https://www.theepochtimes.com/at-the-threshold-or-turning-point_5166741.htmlAt the Threshold or Turning Point
(Douglass Mackey, also known online as influencer "Ricky Vaughn," dated February 2023)By Roger Kimball
April 3, 2023
Excerpts:Reflecting on the breathtaking and unprecedented enormity of Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, a friend wrote me to say it reminded her of Martin Niemöller’s famous poem “First they came.”
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
“Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
How apposite those lines seem to our situation, all the more now that the Eastern District of New York has convicted Douglass Mackey of a felony for posting a satirical meme making fun of Hillary Clinton.
That episode, as I have said elsewhere, is yet more evidence that the United States has become a banana republic, a corrupt and despotic polity wherein the ruling party criminalizes dissent and cows and intimidates anyone insufficiently obeisant to the dominant ideology.
...
In his analysis of governmental paternalism, Alexis de Tocqueville noted, “Almost all the rulers who have tried to destroy freedom have at first attempted to preserve its forms.”
At first.
Once they have consolidated power, they or their successors dispense with the fiction and proceed with more patently despotic forms of coercion and control.
In the United States, I believe, we’re at the threshold of that transition.
Can we derail the progress of the totalitarian juggernaut?
...
They came for a national security adviser, but that wasn’t me, so I did nothing.
They came for a presidential lawyer, but that wasn’t me, so I did nothing.
They came for a social media “influencer,” but it wasn’t me, so I did nothing.
They called concerned parents who confronted left-wing school boards “domestic terrorists,” but that wasn’t me, so I did nothing.
They came for a former president, but it wasn’t me, so I did nothing.
There are basically only two ways this can end.
Neither will be easy or pleasant.
Only one will preserve our liberty and prerogatives as free citizens.
More at URL above...(Good article. Last three lines say it all -- as I've been saying in this forum for some time now.)
