Monday, July 8, 2024

The Stakes Ch. 3-4 Notes: America at the Point of No Return by Michael Anton

 Chapter 3:


Neoliberalism

-American society is more unequal today then when the project started

-borders are unfortunate and unhelpful obstacles

-migration policies benefit finance and big business

-power resides with donors: banks, CEOs, financiers, and tech oligarchs  

-formal inequality before the law

-overlords aggressively promote “wokeness” that makes them seem superior moral 

-deserving of their wealth, power, and status 


Regime:

-mass immigration entirely transformed the electorate of the country

-ruling class explicitly misled the American people to bypass their consent to immigration reform

-environmental policies causing detrimental restrictions like farmers unable to irrigate their crops

-restricting gun rights 

-override the proper order of the consent of the people

-reinforcing assertion of superiority by the elites 

-rulers’ claim superior morality

-use virtuous rules with viciousness 

-want to take guns from law abiding citizens but not deal with illegal guns used by criminals



Legal System:

-fundamentally breaching of the separation of powers: 

*legislature is drafting  its own administrative laws

*executive enforces that law’

*judiciary tries, convicts, and sentences offenders under the guise of administrative hearings

*perversion of the separation of powers

-modern judges are “legislating from the bench”

-judges are making the law and inventing new “rights as they go 

-judges should not use their personal sense of morality 

****today judges should be loyal to the actual constitution and not be allowed to make laws or invent new rights

-judges are justifying policies that are obviously unconstitutional in the actual Constitution

Ex. ObamaCare is an individual mandate as a “tax” to declare as a law 

-judges are taking on executive powers 

-judges affirm that racial prohibits so change to affirm racial preference 

-use of jury that is prejudiced

-use of gag orders preventing the defense to speak out

-not using gag orders on prosecution so they are able to speak out

-ruling class break laws seen as “careless” with no legal ramifications

-opposing group seen as “negligent” deserving of jail time 

-ruling class benefits from unequal justice

-Obama and Soros both oppose to enforcing the laws 

-no consequences for disadvantages group members of a protected class 

-want to make upstanding citizens into felons 



Founders warned us:

-government to serve the people

-should be God, “we the people,” then government 

-Federal is limited over the states, but now it has flipped to federal taking over states powers

-Federal controls state money dictates what they can and cannot do holding federal money 

-Federal power imposing their will nationally

-government is inherently dangerous, so the less power it has the better

-Federal nationalizes elite agenda

**entitlement programs

**criminal justice systems

**”protected classes” = now legal to sexually abuse toddlers, mutilate children, overtake womens’ spaces 


Types of Corruption:

soft bribery

business donates to politician’s campaign in exchange for interests of politician

-government service is a path to wealth

-linkage between service and payment

Pay to play bribery:

-mass immigration makes rich richer 

-churches take money to preach for open borders

-mass immigration is a threat to the environment in exchange for $200 million from woke billionaire open the borders

-foreign governments give loads of cash to lobbyists in exchange for favors and influence


State & Local levels:

-contrived phony criminal investigation to justify the spying of citizens up to a presidential candidate

-FBI lied to judges in order to get warrants

-FBI lied to Congress and the American people

-Judges and Congress found out they lied causing the largest political scandal in American history

-powerful agencies in our government: the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, the entire intelligence community are all CORRUPT

-the Ruling class do not have to obey the law

-the Ruling class brag that they are the most powerful

-the Ruling class brag that they are the most secretive

-the Ruling class brag that they are uncountable agencies

-the Ruling class brag that they pursue private vengeance 

-the Ruling class brag they only serve their institutional interests

-the Courts are part of this corrupt system

-the Judges defend the interests of their allies = the government and the ruling class

***the institution is this brazen in lying to the public = Screw you; we rule


Meta-Corruption

The past:

-core purpose of government is to promote the common good

-build policies that benefit the whole citizenry

Today:

-government and elite institutions deny there is a common good 

-insist the purpose of government is identical with their own now sectarian interests


Electoral Manipulation:

-elections used to be the bedrock of our democracy

-today, there is outright voter fraud using ballot stuffing and ballot tossing

-manipulating the rules of voting so that Democrats always win

-elites do not want election integrity

-elites do not want people to show ID to vote to prove their identity

-elites push that voter ID rules are racist

-elites have used voting reforms to abuse the system 

-allowing for mail-in voting with not ID requirements

-allowing for children, felons, and illegals to vote

-challenging any and every measure that would increase security and integrity of our elections

-strategically placing in timed lawsuits  that force outcomes that can’t be achieved at the ballot


Ballot-Harvesting:

