Just Living Your Life... Under the Watchful Eyes of the Swamp

 “A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.”  Writing in 1928, John Shedd wasn’t really talking about ships. He was talking about life.

Years ago, my girlfriend and I went to see a movie.  What we saw, I’ve no idea, but I do know we had a terrible time, and it had nothing to do with what was on the screen and everything to do with what was going on in the theater. People were yelling at the screen, talking to each other, and smoking. My girlfriend mentioned the smoking, and I said that if that was the only problem we encountered, we’d be lucky, as I’d recently witnessed a bloody knife fight between two girls over a baby-daddy in a nearby theater.

I mention this because when you think your life may be in jeopardy, it’s hard to enjoy entertainment, and enjoyment is the whole point of movies. Movies require your buy-in for success, you must turn off reality and connect with the characters.

If you can’t do that, you can’t enjoy the movie. If you’re worried that someone’s going to pull a gun or set the place on fire, you’re going to be too busy scanning for danger to become engaged with what’s on the screen. You’d end up doing little more than wasting your time and money.

Just as movies require your buy-in and focus for success, so too does life. And that’s a problem with 21st-century America and the always-on-everywhere swamp. The danger is not so much that Big Brother is watching and trying to control our every move. He/it doesn’t have to. Our knowing that the state could be watching or listening is enough. It’s called the “Chilling Effect”, basically the government doing something that chills citizens’ willingness to exercise their constitutional rights for fear of reprisals.

Think about it this way: If you think it’s tough to enjoy a movie when you’re worried about what’s going on in the theater, imagine how difficult it would be to write a compelling, engaging movie with a critic holding a club looking over your shoulder the entire time. Well, that’s you trying to live your life.

How different would the script of your life be if you knew your every word might end up as part of some government dossier? How much could you embrace freedom and focus on having fun, sowing your wild oats, finding your passion, or risking failure to pursue some crazy dream if you were constantly wondering what some government bureaucrat with the power to throw you in prison or destroy your business or take away your kids might think? And that’s true even if you didn’t do anything illegal.

And that’s the problem. Since 2013’s Snowden revelations, we’ve known the government is actively collecting reams of data on virtually all of us. Back then, even the NY Times called it a “Threat to Democracy.” The government, against virtually the entire Bill of Rights, has and currently is looking at everything Americans do. (Want to see how much data they collect? Click here.)

Knowing our government is actively looking at emails, phone calls (or “just” our metadata, as we were assured), as well as our online surfing and purchasing habits, sends a chill down your spine. With 350 million people in the country, they’re probably not looking at you…but they might be.

And it’s not just the government. While, yes, it is the FBI, NSA, IRS, and other agencies in the alphabet soup of the state, it’s also Facebook, Google, Apple, and AT&T. It’s also the banks. Maybe the most relevant example of the banks is JP Morgan Chase—a company that recently paid $290 million to victims of Jeffry Epstein for empowering the pedophile—recently closing down the accounts of a prominent vaccine skeptic after closing the account of a religious freedom nonprofit last year. This follows a since derailed plan by MasterCard and Visa to track gun and ammunition purchases.

“But they’re private companies!” That’s technically true, but also false. They may be private but they’re often coerced by the government to do its bidding. What’s more, there’s often a revolving door with government officials that makes explicit coercion unnecessary and government service quite lucrative for potential regulators.

And so back to the life you’re living…

How comfortable are you going to be doing or saying anything that might cause the federal government (or state or local) to put you on some watchlist? You ask yourself “Should I wear this MAGA hat to that school board meeting, or should I wait until my building permit is approved?” “Should I write that blog critical of my senator, or should I wait until my nonprofit application is approved?” “Should I post pictures of my kids at the range, or should I wait until my bank approves my mortgage application?”

The reality is, citizens silencing themselves is a far bigger problem than the government censoring them. (Just think how unfunny “comedy” is today with the censorious woke scrutinizing every joke.) How many journalists or bloggers have avoided writing something or “toned it down” because they were worried they’d pay some price for offending the wrong bureaucrat?

