rixlibris

The word ‘truthiness’ coined by Stephen colbert (or not, the claim is disputed both by the Oxford English Dictionary and the Century Dictionary, each citing prior usage) has become a useful tool for understanding what has happened to our use of language over the past few years. Main Stream Media has become a bastion of truthiness.

Truthiness is defined as the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based solely on the feelings or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to any evidence, logic, intellectual examination or facts and can run the gamut from ignorant assertion of falsehoods to deliberate presentation of lies and/or propaganda intended to shape opinion

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty dunpty, “which is to be the master – that’s all.”

Humpty Dumpty believed that words were fluid, their meanings not fixed but malleable. If true that approach would render language incomprehensible. Taking that thought to its ultimate conclusion, a ten word sentence could consist of a single word repeated ten times, each iteration having a different meaning. For words to be meaningful they must have an individual, unique, mutually agreed upon interpretation.

In our ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ world words no longer mean what we originally intended them to mean. For many thousands of years ‘gender’ was determined by certain immutable characteristics such as external genitalia, the presence or absence of certain internal organs, chromosome count and the secretion of differing hormones to name but a few. Humanity was divided into two genders, male and female, and this designation served us well throughout history, until roughly the 1970’s. Since then an attempt to mollify a large and growing number of special interests has pushed us into a gender quagmire.

Currently there is a confirmation process taking place to appoint a new justice to the Supreme Court. The candidate was asked to define ‘woman’ and said that she couldn’t despite being a woman herself. How about simply responding, “among other factors a woman is a human being capable of producing an egg, having it fertilized and then develop within her body into a unique new human being.”

Until fairly recently gender dysphoria was defined by the medical community as ‘a form of mental illness treatable by counseling and medication.’ Now it is defined as ‘one of many normal conditions found in young people as they develop and mature that should be affirmed and in some cases assisted with counseling, medication and perhaps surgery.’ Advantage Truthiness.

The ‘China Virus’ was unleashed upon the world and everything about it, from inception to worldwide reaction and even into its waning days has been defined by truthiness. Not a shred or thread of sustainable truth is to be found anywhere in the Covid-19 narrative. And to this day no apologies or admissions of responsibility from any of the groups that benefited financially and politically from the tissue of lies purposely spread to keep the world captive to their machinations. Again Advantage Truthiness.

The entire Biden administration has been truthiness personified. I thought to share an example or two to illustrate truthiness but couldn’t think of a single thing done during this administration’s tenure that was based in truth, or on facts, to serve as a contrast. This entire presidential term is an example of truthiness in action. They have obfuscated, spun and lied about every official action taken since the swearing in and even that was a lie. Mr. Biden swore a sacred oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and he has clearly not done so.

Thank you Mr. Colbert for providing a one word description to encapsulate the totality of our government, the elite classes, Big Tech, Big Pharma, most institutes of higher learning, public school educators and state and local government in all of the blue and many of the red states.

We need a lot less truthiness and a lot more truth. We thank you for truthiness, now tell us how to get rid of it.

There is so much pure crap going on in today’s world that it is hard for even the most dedicated observer to keep up. War and rumors of war, inflation, shifts in the balance of power, deliberate action by political figures and their ruling classes to destroy their own systems of government, and these are just the highlights, a complete listing would easily fill this page.

Tune in to any news source, read any newspaper or current events magazine and you will be treated to journalists, pundits and ‘expert’ commentators explaining how complicated our world has become. They are wrong but they are paid to be the only ones to understand the reasons behind all the debacles, even when the complicated reasons do not actually exist. Simply put, they earn a living by overthinking in order to appear to have exclusive knowledge or expertise.

We would be better served if we were given the ‘Cliff Notes’ version of events rather than the embellished versions. The truth is that we are effectively a country without a Commander in Chief or Vice President, a situation that in ordinary times would be deemed a crisis. And in the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste, many diverse forces are attempting to further their agendas while the crisis lasts, all acting separately but at the same time. Any attempt to follow the threads by assigning some common denominator linking them all is doomed to failure. The only thing held in common is the sense of urgency to get their agendas fulfilled while this vacuum in leadership lasts. They all recognize the upcoming mid term elections and the 2024 presidential election as hard deadlines.

