WorldWatch

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC

By Orson Scott Card September 20, 2009

I'm Back

People have been asking me why I haven't written a WorldWatch or a Civilization Watch in nine months.

At first it was because I wanted to give Obama a chance to show us who he is. I even hoped that maybe his pose as a middle-of-the-road bring-us-together candidate was actually true.

Now he's shown us that he's a radical leftist at heart and all his promises -- every one of them -- were lies. But he's still relatively harmless domestically because he's such an incompetent leader, unable to hold his course or persuade even his followers.

With ObamaCare on the ropes, his mischief is limited to not prosecuting his criminal friends (like the Black Panthers who openly intimidated voters in Philadelphia), appointing idiots to new offices that he invented so they wouldn't have to withstand congressional scrutiny, and completely botching American foreign policy.

I never thought I'd live to see the day, but Hillary Clinton is actually looking good as Secretary of State. At least she could go to a hellhole of corruption and fanaticism like Nigeria and speak truth to power.

Obama can't even keep a promise to the newly-freed countries of Eastern Europe to protect them from missile attacks.

Nor could he keep his promise to remain committed to victory in Afghanistan -- a war we could win, but not if Obama caves in to pressure from the stupidest wing of the Democratic Party.

Obama has now broken promise after promise and told lie after lie. Yet our leftist media give him a pass every time. Meanwhile, I still remember that President Bush was called a liar constantly, even though -- and I'm willing to stand by this -- he was never found to have told a lie in his entire presidency.

(Remember, a lie is when you knowingly make a false statement, not when you simply turn out to be wrong about something that you believed to be true.)

So I flip back and forth between regarding Obama as the new Warren G. Harding -- a man chosen as his party's candidate for president because he looked like a president, and who then governed with such incompetence that the only thing that saved his presidency was getting sick and dying in office -- and dreading him as the leader of the fanatical Left, a group with no regard whatsoever for fairness, consistency, honesty, promise-keeping, or the rule of law.

If the Left actually succeeds in achieving their agenda, we can kiss freedom in America good-bye. Fortunately, they are such incompetent clowns that even when they have the presidency and heavy majorities in Congress they can't pass anything but standard old-fashioned pork barrel bills.

How stupid and incompetent are the Fanatical Left in America today?

They're so dumb that when they desperately need to change the minds of people who disagree with them about health care, instead of listening to their opponents and compromising with them (which is how actual governing is done), they insult and vilify and slander and misrepresent and impugn the motives of those who disagree with them.

Mr. President and your chums in Congress, here's a clue, since you are clearly without one: You can only build a majority by winning the hearts and minds of the people who disagree with you.

And if you insult those people, your chance of winning them over recedes into the infinite distance.

You'll notice that I have no qualms about insulting the extremists of the Left, but that's because there is no way to win them over anyway. They are incapable of learning or even listening; they are contemptuous of logic or evidence; having learned all the things that "smart people" say, they just go on saying them without any sign that they are actually aware of the utter vapidity of their own dogmas.

But I don't have to persuade them, because they are not the majority, though they were able to get nominal control of Congress by lying merrily and getting the media to go along with them. Even now they don't realize how much trouble they're in, because the "mainstream" media barely report on their malfeasance.

More and more Americans, however, are getting their news from Fox and the Internet; more and more Americans are becoming offended by the contemptuous way Obama and his chums stand there in the dark of night telling us it's daylight and calling us names if we disagree.

So ... why haven't I written a World Watch till now?

Because you already got the message without my help.

However, I do have a few essays up my sleeve, which will see the light of day in weeks to come.

Chances are, however, that I won't say much about the hot-button issues that are already being discussed to death. Contrary as I am, I'm more inclined to turn my laser-like -- OK, Eveready flashlight-like -- wit on the issues that I think have more to do with our daily lives than with current politics.

Besides, if Obama doesn't face a Congress solidly in the control of the Republican Party after the 2010 election (the way Clinton did after 1994), it means that either the Republicans really are the Stupid Party, or the American people are grimly determined to keep getting kicked by the same mule.



