In his March 1933 inaugural speech, F.D.R. famously told America “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  F.D.R. was what we would now call a Progressive.  He was responsible for the expansion of the federal government which has resulted in the unconstitutional federal domination of the States from which we currently suffer.  F.D.R. was the champion of Big Government, at a time when one could argue there was a need for more government intervention in our lives – the Great Depression.  At his second inaugural, F.D.R. spoke of a nation in which privation was common, “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”  The point is that, like F.D.R. or not, in the 1930’s he wasn’t wrong.  90 years after F.D.R., the problem with Democrats, or more to the point, Progressives, is that they fail to recognize progress.  Democrats are still supporting programs designed to relieve conditions that the New Deal and Great Society programs already addressed.  Democrats are still running as F.D.R. government expansionists, they just changed the motto, “The only thing we have to sell is fear itself.”  Think about it.  The Left has no policies.  The Left isn’t “for” anything.  All the Left has is a list of the things they’re against, and the things that want you to fear.  Engendering fear comes right out of their playbook.  Rahm Emanuel famously advised Democrats never to let a crisis go to waste.  Like the 2015 movie, their brand is crisis.  It has to be.  The Woke Left crazies make up about 20% of the electorate.  The programs they want can’t be enacted if times are good.  Ergo, everything has to be a crisis.  Everything has to be “an existential threat.”  Sound familiar.  It’s all part of the plan.  That’s why the social media sites have to cancel dissent.  That’s why we have to be told there’s only one side to every story.  There can’t be a debate, because the Woke wish list can’t stand up in the light of day.  Sunlight is the best disinfectant, that’s why Leftists have to keep pulling down the shades.  Climate change, you may have heard, is an existential threat.  For how many years have they been telling us we only have 12 years to fix the problem?  Spoiler alert – in 1970, at the first Earth Day, “experts” predicted world-wide famine by the year 2000 because increased nitrogen in the atmosphere would render all farmland unusable.  I shit you not, and we’re still here.  Today’s remedy for climate change is deindustrialization.  There are groups that are seriously advocating shutting down one-third of our industrial production to reverse climate change.  Just us.  China and Russia and India will keep on producing.  The Green New Deal is crazy, but we have no choice, it’s a crisis.  Race relations are the same story.  We are told, and many young people believe, that racism is worse today than ever before.  We are told, by the FBI no less (and there is no less), that the greatest terrorist threat we face is from white supremecist groups.  Really?  Homicides and other violent crimes are up 30, 40, 50% in the past two years.  Dozens of black men, women and children are shot and killed every day, by black perpetrators.  Antifa and BLM are in the streets fomenting assault, arson and looting.   Islamic terrorists are still with us.  And white supremecists are the greatest threat?  Look, I have an open mind.  Somebody please prove me wrong.  I’m willing to listen.  Somebody, please give me two examples of lives being lost to white supremecists.  White supremecists exist, to be sure, they bear watching.  If they violate the law they need to be prosecuted.  They’re not our greatest threat, but they are convenient scapegoats.  That’s their role.  The Left loves to create a straw man for people to fear and hate.  It keeps the rabble from noticing that the Democrats are politically and intellectually bankrupt.   It’s not a coincidence that our educational system stopped teaching history and began indoctrinating our kids with Woke claptrap.  In 2005, historian David McCollough warned that we were producing generations of historical illiterates.  It wasn’t a mistake.  It was all part of the plan.  And it worked.  In an age when unlimited information is at our fingertips, most young people are blissfully ignorant of events that occurred before they were born.  We no longer have revisionist history, we have a pervasive and troubling ignorance of history.  But for ignorance, the Left couldn’t tell us poverty is worse than ever, racism is worse than ever, and the biggest lie, we need to spend more money.  It’s so bad that people, purportedly from the Left, are beginning to speak out against it.  Bill Maher is a Progressive who’s beginning to sound the alarm about the dangerous path Progressives have chosen to take.  He recently spoke against what he called, “progressophobia,”  a term which describes liberals and other progressive thinkers who are unable to perceive any forward movement in America on social and cultural issues.   Maher explained, “It’s like situational blindness, only what you can’t see is that your dorm in 2021 is better than the South before the Civil War.”  He pointed out examples such as comedian Kevin Hart, who said, “You’re witnessing White power and White privilege at an all-time high.”  Maher asks, “Higher than a century ago — the year of the Tulsa race massacre?  Higher than the years when the KKK rode unchecked and Jim Crow went unchallenged?  Higher than slavery?  And I mean actual slavery, not ‘Prince doesn’t like his record contract’ slavery.”  Bill Maher drove home his point graphically, “if you think America is more racist now than ever, more sexist than before women could vote and more homophobic than when blow jobs were a felony, you have progressophobia and you should adjust your mask because its covering your eyes.”  Amen.  He also had advice for ignorant young people,  “Because here’s the thing, kids:  There actually was a world before you got here.  We date human events A.D. and B.C., but we need a new marker for Millennials and Gen-Z, ‘B.Y.’ – ‘Before You.’”  Amen again.  People of good will are beginning to fight back.  We have seen parents, disgusted by the attempts of Woke educators to brainwash their children, fighting back against schools and school boards.  That’s a start.  Unless we  stop selling fear, and start seeing truth, we’re through as a nation.