Halloween isn’t as frightening as it used to be. How can traditional monsters compare to Hamas’ actions in killing infants, China’s growing nuclear arsenal, progressive antisemitism rising to Hitlerian levels, Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine, crime rampaging through American cities?
In 2023, you have to feel sorry for our old friends Dracula, assorted mummies and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Don’t let us forget all those witches, either. Try as they might, they simply can’t conjure up the terror they used to.
After all, those devilish monsters could barely harass a handful of folks on any particular evening. Some of those goblins and ghouls were restricted to just All Hallows Eve. What horror could a nibble on the neck from a hungry vampire produce when Hamas is beheading folks on a mass scale every day?
How do you compare the frightening capabilities a misunderstood creature of the night can have to, say, the thought of a terrorist heading in your direction? Or even something as tiny as a China-made COVID germ?
What is really scary, though, isn’t some raging enemy or even a toxic malady. What is most frightening is the growing inability or unwillingness of our leaders to deal these threats. Americans used to be a “can do” people. If something stood in our way, we cut a path through it. If someone opposed us, we flattened them. Now we passively tolerate true evil.
Not unlike the insidious infestation of celluloid horror movie terrors in a Hollywood script, we have allowed the very fabric of the American nation to be undermined. A little over a decade ago, it would have been unimaginable that the First Amendment would have been so seriously disregarded by bureaucrats claiming they had the right to censor the media. A mere decade ago, who would have believed that parents objecting to the rape of their young daughters on school grounds would be labelled as domestic terrorists?
We have had a black president, black supreme court justices, black mayors, governors, senators and congressional representatives. There are laws on the books banning discrimination. We are now led, however, by an administration and media that appears determined to rekindle former hatreds by falsely portraying our society as racist.
Those same hate-mongers eagerly seek to divide the nation along political lines, and utilize the Department of Justice to persecute those who disagree with the current regime. Just as Dracula recoiled from crucifixes, our Justice Department disdains traditional Catholics.
Who would have believed that neo-Nazi’s on college campuses and on the streets of cities would vigorously support the beheading of Jewish children, the raping of Israeli women, and wholesale slaughter of civilians? Even Hitler attempted to hide his mass murders. Hamas films their actions. Despite that, some of the same publications that ignored the Holocaust are now downplaying those actions.
No one would have believed that any presidential administration would ignore border controls, and allow millions, including military age men, foreign agents, cartel criminals and human traffickers to cross into the United States.
Dr. Frankenstein created his woefully misunderstood reanimated man, but the product of our educational system is far worse. By replacing facts with propaganda and ignoring or misrepresenting the lessons of history, American educators have developed a generation devoid of an accurate historical perspective and with a contempt for the concept of individual rights and personal responsibility. The manifestation of their creation isn’t a single creature, but a large portion of an entire age group who cannot tolerate opinions other than their own.
This Halloween, the terrors of the creatures of the night are a welcome distraction from the horrors that exist in the real world.
Illustration: Pixabay