Is this what "winning" feels like?

I never thought of myself as a pessimist. I've always tried to make lemonade out of lemons. But as I look around me and see things in our world crumbling, I feel like I am hearing a crescendo of voices who are saying that all the "bad" actually is "good."

I don't know. If you'd asked me a couple of years ago, I might have agreed. Even though I wasn't actively involved in politics until after the November 2020 election, I had been following national politics very closely and knew that we were sitting on a political supervolcano that was ready to erupt. And when the plandemic struck, I was still hopeful that this could be the blatant overreach that finally woke people up and stirred them to action. But nope. Most people complied with COVID-19 measures with little to no pushback. That began to terrify me.

People think that no one would go along with a demand from the government to give up their guns, but the ease with which people complied with governmental demands that they put on a meaningless mask or subject themselves to vaccinations in order to keep their job should make people think twice about whether or not we are a nation of people who would not also easily comply with restrictions on our Second Amendment. (I've been in a crowded gun store more than once when everyone in there except for me was complying with a mask mandate.)

Then eyewitness reports of wrongdoing in the November 2020 election started coming out immediately following the election (and not all of the witnesses were Republicans), and those who were speaking up were threatened, silenced, shunned, and some even lost their jobs, went into hiding, or had to move. But people weren't paying attention--not enough of them--and weren't showing concerns.

It was when I realized that the "bad" was never going to end up being a "good" thing unless and until people were paying attention. If people remain apathetic or uninvolved, then the "bad" things that are happening are just that--BAD. There is no saving grace when we accept that what is happening to us is a good thing. There is no saving grace when we fail to put up a fight.

I still don't really think of myself as a pessimist, but perhaps that is because I know that there will be fight in me up until my very last breath, come what may. But I do worry about what our future holds when--after so many rapid changes have taken place in our country and our freedoms are being stripped away--people still are mostly complacent. If people hope to have a chance in hell of surviving what we are up against, it's going to take more than a chat room airing of grievances.

Our grievances need to be front and center and made public to those in our government. We truly need to recognize and be honest about who is on our side and who has not been. We need to see beyond the political theater and the assigned roles that Democrats and Republicans play out over and over again, and we need to realize that what we see play out in our government is about as real as the staged wrestling that I used to enjoy watching on TV when I was a kid. That show will continue to run for as long as we let it. It's a profitable one for politicians.