Just because you aren't paranoid doesn't mean that someone is not out to get you!
The beautiful Chinese Balloon was declared "harmless" by illustrious our illustrious leader. Since he is a buddy of the Chinese, I'm sure he, Hunter, and his whole circle of the Biden Crime Family would live in the lap of luxury in the PRC were something untoward would happen to us.
So even if you are confident that I'm a tinfoil hat loonie on the PRC danger, the natural version would be even more deadly.
Now I know the Biden Crime Family and our entire Davos Elite oligarchy are entirely trustworthy, and would never allow such a thing as a PRC EMP attack to happen, and then cover it up as a natural event! We know that Covid came from a bad little bat that went to market, and not some nasty lab funded to enhance the lethality and transmissibility of a virus. They simply would not lie to their loyal subjects!
So, thankfully, we have nothing to be concerned about! We can focus on the important stuff like Transgender, racist Black Police killing a Black man, the horror of 7 years olds being prevented from expressing their "true selves", and of course the never ending evil of the deplorable fascist ultraMAGA people lurking among us!
I'm pretty sure anyone that reads this blog is aware that social media is a danger, especially for our youth, and especially for our democracy.
What we may not get is just how dangerous ... and how specifically managed by China to take us down.
“Beijing’s digital fentanyl” is how the Federal Communications Commission’s Brendan Carr describes the app. “The problems present themselves as soon as you sign up; it starts feeding you content directly from a Beijing-originated algorithm.” Mr. Carr is one of many Americans calling for a total ban on TikTok. One reason, he says, was a recent study showing that accounts set up for thirteen-year-old girls were offering self-harm and eating-disorder content in as little as three minutes."
I spend a tiny amount of time on our mass (Democrat propaganda) media. I touch on it through "Google News" to be marginally aware of "Vox Populi". Topics consist of:
A daily dose of Trump Derangement Syndrome" ... lawsuits, how terrible his business and campaign are going, somebody either accused him , or are going to accuse him of of something. All of this is a very serious threat to our nation, the world, the universe, etc
Something about Biden is "better than expected" or "misunderstood". Whatever is being said that doesn't sound good is "misinformation", unfair attacks, or just misdirecting us away from "the important stuff"! Like TRUMP!
More money, tanks, missiles, aircraft, etc for Ukraine! It's a big deal now, not so much when Russia took Crimea when Obama was in office. Putin is evil, but there is no danger he might escalate just because the west is pouring everything they can muster to his opponent in Ukraine.
Hollywood, sports, British Royalty, etc "stars" activities, views, etc
Racism, white privilege, attacks on "gays, trans, non-binary, whatevers" by horrible "far right, ultra MAGA, White Supremacist Fascists ...
"The balloon" was a major topic for a couple days, but turned out to be "well. what about Trump!" ... supposedly there were balloons while he was in office, but nobody told him.
Five black police officers beating a black man to death has been big lately. Clear proof of systematic racism if you are slow on the uptake.
Back to our subject ...
"Over the last year at least seven Republican governors have taken steps to ban TikTok from government devices amid spyware concerns. In December, Congress voted for the same rule at a federal level. The Biden administration has been criticized for a drawn-out review of whether the Chinese-owned app should be restricted. Wisconsin representative Mike Gallagher (interviewed on p.26), chair of the House select committee on China, says that “allowing the app to continue to operate in the US would be like allowing the USSR to buy up the New York Times, Washington Post and major broadcast networks during the Cold War.”
It is mostly Republicans that seem concerned, so no doubt it is kind of like the balloon ... nothing to be concerned about, and Tik Tok was around under Trump, so ... never mind.
The irony is that in China, TikTok provides users with a more optimistic outlook and encourages users to become moral citizens in the eyes of the CCP. Douyin, which is what TikTok is called in China, is a hit even with parents. Despite efforts of its parent company ByteDance to present Douyin and TikTok as the same product, they are actually two separate entities. In China, if you are under fourteen, your Douyin use is capped at forty minutes a day. It also feeds you different content, with education at the forefront. Art, science, architecture and pro-CCP content are also pushed. In a recent 60 Minutes report, Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, compares the Chinese version to “spinach” and its exported, Western version to “opium.”
"How ironic" that a nation would use available technologies to strengthen itself and weaken it's opponents.
Do people watch 60 Minutes anymore? No idea, but it doesn't strike me as a far right fascist ultra MAGA outlet? Since there are 138 million active Tik Tok users in US (2/3rds under 30), it seems that more people being aware of this might "trump" all of the points above.
