It wasn’t until the recent last few years that I have been trying to understand our American culture. Unique to the world, our own brand of patriotism, pride, and power, all deeply connected to the Constitution and the beginnings of our nation.

It has been most recently presented that if you acknowledge the horrors and murderous behavior of our predecessors, you hate America.

It’s coming from the Right Wing of persuasive conservative minds in an attempt to discredit any liberal thinking voter. It’s intentional and purposeful to sway votes in their favor.

It’s nothing new, to manipulate people for votes. It’s even bi-partisan. Every politician in history has learned the practice of bending truth and reality in order to excite their constituents and gain or remain in power. But never like this. Never with the awesome power of social media and the lack of consequences for telling half truths and all out lies to the American public.

For those that are unaware, there used to be a law enforced by the FCC that required truth in news programs. That law was revoked by Ronald Reagan and gave birth to political opinion “news” programs such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. I can only assume that The Gipper was convinced by puppeteers that a law that limits what you can spew out of your insane fucking mouth is an infringement on free speech, and ol’ Ronny fell for it.

And here we are today with a whole plethora of bullshit to wade through that no one can find the actual truth about anything without digging deep into trusted, but always still biased, independent news sources. You have to do focused research on who you can trust. You need to have the ability to recognize when you are being targeted and manipulated. And most people don’t.

We don’t have the time, education, or instinct to decipher the coded news. We don’t have the ability to see the manipulation if we are not manipulators ourselves. We have been trained, conditioned, educated, and indoctrinated into believing what the officials on TV are telling us. And now everyone looks official. That’s how they got us.It’s not our fault. We were taught to trust them. They look like the News. They talk like the News. Why aren’t they the News?

If you study the smallest amount of history about nations where democracy has failed and about the takeover of fascism. It’s almost always the same playbook. You’ll see the tools of manipulation, like using Law and Order, Free Speech ,and Patriotism to convince hard working, good people that they’re being duped. You’ll see the Right Wing accuse the Left of exactly what the Right is doing as a way to confuse people. It’s a way of pointing the finger as a distraction to get away with something and it works. It creates doubt and places blame on their enemy so no one gets suspicious of them. They appear to have seen it coming, so they must be smarter. They are protecting us and calling them out. Well, no. They are manipulating you.

One strange thing we do is despise intelligent people. ‘Know it alls’, arrogant and pompous educated people. We don’t like anyone who is smarter than us and we are offended when we are wrong. We call our own kids ‘smarty pants’ when they know something we don’t. We stomp our feet and throw tantrums and become absolutely defiant when smart people tell us what to do.

I was truly disappointed in America, not mad, not offended, but sad when the election results confirmed Donald Trump as our President. I honestly didn’t think it could happen. That an obviously child-like, wannabe dictator, city slicker, whiny, cry baby convinced rednecks and country folks that he was better than a woman to run the free world.

I was continually surprised that those followers appeared more like cult believers and would do anything he told them to. I’m still amazed that after all he has said and done, and crimes he has committed, he is still the front runner for the Republican Party.

We are being warned about the loss of our democracy. Some of us have been very vocal about it for a long time. But we play nice. We try to have respect for those that don’t agree with us. All the while, the Right Wing is taking down our freedoms. Our civil rights. Our country.

I see the future of America as a fascist nation. My kids will live to see a different America. Ironically one that goes against the very thing that made us. The Constitution.

It’ll function. America will convince the masses that they are free and have unalienable God given rights. They’ll be convinced to die for it just as it is now. But the homeless, the poor, and the working class will hurt. There will be a lack of empathy and more despair. Violence and illness will run rampant and the gaps in our society will grow. It will be a worse world to live in. Even if you’re rich, there will be futility and guilt. And history will look back and wonder why we didn’t see it coming or stop it from taking over. Again.