The Objective Observer

Well, it’s official, as of 2022, the Cleveland Indians baseball team is changing their name to the Cleveland Guardians and we here at The Objective Observer are fully supportive and applaud this change. While one may take issue with the lame name chosen, the Guardians, or decry the abomination of the new logo design, a Hermes inspired winged baseball, what one cannot deny or bemoan is that this change was long overdue.

Honestly, it’s about time we all stop being so blatantly culturally insensitive to the suffering of an entire population of people. It is the duty of our enlightened generation to end the offensive depiction of indigenous people in sport team names and logos. Why this has taken so long is anyone’s guess. It has been apparent for generations that the lionization of indigenous people is just downright offensive to the ancestors of settlers who were kidnapped, raped and murdered on the western plains by Native Americans. Obviously.

And yet, here we are just starting to right this deeply hurtful wrong hundreds of years later. The ancestors of settlers killed by Native Americans have suffered for decades while the sports community glorified and idolized the persecutors of their forefathers. And it never made any sense. This is a group of people that were enemies of the United States, a group of people that we defeated in many battles and wars. It’s akin to naming a sports team the Cleveland Redcoats or the Cleveland SS. It just makes absolutely no sense at all. Why on earth the sports community continues to embrace enemies of the state is simply beyond comprehension.

Therefore, while we are ecstatic to see the end of this lionization of the enemy, we do, however, take issue with how the Cleveland Indians chose to go about the change. There was a far easier and more straight forward approach that wouldn’t have even required a name change and been way more badass in terms of a new mascot and logo. All they had to do was change the mascot and logo to Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and problem solved.

Not only is a logo depicting the severed heads and extremities of your enemies far better than a stupid winged baseball but this would have also shown religious tolerance. And the whole Indians name now has a completely different context. So…win-win.

On Monday Chief Justice Roberts’ “Do Nothing Court” once again decided to, well, do nothing once again. This time the Supreme Court chose to “do nothing” when it came to the 2020 Presidential election. The particular cases in question involved Pennsylvania absentee election ballots. A United States Supreme Court ruling on these cases would not have changed the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election race, but it is beyond unfortunate that the United States Supreme Court did not rule in these cases and instead chose to once again “do nothing” as with a similar case involving Texas. The reason is that this simply sows yet more populism, more distrust of government, more distrust of the election system and disenfranchises all voters, not just those who voted for Trump. But, before we get to all that, let’s review the specifics of the cases.

The United States Constitution in Article II, Section 1, which deals with the the election of the President and Vice President states:

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress:”

In plain English, this means that each state’s legislature gets to create their own rules around Presidential elections, what specific times voting will occur, where polling locations are located, how electors are apportioned, rules around absentee voting, rules around early voting, voter verification, electronic or paper ballots, when recounts occur, how recounts occur, etc. And, perhaps surprisingly, election rules vary quite a bit between states.

Now, what happened in Pennsylvania is that the state legislature changed some election regulations in the runup to the 2020 Presidential election. Democrats, not happy with the stated deadline for county boards of elections to receive mail-in ballots by 8 p.m. on Election Day sued and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court instead extended the deadline for mail-in ballots to three days after Election Day. It’s important to note here that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is not a legislative body. The Pennsylvania secretary of state also removed/ignored the state law mandating that all applications for absentee or mail-in ballots for non-disabled and non-military voters be signed by the applicant. Again, important to note here that the Pennsylvania secretary of state is not a legislative entity and, in fact, isn’t even an elected official.

These actions prompted Republicans to sue the acting Pennsylvania secretary of state before the United States Supreme Court. The issue being whether or not the actions of the secretary of state and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violated the Constitution because the legislature did not make the rules. But, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case claiming that the issues in the case were “moot”, presumably because the election is over and there were not enough votes in question to change the outcome. However, the Supreme Court could have agreed to hear the case under the exception phrased “capable of repetition, yet evading review”. In fact, this is exactly how Roe v. Wade came about since Jane Roe’s appeal was moot because she had already given birth and thus would not be affected by the ruling and as such lacked standing to assert the rights of other pregnant women.

And Pennsylvania is not the only state in which these sorts of shenanigans occurred. In Georgia, state law prohibits the counting of absentee ballots until after the polls open on Election Day but Georgia’s State Election Board allowed processing of ballots up to three weeks before Election Day. In Michigan, state law requires that all absentee ballot requests be requested by the voter through a specific application process requiring a signature but the Michigan secretary of state created a website where people could request an absentee ballot without a signature. In Wisconsin, state law prohibits the use of unmanned drop boxes for ballots, however, the Wisconsin Elections Commission and other local officials used unmanned drop boxes. And this list probably isn’t even comprehensive in terms of how non-legislative entities and in some cases single, unelected officials changed election rules in what would appear to be a clear violation of the Constitution.

Now, again, none of this would change the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. But, that does not mean that the United States Supreme Court should not rule in whether or not these actions were constitutional. In fact, this would have been the exact right time to make a ruling on this topic because it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the election. This is essentially what Justice Thomas, Justice Alito and Justice Gorsuch argue in their dissents.

So why were the cases not heard? Why would the United States Supreme Court refuse to hear cases involving election integrity and the constitutionality of last minute election rule changes by non-legislative entities and single, unelected officials? Well, it is because Chief Justice Roberts is so concerned over the political optics of hearing the cases that he once again chose to “do nothing”. As we pointed out in Silence, any time there is even the hint that a case or ruling from the United States Supreme Court could be politized, Roberts drops it like it’s hot. However, in doing so, Roberts has actually made the United States Supreme Court more politicized, not less politicized. Let us explain.

Most everyone has that one bad ex. That ex boyfriend/girlfriend where the relationship ended so horribly that you find yourself judging every new relationship based upon that individual. The minute you spot any characteristic that reminds you of that awful, horrible person, you end the relationship immediately. However, when you do this, you are actually still being controlled by that old, awful, horrible ex. You are allowing your life to be defined and shaped by the person you hate the most. This is exactly how the United States Supreme Court has been politicized. By looking at the merits of each case based solely upon the political optics, the United States Supreme Court has become more politicized than ever before.

Chief Justice Roberts’ political calculation was that if the United States Supreme Court heard the case then this would just add fuel to the proverbial fire of Trump’s relentless “fraud” and “the election was stolen” narrative. Which is probably true (the fuel not the narrative). But, in not hearing the case the United States Supreme Court has actually solidified the perception in many voters eyes that the election was, in fact, stolen. Anyone objective about the matter and with half a brain can see that there were many actions taken in the runup to the 2020 Presidential election that are questionable at best and obviously unconstitutional at worst. Not addressing those issues leaves voters confused and erodes voter confidence.

And it is not just Trump voters that have been disenfranchised. Actually, all voters have been disenfranchised. If the United States Supreme Court thinks that this is a “one time”, “extraordinary” occurrence, it is dead wrong. What the United States Supreme Court has done is actually set the precedent that it is OK for non-legislative entities to arbitrarily change election rules and regulations. That precedent is now set in stone. This only means that these non-legislative entities and single, unelected officials are going to do more of it the next time, not less. It’s human nature. It’s the nature of power.

The United States Supreme Court is supposed to be the ordinary citizen’s last line of defense against the tyranny of evil men/women. Read, those in power. Insanely, Robert’s “do nothing court” has chosen to completely abdicate this responsibility and instead enable the tyranny. Perhaps we need to change the name to Roberts’ “Cowardly Court”. This is only going to encourage increased populism and, as we have pointed out in Burn it Down, that tends to end badly.

Chief Justice Roberts, we take back our apology. You are a pussy, a political hack, a coward and someone that is doing real damage to our American institutions and America itself. You, sir, are a complete and utter disgrace.

A week or so ago, Antifa and Black Lives Matter protestors marched through the District of Columbia (D.C.) chanting “Burn it down”. While this may come as a bit of a surprise, we here at The Objective Observer actually kind of, sort of agree with them, in a figurative sense, not a literal sense. To understand this position, it is important that one understand the underlying motivations behind the populous movements within the United States and the reality of divergent political ideologies.

Populism is defined as support and concern for ordinary people. Populism ascends within countries when ordinary people feel that the bureaucracy and institutions of government no longer serve the needs of ordinary people but instead only serve the wealthy and the powerful. Quite simply stated, populism is the enemy of those in power as, throughout history, populist revolutions are what tend to overthrow the status quo, often quite violently.

Now, we must mention that populism tends to get a bad rap. Since violent populist revolutions are what tend to overthrow governments by, well, violence, it is easy for populism to be declared an evil thing. However, populism is simply the reaction of ordinary people to institutions and power structures that have failed them, institutions and power structures that have become corrupt and benefit only the wealthy and the powerful. And make no mistake, populism has taken hold in America in a number of forms.

The most obvious, current populous movement is that of former President Trump. As we explained in Why Trump is Hated it was Trump’s populist agenda in seeking to curtail and shrink the power and influence of the federal government along with his similarly populist nationalistic attitudes that earned him the everlasting enmity of power factions within the federal government and elsewhere. In short, those individuals benefiting from the corrupt institutions and power structures of the federal government were simply not going to take it lightly when someone with populist leanings threatens their power, influence and wealth. In effect, former President Trump threatened to “drain the swamp” or, in other words replace the current institutions and trappings of governmental power with a system and institutions that better served the needs of “the people”.

However, former President Trump’s supporters are not the only populist movement within the United States. Consider that Antifa positions itself as being anti-fascist and anti-racist, if there is any real central “platform” to speak of considering how decentralized and autonomous the groups are that make up the movement. But the truth is that Antifa’s members are, by and large, anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, and anti-state; espousing ideologies of anarchism, communism, Marxism, social democracy, and socialism. At its core, Antifa is a left-wing populous movement that has lost faith in the current institutions and trappings of governmental power, seeking to “burn it down” and replace the system with institutions that better serve the needs of “the people”.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is another left-wing, decentralized, populist movement. BLM is also strongly anti-racist, anti-authoritarian and believe that the institutions of the United States, and specifically the police, have failed to protect blacks in America from racism, incarceration and violence. In fact, BLM believes that the very power structure currently in place within the United States institutionalizes racism and thus BLM seeks to “burn it down” in order to replace the system with institutions that better serve the needs of “the people”.

So, if populism is the enemy of the establishment, then why have those in power not taken similar measures to utterly destroy Antifa and BLM as the ones employed against former President Trump? Three reasons. First, the establishment does not consider Antifa and BLM a true threat because those organizations hold no real power, unlike former President Trump. Second, the establishment fails to properly classify Antifa and BLM correctly as populist movements and instead tends to only focus on these organizations’ stated anti-fascist and anti-racist agendas; attitudes with which people empathize. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the establishment incorrectly thinks that the political spectrum is linear.

Unfortunately, this isn’t how things actually work. The actual political spectrum is a circle where the radical left and the radical right meet one another in espousing a radical, populist ideology.

While this may seem odd and unintuitive because if viewed from a linear perspective where the radical left and the radical right appear to be polar opposites, the reality is that at some point these two groups end up having more and more in common with one another to the point where their common traits and goals dwarf their respective differences. Specifically, the radical right and radical left conjoin over being populist movements that are anti-establishment, anti-status quo and have a tendency to effect change through violence. The exact details of “what comes next” fades away in the face of the overwhelming desire to change “the system”.

When the radicalism on both the right and the left reaches critical mass, this is where unholy alliances are made and governments fall due to a simple, burning desire to have something else, anything else, than the current institutions and established power structures that are seen as unfair and untrustworthy to the vast majority of the population. Think American Revolution, the French revolution, Stalin and, well, we’re sure you can think up a few more on your own. All were populist movements that violently overthrew the existing, corrupt power structures and institutions of their day.

The scary part of all of this is that it almost becomes inevitable. As the establishment witnesses the rise of populism, what does the establishment do? The establishment seeks to hold on to power of course. And the establishment does this by glomming on to even more power, being more authoritative and wielding their influence in even grander fashion. Again, this can be seen in the end of the British Empire, the end of the French monarchy and the end of the Russian Czars among other examples. The instinctive reaction of the establishment is to increase their levels of power, influence and control in a vain attempt to “crush” the burgeoning populist movement. Inevitably, this simply leads to more populism and more rebellion.

America is likely already too far down this inevitable spiral of doom to pull out of it. We see this today with King Biden flexing the power of the federal government to sign a ridiculous number of executive orders that seek to make the federal government even more powerful and more influential, usurping power and influence from state and local governments. This is why we mock the current administration as a monarchy with King Biden sitting on the throne. Of course, King Biden does this in the name of “equity”, what the monarchy believes is the antidote to a populist disease. But it is equity by force, equity in name only and equity that can only be brought about by the federal government exerting even greater influence and power over the subjugated populace. Ultimately, this is the classic, instinctive reaction to populism that inevitably breeds more populism.

It is interesting that former President Trump, while he preached populism, he did not preach radical, utterly destroy the current institutions and power structures kind of populism. Did Trump seek to unwind decades of continued growth in the power and influence of the federal government? Absolutely. And for this he earned the eternal enmity of the establishment. But he sought to work against the system from within the system. And we applaud him for that. One might hypothesize that he saw what was coming and sought to avert disaster. Saw that D.C. had become far too powerful, corrupt, influential and intrusive in the daily lives of Americans. The system needed to be singed a bit. But Antifa and BLM, these movements have already demonstrated their violent tendencies and they make no bones about clearly stating their true intentions, “Burn it down”. Not figuratively, but literally. People should pay more attention.

For our part, we’re objective about the matter, above all else. Nothing we say or do will change the trajectory of what is to come. Thus, we are content to sit back and watch it all burn to the ground. Or not.

Well, the subject of reparations is back apparently. Haven’t really seen much discussion on this topic in almost 20 years so we decided to dig out an old article from around 2003, dust it off and update it for the present. In doing so, we were reminded just how sensitive this topic is and just how potentially offensive the stance taken in that original article might be. Oh well. Too bad.

First, please recognize that nobody here at The Objective Observer belongs to any of the 5% of present day American whites that are connected to historical American slave ownership. Nor is anyone here at The Objective Observer part of any black or Native American family that historically owned black slaves. We want to be clear on this because reparations is one of those issues that defies objectivity. Everyone has a stake in it because everyone’s tax dollars will go towards reparations. So we want to ensure that everyone is clear on any potential, perceived conflicts of interest that we may possess.

In order to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, we want to stay away from the subject of whether or not reparations should be paid. Blacks have some legitimate gripes. There are some very decent, logical arguments in favor of reparations. However, there are equally legitimate, logical arguments against paying reparations. Those issues and arguments are old hat and have been bantered around ad nauseam. Instead, we want to explore the issue surrounding the fair price of reparations if the powers at be decide that reparations should indeed be paid. This is solely a financial discussion. We are not discussing slavery in general, which was unquestionably awful, wrong and a blight upon the history of the United States. Just because slavery had existed for thousands and thousands of years and American slavery only existed for a brief time, that does not excuse it.

Now, we want to caution any readers out there. People avoid the reparations debate because they lack the backbone and intestinal fortitude to discuss the issues rationally and logically. People are generally cowards that do not want to offend people. We personally do not care about offending people. Facts are facts, issues are issues, let’s all take a look at them logically and rationally and come to a conclusion. So, prepare to be offended. We make no apologies for the statements made here, if you want to discuss any opinions or arguments made in this piece, use the Contact form or leave a comment. If you are the kind of person that does not react well to being offended, then we strongly recommend that you do not read the rest of this piece.

There are two fundamental issues that we see with the reparations debate. First, everyone looks at the issue from a racial perspective, which clouds everyone’s thinking and reasoning. Second, everyone looks at reparations in an isolated historical perspective. That perspective is that blacks were once slaves and now they are not, so they should be compensated for being slaves. However, a couple hundred years have passed since blacks were considered property and thus, if we are to be objective, we must look at the entirety of what has gone on in this country and the world and apply what we find to the debate regarding reparations. To look solely at a few particular events and ignore everything else is not fair to either side in the reparations debate.

To point, reparations involves taking tax money from the general fund of running the country and to use a portion of that money to compensate certain individuals for being considered property, being denied the ability to acquire and amass property themselves and pass those holdings on to descendants. Now, what this leads to are a couple of interesting logical exercises. First, the basis of reparations is that blacks were harmed economically from the inability to acquire and amass property. Therefore, if this is the basis of reparations, then in order to assign a value to those reparations we must also look at how blacks have been helped economically by the federal government. In addition, we must take into account taxes related to death, inheritance and property ownership. And, well there are a few other things…

First up is welfare. Welfare, like reparations, is the redistribution of wealth among United States citizens. Between 1965 and 2000, welfare spending has cost taxpayers $8.2 trillion dollars. Now, since blacks represent approximately 13% of US citizens, we will take 10% of this $8.2 trillion dollar number, which is $820 billion dollars. Let’s keep the math simple and err on the side of blacks. This $820 billion dollars represents what the federal government has already paid out to underprivileged and economically destitute blacks between 1965 and 2000. Again, this is money that was taken from tax payers and redistributed to poor and economically challenged individuals, of which blacks, that were denied the ability to own property, are likely to fall into. Therefore, any value assigned to reparations should subtract $820 billion dollars off the top as money already paid. And this is being very nice. If truth be told, this $820 billion number should be much higher because the percentage of whites versus blacks on welfare does not hold true to the national averages among whites and blacks in the population. But, in an effort to bend over backwards to be fair, we will go with national population averages. So, $820 billion off the top of the value of reparations.

Second, we must also look at whether blacks economic status was actually improved by slavery. This may seem offensive to some, but if the argument is going to be made that slavery hurt the economic welfare of blacks, then it is only fair to look for data that might show that blacks in this country were in fact aided by slavery. If we look at the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, a good indicator of overall standard of living, for the United States, we get the following:

Now, if we look at the GDP per capita of the second richest country in Africa, South Africa (data on Nigeria is sparse), we get the following:

Now, the facts are irrefutable and the conclusions, while obviously offensive are inescapable. The GDP per capita of the United States is over 4 times that of the second richest country in Africa in terms of pure GDP. Thus, the inescapable conclusion is that those blacks that were previously slaves in Africa and brought to the United States are roughly 4 times better off economically from blacks that remained in Africa. And again, to be fair, we should really use the average GDP per capita of countries in Africa which is a tenth that of the United States, but we are bending over backwards to be fair to all sides here, so, for the sake of argument, we will assume that all slaves brought to the United States would have grown up in one of the richest countries in Africa. In fact, there is no country in Africa where the GBP per capita is over a third of the United States GDP per capita. What this means is that whatever economic advantage being brought to America afforded blacks should be deducted from the total amount of reparations.

We are absolutely certain that there are some people out there that are blowing blood vessels right about now. “How dare you insinuate that blacks were actually helped economically by slavery!!” Well, we are not insinuating that at all. We are actually stating this as a fact, and it is a fact that cannot be refuted or denied. The facts are clear on this issue, blacks were helped economically by being brought to the United States. It may be offensive or politically incorrect to say this, but that does not make the statement any less true. And it certainly is offensive to say so, but if some people are going to point to the economic effects of slavery as an argument for reparations, then an objective observer cannot simply ignore the positive economic effects of slavery. It would simply be unfair and not objective to do so.

