By Philalethes

That got your attention. I am not a terrorist, of course. But the Department of Homeland Security has issued a circular on the present terrorist threat, which they say is dire, and by their new definition of the word you’re probably a terrorist, too, and so are about half the American people, and with that many terrorists running around I guess the threat really is dire. On the other hand, what a lot of new friends old-fashioned terrorists now have. So, my fellow Americans, I mean terrorists, welcome to the terrorist jamboree. Hezbollah’s round-table is in the conference room on the left, the Aryan Nations encounter group is in the lounge upstairs, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are sponsoring a suicide bomber cooking hour, the Russian Nihilists are sitting over there in the dark looking glum, and the Irish Republican Army’s invited everybody for a meet-and-greet social over Guinness at five. I already have a lapel sticker with a smiley face. It says, “Hi! I’m Osama Bin Laden. What’s your name?” 

No, just joking. But why not? Terrorism in the age of Biden has nothing at all to do with what a sane person would call terrorism. (We’ll get around to sanity, as well, presently.) The National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin of February 7, 2022, lists three factors that contribute to the “heightened threat environment”. Calls by foreign terrorist organizations for attacks on these United States barely squeak in, at Number Three. Sorry, all you Taliban terrorists, I mean, third world freedom fighters. You’re barely relevant here. But the Biden administration gave you a whole country to torture, starve, and kill, with billions of dollars’ worth of shiny, lethal high-tech toys thrown in, everything from side arms to helicopters, all as a consolation prize for coming in third. Thanks for playing. 

The Taliban walk off the stage, muttering grimly in Pashto. Lights! Drum roll! The winning contestant squeals with avaricious delight and the audience loudly applaud as we open door Number One, the first point on the DHS list: “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” 

Uh, could we have that again? You betcha! “The proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” That’s the absolute top reason the DHS is pressing the panic button. False and misleading narratives! In other words, Fiction! Put down that novel and batten down the hatches! Get outta town!

Let’s pretend that the DHS dictate is in English and was intended to explain, not to obfuscate, and try to figure out what it means. First of all, there’s the matter of true and false narratives. Who gets to say which narrative (we used to call them “stories”) is false and which is true? I don’t know. Is it Mr. Biden, who said his withdrawal from Kabul wasn’t going to leave the Afghan capital looking like Saigon? Maybe the story retailed by our corrupt, senile moron of a President, his handlers, and his merry band of thieves and imbeciles was true, though, after a fashion. Kabul in 2021 actually wasn’t Saigon 1975. It was a hundred times worse. But that’s not what Biden meant, and if motive is to carry any juridical weight, we still have to give the President the benefit of a doubt, and concede that even if in a certain sense he told the truth unawares, at least he intended to lie. But DHS isn’t losing sleep over the daily false narratives from the White House at the solemn foolery of press conferences.

Then there’s the controlled press— all those compliantly nodding heads at said press conference, the puppets all saying the same thing on your widescreen television. Remember the premeditated, well-funded campaign of murder, violence, arson, and looting that swept across the country not too many moons ago? The carefully planned riots that the New York Times, CNN, and the rest of the media called “mostly peaceful demonstrations”? Is that designation a false narrative, too? Again, one is certain the left-fascist press meant to lie. But it could be argued that the demonstrations were mostly peaceful, of necessity, before they got fully underway. They were mostly peaceful while the hired mobs were busy arriving at predetermined assembly points from Seattle to the Big Apple, chatting companionably as they filled Molotov cocktail bottles with gasoline, adjusting each other’s fashion-conscious headbands, worriedly rechecking placards for correct spellings, and shaking spray cans. The latter were to be used for the purpose of edification and enlightenment— to inscribe mostly peaceful and uplifting sentiments recommending a final solution to a certain problem, on the walls of synagogues. That kind of thing. But DHS isn’t worried about the media. 

True narratives. Like the narrative that Jan. 6, 2021 was an insurrection. Sedition. Worse than 9/11. Worse than Pearl Harbor. Deadly. A narrative has to have a narrator, so imagine a reporter with a microphone, their voice heavy with concern for “democracy”. Over three thousand Americans were killed on 9/11 in NYC, Washington, and Pennsylvania; about 2500 in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941. At the Capitol last January, one person was killed. One. The young woman was a demonstrator— sorry, seditious insurrectionist terrorist— and US Air Force veteran, unarmed, not in the Capitol building, not even on its steps, holding an American flag. A police officer shot her dead. Tucker Carlson was promptly labeled a traitor for stating these inconvenient truths in the face of manufactured hysteria. An agent of Vlad the Putin. No, of Vlad the Impaler, of Dracula himself! Satanist! Heretic! Anybody who labels a false narrative as false is guilty of a false narrative. Quod erat demonstrandum. Put on your dunce cap and come to the head of the class.  

