February 9, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The Coming American “Civil War,” Glenn Beck and the Kumbaya Moment

Friends,

Usually I pick one day during the week, if possible, to drive into Raleigh to handle errands and take care of multiple medical appointments (that older men like me are forced to endure). And I’ll normally tune into the local conservative talk radio station en route. 

During the week that station features Glenn Beck from 9 a.m. until noon. Let me confess upfront: I normally don’t listen to Beck. I consider him something of a myopic nut case, whose ravings are uninformed and lacking in rational understanding, who spins out off-the-wall theorization that cannot survive close examination or careful questioning. He likes to manipulate history, history as he interprets it.

Back in 2016 Glenn Beck was a virulent Never, or better said, a vicious, Anti-Trumper. For him, Trump was a “racist bigot,” an “ultra-nationalist,” someone who had failed to condemn Duke David; Trump was threatening the “international democratic order” and potentially was a “new Hitler, who would undermine ‘our democracy’.”  Trump was—is—“no conservative,” at least, as Beck understands that term.

Let me suggest that my cocker spaniels have a better understanding than he of what “conservatism” is or what it once meant.

Back in 2010 scholar and historian Dr. Paul Gottfried demolished Beck’s claim to be an historian and to being a “conservative,”  and, in particular, his cavalier attempt to pigeon-hole those of whatever stripe who disagree with the standard Neoconservative narrative which it shares with the “farther Left.” (See, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/glenn-becks-myths/ ). According to Beck anyone who does not believe in universal equality and democracy and refuses to oppose “racism” and “sexism,” is bound to be dealing in “fascism,” or in danger of falling for Nazism. 

As well, modern liberals, following National Review scribbler Jonah Goldberg, are “liberal fascists,” as Beck labels them.

But since the rise of Donald Trump he has saved most of his fire for those populist and nationalist conservatives who reject his brand of egalitarianism and who dare refuse to join him in denouncing “racism.” For Beck and writers like Kevin Williamson, David French and National Review editor Rich Lowry:

Tears glaze their eyes when they talk about 1960s civil rights laws, which placed entire regions of the country that once discriminated against black voters under what is now perpetual federal surveillance. Beck rages against the late Sen. Robert Byrd for voting against the Civil Rights Act. Byrd believed this legislation would interfere excessively in commercial relations and plunge the country into endless suits and investigations over racial and gender discrimination…. Although this indignation may be Beck’s attempt to woo minorities, it makes one wonder how serious he is about scaling back public administration.

Beck’s views of President Trump’s policies since the election have, so it seems, moderated just a bit. While still expressing a disdain and condescension for the president, he does admit to agreeing with some things Trump has done (e.g. Justice Gorsuch, the budget deal, etc.). But he continues to believe that the president’s “populist nationalism” is a threat to “the cause of global democracy,” and that he has stirred up “hatred” and “racial bigotry,” for example regarding Charlottesville, where President Trump "failed" to forthrightly condemn “those Nazis and Klansmen.” That failure, the fact that the president condemned both sides for the violence and actually said that some of those demonstrating in favor of the Lee statue were decent and good folks, was, said Beck (as did his stand-in host a few weeks ago, rattle-gums, turd-con Ben Shapiro), “a dog-whistle to racists.”

So, with trepidation on the way into Raleigh, I tuned in to Beck’s program, and, voila! There he was this time constructing a giant web of conspiracy and global skullduggery, connecting Russian nationalist philosopher, Alexander Dugin, to a worldwide plot—a “world nationalist conservative union”—whose tentacles were spreading surreptitiously into Europe with the rise of anti-immigrant, nationalist and populist conservative political movements (e.g. Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, Alternativ fur Deutschland in Germany, Viktor Orban in Hungary, the Northern League in Italy, and so on), and here in the  United States, a spinning web that encompasses everything from the so-called Alt-Right, the Klan, Jared Taylor (who writes scholarly articles about race), Breitbart News (!), Roy Moore in Alabama, and some of those “nefarious nationalist policy advisors  (e.g., Stephen Miller) who are around Trump.” And each time that he named an additional manifestation of this international rightwing “conspiracy,” his voice became darker and slowed down with emphasis—“we are back in the 1920s again,” he solemnly intoned, “and we are facing the rise of a new Hitler in our midst!” And I shuddered, almost expecting to see some club-wielding Brownshirts blocking US 64 as I sped into town. Lord, save us from the Fascists!

This wasn’t the first time that Beck had fingered the Russian professor of philosophy, Dugin, as the master mind of a global radical right conspiracy. About a year ago, he had done the same thing on his television program, replete with charts and connecting lines to indicate where power and authority flowed from and where it flowed to. Yet, his “history” was replete with errors, faulty assumptions, and downright falsehood. The implication is that Alexander Dugin is the court-philosopher for President Vladimir Putin, providing the road map for Putin’s attempt to dominate the world and “restore the Soviet Union.” 

Yet, as Putin, himself, has made abundantly clear in  interviews (See, First Person: An Astonishing Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, New York, 2000), speeches (See, for instance, several speeches at the Valdai International Forum, http://valdaiclub.com/politics/62880.html  and http://valdaiclub.com/opinion/highlights/vladimir-putin-meets-with-members-of-the-valdai-discussion-club-transcript-of-the-final-plenary-sess/ and his annual broadcasts, “State of the Nation,” including December 12, 2013, in The Daily Telegraph; and various commentaries, including by  Paul Craig Roberts in 2014, http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/10/paul-craig-roberts/why-is-putin-hated/), and more concretely, in his actions, the Russian president’s preferred guides historically and philosophically are figures like Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Solovyev, and Ivan Ilyin, not to mention the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn (See, The Washington Post, August 5, 2008, “Towards the End, Solzhenitsyn Embraced Putin’s Russia”)—not a Nazi among them! Indeed, these thinkers, whom Putin cites frequently, partake of a deeply Christian and Orthodox spirituality and a profound love for Russian tradition. 

