Westerners’ Abusive Relationship With Their Governments
Two years ago, world-class researcher and analyst “Sundance” posted an alarming essay on his website, The Conservative Treehouse. Taking a look back at the previous years’ severe COVID tyranny, the rise of the Biden administration’s censorship regime, and the false media narratives pushing a NATO-Russia war in Ukraine, “Sundance” soberly concluded that “We the People” are in an abusive relationship with government. Within that essay, he embedded a picture of a woman holding a sign that reads: “DANGER: You are being conditioned to view your freedom as selfish.”
At the end of the essay, there is a chart from a mental health organization entitled, “15 Signs That You Might Be in an Abusive Relationship.” All fifteen signs are worth pondering:
(1) Stop you from seeing friends and family.
(2) Won’t let you leave home without permission.
(3) Tell you what to wear.
(4) Monitor your phone, emails, and communication.
(5) Control finances, won’t let you work.
(6) Control what you read, watch, and say.
(7) Monitor everything you do.
(8) Punish you for breaking rules that keep changing.
(9) Tell you it’s for your own good. They know better.
(10) Don’t allow you to question decisions.
(11) Tell you you’re crazy, and no-one agrees with you.
(12) Call you names, or shame you for being selfish.
(13) Gaslight you, challenge your memory of events, make you doubt yourself.
(14) Dismiss your opinions.
(15) Play the victim if things go wrong. It’s all your fault.
Although his essay was meant to highlight how government authorities used COVID to advance totalitarianism throughout the West, “Sundance” concludes with a warning about the mass surveillance State being constructed to control the flow of information, isolate us from each other, and make us dependent upon government bureaucrats for survival. “I never really understood how people could accept the formation of communism around them,” he wrote. “Now I do.”
Last week, social media users reposted failed California Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2020 Thanksgiving guidelines: (1) No more than three households present; (2) Parties no longer than two hours; (3) Guests must stay outside; (4) Avoid singing, chanting, and shouting. As Governor Newspeak prepares for a 2028 presidential run (an election he swears President Trump will cancel because his White House renovations somehow prove that he’s a “dictator”), he does not want Americans to remember how ridiculous all his COVID edicts were. Remember when he arrested paddle-boarders swimming alone in the ocean?
Newsom was far from the only Democrat enamored with his unconstitutionally created COVID powers. Democrat governors and mayors locked Americans in their homes, threatened Christians for attending church services, bankrupted small businesses, and mandated that citizens wear multiple masks while alone in their cars. They embraced tyranny without hesitation and did not even feign to acknowledge the seriousness of their actions. The COVID Era checked off all fifteen signs of an abusive relationship between government and citizens in flashing neon lights.
Although there is no shortage of examples that amply demonstrate how unapologetically politicians justified eliminating Americans’ freedoms in the name of “safety,” a top-five list of particularly egregious offenses would surely include a Humvee rolling down a quiet neighborhood street in Minneapolis while dozens of heavily armed riot cops — tasked with enforcing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s COVID curfew orders — shot paintballs at residents for standing outside their homes. While Walz loves to call President Trump a “tyrant,” there is nothing quite so tyrannical as the sight of American law enforcement officers using military equipment to intimidate and assault peaceful Americans for the “crime” of sitting on their front porches.
We are now several years removed from the worst government abuses during COVID, but no Westerner should be under the illusion that the “Reign of COVID Terror” is behind us or that other iterations won’t soon plague us. Government tyranny is a hydra-headed beast: For every form of government oppression that is struck down, at least two more grow.
In the United Kingdom, members of parliament are demanding mandatory digital identifications that make it easier to track citizens at all times. Instead of admitting that they wish to continue constructing a totalitarian surveillance State, British authorities claim that the IDs are necessary to combat mass illegal immigration. In other words, the same government officials who destroyed social cohesion by flooding the country with migrants now want to capitalize upon a government-created problem and expand the national security surveillance State. The British motto could be: First, harm citizens; then offer a “solution” that harms citizens some more.
Emily Spurrell, the chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in the U.K., has denounced British citizens for raising patriotic flags in protest of decades of government-orchestrated foreign invasion. The police commissioner argues that waving the Union Jack and St. George’s flags is “not free expression” but rather “intimidation” because patriotic displays make “our neighbors” feel “unsafe” and “afraid to walk down the street.” Perhaps someone should suggest to Commissioner Spurrell that foreigners who see British flags as “divisive” probably don’t belong in the U.K. Would she really expect Beijing to bend the knee to a Scotsman who felt “intimidated” by communist China’s Five-star Red Flag? Or is this just another opportunity for British authorities to shame and gaslight citizens (signs 12 and 13 of an abusive relationship), dismiss their opinions (sign 14), and tell them that the nation’s divisions are all their fault (sign 15)?
Similarly, the European Union has gone all in on monitoring private electronic messages without first establishing any kind of probable cause or seeking a judicial warrant. The Eurocrats’ justification for their gross intrusion into citizens’ private lives is that they are trying to battle the proliferation of child pornography. European authorities settled on this convenient excuse because the arrival of unvetted Islamic “asylum seekers” across the continent has set off an epidemic of Islamic men sexually molesting young girls and boys.
For years, European Union authorities have defamed native Europeans as “racists” and “bigots” for objecting to the mass Islamic immigration that is undermining European culture and increasing acts of terrorism and violent crime. Now those same European officials are pretending to fight crimes against children by giving themselves the authority to read every European’s personal communications. So Brussels Eurocrats insist on monitoring communications (signs 4 and 7 of an abusive relationship), punishing citizens for breaking rules that keep changing (sign 8), telling Europeans that the new rules are for their own good (sign 9), forbidding them from questioning official decisions (sign 10), and calling anyone who objects “selfish” and “crazy” (signs 11 and 12). Do you think Europeans might just be in an abusive relationship with their oppressive government?
Before you answer that question, please be aware that Empress Ursula von der Leyen and her censorship-loving Commission are watching. They are right now creating a so-called “Democracy Shield” that is meant to identify and remove “false content” from the internet (sign 6). As one European diplomat describes the new “monitoring center” without any sense of shame: “Freedom of speech remains for everyone. At the same time, however, citizens must be free from interference.” In the name of “democracy,” the Eurocrats must stop us from communicating with undesirable friends and family (sign 1) or leaving Brussels’s information “safe space” without permission (sign 2). It’s for our own good (sign 9)!
Across the West, governments broadcast the same public message: The beatings will continue until morale improves. Who needs to venture out to slay the authoritarian dragons in Russia and China, when Hell is empty and all the devils have government jobs at home?
There are only two ways to survive an abusive relationship: leave the abuser or learn to fight back. Most of us have nowhere else to go.