During the 2012 presidential election, Barack Obama coined a catchy phrase to describe all the flip-flops in which his opponent had allegedly engaged during the course of his career. On virtually every issue, from health care to abortion, from taxes to so-called pay equity, from welfare to gun control, Obama said the GOP nominee suffered from “Romnesia.”
In anticipation of the continued seductive tyranny that surely awaits us in the next four years, I would like to propose a new expression to describe the reaction of many of us to the policies coming in Obama’s second term: “Obamasterics,” defined as an appropriate level of hysterics caused by the ongoing authoritarian reign of the 44th President of the United States.
Unlike Romnesia, Obamasterics is not a joke, and it is not amusing. It is a very serious condition brought on by a fundamental understanding of the U.S. Constitution in an age of despotism. Quite simply, if you understand and support the Constitution, you are likely to suffer from Obamasterics. I know I do. To quote Thomas Jefferson, “I tremble for my country.”
There are very real reasons to be frightened. As half the nation blindly accepts the notion that the office of President of the United States is some sort of autocratic position, the holder of which has virtually unlimited power to decree whatever he pleases, those of us who still cling to the notion of limited Constitutional government understand that Obama himself subscribes to the belief that, as the nation’s chief executive, he has the authority to execute any edict that comes into his calculating Marxist mind.
Nowhere can Obamasterics be viewed more clearly than in our reaction to his determination to grab as many guns from law-abiding citizens as possible. Obama appointed that towering legal mind, Vice President Joe Biden, to “study” the issue of gun violence and come up with a set of solutions. At his first meeting on the subject, Biden announced, “The president is going to act. There are executive orders, executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required.”
Of all the areas of the American economy this president has failed to stimulate in the last four years, the gun industry is the one big exception. Sales are booming. In fact, with Obama and his cronies in Congress threatening more meaningless firearms laws since the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting last month, Obamasterics already had a grip on gun owners — and rightly so.
But with those 52 words from Biden, the Obama administration has thrown down the gauntlet to gun owners and sent them into overdrive to defend their Second Amendment rights. In fact, one has to wonder if that is the idea. Remember when Biden was said to have inadvertently blabbed his opinion that same-sex marriage should be legalized? I never believed for a moment that the VP’s statement wasn’t calculated and timed to throw that issue like a bomb into the public debate.
The same could be said of Biden’s statement about guns. It would not surprise me if the current run on AR-15, AK-47 and SKS rifles, as well as semi-automatic handguns and ammunition, will give these despots the additional excuse they need to go a step further and attempt to tax, regulate, ban, and/or eventually confiscate these weapons and the ammo they utilize.
“There are just too many of these dangerous weapons in the hands of untrained, untested civilians,” the rationale will go, “to allow this situation to stand. Ever since Sandy Hook, people have been buying the same weapons used by this crazed killer. We must ask ourselves, why? And we must act!”
Get ready for the raw exercise of presidential power the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetime. A president with as little regard for the First Amendment as Obama has shown will certainly not think twice about trampling on our Second Amendment rights.
Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.