-practice of canvassing nursing homes, housing projects, and poor and immigrant neighborhoods with absentee ballots

-these ballots filled out and impossible to say the votes were truly the voter’s choices

-ballots that are filled out the wrong way get tossed before ever reaching the polling stations

-ballot harvesting ballots are filled out with assistance of people working on a specific campaign done in secret

-the harvester can throw out ones that don’t further the cause

ex . 2016, 1.4 millions harvested ballots were dropped off on Election day

-harvested ballots cannot clear as legitimate


Lefty public interest lawyers

-files every lawsuit that would make electoral fraud harder

-their aim is to ensure a Democratic victory

-late arriving box of Democratic ballots in the trunk of some activist’s car must be counted

-Democratic absentee ballot must be counted or called fraud

-Republican absentee ballot must be scrutinized and discarded for slightest irregularity

-Democrats call “voter suppression”  and “fraud” and “racism” if Republican wins over Democrat

-Elites want to take over the electoral process/electoral college


**Controlled opposition

“The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves” (Lenin).


Propaganda and Censorship:

***Meta-story = the “Narrative” or the message the elites want every American to accept unquestioningly 

-core elements: the Narrative, the Megaphone, the Muzzle

Narrative: 

-meet the ruling class exigencies in a given moment (tell the story the left wants you to tell and repeat so often that people begin to believe it to be true even if it is untrue)

Megaphone: 

-collection of instruments through which the Narrative is broadcast: newspapers, cable channels, streaming services, social media, aggregators, late-night talk shows, TV series and movies, the education system 

“Any institution whose primary purpose is the creation and/or dissemination of “content.” The word information “information” will not do as it implies underlying truth. “Content” by contrast can be, and very often is, entirely fake especially when it purports to be the truth.”

Muzzle:

-arm of censorship

-social media sites and banks de-platforming dissenters

-massive societal pressure to shun and even “cancel” wrong-thinkers

-there is no “ministry of truth” that sets the narrative


Analogy of social class

-ruling class are the producers

-academics are the writers

-senior politicians and deep-staters are the directors

-media personalities and other celebrities are the actors

-activists are the crew

-you and I are the captive audience 


The Narrative:

-Never explain, never apologize

-America is fundamentally and inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic, etc….

-the flaws and sins of America derive directly from those of its founding stock who are natural predators, inherently racist, and malevolent

-they never decline a chance at harm “people of color” unless prevented by force

-effort to atone for their “privilege "and those who do not are “deplorables”

-pushing leftist social policies that undermine deplorables and appeal to people of color

-policies do not jeopardize the ruling class’s  personal bottom line


Woke Capitalism:

-propaganda pushed by by corporations on topics that have nothing to do with their products

-woke propaganda is a way for the inner party to buy off those who might otherwise resent their student debt, dead-end job, or lack of any job at all 

Ex. relentlessly pushing “Pride Month” messaging throughout June (leftist mobs celebrated)


Divided Classes:

Distinction between deserving elites and deplorables can be maintained

**institutions are irredeemably infused with racism, which it posits as a kind of inexpugnable white original sin 

-white privilege is the villain

-paint the deplorables as the privileged 

-paint the deplorables as needing constant self-flagellation

-elites justify their position, wealth, and honors

-elites expertise that entitles them to rule

-Feudalism: you peasants would be dead without us to protect you, so we deserve our privilege

-prefer to target only deplorables explicitly anti-white

**The narrative is anti-white

-potential resentment an class hatred in other directions

-America to be irredeemably racist

-Ruling class in position of power, prominence, or wealth got there on talent alone and this deserves her status

**Don’t rail against the system; join it or reap the rewards 

Current Ruling Class:

-well chosen and obedient outsiders plucked from poverty and obscurity to demonstrate their rulers’ fairness, openness, and commitment to diversity

-white privilege is to blame for obvious injustices

Ex. 2020 deplorables were the truck drivers, plumbers, cops, nurses, teachers

-narrative is demonizing men and dividing men and women especially young men from young women


Education:

-all federal, state, and local power would be dedicated to crushing the scourge

-tighten the federal grip on our education system

-demonize young men, especially young white men 

-curriculum based on this morale-sucking, cohesion-destroying, incendiary calumny is now

Being adopted by school systems across the country


Transformation of the definition of “racism”:

“Long ago ‘racism’ was judging people by their race rather than by their moral qualities and talents, and/or harboring ill will toward an entire race, and/or believing that one race is somehow superior or inferior to another.”

