The American Political Scene: A Hollywood B Movie in Progress
American politics, I am starting to believe, has increasingly come to resemble a Hollywood B movie. Watching from the back row of the theater, i.e., Canada, I sometimes simply cannot believe what I am seeing. The sensation is similar in its way to what I experienced when I first learned about 9/11.
As I recount in The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity, I was vacationing at the time on the off-the-beaten-wake Greek island of Tilos. On the morning of September 12, sipping my coffee in one of the portside cafeneions, my attention was drawn to the television screen flickering over the counter. The camera tracked the flight of two passenger jets into the World Trade Center, culminating in the typical Hollywood pyrotechnics of soaring flames and billowing smoke, plummeting bodies, and hysterical crowds panicking in the streets. Another dismal Tinseltown product, I thought, some low-grade CIA thriller or lurid action feature. But then the image was replayed and then replayed many times over again, as if the film had snarled in an endless loop. Suddenly a commentator appeared on the screen and in solemn tones explained that terrorists had attacked New York and that thousands of people had been killed.
Though admittedly more diffuse, the sense of incredulity and apprehension I feel today as I survey the American political scene is not appreciably different. Of course, I am not observing carnage and mayhem, but what I seem to be witnessing is a towering country on the verge of disintegration. It’s become an all-too-familiar litany by now. Under the current administration, the United States is accumulating a national debt that is practically inconceivable and that can only lead to massive economic collapse if it is not checked. It is a country that has begun to target not its terrorist enemies but its own intelligence operatives working to keep the American people safe. It releases terrorist detainees back into the world where many revert to their old maniacal anti-American ways. Bulletins emerging from the White House consider its own dissentient citizens, protesting against the government takeover of its public and economic life, as traitors to the cause.
And in shaping his new foreign policy, President Obama — how bizarre this locution seems to a Western ear, President Obama — has stretched out an open hand to an Islamic world that envisages America’s eventual destruction. As the president said in his April 6 speech before the Turkish parliament in Ankara, “America is not — and never will be — at war with Islam.” This bit of prevarication, like the pap spouted in his Cairo address, has not prevented fundamental Islam from being at war — and always being at war — with America. Despite the ever-growing threat to American security and the need for the defense establishment to marshal its reserves in order to resolutely confront the menace, the retreat has been sonorously proclaimed. But then, the president has many other places where he can ripple his pectorals, democratic allies such as Honduras and Israel, for instance.
Perhaps what we are remarking is a deep, European-like resentment of American freedom, power, derring-do, entrepreneurship, swagger, and prosperity, in other words, of everything that comprises American exceptionalism. This is especially true of the young, recipients of a dumbed-down education bordering on a species of left-liberal indoctrination. One thinks as well of the president’s wife, who expressed pride in her country “for the first time in my adult life” only when campaigning for her much-lionized husband. The result of such antinomian sentiment is becoming more and more evident in the declining fortunes of a once-great nation.
As Thomas Paine asks in Common Sense, “Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern?” Paine then warns that revolutionary figures, like Thomas Anello of Naples, a.k.a. Massanello, “may hereafter arise … and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge.” Paine was writing in 1776 and in obviously different circumstances. But his admonitions of the time seem no less pertinent today.
The Obama Project is built on a house of cards. It will not stand against the wind of outraged citizens, regardless of how clever the National Socialists believe themselves to be.
Speaking of Canada: It’s a fallacy to compare Canadian medical coverage to Obamacare. I lived in BC and the Yukon for 23 years and was quite happy with it. I never needed expensive technology so I had a limited experience of the system. I was an active volunteer for the socialist NDP (until they took power in Victoria and I got a rude awakening). There is a paternalistic streak in Canada but it is nowhere close to the totalitarian measures the National Socialists have put into the “Stimulus Bill” and HR 3200. After I left BC in ’99, the Liberals went on a slash and burn program against both education and health. I’m still hearing new horror stories about it from friends and family. Yet I doubt it is anywhere near what our Supreme Leader has in store for us when they fill in all the blanks in the legislation.
More exactly, it is a little-known novel by a respected American jurist and author, Allen Drury. The novel, “Come Nineveh, Come Tyre” was published in 1964, after his more famous
“Advise and Consent”.
