Lest you are feeling too comfortable and secure under current circumstances, I offer this from this morning’s reading from the autobiography by Lech Walesa:

When I was born at half past three on the morning of September 29, 1943, my father Boleslaw was in a Nazi concentration camp. His arrest had come without any waring for his family, when I was still in my mother Felicja’s womb. One dark night, policemen on horseback arrived, searched our home, found something incriminating, and took my father away with them. Later they came back to do another search and stole my mother’s watches and rings. My mother was in despair: they had taken her wedding ring. She told me later that she was sure it meant that her husband would never return, that her married life was over.

The men arrested were first detained at Chalin, in a building that after the war was turned into a school I later attended. I remember seeing blood still staining the walls from the savage beatings the Nazis had inflicted. Afterward, my father was sent to the camp at Mlyniec. That winter the prisoners lay on the ground in unheated cells; their hair froze while they slept and stuck to the frost-covered walls; worn down by hunger and illness, they soon began dying. My mother tried every means possible to smuggle food in for my father, and sometimes she succeeded. She would slip out of the house in the middle of the night and take secret paths through the forest, so as not to be spotted by the Germans. As long as my father was in a work camp, some contact was possible. Mama went through the forest, weeping, praying that her trip wouldn’t be in vain.

My family had always been very close. My father’s brother was killed during World War I. One day he went off to fight and he never came back. We don’t even know where he is buried. Grandmother Walesa, born Glonek, was a very pious woman, and for the rest of her life she continued to pray for her son’s return. She was never able to accept his death. He had been in the cavalry, and sometimes she ran out to the road, convinced, she’d heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats.

The people of our village hated the Nazis, who had destroyed heir world. Under the occupation, two Germans lived in Popowo: Krepeic and Broch. Two Polish families, the Bialoskorskis and the Uminskis, were thrown out of their homes so that Krepiec and Broch could move in. Krepiec and Broch were themselves hostile to their Polish neighbors, but the daughter of one of them fell in love with a Polish farmhand who had snatched her from the jaws of death when she got herself caught between the gears of a combine. Love conquered all, and everyone in the village knew about it – and benefited from it. The young woman always warned the people when the Nazis were about to come to the village.

It was commonly understood that slaughtering a pig for food, like taking food to the partisans, was very dangerous. All meat belonged to the occupiers. Apparently, before he was arrested, my father had tried to slaughter a pig. He stunned the animal, but didn’t stick it with enough force, so the pig came to, escaped, and trotted off into the woods covered in blood. The police followed its tracks to our house, and things looked black. But thanks to some miracle, possibly in the form of a bribe, the whole business was hushed up. The pig, however, was confiscated.

Wehmacht deserters turned up regularly in the vicinity of the village, and I know that our family, among others, hid them. They sometimes took shelter in the stables, and children brought them soup in pails so small they looked like toys. The partisans used the forest not far from the village of Brudzenio as their hideout, and the children took food to them, too, sometimes covering a distance of nearly three miles.

After the war, corpses were discovered in Brudzenio (where today there is a cross over a mass grave), It was there that the Nazis executed people, especially the young men, from the surrounding villages. The grisly chore of exhuming the bodies was performed by those Germans who had failed to get away and were still living in the neighborhood. They were ordered to dig up the earth with their bare hands, pull out the corpses, wash them, and then line them up neatly. When they had finished, the Poles gathered to identify their loved ones. In agonies of grief they threw themselves on the Germans and beat them, until an officer forced them to stop and to stand aside. What they saw overwhelmed them all. Some of the disinterred bodies had their hands over their mouths, as though trying to keep out the dirt. They had probably been buried alive.

My father was lucky enough to die at home. After the war he returned to Popowo, but lived only another two months before succumbing to exhaustion and illness. … – Pages 129-131

Thankfully, nothing even remotely like this could ever happen here.

(SIDENOTE: I humbly suggest that this is a good companion piece to something I posted five years ago: Horse Tales from the Abyss. The meat of that older post is taken from some “fiction” written by Victor Serge. Like Walesa, Serge knows very well much of what he translates to us.)

I like to announce them here first, I’m sentimental like that.

I’m delighted to announce that my 57^th audiobook narration, The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War by J. L. Bell, is now available on Audible.com.

