Faithful idiots and ungrateful brats

This article states: “To imagine that the nation would entrust the most powerful job on Earth to a young black-skinned man with a Kenyan father, a Muslim heritage, and a name that sounds like it comes off a terrorist watch list — that was an act of supreme faith.”

First, no need to overstate the obvious: Obama support has turned into a form of a cult (you thought Onion was joking, huh?) — except that in cults, leaders take money from the followers; here, followers ask leaders to take others’ money. Second, add to that a list of racist, terrorist, and mafia friends, no experience, liberal-college–textbook view of the world and a plan of how to ruin the country through socialism (not a well thought-out one, if that’s any consolation), and an act of supreme faith turns into an act of supreme stupidity. Which faith not based on any reason most often is.

(As a side note, Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb states in his audio lecture on Oral Torah, the term “faith” got into our vocabulary from Christianity, but it does not mean the same thing when we say it. In Christianity it means irrational and baseless belief based on emotions, superstition or ungrounded intuition. In, lehavdil, Judaism, it means reasonable trust.

It’s not unreasonable to trust a good source that’s proved its own validity and trustworthiness, or if the evidence lends greater support to trust than to doubt. It is unreasonable to “just believe” — and it is ridiculous to say that “just believing” is more praiseworthy than believing with rational basis. If you think about it, says Rabbi Gottlieb, people who have the most respect in Judaism, like Avraham and Moses, like tzaddikim of all the generations, believed in G-d based on direct evidence of Divine revelation. And, in case of Avraham and many others, based on rational argument. If faith is greater than reason, as Christians believe, then agnostics of all sorts are holier than those tzaddikim who experienced G-dliness directly? What sort of nonsense is that?)

So, ironically, after calling Bush and his supporters stupid for eight years, liberals committed an even greater act of stupidity. Which some observers start to come in terms with. Now that we elected a president through an affirmative-action type of logic, some people start appreciating Bush more. The realization that journalists behaved disgracefully throughout the years of Bush presidency (perhaps even more than is natural for them) begins to dawn. As well as the fact that people who claim that we have it bad are idiots. David Letterman, quoted by Circus Tent, discusses how amidst greatest prosperity (geographic and historical), Americans, coached by the media, still complain — about the fact of how good life is, apparently. Reality is always stranger than any Onion video or article. Especially, liberal reality.

I started thinking, “What are we so unhappy about?”

A. Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 Days a week?
B. Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter?
C. Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job?
D. Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?
E. Maybe it is the ability to drive our cars and trucks from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state.
F. Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter?
G. I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough either.
H. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.
I. Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home.
J. You may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family, and your belongings.
K. Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes, an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss.
L. This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90% of teenagers own cell phones and computers.
M. How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world?

Maybe that is what has 67% of you folks unhappy.

They complain about the President who tried to protect our country with our own armed forces (consisting of people who signed up for the job). They want a change — a change towards what? Russia? North Korea? France? How about a change back to what this country was supposed to be originally, and what made it what it is today — “a land of the free”?

Turn off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as a country. There is exponentially more good than bad. We are among the most blessed people on Earth and should thank G-d several times a day, or at least be thankful and appreciative.

A good read.

Not that I don’t believe that Bush, his administration and the Republicans made mistakes. First, many of their actions were very socialist in themselves. Saying that Republican party strayed from its path would be a massive understatement. Second, they made a mistake of seeking compromises (trying to play both camps) and pursuing a strategy of half-measures. (Let’s invade a country… but with not enough forces. Yeah. That will be a nice compromise between “hawks” and “pigeons”.)

Third, and most importantly, they forgot that they are dealing with a herd of people with intellectual habits of a four-year-old: responding best to attractive imagery and thinking in a knee-jerk fashion. All things need to be explained slowly and in a fool-proof way, knowing, beforehand, that left media will distort everything.

The war in Iraq is the best example. Most people today have an erroneous idea why we went there in the first place (because we knew about WMD? Wrong! To get control over oil? Wrong!), what justification was provided for it, and why we had to do it. Why? Because it was not explained to them properly, like you would explain something to a child, step-by-step, slowly, with visual imagery, preparing him for the propaganda that his teacher in school will try to fill his mind with.