Sunday, November 11, 2012

Barack Obama, Conservatives and the 2012 Election



Barack Obama, Conservatives and the 2012 Election

By M.L. Wilson

All contents copyright © 2012 by M.L. Wilson. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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This commentary is a bit off the typical topic that I place here, but I feel strongly about the events of last night (Election day, November 6th) so I decided to relate my thoughts as to what happened. I spent most of last evening contemplating just exactly what happened with the re-election of Barack Obama; a sleepless, restless night asking God what it is supposed to mean. There are too many unknowns with respect to God and His will that make watching such a man like Obama be re-elected to go down easy for me.

There are many of you out there reading this that believe that I am overwrought and making much ado about nothing. I respect that, but I would also point out that were the outcome to have been differently, many Obama supporters promised to riot, create mayhem and one pro-Obama campaign ad even had a sweet looking ninety-seven year old lady threaten to, “Burn this Motherf***ker down” should he lose. Given this toxic atmosphere, I do not find it at all out of line to point out my disappointment at the outcome, but also why I believe we had this outcome.

 It is without a doubt that the present state of the economy of the United States is in tatters. Unemployment remains high and prospects for a positive change just evaporated with Obama’s unskilled hand guiding our ship of state. Notwithstanding the constant reconfiguring of unemployment figures by the Administration, actual unemployment in this country is near Depression era figures of 21%  The reason for such a dramatic variance from what the Administration reports and what actually exists is simple: We do not track unemployment the same way as we did in years past. We now place those out of work in sub-categories – or simply do not count them at all. I presently fall into that latter group. So while I am out of work and still looking, there is no official record of that fact; I don’t exist for this administration.

Now with Obama’s re-election, we see one of the first reactions taking place with a dramatic Stock Exchange crash of over 300 points. Additionally we see business after business, both large and small, indicating that they are implementing hiring freezes and perhaps contemplating having to close altogether. Since these are the people who actually run businesses and do not operate on the theoretical plane, one needs to ask what it is that they know which the majority of the voting public most evidently does not? I would say that in a word: finances. As a people, the majority of United States citizens – evidenced by this election - are financially illiterate. We cannot continue to borrow and spend and not expect a day of reckoning.

But let us step outside of the realm of the economy for a moment and look at other factors which I believe are certain to lead a good number of the people who voted for Barack Obama on Tuesday, November 6th to soon rue that choice. Despite his claims of desiring unity, Barack Obama has instead succeeded in dividing this country more than it has been since the Civil War. Not even the era of Civil Rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s saw such division. This president won re-election by running the most divisive, dirty campaign in modern history. He lied about conditions in this country and fomented anger and hatred amongst his most likely voters. There was never a “War on Women” by the Conservatives; there is no institutionalized racism on the part of Conservatives; there are no moves by Conservatives to put “Granny out on the street”; nor are there any plans to ship jobs to China. All of these were straw-men  arguments designed to  distract from the fact that Barack Obama had failed on every objective he had set out to accomplish. Even his heralded “Obamacare” is not what he really wanted (single payer), yet despite controlling the House, Senate and Executive branch, he blamed all of his deficiencies on his predecessor and Republicans which enabled him to successfully got a slim majority to agree and hand him another term in office.

Most obscenely, Barack Obama lied about the character of his opponent worse than he lied about the qualities of himself. Mitt Romney was portrayed as having murdered a woman, abusing animals, being raised in a family dripping with multiple wives engaged in orgiastic ecstasy with oppressive husbands. As over-the-top as these lies were, a willing people sopped it up like a dry sponge. In the end it really didn’t matter if any of it was true; it did the job in painting Romney as something different; something alien. That was Obama’s real tactic and it unfortunately succeeded on an ill-informed, pliable public.