Along this same line, slave owners completely provided for the needs of their black slaves including food, shelter and clothing. Thus, it would be reasonable to deduct these costs from the total value of reparations because these are costs that would otherwise have had to been paid by blacks. Again, if we are going to focus on the negative economic impact to blacks, then we must also take into account other, positive economic factors. Yes, blacks were denied the right to own and amass property, but they also did not have any expenses. Therefore, basing reparations solely on what was denied and not taking into account what was given is simply unfair.

Now, the last item that must be taken into account is death, inheritance and property taxes. The logic here is that if blacks had been allowed to acquire and amass property, then they would have had to pay taxes on that property, including death and inheritance taxes. Therefore, we also need to deduct allowances for death and inheritance taxes as well as property taxes from the total value of reparations.

Now, we are not going to add up all of the values of what should be deducted from reparations. We have $820 billion off the top of reparations due to current paid reparations, a la welfare. We also have the fact that blacks in the United States are 3 to 4 times better off than if they had remained in Africa. Finally, there needs to be allowances for food, shelter and clothing provided free-of-charge to blacks as well as allowances for death, inheritance and property taxes. At the end of the day, it is quite possible that blacks actually owe the United States billions or trillions of dollars for the positive economic impact of slavery, not that the United States owes blacks billions or trillions of dollars in reparations.

This is quite possibly the single most offensive piece that we have ever written. We make no apologies for that. This piece came out this way because of fundamental flaws in arguments made by Randall Robinson, Kamala Harris and others in the pro-reparations movement. They claim economic hardship from the effects of slavery, but the facts clearly show that slavery actually helped, not hurt the economics of blacks brought to America. If the facts came out a different way, we would say so, but they do not. To us, it is a simple case of some morons inflating weak ideas hoping that the evidence to refute those weak ideas was so incredibly offensive that no one would stand up and call them on it. Too bad for them, they did not count on The Objective Observer where, frankly, we don’t give a damn.

The bitterly cold temperatures and winter weather in Texas have recently put the reliability of “green energy” into the spotlight.

• Unreliable Green Power: Wind Power Frozen In Texas Storm, Energy Costs Rise To A Stunning $9000 Per Mega-Watt Hour – FYI.com
• Texas Outages Put Reliability Of Renewable Energy In The Spotlight (forbes.com)

But the unreliability of green energy has been known for years

• Too Much Green Power Worsening Blackouts – California Globe
• Green Power Gridlock: Why Renewable Energy Is No Alternative (forbes.com)

Note that the last article is over 7 years old. The fact that green energy is unreliable is nothing new. When the wind doesn’t blow, windmills are useless. When the sun doesn’t shine, solar panels are useless. This is not a matter of debate. Glad that people are suddenly now paying attention but, as is typically the case, even with this renewed “revelation”, everyone is actually still missing the point. And that point is that green energy smacks of “white privilege”. Whether or not you believe in white privilege or how much you believe green energy unreliability contributed to Texas’ electrical grid failure, if we use the same arguments others use to brand things as white privilege, then there is absolutely no denying that green energy does; in fact, meet the definition of white privilege to the letter. Doubt us? Read on.

It has been well understood for years that minorities, and in particular blacks, suffer disproportionately during weather events of extreme heat or cold. Consider this report from the CDC in 2014 where this is stated multiple times:

“Adjustment for region and urbanization decreased the risk of heat-related mortality among Hispanic persons and increased the risk of cold-related mortality among non-Hispanic black persons, compared with non-Hispanic white persons.“

“Subpopulations at risk for cold-related mortality are similar to those at risk for heat-related mortality: older adults, infants, males, black persons, and persons with preexisting chronic medical conditions (2,11,15,16,23–27,29).”

“Non-Hispanic black persons had higher rates of heat-related and cold-related mortality than other race and ethnicity groups during 2006–2010 (Table 3). For heat-related mortality, the rate for non-Hispanic black persons was about 2.5 times that for non-Hispanic white persons and about 2 times as high as that for Hispanic persons. The age-adjusted cold-related death rate for non-Hispanic black persons was 5.8 deaths per million compared with 4.1 for non-Hispanic white persons and 2.1 for Hispanic persons.”

“Adjustment for region and urbanization level increased the risk of heat-related mortality for counties in the lower three income quartiles compared with counties in the highest income quartile. In contrast to the impact of adjustment on heat-related mortality, adjustment for region and urbanization level slightly increased the risk of cold-related mortality for non-Hispanic black persons compared with non-Hispanic white persons (from 1.35 to 1.73).”

“This study found, as studies for earlier time periods have reported, that older persons, males, and non-Hispanic black persons had higher weather-related mortality rates than other ages, females, and other race and ethnicity subgroups. This study also found that weather related death rates were 2 to 7 times as high in low-income counties as in high-income counties;”

“Age-adjusted weather-related death rates for males were higher than those for females, and age-adjusted death rates for heat-related and cold-related mortality were higher for non-Hispanic black than non-Hispanic white or Hispanic persons.“

This is not the only study to make such a conclusion, there are many.

“In the United States, people of color are found to be particularly more vulnerable to heatwaves, extreme weather events, environmental degradation, and subsequent labor market dislocations.”

If we are to follow the science, then there is no question that weather events of extreme heat or cold disproportionately kill blacks rather than whites. But why is this? Well, yet another study that makes the same conclusions provides an answer:

“Heat-related mortality in four US cities was reduced with increasing central AC prevalence, and substantially higher effects of heat on mortality were observed among Blacks compared with Whites. A large proportion of the disparity in heat-related mortality may be due to differences in central AC prevalence. Room-unit AC prevalence showed little effect on heat-related mortality and no consistent pat-tern of disparities by race.

Several previous studies showed both Black race and lack of AC as indicating vulnerability to heat-related health effects. Heat-related mortality associations were higher in areas with lower AC prevalence, even after adjusting for latitude. Access to AC has been recommended as a key component of efforts to prevent heat-related deaths.”

But what does this have to do with green energy? Well, obviously electricity is required to power the vast majority of heating and cooling systems within houses. Furnaces might run on natural gas, but you still need electricity for them to work. Same goes for air conditioning, you need electricity. Proper temperature regulation, critical to keeping people alive during extreme heat and cold events, depends directly on electrical energy supply.

Now consider that white households are generally more affluent than black households and other minorities.

What this means is that whites are better able to cope with electricity outages caused by unreliable green energy. Wealthy white households are able to afford expensive luxuries such as backup power generators to power their furnaces and AC units. Wealthier white households are also more likely to have better insulation and weatherproofing in their homes. In addition, wealthy white households have better mobility in the event of an extreme hot or cold weather event, they can simply hop on a plane to their second home in Florida if the whether becomes too cold, or jaunt on over to the Hamptons for vacation if the whether becomes too hot. In short, the unreliability of green energy is a risk and a luxury that whites can afford. Thus, the ability to cope with unreliable green energy is a benefit that whites unconsciously enjoy. And that is the very definition of “white privilege”.

Fact checking seems to be all the rage these days. Ever since former President Trump took office, fact checking seems to have grown exponentially into its own cottage industry. Ostensibly, this is a good thing that provides truth to the American public and dispels misinformation. However, what if the fact checks themselves are actually inaccurate? What if the fact checks are simply propaganda and misinformation? What happens then? What fair, impartial, objective observer can we find to fact check the fact checks? Oh wait, duh, that’s us here at The Objective Observer!

Well, let’s pilot this out. We will take CNN’s recent “fact check” of Trump’s defense lawyers.

Defense team misleadingly omits Trump remarks defending violence

We rate the fact check on this: Reaching. False. Misleading. Cherry Picking.

First, this is fact check is reaching a bit. CNN had to reach far, far back into the way back machine before President Trump was even President in order to find a few times where former President Trump appeared to approve of or endorse violence. But there can be little question that Trump’s consistent and repeated calls for “law and order” far outweigh statements contrary to this message. The CNN fact check cherry picks a few times, many taken out of context, where Trump said something “aggressive”. The fact that CNN willfully misleads in a number of cases demonstrates just how few times Trump has ever wavered from his “law and order” message. And, in the few cases where he does say something that “advocates violence” it is actually in the name of preserving “law and order”.

CNN rules that the following were omitted examples of Trump endorsing violence:

• praised a Republican congressman for assaulting a journalist; Misleading. The linked story clearly says that Trump’s comment was a “joke”.
• urged police officers not to worry about injuring the heads of suspects they are arresting; Misleading. Again, it is clear from Trump’s actual words that he made an off color joke punning how criminals are treated by police versus those criminals’ actions. “Like, don’t hit their head, and they just killed somebody — don’t hit their head,” Trump continued. “I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”
• said he would like to punch a protester in the face; Somewhat true. Trump said “I’d like to punch him in the face,” about a man attempting to disrupt his rally. However, also false and misleading as Trump was not “defending violence”, he was clearly simply expressing his current feelings at the time.
• urged supporters to “knock the crap out of” any protester they saw holding a tomato; Mostly true. Then candidate Trump said “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?”. It should be noted that throwing a tomato with the intent to hit someone is assault, a violent act. Many states have self defense laws.
• said a kidnapping plot against Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer might not be an actual “problem”; Lacks context, willfully misleading. Trumps words were “I’m the one, it was our people that helped her out with her problem. I mean, we’ll have to see if it’s a problem. Right? People are entitled to say maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t,” he added. “It was our people — my people, our people that helped her out. And then she blamed me for it. She blamed me and it was our people that helped her.” The matter was still under investigation, no one had been convicted and therefore, yes, people are still entitled to due process and the assumption of innocent until proven guilty. They are entitled to say that they were not doing what they were accused of doing.
• approvingly told a fake story about an early 20th century US general who massacred Muslim terrorists with bullets dipped in the blood of pigs; Mostly true. Then candidate Trump did tell such a story. Technically, the story has never been proven to be false. The “proof” is simply that the story did not appear in the general’s memoirs. However, we doubt he would include such a thing even if it were true. One might reasonably interpret Trump’s remarks as an parable or allegory such as “Chicken Little”. There is little question that the story of “Chicken Little” is fake but people generally are not accused of telling a “fake story” for referencing it.
• said it was a “beautiful sight” when the authorities tossed a journalist to the ground during unrest in Minneapolis; Questionable. It is unclear to what exactly Trump is referring to, his exact words being. “They were touching arms and they had big strong arms like these guys right over here. They were big, strong guys, that’s all right, and they were like together. And then you saw the first line, then you saw the second line, then you saw a third line, then you saw the fourth line and then they said march. They never halted. Just walked right through, cleaned everything out, and Minneapolis was cured. They were cured. They grab them, they grab them, they grab them. They were grabbing them left and right. Sometimes they grab, they grab one guy, I’m a reporter, I’m a reporter. Get out of here. They threw him aside like he was a little a bag of popcorn. But no — but I mean, honestly, when you watch the crap that we’ve all had to take so long. When you see that, it’s actually — you don’t want to do that, but when you see it, it’s actually a beautiful sight, it’s a beautiful sight. And they had the same thing on some other streets and the whole thing was gone and I haven’t heard of any real problem in Minneapolis, since that happened.” It is much more likely that Trump was referring to the police action to retake the streets as the “beautiful site” as can be read when he talks about “the same thing on some other streets”
• mocked a reporter who got shot with a rubber bullet; True. But, come on, honestly, that was kind of funny…
• and applauded the Trump supporters who surrounded a Joe Biden campaign bus on the highway, an incident that prompted an FBI investigation. Lacks context willfully misleading. Trump tweeted out “I LOVE TEXAS” to a video that only showed trucks with Trump flags following the bus. The trucks were following the Biden bus and the FBI investigated at the prompting of Democrats and nothing ever came of it. Even the USA Today‘s fact-checker said that claim was “missing context” because the Trump Train people were just having fun escorting the bus, not threatening it.

Trump’s lawyer falsely claims Trump’s first two tweets during the Capitol attack urged calm

The fact check is rated: Questionable.

The fact check states:

“Trump’s “stay peaceful” tweet at 2:38 p.m. and “no violence” tweet at 3:13 p.m. were his second and third tweeted messages after the Capitol was breached, not his first. Trump’s first tweet was at 2:24 p.m.”

The accuracy of the fact check versus Trump’s lawyers claims rests on the exact timing and definition of the words “incursion of the Capitol”. If by “incursion of the Capitol”, Trump’s lawyers meant when rioters crossed Statutory Hall, then Trump’s lawyers are correct and truthful as this occurred at 2:33 PM.

No, the media wasn’t lying that there was hacking during the 2016 election

We rate this fact check: False, intentionally being obtuse.

The fact is regarding Trump’s defense lawyers stating:

“The entire Democratic Party and national news media spent the last four years repeating without any evidence that the 2016 election had been hacked.”

The fact check then goes into a diatribe about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee being “hacked”. The fact check is being intentionally obtuse about Trump’s defense lawyer using the worked “hacked” when in it is clear in the full context that the lawyer is referring to the broad Russia collusion hoax which was in fact repeated without evidence by the national news media. The Mueller report found “no evidence”.

Castor falsely claims rioters didn’t attend Trump’s DC speech

We rate this fact check: False.

Mr. Castor’s attributed statements in the fact check were:

“Given the timeline of events, the criminals at the Capitol weren’t there at the Ellipse to even hear the President’s words,” Castor said. “They were more than a mile away, engaged in their pre-planned assault on this very building.” “This was a pre-planned assault,” Castor said, “make no mistake.” He also claimed this assertion was “confirmed by the FBI, Department of Justice and even the House managers.”

The fact check then says:

“It’s false that none of the accused Capitol rioters attended Trump’s speech beforehand. And Castor is exaggerating the known facts about whether the assault was pre-planned.”

We rate the first part of this fact check as false because Mr. Castor never stated that “none” of the rioters attended Trump’s speech beforehand. It is not correct put words into people’s mouths. We rate the second part of this fact check as false because by the fact check’s own statement:

“The Justice Department and FBI have accused some rioters of planning the attacks before coming to Washington, and top prosecutors have said more charges along those lines are expected.”

Thus, Mr. Castor’s plain words, free of subjective interpretation, are all entirely true.

No, Georgia did not see a ‘dramatic drop’ in ballot rejection rates

We rate this fact check: Irrelevant, misleading

The fact check states:

“Castor argued Trump’s use of the word ‘find’ was ‘solely related to his concerns with the inexplicable dramatic drop in Georgia’s ballot rejection rates.'”

The intent of Trump’s use of the word “find” aside, Georgia did not experience a “dramatic drop” in ballot rejection rates, according to data from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

We rate this fact check irrelevant because Mr. Castor was not arguing about whether the rejection rates claim was true or false but only arguing about the context of the word “find” in relation to former President Trump’s opinion that there was an “inexplicable dramatic drop in Georgia’s ballot rejection rates.“. The truth or falsehood of rejection rates in Georgia is irrelevant to the argument being made. We further rate this fact check misleading because, the fact check glosses over the fact that, in context, Trump was obviously not trying to illegally “steal” the election via this phone call, as has been widely reported in the media. In context, it is clear that the use of “find” is related to Trump’s belief that if a full and accurate accounting of the votes that Georgia would “find” that many legitimate votes were actually illegitimate. Again, this makes no claims whether Trump’s beliefs were true or even reasonable, this simply explains the true context of the word “find” within the conversation.

Trump lawyers misleadingly use Biden comment on peaceful protest

We rate this fact check as: Questionable. Cherry picking.

The fact states:

“But the Trump defense team itself clearly did selectively edit its video presentations. For example, moments before this Castor complaint, he had played a video that showed then-candidate Joe Biden saying, of last year’s racial justice protests, “The vast majority of — of the protests have been peaceful.” The video then cut immediately to footage of rioting, suggesting that Biden’s claim was wrong.

This video cut was misleading. Biden was correct when he said that the vast majority of racial justice protests in 2020 were peaceful; he was not describing riots as peaceful. Biden has repeatedly condemned rioting.“

We rate this fact check as questionable because exactly what protests in what cities are being referred to is unknown. Furthermore, the definition of the word “vast” is subjective. In addition, there is no clear factual information to support the claim that “the vast majority of racial justice protests in 2020 were peaceful”. There is no database that catalogs all such protests and whether or not those protests were peaceful or not peaceful. Thus, the claim that the vast majority of protests were peaceful is subject to debate. Finally, we rate this fact check as “cherry picking” because no similar analysis was performed on the House managers’ use of selectively editing video.

Trump lawyers falsely claim trial violated due process

We rate this fact check as: Mostly true.

The fact check states:

“The due process clause applies to this impeachment hearing and it’s been severely and extremely violated,” he said.

This is false. An impeachment inquiry is a political process, not a criminal case, therefore the constitutional rights of criminal defendants, such as due process, do not apply.

We rate this fact check as mostly true as it is true that impeachment is a political process and thus due process technically does not apply. However, we also stipulate that most Americans agree in basic fairness and that in an undertaking so historically significant as the impeachment of a President or former President that Americans would generally expect there to at least be a semblance of due process, a full discovery of the facts involved in the case. This basic fairness has, in fact, been severely and extremely violated.

Conclusion

OK, so what is the point of all this? Well, the point is that “fact checks” are really nothing more than opinion. Far from being objective “facts about facts”, they are really not free from bias and thus nothing more than opinions about facts. We have clearly demonstrated that CNN’s “fact check” of the Trump defense team is mostly false or at the very least misleading. CNN’s “fact check” is clearly full of bias. As further evidence of this bias it is telling that CNN chose to “fact check” Trump’s defense team and yet no similar CNN “fact check” exists of the House managers’ obvious misstatements and misleading “facts”. This “bias by omission” is actually perhaps even more concerning. True journalism would require equal treatment of both sides and yet CNN only chose to “fact check” one side. This does not survive scrutiny as being objective and unbiased and further does not rise to the level of journalistic integrity that news organizations ought to strive for.

At the end of the day, an objective observer might very well also question the objectivity of the analysis performed here about CNN’s analysis of facts stated by Trump’s defense team. Who fact checks the fact checkers of the fact checkers? And hence, where does it all end? At the end of the day, it boils down to who each individual trusts to deliver fair, unbiased, objective analysis or opinion. People are going to gravitate to whoever delivers opinions that fit their predetermined positions and thus, the entire “fact check” industry is actually rather pointless because nobody just states the facts any longer.

