So, that man in “Freedom of Speech,” the famous Norman Rockwell painting of an America exercising one of the liberals’ least favorite rights, stands up in 2016 to say his peace and … it will not end well. You see, to liberals, what our guy has to say isn’t important – what’s important to liberals is to shut him up. It’s to punch down upon him with cheap mockery so he’s beaten into submission. It’s to use shame to silence him and every other irredeemable deplorable in order to consolidate their progressive death grip upon America’s throat.

This will not end well.

See, a republic with democratic features like the United States can’t function without the possibility of discussion. It needs citizens to have the ability to rationally debate the issues, to be heard so that they can perceive the process as fair and one where they are equal participants. But that’s exactly what liberals, with tactics like political correctness, Jon Stewarty snark, and the outright lies of their vinyl-body-suited mainstream media chorus, seek to prevent. Discussion can only exist where customs and norms demand that all voices be heard, that the points of the opposition are at least characterized as something resembling what they are, and that no one is excluded from participation by the fact that they possess views of which the majority – or a powerful minority – disapproves. But instead of that, today we have a liberal elite that gleefully bludgeons people with opposing views into silence, and then pats itself on its collective back for its enlightenment.

This will not end well.

Take our guy in the painting. He stands and says, “Well, I don’t know about this idea of letting men into ladies rooms with little girls.” And, of course, the freakshow left doesn’t address the very real problems that come with allowing grown men into restrooms with little girls. Facts merely enrage them. So there won’t be any discussion of the problem of weirdos and perverts taking advantage of this idiotic liberal nonsense that this normal guy – like any normal person – would worry about. No, instead he’ll get berated by some screaming genderfreak activist with a half-shaved head and looming daddy issues bellowing “Hate criminal!” and demanding our guy be fired from his job down at the plant for felony wrongthinking.

Then maybe whoever that loser is who replaced Jon Stewart, that pioneer of E-Z snark masquerading as comedy, will get a clip of our guy speaking and play it on his show. There’s nothing funnier than a rustic presuming to speak out as if his views matter! Then the host will make a funny face – I mean, how can anyone be so insane and stupid to think that maybe having grown men lurking around little girls as they use the potty could go wrong? – and that goofy smirk will cue the skinny-jeaned audience to go into paroxysms of laughter. Not laughter because it’s funny or clever, mind you, but laughter that demonstrates social solidarity among the kind of smug people who drink pretentious, awful craft beers and think the “P” in “IPA” stands for “pumpkin spice.”

Maybe John Oliver will do a 10 minute rant about him and how Jesus probably told him that dudes shouldn’t be alone with little girls in toilets. Maybe Samantha Bee will scrunch up her tired, sour apple doll face and point out how this guy probably didn’t even go to Yale and where did he get that jacket anyway, at Wal-Mart?

And maybe our guy will sit down and hold his tongue. And then maybe he’ll remember how he went to a Tea Party to politely register his dissent and how he was dumped on for daring to try and be heard. Then maybe he’ll vote for Donald Trump because maybe if he’s a little louder and a little ruder then perhaps someone will listen to him about not turning his little girl’s bathroom into a social experiment, about the illegal aliens like the one who ran into his truck and didn’t have insurance, and about the rumor going around that his job down at the plant may be moving to Juarez next year.

But then, those concerns apparently aren’t worthy of attention. The news covers, day in and day out, some overeating foreigner and drug lord baby mama who Donald Trump was mean to a couple decades ago, but no reporter ever asks our guy about his problems. And they don’t merely ignore him. They come after him, jamming things down his throat like gender neutral bathrooms and murderous Muslim refugees and Wall Street scams that mean he gets about .001% interest on that money he saved just like the experts told him to. And he’s expected to just take it.

This will not end well.

Our guy was in Fallujah as a Marine, and when he wakes up shivering and calls the VA for help no one answers. President Faily McWorsethancarter hasn’t had time to fix that travesty in eight years, yet he somehow found plenty of time to party at the White House with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Leonardo has a jet and the president’s private email. Our guy has an F-150 with a smashed-in quarter panel and a busy signal. When he dares complain, they call him stupid, racist, and obsolete. He’s struggling to pay his mortgage yet they call him “privileged” because his great-great-great-great-great grandfather came from Glasgow. And he takes it, for now.

But this will not end well.

When the combined weight of the D.C. establishment and the media and Hollywood defeats Donald Trump, progressives face a decision point. They can change their ways and return America’s culture to how it was, where everyone gets a chance to participate, or they can double down on the new rules of mockery and exclusion to consolidate their own power.

But they are likely too foolish to realize the danger to our country as we know it, too blindly confident that they can play by one set of rules while forcing everyone else to play by another. Instead of seeking unity, they will do the opposite – more exclusion, more ostracism from self-determination for the people they consider unworthy. Despite a narrow win, they will claim a massive victory over people like our guy, a mandate to complete the subjugation of Americans like him. After all, he’s deplorable. He’s irredeemable. He’s unworthy of respect. His interests are unworthy of representation. The elite will heave a sigh of relief that the threat has passed, that with Felonia von Pantsuit in the Oval Office our guy and those like him can be safely ignored.

But this will not end well.

Our guy and millions upon millions of others will get angry. Not merely miffed as with the Tea Party, not a bit perturbed as with Trump. Angry. Coldly furious not only that they have been exiled from their own republic but because they have been relentlessly insulted, abused, humiliated – and forced to pay for it all.

Because the elite will have made it clear that the system really is rigged against those outside their caste, and that there is no way for people like our guy to be heard merely by trying to be part of the existing political system. And instead of meekly submitting, millions and millions of people may begin to look to step outside of the system as currently constituted.

And this will not end well.