Democrats Leaning Totalitarian More-and-More Every Day

What a great post by PJ-MEDIA!

The Left’s taste for totalitarianism is increasingly obvious. There have been calls from Leftists for the opponents of the still-unapproved vaccines to be shot (with a gun, not a hypodermic needle), or at the very least arrested and imprisoned, and on Thursday AP reported that Biden handlers had discussed “mandating vaccines for interstate travel,” but decided against doing so because “the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment.” For the moment. That means we should watch for this particular trial balloon to be floated again after the establishment media has pounded the American people with fear propaganda for a few more months.

Even the fact that this idea has been broached should send chills down the spine of everyone who is aware of how totalitarian regimes work. Internal passports are one of their hallmarks, as they enable easy, centralized data collection about the population and its political leanings, along with ready knowledge of each individual’s whereabouts, which is always handy when the time comes for that knock on the door at 3 a.m. At a time when the Democratic leadership is doing everything it can to stir up hysteria about a fictional “insurrection” and talking about acting against a largely chimerical “white supremacist terrorism,” the idea of internal passports should be a matter of serious concern.

On December 27, 1932, the Soviet Union established the “Unified Passport System within the USSR,” severely restricting travel within the country and requiring Soviet citizens to carry passports for travel inside the workers’ paradise, so as to aid in “the removal of persons not engaged in industrial or other socially-useful work from towns and cleansing of towns from hiding kulaks, criminals and other antisocial elements.” “Kulaks” was the Stalin regime’s word for peasants they didn’t find sufficiently enthusiastic for the arrival of Communism; the internal passports were designed to aid in identifying and rooting out such undesirable elements and enemies of the regime.

Victor Davis Hanson recently pointed out that “once the delta variant arrived in force in early summer, earlier government assurances that the vaccinated were now free to resume a normal life lost credibility. Confused and mixed messages followed — simultaneously downplaying and exaggerating the efficacy of the vaccinations.” Yet in the face of this loss of credibility, Biden’s handlers have not eased off on their vaccination push, but have only intensified it. AP noted: “When the pace of vaccinations in the U.S. first began to slow, President Joe Biden backed incentives like million-dollar cash lotteries if that’s what it took to get shots in arms.” Yes, it’s a vaccine so safe, so effective, so widely trusted, that Biden’s handlers were willing to bribe Americans to get it.

The cash lotteries were the carrot; now comes the stick. “In just the past two weeks,” says AP: “Biden has forced millions of federal workers to attest to their vaccination status or face onerous new requirements. He’s met with business leaders at the White House to press them to do the same.” And that’s not remotely all. Biden’s handlers have also “taken steps toward mandating shots for people traveling into the U.S. from overseas.” Much more is coming, “including potential support for school districts imposing rules to prevent spread of the virus over the objection of Republican leaders.”

Yet again employing the Leftist tactic of accusing his enemies of what he is guilty of, Old Joe on Thursday politicized his vaccine push while claiming his foes were the ones doing so: “To the mayors, school superintendents, educators, local leaders, who are standing up to the governors politicizing mask protection for our kids: thank you. Thank God that we have heroes like you, and I stand with you all, and America should as well.”

AP’s Zeke Miller then gives us a paragraph about Old Joe’s strict constitutionalism and magnanimity, saying that “he has refrained from using all his powers to pressure Americans to get vaccinated. He’s held off, for instance, on proposals to require vaccinations for all air travelers or, for that matter, the federal workforce. The result is a precarious balancing act as Biden works to make life more uncomfortable for the unvaccinated without spurring a backlash in a deeply polarized country that would only undermine his public health goals…. Still, while more severe measures — such as mandating vaccines for interstate travel or changing how the federal government reimburses treatment for those who are unvaccinated and become ill with COVID-19 — have been discussed, the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment.”

Wait a minute. He has “refrained from using all his powers”? What powers exactly has he declined to use? What section of the Constitution allows the president of the United States to require vaccinations for all air travelers or internal passports? What part of the Bill of Rights allows the president to take any measures whatsoever to “make life more uncomfortable for the unvaccinated”? If a pandemic justifies this level of federal overreach, what on earth would or could possibly prevent a tyrant from creating one in order to arrogate emergency powers to himself? Is the pandemic now the Left’s Reichstag fire excuse to destroy Americans’ freedom and crush dissent?……….

(READ IT ALL)

 

Benjamin Franklin Cancelled (Armstrong and Getty)

Armstrong and Getty go read from a Wall Street Journal opinion article regarding the “cancelling” (erasing of) history by Democrats. The articles title is “BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, ‘PERSON OF CONCERN’ — D.C. ALSO PROPOSES TO CANCEL WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON

Excerpt:

‘A republic, if you can keep it.” Benjamin Franklin’s 1787 quip about the government Americans would have is probably the most popular Founding-era wisdom still with us. Maybe not for long. As if to prove Franklin’s insight about the tendency of republics to self-destruct, a District of Columbia panel has identified Franklin, among other Founders, as a “person of concern,” and recommended his name be removed from D.C. property.

