"UNFORGIVABLE!"
- from my friend, Ayad, on the East side of Cleveland...It is unforgivable that we, as a nation:
* Considered, for president of the United States, somebody, with no discernible affection for, pride in, or allegiance to the country.
* Considered, for president of the United States - and "Leader of the Free World" - a "red-diaper baby" (with a Third World twist, and a side of Islam), marinated in Marxism for three generations (on both sides of the family).
* Considered a candidate, who -- based on his life story, family pedigree, the lives and views of immediate and extended family members, and his own past and current political teammates, friends, mentors and heroes -- is, at best, not sympathetic to the country's traditions, core values, founding principles, free-enterprise system, military and police.
* Considered, for high political office, someone who might not be able to obtain a security clearance to enter the White House.
* Considered, for president, somebody with an Arabic name, with whom Arabs identify, while we are at war with Arab fascism (and not even asking whether the first name comes from baraka (meaning blessing) or Buraq (the name of the horse that Islam's prophet, Muhammad, rode to heaven)).
* Considered, for high political office, somebody with Third Worldist sentiments, allegiances and ideologies.
* Considered for president, someone with no appreciation or regard for what made this country great.
It is unforgivable, that we:
* Have gone the way of Third World dictatorships (including that with which I am most familiar, my native Iraq), by succumbing to what Arabs call "empty talk" - the hollow slogans and fantastical rhetoric upon which Arabs have feasted and been deluded for generations.
* Demonized our last (and last patriotic) president and many patriotic Americans (as well as patriotic Iraqis), thus paving the way for demagoguery.
* Have gone the way of the Arab world, with scapegoating and demonization, demagoguery, messianism, tribalism and identity politics, political idolatry, cult of personality, mass hysteria and delusion, the pathology of perpetual crises, the politics of devils and angels, criminalizing politics, and seeking redemption and salvation through politics.
* Have gone the way of the Third World, where each incoming ruler seeks to remake the nation anew.
* Cared so little about this great country, as to entrust its leadership to the most untested, inexperienced, unaccomplished, unexamined, unvetted and unknown presidential candidate in memory, and, probably, in the country's history.
It is unforgivable that our media:
* Have become defense counsel and propagandists for a particular party, forcing Americans - as Iraqis did, in the days of Saddam - to turn to foreign sources to find out what's happening inside their own country (in our case, Izvestia, students in Communist China and the British press).
* Did not demand a presidential candidate's personal, school, financial, medical and psychological records.
* Did not look into a candidate's - let alone a presidential candidate's -- upbringing, family background, psychological makeup, personal and political history, ideology, political teammates, and current and past financial patrons.
* Did not delve into a candidate's personal history, worldview, and attitude towards business, to discern how those affect that candidate's motivations and views on American traditions and values, the middle class, the "American Dream," the role of government in people's lives, and the need to be taken care of.
* Did not attempt to discover who a candidate's friends have been, and who, his enemies.
* Did not examine a candidate's psychological needs and motivations.
* Did not scrutinize how a presidential candidate climbed the academic and political ladders, to enable us to judge his qualities and qualifications.
* Has not looked into the lives and politics of a candidate's sister, brothers and other family members.
* Has not examined that candidate's father -- his life, ethnicity, politics, personal behavior, alcoholism, work history, and parental role, and their effects on the son.
* Has not examined that candidate's mother -- her politics, behavior, and parental role, and their effects on the son.
* Did not look at Kenyans' animus toward England (an animus surpassed only by the Irish), and a politician's feelings towards his Kenyan grandfather's treatment by the British (under Winston Churchill).
* Did not examine a candidate's views of American power and historic role in the world, and what those views might mean for the world, our allies and our adversaries.
* Have abdicated their proper role as watchdogs, and, in the manner of dictatorships, become not only lap dogs for the state (or a particular party), but attack dogs, scrutinizing, investigating and attacking any private citizen or public official who dares to question the favored leader.
* Cover up news and scandals, rather than uncovering them.
* Have made our fate, in some ways, worse than in a dictatorship, where people know their media are not free and independent, and thus disbelieve everything they say.
* Divulge operational secrets of our war effort -- and get away with it.
* Reported in bad faith on Iraq and the military effort as a whole.
* Painted the toppling of the world's greatest terrorist and biggest sponsor of terrorism, as not only wrong and having nothing to do with 9/11 and terrorism, but illegal, immoral, and "the original sin."
* Made "Iraq" a dirty word.
* Mock, smear and impugn the motives of American citizens, peacefully exercising their right to protest their government, by insulting them with such slurs as racists, bigots, Nazis, skinheads, klansmen, "angry white men," haters, a mob, terrorists, violent, lunatic fringe, wackos, and tea-baggers - and getting away with it.
* Censor themselves and do not criticize or ask difficult questions of a politician, for fear of being called racist.
* Did not examine what a candidate meant by "change" and "transformation" of the country.
Unforgivable:
* The "loyal opposition" cynically switching its position on Iraq, for no reason but to gain power.
* Maligning and demoralizing the troops, undermining the war effort, and stabbing in the back the commander-in-chief and the military, in wartime.
* Knee-jerk America-blaming and fault-finding.
* An arrogant class's bigotry against Southerners, conservatives, Christians, white men, patriots, traditionalists, morally upright citizens, people from small towns, people not of the right schools, people who don't speak with the approved accents, people who work their way through school, people who go into the military, people with large families, people who don't kill their babies in the womb (especially if the baby is "defective") - or, as a presidential candidate famously said, "people who aren't like them."