We hear a lot about "wealth", and "wealth inequality" today.
As I've often repeated in my blogging, zero remains zero and inflation creates more wealth inequality as a "base". If the top income last year was $100, and it is $1000 today, we have 1x the inequality. Any growing economy increases income inequality.
A million dollars today is the equivalent of $390K in 1990. There tends to be a lot of talk about "millionaires" (or billionaires), which is the Deep/Administrative State misleading you. Of COURSE there is more numeric "inequality", but that is far from "the story" because there are a ton of factors involved. "Poverty" for a family of 4 today is $26k, but since the state is at war with families, there are not many stable families of 4, and FAR fewer without the complexities of divorce, addiction, etc
If you go look at the linked charts, you can see how much Vietnam, Jimmy Carter, and now Biden have cost us ... especially those of us who at one time had "nice pensions".
On top of that, government subsidies bump the actual living conditions higher, and to be "poor" in American likely means you are obese, have a nice color tv, high speed internet, a lot of subsidies, and probably a car. (80% of poor Americans have access to a car). Compared to the rest of the world, poverty in America is somewhere between rich and middle class elsewhere. (gee, why don't we have a Southern border?)
In order to be the equivalent of a 1990 millionaire today, you need to have $2,270,826, or basically $2.3 million.
The average cumulative inflation since '92 is 127%, however it varies from 200% in Seattle to 104% in St Louis.
I have no interest in being an inflation expert, but my guess is that housing is the big reason for the difference in cities. My son paid $750 a month for an efficiency dump in Denver, and $750 for a nice one bedroom in a complex with a pool, exercise area, good parking, and a nice neighborhood in Des Moines. Basically 2x as good for the same money.
So a billionaire today is really worth $390 million in 1990 dollars. Certainly nobody is going to have much pity on someone worth $390 million, nor even on someone worth $390k in 1990 dollars. The point is (as always) take what the government and media (but I repeat myself) tell you with a BIG grain of salt!
You need $10 today to buy what a buck would buy in 1960. For those of us born in the 50's or 60's, that might explain a bit about how "we don't feel rich", though the numbers on our bank accounts look like we "should" be.
Who loves inflation? Debtors, of which the government is the gorilla in the room paying back their debt with ever more worthless dollars. Have a billion dollar debt in 1990? Pay it off today with the equivalent value of $390 million today!
As our government rulers continually show us, it is great to be king!
The linked review is from the American Spectator, a magazine I subscribe to for reviews like this and to stretch my brain in the weak areas of poetry and the "liberal arts" in the old sense of "liberal".
The author of the book is Beverly Gage, a Yale professor, so someone even the left might not totally disregard, although my guess is this book will be as suppressed as possible.
Her book G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, a biography of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, was named a best book of 2022 by the Washington Post (Ten Best Books), The Atlantic (Ten Best Books), Publishers Weekly (Ten Best Books), The New Yorker (24 Essential Reads), The New York Times (100 Notable Books), Smithsonian (Ten Best History Books), and Barnes & Noble (Ten Best History Books).
When the FBI was investigating organized crime and communist agents and sympathisers in the US, it received total support from conservatives (and not from the left). Today? Not so much.
The FBI has suffered popular disapproval before in its 114-year history, yet never has the Bureau been so distrusted by the Right as it is today. It is playing a central role in the attempt to criminalize Donald Trump and his supporters, with heavy-handed tactics deployed against the January 6 “insurrectionists” and a raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home reminiscent of what occurs in a banana republic.In addition, its aggressive targeting of “right-wing extremists,” including pro-life activists, indicates a surprising willingness by the Bureau to become identified as a partisan police force for the Democratic Party.
Few people realize that Mark Felt, Hoover's 3rd in command at the FBI was "Deep Throat", who brought down Nixon, mostly because he was passed over for a promotion to director of the FBI in favor of Patrick Gray. Mark Felt was no moral paragon, in 1980 he was convicted of civil rights violations, but pardoned by Ronald Reagan.
Gage explored the dramatic two years that followed Hoover’s death in a scholarly essay published in 2012, “Deep Throat, Watergate, and the Bureaucratic Politics of the FBI,” in which she notes that the conditions for the Watergate crisis had already been established by Hoover before his death. Though Hoover and Nixon were close personal friends, “Hoover believed in the administrative state—in the power of independent bureaucrats. . . . Nixon, by contrast, was a man of parties, someone who hated the bureaucracy and believed that . . . voter control offered the best hope for effective government.” From this perspective, Watergate emerges as “an institutional struggle between political allies, contained within the executive branch and locked in conflict over the proper use of the state."