It’s not just the words not spoken or the stands not taken that are the problem. It’s the fact that energy must be spent considering them in the first place. Living a successful life is challenging in the best of circumstances. Getting everything from an education to a job, starting a company or finding the perfect spouse and raising good kids. All take a lot of effort to do successfully, but the question is, how much harder would they be if you had to divert X% of your focus to constantly wondering what the consequences on them be if you exercised your First or Second Amendment rights?

Sure, you could simply keep your head down and not bother, but as we know from Fahrenheit 451, that actually harms society. And, even if you tried to keep your head down and go about your way, there’s no guarantee you aren’t going to end up on the wrong side of a government vaccine policy or tripped up by a school board’s constantly evolving “pronoun” policy.

At the end of the day, living a good life takes work and can be challenging, that’s particularly so in a free society. But it’s the freedom of ideas that the advancements of society, whether advocating for a legislative check on a monarch’s power, proffering a sun-centered system, or filibustering for a Bill of Rights. There’s a reason the US and the West have led the world in the growth of prosperity and advances in science and mathematics, and that reason is the freedom to exchange ideas, good and bad and otherwise.

Getting the most out of life, like enjoying a movie, depends on the ability to focus on the task at hand without fear for your safety as you do so. As the surveillance and control leviathan of the swamp grows, doing so becomes ever more difficult. Now might be a good time to start supporting candidates who vow to dismantle it before it dismantles what’s left of our freedoms.

Even if he's guilty, even if he's convicted, if Donald Trump is on the ballot, I'm voting for him

Donald Trump may indeed be guilty of the charges for which he was indicted a couple of weeks ago… or maybe not. He may even end up being convicted.  Regardless, assuming he’s on the ballot, I’ll be voting for him, even if he’s dressed in stripes sitting in a jail cell. 

Why? Not because I don’t take seriously the handling of classified records or trying to “obstruct” the Justice Department.  Indeed both are serious.  But even if Trump were guilty of both, even if he violated the letter and the spirit of the law, those violations are nothing when compared to the weaponization of the federal government we’ve observed over the last decade and a half.

The Democrat party has spent much of the last fifteen years turning the federal government into an American Stasi to be used against their political opponents in a manner unprecedented in American history. 

Barack Obama took aim at the Constitution early on when in 2010 his Justice Department targeted the press under the guise of “national security”.  They seized records from FOX News reporter James Rosen and accused him of “Espionage” for his reporting on American policy towards North Korea.  Three years later they used similar tactics against the Associated Press.   

Not content to eviscerate the freedom of the press, Obama next set his sights on freedom of speech, this time harnessing the IRS to undermine the Constitution. 

Other presidents have been accused of using the IRS against opponents, but they were pikers when compared to Obama’s war on speech in which the IRS sought to smother hundreds of grass roots Tea Party organizations in their bassinets, before they could even crawl.  The likely result of that “mistreatment” of grassroots opponents was that Barack Obama won reelection despite having 5 million fewer votes than he did in 2008. Contrast that with Donald Trump, who grew his vote total by 12 million in 2020 but somehow “lost” his reelection bid.

Then came the coronation of Hillary Clinton, which had to be guaranteed.  And the vehicle for that guarantee was the Russia collusion hoax which Hillary Clinton started and Obama knew about. The Durham Report lays out in black and white exactly how much the Department of Justice has been politicized.  The FBI not only should have never investigated Trump for Russia collusion in the first place, but over the course of years various FBI and other officials fabricated evidence, lied to judges, lied to Congress, ignored exculpatory evidence, and sought to entrap people in Trump’s coterie then coerce them into testifying against him. 

As a result of the Justice Department’s persecution of Donald Trump, not only was his term hobbled by investigations, but at the same time he had to survive attacks from virtually every corner, including legislators allegedly on his side.  Perhaps most perniciously, largely because of their weaponization of the Justice Department, more than half the country doesn’t trust the “premier” law enforcement agency in the nation.  In 2023 fully 70% of the American people feel like our elections may be compromised by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  To put that in perspective, after decades of the media propaganda machine lying about police hunting black men, black Americans still have a higher opinion of local police than Americans in general do of the FBI.

