NEED IS NOT RIGHT: “In the end, all these arguments boil down to one thing -- what gun control advocates think Americans “need.” Irrespective of the mental gymnastics needed to philosophically get there, the closing statement in these arguments for gun control invariably goes something like this: “Why does anyone need a [insert any arbitrarily chosen gun, or gun accessory, of some specific caliber, muzzle velocity, rate of fire, cosmetic accoutrements, magazine size, etc., here]?”
We proponents of limited government and individual rights can, and often do, present substantial arguments as to why such firearms might be necessary to protect ourselves against evil neighbors or government agents who might choose to infringe upon our right to life and liberty, and why the gun control proposals being offered would be ineffective.
We proponents of limited government and individual rights can, and often do, present substantial arguments as to why such firearms might be necessary to protect ourselves against evil neighbors or government agents who might choose to infringe upon our right to life and liberty, and why the gun control proposals being offered would be ineffective.
We might point out, for example, the data showing that there is absolutely no evidence that “assault weapon” bans and gun confiscation programs (like the much-touted Australian “buyback”) do anything at all to reduce homicide rates. We might mention that violent crime and murder rates have fallen sharply since the National Assault Weapons Ban was lifted in 2004 (as I did in 2013, here), despite the number of firearms owned by individuals in this country growing dramatically in the years since, and the prevalence and expansion of concealed and open carry laws in many states.
We might also point out that the CDC has observed that guns are used as a means of self-defense in “about 500,000 to more than 3 million” instances annually, clearly signifying the value of gun rights in protecting Americans’ lives and preserving their liberty. Or, we might argue, as David French does at National Review, that “for the Second Amendment to remain a meaningful check on state power, citizens must be able to possess the kinds and categories of weapons that can at least deter state overreach, that would make true authoritarianism too costly to attempt.”
But you might notice that all of these arguments, however correct and practical they may be, are not effective in moving gun control advocates’ away from their quest to rob us of our individual rights. That is because they are clearly arguing on the grounds of raw emotion, and they are therefore incapable of adequately appraising facts and reason. They are making what they believe to be a moral argument -- if you don’t “need” the thing that they surmise you shouldn’t have, then why should you be allowed to legally own it?
Our moral objection to that question should be abundantly clear. If it is, indeed, my legally protected “right to keep and bear arms,” and it’s true that this right “shall not be infringed” by the federal government, then the question about why I might need an AR-15, or any other arbitrarily maligned firearm, is inconsequential. The more appropriate question to ask is why anyone else believes that he has the right to demand that the federal government take that explicitly defined right away from me, or any other law-abiding citizen.
We are constantly besieged by variations of this argument about an American’s “need” being required to justify the most fundamental of American rights, and these arguments exist well beyond the debate around gun rights. Leftists incessantly entreat Americans with the question, for example, “why should someone need X millions” of legally acquired dollars? Our response shouldn’t be to ponder or address why someone else might need that amount of money. That question is utterly irrelevant. What we should be asking is, what right of mine do I own to demand that the government take their individual property rights from them?”
THE AGGRESSIVE NATURE OF GUN CONFISCATION ATTEMPTS: “Reducing the number of guns in the United States will require more aggressive methods of taking guns from their lawful owners, contemplating policies that are a lot more radical — and more consistent with the fears stoked by pro-gun groups — than anything that has ever seriously been considered at the national level in the past.
Large-scale gun confiscation would raise Fourth Amendment concerns as well as Second Amendment ones. There are also huge practicality issues that have yet to be discussed. Even its proponents concede it is unlikely to happen. But it will be talked about. And even rhetorically attacking gun ownership as a rational decision without seriously pursuing these policies will trigger a serious political backlash.”
https://theweek.com/articles/858080/why-gun-control-might-backfire-democrats
VIEW OF VIOLENCE: “The language of physical aggression is bellowed loud and clear from the political, cultural, journalistic, and academic classes of the Left. These aren’t vague, ambiguous slips of the tongue that can be explained away by context or poor phrasing. There is no dog whistling here. These are direct calls to violence. And this violence is being encouraged not by fringe lunatics who show up at baseball games to shoot congressmembers, but whom Dougherty refers to as the “political class.”
Many of these examples were uttered when John Boehner, Mitt Romney, and John McCain were the face of the Republican Party, long before Trump rode down that escalator to declare his candidacy.
These threats are voiced by people who won’t throw the Molotov cocktails themselves but expect the friskier elements of their base to take the hints and do so. And they indeed do so, with relish and increasing brazenness. The growing violence on our campuses and in our streets is almost exclusively leftist and is a direct result of the green light being given to them by their leaders.
There is hesitation on the part of some Republicans to downplay the Left’s calls to violence or, worse, accept their equivocations that such speech is only metaphorical...
This hesitation, grounded in a desire to retain the moral high ground of decorum, is commendable. But it is also whistling past the graveyard... this is an ugly time in our history, and we need our eyes open wide to the fact that our friends across the aisle are increasingly comfortable with promoting violence rather than civil dialogue in their dealings with us.
These agitations are directed not against foreign dictatorships, but against American citizens with whom the agitators simply disagree. We cannot coexist with an ideology that is currently integrating the concept that conservatives publicly expressing their views, or even of conservatives being allowed to go about their lives in peace, are of themselves acts of violence.”
POGROM PROGRAMMING: “There is a sinister war underway, a war of mental conditioning, as a new united front of communists, socialists, and liberals in media and politics attacks the American mind and soul as something immoral and hateful—something to be reviled as “racist” in every tweet and every news story, and demonized as “white nationalist” over every airwave, all to a point of reflexive consensus in the public square.
The ravages of history bear witness to the heinous results of eerily similar campaigns of public revilement in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and other totalitarian echo chambers... What is troubling with regard to the potential for state violence or coercion against this large, relentlessly demonized stratum of America is that the primary source of the invective is not “the street” or “radical fringe,” but the top leaders and most influential figures in the Democratic Party. What if they win?
It’s no exaggeration to observe that Democratic politics today are all about whipping up rage against America: rage against borders, against immigration control; rage against Americans who support borders and immigration control. If it was bad in 2016, it’s out of control today and will worsen tomorrow.
That’s because the spur to this rage is nakedly racial, brutally divisive, and, most important, purposefully so. As a matter of strategy, Democrats have inverted the national motto, E pluribus unum, to pit many races against “white America,” harnessing the currents of a race-hatred they promulgate to propose “open borders” as the solution, or taxpayer support for aliens by the tens of thousands as the means to atone...
It doesn’t take a whiz kid to see that Democrats believe “White America” is evil, and everyone knows evil must be fought—and eradicated.
The question then becomes, should the cataclysm come upon us and Trump not win re-election, how, in a Democratic administration of a President Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, or Cory Booker et. al., do millions of American patriots not become the new kulaks of Stalin’s USSR, the new Jews of Hitler’s Germany?
It’s quite clear that in the Democrats’ cold, hard eyes, it is not only “racist” and “white nationalist” to build a wall, it’s “racist” and “white nationalist” to survive.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-brain-washing-war-on-americas-mind-and-soul_3046572.html
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (CONT 3)
The Left wants to disrupt the Right’s power, organizations, celebrations.
