DISAGREE WITH THE LEFT
AND YOU’RE A TERRORIST
In a tragically absurd miscarriage of justice — one you may not have heard about — a 21-year-old Michigan college student is under house arrest facing a possible 20 years in prison for posting a photo of a rifle on Snapchat.
Such cases always seem to be filled with irony, so let me point out that Lucas Gerhardt is the son of a Marine Corps colonel, he’s an Eagle Scout, he’s a Criminal Justice major at Lake Superior State University, and he’s the legal owner of the weapon in question, an AR-15.
Gerhardt is charged with making a terrorist threat. Prosecution of this apparently admirable young man was instigated by a student who took offense at the conservative views Gerhardt expressed on campus. The allegation was insanely pursued by his college administration.
Under treatment for Type-1 Diabetes, Gerhardt spent 83 days in jail. He currently wears an electronic tether to monitor his movements (at a cost to his family of $500 a month). And he is forbidden to use the Internet or go near university facilities.
It should be noted that, majoring in Criminal Justice, and attending related classes and activities, Gerhardt has frequently been in legitimate public possession of weapons and police equipment. Yet, a court ruled against him, and his appeal of that ruling has been rejected by the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Take a look at the photo (and caption) at issue, and see if you think this represents anything more than a cheeky joke by a Trump supporter. To me it suggests the sort of naïve bluster I’ve heard from fresh-faced YAFers (Young Americans for Freedom members) attending the Conservative Political Action Conference. It’s like the overblown banter my friends and I indulged in back during our ’60s days with the Youth for Goldwater.
But a terrorist threat?
Nonsense.
This case is of a piece with the unconstitutional detention of those Trumpers lured into the fake “insurrection” at the Capitol Building. You know, January 6, the Democrats’ cut-rate version of the “Reichstag Fire?” While no sedition or insurrection charges have been lodged against them, those poor folks are still in custody, with tales of extreme mistreatment leaking out.
The current faux Administration has been using the Capitol farce to justify a whole menu of so-called anti-terror efforts — from their more-woke-than-thou military indoctrination program, to encouraging citizens to rat out friends and family members who show signs of “radicalization,” to pressuring media into providing the IP addresses of people who’ve read a particular article online.
And those currently exercising presidential power are hardly acting alone. Biden and his handlers are receiving enthusiastic support from a cadre of staunch wokesters.
For instance, the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers union, has resolved to promote Critical Race Theory in our schools. CRT is the array of ideas allegedly stirring up all this “terrorism.” The NEA plans aggressive action in support of its resolution, funding opposition research aimed at discrediting groups opposed to CRT.
If you think such actions are merely organizational posturing, consider that more than 5,000 individual teachers have committed themselves to challenging state and local objections to CRT. They’ve pledged to engage in race-focused instruction “regardless of the law.”
Predictably, Facebook has gotten into the game. Zuck and his cronies have posted warnings about extremist online content, and are advising users to keep alert for hints of “radicalization” among friends and relatives. They’re even providing links to organizations that supposedly deprogram individuals who’ve been caught up in rightwing “hate” movements — always rightwing, of course, never Antifa, Black Lives Matter, or other circles of enlightened conspiracy.
It all amounts to what the Claremont Institute’s Ben Weingarten has termed “codification” of a “War on Wrongthink.” Writing in Newsweek, Weingarten observes that…
“the strategy uses public safety to justify leftist domination of both public policy and the public discourse, enforcing the regime’s ideology at the point of a government gun ….
“The goal is to use policy to socially engineer the citizenry so that all outcomes are proportional to group identity. Applied Critical Race Theory, in other words, is now set to be our domestic counterterrorism strategy.”
Weingarten makes the point that justification for such initiatives is murky at best…
“Where the strategy believes it derives this legal authority or social legitimacy is unclear.”
But, he insists…
“What is clear is that such a policy is incompatible with basic freedom and republican self-governance.”
Now to be sure, Joe Biden didn’t bring the terrorism charge against Lucas Gerhardt. That atrocity began on the state level in the summer of 2019. But this immoral prosecution reflects a way of thinking that’s been gaining momentum for decades.
It’s brought us trigger warnings, safe spaces, speech suppression, race-exclusive dormitories, a whole panoply of warped notions that are turning higher education into an over-priced and subversive hoax.
