The Mel Gibson historical epic Apocalypto is a film about how a powerful culture, like the early 16th-century Mayans portrayed in the movie, can sometimes meet an unexpected end.

One thing about the movie really stood out for me.  When the Mayans are confronted with existential threats, like crop failure and disease, the only response their leaders can muster is more of what they’re already doing.  They go big.  They don’t know how to solve the problems they are facing, so they go all in on more of the same.  Already trying to appease their gods with human sacrifice, they sacrifice more.  It’s a bloodbath.  It’s the only response they are capable of.

The Mayans’ response reminds me of our current Democrats.  Can’t sell your policies to current voters?  Import more illegals and register them to vote.  Not enough government programs to enrich friends and buy votes?  More spending.  Want to lower the population and weaken the bonds of the family?  More abortion.  Want to create dysfunction and confusion about sexuality and procreation (and lower the birth rate)?  More transgenderism.  Add more lies to hide what their real goals are and stir.  What a recipe for national Armageddon.

These days, the D that stands for Democrat also stands for a lot of other things, like “dysfunction.”  Democrats had a dysfunctional primary this year.  Not one Democrat primary voter in this election season voted for Kamala Harris.  It was completely phony, since every Democrat voted for a guy who was forced to step down.  Harris was chosen by the party elite.

In similar, anti-democratic fashion, Democrats suppress discussion of the issues by claiming that some ideas are too dangerous to express.  They shut down debate with accusations of racism and homophobia, pushing our politics away from democratic give-and-take toward authoritarianism.  Democrat leaders know that their policies are too radical for America (open borders, taxing unrealized capital gains, transgender surgeries for prisoners), so they hide behind evasion, name-calling, and cries of “misinformation.”

D is likewise for the “death” of reason.  Reason and argument no longer matter.  It’s only the brute force of repeating the same mantras over and over.  It’s the death of reason by blunt force trauma, facilitated through Democrat control of all levels of the media: news, social media, movies, television, and soon, radio, with the proposed radio network purchase by George Soros.

D is also for “disdain.”  The foundation for free and open debate in a democracy like ours, which they like to claim Trump is destroying, is a fundamental respect for your opponent whether you agree with him or not.  That respect broke down when Hillary Clinton in 2016 called Trump-supporters, or rather, people who disagreed with her, deplorables.

Politicians used to claim proudly that they represented all Americans, but no longer.  Once politicians divide the people against one another, it’s a short distance to a two-tiered society that benefits one group at the expense of another, like the old Soviet Union.  If you were a party member, you got everything; if not, you struggled to feed yourself.  That’s where the Democrats are headed.  The reason that Democrats name-call and shut down debate is because they don’t have answers for the problems facing our country.  Or they don’t want to tell you what their intentions are.  Dodging questions about the economy or immigration, Harris changes the subject to “Trump is evil” or her middle-class upbringing because she doesn’t have a real plan to bring down inflation or close the border.  Or maybe she doesn’t intend to lower inflation or close the border.  In her recent Fox News interview with Bret Baier, Harris didn’t discuss a single policy proposal except her oft-repeated refrain that she will provide $25,000 for first-time homebuyers.  All she did was attack Donald Trump.  What Democrats don’t understand is the slow-motion unraveling of their party won’t end if Trump goes away.  Even if Trump loses, the party is imploding.  Too many eyes have been opened now.

The lies and evasions of Democrats reveal the emptiness at the core of the party.  What are they for?  Their principal goals are all negative.  Democrats today talk a lot about abortion, which, despite their misrepresentation of it as health care, involves ending a human life.  D is, again, for “death.”  They can talk around it as much as they like, but the fact remains that before abortion, there is life in the womb, and after, there isn’t.  Abortion is about killing, although they say it’s for a higher purpose.  That’s a pretty negative energy.  Just ask the Mayans.

Another principal issue for Harris and the Democrats is climate change.  The unanswered question hanging over the climate change debate is whether the planet is really at risk.  We are browbeaten with the mantra “the science is settled,” but it isn’t.  If the mainstream media weren’t on board with this lie, more people would be questioning the Democrats’ draconian climate policy.  For Democrats, all our habits must be turned upside-down.  Nothing we are doing is right.  We must accept limitations: don’t do this, don’t consume that, don’t think this.  To combat “climate change,” our lives will be full of deprivation, not the abundance politicians used to promise citizens.  We are promised that we will have less, and we will be happy about it.

The Democrats do have two positive goals: they want more government power, and they want more of your money.  But when the federal government becomes as powerful as it is, it pulls everything to itself, and that’s a threat to individual citizens.  As someone once said, a government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take it away.  To save our country, we must decentralize.

A powerful state competes for decision-making power with free individuals and strong families.  For the state to grow in power, it pushes aside competing claims, particularly the traditional family.  Through policies pushed by Democrats for fifty years to expand the power and reach of the federal government, we have witnessed an unrelenting attack on marriage, morals, the family unit, human sexuality, gender norms, and most recently, even the stubborn facts of human biology.  The family, the foundation of the republic, has been under siege from every side.  Through all of this, the expanding state, aided by Democrat surrogates in the courts and the media, has undermined well established norms and offered itself as a new locus of meaning and stand-in for the family unit.  Modern leftism is a religious crusade.  Meanwhile, the federal government has expanded to offer every service that the family has traditionally provided, promising a wealth of material support with none of the expectations or responsibilities.

Should Trump win in November, he must end the power of the administrative state.  The nation needs a renewed federalism.  Power must shift back to states, local governments, and families.  The pipeline of money that the federal government uses to draw states into its regulatory clutches must be turned off.  The all-consuming “more” must be stopped.  Shutter the bureaucracy.  End government unions.

The 2024 presidential election is enormously consequential.  If Harris wins, expect an accelerating socialism ruled by an all-powerful federal government, a government demanding more and more while providing less and less.

The Mayans had no other answer to their problems than to step on the accelerator.  Let’s hope that come January, Trump can hit the brakes before we go over the cliff, too.

Image via Pexels.