The Right is sick of Leftist disruption and wants to punish it with force.
The hard Left has an effective infrastructure. The hard Right is looking to build one. The hard Left will use the tactics it’s already using.
The hard Right will use Leftist tactics, at which point the Press will become very interested in denormalizing those tactics.
I’m guessing the Trump administration will try to eviscerate Lefty Institutions with budget cuts and the hard Left infrastructure with RICO.
Look for lots of property destruction, by everyone. I would not be surprised to see innovative tactics used to destroy property.
The press is a Lefty weapon and a Righty target.
Everyone will have enemies’ lists. All of us are already on somebody’s. Effective Righty violence will be, by necessity, by loners or by really close conspiracies (think family members).
Effective Lefty violence will be by capable, fully operating cells.
If we get political violence between civilians, it’s mostly going to be low-level until it abruptly isn’t.
Some suicidal mass murder types may copycat political violence and choose political targets.
You do not want white people to riot. You Do Not. Want. White People. To Riot.
Nobody wants Civil War II. That doesn’t mean we won’t get it anyway.”
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (CONT 2)
“So how far would this go? Would mainstream Nazi-hating Righties be ok w/ literal Nazis on the streetfighting squads that keep them safe?
I dunno; how’d you feel about folks who voluntarily get their bodies between your peaceful gathering and a crowd trying to intimidate you?
Lefties could keep that very human thing from happening. But they’d have to de-escalate. And they won’t. Mellow out on college campuses? Quit disrupting righty events? No chance. It’s too much fun. So the hard Left is going to do more to normalize literal Nazis in America than anyone since Charles Lindbergh.
Let me be blunt, though: with or without literal Nazis, if Lefties pull another Chicago, Righty defense groups will happen. I honestly don’t think think the literal Nazis are going to be as involved in streetfighting as you might think. It’d be a distraction. The big thing the hard Right is trying to do right now is create organization and infrastructure. They have, historically, sucked at it. The hard Left has great infrastructure. Look at DisruptJ20: they know enough lawyers to have 2 teams dedicated to getting them out of jail! Think any Righty group has gotten around to organizing lawyers on tap like that? Nope.
Why are the Lefties so good at this? Communism. The American Communist Party got fantastic hand-me-down Russian-facilitated training, and shared. But hard Righties learn from overseas compatriots now, too. And a bunch of overseas hard Right movements are aided by the Russians. It’s not gonna happen overnight. But in ten or twenty or fifty years, you could have a superbly organized hard Right movement in America.
Now, you can do two things with radical infrastructure: use it to nudge the mainstream (SDS) or use it for radical action (Weatherman). I think Righties have to go SDS, while Lefties have room to go Weatherman. This is not from any innate philosophical difference, but purely practical. Effective Righty infrastructure is too rare & valuable to risk. (Also, any Righty organization or conspiracy is going to be stocked to the gills with snitches. Look at Malheur. Literally 25% snitches!) So I cannot stress this enough: any righty organization designed from the ground up to be violent is doomed to fail.
What this means: hard Left violence will be coordinated. Hard Right violence will be distributed.
Terrorists are basically mass murderers, or people who want to be. If you think about it, there are three kinds of mass murderers, and the typology applies to political violence too. The first kind is loners. The second kind is conspiracies (which have to be very tight-knit, or somebody narcs). The third kind is guys from the murder factory. A murder factory is a self-perpetuating machine that brings in recruits and spits out killers. Islamic State: that’s a murder factory.
Murder factories are hard to build. Weatherman tried to build one. They failed. The hard Left is bigger with fifty years more experience now, and I still doubt they could make a murder factory without support from a foreign power. That leaves conspiracies for Lefties, and loners for the Right.
So if Lefty violence will mostly be the result of conspiracies, while Righty violence will mostly be the work of loners, there will be differences in the kinds of things that Lefties and Righties will be able to do. A lone perpetrator can pull off a bombing, for example, but not a riot.
Left and Right also have different vulnerabilities. The Left is far better at allowing its people, esp radicals, to rise and mainstream. As a result, way more new Lefties attain prominence and effective leadership status than Righties. This makes for a deeper activist bench. With a sea of effective, prominent Lefties, Lefties who are lost will be mourned but not irreplaceable. This is emphatically not the case for Righties. To be perfectly blunt: the Right would be extremely easy to disrupt with targeted assassinations. The Left would not.
Once political violence starts, the smart move is to keep your violence low-level and try to provoke the other guys into serious violence. This, as with everything else, favors the Left. The Left can absorb a hell of a lot of serious violence. Martyrs are fuel for Leftism. Look at the history of unions. So these are the tactics I see the Left using for early political violence:
- use as many different nonmurderous but disruptive-to-violent tactics as possible — “shut it down,” occupations, property damage, riots
- weaponize Institutions against Righties, when possible
- drag events out — long, very low-level conflict works in Lefties’ favor
- target individual Righties for intimidation/disemployment, to discourage others
- target the most effective Righties for Unpersoning, lawfare, and (only if absolutely necessary; this would be very rare) assassination
Yes, the Left is doing almost all of this stuff already. But it could be ramped up. Take disemployment: Lefties clamoring to get somebody fired. The way it works now is reactive, news-cycle driven. It doesn’t have to be. Political donations are public record. So are voter registrations. It would be trivial to set up a Disemployment Committee to scrape these. HR departments tend to have a lot of Lefties in them. They could bring back a coordinated blacklist. You’d never know it.
Expect expansion to second-order targets, too. If you can’t target someone (bc they’re self-employed, and unshameable), go for their family — that’s already happening, by the way. Remember: most Americans are a paycheck or two from financial calamity. I’m surprised disemployment hasn’t yet been repaid with murder. Setting up fake petitions to get your enemies to sign themselves up on your Enemies List is a tactic I expect to be pretty bipartisan. Lefties’ enemies lists will have fewer prominent Righties and Righty infrastructure types on them, just because there are fewer of those.
If you notice who Lefties really tend to go after, it’s two kinds of people:
- Righties who might be growing in popularity and/or influence, to make them radioactive and make others afraid to associate with them
- regular people, who have employment and social fragility, to make them scared to admit WrongThink.
So Lefties will target more people on top and on bottom, status-wise. Righties will target more in the middle, go for the Lefty NCO corps. That’s because the biggest impact the Right can make at this stage of conflict is to destroy, damage, or neutralize Lefty Institutions. But Lefty Institutions are massive cultural power centers. Universities, Media, Bureaucracies, Organizations/Foundations, Cities.
The Right is not big enough or organized enough to really destroy Lefty Institutions. Like the Left, they’ll be looking to intimidate people out of the game and take away enemy tools. Example: Institutional and media bias means radical Leftist tactics are accepted, which means radical Leftist tactics become normalized. Ergo, the only way the Right can delegitimize Lefty tactics is to use them, at which point they’ll become The Worst Things Ever Done By Man. My guess is the Right will start using Leftist tactics against members of Leftist Institutions: “This is what you ordered. Eat it.”
