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Confusion about politics: Diversion as a leftist tactic by Russell L. Blaylock, MD

[Although this article was edited in anticipation of the 2020 elections, it was written much earlier as a timeless article with great political implications by my friend Dr. Russell L. Blaylock. It cites important recent political and historical events, and tactical and strategic recommendations for political victory by the forces of freedom. Read it.— Dr. Miguel Faria]

The presidential election process is heating up and we are hearing a lot about the importance of re-electing President Trump and laughing at the bickering, radical Democratic candidates. Conservatives are getting too confident given the poor quality of the Democrat contenders and even more about their authoritarian socialist messages. The coronavirus has also entered the picture and it has been hyped to sink the President. It is true that radical leftists in the presidency and other higher governmental positions can create mayhem throughout the country, but should this concern be the most important consideration for conservatives?

This thinking that higher offices are most important is wrong on many levels. First, some of the most grave problems in America lie not with the federal government, as important as that is—it is with government at all levels—state, county and city. A friend of mine who held a high position at Hillsdale College sent a most important book to me many years ago. A major player in the New Left hierarchy wrote the book, now somewhere lost among my disorganized library. In this book he explains that in the past the Left was of the opinion that the revolution to take the United States must come from the top and therefore they should concentrate their efforts at the highest levels of government, the Presidency and the Legislative houses.

Saul Alinsky in August 1963

The New Thinking, the author concludes, is that in fact the most effective mode of attack is to concentrate their efforts on the local levels of politics—governors, mayors, city councils, school boards and other more regional offices. This, in fact, goes along with the community-organizing concept as elucidated by Saul Alinsky, and Antonio Gramsci before him. The Fabian socialists also used this concept, but envisioned more of a pincer movement involving control of the major areas of intellectual as well as political influence at all levels—high and low.

A number of conservative thinkers and political pundits have noted this oversight and concluded that faith in fixing America’s problem by controlling the federal government have led to a major loss of basic freedoms. Most federal offices, despite the massive increase in federal power over the states and individuals, is still limited in its scope of power, and a conservative leadership at this level will likewise be quite limited in fixing the problem and stopping this draconian revolution that is devouring our country. Ronald Reagan, our greatest chance in modern history, learned this lesson the hard way.

At no time in my life, and I am 70 years old, have I witnessed such an opportunity for conservative power, with conservative control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress with the so-called Reagan revolution. Yet, despite this, Reagan actually accomplished very little in terms of stopping the federal juggernaut. During his campaign he promised to eliminate the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, neither of which were even reduced in power in any substantive way. With all the talk of deep cuts in spending on the federal bureaucracy, that is, the real power in government, all he and the conservative Congress were able to do was make minimal cuts in the rate of spending increases—and then the Left and its media handmaidens screamed like banshees.

Pulling the Wool Over the Conservatives’ Eyes

Having lived during the turbulent sixties—the race riots (long-hot summers), the anti-war street protests (pro-Vietcong demonstrations), the attack on moral norms, widespread use of illegal mind-altering drugs and the radicalization of colleges and universities—when it all seemed to come to an end, I breathed a deep sign of relief. Almost with a snap of the fingers, the Black Panthers all but disappeared, the streets became calm once again—no more summer riots, mass demonstrations, the campuses appeared to return to teaching students, and drug use became a problem for rehabilitation councilors and police departments. A welcomed calm came over society and to all outward appearances, things began to return to normal.

The apparent calm turned out to be a deception, one that, in my opinion, was part of the ultimate plan—its purpose was to lull the conservatives and moderates to sleep—and it worked. No one seemed to notice at the time that the street radicals, even the bomb-throwing types such as Bernadette Dohrn and Bill Ayers, suddenly donned three-piece suits (or less radial looking outfits) and moved into mainstream society. They ran for local offices, sat on school boards and city councils, became judges, lawyers and other functionaries in the judicial system, became mayors and governors (as with Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown). They also took up powerful positions in the education system and the media. They became college presidents and major university professors and writers of our textbooks, especially concerning history, social philosophy, judicial philosophy and political science. Unseen by the conservatives, these unrepentant radicals began to redesign society on a modified Marxist and even Marxist/Leninist model. I say modified, as they wished to dispense with the immediate use of secret police, gulags and mass killings of the populace as with previous revolutions—it was more of a merging of Fabian socialist methodology, Gramscian reformed communism, fascism and liberal reformism.

