by Eric Peters EricPetersAutos.com Recently by Eric Peters: Avoiding the Ethanol Blues
The Chimp pursed his pouty lips and announced that he’d “decided” – and you Republicans (you conservatives) didn’t object. Many of you actually cheered. So, please – don’t complain when Obama “decides.” As I expect him to in the weeks and months ahead. When Congress declines to “act” to “protect our children” from evil pieces of metal, composite and wood – Obama will do exactly as his predecessor did. He will “decide” that “we cannot wait” for Congress to act.
And so he will.
An executive order – the Americanized form of a Fuhrerbefehl – will simply decree that henceforth certain types of firearms shall be unlawful for anyone not a costumed goon to possess. Perhaps all types of firearms. And with the stroke of his pen, that will be that. No sieg heiling, perhaps – but the thing’s the same: An absolute autocrat asserting his personal will.
That is what the presidency of the United at Gunpoint States has become – a sort of occasionally revolving autocracy – led by a person we might properly call The Decider. So, kudos to the Chimp. He let slip the truth, just that once.
The Decider himself changes every so often – but the power of the decidership remains. And today, it has become all-but-omnipotent. Limited, not by societal expectations (quite the opposite) much less by any document or set of codified restrictions; certainly not by that “god-damned piece of paper,” as the first openly avowed Decider put it – but only by the extent of the brazenness of whomever happens to be The Decider at any given moment.
The tendency has festered since the very beginning days of the republic (e.g., Washington’s stomping of the Whiskey Tax Rebels; Adams’ Alien & Sedition acts) and been festering like a canker that will not scab over since at least since the time of Andrew Jackson. The tendency was made explicit policy under the decidership of Abe Lincoln – but for awhile thereafter, it quiesced somewhat. Then came Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ – and most recently, The Chimp – who asserted his decidership so audaciously it literally shocked the country into a state of helpless stupefaction. One half (that’s you Republicans) marveled – and approved. Because the self-described Decider decided in ways that comported with their own sensibilities. The other (that’s you Democrats) got upset, but only because it wasn’t their Decider doing the deciding – and because his decisions weren’t ones you approved of.
Now that it’s your Decider deciding, you cheer, too – or (like your Republican doppelgangers) you remain quiescent.
You certainly don’t object.
Not to the idea of the thing.
