The Propaganda Beast Is in a Doom Loop

The propaganda beast is weakening in its ability to create the illusion of power for the sea beast.

If that sounds cryptic to you, we’re looking at the beasts of Revelation 13 as either symbols or pretty accurate metaphors for what we’re seeing. In short, the beast coming up out of the sea, or sea beast, is what we also call the worldwide cabal, the whore of all the earth, the great and abominable church, the deep state, secret combinations, or simply evil corruption for power. This beast is controlled by the dragon—Satan—which means it is powered by evil and has evil intent.

The second beast, on the land, is a false-speaking beast, and it is also controlled by the dragon. It supports or creates the illusion of power for the sea beast. I call this land beast the propaganda beast. It is made up of news media, entertainment media, academia, government and business entities—all of which create a narrative, or image, that supports the power elite.

from the Dürer Apocalypse woodcut "The Beast with the Lamb's Horns
and the Beast with Seven Heads," this segment found here

With that brief primer behind us, what I think we’re seeing is both the weakening of the sea beast (which I wrote about here) and the weakening of the propaganda beast to make us think the power elite still have power.

I’m observing what I’m seeing now, not predicting what will happen next week or next month or year. I think we’re seeing something like an illusion show, a magician, whose props fail and suddenly the trick is revealed to the audience. The people no longer believe what the magician was tricking them into believing. In a magic show, being fooled—and figuring it out—are both part of the fun. But in real life, when we didn’t consent to the deception, we’re just being lied to. And it’s a good thing to recognize the deception and awaken to the truth.

So, what am I seeing? A lot of what other people are seeing as well. Mainly this is about the news media, which has enjoyed some decades of control over what we the people believe. Until the internet. Now there are other voices we can go to.

 

The Broken Shards Piece

There was an Axios piece this week, trying to describe what’s happening, albeit from their view as one of the narrative controllers. In “Behind the Curtain: The big media era is over” by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, October 28, 2024, the authors describe a broken shards scenario: our news sources used to be solid glass panes that we all saw fairly equally. Now there are a multitude of diverse “shards,” and we all get a different combination of sources. They explain:

The big picture: When we speak around the country, we often tell audiences that when you're sitting at a table of people of different ages and politics, several of them probably get their information on platforms you've never visited ... from popular influencers you've never heard of ... on topics that might seem exotic or totally new.

They’re looking mainly at how this affects the presidential campaigns:

Former President Trump reached way more potential male voters with his three-hour Rogan conversation (33 million views over the weekend) than he could have with a dozen or more appearances on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined. All three cable news networks skew very old in viewership, with median ages ranging from 67 to 70.

They give a list of podcasts, etc., that Kamala Harris has gone to, and that I literally have not heard of:

·        A Nueva Network radio interview with Stephanie “Chiquibaby” Himonidis aimed at a young Latino demographic.

·        “All the Smoke” NBA-focused podcast aimed at young Black men.

·        “The Shade Room” culture podcast aimed at young Black women.

·        “Club Shay-Shay” podcast with NFL player Shannon Sharpe, aimed, I assume at Black men.

There was also the "Who's Your Daddy" podcast, an explicit sex discussion, which Kamala deemed important while Hurricane victims in North Carolina were without power or without homes. I hadn't heard of this before she did it, but I had heard of it before reading the Axios piece.

There’s a list of some more obscure places Trump has been as well, also many of which I had previously been unaware of, but as well as many I’ve long known. A difference the article might have noted but didn’t was that Trump’s schedule has been packed, and has included many larger rallies, and he talks at each of these as a real, authentic person. Meanwhile, most of Kamala’s scheduled days (which are publicly accessible) show her taking days to prepare for each one. She keeps them brief. She says essentially the same things over and over, often claiming things that are provable lies. Her campaign is counting on these people seeing only news that is curated with the power elite’s narrative.

Her brief attempt at “crossing the aisle” with Fox News’ Bret Baier did not go well for her. She failed to answer direct questions that should have been the “of course” anticipated questions. She circled around. And this was after arriving late for the interview and then cutting it short—which we now also know about her and her handlers. Trump has been willing to talk with people of opposing views, as long as it’s a real conversation and not an attack pile-on. So he has actually reached more people who didn’t previously know him except the way the propaganda beast had labeled him. 

After the Harris campaign called all the attendees at the MSG 
event racist Nazis, someone showed yet another Babylon Bee
satire that becomes actual news, this one from July. 

Axios is also wrong to call Joe Rogan right-wing. He had never been anything of the sort—until he told his actual personal experience with Ivermectin after having COVID, and got cancelled. Which led to the rise of Rumble (a non-censoring platform), where Rogan’s viewership far eclipses the network news sources put together. People who watched Rogan’s interview with Trump—for three hours—saw that Trump was personable, interesting, well-versed on many topics, interested in the person he was talking with, and by extension interested in a whole lot of regular Americans. And he is clearly not Hitler.

My favorite line—this was in reference to environmental damage caused by offshore windmills—was, “I’d like to be a whale psychiatrist.” The Rogan interview with VP candidate J. D. Vance is out, and I’m interested in watching it later today. Vance, by the way, has been a force in taking on the media. He has the facts at the ready, remains unruffled, and does it with aplomb. This belies the “he’s weird, mean, and angry” depiction of him proffered by the propaganda beast.

The meme was shared on the Viva & Barnes Sunday livestream October 27, 2024

Back to that article. Here’s how you know Axios isn’t about truth. They say:

Threat level: When attention is scattered across scores of shards, it’s easier to propagate conspiracy theories and manipulate “news.” It’s way harder to catch Russian misinformation campaigns when they are unleashed inside a dozen different information bubbles.

