Tom’s World – 04DEC2025 – The End of “Our Democracy”

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TomD

Here’s a column by Christopher Chantrill, whom I’ve been following religiously for several years. He has several uncommon, shall we say, takes on the political landscape.

A Commoner Manifesto Pushing Back Against the Revolution of the commoners Christopher Chantrill Dec 03, 2025

“Our situation is not whether to have a republic or democracy. Our situation is what to do after the failure of the educated-class project of the last 150-200 years. Obviously, the educated class wants to hang on.”

“Problem for any ruling class is that, at the end of the dynasty, the rulers are not sending their best: Biden, Harris, Walz: see what I mean? And so, even though they have sat majestically on the throne for decades and won world wars and saved workers and blacks and women and gays from a fate worse than death, when it comes to the crunch, they don’t have the ability and the skills and the cojones to realize that they have screwed up, that their regime is incompetent and corrupt, and that dynasties don’t last forever.”

COVID Investigation

We may be getting close to proving that the CIA and the US Health agencies were an important part of the COVID pandemic.

Ralph Baric, the world’s top coronavirus researcher, discussed “human adaptation” of coronaviruses with the CIA before Covid began

Years before Sars-COV-2 emerged from China, Dr. Ralph Baric — a North Carolina virologist who worked closely with the Chinese lab that is the likely source of the virus — met with American spies to discuss the “human adaptation” of coronaviruses.

Emails released by Kentucky senator Rand Paul reveal the meetings, which again raise the question of whether American spies are protecting Baric and covering up their own possible role in risky Chinese lab work that likely caused Covid.

Now Paul is pushing the agencies for more documents that may finally offer an answer — nearly six years after Covid began.”

You might say, “Does it matter anymore?”  I think the answer is yes.

Now, let me be clear.  I doubt that anyone will go to prison.  I’m sure the spooks and their Democratic partners have scrubbed all the really damning documents and all that’s left is a trail of crumbs leading to Anthony Fauci.  But I still think that a Congressional Investigation report followed by a DOJ report naming as many names as possible would go a long way to vindicating all the suspicions we felt during the COVID scam.

The article stated, “Although Baric has publicly dodged making definitive statements on his view of Covid’s origins, the emails that Paul released show that Baric worried from the first that a lab leak might have been responsible.

In late January, he warned a secret American intelligence group of the risk of “accidental release,” noting that the Wuhan lab had worked on highly infectious coronaviruses in “BSL2 [Biosafety Level 2] conditions” — laboratories not designed to handle such transmissible viruses.

Reading this article it’s utterly clear that Fauci was completely aware of the lab leak origin of COVID and that the Biden administration did everything in their power to suppress the truth about COVID’s origin and the culpability of American government agents (including the CIA) with the Wuhan disaster.

I hope that Rand Paul does his utmost to keep this investigation from being squelched.  Being a medical doctor he’s familiar with the scientific and medical facts about virology and the kinds of research that is normally performed as a part of vaccine production and can differentiate it from the malpractice that we saw with the “gain-of-function” modification of bat corona viruses.

I’m convinced that what was going on was the production of a bio-weapon by either the CIA or some other entity involved in Wuhan.  Luckily the weapon was a dud.  Probably the RNA vaccine that was created to counter it was more dangerous than the original COVID virus but what’s really important is that such research is going on in places like Wuhan and at the behest of the US federal government.  Whether you are comfortable with the idea of the CIA building bioweapons, it can’t be good policy for it to be going on in a third-rate laboratory under the control of the Chinese Communist party.

I don’t have high hopes for this investigation but in a better world, those responsible for this fiasco would be exposed to the light of day and then sent to prison for decades for what they’ve done.

Joe Rogan Made Me Think

I know this is old news but I decided to watch this Joe Rogan podcast with Kash Patel that was taped I guess today and just listening at random almost, you hear that the people who were in charge under Obama and Biden were ruthless criminals who had no fear of being caught performing completely illegal operations against their political enemies.  Russia-gate is the supreme example but there is no end to how many crooked acts and operations they performed with complete impunity.

I think the stellar quote is that former FBI director Comey had a room where he stashed his worst documents and data.  When he left, he locked the room and removed all record of what was hidden in the room and from 2017 till 2025 no one outside of Comey’s inner circle knew about it.  Patel says he’s mining those documents and data files for proof of Comey’s crimes.

So other than a reason to be outraged by all of these Deep State criminals what is the take away from all this?  Well, to me, it’s just a reminder that this is government.  Corruption and abuse of power is what happens as soon as people get a taste of power and the money that comes with it.  And this will happen with Republicans in power almost as egregiously as when the Democrats are running things.  This is human nature.

