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Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, passed in the wake of the Civil War, reads: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Representatives of the corporate state are attempting to use this section to prevent Trump from running for the presidency. Before getting to the punchline of the present essay, I want to share the section following Section 3 to provide more context and make obvious that this section of the Fourteenth Amendment is referring to those who fought on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. I italicize the relevant passages. To wit, Section 4 reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

The Fourteenth Amendment is plainly referring to individuals who participated in the insurrection and rebellion against the United States during the American Civil War. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment in particular aimed to disqualify individuals who had taken an oath to support the US Constitution but had participated in or supported the Confederacy during the Civil War from holding certain public offices. It was a measure aimed at ensuring that those who had been part of the rebellion against the United States would face consequences in terms of their eligibility for public office. However, it also provided a mechanism for Congress to remove this disability for specific individuals through a two-thirds majority vote, allowing for some reconciliation and the possibility of reintegration into political life after the war.

Context aside, Trump was moreover acquitted in the Senate on charges of insurrection. The double jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits anyone from being prosecuted twice for substantially the same crime. I italicize the relevant clause: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Even though the insurrection clause of the amendment concerns those who rebelled against the republic during the Civil War, stretching it to fit the case of Trump wouldn’t work; Trump’s acquittal means that the President is immune from any punishment regarding his actions on January 6, 2021, in which he called on those in attendance to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol to protest a rigged and stolen election. Like every other citizen of the United States, Trump has a First Amendment right to voice his opinion about the election, as do his followers to hear his opinion and to peaceably assemble to seek redress of their grievances.

It is problematic, then, that on August 1st of this year, former President Donald Trump faced a four-count felony indictment for his involvement in attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, leading to the violent riot at the US Capitol. The Justice Department boast that it had taken action to hold the President accountable for what the propagandists typically describe as an unprecedented effort to obstruct the peaceful transfer of presidential power and undermine American democracy. This marked the third criminal case against Trump to that point (there are now four with the indictments brought by Fulton country of Georgia, which I will briefly review below). The indictment outlines a months-long campaign of spreading “false information” about the election outcome. Trump was also accused of exploiting the violence to further delay the certification of votes confirming his defeat.

“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” said Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith whose office. “It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.” The indictment encompasses allegations of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, and violation of a post-Civil War Reconstruction Era statute concerning civil rights. This statute criminalizes conspiring to infringe upon rights protected by the Constitution, specifically, in this instance, the right to vote. These are new (albeit bogus) charges but the indictment has the appearance of a second go at Trump for insurrection.

Recall the article of impeachment, which carried the title “Article of Impeachment for Incitement of Insurrection,” for it seems to include much of the spirit of Smith’s indictment:

“In his conduct while President of the United States—and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed—Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States, in that:

“On January 6, 2021, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the Senate met at the United States Capitol for a Joint Session of Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College. In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. There, he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.’ He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.’ Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.

“President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.

“In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”

Democrats like to make a big deal about how Trump is twice impeached, but impeachment is not a conviction but a charging mechanism, analogous to an indictment or information. Trump has been twice acquitted on charges brought against him by the same party that’s attempting to keep him off the ballot by organizing four indictments at federal and state levels. He was first acquitted in the case of his phone call to the Ukraine government concerning the criminal actions of Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, it has become clear that Trump was right to make the call. The facts show that the Bidens were engaged in a corrupt money laundering scheme, bribery, and interference in the internal affairs of another country in Ukraine and that Trump in his capacity as chief magistrate of the executive branch of the US government was well within his authority. He was acquitted in the Senate of the second impeachment almost a month after he peacefully transferred the Office of the Presidency to his successor Joe Biden.

Determined to get Trump, prosecutors in various jurisdictions have indicted the President on various charges. In Georgia state court, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump on thirteen criminal counts, alleging his involvement in attempting to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. This charge appears to have already been covered in the article of impeachment of which Trump was acquitted. A federal grand jury in Washington, DC indicted Trump on four counts in a criminal case related to his alleged efforts to subvert the will of the voters and interfere with the 2020 presidential election results. In Florida, a federal grand jury has issued a forty-count indictment against Trump. This indictment pertains to charges of obstructing an investigation and his unlawful retention of classified documents following his presidential term. In a New York State Court, Trump faces a thirty-four-count indictment related to hush money payments made to an adult film star during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In the first two cases, Trump was pursuing his legal right to dispute the results of an election. In the second case, Trump is protected by the Presidential Records Act, as I have discussed elsewhere on this blog. In the fourth case, a court awarded Donald Trump tens of thousands of dollars from Stormy Daniels in failed defamation suit. The underlying facts of the Daniels case are the same that are now being brought against Trump in New York State (Daniels claims she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and was paid by Trump’s legal team to avoid going public with the story ahead of the 2016 presidential election). This is lawfare. What Democrats are doing is a serious threat to the democratic institutions and processes of the republic. This is the type of election interference and rigging that one sees in fascist states and third world countries in the periphery of the world system.

Why are they so panicked about Trump? Trump is an outsider. The corporate state wants to a candidate for the Republican Party who is an insider. Rank-and-file Republicans, conservatives, don’t want the status quo. They’re antiestablishment. They want to return to democratic-republicanism. The populist-nationalist movement is a very powerful movement, and it’s not going away anytime soon. The elite in Washington understand this. They realize now that there’s going to be no Republican who can stand in Trump’s way to reelection. So they’ve turned to lawfare.

This is the way totalitarian societies operate. The administrative state had to remove Trump—and they have to keep him from winning the presidency again—in order to keep power. The desire to destroy Trump was clear from the disinformation campaigns the Democrats in conjunction with deep state operatives and legacy and social media ran from the start of Trump’s presidency. The bogus claim that Trump stole the 2016 election. The Russian collusion hoax. The Steele Dossier. The color revolutions that booked ended Trump’s first term. When Steve Bannon and Rudolph Giuliani got their hands on the Hunter Biden laptop, operatives of the deep state signed a letter saying it was Russian disinformation. Social media censored stories about the laptop. To prevent the dismantling of the administrative state and the revelations such a dismantling will reveal, elites are now trying to throw the leader of the populist movement in prison.

Trump has noted that this is not really about him. It’s about what he represents, namely populist-nationalism. The globalists have to stop resurgent democratic-republicanism and classical liberal freedoms. The MAGA movement is a monkey-wrench thrown into the machinery of transnationalization. The managed decline of the American republic must continue. But Trump is the personification of that movement. So Trump must be imprisoned not just to prevent his return but to demoralize the people. So far, Trump becomes more popular with every indictment. If he is sentenced to prison there is reason to be concerned about the popular backlash. I hate having to say this, but I cannot rule out the possibility of civil war in the near future. Perhaps that’s precisely what the transnationalists are cooking up.

At this point we need to be very worried that the Biden regime is going to take the nation into a war with Russia. To be sure, we’re already at war with Russia, but I mean war directly involving US military forces. Ukraine can’t win the war that Western elites created for them by provoking the Russian invasion (History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War; The US is Not Provoking Russia—And Other Tall Tales). To date, Ukraine has already sacrificed more of its military personnel than the United States did during the Vietnam War. The next logical step for warmongers, i.e., the neoconservatives who shape US foreign policy under Democratic and establishment Republic regimes (War Hawks and the Ugly American), is to dispense with the proxy war and move into full-scale kinetic war with Russia. 