Some of this could actually be constructive for campus civility. For instance, I’ve long argued that if a Righty speaker is disrupted on a college campus, then campus Righties should disrupt every single Lefty speaker for the remainder of the school year. Of course, Righties can’t get away with what Lefties get away with, so no swarming, no intimidating people, no pulling fire alarms. What Righties can get away with: standing up and chanting, at the top of their lungs, “THIS IS WHAT YOU DO TO US.” In multiple stages, for maximum distraction. Leaving peacefully, of course. The bad news is that’s about as cheerful as these face-offs are going to get. They can and probably will get much nastier.
Specifically, I think the hard Right is going to discover the joys of “nonviolent property damage,” which the Left has foolishly normalized. I’m always puzzled when Lefty journalists praise “nonviolent property damage” as if they don’t have offices, homes, and personal property. University administrators who let Lefties disrupt Righty speakers with impunity also have offices, homes, and personal property. Heck, when Lefty rioters get arrested, papers print their names and mugshots. And they have homes, and cars, and … you know the drill.
The advantage of “nonviolent property damage” for Righties: one person can do it without trying to put together a conspiracy. Nor does it injure people. But let’s be blunt: though no people are hurt it is, despite what Lefties say, violence and it would get very ugly, very fast. And it wouldn’t be entirely effective. The Institutions wouldn’t be destroyed. They’d still be there.
But what happens if the Trump administration is a player? No, I don’t think the Trump administration is going to be putting people in camps, or offering free helicopter rides. What the Trump admin might do is use the full force of the federal government to take a chainsaw to Leftist Institutions’ funding and power. Which threat, of course, could spur radical Lefties to violence. (Remember: provoking your enemy to violence is a goal.)
It gets really nasty if government and non-government factions combine, whether by design or merely taking advantage of each other. What could that look like? Imagine this sequence of events:
President Trump goes to hold a provocative rally in a Leftist area of a Leftist city, inviting a “shut this shit down” Lefty riot. The riot happens. Righties show up… and join the rioting Lefties, ensuring that as much damage is done to local property as is possible. Trump’s DOJ blames the Lefty rioters for the damage, prosecutes for conspiracy to riot, and tears apart their funding structure under RICO. The federal government delays for ages, and finally (on the start of a holiday weekend) denies the city recovery assistance for damages, motivating other cities to avoid that fate by proactively shutting down any Lefty radicals who show signs of organizing. I dunno if that’d work, or what hell it’d unleash. But I can see something like that happening.
Ultimately, what nongovernmental actors can do depends on their capabilities, organization… and money. Money was the big thing that hampered radical groups in the ’70s. People died or killed people or were arrested trying to get it. In the 70s, radicals were basically limited to 3 options:
- parasitizing existing institutions (like FALN and the Episcopal Church),
- leeching off organizations of well-off radicals (Weatherman and the National Lawyers’ Guild), or
- robbing banks (everyone else). Robbing banks isn’t a great strategy long-term. That’s how people got police attention, and occasionally gunfights and murder charges. In 2016, I’d expect radicals to use electronic crime options: ransomware, identity theft, that sort of thing. Less risk of detection. On the Left, though, most violent plots would be funded in the same manner as the FALN: parasitization.
Given the sea of Lefty foundations, nonprofits, and professions, parasitizing a few organizations to fund terrorism would be very doable. Nor would it be hard for YouTube stars or Leftists with Patreons — or, hell, the National Lawyers’ Guild — to turn money toward radicals.
On the Right, funding would be more of a challenge. It always is. Bitcoin would make funding anonymously easier. Also, many righties would be acting alone, so they wouldn’t have huge budgets. Still, the Left, again, has an absolutely massive structural advantage.
There will also be efforts to target each others’ funding. Note that Lefties already do this to Righties, and Righties to Lefties. Righties want to not give their own money to their enemies. Lefties want no one to give any money to their enemies. You can see some of this going on now re: defunding Planned Parenthood. For the pro-life groups, it’s about abortion, full stop, but for Steve Bannon, I’m guessing it’s about a powerful institution that uses money & political organization to support enemy politicians. Of course he’d look to stop taxpayer dollars from going to Planned Parenthood. If you think of politics as a war, that’s a no-brainer.
This is a rare area where Lefties are more vulnerable than Righties, because Lefty organizations get more taxpayer support than Righties do. Lefties are great at mobilizing boycotts and targeting advertisers, though, as we’re seeing them currently do with Breitbart. Could issues over some of this turn violent? Yeah. People could be threatened for advertising, showing support, etc. Any violence would be attention-getting threats/demonstrations, rather than murders. Breaking windows, bombs in offices at night, and the like.
Mostly, though, Americans who turn to political violence will target gatherings of their enemies, and people on their enemies’ lists. Because people are angry at their enemies. They want to punish them. All this godawfulness gets even wackier if the factions of the government get involved. Which, uh. They sort of already are.
The Left has the Bureaucracy and the Deep State. To judge from the press, the CIA is already at war with the Trump administration. So if there are any Righties still dreaming of smiting, lemme point out again: the Left is better placed to go at it than the Right is.
Righties might go, “Yeah, but the military!” Yes, the military runs very heavily Righty. As do the cops. To which my answer is: if we get Civil War II, how many Americans do you think the U.S. military is willing to run over with tanks?
At some point, there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement for either strong federalism or national divorce. But we’re not gonna do either, because Americans want to rule each other, so.
If you’re asking, no, I don’t know how we’re going to stop this. I don’t even know why you’d ask me. Maybe CalExit could take some pressure off, but I dunno. I feel that bad times are coming...”
(CONT)
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE: “The big three takeaways for me about Weatherman, when it comes to political violence in America as we might see it...
Radicalism can come from anywhere. The Weathermen weren’t oppressed, or poor, or anything like that. They were hard leftists. That’s it.
Sustained political violence is dependent on the willing cooperation of admirers and accomplices. The Left has these. The Right does not.
Not a violent issue, but a political one: ethnic issues involving access to power can both empower and derail radical movements.
...The other thing that the Left has that the Right doesn’t are Shock Troops: unshameable actors. Institutions and Shock Troops are important resources for the Left. They work together. The Left’s Institutions accept, cater to, train, and/or employ its people, including Shock Troops. And, in the cases of several Weathermen (and Davis), give them cushy jobs in their Shock-Troop retirement.
What happens when you have Shock Troops, but no, or few, or short-lived Institutions? That’s the story of black radicalism in the USA.
...So, looking at the BLA, SLA, the Family, wth a detour to NWLF — what do we learn about political violence? Looking, in particular, through the lens of our the concepts of Institutions and Shock Troops, and why these matter: Institutions are crucial to the longevity of organized campaigns of political violence by Shock Troops.
Shock Troops that don’t have Institutions fare worse and have shorter careers than Shock Troops that do.
Shock Troops without support from Institutions tend to turn to crime, often violent crime, for money.
Doing violent crime to raise money eventually bites Shock Troops in the ass. The bigger a Shock Troop army, the more financial support it needs, whether from an Institution or from criminal activity.
