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The WHO’s Road To Totalitarianism

The WHO’s Road To Totalitarianism

Authored by Bert Olivier via The Brownstone Institute,

Several articles on the proposed amendments to the…

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31 mins ago

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The WHO's Road To Totalitarianism

Authored by Bert Olivier via The Brownstone Institute,

Several articles on the proposed amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) international health regulations have appeared here on Brownstone, such as this excellent introduction. Consequently, there is no need to repeat this information in a similar format. What I would like to do instead is to pursue the question, what the implications would be for people worldwide if this organisation were to be successful in getting the representatives of member countries to accept the proposed amendments. More specifically, what are the likely consequences in terms of the concept and practice of totalitarianism?

To understand this, one has to get to grips with the mode of rule called totalitarian government, of course, but I doubt whether most people have an adequate grasp of full-fledged totalitarian rule, despite recently experiencing it to a certain degree under “pandemic” conditions. Should the amendments proposed by the WHO be accepted in May, the citizens of the world would be subjected to unadulterated totalitarianism, however, so it is worthwhile exploring the full implications of this “anonymous” mode of governance here.

This is done in the hope that, if representatives of the people—which is what they are supposed to be—in legislative bodies around the world were to read this article, as well as others related to the same topic, they would think twice before supporting a motion or bill which would, in effect, grant the WHO the right to usurp the sovereignty of member nations. The recent developments in the state of Louisiana in the United States, which amount to the rejection of the WHO’s authority, should be an inspiration to other states and countries to follow its example. This is the way to beat the WHO’s mendacious “pandemic treaty.”

On her website, called Freedom Research, Dr. Meryl Nass has described the WHO’s notion of “pandemic preparedness” as a “scam/boondoggle/Trojan horse,” which aims (among other things) to transfer billions of taxpayer dollars to the WHO as well as other industries, in order to vindicate censorship in the name of “public health,” and perhaps most importantly, to transfer sovereignty regarding decision-making for “public health” globally to the Director-General of the WHO (which means that legally, member countries would lose their sovereignty).

In addition, she highlights the fact that the WHO intends to use the idea of “One Health” to subsume all living beings, ecosystems, as well as climate change under its own “authority”; further, to acquire more pathogens for wide distribution, in this way exacerbating the possibility of pandemics while obscuring their origin, and in the event of such pandemics occurring, justifying the development of more (mandatory) “vaccines” and the mandating of vaccine passports (and of lockdowns) globally, thus increasing control (the key term here) over populations. Should its attempt at a global power grab succeed, the WHO would have the authority to impose any “medical” programme it deems necessary for “world health,” regardless of their efficacy and side-effects (including death).

In the preceding paragraph I italicised the word “control” as a key term. What should be added to it is the term “total”—that is, “total control.” This is the gist of totalitarian rule, and it should therefore be easy to see that what the WHO (together with the WEF and the U.N.) strives for is total or complete control of all people’s lives.

No one has analysed and elaborated on totalitarianism from this perspective more thoroughly than the German-born, American philosopher, Hannah Arendt, and her monumental study of this phenomenon—“The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951 and in enlarged format, 1958) still stands as the authoritative source for the understanding of its historical manifestations. The latter, focused on by Arendt, are 20th-century Nazism and Stalinism, but it is not difficult to perceive its lineaments in what we have been living through since 2020—although a strong case could be made that 2001 marked its identifiable beginning, when (in the wake of 9/11) the Patriot Act was passed, arguably laying the authoritarian groundwork for totalitarian rule as clearly perceived by Henry Giroux.

Arendt (p. 274 of the Harvest, Harcourt edition of “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” 1976) singles out “total terror” as the essence of totalitarian government, and elaborates as follows:

“By pressing men against each other, total terror destroys the space between them; compared to the condition within its iron band, even the desert of tyranny [which she distinguishes from totalitarianism; B.O.], insofar as it is still some kind of space, appears like a guarantee of freedom. Totalitarian government does not just curtail liberties or abolish essential freedoms; nor does it, at least to our limited knowledge, succeed in eradicating the love for freedom from the hearts of man. It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom which is simply the capacity of motion which cannot exist without space.”

