Top Dems Mourn the "Easter worshippers"

“Easter worshippers.” Hats off to Mr. Khachatrian for his graceful call-out. And the truth is, we've had more than enough of such sleights. A constant drumbeat of them.

The linguistic brush-off from Obama and Clinton is carefully calculated and clear as day. Don't think so? Just watch how the whole team takes it up:





These people don't dare sympathize openly with Christian victims. It's against their religion.

Of course the Obama years were rife with this kind of linguistic misdirection. Exhibit 1: Obama almost never referred to religious freedom, but used freedom of worship instead.

Why? "Freedom of worship" suggests that Americans of faith should keep their religion INSIDE their churches or other houses of worship rather than live it in the public sphere. "Freedom of worship" is a not-too-subtle betrayal of our Founders' stronger vision.

The language of our Democratic Party big wigs, even the “Christians” among them, is intentionally corrosive of Christianity. Again, after this horrendous massacre, they pretend to reverence the many victims in Sri Lanka even as they subtly erase them.

Given the persecution of Christians globally (now the world's most persecuted religion by far) Democrats' refusal to even speak the word "Christian" is despicable. #WalkAway

P.S.:

No problem there. Of course not.

Eric Mader

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

PANIC: Washington Elites in Full Propaganda Mode

CNN before the election; CNN after the election.
by David Hammond

Well, I honestly thought we had dodged a bullet involving war with Russia by not electing Hillary Clinton, but it looks like I was wrong. Given Clinton's defeat in the presidency, her controllers are now simply attempting to advance the timeline. Never mind the absurdity of the CIA complaining about election meddling, when that's been their particular specialty, in foreign governments, for at least the past seventy years. Never mind that our government has the gall to lie to us about "fake news" when our own Supreme Court has ruled that the mainstream news media is under absolutely no obligation to tell the truth. Never mind that the CIA has a documented history of infiltrating our news media through Operation Mockingbird and who knows what else, and has been called out by the highest members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, decade after decade, for being inherently deceitful from the inside out. Never mind that Julian Assange, top US intelligence officers, and even former UK ambassador Craig Murray have all explicitly stated that the expose of corrupt DNC activity was a leak, not a hack.

I suppose it may also be relevant that exactly twenty years ago TIME magazine proudly reported on the feats of American political consultants who manipulated the Russian election to ensure a Boris Yeltsin win, using a covert plan that involved specialized polling (similar to the Clinton campaign’s weighted polling that split Independents in half, giving her at least a constant 10% bump nationally) a negative ad campaign, propaganda, and other tools of the political manipulation trade.

This latest media propaganda blitz isn't so shocking on its own because similar tactics have presaged every war of choice America has ever been in. But to see so many intelligent people hysterically lap it up while apparently salivating for war with Russia and decrying "fake news" is getting a little creepy.

And the craziest part is that nearly every cheerleader is on the so-called left (of which I have been a lifelong member) when aren't we the ones who are supposed to see through government BS and lies as they goad us into yet another war? Surely such hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance can't be simply because our president is a Democrat, can it? Not even sure if I want to know the answer to that.

America, you are being lied to, yet again. You are being herded into yet another war of choice by powers that will say absolutely anything to get you to believe whatever they want you to believe. As Rahm Emmanuel infamously put it: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Unfortunately, the establishment candidate's loss is just such an opportunity and they are capitalizing on it fiercely. How can this even happen? They are basically eliminating alternative news media with HR 6393, which was just quietly passed in the House, a bill that is quite literally the beginning of government censorship, with all of social media onboard. And, of all organizations, they're using Snopes as one of their go-to judges of what is “fake”, a widely-discredited source that routinely serves up misinformation, disinformation, and flat-out lies. Germany is even following suit by threatening to sue Facebook for €500,000 for every "fake" post allowed to stay up for more than 24 hours. When this kind of law can pass muster, it really doesn't matter which side of the aisle you are on. It should send a chill down the spine of anybody who appreciates their First Amendment rights. And as always, who is watching the watchers? This is nothing short of a open gate straight to tyranny.

Yet their technique has always been to point frantically to a threat so big and so encompassing that people will be clamoring for whatever medicine they want to sell. Its called problem -> reaction -> solution, and it's been their modus operandi for as long as anyone on the planet has been alive. Of course, they create the problem, fake the reaction, and then enact their preplanned solution, but is anyone really paying attention?

