Monday, November 12, 2012

The New Normal

 
 

 
"We are not in Kansas anymore..."
 
In case you did not notice, our world changed last week. We now live in a new land - uncharted territory. The closest we have  ever been to this venue was in the late seventies. We were suffering though a terrible economy. Our military had been weakened and overseas, Muslim extremists were holding American citizens hostage. Our country was being led by a good and moral man, however immanently unqualified for the job. Collectively, we made a mistake electing him to be our leader. As hard as our president tried to make things better, to fix things, he could not - he did not have the skills. The country could not wait to remove him from office once his term was up - and we did.

Today, we have a president whom four years ago we chose over a man who was a genuine war hero and a sitting, experienced United States Senator. We knew that the man we selected to lead our country had absolutely no experience - we really did not care. The country was "war weary", "Bush weary" and most everyone it seemed was looking for a change - that is "hope and change". After winning the election, with the economy on the brink of disaster, our new president governed in the same manner his lack of experience allowed him to. He ignored consensus, eschewed the opposition, and governed like a monarch ruling over subjects. The promises of being the "uniter" we all were hoping for were quickly replaced by divisions this country had not seen for generations. Rather than being respected by our friends and feared by our enemies, we were neither. In short, it was the late 1970's all over again, and we had an election coming up to remedy this mistake. 

Last week the election came and many thought it would be the end to malaise 2.0 and the start of the healing for the country. Those that thought that, thought wrong. Welcome to the "new normal". With the country a mess, scandals erupting at home and abroad, and a monster storm paralyzing the Jersey and New York coastline, we voted for more of the same. We decided to vote for gay marriage, unchecked voter fraud, legalized pot, higher taxes and hundreds of new crippling regulations, mostly still unwritten. More importantly, we decided to return a man to the nation's highest office who did not have the skills or experience to be there in the first place.

As we settle into our new home in the land of "new normal", we look ahead to the future. Once sacrosanct documents like the Holy Bible and our Constitution are being questioned and cherry picked. Our economic system of capitalism will continue to morph into European style Socialism. The United Nations will become more of our overlord as we allow it to be so. Freshly emboldened by the election, many Obamacare advocates will attempt to take healthcare to the next level - single payer. Many small business will shutter their doors as the cost new health care and the new regulations resulting from Dodd-Frank make profit margins unacceptable and unsustainable. We will continue to sink valuable and diminishing resources into untested "green" technologies while continuing the "war on coal". As much as we don't want it to, the War on Terror will continue. Further defense cuts will allow our "blue water" Navy to devolve into nothing more than a Japanese style "self defense force".

No Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore. Even though over 90% of all the counties in America voted for a change in leadership, a change in direction, the remainder of the counties, mostly blue, voted for status quo. Geographically, the tale wagged the dog. And so life now begins, in "new normal"... 

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