The Shock Troops that succeed without Institutions have as few members as possible & avoid violent crime (the NWLF guy didn’t do robbery; he grew tons of reportedly amazing weed), and keep a low profile outside of their Shock Troop actions.
Having an Institution is no guarantee of keeping it; Institutions can be attacked by adversaries or other outside forces (see: Lincoln Detox).
All of which is to say: in some respects, a resurgence of political violence in the United States would look similar to previous versions — but in others, it’d look very different.
...Let me ask you a question: how the hell did I not know this story? Forget the presidential assassination attempt. Forget the mass shooting in the Congressional chamber. Just look at the FALN stuff: a years-long bombing campaign in multiple American cities, by perpetrators trained and initiated by a foreign power. A terrorist organization that parasitized a church so effectively, it got the church infrastructure to act on its behalf. A stunning escape from custody almost too astounding to believe...
Organizations don’t have to fully capture institutions. They can latch onto them, and come to be seen as limbs. One person in a position to hire effectively suborned the Episcopal Church to give violent radicals jobs, stability, and even protection. As with everything, the Left will be much better at this kind of operation than the Right will. But the Right might do it on occasion.
The other takeaway: again, Lefty radicals have more opportunities and more acceptance from their mainstream than Righty ones...
I have some ideas as to what some of it may look like. It really isn’t pleasant to think about.
Political violence is like war, like violence in general: people have a fantasy about how it works. This is the fantasy of how violence works: you smite your enemies in a grand and glorious cleansing because of course you’re better.
Grand and glorious smiting isn’t actually how violence works. I’ve worked a few places that have had serious political violence. And I’m not sure how to really describe it so people get it.
This is a stupid comparison, but here: imagine that one day Godzilla walks through your town.
The next day, he does it again.
And he keeps doing it. Some days he steps on more people than others. That’s it. That’s all he does: trudging through your town, back and forth. Your town’s not your town now; it’s The Godzilla Trudging Zone. That’s kind of what it’s like.
I’m going to talk about some nasty things here. I do not want any of it. But some or all of it could happen. Some of it already is. In 2017, I am very pessimistic about America’s future, to the point that I think the country should seriously consider a National Divorce.
Everyone feeling nice and at ease now? Good, let’s get started.
Let’s not mince words: the United States of America is currently engaged in a cold Civil War.
In North Carolina, the Republican governor lost re-election, so the Republican legislature convened a special session to limit powers of the post. Democrats nationwide howled with justified outrage; as we all know, legislators who dislike a governor should flee the state to block quorum, facilitate occupation of government buildings by mobs, and have allies execute secret raids on homes on the governor’s supporters. All of those are things that the Democrats did to oppose a Republican governor in Wisconsin, and the Democrats were pretty cool with it. This isn’t a cutesy “both sides” argument. Nor am I calling out the press for bias, or politicians for hypocrisy (that’s later).
My point is: did you notice the Left and the Right use fundamentally different tactics? This is no accident. They’re different cultures. The Left and Right don’t just want different things. They also have different abilities, goals, resources, and senses of propriety. Meaning contemporary political violence from the Left and from the Right will look very different.
Now, 2017 isn’t going to be the 1970s. Goals, situations, and cultures change. The actors want different things. But we can look to the ’70s for hints.
Like: what kind of people will do this stuff? The mental model we have for domestic terrorism in 2017 is shaped by what scares us: mass shooters and jihad. ’70s radicals were different. ’70s radicals wanted to get away with their crimes. They wanted to avoid detection, they didn’t want to get arrested, and they didn’t want to die. Most ’70s bombers had no moral objection to killing people, but they also didn’t go to any great lengths to maximize body count. That’s pretty different from 21st-century mass shooters (who tend suicidal) & jihadists (for whom a high body count is part of the message).
Some suicidal mass murderers choose political targets, though it’s uncommon. Overseas jihadists draft depressives, but that takes organization (and willingness to use suicide attacks). When we’re talking about domestic political violence, we’re mostly talking about stuff that is coldbloodedly plotted by serious people.
So maybe we can hope that political violence in the US, ’70s-style, won’t go all-out for massive numbers of deaths? Well… maybe. The way I see it, domestic conflict in the United States could operate in basically four stages:
- cold Civil War
- targeted political violence, mostly short of murder
- political violence with murder as the default
- Civil War II
The United States should start seriously talking about National Divorce before we get to stage 3. We’re in Stage 1 now. Stages 2 and 3 are what we’re concerned with: the public getting mobilized. What would that look like, on Left and Right?
People tend to think that the Right will be an awesome, horrific force in political violence. The SPLC’s donations depend on that idea. Righties tell themselves that of course they’d win a war against Lefties. Tactical Deathbeast vs. Pajama Boy? No contest. Why, Righties have thought about what an effective domestic insurrection would look like. Righties have written books and manifestos!
It’s horseshit.
The truth: the Left is a lot more organized & prepared for violence than the Right is, and has the advantage of a mainstream more supportive of it.
You think that’s unfair? Okay, well: imagine an abortion clinic bombing ring getting presidential clemency. Imagine an abortion clinic bomber getting a comfortable job at an elite university. Outrageous, right? No way the Right could get away with that. But the Left does! And the press gives them cover.
The press freaked out and called for a National Conversation every time some shithead punched a protestor at a Trump rally. If Trump fans pulled a Portland, running through the streets, intimidating motorists, smashing windows, what would press reaction be? You don’t need me to tell you: pants-shitting hysteria fascism OMG Hitler. When Lefties really did that: “meh, that’s what Lefties do.” No need for a National Conversation. Certainly not a Clinton disavowal.
Organizing protests like Portland and the other cities takes experience, efficiency, and a lot of people you can call out. The Left can do that. The Right can’t. That is a logistical advantage that is enormous, and it matters. Because a Left that can tell that many people to do that stuff in that many places can also tell at least some of them to do something else.
The hard Left selectively uses violence, normalizes it with weasel words: “Direct action.” “Diversity of tactics.” “Nonviolent property damage.” “Antifa.” If you want to know why Righties will get down with streetfighting, if it comes to that: take a look at Antifa. A good long one.
Part of the bargain of civilization is ceding the authority to commit violence to the State. (Has its own problems. Beats the alternative.) Lord knows there are people I’d love to beat the shit out of in the street, but if I don’t get to then neither do you. No, I don’t give a flying fuck who they are; you don’t get to do that.
Lefties say, “Well, that’s Nazis, they only do that to Nazis; Nazis are different, you have to shut that shit down, etc.” Great. Except that Lefties pull the same “shut this shit down!” stuff on mainstream Righties on college campuses, all the while calling them Nazis.
Hell, Lefties said Ted Cruz was a Nazi, Mitt Romney was a Nazi, George W. Bush was a Nazi. I’ve done human rights work that had me working in proximity to the U.S. military, so at a professional meeting a Lefty called me a Nazi.
So if you tell me that I’m a Nazi, and tell me people I respect are Nazis, and tell me you’re in favor of going out and beating up Nazis, guess what? I am suddenly very interested in the physical safety of Nazis. And I’m Jewish.
