The despair that could wreck civilization

Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today is Friday July 31, 2020 the last day of the seventh month of this year.¹ I always give the date verbally and in print in case one of the tech giants decides to cancel me. It might still be possible to find past archived issues of the Castle Report through the date.

Castle family update: a personal despair

The Castle family is fine today and doing well in its efforts to avoid the despair that many are feeling. The family daughter got word this week that maybe, just maybe, some flights from her island will be allowed starting September 1. So we pray for her and we wait, and we try to avoid despair.

General despair

Speaking of despair, I do notice quite a bit of it in the country today. Despair means without hope, and many people today are unsure where their hope will come from. People are in despair for many reasons, among them:

• The virus, and
• The riots, looting, and anarchy that they see unfolding on their video screens.

These are all problems that are very difficult to understand. That holds especially for someone who has only the information from a media with an ax to grind.

The virus and its subsequent problems, these media often tell us, we should leave to the experts.² So technocrats like Anthony Fauci should decide the future of the entire world. But who elected Dr. Fauci to any office? Or who among us gave him the authority to decide our future? Should elected politicians not defer to the experts, then criticism quickly ensues. They must not only defer to experts, but the experts whose opinions are in favor.³

Whom to believe

Mr. Average then, is in despair because he knows that his life is upside down, but he doesn’t know why. He receives orders not to attend church, a sporting event, or a concert. But if he wants to attend a mass protest that will be just fine. His kids are afraid to attend school, but they must. He can’t take his family any where to relieve the pressure of confinement. Some criticize him for wearing a mask, and some for not wearing a mask.⁴ He suspects that the mask is nothing more than a symbol to satisfy the mob.⁵ But he puts it on to avoid their criticism. Now, let’s look at the source of much of his despair.

Source of despair – the riots

What is the cause of the “peaceful protests”? The protests really are peaceful, at least that is what media and some in politics expect us to believe. What has been happening in Portland and Seattle are:

• Small groups of peaceful people simply expressing their opinions about something, and
• Armies of federal storm troopers arresting and molesting them for no reason.

Let’s take a look at what one very well-known journalist or commentator recently said about Portland.

An opinion piece challenges a narrative – or does it distort reality?

Nicholas Kristof, writing for the opinion page of The New York Times, last Sunday edition said this:

To watch Fox News is to learn from Sean Hannity that the “Rose City” of Portland, is “like a war zone” that has been in Tucker Carlson’s words’ “destroyed by the mob.” So, I invite Hannity and Carlson to escape their bubbles and visit Portland. Stroll along the Willamette River and enjoy a glass of local pinot noir. They’ll be safe—unless they venture at night into the two blocks beside the federal courthouse. Citizens need to be vigilant there, for armed groups periodically storm the streets to attack peaceful visitors. I’m talking of course about the uninvited federal forces.

Seeking to persuade – or feed the despair?

Mr. Kristof is not a journalist. For journalists watch, do research, and write the truth as their eyes and research reveal it. Mr. Kristof, on the other hand, writing for the greatest newspaper in the world, seeks to persuade rather than inform.

Let me give you one final Kristof quote to illustrate my point.

So, let’s be real: Trump isn’t trying to quell violence in Portland. No, he’s provoking it to divert attention from 140,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States. Once again he’s fear gassing peaceful protesters to generate a photo op. And he’s doing this every night in downtown Portland.

Mind reader?

Those are not the words of a journalist, but I don’t suppose Mr. Kristof even pretends to be a journalist. He is an opinion writer, but I often wonder how he can so deftly determine the motivation of the President. To observe an action and to have an opinion about that action is one thing. But to know the motivation behind it is quite another. Perhaps some of the virus deaths resulted from the “peaceful protests” that he describes so well. Or perhaps from some of the pinot noir strolls along the river.

From the Attorney General

In any event there are other views of what has been happening in Portland. The other day Attorney General Barr came to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the use of federal officers:

• To protect federal property, and
• To quell disturbances.

For openers: all lives should matter

Let me give you a few words from his opening statement.

When officers respond to an emergency, whether a catastrophe like 9/11 or an everyday crime, they do not set out to protect white people or black people. They risk and sometimes give their lives to protect and serve all people, and all people owe them thanks.

When a community turns on and pillories its own police, officers naturally become more risk averse and crime rates soar. Unfortunately, we are seeing that now in many of our major cities. This is a critical problem that exists apart from disagreements on other issues. The threat to black lives posed by crime on the streets is massively greater than any threat posed by police misconduct. The leading cause of death for young black males is homicide. Every year approximately 7,500 black Americans are victims of homicide, and the vast majority of them-around 90 percent-are killed by other blacks, mainly by gunfire. Each of those lives matters.

Continuing…

Finally, I want to address a different breakdown in the rule of law that we have witnessed over the past two months. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims. The current situation in Portland is a telling example. Every night for the past two months, a mob of hundreds of rioters has laid siege to the federal courthouse and other nearby federal property. The rioters arrive equipped for a fight, armed with powerful slingshots, tasers, sledgehammers, saws. Knives, rifles, and explosive devices. Inside the courthouse are a relatively small number of federal law enforcement personnel charged with a defensive mission: to protect the courthouse, home to Article lll federal judges, from being overrun and destroyed.

Peaceful? Or a mob?

He went on to say in his actual testimony that peaceful protesters do not throw explosives into federal courthouses. We should all agree as Americans that one cannot allow armed mobs to operate beyond government, or tear down federal courthouses.

