There are times when it's just too depressing to write
about politics. This is one of those times. The
welfare-reform-killing, debt-exploding, generational-thieving,
pork-laden, growth-inhibiting, utterly unnecessary and
counterproductive monstrosity that the Obamites and Pelosians
just shoved down the nation's throats has left me in a deep
numbness akin to one of the stages of grief.
What's worse is that the $800 billion stick-it-to-us
package is just the beginning. Everywhere one looks in Congress
there are bills being lined up with tiny provision after tiny
provision that harm entrepreneurs, enrich union bosses and
plaintiffs' attorneys at the expense of the rest of the populace,
punish productivity, undermine our cultural heritage and cultural
literacy, expand the leviathan state, eliminate private choices
and responsibility, and whittle away at free speech or other
rights and privileges of citizenship. And the vast majority of
those provisions will pass, by hook or quite often by crook, with
our president and our speaker and Majority Leader Harry Reid
ignoring every rule or pledge or promise they need to ignore in
order to get their way.
Behind the gauzy, post-partisan halo the establishment
media has painted around the cover-boy visage of Barack Obama
lies one of the most cynically calculating pols in living memory.
He promises to abide by campaign spending limits -- except when
he won't. He won't hire lobbyists -- unless he makes a dozen
exceptions to the rule. He'll run a transparent government,
posting everything on the web -- except when it is inconvenient.
He'll say he's bipartisan -- except when it comes time to
actually deal with real substance. And he can no more disown his
pastor than he can disown his white grandmother -- unless the
pastor embarrasses him again, of course.
Obama has a certain maneuver -- the “smile broadly for the
audience while he sticks a shiv in you" -- down to a fine
art.
Again, it's all too depressing.
Which is why I wasn't going to write about politics. And
I'm not, I promise. It's just too worrisome
to think about how Obama is going to gut missile defense just
when it is starting to work more consistently. Just can't write
about that right now. And I just can't bear to write about how
the Rodham Clinton State Department has already begun its
imitation of Jimmy Carter, with the fervent belief that if we
make nice to evil regimes they will stop being evil. All those
developments are not merely depressing, but far too scary to
either write or think about. So I won't. I
promise.
Really.
Instead, just relax. Pick up a good old, sturdy hardback
book (before old hardbacks are incinerated -- I'm not making this
up -- to comply with the new anti-lead law that took effect Feb.
10). Watch a thoughtful movie that actually has a somewhat
redemptive ending.* (Hollywood makes one or two of them in a good
year -- and good years occur at least once every decade,
perhaps.) Listen to some catchy pop tunes whose lyrics celebrate
love instead of sex. (You can find some of those on old LPs, I
understand. You still have a turntable, don't you?)
Oh -- and if you want to do something to
protest the filth that corrupts pop culture, definitely don't ask
the politicians to do anything about it. Besides the fact that
this column promised not to be about politics, the simple fact is
that the politicians won't bother anyway, because they think all
expression is protected, especially if it is crass or vulgar,
except political expression they don't agree with.
Such political expression, don't you understand, is what's
really dangerous, and just in the past week both
Bill Clinton and Sen. Tom Harkin said government bureaucrats
should keep it off the airwaves.
But we're not going to talk about that. That's politics,
and it's just too depressing.
But politics wasn't always so depressing. As Citizens
United, along with Newt and Callista Gingrich, reminded us with
their recently released Reagan documentary,
Rendezvous With
Destiny, there
was a time when our presidents told us that great things waited
around the corner, and told us we would get there if we took the
very steps he outlined on the campaign trail.
Now, though, we have a president who warns us of
“catastrophe" if we don't do what he says -- even though what he
just demanded in the stimulus abomination runs contrary to the
fiscal rectitude he explicitly and repeatedly promised during the
campaign….
Oops -- I guess I spent a whole column writing about
politics. No big deal: If a president can make exceptions for
every one of his promises, I guess a columnist can, too.
*Shameless promotion: If you want to see a truly
good one, watch Crossroads on TMC,
The Movie Channel, which I think runs tonight, Monday Feb. 16, at
8 p.m. Eastern Time.
