Out of Session
Internal Comms, Vol. 3
Did you have to read Shakespeare’s Macbeth in high school? If you didn’t, it might be worth your time if you’re into the classics. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I’m definitely no Shakespeare, but hopefully you get something out if it. Macbeth was a tyrant. A tyrant king at that. He killed his predecessor in order to seize the throne. *Spoiler Alert* Look, the play is thought to have been written sometime between 1606 and 1607 with it first being published in 1623, according to Britannica. So if you haven’t stumbled into how it ends, or some of the other plot points in the last 400 years, I apologize if I give away some of the details.
Macbeth, like many a politician or other governmental agent, was power hungry. His wife too was ambitious for rank, prestige, honor, and a high position. No, her name wasn't Hillary! Geesh! Calm down people! The two of them hatched a regicide plot they had been ruminating on and killed the rightful king, King Duncan. Most would likely agree that a power couple who murderously remove the king so they can become the royal family would lead to a tyrannical dictatorship; and they’d be right. But what about when things may be less clear on the path to tyranny?
Tyranny is defined as “arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority.” Some synonyms for despotic are “dictatorial, totalitarian, authoritarian, arbitrary, unconstitutional, undemocratic, and unaccountable,” amongst others. There have been a handful of things that has stood out this week which have had me pondering this definition. Most pressing for me, likely because the same committee is supposed to be investigating the weaponization of government agencies like the FBI, amongst others, is that of threats to imprison journalist Matt Taibbi who you can find here on Substack too.
The Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), has threatened Taibbi with five years in prison over an error by MSNBC propagandist Mehdi Hasan. Taibbi explained this madness on his Substack as well as on The Kim Iverson Show:
Stacey Plaskett called Taibbi, and fellow investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger, “so called journalists” when they appeared to testify before Congress regarding their findings in the Twitter Files. That is quite the hyperbolic statement coming from a non-voting member of Congress. It is also ironic. Plaskett sits on the subcommittee whose entire purpose is to investigate the weaponization of government. Yet she sits atop her ivory tower weaponizing the government against Congressional witnesses; all based on lies from Mehdi Hasan and NOT even based on Taibbi’s Congressional testimony. I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again. This is tyranny. No doubt about it. I know people scoff at that, but a plain reading of the definition makes it clear.
Earlier this week Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in part tweeted "Whistleblowers can receive protection if they come forward now." This filled me with equal parts rage, laughter and sadness considering my own circumstances as a whistleblower as well as a number of others who I know or otherwise am aware of. Congress can’t protect whistleblowers; or least they haven’t. The governmental agencies like the FBI, or the IRS which has had a whistleblower start the process of coming forward to Congress regarding the Biden family, will stop at nothing to silence whistleblowers. Or, when whistleblowers do answer questions, the opposing side will leak selected excerpts or outright lies to the Mockingbird Media as discussed in lying Leaking Leakers.
(R) or (D), doesn't matter. These people can't be trusted. Legally, sure, whistleblowers are "supposed" to be protected, and Congress can feign like they will protect them, but if your name is anything other than Alexander Vindman or the-one-who-shall-not-be-named (Eric Ciaramella), good luck. From my perspective, it's all a sham. The protection, the investigation, people like MTG claiming they can somehow protect anyone. They can't. The FBI, DOJ and regime do whatever they want. The process is the punishment.
"It is an abomination to kings to do evil, for the throne is established by righteousness. Righteous lips are the delight of a king, and he loves him who speaks what is right."
Proverbs 16:12-13
Yet our rulers are actively engaged in evil, like the Matt Taibbi example and whistleblower examples provided, and want that evilness hidden in the dark. Speak up about it, about what is right, you will get no love from those rulers. You'll get canceled. Another tyrannical example from this week comes from sworn testimony of former acting CIA Director, Mike Morell.
Do you remember the 51 intelligence officials who all signed off on a bogus letter indicating that the Hunter Biden laptop story had all the indicators of a “Russian disinformation campaign?” Turns out that Morell, at the behest of the Biden campaign, organized those intelligence community colleagues to sign that false letter. Joe Biden even relied on that lie in the 2020 presidential debates. The current Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, was previously a senior campaign official for Biden.
