81 Million Neville Chamberlains... Nuclear War, Maybe, But At Least No Mean Tweets

Vladimir Putin is a bad guy.  Vladimir Putin is a megalomaniac.  Vladimir Putin is a criminal.  All of those things are true.  Similarly, Adolph Hitler was a bad guy, a megalomaniac and a criminal. But Vladimir Putin is not Adolph Hitler and Russia in 2022 is not Germany in 1938/39.  But in both cases, the future of the world hung on / hangs in the balance.  But maybe not in the way you think…

Much of the world was already engaged in war in 1941 when the United States joined the fight.  Most of Europe and much of North Africa were under the boot of the Nazis while most of the Far East was controlled by the Japanese.  German U Boats were prowling the seas sinking ships around the world from belligerents and non belligerents alike.  There was a world war going on, we just weren’t active, frontline participants prior to Pearl Harbor. However one looks at that period, the world as we know it was under fierce attack and eventually would have enveloped the rest of the world, including the United States. 

In February 2022 none of that was true.  Sure, Russia invaded Ukraine after invading Georgia in 2008 (then leaving after six months) and annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.  And sure, Vladimir Putin has been saber rattling about reconstituting the lost parts of the USSR.  But the world in 2022 was not the world in 1938/39…

NATO didn’t exist then. The UN didn’t exist then.  More importantly, the economic integration of European nations to one another and the rest of the west didn’t exist to the extent it does today.  And finally, in the late 1930s the Nazis had the most powerful military on the planet, while today Russia’s troops are rightly seen as inferior to most they would face in the West.

All of that to say when Russia invaded Ukraine in February of this year, the world was not on the brink of anything resembling a world war.  

If you took a time machine and went back to February of 2022 and asked the American people would they be willing to spend in excess of $50 billion and send the world into an economic tailspin if Russia invaded Ukraine, my guess is they would have said no.  They might have talked about bulking up NATO forces, they might have talked about sanctions, but I doubt they would have supported propping up a corrupt regime in a notoriously corrupt nation with tens of billions of dollars that would have to paid for by taxpayers already struggling under the weight of inflation and economic malaise.  Nor would they have wanted to bring America and the world to the brink of a nuclear cataclysm. 

But here we are, six months later, exactly there, with Vladimir Putin opaquely threatening to use nuclear weapons and the leader of Ukraine goading the United States to strike first with its nuclear weapons.

What is most sad about all of this is that none of it had to happen. A new piece in Foreign Affairs states “in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”  So essentially, in April, less than two months after the beginning of the war, the parties involved were close to agreement with returning to the status quo of what existed the day before Russia invaded.  But the agreement collapsed.  Why? Joe Biden…

“As soon as the Ukrainian negotiators and Abramovich/Medinsky, following the outcome of Istanbul, had agreed on the structure of a future possible agreement in general terms, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared in Kyiv almost without warning.

"Johnson brought two simple messages to Kyiv. The first is that Putin is a war criminal; he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not. We can sign [an agreement] with you [Ukraine], but not with him. Anyway, he will screw everyone over” is how one of Zelenskyy's close associates summed up the essence of Johnson's visit.”

Now that’s Pravda, a Russian mouthpiece, but its assertion dovetails with statements Johnson made publically two weeks later:  “British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said any peace talks over Ukraine are likely to fail, as he compared holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiating with a crocodile. Johnson said dealing with Putin was like "a crocodile when it's got your leg in its jaws" and said it was vital that the West continues arming Ukraine.” And “Johnson said world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, agreed on a call this week that they would continue to supply Ukraine with weapons, including artillery, as Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine's East.”

So, essentially, the combatants had come to a resolution to their conflict when the west shows up and decides they’d rather have more war. The “they” in Johnson’s statement about not being on board with a peace settlement is telling.  Johnson was no doubt acting on behalf of the man who “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”, Joe Biden.  There’s simply no way to believe that the UK was going to put the kibosh on what could be a peaceful settlement to a potential powder keg without Washington’s approval or encouragement.

At the very moment when a fragile peace could have been worked out and negotiators begun to solve the differences between Russia and the Ukraine, Joe Biden steps in and does what he does best, mess things up.  The timeline here is interesting… Despite the fact that on March 10^th the US promised Ukraine $13 billion and on March 26^th Biden told the world that Putin "cannot remain in power," the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were still able to come to an agreement on a peace deal.  And staggeringly, Joe Biden scuttled it.

Here we are, in September and the much of the world is in recession, prices for everything are up dramatically, the US has provided Ukraine with upwards of $60 billion in aid and Europe is facing energy shortages and skyrocketing prices just as winter approaches.  And now nuclear war is in the air.

All of this because Joe Biden wants revenge on Russia for something they didn’t even do…

Most certainly Russia tried to influence the 2016 elections in the US, but many countries do so.  It’s called statecraft and most certainly the United States does an enormous amount of it.  Nonetheless, even the Washington Post, the Democrat mouthpiece, states that the Russian’s “efforts were small in scope, relative to homegrown media efforts,” instead blaming “Fox News and the insular right-wing media ecosystem it anchors.”

And there we have it. The world of 2022 is looking a bit more like Europe of the late 1930’s and on the brink of war because of Joe Biden’s Trump Derangement Syndrome. But rather than being some troll on Twitter reposting Democrat memes from his Mom’s basement, Joe Biden is the leader of the free world and is expressing his TDS by sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine, sending the world into a global recession and threatening Russia to the point where its leader threatens to use nuclear weapons. 

On literally every single issue of consequence today Joe Biden is wrong.  On the single biggest issue of today Joe Biden has not only been wrong, but catastrophically so.  At the moment the world should be finding ways to pick itself up from the economic body blow of the Covid lunacy, the world is watching Putin hover his shaky finger over the nuclear button and wondering how many Europeans will freeze to death this winter because they don’t have enough energy to heat their homes.

In 2022 if the world finds itself in a nuclear conflict, Vladimir Putin will bear some of the blame, but he will share that with the feckless Joe Biden.  Putin’s a thug and Biden’s a dunce and everyone knows it. Most of the blame however will sit squarely on the shoulders of the purported “81 million” Americans who were so angered by “mean tweets” that they put into the most powerful office in the world someone demonstrably not capable of running a lemonade stand.  But at least, like Neville Chamberlain they had good intentions. 

Joe Biden Has Picked Up the Nazi's Handbook, and He's Not Trying to Burn It...

Most people know about the Nazis and WWII and the Jews. A century later however what many people don’t realize is that the Nazis didn’t start out as the merchants of death they became.  They started out as anti-big business, anti-middle class, anti-capitalist and anti-Communist with only a relatively tangential focus on anti-Semitism.  For all of their efforts in the first decade of their existence the Nazi party attracted few adherents.  It was only in the early 30’s when they began to gain real traction, using the economic ruin brought on by the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression to gain power. While nationalism and anti-Semitism were always part of their agenda, it was the post war economic disaster that was the golden ticket for a party who argued the Germans were suffering under the boot of oppression.  The Nazis promised to remove the shackles of Versailles, reenergize the German economy and as a result in 1932 they won the largest number of seats in the Parliament.  Leveraging this position Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933. 

Once in power, the gloves came off.  The Reichstag fire in February 1933 was used as a premise to target political opponents and curtail civil liberties.  A month later Parliament passed the Enabling Act which allowed the cabinet to make laws with no parliamentary oversight.  In June of that year opposition parties were outlawed and in December the lines between party and government were erased.  In January of 1934 the last vestiges of opposition was eliminated when states lost their voice in government.  So in a period of less than two years the Nazi party went from a fringe party to having a stranglehold on the government and the people of Germany.  It was then that they unleashed their heretofore relatively subdued anti-Semitism.  From boycotts to book burnings to de facto discrimination to de jure separation via the Nuremberg laws and finally, the Final Solution.

We can be almost sure that if we asked any German in 1932 would it be OK to gas and murder Jews, they would most certainly have said no. But within two years Jews would officially be defined as a different, inferior race, had their political and economic freedoms curtailed and within a decade millions would be dead. 

As Martin Niemöller suggests in his 1946 poem “First they came…” the Nazis were able to accomplish their goals by taking baby steps of oppression with little discernible pushback from a willfully gullible public. 

And so it is that we find ourselves in America in 2022 with fascism ascendant. And unlike what the media would like you to believe, it’s not Donald Trump who’s leading the parade.  For just over two years we’ve seen the evil of fascism take hold in the United States like it’s never held sway before.

Consider the following: 

In the summer of 2020 Democrats rained hell down on American cities and citizens, by allowing and encouraging and funding urban terrorists to destroy private and public property, attack citizens and the police and kill dozens of innocent victims. 