The media coverage regarding King Biden‘s vaccine rollout has been rather positive. Various publications have gushed over how COVID-19 vaccine distribution has been “ramping up” or “accelerating”. Unlike former President Trump’s vaccine rollout, which was widely panned by the media because former President Trump’s lofty goal of having 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020 took 3 weeks longer than expected. Now, however, it is nothing but sunshine and rainbows; universal, glowing admiration for King Biden‘s vaccine distribution:

• Biden preparing to accelerate distribution of COVID-19 vaccine upon taking office – CBS News
• Biden administration plans to release nearly all COVID-19 vaccine doses to accelerate distribution (msn.com)
• Covid-19 vaccine progress made on several fronts, and experts are encouraged – CNN
• US coronavirus: States are looking to help their vulnerable communities as vaccine distribution ramps up – CNN
• Vaccine distribution effort to pharmacies ramping up (yahoo.com)

Now sure, King Biden had a bit of a rocky start with his monarchy initially saying that the previous administration had left “no plan”, only to have this almost immediately refuted by Dr. Fauci. And then there was the original goal of 100 million doses in 100 days, which was exceedingly underwhelming considering that on the last day Trump was in office the seven day average for total doses administered was already 959,072 per day. Achieving a mere 100 million doses in 100 days then amounted to an uncontested layup. But, King Biden revised the goal to 150 million doses in 100 days and all has been peachy keen since. There is even a website designed to track progress towards that, arguably, still mild, goal. And this website is very forgiving to King Biden clearly stating:

“Use this graphic to follow whether the country is on track to reach the administration’s goal. Note that total vaccinations given — as in first and second shots, both shots counting individually — are what’s being counted. This is not the same as full vaccinations, which are first and second shots counted as one. Biden specifically mentioned shots in arms in his statements about the goal.“

With all of this fantastic coverage by the objective mainstream media, whose journalistic integrity is obviously beyond reproach, it was with great surprise then when King Biden recently came out with extremely harsh words and blame for his predecessor over COVID-19 vaccine procurement and distribution.

Hmm…curious. So we here at The Objective Observer decided to take two seconds and have a closer look at the vaccine distribution numbers from the CDC. What we found is that either the media is purposefully misleading the public or the media is incapable of doing basic, trivial data analysis.

The graph below is from the CDC website tracking vaccine doses administered within the United States. The column highlighted in gray denotes the last day of the Trump administration. Now, nine days after Trump left office, one can see a drop off in the seven day average of total doses administered (red line) that spans four consecutive days but overall the trend seems positive and even seems like it is indeed “accelerating”, the slope of the line increases somewhat.

We have confirmed that this is the graph that is the basis for the NBC News vaccine tracking King Biden‘s stated goal of 150 million does in 100 days. How? We spent several days checking both websites and the seven day average stated by both websites were identical each day, except for that one odd day when the NBC News website stated a seven day average that was 10,000 doses above the CDC’s, but we’ll chalk that up to a “clerical” error.

However, switching to “People Receiving Dose 1” and “Daily Count” paints a completely different picture:

Here we see that the number of people receiving their first does of a COVID-19 vaccine has leveled off. This means that the pace of people receiving their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine decelerated. If daily first doses remain at their current plateau of under one million then we will be well into next year before all Americans even have their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The difference between the two graphs is solely the people receiving their second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, shown below.

As one can see from the graph, during the Trump administration’s first days of even being able to administer a second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, initially, the Trump administration actually did a slightly better job at accelerating the distribution of second doses than King Biden. But, remember that there is a 3-4 week delay between doses so King Biden benefitted from there being far more people that were even eligible to receive a second dose versus Trump. Given that Trump held back half of the vaccine doses in order to ensure that people received their second dose, a policy King Biden reversed upon taking office and that the entire “acceleration” of vaccine distribution is due to these second shots…one has to wonder exactly when this short term “boost” is going to come to an end.

The only objective conclusion that one can draw from this rather trivial data analysis exercise is that vaccine distribution under King Biden is in real trouble. First time vaccine distribution has effectively stalled and the rosy numbers being reported by the media are simply an aftereffect of King Biden benefiting from those individuals who were already given their first dose under Trump and Trump’s decision to hold back vaccine doses to ensure people received their second shot. We can’t help but wonder whether King Biden might have spent his time better working on COVID-19 vaccine distribution rather than signing a record breaking number of executive orders and allowing the Senate kangaroo court to engage in a literal show trial.

But, the media’s misleading of the public does not stop there. It seems that most media outlets wish to provide COVID-19 vaccination numbers in terms of total doses administered. By that measure, the United States topped 44 million doses administered as of the last day of vetted results when this article was written. That’s not horrible, a little over 14% of the population.

However, if one takes the time to look a bit closer, those individuals that are fully inoculated number less than 25% of that figure, just over 10 million, or about 3% of the population. Not so good. That…that is horrible. At that rate, doing some rough math of 7 million second doses administered from January 20^th until February 7^th (18 days) indicates that, optimistically, fully inoculating all Americans would take about 1,100 days, or just over 3 years. And that’s just the current population, it does not account for illegal immigrants flooding over the border during that time. Yeah, King Biden had better get his sorry ass moving, and quick.

Now, it has been widely reported that former President Trump left a note for King Biden within the resolute desk as per custom. And there has been widespread speculation about the contents of that letter. Well, we here at The Objective Observer have a theory that former President Trump actually left three letters in the Resolute desk along with a note reading “If you get into trouble, open these numbered letters in order.”. King Biden just opened the first letter and it read “blame your predecessor”. We can’t be certain what the second letter might contain, but if we are right, the third letter most assuredly states “write three letters”.

There has been a ton of media coverage regarding the words and deeds of Trump’s impeachment defense team. Much of this coverage has centered around what the defense team did wrong or incorrectly or the invalidity of their arguments. Shockingly however, there really hasn’t been much coverage regarding the House managers fabrication of evidence, lying and purposefully manipulating video evidence in a willful attempt to mislead Senators. Those are all serious, serious issues. Lying to the Senate, especially about something as important as a Presidential impeachment, is not something that people should simply get a pass on.

Now, House managers cannot be impeached. The Constitution’s impeachment clause only applies to the Executive and Judicial branches. But some form of punishment must be forthcoming. It cannot be allowed to stand that House managers are allowed to outright lie, intentionally ignore context and manipulate evidence in formal impeachment proceedings before the Senate. It’s absurd that there would not, at the very least, be censure although a more appropriate punishment would be expulsion. The evidence is overwhelming. Raskin’s doctored tweet from the New York Times article aside, it was never presented as evidence against Trump on the floor of the Senate, there are plenty of other instances where evidence was outright fabricated and lies were told to intentionally mislead Senators. Let’s do the list:

• Lying about the text of a tweet – Eric Swalwell lied about a tweet from January 6^th stating, repeatedly, that the tweet read “cavalry” (armed militia) when the tweet clearly read Calvary (a public display of Christ’s crucifixion). The House managers used this as evidence that Trump knew there would be armed insurrection at the Capitol. If not drummed out of office for blatantly and purposefully lying to the Senate, he should be expelled for being illiterate.
• Fabrication of evidence in the same tweet – House managers fabricated the blue checkmark next to Jennifer Lynn Lawrence’s account. Blue check marks are “verified” accounts and thus have greater authority behind their words, often representing organizations or persons of authority within organizations. Again, House managers used this as evidence that Trump knew there would be armed insurrection at the Capitol. They doctored the evidence.
• Lying about a phone call – House managers lied about a purported phone conversation between President Trump and Senators Mike Lee and Tommy Tuberville. Mike Lee stated: “Statements attributed to me moments ago by the impeachment managers, statements relating to the contents of the conversations between phone calls involving Trump and Senator Tuberville, were not made by me, were not accurate,”. The statements were withdrawn but David Cicilline still lied on the floor of the Senate and Representative Raskin subsequently and inexplicably defended the lie after Senator Mike Lee himself said the statements were untrue.
• The Charlottesville “very fine people” lie – House managers used words out of context to support their outright lie that President Trump supported and encouraged white nationalist groups like The Proud Boys. The full context of Trump’s remarks makes it crystal clear that he emphatically called out and condemned white nationalist and Neo-Nazi groups. Specifically condemned them. Biased and journalistically corrupt media organizations doing this is one thing, but to present such a blatant lie intentionally to mislead Senators on the floor of the Senate?
• Lied about the Georgia phone call – House managers clearly, intentionally took President Trump’s words out of context in his call with the Georgia secretary of state in claiming that Trump demanded that the secretary of state ‘find’ just over 11,000 votes. The House managers told the Senators that this was evidence of Trump attempting to forcefully subvert the election. In the full context of that entire phone call, however, it is clear that Trump is stating his belief that if Georgia were to recount the ballots through legal means that they would “find” inadmissible ballots. Trump was under the mistaken belief at that time that Georgia rejection rates had declined dramatically from previous elections. But House managers specifically twisted the words to lie to and mislead Senators about the true nature of the phone call. They did this purposefully and they did this willfully.
• “You have to get your people to fight” lie – This one is probably the worst of the bunch. House managers manipulated video to selectively take out of context Trump’s words from his January 6th, 2021 rally to claim that Trump ordered his supporters to go fight at the Capitol. As House managers claimed, “He told them”, meaning that Trump told the rioters to storm the Capitol. But, the full context of the speech makes clear that Trump is referring to primarying lawmakers, not physically combatting them. The attempted deception here is simply not something that can be allowed on the hallowed floor of the Senate.

Now, these are just a few of the cases where House impeachment managers fabricated evidence, lied and sought to intentionally mislead Senators. The list doesn’t even include the misleading testimony regarding the Biden bus which was never “run off the road” or Rep. Madeleine Dean’s blatant falsehood “[Trump] had a pattern and practice of praising and encouraging supporters of violence — never condemning it,”. Digging into the entirety of the 12+ hours of the House managers’ tortured testimony is simply too much work and this article would drag on for an eternity. But someone, someone, should take the time. The media telling these lies is one thing but there should be a higher standard from our elected representatives, especially in the halls of Congress.

If a lawyer in a court of law engaged in even one or two of these things, they would be disbarred. Therefore, the only sensible, adequate punishment for the House managers is expulsion from the House of Representatives. Faking evidence, lying and intentionally misleading Senators can never, ever be tolerated. How can the American people be expected to have faith in their institutions of government if this flagrant betrayal of trust is allowed to go unpunished? The American people were lied to. Not expelling the House managers immediately only proves, unequivocally, that the second impeachment of Trump was nothing more than the very definition of a show trial.

Look, none of this is a statement about Trump’s culpability in the January 6^th Capitol Hill riot or even whether or not he should or should not have been convicted in the impeachment trial. Everyone can have different opinions on that. But what we should all agree on is that nobody, nobody, should be able to take to the floor of the Senate, present fabricated evidence, lie and intentionally attempt to mislead Senators of the United Sates of America with impunity. There must be, must be, some sort of repercussions and consequences for such actions. And if we can’t all agree on that, this republic is truly lost.

Today is Valentine’s Day so we here at The Objective Observer thought that we would take a break from overly political or technical articles and instead celebrate love, true love. And not just true love, but the greatest love story of all time. But achieving this end would be no small feat. Should we write about true life love stories only? Fictional love stories? Should we write about only existing love stories documented by others or a true love story that has never been told? If we sought a true life, epic love story that had never been told, how could we possibly hope to compete with stories the likes of Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman in a book literally titled The Greatest Love Story Ever Told? Not to mention such epic, timeless love stories as Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Gone with the Wind, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Notebook, Doctor Zhivago, Titanic, The Princess Bride, Star Wars, Fifty Shades of Grey and, of course, Twilight…

Sorry…sorry…excuse us. Sorry, sometimes our own jokes make us collectively throw up in our mouths a little bit. We’re good. We’re good now, we’re back. Twilight…hurl.

In any case, we clearly had our work cut out for us. But after weeks upon weeks of racking our brains, we finally, finally, hit upon the greatest, true, real life, untold love story of all time. It was so obvious, a love more boundless than the the borders of the United States, more powerful than a monarch, more plentiful than carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere, more nuanced than gender identity, more equitable than a $15 per hour minimum wage, more dramatic than erasing women, more urgent than COVID-19 vaccination, more hyperbolic than hatred for Trump, more bountiful than dark money and more certain than science. Of course, of course, we are talking about the media’s love affair with Queen Psaki.

Let’s be honest, the media’s love affair with Queen Psaki has all the elements of any truly great, epic literary romance:

• Love at first sight – Clearly, the media was enamored with Queen Psaki from her very first press conference.
• Being saved/rescued – Like when the media came to Queen Psaki‘s defense over wearing a hat emblazoned with the emblem of a hammer and sickle
• Turmoil and conflict – Like the media struggling with and ultimately abandoning all sense of journalistic integrity and objectivity
• Significant differences – Like the media being on the side of uncovering the truth while Queen Psaki obscures it
• Relationship transcends life and death – Such as the media and Queen Psaki transcending a pandemic
• Love triangles – Alternate love interests for both, the media’s other potential love, truth and Queen Psaki‘s, her husband
• The members in the relationship engage in societal rituals of fun and romance – Press conferences
• The romance requires sacrifice – The media has sacrificed so, so much
• The romance and relationship is denied – For obviously this is forbidden love

The media’s love affair with Queen Psaki is all the more remarkable given the outright hostility of the media to previous White House Press Secretaries such as Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Kayleigh McEnany. We are so overjoyed, in particular, for the media in finding their true and forever love. After having been rejected by so many in the past we feared that they had become too bitter and angry to ever again attempt to court and find unconditional love.

Thus, we here at The Objective Observer on this Valentine’s Day are inspired, filled with optimism and feel privileged to witness this epic, illicit love affair between the media and Queen Psaki. A truly remarkable romantic tale that should uplift all Americans during this long dark winter. On this Valentine’s Day, make time to appreciate this love that transcends time and space and will live forever as an inspiration to all true lovers whose cruel circumstance harshly and unjustly keeps them apart, keeps them from expressing their true, innocent and pure love for one another…

Sorry…sorry…>hork<…just a…>hork<…just a little bit more…vomit. >gulp< It burns…it burns!

To an objective observer, the second impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump has been nothing but a show trial presided over by a kangaroo court. No, seriously. Just like the Senate recently engaged in a “vote-o-rama” over “COVID-19 relief”, we here at The Objective Observer dub this debacle a “Bananarama”. Banana referring to just the bat shit craziness of this entire impeachment proceeding. The sorry spectacle of this show trial is incredibly sad for America and does real harm to the country going forward both in terms the repercussions for American politics and America’s image abroad. Lest you feel otherwise, we will demonstrate, point-by-point the irrefutable veracity of our view.

First, a show trial, by definition is:

“A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt, and/or innocence, of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so they will serve as both an impressive example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors. Show trials tend to be retributive rather than corrective and they are also conducted for propagandistic purposes.” – Wikipedia

So here we have a public trial where the Senators already predetermined the guilt and/or innocence of the defendant, innocent. Everyone has known since the beginning that Trump would not be convicted. Thus the only goal of the trial is to serve as an impressive example and warning to Trump and his followers. It is a retributive action conducted purely for Democrat propagandistic purposes.

The propaganda element is overtly obvious in the very way in which the House managers presented their case, the core of which being to repeatedly and disgustingly show video footage of the Capitol riot again and again. Quite simply, there was nothing fact based to be learned from viewing footage of the Capitol riot, repeatedly. No one is refuting that the Capitol riot took place. No one is refuting that it was a horrific event. The sole purpose of continuing to show footage of the riot is propaganda, an intent to drive an emotional response of hate and vitriol for the defendant.

This is the type of propaganda the show trials of Mao Zedong’s Communist China or Joseph Stalin’s Moscow Trials of the Great Purge would be proud of. Dare we say that the House managers’ presentation is one we might expect to see during a Nazi era Sondergericht or “special court” in Hitler’s Germany? Why on earth have Americans caused this same kind of shameful sham trial to be written into the history books of the United States? It simply diminishes America in the eyes of the world. We are now in the same league as Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany.

But the propaganda is required because of the sheer absurdity the House managers’ case. As we explained in The Fatal Flaw, Trump bears some responsibility for the Capitol riot because he was negligent in his duties as President to consider the greater good of the country rather than his own personal opinions regarding the fairness and validity of the election. House managers have inexplicably flipped this tale of gross negligence to be one of carefully calculated preplanning of violent insurrection. The notion on its face is absurd. In order to cover the absurdity, we are overloaded with slick, movie quality propaganda films.

Along with their propaganda the House managers have turned the Senate into a kangaroo court, which is, by definition:

“A kangaroo court is a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice and often carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides. A kangaroo court may ignore due process and come to a predetermined conclusion. The term may also apply to a court held by a legitimate judicial authority which intentionally disregards the court’s legal or ethical obligations.” – Wikipedia

Ignoring recognized standards of law or justice? Like ignoring the recognized legal meaning of incitement? The legal definition of “incitement” is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” as defined in Brandenburg vs. Ohio? Not being content to simply ignore the legal definition of “incitement”, House managers actually went so far as to make up their own standard. In no possible universe can anything that former President Trump said be classified as intended to produce imminent lawless action. Ignoring due process? Where to start? Disregarding the court’s legal or ethical obligations? You mean like having a full accounting of the facts prior to starting the trial? You mean like calling witnesses? You mean like presenting outright lies as evidence? Lies Trump’s defense team adroitly pointed out.

The term “kangaroo court” actually comes from the notion of justice proceeding “by leaps”, like a kangaroo “jumping over” (intentionally ignoring) evidence in favor of the defendant. Like the House managers “jumping over” the fact that former President Trump asked his supports to “patriotically and peacefully make your voices heard”. Former President Trump may have only said it once during his speech but there can be no “leaping over” the fact that former President Trump actually uttered those words. The examples of this intentional “jumping over” the facts are too many to print in a mere blog article.

The repercussions of the this shameful, disastrous, sham of an impeachment trial will be felt in American politics for decades to come, perhaps forever. Impeachment of a President has now been, and will forever remain, corrupted. No longer a weighty, solemn affair undertaken exceedingly rarely and with great thought and consideration, impeachment is now simply another common political tool for the legislature to weaken and bully the separate and coequal branch of the Executive. As if Democrats are in some bizarre, high stakes poker game saying, “Donald Trump, we call your dismissiveness of what’s good for the country and raise you everlasting harm to the pillars of democracy”. The harm to the crucial separation of powers within the federal government is real and it should be alarming to every American.

There is little question that allies of the United States have watched the trial proceedings in abject horror while enemies celebrate and will, no doubt, use the proceedings as propaganda to demonstrate how weak, unjust, stupid and hypocritical the United States really is. Perhaps the only saving grace is that in contrast to the House managers’ emotional propaganda, Trump’s defense team presented a largely logical, reasonable, judicial and short case based upon facts. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.

Just as there can be no denying that former President Trump bears some responsibility for the Capitol riot on January 6^th, 2021 due to his negligent words and actions, there is no denying that King Biden failed a critical leadership test by not speaking out against this sham of an impeachment trial. So too can there be no denying that Nancy Pelosi bears the sole responsibility of turning the United States, in the eyes of the world, into nothing more than a banana republic. “Mean, bitter, frog mouthed old hag vainly obsessed with a youthful appearance.“…we forgot thoughtless, brainless and a complete and utter disgrace.

