http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/president_haters.html
President Haters
By J.R. Dunn
"I'll make those f*ckers glad to mutate."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, in Roosevelt after Inauguration by
William Burroughs
William Burroughs will never be an icon of the conservative movement.
A proud junkie, an aggressive homosexual, a leader of both the Beat
movement and the Counterculture, a man who shot his wife by "accident"
while playing a party game, Burroughs was, if anything, the polar
opposite of the conservative ideal.
But there was one element of Burroughs' thought not altogether alien
to conservatives: his opinion of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Relatively
late in his career, Burroughs published a short piece titled Roosevelt
after Inauguration, which featured FDR swaggering around Washington
(this is fiction, remember), wearing a purple toga and accompanied by
a gang of killer baboons whom he sends after his enemies. The story
climaxes with the massacre of the Supreme Court by the baboons,
whereupon FDR gazes contemplatively across the Potomac at the country
now lying at his feet and utters the line quoted above.
What inspired Burroughs to embark on this exercise in nastiness
remains unclear. He himself claimed that he was promised a high
position in the St. Louis sewer department only to be denied it by New
Deal do-gooders, but this may be only part of the legend. Whatever the
case, Roosevelt after Inauguration remains one of the purest
expressions of political hatred ever put into writing. If every foul
attack made over the years against Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich, Bush,
Cheney, and Palin were rolled into one, the result would not match a
single paragraph. Roosevelt after Inauguration is a masterpiece of
political scurrility.
Which brings us to Barack Obama.
Two weeks ago, the White House informed the state of Oklahoma that it
could expect no federal aid to help deal with the damage caused by
recent flooding. There was no explanation, no expression of sympathy,
no offer of alternatives.
Last week, it was revealed that NASA's new mission will be centered on
making Muslims "feel good" about their scientific achievements of
roughly a millennium in the past. This comes right on the heels of the
cancellation of the Constellation program, which employed tens of
thousands and promised to put the U.S. back into space in a big way.
At roughly the same time, J. Christian Adams, a former Department of
Justice attorney, revealed that the voter harassment case against the
New Black Panthers had been dropped for purely racist reasons, and
that the word had come down to "never bring another lawsuit against a
black or other national minority, no matter what they do."
While this doesn't match killer baboons, it'll do until Obama gets his
pack trained.
Consider these actions. If anyone during the 2008 elections had
implied, or even speculated, that Obama was capable of anything of the
sort, he'd have been dismissed as a demagogue, a hater, even a
lunatic. But today, after his abandonment of the state of Tennessee
(also wracked by flooding); his betrayal of the Georgians; his pulling
the rug out from under the Poles and Czechs; his dragging and cold
response to the Gulf blowout; and his insults to the U.K., the GOP,
the Supreme Court, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Dalai Lama, it scarcely
raises a shrug. That's Obama. That's how he acts -- with arrogance,
superciliousness, and indifference. We can search the entire roster of
American presidents, and we will not find a match. This is not the
behavior of an elected chief executive; it's the conduct of a divine
right monarch, and a pretty inadequate one as well.
Conduct of this sort inevitably produces a reaction -- contempt from
equals and hatred from victims. Obama has created a lot of victims in
eighteen months of power, and that reaction has been growing. In plain
fact, Obama is on his way to becoming the most hated president of the
modern epoch. More so than Roosevelt, more so than Nixon, more so than
Bush -- keep in mind that W. was truly hated only by the hard left.
With steady and unrelenting pressure over a period of six years, the
left did succeed in planting doubts and discomfort in the country as a
whole...but never extending to actual hatred.
Obama is different -- in part because of the way he was so
relentlessly hyped during his ascension to office, and the way he
played along with it, toying with the public's expectations and
transparently enjoying his status as demigod. But he is no longer the
godling of legend, the Illinois messiah here to lead us to a left-wing
Eden. He is merely a community organizer in over his head. The
blowback triggered by disappointments of such depth can be ferocious.
FDR was never foolish enough to make promises on this level (listen to
his 1933 inaugural speech), and it served him well over three full
terms. Obama was, and now he must pay the piper.
