Prepare Yourselves: A Tsunami Looms

Gradual Habituation of the People

Historian Milton Mayer once said, "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security... And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”

A Tsunami Approaches

Prepare yourselves, a tsunami is coming. As the nation squabbles over who will lead the country, something is brewing in the corridors of power, far from the public eye, and it does not bode well for the future of the nation.

Beware of a Government Operating in Shadows

When a nation is so entranced by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, caution is needed. When a government operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, caution is needed. When a government is so far removed from its people that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, caution is needed.

Getting Our Priorities Straight

We need to get our priorities straight if we are to maintain any sense of freedom in America. As long as we allow ourselves to be distracted, diverted, occasionally outraged, always polarized and content to view each other—rather than the government—as the enemy, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.

The Hidden Face of Government

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedoms of its citizenry.

Enough with the Excuses

Enough with the excuses, the hedging, the finger-pointing, and the pissing contests to see which side can out-shout, out-blame and out-spew the other. Enough with the short- and long-term amnesia that allows political sycophants to conveniently forget the duplicity, complicity and mendacity of their own party while casting blame on everyone else. This is how evil wins. This is how freedom falls and tyranny rises.

The Looming Danger

This is how good, generally decent people—having allowed themselves to be distracted with manufactured crises, polarizing politics, and fighting that divides the populace into warring us vs. them camps—fail to take note of the looming danger that threatens to wipe freedom from the map and place us all in chains.

The Road We've Been Down Before

The world has been down this road before, as historian Milton Mayer recounts in his seminal book on Hitler’s rise to power, They Thought They Were Free. We are at our most vulnerable right now. The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.

National State of Denial

We’re in a national state of denial, yet no amount of escapism can shield us from the harsh reality that the danger in our midst is posed by an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution, Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

Nothing Has Changed

No matter how often the team colors change, the playbook remains the same. The leopard does not change its spots. Scrape off the surface layers and you will find that nothing has changed. The police state is still winning. We the people are still losing.

Consider for Yourselves

Police haven’t stopped disregarding the rights of citizens. SWAT teams haven’t stopped crashing through doors and terrorizing families. The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security haven’t stopped militarizing and federalizing local police. Schools haven’t stopped treating young people like hard-core prisoners. For-profit private prisons haven’t stopped locking up Americans and immigrants alike at taxpayer expense. Censorship hasn’t stopped. The courts haven’t stopped marching in lockstep with the police state. Government bureaucrats haven’t stopped turning American citizens into criminals. The surveillance state hasn’t stopped spying on Americans’ communications, transactions or movements. The TSA hasn’t stopped groping or ogling travelers. Congress hasn’t stopped enacting draconian laws. The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t stopped being a “wasteful, growing, fear-mongering beast.” The military industrial complex hasn’t stopped profiting from endless wars abroad. The Deep State’s shadow government hasn’t stopped calling the shots behind the scenes. And the American people haven’t stopped acting like gullible sheep.

Life is Good in America, Too

Life is good in America as long as you’re able to keep sleep-walking through life, cocooning yourself in political fantasies that depict a world in which your party is always right and everyone else is wrong, and distracting yourself with bread-and-circus entertainment that bears no resemblance to reality. Life is good in America as long as you don’t mind being made to pay through the nose for the government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations, bloated workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons, biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons, and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to the fast-growing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of those who are barely making ends meet—that is, we the 99%. Life is good in America for the privileged few, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s getting worse by the day for the rest of us.

Media Hysterics and Outrage

So, please spare me the media hysterics and the outrage and the hypocritical double standards of those whose moral conscience appears to be largely dictated by their political loyalties. Anyone who believes that the injustices, cruelties and vicious callousness of the U.S. government are unique to any one particular administration has not been paying attention.

Bottom Line

The German people chose to ignore the truth and believe the lie. They were not oblivious to the horrors taking place around them. The warning signs were definitely there, blinking incessantly like large neon signs. Yet, the vast majority voted in favor of Nazism, and in spite of what they could read in the press and hear by word of mouth about the secret police, the concentration camps, official anti-Semitism, and so on. The German people backed Hitler because for the majority of them, life was good. The situation isn't too different in America today. Life is good as long as you're not the one being discriminated against, persecuted, starved, beaten, shot, stripped, jailed and turned into slave labor. But how long will this last? What are your thoughts on this matter? Share this article with your friends and let's start a conversation. Don't forget to sign up for the Daily Briefing, every day at 6pm.