By contrast, Conservatives were pilloried by asking legitimate questions about Obama as though to even think about making such inquiries was un-American. But never-the-less, one must ask if any of these question honestly answered would have altered the outcome of the election. I contend that given the present ignorant siege-mentality of the American Public that it would not have; Obama could have disclosed all and not lost a single vote. Some of those questions yet to be answered are:  Is Obama’s father really Barack Obama Sr. of Kenya or is it Frank Marshal Davis of Chicago? Does this somehow play into why he will not release his birth certificate? Did Obama enter Occidental College under a foreign student grant? How did he get into Harvard when it has been hinted that he did not do well academically and clearly had no money to pay for tuition? Why won’t he release his college transcripts? At the end of the day, Obama distracted his followers with enough rumor and innuendo that he didn’t have to answer any of these legitimate questions. He knew that his constituency did not have the intellect to understand the ramifications in any event. Instead of answering his critics, Obama rested on the old tried and true Roman tactic of Bread and Circuses. MTV, “Honey Boo Boo” and “The Jersey Shore” are thrown out to mask the truth and a more than gullible electorate accepted it.

Despite all of these patently transparent moves to hide who and what he is, more people in this country voted to continue with Barack Obama rather than demand true change. Now do I believe that Mitt Romney would have “fixed” everything had he been elected? No and no thinking person ever did. The real question that need be asked is: Would Mitt Romney have rescued us from the fiscal mire we find ourselves in and begun to steer the ship of state in a better direction? To that question I give an overwhelming yes. Romney has actually created and run multiple businesses all over the world. This gives him financial experience as well as foreign policy experience. When you are negotiating across the table from some Chinese or Middle Eastern leader in business, you learn how to negotiate anything. Romney has shown far greater character as a husband and a father than Barack Obama has. To Romney, grandchildren are not a punishment. This was an opportunity that Romney did not take advantage of. Still I see his loss as a result of even more than than these lost opportunities.

I believe that there were two essential factors in play which has led us to a second Obama term. The first is that the Democratic Party has for decades been carefully cultivating a populous that is by its very nature, dependent and ignorant. These are people who are told from birth that they are victims and are entitled. When a child is taught from their earliest moments that they are owed everything based upon inequities from “those people”, they will grow into adults expecting just that and they will expect it from “those people”. For another person to come alongside them later in their life and attempt to explain that the world doesn’t quite work that way simply does not register with these people; it is a foreign language to them and they do not understand. As such, these conditioned people have no capacity of discernment. They do not believe when they are told for example that all Unions are not good and can be easily corrupted. A Union must work with the employer for the relationship to work to everyone’s best interest; they do not understand the very basics of finance and insist that there are large stashes of money hidden by “those people” because they have been conditioned to live on a government stipend. Endless borrowing and spending by the government has no impact on them because they have been told since birth that the government will “fix it” when it gets too bad. These are people who cannot correlate the intact family structure with the health of our country because once again, from birth they have been taught that family is essentially ancillary. 

Sadly during this period of cultivation which begun in earnest with FDR, opportunists within the Democratic Party took advantage of the struggles of families due to the tough economy to plant the seeds of familial disconnect and discord. By the time of LBJ and his “Great Society”, the final nail had been driven into the family coffin. For individuals struggling to support their families, the government made it monetarily advantageous to have a broken family rather than one that remained intact. This move on behalf of the Johnson Administration succeeded in creating the dependency constituency that the Democratic Party so desired and all it cost them was a small taxpayer supplied subsistence check once a month. A pretty sweet deal to ensure their place of power considering the monies for these subsistence checks were from taxpayers and not their own pockets. Once the family bonds were broken by such fiscal policies, the children of those families were conditioned to always look towards the government to fulfill their needs - both financial and social. Of course the Democratic leaders were more than happy to oblige – providing that the votes of this dependency class continued to be for solely for Democrats. The threats of the money flow being cut off could now be used as an effective weapon for voting against the Progressive Liberals movement.

