No, this is not another tortured, hyperbolic Corporate Media piece about how Vladimir Putin is attempting to resurrect the Soviet Union with his invasion of Ukraine. There is more than enough emotionalist pearl-clutching going on in media both traditional and social for the likes of me to add another log to the dumpster fire. No, this is about us. The American People. You and me.
I distinctly remember growing up during the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s. A time when the line of demarcation between freedom and darkness, between good and evil; was clearly seen and understood. America stood on the side of free people everywhere against the totalitarianism and corruption behind the iron curtain. Even then, the elitists in academia and the ‘media’ (of which I was to become a part during college) sneered in derision at Ronald Reagan’s ‘amiable dunce’, simplistic view of world events. A worldview that ultimately triumphed when the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, much to the chagrin of the American Left.
Readers who came of age in the Cold War: Remember how we used to laugh at pictures and videos of the dullards in the Soviet Union standing in line for bread, shoes, or other consumer goods? Remember how we used to ask ourselves, as we sat comfortably in our furnished homes, with food abundant in the local supermarket, “How can these people live like this? How can they tolerate a government that makes this happen?”
Yet, in a little over a generation, we’ve allowed it to happen here. One relentless media campaign (more on them in a moment) about a virus with a 99% survival rate and we allowed ourselves to be scared right out of our freedom and into totalitarian arms. We now accept things like ‘supply chain disruption’ as the ‘new normal.’ (continued)
This post originally appeared on The Blue State Conservative.