Somebody believes the left is losing the public policy debate because they’ve got all the flagship institutions. And that’s a liability. Umair Haque, writing in a Harvard Business Publishing article, argues that the right, like al-Qaeda has mastered the art of “5th generation warfare” and is swarming all over the left. He notices that liberals have been losing the debate lately and tries to analyze why. The problem with the left, he seems to think, is that they are responding from a center, sending talking points out to a periphery, whereas the right has discovered how to attack swiftly, from a plethora of directions and in depth. The right is inside their OODA loop and Haque realizes that if this goes on long enough, the left will lose. Haque posits “10 rules” for fighting a “5th generation” information war, which I’ll leave the reader to peruse, but here is a list of of some of them.
- Speed up response
- Microchunk answers
- Meta-attack — revalue facts by establishing sources of authority
- Self-organize hyperlocally
Haque is among the first to understand that the Left is facing an truly new phenomenon. He does not make the mistake of believing that grassroots restiveness is driven by simple ignorance; nor does he fall into the error of thinking that the sudden emergence of memes like the fear of “death panels” is simply a perverse rejection of a beautiful public good. He correctly understands that the attacks are coming from everywhere in the conservative political spectrum, that its sheer leaderlessness is actually a source of strength because it means that like al-Qaeda, every group of conservative protesters can initiate and plan its own actions within the context of a shared narrative. This is why it is so deadly; and why he profers his ten points for countering it.
But having gone so far toward understanding what he’s facing, Haque fails to take his own logic to its ultimate conclusion. For some reason he believes that manipulation and the reimposition of authority can stem the tide. A change of style will set things right. The problem is that the left isn’t cool enough; get cooler and get into 5G. For example, Haque advises the left to forget about the facts; to focus on the frame. He tells them to destroy their opposition with the wow of authority.
You’re attacking with “facts.” But facts don’t matter, because your enemy doesn’t value information like you do. Life expectancy’s smaller in the States? So what — according to your enemies, you can’t trust facts from Cuba (or France). So you have to attack not with “facts”, but with meta-information about how to value facts. Start with meta-information about how to value insurance rationally — over a lifetime, not a day, for example. … discuss why smears and misinformation are unacceptable; make public and transparent who refuses to accept norms of good behaviour
I think Haque’s advice will ultimately fail because it fails to recognize the fundamental difference between ‘fake’ 5th generation warfare and the real thing. The real thing is bottom up; the fake thing is astroturfed. The genuine article aggregates the wisdom of crowds; the counterfeit hires crowds. The real thing genuinely takes into account the experience of the many and values it. It accepts that “norms” are actually driven by the normal and not pronounced on from above. This distinction in source of initiative is crucial. His “10 rules for fighting a 5G war” will come to nothing without recognizing rule number 1: the people can act directly in public policy. The result of applying this principle is 5th generation warfare. The opposite principle is that an enlightned elite, led by a One are leading the world to change. Applying this principle may result in a slick advertising campaign, but it will never be 5th generation warfare.
This is the crucial realization. The Republican leadership was in fact the first victim of the revolt from below. Only after the “5th generation” war had ripped through the comfortable assumptions of business as usual did it break out to face the left. To think that the current unrest is the creation of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck would be to make a fundamental mistake. Those figures are simply its beneficiaries — and its beneficiaries by accident. If Haque really wants to fight 5G, I would like to propose a different set of rules.
- Listen to the people;
- Believe that truth is something to be discovered in dialogue with the public; that the debate is never “over” simply because the great and good say so;
- Consider it possible that all men, including small businessmen, plumbers, rubes from Alaska, cleaning women who say their prayers at mealtimes — are in some fundamental way the equal of graduates of Harvard Law School and know as much about life and death as Dr. Zeke Emmanuel;
- Accept that facts do matter because reality is authored by something larger than government, greater than the Congress and more lasting than any administration;
- That all efforts to “attack the base” will ultimately fail because a government by the people, of the people and for the people will never perish from the earth; and
- Realize that these precepts are obvious on the face of it though there are none so blind as they who will not see.
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People who use words like “microchunk” or “hyperlocally” are never to be trusted for relevant opinion. Never.
That Haque talks about speeding up “response” proves that he read “5th Generation Warfare” somewhere and decided to write about it without actually understanding it. Speeding up “response” is, prima facie, counter to Boyd’s OODA. If you’re “responding” you’re already wrong.
There is a boom in the smart-guy-good-idea industry. Unfortunately, most of the products are like this: hokum and buzzwords on glossy paper generated in leftist halls of academe.
Just sounds like more condensing, self important drivel too me.
In here there is nothing about Leftists soberly undertaking some self-examination or soul searching. Constant through out is reliance on the fallacy of “appeal to authority”, in this case the authority of the leftist institutions, the little bromide “Consider it possible that all men, including small businessmen, plumbers…” notwithstanding. And really now, look at that construction: “Consider it possible…”
There are three salient points:
1) Collectivism as a political organizing principle must eventually turn to totalitarianism.
2) Our current elites and there institutions are mostly delusional parasites, they live in a world dependent on and exterior world which operates by wholly different rules.
3) To hold the beliefs they do requires such willfully self deception and arrogance rejection of all that is real, good or true that they cannot be reasoned with or trusted. The “great and the good”, indeed.
I love this bit:
“But facts don’t matter, because your enemy doesn’t value information like you do. Life expectancy’s smaller in the States? So what — according to your enemies, you can’t trust facts from Cuba (or France).”
This quote most deftly illustrates my three points.
The real truth is that the left is out in the open now. They have a window for the ultimate destruction of us all, the more ruthless and energetic among them are going at it full bore and they are almost completely out in the open for even the “muddle” to see. And, most importantly, we all can see the consequences, real and potential, of their acts.
It is race between the speed and level of that destruction on one hand, and the reaction of the reaction of the rest of us on the other.
That is what is “new”. The mask has fallen. Seem to me that right now, the broad mass is in a state of shock. What happens when the next stage comes is anyone’s guess.
The sad thing is that Mr. Haque (ah such a nice American name) thinks that he is on the side of the “great and the good”.
^To hold the beliefs they do requires such willful self deception
^Our current elites and their institutions
Sorry, need to get the morning coffee.
So you have to attack not with “facts”, but with meta-information about how to value facts.
When did they last base an attack on facts? I think the left mastered this instruction some time ago, hence post-modern relativism: remove notions of right and wrong. Appeal to emotional sense of helping the downtrodden while papering over the realities determining social dysfunction. Introduce socialised medicine which sucks the vitality out of the health system by making it top-heavy with administrators while hobbling those who actually help people. I could go on, but the list is too long.
The right is fighting as a distributed insurgency. This has been clear for some time. It is equally clear that the left has not a clue as to how to respond to this phenomenon.
The left’s methods, tried and true, rely on controlling the dialoge with the MSM and decapitation strikes on the right’s leadership. With the advent of the ‘new media’, the MSM has been suffering with an inability to control the dialoge and with a loss of credibility. The decapitation strike (think of what was done to Gingrich, Delay, Bush, Cheney, Rove….Palin) has continued to work fairly well – especially since Republicans do not protect their own as well as the Democrats. The recent change, however, is that the right has begun to act without a leader which completely takes the decapitation strike off the table. In the healthcare debate, the left has no opposition leader to demonize. They’ve tried to make the ‘townhallers’ into insurance industry drones or crazy whacked out “birthers”. But the once powerful MSM was unable to pull it off. So, instead, they just attack the citizen opposition themselves, i.e., brownshirts, nazis, and unamerican.
What the left really wants in the right is a leader, a figurehead, someone to attack and demonize. Someone to investigate. Perhaps it is best if we don’t give them one.
…discuss why smears and misinformation are unacceptable; make public and transparent who refuses to accept norms of good behaviour…
The most recent copy of the National Association of Scholars newsletter says that the administration at Virginia Tech is considering making support for “diversity” a prerequisite for faculty being hired, promoted, or tenured [my emphasis]. When I worked there as staff, a large section of our annual job evaluation was devoted to whether we supported “diversity.” I was always ready to say “No, I support equality and merit,” but my faculty supervisors never pressed the issue.
So, yes, as Mongoose wrote, “The real truth is that the left is out in the open now. They have a window for the ultimate destruction of us all, the more ruthless and energetic among them are going at it full bore…”
At the heart of every real networked revolution is the idea that the impetus is going to come from a lot of the nodes; they’re not just going to be repeaters. There is, in every phenomenon of this sort, the acceptance of a degree of uncertainty. “Cast your bread upon the waters”, Ecclesiastes says. You can’t stay totally in control. Part of the outcome of the drama is in an individual’s hands, but a lot of the total outcome is going to be the result of emergent phenomena. This is anathema to a person who believes he’s been given a privileged position in history. Anyone, I think, who truly imbibes in the spirit of 5G must accept that he at most can only play his part. He cannot write the script. History has a place for leaders. It has no real place for tyrants.
There’s a deep connection I think, between democracy and the successful operation of a system. There is a tremendous power in the recognition of ordinary worth, which directly arises from the realization that a real power springs from tapping into all things great and small. What this implies is that each, no matter how humble, has the right to act, even in a small way. None of us is insignificant. Even the little should dare to be right at the risk of being wrong. What is not acceptable is to believe that we don’t count as individuals. Our voices may not carry the day, but speak we must.
“The most recent copy of the National Association of Scholars newsletter says that the administration at Virginia Tech is considering making support for “diversity” a prerequisite for faculty being hired, promoted, or tenured…”
Seems to me one of the quickest ways to get strangle this initiative in the crib might be to organize an alumni donation strike. I’d say perhaps the four most terrifying words to a school president are: “Our donations are down.” Administrations deal with–and expect–protests all the time, but what do they do when the money spigot gets turned off?
Well it is high time that we engage in the same decapitation techniques; either that or we successfully expose it for what it is and finally put it to rest. One things is for certain: the average citizen will protect their own.
Seriously now, as someone said here the other day it is time to put it to the GOP: “Are you going to execute on your oath of office? Are you going stop this desecration of the Constitution?”. And I mean stop it. I do not me “try to stop it”. I mean stop it. Do what it takes.
The GOP better wake up. We do not have the time to start a third party. This strategy just plays into the Left’s hands.
I wonder if the nation can take the pressure. It has not even been a year now–just you wait. Something has got to give. I imagine that the Left has anticipated this. WHen it breaks it will move quickly and shockingly.
If I were Palin, I would forswear personal political ambition and go out there drive home just what is going on in simple, clear and brutally honest terms. It would have broad resonance. This must start immediately before the crushing moves commence.
One wonders what a two day national “Patriots’ Strike” might do.
We have been in a lull this August, and I fear that we hae been kidding ourselves about the effectiveness of citizen’s pushing back this summer. The Dems most likely will sit down and pass Obamacare after it is proceeded with a propaganda blitz unlike anything we have seen since WW2.
It is likely to get very nasty and very destructive. I hope we all have the heart for it. It is certain that our “leaders” in the main do not.
Here’s a cut from Kennedy’s speech at the 1980 Convention. It is considered to be his finest speech even some 29 years later because it encapsulates the scope of modern liberalism.
A fair prosperity and a just society are within our vision and our grasp, and we do not have every answer. There are questions not yet asked, waiting for us in the recesses of the future. But of this much we can be certain because it is the lesson of all of our history: Together a President and the people can make a difference. I have found that faith still alive wherever I have traveled across this land. So let us reject the counsel of retreat and the call to reaction. Let us go forward in the knowledge that history only helps those who help themselves.
There will be setbacks and sacrifices in the years ahead; but I am convinced that we as a people are ready to give something back to our country in return for all it has given to us.
Let this — Let this be our commitment: Whatever sacrifices must be made will be shared and shared fairly. And let this be our confidence: At the end of our journey and always before us shines that ideal of liberty and justice for all.
The speech has all the deep appeal of the “fair and just society” that drives Obama and the Progressives today, as it has for more than 100 years.
I may be beginning to understand why Progressivism (modern liberlism if you would) which starts from lofty ideals always ends up making a greater number of people even more people miserable, and why Joe Sixpack is rejecting the message.
I think there are two reasons. One is that Progressivism equates good intentions, even truly noble intentions at times, with Wisdom but without explanation. The other is that Progressivism uses politics to instruct human nature.
It always comes back to morality, in its broadest sense. What does it mean to be human? Obama’s arrogance and Party hubris from controlling all the institutions of power has emboldened the Progressives to tell Americans their true message – “You are not a good person until I say you are.”
Fairness and justice are human concepts. We can attempt to discern a meaning for them from reason, from experience, or from revelation but so far as I know nobody has ever come up with one definition that applies to all men for all time. Why are fairness and justice within the grasp and vision of only the Progressives?
The Declaration of Independence intended that the discovery of the meaning of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” would be a private journey unhindered by a government that demanded fidelity to any one particular religious, theological or philosophical doctrine. This is the true meaning of American Exceptionalism. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
By its very nature, because of the confidence that it has already secured Wisdom, Progressivism blocks individuals from pursuing their own pathway and puts them on the state built road to Good. There is no need to waste time and resources wandering around looking for the Light when it has already been found. That is the beginning of tyrrany, and Americans are getting the message.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu
I love #6, but I don’t think calling them “Life Panels” is going to catch on.
“Speak we must.” Yes, you’re absolutely right. Those on the left who are trying to destroy the country have been allowed to suborn it without much resistance for too long. It’s time to tell them, “this far and no farther. Not without a fight, and it will be the best fight I can muster.”
America depends so much on having the vast majority of its people be honest, law-abiding, and generally cooperative to government. If that ever changes by even 25%, it’s game over for that government. There is no way they can enforce rules that 25% of the people simply refuse to acknowledge as legitimate. All it would take to bring down Bama was that percentage of the tax-paying electorate refusing to submit a Federal tax return. Anything more than that would just be piling on. Obama and his minions forget this at their dire peril. The current system is far more fragile than they–or really anyone else–wants to admit.
Hague’s views are nothing new, just recycled wrapping paper.
Objectivity is what makes the Right right and the Left opposition.
Why do you think laws written by (leftist) lawyers are so muddled and open ended? Good for the lawyers and good for the Left = bad for society.
I see two issues at play regarding the failure of the president to gain popular traction for the healthcare overhaul. The first is the basic misconception the left has about the average American. Simply put, they believe, for some reason, that the true heart’s desire of every American is for the government to take massive control of large segments of our lives. It is such a mind-numbingly stupid assumption, it is difficult to address.
Second, and this was touched on earlier, is the Left’s belief that most people possess a severely unsophisticated method of processing information. Perfect example… the statement about the ‘facts’ regarding life expectancy. France has the best healthcare system in the world? The U.S. is ranked somewhere below Morocco? Common sense is for more valuable than an Ivy League degree, because thousands of Frenchmen coming to the U.S. every year for medical treatment illustrates the obvious. No one is banging down Italy’s door. The world comes here.
This last point stems for the Left’s insistence that the market is not only immoral, but inefficient, and tells us nothing about the comparative worth of the products within that market.
Wretchard wrote Consider it possible that all men, including small businessmen, plumbers, rubes from Alaska, cleaning women who say their prayers at mealtimes — are in some fundamental way the equal of graduates of Harvard Law School and know as much about life and death as Dr. Zeke Emmanuel;
The logical corollary of what Wretchard wrote is that all men, both on the right & on the the left, are in some fundamental way equal.
Therefore the right has to learn from the left:
“For all men are created equal, … they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –”
The right, if it truly believes these words [which it claims it does]; must therefore, accept, that those on the left are also created equal & to treat them as such, and as of equal value & importance to figure out how to govern this great nation.
Regarding Item 5: That all efforts to “attack the base” will ultimately fail because a government by the people, of the people and for the people will never perish from the earth;
As to “government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people.”, again if we believe in such a concept … it might be helpful to listen to another saying by our 16th President … “A house divided against itself cannot stand”.
Both sides need each other.
Escalating the fight with each other is the wrong strategy, instead both sides need to work at deescalating it.
Duplicate post, sorry. Edited by the Author to avoid duplication.
MarkJ,
The answer to “donations are down” for university administrators is “publicly funded.”
Marsh Arab,
What the left really wants in the right is a leader
- Aeschylus, The Persians
One other thing I noticed today. I went to Daily Kos and read their comments on Ted Kennedy’s death. It was the typical eulogy stuff. One person did mention Mary Jo Kopechne. Much admiration of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act over there after an article by Dana Houle.
There were two things that really struck home to me. First, while Ms. Houle mentioned that Kennedy was either mistaken or deliberately leading people astray as to the effects of the Act, no one called Kennedy on it. Not one word or question.
My thinking was that they simply don’t care that both he and his brother, Robert, lied to America about this Act. In fact, that might well be what they expect from their political leaders because they don’t trust this country to make proper decisions even when all the facts are available. They think the average voter is too damned stupid and reactionary to do what is correct, so even if the voting public CLEARLY DOES NOT WANT SOMETHING, the left sees nothing wrong with shoving it down their throats. Strange dichotomy at work here. Women’s choice about abortion is sacrosanct; voters’ choices about legislation: not so much.
Second thing: Kos was bemoaning how much he needs to get a new car. He has seven people who must fit in the car, so he’s thinking about a minivan. He went out of his way to say, “We’re a one-car family (and we’re going to stay that way.)”
Why should it matter to anyone whether he has one car or two? I couldn’t possibly care less what he drives or how many cars he has. Then I realized that being lower-middle to lower class means a great deal to his listeners, as well as being “green”. They covertly don’t want anyone to have more than they do.
They justify their resentment with shibboleths such as “conserving resources,” or wanting “equality,” but the reality is that they’re just jealous of those who have done better than they have in the economic struggle. Because they haven’t succeeded as well as they would have liked economically, it’s important to them that no one else do so either. Class envy leads them straight to class hatred and there is no changing that mindset. I just wish there weren’t so many of their ilk out there in the body politic.
There’s a deep connection I think, between democracy and the successful operation of a system. There is a tremendous power in the recognition of ordinary worth, which directly arises from the realization that a real power springs from tapping into all things great and small. What this implies is that each, no matter how humble, has the right to act, even in a small way. None of us is insignificant. Even the little should dare to be right at the risk of being wrong. What is not acceptable is to believe that we don’t count as individuals. Our voices may not carry the day, but speak we must.
Some have called this the “Sacredness of the Ordinary”.
This sentiment is, of course, at the very core of the Judeo-Christian teachings. It is one of the core aspects of our civilization. It is at the very root of the founding principles of the nation and has been the daily marker of its historical transit. It is an objective truth. It is not sentimental in the least, but rather rooted in hard and rough reality. It require little interpretation.
We tend forget this, but this is at the core of the “American Project”. The “American Dream” is not that every man has a shot at being an aristocrat, but that every man has a right to work towards his own ends and be left alone. To state the obvious, the common man is in control of his destiny valued by the lights of his values and morality. This is our highest political virture. That America has done great things springs from this: Common people doing uncommon things. The point, however, is simple individual liberty, not collective “greatness” or “solving world problems”. All else flows from this. That is our gamble.
The focus is the fellow down that road that runs a reasonable sawmill, or the fellow next door that owns a ball bearing factory or a hard working employee in that factory pinching pennies to one day be free. In the end it is the rough Brakeman’s hand that stops the train and the carpenter’s eye that see the plumb. Some obtuse pipsqueak in some “world class Political Science Department” has little to do with it all.
This is what the left fears the most for it sest fire to the lie that they are better and more useful than those they purport to redeem. All that remains. on the other side of that fire is open and hollow vanity. This that cannot face.
