Foreign Enemies, IRS Agents, Elections
We regularly read articles that explain to us that authoritarian regimes—and especially China and Russia—gin up scares regarding foreign enemies to keep their home populations loyal. It’s like scoundrels wrapping themselves in the flag, signalling patriotism to cloak their misdeeds as done with noble intent. If the country is being threatened by foreign enemies, then criticism of the regime is unpatriotic and disloyal—not just to the regime but to the nation as such. In US terms, criticism of the regime becomes Unamerican.
While these articles target China and Russia it’s a peculiarity of American life that most Americans regard suspicions of such tactics on the part of their own regime as “conspiracy theory”. Such suspicions are ruled out of bounds and are regarded as presumptively unbalanced or disloyal, because we have a media that guards against regime shenanigans and manipulations by providing the citizenry with full and true accounts of what’s going on.
Nevertheless, it does seem that something is going on, and it’s not even terribly subtle. For example:
Obviously, Tracey is referring to the unbelievable leaks suggesting that the FBI was looking for “nuclear documents” in their MAL Raid—whatever “nuclear documents” might be. As Red State explains:
On Thursday, AG Merrick Garland finally spoke out while not really saying anything at all. …
Then the leaks started. Just hours after Garland had sneered at Americans for questioning the FBI’s integrity, someone inside the department (or the DOJ) ran to The Washington Post to claim the government searched Trump’s home because they were looking for “nuclear documents.”
The Russia Hoax 1.0 having been thoroughly debunked—including revelations of criminal misconduct in the Intel Community verging on seditious conspiracy—something more subtle was needed. “Nuclear documents” presumably signals nuclear weapons, rather than power plants. And that’s a sneaky way of implying, once again, that Trump is in cahoots with—are you ready for this—foreigners. Uh oh! These are nefarious people who are up to no good—many of them don’t even speak English, and if they do they speak with accents that give their game away. That’s the drift of it. Trust the Interagency—Trump is an existential threat to America because he’s conspiring with foreign enemies.
A lot of conservatives are, rightfully (!), having fun with all this, ridiculing the clumsiness of it all. Nevertheless, practice makes perfect and we should not doubt the seriousness of the intentions behind it all.
Now, I’ve been thinking about the business of the “Inflation” bill that was just passed. That bill included provision for a remarkable increase in the complement of IRS employees, many of them to be special agents—designated LE officers. Eighty seven thousand (87,000) additional IRS employees. For perspective—and this isn’t a random example—the FBI currently has about 35,000 employees, but only about 13,500 are LE officers, Special Agents. By the same token, only a minority of IRS employees are LE officers. Nevertheless, the increase is startling, especially given known past IRS political abuses. Imagine the outcry if the FBI had doubled in size under the bill! One wonders whether there’s some stealth agenda behind this, and that using the IRS as the vehicle for a vast increase in the federal LE complement was … cover?
As it happens, Alex Krainer has been thinking along similar lines, and he ties the business of the proposed massive increase at IRS in nicely with the foreign enemies meme:
Americans seem peculiarly prone to the it-could-never-happen-here bromide. However, students of history know that it’s extremely unwise to rely on such bland assurances. Consider Krainer’s argument, but realize that actual war is not a necessary part of it. The necessary part is a foreign threat to muzzle criticism and justify extraordinary measures—a national emergency:
But what could be the point of provoking China? … the risks are clear. What benefits could possibly justify taking such risks?
The important bit to realize here is that the primary target of the war against China would not really be China. It would be the American people. The shiny new world war in the Pacific would deflect people’s attention from the metastasizing crises at home, redirect people’s anger at a foreign enemy and for the same high price also provide the ideal smokescreen for a radical crackdown on dissent ... As James Madison warned us, “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
Thankfully, other than posturing and saber-rattling nothing much happened in South China Sea thus far. But in just the past few days we saw very chilling developments in the US including the political show trial of journalist Alex Jones, this week’s FBI raid of former President Trump‘s private residence, as well as the tax collecting agency, IRS seeking to recruit 87,000 new agents. There are “only” 724 billionaires in the US at present, and the IRS certainly wouldn’t need that many agents to shake down the ultra high net-worth cohort. Instead, the swelling army of IRS agents will be unleashed on the ordinary Americans. It takes only a cursory reading of history to understand that none of this is random.
