Fearing Obama
By Alan
Caruba
I have
been sensing something about the mood of many Americans that I think is
unprecedented in the history of the nation. It is a fear of the President. A
fear that one observer, Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal, calls “the
president’s creeping authoritarianism.”
Obama has
had four and a half years to pursue his goal of “transforming” America and,
along the way, he has continually expressed his disdain for the constraints of
the Constitution, his contempt for Congress and the Supreme Court, and, if his
recent speeches are any indication, his belief that enough Americans are so
dumb they will believe anything he says.
Overall,
there is a growing sense of foreboding as four in five Americans are facing
some degree of poverty and a small chance of finding work. One can feel the
nation slowing down, its momentum sapped, its national sense of optimism being
drained.
The
bankruptcy of a major American city, Detroit, tells one everything they need to
know about the result of decades of liberal governance and its acceleration
under Obama. What other cities face a similar fate? Is the nation on the path
to becoming a third-world economy?
I had my
own fears evoked by a news report that “The U.S. government has demanded that
major Internet companies divulge user’s stored passwords, according to two
industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in
surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.”
In
countless ways, the Constitutional protection of privacy is being eroded along
with reports that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been purchasing
huge quantities of ammunition and military-style vehicles. A new book discusses
the way local police forces have been developing SWAT teams with similar
capabilities. What kind of domestic uprising is DHS anticipating? And why is it
anticipating it?
The
National Security Agency is building a huge complex in Utah, larger even than
the Pentagon, to store data it collects, presumably about Americans as well as
foreigners. Kiss the Fourth Amendment goodbye, yet Congress just voted to
sustain the NSA without restraints.
Why hasn’t
Congress acted to repeal the National Defense Authorization Act that permits
the government to arrest and detain any American without recourse to an
attorney or the courts?
The
Department of Justice (DOJ) has been on a tear, presumably to find out the
sources of leaks in the Obama administration, seizing the telephone records of
the Associated Press without giving the AP due notice.
Americans
are beginning to suspect that there is little justice to be found in the DOJ,
particularly since the revelations about “Fast and Furious”, an idiotic program
of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency to purchase and “walk” guns into
Mexico in order to “track” them. It was obvious they would end up in the hands
of the drug cartels. It took an executive order by Obama to shut down a
congressional investigation into this bizarre scheme. His administration has
done everything it could to undermine the Second Amendment.
Over at
the Internal Revenue Service, one of its officials accused of targeting patriot
organizations seeking tax except status has plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid
answering a congressional committee’s questions.
Meanwhile,
the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—is in the process of expanding the IRS as the
government begins its takeover of one sixth of the nation’s economy with a
piece of legislation that has already been declared a “train wreck”, unmanageable
and, most importantly, so intrusive into our personal lives that no previous
generation would have ever allowed it. Obamacare is already wrecking the
economy as businesses large and small try to anticipate its costs.
The
appalling lies about the terrorist attack on the U.S. Benghazi consulate are
evidence in themselves that the Obama administration is prepared to deceive
Americans about the killing of a U.S. ambassador and three of his security
personnel. The orders given during the course of the attack were to do nothing.
This is unprecedented. And frightening.
Millions
of Americans out of work have very real cause to fear for their well-being, but
the President recently told them the real threat was “climate change”, not an
economy that is not producing jobs, but in fact shedding them, keeping the rate
of unemployment unchanged for years.
There is a
point when one must ask if this is deliberate and not just the result of bad
domestic policies. If the answer is yes, then Americans have real cause to fear
the President and the prospect of living in a surveillance state where
everything they communicate and everyone with whom they communicate can be
identified.
There are
those raising warnings about the direction in which the nation is going, but
unless there are demonstrations by Americans that want to see an end to these
laws and trends, the progress toward tyranny will continue.
Marches
are being planned for Washington, D.C., and they may hold the key to the future
before America becomes a totalitarian nightmare.
© Alan
Caruba, 2013
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" and shared on dozens
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