Tag: Providence

Thanksgiving Propaganda 1.0 by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863

High angle shot of an unrecognizable family saying grace at the dining table on Thanksgiving

Donald Jeffries helped me this morning to reflect on the “official” federal (called general back in 1863) government declaration of the thanksgiving holiday and placed it in proper perspective, an act of deception.

Note that up until this point, the different English colonies and later American states each had their own day of Thanksgiving, if they had one. I think Lincoln here is trying to force this whole “union” thing. Since many still refer to him as “father” Abraham, there seems something magical to them when government decrees these kind of things, a vast majority people assume a god has spoken and the words are true.

Let’s take a look at the context:

It’s fitting that America’s biggest tyrant, Abraham Lincoln, first proposed a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863, after a pivotal victory by the Union army during the war he waged so relentlessly. His official proclamation, like all of Lincoln’s writings, distorted a horrendous reality into often beautiful poetry.

So Lincoln, over two years into a war “against insurrection”, but was actually against independence via secession like when the thirteen American colonies exited the British Empire, reflects on what he has accomplished to date:

While waxing over the wonderful bounties we all take for granted, Lincoln provided the following bit of political delusion: “In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict….”

Can any casual read call B.S. to this? I guess if you rely on government textbooks then maybe you believe this to be true. Maybe to the northern farmers of the time, you might have believed all this. But if you were an owner of a printing press, you would have known by now that there were many things you could not print. If you were a farmer in the south, you would have known by now the utter destruction the Union army accomplished against innocent civilians as they got more desperate for total victory, via total war. Lincoln, an avowed atheist, knows that many people DO believe in Providence and therefore speaks their language in his deceptive speech as Thomas DiLorenzo pointed out:

But as more and more fellow American citizens were murdered by the thousands by his army, and as the war crimes mounted, Abe stepped up his Biblical lingo.

Lincoln knew he had to connect with people to cover the lies he was spewing, like proclaiming government of/by/for the people? Really?:

“that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” when he was trying to prevent the seceded Southern states from doing that.

Sheesh. I wonder how many people “got that”?

The author moves on in his analysis of this Thanksgiving proclamation:

Analyzing this proclamation further, Lincoln’s note that “order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed” was especially laughable, in light of the untold thousands of political prisoners he locked up in the north [18,000 to 38,000], the hundreds of newspapers he shut down, and his unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. “Harmony” certainly didn’t prevail in those makeshift prisons; one of those imprisoned was Frank Key Howard, grandson of Francis Scott Key. In an incalculable irony, Howard was incarcerated in Fort McHenry, the very spot where his grandfather was inspired by the glorious flying flag to write The Star-Spangled Banner. 

While this is indeed a 19th century case of fake news, please know that fake news has been around a lot longer than we realize. Some people wake up to this fact along the way, but it usually involves using some critical thinking techniques that few seem to be equipped with.

Lincoln’s concern for all those widows and orphans didn’t compel him to order bloodthirsty Union generals like Sherman and Sheridan to cease their unprecedented “scorched earth” campaign. It’s impossible to determine how many of those widows were raped by soldiers, who also plundered their remaining valuables, burned their crops and salted the earth behind them. As far as Lincoln imploring the “Almighty Hand” for anything, this flies in the face of his own, well-documented atheistic beliefs. His cold exploitation of a faithful, religious populace with these persistent, flowery references to an Almighty being he didn’t believe in himself goes beyond even what we see in the modern world of practical politics.

Was Lincoln’s proclamation successful? Well, you can be sure no southern state decided to celebrate Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day any time soon. The truth is, Thanksgiving became a national holiday with the completion of the Reconstruction of the South after the War of Northern Aggression and the extermination of the Plains Indians by the Union generals in the 1870s. This actually taints the US Federal Government holiday “Thanksgiving” as a celebration of the preservation and expansion of the American Empire and accurately reflects the goal of the political forces behind Lincoln.

Politics of course was always at the forefront of Lincoln’s mind, the proclamation in the fall of 1863 was to set the tone for 1864 elections that he feared greatly that he would not win. Over the next year he would force the creation of a new state (West Virginia) out of part of a seceded one (Virginia), allow Nevada to join early even though it did not have enough people to qualify and also utilize the threat of force at the last minute as Lincoln won New York by 7,000 votes in 1864 “with the help of federal bayonets”.

