CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, May 16, 2016

The world: Not going to go away

Prior to the attack by the Islamic jihadists on 9/11, 2001, America seemed to be on the brink of making the 21st Century much better than the 20th Century with its costly two World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Gulf War I. But now, gentle readers, bet there are times when you would just as soon not know the news because it all seems so depressing.

We face a violent foe fired up by a political movement posing as a religion. Our society, and in particular, our military is undergoing the "fundamental transformation" promised by Candidate Obama in the summer of 2008. If "fundamental transformation" were a card game, then President Obama held four aces when he took office in 2009: His alter-ego, Valerie Jarrett; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts. Together, and without a single Republican vote, they created ObamaCare. Depending on your point-of-view, that was either the high-water or the low-water mark of Mr. Obama’s time in office.

Alarmed by President Obama’s plans to institutionalize: infanticide (abortion), borderless immigration, Political Correctness, and his hostility to the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments, and Article I (the Congress), the voters returned the House of Representatives to Republican Control in 2010 and the Senate to GOP control in 2014. But, when it came to halting Mr. Obama’s "fundamental transformation," the GOP leadership proved powerless and provoked the electorate into the political turmoil we see being played out in the news today.

Many Americans, accustomed to seeing their nation rising to what Winston Churchill called: "the broad sun-lit uplands," now see America declining into dark despair. But, to paraphrase the poet Dylan Thomas, Americans are not going gently into the night. Instead, Sanford Professor Victor Davis Hanson tells us that the excesses of the Obama Administration and the flaccid responses by the Republican establishment have created (drum roll) Donald Trump.

Professor Hanson claims President Obama’s "fundamental transformation" has given Mr. Trump a verbal get-out-of-jail-free- card, allowing Mr. Trump to say whatever he wants to say in provocative ways, drawing millions of new voters eager to set aside the previous eight years and march forward into the "make America great again" future promised by Mr. Trump.

That said, the news is going to get ugly. The leading presidential candidates: Mrs. Bill Clinton and Donald Trump each have the kind of past histories that are the delight of opposition researchers. Now, we are about to witness a seemingly endless parade of accusations and counter-accusations the likes of which have not been seen since the rough-and-tumble presidential campaigns of the 19th Century.

Consequently, some may find comfort in the words of Eddie Arnold when he sang in 1966: " Make the world go away / And get it off my shoulders / Say the things you used to say / And make the world go away..."

Yes, we would like to be able to say "the things we used to say" about America. The world, however, is not going to go away and America’s fate may well depend on what happens on Election Day: November 8, 2016.

Nationally syndicated columnist, William Hamilton, is a laureate of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma University Army ROTC Wall of Fame, and is a recipient of the University of Nebraska 2015 Alumni Achievement Award. He was educated at the University of Oklahoma, the Army Language School, the George Washington University, the Infantry School, the U.S Naval War College, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University.

©2016. William Hamilton.

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