Right now, our government and their pliant mainstream media are engaged in a full-on fake news blitz, telling a lie so big and so outrageous that you'll have no choice but to believe it, or risk thinking the whole world has gone insane. This is called gaslighting, by the way. Look into it because it's one of the newest forms of mass manipulation in the book, and it's being aimed directly at you. Essentially a spin-off of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' famous quip “Tell a lie big enough and loud enough, and people will eventually believe it,” contemporary gaslighting adds subtle techniques of psychological manipulation to disorient the populace into submission.

Of course if Hillary Clinton had won, and the Trump camp were making these same ludicrous accusations, based on the same dearth of evidence, the left would be howling and scowling and ridiculing them day and night. When are people going to realize that, left or right, we are being repeatedly played to acquiesce to the establishment agenda? Naturally, I did not vote for Trump and I do not support Trump. But I have a very big problem with glaring hypocrisy and selective outrage--especially when those playing such games dangerously throw all logic and common sense out the window while risking war with a nuclear power.

The same goes for the idea that we need to overturn this election. Caveat: Unless you are personally willing to fight in a civil war, then please stop immediately. Unless you are willing to throw this country into blind chaos and bloodshed, then please stop. And again, just think: if Trump supporters demanded overturning the election, the left would climb over themselves to use that as evidence of crazed depravity, leveling every possible insult imaginable, and very likely threatening violence. Don't expect that the same thing wouldn't happen if Clinton supporters get anywhere near actually overturning this election.

And isn't it ironic that an establishment complaining about "fake news" was all in for a candidate who openly stated to Goldman Sachs that “You have to have a public position, as well as a private position”? The message is quite clear: It's basically okay to lie to you, the public, as long as we're the ones doing it. But if somebody exposes our lies--Russia for instance, or some recently-murdered DNC staffer, namely Seth Rich, then it's clearly not okay.

And while the mainstream media implicates everybody not named Hillary Clinton for her loss, we're suddenly pretending it's the 1950s again and there's a Russky hiding under every bed and anybody who disagrees with the establishment's deceitful narrative is a Kremlin operative. The fact that our current Democratic Party's primary allies are the CIA, Internet censors, and McCarthyist hacks should strike the sane left observer as alarming, but then this is 2016 I suppose, so God only knows what's possible.

Who can be blind to the painful irony in the fact that the evidence for this supposed “election hacking” is nothing more than "a secret report, leaked by an anonymous insider, backed by no proof whatsoever, from an agency with a history of lying to the public." (Thank you, Estela Jordan, for that concise summary.)

And doesn't it seem a bit odd that the Orwellian NSA, which tracks every detail of our personal lives, somehow can't quite manage to trace this hack? “Of course they can't trace it,” sanity says, “because it's a leak, not a hack.” But plain sanity isn’t going to stop the government and its mainstream media lackeys from telling you otherwise.

According to CNN, our current president warned: "Mr. Putin can weaken us just like he is trying to weaken Europe if we buy into notions that it is okay to intimidate the press or lock up dissidents."

Oh really, you mean as in writing off all alternative and investigative news media as "fake news" while threatening to lock up true patriots like Edward Snowden, thus forcing them into exile? This from the same guy who promised to champion whistleblowers--then went on to prosecute more than all other presidents combined?

And isn't it getting a little hard to stomach that, even if Russia did hack the emails, their only crime was exposing the monumental lies and deceit that have become the hallmark of Clinton, Inc. and the DNC--yet never a single word about that is mentioned? So does this now mean that we shoot all messengers for delivering bad news? That exposing a lie fully implicates you in that lie or makes you a greater threat than the liar? What kind of upside-down, backwards, bizarro logic is that? Even if Russia did it, their only real "crime" would simply be exposing the truth about our so-called leaders.

There's no way the government can pull off this blitzkrieg of deception unless Americans abandon all logic and reason and allow the cognitive dissonance to fully take over. That again is part of the strategy of gaslighting. In insistent and logical tones, the manipulator repeats illogical things. And so our Washington elites continue screaming "Fake news from Russia!" over and over again, screaming it in the face of the universal recognition that the Wikileaks emails are entirely authentic, screaming it and waiting for us to grow uncertain of our mental footing and begin screaming along.

