I wrote this in a Facebook Post (the still-hidden Ball Diamond Ball FB group) when it was clear that we had lost in 2012. I felt then, and had said several times, that an Obama re-election would be a point of no return for the country. I still believe that it is true — we will never recover the Constitutional functioning of our Republic — all that is left is to muddle forward and find a way to re-instill some small portion of what has been lost. We are in the business of defensive fortifications, which is never a good place to be. We have been Fundamentally Transformed, as promised, as voted, as delivered.
Upon Obama’s re-election, I developed chest pains and began having anxiety attacks any time I sat down to write about politics. I thought I had a heart attack the night of the election, and was relieved many months later to learn what angina pectoris was. That’s apparently Latin for “feels like a heart attack”.
Just the same, I wished in my despair to provide some leadership to my group (as much as they would have off of me), to comfort the afflicted, rally the troops, tend to the wounded, etc. I re-read this in the course of cleaning up the old FB group in order to make it public, and tie it in with the blog. I was pleased with my own writing, if I do say so myself. Obama broke me in 2012. I’ve never really gotten it back.
The post:
Friends and Patriots
Okay, conservatives. Mind your manners. Shut your mouths. Nothing you say on Facebook or anywhere else will do any good or change anything, at least, not for the better.
Talk is nothing. Group is nothing. Education is nothing.
There is only victory or defeat, and we have lost.
IF YOU WOULD MASTER YOUR ENEMY, FIRST MASTER YOURSELF
Accept with poise and self-control the equally worthless words of your co-workers and family. Reflect upon how complete our defeat truly is.
The Constitution is already ignored. It will not survive the next four years. Now how shall we talk our way out of this?
Meanwhile, take care of somebody who needs taking care of right now. We have many wounded, so to speak. Reach out privately to affirm and appreciate those who have given their energy, their time, their money, and in some cases, their livelihoods.I feel despair, but I resist. I want to lash out, but I refuse. I wish to burn and smash, to delete and quit, but I know that these are unhealthy and unwise reactions to our fortune. So weigh your actions. Measure your words. Limit your audience. Heal yourself. Lift up the needy that they may lift you in your need.
Do not try to change or control that which is too late and too large for your effort. Do not damage yourself in recklessness any further than your well-earned wounds from this desperate battle. We have lost, and we now have internal needs to tend to. Which is just as well, because we are well and truly screwed in our struggle, for the foreseeable future.
Yet that which is not seen, we ignore at our peril, and this is as true of opportunities and threats as it is of Bastiat’s shoemaker. So be quiet and be of good cheer, for we have lost, and our anger can hurt only ourselves and our sacred Constitutional cause.
A SENSE OF HUMOR IS THE LAST EFFECTIVE TOOL IN OUR KIT
When people ask me about it, knowing full-well where I stand and have stood for years, I tell them it’s okay, that I got my brain implant, I’m now picking up the transmission from the White House, and I was wrong. Freedom is for chumps and I’m glad I finally got controlled like the rest of America. I genuinely laugh and then I genuinely make my way out of the conversation. Anybody wants to pick over my guts, they won’t have my help in doing it. I won’t lose my composure without having it kicked out of me, and I don’t see anybody man enough to do the job.
Master yourself, care for your allies. Recover, and return to the fight in good shape.
BDB, in hindsight how does one help/encourage someone who has been devastated by things?
I had similar feelings. I began to despair when I engaged with the ‘True Conservatives” about trade, the failing working class, and the increasing elitism rampant on both progressive and ‘conservative’ sides.
Obama won in 2012 because no one rallied the citizens under the American banner.
I do believe that FDR broke stuff long ago, and we are finally crashing on the curb with the need to patch, repair and replace our consensus on governing.
Obama was just the endgame of the mess. Hillary would have had us one step from Venezuela after four years.
Can we cobble it together? I remain a crazed codger optimist. The communication monopolies that maintained the old order are done.
I am betting we can reset the compass and get another hundred years out of the this here republic.
My time of despair was when I realized George Bush was a catastrophic incompetent, circa 2005. I have a distinct memory of just where I was when I finally gave up on him- but no matter.
In the event Barry was much less of a disaster than I feared and expected. I was pretty sure we’d get some sort of new federal gun control legislation plus amnesty amnesty amnesty, at a minimum.
Instead we got a GOP Congress and a disemboweled demonrat party, followed by President Donald Trump. I yield to no one in my contempt for and loathing of the gop- but this is still better than the alternative. The Republican base is pro-US and pro-Constitutional government, which tends to drag the gop establishment back to reality. The demonrat base- is not.
I suspect the real story of the last few years is that the ability of the left to rule the United States has disappeared. Thus the furious efforts to import a new people, along with the complete abandonment of any restraint in the pursuit of political goals, even at the cost of alienating potential supporters. On some level they realize history is no longer inevitably on their side, so they have to lock in their gains while they still have the chance.
Too late. And this is too long, so I’ll close with that.
I view it differently.
Obama is evil. Evil and deception will always be with us.
The issue isn’t that there is evil in the world embodied in one BHOSoterro. The issue is there are so few fighting the good fight and too many claiming to do so hence the fiasco of ‘center right’.
I do not bemoan evil. Ever since Eve listened to the serpent we’ve had evil amongst mostly in the form of our own desires.
