Afterword

Since Gerald Flurry originally wrote this booklet in 2001, many of the problems he addressed have gotten worse. Statistics regarding alcohol and drug abuse are far higher. Pornography use has increased and become far more socially acceptable. And the 2000 election crisis foreshadowed far more acute political division in the United States.

Here are some factual updates the Trumpet staff has compiled, with quotations from Mr. Flurry followed by more recent statistics.

Page 2: Alcohol abuse comes with a staggering price tag, socially and economically. It costs an estimated $2 billion each year to cover health and welfare services provided to alcoholics and their families in the U.S. Include their decreased productivity at work, and some estimate the problem costs America $7 to $10 billion.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcohol abuse costs an estimated $28 billion in health care, $13 billion in car accidents, $25 billion in crime. An additional $179 billion is lost in workplace productivity. This is a staggering $249 billion drain on the U.S. economy every year, more than 20 times the estimated average of 22 years ago.

Page 3: America leads the world in demand for mind-damaging, escapist drugs. Over 77 million Americans have sniffed, smoked, swallowed or injected themselves with illegal drugs; 22 million identify themselves as regular users. Among youth ages 12 to 17, a staggering 10.9 percent are regular drug users!

The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports that half of Americans age 12 and older have used illegal drugs at least once. That’s more than 138 million people—nearly twice as many as in 2001. In 2020, 37.3 million Americans were considered current illegal drug users. Of teenagers, 46.6 percent have tried illegal drugs by the time they reach 12th grade.

Meanwhile, the opioid crisis is killing record numbers of people and littering American cities with drugged-out zombies. Some 9.5 million Americans 12 and older (or 3.4 percent) misuse opioids at least once every year; the vast majority of these use prescription pain relievers. Since 1999, overdose deaths from opioids have increased 500 percent among 15-to-24-year-olds. Accidental drug overdose is a leading cause of death among those under age 45. In 2000, over 70,000 drug overdose deaths were reported, of which 67.8 percent were opioid related.

In 2017, the cost of drug abuse was over $270 billion. The U.S. government budgeted $35 billion for drug control; yet some states have legalized drug use, even providing users with drugs and paraphernalia. Marijuana use is illegal under federal law, yet 15 states have legalized its “recreational” use. So we can expect this problem to continue to grow.

Page 5: Social workers and ministers often discuss a rapidly growing problem. Many people (especially the young) tell these professionals that they are hooked on Internet sex and can’t break the habit. They have become addicted and have lost control.

Psychology Today reports that more than 90 percent of young men today admit to regularly watching porn videos. The world’s largest porn site has over 90 billion videos, which are viewed by more than 64 million users daily. A 2021 survey by Common Sense Media found that 73 percent of teenagers ages 13 to 17 have watched porn online. More than half said they first saw porn by age 13; 15 percent by age 10.

Page 14: This is where most of our leaders are blind. They like an “evolving Constitution,” which places more trust in human reasoning than law. It is a dangerous recipe for disaster. All close elections of the future are apt to be contested. The chaos will spiral out of control unless we make radical changes.

True to this forecast, U.S. elections have been contested routinely since the 2000 election. The 2016 election results giving the presidency to Donald Trump have been openly denied by Democrats for years. In 2020, the election was actually stolen from President Trump by various lawless means. Nearly 70 percent of Republicans and a growing number of Democrats believe the election was stolen. Elections for Senate, the House of Representatives and at the state and local levels have also been contested. Today, the American public’s trust in the election system is at a record low, with 58 percent “only a little” or “not at all” confident that elections reflect the people’s will.

Page 16: The late Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press, said the 2000 election was “the worst political war” he had ever seen. The division between parties was terribly bitter. But the worst is still to come.

Party divisions have grown demonstrably worse. After the 2022 midterm elections, Congress was divided: The Senate was split down the middle with 51 Democrats to 49 Republicans; but Republicans won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives with 222 to 213. Across the states, the division continued with governorships divided 24 to 26 between Democrats and Republicans. The division is also largely between rural and city dwellers. Despite the nearly equal division between parties across the nation, many Republicans have turned out to be ideologically allied with Democrats and unwilling to take truly conservative action. Many American conservatives feel disenfranchised and betrayed by Republican leaders.

Page 36: It took a civil war to overturn that decision. That gives you some idea of how hard it is to change what judges do! Today judges used that same reasoning—“substantive due process”—to say that abortion is constitutional. Mr. Bork believed that reasoning to be a dangerous mistake, and so do I.

In 2021, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, putting the decision back in the state’s control.

Page 38: The media is a big part of the liberal culture—about 80 percent of them. The destruction of our constitutional republic would not be possible without their support. All too often they are deceived, and in turn they have the power to deceive our citizens.

This trend has certainly intensified: Today, nearly all mainstream media has become “liberal,” and a growing majority of it would be better characterized as leftist. This includes social media, which has come to have significant power to shape public opinion, and has been proved to be strongly controlled by federal authorities. The role of these media outlets in supporting unconstitutional government measures has been robust in recent years, promoting stories that support their agenda and ignoring or actively suppressing stories that contradict it. Examples include scaremongering coverage of the covid-19 pandemic featuring incessant and inflated death totals, aggressive promotion of untested vaccines and vaccine boosters, and demonization of anyone who voiced contrary views. Another powerful example was the way politicians and media characterized the January 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol as an insurrection that threatened the nation’s democracy more than 9/11 or Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

In 2021, Elon Musk purchased social media site Twitter (since renamed X) in an effort to counter this one-sided messaging. Within months, he released “the Twitter Files,” exposing profound government interference in mass media to push leftist views and to target those who contradict them. (For more on this subject, request our free book America Under Attack.)

American society has been transformed. The lawlessness in our society is far more advanced than when this booklet was first written in 2001. The only path to true freedom from the terrible curses afflicting our nation is to turn to God and obey His perfect law.