Stepping Stones

Whether they succeed or fail, this time is beside the point. They’d like to, don’t get me wrong, they’d really like to get this over and done with, but they’re willing to wait for a little while longer, just the same.

In case you have a hard time reading between the lines, the goal is simple: 1. make everyone dependent on government; 2. Take away the average citizen’s ability to defend himself against said government when it becomes tyrannical. Notice I didn’t say if it becomes tyrannical, but rather when.

It’s a given that it will, because it must, in order to retain the control it wrestled away from the average citizen. Eventually, given enough time and enough screw tightening, most people realize what’s just happened to them. Some are perfectly fine being bleating sheep, doing what they’re told, and not questioning the lack of logic in what they hear. Still, others will instinctively attempt to shake off the shackles because they innately discern that they are unnatural.

If the number of those bristling at the chocking off of their freedoms is large enough, the power-mad pull back and live to fight another day. They understand they cannot do what they dream of doing while people are still able to resist them. As such, they must play the long game and wait patiently for that moment of inattention wherein every plan is put in place; then, it will be too late.

Even if they don’t succeed this time out, they will not see it as a failure, but as another stepping stone toward success. The data they’ve accumulated over the past few months is incalculable. They’ve learned which buttons they can push to incite panic. They’ve learned how people react to having their constitutional rights stripped from them based on nothing more than presumption and failed models. They’ve learned how easy it is to make neighbors turn on neighbors. They’ve learned how far they can push before people start pushing back.

It’s easy to discount politicians as single-cell organisms whose only goal is more power, but it’s that singlemindedness that is dangerous. When someone in power is willing to sacrifice anyone and anything in order to accumulate more power, that is someone you don’t want anywhere near the levers of power.

Whichever way this goes, we have set a dangerous precedent in this country. However long it takes for certain states to open back up, the cat’s already out of the bag. Governors the nation over know that they can turn it off with the flip of a switch, their overreach seemingly has no consequences, and the bruised and battered citizenry will shut up and take it for the most part.

Their first time at bat and they managed to strip away almost every constitutional right, and if the pushback were not so visceral, they would have gone further. How exactly are we helping flatten the curve by fining anyone caught fishing in Louisiana $500? Even if they have a fishing license, that’s still the fine because if you get out on the lake and cast a line, you’re less likely to be at home in a drunken stupor, not knowing what’s going on. We can’t have that, now can we? How dare anyone try to feed their family by means other than going hat in hand to the government?

That they have managed to decimate in a manner of weeks what took over 240 years to construct is both terrifying and impressive. They’ve been building up to this for decades now, and even with the orange-haired fly in their ointment, they’ve somehow managed to seize upon this crisis and use it to their own nefarious ends. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.