Someday, when we need an epitaph for the Obama Years, I’m going to submit this paragraph by Mattew Continetti:
Over the last few years the divergence between what the government promises and what it delivers, between what it says is happening or will happen and what actually is happening and does happen, between what it determines to be important and what the public wishes to be important — this gap has become abysmal, unavoidable, inescapable.
We hear of “lone-wolf” terrorism, of “workplace violence,” that if you like your plan you can keep your plan. We are told that Benghazi was a spontaneous demonstration, that al-Qaeda is on the run, that the border is as secure as it has ever been, that Assad must go, that I didn’t draw a red line, the world drew a red line, that the IRS targeting of tea-party groups involved not a smidgen of corruption, that the Islamic State is not Islamic. We see the government spend billions on websites that do not function, and the VA consign patients to death by waiting list and then cover it up. We are assured that Putin won’t invade; that the Islamic State is the jayvee team of terrorism; that Bowe Bergdahl served with honor and distinction; that there is a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
While the public remains pro-Israel, our government negotiates with Israel’s enemies. While the public wants to reduce immigration, the preeminent legislative objective of both parties is a bill that would increase it. While the public is uninterested in global warming, while costly regulations could not pass a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate, while the scientific consensus behind the green agenda is, at the very least, fraying, the president says that climate change is the greatest threat to the United States. While Americans tell pollsters their economic situation has not improved, and that things are headed in the wrong direction — while even Democratic economists acknowledge the despondent state of the middle class — the president travels to Chicago to celebrate his economic recovery.
What was it that the Declaration of Independence said about a distant, arrogant, unrespnsive government?
The unresponsive part is a synonym for “non-democratic.” The Federal government was designed so that only one half of one of its three branches was sensitive to small-d democratic pressures.
To liberals, this is a feature, not a bug.
When you have the least democratic level of government involving itself more and more in the daily lives its citizens, you don’t have a republic anymore. You don’t have a people who rule themselves, you have a people ruled by an aristocracy. The policies that matter are the ones they care about, not the ones we, the ruled, care about.
I’m thinking George Orwell wrote the epitaph for the Obama administration back in 1948, if you catch my drift. Eastasia has always been at war with Oceania, Winston.
Now the question is whether the “five minute hate” will be directed at Mitch or not. Who’s with me to promote him for the position? :^)