If you missed our livestream Clubland Q&A on Friday afternoon, here's the action replay. Simply click above and settle back for an hour of my answers to questions from Mark Steyn Club members around the planet. The end of the Trump presidency predominated - and what the future holds for dissenters from the new regime.
You don't have to be a Mark Steyn Club member to listen to the show, so please click away and enjoy it. But I do thank Steyn Clubbers for, as always, some excellent questions on this first Q&A of 2021, and we'll pick up some of the ones we didn't get to in the days ahead.
This weekend we will have a new Mark Steyn Show for you, and also a brand new Tale for Our Time which you will not want to miss.
Clubland Q&A is made possible by The Mark Steyn Club. If you're not yet a member of the Steyn Club and you're minded to consider signing up, you can get more info here. It also makes a splendid New Year gift for your loved one.
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Trump Hate Week continues, though actually Trump Hate Years by the media. But in the real world this is what happens: DELTA airlines boots two women for private conversation about Trump...
2021 is already horrible. I find myself, daily, harking back to the halcyon days of 2020. The sole reason for my flirt with the rearview was that Donald Trump was firmly ensconced in the Oval Office and his Twitter account.
No matter what leftist-woke lunatic psychosis dropped into our lap in 2020, President Trump was the constant, consistent buffer. Without Trump, we are now subject the sledgehammer of Jack Dorsey, Kamala Harris, CNN (et al) and BLM. Barely two weeks into 2021 and I've audibly gasped at egregious acts of tyranny, unthinkable mere weeks ago. And the Democrat communists haven't even gained full power. And Republicans haven't yet lost it. And guts have already been torn open and spilled. The path ahead is perilous and deeply dark.
Terrific show! Many thoughts, in no particular order:
Trump's future as ex-president will track Margaret Thatcher's life as ex-PM, and perhaps Pinochet,s life as ex-president of Chile - constant threat of arrest by the ICC, or some individual loony judge with a grudge, so he can be extradicted to a country that will frog-march him on a perp walk to life in prison. If the NY DA does not get there first.
Trump WAS the backlash, which now has fizzled, not just because of the events of Jan. 6. As a lifetime resident of California, we have long said that California politics is the predictor of future US politics. This stretches back to the first use of non-idelogical political consultants in the 1930s. Republicans were happy about this idea in the 70s and 80s, when California became Reagan Country, and then the US became Reagan Country.
The Republican party in Calif. has, regrettably, led the National Republican party into an empty shell of irrelevance. The Republicans last backlash was in 1994, when they eked out control of the California Legislature (and US Congress). The voters also tried to stem the tide of illegal immigration by voting in Prop 187. These victories were taken away by the courts and Democrat shenanigans. A pretend Republican media start/businessman with zero public office experience then won the highest office in the state in a recall triggered field of over 100 candidates.
By the end of Governor Schwarzenegger's time in office, Republicans generally and conservatives arrives specifically had been completely shut out of power. Between the "reforms" of elections engineered by the Governator and continued illegal immigration, Republicans have not appeared on the last two US Senate general election ballots, and there have been no Republican statewide office holders since 2012.
This is the future of the Republican party nationally, I fear. Ann Coulter was right about this much: if you don't get illegal immigration under control, nothing else matters because the Republicans will not be able to win on any other issues. California Republicans lost on illegal immigration in the late 1990's, and we haven't won anything since.
People need to understand what is coming next on the censorship front.
We will progress (because these policies are driven by "progressives") from banned speech to compulsory speech.
No BLM banner on your website? You are a hater. Banned!
No "Save the planet!" slogan in your store windows? Banned!
No DNC support on Linkedin? Unemployable.
And the Supreme Court will say "That's lawful. The 1st only applies to Government. Congress makes the laws, and they have not legislated against this." Because Congress is owned.
I have long been observing that STASI was outsourced to Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft. Check the terms under which you can use your cloud-based software to write emails, documents etc. If it's cloud, whatever you write can be monitored. If it goes through or is stored on someone else's server, it can be read.
The digital world is very convenient, and convenience is dangerous. Smart things - phones, home systems, cars, whatever has IoT connectivity - are backed by services that make smart people dumb, dependent, lazy and complacent.
When you wake up having to say "Black Lives Matter! I repent my white privilege!" in order to turn the lights and heating on, lest the local commissar comes to put you through Mao-style beatings, you'll regret handing over your arms to the Blue Lives Matter guys. Or perhaps you'll come to love Big Brother.
The Daily Wire created a feature film that will premiere on January 14th. It is called "Run Hide Fight" "about a 17-year-old who must fight for her life and those of her schoolmates against a group of live-streaming terrorists." They have other projects in the works. It is the start of a process to take back the culture.
I have been in various states of shock since the 6th. I don't want our side to start the shooting. But the incident has brought out the insanity of the left even more. Suddenly, the MSM is NOT demanding that the shooting of an unarmed woman be investigated. Imagine if Ashli Babbitt had been a leftist. It is easy if you try.
