US AT BOTTOM (AGAIN) IN MATERNAL MORTALITY RATES

     Here in the Prozac Nation, outbreaks of mass-insanity are becoming increasingly common, as they historically do when a society is breaking down. These outbursts usually manifest themselves around some controversial issue which wouldn't even be a matter of debate in a sane society, while underlying or more serious issues get ignored but these absurdities are always dignified with some high-sounding stock phrase to give the illusion of importance.

    Last week, for example, the rage was all about the Donald Trump and Hunter Biden trials while the whole issue of egregious dysfunction in our Legal System was swept under the rug. This week, women's issues have resurfaced, the controversy surrounding two (so far) beauty pageants 'won' by contestants who---to put it mildly---weren't quite what we'd normally expect. The decisions obviously were made to incite controversy a make a statement because no rational person would justify either of them in any other way. 

   The State of Maryland decided that Gender Dysphoria was a positive role model for girls; while the State of Alabama stressed Morbid Obesity as a desirable feminine goal. Actually, I'm not sure why any young woman would want to participate in these events after these clown-shows, but outlets for positive femininity are becoming about as closed as their masculine counterparts these days. It's a common misconception in the Manosphere that women are valued more than men in our society, but this is an illusion based on a faulty perspective. Women are worth nothing in our society: men are worth less than nothing and this actually is the only difference. 

    As proof of this, let's look at a story which went ignored behind all of the online flame-wars, gender-bending, and general stupidity. For the third straight year, the US retains last place among developed nations in its maternal mortality rate. In fact, the percentage of mothers dying in childbirth is nearly twice as high as Chile, which is second-worst among the 37 OECD nations. 

   This isn't a phenomenon which only happened last week: the numbers have been crashing throughout the entire 21st Century, though neither our social influencers nor the political class seem to take much interest in it. In the year 2000---which had already seen some decline in previous years, the maternal mortality rate in America stood at 9.8 per 100,000 births; today that number is 22.8. In 2021, the numbers had hit as high as 32.9: but even since then, the rates of infertility and infant mortality rates have climbed which probably account for the modest decline. Native-born Americans are not even reproducing at replacement levels. 

    The study also showed an interesting statistic; 2/3 of maternal mortality happens postpartum---within a year---of giving birth. Those are causes of death referred to as complications of pregnancy. While it is true that addictions, obesity, and the generally poor condition of American health is causing much of the problem, poor postnatal care is also a contributing factor. 

    The reason behind this likely has to do with the structure of American healthcare. Obamacare essentially turned over the system to Big Pharma and the Insurance Cartels---which had already amassed considerable power over it under the Neocon policy of outsourcing social services and favoring monopolistic practices. Policies on pregnancy and childbirth are today centered on the most cost-effective options and patients are merely commodities. Postnatal care doesn't involve the subsidies or medical expenses that natal care does, and the latter already is done as cheaply as possible. As proof of this, it should be noted that the highest rates of both maternal and infant mortality are in so-called Red States where Crony-Capitalist control over healthcare is more pronounced.

    Regardless of the policy reasons however, it's sadly obvious that a culture which considers access to abortion and homo 'marriage' as sacred human rights isn't likely to concern itself much over things like maternal or infant mortality rates. Nor will an economic system which is essentially dehumanizing put much value on things like the miracle of birth. So our culture will probably go on fighting over challenging traditional gender stereotypes while things like femininity and motherhood continue to decline. 

EPOCH TIMES CFO JAILED

      For obvious reasons, there wasn't much said about this story in the Controlled Opposition Media. Earlier this week, Weidong Guan, Chief Financial Officer of The Epoch Times landed in jail for---well, a lot of things. 

     According to the NBC affiliate in New York City: "Guan, a resident of Secaucus, New Jersey, managed the Epoch Times’ 'Make Money Online team,' which carried out the scheme to buy criminal proceeds and transfer them to bank accounts linked to the media outlet, according to his indictment. From 2020 to 2024, the team allegedly used a crypto platform to buy tens of millions of dollars in crime proceeds at discounted rates, of 70 to 80 cents on the dollar, in exchange for cryptocurrency. The crime proceeds, which came from sources including fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits, were loaded onto tens of thousands of prepaid debit cards.

