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Welcome to The Blankenberg Blog
Recent polls show that trust in government is at a near all-time low. I have never been one who has placed a lot of trust in the government. So, in some ways, it’s satisfying that the public has come around to my perspective. However, it’s not just trusting in government that has suffered in recent years. Trust in our institutions in general has also plummeted. This is not a good thing.
-Pew Research Center 06-2022
The way our institutions handled COVID-19 certainly played a large role in the dwindling level of trust across society. During the pandemic, State governments ordered small businesses to close and put millions of people out of work, while allowing giant corporations like Costco, Amazon, and Walmart to operate freely. The Governors of New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and other states sent elderly Covid- 19 patients back to their nursing homes where they infected and killed tens of thousands of people. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten colluded with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to unnecessarily keep the schools closed. State governments also ordered churches to close, and pastors readily complied, abandoning their flocks in their time of need. During the entire time, the government, media, social media, pharmaceutical companies, and the medical establishment lied about everything from the efficacy and safety of the vaccines to the effectiveness of treatments like Ivermectin.
The pandemic also helped distill the notion that large corporations care more about profits in China than they do about Americans. Over the last two decades, American corporations moved over 5 million manufacturing jobs to China. During the last two years, we learned that 95% of our antibiotics and almost all our textiles, including “personal protective equipment” are manufactured in China. Much of our consumer electronics, computer equipment, machine tools, and more are also built outside of America in China and other countries.
-Industry Week 23-2020
During the 2012 Presidential debate, Barack Obama told us to forget about manufacturing. He said that we need to focus on the jobs of the future. Fine, but American companies have also moved millions of technology jobs to India and other countries, which has stagnated incomes in the technology sector and caused many American students to shy away from computer science and other STEM degrees in college.
Another problem that has fed mistrust across America is our increasingly corrupt election system. In 2020, several swing states used the Covid pandemic as an excuse to change their voting laws illegally and unconstitutionally. Only Congress and State Legislatures can change voting laws. Yet in 2020, governors, judges, and even county clerks made enormous changes to how we vote. They changed laws in a manner that made it easier for voter fraud to occur. Whether massive fraud did occur is open for debate. But there isn’t any question that changes like the mass mailing of ballots, ballot harvesting by political operatives, and reduced signature verification requirements opened the system up for abuse like never before. Five of the states that made these changes swung from Donald Trump in 2016 to Joe Biden in 2020.
In North Carolina, the will of the voters was overruled by the Democrat majority on the State Supreme Court when they invalidated voter id requirements that North Carolinians passed with a 55% majority. Although North Carolina seems to fare better than many other states when it comes to election integrity, we have had our issues too. In 2020, 19 aliens were charged with illegally voting in Greensboro. Also in 2020, the Immigration Reform Institute uncovered evidence of illegal aliens voting in Mecklenburg County going back to 2012. The Heritage Foundation has also reported numerous cases of illegal voting and other election fraud in North Carolina dating as far back as 2003.
The crisis at the border has also eroded trust in the government. 2.4 million illegal aliens have made their way into the country since President Biden assumed office. Some of the illegal aliens are smuggling Fentanyl and other drugs which killed over 110,000 Americans last year. Others have smuggled women and children being sold into sex slavery. Despite evidence to the contrary, members of the Biden administration keep repeating the lie that the “border is secure”. Much of the national news media refuses to report the truth.
In many areas of the country, the government schools have become agencies of neo-Marxist indoctrination instead of education. America’s wealth has always rested on our technical prowess. The failure of the government school system was already hurting our competitiveness prior to the woke curriculum. We can’t compete with China and India with an innumerate and scientifically illiterate population.
Finally, the government and many private institutions are allowing men, who have a serious mental illness called gender dysmorphia into women’s restrooms, women’s sports, women’s beauty pageants, and even children’s entertainment. We are told that these are real women and that it’s discriminatory to state otherwise.
Given everything that has been foisted on us over the last several years, it shouldn’t be surprising that people are fed up. I’m afraid that it is going to get worse before we can even begin to make it better.
Fixing the nation’s problems and restoring trust will be a difficult challenge. It can’t be done overnight. It will take a herculean effort. But we must try if America is to survive as a cohesive, stable country. In future articles, I’ll discuss how we can overcome these issues and restore trust in our institutions.
About Eric Blankenburg
Eric is a husband, father of four, technology guy, U.S. Air Force veteran, and left coast refugee. He is a lifelong conservative and “disgruntled” Republican, who has sought ways to help the GOP live up to its values. When Eric is not working or spending time with his family, he likes to write about a variety of current issues. Eric is a regular writer for Liberty First Grassroots (LFG).
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