I started thinking about how much I’ve been hearing the word “universal” lately.

“Universal” is the “it” word, as in universal health care or “The Universe will guide me,” or “Leave it to the Universe.” 

There was a different word for it back in the day, more imposing but less confusing: God. But God is not a trendy word anymore. God is not popular, just like the Republicans. You are guilty by association with both. Even C.G. Jung was annoyed by it (the not calling God a ‘God’ part, not the Republicans). 

There was also that video tribute by Ken Burns to Ted Kennedy’s legacy. 

Ken Burns, surely, is a gifted storyteller in love with Americana. I have heard him speak many times, and Ken Burns is no Michael Moore. Michael Moore is an indoctrinated “half intellectual” (as Jean- Luc Goddard called him once) who follows Karl Marx verbatim. On the contrary, Ken Burns is a voluntary propagandist who, just like most of America’s talented artists, made an inevitably subconscious left turn in order to succeed in a better-marketed liberal Democratic cultural establishment. Burns does try to maintain his independent artistic spirit somewhat, at least to the degree allowed by PBS. 

In short, Ken Burns is PBS’s Sergei Eisenstein. 

So, it was even more disappointing to see how lame of a video tribute it was. All I learned was that Ted Kennedy loved water and universal health care, and that the people whom he helped loved him. The video’s real purpose, though, was an apparent attempt to make Obama look like an heir to Kennedy’s long desired health care reform. 

As everything in the age of Obama, the video turned out to be about Obama.

Sadly, Obama is gradually becoming the zero of any socio-political equation-any number multiplied or divided by him becomes a zero. Or, rather like a zero on a roulette table, once the ball stops on him, all the money goes to the bank (a government owned one, of course). It is a uniquely universal quality.

The Kennedys were instrumental in Obama’s ascension to power. In fact, Ted Kennedy, as his friends were emotionally emphasizing during the tribute, helped a lot of people…except for one whom he left dying in the water that he loved so much, for which he was never held accountable because of the universal love for the Kennedys. Except for people who do not drink and drive, no one is exempt from drunk-driving accidents, and the shock that follows could impede anyone’s swift judgment. 

Ted Kennedy, as many mentioned, also sincerely cared for “simple folks.” 

Documentary Filmmaker Ken Burns

Yet, what would have been enough to sink any other good man’s public career was forgiven to Ted Kennedy-a testimony to the major dysfunction of our consumer-driven democracy that is still unable to break the chains of seduction to its universally hailed icons and idols. 

So, there is, after all, a difference between the concepts of “Universal” and God. God brings justice; the Universe forgives. God is personal; the Universe is not. You can’t even curse the Universe. Who would be offended by cursing the Rings of Saturn, anyway? 

A half-junkie acquaintance of mine in Hollywood was telling me that she applied for many jobs and by doing so made a statement to the Universe that she needed a job. Now, the Universe must help her… 

Do you see the pattern here? The Universe is entitled to help. The Universe is the substitute for the judgmental and (rapidly disappearing) God. God and his Republican guards leave people alone and uninsured, but the Universe helps them. And Unions help them too. And the Soviet Union helped people too, after it got rid of the people who did not ‘care’ about other people. The Universal end justifies individual means, even if by the “means” one implies vilifying half of the population who do not agree with the Universal Agent of Change.

Once in thousand years, the Universe sends savior figures that materialize people’s desires and protect them against social injustice. Sometimes, however, these agents of change commit locally individual acts of injustice; yet, ultimately, they bring on the kind of “universal social justice” so eloquently championed by Ted Kennedy throughout his distinguished career.

And I agree – that the President is doing his level best to buck this country up. 

His bucked-up foreign policy has signaled weakness to our detractors and encouraged aggression from those who would destroy us. 

He bucked up our financial institutions by taking control of over 600 banks.  He bucked up the automotive industry with at first his bail-outs with strings, and firing CEO’s, and placing stipulations, regulations and mandates on formerly private companies. 

With his ‘cap-and-trade’ bill, he bucked up the energy industry by passing the largest tax hike in history… to further buck up the middle class. 

He’s bucking us up with his racist, activist supreme court nominee, the not-so-wise affirmative action judge Sotomayor.  He’s bucking up our economy by plunging us into an abyss of debt and raising taxes on those who build industry.   He’s bucking up big business; he’s bucking up small business.  In fact, the only faction not getting bucked up are the unions and government workers.  The message seems clear:  A) Join a union or B) Go to work for the government, or C) Do both…. or we’re going to buck you up.

But does the buck really stop there?   I think there’s plenty more on the way.   Thus far we still have freedom of speech, freedom of expression.  But with a revised version of the Fairness Doctrine due to come down the pike to silence talk radio and regulate the Internet, the president and his brood will be sure to buck that up too.  After all, it’s only been six months.  Plenty of buck-up time still to go.

And we still have the 2nd Amendment in place.  The right to keep and bear arms.  But as anyone who follows history knows, hardcore socialists can’t wait to inflict all sorts of gun control, restrictions, registrations, and eventually, confiscations on its citizens. 

It’s so much easier to control people when they cease to be citizens, and start being subjects. 

You see, our leader, President Obama, is the smartest man in the universe.  He is so smart, he doesn’t even have to have ever run a business himself in order to decide what is best for businesses.  And he doesn’t have to be a doctor or ever have run a hospital to know what is wrong with our health care system and how to make it less expensive and run more efficiently.  And he’s never even believed in capitalism and the free market system, but he swears he knows how to make that work oh so much better, too.

You have to admit, this guy is really good at bucking things up.

Now…all you folks who voted for this amazingly charismatic, yet annoyingly vapid, arrogant and incompetent man…I know it’s an embarrassment to admit.   And your pride will prevent you from an overt admission that you made a tragically wrong decision last November 4th.   But we understand.  Sometimes, with a stiff shot of media manipulation and some bad water, we make mistakes.  I myself admit to one of momentous stupidity when I, in the mid-seventies, actually cast my vote for Jimmy Carter for Prez of the United States.  (However, in my defense, I had been stoned off my gourd for the previous three years, it was college hysteria, and all the hot chicks seemed to be Democrats.  Or, come to think of it…not so much hot…as easy.)

But let us put aside our differences, our past mistakes, and our collegiate encumbrances.  What’s done is done.  Now we are faced with a leader who wants to supersede the Constitution and discount our American way of life for something more resembling a Eurotrash ghetto. 

He wants achievement to be punished and restricted…and he wants non-performance, indolence and apathy to be rewarded.  He promises Utopia, in which all worries of life are vaporized, and everything is free, paid for by himself, The One…and financed by the suckers who have fallen for that old-fashioned notion of working hard, earning a living, and keeping what you earn to spend on your own family.   We are being systematically bankrupted, stripped of our freedom, and saddling our grandkids with monstrous debt.

And Mr. Obama just smiles…and tells us to ‘buck up’.

I think about my country…about the brave servicemen who have paid the price for our liberty…and how those liberties are being quickly eroded and squashed by this new president and his sycophantic, erudite and despicable cronies in Congress…and I just want to cry.  But I don’t.  I suck it up.  Because I know there will be a reckoning.  There are just too many of us that love our country and want the socialists to keep their filthy mitts off of it.  So …to the parasites…to the statists, socialists, Marxists… to the thieves who continue to pass bills that legalize theft….

Buck me?   No….  Buck you, Mr. President.