Russia is a nuclear power. Russia, which inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, has the world’s biggest stockpile of nuclear warheads. According to the Federation of American Scientists, as of 2022, Putin controls about 5,977 warheads, compared with 5,428 controlled by United States. The Biden regime has already brought us to the brink of nuclear war by provoking Russia into invading Ukraine with a country so obviously backed by the West. To date, Biden has given more than a hundred billion dollars to Ukraine—in addition to all the assistance given Ukraine by other NATO countries. The US deep state overthrew the Ukrainian government to establish a forward staging area to antagonize Russia. The situation is dire. (Will WWIII Begin in Eurasia?)

The plan to remove Putin from power is not only to open Russia up to western economic exploitation. War is a move to keep the transnationalists in power in Washington. As I write about in George Soros, Philanthrocapitalism, and the Coming Era of Global Neo-Feudalism, beyond the cheap thought-stopping trick by progressives Democrats to poison the well, there is a genuine failure to understand transnationalization and the powerful actors transforming the global economy and with it the Westphalian system of nation-states and international law, with the long-range goal of fixing the problem of late capitalism (fall of the rate of profit, overshoot and collapse, and all the rest of it) by replacing it with a global system of corporate state neofeudalism—this in order to protect their power and privilege. Such aims are detrimental to the interests of the working classes of the West. Liberal values and republican virtue will be smothered by the New Fascism of the corporate state. Democracy will be finally replaced by technocracy.

Whether Biden takes the United States to war with Russia depends on whether the corporate state can successfully throw Trump and other leading populist figures in prison. Trump has not been indicted four times. In each case the underlying facts do not warrant criminal prosecution. But in era of law-fare, that is using the law as a means of political warfare, something we see in fascist nations and third world countries in the periphery of the world system, right does not lie behind the actions of the state. If elites can’t put Trump in prison, and reason would dictate that they can’t (these indictments are so obviously bogus one hopes some court somewhere stops it—and in time), then war become all but inevitable. That Trump represents a trans-Atlantic movement also makes war with Russia likely. Indeed, it’s because Trump represents a trans-Atlantic movement that it’s so important to keep the transnationalists in power.

When the Carter administration provoked Russia into invading Afghanistan, at least in that instance, Carter did it covertly, and so did the Reagan administration (which was actually the Bush regime foreign policy-wise during those eight years) in continuing the policy, and so the threat of nuclear war was greatly diminished. But Ukraine is quite plainly a US backed war with Russia. (See Sowing the Seeds of Terrorism? Capitalist Intrigue and Adventurism in Afghanistan; Jimmy Carter, Trilateralist, Entering Hospice; Everybody Loves Jimmy Carter.)

This is the worst president that we’ve had in my lifetime. But what makes the Biden presidency so bad is not simply that the man is the don of a organized crime family and an awful human being all around, but because the administrative state and the transnationalists have never been more belligerent than they are right now. This is the most fascistic regime that’s ever been in power in Washington. Young men and women of America must resist war—and the most important act of resistance to war is to support and vote for patriots.

🆕BREAKING: Head Women’s Lacrosse Coach at Oberlin College is breaking her silence in an @IWF documentary after being “burned at the stake” for her support of single-sex sports & speaking out against allowing men in women’s sports. https://t.co/n1MPhiM4D5 pic.twitter.com/WgD57sAYxR

— Independent Women's Forum (@IWF) August 29, 2023

It’s outrageous that a university would tell any employee that they have to repeat the false slogans of gender ideology fanatics or any other fanatical movement. A trans woman is not a woman. A woman is an adult human female (or adult female human, if you like). Women, as are girls, are those of the female sex. Therefore, a trans woman is a man. That’s scientific truth. To tell the Head Women’s Lacrosse Coach at Oberlin College that she has to write a letter of apology and affirm a falsehood is the equivalent of telling the Head Women’s Lacrosse Coach at Oberlin College that she has to affirm the slogan “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” And? “Peace be upon him.” This is where we’re today—the true believers demand we believe, too. And not had-heartedly.

The betrayal of this woman’s right to a free conscience by her own students testifies to the failure of public schools to teach youth about the necessary and essential facts of liberty. As I have written about many times on Freedom and Reason, it is the fundamental law of the American Republic that an individual has a right to her conscience and her opinion. Representatives of Oberlin College say that’s fine except where it contradicts Oberlin College’s beliefs. But Oberlin College is an institution. Institutions don’t have beliefs. People do. And while Oberlin College may be organized by an ideology, there is no obligation for any individual to accept that ideology as her own. What those attacking Russell are saying is that their opinion trumps her opinion and that she must not only repudiate her opinion, but she must apologize to others for having held that opinion.

As Russell reports (and she has the receipts), she was forced to participate in a struggle session where young people attacked her for her ideological infidelity. As I noted in my April 3 essay The Cultural Revolution, embedded in the corporate bureaucracy, employees are a captive audience in much the same way serfs are captives under conditions of bureaucratic collectivism instantiated by totalitarian states like the People’s Republic of China. Struggle sessions are designed to amplify disallowed opinions and to persecute those who hold them. “Suppose you work at a university and you do not believe trans women are women, or that one cannot change sex, or that males should not compete in women’s sports,” I wrote in that blog. We no longer have to suppose. This is exactly what has happened to Russell.

The struggle session is designed to intimidate Russell by presenting gender ideology as the institution’s official position, thus giving the doctrine the force of authority. Russell recognizes that many of those who are of the opinion that one cannot change one’s gender will not voice that opinion because they are fearful of what the institution might do with their heresy. This is the chilling effect. It didn’t work on Russell, and she may lose her job for speaking out, but the purpose of her persecution is to show others what will happen to them if it doesn’t work on them. The struggle session is designed to reeducate resisters and break the recalcitrant by having them rehearse the slogans of the revolution or apologize for failing to have done so. The victim may be reprimanded for her half-hearted commitment to the revolution, which we hear from one of Russell’s students. Indeed, the struggle session is designed to train subalterns to police and correct the thoughts of not only those in the session, but those who lie beyond the reach of the mandated training. This is the proselytizing character that marks a cultural revolution.

The betrayal of this woman’s right to a free conscience also testifies to the failure of public schools to teach youth about what feminism means. A true feminism cannot be inclusive of trans women because having men compete against women is violative of women’s rights. What true feminist can abide by practices that violate women’s rights? And while nobody should be punished for disloyalty to a movement, the fact that so many women are is an explanation for why we have found ourselves in this spot today. It was only a few years ago that the #MeToo movement shined a light on the problem of men violating women’s spaces. How could those who claim to be feminists so quickly move on from that to supporting men exposing their genitalia in women’s locker rooms and using superior physical abilities to steal opportunities reserved for women?

