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Sunday, November 11, 2012

A New Kind of Civil War


Now that all the excuses, rationalizations, analyses, number-countings, hand-wringings, finger-pointings, and tear-sheddings have largely passed, I feel that I can say something about why, on November 6th, Mitt Romney lost his bid for the presidency and Obama retained it. It seems that all that is left to do, for someone who realizes that a second Obama term will be more destructive, vindictive, and malicious than the first, is fulminate anew at a succession of fresh assaults on liberty, freedom of speech, property, wealth, standards of living, national security, the military, and on America from without and from within.

I'm guessing that about half the people who voted for Romney voted for him because he wasn't Obama. The choice can be likened to voting for Barney Fife because he isn't Hannibal Lecter. That was why I voted for Romney. Other than recommend that everyone who opposed Obama just stay home and let the Obamatons monopolize the polling places, there wasn’t much choice in the way of action. Fife in the White House could have at least stalled the movement to full statism and allowed some serious steam to build up against big government – or of Hannibal Lecter not making a meal of everyone.

But Hannibal Lecter had the Chicago machine working for him and a brainwashed, idolizing fan club that could be counted on to vote for him. They turned out to vote early and often.

Romney's campaign, on the other hand, was reminiscent of a large-scale drive to get people to buy Girl Scout cookies.

Many who opposed Obama stayed home because Romney waffled on what he really believed and charged Obama with being an "extremist." Which is exactly why many disliked Obama, because he was an "extreme" advocate of policies and programs that were eating them alive or had targeted them for the cannibal's cooking pot. They already knew he was a Marxist extremist. What they wanted from Romney was a counter-extremism, one that was point for point the exact opposite of Obama's ideology. What they heard instead were approximations and equivocations and denials of being an "extremist."

What many who stayed home observed was that Romney's touting of financial independence and freedom of choice contradicted his enactment of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, which the administration has confessed served as the boilerplate for Obamacare. What, in these voters' minds, could be the difference between a state-enforced socialist program and a federally-enforced socialist program? There was no difference, except in scale.

Obama garnered the states with the most Electoral College numbers. Those are what count. And over the years Democrats were "hollering" for the abolition of the Electoral College because they said it was an anachronism and unfair, just as they hollered for and got the popular election of Senators (formerly appointed by the states), which, from a political mechanism perspective, undid the work of the Founders. The Senate was created as a bulwark against populist movements originating in the House. The Senate, as a result of this election, has become an unofficial departmental adjunct of the White House. I'm betting the Democrats are grateful they didn't succeed. Now it's the House that will need to act as a bulwark against the Senate and the White House.

But House Speaker JohnBoehner has telegraphed that the House will not stand against Obama and the Senate.

“Mr. President, this is your moment. We’re ready to be led," said Boehner. "Not as Democrats or Republicans but as Americans. We want you to lead not as a liberal or a conservative but as president of the United States of America.

“We want you to succeed,” said Boehner. “Let’s challenge ourselves to find the common ground that has eluded us. Let’s rise above the dysfunction and do the right thing together for our country.”

When I read that, I kept hearing Hitler saying the same thing to masses of uniformly clad zombies held rapt by his oratory. Or Evita Peron addressing her adoring Argentines. Or Mussolini daring anyone to smack his jutting jaw.

The people who voted for Obama are morally corrupt. You would have thought that the Benghazi debacle alone would have convinced voters that he was no good, that he was indeed a nihilist prepared to sacrifice American lives to protect a failed policy. You have to then examine what that means, which is that they don’t mind seeing him destroy things, things on which their lives depend. You must grasp that they don’t know what their lives depend on.

Or don’t care to know. They just want it their way. They see no relationship between Obama being willing to see American lives sacrificed in a pesthole and sacrificing American lives at home. Or, if they do see the relationship, they don’t care to dwell on it, because that would lead them to conclusions about Obama's character and intentions which are not pretty and which they don’t care to dwell on. One of those conclusions would be that Obama is a moral monster, a Moloch to whom everything must be sacrificed, even their children. And that would imply that they, too, are moral monsters.

