There are three government narratives pushed today that are not real: (1) fraud-free elections, (2) a looming climate apocalypse, and (3) a COVID health emergency requiring total government control.  If you see through only one, then you're not looking hard enough.  Or as Bill Engvall might say, "If you now believe COVID is mostly a hoax but are still terrified of global warming, here's your sign."  Conversely, if you do see through them, you're likely being censored for expressing those points of view.  

Here's our impasse: when governments claim to have a monopoly on truth, then citizens are expected to accept preposterous fantasies, no matter how much opposing evidence they might see.  The narrative is absolute.  Dissent is forbidden.  Total obedience is the objective.  Last century, free Westerners understood these features as telltale signs of totalitarianism.  Today, much less free Westerners have been taught to embrace — without scrutiny or wisdom — the government's fairy tales as part of our required, if not sacred, deference to the bureaucratic State's cult of expertise.  Whether citizens grasp this shift in individual freedom or not, the general rule handed down from governments is stark yet succinct: ask us no questions, and we will tell you no lies!

Westerners desperately need to reboot their systems of government before those systems of government delete the public's power to make changes ever again.  It is not possible for political leaders to claim that their countries support personal freedom when they snatch that freedom away at the first sneeze, cow fart, or unapproved tweet.  It is not logical for governments to claim that they protect "democracy" when armies of unelected permanent bureaucrats run the modern State.  It is not reasonable for Western nations to claim that they cherish "free thinking" and "free expression" when their technocratic surveillance arms actively censor speech and promote State-approved points of view over all others.

Notice that the above paragraph makes sense only if you have not already become so brainwashed by State "narratives" as to think active government control over an individual's body and mind nonetheless advances human liberty, democracy, and free speech.  Make no mistake: even in this age of forced COVID lockdowns, mandatory experimental injections, "climate change"–initiated inflation, über-regulation of the market economy, mail-in ballot elections run by political partisans, and self-interested censorship disguised as moral wars against "hate speech" or "misinformation," there are millions of our fellow Westerners who see these abhorrent phenomena as mere trifles.  That's Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole mental doublethink of the highest absurdity!  This willful disinterest in examining government propaganda is, it is sad to say, how the veil of totalitarianism falls gently over unsuspecting populations that have been so psychologically conditioned to accept their new chains that they embrace government tyranny as not only customary but also quite pleasant.

Earlier this year, a U.S. Marine who fought at the bloody Battle of Guadalcanal during WWII was being interviewed in celebration of his hundredth birthday.  Veteran Carl Dekle, who went through absolute hell in the Pacific theater and managed to persevere against exhaustion and relentless close combat, broke down in tears.  However, the Silver Star recipient was not reliving nightmares from the past; he was heartbroken at the state of America today.

"Nowadays I am so upset that the things we did and the things we fought for and the boys that died for it, it's all going down the drain," he said.  "Our country's going to hell in a handbasket.  We haven't got the country we had when I was raised, not at all.  Nobody will have the fun I had; nobody will have the opportunity I had.  It's just not the same."

Imagine fighting Japanese Imperialism and the threats of global totalitarianism, surviving when so many friends did not, and living long enough to see the very ideological threats that you once defeated on foreign battlefields find a malevolent foothold on the same land of liberty you defended with selfless love.  This is a brave warrior who battled through terror today's generations cannot imagine, and he is reduced to unbearable sadness because "our country's gone to hell."  

That emotional plea should shock the conscience of anyone too blissfully asleep today to understand what is actually happening.  America and her Western allies fought a global war against State totalitarianism only to spend the next eighty years slowly embracing State controls over their own peoples at home.  It is a historical gut punch that would make even the strongest hero cry.  That's what we're up against.

In the U.S., we have now completed the second straight election in which COVID-era mail-in ballots and statistically questionable results have upended races days after their supposed conclusion.  When Americans point out rampant ballot insecurity, the lack of signature verification, and strange vote patterns inconsistent with prior local races, government officials target concerned citizens rather than scrutinizing suspect elections.  The people who insist that "democracy" must defeat "authoritarianism" at all costs are the same ones who authoritatively dismiss election concerns and demean unconvinced citizens as "deniers." 

Consider how vile that wretched slur — "denier" — really is.  Once an insult reserved for a lowly class of humanity who stubbornly refused to accept the truth of the Nazis' monstrous mass slaughter during the Holocaust, now Western political leaders toss out the "denier" smear anytime a government narrative is remotely questioned.  Object to election outcomes that make little sense and require weeks to decide, and you're an "election denier."  Question that our naturally changing climate is actually evidence for an imminent human-created apocalypse, and you're a "climate denier."  Question that COVID-19's relatively meager lethality rate required the global economy to come to a grinding halt, and you're a "COVID denier," too.  

As more and more people begin to question the West's failed response to that pathogen, though, it is the horrid "deniers" among us who more often than not have distinguished themselves as reasonable Westerners grounded in common sense, and the Westerners quick to slander others who should be eating humble pie and extra helpings of crow.  When people are ridiculed for thinking critically and forced to believe whatever the "credentialed" demand, then governments create mindless masses who know nothing other than how to comply upon command.  

It is difficult to stand against the narratives of the State.  When modern nations armed with robust systems of surveillance, a fondness for psychological warfare against their own citizens, and a natural enmity toward unvarnished truth proclaim something to be so, it is nearly impossible to prove otherwise.  With this as our baseline, nothing governments say should ever be accepted as indisputably true.  Quite the opposite, in fact — absolutely everything said by any official should be questioned at all times.  This used to be understood as the hallmark of basic journalism; now even the simplest incredulity is reviled as a "conspiratorial" pursuit.  If we actually had a Fourth Estate in the West, rampant conspiracy-chasing — not loyal devotion to the State — would be the reporter's certain path to truth.

Fear is defeated with knowledge.  The more we question, the more we know.  The more we know, the easier it is to stand up to a seemingly all-powerful State.  Is it any wonder, then, why governments want citizens to know so little?  Totalitarianism feeds off ignorance.  It feeds off panic and alarm.  It is why members of the Greatest Generation who saw State tyranny face to face look at the loss of freedom and servile compliance all around and weep at what the West has become.

Image: Azamat Esenaliev via Pexels, Pexels License.