It should not escape the reader that the power enjoyed by people in positions of authority being used to control Russell’s mind is the same power we would rightly condemn if it were used to control Russell’s body. The paradigm of sexual harassment is the attempt of a man in a position of authority, using threats of discipline, punishment, or termination, to compel a woman to meet his physical needs. How is it any different when a man in a position of authority uses threats of discipline, punishment, or termination to compel a woman to meed his ideological needs? The fact that he is not alone in making such demands only means that the establishment has also become the perpetrator. o employee should ever face harassment and intimidation like this. And, no, her commitment to the truth that men can’t be women neither harasses nor intimidates anyone.

We got to this point because a lot of people didn’t know what the state was doing when it was installing the ideological cudgels of diversity, equity, and inclusion to force changes in conscience and thought. Moreover, the people believed that the better angels of their nature were being called forth—a call to which, as moral beings, they felt obliged to respond. They thought the trans gender identity was gay plus. They believed accepting trans gender ideology was about tolerating self-identification, which people are prepared to do because they’re kind and eager to extend freedom to others. They had no idea that it would be about having to affirm falsehoods to have and keep careers—that their goodness would compromise their fundamental freedoms.

As cases like Russell’s accumulate, and as people learn that queer theory is antithetical to the rights of gays and lesbians and women, and that the demand they affirm delusions undermines liberty and equality, resistance to the cultural revolution grow. I hope this case serves as a warning to future generations to be more aware and speak up before things like this go too far. We might have avoided all of this had we understood from the beginning the situation and said no immediately. Think of all the children that would have been spared the nightmare of so-called gender-affirming care. So please share Kim Russell’s story. She needs your support, of course. But the people need the truth.

* * *

Meet 12yo Jaiden who was kicked out of class yesterday in Colorado Springs for having a Gadsden flag patch, which the school claims has "origins with slavery."

The school's director said via email that the patch was "disruptive to the classroom environment."

Receipts in the 🧵 pic.twitter.com/qQ8jK1zSpR

— Connor Boyack 📚 (@cboyack) August 29, 2023

Twelve-year-old Jaiden was kicked out of class day before yesterday in Colorado Springs and forced to undergo a struggle session for having a Gadsden flag patch. The school official claims the patch has “origins with slavery.” This is not true. But what if it did? The school’s director said via email that the patch was “disruptive to the classroom environment.” In the same way that a pride or trans flag is disruptive? Suppose a student objected to a classmate wearing a flag patch on backpack such that it disrupted the classroom environment. On whose side would the teachers be?

The Gadsden flag, with its iconic coiled rattlesnake and phrase “Don’t Tread on Me” flag is a symbol of American independence and individual liberties. It was designed by Christopher Gadsden, an American general and statesman, in 1775. The flag conveyed the message that Americans were willing to defend their rights and freedom against any oppressive force. Over time, the flag has taken on a broader symbolism, representing resistance to government overreach and the protection of individual liberties. It’s now often associated with conservative and libertarian movements in the United States. This is telling.

So when the school official writes that the patch was “disruptive to the classroom environment,” what the official meant is that symbols of resistance to the oppressive character of the woke progressive ideas being pressed into children’s brains, marked by classrooms festooned with the banners and flags of critical race theory and queer theory, overflowing with the pamphlets and propaganda of the revolution, is disruptive to that ideological project. The school official does not find queer propaganda disruptive because the resistance it signals is not against government overreach and the violation of individual liberties; queer symbology registers opposition to the rights and liberties the Gadsden flag represents.

Only last week, as my son and I were driving back from the gun range, I asked him to imagine what would happen to a teacher who put up the Gadsden flag in his classroom. Whatever the teacher’s motive, it’s a symbol of the American Revolution, so one would think that was okay. It should only be slightly more controversial than Old Glory, which is still allowed to appear on classroom walls. Of course (as I have discussed on this blog), hanging the Christian nationalist flag or other ideological symbols would be out of bounds. For the same reason, so should the pride and trans flags. But as patches on a kids backpack? Can you imagine a teacher removing a child from a classroom because of a pride patch? The child’s parents would rightly be angry.

The double standard is one reason to be concerned by this case. But another reason is how it came to pass that public school administrators and teachers are so uneducated about the First Amendment rights of their students that they think it is okay to remove a kid from the classroom for the Gadsden flag patch. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, decided by the Supreme Court in 1969, established the precedent that schools must have a valid reason to restrict students’ expression, particularly when it comes to political symbols and slogans. The case affirmed that students have a First Amendment right to express themselves while in school, curtailed only if their expression significantly disrupts the educational environment.

In the Tinker case, several students in an Iowa school decided to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The school district learned of their plans and adopted a policy that prohibited the wearing of armbands to school. Despite this policy, the students wore the armbands, were sent home, and subsequently sued the school district, claiming their First Amendment rights to free speech had been violated. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the students. The Court held that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” It recognized that students have the right to express their opinions, even if those opinions are controversial or unpopular, as long as the expression does not disrupt the educational process.

Today I received word that a day later Jaiden’s school changed their mind and will allow Jaiden to carry the Gadsden patch on his backpack. Here’s some of the letter The Vanguard School sent to parents. I’m happy to see it does more than merely affirm Jaiden’s Constitutional right to display the patch on his backpack. The school has reaffirmed its commitment to the American Republic.

The GOP-controlled Tennessee House of Representatives voted yesterday to silence state representative and civil rights cosplay actor Justin Jones as the legislature meets for a special session on public safety spurred by a mass shooting at a Nashville school in March of this year. The shooter was a trans-identifying 28-year-old a Nashville resident Audrey Hale. She has no previous criminal record before opening fire at The Covenant School, killing three children and three adults. She left behind a manifesto which authorities have refused to release. Attention on the special session in which Jones spoke out of turn (the actual reason he was silenced) was heightened by recent mass shootings, one of which had manifestos that were immediately made public (see Diary of a Madman: The Role of Race in Lethal Violence).

Jones was as twice ruled out of order during debate Monday by Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton, automatically triggering a vote to silence Jones for the remainder of the day. The vote passed along party lines, 70-20. Democrats walked out in protest. “What is happening is not democratic. It is authoritarianism,” Jones said in as video shared on X (formerly known as Twitter). accusing Sexton of silencing him because the Democrat had earlier proposed a vote of no confidence against the Speaker (as if the House Speaker worried about that). Here is another video shared by Jones in which he claims his motive is to protect kids not guns.

Headed into another day of the special session and been informed that if I speak “off topic” I’ll be silenced by Speaker Sexton for 3 days.

However, also heard that we may adjourn today because my Republican colleagues are feeling the pressure.

We must protect kids, not guns. pic.twitter.com/UhkbFLfH1n

— Rep. Justin Jones (@brotherjones_) August 29, 2023

Jones, like progressive Democrats generally, is going after guns even those the facts show that guns are not the cause of shootings. As I noted in yesterday’s blog essay Jones is engaged in a logical fallacy that disappears the person who is actually the agent or cause of shootings by implying that an inanimate object has agency. To understand why a person uses a gun to harm another person often requires a comprehensive study of the root causes of the phenomenon. In the case of Hale, we might get a better idea of why she killed school children if we would study the manifesto she left behind explaining her motive. However, in a much large proportion of gun deaths, the shootings are perpetrated by those immersed in drug trafficking and gang society. Part of the reason why guns and not those who pull their triggers are the focus is to obscure the problem of violence in black inner-city neighborhoods.