Reading this evocative characterisation of totalitarianism in terms of “total terror” makes one realise anew, with a start, how fiendishly clever the perpetrators of the so-called “pandemic” emergency were—which was no real pandemic, of course, as the German government recently admitted. It was the thin edge of the wedge, as it were, to insinuate “total terror” into our lives by means of curtailing our access to free movement in space. “Lockdowns” are the signature tool for implementing restrictions of free movements in space.

It may not, on the face of it, appear to be the same as, or similar to, the incarceration of prisoners in the concentration camps under Nazi rule, but arguably the psychological effects of lockdowns approximate those experienced by inmates of these notorious camps in the 1940s. After all, if you are not allowed to leave your house, except to go to the shop to buy food and other essentials before you hurry back home—where you dutifully sanitise all the items you bought (a concrete reminder that venturing out in space is “potentially lethal”)—the imperative is the same: “You are not allowed out of this enclosure, except under specified conditions.” It is understandable that the imposition of such strict spatial boundaries engenders a pervasive sense of fear, which eventually morphs into terror.

Small wonder the pseudo-authorities promoted—if not “commanded”—“working (and studying) from home,” leaving millions of people cloistered in their houses in front of their computer screens (Plato’s cave wall). And banning meetings in public, except for a few concessions as far as the numbers of attendees at certain gatherings were concerned, was just as effective regarding the intensification of terror. Most people would not dare transgress these spatial restrictions, given the effectiveness of the campaign, to instil a dread of the supposedly lethal “novel coronavirus” in populations, exacerbating “total terror” in the process. The images of patients in hospitals, attached to ventilators, and sometimes looking appealingly, desperately at the camera, only served to exacerbate this feeling of dread.

With the advent of the much-hyped COVID pseudo-“vaccines,” another aspect of generating terror among the populace manifested itself in the guise of relentless censorship of all dissenting views and opinions on the “efficacy and safety” of these, as well as on the comparable effectiveness of early treatment of COVID by means of proven remedies such as Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. The clear aim of this was to discredit contrarians who raised doubts over the official valorisation of these supposedly miraculous cures for the disease, and to isolate them from the mainstream as “conspiracy theorists.”

Arendt’s insight into the indispensable function of space for human movement also casts the WEF’s plans to create “15-minute cities” worldwide in a disturbing new light. These have been described as “open-air concentration camps,” which would eventually become a reality by prohibiting movement outside of these demarcated areas, after an initial period of selling the idea as a way of combating climate change by walking and cycling instead of using carbon-emitting motor cars. The WEF and WHO’s “concern” with climate change as a putative threat to global health offers further justification for these planned variations on prisons for the thinly disguised incarceration of millions of people.

The pertinence of Arendt’s thinking on totalitarianism for the present does not end here, though. Just as relevant as the manner in which it cultivates terror is her identification of loneliness and isolation as prerequisites for total domination. She describes isolation—in the political sphere—as “pre-totalitarian.” It is typical of the tyrannical governments of dictators (which are pre-totalitarian), where it functions to prevent citizens from wielding some power by acting together.

Loneliness is the counterpart of isolation in the social sphere; the two are not identical, and the one can be the case without the other. One can be isolated or kept apart from others without being lonely; the latter only sets in when one feels abandoned by all other human beings. Terror, Arendt sagely observes, can “rule absolutely” only over people who have been “isolated against each other” (Arendt 1975, pp. 289–290). It therefore stands to reason that, to achieve the triumph of totalitarian rule, those promoting its inception would create the circumstances where individuals feel increasingly isolated as well as lonely.

It is superfluous to remind anyone of the systematic inculcation of both of these conditions in the course of the “pandemic” through what has been discussed above, particularly lockdowns, the restriction of social contact at all levels, and through censorship, which—as remarked above—was clearly intended to isolate dissenting individuals. And those who were isolated in this way, were often—if not usually—abandoned by their family and friends, with the consequence that loneliness could, and sometimes did, follow. In other words, the tyrannical imposition of COVID regulations served the (probably intended) purpose of preparing the ground for totalitarian rule by creating the conditions for isolation and loneliness to become pervasive.

How does totalitarian government differ from tyranny and authoritarianism, where one may still discern the figures of the despot, and the sway of some abstract ideal, respectively? Arendt writes that (p. 271–272):

“If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination.

