2020 was a year we will not soon forget. Like the year 2001, our Great Experiment as a democratic republic turned an abrupt corner.
America was attacked not by an enemy we could identify, catalog, and counter-attack, as with Sept. 11, 2001, when after a succession of terrorist attacks we relinquished more than a few of our liberties.
Instead, the attack jackhammered at the cornerstone of what it means to be a free and, dare-we-say, a faith-based society. The enemy drove Americans apart, forced us to lock ourselves in our homes, shroud our smiles behind masks, and wall off our elderly to die alone, without so much as a family member to even hold their hands. We even masked some of our youngest children, something that drastically changed their view of the world. We did all this in the name of following the science.
Quite easily, Americans caved to government control.
While it has not been America’s worst moment, 2020 is is certainly not our proudest. Socialists, anarchists, antifa, common criminals, and communist infiltrators took advantage of the pandemic of fear, using the crisis over the summer to loot and burn and terrorize their way to the November election of their standard-bearer, Joe Biden and his socialistic minder, Kamala Harris.
Biden has softly whispered to America that all will be right in the world once again once the guard dog Donald Trump is gone. Even if the election was stolen, a shocking number of voters went along.
2020 was a moment ripe for this revolution. The stakeholders in big government had grown since those first days of the Trump Administration, as the rebellion has come from within the ranks of the publicly employed, from university professors to first-grade teachers to federal grant administrators and their grant recipients.
Early on in the Trump Administration, groups of “resisters” in the federal government set up covert communications and started sandbagging the new boss — in the Park Service, Department of Interior, and even the Department of Justice.
President Trump, both a genius and an artless warrior, believed in 2016 he could tame this beast created by a growing alliance of socialist and corporate statists — companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and others that have been transformed into political actors.
When Trump took office, however, it may not have occurred to him that he was now the CEO of the nation’s largest employer of all — the federal government, now operating far outside the bounds ever imagined by our Founding Fathers. As with any beast that must be fed, the federal bureaucracy was an organism bent on self-preservation. It would not willingly return to its container.
The overall government workforce is a Lernaean Hydra. Out of an American workforce of 157 million, some 24 million are employed by governments from the federal to the local level. Of those, 16 million are employed by state and local governments. Close to one out of every six jobs in America is now a government post, and one that is nearly impossible to winnow. Chop off one head, and another two grow elsewhere.
Governments in America now employ twice as many workers than the private manufacturing sector does, at 12 million. As for one of America’s economic engines, oil and gas support 9.8 million, 5.6 percent of total U.S. employment. Biden has pledged he will immediately end new oil and gas leases on federal land, plunging millions of Americans into unemployment or at least uncertainty.
Congress has a growing share of socialists; in 2020, four members of Democrat Socialists of America were elected to Congress, and 30 were elected to state legislatures. Hundreds now control city councils.
Although our Bill of Rights was written to ensure that government would not become so pervasive that it would crush the personal liberties and economic freedoms of the people of America, governments always seem to expand to fill their containers.
Before inauguration day, Americans should at least take a clear-eyed look at our national deficit and what that means for the years ahead Spoiler alert: It’s not great for the workers and taxpayers in the private sector who are footing the bill.
While the economy was roaring under President Trump, government spending did not, unfortunately, get under control. Part of this can be explained because Trump rebuilt the military, which had been eroded under President Obama and which was left with aging, dilapidated equipment. Part of it can be explained by Trump believing that a roaring economy would eventually fix the ills of national debt. He ran out of time and he ran into a costly pandemic.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government ran a deficit of $284 billion in October of 2020, the first month of Fiscal Year 2021. That’s more than twice the deficit of October 2019, which was $134 billion.
Federal expenditures were 37 percent higher this October than in October, 2019, largely due to the federal response to what has become China’s largest and most costly export, the coronavirus.
It is too early to tell what corner America has actually turned in 2020. Books will be written, doctoral theses will be defended, and documentaries will be made.
What we know is who brought Joe Biden to the dance. Socialists, and their surrogates in the environmental industry, will command the dance floor made from their manufactured crises of 2020. Roughly half of American voters appeared ready for this change, while the other half is standing in shock and dismay as they are called Nazis in the public square by the breed of new socialists, ironically the party of the actual Nazis.
As for the promises made by Biden, from his Green New Deal cabinet to Medicare for all, there always seems to be another hole in the belt of big government, which is about to go up another pant size in 2021.
We deserve what we permit. Tolerance is not a virtue.
Dang! Wish I could write like this. On the spot. In today’s pop culture, it was a “mic drop”. Thank you.
Eddie Burke.
Well written and red flags to us all. I still have not given up on President Trump and have great faith in the power of right over wrong or good over evil and I think that is where the nation is right now….it is a moment of GOOD Vs Evil and I still believe GOOD will win the day ….
It’s been my experience that evil triumphs over good unless good is very very good or very very lucky.
Good is too lazy to do the work necessary to win. Trump and his people should have been raising hell BEFORE the election was rigged, not after.
But they didn’t and here we are.
People don’t like freedom. It’s scary and comes with accountability for actions – or lack of.
Most people will happily trade freedom for being told what to do. Worse, most will happily tell others what to do. Or have the government do it. And support using force to make them behave.
Once I thought we were headed to Civil War. Now I realize it’s not gonna happen. We already lost without even trying to fight.
We tried to fight, they changed the rules in the middle of the game and wouldn’t let us win. That’s a long shot from not even trying.
That’s exactly the sort of attitude that got us here. “We tried/they cheated”.
