PrintMarch 2, 2009
He'll Only Break Your Heart
A Note to America from a Concerned Family Member
I owed it to you to give him a chance. I watched him. I listened to him. I read about him. And as I learned who he really was and what he really wanted, it became harder and harder for me to bite my tongue. It was too much to hope that you would see this on your own, and now it's time someone told you what you need to hear.
You hang on his every word. Each of his silver-tongued pronouncements takes you higher, draws you closer, beckons you to drink deeper. You want to believe the promises of a better life, of being whisked away to a place where danger can't find you, of a place where your heart can stay intact. He promises you the world and he gives you something to believe in.
The truth is, he's just not that into you, he's into the idea of what you could be. He's into a place he calls America, but it looks nothing like you. The America I love will be gutted and rebuilt. You will be a shadow of your former self, he knows an opportunity when he says it (political opportunists often do) and as his crony Rahm says "You never let a good crisis go to waste." Things have gotten bad in the last few months and he knows it's what sealed the deal for you. While you may have expected some change, you thought he would leave what's best about you unharmed, but as the TARP and stimulus sequels become visible over the horizon, you still have no idea what price you will pay to satisfy his selfish ambition.
Remember when he told you he would have the most transparent government in history? He vowed to have a "clean break from business as usual" and said he would protect you from the undue influence of lobbyists. And what has happened since he made this promise? How many have been granted an exception? If he respected you, would he make a promise that he knew he would break? If he cared about you, would he walk all over you?
It doesn't stop there. This week he hit you up for a trillion dollars and then had the audacity to swear up and down that none of it was going to be spent on pork, but you know that's not true. What else do you call $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts or $550 million for hybrids for bureaucrats? And then he asked for $410 billion more - $9 billion of which was unabashed pork barrel frittering of your hard earned cash - and mine too. The bottom line is that your bad decisions are starting to affect the rest of us. After the last few weeks, he's on track to take as much as $4 trillion dollars from you and me and the rest of the family. Where are we going to find that kind of money?
Why would you let him have that? But more importantly, why would you trust him with what you have already given him? Do you realize that he is entrusting much of that money to "Nobody Messes With Joe" Biden - a man who can't seem to remember what the "number" is for the website dedicated to stimulus oversight (it's recovery.gov). This is a man who stated that in Delaware "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent." What a classy guy. But it's alright because the verbal idiocy of Joe the Stimulus Czar is just chalked up to "rhetorical flourish." Our money is in good hands.
Don't kid yourself into thinking that your new man will be able to pay for all this by increasing taxes on rich people. The Wall Street Journal points out the absurdity of his payment plan; if you took all the taxable income of the top 2% of Americans - the ones he plans to penalize in order to pay the rest of the family back - he would only have $1.3 trillion, far short of the $4 trillion he is on track to spend.
Beyond the money issue, what about our personal safety? We are at war. The ghosts of three thousand murdered souls still roam the streets of Lower Manhattan and seven years later their dust is still kicked up by the late winter wind. They were annihilated by people who want us dead; but it seems that your beau feels that the war Islamic Fundamentalists have declared on our family, on our home, is not worthy of public recognition. Why else would his first speech to Congress not mention terrorism in a meaningful way? Why else would Janet Napalitano decline to mention terrorism in her first address to the House Homeland Security Committee? Wasn't her department created to protect us in the wake of 9/11? Do they really think that choosing to ignore this problem will make it go away? Isn't that the sort of thinking, or lack thereof, that has exacted such a heavy toll on the family?
Despite all this, I still love you. You will always be my home. We have 230 years of history. The funny thing is that everything about us that he wants to change is what makes our home so beautiful: our independence and industry, our self-reliance and support of the individual over the collective. His silver-tongued oratory inspires, but in the real world it is deeds, not words, that prove the mettle of the man. You'll see eventually, and I'll be there to extend my hand when you fall, to let you know you aren't alone.
Matthias Reynolds blogs at AmericaAdNauseam.blogspot.com and can be reached at Matthiasreynolds@verizon.net."
Matthias Reynolds blogs at AmericaAdNauseam.blogspot.com and can be reached at Matthiasreynolds@verizon.net."
