I have an old Nigerian friend who has filled my head with so many traditional Igbo proverbs that I sometimes forget whether I'm recalling folksy American wisdom or folksy Igbo wisdom.  (When it has anything to do with yams, it's the latter.)  These days, I can't stop thinking about a sage little gem he threw my way long ago.  I consulted his advice on a particularly difficult decision confronting me, and he just nodded his head and said, "Yes, a large fly has landed on your nether regions."  When I raised an eyebrow in his direction, he said gravely, "Whether you swat it away or leave it there, you're in trouble."

That seems, to me, to sum up the whole awful reality smacking freedom-minded Americans across the face day after day.  We know there's something terribly wrong in our country, but there's no good way to remedy the situation without causing ourselves a great deal of pain.

If you question how the Constitution empowers local municipal tyrants to combat illness by unilaterally sentencing Americans to house arrest, confiscating their places of business, and separating them from their families, nobody even pretends the Constitution still exists.  It doesn't matter whether wearing a mask reduces the spread of disease or just forces people to touch their faces routinely with unclean hands and dirty strips of cloth; you have been told to wear a mask!  It doesn't matter whether social isolation causes more deaths than the Chinese virus or whether enforced business closures permanently destroy Americans' futures; science must be obeyed, even when it's routinely wrong.  Especially when it's wrong!  Government fiat works, you see, only when common people are trained to abandon common sense.  When people know that rules are absurd but follow them nonetheless, they are finally progressive enough to do exactly as the government commands!

Freedom of the press still exists, fellow Americans, but only if the press chooses its words carefully.  

If you refuse to swallow the official state narrative on the 2020 presidential election and instead question the deluge of voting irregularities in battleground states, you will be ridiculed as a nutjob, deprived of your free speech, and threatened with financial and professional harm.  If you gather together with millions of Americans who feel the same way, then you will be branded a terrorist, deprived of your freedom of association, and targeted by the FBI and local district attorneys for crimes you did not commit.

We are herded like dumb animals, whipped and cursed until we learn to accept the politically correct truths fabricated from one day to the next.  (In the progressive mind, truth is never to be sought but always to be shaped.)  Bureaucrats and elected officials entrusted with safeguarding American freedoms instead bully Americans into silence and compliance.  Private companies eagerly join in the persecution parties by throwing people with incorrect thoughts on no-fly lists and banning them from commercial services and common courtesies.  And an army of belligerent tattletales spend their days enforcing every new government edict upon the populace by shaming and threatening thought offenders through the weaponization of anonymous online hate mobs.  Most of these digital vigilantes are happy to target their countrymen for free.  Authoritarianism succeeds only when populations enthusiastically police themselves.

If the United States of America is still freedom's "last, best hope," that distinction does not include the District of Columbia.  In honor of the new administration, the capital was barricaded up just like the old checkpoints once separating East and West Berlin.  Everything's fine, though.  This is all quite normal.  Sure, Lafayette Square looks a little like Tiananmen Square circa 1989.  No big deal.  Move along, citizen.  Nothing to see.

Joe Biden is the most popularly elected president in the history of the United States — so popular in fact, that a large army has taken over the streets of D.C. just to prove how popular he really is.  Stop questioning his election!  He's tremendously popular, okay?  The overwhelming military and security forces surrounding the new president are there so Americans can see for themselves that no elected president has ever been more popular.  Really, really popular presidents always require huge armies when their regimes are installed.  Truly.  Just ask the Cubans who voted for Castro.

For our entertainment, the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda produced a Hollywood spectacle filled with Hollywood stars to celebrate Joe Biden's inauguration because it's important for Americans to be happy about the new government at all times.  Don't call it conditioning!  This is about "unity."  We're all in this together (except for those who refuse to learn and must therefore be deplatformed and punished).  And anyway, Tom Hanks is a big supporter of Joe Biden.  Don't you like Tom Hanks?  He's America's "everyman."  How can you not trust Tom Hanks and still consider yourself an American?  Someone should add that to the popular president's list of first day executive orders: if you do not believe what Tom Hanks is selling you, then you are no longer an American.  (Amazingly, your replacement is already here and checking in at the unenforced southern border.)

So, just to be clear about where we now stand: 

The Constitution's out sick because of Chinese Flu.  You still get to say and print what you want so long as what you have to say conforms to whatever CNN has to say.  If you stick up for the Founding Fathers who fought for our freedoms, you're likely a "white supremacist," but if you destroy monuments to the Founding Fathers, you're a freedom fighter.  It's patriotic to inform on your neighbors for violating government health decrees but unpatriotic to pray with your neighbors in church.  Rioters who destroy cities are protesting for democracy, but Americans protesting for free and fair elections are threatening democracy.  It's good and noble to burn down buildings around the White House when members of Congress promise to pay for arsonists' bail, but breaching the Capitol perimeter is no less tragic than Pearl Harbor.  Social media protect speech by silencing it.  News corporations protect freedom of the press by urging the censorship of points of view.  Americans can no longer be trusted with guns because they might use them to protect their natural rights.  The only person ever to receive more votes than Donald Trump is Joe Biden, but Americans are supposed to remember at all times that Donald Trump is immensely unpopular while Joe Biden is historically loved.  And so many Americans support the incoming president that he requires a standing army to ensure his safe installation.  In America.  The "land of the free."  Got it.

If all that doesn't already add up to an unrelenting, parasitic fly and a precarious decision, then at the very least, the buzzing sure is getting loud around here.

Image: Pashi via Pixabay, Pixabay License.