The Holistic Vacuity of Kamala Harris

On September 25, Vice-President Kamala Harris appeared with Stephanie Ruhle for a sit-down interview on the MSNBC. Ruhle had fawned over Harris on a recent Bill Maher show, saying that Harris’ reluctance to answer any questions with substance is okay because we know her opponent (Donald Trump) and that knowledge alone is sufficient for deciding who to vote for, which of course is Harris. That Ruhle isn’t interested in substance excited the Harris campaign, so they sought out Ruhle for a “positive conversation.” During the sit-down Harris repeated her tactic of not answering questions (calling it a “tactic” puts the matter generously). This was fine by Ruhle, she later told colleague Nicolle Wallace, repeating that non-answers are “okay,” because these aren’t “clear and direct issues,” which I presume is code for “Orange Man.”

“What I didn’t hear from her was divisive language,” Ruhle told Wallace, before hallucinating a conversation with Trump. “Imagine if I was sitting against Donald Trump, imagine the language he would be using, please!” Would Ruhle repeat the same lies Harris repeated during the ABC News debate, which moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis never fact checked, while doing her best to follow in Muir and Davis’ footsteps of relentlessly fact checking of the President? If so, then I, too, can imagine the language Trump would be using.

I confess: I do not find Ruhle to be an impressive person. Ruhle’s appearance on Maher and her comments to Wallace indicates that she is hardly less vapid than Harris. Consider the following remark: “And just the fact that we were talking about collaborative inclusivity—I don’t know. Vote for her or don’t vote for her, but isn’t it great to just have a positive conversation right now?” Note that, in an interview with Trump, Ruhle would be sitting against the President, this is in contrast to Harris where Ruhle was sitting with the Vice-President. And what the hell is “collaborative inclusivity”?

Kamala Harris was raised in a middle class family

For her part, Harris repeated the same words and phrases she uses every time she speaks. She praised “the spirit and character of the American people.” We have “ambition,” “aspirations,” “dreams,” and an “incredible work ethic.” Her vision for the economy? “I call it an ‘opportunity economy,’” she answered (it was her question, by the way). “I come from the middle class” she told us once more.

Ruhle praised Harris for her plan to give first-time home buyers $25,000 for a downpayment before noting that there is a housing shortage in the United States. No mention of whether that problem is a result of the Biden-Harris administration engineering the mass influx of millions of foreigners to small cities and towns across the United States. Harris answered that “some of the work is going to be through what we do in terms of giving benefits and assistance to state and local governments around transit dollars, and looking holistically at the connection between that and housing, and looking holistically at the incentives we in the federal government can create for local and state governments to actually engage in planning in a holistic manner that includes prioritizing affordable housing for working people.” I counted three instances of some variant of the word “holistic” in that sentence, but given its vacuity, it feels like more.

Of Trump Harris said, “He’s just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues. And one must be serious and have a plan, and a real plan, that’s not just about some talking point ending in an exclamation at a political rally, but actually putting the thought into, what will be the return on the investment, what will be the economic impact on everyday people?” She perfectly described her campaign and projects it onto Trump. So what’s new?

The interview was so bad that Morning Joe got the call to gaslight his audience over her performance. “I challenge anybody to find an interview from over nine years of Donald Trump where he actually talks about facts as specific as those facts,” he tweeted You don’t have to go back nine years to find such an interview. I will just pull an unscripted sit-down he did only a few weeks ago. He seems a bit tired here. Perhaps it’s the environment Lex Fridman sets. At any rate, enjoy.

There was No Lynching in America on September 24, 2024

Marcellus Williams was executed on September 24, 2024 for the brutal murder of journalist Felicia Gayle in her own home in 1998.

Marcellus Williams

While burglarizing her home in St. Louis, Missouri, Williams stabbed Gayle 43 times with a knife he obtained from her kitchen. Items stolen from Gayle’s home, including a laptop belonging to her husband, were found in Williams’ possession. Williams’ girlfriend reported to police that Williams was covered in blood when he picked her up on the day of Gayle’s murder. Williams admitted to his girlfriend that he murdered Gayle when confronted with Gayle’s purse, which she had found in his car. Williams threatened to kill her and her family if she reported it, which delayed her going to the police​. While incarcerated for yet another crime, Williams provided to a cellmate nonpublic information about the murder that only someone involved in the crime would know. This informant’s reported this information to the police.