Let’s work through the facts. Based on recent statistics, the black population in Tennessee is 16.7 percent of the total. There were 744 homicides in the state of Tennessee in 2021. Blacks commit 52 percent of the homicides in Tennessee. Given that a known proportion of those perpetrators at 65 percent are male, with most of the 25.8 percent “sex unknown” almost certainly male, and moreover the offender age at 59 percent overwhelming under 30, we can say that young black men are drastically overrepresented in the perpetration of homicide in Tennessee. Since the police can readily identify the race of the victim, and since most homicide is intraracial, the fact that 68 percent of murder victims are black makes the determination of the “race unknown” category rather easy. That means that as much as 78 percent of homicides in Tennessee are committed by blacks—even though blacks comprise less than 17 percent of the population of that state.

Compare this to 21 percent of whites (do the same demographic breakdown, keeping in mind that the mean age of black males is much lower than it is for white males). Although the race of the perpetrator is unknown in 26 percent of homicide (because people kill and flee and cases remain unsolved), I think we have a good idea which race would be overrepresented in that large leftover proportion.

The numbers are much worse in the cities of Nashville and Memphis. There were 120 homicides recored by the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department in 2021. Of these, 46 percent were perpetrated by blacks, 12 percent by whites, with 43 percent “race unknown.” However, 68 percent of victim of homicide were black. Again, most homicide is intraracial, so the “race unknown” category is likely disproportionately black. Nashville has a population of 683,622, 27.2 percent of which is black.

There were 327 homicides in Memphis recorded by the Memphis Police Department in 2021. Of these, 64 percent of homicides were perpetrated by blacks, whereas only 5 percent of homicides were perpetrated by whites, with the race unknown for 31 percent of perpetrators. Again, with 88 percent of homicide victims being black, the “race unknown” category is almost certainly mostly black. Memphis has a population of 621,056, 64 percent of which is black.

What explains these numbers? State representative Jones wants you to believe it’s guns. It can’t be guns. If it was merely the proliferation of guns, then not only would most murders and their victims be white, since whites comprise more than 78 percent of Tennessee’s population and, moreover, nearly 52 percent of Tennesseans have guns in their homes, but also because whites are far more likely to own guns than blacks (at least legally), as surveys over the last several decades consistently indicate. Yet it’s blacks who are perpetrating most gun homicides and who are most likely to be the victims of gun homicides.

The question that needs answering, then, is why are blacks, especially black males, so much more likely to perpetrate homicide? It seems rather racist to suggest that possessing a gun makes a black man more likely to kill another man. A black man is no more intrinsically impulsive than a white man. There is nothing in his genetics that would cause him to shoot at people after acquiring a gun. It must therefore be something other than his genetic makeup that finds him so drastically overrepresented in these statistics.

Is it poverty? No. Most poor people in Tennessee are white. There are 5,516,696 whites living in in the state. Of that number, 617,669 are poor (11.2 percent). There are 1,179,729 black Tennesseans. Of that number, 262,160 are poor (22.2 percent). This means that there are more than 2.354 times as many poor whites as there are poor blacks. Does it make sense to say that poverty affects blacks in ways it does not affect whites? Again, this sounds rather racist.

It’s not just a problem of disproportionalities in the statistics but absolute numbers. Leaving out the “race unknown” statistic, blacks committed at least 389 homicides, whereas whites committed at least 159 homicides. In terms of rates, that’s 345.15 per 100,000 for blacks compared to 31.4 per 100,000 for whites. That means the ratio of the homicide rates between blacks and whites is approximately 10.98, indicating that the homicide rate among blacks and the frequency of homicide perpetration is drastically higher compared to that among whites.

There is significant disparity between blacks and whites when it comes to single-parent families. Whereas 27 percent of white children live in a single-parent household, 71 percent of black children live in single-parent home. Most single-parent homes are headed by women. We know that single-parent families are largely associated with existence in inner-city urban areas where residents live in public housing and receive public assistance. Father absence is associated with public assistance, as well as higher rates of crime and violence. There is a cultural component to all this, not only in the single-parent household phenomenon, but in a milieu in which violence is normalized and experienced as an ordinary part of everyday life. This milieu is also associated with poor academic performance and poor labor force attachment.

The reality Democrats don’t want you to think about is the fact that the black population has been ghettoized over a period of many decades, a situation organized and sustained by progressive ale and policy. In other words, the very same politicians and policymakers who want to control guns are the same elites who created the situation associated with extraordinary high rates of gun and other violence. In order to cover for the results of their politics and policies, they want to deprive law-abiding citizens—black and white—of their firearms, their means of hunting, self-defense, and sporting activities.

Based on everything we know about gun homicide, it’s not gun ownership that’s the problem; the problem is a culture of violence associated with inner-city life organized by progressive politics and policies that undermine family structure, weaken self-discipline, and create and sustain an environment fostering the development and persistence of criminal networks involving traffic in drugs and stolen merchandise, conditions generating high rates of burglary, robbery, and other serious criminal offenses, and an associated gang life in which the ethic of tribal warfare reduces empathy and diminishes human worth.

There is moreover an associated popular culture that glorifies gang warfare and wanton violence, as well as an ideological system that misleads blacks into believing that the misery their attitudes and behaviors cause is somebody else’s fault, specially the whites whose targeting is then justified in light of rhetoric regarding reparation, systemic racism, and white supremacy.

According to Sheriff T.K. Waters of Jacksonville, 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, who lived with his parents in nearby Orange Park and had no criminal arrest history, bought a handgun in April and an AR-15-style rifle in June and used these weapons on Saturday to kill three people and then himself at the Kings Road Dollar General store. The manifesto he left behind has been described as “the diary of a madman.” His victims were black: Angela Michelle Carr, aged 52, Anolt Joseph “A.J.” Laguerre Jr., aged 19, and Jarrald De’Shawn Gallion, aged 29. Palmeter was white. He was also a racist.

Before the rampage, Palmeter appeared at the historically Black Edward Waters University around 12:45 pm. There, he equipped himself with tactical gear, including a bullet-resistant vest, mask, and gloves. His actions raised suspicions among the university’s security personnel, prompting him to leave the premises shortly after. Following his departure from the campus, Palmeter proceeded to carry out the shooting without warning. Amidst the chaos, he allowed certain individuals to exit the store before taking his own life.

Sheriff Waters said there were no red flags in this case. Both the rifle and handgun were legal and had been purchased legally. The firearms dealers―Wild West Guns and Orange Park Gun and Pawn—followed proper procedures in the sales. The shooter had come to the attention of law enforcement in 2017 in connection with the state’s Baker Act, a measure that permits the involuntary confinement and assessment of individuals for up to 72 hours when facing a mental health emergency, but uncertainties remain regarding the accuracy of the recorded Baker Act incident and whether it was categorized as a comprehensive Baker Act case. “In this situation, there was nothing illegal about him owning the firearms,” Sheriff Waters told reporters.

