Monday, May 4, 2020

May, 2020, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: The Coronavirus's Orwellian Implications And More Implications

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) Anyone who wants to live free and live in a free country is always suspicious when a government official or politician says they are impinging on your freedom for “your own good.” Because this is how freedom is destroyed, little by little so that before you know it, government and the political class has destroyed your liberty by a thousand cuts.

George Orwell illustrated that in his novel, 1984. Government surveillance was everywhere in that story in order to “protect” citizens and keep them safe. In reality, it was a form of control, to monitor and if necessary, take repressive steps against one’s freedom as a result of that monitoring.

This type of 1984 behavior has been growing and growing inside the authoritarian state of China for some time and the country’s political class and government functions there have used the coronavirus to accelerate that control and repression, as reported by CNN:
  • As a result of the virus, the government is installing surveillance cameras outside of citizens' front doors to make sure they stay under quarantine per government orders relative to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Even worse, some citizens are reporting that government operatives have actually placed surveillance cameras INSIDE people’s homes under the premise that they need to make sure that those under quarantine don't leave their homes during the quarantine period.
  • Irishman Ian Lahiffe lives in Beijing and when he returned from a trip to southern China he found a camera being installed to watch his front door: "(Having a camera outside your door is) an incredible erosion of privacy. It just seems to be a massive data grab. And I don't know how much of it is actually legal."



  • Apparently, according to CNN, there is no specific law that regulates or bans the use of surveillance cameras on citizens that have committed no crimes.
  • And there was no indication whether these cameras are being taken down after one’s quarantine period.
  • But this should not surprise us since China’s citizens are probably under more government surveillance than any other people in the world.
  • According to government broadcaster CCTV, over 20 million cameras have been installed in the country since 2017 to watch citizens movements and actions.
  • IHS Markit Technology estimates that the country has a whopping 349 million surveillance cameras installed around the country.
  • In fact, eight of the top ten cities in the world relative to surveillance cameras per 1,000 residents are in China.
So when our politicians start lecturing us on how to behave during a health crisis, how they insist that we stay home and stay afraid, how quickly their smile escalates into a stern warning and arrests, think about how their ranting and raving is just a few short steps away from China's 1984 surveillance behavior. 

Politicians usually do not facilitate freedom, they almost always curtail it. And step by step, you go from a friendly politician's smile telling us they know best to having cameras installed outside our doors to track our movements and restrict our freedom.

2) Michael Flynn was a member of Trump’s election staff. However, he ran afoul of the FBI that was supposedly looking into the Trump campaign collusion with Russia. He ended up getting accused and persecuted for what at the time seemed like some pretty weak evidence of him misbehaving and collaborating with the Russians to fix the 2016 Presidential election.

Well, it turns out that he was not the guilty party, the FBI and its relentless and uncalled for hounding of him was the guilty party:
  • Newly released FBI documents showed that the FBI were far out of integrity and official investigation protocols in order to entrap Flynn for actions he never did in an attempt to overthrow the Trump administration.
  • According to notes and documents that were written by former FBI head of counterintelligence, William Priestap, after a meeting with James Comey and Andrew McCabe, the highest ranking FBI executives at the time, we now know that the FBI was more interested in trapping Flynn in a lie than actually investigating any crime relative to the Russians.
  • For instance, one note read: “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
  • George Washington University Law Professor, Jonathan Turley, said the notes and documents should scare the daylights out of any liberty loving Americans given the abuse of power within the FBI and the Justice Department: “We need to hear from the DOJ official on the meaning of this note. However, the reference to the Logan Act is particularly chilling. It suggests the use of a flagrantly unconstitutional act to trap a top Trump official. This is just one document (though more is expected to be released). However, it adds troubling new details to an already dubious prosecution by the Justice Department. The clear impression is that the DOJ sought to bag a top Trump official in legal version of a canned hunt.”
  • In other Priestap notes, he references the concerns of FBI investigating agents who were worried they were jeopardizing the FBI by going after Flynn along political lines, not criminal lines: “If we’re seen as playing games, White House will be furious.” 
  • Flynn avoided major charges and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but claims he only plead guilty to that charge because of duress from the investigation which in reality was a political witch hunt.
  • His lawyer, Sidney Powell summarized what the new documents mean: “It’s just absolutely appalling what these agents, and then special counsel operatives, did to General Flynn. It’s abuse of their authority at every turn. I interpret the notes as absolutely damning of their conduct and their plan. They rejected the advice of the apparent lawyer who wrote on the handwritten note that they not play games with the White House and instead that is exactly what they did.”
Abuse of power and attacks on freedom. Whether it is government operatives in China watching your every move even though you did nothing wrong or harmful or crooked, or high ranking government officials here who are undermining people’s votes and First Amendment rights by focusing the full weight of the Federal government on an innocent citizen, 1984 is not that far away.

3) It seems when a liberal or Democrat these days doesn't agree with a citizen’s viewpoint, rather than sit down and have a mature, adult conversation of the issue, they almost always and immediately play the race card. And current Democratic Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is no exception. 

The governor has been under fire recently because of the draconian and often stupid restrictions she has placed on her state’s citizens as a result of the coronarvirus pandemic. For example, you cannot buy paint, gardening tools and seeds during her lock down unless you buy it from a store that is less than 50,000 square feet in size. Makes no sense.

Rather than selectively apply lock down rules around the state based on regional situations, a large state that has far different rates of the virus, she has blanketed the whole, large state with the same restrictions. For example, the vast number of infections in the state are in and around the city of Detroit. The rate of infections in the upper peninsula of the state are far lower. Thus, citizens in the far away areas from serious infections are chafing under restrictions that make no sense and rob them of their freedom and jobs.

As a result of her nonsensical approach to the pandemic, the state capital has been the scene of protests from citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to question the wisdom of her insane rules. Rather than listen to what they say and consider some rational alternatives, if any, she immediately played the racist card when discussing the peaceful protests: “There were swastikas and Confederate flags and nooses and people with assault rifles. Some of the outrageousnesses of what happened at our capitol depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country.”

Some major things wrong with this pig headed approach to the crisis and citizen concerns:
  • She actually afterwards admitted that those she is causing racists were actually a very small portion of the overall peaceful protests.
  • So, she first overreacts and gives the impression that the protests were not concerned citizens but a Ku KLux Klan rally only to then back off of it.
  • To be honest, I looked at a lot of the photos from the protests and saw nothing of the sort so she is either lying, I just missed these photos of confederate flags and such or it was a miniscule portion of the protesters.
  • Regardless, the First Amendment allows citizens to protest government actions any way they want.
  • From a rifle perspective, the Second Amendment allows citizens to be armed and current Michigan law allows those arms to be carried openly, thus, her complaining about the rifles is another assault on the Bill of Rights.
And like we said, rather than actually considering that maybe these citizens have a good point or suggestion to make, she rejects them out of hand, attacks the First and Second Amendment rights, and plays the race card like a coward.

Not a good post for freedom today. China watching its citizens’ every move, both before and now more intensely during the pandemic, the top law enforcement entity in the country ignoring rules and laws in order to upset an election, and a state governor who does not respect the First Amendment, the Second Amendment and is a race baiter. 1984 is not that far away.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w



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