I am not here to relitigate the case. I have reviewed both sides of the case and determined that Williams was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Claims such as the one made below by Ibram X. Kendi, that DNA evidence proves his innocence, are not merely false but misunderstand basic legal concepts. It isn’t worth the time to debunk all the false claims. My purpose here is threefold: criticize the race hustlers, note the purpose of identity politics, and condemn the death penalty.

First, I have written about lynching in the pages of academic journals and here on Freedom and Reason and I can assure readers that, even if there were legitimate doubts in this case, Williams was not lynched. Lynching is something else entirely (see Agency and Motive in Lynching and Genocide). The NAACP is further tarnishing their image by framing the execution in this false way.

Second, the furor over Williams’ execution is an attempt in an election year to manufacture a George Floyd-type outrage to help the Democrats. Trump is doing better than past Republicans among black voters, so the project to portray all whites as racist has slipped into a higher gear. This likely won’t be the last attempt at inflaming racial tensions. The heinous nature of Williams’ crime worked against the effort to portray him in a sympathetic light, but there may be other cases with wider play.

Finally, I know many of my friends and family disagree with me about this, but the political hijacking of this case by progressives is distracting from the real injustice, namely the fact that the United States still kills some of it prisoners. To be sure, Missouri didn’t lynch a man. They lawfully executed a guilty man for a heinous crime. The world is safer without Williams in it. But Missouri should not kill its prisoners. No state should. America should abolish the death penalty.

They’re Lying to You. Violent Crime is Not Down

Serious crime skyrocketed between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s. As I note here, why this happened requires a long and complex analysis. However, what brought down crime after the mid-1990s is not a complicated story: it was a drastic expansion of the criminal justice system—incarcerating more violent offenders for longer periods of time and putting more police on the street focused on crime prevention, drug trafficking, and gang activity. However, over the last decades, police departments have been stood down and prosecutors installed who routinely decline to hold perpetrators responsible for their crimes.

We’ve been told by the Harris-Walz campaign, the corporate media, and progressive social media influencers that violent crime is down under Biden-Harris. We saw a few weeks ago that, according to a report by the Department of Justice, violent crime isn’t down. It’s up. The DOJ’s Criminal Victimization, 2023 found that, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, or NCVS, from 2020 to 2023, violent crime increased 37 percent, rape 42 percent, robbery 63 percent, and stranger violence 61 percent. Also in the DOJ report, property crime was up 13 percent, driven by motor vehicle theft, which increased 48 percent.

Now the FBI has finally updated its Crime Data Explorer, or CDE. What do those data show? As with the NCVS, violent crime isn’t down. It’s up. The above chart depicts over a decade of data. The FBI doesn’t make it easy to eyeball, failing to provide dates along the x-axis, but we can count dots. Look at seventh dot. That’s September 2020. Trump is President. Violent crime is down. The eighth dot is September 2021. Biden is president. Violent crime is up.

However, there’s something missing the reports. A couple of things, actually. As readers of Freedom and Reason know, blacks are overrepresented in violent and serious crime statistics. For years, the percentage of blacks who perpetrate homicide and robbery has consistently exceeded fifty percent (some years approaching sixty percent for robbery) despite blacks being only around thirteen percent of the population. Most violent and serious crime is perpetrated by young males. Young black males comprise approximately 4-5 percent of the population. This means the overrepresentation of blacks in crime is even more significant than it might appear at first.

Statistics for the nation as a whole show that blacks (mostly male) perpetrate half of all robberies, while forty-six percent of all victims are white. However, “Not Specified” and “Unknown” attributes enjoy much larger percentages than in years previous. Given that, in 2022, fifty-eight percent of offenders were black, one might guess with a reasonable degree of certainty what percentage of “not specifics” and “unknowns” might be included in specified and known categories. Indeed, it may be worse than it was before.

Here is the data for New York State and New York City respectively. A lot of “unknowns.” (This is especially odd for the victim race category.)

Here are the racial demographics for homicide in New York City. Sixty-eight percent “unknown.”

Here’s robbery for Chicago. A lot of “unknowns.”

A lot of “not specified” for murder in Chicago:

What’s going in Baltimore? Sixty-four percent “not specified.”

Here’s Atlanta. Fifty-nine percent of robbers are black. Twenty-one percent “unknown.” Nineteen percent “not specified.”

Here the second thing that’s missing. I wanted to show you New Orleans, but the demographic data—age, sex, race, ethnicity—are all blank. That means that the New Orleans Police Department reported no data for violent crime. Here are the CDE charts for homicide and robbery. Note the totals. Nothing but zeros.

I wanted to show you Los Angeles, too, but there is no demographic data reported for LA, either. Or Jackson, Mississippi. Does crime go down when you don’t report it? Absolutely.

Birmingham, Alabama did report demographics with relative few “not specifieds” and “unknowns.” Eighty-six percent of robbers are black.

Birmingham Police reported numbers for homicides, as well. Look at the number of “unknowns” in the offender category. Now look at the victim race category.

It is pretty clear why officials have been keeping the data away from the public and why the media conveys a different impression the what the facts indicate—and what our common sense tells us. The media hasn’t bothered to tell the public that the data reported to the FBI first depends on crime victims reporting crimes to the police, then on police departments reporting those numbers to the FBI. The NCVS finds that, for most serious crimes, less than half of the crime that victims report in surveys are reported to the police. What the CDE report tells us is that some of the biggest police departments in the most crime ridden blue cities aren’t even reporting these numbers.

The supposed drop in crime is a mirage. The media knows this. If that institution were to function the way it was supposed to, it would be reporting to you what I am reporting to you. But the media the propaganda apparatus for the corporate state, captured by progressive ideology, and they are covering for the blue cities. We call them “blue cities” because they’re run by Democrats. Democrats created and maintain the conditions that generate violent crime. They are also hiding or obscuring racial demographics. This is because the primary victims of progressive policy is black people. Progressives only chant “Black Lives Matter.” They don’t actually believe it. They never have. After all, what has the Democratic Party represented since its inception?

People stopped paying attention to the conditions of blue cities for many years because of the historic drop in crime. Since crime has been on the rise, the result of depolicing and reluctant prosecutors, the ubiquitous preachments of identity politics, and the effects of globalization, including mass immigration, an increasing number of people have taken notice. Since Democrats can’t turn this around before the election, they have taken to hiding the numbers. The media is all too eager to help. And if Democrats win the election, they won’t turn this around for the same reasons they caused this to happen. And the media will continue to cover for them.

“Senseless Violence.” What Can We Do About It?

The mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, last night, that left four dead (so far), and seventeen wounded, is not a problem of guns but of violent crime. Guns don’t shoot themselves. People use guns to shoot other people (and themselves). If the public wants to reduce homicide, it needs to understand why people kill other people. Part of this is understanding who is doing the killing. The security state and the corporate media want the public to believe it’s the lone white male. The public has yet to learn who perpetrated the Birmingham shooting because it’s not. It usually isn’t.

A mass shooting killed four people and wounded seventeen others in a popular nightlife area in Birmingham, Alabama

Serious crime skyrocketed between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s. Why this happened requires a long and complex analysis. However, what brought down crime after the mid-1990s is not a complicated story. Progressives tell us that it was the assault weapons ban, which came into effect in September 1994 and sunset in September 2004. But so-called assault weapons are involved in a very small portion of homicides (fewer than one in twenty)—and who is robbing people with an AR-15? What brought crime rates down was a drastic expansion of the criminal justice system—incarcerating more violent offenders for longer periods of time and putting more police on the street focused on crime prevention, drug trafficking, and gang activity. NewYork City under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton is the paradigm.

Thanks to the tilt of criminal justice policy and practice towards law and order, the nation enjoyed a historic drop in crime after the mid-1990s. But that’s been reversed over the last decade. And it shows no signs of letting up. The DOJ’s Criminal Victimization for 2023 is out. The Department of Justice found that violent crime increased 37 percent from 2020 to 2023, rape 42 percent, robbery 63 percent, and stranger violence 61 percent. The NCVS does not include murder statistics, and the FBI has still not released the 2023 statistics (and the 2022 statistics are incomplete), so I can’t report that figure for that year. But I can report murder for the years earlier, and it’s scary. Also in the DOJ report, property crime is up 13 percent, driven by motor vehicle theft, which increased 48 percent.

What went wrong? Around 2010, academics and the mass media began pushing the white supremacy/white privilege narrative. In a detailed content analysis of major media sources published in Tablet in 2020, “How the Media Led the Great Racial Awakening,” Zach Goldberg finds that, “[y]ears before Trump’s election the media dramatically increased coverage of racism and embraced new theories of racial consciousness that set the stage for the latest unrest.”