Source of despair – two disparate views with equal prominence

What causes the two different views of the same thing, and which one are we to believe? The two views are so different they can’t both possibly be true. I know which view my Republican friends believe and I know which view my Democrat friends believe. If the picture we hear is false, why would Nicholas Kristof make up such a potentially damaging lie? And not only that, publish it as the view of The New York Times?

Feeding the despair – a lurid picture

Some went much further than Mr. Kristof in their description of the officers sent by the President to Portland. The Democrat majority whip in the House, James Clyburn, endorsed the opinion of the speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi:

The use of stormtroopers under the guise of law and order is a tactic that is not appropriate to our country in any way.

Mr. Clyburn went on to describe the federal officers as stormtroopers as well, thus equating them to Adolf Hitler’s brownshirts.⁶

Do Democrats despair of their polls and candidate?

I used to have a hard time understanding all this and sometimes I still do. But I think I have at least a partial handle on it. The Democrats hate Donald Trump so much they are willing to say just about anything that might serve to hurt him in the coming election. They spew out the most demeaning language on subjects that could cause permanent harm to the nation. And they do it just to hurt Trump’s election chances. When you think about it, they must not have much faith in those polls we read about constantly which show Biden with a double-digit lead.

Come to think of it they must not have much faith in Biden either. They do create problems for themselves sometimes though. A recent court ruling in the Democrat city of Milwaukee that police had to quit using tear gas or pepper spray for crowd control caused 100 different police organizations to withdraw from an agreement to provide security at the Democrat National Convention.

The police protect people – all of them

If I were a person truly interested in the lives of black people and the welfare of black people, which I am, I would be an advocate of more police funding not less. Why? Because the withdrawal of police from cities which defund them has caused disastrous problems. Violent crime in Democrat cities across the nation is soaring compared to years past. Chicago, for example, has seen a record month. Congratulations to Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot for having more than 100 murders in the month of July. The number of today still awaits tabulation. But through yesterday 584 people have been shot and 103 of them have been murdered. Yes, indeed mayor, congratulations on doing the worst job for black people of any mayor in the country.

An old case of despair – Viet Nam

Those numbers remind me a little of the days during the Vietnam War when kill counts were very important. The cameras were waiting to see how many bodies you pushed into the pits compared to the numbers you sent home to their mamas. They really are similar, and both make just about the same amount of sense, but there is one difference. The media in Vietnam was more than willing to look at the bodies and tell the people back home that the war was going well.⁷ In Chicago, and other Democrat cities, the media won’t even report that there is a war.

A derelict mayor

Mayor Lightfoot, to her credit, admits that if she ever had control of Chicago, she doesn’t have it now. When her critics point out the strict gun laws of Chicago to her, she just shrugs and says the guns are coming in from areas that don’t have gun laws. Yes, Mayor I suppose that’s at least partially true, places like Mexico perhaps.⁸ But how are other more populated cities doing better than yours? Democrats, especially city Mayors, need the police and their support right now. The violence is so great in the no go zones of major Democrat cities that its going to take a long time, perhaps years to regain control, if ever.⁹

Distraction?

I get the feeling that the riots and looting of recent months have been a distraction. Or in military terms, a diversion. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, black, white and Hispanic, young and old, and the pseudo sexual against everyone in the human race, if we could all realize that we are all part of the human race and that everyone in the human race is under attack right now.

The human race is at war against the technocrats. Who seek to monitor, tabulate and control it just as a cattle farmer wants to monitor and control his cattle. For the first time in the history of our race, technology has caught up with the dreams of technocrats. We are in danger of extermination but not violent extermination as with nuclear weapons. In the sick dreams of the technocrats we would still be alive, most of us anyway, just as cattle are temporarily alive.¹⁰

The Real Answer to despair

Finally, folks, it’s hard not to be in despair when considering all this. Where is the hope that drives away despair?¹¹ When you take away God it’s hard to hire enough police.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle.

About the image

“Days of FDR” by OakleyOriginals is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Editor’s Notes

1 As ever, CNAV received this article for editing three days later than the date the author indicates.

2 But not all experts! 100 of them disputed the prevailing narrative. Watch. Or watch here.

3 That evidently includes Bill Gates. No one elected him President either.

About those masks

4 CNAV holds that one should wear a mask strictly as a courtesy to the home or establishment one visits. Furthermore, that courtesy does require nor condone usurping an enforcement authority one does not possess.

5 See for example Linda Goudsmit’s excellent article making this very point.

Armies real or imaginary

6 Or perhaps to an army of men of uniform size, wearing all-white full-body armor with a helmet that covers the face and reveals a breathing grid in the shape of a perpetual angry frown. George Lucas certainly designed well the oppressive army of the popular space fantasy he premiered forty-one years ago. In any case, the majority whip obeys Godwin’s Law. Behold: reductio ad Hitlerem, or reductio ad imperium galacticum.

7 At first they did. Then came the Tet Offensive of 1968, and the student riots in that same year. Suddenly the media, with CBS’ Walter Cronkite in the lead, turned against the United States Command. Cronkite in particular described the Tet Offensive as a North Vietnamese victory, not the American victory it actually was. General Vo Nguyen Giap NVA specifically credited Cronkite with making eventual NVA victory possible.

Official deception as source of despair

8 See CNAV’s extensive series on Operation Fast and Furious. The end of this article gives access to every other article in the series.

9 CNAV has made its position on the riots abundantly clear.

10 Bradlee Dean makes that point eloquently about one of the most prominent technocrats in the world today.

11 Here’s one Person to Whom to look for it.