It is in this hatred of the ordinary that the Left betrays their true natures and the black evil that abides within them.
mac,
Good catch and brave of you to visit Kos, hope you had a chance to shower after.
Kos makes sure that there is only one car available for his family because he is a control freak.
I, personally, don’t need the Left. I’ll take Democrats who can still truthfully claim ignorance about what is actually happening in our rush to this statism/corporatism. But the aware Leftists, who push, cheat, lie and bully to knowingly advance the Cause? The opportunistic parasites who are looting the public treasury hoping the Dems can stay in power just a bit longer?
No, I won’t work with them. Our goals for a just society may be similar, but our methods cannot be reconciled. They can’t be trusted, and they need to kept from the levers of power. Thus always to those who wish to control the lives of their fellow citizens.
But facts don’t matter, because your enemy doesn’t value information like you do. Life expectancy’s smaller in the States? So what — according to your enemies, you can’t trust facts from Cuba (or France).
Here are a few facts:
Life expectancy is basically the same in developed countries, give or take a few years. And those small differences depend on many factors which have little or nothing to do with the quality of health care. For example, how do statistics deal with preterm births? In the US more preterm children are counted as actual births than in some other countries; the ones who don´t survive increase statistical child mortality – even if they have a better chance of making it than in those countries!
Eating habits differ (fewer fat people in France, very unique diet in Japan until very recently). Smoking habits differ (Americans were relatively very heavy smokers until a few decades ago; this will influence statistics for years to come). We also have high immigration and minorities with unusually high rates of death; most countries in Europe and Japan do not. And so on.
First, none of this justifies the introduction of government-run health care.
Second, make up your mind already. I thought this was all about cost control?
Third, even if quality of care was your only concern, government run healthcare is the last thing you would want.
Fourth, yes, I do not trust Cuban statistics. But then, I´ve been there.
About your counter-points, Wretchard: I hold those truths to be self-evident.
Amit: We have been trying to reason with the left for almost a century and all they do is smugly pretend to be reasonable and when our back is turned jump upon us in a stabbing frenzy. They are out to destroy our civilization. They are close to achieving this.
They in fact are not our equals in morality and sanity. There is such a thing as shared civilization and culture. There is such a thing as objective truth. We have passed that point of common ground. The outer layers of misguided “useful idiots” of the Left’s popular fronts, the sort Peter Boston describes above, may be able to be turned, but only after the Left has been at least ideologically defeated. My guess is that it will take more than an ideological defeat. The core of the Left consists of hard core Bolshevik nihilists and power seekers, not misguided soccer moms or dreamy students posting on KOS.
Are we to undergo the sort of destruction that overtook the USSR to prove our point, to
“bring the Left around”? No, the Left must be forever cast out of power and our key institutions.
This must be dealt with once and for all.
The course of the last century clear shows this.
It is war. A cold one now, but if our political institutions are further corrupted all will fail apart.
Events are in the saddle now. As I often say, we are thrown now about our legacy, our characters and our natures.
#22 Mo.
That is really me, Mongoose
Ultimately the different between Left and Conservatives is that the Right believes that the only feasible society is one based on individual worth, individual brilliance, individual work, and individual responsibility. It is grounded in reality but with a hopeful view of the human soul.
The Left believes that reality is malleable depending what group perceives it. They believe that human society is so incredibly powerful that it can overcome the effects of hurricanes and change the planet’s weather by consensus. No one really has to work, other than to urge others to do so, because there is a vast bunch of stuff “out there” just for the taking, by consensus. They think the Conservative Uprising is Astroturf because they think that everything is Astroturf.
Ultimately the Left carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. If they win it all, all the time, people will eventually stop working, innovating, and investing. Everybody moves to Galt’s Gulch. The USSR rolled along, getting better and better all the time, the Left winning every argument, every time, for decades, until the country fell apart.
Ultimately, Conservatives carry within themselves the seeds of their own success, because after the Left has destroyed everything, they can build it all back.
mac: wanna bet that more than a few of those folks actually have more than one car?
Amit Green @ 18:
The basic problem I have with these very nice sounding platitudes is that they necessarily lead to government control. Consider a compromise in which the left receives 25% for what they aimed for, in this case socialized medicine. Such a fine compromise. Well done, all. Pats on the back, and a round of brandy and cigars. Five years later they come for more, and they get 25% of what they asked for. Here, here. Jolly good. What a fine system we have. And on, and on… When was the last time a compromise legislation wrested control of some aspect of society AWAY from central government? It rarely happens, if ever.
Where are the Democrats who are calling for tort reform? The lowering of mandates? Cross-state insurance? Any market based solutions to rising costs at all?
Politicians who go to Washington and complain about politics make my skin crawl. Politics is how we resolve conflict in the United States, and as ‘nasty’ as it may get to the delicate sensibilities of Chicago natives, it’s better than pistols at twenty paces.
The FIGHT is what it’s all about, and it’s a very, very good thing.
Well, the lefties all conformed themselves to incestuous group think farms like Harvard/Yale.
Me? Bars, SF, construction sites. Not quiet Boyd’ss live or die 30 second dogfights, but still a fair ‘put up or shut up’ laboratory for stress testing BS.
God do I wish dueling would be decriminalized. Think of the mountains of dead lawyers, feathermerchants, politicians and their coat holding jock sniffing hacks.
Haque makes a good observation, but then as you say completely misinterprets what he’s observed. (or rather interprets it subjectively through the prism of his own political inclinations)
He is VERY correct that the control of all the flagship institutions is in fact, a great weakness for the left. His big mistake (besides the ones you’ve already pointed out so well, wretchard) is that he doesn’t see that this is the same weakness which affected the old Soviet Union in the years immediately preceding the fall. *Because* they controlled all flagship institutions, there was no one they would consider listening to who could warn them that they were completely out of touch with the vast majority of the country, and that their ship of state was headed straight into some very nasty rocks.
When one side controls all the flagships, it’s natural to feel invincible – and a feeling of invincibility always leads to catastrophic overreach and subsequent failure, which the formerly invinvible warrior never sees coming. I believe the ancient Greeks wrote a play or two about this kind of thing.
Seems to me one of the quickest ways to get strangle this initiative in the crib might be to organize an alumni donation strike.
It’s a good idea, MarkJ, but in my experience, alums aren’t interested in these kinds of issues. The average alum does not consider a required “diversity” attitude at their former university any more a threat to freedom than they do in their own corporation. The threat is too abstract, mostly an annoyance. For most, it’s not worth going to war over.
wws: Perverting those institutions to the point of completely destroying them does not help them much either. The fact that Obama s a HLS graduate speaks volumes. So does the connivance of the Academy in the AGW hustle.
Seem to me that they are in the processes of discrediting those “flagships”.
This is what happens were politics displaces merit, and wishful thinking displaces merit.
It all comes down to rejection of the very notion of objective truth or knowledge.
Wretchard:
“At the heart of every real networked revolution is the idea that the impetus is going to come from a lot of the nodes; they’re not just going to be repeaters.”
Thus Central Control’s next logical step will be an attempt to strangle the means by which the unwashed masses communicate. So again the question – when the internet becomes controlled, how do we build an electronic samizdat?
Haque is clearly not on the cutting edge. The Chinese government knows that the best way to fight a networked insurgency is to control the network; to prevent the individual wills from accumulating into a national movement; to make fear a greater motivator than hope.
That’s why political correctness is so important to the Left. The 1st Amendment prevents them from actually controlling radio, TV and the Internet (as long as the Fairness Doctrine remains in its grave), but enough social punishment heaped upon the head of anyone willing to speak out against the Leftist’s social dogma will provide much the same effect.
My God, but Haque is clueless! And what’s worse is, he thinks he’s so clever.
He’s not alone. There seems to be a concerted effort by his fellow “deep-thinkers” to find ways to ouwit us rubes, but they couch it differently, of course.
From “LiveScience” and Yahoo: “Health Care Debate Based on Lack of Logic” (http://www.livescience.com/culture/090826-healthcare-debate.html), and also: “Majority of Americans Believe Health Care Reform ‘Myths’ ” (http://www.livescience.com/environment/090824-healthcare-myths.html)
The right is using Alinsky rules with a different name.
Mongoose:The real truth is that the left is out in the open now.
Absolutely right. The reason the radical left is losing this fight both on healthcare and Cap and Trade because is there is an actual bill out on the internet that ordinary citizens can read and see for themselves what sick authoritarian control freaks the these lefties really are. The truth is in those bills and word of the that truth is spreading.
Several months ago, there was a thread here at BC about how difficult it was for conservatives to be heard, fight this battle, and acquire the necessary political power to win this Civil Cold War. Back then, and for several years now, many ordinary citizens, not just conservatives, were intimidated and cowered by the left from openly arguing for their views. That has changed now.
What Cap and Trade and the Public Option has shown to middle America, not just conservatives, is the real danger of giving the left free rein to run our government. It is out in the open now; the eyes of the common man in the street have been opened and he is now so outraged and incensed that he longer is afraid to confront the monsters of the Left.
We cannot let up. One of conservative’s biggest problems in this struggle, is the RINO leadership of the Republican Party. These RINO jerks are always trying to undermine the efforts to save the Country and our Constitution. They are more interested in putting a happy face on the Left’s attacks on America, than saving America.
Just a couple of days ago, John Mc Cain, once again, suggested that the responsible Republican leadership should sit down with Buraq and work out yet another sellout compromise to save healthcare reform. He and people like Collins, Snowe, Lugar, Graham and Voinivich cannot fathom that Buraq and the left want to destroy this Country. They are caught up in the Beltway bubble. These RINO traitors would rather strive for adoring MSM pub than fight to save the Constitution. I know many here at BC support McCain and his friends, but he and his pals really need to be politically kneecapped and put out to pasture. They are a danger to this country; they aid and abet too many efforts to destroy America.
#37 Brock “The 1st Amendment prevents them from actually controlling radio … but enough social punishment heaped upon the head of anyone willing to speak out against the Leftist.s social dogma will provide much the same effect.”
As long as we have the 1st Amendment in this country [and that is not changing in the next 10+ years] we have nothing to fear …
What is happening right now, and why the right is starting to win the 5G war, is that there is no single person to heap social punishment on.
So many people, individually, now care, that the Obama administration has turned this into a fight of Obama .vs. the Voters.
This, they cannot and will not win. The voters are sovereign in the American system.
#31 Urban B “Politicians who go to Washington and complain about politics make my skin crawl. Politics is how we resolve conflict in the United States, and as .nasty. as it may get to the delicate sensibilities of Chicago natives, it.s better than pistols at twenty paces.
The FIGHT is what it.s all about, and it.s a very, very good thing.
Ok, my fault for not being clear. Very sorry. Let me try again.
I have many many friends on both the left & the right, and have talked to them for years.
One of the things that is totally obvious, is that citizens on both the left & the right truly love America … and both sides want what is best for America … though they have different visions.
However, its almost impossible to get the two sides to talk to each other sensibly; and come to agreement on a common vision.
Just as Republicans have let down the conservatives … and are in many ways destructive to the conservative cause … so the Democrats have let down the liberals … and are in many ways destructive to the liberal cause.
The problem, I agree, is the politicans on both sides. Certainly we need to oppose the politicans (on both sides) and “The FIGHT is what it.s all about, and it.s a very, very good thing.” The politicans, on both sides, are destroying the fabric of this country, and this needs to be opposed.
I’m trying to say, we need to do it, while learning from the left [in terms of vast vast majority of citizens on the left who care & love America] … we should not oppose our fellow citizens, they also have an equal contribution & an equal voice to be heard:
And that applies to everyone on both the left & the right.
#40 Unsk: We cannot let up. One of conservative’s biggest problems in this struggle, is the RINO leadership of the Republican Party. These RINO jerks are always trying to undermine the efforts to save the Country and our Constitution. They are more interested in putting a happy face on the Left’s attacks on America, than saving America.
Agreed — in many ways, for conservatives, the RINO’s are a much bigger problem than the Democrats in congress.
Mongoose wrote:
“It all comes down to rejection of the very notion of objective truth or knowledge.”
Which has been the focus of the entire “liberal arts” academic establishment during the entire post WW2 era – example, the rise of so-called “feminist” studies in which knowledge is never objective, but must be viewed through the prism of an aggressive ideology. Most lately seen in the dumbing down of science in order to serve the AGW political agenda. No dissenters need be heard; out with objective analysis, in with the new “Scientific Consensus!” Which by definition can never be scientfic.
To Brock: you’re correct about control, but it’s a very difficult thing to achieve in a system which does not allow actual physical control such as the Chinese system allows. The greatest weakness of social control is that it only works as long as it’s “cool”; as soon as a tipping point of unhappiness is reached, the entire paradigm is flipped on it’s head and all of the weapons of control are turned back on their creators. I would venture to guess that something like this is happening to Axelrod and Obama right now.
Also, don’t forget that the Chinese have an off and on 2,000 year history of keeping a very large number of fractious people under central control. They’ve gotten quite good at it, much better than any government in the west ever has. Rather than viewing them as specifically “communist”, I find it much more useful to consider the Chinese as simply having a somewhat reformed and modernized version of the same government they’ve had for 2 millenia now.
I suspect that any modern Chinese bureaucrat would fit quite comfortably into a similar position if he somehow found himself trasnsported to any of the previous 20 centuries.
Wrichard writes: “I think Haque’s advice will ultimately fail because it fails to recognize the fundamental difference between ‘fake’ 5th generation warfare and the real thing. The real thing is bottom up; the fake thing is astroturfed.”
Yes, and Wrichard’s six rules are worthy ones. At the same time, a lot of conservatives have considered (or independently intuited) Alinsky’s rules and how they can be employed in support of, say, the six rules. With a smile. Consider:
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)
RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid “un-fun” activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)
The American Left has unwittingly enlarged the base of its opposition by expanding the concept of what constitutes conservatism and reactionary behavior. Millions of centrists, including many who voted for Obama and Democrats, have now been branded virtual enemies of the state.
Also, by trying to use accusations of “treason” and “un-Americanism” against its opponents, a tactic that used to be completely outside of their pervue, they’ve only made themselves look ridiculous.
“”"”"RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.) “”"”"”
And, BOY does the left have an Achilles Heel on that one!
Granted, it’s “irrational,” but it doesn’t help that some of the leading lights of this Democratic party and administration are either 1) ugly (Henry Waxman), 2) funny-looking (Pelosi, Reid), 3) silly-acting (Pelosi, Biden), prone to what many consider outside-the-norm behavior or worldviews (Barney Frank, Zeke and Rahm Emanuel, John Holdren), and blatantly corrupt (Frank, Dodd, Murtha, Holder, Rahm Emanuel).
Oh, and then there are the First Scolds, Barack and Michelle. Although, Michelle has been very quiet lately.
They are losing the argument, for now, because Maggie Thatcher was right. “The facts of life are conservative.”
They are pursuing some major brass rings, long-time policy goals of the progressives: universal health care and control of our energy supply (cap and trade). These initiatives will affect everybody, and unlike many other liberal policies, there will be no private space in which to escape them. The problem this has created for the left is that consequently, they have EVERYBODY’S attention. Technology has given the masses the ability to look at what they are proposing, see that is will be worse than what we presently enjoy, will involve a significant erosion or personal freedom to boot, and will cost more than we can afford for generations to come.
To make matters worse for their agenda, they have already squandered their credibility with the previous sky-is-falling “pass-it-now” stimulus package, and accordingly, peoples’ suspicions are raised further by the means they are using to advance the agenda.
Relativism, it seems, has its limitations and will not fool all the people, all the time. In short, I think the simplest explanation for their agenda being off-track is that these are bad ideas (that will affect everyone), with easily foreseeable bad consequences, and are being pursued in a transparently bad faith way.
There is no good explanation, that will satisfy most people, for why a flawed system of health care that nevertheless gets the job done for 85% of insureds, needs to be completely torn down to provide coverage for the other 15%. And even if there was, their approach (an attempt to rush the vote, 1000 page bills not read, union bullies, bashing opponents on TV, calling us racists for daring to question Obama, Reid and Pelosi)is not the way a sincere complete makeover would be pursued by reasonable people. Many people get this.
Cap and trade may get even worse, in its turn. The price of the left finally having its moment has been the necessity of having it completely out in the open. If enough of America still regards Freedom as its most important value, a question about which I am more hopeful than a year ago, the Obama agenda may well be stopped. Now that the moment has arrived, however, what we need is a decisive rejection that lasts a couple generations.
This clown’s argument assumes that folks at townhalls and tea parties are all conservatives, or of “the right”!
This is where both the left and the right are gravely mistaken and missing opportunity.
There may be a core group of conservatives, but from what I’ve seen, it’s from center-left all the way over to the right that’s standing up and saying “No, you need to listen to us.”
And until a party or a very well funded candidate stop, listen, and formulate a comprehensive way forward that is based on American values, we’ll keep swinging back and forth between the dems and repubs, growing ever weaker and more vulnerable.
Everyday 300 million Americans get up and create, buy, sell, etc. They decide what to buy and what price to pay. They decide what to sell, and at what price to sell. The collective intelligence inherent in this system is simply far to massive to be captured, or, perhaps, even understood by centralized bureaucrats regardless of credentials or arrogance.
Centralized elites are comfortable with centralized communication networks where they can dissassociate nodes in order to control information flow. Unfortunately for them, centralized networks are unstable under assault, either ignoring negatives, or accepting false positives. This is the phenomenon on why totalitarian regimes fall so quickly once they fall.
This was prefaced in the famous quote from a Washington insider who could not imagine how Richard Nixon won the presidency when all her friends voted for Humphrey.
Amit, what you are calling the Left, those personal acquaintances you mention, I would call more the “useful idiots”, or those who “fashionably or sentimentally vote Democrat”, if the term “useful idiots” sounds too derogatory to you (I mean this term in its historical sense, btw…well sorta).
This is not who our enemies are. Pour enemies are those that cynically manipulate these people either for ideological reasons or persoanl gain.. And yes these folks may be well meaning and care bout America. They are completely misguided, however, and this does/i>reflect on at least their capabilities, if not their characters. I think the real questions about this are: 1) Can the necessary righting of the ship be accomplished through the normal political process, and 2) If it can, how much of the “fashionable voters” assent is need to achieve it.
I think it is fair to say that they wil hve to be somehow shown the error of their ways. There belief are toxic no matter how good their intentions.
If Obama tries some sort of radical “Reichstag event” to finally consolodate power then all bet are off.
Uncle Jefe:
Could you break out what you see in to percentages?
I am here is the belly of a very blue beast, so most people involved with this business here are pretty conservative. I do not have your perspective.
Fourth generation warfare is that a political party not only weaponizes but also abandons geopolitical boundaries. Additionally it coops the tactics of 1,2,and 3rd gen military tactics and employs them when advantageous. To accuse the stolid and staid center right of the American political conversation of engaging in “5G” warfare is a gross misuse of the language.
Someone has been playing too many strategy games in the basement of Cambridge think tanks. They need to grow up and walk outside in the real world that most of us live in. Grandfather’s senility has real and everyday consequences for each family. So does the interplay of 18% of the daily economy that has been carefully and slowly woven into the fabric that culturally clothes our nation. So there should be no surprise that people respond to the elites that think they can rip off the blankets just because they themselves think that they have a better use for the blanket.
Only the American left would dream to call it warfare when they start to lose a blanket struggling contest. “5G” warfare is not warfare,its about parents trying to get the family to share and survive as best as one possibly can. That is what compromise and politics are for . To prevent war. Some parent needs to tell lefty junior to take a time out or someone named righty junior will have his hands untied and then lefty junior really would not like the outcome.
