: Obama urges people to ‘malama’ and help Maui victims.

I didn’t know what to think with so many of the conspiracy theories flying about – from alleging the government used space lasers to destroy Maui, so they can steal the land from the people and build a WEF style 15-minute city, to conspiratorial takes that Oprah was involved, so she can buy up more land on Maui, to people insisting something sinister with the Obamas’ mansion not having a single blade of grass burnt (their mansion is on the island of Oahu, not the island of Maui). This NY Post story covers a lot of the other conspiracy theories, debunking them: Maui wildfires spark conspiracy theories about space lasers, Oprah land grabs and suspicious trees.

Putting all the crazy global conspiracy takes aside, the Biden White House has been terrible at instilling public confidence and the relief effort in Hawaii appears to be insufficient and not stellar too, but even more disturbing is some information is beginning to filter out about what went wrong. Although this tragic disaster isn’t some carefully orchestrated evil globalist plot, more disturbing things appear to have gone wrong, due to gross incompetence and delays. Left-wing “environmental justice” water policy (part of the green energy policy) may also have played a role in the tragedy.

Maui’s EMA chief did not sound the alarm to warn residents of the rapidly spreading wildfires and has resigned: Maui’s EMA chief resigns, citing health reasons, a week after start of deadly wildfires. There are investigations into Hawaii Electric prioritizing renewable energy and neglecting maintaining their power lines Here’s a FOX News report: Hawaiian Electric knew of wildfire threat, but focused instead on mandated shift to renewable energy. Here are more details from this FOX report:

“Hawaiian Electric was aware of infrastructure issues that could contribute to a wildfire threat but focused on shifting the company toward renewable energy rather than fixing problems, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The utility company concluded in 2019 that it needed to invest more in preventing its power lines from emitting sparks, among other issues. Consulting California’s efforts to reduce wildfires, the company drafted a plan to install more insulated conductors, fire-retardant poles and more aggressive monitoring technology.

The company barely pursued those goals over the next two years, however, investing less than $250,000 on wildfire projects, according to the Journal. It did not request state permission to raise rates to pay for wildfire prevention until 2022.”

https://www.foxnews.com/us/hawaiian-electric-knew-wildfire-threat-focused-instead-mandated-shift-renewable-energy

It’s very easy to see this constant stream of video clips of Klaus Schwab and other WEF bigwigs spouting their alarming globalist green and DEI social justice ideas and look for some global masterminds behind every event, but the truth is their big utopian movement and ideas attract loads of truly low-talent, incompetent nitwits and activists, who keep becoming ensconced in running federal, state and even local government and agencies… especially in Democrat-run locations in America. Hawaii is a Democrat-run state.

For instance, some bureaucrat in the Consumer Protection Safety Commission, announced they were considering a ban on gas stoves early this year. Right-wing uproar ensued, then top Dems, like Senator Schumer from NY, insisted no one was trying to ban gas stoves. In May, NY became the first state to ban gas stoves.

Assuredly, how they go about enforcing this ban will be a total, convoluted mess, because the only thing Democrats are careful about is burying their radical agenda and massive government spending into legislation. Their plans almost invariably lead to chaos, confusion and become bottomless pits for more spending to fix the same problems and the additional problems resulting from their poorly thought out or totally pie-in-the sky plans…. or they leap into action to waste money on more utopian far-left causes.

There’s also reporting that a Hawaii official allegedly withheld water from firefighters:

“A Hawaii official accused of withholding water from firefighters battling Maui’s deadly wildfires said last year that the state should make access to water conditional on “conversations about equity.”FreeBeaconHistoric San Francisco Business Warns It May Be Latest To Close Shop Over Crime

M. Kaleo Manuel, who was deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, has been under scrutiny since local media reported that he delayed releasing water to firefighters who were battling last week’s wildfires, which killed at least 111 people.

The West Maui Land Company alleged in an Aug. 10 letter to Manuel that his commission declined its request to divert streams to fill reservoirs until the wildfires worsened and caused significant “devastation.” According to Honolulu Civil Beat, sources said Manuel was responsible for the delay. They said Manuel asked the company to consult with a local farmer about the impacts of diverting water before he would approve the request.

Manuel only released the water five hours after the request was made, wrote the West Maui Land Company, which operates three water providers on the island.”