Today it finds expression on the federal level in the assertion that disagreeing with leftist orthodoxy constitutes terrorism — or, at a minimum, encouragement of terrorism. In this, the government is setting itself in opposition to a growing public consensus against the hyper-politicization of everything. That consensus is especially evident among parents of school children, who are protesting the injection of Critical Race Theory into curricula at all grade levels.
Around the country local school boards are being besieged by angry taxpayers who, as National Review senior writer Charles Cooke has put it, see their kids being denied real, substantive education, and who fear that…
“instead of being told that America has often failed to live up to the beautiful ideas that informed the Declaration and the Constitution … [children] will be told that the whole thing was a cynical and self-serving lie.”
Such anger — an unsurprising response to this cultural hijacking — is genuine, and it’s growing. The torches and pitchforks haven’t come out yet. But lefties sense there could be some real terror down the road.
This meme warning about the GOP threat to Democrat congressional control (currently circulating on Facebook) gives a hint of their anxiety. Look closely at that line in the bottom panel about protecting the House from “seditionist Republicans.” It’s laughable, but it’s a telling piece of what psychologists call projection — which is to say seeing your own sins in others.
But then, lefties really ought to chill out. As long as they have those Dominion voting machines, they’ll never have to worry about elections again.
____________
Max Morton is a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, former CIA paramilitary operations officer, and a veteran of multiple armed conflicts, revolutions, and contingency operations who has read the Biden Administration’s recently released “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” He sees that a lot of people could fall under its highly elastic definition of terrorism, since the document…
“talks about ‘identifying potential threats,’ or ‘evolving threats’ of ‘potential violence,’ and ‘indicators and warnings of preparation for potential violence.’ It is one thing to be a terrorist — that is a pretty hard-wired definition — but it’s an extremely subjective judgment as to whether an American is a ‘potential threat,’ an ‘evolving threat,’ or is ‘preparing for potential violence.’
As if that’s not broad enough, the document…
“goes on to define domestic violent extremists as individuals who entertain ‘dangerous conspiracy theories’ regarding perceived federal government overreach and corruption, harbor beliefs about election fraud in the 2020 election, and fail to accept the establishment narrative regarding COVID-19.”
Beliefs about election fraud?
According to the Rasmussen polling organization, that takes in about half the country.
Morton shares his thoughts at American Greatness…
https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/27/how-i-got-classified-as-an-anti-government-domestic-extremist/
The Washington Free Beacon’s Joseph Simonson examines a particular area of interest in the Biden strategy document, using our security agencies to teach the American people how (and what) to think…
“the federal government, led by the Department of Homeland Security, is ‘funding and implementing or planning evidence-based digital programming’ aimed at ‘enhancing media literacy and critical thinking skills’ of the public. These federal programs, the NSC alleges, will serve ‘as a mechanism for strengthening [American] … resilience to disinformation and misinformation online.”
Can you say “Ministry of Truth?”
George Orwell, call your office…
Well, these efforts come none too soon, if Uncle Joe is going to stamp out dangerous, non-conforming thoughts — thoughts like those expressed by country rock star Aaron Lewis, whose ode to skepticism, “Am I the Only One,” is sweeping the charts…
“Am I the only one here tonight, shakin’ my head and thinkin’ something ain’t right?”
Read about this anthem of our time on Breitbart News
and listen to it here…
____________
Extremist content is where you find it, and some clever wag has offered his own suggestion about what to look out for online…
Of course, extremism can be interpreted in different ways, as this sly poke at Facebook demonstrates…
Some people are even claiming extremism as a badge of honor, adding this circle to their profile photos (feel free to download it)…
But if you’re planning to actually be an extremist, this graphic shows how to do it right…
Meanwhile, author Christopher Buckley shares this Ben Garrison cartoon about some of the machinations behind that notorious January 6 incident…
…as another Facebook denizen ponders how politicians with questionable agendas would have been dealt with in the past…
Now that’s something to strike terror into the hearts of our faux Administration.
Sean says
From: Facebook
The left has embraced Communism, Fascism and Satanism, and this is Exhibit A
Al says
THE SPACESHIPS WILL BE ARRIVING IN MID AUGUST AFTER THE INAUGURATION TO TAKE YOU ON THE MAGICAL RAPTURE TOUR.
*************BRING A CHANGE OF UNDERWEAR*************
Al says
Credit where credit is due.
The Donald did project warp speed. Without which the vaccine would not exist.
Hat’s off for a very big one.
As my grandmother used to say, “dunke.”