And The Truth Shall Set You Free

Since the Confederacy has been so horribly maligned in recent events, what with the wholesale destruction of monuments, the defiling of the Confederate flag and the entrenched belief that the Civil War was about slavery, it seemed an apropos time to review real, actual history.

For our foreign readers, one must keep in mind that most Americans are hopelessly ill- or maleducated.  The government schools only allow carefully controlled information into the classroom and more time is spent on wrapping bananas in condoms than on important subjects like history.

Couple the poor state of US education with the wholesale take-over of schools by Progressive left-wing fanatics and you have a potent weapon against the human intellect.  While we can't hold hapless victims responsible for maleducation, we can fault them for not seeking the truth on their own, and worse, for their parents' lack of interest in what their children's heads are being filled with.

The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.

Let that sink in a bit.  For many people this statement will seem false, even repulsive.  One's emotional reaction, however, does not affect the truth of it.

In the North, Abraham Lincoln was a confirmed racist, who abhorred the very idea of whites and blacks living together as equals, and especially the thought of the races intermarrying.  He rather lent his support to an effort to ship slaves and free blacks back to Africa, where the country of Liberia was founded for the express purpose of receiving the deported individuals.

Slavery did not end in the North after the Civil War.  In fact, slave markets could still be found in New York City, Baltimore and other cities long after the South was crushed.  The Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the Confederacy, and so the Yankees enjoyed their slaves for some time following the hostilities.

The Civil War was, in fact, caused by the Democratic Party.  Big surprise there, since they seem hell-bent on repeating their great achievement again.  That wonderful party of slavery, income taxes and other horrors gave the country institutional slavery, commonly called Dred Scott.  It took its name from a black slave who sued in US courts (not Confederate) for his freedom, only to have the US Supreme Court deny his freedom.  The Court declared that blacks could never be free citizens of the United States (long before the Confederacy).

It should be noted that the president at that time was Franklin Pierce, a Democrat who strongly against the abolition of slavery.  In fact, Pierce is widely credited for causing the Civil War, since that is what Democrats do best - destroy things.

In any event, the northern states kept raising taxes on agricultural goods, which were the specialty of the southern states.  Since representation in Washington, D.C. is based on population, and blacks only counted as 3/5ths of a man at that time (thanks entirely to Democrat laws), the South was sorely underrepresented and was basically far out-voted in Congress.  Thus, the North was able to do pretty much as they pleased, and it pleased them to put most of the financial burden of the federal government on the South.

Furthermore, northern industrialists lobbied for price controls on agricultural products they needed as raw materials.  This placed a further and egregious economic burden on the South.  This led to fist fights in Congress and a lot of very hard feelings amongst the States, with the South rightly claiming the North was enjoying great economic times at the expense of the South.

Ultimately, the South set up a boycott, refusing to send vital raw materials to the northern Robber Barons.  The northern Democrat Yankees naturally couldn't believe anyone would stand up to them, and decided if the South wouldn't sell, they would take by force.

A group of US Navy ships challenged the blockade at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in a raid to steal shipments of agricultural goods.  Being attacked by US forces led the southern states to secede from the US and form their own union, called the Confederacy.  This in turn led to three years of horrific war in which half a million men died, the US Army committed mind-numbing atrocities, and an entire culture was laid to waste.

Abraham Lincoln, racists and evil tyrant, signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery - only in the South - not because he thought slavery was bad, but he wanted to undermine the southern economy and make it impossible for them to fight.

To put a finer point on it, it should be noted that not one single slave was brought from Africa to either the US or the Caribbean by the Confederacy.  That was done entirely by British and American vessels, and to a lesser extent by Spanish and Portuguese vessels, as well.  It should also be noted that the genocide of the American Indians was carried out entirely by American troops.  Many of the tribes sided with the Confederacy, believing freedom would benefit their causes against the US, as well.

So, as we survey the death and destruction being caused by the Progressive Left and the Democratic Party today, we should remember that it is nothing new.  These same ideologues have behaved much the same throughout the history of the US.  Hate and violence have been their signature for nearly 200 years.

One reason why knowing history is so important is the power it gives us to discern who is telling the truth when it comes to events such as Charlottesville.  Given that the GeezerMedia and the violent protesters are supportive of or supported by the Democratic Party, and given the vile history of that party in the past, we can place a greater burden of proof on them to convince us that "white supremacists" and "neo-Nazis" instigated the violence.  After all, it is the political left in the US which has caused so much grief for so many people for so long.

And no, I don't like the Republicans either.

Inconceivable!

READER NOTE: Don't forget to take the Far Side 2016 Presidential Poll!

The first rule of covert operations, once referred to as "false flag" attacks back when flags were a thing, is that one must create a plausible enemy.

One of the best dramatizations of covert operations I've ever found is The Princess Bride.  Follow me here, I know it's not what you expected.

The evil Prince Humperdinck of Florin wants to attack Guilder, a neighboring country, for economic benefits.  He hatches a plot to have his wildly popular bride-to-be kidnapped and specific clues left to point the finger at Guilder operatives.  The plan goes awry when the anti-hero, a man dressed in black and wearing a mask called Dread Pirate Roberts, intervenes to save the future princess bride.

This brilliant and humorous film subtly shows how possible it is to create an enemy, blame it for everything wrong in your own country, and have your best-laid plans shot out from under you by someone who, on the surface, looks like a bad guy.

