Loose Lips Sink Ships

 Look lips sink ships. That is all. 

War

In the prelude to World War II, there were negotiations, embargoes, sanctions, all the mess. I am sorry to post this blog, and I know I haven't written for awhile. Take it for what it's worth. But take it.

I will be short. I used to not be, but now I am. Comment if you want to add.

China wants to rule the world. Nope. Yes they do. Read their history.  I have. Have you?

China makes up one quarter of the of the world's population. For now.

Corona was not unleashed on the world by some guy selling bat meat in a deli exactly 3 miles from a biological weapons site.

If I really need to say it, which apparently I do, this was an attack, on the western world by China. They unleashed a virus that just happens to kill those who they see as worthless in their own society, but then also cripples the world. The Chinese hate hate old people. Of course they do. This is communism at its apex. They also believe, like the Japanese did, that their civilization (as they know it) can't end. There is a huge "oops" coming next.

Why? Because we are already at war, and the moment Americans  realize that en masse, we will exterminate the enemy. So not to be confused, they intend to exterminate us.

I don't write much anymore. I'm too scared what my clients or friends might think. So i'm scared. Here's what comes next. War.

China didn't accidentally release a pandemic on the world. There are only three possibilities. They are incompetent, they have a bunch of incompetent people around them, or it was an attack. I could spend the next three days of my life explaining to you why this was an attack, but really, if you don't get it yet you won't. Shelter in place.

For everyone else who isn't an idiot and knows this was an attack, the question is the response. Hitler had to be ended.  He had to be killed. Is Xi Jinping Hitler? Nope. He's too stupid and has almost no sense of his own strategic importance, or lack thereof. The Chinese Communist Party will kill him the minute they find him useless, which basically is now.

Here is what we know for sure. A virus  came from China. Probably not from bat soup. Xi is a dictator. He has killed millions of humans. China's bat soup or whatever virus has crippled the world. China has made major gains off of western business over he last 20 years. They will not get that business going forward. That will make them mad. They will act out. They will go to war. We will fight back. They will use some fancy weapon. We will die. We will also end their civilization. Six thousand years of China. Poof. Gone.

Like I said. I don't much like writing anymore at all. This one I had to. Get your guns, ammo, food, water and shelter. It's coming. 

The New America

Everything I am about to say is what I expect the evidence to show. I will be brief.

The world was crippled by a deliberate attack, by China against the United States and NATO.

School

The circumstances under which school was cancelled in March have not changed. There is no vaccine. There is no cure. Children will go back to the infection zones, also known as schools, they will get COVID-19 and they will pass it along to teachers, parents and grandparents. A portion of those teachers, parents and grandparents will die. School isn't that important.

Everyone Who Can Work From Home Will

It is a well known fact to every employment lawyer and human resources representative that once an employee is allowed to work from home, he or she never comes back. In this situation, you cannot make anyone come sit in a cubicle. Let's assume for the sake of argument that a vaccine is ready and available in January of next year. Even flu vaccines are only 60% effective in a good year. This is a new virus altogether. We would be exceptionally lucky to achieve that the first time around. Face time in the office, hours in a schoolroom are just not worth it.

What This Pandemic Has Taught Us

Government is not very effective, and it is in fact so ineffective it is not necessary.  They take our money, indoctrinate our children, then lie to us.

Masks are ineffective. Oops, no, wait, everyone must wear a mask, because that stops the virus.

15 days to flatten the curve. Oops, no, wait, we mean 90 days. I mean 120. Wait, maybe a year.

What we know from our government: (1) beaches will kill you; (2) running in the park will kill you and your mom; (3) your job is not essential; (4) taxes are essential.

You have to go back to Caligula to find a more asinine, arbitrary form of government.

Speaking of Rome, I was reading  Edward Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" the other day. It's been on my re-read list for a decade. Rome was attacked and defeated in 410 A.D. The "barbarians," (literally where the word comes from, "Barbarian,") found Rome to be such a disgusting place that the king of the Visigoths, Alaric, ordered his people to leave. That's right, they thought living in tents in the cold northern forrest was preferable. Rome continued on until 476, another two generations. It then fell and the Dark Ages followed, along with many pandemics.

Rome fell. Just remember that.

Neville Chamberlain

Chamberlain is reviled in history as a wimp who let the Nazis rise to power. He was not. When he secured "peace in our time," he was buying time. He knew there was no way Britain could defeat the Nazi war machine. The same day he secured that "peace," he ordered that all factories convert to wartime production. No one knows that because we do not actually learn history anymore.

Chamberlain was right. We were not ready for war. Germany had far superior weapons, many more of them, and a manufacturing base capable of making them.

That should sound familiar.

China

China makes up more that a quarter of the world population. Not for long.

The morons that have been running our government and our military for the last 30 years failed to recognize the only real existential threat to America. Russia is weak, and as we know now, was always weak. Russia has devoted soldiers and heavy weaponry and they hate the Chinese. We probably should try to be their friends.

Russia? Russia?

Yes, Russia. You'd have to take a couple of Russian history classes to understand that Russians actually love America and Americans. Even during the Cold War. To put it crassly, they love American clothes, American women, American movies, American cigarettes, and if given the choice they would live here. They are also fierce soldiers.

China is preparing for war, and we are not ready for it. We can't defeat a bunch of dummies living in tents in the desert. China knows that.

Before you cancel me, my buddies who were there, including two captains, a colonel and an army scout sniper all agree. There was a young man I played golf with who I'm sure would also agree.  He died there, in Fallujah. In his first three months on active duty. He liked muscle cars and fixing engines. He loved girls, but he was absolutely terrible at telling them apart. There were too many. He had the longest drive I've ever seen. He is dead.

I digress.

My point is this, we need to be better at war. Much better. We can't just go send some guys in to control an area and then leave. We have to destroy the enemy. Trillions of dollars and, much much worse, tens of thousands of lives have been lost by not winning. Why? I think we need to ask that question as a nation.

China intends to conquer the world.They believe it is their birthright. They have spent thousands of years preparing to achieve this very goal. They must be convinced otherwise, or destroyed. The Bat virus is just the beginning. They will continue to unleash more and worse weapons to provide covering fire (metaphorical or real) while they advance into the rest of Asia, and then the West. Our manufacturing base does not need to be there. Our wealth does not need to be there.They don't need to be given the privilege of educating their next generation of totalitarian leaders in our Ivy League schools. It has to stop.

A Call to Action

We are in crisis, and we have leadership that is unwilling or unable to help us define that crisis. It is time to take matters into our own hands. Vote. But also arm yourselves and train. Get out off of the couch, put down the booze and get ready for what is coming next. Right now we are the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water. Jump out of the pot, assume the worst, prepare and then act like Americans. Assume they are lying to you. Assume they are incompetent. This nation was born free. It is incumbent on all of us to keep it that way.

Post-Constitutional America

If you keep up with this blog, you probably keep up with the news. This was a remarkable week in America. A 36 year old allegation of sexual assault, with no extrinsic evidence to support it, has effectively ended the career of a federal judge with an otherwise spotless record as a judge and a gentleman. Whether you believe Dr. Ford or not, it is indisputable that she was not, in any way, constrained by the burden of proof. It fell to Brett Kavanaugh to prove his innocence. We are in a new era in American history - the Post-Constitutional Era.

As is the case with most historical eras, reasonable minds can differ on when the era began. George W. Bush and the Republicans certainly bent the rules after 9/11 with "enhanced interrogation" techniques, mass surveillance, and the invasion of Iraq. Barack Obama and the Democrats took it to a whole new level, expanding mass surveillance, dramatically increasing the power of the administrative state, spying on the Congress, and ultimately on the Trump campaign. Donald Trump has been in power for less than two years, but already he has been the target of an unrelenting, extra-Constitutional effort by the administrative state and Democrats to remove him from office. 

The Post-Constitutional Era we are in marks the end of the Republic. Historians will define the future by who was in power at what time. This is very much the way historians define other totalitarian regimes and monarchies. We define eras in European history as the "Victorian Era," after queen Victoria, for example. We define Soviet politics by the "Stalin Era" or the "Khrushchev Era." African and South American history is defined by "regimes," like the "Castro Regime," the "Chavez Regime," the "Mugabe Regime." 