* Crying wolf, as a nation -- about loss of liberties, invasion of privacy, lying, lack of science, suppression of dissent, shredding the Constitution, a lawless and rogue regime, illegitimate rule, a power grab, crony capitalism, arrogance, egomania, narcissism, "father issues," dictatorship, fascism, Hitler, Nazi, disastrous economy, abuse of power, scaremongering and hatemongering, "culture of corruption," a compliant press, impending, catastrophic natural disasters, and an apocalypse around every corner.
* Our tremendously wide fifth column, that has now conquered the country.
* An arrogant class's scurrilous and malicious treatment of a high-ranking and courageous politician, with a string of accomplishments, a remarkable life story, and one of the highest approval ratings in the country -- and, on top of that, the vile and depraved treatment of that politician's children.
* Immigrants -- and others -- who use the country and benefit from it, while constantly disparaging it and complaining about its people and culture.
* Sacrificing America at the altar of...I-know-not-what -- "white guilt"? assuaging our narcissism by making us feel good about ourselves? affirmative action? encouraging people's self-esteem? wishful thinking about "race relations" or "world peace"? utopian visions? political correctness? the god of multicultural diversity?
* Making our professional clowns and mimics into opinion leaders and experts on everything under the sun - including the sun itself.
Unforgivable, this president's:
* Unleashing and feeding resentments, class warfare, hatreds and racial hostilities -- destructive forces, that, once unleashed, are well-nigh impossible to contain.
* Targeting, attacking and vilifying professions, businesses and industries.
* Pitting segments of society against each other, and sicking them on each other.
* Engaging in racial and identity politics - and the backlash that has created.
* Sitting in the pews of an America-hating bigot's church - and subjecting his children to that abuse and venom.
* Trillion-dollar budget deficits.
* Making trillion an everyday number.* Firing a private-company executive.
* Gross interference in the economy and takeover of sections of the private sector.
* Centralizing control of the economy.
* Rewarding bad behavior and punishing good.
* Taking us down "the road to serfdom," by undermining and destroying enterprise and the spirit of self-reliance.
* Putting a stake through the heart of the country - its very spirit, drive and energy.
* Playing the blame game -- the stock-in-trade of the Arab world.
* De-emphasizing the 9/11 attack and war, reducing it to a crime and a "tragedy," to be "remembered" by "service."
* International spitting-on-America tour.
* Unpresidential behavior, language and comportment.
* Mocking and snearing at political opponents.
* Showing disrespect to the citizens of the country he putatively leads.
* Showing more sympathy towards terrorists and this country's enemies, than towards its friends.
* Friendliness to dictators and communist regimes.
* Disdain towards and betrayal of democracies and democratic movements.
* Lack of fondness and afinity for the U.S. Constitution.
It is unforgivable that we:
* Fell for media propaganda - that propped up a naked emperor and smeared good and decent patriots.
* Bought something, without knowing what we were getting.
* Fell for the biggest scam and con-job in America's history.
* Thought so little of the United States as to roll the dice with the country, risking its future and very essence.
* Are so cavalier with the country, as to turn it into a laboratory for social engineering.
* Were so gullible as to fall for the fraudulent hoax of global warming.
* Have been so conceited and narcissistic as to think we are greater than the sun, the seasons, and the natural world; that we know what the right temperature should be; and believing we can do something about the weather.
* Are trading individual liberty, for the potential of (Third World-like) government-promised security.
* Accept more and more government subsidies (in Iraq, Saddam "bought" people, with subsidized homes, land, jobs, food, fuel, healthcare and education).
* Grow increasingly dependent on government.
* Are turning ourselves from free and independent citizens, to subjects of the state, beholden and indebted to the beneficent leader -- the source of all things -- our welfare, our property, and our very lives.
* Have forgotten Thomas Jefferson's maxim that "the government that governs least, governs best."
* Do not understand - or care - that the bigger the government, the less freedom we, as individuals, have.
* Have mainstreamed radicalism.
* Have become ahistorical and apolitical.
* Have become ignorant of the true nature and reality of Marxism, socialism and demagoguery, and not recognizing them when they hit us in the face.
* Equate the country with the leader, as is done in the Third World.
* Look increasingly to the state to create work and jobs, rather than to ourselves.
* Have eroded and weakened our democracy, with an uninformed and ill-educated populace.
* "Talked down" the economy and the country, thus undermining Americans' faith and confidence.
* Have "trashed" America for a couple generations, thus turning Americans against their country and churning out, as in the Arab world, a couple generations of America-haters.
* Have become economically illiterate, ignorant of the most basic laws of economics, how goods and services are produced, how wealth is created.
* Abandoned skepticism of politicians and the ways of politics.
* Did not act in the tried-and-true American way, by kicking the tires, taking the car around for a spin, and checking under the hood.
* Did not demand some accomplishments from a candidate.
* Considered a candidate (for any office) who, as a legislator, voted against providing medical care to babies surviving abortions who are left to die (what can, at best, be called "passive infanticide") - and who did so more than once.
* Lacked the basic common sense and patriotism to see through the propaganda, BS and the "con."
* Handed over our government - and country - to a bunch of neo-Comms.
* Set aside patriotism and basic love of country, as requirements, for high public office.
* Gave our country its first Third Worldist president.
* Gave our country its first Marxist president.
* Gave our country its first anti-American president.
* Put a demagogue in the White House, maybe for the first time.
* Introduced the cult of personality to this country.
* Introduced our country to a "true believer," a revolutionary, and the politics of mass movements.
* Were so ignorant, gullible and unpatriotic, as to have given such a person a hearing.
* Vote, based on identity, or for racial, ethnic or tribal reasons.
* Make everything about race, to the exclusion and detriment of everything else, including the country, and "race relations" themselves.
* Jettisoned human history's most successful experiment in individual liberty.
* Took America for granted.
Ayad Rahim "The View From Here"