How do we explain the current sorry spectacle of a highly intelligent president who repeatedly makes bad choices and decisions? Make no mistake about it – President Obama has done just that. Ever pause and wonder how ostensibly perspicacious individuals can show remarkable errors in judgment? History is filled with people like this, proving repeatedly intelligence is no guarantee of good judgment and decision-making. Why?
In the 1980s, American aerodynamicists faced a conundrum: How did the USSR, using comparatively rudimentary computers and without CAD/CAM, nonetheless closely match America's best fighter designs? The answer, not immediately obvious, was that Soviet programmers simply wrote better software – using far fewer lines of code, easily handled by their slower computers. The key was in the programming, the software – it was at least as important as the superfast computational power of our defense industry's ubiquitous supercomputers.
How does this explain a highly intelligent individual making manifestly bad decisions? The answer derives from the basic computer science of a hypothetical personal computer. Optimizing its design, we introduce the fastest and most capable CPU; next, abundant RAM and hard-drive capacity. Now the important stuff: the data and then, of course, the software. There it is again, the software – without which all that proceeds can be next to useless.
His high intelligence (fast CPU) notwithstanding, President Obama is handicapped by faulty data and bad programming – both indelibly imprinted upon him by his lifelong studies and associations: his mentor, communist Frank Marshall Davis, the writings of communist Saul Alinsky, the rantings of black liberation theology proponent the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and associations with former Weatherman radical terrorist Bill Ayers, plus many more. Is it small wonder then that Obama does things no other president has ever done before? He grovels and apologizes to the world for America's "arrogance" and "mistakes," reaches out to the likes of Chavez and Ahmadinejad, snubs the U.K., brings sanctions against Honduras for ousting Chavez wannabe Zelaya, offering unwavering support for the NEA, SEIU and UAW (a root cause of GM's downfall) while openly supporting a socialist single-payer health-care system and redistribution of wealth.
The ultimate expose on the radical nature of our 44th president: "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists." The best-seller as an audio book is also available.
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A troubling question arises: How did the American people come to elect this truly flawed man? Is our collective acumen wanting? Or is our collective software at fault? Arguably, America's "software" has historically been the world's best. It's embodied in our unique psyche, history and culture. It includes patriotism but not chauvinism, love of freedom but acceptance of responsibility, the willingness to work hard to get ahead while allowing others the same opportunity. Americans cherish their heritage, but with an eye to leaving an even better country to posterity; they readily help the less fortunate and right great wrongs – from expunging slavery to defeating the tyrannies that threatened the entire 20th–century world. This is a country that was victorious in two World Wars and the Cold War and, as an aside, put men on the moon 41 years ago. Incredibly, Obama rejects American exceptionalism.
So then why did we elect Obama? Continuing metaphorically, the answer lies in the 1960s, when the American body politic was infected by the self-replicating, insidious virus of liberalism. Spawned and nurtured in liberal academia, this virus and its other iterations – socialism and progressivism – have worked their way into every aspect of our society, while being enthusiastically embraced and promoted by a vacuous, nonetheless arrogant liberal media. Consequently, over the intervening decades we have been assaulted and benumbed by a seemingly endless concatenation of liberalism's ruinous policies and ideologies: affirmative action, forced busing, dumbed-down public schools, proliferating entitlements, environmental extremism, sanctuary cities, gay marriage, cultural relativism, multiculturalism, Afrocentrism, political correctness and a lot more. Capping the resultant zeitgeist was white guilt – making Barack Obama a shoo-in in 2008.
Elected during severe financial and economic crisis, the Obama administration salivated over a crisis not to be wasted. However, instead of tackling daunting economic problems first, Obama's socialist programming sidetracked him into giving priority to national health care instead. Today, the nation is experiencing some of the worst leftist governments can produce: exploding government programs, spending and regulations, high unemployment and stagnating economy – a nation in compounding crisis.
Thankfully, this crisis the people will not let go to waste, their reaction spurring a potent system immune response – an antivirus – the spontaneous tea-party movement. Derided, deprecated and largely ignored by the conventional media as rednecked, far-right and racist, it is actually wide-based, is growing and amazingly has the support of over 30 percent of African-Americans.
The really good news is that the American people are realizing they erred badly in 2008, largely due to the liberal media's egregious failure to fully explore and expose candidate Obama's background and lack of qualifications. However, the electorate has proven resilient, adaptive and increasingly engaged. It will no longer countenance an arrogant Congress, passing monumental legislation few legislators have read while disregarding polls clearly showing the majority of the electorate disapproving of the massive, unjustified overhaul of America's health-care system. Politicians who disregarded these polls will face the full wrath of their constituencies in November.
An ordinary computer can be upgraded with new software and data while the basic electronics remain unchanged. The human computer, however, as embodied by Barack Obama is different. Its socialist programming is essentially hardwired and will tenaciously resist modification. This paradoxically augurs well for the republic because, unlike Bill Clinton, who bent with the wind and polls to win re-election, Obama and the doctrinaire left will cling to their radical agenda throughout Obama's term, virtually assuring a political rout in 2012. In fact, an unintended consequence of the crisis engendered by Obama – Obamacare – encompassing bigger government and the Big Lie, is that we may well have seen the high-water mark of liberalism in America and the ushering in of an era of retrenchment, thoughtful reassessment and a rebirth of the American spirit that made our nation the greatest nation on earth. Amen.
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Andy Logar is a retired TWA pilot whose letters to the editor have appeared in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times. He resides in California.