Like these other totalitarian societies, power may shift from one faction to another or one wing of the government to the other, but power will be the defining characteristic. Also characteristic of this kind of government is a total disregard for any individual rights or the rights of the minority. Mobs of well armed "political parties" sweep into power and mercilessly stamp out the opposition. Hangings, beheadings, shootings, gas chambers and concentration camps are all publicly and routinely employed to deter opposition to the regime. Opposing factions literally hate each other and fight for generations in a futile effort to exterminate the other side. 

But, that can't happen here ... can it?

Well, no, so long as we are a Constitutional Republic. But that is exactly the problem with Post-Constitutional America. Our Constitution guarantees individual rights through the use of due process. At its core, due process is about providing a means by which an aggrieved individual can protect his or her individual rights. Those rights are enshrined in our founding documents as life, liberty, private property, and the right to be generally left alone. The Constitution provides Americans with a structure for resolving differences and espousing views. However, in the past 60 years, one faction of American society has used that very structure to espouse its destruction. They have largely succeeded.

Take for example, the Supreme Court. For 170 years, the Court largely avoided rendering opinions that conflicted with existing precedent or the text of the Constitutional. There were exceptions to be sure, but they were rare. Beginning in the 1950's, largely because of the Civil Rights movement, the Court had no choice but to intervene to guarantee the Constitutional rights of African-Americans. While those decisions were morally correct, the door was opened to the Supreme Court being the sole arbiter of what is or is not right in America. In many decisions that followed, the Court supplanted its wisdom for that of the Legislature and the President because the other two branches of government were not acting quickly enough.

Most Americans born after 1960 know it no other way. We've all been taught that this was always the intent of the Founders, but that's simply not true. The Supreme Court is not the only guarantor of Constitutional rights. Article One of the Constitution created a Legislature - the most important branch of government in the eyes of the Founders. Article Two created the Presidency. It was not until Article Three that our Founders created a Supreme Court, and even then, it was without the power of judicial review. Other federal courts were to be created by the Congress, not the judiciary. 

In modern America, however, a single federal judge can issue and nationwide injunction against the other two branches of government without a trial.  If a single federal judge doesn't like a particular regulation, policy or piece of legislation, poof, it's ensnared in a tediously slow process for years. And that is why these Supreme Court confirmation hearings have come so contentious. Nearly any case can be brought in an ideologically friendly federal court to frustrate the will of the people. Consequently, both conservatives and progressives have recognized the enormous power they wield if they have ideological control of the courts. This was never intended by our Founders.

Likewise, nothing in the Constitution provided the Executive branch with the power to create a permanent bureaucratic state with the power to legislate by fiat. In fact, it wasn't until after World War II that the bureaucracies were given any permanent status. Prior to that, it was common practice for a new President to replace most if not all of the previous administration's bureaucrats with his own supporters. As a result, the administrative state remained unstable and wielded far less power. 

Now, of course, we have permanently placed, Obama era bureaucrats actively working to impede and ultimately impeach the new President. These saboteurs, as has now been well-documented, weaponized the FBI, CIA, DOJ and IRS against grass roots conservatives, President Trump, and his supporters. 

There are three old adages everyone should memorize in order to survive in Post-Constitutional America: (1) Might makes right; (2) What goes around comes around; and (3) Turnabout is fair play.

A society in which individual rights are not protected is a society in which the strong prey on the weak. It is a society in which the majority or an elite minority dictates privileges to the rest of the society. Those rights then may arbitrarily be taken away. The extent to which privileges are granted is wholly dependent on the level of anger between the various factions. In Post-Constitutional America, minorities and those who can't fight back will be dependent on the benevolence of the ruling faction and the strong. Those whose actions have compromised the Constitution, or who attack our founding documents as old, white, and out of fashion, better be really, really sure that they will always be the stronger faction. Otherwise, they will have destroyed the only protection they had.

As they say, what goes around comes around. If you allow a man's reputation to be destroyed by unsubstantiated allegations of sexual assault, it is only a matter of time before your own reputation may be at stake. If you uproot hundreds of years of Constitutional precedent to protect your faction, you better be really, really sure to hold on the power forever. The great pendulum of history will eventually swing back in the other direction.

Finally, those who have used extra-Constitutional means to attack their opponents better be really, really sure that their opponents will not do the same. There is nothing more insulting to the group out of power than a double standard. Double standards become rallying cries. When the rule of law applies to you, but not to some elite political group, you might rally around a cry to "lock her up." If you used the entire national security apparatus to spy on your political enemies, you may find yourself under constant state surveillance in the future. Worse, you may find yourself locked up and all of your friends under constant surveillance. 

This is because it is human nature to believe that turnabout is fair play. It is the origin of the "golden rule." If you do it to him, he may do it back to you. World history is replete with "oops" moments during which some elite faction suddenly found itself out of power. Farm confiscations in South Africa, the Guillotine in France, civil war in Rwanda, Gaddafi, the Romanovs, and Hussein, for example. 

Post-Constitutional America will not be the progressive utopia many Americans think it will be. It will be a regressive dystopia. Weak and entitled Americans possessing a victim's mentality will be truly victimized. Americans who rely on others to protect and defend them will be alone and unprepared. There will be fewer history degrees or psychology degrees, fewer therapists and lawyers. Those with any sort of wealth will only be able to protect that wealth through force or membership in the ruling faction. 

Constitutional government is necessarily deliberative. The Constitution makes change hard, and that is exactly what our Founders intended. Sometimes, that makes social change take too long, but it also ensures that once that change happens, it is hard to reverse. Progress is slow, but permanent. Once a right is recognized, it is very difficult to take it way in a Constitutional Republic. The opposite is also true, however. Once a right is taken away from a particular group -  like, say, the right to due process, - it is eventually destroyed for everyone. Society then becomes unequal, divides into factions, each seeking to impose its will on the other through force. So be careful what you wish for.

The Gaslighting of America

Donald Trump is an anti-Semitic Nazi, racist, misogynistic, narcissist, and a Russian spy.

Peter Stzrok, the FBI, CIA, NSA, John Brennan, James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, the entire Obama Administration, and the mainstream media are all patriots, uncovering a secret plot between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to surrender America to Russia.

So we've been told.

Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." The "big lie" is the foundation of gaslighting. Psychology Today has several articles about gaslighting, I picked one called: 11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/11-warning-signs-gaslighting). It is instructive.

Gaslighting is, at its core, a highly abusive form of concealment used by addicts, narcissists, and sociopaths to deflect attention from their own nefarious activities. I've taken several months off from social media and writing to simply observe. I have to confess, the incredible onslaught from the media and the Democrats directed at Donald Trump and his supporters gave me a moment of pause. Am I being a fool for supporting the President? Is it possible that he really is a Russian stooge? Is he the one telling the big lies? After four months of reflection, I have concluded that I, along with the rest of America, have been the victims of gaslighting. The Establishments of both parties, the media, and other leftists have conspired to promote multiple big lies, which they have used to conceal their own misconduct. 

According to Psychology Today, these are the 11 warning signs. I take no credit for these, they all came off their blog site.

1. They tell blatant lies.

You know it's an outright lie. Yet they are telling you this lie with a straight face. Why are they so blatant? Because they're setting up a precedent. Once they tell you a huge lie, you're not sure if anything they say is true. Keeping you unsteady and off-kilter is the goal.

James Clapper testified before Congress that the government had absolutely no program of bulk data gathering on Americans. That was a lie. In fact we now know the NSA does have a program to collect the metadata from every call, text and email placed in the United States.

James Comey said that he had never leaked anything to the media about the so-called Russia Investigation. That was a lie. In actuality, Comey leaked the "private notes" of his conversation with the President about the investigation to his "friend," who then sent it to the New York Times at Comey's instruction. It was not his only leak. His former subordinate, Andrew McCabe testified that Director Comey instructed him to leak certain information about the investigation to the New York Times prior to the election.