Lincoln was not the first that tried to force Thanksgiving on ‘the people’, as George Washington issued the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation on November 26, 1789. However, the early presidents who were more Virginian and of a states’ rights disposition regarded such proclamations as excessively Yankee and Federalist.  I have to agree. Let each region or state choose themselves what they want to celebrate, or not. Getting pretty tired of the national government forcing their heroes and their morality (immorality) on the balance of us to celebrate, as I hesitate to hear what new holiday might be in the works.

So here we are in 2019, in a land with our society ripped about by politics, where the politicians are happy that their own political big names are talked about more than family and real life. The bread and circus era is upon this empire to distract from some pretty serious red flags one sees in various aspects of this nation, its war on terror creating more terrorists, its war on drugs imprisoning millions, its war on poverty keeping millions dependent on the state and the continued deficit spending causing more ‘taxation without representation’ as our kids and their kids will have to pay this money back and be tax slaves the rest of their lives. This will undoubtedly cause generational warfare which politics will claim as something they can solve.

Being a contrarian, a rebel of sorts, I like to counter this government sprawl that has taken place with its decreed holy days with some good old common sense.

Consider making everyday Thanksgiving Day, as we could just unofficially wake up each day, thankful for what we have and balance that with a hope for the future, for us, our families and our friends. I am not saying to not take advantage of this day, but attempt to keep perspective of what we have gained, and what we have lost, each and every day.

Consider too making every family-centered celebration the main thing, as those in opposition to faith and family that try to utilize the state as their avenue for more stuff, that causes more and more divisions, will be curious in time of the deep love y’all have for family.

Enjoy the day y’all .. get hugs from family and friends and stay true to liberty and freedom and the One who gave us our natural rights in this very broken world.

Draft #1 of the declaration of independence from the British Empire:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change.

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness ..

-SF1

The Founders Knew, Why Do We Then Keep a Standing Army? Government is our God!

Adrift in a sea of feelings is where this country’s society is now. Principles do not matter, faith does not matter, it is most about what we can get for little or no effort or how can we feel safe both physically and emotionally.

A society like this should expect to be slaves, good compliant tax slaves on the government plantation. The elites love this.

In light of the approaching celebration of what was called Armistice Day, since WWII called Veterans Day, it is worth revisiting what some of the founders KNEW as a result of their own experiences:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.- James Madison

From a 2005 post by Jacob Hornsberger, he rightly predicts what our future holds:

Imagine that the president issues the following grave announcement on national television during prime time: “Our nation has come under another terrorist attack. Our freedoms and our national security are at stake. I have issued orders to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to immediately take into custody some 1,000 American terrorists who have been identified by the FBI as having conspired to commit this dastardly attack or who have given aid and comfort to the enemy. I have also ordered the JCS to take all necessary steps to temporarily confiscate weapons in the areas where these terrorists are believed to be hiding. These weapons will be returned to the owners once the terrorist threat has subsided. I am calling on all Americans to support the troops in these endeavors, just as you are supporting them in their fight against terrorism in Iraq. We will survive. We will prevail. God bless America.”

Now ask yourself: How many of the troops would disobey the orders of the president given those circumstances, especially if panicked and terrified Americans and the mainstream press were endorsing his martial-law orders?

The answer: Almost none would disobey. They would not consider it their job to determine the constitutionality of the president’s orders. They would leave that for the courts to decide. Their professional allegiance and loyalty to their supreme commander in chief would trump all other considerations, including their oath to “support and defend the Constitution.”

Therefore, if the federal government is the primary threat to our freedom, then so are the troops: their unswerving loyalty to their commander in chief makes them the primary instrument by which the federal government is able to destroy or infringe the rights and freedoms of the citizenry.

Jacob also offers a solution, one that will never be taken seriously since our trust as a society is in government and not in the founding father’s Providence:

There is one — and only one — solution to this threat to our freedoms and well-being: for the American people to heed the warning of our Founding Fathers against standing armies before it is too late, and to do what should have been done at least 15 years ago: dismantle the U.S. military empire, close all overseas bases, and bring all the troops home, discharging them into the private sector, where they would effectively become “Citizen-soldiers” — well-trained citizens prepared to rally to the defense of our nation in the unlikely event of a foreign invasion of our country. And for the American people to heed the warning of President Eisenhower against the military-industrial complex, by shutting down the Pentagon’s enormous domestic military empire, closing domestic bases, and discharging those troops into the private sector.

