Disgruntled mobs. Martial law. A populace under house arrest. A techno-corporate state wielding its power to immobilize huge swaths of the country. A Constitution in tatters.
Between the riots, lockdowns, political theater, and COVID-19 mandates, 2021 was one for the history books.
In our ongoing pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, here were some of the stumbling blocks that kept us fettered:
Riots, martial law and the Deep Stateโs coup.ย A simmering pot of political tensions boiled over on January 6, 2021, when protestersย stormed the Capitolย because the jailer of their choice didnโt get chosen to knock heads for another four years. It took no time at all for the nationโs capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpointsย ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned. The subsequentย military occupation of the nationโs capital by 25,000 troopsย as part of the so-called โpeacefulโ transfer of power from one administration to the next was little more than martial law disguised as national security. Theย January 6 attemptย to storm the Capitol by so-called insurrectionists created the perfect crisis for the Deep Stateโa.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance Stateโto swoop in and take control.
The imperial president.ย All of theย imperial powers amassed by Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bushโto kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountabilityโwere inherited by Joe Biden, the nationโs 46thย president.
The Surveillance State.ย On any given day, the average American going about his daily business was monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. In such aย surveillance ecosystem, weโre all suspects and databits to be tracked, catalogued and targeted. Consider that it took days, if not hours or minutes, for the FBI to begin the process of identifying, tracking and rounding up those suspected of being part of the Capitol riots. Imagine how quickly government agents could target and round up any segment of society they wanted to based on the digital trails and digital footprints we leave behind.
Digital tyranny.ย In response to the events of Jan. 6, the tech giants meted out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship. Suddenly, individuals, including those who had no ties to the Capitol riots, began to experienceย lock outs, suspensions and even deletions of their social media accounts. It signaled aย turning point in the battle for control over digital speech, one that leaves โwe the peopleโ on the losing end of the bargain.
A new war on terror.ย โDomestic terrorism,โ usedย interchangeablyย with โanti-government,โ โextremistโ and โterrorist,โ to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered โdangerous,โ became the new poster child for expanding the governmentโs powers at the expense of civil liberties. As part of his inaugural address, President Biden pledged to wage war on so-calledย political extremism, ushering in what investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald described as โa wave of new domestic police powersย and rhetoric in the name of fighting โterrorismโ that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago.โ The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.
Government violence.ย Theย death penalty may have been abolished in Virginiaย in 2021, but government-sanctioned murder and mayhem continued unabated, with the U.S. government acting as judge, jury and executioner over a populace that had already been pre-judged and found guilty, stripped of their rights, and left to suffer at the hands of government agents trained to respond with the utmost degree of violence. Police particularlyย posed a risk to anyone undergoing a mental health crisis or with special needs whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent.
Culture wars.ย Political correctness gave way to a more insidious form of group think and mob rule which, coupled with government and corporate censors and a cancel culture determined not to offend โcertainโ viewpoints, was all too willing to eradicate views that do not conform. Critical race theory also moved to the forefront of the culture wars.
Home invasions.ย Government agents routinelyย violated the Fourth Amendment at willย under the pretext of public health and safety. This doesnโt even begin to touch on the many ways the government and its corporate partners-in-crime used surveillance technology to invade homes: with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, and other monitoring devices. However, in a rare move, the Supreme Court put its foot down in two casesโCaniglia v. Stromย andย Lange v. Californiaโto prevent police fromย carrying out warrantless home invasions in order to seize lawfully-owned guns under the pretext of their so-called โcommunity caretakingโ dutiesย andย from entering homes without warrants under the guise of being in โhot pursuitโ of someone they suspect may have committed a crime.
Bodily integrity.ย Caught in the crosshairs of a showdown between the rights of the individual and the so-called โemergencyโ state, concerns about COVID-19 mandates and bodily integrity remained part of a much larger debate over the ongoing power struggle between the citizenry and the government over our property โinterestโ in our bodies. This debate over bodily integrity covered broad territory, ranging from abortion and forced vaccinations to biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these were just a few ways in which Americans continued to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.
COVID-19.ย What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) became yet another means by which world governments (including our own) expanded their powers, abused their authority, and further oppressed their constituents. Now that the government has gotten a taste for flexing its police state powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., it remains to be seen how the rights of the individual will hold up in the face of long-term COVID-19 authoritarianism.
Financial tyranny.ย Theย national debtย (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) exceededย $29 trillionย and is growing. That translates to almost $230,000 per taxpayer. The amount this country owes is nowย greater than its gross domestic productย (all the products and services produced in one yearย by labor and property supplied by the citizens). That debt is also growing exponentially: it is expected to beย twice the size of the U.S. economyย by 2051. Meanwhile, the government continued to spend taxpayer money it didnโt have on programs it couldnโt afford; businesses shuttered for lack of customers, resources and employees; and consumers continued to encounterย global supply chain shortagesย (and skyrocketing prices) on everything from computer chips and cars to construction materials.
Global Deep State.ย Owing in large part to the U.S. governmentโs deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations, it became increasingly obvious that we had entered into a new world orderโa global world orderโmade up of international government agencies and corporations. Weโve been inching closer to this global world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which saw governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, shifted this transformation into high gear. Fascism became a global menace.
20 years of crises.ย Every crisisโmanufactured or otherwiseโsince the nationโs early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government to expand its reach and its power at taxpayer expense while limiting our freedoms at every turn: The Great Depression. The World Wars. The 9/11 terror attacks. The COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the governmentโs (mis)management of various states of emergency in the past 20 years from 9/11 to COVID-19 has spawned a massive security-industrial complex the likes of which have never been seen before.
The state of our nation.ย There may have been a new guy in charge this year, but for the most part, nothing changed. The nation remained politically polarized, controlled by forces beyond the purview of the average American, and rapidly moving the nation away from its freedom foundation. Over the past year, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans found themselves repeatedly subjected to egregious civil liberties violations, invasive surveillance, martial law, lockdowns, political correctness, erosions of free speech, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, etc.
In other words, as I make clear in my bookย Battlefield America: The War on the American Peopleย and in its fictional counterpartย The Erik Blair Diaries, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
This article was originally published atย The Rutherford Institute.
- Battlefield America: The Federal War on the “Enemy Within” - October 1, 2025
- How Tyranny Becomes Entrenched: 9/11 and the Police State’s Endless Power Grabs - September 11, 2025
- The Real National Emergency - June 23, 2025