Photographer's Caption: Published Caption: Dan Mooney
It is easier for us older Americans to recognize the enormity of America’s precipitous cultural swing downward exemplified by the cultural degradation and scandals within the Obama administration.
Over the years I have studied the relationship between leadership and culture and the apparent drive of those with power to abuse people and institutions. I have found that the overwhelming cause of cultural degradation is less of what power does to a leader than what a leader does with power.
Each president creates a culture within the executive branch by setting the behavioral “tone,” i.e. acceptable and unacceptable behavior. This tone can be from incorruptible to one of allowing almost any action to achieve the president’s expectations. If he allows unethical behavior, such action will be taken.
Alvin Tofler writes that the three sources of power are information, wealth and violence. The education system, Hollywood, the news media, the unions and the trial lawyers have an almost omnipotent hold on all three sources, with the unions being the leading agents of intimidation, a soft form of violence.
Influence is power applied. Our culture is saturated with sources of pervasive liberal influence providing the major source of Obama’s power (not authority) that serves as the primary foundation for unethical and quasi-legal action within the administration.
Unlike authority that is delegated to the people by the Constitution, power moves from the bottom up, emanating from within the culture. Along with religion, an important purpose of government is to control the abuse of power. However, the president and his liberal power base becomes more culturally diseased, the weight of his pathological power overwhelms traditional cultural norms.
President Obama’s power base is immense. He perceives that he cannot be held in compliance with the natural and logical consequences of his decisions. Consequently, the president is encased in what I have termed “raptures of power,” aka “raptures of the deep,” or the nitrogen narcosis that occurs when deep-sea divers descend too deep. As depth increases, the diver suffers from a mental impairment that becomes more and more severe, causing a decline or loss of reality.
Some divers loose their sense of direction, diving deeper, not upwards toward freedom and self-preservation. As Obama continues to receive massive support from his liberal power base, “raptures of power” drive his administration to deeper depths into the abysses of destruction.
The irony is that the current tone does not and cannot stand alone. It is created and will survive as long as the greater American body politic allows Obama’s culture of degradation to continue.
Yet the administration will persist with denial, spinning, withholding, lying, feigning confidence, covering up and using administrative branch resources to eliminate opponents until, like Richard Nixon, the president loses his power base.
Dan Mooney, a 40-year Carson City resident, may be reached at Nevada4@aol.com.