The entire Obama administration, including the FBI, DNI James Clapper and CIA Director Brennan, said that they had not conducted any surveillance on Trump or his campaign. That was a lie. In fact, as was announced on Friday, the Obama Administration sought and received multiple FISA warrants to wiretap Carter Page and Paul Manafort, both of whom were a part of the Trump campaign. The FBI and CIA also used foreign agents in foreign countries to conduct undercover meetings with George Papadopoulus, another member of the campaign, in an effort to catch him saying anything that might compromise Donald Trump or his campaign.

The FBI's Director of Counterintelligence, Peter Stzrok, testified before Congress that he was in no way motivated by deep political animus to exonerate Clinton and investigate Trump prior to the election. This is notwithstanding the fact that his own text messages reveal his desire to impeach Trump for collusion even though there was, in his words, "no there there."

They have all told bold faced lies in an effort to keep the American people off kilter and uncertain as to what is really happening in government.

2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof. 

You know they said they would do something; you know you heard it. But they out and out deny it. It makes you start questioning your reality—maybe they never said that thing. And the more they do this, the more you question your reality and start accepting theirs. 

As demonstrated above, each of these players continue to deny the obvious. Worse, each of these players now deny that they ever were supportive or Putin or Russia. Hillary Clinton was "always tough on Russia," despite hours of archived news clips and Youtube videos showing her coddling Vladimir Putin. Ditto for President Obama who withdrew missile defense from Eastern Europe at Putin's request in exchange for nothing.

These people continue to deny their own recorded statements about Russia and the Russian investigation.

3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition. 

They know how important your kids are to you, and they know how important your identity is to you. So those may be one of the first things they attack. If you have kids, they tell you that you should not have had those children. They will tell you'd be a worthy person if only you didn't have a long list of negative traits. They attack the foundation of your being. 

Here is where we begin to see real evil. Every Trump supporter "separates children from their parents" at the border because they are horrible human beings. Trump supporters are "Nazis," undeserving of respect. We are bigots, unsophisticated, stupid, mean spirited, and (according to the head of the FBI's counterintelligence department) "smelly."

According to the gaslighters, if Trump and his supporters have their way, America will be destroyed. The Constitution will be burned. All non-whites will be rounded up and gassed in concentration camps in a new Holocaust. Children will be brutalized by the police. Women will be forced to have children they don't want or will die obtaining illegal abortions. All Hispanics will be deported. 

To these sociopaths, and to be sure, Brennan, Clapper, Clinton, Comey, and Strzok are sociopaths, all Trump supporters are "deplorable." We are unworthy of representation and impossible to love. These gaslighters continue to attack the very identities of 65 million Americans, and it seems to be working. Trump supporters are a "silent" group for this very reason. Many have begun to doubt whether they are worthy enough to have or voice an opinion.

4. They wear you down over time.

This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting—it is done gradually, over time. A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often...and then it starts ramping up. Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting—it is that effective. It's the "frog in the frying pan" analogy: The heat is turned up slowly, so the frog never realizes what's happening to it.

The frogs in the frying pan. That's what we Americans have become. Think of where we started and where we are now with this whole Establishment vs. Trump treason game. 

Here are a few posts I wrote more than a year ago, when the Democrats and the intelligence agencies were still denying that they had done anything to investigate Trump or his campaign:

http://libertyswindow.blogspot.com/2017/03/where-democracy-goes-to-die.html

http://libertyswindow.blogspot.com/2017/04/give-democrats-and-leakers-one-last.html

http://libertyswindow.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-treason-game.html

Yes, I was speculating, but I turned out to be right. At the time, my liberal friends were apoplectic that I wouldn't just take the government's denial at face value. The government denied there was any investigation, but there was obviously an investigation. Then they denied that there was a FISA warrant, which we now know was also false. Then they denied that the FISA warrant was in any way connected to the campaign. They claimed it was merely "routine surveillance of foreign agents." Now we know that wasn't true either. There is nothing routine about surveilling your opponent's campaign officials. Then they told us that candidate Trump wasn't the target of the (previously denied) "counterintelligence operation." Now we know that each of these FISA warrants was based on opposition research papers created by the Clinton campaign and directly related to Trump's alleged improprieties.  

They continue to deny that they were actively conspiring with each other and the media to use the entire national security apparatus of the United States to help Hillary Clinton get elected and "stop Trump," notwithstanding clear evidence of investigatory bias and misconduct on the part of the FBI. If Peter Stzrok had already concluded (as he did) that there was "no there there" with regard to so-called "Russian collusion," then why did he later want to join the Mueller team and work to "impeach Trump"? He obviously didn't care what the actual evidence showed. He just wanted to destroy the Trump Presidency, even if he had to lie to do it.

Between the ever changing lies, the suffocating media coverage of all of these supposed Trump outrages, and the Establishment's continued refusal to put an end to this farce, we have been worn out. This is their goal, to wear us down so we acquiesce to their abuse.

5. Their actions do not match their words.

When dealing with a person or entity that gaslights, look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying. What they are saying means nothing; it is just talk. What they are doing is the issue. 

We are made to believe that Donald Trump is a secret Russian agent with deep ties to Vladimir Putin. Yet it is Bill Clinton who took $500,000.00 in speaking fees for pro government speeches in Russia. The Clinton Foundation made millions of dollars off of the "Uranium One" deal, in which 25% of America's uranium supply was sold to a company with close ties to the Russian Government. It was Barack Obama who withdrew America's missile shield from Eastern Europe, and President Trump who put some of it back. 

It was John Podesta's brother who was an unregistered foreign agent for Russia who is now, cynically, getting immunity from Robert Mueller to testify against Paul Manafort who is accused of ... wait for it ... being an unregistered foreign agent for Russia. John Podesta was Hillary Clinton's chief of staff during the campaign, but the Special Counsel sees no conflict here...

In point of fact, you can look at everything the Democrats and their co-conspirators are accusing Trump of doing and find that they have done or are doing the the same thing. 

6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you. 

This person or entity that is cutting you down, telling you that you don't have value, is now praising you for something you did. This adds an additional sense of uneasiness. You think, "Well maybe they aren't so bad." Yes, they are. This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter—and again, to question your reality. Also look at what you were praised for; it is probably something that served the gaslighter. 

Every once in awhile, President Trump (and by extension his supporters) get a little praise. The New York Times, who has been one of the leaders in the gaslight movement, recently wrote a glowing piece on the Trump economy. When Trump attacked Syria, he received near universal praise for reasserting America's role as the world's policeman. Occasionally the President is praised as having a "good week" or a "good press conference," but in reality the Times and the rest of them hate Donald Trump and his supporters. 

7. They know confusion weakens people. 

Gaslighters know that people like having a sense of stability and normalcy. Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything. And humans' natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable—and that happens to be the gaslight. 

The Democrats, the media and the Republican Establishment want to appear to be the stable, safe choice for the country. They have created this Russia nonsense to sow confusion and suspicion amongst the electorate. They cannot accept the results of the last election because they were, in fact, rejected by a population that they have victimized for years. Unrestrained government, unrestrained police power, and unrestrained corruption have been the hallmarks of Establishment government for decades. They have to hide it, so now these gaslighters have decided to really pour it on, making us feel stupid for ever rejecting them as our natural superiors.

8. They project.

They are a drug user or a cheater, yet they are constantly accusing you of that. This is done so often that you start trying to defend yourself, and are distracted from the gaslighter's own behavior. 

This is the most obvious clue. Here they are accusing President Trump of collusion with Russia when the evidence conclusively demonstrates that it is the political establishment that has profited from a twisted relationship with Vladimir Putin. President Bush looked into Putin's eyes and "saw his soul." Some time after that, Putin invaded Georgia. Hillary Clinton presented Russia with a giant red and yellow toy button with the word "reset" on it. Putting aside the fact that it looked more like a nuclear button, Clinton also wanted to have a close relationship with Putin. She advocated for a "strong Russia," and a "stable government." This is after Putin's 2008 invasion of Georgia. Putin, for his part, took her words to heart and promptly invaded Crimea and the Ukraine. 

It is the Clintons and their political allies who have profited financially from their relationships with various Russian oligarchs, not President Trump. And with regard to the allegations of election fraud, it is the Republican Establishment and the Democrats who conspired with the government to steal an election, not Trump. Whether by accident or design, they have projected their own serious misconduct onto the President in order to distract from their own bad behavior.

