For recovering politicians, this is the most dangerous time for a relapse, especially those living in a swing state. Their televisions, radios, and social media are chock with political news and ads. This can spark a recrudescence of old vices, such as arguing at the top of one’s lungs at an offending ad or slanted news story, and, worse, then conjuring a way to counter it and win the election for their side. It may even spur them to contact old friends still in the political arena and urge them to incorporate their “unexpectedly” inspired idea into their campaign. Such a loss of realistic expectations and understanding of what others are going through constitutes sure signs the poor creature is reverting to a politician’s solipsistic mindset.
Further exacerbating the risk of their relapsing, interested friends from across the country send recovering politicians’ links to ads, news, or tweets to get their reaction. This can further trigger bouts of the ex-pol shouting to the heavens—or elsewhere—and reengaging the sordid political world they had renounced.
Yet, by far the most frequent temptation occurs when friends from across the country contact the recovering politician to see if he or she has any insight into how their swing state and/or the nation will ultimately choose for president (and often who will control both chambers of Congress). These contacts are usually precipitated by the inquirer seeing a poll and asking if the recovering politician believes it is “accurate.” Tragically, the recovering politician may immediately commence addressing the merits of the poll’s methodology; the voting history of various constituencies vis-à-vis the poll results; and sundry other micro- and macro-critiques and speculations regarding the election—including their view of “what they need to do to win!”
Of course, the friends of an ex-pol do not want to be the reason he or she goes cannonballing back into the political cesspool. So, for their sake and that of my fellow recovering politicians, I offer this bit of advice to avoid the temptation to relapse posed by “the polls say” query: Watch the opponent, not the polls.
The virtue of this approach is to allow the inquirer to refrain from dragging the recovering politician back into the electoral fray for a simple reason: the inquirer can figure it out on their own. Granted, it isn’t foolproof, since fools will be too benighted to interpret an opponent’s political machinations. Still, it can help reduce the number of “the polls say” questions and, ergo, the near occasion of temptation for the ex-pol to reengage.
Presently, the Democrat nominee’s presidential bid exemplifies why understanding what a campaign is doing is the best barometer of how a candidate is performing with the electorate—not a poll.
On the micro-level, one can view the Harris campaign’s targeting of individual constituencies, which have traditionally comprised integral parts of the Democrat coalition. From young African-American men to Hispanics to Arab-Americans to Jewish-Americans, the Harris campaign’s assumed, almost unanimous, and necessary support has been lacking. As a result, we see not only an increase in her campaign’s messaging to these constituencies, we see the surreal hectoring of young black males—and males, in general—by surrogates, such as the Obamas. Asking voters to support your candidate indicates your campaign is okay; urging voters to support your candidate indicates your campaign is troubled; criticizing voters as not being “man” enough to vote for your candidate indicates your campaign is cooked. Other targeted messages abound within the Harris campaigns, including the emphasis on increased federal spending within the African-American community (in one of the most patronizingly racist appeals imaginable); abortion (though it is hard to imagine those who believe abortion is the overriding issue not already voting for the vice president); and the big lie about “Project 2025” being Donald Trump’s post-election agenda—all of which are designed to unite and rally a presently eroding and unenthusiastic Democrat voter base.
On the macro-level, be one a political junkie or a well-adjusted person, the Harris campaign’s desperation is patent for all to see, notably by those Democrat candidates’ running from the radical leftist Ms. Harris and racing toward the middle:
August’s “politics of joy” has devolved into October’s “Trump is Hitler.”
Now, do you really need to risk a recovering politician’s relapse to recognize the Harris campaign is circling the drain?
BETHLEHEM, Pa.—Nestled in the heart of eastern Pennsylvania is one of two state counties that has been a bellwether in the last four presidential elections, and may decide who controls the White House next year.
Northampton County, home of the former Bethlehem Steel plant—once the world’s largest producer of steel—is one of two once-blue counties in the Keystone State, along with Erie County, that then-candidate Donald Trump flipped in 2016 before moving back to the Democrats in 2020.
Now considered a swing county in the largest battleground state, Northampton is seeing significant attention this year. Democrats visited the county in September, Trump stopped repeatedly in the larger Lehigh Valley area, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has been to Bethlehem twice recently.
The attention underscores how important the county will be in determining the winning presidential candidate in Pennsylvania and, by extension, the White House.
“These fluctuations between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Barack Obama, I think, are indicative of the fact that we truly are a true bellwether,” Northampton County GOP Chair Glenn Geissinger told The Epoch Times.
“We reflect the national feel as well as that of the Commonwealth pretty well, because our demographics accurately reflect the cross-section of everybody. We [also] have a good, solid portion of independents.”
Part of that political diversity comes from the region’s decades-long evolution.
Industrialization “was a sort of a slam dunk for the Democrats,” Tony Iannelli, president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, told The Epoch Times. “There’s still a fair amount of labor here.”
When manufacturing went offshore in the mid-1990s, Iannelli says the area “hit a wall “ but has since bounced back.
“The bad times literally set us up for the good times,” he said. Health care, life sciences, sports, and other industries are flooding into the area, building a bustling tourism industry.
Residents in neighboring New York City and Philadelphia—both a 90-minute drive away—are moving into Northampton County, leading to a 5.1 percent population growth from 2010 to 2020, according to U.S. census data.
Now “softer R” or moderate Republicans are moving into the area from neighboring New York and New Jersey, Geissinger said, adding to the area’s political diversity.
That growth has also allowed the GOP to shave off the Democrats’ voter registration advantage in Northampton County. In 2008, there were over 30,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in the county, but by September, that margin was roughly 12,000.
“We’ve cut the margin significantly over time … and we’ve also seen an increase in the number of independent voters,” Geissinger said.
“What Donald Trump did is he brought a populist message to the Republican Party, and that populist message has paid off for him,” he added, especially in appealing to working-class voters.
President Joe Biden, in Geissinger’s view, won over older blue-collar voters in 2020 because of his connections to Scranton, where he was born and raised.
“We’re not going to experience that this time around with Kamala Harris. It’s just not going to happen,” he said.
The chairman acknowledged that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has advantages with younger, college-educated groups, but is confident of Trump’s chances this year.
“[Trump has] made inroads with blue-collar … Democrats, and that’s going to pull him over significantly in Northampton County,” Geissinger said.
The Epoch Times contacted the Northampton County Democratic Party but did not receive a response by press time.
“This race is a toss-up. So it tells me that we’re still kind of a purple state in the sense the urban areas … tend to be more Democratic, and then our outlying regions tend to be Republican,” Iannelli said.
County Demographics
The cities of Bethlehem and Easton toward the south near Bucks County have been traditionally blue but Pennsylvania’s rural, agricultural areas to the north are largely Republican, Geissinger said.
“Certainly, we would have the traditional Democrat base that will still be there in the cities, just as we have the traditional Republican base that will be in the rural areas,” he added.
Some of the locals are drawn to the county’s diversity.
“There’s a lot of diversity out here, and not even just in terms of culture or ethnicity, but just in terms of like different groups,” Francisco Santana, 25, told The Epoch Times.
“You have seniors, you have middle-aged people, and there’s a lot of colleges here.”
While the county is 85.1 percent white, according to the U.S. census, 8.3 percent of residents are black, and 15.9 percent are Hispanic or Latino.
Trump’s support among Hispanic voters has increased in 8 years, but Harris has leaned into the controversial remarks said at his Madison Square Garden rally last month about Puerto Rico, where a comedian called the territory a “floating island of garbage.” Those with Puerto Rican heritage make up 56.4 percent of Northampton County’s Hispanic population.
Bethlehem Voter Vibes
Modern-day Bethlehem sits like a crown jewel beneath the hills of the Appalachian Highlands, and is a central hub of Northampton County.
Like much of industrial Pennsylvania, Bethlehem was a victim of the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing, which led to the demise of its once-mighty Bethlehem Steel plant—formerly the world’s largest producer of steel, fabricating structures like the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Nestled along the Lehigh River, the sprawling site’s towering buildings are now weathered, rusted, and decayed from decades of neglect. Windows are cracked or shattered, with crumbling bricks exposing the entrails of what used to be a mighty industrial giant.
“When so much went overseas [in] steel making, they just weren’t ready for it. And that was the end of their demise,” Iannelli said.
Some in the area still have connections to the plant.
“For some families, it took a huge toll,” Amanda Holi, 36, whose father, uncle, and grandfather once worked at Bethlehem Steel, told The Epoch Times. When part of the site became the Sands Casino, she worked there as well.
However, she sees a resurgence in the area,with new developments and businesses feeding the local economy.
“There’s tons of traditions that I feel make it cute and quaint,” she said, describing the local sports rivalries and the new restaurants opening locally.
Along the winding streets of Bethlehem’s residential borrows, rows of houses sport Harris-Walz yard signs. But for every four homes backing the Democratic nominee, one will see a Trump-Vance sign—a reminder of the support for Republicans in a county that was once solidly blue, and now has only a tiny majority of registered Democrats.
Voters of all ages, including students at Lehigh University, spoke about their desire for political unity, access to healthcare, reproductive rights, the economy, and their fears about the 2024 election.
Some were aware of the significance of their vote as residents of a bellwether county in the largest U.S. battleground state.
“It makes me feel a little responsible to try to convince people to vote the way I think is important, because I think we’re in a crucial time here,” Norah Hooper, a retiree who moved to the area two years ago, told The Epoch Times.
“It’s made me try to talk to people about it, and to work towards Harris to make sure that she wins,” she said. Hooper feels “scared to death” about the election and wants a president who empathizes with all Americans.
Northampton’s diversity gives many different voter groups a chance to make their mark on the nation, Santana said.
“Even if it is a battleground state, I think it’s nice to see that a lot of demographics are here and are having their voice heard,” he said.
Ben Cohen, 43, said he would vote regardless. His support for Harris this year is a “very simple, binary choice” as he does not think Trump is a good leader for the country, calling him a wild card. Cohen says he supports an economic agenda that focuses on the middle class.
Others downplayed the state and county’s significance in the election, pointing out that every ballot nationwide contains many local and statewide races.
“I think every vote counts regardless of where you are,” a man who declined to give his name told The Epoch Times. “Every vote counts in some way.”
Concerns About Election Results
Some expressed deep concerns about what could play out on election day.
“I already voted by mail, and I’m kind of scared that [Trump] might win,” Mary Jean Langman, a retired teacher who moved to Northampton County from Scranton, told The Epoch Times.
She’s worried about the former president cutting Social Security, which, along with Langman’s teacher’s pension, is her lifeline. While Trump has said this year he would not make any changes to Social Security, he has discussed making cuts to it in the past, including in 2020, during the last year of his administration.
The economy is often named as one of the top issues on voters’ minds in most polls, although some expressed optimism about the country’s trajectory.
“All these years that I’ve been here, it was always the economy; that was the issue” that mattered in most elections, Babak Kamyab told The Epoch Times. He owns a gift shop in downtown Bethlehem and immigrated to the United States from Iran in 1977.
Despite economic woes since COVID, Kamyab says his business is thriving.
“The economy is like an ocean, if it’s turning whether up or down, it’s going to make a huge circle, very slowly, to come back up or go down. That’s the way [the] economy works,” he said.
Kamyab’s shop is one of the only along Main Street with a Harris-Walz sign at its entrance. Given how close the race seems in recent polling, he expressed concerns about Trump’s chances but said he thinks Harris will prevail if she stays the course.
“I mean, the international situation is a terrible situation,” Kamyab said, referring to the escalating military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. “But at least I know with [Trump], the Ukraine situation is going to get worse.”
Frankie Lozada, 37, and Timear Haley, 30, both moved to the Lehigh Valley to join Hogar Crea, an international drug rehabilitation program that has a location in nearby Allentown. While Lozada doesn’t pay much attention to politics, Haley is inspired by Harris’s messaging.
“[Her slogan] ‘When we fight, we win,’ it kind of caught me, because I was at a stage in my life where I wanted to give up, and I just didn’t want to live life anymore,” Haley said.
“When she said that, it kind of took to me, and I was just like, I would keep going with her with that slogan, so fight and win. So far, so good, I’ve been a month clean,” he said. Haley hopes to start a business when he gets back on his feet.
Many of the students at Bethlehem’s Lehigh University are deeply engaged in the 2024 election. For some, it is the first time they’re old enough to cast a ballot.
“I just want younger candidates” and smaller generational gaps between them, Raquel Romero, 19, told The Epoch Times.
“Our financial state right now is absolutely horrible with the fact that living expenses are almost that height of this generation, at least mine,” she said. Bodily autonomy as a woman is also a central issue on her mind this election.
“It’s definitely difficult because it’s almost choosing between two evils. I definitely understand how difficult it could be for the candidates themselves,” Romero said. She sees no quick and easy solutions for inflation, as raising salaries could also increase the prices of goods.
“At the end of the day, we’ve had so many experiences where one candidate says one thing, and then they just never do it,” she added. Romero knows who she’s voting for, but declined to say.
Even though Haksheel Alleck, 23, an international student from Mauritius Island, can’t vote in this election, he’s concerned about illegal immigration and the nation’s geopolitical tension with other countries.
He’s also worried about how both candidates could affect visas for international students like himself.
“It’s always on my mind, would my visa still be relevant in the next few years? Would my status change [as] the political landscape changes here?” Alleck added.
Other students, acknowledging the voting enthusiasm among their social circles, expressed frustration with the choices of candidates.
“It’s really sad,” Max Denbow, 20, told The Epoch Times. “It’s also tough because … each candidate has aspects that appeal to me, but I can’t get myself to vote for either of them.”
