I suppose it was bound to happen. We’ve been building up to it for years, indoctrinating our youth instead of teaching them to think, and creating a climate where the right not to be offended was more cherished than the right to speak plainly, with the full knowledge that the intended recipients should be ashamed, rather than offended. Still, for me at least, it felt like in 2011, stupid reached critical mass, and started a chain reaction of stupid in everything that it touched. And as I watched, I felt…ennui.
I know that it, and other things kept shouting at my muse this year, until I rarely heard her sweet song, enticing me to tap out far fewer lines than I normally would. I just find it difficult to be either insightful or entertaining when my response to 93% of the headlines is “DUH!” and my response to 5% of the remaining 7% really shouldn’t be repeated in polite company anyway.
It was a year when we saw a key economic partner crippled by earthquakes and tsunamis, giving much fodder but little fact to the anti-nuke hysterics. A story that then faded from our conscience as our news outlets found new stories to hyperventilate about, despite the fact that the real story will continue to unfold for years.
It was yet another year when dissent equaled racism in the eyes of the people who believe their opinions should be our own, and tell us so at every opportunity. It isn’t surprising though. The criticism equals racism meme was getting almost as lonely as it was tired.
It was the year when spoiled entitled youth from across the country mounted a frontal assault on the very same capitalism that made it possible to tweet the “revolution” from their iPhones and blog about it on their Macbooks.
It was the year that the middle east erupted in protests against despotic leaders, so they could replace them with…despotic leaders…and terrorists. And in at least one case, it wasn’t enough for the Duffer-in-Chief to “Bear Witness”…he made sure we helped to replace the devil we knew with the one we didn’t. (Go ahead…call this racist, it won’t make you right or me wrong.)
It was a year in which we saw the Federal Government sue states for trying to enforce the same laws that the Federal Government refused to. And it was a year in which we learned of the most incompetent plan to track illegal firearms and activies with them EVER…a plan that could only exist to curtail a Constitutional right, not make anyone safer. Just ask Brian Terry, and scores of Mexican citizens…oh, that’s right…you can’t. And, as predictable as Grandpa going to the bathroom after breakfast with the newspaper tucked under his arm, calling for the resignation of the Attorney General who appears to have known all about it is….wait for it…RACIST!!!!
It was the year in which we learned that needing an ID to drive, buy booze and cigarettes, apply for credit, get an apartment, and go to college was NOT racist, but requiring it before you let someone cast a ballot, IS. (Thank you, Uncle Facts.)
It was the year when our elected officials received the clearest warning yet given from the financial sector that spending more than it takes in is an invitation to ruin and doom…and their response was to ignore the real issue, point fingers at each other, and keep spending money it doesn’t have on things it has no lawful authority to do. I wish the stupid was confined to the government on this point, but our shame is double, since we keep letting them do this. I can’t think of any other situation where we hire people to perform certain duties for us, for which we pay them sums certain, only to have them decide that they also have to feed everyone in the next state, clothe them, make sure they get medical care, and in order to do it, they take out loans in our name, without our consent, and tell us that it will be fine, because it will actually be our kids and grandkids paying the loans back.
I’d like to live just long enough to see those same little children who were singing the creepy “dear leader-esque” songs to the serial vacationer in the Oval Office shouting his name in anger when they are all in their 40s, living in efficiency apartments and clothed in rags as they service the debt to pay off the Spendulous slush funds and payoffs, furious that he and the Senate that hasn’t passed a budget in years so blatantly stole their futures from them so they could live very comfortably in the now. I am sure that when my own sons are grown adults, Senator Reid’s name will be synonymous with corruption, shortsightedness, and FAIL!
It was the year in which we heard an entire party that at least understands the differences between an America that is strong, prosperous, and exceptional, as opposed to one that is gripped by economic decline and malaise, without focus, vision, or unity, decried as evil, mean people who want blacks hanging from trees, and old people and kids with autism to starve.
It was a year when an athlete who openly practiced his faith became a punchline for people too cowardly or too lazy to find and keep their own. And still, he prays. Thank you for that.
It was another year when those who believed in nothing, and had no standards or goals past living another year, and getting whatever they could continued to mock and critique those who do. It was another year when decency was something uttered with a sneer by people who could not or refused to find it in themselves.