An addled Nancy Pelosi effectively attempting to stage a military coup by asking the Pentagon to disobey Trump's orders. Because we all know Trump has been so humiliated that he will drop some nuclear bombs willy nilly because that is just the way he is. Our big tech overlords shutting conservative voices down with impunity. When will the moderates get over their problems with Trump's personality and wake up?
"When will the moderates get over their problems with Trump's personality and wake up?"
You only feel your chains when you pull against them.
I recently listened to an interview of Yeonmi Park, the young woman who escaped from North Korea and was sold into slavery in China, done by Mikhaila Peterson, your friend, Jordan Peterson's daughter. Both young women expressed alarm at how quickly people had given up their personal freedoms because a panopticon central government had told them to. Poor Yeonmi Park risked her life, and ultimately her family and friends back in North Korea lost theirs, in order that she could be free. Now that she's in America, she's started a family and she was beginning to embrace freedom the country is turning into the nightmare she ran away from.
God defend her if the ccp takes control of the federal government. I wouldn't put it past the biden harris administration to send Ms. Park back to her over lords in north korea who have been threatening her life since she made public the human rights abuses going on in north korea and china.
Just saw a Steynian level brilliant take on Parler from Antipodean legend Garbage Human: "Just goes to show that if the government won't regulate Big Tech then Big Tech will regulate the government".
They are regulating us.
It appears that Big Tech and government will be in lock-step after 20th January. Congress will be the government arm of Big Tech.
John Stossel has an interview on YT with Edward Snowden and during one part of the interview Stossel states something to the effect of, "Well, at least YouTube and Twitter can't have you arrested." Snowden's response was chilling, "Yet." Yet indeed. Apple is "considering" removing Parler from their app store too. Supposedly these app stores were developed to ensure convenience and security. Ha! Turns out it's also a great for cancelling entire platforms that don't toe the party line. And increasingly Big Tech is "the party". How long before places like TMSC are removed entirely from Google search?
It is beyond shocking how quickly these gadget companies become omnipotently powerful. And it's breathtaking how so many people see their actions as being perfectly acceptable because it isn't the government abridging your rights to free speech. Big Tech has more power to shut down your right to free speech than any government despot could have ever dreamed of.
I'm going to get myself an old fashioned radio. Maybe Mark can get some old fashioned broadcasting equipment, and Rush can too, so we can still listen to the shows we love.
We need to defend ourselves from the panopticon state. I find myself thinking that getting rid of the ubiquitous cameras is as important as figuring out how to get away from the leftist web sites.
Please use Brave as your search engine instead of google. We need to get away from these people as much as possible.
My question also; Can the MSC be cancelled?
Another excellent Q&A. Most of the questions, and Mark's answers, remind me of the comment Mark often makes about society and the realm of manners. I can't help but think we're long past even seeing that realm in our rearview mirrors, and I personally believe it's the result of the push from the Left for the last 50 years.
Yes. Those manners were predicated on a predominantly Christian society. The left has been working as hard as they can to remove any vestige of Christianity from society. They have the public schools, the tv shows, the music. They didn't need anything else. Many of the churches just followed suit and most of them don't teach Christian ethics anymore, nor do they uphold them.
All that has happened has me very on edge. I'm taking a hiatus on politics for awhile to attempt to calm myself down. Not sure when I'll comment again or if I ever will. Need some time to process everything and decide my next move if I have one to make. Take cares one and all.
I'm in much the same boat. Although I know myself well enough to know I can't completely step out. Good luck to you, in this and all, Brian.
Keep Calm and Comment On. There are still some useful lessons from Old Blighty.
Dear Brian,
Please rest and recover. Your writing is worthwhile and reread; will be missed until you return. Your post of 1/8/21 @ 01:24 resonated. Take heart from the great ones - "never give up".
Stay safe and may God bless you!
I know the feeling. I took a similar hiatus for a couple of weeks at the end of December into early January. Boy what a time to return. I should've stayed away! Regardless, TMSC is a bright light in an otherwise dark and dreary world. Be well, stay free and hope to see you back here in a bit.
I'll miss your comments and will be looking forward to them when you return.
I know how you feel Brian. My remedy is to bring down the old record player from the attic and listen to some of my old favorite songs. Takes me back to the days when life was certainly less complicated and stressful and we lived in a free society.
Very much sympathise, Brian - and look forward to hearing your much-needed voice again, after your break.
that's a good idea. I don't have a record player anymore, but I do watch an old movie before going to bed to clear my mind. I'm also spending a lot of time praying.
I'm having the same problem. The night of January 6th I couldn't sleep at all. It was like the night after 9/11/01. My kids are pretty much grown up now, but my concern for their safety and future is just as great as it was when they were small.
God bless you with strength, wisdom and peace of mind. I hope you come back soon!
There's an old saw in sports that "you're never as good as you look when you're winning, and you're never as bad as you look when you're losing." It's not a perfect fit for politics--things looked awesome for President Trump on the evening of November 3rd, only to look pretty lousy by sunup--but I would suggest things look worse than they actually are. Which is not to say things don't look bleak, because they do. Really, really bleak. You may think you know bleak, but you don't.
