This marks the fifth annual
edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring
title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the
movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never
allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing
anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming
back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew
on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone
where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each
other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want
to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his
face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the
young man who is driving.
Over the past four years that I have been writing this post, I have used it to highlight the scary problems in our political world. And every year there is more and more to fear. The real life events taking place in our country today are worse than any scary film plot ever hatched in the mind of any Hollywood producer.
1. ISIS/Terrorism: Just two years after Obama and Joe Biden proudly proclaimed that "Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is alive" we are now dealing with unprecedented terrorism. This new brand of terrorism does not need a unifying leader like bin Laden to unleash havoc on the world. It is like the mythical Hydra--when one head is cut off, two more appear in its place. The attacks this week in Canada and in New York City highlight the very real problem created by a soft, squishy foreign policy with regard to radical Islam. We are now experiencing more and more isolated attacks against individuals in the name of Allah.
Add to that the fact that not only is the Obama Administration not serious about stopping ISIS, they are apparently helping to supply them through inadvertent food and weapons drops, and you have a mess of epic proportions. Obama not only has not stopped terrorism--he has emboldened our enemies on a level we have never before experienced. He has essentially taken the fight against Islam from the desert sands of Iraq to our own shores and made each of us a potential target and a potential combatant. The recent case of the young man in Oklahoma who beheaded his co-worker before being shot by the company's owner highlights that no part of the country is safe and no one, young or old, is off limits.
2. Ebola: Living in Dallas I was confronted daily with news reports of Thomas Duncan and the nurses who were infected while caring for him--thankfully they appear to be recovering. I also heard all of the conspiracy theories that Ebola has been brought here on purpose by our government to destroy us. Regardless of whether you believe Ebola patients are being allowed in here intentionally, I think all of us will agree that the Ebola crisis is at best another example of gross mismanagement. Individual schools are now denying applicants from Ebola-stricken nations while the federal government tries to figure out whether we should have a no-fly list. The U.S. government's primary responsibility should be to protect American citizens and to act in the best interest of the American people. What is in our best interests is restricting travel and access and quarantining those from infected nations--rather than worrying about being culturally sensitive we need to be working to curtail the spread of this disease.
At the same time, the Obama Administration is sending thousands of our young men and women from the military into infected areas. We all worry when our troops go overseas to fight human enemies, though we all understand that this is a necessary part of our existence and of military life. But to send men and women overseas to combat diseases which they have neither the training nor experience to fight is irresponsible and corrupt. We owe our troops more than to risk sacrificing their lives to battle a disease with no cure on a foreign continent. The fact that our government is defending this decision is unthinkable.
3. The 2014 elections: We have a real chance to see the GOP take control of the Senate this year. I keep seeing trending hashtags with catchy slogans such as #stoptheGOP as Democrats vent because their candidates are in tight races. Right now polls look good for a solid win in the next two weeks, and every time the president talks, our chances improve. Yesterday he was on Al Sharpton's radio show reminding the nation that although Democrat Senators and Congressional Representatives may be distancing themselves from him now, they all support all of his policies and will vote with him faithfully. (Obama's ongoing rhetoric reminding the nation that this election is really all about him and his policies almost begs the question, "Are you actually trying to lose or are you just really this narcissistic and clueless.") In Texas, Wendy Davis' campaign has devolved in a vicious mockery of current attorney-general Greg Abbott's disabilities. In spite of attempts to derail them, our state's voter ID laws have been allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to stay in place for this election cycle. For the first time in a long time, we have real hope.
But here's the deal--none of that matters if every last one of us does not get out this Fall and vote. I don't normally agree with Obama about anything, but he is right about this. All of these politicians who are pretending they have never heard of Barack Obama will go right back to voting the party line and supporting his every whim if they are re-elected. The amnesty that he delayed until after the election will go into place as soon as Harry Reid is safely back in as Senate Majority Leader. Obamacare's small business provisions are going to go into effect next year and those provisions are going to make it even more difficult for the over 90 million unemployed Americans to return to work. The war on coal and Obama's draconian rules aimed at stopping man-made climate change are just in their infancy; they are about to come to adulthood in radical ways. The policies that have wreaked havoc on this nation--policies that endanger our civil liberties, our freedom, our prosperity, our security and our very sovereignty will continue on unhampered unless on November 4th we are willing as a nation to stand up and say to the president, "You are right--for once. This election is all about you and your policies. We know that your lackeys support you unwaveringly and we have had enough. It's time for some real hope and change and time for Harry Reid and his liberal cronies to go find a new job."
If enough of us are willing to do that on November 4th, we can awaken on November 5th to a country that is still badly damaged but a country with hope of recovery. The road back is going to be long and difficult, but if we don't start making changes to this country's leadership today, there will be no road back. If Harry Reid keeps his job, we can expect more of what we have already had for the last six years, plus two years of set up to elect yet another leftist idealogue as President so that we as a nation can continue careening further and further away from the nation we have been--the land of the free and the home of the brave--and more and more into a socialist dystopian hell. Now that's a really scary thought.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
