The Perfect Storm

The Perfect Storm

By Tim Wood
Professor of History at Southwest Baptist University
Bolivar, Missouri.

I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have
studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe
it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they
are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels,
smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but
there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten - fifteen
years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we
know they can never pay back. Why?

We learn that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has ‘loaned’
two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us
to whom, or why, or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times
the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do
they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought
this was a government of ‘we the people’, who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently
not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why? We have
intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and we no longer teach our founding
documents, showing why we are exceptional and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large
cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not
picketing, and school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in
California over a proposition that is so ‘controversial’ that it wants marriage to remain between
one man and one woman!). Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago? We have
corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically
change our way of life, and then allow mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our
voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are
failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is
Medicare and our entire government, and our education system is worse than a joke. (I teach
college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length,
breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name
for fear of offending people of the same religion, an enemy who cannot wait to slit the throats of
your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

Now we have elected President a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a
Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla , Alaska . All of his associations and alliances
are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him,
drip by drip, is unsettling, if not downright scary. Surely you have heard him speak about his
idea to create and fund a ‘mandatory civilian defense force’ stronger than our military for use
inside our borders. No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over, and
then demand he explain it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important
to the media.

Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now! This man campaigned on
bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my
assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign
the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes,
you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the
mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets,
about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated
with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed. He edged his
way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people
were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even
newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his ‘brown shirts’ would bully them into
submission. And then, he was duly elected to office as full-throttled economic crisis was at hand
[the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power,
department-by-department, person-by-person, bureaucracy-by-bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth
Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side?
He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the
military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control,
health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in
their country, across Europe , and around the world.

He did it with a compliant media. Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice
and …. change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am
exaggerating.)

Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed
at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated
in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and
called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe . It was full of
music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years — a
shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency — it was rounding up its own
citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors
against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to hell is paved with
them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either
believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust);
I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope
I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I
have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe, and why I
believe it.

I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.