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/flashback-hawaii-official-who-allegedly-withheld-water-from-firefighters-says-equity-comes-first/

Instead of people rushing into panic and hysteria about evil globalists taking over the world, Americans should be thankful they still have the power to resist, by electing competent people for positions in, especially, local and state positions, but we have federal elections too. I try not to buy into all the social media conspiracy theory hysteria and instead start calmly looking for facts and information now. I have fallen for some conspiracy theory hot takes and false reporting before. I think most people have. Jumping into panic mode constantly wastes a lot of time and energy that could go into things to better our own lives – like being better prepared, learning more skills to be self-reliant, forming communities in real life and even in the virtual world to foster constructive relationships and share ideas – not just the hyper-charged partisan drama. There is nothing wrong with just taking a “I don’t know what happened yet” attitude and wait for more information.

With all the hype about Klaus Schwab and the WEF, I think his “COVID-19: The Great Reset” plan is fundamentally flawed and that goes to what I titled this blog post – “Utopians fail at competent public administration.” We actually saw so much of this incompetence during the pandemic when the social mitigation zealots were in charge too. Dr. Fauci often would announce some new mitigation idea and when reporters asked questions about various other situations, he hadn’t even thought about any of those details. So, he was making up national guidance on the fly. There was a video of the new CDC director talking about how she made lockdown decisions during COVID, by calling her friend in another state, who was another health official, and asking her friend what she was doing in her state – there was no science involved – just on the fly decisions by incompetent nitwits:

I’ll pull up quotes from Schwab’s book and other NetZero nitwittery and put that in another blog post soon.

Here are two of my tweets, oops, they’re now called “posts” on X (formerly Twitter) about more Dem word games I responded to:

Dem word games never end. Rolling along.
"brought back virtually all the American citizens" – abandoning Americans

"mostly peaceful protests" – cities ablaze & rampant rioting

"gender-affirming care" – pumping kids full of hormones and lopping off/mutilating genitals https://t.co/BonG5hiiG5

— libertybelle (@susan_heward) August 16, 2023

It's not "bizarre," it's deliberate. They want to erase the word "mother," a term in traditional family structure, from the common language. https://t.co/tI6Zd4sl1d

— libertybelle (@susan_heward) August 17, 2023

Seriously, Rachael Levine floated calling mother “egg-producers” as if we’re hens. Here’s the full Ted Cruz tweet that I quote tweeted:

Bizarre.

The radical Left is profoundly anti-woman. https://t.co/DQWmSLB0qo

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) August 17, 2023

These word games come in a lot of different directions, but this transgender effort to keep mainstreaming new terms like instead of pregnant women, they floated “birthing people” isn’t just crazy people. It’s important to try to figure out what’s the objective behind these word games. Well, with neutralizing motherhood, the objective is to destroy the traditional family structure and replace it with more fluid human relationships.

I am working on posts about the 2024 presidential race, but wanted to get this short piece out. I’m still reading the first volume in a 3-volume set on China’s history post WWII and the Chinese revolution, because I realized I didn’t really know a whole lot about that. That’s one of my quirks with things, I often get interested in a topic and then set out and read as much as I can about it. I also ordered several books, that I saw in footnotes of some other books, about totalitarianism. Not sure when I’ll find time to read all this, but at least the books are here waiting.

Back to the word games and efforts to destroy traditional family structure, well, Chairman Mao, the Communist dictator, tried to do that too with his cultural revolution and so many of the tactics used in the American left’s culture war, especially the current racial and gender politics strongly resemble Maoist and Soviet tactics. Mao actually received training, support, and arms from Stalin to launch his Chinese revolution, so it’s not surprising many of the same tactics were used. The Soviets also sent many trainers and advisors to China.

Words give meaning to our lives and experiences and allow us to connect and form bonds. By uprooting the language, it literally makes it impossible for people to communicate effectively and by making so many words taboo and instilling fear of social reprisal for using the “wrong” words, it forces us into self-censoring our speech – and that steals our free speech. I’ve watched YouTube content creators go through this substituting words hesitations, to avoid having their content banned or demonetized, from discussing COVID to taking about firearms to who knows what the liberal censors at YouTube will try to silence next. And the other social media platforms do the same thing – even X, despite this widespread belief among a lot of the right that Elon Musk is going to save free speech. Elon Musk really wants to turn X into a platform where people do everything – from messaging, digital banking, and entertainment. He assuredly will be scooping up as much data as possible with this enterprise, just like the other social media platforms. I fear we’ll have fewer and fewer zones of privacy in our lives in the near future, but I hope more people will become aware of how important free speech really is and freely exercise it.

