A Day of Reckoning

On her fine blog, Ann Barnhardt has a two part posting on a day of reckoning.  She talks about the necessity for justice.  She makes the point that we must have this justice and that, collectively, as a society, we must be punished when we don't carry out justice.

I agree with her.

But I'm convinced, and I think she knows this as well, that it is well beyond too late.  We've had our chances, over and over and over again.  We failed to act. 

I knew it was the beginning of the end when the country elected Bill Clinton and the things I heard people saying back then.

I was driving a truck at night from Tampa to Orlando and listening to late night talk radio before Rush Limbaugh became a hot item.  I was listening to guys like Barry Farber, and Tom Snyder, and Alan Colmes.  Moderates or flaming liberals.  I could tell we were in for a reckoning.

The prevailing thought was that it didn't matter what the man did in his private life.  It had no bearing on how he would do his job as president.

Really?  I knew that was crap when I first heard it, but now I've had years to think about the ramifications of such crap.

First, let's deal with the idea that other presidents before him did bad stuff in their private lives.  Oh yes, Kennedy was a serious womanizing rascal.  Nixon positively makes me ill for all the hubris that he indulged in.  The point is that none of it was considered good, or inconsequential.  The country at large would not tolerate flagrant misdemeanor behavior from a president.  But by the time Bill Clinton came along, the country had changed.  George H.W. Bush had done enough damage to the Reagan Revolution to make most of the dumb masses of voters think that voting conservative had been for nothing.  The media spin machine had people believing that government could and should do something to make an already good economy do better. 

Essentially, I heard many people saying that they didn't care one whit what the president did in "his private life."  As if you can compartmentalize such things.  Sorry, you can't.

I've worked in many jobs over the years.  The same guy who will take home reams of paper from the office copy room or boxes of staples or whatever is going to be the same guy who eventually figures out how to embezzle a million or two if he's in the position to do so. I've seen it enough times.  I've talked to enough people to learn who you can trust and what their ultimate goals are.  The guy who brags to me about how he cheated on his wife is almost always the same guy who brags about how he scammed somebody on some other deal.  He is proud about how damned clever he is.

When Bill Clinton appeared on national TV with Hillary at his side to explain Jennifer Flowers, I knew we were in trouble.  It became obvious that theirs was a marraige akin to Herod and Herodias.  She was there for the power trip and was just as corrupt and evil as he was.  Probably more. Their's was a business partnership marraige.  Theirs was a marriage such as had been done for centuries between kingdoms.  Anybody want to laughably challenge me on this today?  When's the last time those two have been in the same zip code, let alone the same room?

I would wish that enough people were willing to fight.  First, you would have to believe that there is a fight and there is something worth fighting for.

I don't believe this country is going to survive as we know it.  We are going down.  And the only people who are going to be around to rebuild whatever is left are the people who see it coming.

The vast majority of people are too busy working to survive and in their precious spare time are allowing themselves to be distracted by everything from sports to "dancing with the stars."