21st-Century McCarthyism

How much longer can Americans be lied to before the nation’s social fabric shreds completely?

To some extent, governments and big media have always lied. In the past, this has been done with good intentions (during times of war when secrecy is needed) or bad (as in cover-ups of blunders and crimes).

Americans may be a bit cynical, yet they know what’s happening and why. Vietnam and Watergate are examples, but you can go as far back as you like in U.S. history and find more.

Today the tempo of lies has sped up beyond belief. It’s almost as if the media have lost all interest in honest reporting. It’s all about supporting a political narrative.

First, there was the Russian influence hoax aimed at Donald Trump by Hillary Clinton and her stooges. It was a pack of lies orchestrated by Clinton to try to deflect blame away from the fact that she lost the election fair and square.

Then came the cover-up of the actual 2020 election fraud. There’s room for disagreement about whether that fraud (as well as simple incompetence among poll workers and election officials) changed the outcome of the election, but there’s no question about the fact that it happened.

Yet any mention of it made you an “election denier.” The word “denier” became the insult of choice for opponents when confronted by the truth.

“Shut up, You Denier!”

When you point out that climate changes all the time but slowly and without catastrophic outcomes, and that CO2 is a trace gas with no proven relationship to climate change (which is caused by sun cycles, volcanoes and ocean currents among other large-scale and immensely complex systems), it’s more than enough to get you labeled a “climate denier.”

You’re in the pay of “Big Oil” or are in some way aligned with nefarious groups. Facts don’t matter to them.

Anytime there’s a natural disaster the talking heads on TV try to blame it on climate change and issue additional charges of climate denialism.

Then there’s the mother of all public policy lies, which was the campaign designed to scare Americans into taking untested experimental gene therapies under the name of “vaccines.”

The lies about COVID are almost too many to count. Careful studies show that masks don’t work, vaccines don’t work (or have limited effectiveness), lockdowns don’t work and anti-social “social distancing” doesn’t work.

The government, especially Dr. Anthony Fauci, lied to Americans about all of these things. Above all, Fauci said the virus came from a wet market (powerful evidence indicates it came from a lab in China) to cover up the fact that Fauci was funding the Chinese lab.

21st-Century McCarthyism

Longtime and highly respected journalist Matt Taibbi is a self-described progressive who’s always been sympathetic to Democratic causes. In other words, he’s no Alex Jones or Steve Bannon or some other prominent right-wing figure. Far from it.

But he’s also an honest investigator with a strong commitment to free speech, which is a value that’s lost support in certain political circles.

Digging into the matter, he was shocked by the extent to which the federal government collaborated with social media to censor any information that ran counter to the prevailing narratives about COVID and the vaccines.

In recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, Taibbi argued that social media collusion with the federal government over “disinformation” created a 21st-century “form of digital McCarthyism.”

Anyone who dared to provide facts was banned from social media for spreading disinformation. Of course it wasn’t disinformation, but information.

Of course, Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee and their accomplices in the mainstream media attacked him for telling the truth.

If all this sounds partisan, I’m sorry, it isn’t. I’m just laying out the facts.

Can it get any worse? Unfortunately, yes.

Janet Yellen, Liar

The latest fraud is the banking crisis that has spread from Silicon Valley Bank to Signature Bank and then to First Republic and Credit Suisse. More bank failures are waiting in the wings.

Janet Yellen said the system is sound. That’s a lie. Unrealized bond losses on bank balance sheets exceed $800 billion. Yellen said the bailouts will not cost the taxpayers anything. That’s a lie.

Banks will have to pay higher deposit insurance premiums, which will be passed through to regular customers (that’s you and me) in the form of fees or lower interest rates on deposits.

Yellen blamed Trump for the bank failures. Trump hasn’t been president for over two years. That’s just more finger-pointing and failing to take responsibility, which is entirely typical of this administration.

Harry Truman once said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” My corollary to that is “Better yet, get out of town.”

To be clear, Yellen has always been incompetent both as Fed chair and now as U.S. Treasury secretary. She’s a not-very-good labor economist and statistics geek and not much more.

Her rise to power is a case of affirmative action run amok. Her role as the “first woman Fed chair,” and “first woman Treasury secretary” placed emphasis on the “woman” part of the equation and no emphasis at all on competence or technical skill in monetary or fiscal policy (she has none).

She’s a textbook neo-Keynesian, which is almost the definition of an incompetent economist. Now her free ride is over.

Well, now it looks like Biden is finger-pointing at Yellen herself.

Is Biden Preparing to Throw Yellen Under the Bus?

The Silicon Valley Bank fiasco including the subsequent shutdowns of Signature Bank, the panic at First Republic Bank and her bungling of the definition of insured versus uninsured deposits have left the banking system in shreds.

That comes on top of her failure at implementing financial sanctions on Russia, her blindness to warning signs at FTX and the worst inflation in 40 years. Her time is up and Biden is getting ready to throw her under the bus.

Her likely replacement is Lael Brainard, who recently moved from the Fed to the White House as an audition for the Treasury job. Bye-bye, Janet. Biden will stab her in the back. As Truman said, “get a dog.”

The long-term consequences of this episode will be severe, which will possibly include a breakdown of confidence in the U.S. dollar itself and the collapse of social order.

I realize that sounds extreme, but it’s not. History provides plenty of examples.

The elites are always the last to know because they take the status quo for granted and assume people have an unlimited capacity for swallowing more lies. They don’t.

Maybe when they start erecting a guillotine in Lafayette Square near the White House the elites will have a clue. I’m not advocating that, by the way. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

Still, we’re getting dangerously close if things continue on their present course.