So, from my point of view, we have to look at the present Trump agenda as an extreme anomaly.  Maybe it won’t happen again for a hundred years or maybe never again.  And that is why it must be embraced and ridden as far as it can possibly go.  When it’s time for Trump’s term to end we should select the man who promises to do the most damage to the existing system.  Whatever damage Kash Patel does to the FBI should be considered only a good start.  What is really needed are legislative mandates to eliminate the unconstitutional activities that the 9/11 attacks enabled.  The Patriot Act and the FISA Courts need to be eliminated.  Those instruments strip away our constitutional protections and render the FBI and the other intel agencies the equivalent of the Stasi or the KGB.

I don’t know if it’s Trump’s intention to push for these legal changes.  His Justice Department should right now be in front of SCOTUS with a brief declaring these laws unconstitutional.  And this isn’t even radical.  Even at the time they were enacted it was believed that they were unconstitutional but because of the public’s fear after the 9/11 attacks it was believed that these laws should temporarily exist.  Well, it’s almost a quarter of a century down the road and these laws aren’t keeping Americans safe.  They’re being used to put us in prison.  They need to be struck down as unconstitutional.

People seem pretty sure that JD Vance is going to be Trump’s successor.  Well, maybe Trump will make that decision.  But I want to hear from Vance’s mouth that he is going to continue the process of tearing out the Deep State by the roots.  FBI. CIA, IRS, ATF; all of these agencies are pointed like weapons at the American people.  Destroying them now will not make us permanently safe.  But it will buy us a respite from the worst of the surveillance state that has been built by the people who run our government.

That’s what that Joe Rogan podcast made me think.

Trump and Rubio Are Gutting the Deep State

Trump administration places dozens of National Security Council officials on leave.

Now that’s the way to do it.  Wholesale.

“The moves will cut the agency’s 350-member staff roughly in half. “The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,” a White House official said in an Axios report, which the Washington Examiner confirmed with the White House.”

Think of all these Harvard graduates suddenly cut loose from their lucrative, powerful sinecures.  No fat salary, no clout with defense contractors, no free lunches as four star restaurants!

“Politico reported that committees and their meetings will be reduced and that the White House reinterviewed a large number of NSC staff members to see whether they should keep their jobs. The outlet also reported that notices went out to staffers late Friday afternoon after a staff meeting, with many out of town for the holiday weekend.”

I’d love to be a fly on the wall during those interviews.  “What would you say…you do here??”

 

The ZMan Illuminates the Reality of the “Deep State”

What the ZMan calls the Blob is the halo of NGOs and other organizations that surround and feed off of government entities like the USAID that dole out the taxpayer money for their friends and fellow travelers.

He gives an illuminating example of a woman who fails her way up the ladder of NGO perfidy switching from Middle Eastern influence peddler to immigrant enabler with a stop over in the middle as part of the Biden administration.  It’s inspirational!

Understanding The Blob

Cleaning Out the Augean Stables

When John Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963, I was six years old.  I think I was in kindergarten at the time.  I remember the day because the nuns were all crying.  So, there hasn’t been a day in my life that I can remember that I wasn’t aware of Kennedy’s assassination.  And after the initial shock wore off my family members, it receded into my mind until his brother was assassinated a few years later.  At that point, talk about conspiracies finally became loud enough and I was old enough to have it impinge on my thoughts.

But I wasn’t receptive to these ideas.  I just believed what the official version stated.  Lone gunmen were responsible and that was all there was to it.

I was watching a podcast that had a JFK conspiracy advocate on.  After the initial obvious question (“Is there a smoking gun in the new document dump?”) was answered with a, “Whoa, whoa!  I’m on page 3 of 60,000,” the expert explained that what he’s looking for isn’t a smoking gun but rather a pattern of facts that steers the explanation toward one of the likelier causes.

And here, there is a lot of information that tells us more about what was going on between JFK and his intelligence agencies.  And none of it makes the CIA look less guilty.  The CIA had been following Oswald around for the four years before the assassination and they knew exactly where he lived and worked and how close he would be to Kennedy that day.  And there has never been a doubt that Jack Ruby was a mob-controlled stooge who did what he was told.  And there is no doubt that the CIA had connections to the mob and that the mob hated the Kennedys.  And JFK had been talking to some of the top staff in his administration about busting up the CIA for what happened in Cuba.  This “conspiracy theorist” doesn’t come right out and say that the CIA had Kennedy killed.  But that’s what he’s pointing to.

Somehow that still shocks me.  Now, looking at what happened to Trump last year in Pennsylvania should make it seem obvious that the Deep State is completely ruthless and unconcerned with consequences.  But as intellectually simple as that situation is to see, it’s still horrifying to me.  Sure, I’ve known for decades now that our government isn’t the white hat good guys that I thought they were when I was younger.  Iraq taught me that politicians of both parties use Americans as pawns whenever it’s convenient.  We have psychopaths running many of our agencies.  Just look at the FBI and the Justice Department.  Guilt and innocence are the least important aspects of people they target for “justice.”

