Many of us older than half a century no longer recognize the country we grew up in.  We have a hard time reconciling that past America with what we see happening today.  America, to our view, was predominantly a place of light, freedom, and joy.  Now, as we witness a massing storm of iniquity, we either don't understand what we're seeing or choke back the language to describe it because the words all sound too harsh or politically incorrect.  We look for other demons to blame such as socialism and Marxism, and while they are definitely part of the problem, what now haunts us is even darker than those malignancies.

This baleful presence has been gathering over the American landscape for some time and the pandemic provided just the right catalyst for it to become a clear and present danger.  It would now take an act of will to ignore its existence, but we still, too often, turn our faces away.

The individuals who make up the component parts of this devilry may believe that they act out of good intentions, but the sum of those parts empowers an evil system of racism, corruption, and violence.  It is an evil that is largely driven by a lust for absolute political power and complete control over the individual.  The modern world has seen this storm before, and we ignore it to our great peril.

This plague on our society has pushed us to many forms of mass hysteria:

• We shun those who do not comply with outrageous and unconstitutional mandates.
• We blindly believe government officials and their allies in the media, though they have proven time and again that they lie and should not be trusted.
• We're emptying our jails of violent offenders while imprisoning law-abiding citizens — sometimes for simply exercising their rights.
• We're taking political prisoners like any third-world dictatorship.
• We allow our cities to be torched and looted with few repercussions.
• We're tearing down our history, our culture, and our traditions in the name of progressivism.
• We invite seemingly anyone who wants to enter the country illegally to take our jobs, receive public services, and drag down wages.
• Our national debt reaches into the stratosphere while politicians go whistling past the graveyard.
• We abort the innocent and defenseless while vigorously defending the guiltiest among us.
• We scare our children into radicalism with tales of impending doom due to climate changes that are as old as the Earth.
• We're wrecking entire industries to "protect the Earth" while propping up those same endeavors for our enemies.
• We deny biological realities and allow men to use women's facilities and participate in women's activities, provided that they "self-identify" as women.
• We subject the military to ideological litmus tests.
• We fraudulently change election results while casting those who push for transparency as "conspiracy advocates" and add their names to a list of domestic terrorists.
• We allow the government to censor those who oppose the lunacy that passes for public policy.
• We teach dependency and hatred at many school districts across the country, and within our colleges and universities.
• We accuse, disarm, and punish the law-abiding while acquitting the guilty.

This is the short list of our collective insanity.  We deny science in the name of science.  We obfuscate truth for the purpose of compliance, conformity, and profit.  We have forsaken the Constitution to silence and disarm our population.  We deny God and accommodate evil.

This darkness will continue to spread until people inside the government are willing to identify and confront it.  There are a few brave souls who are standing against the madness, but most still shrink from that responsibility.  If they do not act, this burden will eventually fall to the American people but by that time, and at immense cost to all, the world's great experiment in freedom and self-government will likely be teetering on the brink of extinction.

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." —Edmund Burke

Frank Liberato is a pseudonym.

Image: Dark clouds by W. carter (CC BY-SA 4.0); American flag by Jon Sailer on Unsplash.

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