One of the most insightful things I have ever read about human nature comes in the epilogue of Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago”: And when the war broke out, its real horrors, its real dangers, its menace of real death were a blessing compared with the inhuman reign of the lie, a relief because it broke the spell of the dead letter.
Pasternak published those words in 1957, a little more than a decade after the end of World War II, which is not a long time when you think of how fresh 9/11 is still in our minds. And yet, despite the incalculable horrors Hitler’s invasion brought to the Soviet Union (tens of millions dead, entire cities starved to death), Pasternak spoke for many Russians who looked backed upon WWII fondly, as the Good Years during Josef Stalin’s terrible reign.
In no way am I about to compare the American left and the DC Media to Stalin’s thirty-year terror. But Pasternak’s overall observation, that few things are as oppressive and intolerable as living under the yoke of a lie, is universal.
Political Correctness is a lie, a lie in which Democrats, their cultural enablers in Hollywood, and their Palace Guards in the DC Media, use the fascist weapons of social pressure, emotional blackmail, and character assassination (racist, bigot, Islamophobe) to coerce us to speak and behave in a certain way that is dishonest.
Over the past two decades, like the proverbial boiling frog, our society has caved to this lie. For fear of being branded a racist or of being ostracized by The Beautiful People, too many of us have enabled these lies by tiptoeing around or outright ignoring truths that have not been approved by Our Betters.
Illegal immigrants who steal jobs from the working class and import a horrific amount of crime, are now undocumented workers who are a vitally important part of the fabric of our society.
Islam isn’t a religion infected with a virulent disease that could literally bring about the end of Western Civilization and the Apocalypse, it is a religion of peace with a few bad apples.
Too many American Muslims (hundreds of thousands) are comfortable with the idea of violence and religious oppression (51%). But we are told they are just like the rest of us.
An act of domestic terrorism doesn’t mean our government has failed to protect us or that we need to speak out loud about how political correctness enabled the San Bernardino Islamists. No, it means we must disarm law-abiding Americans more concerned with their personal security than ever before.
Obama wasn’t warped by the influences of Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, and his time overseas. No, he is a patriotic Christian just like the rest of us.
After an attack on Planned Parenthood, we must condemn all pro-lifers and restrict their speech.
After an Islamist atrocity we must embrace the Muslim community as victims of America and Americans.
Islam isn’t a problem because it is Climate Change that creates terrorists.
The government is the answer to all of our problems, so call the federal government if your child is bullied.
Ignore the fact that with an increase of an armed citizenry gun violence has been halved.
That isn’t a man wearing a dress, that’s a woman.
Gun-free zones aren’t invitations to mad men looking for sitting ducks.
A woman can do any job as well or better than a man.
Giving your 14 year-old daughter hormone therapy drugs isn’t child abuse.
Homosexuality isn’t a sin.
Concerns over domestic security are racism.
You can’t use that word anymore, it offends people. Stop celebrating your tradition, it’s insensitive. Prayer is bigotry. Jokes are hate speech. Flags motivate mass-murder. Waterboarding means we’re no better than the terrorists. Those aren’t dead baby parts, that’s fetal tissue. Israel is the problem. Guns are the problem. Budget cuts are the problem. America is the problem…
Every time you turn on the news, every time our government opens its mouth, every time you just want relax in front of a movie, a television show, or a sporting event; every time a Thought Leader or politician speaks… Again and again and over and over these lies not only pile up, they are wielded with a brutal relentlessness meant, not to convince us, but to wear us down until we give up just to make it stop.
But when we give in, and inch-by-inch in this war of inches we always do, we put a yoke of oppression around our own necks by agreeing to live under behavior and speech regulations founded on what we know is a lie.
My dad isn’t a political person. All his life he’s lived by the rules, worked with his hands, voted for the person not the party, and personifies a live and let live approach to life.
He’s warming up to Donald Trump.
“I don’t like or agree with everything Donald Trump says,” he told me the other day. “But I like that he says it.”
This is why our elite media and political establishment are so utterly useless. They have become so insulted and bubbled — the frog boilers or the boiled frogs — that all perspective has been lost.
Like my dad, I don’t agree with everything Trump says, I don’t like everything Trump says and I’m probably not going to vote for him in the primary. But every time he speaks, no matter how coarse, every time he offends (even me), it feels more than liberating, it feels like a revolutionary act in the cause of human freedom.
So many Americans frustrated and angry over this oppression, those not yet fully boiled but who for decades were convinced by a deluge of propaganda that they were alone, forgive much in an imperfect Donald Trump willing to take the flaming arrows that come with volunteering to be a battering ram against the Temple of Political Correctness … against the Left’s “inhuman reign of the lie.”
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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