Shortly after the NY Post, who first published the laptop story, was subsequently banned from Twitter and lauded as spreading misinformation by the left, Morell was approached by Blinken. Furthermore, Morell wanted Biden to win. Let’s not forget that Morell was a career CIA operative. What does the CIA do? One thing they do is spread misinformation and disinformation all over the world; even in our own country it would seem. If this is not another example of “arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority,” what is?
One last example from this week alone, although there are certainly others like the CIA potentially having some of the 9/11 hijackers as assets, is that of the indictment of four black American radical leftists. I likely wouldn’t agree with much of what those indicted advocate for, but I do agree with their absolute right to believe it and openly speak about it; especially in the alleged “land of the free.” The DOJ’s press release states, “U.S. Citizens and Russian Intelligence Officers Charged with Conspiring to Use U.S. Citizens as Illegal Agents of the Russian Government” and that the “defendants sought to sow discord, spread pro-Russia propaganda and interfere in elections within the United States.”
The DOJ’s main allegation is that these dissidents, who no doubt are true dissidents, which is not a crime by the way, received money from Russia and did not fill out the proper government forms for receiving that money. Glenn Greenwald cover this topic in depth this week and it is worth the watch for his analysis if you are interested in this topic since I am truly just scratching the surface here.
Watch the full episode here
I got to thinking about Macbeth because of this Twitter thread (Twitter has disabled the embed function on Substack that I was quite fond of [speaking of arbitrary uses of power] so you’ll have to click the link below the picture to view the thread on Twitter, thanks Elon 😑):
One of the tweets in the thread says, “Macduff blends warrior virtue with Christian love, and the result is a man of power who loves as powerfully as he fights.” The whole thread is thought provoking, especially if you share my faith, and the drumming up of age old Macbeth was an unexpected standout in my brain. I also have been studying the book of Daniel this week and currently am in chapter 3, which is where Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah are thrown into the fiery furnace by the tyrant of their age, King Nebuchadnezzar.
Nebuchadnezzar established a golden image of himself that all peoples of his kingdom were to bow down and worship. Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were sent off to Babylon to be part of the Babylonian governmental system after Judah was conquered in Daniel chapter 1. At the end of chapter 2, “Daniel made a request of the king, and he appointed Shadrach (Hananiah), Meshach (Mishael), and Abednego (Azariah) over the affairs of the province of Babylon.”
Nebuchadnezzar learned that these three Jews refused to worship him/the idol of him so he had them brought before him. He gave them one more chance to bow down and worship, otherwise be thrown into the fiery furnace. Starting in Daniel 3:16 they answered, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
That is living an uncompromising life in the face of tyranny. Remember, they were part of the government too. They were placed, by the very king who was now about to kill them, “over the affairs of the province of Babylon.” But they refused to bend the knee to a tyrant king and worship him as god. They stuck to their convictions, and appear to have been the only ones to have done so.
If you could ask the tyrants in your life one question, what would it be? I think I would ask something like this, “When you suspend FBI agents, taking away their livelihood and likely ruining their career, do you typically do so based solely on allegations that have gone unproven for 8 months, or do you dig at least surface deep to determine if it was possible that they were making protected disclosures to Congress? Or are you simply content, along with the rest of the FBI's executive staff, to be weaponized against those in the workforce who you have deemed to be political enemies?" I guess that’s two questions though…
Near the end of Macbeth, the namesake of the play says the following as part of his final soliloquy, which is also captured in the clip from the 2015 rendition of Macbeth (it’s worth the minute and a half of your time; again, if you’re into the classics 😉):
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
The true tragedy of Macbeth is that he lived a tyrant’s life. He recognized this near the end of that miserable life. He realized his life signified nothing. He probably was harkening back to when he was seen as a brave and trusted military leader, then played his life out through the multitude of moral bankruptcy which led to his tyranny. To those lives he destroyed along the way, it signified pain and sorrow. But for those who lived to see the tyrant headless, it also eventually signified joy and peace. As Macduff showed, as well as countless others throughout actual history, resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.
