Information Is Power
Good, solid information is the best resource that the public can use. Primary sources when possible and good discussions and studies when informative.
Is it AI | Elon Musk and Donald Trump Danceathon | Video: 36 Seconds
Haters will say this is AI 🕺🕺 pic.twitter.com/vqWVxiYXeD
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 14, 2024
The Undeniable Hate Of The Left | Elon Musk | X | Video: 59 Seconds
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2024
Next Up, Vaccine Resistant COVID Lambda Variant From Central and South America, The 2022 Mid-Term Lock-down and Mail-In Ballot Variant
Old COVID narrative = A “Delta Variant” transmissible regardless of vaccinated status, but presumably with the vaccine you won’t get as sick… or so they say. However, not content with the vaccine results so far….
…Now we get the new COVID narrative – A “Lambda Variant” that is not only infectious and transmissible regardless of vaccinated status (just like Delta), but the Lambda Variant is also resistant to any antiviral immunity, meaning the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t work against it.
New York Post – As the US struggles to suppress the rapidly advancing coronavirus Delta variant, new evidence has emerged that the latest Lambda mutation — ravaging parts of South America — won’t be slowed by vaccines.
In a July 28 report appearing on bioRxiv, where the study awaits peer review prior to getting published, researchers in Japan are sounding the alarm on the C.37 variant, dubbed Lambda. And it’s proven just as virulent as Delta thanks to a similar mutation making them even more contagious.
The strain has been contained in 26 countries, including substantial outbreaks in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Ecuador.
“Notably, the vaccination rate in Chile is relatively high; the percentage of the people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine was [about] 60%,” the authors write.
“Nevertheless, a big COVID-19 surge has occurred in Chile in Spring 2021, suggesting that the Lambda variant is proficient in escaping from the antiviral immunity elicited by vaccination,” they warn. […] “In addition to increasing viral infectivity, the Delta variant exhibits higher resistance to the vaccine-induced neutralization,” the authors said. “Similarly, here we showed that the Lambda variant equips not only increased infectivity but also resistance against antiviral immunity.” (read more)
Despite the Lambda variant coming from South and Central America, the Biden administration is keeping the U.S. Southern border open specifically to entice, well, Southern and Central American migrants… Huh, go figure.
If you are cynically thinking this sounds suspiciously like a new “mid-term 2022 lockdown and mail-in ballot variant“… well, you would not be alone.
These folks are nothing, if not predictable. . . .
Man Charged With Murdering 18-Year-Old 2 Days After Being Released From Prison Due To COVID-19: REPORT
A New Jersey inmate allegedly shot and killed an 18-year-old man two days after he was released from prison due to concerns over COVID-19, NJ.com reported.
Convicted burglar Jerry Crawford, 25, was released on parole on Nov. 4, 2020, the New Jersey Department of Corrections told NJ.com, as part of an effort to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus in the state’s prisons. The state let out over 2,000 inmates in November 2020 due to rising deaths and infections in its penitentiary system.
Crawford, along with Yusuf Waites, 23, was charged on July 23 for shooting and killing David Scarborough in Bridgeton, New Jersey on Nov. 6, 2020, two days after he was released from prison. Waites had been released from prison on Oct. 10, less than a month before the murder, according to NJ.com. . . .
Former CBP Chief: Potentially 40K COVID-Positive Illegal Aliens Released into U.S. by Biden’s DHS
Former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan says President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released potentially 40,000 coronavirus-positive illegal aliens into the United States.
Morgan, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said during a press call that “there’s an enormous amount of facts that this administration is willingly and knowingly releasing illegal aliens into border towns and cities with individuals actively carrying and transmitting the virus.”
Specifically, Morgan said the administration has released upwards of 170,000 border crossers and another roughly 100,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) into the U.S. since January 20.
Based on conservative estimates of reported coronavirus positivity rates among border crossers, Morgan said the Biden administration has potentially released tens of thousands of coronavirus-positive border crossers into the U.S:
At a 15 percent positive rate, being conservative, that’s more than 40,000 positive-covid cases that have been released into the United States and that is just the cases that we know about from those who have been tested. And we know that everybody being released, they’re not being tested. We know that. We’ve heard story after story.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas is directing the release of up to 80 percent of families who have illegally entered the United States … so Border Patrol apprehends a family and they’re releasing them as fast as they possibly can into local communities. [Emphasis added]
When a family is released into local communities, DHS is not testing them … so what’s DHS Secretary Mayorkas’ solution to all of this? ‘Eh, it’s up to the local communities to deal with it. It’s your issue and your problem to deal with now.’ [Emphasis added] . . .