Former President Trump is perhaps the second most vilified American in history. He is right up there with Benedict Arnold at this point and is likely first on the list as far as half of the country is concerned. But, as we pointed out in The Dangers of Hyperbole, much of the rhetoric is unwarranted. It’s just extreme hyperbole that doesn’t match up with the facts…at all. Well, at least not to anyone being objective about the matter. And when you feel it necessary to place the word extreme in front of hyperbole, which literally means extravagant exaggerations, well then you know the rhetoric is really, really over the top. But we are left to ponder, why? Why is there such hatred for this individual when his words and deeds do not reasonably approach the level of vitriol and hate heaped upon him? Surely, there must be a reason. Well, luckily, we have the two most probable answers to this question. So if you really want to know, just keep reading. And don’t call us Shirley.

The first most likely answer is rather simple. A left-leaning media stung over the humiliating defeat of Hillary Clinton and attacked by then President Trump as “fake news” threw away every ounce of journalistic integrity and objectivity and fought back by intentionally “trumping up”, mischaracterizing and outright lying to the American public about the words and actions of President Trump. There is solid evidence for this at CNN in particular. MSNBC on the other hand was already devoid of any credible claim to journalistic integrity and objectivity to begin with.

The second most likely answer is more complicated. Former President Trump ran on a right-leaning, populous platform that sought to “drain the swamp” in the District of Columbia (D.C.). The phrase “drain the swamp” really meant that former President Trump ran on a platform that sought to replace current institutions and trappings of power with those that better served the needs of “the people”, ordinary citizens. That’s sort of how populism works. Populism arises when a significant portion of the populous feel that the current bureaucracy, institutions and power structures no longer serve their needs but rather only benefit those in power.

Now, one may debate the overall efficacy of former President Trump in achieving populous aims, but there are many examples of where this populous ideology was put into effect via Trump’s executive orders. For example, requiring federal agencies to remove two regulations for every new regulation. Rolling back the size of federally protected lands and returning control to the states. Rolling back Obamacare, in the Trump administration’s view an overreach of the federal government. Limiting federal control of education. Reducing tax regulatory burdens. Promoting religious freedoms. There are also numerous other executive orders promoting an “America first” policy with respect to goods and services. In effect, former President Trump sought to decrease the overall power, authority and size of the federal government and replace, or perhaps return, that power and authority to state and local institutions.

It is this populous agenda that really earned former President Trump the blind hatred of some of the most powerful figures in D.C. and these powerful figures sought to utterly destroy him for it. Again, as we have covered in The Dangers of Hyperbole, the levels of vitriol directed at Trump are out of step with his actual rhetoric and actions. This is no accident. Powerful individuals and institutions were intent on destroying what they saw as a direct threat to their power, influence and wealth.

Consider this, D.C. exists for the sole purpose of being the seat of power for the federal government of the United States. Furthermore, the population of D.C. actually exceeds that of two entire states. Every single person living in D.C. essentially depends on the size and power of the federal government for their very livelihoods. Furthermore, the only way to increase their power, influence and wealth is for the power and influence of the federal government to continually expand. This is why the federal government has steadily expanded and grown, regardless of the political party in power for decades and decades.

In short, former President Trump sought to decrease the size, power and influence of the federal government. Former President Trump felt that the people were better served when state and local governments made their own decisions versus being dominated by federal mandates. This is absolute blasphemy for big government Democrats and antithetical to just about every single person living in D.C. Most Republicans in D.C. may pay lip service to “smaller government” but they don’t really mean it. Trump did.

Now, it actually gets even worse. Former President Trump is also a nationalist, believing in the superiority of the American system. This put him at direct odds with those in D.C. that see the inevitable end state as a quasi “world government”. Don’t laugh or think this is some kind of conspiracy theory. There is a tremendous amount of serious discussion on this topic and as far as direct evidence, simply look no further than the European Union. Basically, a bunch of nations that have abdicated control over certain functions of government like monetary policy (the Euro), trade and border control to a “super” governing body. For many elites, this is the end state for America as well.

One can see harbingers of this in the agenda and policies of the Obama administration. In short, diminish American exceptionalism in the eyes of the world, be the world’s police and slowly inch America towards inclusion within a larger governing body that would work to ensure “equity” with other nations. You see, in many people’s eyes, America consumes too much of the world’s resources, has far too much power and influence and makes too much money. This is not “equitable” to the rest of the people of the world and thus, America needs to be knocked down a few pegs, pay more than it’s fair share and distribute its wealth among other countries. Now, we won’t debate the pros and cons of this agenda, but we will point out that former President Trump’s agenda was the exact polar opposite. This earned him even more power enemies.

Quite simply, Trump’s populist, nationalist agenda was the absolute enemy of the established federal institutions and power structures. This is why former President Trump had to be utterly destroyed and why these same institutions and this same bureaucracy seeks to destroy former President Trump even to this day when he is out of office. Certain establishment elements and factions can never again run the risk of someone like former President Trump ascending to power. The very existence of Trump and his populous, nationalist leanings are a direct and imminent threat to their power, influence and wealth. Essentially, the destruction of Trump must be a lesson to any other populist that would dare to encroach upon the corrupt system in D.C., which solely benefits those in power.

So, how does one go about destroying someone? Well, weaponize the intelligence community and F.B.I, ramp up the hyperbole, prey upon utterly disappointed Hillary voters and let the media lap up every drop. Form a “resistance” that spins every Trump action into a negative, racist, bigoted, Islamophobic, misogynistic and anti-Semitic activity and just relentlessly hammer the narrative. The politics of ultimate personal destruction. And Trump, being Trump, didn’t help matters, but rather made things worse.

It is beyond the capacity of any objective observer to say for certain which of these two answers, or even a combination of these two answers, is the correct one. And, sure, there are many other reasons for different groups to hate Trump. Trump’s stance on climate change earned him the enmity of environmentalists. Trump’s stance on the border earned him the enmity of those who support open borders. Even Trump’s stance on China likely earned him the enmity of those with significant investments in that country. It is possibly a combination of all these things. Trump consistently chose policies that favored the American economy, American jobs and the American people; in short, America first. This put Trump at odds with many factions in the federal government and perhaps that maybe says something about his enemies. All that an objective observer can say is that after extensive research and thought, the two scenarios posted here are the most likely reasons why Trump was so consistently vilified with such outrageous vitriol and hyperbole.

So there you have it, that is why Trump is so hated and despised by so many. That is why the hyperbole doesn’t jive in any way with reality. Sure, some of it is self-inflicted, but most of it stems from a true, visceral hatred for Trump’s desire to curtail the power and influence of the federal government in favor of state and local control, to walk back decades of work inching America closer to abdicating control to a larger governing body. To end American exceptionalism and promote wealth equity between nations. It’s simply a war of ideologies, one that the corrupt, ever larger government crowd has been winning for decades upon decades. Its a system that steadily increases the power, influence and wealth of those that hold the trappings of power. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. How dare some outsider come in and attempt to upset the apple cart?

First, we here at The Objective Observer would like to point out that former President Trump’s impeachment defense team should have used our argument as to why the impeachment trial was unconstitutional. If nine year old’s cannot be Senators then you cannot only disqualify someone from holding office as an outcome of an impeachment conviction. Easy reasoning and logic that is simple to understand versus whatever that mess was that the defense team was pitching. Not that it would have mattered. The impeachment trial moving forward was inevitable, just like it’s eventual outcome.

So, not that it matters since the outcome is a forgone conclusion, but after watching two days of the House impeachment managers present their case against former President Trump, there is one glaring, fatal flaw in their argument. Sure, there are many problems with their case, but one flaw in particular stands out to any objective observer. This single flaw alone would ensure Trump’s acquittal if it were actually in doubt. You see, the House managers have spun the narrative that former President Trump incited the Capitol riot on January 6^th, 2021. Not only this but to hear the House managers tell the tale, former President Trump actually began intentionally planning the Capitol riot six months prior to the event in the summer of 2020.

The House managers’ case rests upon the idea that six months ago, former President Trump knew that he was going to lose the election, knew that he would lose scores of legal motions to challenge the election’s validity and further understood that his last chance at succeeding in overturning the election would be an armed rebellion at the Capitol starting at around 1PM in the afternoon during which the electoral votes would be certified by Congress; an armed rebellion he intended to succeed. This is the careful, premeditated master plan that the House managers have laid out as proof positive that former President Trump intended to commit insurrection against the United States of America.

“All of it, the nine Democratic managers said, was the foreseeable and intended outcome of Mr. Trump’s desperate attempts to cling to the presidency. Reaching back as far as last summer, they traced how he spent months cultivating not only the “big lie” that the election was “rigged” against him, but stoking the rage of a throng of supporters who made it clear that they would do anything — including resorting to violence — to help him.” – The New York Times | House Lays Out Case Against Trump, Branding Him the ‘Inciter in Chief’

Now, is it possible that former President Trump began planning the insurrection at the Capital six months ago? Sure, anything is possible. But for such a thing to be possible, former President Trump would have to be the most genius intellect on the planet and a strategist so immeasurably clairvoyant that he could easily defeat Deep Blue in any chess match. Thus, after four years of calling former President Trump an idiot and a moron, why are Democrats now saying that Trump is the greatest genius of all time? The short answer is because it is the only way in which their case is even possible.

But is the House manager’s version of events plausible? Absolutely not, at least not to any objective observer. The omniscience to be able to start planning the insurrection at the Capitol six months prior to the event would require God level planning and foresight. Former President Trump may be many things but he is by no means God or even a god. Not even close. Yet this is what the House managers’ case would have us believe, that former President Trump began carefully planning the insurrection six months before it occurred.

The House managers’ case certainly creates a compelling narrative of an evil mastermind exquisitely planning a presumed successful insurrection six months prior to it occurring and of Trump, and Trump alone, carefully, expertly guiding and willing the event to occur. Without a doubt, it is quite riveting political theatre but it is also pure fiction worthy of a James Bond film.

In point of fact, the House managers’ narrative is a classic, text book case of apophenia, the tendency of humans to find patterns where they don’t exist. Suddenly, every tweet by Trump objecting to what he believed were unconstitutional actions being taken by state elections officials and state courts is now somehow purposeful preplanning of the Capitol riot. It is just simply, patently absurd. The reality is that there actually were questionable things that occurred regarding the 2020 elections and some of those cases are still pending. A more rational explanation is that Trump was tweeting about events occurring at the time of the tweets, not as part of some master plan to overthrow the federal government six months later. Besides, it’s not like his concerns were ill founded considering that there was an actual secret cabal actively plotting to prevent him from ever being re-elected.

The stark truth of the matter is that former President Trump did not think enough about his words and actions and how people might interpret those words and actions, not that he thought extensively about his words and actions in a preplanned way to intentionally provoke insurrection. There is no denying that former President Trump was negligent with regard to considering the potential reactions, consequences and outcomes of his words and therefore bears some some amount of responsibility for what occurred. But, to paint this in the light of an evil genius mastermind intentionally inciting insurrection against the United States is simply intellectually dishonest and an utter fabrication. This is the the fatal flaw within the House managers’ case for conviction, yet another example of the extreme hyperbolic lengths to which Democrats will go in order to portray former President Trump as an evil, loathsome individual. But, at least in this case, apparently they do consider him a complete and utter genius.

When we wrote The Dangers of Hyperbole, we, in effect, called former President Trump a misogynist. Now, that’s a pretty strong word. After all, misogyny literally means “to hate woman” since it is formed from the Greek roots misein (“to hate”) and gynē (“woman”). Do we really believe that Trump hates women? No, not really. Sexist? Sure, there’s some clear evidence of sexism, but hate? Hate is a really, really strong word. So why didn’t we point this out as being yet another example of hyperbole? Well, four reasons really:

• First, explaining the nuance between sexism and misogyny is tedious and boring
• Second, the article was already really long
• Third, we’re lazy
• Fourth and most importantly, it was funny

Always go with funny. So, no we don’t really think that Trump is an actual misogynist, a person that literally hates women, that’s just hyperbole. King Biden on the other hand? That dude is clearly 100%, straight up, a stone cold misogynist. Obviously, no question about it. Wait…what? You don’t believe us? Come on man. You have to be kidding. Well, keep reading and we will prove that King Biden is a complete and utter misogynist beyond any shadow of a doubt.

As evidence, we reference King Biden‘s kingly proclamation, Executive By Order on of the King, Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation | The White House Monarchy

“Section 1.  Policy.  Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love.  Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.“

That’s just a small portion of the divine proclamation but gets the point across. Essentially, in an odd denial of “consensus” scientific opinion regarding biological sex, this divine decree, in its infinite wisdom, essentially means that biology does not matter and the only thing that matters is one’s chosen gender identity. In effect, biological males can compete in women’s sports so long as they “identify” as female. Yes, there is a funny South Park episode about this but this crazy shit is happening IRL.

With the stroke of a pen, King Biden essentially erased “women’s” sports. If biological males can compete in women’s sports, there are no women’s sports any longer. The science says that males on average have larger hearts, larger and longer bones, more ligament and tendon strength and a better muscle to mass ratio than females. This is why there are “male” and “female” sports to begin with. This is also why you did not have any female NFL linebackers playing in the Super Bowl. Or, hell, any female NFL players…period. It’s not sexism, it’s science.

Now, with that settled, we would like to switch gears and have you consider what you do with that bad selfie or picture someone takes where your face looks weird. You hate that photo. And you definitely do not want that embarrassing, ugly photo leaking out onto the internet. What do you do with that photo? That’s right, you delete or erase it. If you hate a piece of furniture in your house? You throw it out or erase it. That asshole ex-boyfriend? You erase that son-of-bitch from your life. If you hate it, you erase it.

Thus, an objective observer can only conclude that King Biden hates women so much that he erased them on the same day he took office. Literally, the same freaking day. That’s how much King Biden hates and despises women. King Biden couldn’t wait even a single day to sign the paper erasing women. Couldn’t erase women fast enough. Now that boys and girls is true hatred! That is true, and the very definition of, misogyny.

We here at The Objective Observer are big fans of punctuation. Not so much from an Oxford English Dictionary, “according to Hoyle”, proper use of punctuation perspective, but big fans nonetheless. You see, we use punctuation quite frequently in our articles more in an attempt to convey a sense of “speaking” naturally to the reader, an attempt to convey a conversational atmosphere that emulates the natural pauses in a spoken conversation versus a flat, dull, boring dictation of words on a page. It’s why we give purposeful thought to our use of commas, semi-colons, periods and ellipses and often painstakingly consider which of these punctuations provides the best effect for the “voice” we are trying to convey.

Pretentious self affirmation aside, punctuations and; in particular, commas, are actually important. Consider the title to this article, “Let’s Eat Grandma!” versus “Let’s Eat, Grandma!”. Pretty important. Just saying, commas save lives. Thus it is with some mild amusement that we have watched the last few months of fervent legal and grammatical attention being levied against one particular comma buried within the United States Constitution. The comma in question appears in Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution:

“Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.” – Article I, Section 3

It’s this comma between “removal from office” and “disqualification to hold” that has stirred up a tremendous amount of heated debate regarding the constitutionality of holding a second impeachment trial for former President Trump. On the one side, legal scholars have concluded that the trial is unconstitutional because the purpose of impeachment is only to remove a sitting official from office and then subsequently disqualify that person from ever holding office again. The other side reads the passage to mean that the two clauses are independent of one another, that the Senate can remove an individual from office or disqualify a person from holding a future office.

We know, commas, right? Sheesh, whoever thought we’d be talking about commas? Well, let’s just be clear, the Constitution is a complete travesty when it comes to the proper use of grammar and punctuation. In fact, the Constitution can’t even go two words without immediately having a punctuation error involving a comma. “We The People”? That should be “We, The People” you grammarless imbeciles! The founding fathers may have been civic geniuses but when it came to grammar, well, they just down right sucked at it.

And yet, here we are having this debate over the constitutionality of something because of a comma in a document that is literally a trash heap of poor grammar and questionable punctuation. So be it.

Now, setting aside that there exists in this world an ideology where “and’ actually means “or”, the “its constitutional” crowd seems to pin its argument on the modern Oxford English Dictionary’s guidance that a comma before the word “and” is necessary when two clauses are independent of one another, as in:

On Monday we’ll impeach the President, and on Tuesday we’ll laugh our asses off.

or

It’s cold in Washington D.C., and I can’t find my mittens.

These sentences each contain two independent clauses and thus, according to Oxford comma rules, require a comma before the word “and”.

Now, considering the Constitution’s overall tragic grammar and punctuation, is it likely that we can use the modern, rigorous Oxford English Dictionary’s rules regarding commas to properly interpret the Constitution’s meaning? Unlikely. More likely, we would need to understand the common use of commas coupled with the word “and” at the time the Constitution was written or even more specifically understand the personal, deeply held philosophical ruminations regarding commas of the scribe that penned the Constitutional passage in question. How in the hell are we going to manage that? Well, perhaps we can use the Constitution itself for guidance. You see, three paragraphs above the passage in question is this paragraph:

“No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state for which he shall be chosen.”

This passage is structured identically to the passage in question. We have two clauses, “age of thirty years” and “been nine years a citizen” joined by our nefarious comma directly before the word “and”. Thus, if we are to use the “its constitutional” crowd’s argument in this case then are we saying that nine year old’s can be Senators? Clearly not. Clearly, the intended meaning is that an individual must be at least 30 years old and have been a citizen of the United States for at least 9 years, not that an individual must be 30 years old or have been a citizen for 9 years, meaning a 9 year old born in the United States could be a Senator.

So…why are we having this discussion and debate about that comma again? Clearly, to any objective observer, those two clauses “removal from office” and “disqualification to hold” are not independent and thus the second impeachment trial of former President Trump is technically unconstitutional because the current trial extends further than removal from office. Because you can’t. Former President Trump is not in office and hence he cannot be removed from it. Case closed. Imagine that, “and” means “and”.

Not that any of this matters. Attempting to analyze a single comma in the dumpster fire of grammar that is the United States Constitution is beyond pointless. Besides, small things like logic and commonsense don’t really matter these days. But still, pretty obvious and simple if one looks at things objectively. Regardless, former President Trump’s second impeachment trial starts today because, just like science, people are just going to cherry pick facts and opinion that support their predetermined positions.

So, this second impeachment trial being obviously unconstitutional and all must explain why Chief Justice Roberts is not presiding over this second impeachment trial, right? The Constitution clearly states:

“The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present.”

Actually, no. Since former President Trump is no longer the sitting President, then the Chief Justice is not required to preside over the trial. Nifty. But the real question is, what is up with that colon? WTF is that?!? Just use a God damn period for Christ’s sake. Man, whoever wrote this Constitution was a grammatical retard, sorry, sorry, we meant “punctuationally challenged”…

Given The Objective Observer‘s logo, one might fully expect that we here at The Objective Observer are big fans of conspiracy theories and secret cabals like The Illuminati. We aren’t. It’s actually a bit of sarcasm on our part, an inside joke if you will. We actually try incredibly hard to avoid conspiracy theories or anything that could even be construed as a conspiracy theory. We much prefer facts and objectivity to conspiracy theories that warn of “secret cabals operating in the shadows to control public thought and influence politics”. Nonsense.