How will our society ever have a faith that could help them have hope while being attacked by a foreign empire? More importantly, how did the founders and militias have such faith in the  1770s?

What remains to be seen is how of if the various parts of American society can once again trust God instead of government for a free future. I guess time will tell.

-SF1

When “I Told You So” Ain’t Fun Any More – The End Game of Un-sustainability

The great thing about what is left of the “free” Internet is knowing that you are not alone in one’s own thoughts about the future. I think it can be a curse to be equipped with the ability to see “red flags” when few others do. When I think of the word prophetic, I don’t mean fore-telling as in declaring future events, but forth-telling as in revealing truths.

There are those that have this gift, like Patrick Henry, when he commented about the release of the document called the US Constitution with “I smell a rat”. This among many other “red-flags” he saw in that document came true in the years and decades to come.

The administrator of The Burning Platform wrote today about his (and others like Ron Paul) ability to see what was coming before 2008 and now sees more clearly what is unraveling once more. He also has learned a bit about human nature in this decade since the economy was turned upside-down and the banks were bailed out using taxpayer money.

First, about the sheep:

I will also no longer overestimate the ability of the American populace to see through this charade and come to their senses regarding their unsustainable use of debt to try and maintain an unrealistic lifestyle. Their willful ignorance, created through government education propaganda and social engineering, will not be extinguished until the inevitable financial collapse wipes them out again.

Second, about the wolves:

I suppose I continue to underestimate the level of maliciousness, gluttony, and pure arrogance of those pulling the strings behind the curtain, as they rape and pillage the dwindling financial resources of our empire in its death throes. These psychopaths in suits care not for this country or its people. These globalist pricks want nothing more than pliable slaves, distracted by their iGadgets, sports, and Hollywood drivel.

Lastly, about President Donald Trump:

Vintage 2016:

“They’re keeping the rates down so that everything else doesn’t go down. We have a very false economy. At some point the rates are going to have to change. The only thing that is strong is the artificial stock market. The U.S. economy is in a big, fat, ugly bubble. I will get rid of the nation’s more than $19 trillion national debt over a period of eight years. I’m renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on.” – Donald Trump, September 2016.

Vintage 2019:

“The U.S. economy would grow more quickly if monetary policy were eased. If we had a Fed that would lower interest rates, we would be like a rocket ship. We don’t have a Fed that knows what they’re doing. Our most difficult problem is not our competitors, it is the Federal Reserve. The Fed raised rates too soon, too often, and doesn’t have a clue!” – Donald Trump, July 2019

Obama did that too! The candidate sounded credible .. but once in office, one would think that someone has their kojones in a vise.

I certainly overestimated the campaign rhetoric truthfulness of Donald Trump as he railed against the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates too low, creating a stock market bubble, and contributing to the parabolic rise in debt. His promise to eliminate the national debt in eight years was impossible, but I thought he might rein in spending and reduce annual deficits.

It seems men who may have the best intentions to do what is right on behalf of the American people when they seek higher office or are appointed to positions of power, such as the Federal Reserve, are summoned into a dark boardroom and informed who are the real bosses and what truly makes the world go round.

Sick but true. As FDR said:

The only reason they are selected is because they WILL do the bidding of those that bought, I mean brought, the puppet, I mean candidate to office.

So where does that have us in the 4Q of 2019?:

So here we are, entering Trump’s fourth year in office as the Deep State and their cronies in Congress, the CIA, and fake news media use impeachment as their last straw in their ongoing attempted coup, and the national debt is up by $3 trillion since Trump took office. At the end of his first term the national debt will exceed $24 trillion and interest on that debt will approach $600 billion.

Is this a good direction? Is this Trumps 4D chess? Using Kevin’s voice from the movie “Home Alone” I say: “I don’t think so”

The tax cuts for corporate America and the richest individuals reduced tax revenues and resulted in corporations buying back billions of their own stock to drive the stock market to the highest valuations since the 2000 dot.com bubble. Meanwhile, Trump fed the military industrial complex with billions more, while funding war throughout the world. Rhetoric about ending wars is just bullshit for the masses. The entitlement outlays remain on an unsustainable path, as Trump and all the feckless politicians in D.C. pretend all is well. Nothing bad has happened – Yet.

