So the elections are over, and it seems that President Obama has won re-election for a second term. I'm sure the government of Russia is delighted - not to mention the governments of Iran, Egypt, China, Venezuela, and any other country that wants to get away with anything it can, and believes (probably correctly) that President Obama will do little or nothing to stop them. Israel, on the other hand, now has little reason for restraint in dealing with Iran, since they know for sure they don't have a friend in the White House and can no longer rely on US support.
I've said on at least two occasions this year that it was irrelevant who would be elected President, as the winner of the election would find himself hamstrung by economic reality. That remains true, IMHO. Unfortunately, President Obama has shown over the past four years that he's more than capable of ignoring economic reality. He's well on the way to bankrupting this country, and I suspect that by the end of his second term, that bankruptcy will have moved from threat to reality. It's a grim prospect.
The most difficult thing for me to grasp is the collapse of honesty, integrity and moral courage in this country. Look at it this way.
- In 1972 Watergate brought down President Nixon. Public outrage at his behavior and subsequent dishonesty was so great that he had no choice but to resign. Our politicians were still held to at least some standards of honesty and integrity.
- In 1998 Zippergate damaged, but did not destroy President Clinton. He lied under oath about a sexual relationship, and was impeached (not for the relationship, please note, but for perjury). He survived a Senate trial, which disgusted me at the time because his guilt (on the charge of perjury) was so clear as to be impossible to deny; yet he was allowed to get away with this. Instead of declaring that such mendacity was unacceptable in a President (any President), his supporters made flippant excuses that everyone was dishonest in sexual matters. It was then I began to have serious doubts about the moral foundations of this nation.
- Now President Obama, a man who's lied in his teeth about so many issues that his lack of integrity is beyond question - and who's just sat back and tolerated the murder of four Americans at the US consulate in Benghazi, then lied about their deaths to cover up his own fecklessness - has been re-elected to office. His dishonesty and calculated indifference didn't appear to cost him much, if any, support at the polls.
What does President Obama's re-election say about those who voted for him? I can only conclude that they no longer care about honesty, integrity and moral courage. They care more about electing someone who'll make them feel good, who'll soothe them with political platitudes and let them ignore reality, who'll continue to hand out benefits we can't afford at no cost to them.
Perhaps Mitt Romney's remark about 'the 47%' was right; only by now it's probably more than 50%. If that's the case . . . if more than half the US electorate feels that way . . . then this republic no longer has a future in its present form. It will continue to exist, but as something very different to what our founding fathers intended, and what the Constitution was created to preserve and protect. It will no longer be America as we know it.
Mark Steyn said a few months ago: "This election represents the last exit ramp before the death spiral". I hope he was wrong . . . but I fear he was all too correct, and that for all of us, the downward slope, relatively gentle until now, will rapidly become an ever-steepening, irreversible slide into political, social and economic collapse.
America couldn't have chosen a more suitable President to preside over that process.
*Sigh*
Peter
It's difficult not to feel despair for our once-great country the morning after the election. Romney's infamous 47% have now combined with the hippy losers of the 1960s to accelerate the decline of America from all our founders and forefathers envisioned for us. Moral, ethical, and fiscal soundness no longer matter to the majority. This makes me profoundly sad for the state of our country, and indeed, the world. No more will America be the bright beacon of liberty and opportunity. My gut reaction now is to turn inward and focus on the security of my much-loved family. The United States can look out for itself.
ReplyDeleteLeatherneck
This nation died already, it's just that we're now watching the blip on the screen when the heart muscle twitches. It died December 31, 2011 when "the president" signed an illegal, immoral and unconstitutional decree "allowing" him to murder at will. I'm not surprised that he was re-elected.
ReplyDeleteBut guess what, folks? God is in His throne. This nation is to be judged; Christians are to not be judged, but sifted as wheat, in order to remove the tares and keep the good.