In the novel, an ultra-liberal Senator is elected President, with the help of a friendly news media who believe he is morally superior to his opponent, a moderate conservative, primarily on social issues and foreign policy. In doing so, the media deliberately ignore the Senator’s questionable past associations, including his membership in various organization of a radical-left nature.
Once he is in the White House, he begins suppressing any dissent or even disagreement with his policies, first by societal pressure (again with the help of the media, who eagerly pursue scandalous rumors about his opponents, even when the rumors are made up out of whole cloth by the President’s staff), and in the end by having his political opponents arrested on trumped-up charges ranging from bribery to murder.
In the end, the President declares martial law, orders a roundup of all “dissidents”- and then goes to a summit meeting with the Soviet Premier (remember, this was 1964) to draw up an agreement for the unilateral dismantling of the U.S. nuclear deterrent and the equally unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe, the Far East, and basically everywhere outside of the North American continent- in the name of peace and cooperation.
When the few media figures who had called the President out on his past behavior are arrested and charged with treason, the remaining media mavens, appalled, ask how this could happen.
And realize- a bit too late- that it happened because they were so eager to see not just this President, but any liberal-left politician in a position of power, that they had spent literally decades vilifying anyone not on that end of the political spectrum. In the end, they have succeeded in figuratively slitting their own throats.
In the process of helping transform the United States into a Syndicalist/Socialist prison state.
“Come Nineveh, Come Tyre” by Allen Drury. Out of print, but definitely worth reading.
As yet, we are not quite in the situation described in the novel.
As. Yet.
clear ether
eon
Thank you David. Well thought, well written.
Thank you Eon. Drury’s book got buried in the dust of Lyndon Johnson Borking Goldwater that year. It needs a re-do.
Bolsheviks have overrun our government. The Oval Office and the Berlin Chancellry of 1933 look alike. This time Holder-Rahm-Axelrod form the phalanxes of S.A. to come after us all.
I’m an American living in Canada and I agree that “It is therefore easy for a Canadian to recognize a member of the phratry, a fellow traveler who has assumed his position at the head of the pack.”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “phratry” as: “A political-religious division of the people.”
Because we are used to seeing degrees of communism here in Canada, we are perhaps better than Americans in the USA at recognizing communists. From having lived among communists in a communist country in Asia for a while, I also learned that it is completely acceptable if one is a communist living in a bourgeois society to lie, lie blatantly and whenever necessary, in order to achieve communism’s goals. Communists living in a non-communist society consider lying simply a tactic to achieve communist goals and there are no moral implications to lying for a communist.
I also discovered that communists consider members of the bourgeoisie stupid if they cannot discern lies uttered by communists. The communist’s thinking is that if you are so naive as to think that the lie is true, despite obvious counterfactual evidence or conditions, then you bourgeoisie deserve whatever happens to you.
Sometimes a lie is so blatant, however, that a person’s soul, without the person’s own volition playing any role, cries out in anguish. This was the significance of the South Carolina senator’s, “You lie,” during Obama’s address to the Houses of Congress last Wednesday.
Everything that David relates about Obama’s experiences and associations and accomplishments were all well known to those of us who use the new media to inform ourselves of the truth. As related by eon in sighting Drury’s book the “useful idiots” of the MSM kept the truth from that part of the electorate who take on face value what they read in their local paper or view on television. But since Drury wrote his book the alternative media has and will assume a much greater role in informing the electorate of what is what. Yesterday’s demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere are just the start of the people taking back their government from the communists who were elected in the last two cycles.
Barky Obama wears eye shadow. You won’t see it tonight on the 60 Minutes interview as the cameras are too close; they don’t want to give the game away but in all his teleprompter addresses his lids are shaded and the lashes slightly touched with mascara. Male prostitutes yes. Presidents nyet. The world is leaderless.
And there don’t appear to be any exits. More of a Hotel California than a theater but the point is well taken.
We should remember that one essential attribute of evil is its capacity to escape rational explanations, which does not prevent rationalizing, unfortunately. When a man of no particular accomplishment, having graduated from two respected(!) universities, with no particular appreciation of civilization (except perhaps a nihilist perspective), unable to credit the foundations of America for its greatness is given the presidency, and presides over unprecedented exponential growth of deficit and undebtness, something is terribly wrong, and we don’t need any graduate degree to sense it.
