In Shakespeare's Richard III, the Duke of Gloucester won a military campaign, later he became Richard III and brought tyranny and calamity to his opponents and to the realm. So, too, the lamentable re-election of Barack Hussein Obama to a second term as president of the USA ushered in an almost irrevocable death blow to America's love of freedom and ability to overcome tyranny at home and abroad.

Obama's re-election brought upon us a desolating period for our beloved America. It was a tragedy of grievous proportions for this country and for the few remaining allies we had left in the world. Obama stirred up class warfare and social division in America – a grim genie which, then released, we feared would never again return to its mythical lamp.

I never felt comfortable with the misplaced euphoria expressed by many in the conservative ranks prior to Obama's re-election victory. I feared three main reasons why Obama and the ever-left-leaning Democratic Party would defeat us.

The first was the mainstream fake media, which allied itself with Obama and smothered all news of all the excesses of his regime, thus leaving a huge part of the population in the dark about both what happened at Benghazi and the outrageous gun-running operation into Mexico called Fast and Furious.

The other reason for the re-election of Obama was the massive increase in food stamps and entitlements, thus deliberately creating near 47% of the population reliant upon the woke government. They would hardly vote against a regime granting them such valuable freebies, and they most certainly would care naught for the future so long as the largesse kept flowing.

But above all else, there had been a pernicious and perhaps fatal falling away from Judeo-Christian values and civilization in America. Those of us who remained steadfast in our belief in the Bible and in the United States Constitution, and who persisted in the belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, were increasingly mocked.

I feared the worst for this great country.

To paraphrase Dennis Prager, the conservative talk show host, "the difference between the passengers on the Titanic and the American voters was that the passengers on the Titanic didn't vote to hit the iceberg!"

I am reminded of the outline of a civilization's rise and fall given by the 18th-century Scottish writer, Professor Alexander Tyler. He wrote the following about a nation's rise and what would precipitate its eventual fall:

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence.

• From bondage to spiritual faith;

• From spiritual faith to great courage;

• From courage to liberty;

• From liberty to abundance;

• From abundance to complacency;

• From complacency to apathy;

• From apathy to dependence;

• From dependency back into bondage.

He went on to argue that:

A democracy is always temporary in nature: it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority will always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.

Are we at that moment in history as we marvel at what Donald Trump, in his extraordinary second term as President, has and is achieving. But the infamous 47% of the population indicates that almost half of the American population still prefers to abandon the time-honored American spirit of rugged individualism and hard work, preferring to suck from the government teat and become an army of takers, not creators. They are called Democrats.

The great American dynamo, the envy of the world, which was created by individuals willing to risk all in a glorious attempt to bring personal wealth to themselves and their families – and, in doing so, create high employment – was faltering. Its cogs and wheels were coming apart.

The American enterprise system, so displayed now by President Trump, was earlier fast being dismantled by both the Obama and Biden regimes. Higher and higher taxes kept coming – and with them, a flight from all innovation and production, along with higher and higher unemployment.

With so many in our country then the product of the failing public school system and what Michael Savage, the conservative talk show host, famously called "the colleges of lower learning," the dumbed down electorate had little knowledge of the Constitution or what the founding fathers so courageously instituted in this nation of ours.

They were so easily manipulated by socialist and Marxist doctrines and had become, as Lenin once called them, "useful idiots."

I had feared that the insidious siren song of totalitarian and all-encompassing central government was upon us in ways we could not avoid. And that was an epic tragedy for these blessed United States of America.

Then Trump won the presidency and in this sixth month of his term, America is coming alive again, prosperity is growing exponentially and the nation is once again being respected and no longer ridiculed.

Let us hope that the future will echo only the first four stanzas of Professor Alexander Tyler's epic opinion on the rise of a civilization:

• From bondage to spiritual faith;

• From spiritual faith to great courage;

• From courage to liberty;

• From liberty to abundance.

Victor Sharpe is a prolific writer, and the author of seven published books.