    "After purchasing the proceeds, participants allegedly used stolen personally identifiable information to open various types of accounts and transfer the proceeds into bank accounts linked with the media outlet and related entities. They were often laundered again through other accounts, including Guan’s own personal bank and crypto accounts. To hide the illegal nature of the proceeds, Guan and his co-conspirators allegedly lied to banks and other entities about their sources."

    

    For those unfamiliar with The Epoch Times, it is for the Controlled Opposition what Soros and Gates-funded Media outlets are for the MSM. Just about any story published by that outlet is slurped up without question by most 'Conservative' pundits: especially because of its fanatical anti-China positions. It has just about as much credibility as those MSM outlets have.

   Epoch Times was founded in 2000, by John Tang, who is deeply connected to the dangerous Falun Gong Cult. Falun Gong was chased out of China mostly for doing the same kinds of crimes there as they've since practiced here. Unfortunately, our new, realistic Conservatives have no aversion either to cults or criminals as long as they're based. Just about anybody who flees China today with the police two steps behind him can come to the US and be sheltered and turned into an anti-China dissident or a China expert. The results are usually predictable: Guan's case is not an isolated example. 

    Admittedly, the Liberals are just as bad---the Dalai Lama being a prime example of cultish charlatans embraced by the Whacko Left. The WEF even has one of these yo-yos on their Board of Trustees. However, we shouldn't be acting like the Whacko Left and that's the whole point. 

    The American Right has lost its Moral Compass, which is how characters like Guan get away with doing what they do. The problem is that Postmodern Conservatism has forgotten what it stands for; under Neocon leadership and the influence of that nest of vipers, the Alt-Right, gaining power has become an end in itself. That makes us no better than the Left, which has the same goal and employs the same amoral means to get there. 

    Pundits of the Epoch Times stripe claim that we can't win elections unless we abandon our commitments to things like faith, family, and freedom; but this is disprovable just by looking at recent global political trends. Vladimir Putin, a social Conservative and a nationalist, was re-elected to a sixth term with 88% of the vote. Those who've followed his policies have won elections, ousting US Deep State-backed satraps---Slovakia, Iraq, and (soon) Georgia; and socially Conservative leaders rejecting US Cultural Imperialism have been re-elected resoundingly---Belarus, Hungary, Turkey among others. The expansion of Chinese influence which these pundits also so fear is happening simply by the observable results of Chinese Foreign Policy versus the Corporate American Model. 

   Unfortunately, our side has become so obsessed with success at all costs that it's tended to double-down on its mistakes instead of correcting them. If we, by some chance, actually have a 'Red Wave' in November we'll come to a brutal reality-check as to what we've put in power. 

    

THE WOKE RIGHT EMBRACES EUTHANASIA

    In their ongoing attempts to try and appear relevant in this year's Election Circus, the Conservative-Industrial Complex has taken on many woke positions---alongside their continual posturing about enforcing the New World Order more robustly than the Democrats. Their completely out-of-touch commentaries on the Trump Verdict---pretending that we had an absolutely pristine Justice System until last week---is getting laughed out of the news cycle, so they've apparently gone back to abandoning 'social issues' as part of their strategy of owning the Libtards.

   William Briggs had a good article up today showing the latest in these trends. Not satisfied apparently with going woke on Abortion, homo 'equality,' and drug legalization, the New Right is promoting euthanasia as a new 'Conservative' value. Richard Hanania of the shady Neocon think-tank the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, praised WEF Young Global Leader Mark Rutte's Holland for its for enlightened policies of reducing useless eaters. Following the case of Holland's extermination of a woman probably suffering from depression, Hanania wrote: "This woman was on a wait-list for three years {nota bene: since she was 26}. Doctors concluded it was hopeless after doing what they could {no doubt prompted by Big Pharma} What right do people think they have to tell her that she should go on? It's not your decision." 

