George Rebane
[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 3 January 2018.]
Before we get into the more serious part of the commentary, I want to wish all KVMR listeners a healthy and prosperous 2018. We all know it will be another extraordinary year no matter what your political outlook and hopes.
Last Sunday, New Year’s Eve, Jo Ann and I were preparing for a quiet and intimate evening with friends to enjoy a dinner in front of the fireplace, listen to some laid-back jazz, and play our favorite game of cards while keeping an eye on the happenings in Time Square with the TV on mute. The Christmas decorations were still up, and the décor extended the festive mood from what turned out to be an entire month of holiday celebrations at our house. And then I was suddenly reminded of what we saw on the news before our guests arrived.
The afternoon’s major coverage was about how secure the New Year’s celebrations were going to be across the country, starting of course with Times Square. There we were shown long lines of would be revelers all lined up at checkpoints manned by police and other serious looking people with submachine guns at the ready, keeping their trained eyes on our east coast neighbors waiting to be allowed in and start celebrating. We were assured by the newscaster and various officials that there would be, not one, but two cordons of security checkpoints that everyone would have go through before being granted ‘admission’ to one of the most public, open, and historically accessible spaces in the nation. These scenes brought back many memories and a moist eye, because I was looking at what my country had become in a few short years.
You see, I have enough birthdays to remember WW2 and its aftermath. As a young boy escaping from Estonia to Germany, I remember the wartime checkpoints that we all had pass through at which we were repeatedly searched and our papers examined to assure the state that all was in order. And when the war ended, we became displaced persons and were again directed here and there through checkpoints with armed GIs checking our papers and looking through the three well-worn suitcases that contained all we had before being assigned to a DP camp.
People, who are not trusted by their governments, have tolerated such doings through the ages. And today we again see the same thing happening in America. The saddest part is that we have already become used to such police state tactics in our daily round. We are scrutinized and searched when we go into public buildings, office towers, celebratory gatherings, and whenever we travel. And new laws, regulations, and codes are passed daily that inevitably make us a criminal today for exercising what was yesterday a longstanding freedom.
I doubt that there are many listeners who remember a United States when you could simply walk into any public school or government building. When you could arrive for your flight at the last minute, pocket knife in pocket, and run through the boarding gate onto the jetway while waving your ticket to the cheers of the gate attendants. When carrying unloaded firearms on the back seat was the legal and recommended way of transporting them. When kids actually played with each other all over town, getting there on bikes, spontaneously setting up their own games and resolving their own differences, all with the only parental guidance to be back home when the street lights came on.
That home of the brave and land of the free is no more. Today we are monitored, tracked, logged, checked, confirmed, measured, frisked, x-rayed, and interrogated a dozen times or more a day, and we think nothing of it because the world has become dangerous, not only out there, but right where we live. And we have long since become used to trading our freedoms for security. Not too long ago we provided security for ourselves and our neighbors, and police in military gear and snipers on rooftops were unheard of and not needed to keep us safe. How did this come about in such a short period of time?
But the most important unasked question is, is there any evidence that such friendlier and trusting times will ever return, or will state-imposed constraints on our activities continue to ratchet indefinitely? And finally, what exactly caused these changes to come about, are any of them reversible, and what will it take to again be without the constant fear of terror on our doorstep? Or do we simply hunker down, accept our newest shackles and checkpoints with a shrug and mutter, ‘Yeah, that was then, and this is now.’
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
[Addendum] I will take it upon myself to start an answer to the last question. Longtime readers will recognize it as yet another thesis from the Rebane Doctrine that by now should have achieved the enviable classification as one more of the doctrine’s properly matured and seasoned Sanctimonious Screeds. However, before dismissive sniffs rise to cacophonous levels, I ask the critical reader to judge the sequel by how well it incorporates and explains away the observables of record and those of plausible cause.
I believe the present state of affairs in the world order are the result of the spontaneously coordinated efforts of fundamental Islam and western socialism’s striving to meet Agenda21 objectives. Off the top we note that neither ‘faction’ takes the other to task for its horrendous infliction of human misery and/or public policies that favor dissolution of traditional western cultures replaced by secular authoritarian controls. Both understand that they are each doing the critical work needed to destroy western hegemony on their separate roads toward global government and the Islamic Caliphate (another form of global government). Both factions believe that once the west has been beaten to submission, each can subvert the other to its end and achieve its final triumph. In the meantime, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is the unstated principle that guides and supports de facto cooperation and coordination.
This virtual partnership between the secular socialist and the zealous Islamist goes a long way to explain why the Islamists do everything possible to destabilize Islamic governments and make life in the resulting terror unbearable to its populations who seek peace and a future in other lands. And commensurately it explains why EU socialists accept/promote Islamic ‘migration’, knowing the inflow of culturally disparate and unassimilating aliens will destabilize the historical Westphalian order of Europe. Both ends make for the necessary disorder in which new and radical norms of governance will be demanded and supplied to the respective populations.
In all this the three nuclear behemoths – America, Russia, and China – are to be played off against each other so as to destroy the remaining anchors that naturally promote the survival of separate sovereign nation-states. And here America is the lynchpin. Rich, powerful, geographically isolated, and populated by a people with an exceptional raison d’etre, this country could not be destroyed from the outside. It could only be undone from the inside by creating a rot in its social fabric which would then begin rending by adding a few existential shocks that promote distrust among its several resident cultures and cause its already large government to start applying ‘security measures’ that inevitably drive it toward authoritarian governance.
The intellectual mavens of radical Islam (led by Osama bin Laden) hatched and executed 9/11 as the seminal shock to kick that process into high gear. We have witnessed over the last sixteen years the results of that successful attack. And the successive following attacks, especially by the so-called ‘lone wolves’, have predictably chipped away at our social fabric. The Islamists knew that our socialists would naturally resist efforts to identify our enemy, let alone put in place policies to effectively protect ourselves. We need not venture far from our front doors to see the everyday products of such policies.
America, due to its entrepreneurial riches, abundant resources, and more than a bit of hubris, has always been a provincial country, satisfyingly facing inward and begrudgingly paying attention to the rest of the world, and then only when the barbarians are already at the door. Our educational system has abetted that public attitude, and we are there now. Any political leader who counsels a different tack for America is mercilessly vilified by our globalists who by and large determine our cares, what we know, and how we should divert ourselves.
There is, of course, much more. But we’ll leave it here for now.
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment