On many levels a broader swath of We the People are starting to catch on to how the anti-American forces that now form our ruling beltway can count on the fully compliant and reliably incurious media to overtly spin to the dictated narratives at all costs. That tool is vital to cultivating reportable polling support for them to do things to us that is not, and should not, be allowed under this Republic. Almost every breaking story these days is presented with a narrowly crafted storyline that is shocking in its complete lack of context. For example, the entire Mar-a-Lago Raid story would fade to obscurity about three nanoseconds after anyone brought in any contextual comparisons to the documents taken by either of his two predecessors and the long paths toward resolutions with the National Archives in each case. The silence on the matter from Team Bush is telling. The embarrassing and equally context-less interviews by Bill Barr in recent days (at least the clips I have encountered) are equally pathetic. (He is a smart man who knows the game as well as anyone. One presumes the performance is intentionally so. But I digress.) Luckily, once the pattern is seen it is hard not to see everywhere.

The parts that require more focus these days are the headlines that are never allowed to become breaking news and/or even get the proper coverage to establish the meanings and motives…and potential implications today and down the road a bit. In many cases, these tend to be the stories that would provide the proper contextual backdrop for future breaking news events and storylines. One of these seems to have occurred late this week…cynically executed within the predictably elevated white-noise on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary weekend (and benefitting greatly by the timing of the Queens passing.) You may have missed it or let it slide on by but make no mistake about it…the budding Totalitarians and their allies are continuing to put an unmistakable chill upon anyone even thinking of becoming a player in the opposition. As small as it is in this environment, they were willing to risk the briefest of bad headlines in order to continue to plant the seeds of fear for 2024 and beyond.

Let’s start the story here (H/T OffThePress):

GOP leader suggests homes of dozens of Trump supporters may soon be raided by FBI

Lawyer says clients are receiving “extremely broad” subpoenas.

A GOP leader and prominent conservative attorney is warning that the homes of dozens of Donald Trump supporters could be in the crosshairs of imminent FBI raids just weeks after the former president’s home was raided by bureau agents.  …

…a reporter with Politico recently tipped off Trump affiliates that the FBI was preparing serve “[approximately 50] search warrants and/or subpoenas on Trump supporters.” …

Based on the Politico reporter’s advanced knowledge, Dhillon speculated that the FBI “is telling reporters about these search warrants and subpoenas before they’re executed.”

“There’s no other explanation for this,” she said. “And I think the reason for this is to instill fear into Donald Trump’s supporters and into those who would challenge election irregularities right before an upcoming election.”

“[I]t is illegal for the DOJ to leak this information to the media,” Dhillon also said.

Carlson responded that the allegations, if true, would “wreck the country,” while progressives are “saying nothing about it.”

[Emphasis added]

As we have seen with the Mar-a-Lago script, the selective and targeted…and ILLEGAL…leaking to help cultivate the needed narrative is part of the war our government is waging against us. More coverage from RedState:

Bombshell Report: Dozens of Trump Allies Raided or Served Subpoenas by FBI

But Bannon appeared on the Charlie Kirk show on Friday and he made some concerning remarks about efforts by the Biden FBI against Trump allies. Bannon said that we saw from Biden’s “demonic” anti-MAGA speech that this was the “primal scream” of a “dying regime.” Bannon claimed there were “35 FBI raids” on senior MAGA/Trump allies. …

Bannon said there was so much going on about trying to bankrupt people or de-platform them, as well. … This is all about intimidation…with financial terrorism and “lawfare.” But it’s unclear who the people he’s referencing here are because this has not had any real coverage.

[Emphasis added]

More:

List of Trump Allies Who Had FBI Show up on Their Doorsteps or Got Subpoenas Includes a Big Name

…it looks like just in the case of the Trump raid, a big net was thrown out there trying to find anything they can to go after people on. And it’s a very troubling thing when the Biden Administration appears to be going after the allies of his once and possibly future political opponent.

To be clear, they leak to cultivate the limited narrative that will hit the airwaves immediately following the “news” events but the real intent is to establish the unmistakable chill among those who will get the message through other means. The story is intended to go away…and then, someday, the lack of expertise willing to participate, for some unknown reason, in a – <<GASP>> – Trump (or other Republican) campaign and administration will be the story.

What needs to be even more troubling for We the People is that the typical media platforms are not the only allies the budding Totalitarians will have in this endeavor. Banks, hospitals, employers of all types…they will voluntarily participate or they will be strong armed into it…but they will participate. I first touched on some of this as far back as January 10, 2021 as being signaled by the incoming puppet regime (and its broad network of allies) at my legacy on-line home. Since it is only available to Ricochet Members, I recreate it here in its entirety:

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Midnight in the Republic, Volume 9

I am reminded of a story from The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2 about the building of the The White Sea-Baltic Stalin Canal in the early 1930s – with prison labor, of course***. There is a revealing passage about the behavior of those who completed their terms during the construction and were freed:

And what do those who are freed ahead of time do? … They stay with the project. They have come to love the canal too much to leave it! “They are so absorbed in it that when they are liberated they voluntarily stay at the canal, engaging in earth-moving operations right to the end of the project. (… After all, they all have a stamp in their passport: “Was at OGPU camps.” You aren’t going to find work anywhere else.) – Page 115 