   Hanania's position, as seen in his concluding statement, is basically the standard one of the New Right, typically expressed as "Why should I be responsible for others' bad choices?" Or, to use the Biblical expression: "Am I my brother's keeper?" 

   

    In the aftermath of the Second World War, government-sponsored programs to exterminate the 'unfit' through sterilization, abortion, euthanasia, genocide, and other means fell into great disfavor once the reality of what those policies actually translated to in practice became known. Proponents of Eugenics changed the name of their program to Population Control and sold the program to the Whacko Left Wing under various disguises as to their true objectives. In the case of Euthanasia, extermination of the unfit was re-sold as 'death with dignity' and other such nonsense. 

   Today, the New Right has taken the same arguments are re-selling them as free choice and the medical death-camps offering such services as part of the free market. All of this is further proof that amoral Capitalism is as grave a threat to civilization as godless dictatorships. Neither put the slightest value on human life other than as it serves the ends of the Corporation or State respectively. 

   Depopulation is, of course, part of the policy behind the Great Reset. The Whacko Left Wing has typically framed their support for such policies as the phony threat of overpopulation; that is, pretending that there is a scarcity of resources because there are too many people---not because the Woke Corporations have looted and mismanaged resources as well as suppressing new technologies to keep their stakeholders' profit-margins high. 

   The Right, however, seems to have taken a slightly different variation on the theme. The general feeling on that side seems to be that too many people are 'losers' who don't deserve any resources in the first place. In their minds, the earth belongs to the strong, and power and success are a measure of man's value. Now it is true that Christianity traditionally held that the meek shall inherit the earth and strongly suggested that the duty of the strong was to uplift and encourage the weak: but Churches today tend to ignore everything that Jesus taught and think of the Pharisee as the more realistic and pragmatic type. The Pharisee's prayer: "Lord I thank thee that I am not like the rest of mankind: rapacious, unrighteous, adulterers, or even as my neighbor here" seems to have replaced the Lord's Prayer as the new based and Red-Pilled doxology.

  The position of most religions is (or should be) that all life belongs to God and God alone decides when it should end. These days, though, that position gets a predictable response.

    Of course, people who deny this don't ask the next logical question: if God doesn't have the power over life and death, who does? That would be the State (according to the Whacko Left) or Big Pharma (according to the Woke Right). Now, if these smart-aleck Atheists or self-righteous Churchians would care to explain why governmental or corporate bureaucracies should be entrusted with God-like powers, please feel free to leave a comment. The myth of the Divine Right of Kings was exploded a long time ago, but it doesn't seem to me that presumed 'right' was inherited by anybody else.

   "But," somebody might object "Can't someone choose to end their life? Isn't it a personal decision?" Maybe so; but Euthanasia is hardly an individual choice. As Briggs points out: "All this is before we consider how the glamour of having a doctor kill you is portrayed, and how that affects weak minds. Minds susceptible to propaganda. Which you must know by now are the majority. Read what the killed woman said again: 'My whole friends and my support system, we really did it together'".

   What friends and a support-system actually would do in a less sick society is try to help someone this distraught overcome their despair and live up to their highest potential. We're to presume, of course, that these very non-judgemental persons in her support system only acted with the purest of motives: her 'friends' weren't hoping for a big slice of her estate; and the 'doctors' did all of this for free and didn't get a fat paycheck from Big Pharma. Certainly none of them cared about social media approval or publicity or anything like that.

   Unfortunately, the social atmosphere cultivated and promoted by the Corporate State today isn't one that promotes Life or self-fulfillment. Suicides are rampant throughout Western countries for a reason: our postmodern dystopia sees individuals as expendable, failures as inexcusable, and offers conformity to the shifting sands of public opinion as the highest goal in life. Alienation and isolation are encouraged in such a system to weed out the non-conformists, with occasional human sacrifices offered as an incentive. Drug addiction---the slower version of suicide---is also encouraged.

