What's Next ?
Joseph McCarthy was a Republican Senator from Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, he became the public face of anti-Communism in the midst of the Cold War by using his position as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations to identify communists, Soviet spies and sympathizers that had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. Ultimately, the smear tactics that he used led him to be censured by the U.S. Senate. Today, the term "McCarthyism", is used broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character and patriotism of political opponents.
Unfortunately, It seems we are at the beginning of another era of persecution of political opponents, except this time it is a different group of ruling class elites practicing McCarthyism. Things started slowly in 2008 when Presidential candidate Barrack Obama explained his difficulty in winning over working-class voters. In a moment unintended candor, he expressed in public what many on the left have long thought about citizens living in flyover country:
"And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," Obama said.
We can see how eight years of Obama-Biden policies continued the trend of offshoring millions of jobs to China and other foreign countries while their open border policies attracted millions of illegal immigrants willing to work for less money, thus further depressing income growth for middle class citizens. The combination of these open border and China-friendly policies, along with the growth of workplace automation, just meant that the rich got richer and the rest of got stiffed. Industry-crushing tech behemoths like Google and Amazon did great while the average Joe struggled. The all-important labor participation rate (the share of Americans 16 and older either working or looking for work), sank from 65.7% in 2008 to 62.7% in 2016. Many of these folks ended up on some form of public assistance. President Obama’s policies, and his overreach with the Affordable Care Act, cost him his House and Senate majorities in 2010.
By 2016, this growing number of disaffected citizens had become more visible, as did the scorn heaped upon them by the ruling elites, including some Republicans. Speaking at a fundraiser during the 2016 election cycle, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said half of Donald Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables.” Striking a populist tone as the voice of Hillary’s “deplorables”, Trump stunned the Washington DC establishment on both sides of the aisle as he sailed to victory. Given this rebuke, you’d have thought that the establishment elite would’ve become more empathetic to the forgotten millions but instead Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer spent four years focused on a fruitless attempt to investigate, discredit and impeach Donald Trump.
Trump certainly didn’t help matters with his unique combination of bombastic narcissism that infuriated his opponents and most of media which I think ultimately cost him re-election. Had he just struck a more unifying, Presidential tone and run on his solid record and a pre-COVID booming economy, rather than responding to every attack with a worse attack, he probably would have been victorious. Instead, we got another very close election, fraught with issues during an unprecedented pandemic, where it seems Trump and his millions of supporters neither believe nor accept the results. Then on Jan 6, after a defiant speech by Trump, we witnessed the “storming of the Capitol” by some of his supporters and a few insurgent BLM and ANTIFA types.
Wait, it gets better. In a record 3 days, Nancy Pelosi and her ultra-thin majority in the House impeached the president for a record second time on charges of “inciting insurrection.” Predictably, Mitch McConnell refused to expedite the Senate impeachment trial which permitted Trump to serve his remaining few days in office. Now the Democrats who control the equally divided Senate with the vote of the Vice President, are threatening to stage an impeachment trial of AFTER Trump is out of office. Is this even Constitutional?
Now we are seeing a wide range of journalists, politicians and corporate leaders calling for blacklisting, purging and “deprogramming” the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump. Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, best known for her flagship essay in the New York Times’ ahistorical 1619 Project, believes that 74 million Americans deserve to be “punished” as part of deprogramming them for voting for Donald Trump in 2020. The left- wing “Squad” leader, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said it’s “a problem that doesn’t go away on Jan. 20,” when Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th president. “There are people who are radicalized right now. It’s going to take a very long time to deradicalize these people and a lot of effort,” she said.
First, let me say that I decry the violence at the Capitol. Those few protesters involved in storming the Capitol should and are being prosecuted. But to draw the conclusion that 74 million Americans who didn’t vote for Joe Biden are domestic terrorists and racists is insane and dangerous. The ultimate show of raw power is installing 25,000 National Guard Troops in Washington DC for the inauguration and having those troops screened by the FBI to ensure they were properly “politically aligned.” The brazen hypocrisy is that six months ago, we watched some of our cities burn at the hands of radicalized left-wing organizations like Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA, while Democrat Presidential candidates were cheering them on. Our new Vice President, Kamala Harris, supported a fund to bail out rioters this summer. Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter just shut down Parler, a free speech social media app because, in their judgment, the company didn’t do enough to filter certain speech they didn’t like. Folks, this is real Banana Republic stuff. Last week, my ex-pat neighbor told me that threats like this is why he left Argentina years ago.