What they mean is, it’s much easier to manipulate “news” when you control the whole pane of glass than when you can’t control all those shards. And, by the way, while Russia is willing to put out disinformation on a whim, their efforts have not been a force in our elections. But there are supposed Russian misinformation campaigns that have:

·        Trump colluded with Russia—an invention of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, for which they were fined but were otherwise not held accountable. Based on this invention, they spied on Trump before and after he was in the White House. The media elites went along with it, and Axios apparently still wants to push it as true.

·        Hunter Biden laptop—claimed by 51 former intelligence officers to have had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, even though at the time the FBI had it in their possession and had already authenticated it. Information was censored from social media platforms. Accurate information about this could have meant a 17% swing in the election away from Biden.

Axios predicts that the outcome of the election could slow the movement toward broken up media if Harris wins: “she and her staff are much closer—and responsive—to traditional media.” But if Trump wins, the shift toward more “shards” will accelerate.

 

The Doom Loop of Distrust in Media

There was an opinion piece in Bloomberg a week ago talking about the distrust of institutions in general, and the media in particular. Alas, if only we could go back to the days of Walter Cronkite, when he would said, “And that’s the way it is,” and people believed it really was—even when it was not.

This same week Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, put out a piece explaining (?) why his WaPo decided not to endorse in elections, starting suddenly now—as part of an effort to bring back trust in media, to make it appear less biased. Here’s something accurate from his piece:

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

What is not working is feeding us propaganda and trying to get us to believe it as fact. Bezos uses the analogy of an election:

Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.

Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement.

You know how not to get people to believe your machines count accurately? Let them be connected to the internet when that is illegal. Have counting stop because of “leaking pipes in the building” and then have a sudden inexplicable jump in numbers for one particular side. Refuse to allow observation during the counting. Change rules at the last minute, always in favor of less security. Refuse to allow forensic examination of ballots. Refuse to do signature verification. OK, we could go on and on with that; they tried them all in 2020, and mostly got away with them. What you need to be believed is to follow strict rules, be totally transparent, and have people from opposing sides observe at every step. What doesn’t work is telling people they’re election deniers when they call out your errors and your obfuscation.

That goes as well for the media. If they had a long record of being accurate, they would be believed. They’re failing on the first requirement, and that’s why they’re failing on the second. It seems obvious.

In reaction to both these three pieces in Axios, Bloomberg, and WaPo, the Badlands News Brief (a somewhat Q-related group of writers—this one by Burning Bright—reacting to things in the news) offered this (highlights are mine):

Our Take: The picture would be worth a thousand words, but Amazon owner and self-described elite Jeff Bezos did us one better, and actually WROTE 1,000 words to defend his decision to NOT interfere in an election.

This comes on the heels of Op eds that have been flooding the Info War over the course of the last week, wherein the screeching communist harpies that have decreed themselves official narrative-setters for the entire country realize with mounting dread and panic that they've lost complete control of the story, which, as I have been saying for over two years, IS the war.

Bloomberg actually referred to the media death spiral as a "doom loop," while Axios put it so directly in their own panic piece, it could have been written by an Anon: "the mainstream media's dominance in narrative and reality-shaping in presidential elections shattered in 2024."

Now, we have Bezos being swarmed by the very communist worker bees he once lorded over.

In Game Theory, chaos begets control.

Enjoy it. — Burning Bright

The propaganda beast has "lost complete control of the story." Indeed. 

I came upon this podcast yesterday (literally hadn’t heard of it before, although she’s conservative and has been around for a while). I think it was linked in an email. Tracy Beanz, for UncoverDC,  is responding to the Jeff Bezos op-ed. When Bezos says, “Something we are doing is clearly not working,” Beanz responds,

Yes. Let me tell you what it is. You’re lying to people, continuously, over and over again, every single day. And people, given that they have ways to get information now that are not you, are figuring it out. They don’t want to be propagandized anymore. They don’t want to be spoken down to anymore. They want the truth of what’s going on in the world around them so that they can make informed decisions.

What you’re doing wrong is that you became a fifth branch of the intelligence community for the United States government, and it’s the intelligence community that has been weaponized against the people of America in favor of, I guess you could call it, a globalized campaign to destabilize this country from within. And you, unbeknownst to you or not—and I cannot imagine how you couldn’t realize it, unless you were that retarded (excuse my French)—have just gone along with it hook, line, and sinker. And for a long while it worked. It stopped working at around 2015. And the snowball has just continued to roll down that hill since then.

She’s right about the lying. Is her assessment of the media being an intelligence arm of the US government? I’m not sure that’s how I would word it—intelligence arm. It is definitely a propaganda tool of the US government—or more precisely, of the global elite cabal that currently runs the US government: the sea beast.

It caught my attention that she says this all stopped working around 2015. She may be right. I had been thinking 2020, when the COVID shenanigans, on top of the election shenanigans, were just too obvious to ignore. But maybe it was even earlier, once we all got on the Internet. 

Anyway, there’s more evidence of the doom loop underway.

 

The Times and Tucker

A week before the election, Tucker Carlson (among others) received an inquiry from the New York Times, essentially asking him to be shamed into admitting he is at fault for not agreeing with the propaganda beast’s narrative. I got this from Tom Woods’s daily email, which even improves upon Tucker’s response, so I’ve included his before and after comments.

Tom Woods: Evidently a number of right-of-center influencers, including Tucker Carlson, just received a very similar ominous note from the New York Times.

I want to share that note, along with Carlson’s response, because it is an important lesson in how an institution like the Times is to be handled.