“Terror is the realization of the law of movement; its chief aim is to make it possible for the force of nature or of history to race freely through mankind, unhindered by any spontaneous human action. As such, terror seeks to ‘stabilize’ men in order to liberate the forces of nature or history. It is this movement which singles out the foes of mankind against whom terror is let loose, and no free action of either opposition or sympathy can be permitted to interfere with the elimination of the ‘objective enemy’ of History or Nature, of the class or the race. Guilt and innocence become senseless notions; ‘guilty’ is he who stands in the way of the natural or historical process which has passed judgement over ‘inferior races,’ over individuals ‘unfit to live,’ over ‘dying classes and decadent peoples.’ Terror executes these judgements, and before its court, all concerned are subjectively innocent: the murdered because they did nothing against the system, and the murderers because they do not really murder but execute a death sentence pronounced by some higher tribunal. The rulers themselves do not claim to be just or wise, but only to execute historical or natural laws; they do not apply [positive] laws, but execute a movement in accordance with its inherent law. Terror is lawfulness, if law is the law of the movement of some suprahuman force, Nature or History.”

The reference to nature and history as suprahuman forces pertains to what Arendt (p. 269) claims to have been the undergirding beliefs of National Socialism and Communism, respectively, in the laws of nature and of history as being independent, virtually primordial powers in themselves. Hence the justification of terror being inflicted on those who seem to stand in the way of the unfolding of these impersonal forces. When read carefully, the excerpt, above, paints a picture of totalitarian rule as something predicated on the neutralisation of people, as human beings, in society as potential agents or participants in its organisation or the direction in which it develops. The “rulers” are not rulers in the traditional sense; they are merely there to ensure that the suprahuman force in question is left unhindered to unfold as it “should.”

It takes no genius to perceive in Arendt’s perspicacious characterisation of totalitarian domination—which she relates to Nazism and Stalinism as its historical embodiments—a kind of template which applies to the emerging totalitarian character of what first manifested itself in 2020 as iatrocracy, under the subterfuge of a global health emergency—something well known to all of us today. Since then other features of this totalitarian movement have emerged, all of which cohere into what may be described, in ideological terms, as “transhumanism.”

This, too, fits into Arendt’s account of totalitarianism—not the transhumanist character, as such, of this latest incarnation of the attempt to harness humanity as a whole to a suprahuman power, but its ideological status. Just as the Nazi regime justified its operations by appealing to nature (in the guise of the vaunted superiority of the “Aryan race,” for example), so the group of technocratic globalists driving the (not so) “Great Reset” appeals to the idea of going “beyond humanity” to a supposed superior (non-natural) “species” instantiating a fusion between humans and machines—also anticipated, it seems, by the “singularity” artist called Stelarc. I emphasised “idea” because, as Arendt observes (p. 279–280),

“An ideology is quite literally what its name indicates: it is the logic of an idea. Its subject matter is history, to which the ‘idea’ is applied; the result of this application is not a body of statements about something that is, but the unfolding of a process which is in constant change. The ideology treats the course of events as though it followed the same ‘law’ as the logical exposition of its ‘idea.’”

Given the nature of an ideology, explicated above, it should be evident how this applies to the transhumanist ideology of the neo-fascist cabal: the idea underpinning the historical process has supposedly always been a kind of transhumanist teleology—allegedly the (previously hidden) telos or goal of all of history has constantly been the attainment of a state of surpassing mere Homo and Gyna sapiens sapiens (the doubly wise human man and woman) and actualising the “transhuman.” Is it at all surprising that they have claimed to have acquired god-like powers?

This further explains the unscrupulousness with which the transhumanist globalists can countenance the functioning and debilitating effects of “total terror” as identified by Arendt. “Total terror” here means the pervasive or totalising effects of, for example, installing encompassing systems of impersonal, largely AI-controlled surveillance, and communicating to people—at least initially—that it is for their own safety and security. The psychological consequences, however, amount to a subliminal awareness of the closure of “free space,” which is replaced by a sense of spatial confinement, and of there being “no way out.”

