"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:32... and also chiseled into the marble entrance of the CIA Central Intellegience Agency... how's that for irony!
Most of what you believe about your government is a lie, an elaborate illusion to keep you ignorant of the truth. To the extent to which you buy their lies and the propaganda of the major media you are deluding yourself. "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
So, citizen, are you going to take the blue pill or the red pill ? As Morpheus said, "all I offer is the truth and nothing more".
In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies.... They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and the name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void and ineffective for any purpose since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it; an unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed... An unconstitutional law is void. (16 Am. Jur. 2d, Sec. 178)
“Nationalism does nothing but teach you to hate people you never met, and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in.” Doug Stanhope
There's a fine line between the American dream and the American nightmare. Don Henley
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. - Ayn Rand
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important. ~ T. S. Eliot
Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism when hate for people other than your own comes first. Charles De Gaulle
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable. - H. L. Mencken

Insanity

In looking at the insanity going on around us, much can be explained by the spoiled nature of our society. Viktor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning described in 1979 how that generation (mine in fact) were generally not challenged in life as earlier generations were (unlike his generation including himself who went through the holocaust and those who came out were stronger for it in many ways) and had everything handed to them resulting in a society of spoiled little brats. Now we are reaping what we sowed. It manifests itself most egregiously with a bunch of middle class kids who have no skills to survive in life (they think food comes from the grocery store!) and will starve if left to their own devices. Their entire reality is defined by the devices they hold in their hands. Then there are generations of black citizens whose grandparents once fought and died to achieve their rights but now sit back waiting for so called white supremacists to give them what they think they are entitled to. And then you have upper class virtue signalers who give to causes like black lives matters and antifa only to perpetuate class divisions so they can sip fine wine while the country burns outside of their gated communities.

I know people who think all cops are racists and evil. Of course they don't know any cops personally but don't hesitate to judge people they don't know. Many of this generation and many of their lame brained parents judge people through a simple black and white lens and understand nothing. This has been created in part by government run schools who after the late 60's turned to very socialist laden agenda (John Taylor Gatto has written extensively on this) setting us up for a general population that believes everything is relative, morality doesn't exist and you can make up anything you want and treat it as true; and no one should ever experience failure and have their feelings hurt. You have a corporate/banking/Wall Street culture that sits apart from society, pulling our strings and accumulating vast wealth and power, insuring we remain divided, fighting each other rather than them. The current violence and divisions suit them fine as long as the violence doesn't extend into their gated communities. And then hear them wail! No de-funding the police in their neighborhood.

With current events I see a distinct pattern. First the Democrats tried getting rid of Trump with a fake Russia-gate investigation. That went nowhere. Then they tried propping up a fake Ukrane-gate impeachment which went nowhere too. Then they bumped into a real virus sent from heaven for their purposes and blew the response way out of proportion, pricking the bubble that was our economy in the process (all the while the entire process is driven by a bureaucratic necessity to screw everything up even more than it is). That still didn't seem to be affecting Trump's reelection prospects so when a police officer committed an act of public murder, this gets blown up out of proportion like the virus response as their hope clearly is this affects his reelection. If his predecessor was in the White House none of this would be going down this way. He'd let the old people die of the virus and tell us how sad he was and all the liberals would be content and they'd go back to their lattes. One conclusion I draw is that if the criminal scum burning down the very businesses that poor people depend on are so intent in getting Trump un-elected that they would engage in these outrages and vote for a dementia patient like Joe Biden then that suggests they are scared of Trump. I'm not sure why they are so scared of him as he really hasn't been all that effective. And, if they really wanted to get rid of him, they could always accuse him of the real crimes he's has committed but that might actually work. I guess they'd have to go back and prosecute the prior president for authorizing the murder of American citizens by drone. Funny how hypocrisy works. These investigation and impeachments are all about theater, not law!

Black Lives Matter is funded by a Who's Who of Wall Street: Adidas, Amazon, Airbnb, American Express, Bank of America, BMW, Burger King, Citigroup, Coca Cola, DHL, Disney, eBay, Ford Foundation, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, Mastercard, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Sony, Starbucks, Twitter, Verizon, WalMart, Warner Brothers and YouTube, just to name a few. What's going on with that? A vast group of clueless citizens are getting woke while many more are remaining silent. We as a society have lost touch with what it means to be an American and that is to be a person who has their own sense of purpose and are willing to work to achieve their dreams and accept the consequences of success or failure (which I define as justice - you get what you deserve). We've created a world in which corporations have rights. What a ludicrous concept! But having trashed the idea that individuals are born with rights it's easy to endow corporations with even more rights (privileges legally) than individuals. It is so messed up.

BLM is a racist organization as they are judging all of these issues based on the color of someone's skin. To them Martin Luthor King is an uncle Tom. This crowd thinks that violence gets you what they want. What they don't understand is that communists like them will never take over this county. Push people far enough and we will end up with some fascist tyrant who will cram them into concentration camps. But if you don't understand anything, especially American history, the woke crowd will be surprised when that happens. The weekend after Floyd was murdered, at least 18 black individuals were killed by other black individuals in Chicago. Where is the civil action and protest against that? This it seems is unimportant to BLM because they weren't killed by white police! And while we are bestowing sainthood on Floyd we should remember that he had a long rap sheet including jail time and an conviction where he pointed a gun at a black pregnant woman. But I guess her black life didn't matter in that case. It didn't take a genius to figure out that his life wasn't going to end well however wrong the actions of those police may have been. As the evidence in that case is developed it may well be determined that Floyd died of an overdose of fentanyl, three times the letal dose and the actions of the police were not what everybody thought!

