Twilight Zone

-No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.

-There is no distinctly native American criminal class, save Congress.

Mark Twain

By Dr. Jim Ferguson

As a writer of science fiction, I often imagine what it might be like in another reality. What would it be like to walk under a pink rather than a blue sky or beside a yellow ocean? The surrealist painter Salvador Dali imagined a landscape of melting clocks.

But wait... we already live in a surrealistic reality fashioned by 1960s radicals who control a president, where media wokesters deem iPOTUS competent and John Fetterman stylish, and where Americans still vote for Democrats after two years of destruction. We are in Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone," a reality run by radicals, freaks and fools.

I wish I could be more hopeful as 2023 looms, but, unfortunately, it hasn't gotten bad enough for Americans to demand a change. We gave radicals the proverbial keys to the car, and now these woke and "progressive" children have brought us mayhem, although the car has not yet been totaled.

The recent bomb cyclone is a metaphor for Biden and the progressive leftists who now run the Democrat party and are destroying our country. I think Americans have become numb after two years of inflation, rising prices, shortages with supply chain issues, border invasion, fentanyl, election interference by the FBI, FakeBook and Big Tech, foreign policy debacles like Afghanistan, grounding of our stealth bomber fleet, the woke military leadership, gender lunacy and medical assaults on confused children, the green energy delusion which destroyed our energy independence and has led to a worldwide increase in the use of coal.

And lastly, the Mini-Madoff scandal by the Democrat's 2nd biggest campaign contributor. Biden now deigns to preach a year-end homily of unity after labeling Americans domestic terrorists like Home Alone's "filthy animals."

In recent months, I've received messages from new readers who have discovered The Focus after moving to the Knoxville area. The 2020 census showed that Knox County is growing rapidly as people flee the confiscatory taxes, homelessness and crime in Illinois, NY and other blue states and cities. We welcome fellow citizens to Tennessee but do not want these "refugees" to bring progressive lunacy. I've begun to see signs in Maryville pleading, "Keep Blount County conservative." Tennessee is doing well because our state and county are relatively conservative. Mayor Kincannon, I don't want the ills of "blue" cities.

I'm watching NFL football again because Commissioner Roger Goodell has managed to keep his woke mouth shut and let them just play football. The New York Jets quarterback Zack Wilson was recently benched for poor results, but unfortunately, we can't bench the demented, decrepit, divisive dork. I sometimes long for a parliamentary system where you declare "No confidence" and call for new elections. But that might not work because Americans keep electing Democrats and RINOS (Republicans in name only) who cause our problems. Case in point is the abominable Omnibus bill which was recently passed by all the Senate Dems and 18 RINOS. This monstrosity sends hundreds of millions of dollars for border security in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Lebanon, but precludes any money to secure our southern border.

The word torpor is "a state of mental and motor inactivity with partial or total insensibility" (Webster). I maintain that it has not gotten bad enough to shake Americans from their torpor. We've had it so good for so long. Throughout history when things get bad, people flee to communes, walled cities, or cloistered enclaves like the Biblical Essenes of Qumran who would preserve the Dead Sea Scrolls. Sometimes it works as in Medieval Spain where classical knowledge was stored in places like The Alhambra. This repository and others contributed to the Renaissance or rebirth of classical culture.

Interestingly, the neo- intellectuals of the Renaissance would label their Medieval predecessors as having lived in the dark ages. In the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne described "come outers" who fled to communes to escape dysfunctional society. Question: what would you do if you recognized that you were living in a dark time or perhaps the twilight of western civilization?

I was born after The Great Depression and the two World Wars of the 20th century. I have never known privation. We think it's tough with a few days of rolling blackouts or less than fully stacked shelves at Krogers. And until recently, I had no experience with the corruption of virtually every societal institution. We've long mistrusted politicians, but now we mistrust the media, the military brass and the corrupt FBI leadership. You realize the FBI had the Hunter Biden laptop for 11 months and yet told Twitter, Fakebook, NYT, etc. that this was Russian interference so as to suppress the NY Post bombshell story about the Biden family's corruption. The FBI actually interfered with our election as well as manipulating the Covid debate (Twitter files).

I no longer believe we can just vote our way out of the mess. If we are to survive, we must primary RINOs and quit voting Democrat until the progressive leftists are purged. Remember, "Most Republicans on Capitol Hill are Democrats, but no Democrats are republican" (Dan Bongino). Tennessee's two Senators and Tim Burchett are notable exceptions to the Bongino axiom. Corrupt systems like the Deep State and the FBI must be disassembled and reconstituted after reforms.

We have a template for correction – The Constitution. We started the process in 2016. But the Deep State was not purged, the corrupt media lied and the China virus unleashed and destroyed the reformer by duping the gullible. The Big Lies were spun with hatred, the Devil's calling card. And it is still operative.

But we can turn it around. To do so begins with each of us. We must "Just say no" to the lies of leftists and wokesters, be they mayors, anti-American professors, leftist activists, as well as the dishonest media, woke generals and politicians.

Civil disobedience was the method of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It is a proven strategy. The left uses violence (BLM, Antifa, gaslighting, censure, etc.). A better way is for patriots to follow the lead of "great souls" like the Mahatma and Dr. King.

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