This article was originally published by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute.
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”—Albert Einstein
America is breaking down.
This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, racism, classism, fascism, fear-mongering, political correctness, cultural sanitation, virtue signaling, a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing government corruption and brutality, a growing economic divide that has much of the population struggling to get by, and militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment)—is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long.
In New York City, for example, a 200-year-old statue of Thomas Jefferson holding the Declaration of Independence will be removed from the City Council’s chambers where it has presided since 1915. Despite Jefferson’s many significant accomplishments, without which we might not have the rights we do today, he will be banished for having been, like many of his day, a slaveowner. Curiously, that same brutal expectation of infallibility has yet to be applied to many other politically correct yet equally imperfect and fallible role models of the day.
In Washington, DC, a tribunal of nine men and women spoke with one voice to affirm that the government and its henchmen can literally get away with murder and not be held accountable for their wrongdoing. The Supreme Court’s latest rulings are yet another painful lesson in compliance, a reminder that in the American police state, “we the people” are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”
All across the country, from California to Connecticut and every point in between, men and women who have worked faithfully and diligently at their jobs for years are being terminated for daring to believe that they have a right to bodily integrity; that they should not be forced, against their conscience or better judgment, to choose between individual liberty and economic survival; and that they—and not the government, or the FDA, or the CDC, or the Corporate State—have dominion over their bodies. Conveniently enough, this COVID-19 pandemic has created yet another double standard in how “we the people” navigate this country: while “we the middling classes” are subjected to vaccine mandates and denied even the right to be skeptical about the origins of the COVID virus, let alone the efficacy of the so-called cure, the government, corporations and pharmaceutical companies have been shielded from liability with blanket immunity laws that ensure we are little more than guinea pigs for their questionable experiments.
And then in Pennsylvania, a man traveling on a commuter train harassed, assaulted and then raped a woman over the course of 40 minutes and more than two dozen train stops while fellow travelers, watching and filming the attack, did nothing. Not a single witness called 911. Not a single bystander intervened to help the woman. Despite the fact that the man was outnumbered and could have been overwhelmed by those on the train, no collective effort was made to ward off the attack. Only when it was too late, when the damage had been done and the train had pulled into its last stop, did police show up to intervene.
There is an allegory here for what is happening to our country and its citizens, who have also been waylaid by a madman (the Deep State), stripped of their safety nets (their rights undermined and eroded), and savaged out in the open by a fiend (the American Police State and its many operatives—the courts, the legislatures and their various armies) that is devoid of humanity while those not in the immediate crosshairs watch safely from a distance without making a move to help.
This is madness, yet there is a method to this madness.
This is how freedom falls and tyranny rises.
Remember, authoritarian regimes begin with incremental steps: overcriminalization, surveillance of innocent citizens, imprisonment for nonviolent—victimless—crimes, etc. Bit by bit, the citizenry finds its freedoms being curtailed and undermined for the sake of national security. And slowly the populace begins to submit.
No one speaks up for those being targeted.
No one resists these minor acts of oppression.
No one recognizes the indoctrination into tyranny for what it is.
Historically this failure to speak truth to power has resulted in whole populations being conditioned to tolerate unspoken cruelty toward their fellow human beings, a bystander syndrome in which people remain silent and disengaged—mere onlookers—in the face of abject horrors and injustice.
Time has insulated us from the violence perpetrated by past regimes in their pursuit of power: the crucifixion and slaughter of innocents by the Romans, the torture of the Inquisition, the atrocities of the Nazis, the butchery of the Fascists, the bloodshed by the Communists, and the cold-blooded war machines run by the military-industrial complex.
We can disassociate from such violence. We can convince ourselves that we are somehow different from the victims of government abuse. We can continue to spout empty political rhetoric about how great America is, despite the evidence to the contrary.
We can avoid responsibility for holding the government accountable.
We can zip our lips and bind our hands and shut our eyes.
In other words, we can continue to exist in a state of denial. Yet there is no denying the ugly, hard truths that become more evident with every passing day.
- The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.”
- Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control.
- Republicans and Democrats like to act as if there’s a huge difference between them and their policies. However, they are not sworn enemies so much as they are partners in crime, united in a common goal, which is to maintain the status quo.