Lemme tell you a true story. 209 BC, two Qin Dynasty army officers, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, were ordered to lead their troops on a march to provide reinforcements. Massive flooding delayed them. They couldn’t make their rendezvous time. In the Qin Dynasty, this carried the death penalty. No excuses. “What’s the penalty for being late?” “Death.” “What’s the penalty for rebellion?” “Death.” “Well — we’re late.” And that’s the story of the Dazexiang Uprising.
How does full-on streetfighting start in the United States of America? My guess is: pretty much like that. “What’s the penalty for kicking the living shit out of Leftist protestors?” “Oh, Jesus, we’d be demonized as Nazis.” “…what’ll they do if we don’t kick the living shit out of Leftist protestors?” “They’ll — hmmmmmmm….”
So, what’re the odds of Righties kicking the living shit out of Lefty protestors actually happening? Depends on what happens January 20th, and after. Before the inauguration, the movement DisruptJ20 announced plans to screw up the inauguration.
Here’s a pre-inauguration article on DisruptJ20. Notice the variety of things they had on the agenda at that point. Now reread that article, and think about how the national press would react if instead of a commie it were Richard Spencer.
The thing about commies is you have to pay attention to what they don’t say: “This is a nonviolent protest and we will not attack anybody.” Instead, it’s: “We are preparing for the possibility of sporadic fights breaking out because people are very emotional about this.” Cute, huh?
Protests like DisruptJ20 operate on a sliding scale from disruption to violence. This is deliberate. They harass their opponents, and try to bait opponents into attacking them. One tactic you often see: if one of their protestors does get violent, other protestors will loudly call, “Peaceful protest! Peaceful protest!” This is not an attempt to dissuade the violent person, but to persuade onlookers that they are not seeing what they are seeing. At the very least, the protestors figure, onlookers will assume “they’re not all like that! They’re trying to stop the bad one!” Of course, that’s a scam.
If at any point in 2017 Trump supporters are harmed or harrassed like the rally in Chicago, expect Righties to get very interested in forming street defense leagues: goons and headhunters to make Black Bloc spit teeth. And they’ll be purely defensive. For a while. But they’re human. So then they’ll think about getting proactive.
Bluntly: this is dangerous. The people who do it for the Left are literal Communists. What kind of Righties will it draw? Oh, I dunno, I’m guessing people who’re comfortable with violence, who don’t mind breaking norms or being arrested…
…if you’re now thinking, “Oh shit,” well, guess what? So am I.
If streetfights start happening on a regular basis on American streets, our democracy will corrode very quickly. We’ll see rapid radicalization at both poles, meaning normalization of political extremists.
The usual story American politics tells of how extremists get politically normalized is, to say the least, inaccurate. “Extremists get normalized bc the mainstream says things so beyond the pale it invites extremes.” ie, “Republicans make Nazis.” Bullshit. How extremists really get mainstreamed: because the extremists have organization, logistics, and manpower that the mainstream finds useful.
Mainstream Lefties happily go to protests they favor that are organized by the literal Stalinists of ANSWER & the Worker’s World Party. Why? The commies are really good at getting people signs and making sure there are enough port-a-potties. When you’re great at organizing signs & port-a-potties, Lefties overlook that you’re into an ideology that murdered a hundred million people...
(CONT)
WATCH OUT WHERE YOU GET YOUR IDEAS: “Historians have long known about American companies such as IBM and General Motors that did business in Germany into the late 1930s, but the cultural power of movies -- their ability to shape what people think -- makes Hollywood's cooperation with the Nazis a particularly important and chilling moment in history.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-hollywood-helped-hitler-595684
BOUNCE MARK OF A RUBBER STAMP JUDGE: “With the FISC process being called into question, another issues raised is, exactly why did a FISC judge recuse himself from the court? Since the abuse of power using a secret court for political gain by our sworn protectors was so horrendous, the disinfectant of sunshine must be used to find out exactly what triggered FISC judge Rudy Contreras recusing himself.
...How early did Chief Justice Roberts know and involve himself when the two lovers, Strzok and Page, were discussing having the fix in with a federal judge? This is not a trivial point, because if it turns out that Chief Justice Roberts knew and did nothing, it can be seen as a serious lapse in judgment.”
‘A HOROWITZ SENATE CHRISTMAS TESTIMONY MIRACLE MYSTERY!’ may look like a made-for-TV remake of earlier House testimony, but it’s actually a sequel that follows the same basic plot.
This time it’s the Senate’s turn to star in a carefully scripted debate over whether viewers will see a political espionage thrill-ride of bias and criminal conduct, or an inexplicable and inexcusably incompetent comedy of errors, starring the same familiar cast of characters from 2016’s ‘Midyear Review: The Missing Server’, long-running series ‘Crossfire Hurricane - the Spygate Chronicles’, and last seasons’ critically-underwhelming ‘It’s... Mueller-time!’
Returning lead Michael Horowitz returns as a truth-seeking investigator with limited investigative powers who must carefully respond to repeated questioning around an explosive case of massive government fraud before a secret counterintelligence court involving foreign spies and the campaign of a newly-elected U.S. president (played with relish by scenery-chewing Donald Trump, famous former reality star of ‘The Apprentice’ and a frequent cameo in movies, TV, commercials, and WWF Wrestling, including ‘Home Alone’, and ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’).
Other major players essential to the plot double as current publicists and news commentators, blurring the lines between fact and fiction, as the “media leak strategy” narrative employed during the fraudulent investigation extends and mixes with current real-world publicity and news coverage about Horowitz’s high-stakes, high-wire public performance balancing act.
If you’re confused, it’s because you’re supposed to be! This show is reality-bending over backwards at its brain-twisting best, but with this experienced cast of veteran performers, you can trust the plan, enjoy some popcorn, sit back and dig deep into a deep state of amazingly entertaining unbelievable narrative.
“A NECESSARY AND GLORIOUS BASTARD”: “This hate-filled Democrat ideology relies on our willingness to accept their lies, falsehoods, and scripted presentations; and then demands we grant benefit amid their seeds of doubt...
Foolishness and betrayal of our nation have served to reveal dangers within our present condition. Misplaced corrective action, regardless of intent, is neither safe nor wise.
We know exactly who Donald Trump is, and we also know what he is not. He is exactly what we need at this moment. He is a necessary and glorious bastard.
He is our President.
...Our chosen President is constantly attacked by those holding a corrupt, conniving and Godless leftist ideology. It is our job now to stand with him, firm on his behalf.
To respond we must engage as an insurgency. We must modify our disposition to think like an insurgent. Insurgencies have nothing to lose. If insurgents are not victorious the system, which controls the dynamic, wins. However, if insurgents do nothing, the same system, which controls the dynamic, also wins.
Do nothing and we lose. Go to the mattresses, and we win. The choice is ours.
...The awakened American middle-class insurgency, led by Donald Trump, is an existential threat to the professional political class and every entity who lives in/around the professional political class. Their entire political apparatus is threatened by our insurgency. The political industry, all of corrupt governance, is threatened by our support through Donald Trump.
