Written by There’s a few things to get to pertaining to this production, which I’ll detail when we are behind the paywall. Such as what comes after the Radical Agenda, besides the “Grindr calls”.
In the news, two pieces stand out in my reading of the day.
David Frum, writing at The Atlantic, talks about a plan to disrupt the 2024 Democrat Convention. In his analysis, he covers the 1968 disruption, and attempts to disrupt subsequent conventions which have failed.
The difference, he notes, is force. Left wing fanatics might take over college campuses and loot department stores when they have a reasonable expectation that the powers of the State will allow them to do so relatively free of consequence, but when they know they will be met with a large law enforcement presence, then hauled of to jail where they will be tried, convicted, and sentenced to a lengthy stay in prison, they promptly make other plans.
Frum’s telling of the story is calm and polite, but it no less reminded me of a controversy when the New York Times published a column by Tom Cotton suggesting that the military be deployed to stop the 2020 race riots.
Like Frum, Cotton understood that what separates order from chaos is organized physical force. It is not a choice of violence or no violence. It is a choice of whose violence shall prevail in the perpetual conflict that is the human condition.
We can either have the good guys confront the bad guys, or we can let the bad guys have their way with the population. In either case, violence prevails, but in one, the average citizen is unharmed, and in the other, they live in terror.
The other piece catching my attention pertains to a new rule proposed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons which would prohibit prisoners from directing others to maintain social media accounts on their behalf. The outraged response from civil rights groups gave me a good chuckle, since the BOP has been doing this in the Communications Management Units and ADX for quite some time. I myself was cut off from podcasting almost immediately upon my arrival, and the BOP dragged out administrative procedure to avoid litigation until after I was released from the halfway house.
Correctional facilities have long prohibited “3rd Party Contact”. Typically, this has the sensible purpose of barring inmates from using tools like three way calling to subvert the “This is a call from a correctional facility” greeting that begins all calls originating from said facilities. If prisoners want to threaten witnesses, or commit fraud, or otherwise do things they are not supposed to do, the third party contact prohibition bars the prerequisites of doing so long before the crime can take place.
This otherwise sensible rule has already been warped and abused to silence political speech from prisoners. Matt Hale was prohibited from publishing his book under the auspices that it was gang material. Anyone who attempted to get that book out on his behalf would have been engaged in third party contact, and dissemination of gang material.
Monzer al-Kassar had his correspondence cut off for telling someone over the phone “Tell the people of Syria…” to his contact. This was deemed “third party contact” and he was penalized.
Viktor Bout gave a telephone interview to RT, and this is how he was placed in the CMU before I met him.
This is what the government always does. It determines that it wants to impose a policy that will predictably meet some resistance. They impose that policy on people who are unsympathetic and will not have the means to resist that policy. On this group, the government establishes precedent, and then it simply applies the policy to more people, who now have the added burden of overcoming appellate precedent if they wish to stop it.
Among my favorite quotes of all time is one by H.L. Mencken;
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom, is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
That and more, plus your input of course, this and every Wednesday at 9:30pm US Eastern.
Recall that we are now hosting the chats on Discord!
You can link your SurrealPolitiks Member account to your Discord account using the links provided either on the Member Chat Page https://surrealpolitiks.com/member-chat/ or on the Your Profile page on SurrealPolitiks.com https://surrealpolitiks.com/membership-account/your-profile/. This integrates a Discord Bot with our membership software to control access to member areas.
If you are having trouble connecting your account, there is a link to the Discord Server on the member chat page and you can join the server without your account being linked. From there someone can try to help you get things sorted out. If you don’t have a Discord account, you can create one on Discord.com. You can get the app for Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, or Android fairly easily by searching their respective app stores or getting it directly from Discord.com.
If you’re not a member yet, you can become one at https://SurrealPolitiks.com/join for just $6.70/month if you use promo code agenda33 at checkout.
Once you’re a member, you can join us every Wednesday at 9:30pm Eastern on our Discord Server, and you can find these instructions on our Member Chat here https://surrealpolitiks.com/member-chat/.
If you miss the live show, you can always catch the replay in the member content section here https://surrealpolitiks.com/category/membersonly/.
Those of you with Odysee content subscriptions can find the Odysee stream here https://odysee.com/@ChrisCantwell:9/spmc20240501:2