Co-founder of the radical Weather Underground movement in the 1960s, Bill Ayers is now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a former leader in the Weather Underground, teaches law at Northwestern University. Photo credit: Todd Buchanan/The New York Times, 2001

By the time the conservatives began to wake up, the radical and the proto-fascists had everything in place and with control of the majority of the media who would tell the truth? The conservative and libertarian internet bloggers managed to spread a good deal of truth but even 20 million people educated by the bloggers and conservative radio hosts is still a substantial minority of the population. That all this truth telling has been ineffective in stopping the leftist revolution is evidenced by the enormous inroads made in the moral destruction and the unending concentration of power in centralized bureaucracies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, now under administrative law has the power to fine anyone it chooses, with essentially no judicial review, and can remove the funds from your personal bank account without notifying you. The bank, in essence, has become an arm of the centralized state power. You think you have $50,000 in your savings account and discover much to your dismay that you only have $2,000 left in the account. This has happened.

In fact, your money is no longer yours—it belongs to the federal authorities. If you withdraw $10,000 from your bank account every month (now even less) it is called structuring and you could be imprisoned and your funds confiscated. If you travel with large sums of your own money, you risk it being confiscated and it never being fully returned. What, we may ask, happened to being innocent until proven guilty? The whole justification for this bureaucratic law was to stop the Mafiosi and major drug dealers, supposedly under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act, yet we have grandmothers and other innocents being convicted on such obvious abuses of government that has absolutely nothing to do with controlling drugs. On the state level, law enforcement in conjunction with the local government, ramped up these zero-tolerance laws and have used them via asset forfeiture proceedings to confiscate property and settle personal vendettas.

While these are examples of abuse on the federal level, on a state and local level we are also seeing a rise in power. Many cities are now exercising eminent domain laws, not for obvious public use projects, but rather to garner more tax monies for the city government by tearing down privately-owned businesses that pay lower taxes and attracting out-of-state developers of malls who will pay much higher taxes. The first victims of all this local government action are the poor and the middle class—the very ones the Left claims to represent in their revolution. But then, like Hillary Clinton and George Soros, money trumps leftist principles every time. The leftist talk of the downtrodden is just for the useful fools, not the intellectual Left elite.

More neighborhoods are also coming under strict control of city government in terms of one’s land use—for example, having to get a permit to cut down a tree or clear one’s property of bramble or collected water. Unreasonable rules are implemented for driveways, garages and even the growing of vegetable gardens. People unable to afford these dictated changes are hit with fines and may lose their homes. Property taxes continue to rise to pay for local welfare and vote-buying projects, resulting in a number of individuals losing their property to the local government.

Increasingly zoning laws are being rewritten to favor developers over local residents. One of the most egregious abuses of government is the quest by states to attract large corporations under the guise of attracting jobs and improving the state’s tax base, when in fact, as in the case of where I live, the government virtually gave the land to the company, cancelled their tax obligations and built schools and roads for the company at taxpayer expense. So, what about the high paying jobs? Mostly, these companies brought in their own people. We see this same practice or even worse as in the case of the Disney Corporation, which not only fired their highly skilled workers and replaced them with foreign workers, they forced the fired workers to train their replacements.

Increasingly, local governments and businesses are requiring their employees to attend sensitivity training courses, patterned after the forced communist re-education camp concept. Mostly these courses are little more than thought control sessions spewing out the latest political correctness psychobabble and social engineering. Major corporations, in conjunction with local governments, have become major players in social engineering. Where is the outrage?

Home Depot openly sponsors some of the most in-your-face homosexual parades in San Francisco, many of which are openly blasphemous to Christian beliefs. The company supplies power tools, aprons with their company logo and floats for these extremist displays. All of this outrage is supported by local governments. Local school boards are allowing or even promoting hard-core, left-wing course material (National Education Association [NEA] sponsored) in the public schools and even insisting that home school curricula include the same material used in public schools—material that is counter to the philosophy that led to the formation of homeschooling.

Critical Race Theory being taught in public school systems across the USA

While the federal government enforced the Supreme Court’s ruling on religion in schools, even more stringent and often illegal restrictions on religion have been implemented by local school boards that go far beyond the federal mandates. In essence, the local school boards and educators are demonstrating their enthusiasm for the leftist mandates. Principles of many public schools have been allowed to punish, not only students with religious symbols on their clothing and jewelry, they have also targeted children of soldiers who have served in our military. None of these policies originated from the federal government—they were local decisions.