Now President-Elect Biden is urging the nation to come together and unify. So what exactly is he asking us to unify around? The Green New Deal, the Great Reset, a return to an open-border policy, defunding the police and endless COVID lockdowns? Compromise between sanity and insanity spells death for the sanity. If I asked you to drink a cup of cyanide and you refuse, but we compromise on half a cup, who wins? It’s these sorts of compromises, occurring bit by bit over decades, that have eroded our strength as a nation. It’s not a mystery how it happened. Whenever there was a problem, the solution was always more power for the federal government supported by a blaze of propaganda with any dissent being met with intolerance. More power for Washington DC, and less individual liberty for you and me.
I sure hope Biden is the moderate he purports to be. If he isn’t and I disagree with these policies, am I a domestic terrorist? Maybe these words from his inauguration speech, provides a clue: “And now, the rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, that we must confront, and we will defeat.” I get that white supremacists are on the lunatic fringe and I reject them completely, but who gets to define “political extremism?” If I think Mr. Biden’s new executive order mandating masks on all forms of public travel under the pain of fines and arrest is an overreach, am I an extremist?
And then there is former CIA Director and co-conspirator of the operation to spy on Trump, John Brennan, who went a step further and said in a post-inauguration MSNBC interview that intelligence agencies should look into "religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians..." Libertarians? It appears that I am now an enemy of the state. This is no longer conspiracy theory stuff folks. I have been warning about this for some time and now the barbarians are at the gate.
What the left in this country doesn’t understand is that the emerging resistance from half of the citizens of this country, has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It has everything to do with totalitarian actions by the governing elite, and their cronies in academia, the media and big business. Totalitarianism has never produced anything but destruction, destitution, and death regardless of its lofty rhetoric. The hypocrisy is stunning, and most Americans see it for what it is and have had enough.
What’s Next?
For more than a year I have been grousing about the double-standards and hypocrisy of the political class and their media enablers. But I am just one of many of that see the problems we have. But there has been enough time spent on identifying the problems and now the time has come to do something about it. While it’s easy to just blame Democrats and “the Left,” some of the GOP has been complicit in this massive “cancel culture” movement to silence dissent. How does that saying go by Edmund Burke? “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Yesterday, I was exchanging emails with a group of smart folks who are members of the American Business Conference, a business lobby group in DC, on what to expect from a divided Senate. We were on the topic of whether a small group of moderates on both sides of the aisle, like Joe Manchin and Susan Collins, could be a positive bipartisan force. Here’s how I answered.
I hope you’re right about the possibility of bipartisanship. I’m skeptical given that we just completed four years of unprecedented political resistance of the President by Democrats. I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe that many in the GOP will simply forget all that. Each election cycle seems to create new norms for political behavior, and to expect half the country to simply unilaterally disarm in the name of unity around Joe Biden is a bit rich.
I worry that our country is already on an unsustainable path. For at least half the country, middle ground is to the right of where we are now. My read is that compromising with the radical left means accelerating a decades-long leftward march where freedom is degraded and all issues, real or invented, are kicked up to federal government enforcers who are backed up by the Federal Reserve printing press.
From the perspective of a business that needs to keep running, the rational move for most is to keep their heads down and quietly accept the significant taxes, regulations and diversity mandates coming down the pike. This is yet another Hobson’s Choice that moves the goal posts further left. In contrast, as an entrepreneur, I see an opportunity to copy successful business models but tailor them to the demographic of millions of citizens who feel ostracized and left behind, and who will discover the power of voting with their feet and their money. From FANG alternatives to the beginning of the “Great Migration”, I expect this trend to grow over the coming years.
Sadly, everything we do, including business, must be viewed thru a political lens. Where we live, how we spend our money, who we associate with. We need to ask whether the powers we still possess, like voting with our money and our feet, helps or hinders the authoritarians who have spent decades dividing and conquering. We are in the early stages of building the coalition that can successfully resist them.
We cannot rely on either the Democrat or Republican Party to fight for the average American Joe and Jane. They will not. It’s time to organize outside of the two-party monopoly to build a sustainable, effective grassroots movement that extends most cities and counties in the nation. From this grassroots movement comes state organizations who can coordinate among themselves to maximize opposition to Washington tyranny. To be clear, this isn’t about establishing a new political party, at least right away. To use a parenting analogy, it is about modelling the behavior we want to see. Locally Grown principles like freedom, diversity, and decentralization have within them, aspects that should appeal to both liberals and conservatives. This is middle ground that respects freedom.
