A Look Back

Can Define Where We Are

There will never be an honest post-mortem on the Barack Obama Presidency.

The history of race, and his race, preclude any and all honest public discussion. That is, if you want to get the book published. To get published you’d have to toe the official narrative, which is full time adoration.

And when I say adoration it is the absolute correct word. The only official narrative on Barack Hussein Obama must be one of reverence, deference, idolization, and praise. Absent even a smidgen of critique.

I look back, just prior to his ascendance, as he eclipsed the Party favorite Hillary, and rose to real prominence, and there was hope in the country, real hope. Even from the Right. And that specific hope was that we were about to enter a post racial society.

The famous poster said it all, “Hope and Change”.

Seeing this poster again after so many years gone by I couldn’t help but be impressed with the Soviet-like styling and colorization, almost naked in the propaganda being peddled. But, oh, how it did work. He used this image to rise to the highest position in the land, the most powerful position in the world.

But.

Except.

We didn’t emerge from the Obama years a post racial society, racial relations declined and our differences have festered. We regressed.

Where just prior to Obama’s rise to the top we were a nation on the brink of finally coalescing as a single people, Americans, instead the largest voices being amplified were those intending to separate us all completely, and the largest voice of them all came from Barack Hussein Obama.

As a white American the defining moment of eight years of Obama being our President can be summed up very succinctly; “you didn’t build that”.

“You didn’t build that”.

Such a sinister statement.

Am I in possession of stolen goods? Have I taken from others?

The statement implies that I am unworthy, you are unworthy, we are in possession of something we didn’t earn, that there is a sense that we’ve benefitted on the backs of others. We’ve taken unfairly.

We may control and possess, but what we own and possess should not be ours.

And the entire Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama can be summed up in that simple phrase, because it defined every action of his administration.

He was a real world socialist, a man bent on redistribution, a leveling. He became a proponent of the existence of “White Supremacy”, all things DEI, and began to implement training programs to combat the sin of “White Supremacy” across all of government, and in all the private corporations. DEI became the “law of the land”.

And there is nothing, nothing at all, unifying about that. No, no there isn’t.

Guess who was the second biggest voice being amplified in the nation with a divisive message?

Access to the finest education in America, moving into an affluence throughout life that would be the envy of societies across the globe, seeing your husband of color rise through the political ranks, first as a Chicago community organizer, then onto Illinois Senator, and eventually taking the top prize, the White House itself.

And you’d never taken any pride in being an “American”?

The attitude of those at the highest echelons of power in the United States of America spawned a cottage industry of guilt merchants and the divisive. Suddenly Ta’Nehisi Coates became the darling of the publishing industry with his books declaring the nation racist beyond repair. Robin DiAngelo was at the vanguard of the DEI movement and became a favored speaker at those major Fortune 500 Corporations that held events where the white employees were scolded for their privilege and made to bow down before all people of color in the company.

Expressing any discomfort with the new movement was proof that you indeed were a “White Supremacist”, a bigot, a racist. The worst kind of human alive.

As Obama continued to rule and pontificate, the division and separation got worse, and the hue and cry for reparations for all past sins became a forceful shout.

America was more divided than we’d been in sixty years, you’d have to go back to before Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs, before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, all the way back to Jim Crow, or Bull Conner and the dogs and water cannons, to see us as divided on race in the country.

Why it was as if all progress had been repealed.

“You didn’t build that”.

If you stop and analyze that thought, if you really stop and think about that expression, if you really give it proper respect, you come to the conclusion it is the antithesis, the exact opposite, of “The American Dream”.

With one small statement Obama had managed to destroy the entire basis for the exceptionalism of America.

In America you could be anything you wanted to be, you could move freely, as he did in fact, through the classes of our society, you could be aspirational, you could dream, and have those dreams fulfilled.

But not if all of your efforts, all your work, all your movement toward affluence, wealth, and opportunity should not, and could not accrue to yourself.

Why bother?