You can find Goldberg’s article here, and I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing, but I want to pull a few charts from the piece to make the point immediate for you. In the first two charts, the reader will see the drastic increase of reference to “racists” and “racism” occurring around 2010 and a corresponding rise in the percentage of the population who reported that racism in the United States is a problem—this after a long decline.

Source: Zach Goldberg, Tablet, 2020

Indicated by the next several charts, the use of terms like “racists” and “racism” were buttressed by a slew of novel or academic terms developed by progressive social scientists and historians and pushed out by the corporate media and culture industry: “systemic racism,” “structural racism,” and “institutional racism”; “racial privilege” and “white privilege”; “racial hierarchies,” “whiteness,” and “white supremacy”; “racial disparities,” “racial inequalities,” and “racial inequities.”

In this way, the alleged effects of “whiteness,” “systemic racism,” etc., were identified as causing racial disparities and inequities without any demonstration of the validity of the alleged independent variables or their explanatory power. No matter, the terms comprised the assumption in force. Reinforced by race hustlers like Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, and through constant repetition, the abstract facts of racial disparity became their own cause, especially since even suggesting they were explicable by reference to causes outside of the antiracist narrative risked being labeled a racist.

Source: Zach Goldberg, Tablet, 2020

Two major pieces of this narrative played a critical role in producing the crime wave we’re currently suffering: (1) dissemination of the myth of a racist criminal justice system and (2) sowing resentment among racialized populations impoverished by globalization—offshoring and immigration. Elites blamed the situation of blacks on working class whites to deflect from the fact that transnational corporations and white progressives and their black collaborators were responsible. Against a backdrop of decades of decay in America’s central cities caused by Great Society social engineering and the destruction of the black family, demoralization combined with decarceration and depolicing produced rising rates of violent and serious property crime.

Today, there is more violent and serious property crime than there has been in a long time. It’s so bad that many city and state governments are not reporting out the statistics—hence in unavailability of the FBI Uniform Crime Report. Predictably, serious crime predominates in blue cities run by progressive politicians and policymakers. These are the same politicians and policymakers who manufactured the myth of the racist criminal justice system and socialized identity politics, i.e, the reracialization of the nation’s collective consciousness. Given the criminogenic conditions that these politicians and policymakers perpetuate, without effective public safety measures, violent and serious crime inevitably returned.

What can we do about it? If you don’t want to do anything about it, or make it worse, then vote Democrat. But if you want to return to the rule of law and public safety, then you will have to vote for the alternative. We are on the threshold of a new day—but we have to seize it. Not seizing the moment is not a neutral act. We can vote for Harris and remain in the ever-growing authoritarian darkness of the corporate state, or we can vote for a movement that is bringing together the left and the right around democratic-republican principles of governance and classical liberal values. Things are more hopeful than they have been in my lifetime. But half the nation wants to be governed harder by the nanny state. And the nanny state—and the destruction of the family it brings—lies at the heart of criminogenesis in America.

Lawfare is Inexcusable. So is Not Understanding Basic Legal Principles and Processes

I see something along the lines of this regurgitated endlessly X: “Nothing changes the fact that Donald Trump is a twice impeached, adjudicated rapist, business fraud and convicted felon traitor who incited a deadly attack on our Capitol.”

First, an impeachment isn’t a conviction. Impeachment is an indictment (or information). Trump was acquitted at trial on both impeachments, the latter concerning the charge of inciting a riot. A man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Trump was found “not guilty.” Trump therefore retains his legal innocence.

Trump acquitted on charge of inciting US Capitol riot

Second, Trump has no criminal rape convictions. A judge in a civil trial said she believed Trump committed rape. Her beliefs do not substitute for a rape conviction. The opinion is an aside from a judge who took seriously the claims of a deranged plaintiff. Trump is not an adjudicated rapist. The man has never even been tried for rape.

Third, Trump is not convicted of any felony counts related to business fraud in New York until the jury verdict is entered into the record at sentencing. Sentencing has been postponed until after the election—and the judge will likely set aside the verdict after Trump is elected in November. And even if the judge were to affirm the verdict, Trump could appeal, and at some point up the appellate chain see the verdict is overturned, because the trial was facially fraudulent.

Democrats lie like dogs. Constantly. Pathologically. If the Democratic Party were a person, it’d be an individual who, if examined by a clinical psychologist, would be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Believe nothing Democrats tell you. Truth means nothing to them. They’re psychopaths.

