Surviving Obama

 

By William L. Gensert
AmericanThinker.com

Barack Obama is the worst thing to happen to America in my lifetime. Yet he lacks the work ethic and intellectual rigor necessary to destroy us -- despite actions which are purposely malevolent or moronically unintentional.

He has forced his will upon us through:

• Legislative chicanery -- the abomination of ObamaCare.
• Policy excess -- Dodd-Frank financial reform, which reforms nothing but makes it impossible for business to borrow and citizens to get mortgages.
• Crony capitalism -- the green energy roach motel, where our money goes in, but nothing ever comes out, except for Obama campaign bundlers, with bundles for his campaign.
• Executive orders and regulatory fiat -- the war on fossil fuels and small business.
• Disastrous policy preferences -- resulting in the destruction of the economy, lower employment, decreasing freedom, and a tenuous, less prosperous future for our children.

After three and a half years of the dismal, abysmal slow-motion implosion, the ship of state is certainly damaged and debased. Yet rumors of our demise are premature. Destruction of the nation is still beyond his reach -- and it always will be.

I'm not sure that Obama's intent has been to destroy America -- more likely, he wants to remake the country in his own image, ignorant that who he is is not what we aspire to be. Yet even if his intentions were indeed bad, as a faux great man (or is it a great faux man), accomplishing this task is simply not within the scope of Obama's "brilliance."

You see, America is blessed.

It's not just our natural resources. By some estimates, our nation has more fossil fuel reserves than the rest of the world combined. If we chose to do so, we could exploit these blessings and never, ever take another drop of oil from our enemies. Remove the monopolistic power of oil from terrorist nations, and their particular tyrannies will crumble, allowing peace to thrive.

With the royalties alone, America could eliminate deficits and pay off the national debt, while the lower prices of gasoline and electricity would result in an economic bonanza for the nation. To paraphrase Nietzsche, nothing cures the ills of a nation like prosperity.

Declining energy costs as a component of production will again make American products competitive worldwide, while increasing employment and salaries here at home. American energy has the power to fuel the future of the nation, making this century an American century, much like the last one.

For the demagogue within, cutting the price of gasoline and electricity in half would do more to even out the disparity in incomes than any tax increase on the 1%, dreamt of in Barack Obama's philosophy.

The high energy prices created by Barack Obama's policies have engendered a world where the poor cannot afford to keep warm or own a car, relegating them to nothing more than a sad existence in walking distance from where they are.

Our formidable economic system alone does not make us unbeatable, despite the fact that since its inception, American capitalism has led the world in prosperity and economic mobility. In the history of humanity, where else has it ever been possible for a poor man to become rich, a rich man to become richer, and a regular man to become special -- or even for a fatherless child to make his way from Hawaii, to Indonesia, to Chicago, and ultimately to the White House?

Opportunity is what capitalism has given every man, woman, and child in America. Sure, there are no guarantees, and the system is mocked as trickle-down prosperity, but there is no denying the prosperity. Look around: we live in a society where the poor are now fatter than the rich.

What have we received from three and a half years of Barack Obama's brand of bitterness and envy -- trickle-up poverty? It is "fairer," certainly, when everyone is poor, but is this what we aspire to? Is this what any human being aspires to?

If given a choice between a "fair" system, with everyone equal but poor, and one where success is attainable but not guaranteed, most people would choose the potential for prosperity over a life of poverty, even if the impoverishment in the latter case were not as severe as it might be.

It is not our form of government, either. The United States is humanity's most successful experiment in representative governance, enumerated powers, and checks and balances, as well as individual liberty and free speech.

Yet coming to America from the deepest, darkest disaster of a place this brutal world has to offer, and wanting to be an American, and making the effort to be an American affords the possibility of actually becoming an American. The opportunity is not there -- it is here, and it and always has been.

Why else would people storm our borders to get in?

What other nation or civilization has ever presented that same prospect to the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses?

Michelle may have never been proud of America before the ascendance of Barack, but I've always been proud -- damn proud. And there are millions like me, and we are tired of her and her race-baiting, incompetent husband.

America is strong and transcendent because of all these things together -- our people, God's great blessing of location and resources, our form of government and economy, our freedoms, our rights, and our pride. We are a proud nation, and Mr. President, "you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Barack Obama is at best an aberration, a bump in the road, because in the end he is nothing more than a mix of hubris and narcissism. He pales in comparison to the greatness of America and who we are as a people. The dream our nation represents has drawn people the world over, willing to sacrifice everything to give their children the possibility of being an American.

America never needed transformation in the first place, and we certainly never needed Barack Obama. This is precisely why he cannot destroy us, despite his best efforts or missteps; we have too much going for us. After all, where else could a man who never actually held a real job, who talks of saving humanity in general while never having ever saved anyone in particular, whose life is so shrouded in mystery as to be a work of fiction -- where else could this man become president?

The answer is nowhere else. America will survive, and Barack Obama will fade into history as just another nobody who thought all this was about him.