The somnolence of an electorate anxious to purge its self-image of the stigma of racism does not quite explain it, the immaturity of a young president does not really explain it either, the corruption of the press by itself would not suffice.
When you see this kind of perfect storm whithout being able to discern precisely the coordinating mechanism, it is reasonable to postulate evil. This is why the present expressions of alarm invoke Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, etc… Not because the specific attributes fit precisely, they don’t, but because we are dealing with evil, simple as that!
Then, it makes sense that our president surpasses most ardent activists in the systematic denial of evil in all of its contemporary manifestations, Iran, Islamic imperialism, Antisemitism and widespread tyranny, basically co-opting evil, embracing (sometimes literally) Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Hamas, etc…
If America possesses an immune system against tyranny, now is the time to trigger its response. I hope and pray that the tea party movement is what will ultimately prevent the fall, within the bounds of civility, while it is still possible to do so.
Never, never understate the failure of the captive media in this travesty. Chimpy the Kenyan would not be President today if even a few in the “media” had done an honest job. His entire background is a lie. His whole life has been concealed. He was elected because the media and other liberals and anti-Americans saw him as a magic negro and, for that reason alone, worthy to be President!
Thank you for your observation: “how bizarre this locution seems to a Western ear – President Obama” – yes, indeed it does. What it portended before the elction was an individual whose cultural upbringing would be at odds with the majority of Americans, whose devotion to this country and its history would be in question, and his motives would be suspect. Of course the predictable response to all of these misgivings would be to call the suspicious racist, nativist, chauvanist etc. But those are marxist responses meant to keep the marxist narrative alive in the minds of Americans, to soften us up for the inevitable collapse of America. We had every right to question who this man was and where his heart and loyalty lay. If he were not of a different race it might have happened more vigorously. And he knew that and in his usual manner cynically exploited it. We have been told for decades to embrace multiculturalism and diversity, two codes words for anti-white and anti-American. Now we see common sense makes sense. It is heartening to see people finally expressing common sense and logic regardless of the tired old vicious smear tactics being levelled. Our very survval depends upon people calling this man what he is. The pity is we have been so cowed and bashed for so long that it didn’t happen before the election. He is not an American. His character and ideas are foreign and inimical to the ideas which shaped this country. In my opinion, he is a domestic enemy and a terrorist. Or should I say more accurately, a man caused disaster.
Dear Eon
Thanks for the heads up on Drury’s novel, which I’ve just ordered. Somehow I missed the book along the way. Sounds like it might have triggered Charles McCarry’s Shelley’s Heart.
D.S.
Mr. Solway,
Your voice is pitch-perfect.
Thank you.
Revolutions, violent revolutions or upheavals are generally carried on by small bands of opportunists & adventurers who cynically guide massess of aroused “useful idiots”, useful idiots whose preparation and conditioning require a well coordinated effort.
An important element of Obama’s (so far successful) revolution has been the presentce in the tissue of this nation of a large number of active and seditios citizenry who are facilitating his efforts and are constantly dampening across the country the perception of their (Obama efforts’) consequences (and this, alas! against their own very best interests!).
Who are this generation of useful idiots?
Gary Ogletree, We were in the book business together. Do you still live on East 5th or 6th? Sounds like your not in Vancouver anymore. If you are I’d like to get in touch with you.
David, as a Canadian/American and an unknown poet of dubious abilities, i enjoyed your essay immensely. I appreciate dry sarcastic wit above all else. Please contribute more in the future.
How interesting, there are so many Canadians who appreciate Americas freedoms and the imminent loss of those freedoms. Especially when so many of the Canadian newspapers seem to be in a duplicitous relationship with the Obama Marxist Servitude Train of Slavery moving at mach one around the world.
Yes I pull no punches, Obama is a blatant Marxist who seeks to destroy this country so that he can remake it in a National Socialist Dystopia complete with a Black Liberationist Elite group of rulers who will control everything, especially the wealth.
Can’t recall a more readable and literate article. Thumbs up for the elegant turn of phrase! As an American I wish to offer impressions from my perspective. To be ingenuous, the Obama scenario unfolds like a Kabuki stagepiece.