 

Tom Woods: So a week before the election, the Times is colluding with the crazies at Media Matters to try to shut down dissident voices.

Carlson's response was exactly right. Do not engage with these people as if they are acting in good faith, or in the hope that if you're reasonable and forthcoming, they have to treat you fairly. They don't have to do anything.

More people are going to see Carlson's response than will see the New York Times hit piece. (This is why they hate the Internet.)

Indeed, they hate the internet; it is so hard to control all of us with our varied voices and opinions. And they prefer control.

Almost daily, Dan Bongino says (I’m paraphrasing), “No matter how much you hate the media, you don’t hate them enough.” Hate is a strong word—for individual people. It is not too strong a word to use for the propaganda beast—an entity made up of many weak humans unwilling to stand for truth, but willing to lie for power, prestige, influence, or something else the dragon knows is their weakness.

 

Other Signals

As the Axios piece points out, there’s an election the media is focused on. What an inconvenient time for the media not to have the force it used to have. Granted, there’s not much for them to work with. The whole “Trump is Hitler” thing just isn’t working—because, as you might surmise by now, the media is lying about that along with everything else they lie about.

In fact, they’re so predictable at their lies, that the Babylon Bee made it a meme back in July (see above).  

This doesn’t stop them from doubling down on what’s not working.

And for some reason the media elites can’t seem to grasp, people don’t like being called racists and Nazis (all 100,000 New Yorkers who were inside and outside of the Madison Square Garden Trump rally), deplorables (that was Hillary, shortly before she lost), and garbage (Biden this week about all Trump supporters).

from the Madison Square Garden rally, top, pro-Israel and
pro-American, whom they call Nazis, compared to a Harris rally, bottom,
with Palestinian flag, but no pro-American anything; image from a Facebook story;
original source appears to be @naz_hashem and drsheilanazarian

One of the tools bringing down this propaganda beast has been mocking and meme-smithing. The Babylon Bee could be considered cultural heroes. But there are many unsung warriors. They took what were intended to be campaign-killing moments and turned them into inspiring images.

There was the iconic mugshot—representing Trump as the target to keep them from getting to the rest of us. There was the iconic “Fight! Fight! Fight!” right after Trump was shot, when they only grazed his ear, instead of leaving us without a candidate (their wish; whether it was planned with the assassin or not). Then came that happy few minutes of Trump working at McDonald’s, mocking Kamala for claiming she had worked there as a teen, although there’s no evidence she ever did. Then, after Biden called all of us “garbage,” Trump showed up as a garbage collector. Separately, any these makes a pretty iconic meme. Together, they show the power of images—something the opposition just can’t seem to muster this season.

collage found on Tom Glass's Facebook

"A campaign is snapshots and soundbites"—another Dan Bongino quote.

The Harris/Walz campaign has the full power of the propaganda beast at their disposal. But they can’t manage anything but humiliating snapshots and soundbites. The Trump team occasionally just takes clips of Kamala speaking, without editing, and adds simply, “I’m Donald Trump, and I approve this message.” The more we hear her, the less likely we are to vote for her.

Meanwhile, Trump and Vance come up with more positive snapshots and soundbites every day.

There’s some delight in seeing the “doom loop,” or death spiral, of the propaganda beast—it’s failure to create the illusion of power for the evil cabal—timed for this point in history, just before the election. After years of feeling oppressed, this feels hopeful.

That doesn’t mean I can predict the election outcome. My sense is that Trump could win, and maybe win big. But the evil cabal will cheat. We must win so big—and so widespread across the electoral college map—that they can’t cover the gap.

And then, what about when they protest, possibly even violently, against us “garbage” patriots? I don’t know. But, if I’m right and the propaganda beast is losing its power, then it will no longer be able to create the illusion that the sea beast (evil cabal) has power. Babylon falls in an our (Revelation 18:10, 17, 19). That’s how the story goes in Revelation. Those beasts are defeated. After all we can do, Christ the King—whom Kamala blithely declared not welcome at her rally last week; you should look for Him at the Trump rally—yes, Jesus Christ the Redeemer comes in and fights our battles.

That’s how the story ends. I do not know for certain where we are in the story. I only know that the sea beast may be beyond its reign over us, and it looks like that supporting propaganda beast is losing its voice. That may make them seem more fierce, temporarily. We shall see. We live in interesting times.

Censor, Indict, Execute

Tucker Carlson, in his December 18, 2023, podcast, talked with Seth Dillion, head of The Babylon Bee, a parody news site, with a subtitle, "Fake News You Can Trust." I love The Bee. They’re not only funny; they’re also, sometimes accidentally, more accurate than the mainstream news. It’s especially funny when they get fact checked, as though the story were real—because reality is so bizarre, it’s hard to exaggerate enough to satirize it.

The Babylon Bee's front-page headlines online today (January 18, 2024)

The Bee got taken down from Twitter, shortly before Elon Musk bought the company. They had responded to the real news of biological male Rachel Levine being named the Time Magazine Woman of the Year, by naming this biological male the “Man of the Year.” This was considered hate speech, and a violation of community standards by Twitter. It was, in fact, an incentive for Elon Musk to make the purchase and make an effort to restore freedom of speech.

The Babylon Bee's tweet image, found here

In their discussion, Dillon and Carlson were talking about who you’re allowed to criticize or mock, and who you’re not. Dillon was mainly talking about comedy, and then speakers on college campuses. And then Tucker got a little more serious.

