New Day, Same Problem, Different Group

So let’s take a look at this new warning from the .dotgov.  Here’s the summary:

The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin due to a heightened threat environment across the United States, which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the successful Presidential Inauguration.  Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.

What interests me about this diktat  is not that it’s spurious bullshit (it is), but in terms of this language it could have been equally applicable after Trump was elected President.  Let’s parse the thing, to get the parallels to 2017.

  • “Some ideologically-motivated violent extremists”  — Antifa?  Most definitely.
  • “Objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition” — Anyone remember the Washington D.C. riots during and after Trump’s inauguration?
  • “Other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives” — that would be the completely false Russian “involvement” of 2017.

All these and more could have been good reasons for Trump to invoke this very kind of action, back in early 2017.

But he didn’t.

Yet because a couple hundred idiots invaded the Capitol, walked off with Nancy Pelosi’s lectern and sat behind her desk, now it’s Defcon-3 and BOLOs for “terrorists”?  Just a reminder:  the “insurgents” who broke into the Capitol weren’t carrying weapons, didn’t throw Molotov cocktails around in the streets or public places, didn’t burn and pillage shops and office buildings, and didn’t beat up innocent people in the streets.  Even the ones arrested were released within hours, and if any effort was made to identify and charge the instigators of said riots, I don’t remember it and nothing ever came of it if there was such an effort.

Also, I don’t recall any of the 2021 “ringleaders” actually saying things like Black Lives Matter’s co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who said in 2015 that she and her fellow organizers are “trained Marxists”.

So which group is more likely to want to violently overthrow our republican form of government:  the “Proud Boys” / Trumpist conservatives or BLM / Antifa?

Anyone who suggests the conservatives, I would suggest, is the enemy of the United States and should be the ones targeted by the National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin of January 27, 2021 — because if ever there is a “false narrative”, it’s the one contained in the bulletin’s summary at the top of this post.

It’s an age-old tactic of the Left:  accuse your opponents of doing what you’re doing, or plan to do.

Nothing New

Here’s an interesting consequence of the Chinkvirus:

Denmark is set to introduce a government-sponsored coronavirus vaccine passport in coordination with airlines early this year, a national Danish broadcaster has revealed.

Now the idea of a “vaccination passport” has a whole bunch of people tied in knots, as it’s just one step away from the old “Papieren bitte”  way to install restrictions, tracking and control on travel.

I’m not one of them.  In the first place, proof of vaccination has always been a fact of life when traveling anywhere outside your home country;  try visiting India or Africa without proof of smallpox/yellow fever/etc. etc. in your passport, and you’ll be turned away from the boarding area.  (This, by the way, is as much to ensure that not only are you immune to catching the pox whilst Over There looking at strange temples etc., but that you don’t bring said pox back with you to an un-vaccinated home population.)  The only reason one doesn’t need proof of vaccination when traveling from the U.S. to places like Britishland and Euroland is because said diseases are not only notionally extinct (except where, surprise surprise there are large numbers of illegal and un-vaccinated border-jumpers), but where children are routinely vaccinated in order to attend school and so on.

So I’m indifferent to the idea of a Chinkvirus vaccination passport as part of international travel — and for that matter, in terms of local travel and behavior as well — and especially because once inoculated, I wouldn’t have to wear a stupid and ineffective face-condom every time I wanted to go out of the house.

Of course, the conspiracy morons are going to insist that Gummint is going to use Pox Passports to track individuals’ movements and behaviors, and of course that is a valid concern.  Just remember, though, that we’re talking about Government here:  the morons who can’t find their own assholes with both hands, a map and a trail of crumbs.

I know that in movies, government agents always require just a few clicks on their (Apple — LOL) laptops to create all sorts of data reports at the drop of a hat — the risible Person Of Interest  TV series being the apotheosis thereof.  Longtime students of both government, database systems and the combination thereof know that this facility is very much part of the suspension of belief required to view any work of fiction these days.

Besides, I’m relying on the criminal marketplace to produce passable copies of said documents in sufficient numbers to make the entire thing untenable — just as fake driver’s licenses can and have been used to enable fraudulent voting.

It’s a non-issue, and we have bigger things to worry about.

Insufferable

As I’ve often warned:  because our governing elites are in thrall to things that Europeans do — just off the top of my head, socialism, government-run medical systems, Corona cops and Scandinavian-level tax rates — what happens Over There often repeats itself Over Here.

Hence my bile directed at this latest little bit of Nannyism from Britishland:

Supermarket promotions of unhealthy food will be curbed as part of the Government’s war on obesity.
‘Buy one get one free’ deals on fizzy drinks, crisps and fatty foods will be banned in medium and large stores, as well as on websites, from April 2022.
And free refills of sugary soft drinks will be prohibited in restaurants and fast food outlets.

I know that we’ve seen examples of this before — once again off the top of my head, Malignant Dwarf  I mean  Mayor “Mike” Bloomberg’s ban on Big Gulps in NYFC a few years ago — but make no mistake, there is no part of your life that Bug Gummint isn’t interested in sticking its fat, snot-dripping wart-infested nose into.


By the way, I was in the restaurant business many years ago, and the “no free refills” is easily bypassed by asking customers if they think they’ll need refills, then adding a 1-cent surcharge onto the bill, making refills no longer “free”.  The cost of trying to police such practices makes the game not worth the candle, even for Gummint.