In 2020 and beyond, after years of watching Democrats assail our election system, when anyone questioned the highly unlikely outcome of the 2020 election they were branded as anti democratic conspiracy nuts and accused of supporting insurrection.

The relatively small riot that occurred on January 6^th 2021– primarily involving those who questioned the 2020 election outcome – was labeled an insurrection and hundreds of citizens who had been welcomed into the US Capital or standing on its grounds were arrested, labeled as terrorists and thrown in solitary confinement for months without charge or bail.  At the same time there are a number of provocateurs who seem to have been involved about whom the FBI is stunningly disinterested.   

Illegally politicizing the Department of Justice, for the following 18 months the Biden administration and Democrats used the pretense of the “insurrection” to harass, intimidate, arrest and jail members of the former president’s administration, legal team and supporters.  This harassment eventually led to the unprecedented step of the Justice Department and the FBI raiding the home of the former president and future presidential contender. 

Beginning in 2020, in response to the Corona virus, states and municipalities across the country (mostly run by Democrats) instituted draconian lockdown edicts that eviscerated individual rights, destroyed small businesses and ostracized or arrested individuals who resisted. Simultaneously teachers’ unions nationwide forced the shutdown of schools, leading to extraordinary declines in student learning and dramatic increases in youth depression. Those seen questioning the efficacy of or the damage from such lockdowns and shutdowns were seen as enemies of the regime and were subsequently silenced as the administration covertly worked with social media companies to silence and deplatform them.  

The Biden administration issued mandates for rapidly developed vaccines of dubious efficacy and unknown danger and then proceeded to coerce private enterprises to enforce said mandates.   Questioning that policy or non acquiesce with it was seen as a proxy for opposition to the regime and livelihoods were threatened and destroyed.

Inserting themselves into the localist of government activities, school boards, Americans who stood up and voiced their opposition to their children being exposed to sexualization in schools or accused of being racists because of the color of their skin have been branded as terrorists by the Justice Department.

All of this threatening, intimidating and jailing of the opposition set the backdrop for Joe Biden’s extraordinary speech last week where he stated:  Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic. This was not a campaign speech, this was the President of the United States addressing American citizens… and he called 71 million of them terrorists.

Which brings us back to Germany in 1932.  Just as the Nazis used their toehold on power to take total control of the government and methodically use that government to first slander then marginalize then cleave from society the hated Jews who were said to be less than human, the Democrats have used their control over the media, local governments and federal agencies to take over the federal government and are now using that government to slander and marginalize and cleave from society the millions of Americans who disagree with their leftist agenda. 

And these are not just idle words, Joe Biden is the head of the United States government, with all of its resources at disposal, telling 71 million Americans they are a threat to the nation. And in case anyone missed the point, after having just passed a law to hire 87,000 new armed IRS agents, the administration hired Nikole Flax, who worked with Lois Lerner at the IRS when it was targeting conservatives during the Obama administration, to run the new division.   So Joe Biden and the Democrats have just created the largest armed police force in the nation and set as its leader someone associated with the targeting of their political opponents.  Joe Biden’s words are not just words… they are threats. He paints his political opponents as extremists and then exhorts his supporters to “confront” them.  “We’re all called by duty and conscience to confront extremists who put their own pursuit of power above all else.”

None of this means that by 2025 we’ll have concentration camps filled with emaciated conservatives, but it’s not like there’s no precedent.  But unlike the Germans after 1932, Americans still have the opportunity to do something about this, to make their voices heard, to change the course of history.  This November in all 50 states there will be elections, and in most there will be a Democrat on one side and a Republican on the other.  In every single case, whether for dog catcher, governor, senator or any office in between, they should pull the GOP lever.  The GOP is far from perfect and their candidates and representatives are at times questionable, but at the end of the day, they are not Democrats.  They are not the party that is taking the country down the totalitarian path that wrought so much damage and spilled so much blood in the last century.  No, Republicans may be flawed, but voting for them will likely not be fatal to the Republic.  The same can’t be said about Democrats.

Taking Back September 11th and Taking Back The Republic

I was not, obviously, alive in 1776 when the United States was born.  I couldn’t be there when the 2^nd Continental Congress was writing the Constitution.  I wasn’t part of the Union fighting to free the slaves or the troops who landed on the beaches of Normandy.  Nor was I a fireman running into the towers on September 11 or a soldier in Afghanistan routing out the people responsible for it.  But I’m here now.

There’s no way I’ll be able to accomplish in my life anything on the scale of greatness achieved by those men.  But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.  Just because one can’t aspire to be a saint doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t seek to do good works. 

We’re just a couple of weeks away from the 20^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks that changed the course of our history.  America in 2021 is seemingly a universe away from America in 2001.  In almost every way, the country is far worse off.  Americans are divided like never before.  The basic notion of the United States as a positive force in the world, a fundamentally good, if flawed, nation is under attack in our schools on our airwaves and tellingly, in our military.  Our borders are nonexistent – unless you’re Cuban – allowing literally millions of people a year to simply walk into our country unfettered. Fundamental tenants of American life, free speech, freedom of religion, private property, and the notion of innocent until proven guilty are evaporating right in front of us.

And then of course there’s Afghanistan.  On the international stage we are watching the real time collapse of American prestige, honor, influence and power.  Joe Biden and his woke cabal have turned a debatable policy of leaving Afghanistan into a military, humanitarian and political disaster of epic proportions.  Somehow, they have figured out how to not only abandon Afghanistan, but do so while providing the Taliban with potentially thousands of American hostages, betraying tens of thousands of Afghans who helped us over the last two decades and provide the enemy with tens of billions of dollars of American military equipment, ammunition and buildings. 

In a word, America circa 2021 is in decline.  And the pace of her collapse is quickening.  Things have been coming apart for a while but started in earnest when the media turned on George Bush after the war in Iraq, picked up steam with Barack Obama and the fiction that opposition equaled racism, and came to a head with the hatred of Donald Trump and reached its peak with the theft of the 2020 election. 

As a result of all of this, the United States are not so united.  The country is coming apart at the seams and the only way to keep it together is to once again give Americans confidence that their legal votes count, that their voices count and that the man or woman governing the country was legitimately elected.  Citizens who feel like their government is corrupt look for extra legal ways to solve problems, they evade taxes and regulations and eventually establish their own shadow forms of government and coercion. (See Mexico just across the nonexistent border) In the simplest form, a nation where the citizens feel like the government is corrupt will find that those citizens don’t obey laws unless there’s a gun pointed at their heads, and in the case of the United States, with a citizenry built on two centuries of freedom and liberty, that is going to take a lot of guns. 

Tens of millions of Americans are asking themselves “What can we do about this?” or “What the hell happened?” or “How the hell can we save this country?”

According to the traditional way things have always been done, nothing.  We could wait for 2022 and 2024 to go back to the polls and think “Maybe we’ll win!”  Don’t count on it.  Should we start a revolution or try to overthrow the government?  Umm… no.  Not only would such an effort be doomed to fail, but that would open a Pandora’s box of chaos from which I doubt we’d emerge as “One nation, under God” or as one nation at all.  But by the same token, by doing nothing America is rapidly becoming a fascist state run by tyrants of the far left.  So can anything be done?  I don’t know, but I’ve got a suggestion.

On the twentieth anniversary of September 11^th Americans should take back the date from the terrorists who put it on our calendar.  How? By making September 11 stand for something else.  Make September 11 the day Americans stood up and demanded their country back, stated that they would not accept their nation being stolen under the cover of night, that they would not accept that America has become a third world dictatorship where social media robber barons and corrupt officials manipulate the voting machines and install their leader of choice.  Make September 11, 2021 the modern equivalent of July 4, 1776 and declare that we will not be ruled by unjust leaders with no legitimate right to govern. 

How do patriots do that?  By showing up at the doorsteps of their state capitals on September 11^th and demanding that their legislatures lend their voices to the fight.  Those voices should demand that states with a margin of victory in the 2020 election below 3% audit those elections and decertify their electors in the event fraud is discovered.  That voice is not a request.  It’s a demand. 

Now of course the legislatures could refuse.  And even if they didn’t and made that demand, Congress could – and probably would – simply ignore them. And lastly, even if Congress were on board, the Supreme Court might insert itself into the mix and claim it’s unconstitutional.  We understand all of that, but none of that obviates the necessity of making a stand in the first place.  Remember, the Declaration of Independence was not the opening salvo of the conflict with England.

