Are You Experienced?

Just over 40 years ago Jimi Hendrix posed a musical question to a generation that today is a fault line separating John McCain from Barak Obama and running directly through Hillary Clinton. Hendrixs’ question then, as it does now, has several layers of meaning. But this meaning has changed over time.

Back in the 60’s no one knew about AIDs or cared little about other STDs. The effects of teen-age pregnancy, let alone abortions, and drug addiction on a large scale were either respectively a rarity or an unknown quantity when an entire generation became lab rats and crash test dummies in what were seen as the great experiments of the time.

Recreational drug use and guilt-free sex became the lure to privileged youth to break free of outdated mores and cultural values. They were seen as the ultimate weapons to further if not outright rebellion, at least “change”. Consequences whether good, bad, or fatal fell out of sight to “Do your own thing” and “If it feels nice don’t think twice.”

Today American voters are to be given the chance to again decide if they wish to follow the clarion call of rebels dressed up as being “agents of change”. The choices they have for President are clear if not ideal and the consequences of choosing poorly are every bit as consequential, if not more so, for the country as the cultural choices made in the 60’s.

In today’s contest for President consequences have narrowed the field to three individuals. Behind Door #1 is John McCain. He is a crusty war vet and career politician. He is “The Man” and ultimate Washington insider. Behind Door #2 is Hillary Clinton. She is “The Everyman” without the man part combining the beliefs of a radical chic socialist and feminist while masquerading as a shot and a beer blue-collar worker. And finally behind Door #3 is Barak Obama. He is “The Wiz” and trying to get any sense of his substance is made difficult as his style, as a glass darkly, clouds viewing his true self. As he eases down the road to change he asks us to pay no attention to those men behind the curtain.

All of these characters stress their experience for the job of President. And how are we as voters to define and judge “experience”? Few of us will ever aspire to be President let alone be President. So we do as we have done when previously deciding on a Chief Executive, we vote with our head and our heart. We trust and verify based largely through the prism of our own experience. The candidates seek to know and play upon our prism to cast their experience in the best light possible, our personal image of a good President. Failure to see the candidates as they truly are in the cold gray light of dawn and instead to once again be a captive of change can lead to making the same mistakes of past generations.

Change is always with us. But with the passing of time we can look back and legitimately ask “At what cost?” Regarding the 60’s and to quote a certain Reverend, “The chickens have come home to roost”. How will history judge us in 40 years?

Obamanation

Barak Obama bills himself as being a “uniter” and he is trying hard to be one. But the uniting he seeks is that of coalescing all the far left idealists into one, to borrow from the movie “Ghostbusters”, river of slime.

I know that this may seem to be a farfetched and strident analogy but bear with me while I explain its use. Coursing throughout America and purposefully kept out of the sight by most of our nations media is a socialist world-view that ebbs and flows like a river over time.

This world-view has, like an intellectual toxic waste dump, contaminated significant numbers of Americans throughout recent history. Variations have infected educated “Bohemians” during the 40’s and 50’s, radical chic intellects and student activists of the 60’s, violent revolutionaries such as the Weather Underground and Black Panthers, and spoiled guilt-ridden inheritors of capitalist fortunes from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to this very day. As we learn more about Barak Obama we find he has either a great sympathy or a direct connection with many of these “special interest groups”.

Regardless of the source of these rivulets of socialist dogma up to this time, while they have done significant damage, they have fortunately not been completely effective in destroying the United States of America. This is because, as anyone who knows anything about human nature, members of these various groups do not trust others or wish to share power.

Barak Obama is trying to change that. He presents an attractive figure to many elements of the hard left. This appeal comes from his bi-racial genealogy and his having one foot in the ivy covered halls of academia while giving the appearance that the other is in the hard-scrabble mean streets of urban America.

Whether he is preaching to the congregations of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago or the upper-class bastion of progressivism known as Marin County California he uses the same tactics. He gives the same re-tread, class-based, and divisive utopian message and manages to convince his audiences it is unique to him. He walks in the footsteps of those who craved power who preceded him. Follow me and I will lead you out of the wilderness to the Promised Land. We will emerge from out of the shadows and take back America and assume our rightful position in power. It is as if not the Anti-Christ but certainly the Anti-Martin Luther King has become manifest. You will be judged based on differences in how you look, think, and act rather than the content of your character.

That Obamas message has appeal is without question. One only has to look at the numbers and types of contributors to his campaign. Should Obama be carried into the Presidency by the river of slime we who do not subscribe to his world-view will be most affected.