But the shock tells me that probably the most important work Donald Trump can do before he retires to Mar a Lago in three and half years is to empty out the CIA and the FBI.  I think of these two agencies as threats a hundred times more dangerous to this country than China and Russia combined.  We have a very expensive and on balance, formidable military machine.  Even after eighty years, the nuclear deterrence of our arsenal is still potent.  I don’t think the benefits we gain from the intelligence and judgement of these intelligence agencies compensate us for the malice and deception that they seem to display as their defining characteristics.  They are a threat to the elected leaders of this country and they represent a potent force preventing the very information which our leaders need from reaching them.  Instead of facts they provide a narrative that is convenient for their interests but often is confusing and destructive.  I wish Donald Trump all the best luck in tackling these rogue agencies.  And I hope he breaks them permanently.

Well, that’s what I thought about today.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

This was a brutal week.  Traveling, problems at work, family health issues, snow and ice removal and on and on and on.  So of course, the week ends with my yearly trip to the tax accountant. But honestly it was kind of soothing.  I’ve got a few business-related problems that have been gnawing at my mind for the last few months but I let it fester because I knew I could talk about them when I had my tax appointment.  But in the last few weeks I’ve been getting some warning e-mails from the state so I was planning to do some research before the appointment to have all my ducks in a row.  But all this jazz that’s gone on in the last week harpooned my good intentions and so I showed up at this meeting annoyed and worried.  And my accountant, as all good accountants should, explained in a few short words what I had to do and told me to stop worrying about it and just put it to bed in February and I would never have to think about this situation for the rest of eternity.  After that he told me that the reason I hadn’t gotten a document from one of the brokerage houses I have an account with is because they have until the 15th of February to mail it out and if I had waited another week to do my taxes, I’d have the form in hand.  So, problems solved, headache soothed and fears dispelled.  So, until next week there’s nothing but smooth sailing.  Well, there are a few inches of snow predicted for tonight but that’s just so I don’t get bored.

And today, the Senate finally voted in Kash Patel as the next Director of the FBI.  I’ve been waiting impatiently for this one for weeks.  Only the loopy women Republican senators from Maine and Alaska voted against him.  Even crooked old McConnell voted for Patel.  Mitch announced he’s not running for reelection next year and probably wants to stay on Trump’s good side so he isn’t prosecuted for corruption.  I think FBI Director is the last of the really important appointments left.  At this point, Trump has his people in place to start getting things done.

The first clip I saw on Patel’s approval on YouTube was from MSNBC and so the tenor of the report was that Kash Patel would lead to the downfall of the United States because he was the actual devil.  They had all these Democrat senators railing against Patel because he would subvert the mission of the FBI by weaponizing it against Donald Trump’s enemies.  It was hilarious.  The sheer scope of the projection they were transferring from Biden’s FBI to Patel was staggering.  They swore up and down that Patel had a hit list of about sixty FBI agents that he would punish for their work against Trump.  I don’t know if it was true but it made my mouth water just thinking of it!  If only a quarter of what they say Patel has in mind comes true it would be a reason to celebrate.

I’m well aware that the US Constitution has an explicit statement prohibiting “cruel and unusual” punishment.  But both words in this description are somewhat vague.  I think all of Trump’s tormentors should lose all of their civil service benefits including pensions and be forced to work as janitorial cleaning staff at Trump properties at minimum wage for the rest of their lives or until Donald Trump thinks they’ve suffered enough.  Only in that way can they truly learn the humility that comes with being a civil servant.  Oh, and they should be forced to listen to an audio loop of Trump’s most memorable rally speeches during their hours of work.  That should do it.

How Many Generals Has Pete Fired?

February has been keeping me busy with snow and ice removal.  Three snowfalls in one week are predicted.  And the day job has been hectic.  But I’ve managed to write several thousand words on my story this week which is pretty good.  I follow as best I can in the news how Trump is doing in his epic assault on the “managerial state.”  We’ve reached the point in the dance where various Obama-appointed federal judges will veto everything he does.  It’ll be interesting to see if he honors the decisions or just ignores them.  I rather hope he just goes full speed ahead and deals with the consequences later.  It would be so much quicker to just make the changes and let the Deep State deal with a fait accompli.

I didn’t see the game but I watched a few minutes of post-Super Bowl celebrations going on in Philadelphia.  A mob of inebriated cretinous goons combined their strength to yank a traffic light pole out of the ground, smash it with their hands and feet and then throw into the back of an enormous dump truck that they somehow got their hands on.  Unfortunately, it fell out of the truck and onto several of their fellow rioters.  But obviously a good time was had by all.  Ah, the transformative energy of sports.  I’m sure the City of Brotherly Love will rise to new heights on the spiritual boost this championship will provide.  Well, anyway, the rioting, looting and arson probably won’t continue much past Monday.