The fault does not lie with the individuals occupying this nation’s highest two offices. The titular President is not physically or mentally capable of governing and the Vice President is very far out of her depth. They are both useful idiots, chosen by their handlers specifically for their weaknesses. As far as skill levels are concerned the guy who fills the mouse costume at Disney World and any one of the ticket booth operators would have served as well.

The election of Donald J. Trump presented a unique challenge to the establishment. A patriotic pragmatist President who owed no allegiance to The Swamp as occupant of the Oval Office and therefore not controllable by any ‘normal’ corrupt means was a threat to the status quo as well as to the proponents of the New World order. During the four years of his presidency we witnessed the greatest show of bipartisan unity ever marshaled for a single goal, that of removing a duly elected president from office.

With Donald Trump out of the way the forces of corruption have run rampant, often stepping on each others toes whenever their agendas were at cross purposes. The last year has had all the decorum of a frat house food fight and now Vladimir Putin, emboldened by a rudderless America, up to its neck with domestic challenges, has begun his attempt to fulfill his fever dream of recreating the defunct Soviet Union by invading The Ukraine.

While Ukrainians, subject to the most despicable war crimes, fight valiantly to stop the invaders the rest of the world, lacking the leadership of a strong America, wrings its collective hands and offers what amounts to not more than lip service to those intrepid heroes of The Ukraine.

As for stopping Putin, don’t look to Biden for help. He is merely a tool and those manipulating him have, on one hand no desire to see Ukraine remain free of Russian dominance and on the other hand, as would any craftsman, they wish to protect their ‘tool’ from being damaged. It has been widely reported that the Biden Crime family has had many corrupt deals with Russian and with China. It would be beyond belief to think that their meetings and discussions were not fully documented in great detail.

Were it to their advantage Putin, and to a lesser degree Xi of China, would relish the the thought of exposing Biden if only to illustrate to the world the extent of corruption in America’s government and to serve as a warning to the many others that they have recorded during their clandestine dealings.

So let us not overthink the elements of our problem. The simple overview is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not in charge of the Administrative Branch of our government. Those who are behind the scenes, pulling their strings, are not in charge of The Swamp and The Swamp is not in charge of the Green New Deal zealots. No one in government is controlling Big Tech or Big Pharma and the laundry list of billionaire oligarchs are all ‘one eyed jacks,’ wild cards, both unpredictable and unaccountable.

There are now so many competing agendas and given the complete lack of unity within both major political parties, the entire farce known as government resembles the cluster copulation of a Garter Snake Mating Ball. The plus side is that as a whole the entire debacle in D.C. seems to be reaching critical mass and is destined to implode from the sheer unmanageability of its overreach.

The survival of the entire corrupt system was keyed to ‘Mordida,’ the little bite. Ironically the greed that fueled the system and is now accelerated by the approaching elections might prove to be its undoing.

Meanwhile, pray for the survival of The Ukraine

Vladimir Putin is at best, and at worst, a deluded would-be Imperialistic Tsar. He fancies himself to be in charge of a great and powerful nation engaged in an epic quest to restore its proper order of stolen glory. In reality he is nothing more than a tool in the hands of those producing and directing an epic drama titled, The Great Reset. Putin’s role is to assist in creating chaos in his corner of the stage to serve as misdirection for the sleight of hand occurring on center stage.

America’s role in this global improvisational audience participation farce is to design and commit as many forms of national suicide as possible. In this Barnum and Bailey world the old concept of a three ring circus has been replaced by an unlimited number of acts being simultaneously performed on an incalculable number of stages.

Let us begin with the oil industry. Under the previous administration America had obtained energy independence. Among the first acts of the current administration was the cancellation of all the effort that had given us that independence, making us dependent on foreign oil suppliers once again. Russia became one of our main oil suppliers but when they invaded the Ukraine they fell out of favor with America. We retaliated by ceasing all oil purchases from Russia but also decided to ignore the fact that we are sitting on the richest oil reserves on the planet and instead sought to purchase oil from nations that are no more friendly to us than is Russia.

