After more than a year since the start of government economic mandates and restrictions, a number of Texans are feeling overwhelmed. A man who helped lead a long struggle for freedom encourages all to keep fighting.
“I was literally a lone voice in the ’90s, standing up and saying, ‘We’re heading in the wrong direction,’” Nigel Farage said when he visited Dallas on May 1. Also called “Mr. Brexit,” he waged 27 years of political warfare that resulted in the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, restoring Britain’s national sovereignty from foreign powers.
It wasn’t easy. He fought long and hard for 27 years and went through many struggles, including a plane crash. The last part would arguably be enough to cause someone to feel overwhelmed with their circumstances.
With vaccine mandates and other areas of government overreach, a number of Texans are starting to feel that way, too.
“I used to say that trying to figure out where to direct efforts toward important issues was like playing whack-a-mole. Things just kept popping up,” Jill Glover told Texas Scorecard. “But now, that comparison seems to minimize the gravity of where we are: being told we have to get an injection or we are not ‘safe,’ kids being taught lies about their biological reality, or the narrative that one skin tone is solely responsible for injustice.” She also mentioned election integrity and redefining the term “family” as other issues. “I feel like we are drowning in lies.”
A citizen, who asked to remain anonymous, expressed similar feelings regarding vaccine mandates. “We are preparing for our kids to be kicked out of school, to lose our jobs, and to lose friends,” they said. “And, of course, somewhat concerned about getting sick.”
Without her Bible, Glover would have given in to hopelessness. “The short-term future looks bleak,” she said. “Yet, we must stand. What else do we do?”
It can be a tall order to stand, especially when you’re unsure of victory.
When he came to Dallas as a guest of the local Turning Point USA chapter, Farage was addressing a “very down” feeling he saw in his conservative American friends after President Trump left office.
Instead of giving up, he said conservative organizations need to work together, and he encouraged the audience with the long struggle of the Brexit movement as an example of what happens when you don’t quit. “It took me a h— of a long time. Why? Because I was attempting the impossible,” Farage said.
He also can sympathize with Texans feeling alone. Though Farage is popular now, it wasn’t always that way. “I was opposed by everybody because human beings, once they’ve got themselves into a comfortable status quo, will always oppose any change whatsoever,” he said. “Whether that is scientific change, whether it’s business change, whether it’s changes of religious thought or political change, the status quo will always try to damn us.”
Texas Scorecard asked Farage how he kept going when things got bleak.
“I have absolutely no idea,” he replied. “I’m either very brave or completely bonkers, or a bit of them both.”
He mentioned he had “sheer bloody-minded determination” and remembered those who had sacrificed in World War II for his freedom, how “all of those [were being] squandered to [a] new out of control bureaucracy.”
“I thought the very least I can do … I haven’t got to pick up a rifle and go off to Northern France, but I will fight the political establishment.”
He added, “When I started doing it and [the establishment] started responding in the way that they did, oddly, I started to quite enjoy it.”
