We just got back from the Feast of Tabernacles and had a fantastic crowd at Panama City Beach. I spent the entire time there, and everybody was in high gear. I hope it went as well in all the sites. 

It’s almost like we haven’t been gone in the news. The negotiations that were going on as relates to Ukraine, still are. The next meeting is in Hungary, and in the meantime the war goes on.

Israeli hostages have been released in the war in Gaza. Those idiots better have learned their lesson, but probably not. It’s a different mentality over there, and nothing makes sense to you or me. Everybody knows what has transpired so far.

Trump apparently wants to be known as a peace-maker. I saw him brag about the wars he’s stopped in Africa, and he’s got bigger fish to fry. Who knows what Putin has in mind, or Zelensky for that matter. The war in Ukraine may be the hardest one to solve. There’s another meeting planned, but the principles have that look on their face. It won’t be easy.

The Arabs have released hostages that should have never been taken in the first place. Things haven’t changed that much, despite thousands of years. Apparently Donald Trump has everybody’s respect in a way that we’ve not seen before. They better agree before something else happens. The rabble-rousers must have taken a play from some former playbook, because they’re still saying things that make me remember how they used to talk, and that was the 70’s!

Nancy Pelosi may retire! But then again, maybe not. There is a backbench of hopefuls, one of them related, that may make life difficult for years to come. Let’s hope not.

Charges have been filed on Comey and Bolton, and they are not insignificant. Page after page of crimes. They thought they’d be in power forever, and so weren’t worried. I guess they never saw Trump coming, but now they’re in trouble.  

Vigils were held all over Europe for Charlie Kirk. Who knew they even cared? He was having an impact, and now even more. That shooter didn’t know what he would unleash. What do you want to bet that he realizes he made a big mistake, and will have to live with it. In prison.

We had a great and inspiring Feast. We hope you’ll start planning right now for next year’s Feast.  There used to be a thing about the “best Feast ever,” but whose memory goes back that far? We’re having some great ones, no doubt about it, and looking to the future. We’re not through yet!  

With God’s help, we may never be.

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – October 17, 2025 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The jangle of X-mas is almost over. We can’t wait. Other than the Rose Parade in Pasadena, the beautiful weather, the Rose Bowl game. The whole thing seemed wholesome. All the people we listen to and read are off, and we’ll have to survive without them.  But I’m sure we’ll continue to be entertained.

Isn’t it something? God just bailed us out, and everybody can’t wait to dive right back into paganism.  I guess they don’t know any better, but we’ve been trying to give them a clue all these years.

Everything is in a state of flux in the Middle East. I remember hearing everything they’re saying, and that was longer ago than I care to remember. But the Arabs finally did it. They ran that sneak attack on a music festival, to their everlasting regret. They committed acts we don’t even want to know about, and acted like they’d won a victory. Now they’re either dead or getting pushed further and further back.

After 24 years Bashir Assad is gone from Syria. Word is that he fled to Russia, and it has been reported (the Sun) that he gave the Israelis targeting information in exchange for safe passage. We don’t know if that’s true, but there have been some huge explosions around Baghdad.

The war in Ukraine is terrible, and we’ll probably never know the extent of it.  Funny that that was one of the places where they apparently laundered money.  Who knows what corruption took place.  We don’t even want to know unless some who took advantage get entangled in some of the investigations that are coming. That would be alright.

Hopefully it’s a brighter day for America, now that we’ve got someone who cares. I was told many years ago that it was OK to have someone who was a millionaire in the White House. I think that was when Reagan beat Carter. We don’t need to worry about corruption if somebody’s already rich!  

Did I hear right? Did Nancy Pelosi break a hip? Things just keep getting more interesting. We have the smartest people alive helping with government waste, and we’re through saving the planet. As if it made any difference without the cooperation of India and China. No, we’re about to start drilling for oil! Trump says in his rallies that we’ve got more oil than Russia or Saudi Arabia, and it’s time we stopped buying it from third world countries.

The world is coming to grips with what a Donald Trump Presidency means.  Little Trudeau of Canada hopped a plane to visit Mar-a-Lago. He got told that he could be the governor of the 51^st state. I thought it was a joke, but it’s been said again.  

I hope we don’t buy Greenland or absorb Canada. But, what do I know? Seems to me we’ve got enough trouble already, and God has given us a way out. Let’s not waste it!

