The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
“The Left Finds Their Demographic,” Dave Carter writes at Ricochet:
…the President explains that his only failing is in not dumbing things down enough to correct our deficient appreciation for the wreckage his initiatives have wrought. The problem isn’t a shrinking work force, you understand, or a record number months of unemployment over 8 percent, or a first-ever downgraded national credit rating, or a national debt equal to GDP, or record numbers of people on public assistance, or a healthcare law whose costs have tripled before it’s even implemented. No, the problem is that the President hasn’t administered enough intellectual novocaine to numb the minds of people who are smart enough to see that his utopian pipe dream isn’t working.
Then the thought occurred that he really isn’t talking to us! His shabby confession of inadequacy was little more than noblesse oblige at discount prices. And he’s not talking to the independent voters either. They are deserting him via the nearest stampede. His only hope is the only audience that still believes him. Who are they? Listen to the leader of Women in NAACP, Charlotte Stoker Manning who, while discussing Governor Romney’s speech to that organization, let slip liberalism’s mask of altruism: “You cannot possibly talk about jobs for black people at the level he’s coming from. He’s talking about entrepreneurship, savings accounts — black people can barely find a way to get back and forth from work.” Evidently, the idea that Governor Romney can speak as an adult, in a room full of adults, is quite too much for Ms. Manning, whose degrading and racist remarks are about the most repugnant thing to come along in awhile. But at least she illuminates the President’s target demographic.
As Red State contributor Moe Lane wrote yesterday, “The Left tacitly admits: Mitt Romney hit a home run at the NAACP on Wednesday. How do we know this? Because they’re all FREAKING OUT about it today.” So much so that in Manning’s case, she was willing to drop the mask, and have her own equivalent of Obama’s “bitter clinger moment,” his defining Kinsley-esque gaffe of 2008.
Related: Roger L. Simon on “The Democratic Party as the Party of Race.”
Sorry, but I have to defend her a bit. She is not disparaging blacks, here. She is saying that talk of these greater things are beyond people who barely have enough to care for themselves. She was not talking about inherent capability, but means.
Of course, this is the real flaw with the Left. They do not understand the power of dreams and bootstrapping. They view dreams as impossible dreams. They do not believe folks should be aiming so high. This impossible dreaming is the very definition of the American Dream. The American Dream is not about the average life, but an excellent life: Making it big!
The Left simply disagree with the notion. That way leads to too much failure, too many losers, and too few winners. They see the successes as individual successes at the expense of others. It’s unfair. Nevermind that these enormous successes make everyone’s life so much better. (Don’t try to tell me you do not absolutely love your cellphone and your Internet!) These things are simply not connected in their minds.
The Left just cannot bear the notion of so many failures. It is better to live a “realistic life”, a settle-for existence, a guaranteed minimum ensured by benevolent government. Do not dare to dream big. Small flats, public transportation, guaranteed (if lesser-quality) healthcare, plus whatever little luxuries and entertainments you can find here and there in your limited budget. Panum et circi, sans circi.
Well, except for for your leaders, of course. They get the good life, because some animals are more equal than others.
Oh, btw, pay no attention to the fact that Romney got a standing ovation. Of course, if he hadn’t, we would likely not hear anything about this. They have to find something to nitpick, even if they have to make it up. Can’t have the slaves getting too uppity and start thinking they can dream the American Dream, now can we?
When I used to travel a lot, having great adventures for months at a time, I’d come home and some of my friends who liked the idea would say how lucky I was. I told them luck had nothing to do with it. I purposefully planned and researched the trips, scrimped and saved and went without a car to save the money.
Then I’d tell them how they could do it and point by point they always had a reason why they couldn’t. That’s failure right there. It seems to permeate the thinking of the black political Left in America – at least that’s the sense I get from reading hundreds of articles in the black press; Manning didn’t disappoint. This mindset concentrates on what they can’t do rather than what they can not to mention every failure is somehow my fault.
Imagine what this woman does as a job every day at the NAACP and one can imagine it’s a mirror reflection of her own bald-faced racism at an organization that has morphed into nothing more than a hate group.
Excellent assessment of the reality of the NAACP.
I just swipe my EBT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o64Fz-KW1Dk&feature=youtu.be&noredirect=1
You cannot possibly talk about lower expectations for black people than the level Barack Obama has planned for them. He’s talking about class warfare, redistribution accounts. Black people can barely find work.
There. Fixed it for you, Ms. Manning.
Re: Marc Malone comment: “Sorry, but I have to defend her a bit. She is not disparaging blacks, here. She is saying that talk of these greater things are beyond people who barely have enough to care for themselves. She was not talking about inherent capability, but means.”
I appreciate everything you say starting in the next paragraph, but think you entirely miss the point in this first paragraph. She may not be intending to disparage blacks, but it is precisely the point that what she says is in fact disparaging of blacks. And your very next paragraph begins to illuminate just where the disparagement lies.
I would not subject myself to the assault on my intelligence which watching the Rose/Obama interview would entail, but my impression has been that Obama’s identification of “failure” in his first term conduct was on the order of replying to a job interviewer’s question about one’s biggest fault. Obama essentially is saying “I have worked so hard and accomplished so much in selfless service to the country that sometimes I have neglected the need to keep you all up to date on just how wonderful are the things I’ve done, the big picture on what greatness you are blessed with in me.”
The point about special interest groups is that their focus always has to be narrow in the eyes of the Democrats and their supporters. So for an entire race to be categorized as a special interest group, they have to be pigeon-holed into some other limited category by the Dems, in this case “poor” and “uneducated”. The emphasis is alsomst always on the “poor” part, because that’s a far more identifiable one for swing voters to relate to, but Romney’s NAACP speech brought out the latter from Ms. Manning because she had to find some other avenue to attack Mitt for not only not pandering to the crowd, but going with the same speech themes he uses with everyone else.
Romney has found a principled political attack which Obama cannot counter.
Romney has shown that he can present his views to a hostile audience, accept booing, and continue in good cheer to explain his message.
Obama has not shown that he can do this. Obama seeks out only the most sycophantic crowds. This looks weak compared to Romney’s performance. And those optics should be repeated whenever Romney can arrange it.
Speak to everyone, especially unsympathetic audiences, if you want to present yourself as the preferred leader of all of the people, not just your own side.