What is the United States of America? A society of elitists vs. the rest? A culture that’s given up on itself? A land of censorship? A nation in which policies and orientation are not merely matters of disagreement but causes of internal and irreconcilable turmoil? It was supposed to be none of these. But today it seems a foreign place, with more in common with the many dystopias of literature than anything the founders of a free nation ever imagined.

Just a single quick scan through the blogs and aggregators of the Internet makes us wonder who and where we are as a nation:

• Many of those who hold political, economic, and cultural power favor the system of China, where a single-party autocracy “led by a reasonably enlightened group of people” who live privileged lives plan and execute a top-down national plan the entire country is expected to follow without objection.
• At the same time, this class believes it is its job to oversee the decline of America.
• Voter fraud and election theft have become normalized nationally rather than confined to big cities run by Democrat political machines.
• Voters have put prosecutors who refuse to prosecute into office all over the country. It seems to be one man’s objective to foul our communities so completely that we’ll eventually go begging for tyrants to save us.
• The Constitution is being tread upon by sort of tyrants we’ll be asking for in the name of keeping us healthy.
• Voters have also put a team in the White House that will be beholden not to the country and Constitution it will swear to protect but to China.
• Most of both the media and academia have become naked propagandists for one party rather than objective dispensers of news and even-handed educators.
• Corporate America is becoming increasingly captured by woke forces and climate zealots, which makes life harder on the middle and lower classes.
• Identity politics and a “social justice” are splitting the nation into warring tribes.
• Our freedoms to speak and worship freely are being diminished almost daily.
• Dissent from hard-left orthodoxy is punished by job loss, ostracization, and on occasion violence.
• Rioters, looters and domestic terrorists are being coddled and even encouraged by the media, academia, and rotten-to-the core politicians.
• As Pat Buchanan wrote last week, “we are two nations, two peoples seemingly separated indefinitely. Can a nation so divided as ours, racially, ideologically, religiously, still do great things together, as did the America of days gone by, to the amazement of the world?”

We’ve been hearing and reading that despite the election’s outcome, Trumpism will continue, and that the American spirit hasn’t fully wilted. We hope this is true, and the down-ballot results seem to confirm it. But it’s undeniable that much of the country is pulling in the other direction. Regarding that, we offer only one suggestion: Resist.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board