J.B. Shurk – The House has a new speaker, and now attention returns to whether a government “shutdown” can be averted before November 17.  If only the American people could place the federal government in lockdown just as the unaccountable bureaucracy did to them during COVID’s oppressive hysteria.  (So much for the people being in charge, eh?)

In response to our unmanageable debt problem, there is an online meme that is spreading faster than Biden’s human trafficking business at the border: Government Shutdown — Fifteen Days to Flatten the Curve.

Sounds like a good plan. Shut ’er down, and we’ll see where we are in a couple weeks. If the debt and deficit haven’t improved, we’ll just have to keep the federal government in lockdown until our unsustainable spending problem is finally under control. For all those highly paid, partisan bureaucrats worried about their sinecures, stop being so selfish! We’re all in this together, after all. The experts are working at the speed of economics!

Edward Holman says it best: “Had we merely refused to raise the debt ceiling one day forty years ago, the following morning Congress would have been forced to pay the debt service because we have always collected FAR more in tax revenue than needed to service the debt.”

Americans should call the government’s “bluff that we would all drown in a lake of fire” if the Leviathan doesn’t get everything it demands. In other words, until the federal government gains basic arithmetic and accounting skills and learns to live within a budget, shut ’er down!

But how would the war hawks continue funding death and mayhem in Europe if they can no longer use American tax dollars to pay Ukraine’s government workforce and public sector pensions?

Military strategist Larry Johnson has a good idea: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should “make the rounds in Hollywood pitching a new soap opera — As the War Turns. It would be the story of a beleaguered Jewish comedian thrust into the seat of power, backed up by Nazi hordes, acquiescing to be the sock puppet of a malevolent Uncle Sam in exchange for a steady supply of Colombian cocaine and bags of cash.” Hollywood could fund WWIII all by itself!

Seriously, should American taxpayers be funding Ukrainian retirements when pension plans in the United States have been so mismanaged and dangerously underfunded that the next stock market quake will likely wipe out half of Americans’ own retirement nest eggs?

Tucker Carlson, one of the few national figures willing to speak plainly about the threats to and concerns of the American people, said some remarkable things in a speech last Tuesday. He warned that “abrupt change” is heading our way. He argued that the United States may very well be on the “brink of collapse.” And he concluded that Americans, “regardless of political affiliation, can feel that something bad’s coming.” Meanwhile, our dishonest and incompetent ruling class is either asleep at the switch or actively rolling large boulders onto the tracks that lie ahead.

Rigged elections, rampant censorship, political persecution, an economic death spiral, and the growing prospect of this century’s first truly global war — yes, bad things are either here or quickly coming. Yet the media’s brainwashed minions prattle about “climate change,” “colonialism,” “diversity,” “equity,” Taylor Swift, and other false, foolish, or frivolous blather.

It is also true that America’s leadership class has been found sorely wanting. It consists of frauds and thieves, murderers and misfits. Its butcher’s bill includes every victim of the experimental COVID “vaccine,” every casualty of the Uniparty’s open borders, every service-member sacrificed during Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan retreat, and the gone-but-never-forgotten veteran, Ashli Babbitt. Its allegiance belongs to central bank oligarchs and a royal clique of international elites who call no country home. Americans-in-name-only run the U.S. government today. The only political leader in the last forty years who actually fought for Americans (instead of against them) is being railroaded in one courtroom after the next, gagged from speaking honestly, and threatened with life in prison for daring to honor his constitutional oath.

The Fascist Bureau of Intimidation and Department of (in)Justice commit crimes against the American people but face no consequences. The Department of Homeland Security has no interest in securing the homeland. The federal bureaucracy’s primary work product is disinformation, and its primary skill is accusing everyone outside of its Borg Collective of spreading disinformation. The same apparatchiks who take a knee in solidarity with Antifa and Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists have spent three years destroying families for protesting at the U.S. Capitol. The same conmen who framed Donald Trump as a Russian spy now frame the presumptive Republican nominee as a common criminal. The same misanthropes who have drowned this country in debt, drugs, illegal aliens, and violent crime pretend to care about Americans’ health, security, and prosperity.

They do not. They despise this country. They despise its foundations in liberty. They despise its history. They despise its heroes. They despise what its people have accomplished in the past and could so easily accomplish in the future, if only given the chance. Like some Marxist Globalist Bizarro World where the permanent ruling class engages in endless whack-a-mole to destroy everything good, reasonable, and sound, those helming the American ship today seek nothing less than to scuttle her deep into the sea. Darkness is the Deep State’s friend.

In the many battles that lie ahead, most of America’s “leaders” will continue taking a knee. They will play no part in protecting this nation from further harm. As agents of foreign powers, they have no interest in ameliorating Americans’ suffering. If unconstitutional surveillance, censorship, and “green”-energy-induced inflation had not already made that point crystal clear, COVID’s epidemic of rank totalitarianism really drove it home for good. Make no mistake, when the Doomsday Clock strikes midnight, We the People will be on our own.

That’s okay. America is much more than its government, and Americans are much more capable than those who insist on ruling over us. I’ll tell you now what I know to be true — we will get through what’s coming. The American government is corrupt, dangerous, and quasi-insane, but the American people still possess a unique and indomitable spirit.

One of my favorite depictions of that spirit is retold in Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers. Easy Company is heading for the Ardennes Forest near Bastogne to face the Germans in what would be known as the Battle of the Bulge. Without food, winter clothing, or ammunition, the young soldiers have no support but each other. A horrified lieutenant tells Captain Winters that his guys will be completely surrounded, but the captain responds assuredly, “We’re paratroopers, Lieutenant. We’re supposed to be surrounded.”

An anonymous quote attributed to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment then appears on a black screen: “Farthest from your mind is the thought of falling back; in fact, it isn’t there at all. And so you dig your hole carefully and deep, and wait.”

I have always felt that we Americans were meant to be surrounded. Throw any manner of hardship our way, and we’ll somehow survive. Send evil in our direction, and we’ll fight it tooth and nail. Just because the “woke” tyrants make all the noise, don’t underestimate those Americans who have carefully dug their holes and now patiently wait. For too many Americans, “falling back” will never be an option.

“What one man can do, another can do,” Sir Anthony Hopkins memorably averred. What one generation of Americans can do, another can, too. Without help from a bloated government bureaucracy or a corrupt and worthless “ruling class,” Americans will endure. Sometimes, it is only when we are surrounded by danger that we find the courage and fellowship to stare down evil and prevail.