Reality Check: My Two Cents on the Loss of Consensus

The author Joseph Conrad once noted that reality only holds up by consensus. In places like the Indian Ocean, he said, where there aren’t enough people around to agree, reality tends to break down. (For those of us who have sailed there, you won’t find any disagreement!) But what he never counted on was a place like Washington DC, where reality breaks down not because there aren’t enough people around, but because there is no such thing as consensus.

Lately, it seems that surreality is the only major consensus in the Nation’s Capitol. Where else can a President sign a “Freedom of the Press” Act while simultaneously blowing off reporters? (Or levying an unofficial gag order on his Supreme Court nominee?) The breakdown of reality in DC is epidemic. The post-partisan, post-racial, full-transparency President has set new records for partisan vitriol, racial pandering, and behind the doors dealing, but he has lots of help. When even the Nationals are doing better than the Red Sox, something is clearly awry.

The First Lady wants to track the body fat of American children, but the Administration can’t be bothered to track visa violators before they build bombs in their cars. Administration officials rush to the microphones to claim credit for arresting an incompetent bomber only moments before he waltzed out of the country, easily evading an otherwise intense manhunt.

Janet Napolitano criticized the Arizona immigration law but admits she’s never read it. DHS, which cannot be bothered to secure our southern borders, is preparing to seize a Vermont farm in order to “harden” a northern border crossing that almost no one ever uses. The Attorney General (who also hates the Arizona law he’s never read) is too cowardly to admit that the majority of recent terrorist attempts and attacks in the U. S. were made by men whose judgment was warped by radicalized Islam.

Nancy Pelosi defies Roman Catholic teaching on a variety of topics, but has dared to instruct Catholic bishops on what should be preached from their pulpits. (Someone should tell Madame Speaker that being preachy doesn’t necessarily translate into theological competence…) This is the same Speaker who opined that Congress had to pass the Health Care Bill so that everyone could find out what was actually in it. According to the CBO now, apparently there are a lot more hidden costs than anyone expected, and the National Chamber of Commerce estimates the impact to the top 40 companies in the U. S. to exceed 4 billion dollars. Ms Pelosi, however, this week interpreted the bill thus: you can leave your job and still have health care.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was still high-fiving Monday about Iran’s agreement to ship fissionable material to other countries when his counterpart in the Iranian Propaganda Ministry pointed out that Iran would continue to enrich uranium regardless of the latest sanction-deferring deal. It now appears that “Baghdad Bob”, Saddam Hussein’s oblivious spokesman during the Gulf War, had a better grip on Middle East realities than the President’s spokesman.

The Department of State recently apologized to China for Arizona’s immigration law, an interesting move when one considers China’s own exemplary record on human rights. But, when one considers that China is bankrolling most of the Administration’s spendthrift legislation, it probably makes sense to suck up to them now and then.

The President pointed the finger at oil execs for pointing the finger at each other, then pointed the finger at the Bush Administration for the Gulf oil spill. At a college commencement, he called portable electronics “distractions” just before checking his Blackberry. Earlier, he scolded “fat cats” and “teabaggers” for using loaded language in public discourse – not long after demonizing doctors, flaying financiers, and trash-talking talk radio hosts.

The Administration’s diplomatic “reset” button has merely given credence to a petulant Putin, crazy Kim Jong-Il, and double-dealing Ahmadinejad, while visibly driving away our traditional European and Asian allies. Even the British have given up on us diplomatically.

In the news today, the couple who infamously crashed the first Obama State Dinner are demanding an apology from the White House. Given the fractured state of reality in this town, they’ll probably get it – and probably at the next State Dinner – assuming the President doesn’t feel compelled to apologize to another head of state first.

David J. Aland is a retired Naval Officer with a graduate degree in National Security Affairs from the U. S. Naval War College.

Our current government (congress, the presidential administration) is infested with leftists and they are completely wrong on almost every issue. Of course they don't think they're wrong - after all, it's leftist orthodoxy that liberalism infers intelligence and compassion unknown to those who are not wise enough to adopt the left's POV on just about everything.

Sadly, (decades of) state-controlled public schools have produced exactly what the liberals wanted: a population that is unacquainted with the U.S. Constitution, our nation's proud history or the abject failure of socialist/communist schemes and the pitiful loss of personal freedom these kinds of governments inevitably generate and thrive on.

Thus, we have a (slim) majority of Americans that voted for Barack Hussein Obama for president without paying the slightest attention to what he was actually saying or the fact that he was manifestly unqualified to hold the office he sought. These same voters routinely elect liberal Democrats and in some cases, 'moderate' Republicans, meaning Republicans that agree with and vote for bad Democratic policies but occasionally vote with the Republicans. They call these Republicans In Name Only or, RINO's. I understand that RINOs are becoming an endangered species, which is welcome news.

Thanks to Obama's hard-left positions and feckless actions as president Americans are waking up to the socialist/communist motivations of the president and his many appointees (Vern Jones, anyone?) and turning on arrogant Washington politicians that have pushed our once-thriving economy to the brink of bankruptcy, forced a massive, obscenely expensive bureaucratic nightmare of a government program on us (Health Care), insulted our allies and generally acted like little dictators. The 74-year-old leftist Woody Allen may think this is great - but most Americans do not. Thank God for that consensus.

What is up is down. What is love is hate. What is good is bad. What is peaceful is war. Islam is the religion of peace. What is innocent is guilty.

As a liberal would say: “Who’s to judge?” People fail to notice that Liberals judge opposite. People have opened their minds to the point that their brains spilled out and that is dangerous for all of us.

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