Worse yet is the insanity directed at even small school children as part of the left-wing no-tolerance gun policy, which includes kids displaying finger guns, drawing guns, and in one case, a child chewing a muffin that could (in only a liberal’s insane imagination) look like a gun! In some public school systems they have even called the police on very young children and had them placed in handcuffs and taken to the police station. Of course, after such an incident the poor child now has a record that will follow him or her throughout their educational career and may be used in the future to prevent them from ever owning a firearm. The idea of these social engineers is to brainwash the children into hating guns and fearing severe punishment if they decide to own one. All this radical activity is not mandated by federal laws or mandates; local governments and school systems are criminalizing activities and enthusiastically enforcing them.

Liberal leftist idiocy knows no bounds. Children are being forced to read the Koran, dress in Islamic garb, write that Allah is great, and other outrages that are not deemed teaching religion in school by some perverted thinking of local officials. For two generations, since the sixties and early seventies, these disguised leftist radicals in powerful positions in the educational system, the media, and local governments have been the instructors of our children and the parents are so distracted and uneducated on these subjects that they calmly go along with it all. The only people teaching our children are the enemies of Western civilization and the founding principles of limited government. As a result, the next generation will be even more radical than the present one.

The examples of local government radicalism are extensive and continue to grow and become even more outrageous every day. Yet, the public remains mostly silent. The excitement over GOP presidential contender Donald Trump and the expressed anger of so many people concerning the path our government is taking is less important than many conservatives are attributing to it. The anger is over mostly economic issues, as is always the case with modern conservatives. An issue has to hit the pocketbook to become important politically—moral issues are mostly ignored. I have lived long enough to know that political speeches almost never translate into actual changes once the person is in office—the Reagan example is instructive. This is not to downplay Reagan’s most important role in correcting the destructive economic policies of the Jimmy Carter administration—because he did save us from total economic collapse. He was also valuable in expressing, in a most articulate way, critical moral and philosophical values and principles. These will live on.

So far, President Trump has done more than any president in my lifetime to halt the drive toward international socialism through its new world order. He has drastically cut federal regulations, ordered the first comprehensive budget review of the military ever done, cut personal income taxes, forced China to stop stealing American intellectual property, erased NAFTA and other harmful trade deals, returned religion to schools, destroyed ISIS, reduced foreign military interventions, done a great deal to reduce the massive illegal immigration, reinstituted investigations of domestic radical Islamic groups, appointed an impressive number of constitutional federal judges, dramatically lowered unemployment (especially black unemployment), returned a number of industries back to the United States from China and Mexico, made the United States oil independent, returned justice to the Justice Department, and has been a powerful voice for Judeo-Christian principles. 

Because he has done so much damage to the leftist cause of international socialism, the radical left has in response done everything in their deranged imaginations to remove him from office. The most radical elements in the Democratic Party are now threatening the more moderate liberal elements. 

In a Revolution, the Most Radical Elements Always Rise to the Top

It has been observed that in all revolutions the worst and most radical elements rise to the top of the power structure. The French Revolution and the Russian Revolution are excellent examples of this principle. Over time those who are not limited by moral squeamishness or reticent to use violence replace the more moderate elements. The Mensheviks were unseated by the Bolsheviks and the moderates of the National Assembly were displaced by the violent radicals—Danton, Marat, Robespierre, and Saint-Just—during the French Revolution.

We are now seeing that the most radical elements are moving to positions of power in this revolution. The extreme arm of the homosexual and transgender crowd have declared war on all Christians, and the states are aiding them in this assault on decency. Take the recent case in Charlotte, North Carolina, where a convicted sex offender influenced the lawmakers in the city to change the law so as to allow transsexual claimants to use any restroom they desire. Why would local officials elected by the people acquiesce to the desires of a handful of extremist radicals and ignore those who elected them? The only answer is apathy—most people could care less about moral issues.

I recall when there was a move to mix the males and females in college and university dormitories. I was sure there would be a show of outrage by parents. I was dumbfounded to see that there was little more than a whimper. Virtually all of the universities and colleges acquiesced and now it is considered acceptable. Why no outrage? The idea of mixed dormitories was from the most radical elements in society—a minority—yet parents just chose to do nothing—absolutely nothing. Moral issues did not matter, even when it involved our most precious population—our children.

