I picked up a pretty good amount of commentary in my email from yesterday’s column, in which I expressed some optimism that things might be starting to turn around in the fight to preserve civilization from the forces of tyranny who are holding the high ground at present.

Some of you guys are Eeyores, you know.

No, I’m not drinking, and no, I’m not delusional. I would point out to you that your despair is the precise result the forces of evil are seeking. They want you to believe that the America you grew up in is lost because when that recognition takes hold you’ll be demoralized.

Demoralization Is the First Stage In the Communist Takeover

I’ll take you back to the column I wrote four years ago at The American Spectator, which if I’m not mistaken is still the top-traffic getter of them all. In it, I brought up Yuri Bezmenov, who was a former Soviet KGB officer who defected to Canada in the late 1970s but did an interview with an American journalist in which he described the four stages of a Communist takeover of a country.

The first stage, according to Bezmenov, was demoralization. He meant it in two ways: the act of sapping national will by making people depressed and disgusted — which you can see in countless ways from our trash culture to the awful quality of life for American corporate-drone workers and so on — but also, literally de-MORAL-ization, in which a society is taught to ignore the focus on the traditionally important things in life.

Are you a good person? Do you live in a community full of good people? Are the standards you and your neighbors upholding praiseworthy? Or is the concept of standards at all now a sign of bigotry?

It isn’t normal politics which creates transgenderism as a mainstream advocacy position, you know. And it’s certainly not normal that the Democrats would open their party platform with a “land acknowledgment” that alleges that America shouldn’t even exist. Those idiocies have no purpose but to demoralize society and to tear down the cultural and intellectual underpinnings of what it means to be an American.

Once a society has been demoralized, Bezmenov said, the next stage was destabilization, followed by crisis and normalization; that last stage was when the country in question was fully taken over by communist tyrants.

Primed for Recognition

It’s arguable how far along we are on Bezmenov’s timeline. I argued almost three years ago that we were in the destabilization phase, but it feels a little like that has bogged down. What’s certainly true is that none of this is inexorable, though. It can be fought off. And the first stage in a revival or counter-takeover, to play off Bezmenov’s theory, is recognition.

We may not be in the recognition stage yet. But we’re primed for it.

The things discussed in yesterday’s column are the unmistakable signs of abnormality by which the apolitical can now be awakened to a problem. A San Francisco 49ers wide receiver is shot on the street for his Rolex by a 17-year-old thug who isn’t supposed to have a firearm under California law. Venezuelan gangsters are staging violent takeovers of apartment complexes in suburban Denver and Chicago. A longtime aide to two New York governors gets arrested as a spy for China. Brazil bans X, and this is the reaction of a major political party’s presidential nominee:

Well, here ya go folks. Harris is saying the quiet part out loud. She’s openly expressing her desire to censor free speech. Jake Tapper looks totally shocked & baffled. The idea of this woman leading the freest and most powerful nation on the planet is simply terrifying. @X… pic.twitter.com/P1MQF7wWG5

— Evans Wroten (@Evans_Wroten) September 3, 2024

Yes, that last bit is as crystal clear as it is noxious. It says a lot, doesn’t it? She’s clearly a moron, and she clearly wouldn’t be the one running the country if she won, and there is clearly a cabal of tyrants she’s fronting for who clearly believe in shutting down the digital public square.

We have about two months left in this presidential race — and there are a lot of down-ballot races of crucial importance on tap as well — and one of the things we’re going to find out is whether the American people are truly ready for the recognition stage of recovery.

Because it’s becoming impossible to avoid the truth about the ruling class in this country.

The Elites Are Truly Atrocious People

These are incredibly contemptuous, rapacious, atrocious people  — atrocious in the sense that they have no qualms about committing atrocities. The banning of a social media platform because its users might say things with which you disagree is an atrocity. Sustaining a war that kills hundreds of thousands if not millions of people for no other reason than profiteering is an atrocity. Shepherding your people into a declining life expectancy as they fall into dependency on the pharmaceutical industry that you encourage from childhood on is an atrocity.

Allowing almost 300,000 illegal migrant children to go “missing,” meaning that a very large proportion of them are routed into child sex trafficking in this country, is an atrocity. Allowing the opposition presidential candidate to be shot, whether through over-the-top manufactured incompetence or intentional action, is an atrocity. Inundating your cities with criminals from foreign lands, so that everyday Americans already suffering from a poor quality of life now have to fear colonization from the world’s most savage and violent people on your watch.

That’s an atrocity.

You have to see that it is. And once you see it you have to act to stop it.

Of course, the legacy corporate media is hard at work screeching to you that “All is well!” Kevin Bacon-style, but it’s with much less feeling nowadays. They can’t really sell this Edsel EV and they know it — if for no other reason than that the TV ratings and circulation counts tell them so.

Privately, their talking heads are warning their votaries that things aren’t going well for the ruling class side. Here’s Mark Halperin from a few days ago attempting to break it softly to their voters:

Recognition cancels demoralization. When you know and believe that there are forces out there actively subverting your way of life and the principles of your society, you are no longer demoralized. You are now responsible for acting against those forces and helping to restore those norms and standards which undergird that society.

Without demoralization, the Bezmenov process of imposing communist control over society becomes much more difficult if not impossible.

Do not be demoralized. Be resolute. Don’t just vote this fall. Chase everyone you know who can help the cause of freedom and order to the polls. Stand up to tyranny wherever you see it. Give money — one way to do that which really will help is to subscribe to The American Spectator so that we’ve got the resources to keep at this and grow stronger.

Don’t just sit on that couch. Wage this spiritual, informational war at every turn — cheerfully, lawfully, and with a full heart.

Because the fight only ends when you stop fighting.

Don’t let them stop you.

Ever.