“”"” There may be a core group of conservatives, but from what I’ve seen, it’s from center-left all the way over to the right that’s standing up and saying “No, you need to listen to us.” “”"”
#47 Uncle Jefe, I made a similar point in #44.
The piece seems to make two errors: over thinking and the partisan notion that one’s side is civil and pure fact driven (good) and the other side is uncivil and raw animal instinctual emotionalism (bad). Partisans from both sides resort to this.
The left is now trying to divide the spoils and as we all know victory has many fathers.
In order to get that dominance Rahm had to make a deal with the “devil” aka the Blue Dogs. The hard left carried the torch in the lean years and believe they should get all they want for the torch carrying and the Blue Dogs think they have the keys to sustained victory. The problem is a hard lefty is controlling the agenda and the Blue Dogs will be minimized, any event the BDs are at the margin and that is where all positions get whittled away.
BTW Wretchard, the left (and many on the right for that matter) will never go for item #3.
wretchard – If they follow your 5 points then they will become……(wait for it)…… conservatives. Your post is held exactly in this:
- US Declaration of Independence
Peter Boston:
What does it mean to be human?…“You are not a good person until I say you are.”
What if the new push is to deny any individualism? That there is no true SELF? Or that the highest form of true self (nay, it is our ethical and moral obligation) is to abandon the ‘illusion’ of individualism and do what’s ‘for the common good’?
I know you read Dr. Sanity. Check out one of her recent posts, “PREPARE FOR THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT!”.
Word
I remember that years ago Rush Limbaugh stated that the initial success of his radio show was due largely to the fact that he already had a large audience before he started. It was just that they had never been catered to by the MSM. His problem was entertaining them and giving them voice.
The left has never understood this. So they attack entertainment personalities and nothing much happens.
One of the big reasons that the MSM is going down the tubes is that they keep getting caught in lies and it gets spread over the ‘net, talk radio, and Fox cable shows. So Hauge thinks they need to lie more. “What a maroon.”
Re: Wretchard’s #3
“Consider it possible that all men, including small businessmen, plumbers, rubes from Alaska, cleaning women who say their prayers at mealtimes…”
Yes; Wretchard correctly notes the sniffy condescension of the left/Obama movement towards common folk; of course, we saw this in the campaign with Obama’s remark about bitter, clinging small town people. A couple days after his encounter with Joe the Plumber Obama leaned on a podium and yelled to a crowd, “What kind of plumber makes 200 thousand a year?”
I remember thinking, ‘what kind of politician thinks he can get away with putting down the nation’s plumbers? Who is this guy – who has never run a cash register, swept a shop floor, packed a container, bucked hay, worked in a mill or harvested fruit under the sun – who is this guy to take a shot at working men & women?’
There is something weirdly fragile about Obama. He has been ‘handled’ his whole life; He has never had to really do anything for himself. Therefore he has evolved a psychology that allows him to make casual nasty swipes about groups of people (so far, white people, surgeons, bitter clingers, Special Olympics, plumbers, cops, etc).
But the people are pushing back. How will this very fragile man handle it?
Urban B:
they believe, for some reason, that the true heart’s desire of every American is for the government to take massive control of large segments of our lives.
What if this is true? That they (the left) had been at it for decades, and succeeding at redeucating our young (two or more generations now).
das, some form of cleansing finale is true to the type. Think ‘Gotterdammerung, if you can manage it’.
And thanks (i guess is the word) for the reminder of that “What kind of plumber makes 200 thousand a year?” moment, which i too saw, and filed away, and had forgotten about. But i wanted to think on that remark, so glad to see it brought back up. A couple of other ‘tells’ which stick in mind, just recently, maybe it was in his last speech before vacation, as he was striding the stage taking “questions”, he used the word “patents” in describing the litany of healthcare problems bedeviling ‘the people’. he spit out the word, as if it was something nasty he had to get out of his mouth. he ridiculed the existence of patents –as if all the body of law was for is to rip off ‘the people’. Another time, sometime back, he was marveling over the ‘resilience of the economy’ in the way that one would marvel over the resilience of weeds or garbage or some other oious disposal problem vexing him. You could see it if you were watching. I fell off my chair, almost.
LB, you might be right but is it too much to hope that O gain some sense of wider empathy with the nation? Maybe not, the ‘put-down’ has served him so well…
I think the fundamental mistake is that this isn’t a war. It’s politics.
If you aren’t convincing enough people in a democracy, you will lose. There’s lots of ways to do that. Using all this think-tank rhetoric is stupid and counterproductive.
Find out why people oppose your policy. Take it seriously. Then respond in a way that changes their mind. It’s that simple.
The simple things are always hard, and it may just be that it’s impossible to convince people about the benefits of gov’t health care, because their concerns are correct and it will cede too much power to the gov’t and cost too much.
In that case, democracy works by saving the republic from this mess.
The Left never seems to learn from history, maybe even deny that one CAN learn from history.
For example, “appeals to authority” has been known as a fallacy in thinking since the ancient Greeks.
Perhaps they don’t mind increasing their power over others through fallacous means.
“What the left really wants in the right is a leader, a figurehead, someone to attack and demonize. Someone to investigate. Perhaps it is best if we don’t give them one.”
He was Robert Paulson. I am Robert Paulson.
das/61; that’s one of my fondest hopes –that ‘the office will make the man’. Too bad he has that gang of 44 czars to move toward the center –they ain’t gonna go there.
my close on #60 is unclear (racing the edit tool) but those remarks on the economy –at a WH presser iirc, about a month or six weeks back –used innocuous and expected words about the state of the economy. The ‘tic’ was in the facial expression and slightly altered tone of a short parenthetical within the larger answer-speech. The thought should’ve been delivered with a beam, a note of pride and gratitude. i’m sure that’s what his mind was attempting to do. But what came out, in just a quick second or two and then gone, was the message that he was a little frustrated, a little exasperated, with this resilience of the economy. As a communications ‘moment’ it could never generate commentary –too evanescent & fleeting. But it was a real flash of rue & consternation, and powerful enuff to stun whomever happened to be studying the POTUS extempores for clues as to what’s happening in the inner sanctum. A shivering moment of pure communication, saying something like, “Dammit, I want an emergency Stimulous II, and a market crash too if I can get it”.
But maybe it was just me.
anyway –the office ‘can’ make the man –right?
The Left does not learn for history because it does not believe in history.
(this is ironic given Marx’s reliance on Hegel, I know, but I mean “objective history”).
The Left does not believe in facts.
The left does not believe in reality.
I think we must face the simple fact the that the disaster of the the “Great Civil War of Europe” in the last century allowed a tribe of people to get into power than normally would never ever get near it.
This issue is one of how to undo it, how to get them out and save ourselves and our civilization.
Socialism cannot work. It will always move toward ruin and tyranny. It destroys the societies that it dominates and those societies rarely recover.
We must stop this. It must be done.
It already may be too late to save our society. For Pete’s sake, we are putting a Union boss in charge of the NY FED! This is systematic and well thought out assault against our society. We are moving into the area of the October Revolution, into Stalinism.
It is no joke.
But to save it, in must be made blindingly and categorically clear that this is forbidden. This means the malefactors must be punished. They must go to jail.
Obama has, in less than a year, moved us further out from our normative political process than any man in history. He is worse than FDR (well ok, he is getting there, but he is potentially worse).
In a matter of months we have ceased to be America. It must stop.
I tell you, something is going to give if the Democrats do not back down from this Marxist coup of theirs. It cannot go on this way.
Wretchard,
If I understand you correctly, you say that the Left has figuring out its opposition consists of Right’s “buzzing hornet swarm” of civic action, but you think that Umair Haque’s advice amounts to:
1) Using faster appeals to higher authority to;
2) More effectively condescend to those masses of opposition, plus;
3) Hiring bigger astroturfed crowds for the Main Stream Media cameras.
If so, according to Drew Brown over at the American Thinker, Obama’s people seem set to take Umair Haque’s advice:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/barack_obama_doesnt_care_what.html
What I am concerned about, and warning everyone about, is the media machine that uses these organized events to broadcast the agenda. Framed differently, these activities aren’t meant to convince attendees that healthcare is good; these activities are meant to manufacture the news, spread propaganda tropes, and over-inflate the image of the pro-socialized healthcare forces. PR stunts. The Obama modus operandi is to make his goons look bigger than they are. These are the people who will make a group of twenty conservatives appear diminutive with a far-away camera angle, and then give individual interviews to all three liberal attendees. It’s just like a real estate agent photographing a small house from the best angle. Organizing for America is an illusion. It is the Wizard of Oz.
The question I have regards all of this frenetic action — given main stream media viewing demographics — is who will the MSM’s audience be now that they’ve alienated the Depends generation?
mongoose/66; They must go to jail –this harks back to the Dan Rather and Teddy Kennedy threads –and reminds of all the now hundreds of cases of major crimes commited by the NYC/DC axis that are simply not prosecuted. Filegate should’ve sent the whole gang of conspirators off to jail. Teddy shoulda gone to jail. Plame & Wilson, Frank, Dodd, Rangel, Murtha, a hundred others at this moment lolling in the salons of privilege, should be behind bars. What the hell –how can the country be saved from this –there’s not only no more shame, there’s no more jail either. Lid’s off! Smash & Grab! Book Deal!
Does anybody even KNOW who big-time Obama supporter Joseph Cassano IS ?
If you DO know who he is –can you tell me why he’s not in jail?
#65 LB
Yes, as the ancient Romans looked to animal entrails to interpret the mysterious twists and turns of character and fate, so we must look to the odd intertices of Obama’s public persona to try to understand the man. He is very much a consruction of some sort; he is an artifact that has been pieced together by large interests – like a large paper mache classroom project. You catch glimpses of the ‘real’ man in these down moments you describe. No, I don’t think it is just you; to watch Obama is to watch a very complex phenomena…
The air feels heavier. I wish I had saved all of my old posts…I recall typing something right after the election about the results emboldening the way left. Everybody over there now feels their agenda has been blessed with a mandate. Strange daze indeed. I feel the need to spend some clingy time in the Word and with my 1911.
According to this report Panetta is out at CIA.
about 5 hours ago from Tweetie
ewerickson Looks like I was right. ABC News’s Brian Ross says Leon Panetta is done.
Conservatives are in an interesting position. There is a tension between the belief in Democracy as a political system, along with its economic coevals Capitalism and the associated free market as a valuation and exchange system, and the belief in an absolute truth that is not subject to alteration at the whim of whoever can manipulate imagery to sway the opinions of a mob.
Haque is like the oily Inquisition interrogator trying to trap his victim into a confession of heresy. Sarah Palin is like Galileo standing before the assembled Cardinals and whispering,
Nevertheless, it moves.
Perhaps she is even more boldly to be compared to Martin Luther saying to the Emperor,
Here I stand. http://tinyurl.com/l2k7yo
Constant through out is reliance on the fallacy of “appeal to authority”
That’s counterpart to that other leftist disease, credentialism. I’ve seen leftists argue that the huge salaries of federal employees are merited, because they “so highly educated”. That may be, but I thought salaries were supposed to be a reflection of value, not status.
In re Das’ comments @#58 about Obama’s fragility, it’s interesting to read Spengler’s comments about him: if you want to know about the man behind the persona, said Spengler, look most closely at the women nearest to him, i.e. Michelle Obama and Ann Dunham. What’s especially intriguing is that Spengler’s words were written a year and a half ago…but seem even more poignant now. His conclusion was that Ann Dunham hated America, and that Ann Dunham’s son is her revenge. But read the piece in its entirety…
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html.
what happens when the disenfranchised targets of 5g warfare actually feel like a war is being waged against them?
will they all play nice, like they’re supposed to, and lay down and die, or will they resort to the old fashioned means at their disposal (ie 0-4 gen warfare)?
i fear for my family. recent ancestors drew straws and my lucky branch fled russia in 1912. they walked out in the winter and managed to work their way to the USA. their descendents thrived. the other unlucky branch stayed to try to keep their property and as a result died in the gulags of siberia. i know their names.
my family was volga deutsch, an ethnicity that no longer exists. they were destroyed or scattered. now we who survived are Americans.
i know how this story we are watching plays out. it is an understatment to say that i don’t like it.
If I may quote something I wrote to someone else about this thread [yes, BC reaches far beyond these pages]:
I agree that it is a good thing for now that we do not have a leader who can be targeted. There are downsides to this, however, While we are besieging the castles by cutting off their supplies with raids, eventually there should be the political equivalent of a main force breaching of the walls. At that point, yes we will need leadership. They will become targets. This transition needs to be managed in such a way as to minimize that vulnerability.
BELMONT CLUB has recently been called “the think-tank for the revolution”….
We are engaged in a political insurgency, that has the distinct possibility of moving into other means as defined by Clausewitz. This possibility of movement is triggered by over-reaching by TWANLOC. As noted above, they are taking their position of political power as a permanent mandate to remake the nation; politically, culturally, and economically. They would build the Obamist equivalent of the “New Soviet Man”.
They hold the castles, the “flagships”, the citadels where lie the traditional levers of power. We are doing the equivalent of sniping away at their foraging parties. This is political insurgent warfare at this stage. However, if we are going to be a think tank, it is best to look to the lessons of the past and see which if any may apply. Incidentally, I have already noted multiple approaches to conceptualizing this [and that is a very GOOD thing, ideas and acts bubbling from diverse sources.]. Some seem to draw more from the experience of the Revolution. Some from the Civil War. And there are others. Therefore, do not believe that I consider what I write as being universally applicable; and I throw this out to spark discussion.
One lesson that I have noted is that it is historically extremely difficult for an insurgent movement to win in the absence of support from conventional forces. In the Revolution, we had the French acting as a counterbalance to the Brits on the larger political stage. In the Civil War, the Confederacy had its own main force units.
In political warfare short of actual war, the main force units are political parties and their organizations. We do not have such an organization as the Institutional Republican party at best is the equivalent of the Vichy military alongside the Wehrmacht in France 1940-44. Our lack of targetable leaders is a function of necessity that turned out to be a workable short term strategy. Those who oppose the regime are not only Republicans as is noted above and I have noted elsewhere at BC. It includes Conservatives [some are active or former Republicans], Independents, Libertarians, and apolitical Americans who have been pushed too far]. The Republicans are not going to help us. Their presidential candidate has called for Republicans to rally to help Obama pass some version of his health plan. Bloody Hell! All they want is their share of the spoils and ‘to be eaten last’.
We have no prospect of any help from what would normally be considered the main force units of the Republican party. Events are moving faster than many could conceive of a year ago. There is no time to retake the Republican party, and the effort to do so would be both a dividing of our forces in the face of the enemy, and even if successful would give the enemy a target on which to bring to bear their weaponry. There is no time to bring a new party into existence from scratch, albeit such should be in the back of the minds of Patriots for when the time is right.
Timelines are tight. Despite the overwhelming opposition to ObamaMengeleCare expressed in every forum possible during the recess; TWANLOC have the votes to pass anything that they want to without input from anyone else. They have means of coercion to use on their own ranks. It is well within the realm of the possible that they will force it through over the objections of the American people. After all, TWANLOC always know best for the ignorant masses. It is an article of faith, equivalent to the Apostles’ Creed for Catholics, on their part. That leaves us with the problem of what to do in that case.
I also note, that once they have made the considered decision to impose their will on an unwilling people, there is no further downside to them passing anything in the way of controls the regime wants. Cap and Tax? sure. “Fairness” Doctrine? absolutely. Sedition laws? why not? They have been acting as if they do not fear ever facing the voters again in anything approximating an honest election. And they may not.
That would likely mean an immediate trigger to moving beyond political means no later than November 2010. We are not ready for such. It would result in massive casualties for Patriots in the early days alone. Mind you, there is no foreseeable purely political solution that gives a Hollywood happy ending. Our country is in for a ‘time of troubles’, regardless.
In the absence of a political equivalent of main force units, we have to work with what we have. Thus we have to turn to those few historical examples of insurgents who won on their own. The common thread in those cases involves the holders of the “flagships”, the citadels of power, being in the end widely considered to be illegitimate. Thus, when push finally came to shove, they could not rally supporters to impose their will on the insurgent populace.
The actions of the regime, as described by #17 Urban B, #2 Mongoose, and #44 Roderick Reilly are already destroying their legitimacy. We need to help them along. Humor and contempt are our tools.
We have means beyond those dreamed of by most insurgents. Every home computer, with some planning, has the ability to dig into the lives of individuals that the government only had a decade ago. We are governed by crooks and moral reprobates of both parties. If the DemStream Media have the ability to dig through every aspect of Sarah Palin’s life; why cannot individuals do the same for the political figures of the regime [and their fellow travellers] at all levels. Once something discrediting is found, why cannot the data be spread, with the appropriately embarassing humor and commentary, nationwide the same way that the Joker Obama poster went viral? Once again, the individual has power of mass communication that was only the province of the state or major institutions just a few years ago.
This will provoke reaction. Actually we can be fairly sure that it will provoke over-reaction. The people in charge in this regime; many of whom were literally on the receiving end of the nightsticks of Daley’s police in Grant Park in 1968, are now the political heirs of Mayor Daley, as well as the ideological heirs of Nuon Chea. Now that they are at the levers of power, they will use the power of the State to clumsily try to enforce their will and conformity.
And that in turn will do more to harm their legitimacy. Decentralized, original, as Glen Reynolds says, “an army of Davids” slipping between the cracks of the walls of the citadel; can bring it about. What we will be doing is preparing the battlefield of the future. If electoral politics endures, we will be destroying their political future. If other means are brought to the fore, de-legitimizing the enemy can only help.
They will be reacting to us, and we will be well inside their OODA loop.
There is an old Royal Navy toast, “Confusion to the Enemy!”. I think it fits today.
Subotai Bahadur
Bob Smith: Yes, they are quite insane about this. When you ask them what they mean by “education’ they have no idea. They mumble something about “parsing policy debates” or something. I happen to be highly educated, at the best of schools and am older so I got through before all this PC crap and the “deconstruction” nonsense happened. There were still high standards then. By my lights these people are not educated at all. Merely indoctrinated and credentialed.
They have to have government. Either direct or indirect government money is they only way they can make any money at all. It is just a racket. That :education is just a gateway to government jobs, to the Nomenklatura. It was the same way in the USSR.
We see the truth of this whenever they try do something in the real world. Look at the Cash for Clunkers dabacle. Just a Classic example of “credetialised morons”.
Subotal: I get your point about the Rubicon crossing of passing this health care bill. I am not sanguine about the effectiveness of the Tea Parties in stopping this. We are about to see a media campaign unlike anything we have seen since ww2.
Here a stopgap solution might be several regional rallies where say a million or so turn out to each. Palin might be able to bring it off.
I do not see it happening though; it would need to start now.
I would not be surprised to see this bill pass by mid October. More has to be threatened than the loss of the blue dogs seats. They can always buy them off with “consulting jobs”. I doubt that Rahm was so stupid as to imagine that they would not lose their seat in all of this.
What need to be threatened is the party falling out of power, and not just in congress but on the state level as well.
Then they will blink
“”"”" Yes; Wretchard correctly notes the sniffy condescension of the left/Obama movement towards common folk; of course, we saw this in the campaign with Obama’s remark about bitter, clinging small town people. A couple days after his encounter with Joe the Plumber Obama leaned on a podium and yelled to a crowd, “What kind of plumber makes 200 thousand a year?” “”"”"
#58 das:
Another so-far hidden weakness of Obama’s is that his condescension extends beyond lower middle class white folks.
