From December 2021 into January 2022, the propaganda prigs have been busy on all surfaces of the geopolitical dodecahedron. There’s no chance getting through the whole of it (not even close) but we can peek at the psyops, manipulation of otherwise intelligent people and the artificially created, deceptive incentives to infighting and destabilizing one’s enemies in a few ways almost no one else will look at.

One would like to see through the whole of it but the picture is so mixed, it defies short description. What in fact seems to be emerging is, when the forces of evil battle each other, it is not something a positive spin can be put on for the simple fact the collateral damage is immense; but we can begin with Russia and the Russian propaganda prigs employing ignorant Americans to propagandize ignorant Americans, that is Ted Rall whose understanding of the USA’s constitutional history is only matched by the ugliness of Rall’s cartoon characters:

“From the electoral college to gun rights to the hilariously archaic right to refuse to quarter troops in your home and the $20 threshold for a civil jury trial, the US Constitution contains many head-scratching relics of an America we wouldn’t recognize. Living in the age of the musket, James Madison might not be so quick to argue for legalizing the AR-15, assuming that a well-regulated state militia was still a thing.

“A work of genius the US Constitution is not. It is almost impossible to amend—it is in fact the hardest to amend in the world. The immutability of the document is highlighted by the inability of the world’s most powerful democracy to enshrine a right as basic as gender equality, a principle that the vast majority of other countries, even dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, have managed to include (at least in theory) in their founding charters” [1]

Going to Rall’s mangled context of the word “state” in Rall’s 1st paragraph, the 2^nd Amendment’s “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” is used (as it was meant to be used), at the time of it’s writing, in a singular, greater sense of ‘nation’ as the term ‘state’ is commonly known and used in international relations to this day. This has little to do with any state militia except to put a check on those as well, when the constitutional provision was made to arm the American people. [2]

The 2nd amendment plays big in the propaganda wars, as even sane American conservatives think it is a ‘god given right’ as opposed to the anti-federalists intending it as a check on the very sort of people manipulating today’s outcomes, that is Trump & his religious fanatic allies on the one side and the ‘liberal’ opposition on the other as “American Gladio” falsely convinces liberals all ‘gun rights nuts’ are murderous sociopaths. [3]

If the anti-federalists’ 2nd Amendment had been employed honestly (original intent), we’d be a decentralized nation of stable communities where only permanent community residents in good standing (upright citizens used to be the term) owned the military grade small arms and controlled the keys to the armory where the tanks are parked. There’d be no way we’d be bleeding the common taxpayer into an impossible to solve national debt problem for purpose of supplying truly lethal arms to the world and fanning the aggression demanding immense munitions expenditures (our ‘liberals’ are co-equal or worse offenders) enriching the military industrial complex. Mom & pop businesses would still flourish and a tap you bought for home installation, either in the 1930s or today, would still be working after 100 years.

CORRUPTION is the big alienating factor that in the end frightens people when it is the corrupt spinning the news (corporate owned press, journalism  these days is more concerned with job security than deeply delving into reporting on the hand that feeds them, includes ‘journalists’ like Rall working for state owned propaganda machines.) Then there’s the liberal element in power trying to jam their values down everyone’s throat, that radicalizes even the conservatives who aren’t religious nuts, which plays into a feedback loop generating more extreme hype on both sides.

This corruption consumed the American  constitution from our republic’s inception; to understand the argument between the Federalists and anti-Federalists was never solved, but the Federalists (essentially today’s corporate America) have played dirty ever since, one only need examine the history of the 11th Amendment and the associated, suspect, idea the USA has rightfully asserted the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State. -11th Amendment
What had happened here, is a contractor from South Carolina was owed a Revolutionary War debt by the State of Georgia, which didn’t want to pay up. The Supreme Court had ruled there was no such thing as state sovereign immunity, in the case of Chisholm v Georgia.

“Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), is considered the first United States Supreme Court case of significance and impact. Since the case was argued prior to the establishment of judicial review by Marbury v. Madison (1803), there was little available legal precedent (particularly in U.S. law). The Court, in a 4-1 decision, ruled in favor of Alexander Chisholm, a citizen of South Carolina, stating that states did not enjoy sovereign immunity from suits made by citizens of other states in federal court” [4]

Nearly all of the states freaked out at the prospect of having to pay up on their war debts and the 11th Amendment was passed, posthaste:

“To this day, Chisholm stands as one of only a handful of Supreme Court rulings that have been overturned by constitutional amendment. Even more important, the Supreme Court has built on the repudiation of Chisholm to hold that the Eleventh Amendment exemplifies a sovereign-immunity principle that sweeps well beyond the amendment’s text” [5]

And just like that, two immediate and a third, remarkable things happened;

1) Although the 11th Amendment is specific and narrow, and doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, the legendary English Common Law expert William Blackstone’s Sovereign Immunity doctrine is reinstated in the former colonies: “The King moreover is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong; he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness.” Only now, suddenly it is no longer the ‘King’ can act with impunity, but the institutions of government in the newly formed United States.

2) With the passing of the 11th Amendment by the several states’ legislators, all of the lawsuits pending in federal court per state war debts had been erased, and half the language of Article One, Section Nine, of the Constitution had been tossed into the ash bin: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Thomas Jefferson indicated this language had been meant to cover both criminal and civil circumstance of law, and the constitutional language supports this assertion by Jefferson; ‘Bill of Attainder’ should refer to criminal, and ‘ex post facto’ should refer to civil liabilities. In other words, the USA should not have been allowed to make law, criminalizing or creating liability, or excusing crime and liability, after the fact, to get the outcome it wants. The 11th Amendment neither mentions nor lifts this other constitutional provision. But now, civil ex post facto law happens frequently, such as Congress ‘forgiving’ the telecom companies illegally spying on Americans, erasing liability and robbing citizens of their day in court.

3) The third thing to happen was, as late as 1991, in Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, the Supreme Court wrote:

“we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal feudal system with their sovereignty intact, that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the “plan of the convention” [my correction of SCOTUS language in bold]

And there you have it, from the early days of the Supreme Court saying Sovereign Immunity is a non existent thing in immediate post colonial USA law, to the several states’ legislatures passing the 11th Amendment which doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, to escape war debt, to the modern Supreme Court stating the language of our constitution’s 11th Amendment doesn’t mean what it actually says, but instead means what they want it to say, essentially stating ‘we’ll extend ‘the King’s prerogative‘ as far as we please, and we’ll use the 11th Amendment to absurdly assert what amounts to a claim the King’s Sovereign Immunity (impunity) was never a point of the American Revolution.’

Here’s the simple math: From King George III was our ‘sovereign’ entitled to immunity (amounting to impunity), to ‘the people’ are sovereign, to politicians claiming they hold the people’s sovereignty (amounting to impunity), to judges appointed by those very politicians upholding this political theft of our freedoms, to the oath to uphold our constitution becoming patently meaningless, even especially when cases come before the courts. [6]

It is in the light of this preceding we can examine (shortly) Rall’s “hilariously” ignorant idea (his second paragraph quoted at the beginning of this article) there is no existing means of enforcing gender equality in our constitution as written. In fact, with the enfranchisement of women (right to vote) via the 19th Amendment, the constitution’s “Equal Protection” of the law should have served as basis for enforcing gender equality. But what is it Rall (and liberals generally) don’t want to be honest about? If THERE WERE gender equality, in a context of ‘equal protection of the law’, women would be subject to military conscription, not only men. People like Rall will never pull that argument (together with their heads) out of where the sun never shines in their small understanding of the difficulties attending social evolution, probably because they fear losing it.

Insofar as Rall asserting the USA constitution “a work of genius it is not” should recall the same people (the anti-federalists which, as a popular movement, ratified the ‘Bill of Rights’ from New Hampshire to Georgia) who wrote the 2nd Amendment also wrote the 4th amendment concerning privacy in one’s papers, a given example of motivation in the anti-federalists’ actual intentions. As well, other rights, for instance prohibition of a bill of attainder, prevention of (warrantless) unreasonable searches & seizures and the right to confront your accuser. To name but a few provisions of the first through eighth amendments authored by the anti-federalists.