When I grew up there was a thing called common-law marriage, where two people just decided to move in together pretending to be married. It was considered shameful and amoral. Illegitimate children in large numbers were the result and the public picked up the tab for their nurture and care. After the sixties, the radicals promoted the idea that marriage was an outmoded and archaic practice, and people could just live together, something adapted from John Dewey and others before him. After the insanity of the sixties died down, the concept of widespread common-law marriages among all classes, even the rich, remained and are now considered—acceptable. Where was the outrage by parents? They accepted the arrangement as comporting with “modern thinking” and most parents wanted to be seen as “modern.” Now we have an overflow of illegitimate children, but then today there is no shame in having children out of wedlock—it has become the norm.

Such examples can be seen in virtually every segment of society and few even attempt to resist. Sexually transmitted disease are now rampant, unwed mothers are numerous, abandoned children an everyday occurrence and the cost of caring for these dysfunctional “families” is ever rising. Where is the outrage? Local schools have invited homosexual, prostitutes, and an assortment of sexual deviants to lecture to high school students and there is little outrage. The public just keeps reelecting the very people who are responsible for these outrages. To do otherwise would be considered outmoded, and less than compassionate, open-minded, and “modern.”

When sexual education was sold by the radical elements in our society, they spoke of preventing unwanted pregnancies and lowering the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases. Now, no one even remembers this—we have moved on to teaching sexual technique, including how to put a condom on a penis, techniques of anal sex, and how to have “good” oral sex. Even during the so-called AIDS epidemic, schools were instructing students on proper oral and anal sex, and under the Clinton administration we even had the Surgeon General promote oral sex as a substitute for intercourse. Where was the outrage?

All of these examples are of things controlled by local politicians—politicians who get reelected time and again. No matter how radical the proposal, local politicians seem to be willing to not only defend the proposal but to enthusiastically enforce and promote the outrageous proposal. Where is the public outrage? It is also noteworthy that none of these outrages can be fixed by national politicians, especially a President—it is beyond the scope of his office.

The Power of Social Acceptance

One of the major questions that has puzzled me over the years is why do people acquiesce to such radical, destructive and bizarre ideas and proposals proposed by the Left? I have concluded from studying the works of those who have spent years studying these motivations that the most powerful force is a basic need of people to be socially accepted by the group. Gustave La Bon discussed this extensively in his book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, and Edward Bernays in his book, Propaganda, goes even deeper.

Humans are basically social; they need approval of their neighbors, friends and associates—we all want to fit in. We call this human nature. This need for social acceptance is so powerful most people will acquiesce to radical proposals, if they see that to reject them may cause censure by those within their social group. This is where propaganda comes into play. As Bernays demonstrates, all that is necessary to control people is to become the trendsetter, the one who decides what is desirable or acceptable in society. He says:

“…in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons—a trifling fraction…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires, which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bond and guide the world.”

He further notes:

“We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issue so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions.”[p. 37-38]

“While some are convinced that science and technology will be our savior, it can also be our master and in many instances it has become our master.” [p. 39]

 “As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.” [p. 40]

Keep in mind that Bernays book was written in 1928—technological means of controlling opinion and behavior have increased astronomically since then. F.A. Hayek and Richard Weaver also addressed these issues of controlling public opinion. Le Bon in using the speaker that moves crowds as an example notes:

“Given to exaggerations in its feelings, a crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning are, methods of argument well known to speakers at public meetings. [Emphasis added]

This concept of not using reason is important as it is emotionally-charged words, or as Richard Weaver calls them –god words—that drive the social trends and political correctness. Black Lives Matter is a case in point. The words are full of emotions and mentally-generated visual images. Reasoning would expand this to—All Lives Matter, but when this was expressed it was met with outrage. Further examination found that those chanting the mantra of the radicals only directed their sentiments at blacks killed by white policemen even in justified cases—those killed by black policemen were given a pass as was black-on-black killing, which accounted for a far higher proportion of dead blacks.

To not show sympathy for the demonstrations was to label one as non-caring and a racist—both terms of which can cause unbearable social rejection. By using social pressure to control the debate and discussions, one can direct large numbers of people into adhering to social nonsense and destructive policies. The media play a huge role in this regimentation of opinion process.