In 1768 there was the Massachusetts Circular Letter which declared The Townsend Act taxes were unconstitutional because Massachusetts was not represented in Parliament.  In response the British sent troops to restore “order” and the result was the Boston Massacre in 1770.  From there more taxes and more resistance, culminating in the Boston Tea Party in 1773.  This defiance brought about the Coercive Acts which sought to essentially turn Massachusetts into a police state governed by the Crown.  From there the table was set for Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress and eventually the Declaration of Independence.  All along the way the British had opportunities to avert losing what would turn out to be the golden goose, but at each step they failed to do so. Will the states, Congress and the Supreme Court make the same mistake?

The state legislatures, Congress and the Supreme Court may indeed fail the American people once again, but it is up to us to make them understand that we take our Constitution and our democratic Republic very seriously and will no longer let them obscure what happened in 2020.  September 11^th 2021 will be the first step in taking back the narrative, from the terrorists who struck at the heart of our nation 20 years ago and the country from the conspirators who struck at the heart of our Republic on the morning of November 4^th. 

None of this is intended to take away from the courage and valor of those who ran into buildings on that fateful day.  Absolutely not. Their courage and bravery stand as beacons through the dark and will for ages...

In the end we may not be able to achieve the greatness of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of D-Day or the men of NYFD, or the men and women who fought so bravely in Afghanistan, but we can certainly plant our flag and say “No more! We’re taking back September 11^th and taking back our Republic!”

The Lesson of Afghanistan is a Simple One, But Probably Not What You Think

 Joe Biden is being roasted for his indefensible handling of the Afghanistan exit.  As well he should be.  Indeed, his incompetence is so legion that he’s actually getting roasted by a media whose only job appears to be to prop up the Biden regime.  Both the New York Times and the Washington Post pilloried him while over at CNN: 'the debacle of defeat and chaotic retreat in Afghanistan' is a 'political disaster' for President Biden. The Wall Street Journal suggested his statement 'washing hands' of Afghanistan 'is one of most shameful in US history'. 

They’re of course right.  This may be the most incompetent diplomatic / military exercise in American history… and it came straight from the Commander in Chief and his incompetent cabal of woke advisors. 

Given the tragedy unfolding today, one wonders if Americans will learn the real lesson of Afghanistan.  Sure, while one lesson would be to never put a senile incompetent leftist in the position of Commander in Chief, that’s not the real lesson to be learned…

American direct involvement in Afghanistan started out twenty years ago after the attacks of September 11^th.  It didn’t take long to discover that the Taliban had been giving Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda training bases and a home from which to attack the US.  George W. Bush sent troops in to rout them, which was largely accomplished within months.  But of course the troops didn’t come home. They stayed, with the ostensible mission of helping Afghanistan craft a nation that would no longer be a haven for terrorists, and a government unwilling to protect them.  We – Americans, not me personally as I did not serve during that time nor in that theater – built roads, schools, bases, buildings, shepherded the writing of a constitution, facilitated elections and helped form a government with all the trappings of legitimacy.  One of the most laudable efforts was help to give girls and women opportunities that they had essentially never seen in Afghanistan.

Of course, the Taliban, while defeated in terms of running the country, never quite went away.  They hid in the hills. They hid in Pakistan and actually took parts of it over.  They operated under the cover of night and gave a constant reminder that they were never far away, having been funded and shielded by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service.  

All of this “progress” cost a great deal, both in terms of money and the lives of brave servicemen.  When all is said and done, the United States will have spent somewhere between $1 and $2 trillion seeking to build Afghanistan into a democracy with a functioning military and government.  At the same time, 2,500 American servicemembers lost their lives executing that mission. 

All for what?  Not much, apparently.  In just a number of days the Taliban took over the entire country.  The president fled. Americans were airlifted from the roof of the embassy.  Girls are now being stolen from their families to be given as wives to Taliban fighters.  Those who assisted the Americans and local police are being rounded up and killed.  The Afghan military has essentially evaporated, leaving the Taliban in possession of tens of billions of dollars of American supplied weapons and equipment.  Soon the Taliban will bring Afghanistan back to the 7^th century, from whence they came.  Sharia law.  Women in bondage. No freedom.  Economic backwater.

The lesson of Afghanistan is not that the United States couldn’t turn The Graveyard of Empires into a thriving democracy, such as our own. That was never in the cards.  The American colonies grew up as part of the British Empire and had been marching slowly towards a representative government with individual freedoms for centuries, culminating in the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution.  Of course neither of those was the final word and the United States has been evolving towards a More Perfect Union ever since. 

Afghanistan doesn’t have anything resembling the history we have.  Just the opposite.  The nation, to the degree that is actually a nation, exists largely on a map.  The people are far more tribal than they are Afghani, and most live lives like those their ancestors lived 1,000 years ago.  Nation building in Afghanistan was always likely to be a failure, whether the United States spent $2 trillion or $20. 

And therein lays the lesson of Afghanistan, through the words of Ronald Reagan.  “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Americans live in the greatest nation in the history of man, one that took literally centuries to get where it is today.  It’s far from perfect of course, and it’s always evolving, but the fundamental principles of limited government, individual freedom and free markets have been guides the entire journey. But because it’s not perfect, the left wants to destroy it.  Tear down our Founding Fathers because they didn’t think about 21^st century mores when they were busy carving out a new nation.  Eliminate free speech because mean words offend vulnerable sensibilities.  Eliminate free markets because they do not provide for a perfectly equal distribution of wealth.  Divide the country by an endless array of hyphens so that professional victims can identify their “oppressors”. 

The freedom that Reagan spoke of, the prosperity the United States has created and the opportunities Americans enjoy are not predestined. They aren’t written into our DNA, not guaranteed by God and not irreversible.  Just as a generation of Afghanis who grew up in a relatively free nation are about to discover, what is here today is not guaranteed to still be here tomorrow.  History is important. Culture is important. Shared values are important.  Twenty years and $2 trillion dollars in Afghanistan prove that and demonstrate how quickly rights and freedoms can evaporate.  

To the degree that pampered leftists who, in a global sense were born on third and think they hit a triple, want to change the rules of the game called America, change the dimensions of the playing field and change the players in the lineup, they’re playing with fire. They think they know where those changes will lead.  They’re wrong.  Free speech, and the respect for the free exercise of such, once gone are almost impossible to regain.  Private property, once taken, almost never makes it back into the hands of the rightful owners and with it goes free markets and prosperity.  Government programs, once launched almost never end, and edicts, once written are almost never rescinded.  A government unleashed from the constraint of the Bill of Rights will never find its way back into the cage.    

Some people know that reality while others clearly don’t.  Compare a 25 year old Afghani woman who is now facing home detention, a burqa for life and a husband she didn’t choose to a 25 year old American grad student standing in $300 sneakers holding a $1,000 phone and barking “F the police”.  One clearly understands what freedom is while the other wallows in his utopian fantasy utterly clueless of how the world actually works.  There’s a reason millions of people risk their lives every year to come to America or literally cling to the wing of a flying plane in order to escape Taliban Afghanistan.  It’s called reality. 

It would be nice if the left would learn the simple lesson of Afghanistan, that freedom is fleeting and must be prized and protected, but sadly they are unlikely to allow machinations in the real world intrude on their delusional fantasies.   

What Now - Part 2: Solution to Fraud? Pact of Secession

Earlier in the week I asked the question:  What if Proof of 2020 Presidential Election Fraud Develops? In it I mentioned a number of remedies that have been widely talked about from impeachment to a Pentagon coup to rioting in the streets.

None of those is an ideal solution. Indeed, the first wouldn’t correct the problem, the second would turn the United States into a third world banana republic and the last would bring about a modern version of the bloody chaos that characterized post revolutionary France.  

No, an ideal solution would reverse the inauguration of Joe Biden and inaugurate Donald Trump as the rightful president and do so while maintaining our Constitutional Republic.

As such, there is another option that could theoretically do that, and thanks to TV shows from Perry Mason to Law & Order it’s based on concepts most Americans are familiar with: “fraud vitiates everything” and “fruit of the poison tree”.  The former, based on the Supreme Court ruling UNITED STATES v. THROCKMORTON (98 US 61 – Supreme Court 1878); states that “There is no question of the general doctrine that fraud vitiates the most solemn contracts, documents, and even judgments.” That essentially means that in contracts – and an election is nothing if not a contract – fraud makes them invalid. Everyone knows if you sign a contract based on fraudulent information, that contract is invalid.  Further, from that comes “void ab initio” which means that fraud from the beginning taints everything resulting from it.  No doubt most of us have heard a TV lawyer seeking to throw out evidence against their client because the search itself or the information upon which the warrant was based, was fraudulent.  It’s called the doctrine of “Fruit of a poison tree” from NARDONE V. UNITED STATES, (308 U.S. 338 – Supreme Court 1939) which states that if a tree is poisonous, so too is its fruit. (H/T to Andrea Widburg, Donna Palen and Al Simon)

All of this means that once the fraud is demonstrated, the election is invalid; Joe Biden is legally not president and every action of the Biden administration has undertaken is void as if it never happened.  That of course has never been done in a presidential election but it’s occurred a handful of times in lower elections.  The fly in the ointment of course is that all of this it requires a court, and eventually the Supreme Court to rule that the election was indeed fraudulent.  Given the Supreme Court’s general (but very selective) reluctance to wade into political areas – particularly highly volatile ones – and this particular Court’s demonstrated cowardice, it’s unlikely that they would even consider the matter.

