Living In The Age Of Deception And Betrayal

James Wesley Rawles December 29, 2020

For the past 12 years, I’ve been telling my readers that we are living in an age of deception and betrayal. My first use of that phrase in SurvivalBlog was In 2008. Here is a brief excerpt from that essay:

“I urge all SurvivalBlog readers to redouble their efforts to keep a low profile in their communities and their presence on the Internet. If the Cold War reemerges with the same intensity as the Cuban Missile Crisis, we may very well soon enter an age of deception and betrayal that could sweep up innocents as well as malefactors. It is both wise and prudent to avoid creating a ‘paper trail’, ‘electronic footprints’, or ‘cookie crumbs’ when acquiring storage food, ammunition, night vision gear, controversial books, and various logistics.”

And in 2013, I wrote:

As I’ve summarized before: We are living in the age of deception and betrayal. Beware. Be politically active. Let your congresscritters feel the heat, so that they will see the light. Be vocal, but do so about the right things. Pray for the wisdom and discernment to know when to remain silent. Don’t become a tool of the statists.

When I posted those essays, I received a few e-mails from folks who felt that I was engaging in hyperbole. Perhaps they were right… Perhaps I issued those warnings prematurely. But now, particularly looking back on just the year 2020, many Americans would agree with my assertion. Just consider how many times we’ve been lied to, and heard changing or conflicting medical “truths”, and how we’ve been virtually shackled by our public officials with arbitrary “lockdowns” since the Wuhan
Flu outbreak.

Observe how Big tech censorship has become ubiquitous. And mass surveillance has become even more pervasive. Divisive “red/blue” party politics and weaponized urban mobs are now the norm. Criminals are adulated, while statues of our founding fathers are being torn down. Police agencies back off and watch cities burn.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) is now countermanding long-standing policies, thus threatening to turn millions of law-abiding gun owners into felons, at the stroke of a pen. Yes, indeed: We Are Living In The Age of Deception And Betrayal (WALITAODAB). I believe that it is now an indisputable truth, so I’ve turned that phrase into an acronym. In the following section, I will outline some key examples of this deception and betrayal in contemporary America:

Deceived By Mass Media

The mass media in our country began first quite subtly, but now blatantly propagandizing the citizenry with a socialist, statist, and globalist agenda. They have twisted facts, mischaracterized events, distorted statistics, slanted history, pushed degeneracy, and smeared anyone who disagrees with their world view. Hollywood moviemakers have consistently sought to normalize perversity, denigrate traditional values, and ridicule traditional parenting. Newspapers, network radio, and network television have not just distorted the news, but have engaged in sophisticated psychological warfare. They successfully did so by normalizing homosexual perversion, eventually to the point of extending the “right” to have a homosexual “marriage”. Not content with just that, they have now moved the goalposts again, and are attempting to normalize facial tattooing, body piercing, cross-dressing, transgender body mutilation, polygamy, and pederasty.

Most recently, the mass media has attempted to make the most productive and successful middle-class people in society feel guilt over the oppressive behavior of some of their great-great-grandfathers. They shame people for studying hard and having a solid work ethic. They shame us for the fanciful chimera of “white privilege” — which through The Big Lie is nothing more than whitewashing and group shaming, regardless of how individual people actually interact with others. Thus, they transfer the guilt and blame for the bigotry of a handful of people onto more than half of the populace. Ironically, the same people who preached: “Judge people as individuals” now consistently judge the entire majority as deplorably greedy and racist.

The mass media has been masterful in their use of imagery, fictional storylines, symbolism, and foul music lyrics to gradually subvert American society into not just accepting but embracing criminal gang culture, slovenly fashion, graffiti/tagging, crude and blasphemous language, promiscuous sex, abortion, and larcenous behavior. By glamorizing decadence, crime, violence, and perversion they have made three successive generations of Americans emulate the things that their forefathers despised and shunned. WALITAODAB.

Deceived by Banksters And Legislators

As I’m writing this in December of 2020, the national economy is in shambles. Supply chains are breaking. The Federal budget deficit is ballooning alarmingly. The National Debt is now nearly $25 Trillion. And the Federal Reserve’s “market intervention” increased $10.275 trillion In nine months. But going back much further, since 1913, the United States has had fractional reserve banking and the issuance of fiat (unbacked) currency. And since the 1960s we’ve carried worthless tokens in our pockets rather than real silver coins.

The U.S. Congress has been thoroughly co-opted into socialism. Both the Democrat and Repbulican leadership are socialist. The only difference is that one party is in more of a hurry than the other. The incoming presidential administration will probably get concurrence from congress on their promises of billions of taxpayer dollars in “reparations” to the descendants of slaves that were freed 155 years ago. The same administration is proposing a huge raft of socialist and environmentalist policies including a ban on fracking, gun ownership restrictions, umpteen new regulations, amnesty and citizenship for illegal aliens, and higher taxation. Again, I expect both the House and Senate to go along with most of the Democrat agenda. We recently witnessed how the vote counts in the 2020 presidential election were deliberately “adjusted” or downright fabricated, in at least six states. This does not bode well for elections at the state and Federal levels. WALITAODAB.

