Surveying The American Community

The Pace of Events

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day,to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death…...” Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5.

A comforting and enduring pleasure of writing these commentaries is not being bound by a timetable driven by commercial demands, but rather as my schedule permits an adequate analysis of the “events of the day”. The events of the day have a timetable of their own; ideally these events are captured incipiently with analysis that sometimes may offer fresh and incisive insight, before the news becomes stale and over analyzed. Recently circumstances have prevented my analysis of a mother lode of news events that serve to further delineate the trajectory of the world in which we live.

An unfortunate consequence of the speed and volume of news events is that they operate to render little encroachment on the collective nescience of the populace. So at the risk of plowing yet again fresh furrows of information, I’d like to posit my perspective on several recent examples of eventful news and conclude with my personal experience with 1984.

The Theater of the Absurd

The common plot characteristics of those plays deemed as part of the genre of the Theater of the Absurd are emptiness and unresolved mysteries; an apt description for an ever increasing disquiet of the American public on the once effulgent now tenebrous Obama administration.

Emptiness pervades the man himself - enrolled at Occidental College as Barry Soetoro, when did Barry Soetoro become Barach Obama, i.e. the stepson of a Muslim Indonesian oil company manager or the son of a Atheist Kenyan government economist?

Unresolved mysteries abound in this existentialist play where the President who campaigned for a more “open government” and “full disclosure”. His medical records remain sealed along with his school records, his birth records, and passport records. A team of lawyers representing Obama will not allow the release of his Harvard records, his Columbia records, including his college thesis, or his Occidental College records.

All his legislative records from the Illinois State Senate are missing and he claims his scheduling records during those State Senate years are lost as well. In addition, no one can find his school records for The Punahou School, an elite college prep school he attended in Hawaii.

What the public has learned after his ten months in office is that the nation’s Commander in Chief is our country’s most far left (radical) President ever.

Now on to the news events that further define this President and administration.

The Fix is In

With all Obama’s egregious missteps to date it’s difficult to imagine a less propitious start to a presidency. Don’t expect the main stream media to offer anything but plaudits despite abysmal performance in every conceivable area. Through it all there has been the tandem constants of an unconstitutionally expanded government and slavish media promotion and support.

The international fix is in with Obama as evidenced by the recent awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize for "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." The nominating committee sent out its solicitation for nominations last September, two months before Obama was elected president and selected Laureate after ten days in office.

President Obama immediately cemented his standing with the Zeitgeist of the international socialist community when he began his America apology tour – among many examples, the obsequious bowing in Cairo, embracing Chavez, and the shameless dropping of the missile shield in Eastern Europe to appease Russia.

Obama’s kumbaya diplomacy that has yielded zero results is best described by the Weekly Standard, “taking no for an answer is now Obama’s “presidential trademark.” Obama asks and asks, but always gets the same answer. The International Olympic Committee (no to games in Chicago), Israel (no to a settlement freeze), Mahmoud Abbas (no to talks with Israel), King Abdullah (no to Saudi friendly gesture to Israel), our NATO allies (no to more troops for Afghanistan) a government official in Scotland (no to stopping the release of the Lockerbie bomber), Fidel Castro (no to loosening his dictatorial control), Honduras (no to taking back its deposed president), Russia (no to anti-missile batteries in Eastern Europe and meaningful sanctions on Iran) — for all the love the world has showered on Obama, national self-interest still determines the behavior of nations, just as it did when George Bush was President.”

Now that the President is the Nobel Peace Laureate, it will be interesting to see how long Obama “dithers” with the requested Afghanistan troop increase of 40,000. How long and at what cost, from the man who has repeatedly said that the term “victory” is not the objective in Afghanistan?

The best that can be said about Obama’s international diplomacy style is captured in Teddy Roosevelt’s observation in his day “The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife."

Obama’s Enemies List

Apparently the unbridled hubris of the Obama administration transcends heeding the lessons of history as offered in Nixon’s ill fated enemies list. The Nixon enemies list, prepared by Chuck Colson, was a covert list of 20 individuals’ names, brought to light by the Senate Watergate Committee for the official purpose, as described by the White House Counsel’s Office, to screw Nixon’s political enemies, by means of IRS tax audits, and by manipulating grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, prosecution, etc.

The Obama administration has been disturbingly aggressive in overtly demonizing individuals and brazenly attacking institutions and industries at unprecedented levels and scope – the Obama enemies list. Prominent targets include:

Rush Limbaugh - Not surprisingly, Rush is at the top of Obama’s individuals’ list and understandably so with 30 million listeners weekly. Rush’s misfortune was being invited to participate financially in a group seeking to buy the NFL St. Louis Rams. Once the news became public, the media began a withering barrage of falsified quotes attributable to Rush and the “no visible means of livelihood” brothers Revs. Sharpton and Jackson immediately appeared on the scene with their race bating accusations in a league that is composed of 75% African Americans. The deal killer was the head of the NFL players’ union and Obama transition team member DeMaurice Smith, who was outspoken in his criticism of Mr. Limbaugh. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that Rush was “too controversial” for a league that is inordinately populated with felons, rapists, drug users, drug dealers, dead beat dads, et al.

