There is a pressing question that haunts America as we swing into this new year, one that it is incredible we now must ask: Are our nation’s leaders willfully ruining our lives, or are they merely a bunch of stupendously incompetent dimwits?

I must admit that I’m beginning to suspect active malevolence plays a much larger role in causing our debt, disorder, despair, and dependence than I have previously thought possible, but I may, of course, be wrong.  It just seems to me increasingly implausible that anyone with a modicum of sanity or intelligence could be so incredibly oblivious to the pain that their policies are inflicting on our nation and people. 

Unsurprisingly, I now find my frustrations with the dysfunctional direction of America keening into unmitigated anger.

The cost of food, fuel, housing, medical care, transportation, and virtually every other life necessity is spiraling upward, and our government is busily spending America into the poorhouse for reasons that defy all logic or reason.  The defunding of the police and denigration of law enforcement as an inherently bigoted pursuit has caused the rates of all types of crimes to spike, and even liberal bastions such as San Francisco and New York City are now unable to escape the grim reality of the urban hellholes their shortsighted policies and inflammatory rhetoric have produced.  Continued Covid-19 craziness and divisive ranting about systemic racism have produced social isolation, paranoia, and hatreds that have led to widespread despair.  

Worse yet—and there is no little irony here—as a result of all of the governmentally-inflicted wounds hobbling our nation, more and more Americans are dependent on government programs that cost loads of money, create few long term improvements in our lives, and justify their existences by pointing to the debt, disorder, and despair that our political leadership and their handmaidens in academia and the news media have today enabled.

The never ending pandemic, of course, acts as an overarching tool of terror that encourages acquiescence regarding governmental control of the mundane daily activities of Americans to a degree unprecedented in our nation’s history.  

Questions about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines being mandated, the usefulness of masking and the entry restrictions that circumscribe our lives, or the disconnect between oppressing American citizens but allowing millions of unvaccinated and undocumented immigrants (not to mention the hundreds of members of the United States Congress and Senate who are not required to be vaccinated) to continue to roam the land are all lines of inquiry that are actively suppressed by government officials and supposed experts who insist that they are the only intelligent people who currently exist in our entire country.

The fine but distinct difference between fact and propaganda has been obliterated by partisanship masquerading as science, and anyone who has the gall to point this out is likely to be hounded by the self-appointed guardians of their self-serving truths.  The intersection of money, lies, and influence has likely never been so evident to the sullen masses of Americans—while being so studiously ignored by our elite masters of outrage and obfuscation.

Of course, those who raise their voices in protest are attacked, investigated, and deplatformed.  It has always been dangerous throughout the course of human history to be right when those with power are wrong.  However, the technological totalitarianism now possible has pushed us into a new and frightening epoch of censorship and surveillance that gives government the power to control and isolate people as never before.

This is a time of great danger for our democracy, and the loud socialist monoculture that infests education, mass media, and popular culture is intent only on maintaining its power and the flow of money—an astonishing amount of it courtesy of taxpayers in ways both obvious and carefully hidden—that comes along with that power.  

The entrenched elites who are convinced they are smarter and worthier than the Deplorables who chafe at their arrogance are fighting an increasingly desperate battle to maintain control, and their thinly concealed contempt for—and anger at—those frustrated Americans who dare to dissent becomes more obvious with each passing day.

Is the suffering being inflicted on so many Americans intentional? Are skyrocketing inflation, violent and pervasive crime, social isolation and loneliness, and the desperate need for government handouts to merely survive an accident or a planned attack on the hopes and freedoms of those Americans who still dream of a better future for themselves and their children?  Are our rights as Americans now forfeit to a larger and more disturbing agenda that is known only to a chosen few?

These are questions each of us must today ponder and answer for ourselves during the coming year, and our responses will likely determine the direction of our nation for many generations to come.