They didn't want to go there. They wanted to believe that Obama and his policies are a causeless cornucopia of free things and social justice and multicultural enrichment and diversification. And if some Americans have to be sacrificed to make their fantasies come true – tough.

You would have thought that the disasters and outrages of the last four years – including the lying and posturing and being stuck with the tab of the First Family's million dollar vacations – would have somehow penetrated the skulls of the most grotesquely slobbering Obamaton. But you, the individual who had always assumed that you own your own life and are responsible for it – not the state, not the collective – reside in a moral universe that is an anathema to Obama and his Obamatons. They are old and young, stupid and savvy, ignorant and learned, naïve and street-smart, the clueless and shrewd, the educated and indoctrinated – but all beholden to the state, to the collective.

They all want to go Forward, and if that means trampling on your dreams, effort, plans, and life – tough.

They will have nothing to do with reality. TARP, $16 trillion and counting national debt, Solyndra and other "can't fail" green businesses, Jeremiah Wright, Czars, rising prices at the gas pump and the supermarket, these are all irrelevant. Many voted for Obama because they're Democrats – can't you see the tattoos on their wrists? – and because Obama gives them that old-time religion feeling.

They'll be gathering at the river until it runs dry because you can no longer carry their water or have no more water to pour into the river. They'll be basking on the beach on your dime and will remark on how pretty the tsunami is on the horizon before it sweeps in and washes them and us away.

And they will blame you for the drought and the tsunami.

You've warned them for four years that four more years of Obama will see the collapse of this country. They replied that everyone sees things differently, reality is just a subjective "construct" and that your "perception" of things isn't any more valid than theirs, but because their perception is "better" they have a right to impose it on you and everyone else. They're "differently" abled, you see, and you're just a bigot and a racist and prejudiced against their crippled minds, and you ought to be penalized for it because you're fully abled and have a duty to respect their flawed metaphysics and warped epistemology and to help make their delusions become true.

To them, it was absolutely imperative to preserve and perpetuate the welfare state and all the premises that sanctioned it. Romney only seemed to threaten it (and he wouldn't have actually begun to dismantle it, either, because he believes in it). This is in light of the soaring national debt Obama has generated, the failure of his programs, the cronyism of his rich and poor supporters, his thuggish and adolescent behavior, in short, every evil thing that has happened in this country since he took office – you would have thought that any one of those things would have torpedoed his chances for a second term. But none of those things mattered.

The election has revealed not just an electoral division, but a division that goes deeper. The people who voted for Obama in light of and in spite of all his transgressions are the ones of whom one can't say that they "let it go." They never had it to begin with.

What is it that they either "let go" or never had?

The American "sense of life." Decades ago novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand wrote an essay, "Don't Let It Go."

Just as an individual’s sense of life can be better or worse than his conscious convictions, so can a nation’s. And just as an individual who has never translated his sense of life into conscious convictions is in terrible danger—no matter how good his subconscious values—so is a nation.

This is the position of America today.

If America is to be saved from destruction—specifically, from dictatorship—she will be saved by her sense of life.

America is now divided between those who have retained that "sense of life" and an alliance of those who did let it go and those who never had it to lose.

Since November 6th, I have severed ties with anyone I know voted for Obama a second time. There was nothing to gain by continuing friendships or even civil relationships with them, because they have shown that they are proof against reason and reality. I know of no other way to demonstrate that I mean it.

Thus making it a philosophical civil war. It's the children of the Age of Enlightenment vs. the spawn of the Age of Envy and Entitlements.

9 comments:

  1. Dear Ed,

    I am an immigrant on Visa here who may not become a US Citizen anytime soon. However, I found it very strange that at my workplace most people are going on with their lives as if nothing significant happened. I did not see very many feel the despair or fear that I thought they would feel. I suppose not many people can grasp the implications of an Obama victory. The world stands to experience another dark age. It may not happen for another generation but I think but the consequences of the USA in decline will be worldwide.