As obscene and horrific as this one side of the equation is, it is balanced by an equal obscenity on the other side. That part of the equation is just as inured with false teaching and belief as is the dependent Progressive Liberal constituency. The other half has more to do with how religious Conservatives view themselves and their principles. Unlike the Democrats, religious Conservatives tend to “cut off their nose to spite their face” time and time again. The great failing of religious Conservatives is their inability to be shrewd when dealing with their opponents. The essential problem with these religious Conservatives is that they tend to equate a compromise on any level with an opponent as an offense against God.

I will take this moment to point out a passage in the Gospel of Luke chapter 16.  In it, Jesus recounts the tale of a manager of a rich man who was accused of wasting the rich man’s possessions. The rich man was upset and demanded an accounting from the manager before he was fired. The manager realizing that he was too old to go back to a manual labor position went out and collected what debt that he could to not only repay the rich man, but engender good will amongst those people to whom money had been lent. The manager cut many of the debts in half to the delight of the debtors and returned enough money to the rich man that the rich man commended him. On the surface, this seems to be something of a slight of hand on the part of the manager; he was the one who gave the loans, he was the one who did not administer those loans properly. It seems as though this manager stuck his boss with the bill while securing for himself a cushion of goodwill with the debtors.

Christ goes on to point out that the people of the world are shrewder in dealing with their own kind than with the people of the light (read Christians).  Money lending in those days was such that even with the truncated payments, the rich man made money on his loans and lost nothing. Despite the rigidity of the loan contract, the manager made a smarter choice that benefited all.

I point this out because the other factor that led to the loss of Mitt Romney in this election had to do with some Christian Conservatives refusing to vote at all because Mitt Romney identifies himself as a Mormon. Since Mormonism has been identified as a cult, too many Christians regarded a vote for Mitt Romney as a vote for Satan. These people truly believed that God would gaze down upon them at the Great White Throne judgment and cast them into the Lake of Fire for their “compromise vote.” I will not go into the gross theological errors rife with such thinking here; it is a debate without end. Such thinking on the part of well intentioned Christians is as much a result of ideological cultivation and conditioning as is the tragically infantile Progressive Liberal mindset. Both sides reacted to the teaching they had been given from infancy and their unwillingness to look at any other view has resulted in the split that now exists in this country.

As God is God, I realize that He is in complete control over this situation. “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.” The Apostle Paul pointed out in Romans 8:28. It should also be pointed out, however, that that “good” does not necessarily translate into “good” as we might be familiar. The Apostle Paul thought it would be good for him to go home to be with Christ, but remained because that was better for the rest of us. The passage in Romans above concerns our battles in this world as Christians. We, as Christians – as Lights to the world – are going to undergo struggles, persecutions, slanders, etc. The “good” is what is eventually born from such work. Too many Evangelicals misconstrue Paul’s words and errantly believe that “good” will manifest now, here in this realm. While we are to be hopeful of such an outcome, the promise we are to hope for is in Christ and the world to come; not this one.

As a Christian, I am also well aware that it will become dark in this world before the end. But I also know that as a Christian, I am not to court such an outcome nor hasten its arrival. I am to be a Light to those within my sphere of influence; I am to reflect Christ. Additionally, I am to be a good steward to that which I have been given. As a result of my fellow Christian’s holding to some misplaced rigid ideology and opting to sit out this election, a man who will most likely appoint three (or more) Supreme Court judges, many Superior and Appellate Court judges has been re-elected. This same man will also continue his march upon our rights and freedoms – freedoms of worship which will result in the hastening the darkness that is to come. 