Does anyone still remember Jesse Jackson’s comment about “cutting Obama’s nuts off” for “talking down to black foks?”
Those remarks were immediately misinterpreted as coming from a peeved Jackson who resented being out of the limelight. It wasn’t just the MSM that was clueless, but many conservative commentators exasperated me with their blindness, because their judgment was clouded by a need to go after Jackson because they don’t like him, rather than realizing that Obama and his crowd are NOT part of the greater black experience, but aloof to it. On a similar note, Marion Barry warned the Washington DC city council not to sanction gay marriage, because he feared a “civil war” in DC. Barry was being an alarmist about a “civil war,” but he was clued into the fact that the general African America community is socially conservative, and sensitive to being disrespected. Let me connect another dot: The passage of Prop 8 in California, the most liberal of the large states, and the most liberal in its tolerance of gay lifestyles of any state, AND a state that went heavily for Obama, should be a thunderous reminder to the leftist elite that they don’t have a lot of their base on board on a number of crucial issues. Talk down to that base, ignore them, insult them further by lumping them all together, and you open up an aditonal front of dissent and resistance.
One battleground will be every local Registar of Voters. I’ve been thinking that local citizens groups should put public pressure for audits of the voters rolls – when did you last purge the dead and the people who moved away? How do you check for fraud in new registrants?
State law provides the framework but local exposure of how those work in practice would be invaluable.
Even the pushback that such a proposal would receive would be a useful political marker and an eye-opener for many citizens.
Local bi-partisian support for such an audit might be obtainable is one included the question of how easy is it to legitimately register and vote.
The liberals have been active in this issue for years and we’ve played a pretty lousy game of defense. Time to take the offensive of the integrity of the ballot.
re above mention of AFL-CIO chief assuming chair at the board of New York Fed directors –
with al due apolgies for unreadable turgidity, pls let me drop this in as a long quickie, it’s way off in the weeds, but 5G doctrine says repeat it, & maybe now a year later there’s less event-clog in the channels now than then.
Does anything strike you as odd about the Eliot Spitzer Affair? Were the optics a little ‘off’? Just briefly: what if Cassano (see link above) was on a mission to do exactly what he did do (and now characterizes as ‘a mistaken strategy’) ?
The question would be, how did he get to where he could do it? What if there as a guy named Hank Greenberg, founder & CEO of AIG, in the way?
What if Elliot Spitzer’s unique & controversial (saved from identification as a ‘one-off’ via prior troubling attacks on other prominent ‘outsider’ wall-streeters such as Grasso and Langone?) removal from AIG of Hank Greenberg had been done in order to get an agent named Cassano into the one place in the entire universe where an agent could, using tools fashioned a decade ago by (then Clintonite Treasury deputy, now Obama’s head regulator) Gensler, engineer a timed bubble-pop, complete with panic-inducing surprise hidden amplitudes (see mkts, bank stocks, Sept 2008, uptic, insider naked shorters scot-free), of Fannie & Freddie (which had gone into hyperdrive –most of the damage compressed into about 18 months of 40:1 ninjas and liar loans –about when Spitzer took out Greenberg), in the precise window where it could
1) guarantee a Dem 2008 election,
2) saddle the prior admin with the first ‘he started it’ bailout,
3) insure that the new admin would have a perfect crisis with which to attack the international left’s deepest target: the interrelated global power of the USA Dollar & economy (meaning its military/diplomatic/moral power),
4) and create such a financial, monetary, and fiscal federal debt crisis that the only way out would be to centralize and federalize so much American power that no other domestic alternative could ever again be viable?
(jeez, that was a long question)
So anyway, would the insiders then think to muddy what must have appeared to them as a glowing neon vector back to them, then think to –naaaah –we just have to accept that the Governor of the State of New York liked his ho’s & got caught.
anyhoo, don’t say this is all nertz until after you read the Cassano link above.
Note the oddity of Cassano’s ‘behavioral change’ at a certain point in time –how he became dictatorial, mercurial, scary, to his organization –dangerous to question, IOW –the danger being that of losing out on the sudden pyroclastic cash flow in their pockets due to Cassano’s mind-boggling leveraged gambles into Credit Default Swaps –the instrument that Mr Gensler had specifically deregulated in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. yes, it’s all too crazy to believe there was any thread running thru all this –it’s just too unstable and easily busted –but then you remember, heck, it only had to last a couple years, then the election and the crash would blow it all into the background. Even tho that background had created the foreground, what the hell, if ya got the media, and the WH and congress, what’s to worry?
Luddy #80
That question are difficult; way – as an OBject of our distant affections once said – above my pay grade…try to remember: most of us aren’t as smart as you…
cheers
D
(since letters on the page – or screen – tend to dull literalness – the above was written as affectionate kidding)
das/81; LOL –yes –it’s like some long bad dream, it can’t really BE like all that, it’s really gonna be over any minute now when the alarm clock rings and i wake up in the good ole USA.
In political warfare short of actual war, the main force units are political parties and their organizations. We do not have such an organization as the Institutional Republican party at best is the equivalent of the Vichy military alongside the Wehrmacht in France 1940-44.
With respect, Subotai, I disagree with your assessment that the present GOP can’t act as a “main force unit” in the struggle.
I once was a member of my county GOP Exec committee. Since last spring, I’ve been attending Tea Parties and Town Halls, but no GOP involvement. Recently, however, after no participation for almost 10 years, I attended a county GOP luncheon. The speakers were leading Republican legislators in my state (yes, yes, POLITICIANS, if you will). They are latching onto the anger and energy of tea parties and town halls — big time. They are making the cause their own, mouthing our slogans. Never mind that, like the French in the American Revolution, they will need to be watched at the end of the war. They are slowly coming around to adding their not inconsiderable money and mailing lists and energy to the fight. Because they see an opportunity.
I haven’t given the GOP money in ten years. In the old days, they used to train hunting dogs by withholding water. I think these dogs are gonna hunt.
Das: In reference to Obama being handled.
I think his policies are being “handed” out with out passing through his brain or his hands. This would explain in part why he doesn’t seem to know much about what’s in them.
Why some many of them have financial pay off to buddies. Soros has scored pretty big lately. The Brazil thing comes to mind. He just may be the worlds biggest sock puppet.
Subotai Bahadur @75…
A database of shame is THE place to start.
Said database to include unflattering photos and artwork…
And their CV…
And their cronies… connections — connections.
Grafters of the grifters…
Notable quotes…
////
BTW it appears that the terrible economy of Las Vegas is making Harry a weak Reid.
It may be instructive to know how Conservatism is being portrayed by the other side. I came across this website by way of researching the Apollo Alliance and following a link. The website is called “Campaign for America’s Future” and it is all so progressive. Under “Our Work” one of the subheadings deals with “The Big Con” in which it is explained that not only is it the case that “conservatism has failed” but even more of an indictment, “conservatism can not live up to its promise…”
If you ask me, the above is representative of a classic case of projection. But I’ll let those interested investigate and come to their own conclusions.
http://www.ourfuture.org/thebigcon
Mongoose, I’m in Sonoma County, California, an hour north of San Francisco. True ‘liberal’ country, by most standards.
Yet the folks I’ve spoken with, and the voices I’m hearing in tv reports, in editorials, in bars, etc who are shocked at what’s happening are self-identifying as independents and democrats. Folks here are pissed that neither party seems to listen (especially the dems), and that far-leftists have hijacked all aspects of our government. A lot of the folks who voted for Obama really didn’t ‘read the fine print’, they voted for good ol’ hope and change. It’s anecdotal, but around this county, the Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers can still be seen, yet a large number of obama bumperstickers have quietly disappeared…
BUDDY numba 8 zero.
my man i done tryed ta get da scent ub your nuba 8-oh but I be eatin down in da bog wit Ms GingerTater and hur friend Ms MerkinTater.
Weez tried and done ried ta make it be sense but I gotz ta say Miztah Buddy dat since I had dat last batch ‘o corn light’n and dat hit with da Michelin tire on dat trick I ain;t rack’n so gud as i usta.
say can you just repeat what you done wrote but make it easy?
we luvs ya Buddy
# 83 Salt Lick
Just curious, what part of the country are you in? Here in Colorado, the Republican party desires nothing other than the approval of the Democrats. They are at war with Conservatives here, willingly giving up a US Senate seat to keep a Conservative from running [2004], the counting of votes at our state convention whenever a Conservative is running for a statewide office is worthy of a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, I have seen them boo a disabled SF veteran of Iraq [yeah, he was for Ron Paul, but it was during the 15 second "speech" you used to nominate yourself for a national delegate slot and he had said nothing offensive. I am far from a Paulista, but his people in Colorado had followed the rules, and were following the rules at the convention.][2008], and they tried to oust my own incumbent congressman who I’ve mentioned before as a staunch opponent of liberals, RINO’s, and now all of Obama’s financial insanity and replace him with someone whose platform and acceptance speech included a promise to “reach across the aisle and work with the majority Democrats” [2008]. Our last Republican governor led the successful effort to suspend our Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights for 5 years [2005], and the Republicans will be pushing for its repeal from our state constitution in the next legislative session, taking the heat for the majority Democrats.
And they think that the reason Colorado is now a ‘purple’ state is because Republicans are perceived as too conservative and we have to act more like Democrats.
I hope your state party has a higher testosterone count than mine, and that of the national party which will also sacrifice seats to keep Conservatives out.
If the votes are counted honestly in 2010, Republicans will pick up seats, because they are the opposition. This does not mean that the opposition to Obama will be proportionally more effective, because those who are willing to fight are a small minority of the candidates. But you take what you can and fight electorally as long as it remains possible.
In our case, it is not wise to trust collaborators.
Subotai Bahadur
I would disagree.
This is not 5G warfare. It’s an old, old struggle between the elites and the populists, the “Born Fighting” “Celtic” strain in America, and the “Anglo” (think the New England aristocracy, from the Bushes to Kennedys).
The aristocrats have on their side tremendous, staggering sums of money, the media, Blacks, Hispanics, and younger women (who yearn for aristocratic rule). On the other side, as Wretchard notes, there is the populists, who are essentially leaderless and now deeply angry and radicalized. With Seniors now absolutely splitting from Dems, a historic change, and fighting literally for their LIVES.
Dem Senators and Congressmen (links at Hotair and Ace of Spades) admit openly to Townhalls that Seniors must accept deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and much less benefits, to give benefits to Hispanic and Black youngsters. In many cases, people who are not even citizens and only recently entered the country illegally.
This is a combination of the old, old brutal spoils warfare taken to it’s logical conclusion (overt population replacement, i.e. “duty to die” from Richard Lamm) and is only going to get WORSE.
For every escalation by Obama, there will be a matching escalation by distributed, leaderless forces. Including publicizing nasty secrets (such as the ugly incident with Dodd and Teddy Kennedy groping and assaulting a waitress in 1990 while drunk) previously hidden (link on Ace of Spades) or challengers to previously safe incumbents or open discussion (as in the Atlanta Mayor’s race) of how political figures claim offices for certain racial or ethnic groups to deny them to the majority population of this country. In hard, nasty times. This is not an “elegant” fight of OODA loops, it is a political knife fight and one with the people against the elite. Squarely. It will be hard, brutal, and when it’s done, America will either be ruled by a hereditary aristocracy like Cuba, or a new populism will destroy all the existing institutions and remake them anew.
The Cold Civil war has turned hot.
Jefe
I’m also in Sonoma County. Unfortunately, I do not see what you do. Still tons of OB stickers, and local support.
Hope ur correct, but fear ur are overly optomistic.
It is not in my nature to allow myself to be controlled by another person and beyond my comprehension why the left is so willing to allow others to control their lives. I just don’t get it.
Yes, I submit to laws I don’t always agree with, but I do that for financial reasons. Getting oneself arrested costs money for bail, for lawyers, for job losses, etc.
Is it just immaturity on the left that makes them so susceptible to the idea that someone else should rule their every move or is it hubris on their part that makes them think they are smarter and better able to dictate my decisions. Because if it is the latter, I think they are in for one rude awakening.
Some of the “dumbest” people I know are MBAs and PhDs. Sure they know their own subjects, but their life experience is nearly non-existent. The smartest woman I’ve ever known had only an 8th grade education. It is amazing how well equipped one becomes to deal with what life throws at you when you have this little education and are left a widow at age 27 with 6 children under the age of 9 to provide for. She’s 88 now and I asked her a couple of weeks ago what she thought of the gov’t take over of health care. She was always feisty, but never salty in her language. Her answer, “f**k them and the horse they rode in on, no young whippersnapper is going to tell me how to live or when to die. I’ve paid my dues and I intend to live my life, not their idea of what my life should be.” She was busy packing for a senior bus trip with her travel club about to leave from Calif. to a week in Branson, Mo. I then asked if her friends were supporting the protests. Her answer, “damn right we do, and if they don’t stop calling us names, we might just keep heading East and march on Washington.”
I can promise you, you don’t want to mess with this woman or her friends. I know. She was for 32 years, my mother-in-law.
Wretchard said: “Anyone, I think, who truly imbibes in the spirit of 5G must accept that he at most can only play his part.”
Well, I’m playing my small part and loving it. Don’t mistake this for undue optimism. Just a recognition that it ain’t over till it’s over and in the meantime we all do what we can. Here’s some info about how the political winds are blowing in Wisc. Things are moving VERY fast.
Wisconsin is generally considered a “purple” state (a toss-up between Repubs and Dems). It voted against Bush in 2000 and 2004 by narrow margins. It went for Obama in 2008 by a larger margin. The recent Dem tide has given Wisc. a Dem governor (Jim Doyle) and Dem control (just barely) of both houses of the state legislature. There are two recent political events which may indicate just how strong the Tea Party/Town Hall movement is in this “purple” state. And presumably Wisc. is not the only place to experience these types of phenomena.
1. Dem Governor Jim Doyle will NOT run for re-election in 2010. It is highly unusual for incumbent politicians to give up their office unless they are facing major scandal or real personal problems such as illness or family difficulties. This is not the case with Gov. Doyle. Rather, he is facing the wrath of voters for turning Wisc. into a Midwestern version of California, with out-of-control government spending bankrupting the state. He has read the writing on the wall and doesn’t like his chances for 2010. Just a few months ago, as an incumbent, an early supporter of then popular Obama and sitting on top of a huge campaign war chest, he was considered a shoo-in for re-election. Any Repub challenger was viewed as a sacrificial lamb. Now, Repub Scott Walker is the front runner and Dems are looking for a candidate who might have a chance.
2. Dem Senator Russ Feingold is starting to sound like a Repub. Yesterday, at a Town Hall in northern Wisc. (see the full article here
http://www.lakelandtimes.com/print.asp?SectionID=9&SubSectionID=9&ArticleID=10027 )
Sen. Feingold (also up for re-election in 2010) was moving away from Obama and towards the right so fast that folks in the area may have heard a sonic boom. The headline quote, with regard to Obamacare, was
“Nobody is going to bring a bill before Christmas, and maybe not even then, if this ever happens…”
Feingold went on to say that he wouldn’t take a position on healthcare until he sees an actual bill brought up for a vote in the Senate. He also took a swipe at federal funding for abortion. On a separate topic, “climate change” (formerly “global warming”), he indicated that Cap & Trade was going nowhere unless India and China sign on. (BTW – there is no chance that India and China would agree to Cap & Trade.) When one of the most reliable Lefties in the Senate starts to sound like a Repub, there is something very big going on. And he doesn’t even have a serious opponent at this stage of the race – just a good guy from Watertown, with no money and no name recognition.
#90 Whiskey
YMMV, but I consider 5G warfare as a tactical framework for how to fight. It can be used in a number of conflicts, including the one you posit. OODA loop can apply to everything from knife fights [it is a good thing to have an enemy trying and failing to react to your moves because you have gone outside his expectations and inside his reaction times] to strategic nuclear stand-offs. I think that both you and Wretchard have ahold of different aspects of the reality of the situation.
Subotai Bahadur
What’s the key to a functional democracy, one that doesn’t devolve into two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch? The secret isn’t majority rule, but minority veto. In a successful democracy, government doesn’t do what 51% of the public wants, it does what 80% or 90% of the public can live with. The key is that no significant segment of the public feels so left out or put upon that it has to fight the system. Without authoritarian rule and widespread oppression, voluntary participation is a necessity, and you only get that if a supermajority decides it can live with the government. The best policy isn’t the one the most people want, but the one that nearly everybody can accept.
This matters in two ways with respect to the Left today. First, it is the reason their support is collapsing. After decades of incremental movement within the “can live with it” envelope, they’ve finally burst through and gone into “can’t live with it” territory. We may have preferred a low tax rate, but we could live with a moderately high one. We can’t live with the rates that will be necessary to pay for Obama’s grandious plans. We may have preferred honest politicians, but we could live with some amount of graft so long as it remained small compared to the overall economy. We can’t live with major industries nationalized and handed over to political cronies or with hundreds of billions in taxpayer money going to well-connected fatcats via unaccounted bailouts. We might have preferred a free-market solution to health care costs, but we could live with the inefficiencies created by existing government interference. We (literally) can’t live with Zeke ‘Kervorkian’ Emmanuel and his Death Panels.
For years the Radical Left was something we could live with, even if most of us would rather not have it. But now they’ve finally become something we can’t live with any longer. Yes, some people will say it was always destined to be that way and any belief we could live with it before was delusional, but the truth is whatever direction things were headed, it wasn’t until recently that they finally crossed that line. The TEA parties are the backlash as a sizeable minority stand up to say they can’t live with what Obama wants.
So the simple thing would be for the Left to pull back and feel out the edges of the envelope, operating as close to the boundary as possible but staying within what we can live with. But they can’t do that. The second thing to realize is that the Left has radicalized too much of it’s own base. A good 25+% of the public have been convinced they cannot live with anything less than the authoritarian socialism of Obama. These are the folks Subotai referrs to as TWANLOCs. They’re now exercising their own minority veto. They’re the reason Obama can’t pull the “Public Option” off the Health care debate table.
So, Democrats can’t go forward out of the envelope, but neither can they pull back within the envelope, because they’ve created a situation where there is no longer any position supported by a supermajority of Americans. This is essentially the situation the country found itself in prior to the Civil War. The Whig Party tore itself apart trying to find common ground, and the ripples of that split the the Democrats too. By the time Lincoln was elected, there was literally nothing he could do to peacably keep the Union together. No matter how conciliatory he tried to be to the slave states, the very act of taking the oath of office led to sucession.
Are we quite that far down the road? I don’t know, but we may be.
aaron writes: “my family was volga deutsch, an ethnicity that no longer exists”
Except in North Dakota, of course, where if I’m not mistaken they are the state’s largest or next to largest ethnic group, even though the Norwegians get all the attention.
Grasslands. Flat. Just like home!
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”
And that is the reason why American-style democracy is doomed to eventual failure. The second sentence of the Declaration is pure, unadulterated, grade AAA+ bullshit. All men are not equal, never have been and never will be as long as Homo sapiens endures.
I believe that Albert Einstein became an American citizen. According to the statement above, it would appear that he was equal to any randomly-chosen wino dragged off the street; at least in terms of how much influence he should have over the choice of American government.
For democracy in any of its forms to endure, it needs some sort of qualification for voting rights. I favour Heinlein’s answer.
Uncle: Yea I know the area. I lived in the Bay Are for a decade. Went to Stanford and taught at Berkeley for a bit.