LBJ used the FBI to investigate political opponents, the Kennedys and MLK, but he was totally on the side of the Administrative State -- they had no quarrel with him, but they hated Richard Nixon, because, (like Trump), he was a threat to the Administrative/Deep State.
Nixon recorded in his diary after the 1972 election:
This is . . . probably the last time, that we can get government under control before it gets so big that it submerges the individual completely and destroys the dynamism which makes the American system what it is.
Nixon saw that America was falling into the tyranny of the Administrative State, and he was attacked because the Administrative State, especially the FBI, saw him as an existential threat to their power. Same for Trump.
The fact that we are no longer a democracy, but rather an oligarchy governed by the Democrats and Administrative State, is beneath the radar of a huge majority of Americans, however many of them sense that "something is wrong" even with the constant propaganda barrage they live under.
To guarantee both its authority and funding, the bureaucracy operates with the support of, and in consultation with, the senior leadership in Congress—which has in key respects ceased to be a partisan institution. Leaders of both parties are deeply attached to their power to supervise the administrative state. Of course, it is the Democrats who have long been the party of big government, and they are truly in charge over the long term. Nominal Republicans in Congress send out spirited fundraising letters invoking the Constitution, but in practice the gop leadership remains firmly within the bounds of establishment opinion. (May we wonder, based on the evidence, whether Senator Mitch McConnell even wanted a Republican majority in November? Might he be entirely content, and even find it preferable, to remain in the minority—retaining his perks without the burden of accountability?)
We can say the same thing of Kevin McCarthy, a true denizen of "The Swamp". The fact that 20 Republicans stood up as a "Rebel Alliance" gives a ray for hope, but the odds against any real change are LONG. Steve Hayward gives an excellent summary of the good/bad of the Rebel Alliance here.
The Administrative State is one of my long term Hobby Horses ... very recently here.
The Empire of the Administrative State is strong. Like the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars, the odds are against freedom.
I have to love the name. Hamburger is very American!
The Hamburger in this case is no joke at all. A Juris Doctor (highest degree in law) from Yale, now a law professor at Columbia and noted author of a number of books, articles, and recipient of prestigious awards. You likely have never heard of him because what he writes about clearly and unambiguously makes a nearly irrefutable case that we are subjects, not citizens, with our rulers having absolute power.
How is that possible? Because the approved media and educational system narrative is that it is not possible for a "modern technological society" to be governed by citizens of a republic. Our betters find the very idea of separation of powers with a judicial system that enforces the separation through application of a written constitution to be "impossible". (the book lets you know it is fairly easily possible, just not desirable for our rulers),
I seem to be on a tear of reading deep and difficult works for some reason lately. This one is no exception, although well written. Five hundred page, fairly small print, and over 100 pages of notes is not to be trifled with. If we are to return to being a Constitutional Republic, something over a majority need to understand some of these truths that are not so "self evident", but critical to any that want to return to being citizens rather than subjects.
A shorter (and likely better) review of the book that I quote from in this post is here.
In the 1500s (and before), the application of absolute power was supposedly required because of "emergency" (like a "crisis" ... Covid, Climate Change, gun violence, etc, etc).
Those who remain skeptical might consider one of Hamburger’s examples. He discusses the 1539 Act of Proclamations enacted by a cowed Parliament at Henry VIII’s insistence. The Act authorized the king to “set forth…proclamations, under such penalties and pains” as might be thought “necessary and requisite” by the king and his council. These proclamations “shall be obeyed, observed, and kept as though they were made by act of Parliament.”
If you have to go around Parliament and Congress from time to time, perhaps the "time" should be perpetually NOW. One of our current ruling class has a definite handle on the importance of the passage of time. We should all be thankful that we are subjects to the brilliance of our betters through Administrative Law ... they have it together!
The thesis of the book is simple:
His thesis, in a nutshell, comes to this: the Constitution contemplates only two kinds of edicts that may bind citizens—rules enacted by Congress, and orders issued by duly authorized courts. Administrative edicts, by contrast, seek to bind citizens by commands that are neither legislatively enacted nor judicially decreed. They are, strictly speaking, lawless.
Perhaps (though I'm pessimistic) people will start to realize that we have been brainwashed by our "educational system" (indoctrination system), our media industrial complex (propaganda), and of course our entire Administrative/Deep State. The Deep State has now been politically weaponized to defend our rulers in the Democrat Deep State.