But the scene of any great conflagration is also the scene of green shoots of renewal. It helps (and hurts) to remember that President Trump actually won the election, probably by a lot. He wasn't rejected by vox pop, but returned by acclamation. "They had to cheat to win," some genius summed it up. "They had to cheat to win." And having won, they are pressing their advantage: Trump's off Twitter, Hawley's book deal is dead, Omar is scrawling her "Articals of Impeechment", knives and pistols are drawn, The Terror has returned.
Dispel the darkness! Light breaks! If this is indeed a New Terror, remember Mark's stirring reading (truly!) of Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel and say with me: "Nous sommes tous le pimpernel écarlate!"
They seek us here, they seek us there, antifa seek us everywhere. Are we in heaven, or are we in hell? Hell, for sure, but for a brief spell.
We already won--twice. How hard can it be to do it again? We're the '69 Mets, not the '62 Mets. We'll do it without the likes of Murkowski and Delecto, without the boob governors of Vermont and Massachusetts. We'll do it with the supermajority of disaffected Republicans, the great bulk of Independents, and more than a few Democrats. As Dan Rather used to sign off with his sweater vest and his fake but accurate news, "Courage."
That's the thing, though. What will it take to overcome The Steal? The system is in place and the media is content to purposefully ignore all the evidence. Before the election, the media/socials all agreed to ignore and suppress any discussion of fraud. They announced it! And now not a single journalist is looking into it. How do you overcome that?
Great comment. Particularly, "We're the '69 Mets, not the '62 Mets." It happens to be that I've been a lifelong Mets fan, which means I know a thing or two about despair and fear that you'll never win again. I look at the election from a very similar perspective. Biden had the ballots and Trump had the votes. One represents the will of real people and the other represents the will of the machine. The fact that the machine "won" should get people angry. What's done is done. I recently heard an interesting phrase that went something like this. All creativity starts in the now. The left, at the present moment, thinks the right is pretty much done. They thought the same thing in 2008 after B.O. won and the Dems controlled Congress. Things changed after that and they can change again. It starts now.
Unless Governor Kemp of Georgia is willing to do the heavy lifting needed to clean up his state's voting process, then all of this is academic. That seems to me to be where our efforts should be concentrated. If Georgia is legitimately blue, then we are tilting at windmills.
I don't know if it's blue, probably more of a purple-ish. The Dems are fat and happy right now. Everything has pretty much gone their way since the last election. But good things don't last forever, and if they have one failing it's that they overreach every time. Americans have short memories and most are apolitical. The blue voters of GA might very well be fed up with the Democrats "shenanigans" (2020 Word of the Year!) by the time 2022 or 2024 rolls around and cast their vote elsewhere. Even in bluer than blue CA, our ultra-liberal governor has a good chance of being recalled. There is sometimes hope where you least expect it, but it's up to us to seize the opportunity and lay the groundwork for a new conservative movement and party.
We're going to need to educate ourselves quickly. they control the internet, mostly. Get off of google and use Brave as your search engine. Get off of the twit consortium if you were ever on it. Connect with people you know who share your values and faith- preferably at church, and not in the presence of your cell phone. Remember that you can be recorded through your cell phone even when you're not using it, and unless it's a very old phone, even when it's on. All your plans should be made in person or the panopticon state will be one step ahead of you.
The leftists in America are scared of the rest of us. Now that they know we prefer Trump they're going to act quickly to take total control of things. We need to be organized ahead of time.
Remember that they accuse us of what they're going to do, so at least in that way they project what we need to look out for. They've been accusing President Trump of planning to declare Marshall Law for a while now. This may be their next step followed by an attempt to confiscate guns. My prayer is that sheriffs and police won't cooperate, that the military won't cooperate either, but that's a prayer, not a certainty.
Not totally, right? They lost a lot of house seats. I think there are positive signs there though Georgia would have been very helpful. What worries me more is Rs who are fine to in office and not in power as Mark says. That'll be our ruin.
" It helps (and hurts) to remember that President Trump actually won the election, probably by a lot. He wasn't rejected by vox pop, but returned by acclamation. "
Comforting fantasies are comforting if you can avoid noticing the hard fact that they are fantasies.
6-7 million more Americans voted against Trump than for him. He could have remained president with 50,000 more votes distributed perfectly among a few swing states; doesn't change that far more Americans did not want Trump to be president than did.
The far left holds unchecked power. We need a course of action that doesn't depend on fantasy.
"6-7 million more Americans voted against Trump than for him."
That, Roy, I believe, is the fantasy. If I thought Biden had won the election without cheating, I'd be resigned to the outcome. But he (they) did cheat. I don't mean the kind of cheating where the media (news and social) get behind their guy (Hunter's Guy) to inflate one narrative and bury another (several others) and push him over the goal line for the score. No, I mean "cheating cheating"--and I want you to hear Whoopi Goldberg's voice exonerating Roman Polanski of "rape rape" in the matter of his alleged rape rape of a 13 yo girl. Or, as stated in the charges: "drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor." The Democrat-Media Complex sodomized on the electoral process.
