By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“All that was required of them was a
primitive patriotism which could be appealed to
whenever it was necessary to make them accept
longer working hours or shorter rations. And
even when they became discontented, as they
sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere,
because, being without general ideas, they could
only focus it on petty specific grievances. The
larger evils invariably escaped their notice.”—
George Orwell, 1984
February 09, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - Let’s be clear
about one thing: the
impeachment of Donald Trump is a waste of time
and money.
Impeaching Trump will accomplish very little, and
it will not in any way improve the plight of the
average American. It will only reinforce the
spectacle and farce that have come to be synonymous
with politics today
While the nation allows itself to be distracted
by yet more bread-and-circus politics, the American
kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled
career politicians and corporate thieves that
panders to the worst vices in our nature and has
little regard for the rights of the people)
continues to suck the American people into a
parallel universe in which the Constitution is
meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the
citizenry are powerless to defend themselves against
government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder,
kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow
madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.
So here’s what I propose: let’s impeach the Deep
State and its cabal of government operatives from
every point along the political spectrum
(right, left and center) for conspiring to expand
the federal government’s powers at the expense of
the citizenry.
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We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally
for so long—sold to us in the name of national
security and global peace, maintained by way of
martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced
by a standing army of militarized police and a
political elite determined to maintain their powers
at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when
it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly
on that downward trajectory now, and things are
moving fast.
Even now, we are being pushed and prodded towards
a civil war, not because the American people are so
divided but because that’s how corrupt governments
control a populace (i.e., divide and conquer).
These are dangerous times.
These are indeed dangerous times but not because
of violent crime, which remains at
an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which
is
statistically rare, or because the borders are
being invaded by foreign armies, which data reports
from the Department of Homeland Security
refute, or because a pandemic is spreading like
a contagion, or even because raging mobs of
so-called domestic terrorists are trying to
overthrow elections.
No, the real danger that we face comes from none
other than the U.S. government and the powers it has
granted to its standing armies to rob, steal, cheat,
harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and
kill American citizens with immunity.
The danger “we the people” face comes from masked
invaders on the government payroll who crash through
our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and
terrorize our families.
This danger comes from militarized henchmen on
the government payroll who demand absolute
obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and
ask questions later.
This danger comes from greedy, power-hungry
bureaucrats on the government payroll who have
little to no understanding of their constitutional
limits.
This danger comes from greedy politicians and
corporations for whom profit trumps principle.
This danger comes from a surveillance state that
grows more and more ominous.
Consider, if you will, all of the dastardly,
devious, diabolical, dangerous, debilitating,
deceitful, dehumanizing, demonic, depraved,
dishonorable, disillusioning, discriminatory,
dictatorial schemes inflicted on “we the people” by
a bureaucratic, totalitarian regime that has long
since ceased to be “a government of the people, by
the people and for the people.”
Americans have no protection against
police abuse. It is no longer unusual to
hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed
individuals first and ask questions later. What
remains all-too-usual, however, is the news that the
officers involved in these incidents get off with
little more than a slap on the hands.
Americans are little more than
pocketbooks to fund the police state. If
there is any absolute maxim by which the federal
government seems to operate, it is that the American
taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true,
whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced
to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used
against us, endless wars that do little for our
safety or our freedoms, bloated government agencies
such as the National Security Agency with its secret
budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.
Americans are no longer innocent until
proven guilty. We once operated under the
assumption that you were innocent until proven
guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in
technology and a heightened surveillance culture,
the burden of proof has been shifted so that the
right to be considered innocent until proven guilty
has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens
are suspects. This is exemplified by police
practices of stopping and frisking people who are
merely walking down the street and where there is no
evidence of wrongdoing. Likewise, by subjecting
Americans to full-body scans and license-plate
readers without their knowledge or compliance and
then storing the scans for later use, the
government—in cahoots with the corporate state—has
erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an
environment, we are all potentially guilty of some
wrongdoing or other.
Americans no longer have a right to
self-defense. In the wake of various
shootings in recent years, “gun control” has become
a resounding theme. Those advocating gun reform see
the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms as
applying only to government officials. As a result,
even Americans who legally own firearms are being
treated with suspicion and, in some cases, undue
violence. In one case, a Texas man had his home
subjected to a no-knock raid and was shot in his bed
after police, attempting to deliver a routine search
warrant, learned that he was in legal possession of
a firearm. In another incident, a Florida man who
was licensed to carry a concealed firearm found
himself detained for two hours during a routine
traffic stop in Maryland while the arresting officer
searched his vehicle in vain for the man’s gun,
which he had left at home.