It was another year when truth was there to be found by anyone diligent and humble enough to seek it, and accept it for what it is. It was a year in which I learned even more about the “Why?” relating to the design, and to my sorrow, many of the points of deviation.
It was a year when certain divisions became more pronounced, and certain outcomes began to feel more inevitable. It was sobering, and frustrating when I could see where so many people either sleepwalk through it, quietly accept it, or worst of all, embrace it.
My resolution for 2012? To make myself speak, rather than letting this show stun me in to silence for another year. I’m no different from many of you. I’ll be swept along in the tide of events along with every other average Joe and Jill.
But I’ll be damned if I go quietly.
Good post BiW but for someone who thinks we have so much at stake, I am amazed that you didn’t include this:
“It was a year in which incredibly unserious people sought support to gain the most serious job in our country.”
It would have been nice to see a bit of political self reflection in your annual wrap-up. Sadly, it’s “the other guy’s fault”.
Happy New Year!
Rutherford, did you miss the part where I talked about the finger pointing and spending?
Besides, any one of those “unserious people” would spend more time doing the job and less time on vacation or the golf course than the incompetent that we have doing it now.
Rutherford, two things occur to me. One, what exactly must ‘unserious’ mean, if the behavior of the current incumbent is so measured? By this comparison, ‘unserious’ becomes a pretty loose standard, seeming to exempt fewer than it qualifies. The second thing that occurs to me is that you seem to imply that ‘serious’ is a quality of the current incumbent. If these are the results that ‘serious’ gets us, then “Ron White for President!”.
The things we could do for this country if we had an electorate (or at least a majority) that votes based on something more than idealized appearances.
There is this Constitution thing that they need to study. WE need to pay bery close attention to our Congresscritters. Find out who’s running, get some background on them, and let’s get us get a gummint worth having. Because you know the next step, and that is an incredibly ugly thing. But not the ugliest of things.
[...] Black is White, Imperial Consigliere. To extract and comment would be injustice to the whole. The Emperor is better at that than I, and [...]
Better get off wordpress before the arbitrarily delete your site. They are leftists and they may decide to delete your achives and tell you after the fact. See BareNakedIslam
For a lover of history BiW you do seem to learn nothing from it. The cries of “Bush is dumb” got him reelected in 2004. If your best shot is “Obama plays too much golf”, you can kiss November goodbye.
For someone lecturing me about being ignorant of history, you sure are ignorant of history. Just a taste of what you either conveniently forgot, or flat out did not know:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/108151/did-bush-play-golf-while-katrina-raged-er-no/byron-york
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/04/21/the-medias-double-standard-on-presidential-golf.html
http://deceiver.com/2009/10/26/the-president-of-the-united-states-shouldnt-play-golf-unless-hes-obama/
Now for someone who tells us how concerned that he is about the economy and so many people being out of work, the fact that his golf game seems to be punctuated by his lavish vacations (the ones that his wife takes with him, not the ones that these millionaires stick us with the bill for that he doesn’t go on, or where he joins her later), constant campaigning, insufferable lectures to we little people about shared sacrifce, criticizing our worldview, apologizing for our country to people we wouldn’t otherwise stop to wipe off our shoes, and the occaisional “gutsy call” to dispatch scumbags and murderers to Hell with extreme prejudice. That is the point. Especially after listening to Mickey the Michigan Manitee and the ever charming Randi Rhodes and others harp on Bush’s golf game for most of his term of office.
SecondMouse, you inferred something not there. I can look at the GOP slate and without comparison to any Democrat, declare some of them unserious. Anyone not blinded by partisanship would agree with me. Hell, the Wall Street Journal and Krauthammer have agreed with me.
This ignores the uncomfortable and often unspoken of fact that the WSJ serves first and foremost, Wall Street…that evil cadre of “occupied” business interests that has made record donations to the Obama Campaign, and Krauthammer, who while brilliant, believes just as much as any Kennedy School of Government grad that only the “approved” people should be occupying elected or appointed office.