Which I think, leaves us with this:  If the Constitution provides no specific remedy to the bastardization of the Constitution itself, something new must be done.  As the Founding Fathers did in 1776, it may be necessary to rewrite the playbook. And that rewritten playbook, while not a new Declaration of Independence, is a tentative Pact of Secession. This pact would be among the states whose rightful votes should have gone to Donald Trump. These states should make it clear that the rights of their citizens to a Constitutional federal government have been infringed upon and if Congress does not remedy the situation they will, in unison, secede.

This Pact would not literally be secession… it would be the announcement of a proposed action that Congress would have the opportunity to avoid by rectifying the demonstrated Constitutional deficits of the 2020 election.  The reality is there is no blueprint for rectifying those deficits, but that is because Congress, the states and the Supreme Court allowed an unconstitutional inauguration to occur in the first place.  Nonetheless, the theft of the highest office in the land simply cannot stand.  As New York, California and a variety of blue states are seeing play out in their streets today, if you allow thieves to steal with impunity, if you allow thugs to harass and assault with impunity, you get more of each. The same holds true with the fraud of an election and the usurping of the apparatus of government and the coercive powers that come with it. If this theft is allowed to stand then no American can go forward with confidence in the nation’s elections and the system based on them.  Once again, the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper. It is the citizens’ loyalty to that Constitution and the system built upon it that make it work. The proof of that can be seen in the fact that the old Soviet Union, Cuba, China and most other dictatorships regularly have constitutions that promise freedoms and rights to their citizens that are rarely actually respected. Words on a paper mean nothing if the government is not bound by them and the citizens have no confidence in them. 

This is, as the British might say, a bloody mess. Indeed the last time secession played a pivotal role in American history that’s exactly what we got.  This however does not have to be that. Spurred by a Pact of Secession, Congress will have an opportunity, in concert with the states themselves, to address the demonstrated fraud and rectify the deficit of the election of 2020 in a cool, logical and peaceful manner.  But they need to understand that once the fire from the smoke of November 4th is demonstrated, the American people will not sit idly by and watch their Constitution shredded.  Too many have paid too high a price so that Americans could live under the umbrella of liberty it provides to allow such a transgression to prevail.  

What Now - Part 1: What if We Find The Fire From the Smoke of Election Fraud?

If the last month has taught us anything, today’s conspiracy theory could easily be tomorrow’s commonsense truth. The speed at which the Wuhan Lab theory as the source of the Covid virus went from “thoroughly debunked” to “Viable” and “Probable” in the media was extraordinary. Indeed, the media scorned the possible source of the most economically destructive virus in history – one that is credited with killing 3 million people – because they didn’t like the then-President of the United States!

Despite the fact that the lab in Wuhan was one of the only places on earth where scientists were studying such viruses, that 3 Wuhan employees went to the hospital in November 2019 with what turned out to be Covid symptoms, that the NIH had actually been funding “gain of function” research in Wuhan focusing specifically on the transmission of such viruses to humans… we were told the Wuhan “China virus” theory was a racist conspiracy theory!

As much damage as Covid did – and far worse, the “lockdowns” used to inflict COVID's damage – that’s nothing compared to the damage another “conspiracy” has done and will do. That, of course, is the “thoroughly debunked” notion that the election of 2020 was stolen, and that Joe Biden is in the Oval Office today because of election fraud. But of course that’s just some tin hat conspiracy theory. We’ve been told that “There’s no evidence of election fraud” and Trump “Lost Nearly 60 Election Fights In Court.” The latter of course is fiction.

Given that we heard similar things for the last year about the origins of Covid, the question is, what happens when proof unequivocally demonstrates that the election was indeed stolen?

The smoke for that conclusion has been around since the wee hours of November 4th. The stopped counting in key states on election night. Mark Zuckerberg’s wholesale purchase of the voting apparatus in key states and counties. The unconstitutional changes to voting laws that crisscrossed the country… many empowered by the politicization of Covid... And then of course there is the TIME magazine piece that laid out in black and white the “inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election”, chronicling widespread coordination of everyone from the Democrat party, Silicon Valley, BLM, unions, the Chamber of Commerce and various other players to get rid of Donald Trump.

All that has been missing has been the CSI level proof of the fire itself. Of course, given the depth and breadth of the Swamp, it may never come to light. But then it might. Currently in Arizona and Wisconsin audits are being done of the 2020 election.

So let’s imagine that somehow, integrity rules the day, and both states under audit produce rock-solid proof that the election in their states was stolen; what then? Technically, nothing. Arizona had 11 electoral votes and Wisconsin had 10. Together they represent 21 electoral votes and Joe Biden was declared the winner by 74 votes. In order for anything to change there must be a difference of at least 38 votes flipped from Biden to Trump.

But let’s say even one of those states produces demonstrable proof of election fraud. At that point the Republican legislatures of other battleground states that exhibited strange activity on election night… Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan would be under a great deal of pressure to look into the integrity of their own elections. Suddenly, with an additional 52 electoral votes in play, things look a bit different.

Let’s further assume that the legislatures of Georgia and Pennsylvania determine that there was sufficient fraud in their states to flip the state’s vote to Donald Trump. With Arizona and Wisconsin, those states would bring the total to 57 electoral votes flipped from Biden to Trump, changing the totals to 249 to 289 and leaving Trump with a majority.

What then? Can a state reverse its electoral vote after certification and counting? Can states recall their electors post-inauguration? Can Congress meet and redo the vote count six months after an inauguration? None has ever been done and there is nothing in the Constitution about doing so. Can the House impeach the President for the fraud? Even if the GOP controlled the Senate a conviction would be unlikely because there’s probably little to connect Joe Biden with the actual fraud done on his behalf.

Can the Supreme Court order a new election? While the Constitution gives the Court no such power, in the Bizarro world of modern America that certainly seems to be no barrier. It is unlikely, however, as the Justices had two clear opportunities to resolve this problem and did nothing. When Pennsylvania Republicans sued seeking to throw out the clearly unconstitutional changes to voting law, the Court demurred. Unconstitutional changes such as these are of course the very basis for the Texas lawsuit that the Supreme Court refused to hear after the election. One state allowing their election to be stolen does indeed negatively impact the rights of citizens of another state if that activity results in a fraudulent president who runs the government of the United States under which all American citizens are governed.

Once the fraud has been demonstrated, America is going to find itself in a situation where it doesn’t appear that there is any Constitutional remedy in place. Are Americans simply supposed to acquiesce to the theft and allow the fraudulent president to be the actual president for the next three years?

No. That would be like a thief stealing your identity and looting your bank account and then once discovered, being allowed to keep it because, as we all remember from elementary school, “possession is 9/10ths of the law.” That was wrong in elementary school and it’s wrong in the Oval Office.

What can be done when the Constitution doesn’t address a bastardization of the constitutional process? Does a military junta take control and put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office? Umm… No! Does the 25th Amendment somehow come into play? No, because that would not remedy the situation. Does Biden resign? Unlikely, and again, it wouldn’t remedy the situation.

A Convention of the States as outlined by Article V of the Constitution? Maybe, but that’s a long process and would likely not occur within the timeframe of the next election.

How about a shadow government? Does Donald Trump build a replica of the Oval Office at Mar-a-Lago and show the world what a real president would do in whatever circumstances the imposter president finds himself in?

Do true patriots take to the streets and use violence and intimidation to wreak havoc from sea to shining sea the way BLM and Antifa did last year, and maintain it until the Democrats capitulate?

None of those ideas is an ideal solution. An ideal solution would essentially reverse the inauguration of Joe Biden and inaugurate Donald Trump as the rightful president.

Many pundits are suggesting that Republicans should dig deep and focus on 2022, both at the local and the state level so that the GOP can take back the House and the Senate. While that’s true, it’s not sufficient because it doesn’t address the fraud in the first place.

If it’s possible to steal the presidency with impunity, what office in the nation is beyond reach? The simple answer is none, and that matters because the government has police power and once the Constitution becomes superfluous, the coercive powers of government suddenly have no limits. And for those who say that the Constitution still stands, the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper. It is the citizens’ loyalty to that Constitution and the system built upon it that make it work.  

