The Ship Isn’t Going to Sink After All

I don’t expect this to be read by many people who need to hear this, but things are not as bad as you fear. Watch and wait. You’ll see. If you’re not ready to hear this yet, OK; maybe we’ll come back to it when you’re ready. I’ll just leave it here.

The ship will not sink after all.

I’m talking to those who aren’t celebrating after last week’s election—or maybe I’m talking to those who care about those who are not celebrating.

Here are a couple of examples. This first one, I like the person who posted. I think she’s a good mom and generally a good person. But I do not engage her on political issues. She reports having this uncomfortable conversation—which she believes should not be something she should have ever had to anticipate, let alone face—with her tween-age daughter. She assured her daughter that she and her husband would keep the children safe. They didn’t need to worry about the outcome of an election. The daughter then said, “Well, they don’t like childless cat ladies. I NEVER want to have kids, and I like cats. So, I guess they don’t want me here [in America]. And if they don’t want me here, fine—I will leave.”

This mom says they do not speak of politics around the house. The girl picked it up, essentially, from the milieu. The mom explains this burden “we” have put on her and her daughter, and ends with, “The coming generations will hold us accountable for what we do today, and if we are conveying that they don’t matter, that they cannot have a voice or live their lives in the abundantly free country many of us grew up in, they will abandon a country that their parents and grandparents forced them to suffocate in.”

By comparison to others, this was relatively mild. For example,

meme found on a Facebook here

I’m OK with history judging me on this vote, by the way, since I have neither those lacks nor those bad character traits.

And this one:

[Someone at] church told me my son would be deported, because he was born when I lived overseas, and that I’d be deported with him [4 laugh/crying emojis] all because [someone on TV] ran her mouth about nonsense. These oldhead liberals at church crack me up.

One more: This is from a HuffPost article called, “My Husband and His Family Voted for Trump, So I’m Canceling Thanksgiving and Christmas,” which then goes on to explain to the husband,

I am sorry about the holidays, but I cannot bite my tongue like I did with Hillary. I don’t want to disrespect your parents or your brother and his family in their home, or our home, so it’s best this way. No scenes. You can go see them. Seriously—I will not be in a room of 15 people who voted for Trump.

What a relief for the other 15 people!

We are not dealing with rational people right now. Just for clarity, J.D. Vance never said we should deport, or ignore, or “cancel” childless cat ladies; he said people with no children, and therefore no stake in the future of the country, should not be overrepresented in leadership positions. And he said it as an offhand remark in 2021 in an interview with Tucker Carlson. (Read more at your trusted NPR source here). It got dredged up by the Harris campaign, and taken out of context, to foment anger, which apparently worked on the demographic they aimed for—those who were already voting for her. The milieu in my home would not have caused such distress on a pre-teen girl, but then, our milieu is really very different—the sources for news, entertainment, conversation topics, etc. I think I wouldn’t have started the conversation with, “Don’t worry about the outcome of the election; we’ll protect you,” and then blamed the rest of us for the daughter’s distress.

As for the church person telling a US citizen that they’d be deported along with their child for allowing their child to be born while they were temporarily living outside US boundaries is so laughably ill-informed, I almost shouldn’t dignify it with the explanation, but children born to US citizens are considered US citizens, regardless of where they are born. Otherwise, you couldn’t get service members in their child-bearing years to live abroad with their families. Nor would ambassadors or even US workers in international companies. So, “oldhead liberals at church,” get a grip.

We—the majority of the country who are Trump voters—are, for the sake of love of country and our fellow Americans, being patient during this mourning process. We have been in that place of overwhelming loss, with a great deal more good reason.

Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, screenshot from here

Bret Weinstein and wife Heather Heying did a thoughtful podcast a few days after the election.  They come from a liberal background—up until “the science” was so obviously wrong, in 2020 and beyond concerning the pandemic, that they felt they had to speak up. And for that, even though she had been voted favorite professor at Evergreen College in the northwest, they were both fired for speaking the truth about actual data. So, yes, they were red pilled, and in this election strongly supported Trump. But they also remain close to a sizable number of people who cling to the left (bitter clingers?)

Bret Weinstein uses a metaphor of a ship that is being badly captained, in such a way that the ship is going to go down, along with everyone aboard. So there’s an honorable mutiny—the capable sailors come forward and restrain the captain and take over. There are also sailors who do not mutiny, who stay loyal to the captain no matter what. They’re angry with those who stepped in and changed the sails and set the ship aright. In fact, they insist the captain is saving them and these sailors stepping up to make the necessary changes are going to kill them all. Those angry ones are wrong, but they will nevertheless benefit from the lifesaving actions of those who took over.

Metaphors always have limits. The American voters are not mutineers nor insurrectionists; they abided by the law and used their vote for a peaceful transition of power. There is, nevertheless, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who insist these pro-American voters are killing democracy and inflicting us all with fascism. But they are wrong, fortunately.

Weinstein offers a main point, which maybe will help us move forward: we all want the ship to stay afloat.

