The following question isn’t on the U.S. citizenship test. But it ought to be. I’d say let’s make it the sole question, since it’s the only one that matters now. It’s a multiple choice question with a very exact description leading up to it.

Question 1:

The leaders of a country’s secret intelligence agencies don’t approve of the outcome of a popular election. They regard the winner as dangerous to their plans for the nation and its citizens. The country’s business elites and governmental bureaucracy agree with the spy agency leaders. They think this new leader threatens their oligarchical control. They have already spied on him throughout his campaign, and continue to spy on him in office. 

Consulting their political allies, these intelligence officials decide to nullify that election. Using their exclusive access to private data and communications technology, they manufacture serious crimes verging on treason. Then they plant evidence (created by their preferred regime’s candidate campaign) framing the election winner for committing them.

Inventing Russian Collusion

When that winner uses his power to appoint a new leader of their agency, they falsely accuse the appointee of similar crimes. They threaten his family members with prison. He gives in and resigns. Safe from the threat of exposure, the intel agencies leak these charges about the election winner to compliant, state-friendly monopoly media. Those same media squelch any dissent, and accuse the new leader’s defenders of complicity, treason, “hatred,” and “extremism.”

The regime’s allies in the legislature call incessant hearings and inquests, demanding confessions from their political enemy. State-friendly media repeat the charges incessantly. They invent extremist smears to hurl at anyone reckless enough to dispute them. The charges are entirely invented, so they will never be sufficient to justify removing the interloper from office. But that’s okay. What matters is that he be hamstrung and rendered powerless.

Trump Was a Crippled Giant

The spy agencies’ leaders thwart virtually everything the new leader decides to do. They get away with it because all their allied intelligence agencies, and the permanent members of the bureaucracy, support them. So the leader flounders in office. He appoints people he thinks will be his allies, unaware of their links to the oligarchy or how that will work against him. Indeed, the oligarchy’s agenda dominates both the official and the “opposition” party, other than pockets of “extremists.”

Appointees who try to serve the new leader find themselves tainted by scandals invented or exaggerated by the spy agencies. They are driven out of office and rendered unemployable in the private sector. Some are threatened with prison.

The Reichstag Virus

A public health scare terrifies the public, and justifies the regime’s local leaders’ decision to arrogate “emergency powers.” They use these to ban gatherings by dissident churches and other groups, while permitting pro-regime demonstrations and even riots. The regime also uses the health scare as a pretext for loosening voting laws in the localities its allies control. This permits them to manufacture support for the regime at the next national plebiscite. Those who object are accused of racial “hate” and extremism.

Anarcho-Tyranny

Highly organized, violent groups of political agitators fan out through the country, demanding the leader’s removal and threatening his supporters. The allies of the regime (and its intelligence agencies) refuse to prosecute these agitators for blatant and violent actions. However, if dissident citizens use force in self-defense, they are prosecuted aggressively and accused of racist extremism by regime-friendly media. If it’s too hard to imprison them, their personal and professional lives will be destroyed. If dissident demonstrators violate the slightest law or regulation, however obscure, the regime will use secret evidence to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law as “insurrectionists.”

Every action of every citizen in the country is relentlessly politicized. Those whose statements, decisions, purchases and other actions show loyalty to the regime are left mostly in peace. Those who express dissident opinions, however slight, face immediate and ubiquitous charges of hatred and extremism. They suffer irrevocable financial and professional harm, thanks to organized boycotts and media censorship of their statements and even their ads.

Multiple Choice: History or the Headlines?

Is the situation outlined above a description of

1. The Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948.
2. The Polish Communist crackdown on Solidarity in 1981.
3. The U.S. spy agencies’ reversal of the 2016 presidential election.
4. All of the above.

Let Me Ruin Your Day

If you didn’t answer 4., I have an assignment for you. A reading assignment. Don’t brew a cup but a pot of coffee, and set aside several hours. Is that too long to ask for you to understand what’s really happening in your country? This assignment is an article, a long one that argues that the U.S. is no longer remotely a democracy. Neither the president, Congress, nor the courts wield ultimate power anymore. It’s in the hands of the intelligence agencies. The Deep State is the real state, and the rest is old-timey patriotic window dressing. Red, white, and blue bunting that hangs outside the Ministry of Love.

Here’s the title: “The Surveillance and Political Spying Operations Highlighted by John Durham are the Tip of the Iceberg.” The author is … anonymous. He’s not stupid. Maybe he doesn’t want to end up on a no-fly list, with his bank accounts canceled and his name on a database of “extremists.”

Here’s the quick gist of what you’ll learn.

From the Clueless to the Ruthless

Panicked by 9/11, the bumbling, dilettantish Bush administration demanded and got massive power transferred to secret spy agencies, and insulated them from democratic oversight. Swept into power by the 2008 financial crisis and the catastrophic Iraq War, the Obama administration smelled blood in the water. Obama’s sleek professionals knew that such power as Bush had grabbed to snoop on potential “terrorists” could be weaponized against any American. They filled the intelligence agencies with their partisans, and turned the NSA, FBI, and even the CIA into American clones of the East German Stasi.

The monster they created was able to neutralize, even nullify, Donald Trump’s election. Meanwhile, their allies in swing states could guarantee that the next election would proceed according to plan. Whatever senile, corrupt, scandal-ridden hack they nominated would win — no question. And so Joe Biden did.

We know that Joseph Biden isn’t making any day to day decisions, except perhaps about what time he will nap and what flavor ice cream his nurses will offer him. So who is running the country? Does someone have a membership list of The Secret Committee Formerly Known As Joe Biden (TSCFKAJB)?

I’m guessing they’re all from the Deep State. The shambling Biden constitutes the thinnest and frailest fig leaf imaginable. And we all pretend to believe it, because the truth is too hideous to bear.

Go read this monster article. It will ruin your day. It’s a red pill we each have to choke on. Then send it to your friends and ruin theirs too. Life’s too short to spend it in a fantasy world manufactured by spooks.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”