Now that we're approaching the three-year anniversary of COVID-1984's global demolition (or "Great Reset" in World Economic Forum parlance), reality looks very different from what many people once perceived it to be.  Raise your hand if you thought "free" nations would declare the authority to close millions of small businesses until they went bankrupt and folded.  Or whether never-before-used, experimental cocktails of mRNA "vaccine" would be coercively injected into citizens.  Did you think governments would conspire to cover up "vaccine"-related injuries and deaths?  Did you expect that the Canadian government would take the unprecedented steps of invoking the Emergencies Act and seizing the private bank accounts of Freedom Convoy protesters in order to intimidate peaceful Canadians and quell dissent?  Did you predict that in the United States and throughout the West, public debate would be targeted and censored if that speech contradicted governments' official public health "narratives"?  Did you know that COVID communism would end up being more contagious than the virus?

If you still have your hand raised, then you are part of a humble minority who were worried about the West's accelerating attacks against personal liberty even before the rise of COVID-1984.  If you had your eyes unexpectedly opened during the last three years, though, it is all the better to have you seeing clearly now.  Around the world, the WuFlu pandemic and governments' coordinated responses to use this health scare as a transparent pretense for ushering in the WEF's beloved "Great Reset" have awakened hundreds of millions of people who might otherwise still be sleeping.  While our puppet master oligarchs have achieved a great deal in a short time, their in-your-face mobilization efforts to "fundamentally transform" the world have also commanded new, unwanted attention.  A growing share of the population finally understands that we are in an ongoing battle between self-government and global government and that friends of freedom must dig in their heels for the long haul.

"Government is not your friend."  Now, depending upon how you react to that statement, you can judge for yourself just how close you are to admitting that we have a Big Government problem.  If you think forced lockdowns, injections, property confiscations, and censorship are all reasonable powers for a government with "good intentions" just looking out for the "greater good," then you, friend, are still sleeping and may not bounce to until tanks or something equally less subtle is thundering down your street.  On the other hand, if you have wondered for some time how any entity could steal half your income, declare your religion "hate speech," and aid and abet narco-terrorists and sex-traffickers at the border and somehow not be considered a front for organized crime, then you already see through the Big Government ruse.  If you have dared to question how it is possible for the EPA or IRS or some other tentacle of the federal Leviathan to regulate the minutiae of your life behind the barrel of a gun and the threat of lethal force, while simultaneously labeling your anti-government thoughts as examples of "domestic terrorism," then you successfully grasp just how big of a problem Big Government has become.  With few exceptions, government is where small-time crooks go to commit large-scale crimes in the name of the people in exchange for immunity.  The best criminals get buildings, bridges, tunnels, and parks named after them.

Still, illogically equating "love of country" with "love of government" remains a stubborn delusion.  It is somewhat amazing to realize how many people find it utterly offensive hillbilly-speak, if not evidence of outright treason, to hear someone saying something as benign as, "You can't trust the government."  In America, that reaction is particularly vexing.  The whole U.S. Constitution was designed precisely because the Founders despised centralized authority and distrusted government.  They set up an entire system of "checks and balances" because they agreed that men are prone to vice, that unscrupulous people are attracted to the levers of power, that governments are inherently corrupt, and that the best we can do is devise an organizational structure in which one man's personal corruption is played against another's in the measured hope that bad-faith actors will nonetheless be constrained into doing some occasional good.  Everything about America's founding is predicated on the idea that power should be minimized and divided as much as possible.  Individual liberty is not only an inalienable right, but also an inherent check against the accumulation of unjust government authority.  Still, public school indoctrination over the decades and celebrity politicians glamorizing government as some sort of sacred, secular religion have succeeded in warping Americans' minds to such an extent that it is now nearly heresy to suggest that working for the "public good" is in reality nothing more than a D.C. cocktail party punch line!

There is a reason that the Founders' first order of business after establishing the Constitution was to ratify a Bill of Rights: too many of them knew that even though the whole fight for American independence had been conducted in the pursuit of liberty, members of the American government would sell out Americans' hard fought freedoms just as soon as doing so either became popular or profitable.  Not only did it not take long for early congresses to prove their fears correct, but also it would be fair to say today that the Bill of Rights has become a target under sustained attack.  

You like your free speech and assembly?  That's fine — just don't get caught in the nation's capital protesting fraudulent mail-in-ballot elections, or it's off to the gulag for you!  Best not to express your doubts online about man-made climate change, transgenderism, or the effectiveness of mRNA "vaccines" either — or the FBI, CDC, and Homeland Security will have to censor your speech as harmful "disinformation."  You think you should be able to own a firearm for your personal defense and as a bulwark against government tyranny?  Uhhh, haven't you heard?  Despite the Supreme Court's decisions to the contrary, you don't get any Second Amendment protections without background checks, licensing, and government database monitoring.  What's that about your Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures and your desire to maintain privacy unless a valid warrant has been issued based upon probable cause?  Oh, sorry, the DOJ, FBI, and Intelligence Community have found PATRIOT Act workarounds to tear those noisome constitutional considerations to shreds.  You can exercise your religion freely — no, that's not right; you must refrain from publicly practicing any religion that conflicts with the "politically correct" doctrines of the State's established "woke" faith.  Hmmm, you might still have some due process rights or protections against cruel and unusual punishment — depending on your politics, of course!  

American rights have been sliced and diced until all that is left is the will of the government.  The will of the people, as so many J6 defendants can attest, has limped along on life support, while Big Government assassins seek to smother it dead.  These last three years of COVID-1984 may have changed that depressing prognosis once and for all.  Brutal overreach has more Americans than ever asking why they should be perpetual victims of government abuse.  Many are finally recalling the Founders' wisdom and remembering that government is not their friend.  Many more have begun to realize that a government that refuses to abide by the Constitution is a government with waning legitimacy.  When enough realize that self-government demands that the organs of the State defer to the people, then a tipping point will be reached.  The World Economic Forum's acolytes might have sown the seeds for a "Great Reset," but they may well regret what they eventually reap.

Image: qimono via Pixabay, Pixabay License.