“Which Side Are You On?”

     The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H. L. Mencken

     I’ve already said it many times, most recently in this piece. Frightened people who believe they cannot defend themselves are the most easily subjugated of all. Subjugation – the fascistic arrogation of unbounded power over us that the Left seeks – would ultimately be far deadlier than the Chinese coronavirus (which I’m thinking of re-christening the Communist Chinese coronavirus). While many Americans realize this, many others have closed their eyes to the danger, their good sense overwhelmed by the media-powered panic over a disease that’s not even as dangerous as common influenza.

     It must cease. The panic must be countered. There’s excellent evidence that the Chi-Com Crud, while irritating and more communicable than we’d like, is easily defeated with American-quality medical care. Granted that seniors with other diseases are at some risk, the rest of us, given some ordinary precautions, are not. That makes the principal urgency of the day a swift return to business as usual.

     The alternative isn’t just subjugation; it includes impoverishment as well.

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     This morning, Independent Sentinel presents a letter from a professor at Bard College. It’s a must-read piece, of which I’ll excerpt only the tiniest snippet:

     Fellow Americans,

     Look at the front page of the New York Times. It screams about depression and paralysis in the United States. It announces that the coronavirus recession is in full swing. It is a war, folks, a war on America. This war is not with some foreign power; it is not a war among Americans. It is a war that American elites wage on American people.

     Please, please read it all, I beseech you! The writer, Professor Gennady Shkliarevsky, knows whereof he speaks: his concentration is in Russian and Soviet history.

     The Soviets controlled their media in their time. Pravda and Izvestia could only publish what they were allowed to publish. Our media aren’t under such constraints; they’re merely serving the wishes of the Democrat Party, which is so avid for a return to federal hegemony that it will plunge the nation into poverty, if necessary, to get it.

     It’s time to ask them, in a place, a time, and a format which will compel them to answer candidly: “Which side are you on, boys?”

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     By now my Gentle Readers have read about the exchange of fire between NBC’s Peter Alexander and President Trump. Trump was plainly angered by Alexander’s obvious agenda. That anger was expressed in his response to Alexander’s tendentious “question.” But of course the media and the NeverTrumpRump have proclaimed that “question” perfectly legitimate, deserving of an ordinary answer, while Trump’s reply was intemperate and evasive.

     For three years the media have attacked this president. They’ve denied him credit for his achievements and have laid every negative development they can think of or concoct at his doorstep. They’ve questioned his character, his self-command, his agenda, his marriage, and his preferences in cuisines. (Was any other president ever held up to ridicule for preferring his steak well done with ketchup?) Yet Trump has soldiered on through it all, in a performance in office that entitles him to the highest of praise.

     Certain Trump-versus-the-media events have taken on an iconic status. The antagonist featured in many of them is CNN’s detestable Jim Acosta. Consider the famous event that got Acosta ejected from a Trump press conference. Consider Acosta’s public dressing down by Kellyanne Conway. Consider Acosta’s relentless badgering of Sarah Sanders, the first White House press secretary ever to need Secret Service protection.

     Fascinatingly, those events are viewed in completely opposite ways by pro-Trump and anti-Trump persons...in other words, by American patriots and enablers of Left-wing fascism.

     At this point it should not be necessary to ask which side the media are on...yet too many Americans still believe what they read in the papers and see on TV news.

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     There isn’t much more to be said about all this. The fear-mongering by the media over the Chi-Com Crud, when counterpoised to the objective evidence about the virus, makes it plain that the press has an agenda other than the well-being of the American people. The NeverTrumpers who defend them are complicit in their offenses against the body politic and equally deserve to be shunned. They cannot and must not be forcibly silenced – that would be un-American – but it is imperative that these open enemies of the most effective, pro-American administration since Calvin Coolidge get no more of our credulity.

     Similarly, the various governors and mayors who’ve arrogated authorities never delegated to them in any constitution or charter must be sharply rebuffed. For each of them to be dragged from his mansion, tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail would be fitting. While that’s unlikely, at the very least we can turn them out of office at the next opportunity, before they can do more harm.

     If we’re to get back to business as usual before this becomes more than a minor inconvenience, it’s high time to know our enemies and name them. Grant their fear-mongering no more credence. Sensible precautions only:

• Keep clean;
• Cover when you cough or sneeze;
• Minimize physical contact with non-family members;
• No kissing random strangers!

     End the paralysis! Ordinary Americans – especially those who work in and own America’s four-million-plus small businesses – must take their freedom into their hands and insist on it. The hour is late indeed.

     No power is strong enough if it labors under the weight of fear. – Marcus Tullius Cicero