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The question brings up the commonsense idea that human beings can wear a mask (a “persona”) and pretend to be one person while actually being something or someone entirely different. It’s based on the age-old philosophical topic of “appearance versus reality.” More simply, it’s the problem of phoniness. This raises a question: How can we see behind the mask to know who someone really is?

We know we can’t simply trust what someone says. (“I am who I say I am!”). People can lie or be mistaken, even about themselves. We also can’t necessarily trust what others say (“This person is who I say they are!”) for the same reason. As recent events have shown quite vividly, we also can’t necessarily trust media, “respected authorities,” “The Science,” and so on.

What options does that leave us? Can we ever really know who someone is?

One answer here is supplied by—wait for it—the study of drama.

Image by Andrea Widburg

“True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure—the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.” (This is from the book Story by Robert McKee.) Revealing character—from Don Quixote or Hamlet to The Usual Suspects or Fight Club—is a key pillar of storytelling and the billion-dollar entertainment industry.

We can pair this with a quote from Robert Ingersoll about Abraham Lincoln: “…if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.”

We can now apply this test to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. What choices have they made under pressure? And what have they done with power?

The answers here could branch in multiple directions. For example, we could take note that Kamala Harris’s record shows her to have been the most “liberal” (read: Leftist) member of the U.S. Senate, even further left than self-described Socialist Bernie Sanders. We could talk about her Marxist parents or her alarming ties to financial benefactor Steve Phillips, a leading Marxist-Leninist and long-time affiliate of a pro-China group (speaking of drama), the “League of Revolutionary Struggle.” We could follow the same course with Tim Walz, noting, for example, his bizarre and apparent lifelong love for Communist China, having visited it “about 30 times, including for his honeymoon.”

But we can simplify matters even further.

What is one choice Kamala Harris made under pressure and while holding power? Answer: from thousands of possible options, all of which were entirely hers to choose, she picked Tim Walz as her running mate.

And what is one choice Walz made, under pressure and while holding power, also out of thousands of possible options?

Walz chose to appoint a person named Brian Lozenski to help write the statewide “implementation framework” (similar to a curriculum) for Minnesota’s new “ethnic studies” standards.

And who is Brian Lozenski?

Well, he’s just someone who has openly called for overthrow of the United States.

This isn’t an exaggeration. In his words, the United States “must be done with, it must be overthrown… It’s about overthrow… The United States needs to be deconstructed, period.”

Here is the full context:

The first tenet of critical race theory is that the United States as constructed is irreversibly racist. So if the nation-state as constructed is irreversibly racist, then it must be done with, it must be overthrown, right. And so we can’t be like, ‘Oh no, critical race theory is just about telling our stories and divers[ity].’ It’s not about that. It’s about overthrow. It’s insurgent. And we, we need to be, I think, more honest with that. And it’s funny that they [so-called supremacists], you know, they don’t understand critical race theory, but they actually tell some truth when they’re like, yeah, it is anti-state. You can’t be a critical race theorist and be pro-U.S. Okay, it is an anti-state theory that says, The United States needs to be deconstructed, period. Right. Like that’s, you know, and so I think, I think it’s an interesting argument there. And that’s why I’m a critical race theorist.

(Sources: here and here.) While the original YouTube video no longer exists, Vivek Ramaswamy preserved the clip, courtesy of Elon Musk:

This is the man Tim Walz deliberately chose to help decide the curriculum for Minnesota’s kindergarteners and grade-schoolers.

A serious and genuine American leader would ensure that a man like this would never be within a million miles of any seat of power. Tim Walz, on the other hand, deliberately sought out Lozenski.

The point here isn’t that Harris and Walz are simply Communists-Who-Avoid-Using-the-Word-Communist, or CENOs (Communists Except Name Only). Anyone who has been paying close enough attention is familiar with the Cloward-Piven strategy or knows the work of Trevor Loudon (here or in his excellent book Stealth: Kamala Harris’s Communist Roots) already knows this.

The point is that there are people who are consciously and deliberately working to overthrow and end the United States as we know it. And some of these people are now a hair’s breadth away from having much more control of the U. S. Government than they already have.

Even if this election goes Trump’s way—and if, after that, he actually makes it into the Oval Office—the fact that individuals like these are now this close to the heart of power in America should be a long-overdue wake-up call.

America is at war. Too many Americans are blind to this. One reason is that we’re simply too busy, distracted, complacent, shallow, and unserious. Another reason is that this isn’t conventional warfare, where one military tries to destroy another. It’s something different. It’s the battle to take America from within. It’s “Fifth-Generation Warfare,” as General Michael Flynn and others describe. It isn’t the kind of thing that’s on most Americans’ radar.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said the following decades ago, according to Former Secretary of Agriculture under President Eisenhower, Ezra Taft Benson:

Your children’s children will live under communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright; but we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you will finally wake up and find you already have Communism. We will not have to fight you; We will so weaken your economy, until you will fall like overripe fruit into our hands.

Nearly half of Americans are fully willing to vote for exactly this. Either they’re ignorant of the kind of radical Marxist hell they’re really voting for, or they aren’t. Neither answer is reassuring.

Either way, however this election goes, we Americans have some serious work to do.

Steve Rose is a pseudonym.