American civil tolerance is now being violated daily in novel and alarming localized ways by a familiar yet modified variation of the "petty tyrant."  Arising out of the pandemic smokescreen, states' governors such as Walz (Minn.), Cuomo (N.Y.), Murphy (N.J.), and Whitmer (Mich.) have, through their unilateral abuses of local government process, trounced the federal constitutional rights of the citizens they govern beyond recognition in ways too numerous and egregious to cite.

Taking full advantage of the corporate monopoly on access to and control of free speech, these new petty tyrants effectively mute unwanted civil discourse while breathlessly converting propaganda into truth, faith into fear, initiative into ideology, all while allowing real-world leadership to be replaced with distance cowardice.  It is through their continued inaction that American citizens remain unsafe from unabated mob violence while any opposition is suppressed through threats of virtual censorship, cancelation, or even "erasure." 

Minnesota was one of the first states to showcase this new method of governance during Governor Timothy Walz's first self-congratulatory quarantine kick off conference.  In a bizarre spectacle, minor agency heads of a small Midwestern state, many with no private-sector experience, preened about in the first person, referring to "my agency" and "my staff," culminating in the oxymoronic proclamation by an education department official that "there's no problem a group of educators cannot solve."  It was then that people knew they were doomed.  No one at that point anticipated how far this little group of state and local appointees could run amok with legislative authority, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights through unilaterally closing schools, shutting down commerce, and curtailing freedoms to assemble and worship.  Worst of all was the reckless, irrational, and sustained fear created by Walz, who cited absurd and unscientific mortality predictions of up to 100,000 deaths in Minnesota alone, one of the biggest political blunders ever made, which, when exposed, was blamed on "computer modeling."

Walz will be remembered not only for the unilateral destruction of the Minnesota economy through the use of unconstitutional edicts in response to the COVID-19 disaster, but more conspicuously for his benign sanction of the displays of ignorance and cowardice resulting from  the inversion of the rule of law characterizing the wake of the George Floyd tragedy.  Employing a hallmark tactic of the petty tyrant, Walz and the other governors capitalized (through ignorance or design) on the ideological and discriminatory violence of the few and used it as an effective political weapon to threaten and control the rights the many.  In a series of never-ending narcissistic and condescending television spots, this group of petty tyrants has successfully pitted Democrats against everyone, employees against employers, private-sector against public-sector employees, parents against school districts, teachers against students and even teaching itself, to the point that the alleged Covid-19 response represents the most blatantly discriminatory and divisive set of political actions implemented in American history culminating in a continuous wave of incalculable civil, cultural, and financial destruction.

It was also Minnesota's Walz who ably transformed Minnesota's moniker, "Minnesota Nice," into a nationally sanctioned felonious interpretation of "free speech" that includes justifiable racism, burning, looting, murder, pandemic immunity, and selective prosecution.  This feat was accomplished while protecting and promoting local and federal political constituents: teachers, government employees, and unions.  Teachers and government workers were not classified by any of the governors as "essential employees."  Along with the millions getting paid incentives not to work, Walz and company sit home with local constituents and those in Washington, while private-sector employees have no daycare, schools, jobs, businesses, or benefits.

The relief from these injuries was a front row seat to the vacant response to the ongoing burning and looting of Minneapolis and subsequent cities, attacks on American law enforcement, and the sickening, phony ideological and cultural apologetics and hand-wringing in the aftermath of George Floyd's death.  The growing rift between constitutional and collectivist principles is more than "a summer of love," a mere flare-up in political tensions.  Behavioral changes in the citizenry such as the human and capital migration from burning cities; rising domestic gun sales; and the unprecedented technical control, censorship, and violation of free speech all tell a different tale.  

The simple fact is that America, though designed predominantly by Christians, was not designed for Christians.  The Founding Fathers were concerned with religion only secondarily to tyranny, their first and foremost concern.  They were learned men who studied world governments throughout history, basing their judgments and conclusions on the consistent observation that the foundation of all human government rested precipitously on the eternal tension between the human desire for the political and personal power achieved through tyranny and the desire for freedom offered through liberty, or a mixture of both.  Twenty-five hundred years of world history including Greco-Roman, Middle Eastern, Persian, Asian, and Indian had proven this one fact above all to the Founders: men and woman either live free or under tyranny.

Underestimating how deep these currents run in the foundation of the American experience is to mistake and misunderstand America, Americans, and their true heritage and history.  Running through the veins of all Americans, who truly represent citizens drawn from all cultures and times, regardless of any ideological fad or actual threat, is this awareness of freedom and the hatred of tyranny and political control.  The search for, the articulation of and the transfusion of this "sixth sense" into the blood, hearts, and minds of American citizens, regardless of color, religion, or any other consideration, was the true work and the real gift of the Founding Fathers.  Not merely two hundred and fifty years, but twenty-five hundred years of tested experience resisting excessive political control, checking and resisting tyranny by any party, person, or force is in American blood, spirit, and consciousness.

It may be too much to expect from one or more of these petty tyrants that while staring into their electronic mirrors populated with media feeds, self-referential algorithms, homogenized and censored comments that are either "liked" or "disliked" in a perpetual electronic junior high school, they might awaken from their electronic narcissism to remember their vows of public service.  America needs more than ever live, courageous, and intelligent leadership, not electronically projected images of petty tyrants, cowards, or hacks staring into their cell phones surrounded by like-minded drones endlessly reinforcing their egoic projections of themselves.  Americans need dedicated and selfless leadership that will once again defend their constitutional freedoms, check and eliminate the powers of tyranny and propaganda, and protect the safeties and opportunities that characterize a free and vibrant society.

Image: Lorie Shaull via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.