   In the larger scheme of things, the Right is once again failing to show how it is any improvement over the Left. Holding our noses and voting for Neocons isn't going to do much to revive our sense of responsibility towards our neighbors---which is something that we really need if we're going to Make America Great Again.

   

     

   

    

AI: McDONALD'S FOR THE MIND

    While today in the Prozac Nation our nominal Head-of-State was busy kicking off Pride Month and the Controlled Opposition was hand-wringing over the newly-discovered revelation that our Legal System is dysfunctional, the real rulers of the former Western democracies were meeting at the World Economic Forum to hold a symposium on imposing Artificial Intelligence on their subject populations. The Oligarchs' cover-story is that this meeting is about using AI to combat 'climate change;' if they admitted its real purposes (i.e. mind control, displacing workers,  weaponizing bureaucracy, etc.) it would be a much harder sell to a gullible public. 

   AI, like all technologies, has the potential for positive uses. The Chinese, for example, have been experimenting with AI to solve complicated medical procedures and engineering problems. China also has been a leader in using AI for increased food production. However, given that in our region, companies like MicroSoft, Google, and BlackRock are driving most of the innovations, we do well to question to what purposes it is being employed here. 

   In a cultural atmosphere where the general population outsources its thinking and is predominantly self-centered on hedonistic distractions, Artificial Intelligence spread like wildfire after it became mainstreamed in 2023. Consumers welcomed Smart Homes where they were relieved of such complicated tasks such as turning on light switches and adjusting thermostats. AI use has become so pervasive in forming Official Narratives and Fact-Checking the same narratives that Media Cartels have been laying off personnel. Likewise, we've seen a rise in AI-generated images and chat-bots which obviate the need for actual social interaction. 

   

    It's really a sad commentary on the state of American Culture when we actually need to have our thoughts validated by a robot or our social acceptance based on cartoon characters, but here we are. McDonald's for the Mind and the Amazon Marketplace For All Your Social Needs: this is a Market-Driven Economy devoid of ethics reaching its logical conclusions. Mechanization of the mind, body, and soul is the godlike power that the Overlords pushing this agenda seek to achieve.

    A body without a mind or soul is, by definition, a corpse; if it retains some motility, it is a zombie: here we get a fairly good impression of what life under the Great Reset would actually be like. Both reason and spirituality would be vitiated and existence (because one could no longer call it living) subject to the arbitrary will of a few overlords creating the illusion of peace, security, and freedom. 

   As gloomy as this scenario is, we must remember that our bodies, souls, and minds are subject to a Higher Power than the World Economic Forum. We have the Free Will to sell ourselves into slavery; which is what most Americans are doing: but we can also reject these impositions and usurpations as we should. For this reason, the Great Reset ultimately will fail. Technology has never beaten Nature yet; Man has never outsmarted his Creator, and I don't give the Fourth Industrial Revolution any better odds than its predecessors of achieving its delusions about World Domination. 

    What those in charge of the Globalist Deep State are counting on is their ability to deceive and distract: and that is where AI's greatest benefit to them lies. In the aftermath of the fall of the Third Reich, people were surprised to learn how small the Gestapo really was. Everybody in Europe feared them and believed that they were everywhere at once; when in reality, the Gestapo relied heavily on informants and what we'd call today Deep Fakes which were highly publicized in the Nazi Press. AI, in the hands of the Oligarchy is being employed the same way. At their core, all repressive regimes rely on their ability to create an illusion of omnipotence. The greatest fear of all of them---and this includes the de facto dictatorship here---is that the majority (or even a plurality) see through their deceptions. 

   No matter what the Tech Lords and their Media sycophants say, AI is no match for the human brain---if we would only choose to rely upon it. 

    

      

     

  

    

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP

      I recall a few years ago, a fellow whom I knew was going to Law School. I dropped by his place; he was busy studying for something and I was waiting for his dad (some families still have those in the US). While I was waiting, I spied on his textbooks that looked interesting. It was about defending murder trial cases and written by one of the celebrity lawyers who defended O.J. Simpson (I don't recall which one). The very first chapter was all about stressing the need for the lawyer to be paid in advance; after all, if a murder trial goes against a defendant, there isn't much his attorney can do if the defendant decides not to pay him. 