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – December 20, 2024 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post U.S. House Speaker Pelosi’s husband assaulted with hammer at home first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Senator Marsha Blackburn arrived in Taiwan’s capital Taipei on board a U.S. military aircraft, live television footage from the downtown Songshan Airport showed. She was welcomed on the airport tarmac by Douglas Hsu, director general of Taiwan’s foreign affairs ministry, Blackburn’s office said.

“Taiwan is our strongest partner in the Indo-Pacific Region. Regular high-level visits to Taipei are long-standing U.S. policy,” Blackburn said in a statement. “I will not be bullied by Communist China into turning my back on the island.”

China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory against the strong objections of the democratically elected government in Taipei, launched military drills near the island after U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited in early August.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-lawmakers-arrive-taiwan-thursday-report-2022-08-25/

The post U.S. senator arrives in Taiwan, defying angry Beijing first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Weekly Update

Greetings from Tyler,

Can things not slow down at all? Nancy Pelosi thought it appropriate to risk China’s wrath and has been hailed for doing so. She seemed to sing a tune that’s not exactly in line with official foreign policy. But as National Security Spokesman John Kirby said, she’s going to do whatever she wants. The ominous threats various China officials were making might have made her think twice, but she went anyway. The purpose of her trip remains a little murky.

Now China is conducting war games and firing off missiles, threatening by intimidation. But Taiwan purportedly produces nearly all the chips that power everything from common devices to automobile systems. You’d think we’d repatriate all that. Chinese officials undoubtedly possess ruinous information, but why use it? Well, maybe use it as leverage, but what could be better than a hapless old codger that is told what to say by Obama’s people? From the Chinese perspective, of course.

Odd isn’t it, that America’s foreign policy challenges are occurring at the center of corruption we’re not supposed to know about? No doubt the arms producers are gleeful that the old inventory is being expended and they must produce the new version of everything for our own military. We hope that’s what they’re doing.

Oohh, they’ve almost got him this time! Having seen a clip or two from channels that are not welcome at my place, they’re salivating over the prospective criminal charges threatening the former President. What was he doing in private on January 6? The cable networks have legal analysts, including the infamous Jeffrey Toobin, who are just sure, “The Walls are Closing In.” Sounds like a rerun from two and three years ago. Oh wait. The same culprits were saying these same things two and three years ago! It was Russian Collusion and two impeachments, and he survived much to the chagrin of the establishment.

They’re going to make a criminal out of Donald Trump if it’s the last thing they do. If they charge him with a crime, that makes all his supporters accessories. They must hate him in a way we don’t quite understand. But maybe there’s more to it. The liberals are always associating fear with hate, and they might be scared. The house-cleaning should have happened last time, but it didn’t. It’s been published that Trump is planning a second term and is already making plans to do just that. That’s probably why the legal experts are making dire predictions.

How many years ago was it that the mainstream began to equate fear with hate? They took to calling us all homophobes when no one was scared. It’s not even a word, but when has that ever slowed down an angry weirdo? We’ve been going along, keeping our heads down as every mainstream product and service preached this stuff. They just might have overplayed their hand. Several of the wokest of the big concerns are falling in value, they’re laying off employees. Maybe we don’t have to stick our heads up, maybe they’ll just fall out of favor and go broke. We can only hope.

It seems the government is not about to back off the global warming kick, or whatever they’re calling it these days. The European institutions are all pious about saving the planet. They’ve just got to get us to OBEY, and everything will be fine. We only hope they live long enough to realize what buffoons they are. Meanwhile, we’re not buying.

Neither Russia or China are bought into any of this nonsense. Nor are they “doing their part” to help with the cause. You might be interested in the video put out by the Russian ambassador to Spain, “Time to move to Russia.” It brags that Russia has good food (doubtful), cheap and plentiful gas and water, and don’t forget beautiful women. It may be satire or a spoof. But it’s a sad day when Russia can gloat about so much that we’ve lost. Europe, more so.

We’re probably all going to get drug through the laptop from Hades, ready or not. The status quo is too rickety for something not to go awry. The pretender is in isolation once again. He’s got us all wondering why we didn’t get double vaxxed and boosted. We hope for his speedy recovery. We wouldn’t want him to miss what’s coming down the tracks. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 5 August 2022 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

It’s starting to look a lot like sabotage.  If the goal was to ruin our way of life, dismantle everything that made America great, and drag us all into a gay, trans-sexual whirlwind, the government media and corporate bosses couldn’t try any harder.  We have to be “flexible” enough to abide another round of emergency mandates.  The little twerp in a lab coat will decide.