The linked review is more optimistic than I am. We both see the ACA as an example of the tragedy of the Administrative State, however since the linked review is from 2014, it appears my pessimism is more accurate than their admittedly tepid optimism.
The persistent, widespread, and increasing unpopularity of the Affordable Care Act may be an indicator of public exhaustion with the new regulatory paradigm. Despite early enthusiasm for health care “reform,” it gradually began to dawn on the public that a government plan to coordinate health care services all the way down, so to speak, is going to have a lot to say about when, where, how, and by whom you are treated, and for how long. And the government is not always going to say please and thank you as it steers citizens into mandated health care chutes. Despite repeated promises by politicians from the president on down, it turns out that large numbers of people will not be able to keep their previous health plan or doctors. And their new insurance policies in all probability will cost them more—considerably more.
As the book repeats multiple times, our courts including the SCOTUS have decided it is almighty precedent that requires deference to the Administrative State, and Obama Care is a nasty example.
A quote from the book by way of the review summarizes what has happened rather nicely.
The history of government is largely a story of elite power and popular subservience. Americans, however, turned this old model upside down. By establishing a republican form of government, they eventually made themselves masters and made their lawmakers their servants. More than two centuries later, the shell of this republican experiment remains. Within it, however, another government has arisen, in which new masters once again assert themselves, issuing commands as if they were members of a ruling class, and as if the people were merely their servants. Self-government thus has given way to a system of submission.
Optimists honestly thought that the Covid authoritarian lockdowns, lies, destruction of our economy and educational system would wake up the population and draw them away from Netflix, social media, and general mindless entertainment to throw the bums out. To the extent 2022 was an "election" it shows that was either a false hope, or that a serf thinking that an "election" run by the ruling class is going to free them from their servility is deluded.
You probably started reading this thinking you were a citizen, welcome to being a subject!
Watching this if you don't have a Daily Wire subscription is like watching network TV ... the commercials are infuriating, but I think worth it.
It covers a lot of facts about the strange response to Covid, the main one in my mind is "Why doesn't anyone seem to be curious about how Covid got started"? (in fact they want desperately to close the case that it was not). The circumstantial evidence is very damning ... viral gain of function research was being done in Wuhan, Fauci was funding it, we know there was a conference call on which Fauci and a set of virologists were very concerned about this being a lab leak, and how they could "verify" that it was not. (they claimed they had found a "very similar" virus in a pangolin), however when guys like Ridley looked, it wasn't.
If you take the time to look at the early part of the video, you will learn about protein spikes and ACE2 receptors, and why it is so difficult (thanks be to God) for nature to produce a virus that does human to human transmission. Is it "possible" that it can happen randomly? Certainly, someone does win the lottery after all. Occam would be skeptical. In this case, the Wuhan lab was specifically inserting genetic code to allow the virus to be highly transmissible to humans.
This "Gain of Function" research was criticized as being likely to create the specific problem it was allegedly trying to prevent. An analogy used in the video is that it was like looking for a natural gas leak with a lighted match.
I've long been convinced that Covid was a lab "leak" at least, if not an intentional insertion into the environment. Remember that just prior to Covid, our economy was booming, energy prices were low, and Trump was looking like an absolute lock for re-election. Trump was a huge thorn in the side of the Administrative State, Chinese world dominance, exposing Democrat weaponization of the "Great Reset", open borders, and many other things. From the POV of the global elite, defeating him was an absolute requirement from day 1 of his administration, and failure was not an option.
Covid enabled the measures like massive mail in "voting" that averted what the woke viewed as an existential threat.
In a world were killing millions of babies is considered to be a "moral good", as well as the destruction of the middle class and families, it is imperative that ALL means be used to prevent that disaster if you look at it from the POV of the global elite. Millions dying is just collateral damage.
The last hour of the video discusses what Jordan and Matt think is even a more dangerous "virus", the rise of the woke authoritarian state, and the end of open inquiry. There is also some excellent discussion of how Christianity relates to the search for truth.
I strongly suggest taking the time to view ... subscribing to the Daily Wire is not a bad idea either.
I'm slogging my way through "Is Administrative Law Unlawful", an excellent, though not exactly a page turner book. Short version, Administrative Law is both Unconstitutional and Unlawful ... there IS a difference, which I will TRY to unravel somewhat plainly when I review the book
In the meantime, the linked gives the sad story of the Administrative State making life miserable for a small commercial fisherman.