I talk about this movement in my 2019 book, Locally Grown: The Art of Sustainable Government. I was hopeful America would have some time to digest these ideas and slowly start to experiment with them over the next decade. However, in a year since my book was published, our country is standing at the edge of the abyss and wondering, “What’s Next?” The answer is a steady methodical process of deconstructing the federal leviathan back into something resembling its original constitutional scope. I can hear what you’re thinking. Fini is crazy. This is an impossible task. Well, it took decades for the radical left to infiltrate our schools, media and institutions so it will take some time to reinstitute the concepts of freedom, tolerance, a fairer distribution of wealth, and fiscal sustainability. Think of the old adage, You have to eat the elephant, a bite at a time.
When considering the size and scope of the effort to return our country to its sustainable bottom-up roots, most people will be what I call “Silent Supporters.” They understand that serious activism can threaten their livelihoods and even their personal freedom. The radical left- wing activists in the government, mainstream media and big American companies are incredibly powerful and well-funded. Facing them head-on is a challenge not for the faint of heart. If you fall into the category of supporting the resistance but not participating in the resistance, you are a Silent Supporter. And whether you are a Silent Support or the brave few that are on the front-lines, I have two words for you. “Operations Security”, or OPSEC. It is a military best practice that identifies critical information to determine if friendly actions can be observed by enemy intelligence and be useful to them. It then takes measures to eliminate or reduce exploitation of that friendly information. In todays world of social media and Big Tech surveillance, it means thinking about the information you give away about yourself. OPSEC is the process of protecting individual pieces of data that could be grouped together to give the bigger picture of you. It is the protection of information deemed to be mission critical. The process results in the development of countermeasures, such as email encryption, anti-eavesdropping methods, and paying attention to your social media posts.
OPSEC means taking control over the information about you that is publicly available on-line. In the European Union, there is a great law called, The Right to Be Forgotten, which codifies a person’s right to ask companies to delete their on-line public data. There are some limitations but it’s a step in the right direction and the US should have this policy. In the meantime, there are things you can do to get to a similar result. I just signed up for an online workshop sponsored by Consumer Reports, Deleting Yourself from Searches, that is advertised as follows:
“If you’ve ever entered your name into a search engine, you might be shocked at just how much sensitive information crops up. This personal information can be used to find out where you live, share details of your relatives, steal your identity, or worse! In this workshop we’ll talk about the rise of people finder sites, the data they collect, and how to remove your information from these sites.“
OPSEC means taking down that Trump sign, shutting down that Facebook account, removing that NRA bumper sticker. It is being uninteresting and blending into the crowd. It’s a simple concept that becomes very important when the shit hits the fan. Even if you are only a Silent Supporter, here are few impactful things you can do bring about social change without putting your careers and families at risk.
Voting with your Money
The most powerful tool for social change is depriving companies, institutions and governments of money. Everyone understands money. I am in the process of transitioning some of my on-line usage to platforms that are safer and more secure that also respect the First Amendment. That means unplugging from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, in favor of apps like Telegram, Signal and Minds.com. It means changing my default search engine from Google to Duck Duck Go. To be sure, these new options are not nearly as developed and have only a fraction of the users of their Big Tech counterparts, but you will be one less eyeball they can advertise to or spy on. Making this move is also a good way to practice OPSEC. If you want more information on alternatives to Big Tech, check out Simon Black’s article, As Tech Companies Purge Users, Here Are Some Alternatives at SovereignMan.com.
Another way to vote with your money is look at where you shop. As convenient as Amazon is, I am trying to shop more at local stores even if it means driving and paying more money. Keeping as much of your spending as possible in your community means supporting local jobs.
Another powerful way to fight the intolerance of broadcast media and entertainment is to unplug from it. Professional sports are both a HUGE business and a HUGE influencer in our society. However, the widespread practice of kneeling during the national anthem as a political protest and the crazy obsession with the Black Lives Matter movement (which was founded by Marxists by the way), has dealt a body blow to the bottom lines of the NFL, NBA and MLB. I don’t watch pro basketball or baseball anymore despite playing those sports throughout my youth. The NBA especially is revolting in the way it purports to care about diversity and tolerance and social justice, while it’s owners kowtow to China which is the most racist and repressive government in the world. I share Martin Luther King’s vision of racism where people are judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Whether it is Facebook, Amazon, the NBA, Disney or Walmart, there is an incredible amount of pressure on large companies to conform to the identity-politics of the radical left. Not towing the line, can mean all sorts of bad things happening including consumer boycotts and “special government regulation.” Most companies rationalize that it’s easier to play along than resist. So you’ll have to decide if wearing that Nike logo, doing the Disney vacation or drinking that Starbucks latte is important enough to support companies that engage in behavior contrary to our nation’s core values.