I nearly lost it when I heard Nancy (Dad used to say she’d managed to get a permanent look of surprise on her face) say that the oil companies couldn’t be allowed to take advantage of the situation to roll back all they’re doing to “save the planet.”  Someday we’re going to find out that she can’t even save herself, let alone the “planet.”  They employ the term as if the “planet” is within their power.  None of these goofs can save the “planet.”  Electric cars aren’t going to do it either.  But if you watch TV you’d think that we have no choice.  And no, buying one won’t make you “iconic,”  but you might get stranded.

The government won’t call a temporary halt to the egregious taxes on gasoline, but the occupant is releasing America’s strategic oil reserves to bring the price down, temporarily.  Let’s hope we don’t need it.  What will it cost to replace, or are there any plans for that?  Buying oil from Venezuela and Iran?  Revisiting the Iran Deal, with Russia on our side of the table?  What on earth?

God blessed this country with massive oil reserves.  But everybody from the pretender to the corporations and the media is on board with paying enemies to produce our energy.  It’s the craziest thing!  It’s this green boondoggle.  Obviously the pretender is more anxious to keep the squad happy, if it puts us all out of business.

The Disney company is acting like it can demand woke nonsense and take on Florida. The state has passed legislation making it illegal to bring adult themes into the school rooms of little children.  Disney has made it their priority to abolish the law. They think that NOT teaching little children about weird non-sense is “targeting” them.  We grew up in a time that nobody would dare expose us to this clap-trap.  Not anymore.  Maybe you’ve seen the video of one of their executives saying that she has two “queer” children, and explaining that there need to be more “gay and transgender” characters in their movies.  Then YOUR children have a chance of turning out like hers.  Isn’t that exciting?

Glenn Beck made a point that bears repeating.  The activists didn’t go after Warner Bros, or Paramount, they’ve taken over Disney.  The company that provides entertainment for children and families.  The White House is taking a stand along with the Department of Education.  Children must be taught about all the weirdness at a tender age, otherwise it’s “tragic” and they’re being “targeted.”   They don’t need to know.  Neither do we.  Don’t tell us.

The mainstream has done everything to couch the war in Ukraine as simply as possible.  Ukraine good, Russia bad.  But Ukraine is hardly a haven for Disney “values.”  It would be entertaining for one of these undercover outfits to send a tranny to Ukraine to help out.  They don’t suffer this stuff lightly over there.  Neither Russia nor China are the least bit amused with our stated “values.”  But we’re not supposed to know that.

It used to be entertaining to lampoon the lunatics destroying freedom. It’s not funny anymore.  Last week’s Update warned about the media’s new discovery.  The occupant’s family has been banking vast sums from Eastern European countries and China for years.  It’s all documented, and will be made public in spite of the social media companies and the mainstream trying to silence word of it for years.  Only a few months ago, they’d cancel you cold if you dared Tweet or Facebook the stuff now making headlines.  They called it “Russian disinformation,” and you might just be “Putin’s puppet” if you were shown to be saying anything about it publicly.

But alas.  The flagship papers now admit that it’s all true, without accepting any responsibility for attempting to deceive the public.  The laptop from you know where is not “Russian disinformation.”  They’ve finally admitted it.  What we knew and understood before the last presidential election, banned from polite company by the big bosses is now the stuff of headlines!  They’re reporting things we knew two years ago and calling it “Breaking News.”  What a farce!

Uh oh.  Hunter will have to plead guilty to everything to avoid a trial that would implicate the “big guy.”  What a conundrum!  It couldn’t have happened to a nicer family.  Even with the millions, they can’t afford it.  Neither can we.  They call us “haters” if our beliefs line up with the Bible.  Sticks and stones…

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 1 April 2022 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Has literally no idea when asked how CDC is testing for the so called Delta variant

With the CDC announcing a mask mandate reversal and the endless doom mongering over the dreaded Delta variant, Americans have a lot of questions, yet the answer to all of them seems to simply be ‘do as you’re told because we say so’.

This was in evidence again on Friday when after the announcement that even vaccinated people can still get and transmit the Delta variant, Newsmax reporter Emerald Robinson asked the White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre what exactly the CDC is doing to test for this.

Jean-Pierre had no idea and didn’t even bother to suggest she would try to find out.

The Biden Administration is unable to provide any proof that Delta variant is real and White House Deputy Press Secretary @KJP46 just admitted in a press briefing that she has no idea if there’s even a test for it! — Emerald Robinson (@EmeraldRobinson) July 30, 2021

She claimed she didn’t even know why anyone would ask how the CDC tests for the Delta variant or why they would bother to explain the process.

