Throughout our long American history, we citizens have been blessed with the right to think anything we wanted about anything and anyone we wanted. We were even allowed to hot wire our thoughts to our larynxes and give voice to those beliefs in public venues. Granted, our openness always came at a price, and while it was generally a small price that took the form of polite criticism, the freedom was protected by everyone and it was ours. Those of us who chose to base our beliefs on rational thought supported by historical examples and facts that undergirded our opinions were (thankfully) often the majority. And the majority usually ruled. Somewhere along the way, however, the minority who based their views and actions on supposition infused with deeply-rooted group-think ideology, decided it was the majority and that we who called ourselves the truth-keepers were now enemies of the (new) state. As such, we deserved to be treated as heretics and relics of the past because we dared challenge their flawed view of America which they maintain is a place of great suffering and injustice and that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic.

And those despicable human beings who perpetrated and begat that zygote of evil are mostly Caucasian-Americans with X and Y chromosomes who are prone to wearing red hats with slogans on them. They are "MAGA Republicans," America's Praetorian Guard, who stand watch over their vested interests which are antithetical to the country's best interests. They are a clear and present danger to the Republic and must be stopped. How do I know that? Because the president of the United States told me so, that's how.

He has attempted to throw the spanner of doubt into my mind and the minds of 74.2 million other Americans who voted for Donald Trump. He has summoned the storm clouds of uncertainty and fear and commanded them to hang over our heads. He has seeded them with accusations that we are not "real" patriotic Americans and the danger we represent by wanting a return to policies that would "Make America Great Again" cannot be tolerated. Our insistence on questioning authority or its real motives is punishable by banishment from the tribe whose rulers believe that our climate is in imminent danger, that our national border is secure, that the country's streets are safe, that our children are getting a quality education and that runaway inflation is normal.

Is hypocrisy a bedfellow with dystopia?

With only a few weeks to go before the mid-term elections, we are being bombarded by the Left's hypocrisy. The most egregious example occurred this last Wednesday. Fifty illegal immigrants from Venezuela were flown to the posh Massachusetts' vacation mecca of Martha's Vineyard by Florida Governor Ron Desantis. While 'the vineyard' is not one of Massachusetts' sanctuary cities (Amherst, Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Concord, Newton, Northampton, and Somerville are), it has proclaimed itself to 'have a big heart' for the downtrodden. Unfortunately, upon the immigrants' arrival, residents of the tony town were horrified that their village was now awash with illegals and considered the 'invasion' to be a humanitarian crisis and promptly deported them to a shelter at Joint Base Cape Cod two days later. The media were quick to liken the Desantis action as something akin to 'human trafficking,' but have been relatively silent about the wholesale gate-crashing of our southern border that has brought with it deadly Fentanyl, nor has it reported on the devastation to Texas' healthcare and educational systems because of the illegal migrant surge. Who is suffering from dystopia — the residents of Eagle Pass, Texas (pop. minus illegals: 29K) or the 15,000 residents of Martha's Vineyard where the average house costs $1 million?   

To the Progressives who are willing to bankrupt our economy, make us dependent on foreign energy sources, condone crime, allow civil unrest to turn violent and pit Americans against each other, we conservatives are the ones crying wolf or complaining that the sky is falling. They say that all they are doing is trying to save the rest of us from ourselves and reverse the mistakes of the previous administration. Dystopia by definition is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. That raises the question...if dystopia becomes reality, does it cease becoming dystopia?  And who makes the decision?

Stephan Helgesen is a retired career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in 30 countries for 25 years during the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush Administrations. He is the author of twelve books, six of which are on American politics and has written over 1,200 articles on politics, economics and social trends. He operates a political news story aggregator website, www.projectpushback.com. He can be reached at stephan@stephanhelgesen.com.

Image: Chris Dodds via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.