by Eric Striker via Unz Review

American Oligarchs” will be a recurring National Justice series highlighting 21st century robber barons and how they use their power over our country.

The goal is to spotlight America’s crisis of representative democracy and the corruption foisted upon our society by capitalist thugs and their agents.

It seems like we woke up one day to find that, out of nowhere, distinguishing between male and female has become illegal. In defiance of intuition, common sense and 3rd grade biology, a number of liberal plutocracies like Canada and the United Kingdom have legislated to force-feed their subjects the doctrine of transgenderism, which contrary to the idea that it is an individual choice, is always coupled with mandates that ordinary citizens acknowledge the delusions of wealthy narcissists and perverts.

In the United States, using the incorrect pronoun or expressing suspicion that transgender people are simply mentally ill incurs a massive personal cost. Such expressions can get one put on a Southern Poverty Law Center hit list, banned from the ability to use social media and banking services, and opens one up to harassment and violence from anarchist and radical liberal militias given vast leeway to operate by the police.

An army of phony scientists, shameless academics, politicians and activist legal fronts, armed with unfathomable amounts of money, have been successful in using every dirty trick to completely circumvent and upend legislative democracy. Christopher Caldwell’s recent book, “The Age of Entitlement,” outlines how elites have been able to use Civil Rights precedents – where laws are decided in courts rather than by elected representatives and referendum – to radically transform American society by overruling the US Constitution and the will of the people.

Civil Rights, what was originally promoted as a second “Reconstruction” that would only impact issues related to Jim Crow in the South, has become a parallel vein of political power, where laws and rules that impact society as a whole are no longer tethered to public opinion or consent, but instead decided by a small group of rich Jews and capitalists, sometimes in the same family and playing diverse roles on the pitch to make their grotesque and oppressive dystopia real.

The Pritzkers and Transgenderism

The Pritzker family, heirs to the Hyatt Hotel, today use their estimated $29 billion dollar fortune to speculate on the stock market, dodge taxes, buy politicians, and rip people off with predatory banking schemes.

The Jewish clan has made capitalist-activism, where money wrung out of working class people is used to pay for the pet projects of the anti-social left, central to their plan to radically re-engineer America. The Hyatt Hotels have been specifically targeted in the past for their atrocious working conditions, while they have also raked in large illicit profits through Superior Bank, a usurious subprime lending racket that ripped off and ruined the lives of scores of poor people. The money-lending venture so abusive it compelled the government to force the Pritzkers to pay a $460 million dollar settlement. In a functional system they would’ve gone to prison.

One member, the billionaire Jennifer Pritzker, is a male-to-female transgender who served in the US military.

According to research conducted by Jennifer Bilek, Jennifer’s money, along with other figures like fellow Jew and transsexual Martine Rothblatt, has put the wind in the sails of the transgender top-down revolution, granting it scientific and medical credibility through the power of their checkbooks, along with trained operatives who have helped institutionalize in the corporate world. The Pritzkers are heavily invested in the world of pharmaceuticals and science.

Through the Tawani Foundation, Jennifer has been able to corrupt and influence the direction of the ACLU, various military academies, medical institutions (including for children) and universities.

In recent years, Jennifer has donated millions to the University of Minnesota Medical Department’s Human Sexuality department, carved out a “Pritzker School of Medicine” at the University of Chicago, and a “Transgender Studies” chair, handpicked by Pritzker, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Other members of the Pritzker family donated $25 million to University of California at San Francisco’s child health department, which under the auspices of two Jews, predictably advocates for confused or ill young children to be given irreversible transsexual surgeries.

This money guarantees, in the very best case scenario, a veto on science that questions the validity of transgenderism, but often times just incentivizes these universities to produce pseudo-science in favor of it. UMN has a whole clinic dedicated to advocating in favor of and entertaining transgender insanity, targeting kids in particular. The University of Chicago’s School of Medicine has been transformed into a laboratory for macabre “gender-reassignment” human experimentation, akin to Magnus Hirschfeld’s Weimar-era house of horrors.

The private grant system and for-profit universities have reduced science in the United States to the propaganda mills dedicated to affirming the ideological will of donors like the Pritzkers, as seen with Brown University’s inexplicable retraction and apology for a study that found transgenderism is nothing more than a socially constructed fad spreading via peer pressure. Brown later allowed for the study to be republished after rare but intense media scrutiny, but this case was symbolic of the pressure scientists are under to never question system dogmas set in advance by billionaires.

The ridiculous “controversy” over whether the military should allow transgenders is another product of Pritzker money. It is hard to believe that retired and current military men think it is important to include transsexuals in the armed forces, but 10s of millions of dollars can get many of these careerists “woke.”

In 2013, Jennifer Pritzker donated $25 million to the prestigious University of Norwich and its military department, which is credited with creating the ROTC system. This was the largest donation the school has ever received in its 194 year history. A few years later, the University of Norwich’s student rules manual has a whole chapter dedicated to “accommodating” transgender recruits with special exceptions, putting the homo in globo-homo imperialism.