I think the irony of the moment is you have something like half the population convinced that something terrible has just happened. And that half the population, I think, does not appreciate that, actually, the terrible thing was already well underway. We were living under what was at least a turnkey totalitarian state in which, actually, the key had begun to be turned, and we had all sorts of examples of political prisoners, of lawfare being wielded, people being disenfranchised, borders being open for cynical reasons that we can't know, the costs were accumulating for the insane captain's perspective on how the civilization—or the ship, in this case—was to be run.

And so, at some level, the fact that you believe that something terrible has happened in this mutiny doesn't mean your life wasn't just saved by the mutineers. You may not get that. But we should all be able to agree that we are bound together, and that what we need is for the ship to be well governed. And what we disagree over is which of these prospects was the terrifying one.

I may disagree with him slightly here; I think there are some, in power positions, who were rooting for the malaise and eventual demise of our beloved constitutional republic—for the ship to sink, as it were. But most of the people have been what Stalin (or was it Lenin?) called “useful idiots.” They believe what they’re told by the tyrannical state, without question, and they act accordingly.

I continue to puzzle over why they believe what they’re told, without questioning. They even seem to see a different reality from actual, provable reality. Some of it must be the sources they use for information. In fact, that must be a lot of it. But some of it must be choosing to believe what they believe, against the evidence.

As Mark Twain said, “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

I am, of course, working under the assumption that reality as I see it is close to the actual reality. I aim for that, anyway.

A day or so before the election, Chris Martenson put out a short Peak Prosperity video. He began with a clip of Oprah saying, “We don't get to sit this one out. If we don't show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”

Chris Martenson, upper right, shows clip of Oprah,
screenshot from here

Martenson then said, “I agree. Just, we have— It's just amazing how fundamentally different we are.” We thought it was entirely possible that, had Harris won, the totalitarian state would have moved so far down, we might never have seen a way out of the tyranny. Seriously. Martenson pointed out that this administration oversaw shadow banning and actual banning, censorship—so much that it filtered down to regular people on Facebook. (My BIL had his post taken down when he told his own personal experience with COVID and the eventual treatment—which included hydroxychloroquine. Several Facebook friends had posts removed and were put on some sort of time out or probation they call Facebook jail. Many of us, including me, had those ubiquitous misinformation warnings placed under our posts.)

In the Weinstein video, they put out some of what we faced. A January 2022 report shows what people from the two parties believed should happen:

·        Find/identify the unvaxxed.

o   20% REP             55% DEM

·        Unvaccinated should be locked in homes.

o   20% REP             60% DEM

·        Unvaccinated should be sent to quarantine camps

o   20% REP (way too high)               40% DEM

·        Take children from unvaccinated parents.

o   Near 0% REP                    30% DEM

·        Imprison critics of the vaccine.

o   10% REP             50% DEM

This is not to say these things happened in the US; they didn’t. But Democrats wanted them to at much higher rates than Republicans. There were, however, actual CDC plans to carry them out. The day Weinstein and Heying recorded the video, they noticed a piece by Jeffrey Tucker, of the Brownstone Institute, saying that the CDC had plans built for quarantine camps, which plans remained on the CDC site until 2023. Tucker says this was called “interim operational considerations for implementing the shielding approach to prevent COVID-19 infections in humanitarian settings,” in case you didn’t get terrified enough by this year’s Halloween.

The Blaze put out a piece in their Lifestyle section called “Every Lie They Told You about Trump: A Brief Overview.”  It’s way too brief to touch on “every lie,” but I’ll let you explore that one on your own.

Tom Woods, in his email from Thursday (November 14), quoted Dave Smith, who reminds us of this story from eight years ago:

The US intelligence agencies framed the sitting US President for treason. They all knew that Donald Trump wasn’t involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, but they lied.

Well, that President is back AND the boss of the Intelligence agencies is now, not only someone completely outside of that conspiracy, but someone who was slandered with that same accusation, by the same nasty woman whose campaign came up with the whole Trump frame job to begin with.

It turns out there are people who should fear a Trump presidency—not because he’ll be a tyrannical dictator; clearly they weren’t afraid of tyranny (or "loss of our democracy," as they put it), as long as they were the tyrants. But they should fear that Trump will hold them legally and lawfully accountable for their actions. They will call any such legal actions the political retributions of an authoritarian dictator, but the myriad of Trump voters know what it really is.

Weinstein brought back the ship analogy an hour further into the podcast. It had taken some bravery to stand up publicly as they had, along with many others. He says,

If we had failed, we would have been made to walk the plank, and the ship would have gone down somewhat later. There was no escape. And this is why I think so many people took what they at least perceived to be such risks with their own personal well-being, was that we didn't have a choice, right? We really believed—and I still believe—that the other outcome was utterly intolerable, and that this was probably our last shot to gain control of the helm and steer the ship back on a reasonable course.

But I was imagining the ship, if the other outcome had happened, the ship would go down, and a lot of people would be scratching their heads at the last moments as to whether the mutineers might have been onto something, which is a—that's a terrible screenplay I don't want to live.

