The Conservative Conspiracy of a Liberal Conspiracy

Now, we fast forward from that long ago year of 2000 to the innocuous sounding 2008, when the 44^th President, Barack H. Obama was elected to the highest office in the land. Obama received a very different reception by the youth culture because he is young (as far as Presidents go), charismatic, and without a doubt the leftist leaning president in recent history, and probably in history with value added to social progresses. The conservative media and pundits don’t care for him at all, and from the moment he took the oath of office the Republican minority (at the time) rallied against his agenda—which actually isn’t surprising and I would expect nothing less of a Democrat minority. Over the course of his four-year term, the president has been continually blocked and bombarded by the right. In defense of that, the President hasn’t done much in terms of bridging the aisle other than declaring an “Open Door” policy. An in, the American political scene has been increasingly toxic over the course of President Obama’s term for a variety of reasons that are striped and star spangled, though not entirely “American” on either end.

Hungry for some sort of equivalent gripe to the 2000 election, the right had none coming from the election of Barack Obama, because he won by a large enough lead that some considered it more of a mandate than a victory. In that time Obama hasn’t exactly panned out to be the messianic leader of hope, change, transparency, and unity—not by half—but he does have some strong and solid progressive achievements under his belt (not the least of which is the so-called Obamacare, The Affordable Care Act and the pullout schedules from the two Bush-era, post 9/11 wars). However his campaign promises did not really match his record on many issues, and most importantly in this cycle on the economy. All estimations say that at this rate of recovery the unemployment rate will reach pre-recession levels at sometime mid-to-early next decade. This has left many of Obama’s constituents unhappy and unemployed and has fueled the fire and ire of their counterparts. What the conservative culture has brought forth is a sort of anti-Bush yet still detestable public visage that paints the 44^th President as a media-darling, celebrity, egocentric, arrogant, over-intellectual, entitled, ne’er do well, who was placed in power by a subversive terrorist agenda, through serious machinations and planning dating back to his conception. I will also leave this to debate at another time but will add that there are absolutely no teeth to the birther agenda, and the more it comes it the more you see the ugly head of racism and fear-mongering raise its head.