Federal law gives NOAA the power to force me to carry a monitor on my boat, but it doesn’t give the agency the power to make me pay for the monitor. If Congress had passed a law that allowed NOAA to force herring fishermen to pay for monitors, we could at least use our voices and our votes to check the lawmakers who’d voted for it. But since in this instance a federal agency has tried to do the same thing through an unconstitutional, unilateral power grab, we’ve been forced to settle the issue in the courts.
Why does the NOAA get away with expanding its power? In one word, Chevron.
"Chevron is a rule that tips the scales in favor of a particular result when a statute is unclear," Yale Law's Abbe Gluck has written of the principle. "In Chevron's case, the scales are tipped toward the agency's preferred interpretation."
If you follow the Chevron link, you will also find that Chevron gave us Obamacare.
If you go to the link and look at the chart, you see that up until 1970, the amount spent on healthcare seemed to be growing at a relatively similar pace to the population. Whole books are written on this contentious subject, and nothing lies like statistics. Why did this happen?
In 1965 LBJ signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. Those programs are the major driver of the huge increases in medical costs. Again, we could find endless discussion on this issue. My essential point is that in the countries that have "Single Payer", the government seriously controls the costs for people that use those programs. They wait for years if they need a procedure like a hip replacement, and if they go to a hospital, they are in "wards" 10, 15, sometimes 20 or more people. As defenders if single payer point out, though, "the people love it"!
Indeed, the healthy people do. Routine visits are well taken care of. Do you like your fire insurance? Probably yes ... because you never used it, and hope not to. Sick people don't love single payer so much (if they are able, they come to Mayo), and the really dissatisfied are generally dead. Something like we got a taste of with Covid, it can take a long time to get care when the government has you under its thumb, and the dead don't complain. They do however vote Democrat, which is likely a significant reason (on top of larger government) that Democrats like single payer so much!
Throwing government at a problem is like throwing gasoline on a fire, only in the case of government programs, they grow "spontaneously" like Jack's beanstalk. Why? Because there is nothing limiting them, so "more is better". But what about taxes and deficits? The sad truth is that a majority of the American people seem not to care, or are so bamboozled, they don't know enough to care. "The rich will pay", "Everyone will be more wealthy in the future, so it will be easy to pay it off", "The same unicorns that will give us low cost green energy will work the same magic on all our problems" ... etc, etc. Color me skeptical.
Obamacare just increased the flow of gasoline to the healthcare dumpster fire. Schmucks that bought into the old American idea of "Work hard and save for retirement" have been badly burned -- and who cares about those idiots? (of which I am one)
Close to home, friends at IBM had dutifully looked at the TOTAL they were paying for healthcare with premiums and deductibles included as they obtained coverage through IBM. Health status made no difference on IBM premiums, and the deductibles were generally capped at about "4K" ... so that is what they made their retirement assumptions on as they left or were forced out of IBM. Typically, $12K a year total. Post Obamacare, premiums went up, but deductibles and caps REALLY went up. The typical couples premium cost went up to over $20K. Total expenditures typically exceeded $30K as opposed to the estimated $12K, since older people have higher healthcare expenses. Taking a $20K hit on your yearly budget is not a positive experience. Since my younger wife continued to work at IBM, and I was covered under her, our pain was less. (thanks wife!)
Most of what we "know" is provided by the Administrative State, and their friends in large corporations and the media. Covid, and the attacks on Trump have made it much more clear what has been happening for a long time, and increases to happen. We are fed a "narrative" that lulls most Americans into the idea that whatever the Democrats, Administrative State and media (basically a single entity) tell us is truthful and things are good, except for the constant threat of Republican extremism.
Once we had a Constitution that largely prevented and certainly curtailed much of this. With the overturn of Roe, there is a glimmer of hope that we may return to Constitutional government ... a SLIGHT glimmer.
Along with Stephan the fisherman from the top link, I would really like to believe that Americans will awake from their entertainment and entitlement slumber and realize that there is STILL no free lunch!
This is certainly not a recreational read ... much time is spent in the details of various primitive totemic religions (largely Aborigine), but also some reference to the religions of the native americans.
The basic truth painstakingly worked out is that we are "Moral Believing Animals". In short, humans are inherently social, they will form groups, and those groups will believe in something that is at its base not rational/proveable, but totally real and sacred to the group.
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. The second element which thus finds a place in our definition is no less essential than the first; for by showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from that of the Church, it makes it clear that religion should be an eminently collective thing.