9. They try to align people against you.

Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what—and they use these people against you. They will make comments such as, "This person knows that you're not right," or "This person knows you're useless too." Keep in mind it does not mean that these people actually said these things. A gaslighter is a constant liar. When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don't know who to trust or turn to—and that leads you right back to the gaslighter. And that's exactly what they want: Isolation gives them more control.

This is where the media has really shown its true identity as a destructive force in America. The gaslighters have recruited almost the entire mainstream media to tell us that we are bad people, that we are useless, that we are deplorable. Turn on any news channel (other than FoxNews) and you will see nothing but 24 hour coverage that is highly insulting to Trump and his supporters. Their commentary is more than just "negative." It is abusive. 

If you support Trump you are a ___________. Fill in the blank with any abusive word you want, it has been used to describe you by someone on MSNBC, CNN, the print media, or network news.

The same is true of the entertainment industry. Movies and sitcoms routinely depict Trump supporters as fools and cavemen. You cannot watch an awards show without hearing "F-Trump" yelled throughout. Movie and television stars have been recruited by the left to spew hatred at middle America all in an effort to convince us that we are worthless and should just submit to the gaslighters.

10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.

This is one of the most effective tools of the gaslighter, because it's dismissive. The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control. It's a master technique.

Likewise, anyone left in America who is undecided or open to the possibility that the President is not a bad guy has been inundated with allegations that Trump and his supporters are, literally, "crazy." Trump is a narcissist, who has dementia, or early onset Alzheimers disease. Trump supporters are categorized as fools, uneducated, pathological. 

All of this is an attempt to convince the undecided voters that a vote for Trump is a vote for a raving lunatic (and a spy).

11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.

By telling you that everyone else (your family, the media) is a liar, it again makes you question your reality. You've never known someone with the audacity to do this, so they must be telling the truth, right? No. It's a manipulation technique. It makes people turn to the gaslighter for the "correct" information—which isn't correct information at all.

This last one is perhaps the most obvious. These gaslighters in government and the media have been telling you that everyone else is a liar. President Trump is a liar. His cabinet officials are all liars. Every word out of his mouth and the mouths of his supporters is a lie. FoxNews is a network of liars. They tell us that if we want the "correct information" we have to go to CNN, or Adam Schiff, or Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton. Or better still, if we want the truth we should look to the FBI, or other professional liars like former CIA spook, John Brennan.

It's absolutely nuts. The evidence shows that these people have lied to us over and over again, yet we are being directed to them for the "truth." And so the gaslighting of America continues. It is time to wake up and realize that we are in an abusive relationship with the Democrats, the Establishment, the Deep State and the media. We have every right to reject them and leave. The longer we allow the gaslighting to continue, the harder it will be to stop the abuse.

It Is Time To Raise The Age Of Majority To 21

The nation watched today as thousands of children marched on Washington to protest the Second Amendment. These children were mostly polite and eloquent in expressing their views that all guns should be banned. Since they are children, and since our schools have utterly failed to teach real history, very few understand why we have a Second Amendment. Here is a hint, it is not for hunting.

One of the appealing proposals they make, however, is raising the age to purchase a rifle to 21. The current age is 18, although one must be 21 to own a handgun. It occurred to me as I was watching these speeches that perhaps we really have reached a turning point in our nation. Our children do not mature nearly as soon as they did just two generations ago. Very few have a job, and most will live with their parents until they are 30. We do not encourage risk taking, and we reward only the most docile, compliant children in the class. Current high school students will not marry until they are 30 either, but they will almost all have had sex with multiple partners before they are 21. 

Most boys between 18 and 21 in our nation are not physically fit for military service. Even fewer know how to hunt, handle a firearm, handle a knife, fix an engine, stop a fight, plow a field, dance with a lady, or keep their opinions to themselves in front of their bosses. It makes little sense that we would allow the vast majority of these boys to purchase an AR-15, so I will support the age increase.

However, it is unfair to ask these children to give up their Constitutional right to own a firearm, but then require them to register for the draft and, potentially, fight and die for their country. If they are not responsible enough to own a gun, then it is deranged to treat them as mentally and emotionally mature enough to fight a war. They simply are not emotionally or mentally developed enough to be either effective or able to understand the sacrifices they are being asked to make.

Likewise, teenage drivers kill far more children per year than firearms. If a budding adult is incapable of handling a 7.8 pound rifle responsibly, I cannot see how, as a society, we should allow them to handle a three ton vehicle. If we really want to curb teen deaths, we must raise the driving age to 21. I do not trust this generation with an 8800 pound truck any more than I do with an AR-15. They are distracted by social media, music and friends, and not emotionally mature enough to understand the responsibility that comes along with driving such a potentially deadly weapon.

Along those same lines, I cannot understand why we would allow the current generations of children to marry before their 21st birthday. It requires enormous emotional maturity to responsibly handle marriage and, more importantly, children. Couples married under 25 are twice as likely to divorce, leaving behind broken homes with broken children. By allowing children to marry children we perpetuate this cycle of broken homes that, in some cases, result in more school shootings, drug users, and teenage drunk driving accidents.

National wealth and abundance has created a society in which we infantilize our children well into their 20s. As a result, they really probably are not capable of owning a gun, driving a car, serving in the military, or getting married. They cannot form the capacity to contract, for example, for a student loan.  Our current generations of children simply cannot be trusted to be emotionally mature until at least 30. It is our own fault as fawning parents, but that doesn't change the fact. As a result, I propose raising the age of majority to 21. 

Allied Generals Are Still Fighting The Last Cold War

While the Congress, and Democrats in particular, continue to assail Russia from the comfort of Mother America's bosom, Europe is facing an entirely new threat. Russia is already fighting a kinetic war on European soil using illegal weapons and pre-cold war tactics. The Russian attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, using an illegal and highly toxic nerve agent, signifies to the world that Russia is not playing by the old rules. 

For those who need some background, Mr. Skripal worked as a British spy in Russia until he was discovered in 2004. He was jailed and later traded back to the U.K. as part of an old fashioned "spy swap," like you'd see in a Cold War movie. This Bridge of Spies kind of transfer of prisoners had been the norm between the Allies and Russia for more than 50 years. Spies of any value were rarely put on public trial, or even acknowledged as spies. They were either shot or debriefed and traded for something of equal value.

Mr. Skripal was serving as a spy more than a decade after the Berlin Wall fell. Russia and NATO were no longer sworn enemies, but rather cautious acquaintances, still deciding whether to be good neighbors. Vladimir Putin was not yet in power and America was still dealing with the effects of 9/11. 

Now, fourteen years later, Mr. Putin apparently decided to kill this irrelevant, 65 year old man and his daughter. Every Western intelligence agency reported yesterday that this was an attack, by Russia, on British soil, using a banned weapon. These agencies reported that the attack was almost certainly approved by Vladimir Putin, something he has only partially denied. This marks a new chapter in East-West relations, and the implications should be unnerving to everyone. 

First, the Russian government and its military simply do not fear significant retaliation. Like casting a blind eye to the chemical weapons attacks in Syria, Russia has once again shown that it does not consider any weapon to be too brutal to use. Russia could have used any weapon. Why not a gun? Why not kill him with an axe or a knife? Why did it have to be a nerve agent? It was to make a point. No law will restrict Russia from pursuing its own interests, using whatever means it deems necessary to effect that interest, and it will strike wherever and whenever it chooses.

It is difficult to imagine a more brazen approach. A chemical weapons attack on an American citizen in New York, for example, would almost certainly earn the perpetrator a twenty year war with the United States - that is, if it turned out that a Middle Eastern country were the perpetrator. Britain's response so far has been to expel 23 known Russian agents from the U.K. This tepid reaction shows one thing for certain, we are far more afraid of Russia than Russia is of the West.

Mr. Putin is testing the West's resolve again, just as he did in Georgia, Crimea and the Ukraine. This is yet another probing action, designed to illicit a measurable response that the former spy-master can then use to plan his next move. His next move may be to invade the rest of Ukraine, move into another Eastern European country, or sanction the use of chemical weapons to wipe out any further resistance in Syria. We just don't know, but we need to be on guard. 