The Constitution had been hanging by a thread. The repair is going to feel kind of severe and crazy for a while. Coming to know the truth will help with the healing; it really will.

image from a Christian Homestead video

I put a new book on my reading list: Political Ponerology: The Science of Evi, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism. In a recommendation of this book, David Solway, for PJ Media says, 

In effect, you cannot change a mind that was never properly formed or classically educated or a mind devoid of any vestige of common sense or practical smarts. A coalition of conservative thinkers and ordinary working families constitutes a winning combination.

For those who eventually find your way here at a time when you have become open to it, I suggest adding a full list of conservative thinkers to your content providers. Check out Epoch Times, The Blaze, The Daily Wire, PJ Media, Tucker Carlson—just for starters. And check out free Hillsdale courses, particularly Constitution 101. And then have some open-minded discussions with those 15 people who voted for Trump who are at your holiday table (maybe you’ll be ready for this step next year). Maybe you will unlearn some of the untruths that have been making you so panicked/angry/over-emotional, miserable, and miserable to be around.

And, once you’re ready to add some levity back into your life, use the Babylon Bee as your news source; while they are a satire site, they do hit on the truth more accurately than the sources that led you astray before. And if you don’t understand the satire, well, that will put you on a journey toward truth too.

image from a Babylon Bee story on Facebook

One more Weinstein quote, about how the rest of us are feeling right now:

I just want to try to just capture the fact that something took place that I think all of the people, whose names you know, who took a risk on this were feeling, simultaneously, the day after, and it was not vitriolic; it was not angry; it was not any of the things that you might imagine; it was this feeling of “I can't believe that I feel hopeful. And I can't remember how long I've been living under this feeling of pressure, that we cannot afford to lose, because we are in the bullseye.”

I’m sorry there are people feeling lost and afraid the ship is sinking. But it’s not. And those of us who had witnessed the peril, we just feel so relieved. And we’re ready to help right the ship and sail forward.

Bonus: three lists (with some repetition) of progress in President-elect Trump's first week:

found on Facebook, here

 A facebook story, original credited to
@the_typical_liberal and dc_draino

found on Facebook here

Cataclysmic and Calamitous Times

Lately, every time I set out to write about something deeper and principle-based, I get distracted by the crazy news. I’ll try to tie this into something eternal in the end.

The cataclysmic news this week includes—well, let’s start with a massive hurricane.

Hurricane Helene, image from here

 

Hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene, which hit the Florida panhandle as a category 4 storm a week ago, caused widespread devastation across 10-12 states. Some areas had 30 inches of rain—much of it before the storm actually arrived, so mudslides were a common outcome. The death toll is still unknown; compared to catastrophes in some third-world countries, deaths are low, but there are still a lot of missing people, maybe thousands. This may be the most devastating storm since Katrina. (I believe Hurricane Harvey was as devasting, with more than 50 inches of rain, as the storm stalled over Houston for days, but it was milder once it moved on to other areas.)

A bridge out near Ashville, North Carolina,
photo from here.

Communications, roads, water, and electricity are out—some of this may be long-term. Pack mules are being used to bring in supplies, which I thought was fascinating. If we ever get stuck in a pre-industrial situation, there are pack mules. This was probably common a century and a half ago, but now I see it as a rare and inventive solution.

Pack mule teams to the rescue,
image found here.

Churches (here’s one story; here’s another) and individuals are working together to bring relief. Glenn Beck talks about the Hillbilly Airforce (similar to the Cajun Navy, citizen volunteers from Louisiana that helped us out in Houston with Hurricane Harvey), in this story:

·        "What Glenn saw while helping hurricane victims in Asheville SHOCKED him” October 4, 2024.

He was there helping organize airlifting people in need. Government tried to shut them down. The people, who had organized themselves and found people with helicopters to come and volunteer, told the government guys, since they weren’t there to help, to get out of the way: “Get off our land!”

Glenn saw one FEMA truck, behind a building. The US Rep. he was with went with him to talk to them. It was a communications truck. The workers were sitting around playing cards or something, doing nothing. Glenn said almost nothing, to avoid lighting into them. There are government resources at military bases as close as North Carolina. Meanwhile, Kamala continues fundraising and avoiding media appearances, while the so-called president “commands forces” from a beach in Delaware.

FEMA has instituted a priority system, based on DEI dogma. A poor white Appalachian child cannot be prioritized over a suburban black, because of, you know, privilege.

Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity starts off a brief video with, “Welcome to the quickening.” Maybe that refers to how fast news is coming at us, or maybe it’s an end times reference. But he, as I am doing, will talk about several big news stories: the hurricane and lack of response, the port strike (which I mention below), and the unrest on the Israel/Lebanon border. This 10-minute segment is limited to the hurricane and response:

·      “Hurricane Helene and Government Inaction, Israel Invades, and Free Speech Under Attack” Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity, October 2, 2024.       

In the absence of true reporting and government distrust, there are some conspiracy theories about attempts at weather control—that either went awry or went as planned, not sure. I have no idea what may be true. I mention it, but I’ll need more information to become a believer. But I know enough not to put it past this current government regime.

Anyone who still trusts government—and turns to government as their substitute for God—may need an experience like this to wake up. Some note that, besides helping one another, the only place to turn is to God, and that is happening.