A Second Attempt on Trump’s Life

Update (10:35 PM):

* * *

The Democratic Party is all Establishment. By Establishment I mean the dominant economic, political, and social elites who hold power and influence in a society—the entrenched authority that maintains the status quo and resists change, controlling key aspects of business, government, education, media, and cultural production. The Establishment is out of touch with the broader population’s needs or desires (for example in Springfield, Ohio). The Establishment is a collective force that protects its own interests at the expense of the people.

The Establishment is globalists. The proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is an expression of globalist ambition. While the Democrats are all in, the Republican Party is split between the Establishment and the populist-nationalists. Trump represents the return to constitutional republicanism and classical liberal principles. Reclamation of our founding is antithetical to globalist ambitions. Ryan Wesley Routh, who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump yesterday in Florida, was on the side of the Republican Party he perceived was Establishment, correctly with Nikki Haley, wrongly with Vivek Ramaswamy. This is how he could support the Republicans but loathe Trump.

Political cartoon from October 1884

Trump is a populist-nationalists who doesn’t want the proxy war with Russia. That’s why the Establishment says he is Putin’s stooge. If you don’t understand this split then you won’t understand the assassin’s support for the Republican Party while parroting Biden-Harris talking points. We saw the same thing with the first assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks. Crooks was a registered Republican. But what kind of Republican? Establishment Republicans hate Trump because Trump is not Establishment. They have endorsed Harris-Walz because the Democratic Party is Establishment. Even Dick Cheney has come out in support of Harris-Walz.

It’s remarkable people haven’t figured all this out. I’ve been writing about this years on Freedom and Reason. We are in the midst of a great realignment. Realignment turns on the actual bifurcation point in a grand historical struggle between transnationalism and nationalism. The attempts on Trump’s life represent the effort to cut off the head of the populist-nationalist movement that represents resistance to globalization—open borders, the transnationalization of corporate power and its governance and legal structures, fusion with China and the entrenchment of authoritarian and technocratic control.

The Establishment wants things the way they were from January 20, 1989 to January 20, 2017. They thought Hillary Clinton would win the White House in 2016 and they could continue dismantling the American Republic and entrenching the corporate state. They rigged 2020 to get the project back on track. They thought they could delegitimize Trump before 2024—lawfare and all the rest of it. They haven’t been able to, so they’re turning to desperate measures.

The first assassin cannot tell us who he worked with, who prepared him, because he’s dead. But we know a lot about the second one. We can see he is aligned with the Establishment. He wanted the proxy war against Russia to continue. He was in Ukraine working with the Azov Battalion. Newsweek is reporting that Routh told The New York Times in March 2023 about his effort to recruit Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine. He told the Times that he spent several months in Ukraine in 2022. A Semafor report published on March 2023 cited Routh as the head of the International Volunteer Center (IVC) in Ukraine. The Associated Press reported that Routh was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. He saw a Trump victory as the potential end of the transnational project. When he parroted the Establishment rhetoric about Trump representing a threat to democracy, this is what he meant.

Was Routh a CIA asset? Ian Carroll has made some observations worth your attention.

The Racial Politics of Safeguarding Companion Animals

The language on the right is Haitian Creole. The sign is in Springfield, Ohio

Responding to the killing of Cats in Ohio and elsewhere, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, has put out series of public service announcement emphasizing that “Outdoor cats don’t go missing by themselves.” This is true. Toms wander off from time to time, but generally speaking, if your cat doesn’t come home, it’s probably been killed. It could be coyotes. It could be humans. It seems that the authorities aren’t interested in finding out whether it’s the one or the other. But they are interested in racializing the problem of immigration by telling the public that concern over the safety of cats in Ohio is a symptom of white supremacy.

The PETA ad is based on actual events. Here’s a report on these events, from the Dayton Daily News, dated July 10, 2024: Dayton man charged after reportedly setting kitten on fire. Eric Keith Williams, 21, of Dayton, faces charges of arson and cruelty to companion animals, according to records from Dayton Municipal Court. The arson charge is a first-degree misdemeanor, and the cruelty to companion animals charge is a fourth-degree felony. The Humane Society of Greater Dayton, assisting local authorities, has taken custody of the cat. Thankfully, the cat survived its injuries and is currently being treated as it recovers. Dayton is about thirty minutes from Springfield.