Agents trained in Pritzker funded school departments or who are selected for Pritzker scholarships include Jews like University of Chicago Medicine academic David T. Rubin who also served as an expert advisor at CVS Caremark, which acquired Target (famous for its transgender bathroom policy), and Loren S. Schecter, an influential “gender confirmation” surgeon.

The reason our national discourse takes on inane debates about whether women should get their own private bathrooms and lockerrooms in a country rife with real problems is because these are manifestations of consciousness streaming out of bags of money owned by the mentally disturbed.

While transgenderism is associated with the Democrats, Jennifer Pritzker is a life-long GOP donor, but the billionaire last year decried its “marginalization” at the hands of the Trump administration’s “rhetoric.” In its op-ed, Pritzker demands the GOP go back to focusing on low taxes for billionaires and defer to “experts” on issues like transgenderism – presumably the “experts” Jennifer personally funds to say what it thinks

The Democratic Political Machine

The Pritzker family is intimately involved with the Democratic establishment, especially in their home city of Chicago where they enjoy close ties to the Israeli Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama. Members of the family have chaired major campaigns, served as Secretary of Commerce, have been given control over the Chicago school system, directed Olympic games, and much more. J.B. Pritzker is currently the Governor of Illinois, and the chairman of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.

This family was very influential in Washington during the Obama years, where the Pritzkers, through bundling and personal donations, were able to collect $800 million dollars for Obama’s campaigns and inaugural funds.

Quid pro quo in the Obama years was rife, and the role of the Pritzkers in getting him elected was duly noted. Obama’s administration was important in using federal power to impose transgenderism in the public space, with pushes to integrate transsexuals into the military, creating “gender neutral” bathrooms in public schools and facilities, and increasing state funding to groups like the Tides Foundation, which in turn funds pro-transsexual activist groups. Penny Pritzker’s close relationship to Obama led to the government looking away as her and her family cheated the estate’s tax system, paying $9 million on their inheritances rather than the $150 million they should’ve owed.

Obama in 2013 appointed his handler Penny Pritzker, who ran his campaign’s finance wing in ’08 and chaired his campaign in ’12, to oversee his Department of Commerce, which allowed her to set the terms and priorities on new government initiatives like NIMBL, a program that allocates R&D grants for research on biopharmaceuticals.

Like Jennifer, Penny’s private “philanthropy” is obsessed with influencing what children are taught as well as the university system. Her Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation has funneled millions into Harvard’s Medical School, which has purchased her a spot as a member of the Harvard Corporation. Harvard is known for institutionalizing an extreme form of gender ideology that it submerges future elites in.

As for Penny’s brother, fellow billionaire and Governor J.B. Pritzker, he has turned the state Illinois into a free for all, often with a tranny bent.

He has signed executive orders and bills on immigration that ban local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE to deport criminal aliens, give wide swaths of Illinois’ illegal immigrant population amnesty, and developed a special incentive program for illegal and transgender students to receive public grants from the Monetary Award Program.

Governor Pritzker has also signed an executive order giving transgender and “non-binary” students special privileges in school, along with free access to an arsenal of lawyers that effectively controls the direction of sexual education and erases the First Amendment rights of fellow students.

The Pritzkers are only one, relatively small branch of America’s hereditary plutocracy. If you’re wondering why Presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren or Great Wall Street Hope Pete Buttigieg have made the absurdity of transgenderism front and center in their campaigns, it’s because the Pritzkers are paying them to.

Universities, mass media, elections, law enforcement, medicine – all of these important institutions have been ruined by Jewish bankster money from people like the Pritzkers, who have almost fully replaced ethics and merit to indulge their fetishes and desire to control us.

(Republished from National Justice by permission of author or representative)

Stop acting like you never saw Michelle Obama’s testicles dancing on Ellen Degeneres show https://t.co/D7hOi0b9Zq pic.twitter.com/VIFW0APaVw

— S͎K͎E͎L͎E͎T͎O͎R͎ (@Skeletor_1981) August 4, 2023

By the way, that was not an accident or an oversight by the stage director. For one, these shows are pre-recorded. It was a deliberate signal to those in the know . . . A public acknowledgment. Wink, wink . . .

by Tyler Darden via Zero Hedge

In January 2023, Joe Rogan spoke with former CIA officer Mike Baker, and reflected specifically on George Soros:

“I had a conversation with the governor of Texas about him, with Greg Abbott, where he was explaining to me what George Soros does,” Rogan said.
“And it’s f’ terrifying that he donates money to a very progressive, very leftist — whether it’s a DA or whatever, politician, and then funds someone who’s even further left than them to go against them,” Rogan added.
“And just keeps moving it along. So he’s playing like a global game. And that he enjoys doing it.”

“Yeah. He enjoys doing it. But it is, it’s telling right? He understood early on where you wanted to seize power,” Baker replied.

Early on, indeed.

And now, in an ironic twist, Patrick Bet-David explained this week – also to Joe Rogan – Soros has been acting out his ‘god-like’ plan since at least 2004.