Against this backdrop, reflecting on the looming possibility that the WHO may succeed in getting compliant nations to accept the proposed amendments to their health regulations, yields greater insight into the concrete effects this would have. And these aren’t pretty, to say the least. In a nutshell, it means that this unelected organisation would have the authority to proclaim lockdowns and “medical (or health) emergencies,” as well as mandatory “vaccinations” at the whim of the WHO’s Director-General, reducing the freedom to traverse space freely to ironclad spatial confinement in one fell swoop. This is what “total terror” would mean. It is my fervent hope that something can still be done to avert this imminent nightmare.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/15/2024 - 23:40

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California Auditor Finds Homeless Council Can’t Account For Money Spent

California Auditor Finds Homeless Council Can’t Account For Money Spent

Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,

Responsible businesses…

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April 15, 2024

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California Auditor Finds Homeless Council Can't Account For Money Spent

Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,

Responsible businesses do regular audits of their finances to see which areas are making money and which not.

Families also do audits, if only at tax time to see how much they owe.

Contrast that with government. California State Auditor Grant Parks just came out with a new audit, “Homelessness in California: The State Must Do More to Assess the Cost‑Effectiveness of Its Homelessness Programs.”

The Joint Legislative Committee requested the audit for homeless programs ending in 2023. Mr. Parks said the audit “focuses primarily on the State’s activities, in particular the California Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal ICH),” which coordinates the state’s programs.

This ought to be a massive scandal.

Here’s the main conclusion.

Note there’s no definitive number given, just “billions”—and even the number of programs, “at least 30,” is fuzzy:

“More than 180,000 Californians experienced homelessness in 2023 - a 53 percent increase from 2013.

To address this ongoing crisis, nine state agencies have collectively spent billions of dollars in state funding over the past five years administering at least 30 programs dedicated to preventing and ending homelessness.

Cal ICH is responsible for coordinating, developing, and evaluating the efforts of these nine agencies.”

Below is the chart of the PIT—point in time—counts of the homeless:

(California State Auditor)

Also note the number went up 20 percent after Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019, despite his Jan. 7 Inaugural Address that year pledging, “We will launch a Marshall Plan for affordable housing and lift up the fight against homelessness from a local matter to a state-wide mission.” The Marshall Plan was a 1948 U.S. aid program to restore economic growth to war-torn Europe.

‘Lack of Coordination’

Mr. Parks pointed to a Feb. 11, 2021 report by him, “Homelessness in California: The State’s Uncoordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness Has Hampered the Effectiveness of Its Efforts.”

And he said Cal ICH fulfilled a legislative requirement to report its financial assessments, but did so only for the fiscal years 2018-19 and 2020-21, not after.

He added in the new report, “Further, it has not aligned its action plan for addressing homelessness with its statutory goals, nor has it ensured that it collects accurate, complete, and comparable financial and outcome information from homelessness programs. Until Cal ICH takes these critical steps, the State will lack up‑to‑date information that it can use to make data‑driven policy decisions on how to effectively reduce homelessness.”

Basically, the state government and the citizens of California have little idea where these untold “billions” of dollars to help the homeless have gone.

3 of 5 Programs Lack Enough Data

Mr. Parks said he looked more closely at five of the “at least” 30 state homeless programs. I’ll break up his paragraphs to make it more clear: “When we selected five of the State’s homelessness programs to review, we found that two were likely cost-effective: Homekey and the CalWORKs Housing Support Program (housing support program). ...

  • “Homekey refurbishes existing buildings to provide housing units to individuals experiencing homelessness for hundreds of thousands of dollars less than the cost of newly built units.

  • “The Housing Support Program’s provision of financial support to families who were at risk of or experiencing homelessness has cost the State less than it would have spent had these families remained or become homeless.

“However, we were unable to fully assess the other three programs we reviewed ... because the State has not collected sufficient data on the programs’ outcomes. In the absence of this information, the State cannot determine whether these programs represent the best use of its funds.”

The three unassessed programs were:

  • The State Rental Assistance Program, “Provides funds for rental arrears, prospective rental payments, utility and home energy cost arrears, utility and home energy costs, and other expenses related to housing incurred during or due, directly or indirectly, to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

  • The Encampment Resolution Funding Program, “Provides competitive grants to assist local jurisdictions in ensuring the wellness and safety of people experiencing homelessness in encampments by providing services and supports that address their immediate physical and mental wellness and result in meaningful paths to safe and stable housing.”