Robinson pointed out that the only answers Americans are being given is “because they say so,” to which the Deputy Press Secretary answered “because they are the experts.”

Amy Tarkanian@MrsT106.
@EmeraldRobinson asked @KJP46 how the CDC is testing for the Delta variant and she completely falls apart and says it’s because “the experts” say so.

As we noted last week, Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s answer to the question “If vaccines work, then why do people who have the vaccine now need to wear masks?” was essentially ‘because we say so’.

After admitting that he is seeking to determine whether he can mandate vaccines for all Americans, Joe Biden lost it with reporter Peter Doocy, who again dared to ask for an explanation on the flip-flop on masks.

Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, are literally repeating the stock phrase ‘it’s science’ over and over without explaining any of the methods behind it, because they literally have no idea what it is.

(TLB) published this article from Summit News as compiled and written by Steve Watson

Source: https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/wh-deputy-press-secretary-says-americans-must-follow-cdc-orders-because-the-experts-say-so-video/

The post WH Deputy Press Secretary Says Americans Must Follow CDC Orders ‘Because The Experts Say So’ [Video] first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, slammed the Biden administration on Sunday for doing “everything wrong.”

During an exclusive interview with “Sunday Morning Futures” the congressman argued that President Biden has “given” Americans “record crime” and inflation during his first year in office.

Jordan made the comments three days after it was revealed that annual inflation is running at the hottest pace in nearly four decades as widespread supply disruptions, extraordinarily high consumer demand and worker shortages fuel rapidly rising price increases.

Prices soared by 5.7% through November, according to the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index data released Thursday morning. That topped the previous month’s rate of 5%, becoming the fastest pace increase since February 1982, when the gauge hit 6.17%.

The inflation spike largely reflected surging energy costs, which rose 34% from a year ago, and food costs, which were up 5.6% over that same time period. Services inflation rose by 4.3% in November, and goods inflation increased 8.5% – up from the 7.6% pace a month prior, the data shows.

MANCHIN SAYS HE ‘CANNOT VOTE’ FOR BUILD BACK BETTER: ‘I’VE DONE EVERYTHING HUMANLY POSSIBLE’

“The American people would like safe streets, they’d like affordable gas and they’d like freedom,” Rep. Jordan argued on Sunday. “Instead what Biden is giving them is record crime, record inflation and Dr. Fauci.”

“You pick the policy area, they’ve [The Biden administration has] done it wrong,” he added.

Jordan then argued that in “literally in 11 months,” the country “went from safe streets to record crime.”

“We went from a secure border to complete chaos,” he continued. “We went from stable prices to now record inflation. We went from projecting strength around the world to the debacle that was the exit in Afghanistan.”

A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

Rep. Jordan also said that Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., “stays firm and this crazy so-called ‘Build Back Better’ bill never passes.”

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., declared last Sunday that after months of negotiations he has determined that there is no way he can support Biden’s massive social spending bill known as the Build Back Better Act.

Manchin said that he has spoken with President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., but could not reach an agreement on the legislation.

He said that between ongoing inflation, the national debt, “geopolitical unrest,” and the COVID-19 pandemic, the bill being pushed by his fellow Democrats was too much.

“When you have these things coming at you the way they are right now … I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” he said, stating that if he cannot explain to his constituents why he would vote for a bill, then he cannot vote for it, despite all the work he and other Democrats have put into trying to make it work.

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FOX Business’ Megan Henney and Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.

Talia Kaplan is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @taliakaplan

Support: https://www.foxnews.com/media/rep-jordan-blasts-biden-admin-everything-wrong

The post Rep. Jordan blasts Biden admin for doing ‘everything wrong’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Big earthquakes offshore in Alaska or Chile lead Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders to worry about tsunamis coming from thousands of miles away. People take precautions. They move to higher ground. Faced with a real threat, Hawaiians prepare to make major changes to survive.

Apparently, Hawaiians are more interested in survival than Washington Democrats.

Democrats have now had three weeks of tsunami warnings, and the dictatorship of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., seems determined to force through trillions of dollars of additional spending and a host of radical woke policies – even though the American people are screaming, “No!”

KEVIN MCCARTHY DROPS THE GLOVES ON BUILD BACK BETTER AND KICKS OFF 2022 MIDTERM FIGHT

Big government socialism and woke radical policies – and incompetence on issues such as inflation, crime, controlling the border, leaving Afghanistan, and solving logistics problems – are all adding up to an easily repudiated mess. Fed up Americans have a simple battle cry: “It just doesn’t work.”