It also shows how comedy is often one of the best ways to deliver serious messages in a non-threatening manner.

Speaking of comedy, let's turn our attention to the US, shall we?

For months now, the US media and the Democratic Party - which includes its titular head Barack Obama - have done everything in their power to vilify the Russians, and especially Vladimir Putin.  The Russians have been blames for everything from economic collapse to low-flush toilets.  The US has in effect poked Russia with sharp sticks, and then runs to mommy when the bear growls.  Even Hillarys clear and blatant vote-rigging in the primary elections has been blamed on nefarious Russian agents.

The truth is that the US tried to collapse the Russian economy.  The US tried to shoot Putin out of the air.  And the US tried to drive Putin to ruin.  Why those crafty Democrats have even tried to tell us that the Russians were massing for an attack on NATO.

There is only one reason for this unbridled effort to demonize the Russians: they are to be used as a scapegoat for something big.  We can only guess at the scope and nature of the plan, but the obvious part is that the Russian are being played for Guilder, and one suspects that Trump is the Dread Pirate Roberts, the vilified masked party-crasher.

The only things missing are the shrieking eels.

Don't get me wrong here - the Republicans are not innocents, they have their own plan that looks something like The Hunt for Red October.  But it's the Democratic Party's Princess Bride scenario that is front-and-center at the moment.

And yes, there's a reason I often use movie plots to explain current events.  The way I see it, Hollywood is the US version of a war college, where various scenarios are literally played out as a form of entertainment, both to soften the public mind by planting memes, and the other to see to which plots the public will take most kindly.  Most major studio movies are behavioral modification efforts that teach audiences how to act, what to believe and what to expect.  If we judge by the most prominent themes in movies, we are in for dystopian societies, apocalyptic wars and marauding aliens.

If you ever want to know what the US is planning, just watch movies.

Echoes And Hypocricy

The Watergate Hotel

I have yet to read anyone pointing out the Time Echo of the WikiLeaks email scandal.  Like a Mandelbrot fractal, the iterations proceed from the smallest scale to the largest.  It's a real joy to watch how time is truly circular and history is always folding back on itself.

Just to refresh our memories, let's see what Wikipedia has to say about Watergate:

"Watergate was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s, following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. and President Richard Nixon's administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon administration's resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis.[1]"

Perhaps you are starting to see the echoes?  Exactly 44 years after the infamous break-in, the Watergate Hotel reopened in June 2016.  This time, instead of five "Plumbers" breaking into the Democratic National Committee's offices, some mysterious "Hackers" broke into the DNC's email server.  Instead of humiliating the Republican party and the administration, the email have backfired on the Democratic party and the administration.  In 1972, Hillary Rodham (not yet Clinton) was a junior attorney working on the Impeachment Inquiry Panel investigating Richard Nixon.  Now she is the focus of scandals as she runs for president.

To me, though, what's most deliciously hilarious about this whole affair is that it has shown in stark relief the hypocrisy of the Democratic party and the utter emptiness of the liberal establishment.

The Democratic party is the political wing of US liberalism, which claims to be all-inclusive and sensitive and diverse and champion of minorities.  Instead, the DNC email release shows the party elite to be cynical, biased, racist, anti-Jew and utterly without conscience.

It's as if the Democrats have taken careful aim and shot themselves in every foot they can find.  Oh, the irony!

In an earlier post, I explored the echoes of the election in 1968, and now it seems that the 1972 election is also ringing in our ears.  We have literally come back to the future.

The part that entertains me the most is the cynicism of the party elite.  They claim to champion minorities, but have selected two white deep insiders who know nothing of real life.  They claim to champion rights and liberties, yet have erected a huge fence around the convention to prevent the voices of the disaffected from being heard.  The party that claims to disavow hate speech wrote email denigrating Bernie Sanders' Jewish heritage and wanting to weaponize it.  The party that claims to want safety and security has a nominee whose actions led to numerous deaths in Benghazi and whose private email server exposed untold national secrets to prying eyes.  The party that espouses Political Correctness and anti-racism can't stop using racial slurs.

And I'm just hitting the highlights here.

If Hillary were to be elected (a big if - see my article here), then the Time Echo Theory says that she would likely be impeached and forced to resign within a couple of years after taking office.  That assumes that health problems didn't force her out of office first, of course.

It's almost as if the elite have resigned themselves to a Trump presidency, but are granting Hillary the first female nomination as a consolation prize for being such a good lackey all these years.

If this were fiction, no one would believe it.  The whole thing is a massive farce being played with an absolutely straight face.  Certainly, everyone in the public eye is looking quite serious about the whole thing, but surely somewhere someone is laughing their fool head off at this tragi-comedy.

It is some of the best free entertainment around, and as an added bonus, there is something strange, even sinister, lurking just under the surface.

The most interesting part of it, at least to me, is the Time Echoes.  If I were to draw this out ad infinitum, I could even draw parallels between fracking and Tea Pot Dome, Cold War II, or the New Space Race.

You know, now that I think about it, it's almost as if the Baby Boomers are - consciously or unconsciously - trying to recreate their lost youth for one last hurrah before they start checking out.  And Hillary, Bernie and Trump are certainly in that group.

You'll forgive me if I take a moment to buckle up.  The year ahead looks to be a bumpy ride.