Posted on 05/16/2023 8:20:07 AM PDT by Red Badger
Using cheesy training videos to teach Americans to see their neighbors as criminals is equal parts lazy, stupid, and sinister.
You meet up with your friend from college. While you went on to make a career for yourself in HR, she married right after graduation and started her family. You are disturbed by how she has changed over the last 10 years. She has doubts about the 2020 presidential election and Covid vaccines, speaks highly of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, and refuses to drink Bud Light. She has also become quite religious, attending potlucks and Bible studies, and laments how immoral and unsafe the world has become. You later discover she expresses her dangerous views to a sizable crowd of followers on social media.
You have a few choices on how to respond:
(1) You cut off all communication with her and report her to federal authorities for spreading misinformation.
(2) You confront her about the falsehoods and try to correct her in a kind yet firm manner.
(3) You try to investigate by talking to her husband and children as well as some of her friends.
According to documents obtained by the America First Legal Foundation, agents at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were in the process of producing short videos for these kinds of scenarios for “bystander training.” Other videos involved “a white teenage male who hurls ‘racial epithets’ and flashes a gun at his girlfriend and a young environmental activist.” Apparently, the leaders of the DHS believe these are the types most at risk of committing acts of terror — not jihadists, radical Marxists, or demented incels who are almost always the main perpetrators of such violence.
Speaking to The Daily Wire, Mike Benz, the executive director of Foundation For Online Freedom and former deputy assistant for internal communications and information policy for the U.S. State Department, said “that DHS officials planned on creating the videos to encourage citizens to police one another’s personal beliefs and report family members spreading so-called disinformation about COVID or expressing skepticism toward the U.S. government on social media.” Thus, in addition to using other agencies to monitor, harass, and occasionally imprison Americans exercising their first amendment rights, the DHS wanted to mobilize American civilians to help expand their persecution campaign.
In many ways, this revelation encapsulates the Biden presidency in a nutshell. Like most ideas of the Biden administration, using cheesy training videos to teach Americans to see their neighbors as criminals is equal parts lazy, stupid, and sinister.
Seeing that there are untold numbers of agencies and departments in the executive branch of the federal government, and that all of them are already equipped to the hilt to surveil and monitor potential terrorists, it’s beyond ridiculous to ask average Americans to do any of this work for them. This is like a security guard asking customers to keep an eye out for suspicious individuals who might shoplift.
Moreover, how exactly is a video featuring pro-life soccer moms and casual conspiracy theorists going to help anyone properly identify and report truly dangerous people? This is perhaps even dumber than the Puritans trusting in the testimony of children to root out witches in their village. Every leftist with an axe to grind would report their conservative friends, coworkers, and family members at every opportunity. And just as the “Twitter Files” effectively smothered online dissent on major issues, commissioning American citizens to rat out other American citizens would do the same in the physical world.
And who — except maybe deranged leftists, mindless Democrat hacks, and Joe Biden who sinks ever deeper into senility — would seriously fall for the narrative that these are the people who pose a danger to society? With all that’s going on in modern society, it’s quite clear that targeting these groups is nothing but purposely provocative and politically motivated. The people in question are far from radical — although becoming victims of tyranny may very well radicalize them and their friends, which seems to be the point. Meanwhile, America’s actual enemies enjoy free rein to burn down cities, bomb pregnancy centers, beat up politicians, vandalize churches, threaten Supreme Court justices, and shoot down innocent children.
If this is what the DHS had in mind for civilians, it’s reasonable to assume that they and other agencies are already training their agents with this devious propaganda. That could explain why SWAT teams raided an innocent pro-lifer’s house, CIA officials lied and offered cover for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, a Capitol police officer downed an unarmed woman, or FBI agents investigated angry parents who complained at school board meetings. They’ve been made to believe they are taking down the enemy. They don’t realize that they themselves are the enemy.
Naturally, this narrative is amplified many times over by shameless corporate media that aim to demonize and marginalize the deplorables who voted for Trump. Consequently, conservatives are conditioned to hide their views from polite society, expect to be censored, and refrain from calling out Biden’s incompetence while leftists are emboldened to attack people who refuse to conform to the party line.
Although pitting Americans against one another helps the ruling class to divide and conquer the populace, a house divided will not stand. In order to successfully cope with the major challenges facing the nation, Americans need to look beyond the propaganda. It’s not true, it poisons civic discourse, and it prevents people from developing constructive solutions.
Nevertheless, this has always been the agenda of “Dark Brandon,” and this is exactly what he intends to run on for the 2024 election. Complacent Democratic voters may continue to support this, but the only way this nightmare ends is for people who still care about their country to find the courage to reject this and speak out while time remains.
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Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.
“Lets say Trump wants to fire someone...”
Try eliminating entire FEd agencies and departments that use power reserved to the States and the People?
That any Federal agency believes 1, 2, 3, or All of the Above is a "correct" response, is a clear violation of the Constitution and the 1st and 4th Amendments.
The agency should be shuttered.
Seems to me that having someone like Mike Benz or the DHS trying to encourage people to spy on neighbors or family members concerning their opinions of them or for possible “subversive behavior” on their part...could get that nosy person a split lip & a serious fall off the front porch by doing this.
Combine this with “Red Flag Laws” and we no longer have a second amendment
You have a few choices on how to respond:
(1) You cut off all communication with her and report her to federal authorities for spreading misinformation.
(2) You confront her about the falsehoods and try to correct her in a kind yet firm manner.
(3) You try to investigate by talking to her husband and children as well as some of her friends.
They, of course, do not include answers like, talk to her and see if she's right.
Consider that she may be and you are wrong.
And my favorite. "MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS"
To Liberals, 1984 was a instruction manual...............
Decent people cannot fathom the amoral cruelty of the Biden regime.
Uh oh AUGUSTE ... you’re on the list now.
When there is a change of control in Jan 2025, Eliminate the ATF. Every State already has law enforcement for alcohol, tobacco, firearms. Not in the Constitution and totally redundant. Some states will have enforcement the left will like. Some won’t. It is not a Federal issue.
Eliiminate every alphabet agency possible. Don’t give them a dime. Zero in the budget. Zero in the appropriation. It the states want to do it, let them.
Eliminate Fed taxes. No alcohol tax. No gas tax. No Utility tax, no nuisance tax. Let the states have it (or not).
When my wife transitioned from illegal immigrant to legal immigrant she (and I) signed that she would never be dependent on the government for support. Every immigrant, legal and illegal should sign that. No Fed money should go to immigrants... not legal...not those who become citizens...no one.
Coming here to work is one thing. Coming here to go on welfare is quite different.
Medicaid has several categories. ABD aged, blind, disabled is quite different from professional FPL player. Set a limit: No FPL welfare for anyone after 2028. Educate HS students that they better study in school. Welfare will not be there for them when they get out of school.
The left asks for more than they expect to get. Then they compromise and we compromise “halfway”. We can play the same game.
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