Denbow is writing in his own name on his ballot this year.
When asked what kind of message or agenda he’d like to hear from a future presidential candidate—either Republican or Democrat—to win his vote, Denbow was quick to respond.
“Someone that prioritizes unity. We need to be unified.”
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a significant positive evolution within American society. In the early days of the Ron Paul movement I remember the hopeful groundswell of support for a new conservative epoch that adopted a little Libertarianism and a recognition that most “conspiracy theories” are actually conspiracy realities. It was the kind of catalyst that was needed to break the long running false paradigm of Neo-Cons vs Democrats; it was the beginning of the conservative rebellion we see happening today.
How do I know things have changed? For one, Neo-Cons are almost universally hated by real conservatives. So much so that it has forced those politicians to show their true colors and come out in favor of Democrat/globalist candidates like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The mask is truly off and the act is over. You’re not going to see people like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney or Lindsay Graham taken very seriously by anyone anymore.
The return to a true conservative philosophy has been initiated and this time it doesn’t look like it will be snuffed out like the Barry Goldwater era of the early 1960s. The concept of limited government, an end to debt spending, sound money, the removal of elitist NGOs from political influence, a hard-line stance against globalism, legit border security, meritocracy, a rejection of progressive deconstruction and moral relativism, all of these things are prime conservative principles.
Such ideas have been treated as “archaic” and “barbaric” for decades because they threaten the structures that keep the establishment elites in power. Today, they are making a comeback.
Some will say that it’s all because of Donald Trump, but this is not the case. This movement was growing into a Juggernaut long before Trump, though he is certainly riding the wave as it comes to fruition. The question is, will Trump do it justice if he gets the gold this week? I predicted a Trump win in 2016 for months leading up to the election despite the army of naysayers (I also predict he will win in 2024). But, for me, his first term left a lot to be desired; the biggest problem being the elitist creepers filling his cabinet.
But hey, at least he wasn’t promoting transsexual procedures for children or trying to start World War III with Russia like the Democrats have been doing. I’ll also admit that Trump’s coalition of allies is looking FAR better this time around. Talk of Ron Paul joining the team is surprising and gives me some hope.
During the Ron Paul movement in 2012 I was once invited to a conservative dinner with some liberty bigwigs at the time (most of them are long out of the picture now, either retired or dead) and some were arguing about the presidential election. The position was presented that voting for Romney over Ron Paul would at least get Obama out of the White House. Others suggested that this was simply choosing the lesser of two evils.
I and others argued that there was no lesser evil. They were both equally demonic. One man in the group said “Well Jesus isn’t running for office.”
I doubt that man would defend Mitt Romney today. That said, I don’t view the election of 2024 the same way I did in 2012. Jesus isn’t running, that’s for certain, but the Devil definitely is in the form of the extreme political left. They are evil incarnate. Maybe Trump turns out to be a disappointment, but he’s no devil. And if he doesn’t follow through on his campaign promises then conservative can hold him accountable and it won’t be treated as an insurrection, just a correction.
There’s already millions of conservatives putting the candidate under a microscope and we don’t function the way Democrats do. The party is meaningless to us, it’s the policies and the follow through that matter. You can’t mention Trump around a group of conservatives without half of them noting his shortcomings. His mistakes are tallied regularly by the very people who originally voted for him.
Leftists don’t dare do that within their own circles. They don’t care about policy, they only care about power.
No conservative is going to change his or her mind about securing the border, deporting the illegals, shrinking government, ending American participation in the Ukraine War and ending the transing of kids on a federal level (to start with). These things are going to happen eventually with or without Trump.
And I can’t help but notice how much the establishment seems to be breaking down in a panic over the idea of a new conservative renaissance. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the new world order elites look as worried and despondent as they do right now. (I’m thinking specifically of Lynn de Rothchild at the beginning of this year pouting over the public exposure of ESG and talking about how the globalists would have to abandon it in favor of a more discreet program. Or, John Kerry this month at the climate talks in New York bitterly admonishing free speech on the web and how it was sabotaging the globalist agenda).
When was the last time you saw WEF globalists taking center stage in the media? What happened to the Council For Inclusive Capitalism? ESG controls and lending have been crushed. DEI is quickly dying, as it should. Gen Z men are reportedly the most conservative group of young men in generations. There is a sea change happening right now, and if you’ve been paying attention from within the alternative sphere for a decade or more then you have probably noticed it.
This is not a momentary flash of cultural awareness. This is a permanent societal shift. Unfortunately, when this sort of thing happens engineered calamity usually follows.
Globalists and their leftist puppets can’t conceive of losing. They can’t fathom the idea that their ideology is failing and that the public isn’t buying what they’re selling. They will council themselves and suggest that the populace is simply “too stupid” to understand the necessity of the globalist vision. They’ll say that the rise of the conservative right is a “great step backwards” and a “dark age”. They’ll claim that this will lead to an epic disaster on a planetary scale.
Then…those same people take action to CREATE that disaster.
My original prediction for 2024 was that another presidential election would not happen; that there would be an event that disrupts the election and sends the country into chaos. We almost had that happen with two separate assassination attempts on Donald Trump. However, by sheer luck it appears that I was wrong and the election is moving forward. What does this mean for the future?
I think most of us in the alternative economic field understand well that if Trump reenters the White House the complex manipulation of financial data and jobs data by the Biden/Harris Administration will suddenly end. Meaning, the real data will come out, it will look very bad, and the media will immediately accuse Trump and conservatives of destroying the economy.
On top of that, conservatives will be inheriting two separate proxy wars from Democrats – The war with Russia through Ukraine and the war with Iran through Israel. Both of these scenarios have the potential to escalate into a world war. I would argue that at this point a world war is inevitable (the first stage has already begun) and Trump will not be able to keep America out of it even if he wants to. Too many dominoes have been set in motion.
Then you have the potential domestic fallout from a Trump win with leftists rioting across the country (as soon as the weather warms up enough enough for their dainty little hands to throw bricks and Molotovs). The goal of the leftist mob is to force conservatives to act like the very “fascists” the activists accuse us of being. Of course, if that happened they would be dead, but they will have destroyed the conservative moral ideal in the process.
These are the kinds of people we’re dealing with. They aren’t going to sit back and let us prove the country can function far better without progressive influence and woke social engineering. They would rather burn the whole thing to the ground first.
My point is, always be on guard in the moments when you think you’re winning. That’s when the people that mean you harm will be most angry, when they will be most unhinged, and when they will be most inclined to strike.
* * *
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A judge has denied Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s request to block the $1 million giveaway program that billionaire Elon Musk and America PAC have been operating in the lead-up to the Nov. 5 election.
Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Judge Angelo Foglietta issued the denial after a Nov. 4 hearing that was prompted by Krasner’s civil lawsuit against Musk and America PAC.
Krasner had accused Musk and America PAC of running an illegal lottery, which he said created a public nuisance, and violating a state consumer protection law.