We also know from this attack that Mr. Putin is not afraid to use kinetic, terrorist like force on a Western ally. Chemical weapons, like the nerve agent used in this attack, have been banned for almost a century. State actors using chemical weapons risk global condemnation as well as military retaliation. American military doctrine has been entirely focused on the "mass destruction" part of "weapons of mass destruction." Russia, however, has been focused almost exclusively on the limited use of these weapons. In a publication released two years ago, Russia announced its plans to use nuclear weapons in a "limited" capacity in the event of a war against NATO in Eastern Europe. NATO yawned, secure in the belief that no such war could ever really happen.

Of course, no war can really ever happen...until it does. Russia has demonstrated that it is not only willing to use weapons of mass destruction, but that it knows how to use them in a "limited" capacity - like an assassination. Meanwhile, NATO generals are still fighting the last war.

The United States and its allies have spent the last 25 years preparing for and fighting wars in the Middle East. Russia was an afterthought, as was China. Even when Russia invaded Soviet Georgia, the Bush administration, bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, chose to do nothing. When Russia annexed Crimea, the Obama administration belittled the invasion as "contrary to Russia's interests," as if we dictate to Russia what its interests are. When Russia invaded the Ukraine, again, nothing, notwithstanding that we had guaranteed the Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for its agreement to give up its nuclear arsenal. My guess is that they regret that decision now.

Western leaders, including NATO, have consistently underestimated Putin and Russia, disregarding them as "thugs," and "foolish." All the while, Putin has humiliated the West. Contrary to what our leadership may think, Russia is not a "regional power," with a small economy and a decaying military.

Russia has a land mass larger than all of Europe. It has a population greater than Germany and France combined. Its conventional military assets double those of NATO if you were to exclude the United States. Russia has strategic resources in oil, gas, coal and ore that exceed anything in the rest of Europe, and it has strategic alliances with our global rivals that provide it with anything it cannot make on its own. Russia has an enormous, albeit dormant, industrial base. Russia can grow its own food.

Most importantly, however, the Russian people are hardened. There is a reason Vladimir Putin is so popular in Russia. The average Russian enjoys far more wealth than a decade ago, which isn't saying much. But, as the EU debates how many refugees should be allowed to take advantage of state benefits, Russians have been singularly focused on rebuilding their nation. Scarcity is not now, nor has it ever been, a foreign concept to the average Russian. We think that Apple, Facebook and Google make us superior, but we had a similar misconception about Western industry leading up to both World Wars. We have a tendency in the West to overestimate our importance to the world and we have consistently underestimated the resolve of our adversaries. The next war may start in cyberspace, and Apple may give us an advantage but, like all wars, it will end on the ground with guns and men.

It is far too late to rely on deterrence. We have appeased Putin's Russia since the invasion of Georgia and, regardless, Putin's actions demonstrate an utter disregard for Western power. Hitler was not stopped at Munich and the result was conflagration. By the time he invaded Poland, the West had nothing left to threaten him with. The same is true of Russia. We need to prepare for war because it is coming, without regard to our deep desire to avoid it. And it will not be a cold war. It will not be the last war. It will not be the wars we've fought in the Middle East for the last seventeen years. It is a war that has already started, and a war that we are already losing.

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. That warning holds true today. The blueprint for the next World War has been perfectly laid out as if it were 1914 or 1936. As horrifying as that may be, it also should serve as a warning to our adversaries. The United States has, since its inception, annihilated every great power it has fought. The birth of our nation marked the beginning of the end of the British Empire. Our entry in to World War I marked the end of the German monarchy. Our entry in to World War II marked the end of the Nazi juggernaut and imperial Japan. Our resurgence during the Regan administration marked the end of the Cold War. As Admiral Yamamoto lamented after Pearl Harbor: "I fear we have awoken a sleeping giant." It is a lasting warning to our enemies. We are slow to anger but, when provoked, we are an unstoppable force.

That said, the last two World Wars started because the great powers were overconfident and underestimated their adversaries. Who on Earth can say that history is not now repeating itself?

How To Stop School Shootings

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am a fervent Second Amendment supporter and a gun owner. I believe that Americans should own guns, particularly AR-15 assault rifles, to protect themselves and their families from evil. I also believe that an armed society is a free society. 

We have yet another tragic school shooting. Once again, the FBI and local law enforcement knew this 19 year old was a threat and failed to take action to stop his rampage. This is yet another reason my wife and I carry firearms. The government WILL NOT PROTECT YOU.

The recriminations are the same. Liberals want to ban guns, conservatives want to do nothing. This is not a difficult problem to solve, notwithstanding the histrionic babble from both sides.

Children Are More Important Than Money

First, as I've said for years, we protect our money better than we protect our children. There is no excuse, none, for a 19 year old without any military training to be able to enter a school building with an AR-15 and kill 17 people. None. It. Should. Never. Happen. Schools are soft targets and have always been soft targets. Banks are not. Banks are hard to rob and, unlike 50 years ago, you don't hear much about bank robberies anymore do you...

That's because banks protect something our government really cares about on a bi-partisan basis - money. They are hardened. They have vaults, guards, cameras, armed citizens, off duty police, bullet resistant countermeasures, and trained staff. 

Another place you don't see mass shootings? Airports. Yes, there is the occasional attack by highly trained Jihadis, who are quickly dispatched by an army of military personnel and policemen. Airports are hardened because we see the threat.

There is no reason our schools should not be hard targets. We will likely see a $1.4 Trillion dollar infrastructure bill passed by the Congress in the next six months. Let's spend that money on our children. Our schools should be fortresses. There should be armed, but polite and well trained guards at every entry point and soft spot of a school. The staff should receive routine military-based training and be required to show that they are competent to work together to repel an assault. There should be walking patrols around the school grounds and the ingress and egress points of a school should be bulletproof, locked and incapable of breach by any weapon lighter than an RPG. There should be hardened safe rooms on every floor and children should be taught to move to them as they do in the event of a fire or a tornado. School room doors should be nearly impenetrable. If someone wants to attack a school, there should be very few targets for him to kill.

No one should be allowed into a school without prior clearance. Cameras should be monitored by professionals using modern technology to quickly identify threats and then coordinate with armed security to neutralize that threat. These are our children. They are more important than dollar bills.

Does this sound extreme to you? Does this sound like a waste of money? Does this sound "impossible"?

I want you to think about this. One or two teenagers with handguns and rifles can kill dozens of children in less than ten minutes. Imagine what ten well trained Jihadis with fully automatic assault rifles and grenades could do in a few hours. It is time to end this willful ignorance before hundreds, maybe a thousand of our children are slaughtered like sheep in a bloody terrorist attack. Every day we show how weakly we protect our most precious citizens, the more likely it is they will be violently attacked. Next time it may not be a crazed teenager.

Realistic Expanded Background Checks

Use the phrase "gun control" and you will accomplish nothing. You are part of the problem and not the solution. "Gun control" is a trigger for conservatives because historically "gun control" has always meant "gun confiscation." You will not solve this problem, politically or practically, by calling for "gun control."

However, there are many people who should not have guns. The mentally ill teen who posts menacing social media messages about being a professional school shooter, for example, probably should not have a gun. I am willing to make it harder for law abiding Americans to have access to the most destructive weapons, so long as liberals agree to give up this fantasy that the elimination of guns solves gun violence.

We should have a three tiered system for gun ownership. It should be federalized, national, and the states should no longer have any role in the process. 

Tier one: Revolvers, bolt action and lever action rifles, single shot rifles, and pump action shotguns. If you want to own one of these, you pass the current federal background check process.

Tier two: semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns. You pass an enhanced background check system that includes a review of your social media posts, your mental health records, and of course your criminal background. If there is an issue, you submit to a telephone or in person interview with someone in the BATFE, FBI or DHS. However, once you pass this background check, you get a license that lasts five years. The license allows you to purchase as many such weapons as you want, and you may carry those weapons nearly anywhere in the United States without a separate "concealed carry" permit. 

Tier three:  Fully automatic weapons. You should pass a rigorous background check that includes a personal interview, review of social media postings for a period of ten years and an in home visit by law enforcement. You must be able to pass a character and fitness exam similar to what you have to do to become a lawyer. You then get a five year license and can purchase some limited number of weapons.