100 Days into Mark Zuckerberg's Latest Acquisition

Government sometimes needs help. It can’t do everything… and it most certainly can’t do everything well. Some Americans have stepped up and use their resources and expertise to help government function more effectively.

An example of this is Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to fund “Special Assistant Attorneys Generals.” in the actual Attorneys Generals offices in half a dozen large cities across the country. Those SAAGs are tasked with a specific focus on climate change and act as liaisons between AG leadership and NGO’s and other interested parties. The goal was to step up and move the issue of climate change forward in the face of Congress refusing to move on the threat.

Another more recent effort to address government dysfunction had to do with voting. After the chaos of 2000, the Russian influence scandal of 2016 and complaints about lines and closed precincts after almost every election, it was clear that America’s voting system could use some assistance.

As might be appropriate for the high tech world we live in, it was a master of the Silicon Valley universe who stepped into the breach to provide assistance to the very low tech world of voting; Mark Zuckerberg. He and his wife contributed over $350 million to the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civil Life to pay election workers, drop boxes, foreign language information, train poll workers, rent polling locations and count votes during the 2020 elections.

The result was a far more robust election functionality in the locales where the money was focused. For CFCL it was what you would call a home run. Take Maricopa County Arizona for example. The county, with its approximately 2 million votes – including Phoenix – represents over 60% of Arizona’s electorate. CFCL spent approximately $3 million in the county. The result? Much higher turnout. Donald Trump received 995,665 votes, 250,000 more than he did in 2016 for a 33% increase. Joe Biden garnered 1,040,774 votes, a whopping 340,000 or 48% more than Hillary Clinton did four years before. Zuckerberg and CFCL certainly had an impact.

To see how much, look at the rest of Arizona where CFCL spent 30% less. Trump’s 2020 total grew by 32% (compared to 2016) while Biden improved on Clinton’s total by 38%. In Maricopa County where Zuckerberg spent $3 million the Democrat candidate increased his total by 48% while the GOP candidate grew his by 33%, a difference of 15%. In the rest of the state the difference between 2016 and 2020 was 6%. CFCL essentially boosted Maricopa County’s turnout by 9% compared to the rest of the state.

If a difference of 9% between Maricopa and the rest of the state doesn’t sound like much, remember that billion dollar casino empires have been built on games where the house has much less of an advantage and trillion dollar empires have been built with less than half that.   

That CTCL model played itself out in a handful of states that gave the election to Biden. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia. In each state CTCL spent millions of dollars in heavily Democrat counties and drove almost unprecedented increases in voter turnout and troubling vote irregularities.

Today, in this particular case, half the country might suggest all of that is Constitutional. In fact, it’s not.

In the 1960’s the United States was in the midst of an upheaval of monumental proportions where racism and Jim Crow laws were being challenged virtually everywhere. People were being treated differently with the government’s imprimatur. The Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts were passed specifically to ensure the Constitutional requirement that people were treated equally. MLK’s I Have a Dream speech epitomized the goal of the journey that the United States embarked on over the next few decades.

Fundamentally Americans understood that people should be treated equally, particularly by government. Government has a power over you that no store or school or hotel does. Government can raise your taxes, impact your ability to open a business, dictate where your kids go to school, and most importantly, put you in prison.

As such, Americans expect government to treat everyone equally, and according to a report released by the Amistad Project, Zuckerberg’s CTCL not only didn’t do that, the expenditures were in direct violation to federal law:

This privatization of elections undermines the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires state election plans to be submitted to federal officials and approved and requires respect for equal protection by making all resources available equally to all voters.

The provision of Zuckerberg-CTCL funds allowed these Democrat strongholds to spend roughly $47 per voter, compared to $4 to $7 per voter in traditionally Republican areas of the state.

While there are most certainly areas of government where private / public partnerships can play a role – things like feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and substance abuse aid – none of those things involves the police power of government or determining the representation in the government itself. Bloomberg’s efforts involve the former and Zuckerberg’s impact the latter.

Government is supposed to be objective in the execution of the laws and by allowing private entities to illegally do the various functions of the state, the government is essentially putting its thumb on the scales that keep the Republic balanced. Just as it would be unconstitutional for Exxon to fund the enforcement actions of the EPA, the NRA to fund agents of the ATF or the Proud Boys to do enforcement work for the Border Patrol, it’s equally unconstitutional for billionaires or anyone else unaccountable to the people to be bankrolling election processes and activities.

No doubt had Donald Trump won with similar assistance by a nonprofit funded by Larry Ellison, John Schnatter or the late Sheldon Adelson, the nation would be subject to wall to wall cries that the election was fraudulent and that a Donald Trump was a fascist dictator. And indeed that would have been true. Had GOP aligned “nonprofits” provided training and helped counting votes in predominantly red counties and precincts, Antifa, BLM and Democrats would have “protested” and likely burned Washington to the ground. Instead, as it was, in the face of the clear theft of the most important election of our time a few hundred Trump supporters broke into the Capital and took selfies with the Capitol Police, put their feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and caused minor mayhem.

And so today as we “celebrate” the first 100 days of the fraudulent Biden administration, it might be useful to sit back and recognize exactly what Mark Zuckerberg's purchase of the 2020 election foretells. Unless this unconstitutional election is somehow set aside, or laws put in place to make sure the theft is never repeated, we will have crossed the Rubicon into a post Augustan Rome where the Imperial Throne is up for grabs to whoever comes up with the most gold for the vote takers and counters. Given that Kamala Harris is the next in line… it wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t have our own Year of the Four Emperors.

Freedom Will Not Go Quietly Into That Good Night

Adolph Hitler said: “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” That line may never have been as true as it is today. What is that lie? It comes in many flavors: America is racist. Donald Trump is racist. Trump supporters are racists. Republicans are racists. You might notice a theme here. Now repeat the above and exchange the word racist for fascist...

None of those things are true. But truth doesn’t matter. Why? Because truth is not the objective, power is. In 2020 America, if you disagree with the left on anything from abortion to immigration to tax cuts to global warming you are an enemy who must be destroyed. And the primary weapons of choice are the slurs of racist and fascist.

And the beauty of it is that no proof beyond the assertion is necessary. Before he became president Donald Trump lived most of his life in front of cameras in the most media obsessed city on the planet. Morning shows, talk shows, radio shows, news shows, press conferences, grand openings, the Apprentice… you name it and Trump was there. As we all know, Donald Trump basically can’t keep his mouth shut, yet for the first 67 years of his life this man who never met a camera or microphone he could resist somehow kept the secret of his virulent racism a secret.

Then, once he became president he did such racist things as fund Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) at a level no president ever had, label the KKK as a terrorist organization, signed into law sentencing reform that had been called for by black leaders for decades, pardon the late boxer Jack Johnson and the very much alive Alice Johnson. He also supported “opportunity zones”, pushed for school choice, both of which disproportionately benefit minorities, and at the same time created an economy that brought about the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded. But he’s a racist.

The proof Donald Trump is a fascist is equally strong. He arrests and jails any reporter who dares to question him. He uses the CIA and FBI to spy on anyone who disagrees with him. He imprisons judges who rule against his policies. He trains the military on people who are peacefully protesting his policies. Clearly Donald Trump is a fascist.

To understand how accurate Hitler’s words are look no farther than a Newsweek piece from July: Half of Americans Think Trump Is Racist and an Additional 13 Percent Are Unsure.  That is simply staggering, and the reason is simple: In excess of 90% of the media coverage of Donald Trump is negative. “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” Add to that the manipulation by Facebook, Google and Twitter and you get us to where we are today with an election that was not only stolen, but with 1/2 the population thinking that a flawed but good man is racist and a fascist... 

The above is only a symptom of the real problem however. The real target is not Donald Trump per se, but rather the half the population who support him, and the truth is they hated us long before Donald Trump came onto the political stage, most clearly seen when we were called racists and Nazis for opposing Barack Obama in 2008.

Democrats and their comrades get away with it because they know we respect the rule of law. In 2008 when we lost to Barack Obama we didn’t riot.  We peacefully protested and went to the voting booth. In 2010 we went to the polls and the Democrats lost 64 seats in the House and we finally turned the Senate red in 2014. That is what conservatives and Republicans generally do. We don’t riot when we don’t get our way. Even when we’re cheated, as happened in 1960 with Nixon, 2004 with Dino Rossi and 2008 with Norm Coleman, we don’t try to burn the country down because we respect the rule of law.

