It’s good to be a badass

Scenario #1:

You’re sitting at a bar drinking a beer when a big galoot in overalls and muddy work boots grabs the stool next to you and orders a beer. While reaching for the popcorn basket he bumps your drink, sloshing it onto your sleeve. You turn to make a nasty remark but hold your tongue when you notice the crazy gleam in his eyes. But he just says, “Oops, sorry, buddy” and both of you drink your beers silently while watching the hockey game on the TV.

A few minutes later, a young punk walks into the bar, pulls a pistol, and orders the bartender to empty the cash register. Then he starts collecting wallets and purses. While this is going on, the big guy next to you is watching the punk, but now his eyes are squinty, his cheek is twitching, and he’s drumming his fingers on the bar. When the punk comes to a lady who hesitates to hand over her purse, he pistol-whips her, knocking her to the floor with a bloody gash across her face. The big guy lunges towards the punk, who fires a couple of rounds, one of which hits the galoot in the leg. But he keeps coming anyway, wrestles the gun away, fires the remaining rounds into the punk’s sorry guts, and then returns to the bar, holding a hand over his wound and sipping his beer until the police and paramedics arrive.

Scenario #2:

You’re sitting at a bar drinking a beer, and a guy in a $1,000 suit with a $200 haircut grabs the bar stool next to you. He orders a Bacardi Mojito with fresh mint and grumbles when the bartender tells him they only have mint syrup.  While nursing his drink, he makes a cell phone call, and since he’s wearing a stylish Bluetooth earpiece, you can hear that he’s a lawyer bragging to someone about a medical malpractice case he won that day, claiming that he’ll net nearly a quarter million from the insurance company after the patient gets her hundred thousand.

A few minutes later, a young punk walks into the bar, pulls a pistol, and orders the bartender to empty the cash register. Then he starts collecting wallets and purses. Noticing the lawyer on the phone, he points his gun, and the lawyer immediately hangs up without saying anything about the robbery in progress. When the punk comes to a lady who hesitates to hand over her purse, he pistol-whips her, knocking her to the floor with a bloody gash across her face. The lawyer averts his eyes, pulls out his wallet, and pushes it away from him on the bar.

The robber finishes his business and backs out the door, warning everyone to stay put for 15 minutes. As soon as he’s gone, several customers rush to help the bleeding woman while the bartender dials 911. The lawyer cowers on his bar stool as ordered until the police arrive. Then he approaches the woman, offers her his card, and says he’ll be happy to represent her in a lawsuit against the bar for their poor security.

Meaning:

These scenarios are drawn from hundreds of movies I’ve seen, and never has the snazzy dude in Scenario #2 been portrayed as a good guy. America has always preferred heroes who set things right directly and with a minimum of fuss. We love the tough guy who says, “Go ahead, punk, make my day.” At least we used to, but with the election of Obama, I’m not so sure.

First, we saw his deplorable behavior during his “apology tour” earlier this year. This past week was even worse when we witnessed for the first time an American President go to the United Nations and denigrate his own country. Space doesn’t permit me to list his many insults to America, its institutions, and its people. Read any accurate account of his performance, and judge for yourself.

However, I think one of his acts was particularly troubling. Obama essentially announced his intention to unilaterally purge our arsenal of nuclear weapons. Oh, sure, his administration submitted a Security Council resolution calling for “a world without nuclear weapons” that was unanimously approved. However, it’s pretty clear that our foolish president is the only member willing to actually take those steps. The other members were laughing up their sleeves, and Iran even mocked him by immediately revealing their second nuclear plant.

Until Obama, the world saw the United States as that big galoot with the crazy gleam in his eyes. We are the only country that ever had the guts to actually use a nuclear weapon, and afterwards whenever we were threatened, we could defuse the situation by turning that crazy gleam on our antagonist. Since we dropped the bomb before, they could never be sure we wouldn’t drop it again, this time on them. Every president from Truman to GWB, even Carter and Clinton, had that crazy gleam going for them. Even when Clinton took “the nuclear option” off the table, nobody believed him.

Now we have Obama setting the stage for unilateral disarmament by first apologizing for the “evils” of America. In his twisted logic, it follows that if we are so evil, then we can’t be trusted with nukes. Meanwhile, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and God knows which other anti-American regimes laugh at Obama and the UN, while they continue to evolve their nuclear weapons.

We can only hope that this will be another example of Obama’s failure to read the tea leaves in his own country. Will our military and intelligence organizations have the courage to tell Obama he’s wrong? Will they honor their oaths and refuse to participate in the disarming of America? Will Obama be opposed by realistic citizens who understand the need to conduct international diplomacy from a position of military, financial, and cultural strength? If not, the United States is surely doomed to slide into third world insignificance. This is apparently what Obama and his left-wing cronies want.