Constitution of the United States

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In so many blog posts I blather on about how words matter and try to explain the spin information war, that’s working to tear America apart at the seams and divide us into seething factions. My blog has been an ongoing ramble about the spin information war and warnings that “words matter.” Well, the words above, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, are words that protect Americans from some of the efforts to silence citizens happening in many other western democracies, in the name of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion or expressing views that run against the majority popular opinion of the “experts” or leftist culture warriors.

Free speech in America has been under attack at other times in our history, especially during wartime. Here’s a link to information about the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, under President Woodrow Wilson during World War I.

I view this spin information war – not as just normal political messaging, but as a real, deliberate, orchestrated, actual information war, of the kind generally waged by state actors against other state actors or in totalitarian regimes to keep the people under control. Here in America, I believe this change from more traditional political messaging operations to this spin information war began in the 1990s with the Clinton operatives and then spread throughout the entire Democratic Party and left-wing activists. The mainstream (liberal) news media, the “expert” class from academia, and Hollywood have always played an active role in the Dem. spin war messaging operations. These three information avenues drive the culture in America, while the political class tries to solidify those culture war gains into law.

For many years, right-wing allegations of “media bias” were dismissed by the mainstream media, until Donald J. Trump came along and adopted their same corrupt spin information warfare way of advancing political objectives. No matter how much I dislike Trump’s lying and behaving as badly as lying, corrupt liberal spinmeisters, his willingness to get in the same gutter and engage in the same type of vicious smear attacks, the lying, and repetitive messaging games did thoroughly expose the mainstream (liberal) media as corrupt Dem. operatives rather than the professional journalists, they proclaim to be.

There’s a subtle difference between the Dem repetitive messaging games and Trump’s. The liberal media messaging attacks can be spotted with smooth-talking media folks all repeating the same words and phrases that advance Democrat and liberal activist objectives, while Trump’s repetitive messaging games are cruder and less refined, as Trump bellows out some new mean nicknames over and over or rage tweets some new talking point in capital letters on social media that often upends an orchestrated liberal media messaging attack. Trump’s is mostly a one-man guerilla messaging operation, while Dems and the liberal media have orchestrated theirs into a smooth production.

Trump won so many of the spin messaging battles and that’s why the left wanted to silence him. Trump’s current 2024 campaign though is branching out to more orchestrated smear and meme messaging attacks against DeSantis, which is a sign that within the Trump GOP, the corrupt Dem form of spin information warfare is becoming normalized, I think. Partisan politics aside, I have believed, since I first started working to understand this American spin war, that any coordinated large scale media/political effort dedicated to fueling divides 24/7, across all avenues of information, in America is a threat to our American constitutional republic and corrosive to insuring domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare, that’s mentioned in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. I’ve always been one of those sticklers about following rules.

The goal of the liberal spin information war is to advance the left’s culture war agenda and to do that requires, not only winning elections, but completely dominating and driving the culture in America. They strive to control public opinion and define/control the cultural norms. And yes, words really do matter in this spin information war. They matter for the politicians, but even more importantly is our ability as ordinary citizens, to be able to speak and meet freely, to express opinions without fear of reprisals or punishment.

Many people from other countries don’t understand our American belief in free speech. Beyond autocratic countries, with very few personal liberties, even in many western-style democracies in the past decade, there’s been a push from the political left for enacting “speech codes” into law to restrict and even impose criminal punishments for “hate speech.” A March 2023, article, A Modicum of Sense: U.K. walks back enforcement of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), better understood as thought crimes, at the City Journal, explains:

“With recorded crime across England and Wales at a 20-year high, signs are emerging that the U.K. government might be coming to its senses.

Under new plans announced by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the police will be instructed to record non-crime hate incidents (NCHI) only when necessary, not simply when someone feels offended, and officers reporting them will have to give precedence to freedom of speech and expression over restrictions on offensive or insulting language.

Until this change, an NCHI was defined as anything that a victim (or any other person) perceived to be motivated by prejudice or hostility toward one or more protected characteristics. These include (but aren’t limited to) race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-modicum-of-sense

So, anything “perceived to be motivated” by the person alleging a hate crime could lead to you being arrested in the UK. It’s not just the UK, here’s a March 2023 article from Euronews, New hate speech laws kick up a storm in Ireland. Here’s a September 2022 NYT’s article on Germany’s crackdown on “hate speech,” Where Online Hate Speech Can Bring the Police to Your Door: Battling far-right extremism, Germany has gone further than any other Western democracy to prosecute individuals for what they say online, testing the limits of free speech on the internet. France, Canada, Australia and other western countries have all embraced enacting laws against “hate speech.”

The “hate speech” activism ramped up in the 1980s and 1990s in America resulting in “speech codes” being implemented at many colleges and universities. These sorts of “hate speech” laws have met resistance in our American legal system due to our 1st Amendment right to free speech, but the left-wing activism to silence opposing views and police our language continues, largely through efforts to silence people on social media platforms and foment online mobs to cancel people. The effort to label unpopular views as “disinformation” or “misinformation continues. Here’s a post by a British professor on X (formerly Twitter) :

Another tentacle of the social justice/climate activism is to keep flooding academia, schools, news media and entertainment with new words and terms that create moral confusion and even call reality itself into question. We often get lulled into using these new words and phrases, because it seems everyone else is using them. The media often floods the zone with “experts” to “educate” us on these new words and phrases, that we’re badgered to use. Journalists also have style guides and professional guidance that impose use of the new words and phrases for their publications.

It’s important to not be afraid to speak up and challenge new words that deliberately sow moral ambiguity, defy science, and sometimes even mask horrific practices in benign terms. “Gender-affirming” care for children involves pumping children full of hormones and even removal of genitals, which results in irreversible changes and often sterility and loss of sexual function in adulthood. Some phrases are more subtle. Here’s Mollie Hemingway pointing out:

Whenever you think the insane gender craziness can’t get worse, well, it does. Here’s a CNN story from August 12, 2023: A guide to neopronouns, from ae to ze. Frankly, I’m not going to use “neopronouns” or even try to understand this nonsense, but unfortunately plenty of people avidly adopt all this language lunacy, without question, then run around demanding other people use these meaningless new words and phrases or face public outrage antics or even more serious retaliation, like doxxing or inciting an online mob pile-up attack or even getting media thugs involved in trying to destroy people’s lives/careers for running afoul of the leftist word police.

With the speed and volume of information we have bombarding us, it’s easy to forget short-lived dramas about free speech. The Biden administration tried to launch a Disinformation Governance Board within the Department of Homeland Security last year, to be headed by some silly liberal woman, who had tweeted this in 2020 (I wrote a blog post on it, that’s why I have the link):

The importance of our free speech rights in America is that we don’t ever have to bow down to the majority opinion in expressing what we think. We have the right to hold unpopular opinions and to express them.

We also have the right to reject having our words force fed to us or to be forced into silence. What’s interesting about so many of the liberal people pushing speech codes and hate speech rules is they often wax on about right-wing “totalitarians” and “authoritarians,” while at the same time using the favorite tools of tyrants through the ages to crush personal liberty – suppressing free speech.

Although it may seem like a long time ago, the Chinese spy balloon floating over America’s most sensitive military sites happened in February of this year. We never got any real answers from the Department of Defense or our intelligence agencies about what that was all about. Here’s a quote from a June BBC article, Chinese spy balloon did not collect information, says Pentagon

“Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on Thursday that the US was “aware that [the balloon] had intelligence collection capabilities”.

But “it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over flying the United States”.

He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering “contributed” to the balloon’s failure to gather sensitive information.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66062562

So, then last night, I came across this NYT article: U.S. Hunts Chinese Malware That Could Disrupt American Military Operations. This report, if true, is so alarming that I wonder how on earth the Pentagon could be downplaying that Chinese spy balloon incident in June, when this NYT’s article states:

“The Biden administration is hunting for malicious computer code it believes China has hidden deep inside the networks controlling power grids, communications systems and water supplies that feed military bases in the United States and around the world, according to American military, intelligence and national security officials.

