Based on my worldview, I thought Ronald Reagan was wrong, Bill Clinton was right, and Ayn Rand and George Orwell would never happen. Based on today’s reality, Reagan is right, Clinton is flat out wrong, and Rand and Orwell are definitely possible, maybe even likely.
In 1986, when then-President Ronald Reagan declared, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help”, as an American Black who benefitted from the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, I swore at the time that Reagan was wrong. But last June, 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops, not requested by the Mayor or Governor but sent anyway by President Donald Trump, showed up in Los Angeles to “help” stop legal nonviolent protests protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE )’s very aggressive immigration raids.
Then this month 800 National Guard troops along with 500 agents from the F.B.I.; Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, Homeland Security Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals, not requested by the Mayor, showed up in Washington D.C. saying President Trump sent them to “help” police and stop a nonexistent “public safety emergency”. According to the reservation service OpenTable and the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington the only thing the National Guard and federal agents are stopping is people going out to eat, Hill Prince a restaurant that averages $1,200.00 on a weeknight saw its nightly total drop to $112.00, and another restaurant that wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation said its sales were down 30% since the troop deployment.
And finally, this year I have been truly filled with terrifying words, as I witness federal government people driving unmarked cars and wearing face masks, drive up on a person innocently walking down the street and violently grab and yank the person into the unmarked vehicle, having never even ID themselves as people from the federal government. Lately, I’ve been thinking maybe Reagan is right, someone showing up from the federal government and claiming they are here to help, can be a terrifying experience!!!
In 1996, when then-President Bill Clinton declared in his 3rd State of the Union Address, “The era of big government is over”, I thought he was speaking the gospel truth, because in the 1994 mid-term elections, for the first time in 40 years, Republicans had won control of both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate campaigning on their Contract with America legislative agenda of ending big government. But in 2021, the Texas state government started dictating the curriculum for public schools in Texas. Now in 2025, the big federal government is threatening to strip the accreditation of any college that doesn’t meet the philosophical and ideological approval of the big federal government.
The big federal government is now trying to dictate to a privately-owned, privately-regulated athletic team what their name and mascot can be. Also, the big federal government is now dictating what can be painted on state and local streets, so a Miami Beach city street intersection had to be painted over to remove its rainbow crosswalks. And since many point to a news media company recently paying $16,000,000 and a newspaper deciding to no longer print political op-eds, as proof that threats of big federal government retaliation now dictate how and what news is reported, has me now thinking Bill Clinton was wrong, his declaration that “the era of big government is over” was not the gospel truth, it was a gospel myth!!!
I have always considered the limited-government icon Ayn Rand’s bestselling novel, Atlas Shrugged, to be exaggerated fiction on unrestrained government authority. But then in 2024, Rand’s fiction transformed into U.S. government non-fiction reality, when the conservative ideologically biased U.S. Supreme Court ruled that neither a sitting president nor a former president can ever be prosecuted, and held criminally or civilly liable for any official acts they execute while serving as President of the United States, even if the official act they commit is an act to prevent a democratically elected person from being sworn as a new the President.
I also considered the democratic socialist icon George Orwell’s bestselling novel, 1984, to be exaggerated fiction about big government laws, regulations, and false propaganda enforced on people, to control what and how they think, that would never happen in the USA. But now Orwell’s big government mind control fiction is transforming into U.S. big government mind control reality. Because federal big government is telling 2 of America’s premier museums, The Smithsonian American Art Museum and The National Museum of African American History and Culture, and their academically trained historians what content or American history they can display, and any history or content big government allows must be told or displayed the way big government dictates.
Unfortunately mind control and group think control is not limited to museums, federal big government is telling all of America’s corporations that if they are thinking about how to diversify their employee ranks, if the word DEI is listed among any of its written materials, or if they have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies to promote diversity, they will face U.S. Justice Dept. investigations and civil rights prosecution.
August 23, 2023: GOP Thought Police
Tragically, American democracy is currently traveling on the road to American autocracy or an American dictatorship, based on how federal big government has been flexing its powers lately in America. It now appears Ronald Reagan was correct: the nine most terrifying words are I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help. Bill Clinton was wrong. The era of big government is not over; a new, magnified, intense phase of big government is just beginning. And Ayn Rand and George Orwell’s fiction novels, about federal big government controlling every aspect of American society and life, are on the verge of becoming a non-fiction reality, for every aspect of American society and life!!!