Human beings are believers by nature. It is one of the charming vulnerabilities of our species. We love urban legends, ghost stories, extraterrestrial sightings, gossip, rumors, and assorted tall tales because we like to think they “could” possibly be true. 

Our yearnings, which speak to our need to trust and be trusted, both enhance our relationships and make us victims on occasion. We want to believe in Santa Claus and that another round of chemotherapy will save someone whom we love, but we also want to believe we can save a friend with a drinking problem and put our faith in the ridiculous promises of a serial abuser who has sworn never to hit us again. 

However, even when we realize we are being credulous fools, we still choose to believe because not believing is simply too painful.

This perhaps explains why our societal loss of religious faith during the late 20th and early 21st century, which has been well documented, has driven many atheists and agnostics to adopt an absolute and unshakable faith in the benefits of Big Government. They want to believe that some all-powerful amorphous force is watching out for their well being because it is simply too terrifying to face the world without a protector. This likely helps to explain why Conservatives, who are typically more religious, are less attached to expansive and costly government programs—while liberals cling to ponderous bureaucracy like frightened kittens stuck in a tree.

Unfortunately, a great deal of American government and the liberal philosophies behind it, which have mutated into a voracious money-eating monster devouring everything in its path over the past 50 years or so, is built on a teetering tower of ever more outrageous lies that are used to lull us into complacency. These lies are now becoming simply too obvious to continue to ignore—which is a huge problem for those telling the lies.

For example, no army of social workers, psychologists, and child intervention specialists paid for by your friendly government with your tax dollars, can replace a stable, two-parent family glued together thanks to that most outmoded of documents, a marriage license. However, this has not stopped liberals from singing the praises of no-strings-attached sexual encounters and complaining about the problems they claim are caused by so-called toxic masculinity. The travails of single parents, 80% of whom are women, land squarely on the tender shoulders of children, which is a terribly unfair fact compounded by the many selfish fathers who prefer to conscientiously ignore the important responsibilities of parenthood. 

The key question no one seems able—or willing—to answer while they are busily distributing condoms in our public schools is why children who grow up without two parents in the house are plagued with diminished academic outcomes and starkly increased emotional and behavioral difficulties. Apparently all that toxic masculinity is less toxic than deciding fathers are superfluous, which contradicts the destructive anti-male attitudes that liberals and their co-conspirators in academia, Hollywood, and government use to normalize lonely and despairing childhoods. There are lots of lies and no accountability for the terrible damage being done, which pretty much sums up much of what has passed for good governance for many decades.

We have, of course, only recently suffered the consequences of the numerous lies used to justify a national house arrest created by government-induced panic over the Covid-19 virus. I still remember driving and listening to a story on NPR that crazy spring of 2020 about how the virus originated in a Chinese wet market, which I just shook my head at while I was waiting for a stoplight to change—it was obviously BS.

We also dealt with a slew of lies about the science of social distancing (there was none), the usefulness of wearing masks (another bit of nonsense), and the safety and efficacy of the experimental vaccines (lots of dangerous side effects and far less effective than advertised). Multiple government officials have admitted they knowingly misled Americans and actively suppressed the voices of dissenters, including those of many medical professionals who realized very early on that our elected leaders and their minions were promulgating a national tragedy of unimaginable proportions. Have any of these liars been held responsible in any way? Not that I’ve heard of.

I also suspect very few voters will be able to forget the many lies we have been told about the border invasion staged by the Biden-Harris administration, who simply opened the door to human smuggling, a flood of Fentanyl, criminal cartels, violent sex offenders, and the dangerously mentally ill—even going so far as to fly illegals into our country.

I have lost count of how often we have heard “the border is secure” from elected and appointed officials who knew they were lying, knew we knew they were lying, and just didn’t give a damn. Blood is on the hands of many—including the Border Czar now running for President—but not a single individual has been impeached, indicted, fired, or forced to resign in disgrace. Meanwhile, states are left to deal with the utter chaos caused by these many lies regarding illegal immigration and legalized forced immigration foisted upon cities and communities across America without their consent. 

It is little wonder that fewer and fewer have any remaining patience for yet more official lies, and this stark erosion of trust, which is typically characterized as bigotry or misinformation by those who prefer we don’t rise up in rage, is probably the least discussed factor driving the outcomes of this year’s elections—and the primary reason why traditional predictive electoral models are likely useless. 

People are well past being merely angry anymore; they have moved on to a wholesale rejection of our leaders and their policies, which is terrifying those who presumed we would continue to gobble up their diet of misleading statistics, denials of obvious facts, and smug assurances that we are simply too stupid to understand the brilliance of their ideas. Perhaps Leftists can once again succeed at the ballot box by spreading hatred and suspicion, convincing those who revel in their victimhood that their fellow Americans are their enemies. Fear disables an individual’s critical thinking skills, so one cannot discount the possibility that the scared and ignorant will carry the day come November—and bequeath us another four years of Marxist mania.

I can only hope the many millions of average Americans who still want to be proud of our country have not become so disheartened that voting seems an exercise in futility. This year’s elections—and the stark choice they present for our nation’s future—are a tipping point that occurs perhaps only once in the history of any nation. How we vote in our local, state, and federal elections this year has certainly never been as important during my lifetime, and the direction we choose will reverberate through many, many decades to come. 

Little any of us do during the course of the remainder of our lives will likely by more important than the decisions we make—and the courage we hopefully will show—between now and Inauguration Day next year.