There’s another named storm, Kirk, out in the Atlantic. A fearmongering press suggested it might take the same trajectory as Helene. But my weather app shows it much further east (Helene came up from the Gulf in the south) and heading eastward; it may be possible that it will hit the UK or France, but it’s definitely not going to hit the east coast of the US. Still, it is not a storm you’d want to meet out on the waters.

 

Iran Attack on Israel

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Israel’s new year and high holy days season—which starts on a new moon, and also happened to coincide with an annular eclipse—Iran attacked Israel with a barrage of 180 missiles. (Iran claims it was over 200.) Most of the missiles were intercepted. A few hit in central Israel. Mostly administrative buildings were damaged, and some homes received shrapnel damage.

There were no deaths. A few people were treated with shrapnel wounds, mostly minor. Whatever else you might say, that outcome seems miraculous. As in biblically miraculous. There’s the prophecy of the two prophets raised up to Israel in the last days, who, according to Revelation 11:4-5:

“they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days [1260 days, or 3 ½ years] clothed in sackcloth….and if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.”

I don’t yet see the two witnesses. But it sure looks like someone is protecting Israel, so, if it’s them, we’re probably somewhere within those 1260 days.

Basic info is in this BBC News piece:

·       “What we know about Iran's missile attack on Israel” David Gritten, Matt Murphy, and Patrick Jackson, BBC News, October 3, 2024. 

 

Earthquake in Tonga

There was a 6.8 earthquake in Tonga on October 2. I’ve seen very little news concerning it. (There is a story here.) I’m remembering the 6.8 earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1989, just two months after we moved away from there. The Bay Bridge collapsed. Roads and rails were torn up, and there was widespread devastation. That’s a very big quake.

image from here

Fortunately, this quake in the island nation of Tonga was about 6 miles deep and did not cause a tsunami. The nearby islands felt the shock but did not suffer a great deal of damage.

But if you want to worry some more about earthquakes, there’s this story:

·       “Record spike in earthquakes around Washington's 'high threat' volcano” Ellyn Lapointe, Daily Mail, October 4, 2024. 

 

Vice Presidential Debate

There was a vice-presidential debate Tuesday night, October 1. “Catastrophe” is a word you might use, depending on which side you were on. J. D. Vance comported himself well, looked presidential and in control—dispelling the media lies about him being “weird” or unreasonable and angry. Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, looked like a wild-eyed and/or befuddled Elmer Fudd. Take just about any screenshot the entire debate. 

J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, VP debate,
random screenshot taken from a clip shown by Dan Bongino 

He badly fumbled such questions as why he claimed to be in Tiananmen Square during the riots when he was not there until months later—adding that to the list of stolen valor-type lies. He said something to the effect that his people know and understand him, and he’s sometimes a knucklehead. That’s really doesn’t explain why you would invent a story to give yourself credit for some particular experience that you didn’t have. The whole rest of the world has not gone, “Tiananmen Square, now was I there at that time when the government mowed down civilians in the street? I can’t quite remember.” Tim Walz is unique. In a bad way.

Another fumble—and this was a misspeak he didn’t seem to be aware of—was trying to explain his change from supporting the 2^nd Amendment to wanting gun control. He intended, I think, to refer to a conversation he had with parents of Sandy Hook victims, but he said he changed after talking to the shooters. Oops.

He was in the unenviable position of trying to explain why Kamala Harris would suddenly do everything right once elected—and be an agent of change—when she’s had the power to effect those changes for three and a half years so far. So, for him, and that side of the ballot, you could call the night memorably catastrophic.

 

Port Workers Strike

The hurricane aftermath, with roads wiped out and bridges collapsed, is going to cause some shipping problems. Quartz and lithium mines, necessary for making computer chips, are inaccessible for the foreseeable future. And people are going to prioritize getting food, water, and fuel. So the timing could hardly be better for a longshoreman strike all along the east coast, and even including the Port of Houston here. As I was writing, word came that they had settled for a sizable pay increase, or maybe have paused the strike until January.

Ports under threat of closure,
image found on Facebook.

Even with only a few days of buildup in the ports, the ripple effect could still take weeks to work back toward normal. The big concern for the overall economy was, if it lasted for as long as a couple of weeks, we could be feeling the effects on through Christmas, with even early orders not making it in time. This would have had a substantial impact on businesses, many of which plan on making a large percentage of their annual sales during the Christmas holiday season.

 

Avoiding Prophesied Calamities

A prophetic scripture came to mind: Doctrine & Covenants 88:87-91: 

87 For not many days hence and the earth shall tremble and reel to and fro as a drunken man; and the sun shall hide his face, and shall refuse to give light; and the moon shall be bathed in blood; and the stars shall become exceedingly angry, and shall cast themselves down as a fig that falleth from off a fig tree.

88 And after your testimony cometh wrath and indignation upon the people.

89 For after your testimony cometh the testimony of earthquakes, that shall cause groanings in the midst of her, and men shall fall upon the ground and shall not be able to stand.

