Not Living Up To Their Hype

We, that is those of us that are willing to see the entire spectrum of what is transpiring in America, have realized several things since January 20th 2009. Firstly, it’s that conservatives want instant gratification. They expect - not hope - the administration to restore the economy, bring unemployment to near 0%, capture all the terrorists, deport all illegal ( and some legal ) immigrants, build an electrified fence with accompanying mine-field along the Mexican boarder, pay off our debt, and have no less than 10 oil wells in each state within the span of 12 months. They act this way because of the narrative that they ( not liberals/progressives ) created around Barack Obama.

And while conservatives will be the very first segment of this country to completely deny that they lionized Obama, one has but to glance through a handful of writings, videos, and talk-radio programs from 2008 and you’ll get a very clear picture of whom THEY wanted Obama to be. They wanted him to be this solar-messiah that could magically solve every problem in the country they had a huge stake in creating and turn it around with little to no effort. From the banking problems, auto industry turmoil, to the overall state of the economy, they set up this elaborate portrait of Obama in order to lay the groundwork for their storyline in the hopes that it would carry over until 2012. Unfortunately, it’s worked on several levels for them.

From the moment that he was inaugurated, even during his inauguration when he caught Justice Roberts screwing up the Oath – which the Right tried to pass off as Obama’s mistake - conservatives were literally crawling over one another in an attempt to see who could be the loudest voice and have the most incendiary rhetoric. The cacophonous rage has been at a rolling boil ever since that moment and it shows no signs of letting up.

Conservatives, self-proclaimed champions of their country, soon began to actively pray for her destruction. They did this because they wanted Obama to fail. What they weren’t looking at was what could potentially happen if he did fail. The iconography that conservatives had created wasn’t real, and they knew it, but it wasn’t about to stop them from becoming that which they once despised – anti-government, conspiratorial, rage monkeys.

Suddenly, anyone not a Republican was called a Marxist, Communist, Socialist, Nazi, and every label that conservatives had said THEY shouldn’t be labeled prior to 2009. History was being re-written by the likes of Glenn Beck and large groups of people gathered on publicly funded land with misspelled signs shouting about how they “wanted their country back”, wanted government out of Social Security, or any host of canned phrases that Frank Luntz had typed out in his latest memo to FreedomWorks and Fox”News”. It was as if the country had turned upside down and conservatives were hanging on to that tiny little root in the ground praying that didn’t fall off into the void. And this is just within the first 3 months of Obama’s Presidency.

How did this happen so fast? By the time of the first Tea Bagger shoutfest, conservatives within various sections of the media were going off on so many tangentical rants that it became difficult to keep up on most days. Where was this anger and passion when the Bush administration was asleep at the switch prior to Sept. 11th? Where were the protests against massive expansions of government control and overreach when we were spied on while making phone calls? How about when Bush and company lied us into an occupation of Iraq that ultimately claimed more lives than were lost on Sept. 11th? Where were the conservative voices then? They were too busy advocating all these things and degrading those that opposed them.

I don’t see this as strict role reversal, seeing as how liberal/progressive voices are the same today as they were when Bush sat in the Oval Office, but more like conservatives are having an identity crisis. Couple that with the fact that conservatives are attempting to show they have this love of the Constitution that was strangely absent between 2001 and January 2009. They had morphed from people that sat by in idle ignorance during deregulation, massive spending, and corruption and were now experts in economics, foreign policy, culture, telecommunication; masters of all aspects of American life. They had all the answers and they were all the same – destroy Obama at all costs.

No matter what Obama did or is going to do, conservatives can’t allow anyone to see that he has been even modestly successful. Their message is continually evolving with every move forward that the Obama administration makes. They clamor for progress but when given it they say it’s not enough, that it was attained by ill-gotten means, that it’s an illusion, or that it simply doesn’t matter. Nothing will be good enough for them. So why is the Obama administration not casting conservatives aside and actually moving forward?

From my perspective, I think it’s because they know that the sweeping changes that are required to put this country back on top, or even just back in the position it was after Clinton was elected, would ultimately end in someone within the conservative movement killing a Democrat. Obama and his administration know this and it has likely affected how they craft policy and practice. He knows that the tension conservatives have created within America are near their breaking point in many areas. That’s another unfortunate aspect of America conservatives believe Obama should be able to miraculously change – bringing the country together.

I have always hastened to say that all conservatives are racists, as that is generally a tactic reserved for people on the Right to utilize when they find themselves bested by their opposition. But make no mistake, it is there and it is even more palpable today than it was two years ago before Obama was President. Race and how it is discussed is a primary theme within conservative thought today. They use it to insist that there is no racism, that Obama is the real racist, or that the only racists in the country are Demcorats. To them, racism exists outside their own lives, even though they utilize racism to preach their own version of what America is, isn’t, and should be.

The rate at which Obama, the man, is able to turn this country around should be stepped up, I agree. I have been quite critical of many of his policy standpoints from Afghanistan, to Iraq, healthcare, and on down to the basics of foreign policy. There have been great strides made but they could have been better, larger, and paced more quickly. None of that would satisfy conservatives nor lessen their cries that “The One” can’t accomplish anything. Conservatives are so caught up in their own storytelling, so intent on tearing down the idol which they created, that they have lost sight about what this country needs.

Certainly, they will claim to know what America needs, but they lack the ability to carry out the work that needs to be done. The harsh reality that they will face in 2012, should Obama not be re-elected and a Republican take back the White House – which is not entirely likely considering who they have to offer - is that they will have to live up to what they insist Obama and his administration should be doing. And there’s not one superhero within the conservative movement that could come close to meeting a fraction of those requirements.