That was deep blue country then, Sonoma, I mean. Well that is reassuring, what you say. Might not be a place for inroads for conservatives or the GOP, but perhaps people can understand something about the Democrats. We need to come up with practical teaching points here. None too doctrinaire for a place like Sonoma. Really, I am rather shocked to hear what you say, but I quite believe you of course.
I live in NYC. It has never been more Left wing. I do see a little buyer remorse, but not much really. Of course, here they will not let on–you have to pry it out of people.
I really think it is just starting to sink in how people have been had by the Wall St. crowd. Lots of cognitive dissonance here.
My feeling is that there will be no strong movement away from Obama or the hard left Dems here. You should have heard the ruckus on the streets the night he got elected. Never heard so much honking in my life. You would have thought it was V-day.
My angle now is: “Oh they are both the same, the GOP and the Democrats”, and I do get some takers on that.
Sonoma is a wonderful place though. I had friends up there and would go up there all the time. Used to boat on the Russian River too. Not a bad place to wait out the revolution.
Well thanks for filling me in.
aaron writes: “my family was volga deutsch, an ethnicity that no longer exists”
Except in North Dakota
Sorry for going OT, but my husband’s family are Volga Deutsch. Just wondered if you knew there is a big library in Lincoln, Nebraska with the genealogical/historical record of most of the Volga families who came to the US. My husband’s family and friends from there settled in Colorado. Check online under Germans from Russia for even more info.
Okay sorry for the interruption, back to regular programming.
As a once-upon-a-time hippie, the irony of it all makes me slap my forehead. The street radicals of the sixties and their progeny have become the corrupt machine. They are every bit of what they raged against in the sixties and seventies. And now, we conservatives are “taking it to the streets” and “giving power to the people” with 5th generation warfare. Amazing.
Ed, I think what we have here in Sonoma County are Americans who believe in our country, but who are socially liberal. To a point.
There is a fringe minority who are very loud and very connected- the same groups who protested the war on the street corner of Healdsburg show up for the protests in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol, for example, as well as for the urban growth boundary meetings, where they’re always ANTI-growth, ANTI-business, ANTI-everything. I know because I go to ‘support the Troop’ rallies and to planning commission meetings, and see them, KNOW them, and have seen their email agendas.
I know who’s who.
It’s always the same core group, but by going to different towns it seems as if there are more of them than actually are.
And they get the press.
They do not represent Sonoma County; they represent the fringe left.
And yes, there are many obama bumperstickers, but significantly less over these last few months.
And again, what I’m hearing about townhalls and tea parties is that people of all stripes (except the fringe left) are very concerned, and mostly fed up with being ignored.
Mongoose @ #2,
RE “Drivel:” Haque’s “revalue facts by establishing sources of authority” leads him to the same dead end that Postmodernists’ interpretational bent leads them. If any fact’s verity is derived from its messenger’s credentials, all ya gotta do is primp the message-carrier’s dossier to sell abject nonsense…then the cred’s themselves come under question…it’s a well-worn road.
Panamanian strong man Manuel Noriega wore a chest full of medals, but not one of them reflected a shining intellect. College coolies, seeking debt for “degrees,” please take note.
Luddy @ 80,
“Unreadable turgidity?” How about a T-bone with a baked potato, pile of butter and a side of green beans?
It’s funny how minds can think alike…
With Eliot Spitzer’s return to the New York political scene recently, I got to wondering whether any piccadillos matter anymore when media is willing to cover for ya. I mean, we’ve got Marion Barry smoking crack on film, and he’s been puffed, primped and re-posed for election…why not Spitzer. (What happened to DeLorean?) Afterall, all Spitzer did is pay for sex (a legal commodity in the state of NY, not a contraband item), and if Bill Clinton can soil a blue dress and still make millions in speaking fees with only the AK bar slapping his wrist (prolonged flagellation with a wet noodle would’ve been more punishing), why shouldn’t an NYC politico like Spitzer similarly sanitize? The way to redemption has been well marked by those before him, why not just follow the well-worn yellow-brick road to reelection?
El Jefe @ 87,
I’m seeing the reverse in Flagstaff’s environs (the only county in AZ that voted Gore in 2000). I was hard pressed to find an Obama bumper sticker in Flag prior to the election. Sure, there were a couple here and there. Flagstaff can be summed-up as “poverty with a view,” but it is a college town after all, so I expected to see a lot more than I did. But, sometime ’round Spring this year the O-stickers started to proliferate. It seems many waited until after the inauguration to display their adoration the Won.
Same thing with the O! videos at Sam’s club. ‘Round May and early June, the shelves were flush with Obamemorabilia. Could it be more of those “grass-roots” efforts we’re hearing about?
(Funny thing is, ’round beginning of July, all the O! dvd’s disappeared off of Sammie’s shelves. Maybe Axelrod sensed we were approaching “burnout” on the O!, and went to ground. I know I was.)
Mark,
“Grasslands. Flat. COLDER THAN TIBETAN HELL IN THE WINTER. Just like home!” Fixed that for you.
You left something very important out and I didn’t want you to miss it. The cold does have its advantages: as once was written in “National Geographic” about North Dakota, “the cold tends to keep the ‘riff-raff’ out.”
I’m sure it does, but the price isn’t cheap…
JMH #95:
That is the best description I’ve read to date on the state of this country and the opposition right now.
I admit that I was never exposed to many democrats/leftists in my life. Republican family, military wife, all my friends right of center to bordering on libertarian. One thing they all seemed to have in common was a reluctance to ever get involved with anything that might end up being a public spectacle. They were raised on the principle that you don’t air your dirty laundry in public. They also had a healthy distrust regarding the honesty of politicians and all were fierce individualists who would rather do without than somehow end up in a government system. They believed in hard work and that merit should be the deciding factor for advancement in life. And to a person, they judged people on their character, not on artificial degrees of education, race, religion or ethnicity.
Like JMH pointed out, they were willing to go along to get along, but everyone has a tipping point.
I was reluctant to attend my first Tea Party. It felt somewhat unseemly, something that smacked of what I despise, the anti-war protests. I didn’t want to be like one of those. But, I went, rationalizing that as a blogger, the least I could do is take some pictures. My son was even less eager to go, but I insisted. It was an incredible day and we both came away committed. Just seeing, talking, and listening to others in my own community and hearing that they were as angry or more so than I was, was empowering.
At one point, I was sitting on a bench with a 22 year old guy on one side and a 76 year old woman on the other. They were both on the same page and making plans to meet later in the week to combine their call lists. The older woman exclaimed, “I’m having the time of my life. Should have done this years ago. Go Grey Power” I was sitting there thinking, “yeah me too.” Unfortunately, years ago for me meant I was busy working, raising two kids, and trying to figure out how to be both Mom and Dad while my husband was gone on long deployments year after year. But isn’t that why the protesting groups are going to continue to build their power – these are people hardened to life. They are the “been there done that” crowd. They’ve lived through all these “experiments” before, they remember the Cold War and the Soviet system, they remember the Carter years, their parents and grandparents have told them countless stories of living through the Great Depression or the horror of the FDR years. They haven’t been coddled and feminized and wimpified as the kids and grandchildren are now. They let the rope go slack for 40 years and now they are ready to tug it back nice and taut. From what I’ve seen briefly since April, if one or two weaken in their resolve, their are ten ready to take their place on that rope. Thousands upon thousands of individual leaders taking charge of themselves.
It is time the adults assert themselves and get back in charge!
right on, steveaz –if ya gotta be rolled offstage, better as an imminently forgivable red-blooded rogue than anything else by far. Spitzer himself looked kinda smug at the ritual apologia auto-duh-fey.
His “5G” defense strategy is simply yet another communications memes. And I use the term memes versus method because the leftist culture is all about communication and education. They are so convinced of the validity of their moral world view that they accept as a given fact that the only reason the masses don’t follow them is a lack of understanding, or a failure to get the messsage. Any concept that they could actually be on the wrong side of history, that their version of liberty enslaves all, is utterly lost on them.
And to Wretchard, with respects:
“That all efforts to “attack the base” will ultimately fail because a government by the people, of the people and for the people will never perish from the earth;”
Well, yes, but that is irrelevant. Many generations and lifetimes could suffer under the new state-ism, just as the pseudo-socialist (or more correctly fascist) policies of FDR and Johnson have largely survived over decades. My kids will suffer confiscatory FICA tax rates to pay for a Social Security insurance system, and they will likely never receive even a dollar for dollar return on their forced “investment”. That “government … by the people .. will never perish from the earth” is rather meaningless, if my kids and grandkids live under leftist state-ism the rest of their lives, and decades pass (or perhaps even a revolution) before the left’s new statist status quo is turned back.
Ultimately every battle comes down to logistics, and the political Left has been consistently winning the battle of logistics. The Left mobilizes $Trillions of government dollars, government worker unions, left-leaning university professors, unionized schools, and even police, fire, and other emergency workers, along with the still dominant MSM to define and control a leftist national narrative. Conservatives use of the public internet technology is not a comparable counterweight. Neither does a grass-roots, “independent cell” style of organization ultimately win the battle. Al-Qaeda cannot win the battle against the logistically superior U.S.A. unless they can cut off our logistics via physical or political means. Conservatives can fight “5G”, but they cannot win 5G.
Logistics comes down to putting the right material in place in sufficient quality, at the right time. The left has an unbeatable advantage in logistics, i.e. their logistical lines route back to every American’s pocket book, and to every family’s school age child. Until some means has been found to DEFUND the left, conservatives will fight an uphill battle.
I don’t know the solution, but I would suggest the country needs:
* New accountability in government – no more omnibus bills, and no more voice-votes
* Outlaw civil service unions – “Public servants” cannot server two masters, either the union or the American people lose, and the public services employees will not vote against their personal economic interests.
* Sunset every tax law every two years, e.g. no tax law lasts longer than the congress that authorized it. Force representatives to account for every line of the tax code every two year, and every tax dollar they levy.
* School choice nation wide. Or at least (allowing for states rights), route every federal tax education dollar directly to the student’s parents, and fight the school choice battle state to state. DEFUND the education bureaucrats and teacher unions. REMOVE the centrally managed financial honey pot, and good schools will appear like clover across the national landscape.
* Defund government dollars to media of any kind.
Finally, I don’t buy the argument that the MSM’s influence has diminished due to conservatives effective use of the internet. The left has BOTH their “netroots” and the MSM and government dollars to carry on their fight. In fact, the Left has found the internet an effective medium for granting deniability to their political leaders. Obama’s campaign can attack a pregnant high school girl from Alaska, or a blue collar plumber from Ohio, while Obama chides those who attack them. The slanders remain unrepudiated. The answer to those claiming a diminished influence of the MSM is pages long, e.g. Bork, Bush (draft evasion, privileged military assignments, late “hit” drunk driving charges in the 2000 campaign), Cheney, Palin, Palin’s teenage daughter, etc.. The MSM and netroots can still destroy anyone they target.
Many of the left’s “best and brightest” minds have jobs paid for by American tax payer funds, either directly or indirectly. Comparing the Democrat left’s logistical support vis-a-vis conservative’s internet-driven-grassroots is a joke; there’s no comparison. Conservatives may win skirmishes and even battles at the fringes, but the main war is losing effort unless we go after their logistical network and material (i.e. $$$).
Regards,
OldSalt
A good 25+% of the public have been convinced they cannot live with anything less than the authoritarian socialism of Obama. These are the folks Subotai refers to as TWANLOCs. They’re now exercising their own minority veto. They’re the reason Obama can’t pull the “Public Option” off the Health care debate table. -JMH
Good analysis, but regarding Obama, nothing in his history would indicate that he’s merely an opportunist politician like Clinton. His radical church, his left-wing contacts (not just contacts, but close friends), and his life work (Acorn, education) all point hard left.
Obama will not cease until single-public provider is the way American healthcare is delivered, because he believes in it. He’s a true believer in his brand of Socialism (again, actually more like Fascism). He intends to implement his priorities, and the fact that his left wing has an electoral gun to his back is to his ADVANTAGE; he can use it to beat “moderate” Democrats into submission.
Remember, the Democrats (until 24 hours ago) had 60 votes in the Senate. They still do (with the V.P.). There is nothing Obama cannot do with the support of his own party, and he intends to move America hard left.
wretchard, you seen to credit this structuralist litcrit gibberish. now, I like structuralist litcrit gibberish as well as the next guy, and on a hot summer day I might go full bore pomo on you at any moment. But, politically, I think this is nothing but hoohah.
Gosh, was it only 2004 when linguist George Lakoff started in on this theme, that if the left just used better keywords, images, similies, homilies, then their ideas would win in debate?
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?TTL=&ATH=george+lakoff&WRD=&PRC=&FMT=&AGE=&USRI=1&CID=&PBL=
I used to like Lakoff, before that.
WHAT IF the problem with the left is that their ideas are incoherent and unworkable and on even cursory inspection any rational and politically neutral person would reject them?
WHAT IF maybe 1/3 of the electorate is simply against anything that is proposed, good or bad?
It simply comes down to the left, far more than the right, believes they should – SHOULD – impose their superior ideas on the hoi polloi for the universal and transcendent good. OK, on the right there is a small element of crazed religious types, but that’s a religious position, not a political one.
I don’t think the right’s use of new tech is magical, I think it just facilitates a contentful discussion, and when that happens, the left loses.
Fletcher (97): Sorry, but the very same T Jefferson who wrote those words, also wrote (quite a bit later), “Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others.” Letter to Henri Gregoire, February 25, 1809.
That, rather than ability or talent, is the sense in which Jefferson meant those earlier words, too.
OldSalt, one minor point: the Vice President may only cast a vote in the Senate if and only if there is a tie. Mr. Biden is not their 60th vote.
Fletcher:
What was meant by that was that all men are born politically equal. It was equality before the law and at the ballot box, and nothing more which concerned our founders. Jefferson was certainly not making any assertion by any means about all men’s abilities being equal nor was he the least concerned with equalities of outcomes. He lived in Continental America, for heaven’s sake. It is most certain that this founding principle was prompted by the hereditary aristocracies of Europe, where there were literally different court systems for nobles and commoners, where a commoner had little recourse against a noble, and where even universal male suffrage had yet to be established. Jefferson’s meaning is obvious and hardly mysterious or sentimental. And he was, of course, right.
There is still considerable misunderstanding about this matter.
The whole notion of the founders was indeed that men have different abilities and potentials, and the system must protect both the extraordinary from the depredations of the Mob, and the electorate from the the tyranny of the extraordinary.
So you misunderstand Jefferson’s meaning.
The founding principle and virtue of the American order is Liberty, not Equality. Equality is a political means to an moral end. This separates America from almost all other modern political systems (though there are strong ties to the Liberal traditions England, of course). You would better direct your scorn at the French Revolution’s notion of egalitarianism and solidarity. These are the folks that have the pollyannish notions about the equality of men (provided that you are not English, as well you know).
In America it was assumed that extraordinary men would rise, and this was a good and necessary thing, but that there need to be checks and balances. We desire neither king or hereditary gentry (at least that was the case until the New Dealers came along). There once was an America saying: “Clogs to clogs in three generations”.
Now, of course, the Democrats of the last 60 years or so have increasingly moved to the European notions of these matters. They most certainly want an hereditary aristocracy, of sorts, and they mean, oddly enough, to use “equality” to get it. This is just the sort of thing which flummoxes us hereabouts on BC.
(Oh, and fear not, Einstein had much more influence than the average voter. Far too much I should say given all that dread pacifism of his after the war. He was a regular poster boy of the fellow travelers of the center left, though unwittingly so I suspect. They could scarcely keep his mug out of the papers there for a while in the 1950′s and 1960′s.)
At the very least Haque’s article is a leftist’s non ad hominem attempt to understand what is going on with conversatives. For a long time now I’ve thought that the sticking point between right and left in the USA is this: conservatives can understand the left but the left cannot understand conservatives.
Does anyone out there know of any reasoned analysis of the right by a leftist? I’ve never seen one. They all end up spluttering some version of “conservatives are mean and selfish.” The left is so very adept at invective and character assasination because they cannot marshall flat honest statement of what they believe. They don’t understand – or don’t want to see – what conservatives are about.
I’m a middled aged man without health insurance; I’m very interested in what the Democrats/left wants to do about health care but all I see and hear is their static & hysteria facing somewhat loud but concerned citizens. Meantime, I see a great opening for the blobish republican party to put forward some straighforward, workable, alternative proposals about health care…still waiting on that…
In many ways the Republicans are like the Spanish in their dust up with Napoleon. The Spanish Army (The Republican Party Machine) is totally ineffective against Napoleon’s Regulars (The Democrat Party Machine). However, the partisans redeem the war.
The tone of comment in this blog is becoming pretty darned scarifyin. Wouldn’t be surprised if snoops are not already taking names and snitching.
Does anyone know anything about OathKeepers.org? Their website has a list of ten mighty ambitious “We Won’t's” — definite Line-in-the-sand sorta stuff.
for instance…
. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”
Seems like it time to be fixin’ to number your buddies, and make sure the sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal are stored in a dry cellar.
Wikipedia article gives the exact proportions for gu npo wder, along with warnings about the dangers of manufacture.
Just for purposes of conversation, mind you. In any proper contest tween rebels and O federales, the old stuff would not be a realistic basis for arms anyhow.
MENE MENE TEKEL PARSIN
What I see in BC posts is a remarkable focusing over the course of several months, and even several years, of a critique of liberal political philosophy and politics. This focus parallels a similar development among major commentators. Goldberg’s ‘Liberal Fascism,’ for example, has provided renewed attention to the illiberal goals of liberalism.
Action is important. But knowledge comes first, resulting in an illumination: “So that’s what the liberals are up to, and that’s why what they want to do is likely to harm themselves, others, my family, and me.” After knowledge comes voting. Admittedly the left likes to rig some voting, but no amount of rigging is likely to turn the tide of a major swing to the conservatives/Republicans, especially if the memes trend that way. The left will lose heart, and numbers, if the trends continue as they are going.
Michael Savage says that liberalism is a mental disease. Perhaps it is even more a false religion (and even more accurate to say that societal mental disease results from false religion/belief.) BC has provided much good discussion of the faith-based nature of liberalism. Mainline protestants have declined, but the church liberals have morphed into political liberals with an updated verion of Luther’s manifesto: faith (in human perfectabilty) alone, works (funded by taxpayers) alone, word (statist-friendly media) alone.
Because Ted Kennedy seemed like the truest of true liberal believers (though I never knew him to give anything other than other peoples’ money to anything), all of his sins were forgiven. Already we see the haloed iconography of Teddy that we have already seen of Obama. Just as Wrichard said: for liberals virtue comes from having the right beliefs.
They do not represent Sonoma County; they represent the fringe left.
Until Sonoma’s Democrat voters disown them by voting against politicians who want to implement their policies, they do indeed represent Sonoma County. It’s a classic leftist trick: savoring the fruit while cursing the vine.
JJRedfan: Yup, I’ve been an OathKeeper for a while now. Anyone who is current or veteran military, or current or retired law enforcement, ought to go to oathkeepers.org and find out about the group, and join up. The oath we all took didn’t have an expiration date. It’s still in effect and it means something to a very large group of us.
Holy crap. I read about 1/4 of this thread, and I’ve gotta bookmark it so I can come back later and read the rest. I’ve been reading BC since about a couple of months after its inception and I haven’t missed a lot of posts and threads…and this may be the best one yet.
Bravo, Richard and everyone else. I’m clearly in the company of superiors.
I’m glad so many posters on this thread think that Americans are starting to be concerned about Obama and the political future of the United States.
I am very concerned. I believe Obama is a front man for socialist/fascist types who hate the United States and want to destroy this country.