You may think I am exaggerating about a tsunami-like anti-Democrat wave, but consider recent evidence.

On Nov. 2 Glenn Youngkin led an entire team to victory in Virginia. The team included Lt. Gov.-elect Winsome Sears, a Jamaica-born naturalized citizen who served in the U.S. Marine Corps and loves America. It also included Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares, the son of Cuban refugees who escaped the oppression of communism.

This diverse, impressive Republican team swept Virginia and carried with it a new Republican majority in the legislature. For Pelosi and the Democrats, this was earthquake No. 1.

A few miles north, in New Jersey, Ed Durr Jr., an independent truck driver, defeated New Jersey State Senate President Stephen Sweeney in one of the biggest upsets in modern politics. Durr spent only $2,300. Clearly, the voters were saying: “Not Sweeney.” Consider that Sweeney got almost 59% of the vote four years earlier. This was earthquake No. 2.

Nationally, the polling has been increasingly bad for Democrats.
On the opposite side of the country, in Seattle, a Republican won the city attorney’s race for the first time in more than 30 years.

In a state legislative special election in San Antonio, Texas, a Republican won in a 73% Latino district.

A few days later Democratic Texas State Legislator Ryan Guillen switched parties, saying: “After much consideration and prayer with my family, I feel that my fiscally conservative, pro-business, and pro-life values are no longer in-step with the Democrat Party of today, and I am proudly running as a Republican to represent House District 31.”

Last week in South Carolina, Republicans had solid victories in municipal elections. In Georgetown, Carol Jayroe became the first Republican ever elected mayor. In Columbia, Republican Daniel Rickenmann was elected mayor in a county that went 68% for Biden.

Nationally, the polling has been increasingly bad for Democrats. A generic ballot is a question of whether you are more likely to vote for one party or the other.

On Nov. 7, the Suffolk University/USA Today poll showed an 8% generic advantage for Republicans (46-38) in congressional voting and 38% approval for President Biden. On Nov. 11, the ABC News/Washington Post poll showed a 10% Republican generic advantage (51-41). On Nov. 16, Rasmussen reported a 13-point generic gap (51-38).

As Rasmussen reported:

“The 13-point edge for Republicans in the latest poll is larger than Democrats enjoyed at any time during the 2018 midterm campaign, due both to greater GOP partisan intensity and a wide advantage among independents. While 89% of Republican voters say they would vote for their own party’s candidate, only 77% of Democrats would vote for the Democratic candidate. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, 48% would vote Republican and 26% would vote Democrats, with another 17% undecided.”

In less than two weeks, the generic ballot has moved against the Democrats in every poll. But, of course, in the Pelosi dictatorship none of these results in real elections or polls have had any impact. Democrats seem more worried about being kneecapped by Dictator Pelosi today than being thrown out by voters next year.

Furthermore, the threat to all Democrats is compounded with President Biden at 38% approval and Vice President Harris down to 28% approval. (And anyone who listens to the 10 hours of her laughing will understand that she is likely to go even lower when her supporters hear how whacked she sounds.)

The power of the emerging anti-Democrat tsunami coming this early creates huge problems for the Democratic Party. The scale of the tsunami will encourage Democrats to retire (note Sen. Patrick Leahy announced his retirement just last week). We will have to see if Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., can withstand the psychological pressure of their radical members and the constant harassment of left-wing activists invading bathrooms, surrounding cars and boats, etc.

At the same time, the wave will encourage Republicans to run everywhere, at every level. (If a little-known truck driver can spend $2,300 to beat the most powerful state politician in New Jersey, any Republican can win anywhere.) In the process, Democratic fundraising will get harder, and Republican fundraising will get easier.

Still, with the tide receding, Pelosi charges toward the beach – and the lemmings (replacing the donkey as the symbol of the Democratic Party) march in lockstep behind her, toward the coming tsunami.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/voter-tsunami-democrats-pelosi-newt-gingrich

The post Voter tsunami begins to drown Democrats first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Notwithstanding all the hysterical rhetoric surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, two critical things stand out. The first is that what happened was much more hoax than insurrection. In fact, in my judgment, it wasn’t an insurrection at all.

An “insurrection,” as the dictionary will tell you, is a violent uprising against a government or other established authority. Unlike the violent riots that swept the country in the summer of 2020—riots that caused some $2 billion in property damage and claimed more than 20 lives—the January 6 protest at the Capitol lasted a few hours, caused minimal damage, and the only person directly killed was an unarmed female Trump supporter who was shot by a Capitol Hill Police officer. It was, as Tucker Carlson said shortly after the event, a political protest that “got out of hand.”