90 And also cometh the testimony of the voice of thunderings, and the voice of lightnings, and the voice of tempests, and the voice of the waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds.

91 And all things shall be in commotion; and surely, men’s hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people.

 Brigham Young put it this way: 

When the testimony of the Elders ceases to be given, and the Lord says to them, “Come home; I will now preach my own sermons to the nations of the earth,” all you now know can scarcely be called a preface to the sermon that will be preached with fire and sword, tempests, earthquakes, hail, rain, thunders and lightnings, and fearful destruction. What matters the destruction of a few railway cars? You will hear of magnificent cities, now idolized by the people, sinking in the earth, entombing the inhabitants. The sea will heave itself beyond its bounds, engulfing mighty cities. Famine will spread over the nations and nation will rise up against nation, kingdom against kingdom and states against states, in our own country and in foreign lands; and they will destroy each other, caring not for the blood and lives of their neighbors, of their families, or for their own lives (Discourses of Brigham Young, 111–12).

Dan Bongino has a T-shirt he sells that says, “Is it bad enough yet?” Some people read about apocalyptic times and think it is all going to be much worse than what we have seen, as if to say, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” And, granted, the book of Revelation, among others, looks pretty scary in places. But for people in North Carolina and Tennessee right now, without roads, electricity, food supply, or communications, seeing entire cities wiped out by flood and mud, unable to reach loved ones to find out if one another has survived—for these people this is probably bad enough.

In Houston in 2017, with biblical downpours of rain, watching boats go up and down the water-filled streets to rescue people, we thought that was probably bad enough.

People in war-torn countries probably think what they’re facing is bad enough. People caught in human trafficking (more human slavery now than at any time when it was considered legal and acceptable, which included most of human history) probably think this is bad enough.

I thought things were bad enough in the 1990s, but then I was surprised by the 2000s. I was certain things were bad enough in the 2010s. Then 2020 came, when we began playing apocalypse bingo as we read the news.

A meme I saw in May 2020; I don't know the original source.

While it’s true we are often blessed in our personal lives, going on with things—as they did in the days of Noah, right up until it began to rain—that doesn’t mean the prophesied pouring out of desolations isn’t happening somewhere else in the world. And, because of our communications, we’re likely to hear about these things, wherever they happen.

Another prophecy warning outcome caught my attention this week. This is the next-to-last paragraph of The Family: A Proclamation to the World:

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

There is a way to forfend the foretold calamities; it is to strengthen personal families, and to strengthen the concept of Family within our communities. We should “promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society” (final paragraph of the Family Proclamation).

This is not to say that all those negatively affected by the hurricane and other catastrophes in the news have failed to support their families and Family in general. Some of the outpouring of desolations will rain down upon the just and the unjust. But, as God “preaches His own sermons to the nations of the earth,” He is saying, “Turn to Me.” If government has been your god, you can see what a puny, powerless god it is in such times. If you’ve been depending on your own strength and control, that doesn’t stand up well to the power of nature and Nature’s God.

A starting place is to honor family, to keep commitments to those we are closest to in love. And we support that for others as well. This may lead to the essential place: honoring God, through His Son Jesus Christ.

I recommend a couple of video conversations from this week, toward this end:

·       “General Relief Society President - Family Proclamation, 'Family Is The Doctrine Of Christ'” September 29, 2024  Greg Matson, CWIC Media, September 29, 2024. He repeats the point from of former general Relief Society President: to be anti-family is to be anti-Christ.

·        Stu Does America, September 26, 2024. Stu Burgiere talks with Ryan T. Anderson about the post Dobbs world of abortion. Anderson, with the benefit of much research on top of seeking moral ways of living, points out that people in general favor abortion in just three circumstances: when the life of the mother is at stake, as a result of rape or incest—and when it’s their personal situation (their own or their child’s). It’s that last one that is the problem. We need a people moral enough to prevent such circumstances whenever possible, and to face them when they show up even after all you could do.     

So, the way to avoid prophesied calamities is simple, if not easy: Turn to Christ, and share Him—by example and word—with your immediate family. And then share Him with your extended family, friends, and community. People who do that will get through these times. People who don’t have no such promise.

 

Rhetorically Speaking

Rhetoric is, in essence, the skillful use of language. I’ve taught rhetoric; it was called basic writing. I use rhetoric here. It is using language for clarity and possibly also for persuasion, sometimes for beauty. Usually rhetoric is considered written speech, although a pre-written speech that is then spoken aloud might also be called rhetoric. By definition, it does not normally mean just speech.

If you didn’t know the definition, you would think rhetoric is a hateful thing. It’s lies. It’s malinformation, or something. It can be dangerous, or hateful, or racist, or anything that some ideology might be—and if it isn’t your ideology, then it must be terribly bad.

Ironically, those who are doing the blame game, accusing others of using dangerous rhetoric, are using that type of “rhetoric” for those negative purposes. And it’s almost always spoken remarks, not necessarily prepared or pre-written, although tweets and memes are definitely part of the mix.

