I think I finally and truly see the evil mechanism behind it all now. I like to think of myself as fairly intelligent and aware, and separate from negative influences, calm, shielded from it, by my better-than-average awareness and The Four Agreements, my faith, but I now see that I am just as enthralled to it as all of you.

I’m a puppet, my strings being pulled by forces that I willingly interface with on a daily basis. Damn, this is an insidious power. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and I don’t use drugs, but I have a parasite on my back, just like everyone else.

I wanted to believe that I was different, somehow better than others, the rank and file zombies all around me. I was deluding myself. I see that now. I… KNOW things now. Things I shouldn’t. I have been down the rabbit hole and back again. I have some acquaintances in… interesting places. I have put most of the pieces together. I know what I should do. And yet…

It keeps me in its power by my thirst for knowledge. My compulsive need to know what is REALLY going on. My innate desire to SEE BEHIND THE SCENES. The Demon finds your lever and PUSHES DOWN. We each have our own different lever that can and will move us, every time. It is almost inescapable.

I have watched what I thought was the steady maddening and dissolution of our entire country, our society. Watched with mounting horror and disbelief that things could really get this bad, this quickly. The most shocking part was the seemingly complete and utter denial of actual events by half of our population. We seem to be in the grip of a madness, a mass hysteria that is inescapable. It’s like every dystopian sci-fi movie I have ever seen, rolled into one.

Demon, show me a crazy person lighting a fire, saying we are all evil, trying to destroy our way of life, and my emotional strings get yanked, setting the hook but good. I want them to stop, I want to REASON with them, and when that fails, to STOP them. Maybe even hurt them. My daughter. Always my daughter, what world will she inhabit? I MUST stop these crazy people who want to destroy HER world.

And THAT, in the end, is my lever. SHE is my weakness.

Yet, I look out my window each day and my eyes try and reason with ME. LOOK, David! Nothing out there, son. Nothing coming for you, no collectivist monsters, no pod people, no fires, no riots, no scary bans of words and ideas… Just a calm, quiet, tree-lined street, a few kids, some parked cars and well-cared-for lawns, birds, groundhogs, the occasional fox or deer, and in the night, the calming sounds of insects, calling to each other through the humid darkness.

And that is why I must find a way cut the Demon’s strings. Pull out the catheter that is in me, sever the IV drip of the feed that generates so much pain and fear in my heart. It does me no good. It does YOU no good when I spread my pain and fear to YOU. It is a circle-jerk of trauma and paranoia and anger at the possibility of losing all that is wonderful and good about this beautiful and free country.

Why are we doing this to ourselves? We have the power to stop it. We can pull the plug and the parasite falls off our backs. It WILL fight like hell to stay on there, and whatever lever it can push on you will be revealed when you attempt to disengage from the twenty-four hour cycle. It WANTS your fear and anger. NEEDS them. Without them, it dies quickly.

All the friends I lost in the last five years, all the hate, pain, anxiety, all those moments, all that righteous anger, the calls to action, the declarations of fealty, the bravado…

Start unplugging. Peel back one layer at a time and LET GO. You DON’T ACTUALLY NEED TO KNOW. Seriously. Just let it go. Don’t spread the bad, spread the GOOD instead. Spreading the bad is very seductive. “LOOK! Look at this awful thing! We must DO SOMETHING! LOOK AT IT! TELL OTHERS!”

No.

STOP.

How about you simply look out your window today, and act accordingly?

GOOD LUCK AND GOD BLESS YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES.