What Will The Next Chapter Be About?

Baby boomers now running our country, or seeking to run it, came of age during the hubris of the 1960s and 70s. That era shaped them for well or ill, and we’re seeing more evidence of the latter as this unprecedented campaign unfolds. Being a teenager and young adult at the time, I recall quite vividly that societal norms governing sexual behavior were thrown to the wind. The ethos of the age was such that religious and cultural strictures around sex were considered repressive and unnatural. They were shredded so we could be “liberated.” People should “do their own thing” regardless of millennia-old exemplars. The principle that sex is best confined to marriage sex produced children who were best raised in nuclear families was widely accepted Though violations were frequent, they were stigmatized. Since the sixties, however, we’ve been “defining deviancy down,” to borrow a phrase from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), and here we are, like it or not. Sex isn’t for procreation anymore. It’s recreation. Babies are more a problem than a blessing.

Anthony Weiner

Much of today’s media has been pornified, but remember that the sixties began with John F. Kennedy’s presidency. His White House promiscuity has become widely known but few knew at the time. Media knew but chose to ignore it. Public scandals were confined to politics: Watergate in the Nixon presidency and Iran-Contra in Reagan’s. Clinton’s scandals were sexual but Obama’s returned to the political. Now, however, Clinton’s sexual escapades have been resurrected by Trump after his own were widely publicized. And now, bizarrely, those of the former congressman with the unfortunate name are back in the news. Sex, especially its misuse, dominates America’s attention as we approach election day. The FBI is investigating former Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner after he was caught for the third time sending unwanted pictures of his genitalia — this time to a 15-year-old girl. The probe turned up something unexpected which may determine who becomes our next president. Exactly what that is, we don’t yet know, but it’s evidently important enough to make its existence public at this critical time.

Sex has so dominated public discussion of the biggest election campaign in years that other issues get little attention. An hour before the first big Wikileaks email dump on Friday, October 7th, NBC released the now-famous Trump remarks on the bus in which he claimed women let him grope them because he was famous. Before that, he had been talking about world and national issues and cutting into Hillary’s lead. Some polls even showed him ahead, but he slid behind again after his prurient 2005 remarks went public. They consumed so much media oxygen that few Americans learned about Wikileaks emails showing that Hillary lied even more often, about even more things, than we already knew. Suddenly it was all about sex again.

Bill Clinton at 2nd debate as Trump fingered him

In their second debate two days later on October 9th, Trump turned the sexual focus back onto the Clintons, claiming he only talked about groping women while Bill Clinton actually did it. He brought several women into the debate hall who alleged President Clinton had groped or even raped them while he was Arkansas Attorney General, Governor, and president. Then, for days after, about a dozen women claimed that Trump had groped them over the last three decades. Trump’s denied their allegations, threatened to sue them, and continued his slide in the polls. Americans felt soiled by sordid charges thrown back and forth and looked forward to the election being over.

Trump finally went back to talking about issues and began creeping back up in the polls. Continued release of Wikileaks emails and FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) documents pried out of the State Department continued damaging Hillary. The biggest bombshell dropped last Friday when FBI Director James Comey notified Congress that he was reopening his investigation into Hillary Clinton’s unsecured, classified emails. At least it didn’t involve sex, we thought. Only hours later, however, we learned that Comey’s investigatory turnaround was prompted by information found as the FBI gathered evidence on Weiner — the estranged husband of Hillary’s closest aid, Huma Abedin, who evidently left thousands of emails on his computer. It was back in the cesspool again for all of us.

This is the third presidential election during which I’ve been able to interview candidates — seven this year including Hillary Clinton. For me that makes the process more interesting, but this cycle has focused more Americans than any other. It’s forcing us to look at ourselves. Our votes — Democrat and Republican — gave us these candidates. Why, then, are we disgusted with them? To answer that, we have to look at the culture in which we’re swimming. Lying and sexual misdeeds don’t seem to matter much anymore. Everybody does it, right?

Next Tuesday we’ll know who will occupy the White House in January. We’d like it to, but it won’t be over next week, I’m afraid. It’ll just be the beginning of another chapter.

Riding High In April, Shot Down In May

Somebody in our high command let two former Navy SEALs die fighting off eighty radical Muslims. They fought bravely for seven hours and they could have been saved, but someone made a political decision that they should be left to die. Was that our commander-in-chief? Looks to me that it was, but soon we’ll have a full-scale investigation to answer that forty-year-old question: “What did the president know and when did he know it?” This isn’t what I started writing about for my weekly column but after watching our indignant president’s arrogant performance at the press conference Monday, my blood was boiling.

Uh-oh. We're screwed

We know he’s a political animal. All presidents are. A huge ego is necessary to even go after the job, but most maintain basic human values and decency while functioning in the Oval Office. Did President Obama? He was running for a second term and election day was six weeks away. He’d been bragging about killing Osama Bin Laden and putting al Qaida on the run. Then, on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, an al Qaida group murdered an American Ambassador the president himself had appointed. Ambassador Stevens’ body was photographed being dragged through the streets, and there are unconfirmed reports that it was degraded in other ways before and after death.

It can’t be proven yet, but it’s obvious to millions of Americans that President Obama made a political decision that it was bad for his campaign for al Qaida to draw American blood again on the anniversary of September 11th, and on his watch. So, he tried to make it seem like it was something other than a terrorist attack, and hoped to ride it out until after election day. With the cooperation of our lapdog Mainstream Media, who either believed or pretended to believe his lies, he did.