Considering you fail to call out people in the Democratic Party who are in office who fail to meet the criteria of “serious”, (such bright lights as John Conyers, Maxine Waters, Debbie Wassermann Shultz, Jan Schakowski, Chris Van Holland, Emmanuel Clever, and others) you might consider the proverb about hurling stones when living in glass houses.
R, you acknowledged that Obama behaves as though he doesn’t really want the job he’s got. So, who you calling un-serious Kemosabe?
Hard to believe Rutherford is still under the delusion that the Dimocratic party is the party of serious. How long has it been since they were serious about anything other than getting elected. About as serious as say OWS.
Other than Clinton castoffs and Joe Liebermann, whom I still consider a Dim, the Dimocratic party is an absolute joke – a sick joke. Also hard to believe I used to take Rutherford as a serious man.
It’s just so ironic that the self proclaimed elite can just deem a candidate “un-serious” based on some arcane criteria while Obama sits in the Oval office still un-vetted and unaccomplished even after holding the job for three years. His administration has made any number of malign and lawless decisions (when he has bothered to make a decision) that have diminished this country on a global scale but the republican candidates, even outside the so-called top tier candidates, with many more real world accomplishments and or governmental experience are dismissed as sideshows. The real joke is being played on us that Obama actually believes in America as the founders envisioned it and what made this country great before the the progressives started chipping at the edifice so that they could remake this country to assuage their overblown ego’s.
Obama’s golf playing as evidence of his un-seriousness is just a distraction in the purest sense of the word. While everyone is focusing on Sir Golfs-a-lot’s handicap and Louis the 16th attitude the brains behind the throne are conniving for the dismantling and remaking of America into their preferred dystopia.
Obama is just the smooth veneer on an ugly agenda. He is the face man in a century old confidence game that tries to sell the mark on the idea that an “expert”, one who has deliberately muddied the waters with irrelevant abstractions and 25cent words, knows what’s best for you.
He is a talisman that protects them with what they think is powerful ju-ju… the ability to call an opponent any number of ad hominem slurs that pass for reasoned discourse by the pseudo- intelligentsia. First and foremost being the tired and overdrawn race card which does more now to shackle a minority than even the strongest chains ever could.
The fact is, like in Iran where Ahmadinejad is really just a conniving mouthpiece for the ruling mullahs, Obama is just the mouthpiece for those who believe we need to return to the medieval paradigm of the rule of the elites but instead of something objective like birthright determining who rules, it will be based on the fealty to the egocentric agenda promulgated by an arrogant “elite”
R I gotta give you props that you’ve got your spurs in and you’re not letting go no matter what.
I think your take as well as others as to the seriousness of any candidate should needs to be seriously reexamined.
Although I find a number of the GOP candidates to be laughable and unelectable I NEVER doubted their seriousness.
Tigre, the unseriousness of a GOP candidate has nothing to do with Obama. The two are completely unrelated.
That’s like my saying “wine is intoxicating” and you countering with “oh yeah, pot is intoxicating” and somehow thinking that means wine isn’t intoxicating.
While I disagree with your assessment of Obama, I could agree with it and it wouldn’t change the truth of my original statement about the GOP slate.
I thought you were talking about ABO. Was I wrong?
So why are you voting for Obama again? He’s not serious.
I do not agree that the GOP is not serious. Obama’s running for a job he doesn’t want — that though is definitely not serious. You unquestioning loyalty to Obama is not serious.
Alfie, you and I could say with all seriousness (and self-delusion) that one of us is going to be the next POTUS. No one else would take us seriously. That makes us unserious candidates.
I never said that Herman Cain and Rick Perry were not very serious about their presidential ambitions. BUT they can’t be taken seriously (except by partisan hacks).
So I guess I’m saying unseriousness has nothing to do with a candidate’s self assessment. It has to do with an objective measurement of them.
Now that you mention it, Donald Trump was neither serious about running nor a serious candidate. He was both laughable AND was playing us all for suckers since he NEVER had any intention of giving up his sweet NBC gig to run for POTUS. It was a stunt.
BiW,
Is this legal?
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a defiant display of executive power, President Barack Obama on Wednesday will buck GOP opposition and name Richard Cordray as the nation’s chief consumer watchdog even though the Senate contends the move is inappropriate, senior administration officials told The Associated Press