I always look for signs of any awakening among my liberal family and friends, but all think that Obama is terrific and that we need government healthcare for everyone.
I just came from a party in Evanston, IL, where the people are generally wealthy liberals who don’t believe in “profits.” They believe in “non-profits.” Today they wanted to destroy the “profit-making” insurance companies and replace them with government health insurance.
Very depressing.
I don’t see any light on the horizon except what I read on Belmont Club and other free enterprise sites. Thank you posters who have some good news to report. I don’t want to live in a “socialist paradise.”
Promethea,
Evanston Illinois, still so devoted to human liberty.
How is the Women’s Christian Temperance Union doing these days?
For people interested in figuring out the question “Who sent you?” of the cipher we know as o… read about George Soros.
Back in Chicago I had a few dates with a very nice professor of meso american history who was a big fan of Rolling Stones. When the I-max movie of one of their concerts played at the Museum of Science and Industry (?) I went with her and was glad the seats had belts.
Seeing Mick Jagger in EXTREME CLOSEUP was daunting, but edifying.
The guy was doing his best prancing and wriggling and strutting like a Clark Street hooker. But all the while his eyes were clear and bright and watchful, taking in seemingly every detail of the whole business. You would never be able to see that in his eyes except in that sort of 40-foot high magnification. He seemed like a commander in the field, watching his lieutenants to see that his instructions were being carried out.
I learned some years later that Jagger had attended London School of Economics.
Sometimes it’s easy to dismiss all celebrities because so many of them are self-destructive idiots.
But London School of Economics does seem to have been the training crucible for a fair number of people who’ve managed to lever a pot of coins out of the exchequers of major governments.
G. Soros among them.
#121 Lifeofthemind . . .
The WCTU is Evanston’s joke, which gives it an eternally bad reputation. However, Evanston in the 21st Century is one of the most liberal of Chicago’s suburbs.
With all the close-mindedness the word “liberal” entails.
You know, Richard, it is really weird to see someone else quote my strategy and tactics almost verbatim.
It doesn’t take a lot of money or power of position or influence. All it it takes is an internet connection, a very broad knowledge base combines with synthetic thinking, plus a smattering of Game Theory.
It is very time consuming, though…ten years and two hundred thousand hours for one man to move the world…while using a PC as a lever…
Reagan was quite right, of course, It is astonishing how much you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.
What’s really amusing is that most of you won’t believe a word I’m saying, which means that I can keep doing what I’ve been doing for another ten years…
Social Singularity. keyword it with my name for another pov…
Charles Maurras took the view that one couldn’t be truly French if one were Protestant, Jewish, Freemason, of non-Latin ethnicity, or having the surname Monod. He saw France as a struggle between the monarchists who were truly French (embodied by the everyday Frenchman) and the “republican elites” who divided and conquered Catholic monarchist France through the power of the media.
Sound familiar?
E Pluribus Unum is not only the motto of the United States; it is what the United States of America ought to be. E Pluribus Unum is not merely some slogan to be debased by Obama’s propaganda machine; it is a statement that being American is not defined in a volkisch sense that has poisoned French and German politics.
Although I disagree with many policies promoted by the Obama administration, my fundamental disagreement with Barack Obama is the monarchism of those who worship him. His presidential campaign iconography is blatantly monarchist; it’s all about him rather than being about America. The United States of America is and must stay a republic, not a monarchy, and certainly not an oriental despotism.
Let’s not go down the same road as the authors of the Vichy regime. Let’s hold out our hands to those who would belatedly oppose the excesses of this present administration; let’s not lower ourselves to the level of early twentieth century French monarchists. Let’s not lower ourselves to the level of Barack Obama by portraying entire demographic groups, whether by race, religion, or sex, as class enemies.
If the majority of Jews voted for Obama, does that mean that Jews must necessarily have become permanent enemies of “white working class voters” alongside blacks, hispanics, and young women? Think about it. Aren’t a strong majority of Jews liberals, don’t a strong majority of Jews vote Democrat, and didn’t a strong majority of Jews vote for Obama? If one regards young women, blacks, and hispanics as part of an unholy alliance with “the elites”, it would be difficult not to add Jews to this list given how Jews tend to vote. And then, in the name of “Jacksonian democracy”, we would have an American mirror to the monarchism (or “integral nationalism”) of Charles Maurras and his many disciples from Action Française.
Opposing the latest dictates of the Obama administration is important. Still, why can’t we have an opposition focused upon creating an America that people from different walks of life can rally around? Why can’t we have an opposition that seeks to change our Census to one where people write down their identity as a “fill in the blank” rather than one where the federal government biases the choice by imposing its own categories?
We must fight for liberty. That means we must avoid the “integral nationalism” of French royalists, no matter how tempting such an option may appear to some people.
Just a quick observation from an uneddicated working stiff. Over the past week or two I sense here and elsewhere a minor but growing feeling of victory, or perhaps I should say we feel we are winning something, and as a result we’re assuming the health care bill will be rolled back. Personally I don’t think any victory-related emotions are in order. It’s too dangerous. By assuming we’ve “won,” we stop pushing back in order to resume our productive lives. Wrong, please, very wrong. What’s that line? “It’s not over ’til it’s over…” If there’s any chance at all, keep up the fight.
And FWIW as an aside to the above, personally I fear this evil bill will in fact become law, and so will the Cap and Trade, and maybe a few other things including Fairness Doctrine legislation. It’s what we do THEN, that we should also be planning for.
Anyway, my .02.
Thank you.
I came from the Soviet Union some 30 yrs ago and I assure you that about 80% of former Soviet Jews voted against Obama. “Primal fear” thats what we felt about him from the very beginning.
here here, Alexis.
Jews and blacks were integral to the Revolution –critical financing arranged by the new nation’s financier Haym Solomon for (congressional record says) “…money needed to carry on the war and later to save the emerging nation from financial collapse. Solomon advanced direct loans to the government and also gave generously of his own resources to pay the salaries of government officials and army officers.” South Carolina’s representative in the First Provisional Congress was Jewish.
And the African Americans who kept the farms running while the owners fought long years under George Washington –farmers and planters who formed much of the yeomanry & officer corp and would otherwise have necessarily been tethered closely to home, planting & harvesting & managing the livestock –and likely the less revolutionary and the more Tory as farming so needs safe fields in a stable politics.
our message needs to be deep and comprehensive –to bitch-slap identity groups who lean Democratic is to drive them further away and create more the white-power party that we should resist on all grounds including the practical. If it must look like such, let it not be for want of our efforts otherwise.
The challenge is to find the words for the message that the old Steinbeckian workingman’s Democratic Party of old –the Lincoln Brigade Democrats –are allied in name only to the current leadership of the party. The hi-jacked party.
Hey:
http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed1/idUSN27328207
Where is the outrage? where is the GOP?
We are now be run by blantant communists. They are not even try to cover it over one little but.
Shows you what they have planned for the rest of us. It is really too much.
Is there a decent Democrat left?
Obama has such utter contempt for this country.
I tell you. Something has got to give. There is an outrage almost every day.
The Democrats have got to back down.
mongoose/129; –so, we’re now officially allied to Castro, Chavez, and Putin? Great, who do we invade –Canada? What do we subvert –the Moon?
luddy barsen,
The moon belongs to everyone.
The best things in life are free.
Hollywood got there first.
Beating my earlier point to death about Free Will versus the Inquisition or Facts versus Haque I found a couple of video links for my blog. Everyone should go watch Bronowski’s Ascent of Man series and even better Eugene Weber’s The Western Tradition if you can find them. Today’s laugh fact is that the excellent Weber series was funded by Annenberg, the same outfit that gave Ayers and Obama money to play with.
Credit to Sam Cooke for the lyric in #131.
LotM/132; -the original Annenberg was conservative (as was the original Pew). It seems that the non-profits are vulnerable to takeover –thru the do-good doorway.
“Everybody should have everything!” Yes, but….
(shrug) it’s …just…too…hard…to explain.
I recall back during the heighth of the boom, when unemployment was 4% and growth was about that, that the left began advancing the concept of relative poverty.
It means (like communism’s “false consciousness” means) “You can’t win”.
Amit Green @ various:
I am going to address this in stages, you are correct about some things but wrong overall because you miss the real points.
Yes, both flavors of CITIZENS are just that. People are generally good. But there is that other percentage of evil basterds. It is the ones who control the real reins of power who are not.
Individuals can get together and make compromises. That happens all the time in city councils, school boards, etc. What you miss is the transition to the national stage is a whole other ball game. The entrance ticket is MONEY. Big money. Lots of money. Corrupting levels of money. That fact makes the two different.
True if you consider individuals. When it gets to national stage philosophies then it becomes different. At that level, they are all the same. Why? See above. Money, money, money. Because of that the two sides then become just part of the same machine. They then become indistinguishable. They then have to espouse ideas and outlooks that inimical and counter to any better natures of individuals. The political machines then become part of the same fabric. And that fabric is corrupt to the very core. Mark Levin calls them Statists. At this level there is not one iota of difference between the Democrat or the Republican. Just the speed at which they wish to implement bigger and bigger government.
You miss something here. If the world was functioning as normal then it is not a fight but a process, a polity. But it is not a world functioning as normal. The Statists have gone “All-In” now they have control and a willing majority. They have not had this for a long, long time where the radical arm of any party has the majority. The radicals have arrived and they are doing their best to ruin the Republic.
As many here have said, it is long past the time when we can hope to avoid drastic actions to save what we have. Also, the economic ruination is not done. The recent suckers rally in the NYSE is just that. Look for the third leg of the crash – the one that will allow Cloward-Piven to operate. It is coming soon, I believe.
Das @ 69:
I disagree. The Won is just as he said he was in his autobio. Radical who hangs with radicals. The real question is: “Who sent him?” There is a picture of his eyes in an unguarded moment when he is vexed last year on the campaign trail. Those eyes show the real man. One who is angry and full of spite. One quietly at peace with the dark creatures he knows live in his soul. I believe he is simple. Very easy to understand.
luddy @ 80: Just so, it really did happen that way. Like DAS said, we are not all as smart as you happen to be. There may be other factors that contributed, like Soros funds making a run on the central banking structure through shadow players.
Salt Lick @ 83:
Are you sure they are not just hedging bets? Vying to be eaten last by whoever happens to come out on top? Like Subotai, I think this whole bit of history has slipped out of their grasp. Remember that the GoP apparatchiks are part and parcel of the responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in. They helped make this what it is.
JJRedfan @ 114:
So what? I have been on one list or another since 1968 or so. Being on one of The 0bamanation’s list don’t scare me none. Yup, I are one of THOSE guys or at least used to be. Hell, Mark Rudd lives down the road from me.
Surely do. They have the right idea. My oath I still consider operative.
Promethea @ 120:
He scared the crap out of me the first time I saw his visage on the idiot box.
He is not the front man, he is one of the architects, or so he thinks. These guys have been around for along time and plotting the demise of the Republic. (Note to someone above, it is NOT a democracy, it is a republic.)
As for local politics:
Billy “Roadrunner” Richardson just got pardoned by the DoJ today. Okay, it wasn’t a pardon, they have just decided not to prosecute. He is crooked as dog’s hind leg. Thank G-d that he is soon out of office due to term limits. I met him when he was starting out and he barely escaped getting his butt kicked that day. I was clerk at a small store he came to trade in and he treated me like dirt. I needed the job and have hated the man to this day.
Sen. Jeff “I was born to be a US Senator” Bingaman has come out and declared that he is in favor of using reconciliation to pass ObamaCare or as it should be named, ChappaquiddiCare. (At age 65 you get a clinker Buick or Olds of your choice, a bottle of Chivas and a map of the Chappaquiddick area.) That guy is a tool and somehow in this Bluest of states we need to replace him.
One should never incur the wrath of mild and conservative men. They are slow to anger, but once aroused, they are notoriously difficult to placate.
If you oppose me and you win, then i will agree that I was false, and we share the victory. If you oppose me and I win, the game is over.
107 OldSalt:
“Remember, the Democrats (until 24 hours ago) had 60 votes in the Senate. They still do (with the V.P.). There is nothing Obama cannot do with the support of his own party, and he intends to move America hard left.”
I am not sure if it will really take 60 votes.
I am a little rusty on parliamentary procedure in the Senate but, I think there is a way to scoop up the really toxic parts of a bill and stuff it back into reconciliation. If that is true then it will only take 51 votes – and it’s a done deal. If there is a way it can be done 0bama and his cronies will do it.
I see 0bama as virulent and cancerous. Just look at the “Czars” he has hired. They are hardcore leftists.
I would hope that some smart conservative lawyer(s) would find a way to legally eject him from Office (Sorry, Buddy but Biden is benign compared to 0bama and I’ll take him a hold my nose). If not, I would hope that some conservative lawyer(s) would tie 0bama up in legal battles.
Here is Crowder’s take on Astroturfing and the Calpers money trail.
‘Hidden camera video: How much does a left-wing astroturfer get paid, anyway?’
“That $33,000 a year plus benefits is just their share of the wealth that belongs to all of us.”
See: Crowder on Astroturfing
http://tinyurl.com/mucu85
Our forefathers devised a republic because a republic is rule of law. A democracy as rule of majority fails eventually every time. They proposed as little gov as possible because gov tramples on freedom.
USA down to earth citizens understand more clearly the essense of our country than the leftest elite or the corrupt politician.
A Sarah Palin with her lake outside her modest home, with prideful ownership and virtual independence with a freezer of meat and a kettle of fish understands more of this country and its BREATH AND BLOOD than a Harvard professor that argues the constitution is restrictive to his progressive ideals.
Those of us who believe our fore fathers had a valid vision arnt going to let some prosetlyzing professor with a chaos theory have his way.
You got to be kidding, you who gag when you eat meat, cant protect your own from harm and think Freedom is open to debate are in for a real surprise. The real essense of this country are the Sarah Palins and you can’t stand that. Your Harvard Professor and his minions are just “trash talking” Chicago Thugs that have no idea about real USA citizens.
Real USA citizens cant be turned into orange shirted ACORN puppets. You got it ALL WRONG.
Here is the link for The Western Tradition videos online, remember to allow pop-up windows. My bad I misspelled Eugen Weber’s name. http://www.learner.org/resources/series58.html#
ledger @ 107; –“That $33,000 a year plus benefits is just their share of the wealth that belongs to all of us.”
Exhibit A, why, sooner or later, these birdbrained predators always run out of any way to pay everybody off, and always then have to invade the neighbors. If i’m Mexican or Canadian, i’m starting to worry long about now. Or even inside –wonder if there’s any discussion going on amongst the czars of how the War on Drugs’ seizure & confiscation law could be applied to neanderthal property.
95 JMH – You’re absolutely right. Incrementalism has been the lefts’ friend for years, but they’re front and center now. Problem is, what’s the alternative?
This country has become “Of, By, and For” the special interests. That goes for both sides of the political spectrum. It’s always been that way to some degree, but we’ve reached the point where the enormous power and wealth that are concentrated in DC has made it impossible for the average citizen to stay out of the way. The only solution is to take a lot of it away, and I don’t see a mechanism for that.
The most dangerous special interest is the left (actually a collection of interests), and unfortunately for them it looks like they’ll be holding the bag when the really bad things happen. This is a very good thing, and if the stars align it may mean that they will be discredited for many years after. But a lot of pain will be involved as (or if) this occurs, and the remaining interests will still be firmly entrenched.
The GOP may prove useful as a check on the current administration, but they aren’t the long term solution. Power is rarely ceded voluntarily. I’m not sure there is a solution on the horizon – it’ll have to appear when it’s needed (if our luck holds out). Maybe the Tea Parties, etc, are the beginning – who knows?
How many of you plan to attend the National Tea Party in Washington, DC on 12 September?
dtmack/141; today on the Kudlow Show (CNBC) Kudlow & Sen. Tom Coburn had a pretty serious discussion on the need to push hard on starting the ball rolling for a Constitutional Amendment to limit the government’s currently unlimited power (unlimited except via the longer end of the market-clearing interest rates needed to resell –a discipline oft breached, see ‘conundrum’ ‘greenspan’) to sell debt. this would lock the printing press, and lay-off from the political economy an enormous amount of the vice that seemingly has to exist anywhere near a bottomless pocket.
***
Sara –i oughtta go –it’d be great to see a big, big turnout –
Want to see who is boycotting Glenn Beck –before you plan your Christmas or Hannukah gift-shopping?
The other thing about the hard left – I suspect that, when push comes to shove, we’ll all be amazed at what paper tigers they truly are.
A lot here see them as some insidious, all powerful conspiracy that has gained the upper hand, and intends to retain power by shutting down opposing voices, rigging the census, and stuffing ballot boxes. Let them try it (actually, I sincerely hope they don’t).
I see them as those who, by an apparently fortuitous set of circumstances (ineptness and corruption of the GOP), find themselves in power. They’re believing their own press clippings, and think that the people are with them. If they are we’re doomed, but I don’t believe it.
Even with the vast majority of the communications network on their side, they can barely keep their heads above water. With huge majorities in both Houses of Congress, the Presidency, the news media, and many other institutions on their side, they still can’t pass their health care bill. There’s almost no real institutional opposition, and they’re still being checked by a rag tag group of tea partiers. No offense intended, just pointing out the power differences on both sides. The side with all the apparent power is losing, and that’s not an indication of strength to me.
If Obama had been truly examined by the media in the run up to the last election, he’d have been soundly defeated, even by a weak candidate like McCain.
They’re in the process now of living out the old warning, ‘be careful what you wish for, you may get it”.
If Obama had been truly examined by the media in the run up to the last election …then we would never have known what a complete institutional subversion perversion looks like in the decadent phase.
Buddy – absolutely true, and I think that’s a very good thing long term. I’ve read before (don’t know where) that in surveys at J schools the number one reason for becoming a journalist is to “make a difference”. They want to be players, not journalists. To do that you have to pick a side. They’ve done it, and have stopped trying to hide it. Not a good thing for them or their credibility. That’s another reason for optimism.
Let me put on my amateur psychologist hat here.
I’m sure there were a lot of high fives in newsrooms on election night, and a good bit of it was that their guy was elected instead of another mean old Republican.
But I’m sure a lot of it was that they believed that it validated them, and their “profession”. We’d been hearing for several years about the demise of the MSM. However, in their minds, if they could succeed in electing a total non-entity to the highest office in the land, then that proved that they were still powerful and relevant.
But they keep having to double down on their bet, and it’s not very becoming. More people are noticing as they attempt to cover for Obamas ham-handed performance. The law of unintended consequences strikes again!
Doug Loss:
JJRedfan: Yup, I’ve been an OathKeeper for a while now. Anyone who is current or veteran military, or current or retired law enforcement, ought to go to oathkeepers.org and find out about the group, and join up. The oath we all took didn’t have an expiration date. It’s still in effect and it means something to a very large group of us.
Aug 27, 2009 – 8:24 pm
I got involved on the 9th of August
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2009/08/oath-keepers.html
A very good novel about leaderless war is:
The Spirit of Dorsai
And a novel that gives an overview of the war discussed in “The Spirit of the Dorsai”
Tactics of Mistake
It should be read first if you want the maximum entertainment value.
BTW the comments around here are just tops. Flowering tops.
“Unrestricted Warfare,” by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999)
Online book. Interesting reading.
Buddy & dtmack, sorry, but I think you’re both wrong: Obama won because Americans, with their jelly donut hearts, wanted, after eight years of slightly repellent, clodhopping Bush, a president they could love. Obama simply presented himself as the more loveable of the two candidates. And he was. Americans were not going to vote in another wooden, inarticulate, marionette-mannered republican. Our cussed national weakness is that we want to love the guy in the White House.