If Beck had delved into the abundant literature on the topic, not only Putin’s numerous speeches and commentaries, but scholarly studies by Professors Allen Lynch (Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft), Michael Stuermer (Putin and the Rise of Russia), John Garrard (Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent), and others, he might have comprehended this.

But that would not have served his purpose. Instead, he has resurfaced the fashionable Leftist trope about the evil “anti-democratic” Putin and the Russians, but this time coming from a supposed “conservative” talk radio host: it’s the “reductio ad Hitlerum”—Everything reduced to Hitler! The explanation for opposition to Beck's views is that the opposition is and represents the rise of a “new Hitler.” Connect the dots, he says.  “Racism” + “populism” + “nationalism” + “belief in national identity” + “hatred of immigrants” + “refusal to recognize the ‘good’ and the ‘humanity’ in our enemies,” and there you have it, a new Nazism!  And that is the tar brush he used to libel each and every one of these targeted groups and individuals.

How, pray tell, does this narrative differ from that of the most vociferous and vile Marxist minions on the far Left who would like to unseat and impeach Donald Trump, the Maxine Waters types who also accuse the president and his supporters of “racism” and of being  “Nazis”?

But, wait, there’s more: a little later in the program Beck brought in a guest—I did not catch his full name (I think his last name was “Lu” or “Liu”), but apparently he has created a national group which, he stated, has as its purpose to “re-humanize” Americans, to bring together Marxists and Leftists to sit down with “conservatives” like Beck (but NOT the “extremist Right”) for “dialogue,” to re-discover our commonalities and what unites us, in what I would call “kumbaya moments.” Beck’s guest related how those radical Marxists and brain-dead Leftie soccer moms and brain-empty Millenials would gather together with those brain-less “conservatives” and “hug each other, and shed tears of understanding, probing to find and establish bonds of unity.” Together they would sing those old civil rights songs, and Mr. Lu (Liu) would preach, although he made it clear that his preaching was not in any way Christian. No; his object, he repeated, was to “begin the process of ‘re-humanizing’ Americans, bringing us all back together as one, dedicated to democracy and equality.”

Well, I felt so much better after hearing that!! In fact, I think the meaning was that I was to go out and find some brain-washed soccer mom, or perhaps some brain-washer college professor, and give them a big hug, shed some tears, sing “We Shall Overcome!” and—repeat what Rodney King said a number of years ago during the Watts riots—“can’t we all just get along?” And then everything would be alright….

But that’s not the situation in American today, as Pat Buchanan has recently written. What we need is a kind of “street fighter” (like maybe Donald Trump), not a fossilized and bought-off-by-the-Deep State conservatism. As Buchanan quotes Frank Cannon,  we need leadership that is "at war with the progressives who have co-opted American civil society …. [and is] willing to go further than any other previous conservative to defeat them." [http://buchanan.org/blog/trump-middle-american-radical-128704]

Despite all the touchy-feely emotionalism and intellectual defecation of a Glenn Beck, we are in the midst of a brutal and vicious cultural war—a war that threatens to erupt in much more than pundits and politicians screaming threats and imprecations at us on CNN and NBC, or Deep State attempts to reverse the verdict of the 2016 election, but in real and palpable violence, pitting the West and East coasts against the middle and south of this nation, of the university towns and cities like Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle against the rest of America.

I don’t know about you, but if things continue to worsen, I’m glad of one thing: most of those cultural Marxists and Leftist-types are gun control fanatics who don’t believe in possessing weapons. Fine. Most of my “deplorable” friends out here in rural Carolina do….

February 6, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

“The Russians Are Coming!” The Beast Who Never Dies, the Madness that Ends in the Destruction of the Country

Friends,

I suspect that some of you—perhaps most of you—will be old enough to remember that film “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” from 1966. It was a satirical view of the excesses of the Cold War, with a bumbling Soviet Russian submarine running aground on an island off the Massachusetts coast, and the island’s citizens then becoming comically hysterical about the impending Commie invasion. The film starred Carl Reiner, Eve Marie Saint, Brian Keith, Theodore Bikel, and Jonathan Winters, names that once conjured up moderate fame on the silver screen, but probably are unrecognizable to most of today’s Millenials.

The film is funny, in retrospect, and watching it recently once again—some fifty years after its first release—I laughed and smiled at the comic situations as the citizens, in expressions of mock heroism, rallied to meet the “Red Menace.” Yet, I can also remember that when it first came out some conservatives, with thoughtful justification, were critical that it made too light of the real and palpable Soviet Communist threat. It was okay to treat such topics with a dash of humor, but wasn’t the movie also another example of Hollywood’s and the left-leaning cultural establishment’s “soft-headed” approach to the Soviets?

Five decades later, in hindsight, it is easier to judge—and it is fascinating to examine--just what kind of transformation has taken place amongst those Hollywood elites, in the media, in academia and in the ranks of the Democratic Party regarding Russia, that is, the reaction of those forces in American society that traditionally, certainly since the 1920s, have manifested a certain indulgence, if not sympathy, to various forms of Marxism and ongoing socialist revolution.

The hullabaloo and controversy surrounding the release of the “Nunes Memo” dealing with a portion of the Russiagate scandal, and the impending probable release of the Democratic “response memo,” bring this history forward in stunning relief: All of a sudden those who have been apologists for decades in many ways for Russia when it was ruled by Communists, have now decided that post-Communist (even in many ways, anti-Communist) Russia is “the chief opponent of human Progress” in the world.  And that anyone who has ever been to Russia (at least while Vladimir Putin has been its president), or had business dealings with Russians, or even written favorably of post-1991 Russia, is more than likely a Russian spy or at least “serving the goals and interests of Putin” (and they never fail to add, “that former KGB officer!”).