Americans no longer have a right to
private property. If government agents can
invade your home, break down your doors, kill your
dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your
family, your property is no longer private and
secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if
government officials can fine and arrest you for
growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with
friends in your living room, installing solar panels
on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard,
you’re no longer the owner of your property.
Americans are powerless in the face of
militarized police. In early America,
citizens were considered equals with law enforcement
officials. Authorities were rarely permitted to
enter one’s home without permission or in a
deceitful manner. And it was not uncommon for police
officers to be held personally liable for trespass
when they wrongfully invaded a citizen’s home.
Unlike today, early Americans could resist arrest
when a police officer tried to restrain them without
proper justification or a warrant—which the police
had to allow citizens to read before arresting them.
(Daring to dispute a warrant with a police official
today who is armed with high-tech military weapons
and tasers would be nothing short of suicidal.) As
police forces across the country continue to be
transformed into outposts of the military, with
police agencies acquiring military-grade hardware in
droves, Americans are finding their once-peaceful
communities transformed into military outposts,
complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment
designed for the battlefield.
Americans no longer have a right to
bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining
the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip
searches have left us powerless against police
empowered to forcefully draw our blood, strip search
us, and probe us intimately. It’s no longer unusual
to hear accounts of men and women being subjected to
what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by
police in the course of “routine” traffic stops.
What remains to be seen is how the emerging
hypervigilance over COVID-19 vaccines will impact
that right to bodily integrity.
Americans no longer have a right to the
expectation of privacy. Despite the
staggering number of revelations about government
spying on Americans’ phone calls, Facebook posts,
Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore
and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter
toll records, etc., little to nothing has been done
to counteract these abuses. Instead, we are daily
being accustomed to life in this electronic
concentration camp.
Americans can no longer rely on the
courts to mete out justice. The U.S.
Supreme Court was intended to be an institution
established to intervene and protect the people
against the government and its agents when they
overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference
to police power, preference for security over
freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights
for the sake of order and expediency, the justices
of the Supreme Court have become the architects of
the American police state in which we now live,
while the lower courts have appointed themselves
courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing
the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or
illegal.
Americans no longer have a representative
government. We have moved beyond the era of
representative government and entered a new age,
let’s call it the age of authoritarianism. In fact,
a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern
University concluded that the
U.S. government does not represent the majority of
American citizens. Instead, the study found that
the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or
the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the
researchers concluded that policies enacted by this
governmental elite nearly always favor special
interests and lobbying groups.
It is not overstating matters to say that
Congress, which has done its best to keep their
unhappy constituents at a distance, may well be the
most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in
America.
In other words, we are being
ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy,
and arguably on our way towards fascism: a form of
government where private corporate interests rule,
money calls the shots, and the people are seen as
mere subjects to be controlled.
Rest assured that when and if fascism finally
takes hold in America, the basic forms of government
will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The
legislators will be in session. There will be
elections, and the news media will continue to cover
the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of
the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual
control will have finally passed to the oligarchic
elite controlling the government behind the scenes.
Sound familiar?
Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite
of governmental and corporate interests. We have
moved into “corporatism” (favored
by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point
on the road to full-blown fascism. Corporatism is
where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the
citizenry—rule over the many.
History may show that from this point forward, we
will have left behind any semblance of
constitutional government and entered into a
totalitarian state where all citizens are suspects
and security trumps freedom.
Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this
topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has
become America’s new normal.
From Clinton to Bush, Obama to Trump, and now
Biden, it’s as if we’ve been caught in a time loop,
forced to re-live the same thing over and over
again: the same assaults on our freedoms, the same
disregard for the rule of law, the same subservience
to the Deep State, and the same corrupt,
self-serving government that exists only to amass
power, enrich its shareholders and ensure its
continued domination.
As I make clear in my book
Battlefield America: The War on the American
People, the powers-that-be want us to
remain distracted, divided, alienated from each
other based on our politics, our bank accounts, our
religion, our race and our value systems.
Yet as George Orwell observed, “The real division
is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but
between authoritarians and libertarians.”
Constitutional attorney and author John W.
Whitehead is founder and president of The
Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People
is available at
www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be
contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
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