The world situation grows more chaotic by the week.  The Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange seems to be wobbling and the Ukraine war grinds brutally on.  Trump’s latest tariff project seems to involve imports of aluminum and steel.  I believe we get a lot of aluminum from Canada.  The hydroelectricity in Quebec makes Canadian aluminum competitive with any other world producers.  I’m not sure if Trump is taking another slap at Trudeau.  I think a lot of the steel comes out of China.  I wonder if Trump is serious about that.  It would be a real shot across the bow of Xi Jinping’s economy.  We’ll see.

I’m curious to see if Trump will give a speech where he lays out his big plan for the changes he’s making to government spending.  I mean, it’s great that he’s shutting down the patronage and pork at USAID and other left-wing fronts.  And reducing the federal payroll by as much as possible is also admirable.  But I tend to think that he has some bigger, more comprehensive program in the works.  Now maybe he wants to wait until he’s put out some of these fires like the judges blocking his executive orders.  And maybe he’s working with the Congressional Republicans to push forward some large bill that contains a lot of the items he intends to use to transform the economy.  But right now, it’s very hard to tell what’s going forward and what’s been halted.

I guess I’ll have to be patient for a few more weeks.  After all he hasn’t been in office even a month yet.  It just seems longer because of all the activity he’s produced.  I’m impatiently waiting for Patel, Kennedy and Gabbard to get their votes in the Senate.  I feel like that’s dragging.  But that’s not Trump’s fault.  The Senate Republicans are a sorry looking lot and can barely keep from tripping over their own feet.  But one thing I’d like to hear about is how many generals Pete Hegseth has fired this week.  I think maybe that’s the metric I would use to gauge the effectiveness of the Trump administration.  Yep that’s the one.

But Gaza?

So, I turn around for a minute and the next thing I know Trump is annexing the Gaza Strip.  What’s next?  Will he be fighting the Pygmies of Central Africa and laying claim to the long-lost ivory of the legendary elephant burial ground?  I’m starting to get dizzy.  Now I’m all for shutting down USAID and offering golden parachutes to the whole damn CIA.  I doubt anyone in that agency ever produced intelligence that was worth the paper it was written on.

But this Gaza thing sounds crazy.  What the hell do we want with Gaza?  First of all, it’s full of Gazans who are crazy even by Palestinian standards.  If this is some kind of a bluff, I’m damned if I can see how it helps anyone.  Sending our troops there is tantamount to opening up another forever war when we’re finally rid of the ones we were stuck with.

Well, for the time being I’ll make believe that this isn’t actually happening.  I’m not ready to abandon all hope for a better world and that’s what adopting Gaza would mean.  Stay tuned.

Getting back to happier thoughts, I hear Trump is going after PBS and NPR.  They’re being investigated because they allow sponsors to air little puff pieces that tout their sponsorship.  These acknowledgements are being scrutinized to see if they come too close to being commercials which are banned under the PBS charter.  Well, that seems like quibbling.  I wouldn’t cut off their funding over that.  I’d axe them for employing Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks.  Two more pathetic “journalists” have never assaulted the airwaves with tripe less worthy of being called opinion.  And after NPR drove out Uri Berliner for telling the truth about the left-wing echo chamber that exists at the organization, Trump should shut the place down once and for all because of discrimination against intelligence.  He would be doing a favor to all of humanity.  The smarmy, unctuous, hushed tones of the boobs employed there are an obvious symptom of a hothouse environment where products of Ivy League colleges exchange congratulations for “uncovering” examples of normal people ignoring whatever pathology NPR is trying to normalize and getting on with their lives without having to apologize for doing so.

As much as I applaud the acumen that has targeted USAID as among the first departments to be dissected by Trump’s cabinet, I really want to see funding ended for NPR and PBS.  They always claim that they only receive a pittance from the federal government.  Fine then, they won’t miss it when it’s gone.  Just cut it off.

And finally, I’m very excited to see what happens to the Department of Education.  I can think of a dozen changes that would reverse the influence of that agency from negative to positive.  The first thing would be cutting off all funding to any public school that in any way advocated for abnormal sexuality.  Banning the whole LGBTQ mess should be the first order of business.  Afte that the government should stop funding for colleges that use affirmative action instead of merit-based criteria for admissions.  And finally, the federal government should buy into school choice via vouchers for parents who want a legitimate choice to the public school system.

It looks like Gabbard, Kennedy and Patel will get through this week or next.  That should allow Trump to solidify the actions he’s already taking in those departments.  There really does seem to be action almost everywhere in the government.  I hear DOGE is doing an in-depth review of the Ukraine War funding to find out exactly how many billions of dollars were stolen.  That will be a sad but important report.  Alright, that’s enough for now.

But Gaza?