My friend Carol recently expressed frustration that we’re all running around babbling about stars’ naughty bits and football team nicknames, and the ostensible leader of the free world is golfing and hobnobbing as it burns down.
(That’s not exactly what she said, but I suspect she’d be fine with that account of her concern.)
To be sure, I am scared. I’m frightened for my family and for my country. And most of my fear would be mitigated were the United States of America leading, as she has nearly always done.
You do understand that the United States must lead, don’t you? Visions of a world of countries equal in importance and influence are the naive fantasies of deluded sillyhearts. There will always be a biggest kid on the block. I want that biggest kid to be the United States, because I believe the core values of the United States are superior to the core values of any other nation that would seek to influence others.
Is Bo Williams an American exceptionalist? To his core.
I do blog about politics and weightier world matters from time to time. I don’t do so more often because a) it depresses me; and b) Obama’s approval rating still inexplicably hovers around 40%, which presumably means that four in ten of you think things are going fine.
I must temper myself before addressing that four in ten of you.
This will unavoidably sound condescending. I apologize:
I think most of the four in ten of you are doing the best you can.
I think many of you have poor to nonexistent understanding of media bias, which badly damages your perception of just what you consume in the way of news and opinion.
I think many of you are too young to remember the Carter presidency, when we last had a president who was ashamed of the United States.
I think many of you think that Obama blathering that thugs and tyrants are “on the wrong side of history” will somehow stop them, when it has generally been American and allied force that has relegated evil men to said wrong side, not rhetoric. Lasting peace comes from the total defeat of an enemy, not pontification.
I think many of you have received inaccurate explanation of the many social reforms you advocate, and woefully insufficient exposure to their numerous real-world failures.
I think many of you have been trained to look to the government first, not last, when you have a problem. It hasn’t always been that way. (Quick – name a JFK quote.)
Most poignantly, I think way too many of you refuse to seriously examine the proposition that if our current president is not an enemy of the United States, his behavior is usually indistinguishable from one.
I do not think most of you are bad people. I think you are good people with bad ideas – ideas that do not yield your desired ends, and often actually work directly counter to them.
Even though I understand how you four in ten got to where you are, I still have very little patience for fairy tales offered as defense in a robust discussion about the future of the country and the world.
So I generally wait until I spend a good bit of time and effort on a serious political piece before I publish it. I want to have spent enough of myself on it to believe it may persuade someone. (Delusion? Probably. But a mostly harmless one.)
The shallow red meat that rankles a lot of the same people is easier. Had some of that this week.
So that’s a bit of insight into how I’m thinking about the political content of BoWilliams.com. I am gravely concerned, but I don’t talk about it all the time mostly for quality-of-life reasons.
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That 40% thinks that all the problems would be solved if the gov’t would just print more money and hand it out to them.
That’s a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that?