- The lesser of two evils is still evil.
- Some years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: “What’s the difference between a politician and a psychopath?” The answer, then and now, remains the same: None. There is virtually no difference between psychopaths and politicians.
- More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us
- The government knows exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate the populace and gain the public’s cooperation and compliance.
- If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.
- America’s shadow government—which is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes right now and operates beyond the reach of the Constitution with no real accountability to the citizenry—is the real reason why “we the people” have no control over our government.
- You no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is, the citizenry—of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent.
- “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect our constitutional rights while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.
- Private property means nothing if the government can take your home, car or money under the flimsiest of pretexts, whether it be asset forfeiture schemes, eminent domain or overdue property taxes. Likewise, private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family.
- We now find ourselves caught in the crosshairs of a showdown between the rights of the individual and the so-called “emergency” state, and “we the people” are losing.
- All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.
- If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off.
- Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.
- Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.
- Finally, freedom is never free. There is always a price—always a sacrifice—that must be made in order to safeguard one’s freedoms.
We cannot remain silent in the face of the government’s ongoing overreaches, power grabs, and crimes against humanity.
Evil disguised as bureaucracy is still evil. Indeed, this is what Hannah Arendt referred to as the banality of evil.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, such evil happens when bureaucrats (governmental and corporate) unquestioningly carry out orders that are immoral and inhumane; obey immoral instructions unthinkingly; march in lockstep with tyrants; mindlessly perpetrate acts of terror and inhumanity, and justify it all as just “doing one’s job.”
Such evil prevails when good men and women do nothing.
By doing nothing, by remaining silent, by being bystanders to injustice, hate, and wrongdoing, good people become as guilty as the perpetrator.
There’s a term for this phenomenon where people stand by, watch and do nothing—even when there is no risk to their safety—while some horrific act takes place (someone is mugged or raped or bullied or left to die): it’s called the bystander effect.
It works the same whether you’re talking about kids watching bullies torment a fellow student on a playground, bystanders watching someone dying on a sidewalk, passengers on a train filming a fellow traveler be raped without intervening to help, or citizens remaining silent in the face of government atrocities.
We need to stop being silent bystanders.
It’s time to stand up for truth—for justice—for freedom—not just for ourselves but for all humanity. Tomorrow may be too late.
“We can avoid responsibility for holding the government accountable.”
Or we can speak out against them at public meetings and in public forums and be declared domestic terrorists.
“By doing nothing, by remaining silent,
by being bystanders to injustice, hate,
and wrongdoing, good people become
as guilty as the perpetrator.”
THIS IS CONGRESS and all governmental institutions and most corporations and businesses are pushing a 90% depopulation including MURDERING innocent babies and children. DAMN them all…. Not my words, but GOD almighty. He is the final judge on this wickedness and their time is coming very soon.
NARROW is the pathway to heaven. WIDE and CONGESTED is the superhighway to HELL.
Well said!
You have to ask – today the vaccinated are catching covid as much, and maybe more. This fact speaks to the clot shots are weakening human immune systems =AIDS.
What do you think will happen when deaths start in significant numbers to draw wide spread attention!!
Let me help: Anarchy and Marshal Law
What do I think will happen?
Probably a massive public attack on the unvaccinated for causing it.
This article is right on target, a bullseye in fact! I have been speaking out when I can, to people I come across in passing and two people I know as well. I have lost so many so called friends over the truth. You know, the people who live in lies and denial. It saddens me to see this, head in the sand mentality is so rampant among the American populace. Over the past 4 decades I have watched America turn into a socialist/communist police state. Right along with that, watch a once balanced society get turned into a bunch of offended, self entitled nut jobs. I stand with God and when push comes to shove, will stand up when it’s finally time to fight back against the evil system that uses us as cattle for the slaughter and cares nothing for us.
Amen!
I would stand with you.
