According to this report, The Secret Service is facing "unprecedented" threats to the President's life. They may have to relinquish all other duties with the Department of Treasury so they can devote full resources to keeping our President alive?
Sadly, it's shocking to even acknowledge that President Obama's message of hope of change and a better America could be considered as a factor in this sort of scary, disturbing, despicable news. That this could somehow be his fault - that he has somehow asked for it - is a reprehensible idea.
What has happened to this country when a man's message of hope and change can be considered to be responsible for this sort of insanity? If that's the case - and the news seems to imply it is - then the thing that happens if some nut takes action is that America will have lost her soul. We will have met the enemy, and the enemy will be us. What have we become when a leader's attempts to reform a damaged system can be met with such vitriolic contempt, forecasting catastrophic change to America? What a terrible gut check to even consider that the Secret Service's fears are even possible in this day and age. If President Obama responds to this news by coming to a realization and changing his course, then we will have seen the victory of truly homegrown terrorism.
I don't listen to much of the "noise" these days as the anti-Obama atmosphere has reached such a toxic level that it has departed from rational discourse. And, it simply feeds on itself. It feeds on this absurd notion that America - as a nation and an idea - is at risk. The fact that every action and every word and every initiative seems to draw hysterical responses about the need to "take our country back" is completely baffling, and truly, truly sad. The sort of discourse that scares people into believing their way of life is threatened and they have no choice but rash actions is terrifying.
People calmly and publicly talking of "watering the tree of liberty" is a image I never thought I'd live with. Some people are outraged, some news reports it, and then nothing. The fact that we don't vehemently denounce such terror, the fact that we don't run from such craziness, is beyond my comprehension. That sort of environment contributes to a rising hysteria that could become the proverbial straw, and I am deeply saddened by that realization.
The Secret Service is facing "unprecedented" threats to the President's life. They may have to relinquish all other duties with the Department of Treasury so they can devote full resources to keeping our President alive?
Where are we? What have we become?
4 comments:
Who is "we", Michael? "We" doesn't exist. You exist. I exist. "We" is a concept, not a thing. Concepts don't hate. Concepts can't feel compassion. Concepts don't think. Only individuals can do those things. And individuals are very different from each other.
What you call a message of hope and change I call the same old advocacy of using state violence to control people and steal from them - with the proceeds being used by politicians to bribe their friends and the people who vote for them. You think one thing. I think another thing. "We" doesn't think.
Yes, Steven, there is a "we."
We are:
"We the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Michael, if someone or some people were to shoot the president, "We the people of the United States of America" would not be to blame. Only the person or persons who planned and committed that act would be to blame. Society is not responsible for violent acts committed by individuals. Only those individuals are responsible.
That's true - however, someone who "shouts fire in the crowded theater" is responsible for the subsequent deaths caused by mob action trampling which is simply an irrational response.
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