February 22, 2020

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

They’re Coming to Get You! Build that Bomb Shelter NOW!

Friends,

Right after the installment of MY CORNER of February 14 appeared, it was picked up and published nationally by LewRockwell.com. It was almost as if some well-placed Intel spook had met with me at “Rick’s Café Americain” (remember the film “Casablanca”?) and secretly revealed what was going to happen. The “Russia Hoax” was going to be fully reborn (in fact, as I wrote, it had never gone away). Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster it emerged again from our corrupted and corrupt Intelligence agencies (those government apparatchiks who are beginning to make Inspector Clouseau look like a genius) and the bowels of the frenetically ideological New York Times (and those poisoned zombie-brains in Congress, e.g. Adam Schiff). The Mueller Commission, try as it did, couldn’t find anything substantive because there isn’t and wasn’t anything there, save for the putrid defecation of three years of strenuous Deep State “investigation.” But with the crop of Establishment Democrat candidates for president looking increasingly like a lesser version the Keystone Kops, something—anything—had to be found, some additional obstacle, some roadblock to stop “the Donald,” and much more dangerously, the counter-revolution that he has (at times, quite unwittingly) unleashed. 

How better to do this than have the president’s own Director of National Intelligence, along with his Deep State ideological “Intel savants” (a true oxymoron!), brief Schiff and top Democrats, and without the president even knowing it!  Ha! Talk about your own team sabotaging you—anyone remember those words of Julius Caesar: “Et tu, Brute?” And you also, Brutus? But it doesn’t take a Shakespeare play to instruct us on what is going on. As I have repeated too many times to count, President Trump’s major problem is that he has surrounded himself with Neoconservative and Deep State minions who diametrically oppose his announced agenda, and they have done everything possible—with some real success, especially in foreign affairs—to stymy and obstruct it.

Those once highly regarded agencies—the FBI, the CIA, the NSA—haven’t gotten much right since they officiously proclaimed from on high their dogmatic, infallible judgment about “weapons of mass destruction” hiding in Saddam Hussein’s outdoor outhouse. Their active immersion in the government-engineered plot to bring down a president—the Steele Dossier, the inveigling of General Flynn, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, etc., their use of British “intelligence” (the Brits stopped having “intelligence” after Enoch Powell’s warnings about unlimited immigration were ignored)—has revealed for anyone with eyes to see the fact that, at least in the upper echelons, those agencies form an integral part, an active arm of the managerial state apparatus that seeks to strangle any real dissent or opposition  to its New World Order designs.

Even so-called “conservatives”—the Neoconservatives, whom I often criticize—accept the Russia boogeyman narrative. But it’s not so much Trump who is the target, it seems, but in their version the Russkies are just warmed-over Communists who want to “destroy our democracy.” The Cold War, in their pygmy-sized brains, continues unabated, and even the vaunted Rush Limbaugh has very real difficulty distinguishing the Communist Soviet Union and post-1991 Russia. Flying in the face of subsequent history and fact, he uses the terms interchangeably: true, palpable historical ignorance on parade. For him and the zealous Neocon interventionists it is still October 1962 and we are still mired in the Cuban Missile Crisis, although now it has been miraculously transposed over to Ukraine. Just ask John Bolton (or the late, unlamented John McCain).

The other night I made myself listen to “Special Report with Bret Baier,” where the Fox News “All Stars” held forth, fully accepting the Hoax—yes, of course, they solemnly declared, the Russians are messing with and meddling in our 2020 election cycle, just like in 2016.  The Intel folks—whose probity and diligence cannot be doubted!—say so. And Chris Wallace (who is by no means a “conservative” of any flavor) pronounced to Ed Henry on another segment that very simply “we must take these active threats very, very seriously. The Russians are AGAIN manipulating our elections.”  

Got that?

I almost regretted not signing up with that contractor who offered to build me a bomb shelter in my ample back yard. For only $125,000 he could construct for me an underground bunker that would withstand those incoming Russian MiGs….

