Thursday, November 15, 2012

Alas, E Pluribus Pluribus

Alas, E Pluribus Pluribus
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
by Burt Prelutsky

Not being conversant in Latin, I may have bungled the title, but I figure that if e pluribus unum means one out of many, what we have turned into is an America that the Founding Fathers would never recognize. When you look at the election map, we more closely resemble the Balkans than the America that used to lie between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Even if, like me, you wonder what happened to those two million Republicans who saw fit to vote for John McCain, but decided to stay home this time alphabetizing their canned goods, there’s no getting around the fact that Obama has managed to expand on FDR’s base. Whereas Roosevelt managed to win four elections by appealing mainly to blacks, Jews and union members, Obama has cobbled together those three blocs along with Hispanics, homosexuals, single women, Asians, Muslims and college students.

One can hardly blame Obama for causing divisions. After all, he was desperately seeking re-election. And you can’t blame Romney although a lot of right-wing Monday morning quarterbacks are doing so. He ran a fine campaign. And if the guy who oversaw the worsening of a bad economy; pushed through ObamaCare; lied about Benghazi; and promoted class, gender and race, warfare, could get himself re-elected, you can’t blame his opponent.

You can, however, blame the media that stood by while Obama provided the clumsiest cover-up of a government scandal since Watergate; that helped him portray Romney as an evil plutocrat; and applauded his every utterance as if it came straight from the Mount.

You can also blame parents who have reared the greediest, most self-indulgent, self-satisfied, bunch of hedonistic morons in this nation’s history. I mean, it’s not as if these youngsters who think that everything from a college education to cell phones and a lifetime supply of birth control pills are entitlements, were hatched from eggs, although they clearly have close ties to those, such as chickens and snakes, who are.

The reason that the future looks so bleak is because, as I wrote prior to the election, America could probably survive four more years of Obama, but it can’t survive a population that would re-elect him. It means that the takers now out-number the makers. What’s more, when you consider the demographics, it’s obvious that Obama’s groupies breed at a far faster rate than the rest of us. I guess that figures because they have so much more time to devote to that particular activity.

After Obama defeated Romney, Paul Krugman, who would be an embarrassment to the NY Times if the Times had the capacity to be embarrassed, advised Obama not to even consider compromising with the Republicans in the House. Instead, Krugman, who has won a Nobel Prize in the field of Economics, said Obama should call their bluff and let the economy go over the cliff. I guess there’s no reason why a guy who pulls down about $50,000 per speaking gig should concern himself with what another recession will do to the middle class. It just goes to show that the Peace Prize isn’t the only inexcusable waste of Alfred Nobel’s TNT royalties.

In the aftermath of the election, Chris Matthews thanked Hurricane Sandy for helping to get Obama re-elected. In a way, it’s rather magnanimous of Matthews to give a thumbs-up to a malevolent Mother Nature. It can only mean that he has finally forgiven the old girl for cursing him with that embarrassing lisp.

Speaking of Sandy, I have tried in vain to find mention of any nation offering to help us deal with the debt and destruction left in its wake. I would hope, but not expect, that Congress would keep that in mind when determining to which nations we should extend foreign aid with money we first have to borrow from the shylocks in China.

There are two groups of people to whom we are expected to bend a knee simply because they are identified as civil rights leaders or former members of the military. In the first group, we find such leeches as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Joseph (“White folks are all going to Hell”) Lowery, the reverend who delivered the benediction at Obama’s inauguration, no doubt because Jeremiah Wright was still busy crawling out from under the bus where Obama had thrown him.

In the second group, we find the likes of Colin Powell, David Petraeus, Charley Rangel, John McCain and the late Rep. John Murtha. I’m not sure if the Peter Principle applies, the notion that people tend to rise in a bureaucracy to their level of incompetence, but it certainly seemed to kick in once these guys returned to civilian life.

In the aftermath of the election, I have tried to adopt a philosophical attitude. I tried to remind myself that this, too, will pass. But that’s like saying this, too, will pass when referring to a kidney stone the size of Obama.

Frankly, I’m not sure what I find the most disgusting, but contenders are, one, that 80% of blacks, whites and Hispanics, between the ages of 18 and 29, voted for Obama; that a super candidate like Romney couldn’t even do as well as John McCain; or that 50,000 Americans squandered their birthright voting for Roseanne Barr.

Finally, on November 6, 2012, it’s as if the ship of state was renamed the Titanic and the majority of the passengers said, “Hey, look, there’s an iceberg. Let’s hit it!”
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.

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