Election 2012: The DIVIDED States of America

I was looking for election coverage Tuesday night, but I kept finding movies instead. First, the sequel to ‘Titanic‘ was on, and before I turned it off it looked like they were gonna try to hit the iceberg from the other side this time. Also on was a remake of the classic ‘Pinocchio‘, but this time the little wooden boy decided to remain on Pleasure Island where he could eat, drink and smoke for free, despite the now obvious signs that it’s turning him into a donkey.

Oh, wait a sec…  all of that WAS the election coverage! Silly me, I got confused between the channels.

It was an easy mistake to make. After all, America has somehow decided it doesn’t care HOW many trillions of debt we rack up: we want our free food-stamps-and-phones, darn it, and we re-elected the guy promising them, and more.

You know, like this lady: 

Obamaphone Lady doesn’t represent the entire Democrat party…but she’s certainly in the majority, in two basic ways:

1. the people who receive the free stuff, as well as
2. the folks who agree she should get all of that and more.

The problem is that roughly half the country doesn’t agree that apparently able-bodied people should continue to receive money, food, healthcare, phones, and everything else…for free. And when I say “free”, I mean “paid for by me, and then sent through the sluice of the Federal Government, eventually ending up in Obamaphone Lady’s pocket“.

I’m including this video yet again, because I’ve yet to find another one that distills the entire argument as perfectly as this 2 minutes does:

This is dividing our great country, but it’s not the only way.

President Unifier and his surrogates have encouraged more division than my 3rd grade math teacher. Through the mythical “War on Women”, to “Racist Dog Whistles” to the Occupy/Makers-vs-Takers/Class Warfare/”You-Didn’t-Build-That” mentality, a continual Balkanization permeates our politics, our news, even our classrooms. It’s everywhere.

This is what concerns me more than just an election. With this sort of thinking being rewarded, (and have no doubt, it just was), it’s a near certainty that such divisiveness will continue, and increase.

And if even a fraction of my fears come true in the next 4 years, the division that our President has sown will bring a bumper crop of resentment and ill will between those receiving the entitlements and the folks working 9-to-5 (or, more likely, closer to 7:30-to-6:00) to provide all the bounty.

If all this was a movie, it wouldn’t end well.

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I’m sure there will be some who will start the inevitable finger-pointing at the candidates, the get-out-the-vote drive, etc.,.. now that the campaigns are over. I will not be one of them. Especially compared to the debacle of McCain in ’08, or Dole in ’96, or even Bush Sr. in ’92, the Romney/Ryan campaign was many times superior, in tone, energy and ground-game.

Mitt Romney wasn’t my 1st, 2nd, or 3rd initial choice for President, but I slowly grew to both appreciate the man, and respect his character. His concession speech further cemented my opinion:

“I wish all of them well,” Governor Mitt Romney said in front of a somber crowd at Romney Headquarters in Boston. “I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.”

“To you here tonight and to the team across the country, the volunteers, thank you,” Romney said. “ You’ve inspired and humbled us.”

Romney wished Obama the best, but put his trust in job creators and small businesses to move the economy forward, an argument he made on the campaign trail. He called for Obama to reach across the aisle to “do the people’s work” in a time of great challenge, saying the founding principles of the country are the only sure guide for a better future.

“I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes in leading the country in a different direction,” he said. “I ran for office because I’m concerned about America.”

Romney ran a solid campaign and he ran it with enthusiasm. Could he have pushed harder on Benghazi? Absolutely. But, when the media did (rarely) mention Benghazi, it was only to imply that somehow Romney’s talking about it was worse than the attack itself. Plus, you had the networks almost gleefully complicit in covering up the story, with the worst example being CBS/’60 Minutes.

This news just came to light MONDAY, remember, which is way too late for it to matter. You think maybe hearing this could have made a difference back, oh, I don’t know….maybe a month ago? Especially since it destroys what Candy Crowley did to protect the President during the 2nd debate.

From Human Events:

They withheld one more little snippet of that interview until yesterday, and the last piece of the puzzle invalidates efforts to use the previous dribbles of information from the “60 Minutes” memory hole to build an “Obama always said this was terrorism” narrative.  Here, for the very first time – 53 days after the interview occurred – is the full exchange between Steve Kroft and Barack Obama:

KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorism attack?

OBAMA: Well it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans.  And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.

KROFT: But there are reports that they were very heavily armed with grenades, that doesn’t sound like your normal demonstration.

OBAMA:  As I said, we’re still investigating exactly what happened, I don’t want to jump the gun on this.   But your right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt.   And my suspicion is there are folks involved in this. Who were looking to target Americans from the start.  So we’re gonna make sure that our first priority is to get our folks out safe, make sure our embassies are secured around the world and then we are going to go after those folks who carried this out.

That’s a tough hill to climb, now made tougher with an electorate hooked on the most addicting drug of all: free stuff.

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So, we’ve come to the beginning of another 4-year slog with President Presents-for-Everybody, who’s whistling happily at the helm of the U.S. Titanic.

You can stay here, but I’m going topside. Those deck chairs aren’t going to rearrange themselves, you know.