There’s not even much of an illusion left. From John and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” — Neil Postman
What you smell is the stench of a dying republic.
Our dying republic.
We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.
In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).
For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.
In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.
We’re in trouble, folks.
This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.
Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.
Freedom no longer means what it once did.
But, but, but, fortified democracy has (s)elections!
I voted, did you see my virtue signal sticker?
Mommygov sent me an EBT card allowance because it loves me.
The WCW/WWF throwdown this November is gonna rock!
Get ready for the most important kayfabe kabuki evarz.
With The Cackler/Timmeh versus Emmanuel Trumpstein and Mini-Thiel!
Be there or be square, I swear.
Breaking from Vince DiCola:
Training Montage (From Rocky IV)