No lesser media outlet than The LA Times wrote (in 2004) following an interview with USA Today:

The begin by noting that George Soros’ motto, “If I spend enough, I will make it right”, is the essence of his articulated ideas about changing society.

Then the ‘god complex’ conversation happens: (via The LA Times) (emphasis ours)

It seems that Soros believes he was anointed by God.
“I fancied myself as some kind of god …” he once wrote.
“If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise they might get me in trouble.”
When asked by Britain’s Independent newspaper to elaborate on that passage, Soros said, “It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.”
Since I began to live it out.
Those unfamiliar with Soros would probably dismiss the statement out of hand. But for those who have followed his career and sociopolitical endeavors, it cannot be taken quite so lightly.
Soros has proved that with the vast resources of money at his command he has the ability to make the once unthinkable acceptable. His work as a self-professed “amoral” financial speculator has left millions in poverty when their national currencies were devaluated, and he pumped so much cash into shaping former Soviet republics to his liking that he has bragged that the former Soviet empire is now the “Soros Empire.”
Now he’s turned his eye on the internal affairs of the United States. Today’s U.S., he writes in his latest book, “The Bubble of American Supremacy,” is a “threat to the world,” run by a Republican Party that is the devil child of an unholy alliance between “market fundamentalists” and “religious fundamentalists.”
We have become a “supremacist” nation.

Can anyone imagine The LA Times writing anything like that today about The Open Society founder – protector of minorities, supporter of progressives, and general global anti-right chaos agent.

Worse still, this ‘god’ (with a small g) thinks he might be mad:

“Next to my fantasies about being God, I also have very strong fantasies of being mad,” Soros once confided on British television.
“In fact, my grandfather was actually paranoid. I have a lot of madness in my family. So far I have escaped it.”

Perhaps that explains his omnipresence at the loci of every chaos-engine-enabling event around the world.

The LA Times ends on a prophetic note:

In his book, “Soros on Soros,” he says: “I do not accept the rules imposed by others…. And in periods of regime change, the normal rules don’t apply.” Clearly, Soros considers himself to be someone who is able to determine when the “normal rules” should and shouldn’t apply.

He who buys the most DAs, makes the rules (or sows enough chaos to reflexively create new rules).

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and wanna be President of the World, visits China, meets with THE President.

Chinese media revealed that this is Xi’s second meeting with a foreign businessman in several years, after Elon Musk.

President Xi Jinping thanked the American billionaire for his long-standing efforts to fight global poverty and for his extensive philanthropic work.

Ed. Note: Watch the body language of the “President of the World”. Unfortunately, we, the hoy poloi, were not informed of why Bill Gates, a nobody, a retired former businessman [sic], who stole other people creative ideas, lied about everything, and was a buddy buddy of Mossad pedophile predator Epstein had any credentials to be in a private audience with President Xi of China. However, his peddling of his creepy ideas of a World Government of Bill Gates, run on the basis of worldwide “health passports” administered by Bill Gates’ Microsoft, seems to have been less then a success, if we are to judge by the body language.  And the same, we hope, for the American 2030 project.

via ZeroHedge

After his first episode topped 100 million views, Tucker Carlson is back with Episode 2, exploring how we, as a population, are controlled (or coerced) directly (through laws) or indirectly (through taboos).

Carlson observes the changing societal taboos in America, suggesting that they are being dictated from above rather than evolving organically, focusing explicitly on the shift in attitudes towards race-based attacks, adultery in politics, and child molestation.

“Let’s say you wanted to control a country,” the former Fox News man begins rather joltingly.
“Well,” he explains “you’d want to make sure you had the complete obedience of everybody within your borders who was authorized to use deadly force… you’d start with the military… [and other agencies] like the IRS.”
“Controlling the guns would be a top priority for you if ever wanted to go dictatorial.”

But, Carlson, asks, what if you wanted more, not simply to control people’s behavior, “but to control how they think.”

“In that case,” he remarks, “you’d need to take charge of its taboos.”

A taboo is something that by popular consensus is not allowed, it is not illegal, but it doesn’t need to be.

“Over time, social prohibitions are more powerful and more enduring than laws.”

Until fairly recently, Tucker points out that it was taboo in this country to attack people on the basis of their race, but he notes “apparently we no longer believe that – punishing people on the basis of their skin color is not only permitted in modern America, it is mandatory… as long as the victims are white.”

Carlson questions the definition and scope of white supremacy as described by President Joe Biden…

Which brings Carlson to this week’s horrific WSJ expose of Instagram’s kiddie-porn rings which he notes has resulted in exactly nothing as “one of the largest circulation newspapers in the world reported that one of the world’s most influential companies was promoting pedophilia and nobody in power did anything about it.”

As Carlson notes, “The people who run this country no longer see child molesters as the worst among us”

He expresses concerns about the blurred lines of crime, the erosion of defined legal codes, and the need to protect societal taboos as guiding moral principles.

In fact, he continues, “what we are allowed to dislike is being dictated to us from above, sometimes by force.”