But the question is, what if there is no real law to respect?  What if there is one law for the suckers who play by the rules and basically a lack thereof for Democrats? For decades Democrats have fought attempts to secure out our voting process by continuously opposing voter ID, supporting same day voter registration and encouraging mail in balloting among other things. Any attempts to ensure credibility of the system were labeled “racist” or called “voter suppression” and usually withered on the vine. When they won in 2008 they proceeded to weaponize the federal government against the citizens. In the ultimate demonstration of such tactics, the Obama administration used the IRS to silence opponents, spied on media who dared question their actions and turned the FBI and the courts into a vehicles for the launching of a coup d'état against their successors. And now that they think they're poised to take complete power again, they’ve threatened to pack the Supreme Court, grow the Senate, eliminate the Electoral College and keep “lists” of their opponents. There's a word for that and it's not liberty.

What do 75 million Americans do if they discover that despite playing by the rules they’ve been duped again, this time on the single most important election of their lifetimes, with the future of the Republic literally hanging in the balance? They are told by the same media who spent four years pushing the fiction of Russian collusion that they should simply shut up and accept defeat, regardless of the myriad examples of voter fraud, both big and small.

Lincoln said “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” He was referring to the issue of slavery, but the line might also well apply here today. When fully half the American population loses confidence in the integrity of the election process upon which the nation is governed, loses confidence in the media - both traditional and social - who have been lying to them for years about fictional election tampering, and come to believe that their political opponents will use everything from rioting to mayhem to outright theft to gain control of the government, what should they do? What is their motivation to continue to participate in a process where the game is rigged?  What is their motivation to continue to engage in a system where one side believes the Constitution is but a barrier to be subverted rather than the rulebook by which the nation is governed? What is their motivation to be constrained by a Constitution which their opponents disregard at every turn as they seek to undermine the very rights it was written to protect? What is their motivation to engage in a process legally when they know that their opponents seek to bastardize that very process to accumulate more power and eviscerate the very ideas upon which the nation was founded?

I don’t have the answer and I’ve no idea where we are on a spectrum of anarchy vs. tyranny, but I’m certain that the closer Democrats push the United States towards tyranny the closer we get to a point where liberty loving Americans look for other means to protect the God given rights the Constitution was written to guarantee.  What that looks like, I’ve no idea, but Carl von Clausewitz once said “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” That’s something to keep in mind as the Democrats continue their march to eviscerate our Constitution and destroy the country that has given so much to so many for so long.  I don't believe that freedom will go quietly into that good night...

America on the Eve of the 2020 Election... Is it Even Worth Saving?

This past summer there were a lot of American flags ripped, walked on and set on fire around the country.  Protesters pulled down statues, looted stores and set buildings on fire across the country.  They claim that America is racist.  They claim Donald Trump is a fascist.  They suggest Capitalism is a cancer and must be replaced.  And the Constitution, as it has been a tool of oppression since its writing, must be eliminated. 

To listen to protesters speak, the United States is a cesspool of racism and oppression where only the rich thrive.

Maybe they’re right.  Maybe America is nothing but one large work camp where citizens are oppressed by their overlords where they have no freedoms and experience a quality of life that is something out of Dickens. Maybe…

If that’s true, it should be easy to spot.  Below are a variety of tables listing measures of life ranked by country.  The sources for each set of data is different but most evaluate between 180 & 210 countries, depending on how that term is defined. 

So what do the data say about this fascist, oppressive American country? Well, as a journalist might say... lets's go to the data.  

How about we start off with the basics… Life Expectancy.  Below is a table of selected countries for life expectancy.  The world average is 72.6 and the United States comes in at 78.9, putting it solidly in the top 25%.  That’s not terrible.

Life expectancy:

Hong Kong	84.7
Japan	84.5
Singapore	83.8
Italy	83.6
Australia	83.3
South Korea	82.8
Sweden	82.7
France	82.5
New Zealand	82.1
Germany	81.2
United Kingdom	81.2
United States	78.9
Mexico	75.0
Russia	72.4
South Africa	63.9
Haiti	63.7
Kenya	63.3
Nigeria	54.3

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

But of course life is one thing… being happy is something else.  Here the United States comes in 19^th out of 156.  That’s pretty good.

Happiness: 

1	Finland
2	Denmark
3	Norway
4	Iceland
5	Netherlands
6	Switzerland
7	Sweden
8	New Zealand
9	Canada
10	Austria
11	Australia
12	Costa Rica
13	Israel
14	Luxembourg
15	United Kingdom
16	Ireland
17	Germany
18	Belgium
19	United States
20	Czech Republic

 https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world

Then of course there’s earning a living.  Below is a table with the average incomes around the world and the United States comes in at #5, with not a single country above the United States having more people than the city of New York. That matters of course because like herding cat, having a country where people are spread out over vast areas, have extraordinarily different backgrounds and heritages it’s far more difficult to get everyone on the same page in terms of what works to achieve prosperity.  America has done that.   

Average Wage:

1	Switzerland	$90,127
2	Iceland	$70,628
3	Luxembourg	$69,895
4	Denmark	$64,229
5	United States	$63,093
6	Ireland	$56,787
7	Norway	$53,049
8	Australia	$52,261
9	Netherlands	$51,313
10	Belgium	$48,797

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

And of course everyone talks about GDP, the sum of all of the goods and services a nation produces. Below is a table of the 15 nations with the largest GDPs in the world.  The United States, with 5% of the planet’s population produces 24% of the world’s economic output:

GDP:

1	United States	$21,427,700
2	China	$14,342,903
3	Japan	$5,081,770
4	Germany	$3,845,630
5	India	$2,875,142
6	United Kingdom	$2,827,113
7	France	$2,715,518
8	Italy	$2,001,244
9	Brazil	$1,839,758
10	Canada	$1,736,426
11	Russia[n 3]	$1,699,877
12	South Korea	$1,642,383
13	Spain	$1,394,116
14	Australia	$1,392,681
15	Mexico	$1,258,287

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

Another way of looking at this is GDP on a per capita basis.  Here too none of the nations above the United States has a population above that of New York.  Again, none of the other countries on this list comes close to being similar to the United States in terms of size and diversity of our population, and with only Australia being similar when compared to geographic footprint.

Per Capita GDP

1	Monaco	$185,741
2	Liechtenstein	$173,356
3	Luxembourg	$114,705
4	Macau	$84,096
5	Switzerland	$81,994
6	Ireland	$78,661
7	Norway	$75,420
8	Iceland	$66,945
9	United States	$65,281
10	Singapore	$65,233
11	Qatar	$64,782
12	Denmark	$59,822
13	Australia	$54,907
14	Netherlands	$52,448
15	Sweden	$51,610
16	Austria	$50,277
17	Hong Kong	$48,756
18	Finland	$48,686
19	San Marino	$48,481
20	Germany	$46,259

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita

Of course it’s not all about income, it’s about what you can do with that income.  Below is a table showing the top 20 countries (out of 101) based on the cost of living which measures what one can actually purchase with the money they earn.  And the United States comes in at 4.

Cost of Living (Purchasing Power Index)

1	Macao
2	Qatar
3	Luxembourg
4	United States
5	Norway
6	Switzerland
7	Ireland
8	Bermuda
9	Sweden
10	Iceland
11	Singapore
12	Netherlands
13	Germany
14	Denmark
15	Austria
16	Australia
17	United Arab Emirates
18	Belgium
19	Finland
20	Hong Kong

 https://www.worlddata.info/cost-of-living.php

Most of us work for a living and sometimes things work out well and we accumulate significant assets, making us millionaires!  Sadly, I’m not one of them, but there are a LOT of millionaires in the United States.  As a matter of fact, the United States, which again is 5% of the world’s population, is the home of fully 40% of the world’s millionaires:

Millionaires: (in thousands)

1	United States	18,614
2	China	4,447
3	Japan	3,025
4	United Kingdom	2,460
5	Germany	2,187
6	France	2,071
7	Italy	1,496
8	Canada	1,322
9	Australia	1,180
10	Spain	979
11	Netherlands	832
12	Switzerland	810
13	India	759
14	South Korea	741
15	Taiwan	528

 And not only that, the number of millionaires as a percentage of the population is higher in the United States than any nation on the planet other than Switzerland… but in our defense, Switzerland has really good chocolate.

Percent of Population who are Millionaires

1	Switzerland	9.43%
2	United States	5.67%
3	Netherlands	4.87%
4	Australia	4.68%
5	United Kingdom	3.64%
6	Canada	3.53%
7	France	3.18%
8	Germany	2.62%
9	Italy	2.47%
10	Japan	2.39%
11	Taiwan	2.22%
12	Spain	2.10%
13	South Korea	1.45%
14	China	0.31%
15	India	0.06%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number_of_millionaires

Particularly important in this discussion is who those millionaires are.  The makeup of American millionaires is below.  Minorities, making up 40% of the nation’s population, make up 24% of the millionaires. 