By 2020 the apparatchiks in the Justice Department had decided that they were America’s white knights and were going to save the country from having to endure another term of Donald Trump as president.  As the election was wrapping up the New York Post ran a story about a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter.  The laptop was full of information about drugs and prostitution and various other illegal activities that the younger Biden participated in.  More proe problematic however were the emails and other information that implicated Joe Biden in various schemes whereby his son and brother were handsomely paid by various foreign entities for his (Biden’s) influencing American policy while Vice President. The FBI worked back channels with America’s modern public squares, Twitter, Facebook and other media outlets to both censor the story and suggest that it was Russian disinformation at the same time. 

The FBI white nights succeeded in their quest to save the nation.  In an election that turned on less than 100,000 votes, fully 13 million Americans (16% of Biden’s “84 million” voters) said they would have changed their vote had they known about the laptop story.  That is what you call a coup d'état.  But as it was the Democrats and the Justice Department leadership running the coup, there was no problem.

Once in office Biden lost no time in seeking to weaponize the DOJ against Trump supporters, including hundreds of Jan 6 protesters, some of whom never even entered the Capitol.  On the 29^th of January, 2021, a mere 9 days after taking office, the administration set about plans to target conservatives by gaming out scenarios about vulnerable citizens facing “radicalization” by pro-life advocates and small government proponents. The following year the Justice Department would target as “domestic terrorists” parents concerned about what was being taught to their children in public schools.  Later FBI management would be accused of forcing agents to fabricate “extremist” and “white supremacist” cases because “The demand for white supremacy vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy”.  And just to put a fine point on it, in April Biden blasted “Those MAGA Republicans” as the real problem America faces. 

Which brings us back to Donald Trump and last week’s indictment.  The reality is, there’s likely not a single voter in America who is going to be swayed one way or another based on the outcome of that case. If elections were about the candidate, last year Pennsylvania Democrats wouldn’t have elected to represent them as Senator a guy who would have trouble completing a kindergarten art project over an erudite, if slightly odd, cardiothoracic surgeon.  Americans of every stripe understand what the choice is in 2024.  Most certainly there are voters who are turned off by some of Trump’s antics and statements, but the reality is anyone who says they would be willing to vote for Ron DeSantis but not Donald Trump is lying… either to themselves or to you. They’re simply looking for a fig leaf to cover their consciences so they can vote for a Democrat.

While at the end of the day the choice may ostensibly come down to a doddering Alzheimer’s patient vs. a convicted ex president, or even a “vapid pander bear” vs. the “Grand Wizard” of the KKK, the reality is the choice on the ballot next November is stark: The continued weaponization of government against the citizens or a resurgence of the freedom and limited government that are at the foundation of America’s greatness.  The Democrat Party and the rest of its swamp cabal have clearly demonstrated they are more than willing to ignore the Constitution and use the police power of government to coerce, control, and if necessary crucify anyone not willing to go along with their cancerous progressive agenda.  Donald Trump doesn’t want to let them do that.

Trump may be a highly flawed man, but as the nation watches its government being transformed into a repressive, progressive Borg, who better to lead the charge to destroy it than the man who has weathered its slings and arrows for the last 8 years?  More than perhaps anyone in America, Trump understands the threat because he’s experienced firsthand the danger it poses. And unlike most, he recognizes who the real target is, something he pointed out to supporters in 2019:  “In reality they’re not after me, they’re after you.  I’m just in the way.”

Sitting in a jail cell or out on the campaign trail, Donald Trump is the touchstone of the Republic.  We either go forward as a nation of laws limited by the Constitution or we transform into a nation of men governed only by coercion and brute force.  There is no middle ground. Given that I’ll take the guy in stripes every time.