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https://brownstone.org/articles/will-we-ever-get-the-truth/

Will We Ever Get the Truth?

Donald Trump will certainly get the Republican nomination. With that the issue of truth and honesty about what happened on March 13, 2020, and beyond will likely not be pushed by the executive branch even if Trump wins. 

No one in his circles wants any talk of this subject, even if every bit of the current national crisis (health, economics, cultural, societal) traces to those grim days of lockdown and the ensuing disaster. We are very far from gaining anything like transparency on what precisely happened. 

The situation today is quite the opposite. Again, Trump’s team long ago accepted a tacit agreement to make the issue go away. This was initially in the interest of securing the nomination (never admit error to your voters). But it soon became an accepted doctrine in those circles. Trump’s opponent wants it this way too, of course, except perhaps to say that Trump didn’t lock down enough soon enough. 

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has announced every intention to use the last experience as a template for the next. The national media has no regrets pushing wild panic. The tech companies show no remorse for unrelenting censorship which still continues to this day. Pharma has more power than ever, and so do the armies of bureaucratic enforcers at all levels of government. Academia is out too: here administrators closed their campuses and forced pointless shots on returning students. They are all culpable. 

Let’s take a step back and ask a fundamental question: when will truth emerge to the point that your average intellectual in a public space will admit that this whole thing was catastrophic for everything we call civilization? We know the answer involves time but how much time? And how much in the way of effort will it require to get the reckoning we need before the healing we require takes place?

This morning my mind drifted back to the days after 9/11, when the George Bush administration decided to use the public fury over the attacks in New York and Washington to deploy a war that the president’s father began much earlier but did not complete. The Bush administration decided on regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

A small minority of people (myself among them) objected that these wars would do nothing to realize justice for 9/11. Indeed they would cause calamity at home and abroad. Americans would lose liberty, security, and many lives would be lost. Overthrowing Saddam and the Taliban without a viable replacement for each would unleash some unpredictable chaos. Nationalizing security at home would create a bureaucratic monster at home that would be eventually turned on Americans themselves. 

How well we recall the way we dissidents were shouted down, called every name. The most absurd was “coward,” as if our opinions on this grave matter were formed by nothing other than our unwillingness to type cheers as others fought and died. 

Sure enough, all our predictions (which were not hard to make) came true. The US wrecked what was the most liberal and secular country in the region, while the war against the Taliban ended with them taking charge again. At some point, the US even facilitated the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, for whatever reason. No one could have anticipated a massive refugee crisis in Europe that would destabilize every government and give rise to massive public anger and distrust. 

Some seven years after these invasions, candidate Ron Paul was on the stage at a Republican debate and denounced the whole thing. He was booed. And then smeared. And then shouted down and hated. But that seemed to kick off a rethinking. 

Eight years after that, Donald Trump said something similar and his comments elicited the same reaction. Except that he then won the nomination. That was 2016. Since then there seems to have been a gradual dying out of the warhawks who take pride in their wild adventure. 

Just this morning, writing in the New York Times, Ross Douthat tossed off the following paragraph without much of a thought, even burying it in an otherwise uneventful column.

The Iraq war and the slower, longer failure in Afghanistan didn’t just begin the unraveling of the Pax Americana. They also discredited the American establishment at home, shattering the center-right and undermining the center-left, dissolving confidence in politicians, bureaucracies and even the military itself, while the war’s social effects lingered in the opioid epidemic and the mental health crisis.

You see how he writes this as if it is nothing controversial? He is merely relaying what everyone knows today. Somewhere between 2001 and 2024, unthinkable thoughts became conventional wisdom. There was never an announcement, never a serious commission, never an apology or some kind of big reckoning or admission of error. What was once radical became mainstream, gradually and then all at once. It’s not even clear when this happened. Eight years ago? A year ago? It’s not clear. 