  • The Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant program, “Provides local jurisdictions with funds to support regional coordination and expand or develop local capacity to address their immediate homelessness challenges.”

If the rest of the “at least 30” homeless programs were examined, who knows how many would end up with too little data to assess. But if the 3 to 5 ratio holds, overall of the 30 it would be 12 assessed thoroughly, 18 not properly assessed because of too little data.

Why Is Prop. 1 Money Needed?

On March 5, California voters barely passed Proposition 1, which Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed hard. The margin was 50.18 percent yea to 49.82 percent nay. As I pointed out in my analysis in the Epoch Times, officially the bonds will cost $310 million a year for 30 years to pay back, or $9.3 billion total.

The money will come from the general fund—which currently is $73 billion in deficit, according to the Legislative Analyst. Which is why for three decades I have called bonds “delayed tax increases,” because the money has to come from somewhere.

Worse, as I noted, with interest rates staying high, the true payback amount could be higher, by some estimates as high as $12.45 billion.

How can the state spend that money when it has no idea if the unaccounted “billions” currently being spent really are helping the homeless? Are the programs good, indifferent, or bad? Is the money really helping people—or just being wasted?

It’s too bad this audit wasn’t available before the March 5 vote on Prop. 1. Likewise with the late production of the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for fiscal year 2020-22, which came out more than a year late on March 15, just after the election, and with a “net position” $29 billion worse than previously tallied.

If voters had known how bad the state finances really were, and the inability to assess current homeless programs’ finances, would they have approved Prop. 1?

Conclusion: What Really Can Be Done?

Former state Sen. John Moorlach, for whom I worked as press secretary, has been involved in helping the homeless since when he was a Certified Public Accountant in private practice in the 1980s. Later, as an Orange County Supervisor, he was the chairman of the Orange County Commission to End Homelessness.

“Newsom is throwing money everywhere,” he said. “But, really, what are you doing? What’s the program? What are the results? How do you measure? And it’s just so sad to watch.”

If current programs aren’t working, what could?

“Recently I’ve started to started to think the way you take care of you low-income housing is you’ve got to built some nice housing, and let people move up. Then the housing in the old part of town would be the low-income housing.”

He contrasted that with the current system, in which new complexes are built specifically to house the homeless. But due to government regulations, such as prevailing wage laws, “each unit costs $900,000.”

He said often the new housing is for people who don’t even want to live inside. And older housing is where the poor used to live before.

What’s certain is the current approach of “throw money at everything—and when that doesn’t work, throw more money at it,” isn’t working. Especially because, as the new audit shows, we have no idea even where most of the money is going.

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/15/2024 - 19:00

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Cheap grocery chain adds a fancy Whole Foods-style feature

The food market, which operates across the northeast and mid Atlantic, is adding a crowd pleaser.

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April 15, 2024

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Routine, weekly trips to the grocery store are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. 

And that's largely because the grocery landscape is changing as a whole. 

Related: Target makes (another) self-checkout change customers will hate

Increasingly, consumer taste and demands are becoming more niche. Some prefer to shop exclusively online thanks to new delivery services like Instacart and Amazon  (AMZN)  grocery delivery. 

Others frequent superstores like Walmart  (WMT)  or Target  (TGT)  where they can hit all their errands – pharmacy, pet supplies, party favors, cosmetics, and groceries – at once. Often, these stores offer deeper discounts and better value, particularly if a customer prefers buying in bulk. 

Other customers prefer instead to make the trek to a specialty grocer, such as a Wegmans, Whole Foods, The Fresh Market, or Sprouts which tend to carry more niche, holistic, or gourmet items for even the pickiest of palates. 

Often, these specialty stores will carry an outsized number of organic produce, or items that one might have to ordinarily place a special order for ahead of time at another store or restaurant, like sushi, poke bowls, hand-made mozzarella, organic smoothies, or international candies. 

But increasingly, everyday markets and grocery stores are beginning to add in specialty conveniences in an effort to attract more customers through their doors – or please the existing ones. Florida-based Publix, for example, has been adding new features like burrito bars, fresh deli sandwich stations, salad bars, ramen bars, and freshly cooked pizzas to some of its stores for a renewed upscale experience.