I'm not trying to convince you if you aren't convinced; only to convince you that I'm convinced. I'm convinced they did it in every closely contested state, and in a few (like Texas) that weren't. If it seems a coincidence that we losers are largely highlighting the states Trump unexpectedly won over Hillary last time, but lost to Biden this time, welcome to our way of thinking. That is no coincidence. Hillary's demented national strategy in 2016 reminded Dems (who knew better in 1960) that elections are won in states; more to the point, in precincts; even more to the point, in boxes of uncreased postal ballots marked for one candidate only.
Anyway, my point is that the (Dominion) machinery of power is solidly in the Democrats' hands; there is no dislodging it. Not by politics, anyway. By culture, maybe. As Mark often quotes Mrs. Thatcher, "First you win the argument, then you sin the election." I'm ready to argue.
Setting aside the issue of fraud, there's a consistent pattern amongst Never Trumpers:
1. They were not troubled by the states' explicit violation of the federal Constitution (as it relates to the election of the president).
2. They were not troubled by Big Tech censorship (since November 4th) as it relates to a president of whom they did not approve.
PS. Video of Pence in early January: "We've all got our doubts about the last election. I want to assure you, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities. And I promise you, come this Wednesday, we'll have our day in Congress." The comforting fantasy - propagated by the VP himself - needs to be on a continuous play loop on Fox News. It would be interesting to hear Tucker Carlson discuss it, given his own reservations. Sounds like sedition!
Pamela Geller flashes back to the Trump inauguration and the fact that in the end all protestors had charges dropped against them. Windows were smashed and a limo was set on fire. But the charges were hard to stick as demonstrators wore masks and similar black clothing.
I wonder if we have been too soft in denouncing the swamp who are letting the country and its culture be destroyed and are taking revenge now. These people are monsters: not giants but cockroaches. The banality of evil.
Agreed. The media conveniently decide when they are outraged. Almost anything that goes through their filter turns into a lie. More directly to your point, the swamp is evil and that needs to be addressed.
Yes. The left has been evil for a long time. We need to be good. We need to pray and be on the side of right. God defend us!
I think if we try to defend our positions we're going to need to dress like antifa too. Leftists have long dressed as kkk or who ever they want to smear us with and showed up at conservative events with the press in tow. This was an alinsky tactic. Why we've never reciprocated is beyond me. The kkk were founded by democrats after all.
One of the things that resonated most with me in this Q and A was Mark's comment that to the Left literally everything is about politics. It reminded me of a debate we had in my shul shortly before I left it. Some of us including myself were arguing that we should not be mixing politics with spirituality. To this one of the members replied that all prayer is political. So here's the thing, in the daily service there is one mandatory prayer which is said more than once and that is Kaddish, the mourner's prayer which is said for remembrance and consolation and also happens to be a prayer glorifying G-d. Another prayer that is said every day is a petitionary prayer asking G-d to heal a loved one who is seriously ill. Now these two prayers are recited aloud in public only by those to whom they pertain but might I add that for half the year the entire congregation prays for rain? And all of this was said to be political and that is one of the main reason why I left this congregation.
"to the Left literally everything is about politics" which is why the left loves Islam.
Islam is a total lifestyle thing. Leftism and Islam are all-consuming, and are ruthlessly focused on acheiving submission.
I don't know Perry, granted that they both seek total submission to me theirs looks more like a marriage of convenience. We'll see how it works out in the long run. Remember "to a hammer everything looks like a nail " but what happens when the other hammer looks like a nail to your hammer?
Don't recall where I saw it, but the hammers/nails thing remind me of the story of a Muslim cleric accusing the LBGTQ rep of Islamophobia, and the LGBTQ rep accusing the cleric of homophobia. Each looked suspiciously like a ten-penny to the other, and many more examples likely upcoming. Liberalism and progressivism inevitably tangle thought into knots.
And they both hate Christianity. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Please be careful! Historically totalitarians always seem to get around to targeting Jews. This is why I could never understand why my Jewish friends support the left in such large numbers. The ones who've been honest with me about it have always expressed a hatred of traditional Christianity, but Christians are most likely to risk their lives to defend you.
I'm very scared that Jews will be targeted. omar and many others on the left are overtly bigoted against Jews and none of their comrades call them out on it.
Kitty I'm sure you know that not all Jews are the same, for the most part the ones in Israel are much more sophisticated than the ones in the Diaspora and that is because of the hostile neighborhood in which they reside, in other words they've been "mugged by reality" as the old saying would have it. Although their was a brief pause of covering it up directly after the Holocaust the totalitarians and their minions have never given up on targeting Jews. Did you know that shortly after WWII a posse of German scientists moved to Egypt to work on Nassr's chemical warfare program targeting Israel? Mossad had to use some very persuasive tactics to persuade them that this wasn't such a healthy idea.
