The national media are flabbergasted that Americans won't consent to President Trump's removal from office. How can so many of his compatriots be indicted and so many government bureaucrats condemn his behavior without giving them what they desire: self-assurance that they are "on the right side of history"?

If they ever wish to understand, the critical starting point in their education is not the current presidency, but the last one. Although there are numerous ways to describe the present divide in America, one of the simpler is thus: those Americans who take Barack Obama at his word that his presidency was historically "scandal free" and those Americans who see the unrelenting stream of Deep State attempts to take down President Trump as a continuing coup and the natural extension of an unethical, criminal, and at times unconstitutional Obama presidency.

For those of us in the latter camp, Barack Obama presided over a corrupt administration and used his historic election as the first non-white American president as a get-out-of-jail-free card to abuse his power while silencing his critics.

Whataboutery is frowned upon now that President Trump is in office, but if President Trump had done a tiny percentage of what Obama orchestrated, he actually would be in federal prison. Imagine what would have happened if President Trump had done the following:

used a recession to bilk a trillion dollars from the public to stuff the pockets of campaign donors like Solyndra

facilitated Agent Brian Terry's murder by arming the Mexican cartels

targeted American citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process

lied to voters that their doctors would be protected and premiums reduced, while illegally funding Obamacare and covering illegal aliens' health care

stolen from victims of Iranian terrorism by plundering escrow accounts protected by law while handing over $1.7 billion in untraceable European currency and planeloads of American cash, releasing twenty-one Iranian convicts, and shutting down a decade-long DEA operation against Hezb'allah's double-whammy assault of smuggling cocaine into the U.S. and financing terrorism against us, all for the glory of an "Iran deal"

spied on reporters while putting a record number of their sources in jail

used the IRS as his personal gang of thugs to target conservatives before the 2012 election

allowed a 9-11 anniversary terrorist attack to unfold without sending reinforcements while falsely blaming the four resulting American deaths on a YouTube video and American free speech

sent an untold number of American veterans to early deaths through widespread negligence and corruption at the V.A.

protected his attorney general who lied to lawmakers on the president's behalf so persistently that Democrats joined Republicans to make him the first A.G. to be held in contempt of Congress

protected his CIA director, who spied on lawmakers and lied about it

protected his director of National Intelligence, who illegally spied on all Americans and lied about it

protected his heir apparent, who used an illegal and compromised email server and lied about it

promoted his U.N. ambassador to national security adviser for unashamedly circuiting Sunday-morning talk shows and peddling demonstrable lies to the American public

and all of this while betraying his oath of office by vigorously attacking Americans' constitutionally protected free speech, religion, and right to bear arms; squeezing colleges and private companies to submit to his socialist vision; and punishing his ideological foes by using a corrupt Justice Department and FBI to hunt his enemies

If President Trump had done all this and everything else Obama pulled off, well, then the American media might finally see how luminous the federal government's corruption over these many years truly has been. Instead, not only have they rebuffed Obama's critics as mere racists, but they flood their editorials and airwaves with the commentary of the very actors who took part in his crimes. Never before have we seen intelligence chiefs and justice department officials so quickly run to television studios to demean themselves as propagandists intent on protecting the last president by taking down the current one.

For those of us not seduced by pretty words and skillful theatrics, the Obama years were a cesspool of corruption that brought back the stench of the Clinton years in a fashionable new package. Obama ignored court orders and congressional oversight, protected his friends from criminal prosecutions, and stirred up racial tensions by creating unnecessary controversies and playing whites and blacks against each other for electoral gain. He entered the White House as one of our poorest presidents, and he will die as one of the richest ex-presidents. Whereas the Clintons found fortune through their charity, Obama has found fortune by greatly benefiting in his post-presidency from companies who coincidentally benefited greatly during his time as president. Wherever he goes, he picks up checks, including a staggering sixty-five-million-dollar book deal advance from Penguin Random House, a publishing house taken over in 2013 by Bertelsmann, a privately held German company; one of the world's largest media conglomerates; and the parent of Bertelsmann Investments, an international network of private banking funds in the services and natural resources industries, including those in Iran. The "most transparent president in history" has now become the "most transparent billionaire in history," adding to his vast wealth in ways the public can only imagine.

So, for the preening junior senator from Utah who manages to be on the wrong side of every issue, the formerly esteemed conservative pundits who now push Bernie Sanders's communism on the United States, and all the news personalities who pretend to have original thoughts by repeating endlessly what the Democratic Party has written for them, if you are dense enough to misinterpret the unprecedented coup against the sitting president instead as crimes worthy of his repeated condemnation and impeachment, it is way past time to sit down, open your mind, and begin learning about the presidency of one Barack Obama. It will be a lot to take in; it certainly was for those of us who endured it.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.