Weis Markets adds unique new feature

The issue with many of these specialty stores, of course, is that only a few items can ring up a pricey bill. It's not exactly feasible for the average family of four, for example, to shop each week for their essentials at The Fresh Market. The bill would be pricey, and not every kid prefers or appreciates fresh organic burrata cheese on his or her cauliflower crust pizza for a packable lunch.

A Weis Market at Broadcasting Square.

MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images/Getty Images

So everyday grocery stores have been adding some more modern conveniences to their aisles in an effort to attract a clientele that appreciates the finer things but still wants to save money. 

Weis Markets announced it would be adding technologically advanced salad bars to some of its stores, which will allow customers to create their own bespoke ready to eat meals, hot and fresh, while they get their grocery shopping done. 

The salad bars are made by Picadeli of Sweden and utilize artificial intelligence to create "fresher, safer, and more craveable," salad bars using locally sourced ingredients that are typically very veggie-heavy. Red meat is not on the menu, the company proudly touts. 

"The push pre-pandemic was for more bulk foods, more service stations, [and then] the pandemic got everybody really concerned” about safety, Weis Markets Director of Produce Kevin Weaver said. “And now the pendulum is swinging back to ‘I want more choice, I want to be able to customize.’ And so service departments are making a resurgence and salad bars are making a resurgence.”

The salad bars will feature closable hoods, which will protect ingredients and keep them fresher longer. Weis Markets will start out by introducing the Picadeli stations into of their stores, many of which will be located in Maryland. 

Two stores have already received the new installations, in York and Bellefonte, Pa., and the following are slated to install them soon: 

  • Parkville, Md.
  • Perry Hall, Md.
  • Baltimore, Md.
  • Frederick, Md.
  • Huntingdon Valley, Pa.
  • Clarks Summit, Pa.

Picadeli currently operates its salad bars in other popular areas around the U.S., include Acme grocery stores, Giant, Safeway, Coborn's, and Maryville University in Missouri.

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Victor Davis Hanson: Gaming The 2024 Campaign

Victor Davis Hanson: Gaming The 2024 Campaign

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

We have seen enough of the Biden-Trump…

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April 15, 2024

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Victor Davis Hanson: Gaming The 2024 Campaign

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

We have seen enough of the Biden-Trump race so far to predict what lies ahead over the next seven months of the campaign. Currently, the polls are about dead even. Trump, however, for now enjoys small leads in the majority of the fickle swing/purple states that will likely decide the election.

So here is what we should expect:

Biden

Biden has three major vulnerabilities and three major assets. His fate will depend on how these criteria play out.

First, on the negative side of the ledger, Biden suffers continual mental and physical decline, which is accelerating exponentially. His work week is now more off than on. Aides pray that he can get through a teleprompter without complete incoherence. His speech is so slurred, his syntax so bizarre that he seems to speak a language that is mostly indecipherable.

They rightly fear that any young attractive woman or even preteen might earn a trademark Biden weird call-out, a hair- or accustomed ear-blow, or even an attempted presidential too-long hug or neck nibble.

Steps pose an existential threat, given that the president is one trip away from oblivion. Biden is not even the diminished Biden of 2020, when, in his basement, he at least manipulated the COVID-19 lockdown to mask his infirmities and abbreviated schedules.

The odds are 50/50 whether Biden will even make it over the next five months to the August Democratic Convention. And, assuming that he does, can he rein in efforts to push him off the ticket?

Second, the Biden family is corrupt. Hunter still faces spring- and summer-long felony exposure in connection with his Biden-family brand of tax cheating. Joe knows that his own documents, first-hand witnesses, bank statements, Hunter’s emails, and testimonies from Hunter’s associates reveal that the otherwise talentless but high-living Biden extended family was surviving only by the sale of Senator, Vice President, and future President Joe Biden’s name—and his known willingness to pay fast and loose with legal and ethical constraints.

There is still some chance that, in the current impeachment investigations and trial, more incriminating evidence will emerge or turned witnesses will offer proof of Biden’s criminality. For now, Biden’s lawbreaking is completely dismissed by Attorney General Merrick Garland and by special counsel Robert Hur’s satirical-comedy-worthy argument that even overwhelming evidence pointing to Joe Biden’s criminal behavior cannot be prosecuted because of the president’s dementia.