For those who formerly were so enamored of the Soviet “experiment” in its failed attempt to alter and transform human nature, there are two major reasons for this utter reversal of focus.

First, there is that ongoing attempt to “get” the hated Donald Trump and restore the onward progress of the New World Order. Thus, any connection or business dealing that any, even peripheral or temporary, advisor to the 2016 Trump campaign (e.g., Carter Page) may have had with the Russkies is, with fake and made up intel from that virulently anti-Trump ex-British intelligent agent, Christopher Steele, and paid for by the Hillary campaign, grist for the mill—and used by the corrupted ideologically-weaponized higher levels of the FBI to get secret warrants to spy on American citizens who have never been charged with anything, and those warrants permit wiretapping, illegal searches, and all the  most egregious characteristics of a police state, right here in the continental US.

The second reason is a natural reaction to what has happened in Russia since Vladimir Putin, personally leading the St. Petersburg militia, defeated the attempted coup by his erstwhile colleagues in the KGB against the post-Communist government of Boris Yeltsin back in August 1991.  Certainly since Putin’s election as president in 2000 Russia has moved to the conservative Right, firmly renounced the “God that failed” of Communism while re-embracing its historic Orthodox faith, and now celebrates its national roots and its patriotic traditions.

But most infuriatingly for our Marxist and Progressivist elites and establishment, Russia has forthrightly refused to go along with the “New World Order” globalist program (whether pushed by the European Union or advanced in the decaying brain of politicians like John McCain). Russia has become a proverbial “sign of contradiction,” an immense stumbling block, and thus, a very convenient boogeyman for the “#Resist” anti-Trumpers and the NeverTrump Deep State minions who seek to regain the momentum they lost in November 2016.

And this new-found “anti-Russianism” has brought the frenzied cultural Marxists and Progressivists who dominate the Democratic Party, the media, Hollywood, and academia, together in an unholy and, at times, uncomfortable alliance against Russia with the Neoconservative intellectuals who dominate the “conservative movement” and provide the thin intellectual gruel that fuels the brainless response of most leaders in the GOP.

The Neocons, of course, owe their intellectual origin decades ago to that other major stream of Marxist thought, identified with Leon Trotsky and his zealous internationalism. Early on for those intellectual descendants of Trotsky their opposition to Soviet Communism was just as much a hatred for Russia, which they saw as anti-Semitic (e.g., the infamous “doctors’ plot”) and “reactionary,” as it was for what they perceived as Stalin’s (and Brezhnev’s) perversion of the original “humanist” and “democratic core” of Marxist theory.

Thus, even with the daily revelations, the reports and all the accounts of skullduggery by agents of the Deep State that seem to seep out, the narrative of “the Russians Did It!” must be maintained, by both Progressivists AND the Neocons. Either the Russians and that “new Hitler” (to use Neocon Max Boot’s ill-chosen comparison) Putin were somehow directing Donald Trump like a puppet master controls a stick puppet, or the Russians and that “new Hitler” were working with Hillary and the DNC to blacken Donald Trump’s good name and unseat him. Either way “the Russians Did It!”

And this effort, this unimaginable hysteria, has reached monumental proportions that make those naïve citizens on that mythical Massachusetts island in that 1966 movie seem like paragons of reason and thoughtfulness.

Just last week, on the Tucker Carlson Program on Fox, California Congressman Eric Swalwell accused the program host of “serving the interest and goals of Vladimir Putin.” Carlson’s sin? Modestly questioning certain particulars of the “Russians Did It!” narrative and whether it is proper for American intelligence agencies like the FBI to work hand-in-glove with one political party and campaign to surveil and wiretap (clandestinely) and incriminate the campaign and candidate of the other political party, and, then, attempt to use fabricated and bogus “intel” (created by that first party) to attempt to bring down and perhaps impeach the president. Pat Buchanan has summarized this up succinctly in a recent column: http://buchanan.org/blog/nunes-duels-deep-state-128665

This monumental violation and destruction of what is left of our constitutional system, this frontal assault on specified rights guaranteed to each of us by our Constitution, is fobbed off as “critical” to national intelligence and discovering the “collusion” of President Trump and his campaign with the Russians…and his later “obstruction of justice.” Like a stubborn bacillus, it doesn’t die, it just re-emerges after each hit and revelation: it has become a manic obsession, and despite its barrenness and lack of any evidence, it is pushed even harder and with even more gusto each time it takes a factual hit.

The latest manifestation of this certifiable madness came at an event at the University of Pennsylvania, where California Congressman Adam Schiff, ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee, claimed that the Russians had been using social media to support the Second Amendment to the Constitution—gun rights:  “…the Russians are very big fans of our Second Amendment,” Schiff intoned. “They don’t particularly want a Second Amendment of their own, but they’re really glad that we have one. The Russians would be thrilled if we were doing nothing but killing each other every day, and sadly we are.”[http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/02/05/adam-schiff-russians-promoted-2nd-amendment-so-americans-would-kill-each-other/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180205 ]

That’s right. Schiff, the archetypal looney leftist, gets two strikes for the price of one: he blames supporters of the Second Amendment for “gun violence,” and behind it, you see, are those dastardly Russians!  Got that? Those Russians are into everything, under every bed, control Donald Trump, and—wait—of course, we don’t have any real evidence, but maybe if we keep investigating and making up facts, say, at least until the presidential election of 2020 (or later?) we might find something, anything.  And, of course, it just happens to serve both our political and ideological purposes.

