Monty Python’s 1979 hit movie “Life of Brian” featured a song about optimism:

Some things in life are bad

They can really make you mad

Other things just make you swear and curse

When you're chewing on life's gristle

Don't grumble, give a whistle

And this'll help things turn out for the best

Always look on the bright side of life

One might apply this to politics and current events.

Are you optimistic that America is just in a phase that we will get through, that things will soon return to normal, or we don’t grumble and just give a whistle?

Or are we watching the end of the American experiment, in keeping with the adage that empires last no longer than 250 years before crumbling into totalitarianism or chaos?

Is looking on the bright side of geopolitical and economic life wishful thinking, denial of reality?

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The American economy is in freefall. Washington, D.C., is spending money we don’t have. Our borders are nonexistent, with millions streaming across, many unskilled, illiterate, disease-carrying, criminal, or potential enemy combatants.

We are already engaged in World War III by proxy against the largest nuclear power in the world for no discernable U.S. national interest other than enriching the military-industrial complex and politicians.

Social norms and traditions are out the window when men can claim to be women just because they say so, in defiance of biology and common sense, and we must shut up, agree, as well as praise their courage.

Government has been weaponized against political opponents in the manner of the Soviet Union or East Germany, where an elite ruling class exempts itself from justice and the Constitution, while any opposition is crushed under the jackboot of a tyrannical government.

Elections are rigged, not as a conspiracy theory, but in the opinion of most Americans. It is indeed, as George Carlin observed, “a big club and we ain’t in it,” especially for those who believe in timeless principles of natural law, unalienable rights, the Constitution, and the Bible.

Do you think things look bad and are making you mad? Do you curse chewing on ruling class gristle? Will a simple whistle make things turn out for the best? Is it as easy as looking on the bright side of life?

In 16 months, there will be a major election that will determine whether America displays a bright side of life or more gristle. Not only a presidential election but all the House, a third of the Senate, as well as hundreds of state governors, legislatures, attorneys general, secretaries of state, and local officials.

If sanity doesn’t return to American culture and governance, where are we headed? Can the elections even be trusted? I discussed this issue last week, concluding that they cannot be trusted. Are electoral outcomes predetermined? Are voting machines still connected to the internet? Will thousands of undeliverable ballots be harvested by postal workers, delivered to unknown locations, to be filled out by Democrat operatives and delivered to selected precincts, and run through vote tabulators multiple times until the preordained candidate takes the lead?

Democrats aren’t even concerned about the 2024 election. Biden has few campaign workers and no headquarters. Why should he? He already has the necessary votes, as he did in 2020, and is confident that his vote tally will exceed that of any opponent. For Democrats, the fix is in, the campaign is theater. Has Trump or the GOP fixed anything since 2020, effecting a different outcome?

Or will elections even happen? Will there be a false flag event leading to delayed or canceled elections for “public safety”? We are on the verge of nuclear war with Russia. How many pathogens, developed in America’s vast international network of 300+ biolabs, are ready to be unleashed on America and the world, requiring draconian lockdowns and travel restrictions, closing society North Korea-style, making elections “too risky”?

Who, if elected, can turn the tide against a tyrannical government? Only an outsider, unbeholden to corporate and ruling class donors, has a chance to stem the tide of American decline. Two names currently in the presidential race come to mind, Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Both are symptoms of and a response to the dysfunction and corruption within their respective political parties.

Both are outsiders, skunks at their respective political party's garden party. Both are a threat to the status quo, and the ruling class will move heaven and earth to keep both far from the White House. Although Trump served four years as president, he is still an outsider, not part of the big club, and such an existential threat to the status quo that the entire weight of the federal and even local governments have been weaponized against him.

Thoughtful and principled Republicans turn their noses up at Trump. He instigated “an insurrection,” they say, ignoring that Congressional leadership aided and abetted the January 6 protests with the assistance of federal agents strategically placed within the crowds. Trump’s words of “peacefully and patriotically make your voiced heard” somehow reflects ignorance of the US Constitution.

Trump doesn’t respect the Constitution, some say, despite nominating three Constitutionally conservative justices to the US Supreme Court, more than any other president, finally restoring Constitutional jurisprudence to a left-wing activist court.

Trump didn’t start a single foreign war, something no recent past president is able to claim. He also sought, against bipartisan opposition, to secure America’s borders, as Article 4, section 4 of the Constitution stipulates. He put American workers and citizens at the forefront of his initiatives, unlike most of his predecessors in the White House.

He spoke up and pushed back, making him a narcissist as some claim. With 95 percent of the corporate media against him, and his executive branch and many in his own party scheming against him, knowingly and illegally breaking the law to undermine his election and presidency, he spoke out, loudly.

One must shout to be heard over a hurricane. That’s not a narcissist; instead, that’s someone standing up for himself and his millions of voters. Want more of a gentleman? How about Presidents McCain or Romney, the latter who muttered helplessly when falsely accused of hating women and dogs, deliberately killing his employees, and not paying taxes?

The genteel and dignified GOP candidates were only good at giving concession speeches, not winning elections.

RFK is challenging the military-pharmaceutical-industrial complex with sensible evidence-based arguments about vaccines and pharma influence on government and the media. He, too, sees no American interest in fomenting war with Russia and acknowledges the need for a national border. He is still a solid Democrat on other issues, but in some key areas, he is to the right of most of the GOP presidential field.

Imagine this scenario. Both Trump and RFK get “Bernie’d,” their party’s nomination strategically kept away from them, and they join forces and run as an independent third party. Unlikely, but don’t rule it out. The GOP establishment, through proportional delegate distribution, is already trying to rig the nomination process against Trump.

Meanwhile, Americans virtue signal over Ukraine and Pride Month, oblivious to the fundamental transformation of America, started decades ago, accelerated by George W. Bush and Barack Obama, with Donald Trump’s first term as merely a speed bump.

If the wrong people control government after the 2024 election, expect a stacked Supreme Court that believes in a “living Constitution,” meaning that free speech and association are now deemed “unsafe” and the right to bear arms can be infringed for “public safety.” Think, say, or do wrong in the eyes of Big Brother, and life as you know it will cease, figuratively or literally.

Far-fetched? Michigan is on the way to criminalizing “wrong-speak,” as in "mis-gendering" someone.

In less than a decade, we may be eating bugs instead of meat and wearing uniforms rather than fashion if the World Economic Forum has its way, which it may with another four years of Democrat rule.

What happens when a central digital currency wipes away your assets or the ability to conduct commerce due to your “incorrect ideas or thoughts”? Nigel Farage claims this happened to him recently in the U.K. Canadian trucker protesters’ assets were frozen by the Canadian authorities.

We are living in a totalitarian state, but most of us don’t yet realize or acknowledge this. When we do, it will be too late.

William Wallace’s words in Braveheart ring true.

Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

This is not a call to arms but, instead, to thinking and insisting on more from our elected representatives. It’s time to demand of them a government, as Abraham Lincoln declared in the Gettysburg Address, “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Mocking the elites is one method as per Saul Alinsky, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Utilizing the underground economy is another method to starve the beast, avoiding taxes and central digital currency control. Both are already happening, the former in social and alternative media and the latter in much of the human labor and service industries.

Simply looking on the bright side of life won’t cut it this time, as eventually the brightness of America will be extinguished like a dying star.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. Follow me on Twitter @retinaldoctor, Substack Dr. Brian’s Substack, Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, and LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph.