Do Obama's Words Matter Anymore?
January 27, 2010
Have you ever heard the word 'meme'?
It's a one syllable word that rhymes with 'cream'.
Merriam-Webster, the dictionary that was briefly banned from a California school this week, defines meme as an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture. It's derived from a Greek word which means something copied, imitated or replicated.
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Replicate means to duplicate or repeat.
Genes replicate, and sometimes, mutate, as they pass biologically from generation to generation.
Memes replicate as they pass by word of mouth.
They also replicate electronically, and in our social media-driven society, memes spread much more rapidly than genes. The gestation period for a human being is nine months, whereas memes replicate in nanoseconds.
The Barack Hussein Obama meme, created circa 2007, was spread by television, telephone, text message, Facebook, Twitter, and doctrinaire college professors.
The meme postulated that Mr. Obama, if elected President of the United States, would repair our supposedly tarnished image abroad, provide quality health care for all, educate the illiterate, lift millions out of poverty, create jobs, stop global warming, end torture, and sweet talk al Qaeda and other Islamo-Fascists into loving us.
He would also heal racial divisions in America and be a 'transformative' figure as we progressed to a post-racial period.
Like an electronic tulip bulb craze, it inspired madness throughout the U.S. body politic, and spread to Latin America and Europe as well.
(The Asians seemed immune to the Obama meme, however, perhaps as a consequence of having a far more advanced telecommunications system than the rest of the world. That's a little geek humor.)
One year into his presidency, Mr. Obama has achieved none of the predicted results other than the cessation of 'torture'.
Italy and France sneered at us for sending troops, doctors, clothing, food and water to an earthquake-destroyed Haiti.
The developing world hates us because we won't pay 'reparations' for the imagined damage caused by now-discredited global warming.
Al Qaeda still wants to kill us and has launched three terrorist attacks on U.S. territory, of which two were successful.
Iran continues apace with its pursuit of nuclear weapons and mocks Obama's entreaties.
Russia snickers at his surrender of the Eastern European missile shield, while our allies there shudder.
China plunders our economy while using the profits to build a fearsome military force, capable of electronic warfare against our most sophisticated weapons.
Mr. Obama tried to nationalize, rather than reform, our health care system and Americans woke up just in time to stop him, we think.
Four and one-half million more jobs have been lost, and Mr. Obama has added $1.5 trillion to our national debt, and promises, promises to add more.
The unemployment rate among young African-Americans approaches thirty per cent in some parts of the country, and we ponder the consequences.
He has kept his promise to end enhanced interrogations, and as a consequence, people walk onto our airplanes without showing their passports and with high-explosives hidden in their underwear. So that's progress.
Independent voters provided the margin of victory for Obama in the 2008 presidential election.
With his words, he portrayed himself as a moderate person, a capable manager, and a protector of the middle class, and they bought it.
By November of 2009 they had begun to regret their decision, and elected Republican Governors in Virginia and New Jersey, two states which Obama had won in 2008.
On January 19, 2010, Massachusetts voters hit Mr. Obama over the head with a two-by- four when they elected Republican Scott Brown to fill the U.S. Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy, the iconic Democrat who had held it for forty-seven years.
The President's response is that he'll change his image and try to convince us with his words, again, that he's a fiscal conservative.
During his State of the Union speech, scheduled for tonight, reportedly he'll advocate a spending freeze on 'discretionary spending'. The freeze is designed to 'save' $250 billion over ten years, or about $25 billion annually.
That seems reasonable unless you're aware of the fact that yesterday the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office declared that the President's 2009 Stimulus Plan is now predicted to cost $75 billion more than the originally estimated $787 billion.
In other words, thirty per cent of the President's proposed 'savings' from the spending freeze evaporated in one day.
During his first year he increased discretionary spending by twenty-five per cent, which means that the 'freeze' is at a much higher level of spending than existed when he took the oath of office.
As Mr. Obama's approval ratings plummet into the mid-forties, we're told by Democrats that Ronald Reagan had a difficult first year too, because of the recession he inherited from Jimmy Carter, and that like Reagan, Obama can rally.
It's an inapt analogy.
Ronald Reagan was of, by, and for America.
He had an innate love of, and trust in, the American people.
He didn't believe there was something wrong with Americans. He believed that the government needed to leave them alone to pursue their own dreams.
Reagan trusted that if freed from excessive government and taxes the American people would unleash their entrepreneurial spirit, revive the economy, and create millions of new jobs.
That's exactly what happened.
Barack Obama seems disconnected and aloof from the Middle Class. It's as though he scorns them and disdains their religion, guns, dreams and aspirations.
His economic illiteracy is such that he thinks he can command economic behavior with laws, regulations and taxpayer funds.
He fears that, left to their own devices, Americans will pursue what he deems an incorrect path.
Americans have come to suspect that underneath the GQ looks and the Harvard mouth is an inveterate hustler who talks about fairness, economic justice, environmental protection, education reform, and American ideals of jurisprudence while he steals your grandmother's Medicare, ships your job to China, cuts off water supplies to farmers in California, appoints a pedophile as his Safe School Czar, and grants civilian trials to terrorists while persecuting the Navy SEALS and C.I.A. agents who pursue them.
As a consequence, his words no longer resonate with Independents and his presidency is in an unrecoverable flat spin.
The Obama meme is headed for extinction.