THE COLUMN: Never Forget, Never Forgive, Never Again

Michael Walsh22 May, 2023 5 Min Read
Turn out the lights, the party was over.

The presidency of Donald J. Trump ended on a bleak day in February 2020 when he ceded control of the United States of America to a malevolent midget with a medical degree named Anthony Fauci. A prisoner of his own poor judgment, insecurity, and horrible taste in advisers, Trump allowed himself to be stampeded into something called Operation Warp Speed, and was sandbagged in his quest for re-election when the announcement of a "vaccine" -- actually, experimental gene therapy inflicted on hundreds of millions of people with no clear idea about what would happen next -- was made immediately after he lost a "fortified" election to a dementia patient who had campaigned from a basement in Delaware.

From then on, the constitutional provisions of the First Amendment were trampled and trashed, a police state that was just itching to happen finally came out into the open, American churches capitulated to governmental demands, a sizable portion of the population voluntarily or involuntarily masked themselves like coolies, and then turned on the their fellow but non-compliant citizens in a fury born of fear to rat them out to the authorities. The booming economy promptly tanked. Trust in the electoral system evaporated. Race relations cratered. The courts, of course, did nothing. It was and remains the single most disgraceful moment in the history of this country.

Worst of all was the American media, which at last abandoned all pretense of "objectivity" (something once prized when I was a young reporter and now scorned by the red-diaper-baby mafia) and burst out of the ideological closet as fully hatched apparatchiks of the Regulatory State that has since replaced the republican democracy we once enjoyed. Brimming with unrighteous indignation, filled with scorn for flyover Americans they'd long despised (this in spite of the fact that many of them were themselves flyovers who'd trekked eastward to the imperial capitals in New York and Washington and been baptized in the new secular religion of Government), they spewed derision and hatred from their foam-flecked mouths, directed at you. Have a look:

Thus did such loaded terms as "mis- and disinformation" enter the lingo, courtesy of the fascistic collaboration between government and the corporate media that temporarily birthed the monstrous Disinformation Governance Board, now allegedly terminated. ("Disinformation," by the way, is a Soviet/KGB term leftover from the Cold War -- a war that the American CIA and other charter members of Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party's "Forever Wars" wing dearly missed and have cheerfully restarted via their proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine ).

Ah, but the terminology lives on elsewhere, burrowed into the bowels of the Security State apparatus, here called somewhat redundantly the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, which is very much concerned with -- you guess it -- "Foreign Influence Operations and Disinformation." Never heard of it? No worries -- their first concern is protecting your rights:

CISA helps the American people understand the risks from foreign influence operations and disinformation and how citizens can play a role in reducing the impact of it on their organizations and communities. This work is done in close partnership with the interagency, private sector, academia, and international stakeholders.

The guiding principles for addressing risk from foreign influence operations and disinformation include the protection of privacy, free speech, and civil liberties. CISA works with its Privacy Office and Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to ensure these principles are reflected in all of its activities.

We are also committed to collaboration with partners and stakeholders. In addition to civil society groups, researchers, and state and local government officials, we work in close collaboration with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Defense, and other agencies across the federal government. Federal Agencies respective roles in recognizing, understanding, and helping manage the threat and dangers of foreign influence operations and disinformation activities on the American people are mutually supportive, and it is essential that we remain coordinated and cohesive when we engage stakeholders.

So take that First Amendment and shove it, folks -- we've got a country to protect here!

Latterly, there's a movement afoot by those who brought you the continuing Covid disaster to feign remorse over what they did. Don't buy a word of it. These crocodiles -- a cabal of frightened women and pusillanimous yet power hungry men -- enjoyed every minute of your misery, even as they swan about on their mini non-apology tours and warn direly about the next iteration of the Black Death that is surely headed our (but not their) way. Meanwhile, they're allowed to quietly resign and cash in their enormous pensions, courtesy of you.

Will they get away with it? Of course they will. As gangster Johnny Caspar says in the Coen brothers' peerless film, Miller's Crossing: "if you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?" Sure, we hear brave noises about how "this is not going away," but go away it will as the conservative American populace dives into the next Harry and Meghan story or frets about whether Sean Hannity is up to replacing Tucker Carlson.

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At last, someone at the highest levels of government seems to understand what happened, and right under his nose. In a recent opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch said what so many of us have been saying all along:

Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.

Federal executive officials entered the act too. Not just with emergency immigration decrees. They deployed a public-health agency to regulate landlord-tenant relations nationwide. They used a workplace-safety agency to issue a vaccination mandate for most working Americans. They threatened to fire noncompliant employees, and warned that service members who refused to vaccinate might face dishonorable discharge and confinement. Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social-media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed.

While executive officials issued new emergency decrees at a furious pace, state legislatures and Congress—the bodies normally responsible for adopting our laws—too often fell silent. Courts bound to protect our liberties addressed a few—but hardly all—of the intrusions upon them. In some cases, like this one, courts even allowed themselves to be used to perpetuate emergency public-health decrees for collateral purposes, itself a form of emergency-lawmaking-by-litigation.