Suddenly, I was put in mind of that satirical film from 1964, Dr. Strangelove. And I wondered if, echoing Peter Sellers in that scintillating cinema, the likes of Bolton, Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and those agents of Russophobia who now surround the president and have turned our Intel agencies and Congress into little more than a herd of docile bovines (with the connivance of all our television networks), we would finally see and experience the “Doomsday Weapon” (as in the final scene of the film).

Although from somewhat different perspectives and viewpoints, Establishment Conservatism (i.e, the Neocons) and the Left have made post-Communist Russia their target. Yet, the major threat by far—very far—is what the actually Communist Chinese are doing and have done. Adam Schiff doesn’t talk about that, and neither do most politicians or major American big name capitalists, because the Chinese Reds already own and dominate so much of this country’s infrastructure and business.

And the fact—still mostly hidden from most Americans—that post-1991 Russia has actually turned towards its traditional religious faith and conservative (especially moral) traditions doesn’t go over well with the transgender-pushing, pro-same sex marriage establishment which dominates both political parties, both Leftwing AND Conservative, here in the United States. Recall John McCain bitterly criticizing Vladimir Putin for his “persecution” and suppression of lesbians (i.e., “Pussy Riot”) and same sex supporters in Mother Russia?

This is what Mainstream Conservatism has become: a sordid and decrepit second cousin of the rapidly advancing Leftist juggernaut. And, once again, I quote Robert Lewis Dabney’s apposite words:

This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn.

American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it he salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious, for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always—when about to enter a protest—very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its ‘bark is worse than its bite,’ and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent rôle of resistance.

The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it ‘in wind,’ and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women's suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.

As we hurdle on to diabolical moral degradation in America, each step worse than the last, even though our masters tell us not to worry and just accept it, our supposed opponents in Moscow, Kazan and Novgorod recover and celebrate their Christian and moral beliefs and inheritance.

What irony! Is this not a full exemplification of Gilbert and Sullivan’s image of "topsy-turvy"?

And for the American traditionalist, for the orthodox Christian, to quote Patrick Buchanan:   “On whose side is God NOW on?

**********

I pass on the LewRockwell.com issue from February 17:

LewRockwell.comanti-state•anti-war•pro-market

The Russia Hoax Continues and Both Dems and Republicans Push It

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/02/no_author/the-russia-hoax-continues-and-both-dems-and-republicans-push-it/

By Boyd D. Cathey     My Corner    February 17, 2020

Although the farcical Mueller Commission is now ended and even the results it came up with, practically speaking, effectively exonerated the president, to listen to various members of the media, including many Fox pundits, most Democrats and many Republicans, it was if there was no “investigation” at all. The same “Russia Hoax” narrative continues: just listen to Representative Adam Schiff spiel on for a while. For such national personalities nothing has really changed.

This template, despite what we now know and always have known, continues frenetically and unabated before our eyes. It’s why Roger Stone faces prison time, essentially because he was convicted for lying about non-existent Russian subversion in America elections.

“Russia is bad,” we are told, and its president, Vladimir Putin, is really, really bad. Why, he may be as bad as, let’s see, maybe those old Commies prior to 1991, or maybe he IS a Commie? Certainly, say Fox interviewees like Representatives Dan Crenshaw and Adan Kinzinger, or Neoconservative publicists such as Jonah Goldberg. Communism, it seems, still rampages and “Russia is still our Number One Enemy” (remember Mitt Romney saying that?).

friend Dr. Paul Gottfried just recently sent me a news article; it concerns something President Vladimir Putin recently said and was quoted by Reuters news service (February 13), specifically, that in no uncertain terms he totally ruled out homosexual marriage in Russia. In reference to discussions over modifications to the Russian constitution he declared: “As far as ‘parent number 1’ and ‘parent number 2’ goes, I’ve already spoken publicly about this and I’ll repeat it again: as long as I’m president this will not happen. There will be dad and mum.”

