Wherever I’ve gone over the past month, the recurring theme I have heard from people of all ages and all walks of life can be summed up under the general phrase, “I’m so glad that 2021 is over.” While the sentiment is understandable coming from patriotic Americans who have seen their Constitution and their individual rights fall under attack in a manner that is unprecedented in our history, I also think it is tragic that people look back on an entire year of their life and feel as though the best thing about it is that they survived it.
Allow me to reframe the dumpster fire of this past year and cast the abuses and frustrations we have suffered in a different light. 2021 was a year where the leviathan of the totalitarian state officially declared war on traditional Americans and expected to crush you. This was a top-down revolution pitting the ruling class elite against regular patriotic Americans. They pressed us to the point where they were certain we would sue for peace and surrender to them.
Instead, we have taken all their best punches and are still standing. They are now tired, paranoid, and desperate. We’ve started to fight back, and our blows are landing on an enemy that didn’t anticipate receiving them. This past year, 2021, has been the year where the citizen has taken back their rightful place. It has seen the rise of the “parent’s party” and now we have momentum on our side.
We might never have brought ourselves to this point if they hadn’t overreached so badly. All the hell and fury brought forth against us in 2021 has steeled us and has now awakened in so many the will to win.
January 2021-A month to remember
Much of the history that was written in the past 12 months had its major themes and plot lines developed in the very first month of the year. On January 5th, the State of Georgia held a runoff election for not one but two U.S. Senate seats. Deflated by the nationwide reports of November election tampering and having seen evidence of it in their own state, patriotic Georgians simply didn’t muster the energy to turnout and support the Republican candidates. As a result, a new country western song, “Don’t it Turn My Red State Blue” was written and two Marxist Democrats came out winners.
Now, with a 50-50 member tie in the Senate, and Kamala Harris the tiebreaking vote, the collectivists in Washington had secured control of all but the Supreme Court. That was January 5th and was about as bad of news as we could receive. That remained true for a total of one whole day.
The events at our nation’s capital on January 6th were incredibly damaging to our country but not because it was an “insurrection” (which is patently ridiculous) and not because it was a “threat to our democracy (we don’t live in a democracy). January 6th was important because the optics of it gave the incoming Biden administration, the mainstream media, and the big tech giants the images they needed to convince otherwise disengaged Americans that the threat from patriots was real and that strong steps needed to be taken to silence us. Those who climbed and entered the capital gave them the pictures, and like William Randolph Hearst a century ago, they used them to give us a war.
Incoming President Joe Biden said of January 6th that if it had been a BLM protest that had gone sideways like the one at the capital that they would have been treated differently. He was right, of course. Had BLM entered the capital uninvited they would have been given millions of dollars by Amazon and a new Super Bowl halftime show by the NFL. Biden would carry his sentiments into his inaugural address a couple of weeks later when he said we have to “unite in this domestic war.” That “war” of course, was one he was declaring on people with whom he doesn’t agree, people he lumped under the general heading of “thugs.”
Between January 6th and Biden’s unifying inaugural, something happened that had the effect of a very shrill alarm going off in the bedroom of a peacefully dreaming sleeper. On January 8th, Twitter permanently closed the account of then-sitting President Donald Trump! Facebook and Instagram quickly followed suit. I experienced in real time the awakening of people all across the country who were stunned by the boldness of the move.
Prior to that censorship, it was difficult to convince regular citizens of just how great a threat big tech truly was to their expression of free speech. Social media acting on their own to silence a sitting President left no further need for persuasive arguments or hypotheticals. The facts of big tech’s arbitrary and partisan power were now in evidence and were not in dispute.
After the de-platforming of President Trump, he was then again publicly defiled by being impeached for a second time. On January 13th the House impeached the President for the role he didn’t play, but that they wished that he had played, in the January 6th protest. A handful of cowardly, ruling class, Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted with the collectivist Democrats in a process so devoid of evidence or procedure that it was itself a much greater threat to our country than was January 6th. While the Senate would ultimately fail to convict the President, the message had been delivered: Stay out of our way or we will destroy you.
All downhill after January? Not so fast!
With January behind them and their enemies properly punished and warned, the collectivists must have looked toward the rest of 2021 as if it would be the golden age of the Roman emperors. Surely, after the flex of muscle shown in the month prior, nobody would dare to get in their way. They wouldn’t even need to really govern. They could just sit back and enjoy the spoils of power. It didn’t take long, however, before the weaknesses in their plan began to surface.
Writers are quite fond of killing off metaphorical canary’s living in coal mines for the purpose of pointing to warning signs. In February of 2021 came the death of one such canary in the form of the GameStop stock trading revolt against Wall Street. Employing another hard-to-resist metaphor, it was a David v. Goliath moment and was an indication that the small were not to be equated with the weak. The loose band of independent traders who formed and rose up against the big trading houses sounded a warning that citizens and their rights still can make themselves heard.
March brought another strong move toward socialism and government dependance with the passage of a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill filed with entitlements and disincentives to work. It was also the month when Biden told us that by the 4th of July there was a good chance that we could all get together because Covid was on the run. Sleepy Joe would likely want to have that one back, that is if he even remembers he said it.
It wasn’t just the Chinese coronavirus that gave us trouble from across the pacific, China, itself became even bolder and more contemptuous of the U.S. with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying that the United States is not qualified to talk to China from a “position of strength.” Later, he doubled-down by saying the U.S. needs a “tutorial” on how to deal with other countries. So much for Hunter Biden’s efforts to improve relations with our enemy.