It’s commonly taught that the Redcoats marched into Concord to capture John Hancock, John Adams, and other patriots, and this led to the battle that started the war. But General Gage’s orders to his troops didn’t say anything about capturing people on the mission. Some wise-ass Sons of Liberty had stolen four brass cannon right out from under his nose, from a guarded building, by cutting into a side door while the Brits were making noise outside during the changing of the guard. Gage was determined to get those cannon back before someone told London about the incident and embarrassed him.

The Patriots were serious, determined men, but they were experts at playing games with the Redcoats to keep them off balance. Military supplies and provisions were being stockpiled for the coming war and hidden in all sorts of interesting ways. This book tells stories about ordinary farmers and mechanics, who were the driving force behind the beginning of the war. Men like Adams and Hancock influenced and guided, but the war would not have happened if ordinary men and women hadn’t felt that they were being denied their rights, and were determined to do something about it.

I would be happy to send a coupon code for a free download to anyone who is interested.  Send me an email at dad@pratt-hobbies.com and I’ll send you a promo code. You don’t have to be an Audible subscriber to get the free copy, but you do have to use their free app to listen to the book. If you decide to subscribe to Audible and pick this book as your free introductory title, please do it through this link (https://www.audible.com/pd/B096BNJP2N/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWU-BK-ACX0-261618&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_261618_pd_us)  and the author and I will get credit for your membership. If you are interested in any of my other Audible titles, let me know; I still have review promo codes for most of them and will be happy to share them.

My son Brian graduated from ITT Tech with an Electrical Engineering degree, for which he and I each assumed about $20K in student loans. I see on NRO this morning that this debt will be forgiven. Even though I have a reason to be pleased, I want to point out that this is not the same as other student debt.

Debt related to ITT Tech partakes of fraud.

I am immensely proud of Brian. We used to team teach NRA Pistol Safety classes, and I know he is an excellent instructor. The biggest reason I’m proud of him is that he has gotten through some incredibly bad luck without turning bitter.

Brian decided to become a gunsmith, so we did some research and found that there were only four colleges that offered a degree in gunsmithing at the time. The oldest and most respected was at Lasson College in Susanville, CA, up in the north of the state. So that’s where he went, and he was six months from graduating when California passed new gun control laws that shut down the program.

He came back home to Virginia and decided to go for a two-year EE degree at ITT Tech. Straight As, even in calculus, which surprised him more than us (kid has a high IQ). So when they offered to extend him to a four-year degree (with loans) he took them up on it. In his last term, ITT Tech lost their accreditation, and they didn’t tell Brian or their other students. He passed his final (only one B all four years), and the next day they announced that they would close the company. They mailed him a diploma. When he tried to use it to get a job he was informed that since the degree was from ITT Tech it didn’t count, and he could either go to a real school for a few years or take a job as something less than an electrical engineer.

And here’s something for you Starbucks-haters to consider. Brian worked as a barista through high school and almost all the years of college. He moved to Seattle and went to work at their factory, and now runs a production line. Starbucks has been his only good luck career-wise.

Back to ITT Tech. Clearly he got a raw deal; not as raw as hundreds of other ITT Tech students who thought they were going to be RNs, but plenty raw enough. This wasn’t just the student loan sales pitch. This was clearly fraud, and a class-action suit was instigated. We have been hoping for the best, and I think we can expect some good news when all this is finalized.

I wanted to tell the story so we could point out that not all the student loan forgiveness is gender-study majors freeloading off taxpayers. Thanks for listening to my Fathers’ Day bragging. Don’t get me started about my daughter unless you want to hear more.

It just so happens that I was commissioned to paint a picture of Jack Nicklaus for the Canterbury Golf Club in Beachwood, Ohio. It was there in 1973 that Nicklaus won the PGA Championship, giving him his record-setting 14th major title, surpassing Bobby Jones. He later went on to win four more major tournaments, a record that still stands.

The painting was based on a famous photo taken at the tournament. After finishing one of the holes, Nicklaus’ four-year-old son Gary (now a professional golfer), having been cajoled by his mischievous older brother Jack Jr., crawled under the security ropes and ran out onto the green to greet his father. Jack hoisted him into his arms and Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper photographer Ray Matjasic snapped a black and white photo.  Jack Nicklaus is quoted as saying that it is his favorite photo.

I can make up colors from black and white images if I have to, especially skin tones, but instead I scoured the Internet and found color photos taken of Jack and his son Gary at that very tournament, possibly the same day that the famous photo was snapped. The clothing on both of them matched the black and white photo perfectly. So this is historically accurate, not that it matters much. The Nicklaus Foundation also helped with some critical details.  I would post the photo here but there might be some copyright issues.  You can find it online.