   Of course, in Simpson's case, he was exonerated but died in poverty while everyone else connected to the case raked in a fortune, so his attorney's advice worked out well for the system. The Simpson Case was a perfect example of 'Justice' has been turned into an industry---one on roughly the same moral plane as predatory financial octopuses, Big Pharma, the Corporate Media, etc. Bear in mind that the Simpson Case happened in 1994; it's not as though we've had a system well-renown for its fairness and commitment to bedrock principles during the last 30 years despite the Controlled Opposition's insistence that the System has only been corrupted since Biden took office. 

  Speaking of our nominal Head-of-State, in a particularly ironic twist of fate after a weekend of hand-wringing over the Trump Verdict, his son Hunter Biden is the star of this week's Trial of the Century. Now, naturally the Controlled Opposition is arguing that, unlike the Trump Trial, there is not slightest political motivation behind bringing Hunter Biden to trial, and the fact that his dad is also running for president this year is just a coincidence. Nobody is above the law, including the President's son. In other words, let's all just flip last week's narratives because it's different now. 

   The bottom line here is that this has got to stop. By 'this' I mean the whole Lawfare Industry in general, but the politicization of the System in particular. It's bad enough outside the political sphere: the mercenary law firms, the corruption, the Media Circuses, the inequality of legal representation, etc; but people need to wake up. Elected officials are being impeached on a regular basis; show-trials are concocted against political opponents, elections are being decided in Courts. The problem has gone beyond the guilt or innocence of this or that person: the System itself has become a criminal enterprise. 

   One would think that the Trump Verdict would result in demands from the Right that Lawfare be stopped once and for all and meaningful Judicial Reforms---reforms with teeth---would be forthcoming, but apparently not.

    Unfortunately, as the above tweet shows, we don't really have a Conservative Movement based upon principle: what passes for a Conservative Party today is merely Reactionary Politics. Statements like that one spell it out clearly. The Right is not interested in a Justice System based upon impartial equality before the Law; they want the same unaccountable power for themselves to employ against their own perceived enemies. 

   I'm not arguing here that the criminals on the Left shouldn't be held accountable for their crimes. They should be ejected from power and reforms put in place to keep the kinds of abuses of power they've committed from happening again. However, that's not what these pundits on the Right are calling for. What they really want is the same system with different people in control of it to "give the Democrats a taste of their own medicine." It is an attitude based not upon a desire for Justice but upon envy of those wielding arbitrary and irresponsible power and the desire take that power to lord over others in the same way.

  Worse still, what the reaction on the Right is suggesting is an escalation of the Strategy of Tension---an escalation because, in the case of Lawfare, it is employing the very purposes of Law as a weapon against the foundational principles of Law. The Strategy of Tension encourages social upheaval and division to build consensus for a strong Government; but when that chaos is sown within the Justice System itself, the end result can only be an even more brutal and repressive Judiciary.

    Given though that the current system is both politically and financially profitable, and that the American Public holds courtrooms in a superstitious, almost reverential awe, the chances of meaningful reform of any kind are slim. So until we see a change of public attitudes---where courts become a venue of Justice again instead of a public display of the worst elements in human nature---injustice will be the New Normal while the lawyers and judges laugh all the way to the bank. 

SEEING THROUGH THE SMOKESCREEN

     So, in the aftermath of this week's Trial of the Century, Americans are reacting. Some are celebrating the decision, others are faking outrage, and the majority are most likely stocking up at the Marijuana Dispensary and eagerly following the really important news stories,

   

   The verdict in the Chad Daybell Case even ranked higher than the Trump Case did. The bright spot is though that at least that case wasn't a miscarriage of justice even if did take four years to accomplish. Still, one would think that political show-trials in America, a situation in East Asia about to spiral out of control, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza would be higher priorities. 