The program is set to conclude on Election Day, Nov. 5.
The two sides had a brief hearing on Oct. 31, but Foglietta decided that he had been divested of jurisdiction after Musk filed to move the case to federal court. A federal judge sent the case back to state court the following day, and Foglietta quickly responded by scheduling a hearing for Nov. 4.
Foglietta said at the beginning of the hearing that because another day remained for the program, he didn’t think the case was moot.
Musk was not in the courtroom, located within Philadelphia City Hall.
America PAC attorney Chris Gober argued that despite Musk’s description of the giveaway as random, the program was not random.
Gober said the program involved a contractual relationship in which participants served as spokespeople for the political action committee after being selected by a predetermined pool of people.
So far, several individuals from Pennsylvania have won as part of the giveaway. Krasner’s complaint cited a post on X in which America PAC said more than 280,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania had signed the petition, which makes them eligible for the giveaway.
Gober said that 6,661 of 18,000 payments—of differing amounts—owed to the residents of Philadelphia County had already been mailed. Around 3,000 were in process and slated to be mailed on Nov. 4 while the remaining—around 7,000—were slated to be mailed on Nov. 5.
John Summers, an attorney representing Krasner’s office, said the PAC is relatively opaque about details surrounding the giveaways and terms for the PAC’s relationship with participants.
Summers pointed to Musk’s giveaway statement and argued that the fact that the giveaway wasn’t actually random was not a valid defense. He also noted the testimony from America PAC Director Chris Young stating that he was surprised to hear Musk call the giveaway random.
During his closing argument, Summers alleged the defendants’ lack of transparency cheated thousands of Philadelphians.
Andy Taylor, another attorney for the defense, basing his closing argument on the First Amendment, said Krasner was asking for a violation of core political speech by stopping people from signing the PAC’s petition.
Taylor said that the giveaway was by design rather than by chance. The winner selection process, he said, should be likened to a job application rather than a lottery.
Summers responded to Taylor in part by stating that the case had nothing to do with freedom of speech and should instead be viewed as fraud.
“No one’s First Amendment rights are being smothered,” Summers said.
Are you an aspiring oligarch, dictator or autocrat? Do you want to wield power whilst maintaining a façade of popular support and democratic mandate? Do you want to make your proles believe they have a choice?
Well then, welcome to the first of our “How to…” series.
A selection of articles dedicated to teaching aspiring authoritarians how to hide tyranny behind a reassuring mask of freedom.
Here we’ll go into the finer points of how it’s possible to have “elections” that mean almost nothing.
What we talk about when we talk about rigging an election
First things first, we need to establish what we mean when we talk about “election rigging”.
Controlling the outcome of an election is a comparatively simple, even vulgar, process. All you need to do is manipulate the count and/or simply lie about the result.
However doing this efficiently – rigging an election with as little effort as possible and disguising that fact is more difficult.
In short, if your rigged election is entirely reliant on simply forging ballots you have done something wrong. If you want to reliably and consistently control the results of your “elections” you need to be more creative than that.
The vast majority of your work pre-election will be dedicated to laying the groundwork, building infrastructure, and lubricating the public.
The vote itself is the final destination in a long journey that starts with…
1. The System
The CIA is a perfect example of the kind of institution which is not answerable to the electorate. You’ll need to create your own version of this.
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
Your first priority when constructing your system should be establishing an infrastructure that is not significantly impacted by elections.
Unelected civil servants, intelligence agencies, military officers, judges, NGOs, corporate interests and lobby groups should form the permanent foundations of the power structure, while “elected officials” should ideally be mere window dressing and wall-paper, with zero opportunity to act independently.
Having by this means established a covert power structure that effectively guarantees an election will never be able to change anything meaningful – what we can call your “Deep State” – you need to set about creating a “democracy” that camouflages this fact.
The design of your “democracy” can make or break an efficiently controlled election. Following our advice on the voting system you employ can make controlling the outcome of your “elections” relatively hassle-free.
For starters, you should be aiming to make as little work for your Deep State as possible. A country is a big and complex entity, and effectively micro-managing millions upon millions of individual votes is demanding of man-hours and man-power.
That’s where your “voting system” comes into play, and it should work, not by falsifying and manipulating every single vote, but by making the vast majority of those votes mutually-canceling.
Using your fully controlled “two-party system” (point 2), you should try to achieve a status quo in which the voting intentions of the majority will always split fairly evenly between two meaningless “choices”.
You can do this with class or race or gender messaging, it doesn’t matter, just so long as their minds are made up at an early stage and tend to stay that way.
Essentially you need a situation in which roughly 49% of your populace will vote for Team Red and 49% will vote for Team Blue.
This then creates your mythical “election deciders” – the remaining 2% of the electorate whose votes you will need to care about. You can call them “swing states” or “floating voters” or some terminology of your own.
What you’re aiming for by this means is an “election” that is decided by as few votes as possible.
Once you have the system in place you need to start thinking about your political parties.
2. The Parties
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties.”
An essential part of your control mechanism is, as referenced above, the “Two-Party System”. Ideally this would be a perfect but meaningless binary, but this method can absorb a few token “third party” options provided they remain purely minority choices.
In fact permitting a few “independents” or “wild cards” to proliferate can even be beneficial for a few reasons –
a) it reinforces your appearance of genuine democracy, while remaining largely meaningless since the aforementioned entrenchment means they will never gain any serious traction.
b) because sandwiching your Big Two parties between the “kill the rich and eat their babies” party on the Left and the “set fire to everyone darker than taupe on the Dulux paint scale” party on the Right only makes your two “REAL” parties look more sensible and “safe”.
c) Hopeless minority third parties can act as good anger-sponges and safety-valves for people who may be beginning to see through your rigged system.
Of course, if you are doing this thoroughly you will probably be controlling the third parties as well. But that isn’t essential and in the main, you’ll want to focus on The Big Two.
Establishing your Big Two is relatively easy, after all, you have money and power and (thanks to your candidate filtering processes, point 3) you have an entire political class dedicated to the pursuit of those things.
Bringing both Big Two parties under your banner is easy. The hard part is refining the skill of taking two near-identical things and somehow making them appear not just different but diametrically opposed.
Your press will play an important role here. They must report only on the minor points of difference, and completely ignore or elide the obvious fact that the two parties agree on every single major issue.
IMPORTANT – The unquestioned assumptions holding your system in place only work if they remain unquestioned, and they only remain unquestioned if people don’t realise they are there.
This is the primary purpose of the Big Two parties, limit choice and control public discourse – while appearing to do the exact opposite.
When the press discuss the Big Two parties they should talk about ill-defined concepts instead of facts. Use words like “progressive”, “liberal”, “traditional” and “common sense”. Words with relative qualitative meaning as opposed to objective quantitative value.