At the rally preceding the events in question, Donald Trump had suggested that people march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically”—these were his exact words—in order to make their voices heard. He did not incite a riot; he stirred up a crowd. Was that, given the circumstances, imprudent? Probably. Was it an effort to overthrow the government? Hardly.

I know this is not the narrative that we have all been instructed to parrot. Indeed, to listen to the establishment media and our political masters, the January 6 protest was a dire threat to the very fabric of our nation: the worst assault on “our democracy” since 9/11, since Pearl Harbor, since the Civil War! (Really: Joe Biden said last April that the January 6 protest at the Capitol was “the worst attack attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”)

Note that phrase “our democracy”: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and various talking heads have repeated it ad nauseam. But you do not need an advanced degree in hermeneutics to understand that what they mean by “our democracy” is their oligarchy. Similarly, when Nancy Pelosi talks about “the people’s house,” she doesn’t mean a house that welcomes riff-raff like you and me.

I just alluded to Ashli Babbitt, the unarmed supporter of Donald Trump who was shot and killed on January 6. Her fate brings me to the second critical thing to understand about the January 6 insurrection hoax. Namely, that it was not a stand-alone event.

On the contrary, what happened that afternoon, and what happened afterwards, is only intelligible when seen as a chapter in the long-running effort to discredit and, ultimately, to dispose of Donald Trump—as well as what Hillary Clinton might call the “deplorable” populist sentiment that brought Trump to power.

In other words, to understand the January 6 insurrection hoax, you also have to understand that other long-running hoax, the Russia collusion hoax. The story of that hoax begins back in 2015, when the resources of the federal government were first mobilized to spy on the Trump campaign, to frame various people close to Trump, and eventually to launch a full-throated criminal investigation of the Trump administration.

From before Trump took office, the Russia collusion hoax was used as a pretext to create a parallel administration shadowing the elected administration. Remember the Steele Dossier, the fantastical document confected by the “well-regarded” British spy Christopher Steele? We know now that it was the only relevant predicate for ordering FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page and other American citizens.

But in truth, the Steele Dossier was just opposition dirt covertly paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. From beginning to end, it was a tissue of lies and fabrications. Everyone involved knew all along it was garbage—rumors and fantasies fed to a gullible Steele by shady Russian sources. But it was nonetheless used to deploy, illegally, the awesome coercive power of the state against a presidential candidate of whom the ruling bureaucracy and their favored candidate disapproved.

The public learned that the Democratic National Committee paid for the manufactured evidence only because of a court order. James Comey, the disgraced former director of the FBI, publicly denied knowing who paid for it, but emails from a year earlier prove that he knew all along. And what was the penalty for lying in Comey’s case? He got a huge book deal and toured the country denouncing Trump to the gleeful satisfaction of his anti-Trump audiences.

What was true of Comey was also true of the entire intelligence apparat, from former CIA Director John Brennan to Adam Schiff and other Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee to senior members of the FBI. All these people said publicly that they had seen clear evidence of collusion with Russia. But they admitted under oath behind closed doors that they hadn’t.

General Mike Flynn had his career ruined and was bankrupted as part of a political vendetta. Meanwhile James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, John Brennan, Peter Strzok, and all the rest of the crew at the FBI, the CIA, and other intel agencies suffered nothing. When it came to light that an FBI lawyer altered an email in order to help get a FISA warrant—in other words, that he doctored evidence to spy on a political opponent, which is a felony—he got probation. Andrew McCabe, meanwhile, a former FBI deputy director, just got his pension restored notwithstanding the fact that an Inspector General’s report concluded that he lied multiple times under oath.

The recent news that Special Counsel John Durham has indicted Michael Sussman, a lawyer who covertly worked for the Clinton campaign and lied to the FBI, is welcome news. Granted, it is too early to say where Durham’s investigation will ultimately go, but Sussman’s indictment seems like small beer given the rampant higher-level corruption that saturated the Russia Collusion hoax.

At least 74 million citizens voted for Donald Trump in 2020, which is at least 11 million more than voted for him in 2016. Many of those voters are profoundly disillusioned and increasingly angry about this entire story—the years-long Robert Mueller “investigation,” the two impeachments of President Trump, the cloud of unknowing that surrounds the 2020 election, and the many questions that have emerged not only from the January 6 protest at the Capitol but, even more, from the government’s response to that protest.