This writer is not foreign policy expert or a White House correspondent. I’m a retired history teacher, but I knew right away it wasn’t a “demonstration” against a Youtube video. It was a full-scale terrorist attack by radical Muslims bent on killing Americans. People don’t bring rocket-propelled grenade launchers to demonstrations. So, when I watched as President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to the families of the slain Americans next to their coffins at the airport, I was enraged. When I watched UN Ambassador Susan Rice go around the Sunday morning talk shows, I knew she was lying too. Right away I got on my laptop and started typing to give vent to my anger. The next day, September 17th, I posted it on my web site and it ran in the newspapers the following Thursday, the 20th.

For weeks afterward, I had to listen to President Obama tell the same lie on several television programs and at the United Nations. I vented my increasing rage again in a web post September 25th, which ran as another column the following Thursday in various newspapers. I watched as the Mainstream Media jumped all over Mitt Romney for even commenting on the attack. I watched as CNN’s Candy Crowley helped President Obama keep the lid on his lies during the second presidential debate which she moderated. Then I watched Romney wimp out on Benghazi in the third debate - and Obama cruised to victory.

Now, finally, it’s unraveling. The Mainstream Media is being shamed into covering the emerging scandal they’ve studiously ignored for eight months. They know they can’t ignore the testimony of the three, brave whistleblowers last week. Monday I watched their faces at the press conference as their hero embarrassed himself with his continued, arrogant stonewalling. They weren’t going to be his lapdogs anymore, but he hasn’t realized it yet.

The president also denied knowing anything about his Internal Revenue Service officials targeting conservative groups and pro-Israel Jewish groups for harassment until it was reported as a Friday-afternoon story three days before. I don’t believe that, and, as I watched their faces during the press conference, it looked like those reporters didn’t believe it either. They knew that history was about to repeat itself as members of the House of Representatives - controlled by the opposite party - will soon form up and ask the same question over and over: “What did the president know and when did he know it?” According to our Constitution, the House has sole power of impeachment.

The worst part of this, however, is the brave soldiers who died at their posts because someone twice gave the order for their rescuers to “stand down.” Then there’s Sean Smith, the State Department computer expert who died with Ambassador Stevens. His mother commented Sunday: “I want to wish Hillary a happy Mother's Day,” she said. “She has her child. I don't have mine because of her.”

Outgoing Secretary Of The Statement

“What difference does it make?” That’s the mantra of the Obama Administration now, and it’s not just about what happened in Benghazi. It’s about many things, like twice taking an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God - and then ignoring it. “What difference does it make?”

 It’s about quadrupling our deficits for the last four years after promising to cut them in half. What difference does it make? It’s about using the Federal Reserve to print trillions of dollars with nothing to back them up. What difference does it make? It’s about infringing on the right to keep and bear arms in spite of the Second Amendment. What difference does it make? It’s about making “recess appointments” when the Senate isn’t in recess and appointing “czars” to make policy without congressional confirmation or authorization. What difference does it make?

Guess we could call Hillary Clinton our outgoing “Secretary of the Statement” since she made that infamous remark in the form of a rhetorical question. After shedding crocodile tears about her friend “Chris” and the other three dead Americans whose bodies were flown back to America, Mrs. Clinton pounded the table in feigned indignation yelling: “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for walk one night who decided they’d go and kill some Americans?” It was neither of those things Madame Secretary, but as you said: what difference does it make?

What difference does it make that you (ignored) didn’t receive your friend Chris’s repeated pleas for more security? What difference does it make that you and/or President Obama and/or the Secretary of Defense (refused) didn’t know enough to send help to the former Navy Seals who, thinking for seven hours that help was on the way, died bravely trying to defend surviving Americans? What difference does it make that you all sent out UN Ambassador Susan Rice to lie to the American people about it five times the next Sunday morning?

What difference does it make that our Secretary of State just wants to go on her way without being accountable to questions about her competence, questions concerning her lies about some video being the cause of the attack, or questions about her lack of accountability to the US Senate that confirmed her? What difference, at this point, does it make?

What difference does it make if our soldiers’ morale plummets after realizing their commander-in-chief cares more about an election than about the very lives of brave soldiers under his command? What difference does it make that our president talked tough about the terrorists - promising to “bring them to justice” but hasn’t done a thing, even after one of the terrorists talked about it with a New York Times reporter at a cafe? What difference does it make when the same terrorists with the same weapons are so unafraid of President Obama that they took American hostages when attacking an oil rig in Algeria a couple of weeks ago?

What difference does it make when the Obama Administration censors any references to Islam or jihad from government documents about the war in which we’re engaged? What difference does it make that we’re afraid even to call our enemy by its true name? What difference does it make that our enemies think President Obama is a wuss and that America is a paper tiger?

 What difference does it make that Iran doesn’t take seriously President Obama’s promise that “The United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” What difference does it make that Israel doesn’t take our president seriously either and so will be forced into a pre-emptive attack on Iran to save itself? What difference does it make if that drives up the price of oil to $500 or $1000 a barrel and sinks the whole world’s economy? What difference does it make if a nuclear war breaks out in the Middle East and we’re led by a cowardly, incompetent administration?

Hard to see why any of this would be a big deal.