Canterbury appropriately chose today, Father’s Day, for the unveiling of the painting to its members. They have a whole room dedicated to Jack Nicklaus, as well as rooms dedicated to four other famous golfers. This is the third portrait painting I have done for them (so far). They tried to get Jack to fly in for the ceremony, but the trip from Florida to the Cleveland area proved to be too burdensome. Instead, he will be participating either through Zoom or sending a video message. I’m not sure of the details. The unveiling is at 3:00 PM Eastern time, so if you don’t hear from me or my wife @caryn around then, you will know why.

Here’s a sneak peek at the painting and a wonderful Father’s Day greeting to all of you fathers out there. A special appreciation to my own father James, also an artist, who died ten years ago. He taught me everything I know!

One of the things that makes mankind special is that we can – and do – take in data, make sense of it, assign it to categories in order to make it useful, and act accordingly. These categories, whether they are of the more scientific “mammal or not mammal?” variety or the softer stereotypes of, “Does that person pose an above-average risk to my person?” are not necessarily accurate – but they tend to be broadly helpful in going about our lives.

There are always dangers with categorization, as we know very well. Broad stereotypes lead to enhanced tribalism of all kinds (from xenophobia to racism). There is a reason the Torah tells us to have the same law for the stranger within our gates as for the citizen – we instinctively think otherwise.  Nevertheless, the same text tells us that we must categorize and make judgments. We must be responsible for our actions and choices because it is our choices that define who we are.

What amazes me is that there seems to be a broad push within the liberal world to remove all the classic categorizations: nobody in polite intellectual company uses the word “evil,” for example. Or, for that matter, asserts that people have souls. Of course, if we do not make moral decisions, then we are reverting to a more basic existence where nothing is “good” or “bad.” Such labels have no meaning to a mere animal.

When I wrote the first draft of this piece, I thought that we were seeing a reversion to the Garden of Eden – to a time before we ate the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, and learned to see the world in categories, with everything assigned a place along some kind of scale between opposites: beautiful and ugly; good and evil; man and woman; materialism and spiritualism; matter and energy. By eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we learned how to make distinctions and judgments, to perceive that there are in fact moral differences that we can and should see.

But, as @susanquinn so delicately corrected me, I was wrong. Liberals are not actually keen to remove all categories, to put us back into a primordial mental state where we can no longer make useful distinctions.

Instead, they want to rewrite everything. Stereotypes are necessary to a liberal – it is just that all the ones we have from experience and tradition must be wrong by virtue of the fact that they come from that same experience and tradition. So liberals absolutely have stereotypes about whites and blacks, men and women, and even good and evil; it is just that everything we thought was right is, apparently, wrong.

We thought it was best to judge people by the content of their character: WRONG. We thought that men and women brought unique perspectives and value to relationships: WRONG. Heck, we even thought that there was such a thing as “men” and “women.” The joke is clearly on us. How could we have been so blind so as not to see that white people are bad, and gender is fluid, and humans are just animals? The world was SO wrong for so many millennia. Bad world.

Liberals do not want to eliminate distinctions. They just want to rewrite them all.

Still, my earlier thought that the liberals seek to revert mankind is not entirely incorrect. Because there was a key feature about living in the Garden of Eden: there was nothing productive to do there. Eden was a paradise – one with no mission, no tasks, no responsibility. All Adam and Eve could do was engage in hedonism, the ancient equivalent of endless orgies and Netflix-bingeing. They had no jobs, no children, nothing of what we would today call “real life.” Adam and Eve did not have to be adults.

And it seems to me that this is a key feature desired by the Left. Marx wanted everyone to have a job, but modern liberalism wants everyone to be given money with no obligations attached. Because there are no traditional roles, there is no traditional family. Because life is just about self-identity (and especially sexual identity), there is no investment in other people, and certainly no investment in a relationship with G-d. We fixate instead on how, in our deepest and basest fantasies, we want to deploy our sexual organs. Not for the sake of growth or reproduction, but just to scratch an itch. This was the Garden of Eden. It is also the liberal paradise.

