How many of you have seen Shawshank Redemption? Despite the personally liberal leanings of Tim Robbins, his portrayal of Andy Dufresne in that film has kept it in many top ten lists for years.
In the film, Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover after catching them in the throes of passion. He’s a gentle man who clearly doesn’t fit the stereotypical definition of an inmate. Throughout the movie, and throughout Andy’s time inside the cold, stone walls of the prison known as Shawshank, he survives horrific acts with only the “hope” of redemption providing sustenance. “Hope” as defined by Morgan Freeman’s character, Red, is a dangerous thing in a prison but Andy refuses to let go. He is dogged in his determination and steadfast in his resolve. He was innocent. He was good. He would withstand whatever was thrown at him for the chance to one day set foot on the beaches of Zihuatanejo, Mexico…..”a warm place with no memory.”
If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it. If you have seen it, then surely you will agree that Mitt Romney has tunneled through the wall behind the strategically placed poster of Raquel Welch, or “Fuzzy Britches” as the warden so eloquently put it. Romney is tucked away, inside the walls of the prison. He is synchronizing his patiently measured strikes with the crashes of thunder from the violent storm outside. He’s within a few desperate strikes, using whatever is at his disposal, praying against all odds to complete a carefully conceived plan that has spanned the course of his detractor’s time in his life.
Can a better comparison be drawn than that of Barack Hussein Obama to the “river of filth” through which Andy Dufresne had to crawl in order to finally taste freedom? Andy Dufresne made the most of the world around him. He didn’t accept his fate as determined by the state, or the sociopathic guards, or a sadistic warden, or any other outside sources. He smiled in the knowledge that his faith would see him through to brighter days. The same can be said of Mitt Romney.
Everywhere Mitt Romney has gone in his life, he has delivered success. He has left a trail of people who are genuinely moved by having crossed paths with Mitt Romney. The man doesn’t brag. The man doesn’t toot his own horn. He would never have gone before the nation and taken credit for the bravery of other men. That’s simply not who he is.
What some people see as “smugness” is not that at all. Mitt Romney is not a smug man. He is a faithful man. There’s a HUGE difference and I truly believe what we witnessed last night was the gentle wisdom of Mitt Romney starting to take hold in Paul Ryan. Romney’s gentle nature won’t permit the kind of pummeling we all want to see him deliver. His faith in doing things the right way, not the popular way, is what makes him perfectly suited for the office he seeks.
Paul Ryan had to resist, with more will power than most of us could ever hope to summon, the urge to get up and beat the snot out of a condescending, disrespectful, rude, and childish old man on stage last night. Joe Biden, whether drunk, nervous, or just being himself; behaved like an amateur last night. Whatever points he may have made with his logic and words, he gave back with his body language and abhorrent social skills. The man didn’t even have the decency to respond with a simple “you’re welcome” when Congressman Ryan thanked him for the opportunity to debate in his closing statements.
We were all hoping to see another nail in the coffin of the Barack “River of Filth” Obama presidency last night, but this was not that kind of debate. This was a debate that set a lot of stages for next Tuesday’s debate. This was a debate that, for Joe Biden, was meant to steer the narrative. This debate was meant to put Romney and Ryan back on defense and it might have worked had it not been for Biden’s psychotic laughter and incredulity.
Mitt Romney is faithful. His faith is not limited to God. Mitt Romney has faith in the goodness of America. Mitt Romney believes that there is more to America than the walls Obama has put around us. He truly believes that the foolish spending, dependency nurturing, national security weakening, economy destroying, labor crushing ways of Barack Hussein Obama and his parasitic media allies are the confining walls of a prison. The prison is not incarcerating America. It’s incarcerating the hope America holds so dear. He believes in the innocence of America and he’s willing to crawl through that river of filth in order to deliver the freedom we all deserve.
It’s time for us, as the recipients of Mitt Romney’s undeniable faith, to start living like the people he believes us to be and not the people Obama has made us. If we’re going to rid this country of the germ that is His Barackness, we need to start living beyond his reach. Romney has done just that. Can we, as a nation, emulate the genuine goodness displayed by Mitt Romney? Can we finally start to look beyond our own, individual needs and consider what’s best for the country as a whole? If that time is taken; if that consideration can be applied to your vote, there is no possible way you pull that Obama lever in November.
At the end of Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne and Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding embrace on the beach of Zihuatanejo. The plan that Andy implemented required the calculated and simultaneous defeat of unfathomable opponents and obstacles, but he emerged victorious and redeemed. Do we want to give up when we’re in the sewage pipe? Right now, it could be said that the “success pipe” in America is about 47% clogged. If we give up the fight and allow His Barackness to maintain residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for four more years, that pipe will become clogged beyond any possible repair.
Hope is not a dangerous thing in America like it is within the dehumanizing walls of a prison. Hope is only dangerous in America when we are told what to hope for. Hope becomes a danger when we are encouraged, by those we elect to defend us, to “hope” for the wrong things. Hope becomes dangerous when it’s unaccompanied by ambition. The two cannot operate independently of each other and that’s why Obama’s “hope” has failed so miserably.
Hope becomes a danger when it is faked. When Barack Obama celebrated the ousters of Ghadaffi and Mubarak he pointed to all the hope these actions had delivered to a region of the world unaccustomed to such notions. For a while, we believed him. Then the reality set in. Yes, these men were finally out of power, but were they the real threat we were led to believe they were? Was there a plan in place for what or who would succeed them in power? There are four dead Americans and several heavily damaged United States Embassies who might say “no.”
Mitt Romney offers us a better option. It’s up to us to make sure that option is taken. No more hype. No more falsified information. No more “oops, we forgot to report CALIFORNIA in our jobless numbers on the morning of a Vice Presidential Debate but we swear it’s just a coincidental omission” type of mistakes. No more flexibility. No more condescension. No more disrespect. No more abandonment of principles. No more casting aside of values and traditions. No more heroic stances against imaginary foes. No more looking the other way while the man holding the highest office in our land weakens us as a country on every stage. No more.
It’s time for us to clear the blockage. This 47% nonsense seems to be the one the Obama campaign wants to go with. They are literally defending the clog in the pipe. They’re happy to let the clog increase until the flow of success in reduced to a sporadic trickle.
As always, thanks for playing!
J Robert Giles
