October 10 is the day patriots and humanitarians celebrate the Bolivian Army’s execution of Che Guevara. People who find themselves disappointed with the year 2020 can console themselves with this thought, that Argentinian psycho wasn’t around to kill anyone this year or any other year. It’s always good to have a thing to celebrate.

For readers more interested in boobs than butchers, here’s a sample from California:

Office of the Governor of California@CAgovernor

Going out to eat with members of your household this weekend? Don’t forget to keep your mask on in between bites.

Do your part to keep those around you healthy. #SlowtheSpread, I’ll say no more and leave it to my readers to supply appropriate comments.

Some good news from Maine? Susan Collins and Sara Gideon will not be running for the United States Senate next year. We will not hear any more about Sara Gideon’s ethical scandals, Susan Collins’s subservience to Donald Trump, Sara’s urgent desire to tax your heating oil, Susan’s dedication to enriching the super-rich and the wicked corporations. I see very little TV news that’s not available through the Internet and rarely listen to the radio, but mass mailings and e-mail appeals come my way in torrents. This puts me in mind of a passage in Dr. Goebbels’ Diaries where he complains about the difficulty he had with his chief subordinate. The man was wasting time trying to make Nazi propaganda more intelligent and persuasive while the doctor tried to drill it into his head that repetition, repetition, repetition was the key to persuasion, no sophistication. Goebbels was very successful as the Third Reich’s National Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

I’m not saying the GOP and Democratic Party propagandists are Nazis. I’m saying only that the same rules of persuasion apply. If this campaign lasted until October 2021 it would be repeating the same tiresome babble as we have been enduring this year.

Twenty-twenty’s elections may turn out to be decisive or it may turn out to be a familiar bore. It will be a while before we know if this year will simply be the continuation of a long drawn out process. According to Thomas Jefferson “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” President Reagan restated this dictum in his farewell address: “There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.” Jefferson’s quote is dated May 27, 1788. It seems appropriate that he made it (to another Virginian revolutionary war veteran) in Paris. From that point to the present France has undergone 10 constitutional revolutions. The heads of government have changed and changed again. The government continued to grow.

It’s been 132 years since “Jefferson’s Law” was formulated. Government has nowhere been reduced except by collapse (e.g. Third Reich, USSR) never by deliberate choice of the people.

This year the Republicans want to re-elect the Trump Tower Gargoyle and keep their Senate majority. The Democrats want Trump gone, the Senate in their hands and their House majority expanded. With all that done they can pack the United States Supreme Court with Justices who won’t impede further increases in governmental power.

This may open the way to statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia (“Columbia” I assume will no longer be used). More, there will be no longer be an obstacle to open borders, so new immigrants, newly enfranchised, can be added to the Democratic voting bloc. This assumes the Left can persuade them that the Democratic Party is an inclusive organization dedicated to protecting them from the white supremacist Republican Party.

This is not a communist plot. It’s a process. There’s considerable historical evidence to suggest that servility and dependence is the natural condition of the human race. And there’s a good deal of reason to believe that American exceptionalism is an anomaly already fading away.

John Frary of Farmington, the GOP candidate for U.S. Congress in 2008, is a retired history professor, an emeritus Board Member of Maine Taxpayers United, a Maine Citizen’s Coalition Board member, and publisher of FraryHomeCompanion.com. He can be reached at jfrary8070@aol.com.