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2007-2008 |
The Promise |
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"Hope and Change." Two words. No specifics. What hope? Change to what? I had heard this before — in a different language, in a different country. In the Soviet Union, we called it svetloye budushcheye — "the bright future." Always promised, never defined. I recognized the first stage of a process I had seen before. |
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2009-2016 |
The Unfolding |
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"You didn't build that." The mask slipped. Achievement was redefined as a debt to the collective. Success was reframed as exploitation. "Fundamental transformation" — promised and delivered. The Long March through the institutions reached its destination. |
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2017–2020 |
The Assault |
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An outsider won. The response: not opposition, but destruction. Weaponized intelligence agencies. Fabricated investigations. The machinery of a one-party state defending itself against an intruder. |
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2020-2021 |
Crisis and Control |
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Lockdowns. Mandates. Censorship. "Experts" are elevated above citizens. Emergency powers that never expired. "Mostly peaceful protests" burned cities while churches closed and funerals were forbidden. The institutions revealed themselves. Those who had lectured about "following the science" silenced scientists who disagreed. Those who had championed "my body, my choice" demanded compliance with medical mandates. The masks fell in every sense. |
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2021-2023 |
The Consequences Unfold |
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Afghanistan collapsed in days, erasing twenty years and thousands of lives. The border opened — not by accident but by policy. Inflation surged while officials denied it. Parents who questioned school curricula were labeled domestic terrorists. The FBI investigated Catholics. The Department of Justice targeted political opponents. Each month brought new evidence that the captured institutions were not neutral — they were weapons aimed at those who resisted the transformation. |
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October 7, 2023 |
The Mask Falls |
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Then came October 7th. Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and murdered 1,200 people — the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Families slaughtered in their homes. Children murdered in front of their parents. Women raped and paraded. Hostages dragged to Gaza. Atrocities documented by the killers themselves, filmed and celebrated. What happened next on American campuses revealed everything. Not silence. Not even measured neutrality. Celebration. Within hours — before Israel had responded, before any "cycle of violence" could be blamed — students at elite universities gathered to praise the massacre. "Resistance." "Decolonization." "By any means necessary." At Harvard, student groups signed a letter holding Israel "entirely responsible" for the attack, for its own massacre. At Columbia, at Yale, at universities across the country, Jewish students were surrounded, threatened, and excluded. Posters of kidnapped children were torn down. Faculty members justified atrocities. Administrators who had created "bias response teams" and "microaggression" policies suddenly discovered complexity when Jews were being murdered. I watched this with recognition, not surprise. I had seen it before. In Soviet Ukraine, antisemitism wore the mask of "anti-Zionism." The Jews were "cosmopolitans," agents of imperialism, enemies of the people. The hatred was dressed in ideological clothing, which made it acceptable, even righteous. Now I watched American students wearing keffiyehs and chanting for intifada — and I heard the echo. Different language. Different continent. Same pattern. Same destination. The ideology that had captured American institutions had found its scapegoat. The "oppressor" had been identified. The oldest hatred had been rehabilitated — not despite progressive values, but through them. This is where the road leads. Not to justice. Not to equality. To scapegoats and show trials and acceptable targets for hatred. I had lived inside this destination for twenty-seven years. I recognized it instantly. If you want to know where collectivist ideology leads, look at what happened on American campuses after October 7, 2023. The mask did not slip. It fell off completely. |
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November 2024 |
The Turning |
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The pattern was rejected — this time. An election that was supposed to be a referendum on "democracy" became a referendum on the institutions themselves. The voters chose. A battle won. But not the war. The captured institutions remain. The ideology remains. The scapegoat mechanism remains. |
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2025 Forward |
The Struggle Continues |
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My granddaughters were born. The future has faces. The battle is generational. The institutions that celebrate massacres and teach hatred to students will not reform themselves. They must be replaced, defunded, or rebuilt from the ground up. This is why I write. This is why I cannot stay silent. |
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