Some people attribute the Jewish history of oppression or the Jewish involvement in the labor movement when most of them were workers in the needle train, for example, as was my father to the tendency to take up the causes of the real and/or self-styled oppressed but I would say simply that Jewish Leftists are like all other Leftists ignorant of where their ideology is leading and drunk with self-righteousness.
I don't know anything about Jews hating traditional Christianity even though, as you know, there was a time even in the not too distant past that Jews were oppressed and persecuted by Christian anti-Semitism. And I'm sure you would not associate Christianity with the likes of Reverends Wright and Warnock but there is that too. But I certainly agree with you that at this point in time Jews and Christians are natural allies facing the same hateful enemies. Perhaps you are aware of the fact that in the U.S. and Canada hate crimes against Jews far outnumber
those against any other ethnic group even though Jews are a very small though highly visible minority? As a child of Holocaust survivors I am acutely aware of the storms that are brewing and, as the election demonstrated and with the advent of Jexodus the numbers of those like me in North America are growing but in the back of my mind is the idea that if worse comes to worst I will hightail it to Israel. If my kids weren't still rather young and unsettled I'd probably be living there now.
The thing I could never understand about Donald Trump is that, once he became President, he gave a lot of the establishment types and Never Trumpers jobs in his administration and then wondered why there were problems with cohesion, loyalty, leaking of info etc. He appeared to trust people like Lindsay Graham who was an ally of John McCain and never met a foreign war he didn't like. Ditto for Paul Ryan, Bill Barr, John Bolton, Jim Mattis etc etc. A Trump supporter on Twitter, who has undoubtedly been banned by now, likened Trump's presidency to the Bay of Pigs: loyalists and allies left on the beach to be slaughtered and the enemies invited into the inner circle. They've all headed for the hills now, of course, probably believing that, once Trump is totally vanquished, they can go back to their old business model but who would ever vote for them again? There can't be that many country club members and 'suburban women' in America to make up for the lost Trump voters can there?
As for the Democrats, they have now gleefully taken up a role similar to that of the Lord High Executioner from 'The Mikado' - they've got a little list of Trump supporters and none of them will be missed. Unfortunately though they are not a character from a comic opera but real life, very ruthless people who are in deadly earnest. It is hard to see any white knight emerging from the conservative side, let alone the Republicans, to fight them. Ordinary people are going to have to carry the full load I fear.
I believe Mark himself gave an answer to your first question some time ago. When a conservative, principled leader gets elected (President, Prime Minister), they have a couple of like minded choices for cabinet positions, then after picking those few you have to fill the rest from the squishy unprincipled political animals. The hacks. It is the persuasive and inspirational power of the leader that might give some of these people a temporary backbone.
A friend of mine once likened political hacks to sharks. They go to where they think they will get the most advantage for themselves. When they smell blood in the water, they will turn on the wounded, no matter what pledge of loyalty they had made in the past
Ashli Babbitt. Say her name. She was executed by a cop. I want that cop arrested and prosecuted.
Sound like a broken record? Sorry, but get used to it from me. For one thing, it's the best point we have. You all have written thousands of words on here, making many good points, but to a lot of people, it will just come off as background noise as their eyes glaze over. But a woman with a name, murdered by a cop? That's pretty simple and hard to argue. I assume you remember the name George Floyd?
Why haven't the police released the name and race of the cop shooter? I have my suspicions and probably you do, too. We have to be very careful not to stir up racial tensions. Let me rephrase that. We have to be very careful not to stir up racial tensions that go the wrong way.
Have you seen the video of the shooting? If not, find it and watch it. The woman was threatening no one. Certainly not the cop who came out and shot her. Also, you've probably heard things about the shooting that are clearly wrong. The cop did not spray bullets into a crowd. It was one shot to the head and then he goes back in the room he came out from. It was an execution.
Ashli Babbitt. Say her name before it gets flushed down the memory hole.
To me, the glossing over of the four lives lost is the most troubling aspect , especially the case you have highlighted.
Recently , President - elect Biden said Capitol protesters were treated differently. You can say that again.
Add that to "an insurrection " and "terrorists " and Joe, the safe hands at the helm , the steady as she goes candidate looks very shaky.
Cheers.
And how did it get to be filmed? Because a BLM terrorist was allowed to film the incursion.
There should be charges brought in relation to the killings of Ashli Babbitt and Brian Sicknick ASAP.
Many thanks: fine questions, fine answers, fine comments already. I do so enjoy hanging out with my betters.
I agree Segnes, nowhere else in this troubled time have I found more wisdom and consolation than in this forum.
Not to mention fun, M.! Stay strong. ;-)
Right you are Segnes! You too!
Just as there is no right to freedom of speech on a non-state owned platform, so there is no right to banking.
Big Tech has banking licenses. Commie Jack (not Ma) also controls Square, Paypal is a major player in payments. The banks are run by leftist sympathizers and regulated by government. Check out Operation Choke Point.
Imagine a digital world in which your bank asks you to close your account. Paypal, Square, Stripe refuse to let you use their payment platforms to sell or buy. Visa and Mastercard close your credit card accounts. Wordpress closes your website. Wikipedia editors trash you. Being thrown off Facebook is the least of your worries.
