January 12th, 2023

On his Podcast today, Dan Bongino said he is really frightened (about what is happening to our country). Here is an excerpt from my eBook "f'd: For Your Own Good" published last May:

Frightened
Americans enjoy an immense amount of freedom because the Constitution of the United States protects our God-given right to speak freely, to gather and associate without government intimidation, and to express our opinions. The Constitution doesn't qualify that freedom. It doesn't distinguish between self serving, petty or ill-informed speech. It doesn't mention pedantic or hate speech. Americans don't have to meet any litmus tests to exercise our freedoms.

Our Constitution also protects us from assaults on our person or property by anyone violating laws written and adopted by the legislative branch of our government. It does not authorize renegade, self appointed authorities to enforce their own rules. The Constitution defines a process for establishing community standards through legal review based on case history by the Judicial Branch of our government. Citizens challenging other citizens to exercise their brains and to promote social lubrication are symbolic of everything good about Americanism. It is a beautiful thing!

I am a big boy and I don't get frightened easily, but I am now. Because in just a few short years it has become increasingly acceptable to ignore the Constitution, to attack alternative viewpoints and to attack, shame, impugn or even arrest certain groups of people. The most ubiquitous form of social intercourse, social media, has become an enforcement arm of a certain political viewpoint. Just last year Twitter had the audacity to suspend the account of the President of the United States! This should have outraged every American, but it didn't. 

Suddenly it has become acceptable practice for media platforms to censor opinions and to restrict access to information. Major corporations and academic institutions are using litmus tests to measure "Wokeness". People are going to jail, careers and reputations are being ruined. The largest book publisher in the world is making value judgments on who they will publish and who they won't. This behavior is not only anti-American, it is 21st century Fascism.

"Wokeness" disregards the principles that our nation was founded on. Measuring a person's "acceptability" is a litmus test. It may not look like the totalitarianism of Mao Zedong or Joseph Stalin, but left unchecked, it will become a junta sooner rather than later. That is why the Founding Fathers implemented a different form of representative government as an alternative to a pure Democracy. 

The North Koreans have become so completely hypnotized by their abusive leadership that they worship their absolutism. That kind of psychological grooming is a hallmark of Communism. Americans are starting to move in that direction as academia, entertainment, news and social media information systems fall increasingly in line with a GroupThink "Woke" political dogma.

Instead of using machine guns and gulags, the 21st century Woke Fascists use social pressure to enforce conformity. And because people going about their everyday life, struggling to make ends meet, don't see an armed militia occupying their communities, they look the other way.

By any measure it has become near normal for authorities to demand conformity. They couch their authoritarianism as "Public Health'' measures, but who defines those terms?

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom mandated draconian mask requirements, forcing business and church closures, shutting down small "non-essential" businesses, all based on his claim that there was a Public Health Emergency that gave him unlimited powers. Unfortunately no one pointed out that the clause he based his claims on emphatically requires the health threat, in this case a virus, must exceed "normal annual disease death rates". Statistics have consistently shown that statewide, and even nationwide, annual death rates have not varied by more than 1% in many years! The Wuhan Virus never reached required variance levels because it never exceeded flu death rates that have occurred many times in the past. But that fact was never discussed because Newsom has complete control over a sympathetic press and all levers of power in California. He is the leader of a Democratic fiefdom.

If you look at the history of California politics, you might conclude that the state was/is conservative. It led the way in election reform, passing the Fair Political Practices Committee Proposition 9 in 1974. Prop 9 was a plan to clean up secretive contributions, expose backroom lobbying deals, conflicts of interest and corruption, and eliminate the use of public funds for campaigns. For the next dozen years the California legislature passed laws to increase voter awareness of who was funding and participating in political campaigns. All of the new laws were intended to increase transparency.

In the early 90's, California passed a series of reforms to reduce corporate influence by closing the "Revolving Door" that allowed former government employees from moving laterally to high paying corporate positions immediately following the end of their public service.

In 1978 California passed Proposition 13, a controversial tax limitation law that was designed to protect seniors who naturally would need to downsize their homes as they aged. It limited the amount of assessed property value so that over time the homeowner could not be displaced by annual property tax increases. It eventually led to a nationwide taxpayer revolt, causing other states to follow suit. Some say it led to the election of Ronaldus Maxis, later to become the 39th president of the United States.

Later California voters passed 13 additional anti-tax measures, which led to the concept of "The Third Rail" in politics: A subject that no politician will ever challenge. It could also be construed as the backbone of the Republican Brand.