The corporate state is making the shooting about two things: racism and guns. It appears that racism was an element in the crime. Palmeter had composed manifestos that explicitly articulated his abhorrence for the black people and his intent to perpetrate violence against them. His rifle was adorned with swastikas. He specifically targeted black people before turning the gun on himself.

To punctuate the racial aspect of the crime, the media has noted that the shooting occurred on or around the anniversaries of two significant events in the history of civil rights, namely Ax Handle Saturday and the March on Washington.

Ax Handle Saturday took place on August 27, 1960, at Hemming Park in Jacksonville, Florida. The incident was a brutal attack on black protesters by a white mob. On that day, a group of black college students, led by civil rights activists Rodney Lawrence Hurst Sr. and Alton Yates, organized a peaceful sit-in demonstration at several segregated lunch counters in downtown Jacksonville. The students were advocating for an end to racial segregation in public spaces. They entered the whites-only lunch counters and attempted to be served, which was met with hostility from white patrons and counter-protesters. As tensions escalated, the situation turned violent. A white mob, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, gathered and began attacking the protesters with various weapons, including ax handles, baseball bats, and bricks. The police response was inadequate, as officers reportedly did little to protect the peaceful protesters from the mob.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, often referred to simply as the March on Washington, was a historic civil rights event that took place on August 28, 1963, in Washington, DC. Organized by a coalition of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations, the march aimed to address issues of racial segregation, economic inequality, and civil rights for African Americans. The march is perhaps best known for being the site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, where he spoke of a future where individuals would be judged by their character rather than the color of their skin. The event drew a massive and diverse crowd, making it one of the largest political rallies for civil rights in American history up to that point. The March on Washington helped build momentum for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which were significant legislative achievements in the struggle for racial equality.

At this point, I have no evidence or reporting indicating Palmeter planned his actions around these anniversaries. However, in tying the shooting to these events, the corporate media is perpetuating the ideological project to portray the United States as a country fraught by white supremacy. To be sure, it is crucial to continue the struggle against racism, but the United States of today is not the United States of the 1950s and 1960s. White supremacy exists in the United States, but it is not a significant problem. In fact, as I have reported on Freedom and Reason, in cases of homicide where the perpetrator is a different race than the victim, it is far more likely the perpetrator will be black and the victim white than the other way around. Video evidence of violent altercations indicating racial antipathy of black towards whites is voluminous. In addressing this problem, attention must indeed be focused on the problem of racial thinking. We must recognize that the antiracism rooted in identity politics is a racist ideology; identity politics manufactures racial resentment and antagonize people.

Along with leveraging the shooting to portray the United States as a white power project, the corporate state wants to make this about the availability of semiautomatic rifles. This is a red herring designed to advance the agenda of disarming the population, as well as creating the ability of propagandists to selectively identify ideology in motivation. That second piece allows for the horrific frequency of homicide in black neighborhoods to appear as occurring without human agency and therefore outside the scope of explanation; the fact that the number of those nineteen and younger killed by guns is driven by violence in black neighborhoods is obscured, with gun deaths framed the same way public health officials would talk about injurious and lethal pathogens, except where they can be attributed to the actions of mentally-ill white supremacists.

As I have admitted on this blog, I have been wrong in the past on the gun issue, repeating a logical fallacy that disappears the person who is actually the agent or cause of shootings and implying that an inanimate object has agency. The fact is that guns don’t shoot themselves. They’re tools like anything else—a means to an end. To understand the use of any means, we have to determine why the person seeks the ends he seeks. This requires a comprehensive study the root causes that explain why one human being kills another human being. In a large proportion of gun deaths, the shootings are perpetrated by those immersed in drug trafficking and gang society.

But elites don’t really care about why people kill people unless it is useful to the agenda at hand. The irrationalism in the debate over semiautomatic rifles makes it clear the motive of the state in arguing for bans and stricter regulations. More people are killed with feet and hands every year than are killed by rifles. The type of gun typically used in gun violence is the handgun. Yet the focus is on semiautomatic rifles. Why? Because handguns and long guns are not effective in combat against the high-powered weaponry possessed by the federal and state governments, and the corporate state doesn’t want the citizenry to be effectively armed to defend their liberty and their republic.

Everything that has been unfolding over the last several decades telegraphs the desire of the elite to dispense with democratic-republicanism and liberal freedoms and establish a totalitarian system of corporate governance. When they aren’t saying it out loud, the contempt for the American Republic exhibited by progressive Democrats is palpable. The framing of the rare mass shooting involving a white supremacist is amplified by the corporate state and media to heap disrepute on the American republic. The desire to disarm Americans is why it is so vitally important to keep the Second Amendment as free and open as possible.

The importance of indoctrinating children in the ideology of the indoctrinators is so that ideology is felt by the indoctrinated in adulthood as common sense or the ordinary social logic. They don’t even know it’s ideology because it has been put in their heads before they developed abstract and critical thinking. It feels intuitive to them.

Inoculating in the masses the social logic of the indoctrinators is a major part of perpetuating the established hegemony. To be sure, some will escape the indoctrination. But many will not. They will carry the frame that keeps them in darkness their entire lives because early childhood indoctrination structured their cognitive and emotional response with deep-seated assumptions and truisms.

This is why progressives started the long march through the institutions a century ago: to colonize the spaces where they could get easy and exclusive access to the children—doctor’s offices, schools, television programming. Progressives were especially eager to infiltrate the public education system. It’s why public school classrooms are today festooned with the signifiers and symbology of woke progressive ideology.

I’m not here warning you that they’re after your kids. I’m here telling you that they’ve already got them.

Alice Cooper believes that contemporary woke ideology is excessive. He’s in the news for criticizing the trans gender phenomenon. Cosmetic companies who had endorsed him in the past dropped him from the lists of their endorsees. Predictably, Cooper is being smeared as “anti-trans” and “transphobic.” I grew up with Alice Cooper’s music and have understood his politics from early on. Like Frank Zappa (who discovered Cooper and gave him his first record contract), Cooper was uncomfortable with the cultural revolution of the 1960s. For Cooper and Zappa, art, music, and theater are vehicles for the expression of ideas. The cultural revolution was challenging the very liberal framework that guaranteed the freedom of expression.

Cooper is portrayed as conservative and right wing based on his comments. However, Cooper he has identified as a libertarian in the past. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that emphasizes free market capitalism, individual rights, limited government, and personal autonomy. Libertarians are anti-authoritarian and individualist, emphasizing minimal state interference in economic and personal matters. Cooper’s politics have been stable over his decades-long career, and his alignment with libertarianism explains his views with respect to woke ideology. For those of you who follow Freedom and Reason, you are aware that these are also my politics.

I will discuss more politics in a moment, but before I do, a brief biography of Cooper for those who may not know who he is. Cooper, born Vincent Damon Furnier in February 1948, has enjoyed a career spanning several decades as a rock sensation, recognized for his theatrical stage presence, making him one of the most notable figures in the realm of shock rock and rock more broadly. Along the way there was a great deal of gender bending, which was typical in the 1970s. I will dwell on the Zappa connection in Cooper’s early years because of the political affinity between the two artists and the cultural milieu in which both charted a unique path through rock music.