While we’re defining words, let’s look at the word stochastic. This is a word I only became familiar with in the past year or so. I looked up the meaning in my 40-year-old dictionary; it comes at a page turn, so I won’t show a photo:

Sto-chas-tic

1.      Of, pertaining to, or arising from chance; involving probability; random.

2.      Math. Designating a process having an infinite progression of jointly distributed random variables.

It wasn’t in use in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary. Current online dictionaries define it essentially the same way as above. And Wikipedia lists various fields in which it is used—all with the meaning of randomness or many variables.

But it began to be used quite recently in the phrase “stochastic terrorism.” Random terrorism? Meaning random targets? Causing random terror, rather than planned? No, not really. It has meant, “Your rhetoric (spoken language) is causing people to be violent, to become domestic terrorists.” That’s quite a stretch for the usage of the word. It’s also quite a stretch to think that rhetoric (spoken language) causes violence.

And, even more ironically, it is used to accuse—not those saying the violent things, but those being accused by them.

Spoiler alert: I do not believe in stochastic terrorism. And I do not believe in blaming rhetoric (or spoken language) for someone’s evil acts.

Can language lead people to do evil? Certainly. But to blame someone for inciting such evil, or such violence, the language would have to be direct, such as: “Join our cause. If you believe as we do, take action. We are planning an attack at midnight this Thursday. Meet with us at the gas station on the corner at 9:00 PM that night to get your assignments and weaponry. You might be killed, but not before you take out plenty of others.”

I wouldn’t really call that rhetoric. I would call that incitement. The person doing the speaking, though, wouldn’t be criminally guilty for the speaking—but for the planning and carrying out (or facilitating others in the carrying out) of the violence. Someone speaking those words, on a soapbox in a park, but being ignored as a crank by every passerby would not be guilty for speaking the words. The incitement charge would have to be from connecting with other human beings and persuading them—as part of an evil cabal—to carry out evil acts.

The ones currently complaining about dangerous, hateful rhetoric—and sometimes calling those things stochastic terrorism—are doing what we call projection. They are doing the things they are accusing their enemies of. And this is in tandem with two (known) assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the main target of their hateful speech.

The assassin from September 15, Ryan Routh (who is still alive and in custody; more below), put out a tweet using the phrase “democracy is on the ballot.” Dan Bongino shared a supercut (video collection of short clips) done, I think, by Bulldog Media, on his program September 17. I used screenshots to make a collage or two.

This first one has the anti-Trump media using that same “democracy is on the ballot” phrase—so maybe you could assume the assassin got it from somewhere.

There were several more clips; I missed a couple that specifically used the phrase “stochastic terrorism,” not in response to the things being said by all these sources, but by Donald Trump—for things he didn’t actually say, such as “white supremacists are good people,” or threatening a “bloodbath” if he didn’t win the election, rather than what he actually said, which was a warning for the beleaguered auto industry if Biden (now Harris) were to continue the administration’s harmful policies. Anyway, here’s another set, in which the speakers call Trump a threat to democracy or some such accusation (ironically from people supporting a candidate who was placed on the ballot, rather than being voted on), and even go so far as to say he has to be eliminated:

Dan Bongino also showed a list. It looked much like one I first saw on a Peak Prosperity video after the September 15 assassination attempt. But I find there is no overlap. Eventually I found the source to be the Trump/Vance campaign website news. The list is long, so I used five screenshots. You might note that this is all “hateful rhetoric” coming at, not from, the MAGA side. The list coming from the MAGA side so far seems to be limited to the Charlottesville lie, the J6 lie, and the bloodbath lie. If there were a shocking amount of hateful statements coming from the MAGA side, wouldn't they list the actual ones, rather than those easily debunked lies?

J.D. Vance had this response (passed along by The Blaze):

from this article on The Blaze

Still, like I said, these spoken words, as vile as they are, as unacceptable in a civilized society as they are, do not cause violence. Additionally, as if we have to say it, speech itself is not violence. We have free speech, which includes allowing vile, ugly things to be said. We have many non-violent ways to respond to that kind of speech—preferably always including speaking more truth.

Along those lines, Guy Benson has had a good response to some of these rhetorical attacks, in an article, here. He included photos of a couple of tweets:

There are more such tweets—in the category of victim blaming:

This was also included in the Guy Benson article

composite image from this Newsweek article

Fortunately, we have a “news” organization skilled in the use of rhetoric—in the form of humor, satire, parody. Thank you, Babylon Bee, for possibly keeping us sane:

from The Babylon Bee

 

from The Babylon Bee

 

Since I do not believe rhetoric—as bad as these hateful words have been—caused either of the assassins to do what they’ve done, why did they do those things?

Hatred and evil are real. Also, we are fighting against powers of darkness. Fortunately, light always wins out over darkness.

OK. But that’s rather vague. I have suspicions of some specifics. I am gathering from others more skilled in such investigations. But we can, at this point, put forth some theories, mainly to show what should be investigated, to then provide the proof we think can and should be found.