Third, the hard-left Biden agenda is completely underwater. Not a single Biden administration issue or policy—the border, crime, inflation, energy, foreign policy, race relations, education—polls even 50 percent. Worse, Biden never addresses the inflation created by his massive spending program, the lawlessness in our streets since 2021, the spiking cost of gasoline, or the humiliation abroad, from Kabul to Kyiv to the Chinese balloon. His idea of how to combat inflation is akin to combating obesity by gaining 100 pounds, losing two, and—presto—announcing that obesity was abated.

He spiked racial polarization, proved indifferent to an epidemic of anti-Semitism, and fueled the national debt (an additional $1 trillion every 100 days).

Now Biden is warring on the Supreme Court—a dangerous precedent given that an assassin has already shown up at Justice Kavanaugh’s home, given that mobs have massed at various justices’ residences with impunity, given Sen. Schumer’s prior personal threats at the very doors of the court to Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, and given left-wing rhetoric about packing the court.

All candidate Biden can do is either deny an open border, inflation, crime, racial tensions, and the Kabul humiliation—or claim that the successful policies of Trump, out of power for nearly four years, were responsible for all that crashed on Biden’s watch.

Biden, however, enjoys some natural advantages, most notably incumbency.

(Note that this was not much of an advantage to Trump himself in 2020, given the wild cards of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disastrous nationwide lockdown, and the mysterious workings of the Trump-hating administrative state. We remember the 11th-hour Pfizer declaration that there would be no pre-election announcement, as planned, of the success of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed vaccination initiative. Then, there was indeed an announcement—immediately after the election. And then there was the mysterious CIA/FBI arming of the Biden campaign, on the eve of the last debate and just days before Election Day, with the fake anti-Trump rebuttal of “Russian laptop disinformation.”)

Biden will pull every lever of incumbency, working the office of the presidency in the most Machiavellian and cynical of ways:

a) hoping to lower gas prices by not filling up the strategic petroleum reserve, jawboning illiberal and “pariah” oil producers to pump what he claims he hates, ordering Ukraine not to hit Russian refineries, and appeasing enemies like Iran to keep its oil flowing,

b) unconstitutionally sidestepping rulings of the Supreme Court to ensure more pre-election illegal student-loan-cancellation giveaways,

c) prodding the supposedly independent Federal Reserve to lower interest rates before November,

d) pressuring Mexico to tamp down illegal entries for a few months to serve their shared interests in defeating Trump.

A second asset is his army of satellites.

These include left-wing justices, weaponized federal, state, and local prosecutors, and Trump-biased jury pools. The left expects these to do what the effort to remove Trump’s name from the ballot did not: destroy the Republican candidate, financially and health-wise, and bind him with the Lilliputian ropes of Fani Willis, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, and Jack Smith, who are eager to convict him through weaponized judges, juries, and a venomous media. They also include compromised election officials in urban counties in key swing states.

Biden cannot win unless 70-80 percent of voters in the key swing states do not vote on Election Day. Instead, their ballots must be mailed in, harvested, and curated without accustomed audit and without verification of whether voters are registered US citizens or have voted only once and done so legally.

And—his third major asset—Biden will also have billions of dollars more than Trump to pound home these themes in endless ads, social media shenanigans, and news censorship and blackouts.

Biden feels that he nevertheless must make the election hinge on destroying a monstrous, demonic, and hideous Donald Trump through any means necessary. Biden’s is not a positive campaign but will be waged by despising Donald Trump and all who support him. Expect more of those “semi-fascists”/ “ultra-MAGA” Phantom-of-the-Opera Biden hate speeches.

In the next seven months, the Biden effort will play out with three narratives:

  1. Trump is a January 6th insurrectionist and dictator and will “destroy democracy,” though apparently without weaponizing the FBI or removing his opponents’ names from ballots or siccing right-wing prosecutors on his enemies.

  2. Trump purportedly will kill women by banning all abortions while relegating non-whites to the pre-civil-rights era - despite leaving abortion up to the states, and likely gaining more Latino and Black voters than any prior Republican presidential candidate.