The astonishing proposals come from a Washington, D.C., government committee formed by Mayor Muriel Bowser to re-examine the names of schools, statues and parks in the wake of protests. The committee submitted its report Monday, and Ms. Bowser tweeted “I look forward to reviewing and advancing their recommendations.”

The committee says it hunted for historical figures with “key disqualifying histories, including participation in slavery, systemic racism, mistreatment of, or actions that suppressed equality for, persons of color, women and LGBTQ communities and violation of the DC Human Right Act.” The bureaucrats worked with uncharacteristic dispatch, taking six weeks to render the judgment of history on 1,330 properties named for people.

The committee doesn’t explain its case against Franklin, but we can assume he was judged for once owning slaves. He was later president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, but anyone who believes the report is a considered historical exercise and not an Orwellian effort in ideological reprogramming has been taken in

Totalitarianism Doesn’t Shock Us Any More (Covid-1984)

Never in American history have politicians been more powerful than they are now.

Earlier today I posted this in response to a friend:

A friend noted the new FB button by saying,

  • “They give us a ‘care’ button, BUT THEY STILL NEVER GAVE US A DISLIKE BUTTON!”

I included my thoughts adding to her statement:

  • Tolerance used to mean a confirmation of disagreement. Now tolerance means “to celebrate.” It is a sort of forced unitarian thinking. Or, “total thought,” e.g., totalitarianism — by a mix of Brave New World and 1984

You see, by itself this is no big deal… but combined with the myriad of small and large ruminations (videos removed to “micro-aggressions”), it all adds up to people telling me that each of the single acts I can tell them about are “no big deal.” Never seeing the forest. But a better point comes from Dennis Prager’s article titled, “Our Dress Rehearsal for a Police State

All my life, I have dismissed paranoids on the right (“America is headed to communism”) and the left (“It can happen here” — referring to fascism). It’s not that I’ve ever believed liberty was guaranteed. Being familiar with history and a pessimist regarding the human condition, I never believed that.

But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.

People will argue that a temporary police state has been justified because of the allegedly unique threat to life posed by the new coronavirus. I do not believe the data will bear that out. Regardless, let us at least agree that we are closer to a police state than ever in American history.

“Police state” does not mean totalitarian state. America is not a totalitarian state; we still have many freedoms. In a totalitarian state, this article could not be legally published, and if it were illegally published, I would be imprisoned and/or executed. But we are presently living with all four of the key hallmarks of a police state:

No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.

The federal, state, county and city governments are now restricting almost every freedom except those of travel and speech. Americans have been banned from going to work (and thereby earning a living), meeting in groups (both indoors and outdoors), meeting in their cars in church parking lots to pray and entering state-owned properties such as beaches and parks — among many other prohibitions.

No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state’s messaging and deprivation of rights.

The New York Times, CNN and every other mainstream mass medium — except Fox News, The Wall Street Journal (editorial and opinion pages only) and talk radio — have served the cause of state control over individual Americans’ lives just as Pravda served the Soviet government. In fact, there is almost no more dissent in The New York Times than there was in Pravda. And the Big Tech platforms are removing posts about the virus and potential treatments they deem “misinformation.”

No. 3: Use of police.

Police departments throughout America have agreed to enforce these laws and edicts with what can only be described as frightening alacrity. After hearing me describe police giving summonses to, or even arresting, people for playing baseball with their children on a beach, jogging alone without a mask, or worshipping on Easter while sitting isolated in their cars in a church parking lot, a police officer called my show. He explained that the police have no choice. They must respond to every dispatch they receive.

“And why are they dispatched to a person jogging on a beach or sitting alone in a park?” I asked.

Because the department was informed about these lawbreakers.

“And who told the police about these lawbreakers?” I asked.

His answer brings us to the fourth characteristic of a police state:

No. 4: Snitches.

How do the police dispatchers learn of lawbreakers such as families playing softball in a public park, lone joggers without face masks, etc.? From their fellow citizens snitching on them. The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, set up a “snitch line,” whereby New Yorkers were told to send authorities photos of fellow New Yorkers violating any of the quarantine laws. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti similarly encouraged snitching, unabashedly using the term.

It is said that about 1 in every 100 East German citizens were informers for the Stasi, the East German secret police, as superbly portrayed in the film “The Lives of Others.” It would be interesting, and, I think, important, to know what percentage of New Yorkers informed on their fellow citizens. Now, again, you may think such a comparison is not morally valid, that de Blasio’s call to New Yorkers to serve a Stasi-like role was morally justified given the coronavirus pandemic. But you cannot deny it is Stasi-like or that, other than identifying spies during World War II, this is unprecedented in American history at anywhere near this level….

Preferred Pronouns or Prison (Totalitarianism)

“He.” “She.” “They.” Have you ever given a moment’s thought to your everyday use of these pronouns? It has probably never occurred to you that those words could be misused. Or that doing so could cost you your business or your job – or even your freedom. Journalist Abigail Shrier explains how this happened and why it’s become a major free speech issue.