  To try and generate some interest in the American political situation, the hyenas in the Corporate Media are trotting out the usual experts painting lurid scenarios of Right Wing Extremist violence. The Whacko Left, of course, is well-known for its peaceful acceptance of its opponents' positions and never engages in violent public rages or in any way ever condones extremist actions of any kind. Meanwhile, the Controlled Opposition is excited because they think that the Trump Verdict is going to be the Magic Bullet that turns the American Public to embrace the Red Wave. Lockdowns, mandates, race riots, stolen elections----none of those things did: but this verdict will. 

    I've been hearing this baloney from the American Right ever since the Waco Massacre in 1993. By gosh, if those Liberals push us any further we're going to get reallllllly mad! Not to say that the Right is doing nothing: they're holding another Congressional Hearing over the Trump Verdict next week. Nothing about addressing our broken Legal System and proposing meaningful reforms: instead they're going to give two New York City officials---over whom they have absolutely no jurisdiction---a serious tongue-lashing. No word yet as to whether the Congressional Committee will be wearing diapers to show their solidarity with the Cause. Since June is now officially Pride Month in the Prozac Nation, they can even wear rainbow-colored ones to show their wokeness. 

    In a toxic culture like ours, it's important for people to remind themselves that we're living in abnormal times. This is why it is so important to be grounded with others of like mind in a community, because we all need positive reinforcement desperately. Getting stoned on the High Times Flavor-of-the-Month or taking the Red Pill and becoming an aloof Alpha Superman is exactly what we should not do. The sociopolitical collapse we're experiencing today is a direct result of Americans abandoning their sense of responsibility to others and focusing exclusively on themselves. While such attitudes produce an efficient Corporate bureaucracy and an aggressive consumer base, it contributes very little in the interests of Civilization. 

    When a Society is based on a Cult of Power and Personality and the majority are focused on getting from it everything that they think that they're entitled to, it logically results in the kinds of absurdities we see around us today. Twice now in the last three decades presidents have been indicted for sexual impropriety while at the same time it's seriously being debated as to what constitutes Torture and Genocide. Suicides and overdoses are running rampant among American youth while our 'leadership' thinks that social media and access to tobacco products are the greatest threats to young people. Violent street scum are terrorizing our cities and towns while we worry about Chinese weather-balloons drifting into American airspace: and so on. 

   We have to reject this nonsense and come back to an understanding that there are Moral Absolutes in the Universe, whether the settled science or public opinion chooses to recognize them or not; they are still in operation. That fact should be both our consolation and our hope. 

OUR LEGAL SYSTEM IS CORRUPT? WHO KNEW!

     It's hard to believe that only as recently as the Reagan Administration and the immediate years following that Judicial Reform was actually considered an issue in the Republican Party. Reading through the Controlled Opposition's commentaries on yesterday's Trump verdict, one would get the impression that travesties of Justice, Trial-by-Media, kangaroo-court Show Trials, and general corruption in our Legal System only started happening yesterday. 

    Consider that in the last month the GOP-controlled Congress (which has already smashed all records for inquisitorial hearings) criminalized protests on purely political grounds. Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, recently pardoned a convicted murderer on Politically-Correct grounds. Abbott also openly defied the Supreme Court on many occasions. Even Trump himself, just last weekend, offered to commute the sentence of a convicted drug-trafficker on political grounds. The complaints of such people about the legal travesty in New York yesterday rings a little hollow. 

   Also quite hollow is the refrain from all these bowtie-clutching Neocon pundits who had no idea that there are any problems with our Legal System. They seem to have forgotten the abuses of power that happened as long ago as the Clarence Thomas or Robert Bork Hearings. Or maybe how that great champion of the Constitution, George Bush Sr. eviscerated the 5th Amendment with Asset Forfeiture Laws and the 8th Amendment by ruling that trying someone Criminally and Civilly for the same crime was not 'Double Jeopardy.' People found innocent at a legal trial (e.g. the police officers in the Rodney King case, O.J. Simpson as early examples) could be convicted at a Civil Trial and imprisoned. 