Or…that’s what we would have said prior to an actual secret cabal operating in the shadows to control public thought and influence politics announcing itself to the world. Jesus people, you are doing the whole secret cabal thing wrong for Christ’s sake. First rule of secret cabal, don’t talk about secret cabal. This is like “Secret Cabal 101” here folks. Time Magazine attempts to paint this secret cabal’s members as some kind of heroes or freedom fighters. But, as the saying goes, one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Simply stated, nothing good ever comes out of secret cabals. And did you have to go and call yourselves a “secret cabal” for crying out loud? Now you just make everyone sound nuts and conspiratorial just for referring to you using your own description of yourselves.

But surely there really was no secret cabal operating in the shadows during the 2020 Presidential election to control public thought and influence politics, right?

“That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.” – Molly Ball, Time Magazine

Fortifying it? That’s a really odd take on that. “System’s fragility”? Hell yes, you guys just sort of proved that a secret cabal can steal an election. That sort of sounds to us like the system is pretty God damn freaking fragile. The system must be Italian. Look, if you read that article, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election, you can’t help but come away with the feeling that it could just as easily have been titled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Rigged the 2020 Election” and, in fact, it would have been a more accurate title. The mental gymnastics of the author to paint the activities that were engaged in as anything other than purposeful election rigging are extraordinarily contortive. We sincerely hope Ms. Ball did not do permanent damage to herself in twisting her brain and words to such a degree.

Pretty certain an objective observer would absolutely go so far as to call that rigging an election. Ah yes, that Hunter Biden’s laptop story that, oddly, nobody in the main stream media covered or they all, in an extremely coordinated way, said was “Russian disinformation” and then, in an extremely coordinated way, Twitter suspended the New York Post’s Twitter account over publishing information about the Hunter Biden laptop story. Which, just so we are clear, turned out to be an entirely true story, not Russian disinformation and Hunter Biden is currently under investigation by the FBI, a fact that conveniently came out after the election.

You’re telling us that this secret cabal is going to look the American public in the eye and tell them that its “steering media coverage and controlling the flow of information” didn’t deprive the vast majority of Americans of legitimately true information that might have influenced their vote? How is this not rigging an election again? Besides, if an actual, IRL secret cabal is willing to admit that it intentionally, purposefully misled and lied to the public it naturally begs the question, “What activities is this secret cabal not willing to admit that it engaged in?”.

Do you realize that you idiots have now given credence and new life to every “the election was stolen” narrative by Trump and his cronies? Jesus people, there is now zero percent chance that King Biden will ever be considered a legitimately elected monarch. No chance. Consider that there are tens of millions of Americans that still believe that Trump was not legitimately elected even after four years of widespread debunking of the “Russian collusion” narrative. Here…here it’s like the supposed secret Russian/Trump cabal behind the supposed rigging of the 2016 election just stood up and was all like “Oh yeah, we rigged the election, it was all us”. Are you people complete and utter morons? If you rig an election, you do not then come out and tell people that you rigged an election. That’s idiotic.

So, if anyone thinks that tens of millions of Americans will believe King Biden was legitimately elected after accepting the most “dark money” in history, by far, coupled with an actual secret cabal standing up and saying “Oh yeah, we rigged the election, it was all us”, you’re nuts. As in, just plain out there. Tens of millions of Americans will never accept that the 2020 election was legitimate and as an objective observer, we won’t really be able to blame them.

Great…just great. Perfect, now we have actual secret cabals to deal with. Assholes.

President Biden recently signed an executive order that, as near as we can tell, seeks to send federal employees to internment camps for “re-education” about “white privilege”. We’re paraphrasing, but that seems to be the gist of it. For all of you “deplorables” out there, white privilege refers to the idea that there exist implicit or systemic advantages that white people have relative to nonwhite people. Essentially, white privilege refers to the absence of suspicion or other negative reactions that white people experience, as in white people don’t experience suspicious or negative reactions.

Alright, so the concept of white privilege originated in the United States and can be quite the controversial topic. Detractors call the concept of white privilege racist and liken the labelling of white privilege akin to being called a racist. Conversely, proponents like Julie Segal effectively say that anyone that thinks this way is a complete and utter moron that is simply too feeble minded to understand the superior intellectual thought and nuance that is the concept of white privilege. For example, in the piece Benefitting from White privilege doesn’t mean you’re a racist, Ms. Segal states:

Just because you benefit from White privilege does not mean you’re somehow a racist. In fact, that misunderstanding itself prevents some White people from grappling with the idea, which can be a positive step toward becoming an anti-racist and better understanding of what Black people face in their lives. Being White may give people a leg up in an apartment hunt or help immunize them against negative interactions with cops, but that benefit comes from being born into and living in a system built for White people. Systemic racism bestows these benefits. They’re not the result of any individual White person’s actions. So, it’s important to acknowledge that right from the start.

So basically, you have detractors saying that white privilege is coded language for whites being racists and proponents saying that’s nonsense. The two sides are basically talking past one another so the argument just becomes overly contentious and there is no agreement on anything. Well, we here at the The Objective Observer are always here to help. Therefore, let’s see if we can look at the subject of white privilege objectively and reach a conclusion.

In looking at the matter of white privilege objectively, we first come to what we feel are two core, fundamental questions:

• Can white privilege exist without racism?
• How can we quantitatively describe white privilege?

Let’s start with whether white privilege can exist without racism. Since white privilege means that white people benefit from being white, this certainly indicates that those white people are being treated differently based solely upon the color of their skin. In addition, nonwhites are not receiving those benefits so they are also being judged based solely upon the color of their skin. Perhaps we’re no white privilege scholars, but to anyone being objective about the matter, treating someone differently based solely on the color of their skin is, well, that’s pretty much the definition of racism there folks. Thus, we must conclude that white privilege requires there to be a “positive” racism element, whites receive benefits and a “negative” racism element, nonwhites do not receive those same benefits.

OK, next up is whether or not we can quantitatively describe white privilege. For white privilege to exist, white people must receive a positive benefit from being white more often than receiving a negative or neutral benefit. If being white only resulted in receiving mostly neutral, mostly negative reactions or a combination of mostly neutral and mostly negative reactions then the perceived benefits of being white, and thus white privilege wouldn’t exist. In other words if white people didn’t benefit from or experience white privilege more often than they do benefit from or do not experience white privilege, well, then there would be no white privilege. Thus, white privilege can only exist in a world where white people experience the benefits of white privilege more often than they experience no benefit from white privilege.

OK, let’s see if we can take this out of the realm of the subjective and into the realm of the objective and quantitative. Hey! Math is objective and quantitative. Let’s use math. We start by restating the above in terms of math. If white people, more often than not, benefit from individuals they encounter not immediately viewing them with suspicion, then that means that the majority, or greater than 50%, of the individuals those white people encounter must bestow white privilege. If greater than 50% of people did not bestow white privilege, positive racism, then white people would not experience white privilege. The logic seems inescapable here.

We can go further. We can further conclude that for white privilege to exist in the circumstance cited above, then this “absence of suspicion” must be unique to the white experience. That means that those greater than 50% of people that bestow white privilege on whites must also not bestow white privilege on nonwhites. Otherwise, the absence of suspicion in favor of whites would not be unique to being white. If nonwhites also benefited from an absence of suspicion then white privilege does not exist. This means that nonwhites must simultaneously suffer from a lack of white privilege or negative racism. This seems rather obvious but is worth pointing out.

Can this 50% threshold be defended? Well, to hear the white privilege folks talk about it, we believe this number is actually quite low. Our understanding is that white privilege is systematic and omnipresent, more along the lines of upwards of 80%-90% if not 100%. Conversely, setting the threshold too low runs the risk of the white privilege “signal” just being random noise. One could quibble over the exact percentage but if white people didn’t experience white privilege more often than they do not, then can it really be described as a benefit and, perhaps more importantly, can it really be described systemic? Unlikely.

Can we go further? Can we define exactly how many people are required in order for white privilege to be a reality? Perhaps, but some demographic data is in order.

This chart shows that in 2019, the breakdown of the American population by race is as follows:

• Whites – 197,309,822
• Hispanic – 60,572,237
• Blacks – 41,147,488
• Asian – 18,905,879
• Other – 7,273,281
• Native – 2,434,908

Alright, here comes the math. The above chart gives us a total population of 327,643,615. Just over half of this population is 163,821,808. Thus, threshold for white privilege is that 163,821,808 Americans exhibit positive racism towards whites and negative racism towards nonwhites.

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that 100% of nonwhites for some inexplicable reason view whites favorably versus unfavorable and thus contribute to “white privilege” we only get to 40% of the population (130,333,793). But, to get to our threshold of greater than 50%, or 163,821,808 people contributing to white privilege, this means that at least 33,488,015 white people must also contribute to white privilege. That’s about 17%. Thus, we must conclude that a statement about white privilege existing in America has as a base assumption that, at a minimum, 17% of whites are racists.

What about a maximum? OK, let’s now assume that all nonwhites are not contributors to white privilege. Reaching the 50% threshold would require 163,821,808 whites, or 83% of white people, to be racist.

Let’s review.

White privilege cannot possibly exist without at least 50% of the population exhibiting behavior that favors whites while simultaneously treating nonwhites exactly the opposite. These white privilege contributors are therefore positively racist towards white people while also simultaneously being negatively racist towards nonwhites. Reaching the 50% threshold requires that somewhere between 17% and 83% of whites are racist.

The evidence seems pretty clear. This rather simplistic math is likely at the heart of why so many white people so strenuously object to the term “white privilege”. While perhaps not everyone does the exact math, people are generally smart enough to understand the results by intuitive. And, turns out, people don’t like to be called racist.

In conclusion, it becomes obvious then that President Biden’s executive order to “re-educate” federal employees is an official statement from the Biden administration that over 163 million Americans and up to 83% of American whites are racist assholes. While we completely understand that this was most certainly the case in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the last time President Biden likely possessed his full mental faculties; meager as they may have been, we do not believe that is the case today, nor do we believe that calling over half of Americans and up to 83% of American whites racist is a productive means to an intelligent conversation regarding race in America. Way to lead and “unite” the country there gramps.

In 2016 it was widely argued that Russia attempted to influence the Presidential Election. While the whole Russia collusion/hoax thing was eventually dismissed in the Mueller Report, the overall narrative of attempted Russian interference was largely confirmed. But what about 2020? Why isn’t anyone talking about the obvious foreign influence, or dare we say interference, in the 2020 Presidential election?

Look, let’s be clear about this term “interference”. Interference is not a statement about intent. If you run a red light and T-bone another car, whether you intended to hit that car or accidentally hit that car, you still interfered with that car’s intended trajectory. Thus, interference can either be intentional or unintentional.

OK, with that out of the way, let’s start by clearing the air. The Objective Observer in no way, shape or form subscribes to or endorses conspiracy theories ala QAnon, Antifa as the bad actor in the Capitol Hill riots, etc. Furthermore, we do not believe that China acted intentionally to disrupt, influence or interfere with the 2020 Presidential election. That being said, it is obvious that China’s actions, or lack thereof, greatly influenced and interfered with the trajectory of the 2020 Presidential election within the United States. Furthermore, this should raise serious questions and concerns regarding future elections.

Let’s back up. It perhaps goes without saying that the economy is always a major factor in Presidential elections within the United States. Incumbent Presidents with strong economies tend to get reelected, while those with weak economies tend to not get reelected. As James Carville famously put it, “It’s the economy, stupid.“. As such, there can be little doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic greatly affected the economy of America as well as the world. Without the impact of COVID-19 on the United States economy, there is an argument to be made that former President Trump wins the 2020 election handily.

Thus, one could further reason that the COVID-19 pandemic played a major role in the 2020 United States Presidential election. Both from an economic perspective in crippling the American economy as well as how former President Trump and President Biden approached the pandemic during the campaign. Now, if we reject Chinese propaganda and conspiracy theory, can any objective observer deny that the COVID-19 virus originated in China and then spread to the world and eventually to the United States?

Accepting the prima facia evidence that the COVID-19 virus started in China, it is difficult for any objective observer to come to any other conclusion than that a foreign power, intentionally or not, influenced the 2020 Presidential election. That is not a conspiracy theory. China, COVID-19, economic impact, that all actually happened.

While we would not rule out the possibility, we here at The Objective Observer see no credible evidence that China intentionally released COVID-19 on the world in order to weaken the American economy and thus hurt former President Trump’s chances of reelection. However, we do think that the Chinese are not idiots and perhaps they, and/or others, learned something, learned a new attack vector as it were. Given the impact the pandemic had on the world, China and other possible bad actors most definitely realized the potential of these kinds of biological outbreaks.

Let’s face it, China was no fan of President Trump. President Trump was the first America President in history to define China as a rival and aggressor, one even more dangerous than Russia. It would be difficult to argue then that China preferred to not have Trump reelected versus a Biden administration that appeared more favorable to the current Chinese regime. It would also be hard to imagine a circumstance where China did more to damage President Trump’s reelection prospects than releasing an economy destroying pandemic on the world. Again, we here at The Objective Observer do not believe that any of this was intentional or conspiratorial…this time. But what about next time?

Think this through. China and other potential bad actors have realized that a global pandemic can be advantageous to essentially getting what they want. For example, getting a pro-China administration installed within the United States versus an anti-China administration. What is to prevent China, or some other nation, from doing it intentionally next time?

This is where an objective observer should have concerns. The entire world has learned about the fragility of the global economy in the face of a pandemic. Sure, biological weapons are prohibited under international humanitarian law, but is that really going to stop an authoritarian regime that believes it can stealthily cover its tracks by using biological weapons indirectly versus directly on a battlefield?

Face the facts, there are plenty of regimes in the world that have demonstrated an appalling lack of regard for human life, at least by American standards. Is it such a stretch of the imagination then that in the future a bad actor in the world would potentially be willing to intentionally sacrifice millions of innocent lives in order to achieve a particular political goal? To an objective observer, the answer is obvious.

Retirement is great. In fact, there may not be anything more fantastic in the entire world other than retirement. Consider the benefits:

• Reduced stress – Think of how stressful having a job is, the need to meet deadlines and perform to a high standard day after day, the anxiety of dealing with customers and bosses. Retirement means that all of that goes away!
• Healthier – After you retire you have more time to eat healthy, sleep and exercise. Finally you will have the time to take long walks and play golf. You will live longer by retiring earlier!
• Philanthropy – Use the experience and wealth you have accumulated to volunteer, make charitable donations and serve on the boards of not for profit organizations. Truly make a difference in your community and in the lives of others!
• Family – Reconnect with your adult children and grand children. Spend more time with distant family members and even close friends. Remember, “Where there is family, there is love.”

In other words, retirement is a golden opportunity to define a new and better you by getting your priorities straight and living the life you were meant to live. You can spend more time on hobbies, travel to exotic lands and pursue those interests that you never had time for when you were a working stiff. To paraphrase Greg Gutfeld:

“Retirement is great. Retirement is great. Retirement is great. Retirement is great.”

Look, you can’t see us right now, but we here at The Objective Observer all have these huge grins plastered all over our faces. We really believe in retirement and how wonderful it is. In particular, we really think that the vast majority of Senators, Representatives, pretty much anyone and everyone in government should strongly consider retiring…now. Like, right now would be good.

Look, U.S. Census Bureau data shows that the average retirement age in the United States is 65 for men and 63 for women. Now consider that 48 of 100 Senators are over the age of 65 and 147 of 435 Representatives are over the age of 65. Consider that Democratic House leadership averages 72 years old. Face it, all of you people should be retired already. Just go enjoy life and get the hell out of the road.

Not to be “ageist”, like that’s even a thing, but ya’ll are old and out of touch with, well, everything. Watching you trying to deal with the unprecedented power Big Tech has amassed is like watching that Progressive Insurance ad where Dr. Rick states “We going to open a PDF now, who wants to try?” and everyone backs away. It’s just so cringe and embarrassing. You’re simply out of your depth and lack the wherewithal to properly address the real issues going on in the world today. Seriously, it’s like a real world study in that Alvin Toffler book, Future Shock. The leadership of today is like walking around in this dazed and confused psychological state induced by “too much change in too short a period of time”.

And why oh why are you all having so much trouble with this pandemic we might add? Didn’t you all survive the black death? And the Spanish flu? Just use the knowledge you learned then and apply it now for cryin’ out loud. But you can’t even accomplish that!

Again, we’re not calling you senile…well…not most of you anyway. It’s just that you are out-of-touch and stuck in the past. We mean, literally stuck in the past. This whole “race relations” thing? It’s a throwback to your hey days. Nobody cares about it. It certainly isn’t top of mind for most Americans so why does the Biden administration keep bringing it up? Why does Biden seem to think that race is the thing that is most important to deal with versus a freaking pandemic and the usurpation of power by Big Tech…

Oh shit, there it is. Look at what was going on when Biden was a teenager and in his early 20’s. Yeah, certainly looks like there was a major race problem then. And now he thinks its some kind of repeat of his “glory days”? Wise up people, America today is nothing like the civil rights era of yesteryear. There is no Martin Luther King Jr. leading peaceful marches and protests. Today we have Antifa and Black Lives Matter groups rioting and burning and looting. Not equivalent. Get it together grandpa.

Oh look, seems like Obama made race relations worse…

Anyway, for the sake of the country. Please, all of you, retire already. Don’t be remembered like Brett Favre’s last few, sad seasons after leaving Green Bay or Mike Tyson biting someone’s ear off. Go out gracefully. Leave at the top of your game. Seriously, it’s better for everyone. We really want you to be happy but, more importantly, we want ourselves to be happy. And you are totally and completely screwing that up right now. Boomers, it’s time to go.

That’s right, still can’t let this Twitter thing go. Something’s been sticking in our craw about this whole Twitter banning a sitting President of the United States and we think we have boiled it down to the seemingly oddly specific rule that Twitter used to justify it’s ban of President Trump. You see, the Twitter rules page includes an “Authenticity” section under which there is a “Civic Integrity” rule. If we are so bold as to “Learn more” about this civic integrity rule, we arrive at this page and the following snippet:

Misleading information about outcomes 

We will label or remove false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election or other civic process. This includes but is not limited to:

• disputed claims that could undermine faith in the process itself, such as unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results; and
• misleading claims about the results or outcome of a civic process which calls for or could lead to interference with the implementation of the results of the process, e.g. claiming victory before election results have been certified, inciting unlawful conduct to prevent the procedural or practical implementation of election results (note that our violent threats policy may also be relevant for threats not covered by this policy).

First, remember that President Trump was permanently banned from Twitter for the following Tweet:

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

Regarding this particular tweet, Twitter stated that the tweet about skipping the inauguration was “further confirmation that the election was not legitimate.”

Couple things. First, that’s thin Twitter. That’s a very subjective interpretation of that tweet. An objective person would read that as informational only. If the tweet had read:

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the illegitimate Inauguration on January 20th.”