That future is coming to everyone not on the program, and very soon. In a world with no physical currency, how will you receive your salary, your income? How will you pay the mortgage, buy food, fill up the tank?
You are spot on. This would be the easiest way to subvert the 2nd Amendment as well. You own a gun? Sorry, but until you turn it in, you can't bank here, you can't shop here, you can't get insurance, you can't renew your professional license.
Imagine a digital world where every news organization and all the social media companies agree ahead of time to not report on national election irregularities, censor anyone who dares question a Democrat win, and refuse to even do some investigative reporting into any of it. I know, crazy, right?
Also, Brawndo - the entire history of everyone's spending other than by cash is on file.
The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is not about consumers' protection, it is about giving the "agencies" realtime access to all credit card and other transactions.
The agencies don't need a register of gun owners: they know what you bought (beyond the FBI checks), when you bought it. Ammo, guns, training, magazines, MSC subs, Trump MAGA hat - all is searchable. It can rapidly become impossible to buy or sell lawful things, on a person-by-person basis, even before our currency goes fully digital. Big Tech also knows what you have bought to the minutest details.
And when it happens, how are you going to generate outrage so that they back down? America is about 1 nanosecond from being finished.
You guys have nailed it. This is no longer science fiction. Those of us on the right had better adjust our thinking. This is not your father's America.
I wonder how simple it is for them to run a search for ammo purchases by credit card? They may not have that answer currently at hand, but when the time comes they will quickly and easily know where to look for any trouble makers.
No doubt they thought about all of this long before we did. As Mark said, we've been standing in Godzilla's footprint, scratching our heads.
I've never used pay pal and I shop in person and use cash as much as possible.
Imagine a world in which pay pal and stripe and these other leftists sell your banking information to foreign hackers who then empty your account, or a world where they sell your information to "foreign hackers" who then empty your account.
Use cash as much as possible. I'm worried they'll get rid of cash payments, or when the dollar falls they'll set up some kind of government run system where you get points you can use to purchase things and conservatives will be starved.
Unfortunately, if things get this bad removing the infrastructure that allows them to monitor everyone will be the only recourse conservatives can take.
Once again, the people who shout "Abolish America", "God Damn America", and "Death to America" receive more love than the people who say "America is Great", "I Love America", and "God Bless America".
I know I overuse the words astonishing and breathtaking on this forum, but I don't have anything better. And this is yet another example where both seem to apply.
Last February, access to the British Columbia Legislature was blocked by protesters who camped on the steps for over a week. They shouted "shame" and f***" at reporters, civil servants and politicians trying to enter the building for work. They physically blocked people from entering the building. There is one almost amusing video of a reporter who is being screamed at by a young woman using the two words previously indicated, and each time she screamed, he responded by saying: "I can't hear you." The public was unable to enter the building, which they are normally free to do, for eleven days. The campers lit fires on the steps of the legislature, and the smoke entered the building. Another odd moment, was when a left wing politician from city hall, not a provincial politcian, proclaimed that allegations that the protesters had assaulted people were "fake news", and it was noted some incredulity that he was using Trump's language. The Minister of Indigenous Relations agreed to invite seven of the protesters into his office for 45 minutes for a discussion. The talks went on for 90 minutes, and at the end the protesters ask to compose themselves before leaving the building. They apparently had no intention of leaving. About this time, a hundred students from the university came down, surrounded the building, and security had to call the Victoria Police for help. Meanwhile, the contingent inside refused to leave, somehow got pizza delivered, and were arrested later that night, or early the following day. The fact of the pizza delivery was taken as a sign that they had planned well in advance to use the meeting as a ruse to gain access to the legislature building, and stay well beyond the 45 minutes. The politicians did not like being made fools of. I don't see how keeping Nancy's chair warm for her amounts to an insurrection, but by over stating her case, Nancy is probably trying to maintain some kind of advantage.
The collective answer to "my rights are being infringed" is "Shut up", they explained.
What people fail to understand about Parler is that, to be included in Apple and Google's app stores, they had to agree to censor free speech by adopting Apple and Google Ts and Cs and applying them to the Parler platform. Not just mobile apps but the whole Parler platform.
It's free speech for people who stick to the approved script. Everyone else must shut up.
The only platform that allows free speech is Gab, long vilified by the media as a den of fascist racist iniquity, but in truth the only independent platform in the world. The Big Tech oligopoly is clearly a danger to the Republic, but how much more dangerous than Congress, the Media, the Supreme Court and China?
The collective answer to "my rights are being infringed" is "Shut up", they explained.
Once again you've failed to recognize the real victoms. How the heck are Dominion salesmen (flagged) supposed to sell when the market evaporates?
Apple kicked Parler off of it's app store for not having enough safeguards. Apple refuses to stop outsourcing manufacturing to Chicom plants who refuse to cease using slave labor, and in fact lobbied the US government against enacting a ban on the importation of goods from known Chicom slave labor factories.