Doubtless, many lessons can be learned from this chapter in our history, and hopefully serious efforts will be made to study it. One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat... We do not need to confront a bayonet, we need only a nudge, before we willingly abandon the nicety of requiring laws to be adopted by our legislative representatives and accept rule by decree. Along the way, we will accede to the loss of many cherished civil liberties—the right to worship freely, to debate public policy without censorship, to gather with friends and family, or simply to leave our homes. We may even cheer on those who ask us to disregard our normal lawmaking processes and forfeit our personal freedoms.

The time for Gorsuch and his colleagues to say that was in March 2020, not May 2023. But when seconds count and the country's fate is on the line, the courts are years away. So: what are we going to do about it the next time they try it? I know how I'm betting.

Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints, and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and its sequel, The Fiery Angel. Last Stands, a study of military history from the Greeks to the present, was published by St. Martin's Press in December 2019. He is also the editor of Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order, published on Oct. 18, 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @theAmanuensis

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12 comments on “THE COLUMN: Never Forget, Never Forgive, Never Again”

  1. I know little of US politics- too busy trying to figure out what is happening in the UK- but it would seem that as the US creeps ever closer to the next Presidential "junket", American Society is more polarised than ever. Would I be right in thinking that come the "race to the White House" it will be between "Wokism v ?". Having read that Fort Bragg is now renamed- under a law(?)- Fort Liberty, what next I wonder; that the American Civil War didn't happen and all Confederates will be airbrushed from history?
    In the UK there are some who would have all our classical works of literature re-written to be "more inclusive" and fit for the woke society of the 21st Century. Beware young Walsh, "Whose afraid of Classical Music" is next", along with "Bill" Shakespeare!

  2. Off Topic, but just at random I looked at my bookshelf and there I see "Who's Afraid of Classical Music" by, Michael Walsh! And then I glance up and on another shelf see "Last Stands", by Michael Walsh! 'Surely they're not the same author,' I think, but then I see a link to an article by, Michael Walsh(!) and it's right there in his bio. They are all one and the same. Quite a range of genres! Thanks for introducing me to Bruckner's 9th!!!

  3. Phuleeze. Trump did not “cede control”, but made the best of a bad situation to keep it.

    Had he suppressed the “experts” once WuFlu got through our porous borders, BOTH PARTIES in their panic and preening would have done what they wanted to do all along: remove him from office.

    Then Pence (or a replacement for him) would have subjected all 50 states to the full Cuomo/Whitmer/Newsom treatment to curry the favor of said parties.

    The fact that Trump did his job - he respected federalism while marshaling resources to “treat the symptoms” and give us the CHOICE (not a mandate, from him) to vax/not vax - prevented the total socio-economic destruction of this nation by the panic-gogues.

    But when one disdains his abrasive, disruptive, NECESSARY approach of “saying the quiet parts out loud”, they are inclined to ignore what he did accomplish in the face of WuFlu, open borders, the Climate Change Cult … and the political careerists that would not be persuaded (even if he was silver-tongued) to join him to push back on all of the above.

    Direct your ire, at that last group.

  4. whoever wrote this article needs to look up the definition of gene therapy, because he has no idea. Sorry but the vaccines are NOT gene therapy, thats a lie told by conspiracy theorists who are spreading this misinformation betting that the gullible will never fact check

      1. I'm a little late to this article's party, but I have to commend you for writing it. I also found "... the American CIA and other charter members of Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party's "Forever Wars" wing..." to be one of the best descriptions of the US Big Gubmint apparatus I've ever read. Thanks.

    1. Not made from the agent or agents that you are seeking immunity from, does not directly stimulate the immune response, does not give immunity. Not a vaccine. Does use your cells to replicate genetic info found in injection, it is gene therapy, look at 4 year old texts, they brag about it.

  5. Mr Walsh's distaste for Trump and the fact that he was buffaloed in March 2020 notwithstanding, the blame for what came next rests on the American people. Not a majority, but clearly, a critical mass allowed themselves to be stampeded under the beds, emerging only with their underwear on their faces. Had this not been the case, had enough of us said "you said fifteen days, and fifteen days is fifteen days," and had we chased the known liars, frauds, and idiots out of the TV studios and into the streets to face justice, very little of this would be happening right now.

    1. Point well taken. Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” is instructive in this regard. His compelling thesis is that the German people were primed to endorse Nazi ethics and politics after two or three generations of “slave morality” conditioning underneath a social welfare state—itself an invention of the “Second Reich.” Likewise, Americans have been conditioned to endorse—even demand—slave morality over two or three generations of our own homegrown Kaisers (FDR, Johnson et al.) and their welfare ethics (New Deal, Great Society). It was “W” that set the stage for the Covid manipulation when he asserted, in the days after 9/11, that his explicit duty was to keep Americans safe from the “terrorists” while implicitly neglecting his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. But it was the vast majority of Americans, well-conditioned for Big Brother’s false promises of safety and security, that deserve history’s indictment for acquiescing to their own enslavement. It’s not good that We the People suffer, but it is just.

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