On the Road to Idiocracy
by Dan Weber, president, Association of Mature American Citizens
Forget about the threat of socialism or even communism; the real threat comes from those who want to foist Idiocracy down our throats. Merriam-Webster defines Idiocracy as "a form of government in which a country or territory is run by fools." And, the madness of anti-government protests that have swept the country since the election of President Donald Trump indicate that the fools are hell bent on taking over.
The opposition certainly has a right to voice opinions, but only idiots would go to the extremes that the Never-Trumper movement has gone since Mr. Trump took office.
A new Rasmussen survey shows that 59% of American voters fear that the opposition has become so intense it is likely to lead to widespread violence. And, almost a third of respondents in that study said they believe the country is headed for a new Civil War.
Broadcaster Denis Prager, host of The Denis Prager Show, put it this way: "This Second Civil War, fortunately, differs in another critically important way: It has thus far been largely nonviolent. But given increasing left-wing violence, such as riots, the taking over of college presidents' offices and the illegal occupation of state capitols, nonviolence is not guaranteed to be a permanent characteristic of the Second Civil War."
Meanwhile, strident liberal factions are now calling for the elimination of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement component of the Department of Homeland Security. Even many mainstream Democrats think that's an ill-conceived notion; it would leave the country unprotected. It would be a lot like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Hand in hand with the notion of doing away with law enforcers who protect our borders is the novel idea of opening our borders and letting in anyone who might care to come into the country uninvited. Imagine the hardships that would ensue for those of us who already live here. Authoritative estimates put the number of people who would move here from another country at 100 million to 150 million or more. Where would they live? Where would they work? What would they eat? What impact would it have on crime rates?
Opposition from the right against the reign of Barack Obama was admittedly widespread during his tenure, but it was a civil opposition. There were no incidents that even approached the vicious magnitude of the attempt on the life of Rep. Steve Scalise [R-LA] and fellow Republican Congressmen out for a night of baseball last year. A lone shooter, James Hodgkinson, who harbored violent anti-Republican views, was out to kill as many Republican lawmakers as he could on the night of June 14, 2017. He severely wounded Rep. Scalise and 2 Capitol Police officers, a congressional staffer and a lobbyist before he was shot and killed.
During Mr. Obama's two terms in office, we didn't have sitting Republican representatives issuing calls such as the one from Rep Maxine Waters [D-CA] last month. You'll recall that she told her constituents "If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them! And you tell them that they are not welcome, anymore, anywhere,"
And, if you don't think the media is wittingly or unwittingly culpable in distorting the truth in order to promote a new brand of socialist anarchy, you have another think coming.
Instead of reporting the facts of a news story the way a reporter with integrity used to do in day, they prefer to put a spin on their reportage. And, more likely than not, they will spin the facts to suit ideologically liberal notions of how things should be, things such as how the country should be run.
Recently a scholarly report was published that focused on the reason public respect and support has declined for the venerable U.S. Supreme Court. The report was researched and written by two university professors, Matthew Hitt at Colorado State and Kathleen Searles at Louisiana State. Their conclusion was: "To know the Court is to love it, but to watch [TV] coverage of the Court is to dislike it."
As commentator Michael Dempsey put it recently in a letter to the editor of the Echo Press in Alexandria, MN: "The greater problem is media bias and it's absolutely palpable. It's about opinion disguising itself as news, not from rogue websites on the Internet, but from CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Watching a network news program at 5:30 has become laughable. Every night it's an anti-Trump feeding frenzy with nothing to feed on but speculation regarding the so-called Russian collusion and outright lies, distortions and deliberate omissions, as in this most recent story of children being "ripped from their mothers' arms" at the border." Idiocracy, indeed!