In this – OK, I admit it, grossly overextended – analogy, then the thing that broke mankind’s stay in Eden was when Adam and Eve decided to do the one thing that made this paradise impossible: they ate the fruit, and deliberately chose to be able to make clear distinctions between good and evil – and every other dichotomy found in the world. Like the child who sees the emperor is naked, Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened.

Adam and Eve became hopelessly bored in the Garden, and they had no sense of what would happen if they ate the fruit. We have an advantage over them: we do not need to act out of sheer boredom or bloody-mindedness, because we have already tasted the fruit, and we see the value in family and relationships and creative work and an honest living from hard work. I choose not to be an animal. I choose not to be the sum of my lusts. And I seek to always be able to tell good from evil.

Which means that if anyone can tell me what fruit I can eat that enables mankind to once again be able to distinguish between Good and Evil, please do so. Like Adam and Eve, I would much rather do the one thing I am told not to do, rather than endure another minute of this narcissistic pointlessness.

The increasingly ubiquitous and bitter partisanship in America recently seems very odd to me, partially because I really don’t understand the basic, central difference between leftists and conservatives.  In the Civil War, Democrats and Republicans had obvious and important things they disagreed on, such as slavery and human rights.  Things seem nearly as hostile now – surely we’re not arguing about trans-sexual bathrooms or something – there must be a big topic somewhere, that I’m missing.  I discussed this in the Land of Confusion podcast with Don and David a few weeks ago, and I’ve linked to that portion of the conversation below – it runs for about six minutes.  I hope you’ll listen to it to get my point, but I’ll try to summarize here.

Leftists tend to believe in strong, centralized power structures.  Democrats are the party of big government.  I know that Republican politicians don’t always do a great job opposing the Democrats on this point, but I think a large majority of Republican voters view their ideal government as much smaller and much more constrained than Democrat voters do.  President Obama said that government is the word we use to describe the things we all do together.  Leftists profess to believe in cooperative efforts within communities, and view conservatives as radical individualists who believe in an “every man for himself” society, and say that Republicans lack empathy for others.  I know these stereotypes are just that – stereotypes – but just for the sake of argument, follow along with me here.

What I find interesting about all this is that leftist societies, which ostensibly are based on cooperative effort and collectivism, tend to be violent, tribal societies that eventually tear themselves apart.  While other societies, which are based on respect for individual thought and individual rights, tend to be more peaceful and community-based.  Part of this, of course, is the Marxist tendency to coordinate groups of lower- and middle-class people, who use their superior numbers to take what they want from the wealthy few.  But I think there’s more to it than that.

Societies that respect individual thought and individual rights are by nature more tolerant.  If you want to continue to be permitted to do as you please, you are obligated to allow your neighbor to do as he pleases, or else your rights won’t last long, either.  And if you have sufficient self-respect to actually take your views seriously, then you tend to respect the views of others, even if you disagree.

Whereas if you’re in a more collectivist society, then your identity is less dependent on your individual thoughts, and more dependent on your membership in a group.  By remaining loyal to your group, you gain power.  But only at the cost of conceding some of your rights as an individual.  If you are ok with that, then you are less likely to respect the rights of individuals with whom you disagree.

There are some criticisms of conservatives that I can understand.  But when a leftist criticizes a conservative for being intolerant, I just don’t understand that.  A conservative is, by nature, more tolerant.  He simply has to be, if he wants his rights to be tolerated as well.  I would even argue that if someone really cares what someone else thinks, and seeks to control their behavior, that their intolerance defines them as a leftist.  I’m sure there must be exceptions to that rule, but none leap to mind.

The baker from Colorado (Jack Phillips) has become famous for declining to bake cakes for trans-sexual transitions, or other things that conflict with his Christian faith.  But when he declines such jobs, he very politely gives the prospective customer a list of other bakers in his town who would be happy to help them with their request.

The baker is not telling them what to do with their life – he simply declines to participate.  That, to me, is the definition of a conservative.  I admire him for standing for his beliefs, while allowing others to do the same.

And he is going to lose.  They will keep going after him until they destroy him.  Because they are Democrats, and they are by nature intolerant.  And that’s it.

So societies based on respect for individualism are paradoxically more peaceful and community-minded, while collectivist societies tend to tear themselves apart.

In fact, I’m not even sure that it’s paradoxical.  That’s just the way it is.

If you’re so inclined, listen to my effort to explain this – it’s about 6 minutes long, and I have the video below cued up to that point in the conversation.

I’d be interested to hear your perspective on this idea.