The left never stops trying. They never stop working. They never stop hustling and innovating to achieve their goals.
The alleged conservative right makes a half hearted effort, says they tried, and accepts the loss “gracefully”.
Love them or hate them, give Antifa/BLM credit. They hustle. Protests every day, coordinated efforts, commitment to the goal. The right holds boat parades then goes home congratulating themselves for not getting sunburned.
This country, this state, was lost socially and politically by so called conservatives who could not be bothered to skip a meal or miss a TV show to get involved.
“I gotta work” is an excuse, not a justification.
Dear Masked Avenger, Please take heart, you are not alone and remember that THIS IS A CIVIL WAR. We have not lost anything yet. 2016 was the beginning, 2020 is not the end. Kindly review the words below.
” In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins”.
Ulysses S. Grant
Don’t give up!
It’s like being in a mixed wind, with a brown bear nearby, in the deep woods. You can smell it, but you can’t see it. Your hackles rise, you take the safety off your gun, but you don’t yet know which way to point it. You do know that you need to maneuver for a clear field of fire. If it charges, you don’t want it coming right out of the brush next to you.
Biden probably becoming president gives me that feeling, that something very dangerous is near and I don’t have a clear view. Hopefully some ravens will spot the bear’s location and give it’s position away.
“Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
If we allow this, the republic which many have lost their lives protecting is dead.
If you believe what came out of signature unverified mail in balloting and Dominion machines represented America buying Socialism I don’t know what I can tell you.
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Signed: a well armed lamb
I couldn’t take anything seriously after:
“President Trump, both a genius and an artless warrior”
If he was a genius, he could have accomplished his goals while remaining in office.
Instead, he ran the country like a high school bully. Helping his friends, and making fun of the mentally challenged…on live TV. Genius? I think not.
He lied to the entire country about the dangers of Coronavirus
He personally spread the Corona virus across the country
He said in the summer that CV would just magically disappear…this is your genius?
Can you see why people don’t want a liar to be our president anymore.
He literally stopped his son from helping stop CV because it was killing more people in blue states and thought it would help him win the election. Did you know that?
I AM a Republican. But I also believe in decency to your fellow human being and having a president who treats all Americans equally.
Please stop watching MSM, do your own research and stop being bought into the agenda. CCP, Big Tech, Big Pharma, FBI AND CIA is all part of this. This has been planned for eons. Think for yourself and stop listening to what CNN IS TELLING YOU! I beg of you!
Please read my comment again, none of what I said was from any of the sources you quoted.
And I absolutely agree with you that MSM, CCP, Big Tech, Big Pharma, FBI AND CIA, amd others are in on “it”, so to speak, as I HAVE done my own research and came to the same conclusion.
However, what I said above is all factual. Most of it came directly from Trump’s mouth, while being recorded. I dont base my views on him from some stupid news channel. I canceled cable T.V. 14 years ago. I do not have Facebook.
Please respond to what I said in my comment, and don’t just regurgitate the same thing all your friends are saying as a general reply. It doesnt do anyone any good.
Most everything you’ve said about Trump is supportable, but “Bozo The Clown” got elected because he offered hope of getting off the NWO, Greening, Antifa, BLM, and etc. merry-go-around.
Biden offers just more of the same-old, same-old.
I wish 🙁 Unfortunately there are too many corporate democrats (like joe biden) standing in the way if socialism. But someday soon hopefully the us will have a real socialist political force
Lots of people fought alongside Fidel Castro. When he won, he consolidated his position by purging anyone and everyone he thought a potential threat … which were mostly those who had fought alongside him.
You will, more likely than not, be one of the first to get purged. Welcome to Communism 101.
In other words, Joseph, and in the immortal words of Vladimir Lenin, people like Jimmy (above) are just more “useful idiots” for the sociopaths in their quest for consolidation of uncontrolled and unlimited power.
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I’m sorry if the truth hurts, Jimmy, but it is simply a fact — anyone advocating for socialism is, ipso facto, an idiot.
If you are interested the about the road that we are now on one needs to read Erich Maria Remarque’s series of books about how Germany progressed after WWI thru WWII. It is shocking!
Excellent editorial!
Also, while it is still available, I urge every American to watch this startling and in-depth hour and one half documentary from the Epoch Times. You will see that this has been building for a long time, who is behind it, and how greed has fed it.
theepochtimes . com / 2020-election-investigation-who-is-stealing-america_3617562.html
Not sure what can be done at this point in history, but at least all should see things for what they really are.
Words spoken so true, Suzanne. Great writing! Merry Christmas.⛄
So many instigators talking about a possible civil war. They have no real sense of history. The present political climate is more suggestive of a quiet coup by the military, coming to the defense of America.
Our military has been fighting Communism for decades … The CommieDems want to weaken our military, retire the patriotic core, install Leftist’s, and remake Amerika.
77 million Americans, Trump supporters all, would welcome a military coup right now, without an eye-blink.
This has been a tumultuous year. Tumultuous four years. We elected a narcissistic chief executive officer, with no experience, to run the most powerful, complicated operation in the world, and as he methodically attempted to hijack it and make it his personal oligarchy, we allowed him to divide us as a people into two groups, one that thought him a savior and one that thought him a destroyer.
It’s pretty clear now that the one thing he was most successful at was division, which has been growing ever since Reagan told us we can have our cake an eat it. The next four years will tell us, perhaps, how this is all going to play out, and whether democracy, the most fragile governmental system created, can and will endure.
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