1776-2020

When I was a teenager, I began writing a work of dystopian fiction. It took place in a future time when religious worship had been banned, and all white people, to atone for the sins of their forefathers, were required to befriend someone not of their race. Their friends could make any demands of them they wanted, and they weren't allowed to question it. It was all for "the good of the community."

I stopped writing it because I decided the premise was too paranoid and ridiculous. That was back in the early to mid-'80s.

Fast-forward to 2020, and that abandoned work is looking more like prophecy, with people banned from going to church, and guilt-ridden white people literally prostrating themselves for things they never did. Anyone who questions any of it is a bigot.

Of course, this kind of woke rage mob is nothing new. It's the same one that demanded you proclaim that women can have a penis and men can get pregnant, and if you didn't acquiesce, they'd make sure you were publicly shamed and would do anything they could to ensure you lost your job. You're not allowed to have a contrary opinion.

Now everything has just been jacked up, way up, as we try to erase history by destroying statues, Taliban-style. We're defacing monuments in the name of "justice." We're destroying our cities and disbanding our law enforcement. You can lose your job for not saying black lives matter. Books and movies are being banned. Social media censorship continues to ramp up for those who push back against the narrative. You can only believe what the Woke Mob says you can believe. And you must vocally profess your allegiance with the Woke Mob, because "silence is violence" (but apparently, burning down cities isn't violence).

It's all raw emotion. No logic. No reason. In a postmodern culture that has decided words no longer have inherent meaning, so that they can mean whatever you want them to, everything becomes an ideology. Facts and truth no longer matter. Only emotion-driven ideology. And you must submit to the party's ideology. You cannot have a differing point of view.

This is no different from what the Red Guards did under Mao. This is the kind of violent totalitarian intolerance Orwell warned us about in 1984. Those who forget history are indeed doomed to repeat it, it seems.

I said back in the '90s, when I was in college, how campus speech codes would create a slippery slope for freedom of expression. When I saw, firsthand, how Antifa tried to shut down a conference with threats of violence if the organizers didn't disinvite one of the speakers, I said caving in to terrorists would be a huge mistake.

And here we are, with Antifa having taken over a swath of downtown Seattle while the city's brain-dead mayor celebrates the illegal occupation as the beginning of a "summer of love." Yeah, the kind of "love" that compels speech and demands you capitulate on bended knee or suffer the consequences, Inquisition-style.

We've lost the culture war to a lawless totalitarian mob. We can't protest, but they can. They can burn down cities and get police departments disbanded. But if we peacefully protest, we're just selfish whiners, and probably dangerous right-wingers, who need to go back into lockdown and stop crying about things like losing our jobs, our freedom of movement, or even our right to go out without a mask on. The protests are for the Woke Mob, not for you worthless flyover deplorables. They get praise. If you act up, you get Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Bundy Ranch.

And there's no one pushing back. No Eisenhower sending in the National Guard. No Reagan or Obama to give an impassioned speech to unite and inspire people. No, we just have a little narcissistic bully who thinks leadership is writing a few mean tweets. If we had leaders who would act like grown-ups, stand up to the mob, and say NO, we wouldn't be in this situation. Even the strongest presidents would have their hands full in a time like this, but Trump is way in over his head, and it shows.

So let's face it. The America we knew, the America founded on liberty and justice, is gone. It's done. It doesn't even matter if Trump gets re-elected. The only difference it would make is how quickly our nation transforms from a one-time bastion of freedom and hope to a burned-out totalitarian woke hellhole under China-style dictatorial rule and forced re-education. It's not a question of if, but when. Because mobs are never appeased, and no one is stopping them, only caving in to them.

The best thing anyone can do is to act locally. Simplify your life. Try to make yourself as dependent on others as little as possible and as self-reliant as you can. Get to know your neighbors, because you may need them. And arm yourself before the Second Amendment is repealed -- and don't think it couldn't be. Your right to homeschool could vanish. Your right to choose whether to vaccinate could vanish. You could get your internet or your power and water shut off for expressing the wrong opinion. You could be placed under house arrest for disobeying. You could have your kids taken away. Any number of things you take for granted could well be gone in a very short matter of time.

America may cease to exist in the near future. If so, migrate if you can to a place that reflects your values. I am eternally grateful we got out of Washington when we did. I feel much more at home among Idahoans. I was raised in a conservative Midwestern home in a small town, after all, and I suppose to some extent you can't shake those early influences. Not that I'm a Republican by any stretch, but the Left lost me a long time ago as they decided I was a racist just for being born white and sexist just for being a white male. They don't see individuals, but groups. And so they judge you by the group you belong to. Of course that's racist, but you can't say that.

Identity politics is fatally flawed. It pits people against each other, rather than bringing good people together across lines of race and sex, based on character and integrity. Dr. King wanted to see a society where we were judged not by color but character. I want that too. But now I'm a bigot just because of how I was born. And this is the mindset that has taken over the nation. It's crept out from the college campuses as a fringe idea and has taken root in every major institution, from academia to the media to Corporate America to Silicon Valley.

There's no winning. All you can do is hunker down in place and work locally. If your state secedes in pursuit of preserving the values America was founded on, don't be afraid to let the idea of America go. Perhaps the only way to regain America is to start over and work from the ground up. Push the reset button.

At this point, it may well be our only chance.