The Perfect Storm–Mask Mandates, Citizen Rollover, And Government Autocracy

Sam Perkins lived in the Idaho Panhandle in a log cabin in the high mountain forest, off the radar, remote, secure, and the last bastion against government interventionism.  He and his brothers remembered Waco, the FBI assault on the Branch Davidian complex, and the slaughter of innocent women and children.  ‘Nevermore’ was emblazoned on the escutcheon carved over the door; and Sam and the other members of the small, insurrectionist community he had founded meant it.  

Not only would they protect this, their land, but this, their sovereignty.  No government agent would ever set foot within ten miles of their sanctuary or would be met with a firestorm never before imagined.  Sam and his brothers had amassed an arsenal far more complete than David Koresh ever had – an armory of assault rifles, machine guns, bazookas, rocket launchers, grenades, and napalm – and they were willing and ready to use it.

Although they lived in the far woods, they had not cut themselves off from civilization.  They were not hippies or social refugees. The roof of their cabin sprouted the latest in communication equipment with which they monitored police, federal, and citizen band transmissions and via satellite linked high-resolution optics surveyed the entire north Idaho territory. 

They monitored both network broadcasting and key social media, and kept abreast of the political developments which could lead to armed government intervention. The cabin was equipped with much of the same surveillance, data tracking, spyware as the CIA, and the banks of telecommunication equipment, satellite up- and downlink software, and sophisticated hacking and anti-hacking tools was not unlike those feeding the White House war room.

When they drove the 100 miles into town for provisions, they rode in an Oldsmobile sedan and dressed like Mormon missionaries.  No one would have expected these mild-mannered, ordinary-looking men to be anything other than proud, patriotic, and duty-bound Idahoans.

The COVID pandemic had passed them by.  Although they were well aware of it thanks to their media surveillance, they paid little attention.  There was certainly no threat from the virus this far off the grid, and the town where they provisioned was barely a dot on the map. 

However the political and social import of the pandemic quickly became clear; and the more they watched and listened, the more they were convinced that the government response, cloaked as it was within predictable public health nostrums, was a thinly-veiled opportunity for government hegemony. 

Washington had been waiting for decades for the opportunity to finally and once and for all un-man American society – to neuter its pride, patriotism, Old Western independence, and individualism, and to make it over into a socialist model. 

Sam and his brothers talked of their American ancestors who braved and survived malaria, yellow fever, dengue, and infection to tame the overgrown bottomland of the Mississippi Delta, the Northern Neck of Virginia, and the pestilential swamps of North Carolina.  Those ancestors who fought and killed the Indians of the Western plains and made them habitable for cultivation and residence.  Those great grandfathers who fought and killed Mexicans to reclaim lands rightfully theirs.  Those forefathers who drove cattle from the Mexican border to the Montana prairies, settled on virgin land and made the dream of Jefferson and Lewis and Clark a reality.

They in their great adventure had been maimed, infected, snake-bit, crippled and disemboweled along the way; and yet they persisted.  It was an adventure fraught with death and disease but one of high purpose and determination.  The’ Greatest Generation’ of World War II was not the first but one of many in the history of the United States – generations of uncommon courage, steadfastness, and honor.

As the news became more focused on the pandemic, Sam was both angered and incensed by its insidious spread – not just the virus but the government interventionism which followed. The Biden Administration was engaged in the most egregious arrogation of power that the nation had ever seen; and yet township after township, citizen after citizen rolled over like lapdogs and accepted insolent, quiet aggression. 

This was no banana republic violent coup.  It was takeover by insidious means, creating an enemy within to justify its assumption of absolute power. One by one the states followed suit, instituted and enforced lockdowns, mask mandates, and punitive, retributive action against those who refused. 

Only a few governors and mayors pushed back against this federal intrusion.  There might be public health measures to be taken, but not so restrictive as to deny civil and individual rights, to destroy local economies, and to create social mistrust and disharmony.

Sam and his brothers watched in dismay and disbelief as they watched the President tiptoe through his schedule, masked and ‘socially distanced’, afraid of his own shadow and sending a message of craven surrender. 

Of course, he was only a puppet in a White House run by his Rasputin, the Vice President, as calculating and vixenous a woman who had ever held public office.  She told him to project fear and, through the image of his timid capitulation to the epidemic, encourage others’ capitulation – not to the virus but to government authority.

As the vaccines spread and the incidence of new cases dropped, the government decided to ride a new hobbyhorse – the Delta Variant – an unexpected, highly infectious form of the virus that they insisted was threatening the country. 

Of course it was not. Vaccinated people who somehow contracted the new strain came down with little more than a cold, and the disease produced in unvaccinated people was no different than the original strain.  A tempest in a teacup, bald-faced manipulation of 'the science', more government chicanery and abuse. 

Despite the evidence Biden and his shills downplayed the effectiveness of the vaccines and continued to hype mandates, government lockdowns, punitive enforcement and de facto government takeover of municipal and state institutions.

Sam and his brothers were blindsided.  So intent were they on defending themselves against a Waco-like assault; and so vividly did they see martial law and the violent insurrection that would be mounted against it, that they missed the insidious, peaceful assault now well underway.  

There were no barricades to be stormed, no firefights in which to engage.  There were no lines of battle, guerilla warfare, or battlefield strategy.  The government – thanks to the lickspittle cowing of the American people – had taken over without a shot being fired.  The few pockets of resistance were ineffective against the full-frontal government assault. 

Masks for so long a complaisant symbol of ‘doing the right thing’, a flag of dutiful obedience to government and ‘science’ and flown proudly by credulous progressives, now were symbols of the Biden gulag – an item of prison gear, a muzzle.

The frustration in the Idaho cabin was palpable.  The government’s blanket of repression had been cast over the country with people welcoming its 'protection'. Without the complaisance – the capitulation – of the American people, such government autocracy would never have been possible. A nation of sheep.

As bad as this public health charade was, agreed cabinmates, the government’s program to reconfigure American society in its own deformed image was even worse.  Progressives were engineering a sexually deformed society, cancelling Independence Day parades and replacing them with San Francisco Bay-to-Breakers gay extravaganzas.  Worst of all America was becoming a place where free enterprise and economic opportunity were replaced by bureaucratic, authoritarian socialism.

It was, Sam and his friends concluded, the perfect storm – an authoritarian, anti-historical, perversely determined government; and a complaisant, rolled-over, weak and uncomplaining populace willing to accept anything.

This understanding was cold comfort.  It only highlighted their own powerlessness.  They were an insurrectionist group without popular support.  

Although they thought of themselves as Che Guevara-like revolutionaries in the Sierra Maestra, they had no thousands of disaffected supporters in the lowlands.  They were increasingly isolated and alone, without the necessary tools for revolt – a revolt which would have to be mounted electronically, politically, and progressively. A battle of information and disinformation, public relations and snake oil hucksterism until the citizenry finally coalesced into a rebellious majority.  

But Sam and his crew could only watch.  They had prepared for the wrong fight and now were left on the sidelines.

They dismantled their satellite dishes, electronic surveillance equipment, computer grid, and hi-tech software systems.  They sold most of their weapons at Idaho gun fairs, but kept enough, just in case. 

Yet they stayed angry and militant to a man. This outrage, this arrogation of power, this historical absurdity would not stand, but unfortunately not at their hands.