By way of explanation (read that as spin) President Biden is told to say that the fault lies with the oil producers in as much as they have 9000 approved leases in hand and don’t need any more until they use those already approved. In this he is stating a fact. The oil producers counter with facts of their own. Not all leases are on land that will actually produce oil and quite a bit of effort has to go into determining which will be productive. Also it is necessary to gear up for production, incurring infrastructure costs and wages for what is basically a gamble. The oil companies are publicly traded businesses and must take the interests of their shareholders into account before making investments in exploration and production. Because of these facts the producers want assurances from the government that their investments will be protected from any future government action that will make it impossible to recoup their outlay. The government has so far refused to make such assurances and the entire debate becomes just another shell game (no pun intended).

That the Green New Deal is another massive scam is provable by pointing out one simple fact, the United States, the cleanest of all developed nations, is being asked to totally destroy its industrial base while the planet’s two biggest polluters, China and India, are given a 20 year moratorium and allowed to not only continue but to increase their amount of pollution. If clean air was truly the agenda then no serious person would consider this arrangement for a second. The American model would become the worldwide standard and both India and China would be forced to clean up their acts. It’s like having infant triplets, two have soiled their diapers and the third is clean and so you change the clean diaper and leave the other two full of (political promises). Yeah, John Kerry, this makes one helluva lot of sense.

Election integrity, nothing to see here. While more and more swing states admit finding evidence of massive fraud this administration still insists that election fraud in America is a myth. Yeah, right.

Lady Justice takes another kick in the gut. All charges against Prince Andrew are dropped and Virginia Giuffre will not get her day in court, proving once again that some folks are just too important to ever have to face an accuser even when the evidence dictates that the case be heard. Justice, for whom?

Everyone who uses electricity should be worried about the integrity of our power grids. Apparently the government isn’t, nor are those who operate the grids. Putting aside the chance occurrence of a massive solar flare, the grid remains vulnerable to the actions of any entity possessing the technology to create and deploy an Electronic Pulse Weapon. While life without electricity would be inconceivable, the possibility of having to adapt to such in the future is all too real. The irony is that preventing such an occurrence would be relatively simple. The technology and knowhow does exist. The problem is that those who can address the problem won’t address the problem. It comes down to cost. The grid operators say that grid safety is a national security consideration therefore the cost should be borne by the government while the government maintains that the grids are private businesses and so their owners should pay. C’mon guys, either flip a coin or simply split the costs.

America is showing signs of a great awakening but America cannot operate alone on the world stage. We must not only throw the rascals out in this country, it has to also be done in every industrialized nation. We had our revolution a little over 200 years ago and it produced positive, albeit temporary results. For a time we had a magnificent nation but allowed the rot of corruption to steal it from us.

Wherever nations are led by evil they must be marginalized and ostracized. Turning a blind eye to corruption for the sake of doing business as usual cannot be tolerated. As trite as it may sound, morality must be restored to government, there are no degrees of evil, it is an all or nothing proposition.

The bottom line is that positive change starts with the individual, with you and me. Get up and go to your nearest mirror, look at the person looking back at you and ask this question.”What amount of evil, fraud or corruption are you willing to accept as normal and/or necessary?”

Apathy and complacency are tantamount to acceptance.

We often hear that elections have consequences. This is a true statement, elections most certainly do have consequences but so does unequal enforcement of law. Vast fortunes have been amassed due to the unequal law enforcement. We see many references to various ‘crime families’ within the government who have used their positions in office to increase their personal wealth and that of their family and friends.

There are countless reports of so-called oligarchs, millionaires and billionaires, financing rampant law breaking throughout the world in order to advance their agendas. And they are apparently above the law as are the clients of Jeffrey Epstein, that large, well connected group of pedophiles captured on his famous but so far completely restricted blackmail tapes.

The FBI, CIA and NSA, the backbone of our Federal law enforcement and intelligence communities have all been accused of improper, if not illegal activities. Who enforces law when the accused are the enforcers of the law? Can anyone name the last entirely honest, completely above suspicion, Attorney General of the United States?

