"One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be and how dangerous it is to trust them.” Thomas Sowell, American Economist, Author and Political Philosopher
June 19, 2013
By: Linda Case Gibbons
Dear Abby:
I’m at my wits end, Abby. My husband won’t talk to me about the things that I think are important and our life is spiraling out of control.We’re so in debt that I lose sleep over it every night.
He promises me that he will make a budget. We even set a deadline for it, but he misses the deadlines. It’s been four times so far, Abby, and what’s worse, he didn’t make any effort and didn’t even care that he let me down. Now I feel like a fool and am losing confidence in him and his promises, not to mention that our finances are in tatters.
In his private and public life he ignores the people around him, including me, then goes out of his way to cater to everyone but me.
As an example, this week he said he plans to meet with a group of people he’s never met, the "Taliban,” to get them to stop fighting, to change the way they think, for heaven’s sake! From what I can gather, they’ve never said they want to meet with him. They may have said they want to kill me, but not meet him.
These people have been fighting for centuries, they hate me, yet he believes he can turn them around. Frankly I’m worried about him looking like a fool. Actually I’m beginning to think he is a fool.
He has this idea that he can solve anything with words – his words. Oh, not the problems in our world. No, he does best in front of people that don't live here. He does it by pandering to people who hate me. He waxes poetic, talking about calming the seas, taming the winds, that sort of thing. And once again, he looks like a fool to those people, who simply think he is weak.
We had a little money when we first got married, and somehow or other he took that to mean he could spend it like a drunken sailor.
He started flying here and there, mostly there, to other states to sell one or the other of his "plans,” to other countries to apologize for me, burning up millions of dollars on fuel for our private jet whenever the mood struck him.
He sees no connection between our money problems and this behavior of his. He’s even planning a trip to Africa. Africa! It’s going to cost $100 million, but he just does not care.
And his habit of "flight, don’t fight,” has become a way of life for him. When the going gets tough, he heads out of town.
Any "get rich quick” scheme that comes his way, count him in. Actually that’s not strictly accurate. I should call it a "get poor quick” scheme because he never inquires into the viability of the company he’s bank rolling. He just signs on the dotted line because someone, somewhere told him it was "green,” or "eco-friendly” and that does the trick. On the flip side, if it will do me any good, he vetoes it.
As a result, he’s lost his shirt -- and mine. Solar panels, batteries for solar energy, autos that cost three times what anyone could pay, you name it, he sinks billions into them just because they tell him they are green. I tell you, he’s bankrupting us.
Now, he told me he was smart. Not in so many words, of course, but he went to Harvard and he mentions that a lot. He had some bad habits in his college days, but I suppose that is all behind him.
The one thing that galls me to no end is despite his "brilliance,” he never reads anything. If it has to do with his job, he doesn’t read it. And after he doesn’t read it, he doesn’t do anything.
He came up with a scheme, or the friends he hangs around with did, for sweeping health care. Not only did he neglect to research whether his plan would work, but he never read the plan itself. And then he moved on leaving me with a gigantic mess to clean up.
He has a plan to fix a lot of things and he is in a position to do it, but he doesn’t do anything. Safeguarding me? Protecting my interests? Not important to him. He’s on a different wave length than any other man in his position that I have ever seen in my long life.
And it worries me sick.
However, for what it’s worth, for the past five years we’ve been married he’s been on a high that quite defies description. Although he comes from "humble beginnings,” (meaning he had nada when I met him), he’s adjusted too well to living high on the hog on money that I might mention, is not his.
He is the steward of that money, but he doesn’t have a clue on how to manage it. (That’s just one of the skills it turns out he doesn’t have).
Economics are Greek to him. Constitutional law? Supposed to be his specialty, but you couldn't prove it by the way he mistreats the Constitution.
And that’s not the whole story. If you saw the tangle of problems we have, well, I’m embarrassed to even think about them myself.
Several of the departments that he oversees have become a real headache, at least for me. Once again, my trust in my husband’s judgment has taken a beating.
The personnel are reprehensible. Their work ethic stinks, their personal ethics stink, and it’s not just me who thinks so. There are too many of them in too many departments to ignore.
This group who works for him bully people whom they are supposed to serve, in any way they see fit. And I know why. They see the way my husband acts and they figure he figures it’s okay for them to do what they do.
And it is okay with him, only he makes sure he keeps his fingerprints off any and all of it.
I’ve heard about some of the dirty deeds that are going on – spying on people, lying about situations that have taken people's lives -- and it’s not amusing. In fact it is horrifying. It’s even less amusing when I know it goes on with my husband’s blessings.