Which brings me back to Ashli Babbitt, the long-serving Air Force vet who was shot and killed by a nervous Capitol Hill Police officer. Babbitt was a useful prop when the media was in overdrive describing the January 6 events as an “armed insurrection” in which wild supporters of Donald Trump, supposedly at his instigation, attacked the Capitol with the intention of overturning the 2020 election.

According to that narrative, five people, including Babbitt, died in the skirmish. Moreover, it was said, Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by a raging Trump supporter wielding a fire extinguisher. That gem of a story about the fire extinguisher, reported in our former paper of record, The New York Times, was instantly picked up by other media outlets and spread like a Chinese virus.

Of course, it is absolutely critical to the Democratic Party narrative that the January 6 incident be made to seem as violent and crazed as possible. Hence the crazed comparisons to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. Only thus can pro-Trump Americans be excluded from “our democracy” by being branded as “domestic extremists” if not, indeed, “domestic terrorists.”

The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution accords American citizens the right to a speedy trial. But most of the political prisoners of January 6—many of whom have been kept in solitary confinement—are still waiting to be brought to trial. And although the media was full of predictions that they would be found guilty of criminal sedition, none has.

Indeed, the prosecution’s cases seem to be falling apart. Most of the hundreds who have been arrested are being charged with trespassing. Another charge being leveled against them is “disrupting an official proceeding.” This is a felony charge designed not for ceremonial procedures like the January 6 certification of the vote, but rather for disrupting Congressional inquiries—for example, by shredding documents relevant to a Congressional investigation. It originated during the George W. Bush administration to deal with the Enron case.

The indisputable fact about January 6 is that although five people died at or near the Capitol on that day or soon thereafter, none of these deaths was brought about by the protesters. The shot fired Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd that hit Ashli Babbitt in the neck and killed her was the only shot fired at the Capitol that day. No guns were recovered from the Capitol on January 6. Zero.

The liberal commentator Glenn Greenwald further diminished the “armed insurrection” meme in an important column last February titled “The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot.” The title says it all. Kevin Greeson, Greenwald notes, was killed not by the protesters but died of a heart attack outside the Capitol. Benjamin Philips, the founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo, died of a stroke that day. Rosanne Boyland, another Trump supporter, was reported by The New York Times to have been inadvertently “killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.” But later video shows that, far from that, the police pushed protesters on top of Boyland and would not allow fellow protesters to pull her out.

Four of the five who died, then, were pro-Trump protesters. And the fifth? Well, that was Officer Sicknick—also a Trump supporter, as it turned out—who, contrary to the false report from The New York Times that went viral, went home, told his family he felt fine, but died a day later from, as The Washington Post eventually and grudgingly reported, “natural causes.” No fire extinguishers were involved in his demise.

***********

The January 6 insurrection hoax prompts lots of questions.

Why, for example, did the government mobilize 26,000 federal troops from all across the country to surround “the people’s house” following January 6? Why were those troops subjected to loyalty tests, with those discovered to be Trump supporters sent packing?

Why is there some 14,000 hours of video footage of the event on January 6 that the government refuses to release? What are they afraid of letting the public see? More scenes of security guards actually opening doors and politely ushering in protestors? More pictures of FBI informants (read: “fomenters”) covertly salted among the crowd?

My own view is that turning Washington into an armed camp was mostly theater. There was no threat that the Washington police could not have handled. But it was also a show of force and an act of intimidation. The message was: “We’re in charge now, rubes, and don’t you forget it.”

In truth, there is little threat of domestic terrorism in this country. But there is plenty of domestic conservatism. And that conservatism is the real focus of the establishment’s ire.

It is important to note that while the government provides the muscle for this war on dissent, the elite culture at large is a willing accomplice. Consider, for example, the open letter, signed by more than 500 “publishing professionals” (authors, editors, designers, and so on), calling on the industry to reject books written by anyone who had anything to do with the Trump administration.

These paragons pledged to do whatever they could to stop “enriching the monsters among us.” But here’s their problem: approximately 75 million people voted for Trump. That’s a lot of monsters.

Many people have been quoting Benjamin Franklin’s famous response when asked what sort of government they had come up with at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. “A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.” Right now, it looks like we couldn’t. It looks as if the American constitutional republic has given way, at least temporarily, to an American oligarchy.

As the years go by, historians, if the censors allow them access to the documents and give them leave to publish their findings, may well count the 2016 presidential election as the last fair and open democratic election in U.S. history. I know we are not supposed to say that. I know that the heads of Twitter and Facebook and other woke guardians of the status quo call this view “The Big Lie” and do all they can to suppress it. But every honest person knows that the 2020 election was tainted.