I am sure during the Democrat/CIA attempted coup that Trump did not want to pull back DOD spending, especially since a large number of his backers are pro-military, no matter what other country’s women and children will be droned.

The Fed balance sheet peaked at $4.5 trillion as they increased interest rates by a mere 200 basis points over a few years, still 200 basis points below what used to be considered normal. We’ve heard the boasts about the “best economy ever”, “lowest unemployment in history”, “stock market highest ever”, and “record corporate profits”, but with interest rates still at emergency levels and the Fed balance sheet a mere $750 billion lower than its peak, somehow the Fed feels compelled to cut rates and restart QE – but not calling it QE. Powell is bowing down to his Wall Street masters and Trump by taking actions which would only be taken during a recession or financial crisis.

Nothing to see here. Either they will fake it until 2020 elections or the wheels will come off the months prior.

GDP has averaged 2.5% in 2019, with consumer confidence high, consumer spending solid, unemployment at all-time lows, the stock market within spitting distance of all-time highs, and corporate profits at all-time peaks. Why would the Fed cut rates by 50 basis points, with more coming, and increase their balance sheet by $180 billion in one month, with a commitment to increase it by $60 billion a month for the foreseeable future? Will these actions benefit the average person or the above average bank and corporate executives? Savers are again being sacrificed on the altar of corporate America.

Yes, this is the reward people who have tried to save all their lives so they will not be a burden to their kids or to society get when the central bank allows a government to mortgage the future taxpayers lives as perpetual slaves.

Until then, other than Climate Change causing the end of the world in 2032, we have a few things to beware of:

  • His [Trump’s] impeachment and/or election of a gun grabbing socialist will surely lead to civil violence.
  • The continued provocations between superpowers with nuclear weapons and a Middle East always on the verge of apocalypse only needs an arrogant misstep by an egomaniacal leader to trigger a global conflagration.

Stay tuned. Glad I am not the only one that sees these “red-flags”. Now there are at least two, or three or more if you count Captain1776 and Malibu, two of my sons, .. or maybe more if you count my other two sons and my daughter.

You may not know it today, but in the days to come, you might have to lean on your faith (if that is what you have/want/need), that there is a hope for a better future at some point. The founders talked a bit about Providence in their trying times.

Here is to a new generation that can take to heart that after the storm, there will be peace and prosperity.

-SF1

28AUG1776: Divine Intervention?

In my last post toward the end I made the following suggestion:

.. while at the same time to be grounded in the reality that without some divine intervention, this whole thing could end real bad ..

I understand very well why many will be skeptical. This broken world with broken people have made it difficult to think that there might be a divine presence that is an active force against evil. Religion has also not helped make the case for a divine force that is good, or is at its core love. I am not here to convince you of anything, but only to ask to consider the thought, without accepting it.

There are two American historical occurrences  that come to my mind when I think of when evil almost wins and good (or better) prevails. One is the efforts I have been writing about where Francis Marion leads a militia (volunteer) that ends up frustrating an empire’s army enough so that they decide to quit. You and I both know that another fleet of ships and 10,000 more men could have been sent by the British to make 1782 a tough year and have no need for a Treaty of Paris in 1783 with each of the thirteen colonies signing. The other occurrence is that of Gen. George Washington’s retreat from Brooklyn (there was no bridge there until the late 1800s) to Manhattan in the colony of New York on the night of 27AUG1776 and into the next morning.

Getting 9000 troops across the East River before the British could discover their retreat was a daunting task considering the lack of boats to make the effort. The fact that there was no wind that night or the next morning meant that the British fleet could not come up the East River to trap the Continental Army either.

To flesh out in more detail about this predicament I will pull some quotes from this article on HistoryNet:

Washington now called on Colonel John Glover of Massachusetts, who commanded one of the army’s crack regiments. Glover’s ‘Marvelous Men from Marblehead’ were well trained and wore smart blue-and-white uniforms. They were seamen and fishermen, so they were accustomed to shipboard discipline and were quick to carry out orders…

… Washington knew that Glover was just the man to get his army out of its desperate situation. He also knew that there were spies in the ranks — one soldier had already been tried and hanged for his treachery and several others had been found guilty and put in prison — so he sent a misleading message to General William Heath on Manhattan: ‘We have many battalions from New Jersey which are coming over this evening to relieve those here. Order every flat-bottomed boat and other craft fit for transportation of troops down to New York as soon as possible.’ Then he ordered his quartermaster ‘to impress every kind of craft on either side of New York’ that had oars or sails, and to have them in the East River by dark. Anyone intercepting the messages would think that Washington was planning to bring reinforcements to Long Island; in reality he hoped to evacuate his entire army before the British realized what he was doing.

