The America I thought I knew would not tolerate the (let’s get real) permanent wearing of face masks in public, not for any reason.
The America I thought I knew would not stand up for a violent gang of terrorist thugs like Black Lives Matter and Antifa.
The America I thought I knew would not pay $55K a year to people for doing nothing, not even with “COVID” as an excuse.
The America I thought I knew would not even consider someone like Joe Biden for President — a corrupt career politician buffoon with obvious dementia, to boot; and with a grown son who snorts cocaine off the public dole, exploiting his father’s connections.
The America I thought I knew would not report neighbors to the city government for not “social distancing” enough. This is the stuff of Maoist Communist China, not America — even a misguided America.
The America I thought I knew would never have tolerated even the mention of defunding the police, endorsing murderous mayhem on city streets and peddling it all as corporate, intellectual sophistication and “cool”. I thought even our idiotic celebrities were smarter than this. How wrong I was.
Even six months ago, I would have laughed at the prospect of America going this far down, this quickly. If you told me a virus pandemic would drive them to it, I would have assumed it would have to be the stuff of a Stephen King novel, the kind of virus that would kill off half the population overnight. THAT would understandably drive many to lunacy. I would never have believed that a nasty flu with a 99.99 percent survival rate would be the thing to spiral America, this quickly, into a state of literal tyranny that most seem not yet to have fully grasped.
I knew, all along, that ideas had consequences. I knew, all along, that our schools, media and cultural institutions were headed in the destructively wrong (and so very stupid) direction. But even I didn’t realize how far gone we were, how eroded our ability for critical thinking and independence had become in what was once called the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
I look around at all these idiots wearing face masks, refusing to even hug or shake hands with their own family members, merely because “the authorities” told them not to … and I see very little bravery or freedom. This is not the America that fought the Revolutionary War, abolished slavery, defeated the segregationist South, obliterated the imperial Japanese along with Nazi Germany and eventually brought Communism to its knees. NOT EVEN CLOSE.
I can’t in all seriousness wish anyone happy 4th of July or “Happy Independence Day”. America, it seems, went the route of the few other great civilizations known to mankind. Maybe in the future, human beings will get it right. But clearly, not yet.
Grief is healthy, and sometimes necessary. I don’t know about you. But THIS 4th of July, I do not celebrate. I grieve.
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