Weapons should no longer be transferable outside of this process. However, these licenses are automatically renewable upon paper application and the burden is on the government to show cause why your license should not be renewed.

If you lie during any part of the background check process, you spend ten years in jail. If you are denied a license, or if your license is delayed by longer than 90 days, you may appeal to a federal court to require the government to show cause why you should be denied the license. If you win, you should be awarded no less than $50,000.00 and your attorney's fees for having to go through the trouble of vindicating your rights. Moreover, whether the license is denied or approved, the BATFE, FBI or DHS official making the decision must identify his or herself on the application and can be held personally liable for that decision.

Yes, there is potential for abuse, particularly among liberal bureaucrats who think no one should own guns. One can imagine the Obama Administration giving unconstitutional orders to deny all applications. To mitigate this risk, the law should have a ten year sunset clause. If there is abuse, the NRA, along with the enormous number of highly motivated gun owners can vote them out and dismantle the process. It should automatically expire, not automatically renew.

Guns are not going away. Evil is not going away. The natural, unalienable right to protect yourself and your family is not going away. My guns are not going away, and you are not going to take them from me. So, why don't we all stop living in fantasy land and get real about protecting ourselves and our children.

Fixation On The Confederacy Lacks More Than Just Historical Perspective

An Historical Lack Of Perspective

Robert E. Lee was a confederate general. He viewed slavery as a moral and political evil, although his wife's family owned slaves, he opposed succession prior to the war, and Abraham Lincoln asked him to serve as the Union's top general. Robert E. Lee was opposed to the erection of any civil war monuments. In a speech that was famous at the time he said: "I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."

In a world of single issue voters, hyperbole, sensationalist media, and elitist politicians, it is impossible to understand why General Lee chose to fight for the South. It is impossible for so many historically illiterate news reporters to even fathom the motivations of any man who, despite his opposition to the wisdom of a cause, may still choose to follow it. Because we do not teach our  history in a fair or legitimate way, modern thinkers refuse observe any moral complexities in the historical figures they study. When they do, they immediately compare them to our own morality, anachronistically, erasing the validity of the comparison. The result leads to absurdity.

As General Lee stated, slavery was a moral and political evil. Some intelligentsia like to call it America's "original sin," although I find that offensive as a Christian. Slavery is certainly the result of man's original sin, which was turning from God, not from founding this nation without liberating slaves. 

Slavery is an institution that can be traced back to the first human civilizations and has been practiced in nearly every culture at some point in its history. Slavery was not invented by white people. Documentary history as far back as Hammurabi show that the regulation of slavery and slave owners was subject to frequent government action. The Bible, yes, the Bible, addresses slavery without condemnation. Jesus Christ himself did not call on humanity to abolish slavery, but merely to treat  slaves well. He instructed slaves to obey their masters. Both commands when viewed in contemporary terms are morally repugnant. 

Despite 10,000 years of slavery as a widely practiced institution, our freedom loving Founders and their progeny actually quickly eradicated the intuition. That's right, quickly. Abolition was hotly debated during the drafting of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It seemed, rightly, ridiculous to say that all men are created equal, but then continue to enslave a large percentage of the population. The issue never went away, and less than 74 years after the ratification of the Constitution, 620,000 American soldiers died in the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of more civilians died indirectly from war, famine, and disease, and still tens of thousands more perished during Reconstruction. The Civil War is, still to this day, the single most destructive war in the history of our nation, by several orders of magnitude.

Ten thousand years of slavery, abolished in the United States after 74 years. We are indeed a great and moral nation. In fact, slavery was abolished in the United States before it was abolished by Native Americans in North and South America, who held conquered opponents as slaves. It was abolished in the United States before it was abolished in Africa.

To view the institution of slavery without the context of the time period in which it was widely practiced is intellectually dishonest and creates an impossible standard of moral judgment. For example, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Andrew Jackson all owned slaves. They were in power, had an opportunity to use that power to end the institution and did not. By current standards, we should tear down their monuments. But what about Woodrow Wilson? He was an early promoter of eugenics, an ideology also embraced by the Nazis and used to justify the Holocaust. He too should be stricken from our history. What about Robert Byrd, Hillary Clinton's mentor in government, who was a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan? There should be no glorification of him. Franklin Roosevelt interned 100,000 Japanese, depriving them of due process, their property and in many cases, their lives. He and the Supreme Court justices who supported that racist and un-Constitional decision should be stricken. What about Christ? He could have come to Earth and condemned the institution of slavery, but He did not. Perhaps all Christian monuments should also be stricken.

Slavery is and has always been a morally indefensible and evil practice. Many human beings have sacrificed their lives, across many cultures to end slavery. Many Americans gave their lives and continue to give their lives to protect the civil rights of others. Today, we have had the benefit of 300 years of Enlightenment thinking. To condemn historical figures for failing to recognize that which to us is so obvious now, is improper.

A Political Lack Of Perspective

Ambassador Andrew Young, by every measure one of the greatest men still living in our country, recently said that fighting to remove the Confederate Flag from Georgia may have been a mistake. He went on to say: "I think it's too costly to refight the Civil War." He said that flags and statues are just symbols and, "I'm always interested in substance over symbols and if the truth be known, we've had as much glory and agony under the United States flag."

Ambassador Young has perspective. As I wrote some time ago in Man and His Symbols, it was the American flag flying when General Sherman exterminated Native Americans living in the West. General Sherman, of course, was a Union general known for burning his way to the Southern coast during the civil war, resulting in the displacement and deaths of tens of thousands of Southern civilians. It was the American flag that flew as we dropped atomic bombs on civilians in Japan, firebombed Germany and Tokyo, and "relocated" villages in Vietnam. These symbols are a reflection of who we are as a nation, both good and bad. Eradicating them does not change our history. http://libertyswindow.blogspot.com/2015/07/man-and-his-symbols.html

I have spent my entire career in court both defending and prosecuting civil rights. I have, sometimes at great personal expense, helped African Americans find justice, and sometimes peace, by vindicating those rights in front of their fellow citizens. I know first hand that racism exists, and I know the enormous emotional toll it takes on a person to be the victim of racism. Those who think these laws are silly have never had grown men in their office, getting emotional as they describe the truly unfair treatment they've experienced as the result of nothing but the color of their skin. They lack perspective. 

However, like Ambassador Young, I believe this focus on eradicating symbols covers up the real and systemic racial problems we still face as a nation. It blunts the impact of prosecuting real racism. It gives reactionaries an argument that frustrates our ability to bring real, current institutional racism to light. It is an ill advised attack on the wrong targets. 

The vast majority of Americans, black and white, are not thinking about Charlottesville, or Confederate monuments, or Robert E. Lee or Donald Trump's press conferences. The vast majority of Americans are thinking about whether they can get up tomorrow and make it to work on time with their aching knees. The vast majority of Americans are thinking about whether their plant is going to close, or whether their children will make it to practice. They are thinking about whether they can pay the bills or whether they will have to move into a smaller home. Americans are worried about their kid's school, or maybe a child's addiction, or their own. Americans are thinking about the cookout they planned for this weekend, their marriage, their friend who is having an issue.

My father, who came from very humble beginnings, taught me the most important lesson of my life at a very early age. It doesn't matter where you come from, the color of your skin, or who your daddy is. We all put our pants on the same way in the morning, we all care about our families, our jobs, our kids. In the end, we have far more in common with one another than we have that divides us. 

The current populist movement in this nation is a reflection of that reality. Coal miners in West Virginia share the same real life concerns as manufacturing workers in Ohio, or a waitress in Nebraska, or an out of work trucker in Kentucky. The governing elite have completely lost touch with the plight of regular Americans, focusing instead on the minutiae spoiled rich people have time to focus on. The media glorifies conflicts like Charlottesville making it appear that this is what Americans really care about. The coverage lacks perspective. It is not even accurate. It does not reflect the concerns of most Americans. 