The use of social pressure entails both the use of rhetoric to convince and social pressure to keep those who can think from speaking out. David Horowitz in his books Destructive Generation and Radical Son tells of how he and his fellow escapees from the communist mindset experienced tremendous depression by the social rejection of their previous communist friends and associates—they became social pariahs. Most cannot withstand this social isolation and name-calling.

Newsweek cover, February 16, 2009

Over time, one tries desperately to demonstrate in a number of ways that one is a true believer in the political correct viewpoint. Throughout the ages, shunning was used to punish those who rejected anointed beliefs. In the time of Plato, to punish nonbelievers one would have an elaborate ceremony to declare that person dead—they would be ignored as if they no longer existed. It was very effective.

Related is the fact that few people are really deep thinkers. The advocates of human-caused global warming, for example, posit as the solution the destruction of the capitalist system and replacing it with some form of socialism. Of course, none consider the problem of who will produce all the technology and devices that so many have become addicted to, such as cell phones, computers, iPads, as well as cars, trains, airplanes, and all the other niceties and conveniences of the modern world—socialism cannot, as it is all about control, regimentation, bureaucracy and oppression.

The Goal of the Radical Elements: Total Replacement of Society

I have found that a great many conservatives have no idea what the radicals really want. Some assume it is reform or promoting a special program or group’s rights or compassion for the downtrodden. Nothing could be further from the truth, and this is why we are losing. The true revolutionary wants only one thing, and that is to utterly dismantle the existing society—all of its traditions, it moral structure, it institutions, its laws and it basic philosophy. Only when they have accomplished this goal can they, in their demented minds, build the perfect new society—the utopia. Now the real reformers and defenders of human rights may not even be aware that the dedicated, philosophical Marxist revolutionary is using them. They may be perfectly sincere in what they are doing. Yet, the power elite behind the revolution can merely fund the individual unwary radical group and still accomplish their goal without having to have a massive army of true believers of the utopian dream.

It has been observed that radical revolutionaries know how to destroy a country or civilization but have no idea how to run a society. It is the utopian dream, something that only exists within the dizzy revolutionary’s mind that drives them forward and keeps them in the battle no matter how many skirmishes they lose. “One step forward and two steps back,” as Lenin put it.

The very word utopia means that which never was. The Soviet Bolsheviks spent almost a century in a failed effort to build this utopian dream world and in the process murdered no less than 60 million of their own citizens, created one of the most horrifying gulag systems the world has ever known, utterly destroyed its economy, created a medical care system that was a horror, produced a society of paranoid, depressed, oppressed and despondent people that to this day have never fully recovered. Unlike its propaganda—that is, that only a socialist society can bring peace to the world, it was involved in more bloodshed upon its neighbors and other countries around the world than any other country in history—quite a legacy for utopia in power.

China is another example of a failed attempt at utopia. It is now the most polluted country in the world, even though the propaganda told us that it was capitalism that was the great polluter. To trick the Western world into doing business with China, the leaders pretended to evolve into an open, democratic country—truly of the people. In truth, they have murdered even more of their own citizens than any country in the world, run a massive bamboo gulag prison system, sell organs from convicted political prisoners to an international market, run one of the largest police states in the world, severely suppress religion and still exists only because they were smart enough to trick the United States and other Western countries into moving their industrial base and other businesses to their country. Within the United States and Canada, state governments, one after another, then used their citizens tax money to encourage its industries to move to China. This is the only reason this dystopia even exists today.

Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Venezuela, East Germany, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and other Soviet client states have all failed in their attempt to create a socialist utopia and they suffer because they destroyed their existing culture and society to make way for the dreamers’ utopia. That left them with nothing but a broken society. Once a culture is destroyed it is next to impossible to reconstruct it. As generations pass, all those having lived in the nanny state or in an oppressive socialist society no longer remember the traditions, the legal structure, the governmental checks and balances on power and other important aspects of the destroyed culture. The socialist system makes people weak, helpless and dependent on the state for their survival—they no longer know how to care for themselves.