-Now: only white people can be “racist; people of color, by definition, cannot


Megaphone: mass media

**press assumes for itself the mantle of sole arbiter of fact

“They’re all systematically biased by design; their real purpose is to push the Narrative and undermine, distort, or attack any corrections, refutations, or counterclaims.”

-only fact check truths to point out they are not truths

-essentially blunt force propaganda

-scream as loudly as possible

-assume non-trivial number of people will be brainwashed 

-attack the legitimacy of the nation

-attack our nation’s history, government, and its historic majority

**Domestic intellectual terrorism: old America must be destroyed for the new America to succeed

-will not back down even when it is immediately caught red-handed in a lie

-media never stop amplifying hate hoaxes and never apologizes when the hoaxes are inevitable revealed to have been phony, they refuse even to admit hate hoaxes are a phenomenon worthy of coverage

-push the narrative that serves ruling-class 

-society of emasculated liars is easy to control

“Purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.”

Ex. LIE-cutting taxes will lead to economic growth

-rewrite the conservative script ad certify their version

**Progressive imperative of redefining all political questions as ones with correct and incorrect answers

-they are the sole arbiters of truth

-bias doesn’t exist



Television

-role is to shorten, simplify, and amplify the message

-cable and social media ensure saturation coverage

-support the narrative that deplorables are both “in power” and predatorily racist

Ex. find any story that can be spun as “innocent lamb killed by racist white cop”


Muzzle: 

-only stories that fit the Narrative

-is “de-platforming”

-say the wrong thing on social media, have your account locked

-content silence people on Facebook or Twitter

-cancel the heretics: get them fired, cut off from the financial system, even denied medical care 

-denial toward those deemed racist, sexist, or homophobic

-indoctrinate workers on what can and can’t be said

-make clear the price of non-compliance

-public shaming of anyone who steps out of line 

-megaphone bad publicity 

-make people fearful of persona destruction

-make people fearful of social media mobs  


Paradox:

-double standard on certain kinds of speech

Ex. dismissing and confirming any Christian’s concerns about the effects of extending legal protections to homosexuality

-people of color preferential; end white dominance

Ex. the great replacement is a is false, but the truth is the democrats are forcing mass immigration to change America’s demographics

Goal

The left’s strategy is: any time anyone who is not “one of us” and doesn’t love our plan for them repeats what we say, destroy them. The rest can’t be allowed to get wise.” 

-threat level is the same

“White supremacists” are Islamophobic  who are racially motivated violent extremism

Vs.

Antifa is the most violent domestic terror group, but they serve the narrative of a good group fighting for freedom for people of color 

Ex. American flag sign of hatred & violence 

**Government has been transformed to favor institutions and elites 


Ruling Class/Armies:

Who rules? To What End?

-Founders Political philosophy: By the People

-In America the people are sovereign, and they are to exercise their sovereignty

“Promote the general welfare”

-the government are the peoples’ servants

-we the people had direct control throughout the election process 

-we the people had direct control of who they elected as representatives 

-the founders never directed for the need of a “ruling class”

-Jefferson to Adams letter outlined why America is not to have a “ruling class”

“Our ruling class flatters itself into thinking it is not a caste but a cadre of deserving “meritocrats”: “natural aristoi” whose “virtue and talents” entitle them to rule. What they are in reality is a smallish minority who rule in furtherance of their own private interests.”


Chapter 4:


Ruling Class:

***true-believing utopians, strive for the perfection of man on earth

***entitled ruling

-draw from different sectors with notions of human equality 

-removal of Christians and Jews belief it is God’s law

-Libertarians assert contempt for the country that gave them their freedoms

***If you understand wealth and birth = economic and social success (a narrow confined caste system)

-want to punish America for its alleged sins


Protected Class:

-choose who can be admitted into the “protected class”

-they take care of their own (money and power)

-choose who to deny 

-under guise of safety and diversity they expect those not in the “protected class” to give up their power 

-push for others not in “ruling class” socioeconomic and income distribution

-claim preservation of diversity, but used as divide the lower classes to slip in power of the “ruling class” to control over every diverse set of groups

***Intention to hold an iron grip on those economic, political, and cultural institutions

“ruling class” pipeline to feed and grow ultimate sources of ruling-class power and prestige 

**ruling class intend to set the cultural norms and increasing the agenda

-ruling class's goal to secure their power and wealth and need to increase it

“”To transform the United States into a deracinated economic administrative zone with one-size-fits-all rules


“The ruling class must keep the pedal to the floor with globalization, mass immigration, propaganda, political correctness, censorship, de-platforming, and all the other forms of personal enrichment, corruption, harassment, persecution, and unfairness endemic to their rule” (Anton, M;  pg. 181).