Zappa witnessed an Alice Cooper performance in Los Angeles during the early 1970s. As per Cooper’s account: “We were playing a big party in LA, with The Doors, Buffalo Springfield, Love—all those great bands—and we came on next to last because we were the house band. Everybody in the audience was on acid, of course, grooving on peace and love, and then all of a sudden you hear this DA-NA-NAA-NAAA and there’s these insane-looking clowns onstage. We scared the hell out of these people. They were all on acid, we looked like we’d just come up out of the ground, and we didn’t mind a little violence onstage. That audience couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. It was like somebody yelled ‘FIRE!’ There were three people left standing: Frank Zappa, my manager Shep Gordon and one of the GTOs. Frank said, ‘Anybody that can clear a room that quick, I’ve got to sign.’”

It has been reported that Christine Frka, Zappa’s babysitter (Frka is on the cover of Zappa’s 1969 Hot Rats) proposed that Zappa offer Cooper a recording contract. Alice Cooper’s debut album, Pretties For You, was released on Zappa’s Bizarre Records label in 1969. Their second album, Easy Action, was released on Zappa’s Straight label in 1970. In a 1974 interview, Zappa noted, “We were the first ones to sign them. They existed. I didn’t put them together, but I put out their first two or three albums…. They came to my house and auditioned…. About a year after we signed them they started really costuming it up. But they were always strange.” According to a 1993 Pulse Interview, Zappa was the one who encouraged Cooper to wear women’s clothes on stage. It has also been reported that Frka played a pivotal role in shaping the band’s image.

While many artists during that period participated in the cultural revolution of the 1960s and expressed what today is known as woke progressivism, Cooper and Zappa worked from a different standpoint. Zappa was an outspoken libertarian known for his advocacy of free speech, individual rights, and limited government intervention. Zappa was aggressive in expressing his concerns about censorship, the erosion of personal freedoms, and government control. He was also very suspicious of what I have called the medical-industrial complex. He incorporated political and social commentary into his songs and albums.

Zappa’s testimony before the United States Congress in 1985 during hearings on music censorship, where he defended freedom of expression and criticized the efforts to regulate music content, was a remarkable moment for both politics and music culture. The Parents Music Resource Center, or PMRC, was an American committee formed in 1985 by a group of politically influential women, including Tipper Gore, the wife of then-Senator Al Gore, with the aim of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to have drug-related, sexual, or violent themes. The organization gained attention for its advocacy of labeling music with explicit content and for its push to establish warning labels on albums containing such content.

The PMRC’s efforts were met with criticism from various quarters, including free speech advocates and musicians. The controversy surrounding the PMRC’s activities, including their list of songs with lyrics they considered objectionable, led to congressional hearings in 1985, during which musicians like Frank Zappa and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister testified against the organization’s proposed labeling system and censorship. Zappa’s appearance on the CNN talk show Crossfire in May of 1986 was also notable. During the give and take, he insisted that his problem with PMRC censorship concerned lyrics not the videos and album covers to which the host and other guest kept objecting.

In a recent interview with Stereogum journalist Rachel Brodsky, Alice Cooper discussed his history of challenging gender expectations during performances. However, he noted that some of his fellow theatrically inclined rock contemporaries, such as Paul Stanley from Kiss and Dee Snider, have started expressing doubts about certain aspects of gender ideology. Stanley was criticized for tweeting, “There is a BIG difference between teaching acceptance and normalizing and even encouraging participation in a lifestyle that confuses young children into questioning their sexual identification as though some sort of game and then parents in some cases allow it.”

Snider, was criticized for agreeing with Stanley. “You know what? There was a time where I ‘felt pretty’ too. Glad my parents didn’t jump to any rash conclusions!” After the barrage from gender ideologues, Snider responded, “I was not aware the Transgender community expects fealty and total agreement with all their beliefs and any variation or deviation is considered ‘transphobic.’” He wondered why his “lifetime of supporting the Transgender community’s right to identify as they want and honoring whatever changes they may make in how they present themselves to the world isn’t enough? Why not?”

In asking his question, Brodsky focused on Stanley’s characterization of trans phenomenon as a “sad and dangerous fad.” Cooper agreed with Stanley. “I’m understanding that there are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad, and I’m afraid there’s a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that,” he opined. “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be.’”

Cooper argued that is is perilous not solely for young children but for teenagers as well. “I think that’s so confusing to a kid. It’s even confusing to a teenager,” he said. “You’re still trying to find your identity, and yet here’s this thing going on, saying, ‘Yeah, but you can be anything you want. You can be a cat if you want to be.’ I mean, if you identify as a tree… And I’m going, ‘Come on! What are we in, a Kurt Vonnegut novel?’ It’s so absurd, that it’s gone now to the point of absurdity.”he clarified, “I have respect for people and their individual identities, but I won’t advise a seven-year-old boy, ‘Put on a dress because you might actually be a girl.’” He elaborated, “I believe that individuals should have the opportunity to understand their sexuality before delving into whether they identify as a boy or a girl.”

Cooper argued that he looks at topic “from a logical perspective,” asserting, “If you possess these physical attributes, you are male. If you have those physical attributes, you are female.” However, he contended, “The distinction arises when you express the desire to be of the opposite gender. That’s a choice you can make later in life, if you wish. But you don’t biologically transition from being a male to a female.” His comments were similar to those of Stanley, who wrote, “There ARE individuals who as adults may decide reassignment is their needed choice but turning this into a game or parents normalizing it as some sort of natural alternative or believing that because a little boy likes to play dress up in his sister’s clothes or a girl in her brother’s, we should lead them down a path that’s far from the innocence of what they are doing.”

At one point in the interview, Cooper questioned the popular and organic character of gender ideology. “The whole woke thing,” Cooper wondered. “Nobody can answer this question. Maybe you can. Who’s making the rules? Is there a building somewhere in New York where people sit down every day and say, ‘Okay, we can’t say ‘mother’ now. We have to say ‘birthing person.’ Get that out on the wire right now’? Who is this person that’s making these rules? I don’t get it. I’m not being old school about it. I’m being logical about it.” It is top-down. It reflects the tyranny of the administrative state and the technocratic apparatus. Confusing children about gender is a critical step in reorganizing mass consciousness for future political utility.

In the United States, which was founded as a democratic republic, a situation has developed where rules—not laws—are used as means of ideologically-motivated social control. These rules are devised by bureaucrats, for example, administrators and organic intellectuals in the Department of Education and elite education programs, and imposed on the structure of public instruction through the mechanism of financial control it enjoys—when public schools receive federal funds they are tied to agenda that seeks to push down into the states systems the doctrines of the LGBTQ+ movement. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is another example of the top-down and administrative character of social control.