If, after working hard to rise up, you were going to have to share collectively the spoils of your effort, since that effort was not yours and yours alone from which to benefit, then why make the effort?

If your personal achievement was but an illusion, a misguided idea, and really the collective effort of all who’d influenced, all who had a hand in your own personal development, if a debt was owed to any and every person or institution along the way, why there’d be no affluence left, just a shared collective.

Inside of the very definition of “You didn’t build that” is socialism, communism.

Obama was the biggest socialist we’ve ever had as a President, and that includes FDR, he of the creation of so many government programs including the Ponzi scheme known as “Social Security”.

Netting it out you could define the eight year Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama in that simple little phrase “You didn’t build that”.

And not only do I sit here as an American and reject that, I reject it in the most prejudicial manner.

The American Dream is predicated on the singular effort of pulling oneself up and out. Of being rewarded for hard work and effort. Of having the ability to grow up in poverty, or poor circumstances, and having the chance to overcome.

The American Dream has two important elements, first that anyone, any person here growing up in America can change their life circumstances through effort, hard work, and opportunity. And second, that you can potentially lift the family up and out generationally, that one step forward in the last generation can promote the next generation up three rungs on the same ladder. That you can build on generational wealth. That while one generation might suffer in poverty, next generations do not have to share the pain. It may take current personal sacrifice, but future generations may be able to grab that brass ring and find the fulfillment you desire for your clan.

I rejected the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama not due to his color, and not even for his promotion of the idea of “White Supremacy” and DEI.

I rejected him for his socialist policies, and for his attack on the very real “American Dream”.

He lost me completely at “You didn’t build that”.

That, and the fact that he lived a lie. This community organizer man of the people, who sent his own to the finest private schools in DC, and then graduated from the Presidency to contracts into the hundreds of millions with his newfound friends in Hollywood and the media. To multiple homes in Hawaii, and Martha’s Vineyard, and the Kalorama suburbs of DC.

I don’t see any “giving back”, I don’t see efforts to “help the people”, I see a man helping himself very well. It is difficult to assist the poor from the back end of Jeff Bezos’ yacht. I feel the same way about avowed socialist Bernie Sanders who owns three homes.

I prefer men who live the tenets of their beliefs.

Call yourself a community organizer, champion yourself as a “man of the people”, then walk the walk. The people cannot hear you from the multi-acre spread in Hawaii, or from behind the gates in Martha’s Vineyards.

We, right now, years after the Obama reign are a very divided people.

And our first Black President does indeed share much of the blame.

He had a chance to bring us all together and to preach to the better angels of our nature, but instead fanned the flames of division and hatred. Using the cudgel of calling anyone and everyone in opposition to his program a “racist”, and painting all opposition as belonging to the Jim Crow past.

What so many see as a great man of vision I see as a shallow charlatan. A socialist bent on both redistribution and retribution.

I may not have much, I may still face a struggle even at this advanced age. But of one thing I am certain.

“I built it”. Or I should say “We built it”, my wife and I. And not on the backs of some un-named other, not on the backs of minorities, or “A Village”, no.

We built this on the backs of our parents, and their parents, and their parents. We stand on the shoulders of giants. And we busted our own backs, and wore out our own shoulders so that our four children could seek the American Dream, and do so from an easier path, a shorter distance.

I own both my success, and all of my failures. And trust me, the failures exceed the success.

I did build it. Me. Shoulder to shoulder with my wife, and we have persevered.

And what little we’ve built is ours, and ours alone. No one can lay claim.

Where so many see a transformational and great President, I see a charlatan who did lasting damage to our nation through his socialist policies, and division.

I’ll tell you this.

My version will never see the light of day in any published book.

In my version there is no adulation, no reverence, no high praise.

If I have any feelings at all it would be revulsion for his claim that “You didn’t build that”, and a rejection of the policies and promotion of all things DEI that have divided us all.

We are right now living in a post-Obama world. Still affected by all he “accomplished”.

Tell me, how do you think it has all worked out?