Focus on aesthetic, surface-level differences. Contrast colours and iconography. Make sure they aim at different bases and demographics to encourage that 50/50 entrenchment we discussed in point 1.
Sidenote: One of the additional benefits of these two near-identical parties that constantly pretend to be polar opposites is that when you really need to sell something to everyone you can unite the parties in “bi-partisan support”, and the press can sell the issue as “so important that even Red and Blue agree”.
3. The Candidates
“If you own everyone on the ballot, you don’t have to rig anything.”
So, you have a power structure in place that works independently of any and all “elected” officials, you have a voting system that is easy to sway in either direction, and you have two parties as near-identical as makes no difference.
But you still need actual – for want of a better word – “people”, to fill the role of “leader”. These are your candidates, the pool of potential puppets from which you pick.
The good news here is that this process is partly automated via self-selection. The kind of shallow narcissists who seek positions of power are exactly the kinds of people you want on your roster.
It is essential for the maintenance of the status quo that ANY candidates for high political office must be passed through levels of filtration before any ordinary person has the opportunity to put a check next to their name on a ballot paper.
a) Money. Your system needs to ensure no one can run for high office without a LOT of money behind them. Since you and your class allies control all the money worth controlling, this essentially means no one can run for office without your approval.
b) Education and training. As part of your power structure you should have invested resources in your education system. You should be selecting potential “leaders” at an early stage and directing their development through internships and “excellence programs” etc.
As people progress through this system, you need to offer them opportunities to compromise themselves – morally and financially. Anyone who does not avail themselves of those opportunities must be rejected immediatelyand their career stalled or curtailed.
Only those candidates willing to compromise themselves will progress to the next level.
This both de-selects inappropriate applicants and provides important kompromat for future utility. Your intelligence agencies should maintain up to date dossiers on prospective candidates. Records used for what might be vulgarly described as “bribery” and/or “blackmail”.
We prefer the term “carrot and stick”.
4. The Press
It’s nearly election day. The longterm planning is done. You have a political system immune to change, a voting system where most votes are irrelevant, near identical political parties advocating your selected agenda in slightly different words, and a shortlist of candidates who you handpicked and can easily control with carrots or sticks.
But, when the actual voting is about to happen, all of that is of secondary importance to the press.
A cooperative press is one of the fundamental pillars of your political system (point 1), and we won’t be going into creating that here, that’s another lesson for another time.
For the sake of this lesson, we’ll be assuming your “Deep State” assets own and operate the vast majority of mainstream social media, print media, and audio-visual media outlets.
At that point, The Press is your first and best tool for effectively disguising the nature of your “democracy”.
Your press will tell the story of the election, and an efficiently controlled election is nothing but a story. A candidate only says what the press say he says. A candidate only does what the press say she does. Intrigues, scandals, highs-and-lows are the meat and lifeblood that make this show feel “relevant” – a wave of “incident” painting a picture of a dynamic fluid situation with an uncertain outcome, even as it steadily steers the result in your chosen direction.
Remember this isn’t about convincing people how to vote – the locked-in two-party system already renders that self-canceling and meaningless in all but those vital “swing states” (or whatever your chosen terminology). This is simply about making people pay attention, care about the outcome, feel as if vital life-changing choices are at stake, and that you are invested in those choices.
Further, this is a type of propaganda that needs to exist on the meta-level to maintain the facade of choice. The very act of attempted persuasion reinforces the idea that people need to be persuaded and, as such, that their votes matter.
This is the most vital task of your captive press – not controlling the result, but making your chosen result believable.
If you want a landslide polls can predict a landslide, if you want it to be close polls can predict it will be close. By making your carefully curated future what people expect to happen they will be more accepting of it when it happens.
Sidenote: Control of the press was simpler for the generations that came before. Unfortunately, while some aspects of your job have been made easier by technology, some others have been made far more difficult. The modern tyrant must concern themselves with the independent media, but that’s another article in this series.
5. The Votes
“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
You might be wondering, if you control both sides of the election, handpick the candidates, puppeteer the press and have a system in place which means your interests are on both tickets and can literally never lose, do you need to actually rig the votes?
Well, of course you do.
While all your candidates are under your control and promoting the same basic agenda, you will still have a preferred story you want to tell at any given time and a puppet best suited to promoting that story.
For example, you might have a future psy-op planned which only works if Team Red is at the helm.
Or it might be that there is a lot of ill-feeling in the populace that you want to either a) focus on a new hate figure or b) dissipate with an apparent regime change.
It might be you owe some favours to a powerful ally and getting their relative/spouse/son into office is a pay-off.
It might be that you’ve realised, too late, your chosen puppet is so mentally unbalanced he/she might become essentially uncontrollable through your usual methods, and a last minute switch is needed.
These are circumstances where actual vote rigging becomes essential.
Thankfully, as we discussed in point one, you’ve designed a system where an election with millions of votes can be decided by a few thousand, and you have a press that will always obediently lay the groundwork by “predicting” your planned result, however improbable it might seem and even if it requires a last minute change of direction that defies all reason and sense.
You also have “tame” political parties you can unite in bi-partisan acceptance of the result and you have candidates who will always do what they are told, which makes concealing the rigging relatively easy.
So – how do we do the actual rigging?
Surprisingly, in our experience, the traditional in-person hand-written ballots are actually the hardest to manipulate, especially when there is infrastructure in place to confirm IDs and count quickly and efficiently.
This method should therefore be discouraged.
Have your captive Press refer to it as “old-fashioned” and “outdated”. Claim it benefits one side or is “racist”. The specifics don’t matter.
At the same time, you need to be promoting more “modern”, “efficient” and “fairer” methods of voting – postal voting, drop boxes, electronic voting machines and online voting.
All these methods allow for extra votes to be added quite easily via mail fraud or algorithm, or taken away via “lost ballots” or “technical glitches”. They put space – real or metaphorical – between the voter and the people who count the votes.
You can slide into that space and get to work.
And since your system means only a few thousand votes in a relatively small area will likely decide the election you don’t need to go too crazy.
Just a thumb on the scales and you get the result you want.
No one will notice – unless you happen to encounter a situation where your chosen puppet proves to be vastly more unpopular than you anticipated.
This may require last-minute “adjustments” overt enough to raise some comment. However, just make sure your tame press dismiss all such comment as “conspiracy theory” and there will be no significant long-term damage.
Sidenote: To finesse this even further, have the press report on some “glitches” and “lost ballots”. Create a background white noise of chaos but ensure BOTH SIDES are seen to both suffer and benefit, and underline that this is just the way huge modern elections work, and the margin wasn’t impacted. Then, after the fact, issue apologies, censure those “responsible” and promise to improve.
We call this “incompetence camouflage”.
Conclusion
Congratulations, with the completion of this guide you are now one step closer to a perfectly controlled dictatorship in the guise of a democracy.
You should have in place:
A system where your elected officials have very little power, and most votes don’t count.
Political parties that agree on everything of importance whilst constantly squabbling over matters of very little import.