OK, then that would be a clear violation. But as the tweet stands, that’s just putting words in someone’s mouth. Second, the policy states “label or remove”, not “permanently ban for all time”. Minor point, and yes down at the bottom there is a permanent ban warning for repeated violations. And it is very specific about the 5 strike process and everything. But third, how about that part about “inciting unlawful conduct to prevent the procedural or practical implementation of election results”. That’s, wow, that’s extremely specific considering the events of January 6^th, 2021. Like really specific. Did that rule go up before or after January 6^th? When exactly did that rule come about? Inquiring minds want to know.

If only we had a time machine and could go back in time to read the Twitter rules page at various points in the past. If only… Oh wait, shit, this is the age of the Internet, we actually have one of those! It’s called the “Wayback Machine“. The Wayback Machine is a time machine of sorts that captures and archives pages on the Internet. With the Wayback Machine, we can peek back into ancient times to read web pages that talk about ridiculously old-fashioned things like going to a movie theater, eating inside a NYC restaurant or even buying perfectly reasonable amounts of toilet paper.

So, using our time machine, we can actually dial the clock back to the first time that the Wayback Machine captured the Twitter rules page. And, while it took a bit of work, we finally decoded the magic number, 18311. You see, this was the original page name for the Twitter rules page, https://www.twitter.com/rules/18311. You can see the first listing in the Wayback Machine for this page on August 2^nd, 2010 here. It’s a single, short page with no links to any sub pages. And, there’s no mention of Civic Integrity or really much else other than a really long section on spam.

OK, so this Twitter rules page remains remarkably consistent in content. You can view this page at the end of 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018. It’s essentially the same. No mention of civic integrity or anything of the sort. However, 2019 is different.

On June 7th, 2019, the Wayback Machine first captures a version of the Twitter rules page that includes an “Authenticity” section and within that Authenticity section there is a rule about “Election integrity”. If we follow the “Learn more” link we arrive at a new sub page, the very first “Election integrity policy“. Well, not so fast, because the first version of this page was actually captured on April 28^th, 2019 but apparently Twitter never bothered to link to it from their rules page until 2 months later. Incompetence aside, the policy states the following:

“You may not use Twitter’s services for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections. This includes posting or sharing content that may suppress voter turnout or mislead people about when, where, or how to vote.“

OK, there is some verbiage here about interfering with elections but nothing about bitching and moaning about election results. However, down at the bottom, we also see the introduction of the “permanent suspension” language. Except that it is vague, like really vague. Alright, getting closer. And look at Twitter being all responsible and smart, getting out in front of that 2020 election by over a year! Oh, except…ummm…kind of hate to point this out, but you sort of whiffed on the two previous presidential election cycles so….yeah, not too swift are you Twitter? I mean, 2012, 2016? Pshaw! Hey man, you can interfere all you want, we know Barack Obama is getting re-elected and there’s no chance that Hillary is not getting in…

Moving on, let’s focus now on this “Election integrity policy”. Again, the content on this page remains relatively the same for like a a year and a half until September 11th, 2020. That’s an unfortunate day to pick. In any case, here is where what is essentially the current version of the page comes into being. The verbiage about misleading election blah blah blah is the same but now we have the bitching and moaning about election results clauses. So, why the sudden rule change?

Interestingly enough, if we use the Trump Twitter Archive. I know, right? Like that’s a thing. Holy smokes! It is a thing. Wow, well if we use this other time machine of ours, we find a tweet from President Trump on September 10^th, 2020:

Sep 10th 2020 – 8:54:48 AM EST
Sending out 80 MILLION BALLOTS to people who aren’t even asking for a Ballot is unfair and a total fraud in the making. Look at what’s going on right now!

Causality? Hard to prove but it sure looks like Twitter is basically changing the rules of the game while it is being played. Trump tweets about possible fraud and Twitter responds by making a rule that talking about possible fraud is suddenly against the rules. But, whatever. Our moms always told us that changing the rules in the middle of the game was “cheating” but we never bought into that narrative either. So…you know…moms.

But, the amazing thing is that the September 11^th, 2020 version of the page includes the verbiage:

“inciting unlawful conduct to prevent the procedural or practical implementation of election results“

What? As in literally what the hell? Nobody was talking about anything even remotely like what happened on January 6th, 2021 in any way shape or form at that time. Hell, every last reporter said something like “Nobody could have predicted…” and stuff like that. Bullshit! Apparently Twitter predicted it. Twitter. Like, how is that even possible? Did they know something?

Alright, alright, dial it back. We’re not conspiracy theorists here at The Objective Observer. But that’s…that’s just weird. The company that can’t get their shit together to protect the two previous election cycles is now suddenly omnipotently prescient? It’s…it’s hard to swallow. Just sayin’.

OK, one last item to wrap up. The current version of the “civic integrity” policy includes a “5 strikes and you’re out” clause. So when did that come about? Back to the Wayback Machine. Surely this 5 strikes language was in the policy before they banned a sitting President of the United States. That way there is no possible confusion about the rules. Surely. Oh…well…nope. January 9th, 2021 is when the 5 strikes language was added. Wow. There’s a CYA moment for you!!

OK, so what is the point of all of this? Well, President Trump during his time in office continually complained about his unfair treatment in the press and such. In his mind, he was the “worst treated President of all time”. And, to be fair, we think that to any objective observer, he has a bit of a point there. Now, that’s not to say that a lot of it wasn’t self inflicted. The man tended to escalate and not deescalate. So, that’s on him.

Now, fairness is a core American concept. It’s sort of fundamental to the American narrative, that everyone is treated fair. Blind Lady Justice and all that. Sure, it’s a complete and utter lie. If you are rich, you don’t go to jail. But, it is an American ideal after all. It is what we strive for.

So, was President Trump treated fairly by Twitter? We’re going to have to go with big fat “no” on that one. Clearly, the evidence demonstrates that Twitter seemed to be changing their policy rules in response to President Trump’s tweets, effectively changing the rules of the middle of the game. Furthermore Twitter had a very vague “permanent ban” clause that was essentially entirely subjective and arbitrary. There was clearly no warning given to Trump such as small suspensions leading up to the ban as they have now. Then Twitter goes in and covers their ass by putting in that language. Finally, Twitter seems to have purposefully put words in President Trump’s mouth by inferring meaning in Trump’s final tweet that is a highly subjective interpretation.

So, was Trump treated fairly by Twitter? Well, you can decide for yourself but we think the evidence demonstrates that no, President Trump, regardless of what you think of the guy, wasn’t treated fairly. And that’s not the America we strive for quite frankly.

Full disclosure, the content of this article was originally supposed to be included in the article What is Free Speech?. However, we admit, we sort of got off on a bit of a tangent there with the whole cigar thing and, well, we just kind of ran with it. And then we felt the article would be too long so… Anyway, this whole Twitter fiasco over banning President Trump has raised so many questions and issues surrounding free speech that we still have things to say on this topic and, well, damnit, we’re going to say them. This is our blog after all.

As referenced in What is Free Speech?, there are; perhaps surprisingly, limits to free speech in America. We say surprisingly because the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America seems pretty clear:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. – Bill of Rights

And yet Congress has, in point of fact, made laws limiting free speech in America. Specifically, we are referencing the federal felony enacted by Congress in 1917 as part of the United States Code Title 18, Section 871 regarding the threatening of a President of the United States. Soooooo…what now?!? How is that even possible? The plain language of the Bill of Rights clearly reads that making a law abridging free speech should be not be possible. As in, 100% impossible.

OK, sure, Congress makes up stupid laws all the time because it is full of complete and utter morons. We all know that. It’s obvious. But those idiotic laws created by halfwits are invariably eventually overturned by the Supreme Court. So surely this statute has been overturned by…HOLY SHIT!…it’s actually been upheld?!? What the hell? Are we in opposite world? Something is clearly amiss! We need to take a look at the history here and what we find is that the saga of the curtailment and censorship of free speech in America has a surprising long and twisted path.

The curtailment of the freedom of speech unconditionally and unequivocally guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, which is part of the Constitution of the United States, actually began a scant seven years after the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791. So a mere seven years to say whatever the hell you felt like saying. Then, in 1798, Congress adopted the Alien and Sedition Acts in a clear F’ You! to the First Amendment. This act prohibited:

“false, scandalous, and malicious writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame…or to bring them…into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them…hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States”.

OK, first of all, can you spell i n s e c u r e? Come on guys, you can’t abide a bit of criticism? People gonna hate. However, this act expired three years later in 1801 after never being challenged in the Supreme Court. In fact, after the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson pardoned everyone that the John Adams’ administration had prosecuted under the statute, and there were many. So, Jefferson…mad props, yo!

Alright, so other than state and local “obscenity” laws passed at the state and local level; hey, the Constitution only specifies “Congress shall make no law…”, everything remained fairly static up until the 1917 statute making it a federal felony to threaten a President of the United States. People have actually been convicted under this statute. Notably:

• United States v. Stickrath, 242 F. 151, 153 (SD Ohio 1917) – “President Wilson ought to be killed. It is a wonder some one has not done it already. If I had an opportunity, I would do it myself.”
• Clark v. United States, 250 F. 449 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1918) – “Wilson is a wooden-headed son of a bitch. I wish Wilson was in hell, and if I had the power I would put him there.”
• United States v. Apel, 44 F. Supp. 592, 593 (D.C. N. D. Ill. 1942) – Regarding posters advocating the hanging of President Roosevelt
• 2010, Johnny Logan Spencer Jr. for the poem “The Sniper” about the assassination of President Obama
• 2010, Brian Dean Miller – “People, the time has come for revolution. It is time for Obama to die. I am dedicating my life to the death of Obama and every employee of the federal government. As I promised in a previous post, if the health care reform bill passed I would become a terrorist. Today I become a terrorist.”
• 2017, Stephen Taubert – For threatening to hang President Obama

Wow, who knew that President Woodrow Wilson was almost as hated as President Barack Obama? Wasn’t that dude white? And yo, Stephen, you were a bit late to the game there bud. Huh…huh…“wooden headed son of a bitch”…classic.

All joking aside, that’s all awful stuff. We aren’t advocating for threatening a President of the United States, or anyone else for that matter. Which begs the question, why the hell does the President get such special treatment anyway? That’s complete and utter B.S. Is the President a king or something? We don’t want people threatening us lowly plebes either we’ll have you know. But f’ it, apparently people can do that all day long. Lame. Regardless, how the hell is that law Constitutional pray tell?

To answer the above enquiry, we need to look no further than to Schenck v. United States in 1919. This Supreme Court decision states:

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. […] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

Aha!! That’s where “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” comes from! Bonus! And thus we land on where the Supreme Court apparently starts to agree that Congress can, in fact, abridge free speech. Morons. Note that Schenck…really Schenck? That’s your last name? In any case, Schenck was convicted for distributing flyers urging resistance to the draft and the Supreme Court upheld this decision. OK, but sure, everyone makes mistakes, obviously the Supreme Court immediately started to walk back that nonsense. Nope, in fact, the Supreme Court double-downed on that B.S. circa 1942 with Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. Really…Chaplinsky?

In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court implemented the “fighting words” doctrine. Swear…swear to God, as crazy as that shit sounds, we are not making this up. You see, in 1940 a Jehovah’s Witness named Walter Chaplinsky was detained for distributing pamphlets accusing “organized religion” of being a “racket”. Setting aside the fact that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are, well; you know, sort of an organized religion and all while simultaneously setting aside that, well, the dude kind of has a point there… In any case, good ol’ Walter ends up calling a town marshal, and we quote: “You are a God-damned racketeer” and “a damned Fascist”. Poor S.O.B. ends up being convicted under New Hampshire’s “offense language” law and the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United Freaking States upholds this nonsense, stating:

“There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.”

Honestly? In any case, it is not until 1969 that things start to get any better with Brandenburg v. Ohio. Damnit Ohio, always sticking your nose in things. In any case, this is where the Supreme Court started to walk back the ridiculous restrictions around free speech. Sure, it’s beyond unfortunate that this particular case essentially defended KKK member Clarence Brandenburg’s right to spew vile racial bigotry. And, what the hell, are all KKK members named Clarence? We don’t mean to stereotype but; damn, you meet a guy named Clarence and you know you are immediately thinking “This guy’s a Ku Klux Klan Grand Master”. OK, sure, maybe not Clarence Thomas. Maybe. But still… In any case, this is essentially the start of the Supreme Court steadily narrowing the scope of what is regulated speech. Fortunately, that narrowing continues to this day.

Oh wait, except for New York v. Ferber, where the Supreme Court upheld bans on child pornography in 1982. Wait…a…minute…1982? Are you telling us that in 1942 poor ol’ Walter got fined for calling someone a “racketeer” and a “Facist” but it took you Supreme Court yahoos 40 more years to declare child freaking pornography illegal?!? Shame! Shame on you Supreme Court. Priorities. Priorities people. Honestly though, Supreme Court, we are 100% with you on the child pornography thing. Definitely not something that the founders of the Constitution could have ever dreamed of in their day. But the rest of it? It’s like you read the Constitution to say:

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, unless at some point in the future Congress just says “F’ it” and makes some laws to abridge free speech anyway and then it is OK.“

But…it doesn’t say that. The Constitution…it doesn’t say that. Still, technically, the child porn stuff should have been an Amendment. Technically.

So, anyway, that is the condensed version of the history of the limitations on free speech in the United States of America. That is, until Big Tech tossed a veritable hand grenade of controversy into the whole steaming pile of excrement that is the Supreme Court’s history on this issue. Seriously, honest to God, we’ve…we’ve lost a considerable amount of respect for the Supreme Court researching and writing this article. You convicted poor ol’ Walter for calling someone a Fascist for Christ’s sake? Might as well lock up half the freaking country at this point, starting with Don Lemon.

So, what is the point of this exercise other than a long, drawn out excuse to once again point out what an idiot Don Lemon is? Well…you say that like it is a bad thing. Personally, we think that’s enough. The dude called like 74 million Americans fascist Nazi’s after all. But sure, what the hell, let’s make this an “and knowing is half the battle” moment.

OK, so let’s go with this. Perhaps you are wondering just why is The Objective Observer so concerned about free speech? Well, the reality is that it is because we; well, if we are being honest, we say some pretty messed up, crazy shit on this blog site from time to time! Not Don Lemon moronic messed up crazy shit calling everyone Nazis, but still… Seriously, have you read A Cure for the Flu or Vegetarians Are Still Stupid? Admittedly, no joke, we’re “out there”. So, you had better believe that we are concerned about free speech. Luckily though, we have a secret weapon at our disposal. Want to know what it is?

Canada.

You see, WordPress is owned and operated by a Canadian firm. That’s right, SUCK IT! American Big Tech and all of you other censuring, freedom hating Americans, you can’t touch us here! Nyah, nyah, nee, nyah, nyah! And this is how Canada has become more free than America, the “Land of the Censured”.

Honestly, we…we truly hate Big Tech and other American censors. You’re…making…us…defend…Canada! Canada! Of all places! We truly despise you Big Tech, you…you…you…Fascists!! Oh…oh shit…we’re going to jail. We’ll be sure to say “hello” to Walter…

Seriously though, we…uh…we kind of feel bad for Walter.

A lot of attention has been paid to the recent action by Twitter to permanently ban (exclude) a sitting President of the United States of America. However, as is so often the case, everyone seems to be missing the vastly more intriguing bigger picture here. To an objective observer, what is most interesting about Twitter’s banning of President Trump is the fascinating case study this action represents in terms of the “tragedy of the commons“.

For a bit of background, the tragedy of the commons is a concept first introduced by William Forster Lloyd in 1833. Lloyd was an English economist and he released a pamphlet where, per Wikipedia, “he postulated that if a herder put more than his allotted number of cattle on the common, overgrazing could result. For each additional animal, a herder could receive additional benefits, while the whole group shared the resulting damage to the commons. If all herders made this individually rational economic decision, the common could be depleted or even destroyed, to the detriment of all.”

A “common” in this context refers to public land that is free for anyone to use. Lloyd’s concept was resurrected in 1968 by Garrett Hardin’s article “The Tragedy of the Commons”. The name stuck. Since Hardin’s article, the concept has been applied to anthropology, economics, environmental science evolutionary psychology, game theory, politics, sociology and taxation. In short, one can sum up the tragedy of the commons as a situation where individual users deplete or spoil a shared resource by acting contrary to the common good and in their own self interests.

Now, over the years, there have been attempts to apply the tragedy of the commons to the digital world with varying degrees of success. The arguments tend to fall along the lines of overuse of digital resources causing pollution in the physical environment or a “pollution” of information causing things like misinformation, crime, terrorism, confusion, manipulation, etc. We have actually argued similar things when discussing open source here and here. And that goes as far back as 2008. What can we say? We’re brilliant and way ahead of our time like that. Can’t argue with awesome.

Back patting aside, we would argue that Twitter banning President Trump is a fantastic example of a digital, tragedy of the commons. To understand why this is the case, however, we need to define what it means to “consume” Twitter, demonstrate how Twitter can be classified as a “common good” and exactly how this common good “failed”. Let’s get to it.

OK, consumption. To fully “consume” Twitter (participate) you need to be able to read and be able to post. Only being able to read Twitter is akin to only being able to look at the scenery of some common land but be unable to graze your cattle on it. If you are unable to fully utilize a common resource, then that does not count as true consumption.

OK, Twitter as a common good. In the interests of not having to write an entire treatise on economic theory let’s summarize. Goods are either private, club, common or public. Goods are classified into these categories based upon their degree of excludability and rivalry. Excludability is the degree to which something is limited to only paying customers. Rivalrous and non-rivalrous pertain to the degree to which consumption reduces the ability of others to consume the resource. Common goods tend to be non-excludable and rivalrous.

Is Twitter non-excludable? Sure, up until they banned President Trump for life, Twitter was very much non-excludable. Anyone with Internet access was free to read and tweet on Twitter. Is Twitter rivalrous or non-rivalrous? Eh, that’s more of a gray area. One could argue that Twitter is rivalrous, non-rivalrous or even anti-rivalrous. Again, in the interests of not having to write a treatise on the subject, it’s somewhere on the spectrum of rivalry, meaning that there are at least some aspects of rivalry that fit the attributes of a common good. For example, once a username is claimed on Twitter, no one else can use that same username. Also, it is not zero cost for Twitter to scale as consumption increases. Those are examples of Twitter being rivalrous.

OK, so Twitter can reasonably be thought of as a common good. Sure, it’s an arguable point. One could also reasonably make the case for Twitter as a public good or, less likely, a club good. But, again, without authoring a treatise on the subject, we think that the definition of Twitter as a common good is best.

So, how did Twitter “fail” in a manner consistent with the tragedy of the commons? Well, the short answer is President Trump. By permanently banning President Trump, Twitter voluntarily threw the switch between non-excludable to excludable. Thus, Twitter effectively failed as this once common good suddenly became most decidedly excludable and thus no longer a common good. In other words, the self interests of a single individual “spoiled” the common good and thus Twitter #failed as a common good and became yet another victim of the tragedy of the commons.