The discovery of the malware has raised fears that Chinese hackers, probably working for the People’s Liberation Army, have inserted code designed to disrupt U.S. military operations in the event of a conflict, including if Beijing moves against Taiwan in coming years.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/us/politics/china-malware-us-military-bases-taiwan.html

The NYT’s article mentions concerns were raised in May and the BBC article is dated June 30th and states the Pentagon spokesperson gave the Chines spy balloon update on Thursday, which would have been June 29th. Timelines always matter. Back to the NYT’s report: “The first public hints of the malware campaign began to emerge in late May, when Microsoft said it had detected mysterious computer code in telecommunications systems in Guam, the Pacific island with a vast American air base, and elsewhere in the United States.” So, a month after the first public hints of the malware began, the Pentagon was still busy trying to save face on the Feb. Chinese spy balloon fiasco, which took the President a week to take decisive action and shoot down that balloon, as it was done traversing the continental US and heading out over the Atlantic Ocean…

Further into the NYT report: “More than a dozen U.S. officials and industry experts said in interviews over the past two months that the Chinese effort goes far beyond telecommunications systems and predated the May report by at least a year.” (my highlight there). So, if this is true, our government knew about the Chinese malware efforts for at least a year and yet, they were hesitant to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon hovering over our most sensitive military sites for a week?

In April there was a NBC report: Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence from sensitive U.S. military sites, despite U.S. efforts to block it. Here’s a bit from this NBC report:

“The Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so, according to two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official.”

“China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure-eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, the three officials said. The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said.

The three officials said China could have gathered much more intelligence from sensitive sites if not for the administration’s efforts to move around potential targets and obscure the balloon’s ability to pick up their electronic signals by stopping them from broadcasting or emitting signals.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/china-spy-balloon-collected-intelligence-us-military-bases-rcna77155

So, my understanding thus far is that our officials knew about some buried Chinese malware threat while the Chinese spy balloon was hovering over our most sensitive sites and top generals were assuring us there was no “kinetic threat” from this Chinese spy balloon… they knew about this Chinese buried malware threat that could potentially disrupt our grid, critical infrastructure and disrupt our military’s ability to function. Doing Biden political damage control outweighed national security, is how I see it.

Here are some other stories about the Chinese malware threat, but to be clear these reports are quoting the NYT’s report – not independently corroborated:

Forbes – Chinese Malware Could Cut Power To U.S. Military Bases, Businesses And Homes, Report Claims

CNN – New York Times: US officials search for hidden Chinese malware that could affect military operations

FOX News – Biden administration searching for Chinese malware with potential to disrupt military: Report

The federal government wants to manage your social connections now. https://t.co/gjd9iIvwgq

— libertybelle (@susan_heward) July 19, 2023

Sometimes it’s good to step back and try to take a big picture view of things going on in the world. It’s easy to get caught up in the social media and dumpster fires of culture war controversy that flash up constantly. The Jason Aldean controversy, which I mentioned in my last two blog posts, is one of those flash ups, but here’s the thing – if the right/more conservative side wins the public relations battle against CMT or even inflicts some damage on CMT’s bottom-line, the outcome of that controversy isn’t going to amount to much in the vast leftist power grabs and cultural battles the left has won for decades, usually without even a fight.

Speaking up, even in these small cultural flash up controversies, matters, so please don’t think I’m trying to discourage people speaking up. Each small victory or having the courage to speak up, even when “popular” opinion is raging in the other direction, can encourage other people to speak up too. Free speech matters in America and whenever there’s an effort to silence opposing views, that should be like a rallying cry for Americans to stand firm on free speech – even controversial and “unpopular” speech. Stella Morabito, an analyst and writer explains why it matters to speak out in this video:

I’m trying to wrap my head around this latest Dem concern with having the federal government focus on combating loneliness. This effort will likely be sold as an effort to deal with the mental health crisis in America and the serious drug addiction problem and that pits you as being challenged about “You don’t’ care about the mentally-ill or drug addicts?” In fact, when I mentioned this new bill being introduced to someone with differing political views than mine, he dismissed my concerns about government power grabs and said, they only want to put money towards the addiction problem in America. And his trust in the government’s good intentions surprised me.

