Against the Grain

Crosscut Saw

One thing (among many) that really bugged and bugs me about the Clinton and Obummer administrations was/is when they would say, "the American people think (or want or believe)" ... primarily because I consider myself as part of "the American people" and often I do not think (or want or believe) what looney idea was being attributed to me.

Rather than being dissuaded by this prejudice, I will now violate my own taboo and propose that the American people do not want a lot of what Obummer has been doing these last seven years and so many months. But, in this case, I obviously mean only the majority of the American people ... not them all ... like James Carville and Valarie Jarrett so often have loved to claim.

How has Obummer been governing against the grain of the majority of Americans?

One obvious action has been his blatant encouragement of legal and illegal immigration ... even after being slapped down by the U.S. court system. This American aversion to both legal and illegal immigration in general includes both Latinos and the thousands of unvetted Muslims often from strife-torn countries. Being forced to train your foreign replacement does not often sit well with Americans. And clearly every horrific terrorist attack by "Muslim extremists" ... and the stealthy and very costly insertion of needy immigrants into unsuspecting U.S. communities solidifies this growing aversion.

Yes, those few million indigents who are getting free or cheap healthcare as a result of Obamacare are pleased with our president. But the much greater tens of millions who have seen their healthcare deductibles, co-pays and premiums skyrocket with the Democrats' [Un]affordable Care Act are not quite so happy ... particularly when they were promised the exact opposite.

The Black Lives Matter demonstrators clearly like it when Obummer claims that our police "act stupidly" or when he suggests that a black victim "could have been his son." Somehow he never has a balanced approach to the inequities between law enforcers and law breakers. But I know that the vast majority of Americans, both black and white, support our thin blue lines, despite a few bad eggs, as the only bulwark against urban anarchy.

And every day that an American factory closes or moves off-shore because of poorly negotiated or unenforced trade agreements creates more disgruntled members of the struggling working class in Obummer's fiefdom. Watching Chinese and German economies soar while ours languishes suggests that something is not right on the free-trade front. The true measure of the cost of "free trade" is our ballooning negative balance of payments, our shrinking middle class, and our thousands of shuttered factories across America.

And there are other middle finger salutes that Obummer has been lifting in haughty defiance of the interests of the many who elected him ... but he often does it with such confidence and aplomb that he escapes their wrath. But in truth, Obummer has been governing so much against the will of the American people and against the grain of our society's ethos that his nickname could easily be "Crosscut."