If our “Bill of Rights” had been insisted upon by anti-federalists (James Madison was the compromise proxy author), and it most certainly was, the entire world is indebted to our ‘hilariously archaic’ constitution for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights inspired by the American Bill of Rights and certain of its provisions. The 2nd Amendment’s  original intent had been to secure these rights against the state. Well, it didn’t work out as planned because of the Federalist heirs’ dirty play, related dirty propaganda, that, and a self-righteous, arrogant ignorance coupled with moral turpitude & ethical cowardice across all sectors of society. To be honest, humankind is not yet evolved to point of functioning within a democracy. Rall actually seems to believe the other Western democracies, such as Germany, have functioning constitutions because they can be easily amended. Square that with the reality of German politics and its role in imperialism within today’s European Union; the best joke (cartoon in reality) a cynic could dream up: 1) Merkel goes out with a torch-lit parade featuring military sporting Nazi era helmets and music by the lover of an SS criminal executed for war crimes and gets a standing ovation at the Reichstag a day or so later, all a good match for certain NATO aggressive states’ political behaviors embedded in the European Union. [7], [8], [9]

So, going to the history of judicial corruption in the dirty play of the modern Federalists (today’s corporate America, spanning the political spectrum from Chevron’s Condoleezza Rice to Microsoft’s Bill Gates), we can wrap up this ‘Rall Constitutional Vivisection’ with the doctrine of “Strict Scrutiny” which was the WWII era invention of the USA Supreme Court that crucified the anti-federalist personal freedom protections when the new doctrine was employed to over-ride fundamental rights to secure a Federalist ‘compelling state interest’ (includes ‘sovereign immunity’ from suit and suspension of habeas corpus) with the internment of the USA’s Japanese-American population across the board. That was more than a simple prescience constituting a precedent, it was the judicial power grab that prepared the USA for the so-called ‘National Security Act of 1947’, authorizing creation of the CIA, led to the secret FISA court, unaccountable instigation of color revolutions, creation of al Qaida et al, leading ultimately to the so-called ‘Patriot Act’ (and too many more constitutional vulgarities to mention here), and the only thing ‘secured’ was extra-constitutional color of law authorizing empire and the resultant corporate state bringing the USA to ruin. [10]

Meanwhile, let’s do a bit of asymmetrical percentages; you leave both sides responsibility out of your studies and only point the finger at the one side, the left is going to get the right about 50% correct in its complicity and the right is going to get the left about 50% correct in its complicity. The two missing portions equaling 50% each is the 100% complicity both sides share in sending our small world ‘to hell in a hand basket.’

This academic clown correctly points to the USA sliding towards a 2nd civil war and fascist dictatorship but places disproportionate blame on a dead clown:

“But one can’t blame only Mr. Limbaugh, who died in early 2021, and his ilk for America’s dysfunction. These people and their actions are as much symptoms of that dysfunction as its root causes, and those causes are many. Some can be traced to the country’s founding – to an abiding distrust in government baked into the country’s political culture during the Revolution, to slavery, to the political compromise of the Electoral College that slavery spawned, to the over-representation of rural voting power in the Senate, and to the failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War. But successful polities around the world have overcome flaws just as fundamental” [11], [12]

Furthermore, in the  article, if Tucker Carlson is also to blame for the right’s misinformation, how is it the left’s constitutional attorney Glenn Greenwald frequents his show to discuss these matters of our vanishing personal liberties under the Biden administration, and Trump & Obama before that?

A mini rewrite of what seems basically the same material predicting a 2nd civil war in the USA is hosted at the Guardian and this snippet is not far off the mark:

[Fundamentalist Christian leadership of] “The right has recognized that the system is in collapse, and it has a plan: violence and solidarity with treasonous far-right factions” [13]

Both ignore the perfectly plausible ‘sane’ conservative assessment that, were it ‘antifa’ had ‘stormed’ the capitol on 6 January 2021, you wouldn’t see the intact historical decor in the photos of that event, you’d see the flames that had burned that building out. How is it the Capitol rioters are ‘insurrectionists’ & ‘domestic terrorists’ and the antifa rioters who burned Portland for 100 straight days are not? And both authors are ignorant of the corrupt process in the USA’s constitutional history; leading not only to GW Bush and Dick Cheney, but their co-equal criminal actors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, color revolution perpetrators, war mongers and corporate empire prostitutes, the lot of them.

