A recent survey by the UVM Center for Rural Studies found that 77.1 percent of the eligible voters in Vermont, up from 74.3 percent a year earlier, believe that the U.S. government has lost its moral authority. This is hardly surprising when you consider the fact that our government is owned, operated, and controlled by Corporate America. National elections are bought and sold to the highest bidder. It was the loss of moral authority which brought down the apartheid government of South Africa, the communist regimes in six Eastern European countries, and the moribund Soviet Union.
According to this same poll 48.7 percent of Vermonters think the United States has become unsustainable (politically, economically, militarily, and environmentally).
And a recent New York Times/CBS News poll indicates that the views of Vermonters differ little from those of most other Americans. “Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the 1990s.” Eighty-one percent of the respondents of this poll said that they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago.
Even though most Vermonters believe America is going to hell in a handbasket, 87.2 percent of them still believe that the country is governable and 93.6 percent think it is actually fixable. How is this possible? And who do they think is going to fix it? Barack Obama.
Most left-leaning Vermonters are convinced that Obama represents the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. With his feel-good message of hope and change he can surely walk on water. But is it really so?
For example, few Americans realize that Obama’s 2002 speech, in which he expressed opposition to the pending war in Iraq, was, in fact, a prowar speech, not an antiwar speech. His opposition to the war stemmed from his fear that it was the wrong war and that Americans might become disillusioned by its failure, possibly turning them against all wars. Obama is a strong supporter of the war in Afghanistan.
Even more revealing is Obama’s principal foreign policy advisor, vehemently antisoviet, cold warrior, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Not unlike Bill Clinton, Obama is a military hawk disguised as a liberal. Furthermore, there is little evidence that he could stand up to the Israeli lobby. In other words, as far as foreign policy goes, it would be business as usual.
Although Obama is an articulate, intelligent, charismatic speaker, who is long on political rhetoric, he is short on hard-nosed, specific solutions for America’s plethora of extremely complex, interdependent problems. For example, how will he deal with soaring crude oil prices, the collapse of the real estate bubble, the subprime loan crisis, the crash of the dollar, failing infrastructure, and turmoil in the Middle East? These are very difficult problems.
Barack Obama is not going to prevent the ship of state from going down. At best, his touchy-feely message is illusory. At worst, it represents a cruel hoax.
Rebél
Thomas H. Naylor
April 15, 2008