Eric Keith Williams

Above is the booking photo of Williams. Below is the cover image of the ad that depicts Williams’ crimes. It would seem that PETA felt it necessary to change the race of the perpetrator. PETA confirms that this is the case they built the video around. “Shocking reports of people attacking cats have recently grabbed headlines across the U.S., prompting a new PETA video series that will air nationwide, including in Dayton, where a man was arrested after intentionally setting a kitten named Joffrey on fire in July.” Another of PETA’s 30-second TV commercials, “Outdoor Cat,” also features a young white man. The race of the actual perpetrator in that case is unknown, as he (or she) has not been identified. Both men represent the stereotype of the antisocial white kid who revels in cruelty to animals.

Cover image of the ad

I won’t share here the horror of cat killing videos one can find with little effort on X (formerly Twitter). I understand why they need to be shared, but as a cat lover they are difficult to watch. What concerns me is the way that criticism of migrant culture that permits the killing of cats for food or for protective magic in Caribbean religions, principally Obeah, Santería, and Vodou, are being portrayed as expressions of white supremacy. The reason for this is obvious— to tamp down opposition to the corporate state strategy of flooding the country with Third Worlders for the superexploitation of their labor and demographic realignment for political purposes.

It is important for the public to know something about the Third World cultures and religions that represent a threat to companion animals, as these cases are appearing with alarming frequency (hence the PETA campaign, which downplays the cultural aspect of the problem by focusing on decontextualized individual incidents). I will mention three here and then follow up in a day or so with a longer essay on why the conflation of culture and race is fallacious and why tens of thousands of Haitians were dumped on Springfield, Ohio. Culture is being conflated with race enable the smear that will bring disrepute on those who complain about mass immigration and paralyze those who consider joining them.

Marianne Williamson’s now deleted truth moment.

Obeah is a system of spiritual and healing practices originating in West Africa that was brought to the Caribbean during the transatlantic slave trade. It was characterized as a form of sorcery or witchcraft by colonial authorities, encompassing a wide range of practices including divination and protection against spiritual harm. Obeah is particularly associated with Jamaica, blending African spiritual traditions with indigenous and European influences. Cats’ teeth and other body parts are used as charms in this religion.

Santería is a syncretic religion that developed in Cuba among enslaved Africans, primarily of Yoruba descent. It blends traditional Yoruba religious practices with elements of Catholicism, as enslaved people were forced to adopt Christian rituals while covertly maintaining their own spiritual traditions. Central to Santería are the orishas, deities that embody natural forces and human qualities. Rituals often involve animal sacrifice and divination. While Santería is practiced widely in the Caribbean and Latin America, it has also spread to North America through diasporic communities.

Vodou, which I wrote about a few days ago (Is This the Second Coming of Hunter Biden’s Laptop is a Hoax?), is a religion with roots in West African Vodun and has evolved into a distinct tradition in Haiti. Like other Afro-Caribbean religions, it blends elements of African spirituality with Catholicism, with a strong emphasis on ancestor worship, ritual possession by spirits, and the maintenance of harmonious relationships with the spiritual world. Vodou practitioners honor loa (also spelled lwa), or spirits, which act as intermediaries between humans and the divine. Rituals often involve offering of food or animal sacrifices to the loa or for protective magic.

As I will explain that pending essay, increasing flows of Haitians, especially those from the poorest rural areas, are bringing Vodou to the United States. Enabled by the doctrine of multiculturalism, which portrays the demand for assimilation of foreigners into American culture as a expression of racism, Haitian migrants, especially coming in such large numbers, and effectively walled off from other workers in a split labor market, are forming ethnic enclaves in which conformity to civilized norms and values cannot develop.

Industrial Strength Gaslighting

“It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.” —Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1965).

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

I know it sometimes feels like the you’re losing your mind when you read and watch reporting by the mainstream media. You watch a presidential debate and think one thing and then listen to the media analysis the next day and wonder whether you actually saw what you saw. You watch a candidate tell lie after lie without the moderators fact-checking her only to see the media lie about what the other candidate said.

This is industrial strength gaslighting. Don’t let the corporate state propagandists demoralize you. Remember, they all told you that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian information. They told you that Trump praised neo-nazis and white supremacists at Charlottesville, incited a riot on January 6, 2021, and told people to inject bleach into their veins and drink fishtanks cleaner during the COVID-19 pandemic. They told you Ivermectin was horse dewormer and that mRNA shots were safe and effective, that they would provide you with immunity from COVID-19. They told you cloth masks provide protection from the virus.

