Autumn is here.  Brisk mornings have returned.  The midterms are fast approaching.  Electric change saturates the air.  

At a granular level, so much in America today is terribly wrong.  Inflation, crime, unprotected borders, censorship, political persecution, language codes, and other leftist lunacies grip the nation.  From a broader perspective, though, something is right: more and more people in the United States and throughout the West are finally waking up to the sinister machinations of our globalist power brokers and the many miseries they have wrought.  

For so many decades, totalitarianism has spread incrementally across formerly free Western nations, and most citizens were either asleep at the switch or too comfortable to be bothered.  What's wrong with outlawing speech that's "hateful"?  Who could be for hate?  What's wrong with letting private bankers manipulate the value of national currencies?  They do so only to prevent runaway inflation from ruining the economy.  What's wrong with legislatures spending more money than they have?  They can always print more banknotes, tax more incomes, leverage the properties of ever more distant generations far from being born.  What's wrong with endless wars against amorphous concepts like "terror"?  Wars against nameless terror could never mutate into military campaigns against domestic civilians.  What's wrong with disarming civilian populations while arming all-powerful central governments to the hilt?  In "democracies," after all, "authoritarianism" is not allowed.  

Trust your leaders to do "what's best," to do "what's right," and everything will be okay.  Believe without hesitation or doubt what the government tells you, and disregard all opposing viewpoints as dangerous lies.  Reject religious traditions as archaic falsehoods instilling bigotry, and accept the State's "Great Reset" and "Green New Deal" as certain scientific truths.  Support consensus opinion and reject dissent as "extreme."  Remember that politically incorrect words and unsanctioned beliefs may be recognized as forms of "violence" requiring official response.  Believe the mainstream media.  Trust the scientific bureaucracy.  Report fellow citizens who think too freely.  And no matter what, obey the authorities...for your own good.  

The truth is that we have been sleepwalking into this 1984–Brave New World–Fahrenheit-451 nightmare for far too long.  And the longer Western societies have refused to acknowledge the direction of our steady march toward dystopia, the more difficult we have made it for ourselves to reverse the accumulating damage.  The result is that millions of people are only now awakening to the mounting dangers around them and are left terrified by what they finally see.

Why now?  Perhaps it was the unprecedented COVID lockdowns and school closures that ruined livelihoods and educations.  Perhaps it was the government's decision to close small businesses in the name of "public health" while permitting big box stores to rake in windfall profits.  Perhaps it was the medical community's disjointed "scientific" pronouncements that large crowds protesting "racist" policing during a pandemic were perfectly healthy but that citizens assembling to protest government mandates were somehow not.  Perhaps it was the Department of Homeland Security's stealthy open border policies and middle-of-the-night flights of unvaccinated illegal aliens to unsuspecting communities around the country while the Biden administration simultaneously coerced military service members and civilians into taking experimental "vaccines."  Perhaps it was the constantly changing government health guidelines that redefined the meanings of "vaccine" and "emergency" for transparently political purposes.  Perhaps it was the growing public awareness that the mRNA "vaccines" caused more injuries than citizens were told and created fewer lasting protections than citizens were promised.  

Perhaps it was the ballooning recognition that State-funded schools indoctrinate young students with leftist curricula dipped in racism, sexual libertinism, and outright Marxism.  Perhaps it was the growing disparity between how the IRS, EPA, DOJ, and FBI treat left-leaning political allies and how they treat their conservative opponents.  Perhaps it was the abominable two-tiered criminal justice system giving Black Lives Matter and Antifa foot soldiers slaps on the wrist for years while hunting down J6 political protesters as "domestic terrorists" and abandoning them in due process–free purgatories without trial or prospect of bail.  Perhaps it was the increasingly suffocating blanket of government-directed censorship stifling debate, subverting free speech, and justifying politically animated professional punishments and firings.  

Perhaps all of this madness has been sitting undisturbed just under the surface of society like a papier-mâché warehouse one match away from conflagration, and the combined effects of out-of-control inflation, plummeting retirement accounts, debilitating despair, and rampant ideological demonization have acted as the inflammable accelerants and final spark setting the whole edifice ablaze.  However we got here, the fire is burning now for all to see.  It is bright and unpredictable and out of control.  Most importantly, it cannot be swiftly put out.  It will rage until it burns through decades of corruption, malfeasance, and rot.  It will glow and crackle until new roots for civic freedom take hold and grow.  It will at times sear and singe, but it will ultimately bring renewed liberty and peace.

While this social revolution burns, it is important to remember two truths: (1) the more vulnerable the globalist totalitarians are, the more vindictive and cruel they will become, and (2) the more destructive they become, the more consequential every single voice will be.

We see the first point clearly today as ventriloquist dummy Joe Biden, his financial and political puppeteers, and the permanent bureaucratic Deep State exercising raw power behind the curtain all work together to portray freedom-minded, pro-Constitution Americans as security threats undeserving of free speech, equal protection under the law, holding elective office, or exercising civil rights.  We see it when the fake president's speechwriters vilify half the country as racists and when Hillary Clinton slanders worshipful Christians praising God as instead executing a Nazi salute.  We see it as Facebook and Twitter openly work with government agents to censor and punish conservative speech.  We see it as Big Tech monopolies, Big Media conglomerates, and financial heavyweights work to blacklist, deplatform, and demonetize any entrepreneur not willing to bow before the new "woke" clergy or pay homage to their race-based, trans-obsessed, climate-crusading, Big Government bottom line.  Anyone who dares fight back against the globalists' cultural cesspool and New World Order must be destroyed.

Yet it is always in times when such unbridled, evil statism takes hold that lone voices grow louder and start breaking through.  Donald Trump is one of those loud voices, of course.  Aptly named FBI whistleblower Steve Friend, who has come forward to expose the agency's phony record-keeping inflating "domestic extremism" statistics and excessive force used against misdemeanor J6 defendants, is one of those voices.  Businessman Mike Lindell, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Trump administration economist Peter Navarro, and everyone who has refused to self-censor and meekly accept Establishment Washington's assurances that the 2020 election was on the up-and-up are all resounding voices that have broken through the government's information embargoes.  One voice at a time, one listener at a time, the tide does turn.

No matter how dark things get, all it takes is one hero to push back.  Heroes, after all, are not remembered for following the crowd; they emerge because they run in the opposite direction, often into known danger, and spur others to stop, turn around, and act.  It is always the lone voice that inspires a people to rise against the injustices of any age.  It is the stubborn persistence of the few who marshal real change.  It is the resolute among us who peer at the raging inferno without fear.  It is the wise who remember that every waterfall begins with just one drop of rain.  It is the hopeful who can look around at today's chaos and see clearly the opportunity for great change.

Image via Pixabay.