Why be outdone by CNN and NPR? Let’s concoct a true false narrative ourselves. Gentle reader, pay attention, I’m narrating: It’s a lovely morning in the expensive, electronically fortified manse belonging to some oligarch of the Big Tech cartel in Los Mocosos, California. Mom and Dad (strike that, I mean, the two Birth Parents, since males can give birth and if you suggest otherwise at certain hospitals you are proliferating a false narrative) and their cisgendered son Johnny (preferred pronoun, “them”) are at the breakfast table. Johnny is pushing around the omelet on their plate with a fork. Male Birth Parent: “Johnny, stop playing around and eat your food.” Johnny: “I don’t want it.” Female Birth Parent: “Don’t be seditious. Those are fair trade, carbon neutral eggs.” Johnny (pushing back chair noisily and leaving table): “Waaah!” Birth Parents: “Insurrection! That’s it! You’re grounded!” Johnny, whimpering: “That’s a false narrative, Dad!”

But why am I rattling on about false narratives? After all, the Homeland Security ukase also labels as a terrorist anybody who has the temerity to express a “misleading” narrative. What exactly is misleading? Don’t worry, the edict explains that to us with a logical acumen worthy of Aristotle or Aquinas. Regardless of whether it is true, a narrative is misleading, you see, if it “sow(s) discord or undermine(s) public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Oh, I get it. If I tell the truth but it sows discord, then it’s misleading and I’m a terrorist. What is sowing discord? That’s just bureaucratese for “saying something that might be true but that could cause somebody else to disagree with you, or just not like what you said.” In English translation, that would be “argument”. 

Therefore, you’re a terrorist if you say something that’s true but somebody else might not agree with. Now a person who says something that may indeed be true but runs contrary, not just to one person’s views, but to received opinion, the opinion of the majority, is called a “dissenter”. Majority views are not necessary right. One recalls that a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party called itself Bolshevik, meaning “majority”, after it won a vote once. Thereafter, other Russian Social Democrats were branded as minority dissenters, factionalists, and, yes, terrorists. 

Readers of a certain age may recall America’s stern moral condemnation of the suppression of dissent under Bolshevik totalitarianism in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Totalitarianism isn’t in Eastern Europe anymore, but it hasn’t vanished, it’s moved. Here. Eastern European dissenters disagreed with the one-party state, controlled press, and official atheism. Here you’re a dissenter if you dare to speak up in favor of political plurality, a free press, and Judeo-Christian values. Dissent is consistent. If it’s any consolation, those of us on the wrong side of MSNBC are on the right side of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

It’s not just “sowing discord” that makes you a terrorist, though, in the view of the Department of Homeland Security. You could also say (not do, say) something to “undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Again, and I’m showing my age here (it’s a disadvantage to have acquired wisdom and experience over time), I recall that there were journalists back during the Vietnam War in the 1960s who unearthed the Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times, by publishing them, undermined trust in the military-industrial complex, which included plenty of U.S. government institutions. Dwight Eisenhower had coined the term “military-industrial complex”, and had warned us against its undue influence, in his farewell address to the nation a decade earlier. Thus Ike demonstrated that the President of the United States, who had served as the commander of Allied forces in Europe in World War II, by undermining trust in what was already the biggest U.S. government institution, was therefore… a terrorist. 

A few years after the publication of the Pentagon Papers another pair of journalists, Bernstein and Woodward, exposed the misdeeds of Richard Nixon’s Watergate “plumbers”, thereby undermining public trust in the White House. Which is a U.S. government institution. Which makes them terrorists, too, I guess. It’s becoming harder to tell who isn’t a terrorist than who is one. The word has lost all precision, except as an accusation intended to deprive its object of civil and human rights, due process, and the protection of the law. It’s just a murder weapon of the cancel culture. But that’s the whole point of the Orwellian Newspeak of the academic, corporate, and media establishment and its government policing arm: to render English meaningless and to make thought of any kind, except the parroting of official lies and inanities, impossible. 

Two children fighting in a sandbox: “You’re a terrorist!” “No, you’re a terrorist!” “No I’m not!” “Are too!” “Terrorist terrorist terrorist. Nyah nyah nee nyah nyah!”