Perhaps you surveille the big picture, perhaps not – I have no way of knowing. It is my view that the issues are global, rather than national. Conditions you describe in Canada, and questions surrounding the presidency of the U.S. are of common origin. Uncoiling from a nest of international bankers, figuratively speaking, vipers have encircled the earth, locking nations in a death-grip.
The British Commonwealth and Europe have been swallowed by the Bank of England (the Rothschilds.) Nothing in the States is safe from David Rockefeller, as his tentacles penetrate every aspect of American life.
CFR, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission are his spawn, organized to circumvent constitutional process and control events from the shadows. Through stealth and ‘gradualism’ their agenda seeks to destroy U.S. nationalism in favor of a New World Order. Treason and subterfuge are the rule.
The Obamas, and most who surround him, are proponents of CFR. Vice President Biden hails from Bilderberg, Obama’s foreign affairs advisor, Zbigniew Breszinski, springs from the Trilateral Commission. As said before, these are Rockefeller babies. Here is a quote from David Rockefeller’s ‘Memoirs:’
“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents, such as my encounter with Castro, to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
In view of irregularities experienced in the U.S. with electronic balloting, it is clear that massive electronic fraud is possible. Further, considering the criminal practices described above, a realistic observer no longer assumes any official has been legitimately elected. Such was my view concerning the second term of G. W. Bush, and this is my view concerning Barack Obama. He is a plant, groomed for this purpose over a period of years by an East Coast banking cabal. In Indonesia Stanley Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother, developed Ford Foundation’s micro-finance program under Peter F. Geithner, father of Tim Geithner, Obama’s Treasury Secretary. This explains why individuals in the Geithner clique are present in the White House today, despite the fact that these individuals were in large part responsible for the banking crisis. AIG, which profited handsomely from the banking bailouts, was one of Obama’s largest campaign contributors.
So Obama is clearly a pawn of international bankers, who favor dissolution of borders, immigrant invasion, racial diversity, socialist programs, depopulation, i.e., anything to promote divisiveness, to break-down the establishment, and create dependency on a State conceived and run for the greed and dominion of a few depraved men. But the vision goes beyond America to embrace Mexico, Canada, indeed, the world. In my judgment these developments are not about ‘communism’ but – considering the players – Zionism. They reflect a child-like obsession with myth, an ambition for supremacy approaching the psychotic, an adaptation to oppression amounting to misanthropy, licentious behavior indistinguishable from criminality, the elevation of rivalry to embrace genocide. In many ways, as I see matters, Europe and The Commonwealth have ‘been there and done that.’ America is the last frontier. If it is any reassurance, the plot will never see fruition. Our people are yet too robust, our men, too rugged and independent to be conquered by the effete. Likely public intervention will be required for reform, so far have we departed from the Constitutional model. Our downward spiral began in 1913 with creation of The Fed. There will be an interval of trial, but the indomitable American spirit will prevail.
Not to presume, but a complete chronicle of these problems can be found in this free online edition of ‘Final Warning’ by David Allen Rivera, comingjudgement.250x.com. Part I represents a great deal of research, and I suggest beginning with Chapter 2, the section on The Federal Reserve. Except for religionists, Part II can be bypassed.
David, I’ve been watching and thinking along much the same lines. As a Canuck who believes that one of the reasons Canadians enjoy the luxury of being Canadian is due to the protection of the US military umbrella, I wonder if we’ll be able “to exit the theater (sic) and return to a troubling if less devastating world” without its aegis.
Obama appears quite happy to become a one-termer. He doesn’t like the country that much anyway so what’s the biggy with two terms? His administration will insert several viral programs into the system that will never be removed.
Jeez, Davie, I realize you’re a Canadian, but when you’re writing for a Reagan-loving audience, you gotta be careful about using B-movie as a term of derision.
My only quibble is David forgot to mention the uneasy half-recollection many have felt with seeing Obama, alone on stage (his solitude while declaring victory on election night was especially provocative) with that chin jutted up, emoting. Baracko Tortellini… I fear a good part of America will eventually eat this guy alive, and then, the body distributed and consumed, they will have to figure how to renew their sacred signs without becoming the corrupt and eternally-fractured post-war Italy.
David Solway. Interesting piece. Interesting, Greece. Any relation to Larry Solway, Canadian television talent back in the day?
The exit will be created in November 2010.