by: R.J. Moeller
If you have yet to see an episode of the funniest show ever made by humans, Arrested Development, I would highly suggest you go to where 
memorable scenes from the short-lived Fox sitcom is found in the first episode of the second season when two of the main characters, Dr. Tobias and Lindsay Fuenke, are discussing potential strategies to reinvigorate their tepid marriage. In the scene, Tobias, a former distinguished family psychiatrist who lost his medical license for giving CPR to an overweight tourist on vacation that was taking a nap, not having a heart attack, explains to his perpetually self-centered wife Lindsay one of the blatantly ridiculous and counter-productive tactics he used to suggest to couples in the very same situation.
Tobias says he would often advise struggling couples to consider an “open marriage” where the spouses remained, “emotionally committed to each other, but were free to pursue extra-marital encounters.” Lindsay naively then asks her husband if his advice ever actually helped the people who tried it. Tobias responds, “No, no…they would always delude themselves into thinking it would work, but it never did.” He then pauses for a second and in a complete and hysterical turnaround offers, “But it might work for us…”
The irony of a marriage therapist honestly recommending a course of action for his own marriage that he personally knew to be disastrous, let alone thinking it might actually work, is just the type of legitimately funny situational comedy that American viewers did not appreciate in Arrested Development. The show ended prematurely after 3 seasons and two Emmy’s for Best Comedy due to low ratings. Those low ratings were mostly attributable to the fact that there was no laugh track, which meant the millions of mindless minions in TV-land who seem to crave gratuitously unfunny television programming (don't see: CBS's How I Met Your Mother and/or Big Bang Theory) weren’t able to rely upon their Pavlovian-like training to tell them when something was humorous, ironic, or witty. But I digress.
The reason for my recounting of this scene is its direct applicability to the current state of American politics and our collective responses to recent specific problems like the economic collapses of lending giants and their subsequent bailouts. The short-term memory loss and well-meaning lack of good sense displayed so comically by Dr. Tobias Fuenke is the same brand of avoidable amnesia far too many otherwise balanced American voters appear to be perpetually suffering from.
How are the proselytizers of collectivism and Socialism still even taken seriously on the national stage? I mean, this certainly is a free country, with dissent welcomed and legally protected, and surely no political party is devoid of baffling failures, but would we really allow our doctors every 20 years or so to break out the bloodletting leeches they once thought cured the common flu just because they might get a diagnosis wrong from time to time? More to the point: how is it that so many Americans don’t even really know what a dangerous parasite Socialism is to whatever host country it burrows into?
Consider what the current polls tell us about who Americans apparently favor to be our next Chief Executive. Barack Obama has amassed the most liberal voting record in Congress and penned two memoirs that corroborate his proclivity for Socialistic writings, associations, and policies. The man has a non-existent portfolio of legislative accomp
lishments, and a self-professed ability to reach across the political aisle that is harder to produce examples of than OJ’s attempts to find the “real killers.” He’s a seemingly likeable guy who has not a single person from his past that is able to publicly vouch for him in order that we might be granted even a small window into what type of character the would-be Commander-in-Chief and potential future leader of the Free World possesses.
Barack Obama’s economic policy proposals are Marxist in all but name, and what has been made abundantly clear throughout his campaign is that the junior senator from Illinois does not believe in the most important foundational pillar in
The irresponsibility required for any non-committed Leftist to support Senator Barack Obama is staggering. The time for the gloves to come off has arrived, and I’m now speaking directly to any current Obama supporter who has ever voted Republican or Independent (at any electoral level) in the past.
But first, for those of you who think capitalism was the main or sole culprit in the recent economic collapse, you might want to stop reading. If in your world abortion is purely a debate about who loves choices more, and not about whether or not the “soon-to-be-born” have rights that supersede our convenience (precisely because they are endowed by our Creator and not a Supreme Court), then you’ve come to the wrong place. Likewise, the type of people who still believe that the blundering Bush connived and conned the entire world, Congress (including Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton) and United Nations Security Council into war aren’t going to enjoy themselves either today. In fact, if I’ve accurately described your political views above, the chances that your angry face is currently redder than your politics are pretty good.
If a non-partisan extraterrestrial alien who had been studying American political philosophies and 
elections since 1950 landed in my backyard tomorrow I can imagine that some of his first questions would be, “This guy Obama can’t be your real front-runner for Commander-in-Chief in a time of economic crisis, can he? Have you people really not learned your lesson yet with big-government liberalism? Ever heard of Jimmy Carter’s stagflation or LBJ’s “Great Society”? Your students must study the inherent flaws of collectivist, planned economies and be able to identify such intellectual rubbish, right?”
Sorry, Mr. Alien. Our students are busying learning how angry Mother Earth is at their mom’s SUV and how to put a condom on cucumber in grade school. With all the distorting and exaggerating of legitimate mistakes their country has made to complete in Junior High, and whitewashing of the Judeo-Christian value system and its inspirational role in the formation of our Constitutional and legal systems to be done in High School, by college the only room Left in their brains is reserved for relativism and the implied mantra “Republicans are not just wrong, they’re evil.”
Fact: Raising taxes and increasing spending are sure-fire ways to land in a recession, and in a time of economic crisis, textbook strategies to prolong one.
American electorate’s response: But maybe, because he reads a teleprompter better than President Bush and John McCain, Obama’s plan to raise taxes and increase spending will work for us…
Fact: The tax “cut” for 95% of Americans Obama is promising is actually a rebate, which means the government will be taking and then redistributing the income that the top 5% of earners in this country made. This is instead of everyone, following the actual definition of a tax cut, simply keeping the same amount or even more of their own money. That same hated top 5% already pays more than 60% of our total taxes, and includes nearly all of our employers and the corporations that produce things like the life-saving medicines, etc. Unemployment rates are guaranteed to rise. Stocks (and, for all those union members out there, pensions invested in those stocks) will undoubtedly continue to diminish in value. And most importantly, money that might have been spent on developing new technologies and hiring new employees will instead be spent on DVD’s and iPhones by people who typically give no thought to investment or saving and did nothing to earn the money they will come into.
American electorate’s response: But maybe having the government discourage economic growth, innovation, and investment will work for us…
Fact: Russia defiantly invades Georgia this summer and while Obama consults with his dozen or more “Theories of Foreign Policy: 101” experts from Ivy League faculties McCain displays his instant awareness of the entire context surrounding and leading up to the invasion by readily offering an unambiguous condemnation of Russian aggression and explanation for that condemnation. McCain knows the players, he knows the stakes, and the fact that he’s seen and correctly identified enough evil in his own time enables him to avoid wasting any of our’s on self-aggrandizing and hopelessly naive suggestions. Obama meanwhile believes that the only reason there are bad guys in the world is because we haven’t identified and spoken the right “love languages” of hateful and oppressive madmen like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez.
American electorate’s response: But maybe, in one of the most dangerous times in human history, having a freshmen senator with a consistently inconsistent position on nearly every important foreign policy decision this nation has faced during his first few hundred days in Congress as our Commander-in-Chief will work for us…
Should I go on? (I plan on doing so….Monday, with “But it might work for us” Part II)
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