For many years people have been saying that “America is going to Hell in a handbasket.”
Well, I am here to tell you that it just isn’t true!
America already has gone to Hell in a handbasket, and it’s only getting worse by the day.
Most Americans are in denial about how totalitarian and self-servingly corporatist this whole society is becoming.
But, if you just look around you, and consider the everyday assaults on innocents by government police, the federal bureaucrats’ illicit “war on terror” and the drug war, the bureaucratization of just about everything, the Obama-Pelosi-John Roberts Unaffordable Careless Act … it’s a never ending Hell, and worse.
Yes, America has decayed into a third world banana republic, and the military’s internment camps are ready, especially for those disobedient individualists who actually believe in morality.
Even economic historian Robert Higgs – during his appearance at the 2013 Mises University – suggested that people ought to leave the country if they can. In that speech Higgs clearly tells us about the destructiveness of the State.
Dr. Higgs is the author of the 1987 book, Crisis and Leviathan. The post-9/11 surge in hysteria and totalitarianism is proof that Higgs knew exactly what he was talking about.
So some call it pessimism, some call it realism. I’m a realist. [amazon asin=1598131117&template=*lrc ad (right)]
However, there are some people in the Liberty movement, such as another economic historian, Tom Woods, who seem more optimistic. Woods travels extensively, giving speeches and he has many YouTube videos promoting liberty. Here is Woods’s speech at the 2013 Mises University.
Dr. Woods’s book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, shows that perhaps there really are ways to push Leviathan back.
And there really have been some positive developments toward liberty. (Sort of…)
Just the fact that the House of Representatives’ vote against Congressman Justin Amash’s amendment to defund the NSA’s warrantless bulk-spying program was such a close vote, is an encouraging prospect.
But it kind of gets a little less encouraging.
While it is good that the vote was close, we saw that the Pelosi-Democrat Establishment twisted arms to get people to vote to preserve the government’s criminal spying.
And would you believe that the majority of those congresspeople who voted against the Amash amendment had actually received twice as much as the Yes-voters in campaign donations from the very defense and intelligence contractors who profit from that program? Yup.
So how’s that “We the People” thing working out for you?
Apparently, military contractors and others benefit from these invasive and unconstitutional programs. Who knew?
And besides the Military-Security-Corporatist Complex, there are examples of government-corporate conniving in other areas. And it’s not a good sign of “progress,” in my opinion.
For example, a recent CDC study attempted to show that HPV vaccines not only reduced cases of HPV, but can also prevent cervical cancer. Even in boys. Now, that’s quite an achievement.
(I’m sure that GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, whose vaccines were used in the study, were quite pleased with the skewed results.)
As I have noted previously, hardly anyone in the MSM challenged the CDC or brought up the many deaths or injuries that were caused by the HPV vaccines. And this simpatico PBS interview with one of the CDC’s senior flunkies is just one example.
It takes LRC bloggers and Freedom of Information Act requests by Judicial Watch to get actual information on the harm that such vaccines have caused.
Oh, don’t get me started on the vaccine stuff, like this latest item about a deadly 5-in-1 vaccine pushed by Bill Gates on babies in mainly developing countries.
And only a handful of people pointed out those Merck-funding California legislators who voted to force the HPV vaccine on kids. (Perhaps Nancy Lugosi twisted their arms, too.)
Why, even the flu vaccine has its controversies. But one might think that when NPR spends an hour discussing the importance of the flu vaccine, they might also mention the importance of nutritional support and vitamins as better and healthier means of prevention.
But no, not only did they not include a nutrition expert or alternative medicine practitioner on the panel that day, they did include someone from GlaxoSmithKline.
So, if a government bureau like the CDC says something, if the bureaucrats make assertions and cite their studies, and if the doctors say so, I guess the people will largely believe them. Even the stenographers of the MSM.
