I don’t know if it’s a matter of denial or the suspension of disbelief, but I think that the majority of the American populace is under the arrogant delusion that the United States is somehow immune from the coming financial and social maelstrom resulting from years of socio-political engineering, as if:
- This time it will be different, although it has never worked in the past (history be damned), or
- We’re too educated/enlightened/better for all of the predictable poverty/suffering/death/tyranny to happen in the US.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite Ayn Rand quotes: "We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."
So many people are quick to restrict the freedoms of others they disagree with that they are blinded to the bigger picture and the ever constricting web of the nanny state forming around them. They cheer when smoking bans are implemented, but wail when the same institution bans foie gras. They cheer when they take away the profits earned by a “greedy” private corporation or individual, but scoff when the same institution mandates that they must buy medical insurance or face a fine, or jail, or both. In their fervor to enforce their will upon another group of people they naively hand their jailers the keys to their own cells.
It can’t happen here, they say.
Another quote comes to mind, from German anti-fascist Martin Niemoller: "First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
All one has to do is take a look around and just open your mind and your eyes to current events and recent history to see that many of those past horrific episodes of the evil that humanity has endured against itself are still happening all around us. Slavery, religious and political persecution, dictatorships, and ethnic cleansing are alive and well, just generally outside our borders (at present). People think that our nation’s wealth and sophistication will protect us, that if only those other countries, civilizations, or people were like us then they could have resisted and prevented the atrocities left in the path for the control over humanity.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but sometimes it can. All it takes is a stroke of a pen, a stroke on a keyboard, or one more non-fatal cut to drain more of your blood, facilitating the loss of your wealth (stock/housing markets), property (eminent domain), or freedom (smoking bans, helmet laws), just to name a few.
It can’t happen here, they say.
Yes it can, and it already has...