  3. Then we will hear that Trump is a felon who belongs in jail.

All this is the message of the Biden campaign, period.

Trump

Trump likewise has both assets and liabilities. His vulnerabilities are mirror images of Biden’s advantages: he lacks incumbency and the powers that come with it; he does not have an army of officials on his side; and he will have a financial disadvantage.

We have no idea how many gag orders remain. How many late-summer days will Trump spend stuck in court? How many hundreds of millions of his dollars will be expropriated by out-of-control anti-Trump left-wing judges? Can Trump—or any candidate—successfully run with a $1 billion overhead in legal fees and fines and with critical days on the campaign trail diverted to left-wing, media-frenzied, blue-city courtrooms?

In addition, Trump is sometimes his own worst enemy. Trump, one could say, is running mostly against Trump. He knows that if he sticks solely to the agenda, contrasting Biden’s failures with his own past stellar record and future contract with America, he can win. He realizes that he must take the high road and talk idealistically rather than going low and getting angry.

But who could be expected to do so after being the victim of two unfair impeachments, left-wing lies like Russian collusion and disinformation, efforts to railroad him into prison with outrageously politicized legal vendettas, and attempts to remove his name from the ballot?

Trump’s advantages are clear.

First, his record: on foreign policy, inflation, and the economy. But most important for the election is his ability to connect with people.

So far, the split-screen differences between candidate Trump and President Biden have proved overwhelmingly to Trump’s advantage: Biden in New York schmoozing at a black-tie night with celebrities and ex-presidents to haul in $26 million in campaign cash from the hyper-rich, while Trump is with middle-class NYPD rank-and-file at a rainy wake for a murdered cop—killed by a repeat felon released without bail.

Or Trump buying fast food and milkshakes amid a mostly black Atlanta Chick-fil-A crowd, while Biden dines with the venomous Robert De Niro and the zillionaire Jeff Bezos at a White House dinner, with the celebrities’ trophy girls vying to get the most stares at their multi-thousand-dollar designer clothes—as if they were on the red carpet at the Oscars rather than in the people’s house.

What can Trump do to make the best use of all this?

He must magnanimously reach out to former rivals such as Haley, even as she continues to demonize him, and to DeSantis as well. He must unite the House Republicans to keep their razor-thin majority at all costs. He must campaign nonstop among poor whites, blacks, and Latinos, appealing to shared class concerns rather than the racial obsessions and psychodramas of the bicoastal elite.

He should skip the ad hominem invective, forget the past rivalries with his primary opponents, and assume a corrupt media does not deserve a minute of his time. If he does this, he can win.

But if he climbs down into the mud with his leftist opponents, trades insults, wrestles with his opponents, and obsesses about fake news and the crooked media, he will likely lose.

Aside from Trump’s temperament, we must always remember that the answers to two other fundamental questions will determine the outcome of the election:

  1. Can the Republicans monitor the balloting and return it to the environment of 2016 rather than 2020?

  2. Can Trump convince millions of minorities, independents, and former Biden voters that there are plenty of reasons to vote for someone they may not like—including the very future of the United States as a free republic as envisioned by the Founders, rather than an increasingly weak, anemic, cranky socialist has-been?

Finally, we must also remember that, ultimately, the outcome of the election could be determined by unpredictable events.

What happens if the Gaza War expands to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, as Israel is attacked from all directions? Or the military of the United States is attacked in the Middle East, as in the past?

What will be the status of Ukraine by November—static, safer, or absorbed by Russia—and who will be praised or blamed for what ensues?

Will China risk attacking or blockading Taiwan on the theory that it will never be gifted a more ossified president than Biden?

Will the left unleash another late-season October surprise like the 2016 Access Hollywood tape or the 2020 “Russian disinformation” laptop farce? And will these desperate gambits resonate or boomerang?

And, lastly, will the candidates in October and November resemble the candidates of today? These are the two oldest candidates ever to run for president. Will Trump still be vibrant at 78? Will Biden still be upright at 81?

Will Biden’s feebleness still earn him sympathy, or at least respectful silence? Or will it devolve to the point that the public, worn out by his lapses, concludes that Joe Biden would not be able to keep any job in America—except the Presidency of the United States?

Tyler Durden Mon, 04/15/2024 - 16:20

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