How Obama Won A Second Term ~ 2012-11-15
In no point in my life has it been made clearer that the majority of the people have chosen evil than in the elections last week.
Just in case you live under a rock or you're reading this years in the future, this election was Barack Obama going for a second term against Mitt Romney, a Mormon guy with real values and great experience in the world of finance. Obama has spent the last 4 years doing EVERYTHING WRONG: Killed the economy, increased the national debt to unheard of proportions, trampled the Constitution, circumvented the democratic process and ruled by executive order. He is in favor of gay rights, allowing illegal aliens to vote, gun control and every other minority and special interest group issue. He has dramatically increased the number of people on welfare. He wants to "fundamentally change" the USA, he says we are no longer a "Christian nation" and says the Constitution is a "deeply flawed document." Basically, if it's bad for the country or bad for you individually, he's telling you you can have it.
Supposedly the majority of the people in this country still describe themselves as conservative, but when it came right down to voting day something went wrong. First of all, we know there was a lot of fixing going on. Hacking of the new online voting machines, people being paid to bus people from the projects to the voting booths, absentee votes of military men not being counted, etc. But Obama won by such a large margin that there was clearly more than that going on, and after seeing the results, I believe evil probably would have won even without cheating. But they can't help doing that... it's in their nature. (See my earlier post, Freedom, Faith and Control for more on that.)
The real reason evil won in this election was because good people did nothing. It turns out that Obama received FEWER votes in this election than in his first one four years ago, but guess what else: Romney received DRASTICALLY fewer than Obama's opponent four years ago. This is the part that blew me away when I read it. After all the Tea Party rallies, after all the publicity about the terrible things Obama was doing to this country, after all the scandals about the false birth certificate and questionable citizenship and sealed records, people stayed home rather than vote for Romney.
I believe there are two reasons for this. The first is that a growing segment of the nation is becoming disillusioned with EITHER major political party, and it's not hard to see why. The Democratic party wants to turn us into a socialistic, government-controlled state. The Republican party would have a puppet government run by giant corporations. They are both corrupt. They are both filled with power seekers. They would both have us believe that government can solve the problem rather than seeing that government IS the problem, as President Ronald Reagan once said. This was a real concern I had with Romney, even though I still voted for him as the better alternative. My other concern in voting for him was that as a member of my faith, he was going to screw it up and make us look bad. I'd rather NOT have a Mormon president than have one that casts the church in a bad light, which brings me to my next point.
The second reason Romney did not get votes, I believe, was because he was a Mormon. A quick look at online comments makes this clear. Many people claiming Christian values came right out and said that they would not vote for Romney because of his religion. It's just like I said in my recent post, The Importance Of Prejudice. After all the talk in the world about equality, people make judgements based on their personal prejudices and experiences. Also, I believe there were other LDS people like me who were worried he would be a public embarrassment to the church. (Even if every Mormon in the US voted for him, it wouldn't have made a difference; as of this writing, just over 3% of the US population claims membership in the LDS faith.) If we knew him better we might not have thought this, but let's face it: the guy is not Mr. Personality. I'm sure he's good at what he does, but he's a difficult man to get a read on. I'm just saying, he's probably not the most entertaining guy at parties. Maybe I'm wrong but that's how it seems, and in politics perception is everything.
Well, being a Mormon myself I know that the prejudices against the LDS church are completely wrong. In fact, anyone who takes the time to see what we teach and how we live it will immediately recognize us as good, Christian people. But most people are not going to look for themselves; they're going to take the word of their pastor, priest, preacher or minister who sees us as a threat to his (OR HER) business. Because nearly every other religion you find out there has a paid clergy whose JOBS are on the line if they don't keep the customers coming in. The LDS church does not work this way: Nobody in the church organizations is paid. Oh, we voluntarily give more money than any other religion to the church (10% of our income) but none of it goes to paying the church leaders. It pays for land and buildings and their maintenance and upkeep, and it pays for printed and digital materials used in teaching and sharing the gospel message. It pays for broadcast facilities and satellite time and translators and internet bandwidth, all used to share the gospel message at no charge. It pays the travel expenses for volunteer missionaries who give up several years to go round the world and share the message without ever receiving a paycheck. We also have massive relief efforts and preparations constantly under way to help the poor in our communities and the victims of natural disasters around the world, but money for these purposes comes from other donations that we voluntarily give. (Lots more on this in my post, True Religion.)
I repeat: none of us in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is paid for the service we give or the leadership positions we hold in the church.
The final reason I believe Obama won the election is because there actually are many, many people out there who voted for things that are wrong. They wanted the same things that Obama wants, or at least they were deceived into thinking that they do. When we actually get there I believe many of them will change their tunes, or at least we can hope so.
It just happens that recently in my personal scripture study I've been reading about a similar time in history, as recorded in the Book of Mormon. I won't paste it all in here, but I encourage you to follow this link and read these 6 verses before continuing: Book Of Mormon, Helaman Chapter 12, verses 1 through 6.
We are at the point described in these verses. We have been so blessed with riches for so long that we've forgotten how we became blessed in the first place: by being a nation that has repeatedly turned it's heart to God in times of trial. Well America, it appears that those days are over. We've allowed secret societies to usurp our seats of power because we're just not all that sure that we don't want to be a part of them (See my blog entry Consipracy Theories for more on that.) We support them by watching their movies and TV shows and buying their products. We support them in public office by allowing them to take our money and our values. The real winner of this election was Satan, and the real losers were the American people. We are a great nation and we've got a long way to fall before we hit rock bottom. The next few years might not be so bad; it's not the fall that kills you. I've heard from my brother who skydives that falling can be a very enjoyable and thrilling sensation. But hopefully within the next few years, people will notice the ground looming ever closer below us. There will eventually be serious fallout from the things Obama has set in motion, and hopefully the peril that we'll face will cause a resurgence of faith, but will we ever get another President who is committed to doing the right thing for the right reason?
Don't answer me here. Answer me in the way you live your lives. Answer by working to wipe out these secret societies by creating an atmosphere of goodness where they cannot survive.