If there was some unspoken strategy on the part of Christians to hasten the end of the age by abstaining from voting and thereby allowing Barack Obama to be re-elected, these folks need to understand that they have not exemplified good stewardship. They have instead placed their Light under the peck-measure. Similarly, these same Christians, believing that we AS Christians are not to engage in any matters political, fail to recognize one very salient point: God put each and every one of us here in this realm, in this country, at this point in time.  He gave each and every one of us the opportunity to have an effect upon our government and when we ignore that responsibility, we are in effect telling Almighty God that we do not care about anything He has given to us; that we know better. The Old saying of one being so Heavenly minded that they are no Earthly good comes to mind. Again, we are to be a Light to the world without getting caught up in the things of the world. These Christians don’t vote citing all manner of “spiritual” reasons, but the truth of the matter is that most of them are more afraid of being held accountable to their choice and winding up in Hell. This bespeaks a level of selfishness that is not of God. I’ll point out once again that God judges the intents of the heart. Mitt Romney – as will Barack Obama – will both have to account for their choices.

To buttress this claim of mine, I would direct such Conservatives to learn history. If one is not familiar with history, I eagerly encourage learning how we came to be where we are as a country. Our Founding Fathers also identified themselves as Christians despite what the secular press might try to get you to believe. In an age before modern Evangelicalism, however, what they believed and how they understood God was somewhat different than what we’re familiar with. They despite their theological differences, the end result was too important to not come together and create a bastion of freedom for all.

Understanding history frees one up to see the blatant errors that are promulgated by both ends of the ideological spectrum. For either side, I would recommend reading “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs” to get a feel for just how bad government can be towards its people. Read about a world that has fallen into darkness and just what those people had to endure. Move on towards the persecutions of Christians and Jews under not only Nero, but later emperors such as Diocletian. This isn’t the “flowery” stuff you’ll find in the pages of Dr. Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series; this is a harsh, brutal persecution of the type you’ll find in the Holocaust or the Killing Fields. How many of you Christians believe you could endure such brutality at the hands of your former friends and neighbors – in some cases, even family? When you work to hasten the end, there are consequences. In an example in Foxe’s Martyrs, that resulted in a mother watching her 7 year old boy roasted alive on the Hot Iron Seat. If you are unfamiliar with that method of execution, look it up. Part of the consequences of hastening the coming darkness is to also hasten the coming of such despicable acts as outlined in that book.

Do I believe that Barack Obama is capable of such brutality against his own people? I'll answer that question this way: Barack Obama is a man in power and as Lord Acton once famously stated, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” History has proved Lord Acton’s words to be deadly accurate. From my observation, Barack Obama is not guided by Jesus Christ any more than my Christians friends believe that Mitt Romney is guided by who they believe to be Jesus Christ. That leaves us with the character of each man. Barack Obama has encouraged revenge against his opponents while Romney sought to heal the nation. The individual will have to be the judge of who is the more trustworthy based upon character. I don’t believe that this election satisfied that question based upon the aforementioned chicanery employed by Mr. Obama.

 At best, the next four years will be a standstill for our country. There is a Republican controlled House of Representatives that Obama has been unwilling to compromise with during his first term and he has cultivated much enmity there by his sheer arrogance. I see no reason to believe that the relationship will change with a second term as he will simply appoint czars to do the work he wants done and ignore congress altogether. The House will hopefully do the job it was elected to do and stop this president’s attempts to subvert the Constitution. None of those Supreme, Superior and Appellate court judges can make it to the bench without the consent of the House. These are the people that have to now be held to account.

Now at worst, the entitlement mindset on the Left and the unyielding mindset on the Right will result in the Democrats fomenting enough added criticism towards Conservatives that they will reclaim the House in 2014. Should that happen, there will be no way to make up the lost ground and you will see the end of our once great Republic. This is not hyperbole; it is a historical fact.

Keep Christ in the forefront of your thoughts and do all things to His glory, but do not turn a blind eye when a brother is being abused. Be shrewd in your approach towards your opponents. Most of all, however, do not let your dogma and doctrine rule over you to the detriment of this great, grand country. The United States of America is the last great hope on the face of this earth and rigidity and ignorance are not going to help it to survive. Once it is gone, there will be nothing else to replace it until Christ. Unless some of you know something I don’t, Christ may not return for another thousand years. Be good and shrewd stewards, people. Start now. 


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