The President is too toxic for Democrats scrambling to raise support as we head into the midterms, so the hopeful statist campaigners look to visible alternatives from the White House, or other senior offices. Valerie Jarrett, Elizabeth Warren and Michelle Obama are considered less harmful in getting out the vote and in stimulating the disgruntled supporters to exercise their rights in the polling booths across the Nation.
The faithful are favored with deep and perceptive instructions from the FLOTUS such as, “Five votes per precinct is what can make a difference,” she said, “We have 10 days. We have no excuses. So many of our people have to catch the early bus.” And so her message goes around the country because as CNN tells us, “The first lady’s East Wing staff is pouring through campaign requests and filling her calendar with travel plans.” And Nia-Malika Henderson of The Washington Post says, “Michelle Obama is, in many ways, the keeper of the Obama flame.”
Every pol, Republican and Democrat, scrounges for useful support from whatever source will provide it, and we have accepted that taxpayer moneys are spent raising political party cash, however, . . .
The FLOTUS, the POTUS, and others from this White House, constantly focused on politics, golf, basketball, or other nonsense, when the Nation and the world around it is in serious turmoil is seriously disturbing to a majority of voters, and yet their absolute inability to move beyond community organizing strikes an even more discordant note.
Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars flying around on Airforce One to issue simplistic commands of, “catch an early bus” to vote, when historic numbers of Americans are unemployed, or underemployed, couldn’t some of those massively expensive trips have been better applied to inspiring the many unemployed?
Could those costly teleprompter deliveries have been directed toward the tens of millions unemployed in order to uplift them to not give up, to keep seeking, to continue looking for opportunities, to knock on all doors within a bus ride? Could these hundreds of millions have been spent on motivating some to become entrepreneurs, stimulating them to strive to become self-sufficient? Could they have encouraged self-actualization?
Apparently not.
They try to shame people into getting off the couch to vote, but instilling inspiration in fellow human beings is simply not in their toolbox. It requires talent, some insight, and more than just a little amount of Caring.
This is the age of, “vote for more government.” This is the age of, “vote for your government to look after you.” This is the age of, “vote for your government handout, . . . it’s coming out of someone else’s pocket anyway.” This is the age of Obama.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.