Source

I remember reading a study a long time ago that the majority of the public knows the media is biased but at the same time finds it credible. This is what George Orwell called “doublethink,” the ability to hold to contrary positions in one’s head simultaneously and believe both of them. Overcoming doublethink requires purging from your belief system the thing that cannot be true. This takes practice because lifelong conditioning is a powerful force in shaping your assumptions. Say it out loud: “If the media is biased, then it is not credible.” The media is not reporting the news but disseminating propaganda. Therefore, the default position of a rational mind is that the media is lying or misrepresenting the facts. Until you can verify that what they are telling you is true, do not believe them. Getting to this place involves self-deprogramming.

Long ago, linguist Noam Chomsky asked us to consider what the media is. It is this: mainstream news media is a propaganda tool that serves the interests of corporate entities and powerful elites, filtering information in ways that protect the interests of the wealthy and those in power by confusing and deceiving the masses. The media operates within an institutional framework shaped by ownership, advertising, sourcing of information (especially reliance on corporate and government sources), and other factors that lead to systematic bias. The media manufactures consent by controlling public perception, steering discussions towards topics that reinforce the status quo while marginalizing dissenting viewpoints.

Today, the mass media pushes out the progressive worldview, i.e., the corporatist-statist standpoint, advancing the aims of Democratic Party and allied Republicans who represent the interests of the corporate entities that control the world economy. Central to these aims is quashing the populist-nationalist movement to restore our constitutional republic and return to classical liberal norms and values.

Is This the Second Coming of Hunter Biden’s Laptop is a Hoax?

Before getting to the nub of today’s essay, let’s recall together some past CNN post-debate polling. Remember Biden’s 60-28 win in his first 2020 debate against Trump? Trump went on to win 75 million votes, the largest number of votes by presidential aspirant (I don’t believe Biden won 81 million votes). How about Clinton’s 62-27 win over Trump in the first debate of 2016? Clinton lost to Trump. Or Mitt Romney’s 67-25 win over then-President Barack Obama in the first debate of 2012? Romney lost to Obama. The CNN poll showed Harris winning the debate 63 percent to 37 percent among debate-watchers.

The media is attempting to demoralize Trump voters by pushing the recent poll, but history tells us that winning a debate is not winning an election. The Washington Post reports that, despite her win, debate-watchers still preferred Trump by 20 points on the economy (55-35) and 23 points on immigration (56-33). “Those are actually bigger margins than he usually racks up on these issues,” the Post noted, “so it seems possible Trump’s attacks on the Biden administration’s record on these issues landed with some effect.” So Trump supporters should not let the media blitz get them down.

Now, about this “rumor” of Haitians eating cats in Springfield, Ohio (which triggered an avalanche of hilarious cat memes, for which I am grateful), the media is being disingenuous by declaring the matter “debunked.” (So what’s new?) Animal sacrifice is core a part of Haitian Vodou tradition and plays a significant role in its rituals. In Vodou, animal sacrifice is not merely about offering animals to the spirits; it is a sacred act that reflects the deep relationship between humans, the natural order, and the spirit world. The practice is rooted in the belief that blood contains life force or spiritual energy, which helps to feed and strengthen the loa (spirits) during ceremonies.

One purpose of animal sacrifices is to honor the loa and seek their assistance, there are also practices within Vodou that involve curses or protective magic. These are typically done with the intent of defending oneself or the community. Various indigenous or traditional African religions involve animal sacrifice in their rituals; the origins of Vodou lie in the fusion of West and Central African spiritual traditions with the Catholicism imposed by French colonial rulers, forming a syncretic belief system that allows for a complex relationship between the divine, humanity, and the natural world. In this respect (and others) it’s similar to Santería, another AfroCaribbean syncretic religion that has found its way into the United States.

I shared the above tweet on Facebook and was asked about what I knew about animals in Ohio. I presume the question concerned Springfield, and I confessed that I haven’t been there. I suggested he ask Shaun MaQuire about it since it is his post. However, I know that dozens of citizens in Springfield are reporting that animals are missing and that the police know about it. I also know a bit about animals in South Florida. I know that Haitians eat them there and use them to put curses on people. At least they did this back in the 1980s. They put a curse on me and my business partner in Coral Cables. Twice. It was some sort of foul (I presume a chicken). Beheaded, drained of blood, hanging upside down from a tree. (I am not ruling out practitioners of Santería here.)