    However, there are still others like you who are calling it as it is and I feel hope because of that. I got your new Cyrus Skeen novel and am happy to say there is still light.

    Atlas has not shrugged yet.

    Prashant

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  2. Prashant: You're very welcome. I was speechless for days after the election, and focused on the new Skeen novel to keep my sanity. Ed

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  3. "Since November 6th, I have severed ties with anyone I know voted for Obama a second time."

    Were any of those "anyone" connected in any way with Objectivism? And if so (but if not, I've no interest)--what were their prime reasons for casting such a vote? I'm curious as to what would enable a person with, presumably, at least a tiny morsel of intelligence and self-esteem to consciously entrust their short-term well-being to one of such obviously malicious intent. Call it, morbid curiosity. (Perhaps they were spooked by the prospect of the Religious Right, to a suicidal extent? As in--"I'd rather die, than let that gang in"...?) (They spook me, too--but not to that extent; yet.) Anyway, not myself knowing of any who took that course, I'm curious; morbidly.

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  4. Atlas may not have shrugged yet, but we do need to understand, and ally with others of similar mind, that a red line was crossed last Tuesday. This election was the Second Chance for anyone who had voted for the M&M (Marxist + Muslim) in 2008 and was prepared to rectify that mistake. There were not enough of them. Those who either approve or continue to evade the nature of the course the Obama regime has set are officially in the majority. Trying to get them to see reason at this point, with over 4 more years ahead before the regime can be thoroughly cleaned out of office, is a waste of time and energy. And it is useful to make as many of them as possible aware that we have no intention of shaking hands and putting our "differences" aside and "working together to save America" or any of the other thought-stopping bromides being bandied about. They should be made aware by everything from severed personal ties to cold stares and turned backs that we know what they have done and have no intention of going quietly. The consequences of their votes last Tuesday will be dogging and threatening us for years to come. Our energies should now be focused on seeking out those whom we can trust and depend upon to fight for liberty with no excuses and no compromise.

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  5. The only other reason (apart from hatred and fear of the Religious Right) I can fathom to deliberately vote this gang back in, for someone who knows better, is giving them a bit more rope to hang themselves. Literally. As, you know, the punishment for treason ... is capital. (Could happen; far "stranger" things in human history, have.)

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  6. Americans have faced darker days. Let's all continue to fight the good fight, to the best of our abilities.

    “Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”
    -Ayn Rand

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  7. "Fighting the good fight" can no longer consist of backing mushy "moderates" afraid to tell the truth to the voters. The Obama gang will not "hang themselves", if anything they will hang the rest of us to the best of their ability. These may not be our "darkest days" yet, but that's the way the parade is headed.

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  8. I am not so sure they won’t get themselves hung. They probably won’t; this is a pretty tough and smart gang. However: there are, now, already three incidents on the table yet to be examined and “explained”: Benghazi; the drone; and Petraeus. Any or all of those three could in themselves contain the seeds of their destruction—if it can be shown that the security of the country was deliberately compromised (for political ends). I would suppose a case could be made, by able counsel, that such chicanery would be tantamount to treason.

    The problem is—we have to depend, largely, upon the Republicans (of all people) to do the job of investigation, prosecution, and execution. And what is the likelihood of their success, even if solid grounds exist—given THEIR demonstrated character and abilities? Slim to none; that is, nearly none….

    But if these “incidents” come to nothing, I’m sorry to say that I’m sure there’ll be ample, similar opportunities in future: for unfounded confidence breeds recklessness breeds—sometimes—doom. (See: Petraeus.)

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  9. The Republican Party has all but hanged itself. It ought to rename or repackage itself as the Moderation Party. How it treats its firebrands, such as Michele Bachmann, is notorious, and how it sought to isolate really dangerous Republicans, such as Allen West, verges on the criminal. As a "party," it cannot be counted on to act in unison to counter any Democratic program or position. Boehner's behavior, even before the ink was dry on the election results, is symptomatic of the Party's utter lack of principal. I've begun to nickname him "Nancy Pelosi II."

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