How is Homeland Security dealing with these dire terrorist threats from dissenters within, those deplorable enemies of the people who dare to make their opinions heard? By spying on you, the individual, the private citizen, of course. Or to cite their document again, “DHS is working with public and private sector partners, as well as foreign counterparts, to identify and evaluate MDM, including false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories spread on social media and other online platforms that endorse or could inspire violence.” 

I didn’t know— remember, I’m Methuselah— what MDM was. Wikipedia explains: “Mobile device management [MDM] is the administration of mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers, and laptops. MDM is usually implemented with the use of a third-party product that has management features for particular vendors of mobile devices.” Get it? Everything you use to communicate except carrier pigeons and whispered endearments under the covers is being monitored by the secret police of the deep state and its corporate sponsors. That’s happening, for sure. But there’s more than one MDM in this brave new world of ours, and MDM as used by the DHS means, according to another government document: 

“Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation [MDM] make up what CISA defines as “information activities”. When this type of content is released by foreign actors, it can be referred to as foreign influence. Definitions for each are below.

• Misinformation is false, but not created or shared with the intention of causing harm.
• Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.
• Malinformation is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.

Foreign and domestic threat actors use MDM campaigns to cause chaos, confusion, and division. These malign actors are seeking to interfere with and undermine our democratic institutions and national cohesiveness. The resources provided at the bottom of this page provide examples and more information about MDM activities.”

Let’s look carefully, again, at the wording of the implementation plan. Those good old “false and misleading narratives” are back again, but this time they qualify as terrorism if they “could inspire violence.”

“Could inspire violence.” Not “do” but “could”. Not “incite” but “inspire”. Let’s think about that. It could be anything you say, really, that makes you a terrorists, just so long as somebody might conceivably be inspired by your words to feel like your used car dealer, I mean, the government, is not worthy of blind faith and unconditional obedience. Now that’s democracy in action. As the KGB used to boast, “Get us the man and we’ll find the law.” But I want to illustrate the point better, with an example from a book that is doubtless soon to disappear from the shelves. 

An inspirational speaker is standing on a hill talking to a crowd of people. (Twitter was unavailable in antiquity, so people had to make do with something called public oratory.) He says, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.” Could such rhetoric inspire violence? Not “does” it, mind you, but “could” it? I think that’s a big yes. Of course it could. Who knows what sort of hot-headed Zealot might be in the crowd milling about down there, or reading the transcript of the homily afterwards on a scrap of papyrus? The seditious insurrectionist is picked up for questioning by the government and duly convicted of terrorism. The court’s sentence is carried out. 

The accused is Jesus Christ, the tweet is the Sermon on the Mount, the medium is the Gospel according to Matthew, the presiding judge is the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, and the sentence is Golgotha. The convicted terrorist is the Son of God and the greatest Man who ever lived or ever will live. Heaven and earth will pass away, but His Word— what DHS would call His MDM— will not pass away. 

The Homeland Security document concludes on what seems, prima facie, a strange note: “If you know someone who is struggling with mental health issues or may pose a danger to themselves or others, seek help.” Benevolent concern for the well-being and care of distressed or suicidal individuals? Perhaps. But unlikely. We are used by now, I hope, to understanding that even when the present U.S. government inadvertently tells a truth, its intention is to lie. Once we see that, all becomes clear. How did the Soviet authorities deal with their dissidents, whose discordant voices the soi disant Free World was ostensibly so eager to hear? It confined them in mental hospitals, on the assumption that anyone who disagreed with totalitarianism must be insane. Maybe so: Friedrich Nietzsche wrote somewhere that there are times when a man who does not lose his mind, has no mind to lose. But that’s not what the KGB or their white-coated psychiatric torturers were thinking. 

The American left-fascism of the deep state intends therapy as the ultimate weapon to discredit, silence, and then destroy its opponents. Nothing more. Disagree with them and it means you’re crazy, period. If only the Romans had understood how much more effective a padded cell and an injection are than the Cross, a different and cruel world, unrecognizable and without faith, hope, and love, might still be offering sacrifices to Jupiter on the Capitoline hill. Make no mistake. The despotism of an establishment without humanity, decency, or shame, has delivered us to the threshold of such a post-Judeo-Christian order. In this unhappy, unfree America of February 2022, a country under the tyrannical control of its mortal enemies, we have at last arrived at Orwell’s 1984, albeit two generations late. To be called a terrorist is a badge of honor; and to be deemed insane is proof of a sound mind. War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.