Bad Liar Black Hats

Don’t expect Boehner and Republicans to turn things around. For one thing, they don’t have the power. All the power has been consolidated by the White House. For another, they may not be riding the white horses either. They may just be losers in a race consisting entirely of black horses.

I’m wondering how many of you feel that you’re just hanging by a thread; that you’re just one paycheck away from ruin - or one illness; one car accident; one death in the family; one natural disaster? The feeling has become palpable for more than a few people. You are not alone.

We are a proud people and not given to complain. We tend to believe that the neighbor across the street is doing alright. As we watch neighbors increasingly packing up and moving away, we realize that the hooded man with the scythe is on the loose. He just hasn’t gotten to our house yet.

Fear sells. You know that yourself. Don’t tell me you’ve never been tempted to buy gold (and not just because it’s pretty); store food and water in the basement; subscribe to Lifelock; First Alert; and to whatever the name of that company is that claims to save your files when your computer crashes.

Now there are those who will not readily submit to fear-mongering of any kind. Good for them. But even the most confident and self-reliant among us now know that something’s wrong. Look at Trump. I’m sure he’s taken care of for life. Yet, he too thinks that something should be done to hobble the political class (left and right) that’s running away with our country.

We now build government policy around fear. We allow ourselves to be in effect strip-searched at airports; now there’s talk about doing the same thing for people using trains. All the while, we know very well who bad apples are. (I’ve raised this point before, but still haven’t got an answer: Why are Muslim women exempt?) No, it is we, our wives and mothers, and our children who have to prove we are innocent at these unconstitutional checkpoints! What gives?! It doesn’t add up. The guy who tried to blow up Times Square was granted U.S. citizenship barely a year before, while my own wife is denied the same courtesy. People who cross our southern border illegally will now be granted blanket amnesty, while all those who submit to the ‘process’ are told to wait - seemingly forever.

They’ve got our own phones keeping track of us. They can listen in any time they want. They’ll be reading the odometers in our cars. They’ll tell us where we can build factories and where we can’t build our houses. They worship snail darters before letting us sow our seeds. They won’t let us drill holes in our own ground. It just goes on and on. We’re increasingly kept on a very short leash.

Let me suggest that those who denounce Barack Hussein Obama may very well be racist after all. He’s a black man, to be sure; but he isn’t all that different from previous presidents we’ve had; this new miracle Congress isn’t all that different from previous congresses; the candidates the Republican Party appears to be fielding for the 2012 election cycle aren’t that much different from Obama.

They’ll all do as Tim Geithner tells them: raise the debt ceiling (which, btw, has been raised over a hundred times before since its inception). So what’s the big deal this time around? Despite all the posturing, they’ll raise our taxes and find another name for it.

I now understand why the people were so desperate to get rid of Bush. They wanted someone different; someone who would change our direction; to make it better – not worse. What we got was worse - at a lightning speed, no less. Obama’s only crime is that he’s a bad liar. We can see right through his schemes. And it doesn’t end well.

How much are you personally prepared to give up when the hammer finally falls? What are you willing to do for that sandwich, that gallon of gas? Are you ready to sell out your neighbor to save your own skin? These are questions you must be prepared to answer when it becomes apparent that the white hats have been ambushed and delayed; or, when you realize that we’ve just plumb run out of white hat material.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Blowing Up Bridges

It’s on! The trash talking has begun. And make no mistake, it’s being encouraged by the White House. Expect one of the dirtiest campaigns in recent history.

We are all the same. It should be easy to find common ground. It is not. Enter ideology. Ideology forces us into templates that do not fit well. It tends to pervert our true natures - to live and let live - and puts the accent on confrontation. This is generally needed in times of war - in the face of threat. In peacetime it seems a silly way to behave.

Since Barack Hussein Obama has been in office, there has been no peace. It’s almost as if, while we were living our lives, draft notices began arriving in the mail. We’ve been forced to take sides - one side being America.

Obama is a warrior alright, even if Libya doesn’t quite speak to the issue. Warriors do not compromise. They dismiss the broad range of the painter’s palette and divide the world into black and white. Again, this is only appropriate to war.

“You’re either for us, or against us.” No shades of gray even.

Who is POTUS fighting? America, of course. This has been hard for Americans to swallow. They thought he was on their side.

Similarly, it’s been difficult to square POTUS’ color scheme. The white hats have traditionally been ‘good’; the black hats, ‘bad‘. We’ve been taught this from watching John Wayne westerns. POTUS is black and tells us he’s white - while he paints us black as sin.

Something does not add up here. We’ve known it from the start. Now we’re starting to feel uncomfortable with it. We read about the soldiers in Syria who are refusing to shoot protesters being shot by their own - the worst of all fates. We wonder about how the term ‘conscientious objector’ might fare in this climate.

Voting for a black president was supposed to solve all this. We thought it would bridge the eternal divide. Instead, we find the existing bridges blown up and not enough shovel-ready jobs to build new ones. Sources tell us that China is building bridges like crazy - while we are tearing ours down. Some of us are trapped behind enemy lines.

Carlos Castaneda tells us that each life represents a complete, self-contained universe; that two people standing side by side must be seen as two such universes; that these cannot be commingled, except by event affecting both. Ideology disregards the deeper meaning of this lesson. It seeks to bridge chasms (that cannot be bridged) by hostile rhetoric, fomenting non-existent threat and, finally, by outright aggression. Thereby, the individual is lost and replaced by ordinance.

Love lost in the ashes of ritual (s)laughter.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

The Missing Piece

I was 10 years old. I had just arrived in America when my father took me to New York to see “The Alamo”. In those days, the price of a ticket also bought a full color magazine that showed scenes from the movie. I was excited because one of the actors was Richard Boone, my absolute favorite, star of the TV series “Have Gun, Will Travel” (about a gun slinger who never lost fight). I remember being somewhat disappointed because Boone only played a minor part. Nevertheless, after that occasion, I added John Wayne to my list of favorites.

Eventually I would come to realize that all men - especially actors - are in the business of spinning illusions. I do not fault them. Both Boone and Wayne suffered quite human deaths. I still value the illusions they created.

Today, I‘m more inclined to place my bets on honesty. I don’t agree with JB that Obama has no “grit. No bottom. No sand. No…substance.” He has substance alright. He’s been able to accomplish more in two short years to change our country than any other (peacetime) president, certainly within my lifetime. Obama’s missing piece is honesty. And it is that which (to me) renders everything he does utterly suspect.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/