EU Countries Making COVID-19 Vaccines Mandatory
Some European countries are now making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory, requiring vaccine passports to access basic services. Reporting by Joanne Robson . . .
Los Angeles Councilmembers Introduce Motion to Ban Ghost Guns
Los Angeles City councilmembers Aug. 3 introduced a motion to ban the purchase and possession of ghost guns in the city.
Ghost guns, also known as kit guns, are sold as partially assembled guns that can be completed using purchased parts. The unfinished parts are not legally required to have serial numbers or a background check to purchase and are often sold at gun shows or online.
Councilmembers Paul Koretz and Paul Krekorian requested an ordinance banning the possession, purchase, sale, receipt and transportation of all frames, receivers and firearms that are unfinished and non-serialized in the city.
Koretz said in a statement that shootings and homicides have increased 30 percent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shootings are up 43 percent, he said, with over 40 percent of guns confiscated by the ATF and a third of crime guns recovered by the LAPD in Los Angeles were ghost guns last year.
“With such staggering numbers and the sharp increase in hate crimes, we cannot turn a blind eye on a backdoor that allows criminals to gain access to firearms when they would otherwise be denied through the front door,” Koretz said.
Krekorian said in the statement that ghost guns are deliberately designed to avoid tracing. . . .
He Fits Right In With Biden’s Own Past | “Biden ATF nominee accused of racism, hiding statements from lawmakers”
President Biden’s choice to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has come under additional pressure this week due to alleged racism and failure to disclose some public remarks to the Senate committee weighing his nomination.
Late last month, the gun policy news site The Reload reported on racist comments David Chipman allegedly made while a supervisor at the ATF office in Detroit. A current ATF official told the website that Chipman “made some comments that he was surprised by the number of African Americans who have made it onto a specific promotional list.”
“His insinuation was that they had to have cheated,” the official added to The Reload. “Which is kind of despicable.” The official went on to say that “Chipman did not leave Detroit on the best of terms. His reputation was that he was not nice to people.”
Fox News reported in June that Chipman had confirmed in written responses to senators’ questions that two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints had been filed against him, but added that “both complaints were resolved without any finding of discrimination, and no disciplinary action was taken against me.”
On Wednesday, a black former ATF agent claimed that Chipman argued that the agent must have cheated on a promotion exam because he had performed so well.
“He said, ‘Hey, a lot of African Americans qualified to be promoted on this certification list; they must have been cheating,’” the unidentified former agent told The Reload. “And then he had to go and find one. I happened to be that one.”
The former agent added that he was cleared after an investigation by the Justice Department Inspector General’s Office. However, he claimed that the experience dissuaded him from seeking to move up at the ATF. . . .
Delta Variant “Not a Game Changer,” says Dr. Martin Kulldorf | American Thought Leaders | Video: 10 Minutes 56 Seconds
Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Martin Kulldorf says that the Delta Variant of COVID-19 is not something to be worried about, saying that while cases are going up, deaths are continuing to go down because of vaccinations and natural immunity. He says that lockdowns are not the answer and in fact may cause more collateral damage.
[ Epoch TV ]
Antonella Marty: How Socialist, Communist Ideology Took Over Cuba, Latin America
“Communism destroys the incentives. It destroys the most important essence of the human being … liberty,” says Antonella Marty, director of the Atlas Network’s Center for Latin America. At FreedomFest in South Dakota, we sat down with Marty to discuss the spread of communist and socialist ideology in Latin America—from Cuba to Venezuela to her home country of Argentina—and the connections between socialist regimes, terrorist networks, and violent crime. Subscribe to the American Thought Leaders newsletter so you never miss an episode. You can also follow American Thought Leaders on Parler, Facebook, or YouTube. If you’d like to donate to support our work, you can do so here. Follow Epoch TV on Facebook and Twitter. . . .
Close to half of Americans can’t afford a one-bedroom rental: report
Home is where the rent’s affordable which, for many Americans, is an increasingly thin portion of the housing market.
New data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition has revealed the depressing reality that close to half of the American workforce does not make enough money to rent a one-bedroom apartment.
The situation has been made significantly worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which US rents rose while many Americans fell behind on rent payments.
The problem is a huge threat to national happiness and well-being, researchers believe.
