During the summer of 2008, before the financial crisis forced a light on Wall Street’s corruption (and influence), I was promised by no fewer than three news commentators that by the November election, they would investigate and expose exactly who Barack Obama was. By that, they meant his ideology, his priorities, his views on geo-political power and his real plan for America.
Many of us may remember the senator was seen as a somewhat nebulous character. True, he embodied the centrist Democratic ideal; seemingly molded in a laboratory, he looked young, charismatic, ethnically diverse, intellectual, nuanced and beautiful, but even casual observers knew this was vapid. More information was needed, if only to confirm what many already chose to believe.
Did he really believe in “spreading the wealth?” Was he a “uniter not a divider?” Was he part of the left or someone left of center? After his election he was called a committed centrist and even a moderate Republican. Less flattering assessments have argued he is a sociopath and more recently, he’s been compared to Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney. All of these assessments have at least some justification, depending on how you define the terms, but how’s this for you: There is no President Obama.
Yes of course, Barack Obama exist and he occupies the White House, but he is not the president because the office itself no longer exist. There is only Emperor Obama. He presides over an empire and claims the authority of an emperor. His power is limited not by the rule of law or the Constitution, but by the demands of other power brokers. We live in a post-legal world where the the Constitution is ignored or explained away by the most unconscionable far-fetched interpretations.
For example, Obama claims that “due process” does not necessarily mean judicial process. A jury trial is no longer needed, rather his own internal deliberations are sufficient to determine the guilt or innocence of American citizens and anonymous people all over the world.
To quote comedian Stephen Colbert, “Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock-paper-scissors – who cares? Due process just means there’s a process that you do.”
The emperor then hands down his judgment which his unquestioning private army, the CIA, gladly carry out. Questioning its legality is almost quaint. It’s little more than an academic discussion which everyone knows will never result in action.
Author Frédéric Bastiat wrote, “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” In our post-legal world, the laws still exist, but criminals that support the state’s broader mission are never punished. Instead, their faces grace the cover of Forbes; their supposed brilliance is proclaimed throughout the Senate.
Laws exist only to the extent they are necessary to encourage the government’s agents to collect revenue, suppress dissent and maintain order. There are many who even now hide behind it. The very word ‘law’ is justification in itself, even when imposed by an obviously illegitimate government. The failure of juries to nullify absurd and vindictive prosecutions is a good enough example.
We need not recall all of the corrupt practices of our government (we’ve already done that). The point is that the legitimacy of our government, and with it the titles claimed by its officials, has evaporated. He may be elected, and he may be our leader, but it’s an Orwellian parody to refer to him as president.
