Election 2012: It’s the End of America As We Know It

“It’s a tragedy.”  So said Dennis Prager upon first hearing the news that Ohio had gone to Obama, thus deciding the Election 2012 outcome in these United States, November 6, 2012. I would add my own thought as a lifelong Buckeye: It is embarrassing.

By reelecting Barack Obama, we have made a choice as a nation that is so egregiously bad that I feel I must distance myself from the decision or risk being associated with the disastrous consequences of it. Even though I’m not sure that such separation is possible. How we as a nation of intelligent, somewhat God-fearing people could re-elect someone with such a dismal record, someone who has proven to be one of the most inept leaders of the modern era, someone who blatantly lies to us to cover his political disasters, and who openly advocates theft through redistribution as the new American way of life is beyond my feeble comprehension. Especially when we had such an admirable alternative.

Although I didn’t agree with Romney on everything, he is easily one of the most competent and virtuous leaders for whom our nation has has ever had the privilege of casting a vote. It is natural in the aftermath that so many of us would feel disillusioned by our nation rejecting such a leader while embracing another who champions becoming a victim as the new norm. (It’s Bush’s fault, remember?)

This is not the America I have known. But that is, apparently, the point.

I sat last night thinking, “How is this possible?” If America is the nation I think it is — and then it hit me — it’s obviously not, not anymore.  Frankly, I didn’t like any of the answers I gave myself.  I’ll get into more of them in the coming days. And I know many will think my thoughts are just sour grapes.

When I left for Guam a little over a week ago, Romney seemed to have this thing wrapped up. Then came the storm, the photo-ops in the situation room, and the praise from Chris Christie and — presto! Obama thrives while disaster continues on the dark streets of New York and New Jersey. In the words of Vizzini from The Princess Bride — Inconceivable! Unless…

It’s the end of America as we know it.

Far too many of us thought that Obama’s election in 2008 was an anomaly. I confess I thought that too many people had simply been caught up in panic of the economic collapse caused by liberal victimization policies. They had been fooled into thinking it was all Bush’s fault by a biased media. That was then. As the old adage goes, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice — well, that’s where we find ourselves today.

Let’s just say we are now fully and unquestionably responsible for the President we have chosen. The chickens are about to come home to roost. (Where have I heard that before? Oh, that’s right. Obama’s openly Marxist spiritual mentor for twenty years gleefully celebrating the tragedy of 9/11 from the pulpit. Where was the IRS then? But I digress.)

The whole thing reminds me of Jotham’s prophecy in Judges 9. After Abimelech seized power after Gideon’s death, he hunted down and decapitated about 70 of his half-brothers. Jotham alone escaped to prophesy the judgment to come upon Abimilech and those who foolishly followed him. He paints the vivid picture of the trees, mighty and strong, turning to the bramble, the briars and scraggly bushes of little substance, to rule over them. And that is what has happened here.

We, the mightiest of nations in the history of the world, have once again chosen the bramble to lead us.

We will have to pay the consequences for that decision. There’s no getting around it now. And the payment will come quicker now as a result of this election.

It’s going to hurt. Inflation is coming. There’s no way around it. Every single American will be “taxed” by the theft that is about to occur as our currency is devalued. Stagflation is about to reenter our vocabulary. Freedom is fading. There’s no way around it. The HHS Mandate is only the beginning. The church should brace for impact by getting on its knees. The Supreme Court will now likely tilt left for at least a generation. Marriage will disintegrate even further than it has. The government will be lifted even more prominently into a father-figure role reminiscent of the Roman Republic’s transition into tyranny disguised as compassion. And people of faith will come under greater attack in the name of tolerance.

It’s the end of America as we know it.

I say that the results of this election signal the end of America as we know it, because I grew up in the Cold War era where America was clearly the great hope of freedom in the world. And it was generally agreed that freedom was good thing. It was generally assumed that what people wanted was a chance to succeed. Now we have re-elected a President who, at best, sympathizes with the very communistic ideas our nation risked everything to crush, ideas which themselves crushed 100 million souls beneath their iron boots.

Many, and I do mean many, conservatives will now be faced with some choices about how to move forward. Of all the options before them, one that will get a lot of serious private consideration is whether to move forward at all. What I mean is that many will conclude that we have passed the infamous tipping point. They will conclude that hope is gone, that we have become a nation of takers and victims. Many will conclude that it’s time to seriously consider Plan B. You know, reach out to those “right-wing zealots” who are preparing for life after the coming economic collapse. Many of them seemed extreme before. Now they may seem prescient to some, the only hope going forward.

I don’t agree with that course, but I understand it.

I’ll share more thoughts on how America has been fundamentally transformed in the coming days. They might not be pleasant to all, but clarity is vital to getting to solutions. As Hugh Hewitt put it, we are heading into “uncharted waters” that our Founders never envisioned. There is no certainty that our Republic will survive. But great uncertainty has a way of producing tremendous clarity. Let’s pray the price for that clarity is not as high as I suspect it must be.

One thing is sure. America has indeed been fundamentally transformed. This election will prove to be the end of America as we know it. The sooner we get our minds around what that means, the better.