To cite just a single example, many serious crimes were committed during a government program known as Iran-Contra. The entire operation was conducted either in the open or under a thin cloak of secrecy and yet no official, elected or appointed, was ever called to task for having participated in it. In fact, many of those who were a part of Iran-Contra went on to have successful careers and some are still active in government or as expert advisors.

Should we not ask why no one was ever prosecuted for these and many other crimes committed? If the laws are on the books should they not be enforced? And shouldn’t we be curious to know just who it is that has the power and authority to decide which laws are enforced, which ignored?

The open border policy of this administration constitutes a criminal enterprise in and of itself. Our government is complicit in a laundry list of crimes against not only the citizens of this nation that they have sworn to defend and protect but also a surprisingly large number of of illegal border crossers seeking nothing more than an opportunity for a better life. These are equally victims of our government.

One would think that such crimes as child trafficking, slave labor, forced prostitution and drug smuggling would be aggressively opposed by any American administration, not encouraged and abetted. But that isn’t the case, in fact the criminal activity seems to be their goal. The open border and all the crime resulting from it is not only permitted but any pushback by honest politicians or even private citizens is challenged in Federal court by our Attorney General while drug cartels are ceded control of our border.

We read many essays on corrupt practices and unequal law enforcement, most presenting possible solutions, some that might even make inroads toward solving the problems. In this writer’s opinion a simple to understand though difficult to implement solution would be to put the blindfold back on Lady Justice and begin to enforce all laws against all law breakers without regard to their positions or spheres of influence. This means everyone, from the subway stile jumper to the President of the United States, if need be. The only thing to consider in making a decision to prosecute should be whether there is credible evidence that the accused committed the crime. Yes to credible evidence, yes to prosecution.

The way it stands now the Justice Department has sold its soul to the Devil and when you cut a deal with the Devil, the Devil will always write the rules.

In a recent discussion on the relative merits of different forms of government a friend opined that the most efficient type of government would be a benevolent dictatorship. Putting aside for the moment that ‘benevolent dictatorship’ is an oxymoron, anyone who accepts the premise would have to address the logistics involved in the distribution of benevolence among a given population. Taken to its logical conclusion a nation ruled equitably by a benevolent dictator would be limited to a population of one, the dictator himself.

Suppose a mythical monarch, King Harald the All Loving, was to wake up one morning and say to his chief enforcer, “you know what would be really neat? We should equally redistribute all the wealth in the land. I hereby decree that you make it so.” It doesn’t take a lot of thought to figure out who would welcome such a command, all those below the line of average wealth would think it great, all above the line, not so much. King Harald’s benevolence by necessity would be highly selective.

So maybe a benevolent dictatorship is not operationally possible but what of dictators in general? A dictator is classically described as that person who has absolute authority, whose decisions cannot be countermanded. In this context we usually think of people like Joe Stalin, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Un but it’s equally true that you don’t need to be evil in order to wield unquestioned authority, think Pope Francis. The common thread and the most obvious benefit of being a dictator is not having to negotiate with a legislative body or deal with that pesky will of the people thing.

During the conversation that prompted this post my friend mentioned that one of the greatest positive aspects of a dictatorship was expedience. Looking at it from the viewpoint of the dictator I would have to concede that point. In fact we can look to our own form of government for examples of how dictatorial powers are exercised for the sake of expedience. The Supreme court requires a majority of 5 out of 9 members to reach a decision but once that decision is made the court’s actions, in that it cannot be countermanded or even appealed, is tantamount to that of a dictator.

Another example of using dictatorial power for the sake of expedience is the Executive Order. Here we have a case of a good idea gone bad. The Executive Order was intended to be used in rare instances where, in the judgment of the Chief Executive, such an order should be issued to address a dire situation that did not contain the element of time, time to await the deliberations of the legislative body. The Executive Order was never intended to be a way to circumvent Congress and legislate instead from the Administrative Branch. To do so is tantamount to assuming dictatorial powers. Over the past year we have seen the abuse of the Executive Order completely destroy the economy and security of this nation. And this is true not only on the Federal level but on down the line to our Governors and Mayors,

Can anyone describe the recent actions of Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, as anything other than those of a dictator, and by no means a benevolent one? The trucker’s convoy was greeted by the citizens of Ottawa with open arms. The peaceful protest soon morphed into a love fest the likes of which haven’t been seen since Woodstock. And this infuriated the ego driven Trudeau who was anxiously awaiting what he hoped would be provocation for a draconian reaction by his forces. The provocation never came but his draconian response did anyway. The protest that could have been easily and peacefully ended had he elected to sit down with the truckers and calmly discuss their grievances actually ended by Trudeau invoking an emergency powers act and then having armor clad equestrian ‘storm troopers’ ride into and trample those very same people whose rights he claimed were being trampled on by the protesters.