The challenges to counter and defeat the left’s vast “reimagining” America project, that’s been underway for decades, is masked in benign “helping” words. Many of the left’s efforts lull and con millions of Americans to let down their guard and even be amenable to vast federal power grabs and to buy into the false premises that lay the groundwork for the Democrat legislation that follows the propaganda effort to sell the narrative. No one wants to be labeled a bigot, mean, uncaring, a hater, racist, etc. and that sort of demonization and marginalizing that befalls people who challenge the liberal mass media narrative effort.

During the pandemic, the federal government and mass media stoked fear of an unknown contagious disease to con us into surrendering all sorts of rights – free speech, free movement, free association, and even forcing compliance to getting experimental vaccines in order to keep your job or have access to goods, medical services and travel. I honestly didn’t believe it was a con until after I read Klaus Schwab’s book: COVID-19: The Great Reset – long after 2020, but he published this book in the summer of 2020 and was writing it in the beginning of the pandemic. He stated that they knew this would be the least deadly pandemic in history and he also explained how all these pandemic social mitigation efforts could lay the foundations of social control for accelerating the green energy transformation.

The “helping” words during the pandemic centered on compliance to the new dictates meant you cared about other people and if you challenged the new impositions on your life and liberty, well, then you were a bad person and, as one conservative writer got labeled, “a grandma-killer.”

Even more than the COVID messaging war, the US government, both Dems and many Republicans, poured over $4.7 trillion dollars into COVID-spending and a lot of that money poured into other Dem culture war issues and their climate agenda. Last year, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, to the tune of $500 billion dollars in new spending. The Inflation Reduction Act was another of those benign word Dem games, because while Republicans were arguing about the “inflation reduction” issues in the bill, they completely missed the boat that this Dem bill was really about pouring more money into the green energy transition effort and other DEI programs. They initially were arguing about “inflation reduction” (a false premise set by deceptive title of bill), while Dems were really ramming through more green energy spending. That “inflation reduction” act also funded 87,000 new IRS agents.

Whether the right wins some largely social media PR battle against Bud Light or CMT, and even damages their bottom lines, those are small fry issues when Dems have pushed through trillions in federal spending to enact their green transition and social change policies across America. The little battles and big battles matter, but don’t sit back and declare victory, because the left has laid the groundwork for their culture war over decades, while the right gets worked up about one hot button issue or another, but remains largely disorganized and dysfunctional at countering the Democrat agenda or the left’s vast culture war effort that’s fought on media and social media every day.

The right-wing media and political class now spend more time operating as a circular firing squad and wasting time with their own identity political problem – the MAGA vs. RINO dramas than fighting the left, but for this post, let’s put that aside and look at a new Democrat power grab in the works – The National Strategy for Social Connection Act, which Senator Chris Murphy introduced July 18, 2023.

Many people, whose views fall on the political right, often are late to the game in understanding the American political left’s march through the institutions, ramming through social and political change, that’s been ongoing since the 1960s. That leftist movement has grown and advanced, while on the right, it seems to me, most people on the right don’t understand the scope of the left’s culture war and have never organized effectively to counter it. On some issues, I realize I have been slow to catch on to the left’s bigger objectives too, but if you only became aware of ESG or the UN 2030 Agenda goals in the past couple years, boy, you’re many years behind, because ESG initiatives started way back when GWB was president and the UN 2030 Agenda was passed in 2015, when Obama was president. If you wonder why you weren’t aware, don’t be too hard on yourself, because so often these left-wing policies are masked behind unicorn and rainbow phrases that we don’t even see the power grabs. I am one of those annoying people who always asks, “what does that really mean?” and I still sometimes get conned by the left’s word games.

Stella Morabito, whose video I linked above, is a former CIA analyst and she was ahead of the curve on identifying this new concern about loneliness among the left.. She wrote, Mass Conformity and the Weaponization of Loneliness, in 2020. Later she wrote three pieces at The Federalist last year. The links to those are at her blog in this post: Government Plan to “Cure” Loneliness Will Cause Even More Loneliness and she published a book last year, The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer. I am reading her book on Hoopla, which I can access with my library card.

Morabito was also way ahead of the curve in explaining how the left was targeting local elections, especially local school board elections to push their CRT and trans agenda, long before the right was even talking about or showing up to protest at school board meetings.

