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The basic template for all Obama posters should have "Obama lied" text already set up.

I am so inured to the politics of SCOAMFCo that I don't usually feel anything like shock no matter what they pull, but the latest Obama attack ad with Romney struggling with the National Anthem and listing all the jobs Romney "lost" must've maxed out my bile filter.

I was barely old enough to drive when* Johnson's propagandists dropped a nuke on a little girl and blamed it on Goldwater. Back then, and until quite recently, our information sources were so limited, it was hard to ferret out the kind of facts that we can now get so readily through the web. (Which is why the web will be the first to go under Lord Obama.) I'd like to think that ubiquity of information could make the difference.

But, by and large, people are dumb.

(Additional paragraphs of verbiage overflow sump-pumped to my place under the totally not presumptuous title "Salvaging the Republic.")

That was the comment. This is the overflow.

There's that big one-third that can be fooled all the time, which either wants socialism outright, or wants it but don't know that's what it's called.

There's that mediocre agnostic middle one-third that can be fooled much of the time, who wander, unprincipled, unthinking, from one party to the other over elections.

I wish I could say the remaining third was hard-core small-r republican Constitutionalists, but it's a strange bedfull of RINOS, the better libertarians, Fundamentalist Christians, the right-wingy third of Catholics and Jews, and those who just believe in law and limited government.

Which is kind-of funny to think. The Right used to seem to me to be a rather solid and monolithic bloc, somewhat understandable for the lumbering elephant of principled conservatism, while the Left was a coalition of various special interests, whose competing goals, if not mutual revulsion, was overridden by opposition to principled conservatism. I suppose the left-right yardstick has always been segmented into, say, ninths, rather than third, but the middle does seem to have moved, the proportions changed.

We have sailed down the twin lanes of socialism and liberty for well over a century, but perhaps we have come to the great fork in the road at last. Hitler's good for the German economy, they said; plus, he likes dogs and children. Sometime between Poland and VE Day, every aware, thinking world citizen was forced to choose. My late and wonderful mother-in-law records how Pearl Harbor changed her husband's view on Germany.* Only the few truly soulless could stay in the middle; everyone else either joined the Nazi cult or opposed it. I'm not comparing anyone to Hitler double exclamation points!! I am saying that there comes a time when everyone must make that choice, politically, socially, morally, and spiritually — because they are all one in personal experience. The ranks of the vacillating, agnostic, undecided, muddled middle are reduced to the barest minimum, the inner fringes of one side or the other likewise get reduced, as folks move to one extreme or the other, whole-heartedly defending liberty and opposing tyranny, or else imposing the cult of socialism, or slavery in some other of its nefarious forms, including the lunacy of anarchism.

As Jefferson noted in the Declaration, people can almost be like the boiled frog, not reacting until the heat is almost killer. Under pressure, decision is imposed, and then all the dumb sleepy masses finally join up, pay attention, take an interest, vote. This election, we will see how many will boil to death, and how many will be motivated to reinvigorate the Spirit of 1776 in the United States of America, to re-enshrine the Constitution as the law of the land. When America reacted to Pearl Harbor, the vast majority were united in purpose. When America reacted (however it turned out) to the attacks of 2001 Sep 11, even many usually unreactive oppositional lefties felt the call of Justice and Defense. I deem that things just aren't that bad yet, and aren't likely to be so before the November elections.

Will we may need another four years to hammer home what is being lost, to fire up the troops to D-Day socialism in all its forms? Already, salvaging the Republic is more of a restart than a rescue operation. How can growing generations be re-instilled with civic pride and self-governmental principles in schools run by professed socialists? How can the lure of quality of thinking be presented powerfully enough to overpower the rage of manic self-indulgent pleasures promoted by every medium and message of pop culture, self-governing people who base their choices on reason and principle rather than (at best) good intentions and naive utopianism?

Historically, we can be thankful for the lesson of Hitler, as much as it has been learned anyway. Again no comparison with the butcher of Berlin is meant, but in similar fashion, our descendents may be grateful for the period through which we have suffered, and will continue to suffer. With a John McCain, the wrong-headed patterns already built up for so many decades may have persisted and festered for many more years. Under the current administration these patterns have been amplified, bringing to a head the choice between liberty and chains. We may emerge a better nation, principled, economically balanced, stable and secure. Or boiled to death. One or the other.

• A Mindful Webworker July 15, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Taking off shoes and re-counting using toes: I was still too young to drive then. I did have my picture taken with Goldwater, though!

• A Mindful Webworker July 15, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Honest! A vivid memory!

• chrissythehyphenated July 15, 2012 at 8:35 pm
My earliest political memory is my older brother telling me to shush so he could hear the Nixon-Kennedy debate on t.v.

• A Mindful Webworker July 16, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Heh. I remember Dad getting up and storming around. I didn’t fully understand then! I never got the chance to discuss it with him, but I expect he realized that (a) television favored showdog Kennedy’s vacuity over hangdog Nixon’s substance, and (b) the election was lost. That was an early impression. He was livid!