I doubt that Mr. Trudeau will ever be able to live down the optics of his dictatorial decisions. Nor should he.

Just about 245 years ago we fought a war on this soil to remove the yoke of a dictator named King George. We must be careful now to avoid allowing a similar yoke to be placed on us for the sake of expedience. The American system of governance was not designed to include any dictatorial powers and we must not allow them to creep in and poison this noble experiment of having the power being vested in We, the People.

I have a new standard for the easiest job that will never be done, that of reestablishing the nation’s faith in equal justice. Assuming that the good guys (not a partisan assessment) get into office and an Attorney General is appointed who is truly one of the last boy scouts, he or she would face an easy task. Those profiting from government corruption have provided everything necessary to bring about their own demise.

It is truly amazing that we as a nation have strayed so very far from the vision of those great patriots of long ago who dreamed of a land free from the tyranny of corruption and self interest that governed the nations of Europe.

That band of stalwart individuals conspired to end their subjugation to a tyrannical system that had been in power for over a thousand years and they pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor (yes, there once was such a thing) to the task. And that group managed to inspire a rag tag bunch of citizen soldiers to defeat the most powerful army on the planet and then went on to craft a new form of government, one which empowered the people to control their elected officials.

But as the passage of time has demonstrated, elected officials do not wish to be controlled by the people. Individually and as a group they think that they are better then, more clever than, and by some divine right ordained to be set above the masses. Add to this elitist attitude a measure of greed and you soon get the government we have today.

Our near dystopian quagmire that passes for a deliberative body of citizen politicians did not appear overnight. It is the result of a slow erosion of the rights given by God and codified in our Constitution coupled to the willingness of a series of administrators, legislators and members of the judicial to treat their offices as marketable commodities.

And so Ben Franklin’s “A republic is you can keep it” has developed into the most powerful corrruptocracy in the history of mankind, No nation has ever been cursed with such an assortment of highly placed individuals dedicated to the acquisition of personal wealth and power on the one hand and a desire to destroy the system of government that allowed them to prosper on the other.

It has been said that for evil to triumph all it requires is that good people do nothing. The opposite is also true but where are those good people willing to pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor the task?

The irony is that the elements of evil have provided the means for their own destruction. They have done so by simple overreach and overconfidence. At some point those oh so clever criminals among the so-called elite came to regard themselves as so powerful that it was no longer necessary to conceal what they were doing and so ample evidence is readily accessible for any honest branch of law enforcement to use.

As I said in the beginning this is the easiest problem that will never be solved. It takes only one person to get the snowball rolling downhill, a person the likes of whom we have not had in a very long time, an honest Attorney General. That AG would have to be a person who truly believed in the equal enforcement of the law without regard to the status or political alliances of those being charged with a crime. He or she would have to be honest, moral, ethical and apolitical and still willing to become immersed in the sewer that is Washington D.C..

The January 6th committee is supposed to be searching for truth but ignores the 14000 hours of surveillance video that, were it to be brought forward, would provide all the answers they claim to be seeking. Hunter Biden’s laptops alone could sink his family’s criminal empire, An honest FBI would have long since released Jeffrey Epstein’s cache of taped evidence against his clients. Peter Schweitzer’s new book, ‘Red Handed, has 92 pages of well researched, well documented footnotes concerning the corrupt practices of political figures, tech giants, oligarchs and corporate moguls in their dealings with just one country, China. Also not hidden is the fact that tech giants, oligarchs and politicians have openly aided and abetted illegal border crossings, drug smuggling and human trafficking without any legal consequences.