And even though even I have heard about these problems, he denies he knows anything about them. And then he never mentions them again and you had better not either.
Now he’s talking about bringing in people from Mexico to work here, millions of them which will really put the final nail in my coffin.
Once again there is no definitive immigration plan to read and that doesn’t make sense. Been there, done that with healthcare.
With a projected influx of millions to a country where we’ve already had to lay off our own citizens, he wants to add still more, unskilled and uneducated ones to boot.
But he doesn’t care. Even though it’s bad business. Even though it’s a bad idea, he supports this plan and others just as flawed while saying nothing about it in public.
Once again, none of it can be traced back to him when it all goes bad.
I’ve lost respect for him, and the trust, well, that went years ago. And even though I hate to say it, I had a suspicion at the very start, but now I know he isn’t very good at anything. In fact, he messes up everything he touches.
Recently on one of his junkets he told people that the answer to the pressing questions I am facing at this time in history is to control the climate and eradicate nuclear weapons and, as always, change my ways, on his say so. He says this irrespective of the fact that my safety and my future would be compromised, a virtual domino game of consequences.
On his say-so.
Let me explain where I am coming from. I’m a writer. In fact over the years I have penned a couple of seminal documents – the Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution – and as a writer I was always told not to talk down to your audience. But my husband does. All the time. And, sad to say, he talks about me, and not in a good way. All the time.
Abby, please tell me what to do.
Signed, America, Broke and Broken-Hearted
Dear Broke and Broken:
What can I say? I could spout a bunch of clichés such as "Hang in there,” but I don’t believe you should, or, "Fool me once, shame on you…,” but you’ve heard that one before.
So I’ll simply say, "There are plenty of fish in the sea.” You deserve better, so kick the guy to the curb.
An honest man never has trouble speaking the truth or in righting a wrong and you'll know what an honest man means because he will say it and stand by it. The good news is you will not have any problem finding an honest man, so please do not lose hope.
If you want to hear a few honest men, read former Florida Rep. Allen West’s reply to Bill Cosby’s New York Post Op Ed on how Cosby believes we should all be more like Muslims:
"You mean honor killings, beheadings, suicide bombings? Hope you’re kidding, sir.”
Then take a look at the speech by Louisiana Sen. Elbert Guillory, who recently changed parties, from Democrat to Republican and took the time to explain why.
"Hello, my name is Elbert Lee Guillory, and I’m the senator for the twenty-fourth district right here in beautiful Louisiana. Recently I made what many are referring to as a ‘bold decision’ to switch my party affiliation to the Republican Party. I wanted to take a moment to explain why I became a Republican, and also to explain why I don’t think it was a bold decision at all. It is the right decision – not only for me – but for all my brothers and sisters in the black community.
You see, in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow it’s been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.
Frederick Douglass called Republicans the ‘Party of freedom and progress,’ and the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republicans in Congress who authored the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments giving former slaves citizenship, voting rights and due process of law.
The Democrats on the other hand were the Party of Jim Crow. It was Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners. It was the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who championed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but it was Democrats in the Senate who filibustered the bill.
You see, at the heart of liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful big government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the left is only concerned with one thing – control. And they disguise this control as charity. Programs such as welfare, food stamps, these programs aren’t designed to lift black Americans out of poverty, they were always intended as a mechanism for politicians to control the black community.
The idea that blacks, or anyone for that matter, need the government to get ahead in life is despicable. And even more important, this idea is a failure. Our communities are just as poor as they’ve always been. Our schools continue to fail children. Our prisons are filled with young black men who should be at home being fathers. Our self-initiative and our self-reliance have been sacrificed in exchange for allegiance to our overseers who control us by making us dependent on them.
Sometimes I wonder if the word freedom is tossed around so frequently in our society that it has become a cliche.
The idea of freedom is complex and it is all-encompassing. It’s the idea that the economy must remain free of government persuasion. It’s the idea that the press must operate without government intrusion. And it’s the idea that the e-mails and phone records of Americans should remain free from government search and seizure. It’s the idea that parents must be the decision makers in regard to their children’s education – not some government bureaucrat.
But most importantly, it is the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness free from government dependence and free from government control. Because to be truly free is to be reliant on no one other than the author of our destiny. These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party, and it is why I am a Republican.
So my brothers and sisters of the American community, please join with me today in abandoning the government plantation and the Party of disappointment. So that we may all echo the words of one Republican leader who famously said, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.’”
Hold the line, America.