   The Thomas Hearings, the King Verdict, and the Simpson Case also brought big-money media into the Judicial Process. Since then, we've had show-trials in everything but name. Long-gone are the days when crusading journalists were analyzing the relative justice of these high-profile affairs: now they act as cheerleaders egging on the lowest elements of society for clickbait and higher ratings.

  What went wrong with our Justice System and why are there no (sincere) calls for reform? The same thing that went wrong with most other American institutions: it became an industry. Underneath all of the pomp and decorum and the fake appeals to 'tradition' and 'Rule of Law,' our Courts are nothing but another market selling a commodity---or more accurately, a racket run by a few insiders willing to sell 'justice' at very high prices. The rise of the Security and Surveillance State and the Prison-Industrial Complex and so-called 'legal specialization' in our Law-School enterprises have made what these Neocon hypocrites are now calling the "fairest justice system in the world" into a multi-billion dollar system of socially-approved extortion and domestic terrorism. 

   Anybody who dares lift a voice and demand real Judicial Reform is denounced as soft on crime or advocating a two-tiered system, depending on which side of the Official Narrative he encounters. Both factions of the Uniparty like the Status Quo because the moneyed interests profiting off the system fund both of them. 'Crime' today is centered heavily on whatever each side defines as Politically Correct. Political Correctness was a term devised by Vladimir Lenin who, like today's Liberals and Conservatives, felt that Legal formalities shouldn't stand in the way of an agenda.

   

    The actual principles of Justice are of no use to the Ruling Elite: the vast majority of them would be in jail themselves if Laws actually were applied fairly and impartially. However, legal circuses and trial-by-media suits their purposes perfectly. Such things are part of the Strategy of Tension whereby the public is divided both by perceived lawlessness and actual injustice, the ultimate goal of which is to drive the public into the desperation of seeking the protection of an authoritarian system. That strategy is working too: witness the public reaction to the Trump Trial Judicial-Media Extravaganza. Having no opinion makes one an ignorant dunce; having the 'wrong' opinion (depending on who's asking) makes one a 'threat to the rule of law;' saying that the System itself needs to be replaced makes one a tin-foil hat Conspiracy kook---at least both sides can agree on that.

   Unfortunately, besides having no political will to change, America has no public will to change either. The American public holds the Legal System in absolute reverence and judicial verdicts have the gravity of a settled science pronouncement from equally-corrupt Academia. There's an enormous emotional investment among the American public regarding the supposed sanctity of our Courts which has been reinforced by decades of propaganda portraying these slimy judges and lawyers as paragons of professional virtue dedicated to the pursuit of Justice. Lawyers of the stereotypical Honest Abe Lincoln types disappeared from this system long ago and probably wouldn't be admitted to the Bar in this day and age. The fact that most Congressmen and State Attorneys-General are products of the Legal Establishment ought to be proof positive of the level of character needed to succeed in it: but this obvious conclusion is lost on contemporary Trash Culture.

   Sadly, too, there is also a strong public economic investment in the Status Quo. Lawfare has become something of a cottage industry, though a few States have taken measures against the general public poaching on the Legal Establishment's private domains. Some sharpers have figured out that the financial costs and negative publicity involved in fighting a frivolous lawsuit induces many institutions or businesses to succumb to extortion agree to an out-of-court settlement for a tidy sum. The Gay Mafia had a lot of success against the Catholic Church with this tactic and we've also seen how the Zionist Lobby has used it against universities to curb pro-Palestinian student movements. 

   The best that most of us can do at this low point in our history is to avoid entanglements with this System as much as humanly possible. If one has assets that some larcenous lawyer might get his eyes on, make sure that they are protected. Don't go to law unless it is absolutely necessary. Above all, don't fall into the trap of thinking that the System will dispense any kind of Justice (assume the opposite and thank God if you come out of it unscathed). Finally, do not fall for the propaganda that holding one's nose and voting for this Party or that Party will change things materially in any way.