“The kind of tight budgets that especially low-income renters face when they’re cost-burdened can lead to serious harms,” National Low Income Housing Coalition research analyst Daniel Threet told the Guardian.
In order to afford a one-bedroom rental, the new data reported, workers must earn approximately $20.40 an hour, where the median US wage is only $21 an hour — and the federal minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour. . . .
Social Media’s Threat to Religious Freedom
Carl Trueman is a distinguished scholar, bestselling author and ordained Presbyterian minister. On Aug. 7 he gave a series of talks to the Sacramento Gospel Conference, live-streamed on the YouTube channel of Immanuel Baptist Church. Twice during the event, the live broadcast was booted off the air. Viewers were informed that the first interruption was due to a copyright violation, possibly the result of Christian music that the conference organizers played during a break. But in the second, more mysterious instance, Mr. Trueman’s presentation went dark because of a “content violation.”
Was this an intervention by a human being or an algorithm on automatic pilot? Neither Mr. Trueman nor Immanuel Baptist has been told. Equally unclear is the specific nature of the alleged content violation. Nothing in Mr. Trueman’s talks encouraged hatred, vulgarity or violence. On the contrary, he offered a thoughtful analysis of American cultural attitudes toward sex through the lens of classic Christian thought, citing sources from Freud to the philosophers Rousseau and Charles Taylor.
Mr. Trueman is understandably worried that religious speech is being censored online. So are many other religious believers. And for good reason: We sense that the First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty is being dismantled, and with it the profound contributions that religion makes to American unity and self-government.
Today’s sexual politics function as a new kind of fundamentalism, one that presents a deep problem to a diverse and democratic society. Instead of encouraging the dialogue of democratic process, the fundamentalists seek to impose their own rigid certitude unilaterally. On matters ranging from foster care and education to gender ideology and the family, this new fundamentalism is displacing the moral convictions that once grounded U.S. culture. The result isn’t a more compassionate and liberal society; it’s a more punitive one.
Social Media enables the new fundamentalism, enforced by the mysterious rules of Big Tech’s quasimonopoly. On public sidewalks, the First Amendment still theoretically protects free speech. In the new public square of the internet, power displaces liberty and conscience.
Lies, Lies and More Lies To Create Covid-19 Fear For Power and Money | The Texas Tribune ‘Corrects’ It’s Claim That 5,800 Children Hospitalized In 7 Days
Correction, Aug. 12, 2021: An earlier version of this story overstated the number of children who have been hospitalized in Texas recently with COVID-19. The story said over 5,800 children had been hospitalized during a seven-day period in August, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number correctly referred to children hospitalized with COVID-19 since the pandemic began. In actuality, 783 children were admitted to Texas hospitals with COVID-19 between July 1 and Aug. 9 of this year. Texas children and children’s hospitals are under siege from two viruses: RSV and COVID-19
Minneapolis GOP campaign manager, PAC founder allegedly sex trafficked minors
Federal authorities on Thursday arrested a Minneapolis-based GOP strategist and PAC founder on allegations of sex trafficking minors, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported.
The FBI arrested Anton “Tony” Lazzaro on Thursday on numerous charges, including conspiring with others to recruit minors to engage in sexual acts.
According to the indictment, Authorities seized Lazzaro’s possessions including his 2010 Ferrari, property at a downtown hotel, $371,240 in cash, and multiple electronic devices, according to the Star-Tribune.
Federal authorities said they could not estimate the ages or genders of the victims in the case, sharing that more victims could be identified as the investigation continues. . . .
Chicago Cardinal Pushes for Mandatory Coronavirus Vaccines
Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich has been applying “tremendous pressure” on the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) to withdraw its support for conscientious objection to receiving a coronavirus vaccine, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported Wednesday.
On condition of anonymity, one NCBC board member said Cupich has been “leaning hard” on board members, both bishops and laypersons, to throw their support behind a vaccine mandate.
In early July, the NCBC declared it “does not endorse mandated COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] immunization,” referencing a 2020 instruction from the Vatican’s doctrinal office (CDF) that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”
“The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) does not endorse mandated COVID-19 immunization with any of the three vaccines that have received Emergency Use Authorization as of July 1, 2021,” the statement read.
“The most authoritative guidance from the Catholic Church issued on this topic comes from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and emphasizes that individuals must discern whether to be vaccinated or not in conscience and without coercion,” it added.
“The short answer is we don’t have a moral obligation” to get the vaccine, Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann told Catholic News Service (CNS) in an interview last February, but it is “permissible to use these vaccines.”