Regardless, nearly a quarter of a century later, it’s now conventional wisdom that the most popular war policy in the US at the time was a catastrophe by every measure. Everyone today knows for sure that the whole thing was backed by deliberate lies. 

Not that anyone involved will ever be held accountable. George Bush himself is still riding high and never forced to recant his views or actions. None of the top players have paid any price at all. They all moved on to greater fame and riches than before. 

Now everyone just quietly says it was a bad idea all along. 

What can we learn from this? Certainly we can take away that the Covid experience that precipitated the greatest crisis since the Civil War will take a very long time to deal with in any honest way. Will it take 25 years? I seriously doubt it. The work of so many dissidents like those who write daily for Brownstone have dramatically sped up this timeline and contributed to making a repeat much more difficult. 

And maybe that is what we can hope for. And maybe that is much better than the record of history would hope for. Consider the disaster called the Bolshevik Revolution. The event was actually extremely popular in US intellectual circles at the time. Most “liberals” heartily approved of it, believing all the reports that were available at the time. It took years before they began to rethink. 

After the reports of the initial starvations and Lenin’s shift away from War Communism, there was a Red Scare in the US that warned of Bolshevism coming to the US. Hardly anyone really wanted it here. But the party in power in the new Soviet Union would not and could not admit any error. Fully 70 years went by before there was fundamental regime change in that case. That seems like a long time but consider this. The people who experienced the revolution as young men had become very old men by 1989 and many of them died. 

Enough of them eventually died to make the stakes for truth-telling low enough to make it possible. And yet even then, and today, the problem of the past is widely considered to be the crimes of Stalin, not Bolshevism itself. Sure, there is some nostalgia for the Czar but it is not serious. 

If you think about it, then, Bolshevism lasted one lifetime and then died out. That’s a pretty short lifespan for a fanatical ideology in one country. Maybe that’s about what we should expect, and why? Because any generation involved in revolutionary destruction is woefully unwilling to admit error, because they are invested and also because they fear reprisals. 

So it is for the vast Covid generation, especially two groups: the public-health bureaucrats plus media and tech titans that cheered it, and also for the vast swarms of young people who threw themselves into the disaster as a means by which they would and could experience something meaningful in their otherwise aimless lives. 

Will we have to wait for all of them to die out before times change? Will we have to wait 70 years until 2100? 

Surely not. Public and intellectual pressure does speed up the timeline. And in this case, we have an interesting sociological development, as Bret Weinstein has pointed out. The censorship and cancellation campaign hit the wrong groups. These people are now seriously motivated to make a difference. They will not let this pass into the history books. They have a passion for truth and a fiery demand for justice. It was for them the trauma of a lifetime and it will not be forgotten. 

Picture a pot boiling with a tight lid. It is being held on by ruling-class elites in pharma, tech, and media, along with myriad government agents who don’t want to be found out. But the fire is still burning and the water is boiling. Something will give, and it could be sooner rather than later. What we will discover once it all comes out is awesome to consider. If we have only a fraction of the truth now, the full truth will be mind-blowing. 

We cannot wait a lifetime. The fire must still burn.

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https://brownstone.org/articles/may-the-wef-plot-suffer-the-peoples-resistance/

May the WEF Plot Suffer the People’s Resistance

The World Economic Forum had its annual conference last week in Davos, Switzerland. Once again, the Davos crowd ran a demolition derby for the destruction of liberty around the globe.

The WEF seized the Covid pandemic to champion a “Great Reset” to radically increase the power of politicians over every aspect of modern life. In June 2020, the WEF announced that “the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate…We need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

The Covid policies and vaccines that the WEF championed were complete disasters. Thus, one of the WEF’s big themes this year: “restore trust.” More than sixty heads of state from around the world flew in to blather about why they deserve more trust and deference from the people they plunder and oppress.

The WEF seeks to “restore trust,” not by honestly admitting that it peddled horrible advice to governments and the media, but instead by “crushing dissent,” more or less. The WEF is proclaiming that the greatest peril humanity now faces is “misinformation and disinformation.”