Decision time.
You know why the entire apparatus is united against President Trump. You know why the corrupt Wall Street financial apparatus is united against President Trump. You know why every institutional department, every lobbyist, every K-Street dweller, every career legislative member, staffer, and the various downstream economic benefactors, including the corporate media, all of it – all the above, are united against Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is an existential threat to the existence of a corrupt DC system we have exposed to his disinfecting sunlight. Donald Trump is the existential threat to every entity who benefits from that corrupt and vile system.
Global elites now stand with jaw-agape in horror as they witness the result. The value of multi-billion dollar contracts dispatched at our leisure. Trillion dollar multi-national trade deals, full of scheme and graft, left nothing more than tenuous propositions smashed asunder from the mere sound of our approach. Yes, our President is delivering.
The fundamental construct within decades of their united global efforts to tear at the very fabric of our U.S.A is slowly being eliminated. They too have nothing to lose...”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/12/18/on-the-cusp-of-impeachment/#more-178893
NUNES TURNS TO FACE THE MONSTER HE HELPED CREATE: “This is not some just some arbitrary representatives’ opinion. Nunes was Chairman of the HPSCI when he informed the court of the abuse; and he is currently the ranking member of the same committee.
It is not a signal flare from the ranking member of the HPSCI to call for a structural removal of FISC authority. This is a nuclear blast from the primary person who previously guided the FISA re-authorization that permits the court’s existence.”
MARSHALS MATTERS: “Frankly, I would go back 200 years to the U.S. Marshals Service," said Farrell, a former Military Intelligence officer and counterintelligence expert. "I would create a new division for investigations, and in about six to eight months I would shut the FBI down. Agents would be allowed to apply for, or laterally transfer to a new investigative arm of the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI would cease to exist. That’s my idea.”
When guest host Trish Regan expressed reservations about completely revamping the FBI, Farrell said, “There’s a systemic, institutional problem. We can walk it back to the Tsarnaev brothers [Boston Marathon bombing] where they missed the leads, multiple leads on them. You can go back to Whitey Bulger for that matter. You can go back to existing corruption in El Paso, Texas. There’s all sorts of problems."
...We have to reset the thinking," said Farrell. "It’s an institutional, cultural question. The entity itself has become poisoned."
LIKE A VIRAL PARASITE, SURVEILLANCE ABUSE MUTATED AND GREW AS IT PASSED THROUGH VARIOUS ORGANS OF THE HOST: “Working with a timeline, but also referencing origination material in 2015/2016 – CTH hopes to show how the program operated. This explains an evolution from The IRS Files in 2010 to the FISA Files in 2016.
The FISA-702 database extraction process, and utilization of the protections within the smaller intelligence community, was the primary process. We start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinion rendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26th, 2017...
Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. In essence, they were continually lying to the court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information for multiple years.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes outlined. The complexity also helps the media avoid discussing, and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the issues...
The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016... While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).
The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results...
FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (“702”); and the “16” is a check box to initiate a search based on “To and From“. Example, if you put in a date and a phone number and check “16” as the search parameter the user will get the returns on everything “To and From” that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts, contacts etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.
FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702); and the “17” is a check box to initiate a search based on everything “About” the search qualifier. Example, if you put a date and a phone number and check “17” as the search parameter the user will get the returns of everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date parameters.
And that’s just from a phone number.
Search an ip address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.
The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.
As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”.
In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy...
What’s the scale here? ...The operators were searching “U.S Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non compliant”.
85% !! ...Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal.
...that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“...
As noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
[Coincidentally (or not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the next day on April 19th, 2016.]
None of this is conspiracy theory. All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“...
The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.
The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation; and we are not the only one to think that’s what this system is being used for.
Back in 2017 when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was working to reauthorize the FISA legislation, Nunes wrote a letter to ODNI Dan Coats about this specific issue...
NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers eventually took away the “About” query option permanently in 2017. NSA Director Rogers said the abuse was so inherent there was no way to stop it except to remove the process completely. [SEE HERE] Additionally, the NSA database operates as a function of the Pentagon, so the Trump administration went one step further. On his last day as NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -together with ODNI Dan Coats- put U.S. cyber-command, the database steward, fully into the U.S. military as a full combatant command...
There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition. Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place...
When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same principle participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.
All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter make sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers fired.
Everything after March 9th, 2016, was done to cover up the weaponization of the FISA database. [Explained Here] Spygate, Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier, and even the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; he was FBI Director when this began.
The beginning decision to use FISA(702) as a domestic surveillance and political spy mechanism appears to have started in/around 2012. Perhaps sometime shortly before the 2012 presidential election and before John Brennan left the White House and moved to CIA.
However, there was an earlier version of data assembly that preceded this effort... the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse...
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that...
A few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database.
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, are so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content. The Steele Dossier contains the cover-story and justification for the surveillance operation.
A valid FISA warrant would help the FBI cover-up the surveillance. The likely targets were Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos…. but it appears the DOJ/FBI were rebuked. These FISC denials would then initiate institutional panic dependent on the election outcome. An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it...
Fusion-GPS gave them the justification they needed for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier. Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier is so important; without it, the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse”
AS ‘THE MACHINERY WAS MOVING,’ ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE OVERSIGHT, REVIEWS, AND CHECKS WERE SUBSUMED THE BY PROCESS ITSELF,’ RUBBER-STAMPING ‘SIGNIFICANT ABUSES’: “FISA warrants on American citizens require formal approval from the FISC and specifically require that there be probable cause to believe the proposed target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.
A FISA warrant is among the most invasive ways an American citizen can be spied on... Several congressional testimonies reviewed for this article, however, reveal that FISA oversight may not be as robust as the American public has been led to believe...
The FISA process is generally viewed as one that typically takes months of preparation before an application is actually presented to the FISA court, but according to Baker the process could move very quickly, and could even be done orally if needed...
FISA warrants are used to obtain foreign intelligence, but as Baker testified, FISAs can have a criminal component to them as well—as long as a high-ranking national security official signs off... “The line between what is criminal and what is intelligence sometimes becomes blurred”...
Yet, despite the rigid description provided by Baker and Anderson, it appears the linearity process was not adhered to in the case of the Page FISA. According to Anderson, pre-approvals for the Page FISA were provided from both Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, before the FISA application was ever presented to her for review...
The signing process by the FBI Director appears to be more of an official act than any sort of actual review. Anderson testified that the Director might receive 15-20 FISAs to sign each day...
Even during normal circumstances, Anderson noted that she did not view it as her primary responsibility to provide any verification or fact-checking of the FISA. According to Anderson, FISA applications would typically return from DOJ inspection with a cover note that “summarized the FISA” and unless an issue had been identified by the cover note, she typically wouldn’t read the actual FISA...
Anderson also testified that the only way she would be aware of the legal predicate for probable cause would be through the DOJ cover note.
Anderson told investigators that her direct supervisor, FBI General Counsel Baker, had personally read and reviewed the Page FISA, lending her additional confidence in the review process. However, according to Baker, he had only read the “factual section” relating to probable cause, and had not read or reviewed any other section of the Page FISA, including the Woods file.