Scientism, historicism, materialism, Christianity, atheism, Taoism, Communism, etc are equal relative to being unverifiable in a philosophical sense. Since we can't philosophically/scientifically prove our existence, or even that we are "conscious" (which we also can't define), it is faith all the way down for all of us.
At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life; they are what philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space, [4] class, number, cause, substance, personality, etc. They correspond to the most universal properties of things. They are like the solid frame which encloses all thought;
One of the best descriptions of our state is expressed in the deeply intellectual film "This is Spinal Tap" relative to the Druids:
In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, lived an ancient race of people. The Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing.
Amazingly, I've been to Stonehenge, and that quote is etched in stone in the visitors center.
One of the base philosophical questions is "Why is there anything"? As the book says:
Thus we find that we have here two sorts of knowledge, which are like the two opposite poles of the intelligence. Under these conditions forcing reason back upon experience causes it to disappear, for it is equivalent to reducing the universality and necessity which characterize it to pure appearance, to an illusion which may be useful practically, but which corresponds to nothing in reality; consequently it is denying all objective reality to the logical life, whose regulation and organization is the function of the categories. Classical empiricism results in irrationalism; perhaps it would even be fitting to designate it by this latter name.
We thus believe we discover that all our models ... the Platonic, the Aristotelian, the Newtonian, Einstein's static model, the Quantum model, the Standard Model, are all just that, "models". Models, like maps are very useful, however we need to always remember that the map is not the territory.
Durkheim is attempting to go back to the origin of religion, and one of the bases is what a group considers sacred vs profane. One of the laments we hear today is "is nothing sacred?". To classical empiricism, that there is no concept of sacred, and as stated above, classical empiricism as a way to understand the universe is irrational ... meaning "insane". An often heard question today is "has the world gone insane?". I'm pretty sure that Durkheim would say that is so, and a lot of evidence seems to support that view.
To distinguish religion from all other classification systems:
... it is absolute. In all the history of human thought there exists no other example of two categories of things so profoundly differentiated or so radically opposed to one another. The traditional opposition of good and bad is nothing beside this; for the good and the bad are only two opposed species of the same class, namely morals, just as sickness and health are two different aspects of the same order of facts, life, while the sacred and the profane have always and everywhere been conceived by the human mind as two distinct classes, as two worlds between which there is nothing in common.
As our models of the universe have become more sophisticated, they more and more resemble religion.
... between the logic of religious thought and that of scientific thought there is no abyss. The two are made up of the same elements, though inequally and differently developed.
Just as there is no known society without a religion, so there exist none, howsoever crudely organized they may be, where we do not find a whole system of collective representations concerning the soul, its origin and its destiny.
Today, science is our religion. We make statements like "trust the science", "the science is settled". Those that disagree are called "deniers", which is equivalent to "heretics" in Christianity. Their views must be suppressed, they must be punished (fired, cancelled, shunned). So far, no burning at the stake.
Page 369, "...he knows that it is faith that saves".
Search your heart. you know it to be true. Our lives are sustained by faith ... we have faith we will get up in the morning, we have faith we can drive to our destination safely, we have faith that the bridge we drive over will not fall, the list is endless, and in this mortal coil, many of the things we have faith in will fail. We will see that many of the earthly things we have faith in will fail. Even though we see that ... people fail to get up, cars crash and the occupants die, bridges fall, etc
But we still go to sleep, drive our cars, and go over bridges, because we can't live without faith. Even faith in people or things shown to be unfaithful,
So faith saves. John 20:29 Jesus said unto him, “Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”
At the time the FBI arm of the Democrat party raided the former presidents personal residence, even a few of the media arm of the Democrat party thought they better find something, or this is going to be seen as a politically motivated fishing expedition to add hatred for Trump to the 2022 midterms.
So as the midterms were over, the FBI reported, that is just what it was. The Democrat media arm has already started the memory hole process.
I remain somewhat mystified as to why they did not just plant something, or just fail to report it at all? Is it possible that there is still a TINY bit of concern that with a Republican majority in the house, there is a small chance that accountability could be demanded, or that there is still a decent person the FBI that would leak the truth? I suppose one can hope.
We live in a single party / weaponized Deep State Banana Republic. Any fair minded person has know this at least since Chappaquiddick and Watergate, to not understand this after even the Russia Hoax, shows either a complete lack of attention to our supposed "by the people" government, or the belief that a one party Oligarchy vs a Republic is where they want to live.