And as a one-time supermarket guy, let me assure you that any restriction on BOGO offers (or BOGOF, as they call it elsewhere) is just as easily circumvented in the scanning system — and that’s impossible for Gummint to monitor.

Insufferable, Pt. II

More Big Gummint bullshit, this time from Ozland:

Partygoers heading out to celebrate New Year’s Eve in two of Australia’s most populous states have been told by government officials what’s good for them, being warned against any random acts of affection due to the risks posed by the coronavirus.
In the southern state of Victoria, the government wants no displays of physical contact such as kissing despite the state going 59 consecutive days with no locally acquired coronavirus cases.
The state government has issued guidance for people not to kiss anyone outside their immediate family, to prevent celebrations becoming a super spreading event.
Victorians are also being advised to take hand sanitizer to parties on the night and use it liberally on anyone they come in contact with.

So, you wayward Aussies, your government is telling you there’ll be none of this:

…or this:

…or gawd forbid, this:

…just plenty of this:

No wonder people are becoming home-drunks.

Priorities

No wonder people hate prosecutors, the Justice Department and lawyers in general.  From The Treehouse:   

but:

Fucking hell… why not just bring charges against Cain for whacking his brother, while we’re there?

Oh wait, I know:  “That happened outside our jurisdiction.”

And you thought it was fiction… no wonder we don’t believe in our “nation of laws” anymore.  Fucking clowns.

Textbook Steps

Let’s open with a little received wisdom:

“There’s no way to rule innocent men.  The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.  Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them.  One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

That first sentence says it all.  As long as you keep on the right side of the law, you have nothing to fear from authority.

Now’s when it gets tricky, because politicians cannot resist making laws, and as the number of laws grows, so does the chance that you will fall afoul of one of them, no matter how hard you try.  As one FBI agent once put it:  “This is America.  Nobody can go a day without breaking some law or other.”  And that was said in 1998.  The fact that this could be said with pride — or resignation — makes me want to reach for the tar and feathers, but that’s only my reaction to the first step.  There are more.

The next step is to make transgressors into “Enemies Of The People” or (in the case of the Chinkvirus) a “Menace To Society”.  In sociological terms, this is called “scapegoating” or in extreme cases, demonization.  We’ve seen this in the past, of course, such as when the disgusting Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) publishes their various “hate lists” which set out to demonize as “hate groups” first the easy targets such as the KKK, and eventually the most innocuous organizations (e.g. campus-based Republican organizations).  From that. it’s easy to apply the perjorative term du jour  (“racist”, “Nazi”, “fascist” etc.) to whomever doesn’t agree with your position on anything.

Beyond labeling, of course, lies social shaming, “doxxing”, and the “cancel culture.”  After that, the force of law.  (We already have such laws on the books;  murdering someone in cold blood:  bad.  Murdering someone and calling them a dirty nigger at the same time:  somehow worse.)  At some point, it will become an actual crime to say the word niggerniggernigger anywhere, even inside your own home, First Amendment be damned.  And why not? seeing as racism has become punishable by law, any number of asterisks can be attached to the freedom of speech, of course.

“But the Supreme Court will intervene!”  Don’t make me laugh.  As an entity, the fucking Supreme Court has shown itself to be as useful as a paper-towel birdscreen on an airliner’s jet engine when it comes to protecting our rights.

Which leads us to the next Amendment, of course.

Now the Second has some issues for our wannabe-tyrants, of course, because gun owners are, well, armed (always a decent albeit drastic check on government excess).  And disarmament is likely to prove difficult if not impossible, simply because even if only 1% of gun owners turn violent, that’s still a greater number than the number of law enforcement officers who would be tasked with doing the job.

There is another way to disarm gun owners, and it’s quite legal:  pass a law or regulation that requires gun owners to pay a tax on some or all of their firearms, and when they refuse… ta-dah!  Not only can the government use the I.R.S. to harass and prosecute, but because the refuseniks are de facto  lawbreakers (refusal to pay federal taxes is a federal crime), they can be prohibited from owning firearms altogether once convicted of said crime.  (Remember, trying to win a case against the I.R.S. in their own court system is 99.99% impossible, as to win, all they have to do is show that they acted properly in terms of their own regulations.)

Which is why the Socialists’ plan to tax “assault rifles” is such a pernicious act.  If it ever becomes law (or a regulation under an Executive Order), we gun owners are fucked, pure and simple.

We can expect no help from the judiciary, as I noted above.  We can likewise expect no help from local law enforcement refusing to enforce these un-Constitutional acts either, because the Biden Administration will just deploy federal agents (I.R.S., FBI, Fish & Wildlife, Postal inspectors — anyone they can bring to bear) and bypass your friendly sheriff’s deputies altogether.

And don’t think that there will be some kind of passive resistance from local law enforcement, either.  If little Ector County in Texas (!!!) can deploy Meal Team Six just to shut down a fucking bar which stayed open defying a stupid Chinkvirus lockdown order passed by some local asshole mayor, believe me, you’re not going to be safe in your little suburban or rural bunker no matter how angry you are and how many rounds of 5.56mm ammo you have on hand.

I’m not often a doomsayer, but this is one of those occasions.

I’m also not given to issuing threats or warnings, so don’t expect some kind of challenge to come from me either.  Let’s just see what happens, shall we?