[rant]
It is with increasing dismay I watch our President try to drive us down the path to economic ruin.
While some make the case that he's doing it deliberately, with malice and forethought, others ascribe his attempts to 'fix' America's economic problems to willful ignorance, a psychological incapability to believe he can be wrong, or outright stupidity.
Personally, I think it's a combination of all of those things, with the psychological aspect being the leading factor.
There's no doubt in many American's minds that Barack Obama is a classic narcissist, believing he's the only one with the knowledge to fix America's problems. It doesn't help matters that he seems to require unquestioned adulation. Anyone disagreeing with him on any point is seen as being unworthy, wrong, or some kind of close-minded ideologue, something our thin-skinned President has made abundantly clear on more than on occasion.
When his plans don't come together as he wishes, it's always someone else's fault, either through their sheer incompetence or their less than total commitment to his ideas. It's never because his plan was faulty. Never mind that many of his new ideas are merely rehashes of old ideas already found to be unworkable, or worse, cause far more misery than doing nothing. It's like the old mantra of “Yeah, but this time we'll do it right!” running through his head. It won't matter because the old ideas still won't work.
While saying he is willing to “reach across the aisle” in a show of bipartisanship, far too often he's done just the opposite. It has become clear to me his definition of bipartisanship is indeed “All you Republicans sit down, shut up, and do what I tell you to do!” Many of his followers believe he can work in a bipartisan fashion, but looking of his history in Illinois and the US Senate show he's never done so. So how is it that they believe he'll do it now?
His attempts at foreign policy fill me with dread, seeing how his “smart diplomacy” has been neither smart nor diplomatic. How is it he thinks that by insulting our allies and cozying up to our enemies that he'll be able to bring about a kinder, gentler America loved by all? He's on a fool's errand. There will never be a point where everyone loves America. All he's doing is generating contempt for him, and by extension, for the US.
It appears he also believes that by sheer force of his personality that he persuade foreign heads of state to accept his vision of what needs to be done. If nothing else, the G8/G20 summit in Toronto put the lie to that, with many of them telling him “Sod off!”, so to speak, after he tried to persuade them that his vision of how to fix the economic problems everyone is dealing with is the only one worth considering. Ireland has shown that he's wrong by taking austerity measures and pulling themselves out of their recession without the need for more stimulus spending.
He doesn't seem to understand that even Keynes believed any deficit spending for economic stimulation should be of short duration or it could end up causing greater economic hardship than if thee were no stimulus spending at all. It appears Obama's working to make sure the stimulus is a more permanent thing, mostly by making sure most of the jobs created by such spending are government jobs rather than private sector jobs. He doesn't understand that those government jobs do little more than suck money out of the economy and give little in return. How is that supposed to stimulate anything?
OK, I think I've said enough for now. It's time for me to back away from the keyboard and go to bed.
[/rant]