In 1994 California passed the Three Strikes Sentencing Law. Essentially, it required "a defendant convicted of any new felony, having suffered one prior conviction of a serious felony to be sentenced to state prison for twice the term otherwise provided for the crime. If the defendant was convicted of any felony with two or more prior strikes, the law mandated a state prison term of at least 25 years to life. This revolutionized law enforcement, but it also brought about an enormous increase in incarceration rates. Crime dropped but the prisons quickly became overcrowded. Once again Californians demonstrated a serious conservative, law and order conscience.

In 2000 California adopted Proposition 22, which supported the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, passed in Congress under the administration of Bill Clinton. It forbad licensing or recognition of same-sex marriages in the state of California. After many challenges and legal rulings that tempered its viability, the state then proposed Prop 8, which amended the state constitution, making the "defense of marriage" a California landmark decision. The measure passed with a 52% majority vote.

It didn't take long for federal courts to step in and declare Prop 8 unconstitutional.

My point is, that ever since that point in time, California has acted as if it underwent a frontal lobotomy. It suddenly turned into one of the most liberal states in the nation.

Or did it?

It frightens me to think that there is a strong possibility that the Progressive Jihad, which was acting in concert with California labor and educational unions and the increasingly powerful academic community, and using its increasing high tech community political  powers, especially with regard to electronic vote processing, has usurped the integrity of the election process and installed a Democratic Cabal in Sacramento.

Every piece of legislation since 2008 has focused on pandering to unions, to the LGBTQ community, on fleecing the taxpayer to fund government employee pensions, to subsidize rapid transit, to undermine fossil fuel production and use, to redistribute wealth to minority communities and interest groups and to keep Republicans from ever getting elected to any public office in the state ever again.

You have to ask yourself, how did the electorate suddenly change its conscience so dramatically? It didn't transition into a Progressive electorate, it went dramatically left in just a matter of one election cycle.

A non-partisan volunteer group called the Election Integrity Project, which has been monitoring the election process in California for the past ten consecutive years, has found dozens of irregularities in every election since 2010. Using teams of volunteers to watch voting booths, to analyze voting data, and to challenge election law violations, they have uncovered a serious and systemic amount of fraud and mismanagement of statewide elections that point to a concerted effort to compromise the integrity and authenticity of California's elections.

As a California resident and voter since 1974, I have often wondered why the outcomes so often clash with common sense. In the past two decades California has watched nearly every election defy reality. No one wants housing costs to go up, yet every bit of legislation coming out of Sacramento adds to the cost of acquiring, titling and building on land in our state. Californians love our mobility, yet Sacramento has said they want no gas powered vehicles in our state by 2035. California used to have the finest educational institutions in America, but now they are full of angry Marxists who hate America and constantly raise tuition, eliminate merit based advancement, and attack people who have the audacity to speak out about reverse racism and ideological persecution. Oh, and by the way, "we need more taxpayer support" or your children will suffer!

 I am frightened by the destruction of the Golden State, the rusting of the vision of what California has always stood for: It is a place where dreams come true if you are willing to work hard and make the sacrifices necessary to succeed.

Look at the homelessness that is overrunning cities like San Francisco, Venice Beach, Los Angeles, Anaheim and San Diego. The population of displaced, drug addled and psychologically damaged people is growing exponentially, while the state is simultaneously watching millions of its most productive citizens leave for other, more stable and less restrictive states. They are going where they still have buying power, where they can build a business, go to church and send their kids to public schools that don't alienate them from their parents.

I am frightened by a government that values illegal burglars more than it does its own citizens. I have a friend who recently got married in Germany. Her husband has applied for a visa, as they want to bring their newborn back to California to be raised near Grandma and Grandpa. He has been told it may take up to 2 years to get approval. I told them, "just fly into Tijuana Airport and walk across the border." She is a citizen and no one will challenge his citizenship. And even if they do, he will be immediately released on his own recognizance and told to come back later to schedule an immigration hearing, but they will not even ask him where is going or how he can be reached! Voila, he is here and he can start looking for a job immediately because in California it is illegal to ask anyone about their immigration status…

When your own state prefers to help illegals, refuses to help psychologically damaged veterans, provides healthcare and Planned Parenthood services for foreigners, allows them to drive without insurance and refuses to hold anyone accountable for the crimes they commit, it is nothing less than anarchy.

I have spent significant time in Baja California, and marveled at its inherent natural beauty. The people are super nice and resilient. But, they live in a world of anarchy. It amazes me how they have learned to cope. I have over the years had three friends murdered in Baja. All for no other reason but to steal their jewelry or their wallets. 

This is what happens when the value of human life gets reduced to the value of your purse or your watch. When people become hopeless and desperate, when resentment and anger overcome decency and humanity, our options are to protect ourselves or simply run away.
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California has returned to the Wild Wild West, and there is no Sheriff willing to protect the citizens. I am frightened...