But getting back to the faux “security” schemes that are turning America into Nazi Germany as we speak, a U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that police do not need warrants to track people via their cell phones. I guess that implies that they don’t need suspicion either.
So when government goons know when you are away from your home for certain periods of time, might that not make your home, you know, vulnerable? (Ya think?)
The court is saying that the phone service providers are businesses, so their records do not have the same Fourth Amendment protections that private citizens have. (Or used to have, to put it more accurately.)
That court ruling gives the government the power to demand any records of any company with which you do business, no matter how private that information might be, and for any reason.
So how could this newest encroachment not be used by bureaucrats or their minions against critics of the regime, political dissidents, journalists who ask tough questions, or whistleblowers?
Oh wait, they already are doing that!
Can you believe there are still people who scoff at the “Hell in a handbasket” remark? [amazon asin=B00740KVN0&template=*lrc ad (right)]
And after his many months in solitary confinement and torture, the kangaroo court has found Bradley Manning guilty of “espionage.”
“Espionage” is the government’s view of a military or government employee with a conscience who believes that the American people have a right to know when their government and military bureaucrats and soldiers commit criminal acts, as well as the utter incompetence and corruption of U.S. diplomats.
Those disclosures are “espionage” to the bureaucrats of the State.
I think that Bradley Manning’s kangaroo judge belongs to the same country club as Chief Kangaroo John Roberts. (But don’t tell them I said that.)
With the crimes of the State and its cracking down on truth-tellers, this article shows the extreme extent to which the U.S. government will go to propagandize the American people to not question the government’s frauds, corruption, waste, and criminality.
The Rulers are desperately clinging on to their power as more and more people are waking up to the truth. That more people are waking up is reason for optimism.
But there are still many people who just don’t want to hear the truth, such as regarding their own Presidents’ war criminality, or that their government would pass a massive health care “overhaul” without most of the legislators actually having read the bill, or that the bill was written largely by the Big Insurance and Big Pharmaceutical companies at our expense.
And they would rather not hear that their own government bureaucrats are listening in on their private phone calls or reading their emails, or collecting “nearly everything a user does on the Internet,” as part of colossal fishing expeditions to find the slightest indication of “terrorism” that will be impossible to find in such a way.
That reminds me – recently a guy who innocently searched “pressure cookers” and “backpacks” at his work computer while with his former employer, was turned in to the police by someone at the former workplace, a la “If You See Something, Say Something” crapola.
The government goons who came to his house had said, according to Justin Raimondo, that they do those things about 100 times a week, and that 99 of those intrusions turn out to be totally unnecessary.
Soon the goons’ visits will not be because of “pressure cookers” or “bombs,” but because of “anti-war,” “freedom,” or noting the U.S. government’s culpability in 9/11, and other Regime-criticizing searches or expressions.
Oh wait, they already are doing that!
Most Americans would not want to hear that the history of such government spying on its own people and neighbors spying on one another is mainly used to weed out political dissent and critics of the Rulers.
Sadly, many of our fellow Americans are pathologically misinformed, as Thomas DiLorenzo has described.
But, as Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, it seems to be difficult for the average individual to consider other points of view or facts which refute what people already believe to be true. And that goes for even the most seasoned news media analysts, scientists, and academics.
And even in 2013, many people actually believe the government when it says that “keeping us safe” requires fascist criminality against the government’s own people.
The truth is, while there is very little chance that an Islamic terrorist will ever have any effect on your life, there is a much greater chance that your life will be abused, molested, robbed, assaulted, terrorized or murdered by an American government official.
And you “progressives” out there are just as responsible for turning America into the current police state as are the conservatives and neocons, by the way.
But the truth is still difficult for many people to handle.
So, as America has reached Hell in a handbasket, people still would rather believe the myth that government is a “necessary evil,” or that when it gets very, very bad, it can be “reformed.” (Nope.)
So no, the government is not “We the People.” (Another myth.)
Does that handbasket have a round-trip option?