The problem conservatives have is that they see only the immediate results of each of these attacks on society and assume that there is no linkage, no ultimate goal. Each of these attacks on our society, culture or religion, is designed to erase what has existed before the socialist utopia came to power—should it come to power. The conservatives see the transgender attacks, for example, as truly motivated by transgender people seeking “justice” and not for what it really is—to chip away at our culture, especially religious foundations. Likewise, they see the attack on religion as the atheists exercising their right to not be placed under psychological stress by having to see religious symbols, rather than the truth—that it is part of a larger plan to remove all impediments to the secular state. The Soviet state wasted a great deal of effort trying to destroy the churches in the Soviet Union because they could not allow a competing loyalty—one’s loyalty, they concluded, should be totally to the state. Many people went to the gulag or firing squad for not showing enough enthusiasm to their Soviet masters. The Left in this country demands just such loyalty and enthusiasm.

Speech codes and cancel culture. Illustration by Taylor Callery for TIME

Speech codes on college and university campuses, that, in some institutions, also include inappropriate smiling, demonstrate this obsession with control by the utopians. The federal government does not control speech codes; local governing boards of the universities generate them. Parents pay huge sums of their hard earned money to send their children to these universities only to have the Christians, conservatives and patriotic students harassed openly in many classes. Where is the outrage?

Have you ever wondered why the Left on university campuses keep ramping up the political correctness demands? First, it was all about not insulting the black students and showing them respect. Gradually it included more variegated insane demands. Now we talk about such absolute idiocy as microaggressions. What is a microaggression? Well it’s anything that falls short of open enthusiasm for leftist causes and ideology concerning race. In some minds, even being white is a microaggression despite how many friends of the anointed class one might have—your very existence is an affront. Why do university presidents and university boards tolerate such absolute nonsense? The reasons vary, but for many it is because they want to demonstrate their enthusiasm for the Left, just as we saw in the worst of the communist countries with class consciousness and class warfare.

In the Soviet Union one might receive a ten year term in a gulag for sitting on a newspaper having Stalin’s picture in it, and in China wrapping fish in a newspaper having Mao’s picture could get you shot—these are real examples. In this country speaking out against evolution can get you fired from your university position if you are not tenured—if tenured, they might just keep moving your office until you end up in the basement—again taken from a real case. Where is the outrage?

Are People Ready to Turn Back the Clock on These Assaults on our Culture?

I have heard a number of conservatives say that they have never seen such outrage in their lives over the collectivist state and that this gives them great hope that this time, with this presidential election, things will really change. Growing up in the Deep South I have seen far greater outrage, even though it was in error—that is, in the battle over integration. All this turmoil occurred when I was in high school and college. People everywhere were furious yet the Deep South was fully integrated and no mass revolt occurred—discounting the riots at Ole Miss, which in truth were instigated by the federal marshals. Today no one really even thinks about it. I use this example not to defend segregation, but rather to show that public outrage does not always translate into victory for one’s side. Powerful forces can be welded to stifle any public efforts to prevent change.

Anthony Malcolm Daniels, also known by the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, is a psychiatrist and author

One of the most repeated mantras of the Left is that one cannot turn back the clock, almost as if it were a law of physics. Unfortunately, most people who repeat this nonsense have spent virtually no time in deep thought about the subject. What if the path you are taking is making things infinitely worse and is quite destructive—do you persist? The Left says—Yes! And indeed that is exactly what one sees in many countries that have taken the collectivist path. Failure of the collectivist program means that one must throw more money at it and further tighten the controls on the resisting public. One should read the books by Theodore Dalrymple, Life at The Bottom and Our Culture: What’s Left of It, on the subject of the degradation in human lives caused by the British welfare state, to get a better understanding of the difference between a utopian dream and reality.

When LBJ announced that his Great Society program goal was to erase poverty and racism, many on the Left believed it. After fifty years and twenty trillion dollars we still have the same level of official poverty and the Left claims racism is more rampant than ever. So, what is the Left’s answer? That they need more money and state power. How can one spend twenty trillion dollars and not defeat poverty? The bureaucracy involved in the Great Society has grown to enormous proportions and most of the tax dollars spent on these programs do not go to the poor—they go to bureaucrats, consultants, and politicians. Donald Lambro in his monumental book, Fat City: How Washington Wastes Your Taxes, demonstrates this by showing exactly where the money had gone and is going—mainly consulting firms and bureaucrats and not to the poor. Milton Friedman demonstrated that if you just wrote a check to each of the people listed as poor the cost to the taxpayer would be far less than the present welfare program. Where is the outrage?