A roster of candidates that are either morally or financially compromised and have been trained to do as they are told.
A captive press which will report only what you tell it to report.
Measures which make actually rigging the vote simple.
Remember, with all these safeguards and plans in place, it is easy to control the outcome of the election without anyone ever revealing the level of corruption.
…unless, for some reason, you want to make it obvious, perhaps to discredit democracy or start a civil war.
But that’s advanced-level narrative management, which we will cover in a future lesson.
You need to remember – Public belief is the reason we’re doing all of this. The illusion of choice is the lifeblood of your system. Once you reveal it’s fixed and voting doesn’t matter, they will stop voting and lose all investment.
From there your power base can quickly crumble.
Only aim for this if you have a better system already set up to replace it.
RFK Jr Says Trump Plans To Remove Fluoride From American Drinking Water
The debate over the forced medication of the American population by the government is a long standing conflict. Today it is more important than ever after the draconian efforts of Democrats to create a path to forced covid vaccinations using economic coercion. The fight over experimental mRNA vaccines and vaccine passports has had an interesting side effect – The public is now motivated to question many other medical mandates and FDA standards with suspicious origins.
Water fluoridation is one of those standards.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, now part of Donald Trump’s campaign dream team, is to be put in charge of US health initiatives should Trump win the election this week. Kennedy’s secondary career focus (beyond politics) has been exposing faulty medical establishment practices and food industry corruption. He was a stalwart opponent of covid mandates and forced vaccination attempts and it’s fair to say he is widely hated by the government funded medical elite and the media.
Kennedy announced this week that he has turned his sights on water fluoridation, and says Donald Trump plans to set policies in motion to end fluoridation if he returns to office.
On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease. President…
Fluoridation of the US water supply has been a key battleground since it began in 1945. The practice was not widely accepted by the scientific community or the dental community back then, but that was before government manipulation of medical and scientific research through subsidies became a standard.
After a few decades of indoctrination in universities and the growing habit of the medical community to police its own when it comes to investigating certain subjects, very few researchers had the courage to publish evidence contrary to the narrative that fluoride in the water supply was anything other safe.
To question fluoride treatment is almost as taboo as questioning climate change if you are a scientist. It’s just not done, but that attitude is completely contrary to the scientific method. Try to study the subject online and most search engines will bury you in hundreds of “Fact Check” articles claiming that questioning fluoridation is pure conspiracy theory.
The early days of mass fluoride medication are as shady as any conspiracy could possibly be. Rumors of fluoride testing on unwilling subjects by the Third Reich and the Soviets abound, but there is little concrete evidence to confirm the claims that this was done to “control the population.” The Soviets did in fact pass a directive in the 1960s for mass fluoridation of the water supply, and this ended in the 1990s. The reason why is not officially admitted.
The theory was that the chemical caused docile behavior and reduced IQ, making the population easier for the elites to manage.
Here are the facts:
1) Fluoride (or sodium fluoride) is a toxic chemical byproduct of the aluminum and fertilizer industry often used in rat poison. It is also a cumulative agent, which means it continues to collect in the human body over time when ingested.
2) Initially, these industries pumped fluoride gases into the air, causing health concerns and lawsuits. This forced the manufacturers to capture the gases and reduce them down to a chemical sludge. This is then distilled into a powder which makes it easier to contain and transport. The problem was, the chemical was expensive to dispose of safely under environmental protocols.
3) Trace elements of natural fluoride already exist in many water supplies. In some places with higher fluoride content in ground water in the early 1900s, residents were found to suffer from a condition called “brown teeth”. Scientists found that people with brown teeth also had lower instances of cavities. Eventually a correlation to fluoride was established by a man named Trendley H. Dean.
4) Dean, a dentist and scientist, ultimately led the charge for mass fluoridation in US cities. Another entity also lobbied the government for mass fluoridation: Aluminum giant Alcoa.
5) And here’s where it gets shady – Trendley Dean worked for the NIH and the Public Health Service, which was run by Andrew Mellon.
6) Wealthy elitist Andrew Mellon, a founder of ALCOA and one of its major stockholders, was the U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1921-1932, when the PHS was still a division of the Treasury Department. It was therefore Mellon’s PHS that ordered Dean to study fluoride in the first place. In other words, Mellon and Alcoa had Dean conjure up the very studies that would change fluoride from a toxic waste into a public health miracle.
7) This is yet another example of the revolving door between corporations and government health agencies.
8) Not only did industry magnates no longer have to pay for expensive chemical disposal for fluoride, they stood to make millions selling the poison to the government for water treatment. After that, the medical community (under Mellon) hyped up fluoridation as a magical cure for bad teeth.
9) Dozens of recent studies now confirm what many people suspected decades ago: Fluoride does in fact decrease IQ. Children are especially vulnerable. It is also proven to cause weaker bones, thyroid problems and a host of neurological issues. Several published articles have postulated that fluoride could be producing alterations in mitochondrial DNA; mitochondrial DNA has many implications in various mental disorders.
10) Federal Courts have ruled against the EPA in the forced fluoridation of water. They have ordered officials to take action over concerns about potential health risks from currently recommended levels of fluoride in the American drinking water supply.
11) Trendley Dean claimed that tooth decay was reduced by 60% in his studies on fluoride. More recent studies claim a more modest 15% to 25% reduction.
12) Around 70% of US communities fluoridate. Communities that have stopped fluoridation have not experienced a significant increase in dental decay.
Even if fluoride does have legitimate value as a treatment for tooth decay, this is ultimately irrelevant. The dangers involved in using the toxic chemical in public water far outweigh the potential benefits. The suspicious history of the practice also needs to be investigated. It is better to err on the side of caution and not lace our water supply with an industrial waste product.
Plenty of alternatives exist in our modern era for healthy teeth. Beyond that, the government should not be given authority to mass medicate the population. Politicians are not qualified enough or trustworthy enough to make such decisions. Ask yourself, is the government really that concerned about your teeth, or is something else going on?
Earlier this year, Hanwha Ocean Company bought Philly Shipyard for $100 million. Though it was met with little fanfare from the public at the time, the investment was a big deal in the Navy.
It came after requests from American defense experts and government officials for shipbuilders from allied countries to invest into the worn down, depleted, and inefficient mess that is the US shipbuilding industry. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro even called the deal, “a game-changing milestone” for America’s “Maritime Statecraft.”
Now, the new partnership is paying dividends, for Hanwha, Philadelphia, and the United States. In late August, Hanwha secured an annual Navy maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) contract. That contract and the new work at Philly Shipyard will go a long ways towards fixing the Navy’s current maintenance backlog, which is currently contributing to both shipbuilding delays and cost overruns.
According to a 2022 Government Accountability Office report, the Navy’s current maintenance backlog amounted to $1.8 billion. This inefficiency has a major impact on America’s combat readiness has contributed to the Navy’s decision to decommission 9 ships before their expected service life.
