November 1, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

THE REVENGE OF THE DEEP STATE:

Pat Buchanan Writes

Friends,

I pass on to you two very recent columns by national columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan. As many of you know Pat has been a dear friend since the 1980s, and in 1991-1992 I was honored to chair his presidential campaign in North Carolina. In many respects he was, if I may borrow a Biblical comparison, a kind of “St. John the Baptist” who heralded the eventual “Make America Great” campaign of 2016 and the election of outsider—and Deep State cage-rattler—Donald Trump.

Over the years through his columns and superb books on foreign policy, economics, and immigration policy and our future, Pat has enunciated an agenda that, although obscured and suppressed by Deep State cross-dressing Republican minions like Bush I and II, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, has finally emerged in the public square. And the combined forces of the permanent Washington Inside-the-Beltway bureaucratic establishment—most especially with their near complete control of our intelligence services—have struck back fanatically in nearly every conceivable fashion…even to the point that high ranking military figures (e.g., Admiral William McRaven, in The New York Times, October 18, 2019) now apparently advocate possible military action to remove president, “the sooner, the better.”

That got me to thinking and remembering similarities with just how Soviet-backed Communists were eventually successful in turning Eastern Europe into a “Soviet zone” after the end of World War II. The parallels between the role of our own intelligence agencies and those comparable ministries in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria are striking. Immediately after the war Communist political parties and politicians formed “coalition” governments, and to placate the West, integrated a few non-Communists into those coalitions. But in every case, the one essential ministry which they demanded and got was the ministry of the interior, responsible for intelligence, domestic and secret police enforcement, and “maintaining order.”

In many ways that was, as they say, “the ball game.” You have the authority to infiltrate your opponents’ organizations, spy on your enemies, charge them with made-up crimes, and eventually ban and arrest your political opposition. And, of course, manipulate elections and the electorate. Sound familiar?

How else to get vote totals like 97% in favor of Comrade X of the Communist Party for prime minister? [I’ve always wondered what happened to the 3%?]

What Donald Trump stumbled on here in the United States was something nearly as foul, perhaps even more foul and troublesome—because we, citizens of the American republic, are not supposed to be living in countries like post-war Hungary or Poland, where Soviet troops have just recently “liberated” our countries and where they still station troops.  Rather, what showed its demonically fearsome face after November 2016 was a mostly heretofore subterranean permanent managerial state that had been working feverishly for decades to re-make America, to turn it into something that far too many citizens never realized was aborning.

There have been instances in our recent past when it seemed the mask might come off and the Deep State would have to fully reveal its full designs and intrinsic evil. But each time, it managed to somehow put the disruptive genie back in the lamp. This time the threat to its hegemony is far more grave, and, accordingly, far more severe actions and “punishment” must be inflicted on those who speak for and represent the “deplorables.” And this time, as well, the agents of the Deep State control almost the entirety of our educational system (with a few exceptions), our entertainment, our media, and, of course, the standards and language of our political discourse (to the point that most Republicans use its terms and parameters for debate, and, as such, remain imprisoned by it and eventually undone and defeated by it.)

*****

In two columns Pat reflects on the last major challenge to the permanent Deep State dominance, during the Nixon years, and what happened then. And he offers some history, and maybe a bit of hope from that history. But we must wonder: times have changed radically during the past fifty years. Is there enough backbone left in the American citizenry, so intellectually indoctrinated and emasculated, to actually stage a successful counter-revolution?

But, then, the question must actually be: do we have any other option? Do we not only owe it to our ancestors who created this country, to those many generations who left us Western Christian civilization, as well as to our children and grandchildren, “to resist evil to its face,” even if that were to mean the eventual break-up of this country or the taking up of arms?

Think about it.

Is Trump Facing a 1960s-Style Revolt?

https://buchanan.org/blog/is-trump-facing-a-1960s-style-revolt-137682

By Patrick J. Buchanan    Tuesday - October 29, 2019

Sunday morning, President Trump announced that the world's worst terrorist, the head of the ISIS caliphate who had raped an American woman, had received justice. About to be captured and carried off in a helicopter by U.S. special forces, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi blew himself up with an explosive vest in a compound in northwest Syria. The long search for the sadist and fanatic had ended in triumph. No U.S. troops were lost.