This is by no means a comprehensive listing. An accounting of the hidden in plain sight criminal activities of our so-called leaders and members of the elite could go on ad infinitum but the bottom line is that the perpetrators have all sown the seeds of their own destruction, confident that no one will have the ability or even an interest in reigning in their transgressions.

And perhaps they are right. Reformers come and reformers go but the denizens of The Swamp, adept as they are at treading quicksand, continue to endure and prosper.

I wonder, is there any sacred honor left out there?

President Richard Nixon thought it would be a neat idea to bring China into the mainstream of world commerce. He initiated ‘Ping Pong Diplomacy’ and what we have today is a linear acceleration of that awakening of the Dragon.

Here in the USA the political battles are styled as Republican versus Democrat with each side engaged in a tug-o-war for the support of Independents. This is a useful fantasy for marshaling support along ideolgical lines and for obfuscating the reality driving world events.

Being a useful fantasy makes it none the less a fantasy. The battle lines are not drawn along the lines of party politics, they are actually defined by The Swamp versus The Non-Swamp.

The Swamp owes no allegiance to anything other than The Swamp itself. Assigning national interests, political affiliations, religious fervor or secular zeal or any other identifying characteristic as a driving force within The Swamp merely muddies the water and helps The Swamp to remain effective in reaching its goals.

The impetus behind The Swamp is a mutable force, changing its power bases the political fortunes of the planet’s various nations wax and wane. At present The Swamp is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party. Thanks to those initial ambitions of President Nixon, Chairman Mao’s fever dreams have lurched closer to becoming a reality.

Beijing may be calling the shots but its power base is not in mainland China, its in Washington D.C.. In fact, if an announcement were to be made by the White House that Xi Jinping would be occupying an office in the West Wing the news would probably only command one or two news cycles. I can hear Jen Psaki spinning the report, “Due to the extremely dangerous events now taking place the administration felt it necessary have immediate contact with the leader of the world’s only other super power. President Xi will receive complete Secret Service protection while in America. And the White House chef is gaining expertise in Chinese cuisine.”

Administrations come and go, pestilence, wars and famines are created and unleashed as needed to create wealth and shift power but through it all The Swamp endures.

I have made the statement that The Swamp is actually the observable results of temporary alliances between factions with mutually supportive agendas but have never provided an example. Here is one:

The Chinese Communist Party wanted to create and beta-test a new method in biological warfare. This agenda formed the matrix for bringing together several groups with mutually supportive agendas.

China coopted individuals in several US agencies who had similar interests. The agenda for these folks was to gain the ability to offshore research that would have been frowned upon in America. An added benefit to the CCP was that the Americans would provide proprietary knowledge and funding.

Big Pharma, always on the lookout for new income streams, came on board with their agenda, that of massive new sales opportunities while having all necessary research funded by the Federal Government.

Pharma also was able to leverage their complete control of all health related agencies, control gained by their lavish disbursement of lobbying money and campaign donations as well as the long established revolving door between health agency personnel and employment in Big Pharma.

The operation needed a spokesmodel and so a career political hack with credentials in virology was trotted out. Dr. Political saw this as his last chance to gain international recognition before advancing age closed his options. That, and the chance to score a huge chunk of the financial pie

Main Stream media recognized it as ratings gold and certain local politicians, governors and mayors, seized the opportunity to validate their own misguided sense of relevance. Other minor players with personal agendas were positioned to move in an out of the major scenario. And that is the anatomy of a Swamp operation.

The beta testing was rolled out across the planet and deemed a great success by the CCP. China pulled out and the operation began to collapse in spite of the efforts by many players to keep their agendas in motion. China moved on to its next project, that of creating international coalitions to diminish the power and prestige of America, a goal that actually has a lot of support in Washington D.C..

Just as the true nature of The Swamp is that it consists of a number of mutually supportive agendas forming temporary alliances, the only way to defeat it would be for legislative bodies in the world’s developed nations to pass laws to neutralize The Swamp’s power. Laws mutually supportive across national boundaries.

