Fateful year

With the federal debt approaching 70% of GDP, and federal spending at levels not seen since WWII; with existing entitlements programs splitting at the seams, and new ones of unknown but certainly enormous cost being added; with regulatory expenses skyrocketing and a foreign policy in complete disarray; with class-warfare rhetoric reaching fever pitch, and socialist ideology making a comeback like a vampire that won’t stay buried; above all, with a president whose monstrous ego has blinded him to the vastness of his own ignorance, while hardening the intensity of his contempt for compromise and fair play, and encouraging the complacency with which he views all opposition as the personification of wickedness – 2012 will obviously be a watershed year. More than a watershed, in fact; I’m convinced that we are rapidly closing in on the tipping point of America As We Know It.

And one very important test will be whether we reelect Barack Obama. There can be no excuses for harboring illusions concerning his temperament and ideology. He is the first punk ever elected to the presidency - a swaggering, arrogant, destructive ignoramus, a perpetual rebel against a society from which he has been alienated since his youth. And it is a mark of the decrepitude of our political system that the one organization around which Obama’s foes should be able to coalesce – the Republican Party – is hamstrung by dinosaurs of privilege whose opposition to the wilder excesses of the tax-and-spend mentality is now based more on inertia than on principle. It is a mark of the corruption of the fourth estate that even the relative handful of senior Republican congressmen and senators who are fighting the good fight can barely make themselves heard above the talking heads parroting the administration’s canned views. Finally, it is a mark of the cupidity and pusillanimity of Wall Street that its denizens continue to pay protection money in the form of campaign contributions to Obama and his party for the absurd distinction of being able to dine at the captain’s table aboard the Titanic.

It is no surprise that, against this backdrop of fiscal irresponsibility and an aggressive attempt at not-so-surreptitious revolution from above, the Tea Party has arisen. When political institutions fail, it is inevitable that a free people will find their own means for protecting their traditional rights, pushing nominal leaders aside and installing new ones not besotted with the smugness of a false and baseless elitism, nor sunk in the idle luxury of useless sinecures. We hear much about the dangers of populism, the risks associated with directionless and inchoate passion, the futility of trying to change policy without organization. We are told by fearful men to be cautious, by insiders that we don’t understand, by time-servers that patience is a virtue and that all will be well down the road – in short, we are told to keep our mouths shut and to swallow the fantasy that the rabbit hutch that is the establishment is going to magically transform itself into a pride of roaring lions (at some future date, to be determined).

Well, none of that will do in 2012. We The People are the surest guardians of our own liberty, and in this time of clear and present danger, the market for leaders who don’t lead has turned decidedly bearish.