We are repeatedly told that the political divide in the US
is as great now as it was in the years leading up to the civil war. A Google
search on the topic yields these headlines: Trump leaves America at its most
divided since the Civil War, CNN, Jan 19, 2021; Analyst says US is most divided
since Civil War, The Hill, Oct 3, 2018; Is the US really heading for a second
civil war?, The Guardian, Jan 9, 2022; and Biden says US more divided than at
any time since the Civil Was, Fox News, June 24, 2021.
This list goes on and it might be so or maybe not. But, most
of the analysis behind these headlines misses the point. The divide, such as it
is, is framed in terms of hyper-partisan politics. And clearly the policy
differences between the parties now are more than squabbles over taxes, defense
spending, social welfare programs and such.
The divide is about the form and shape of the Union going
forward. Until now it’s been hidden in fog and shadows. The Covid-19 pandemic
has brought it into light and focus.
Our divide is over the ultimate authority federal regulatory
agencies and the executive branch can wield over our everyday lives.
Calling to mind President Biden’s hot mic observation on the
Affordable Care Act, the vaccine mandate is a big f****** deal. The federal
government pushed its authority to act on behalf of a “common good” to an
extreme, negating our most fundamental civil rights through coercion.
Through it our individual liberty regarding personal health
and wellbeing was suspended in order to serve the collective with compliance is
enforced though the denial of a right to earn a living.
And worse, any objections to this highly questionable public
health policy, even by highly qualified critics, were and are censored by
corporate communication channels.
The mandate obliterates the civil rights narrative of “life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness” outlined in our Declaration, and explicitly
violates our right of due process. It arises not from a duly enacted law, but
rather it’s an administrative edict resting upon a tortured application of an
existing legislative authority.
While the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s
rule has been thrown out by the Supreme Court, it demonstrates the extent to
which explicit legislative intent and authority are becoming formalities; a nod
to a dated and to what many claim is an irrelevant constitution.
It’s an end point to the Progressive movement where, from
Woodrow Wilson onwards, the overriding responsibility of the “modern” state is to
unify men into a collective society managed by experts and technocrats for the
collective good.
Dwight Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of an
industrial/military complex. That sort of unholy union of government and corporations
has metastasized into every major segment of the economy. Depending upon how they are counted, there are
between 257 and 430 rule making departments, agencies and sub-agencies (https://cei.org/blog/nobody-knows-how-many-federal-agencies-exist/).
The expansion of regulatory authorities coupled with
economic consolidation of major sectors of the economy into mega corporations
has led to a symbiotic corporate/government union. This union is responsible
for writing the legislation and administrative rules that govern most aspects
of our place in the collective.
We have been managed and corralled throughout the pandemic
by the union of the corporate health care industry, the pharmaceutical industry,
the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, an army of
public health administrators, and propagandizing corporate and social media.
It has been nothing short of a full mobilization of what has
been variously called the administrative state, the deep state or the swamp.
Its performance in minimizing the mortality rates and economic impacts from the
pandemic has been abysmal, while its corporate and government players have been
enriched.
Worse, since the outset we’ve been deceived. The denial that
the virus was almost certainly a bioengineered product from a Chinese a lab and
in part funded by US tax payers is huge. Public funding of viral gain of
function research is something few Americans would agree to. That it was hidden
through obscure third party research grants is a gross misallocation of government
funds, and likely a criminal one.
Similarly, that hospitalizations and mortality rates from
the virus were grossly overstated, by obscuring the distinction between “of”
and “with,” seemed to be part of a misinformation campaign to justify draconian
control measures is huge. So far the pandemic has cost us nearly $5 trillion.
The resulting indirect cost from the subsequent social and economic
displacement is ongoing. It’s becoming increasingly clear those measures did
little to mitigate the spread of the virus or lower its mortality rate. (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jan/31/lockdowns-had-little-or-no-impact-covid-19-deaths-/)
The willful blindness towards and prohibition of therapeutic
medications, particularly ivermectin, is huge and is possibly criminal. Hospitals were paid for treating CV19 patients
only if those providers followed CDC protocols and received a bonus payment for
those who died. Individual physicians were threatened with losing their
hospital admission affiliations and their medical licenses unless they
similarly fell in line. The prohibited therapeutic protocols could have cut
mortality rates by more than half. (https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/doctors-organization-has-treated-over-150000-covid-19-patients-9999-percent-survival)
And finally forcing experimental vaccinations through coercion
and disinformation is huge. It hasn’t stopped the spread of the virus. At best
it’s reduced the severity of the infection. At worse coercing those not at
grave health risk become vaccinated may in fact rise to the level of a crime against
humanity should we see widespread long term serious adverse effects.
The CV19 pandemic demonstrated the degree to which the ruling
elite can exert control even over the very mundane aspects of our personal
lives if they deem it necessary for the collective.
It’s the imposition of arbitrary and extra legal authority
that is the source of the political divide we are seeing now. The measures
relating to Covid-19 underscore how far the coercive power of the government/corporate
technocracy extend. What is seen as a deep partisan political divide is only partisan
in that the Democratic Party has increasingly become the party of the
government/corporate technocracy.
It’s natural to assume those governing have the nation’s
best interests at heart. Whether we agree or disagree with their policies, we
trust they are acting in good faith. Yet when their policies inflict great
social and economic harm without benefit, and when objections to those policies
are met with censorship and deplatforming, one has to wonder.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) recently brought defining
clarity to our political divide:
“Each of us Americans have to understand and own our
responsibility to stand us and protect that freedom in our own way and reject
this censorship, and just remind people what this is all about and how – if we
allow these threats to continue and this censorship to continue, the power
elite to spread their own controlling propaganda, we will lose who we are as a
country. We will no longer have this democratic republic. We will have a
dictatorship that is controlling what people are allowed to hear, what we’re
allowed to see, and what we’re allowed to say, and we will be America no
longer.” (https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/02/04/gabbard-if-power-elite-continue-censorship-propaganda-we-will-have-a-dictatorship/)