Speaking up, even in small ways, matters, but on the right we need to keep our eyes wide open to the bigger picture policies and actions too. A bill being sold as about combating “loneliness” seems to me like it’s about monitoring and controlling private organizations in communities all across America and even putting the levers in place to try to use federal muscle to interfere in local zoning policies. Even more ominous is this bill proposes:

(E) to the maximum extent practicable, coordinate with international bodies to integrate
and inform the global mission to improve social connection;” page 10

Government is always about power, not about being your friend or helping you make friends. For private relationships and connections to flourish requires a private sphere, where we’re able to associate and speak freely, with no government monitors to manage our lives.

Back in August of 2015, I wrote a blog post, “He never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right”, explaining how I saw Trump’s emerging campaign and appeal much like Sarah Palin’s populist appeal. I think that 2015 post is still relevant to where America is at today. My blog started as a place where I bloviated on politics and vented about how much I disagreed with the Obama policies. And, while I’ve tried to get away from that at times, I do read a lot about politics and history, so that’s where I seem to end up.

To save you time, if you don’t want to read my opinions, I’d like to recommend some free online courses I found at Hillsdale College. I started a course on American Citizenship and Its Decline taught by Victor Davis Hanson last week and there are some other free courses at Hillsdale I want to take. I have not agreed with Victor Davis Hanson on some of his pro-Trump viewpoints, but he’s an excellent instructor and I have no reservations about learning from him. I believe I can learn things from people I disagree with, not only from “like-minded” people.

All around us are signs in America that American culture has changed dramatically in the past few decades and I suppose future historians will be trying to puzzle out what happened to America and why did it happen. Experts, politicians, pundits, social commentators offer all sorts of explanations, usually about how opinions became more slanted by political belief systems and less by religious belief systems. Headlines abound blaring about how fewer Americans now hold strong religious convictions and more and more Americans hold much stronger political viewpoints, that serve as a very shallow secular religion foundation. Even speaking openly about some very basic Christian moral beliefs can lead to calls from the far-left crowd that you should be banished from polite society for “hate-speech.” However, these sort of echo-chamber spaces have been growing on the right too in recent years, even in many traditional Christian American churches. Just watch how quickly Trump goes from praising people around him to branding them with disparaging nicknames and casting them into the RINO pit of hell – banished forever, to get a feel that the “cancel culture” is on both sides of the political spectrum in America.

With all the bad things happening, I still don’t believe we are doomed or should give up, if the “other side” wins and my preferred candidate loses. I believe God gives us all the power to work hard and try to face challenges and I refuse to ever buy into our destiny rests on one man being elected. I have always rejected the belief in thinking “one man on a strong horse” can save us, because God gives us all the power to do many things to save ourselves and frankly, if that “one man” you’re depending on dies or is incapacitated, do you just give up?

Even small daily efforts can reap huge benefits over time. I started working at building up my pantry storage and working at container gardening. It’s the getting into that belief system that these small personal efforts really matter and staying committed that has made me a true-believer in slow and steady wins the race. Don’t give up hope – no matter what happens.

My beliefs on leadership were really fully-formed when I joined the Army in 1979 and learned that it’s all about “the team” and no matter what happens in battle, whoever is still standing regroups to fight another day. The American team in the Army was filled with people of all nationalities, all sorts of political and religious beliefs, but they were bound by their oath to protect and defend the Constitution and a set of values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage.

I believe we can all be warriors for American principles and being committed to protecting the Constitution. That’s why I reject the belief that “America’s future hangs on this one election” type thinking, because America’s future depends on all of us – today, tomorrow and in future generations. We need more Americans to learn about US history and especially about the Constitution. These free Hillsdale College courses are an easy way to learn more about American civics.

I hear so much about finding “like-minded” people and that’s the way to survive, but honestly, I think being open to talking to people who disagree with me and who hold differing viewpoints is the only way to get America back to any semblance of a free and functioning pluralistic society. “Saving America” isn’t about getting everyone to march in lockstep with my beliefs and indulging in this constant Us vs. Them divisiveness, it’s about finding common ground and trying to expand on that. That common ground should start with cultivating a belief in the Constitution of the United States.