A note before the 2012 Election
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Thursday, November 1, 2012 at 10:56am ·
I am trying to get this note out for anyone who might want to read it. If I can I will post it on my Word Press Blog as reissuance of this Facebook Note with virtually no changes. By All Saints Day Night November 1, 2012 would be a good time. For any who do not know I am a former Democrat and not a Republican and I voted against Obama in 2008. Read on with that background.
The election for President is going on in many States and early voting has gone on here in Louisiana. Election Day is just around the corner on Tuesday. There are other races as well and I have been paying attention to the only other one I could vote for as a race between candidates I also have been paying attention to the provision and ammendments on which I voted. This is not a partisan campaigning blog nor a profile that devotes itself mostly to electoral choices. I hope people who read my stuff vote. I do care who they vote for but I am happy to have anyone I admit here as a reader or friend regardless of how they may vote or what party they belong to and seek to promote. This will end up being a note mostly about the presidential contest but let me start with something else.
Halloween Night, Representative Jeff Landry and Representative Charles Boustany had their debate on KPEL which on fm is 96.5. The questions were taken from outside the station staff and the last question was mine. I will include that in my electoral note if I get it written before election day… Here is a link to that debate:
http://kpel965.com/boustany-vs-landry-debate-how-the-candidates-answered-the-questions/
I wrote a note about the election of President Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 and posted it here and it is titled as appears just below this sentence and I will return to that note a few times:
“A Few Thoughts Before the End of American Civilization,
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 10:58pm “·
But let me start with talking again about this year’s events,most of all I have voted. As I announced in my status afterward “political as my interests and this profile are I do not strongly advocate for a particular voting choice in the way most people who advocate policy do”. The status I posted on the first day of early voting also continued with a general declaration of my own voting choices. “I voted for eight out of nine ammendments to the Louisiana Constitution, against term limits on the School Board in my parish, and as all of you knew I would I voted against Obama and for the only ticket that could possibly beat him. I like Romney better than I thought I would but I voted against Obama. The toughest choice for me was for Representative. I am sad Louisiana lost a seat, think Boustany and Landry are both good and both imperfect men and legislators. I had factors which drew me strongly to both and a single distinct complaint against each.” Any reader following through this note can see that I played some role in working on this race. I had once had both men on my Facebook list and now have neither. I voted for Charles Boustany on that first day before the debate. I ended my status that day with the remark “I hope to post an elections note in which I tell whom I voted for in that race…” I have previously revealed my vote but this is the promised note.
I do not know who will win this race. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have all been incumbents who were re-elected in my lifetime. The President of the United States has been limited to two terms since FDR. Lyndon Baines Johnson had served more than one term and could have faced real constitutional challenges if he had run again. He had more than one term and was elected twice but not to the same job. Gerald Ford was defeated as an incumbent but was possibly unconstitutional anyway and never elected. Perhaps the Speaker should have been President as far as legalities go there was no real dispute on that point. So in my lifetime the only incumbents ousted from office before two terms expired were fairly few. Richard Nixon by impeachment was ousted only after being reelected. Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush were defeated at the polls and they alone. The older Bush was facing a third party challenge and was at the end of a twelve year regime. Carter was the only one analagous to Obama. If you want to defeat Obama and you live in a state that is not up for grabs try to support Romney in a swing state and realize it is an uphill fight. If you support Obama then the truth is your candidate has a strong advantage. I oppose the incumbent.
In November of 2008 I began the note I have already mentioned writing: “I have decided to jot down a few thoughts before the end of American civilization. I think that we have been in trouble always and that is true of most great civilizations but not all. However, now we are about to reach a final end of our civilization. So I think that will jot down a few thoughts about it. I think that it will be mostly for my own relaxation that I write this. America has always had some real weaknesses and now it has simply committed itself completely to a path which excludes most of the paths that might have produced a worthwhile result. I think that merelly electing Barack Obama sets a seal on the underlying fact that America is dead in regards to all its most vital qualities.”
That is not a moderate response. It is perhaps an anguished one. It has now been four years in which I have written two model constitutions, lamented many woes and sought to make plans to leave while resisting the path we have traveled here. I am not as anguished. But I am not in a better objective position. I tried to describe my state of mind in that note:
“I do not think that one gets to the point of writing an essay like this unless one is already for along on a journey which enables one to let go of a great deal very easily.I have already lost a wife and gotten to 44 years of age without having children. I plan to be alone on Thanksgiving day and as I look back over much of my life it has truly been a series of many unpleasant associations interrupted by far fewer good ones. America is a place where I may never really have belonged. However, I did try to find a way to be here and so I can at least relate to it as the greatest obsession of my life. It is after a master’s degree in American History, after marrying an American woman, after becoming vested in Social Security and after having paid and filed returns for income, property, sales and business registration taxes that I am giving up on remaining part of the story of the United States of America. It’s been a rough and unpleasant run all in all. Yet, had Barack Obama not been elected I am fairly sure that there is very little chance that I would have reached this point. Perhaps I should be grateful for that.”
I then go on to go over many points about the system which I have since explained elsewhere and will not repeat. I am glad to have had the chance to make my proposals and raise my warnings about larger American issues. However, I am very much aware that Obama represents much more of a political force than I do.
I still see Obama as the answer one comes up with when asking all the wrong questions. I am reading Bill Bennet’s collection “Our Sacred Honor” right now. I enjoy the book and I still love America. I also still stand by my words written in anguished resentment that day four years ago: “This is a bad country from the point of view of millions or billions around the world and it is difficult to address any of our bad press because nobody understands what is involved in building an authentic American national unity and finding a away to express it to the world. Barack Obama is Black in the most racist sense which ties America to its worst past but is not descended from the centuries of hard work and noble struggle for progress by black African and mixed race colored people. Obama becoming President as he did seals countless issues the wrong way forever. His own actions henceforth and the actions of the opposition are not relevant in regards to all the ways that he marks the end of all that we are and were as a country.”
We have other problems not related to Obama. I have survived Obama’s first term without being arrested and with me I take such things term by term. I am not sure Romney won’t be behind the thing that leads to my first US arrest for Civil Disobedience or other alleged or real crimes if he is elected. I am not sure what will happen if Obama is elected. I still feel his election was the crossing of a unique border forever. I tried to describe my feelings then.
“I have never reacted like this to any other election. I have objected to quite a few things various elected officials have stood for and done in America. Abroad I have sometimes supported people one might fairly describe as seeking regime change. I may even have been one of the significant minor players in th People Power Revolution that deposed Ferdinand Marcos and put Corazon Aquino into the presidency of the Philippines. This is different however. this is a final coming to a head of a lifelong conflict. I will struggle while here in the USA and make plans to be elsewhere.”
In the years since then we have had our credit rating lowered, we have had the first Ambassador killed in forty years, we have snubbed Israel and seen an Islamist block rise in many places, we have added trillions in debt, shrunk the workforce, been vilified by violent mobs around the world, and had new levels of gridlock in Congress. Whoever is president will have to deal with some of that reality.
I have posted a good bit about politics for four years. I will see what happens in the election. I do not think the election can solve all our problems. I do think that a better future is still possible. I am still opposed to Obama.
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