The days have acquired an eerie regularity.
I rise early – typically between 4:00 and 4:30 – get my (cardiac starter fluid) coffee, and settle at my computer to read through my list of news sources. As I read I make a handful of notes about topics for future essays, though on some mornings the news is too monochromatic for more than one. Thirty to forty-five minutes later I quaff my second (critically important booster shot) cup of coffee. Then comes a shower, a cup of yogurt, and a review of the day’s tasks.
It’s usually about then, as I’m pondering in what order to address the things to be done, that the full horror of…well, of everything…impinges upon me.
How can life be this regular, this placid? The Usurpers are destroying the United States of America. In a bare seven months, they’ve crippled the most vibrant nation in history. We’ve been made a laughingstock in the eyes of the world. The Trump years seem like a joyous fantasy today.
All it took was a fake plague and a stolen election to undo what could have been the mightiest resurgence of a nation and its people ever recorded. And the Usurpers aren’t done, Gentle Reader. They’ve got plans. They intend to reduce us to villeinage or worse, and they know exactly how to go about it.
It’s not a replay of FDR’s New Deal or his Brain Trust. It’s a lot worse. The Brain Trusters didn’t have the tools of control the Usurpers possess. The Thirties didn’t know the ubiquitous computer, the database, the NSA’s ability to record and analyze 100% of the nation’s electronic communications stream, the “intelligence / national security” apparatus, or the all-enveloping fear in which the mainstream media have swaddled us.
Yet life seems to go on as before.
What’s wrong with this picture?
While it surely varies from mine, most Americans’ mornings follow a routine of some kind. Despite the political convulsions of 2021, it probably hasn’t changed much. An individual American’s routine will be based largely on what he must do to meet his obligations: do his job, pay his bills, look after his dependents, care for his home, and so forth. Those obligations don’t typically make for a lot of discretionary activity or slack time. I could write for days about how we got here, but I’ll spare you.
Conditions at the summit of American government haven’t yet touched most of us. There’s a gap between Us – the little people whose decisions and actions matter only to ourselves and our loved ones – and Them – the men who’ve seized the levers of federal power and are maneuvering to make their grip permanent. Developments in the corridors of federal power currently seem distant: abstractly troubling, certainly to be deplored, but less imperative than the pile of bills on our desks, Junior’s latest report card, the overflowing gutters, and the uncut lawn. For the moment, at any rate.
So we go on living our lives essentially as we lived them before the Great Usurpation of 2020.
It can’t continue forever. Therefore, pace Herbert Stein, it will stop. We just don’t know when. But for the moment, the gap in reality that separates us from the chaos in Washington seems to protect us. Mind you, the protection is purely cosmetic. It allows us to go about our days in a state of relative equanimity. As long as there’s food in the fridge and the lights stay on, that can seem like enough.
I’m old. I know my life is coming to a close. These days, that seems a mercy. Present trends continuing, younger Americans will face oppressions and privations that I will never know.
Will present trends continue? Will the Usurpers succeed in fastening their preferred brand of social-fascism upon us? Will our ability to go about our days unconcerned by their machinations be taken from us? Please, God, make it not so. But God helps those who help themselves, as the old saw runs. If we want a better future, or even one like today, we’ll have to fight for it.
Apologies, Gentle Reader. You probably didn’t come here to wallow in my melancholy. But I write from what’s on my mind. Today, I ponder the gap that insulates us from the plans of the totalitarians who’ve stolen America, and I wonder how long it will last.
For thousands of Americans in Afghanistan, there is no gap. Their fates are in the Usurpers’ hands. You and I can do nothing for them. It doesn’t look good for them.
Time to pray.
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This is extremely astute. Many know something is wrong but even more either don’t know or don’t want to know. Many are so blinded by Orange Man Bad that that is still all they talk about. Of those that know, they don’t know what to do. Of those that possibly could do something, they do naught but continue their feigned outrage. The time will come I fear when all will say but, but, but……
As you know, Fran, it’s *always* time to pray.
When pondering world events, the Usurpers, the bug/jab, the failings in the Church, & now Afghanistan, one is bound to accept the ‘connectivity of evil’.
And we, collectively, sit here, thumb firmly implanted up our a$$, staring off into space.
I just watched <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxLbmnvMWM0″>this</a> and it made me SOB like a little girl.
So much lost!
Fran, you summed up my current situation, and my own thoughts and fears to a “T”. At times it seems petty and selfish to worry about our own small affairs when we’re looking at the collapse of Western Civilization. But I think the same things. How many small, precious things that we cherish will be corrupted or lost? How staggering is the loss of liberty already. Note the insanity in France, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand. This is global. There is no escape. In the short term we’re already learning to live like the Russians in the old USSR.
We use code speech when discussing certain topics on line, lest the algorithms detect an improper sequence of keystrokes. We’re learning which small businesses won’t enforce the mask rule. We’re even having to find work-arounds to escape the totalitarians messing with our recreation and hobbies. I recently learned that my favorite polishing compound has been banned in California. Luckily, I found a vendor who would put the stuff in a plain brown wrap, and UPS it to me from Texas. Every day items are becoming scarce, gray-market, and even black-market trade. I won’t even go into guns. You know.
I’ve retreated to my back yard hermitage. I go off grounds maybe once or twice a week at most, and that’s only to get together with the bike gang, and cruise the beach. I cannot stand the sight of the faceless. It brings up that “Invasion of the Body-Snatchers” horror in me. I have enough stone left for three major projects. That should carry me into the winter. The stone work is a gift from God. It’s a primitive, dirty task, as primal as anything human gets. But gives me a sense of purpose. What do you do in the face of all this? Make like a cave-man, and create something beautiful. Anyone got a better answer? Grab a picket sign and stand on the street corner?
I’ll be in the back yard with my cat.
JWM
Those Americans in Afghanistan. My God have mercy on them. The civilians that went their by choice ,to follow and make that big money have put them and their family at risk by there on doing. They leader of the family took a gamble with BIG BUCKS and death . God speaks to this many times warning us of the out come. You can choose which choice to make but you can not choose the consequences that comes with the choice you made.For some it may be death that the head of the family choose!!!! I pray to God it’s not that for them , but only he knows
We have much the same morning. Thank God I’m far behind friendly lines.
Give me a credible leader, a real goal, and logical steps to reach that goil, and I’ll be all in at whatever level I can contribute. Like you, my curtain will be coming down sooner rather than later.
That leader would not be Trump.
Prayer is great, but God helps those that help themselves.