For context, the rapidly developing battle space (<– just a figure of speech, don’t want to be accused of inciting anything by Ricochetti with softer sensibilities and/or reading comprehension issues) includes:

EXHIBIT A: “… Joe Biden that … is working on a bill to go after “domestic terrorism” with a redefinition of the term, to go after the “ideologically-inspired.” [Glenn Greenwald:] There’s absolutely a new War on Terror being initiated — it’d been lurking for awhile, but it’s accelerating now for obvious reasons. This new one is aimed inward, domestically. … Liberals who are behind the Biden/Harris plan to initiate this new War on Terror, this time with a primary domestic focus, won’t need to study what neocons did with the first War on Terror to learn those old tactics against critics. Neocons are their full allies in all of this

EXHIBIT B: [John O. Brennan]: “Anyone now seeking national redemption by claiming to no longer support Trump must acknowledge how wrong it was to ignore & enable his corrupt, dishonest, & divisive agenda. Total denunciation of a despot’s legacy is necessary to eradicate any remaining malignancy.”

EXHIBIT C: DISPATCHES FROM FORBES’ ‘CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER AND EDITOR’: Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.

(SIDE NOTE: It should be shocking to you that the chest thumping threats from Forbes above are not already their standard practice in doing their job. Maybe that touted “brand” is just a bunch of fluff.  From this point on, I guess I am forced to consider Forbes nothing but a bunch of fluffers. But I digress.)

In the earlier volumes of this series I was more focused on the strains in the social fabric across the country and how this great divide was going to impact the interactions between citizens in their jobs and daily lives – interactions between design teams, in cubicle farms, in meeting/conference rooms, at schools/daycare, PTA meetings, etc.  Rather naively, I assumed that those collisions of separate realities would occur under a federal power that still pretended to be operating under the intended constitutional framework and continue to only use its hidden hand to marginally tip the scales towards its desired path. It is now becoming much clearer just how little the incoming totalitarian forces care about hiding their intentions. As I said in the last entry, this weekend things seemed to go hot:

We didn’t get here by accident and there is clearly an agenda at work. I suspect this is not going to end well.

The (still free) mind cannot help but wonder where the “Republic” under the sample exhibits above (and many more out there in the ether…things are happening very fast) is heading. As a mere-citizen Trump supporter (i.e. a domestic terrorist) the most basic questions is: Will I lose my job? But does it get much more insidious than that? As Trump found out, for fear of never getting another client, will legal counsel refuse to represent you? How far does that Forbes posing position extend?

Consider that your “Trump Support Status (TSS)” will be documented with the credit services, on your medical records, and through the bar code stamped on your forehead, the Iron Heel will have full control:

Will you be denied the advertised 3.25% APR for that 30-year mortgage because the schedule for TSS Positive applications indicates you are only eligible for the 12.75% APR?

Will your mom be denied that hip replacement (or teenage daughter denied that heart valve replacement) early next month because the next open slot for TSS Positive patients (and those with immediate family members who are TSS Positive) is three years from next July?

Are you going to make a reservation and actually eat the food prepared in a restaurant that obtained positive press from the fluffers over at Forbes?

A few weeks ago, after re-reading The Power of the Powerless yet again, I posted some thoughts on dissident movements and parallel structures. I intended that to be more for longer term discussions. It appears I may need to return to that sooner than I thought.

These are developing into very scary times. Again, it should terrify most here that the nominal Right is either on-board with it all or cowering in a corner somewhere. The complete dereliction of duty by the complicit and/or reliably incurious “watch dog” press is shameful. Hopefully the true history of these days will make it through to the other side…future intelligent humanity may need yet another lesson on “how liberty is lost.”

For what its worth, here is my “Armageddon is Here” prediction of the week: Ted Cruz will be removed / forced out of the U.S. Senate by noon next Saturday.

Into the abyss…

[END NOTE]

*** Another part of that story regarding the documentation (a book) of the canal project is similarly telling:

The collective authors do not simply keep silent about the deaths on the Belomor Canal during construction. They do not follow the cowardly recipe of half-truths. Instead, they write directly (page 190) that no one died during construction. (Probably they calculated it this way: One hundred thousand started the canal and one hundred thousand finished. And that meant they were all alive. They simply forgot about the prisoner transports devoured by the construction in the course of two fierce winters. … ). – Page 85

Presumably, those authors went on [to] start MSNBC.

(See also Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, Volume 6, Volume 7, and Volume 8)

(See also Midnight in the Republic, A Dystopian Interlude)

___ ___ ___

(For the record, in early 2022 I did follow up on that Forbes part of the post in two posts titled Master Fluffers for the Corrupt Ruling Class? and The Gilded Age of Modern Media Whoredom…Starring Forbes. As you might guess from those titles, neither made it past the protective gate onto the Main Feed so they remain visible only to members. Maybe someday I will post them here too.)

Always remember to notice the silent narrative also.

Into the (ever more chilly) abyss…