Walls: post modern paper

I’m certain that Obama is not losing much sleep over either Iraq or Iran (or Israel for that matter). It would have been nice to be able to demonstrate his ‘savior’ capabilities right off the bat, but it is not essential to the totality of what he means to achieve. Obama thinks in bold, broad strokes. He doesn’t sweat the little stuff. Skirmishes around the world are of little concern to him. Obama’s personal battlefield, first and foremost, is America. Once the war has been won here, the rest of the world will fall into its proper rotation.

It’s been pointed out that Obama to date has appointed more czars than the Romanov Dynasty produced during its three centuries’ reign over Russia. The problem with Obama’s czars is that they are unaccountable to the electorate. Directed to formulate, execute and enforce policy that affects every one of us all directly, czars need not be confirmed by Congress and are answerable solely to the president. Why then bother going through the charade of holding elections at all?

As the end of Obama’s term(s) approaches, expect one (or more) of these czars to declare a state of emergency, postponing elections indefinitely. Maybe the climate czar will determine that holding elections will exceed the carbon footprint limit imposed by the United Nations. Maybe the health czar will declare a pandemic and prohibit everyone from gathering enclosed public spaces. Maybe the car czar in conjunction with the energy czar will declare a fuel emergency and ban all travel by single occupancy vehicle. Just use your imagination. It’ll give you a sense of what they’re surely already cooking up in The White House politburo.

I wonder at which point some people will abandon their insistence on clinging to their myopic, short-term memories and put into historical context where we’ve been, how far we have come, and where we are going. Will we have to wait until the walls have gone up (north, south, east and west) and the gates have clicked shut – not to keep foreigners out, but to keep us in? Will they then still laugh it off as some temporary, comical glitch; some experimental fiction – in which we all play the role of guinea pigs - scrawled on the walls, graffiti-style, to be summarily dismissed on the basis of the now clearly defunct adage, ‘This is America, after all. It can’t happen here.’