The United States, faced with its worst crisis in sixty-five years, has at the helm a radical political class, as personified by Barack Obama, who have chosen a path trod by so many despots in mankind's recent history.  Barack Obama and his fellow-travelers are exploiting the fear and desperation of a growing number of citizens amid gaping fissures in American society in order to retain and expand their control over the populace.

Human societies are held together by the most fragile of cords.  Whenever unrelenting internal or external challenges abound, thereby placing excessive stress on the foundation of any society, the key determination as to whether chaos ensues is most often in the hands of the society's leaders.  They can choose to exploit the circumstances in order to satisfy their lust for power, or they can embrace a course of action and policies to rally the citizenry into collectively overcoming the crisis at hand, regardless of the fractures in that society. 

American society is no longer the cohesive and determined entity that accomplished so much over the past centuries; it is extraordinarily susceptible to manipulation by unscrupulous ideologues.

The overwhelming peace and prosperity of the past 65 years, which saw the United States vault into being the preeminent nation in the world and the most powerful economic and military power in history, brought with them certain expectations and assumptions that could never be met.  Among them is the premise that the country, regardless of circumstances, would always be able to create wealth and an ever-growing standard of living for its people.  This thought process made it easy for politicians of all stripes, but particularly the left, to embed in the psyche of the American people an entitlement mentality and an unwritten guarantee of their individual pursuit of happiness.

For many years, due to the phenomenal growth of the American economy, its inventiveness, and a lack of global competition, these expectations were not only met, but grew exponentially despite an occasional economic downturn.  The ground was fertile for the seeds of complacency to be sown and take root.  

With this backdrop, while the vast majority of the American people slumbered in their contentment, the radical left gradually infiltrated and eventually dominated the education establishment, the mainstream media, the public- and private-sector unions, the Democratic Party, and the entertainment industry.   Being able to dominate the dissemination of news and what was taught in the schools, coupled with the ability to reach into every living room via the entertainment media, the American left with its roots in Marxism was able to promote the message that the United States was an unfair and oppressive country.  That proposition began to seep into the mainstream of societal consciousness.  Therefore whatever problems an individual might have were the fault and responsibility of a society dominated by selfish and greedy capitalists.

The people were encouraged to look to a powerful central government for their sustenance, their survival, and the guarantee a nebulous concept of "fairness."  The left, once in control of the Democratic Party, was able to accelerate its takeover of all levers of government by portraying itself as the protector of the oppressed and guarantor of equality in exchange for the votes of an increasingly and deliberately ill-educated citizenry.

Under the banner of "progressive thinking," a plurality of the American population has arbitrarily rejected the fundamental concepts that made the United States the most successful country in the history of mankind: respect for the uniqueness of each individual, and self-determination.  The death of over 50 million since 1973 from legal abortions, the open promotion of euthanasia, the abandonment of traditional behavioral guidelines, and the active denigration of religion, together with the successful indoctrination of the entitlement mentality and its concurrent belief in an all-powerful government, have unalterably frayed the ties that bind all Americans and greatly eroded the ability of the society as a whole to successfully weather an overwhelmingly severe financial or societal crisis.

The current financial and economic dilemma in which the United States finds itself has not yet reached the catastrophic magnitude of the Great Depression.  However, with the monetary and fiscal policies presently being pursued in Washington, D.C. and the capitals of Europe, that possibility rises by the week.  How then will Americans react? 

The nation is already seeing an increase in violence, whether by unions fearful of losing their clout or by young African-American mobs directed against their perceived antagonists.  The level of vitriol aimed at inciting retaliation against the Tea Party movement or conservatives in general has gone beyond normal political rhetoric.  The demonization of the rich has never been so sustained and blatant.  The incendiary charge of racism has become the default accusation directed at anyone disagreeing with Barack Obama.  There is open talk of curbing free speech, suspending elections, and governing by presidential fiat in order to bypass Congress.  Radical leftist groups allied with the Obama administration are publically calling for massive demonstrations and days of rage in order to stir up additional unrest.

There are now over 14 million Americans out of work plus another 11 million who have ceased looking for work or are working part-time, as they have been unable to find full-time work.  Confidence in the future is at an historic low as fear and uncertainty casts a long shadow across the landscape of America.

Into this portrait steps Barack Obama and his fellow radicals in the governing class determined to retain and expand their power by pursuing the tactics despotic and socialist/fascist regimes have used to achieve or maintain supremacy in the modern era: divide the populace, find a scapegoat, and foment an uprising through the ballot box or the force of arms against the defined establishment.  Those regimes that succeeded in taking over their respective countries in this manner ultimately failed, but not before the death of millions and the near destruction of their nations.

That Barack Obama is willing to take this path and risk the potential consequences is despicable and bordering on betrayal.   

I am certain those on the left will say I am trafficking in hyperbole and baseless accusations.  However, we are all the product of our life experiences.  My first memory of life was death and destruction, followed shortly thereafter by having to survive on my own amid the rubble of a devastated city in Europe after World War II.  I and millions like me were placed in that cauldron as the result of the inability of sophisticated, albeit fractured, European societies to overcome economic and societal hardships and were willingly manipulated by potential autocrats promising to solve the nation's woes through their ill-conceived and narcissistic vision of utopia.

Could the United States suffer a similar fate?  I would like to think not based on the nation's history and the still-high percentage of the population unwilling to abandon the tenets that made America the beacon for freedom around the world.  However, if those currently in power maintain control of the government through their tyrannical tactics and statist ideology, there will be uncontrolled violence and upheaval within America's borders resulting in a dramatic drop in the nation's standard of living, an irrevocable loss of freedom and the imposition of foreign influence over a once proud nation.  That scenario cannot be allowed to come to pass.  

It is vital that the American people understand how they, through the ruinous erosion of their society, allowed the United States to find itself in its current state.  They must begin to return to those propositions that made America the most successful experiment in the history of mankind and in the process make certain that Barack Obama and his radical regime are relegated to a footnote in American history, as their like must never again be allowed to occupy the halls of power.