“Land of the Free and Home of the Brave”??

by Armando Simón

“The irony today is that Americans keep bragging about their land of the free, yet cannot tell a joke, paint their face, whistle at a pretty girl, or even worship an ancestor without losing their careers and livelihoods. PC tyranny rules supreme; media, Hollywood, Big Tech, and academia follow strict orders; and foolish Americans pretend that they’re free.” — Panagiotis “Taki” Theodoracopulos

Recently, I attended a function where The Star-Spangled Banner was sung as usual, and suddenly for the first time, the last stanza hit me like a sledgehammer.

“Land of the Free and Home of the Brave”?

Not anymore.

More like the Land of the Meek and Home of the Scared.

Think I’m exaggerating?

I have little doubt now that America will be altered and destroyed by the Communist (aka “woke”) fanatics that have infiltrated every upper echelon of society and America will collapse without a single shot being fired.

But here let me digress on a peculiarity in America. Whereas in Europe, Communists declare themselves to be such, or “Marxist,” American Communists use a host of euphemisms to cover up their identity: “woke,” “social justice warriors,” “progressives,” “activists,” “anti-fascists,” “liberals,” etc., while some clueless conservatives help them keep up the deception by using those euphemisms instead of calling them for what they are. A number of refugees from Communist regimes keep voicing the alarm, that we are up against Communists, but prominent conservatives apparently think it impolite to voice the Communist label.

But I digressed.

Liberals who have for the past few years have openly called for total censorship (“regulation” of “hate speech”), and have demanded that conservatives be put in gulags and killed, that children should be encouraged to either become homosexual or convinced to be sexually mutilated, and that white people be replaced or exterminated have adopted all the trappings of the usual totalitarian tactics: fraudulent elections, news as propaganda (i.e., fake news), suppression of real news, persecution of heretics, calls for dissidents to be placed in mental institutions, assaults by the paramilitary branch of the Democratic Party (Antifa), indoctrination of the military and schools, insistence on absolute conformity to the ideologies being promulgated, history being falsified, science being mutilated beyond belief, constant attacks on religion, comedy has become severely restricted, films have become propagandistic, and have turned several government agencies into a proto-KGB.

Having both lived in Communist Cuba and studied the history of the Soviet Union, East Germany, Hungary, Romania and the Khmer Rouge, all of this is painfully evident, not just to me, but to other refugees of Communism. This is doubly painful to me, as a student of history, not only on an emotional level because America is my adoptive country, but also because I recognize the importance of the American experiment on Western Civilization.

As this is progressing, most of the Republican politicians, with the exception of a vocal handful, are as usual either unconcerned or meek, enabling and submissive, while their constituents keep waiting, hoping, that they will do something, anything.

But what about the citizens themselves?

Well, by now, the mantra “violence doesn’t solve anything” has been thoroughly internalized by Americans, which has led to a nation of sheep who are being repeatedly victimized. The typical conservative keeps hoping that someone will do something.

Someone other than themselves, of course.

They keep waiting for a savior.

Like Trump.

Or DeSantis.

Or even Jesus.

Back when men were men—in other words, when “toxic masculinity” was normal—this submissiveness would have been unimaginable. Intolerable. Men would not have waited for others to tell them what they should do. They would have acted. Those men, in today’s world, would have stormed the citadels of the Communists and emerged with the heads of Sorors, Mayorkas, Chuck Todd, Joy Behar, Garland, Schiff, etc. on pikes. They would have burned CNN, SPLC, New York Times, CBS, Washington Post, ADL to the ground. They would have taken up guns after the fraudulent election—as happened once before, long ago. They would have swarmed over school board meetings and put those members in the ICU. They would have entered the schools to find the teachers encouraging their children to become homosexuals and would have dragged them out and taught them how to brush their teeth with a brick, homosexuals who rotate their crotch in front of children would have been turned into grape jelly. They would have met the hordes of illegal aliens at the border with a fusillade. Scientists and scholars would have seized the fanatics in their midst and forcefully defenestrated them from their office windows. Parishioners whose pastors have turned churches into drag queen shows would have forcefully reclaimed those churches and expelled the satanic desecrators.

That was a time when boys and men would regularly get into fistfights—and think nothing of it.

Instead, what do we see?

Cowards.

This from Jesse Kelly: “People don’t understand why such a tiny portion of society has such an outsized voice today. It’s not complicated. They’re more committed to their religion than you are to yours. They’re interested in victory and domination. You’d like to win, but only if you can look polite.” And from John Cardillo: “They stole our fucking votes, installed an old man with dementia as the puppet for a Marxist regime, have savages rioting and looting in the streets, locked you down and destroyed your life, yet far too many on our side still want to be polite and compromise with these derelicts.”

If you are a man who finds all of the above too crude and distasteful, it is indicative of how much of a mangina you have become.

Children are being encouraged to become homosexuals or transgenders in schools and the only thing parents do is whine and complain. Their children are also being taught that being white is evil and disgraceful and white children should be victimized by others and parents just complain to the school boards or teachers, all of whom see them, and treat them, with contempt. A horde of illegal aliens are engaging in an invasion on the border with a Marxist administration encouraging them onward and Americans just shake their head in disapproval. Hordes of black criminals ransack a store and the employees just stand around, afraid to get involved—because the offenders are black. Professional comedians are told not to joke about certain topics—and they submit. The supposedly tough New Yorkers are reliving the Kitty Genovese shame all over again and again and again. In universities, professors who state facts are told to resign by the Communist administrators—so they do. In those same universities, conservative college students have their displays overturned by leftist hysterics—and just stand there quivering and sniveling. Second Amendment gun nuts strut around and claim their guns prevent tyranny—and don’t use them.

The Democrats used the Covid panic as an excuse to put everyone under house arrest in many parts of the country (and other countries like Canada, Ireland, the UK, Italy, Australia), impose censorship on dissenting medical treatment and advice, ruin the livelihoods of many persons who had a small business and, in the end, there was no revolution, no retribution of any kind.

The next time I hear the last stanza of The Star-Spangled Banner I will try to control myself and not shed a tear.

First published in Italian translation here.

Armando Simón is a retired psychologist, author of Very Peculiar Stories and The Cult of Suicide and Other Sci-Fi Stories.