“Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”–Barack Obama, State of the Union, Jan. 27, 2010

Just in case anyone is still gullible enough to believe anything this president says, let me put the above in terms any “cash-strapped family” can understand: we’ll to stop going out to dinner on Saturday night, but we’re still going to buy a new car, a plasma TV, and a vacation home–and put it all on our credit card.

Question: where’s the outrage? Forget the grossly anemic response to the trillions of dollars of debt accumulated by a grossly irresponsible federal government, and focus on the thinking behind the above statement. From that perspective, only one conclusion makes sense: this president, and by extension, those who crafted this speech, think Americans are dumber than dirt. They honestly believe they can sell a few billion in “savings” with the left hand, while the right hand is doling out trillions in spending–and you’re too stupid to see the sleight-of-hand.

For decades, Americans have been force-fed a monstrous lie. It is the idea that someone who received an Ivy League education was several rungs higher up the evolutionary ladder than everyone else. It is the idea that “book smart” is the ultimate measurement by which we determine the “best and brightest” among us.

Good, old-fashioned horse sense? A bone tossed to the “uninformed” to make them feel better about their intellectual short-comings.

It’s a load of horse-hockey. How many of you know one of those people who can wax poetic about the intricacies of some high-brow subject–but couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel? How many of you have been made to feel like a second-rate human being because you can’t quote Shakespeare or do algebraic equations in your head?

Talk is extremely cheap. And no one has made it cheaper than the current bunch of self-aggrandizing clowns who control the levers of power in Washington, D.C., and their equally contemptuous soul-mates in the media. The former are bankrupting the country, and the latter are cheerleading them onward.

Have you noticed how many of these “experts” are “surprised” when the latest economic data–or anything else for that matter–”falls short of expectations?” Whose expectations? The very same cadre of self-anointed geniuses who can’t seem to understand why the real-world consequences of their think-tank theories don’t add up, that’s who.

It’s been said patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Maybe it was at some point in our history, but right now the last refuge for a bunch of scoundrels is intellectual snobbery. We’re smart, your stupid, end of discussion–you tea-bagger.

It’s not flying anymore. Not when our “best and brightest” on Wall Street, along with our “best and brightest” in government pushed the economy over a cliff. Not when our “best and brightest” in academia need campus speech codes to protect their intellectual monopoly. Not when our “best and brightest” in the media prostitute themselves for the sake of a political agenda. And especially not when our “best and brightest” continue to dismiss the deep concerns of ordinary Americans as beneath contempt.

Telling Americans that “we are prepared to freeze government spending”–at levels three times higher than anything Americans have ever experienced in the country’s history–is as contemptuous as it gets. It is a hubris that has been carefully cultivated by the privileged for the privileged, and it is completely antithetical to the well-being of our nation.

Maybe that’s the real message behind the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Maybe, despite the reams of political analysis, the people of that state decided they’d had enough of the intellectual snobs who assumed “Ted Kennedy’s seat” was exactly that: a permanent resting place for big-government blowhards.

The Blowhard-in-Chief thought so. So did a lot of other blowhards who are still scratching their heads in bewilderment, or comforting themselves with arcane intellectual theories of which the most ludicrous has to be the idea that electing a Republican in a bluer-than-blue state was due to “continuing anger with George W. Bush.”

Only a genius could believe such utter nonsense.

atahlert@comcast.net

Have PoliticalMavens.com delivered to your inbox in a daily digest by clicking here