This is to where we have descended: it is no longer just a radical fringe on the Left, it’s leading Democrat congressmen suggesting that ANYONE who has ever had ANY contact with ANY Russian or said or written ANYTHING vaguely positive about them—most recently, Carter Page—is bound to be, must be, a Russian agent, working directly for Vladimir Putin…and that those who support gun rights are also doing the Kremlin’s bidding.

I do not often quote Abraham Lincoln, who I believe largely responsible for the incredibly bloody and destructive War Between the States and resultant destruction of our constitutional system. Yet, in his 1858 “House divided” speech he uttered a singular truth: “A house divided against itself cannot stand…the Union…will become all one thing or all the other.” 

The American nation approaches an unsettling and similar point in its history today. It is becoming increasingly impossible to converse, much less engage in legitimate and rational discussion, with those, like Schiff and Swalwell or Nancy Pelosi or most of our college professors or news pundits, who live in a counter-reality bubble, an intellectual hothouse where lunacy, violence and fanaticism infect all thinking and action.

The question then becomes: where does this lead? A second real war pitting the two coasts against the wide heartland and the South?

But, alas, since I still have one (just one) Democrat “friend,” who just recently wondered if I weren’t also serving “the goals of Vladimir Putin,” I suppose I should also confess…And since this list has doubled in size since I put out my “confession” more than a year ago, I think I’ll repeat it now. As of yet, I haven’t been summoned to appear before Robert Mueller’s “star chamber”—I mean commission—but I’m ready to jump in my 2006 Kia and speed up to DC and testify any day he wants.

So, here’s my “statement”:

COMING CLEAN:  HOW I ENGINEERED THE TRUMP VICTORY!

By Boyd D. Cathey (12-17-2016)

Well, finally, my cover has been blown! You see, for several years I’ve been writing articles giving a more nuanced, even somewhat favorable, view of Russia, and, in particular, its current leader Vladimir Putin. The fact that I’ve based my articles on serious and heavily researched sources (which I’ve vetted and cross-examined before using them) makes no difference to the Mainstream Media (MSM) and Clinton Defecation Machine (CDM). Since I also “came out” as a Trump supporter last year, publicly and in print, and since I have both a Trump bumper sticker and a “Putin for President” bumper sticker on the back on my car, and since I’ve attempted to raise some serious doubts about “the Russians did it!” narrative concerning the outcome of the November 8 election, that has settled it for the one leftist friend I still have:

“Boyd, you must be an agent of the Russians!” he exclaimed.

Yep, that’s what this soi-disant “friend” told me this past weekend. So, now, I feel that I must come clean, and, yes, I will finally reveal all, that’s right, all,  just how my pal Vladimir and I basically attempted to “steal” the election from Hillary and give it to “the Donald.”

It was way back in early August 2016 after the Republican National Convention. In fact, I’ve kept transcripts of my direct conversations, when I flew over secretly on one of those luxurious Ilyushin jets to a secret former KGB air base outside Moscow. Alas, all they had to drink in-flight was rot-gut Vodka, so when I asked for some Jack Daniels, all I got was an uncomprehending reply:

“Ve don’t got dat; ve got wodka. You like wodka?” the stern-faced attendant curtly responded.

Well, after my ten hour flight and probably fifteen shots of rot-gut “wodka,” unrelieved by any mixer whatsoever, I was ready to meet Vladimir Putin, my ultimate spymaster.

Here’s how it went (I was a bit tipsy at the beginning, so excuse the informality):

“Hello, Blad…I mean Vladimir! I’m Boyd…you know, from North Carolina. Long live the Confederacy! You got any Jack Daniels ‘round here?”

And President Putin responded: “Dr. Cathey, we are delighted to have you visit Russia, and we are deeply appreciative of your work on our behalf.” (Of course, this was via a translator, although I have been told that Putin does speak English.)

“We want to talk to you about a possible operation to influence the election. You see we have had a couple of top agents assisting our efforts---Boris Badinoff and Natasha Popitoff. But they have increasingly demonstrated that their intelligence gathering efforts are rather weak.  All they seem to know is based in a 1960s television narrative, almost, as we say here in Russia, 'cartoonish.'

I piped up: “So, Plad…I mean Vladimir, how can I be of service? You just let me know, and, you know, given my millions of contacts and tremendous influence, I will make sure that Trump wins and defeats Hillary. You got it?”

Putin then looked at me quizzically: “But, Dr. Cathey, how possibly can you do that? I mean both the US and Russia engage in deep hacking and have done so for many years; all major powers do that, and sometimes it is successful, sometimes it is not. But how possibly can you affect the election? The voting machines in the states are not connected to the Internet, and each state has its own voting system; many still use paper ballots. It seems to me that what you are talking about is an impossibility. More, Hillary is an awful candidate---our foreign policy forecasters think that she will lose, despite all of her prostituted pollsters and favorable media coverage in America.”

At that point, beginning to come out from under my wodka-induced stupor, I responded:

“Well, you see, I have developed a plan; it is very detailed and sure to succeed. All you have to do is be honest. What do I mean? Well, just hack into the Democratic National Committee and get the emails of John Podesta, Donna Brazile, and others, released out to the press. That will help convince voters that Hillary shouldn’t be elected.

“Then, you see, I have a network of 150,000 faithful and super-clandestine sub-agents who will travel to every state and get on local election committees, and then, while the other committee members aren’t looking, they will alter the vote totals. It’s perfect and certain to work.

“The final piece de resistance [that’s French for the icing on the cake for the folks down in rural North Carolina] is that I will encourage 10,000 other sub-agents to pretend to be Clintonista Leftists to go up and down California, Oregon, Washington, and all around New York City and Chicago, to gin up the Clinton votes in THOSE states and cities, to make sure that Hillary gets well over two million votes more than Trump.