The trick, that has happened slowly and then all at one, is that “when a crime has no definition, anyone can be guilty of it”

“Don’t let them rationalize away your intuitive moral sense.”
“Cling to your taboos like you life depends on them… because it does.”

Watch the full Tucker On Twitter episode below:

Here is the full Tucker transcript:

Transcript:
Hey it’s Tucker Carlson let’s say you wanted to control a country how would you start we’d want to make sure you had the complete Obedience of everybody inside your borders who was authorized to use deadly force he would start with the military and then federal law enforcement and move your way down ultimately to agencies like the IRS controlling the guns would be a top priority for you if you would ever wanted to go dictatorial if you wanted to be baby doc
But let’s say you had deeper Ambitions; let’s say you wanted the power not simply to control people’s behavior but to control how they think not just their bodies but their minds as a God would in that case you need to take charge of the society’s taboos a taboo is something that by popular consensus is not allowed a taboo may not be illegal but it doesn’t need to be over time social prohibitions are more powerful and more enduring than laws.
Societies are defined by what they will not permit as our famously religions; Muslims don’t eat pork neither do Orthodox Jews traditional Christians oppose extramarital sex the Amish avoid electricity and so on.
American society isn’t overtly religious but it’s governed by taboos and it always has been what’s interesting is how fast our taboos are changing this is not happening organically what we’re allowed to dislike is being dictated to us from above sometimes by force until fairly recently for example it was Taboo in this country to attack people on the basis of their race that was the main lesson of the second world war we were told again and again
The one thing we learned from the Nazis is that it’s dangerous to reduce human beings to their genetic code there is no master race that made sense but apparently we no longer believe it punishing People based on their skin color is not only permitted in modern America it is mandatory
Throughout business and government and higher education as long as the victims are white at one time that would have been unimaginable so the current behavior of our politicians as recently as the 1992 presidential campaign adultery was considered disqualifying for anyone seeking higher office Bill Clinton was very nearly derailed in the New Hampshire primary by his affair with Jennifer Flowers Clinton went to elaborate lengths to lie about the relationship because he had no choice; but he was the last presidential candidate who had to meet the standard
By 2008 it was obvious to anybody who was paying attention that Barack Obama had a strange and highly creepy personal life yet nobody ever asked him about it; by that point a Leader’s Behavior within his own marriage the core relationship of his life had been declared irrelevant it was Barack Obama’s business not yours one by one with increasing speed our old taboos have been struck down those that remain have lost their moral Force
Stealing flaunting your wealth striking women smoking marijuana on the street Shameless public hypocrisy taking other people’s money for not working all of these things used to be considered unacceptable in America not anymore;
So it probably shouldn’t surprise us that the greatest taboo of all is teetering on the edge of acceptability – child molestation.
A generation ago talking to someone else’s children about sex was widely considered grounds for a thrashing; touching them sexually was effectively a death penalty offense. When Jeffrey Dahmer was bludgeoned to death in the bathroom of a Wisconsin prison in 1994 the Milwaukee district attorney had to caution the public not to turn Dahmer’s killer into a folk hero.
Jeffrey Dahmer had molested and murdered children people felt justified in celebrating his death; 25 years later that standard had changed dramatically in the state of Wisconsin as in the rest of the country in the summer of 2020 during the BLM riots in Kenosha seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse defended his life from a convicted child molester called Joseph Rosenbaum Rosenbaum was trying to kill Rittenhouse so Rittenhouse shot him in self-defense but it was Joseph Rosenbaum whom the media cast as the victim of the story
Kyle Rittenhouse meanwhile an underage boy fending off violence from a child molester was denounced as the villain ultimately he was indicted for murder one of the things that this tells us is the people who run our country no longer see child molesters as the worst Among Us.
It’s never been more obvious than it was yesterday when the Wall Street Journal ran a long expose about Kitty porn on Instagram Instagram the journal found quote helps connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly devoted to the commission and purchase of underage sex content Instagram connects pedophiles and connects them to content sellers of child pornography
In one instance the paper discovered that Instagram was recommending the phrase “incest toddlers” to users who’d expressed interest in similar material.
By the way no one at Instagram denied that any of this had happened nor did Mark Zuckerberg who controls the company the journal story was accurate it was all pretty shocking; but not as shocking as what happened next which was effectively nothing at all
The largest circulation newspaper in the United States revealed that one of the world’s most influential companies was promoting pedophilia and nobody in power did anything about it; the justice department did not announce an investigation Congress did not schedule hearings the guy who runs Instagram Adam Ozeri still has his job; in fact Ozeri’s last tweet which is pinned is a video of himself bragging about how effective Instagram’s algorithm is.
Keep in mind as you watch this it’s real people often talk about the algorithm but there is no one algorithm for Instagram there are many algorithms and ranking processes we use to try to personalize the experience to make it as interesting as we can for each and every person who uses Instagram we believe in this idea of personalization what you’re interested in and what I’m interested in is different and so therefore your Instagram and my Instagram should be different