I do not believe either of these assassins just woke up one day and decided on their own to assassinate President Trump. I think—and evidence is tending toward this belief—that someone, possibly Deep State actors, possibly within some government agency (or possibly an enemy government, although our own looks more likely) targeted these susceptible individuals and convinced them that their acts, while illegal, would be seen as heroic, because Trump in the presidency would definitely mean “the end of our democracy,” because he is “literally Hitler,” etc.

The “hateful rhetoric,” as listed above, would be part of the milieu, the background noise, that led to the belief that Trump was evil and ought to be stopped. But it had to be something more direct that incited these individuals to take the actions they did.

This article is from Just the News;
the original poll results are here

shared as a Facebook story,
source appears to be @mostly.peaceful.memes

 

The July 13 Assassin

Let’s start with the questions for the July 13 shooter, Crooks. There are many people thinking through the questions. I’ll be referring mainly to information from two. First, Dan Bongino, who spent 12 years as a Secret Service agent, assigned to protect presidents and other government officials, their families, or state visitors from other nations. He knows what should have happened, so he’s uniquely qualified to ask why protection didn’t happen.

The other main source is Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity. His channel isn’t always about such things, but he has a particular method of asking questions, eliminating extraneous theories when the evidence shows a different direction, and drawing conclusions when there’s enough evidence to do so.

I’m taking from multiple videos of both of them and may not always be able to point you to exact ones. Robert Gouveia also provided a lot of good examination of the evidence during the first couple of weeks when we were getting information. And certainly there were others. The longer I take to write this up, the more information comes out. So I don't expect the facts as we know them now to remain static. So this is a current snapshot of what I think we know.

Crooks was seen and identified as a suspicious person hours ahead of the shooting, and multiple times by multiple officers. But no officer ever went and encountered him. He had a scope—totally inappropriate in a crowd of people—unless you’re a shooter. He was able to use a drone (although the USSS had declined to use any, or said they couldn’t for some reason that is clearly not true). Both of these things could have led to the suspicion that Crooks was planning an attack—on the crowd or on the principal protectee.

Somehow Crooks was able to smuggle in a rifle. Maybe he had hidden it earlier; we don’t know. But it was his father’s rifle; the dad says his son had borrowed it that morning to go to the shooting range, which was a normal activity. So Crooks couldn’t have hidden it days before, only hours, at best.

And he was able to climb up onto the roof, with the rifle, and stand up and run across the building to get into place (that run is on video). This should have been heard by any officers stationed inside the building. He is seen by multiple people who were attending outside the event—unable to get into the venue, because of crowd size, but were able to hear from outside nearby. These witnesses called the assassin to the attention of various officers, and made video of the shooter on the roof.

Somehow, the officers stationed inside the building where they would have seen that roof happened to leave their posts at the critical time; we still don’t know why. Communications about the suspicious person, early on, and the critical information that he was on the roof just ahead of the shooting didn’t get to the detail protecting Trump, who would have kept him off the stage until the danger was dealt with. That didn’t happen.

The closer rooftop sniper team was located in such a way that they couldn’t see the shooter on the roof, because of a tree blocking their view. The second sniper team took out the shooter. Both teams were placed in such a way that they overlapped coverage area, rather than spreading out to cover more area. We still don’t know who made that decision and why.

The Secret Service cleaned off the roof (crime scene, where the assassin was shot and killed) on day three, which they don’t do. Someone local gets hired to do that—after all evidence has been gathered. Photos of the crime scene—I see why they might not be made available to the public, but they should have been available to any investigators, including congressional investigators. It was cleaned up very quickly. And we’re told to trust them.

Then, just days later, without telling investigators, the body was released and cremated. No further examination can be done. No one else can verify the official report. No one can do any additional toxicology testing. We’re just supposed to trust the official story.

The shooter was of an age that makes it essentially impossible that he didn’t have an online profile; he would have had to decide at age 12-14 that he would never use social media. That seems unlikely. But he seems to have been scrubbed from the internet.

We’re told he (or his computer?) was connected to three offshore accounts, and that he used various foreign encrypted communication apps. There could be reasonable explanations. But the simplest explanation is that he was paid in offshore accounts for doing the deed (whether he survived to receive it or his parents would), and that the recruiter also scrubbed his online profile ahead of time to keep investigators from finding connections. There were other connections, however, such as a visit from someone with a Washington, DC, phone that showed up in his vicinity shortly before the incident and then returned to a government agency building directly afterward. Who made this visit? Someone must know. There could be a reasonable explanation; the refusal to tell us what that might be leads to more speculation.

image shown in a Robert Gouveia video from July 23, 2024

We didn't mention the finding of a bomb or bomb materials in the perpetrator's vehicle, put together in a way that would have required some skill and practice—not to mention questions about getting the materials to put such a thing together.

Chris Martenson was giving near daily updates in July, as more info kept coming out. But additional information has been slow in coming. There are still questions, although they evolve any time there’s added info. But some of these questions--and the speculations they lead to--ought to be unnecessary, because they should have been answered nearly immediately back in July.

This week Josh Hawley came out with the Senate investigations current report, and Chuck Grassley also put out a letter.  Both talk about the stonewalling and refusal to answer the essential questions. Chris Martenson took the opportunity to cover these and give an update on what we know and what we still don't know.

