No, I don’t think it is yet past tense even though the current occupant of the WH, the Leftists, and seemingly a significant portion of the GOP would wish it so. That is the lament and challenge I expressed way back in post #144.
Combat forces on America’s streets and accepted as a necessity is not an indicator that we are an exceptional nation of liberty-loving people.
We have become either one of two things, or a combination of them:
We are now as Franklin warned, a “people become more corrupt and vicious- that they have more need of masters” - in which case acceptance of a Police State negates the claim we are still an exception in the world because society itself has become wicked.
Or,
We have already devolved into the same oppressive state that the rest of the world has known, and we simply refuse to acknowledge it while growing comfortable with living under it.
Armed combat troops accepted as local law enforcement is not evidence of an exceptional people who love liberty. It is evidence we are become no different than the rest of the world and are willful subjects to the state rather than sovereign individuals.