A cat meme

On August 12, NPR ran an exercise in prebunking on its All Things Considered program, “How Springfield, Ohio, took center stage in the election immigration debate.” The opportunity was a speech JD Vance had given on July 10 at the National Conservativism Conference, in which the Vice Presidential candidate had urged the audience to “go to Springfield, Ohio.” “I could not believe it when I first heard about it,” Vance said. “Ask the people there, whether they have been enriched by 20,000 newcomers in four years.” (For more on prebunking, see The Russia Fake News Narrative.)

The media hasn’t bothered to ask the people there—at least not the ones who are complaining—about it. Instead they have sought out the statements of city officials. “I think it’s sad that some people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear,” says Officer Jason Via, Deputy Director of Public Safety and Operations, Springfield. “We get these reports ’the Haitians are killing ducks in a lot of our parks’ or ’the Haitians are eating vegetables right out of the aisle at the grocery store.’ And we haven’t really seen any of that. It’s really frustrating. As a community, it’s not helpful as we try to move forward,” Via says.

Listen carefully to this statement

People are culture-bearers. They bring their culture with them. Animal sacrifice is a part of Vodou tradition and plays a significant role in its rituals. This is not a conspiracy. It’s anthropology. It would be surprising that the people who are reporting the killing and eating of various animals in Springfield were wrong. Their descriptions are accurate with what I know about Haitian gustatory and religious practices. I presume these residents aren’t experts. The association of Haitians and the killing of cats goes back decades, so maybe the retelling of history has come to substitute for direct observation. We’ll see. But the claims are plausible, and I won’t dismiss them out of hand. And I certainly won’t believe the media. After all, Hunter Biden’s laptop was a hoax.

I understand why the government would lie—they have a mass immigration project they need to keep going. I understand why the corporate media isn’t doing any investigatory journalism to find out what’s happening (instead giving the city manager Bryan Heck a call and taking his word for it—the same city manager who shills for the military-industrial complex in the video above)—they don’t want to know. They also can’t answer the question because they have framed the premise of the question as racist (as if culture is race). Since the truth can’t be racist, it’s better to just take the word of an official. What I don’t understand is why the ordinary citizen in Springfield would make up something like this. “Because they’re racist” won’t work. That’s a smear to delegitimize the burden imposed upon them.

I confess that I am not an elitist, nor do I toe the woke progressive line; the testimony of ordinary working people rings more true to me that functionaries who have a political interest in (a) hiding the truth of mass immigration to keep it going and (b) delegitimizing Donald Trump, who has promised to put a stop to it. 

I think it is remarkably naive to believe this couldn’t be happening—or that you can trust the media to tell you it is. It’s wrong to chalk the concern up to racism and xenophobia. These are cultures incompatible with ours and we are well beyond the ethic of assimilation. The citizens of Springfield, which number 60,000, are being saddled with the burden of 20,000 Haitian migrants, migrants they did not vote to allow into their community—a burden the government imposed on the residents there without their consent. 

This is why it is sad to see Springfield resident Nathan Clark, rather than blame the policies that led to his son’s death because of the actions of a Haitian migrant, say, “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man.” Expressions of collective self-loathing driven by identity politics is why people believe the corporate media and official sources over the testimony of ordinary Americans; it’s self-loathing that causes people to not even bother to find out what’s going on in Springfield and in cities across the nation, to wax incredulous at stories that those who have had experience with Haitian culture knows are not only plausible, but very likely, because white people are bad.

* * *

The lies and misrepresentations coming from Kamala Harris night before last were many (I cover many of them here Harris Lies and Distortions). But the way she dismissed thousands of death on the eve of 9/11 anniversary was despicable.

Collage of many of those who died on September 11, 2001 when Muslim terrorists flew plans in buildings

Approximately 2,977 people were killed in the attacks on September 11, 2001. This number includes passengers on the planes, workers in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, firefighters, police officers, and emergency responders. Above are the faces of those killed on 9/11. Not quite the horror of January 6, 2021, Kamala Harris tells us. Nor does Pearl Harbor compare. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, resulted in the deaths of 2,403 Americans. No, we have to go all the way back to the Civil War to find a tragedy comparable to January 6. An estimated 620,000 to 750,000 people died during the American Civil War, making it the deadliest conflict in US history. We know this because Kamala Harris told us. And since the media adores her, you can take this fact to the bank.