And as always, the final choice here is ours. No, we do not have a truly representative government, but we do still retain some influence. We can take their word for it and simply acquiesce, just like we did with the Iraq war, or we can stand firm and hold them to somewhat sane standards of accountability while boldly calling them out on their clearly illogical lies and propaganda. I pray that Americans make the right choice this time.

Trump or Clinton? Neither!

Happens all the time these days. I post something on Facebook indicating I don’t support Hillary and immediately get this from Jane, a friend of a friend: “So your thought is to elect Trump? And that would be better?”

Instead of writing another editorial, I’ll just give you our ensuing dialogue.

Eric Mader: No. My thought is not "to elect Trump”. My thought is rather: A vote is a vote FOR someone, not merely a vote against someone else. Hillary does not deserve the votes of honest citizens, and I refuse to swell her numbers (and thus the illusion of her legitimacy) by giving her my vote. I will no longer join in the Democrat vs. Republican race to the bottom, but will vote third party. The mainstream Democrats deserve to lose, and I'm willing to take the risk of Trump in office if it will help delegitimize these utter fakes.

Jane Doe: Wow. If Trump wins, our world will be pretty scary, and if you supported the tenets of Bernie you will be in for a rude awakening. Unfortunately, at this time a vote for third party is a vote for Trump.

Eric Mader: You’re just being patronizing, Jane. I'm well aware of what rude awakenings there may be. And no: A vote for a third party is emphatically NOT a vote for Trump. A vote for a third party is a vote for a third party. That's why it's called "a vote for a third party".

Jane Doe: Call it what you will, but a Trump presidency certainly would not "delegitimize these utter fakes". He appears to be the biggest fake of them all. And because you are a US citizen you can express your opinions freely and vote for who you want. Good luck.

Eric Mader: Your response is characteristic. Realizing that I will not be voting Hillary, you immediately change the subject to Trump and how he's a bigger fake than Hillary--"the biggest fake of them all". I think which of these two is the bigger fake is arguable, because they are fakes in such different ways, but ultimately the argument is beside the point.

If a place offered you lunch with the choice of shit in a bowl or shit on a stick, your logic would have to be that the shit on the stick is the only wise choice because, look, the amount of shit in the bowl is larger. My choice is to not eat lunch. Who is wiser? Which is the course of action more likely to put that shit restaurant out of business, yours or mine?

I am not voting for Trump, so I'm not sure why you even mention him. The only way to delegitimize fakes in a democracy is not to vote for them. I'm not going to vote for them. You, however, are in the camp that keeps saying: "Mm, this shit on a stick, it really isn't that bad. Creamy actually. Mm, everyone should eat here."

I worked hard to elect Obama twice, the first time enthusiastically, the second time not so much. For me, this election is not between Trump and Hillary, it's between the possibility of democracy and the reality of corporate control over our whole political process. Whether you can see this or not, it is Hillary who is the consummate corporate candidate, which is why, surprise surprise, so many Republican establishment figures are now coming out in her favor. They're doing so because their Republican commitments, all along, have not been to maintaining a democratic republic but rather to furthering the smooth corporate takeover of our republic--ensuring, in short, that government continues to sell out the population to corporate interests. They know--which is bizarre, isn't it?--that the GOP candidate, this time, is actually a less reliable corporate rubber stamp than the Democratic candidate.

Anyhow, good luck to you. I'm fifty now, and I won't be supporting these people any more. I've spent thousands upon thousands of hours in politics, going back to my undergrad years, and am no longer giving the benefit of the doubt to anyone who's spent as much time sucking Wall Street and the corporate elites as Hillary has.


Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Election 2016: Our Deep Malaise

Feeling anxious and strung-out? Worried about where America’s headed? Worried about where’s America’s gotten? Feel like you’ve no good choice in this drawn-out campaign nightmare?

Me too. Election 2016 has put me on edge. I’m pulled this way and that. I’m convinced, like many, that we've been pushed to a precipice, and there’s no way back.

“But which precipice will it be?” the Fates seem to be asking. “You don’t know now, do you? Just wait and see.”

And the Fates wink mischievously. And their mischief is more menacing than playful.

One thing I’m sure of in this mess is that Americans are no longer fooled by the political class. These recent months have proved it. More than anything, the election battles we’re watching are about a single glaring fact:

A corporate-controlled government and democracy are mutually exclusive.

Yes, it’s finally out in the open. The corporate-sponsored puppet show we’ve been watching the past couple decades is not in fact democracy. What’s more, it can no longer even impersonate democracy.

