Our reckoning.
Every dissident can point to that moment when he came to terms with his idealism, his indulgence of the pretty lies, the futility of his "go along to get along".
The idealism of particular significance to the dissident is the narrative of our nation. The dissident, in his reckoning, is compelled to ask: is the nation we hold in our heads and hearts congruent with that in which we occupy in real life?
The answer conjures up what might be called the dissonance of the dissident. The peril of ignoring such dissonance is well known to our side, for it is what ails the sheeple. That slumbering denial laced with a false sense of reality invites all matters of control by the powers who design to enslave us.
To ignore our lying eyes is to give them access to everything. Their empire of lies demands total submission, but like all vampires, also requires our permission, our complicacy.
We know the totalitarians trade in lies. Leftism, after all, is at its core a war on reality. Yet we are not immune from our own comforting delusions.
When we dwell in moments of lucidity, we might admit that our mantra of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is but a mirage we prop up on the horizon.
We make a habit of ignoring the fact that the wellspring of that mirage is increasingly conditioned upon our compliance, submission, and acquiescence to those who wish to destroy that very same oasis.
And no matter how long we comply - and march toward their version of the inevitable great leap forward, our oasis is always just a little bit further out of reach. Just a little more compliance, a little more compromise and we will be free.
When those visions of patriot palms are finally seen for what they are, the crushing reality that some dark force has ended our nation's story in the middle of the page, compels a man toward many more disquieting questions.
What does it mean to be American? Who are we? What of this liberty? This freedom? Our traditions? What can one man do?
Better late than never.
Of course, the abruptness of that narrative ending is also a matter of one's perspective.
Many dissidents saw it coming long ago.
Many others, inclined toward plumbing the depts of history and philosophy, will point to several moments in America's history where that story was left on the cutting room floor. Often under much more acute circumstances than our current year troubles.
They are quick to point out that we have all been running on mythology for a long time. And they are mostly correct.
But the problem isn't that we hold onto mythology; those are our stories after all.
The problem is when our folklore, the heritage of our people, and what remains of those principles upon which our nation was founded are no longer allowed to exist outside of our hearts and minds.
For the rest of us, the truth of our nation's story's becoming wreckage on the shore of Progress revealed slowly at first.
The pretty lies persisted, as we are prone to adapting and plodding onward. Soon enough, however, the despots brought their unjust and illegitimate power to bear such that we could find no safe harbor for even just our stories of liberty.
Wrongthink became an actual crime.
Not even our ritualized fealty to their fiat power was enough.
No, we had to repeat their lies as our truth, bear witness to the perversion of our own history, submit to their inversions without protest, and finally, hand our children over to them to be turned against us.
Their future is written in the blood of patriots, lavished with the squid ink of their fourth estate, and fattened by the seed corn of our children's children.
And so, we make our stand as dissidents.
We say: better to stand and be counted among the defiant than to callous one's knees to avoid the inevitable reach of a tyrannical bloodlust for just a little while longer.
Better to learn to wrestle bears, as opposed to practice running, such that we might out-run our friends when the bear is finally on our heels.
Well, the middle of that page is where we took up the writing of our own story as dissidents.
This tiny corner of commerce is one small part of what we work toward in our everyday lives. We hope it will grow and sustain itself economically but take great joy in creating and sharing our work regardless.
Because no matter our present challenges, in the end, we win. Providence!
- DISSIDENT RAGS