While China mocked us, the nations south of our border invaded us. By March we had a full-scale crisis at our southern border that White house spokesperson Jen Psaki felt there was no need to label. the President quickly appointed Kammy Harris to oversee the border issue. Criticized by many for her inaction, Harris actually has exceeded expectations by doing absolutely nothing to stop the inflow of illegal immigrants. Approximately two-million people entered the heartland of this country in 2021, enough to populate two Montana’s. This is phase one of a three phase plan which is next to include amnesty, followed by voting rights.
What was positive about the border’s non-crisis crisis is that Americans got a chance to see just how chaotic the situation was. It was clear things were out of control. Regular citizens were asking, “Why can’t we just stop people from coming in?”
Signs, signs, everywhere signs. The Derek Chauvin trial had Joe Biden openly trying to influence the verdict, and Maxine Waters hinting for violence in the streets if it didn’t go her way. Nancy Pelosi “thanked” George Floyd for getting killed in order to shine a light on police violence. A regular citizen had to wonder, “If the violence against George Floyd was bad, why do we want more violence? And if it’s good that he died, why aren’t we celebrating?”
In Georgia, the people of that state having witnessed election interference first hand, passed a mild voting reform bill to help ensure integrity in future elections. Collectivist activists fumed with Joe Biden saying it made “Jim Crow look like eagle crow.” (sigh). MLB withdrew its all-star game from the state in protest and moved it to Colorado (which has stricter voting laws) damaging the black citizens in Atlanta in the process. While fools like ESPN’s Michael Wilbon hailed the move, regular citizens were left scratching their head and asking, “So, why shouldn’t somebody have to prove who they are to vote?”
Afghanistan’s collapse in August after a Keystone Cop withdrawal engineered by Biden’s affirmative action choice, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, was humiliating to our boots-on-the-ground military members and encouraging to our enemies. Regular citizens wondered, “Why you would leave a place and then try to get people out instead of the other way around?
As the Chinese coronavirus continued to spread and develop variants, the Biden administration used the opportunity to place new restrictions on employers and regular working citizens. Reports of vaccine side effects and “breakthrough cases” were met with a response of “nothing to see here, folks” by government health officials. As government at all levels got more aggressive in seeking out and denying rights to people who were not vaccinated, regular citizens were left to ask, “If the vaccine works, why do we have to worry about who we are around?”
Not with my child you don’t
As the year progressed, people around the country were beginning to see the excesses and lies associated with government acquiring absolute power over its people. Steadily, uprisings against such abuses began to emerge in pockets all around the country. None of those uprisings have been more widespread or intense than have been those of moms and dads across the country rising up at school board meetings to protest the twin towers of the 2021 “re-education” process; those being mask/vaccine mandates and the imposition of Critical Race Theory upon students.
Humans can take a lot when it comes to being controlled by government. History has shown us to be more often controlled than free as people. That said, start to interfere with a parent’s children and you cross from the learned to the instinctive. Parents naturally and inherently protect their children. In 2021, government and school administrators across the country were clearly a threat and parents responded.
Nowhere was the wrath of parents felt more strongly than in the State of Virginia and the November gubernatorial election. There the race was almost entirely about critical race theory and the winner, Glen Youngkin, was the candidate squarely opposed to teaching the hateful theory in Virginal schools. Even the efforts of Biden’s own Stasi-like Attorney General, Merrick Garland trying to classify concerned parents as domestic terrorists has not been able to scare away those trying to protect their children from insidious indoctrination. All over the country, regular citizens have been asking, “Why is it that my child needs to be taught that they are inherently evil in school?”
Not in my backyard (or anywhere else)
In focusing on the issues that have been national in scope, it is important to remember that all across the country states and cities have been exercising power and attempting to trample on individual rights. From California and Los Angeles, to Illinois and Chicago, to New York State to New York City, individual Americans have been confronted with restrictions on liberty and divisive policies. Meanwhile, as the politicians say they want to help us and protect us, violent crimes soar. Regular citizens everywhere are left to ask, “Hey, what’s going on?”
Citizens have been asking a lot of questions and they have been finding their own answers. This past year was supposed to be the year where we gave up. The year when the Constitution got replaced by government institutions and collective management. But the folks who thought they had it all back in January never expected this “Revenge of the People” instalment to be dropped into their movie moment. For decades we have let collectivists take ground and gain power. Like neglectful parents we have turned a blind eye and looked away. We acted as though if we just left them alone, they would come to their senses.
Instead, their lustful grab for power in 2021 activated all of our senses and woke us up. In 12 short months patriotic Americans have gone from quiet sheep to active dissidents fighting against the leviathan. In our numbers and our dispersion thought the country, we have proven ourselves to be what the philosopher Nassim Taleb would call “antifragile.” We don’t just survive each attack upon our rights, we get stronger.
They have tried constantly changing the rules, a hallmark of a totalitarian government. It hasn’t worked. They have invested all of their time and energy in controlling us. We haven’t surrendered. Heading into 2022 Americans are more awake and more resolved than we have been at any time since WWII.
Do not look back on 2021 with disdain as the year you wish had never happened. Instead, look back on it with gratitude as being the year that had to happen. Now comes the challenge to build upon it in 2022 and beyond. To build upon the momentum we have acquired, and to remember the very painful lessons we have learned. The other side is learning, too. This is far from over.