Remember when that was one of the Left's crusades? Outing companies who made things overseas using slave labor? It was big in the 90's as companies like Nike were publicly shamed and celebrities like Kathie Lee Gifford of TV fame was put on the hot seat and melted into tears in front of the cameras when she found out the garments she was hawking were being made by slave labor in Honduras or wherever it was. However, these concerns suddenly stopped being important to them once everything started being made in China.
Lobbying now to reduce constraints on slave labour!
To be fair, National Review conservativism said that was just comparative advantage and that in the long term those wage slave jobs would give rise to a robust middle class that would demand better wages and living conditions and over the long term would make a better world for all.
As it turns out, with twenty to thirty years of hindsight, that whole line of thinking was a load of crap whose only effect has been to hollow out our own manufacturing and widening income between the wealthy and the rest of us.
So many of our problems are traceable to corporate conservativism, in my opinion. Socialism didn't gain traction among younger people because the communist radicals in the schools suddenly got more persuasive, it became an acceptable idea because while 90 percent of the population's wages stagnated, the great minds of the chamber of commerce said that's a feature, not a bug, and all those giant corporations establishing their monopoly started out as a guy in his garage.
Look, China's per capita gdp is around 17 grand, right between Guyana and Turkmenistan and way below the U.S.'s approximately 63 grand. With a bunch of billionaires and the prosperous middle and upper middle class that inhabit the shining cities inequality has got to be much worse than anything we see here. Recently the CCP regime announced that they have finally eradicated poverty, ahead of schedule of course, and I'd love to know exactly what they mean by that if anything. So this pipe dream that one day they are going to be just like us in every way has always been rubbish and always will be. They have a huge economy because they have a huge population, period. Of course they're big spenders, those who have the dough, and love to show it off but that doesn't change the reality underneath it all and that of course means that that slave labour is a permanent feature, not a bug and anyone with half a brain has known that all along.
Max, you bring up a lot of good points about China. One of the things that GDP fetishists of the National Review corporate stripes miss is that from a purely economic point of view, there is no difference between slave labor that benefits a dictatorship and a reasonably liberal state that just happens to have cheaper labor.
They sold this country a line of crap using an uncritical bit of first year economics, and the country is worse off for it.
"So many of our problems are traceable to corporate conservativism, in my opinion."
Well said, Eric. It ties in with free speech, too: "It's social media, so the First Amendment doesn't apply".
Wow. A lot has happened between the live show and the action replay. Real shock-and-awe. No time is being wasted, and it's not even January 20th. Biden administration targets NRA and drafts no-fly lists. Big Tech deletes conservatives (#WalkAway and War Room etc). Everyone talking about what Mark and a handful of others have warned of for years...
• Glenn Greenwald: "The centralized power over US democracy (and other democracies) concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of unaccountable Silicon Valley oligarchs is stunning, unprecedented and unsustainable."
• Thomas Massie: "Looks like Biden's new war on terror is aimed at American citizens. Like the other wars, this one will never end."
• Michael Tracey: "None of this is about "safety," it's about purposely inflating a threat in order to assert political and cultural dominance."
• Jordan Lancaster: "The president of the United States can't have a twitter but the chinese communist party is allowed to have accounts that peddle blatant propaganda while blocking access to twitter for its citizens."
• Megyn Kelly: "If you're on the right or not woke or want to raise Q's about the integrity of our electoral system, you're next."
• Leonydus Johnson: "Big Tech is doing an infinitely better job at radicalizing conservatives than anything or anyone else they have stupidly claimed to be a threat."
• Will Chamberlain: "It took two years to go from banning Alex Jones to banning of the President of the United States. Some slopes really are slippery."
• Mike Cernovich: "The dark days are here and with Democrat control of senate. They can do whatever they like."
Whatever they like, with the help of the tech dictators - including burying the Biden Crime Family affiliations with the CCP (and Hunter's hard-drive).
PS. Will SteynOnline still be here after the coronation?
Love Glenn Greenwald's " unsustainable " part.
Sky News Australia had a bit about a long list of ccp members who are imbedded in corporations and political groups around the world that was released by some brave Chinese dissenters from the ccp. God bless those brave people. Please look into Sky News Australia's announcement. The news anchor spoke of an Australian newspaper that would be carrying the whole story as well as the list. I'd love to see it. Hopefully it will open some people's eyes. We can pray, anyway.
There was a story a few weeks ago along these lines, Kitty - no doubt one of many!
I wish I knew where to find and capture that information before it gets scrubbed from the public forum by the left.
It appears the reason that the doors to the US Capitol were opened to possible ANTIFA, BLM, or Trump supporters, and/or actors was to provide the story that President Trump incited an insurrection against the US government, and this "fact" would accelerate the Democrats' latest Trump impeachment efforts.
I'll need to see actual timestamped footage of uninvited insurgents, the damage to the Capitol, and the physical attacks on humans inside the Capitol before I believe anything the press or the government reports on the events of Jan.6, 2021.