There is necessarily an organizing principle and an agenda behind these events. If their actions today are as brazen as raiding a former President’s home, what might they be willing and able to do behind the smokescreen of a major war? …
Actual war isn’t necessary. War scare, blaming foreigners for economic woes, anything of the sort could serve the purpose. My guiding principle is that patterns are simply not random—not in nature and not in human affairs. We’re certainly seeing patterns, and those patterns go back some way. I would say at least to the Clinton years. Marco Rubio, of all people, sees patterns, too—and he shared his concerns on Fox News, comparing what’s going on in America in what goes on in incipient authoritarian regimes:
“Here’s what happens: a group takes power; one of the first things that group does is that they begin to persecute and go after their political opponents, and then when the supporters of their political opponents begin to complain about it, they begin to target them and they criminalize opposition.“
Krainer quotes a well known “anti-racism activist” (that’s a euphemism), who didn’t miss the opportunity:
Since the FBI raid, social media have in fact exploded with calls for a crackdown on Trump supporters and conservatives in general. The sentiment was captured well by the popular author and „anti-racism activist“ Tim Wise in a (now deleted) Tweet: „Any MAGAt who advocates violence in response to Trump facing justice should be arrested now. Free speech does not give you the right to advocate violence. Arrest them. Crush them. Make their children functional orphans. End them.“
Note the dehumanizing language. “Crush them.” That’s the kind of thing we do to cockroaches. “End them”. That sounds very final, as a solution to a perceived problem. We’ve seen a lot of similar rhetoric, a virtual tidal wave of it, during the past decade. Krainer draws the lesson from history—beginning with the French Revolution:
… This is indeed the language of political extremism, the kind that gave rise to the reigns of terror of sorts that has emerged many times through history, from revolutionary France, Bolshevik Russia and China during the Cultural Revolution. That history should be required reading for any would-be defender of liberty today. We should not complacently assume that our affluent, hi-tech societies are in any sense immune to succumbing to such episodes.
… today liberty in the western world is at a far greater risk than it has been in generations. It is time for us all to pay attention, guard against manipulation and groupthink, and be on alert. It is time to be brave. The lessons of history show that neither wealth nor status, and not even zealous party affiliation afford protection against the rising reign of terror if we allow it to metastasize.
If that sounds somewhat vague or unfocused, look no further for a point of focus than the upcoming elections, just three months off. The openly declared goal of the Left is to prevent Trump from ever running for office, or to ensure that he loses if he does run. That comes to a head in 2024. But there’s lots of preparation to be done well in advance of 2024, and that preparation begins with retaining Dem control of Congress. That comes to a head in three months, and make no mistake about it—while Trump is the existential threat, the Left’s Big Push doesn’t stop with him. It includes installing the Dem Party as The Party, the only ruling party.
John Daniel Davidson addresses this Leftist push today:
While his main focus is on 2024, he reminds us of 2020. The preparations for 2024 were tested in 2020 and variations will be used in 2022:
… the FBI raid is just a piece of a much larger story that’s playing out in slow motion and in plain sight: the rigging of the 2024 presidential election.
…
It’s no secret that Democrats and the Jan. 6 Committee want Garland to charge Trump with “seditious conspiracy” in hopes of making it impossible for Trump to run in 2024. In that case, a documents dispute with the National Archives would be nothing more than a flimsy pretext to get into Trump’s residence and look for incriminating evidence related to Jan. 6.
The raid and its possible role in the schemes of the Jan. 6 Committee, though, are part of a larger effort underway to recreate the conditions of 2020, just in case Trump escapes indictment and does run. This week, Twitter announced it would begin enforcing its Civics Integrity Project for the 2022 midterms: “This means we’ll take action against misleading claims about the voting process, misleading content intended to intimidate or dissuade people from participating in the election, or misleading claims that may undermine public confidence in elections outcomes.”
And what that means, in light of Twitter’s past behavior around election time, is that anyone who questions the voting processes or outcomes, however justifiably and no matter what irregularities are afoot, will be shut down by Twitter.
... The best way to understand Twitter’s midterm elections policy, which is itself a preview of its 2024 policy, is that anyone who complains about universal absentee voting, ballot harvesting, remote ballot drop boxes, loose voter ID rules, or any other Democrat-favored policies that are known to make elections less secure will be silenced on Twitter.
Why? Because Democrats plan to run the same play in 2024 they ran in 2020, and their allies in Big Tech don’t want anyone pointing it out. …
For the details on how some of this is playing out even now, follow the link.
Interesting idea:
By Monday, the New York Times will be running a story about how Trump had the Ark of the Covenant
https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1558069268754731008