The Last Eight Years? (Pt 1)

This next election is really about the last eight years, or is it? Perhaps we need to go further back to understand the choices we’ve made and the choices before us? I doubt this opinion will matter much to anyone but me, but if you choose to read it consider if I am accurate or just full of excrement. Those who know me know my political positions but let me give anyone else a synopsis. First and foremost, I am a FISCAL conservative. By that, I mean spending within our means is what matters most to me, as I see unrestrained growth of debt as a nation-killer. There is a lot of history in this position as we look at the ancient world up through WW II. Socially, I’ve moved from a liberal indifference to a moderate, as the two extremes drag the respective political parties to the extremes. What I see today are two primary parties led by people who no longer understand how to govern, they simply fight for media supremacy. I see an electorate who can’t be bothered holding their politicians to moderate positions as they all clamor for the federal dollars everyone wants. I’m not sure reason and accountability have ever been a key component for a politician, but by all measures, it does not exist today.

            In 2008 this nation faced a real fiscal crisis which many viewed as equivalent to the stock market crash of 1929. The federal government under Bush and a Congress led by John Boehner (R-OH) in the House and Harry Reid (D-NV) in the Senate. The crash came because of lending practices for home mortgages by the Federal Government when home sales stopped and people and bankers speculating with short-term “balloon payment” mortgages could not make their payments and had to declare bankruptcy. There was a decent movie made in 2011 called “Margin Call” that shows the type of crash that happened. As a result of this disaster the American people who had unified in 2001 to fight a terrorist enemy, again united to remove the GOP from power and instill a Democratic Congress and our first Black President.

            That President had almost total control over running the government and chose a path to redefine the role of the government as a social institution. His party passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act. But in their arrogance, the Democratic liberals knew they had to lie to the American people about what this new “socialized medical scheme” would do. The GOP railed against the act and the costs, but with a coopted media they were simply painted as “evil men protecting the big businesses.” At the same time we were pushing into this world the government was attempting to save businesses “too big to fail.” Chrysler, GM, and others. As far as I know, Ford was alone in its choice not to take the federal dollars.  How much of GM, and how many jobs were saved by these efforts?  I know all the executive positions are still there, but how many plants employing thousands of UAW workers are left?

            In his eight years of leadership, did his choices on how to lead the nation make us a stronger and more unified people? He routinely argued against guns, and Americans went out and bought guns in record numbers. He recognized when an African American was killed by violence at the hands of a white man, but seldom when it was at the hands of another African American, or when a white was killed by a black.  Did his efforts reduce violence in the urban areas, or lessen the probability of school violence? In short, did he move us to that dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. where his children will “… one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character?” Looking around I don’t see his leadership in achieving Dr. King’s ambition.

            We can speculate as to why that was, the left would say our racism came out, but is that really the result of our institutions, or the agenda of those who would rebuild our nation to spend its time repaying others for the sins of the past? The one truth that seems obvious to me is as long as we make race the central component of every story we will never move beyond racism. It really doesn’t matter if we are speaking about white, Asian, or Brown. If we implement a race-based program of any nature we further the issue of race as a central dividing point amongst the people of our nation.