Betrayed by Church Leaders

All across America, mainstream denominations have been subverted by ecumenicalism. Many of them now sound like Unitarians, claiming that there are “many paths to heaven”, even though this is diametrically opposed to what is clearly and unambiguously stated in the Bible: That the one and only path to salvation is through faith in Christ Jesus (Yeshua.)

Several denominations have not only ordained female pastors, but have also acquiesced to homosexual “marriage”. Sickeningly, a few pastors have even turned a blind eye to abortion. At this point, our nation deserves only God’s wrath.

In the past year, I’ve been alarmed to see many mainstream church leaders acquiesce to the COVID-19 lockdowns, and shut their church doors for many months on end. The Bible warns of “forsaking the congregation”, but they have done just that.

I beg my readers to study how the churches have been corrupted by the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). If you cannot convince your church pastors to turn away from that, then it is time for you to LEAVE your church and find a new church home that has sound doctrine, even if it means driving a long distance on your sabbath day. Or, failing that, join or found your own home church or local home Bible study group. Stand firm, because WALITAODAB.

Deceived By Leftist Academia

Since the 1940s there has been an orchestrated effort to propagandize students with socialist indoctrination in public schools, colleges, and universities. In our primary schools, the traditional subjects of reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history have all been politicized and turned into platforms for socialist and sexually perverse brainwashing. These same academics have attempted to characterize homeschooled children as backward and ignorant when in fact homeschoolers have consistently higher test scores and matriculate with higher GPAs when they attend college. They also consistently go on to earn higher incomes and have a high rate of establishing small businesses that flourish.

Clearly, the radical leftist voices in public education have gained supremacy. WALITAODAB.

Deceived by Social Media

Not content with merely providing a free and neutral platform, the social media giants are actively promoting a socialist agenda, but meanwhile blatant censoring, shaming, de-monetizing, de-ranking, and de-platforming anyone who opposes their worldview. They now use sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms to boost the influence of some users while simultaneously trashing others. This method of filtering social media is sometimes blatant and more often subtle, but almost always effective. WALITAODAB.

Deceived By The Courts

Our court system, backed by well-intentioned by witless police officers has enforced laws that have gone far, far beyond the intent of our Founding Fathers. There are now a myriad of laws that carry stiff fines and long prison sentences for “offenses” under statutory jurisdiction. If you compare the laws on the books in 1820 with those of 2020, then you will see a glaring difference. In 1820, a “crime” was a deliberate act that caused great risk or harm to others. (Primarily: murder, rape, arson, kidnapping, extortion, and theft.) In all of these there was a clearly injured or endangered party. But in 2020 most of the “crimes ” on the books are abstractions with no injured or endangered party. For example: Draining and filling in swampland, possession of a drug, tax code violations, possession of a gun with a barrel that is deemed “too short”, or driving 60 miles per hour in a 55 zone. By enforcing purely statutory jurisdiction over trivialities, the courts and police are gradually enslaving us under a myriad of arcane laws that sometimes we don’t even know about. As the 21st century unfolds, I predict that we will be subjected to new laws that create thought crimes. WALITAODAB.

Solutions

Clearly, there is not much we can do personally to change the path that our nation is on. Our political voices have been muzzled by censorship. Simultaneously, our political will has been truncated or even negated by vote fraud. The best that we can hope for is a resurgence of genuine conservatism with a libertarian outlook that will reduce the scale of government. As the leftist agenda is pushed progressively more vociferously and militantly, and the tax bite becomes more painful, I can foresee an acceleration of current socio-political trends. Chief among these will be a hastening of the ongoing political migration that will make the Red/Blue divide even more apparent. As Red states get darker red, and Bule states get darker blue, I predict that there will come a watershed year, when Americans will feel obliged to “choose sides.” That will force either partition states within the Union or even secession of states from the Union. That “divorce” will very likely come complete with lots of drama, and perhaps even some trauma. Look at the tumultuous partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, as an example of what could happen here, in a worst-case.

Please pray fervently for God’s intervention, to avoid any bloodshed. I also beg of you to seriously consider relocating, if you think that you will be trapped on the wrong side of the nascent dividing lines, should partition come. If you relocate soon, then you will safely walk away with the equity that you now hold in your house. But if you delay, then you and your family may become refugees with little more than the clothes on your backs. Vote with your feet now, while that is still a veto of your own volition and not a forced disenfranchisement, under duress.

Yes, WALITAODAB, and most of these macro forces are beyond our control.

Pray hard, folks! – JWR