In America that would start with regaining control of Washington, cutting all ties with China, reigning in Big Tech, Social media, Big Pharma, eliminating the ability of government officials to profit from their office, closing the revolving door between government officials and those whom they regulate and outlawing the entire lobbying industry. And this would only be for starters.

Draining The Swamp would be like the Manhattan Project on steroids. It would take the concerted effort of every developed nation on the planet. Are there any coalition builders out there willing to raise a hand?

A proposed final exam for doctoral candidates in Political-Science.

Consider the word “NILE.” Pronounce it aloud several times, alternating between one syllable and two syllables. Continue until you have a ‘feel’ for any and all nuances of pronunciation.

Write two essays, minimum 500 words each, one defending the single syllable pronunciation of Nile and one defending the two syllable approach.

Your success indicator will be your ability, based on subjective assessment by a panel of your peers, to equally defend each pronunciation to the exclusion of the other.

A passing grade on this exam will demonstrate your fitness to hold elective office at any and all levels of government.

“Robert Johnson went to the crossroads, so the story goes, dealing with his guitar, and the Devil took his soul.”

In human lore making a bargain with the Dark Powers to exchange one’s immortal soul for some measure of temporary success, fame or fortune is the stuff of legend. The person entering into such a bargain is usually portrayed as stupid, foolish, evil or some combination of these but never are they shown to be successful and happy as a result of have made the trade.

A slightly deeper analysis would lead one to conclude that anyone who would even contemplate the surrender of the everlasting for the temporary could not possibly believe in the actual existence of that which is immortal and is therefore gaining something concrete in exchange for something they believe to be imaginary. And that leads us directly to the cause of that collection of woes afflicting our planet today, the total abandonment by our leaders of any individual moral code to guide their activities.

Once, in the distant past, we viewed life on this big blue marble as a constant struggle between good and evil. Given that perception is reality, for all practical purposes a very real Devil once battled with very real angels for the souls of man. But with the passage of time we soon became too intelligent, too sophisticated to continue with those ‘fantasies’ and so the Devil and the angels packed their bags and moved off into the dustbin of quaint folklore.

And in losing our concept of a constant battle between the forces of good and evil we lost something vital to our ability to lead meaningful lives, we abandoned our universal moral compass.

Reading Peter Schweitzer’s latest work, “Red Handed,” in which he gives the details of well documented instances of corruption between highly placed members of our government and the Chinese Communist Party it is apparent that no-one involved has any allegiance to ethics, morality or fair play. Truth, fidelity and respect for the law are nowhere to be found.

And closer to home, where is the morality inherent in those within our own government who are actively working to destroy the fabric of this nation? Where is the morality in those companies that include savings generated from slave labor as part of their cost benefit analysis? For that matter, what of those here in America who loudly proclaim the need to pay reparations for past slavery while wearing sneakers manufactured by present day slaves, do they not sense any irony? Can any politician claim the moral high ground while knowingly violating his or her oath to defend and uphold our Constitution? If indeed an oath is sacred then betraying it can be nothing short of evil.

Borrowing from Hindu Monk Vivekanada (circa 1898), “The nation that abandons morality will not survive.” America has by and large abandoned morality and we certainly don’t appear to be on a solid track for survival. Folks, we desperately need an old fashioned revival of the battle between good and evil. Just as opposing sides on a battlefield wore distinctive uniforms, we must adopt a moral stance as our uniform. We must stop regarding those destroying our nation as misguided or feckless and call them out for what they truly are, they are evil personified.

When President Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an evil empire no one accused him of hyperbole. He was accurate then and today it is not hyperbole to say that the forces that have taken de facto control of our planet are the epitome of evil and must be treated as such.

Having met no meaningful resistance over the past century or so this cancer of evil has been allowed to grow and fester. Those who profit from it will not surrender easily but they are not invulnerable. We are in an existential battle for the soul of America, a soul that is not a single entity but a collective of that spirit which animates each patriotic American citizen. There are only two sides in the war of good and evil. The enemy has chosen its side and we can choose to ignore them, to go along to get along or we can choose to take our individual souls off of the bargaining block and fight the good fight.

