Editor’s Note: American Free News Network would like to welcome Dr. Lani Kass to our great team. Dr. Kass served in the Department of Defense for 30 years. She was the first woman Professor of Military Strategy and Operations at the National War College, where she educated several generations of US and Allied senior-most military and national security leaders. She served as Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force and as Senior Policy Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After retiring from government service in Oct 2011, she served for 10 years as Senior Vice President and Corporate Strategic Advisor at CACI International Inc, a $6B Fortune 100 company. Welcome Aboard Dr. Kass!!
Ed.
The presidential election is still 8 months away. Yet the campaign to preclude a second Trump administration is already in full swing. In the two weeks preceding the most divisive, blatantly partisan State of the Union address in history, the public has been treated to “searing” images of the undemocratic, uncouth, patriarchal, racist, xenophobic, homophobic dystopia America is doomed to become should the GOP win in November. Against the backdrop of the most virulent, overt and violent antisemitism sweeping the US in the wake of Hamas’ barbarous savagery on October 7, 2023, it is “white nationalism” that is pilloried and portrayed as the clear and present danger to our “democracy.”
First, a new tome, White Rural Rage by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, was hailed by the New York Times as “an important book that ought to be read by anyone who wants to understand politics in the perilous Age of Trump.” (David Corn, New York Times, Feb 27, 2024)
The book explores
“why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power [sic] and why…they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States. [The authors] show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites who…are increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies….[B]y stoking rural Whites’ anger…conservative politicians and talking heads create a feedback loop of resentments that are undermining American democracy.”
Next, Politico’s Heidi Przybyla, an award-wining national investigative correspondent and a veteran Washington journalist, told MSNBC that people who believe human rights come from God are “Christian nationalists”. Przybyla’s comments triggered an outrage. Yet, instead of apologizing, she doubled down. Here’s a taste of her newest piece:
“Every person’s spiritual motivations are entitled to respect. Once these motivations take them onto the stage of politics and lawmaking that will affect the lives of fellow citizens, however, they….can expect journalistic scrutiny….They cannot expect exemption from criticism from people who oppose their agendas, nor any extra deference for their political words or actions simply because they are motivated by religious belief…. Christianity is a religion. Christian Nationalism is a political movement…. The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists is that they believe our rights as Americans and as all human beings do not come from any earthy [sic] authority. They don’t come from Congress, from the Supreme Court, they come from God.”
Evidently, people who have read America’s founding document—the Constitution, which every Serviceman and appointed or elected official swear “to protect and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic”—are a mortal threat to our Nation’s very survival. And so, apparently, are the millions of us who have faced the American flag in our classrooms, placed our right hand over our hearts, and recited in unison: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
And, on March 3, CBS’s 60 Minutes broadcast a lengthy segment about “Moms for Democracy” waging a “dangerous campaign to ban books”—specifically ones “focused on race and gender”—from school libraries. Could the dystopia of Fahrenheit 451 and Nazi Germany circa 1933—when students publicly burned over 25,000 books by Jewish authors—be far behind?
Finally, with Super Tuesday having cemented the electoral contest, the President addressed the Congress and the Nation on March 7. Arriving 20 minutes late—itself an unprecedented event, reportedly caused by pro-Hamas rioters blocking both the departure from the White House and the arrival on Capitol Hill—the President opened up with a shouted volley: “Now it’s we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the union. And, yes, my purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment, either. Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today. What makes our moment rare is the freedom and democracy under attack at — both at home and overseas at the very same time.”
Then came this divisive hyperbole of the night:
“In a literal sense, history is watching. History is watching, just like history watched three years ago on January 6th when insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American democracy.
Many of you are here on that darkest of days. We all saw with our own eyes the insurrectionists were not patriots. They’d come to stop the peaceful transfer of power, to overturn the will of the people. January 6th lies about the 2020 election and the plots to steal the election posed a great — gravest threat to US democracy since the Civil War, but they failed….Again, it’s not — it’s not hyperbole to suggest history is watching. They’re watching. Your children and grandchildren will read about this day and what we do.”
What is the purpose of sowing and amplifying such divisions in an already polarized nation? We are witnessing what Hannah Arendt, in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, called “the atomization of society”. It’s a time-tested, highly effective communist, Nazi, and fascist tactic: break up every normal, natural connection in society: the family, the church, the synagogue, the temple;pervert everyday language; portray “the other” as a mortal enemy; isolate people from each other and their communities—all in order to enable totalitarian control. You, the individual, are completely alone—an atom. No family, no community, no religious solace. You trust nobody because everyone can turn on you and be rewarded for that denunciation. That includes your children. And, threats—real and imagined—are all around you.
Whether “right” or “left,” fascist or communist, totalitarianism of all stripes finds fertile ground in frightened, isolated individuals, riven from their fellow countrymen and convinced that everything they hold dear is in peril. And, as George Orwell notes in his famous Animal Farm: “The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous.”
Don’t believe any of this could possibly happen in the U.S.? Think back a couple of years: COVID was upon us and “atomization” was in full swing. Everyone masked up, stood 6 feet apart, isolated from family, friends and community. Most of us chose to avoid holiday celebrations, houses of worship, weddings and funerals, movies, concerts, restaurants, malls, county fairs, and gyms. Our children stayed home from school and we didn’t go to work. Many of us also lined up for hours, rain or shine, to receive not one, but two jabs of a new vaccine of dubious effectiveness and serious, though largely unforeseen, after-effects. We “trusted science” and believed officialdom. We’re still reaping the consequences. If that was an experiment in dividing and controlling society, it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.
Look for Part 2, tomorrow. Stay Tuned.
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