Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Capitol Incident a Dress Rehearsal

With the normalization of mass shootings in the United States it is more than understandable that members of Congress feared for their lives when they learned protestors had forced their way into the Capitol in unknown numbers and were roaming around at will. 

But by the time it was over we knew that: only five weapons were seized by police so most of the intruders were probably unarmed; the only shots fired were by police who killed an unarmed female protestor; video and photos showed the demonstrators taking pictures of chambers and art work like they were tourists; and the occupiers were peacefully led out of the Capitol six hours later.  (Had they been anti-racism protestors one wonders how differently it would have ended.)

A dramatic event such as this is an old-time reporter’s dream, to just describe the facts and details as they emerged, painting a picture in words in print or on the radio. With so many mobile phone pictures and video as well as TV cameras everywhere, that journalistic function has been greatly diminished if not extinguished. In its place are preaching, partisan, editorialists masquerading as mainstream journalists.  

By the time it was over it was clear what had not happened:  it wasn’t a “coup,” it wasn’t an “insurrection,” it had nothing to do with Putin, or China or Iran and it wasn’t like Pearl Harbor, as Sen. Chuck Schumer ridiculously tried to call it. 

It wasn’t the storming of a “temple of democracy,” interrupting Congress’ “sacred duty,” or “desecrating” the “hallowed halls” of the Capitol. Such quasi-religious rhetoric inflates the self-importance of officials elevating themselves above the people they are supposed to serve. 

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Biden state media appointee advocated using propaganda against Americans and ‘rethinking’ First Amendment

The head of the Joe Biden transition team for the US Agency for Global Media, Richard Stengel, has branded himself the “chief propagandist,” urged the government to use propaganda against its “own population,” and called to “rethink” the First Amendment.
Richard Stengel, the top state media appointee for US President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, has enthusiastically defended the use of propaganda against Americans.

“My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist,” Stengel said in 2018. “I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

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The Boot Is Coming Down Hard And Fast

A recent Morning Joe appearance by CIA analyst-turned House Representative Elissa Slotkin eagerly informed us that the real battle against terrorism is now inside America’s borders.

“The post 9/11 era is over,” Slotkin tweeted while sharing a clip of her appearance. “The single greatest national security threat right now is our internal division. The threat of domestic terrorism. The polarization that threatens our democracy. If we don’t reconnect our two Americas, the threats will not have to come from the outside.”

“Before Congress, Elissa worked for the CIA and the Pentagon and helped destabilize the Middle East during the Bush and Obama admins,” tweeted journalist Whitney Webb in response. “What she says here is essentially an open announcement that the US has moved from the ‘War on [foreign] terror’ to the ‘War on domestic terror’.”

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The Cultural Purge Is Now In Overdrive

What I expected then, after Trump would have unceremoniously lost the 2016 election,  was a type of cultural purge against anybody and everybody who enabled his run or supported him. What surprised me was that after he won the cultural purge proceeded anyway. In retrospect it seems obvious, at the time it blindsided me.

For the next four years we watched any (remaining) semblance of objectivity and impartiality wither away from the mainstream media. Even more troubling, was that it was also happening withinBig Tech. Everything polarized and all judgement calls became characteristically asymmetrical. As I noted on occasion, that compared to the post 9/11 era when the Neocons controlled the narrative and the word “liberal” was a slur, everything flipped. Now it was the word “conservative” that was unusable and being a single micron to the right of centre was equated with being “literally Hitler”.

I could list the countless examples of deplatformings, cancellations, character assassinations and careers destroyed in the intervening time. It became so ridiculous, so devoid of any attempt at a claim to due process or fairness that an entire counter-culture has formed around criticizing or ridiculing it. I wrote a book about defending from deplatform attacks, which I started giving away for free in April when Big Tech started deplatforming deviant reporting on the COVID-19 crisis. Babylon Bee sprang into existence and quickly rivalled The Onion, riffing on cancel culture and hitting headwinds on multiple occasions when their scathing satire was indistinguishable from the reality they were lampooning.

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The Government’s New ‘War on Terror’ is Coming — This Time It’s Aimed at America

After the storming of the capitol on Wednesday, mainstream media and establishment voices began throwing around a term that should make us all pay attention — “domestic terrorism.” As the group of MAGA rioters stormed the capitol to take selfies with cops, steal podiums, and hang from banisters, president-elect Joe Biden quickly took to his platform to characterize them as domestic terrorists.

“Don’t dare call them protesters,” Biden said in remarks from Wilmington, Delaware. “They were a riotous mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists. It’s that basic. It’s that simple.”

Unfortunately, during the turmoil, a police officer was killed and a protester shot to death, as well as three other individuals, who were apparently part of the MAGA protest and died from “medical emergencies.” While it was certainly terrible, this riot does not come close to the description Biden gave it, calling it “one of the darkest days in the history of our nation.”

Really Joe? Was it?

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