Unfortunately, things have only gotten worse under the Biden-Harris administration. Misguided spending priorities and a lack of urgency have set back America’s ability to keep up with and deter China, which is the world’s largest Navy numerically and whose fleet is still growing fast.
Hanwha could help turn the tide in that fight, though. With the purchase of the Philly Shipyard, it is now positioned to compete for contracts for building new ships, which could be an enormous windfall not only for Philadelphia workers, but also our naval power.
Specifically, the Philly Shipyard is well positioned to compete for contracts to construct Constellation-class frigates. Currently, these ships are only being built at Marinette Marine in Wisconsin, with the first ship set to set sail in 2029 following production delay. But Navy leadership has already called for an increase in the construction of new missile-guided frigates, and the Philly Shipyard is now well-positioned to compete for building these additional frigates.
The new investment in the Philly Shipyard is a refreshing step in the right direction. It is also a reminder that our efforts to reshore industry and rebuild our defense industrial base will benefit American workers first and foremost, like the new workers who will need to be hired as Philly Shipyards expands.
If we want to win, however, we need to build on this positive momentum. Policymakers should work to create maritime prosperity zones, implement programs to solve labor shortages, and cut down on overregulation in order continue to promote further investments in and expansion of our naval infrastructure, especially at Philly Shipyards.
As our Navy works to meet the challenges of tomorrow, Hanwha’s new investment means Philadelphia will be playing a leading role in the fight. By fixing the maintenance glut and building new ships, Philly Shipyard will be vital to preserving the security of the American people.
Why? Because the first battle of the next great power competition will not take place in the far-off seas of the Pacific; it will be fought in places like Philly Shipyard on the Delaware as we set out to defeat our own deficiencies. And this is a battle we can’t afford to lose.
According to RealClearPolitics, the current US Presidential polling averages have Trump at 48.5% and Harris at 48.5%, literally a tie.
On this measure the two candidates have been within two percentage points of each other since mid-August. So in terms of the popular vote, this is officially the closest election on record.
Today’s Chart of the Day from DB’s Henry Allen (available to pro subscribers in the usual place), looks at the gap between the candidate declared President and the runner up in percentage terms in every election since 1868 after the US Civil War.
Those in red mark the times where the eventual President didn’t win the popular vote. Allen has also annotated all those with less than a 3 percentage point differential.
There have been six elections with less than a percentage point between the candidates.
1880 Garfield beat Hancock by 0.1pp
1884 Cleveland beat Blaine by 0.5pp
1888 Harrison was elected although he lost the popular vote to Cleveland by -0.8pp
1960 Kennedy beat Nixon by 0.2pp
1968 Nixon beat Humphrey by 0.7pp
2000 Bush won even though he lost the popular vote to Gore by -0.5pp. See Henry Allen’s piece here this morning that looked at the market reaction after each election since and including this contested one.
So if current polls are correct then this could be the closest of any US election in popular vote terms. Of course in reality, polls are subject to a margin of error, so you’d expect some variation, but one thing is certain: in just a few days, the avalanche of lawsuits will begin.
Literally the worst case scenario for the country. Why? The 2020 census was wrong, as the Census Bureau has admitted…and it gave extra electoral college votes to blue states. If they’d done it right, Trump would win WITHOUT any of the blue wall states. Get ready for lawsuits. https://t.co/hJR1tiwUGB
Shortly we will publish a comprehensive Election Day guide, providing a comprehensive overview of the “swing states” that will decide the election, a list of bellwether counties to pay attention to within those states, as well as a precise recap of the time line for vote reporting and media projections of the winner in 2020.
It will also cover the rules for challenging the voting results in the swing states as well as rule changes at the federal level adopted in the wake of the last election.
Finally, we caution that while a winner is likely to be declared in MI, AZ, WI and NV within the first 24 hours of the polls closing on Tuesday, PA and GA are likely to take longer to assess – potentially 3-4 days or longer if there are recounts.
So if it is close, stand by for a long few days/weeks/months.
Are they one and the same with Joe Biden’s “semi-fascists,” “chumps,” and “dregs of society?”
Or Barack Obama’s “clingers?”
Do they include Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and “irredeemables?”
Are they FBI grandee Peter Strzok’s Walmart shoppers who “smell?”
Over the last decade-and-a-half, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Harris-Walz, and a host of other self-described elites have variously invented a wide range of smears and slurs—but about whom exactly?
Who are these people that leftwing politicians have so vehemently derided—and why?
They include Trump supporters, of course, or what Biden also dubbed “ultra-MAGAs” and Tim Walz called “fascists,” now without the prior qualifying prefix “semi.”
In general, these adjectives of disdain denote about half the country according to the results of what will soon be the last three presidential elections.
This half is more rural than urban, characterized by larger than smaller families, more high-schooled diplomaed than college degreed, and more conventional and traditional than vanguard and trend-setting.
Statisticians tell us that the new non-clinging Democratic Party finds its greatest support from those who earn less than $50,000 and those who make considerably more than $100,000. These are the rich/poor bookends that surround the reformed Republican party in between.
So, in terms of generalized income and earnings, the left is now the party of the well-to-do professional and credential class and the rich, along with the subsidized poor. The Republicans, by contrast, are increasingly represented by the middle classes.
The Democratic top dogs are most likely to embrace agendas that never garner 51 percent of public support—vast reductions in gas and oil to lessen “climate change,” open borders to welcome in the world’s needy, the government promotion of a third, transgendered sex, abortion on demand without restrictions, the reifications of various critical (race/legal/penal/modern monetary) “theories,” and radical changes in the current system (ending the Senate filibuster, the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, the 50-state union, etc.).
Two truisms stand out about the elite boutique agenda:one, when these theories are implemented – often by the courts, and the permanent and unelected administrative and bureaucratic state – the architects of such experimentation do not really feel the inevitable deleterious consequences.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Silicon Valley masters of the universe, the professors of law, the corporate CEOs, and the Bill Gates of the world really don’t care much whether gas is at $3 a gallon or $6, or Romex wire is $39 a spool or $150.
Illegal aliens do not go to their children’s schools or crowd the offices of their concierge cardiologists and oncologists, much less dump trash on their streets and curbs.
They are strong supporters of teachers’ unions, despising the very idea of charter schools and homeschooling. And yet they send their children more often to private schools where students are not the lab rats of the public school system.
Their ideology is the fruit of their privilege and so is often more utopian and abstract. Given that if it results in economic, social, and cultural damage to millions, they will certainly avoid the ensuing flotsam and jetsam.
The fallout from defunding the police falls upon the inner city, not the privately patrolled Presidio Heights or the secluded sorts in Martha’s Vineyard.
Given their income and status, the new Democratic credentialed and moneyed classes do not care about the struggle of others to live one more day, clinging to the middle-class vestiges of their parents’ era. Instead, for the anointed who have transcended the fear of not filling up their tank or coming up short on monthly rent and power bills, it is not hard to mandate job-killing EVs or to chuckle over biological boys in girls’ locker rooms and pride flags flying from the abandoned American embassy in Kabul.