Indeed, back in December, addressing a meeting in the Kremlin Putin forcefully reaffirmed his nation’s commitment to traditional matrimony:

President Vladimir Putin remarked at a recent Kremlin meeting that some countries are replacing the word “mother” out of concerns for political correctness, something he hoped ‘would never happen in Russia’. Putin was referring to a law passed in France earlier this year which mandates that schools refrain from using ‘father’ and ‘mother’ and instead use ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’. According to government MP Valérie Petit, the change was necessary because using ‘father’ and ‘mother’ is “old fashioned” and doesn’t meet the needs of “social equality.” Don’t expect to see Russia following suit.

During a meeting of the Council for Interethnic Relations, a Kremlin advisory group, Putin told delegates, “You said the word mother ‘can’t be replaced.’ It turns out, perhaps, it can; in some countries, they now have ‘parent number one’ and ‘parent number two.’ I hope we will never have that (in Russia). I will do everything to stop it.”

Back in June, Vladimir Putin commented on a similar topic, asserting that liberalism was in its death throws thanks to forced multiculturalism. “The ruling elites have broken away from the people,” Putin told the Financial Times, adding that the “so-called liberal idea has outlived its purpose.”

This is not new; Putin’s statements and vision for Russia are not secret. Yet, to listen to the American media, very little of what he has said and very little of the legislative action of the Russian Duma (parliament) is reported by the American press. Or, if it is reported, it is done in such a way as to portray the Russian president and his country in an extremely negative and hostile light. Russia, it is repeated daily, is “authoritarian,” anti-democratic, does not respect human rights and persecutes minorities (e.g., homosexuals, lesbians, etc.); it is aggressive and has “invaded” its neighbors (e.g., Ukraine, Georgia). And Putin is a “KGB thug” who “wants to restore the Soviet Union” (cf., Representative Kinzinger).

Over the past six or so years I have written extensively about this narrative. Very simply it is the iron-cage ideological framework that now dominates both Democratic and Republican parties, with a few exceptions. There are voices raised in objection to it: Professors Stephen Cohen (Princeton University) and Paul Robinson (University of Ottawa), and Tucker Carlson on his nightly television program (with guests like former colonel and consultant Douglas MacGregor), and maybe Senator Rand Paul in Congress. But those voices are few in the spectrum of political opinion here in the United States.

The major media, including to a large extent Fox, simply avoid actually quoting Putin, and every action taken in Russia is a perceived threat to America, or to “the sanctity of our democratic elections.”

When was the last time, for instance, that you heard a major American news outlet actually cite something Putin said, a speech, an official statement of Russian policy? Just to take one example—there are many—back on September 20, 2013 he spoke to the annual International Valdai Forum. Here is just a portion of that speech, made before a gathering of representatives from around the world:

“…We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilisation. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual. They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan.

“The excesses of political correctness have reached the point where people are seriously talking about registering political parties whose aim is to promote paedophilia. People in many European countries are embarrassed or afraid to talk about their religious affiliations. Holidays are abolished or even called something different; their essence is hidden away, as is their moral foundation. And people are aggressively trying to export this model all over the world. I am convinced that this opens a direct path to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis.

“What else but the loss of the ability to self-reproduce could act as the greatest testimony of the moral crisis facing a human society? Today almost all developed nations are no longer able to reproduce themselves, even with the help of migration. Without the values ​​embedded in Christianity and other world religions, without the standards of morality that have taken shape over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity. We consider it natural and right to defend these values​​. One must respect every minority’s right to be different, but the rights of the majority must not be put into question.”

I have cited these remarks previously; they are not unique. For Putin has been saying the same thing for years—and enacting legislation mirroring what he says that also reflects the desires and aspirations of the great majority of Russia’s citizenry.

Back a little over five years ago I authored a longish researched essay on Vladimir Putin and what has been and is going on in Russia since the fall of Communism in the fall of 1991. Although the essay could use some updating, the essential information I provide remains accurate and, I believe, useful.

I am passing it along today:

Examining the Hatred of Vladimir Putin and Russia

Reprinted from My Corner by Boyd Cathey.