May 20th, 2013 -- Even This Isn't About Obama

Like usual, everyone is missing the mark. Big surprise.

As of this writing, there are three major scandals brewing in our nation’s capital which are slowly beginning to captivate the American public’s attention. To put them succinctly, and with only facts, not conjecture, they are as follows:

o   Four Americans, including our ambassador, died on 9/11/12 at our consulate building in Benghazi, Libya during a seven hour terrorist attack. The United States military was ordered to stand down and not come to the aid of their fellow countrymen and the nation was lied to about the fact that it was indeed, terrorism. We do not know yet who the highest ranking person was who gave that order, nor who exactly knew what, when.

o   The United States Government seized, without a warrant, the phone records of at least twenty working journalists, including in some cases, home phone lines, in order to surmise the sources of some of the reporters. The government claims they were trying to discover how vital national security information had been leaked, but no one has explained how or why the court and legal obtainment system of warrants was not used, nor who the highest ranking person involved was/is.

o   The IRS has admitted that it unfairly and specifically targeted conservative leaning groups and people via audit powers. The IRS would either look for code words in tax returns (Tea Party, Patriot group, etc) or, upon having an individual identified to them as a conservative leaning person, would then audit their personal and (if existent) business returns, along with, in many cases, bringing in other government agencies and watchdog groups such as OSHA, ATF and others when they too, could perform their own separate audits.

None of the above information is disputable or opinion as it has all been agreed or admitted to, under oath in most cases, by the most pertinent of parties involved. This is your federal government at work, without a doubt. And while many, many questions remain, one thing is certain; this isn’t about President Obama.

There is no doubt that President Obama has fostered a culture of corruption and intimidation during his tenure, much of it overtly. He has, on many occasions, publicly ridiculed or attempted to silence those who disagree with him, often through tactics that go beyond simple “Chicago Style Politics.” From reporter Bob Woodward to Fox News the list of people, groups, and organizations who have been, without question, threatened directly by the president and/or his administration is longer than this space allows.

It is my opinion that if the truth is allowed to come out, in its totality over time, President Barack Obama will go down in history as the undisputed and without question most corrupt leader in our nation’s history. That prediction will have to wait, and even with that said, none of today’s trifecta of scandals is about him.

Obama fostered and encouraged this culture, but he did not create it. Obama used, chose to look away, and offered “code words,” to a system of total intimidation and in violation of everything our nation was founded on and is written in our constitution, but he didn’t invent this tactic and he isn’t its sole proprietor. If the facts are found quickly enough, and they show his direct involvement in ways that many fear, he should absolutely be removed from office immediately and perhaps even placed on trial, all things that are totally premature to even suggest at this moment. However, it is not premature to conclude that such an historic and unprecedented event, in and of itself, would do nothing to solve the problem, for this isn’t about President Obama.

This is about government, and to a larger degree, our nation as a whole. We have become, to use a phrase of the century, too big to fail, much like every empire before us, all of which (by the way), ultimately failed.

To seize records without warrants, to target specific people and groups based on political persuasion, and to order the greatest fighting force in the history of mankind to stand down in the face of itself being attacked takes almost endless allies, accomplices, and people willing to be complicit in things they know are fundamentally not just wrong, but brazenly illegal. While a few of those involved have stepped forward and become “whistleblowers,” you have to stand back in awe of the sheer countless Americans who by definition must be involved in these three scandals.

Endless amounts of people had to be so willing, so scared, so intimidated, so power hungry, and/or so arrogant (or a combination of any of these things) to engage in these events and tactics that it should re-enforce one thing of absolute certainty to you; our culture of people has never been worse. Further, our entire system of government has been allowed to metastasize into a tumor of such utter disrepair that if savable, it will take years to do so, and will demand countless bodies of terminations, resignations, arrests, and convictions. Whether or not this society has the stomach or commitment to do so I would suggest is somewhere between arguable and laughable, but it too, is also premature.   

For today, we should just sit in it and wallow, and marinate, and let it waft over us that what many of us have been telling you is provably, irrefutably true about who we are as a people, a nation and a government. Those who will utter stupidities about how this is not a very big deal, or it’s what’s always gone on, or that none of it should come as a surprise are either ignorant or dishonest to a fault and in either case, deserve zero recognition and certainly no seat at the table of ideas and solutions for those who insist on honest discussion. No addict can be cured without first admitting their problem, and the tens of millions of Americans who are too stupid, disinterested, or delusional to even accept what is glaringly before them are to be ignored.

We live in a nation where you are to be silenced when you say something that is disagreeable and we will stop at nothing to shut you up. We will threaten you, scare you, and if necessary, we will attack you and take away from you everything that you have to make sure that your opinion is not expressed.

We live in a nation where we justify invading the private lives of those entrusted to inform the citizenry under the guise of fear mongering phrases such as “the greater good,” and “national security.” We strip away and ignore every form of civil liberty, civil right and civility en masse as we search for one alleged potential suspect. We justify invading everyone to find the one. This, incidentally, should come as no surprise to a nation that cheered shutting down one of our biggest cities to find one lone terrorist on the run. I mean seriously, people, wake the hell up.

Finally, we live in a nation where we ignore our own while they are under attack in a foreign land, and then with a straight face actually say that there was nothing that could have been done anyway. Never mind all of the glaring blunders made prior to 9/11/12 in Libya, let’s focus on this; we are being told that we, the United States of America, home to the greatest military on the planet, are now incapable of getting somewhere, anywhere, in 7 hours. There are only two acceptable reactions to that; total disbelief or complete horror. Neither is good.

All of these things are our reality. Embrace them, accept them and own them. Or at the very least, go hide under the covers and stay out of the way of those of us who are willing to acknowledge how very far gone we are and how painfully devastating the road back will be, if it can even be traversed. To say it’s a dark day in America would be a clichéd understatement of monumental proportions. We’re in the midst of a societal lunar eclipse, with no sign of sunlight emerging anytime soon.