That evening, Trump went out to the fifth game of the World Series between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros. As his face was flashed on the big screen, the stadium erupted with people booing and chanting, "Impeach Trump!" and "Lock him up!" That Trump is not cheered at a D.C. baseball game is not odd, for the spectators are not working-class Trumpians. Series tickets cost hundreds, even thousands, of dollars, and the spectators are drawn from a town that gave Donald Trump 4% of its votes in 2016.

The mutual distrust in this city was on display when Trump told the press yesterday morning that he had not alerted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the impending U.S. raid, because he was afraid of leaks.

"I wanted to make sure this kept secret," said Trump. "I don't want to have people lost. ... We were going to notify them last night, but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like nothing I've ever seen before. ... A leak could have cost the death of all of them."  The Russians, however, were alerted we were coming, as they control the airspace over the compound we were targeting. And Trump thanked the Russians for their cooperation.

Also left out of the loop was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, one of the "Gang of Eight" that is almost always given a heads-up about major military operations. Schiff is conducting secret hearings to drum up support for Trump's impeachment and removal for "high crimes and misdemeanors."

It is imprecise to say this city is divided over Trump. It is rather almost solidly united behind what millions of Middle Americans believe to be a deep state-media conspiracy to overturn the 2016 election and effect a coup d'etat against a president whom this city detests but fears it cannot defeat in 2020.
 

A week ago, this writer noted the astonishing number of foreign capitals that were on fire with protests that go beyond marching and demonstrating -- to riot, rebellion and even revolution. As with the "yellow vest" protests that shut down Paris on many weekends this past year, and the disorders in Hong Kong, the epidemic had spread to Beirut, Barcelona and Santiago, Chile. In Iraq, over 200 have been killed and thousands injured in protests this month against the Baghdad regime. In Algeria, now six months after President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was forced to step down, rioters still battle the army.

The thread common to these uncivil, often-violent disruptions? A conviction that the cause the protesters are advancing is so critical, noble and necessary that democratic rules may be dispensed with and law and order suspended in pursuit of the cause.

Saturday's Washington Post describes the mindset that is taking hold in D.C. among militants, using as an example the Extinction Rebellion group's dragging of a boat into the street at 16th & K to block traffic for hours to call attention to rising sea levels.
"Blocking traffic may only be the beginning," wrote Marissa Lang. "As protests in the District continue at a rate of about two a day, activists looking to stand out from crowds that march near the White House or the Mall have resorted to more disruptive measures in recent weeks -- a tactic that experts said will probably escalate."

She cites sociology professor Dana Fisher: "There has been a lot of discussion among people on the left who use protests as a tactic that peaceful, traditional protests may not be enough. ... That could mean ... more people blocking traffic. ... I think we're going to see a lot more people coming into D.C. to get arrested."  Fisher continues: "When activists don't feel like their grievances are being heard or responded to ... the natural progression is to get more confrontational and, sometimes, to get more violent. ... I'm ... surprised it's taken so long."

Who wins when leftists go lawless -- in liberal citadels like D.C.?

This thinking echoes the famous "bodies upon the gears" speech of Mario Savio at the famous 1964 University of California, Berkeley campus riot: "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that ... you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop!"  After Berkeley came civil disobedience; the burning of ROTC buildings; and urban riots marked by looting, shooting and arson. Out of that came Richard Nixon's 49-state landslide, Ronald Reagan, and Republican triumphs in five of six presidential elections starting in 1968.

Bring it on.

50 Years Ago: The Day Nixon Routed the Establishment

https://buchanan.org/blog/50-years-ago-the-day-nixon-routed-the-establishment-137693

By Patrick J. Buchanan   Friday - November 1, 2019

What are the roots of our present disorder, of the hostilities and hatreds that so divide us? When did we become this us vs. them nation?