The Woods file, which provides facts supporting the allegations made in the FISA application, is attached to every FISA application and is provided by the originating FBI agent in each case.
Baker, during questioning as to why the FBI failed to disclose the political motivations of dossier author Steele to the FISA court testified this fact should have been vetted during lower levels of preparation.
“So the people filing the FISA application and the people who checked the Woods file to verify that the way this works is that they would not have had any information that was derogatory about Source #1 at the time that this was submitted,” Baker said...
“...I knew that it was sensitive. I knew that it would be controversial … It was connected to a candidate — this person had connections to a candidate for the office of President of the United States. That alone was enough to make me worried about it and made me focus on it.”
Despite this admission, when asked if he had reviewed any of the three Page FISA renewals, Baker responded that he had not done so, telling investigators, “the machinery was moving and the renewals they had expiration dates and so on.”
...There is one final check in the FISA application process—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) itself. A federal judge would hear the FBI and DOJ arguments, questioning the process and the underlying evidence—except that never happened, and apparently it rarely does.
Given the obvious sensitivity of this particular FISA warrant, it seems surprising that no party thought it worthwhile to ask for a hearing—as provided for by FISA court practices.
A FISA warrant, as noted by Baker himself, is an intrusive surveillance technique that is only to be employed under very strict circumstances and subject to rigid oversight and processes. But as can be seen from the example of the Page FISA, the intent behind the process appears to have been subsumed by the process itself, relegating the various levels of oversight to what appears to have been a process of rubber-stamps. The FISA Court itself appears to have performed little better.
...The FISA court found that the government had been engaging in a long pattern of significant abuses that were revealed to the court by then-NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.
“On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA’s minimization procedures involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 using U.S. person identifiers. The full scope of non-compliant querying practices had not been previously disclosed to the Court,” the FISC court ruling read.
The court noted the government’s failure to previously notify the court of these issues, referring to the government’s actions as exhibiting an institutional “lack of candor” while emphasizing that “this is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”
The litany of abuses contained within the April 26, 2017, ruling was shocking and detailed the use of private contractors by the FBI in relation to Section 702 data...
The FISA process has been the subject of ongoing abuse from various elements within the intelligence community and the processes and procedures that we have been told would protect us appear to be routinely compromised at will.”
FISA COURT ORDER: “The FBI's handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the OIG report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above. The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable. The FISC expects the government to provide complete and accurate information in every filing with the Court. Without it, the FISC cannot properly ensure that the government conducts electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes only when there is a sufficient factual basis.”
https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/MIsc%2019%2002%20191217.pdf
TRUMP - ‘LET ME GRAB YOUR ATTENTION’: “The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence...
you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy. You dare to invoke the Founding Fathers in pursuit of this election-nullification scheme—yet your spiteful actions display unfettered contempt for America's founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build...
Your first claim, "Abuse of Power," is a completely disingenuous, meritless, and baseless invention of your imagination...
You are turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable offense—it is no more legitimate than the Executive Branch charging members of Congress with crimes for the lawful exercise of legislative power...
The second claim, so-called "Obstruction of Congress," is preposterous and dangerous. House Democrats are trying to impeach the duly elected President of the United States for asserting Constitutionally based privileges that have been asserted on a bipartisan basis by administrations of both political parties throughout our Nation's history...
You have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes. You view democracy as your enemy!
...You and your party are desperate to distract from America's extraordinary economy, incredible jobs boom, record stock market, soaring confidence, and flourishing citizens. Your party simply cannot compete with our record: 7 million new jobs; the lowest-ever unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans; a rebuilt military; a completely reformed VA with Choice and Accountability for our great veterans; more than 170 new federal judges and two Supreme Court Justices; historic tax and regulation cuts; the elimination of the individual mandate; the first decline in prescription drug prices in half a century; the first new branch of the United States Military since 1947, the Space Force; strong protection of the Second Amendment; criminal justice reform; a defeated ISIS caliphate and the killing of the world's number one terrorist leader, al-Baghdadi; the replacement of the disastrous NAFTA trade deal with the wonderful USMCA (Mexico and Canada); a breakthrough Phase One trade deal with China; massive new trade deals with Japan and South Korea; withdrawal from the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal; cancellation of the unfair and costly Paris Climate Accord; becoming the world's top energy producer; recognition of Israel's capital, opening the American Embassy in Jerusalem, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; a colossal reduction in illegal border crossings, the ending of Catch-and-Release, and the building of the Southern Border Wall—and that is just the beginning, there is so much more. You cannot defend your extreme policies—open borders, mass migration, high crime, crippling taxes, socialized healthcare, destruction of American energy, late-term taxpayer-funded abortion, elimination of the Second Amendment, radical far-left theories of law and justice, and constant partisan obstruction of both common sense and common good.
There is nothing I would rather do than stop referring to your party as the Do-Nothing Democrats. Unfortunately, I don't know that you will ever give me a chance to do so...
You are the ones interfering in America's elections. You are the ones subverting America's Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.
Before the Impeachment Hoax, it was the Russian Witch Hunt. Against all evidence, and regardless of the truth, you and your deputies claimed that my campaign colluded with the Russians—a grave, malicious, and slanderous lie, a falsehood like no other. You forced our Nation through turmoil and torment over a wholly fabricated story, illegally purchased from a foreign spy by Hillary Clinton and the DNC in order to assault our democracy. Yet, when the monstrous lie was debunked and this Democrat conspiracy dissolved into dust, you did not apologize. You did not recant. You did not ask to be forgiven. You showed no remorse, no capacity for self-reflection. Instead, you pursued your next libelous and vicious crusade—you engineered an attempt to frame and defame an innocent person.
...If you truly cared about freedom and liberty for our Nation, then you would be devoting your vast investigative resources to exposing the full truth concerning the FBI's horrifying abuses of power before, during, and after the 2016 election—including the use of spies against my campaign, the submission of false evidence to a FISA court, and the concealment of exculpatory evidence in order to frame the innocent.
...History will judge you harshly as you proceed with this impeachment charade. Your legacy will be that of turning the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution...
I have no doubt the American people will hold you and the Democrats fully responsible in the upcoming 2020 election. They will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of power.“
You are correct about the word ‘well-regulated’ meaning ‘equipped and prepared’.
To your other point, consider the inverse as well: 2A enshrines the right to keep and bear arms, INCLUDING as part of a Militia, being necessary to a free state. This expands upon the right (or blocks presumptive ways that curtailing or limiting its application might be attempted - i.e. ‘just for hunting’ or ‘only on your own property’ or ‘but no training with others’ or ‘only against foreign invasions’ etc.), it is not an attempt to ‘justify’ it.
THE RIFLE ON THE WALL: “The political principle at stake is simple: to deny the state the monopoly of armed force, and, obversely, to empower the citizenry, to distribute the power of armed force among the people... This is not a right-wing position...
The notion that an armed populace should have a measure of power of resistance to the heavily armed power of the state is, if anything, a populist principle, and has always been part of the revolutionary democratic traditions of the left. Per George, above, and Karl, here: “The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition… Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.”