SD: It has nothing to do with being offended. This whole thing, you know, the hypersensitive, the people getting up in comedians’ faces, or charging the stage to slap them in the face if they make a joke they don’t like, the, you know, “Don’t bring your speaker to our campus, because we need a safe space here, and this will offend people.” They’re not— It’s all fake outrage. Because they’ve learned that fake outrage can be used as a tool to bludgeon you into silence and submission.

TC: That’s exactly right. If they would censor you, they would kill you. Period. You don’t censor a peer, another citizen, another human being. You censor your slaves. You censor someone you consider less than human. So, if censorship doesn’t work, they’d indict you. If that doesn’t work, they would kill you. It’s just a very obvious continuum.

Tucker makes a strong point here. They think of you as lesser, not worth respecting. And if you are interfering with their agenda in some way, they think they are justified in eliminating the interference.

We’ve seen it before.

I recently reread a youth novel, Echo, by Pam Muñoz Ryan (in preparation for my private book club with my grandson). The story is divided into three distinct segments. The first takes place in pre-WWII Germany. A boy, Friedrich, lives with his father, who is taken by the Nazis to a hard labor camp, because he has the wrong ideas. He is a musician and has invited longtime musician friends to form a chamber string ensemble. One is a Jew. Another is a Nazi, it turns out. He refuses to play until the Jew is expelled. Friedrich’s father tries to point out that music is their shared interest; can’t they let their differences go? But the Nazi refuses, and turns in Friedrich’s father as a Jew lover. That is enough to get one “cancelled” in that culture.

Friedrich has an older sister, who had been away at nursing school. During that absence, she has become totally loyal to the state. It’s hard to determine if those are her deeply held beliefs, or beliefs she has adapted out of expediency and necessity to advance in her career. But it becomes impossible for the family to speak or write anything to her that might show their former disagreement. She does take some risk later to help rescue her father (with a bribe), so maybe she wasn’t totally brainwashed.

While the book is fiction, it is based on a real time and place. The threats of silencing, indicting (using the law to incarcerate), and even execution were very real.

 

Seth Dillon, of The Babylon Bee, talks with Tucker Carlson
screenshot from here

Tucker and Dillon spend some time talking about the direction of power. The silencing of someone for hate speech is presented as someone bullying the marginalized, or with less power. You’re only allowed to punch up. Punching down is not fair, or moral. So those in power use this assumption against people; it’s their way of wielding power. We’re supposed to think of someone like Rachel Levine, who went through private schooling and a privileged life, who holds one of the highest positions of power in the government as US Assistant Secretary for Health, as someone downtrodden and marginalized. That’s hard to stomach. Such a person—with all that power—does something that is supposed to make all the difference: present themselves as the gender they biologically are not. And if we object, or even laugh, that power hammers down on us.

As Tucker and Dillon point out in their conversation, someone who can have someone cancelled for making a joke about them or criticizing them in any way is the person with the power.

Here is an off-the-top-of-my-head list (likely incomplete) of the groups, people, or ideas that you’re not allowed to mock or criticize:

·        Trans people (people who present as a gender not aligned with their biology)

·        Homosexuals

·        Blacks

·        Marxists (for example, Black Lives Matter)

·        Elites (by education, money, fame, or government authority)

·        Muslims

·        Palestinians

·        Obamas

·        Bidens

·        Clintons

·        Feminists

·        Pro-Abortionists

·        Medical experts aligned with Big Pharma

The elites deciding on this list and cancelling people for not aligning with their agenda are not the marginalized; they are the power-mongering tyrants.

Here’s the list of people they give permission to marginalize:

·        Christians (particularly Catholics and Latter-day Saints, who believe they have divine authority)

·        Jews

·        Conservatives

·        Constitutionalists

·        Trump and Trump voters/supporters

·        Whites

·        Males

·        Asians

·        Large families (probably 3+ children)

·        Stay-at-home mothers

·        Parents who speak up at school board meetings

·        Pro-lifers

·        COVID skeptics

·        Vaccine hesitant

·        Election Integrity concerned

You get the idea.

Back in 2015 I wrote about the many ways the Obama administration had labeled people like me as domestic extremists. Apparently being a good citizen is extreme. I think the label now is not just extremist, but domestic terrorist, thus the many SWAT raids on harmless citizens. 

Seth Dillon admits that, truthfully, he would prefer Twitter prison to real prison any day. But they did make a sacrifice as a company. They could have deleted the Tweet and been reinstated. But Dillon said he didn’t think they should have to. It was an admission that they had been hateful and in violation—when a great many haters and evil people are allowed to stay on the platform. It was wrong to give in. But it was, clearly, not a good business decision. Twitter had been a source for a lot of their traffic, and that was lost.

They have soldiered on, which I appreciate. I get them in my inbox, and never spent much time on Twitter (pretty much only to find Tucker Carlson), so I actually see more of them than ever. Add to that their sister publication, Not the Bee, which shares news so ludicrous you can’t believe it’s not satire.

We need to stand up and speak truth. The hope is, if enough of us stand up to the censorious tyrants, they will not be able to silence us all. If we can defeat them at the censoring stage—before they move on more than they already have to the indicting/imprisoning stage—then maybe we can altogether prevent the execution stage.

Misdirection from the Larger Story, Part I

Instead of impeachment hearings Wednesday, I watched the third in a series of Glenn Beck specials on the larger background of Ukrainian corruption—and the even larger background of worldwide power mongering. They relate tangentially.

Glenn Beck's interactive chalkboard on Ukraine corruption
image from here

Before I left for the day and tuned out all news until evening, I heard just a bit of the opening statements from the open impeachment hearings. Chairman Adam Schiff’s comments were what you would expect from him by now, if you’re paying attention. He was followed by Republican Devin Nunes, who laid out the Democrats’ pattern of behavior, leading to the conclusion that this is just the next in a long series of attempts to overthrow the vote of the people in electing President Trump.