None of this is democratic. And it appears everywhere the same, as Cooper noted. It’s rather pointless to record that lockstep form and content couldn’t have happened by accident when we know exactly how and why it happens. Cooper, Snider, Stanley—these artists get what this is about because their main ethic in their lives is freedom of expression. It is how they can be creative. They’re artists. It’s how they can so readily distinguish between theater and the real world. If Zappa were alive I’m confident that he’d say the same thing (several of his lyrics express an antipathy towards the extremes of gendered thinking. Cooper, Snider, Zappa—they all have something in common: they’re libertarian or lean that way (Snider is defender of gun ownership and women’s rights).

The LGBTQ+ mob wants to lump libertarians in with conservatives and right wingers. They mean to suggest that glam and shock rockers are somehow traditionalist. Libertarians don’t care with who consenting adults have sex or how an adult identifies. All of these figures we’re talking about were gender benders. They’re products of a popular cultural movement in gender bending. What has happened in the meantime that a lot of people want to escape dysphoria by collapsing theater into reality. This is the postmodern character of transhumanism, where the simulation not onto becomes preferable to reality but those born into hyperreality can no longer distinguish between the simulation and reality. A man dressing in women’s clothing is no longer just that but has become an indication of a thing call “gender identity.” A stereotype used in theatrical performances has become the essence of the thing portrayed.

We used to understand the collapse of fantasy and reality in the mind of a person to be the surest sign of mental illness. Today we supposed to know it as the “personal truth” of the “authentic self.”

Have you ever stopped to consider that the wet dream of the cultural left is a BDSM clown world culture where the bottom—the majority—bends over and pleads to the top, “Govern me harder, Daddy. I’m unworthy of your love. Tell me what to believe and how to act. Please? Humiliate me. Make me feel shame. I’m so pathetic and stupid. I’ve been bad and need a good spanking. Harder. Boss me around. Put on the mask. Stick needles in my body. Please? Tell me who I’m allowed to see, where I am allowed to go, what I am allowed to say. I’m wretched. Make me your bitch. I’ll be a good dog. I promise.”

The wet dream is beyond palpable, it’s here, expressed in the symbolic imagery pushed by the cultural left. It’s all there. Deployment of emotional stress and psychological control. Discipline and restraint. Age play. Gender play. The drop. Except we are being forced into the munch. There’s no contract. No consent. No safe word. The play party is in our streets. It’s in our schools. It’s even in our churches. It’s in children’s books. Flags and standards and placards. Symbols and slogans. Public meetings where men do woman-face while reading to children delivered to them by parents desperate to virtue signal their devotion to inclusivity, in strip clubs where kinks are performed for children while the little ones stuff dollar bills in thongs, are guarded by TRAs dressed in fetish gear ready to use violence on the vanillas. These scenes are accompanied by grander scenes created by mask and vaccine mandates, lines of cars filled with ball-gagged bottoms waiting to be swabbed and jabbed. Children hormonally and surgically altered.

Masks, social distancing, and preemptive quarantining (lockdown) are crucial pieces in the mainstreamed BDSM project. Sensory deprivation is a BDSM practice that involves intentionally altering, eliminating, or sharply reducing one or more of the senses, such as hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch. This leads to altered perceptions, which intensify the experience of other activities or dynamics. It focuses the body on the dictates of the top. Sensory deprivation creates an intense psychological and physical experience for participants. In BDSM culture proper, the ethic is that engaging in such activities should always be consensual and negotiated beforehand. But, as it is in struggle and torture sessions (reeducation camps, DEI training, etc.), it is not consensual or negotiated in its application at the mass societal level. Without the consensual and negotiated elements, BDSM is indistinguishable from the struggle or torture session.

There are several forms of sensory deprivation commonly practiced in BDSM including blindfolding, earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones, gags, restraints, and full-body encasement. It doesn’t take much imagination to see their parallels in clown world. It becomes obvious when you distill the principles from the comparative concrete realities. Keeping people from seeing or hearing what’s going on around them enhances the sense of anticipation and vulnerability. Not being able to know what’s going on around the individual puts submerges him into an altered state of consciousness where he is easily conditioned. Blocking out sounds or overloading the subject with information creates a sense of isolation and desire to withdrawal. Restricting the ability to speak leads to feelings of loss of control. Restricting movement, limiting the ability to move freely, boxing in or encasing the body—all of these things put individuals in altered states of consciousness in which they are easily controlled, conditioned, and manipulated.

You might think that people would resist being treated this way, but those immersed in this culture are conditioned to seek more sensory deprivation to heighten their experience of being controlled. Under the right conditions fear can become a drug. People will seek out BDSM to feed their addiction. This is why it is vital to stress the importance of human dignity. And this is why the project to control the masses uses degradation and dehumanization to undermine self-regard. Sensory deprivation intensifies the power dynamics between participants and enhance the emotional and psychological aspects of BDSM play. It conditions the subject to develop an abnormal degree of trust between participants, as well as a clearer awareness of a person’s limits and comfort zones. It is a comprehensive system of control.

Who’s behind clown world? The corporate state. The big corporate conglomerates and transnational financial institutions, the administrative state and its technocratic apparatus, the education system, the mass media, the culture industry—the entire system dedicated to moving the population, already designated bottom, into every greater submission by destroying their confidence and filling their bodies with guilt and shame and the desire to be governed harder. The Pandemic—and they’re threatening to bring that wicked device back out—was a demonstration project of the BDSM culture the power elite mean to impose on the people. BLM and Pride Progress are the cultural spear tips of a comprehensive project to transform mass consciousness for the purposes of powerful political economic forces. 

I have written frequently on the problem of scientism. See, for example, Science Versus Scientism: How to Spot the Difference; The Problem of Scientism and its Solution in Historical Materialism; The Fauci Principle: Technocracy and the Depoliticization of Tyranny. I have also written on the corruption of science by corporate interest. See, for example, We Have Become Eisenhower’s Worst Fears: The Establishment of the Scientific-Industrial Complex; Refining the Art and Science of Propaganda in an Era of Popular Doubt and Questioning. In this essay I revisit the matter of scientism as an expression of corporate marketing and public relations.

We need to pay attention to the question: For whom does the scientist work? If he is a traditional intellectual, then he is likely free to do his work in accordance with the objectives of science. His independence does not guarantee that he knows his art, but it greatly enhances his chances. If, on the other hand, he is an organic intellectual for capitalism, i.e., a scientist working for a corporation or university program/project directed by the business community, then he is likely doing the work of a capitalist firm or industry, which we can see in the areas of chemical manufacturing, energy production, the medical-industrial complex (which includes pharmaceuticals), and the military-industrial complex is performed for the sake of profits not enlightenment.

Science has been profoundly corrupted by profit and power. It has become a technocratic means of control and class domination. It is an ideological endeavor. Moreover, programs producing scientists are determined by the cultural, economic, and political needs of the elite. The degrees obtained from leading institutions are often without rigor or substance. It is well known that in many fields the majority of published studies—in peer-reviewed academic journals—cannot be replicated. Bad science is ubiquitous these days—and has been for years. Indeed, in many cases, nonscientists uncorrupted by corporate power or not left ignorant by ideological programming are much better equipped to think objectively and for the general population than are scientists corrupted and specialized.