Let’s review, the tragedy of the commons is a situation where individual users deplete or spoil a shared resource by acting contrary to the common good and in their own self interests. President Trump acted in his own self interests to such a degree that he caused Twitter to become exclusionary versus non-exclusionary. While perhaps not an “according to Hoyle” tragedy of the commons, this is still an example of commons collapse disorder. We just made that up. But anyway, that is why this case is so fascinating, this episode demonstrates that “over consumption” is not the only way in which a tragedy of the commons event can occur, which is wild.

If you think we here at The Objective Observer are crazy. Rest assured, we are not the only ones that think in these terms. There is an amazing article in The Hill that came out while we were still in the process of writing and editing this article. The article argues that Twitter and Facebook need to become nationalized public goods. The article doesn’t mention tragedy of the commons by name, but if Twitter and Facebook; the same logic holds for Facebook as well, had succeeded as common goods and not victimized themselves via self-inflicted tragedy of the commons, then you wouldn’t need to nationalize them in order to fix them. Both Twitter and Facebook have failed as common goods because they have firmly crossed over the line from non-excludable to excludable and thus, by definition, can no longer be considered common goods.

And, just to wrap this up, there is an element of irony here. There can be no question that President Trump’s use of Twitter greatly benefitted the platform. President Trump was a marketing gold mine, constantly keeping Twitter relevant and in the news. Tremendous irony then that Twitter chose to commit “Suicide of the Commons”, effectively killing themselves as a common good, over this one “selfish” consumer.

No, that title is not a typo. The title of this article is simply an expression of reality at this point. It is time we face the facts and drop the “United” from the quaint name “United States of America”. America is anything but united at this point and, well, there’s no going back. In fact, things are only going to get worse, not better. If you doubt this simple, undeniable truth or have a burning desire to understand the true culprit behind this division, read on.

In order to understand how we have arrived at this moment and the inexorable march we are on to an even more divided future, we have to dial up the way back machine and understand a bit of history of media and, in particular, news. If we focus on television news then from pretty much the invention of television up until the 1980’s, Americans primarily received their news from just three organizations, ABC, NBC and CBS.

Now, at this time, each of these organizations were essentially fair and honest brokers of news and information. What mattered was that the news of the day was reported factually and without opinion. And while there may have been slight differences in the news stories each organization covered or in presentation, the same core set of content was delivered with very little filtering. If we were to picture this improbable, by today’s standards, state of affairs, it would look something like the following:

The little blue dots are the audience. Hey, we’re writers here, not graphic artists, give us a break for Christ’s sake. More importantly than the god awful graphics, the takeaway here is that all Americans were essentially receiving the same information. While there were differences of opinion among Americans, we at least had a core, common set of essentially unfiltered facts that everyone agreed were true.

Importantly, we must point out the economics of this situation. As long as the available audience was every individual within America, there were enough viewers to support these three networks via advertising revenues. There was no need to “spin” the news as these organizations differentiated themselves through their entertainment programming. The news was the news and was a relatively small part of the overall programming.

So what happened? Well, technology happened for one. HBO and cable TV became a thing. Now, cable TV technically dates back to 1948 but after the advent of HBO in 1972, cable TV saw exponential growth in the 1980’s and reached 50 million homes by 1990. With it, cable TV brought dozens of news “channels”. News organizations like CNN launched in 1980, Fox News in 1996 and ESPN in 1979. Hey, some people only care about sports news. What are you going to do? Regardless, Americans now had a much greater choice of sources from which they could self select their news. And we thus saw the advent of specialization. CNN specialized in only news 24/7. ESPN specialized in only sports news 24/7. Later, Fox News specialized in a more conservative view of the news. The audience became more fragmented between these different channels.

And yes, we kept the old style logos for ABC, NBC and CBS because we’re lazy and not graphic artists to begin with. So tough.

Anyway, at around the same time this increase in channels and specialization was occurring in television, similar things were going on in radio. Whereas NPR had been the primary source of news via radio, suddenly conservative talk radio became a thing in 1988. And here we see a harbinger of things to come. Here we see the advent of the news being filtered through the lens of a single individual, like Rush Limbaugh, versus broad filtering of say, sports. Here too we witness the movement towards news analysis and opinion versus solely and dispassionately delivering facts. It’s a here’s what happened but more importantly, here is my opinion on what happened. Not saying right or wrong but this is an important portent of things to come.

What hadn’t changed? Newspapers. Good ol’ newspapers. Each major city only had one or two and everyone could be assured that the politics and opinion were relegated to the editorial pages. Here still could Americans get unbiased, unfiltered, fact based reporting on common information we all had access to and could all agree upon the facts. And then…yep, the Internet.

While cable TV channels continued to grow from dozens of channels to hundreds of channels, the Internet created not hundreds, but thousands, if not millions of new channels through which information could flow and be filtered. Things like the Drudge Report became a thing. Suddenly news websites were springing up all over the place and individuals could further self select and “tune in” to only the websites they liked. But nobody really got their news solely from the Internet back in “those days” (1990’s). And many news websites were just the online avatar of newspapers, radio stations and the like. And then came…social media.

Ah yes, here now arrives social media circa the 2000’s. The channels of information now become exponentially fractured yet again as individuals self select their “friends” and join specialized “groups”. Don’t like what someone is saying? Simply unfriend that idiot. Retreat from differing opinions into your own myopic tribe of facts and opinions. People started to now only receive their information via these “social circles”, solely via the Internet as it were.

Cutting to the chase, the end game here is that every individual eventually has their own custom “channel” of filtered information and this channel has little or no commonality of base content with anyone else’s “channel”. Nobody can agree on anything because nobody is talking about the same thing, the same base set of unfiltered facts. It is all just filtered analysis and opinion.

And here we must once again address the economics of all of this. The economics of millions of channels is vastly different than the economics of three, or just a handful, of channels that reach mass audiences. Instead, sources, news providers, must specialize in order to cater to and reach some specific, target audience. This is why certain news organizations, we won’t name names, have swung hard left while others have swung hard right. Take a look at the front pages of CNN.com, MSNBC.com, FoxNews.com. Oh shit, did we just name names? Damnit. Anyway, the disparity between the news stories covered is striking. Depending on the channel, the base set of content delivered is vastly different. How are two people supposed to agree on anything when there are zero facts and content that those two people have in common?

It is only going to get worse people.

So where do we go from here? We need a true and proper villain after all. Luckily, we can be much more specific about who is to blame for America’s current and future woes rather than simply the broad strokes of “technology”, the “Internet” and “social media”. In fact, if you are looking for someone to blame, we can pin that blame on one specific individual…

Al Gore

You see, Al Gore created the Internet. Note that this is, in fact, a correct attribution, unlike the false claim that Al Gore “‘invented’ the Internet”. Al Gore never, at any time, said that he invented the Internet. Never. Instead, Al Gore’s words were exactly as follows:

“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” – Al Gore

So, if you need someone to blame, blame Al Gore, it’s all his fault. With utmost certainty, it is Al Gore and only Al Gore that has doomed us all to live perpetually bickering and misunderstanding one another within this most divided, State of America. Jackass.

The following is an excerpt from the Wikipedia page on McCarthyism with only the bold words changed for context:

Pelosism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason, especially when related to conservatives, without any proper regard for evidence. The term refers to U.S. representative Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Conservative Scare, lasting from the late 2010s through the 2020s. It was characterized by heightened political repression and a campaign spreading fear of conservative influence on American institutions and of espionage by Russian agents.

The very real possibility exists of this future Wikipedia entry for, to an objective observer, the parallels between the dark period in American history known as McCarthyism and what is happening today in the United States are strong. Lest the reader believe these parallels to be overstated, let us start with the easy stuff. To this end, Wikipedia also provides this summary of McCarthyism in popular culture:

Since the time of McCarthy, the word McCarthyism has entered American speech as a general term for a variety of practices: aggressively questioning a person’s patriotism, making poorly supported accusations, using accusations of disloyalty to pressure a person to adhere to conformist politics or to discredit an opponent, subverting civil and political rights in the name of national security, and the use of demagoguery are all often referred to as McCarthyism.

Aggressively questioning a person’s patriotism. There can be little doubt that individuals such as Trump, Michael Flynn, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and others have had their patriotism “aggressively questioned”.

Making poorly supported accusations. Again, see above. The entire Russian collusion hoax/scandal was significantly driven off of allegations in the Steele dossier, that were subsequently largely discredited and proven untrue by the Mueller report. The final finding of the Mueller report was that it “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Thus, one can only conclude that such accusations were, in fact, poorly supported. The same is true regarding the first impeachment of Trump. The impeachment failed in the Senate and thus one can only objectively conclude that the accusations there were also poorly supported. With the second impeachment of Trump, there is no question that the allegations are poorly supported. There were no hearings, witnesses or testimony presented and the impeachment was so rushed that crucial facts, such as John Sullivan; a liberal activist, purposefully inciting violence, were not fully known.

Using accusations of disloyalty to pressure a person to adhere to conformist politics or to discredit an opponent. See above.

Subverting civil and political rights in the name of national security. Again, referring to the Russia collusion hoax/scandal, there are numerous instances where the FISA court was lied to in order to justify surveillance of an American citizen. This was done in the name of national security to subvert civil rights. The reader can get more information on just one of the instances at CNN.

The use of demagoguery. The last four years regardless of whose side you are on. Check.

Given all of the above, it is easy, eeeeeeeeeeasy, to demonstrate how recent events smack of McCarthyism. But, if we have said it once, we have said it a thousand times, this isn’t the obvious observer, this is The Objective Observer. Simply calling out obvious McCarthyistic practices is not enough. Not nearly enough. Oh no, we are here to demonstrate how McCarthyism is being reborn within the United States of America as something new and equally terrifying.

You see, the McCarthy era was defined by a number of elements including:

• Targeted a specific political point of view
• Weaponized the FBI
• Initial compliance of the media
• Blacklists
• The HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities)

Let’s do the list.

Targeted a specific political point of view. McCarthyism targeted the extreme left of political opinion in the United States at the time, communists, but ended up persecuting a wide swath of liberal, left-leaning individuals and organizations. Guilt by association. We see this today. Today’s Pelosism targets far right groups, such as Proud Boys and other white supremacists, yet clumps all conservatives together under this characterization. Don Lemon, and others, have made this specific characterization of lumping all conservatives as Nazi’s and Klansmen. Never mind that Democrats are on the same side of the political spectrum as violent factions such as Antifa and environmental terrorist organizations, not to mention individuals such as the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and mass murderers Charles Manson and Jim Jones.

Oh, side note, never mind that classifying true, bona fide German Nazi’s as left or right is problematic at best. True German Nazi’s supported American left ideals such as liberalized abortion, state controlled health care and the elimination of individual gun ownership. In addition, Nazism opposed big business, supported state control of education and was fanatically environmentalist. State this platform at any Democratic convention and you’d likely get wide support. The Nazi’s were the Nazi’s. As historian Richard J. Evans in The Coming of the Third Reich states:

The “National Socialists” wanted to unite the two political camps of left and right into which, they argued, the Jews had manipulated the German nation. The basis for this was to be the idea of race.

It is wrong and intellectually dishonest to lump anyone together based upon the extremes. And Mr. Lemon ought to have better sense and at least attempt to be smarter than an amoeba by doing a bit of research. What we here at The Objective Observer are most concerned about is being lumped in with anyone as moronic as Don Lemon on the amoeba/Homosapian intellectual spectrum.

OK, back on track, the McCarthy era weaponized the FBI through burglaries, opening mail, and illegal wiretaps as well through “dirty tricks” such as anonymous letters, leaking information to the press, calling for IRS audits, and the like. Again, this one is easy. The FBI under James Comey was obviously weaponized. Some of the FISA warrants obtained were invalid or possibly illegal (still waiting on that Durham report). And leaking information to the press? Oh boy, we don’t have the time except to point out that Comey did that himself, which is what led to the Mueller investigation!

Initial compliance of the media. The media doesn’t like to talk about its complicity in fanning the flames of communist panic and McCarthyism, but, without question, the media was a crucial component in hyping up the threat from communism in America, which led to McCarthyism. The media only wised up once they became targets of this communist hysteria. Just as then, we see this today with mainstream media outlets hyping up the threat from fringe right-wing elements. Perhaps they will wise up again once Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes good on her desire to “rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.” Psst! CNN, MSNBC, etc. Heads up, they’re coming for you too…

Blacklists. Perhaps nothing more defines McCarthyism than the use of informal “blacklists”. Most famous of these was the Hollywood blacklist that was used to deny employment to actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other American entertainment professionals. Odd that today Hollywood tends to blame the government for this blacklist while it was actually the entertainment industry itself that created and used the blacklist, not the government. Tis truly strange how revisionist history works. In any case, these informal blacklists were used to vilify and destroy the lives of thousands of Americans on the mere suspicion that someone held communist sympathies. And here we go again with the blacklists. Big Tech now has their own blacklist of conservatives. Wall Street has their blacklist. Even the media has their blacklist of conservative news organizations and journalists. To an objective observer, blacklists, whether McCarthyistic or Pelosiistic are wrong.

The HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities). Setting aside the blatant travesty that is the formation of it’s acronym, and that is no small thing considering it is a complete and utter abomination of acronymic convention; but setting that aside, the HUAC was a congressional committees setup for uncovering Communist subversion. Basically, think of it as anyone and everyone could be called to appear before the HUAC in order to defend their “loyalty” to America. Failure to appear, or an unfavorable “ruling”, tended to land you on an industry blacklist. We aren’t quite there…yet. However, as the Wall Street Journal has reported, Nancy Pelosi has expressed a predilection to re-instituting something akin to the HUAC in the past. And there have been calls for congressional committees to investigate certain Republicans in the wake of the Capitol Hill riot which disturbingly smack of a “prove your loyalty” type of affair.

At the end of the day, an objective observer would conclude that we are dangerously close to a rebirth of McCarthyism, a new era where instead of communists, conservatives are widely targeted as un-American and falsely accused of being traitorous and subversive on the basis of little or no evidence. All of the elements are there as in the 1940’s and 1950’s. There is an identified “enemy” of America, conservatives. The FBI has been weaponized against them. The media is complicit of the narrative and helping to stoke the flames of hysteria. We have the blacklists. Nancy Pelosi simply needs to take the next step of congressional committees to investigate the “loyalty” of conservative voices to earn her future, eternal infamy with a Wikipedia page titled simply, Pelosism.

So…this one is probably going to sound kind of bad. Just a heads up. Not trying to incite violence, insurrection or sedition or anything, just kind of following the logic through to a conclusion. So, you have been warned. You are almost certainly going to hate, hate, hate this article.

There has been a lot of talk about the violence at the Capitol lately. Lots and lots of media pundits chiming in with entirely predictable and boring analysis and calls for peace and unity and such. That’s all great. And along with this is pretty much universal condemnation of the violence that occurred at the Capitol. But it’s these condemnations of the violence, or more specifically, how those condemnations are being phrased that…well…that presents kind of a problem quite honestly, at least for any objective observer.

To point, a lot of commentators have expressly stated that the violence at the Capitol was “political violence” and that political violence is always wrong and is, and here it comes, “un-American“. So this is all fine and everything except where you say that political violence is un-American. Because, you know, if you really think about it, political violence is actually, well, in a way political violence is actually kind of the essence of America. OK, OK, that sounds really bad but it’s kind of hard to argue that the United States of America of today wouldn’t even exist without political violence.

See, we told you that you were going to hate this one. So, again, this is absolutely NOT a call to violence, insurrection and/or sedition. This is more about…well…it’s really… Honestly, we have no idea where we are going with this but here we go.

You see, it would be hard to characterize the founding of the United States of America as anything BUT political violence. To quote Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson

Now, let’s face it, we call this the Declaration of Independence but this is basically a Declaration of War against Great Britain. At least the British thought so. There was this thing called the American Revolutionary War after all. So, the founding of America is actually one of political violence in the form of war against the current, existing government of the time, by what can only be characterized from the British point of view as domestic terrorists.

Granted, that’s harsh and one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and all that. But facts are facts. America was founded on the very principle of political violence. We here in the states kind of wash over this fact and portray it in a very positive and patriotic light but, after all, the victor gets to write the history. Facts are still facts, however. America would not exist if it had not violently overthrown the British government in the colonies. And this violence was predicated upon political differences between the colonists and the government of Great Britain.

So, to say that political violence is un-American is, well, it’s kind of BS quite honestly. One could say that political violence is actually the very essence of being an American. Again, that sounds really bad when you say it that way but not sure it can be helped. As further proof, almost 100 years later we; well, we did it again.

You see, almost 100 years after America was founded through the use of political violence there was what? That’s right, the American Civil War. You see, it’s hard to characterize this as anything other than political violence or at the very least, politics that led to violence which is, well, it’s the same thing really.

Yes, the Confederate states initiated the violence when cadets at the Citadel fired on Fort Sumter but this didn’t have to end up in a war. The simple truth is that the North could have withdrawn troops from Southern lands, recognized the Confederate States of America and not gone to war. But, instead political violence in the guise of “preserving the Union” was chosen.

Again, we Americans tend to gloss over this point. Yay, the good guys won, slavery bad and all that. But, it was still a politically violent struggle, a war born from differing political views. If political violence had not been chosen, the United States of America as it exists today would not be here.

OK, so what is the point of this? Well, there is no point really. Too bad for you thinking everything has to have a point to it. Honestly, this article has been a really tough one to write. It’s just one of those things when you hear something repeated over and over in the media, “political violence is un-American” and you step back and think, “You know, that’s kind of wrong really. People sure do have a short memory.”. Or, people are just stupid and don’t know their history. Your choice.

One last thing, and we are going to state for a third time that the political violence that was seen in the Capitol was wrong and that this is absolutely not a call for violence, insurrection or sedition or anything close to it. But, don’t we as Americans reserve the right to resort to political violence when we see something despotic or evil in the world? We were founded that way, preserved the Union that way and this doesn’t even even mention all the wars America has fought over the years over what are, ostensibly, political disagreements. At the end of the day, an objective observer has to cry foul on the statement that political violence is un-American. It is, in point of fact, kind of what defines America. If one steps back and looks at the matter objectively, one can only reach the conclusion that political violence is the American Way.

Yeah, this one is going to get us banned.

So, almost without question, the House of Representatives is going to vote to impeach President Trump a second time. The arguments for and against are, well, they are all stupid quite frankly. To an objective observer, everybody is an idiot here.

The Democrats’ main argument for impeachment seems to be that Trump bitched about the election result and that this then caused the violence at the Capitol. Problem here is that there is a clear causality gap. Complaining about an election result is not incitement of violence. So, that’s a dumb argument.

On the other hand, the Republicans are calling for unity and arguing that impeachment will further divide an already divided nation. This is also a stupid argument. With this crop of Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi, you could argue that the sky is blue and it wouldn’t do you a damn bit of good. A cry for unity? As if.

