Just a few years ago, a political leader with a demonstrably tenuous grasp on reality hamstringed the American economy right after the crippling recession of 2007-2009, while simultaneously overseeing the largest decrease in labor force participation in our nation’s history. Then Barack Obama went on to make and promptly break ridiculous promises, push costly stimulus programs (that all failed), weather political scandals that cost American lives, doubled the national debt, and bungled our foreign affairs, all while gravely damaging the bedrock of our civil discourse.

Sadly, after Obama’s departure from office, things simply went from bad to worse. However, if we’re going to be perfectly honest, we must recognize that Barack Obama did, in fact, inherit a real economic mess (though I know far too much about economics to blame his predecessor, George W. Bush, for it). No one is going to argue that the economic situation Obama faced wasn’t dire, but it’s simply a matter of fact that his policy solutions contributed to one of the weakest economic recoveries in American history.

Even if we’re extremely generous and (falsely) give Obama’s policies credit for the painfully slow recovery that followed the Great Recession, there’s no denying that there was never a large economic rebound, no significant recovery of jobs, and a tremendous loss of capital that occurred under his watch even after he assured the American people that he would solve the country’s continuing economic woes. Nevertheless, labor force participation plummeted to its lowest level in decades, not leveling out until 2014, well into his second term.

It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many… who transferred at once to the person the hatred they bore to his political opinions.
– Thomas Jefferson

Though let’s be clear. Obama tried. He threw every Keynesian trick in the book at the sagging economy, then threw the book. Nothing worked. The jobs situation remained grim even into 2016, and Barack Obama himself aquiesced that “some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back“. Add the divisive rhetoric that often characterized his presidency and having his only major legislative achievement (the Affordable Care Act) critically gutted by the Republicans in 2017, and the Obama presidency can arguably be described as a dismal circus of failure.

Then along came Donald Trump.

As bad as Obama’s eight year tenure may have been, the well meaning incompetence, naive mismanagement, and embarrassing diplomacy of his presidency pales next to the rolling dumpster fire of Donald Trump’s abject philosophical turpitude, naked crony corporatism, and manifest legal malfeasance. The orange buffoon has damaged long standing military alliances older than he is, abandoned crucial (albeit flawed) international treaties, and singlehandedly destabilized the world economy, just to appease his categorically unsophisticated rube base.

Where Republicans once complained about the divisiveness of Obama’s political rhetoric during his two terms, they now revel in white nationalist propaganda, insufferable internet trolling, and unabashed bigotry of Trumpism. And if they ever believed Obama resorting to “a pen and a phone” to circumvent a deadlocked congress was unconscionable when he did it, they seem to have become quite comfortable with it now that Trump’s using exactly the same tactics, since the self described “Master of the Deal” can’t negotiate anything through a congress controlled by his own party.

It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.
– George Washington

Things are getting bad in the nation’s capital, and there’s a growing sense that even if Trump and his cronies may not in fact be overseeing the final days of the American republic, they may be overseeing the final days of our fair republic as we have known it. If America is to survive the next few years as a functioning nation, the American people have to fundamentally reorient our political objectives away from provocative grievance rhetoric and toward committed cultural reintegration, and fast.

We need a unifying third party that can wash out the gutters of Washington, D.C. and change its culture from the top down, either through sheer political dominance or by merely diluting both chambers of congress enough that neither of the two entrenched political parties can get anything done without sitting down and seriously compromising with each other. In the end, good and decent Americans can no longer sit idly by tolerating the insane radicalism of the left or the nationalist bigotry of the right.

We have to stand up and demand better of our country and our countrymen. Even if it means we stand alone.

Join the revolution at #StandUpRepublic.

 

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Liberty is For The Win!