Though I’m glad to see Americans are finally wise to Washington, I’m not so glad about where they take it from there.

On the one hand we’ve tens of millions opting for something like a fascist solution.

“What we need is a strong leader who tells it like it is and puts everyone back in place!” they cry.

Strong leaders can sometimes do great things, indeed. I just wish the strong leader they chose wasn’t such a moron. Conviction grounded in principle is one thing. A buffoon aping conviction is something else. And racist convictions--well, they shouldn’t be tolerated.

But is this buffoon we now see cavorting across the media really a racist? Or is he just being labeled one unfairly?

Before offering my own answer, I should point out that I don’t go along with the hyper-sensitive current PC definition of racism. I think one can say all manner of things these days that will be called out as racist, but that aren’t actually so.

And yet, even given my pretty thick skin regarding what is and isn’t racism, I’d have to say that, yes, Donald Trump is a racist. The things he’s allowed to happen at his rallies prove it. For America’s sake, I wish it weren’t true. It is. Trump is not to be trusted to lead a multiracial society.

But in opposition to this Fascist Clown Solution on offer, we’ve also a European-style socialist running, a man driven by true convictions rather than just aping conviction.

Bernie Sanders seems to me the only contender who’d actually fight to loosen the corporate stranglehold on our polity. Whether or not he’d succeed is a different question. But I can understand people’s strong belief that Sanders offers the best blueprint for the coming years. I largely agree with them.

Yet there are caveats in my support for Sanders. These have to do with the rise of political correctness.

I'm sympathetic to many organizations fighting injustice in America, and I recognize that the black community especially has valid grievances. Nonetheless in recent years I’ve become convinced that PC as a general phenomenon is a serious threat to our culture. On many crucial issues, and especially in their strategies for addressing issues, our social justice warriors are dead wrong. On campuses across the country, they’re destroying what little is left of American liberal education. Which is no small loss. Liberal education and pluralist liberal principles are necessary to our democracy. Speech codes, “safe spaces” and trigger warnings are not. Not to mention the nonstop demonization of all things European that passes for Humanities these days.

This SJW crowd largely backs Sanders, and they’re probably right to do so. I suspect Bernie himself never met a social justice warrior he didn’t like. Which leads me to question my own support for him. I’m a strong pluralist and Catholic, an avid believer in both Western cultural traditions and religious liberty protections, both of which have taken a beating under the PC onslaught. I’ve every reason to fear the justices Sanders would nominate to the Supreme Court. Bernie is not, by any means, my ideal candidate.

Then there’s Hillary Clinton. I’ll acknowledge straight off: Even a Trump nomination would not induce me to vote for Hillary. They don’t currently market nose clips reliable enough to allow me to vote for her. Hillary is, in my reading, something like the worst of both worlds. She will empower and pander to the SJW crowd even as she cheerleads the ongoing corporate dismemberment of our economy. She will do the bidding of the military industrial complex and the abortion industry with equal glee. Hillary is one of the few things I’m sure of in this election year. She is no good.

Many fellow Democrats point out to me that Hillary agrees with Bernie on nearly all the issues, then they ask: “Why would anyone who supports Bernie as you do not also support Hillary if she were the nominee?”

I have an answer: “Because while Hillary may agree with Bernie on a whole range of things during the campaign, this does not at all reflect what she would actually do once in the White House.”

Good Democrats refuse to hear this answer.

Would a Hillary administration be better than a Trump administration? I suspect it would. In the way that being slowly worn down into nihilism and despair is better than being beaten up by a drunk clown.

I hope you see my point.

If in the end America pushes its voters to choose between a fake Democrat and a fake Strongman--between, in short, a Total Sellout and a Fascist Clown--I will be very tempted to say: “Sorry, friends, I’m not going to dignify this election with my vote. Or rather: I’m going to write in the imperfect candidate who at least seems to me a viable candidate.”

If things keep going as they are, many Americans may end up doing something like this, and the candidate they write it may be Bernie, or John Kasich, or who knows. Bernie is more what a Democrat was before the 1990s. And Kasich is more what a Republican was before Fox News and friends dumbed the party down to what it has become today.

Admittedly, none of the above offers much help given the precipice we face as a country. And that is why I, along with so many others, am worried about what the Fates have in store.

Eric Mader

My new book Idiocy, Ltd. is now available at Amazon.