In order for a particular vaccine to be morally mandatory, a number of conditions must exist, including the irrefutable lethality of the disease, proven effectiveness of the vaccine as well as its guaranteed safety for recipients, and an absence of moral objections to the vaccine itself and its provenance.
None of these conditions have been definitively met in the case of the coronavirus and the various vaccines created to defend against it.
Hassan Mahmood on how the mindsets of successful people differ from others
A follow-up to the conclusion of a certain laid down action is called winning. So many people lie in the category of always postponing and putting things on hold. Once you are a victim of procrastinating, it is hard to get yourself to see it fully done. You lose a lot of trust in people and end up becoming unreliable. Hassan Mahmood has shared his insights on the mindset of a winner in this article. No other person can give you the conviction that you need from yourself. This means you have to maintain positive thoughts and ideas in your mind. Once you have created this for yourself, it is easy to regard yourself highly. Secondly, you need to put down your ideas either in your diary, plan book or as a reminder. This majorly helps you keep track of what is required to be done.
Now that you have created a positive environment in your mind, keeping track of things that need to be done, you need to work on your discipline. Be focused enough to meet the deadlines of the said plans and targets. If you have to do it overnight, do it. Once you see your plans getting to be done and you are following up to see that you have done them in the right way, you get some ray of hope and trust yourself more. This creates patterns for yourself, people around you, investors, family, colleagues start relying on you. A winner is a reliable game-changer that is disciplined enough and gets things done. The simple change in you winning in a month, creating this pattern to work for you throughout the whole year, changes your life forever.
A winner is a person that has a pattern of meeting up to fulfill his dreams. This is what Hassan Mahmood believes is how the mind of a winner operates. . . .
Fintech CEO Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison for COVID-19 Relief Loan Fraud, Investment Fraud
Audrey Strauss, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced on Wednesday in a statement, that Sheng-Wen Cheng, a CEO of a financial technology company has been sentenced to 6 years in prison for fraudulently obtaining $7 million in government loans intended to provide relief during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as for securities fraud.
Cheng, a/k/a “Justin Cheng” or “Justin Jung” applied in 2020 to the Small Business Administration (SBA) and other financial institutions under other people’s names for a total of over $7 million of government-guaranteed loans designed for small business owners impacted by lockdowns and restrictions due to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party virus pandemic.
To mitigate the financial difficulties suffered by businesses, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion rescue package also known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), which provided loans for business owners to use for paying their workers and keeping them employed during lockdowns, among other benefits.
These loans had attractive features such as forgiveness of up to eight weeks of payroll based on employee retention and salary levels, no SBA fees, and their repayment could be deferred for a period of six months to a year. However, the amount of granted loans was determined by the number of workers employed by the business and their payroll cost.
In order to receive this type of loan, Cheng, 24 of New York City, who controlled several Fintech companies provided falsified information claiming that other individuals were the sole owners of his companies, the statement said. He also stated in loan applications that his companies employed together over 200 workers to whom he paid in total about $1.5 million in wages per month. To prove that, Cheng submitted falsified tax records that had not been filed with the IRS and payroll records with forged signatures.
All of Cheng’s companies employed a total of no more than 14 employees, the statement said. His false payroll records included names of celebrities, athletes, artists, and public figures, such as a co-anchor of a TV show, a former football player, or a deceased coach.
With the funds obtained through defrauding his lenders, Cheng purchased luxury goods or services for his personal use such as renting and furnishing a luxury condominium instead of directing them to cover payroll costs, mortgage interest, rent, or utilities of his companies as required by the CARES Act, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
In addition to misusing COVID-19 relief loans, Cheng committed investment fraud between 2017 and 2019, the statement said. . . .
Horatio Sanz groomed, sexually assaulted underage fan at ‘SNL’ party: lawsuit
Comedian Horatio Sanz allegedly groomed and sexually assaulted an underage superfan at a “Saturday Night Live” party — as cast members looked the other way, the woman claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The unnamed Pennsylvania woman, who was 17 at the time, was running an “SNL” fan site in May 2002 when Sanz allegedly took her on a limo ride, then “digitally penetrated her genitals” at a post-show bash, according to the lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The girl first met Sanz at age 15 — when he was 31 years old — in 2000 after he invited her to a taping of the sketch comedy show, according to the lawsuit, which names the actor and SNL Studios as defendants.