Politicians that focus on things like Charlottesville will not be in power for much longer. Americans have clearly had enough. As I've said before, Donald Trump is an imperfect messenger, but he is the only politician even willing to speak to the everyday issues facing most Americans. There will be others who hopefully will strike a more balanced tone. But, the vast majority of Americans didn't go to Harvard or know how to articulate their positions in perfect language. Most Americans do not expect that from their leadership either. I give you as Exhibit A, Donald Trump. However, underestimating his support, or condemning his supporters will be the final mistake most current politicians and pundits will make in their careers. The needs of 99% of Americans can only be ignored for so long. 

Perhaps it's time to keep things in perspective. 

One False Move: Five Thoughts On The North Korea Crisis

For many Americans, the nuclear arms crisis between the United States and North Korea represents their first experience with Cold War brinkmanship. Indeed, there are only a few generations of Americans left who have ever lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. The Baby Boomers, of course, grew up in the post-war era and famously engaged in routine "duck and cover" drills in their schools, as if hiding under a desk would save a child from Russian missiles. Generation X grew up during the Carter-Reagan era, which saw the height of American Cold War military and economic power and the collapse of the Soviet Union. For those generations, Cold War rhetoric, insane threats of global destruction, and brinkmanship are nothing new. While the rhetoric is unwelcome, these generations have some experience grappling with those fears and avoiding global thermonuclear war. Nuclear destruction was woven into popular culture in movies, music and television. To the extent possible, Americans had become somewhat desensitized. 

However, those born in the mid 80s and after have grown up in a world in which the greatest threat to western civilization has been various groups of Jihadis in Toyota pick up trucks. As I've said before, while this threat should be taken seriously, our war with Jihadism is simply not on the same scale as the two industrial wars fought in the last century. This experience gap is resulting in misplaced expectations of what might come from the current crisis, and the enormous impact such an event would have on the world. War is not imminent, despite the bluster, but one false move could result in a cascade of destruction, unprecedented in our history.

Technically, the United States has been at war with North Korea since the first Korean War. While there is a long-standing cease fire in place, there is no treaty between any of the warring parties. But, whether we go to war now or go to war in ten years, it is very unlikely that things in North Korea will change. Here's why.

1.  Sanctions Will Fail.

The Trump administration has spent the past 10 days alternating between "fire and fury" and praise for the U.N. sanctions package unanimously passed by the Security Counsel. The total estimated impact of these "tough sanctions" is approximately $1 Billion. 

One billion dollars is less than Donald Trump's net worth. It reminds me of something out of Austin Powers: "I want...One Million dollars! Or I'll use my 'laser' to destroy your country!" Ok ... get out the checkbook. I'm pretty sure that Kim Jong Un and his regime is willing to part with their one billion dollars in exchange for nuclear supremacy in Asia. Un and his supporters stand to gain hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of Un's lifetime using a strong nuclear program to blackmail the world. 

Moreover, nuclear weapons ensure the survival of the Kim regime. Kim will have accomplished what most rogue regimes and our enemies have only dreamed - a deterrent against U.S. intervention. 

Finally, sanctions are dependent on China, who represents 90% of North Korea's trade. Historically, China has shown zero interest in doing anything beyond making a few statements of frustration with North Korean bellicosity.

That aside...

2.  China has chosen North Korea.

Late last night, China announced that it would remain "neutral" if North Korea attacks the United States or its allies. That would be bad enough, but then they announced that if the United States attacked North Korea, or attempted "regime change" on the Korean Peninsula, they would intervene to prevent it. In other words, China is willing to go to war against the United States to prevent Korean reunification under a democratic government. 

China's announcement is tantamount to giving permission to a mentally ill, unstable child to take his assault rifle to school. It is unacceptable for one of our largest trading partners, manufacturing a huge percentage of our products, to threaten to go to war with us. Anyone who considers President Trump's statements to be reckless should be equally if not more critical of China's.

China just picked sides and it creates perhaps the worst case scenario for U.S. influence in Asia. In point of fact, China has been secretly supporting North Korea for decades specifically because they want North Korea to drive the United States out of the region. In recent years, China has taken overt measures to establish itself as a regional hegemony, with man-made militarized islands in the South China Sea. That aside, there is now strong evidence from our intelligence community that China aided North Korea with its nuclear weapons program.

It is now clear that China is not our friend. China is a global rival whose primary interest is regional if not global hegemony. Unfortunately, sanctioning China is much more difficult than people seem to think. China holds a large portion of our debt and does a huge amount of our manufacturing. Cutting off trade with China, while that sounds satisfying, would throw the United States into a deep, deep recession. The stock market would crash, there would be a run on banks, and the United States would have to find a new way to finance its $20 Trillion debt.

It is a very bad development.

3.  Where is NATO?

North Korea has threatened to attack Guam, a U.S. territory, with U.S. citizens. That would be an attack on U.S. soil, invoking Article V of NATO - the common defense provision. Yet, NATO has been silent, with the exception of Angela Merkel, who has decided to criticize President Trump and announce to the world that the West doesn't have the military power to take out North Korea. Even if true, her statement is not one from a military ally supposedly willing to occupy a foxhole with her American and Japanese friends.

Donald Trump ran against the global elite and won. He attacked NATO during the campaign as obsolete, bloated and militarily ineffective. More and more, he looks right. The NATO alliance was supposed to be a military alliance between the NATO countries, not between "Europe" and the "United States." Our European allies seem to think it is otherwise; that the United States is somehow obligated to be the guarantor of European freedom at any cost. At the same time, NATO could care less about any non-European threat. America stands alone in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Asia.

The fact of the matter is, NATO is no longer a military alliance, it is a political alliance. Evidence of this fact is abundant. Take for example how the Europeans' rushed to give NATO membership to Montenegro, a nation of 612,000 people and no military. If the United States is attacked by North Korea, I sincerely doubt Montenegro will be providing us with decisive military force. On the other hand, if Russia decides to test NATO resolve by invading Montenegro, the United States would be obligated under Article V to go to war with Russia. 

Here is the truth, NATO is not going to help us with North Korea, and the American people will not ever authorize a war with Russia over Montenegro. Trump was right, NATO is obsolete. A new, more powerful global military alliance is needed to ensure freedom in the world. Some countries need not apply.

4.  Americans are not prepared for this kind of war.

I have great faith in the American people, and I think we are far tougher than our enemies and critics believe. That said, Americans have enjoyed sole-superpower status in the world since 1991. For 25 years, Americans have been focused on the Middle East and terrorism. Our government and military have been taking the fight to Jihadism in an effort to prevent a group of crazies from getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction to then use in New York City or Chicago. 

North Korea is an entirely different threat. If the U.S. intelligence reports are correct, Kim Jong Un has between 40 and 60 miniaturized nuclear warheads ready to be attached to Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that can reach the entire country. We are no longer talking about one city being attacked by an improvised nuclear device sitting in a delivery van somewhere in a major city. Now we have returned to the Cold War, where North Korea literally could cause at least the temporary  collapse of civil society.

A single successful nuclear attack would devastate our economy, erasing trillions of dollars of wealth overnight. Multiple successful attacks, or a successful EMP strike would change life as we know it in our country forever. As I've said before, this kind of war means no Publix, no Walgreens, no food, limited water, and no Facebook. Our country may not collapse, but the fabric of society would be torn. Americans, having enjoyed decades free of such threats, are no longer prepared for them mentally, physically, or by stocking those things necessary for survival in a long term crisis. 

5.  The war will not stop with North Korea.

World War III will likely start the same way World War I started - with a seemingly insignificant act, combined with the total miscalculation of the way world powers will align. As we just learned, China, who one would think would support its largest trading partner, has decided it would prefer war with the U.S. over regime change in North Korea. That is a stunning revelation, but it is instructive. It is likely that there are other countries that will align with China and North Korea or, at the very least, take advantage of the chaos.

Russia, for example, is a threat to Eastern Europe. Iran is a threat to the Greater Middle East. If the United States is otherwise preoccupied with a bloody, vicious fight in Asia, Europe will in fact find themselves facing Russia alone. Our Middle Eastern allies will have a similar problem. 

I don't care what anyone says, America simply cannot fight a cascading series of regional wars with its current conventional military. The alternative is too scary to contemplate, but it involves the wide ranging use of nuclear weapons. 