This first image is from Senator Hawley's report:

from Senator Josh Hawley's report, screenshot from here

Martenson then puts together one of his summary lists. This one takes two slides to cover what we know about the shooter, local law enforcement, Secret Service, and FBI:

Screenshot from here

Screenshot from here

Dan Bongino is also careful to say what additional questions should be asked, rather than making accusations. But it looks, at the very least, to be a LIHOP situation (let it happen on purpose). It could be worse—a plan carried out by government Deep State actors. We don’t know. And the officials’ refusal to answer questions and allow a full investigation makes on-purpose look more likely.

If this was just a series of mistakes and extremely bad luck, we would see changes to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. But that is not what we see.

 

The September 15 Assassin

On Sunday, September 15, at the golf course four miles from Mar-a-Lago, Trump made an unplanned trip to play golf. The Secret Service was a couple of holes ahead, looking for danger. It happened that an agent spotted a gun barrel protruding from a chain link fence, spotted the assassin, who was wearing a pink shirt, and shot at him. The would-be assassin fled in a car (the car had stolen plates, but I think I heard he had borrowed it from his daughter in North Carolina).

Ryan Routh, attempted assassin of Donald Trump on September 15,
image from here

If the perpetrator had worn a ghillie suit or something less noticeable, or if the gun hadn't been protruding through the fence, the assassin could have gotten off a shot at close range. 

A nearby citizen saw the person run out of the bushes and take off in the car, and followed to get a photo of the car and the license, which they called in to police. The police were quickly able to apprehend the man, Ryan Routh, who is now in custody.

So, even though security should have been boosted, just two months later there is another near assassination. The location was a known vulnerability on that course; photographers frequently use that very spot to get paparazzi photos, because it’s so near the 6^th hole.

The assassin, we learned, had been in the spot for 12 hours, waiting for his opportunity. He was outside the fence, but along a busy road where he could have been spotted. This means there was not a sweep of the location prior to allowing the protectee to arrive.

The gun was first reported as an AK-47-style weapon with a scope. And AK-47 can’t have a scope. It was later learned what specifically it was. It was a type of weapon illegal in all 50 states. It would have needed to be obtained on the black market at sizable expense. Also, the assassin had a record of arrest for possession of a weapon of mass destruction; he would not have been able to buy any type of gun legally.

Routh lives in Hawaii. He had a failed roofing business. There is video of him in Ukraine two years ago, trying to volunteer to fight or otherwise help in that cause. He was then 56 with no military experience; they rejected him. But he then went on to try recruiting volunteer military, at something like $1200/month/person. He didn’t have money or income; he has a court-appointed attorney.

So there are money questions. How did he afford the trip to Ukraine. Although probably no one took the very low offer to be a volunteer soldier, he was saying he had $14,400/year for each recruit. Ten such recruits would have cost $144,000 a year—more than he made, apparently.

Then, how did he afford the trip to Florida from Hawaii. Even if he was visiting someone in North Carolina, he came at a time when the trip to the golf course wasn’t planned. Locals may have noticed that, anytime there’s a motorcade in that area, it might be because Trump was going golfing. But Routh wasn’t a native. And Trump has a very busy schedule. He was across the country just the day before. How did Routh just happen to show up in Florida on a day when Trump decided last minute to go golfing, and station himself in the location on that course best suited to get within a short-range shot of Trump, many hours ahead of any tell-tale motorcade?

It’s also odd that this man has had multiple encounters with the media. He’s shown on camera in Ukraine. And there are a couple of other instances. Why does this person get picked for media stories multiple times when most human beings never have such encounters?

The Behavior Panel went over his Ukraine videos, where he’s trying to answer the question to Ukraine officials, “What are you doing here?” He explains himself, and the panel agreed, he is a true believer. He thinks that he has identified the most worthy cause and is trying to take action. He seems to have delusions of himself as a hero.

If there were a type of person susceptible to being persuaded to carry out an assassination “to save democracy” from “literally Hitler,” he would be such a person.

We don’t know yet whether that happened, but we don’t know it didn’t. Dan Bongino thinks that he was intended to be another suicide-by-cop, but he bailed and fled, and he submitted passively was caught. So, depending on who interrogates him, there’s a chance we could learn something.

The money is an issue. Chris Martenson also brought this up.

Chris Martenson goes through questions about Routh's money,
screenshot from here

Routh had a very expensive illegal weapon. He prepared with ceramic tiles as body armor (I think he had them in backpacks hanging from the fence, which would have deflected bullets). He had the ability to fly around the world. Yet he had no funds of his own. He was on government radar, both for the odd media appearances and the arrest record. Somehow he knew where to be and when.

Those are a lot of coincidences for a guy who just woke up and decided suddenly to drive to the golf course near Trump’s home and shoot him when he got to the nearest hole.

shared as a Facebook story,
source appears to be @snowflake_news

I don’t think either of these assassins was a lone wolf who just decided to be a Trump assassin. I think they were recruited and incited to take these heinous actions.

One thing government officials have not been doing is using actual rhetoric—clear written or spoken words—to tell us the truth.