Reagan learned that even the most minute change in funding would unleash a torrent of indignation by the leftist media and calls that he was trying to starve the poor, abandon the sick and handicapped, and leave people homeless. When I was visiting Philadelphia with my family at the time, we happened to traverse a park filled with the so-called homeless (Thomas Sowell calls them bums). As we walked through the park, the bums started screaming that they were hungry because of President Reagan and that they needed money from us. This shows how quickly the street philosophies of the Left disseminate to even the lowest rungs of the social ladder. The media sounded just like the bums—every problem that reared its head was because of “Reagan cuts”—unfortunately, a great number of people believed it. It was even used as a line in a number of movies—but then what else would one expect from the Hollywood Left.

The philosophy of the Left is so tightly entrenched in our society that to even attempt to bring back some semblance of normality would meet heavy resistance from virtually every quarter. Just try to inform those around you that global warming by human activity is nonsense. Some on the Left are even calling for prosecution of those who question global warming. Others are labeling dissenters of leftist ideas as suffering from a mental illness—schizotypal personality disorder, as I pointed out in one of my earlier editorials—a tactic used by the Soviet Union to control dissidents. Try to bring back common chivalry and respect for women, such as opening doors and properly addressing women as Mrs or Miss and you will experience the venom of the radical feminists. Related to this subject is the observation that when the Left (almost always a lily-white liberal/leftist) takes up a cause that defends the right of another minority they ignore the minority’s protestation when they say they are not offended by the object or situation in question.

A case in point, the Confederate flag as a small portion of the Mississippi state flag. The out-of-state radicals came to the state claiming it was harmful to the psyche of blacks to have that offensive symbol included in the flag. As a result, there was a statewide vote on the flag and to the leftist radicals dismay the blacks voted to keep the flag as is. That had absolutely no effect on the white liberals leading the charge. They are back, now trying to file a lawsuit on behalf of a black fellow who claims that seeing the Confederate flag causes him so much distress that he suffers from anxiety and has difficulty sleeping. Only a leftist lawyer, a university professor or a graduate from an Ivy League university would believe such nonsense. It didn’t matter that the majority of blacks voted in favor of keeping the flag as is. What white liberal litigators are saying is that these blacks are just too stupid to know they are being insulted and need the help of a much smarter white liberal—sort of the slave/master mentality. Where is the outrage?

We witnessed the same with the Indians, who also voted to be called Indians. But then what do a bunch of dumb savage Indians know—they are to be called Native Americans. Baseball teams use Indian names and as expected here comes the white liberal lawyer filing a lawsuit on behalf of the offended Indians. The tribal chief of the so-called offended party took a vote among his tribe, and they voted that they liked being associated with the team. The liberal lawyer could care less what they liked, he continued with the suit. It is said that a person is a socialist in direct proportion to his/her contempt for common people.

What these examples show, is that the leftists filing these suits do not really think or care whether these people are being offended, it is just a ploy to make a lot of money and poke the conservatives in the eye—that is, to chip away at our culture. Taken together, this is how they erase our culture and society. Until we see the totality of this plan, we will be merely swatting at gnats.

Can We Win?

I have spent my entire adult life studying collectivism and the totalitarian mind and have concluded that only a miracle from heaven can save us. People are too apathetic about the issues that should matter most, such as the preservation of our culture and political and social traditions and reinstitution of moral understanding. Yes, they are concerned with the growth of government, high taxes, social unrest, rising crime rates, illegal immigration (linked to the former), terrorism and collapsing families. All polls show that the issue that least concerns Americans is foreign policy; yet it should be high on the list also, as it is connected to the destruction of our society. We are being surrounded by our enemies, countries are in-mass turning to the collectivist model, and foreign wars are costing us massive amounts of money—real money.

Now money concerns most voters—anything to do with the economy and their livelihood, which is good but should not be the only consideration. Also low on the scale for too many voters is religion. Many have swallowed the cool aid on this issue. True belief in the core of Judeo-Christian religion has been severely eroded, yet so much of our culture is hinged on such an understanding. Most important, in this regard is natural law and the idea of transcended law. If this evaporates, then upon what shall we base our laws? Rules concocted by those in power or having the greatest power? Even the secular humanists were forced to borrow from Christian commandments to base their laws upon—such as thy shall not murder; thy shall not bear false witness; thy shall not steal; and thy shall not covet.

