Slouching Towards Serfdom

The lasting legacy, I fear, from this, loosely referred to as the Obama administration, will not be from oil gushing into the Gulf; from value evaporating from our paper currency; from American influence eroding abroad – all of which can be reversed and made to look whole again. Instead, it is the abrasion of (our) trust in elected officials.

There was a hint of it already back in the Bush administration when some people insisted that 9/11 as well as the aftermath of Katrina were part and parcel due to Bush’s evil designs: the first to provide Bush-Cheney with an excuse to invade Iraq; the second, because both men hated blacks.

The concept of the possibility of a rogue government was now out there. Clinton supporters (or even Clinton himself) enhanced its legitimacy in the political realm when they lamented that 9/11 happened during Bush’s tenure. If it had happened when Bill was in office, he could have been a great president.

“Disaster” as political tool to advance policy objectives and to strike crippling blows at the opposition was already well rehearsed by the time Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. Some even claim that the pre-election fiscal meltdown was instrumental to Obama’s installation. Rahm Emanuel emblazoned the concept into the national dialogue by dropping all pretence with his “Never let a crisis go to waste” comment.

Here we are now, wondering why the oil continues to spill; why there are an ever growing number of victims? The suspicion is that, even if it wasn’t sabotage, why is it taking so long (to plug the hole)? Clearly, the outlines of a solution are beginning to emerge: The policy objective of choking off America’s energy supply seems to be gathering steam; the prospect of a large pool of money for the federal government to waste on unprofitable ventures looms large, as does the demonization of Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Nuclear, paving the way for yet another government takedown and thrusting another huge number of people onto the welfare rolls.

All this talk about Obama feeling dispirited and actively thinking of voluntarily forgoing a second term is just that: talk. Barack Hussein Obama is doing just fine (at our expense, I might add). In short order, we can expect the private sector to be just that: private Obama. We’ll all, in one way or another, be working for him. We will live or die as he decides. He will elevate those who support him, while those of us who do not will find the yoke becoming ever tighter; the load ever heavier.

We are seeing the birth of a Chavez-style total socialist takeover. Even with the systems he himself has installed failing on all fronts, I don’t see Chavez in political trouble. Castro has managed to hold on for decades. Don’t think it’s because the people are particularly enamored of them. Ditto, Kim Jong-Il; Ahmadinejad; Mugabe; etc.

We are well along on a similar path, even with a Congress of elected, essentially rubberstamp officials standing in whispered opposition. And yet, the country on the whole is continuing to say, “It can’t happen here” – like a diabetic progressing through the stages of his irreversible disease. It has happened!

'Disasters' have become political bots to keep us in line and make us depended on the good graces of whoever has the audacity to declare himself king. Don’t tell me bots don’t work. They work just fine. Bots are but tools, the extensions of human hands. Unless we begin thinking critically, we openly embrace the prospect of serfdom.