...From a left-socialist perspective, then, the concentration of wealth and the concentration of armed power in the hands of a few, are both bad ideas—and the one has everything to do with the other... “regulations” are limitations on a right, and rights, though never absolute, are to be valued.
...Those who hold that gun ownership is a fundamental political right correctly perceive, and are right to resist, the intended threat of its incremental elimination in gun-control laws that will have little to no practical effect, other than to demand more acts of compliance and submission to the armed authority of the state...
When you ban guns, you are not just eliminating a right, you are creating a criminal offense – in fact a whole set of new crimes? How many months or years will you have to be confined by the armed guards of the state for having a rifle with a pistol grip or a 10-round magazine? How many of those fifty million gun owners are you going to lock up, after raiding their homes?
One has to be kind of obtuse not to understand that a War on Guns, no matter how liberally inspired, will end up like all other such campaigns. It will create crime and pre-crime, and, as Kevin Carson says, “take the level of police statism, lawlessness and general social pathology up a notch in the same way Prohibition and the Drug War have done.”
Can we really give up the right to gun ownership without giving up other rights? Can we pretend not to know that any new, stricter regime of “gun control” enforced by the American capitalist state will result in a greater curtailment of many rights, in more surveillance, in more criminalization of dissident radicalism, directed fiercely and selectively against the opponents of racism and imperialism?
...The net effect of eliminating the right of citizens to possess firearms will be to increase the power of the armed capitalist state. It will not be a more pacific, but a more authoritarian society, one in which the whole panoply of armed police we’ve already come to accept as part of the social landscape will be even more ubiquitous, while citizens’ compliance and submission will be more thoroughly assured. As Patrick Higgins puts it: “The formula for gun control seems pretty obvious to me. Less [sic] guns for the people who are most likely to need them, more guns for cops and soldiers and those sympathetic to them.”
...Here’s the thing, and everybody knows it: Whatever strictest possible gun-control regime is instituted by favored liberal and moderate politicians, the family who threw that party will still have all the guns that it wants at its disposal. Donald Trump (who always had one in New York City), Diane Feinstein, and their ilk will still have their carry permits. Goldman Sachs will have all the weapons it wants for its private army, which will still be working as an allied brigade of the supposedly public branch of the ruling class’s armed forces. There will be a system of waivers, fees, and private security armies for anyone in the .01%.
...Rights empower. Power is dangerous. Guns—certainly the personal firearms that are in question—carry a limited but real measure of inherent power, and therefore danger, that everyone should respect. Indeed, it is because guns are dangerous that the right to own one is important...
Let’s have a discussion on the left about reasonable gun regulations that firmly and sincerely recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental political right, which deserves a place of honor on our wall of historical achievements.
As Ida B. Wells put it, in the cauldron of the Klan’s lynching fever in1892, learning and teaching a valuable lesson (that Orwell would later echo): “Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves … and prevented it.””
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/12/the-rifle-on-the-wall-a-left-argument-for-gun-rights/
INVERTING DUE PROCESS WITH ‘RED FLAGS’: “One of the troubling issues behind such laws is the intent to “catch” people before they actually commit a crime—based on a presumption that the individual “may” commit that crime in the future. In essence, Red Flag laws are “pre-crime” laws, which is why they are also known as prevention laws.
And they invert our nation’s due process of “innocent until proven guilty” into something resembling “potentially guilty until proven innocent.” The intent behind Red Flag laws runs completely counter to the underpinnings of our legal system which has been designed to impose punitive measures after illegal conduct has occurred, not in anticipation of it.
The idea that someone “might” be a danger, although tempting in the wake of these tragic shootings, does not provide legal sufficiency to strip away an individual’s Constitutional rights without the benefit of due process. Also worth asking is what, exactly, constitutes a Red Flag? And who gets to make that determination?”
...Existing Red Flag laws are structured in a manner that incentivize seizure. A law enforcement officer or a presiding judge is unlikely to face any consequence for taking weapons away from someone who is not really a threat. But the potential public backlash from refusing to do so if something tragic was to happen would be fierce. There is an obvious inducement to err on the side of caution—even if it means a violation of that individual’s Constitutional rights.
...Why, if a person represents a level of danger great enough to warrant the seizure of his weapons, is he allowed to remain active in society without treatment? If an individual is deemed to be so dangerous as to require the confiscation of his weapons, surely professional treatment and some sort of custodial setting should be required.
A more useful hurdle might be a judicial determination that the individual meets the state standard for involuntary commitment and that remedy is the one that is followed. At a minimum some mental health treatment should be requisite—and only after a due process judicial determination...
“Honest, decent, law-abiding people should not lose their rights because some judge thinks they might do something in the future. That’s the Soviet Union model, not the American.” [-Judge Andrew Napolitano]
Congress has long had a bad habit of enacting poorly-written, responsive laws, and there is generally an inclination on the part of government to overreach. When enacted legislation and regulation fails, the nature of government is to follow up with additional laws and regulations. If the government is allowed to seize your guns based on the possibility of a future crime, how long before the seizure is of one’s liberty?
...The 5th and 14th Amendments of our Constitution mandate that no citizen shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” When individuals have their firearms confiscated in advance of a judicial hearing, both Amendments are violated, and the individual’s Second Amendment right has been effectively converted into a privilege.
Red Flag laws may violate other portions of our Constitution as well—such as the right to an attorney (6th Amendment) and unreasonable searches and seizures (4th Amendment).”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-red-flags-surrounding-red-flag-laws_3034689.html
DEFENDING PERSONAL SAFETY ON BOTH LEFT AND RIGHT: “The idea of guns granting power to the oppressed isn't unique to black power groups. "Gun control means disarming the revolutionary masses and oppressed classes”...we can't trust Trump to not tweet out a declaration of war or the Democratic Party to hold a fair primary, so why should we trust the government to regulate firearms?
..."As a black leftist male from and in the south who's a gun owner, I find the conversations on gun control in liberal and left circles oftentimes deeply ill-informed," Jones explained. "I'll be frank, I'm not comfortable with giving the state (the US proper)—which was founded on, by, and sustained through genocide, slavery, and theft—a total monopoly on violence. I believe that for folks that look like me, surrendering effective means of self defense and trusting that system is suicide. Also, let's not forget that gun control in the late twentieth century in the States has basically been an effort to disarm people of color."
Others agreed that the state shouldn't have a "monopoly" on violence. "Law enforcement officers as a whole kill way more people in a year than mass shooters or spree killers do," Paul de Revere, a 32-year-old freelancer from Florida, wrote to me. "Until they disarm, citizens (particularly poor ones of color living in blighted, over-patrolled and/or surveilled communities) shouldn't either."
Those arguments contain a somewhat ironic echo of the ethos of right-wing militias, who often say that they need guns in order to protect themselves from the federal government. In either case, the Second Amendment is seen as a bulwark against tyranny, and gun ownership is considered a symbol of freedom.”
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gy5ex9/the-leftist-argument-against-gun-control