What we’ve forsaken is our own values and willingness to fight for them. We’ve surrendered abolishing the extra Constitutional institutions foisted on us by the likes of BHO and now just want to be in charge of them.
***
Yep.
There has been a long trail of traitors to the republic, some conscious, some not. But if there’s a point to ID as the beginning of the end, it’s Wilson.
Look at his actions during WWI. He instituted grossly unconstitutional acts, arrested people for disagreeing with him, set up collective shops, and generally misbehaved. He was summarily tossed out of the WH after one term, and rightfully so.
FDR was a Wilson acolyte. He instituted programs that were inspired by Wilson, gross over reaching of federal government. Yes, times were tough; we were in a depression. People were hurting. Yet the actions of the federal government were grossly ineffective. No matter what it did, the unemployment rate just didn’t move. FDR and the nation were “saved” by WWII – THAT was what gave us “full employment”.
?But what really changed the nation. SCOTUS, in short. FDR packed the court, and Cardozo and his pirates systematically razed the constitution. They did by decree what congress had been unable to do for 150 years. And no one noticed.
The other thing that happened to the country post-WWII was meritocracy. At first blush it would seem a good thing that smart people would win the best positions. That might be OK for a company with technical business, but it is rather disastrous for a government. Smart people tend to be silly; it is one reason we are saddled with PC, a totally idiotic standard. So while there are places for smart people, DC is not one of those. Unfortunately we are being run by idiots-savant. The product of the top colleges on the country are tightly packed in a couple zip-codes, in the area surrounding DC, and in Manhattan – and San Francisco.
So if we are to regrasp control of our country, we are going to have to pry our government out of the hands of the “smart” and install the “practical”. And then lay waste to all the various BS programs that have crept into the fed over these last 80 years.
This is probably long enough to generate “commentary”.
Lord save us from the smart, for they know not their limits or consequences.
We are poised for a struggle against elitism, impracticality and consumerism.
It will be the battleground of the youth of today, who have seen excesses in housing, divorce, addiction , and thought control.
Let us hope they rebel against the mistakes of the past.
You do realize taking on the meritocracy will necessitate a new form of guerrilla warfare. It will need an assault on the concept of “smart” with an equation of “smart” with “foolish”. If you’re out of the norm in one area (IQ), you are probably out of the norm in other areas too.
I’ll say.
Alas, Wilson had two terms. He campaigned for reelection under the slogan, “He kept us out of war.”
You’re right. Guess I just neglected his first term when looking at all the horrible stuff he did in his second. Should have remembered Teddy advocated us publicaly siding with England in an effort to thwart WWI while Wilson spouted flowery BS – and let Europe burn. Then joined with more international BS. He was probably instrumental in the Allies not getting the victory they ought to have had. No one found the peace useful nor supportive of national objectives.
“What we’ve forsaken is our own values and willingness to fight for them. We’ve surrendered abolishing the extra Constitutional institutions foisted on us by the likes of BHO and now just want to be in charge of them.”
Here comes commentary- forgive me, but I do not agree.
First, what do you mean “we”? The conservative-leaning slice of the public has fought relentlessly against the left and the left’s Republican adjuncts, with enormous success. I note that the left no longer controls the US government, at least de jure, despite deploying endless deceit and lawlessness against a feckless opposition. Instead of giving up in despair, conservatives turned out in enough strength to hand control of the government to the gop. I submit that this is an important indication that the American people have not given up on our values and have not ceased fighting for them.
Second, I think it too late to lament the failings of Wilson and the second Roosevelt. The damage is done, and we must move forward. But I also note that FDR set up a governing paradigm that brought political success to his party for decades, obviously winning enough elections to maintain power. Plainly the public was pleased enough with that outcome to make the Democrats the dominant party for a good long time. We should learn from that.
Third, we live in the world that exists, not the world that we wish existed. If our opposition has prospered by extra-constitutional means- and they have- then we must notice, and act. We cannot simply pretend it never happened, and allow them to ignore the law while we remain bound by it.
Fourth, we’ve got to find a governing paradigm that will work for the country that exists today, and solve the problems that we actually have. Duh, of course, obviously. But that will certainly result in Constitutional interpretations, new laws, etc, at odds with what went before, causing some people to lament the end of the Constitution, etc, etc.
Again, forgive the disagreement and the length, but as much as I figure I’m no sort of optimist I too-often see grim despair appearing in comment sections of the sites I read.
Cheer up, people. Recent years could have been much worse.
Keep in mind, this was penned back when BHO just won his second term – 2012. There WAS a lot of depression. A lot of questioning where to go now, if anywhere.
I bring up Wilson & FDR because they were so successful in changing our nation. There ought to be lessons there for us to follow. Remember corporate America found FDR beating the daylights out of them and learned – and now we have THE most corrupt government we have ever had.
?So what is the keystone to further progress. SCOTUS. We have a unique opportunity, especially if Trump is elected to a second term, to shape the court for decades to come. The lesson from the last 80 years is that you don’t have to actually pass any legislation when the courts can declare things unconstitutional and strike down stuff that has been about for a long time.
I wasn’t around for the Wilson admin like the rest of you so I will defer to y’all’s expertise.
*log’s off, deletes account*