Mark, I appreciate your uncertainty regarding the likelihood of a violent backlash to Leftist provocations, past, present and future. I agree that there is no guarantee such a movement is coming. However, if the Left goes ahead with its promised final assaults on our individual freedoms (particularly regarding the 2nd Amendment), I do think a large response will eventually coalesce.
It may take a long time but at some point a charismatic leader will emerge, a la Trump. And since the Left is creating Americans with nothing left to lose at breakneck speed, such a leader might generate a large following very quickly.
Or not. The truth is I share your fear that no real help is coming. But 2020 taught us that surreal and unforseen events can converge overnight and completely change the landscape. Is there cause for optimism at the moment? Nope, none at all. But I have lived in flyover country (there's a hell of a lot of it) and met plenty of people who aren't likely to submit, especially to the level of serfdom which will be demanded.
The Left has now unshackled patriotic Americans from the mirage of the Republican Party and the moderating influence of the rule of law. They may eventually regret that. Now out of options, we're going to find out just how exceptional America still is.
Twitter banishments, kickings off FB, threats to kick Parler out of the App Store, firings for attendee political rallies. Looks like we've gone from the Reichstag fire to the night of the long knives in two days
Most depressing show I've ever heard you do.
What's worse is that it's probably the most encouraging thing out there today.
Crikey! I better not listen then. I thought there might be some hopeful news but apparently not. I'm sure they will find some way to get rid of this website, Mark's Twitter, cancel him from Fox, etc. We need a real grassroots uprising, not some half-baked fakery that was purposely engineered to entrap Trump.
The truth is, the American people have had it far too easy for too long and have never been tested in any meaningful way. We will see how they react when they raise taxes both on the federal and state level, but I will tell you this - California is probably the "wokest" state in the union and we've had enough of Gov. Newsom. We've gathered nearly enough signatures for a recall and it's been a bipartisan effort. Little things like that do give me some hope.
If it looks like they're going to pull the trigger and impeach Trump, he should just immediately resign. Then he can loom like a specter over the Democrats and media for the next 4 years.
Good luck trying and removing him before he leaves. There is no way Nancy and her cohorts are working on holiday weekend!
This is not the beginning. This is not the end of the beginning. But it is the beginning of the end.
When will the end of the end be? Maybe after Uncle Joe (who's movin' kind of slow - can't think of the first line without the second) is coronated, we'll get to see the first hate week celebration featuring DJT in the role of Goldstein. Then we'll know it's all over.
Yup.
Mark, your closing point about the best way to destroy the democrat party is to destroy the republican party made me stand up and cheer! Finally, someone agrees with me. I have been blaming the republican party for enabling the democrats for forty years now. The republicans are despicable! And the treachery of their betrayal of President Trump is evil beyond words. I hope to hear you make this point on Tucker's and Rush's shows and keep it front and center. Also, I love to see you with a beard again!
Holly, yes! After yesterday's display from those despicable congressmen and senators, I can't wait to get rid of them. Only the few brave souls who objected to the electors should remain. If Trump formed a party I'd join it.
Absolutely, Holly. We must eradicate the GOP Inc., the business that makes money by coming second and keeping the DNC Inc (the business that makes money by being in power) in worst place.
If politics is showbusiness for ugly people then the GOP is Harvey Weinstein in a convent.
I had been hoping for the Republicans to hold the Georgia senate seats and stem the tide, with a chance for Trump to actually win again in 2024. But that seems to have gone up in flames, and now Democratic super majorities seem inevitable for 2022.
I cannot believe these elections are even close enough for them to cheat their way across the finish line.
Holly, I join you and Mark regarding destroying the Republican Party. It has proven its utter worthlessness. In fact it is worse that worthless. They do not deserve to be Lincoln's party. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for the GOP to do nothing.' And with a few exceptions nothing is exactly what the GOP did. The destruction of the GOP has been one of the Democrats primary long term objectives. But when it is not the Democrats but instead the forces for freedom and liberty who destroy the GOP and who then focus their righteous anger on the Democrats they will quickly regret what they wished for.
Terms are required for all public positions. You should not be able to be in public office for fourty seven years, a career public servant. You should have to have other roles in other parts of private business and they cannot be on the teat of a tax payer contract. You should also not be able to get rich off being in public service. If you do, then your tax rate goes sky high, if you are wealthy entering public office, you do it for free! The whole political, public servant system is rotten to the core and is only a representation of wider humanity and its moral sickness. They say we have to pay them really well to compete with the private sector, rubbish, people join the public service for a job for life the last bastion of that, not for salary, not because they will be asked to work hard and demonstrate they are earning their salary. Covid has proved their immunity, not a single public servant or politician has been harmed in this so called Pandemic.
Agreed. If not for their so-called public service jobs most of them would be unemployed or even unemployable and that goes for both politicians and civil bureaucrats and at this point in history they are actually making more than they would in the private sector along with the job security. It's like a vast upscale sheltered workshop.
Well said, M.
"It's like a vast upscale sheltered workshop."
Brilliant.