And then Congressman Jim Jordan asked when we could expect to see scheduled the opportunity to question the whistleblower: 

Reps. Adam Schiff (left) and Jim Jordan
screenshot from here

Jordan: Do you anticipate when we might vote on when we will be able to have the whistleblower in front of us? Something that you— Of the 435 members of Congress, you are the only member who knows who that individual is, and your staff is the only staff of any member of Congress who’s had a chance to talk with that individual. We would like that opportunity. When might that happen in this proceeding today?

Schiff: First, as the gentleman knows, that’s a false statement. I do not know the identity of the whistleblower, and I’m determined to make sure that identity is protected.

As Schiff (not a gentleman) knows, his statement is false. He does know the identity of the whistleblower. 

Back in September, Schiff says, “We have not heard directly from the whistleblower. We would like to.” 

Then, on October 2, the New York Times reveals that Schiff or staff (and are we to believe his staff would handle this entirely without his knowledge?) was apprised of the whistleblower’s story days ahead of the filing of that report. 

In tweets House Minority Whip Steve Scalise points out that Schiff had blatantly lied back in September. And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says, “Schiff lied. The question is why?” So, to “clarify,” a committee member claims Schiff had supposedly meant the Intelligence Committee members as a whole, including Schiff personally, perhaps, had not heard directly from the whistleblower. Right [sarcastic tone].

Are we to believe that his staff had no other contact with the whistleblower? Didn’t direct him on how to file, where to file, how to word the statement? And also never mentioned it to their boss, Chairman Schiff? They only mentioned that there was a whistleblower, some individual with a second-hand story of a phonecall, and their boss doesn’t say, “What do we know about this person so that we can gauge whether they are credible?” No questions about the whistleblower’s possible motivations or connections? He just directs them, “Go ahead with your work. Don’t tell me anything”?

I’m picturing one of those movie scenes where a high ranking official shows up somewhere to direct a CIA operative, gives instructions, and then says, “And remember, I was never here.” Cliché.

We do know, unofficially, who the whistleblower is. This includes, I presume, Congressman Jordan, who asked the question. It was called an open secret in media circles for weeks. Some sites started using the name in early October. I heard it from The Blaze and The Daily Wire at least three weeks ago.

The name is Eric Ciaramella. He was a holdover in the National Security Council from the Obama administration, kept on because of his expertise on Ukraine issues, but was fired in 2017 for leaks, after which he returned to the CIA. (The NSC leaking sharply decreased, coincidentally.)

And note, for the record, that there’s a complaint that the transcript of the president’s phonecall in question was made classified, which was a supposed extraordinary action, because there was something nefarious to hide, Schiff implies. But such phonecalls were, as a matter of course, made classified—a change in protocol that had already been in place for a long time, in an attempt to prevent leaks. In other words, the protocol was set in place long before the phonecall—because of the behavior of Ciaramella and possibly others.

Ciaramella’s history also included working directly under James Clapper, and working with Joe Biden at the time when the Obama administration made Biden the “point man” on Ukraine (see Ukraine corruption story here). Ciaramella worked with CIA Director (until January 2017) John Brennan, and he was of course a registered Democrat. He worked directly with DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa, who instigated digging up false dirt to put into the dossier used for the faulty FISA application to get permission to wiretap Trump. Remember that?

If you were looking for a Deep State operative—not a head guy, just a functionary in such a meta-organization—this is the guy.

Schiff had insisted the whistleblower’s story was necessary and important—until just five days after Glenn Beck’s first chalkboard special on Ukrainian corruption. Then suddenly we didn’t need to hear from him, and his identity must be protected at all costs. Odd timing. Unless they suddenly realized someone was onto them.

Tween from Turning Point USA's Benny Johnson
from page 236 of the transcript of US Ambassador
to Ukraine's testimony. Image found here.

And then there were the transcripts of the closed-door impeachment hearings a couple of weeks ago. Schiff’s staff accidentally failed to redact the name of the whistleblower when a witness was questioned about knowing him. Oops. 

The point here is that, if you’re starting off the hearings with someone who blatantly lies to the American people, and the truth shows that there are nefarious reasons for lying about something as simple as having had contact with the whistleblower whose testimony the whole circus is supposedly based on—well, then, you know there’s no truth to be gotten from these hearings.

The Babylon Bee, the parody news site that accidentally becomes
your best source of news, illustrates the impeachment circus.
image from here

While we’re talking the hearings, let’s add a dash of humor. A friend made a link to the REO Speedwagon song “Take It on the Run,” which starts out “I heard it from a friend who / heard it from a friend who / heard it from another …” and suggested this should be the theme song for these hearings.

And then today, in the satirical news parody Andrew Klavan does at the beginning of his podcast, he says,

Eager to get off to a powerful start that would bring forward their best anti-Trump testimony, Democrats introduced their star witness: Alexa, the electronic information assistant from Amazon. Committee Chairman Adam Googly-eyes Schiff started the questioning saying, (quote) “Alexa, did the President demand a quid pro quo from Ukraine?” (unquote).

Alexa answered, (quote) “A man passing the White House Tuesday overheard a guard in the sidewalk booth speaking on the phone to his mother and saying he had met a janitor who said he was cleaning an office in the West Wing when he saw an assistant to an aide in the press department texting a disgruntled former employee of the State Department who said he was willing to bet that old meany Trump would do anything to bring down Joe Biden, who will be a terrific threat to him in the 2020 election, if he can ever complete an English sentence without his teeth falling out and his eye exploding. That text was recorded by Facebook, who was spying on everyone and recorded by myself, who’s spying on Facebook, which is how I know Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself” (unquote).