I understand that the spoiled class will act out irrationally because this is how they were brought up. But the citizens sitting in their homes watching all this crap need to get a clue. I haven't even addressed the compliant media in all of this. People should tune them out and focus on the the few rational commentators out there and get more active at expression you view not hide in your home being guilty for the success you have. Of course the woke crowd tried canceling Tucker Carlson on Fox and his ratings went way up. Sort of backfired on the idiot class. He now has over two times the ratings of any other non-Fox commentary (over 4 million daily) and an equal number of views on YouTube for which you will get a warning before viewing (he must be doing something right if YouTube feels they need to censor his radical views). He has his blind spots but he effectively speaks truth to power as do a host of non drive by media sources.

So what are we supposed to do? First we need to understand the problem thoroughly and understand that we've created a society in which force has been institutionalized unjustly at all levels of government. If you get a check from the government that you didn't earn for services provided (and in many cases even then) you are taking money from another citizen unjustly - it's not your money - it's called theft! And I'm not just talking about welfare. I'm talking about mega corporate subsidies, military contractors and yes Social Security recipients. If SSI recipients think they've earned those payments they need to take a basic course in accounting as that money was spent a long time ago. But keep telling yourself that while the mega corps keep raking it in!

These impositions can be moderated to some extent when done locally - you have some input into the process but at the state and especially the federal level the only people who have real input are those with piles of cash. And that ends up being large multi-national corporations. The only remaining control you have over these institutions is the ballot but the ignorance of most citizens about what is going on and why is abysmal. Most voters are as morally challenged as the politicians they vote for (which is why they get elected after all). The fact is that much of our understanding should come down to simple right and wrong. Yes the details can be complicated but the principles are not and we've lost our way.

I have complicated feelings about Trump. I agree with many of his instincts (namely war is bad for business and then he makes exceptions for arms dealers) and in the current welfare state I think restricting immigration is entirely appropriate but he has some obvious flaws (beside his mouth which doesn't bother me that much - I too have total and utter contempt for the freeloaders and sycophants). I told colleagues the day after his election that his success would be dependent on his appointments, particularly the attorney general who in my view had a lot of prosecuting to do to drain the swamp. As soon as Sessions took the AG position he recused himself from the Russia-gate investigation. Trump let that ride for 21 months before replacing him [ that's just bad management. When Session announced that he would recuse himself, Trump should have said, Jeff I appreciate your willingness to serve but I need a full time AG. And it is clear that he has surrounded himself with a very sub standard crew of largely neo-con and mainstream appointees. It's also clear, his economic views are driven entirely by a business perspective that is not good economic policy. A business person likes low interest rates for obvious reasons but low (and effectively negative rates if one takes inflation into account) rates have driven our economy into the ditch. He seemed to understand bubbles very well during the campaign but has cheerleaded the bubble creation process as president since he perceives it drives up his polling. I can make excuses that the Democrats were sniping at him at every opportunity and distracting his focus but he wanted the big job - time to put on the big boy pants. He never really went on the offensive against the people who counted - the deep state which includes the banker class. Instead he hired many of his enemies (Bolton comes quickly to mind). If he really wanted to turn things inside out, there are plenty of good minds around to tap. Hopefully he's learned something. But someone once said that hope is not a plan.

My biggest disappointment is that his greatest ally is The Law and he seems not to know how to fully utilize it. I'm not talking about a tyrannical judiciary that violates the law at every opportunity or his own executive branch that acts outside of statute and the constitution continuously but the written Constitution and lawful statutes which still form a foundation for restoring much of what he's says he wants to do. He doesn't have to understand the details in order to grasp the principals to put the right people in place to enforce the end results all good citizens should want. He definitely needs to get a handle on appointing people who understand our fundamental principals and not the typical sycophants who could (and have) worked for Obama or Bush.

I think the current political environment is impossible to predict at this juncture and obviously Trump is a flawed vessel but I think we are close to a tipping point one way or the other. The fundamental problem of our country revolves around the 1% financial class and the fiat banking system presided over by the Federal Reserve. This is the pure manifestation of force run amok. That is what needs to be aggressively attacked and this will address many of the obvious government abuses as well as the economy. If Trump can articulate a coherent message and unite the grown ups, this election could create a realignment with the American citizenry rejecting the crazy and destructive leftward drift the Democrats continue to point us to. I do think there are potent forces beyond current BLM insanity and even beyond Trump that are pushing a nationalist/populous response. Voters need to look carefully at the Republicans they vote for as some of them are as left and corrupt as the Democrats. The real thrust for change will come from an activated voter base that doesn't want to hear Republican excuses.. If the vast middle of America doesn't conclude that there is something terribly wrong with this country and needs a positive realignment and then votes that way, then we are going to be in for a very rough ride. Think Russia in the 90's rough ride! A convincing win could change the narrative considerably as we will not likely see a Republican president as disliked by the Republican establishment as this one ever again. In the end it will be up to the American people not The Donald.

My assessment of the intelligence of the American people will be based in part on the election outcomes on November 3. Forget Trump for the moment. Our future is in our hands not the freeloaders asking for handouts or the freeloaders in their gated communities.