Thanks much.

.

I always ask, “why?” In this case, “why is the left so insanely crazy?” I tend to think that most things don’t have a single cause but maybe three or four causes that act independently of one another. And after all, knowing what causes are at the root of a major problem is necessary, I think, to even beginning to consider fixing the problem, by fixing them at their root causes.

And we’ve discussed generically two causes; and as for the third cause, we have attempted to psychoanalyze the loud or the proud or the violent left, and we’ve mentioned that the future may look empty and fruitless to the younger generations, due to lack of economic parity with their parents, and lack of opportunities, and digital social isolation. So far I think we have generally identified two, and now I think I’ve read about a third.

The two causes I think we can pretty much generally agree on are:

1. Divorcing ourselves from God, and thereby remaining open to any other philosophy or religious presentation.

2. The “march through the institutions” and the successive brainwashing of generation after generation; but what is the cause of this? I suppose, aggressive communist infiltration and subversion.

3. And now, finely tuned psyops – transferred to your viewing screen, in your pocket, where ever you go. The upgraded reintroduction of techniques drawn from MKULTRA. It really seems to explain the rage and the intransigent thinking of otherwise nice people, family, and old friends.

The second half of this post is a good succinct explanation taken from Jack Wedam’s article at American Thinker.

*****

But first a quick takeaway on what MKULTRA is for those who may not be aware. These are snippets from the 173-page report to Congress in 1977 (including to Joe Biden) and long but worth the read.

PROJECT MKULTRA, THE CIA’S PROGRAM OF RESEARCH IN BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION

JOINT HEARING BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTH AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH OF THE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

UNITED STATES SENATE NINETY-FIFTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION

AUGUST 3, 1977

***

Senator WALLOP. So I think it is fair to say, too, that the experience of many American prisoners of war in the Korean conflict would indicate that there are behavior modification procedures in use by foreign powers of a fairly advanced degree of sophistication.

Admiral TURNER. Yes, sir. Senator WALLOP. Again, I will just go back and say I think this must have been part of the motivation.

***

Senator SCHWEIKER. Mr. Gittinger, a moment ago you mentioned brainwashing techniques, as one area that you had, I guess, done some work in. How would you characterize the state of the art of brain-washing today? Who has the most expertise in this field, and who is or is not doing it in terms of other governments? During the Korean war there was a lot of serious discussion about brainwashing techniques being used by the North Koreans, and I am interested in finding out what the state of the art is today, as you see it.

***

APPENDIX A

XVII. TESTING AND USE OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL AGENTS BY THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

***

4. MKULTRA was the principal CIA program involving the research and development of chemical and biological agents. It was “concerned with the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”

In January 1973, MKULTRA records were destroyed by Technical Services Division personnel acting on the verbal orders of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Chief of TSD. Dr. Gottlieb has testified, and former Director Helms has confirmed, that in ordering the records destroyed, Dr.Gottlieb was carrying out the verbal order of then DCI Helms.

MKULTRA began with a proposal from the Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Helms, to the DCI, outlining a special funding mechanism for highly sensitive CIA research and development projects that studied the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior. The projects involved:

***Research to develop a capability in the covert use of biological and chemical materials. This area involves the production of various physiological conditions which could support present or future clandestine operations. Aside from the offensive potential, the development of a comprehensive capability in this field of covert chemical and biological warfare gives us a thorough knowledge of the enemy’s theoretical potential, thus enabling us to defend ourselves against a foe who might not be as restrained in the use of these techniques as we are.***

MKULTRA was approved by the DCI on April 13, 1953 along the lines proposed by ADDP Helms.

Part of the rationale for the establishment of this special fund-ing mechanism was its extreme sensitivity. The Inspector General’s survey of MKULTRA in 1963 noted the following reasons for this sensitivity:

a. Research in the manipulation of human behavior is considered by many authorities in medicine and related fields to be professionally unethical, therefore the reputation of professional participants in the MKULTRA program are on occasion in jeopardy.

b. Some MKULTRA activities raise questions of legality implicit in the original charter.

c. A final phase of the testing of MKULTRA products places the rights and interests of U.S. citizens in jeopardy.

d. Public disclosure of some aspects of MKULTRA activity could induce serious adverse reaction in U.S. public opinion, as well as stimulate offensive and defensive action in this field on the part of foreign intelligence services.”

