Summers end. Fall approaches.

As summer draws to an end the days get shorter. Nights are cool and all of the windows are open. The tourists are leaving and soon it will again be possible to hit eighteen holes without following a painfully slow foursome for five hours.

I have watched the bald-faced hornets for months now, as they built an impressive hive on the side of the house, and they are putting the final touches on it. In a month or so they’ll have finished their job, the frosts will come, and all but the queen and a few future queens will die. The queens will find some snug place to winter and begin the whole process again in the spring. Maybe, when the colony is empty and before it is torn apart by birds looking for scraps, I’ll be able to delicately peel it off of the wall, but I am not optimistic. They built it around the light fixture and it looks pretty solid. The colony is still roiling, so I don’t get very close. Big things must be happening in the hornet world. I like all of these things.

But this is also an important election year, so things are roiling among the humans, too. It is going to get scary, far scarier than the hornet’s nest, in the next two months. Here’s what is coming.

The polls will start to lean Democrat and we will all be told that the huge Red Wave we saw building in the spring is an impossible pipe dream. This isn’t the least bit true, of course, but this is what we will be told. We aren’t in a recession and people don’t actually mind paying the prices for gas and groceries. No one is really worried about crime and war, inflation and open borders. Their primary concerns are the same as those of the Democratic Party—systemic racism, global warming, gender politics, pronouns, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

To keep this narrative ball in the air, social media will ramp up their censorship of anything that reflects badly on the current administration. Pointing out the many ongoing failures, from Afghanistan to the CDC to economic policies will result in more bans, locked accounts, and warning tags. Telling the truth about the myriad failures of this Democrat-run government will be called “spreading misinformation”. This is how propaganda is done. It is how it has always been done. Be prepared for it and know it when you see it.

Here’s the kicker, though, and what we must keep in mind: The Democrats can not run on reality. In reality, everything they have touched has turned to muck. They have to rely on Plan B: Trump is a poopy-head and The-Walls-Are-Closing-In.

Why else the incredibly ham-fisted raid on Mar-a-Lago? Why else the Jan 6th star chamber?

So expect it. Be ready, because it is coming as surely as the frost that will drive the hornet queens into snugly solitude. The DoJ will not release the affidavit for the open-ended warrant to search everywhere and everything in the Trump home. Not in any meaningful form, though we may see some scrap of paper so heavily redacted it resembles a word puzzle more than it does an argument. While the DoJ stonewalls there, they will also be criminally leaking to the friendly press. Some of what they leak might be true, but by and large it will be of the Russian collusion delusion variety—Nuclear secrets! Bombshell! Russian stooge! Subpoenas will fly like confetti and the Jan 6th Committee will put Tail-Gunner Joe’s record to shame and pressure individuals into flipping with threats of indictments and crushing legal bills. All of this is coming in the next few weeks.

The left is going to do everything possible to hang on to power. No holds are barred. Legal and illegal are moot. Fairness is not a consideration. This is 100% the ends-justify-the-means territory, and nothing, no lie, no leak, no action is beyond the pale. It’s a dangerous place to bring the country, but the left, having convinced themselves that everyone who disagrees is a racist, homophobic, uneducated, backwoods inbred bigot, have their back against the wall. To the left, this feels like a last stand and if they have to burn the country to save it? It’s a deal they will make.

The road ahead is simple, however. Reality does not change with the narrative and if we all continue to believe what we actually see—nothing the progressives have done has made anything better for anyone—and vote according to what we see and feel as opposed to what we are told, the ship can be righted.

The GOP has to do just a few things to make this happen. Keep the focus on where we were on January 20, 2021 and where we are now. Refuse to take the bait and make November about the horrific treatment of Trump or abortion. And ask the obvious question: What have they actually improved?

It’s going to get weird out there. Keep your chin up.

Peace.