I was once asked how can we save ourselves. My answer was that Americans have a power that is underappreciated—the power of numbers. Most important is local power of the people—the voters. If a city council member exercises their office to impose an outrageous act they should be voted out of office and told that they will never hold an elected office again. The same goes for school boards, judges, mayors, governors, senators and other office holders—we must absolutely hold their feet to the fire.

Party hacks, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, are using newer methods to eliminate the will of the people—be it manipulating delegates, redistricting, using illegal or shady party rules; in essence, whatever works in their favor. The votes of soldiers serving in combat zones have had their votes nullified by leftist political animals and delegates have been forced to vote against their district’s will. Here in Mississippi, the delegates for Trump or Cruz were told that if they make any noise during the delegate gathering they will be arrested—they used this against the Libertarians in the past. Both the Democrats and the Republicans love to speak about the voice of the people, but they like the voice of the people only when it agrees with them—otherwise it is to be silenced. This must be fought on a grassroots level.

We must support such political organizations as the Tea Party and even hold their feet to the fire as well. Thomas Jefferson said that, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” This is also a problem today in that so many are uninformed on major issues, especially those issues beyond the economy. To correct the economy alone will only allow the Left to use the excess tax money and created wealth to promote greater centralization of federal power and an even greater growth of bureaucracy. China has great wealth but is a totalitarian country.

We must insist that our leaders support a limited government, laws based on sound natural law principles and the Constitution as intended by its designers, a sound monetary system, protection of our sovereignty, protection of religion against all intrusions, reestablishment of the balance of powers between the three branches of government, and a house cleaning in the Congress. Only with these sound principles and actions can we regain our Republic.

Written by Russell L. Blaylock, MD

Dr. Russell L. Blaylock is President of Advanced Nutritional Concepts and Theoretical Neurosciences in Jackson, Mississippi. He has written numerous path-blazing scientific papers and many books, including Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills(1994), Bioterrorism: How You Can Survive (2001), Health and Nutrition Secrets(2002), and Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients (2003). He is Associate Editor-in-Chief and a Consulting Editor in Basic Neuroscience for Surgical Neurology International (SNI).

This article may be cited as: Blaylock RL. Confusion about politics: Diversion as a leftist tactic. HaciendaPublishing.com. March 10, 2020. Available from: https://haciendapublishing.com/confusion-about-politics-diversion-as-a-leftist-tactic-by-russell-l-blaylock-md/.

This article was first published on April 29, 2016; but as its message was timeless, it was updated and republished on March 10, 2020 in anticipation of the 2020 elections.

Copyright ©2016-2020 Hacienda Publishing Inc.

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1 thought on “Confusion about politics: Diversion as a leftist tactic by Russell L. Blaylock, MD”

  1. Dr. Miguel A. Faria

    Revisiting Revel’s ‘The Totalitarian Temptation,’ By Francis P. Sempa, January 11, 2022

    …Interestingly, in the Foreword to the the American edition of the book, Revel noted that the United States was then in the midst of a cultural and social revolution that would someday lead to a political revolution. Such a revolution, he wrote, “starts at the grass roots of the sociocultural system.” Politically, it first manifested itself in the presidential candidacy of George McGovern in 1972. And Revel noted that although McGovern was soundly defeated at the polls, the cultural and social revolution had clearly begun to affect the United States. The revolution, he wrote, develops slowly and “works through the depths of society.”

    Here, Revel was prescient. The cultural and social revolution that he sensed in this book actually began in the 1960s, worked its way through U.S. cultural, social, educational, and political institutions during the next several decades, and won the “culture war” by default. By the time conservatives recognized what was happening (Republican candidate Patrick J. Buchanan tried to warn the country at the 1992 GOP Convention), it was too late. Liberalism and progressivism, dominated — and still dominates — America’s cultural, social, educational, and political institutions. And those institutions have become even more powerful and more prone to the totalitarian temptation — witness the outsized influence of far-left social media platforms and mainstream media outlets that unabashedly promote the cultural and political left, and have no qualms about censoring, smearing (or just ignoring) voices on the cultural and political right; or the outsized influence of government officials and bureaucrats who during the pandemic have issued decrees that effectively suspend or trample on constitutional rights…” — Francis P. Sempa, Realclearhistory. https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2022/01/10/revisiting_revels_the_totalitarian_tempation_811442.html

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