The parallels between World War I and the current state of our world are remarkable. There are multiple hostile powers in different regions of the world. World powers have increasingly entered into war pacts with one another, obligating them to go to war. Economies have become globalized. New technologies on the battlefield are waiting to bring a whole new level of destruction to the enemy. World powers have overestimated the importance of global economic ties to their rivals, and have underestimated the strength of the enemy. The explosion of any one crisis can easily create a chain reaction across the globe.

We should learn from our history, or we are indeed doomed to repeat it.

One Final Thought:  Unity

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu famously counseled leaders that: "Wars are won first in the Temples before they are ever fought on the battlefield." What the Chinese General meant was that any successful war enjoys the unified support of the people. Without unity of purpose, resolve and method, a war will certainly fail.

We are a deeply divided nation. It doesn't matter. There is no American who, in the long run, will profit from "being right" about North Korea. The current crisis is the result of nearly half a century of failed leadership from both political parties. It is not just Obama's fault, it is not just Clinton's fault. It is not Trump's fault or the Bush's fault. It is the combined lack of resolve in bringing an antiquated Cold War surrogate to heel over a period of 67 years. The blame goes back to Truman, MacArthur and can even be more fairly pinned on the treaty ending World War II. We are all going to have to live with the consequences of our collective, generational decision to leave the "Hermit Kingdom" alone for so long.

Everyone has strong feelings about "Russian Collusion," Hillary's emails, NSA spying, and any other number of domestic issues. Like most presidents before him, Trump's presidency will be defined by the foreign policy challenges we face, despite his best efforts to focus on domestic initiatives. We simply cannot fight each other and multiple nuclear powers and expect to win. We will most certainly fail. 

There are plenty of fair criticisms of the Trump Administration and the Establishment Pols opposing him. Expressing those criticisms is the American way. It is the tone that dictates whether we can proceed after debate in a unified way or argue ourselves into national defeat.

No matter how right you may be about any issue you feel passionately about, you will not bring about successful change if your city is consumed by flames. Division, hyperbole, partisanship, diversity of opinion on tertiary issues, and thin skin are luxuries enjoyed by a nation at peace. These are serious threats that need to be faced, collectively, by a serious people. Single issue voters will need to broaden their perspective or else get out of the way of the rest of us.

A house divided cannot stand, and no voter, liberal or conservative, will benefit from a world set on fire.

The Real Civil War

Justine Damon, a white suburban woman in Minneapolis, called the police to report what she thought was a rape in progress in an alley by her home. After two calls to 911 the police finally arrived. Ms. Damon approached the police cruiser in her pajamas, agitated, to tell the police what she heard. There was, apparently, a loud noise in the background, and a black police officer shot her through the window of his cruiser, killing her. The mayor of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges, a liberal Democrat, demanded and received the resignation of her police chief, Janee Harteau, one of the first female police chiefs in the nation. Mayor Damon gave a press conference to announce her decision. 

If you haven't seen the video yet on Youtube, go look it up. Her press conference was loudly, effectively, but non-violently interrupted by a number of black men, who were protesting police violence. In the twenty minutes that followed, whites, blacks, and mixed forced her off the stage and took turns giving speeches and hugging each other, demanding she resign. They demanded reform of the police department and an end to "police violence." They demanded respect from the governors.

Across racial lines, socioeconomic lines, and even ideological lines, the government is under attack. Minneapolis is the perfect example. On a Friday night, during a public press conference, Americans in Minnesota loudly protested their government. They were not protesting Donald Trump. They were not protesting some conservative mayor with a stop and frisk policy. No. Black men and women, beside their white neighbors, were protesting a liberal mayor's failure to prevent the police shooting of a white suburban women. There could not be any more clear harbinger of doom to the ruling class.

Americans are done being ruled.

There is no amount of race bating or gender bating that will save the current governing class. To repurpose a phrase, resistance is futile. Bernie Sanders would very likely be President right now if the Democratic Establishment had not stolen the primary from him. Instead you get Donald Trump. Intelligent people still cannot see the similarities. Americans, whether disenfranchised black urban voters or disenfranchised white manufacturing workers are fed up. They have one, huge thing in common. Disenfranchisement. Desperation has a way of creating strong, unlikely coalitions. Put twenty people with totally different backgrounds and views in a foxhole against a common deadly threat and they will more likely than not point their rifles in the same direction. The Establishment and the legacy media still don't get this.

Donald Trump is not everyone's cup of tea. He is a poor messenger for a very important Anti-Establishment message. But, he is not a Russian spy. There is no longer any doubt in my mind that the political Establishment, the Elite, are doing everything they can to improperly supplant the will of the voters with their own will. Fine. But the Establishment is the minority, and as Mayor Hodges learned, they are so far outnumbered by the populous that they cannot even hold a press conference without the consent of the governed. 

And they do not have our consent. 

Free speech is scary. People yell. They say scary things. They appear agitated. They resist. But it is exactly that kind of speech that formed this nation. The story that this nation was founded by a group of gentlemen engaged in orderly, parliamentary debate is false. In fact, a bunch of loud, opinionated, treasonous men, from relatively diverse backgrounds, rebelled against an established political order that they saw as oppressive. And they weren't even the slaves.

Freedom is the natural state of man. Any meaningful encroachment on that natural state has, historically, resulted in rebellion. Rebellions that are successful are called revolutions. Rebellion is scary. Martin Luther King's non-violent rebellion against the racist political order was scary, even to the liberals of the time. Malcolm X was scary. Black Lives Matter is scary. Donald Trump is scary. Nationalism is scary. But this is what displacement of the established order looks like. When you have liberals, libertarians and conservatives all protesting government authority and power, you don't have rebellion - you have revolution. Understand it and reform, or be run over by it.

The real civil war is not between black and white or liberal vs. conservative. It is between ordinary Americans and the current established political order. We have given them too much power. We have made them too rich. We have subordinated our own futures and the futures of our children to their false promises of Utopia. There is no government Utopia. Freedom is as close as it gets and freedom means being left alone. As I've said before, no matter where you live, you wake up in the morning to your government regulated alarm clock, eat your government regulated breakfast, get in your government regulated car to drive down the government regulated road to your government regulated job. Suffice it to say, the rest of your day is government regulated. They even regulate the time the sun sets with my personal favorite, daylight savings time. Think about that. They regulate the time the sun sets. They record everywhere you go, everything you text and email, every phone number you call and every social media post you make. There is not a single speck of dirt in this nation where you can escape them, and most Americans work the first four months of the year just to pay their taxes. We are not free.

If you want to see rebellion turn to revolution, impeach Trump. Go after his family. Prosecute them. In Pretend World, there is this idea that Donald Trump will somehow leave office humiliated and ashamed; that this shameless man will suddenly see the error of his ways and just go away, or that the Establishment will triumphantly remove him using legal means. 

That will mean war to at least half of the 65.8 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump. To put that into perspective, that is 200,000 more people than live in the entire United Kingdom. It is almost exactly one million people fewer than live in all of France. 

It is thirty times more people than are employed by the entire federal government. It is roughly 40 times more than all active service military servicemen and women. 

Probably, this enormous disparity in numbers between the governors and the governed has been the reason true democracy tends to work better than other forms of government. If just a small cross-section of the population feels disenfranchised, left behind or marginalized, the governors find themselves outnumbered by huge margins by the filthy, angry masses. Populism is not the problem, it is the result.

There is a true Constitutional crisis coming. It will be historic, and it will define our nation for a century. Donald Trump will not resign. That is fantasy. He will either move to dismantle the opposition forces against him or the government will remove him from office. Regardless of who initiates it, it will be a crisis. It will be one crisis among the many foreign policy and domestic crises we are facing now. In a free republic, minorities with a powerful moral message can change public opinion and shape history, like Martin Luther King. Removing Donald Trump from office is not even close to a comparable moral cause and those who believe it is lack perspective. In fact, it is an insult to the many worthy and desperate civil rights causes of our day. 

Contrary to the narrative we are being fed by those in power, our nation is actually united. Without regard to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or socio-econminc status, Americans are fed up with authority. We are done being ruled, and I would strongly suggest getting out of the way before being run over.