Regarding the sources of information—all supposedly better than the actual transcript of the phonecall in question, which President Trump made public the day after the whistleblower’s report made news—that isn’t too much of an exaggeration.

We haven’t even gotten to the actual meat, the bigger background. And we are still learning about that, even though the media is conveniently—what’s the term magician’s use?—misdirecting by pretending the impeachment hearings are about protecting the American people from Trump’s supposed wrongdoing. Even though the media is doing their part in Schiff’s show, there’s a plausible reason for Deep State actors to want to hide what Ukraine corruption was really about. The Biden scandal was only a small speck in the overall picture.

But, just so I get it said, even if President Trump had asked for investigation into the Bidens’ possible corruption, wasn’t that in both the interest of Ukraine and the US to know? Would we want to have people possibly voting for a former VP, who was up to the wazoo in corruption, without knowing the facts? 

There’s never been an accusation that Trump asked for made-up information about Biden, only that he wanted an investigation into things that Biden himself had bragged about doing. Was he supposed to say, “Investigate all the corruption you can, because we want Ukraine to go forward with your new presidency having rooted that all out—except, you know, it would have bad optics if you stumbled across corruption by former VP Joe Biden, since he’s currently a candidate; so don’t follow any of those leads”? No. Even if Trump’s inquiries had been only about Biden’s actual corruption, there was nothing there that wouldn’t be in the interest of the US voting public to know.

And it wasn’t only about that relatively minor part of the overall corruption.

The larger Ukrainian corruption—and the even larger worldwide power-mongering—are what interest me much more than the impeachment hearings. But it took this much just to get past the preliminaries of the hearing, so this will require a part II.

Savage Culture Shift

It appears to me the side of evil is trying to one up each other. Last week New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo rejoiced that the state legislature had passed a bill for abortion up until birth.

Not to be left behind, the next day the Vermont legislature announced a state constitutional amendment to make abortion up until birth a right.

This week Virginia made the news when Governor Ralph Northam said infanticide is a right to privacy issue for the woman.

Earlier today, Andrew Klavan started his podcast talking about the shifting culture. He showed an election map from back in the 70s of Nixon winning reelection by an overwhelming majority; only Massachusetts and DC went for the Democrat. Then he showed a photo of some dope smoking hippies. There weren’t so many of them. Just a small part of the population, really.

Screenshots from Andrew Klavan's program

But now, if you were to ask who won, it would be that small minority. They changed the culture to want free sex without consequences, drugs without stigma, foul language, and a general coarsening of the culture. Klavan even pointed out that his not wearing a tie on his show is a result of their win. It wasn’t about numbers. It was about influencing the culture.

Further into his podcast, he was talking about the abortion bill in Virginia that got a lot of attention yesterday. It didn’t pass at this time (thank you Virginia Republicans). But there is video of the bill's proponent, Democrat Kathy Tran, giving testimony, and being pressed to answer what finally becomes clear: abortion would be accepted for essentially any reason (the mental health of the mother under too much stress) right up to the moment of birth, well beyond viability, and even during labor.

Then, to clarify, the Virginia’s governor did a radio interview. And he certainly did clarify—in a way that is beyond shocking. He calmly describes what would happen in the case of a completed birth in which the mother didn’t want the baby, maybe because of a disability or deformity. The baby would be made comfortable, and then doctors and the mother would discuss what should be done about whether to care for the baby or let it die. Or perhaps actively hasten the death of the baby (i.e., murder). He seemed mystified that there should be any upset about something that he thought should be a decision between the mother and the doctors.

Screenshot from here

The mainstream media did not cover the issue. At all. Fox News, however, did cover it. One part of that referred to a Maris poll (which I referenced the other day) showing that only 15% support unrestricted abortion at any time during pregnancy, while 74% want some kind of restrictions: in cases of rape, incest, life of mother, or first trimester, or possibly up to 20 weeks (when pain is known to be felt).

Here’s the transcript of this two-and-a-half-minute segment of Andrew Klavan:

Very few people support third trimester…. What he was talking about was infanticide. He said the baby could be born, and if they decide--  I’m only laughing because it’s so nuts. If you don’t laugh, you cry. I mean, he’s basically saying you could leave it there to die.

What I’m telling you is it doesn’t matter what the polls say. It doesn’t matter what the polls say. He has moved the Overton Window to where a governor of a state can talk about legalized murder, and people just say fine. [He had mentioned that the 3 main news networks were silent on it.]

I know so many liberals, and they all say the same thing. Whenever I talk about the radicalism in the Democrat party, the liberals all say, “Well, most of my friends don’t agree with that.” It doesn’t matter. It’s not how many people. It’s where they are, and what they do, and how they change the culture.

And whether you speak up. Because, if you’re sitting there going, “Well, I don’t agree with that, but I’m voting for him. I’m voting for him, because, you know, that’s radical, so he won’t get away with that,” then you just made that acceptable. If you vote for a guy like that—in fact if you vote for his party, as far as I’m concerned—you have made that statement acceptable. It is all right, if all the doctors agree, and the mother agrees—and men don’t get a say, because what have they got to do with humanity?—it’s all right to leave that baby to die.

If you vote for that, if that’s acceptable talk to you, if you’re not outraged, you’re part of the movement of the culture in that direction. It does not matter whether you agree or disagree. It doesn’t matter what the polls say. It matters that you allow that atmosphere, like poison, like miasma, to seep into the culture.

