View from the American prison house

Conrad Black: Ignorance and upheaval - Full Comment

...It was a house of cards on an open terrace on a summer day...

The foregoing analysis makes no pretense to economic sophistication, but I saw no evidence that either candidate is capable of giving even this minimalist description of what has panicked the country, discomfited the whole financial world and caused foreigners to resume the habit that began with the U.S. rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, and blame everything bad on America. The collapse of the United States was jubilantly announced by the international left, probably at least two centuries prematurely. As McCain flailed wildly, Obama sagely allowed the crisis to reflect badly on Republicans generally, though the Clinton administration was certainly not blameless.

Obama is essentially offering the white population of the United States, in exchange for his residency in the White House, an end to the racial guilt complex that’s formed over 145 years of quasi-segregation of African- Americans, following what Lincoln called “the bondman’s 250 years of unrequited toil.” And as a bonus, this will also be the end of the hackneyed and checkered spokesmanship for the black community of scoundrels such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Charlie Rangel and the Obama family’s recently discharged pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Over the last 60 years in the United States, the governing party has usually changed after two terms. The stylistic shortcomings of the second Bush administration, McCain’s blunderbuss campaign and the financial crisis have all reinforced that likelihood. Under the Mephistophelean influence of the most biased media coverage of a U.S. election since Barry Goldwater in 1964, Obama’s peculiar associations have been downplayed and McCain has been portrayed as serving up a smear-job for raising them at all.

Twenty years of listening, each Sunday, to the demented ravings of Father Jeremiah; the relationship with unrepentant former terrorist Bill Ayers, as they squandered $100-million of the late Walter Annenberg’s money teaching Marxism but not raising test scores in Chicago; Obama’s relations with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), now being investigated for extensive voter-registration fraud in 14 states; and Obama’s provenance from the roughest, crudest, political machine in the country, the Democratic Party that has ruled Chicago and its suburbs for 80 years; all have been ignored or glossed over, and have received less investigative attention than Joe the Plumber’s tax returns or Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.
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A tax increase at the start of a recession is playing Russian roulette with all chambers loaded.

Obama will also promote unionization of the work force, thus advancing that retrograde and declining cause of the departure of much of U.S. manufacturing to cheap-labour countries in the first place. If Obama takes his economic advice from Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker, catastrophe will be avoided. If he actually carries out his program, he will be the worst president since Warren Harding, and the most (inadvertently) destructive since James Buchanan brought on the Civil War.

Obama, Free Conrad Black! End the scapegoating and face the truth.