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‘IT’S NOT HEAVEN, BUT IT COULD BE WORSE’–The Left’s Mediocrity Complacency

The left prefers mediocrity. It informs nearly everything they stand for and the policies they pursue. Remember a few years ago, when Barack Obama discussed regulating the economy in such a way as to eliminate cyclical performance? He didn’t suggest that we break the cycle of boom and bust and instead implement policies to provide for a permanent boom. He suggested we regulate the economy to ensure flat-line mediocre performance.

Nihilism? Pessimism? Surely some “ism” exists that in part explains it. Not fully though. To get to the core of why the left subscribes to mediocrity, it’s necessary to realize one singular truth. The left aims for low expectations and they are comfortable with the resultant poor results, especially among themselves.

“It’s not heaven, but it could be worse.” In a recent exchange, this is how an Obama supporter described the last 73 months to me. This is the benchmark for success, that the promised utopia never transpired but not to worry, things could be worse? It would make for one heck of a campaign bumper sticker for whichever Democrat gets to run as Obama’s third term next year. “Vote for Hillary – it could be worse”, or “Elzabeth Warren – it isn’t going to get better but she won’t let it get worse”.

“It’s not heaven, but it could be worse.” This is the kind of thing the guy who just T-boned a Buick says when he realizes his windshield wipers still work even though the front of his car is smashed beyond recognition. Or the guy who falls down a flight of stairs and realizes he didn’t miss a belt loop when he got dressed twenty minutes before.

Nothing in that statement speaks of success. It doesn’t even suggest accomplishment. At face value, it appears light-years away from the halcyon days of Obama the candidate and Obama the untarnished President. The lofty exhortations to Obama’s greatness remain as intriguing now as they were then, for they hint at leftist acceptance of low expectations.

Just after the election in 2008, I followed an ardent Obama supporter on social media. After hearing all the stories about people fainting in the aisles when he spoke, and being completely unimpressed by him myself, I wanted to learn what it was I seemed to be missing. Her posts were long on woe, typically constructed around a “things are bad and I hope they get better” mantra. No matter what she was posting about any given day, her picture always featured her crying. In tears. Always. I’ve never seen someone cry as much as she seemed to.

There was Julio Osequeda. He was the young man in Florida who gasped out praise for Barack Obama with the memorable “thank you precious God for taking time out of your day”, which preceded his request that the President make his McDonald’s job a head of household position. This was around the same time a woman asked Obama for a kitchen and a bathroom. Both are reminiscent of Peggy Joseph who proudly told a reporter than if Obama was elected “I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car, I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage.”

Because it’s too much to ask that one seek out a job that pays better than McDonald’s or make their own way through life. It’s much easier to just go with the day to day flow and hope someone else will make it all better.

Obama was after all, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. The one with an IQ so high historian Michael Beschloss declared it impossible to quantify. Obama said so himself, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Valerie Jarrett, his closest advisor, agreed. In fact, she went on to say that Obama was bored with the mere work of the Presidency,

he knows exactly how smart he is. I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but someone with extraordinary talents that they had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do. He would never be satisfied with what ordinary people do.

Such superiority Obama casually admitted “you know, it’s interesting. There is a deep down, underneath all the work that I do, I think there’s a laziness in me.”

So off-the-charts capable that even the Presidency couldn’t keep him from becoming bored and lazy with the gig. Being President was just too easy for him.

And yet, against this backdrop Barack Obama was never held accountable for failing to meet expectations. The recession, for example, was described as so deep and complex that it was miraculous enough that Obama express concern over it — few questioned his anemic response to it. Same can be said for foreign policy, health-care reform, and any number of issues. Even today as Obama endorses the Marie Harf jobs program for ISIS, his most devoted supporters defend it as being an intellectual decision too nuanced for ordinary people to understand. If that’s not a sufficient rationale, there’s always the Bush card.

Bush’s fault. Always Bush’s fault. Even now, 73 months after Bush moved out of the White House it’s still his fault. When it isn’t Bush’s fault, the Obama die-hards instead blame it on Romney and Ryan. Odd considering that they didn’t win in 2012 and aren’t running in 2016.

It isn’t hard to find loads of anti-Romney vitriol on the internet. Sorting through it, one wonders if Romney, in fact, has been President all along. Forever maybe. Do these people even know Romney isn’t running for President in 2016? They don’t seem to grasp that their man, Barack Obama, has held the office since 2009.

What it all amounts to are variations of “It’s not heaven, but it could be worse” — leftist acceptance of mediocrity.

In 2016 America will have a choice. We can follow 96 months of mediocre, flat-line performance with Obama’s third term — 48 months of the same of prissing, preening, whining, grievance-mongering dead-end performance. Or we can set our sights higher, and reap the results as our nation exceeds every expectation.

We’ve seen what mediocrity looks like. Let’s see what extraordinary looks like.

Image: https://cerdotopia.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/967/

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Andrew Allen

Andrew Allen (@aandrewallen) grew up in the American southeast and for more than two decades has worked as an information technoloigies professional in various locations around the globe. A former far-left activist, Allen became a conservative in the late 1990s following a lengthy period spent questioning his own worldview. When not working IT-related issues or traveling, Andrew Allen spends his time discovering new ways to bring the pain by exposing the idiocy of liberals and their ideology.