Obama is hated for a good reason -- for causing suffering to no
purpose. A president must cause grief and pain; in this fallen world,
he has no choice. He must and he will make decisions that hurt people.
Hard decisions, decisions that kill. This is one of the reasons that
presidents age so swiftly. The classic case here is Lincoln. No
president caused more bloodshed and sorrow than Lincoln. No president
suffered more for it, as much as it was done for a good and
transcendent cause. The result is apparent in his photographs -- the
somber but healthy figure about to take office transformed into the
wraith of 1865, with his haunted eyes and skin stretched
parchment-tight across the bones of his face.
But the suffering generated by the reign of Obama is unnecessary and
uncalled for, as any short examination will reveal:
o The Economy - Obama has made the same errors as FDR in his first
term, without FDR's charm and earnestness to make up for it. Without
even grasping that they were errors, for that matter. Of course,
giving most of the stimulus money to the same financial industry that
kicked off the crash was a brilliant ploy. We have to admit that
worked.
o The Border - A state under siege attempts to reimpose order through
accepted legal means, and Obama's response is to unleash Eric Holder,
the only person in the country (possibly even the galaxy) more
arrogant than he. This is going to haunt him.
o Health Care - Even now, the chicks are coming home. The system is
starting to go, four years before anything will be ready to replace
it. A former colleague of mine was told this week that her doctor will
no longer accept Medicare. She lives in New York City, not friendly to
Medicare patients in the best of times. She is understandably
distraught. That story is being repeated across country in thousands
-- perhaps hundreds of thousands -- of cases. And what is O's Plan B?
You tell me.
o The Gulf - During the worst ecological disaster of the era, as all
levels of his administration repeatedly fumbled the ball, Obama
golfed, partied, listened to Paulie Beatle, and went on vacation no
fewer than three times. Let them eat cake!
In direct consequence of these actions and countless others, Obama has
become a hated man. That hatred will only grow.
What would the prudent man do? He'd put away his purple robes, give up
his grand schemes, cease the bullying and arrogance, and simply try to
get through the next two years without civil disorder or other forms
of ugliness. But Obama is not a prudent man. Nor are the members of
his personal baboon pack -- Emmanuel, Axelrod, and the rest.
So to avoid a state of permanent crisis, it will be necessary to
dismantle the Obama presidency while it still exists. The new Congress
will put a halt to much of the programs already in motion and must
also move to assure that the levers of power are moved out of Obama's
reach. The Supreme Court will step in regarding a number of
questionable decisions and programs. The sheer pressure of democratic
checks and balances, so blithely ignored by Obama up until now, will
begin to squeeze like a vise.
His own cronies, with no honor among them, will peel off as the
downward spiral becomes evident. They will move to save themselves --
cut their deals, make their testimony, cop their pleas. We will learn
a lot we don't now know about why certain decisions were made. The
collapse will accelerate.
Thanks to the Gulf blowout, we know that Obama's crisis mode is to
retreat. And retreat he will, until he can retreat no farther.
Eventually he will become a ghost in his own White House, querulous
and isolated, afraid to go out among his own people. In the end, he
may well become the first president forced to live in foreign exile.
And this is the best he can expect.
It will not be an easy period. The Iranians, the Chinese, and the
jihadis will take what advantage they can. All the figures Obama has
so assiduously courted, everyone he bowed to, will simply stand aside.
Contempt felt for a ruler extends as a matter of course to his
country, and we cannot avoid that. Regaining international respect
will take time, and it will not happen under this regime.
But it's far from hopeless. Those of us who lived through Watergate
are aware that this country prevails even when the leadership is
derelict. America is resilient, Americans at their best amid crises.
America's "decline" is situational, not permanent. We can look forward
to a period of renewal when it's all over and we've cleared away the
Styrofoam columns. A lot of illusions will be dead, a lot of worthless
ideas exposed. Those who hold them will be have to come to terms with
the fact that no, Americans will never be glad to "mutate."
And who will be Obama's Burroughs? Who will be the one to define him
for all time with a few well-chosen, vicious words? We may have to
wait -- it took Burroughs himself nearly forty years. But we can be
sure of one thing -- a lot of people will be trying. I'd give it a
shot myself, but you know...I'm not sure I'm enough of a hater.
--
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