What you’re interested in and what I’m interested in is different Ozeri explains patiently so your Instagram feed will be different from mine; you’re interested in children that’s why you’re getting all the incest toddler posts it’s a highly personalized experience that tweet is still up tonight of course everybody at Instagram in fact everyone everywhere in Authority will still claim to think that child molestation is bad but the tone has changed unmistakably;
When they say it’s bad they mean it in a kind of abstract way bad like a Civil War in central Africa is bad you wouldn’t prefer it but there are reasons it happens that’s what we now refer to pedophiles as minor attracted persons because honestly who can judge these people are a sexual minority; so pause before you attack them and in any case it’s not like pedophiles are barging into the Capitol Building to sit in Nancy Pelosi’s chair we’re asking uncomfortable questions about the last election; for miscreants like that no punishment is too harsh so far this month the FBI’s Washington field office has issued 11 press releases 10 out of 11 have been about January 6th
Keep in mind that January 6th happened more than two and a half years ago now you know why the feds were ignoring kid touchers on Instagram they’re too busy to respond they’ve got much more important things to do like finding White supremacists;
White supremacists are America’s new child molesters; we’ve got zero tolerance for white supremacists because no one threatens the life of this country more than they do here’s Joe Biden once again making that very clear last month “stand up against the poison of white supremacists I did my inaugural address to a single out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy [Applause] and I’m not saying this because I’m at a black hpcu I say wherever I Go”
Pardon the feedback but you heard the point white supremacy is the most dangerous threat to the American Homeland Joe Biden just told us that it’s more dangerous than the threat of nuclear war with Russia it’s more dangerous than the threat of the Mexican drug cartels who’ve already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and are now in control of swaths of our Southwestern States; white supremacy is that bad. Joe Biden says in fact it’s worse but what is it that’s the question can anyone in Authority actually Define white supremacy; what is it is white supremacy liking white people too much? if so that’s going to put those of us with white children in a pretty tough spot; or as white supremacy something much more obviously bad like trying to expel all non-whites from America in creating some kind of ethno state. 
If that’s Joe Biden’s definition what exactly is the scope of this threat how many people are currently working on this American white ethnostate project and what are the chances they’re going to pull it off? Our guess is not very many and precisely zero but we can’t say for sure because no one has showed us the numbers.
These are not rhetorical questions when the president of the United States describes something as the worst possible crime Americans can commit you have a right to know what that crime is; you used to have that right under our pre-revolutionary legal code before George Floyd questions like these were easy to answer. A crime was defined as something that an elected legislature had explicitly banned usually an act that hurts somebody else.
In America crimes were described precisely with words in English and then preserved in books which you could read yourself; if you ever wondered whether you were committing a crime you could just look it up; you could know for sure whether you were a criminal, now you can’t.
And needless to say that’s the point the point of the exercise – to keep you off balance, to keep you afraid. When no one’s willing to define the offense you can’t be sure whether or not you’re committing it; you could be accused at any time and everything you have taken from you: you live in fear.
Remember this guy Emmanuel Cafferty was driving near a black lives matter protest in Poway in his E Truck when he says he noticed somebody following him and trying to get his attention later that person posted a picture of him making what some believed is a white supremacy symbol on Twitter. Cafferty says he had no idea about any white power symbols and was just cracking his knuckles outside his window when the picture was taken of him later that day he says he was notified by SDG&E that he would be suspended pending an investigation and a few days later he was fired.
What that man did was so offensive as you just saw that local news had to blur the photograph of his hand he was fired from his job his life was destroyed for cracking his knuckles. He didn’t know cracking his knuckles was racist in his defense but then nobody did until the day that poor Emmanuel Cafferty was unwise enough to crack them.
When a crime has no definition anyone can be guilty of it. It’s hard to relax in a country like that the old system was better: government operated on the basis of laws not amorphous moral Terror. Politicians couldn’t accuse you of something they couldn’t Define the legal code was straightforward; child molestation was a crime; having unfashionable opinions was not. Outside of the public sphere the population mostly governed itself as it does in every society and used taboos to do it.
You knew what was allowed and what wasn’t because the rules didn’t change very often the taboos were organic; they derived from collective experience and Instinct the two most reliable guides to life. They evolved for a reason they still do.
Our job at this point is to protect them despite the hectoring – the non-stop hectoring from the people in charge. You know the outlines of right and wrong you’re born knowing them. So don’t let them talk you out of what you can smell don’t let them rationalize away your intuitive moral sense. Cling to your taboos like your life depends on them, because it does.
Cherish and protect them like family heirlooms: that’s exactly what they are.