Over the ten-year life of the program, many “additional avenues to the control of human behavior” were designated as appropriate for investigation under the MKULTRA charter. These include “radiation, electroshock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials.” The research and development of materials to be used for altering human behavior consisted of three phases: first, the search for materials suitable for study; second, laboratory testing on voluntary human subjects in various types of institutions; third, the application of MKULTRA materials in normal life settings.

*****

This is from Jack Wedam‘s article “CIA-developed influence strategies kept showing up in the last 18 months” at American Thinker:

The same Senate report claims… that all the MKUltra documents were destroyed. However, US Patent 8,095,492, issued in 2012, claims “a set of MKUltra documents were discovered, which had escaped destruction by the CIA” and were used to develop the seemingly anodyne “influencing strategies” that are the patent’s subject.

That re-naming is significant because many consider the word “brainwashing” a pejorative. For those trying to disguise their nefarious activities, “influencing strategies” sounds much nicer and more respectful, softer, and gentler. Still, using subliminal tactics to change people’s minds to advance political agendas is despicable, no matter the label.

Reading patents can be boring and time-consuming. However, you do not have to read all of the document’s “influencing strategies” to find a tremendous amount of disturbing information. After you pull up the patent, use the find feature on your computer (CTRL+F), and then search for the following words and phrases:

• MKULTRA
• CIA’s “manual on trickery”
• psychological and social distortion of information
• deceive
• deceptive statistics
• manipulate
• false choices
• all the clever tricks, must be concealed
• brainwashing
• the best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice
• influencing an actor using expertise

The patent is filled with many more examples of brainwashing techniques.

US Patent 8,095,492 also makes frequent mention of expert opinions, expert interviews, expertise, etc. as means by which to influence people. (NB: Textual errors are in the original quotations):

• “Expert opinions are also used to impact the advice provided.”
• “Influencing groups and individuals by applying results of social science.”
• “Social projection and most people think that most other people agree with them about their views on the false consensus effect, things.”
• “Exaggerated impressions of social support.”
• “The `historical movies` that come out of Hollywood are examples of how telling a good story often distorts facts.”
• “Asking an actor to advocate for the your position as an expert.”
• “When someone believes you are an expert, they will tend to defer to your more than others opinions regardless of the sensibility of those opinions.”

Don’t those sound remarkably like some of the talking points repeated so often in the news media and social media? Believe the scientists. Trust the experts. Believe the expert opinions.

This patent also indicates that a person or organization can create a system that tracks people as individuals and continually monitors the success of the influencing strategies on the targeted individual. A computer system can then automatically recommend influence actions to further influence the behavior of the targeted individual towards a “desired outcome.” Artificial intelligence is also mentioned in this patent.

According to a former CIA insider, “‘Everything you have in that cellphone,’ she says, pointing to an iPhone, ‘is what we were working on for our whole careers.’” It’s an interesting coincidence, to say the least, that the same smartphones that constantly pump information into us through social media and news apps came from the same CIA that created the original “influencing strategies.”

We generally note the start of the decline in society and the rise of racism again with the installation of President Obama in 2008, and isn’t that about the time that (addictive) smartphone became popular?

There is absolutely no way of knowing whether Democrats across America – in the government, the social media arena, the mainstream media, etc. – know a single thing about MKUltra. It is, though, noteworthy that they’ve inundated America with “influencing strategies” that have succeeded in turning the gullible among us into fanatics. These fanatics often rage at others who dare to disagree with the information they’ve internalized – even when much of that information reliably proves to be wrong and the remainder can be intelligently and reasonably rebutted.

One hundred years ago the original IRA fought the most powerful empire in the world to a standstill in Ireland. This resulted in the UK granting a de facto independent state to Ireland’s political leaders, which became a republic within thirty years. Much of the original IRA were devout Mass-going Catholics. My ancestors among them.

I wonder had they seen into the far future the Ireland of today – secular degenerate and liberal with a vicious anti-Catholicism in the air – would they have bothered.

I wonder.

Speaking of awful wonders, all month in my local city in Waterford a culture war has been going on between pride supporters and those opposed to its promotion. Several LGBT flags have been vandalised. Cue horror from liberals. Well, now the liberals did their own vandalism.

On the entrance to Waterford city, they covered over a famous mural with the pride colours.

Vandalism. Pure vandalism. Sick and sad. We all know that flag is not about tolerance in modern society. But fitting for modern Ireland.