On Wednesday night, after an hour and roughly 90 applause interruptions, President Obama concluded his State of the Union address. If possible, here was yet another attempt by the president to hypnotize America with his silky-smooth rhetoric.

Watching the speech, I found myself utterly astounded that Democrats, who in 12 short months have brought this nation to the edge of a cliff, were raucously cheering themselves and congratulating the president for his part.

By rights, this should have been the soberest of all State of the Union spectacles. America is in real trouble. And for a whole year, when they should have been focused entirely on jobs and the economy, Afghanistan and terrorism on American soil, this Congress and president were consumed by health care.

At a time when we should have been trying to reduce unemployment, they plowed ahead on this project as if driven by unseen maniacal forces. And all the while, the American people were saying, NO!

As far back as April 2009, Americans had begun to display disagreement by protesting runaway spending during a recession. By July Fourth, almost a million people, by some reports, gathered on the Washington Mall to protest too much federal government control. The mainstream media ignored them, as did Obama and the Democrats.

By August, town hall meetings had clearly illustrated that Americans did not want government-run health care, and polling data backed them up.

Instead of listening to the people and their calls for a change in direction, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, administration officials and liberally bent television news anchors began to call their fellow citizens names.

For a while, if you thought that health care was not a constitutional right, or that government should not play any role in your health, you were a Nazi, a member of an angry mob, a tea-bagger, a right-wing fanatic or wingnut. You were an extremist or a fringe conspiracy theorist. You were a single-issue radical, marked by anger. You were a gun-waver and probably belonged to a militia.

What a brilliant strategy! Call those who disagree with your policies names.

Attorney General Eric Holder said that he would try 9/11 terrorists in Manhattan courtrooms, and a Muslim terrorist hiding out as an officer in our military shot 13 innocent people. Then another extremist tried to bring down an airliner from the inside of his skivvies, and Democrats in Congress would still have their health care.

The Senate passed a bill in the dark of night, without one Republican vote, and it turns out that in order to do it, hideous deals were struck with the senators of Nebraska and Louisiana.

Did any of these people notice that Republicans were winning elections in Virginia and New Jersey? No! In fact, as the president's poll numbers continued to plummet and unemployment continued to rise, Democrats worked feverishly to consolidate the House and Senate packages into one reform bill.

And then came Scott Brown of Massachusetts, home of the original tea party.

There cannot have been a clearer clarion call to Washington than Brown's statements that if elected he would vote against health-care reform, and that we should be spending money to fight terrorists, not protect them in our courts.

If you could put the American people's wishes into one candidate who would speak for us against what has been happening in Washington for one whole year, it would be Scott Brown.

Brown's win had almost everyone believing that Obama would finally get the wax out of his ears and begin tacking back to the center-right, where the American people are. They felt that he would say to Congress and the nation that he would give up health care for now, focus on the economy and jobs, and perhaps even put the military back in charge of terrorists.

Almost all agreed that not even this president could be so deaf as not to hear the country pleading with him to change direction, especially after Scott Brown's win.

It sounded like Mr. Obama plans to maintain course, a steady-as-she-goes kind of thing. There are words to describe this type of defiance as a free people demands a change in direction. It's not tone deafness. More like audacity.

Geoff Cutler is owner of Cutler Tree LLC in Southern Pines and is a regular -contributor to The Pilot and PineStraw magazine. Contact him at geoffcutler@embarq mail.com.