]

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

It’s common now to speak of the before times in contrast to the after times. The turning point was of course March 16, 2020, the day of 15 Days to Flatten the Curve, though authoritarian trends predate that. Rights were suddenly broadly throttled, even religious rights. We were told to conduct every aspect of our lives in accordance with the priorities of the bio-medical security state.

Very few people anticipated such a shocking development. It was the onset of a new state-conducted war and the enemy was something we could not see and hence could be anywhere. No one has ever doubted the omnipresence of potentially dangerous pathogens but now we were being told that life itself depended entirely on avoidance of them and the only guide going forward would be public-health authorities.

Everything changed. Nothing is the same. The trauma is real and lasting. The claim of “15 Days” was revealed to be a ruse. The emergency lasted three years and then some. The people and machinery that did this are still in power. The pick to head the CDC has a long track record of enabling and cheering the lockdowns and all that followed.

It’s a helpful exercise to summarize the new things we’ve all discovered in these years. Together they account for why the world seems different and why we all feel and think differently now than we did just a few years ago.

Twenty terrible realities unearthed by lockdowns

1. Surveillance and censorship by Big Tech. The resistance eventually found each other but it took months and years. A censorship regime descended on all major social platforms, technologies designed with the intention of keeping us more connected and expanding the range of opinion we could experience. We did not know it was happening, but we eventually learned of the crackdown, which is why so much of us felt so alone. Others could not hear us and we could not hear them. The regime faces a bold court challenge on many fronts but it still goes on today, with all but Twitter constantly policing their networks in ways that are unpredictably authoritarian. We have ironclad evidence now that they are all captured.

2. Power and influence of Big Pharma. It was April 2020 when someone asked me if the goal of the vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical cartel was really behind the lockdowns. The idea would be to terrify us and ruin our lives until we were begging for shots. I thought the whole idea was insane and that the corruption could not possibly reach this deep. I was wrong. Pharma had been at work on a vaccine since January of that year and called in every form of purchased influence to eventually make them mandatory. Now we know that the major regulators are wholly owned and controlled, to the point that necessity, safety, and efficacy don’t really matter.

3. Government propaganda by Big Media. It was relentless from day one: the major media proved hardcore partisans of Anthony Fauci. The powers that be could tap the New York Times, National Public Radio, Washington Post, and all the rest, whenever and however they wanted. Later the media was deployed to demonize those who violated lockdowns, refused masks, and resisted the shots. Gone was the idea that “democracy dies in darkness” and the “paper of record” replaced by darkness itself and constant propaganda. They showed no real curiosity of the other side. The Great Barrington Declaration itself began as an effort to educate journalists but only a few dared even show up. Now we get it: the mainstream media too is wholly owned and completely compromised. They already knew what to report and how to report it. Nothing else mattered.

4. Corruption of public health. Who in their right minds would have predicted that the CDC and NIH, not to mention the World Health Organization, would be deployed as frontline workers in the imposition of totalitarian control? Some observers perhaps predicted this but implausibly so. But in fact it was these agencies which were responsible for all the absurd protocols from closing hospitals to non-Covid cases, putting up Plexiglas everywhere, keeping schools closed, demonizing repurpose therapeutics, masking toddlers, and forcing shots. They knew no limits to their power. They revealed themselves to be faithful agents of the hegemon.

5. Consolidation of industry. Free enterprise is supposed to be free but when workers, industries, and brands were divided between essential and nonessential, where were the howls from Big Business? They weren’t there. They proved willing to put profit ahead of the system of competition. So long as they benefited from the system of consolidation, cartelization, and centralization, they were fine with it. The big-box stores got to wipe out the competition and gain a leg up in industrial standing. Same with remote learning platforms and digital technology. The biggest businesses proved to be the worst enemies of real capitalism and the biggest friends of corporatism. As for arts and music: we know now that the elites consider them dispensable.

6. Influence and power of administrative state. The Constitution established three branches of government but lockdowns were not managed by any of them. Instead it was a fourth branch that has grown up over the decades, the permanent class of bureaucrats that no one elected and no one from the public controls. These permanent “experts” were completely unleashed and unhinged with no check on their power, and they cranked out protocols by the hour and enforced them as legislatures, judges, and even presidents and governors stood by powerless and in awe. We know now that there was a coup d’etat on March 13, 2020 that transferred all power to the national security state but we certainly did not know it then. The edict was classified. The administrative state still rules the day.

7. Cowardice of intellectuals. The intellectuals are the most free to speak their minds of any group. Indeed that is their job. Instead, they stayed quiet for the most part. This was true of right and left. The pundits and scholars just went along with the most egregious attacks on human rights in this generation if not in all living memory. We employ these people to be independent but they proved themselves to be anything but that. We stood by in shock as even famed civil libertarians looked out at the suffering and said “This is fine.” A whole generation among them is today completely discredited. And by the way, the few who did stand up were called horrible names and often lost their jobs. Others took note of this reality and decided instead to behave by staying quiet or echoing the ruling-class line.

8. Pusillanimity of universities. The origin of modern academia is with the sanctuaries from war and pestilence so that great ideas could survive even the worst of times. Most universities – only a handful excepted – completely went along with the regime. They closed their doors. They locked students in their dormitories. They denied paying customers in-person education. Then came the shots. Millions were jabbed unnecessarily and could only refuse on pain of being kicked out of degree programs. They showed a complete lack of principle. Alumni should take note and so should parents who are considering where to send their high school seniors next year.

