It is up to the American voters, as it was in 2016, to decide their destiny. Let’s hope Americans make the right choice.

When Obama ran in 2008 on a platform to ‘fundamentally change America,’ nobody really knew what he meant or what such an idea would mean for certain freedoms. Yet many people believed in him and took that phrase as a positive thing.

Obama was “the new guy,” he was seen as “one of us”.

I’m not going to bore you with how poor Obama’s presidency was, or how much it affected the nation. If you are a reader of Human Events, quite possibly you already know as much. Nonetheless this wasn’t always the way people viewed Obama’s philosophy.

Obama was “the new guy,” he was seen as “one of us,” the one who was going to save the nation from the grips of the evil capitalistic world. The majority of the media worshipped him blindly and gave him significantly more air time than any of the other presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton as crazy as it sounds.

So what did he really mean by making a fundamental change to America?

We first have to understand what Obama really believed about America and what his vision for America’s future was. One of the most outspoken critics of Obama has been author and speaker Dinesh D’Souza who wrote and authored books and movies about Obama’s vision, legacy, and the dangers that came with his views on politics.

In summary, he explained that Obama was the bi-product of a highly anti-American background from different fronts: family, life, and academia. He was influenced by the likes of leftist authors Noam Chomsky, Saul Alinsky, and others.

When Obama became president he made sure that his plan would have the resources and tools needed to be achieved. This included a transformation of the image America had on the global stage and a radicalized way to increase government power.

He effectively got free rein to push the policies he wanted with little to no resistance.

Once Barack Obama set up his infrastructure as it related to administrative positions, he effectively got free rein to push the policies he wanted with little to no resistance. He knew the media and Hollywood would not block any of the measures he would take, even if it meant compromising personal liberties.

With the help of people such as Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and even Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, Obama made tremendous strides in accomplishing what he wanted to do and how he wanted it done. During his reign, we witnessed such atrocities as the illegal IRS targeting of conservative 501 (c) 3 groups, the trading of five high-level Taliban prisoners for army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, the illegal investigating of journalists by the DOJ, and much more.

Aside from these previously mentioned scandals, the ones that caused the greatest amounts of damage to the nation were the ones he was able to accomplish via administrative legislation.

By changing, creating, and modifying powers to administrative agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he grew the size and power of the federal government to levels never seen before. These policies ranged from changes on environmental restrictions (i.e., oil drilling bans), economic restrictions via regulations to obstruct free commerce (i.e., Internet Regulations), to policies giving broad powers to governmental agencies (i.e., Obamacare).

The government morphed into a giant control monster, who had its tentacles in virtually every aspect of our lives.

What took place during Obama’s time in power was a significant shift in the way the American government, its military activities, its economic output, and even personal freedoms behaved. The government morphed into a giant control monster, who had its tentacles in virtually every aspect of our lives. This control was guided and monitored by press and media almost completely on Obama’s side.

Regulation after regulation hindered economic opportunities, squashed small and midsized industry, and threatened harm to political dissidence – the latter being one of the most dangerous.

The clearest example of this was the incarceration of D’Souza for illegally making campaign contributions. A crime, at least to the extent he committed it, that virtually no one had ever been convicted on, yet he was severely punished for. This sentence coming after Dinesh’s release of the film Obama’s America (2012).

Why would Obama want this type of governance? For people of ideological visions rather than patriotic purpose, the former are more important to fulfill than the latter.

His goal was to change America from its “horrible history” to one where the country can emulate some sort of European socialist utopia. Unfortunately for Obama and his political structure, 2016 happened and a change in management crippled their plans.

At the end of Obama’s second term, the machine that he created in government and the media had pretty much handpicked a replacement for him: Hillary Clinton.

The America that witnessed these insane changes happening before them saw an option out and elected a disruptor in Donald Trump.

Trump’s presidency is exposing the deeply corrupt system that Obama and other administrations had created.

The election of President Trump has not only rolled back many of Obama’s regulations and policies but has exposed the latter government’s corrupt practices. With President Trump’s “One-In, Two-Out” rule of administrative policy creation, where for every 1 new rule 2 must be eliminated, 2018 alone saw close to 100 regulations out of the books.

So here we are, the middle of 2019 in one of the most volatile years for politics, as Trump’s presidency is exposing the deeply corrupt system that Obama and other administrations had created. One of the biggest obstacles for this administration will be to break the ideology shared by many leftists that America is a toxic place full of toxic history.

Unfortunately there are many people of power and influence, many running for president in 2020, who not only share Obama’s views but go even further (Sanders, Harris, Swalwell, Buttigieg). For these presidential candidates, of which there is close to two dozen, the goal is who can become the most fringe leftist, who can come up with the farthest left ideas, and who can be more like Bernie Sanders.

It is then up to the American voters, as it was in 2016, to decide their destiny. Let’s hope Americans make the right choice.

Hector Fajardo is a Marine Corps veteran