When the dust settles and the American Republic is transformed, we won’t be able to say we didn’t see it coming.
Barack Obama campaigned on change. He’s delivering it faster than anyone thought possible. The American experiment is rapidly transmogrifying from the limited republic envisioned by our founders into a behemoth bureaucracy with elements of corporatism, fascism, and socialism as the public and private sectors continue their ghastly merger (last week General Motors became just the latest company to “collapse” into “the government’s arms,’ as the Wall Street Journal so eloquently put it).
Nevertheless, many journalists and pundits scoff at the notion of Obama’s America becoming socialist, or fascist, deriding such accusations as right wing straw men. But we need not only listen to right wingers to hear frank discussion of America’s current anti-liberty trajectory. Hugo Chavez, the socialist dictator of Venezuela, had this to say about Obama’s take over of GM: “Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right.” Yes, Chavez addressed Obama as “comrade” and joked to Fidel Castro, longtime communist tyrant of Cuba, that Obama is in danger of making them both look right wing.
Then there’s Pravda, once the official propaganda arm of the Communist Party of Soviet Russia. In a April 27 editorial, Stanislav Mishin wrote: “the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed.” Indeed.
Chavez and Pravda know a thing or two about socialism and government run economies. They see quite clearly what’s going on in America. The question is: Do Americans?
It is unclear if the general American public knew just how much change they were in for with Obama. Were they really voting for the complete restructuring of American society? Or were they merely throwing an electoral tantrum, throwing out the Republicans for daring to continue a war long after it had become both unpleasant and unpopular?
Obama’s popularity remains high (59.6% approval, Real Clear Politics average June 9), seeming to suggest that Americans are just fine with the way things are going, thank you very much. And they may very well be. It is equally possible, however, that Americans did not, and do not, fully understand the comprehensive scope of Obama’s transformative regime. If so, it would not be Obama’s fault – after all, the man openly promised on the campaign trail to “spread the wealth” and threatened government induced bankruptcy of the coal industry.
No, Obama made no secret of his socialist inclinations, nor his corporatist intentions. True, the mainstream media covered for him as much as was possible, downplaying these and similar statements in a truly disgusting display of advocacy.
But the information was there, for those who wanted to find it. Media malfeasance is no longer an excuse for ignorance in the age of the blogosphere, Fox, and talk radio. If the American people knew what they were getting and voted for Obama anyway, they will deserve all the change that is coming to them.
And if they didn’t know, they will deserve it then, too.