Vote with your Feet
Voting with your feet is another way of also voting with your money. I moved from The Peoples Republic of Massachusetts nine years ago for the mountains of tax-free Wyoming. When my aging parents needed help five years ago, I then moved my family from Wyoming to Florida, another great low tax and freedom-friendly state. Thank God for our ability to move between our 50 diverse states. Although I was born and raised in Massachusetts, the citizens of that state vote for politicians that simply don’t represent my principles and beliefs. As a result, they don’t get my tax money anymore. My story is being repeated across the country by hundreds of thousands of people who are moving from states like California, New York, and Illinois whose governments are corrupt, insolvent, high tax and hostile to the freedoms guaranteed us in the Constitution. Also, it’s never been easier for most of us to consider a move since the COVID pandemic has proven we all don’t need to be in a big corporate office to do our jobs. As long as there is good internet and video conferencing, you can live in beautiful, better-run states like UT, FL, TN, WY and TX.
Now for the Few, the Proud, the Resistance
Let’s take a look at the playbook for those brave enough to put themselves in harm’s way and overtly resist the authoritarians: It starts with Know thy enemy. Sun Tzu was a famous and successful Chinese general in the fifth century BC who wrote the timeless book, The Art of War. The Chinese Communist Party practices the lessons in this ancient book with incredible results. There are many great quotes in the book, but one my favorites is, “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” A modern-day Sun Tzu was Saul Alinsky, a Chicago-based community activist and political theorist who wrote, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer. It is the essential playbook for left-wing activism since it was published in 1971. Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton were important Alinsky acolytes. One of his most important principles is forcing enemies to live by their own rules while exempting yourself from any rules other than those that secure your own power. Playing by the rules when the opposition doesn’t play by them, is a guaranteed loser. Caring what they think of you is immaterial. Cowering when they call you hypocrites or Nazis is unilateral surrender. A great example of this rule in action, is the left condemning the Capitol riot while cheering on months of BLM and ANTIFA violence this summer. It’s Gavin Newsome, Nancy Pelosi and others forcing COVID lockdowns while they dine at fancy restaurants and visit their favorite beauty salon.
Focus on important issues that can draw a broad base of public support
Whether it be on the left or the right, violence must be rejected. But doing so, we must not throw the baby out with the bath water by destroying our First Amendment rights. A far more effective and less disruptive approach than violence, is to focus on big issues that promote the desired social change that also have broad public support. Notice I didn’t use the word bi-partisan because that implies the involvement of elected politicians who we know ultimately only care about increasing their own power. The real issues are the ones the average Joe and Jane citizen must live with every day. Here are a couple examples of effective erosion of the authoritarian base of support that can also attract a large diverse coalition of American citizens:
1. Public Education Reform - In my home state of Florida, education policy decided a very close gubernatorial election in 2018. Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum opposed school choice and Republican candidate Ron DeSantis was a vocal supporter of school choice. DeSantis beat Mr. Gillum, the African American mayor of Jacksonville, by winning 18% of the female African American vote (100,000 votes) in an election that was decided by 40,000 total votes. These school choice moms voted for a better future for their kids, at a rate that was 250% higher than African American females voted for Republicans nationally. Governor DeSantis is making good on his campaign promise to increase school choice by expanding the state voucher program and the winners are Florida kids.
Educational outcomes are not a function of money as school choice opponents contend. It’s about methodology, accountability, and empowering teachers. Kids are sponges and will emulate good or bad examples in society. Parents are the first role models, and millions of low-income minority families are showing the courage to vote with their feet and enroll their children in public charter schools to increase their odds of success.
The enemies of great schools are the Nation Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) because they are focused on what is best for their three million adult members, NOT what is best for kids. They collectively bargain with local school districts across the country to create work rules for their members that are often at odds with what kids need. The reason so many schools are still completely on-line during this pandemic is because that is what the NEA and the AFT wants. Virtual school is terrible for kids but these unions guarantee that teachers still get paid full-time for less than full-time work. The power of teachers’ unions to collectively bargain for more salary, more retirement benefits, less teaching time, and less accountability is at odds with student and parent interests.
A 2011 study, Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers, by Jason Richwine, Ph.D., and Andrew G. Biggs, Ph.D., concluded that public school teacher total compensation is 52 percent greater than the equivalent private sector job with comparable education and skills requirements. Although salaries are comparable to the private sector, generous pension and healthcare benefits along with much higher job security make public school teaching a very well-paid profession. This disparity costs taxpayers more than $120 billion more each year than they should pay.
