I’m staring at this image of the current president speaking to the combined houses and to the rest of the nation, and I’m thinking back to the last time a president was able to do good things on a large scale for America, things I agreed with, things that made me proud and grateful.
Now, it’s true that, almost by definition, no president can please all the people all the time. But I now realize that all the presidents I have lived through (I started out with Eisenhower) have been major disappointments. So maybe it’s not the man but the job? And maybe it’s not the job but the country?
The United States of America used to be those 13 colonies with more or less the same geographic zone, a similar climate, a similar demography, and a common enemy. The union grew organically, the process was in place and so we went along with it, perhaps mindlessly.
When the integrity of the union was put in question, we killed the folks who did the questioning and burned down their cities. We do that quite well. But the question never went away: does it really make sense to have this union?
Would the five or six major regions comprising the United States of America had created this union had they all been in place politically back in 1776? Probably not.
The poor Europeans have been trying to imitate us, only to discover how unreasonable it is to try and find common ground between Greece and Germany.
What are Washington State and Mississippi doing in the same union together? Heck, what is Mississippi and anyone else doing in the same union together?
If we had thinkers, I mean honest thinkers, among our politicians, I believe they would have recommended starting to dial down this union thing. It’s not working, hasn’t been working for a very long time. It’s no longer even offering stability, never mind prosperity.
I agree that Barack Obama makes a seriously faulty president, but so did his predecessors. It’s an absurd job, to which we elect people who by definition must be off their rocker. I mean, have you seen what these poor folks have to endure on the way to becoming elected? It’s inhuman, and it makes for strictly insane people getting the job. The system is rigged in favor of crazy people.
I’ve been looking at Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky, thinking that if he applied his Libertarian principles in getting elected, maybe there’s hope. But it won’t happen. The only way Rand Paul will be elected president would be by completely overhauling Rand Paul, reneging on every promise, promoting the exact opposite of what he declared to be his agenda, or he won’t stand a chance.
It’s the end of the road for the union, and we don’t even realize we’re already a couple feet under water.