Thomas Sowell, that “Solon of the Hoover Institute” can sure turn a phrase. As evidence of his ample powers, he offers us this gem: “Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.” Try explaining that little number to the imperious Barack Obama: the man who elevated political hubris to an art form by promising early on that as Black Moses, he would calm the rising waters and deliver his people to Canaan. But hefty promises notwithstanding, who among us can deny that our Great Shifter of Paradigms is presently in the process of bringing the temple down upon himself -- and us, for that matter. This is what the learned ones refer to as Tragic Irony; and for the longsuffering, it is a dish best served with relish.

The fruit of Man’s obsessive pride has ever merited moral condemnation, and seldom does the great pendulum of the universe return home emptyhanded -- bringing with it Obama’s political misfortunes now playing out before our eyes. Immersed ninety fathoms deep in a trench he has dug with his own golden spade, the “most transparent presidency in history” is on the rocks because Achilles and his mighty men could no longer read their stars in the night sky.

Memo to History: the vocation of Community Organizer is a poor résumé choice for America’s highest civilian office, and political agitation would seem to be incompatible with nurturing a republic in so many ways. In truth, that facile art is more attuned to flushing drug dealers out of stairwells in housing projects or in subtly steering nominal 8th grade intellects towards candidates of the local CPUSA.

For the man who would be America’s primer inter pares, a persistent policy of pandering to our moribund “Cities of Outstretched Palms” might be effective in the short term, since their wretched masses have skyrocketed under his compassionate watch. But in badmouthing the vast expanses of “Cracker Country” as some redneck plantation chock full of “Marlboros, Methodism, and mullets,” the political judgment of Obama and Co. errs in the extreme. As it now stands, these bitter clingers to tradition and self-sufficiency are reaching the outer limits of toleration. Yes, Tea Party types are fed up biding their time and keeping their powder dry while waiting for that inevitable last straw which unleashes the Kraken.  And when this finally happens, no constituency of EBT card chiselers, phalanx of cemetery-dwelling voters, or nursery school full of red diaper babies will be of any lasting comfort. When the teat dries up and the shotguns are racked, Obama logos will be scraped off Prius bumpers faster than Michael Moore can plug up a toilet on Thanksgiving.                                     

But seriously folks: For a nation founded ironically in the spirit of e pluribus unum, our festering culture war is exacerbated by the fact that Obama is such a piss-poor politico. He sorely lacks the political chromosome; and instead of making inroads and growing coalitions, he burns bridges and marginalizes. More than any other president before him, he has alienated the races from one another because he is psychologically averse to settling for only half of his collectivist loaf. Even with his narrow but sufficient rhetorical gifts, he can only go so far with a sputtering ideological engine and a temperament ill-suited to the task of statesman in the classic sense. And these facts alone make him utterly dangerous; because with his tin-eared political ineptitude and inability to compromise, he is like an arsonist at an Arco station. Who can doubt that the turbulent reign of Obama is anathema to a society that is rupturing itself into bellicose ideological camps?

Moreover, our president’s weakness of character and dearth of gravitas makes him ripe pickings for any number of T-Rex’s (posing as nation states) that salivate at the first whiff of flaccid indecision. But to be honest here, Obama’s poorly veiled contempt for traditional America, and for those who love her, is itself derived from a near congenital predisposition to make common cause with any enemy: whether they slither here or abroad. And while in the end his quest to fully dismantle America cannot succeed, he and his compadres will summon their last drop of bile attempting to extract a pound of flesh for every alleged crime we have committed against “History.”  Unfortunately for us, even if he cannot close the deal, he still has the power and potential to set into motion enough societal wrecking to hamstring America for years, if not decades.

In the grand scheme of things, the United States doesn’t need a Progressive Philosopher-King to define politics from the whimsical perspective of the blue-nosed academician. There are ten thousand men stationed on the periphery of America’s seats of power who well understand the true rudiments of economics and human nature, and who could lead simply by following the sage blueprint of our Founders -- men ill-suited to bread and circuses or the political sleight-of-hand that adds a quarter to the workingman’s left pocket as it draws a twenty from his right.  We need men and women whose political vision does not bring out the worst in America’s character. It is the way of progressives to perpetually promise the bounty of the banquet table; but in the end they deliver dog scraps -- even as they call this political transaction social justice.

Barack Obama’s progressive recipe for managed healthcare is a slow motion off-the-rails train wreck. The pain it will distribute as it is implemented both now and in future years (should it survive) promises increased suffering for the managed -- although not so much for the managers. The scheme by which the statist plague of ObamaCare was birthed has little to do with the counsels that recommend republican law, and the fine print that sustains such monstrosities invariably flows from the pens of corporatist lawyers and gangsters: those contemporary vultures arrayed smartly in Brooks Brothers attire.  Just days ago, Caesar triumphantly ascended the podium with his Golden Fleece of 7 million sign-ups, and not one of the star-struck in attendance demanded to see the books or asked the pregnant question of why millions needed to be thrown off their existing plans or extorted by the coercive hand of IRS bagmen to pay up and shut up. Having paid a “friendly visit” to its competition and invited them to take the midnight bus out of town, ObamaCare turns its crowbar wielding thugs loose in the city looking for plate glass windows -- even as its own glass shops open for business at a hefty premium.  This, friends, is what passes for the scientific rule of politics at the end of history.

Liberalism’s rule of unaccountable technocrats can never be considered true politics in the classical sense, just as Marxism, in all its variant forms, is merely a grandiose apologetic for the docile herding of humanity. That Obama is a proven wrecker who can deftly wield prominent clusters of guilt-ridden self-loathers and government grown parasites as bludgeons to malform society makes him, in the end, a shrewd politician in only the most venal sense. But as a man who charged by his Oath to God with shepherding the greater interests of the whole, he is as null a cipher as they come – even if he makes screaming Planned Parenthood hausfraus wet their chonies and faint dead away.

 Having played their brief day in the sun, Time alone has the final authority to pronounce both King and Slave fools.  But In the full and wise calculus of History, whose penetrating eye nothing escapes, Barry is Ozymandias:  whose haughty frown and wrinkled lip are buried deep in a box filled with sand -- reserved exclusively for felines.

Glenn Fairman writes from Highland, Ca. He can be contacted at arete5000@dslextreme.com and followed at www.stubbornthings.org or on Twitter.