“Then, you see, how could any intelligent observer charge you with deciding the election when two-million more voters vote for Hillary?

"Don’t worry, Vladimir—I got it covered.”

At that point, Putin smiled broadly and stated in measured tones: “Dr. Cathey, I like what I am hearing. But, let me ask, if this plan, as you call it, is to succeed, what will it cost me? I mean you are talking about at least 160,000 trained, secret operatives to effect this plan.  Is this at all possible?”

“Well,” said I, “I’ve got some great connections. In the military, I know General Billy Jack Ripper, you know the grandson of the late General Jack Ripper, who was made famous by that film, “Dr. Strangelove,” many years ago in the darkest days of the Cold War. He’s got thousands of contacts who will do our bidding. And I know of lots of unprincipled, amoral liberals who will help in California and New York. I will promise them all transgender operations and lifetime supplies of vegan quiche and lattes at Starbucks. Oh, could you foot the bill for those things?”

“I will refer those requests to my adjutant, Dmitri Upchuk,” Putin replied. “Dmitri can handle those arrangements.”

At this point I was more than satisfied that my superior negotiating skills were paying off. Indeed, I began to think of myself as a kind of “second John Kerry!”---well, perhaps not on the same august level, but certainly right up there.

“One more observation, Dr. Cathey,” Putin interjected. “You see, Julian Assange and Wikileaks have already got thousands of DNC email messages and tried, unsuccessfully, to hack the RNC. Wikileaks already has enough data to reveal the dishonesty and crass disdain of the Hillary campaign. Wikileaks has a mole, in fact, several moles, within the DNC. I believe the one who gave them those messages is a 400 pound former Bernie Sanders supporter who remains very embittered by what the DNC and Hillary did to him. For our part we really don’t need to do a thing.”

I jumped in and stated: “Yes, the Mainstream Media, Clinton, and even some Republican elites will probably end up blaming you, maybe even blaming you personally, if Hillary should lose…even though the data released is incontrovertible and beyond doubt. It all reminds me of a true story that took place down in Harnett County---that’s down in rural North Carolina, in case you don’t know. [At that point, Putin pointed to an aide to bring him an atlas.] There was a man who was walking by his neighbor’s house, and he happened to look in the window. There he saw his neighbor beating his wife to a pulp, so he reported him to the sheriff. Well, when the case came to trial, the neighbor blamed the man who looked through the window for his own absolutely true act of abuse. In other words, he blamed the messenger.

“It seems to me that’s what you’ll need to prepare for, even if Assange is the one who did all the research and released the adverse data. The media and the Clintonistas, with their political appointees in the US intelligence agencies, will want to cast you as the boogeyman. You’re an easy target—former KGB, anti-gay rights, pro-traditional marriage, and now a returnee to the Christian faith which you strongly support: all those things that our fashionable elites, not just on the Left but also on the so-called ‘Neoconservative/Republican Right,’ despise.”

“Dr. Cathey,” Putin then declared, “if they do that, we will demand in the strongest language that they produce the proof that it was us who revealed the emails.”

“They won’t do that,” I said. “They will say that such details are top secret, so all they will do is ‘leak’ to the mainstream media and have Obama and Hillary blame you and your country for Clinton’s loss, if she should lose.”

Putin quickly repeated: “But all superpowers engage in hacking; and Wikileaks already has the emails, so anything we do at this point is superfluous. But if Obama and Hillary should use this ploy, I will, indeed, demand to see their proof, and not just some anonymous and unnamed ‘reports’.”

At this point, I inquired delicately about what sort of remuneration I might receive for my services to world peace, truth and justice, and the bringing on of the Eschaton. Putin, with nonchalance, told me to go back to North Carolina, and that after the success of my detailed plan, I would receive a handsome, unspecified payment (in rubles) placed in my Credit Union checking account. 

As of this writing, I am still waiting…although I am more than satisfied that my vast and complicated work in engineering the 2016 election for Donald Trump, and making certain that Hillary actually got over two million more votes than “the Donald,” was a major blow for American liberty and our future.

My only real, but minor, complaint came on the way back from Moscow on that same Ilyushin jet: the rot-gut wodka was even worse, so much so, that instead of fifteen shots, I had twenty-five. When I landed at a top secret airfield out here in the wilds of rural eastern Wake County, NC, I was so tipsy that I couldn’t drive or even manipulate my way to my parked and camouflaged 2006 Kia Spectra (which I mistook for an overweight blue-colored elephant, with Trump and Putin stickers affixed to it). I had to hitch hike my way back home!

February 3, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The REAL Issue Lurking Behind the “Nunes Memo” and the Christopher Steele Dossier

                                  ====================================

Friends,

It’s 1861 (maybe 1862) all over again, and Abraham Lincoln just called for the invasion of Middle America (AKA, the South), violated the right of habeas corpus, attempted to subvert national elections, and is shredding the Constitution and its guaranteed protections.

Sound familiar? Does that not remind us of what has been occurring in the United States not only during this past year, but, as we know now, for decades?

Of course, the Lincoln attempts brought on and produced open armed conflict: his attempts to override and shred the Constitution compelled our ancestors to military resistance and four years of bitter war.

Today, as I have written previously, we are, as pundit Dan Bongino put it this morning on the “Fox & Friends” program, in the midst of a “cold civil war,” a real conflict but without—at least not yet—battles like Manassas or Chancellorsville.