How many of you plan to attend the National Tea Party in Washington, DC on 12 September?
Me.
A few topics that will assist you in your efforts at 5th Gen warfare:
Memes, mnemetics/memetics, multiple activated memes, small world phenomenon/networks, distributed cognition, flash mobs,
“Six degrees of messaging” in “Nature,” Mar 13, 2008,
Cognitive Semiotics, Pattern Recognition and
Cognitive Function,
Set Theory,
Side Theory,
swarm behavior,
the psychic unity of mankind (anthropology), biological altrusim, Collective Minds (Ian Couzin),
Group-Level Cognition, Distributed Cognition, Extended Mind,
Collective cognition, Collective memory, (aspects of) Distributed Intelligence,
The Physics of Consciousness,
Social Intelligence, coordination games, mirror neurons, simulation theory,
The holonomic brain theory,
holographic brain theory, Holographic Universe
Theory,
Social Intelligence, Global Consciousness…
The entire list is quite
long. I have collected
several gigabytes of
information related to
this topic. Everything from comparative religious studies to demographic breakdowns to cultural differences to semitiocs to linguistics to the inner workings of the brain, it is all applicable and directly or indirectly relevant to the ongoing discussion here.
Without a general knowledge of these and many related topics, any effort at 5th gen warfare or memetic engineering is doomed to failure. Without such knowledge, at best, you’ll only achieve very short-term results.
Blogged this and a few other things at:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-is-that-boycott-coming.html
also Classical Values
#145 dtmark:The other thing about the hard left . I suspect that, when push comes to shove, we.ll all be amazed at what paper tigers they truly are.
Agreed
A lot here see them as some insidious, all powerful conspiracy that has gained the upper hand, and intends to retain power by shutting down opposing voices, rigging the census, and stuffing ballot boxes.
(1) Agreed, yes a lot here do see them that way; However
(2) Even if that was the intent of the Obama administration, they will fail horribly if they try this; Therefore:
(3) This will not happen, and we have nothing to fear.
Even with the vast majority of the communications network on their side, they can barely keep their heads above water. With huge majorities in both Houses of Congress, the Presidency, the news media, and many other institutions on their side, they still can.t pass their health care bill. There.s almost no real institutional opposition, and they.re still being checked by a rag tag group of tea partiers. No offense intended, just pointing out the power differences on both sides. The side with all the apparent power is losing, and that.s not an indication of strength to me.
I completely agree — they have already been checked by the rag tag group of tea parties
So my [constant & repeated] fundamental question is: How do we proceed from here, without getting radicalized ourselves.
Implicitly, I think getting radicalized is the wrong strategy.
If the tea party movements (and those assisting) get radicalized then this will allow the opposition to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”.
A good example of how not to behave is here: No conservative defense for political violence.
#125 Alexis: Opposing the latest dictates of the Obama administration is important. Still, why can.t we have an opposition focused upon creating an America that people from different walks of life can rally around? Why can.t we have an opposition that seeks to change our Census to one where people write down their identity as a .fill in the blank. rather than one where the federal government biases the choice by imposing its own categories?
We must fight for liberty. That means we must avoid the .integral nationalism. of French royalists, no matter how tempting such an option may appear to some people.
Yes, exactly.
Das: The problem with that is your characterization is largely a Lefist construction.
wooden, inarticulate, marionette-mannered republican.
Bush was none of these things, and if anything, it seems to describe Captain Zero.
A question for you is what people allow themselves to be so manipulated by the media.
Seems to me that there is some deficiencies of mind or character out there in the electorate that are too blame.
In the end, the bizarre reaction to Bush we term BDS–really a collective psychotics break if you ask me–would seem to be a quite complicated matter; it is difficult to unravel.
I would guess though that if people knew what they knew now, and there was a election between GWB and Obama tomorrow, Bush would win by a landslide.
Could some one spell out TWANLOC?
T
W
A
N
L
O
C
Without a general knowledge of these and many related topics, any effort at 5th gen warfare or memetic engineering is doomed to failure. Without such knowledge, at best, you’ll only achieve very short-term results.
I’m sure such a study would help. But the application of all that will naturally emerge from the network.
All bugs are shallow with enough eyeballs. – Open Source Programmer’s Motto.
I call it:
The Mary Jo Kopechne Health Care For All Plan
To honor the recently deceased Ted Kennedy who wanted a National Health Care Plan.
RE: Wretchard’s Rules @#3:
Wretchard writes 6 rules that are beautiful but vulnerable.
1. Listen to the people;
Yes, at this time in America this rule still applies.
2. Believe that truth is something to be discovered in dialogue with the public; that the debate is never “over” simply because the great and good say so;
This one is highly vulnerable. Two generations of relativism and deconstructionism have attenuated this. Logic, facts, truth, and the like no longer exist in the theoretical framework being taught in our universities, and it has already seeped down into high schools and below. Without a premium on the quest for truth (even if ultimate truth were to be unattainable) and without a respect for intellectual honesty and the use of logic, the current and next generation lack the tools required for rule 2 to be effective.
3. Consider it possible that all men, including small businessmen, plumbers, rubes from Alaska, cleaning women who say their prayers at mealtimes — are in some fundamental way the equal of graduates of Harvard Law School and know as much about life and death as Dr. Zeke Emmanuel;
This is, in a nut shell, a major wing of the culture wars. America has always been ambivalent about this. Woodrow Wilson probably represents the turning point here. After him the country turned increasingly to “intellectuals” and the elite centers became increasingly contemptuous of the frontier heritage of America. Eisenhower, a fabulous administrator and strategist in World War II, was thought to be intellectually inferior because he was not as articulate as Adlai Stevenson. Carter had a doctorate in nuclear engineering and was therefore “better” than Ford or Reagan. Ford, a very good college football player, was deemed to be “stupid” and clumsy, and Reagan, despite being highly articulate, was dismissed as intellectually inferior as well. Clinton was revered as a Rhodes Scholar whereas Bush 43 was “dumb” despite a Harvard MBA. And Obama is regarded as highly intelligent.
Yes, the rubes in the voting booth, the “stupid Americans” that Bill Maar speaks of, don’t yet get it. But Sarah Palin’s subtextual appeal is that she represents the pioneer and frontier America and not the sophisticated city slicker America.
4. Accept that facts do matter because reality is authored by something larger than government, greater than the Congress and more lasting than any administration;
This too is vulnerable. As more and more voters depend more and more on the government for employment, insurance, and even permission, they will drift ever more into a feudalistic mentality. Isn’t this part of the thrust of Orwell’s 1984?
5. That all efforts to “attack the base” will ultimately fail because a government by the people, of the people and for the people will never perish from the earth; and
Would that this were true. Governments by, of, and for the people are a historical anomaly. The fragility of Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s vision is greater than we think. Yes, the truths of the Declaration of Independence should be self-evident and emanate from The Creator, but the implementation of them has been rare and fleeting over the course of the past 5000 years, and even the past 100. History has not ended and the need to expend energy keeping freedom going is never ending. Do we still have the stamina?
6. Realize that these precepts are obvious on the face of it though there are none so blind as they who will not see.
Ah, how true. But what happens when those who will not see outnumber those who are eager to see? And what happens when those who will not see pay all the salaries and own all the tanks?
These 6 rules are wonderful organizing principles but they are not “rules” in the sense of having autonomous power to be implemented. It takes the active and ongoing energy of us to apply them.
AMit: With all due respect, and I do respect your opinions, you are kidding yourself, IMO.
A lot here see them as some insidious, all powerful conspiracy that has gained the upper hand, and intends to retain power by shutting down opposing voices, rigging the census, and stuffing ballot boxes.
These are not conjectures or paranoid imaginings, these are facts. The left has done this world over and have done so for almost 100 years. It has kept them in power for generation across the world. Their tactics gave us the Third Reich, the USSR and the ChiComs. It has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, and the blighting of the lives of billions more. They have destroyed once great nations and societies. These are objective facts. I challenge you to prove otherwise.
I do not see how you can say “it cannot happen here”. It is happening across much of the EU, and Latin America. It is happening here. That is just what the German people said to themselves as the Nazis amassed power. They thought Hitler was a weak buffoon, and that it was all just cheap theater. They were dead wrong. A lot of Americans just do not have the personal experience to process this. They lack the context to understand the threat. Those of us that have experience with the Left outside of the USA, those of us who have had to deal with them when and where they had absolute power or where they were corrupting other nations, those who have fought against them and have experienced the very real and lasting historical repercussions of their ascendancies, do have the context, and I can tell you we are profoundly worried for the fate of this nation. It can most certainly happen here.
I lived in the Old USSR. Do you think that they were “paper tigers” there? I can guarantee you that they were not. The Democrats are using the exact same tactics. They have the exact same goals. You can take that to the bank.
You are confusing the people that you know who vote Democrat with the true Left, and it is clouding your judgment.
You do not think they are powerful? Try dissenting on a college campus. Look at the complete legal double standard. Look at the pilfering of the treasury to pay off insiders–trillions of dollars stolen from the American people to line the pockets of Cemocrat insider. And you want to avoid “getting radical”?
They are getting away with it in the clear light of day. We now have the head of the NY AFL-CIO as head of the NY FED! Think about that one for a second. Organized labor is now running a major branch of our so called “independent central bank”.
They will be setting monetary policy and are now beyond te reach of politics. I can tell you, that if the dollar falls to 10% of its current value and oil is now purchased in euros or Yuan, even you will get radical then. Most people will not be able to drive a car.
We had better get radical and soon. Obama is out to destroy the middle class. if he destroys that wealth, it is gone, it is not a case of electing another president, passing some law and then getting it back. It is gone. Period. That wealth was built up over generations. It will take generations to get it back, and that wealth creation was enabled by constitutional guarantees of liberty, and most particularly property rights. If the Constitutional basis of the Republic is destroyed, it will never come back. I may be gone literally in a matter of months.
“Paper tiger”? As far as I am concerned this whole “economic crisis” was contrived. Pretty suspicious stuff. Weak? they are paying astrotufers by the thousand, 30K a year now? how do you fight that one?
The American left trashed the constitution in the 1930′s and we have never gotten it back. That is hardly the work of a “paper tiger” You work more than half a year to support people whose main tasks are to deprive you of your income and your liberties. you can that a “paper tiger”. It is serfdom, is it not? What else is it?
No, it is time for us to get as radical as they are, and pronto. People are allowing themselves to become a little self congratulatory about the Tea Party movement. Folks, it is August, everyone is on vacation. Just wait until Sept. The left’s counter attack hs not even started. We are in a cold civil war here, and do not you forget it. It is going to get very rough indeed.
You risk contracting Stockholm Syndrome. Your advice will lead to defeat. This is not politics as usual. You need to reflect on the history of the Left, and understand how decadent we are, how ripe for the picking. This is a moment of great peril, and underestimating the Left is just indulging in the most deadly arrogance.
(again, nothing personal there, I value you posts.)
Very difficult for an elitist to do, impossible for a narcissist. Which is why this advice cannot be followed by the Leftist/”Progressive” cadre, it requires a humility they do not have.
On BDS, I think it is a consequence of denial:
Amit: Here os a current perspective on the Left in the EU today from that tough freedom warrior from the Warsaw Pact days and a politician in the aftermath, Václav Klaus:
http://klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=y1xJFexYl97t
LarryD: Oh I agree that this a great part of BDS. We were talking along similar lines just the other day here. I am not sure that the psychological facets are the whole of it though.
It may take decades to understand it, if it is ever truly understood.
It is surely one of the strangest things I have seen in my lifetime–worse than anything that was thrown at Reagan or Thatcher.
And pleeeaasssee do not tell me about “Clinton Hatred”, thank you very much.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!
(I sometimes wonder how many conservatives are still bold enough to believe that)
I’m very much afraid that we will lose in the end.
The high water mark for conservatives in our lifetimes was probably the Reagan tax cuts. Most of Gingrich’s Contract With America from 94 was never enacted. Conservatives couldn’t even kill the National Endowment For the Arts – with either Reagan or Gingrich.
Stopping ObamaCare is a good thing, but the Left will keep nibbling away, and the Tea Party folks will go back to their lives. The Left will eventually get most of it. The ratchet effect.
What would a real win look like for us?
A Federal government that is much, much smaller. Most of what the government does these days is illegitimate anyway. That needs to stop. Reverse the Commerce Clause “everything is the Fed’s business” rulings, and set a maximum Federal tax level of about 5% to ensure the government stays small. Both would require Constitutional Amendments. Social Security and Medicare grandfathered for those above 50, otherwise gone. Federal welfare gone. Department of Education gone. NEA gone
Ya’ll can make the list better than I, but you get the point – major changes.
I suspect its a small minority that sees it that way.
Absent this, I think we are just back to arguing between the Democrats and Republicans – not about about where we are going, but just how fast we get there.
quick add to mongoose/165, the NY Fed is more than ‘just’ one of the Fed districts –it’s the nation’s (and the globe’s) Wall Street watchdog –formally as well as traditionally.
also wanted to mention, for a very striking vision of the intelligentsia of 1980s Communist Eastern Europe –the system’s automatic day-to-day twisting of life into knots that can only be borne by living a sort of gray self-dulled semi-aware half-life, check out Saul Bellow’s The Dean’s December. Talk about a cold chill –Bellow the master will make you feel the continual nagging “What is wrong here –is it the world, or is it me?” that is the inescapable residue of a psychologically violated state of being.
Batman wrote:
“Without a premium on the quest for truth (even if ultimate truth were to be unattainable)”
Doesn’t this kind of undermine most everything you just wrote? Truth being different from Ultimate Truth – sorta like being kinda pregnant.
Before we go ballistic, we need to keep our eye on the next great test – the 2010 elections.
I’ll say again, focus on the voting process – the Left certainly has. I hope we all want to avoid violent civil disorders – I certainly do. Ensuring a fair election may be our last hope.
Did you folks here about the Senate bill to give the White House “emergency control” over the internet and require federal licensing of cyber security professionals? This is a grave threat to political communications.
re:165 Mongoose. Well said friend. Some other info about the insidiousness of the opfor is in red at Drudge right now, I drove by there on my way over. Yet another probing on the lines holding free speech. I’m not surprised talk like that is happening but it seems like the lights dim a bit when I read it.
169: Old Guy. Well, then let’s at least lose memorably
A cornered rat will at least contest his life, we can surely do better than that.
Good grief no! How about a census that simply counts how many people there are, and omits irrelevancies like ethnic background?
Mongoose @ 165: And referring to my comment far up the thread at #36, why then would they not attempt to control communications? It is simply campus speech codes writ large – no difference. And those have been adopted with barely a murmur of discontent. They can control the internet incrementally and in fact are planning to do this now. So what do we do about it?
yep, mongoose, that #165 is worthy of a printup on a stack of handbills –it’s appreciated, believe you me –
128: LB
“”"” our message needs to be deep and comprehensive –to bitch-slap identity groups who lean Democratic is to drive them further away and create more the white-power party that we should resist on all grounds including the practical. If it must look like such, let it not be for want of our efforts otherwise. “”"”
I alluded to that in my #78 comment, by mentioning the Jesse Jackson “cut his nuts off” anecdote, as well as citing other black community anecdotes that highlight paradoxes in minority communities.
M. Simon @161…
“TWANLOC
Sorry, it is a phrase I have used for a while to describe the other half of the country that Peter Boston was referring to, and while I made an indirect reference to it in #60, I was thinking that I had quoted the phrase directly in that piece. My error.
It is referential to: “Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen.
Subotai Bahadur”
Warren Bonesteel @ 152:
You mean I spent the money to buy the meatspace version? Dang me!
More than interesting reading, it is the playbook for what the PRC was thinking from the inside a decade ago. Yes, a decade. Just think how far they have come since then. Keeps me up some nights.
M. Simon @ 163:
Ace had it much more concisely and with vigga:
“ChappaquiddiCare”
I LOL’ed on that one!
Mongoose @ 165 to Amit Green:
Amit – Pay attention. You are operating as if the old set of rules you understood 2 years ago still apply. They do not. The Hard Leftists = Statists have arrived, stolen (Yes!) the election and have held their coup. Look what happened while you were sleeping!
Their plans are myriad and numbered, all you have to do is look.
S.773 – Cybersecurity Act of 2009
HR 45 – Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009
HR 645 – National Emergency Centers Establishment Act
HR 1388 – The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act (formally the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE))
Need more Amit?
In today’s fishwrapper from here there is an article about Organizing For America holding a pro-ChappaquiddiCare rally at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. I wish I could post the picture shown in the paper, it is telling. I will describe it – there is the requisite decorated bus in the background. On the ‘stage’ in front of the bus, there are 4 people, one of them in lab coat (presumably a doctor or someone who plays a doctor for OFA). Foreground is a “crowd” of “protesters”, I count maybe 40 people. That is the entire frame and it is wide enough to cover the bus. There was NO public notice of the “rally” given. I read the fishwrapper cover to cover each and everyday of the week, if it was in there, I would know.
So who is ‘AstroTurfing’ now, Amit?
142. Sara (Pal2Pal),154. Salt Lick, and others, including our presumptive “watchers”
I will not be in Washington on Sept 12. Since the March 2007 Defense of the Viet Nam Vets Wall, I have been three times with Gathering of Eagles, now I have no more money for travel at this time. And at the end of July I suffered a CVA and am still in rehab. So this time I must sit on the reserve bench. But I have given my power of attoroney to “USMCDaughter1″ of Eagles UP to demonstrate in my behalf. I am depressed because I expect there will be trouble, and I will not be there. If so, I WILL find a way to get back into the follow-up action for the second act.
And yes, I also am an Oath Keeper. An anonymous follower since last summer, and more recently, an open signatory.
#129 Mongoose:
Is there a decent Democrat left?
There may be a few left, but we are awful close to having to set up a captive breeding program to prevent their extinction. It is already too late for the now mythical “conservative Democrat” which has been gone for at least a generation. A new sub-species of genetically pure Leftist called the “Yellow Dog” has evolved to mimic the extinct species and take over its ecological niche. The primary stressors on the continued survival of “decent Democrats” are … other Democrats higher up the food chain who corrupt any decent and patriotic impulses they might have into support for a totalitarian state; where all aspects of thought, economics, political expression, and society [with the exception of sex (for now)] are controlled by the elites. The outlook for their survival is dismal.
#130 luddy barsen
They are brothers under the skin. They share the same electoral methods. He could do no other, given his plans for the future.
#141 dtmack
The GOP may prove useful as a check on the current administration, but they aren’t the long term solution. Power is rarely ceded voluntarily. I’m not sure there is a solution on the horizon – it’ll have to appear when it’s needed (if our luck holds out). Maybe the Tea Parties, etc, are the beginning – who knows?
Exactly. They may pick up seats [if there are real elections in 2010] but they can at most slow things down. Given that their basic interests are with the elites and that they literally hate and fear any expression of grass roots feeling; they are a weak reed indeed. The situation must evolve as it will, based on the best efforts of Patriots. There is no guarantee of the survival of Liberty. Just the bedrock belief: “If there must be trouble, let it come now, so that our children might live in peace.”.