And what’s equally important about achieving economic success is mobility into America’s economic elite.  Forbes, which publishes its annual Forbes 400 chronicling the 400 richest Americans reports that fully 70% of America’s richest individuals are self made while only 30% inherited their fortunes.

American Millionaires By Race (and Population Race Breakdown):

		Of Millionaires	Of Population
White	14,146,640	76%	60%
Black	1,489,120	8%	13%
Asian	1,489,120	8%	6%
Hispanic	1,302,980	7%	18%
Other	186,140	1%	3%

 https://www.statista.com/statistics/300528/us-millionaires-race-ethnicity/

Forbes:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/09/08/self-made-score/?sh=4f077b3641e4

 But of course not everyone will end up millionaires, but opportunities exist nonetheless.  Below is a table that chronicles social mobility, which is roughly characterized as the ability to move from one economic level to another.  Of the approximately 180 countries in the world this table looks at the 82 with the most measurable opportunities.  The average of these 82 countries is 62.2, and the United States comes in position of 27 with a mobility score of 70.4, while Denmark is first with a score of 85.2 and Côte d’Ivoire is last with a score of 34.5.  A significant element of this measure is education and healthcare, both of which drag down the United States significantly thanks to excessive government intervention.

Social Mobility

1	Denmark	85.20
2	Norway	83.60
3	Finland	83.60
4	Sweden	83.50
5	Iceland	82.70
11	Germany	78.80
12	France	76.70
15	Japan	76.10
16	Australia	75.10
21	United Kingdom	74.40
22	New Zealand	74.30
27	United States	70.40
34	Italy	67.40
39	Russia	64.70
45	China	61.50
58	Mexico	52.60
66	Peru	49.90
67	Indonesia	49.30
81	Senegal	36.00
82	Côte d’Ivoire	34.50

 https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-of-82-countries/

The reality of the fact that government intervention in healthcare and education handicap the country is be demonstrated by the following table that looks at the ease of doing business.  This metric includes starting a business as one of its measures, along with things like regulations, taxes, rule of law and others.  Starting a business is one of the most effective ways in which one might improve their family’s economic situation.  To the degree that the United States is ranked sixth out of 180 nations in terms of the ease of doing business yet 27^th in terms of social mobility suggests that that economic opportunity is very real, while other measures hold the country back. 

Ease of Doing Business

1	New Zealand
2	Singapore
3	Hong Kong
4	Denmark
5	South Korea
6	United States
7	Georgia
8	United Kingdom
9	Norway
10	Sweden

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index

How about getting to work to run that business or make that money – and hopefully have some fun too!  Americans love to drive.  As such, the price of gas is a big deal.  Below is what people pay in different countries for gas.  The world average is $3.80 and the US comes in at $2.15 per gallon while in France they pay $5.94 and in Hong Kong they pay $8.49!

Gas Price (Price Per Gallon on October 26, 2020)

Venezuela	$.08
Kuwait	$1.35
Nigeria	$1.51
Saudi Arabia	$1.60
Russia	$2.31
United States	$2.51
China	$3.39
Canada	$3.44
Australia	$3.34
Japan	$4.67
Luxembourg	$4.75
Spain	$5.14
New Zealand	$5.21
Germany	$5.37
Ireland	$5.60
United Kingdom	$5.65
Sweden	$5.94
France	$5.94
Norway	$6.09
Finland	$6.35
Italy	$6.69
Denmark	$6.30
Netherlands	$6.96
Hong Kong	$8.49

 https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/

But it’s not just gas, but there’s buying a car and maintaining it.  Below is a table that shows the percentage of annual salary it would take to buy a family car and operate it for one year.  These costs include not only the car and its gas, but insurance and maintenance as well.

Car Economics:

		Cost of buying a new family car	Cost of buying & operating as % of annual income
1	UAE	$15,383	1.20%
2	Australia	$16,418	4.08%
3	New Zealand	$20,031	4.86%
4	Germany	$19,114	5.22%
5	Canada	$12,704	6.01%
6	Japan	$18,236	6.83%
7	USA	$14,158	7.06%
8	UK	$18,058	7.42%
9	Ireland	$20,351	7.48%
10	Italy	$22,556	7.61%
	Others in the sample
	Russia	$13,912	18.03%
	India	$24,596	19.68%
	China	$14,819	22.16%
	Mexico	$11,421	24.91%
	Portugal	$22,610	49.00%
	Brazil	$24,827	55.51%

 https://www.comparethemarket.com/car-insurance/content/global-car-index/#pills-family-car

And where might an American drive?  How about home!  Below is a table showing the size of homes for various countries around the world.  The only nation where homes are bigger on average than in the United States is Australia, but that should be expected as apparently all Australians keep pet crocodiles!

Comparison of Home Sizes Measured by Square Foot:

Australia	2,032
US	1,901
Canada	1,792
UK	1,590
France	1,556
Germany	1,477
Mexico	1,416
Spain	1,314
Brazil	1,288

 https://www.point2homes.com/news/canada-real-estate/how-large-are-canadian-homes.html

It’s not just the freedom to drive around that American’s like.  For a nation that was founded on the pursuit of freedom, freedom of all sorts is still important.  Below are two tables, one measuring Economic Freedom and the other Personal Freedom. 

The freedoms in the following two tables in this analysis encompass a variety of measures including these: Rule of Law / Security and Safety / Movement / Religion / Association, Assembly, and Civil Society / Expression and Information / Identity and Relationships / Size of Government / Legal System and Property Rights.  The numbers below are the top nations of the total pool of 162 nations measured.

Freedom:

Economic Freedom			Personal Freedom
1	Hong Kong		1	Sweden
2	New Zealand		2	Netherlands
3	Switzerland		3	New Zealand
4	US		4	Finland
5	Ireland		5	Luxembourg
6	UK		6	Norway
7	Canada		7	Germany
8	Australia		8	Austria
9	Malta		9	Switzerland
10	Denmark		10	Denmark
11	Estonia		11	Canada
12	Luxembourg		12	Australia
13	Taiwan		13	Iceland
14	Germany		14	Estonia
15	Finland		15	Taiwan
16	Iceland		16	Ireland
17	Sweden		17	UK
18	Netherlands		18	Malta
19	Austria		19	US
20	Norway		20	Hong Kong

 https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/human-freedom-index-files/cato-human-freedom-index-update-3.pdf (Page 8)

And of course the number one freedom someone can have is the freedom of speech. Without the freedom to say what’s on your mind without fear of retribution from the government is the strongest tool available for keeping a government honest.  Below is a table demonstrating something that anyone paying attention this summer would recognize, Americans have a level of free speech unfettered by government authorities that is unprecedented in the world. 

Free Speech:

1	United States
2	Poland
3	Spain
4	Mexico
5	Venezuela
6	Canada
7	Australia
8	Argentina
9	South Africa
10	United Kingdom

 https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-freedom-of-speech

Another part of freedom is access to information, which is increasingly delivered via the Internet.  Below is a table that looks at the percent of the population with Internet access for 214 countries. 

Internet access:

1	Falkland Islands	99%
2	Andorra	98%
3	Bermuda	98%
4	Iceland	98%
5	Liechtenstein	98%
6	Kuwait	98%
7	Luxembourg	97%
8	Faroe Islands	97%
9	Aruba	97%
10	Monaco	97%
11	Norway	96%
12	Sweden	96%
13	United States	96%
14	Qatar	95.%
15	Bahrain	95.88%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users

Here are some other measures of the United States and its opportunities, possibilities and successes.

Education.  Below is a table looking at what nations spend on primary education.  The United States sits at #1 by a significant margin.  (Sadly we don’t get the results one might expect from such spending, but that’s a story for another day… (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/)

Education Spending:

1	United States	$26,021
2	Canada	$23,225
3	Switzerland	$22,881
4	Denmark	$21,253
5	Sweden	$20,818
6	Norway	$18,840
7	Finland	$18,001
8	Netherlands	$17,549
9	Germany	$16,722
10	Japan	$16,445
11	Australia	$16,267
12	Ireland	$16,095
13	Belgium	$15,420
14	France	$15,374
15	Austria	$14,894

 https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=RGRADSTY

While the United States may lag far behind on academic success in primary education, our university system is the best in the world by far.  Below are the 15 best universities in the world and the only two on the list that are not from the United States are Oxford and Cambridge in the UK. 

World’s Best Universities

1	Harvard
2	MIT
3	Stanford
4	UC Berkeley
5	Oxford
6	Columbia
7	Cal Tech
8	University of Washington
9	Cambridge
10	Johns Hopkins
11	Princeton
12	Yale
13	UCLA
14	University of Pennsylvania
15	University of California SF

 https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings

Americans also spend a great deal of resources on healthcare, again with mixed results. (https://ceoworld.biz/2019/08/05/revealed-countries-with-the-best-health-care-systems-2019/)   Below are the per capita dollars spent on healthcare in a variety of nations.  The United States is again at the top, by a substantial margin.