Who started the fire? Many trace the roots of our uncivil social conflict to the 1960s and the Johnson years when LBJ, victorious in a 61% landslide in 1964, could not, by 1968, visit a college campus without triggering a violent protest.
The morning after his narrow presidential victory in 1968, Richard Nixon said his goal would be to "bring us together." And in early 1969, he seemed to be succeeding. His inaugural address extended a hand of friendship to old enemies. He withdrew 60,000 troops from Vietnam. He left the Great Society largely untouched and proposed a Family Assistance Plan for the poor and working class. He created a Western White House in San Clemente, California.
In July, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. America approved. Yet the elites seethed. For no political figure of his time was so reviled and hated by the establishment as was Richard Nixon.
By the fall of 1969, that establishment, which had led us into Vietnam and left 500,000 U.S. troops there as of January 1969, had turned against their own war, declared it "an unwinnable war" and "Nixon's war," and begun to cheer the huge anti-war protests scheduled for October and November.
David Broder of The Washington Post was one who saw clearly what was happening: "It is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and movement that broke Lyndon Johnson's presidency in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969. The likelihood is great that they will succeed again."
In a cover story titled "Nixon in Trouble," Newsweek echoed Broder:
"From almost every quarter last week the nine-month-old Administration of Richard M. Nixon was under sustained attack and angry fire, and increasingly the target of the attacks was Mr. Nixon himself and his conduct of the Presidency."
On Oct. 15, some 250,000 descended on the capital for the largest demonstration in history. A stunned Time declared that, instead of resisting its demands, Nixon should prepare "the country for the trauma of distasteful reversal." Time wanted Nixon to declare Vietnam a lost cause.
But by now, Nixon, realizing his presidency was in danger of being broken like LBJ's — but believing he was reading the nation better than the establishment — had decided to wheel and fight.
On Nov. 3, 1969, Nixon delivered an Oval Office address that was carried live on every network. After reciting the case Ike, JFK and LBJ had all made for resisting a Communist takeover of South Vietnam, Nixon laid out his own policy, the rationale for it, and urged the "great silent majority" to stand by him for peace with honor.
The network commentators almost universally disparaged Nixon's address as repetitive and unresponsive to the crisis of his presidency.
Washington's elites, however, had misread the nation. An instant poll found that 70% of the country supported Nixon's declared policy. A coalition of 300 House members endorsed Nixon's stand. Liberal Democrats in the Senate rejected Nixon's policy, but Southern and conservative Democratic senators backed him.
Ten days after the "silent majority" speech, Vice President Spiro Agnew, in Des Moines, launched an assault on the unholy matrimony of media power and liberal bias. Agnew questioned whether the networks near-monopoly over the primary source of information for the American people should be permanently ceded to so tiny and unrepresentative an elite.

All three networks carried Agnew's speech live, but were rocked on their heels by the reaction. Scores of thousand of telegrams and letters poured into network offices and the White House, with the vast majority agreeing with the vice president.  The liberal establishment had sustained a historic defeat.

[Note: View Vice President Agnew's Television News Coverage Speech and transcript on our website at: https://buchanan.org/blog/50-years-ago-the-day-nixon-routed-the-establishment-137693]

By December, Nixon was the most admired man in America. His approval rating in the Gallup Poll was 68%. Only 19% disapproved of how he was conducting his presidency. Dr. Billy Graham was the second-most admired man, and Agnew third.
Nor was this but a blip in the Nixon presidency. When, three years later, Democrats nominated the most impassioned and articulate of their anti-war senators, George McGovern, Nixon would crush him in a 49-state landslide.
In Watergate, the establishment would get its pound of flesh for its rout by Nixon in November 1969 and its humiliation in November 1972. But that establishment would never recover what it lost — the respect and regard of the American people in the '60s and early '70s.
JFK's "best and brightest," whose hour of power was "Camelot," were broken on the wheel of Vietnam. After taking us into Southeast Asia, they had washed their hands of their own war and declared it immoral.

So great was the loss of esteem for the establishment among the silent majority, America's elite would soon cease to call themselves liberals and change their names to "progressives."