The next year, he summoned her to several after-show parties, where he allowed her to drink, touched her inappropriately and told her “to sit on his lap,” according to the lawsuit. . . .
How the woke takeover of child services endangers abused kids
Just to be clear: There were adults who cared about Julissia Batties. Yet their care couldn’t overcome the illogic of a child-welfare machine that returned her to an abusive family environment that this week ended her life: Julissia’s half-brother allegedly beat the 7-year-old to death for taking snacks from the kitchen, an attack subsequently covered up by her own mother.
Her grandmother for years had cared for Julissia. There were city Administration for Children’s Services caseworkers who tried to keep her away from her abusive mother and siblings, even going to the highest courts in the state to keep her safe. There were even concerned neighbors who repeatedly called authorities when they saw what was happening.
The story of Julissia Batties isn’t a story of hidden child abuse, of what goes on behind closed doors. It is the story of a system that favors placing children with their biological parents no matter what the danger, then delays action until it is too late.
Julissia had been taken from her mother at birth. Little wonder, since the mother had lost custody of her four older children in 2013 over safety concerns. A family-court judge initially granted her mother custody — God only knows why — but ACS lawyers appealed the decision and won. . . .
Ex-Chicago police officer gets year in prison for taking bribes in exchange for crash report details

Kevin Tate pleaded guilty to a bribery conspiracy in September 2019, admitting he took “not less than $10,000” from Richard Burton, who ran National Attorney Referral Service.
An ex-Chicago police officer who admitted taking thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for early access to the names of people involved in traffic accidents was sentenced Thursday to a year in federal prison.
Kevin Tate pleaded guilty to a bribery conspiracy in September 2019, admitting he took “not less than $10,000” from Richard Burton, who ran National Attorney Referral Service, while giving Burton details from 25 to 100 crash reports per month from 2015 until 2017.
U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle handed down Tate’s sentence.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrianna Kastanek in a court memo last spring sought a sentence of as many as three years for Tate. She wrote that Tate’s crime was serious not because of the crash reports, “but in the significance of a police officer accepting a bribe in exchange for providing a member of the public with access to information intended, at that time, only for police use.”
“In this context, it was traffic reports,” Kastanek wrote. “In another context, it could have been other sensitive information whose disclosure could risk public or private safety. In exchange for private financial gain (and a relatively small amount of gain) [Tate] compromised his integrity, and public trust in police officers.”
Todd Pugh, one of Tate’s defense attorneys, wrote in a separate memo that punishment has already been leveled toward Tate through the loss of his job, the “unrepairable damage to his professional reputation, and the shame of ignoring the oath he took as a Chicago Police officer to uphold the law.”
Pugh wrote that Tate was fired following his guilty plea.
Tate began his career as a Chicago police officer in 2005 and was repeatedly recognized by the department, Pugh wrote, including when he received a Life Saving Award for rescuing two children from a burning apartment building.
Burton, who pleaded guilty in June 2019 to a bribery conspiracy, has yet to be sentenced, records show. A second officer caught up in the scheme but charged separately, Milot Cadichon, was sentenced in November 2019 to 18 months in prison.
Federal prison records show Cadichon was released from custody in June.
VIDEO: New Yorkers Celebrate Cuomo Resignation, Tell DeBlasio ‘We Coming For You Next, We On Yo Ass Boy’

Video footage from the New York City video street show Sidetalk shows attendees at a “Bye Bye Cuomo” event celebrating the departure of beleaguered ex-governor Andrew Cuomo, trashing him for his unpopular lockdown and mask mandates and proclaiming “You’re next DeBlasio, you’re f***ing next.”
“That Cuomo n***a said we couldn’t be outside like s**t,” one blue-haired woman yelled into the camera. “Where we at? Outside!” The crowd then burst into raucous applause. A man wearing a “Gays For Trump” shirt yelled “Rot in hell, you son of a bitch” into the camera when asked what message he would send to Cuomo.
Bye Bye Cuomo pic.twitter.com/kkzgk9vuGB
— Sidetalk (@sidetalknyc) August 11, 2021
Other highlights include one man screaming “Cuomo you put pineapple on yo pizza and you get no p***y,” and another exclaiming, “You’re next DeBlasio, you’re f***ing next, we on yo ass boy, we on yo ass boy.” Another man screamed even louder, “Cuomo, you thought you’d get away with this s**t, when I see you, I’m gonna grab you by yo f****in’ neck.”
