So this is what America has come to circa 2020: a nation huddled in their homes hoping to avoid illness and death from an obscure virus created in a lab in China.  Businesses shuttered.  Roads emptied.  People eyeing each other suspiciously as they pass in the supermarket aisles, snapping up all of the toilet paper that their SUV can carry while wearing their N95 masks and gloves.   Police arresting pastors for conducting church services.  Neighbors snitching on each other.  An entire country in lockdown over a “pandemic” that is unlikely to affect one person in a hundred, even if we accept the most dire predictions at face value.  I would not have believed it if you had told me 20 years ago that this could be possible in the land of the free and the home of the brave, but here we are.

How did we get here?  How did the same people that blazed new trails across an entire  continent and sent a man to the moon come to cower in the safety of their own homes because they were afraid of a bug?  How do you turn heroes into milquetoasts? 

Our ancestors were tough SOBs.  They came thousands of miles across a hostile wilderness to settle in unyielding lands far from the comfort or safety of civilization.  They fought the elements, disease, hostile natives, and starvation, carving out a place in the hinterlands to call their own, and against all odds they prospered and thrived and made a nation so grand that people from all over the world streamed to it for the next two hundred years.  They were formidable warriors, tenacious farmers, intrepid explorers.  

What happened to those folk?  How do you mold a people like that so that, after a few generations, they meekly cede all of their rights as free men simply because of a government decree?   How do proud peoples become so compliant that they no longer care enough to challenge the power of the federal and state leviathan, even when it is destroying their lives and wrecking their businesses?  

At least part of the answer lies in the total takeover of the news media, which is now in the hands of just 6 people.  Goebbels knew that the average man just wants to go about his business without being hassled.  In order for him to give up his peaceful existence in pursuit of the aims of the state you must convince him that an enemy threatens his family.  And whether that enemy is carrying a gun or a virus doesn’t matter-all that matters is that when the propaganda is relentlessly promoting the same narrative, the madness of crowds takes over and, even when the threat is difficult or impossible to see, the average person will submit himself to what they perceive as the greater good of his family, his society, and of all mankind.

The clever part here is in making the danger appear credible.  A man who is forced to fight will do so, but a man who believes in every fiber of his being that the cause is just and right and true will do anything for the cause, and so for that reason it is important to build up the threat into something monstrous, even if in reality it is rather underwhelming or even non-existent.

Thus, through the magic of the mass media, I know all about the exploding numbers of those affected by this pandemic even while I don’t know of a single soul personally who has caught it.  I am shown hospitals on the evening news that are overflowing with patients, even though I can see with my own eyes that my local infirmary is nearly empty.   I am bombarded by the testimony of “experts”, all of whom say that the sky is not only falling, but that the heavens above are also coming down with it.  Hear enough of that, and the weakest sheep believe it.  They tell everyone they know, and it starts to become accepted lore.  Eventually, only the most cynical of sorts looks askance at what the media has wrought.  Tell a lie often enough and becomes reality.

Thus it is that we sit and wait for the crisis to pass.  We watch TV, and see that there is no cure.  We stay home lest we become sick ourselves.  When we do go out, it is in trepidation.  Many of us are eager for a government handout.  Not a few are happy to report violations of the “lockdown” to authorities.  Others try to enforce the “social distancing” rules.  It creates a nation of paranoia, where we each mistrust each other.  A woman on the website “NextDoor” wondered aloud recently if it would be a good idea if those who had the illness had their homes marked in some way so that the rest of us could avoid them.  Sic Semper Tyrannis.

So gradually we learn that it is not neighbors or friends we should trust but rather the government and the Talking Heads on CNN.  People come to think they have a handle on everything, after all.  And what is going on around us in our great nation, while we are avoiding eye contact with others?  Why, merely a few trillion dollars are being transferred to Wall Street at our expense while the government enacts what is, in effect, a form of martial law, thus ushering in the end of the republic that Franklin predicted so very long ago.

It isn’t that the Wuhan virus isn’t real.  It’s real enough, but it is dwarfed by the monster behind it.  Long after the virus has been cured, we will still be living under the boot heel of the state.  Long after the stimulus money is spent, we will still be indebted to the Banksters.  And long after we emerge from our homes, blinking in the light of a new day, we will still believe whatever the Empire says.  The only thing that will be different is that we will be even more enslaved than we were before.  You would think that we would learn, but, given our recent past, it seems unlikely.  We are one nation, under mammon.  God help us all.