FOX News – Again not surprising, FOX is the most watched cable news network by several orders of magnitude, Fox dominates cable news. President Obama while being interviewed on CNBC recently took a shot at FOX News when asked about media coverage of his young administration, "I've got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration...That's a pretty big megaphone. You'd be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front," Obama said.

Adding fuel to the fire, President Obama said he would give White House interviews via Kenneth Feinberg only to legitimate news organizations and FOX News was not on that list.

But bureau chiefs of Washington television affiliates stood up for Fox and said they wouldn't go unless FOX News Channel, a network that has been in the same press pool since 97, was allowed to attend. When asked about the situation President Obama told an NBC reporter that the reason for keeping FOX out was because it operated more like talk radio than a news outlet...but that he wasn't losing any sleep over it.

So much for the freedom of speech and First Amendment rights of American citizens.

Health Insurance Companies – A huge target because Obama sees the insurance companies as the perfect villain for attacking to gain support for a government run health care plan. The president said the current health care system and the policies of insurance companies are — in his words — "hurting too many families and businesses." And he vowed to change that, predicting health care reform legislation will be passed by Congress this year.

New York Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer has threatened the insurance industry with dropping the anti-trust exemption currently in place for the industry.

United States Chamber of Commerce – The White House is moving aggressively to remove the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from its traditional Washington role as the chief representative for big business, and Instead of working through the Chamber, President Obama is meeting repeatedly with small groups of CEOs in his private White House dining room. Obama is urging corporations to leave the Chamber.

The Chamber spent a record $34.7 million in the third quarter lobbying against the Obama administration's proposals to overhaul energy policy, financial regulation and health care, clearly the anti-regulatory position of its members. The Chamber has launched The Free Enterprise Program - Dream Big with the goal of creating 20 million jobs in ten years, clearly responding to the failed Obama stimulus policy.

The Obama political thaumaturgy is just not working anymore with much of the public, as evidenced by his dramatic drop in favorability ratings in all the polls. The majority of the public no longer support his major initiatives – health care, cap & trade, et al. Except for the continuing fawning of the main stream media, which no longer represents main stream opinion, Obama is seen as a man who is ill equipped by temperament, ability, and ideology to deal with major issues facing our nation. After all, other than being elected President, what the man has accomplished of significance?

The chilling dimension of the entire flurry surrounding the Obama agenda is the head long thrust of socialism, government control, racial division, economic division, and evaporating freedoms.
This dimension in all its Orwellian reality presented itself in the American Community Survey.

The American Community Survey

With cosmic irony, a month ago I (actually “Resident”) received a letter from the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, informing me that my address had been randomly chosen as a participant in The American Community Survey. Being firmly grounded in the reformed faith I have no illusions about “random”, “chance”, or “luck” being anything more than merely man’s attempt to explain the inexplicable.

Then two weeks later I received the dreaded American Community Survey in an envelope boldly stamped Your Response Is Required By Law. The envelope contained a letter from the Director, U.S. Census Bureau informing that “the survey collects critical up-to-date information used to meet the needs of communities across the United States”. And that “results from this survey are used to decide where new schools, hospitals, and fire stations are needed”. “This information also helps communities plan for the kinds of emergency situations that might affect you and your neighbors, such as floods and other natural disasters.”

The letter reminded me that my address was chosen randomly (there’s that word again) and not me personally. The letter concluded “You are required by U.S. law to respond to this survey”, but not to worry all your answers are kept confidential. There was a handy 16 page brochure that answered frequently asked questions about the survey and finally the survey itself and a postage paid return envelope.

The whole experience was sobering and chilling. “Community” just doesn’t mean what it once did; commune and communism are now the prevalent visions conjured under the current administration. Particularly disturbing was that all the information requested is available from local and state sources. Central planning is really one large community.

So there I was standing at the intersection of hope and change (with apologies to the late Rod Serling) - Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas………all personally repugnant.

Rather than test the legal consequences of not completing the survey, I dutifully completed the 28 page form, wincing every step of the way, answering questions on the value of my home, quality of my home, place of birth, job, income, education, disability, journey to work on each person living in the home. I felt like I had just completed a Third Reich questionnaire in Nazi Germany.

Before mailing the survey I received another letter from the Director, U.S. Census Bureau reminding me to send my survey in as soon as possible as required under U.S. law. The “soon as possible” admonition struck me as somewhat strange, maybe it shows a weakness in enforcing the requirements of U.S. law, after all the IRS has a deadline for filing annual tax returns. Again, I didn’t have the appetite to challenge the enforcement proclivity of the U.S. government and begrudgingly mailed my survey in.

As I look wistfully to 2012, the remaining lines of Macbeth’s soliloquy waif through the ether……..”a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”