We second that
I would never blame good people for the evil actions of evil people, even if they remain silent because they’re afraid the tyrants will turn on them if they open their mouths.
this country died on January 6th when there should have been wave after wave after wave of patriots at the capital…. instead most of the country was disgusted at the sight of Patriots trying to right the wrongs of the stolen election .. I am proud to say I was there… now we must all pay the price for sitting on our hands… well USA it was a good run
This is the what is happening in a nut shell, do not attempt to over complicate it. It is the tried and true marxist/Bolshevik strategy to destroy the country. Every institution, every tradition, the culture, our common values, our religion, the economic and financial systems, social unity, and everything communists would see as a rival must be eliminated. Everything, including people must be attacked, maligned, and destroyed. Everything. Then, when all is destroyed they want to remake all as they want it.
Expect mass violence from these marxists, every takeover of a nation in history by communism required massive bloodshed, and mass destruction. Whole classes of people were killed off by the millions. Christians, property owners, intellectuals, professionals, and businessmen were mass murdered including their families. Much of the military and academia were purged (rounded up and shot en masse). Also, do not be surprised to learn people will be put into forced labor and/or “re-education” camps unless the “woke/CRT/progressive movement is stopped cold.
These people comprise a large nameless and faceless component of the State. They are not necessarily motivated by some class struggle, or philosophical ideals or principles or ideology. They are driven chiefly by nothing more than an historical hatred of whites and Christians.
Once the goals of the communist leaders were attained they eliminated most or all of those who supported them because the revolution was never really about justice or the workers or equality or any other similarly stated reasons. It was always about a tiny minority wanting to gain unrivaled power over a nation and its people. They were always merciless dictators, not actually comrades or brothers-in-arms. These millions of hapless useful idiots were no longer necessary or had a useful purpose; they were simply disposed of or were sent to labor camps.
Unless we unite and stand against it this is what will happen.
This is the what is happening in a nut shell, do not attempt to over complicate it. It is the tried and true marxist/Bolshevik strategy to destroy the country. … ~ … Everything, including people must be attacked, maligned, and destroyed. Everything. Then, when all is destroyed they want to remake all as they want it.
But they have some major problems to deal with first.
First would be our WEAPONS. Granted, mainly guns. Long Guns and short Guns (the un-woke version would be Rifle and Pistol / Revolver).
Not easy to pull off just yet. But not impossible. Just improbable at this time.
Next would be military Knowledge and Experience (ie. Veterans). This is already happening. Veterans are already being label and targeted as ‘Domestic Terrorists’ among other things.
There are more, but the point here is that just these two points alone are a major roadblock to their plans.
So, what’s next? Will we be like those other countries that asked for the public cooperation in weapon turn-ins? Or will it confiscation with Marshal Law soon to follow?
God forbid, and some luck to boot – hopefully neither.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
~ Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
I have travelled all over the world and lived in many countries. What I have found is this: countries that are the most peaceable and happy/contented are those which do not struggle with diversity. They are, on the whole, homogeneous societies where the citizens share values and outlooks. Think of Iceland, Japan, Mongolia, Latvia, etc.
Countries where there are no shared values or homogenity – all of Africa, Afghanistan, France, the US – there is now a nasty battle for control of resources and wealth. People can mask this by talking about rising ‘inequality’ but really it is about a simple fact: nobody likes to share what they have with people they neither like, respect or consider an equal. And no matter how many windmills you throw up, people in these countries will continue to fight over resources.
The US is giving the world a real-time live lab of how too much diversity combined with militarism leads to increasingly violent social conflict.
The US needs to be broken up into ethno states that share common values and the military needs to be defanged and production turned to more positive pursuits such as sustainable housing.
Amen Frank. I second everything you said.
Get started now. Claim exempt on your W4 and don’t file until they either ship up or ship out. You still have control of that.
What did the elite think, that they could keep their charade going on forever? Let the whole systems collapse for all I care. We are not your slaves and YOU don’t own us.
I agree with another statement that was written on one of these blogs. It said that someone (s) is loyal to their ancestors. By keeping this sick slavery system alive. A system that has been around for too long. So now we are fighting back against it and the psychopaths don’t like it so they unleashed a pandemic on us showing us what they are capable of doing. The masks are meant for us to keep quiet but because a lot of us aren’t, notice how they keep putting out new variants of this virus? Again, meant to scare us. The rich are fighting like crazy to hang on to their sick ancestors system. Kiss my ass.