We are a civilization in free fall. How did we get here?

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Maureen Steele breaks it down — not with her typical firebombing style, but with a scalpel, examining the psychological, philosophical, sociological, and geopolitical drift that has brought us to this point.

We used to know who we were.

There was a time — not that long ago — when Americans were proud of their country, proud of their families, proud of their flag. We built things. We sacrificed. We believed in hard work, decency, and truth. We knew right from wrong. Our kids stood for the pledge, men tipped their hats, women carried themselves with grace and strength, and the world looked to us as a beacon.

Now? Our cities are in chaos, our institutions are captured, our children are mutilated, and our elections are a punchline. We’re not debating ideas anymore — we’re debating biology. We’re not honoring veterans — we’re funding drag queens. We’re not teaching history — we’re erasing it. And we’re not upholding the Constitution — we’re apologizing for it.

How did we get here?

This isn’t a rant. It’s a reckoning.

The truth is, America didn’t collapse overnight. We’ve been slowly, systematically hollowed out — psychologically, philosophically, spiritually, and politically. What we’re seeing now is just the final act: a civilization in free fall, so dazed by dopamine and disinformation that we don’t even realize the ground is rushing up to meet us.

It started with an idea: that truth is subjective. That feeling trumps fact. That “your truth” and “my truth” matter more than the truth. These ideas, born from the postmodernist movement and pumped through the veins of academia, taught generations of young Americans that objectivity was a tool of oppression and that freedom meant never being offended. This was the birth of fragility — emotional, intellectual, and moral.

Meanwhile, while our minds were being softened, our families were being shattered. The feminist movement, once rooted in basic civil rights, was hijacked by corporate-funded campaigns convincing women that motherhood was servitude and that fulfillment could only be found in a paycheck. The result? Millions of children are raised by strangers, medicated for “behavioral issues,” disconnected from tradition, identity, or structure. Fatherless homes exploded. Divorce became normal. Dinner tables fell silent. And by the 1990s, we had raised an entire generation who never learned how to lose, how to compete, or how to deal with pain — because everyone got a trophy.

Then came the schools.

Civics education — gone. Logic — replaced with critical theory. History — rewritten. Biology — redefined. Instead of teaching young Americans how their government works, we taught them how to dismantle it. Instead of teaching them about the Constitution, we taught them about “privilege.” Instead of the Bill of Rights, we gave them safe spaces, gender ideology, and intersectional victimhood studies. Now, we have a nation full of grown adults who couldn’t pass a basic citizenship test, but can tell you their pronouns and scream about “systems of oppression” while holding an iPhone made by child slaves.

This was no accident. You don’t erase a civilization by force — you do it by making its children forget who they are. You numb the mind, you fracture the family, and then you convince the people that their history, faith, and identity are shameful.

And when they’re ashamed, they’ll accept anything. Even their own destruction.

Which brings us to where we are now: the cultural suicide of the West, dressed up in the language of progress.

We have a generation of Americans who hate their own country. They hate their skin color, their sex, and their past. They believe America is uniquely evil, uniquely racist, and uniquely imperialist, despite having less historical slavery than nearly every other civilization on Earth. They believe borders are bigoted, that masculinity is toxic, and that femininity doesn’t even exist. They demand reparations for sins they didn’t suffer and mutilate their bodies for identities they invented. This is not progress. It’s pathology.

And now, into this moral and cultural void, come ideologies that do know who they are — and what they want.

When New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani declared, “In this city, we have a million Muslims — when you go and vote, remember, it is our opportunity to show that Muslims don’t just belong in New York City, we belong in City Hall too,” it was not just a statement of representation. It was a warning — not because of his religion, but because of his unspoken values.

In a functioning republic, we welcome all faiths under one law — the Constitution. But today, we have elected officials who take their oaths on the Quran while supporting systems fundamentally at odds with the Constitution they swear to uphold. Sharia law, in its full form, is not compatible with the American system. It denies equal rights to women and non-Muslims. It punishes speech, restricts religious freedom, and fuses mosque with state.

This isn’t Islamophobia. This is a fact.

The problem isn’t that Muslims are running for office. The problem is that we no longer require assimilation to our values. We no longer ask, “Do you uphold the Constitution?” We ask, “How many intersectional boxes can you check?” This is why we now have Marxists in Congress and activists on school boards who hate the very nation they claim to serve.

But diversity without unity is chaos. And that’s exactly what we’re living in.

The American people have been so gaslit, so programmed to avoid “offending” anyone, that we now tolerate everything — even ideologies that seek to destroy us. This isn’t tolerance. It’s surrender.

The 20th century’s greatest generation stormed beaches and faced down Nazis. Today’s generation locks themselves indoors for viruses with a 99.7% survival rate and cries microaggression when someone misgenders them. We went from “Ask not what your country can do for you” to “Venmo me for emotional labor.”

We are not living in a republic anymore. We’re living in a padded cell.

And it will not last.

So what’s the solution? It’s not just political — it’s spiritual.

We must return to God. Not performative religion, not spiritual Instagram quotes — but real moral clarity. We must rebuild the family, protect children, honor fathers, and cherish mothers. We must reclaim education — teaching truth, excellence, and logic. We must re-embrace beauty, strength, and virtue. We must elect leaders who love this country more than they fear Twitter. And we must say no — loudly and often — to every force trying to erase us.

Because if we don’t? We’ll get Sharia law, clown world, and Marxism all rolled into one — a society that can’t tell you what a woman is, but demands you obey its every delusion.

We are a civilization in free fall. But it’s not too late to grab the controls.

The only question is: do we have the will to pull up?