J. B. Shurk – Project Veritas’s whistleblower materials revealing that the FBI views the Gadsden and Betsy Ross flags, the Liberty Tree, and a smorgasbord of other Revolutionary War symbols as evidence of domestic terrorism are just further proof that the feds’ secret police force no longer bleeds red, white, and blue (although it does probably give new recruits hammer and sickle tattoos).
A federal agency with both intelligence-gathering and law enforcement functions is dangerous enough to any free society, but one that openly views the spirit of 1776 as a threat to the Republic has lost any vestige of a more noble purpose to defend the country from its enemies. Continue reading →
Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, USA (Ret.) – It’s a simple fact of life that people like to complain. If you don’t believe me, just watch the evening news. Even when we say we don’t, each one of us has an innate desire to lament everything that is wrong with the world.
Sadly, this problem is nothing new. In Scripture, we read how the children of Israel complained that they were going to die of starvation in the wilderness. The Lord answered in spite of their attitude by miraculously providing them with a daily supply of food that tasted “like wafers made with honey.” Incredulously, it wasn’t long after that the Israelites were complaining that the Lord’s miraculous all-you-can-eat buffet was not good enough for them. Continue reading →
Chris Hedges – When Rory Fanning, a burly veteran who served in the 2nd Army Ranger Battalion and was deployed in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2004, appeared at the Donald Trump rally in Chicago last month he was wearing the top half of his combat fatigues. As he moved through the crowd, dozens of Trump supporters shouted greetings such as “Welcome home, brother” and “Thank you for your service.” Then came the protest that shut down the rally. Fanning, one of the demonstrators, pulled out a flag that read “Vets Against Racism, War and Empire.”
“Immediately someone threw a drink on me,” he said when I interviewed him on my teleSUR show, “Days of Revolt.” “I got hit from behind in the head three or four times. It was quite the switch, quite the pivot on me. Questioning the narrative, questioning Donald Trump’s narrative, and I was suddenly out of their good graces.”
Nationalists do not venerate veterans. They venerate veterans who read from the approved patriotic script. America is the greatest and most powerful country on earth. Those we fight are depraved barbarians. Our enemies deserve death. God is on our side. Victory is assured. Our soldiers and Marines are heroes. Deviate from this cant, no matter how many military tours you may have served, and you become despicable. The vaunted patriotism of the right wing is about self-worship. It is a raw lust for violence. It is blind subservience to the state. And it works to censor the reality of war.
“A lot of soldiers who’ve come back from war see themselves as anything but a hero,” Fanning said. “To throw that term around loosely is dangerous. It’s a way to manipulate soldiers. It buys their silence.”
“Soldiers are not encouraged to talk about the realities of war when they come back,” he said. “They’re labeled a hero or warrior. That’s a major problem. It leads to further seclusion, isolation with soldiers. We talk about the suicide rates amongst veterans—22 a day. It’s because we’re not allowed to talk about what we saw overseas, how unjust it was, how we feel like bullies. How many innocent people have been killed since 9/11? Throwing out words like ‘heroes’ does a disservice to the experience of veterans and all the innocent people that have been killed since then.”
J. B. Shurk – Project Veritas’s whistleblower materials revealing that the FBI views the Gadsden and Betsy Ross flags, the Liberty Tree, and a smorgasbord of other Revolutionary War symbols as evidence of domestic terrorism are just further proof that the feds’ secret police force no longer bleeds red, white, and blue (although it does probably give new recruits hammer and sickle tattoos).
Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, USA (Ret.) – It’s a simple fact of life that people like to complain. If you don’t believe me, just watch the evening news. Even when we say we don’t, each one of us has an innate desire to lament everything that is wrong with the world.