The train of events which has taken us to the enthronement of False Dimitry (Juan Guaido, in modern parlance) is generating a “new post-January 6 normal” which is not just utterly distorting the face of the Republic of Jefferson and Lincoln, but makes it literally unrecognizable.
On the most mundane level, the rhythm and quality of everyday life are being transformed in ways that only days ago would have struck most as the demented ramblings of a lunatic on psychedelic drugs. A few days ago, the general descent into madness engendered the trans-Atlantic reincarnation of Pavlik Morozov, the 1930s ideologically alert youth who became a role model because he ratted on his deviationist parents, with consequences that were fatal for his father. Pavlik’s American counterpart is an alert daughter who on January 8 reported to the authorities on her mother’s illicit political sympathies vis-à-vis the recent electoral controversies. As disclosed by the admiring media, “many call[ed] her a ‘hero’ for holding her mother accountable, and others reaching out to offer support to the teen.” Granted, the mother has not yet been shot. But the direction in which this is taking us will be readily apparent to all mature readers with unimpaired historical memory, at least those from Pavlik’s geographical neighborhood.
But Pavlik’s migration to the free world in the cited instance is far from an isolated example. When Mayra Gomez, a California mother and life-long Democrat, disclosed to her young son her intention to vote for the politically incorrect Presidential candidate from a different party, we learn that “he cut her out of his life.” “He specifically told me, ‘You are no longer my mother…’ Their last conversation was so bitter that she is not sure they can reconcile.” In America, family break-ups over such things are a hitherto unheard of phenomena, at least since the Civil War over 150 years ago, as anyone with even a superficial familiarity with the country’s political temperament and culture can attest.
But the post-January 6 “new normal” pervades much more than family relations, being reshaped as they evidently are by little Pavlik’s virulent example. Previously unheard of and unimaginable incidents are popping up everywhere. Two women were ejected from a Delta Airlines flight on January 9 when they were overheard expressing support, in a private conversation, for the banned and vilified presidential candidate. The key code words here, of course, are “overheard” (who was snooping?) and “private” (the opinions attributed to the women are constitutionally protected speech, and they could have shouted them out instead of whispering in private, for all the legal difference it makes). One gathers that an informal, extra-legal new culture of public – and ominously, also private – speech is taking shape, and against it few avenues of redress seem to remain open.
Since it sprang up with a vengeance just a few days ago, that new culture has mauled citizens from all walks of life who apparently had the erroneous impression that they were still living in the same country in which they were once born. After a successful two-decade teaching career, Florida tenured psychology professor Charles Negy is facing dismissal for tweeting what have recently become unconventional views about the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, an event that last summer ignited large-scale riots throughout the country. As reported by the professor’s lawyer, “during Negy’s interrogation, he was asked to remember 15 years of classroom teaching, and his misremembering was considered to be lying by school investigators.” Note that interrogation is another evocative code word that many Eastern European readers will recall perhaps with a slight shiver.
Indeed, an active effort has sprung up to protect vulnerable young minds from the potential damage of being exposed to wrongthink. Concerned pedagogues are intensely reviewing suitable remedial strategies. “Several [school] districts,” we are informed by the media, “have suspended employees as they investigate potential wrongdoing.” To their horror, educators “are discovering that some of their own employees and school board members were among those supporting, attending, and even participating in the insurrection.” “Insurrection,” of course is the obligatory newspeak term (much like “genocide” in referring to Srebrenica) when alluding to the Antifa provocation on January 6, the criminal responsibility for which was skilfully deflected, precisely as the false flag scenario calls for. “The fallout from the insurrection,” the Education Week report continues unctuously, “highlights the tricky complexities district leaders face as they attempt to separate constitutionally protected speech from illegal activity and behavior that’s inconsistent with school values or violates employee codes of conduct.”
The matter is “tricky” to the extent that individual states happen to regulate differently the right of employees to participate in “lawful conduct during nonworking hours away from the employer’s premises.” But in the states where such an apparent violation of First Amendment rights is condoned, a legal expert explains that “although the First Amendment undoubtedly protects an individual’s right to attend a lawful protest, it affords no protection from the employment consequences of doing so.” So if you insist on exercising your legal rights in a way that does not impinge on your employment and still keep your job, it can get tricky for you indeed.
That is what employed people of various profiles found out quickly enough in the aftermath of the watershed January 6 date. The purge dragnet, assisted by state of the art face recognition equipment, did not spare police personnel, firemen, at least 50 elected officials, or even nurses, badly as they may be needed to fight the pandemic.
Except that Antifa thugs such as John Sullivan are exempted from the strictures which are rigorously applied to regular folks. Filmed in combat gear as he was explaining riot techniques to his followers in preparation for January 6 (8:20 to 11:02 minute marker), Sullivan was deceitfully misrepresented by The Washington Times as a benign “Utah activist who filmed the fatal shooting of a Trump supporter during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol will be released on house arrest, a federal judge ruled Friday.”
People who should know better have forgotten what such a “long train of abuses” (to quote from a famous document that should ring a bell with most Americans) is likely to result in. It may be feasible to try to shut up a fringe group, but silencing considerably more than half the population is quite another matter. Feasibility, however, is but a minor, technical aspect of this issue. It is the moral question that looms large: is there anything more un-American than denying a fair hearing to an amply aggrieved dissenting party? Is there anyone who seriously believes that if they just try to beat the dissenters into submission, they will meekly give up and go away?
