We are, indeed, at a crossroads in America.  Next Tuesday, we’ll learn the choice of direction.  Will voters stick with President Trump, who, in saner times, would be a slam-dunk for reelection -- or do they embrace Joe Biden and his grim vision of a dark winter?  We have to believe that most Americans haven’t cast off common sense, along with their used masks and empty hand sanitizer bottles.  But for voters on the fence -- as inexplicable as that is -- let’s evaluate what the Democratic Party is showing us about itself.     

Biden’s claim in the last debate that the U.S. is moving toward a dark winter, thanks to COVID, was revealing.  It exposed more than Biden’s cynicism in trying to manipulate people’s fear of the virus, it exposed an irony. 

The dark winter tag speaks to the Democratic Party’s condition, not America’s.  Democrats are ominous.  Their worldview is antithetical to the American experience, and it’s rotted.  Worse is that they’re destructive.  We see it in their language and actions.  2020 is showcasing the Democrats accelerating descent into a mean-spirited, grudge-filled aggression toward traditional America -- the America of the Revolution and the founding.  They despise that immense swath of red, white, and blue between the Northeast and West Coast.  And anywhere patriots live. 

Perhaps 2020 is providential, in that the Good Lord chose an election year to lay bare the Democrats’ grim plots?  Maybe this is a chance for the broader electorate to get a strong read on the party that’s dumped Happy Days are Here Again for its rendition of Eve of Destruction?      

The Democratic Party is a cancer making systemic attacks on the nation.  The attacks are political, cultural, and moral.  The left, which is ascendent in the party, has over many years, infiltrated major institutions: education, the media, arts and entertainment, corporate executive suites, government bureaucracies.  The fight to restore traditional America won’t end after the president’s hoped for reelection.  With Trump, though, our chances of winning the fight increase dramatically.       

Let’s focus on two big, foreboding developments that are transpiring this year.  They’re pincers in the Democrats ambition to impose tyranny -- a tyranny that leftists and globalists plan to fully unfold should the corrupted and compromised Joe Biden win.  

COVID and the Shutdowns

In March, the COVID crisis struck, but for Democrats, it had little to do with public health.  It was an opportunity to impose and exercise raw political power.  15-day state closures to assess and formulate approaches to grappling with the infection turned into open-ended blue state shutdowns.  New York, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oregon, Wisconsin, Washington State -- blue states all – are still closed to varying degrees.  Businesses have been erased and millions are unemployed.  The rights to worship, to assemble (except for protests and riots), and to function as free citizens, have been curtailed. 

Democrats are previewing their preferred model of governance -- and it should chill patriots.  Theirs isn’t bigger government as an expediency to deal with a temporary crisis.  How Andrew Cuomo, Tom Wolf, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, et al, are governing sets precedents.  Democrats are demonstrating top-down, strongman government as their choice.  It has the stink of Xi Jinping and the PRC.    

Conventional wisdom claims that the lockdowns may ease when the elections end.  After all, shuttering blue state economies was meant to hurt Trump.  Collateral damage to Democrat leaders’ own constituents?  A necessary price to defeat the president.                  

But will the shutdowns end?  Why, when they’re so useful to undermining rights and allowing governments’ grips to tighten?  Biden has declared for more shutdowns until the virus is beaten. Of course, viruses are never beaten.  Biden’s handlers are trying to be clever.

Biden in the White House means a national shutdown.  The U.S. economy has taken a multitrillion-dollar hit this year.  More blows in 2021 would send the nation careening into a depression that would surpass the 1930s.  

But a depression would accomplish much for power-hungry Democrats and globalists.  The Great Reset initiative, advanced by the World Economic Forum, is poorly disguised fascism.  “Manmade climate change” failed to trigger a “reset.”  The COVID crisis is the globalists’ new lodestar. 

Race and Mob Violence

In late May came George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.  There, cringing leftist mayor Jacob Frey was joined by the leftist city council in withdrawing police protection, thereby handing over their city to mobs, though gaslighting that peaceful protests are a right.  Mobs acted as mobs act: with violence -- ransacking, smashing, and burning Minneapolis.  Leftist BLM and Antifa provocateurs did their parts, inciting rioters to even more mayhem. 

Minnesota governor Tim Waltz, in Nero fashion, decided to stand down as Minneapolis burned -- though he had the cheekiness to seek federal aid to recoup millions of dollars in clean-up costs, smartly denied by the Trump administration. 

Not to be outdone, Seattle and Portland followed Minneapolis’ lead.  It was all rinse and reap as mobs ran loose.  Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan’s impotence and endless rationalizations for her city being destroyed were surpassed finally by her embrace of something called the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).”  It was a haven for lawlessness in a broader jurisdiction of lawlessness.  Washington State’s chief eunuch, Jay Inslee, jabbered about protests and rights from the comfort and safety of the governor’s mansion in Olympia.       

South of Seattle, Portland ignited.  Mobs took the streets.  Mayor Ted Wheeler wasn’t to be out-soyboyed by Jacob Frey.  Whereas Frey, like a conquered potentate, groveled before a BLM mob in Minneapolis to show contrition, Wheeler went into the streets seeking dialogue with the barbarians, only to suffer a tear gassing before retreating.  Oregon’s progressive governor Kate Brown jabbered about protests and rights from the comfort and safety of the governor’s mansion in Salem.                 

Do you see the pattern?  Blue states and blue cities alone have sunk into dystopia.  We can attribute some of this to Democrats’ gutlessness and moral desolation, but there’s more here. 

One way of interpreting what’s occurring in blue cities is that anarchy creates vacuums, and power -- goes the saying -- abhors vacuums.  So, it’s a twofer.  Democrats have exploited COVID to push tyranny and have opened the doors to chaos to create the conditions for yet more tyranny.  Their Brave New World is comprised of zombie apocalypses as a precondition for Orwell’s Big Brother. 

George Floyd’s killing sparked yet other opportunities to spew venom and lambast decent Americans as racists.  Only blacks (except defiant Larry Elders) and “woke” affluent progressive whites are exempt from the vitriol and coming recriminations -- if the haters prevail.    

Robert Reich has floated the idea of a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” should Biden win.  That would be a redo of Soviet show trials and Mao’s shaming of Chinese during his Cultural Revolution.          

In race matters, America itself doesn’t get a pass.  No, America was racist from its inception, that being 1619, not 1776.  The founders were nothing more than well-heeled white overlords.  Say Democrats and leftists, Americans must pay for the sins of racism.  Critical Race Theory is indoctrination through shaming and bare-knuckled intimidation.  It was being introduced in federal agencies and the military before the president took steps to halt it.    

A Biden presidency dooms this nation to tyranny -- or, more likely, protracted conflict.  How could patriots ever meekly surrender their God-given rights and the noble -- and ennobling -- ideals of our Revolution and founding?  Ronald Reagan made the case powerfully: patriots will not surrender.  Donald Trump is the only man standing between us and tyranny and conflict.   

J. Robert Smith can be found on Twitter @JRobertSmith1 and Parler @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.   

Image: Pxhere