And people breathe it in, and the next generation of people sitting here will go, “You know, the majority didn’t want to be killing children, but somehow here we are all killing children. I killed mine, but it was different; I disagreed with it. I thought it was wrong.”

You know, it’s just in the same way I don’t wear a tie. You know, in the old days of course I would’ve been wearing a tie, but the 60s culture won. It’s—  Even I use a lot more foul language than I think is right, because the 60s culture won. The culture is dominant. It dominates everything.

What has the culture been doing? I’m not sure I can tell. I had hoped that the growing evidence that a fetus is a growing human baby, made more and more obvious as technology improves, would persuade more. And it does seem to.

And yet, simultaneously, the small minority of the pro-infanticide crowd gets more brazen.

Back in 2013 there was a Salon piece in which a woman admits that, yes, the growing fetus is a human life. But then add, “So what?” (I wrote about it here.)

There’s a story from several years ago, out of Melbourne, Australia, describing a debate over allowing “after-birth abortion,” or killing of a baby after it is born, if that is the mother’s “choice.”

Even earlier, 2011, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva wrote a piece in the Journal of Medical Ethics, inventing the term “after-birth abortion,” trying to change the emphasis from the Dutch guidelines: “infants with a hopeless prognosis who experience what parents and medical experts deem to be unbearable suffering”, instead proposing “‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice.” In other words, let’s ignore any caring feelings about the infant and shift the emphasis to the mother’s choices about her quality of life.

In 2015, Princeton bioethics professor Peter Singer declared that infanticide wasn’t necessarily wrong; he’d been saying this for years, but in 2015 disability activists started a petition calling for his resignation. Here’s Singer’s logic:

Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents.

Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life support—which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection—but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely.

Notice the shift away from acknowledging will to live of the infant (which is evident even in utero). Change the recognition of the baby’s human right to life, and pretend the baby is subhuman, without even a noticeable will to live. Then consider only the convenience or inconvenience to the mother. And then, with the attention shifted there, simply snuff out the life of the baby. Actively. That means to poison, stab, suffocate. To murder.

Yesterday a sitting governor declared, with apparent calm rationality, that killing a baby after it is born ought to be just as acceptable as before it is born, and no mainstream media found that remarkable. Since we know, from ultrasounds, that the baby is just as alive before birth, why should birth make a difference? If you’re not horrified by that, then you need to ask what cultural shift you’ve already succumbed to.

Another good story from the Babylon Bee

At what point does an infant become fully human? Well, that depends, according to these “experts.” On something vague, such as developing a “sense of their own existence over time.” How do you measure that? Do they have to develop language in order for you to measure it? Are you talking months, or years? At what point is a child safe from its parent’s murderous wishes?

The dehumanization that leads to genocide is something we ought to recognize from the last century. If there was an error the Germans made, it was not speaking up, loudly and clearly, to prevent the atrocities from happening.

We must stand up and loudly declare that killing babies is wrong. After birth, or before birth. As a wise elephant once said, “A person’s a person no matter how small.”

Compassion and Clarity

Some people have a gift for humor, which is helpful during trying times. So I’m starting today’s post with some headlines from the Babylon Bee, which has been on a tear since the New York pro-abortion law passed last week. (Their articles are worth reading, in addition to the headlines.)

Ultrasound Unable To Detect Heartbeat In New York State Legislators

January 24th, 2019

New York To Be SuckedOut Of Nation With Vacuum

January 24th, 2019

Report: More Unborn Babies In New York Identifying As Convicted Criminals So They Can't Legally Be Executed

January 25th, 2019

Demon Lord Clearly Visible In New York Senate Chamber Applauding Legalization Of Abortion Until Moment Of Birth

January 23rd, 2019

Thank you, Babylon Bee, for doing the hard job of telling the truth through satire, even when it’s hard to distinguish satire from reality in these troubling times.

I want to additionally address some misunderstandings about what a late-term abortion is, what its purpose is, and why it might be done.

There was a post of a friend, who was concerned that we anti-choice people (i.e., pro-life people) might be making life harder for some women who are actually facing the heart-wrenching decision of a late-term pregnancy termination.

I believe my friend is compassionate. Many of the respondents were too—on both sides. I want to highlight two: one from each side.

One is the story (linked by a commenter) of a Mormon mom, who tells her story. She was at 22 weeks with twins, in the same amniotic sac. One died. That meant the possibility of sepsis for the mother, if the dead fetus was not expelled. But that couldn’t be done without also expelling the live twin, since they shared the same amniotic sac. The live baby had spina bifida and was unlikely to survive long beyond birth. So, for the sake of the mother’s life (she had several other children to raise), they did a C-section, delivering both the dead fetus and the live baby with the severe anomaly. The live baby lived only a short time, as expected.

For those of you who understand Latter-day Saints, this mother conferred with her bishop, who supported her decision and told her to do whatever she needed to in order to protect her health. And he sorrowed with her and her husband over the loss of one child and the impending loss of the second.

The mother was labeling this a late-term abortion, and the implication is that this is the kind of situation the New York law was making room for.

But that is not the case.

First, it was not an abortion; it was an emergency C-section, including the live birth of a child unable to live long thereafter.

Second, there has not been, either before or after Roe v. Wade, any law that would have forced this woman to die rather than risk shortening the life of the live twin. In this, as in almost all cases in which the mother’s life is at stake, the baby’s life is also at stake. So, unless the mother insists that doctors prioritize the life of the baby, doctors will protect her life and the life of the baby, as two patients, doing what they can for both.

