“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. … Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”

— C.S. Lewis

Everything is not all right. In case you haven’t noticed, the Biden administration is a dumpster fire of seeming incompetence and dementia. I don’t believe that is by accident, and I believe those calling the shots wish to do harm to the United States.

A brief review of the Biden family’s financial dealings in China begs the question of a compromised or even installed presidency. Even the staunchest of corporate media allies have at times brought themselves to question the mental health status of Joe Biden, which has led to the assertion that the lights are on but nobody’s home. And given the projection on display during the Trump administration, any recognition of the current state is met with a dose of the leftist coined “whataboutism.”

Accusations of poor mental health or incompetence are chalked up to retaliation in the current political climate. Surely there is a puppet master pulling these strings? Joe Biden didn’t bother to campaign for office and yet raked in more votes than any candidate in history by a wide margin, after all. This is just one of the primary drivers of skepticism in the legitimacy of the Biden Administration and for the aware conservative escapes rationale.

Currently, the situation at our southern border is a nightmare with record numbers of migrants overwhelming infrastructure and bringing new variants of COVID and cartels smuggling drugs and human capital across. The current administration seems to have no response, and what’s more no concern.

The swift deterioration of conditions and withdrawal in Afghanistan has enabled U.S. persons, weapons and intelligence to fall into the hands of the Taliban, undoing 20 years of stalemate in a month’s time.

The push for COVID vaccines and rejection of natural immunity is driving a record silent superspreader event across the country, while simultaneously labor shortages are exacerbated by forcing vaccination on the very health care workers who received no respite in the eye of the pandemic storm.

Inflation is running rampant as supply shortages are met with an overabundance of stimulus dollars injected into the bank accounts of American taxpayers.

Just 18 months ago we touted energy independence, and now the Biden Administration is begging OPEC to make up for artificial shortfalls in supply that are driving exorbitant fuel prices.

Meanwhile, local school boards, government agencies, and corporations continue to double down on racist and divisive social policy designed to drive a wedge down the spine of society.

This is not business as usual.

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame would often describe the Donald Trump leadership style in terms of the Big First Demand. He would describe a negotiating tactic in which Trump would throw out extreme first demands so that he could set the margins of the conversation and bring participants back to a happy middle ground. The Biden administration and more specifically the American left has taken a piece of this playbook and deployed a familiar but very different rhetorical strategy called the Motte and Bailey.

In the Motte and Bailey, extreme first demands are thrown out until pushback is received, at which time they retreat to a more sane middle ground. The difference between this and the Big First Demand strategy of Donald Trump is that the big first demand is actually the goal of Motte and Bailey. The retreat is only temporary to allow scrutiny to die down before returning to an extreme position, such as a belief in universal white supremacy.

When the American left says that all white people are racist, it’s not so they can get us to agree that some white people are racist. Their extreme assertions call for a radical revolution, and conservatives would do well to take them seriously. When the Biden administration fails to act in the face of an overwhelming crisis, it is not by accident. It is setting the stage for a radical revolution.

Conservatives have a tendency to play a mental game where they rationalize with themselves that the public is going to have an epiphany and that the latest display of ineptitude or malfeasance will be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back and wakes up the herd. They overestimate the herd.

There is a concept in psychology called normalcy bias that explains why people have a tendency to downplay serious threats like natural disasters and creates a failure to act in the face of crisis. Those under the spell of normalcy bias will ignore the severity of a situation and justify to themselves that their circumstances are just another in a series of life challenges that will pass. Those who attempt to sound the alarm in the face of these circumstances are merely overreacting. The inaction that results from normalcy bias leads to poor outcomes as appropriate preparation measures are ignored and responses are delayed. The incremental nature of our deteriorating circumstances is a potent but detrimental combination when paired with normalcy bias.

In all of this insanity, where is the Republican Party? There seem to be two possible responses: Republicans either hope to stay silent and allow for the Biden administration to self implode by 2022, or they are complicit in allowing the rapid decline of the United States. There really is no middle ground. Famed Nixon economist Herbert Stein, the father of actor Ben Stein, theorized that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. This has come to be known as Stein’s Law. The question remains, which will cease first — the absurdities of the Biden administration, or the United States itself?

The time for normalcy bias has passed.

Brian Parsons has been a resident of Pocatello for the past seven years. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in digital media from the University of Georgia and a Master of Science degree in information systems from the University of Utah. He’s a digital marketing consultant, a proud husband and father, and an unabashed paleoconservative. You can follow him on his blog at WithdrawConsent.org.