No doubt, by now, you have been able to catch and digest some of the news about the House Intelligence Committee memo, the “Nunes Memo,” a summary of the misdeeds, illegalities and subversion committed by our weaponized  Deep State-controlled intelligence community, specifically the FBI, paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, with the goal, first, of destroying the Trump campaign, and, second, then unseating the president when he became the president (this was the “insurance policy” mentioned in those infamous texts from senior FBI official Peter Strzok).

The hysteria along the Potomac is palpable: the Mainstream Media, while downplaying the confirmation of what we knew was happening as a “nothing-burger,” is also employing various other attacks on the devastating chronology of facts that have been released. Incredibly, in their utter madness the frenzied fanatics of the Deep State actually suggest that the main author of the memo, Representative Devin Nunes and those defending its conclusions, are themselves “working for Vladimir Putin and the Russians” (Case in point: California Democrat Representative Eric Swalwell on last night’s Tucker Carlson program declaring that Carlson’s defense of the memo was a case of him “working for Putin.”)

Such a “defense” reminds me of the Englishman who when he went to France, sternly proclaimed: “When I travel to France, I speak English. If they don’t understand me at first, I speak louder!” The Russian canard has unraveled; the basis for the Mueller Special Counsel has been blasted all to hell; the Congressional investigations of the Trump campaign are nothing more than expensive political theatre; an attempted coup d’etat has been revealed. Yet, the Dems, Obamaites and Clintonistas, our intelligence agencies, academia, the bureaucrats of the Deep State just speak louder.

Yet, there is one point that I think deserves and merits—demands—closer examination and some severe questioning.

The narrative we hear from the zealous Neocon pundits on Fox and which is implied (although not explicitly explained) in the Nunes Memo is that, somehow, “the Russians” are still responsible; that is, some Russian “agents” (putatively of Putin’s government?) supplied the raw (and fake) data to Christopher Steele, the violently anti-Trump rogue former British intel agent, contracted by the Democrats and Clinton via FusionGPS, to produce the infamous dossier.

Now let me get this narrative straight: Putin’s intel folks worked with an agent of the Democrats and Hillary (Christopher Steele) to prepare a fake dossier which was to be used to: (1) destroy Trump’s campaign, maligning it as “pro-Russian” and “working with Russia” [!!] and then, if he were elected, (2) demonstrate that a President Trump had colluded with those very same Russians, thus deserving to be impeached.

Let me repeat: Vladimir Putin was providing information to friendly Dems and the FBI leadership via Steele so that they could attack the Trump campaign as being in cahoots with…the Russians, and then, intimate that President Trump had “colluded” with the Russians to win the election!  Plus, all the resulting anti-Russian sanctions that have come directed at Russia and the very real tensions and potential military confrontations that have resulted?

Something doesn’t make sense here? A lot doesn’t make sense here. We are being told that Vladimir Putin worked with one American political group to produce dirt on the other political group and its candidate, so that the first political group could then come out and then raise bloody hell against Russia and suggest real war against the Russians? We are being told that Vladimir Putin—whom the Democrats and media now frenetically charge wanted Trump to win in 2016—actually was working with and assisting the Democrats to defeat candidate Trump and then President Trump in 2016?

As they say down in eastern Carolina, “that dog don’t hunt.”

The most credible explanation—and one that has some significant evidence to support it—is that very likely Christopher Steele created the fake dossier himself, and whatever assistance he received from “the Russians,” came specifically from a shadowy group of vocal anti-Putin Russians who have had an inordinate influence on American and British intelligence since the 1990s.

Just yesterday, investigative journalist Philip Giraldi, pointed out the role of those anti-Putin propagandists (in league with anti-Russian Neoconservative globalists) in shaping American foreign policy. I strongly recommend Giraldi’s essay, especially on the critical role of William Browder (see: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/02/01/meet-corrupt-billionaire-who-has-brought-about-new-cold-war.html), grandson of the former head of the Communist Party USA, Earl Browder, in influencing American policy towards Russia.  Browder’s cachet with the bitterly anti-Russian, anti-Putin Neoconservative internationalists, is significant. [Additional research by Giraldi can be seen here: http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/the-magnitsky-hoax  and here: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-new-know-nothings-in-congress/; and additional investigatory information by Robert Parry can be read here: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/02/a-blacklisted-film-and-the-new-cold-war/]

Those anti-Putin Russians very likely did, in fact, work with the Democrats and also with the GOP and Neocon NeverTrumpers and the globalist foreign policy establishment—and very probably with the Progressivist-dominated intelligence community. And with Christopher Steele. Their unrelenting goal was not just to defeat (or maybe even impeach) a Donald Trump, supposedly “weak on Putin,” but to continue to push for hostilities between America and Russia, up to and including potential military clashes in Ukraine and in Syria. And their eventual aim is to unseat the hated Putin and establish one more outpost of the New World Order in Moscow.

This, then, I would suggest is the scenario, the template, we should be viewing as we discuss the Nunes Memo. All those Neocon pundits on Fox, at The Weekly Standard and National Review, will admit the illegality and attacks on the Constitution by the “farther Left,” but they cannot leave behind their overriding New World Order narrative and their fierce opposition to the one international power that has refused to accept their tutelage…and the succeeding bondage of the EU and a George Soros...and that power is present-day Russia.

Here follows Philip Giraldi’s latest investigation; please read his earlier work, as well.

PHILIP M. GIRALDI | 01.02.2018 | FEATURED STORY

Meet the Corrupt Billionaire Who Has Brought About a New Cold War

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/02/01/meet-corrupt-billionaire-who-has-brought-about-new-cold-war.html

One has to ask why there is a crisis in US-Russia relations since Washington and Moscow have much more in common than not, to include confronting international terrorism, stabilizing Syria and other parts of the world that are in turmoil, and preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In spite of all that, the US and Russia are currently locked in a tit-for-tat unfriendly relationship somewhat reminiscent of the Cold War.