There is also the fact that that the NEA and AFT combined spent $43 million in political advocacy in 2020, with over 94% going to Democrats. It’s been this way for decades. Even the father of big federal government, President Franklin Roosevelt, warned us against government unions.
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.
The public school system is the largest expenditure by far on most local government budgets, and funding is often a dominant election issue. In 13 states, teachers who are unhappy with their contracts are allowed to strike, an option not available to police and firefighters. Public sector accounting practices hide the true cost of teacher compensation by allowing lower employer contributions to benefit plans than their private sector counterparts. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics similarly lowballs teacher compensation by excluding retiree healthcare contributions. According to the US Census, local school districts have $437 billion in outstanding debt as of 2016, mostly driven by rising retiree costs that deprive resources each year from school operating budgets. This shell game protects most public sector employees, not just teachers. This illustrates a principle that, after a certain point, government takes on a life of its own with interests that diverge from the citizens it is supposed to serve.
I cannot emphasize enough that the teacher’s unions, not the teachers, are the enemy of better schools. Great teachers are inspiring and can change lives. I have witnessed this with my own kids. But there is more than ample room to raise the bar for everyone. The unfortunate result is that many under-performing kids in public schools are simply passed on to the next grade, where they become someone else’s problem. We can and must do better for our kids. The future of this country depends on it.
2. A second example of resistance with broad public support is Income inequality - Income inequality is an increasing problem in the United States and has been for several decades now. Over the past 50 years, the highest-earning 20% of U.S. households have steadily brought in a larger share of the country’s total income. In 2018, households in the top fifth of earners (with incomes of $130,001 or more that year) brought in 52% of all U.S. income, more than the lower four-fifths combined, according to Census Bureau data.
The causes of income inequality are a complicated combination of corporate outsourcing of jobs to cheaper labor in China, automation in the workplace, and government policy. U.S. companies must compete with lower-priced Chinese and Indian companies who pay their workers much less. As a result, the United States has lost 20% of its factory jobs since 2000. These were traditionally higher-paying middle class jobs. Service jobs such as restaurants and retail have increased, but these are much lower paid.
From an average Joe and Jane citizen point of view, the billionaire class presents a convenient scape goat that kills two birds with one stone. Eight of top ten richest Americans on the Forbes list, are major supporters of the Democrat party both with money and the influence they wield at their technology and media companies. I never thought I’d agree with Elizabeth Warren, but I would be open to a wealth tax on the richest citizens in our country. This would have the effect of raising meaningful tax dollars to reduce our deficit while also reducing the influence of major base of support of the authoritarians. America’s 400 richest people are worth a record $3.2 trillion, up $240 billion from a year ago, helped by a stock market that has defied the Coronavirus. A 5% average wealth tax on these billionaires would raise $160 billion in federal tax revenue each year, and send an important bi-partisan message, while reducing the base of support for the authoritarians.
There are more examples of issues that gather broad public support which also attack the authoritarian base of support. These include COVID lockdowns, the destruction of small business, religious freedom, prison reform and the China threat. Hopefully, you get the idea that we have entered a different phase in American history where it is time defend our way of life before it disappears. To be clear, everything I am talking about here is fully protected by the Constitution. Protesting and using the courts to litigate against the federal government are tested methods of resistance that the left has used for years to get to the position of power they are in now. Now that they in power, they will try to eliminate this method for the rest of us. So, you will have to choose whether you will be a Silent Supporter, a front-lines resister or someone who puts their head in the sand and hopes this will all pass. The wave is coming and there will be no place to hide. I implore you to be part of the positive change rather than a victim of oppression.
I’m grateful to all of you who have been listening and reading my stuff and I encourage you to tell all your friends. In my opinion, things are gonna start getting unruly in America over the next few years and hopefully, I can help you make sense of this, at least until the FBI tries to shut me down. Keep your great comments coming and if you have any suggestions for topics or guests, I’d love to hear them. Just pop me an email at jim@jimfini.com. Also, if you like what I’m doing, please becoming a paid subscriber at my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/jimfini. For $3 per month, you get early access to my episodes and a signed copy of my book. $5 per month gets you all that plus, access to bonus episodes that I won’t put online. Practicing good OPSEC here. $20 gets all that plus Locally Grown merch like tee shirts and mugs, and direct access inner sanctum of to me and the Locally Grown posse. And this money is not going into my pocket per se, but to hire dedicated people who believe in the cause who can help with all the back office stuff I do myself.
Thanks for listening and reading and remember, United We Stand, Divided We Fall, Each One for the Other, and All for All.