9. Spinelessness of think tanks. The job of these huge nonprofits is to test the boundaries of acceptable opinion and drive the policy and intellectual world in the direction of progress for everyone. They are also supposed to be independent. They don’t depend on tuition or political favor. They can be bold and principled. So where were they? Almost without exception they clammed up or became craven apologists for the lockdown regime. They waited and waited until the coast was clear and then eked out little opinions that had little impact. Were they just being shy? Not likely. The financials tell a different story. They are supported by the very industries that stood to benefit from the egregious policies. Donors who believe in freedom should take note!

10. Madness of crowds. We’ve all read the classic book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds but we thought it was a chronicle of the past and probably impossible now. But within an instant, mobs of people fell into medieval-style panics, hunting down non-compliers and hiding from the invisible miasma. They had a mission. They were ferreting out dissidents and ratting out the non-compliers. None of this would have happened otherwise. Just like in the Cultural Revolution of China, these would-be members of the Red Guard became foot soldiers for the state. Mathias Desmet’s book on Mass Formation now stands as a classic explanation of how a population devoid of meaningful lives can turn these sorts of political frenzies into deluded crusades. Most of our friends and neighbors went along.

11. Lack of ideological conviction of both right and left. Both right and left betrayed their ideals. The right abandoned its affections for limited government, free enterprise, and the rule of law. And the left turned against its traditional stand for civil liberties, equal freedoms, and free speech. They all became compromised, and they all made up fake rationales for this pathetic situation. Had this all began under a Democrat, the Republicans would have been screaming. Instead they went quiet. Then the Covid regime passed to a Democrat and so they stayed quiet while the Republicans, embarrassed at their previous silence, stayed silent for far too long. Both sides proved ineffective and toothless throughout.

12. Sadism of the ruling class. The kids were denied a year or two of school in some locations. People missed medical diagnostics. Weddings and funerals were on Zoom. The aged were forced into desperate loneliness. The poor suffered. People turned to substance abuse and put on added pounds. The working classes were exploited. Small businesses were wrecked. Millions were forced to move and millions more were displaced from their jobs. The ruling class that advertised its wonderful altruism and public spiritedness became callous and completely disregarded all this suffering. Even when the data poured in about suicide ideation and mental illness from loneliness, it made no difference. They could not muster any concern. They changed nothing. The schools stayed closed and the travel restrictions stayed in place. Those who pointed this out were called terrible names. It was a form of grotesque sadism of which we did not know they were capable.

13. The real-life problem of massive class inequality. Would any of this have happened 20 years ago when a third of the workforce was not privileged enough to take their work home and pretend to produce from laptops? Doubtful. But by 2020, there had developed an overclass that was completely disconnected from the lives of those who work with their hands for a living. But the overclass didn’t care that they had to face the virus bravely and first. These workers and peasants did not have privileges and apparently they didn’t matter much. When it came time for the shots, the overclass wanted their health care workers, pilots, and delivery people to get them too, all in the interest of purifying society of germs. Huge wealth inequalities turn out to make a big difference in political outcomes, especially when one class is forced to serve the other in lockdowns.

14. The cravenness and corruption of public education. A universal education was the proudest achievement of progressives one hundred years ago. We all assumed it was the one thing that would be protected above all else. The kids would never be sacrificed. But then for no good reason, the schools were all closed. The labor unions representing the teachers rather liked their extended paid holiday and tried to make it last as long as possible, as the students got ever further behind in their studies. These are schools for which people paid for with their taxes for many years but no one promised a rebate or any compensation. Homeschooling went from existing under a legal cloud to being suddenly mandatory. And when they opened back up, the kids faced mass silencing with masks.

15. Enabling power of central banking to fund it all. From March 12, 2020, and onward, the Federal Reserve deployed every power to serve as a Congressional printing press. It slammed rates back to zero. It eliminated (eliminated!) reserve requirements for banks. It flooded the economy with fresh money, eventually reaching a peak of 26 percent expansion or $6.2 trillion in total. This of course later translated into price inflation that quickly ate away the actual purchasing power of all that free stimulus dispensed by government, thus harming on net both producers and consumers. It was a great head fake, all made possible by the central bank and its powers. Further damage came to the structure of production by a prolongation of low interest rates.

16. The shallowness of the faith communities. Where were the churches and synagogues? They closed their doors and kept out the people they had sworn to defend. They canceled holy days and holiday celebrations. They utterly and completely failed to protest. And why? Because they went along with the propaganda that ceasing their ministries was consistent with public health priorities. They went along with the state and media claim that their religions were deeply dangerous to the public. What this means is that they don’t really believe in what they claim to believe. When the opening finally came, they discovered that their congregations had dramatically shrunk. It’s no wonder. And who among them did not go along? It was the supposed crazy and odd ones: the Amish, the estranged Mormons, and the Orthodox Jews. How non-mainstream they are. How marginal! But apparently they were among the only ones whose faith was strong enough to resist the demands of princes.