The crowd also cheered on a man wearing a Donald Trump costume with a black wave cap, and chanted in unison, “Cuomo get no p***y, Cuomo get no p***y,” an accusation which seemed strange given that the embattled former governor faced accusations of using his position of power to touch women sexually.
As National File previously reported last week, Democrat President Joe Biden got into a heated exchange with a CNN reporter when questioned over his effusive praise for Cuomo:
“Can I quickly follow up on your comment on Governor Cuomo?” Collins demanded during a presser on Tuesday. “Can you really say he has done ‘a hell of a job’ if he’s accused of sexually harassing women on the job?”
“Look, you’re asking two different questions,” Biden shot back. “Now, I asked the substantive – should he remain as governor is one question. And women should be believed when they make accusations that are on the face of them if they make sense, and investigate them, and if they’re investigated and the judgement was made that what they said was correct. That’s one thing. The question is, did he do a good job on infrastructure? That was the question. He did.”
“The question was how he did as a governor,” Collins snapped. “He was accused of sexually harassing.” She then asked Biden to if he could separate Cuomo’s policies from his personal conduct, to which Biden replied, “No, I’m not, I’m trying to answer a specific question. I was asked a specific question. What do you want to ask me specifically?”
Andrew Cuomo’s brother Chris was confronted about the family scandal on Wednesday while leaving his yacht.
COVID-19, The Color Revolution, The Intelligence Branch and Over a Decade of Test Nudges
It has been almost ten years since CTH first outlined the 1984 interview between Yuri Bezmenov and G. Edward Griffin titled “Deception was My Job”. [2013 CTH Article Here] However, it is worth revisiting the interview as we find ourselves increasingly influenced by a deliberate effort to control U.S. society.
Mr. Yuri Bezmenov was a Soviet informant and KGB operative who defected to the United States in the early 70s. Within the interview [full video here], Bezmenov lays out the four stages of “ideological subversion” created by radical Marxists to indoctrinate and weaken nations from within.
It is my contention the Chicago Marxists aligned with Barack Obama (revolutionary communists) were/are following this ‘four stage’ roadmap. The U.S. State Department is filled with like-minded travelers who align with this approach.
Some researchers have identified the objective as connected to the Fabian Socialist goal, others have called it “The Color Revolution”, but the names do not matter much; what matters is the map they follow, the four stages:
♦Stage One: Demoralization – Elimination of American Exceptionalism, fundamental change of national identity, structural deconstruction of foundational principles, elimination of religion. Embedding a new societal design upon the psyche of generations through ideological academia. Peer pressure by elites upon academics and society to convince that prior values were inherently flawed, racist, prejudiced etc. National identity is diluted with aspersions toward historical references. National history is re-written, re-defined, and molded to fit the new intended behavioral model and create the new values.
♦Stage Two: Crisis – Creation of economic, financial, and national security crisis. Also includes social crisis and breakdown of previous self-evident restrictions on moral behavior. Cloward Piven approach to overloading the system, ie more takers than producers. The crisis produces benevolent leaders who will promise to deliver “things” (Hope and Change) to meet people’s needs through Social and Economic Justice. False illusions that the situation is under control if certain strategic directions are followed (Bailouts, Stimulus, Jobs Bills, Regulations of industry, Unconstitutional Power Grabs, Dismissal of Historical Laws, Changes in legislative processes, Changes in checks and balances of power etc).
♦Stage Three: Normalization – The uncomfortable feelings of change including losses of freedom are absorbed and accepted. Lost national identity becomes accepted as the norm within the new societal model. A period of national rebranding transition where people are so overwhelmed by the change they become numb and begin to accept a ‘new normal’. This period of normalization lasts indefinitely as the progression is continually advanced and acceptance takes place in small controlled doses. (New limits on behavior, Regulations, TSA Patdowns, Intrusions into privacy, Controls into daily life) These things begin to be accepted as “just the way it is now”..
♦Stage Four: Destabilization – Unlike the period of “Crisis” the people who helped orchestrate the change are now no longer needed. The new overarching centralized governmental model begins to take control. Leftist usurpers who initially thought they were going to be part of the new power structure begin to realize they were used and manipulated and they themselves become the new enemy. Because they have first hand knowledge of the agenda they are the primary target for elimination. They may simply be disregarded, obfuscated, thrown out, or they may be collected, imprisoned, or worse killed. There is no longer room for dissention. Dissent is only possible within the free system that has now been deconstructed. Therefore the leftist purpose is served once the destabilization is complete. Totalitarian Government takes control.