And how can we recognize “misinformation?”

Easy: it denies that WEF cronies should rule the world.

OK, that’s a paraphrase. WEF’s latest Global Risks Report warns, “Some governments and platforms…may fail to act to effectively curb falsified information and harmful content, making the definition of ‘truth’ increasingly contentious across societies.” In other words, governments must suppress “falsified” information to save truth.

The WEF presumes governments are founts of truth—regardless of endless rascality from practically every political party on earth. Apparently, anyone who manages to capture political power with a gun or a ballot automatically becomes trustworthy.

The WEF notion that governments deserve deference is practically a theological edict. But that is a primary source of the WEF’s peril to humanity. And this folly is compounded by the presumption that vastly increasing punitive power is necessary to redeem humanity.

One of the wackiest shows at Davos was performed by British environmental activist Jojo Mehta, the chief of “Stop Ecocide Now.” She hectored Davos attendees to recognize that people making money from farming or fishing could be as guilty as people committing “mass murder and genocide.” But if the elites succeed in stopping farmers from farming and fishermen from fishing, future Swiss shindigs may run short of caviar.

The WEF previously promised young people that by the year 2030 “you will own nothing and be happy.” (Davos attendees are exempt from that lofty edict.) Recent political reforms in many nations have furthered the first promise, ravaging private property rights and subverting individual independence.

But the world’s kingpins will need to tighten all the mental thumbscrews for propertyless serfs to “be happy.” Public euphoria could be in especially short supply considering other policies championed at the WEF.

“Individual carbon footprint trackers” are a popular panacea at Davos, and the WEF has proposed the “setting of acceptable limits for personal emissions.” How many burps will it take to get sent to a re-education camp? These types of footprint trackers will be useless without imposing universal “digital identification,” another WEF pet project. How can government “serve” people unless it can find and accost them at any moment, day or night?

Vaccine passports are also a cause célèbres for this crowd. Count on the Master Wizards to exert far more effort to compel injections than to assure vaccines actually provide the protection they promise. While congressional committees in the United States probe the Covid policy failures and cover-ups, the Davos crew continues by effectively whooping up a worldwide Bio-Security State.

The WEF is also gung-ho on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). The US dollar has lost 97% of its value since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, but politicians deserve more arbitrary power over the currency, right? Never forget that “cash is printed freedom.” But CBDCs have powerful appeal to would-be financial tyrants. Saule Omarova, Joe Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, proposed in 2021 to give government total control over every person’s finances; “There will be no more private bank accounts, and all of the deposit accounts will be held directly at the Fed.”

“Climate change” is probably the WEF’s best short-term hope to put a halo over tyranny. This is a topic which requires boundless censorship in order to keep peasants in their place. Cartoonists have long ridiculed all the private jets that fly in for the WEF conference. Such details need to be suppressed on “world security grounds,” or some such crap. The same is true for the appalling failure of green energy schemes such as windfalls to provide energy at reasonable prices.

To boost confidence in the all-electric future, government censors will need to be extra vigilant during harsh winter weather so that people are not warned that their Tesla becomes a useless block of metal during cold snaps.

But the point of the “climate change” hysteria is not to protect either the environment or humanity. It is to provide a pretext for perpetual, boundless subjugation by the elite. If Davos folks were meeting in the woods and subsisting on nuts and berries, they would have more credibility to lecture everyone else on their diets.

WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab practically echoed Marx’s Communist Manifesto, warning of a new specter haunting the world. Schwab derided “an anti-System which is called Libertarianism, which means to tear down everything which creates some kind of influence of government into private lives.” But it is not libertarians’ fault that Schwab’s standard for “some kind of influence of government” is eerily similar to medieval serfdom. Schwab also warned of the rising danger of individuals becoming “egocentric.” And we all know that the worst form of selfishness is refusal to submit to your superiors.