B.O. will be in kontrol of this nation's fortunes (or lack thereof) when the ship cracks in half suddenly and goes down in a matter of minutes.
Then the nation will divide up much as the Soviet Union did.
It is as mathematically inevitable as the Titanic sinking - and we as a nation have long gone past the breaching and overflowing of 4 bulkhead compartments which spelled the doom of that 'great' ship on its maiden voyage.
It was not this election that was the last exit ramp before the death spiral. It was, in fact, 2008.
Pastor Glenn
Thank you for putting into words how I feel this morning.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was about twelve years old I went sledding with a friend. I had never been to that part of the rec area before and I went down a hill and started to slow down before it went down a steep 70 foot grade covered with trees. I remember the feeling last night and this morning as the same as I felt then. My stomach dropped out and my thought was "If I hold on hard enough I'll get through this". The truth is that the United States doesn't really exist anymore. I can't hold on tight enough to the sled, I have to let go now.
ReplyDeleteTo say that I'm shocked about the outcome is about as big an understatement as one can make....
ReplyDeleteBut then I remember that this is the same country that thinks Honey Boo Boo and Jersey Shore is quality entertainment....
And then I'm still depressed.
Many bloggers I read refer to "the place Great Britain used to be"... I guess we're now living in "the place the United States of America used to be."
As goes California, so goes the country. I don't remember who said it first, but - here we are.
ReplyDeleteFamily first, whatever be its make-up, regardless of anything, family protects and nurtures its own.
The polarization of the citizenry is complete.
I wonder how long the infrastructure will last? It doesn't fit into entitlements.
After all these years of working for the common good, I'm done. Now it is looking out for me and mine, period.
ReplyDeleteSo sad. I'm mostly saddened to think about the broken country that my 6 and 8 year old boys will have to endure.
ReplyDeleteThe re-election speaks volumes about the majority of our country. My guess is that God has "given them over to their depravity" and the worst is yet to come. Stay strong and be the light to this dark world!!!!!
God did not die. We died!
ReplyDeleteLet's see: Which president converted budget surpluses into deficits? Which president waged two wars on 100% deficit spending? Which president pushed a major expansion of Medicare? Which president sat on his hands as the banks engaged in ever more risky behavior?
ReplyDelete(Hint: President #44)
But somehow, Republicans are blind to all that.
But I respectfully submit that the American people are not that blind.
I submit that enough people in this country chose not to go back to the failed economic and budgetary policies of 2001-2009.
I submit that any of the other GOP candidates this time around would have been shellacked to the point of the election having basically been over in August.
Romney tried. And the Mitt Romney of 2004, when he was the governor of Massachusetts might have won. But the GOP made him morph into "Mister Severe Conservative", he did so willingly, and he got his kiester handed to him on a platter.
I hear a lot of conservatives blaming the American people for this loss. They ought to go look a bit in the mirror.
@Comrade Misfit: I'm sorry, but you don't get it. I didn't blame any of those policies for the situation - indeed, I'm of the opinion that the American people have the right to elect whatever government they want. If the set of policies they have aren't to their taste, they can replace the politicians who created them with those who (they think) will do a better job. If others disagree, well, that's democracy.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with this election is the quality of the individuals concerned. I said before that I didn't think Romney would be much good as President, and I still believe that. Unfortunately, the current occupant of the White House is a disaster - not because he's a Democrat, but because he's an amoral, lying, deceitful, unprincipled, Chicago machine politician. If he were a Republican and had been re-elected, I'd say the same things about him today as I've said above about President Obama. It's not the party - it's the person.
I'll write tonight about what I see coming over the hill at us in the next four years. Many of those consequences would have happened under a Republican president as well - they're no longer avoidable, IMHO. But please don't think I'm negative about President Obama because of his party. I'm negative about him because of his personality, attributes and demonstrated shortcomings.
Unfortunately, those same issues make him a reflection of many in the US electorate . . . irrespective of their party orientation.