The mother’s complaint was that there was an ethics board at the hospital, ruling on her decision, and that was very upsetting to her. But my belief is, they weren’t debating whether to overrule her decision; they were working to see what could and should be done for the live baby, in addition to saving the mother. They would have asked questions about timing, and whether anything more could be done for the live baby.

What would an abortion, rather than emergency C-section, have been? The live child would have been injected with a killing drug—such as is used in a lethal injection execution—and, after death, would have been delivered vaginally. That would entail a couple of days for dilation drugs to take effect. It could include crushing the skull of the child while still in the womb, since the head is the largest baby part needing to pass through the birth canal. In another method, called partial birth abortion, rather than injecting the baby for pre-killing, they partially birth the baby, feet first, and then, while the head is still inside, use scissors or other sharp instrument to stab the baby’s skull, killing the baby before birth is completed.

This woman’s C-section shouldn’t be used to support late-term abortion—because that isn’t what it was. It was an emergency delivery. A regular OB/GYN surgeon performed it, even if that doctor would never perform an abortion.

The pro-life side in the online comment thread was offered by an experienced OB/GYN nurse (originating here): 

If there is an emergency situation during the second or third trimester, the mother is rushed to the hospital where she is immediately hooked to a monitor. Her belly (the baby) is also strapped to a monitor. Vitals for BOTH MOTHER AND BABY are done. Meds are pushed. Exams are completed. Blood drawn. Contractions monitored. We have TWO patients.

If there is a true emergency (high blood pressure due to pregnancy, for example) doctors will in fact end the pregnancy to save the mother. It is called an EMERGENCY C-SECTION. The baby is out- maybe very early, but the baby is out- and cared for. The pregnancy has ended and Mom can be cared for. Isn't that the so-called point of why pro-choicers advocate for abortion? That they need to be able to "terminate the pregnancy to save the life of the mother"? Well, here ya go. Emergencies ending in c-sections, ending the pregnancy and saving the mother, happen all the time.

You know what doesn't happen all the time? As in, like, never? An emergency abortion. There is NO SUCH THING. Never in the 9 years while working in a large hospital, often in the ER, did I hear the words, "Quick! Get me forceps and suction! This woman needs an emergency abortion STAT!" Why did I never hear these words? Because emergency abortions don't exist.

Since the New York decision, doctors have been weighing in.

Dr. Omar L. Hamada: “I want to clear something up so that there is absolutely no doubt. I’m a board certified OB/GYN who has delivered over 2,500 babies. There’s not a single fetal or maternal condition that requires third trimester abortion. Not one. Delivery, yes. Abortion, no.”

Dr. David McKnight: “It appears that the state of New York has legislated that an unborn baby can now be killed at term…. As a board-certified practicing OB/GYN physician for over 30 years, I need to say publicly and unequivocally, that there is NEVER a medical reason to kill a baby at term. When complications of pregnancy endanger a mother’s life, we sometimes must deliver the baby early, but it is ALWAYS with the intent of doing whatever we can to do it safely for the baby too…. God help us.”

Dr. Alan E. Smith: “[A]s I read this law would allow abortion past what we call the threshold of viability, generally thought to be 23-24 weeks and inching ever downward. If I see a woman at 36 weeks gestation with preeclampsia her life could be at significant risk. But her baby also has a 99% chance of surviving outside the womb.”

Dr. Monique Ruberu (in video): “I guarantee you there is no reason ever, to save the life of the mother, in the third trimester that would necessitate the killing of a child. You just deliver the child, and allow the child to live, and you save the life of the mother.”

And more. Dr.  William Lile also recorded his expert view as a video. I tried embedding it here, but was unable. However, the link is here.

Another thing my compassionate friend said was that late-term abortions are very VERY rare. Unfortunately, that isn’t so either. While it’s a relatively small percentage of total abortions (1.3% overall), it’s as high as 15-17% of abortions in some states. There were 8,296 abortions performed after 21 weeks in 2015, or about 251 for each of the 330 abortion providers willing to perform them. While that is low compared to the overall number of abortions, that’s still a lot. For comparison, about 5000 babies are born with Down Syndrome in the US each year; about 25% of families are affected. So half again more is not particularly rare.

The more common reasons for late-term abortions are birth defects. As in the story above, if the baby can’t survive long after birth, that may still be a cause for heartache. But progress has been made; many defects that used to cause death no longer do. Surgeries, blood transfusions, and other treatments can be performed in utero. This includes successful surgery for spina bifida.

This sweet little friend just took her first steps.

Not everyone sees things the same, but I know what it meant to hold a child who would only live a short while; I valued that time. I wouldn’t have given it up in some misguided attempt to spare myself or the baby some possible pain.

Down Syndrome is a common birth defect in babies being aborted. But those of us who know people with Down Syndrome see that it is not a cause for death; it may even be a cause for rejoicing. These children tend to be happy and loving, and bring great joy to the people around them. With therapy and care, they can grow to become productive adults, with a life expectancy of 60 years. Yet around 67% of Down Syndrome diagnoses lead to abortions—sometimes in the third trimester, because testing can take that long.

Do bad things happen late in pregnancies? Sometimes. Do we need to have compassion for women who face those bad things? Of course. Do we show actual compassion when we conflate an emergency C-section with a late-term abortion? No. One is civilized. One is not.

We people who value life are already compassionate to women facing those bad things. Killing a baby—when that is never necessary to save the life of the mother—is not showing compassion. It is devaluing life. And when the life of the most innocent and vulnerable is devalued, that devalues the life of each of us. Compassionate people value life.