Democratic-republicanism demands that the people shape policy through their elected representatives. So why are we asked to defer to experts and scientists? The desire that technocrats tell us what to do with our lives lives via the administrative route is a totalitarian desire. People who advocate for the latter are advancing not science but scientism, which is a religious-like ideology masquerading as science. The demand from these people is that we exhibit a faith-like belief in science. But science is the opposite of faith-belief. Science is about reason and evidence. That means that anybody who cares to learn to think in that manner and does the work can do science.

Yes, scientists are human and, as such, corruptible and fallible. But science as an enterprise is corrupted by the same forces that corrupt scientists—to the point where we can no longer trust the institution. (See The Cynical Appeal to Expertise.)

* * *

I expressed this opinion on the Facebook page of another users, which I rarely do. “You are free to believe what you want to believe,” was the response. Yes, of course. At least for now. But then again, are we sure? At any rate, the granting of my freedom was made by somebody who claims a science background. This was my response:

I have been a professional scientist now for almost three decades, a tenured professor for twenty-three years, with published articles (including an award winning paper), chapters, and essays in peer-reviewed journals, university press books, encyclopedia, and other venues. I have presented dozens of conference papers since 1993. Not only have I published empirical research, I’ve been teaching research methods since before my PhD program, and applying my research skills to practical areas, such as large-scale program assessment affecting the lives of thousands of people (the elderly, the addicted). 

I told the person that I was only raising my background because she did. By her lights, I should therefore have something relevant to say. I know what I’m talking about—and would even without all those degrees and experience, of course, because I do my own research—and in my judgment she was expressing entirely too much faith in the enterprise. That’s how people get suckered, I noted: “they trust the experts” simply because they are experts (which experts) not because they, the faithful, actually take the time to study the matter under consideration. I stressed that one need not be a credentialed expert. But one needs to know how to do research and learn to tell the difference between “changing science” and an act of lying one’s way out of having been debunked.

As this impacts the lives of everyday people, we could not have had a better example of scientism than the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a disaster precisely because of scientific illiteracy (the technocracy means to keep the public ignorant and make them that way) and trust in experts. Progressive Democrats were especially subject to being fooled, as surveys of their knowledge of disease and death were widely off the mark. Comically so. 

For example, on the question of masks, folks kept hearing about research from the medical journals. That’s the wrong field. The right field is industrial hygiene, which shows that masks don’t work (really, common sense could have told people that). Were populations more curious and self-reliant and less obedient—and had institutions not censored and de-platformed those who could have helped people know where to look for reliable information—that would have known that masks were about control not public health. And all the rest of it. We could have en masse debunked the prevailing “science” concerning COVID-19, resisted effectively, and saved countless lives and businesses. (See Masks and COVID-19: Are You Really Protected?)

I concluded my argument with an appeal to my life in scientific research to note that I have had a front row seat to a lot of crackpot nonsense passed off as science for years now. I noted that, presently, humankind are in an era of science denialism—and it’s scientists and the people who trust them who are leading the way out of the Enlightenment. Scientism has a definite politics, which I noted two paragraphs ago. It’s there folks ought to start looking if they want to chart a path back towards the light of truth.

The anger you need in your life:

Wow. Well said, Ian. pic.twitter.com/PyZpNI78Ms

— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) August 23, 2023

The International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) said in an updated policy document: “For a transgender athlete to compete in the sport of powerlifting at any level, he/she must declare before competing that he/she is a transgender athlete. If an athlete fails to declare that he/she is a transgender and competes that violation leads to Disqualification of the result obtained in that Competition with all resulting Consequences, including forfeiture of any medals, points and prizes.”

This is being touted as a win for women’s sports. It’s not.

The change in policy was in response to Anne Andres—a trans-identifying man who openly mocks the women against whom he competes—blowing out his competition in Canada last weekend. Anne Andres, who currently holds multiple powerlifting records in the women’s division, set an all-time powerlifting record at the 2023 Western Canadian Championship, hosted by the Canadian Powerlifting Union. The total weight lifted in squat, bench, and deadlift resulted in a final score for Andres of 597.5 kilograms, which was over 200 kilograms more than the closest competitor, SuJan Gill, who finished at 387.5 kilograms.

This isn’t fair. It denies science. It tramples women’s rights. It has to change.

Last month, following other organizations previously (e.g., World Aquatics, World Athletics), a cycling race organization (Union Cycliste Internationale) changed its rules to state that individuals who were born female are only allowed to compete in the women’s category (see The Casual Use of Propagandistic Language Surrounding Sex and Gender). Even the International Chess Federation recently announced a ban on transgender women competing in the female category of the competition (to which Yosha Iglesias, a trans-identifying man, responded ridiculously: “If you want to help women in chess, fight sexist and sexual violence, give women in chess more visibility and more money, Don’t use trans women players as scapegoats. We contribute to the development of women in chess. We are women in chess.”)

But the IPF did not follow suit. Instead, that organization chose to deny the intrinsic difference between genotypes and instituted a rule that does nothing to prevent the violation of women’s sex-based rights. The updated IPF policy document states that trans gender athletes must abide by specific testosterone levels. “The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been equal or below 2.4 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L) and/or free testosterone equal or below 0.433 nmol/dL (or at or below the upper limit of normal of a particular laboratory reference) for at least 12 months prior to her first competition.” In other words, men can compete against women in powerlifting as long as they take hormones and steroids to artificially reduce their testosterone levels while allowing all the other physical differences remain in place. That’s right, if they dope they can compete.

Anne Andres (male who identifies and competes as a woman) doesn't understand why female powerlifters are so "bad" at bench press….well idk Anne, but maybe it's because you have 20 times more testosterone than them. Just a thought…. pic.twitter.com/klxd4WaoYc

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) February 17, 2023

Men are not women. Men cannot be women. Men have no place in women’s sports. Full stop. Testosterone production is irrelevant. Any organization that moves to address this problem that does not systematically ban men from competing in women’s sports is not addressing the problem. They are participating in a lie.

I was shocked to see Andres’ competitors applauding his ascent to the highest stage during the award of medals. Why do the women celebrate such a thing? Why aren’t they objecting to it instead? Are this many women so brainwashed as to believe a man can be a woman and compete in a female athletic event? Or are they afraid of what will happen to them if they resist the misogynistic project to destroy women’s sports and cancel women’s rights? Is that why so many people are so silent? They’re afraid?

Yes, that must be the case for many people. Because it cannot be that everybody who is silent thinks this is okay. I refuse to believe that that many people could be that confused about objective reality. The gender binary is as solid a fact as gravity. This is to say that the gender binary is among the most fundamental truths of the universe. Indeed, people are afraid. And if they’re afraid to speak the truth about something as fundamental as the gender binary, then what other truths are they afraid to speak up about?

When so many people are afraid to speak the truth, then we know that freedom is not what it should be. The only way to turn back from the journey to totalitarianism is to resist the big lies the totalitarians tell us. I am not trying to shame those who are afraid. I get it. I have been there. But I can’t be there anymore. What one finds living in truth is a very real peace with self. To live a lie is to live in conflict with self. It’s not a good place to be. It’s certainly not good for the girls and women in our lives. By an ally. Stand up for girls and women.