A lot can change in six months, and it can be kind of frightening.
The vaccine that was derided and cursed by politicians and the press for not being safe is suddenly a badge of honor, hawked by the very people who didn’t trust it until they were elected. Those who choose not to get an untested vaccine are said to be killing children and grandparents. There’s even talk of forcing the unvaccinated to wear badges, be confined to their homes, and prohibiting them from work. For the record, I hope you get a shot if you want one. Whether I get one is none of your business.
Power-hungry politicians are intentionally frightening people over the virus, to the point people don’t believe anything they are told. Yet there is hardly a harsh word the country that gifted it to the world. After all, that’s a country the new administration wants to coddle.
The country in question has a government that makes people disappear in the night, where six year olds are forced to work in cadmium mines and shoe factories, imprisons people for their faith, and until recently cut babies from women’s wombs if there are already two children in the family.
Yet our new leaders kiss their boots.
A lot has changed since January 20.
An economy that was roaring back from nearly a year of shutdowns is once again crashing. The government’s response is not to get out of the way, but to add regulations, pay people to stay at home, and blame the previous administration.
People who burned police precincts and courthouses, destroyed entire business districts, attacked first responders with clubs and Molotov cocktails in protest the deaths of suspects in police custody are released from jail, if they are even arrested. Meanwhile, people who exercised their first amendment rights and never even burned a cigarette are held in solitary confinement and threatened with decades in prison for leaning against statues. In the case of people who actually did commit crimes on January 6, it appears possible that at least some were even instigated by federal agents.
Our national-level military leadership, in less than six months, changed from commanding the world’s premier fighting force to an Orwellian enclave of bureaucrats who are focused on wagging their tails at politically correct crumbs thrown from the table of those who hate America. Instead of focusing on the countries that wish us harm, they are instead focused on race- and gender-preferred promotions and weeding out anyone who Googles “the truth about BLM.”
A nation that the United States invaded to root out state-sponsored terrorism, then had to occupy to help build a nation, and had at the brink of joining at least the 20th century – well, that nation is now back in the business of pouring acid into the uncovered faces of women, and stoning schoolteachers.
To add insult to injury, the patriots of that nation who looked to and trusted the U.S. for help are now being hunted, and refused entry into the country that promised to have their backs. At the same time, the same administration that turned away from our Afghan allies is on track to welcome the equivalent population of a major city coming illegally across the Mexican border this year. Yet refugees from Cuba are told they may not make the equivalent trek across the Straits of Florida, largely because it’s expected they would vote the wrong way.
Things sure can change in six months.
Ordinary Americans are being told, with shrill repetition, that every member of one race is a supremacist, and that infants are being taught to be racist in their cradles. Ice cream is bigoted, unless the president is eating it, then it’s brilliant statecraft. Having to wait in line behind people of another color is racist. Without reeducation by these self-declared experts – who never call for the true equality that was so close – members of that races are not fit to be Americans. Children are being taught, directly or indirectly, to distrust if not actively hate people based on their skin color.
And the federal government’s equivalent of the board of education endorses and pays for this position, using taxpayers’ dollars.
Regarding those tax dollars, every working American is being forced to fund commercials that feature smiling, attractive young people who encourage others to turn in neighbors or family members that they think might be dangerous. Not a word about reporting drug dealers, or child molesters — but owning a firearm or disagreeing with the government or the style mavens is grounds to call law enforcement. Stalin would be proud.
Speaking of firearms – our new leaders think the crime problem can be solved by strictly limiting people on how many and what types of weapons they can own, and forcing them to take money from the government for turning in their guns (or anyone else’s they happen to pick up along the way). After all, look at the sterling examples of public safety that exist in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and the Nation’s Capital. Any gun crime that occurs in those cities is caused by racism and a lack of understanding.
If you don’t understand, you’re a racist.
How quickly things change in six months.
Law enforcement is universally derided as being jackbooted racist thugs eagerly oppressing any minority person they meet. More and more police are turning their backs on a career of service, since they know that the next arrest of a violent felon, a drug dealer or a rapist could be the one that sets their town on fire, and bankrupts them and their families. This is going on while crime rates in many communities increase, so more and more states consider legalization of drugs, and suspects are released without bail or not even arrested in the first place.
Children are being taught to “explore their sexuality” when they’re barely out of diapers. Of course, elected officials and scientists say that not having children in the first case will save the planet, along with getting rid of all petroleum products, especially gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles.
Air conditioning is bad. Cooking with propane is worse. Cow flatulence is causing global warming. Pipelines will destroy the planet. Gasoline must be taxed even higher, to encourage people to use less, as if prices that climb by the week aren’t discouraging enough. Those heavy-metal batteries, wind turbines and solar panels that destroy farmland are much more earth-friendly, of course – unless that petroleum comes from a nation that hates the U.S. Producing oil here, however, is an environmental catastrophe.
What’s really frightening is that merely disagreeing with our new leaders, much less criticizing them, can lead to nighttime knocks on the door, arrests that might be sorted out in court several years from now (with no bail, of course), and being prohibited from using media outlets because someone’s feelings got hurt. People in my business who refuse to toe the line are at best made pariahs, and at worst, questioned and investigated for having ties to extremists. Indeed, I dare not directly link this column on social media, lest I be blackballed for spreading misinformation. Still it would not surprise me to see some blowback for expressing an unapproved opinion.
And I haven’t even covered everything that has happened since January.
The America we knew is going to be gone, if the Americans who care aren’t willing to get off their recliners, stop worrying about namecalling and hurt feelings, and vote to make a difference. The founders gave us the ability to elect or un-elect our leaders, just in case a power-hungry class of nanny state tyrants somehow got in control.
Not long ago, I was seeing the America we can be. It wasn’t black or white or brown. It didn’t celebrate crime and denigrate law enforcement. Children were allowed to be children, without being taught in elementary school that to be white, Christian or heterosexual was evil. Folks in my trade were even expected to tell the truth, although many were already fawning over the left. People wanted to work, not feed at the government trough. There were problems, of course – the human race is in a constant state of conflict, and has been since we were banished from Eden. We will have problems until Christ returns.
Now? We’re one or two staggering steps away from a utopia made of hoarded toilet tissue, a paper screen that’s barely hiding the Stalinesque special police ready to pounce on a single digital sentence that dares to criticize the ruling elite.
Sadly, far too many people are perfectly content to let their most powerful weapon against tyranny – the right to vote – rust in the corner.
What happened to the America we had?
It’s only been six months, but my, how times have changed.
