After nearly two years, the Presidential Election is finally done. No, I am not devastated by the result. Nor do I believe it spells the end of the republic. I do believe a major political shift has occurred and I do believe the Republican Party is growing closer to irrelevancy. The shift, in my opinion, is that a majority of people, regardless of race, economics, and/or gender, believe that there is class warfare. Us against Them is the new mantra, even if a number of the Us are incredibly wealthy themselves. Forgive me for not feeling sorry for the George Clooney type liberal, nor the Warren Buffets of the world. If that class of liberal feels guilty for how well they have done, so be it, but do not begrudge me an opportunity to do likewise. Apparently though, a majority of my fellow Americans have come to believe that those who have done well for themselves are the enemy of the state; unless of course you are part of the aforementioned limousine liberal class who are “down with the struggle”. I did not believe that yesterday and I do not believe it now. The election defined all voters as either part of the President’s victimized class or one of the Romney-like oppressors.
For the record, I am neither victim, nor oppressor and I am not heart broken by the election. That’s mainly because I saw the result coming. I was hoping I was wrong and that living in a major city in the northeast had skewed my cognition on the subject of national politics. As we now know, that was not the case. To my thinking, what has come to pass is that we are no longer a nation that wants to help those who need help. We have now become one that is intent on doing for those who won’t do for themselves. The United States has always been the place where anyone can make it, if they are prepared to hustle for it. As proof of that, consider that the last two Democrat Party candidates elected President of the United States were both sons of single mothers, with mostly, if not completely absentee fathers. President Clinton was born in Hope, Arkansas, population 8,000 and possessed a Southern drawl. President Obama overcame an alien sounding name and race. Both had grandparents who played pivotal roles in their lives and both were admonished to better themselves. Obviously, both did.
The question now though is would either of those future presidents receive the same advice today? Maybe they would be counseled instead to remain in school until they neared 40, taking advantage of “free” healthcare, birth control, education and state sponsored monetary beneficence until they could find a job with 5 weeks of annual vacation. After all, that PhD in Philosophy or Renaissance Poetry is just as valuable as an MFA in Elementary Education or an orthopaedic surgeon’s MD. Why take the taxing job route of the two latter disciplines, even if the rewards are greater, when the former course leads to a vocation that allows plenty of time for stopping to smell the roses? I have seen the satisfaction on the faces of my daughter’s elementary school teachers and I know the joy of a reconstructed should that allows me to throw a baseball with my daughter. Never mind those pesky details though. After all, the country “owes” us those benefits and weeks of relaxation, right? JFK’s famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you- ask what you can do for your country,” has become meaningless. We are now being excoriated for wanting to do better than our neighbors and the country is to do for us what we don’t want to do for ourselves.
The Marlboro Man is a uniquely American concept and I would argue, political correctness aside, that both Presidents Clinton and Obama fit that Marlboro Man mold. Both are self made men. They may have had help along the way and Ivy League educations, but in 95% of the world two men from such humble backgrounds would have no chance of attaining their country’s highest elected office. Even in the 5% of the world where it “might” be possible to achieve such status, the odds against it would make it almost prohibitively risky to even try. Only here in the United States can every child dream of being whatever they want when they grow up and truly have a chance of achieving that dream, if they are prepared to bust their ass tirelessly to get it. Every one of us wrote numerous essays in elementary school titled, “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up”. No doubt what we wanted to be when we grew up changed as we did, and few of us actually became ballerinas, astronauts or fire fighters, but the opportunity was always there.
So, I did not shake my fist at the heavens and curse mightily when I awoke to the election results this morning; mainly because as an, at best, agnostic it would have seemed ridiculous. I did not immediately send out dozens of scathing texts decrying the demise of the republic. Nor did I forward the multiple emails with images of a tombstone showing t
If this sounds as if I am maddened or filled with ire, know that is not the case. I am resigned to the notion that more Americans believe in a way that I do not, than believe as I do. I likewise do not harbor any anger towards President Obama. He may believe, as is said by many, that he is only the President of the progressives, and the rest be damned. I, however, feel as I have always felt about the office of the President of the United States: whomever occupies it is MY President, whether I voted for them or not. I did not believe the Hope and Change rhetoric, and do not believe the rhetoric now which promises to reach across the aisle. Like my prognostication of the election though, I truly hope I am wrong. After all, President Obama and I are both the Marlboro Man. I just see the range as a promise and a place to satisfy my peripatetic urges and the President sees it as a place fenced off by the J.R. Ewing's of the world. I'm okay with hopping a fence here or there and leaving J.R. to his pursuits. The President seems to think the J.R.'s of the world stole the land at the expense of "the little people" and it deserves to be distributed more "equitably" amongst them. Since millions of my fellow Americans decided they wanted four more years of what has come before, I guess I'll have to accept that my time has come and gone. The cowboy born in the middle of the 19th century, but who lived to see the horseless carriage in the early 20th no doubt felt somewhat as I do. I guess that's why the President is called a progressive.
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