On the other hand, if you are of the opinion that there is nothing, no aspect of human existence that survives the three score and ten allotted to these meat machines that we use to transport our consciousness then you probably see no real difference between good and evil beyond the expedience of the moment and that evil offers instant gratification and is often more profitable. If so, you’re one of them.

The army of the good is amassing all across the nation and is preparing to march toward the moral high ground and retake our country. Won’t you enlist? And a prayer or two along the way would not go amiss.

To begin, an immutable truth. You will never defeat an enemy that you cannot define. The ‘Good Guys.’ currently led by Donald Trump, all express a hatred for, and a desire to destroy the Swamp. But if pressed for an answer to what The Swamp actually is they will give a range of answers that vary from each other to the extent of the number of people asked and many of them will be mutually exclusive.

Far easier than defining The Swamp is to state what it is not and then use that as a basis for combatting it. And in line with that thought we can start by understanding that The Swamp is not a monolithic structure complete with an established hierarchy, At its highest and most effective level it is a loose affiliation of the uber wealthy forming groups held together by temporary bonds of mutually supportive agendas. They present a cohesive front only so long as there is mutual benefit and any resistance to their activity that is harmful to one side of the bond will not effect the other, it will merely dissolve that bond. Zuckerberg without Schumer will still be Zuckerberg, the Chinese Communist Party without the Bidens will still be the Chinese Communist Party.

Fighting a monolithic structure is relatively easy. For example, we engaged the Third Reich on the battlefield in WWII. They accommodated us by all wearing the same colored suits. The guys on our side, the ones with the guns, interpreted the color of their suits as saying, “shoot me” and so they did. In all fairness the opposite was also true, we had our guys dressed in the same color giving an identical message to the enemy. Fortunately our guys managed to shoot a greater number of their guys and so we prevailed.

There is no Swamp uniform, no single identifying characteristic that sets them apart. Here we can turn to The Bible for guidance. Matthew 7:16-20, “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit…” KJV

While The Swamp is not monolithic, it is bipartisan and not confined to any social or economic class. It is a pervasive presence in every strata of society throughout the civilized world. By my definition, Parag Agrawal (Twitter) is a swamp dweller and equally so is an ordinary beat cop in Anytown USA who shakes down a local bar owner for donations to a non existent “Widow’s and Orphan’s Fund.” Only the amounts of money and assumed respectability differ.

The sole dining characteristic of swamp dwellers is that they all will use tactics that include lying, immorality, lack of ethics, bribery, class warfare, actual warfare, bigotry, hatred, foreign and domestic terrorism, a willingness to ignore the law and yes, pandemics to advance their agendas. Nothing is ever off the table for the denizens of the swamp no matter how much it harms those of us who constitute ‘collateral damage’ in their pursuits.

These are winning tactics for The Swamp because those in opposition are constrained by a need to always take the moral high road. Platitudes are not nearly as effective for swaying a Supreme Court decision on possible election fraud as is a good old fashioned BLM riot. In the past few years The Swamp’s Brown Shirts, BLM and Antifa have influenced more official decisions than any thinking person could have imagined possible.

The Swamp gave us the pandemic and it was highly effective for a time. We must learn from it, expect a sequel and be alert for the early warning signs that they are about to release its next iteration. The Swamp will abandon losing strategies but will double down on that which has worked in the past.

Sometimes I think that our swamp dwellers, especially those in government, must have listened to a routine by the late, great comedian Brother Dave Gardner in which he said, “make everything legal and you won’t have any crime at all.”

If we could ever get an Attorney General who was not a swamp dweller we might be able to make real strides toward solving the problem. I mistakenly thought we had one in Bill Barr but was disabused of that notion when I looked into his past and found that while in the employ of the CIA (Iran-Contra guns for drugs) he took the code name of ‘Robert Johnson’ apparently likening his involvement in that nefarious scheme to the famous blues guitarist of the 1920’s who claimed to have sold his soul to the Devil. CIA agents who feel that they have willingly sold their souls by taking an assignment that they think is wrong but will advance their careers do not make good AG’s. However it does help to understand some of the questionable decisions he made while he was AG. You can’t get much swampier than that.

Selective enforcement of the law, no matter the ‘justification,’ will never serve to deter criminal activity.