I'm puzzled by the "the Mitt Romney of 2004, when he was the governor of Massachusetts might have won" type statements. I've seen them in both this election, and in the last with McCain. What people are saying is that when the big press liked the candidate as an example of one who compromised with Democrats in the legislature, they were OK, but when the big press started to parse every word ever said by the person and only report out of context clips that could be construed as controversial, they are not OK anymore. It was the same with press reports pre-summer '08 with Palin -- when she was nearly single-handedly destroying the corrupt GOP establishment in Alaska, she was a dreamboat, but once nominated for VP she was suddenly a troglodite who wanted to burn books or whatever. I have a clue to offer: It was not the candidate who changed!
ReplyDeleteInstapundit offers this to console us: http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/157278/
The reference is to Canada, where the Tory majority was reduced to having only 2 seats in the legislature, a very nearly complete wipeout -- and one of those then defected to the liberals. But that defeat cleared the table for a real conservative party to grow from the grassroots reform and alliance movements successively, which then merged with the rump of the federal conservatives to become the current ruling majority in Canada. I've likened reform to the tea-party movement before, and I think the last GOP convention was the last gasp of the old GOP establishment, who were deathly afraid of allowing the grassroots people of the tea-party and/or libertarian persuasions to gain control.
R.I.P, U.S.A.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Peter, for putting into words that which I am to livid, or just too depressed, to do myself.
ReplyDeleteI'm saddened by the thought that my dad and his parents sacrificed for naught. They left behind all their possessions save for a single suitcase (no, its not dramatics...my dad and his parents literally had the clothes they would need in one suitcase) and escaped Communist Yugoslavia in 1956 by boat. They left the islands in the archipelago in the northern Adriatic, and crossed to Italy seeking asylum.
Then they waited in a refugee camp for two years until the paperwork was processed, their sponsors here in the States were vetted, and they were allowed to come to America.
I was the first born in the USA on my dads side. My grandfather told me about what life was like in Yugoslavia under Tito. No freedom, little money, hardscrabble life.
He left behind land (over 100 hectares was abandoned...in todays dollars, worth about 35 million or so) because it was essentially useless when you weren't allowed to farm it, cut the wood off it, hunt it, etc...
He waited, a man with no country, for two years to come here. He became American. He embraced it. Never missed an election, because, as he put it, it was a responsibility and duty to know what was going on, and to vote to ensure that we protected the fragile freedoms we had.
Its gone. We're an empty shell of a once-great nation, consumed with self-centeredness and a sense of entitlement. Generation after generation wanted to make sure that their progeny would have a better life, and while that was a noble sentiment, all it did was deny those progeny the necessary lessons that there is no substitute for hard work, that a mans word is his bond, that a handshake and the honor placed upon it is stronger than signature on a contract.
The citizens have lost their self-respect. And they now simply whore themselves out to the politician who promises them an easier life than the other politician. They grew up thinking that the world was their oyster, and all that they had to do was simply demand it, and it would be handed to them.
The chickens, as they say, have come home to roost.
The carcass of the country will be picked at, the last vestiges of any usable meat removed, and the bones left to bleach in the harsh sun. I for one hope that the country does get the business of splintering and descending into anarchy done and overwith sooner rather than later, as I am actually looking forward to walking off and honoring my obligation to my children of doing the dirty work of war and strife so that they might not have to.
I never thought that I would say it, but I *want* the country to go to war with itself, get the anger to the surface, purge itself of the pent up tensions, then get to the task of healing, with a renewed respect for what the Founders left to us, with it being our guiding beacon out of the darkness.
It was going to happen anyway, only a little faster with Obama.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans made a big mistake nominating the guy who came up with the idea for Obamacare. There was absolutely no choice in this election. If we call it Obamacare or Romneycare it is still unconstitutional socialized health care.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if this election is the final nail in the coffin for America, but there certainly not many more nails to go.