Another fine missive from Skeptic. A lot of this echoes things I’ve said here many times in my darker moments, so it should all seem familiar to you by now.

First – we are learning that, despite the prattlings of hammerheads like Wittle Benny Shapiro and Hannity, we are not in fact “a nation of laws.” We are a nation of MEN – and at the moment, we are a nation whose elected officials are avaricious, tyrannical men. What is being done right now – the quarantines, the lockdowns – are plainly unconstitutional. The phrase “except for” appears nowhere in the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights. So, by whose authority do these mayors and governors acquire the power to lock down their domains? Why, by their own – they are signing their own executive orders giving them that power! Isn’t that convenient?

We have learned that the American people will, in fact, submit meekly. After all the talk about 70 million gun owners, nary a single shot has been fired. Screw the shots – in the country that has half of the world’s lawyers, not one lawyer has filed a lawsuit or filed for an injunction. We are reduced to debating the “when” of when they will deign to allow us to live a normal life again, rather than rising up and proclaiming, “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” We have accepted that they CAN – and we are begging them NOT to. They have taken power that would make Stalin blush and we have said, “yes, sir.”

One of the most chilling aspects of all this has been seeing how very many “Americans” are out there clamoring for even more of it.

For all of those little tyrants, there’s no incentive to open back up. They get to do what they always wanted to do – push people around. They continue to get paid; they are spectators to the economic devastation, not participants. And there will be no pushback from the voters because they get to say they Did Something.

We have learned that – again – our President has precious little control. Trump has, in fact, screwed himself on this thing. Even if Trump were to proclaim that the country will “open up” on, say, April 15, he will simply be disregarded by the governors and mayors, who insist that “their” lockdown must be longer because reasons. The only thing Trump would do is the thing he won’t – demand that the Constitution be returned to full effect, and enforce that using the National Guard if necessary.

We have learned that our side (those discontented with the lockdowns) refuses to engage in civil disobedience. There are no rallies, no protests. We sit at home, making sure not to be around 10 people.

We have learned that a majority of “the people” will seize on the stampeding of civil liberties not as an opportunity to stand up for themselves, but instead to scold others who do stand up, and to virtue-signal with the various “stay home” memes. In fact, the divide seems to be between “getting paid and scolding everyone else” and “unpaid and pissed off.”

We have learned that there will be no consequences to China. Even with what amounts to a WMD attack on the United States, there is a vocal minority (majority?) who will proclaim any anti-China conversation as “racist.”

This is perhaps the thing I find most disgusting of all. By allowing our elites to relocate all American industry to China, combined with Clinton’s ill-advised flip-flop to grant the ChiComs MFN trade status, we weakened our position and limited our options in our dealings with Red China to basically just one: sit back, suck on it, and learn to like the taste.

China is neither a friend nor a trustworthy partner. It is a backwards, primitive dictatorship run by a council of wholly evil megalomaniacs who dream of global domination, and do not lack the will or the means to make it so. For the government of any relatively free nation to allow its greedhead corporatists to relocate so much as one damned factory to a hostile, dangerous adversary-nation without penalizing them harshly for it is the very definition of madness.

But here we all are.

My own business – the one I’ve spent fifteen years building – is in ruins; I’m “nonessential,” so therefore my business is illegal. Maybe I can rebuild after our masters decide to allow me to do business again – but what’s the point? They can – and will – do this again. In a month, in a year, in a decade, who cares? It’ll happen again and I will again be destroyed. Maybe I will rebuild, because I need to make a living, but I will never feel the same way about the business I loved, or the country I loved, again. I do not love the United States anymore.

Nor do I. Nor am I sure I ever really did. In fact, the America I loved—the America I still DO love—had ceased to exist before I ever came of age as anything more concrete than an idea, a historical artifact which I usually refer to here as America That Was. Amerika That IS, FUSA, the USSA, on the other hand, can go hang.

I see idiots like Hannity (again) crowing about Trump’s approval ratings, and how he will win in November. Seriously – who cares? Trump is powerless. He’s weak. He’s letting Fauci run the goddamned country. I always thought he was a fighter, but he’s not. Would we be any worse off with Crazy Bernie as President? I can’t imagine how.

Oh, don’t kid yourself, my friend. It could ALWAYS be worse. And one thing you can count on for sure with an avowed Commie like Bolshevik Bernie is that he will always find a way to make damned sure that it is.

Another thing I’ve said many times here: I don’t think so much that Trump’s greatest flaw is that he isn’t really a fighter. It’s that he still truly does believe in this country—that it remains the America of old, that even though the system has been abused, perverted, and betrayed, it is still salvageable. His manifestly obvious love for his country is so deep and passionate that it appears to have rendered him blind to certain unpleasant realities.

And the bastards who are doing this aren’t missing a paycheck. Are you seeing any news about government workers being furloughed without pay? Me neither.

We’re done, Mike. There will be no Civil War. America has been lost without firing a single shot. Eric Swallwell will not need to nuke us. We’ve done it to ourselves.

The evil bastards have won. Fuck them and fuck this country.

Actually, they won a good while back. All they’re doing now is re-confirming their victory, and testing its bounds for a reference as to what further depredations they’ll be able to get away with next time. And you can be assured there WILL be a next time.