17. The limitations on travel. We didn’t know the government had the power to limit our travel but they did it anyway. First it was internationally. But then it became domestic. For a few months there, it was hard to cross state lines because of the demands that everyone who did so had to quarantine for a fortnight. It was strange because we didn’t know what was and what was not legal nor did we know the enforcement mechanism. It turned out to be a training exercise for what we know now they really want, which is 15-minute cities. Apparently a people on the move are harder to control and corral. We were being acculturated toward a more medieval and tribal existence, staying put so that our masters can keep tabs on us.

18. The tolerance for segregation. Vaccine uptake was certainly disproportionate by race and income. Richer and whiter populations went along but some 40 percent of the non-white and poorer communities didn’t trust the jab and refused. That did not stop 5 major cities from imposing vaccine segregation and enforcing it with police power. For a time, major cities were segregated with disparate impact by race. I don’t recall a single article in a major newspaper that pointed this out, much less decried it. So much for public accommodations and so much for enlightenment! Segregation turns out to be just fine so long as it fits with government priorities – same now as it was in the bad old days.

19. The goal of a social credit system. It is not paranoia to speculate that all this segregation was really about the creation of a vaccine passport system running off a national base, the one they want very much to implement. And part of this is the real and long-term goal of creating a China-style social credit system that would make your participation in economic and social life contingent on political compliance. The CCP has mastered the art and imposed totalitarian control. We know for sure now that major aspects of the pandemic response were scripted in Beijing and imposed through the influence of China’s ruling class. It is completely reasonable to assume that this is the real goal of vaccine passports and even Central Bank Digital Currency.

20. Corporatism as the system under which we live, giving lie to existing ideological systems. For many generations, the great debate has been between capitalism and socialism. All the while, the real goal has passed us by: the institutionalization of an interwar-style corporatist state. This is where property is nominally private and concentrated in only top industries in major sectors but publicly controlled with an eye to political priorities. This is not traditional socialism and it certainly isn’t competitive capitalism. It is a social, economic, and political system designed by the ruling class to serve its interests above all else. Here is the main threat and the existing reality but it is not well understood by either right or left. Not even libertarians seem to get this: they are so attached to the public/private binary that they have blinded themselves to the merger of the two and the ways in which major corporate players are actually driving the advance of statism in their own interests.

If you haven’t changed your thinking over the last three years, you are a prophet, indifferent, or asleep. Much has been revealed and much has changed. To meet these challenges, we must do so with our eyes wide open. The greatest threats to human liberty today are not the ones of the past and they elude easy ideological categorization. Further, we have to admit that in many ways the plain human desire to live a fulfilling life in freedom has been subverted. If we want our freedoms back, we need to have a full understanding of the frightening challenges before us.

Brownstone’s work and influence in this regard is far beyond any that we’ve told publicly. You would be astonished at the extent of it. The times demand circumspection in overt institutional aggrandizement.

We are grateful to our donors for having faith in the power of ideas. We are daily amazed at the ability of passionate and scrupulous writers and intellectuals to make a real difference for the cause of freedom. Please, if you can, join our donor community to keep the momentum going, for the hill is perhaps the steepest we’ve climbed in our lives. We have no “development department” and no corporate or government benefactors: you can make a difference.

“100% lab kids in five years. Japanese researchers on the verge of creating human eggs and sperm that can be grown in an artificial womb”: Parents are no longer needed – the Japanese promise that soon children can be made from a hair or a drop of blood, and the gender of the parents will no longer be important.

“Growing human babies from scratch in the lab could be possible in just five years thanks to a new breakthrough. Researchers in Japan are on the cusp of creating human eggs and sperm cells from scratch in the lab, which will then be developed in an artificial womb. Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi of Kyushu University, who has already figured out the process in mice, thinks he only needs five years to replicate the result in humans. But there are ethical issues, because then women of any age will be able to have children. Parents may also want to give their child certain traits using gene editing. Dr. Hayashi and his team also recently created seven mice with two male biological parents. Scientists will be able to generate sperm and eggs for infertile people, for example, from one of their blood cells. But there are still a lot of ethical, legal and security issues. So, it will be possible to steal the DNA of another person, taking his strand of hair, and make children without his consent.

“Our nation was built on the value of multinational harmony. It’s the most important foundation of our consolidation, which only becomes stronger in the face of foreign pressure and threats,” the Russian president said.

Without stating specific countries, Putin dismissed Russia’s adversaries as “people with neocolonial thinking, dimwits in fact, who do not understand that this diversity makes us stronger.”

“When they talk about us, they think about themselves and imagine that we are like them. They say Russia has to be partitioned into dozens of small states. The goal is clear – to subjugate them, exploit them and use them for profit,” Putin said.

MINISTER OF HYPOCRISY?: Humza Yusaf, first non-white and Muslim Scottish Minister of Health, complains that the Scottish government is too …. Scottish?

Does ‘peak inclusivity’ in a liberal democracy assume racist language is politically correct, against European representatives, in what is a traditionally European (representative) government?