By the same token, the poor count on the left’s largesse to cushion themselves from the damage of their own party’s dreams turned into nightmares. Various food, housing, medical, legal, and educational subsidies to the poor are testaments that the left’s own agendas stagnant upward mobility and confine the poor to permanent poverty.
In a cynical sense, left-wing elites square the circle of the guilt over their privilege through government subsidies for those whom they’d rather not necessarily live next to or have their children attend school with. In other words, they find them useful rather than empathetic. They welcome in millions of illegal aliens—as long as they don’t camp out at Yale, the Hamptons, or Malibu Beach.
Not so the struggling middle classes. Modern theories can result in hyperinflation that can ruin them or easily send them into the ranks of the government-subsidized poor. They are conservative in wanting a secure border, legal-only immigration, affordable food and energy, safe streets, and equality of opportunity rather than of result, because they have no margin of error, lacking the wherewithal of secure home zip codes, or the perks of gargantuan grocery bills at Whole Foods, or a new foreign car every two years.
Such conservatism is reflected in the worldview of the clingers and irredeemables. They accept not cosmopolitism but 2,500 years of nationhood that remind them there can be no nation without borders.
There can be no modern comforts and security without access to affordable food and energy. There can be no public society without safe streets—and indeed, not even public places without sanitation and common decency.
So, the great middle class is wary about falling at the hands of others into government dependency and even more fearful of destroying what has worked over the ages. They resist experimenting with the unknown, especially when thought up and designed by those who will easily ride out the ensuing disasters when such harebrained schemes inevitably fail.
These chumps, fascists, and garbage people know that their advantages in numbers are outweighed by the Eloi’s absorption of institutional and government power. So, in depression, they often shrug and drop out. They assume wisely that the network news, the New York Times and Washington Post, Hollywood, and the corporate boardroom are mere extensions of the utopian and cultural left, who despise them for ignoring their supposed betters.
They pass on watching the Emmys, Oscars, Tonys, and Grammys. They are deaf to the top-down sermons from an Al Gore, John Kerry, the Clintons, the Obamas, or Joe Biden, which assume the grubby majority is either too ignorant or amoral or both to know what is good for them and so must be shamed, smeared, and slurred rather than won over by argumentations and persuasion. Is not the 2024 election about just that—the haughty who sermonize and those weary of being lectured?
The dregs could care less who is president of Harvard or how many letters and titles follow a professional’s name—except to confirm to themselves when watching or hearing such people that our elites increasingly have neither common sense nor integrity. A high school history teacher could have answered congressional questioning on race, anti-Semitism, and bias far more effectively and adroitly than a deer-in-the-headlights, clueless Harvard president Claudine Gay.
Yes, the semi-fascists are lectured that they are racist, sexist, and xenophobic. They are damned by the credentialed as “white privileged” who “rage,” as they dutifully go off to Iraq and Afghanistan to die in combat at double their numbers in our demographics.
They are advised of their toxic illiberality and bigotry, even as their children lack the race, gender, and ethnicity advantage accorded to the so-called Other and the inside edge that money, influence, and status provide for the elite.
What has recently brought this great divide to a head and exposed the fury of the elite is resurgent anger at the newfound impudence of the deplorable class, or the notion that they would dare call the dishonest media the “fake news” or suggest that “fit-as-fiddle,” “smart-as-a-tack,” cognitively challenged Joe Biden is the proverbial emperor with no clothes.
Who are these arrogant who pack the 20,000 seats of Madison Square Garden even after the good people have warned that they were mindlessly reenacting Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will?
The left believes that either racial victimization or money should guarantee privilege and so despises those qualifying for neither. In the elite’s view, the working class so often lacks the romance of the poor and non-white, but worse still, the culture and pretensions of the progressive Übermenschen.
Finally, the unspoken irony of this divide is that the self-professed elite know that they are not the elite by any definable standard or meritocracy. Yale gives a higher percentage of A’s on spec to its students than do trade schools and junior colleges.
Today’s supposedly brilliant Columbia student would likely struggle to earn an objectively graded C on a state college’s standardized, multi-choice history exam.
Those who run the Washington Post or NPR are less competent, worldly, and knowledgeable than the chumpy and dregsy sexagenarian who publishes a small town’s weekly newspaper.
The average salesman and electrician can far better spot fraud and deceit than an Anthony Fauci or Peter Daszak. And the tractor driver is more likely not to lie under oath than a John Brennan, James Clapper, or Andrew McCabe. The lineman working with high voltage is far more likely to err on the side of safety with the lives of others than the executives of Pfizer or Moderna.
In a wider sense, the deplorable class believes it can still build reliable pipelines, frack, truck our nation’s goods, and clean up after a hurricane. But it has utterly lost confidence that the best and the brightest at the Pentagon can win a war, at Boeing can craft a safe jet, or at NASA can send astronauts safely into space and back in the fashion of their grandfathers more than half a century ago.
This election is about many things—left/right issues, of course, and the peculiar personalities of Trump and Harris perhaps.
But it will likely be defined by those who are not just tired of being smeared as the underbelly of America but, far more unforgivably, are beginning to enjoy and mock the disparagement from those who have never earned the right to smear anyone but themselves.
“Coma In A Bottle”: Miami Doc Charged With Trafficking Date Rape Drug
As if there weren’t enough problems in academia right now, an assistant professor at the University of Miami’s medical school has just been charged with trafficking a date rape drug, according to the NY Post.
On Friday, Dr. Dairon Garcia was charged with trafficking the drug. Authorities say they connected him to a package intercepted at Miami International Airport containing 15 pounds of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid.
Miami-Dade Judge Mindy Glazer said at the arraignment: “He should be so embarrassed being here. He’s a medical doctor, going through all those years of education and committing his life to helping people and to get arrested for this.
She added: “That’s between you, your lawyer and the criminal justice system. Good luck to you, sir.”
The NY Post article says that Garcia, an assistant professor of clinical radiology at the UM Miller School of Medicine, is facing charges linked to a package from Paris addressed to his rental property, intercepted by customs at Miami Airport on Aug. 29.
Miami police, alerted by Homeland Security, monitored the address as the package was delivered on Sept. 12 and collected by a woman. After a search, her daughter reported Garcia had informed them of the delivery, asking them to accept it.
Another tenant reported receiving a separate package for Garcia on Sept. 7, and customs intercepted yet another on Sept. 25, addressed to his registered company, DG Diagnostics MD LLC, the report says.
He pleaded not guilty at Friday’s arraignment, was held on $15,000 bail, and posted it that evening.
The DEA says gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), often called “grievous bodily harm” or “coma in a bottle,” is colorless and can be slipped into drinks, causing sedation without the victim’s knowledge.
