Obama Agonistes

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.

- Thomas Jefferson, words inscribed on the (closed) Jefferson Memorial

It has been a simply terrible year for Barack Obama, a year of disaster following disaster.  From gun control to immigration to the Middle East and Syria to the Government Shutdown, nothing has worked out like he had planned.  The ancient Greeks wrote of hubris, the pride that goeth before a fall (indeed, they wrote of little else).  The fall was a direct result of the foolish pride.  So with Agamemnon, so with Oedipus, so with the great surviving ancient plays.  This theme was picked up in the Enlightenment, with Milton's Samson Agonistes and thence to philosophy down through Nietzsche.

And so down to our day, where Obama finds that his foolish pride, his hubris, has chained him to a rock, with an Eagle tearing at his liver.  An American Eagle.

Obama, living inside the Media-Progressive Bubble doesn't realize what will result from his policies.  And so we find that this Administration (egged on my its Media Allies) has picked a fight with the Republic's veterans.  Jefferson echoes down through the ages, and the camera shutter goes click.

The Media exhibit this same hubris.  Long used to being the ones who control the "Narrative" - mostly by preventing certain views from getting any air time - they find that not only is it impossible to suppress Ungood stories, but that their transparent attempts to do so have cost them half or more of their customer base.  In a decade they will be out of business, selling pencils on the street corner.  A Media Agonistes, if you will.

Because the camera shutter goes click.  The red recording light shines.  And it's all ones and zeros, uploaded to a still uncensored Internet.

Senator Cruz has done a great service to the Republic, drawing these battle lines.  The Republican Party is struggling to find its way, caught up in a civil war for its soul, a war between the Establishment and the Nation.  The GOP's fight is weak, and Obama is indeed beating the Republicans.

But that's not where the fight is.  The fight is with the Veterans at closed memorials.  The fight is with cops tearing American flags from the grasp of Veterans who fought and bled for this country.  The fight is with bikers who descend of Washington D.C. in their tens of thousands, sporting Gadsden flags.  The fight is with American citizens who throw orange traffic cones to the side of the road, cones that tried to block off Mt. Rushmore on a public highway.

And the camera shutter goes click.

Obama's problem is that he believed the Media, that they could protect him from the easily expected consequences of his decisions.  Like Bluto in Animal House, he f****d up - he trusted them.  And so he sent the Agents of the State, Gestapo-like to apply some muscle.  To put a bit of Stick about.

And the camera shutter goes click.

The sheer number of images, the number of videos, the mass of citizen-recorded media showing the Federal Government with its fangs bared at the citizenry, is Legion.  This citizen-recorded media is not going away, and will stick to Obama and the Democratic Party like napalm.  The Republican Party may be caught in a civil war that paralyzes the party Apparat, but the burn will continue.  Indeed, the same insurgency that is trying to claim the GOP's soul will use these images - fanning the flames - to succeed in that civil war.

Most grotesquely of all, the Administration (dare we call it "the Regime"?) has denied combat death benefits to the families of troops who fell in the line of duty, far from home.  What's next, forbidding the Honor Guard to attend these funerals?

But the camera shutter goes click.  The Political Ads write themselves.  A picture is worth a thousand words, after all.  All the King's Talking Heads can't put the Obama Mystique back together again.

This battle isn't over, we're still at the beginning.  But the story of 2014 has been written and we can watch a slow motion unfolding of the Agonistes of the Democratic Party next year.  Shockingly, it seems that neither they nor the Media understand this.  Obama doesn't get this.

Samson pulling down the Temple

They will.  The Prophets have foretold the ending.

With winged expedition
Swift as the lightning glance he executes
His errand on the wicked, who surprised
Lose their defence, distracted and amazed.

- John Milton, Samson Agonistes

Get the popcorn.  This is fixin' to be good.

Hat tip: James via email.