Apart from search for a scapegoat to explain the Hillary Clinton defeat, how did it happen? Israel Shamir, a keen observer of the American-Russian relationship, and celebrated American journalist Robert Parry both think that one man deserves much of the credit for the new Cold War and that man is William Browder, a hedge fund operator who made his fortune in the corrupt 1990s world of Russian commodities trading.

Browder is also symptomatic of why the United States government is so poorly informed about international developments as he is the source of much of the Congressional “expert testimony” contributing to the current impasse. He has somehow emerged as a trusted source in spite of the fact that he has self-interest in cultivating a certain outcome. Also ignored is his renunciation of American citizenship in 1998, reportedly to avoid taxes. He is now a British citizen.

Browder is notoriously the man behind the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which exploited Congressional willingness to demonize Russia and has done so much to poison relations between Washington and Moscow. The Act sanctioned individual Russian officials, which Moscow has rightly seen as unwarranted interference in the operation of its judicial system.

Browder, a media favorite who self-promotes as “Putin’s enemy #1,” portrays himself as a selfless human rights advocate, but is he? He has used his fortune to threaten lawsuits for anyone who challenges his version of events, effectively silencing many critics. He claims that his accountant Sergei Magnitsky was a crusading "lawyer" who discovered a $230 million tax-fraud scheme that involved the Browder business interest Hermitage Capital but was, in fact, engineered by corrupt Russian police officers who arrested Magnitsky and enabled his death in a Russian jail.

Many have been skeptical of the Browder narrative, suspecting that the fraud was in fact concocted by Browder and his accountant Magnitsky. A Russian court recently supported that alternative narrative, ruling in late December that Browder had deliberately bankrupted his company and engaged in tax evasion. He was sentenced to nine years prison in absentia.

William Browder is again in the news recently in connection with testimony related to Russiagate. On December 16th Senator Diane Feinstein of the Senate Judiciary Committee released the transcript of the testimony provided by Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS. According to James Carden, Browder was mentioned 50 times, but the repeated citations apparently did not merit inclusion in media coverage of the story by the New York Times, Washington Post and Politico.

Fusion GPS, which was involved in the research producing the Steele Dossier used to discredit Donald Trump, was also retained to provide investigative services relating to a lawsuit in New York City involving a Russian company called Prevezon. As information provided by Browder was the basis of the lawsuit, his company and business practices while in Russia became part of the investigation. Simmons maintained that Browder proved to be somewhat evasive and his accounts of his activities were inconsistent. He claimed never to visit the United States and not own property or do business there, all of which were untrue, to include his ownership through a shell company of a $10 million house in Aspen Colorado. He repeatedly ran away, literally, from attempts to subpoena him so he would have to testify under oath.

Per Simmons, in Russia, Browder used shell companies locally and also worldwide to avoid taxes and conceal ownership, suggesting that he was likely one of many corrupt businessmen operating in what was a wild west business environment. My question is, “Why was such a man granted credibility and allowed a free run to poison the vitally important US-Russia relationship?” The answer might be follow the money. Israel Shamir reports that Browder was a major contributor to Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, who was the major force behind the Magnitsky Act.

February 1, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Confederate Symbols are American Symbols: Destroy One, You Imperil All – The Notable Work of Dr. Brion McClanahan

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Friends,

For some time I’ve been wanting to publicize the stellar work of Dr. Brion McClanahan. Brion, through his labors with The Abbeville Institute, his “Brion McClanahan Academy,” his podcast series “The Brion McClanahan Show,” and his several published books, has contributed mightily to educating our citizens not just about the American South and the War Between the States, but also about the history of the United States, its Founding and its cultural inheritance.

A number of my articles have been published by Abbeville; but hundreds of other thoughtful and well-written essays and studies by distinguished writers have seen the light there. Indeed, since we live in a society increasingly characterized by what we can only call an “historical totalitarian black out,” a black-listing and censuring of any thinking and writing that deviates from a rapidly-advancing Marxist Progressivist Left dogmatism, sites like the Abbeville Institute and a few others have become the slender means to read and understand a tradition-based and realistic appreciation of our Western and Christian history and culture.

When an understanding, appreciation and acceptance of God’s law and the laws of Nature, itself, cease, then society will become the slave of Satan and his minions. Or, to quote the great English poet and playwright, “If you will not have God—and he is a very jealous God—then you must pay your respects to Mr. Stalin or Mr. Hitler.”

Our society now faces that choice as never before. In 2016 it appeared that the very epigones and demons of Hell were preparing for the final coup de grace. The election of the Deep State New World Order “rough beast” candidate (William Butler Yeats’ image), Hillary Clinton,  would have given those “armies of the night” eight years to continue their nefarious work, cement control over the judiciary, and continue their total infiltration of the managerial bureaucracy that has controlled our lives. In short, it would have meant the final extinction of what was left of our God-given liberties.

That did not happen; instead, a hard-talking, bull-in-the-china shop billionaire from New York, Donald Trump, who was unpurchased and unbought, and, most importantly, unbound, was elected. And his success—which was the success of millions of downtrodden Americans, the “deplorables,” somehow aware of the precipitous decline and slide into totalitarianism—brought an incredibly unhinged and frenetic reaction from the Deep State, the New World Order partisans, and the George Soros cabal, so intent on finishing their work of secular globalism: the exact contrary of the historic Christian order.

By no means is President Trump a medieval “knight in shining armor.” He has his admitted faults; he’s a deal-maker and wheeler-dealer. Some of his dealing—for instance, his proposal to offer a “pathway to citizenship” for the DACA “dreamers”—is unacceptable to many of us. About the finer points of American history he is no scholar, about what are called “the conservative wars” (between those who are characterized as “conservatives”) he is unread. He is a trusting soul, and he trusts those who come to him, apparently honestly, but in fact who have secret agendas that are not his Make America Great Again agenda. Bringing in those people may be his greatest mistake.

