We are witnessing the disrobing of the Obama aura in a spending-drenched feeding frenzy befitting hungry pigs at a wet, putrid trough. The fierce urgency of now has become the fierce urgency of sow.
Camille Paglia sums up these first three weeks of the Obama era:
Money by the barrelful, by the truckload. Mountains of money, heaped like gassy pyramids in the national dump. Scrounging packs of politicos, snapping, snarling and sending green bills flying sky-high as they root through the tangled mass with ragged claws. The stale hot air filled with cries of rage, the gnashing of teeth and dark prophecies of doom.
Yes, this grotesque scene, like a claustrophobic circle in Dante’s “Inferno,” was what the U.S. government has looked like for the past two weeks as it fights on over Barack Obama’s stimulus package — a mammoth, chaotic grab bag of treasures, toys and gimcracks. Could popular opinion of our feckless Congress sink any lower? You betcha!
Paglia’s “you betcha” hat tip to Sarah Palin must have been intentional. Paglia defended Palin and her family during the campaign:
The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses. The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place.
Palin, who continues to be attacked as lacking intelligence by the hate-middle-America-first elites, is looking pretty smart right now. I went back and read Palin’s speech at the Republican convention, and Palin’s words were prophetic:
Now, I’ve noticed a pattern with our opponent, and maybe you have too. We’ve all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers, and there is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state senate. This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word “victory” — except when he’s talking about his own campaign.
But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot — when that happens, what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet?
The answer — the answer is to make government bigger and take more of your money and give you more orders from Washington and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world.
America needs more energy. Our opponent is against producing it. Victory in Iraq is finally in sight and he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay. He wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.
Government is too big. He wants to grow it. Congress spends too much money. He promises more. Taxes are too high, and he wants to raise them.
The use of fear to drive an agenda has been long in coming. Fear has been Obama’s stock-in-trade for several months:
Fear is stalking this land, and being stoked by Obama. The genius of Obama is that he has taken a message of fear, and sold it as hope. And the public buys it.
Do something to help move the economy forward? Absolutely. Help fellow Americans who have fallen on hard times make it through this recession? Definitely. Throw away out of fear what it took 200 years to build? No betcha.
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Here’s an interesting article by Charles Kesler on what we can expect from Obama.