The forces responsible for the taint had tried before. Hitherto, their efforts had met with only limited success. But a perfect storm of forces conspired to make 2020 the first oligarchic installation of a president. It would not have happened, I think, absent the panic over the Chinese virus. But that panic, folded in a lover’s embrace by the Democratic establishment, was not only a splendid pretext to clamp down on civil liberties; it also provided an inarguable excuse to alter the rules for elections in several key states.

“Inarguable” is not quite the right word. There could have been plenty of arguments, and many lawsuits, against the way the executive branch in these states usurped the constitutionally guaranteed prerogative of state legislatures to set the election rules when they intervened to allow massive mail-in voting. But the Trump administration, though foreseeing and complaining about the executive interventions, did too little too late to make a difference.

Among the many sobering realities that the 2020 election brought home is that in our current and particular form of oligarchy, the people do have a voice, but it is a voice that is everywhere pressured, cajoled, shaped, and bullied. The people also have a choice, but only among a roster of candidates approved by the elite consensus.

The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump is that he was elected president without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the bipartisan oligarchy that governs us. That was his unforgivable offense. Trump was the greatest threat in history to the credentialed class and the globalist administrative state upon which they feed. Representatives of that oligarchy tried for four years to destroy Trump. Remember that the first mention of impeachment came 19 minutes after his inauguration, an event that was met not only by a widespread Democratic boycott and hysterical claims by Nancy Pelosi and others that the election had been hijacked, but also by riots in Washington, D.C. that saw at least six policemen injured, numerous cars torched, and other property destroyed.

You will search in vain for media or other ruling class denunciations of that violence, or for bulletins from corporate America advising their customers of their solidarity with the newly installed Trump administration. As the commentator Howie Carr noted, some riots are more equal than others. Some get you the approval of people like Nancy Pelosi and at least the grudging acceptance of oligarchs of the other party. Others get the FBI sweeping the country for “domestic terrorists” and the lords of Big Tech canceling people who defend the protesters’ cause.

Someday—maybe someday soon—this witches’ sabbath, this festival of scapegoating, and what George Orwell called the “hideous ecstasy” of hate will be at an end. Perhaps someday people will be aghast, and some will be ashamed, of what they did to the president of the United States and people who supported him: proposing, for instance, to put Senator Ted Cruz on a “no fly” list, or Simon & Schuster canceling Senator Josh Hawley’s book contract. Donald Trump is the Emmanuel Goldstein (the designated principal enemy of the totalitarian state Oceania in “1984”) of the movement. But minor public enemies are legion. Anyone harboring “Trumpist” inclinations is suspect, hence the widespread calls for “deprogramming” his supporters, who are routinely said to be “marching toward sedition.”

Michael Barone, one of our most perceptive political commentators, got it right when he wrote of the rapid movement “from impeaching incitement to canceling conservatism.” That is the path our oligarchs are inviting us to travel now, criminalizing political dissent and transforming policy differences into a species of heresy. You don’t debate heretics, after all. You seek to destroy them.

Donald Trump’s accomplishments as president were nothing less than stunning. Trump was, and is, a rude force of nature. He accomplished an immense amount. But he lacked one thing. Some say it was self-discipline or finesse. I agree with a friend of mine who suggested that Trump’s critical flaw was a deficit in guile. That sounds odd, no doubt, since Trump is supposed to be the tough guy who mastered “the art of the deal.” But I think my friend is probably right. Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.

Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.

Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.

I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.

Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the “Oath Keepers,” a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers. They arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett came from his home in Florida to join the Trump January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.

As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.

Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have been branded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.

Hayek’s overriding concern in The Road to Serfdom was to combat the forces that were pushing people further along that road to servitude. His chief concern was unchecked state power. The Road To Serfdom was first published in 1944. In a new preface in 1956, Hayek noted that one of the book’s “main points” was to document how “extensive government control produces a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.”

“This means,” Hayek said, “that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.”

This dismal situation, Hayek continues, can be averted, but only if the spirit of liberty “reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course.” Note the power of that little word “if.”

It was not so long ago that an American could contemplate totalitarian regimes and say, “Thank God we’ve escaped that.” It’s not at all clear that we can entertain that happy conviction any longer.

That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity will be increasingly demanded and enforced.

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

Bingo.

Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author or editor of many books, most recently, “Who Rules: Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the Twenty-First Century” (Encounter Books, 2020).

Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/10/31/the_january_6_insurrection_hoax_146663.html#!

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