Obama's Gotta Wonder--Is Anybody Listening?

For a long time now whenever an American president has spoken, the world has listened. The global (and domestic) audience might not have liked what they heard, but ears were attentive, brains were engaged. As recently as last year the American president was both heard and heeded on matters both great and small. If nothing else people were ready and willing to hope that the new voice meant substantial and positive change in affairs ranging from health care at home to a globe ranging recession and the very nasty little war in a very faraway place.

In recent months, weeks, even days, the situation has reversed course with an abruptness which startles the observer. Bluntly put, a new dynamic exists, a new dynamic which bloomed with stunning rapidity, a new dynamic in which no one really cares what the American president might say--other than to dismiss the words as not having been worthy of hearing.

There are two excellent indicators of this new dynamic. One comes from the domestic front in the familiar form of a poll. The other comes from the nations comprising the G-20 nations, in the quite unfamiliar form of flat rejection.

The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted between 17 and 21 June shows that Mr Obama and his progressive agenda have been rejected by very significant pluralities of We The People. The numbers, particularly the sixty-two percent who believe "the country is headed down the wrong path," are those one would expect from, say, a Rasmussen, or even a Republican Party sponsored "push poll" not one from the WSJ/NBC News folks.

There are, of course, many inputs to this new domestic perspective. These include the nature and extent of the Great Transformational Agenda so beloved by the Progressive Caucus and the Man in the Oval but which violates the American propensity for modest changes achieved slowly. There are other, equally or more important factors involved. The administration's response to the BP oil blowout is one. The failure of the economic stimulus packages is another. Even the evident erosion of American influence around the world plays a role.

There is no little probability that the president's action of yesterday--firing McChrystal and replacing him with a man who is a highly regarded political general but no warfighter--will add more suspicion and distrust to the mix in the weeks to come, particularly if General Petraeus alters the McChrystal strategy and operational plans. The net effect of appeasement, getting tough with Israel, bowing to a Saudi king, appearing far less than resolute when faced by an act of war by North Korea, kicking the British in the crotch, encouraging the Russians to behave more and more like the Soviets of bygone days, has been to lessen America in the eyes of the world and the American president in the esteem of We the People.

The more head snapping demonstration of the new dynamic comes from the G-20, more specifically the European members of the assemblage of the largest economies. You recall that Mr Obama sent a letter to the heads of government of all G-20 states which, in essence, begged one and all not to become deficit hawks but rather to continue along with the US on the path of stimulus spending.

Apparently, the political advisers who line the walls of the Oval like vultures around the slaughter house came to realize that the Social Democrat propelled states of Europe had reversed course with the blinding rapidity more characteristic of a school of tropical fish than a cluster of European parliamentarians. In a femtosecond or less, the several European states had gone from their traditional stance of cradle-to-grave benefits provided by other people's money to a posture of austerity severe enough to bring a smile to the face of Messrs Calvin and Knox.

At the same time, the US continued to cruise along fueled by money which is not our own in pursuit of the Great Transformational Agenda. The Sages of Politics feared that this lonely position might impose a political cost on the Democratic Party and the incumbent president. So, the begging letter emerged.

It was written. It was signed. It was delivered. It was ignored. With greater or lesser degrees of courtesy, the American president's plea for unity was blown off. Blown off by one and all. The Eurocrats had come to the conclusion that there were times when the US should be quite unilateral.

The irony in this is as tasty as a triple chocolate cake. The American president in common with many of the American hoi oligoi sees Western Europe with its economic and political philosophy of democratic socialism, its post-modernist languor, its cultural relativism, to be the most seductive of Edens, the most attractive of Paradises, the capstone of ten and more cycles of centuries of human "progress."

"If only we could be more like them," came the lovelorn sigh of thousands of Americans, members in good standing of the self-appointed elites of politics, media, and academe.

Just as the new American president seemed to be leading his people successfully out of the wasteland of America-past and into the Promised Land of Europe-West, a not-so-funny thing happed over in the Continent of Dreams. The place morphed overnight it seemed from the Repository of All Things Great to a a remake of the Old USA.

Benefits beyond count, vacations which never ended, being held harmless against all perils foreign and domestic, became suddenly, shockingly, totally yesterday. In a flash, the good life, the "third life," la dolce vita, was cast aside, to be replaced with the pain and suffering, the sackcloth and ashes of austerity.

Say it ain't so, Joe! Say it ain't so, Barack! Nancy! Somebody! Anybody?

But, it is so. And, the US is alone. Swimming upstream. Headed by a leader to whom no one will listen. Urged on by a voice unheard in the world and increasingly unheeded or unbelieved by those of us who are members of We the People but not card carrying adherents of the domestic elite.

Once, not that many months ago, a conveniently unnamed aid to the Man in the Oval (in)famously remarked, "We were elected to preside over the graceful decline of the United States." Now it appears that We the People unwittingly elected a man destined to preside over, not the decline, but the defeat of the US.

We elected the man for a number of reasons. Some of us practiced identity politics--placing the subgroup of ethnic, racial, religious, economic, or ideological affiliation above the primary loyalty to the US. Some of us voted from a basis of frustration and alienation, terminally fried off by the hypocrisy and duplicity of the Bush/Cheney years. Still others of us were taken in by the false flag campaign of Mr Obama. (Of course that latter is no excuse as all political campaigns are to some extent of the false flag sort and experience should have made us too hip to have been taken in by the "hope and change" slogans coming from the TelePrompter propelled mouth over the palpably empty suit.)

In any event We the People still have some faint chance of forestalling our looming defeat in the world. If nothing else we can take a clue from the Europeans. That's right, boyo, the Europeans.

The European hoi polloi have shouted "enough is enough!" The common men and women of West Europe have had it up to their dandruff with cultural relativism, multi-culturalism, the surrendering of painfully won defining institutions and values to the new barbarians, the hordes of arrivals from the primitive regions of the Islamic world.

We can do no less. And, no more. Tolerance, forbearance, and diversity are valuable values, but none mean we must abandon the unique features and attributes which have served so well for so long to make us a self-conscious entity.

Now European politicians are demanding of their people (and in the case of the new British government, themselves) that individuals no longer ask, "what's in it for me?" but rather ask, "how will this benefit us all?" European politicians are seeking to force a powerful and painful change upon their societies and polities, a change from indulgence to sacrifice, a shift from give-it-to-me-now! to delay-for-a-better-future. They are asking the nearly impossible--to surrender an overly pleasurable today for the prospect of an OK tomorrow.

We can do no less. Since so few of our political figures are willing or able to emulate their European counterparts, We the People must demand that they do so. This is to ask of ourselves something even more strenuous, more arduous than the European politicians have asked of their publics.

Yeah, that's where it is at--demand that our politicians demand of us both austerity and the accompanying sacrifice of our version of la dolce vita.

It may be an impossible task for us to undertake. However, the alternative, the defeat of the US, makes the task not only important but central--if we are to have a tomorrow.