Yet, his enemies are our enemies: Antifa, Black Lives Matter, the feminists and radical women’s movement, the LGBT types, the Hollywood Left, most of academia and the media, the wild-and-wooly cultural Marxists, the Democrats and the GOP slurpers who slurp at the hind tits of the Deep State (e.g., Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, John McCain, the Neocon quasi-NeverTrumper, etc.). And the Donald’s essential instincts, his intuition, even against many of his advisors (people he has unfortunately trusted), have been the chief bulwarks that prevent even now the triumph of the renewed Deep State assault on the president and the presidency...and the end of our country and culture as we have known it.

I’ve pointed out before that the attack on Confederate and Southern symbols is just the tip of the iceberg; the Progressivist Left, the assembled demon forces of bloodthirsty and filthy Orcs whom we term the “Establishment,” have comprehended that those symbols and monuments and memorials are the easiest targets. But they are just the first targets in a multilevel, long range campaign to destroy and transform our culture and society. It is a strategy first formulated back in the 1920s by Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci and others, that then was developed and instrumentalized by a group of Marxist Jewish academics (refugees from Nazi Germany) who set up shop at Columbia University in the 1930s. Their influence over our culture, in our understanding and writing of history, in such fields as psychology, sociology, and race and sex studies, has been tremendously influential and critical in shaping how our society thinks.

Yet, millions of Americans—those average citizens who work and make this country work and keep it going, many of those “deplorables”—were not part of this revolutionary movement of Progressivism. Indeed, the Progressivist Revolution, in its hasty panzer advance, had left them behind; after all, they did not possess “power,” they did not occupy significant positions that needed to be conquered and won over by the fanatical demons of the Deep State. 

But they still did vote…and in the depths of their consciousness they understood, if only vaguely, in November 2016 that “things weren’t right,” that they were being drowned and submerged in something that was not only the totalitarian end of their liberties, but the very perversion of their souls—the end of humanity not only as we have known it, but as God intended it to be.

That is why this battle for Confederate symbols is so extremely important. For there is a seamless unity between those particular symbols of and in our culture, and the symbols of the entirety of our culture and history. Those manifestations tell us who we have been and who we are; they are public expressions of our history and what we value.  The Progressivist Revolution is not just intent on erasing and removing the symbols of Confederate memory, but effacing and destroying all the traditional symbols of American history that do not fit its dogmatic, ideological standards on race and sex, as part of a concerted effort to change and transform our society and culture. And, in effect, it is the ultimate in rebellion against the God-given order and the laws of Nature.

This is precisely why we cannot “compromise” with the minions of the Left; for one cannot compromise with what essentially, at base, is a form of theological evil which seeks “the abolition of man.”

That is why the work of such champions as Dr. McClanahan is critical and why I recommend his labors to you.

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey

  THE  BRION  McCLANAHAN  SHOW    

     https://brionmcclanahan.us6.list-  manage.com/track/click?u=2b15bd6bbcb269d0f89d9c259&id=73d329803d&e=b25b1dc230

American political discourse has become so irrational that having an intellectual discussion about any issue is nearly impossible. Just try on social media. This problem has been building for decades but has become more pronounced in the last several years. Perhaps the clearest example is the current attack on all things Confederate. Paul Graham's hilarious little book Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic (Shotwell Press, 2017) provides dozens of cases where people irrationally lost their minds at the mere sight of a Confederate symbol. He accurately labels this a "phobia," a mental disorder that can be cured but must be identified. No one blames spiders for arachnophobia or the number 13 for triskaidekaphobia, but Confederate symbols are fair game. The problem is, as Graham points out, a belief that these symbols have a "psychic power" over people. That is emotivism, a modern political trend that philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre masterfully explained in his After Virtue. "I feel" has replaced "I think" in political discourse. You cannot rationally address an issue if you are "feeling" rather than thinking. I once had a rabid feminist leftist professor smack down anyone who began a statement with "I feel." She wanted to be taken seriously, to have her thoughts rationally discussed, and saying "I feel" reduced them to emotion, and as a woman and a feminist, she thought it created an environment where people could reduce her to hysterics. It was sexist to say "I feel." This is no longer true. In fact, it could be argued that most issues in our "culture war" are byproducts of emotivism, including the assault on Confederate symbols. We don't have rational arguments over these issues because you cannot reason with people who, in the case of Confederate symbols, irrationally "hate" an inanimate object that cannot do anything to them. The same can be said for other cultural issues, and as more Americans vote with their heart rather than their minds--and as a result debate with "I feel" rather than "I think"--we are descending into an irrational political nightmare. The cure is education, but we cannot place our hopes in the "system," so it comes down to thinking outside the box, with educational websites like my  McClanahan Academy or  LearnTrueHistory.com, "think tanks" like the Abbeville Institute, Mises Institute, or the Tenth Amendment Center, podcasts like my Brion McClanahan Show and the Tom Woods Show, or by picking up some literature like Paul Graham's Confederaphobia or other Shotwell Press offerings, or of course any book by yours truly. I discuss all of this in Episode 138 of The Brion McClanahan Show. Don't forget, The Brion McClanahan Show is now being offered on video as well as audio. Go to my Youtube page and you can see the show as well as listen to the show. If you want Brion McClanahan Show gear with my new logo, go to my RedBubble store and pick up a t-shirt, pillow, clock, or stationary. There are several gifts to choose from and all help support the show. And if you do buy something, send me a picture of you with the product, and I'll share it on social media.