The most effective rebuttal of the WEF sirens of subjugation came from the newly-elected president of Argentina. Javier Milei came to Davos and exhorted the friends of freedom around the globe: “Do not be intimidated either by the political class or the parasites who live off of the State. The State is the problem itself.” Milei’s scoff at people “motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged caste” was perhaps the ultimate face slap for the self-proclaimed saviors.

Many of the follies championed at Davos arise from the boneheaded delusion that political power is irredeemably benevolent. We should not trust elitists who portray “truth” as the same type of despicable luxury as eating meat or owning your own automobile. And we should not trust those who seek to convert officialdom into a priesthood with the right to blindfold people, to muzzle them, and to slash their living standard.

Luckily, people still have freedom to scoff on social media (thanks in large part to Elon Musk). Maybe the next Davos confab will convince critics to cease referring to the “World Enslavement Forum.” Will the WEF cease fearing “runaway skepticism” with the same dread that old southern plantation owners viewed runaway slaves?

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https://brownstone.org/articles/the-doj-quietly-prosecutes-the-covid-resistance/

The DOJ Quietly Prosecutes the Covid Resistance

Midwives in New York and plastic surgeons in Utah didn’t close schools, shutter businesses, or add trillions of dollars to the national debt, yet they are the primary targets of the Biden DOJ’s Covid prosecution. 

Court documents reveal how the Department of Justice has dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars in resources to prosecuting Americans who forged Covid vaccination statuses, according to a new report from David Zweig. 

The feds have used undercover agents to take down midwives and local doctors who forged vaccine cards. Many of the “criminals” had no profit motive; they objected to the mandates based on ideological principles or medical concerns, and they needed cards to participate in society. 

Zweig highlights cases that have been brought as late as spring 2022, “long after it was widely known that the vaccines did not stop infection or transmission, which was the only ethical and logistical justification for mandates.” 

More than ever, it is clear that the calls to “move on” from Covid are reserved for protecting those who implemented tyranny. 

Politicians like Gavin Newsom, who celebrated their acquisition of dictatorial powers in 2020, demand forgiveness for eviscerating the Bill of Rights. In the Atlantic, Professor Emily Oster called for a “pandemic amnesty” after advocating for vaccine mandates for employees and students, school closures, “full lockdowns” over the holidays, and universal masking. “Let’s focus on the future,” she insists. 

The Biden White House has largely adapted this strategy; substituting foreign conflicts as its new justifications for exorbitant foreign spending and widespread domestic censorship. 

With the presumptive nomination of President Trump in the Republican Party, citizens’ hope for answers on the Covid response hinges on Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s participation in the presidential debates. Both parties will work to ensure that does not happen.  

In effect, the powerful have already enjoyed a pandemic amnesty. Politicians have not lost their power nor faced a serious inquiry into their malfeasance. Pharmaceutical companies received government-sponsored immunity from lawsuits while pocketing billions of dollars from federal, state, and local mandates. The apparati behind the Covid response remain intact with little threat to their continued acquisition of power. 

But the “focus on the future” does not extend to those who resisted the Covid hegemon. “The mandates were so feared and loathed by significant and diverse numbers of citizens that they were willing to become criminals rather than comply,” Zweig explains. 

The Biden Department of Justice will not give dissidents the courtesy of a pandemic amnesty. Instead, the targets of the regime will join the ranks of Americans punished by the Department of Justice for their resistance while nondescript bureaucratic tyrants continue their careers unscathed. 

The damage to the nation, however, cannot be glossed over. Learning loss, business closures, vaccine injuries, the erosion of trust in all major institutions, trillions of dollars added to the national debt, trillions more in collateral damage, and the institution of a censorship state will take decades to fix, if possible at all.  

But there is no indication that the powerful will be held accountable for the damage they imposed. Instead, the Biden Administration has decided to target citizens who resisted its irrational edicts. The same edicts for which they insist they must be granted an “amnesty.” Such actions only increase the devastation from a disastrous policy response.