Healthcare Spending (2016)

1	United States	$9,892
2	Switzerland	$7,919
3	Luxembourg	$7,463
4	Norway	$6,647
5	Germany	$5,551
6	Ireland	$5,528
7	Sweden	$5,488
8	Netherlands	$5,385
9	Austria	$5,227
10	Denmark	$5,205
11	Belgium	$4,840
12	Canada	$4,753
13	Australia	$4,708
14	France	$4,600

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita

Then there is charity.  The United States spends more money on charity than any other nation by far.  That is a function of both the largest GDP as well as the percentage of giving.  That is reflected in the table on the left below.  The table on the right measures a more holistic giving approach that combines donations, volunteering and helping strangers.  Here the United States sits at number two.

Most Charitable Nations:

Charity as % of GDP (1)				Overall Giving (2)
1	United States	1.44%		1	Myanmar
2	New Zealand	0.79%		2	United States
3	Canada	0.77%		3	Australia
4	United Kingdom	0.54%		4	New Zealand
5	South Korea	0.50%		5	Sri Lanka
6	Singapore	0.39%		6	Canada
7	India	0.37%		7	Indonesia
8	Russia	0.34%		8	United Kingdom
9	Italy	0.30%		9	Ireland
10	Netherlands	0.30%		10	UAE

 (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitable_donation

(2) https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-publications/1950a_wgi_2016_report_web_v2_241016.pdf

But it’s not just charity that demonstrates America’s willingness to help, it’s the total social welfare spending.  For whatever one’s views on such endeavors, the United States is behind only France in social welfare spending.  This measure includes things such as public and private social expenditure, the effect of direct taxes (income tax and social security contributions), indirect taxation of consumption on cash benefits, as well as tax breaks for social purposes.

The table below is a demonstration of something that most Americans would never imagine to be ture, but it is:  the average poor person in the United States has a standard of living that is above that of the average European. (https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-richer-than-most-nations-of-europe/)   

Total Social Welfare Spending (Public & Private)

1	France
2	United States
3	Belgium
4	Netherlands
5	Denmark
6	Italy
7	Finland
8	Germany
9	Sweden
10	United Kingdom
11	Austria
12	Switzerland
13	Australia
14	Japan
15	Portugal

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_welfare_spending

Given that life is not all about economics or education or healthcare, here are some other measures of America on the world stage:

Individuals in the United States have garnered more Nobel Prizes of all sorts than the next five countries combined. 

Nobel Prizes:

1	United States	390
2	United Kingdom	135
3	Germany	108
4	France	70
5	Sweden	32
6	Russia/ Soviet Union	31
7	Switzerland	28
8	Japan	28
9	Canada	27
10	Austria	22
11	Netherlands	21
12	Italy	20
13	Poland	19
14	Denmark	13
15	Hungary	13
16	Norway	13
17	India	12
18	Australia	14
19	Israel	12
20	Belgium	11

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country

 Although not as overwhelming, Americans also top the Olympic medal count.

Olympic Medals

1	United States	2,828
2	USSR / Russia	1,751
3	Germany / East Germany	1,374
4	Great Britian	883
5	France	840
6	Italy	701
7	Sweden	652
8	China	608
9	Norway	520
10	Australia	512
11	Canada	501
12	Hungary	498
13	Japan	497
14	Finland	470
15	Netherlands	415

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-time_Olympic_Games_medal_table

 We are slight slackers however when it comes to spending on video games.  Americans come in number 3 behind Japan and South Korea on this important measure.

 Video Game Spending – Per Person

1	Japan	$98.63
2	South Korea	$78.87
3	US	$65.56
4	UK	$52.74
5	Canada	$47.67
6	Germany	$44.03
7	France	$36.72
8	Spain	$33.28
9	Italy	$25.10
10	China	$15.88

 https://www.gamespot.com/articles/here-are-the-top-100-countries-ranked-in-terms-of-/1100-6431484/

There is one last measure that must be looked at.  That is Defense.  The United States spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined.  For some that might sound problematic, but the reality is that American spending on defense has allowed the world, particularly Europe to thrive.  The second table below shows defense spending as a percent of GDP.  One of the reasons that European nations are able to generate such extensive welfare spending programs is that they have kept their defense spending low for decades while the United States defense expenditures brought about the longest period of overall peace in Europe in history.  That spending may not show up in happiness measures or salary measures, but it most certainly shows up in the fact that both Europe and the United States remain bastions of freedom, democracy and peace, and the carnage of a world war is a distant memory we read about rather than something we all experienced firsthand. The first table shows absolute defense spending and the second shows spending as a percentage of GDP.

Defense Spending:

Absolute Dollars:

1	United States	$685
2	China	$181
3	Saudi Arabia	$78
4	Russia	$62
5	India	$61
6	United Kingdom	$55
7	France	$52
8	Japan	$49
9	Germany	$49
10	South Korea	$40
11	Brazil	$28
12	Italy	$27
13	Australia	$26
14	Israel	$23
15	Iraq	$21

 As a Percentage of GDP

1	Saudi Arabia	$78	8.00%
2	Israel	$23	5.30%
3	Russia	$62	3.90%
4	United States	$685	3.40%
5	South Korea	$40	2.70%
6	Iraq	$21	2.40%
7	Australia	$26	1.90%
8	France	$52	1.90%
9	Germany	$49	1.90%
10	United Kingdom	$55	1.70%
11	Brazil	$28	1.50%
12	Italy	$27	1.40%
13	China	$181	1.30%
14	India	$61	1.30%
15	Japan	$49	0.90%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

At the end of the day, this is piece is a chronicle of the reality of America. America is indeed imperfect, no doubt for every table here someone can find their own tables that paint a far darker picture using their own sources.  America does have inequality, dysfunctional education and healthcare systems and too much government regulation, but at the same time, Americans have done more with what they have than any nation on earth.  America offers economic opportunities on a wider scale (both geographic and occupational) than any nation on earth. From Florida to New York to California to Wyoming the opportunities are simply staggering from doctor to scientist to graphic designer to business consultant to startup founder to mechanic to plumber to Instagram model…  

What many of the protesters don’t care about is the fact that the United States Constitution guarantees Americans freedoms that people in most of the world can only dream of and to the degree that others share some of them, those freedoms are often at the mercy of political majorities.  That includes minority opinions because things that the majority agree with don’t generally need protection. 

At the same time, the United States regularly receives more immigrants from more places than any nation on earth and gives them opportunities and freedoms most would or could not dream of at home.  And it integrates immigrants at a pace that no nation has in history.

While there are racial tensions in the United States as there have been since its founding, in the last half century the country has made extraordinary leaps which can be seen in both culture and economics, the former can be seen on televisions, on sports shows and regularly on the radio while the latter is demonstrated by the fact that 8% of American millionaires are black, 8% are Asian and 7% are Hispanic.  I’ve not found a source thus far, but one can imagine that those numbers were far smaller during the 1950’s and 1960’s. But I can say that the story the Democrats and the media try and foist on us that America is indeed a bastion of racism is fiction.  (https://imperfectamerica.blogspot.com/2020/06/data-shows-driving-while-black-meme-is.html)

For those who want to tear apart American culture because it’s not what they like, denigrate American values because we’ve not achieved them on their timetable, want to overthrow America’s capitalist system because they’d prefer the “equality” promised by socialism or Communism, I’d ask, what place in the world today, or in world history has a nation done a better job than America of giving opportunity to its citizens, generating prosperity for its citizens, protecting its citizens’ freedoms and at the same time helping drive prosperity and peace around the world?  If such a nation exists perhaps I’d certainly be interested in reading about it.

Tomorrow there are two choices on the ballot.  One candidate, a very flawed but passionate man, understands that the United States is the greatest nation to ever grace the face of this earth and sees his role as protecting that legacy and rolling back government intervention to allow Americans of all stripes to address the country’s shortcomings and achieve even greater success in the future. 

The other also an imperfect man, but he sees the United States as a highly flawed nation, he sees Americans of various identities as victims and the Constitution as a roadblock to change rather than a guarantee of freedom and a limit on government intervention on behalf of the majority. 

If you like what you’ve seen in the streets of America over the last six months and would like to see more of it, Joe Biden is your man and the Democrats are your party.  If however you believe like Ronald Reagan that America’s best days are ahead of her and that freedom and opportunity are the solutions to most of the problems we face, Donald Trump is your man and the Republicans are your party.