The weather was still on Washington’s side. A drenching storm kept ‘Black Dick’s’ fleet out of the river and provided cover for the boat gathering. Late in the afternoon Washington met with his staff to tell them his real plans. As Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge wrote in a letter, ‘to move so large a body of troops with all their necessary appendages across a river a full mile wide, with a rapid current, in the face of a victorious, well-disciplined army nearly three times as numerous seemed . . . to present most formidable obstacles.’ The colonel was guilty of understatement.

The entire Northern Theater of the Continental army was at risk. George Washington’s strategy was not working in his favor as they had their backs against a river like this.

The August nights were short, and Washington knew that if Glover had miscalculated the time required for the Herculean job, he would lose any troops unlucky enough to remain on the island at dawn. He had faith in the ‘tough little terrier of a man,’ and to help him he assigned a regiment of men from the Massachusetts towns of Salem, Lynn, and Danvers, sailors all.

The seamen began their work as soon as it was dark, about ten o’clock. The drenched Continentals left their entrenchments unit by unit and moved to the boats in darkness and in absolute silence. Each unit was told only that they were being relieved and were going back to Manhattan. They did not know that the entire army was doing the same thing. By the time any disloyal soldier discovered the truth, it would be too late for treachery. The quartermaster’s men had found only a few sailing craft, so there was much rowing to be done that night. At first the winds were favorable and the boats swiftly made the round trip to Manhattan, despite darkness and unfamiliar waters. Seamen in the rowboats plied them back and forth without a stop, oars muffled, across the fast East River current.

Washington stayed in the saddle, weary though he must have been. For several hours the situation looked favorable, but then the wind changed, blowing in combination with the unusually strong ebb tide. The sails could not overcome the two combined forces. Washington’s despair was partially alleviated when the men rigged the sailboats with temporary tholes, found oars, and rowed. But the tired general realized that many rearguard troops would still be on the island when dawn broke. Their loss would be a serious blow. Yet the seamen continued their race against time. ‘It was one of the most anxious, busy nights that I ever recollect,’ Benjamin Tallmadge recalled, ‘and being the third in which hardly any of us had closed our eyes in sleep, we were all greatly fatigued.’ At one point a rearguard unit under Colonel Edward Hand mistakenly received orders to move down to the water. Its movement left a gap in the lines that the British, had they been aware of it, could have used to smash through the American defenses. But the British didn’t know, and Washington, when he saw what had happened, hurriedly ordered the unit back into place.

In a few more hours luck rejoined the patriots. The wind changed direction and Glover’s men could again use their sails to speedily make the crossings and return. The tempo of the evacuation picked up, but the fickle wind had done its damage. As the dim first-light appeared in the cloudy, gray eastern sky, part of the rear guard was still on the wrong side of the river. As the sky lightened, however, a dense fog rolled in, obscuring the operation’s final movements. Colonel Tallmadge was in one of the last units to leave, and with regret he left his horse tied on the Long Island shore. Safe in New York, the fog as thick as ever, Tallmadge said, ‘I began to think of my favorite horse, and requested leave to return and bring him off. Having obtained permission, I called for a crew of volunteers to go with me, and guiding the boat myself, I obtained my horse and got some distance before the enemy appeared in Brooklyn.’ When the morning fog began to lift and the British patrols warily came to check on the American breastworks, they found them empty. Washington and the last of the rear guard were aboard the boats and sailing to safety. George Washington’s faith in John Glover and the seagoing soldiers had been vindicated. In about nine hours they had whisked 9,000 men and their supplies and cannon out from under the noses of the British. The Revolutionary cause lived on. Later that day, August 30, 10 British frigates and 20 gunboats and sloops finally sailed up the river. They were too late.

Not unlike the thunderstorm and tornado that made the British burning and sacking of Washington DC on 24AUG1814 stop prematurely, this “act of nature” changed the course of history.

“Incredibly, yet again, circumstances – fate, luck, Providence, the hand of God, as would be said so often – intervened.” – Historian David McCullough from his book 1776

I will leave it to y’all to decide in your own minds.

Just my two cents .. your mileage may vary.

-SF1