What Republicans should be doing is reminding everyone of the history of contested elections in this country. Because it is a long one. And, in point of fact, if we were to compare this contested election to other contested elections in the United States, it’s actually pretty tame overall. Let’s do the list.

1800. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Burr both get 83 electoral votes. Alexander Hamilton convinces the House of Representatives to elect Jefferson. Do you think Burr might have thought the presidency was stolen from him? Well, Burr shot and killed Hamilton in a duel so you do the math on that one.

1824. Talk about stolen. Andrew Jackson wins the popular vote and the most electoral votes but not a majority. John Adams comes in second in both. House of Representatives has to decide. House Speaker Henry Clay convinces the House to elect Adams as President after a month of literal back room negotiations. Then, Adams turns around and has Clay be his Secretary of State. Think Jackson was enraged? You bet. He referred to his “loss” as a “corrupt bargain”.

1860. Abraham Lincoln only won 40% of the popular vote but became President. Weeks later, the American Civil War. Enough said.

1876. Another pretty much outright stolen election. Samuel Tilden wins in both the popular vote and the electoral college vote but is one vote shy of a majority. One. Rutherford B. Hayes is second. Three states were too close to call and each party was accusing the other of fraud. Hmm, sounds familiar. Bizarrely, a 15 member panel is formed to decide the election comprised of seven Republicans, seven Democrats and one Independent. The Independent vote swings to Rutherford B. Hayes so he becomes President. The Democrats in the Senate actually threatened to block the official electoral count by filibuster. Again, sound familiar here folks? Anyway, the Democrats didn’t filibuster because of more literal back room negotiations.

1912. Tell you what, we won’t even count this one even though Woodrow Wilson won the white house with far less than 50% of the vote in many states. You can look this one up on your own.

1948. Remember the famous Chicago Daily Tribune headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”? Yeah, that was this one.

2000. OK, those last two are a bit lame but how Gore and W.? We all remember the hanging chads right? This one went on five weeks before the Supreme Court had to step in. No question that Gore and Democrats cried foul since Gore had won the popular vote by over 500,000. In fact, this is where the phrase “full and accurate count“ came from:

“Let me repeat the essence of our proposal here today: seven days, starting tomorrow, for a full and accurate count of all the votes.” – Al Gore

To be clear, people were still calling this a stolen election and a coup d’état TEN YEARS LATER!!

2016. Hillary vs. Trump. OK, we definitely all remember this one. Four years of Hillary and Democrats claiming that the election was stolen as the result of Russian collusion no less. There was an independent counsel. Then when that didn’t work the Democrats impeached President Trump. Any of this ringing a bell here? Then, after that didn’t work there was like an entire year of rioting in the streets, like; literally, just last year. People were killed in those riots if memory serves. So is the incessant complaining about the election and the rioting causally linked? Are those two things related? Apparently, according the Democrats they should be? An objective observer would say no.

So, the takeaway here is that there has been a long history of contested and “stolen” Presidential elections in this country. No, seriously, 100% bona fide stolen elections. And we didn’t even cover 1960 where it there is actual, solid evidence that voter fraud in Illinois, cough; Chicago, stole the election from Nixon. Given the history, is it any surprise then that we might have claims of voter fraud and a stolen election this last go around? Shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone quite frankly.

Yet here we are impeaching a President over what amounts to bitching about the results of an election. But, as the history of Presidential elections shows, complaining about an election result is not incitement of violence. Unless you are Burr and you kill a guy over it. So…OK…there’s that one. Oh, and also, you know, that one that caused an all out Civil War. That one. So yeah, some rioting in Washington D.C. is actually pretty tame in comparison. Perspective people.

There’s a version of this that ends quite differently. One in which the country truly comes together. It goes something like this:

Republicans: “Hey, given the violence at the Capitol we are all reminded that what is important is the country as a whole. We need to come together, both Democrats and Republicans to heal this country and make sure that future elections are free from even the hint of election fraud so that this kind of thing never happens again. And, yes, we Republicans probably went a bit too far bitching and moaning about the Presidential election results, that’s on us.”

Democrats: “Hey, don’t feel too bad, we spent the last four years bitching and moaning about the election results in addition to doing everything in our power to undermine your guy. We agree that the country needs to heal and we are fully on board that elections, as Al Gore says, need to be fair and accurate. Let’s do everything in our power to make sure this never happens again.”

But nope. Impeachment. More division. Nobody focused on the issues of free and fair elections. And let’s be honest, there were issues in this election. Not saying “wide spread voter fraud”, but any objective observer would definitely say that there were some issues that need addressed.

Final word, what a missed opportunity for Biden quite honestly. Biden could have actually come across as a true leader and put his money where his mouth was during the campaign of being a President for all the people, not just some of the people by simply telling Nancy Pelosi to knock it off with the whole impeachment thing. Instead, he showed that he is just as partisan and divisive as everyone else. And that’s a shame.

Recent events, specifically the violence on Capitol Hill, have further inflamed political debate within the United States and thus we here at The Objective Observer feel that it is necessary that everyone take a step back and take a long, objective look at the situation. Only then can we all reach a proper conclusion and resolution. After a long, thoughtful retrospective, we can only conclude that to any objective observer, Trump is most certainly the Devil incarnate while any and all Democrats should likely be beautified by the Pope and given sainthood. The facts are irrefutable. For example:

On January 6th, 2021, President Trump spoke to at a rally in Washington DC and said the following:

“Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you we’re going to walk down… to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” – Donald Trump

Now, obviously, to any objective observer this is a clear call towards violence and insurrection. It’s not even close. But, if further evidence is required, Trump then fanned the flames of hatred and anger by stating:

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your votes heard today.” – Donald Trump

Again, clearly inciting violence. Peacefully? Patriotically? Clearly Trump wants his supporters to be violent and treasonous. It’s obvious. But then, as if Trump’s calls for vicious assaults on democracy were not enough, Trump later doubled down on the violence by releasing the statement:

“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” – Donald Trump

Clearly Trump is demanding that his supporters kill and harm any and all Capitol Police and other law enforcement that get in their way. He even goes so far as to call out the enemies of his supporters by name!

Thus, given the evidence cited above, any truly objective observer can only conclude that Trump must be impeached for inciting insurrection and sedition against the United States of America.

Now, let’s contrast this with words from liberals and Democrats over the last four years that, if looked at dispassionately and objectively, obviously promote peace, respect, order and lawful actions only. For example, Maxine Waters clearly promotes those values when she said:

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” – Maxine Waters

Later, Maxine Waters doubled-down on this obvious message of peace and harmony on MSNBC where she further stated:

“The people are going to turn on them. They’re going to protest. They’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the President, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.’” – Maxine Waters

Clearly with such carefully chosen words such as “harass“, Maxine Waters is promoting peaceful and lawful dissent. Again, this is obvious and doesn’t really need to be stated, but we here at The Objective Observer do like to make things as clear as possible to our readers.

Nancy Pelosi has also been at the forefront of promoting peaceful, lawful actions as well as choosing her rhetoric to not be inciteful or inflammatory in any way whatsoever.

During the Portland riots, Trump’s U.S Customers and Border Patrol (CBP) office released the following intolerant and clearly antagonistic statement:

“While the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) respects every American’s right to protest peacefully, violence and civil unrest will not be tolerated.”

Again, it shouldn’t be necessary to point out but clearly this statement is intolerant, it is right there in the text “will not be tolerated” and clearly it is antagonistic when it mentions words like “violence and civil unrest“.

However, Nancy Pelosi handled the affair with great statesmanship and an attempt to tone down the inflammatory rhetoric of the Trump administration, simply stating:

“Unidentified stormtroopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti.” – Nancy Pelosi

She further clarified her meaning by stating:

“First Amendment speech should never be met with one-sided violence from federal agents acting as Trump’s secret police” – Nancy Pelosi

Clearly, effectively calling the CPB Nazi’s is an attempt to bring the rhetoric back down to a tolerable level. Similarly, Pelosi should be lauded for her stance against mob violence such as when she spoke these words about statues being toppled during riots in various cities:

“I don’t care that much about statues. People will do what they do” – Nancy Pelosi

“I do think that from a safety standpoint, it would be a good idea to have it taken down if the community doesn’t want it. I don’t know that it has to be a commission.” – Nancy Pelosi

Again, the clear meaning of these words obviously cannot be construed as an endorsement of mob violence, it is exactly the opposite. Clearly Nancy Pelosi only has the safety of the mob as top of mind and thus this is clearly a statement of peace, happiness and safety for all of America.

Chuck Schumer has also clearly promoted peace and unity in stepping up to defended the institutions of the United States. To point, on the topic of the Supreme Court of the United States, Chuck Schumer said:

“I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” – Chuck Schumer

Unlike Trump’s words that were specifically and obviously inciting violence, Mr. Schumer here takes great pains to ensure that his words could never possibly be misconstrued towards promoting violence and instead only benevolence.

But Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are not the only people that have been promoting peace, harmony and the American way. Other examples include:

“Get up in the face of some congresspeople.” – Cory Booker

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” – Hillary Rodham Clinton

“When they go low, we kick them. That’s what this Democratic Party’s about.” – Eric Holder

“What we’ve got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box, and now there’s the momentum to be able to do this.” – Tim Kaine

Not to be outdone, the mainstream media has also backed Democrat cries for peace, unity and tranquility:

“New details today on the incident that left Senator Rand Paul with six broken ribs – this might be one of my favorite stories.” -Kaisie Hunt (MSNBC reporter)

“I told Jeb Bush after the debate that I thought he should have punched [Trump]in the face.” -Nicolle Wallace

“How do you resist the temptation to run up and wring [Sarah Huckabee Sanders’] neck?” -Nicolle Wallace

And finally, Hollywood must also be lauded with their mature and intelligent response to a Trump presidency such as those reported in Breitbart News, among others:

• Kathy Griffin ‘Beheads’ Trump in Graphic Photo
• Madonna – “I’ve thought a lot about blowing up the White House.”
• Snoop Dogg “Shoots” Trump in the Head in Music Video
• Robert De Niro: “I’d Like to Punch Him in the Face”
• Joss Whedon: “I Want a Rhino to [F—] Paul Ryan to Death”
• Shakespeare in the Park Stabs ‘Trump’ to Death in Performance of ‘Julius Caesar
• David Simon: “Pick Up a G*ddamn Brick” if Trump Fires Robert Mueller
• Mickey Rourke Threatens to Beat Trump with Baseball Bat: “He Can Suck My F’cking D’ck”
• Actress Lea DeLaria Threatens to ‘Take Out’ Republicans and Independents with Baseball Bat after Trump Win
• Rapper YG Threatens Trump with “[F—] Donald Trump” Song
• Marilyn Manson Kills ‘Trump’ in Music Video
• Rapper Everlast Warns Trump: “I Will Punch You in Your F*cking Face”
• Larry Wilmore Jokes About Suffocating Trump with ‘Pillow They Used to Kill Scalia’
• Stephen Colbert’s Late Show Puts Stephen Miller’s Head on a Spike
• Sarah Silverman Suggests Military Could Help Overthrow Trump
• SNL Pete Davidson mocking veteran David Crenshaw who lost an eye during combat: “You may be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate for Texas and not a hit man in a porno movie”
• “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president? I want to clarify, I am not an actor. I lie for a living. However, it has been a while and maybe it is time.” -Johnny Depp

So, with all of these examples, we can clearly see the stark difference between Trump’s immature, hateful and violent statements and the mature, loving and peaceful statements made by Democrats, the media and Hollywood. Well, we can see it because we are objective in all things. If you cannot see it, then perhaps you need to spend a long time looking into a mirror and contemplating what you see. For what looks back at you through the looking glass is the mirror opposite of yourself and only through deep introspection can you truly understand how your opposition perceives your image and actions.

And once you truly understand your opponent, then you will finally be able to “create a crowd and absolutely harass them, fight in the streets, kick them, punch in the face, wring necks”. In other words, beat them down, step on their necks and shoot them in the head, extinguishing their thoughts, opinions and all opposition forever. Figuratively speaking of course. Ho ho, ha ha, obviously nothing just stated could possibly be misconstrued towards inciting violence, it’s all just coded speech that intelligent people understand even if the deplorable masses do not.

First, we need to make clear that violence is never the answer. And this article is in no way meant or intended to be taken as justification for the violence that occurred in Washington DC today, January 6th, 2021. But, let’s all be honest for a moment…

What did you expect?

The riot that happened at the Capitol today was not “weeks in the making” as some have commented. It is perhaps natural in times of crisis to seek simple answers, that the riots were simply about a contested election, that they were simply “Trumps fault”. Ah, if life was only so simple. No, the reality is that life is complex and the Capitol riot was really four years in the making. For the last four years the left and the media have done everything in their power to delegitimize a legitimately elected sitting President through leaks, misleading stories and flat-out fabrication.

Glossing over the whole Russian hoax/scandal/whatever that was, Trump has been called a Nazi and a racist. It has been widely reported that Trump hates women, is corrupt, hates immigrants, hates clean air and water, hates democracy, loves dictatorships and on and on and on. It might be stated with some confidence that no United States President or perhaps even no American has ever been more vilified than Donald Trump. Maybe Benedict Arnold. Is it any surprise then that the tens of millions of Trump supporters in the United States are pissed after four grueling years of such drivel?

What did you expect?

Not being content to simply vilify Trump, Trump’s supports have been viciously attacked and outright demonized for four long years as “deplorables”, racists, Nazi’s, ignorant, poor and again, on and on and on. Trump supporters have been denied meals in restaurants and generally ostracized by many, including the main stream media. Don Lemon on CNN was very clear in his opinion that Trump supporters should not be respected for their views. And don’t forget all of the times conservatives have been shouted down on campuses across the country. The list of examples is far too long for a mere mortal blog post to include. But can anyone deny the vitriol that has taken place against Americans by other Americans? Is it any wonder then that the tens of millions of Trump supporters are pissed after four years of such venom?

What did you expect?

For four years, the left and the media, which; admittedly, is very much redundant, have taken every opportunity to devolve politics and debate in the country, to vilify and impeach the President, insult Americans that identify as Republicans, deny conservatives services, protest, riot, shout down legitimate debate, employ cancel culture and; well, just be downright complete and utter assholes about things. Is it any wonder then that this devolution of political discourse led to actual violence in the Capitol? It was the left that set the new standard for political “discourse” in the United States. And, spoiler alert, it looked very much like what happened in the Capitol today.

What did you expect?

This is not an attempt to justify bad behavior with bad behavior. This is simply pointing out that actions have consequences. When you go to the lengths that have been gone to in order to vilify the opposing side, when you ramp up the political venom, when you attack the rank and file, when you make it acceptable to treat opponents as less than human, when you make it acceptable to violently protest and riot in the streets, when you redefine and set the new normal of what is acceptable behavior in the name of politics so radically…is it any surprise when you reap what you have sown? The left has done all of these things with extreme and vicious hyperbole. Seriously…

What did you expect?

Not to throw gas on the proverbial fire of political debate in the United States this year, but facts are facts. If one objectively looks at the facts, the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that Democrats are American traitors. To understand why this is the only reasonable conclusion to an objective observer, it is necessary to understand today’s voting patterns as well as the founding and history of the United States of America.

When considering current voting patterns, it is certainly no secret that large urban areas tend to skew towards Democrats while rural areas tend to skew Republican. There is evidence for this dating back for decades but is perhaps best demonstrated by the 2016 election map by county. In Ohio, for example, one can neatly see the counties represented by major population centers, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and Youngstown. The same is true in nearly every other state. The question is, why?

Well, if one thinks about that question a bit it is perhaps not surprising in the least. Within rural locations, people look out their windows and see green grass, trees and blue skies. Those people might reasonably conclude that the environment is in good shape. In addition, within rural settings, sure there might be families that are richer or poorer but the sight of a true homeless person is rare. Finally, rural settings really only have minimal government facilities and services. In fact, many households in rural locations might only have a local county government that only provides minimal governmental services like plowing and patching roads and a fire station. Within rural America, self-reliance is the norm.

The opposite is true for urban population centers. Concrete and smog does not translate to a healthy environment. Urban centers include individuals making six figure salaries or more along with obvious homelessness. The income disparity is on stark display on a daily basis. Finally, people living in urban settings are much more dependent on the government for basic needs such as water, transportation (subways, etc.) and such things as museums, parks and libraries. Police and fire municipal services are also much more obvious. In short, urban America is far more dependent upon the government. Is it any wonder then that these two perspectives of living in the United States are diametrically opposed politically when their daily perceptions of the world are 180 degrees opposite one another? Obviously, this divide should not be a surprise to anyone.

But why is any of this germane to whether or not Democrats are traitors to America? Well, to understand this, we need to dial the clock back to the founding of the United States of America and understand what America looked like in the mid to late 1700’s. Consider that in 1775, the four most populous cities in the American colonies were Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Charleston with respective populations of 40,000, 25,000, 16,000 and 12,000. The remainder of the approximately 2.4 million people lived in small towns and on farms scattered throughout the 13 colonies. To put this in perspective, the most populous areas of America had a population density of just over 40 people per square mile. Today, the Boston-Washington corridor has over 930 people per square mile. That’s over 23 times as dense. As a whole today the average population density in the United States is 91 people per square mile. What this all means is that in the late 1700’s; at the founding of America, that America looked far more like today’s rural America than today’s urban America.

So if America at the founding of the nation looked much more like rural America today then it is reasonable to conclude that the individuals at that time had attitudes and views that were more similar to the attitudes and views of today’s rural folks versus those living in today’s large urban areas of sprawl. And certainly this is the case. The government of Great Britain was months of ocean travel away. The colonists had to be independent and largely self-reliant from Great Britain and Great Britain provided few real governmental services other than a military presence for security.

But, we must also remember that when fighting broke out on April 19th, 1775, there were those individuals living in America that supported the big government of Great Britain and fervently disagreed with American patriots. These are the individuals “who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety” and were called Tories. Tories were fans of big government and their views were 180 degrees opposite of the views of the American patriots. In short, they were traitors to the American revolutionary cause.

So then, why are Democrats traitors? It’s obvious. American patriots at the founding this country reflected the views and attitudes of rural America today and built those principles into the United States Constitution. The people 180 degrees opposed to those patriots were the traitors to the American revolution, the Tories. The people 180 degrees opposed to the views and attitudes of today’s rural Americans are clearly the Democrats living within the urban sprawl of large cities. Rural Americans = Patriots/Republicans. Urban Americans = Tories/Democrats. So, yes, it can be said without a doubt that Democrats are traitors to America as in the ideals, views and attitudes upon which America was founded and this further explains their hatred for the Constitution as the Constitution reflects the independent, self-reliant attitudes of rural America and not the “big government is the answer to all things” attitude of traitorous Tories.

And thus, if the current results of the 2020 election stand and Democrats gain control of the Senate, we are dangerously close to losing the Revolutionary War nearly 250 after it started. We are dangerously close to losing the ideals and principles upon which the United States was founded. The Tories, the traitors to America, will have finally won.