Let’s (just briefly) back up to “But successful polities around the world have overcome flaws just as fundamental” and ask, ‘Oh yeah, and what’s with those covid lock-down riots across the European Union?’ Oh, that’s right, the Federalist empire’s corporate media doesn’t have an easy spin for that. Must be some imperfection having to do with protecting allies in the West’s empire projects and “Liberal Democracy in Europe.” [14], [15]

At the end of the day, the common sense right invites the left to talk our problems out but nowhere in leadership on the left is there anyone to communicate with…

“Trump supporters were led down some rabbit holes. But they are absolutely right that the institutions and power centers of this country have been monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to prevent them getting it. I encourage people on the Left to recognize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in front of them. You’re not going to agree with the conservatives on everything. But if in 2004 I had told you that the majority of the GOP voter base would soon be seeing the folly of the Iraq War, becoming skeptical of state surveillance, and beginning to see the need for action to help the poor and working classes, you’d have told me such a thing would transform the country. Take the opportunity. These people are not demons, and they are ready to listen in a way they haven’t in a long, long time” [16]

…no differently were the sinking, working class right to cross the boundaries created by history exploited in the propaganda hype, there is no one in the right’s leadership to talk the tensions down and pursue some common sense communications:

“Maybe, just maybe, whitey, y’all should look at setting some history aside and begin negotiating some détente and political alliances with black people in the lower middle class communities you should be grateful hadn’t adopted the attitude of ‘the only good cracker is a dead cracker.’ From there alliances might be bridged deeper into those ghettos with a seething anger at what had happened to them and what is now happening to you. Nobody has to be in love, only reasoned, civil and fair” [17]

*

Peripheral notes:

Question for Russian intelligence: Has anyone informed Putin ivermectin crushes covid? Or is the Russian estate determined Putin will join the roll call of prostitutes history will be unforgiving towards as Russia squeezes down on its populace with mandatory, “gene therapy” vaccination and the related erasure of personal liberties? So, does Big Pharma own you too? Our ‘Dr Mengele’s’ name is Fauci. Who is yours? [18]

Factoid: The covid virus is 1,000 times smaller than the pores in the masks you breathe through. Do ‘mask mandates’ say anything to anyone concerning psychological operations pointing people away from securing so-called ‘personal liberties?’ [19]

[1] https://sputniknews.com/20211122/our-inflexible-outdated-constitution-1090939654.html

[2] https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/08/20/the-anti-federalist-urban-legend/

[3] https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2019/08/05/american-gladio/

[4] https://archive.li/ignjs

[5] https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/chisholm-v-georgia-1793/

[6] https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2017/12/01/the-oath-and-the-trash-bin/

[7] https://sputniknews.com/20211204/party-like-its-1939-german-chancellors-send-off-compared-to-nazi-rally-1091244500.html

[8] https://sputniknews.com/20220101/ukrainians-hold-torchlit-rally-in-kiev-to-honor-wwii-nationalist-bandera-1091967797.html

[9] https://fort-russ.com/2022/01/natos-three-chihuahuas/

[10] https://thebusinessprofessor.com/en_US/us-legal-system/strict-scrutiny-standard-of-constitutional-review

[11] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-american-polity-is-cracked-and-might-collapse-canada-must-prepare/

[12] https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2021/02/17/rush-limbaugh-obituary/

[13] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/next-us-civil-war-already-here-we-refuse-to-see-it

[14] https://nypost.com/2021/11/21/europes-covid-19-vaccine-mandates-spark-violent-protests/

[15] https://fort-russ.com/2021/11/liberal-democracy-in-europe/

[16] https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/author-of-the-mega-viral-thread-on

[17] https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2021/03/06/greed-sneetches-shmoos-the-n-word-lots-of-the-n-word/

[18] http://johnhelmer.net/russias-big-pharma-is-a-private-business-fed-by-the-state-and-this-is-how-the-feeding-works/

[19] https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2020/12/02/covid-19/