Irreconcilible Differences

There’s this old saying, as worded by Thumper in Bambi, “If you don’t have somethin’ nice to say, don’t say nothin’ at all,” which is maybe why I say less about our current president than I am thinking. Occasionally, though, some things will spill out. 

There was YET ANOTHER speech/press conference this morning. I am rolling my eyes as I write this. Can the man ever stop blathering at us and actually do some work? Or even play more golf (I’m all for him playing golf, as he has done, more than any other president in history, because I think he does less harm to the country out on the links than anywhere near the White House).  

There was a piece by Walter Williams in April 2010 where he said that there are irreconcilable differences between liberals and conservatives in our country, and we should just admit it and accept divorce as the inevitable best option. I trust Williams was making a point about the differences, and the need to get back to the Constitution, and was not really advocating dividing up the country into pieces. But I do understand the sentiment. 

Obama and I have irreconcilable differences. Idealogically, I can’t imagine how I would ever have accepted him as my president. (Actually, I was not unwise enough to vote for someone so harmful to the country I love and so hateful toward its basic Constitutional law—that was imposed on me by large numbers of people who were just plain wrong to vote for him.) I accepted only based on my acceptance of the Constitution; I accepted the result of a legal vote, with the understanding that peaceful change for the better can happen at the next election. So, in a sense I consented—but I did not consent to the certain abuses that are currently ongoing in that relationship. 

As happens in relationships sometimes, when you know it’s over, when you know there is no way to patch things up, that you begin to ignore the big differences and start to be annoyed at petty little things. Let me just say, I feel that way about Obama's voice.

There’s a chapter in the book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, where he describes moments where couples in counseling reveal certain things that predict whether the couple will be able to work things out. The nonverbal cues of contempt and disdain tell the future. And it is, without a doubt, contempt and disdain—toward me, toward people who think like me, regular Americans who sustain the Constitution (which he took an oath to uphold but doesn’t), toward hardworking family people who try to take care of themselves and their own—he speaks to us as though to maggots that shouldn’t be allowed to inhabit his world. 

How do I know this? His tone of voice, his mannerisms, his speech patterns—and suspicion on my part. Without the suspicion, I might not notice. Others don’t. Others continue to claim he is a brilliant orator. To me, he is simply inarticulate. I understand what he says better when I read a transcript rather than hear him, because when I hear him, the disdain toward me is so distracting that I cannot listen without anger. But when I read what he says (with the ums and uhs edited out, because, unlike other great orators, these are plentiful in his unscripted speech), I can see spin and twisted lies among what he is saying. I do not see a stupid man; I see a manipulative one. 

This morning he said, regarding raising the debt ceiling, “The America people expect more than that. They expect that we try to solve our problem. We have a chance to stabilize America’s finances for a decade, for 15 years or 20 years, if we are willing to seize the moment.” 

If you did not know this man, you would think he might be Ronald Reagan urging a recalcitrant Democrat House and Senate to do the right thing and stop spending away our futures. But that isn’t even close to what he meant. He means the Republican House should raise taxes, guaranteeing less revenue, while raising the debt ceiling even more astronomically than thus far, so that he is free to buy votes any way he chooses. 

He also said, “What the American people are paying attention to is who seems to be trying to get something done.” Really? I think he “hopes,” because, as he said earlier, “I always have hope; don’t you remember my campaign?”—he hopes the American people are not paying attention, because now that we have a Republican House, they have passed a budget, which the Senate has failed to vote on. In fact, in something like 800 days into office, Obama and cronies have not done the basic task required of them to pass a budget—at all. Obama offered one up a few months ago that not even a single Democrat Senator voted for; it was voted down 97-0. In other words, even his own party saw that it was garbage, not to be taken seriously. 

And how is he responding to the debt ceiling debate? By threatening to renege on obligations to current Social Security and Medicare recipients, and then blaming Republicans for causing that catastrophe to happen. Think this through: if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we do no automatically default on our loans, any more than not qualifying for a new credit card in our private lives means we will default on credit card debt we already owe. It just means we are limited in taking on additional debt, and we must prioritize what we spend our money on. We might have to make a budget, if we haven't already done so, and then stick to it. 

So, if we are going to fail to pay those current obligations, he must mean we have gone through every single line item of payment in the government’s expenditures and can’t find anything to cut first. Not paying unwed mothers more every time they have a new fatherless baby. Not paying for research into methane produced by cows. Not paying for Nancy Pelosi to fly a private jet to and from California and elsewhere. No, none of that can be cut, according to Obama, so the logical step, in his mind, is to threaten seniors. A few months back he threatened to not pay salaries due to soldiers serving in the military. Because nothing else can be cut? Surely not. But because he “always has hope” that the media will spin things his way and blame those of us he truly hates and sees as his enemy. 

Yes, I am his enemy; he has made that clear. Not because I am the enemy of the office of President of these United States—but because HE is an enemy to that office, and to this Republic he is breaking his oath to uphold and defend. 

So, yes, I want a divorce. ASAP. If impeachment cannot be done (and I can clearly see that that’s not on the horizon), then the election of 2012 will have to do. In the mean time, can I just please be spared from hearing his disdainful, sneering voice aimed at me?