#’s 152 & 155 Warren Bonesteel
Good recommendations and helpful. You can find “UNRESTRICTED WARFARE” at:
http://www.terrorism.com/documents/TRC-Analysis/unrestricted.pdf
and it is available in hard copy. I note for other BC-er’s that this text is required reading for all Peoples Liberation Army officers and officer candidates, and those who aspire to higher levels. It is officially accepted as a necessary bit of knowledge for dealing with what they consider their most probable enemy, the US. There are a number of texts along this line that might be helpful, including those by Swiss Maj. von Dach, various technical manuals issued by the armed forces, most especially that one authored by a gentleman named Petraeaus, and to study the mechanics of a coup d’ etat from both sides, there is Edward Luttwak’s classic, “Coup d’ Etat”. If you can get around the sociology, Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” has some interesting points about insurgency in a closed system, with the help of computers. No, we do not have a Mycroft. But many of the functions can be done via distributed nodes. If supercomputing capability is needed, it is possible to fabricate such using off the shelf items, acquired without attracting attention. Indeed from garage sales. I reference the BEOWULF PROJECT.
http://www.beowulf.org/overview/index.html
#161 M. Simon
T-hose
W-ho
A-re
N-o
L-onger
O-ur
C-ountrymen
fairly self explanatory, an accurate formulation of the Cold Civil War, and guaranteed to make Leftist heads explode in rage!
#173 Whitehall, and elsewhere on the thread
Absolutely. A brilliant idea. Anyone here involved in the Tea Parties and in Oathkeepers should put forth the idea to their chapters that one of the big projects for them in 2010 might be a county by county effort to go through the voting rolls [they close before the election, if such should happen] to verify the people registered exist. This is something where we can use their Alinsky rules against them. “RULE 4: ‘Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.’”. Force them to either go with provisional ballots for those bogus ones found [and a lot will be simply those who are dead or moved, but finding them means ACORN cannot vote them] or publicly admit that the election is fraudulent. Hit their legitimacy.
Subotai Bahadur
# 182 Me
Profuse apologies.
I forgot to close the html tag at the end of the sentence in my last paragraph. The is a certain amount of difficulty in posting this apology as about 2/3 of the text box is blocked off with a black box rendering it invisible.
Subotai Bahadur
Thanks there, buddy.
The reason I referenced “Unrestricted Warfare” was because some of those same tactics can be used to peacefully resist our own government, and when things become more volatile, they can be used in direct conflict.
For educational purposes, you know.
Personally, I think the Democrats over-reached and have under-estimated the American people. There are certain principles of freedom which are virtually a part of our DNA, and whatever the political party or ideology, there are certain lines in the sand that Shall. Not. Be. Crossed. in America.
For the moment, share information with everyone you know, if they will listen. If they won’t listen, keep movin’ and share that info with someone who will listen. The Biblical phrase about separating the sheep from the goats does apply, here. In the end, no one will remain neutral and everyone will have to choose a side: Freedom or tyranny.
Sorry to intrude with a housekeeping matter, but I have square black areas blocking part of the last paragraph of my #182 where I recommend a project for Tea Party and Oathkeepers, part of my apology at #183, and part of #185 by Warren Bonesteel’s first paragraph regarding “Unrestricted Warfare”. I have tried closing out and restarting the browser, and they are still there. Does anyone else see them, or are they an artifact of my ancient machine? Not paranoid yet, but the day in young.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai @186
Your old machine is doing the same as mine. I see two blocks of grey covering parts of 182, 184 and 185.
tom
I don’t have a problem with that on my ol’ Linux, but I don’t have alla the bells and whistles installed on it that others have on their pc’s, either.
…and Marines refer to paranoia as “Threat Assessments.”
Besides, in the current political paradigm, if you ain’t paranoid, you ain’t payin’ attention!
Please give Amit a break on the “Paper Tiger” comment. That was me – he was only quoting.
I’ve no doubt that there are those on the left who, in their feverish little minds, envision a takeover of the US with BO as the lead (or figurehead). And probably a few are dumb enough to think they can do it. Some here seem to have a real fear of that, but I think it’s overblown.
I see the comparisons to Hitlers rise in Germany – first, we’re Americans, not Germans. Second, Hitler came to power as the saviour after the German society had imploded. Obama is going to preside over the bad times. Third, we’re Americans, not Germans.
I’ll say this – if someone of the caliber of BO and his helpers can take over the country, suspend elections, and declare themselves el presidente for life, then the Country is not worth saving. I don’t think for a minute that this motley crew has a snowballs chance of doing that.
Other than the severe economic problems I think are coming, and soon, my main worries are:
First, we have no real political representation – the GOP isn’t going to cut it, although they may be useful short term. This has got to change.
Second, the leftists will be privy to every bit of classified information this country has – the better to undermine it.
Third, the opposition to BO doesn’t have a program to rally around.
But BO and his buddies taking over the Country?
#187 tomw & #188 Warren Bonesteel
Thanks
Boxes are now dark gray instead of black, but seem to be a permanent feature on this thread, as they move as the thread lengthens.
Wretchard,
Could you have your boffins look at this? I don’t think I buggered up your site, but who knows. And, there is also a very limited possibility of outside interference, official or otherwise [including totally non-political idiots]. If it is from the outside, that would be an indicator it would be good to know.
Subotai Bahadur
I’m not seeing any black or grey boxes.
Rurik — rest up, Marine. I don’t expect trouble in DC; I think the Left is scared of what it’s stirred up. But if you are right and there is indeed trouble, I’m sure it’ll be the start of something you can join in once you’re on your feet.
No black or grey boxes here, either.
No black boxes but I meet dim bulbs everywhere. Today the sky is a grey box.
Maybe it is a sign of my limited social life or maybe it is a guy thing but it surprises me when I make contact with someone who was an acquaintance I knew somewhat and then haven’t seen in half a dozen years, and they don’t remember me. The caustic effect of time.
dtmack: You realize that Germans said “We are Germans, not Russians?
You realize that Germans felt nothing could happen to them because they were German?
Sounds like famous last words to me.
I would say that Obama s looked upon much like Hitler was at the time, or at least that is the packaging. The Left does see him leading us out of crisis, and that is in fact what he campaigned on to the center.
Hitler did not have the power over Germany immediately after he rose to power that Obama has over us today. it took years for him to get there.
Are we really the Americans we once were? Well I hope so, but i rather doubt that any of us really knows the answer to that question. Events will have to answer that one now. We are not the people of the 1940′s or 1950′s, or even the 1980′s that is for sure, or we would not have a open Communist sitting in the WH.
Hope that you are right, but I think you are greatly underestimating the challenge.
Subotai @182…
I appreciate your link to unrestricted warfare.
The Chinese seem to be unaware of total warfare as a term of art.
When one delves deeply into this, the term “high-technology”[5], which first appeared in the
architectural industry in the United States, is in fact a bit vague. What constitutes high
technology? What does it refer to? Logically speaking, high and low are only relative concepts.
However, using an extremely mutable concept in this irrational manner to name warfare, which
is evolving endlessly, in itself constitutes a considerable problem. When one generation’s high
technology becomes low technology with the passage of time, are we still prepared to again dub
the new toys that continue to appear as being high tech?”
from page 16.
Apparently the Chinese are unaware of the evolution of the term ‘high technology.’
////
In the days of vacuum tubes the electronics art was termed: High Vacuum Technology. One was controlling beams of discrete electrons in a vacuum; hence electronics.
When solid-state semi-conductor electronics arrived the need for vacuum tubes was eliminated. Curiously, solid-state circuits operate via electrical field properties anda quantum effects. Hence they run cold. ( Compared to the prior ionized art, that is.)
So the industry simply dropped the Vacuum and became self-described as High Technology.
Once that took hold it became inevitable that the prior art morphed into Low Technology. The general public having never known of High Vacuum Technology.
BTW if you scour the archives you may be lucky enough to find the encyclopedic High Vacuum Technology series by McGraw-Hill published right into the 60′s IIRC.
How these Chinese officers ever came to associate High Tech with architecture is a mystery to me.
It does point to a vast perception and understanding gulf.
The need then is for cultural and historical translators above and beyond language translators.
I think Steve Diamond’s description of Obama as a neo-Stalinist (as explained in this post Who is the Real Barack Obama), is more accurate than the Hitler/Nazi comparisons.
Hitler did not have the power over Germany immediately after he rose to power that Obama has over us today. it took years for him to get there.
With respect, Mongoose –Last month I read William Shirer’s “The Nightmare Years: 1930 – 1940.” I see numerous significant differences between our situation and Germany’s, not least being that Hitler built his power around making battered Germans proud of their heritage again and showing them a new path to becoming a world power. That’s why the people loved him.
Obama is falling out of favor with a sizable number of Americans, partially because he’s doing the opposite of Hitler — he’s pissing on the country’s heritage and humbling it before the world.
To my mind, the situations are almost totally different, other than the drive to gather power to the state.
Sara…
For my money Frank Marshall Davis is Barry’s biological father.
FMD is the man who could send BHO into the circles of the Chicago way.
It all ties up.
BTW BHO has the unusual blood type AB. Has anyone run across Obama Senior’s blood type?
192. Salt Lick,
Thanks. Actually, I’m not a Marine – army combat engineer. I wouldn’t mind being mistaken for one, but I’m very fussy about keeping our attributes and honors clear – too many fakes running loose these days.
I do fear trouble in my absence, if I’m present let ‘er rip. From friends who are organizing, I understand we are concerned about SEIU goons trying to confront. Some of us are also concerned about provocateurs who might try to infiltrate our ranks to start trouble. Such an attempt was quietly foiled In March 2007, though I do not want to expand on it in this particular venue. If you are there, look for Jonn of http://thisainthell.us/, or USMCDaughter1, or Col. Harry Riley himself, and give them my regards. My friends will be your friends.
Andd I have none of those gray or black boxes here eithre. But I have had similar experiences at other sites. I sus[pect it may result from visual resources depleting. When it happens to me, I log off the enternet totally, including closing the browser. And after a few moments of waiting I reload the browser and log back on. This has alays worked fopr me. Once or twice I have had to reboot the whole machine. If none of that works, I recommend you try screaming, blind, panic.
#189 dtmack: I’ve no doubt that there are those on the left who, in their feverish little minds, envision a takeover of the US with BO as the lead (or figurehead)’ And probably a few are dumb enough to think they can do it. Some here seem to have a real fear of that, but I think it’s overblown.
I see the comparisons to Hitlers rise in Germany. First, we’re Americans, not Germans. Second, Hitler came to power as the saviour after the German society had imploded. Obama is going to preside over the bad times. Third, we’re Americans, not Germans.
Agreed.
#198; Salt Lick: To my mind, the situations are almost totally different, other than the drive to gather power to the state.
Obama’s biggest mistake is actually thinking he could be like FDR. And therein lies his big mistake.
The thing is, (1) FDR came into office after a horrible recession (almost depression) that had already lasted about 2.5 years … This gave him great political power … and a true and real desire by all Americans for Change … (2) FDR first addressed [or at least appeared to address] the economic problems and earned the trust of Americans before embarking on his social programs …
Obama came into office after a recession that had lasted less than a year … thus there was much less desire for change among all Americans (There was great desire for change by a subset of Americans, but not all) … (2) Obama tried to ignore the economic problems and immediately embarking on his social programs.
This strategy has failed, and the a very significant portion of Americans no longer trust Obama, especially on health care.
Thus, at best, Obama & the democrats will pass a weakened health care bill, and probably by reconciliation instead of as a normal bill.
#189 dtmack: First, we have no real political representation. the GOP isn’t going to cut it, although they may be useful short term. This has got to change.
Here I agree 100%. Our real problem is not Obama, or the democrats. Our real problem is Obama, the democrats & the republicans.
There is no useful effective opposition currently. I’ll repeat what dmark wrote This has got to change..
Without reforming the republican party, there really is not much purpose to defeating the democrats.
Both parties need to be reformed… And that is truly a difficult task.
The parties need to be re-blooded not reformed.
Murtha, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, McCain, et. al. need to retire.
Our paramount headache is the gaming of the Gerrymander by the polling pols.
In California the result is a one-party state.
Gerrymandering also sustains the political basis for such oddities as Waxman and Frank.
Our polity has been neutered.
Re: Germany in the 30′s: Another big difference that we forget about when considering Hitler’s rise is that Germany had no tradition of representative government. If it hadn’t been for his own disastrously bad judgement in 1914, Germany would still have been ruled by the Kaiser, and without much opposition. The only government they’d had since then was the Weimar disaster, which is still a byword for how a democratic government can completely destroy a country. Hitler appeared on the scene just as most Germans were completely disgusted with a parliamentary style of government and were longing for the return of the Strong Hand which was the style of governent they were born into.
If this administration resembles anything from that era, they look more like the Weimar Republic than anything else, which suggests that there will be a hell of a mess to clean up once they’re gone.
Email blast from Human Events today:
“At this very moment, three Republican Senators (Charles Grassley, Mike Enzi and Olympia Snowe) are meeting with Democrats behind closed doors in an attempt to strike a deal on ObamaCare. And if successful, their actions will effectively lead to government-run health care for all.”
Time to lend Grassley, Enzi, Snowe a piece of your mind.
Blert,
Last year a conservative blog had the pictures of Frank Marshall Davis, and BHO Sr. Buraq looks a hell of a lot like Davis, but nothing at all like Buraq Sr.
“
#179. Blert,
Thanks. Reminds me of Sam Adams:
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” Samuel Adams
Well Salt lick, from your lips….
Seems that half of the country still not over him. I truly hope that his support is dropping like it should. It is unclear to me that this drop in the polls is solely due to growing alarm at his Socialist/Fascist proclivities. Seem to me that it could well be the case that a lot of Democrats think that he is going wobbly on the Revolution. Should he move a little harder to the Left and get single payer through, we might find that the numbers are not so rosy for us after all. Guess we will find this out soon enough.
Let me clear up what I meant:
As to Hitler contra Obama and their respective power, Hitler was not presiding over a nation such as ours in terms of power, but we are in a moment of true fragilty. The faithful do in fact see us in a moment of crisis and failure, and see him as our savior. All we have heard from them for 8 years is this bizarre drumbeat that “Bush destroyed America”. They do really hold to this (quite odd) belief. Obama certainly was elected by holding up some strange mirage that he would somehow led us out of darkness and to the promised land.
Moreover, Hitler did not immediately have the sort of political power that obama and the left has today throughout all key institutions in the USA (and indeed, much of the world). He still had to take time to consolidate and tighten power immediately after he rose to chancellor. ’32-’33 was a bit of a fluke, and one gathers that Hitler himself was a little surprised. This took some years, say until ’34 or ’35 roughly, to get there, and in some ways he was not fully there until after the Anschluss and the Sudetenland crisis arond ’38 or ’39. He did not move at the blinding speed that obama has moved. This took some years.
But my main point about Hitler and Obama was that we should not think that a collectivist/Fascist resolution cannot not happen here, for many a rational German outside the Nazi movement thought the Hitler was a transient phenomena too, and that things would just work themselves out in time. To this end I point out that Obama is at this moment in a much more powerful position than Hitler was in mid ’33. I was not suggesting that soon we would be sporting some nifty leather outerwear and accessories.
But in any event it was never my point the Obama is a direct parallel case to Hitler, or Stalin either for that matter. I am discussing the goals, strategies, tatics and machinations of Collectivist grabs for power and the ultimate universality of their expression. All collectivist “revolutions” are different in circumstance, surface rhetoric and the the details of how the political direct action operates against a nation and its people’s culture, society and its leaders, and in even some strategic details there is variation. This is to be expected: Each nation and each society has different histories, exceptions, norms and traditions. But there are constants. Especially does this become clear when the collectivists are heirs to the Soviet cultural, social and political direct action and propaganda tradition/operations, which is quite literally the case here in America today.
Remember that the modern American Left has direct personal lines of successions, campusings and mentorings going all the way back to Soviet direct action fronts of the interwar and Cold War periods, and this carries across both the national and international level. They are not making this up as they go along. They are attempting to complete a struggle that has been going on for generations. The dice were cast long ago.
Having said this, I will say that there is a curious National Socialist “aftertaste” to “Obamasim”, but it comes by way of Latin American, internal communist fronts and perhaps on the technocrat side from the mandarins of the EU, not from a direct imitation of, or line to, the Nazis (though Herr Rahm has certainly studied their methods). It is a amalgam. There is much emphaisi on Race. “Obamaism” (and its progenitors) replaces the Blood and Soil cult with “International Solidarity” and Environmentalism. They quite deftly manage to have “International Solidarity” both way too: International Socialism and Global Corporatism at the one and the same time. The “Blood cult” trope is cleverly inverted. Hitler had a great many of the same sorts of “New Agers”, technocrats and Corporatist surrounding him too, not to mention Racists. The American Left, no doubt informed by their Comintern masters, quite cleverly inverted some of the National Socialist tropes into a sort of “Global Socialism” but have used a false consciousness of racial suffering and grievance, one that is wholly local and “national”, in order to pull it off. It was quite a trick, and it worked.
The standard class warfare of Soviet style International Socialist direct action did not work well here, precisely due to the strong national traditions of the USA and the identity that goes with it. With the post war boom, they had to change tactics from the labor movement to the Civil Rights movement. Of course this was standard stuff in Latin America and all need be done was to mutate it a bit. So there is an ironic National Socialist element to it all, but it is oblique. When I see Obama surrounded by US flags it just send chills down my spine.
So, the Left’s assault in the USA is a mixture of Soviet Leninist and Stalinist, National Socialist, and Latin American Peronist “Third Way” and “Chavezist” Maoist approachs This is not all that surprising when one considers the very long time it to break down America such that we could find ourselves in the political pickle we find ourselves in today. They had the time to throw the whole kitchen sink at us.
BTW if you scour the archives you may be lucky enough to find the encyclopedic High Vacuum Technology series by McGraw-Hill published right into the 60’s IIRC.
Yes. And I have a collection of old vacuum tube manuals in pdf. Very helpful in designing something called the Polywell Fusion Reactor. The research funding is being covered by the US Navy. The American Thinker has a good article up with the basics.
#201 Rurik
Have tried all of those, with negative results. However, I don’t think I will resort to blind panic, with or without screaming. Since other people have seen it, it is not only my poor obsolete machine. Since most don’t, apparently I did not break Wretchard’s house. It has not recurred and the gray boxes are staying in one place and not bugging anyone. And if it is our minders; I think they already have enough to charge me with sedition and heresy. The problem will be getting me into that Black Maria.
So, we press on.
Subotai Bahadur
#207 Mongoose . . .
Your posts on this thread are terrific (as are many other people’s posts).
I’ve forgotten most of the history I learned about the rise of the Soviet Union and the satellite states plus Cuba, but if you or any others have this information, perhaps there are other parallels between the modern U.S. and the various ways that the Communists took over Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Cuba, etc.
Also, Whittaker Chambers’s “Witness” gave lots of information about the Communists’ methods of takeover. It was pretty clear from that book that the Communists didn’t care at all about Russia or the Soviet Union. They were in business for themselves.
Just a few random thoughts here.
I agree with all the people on this thread that we Americans need to have some knowledge and some plans. Of course, the neo-communists (to make up a term) can read this thread too.
However, I do believe that knowledge is power and that most of us have already read Rules for Radicals, so nothing the Alinskyites can do will suprise us. There are probably quite a few other books out on the market that can guide us. I’m reading The Gulag Archipelago now. It’s not a guidebook, but it’s useful to learn about human nature under psycho dictatorships.
@171, Ash, I guess I was thinking of truth as stuff like science, logic, accuracy, honesty. Ultimate truth seems to me to be in God’s department, answering imponderable questions like the meaning of life, the reconciliation of theodicy, resolution of the conflict between free will and some degree of determinism or cause/effect.
One can still value and seek truth while conceding that we may never be able to capture the ultimate truth of ultimate questions.
Promethea: Thanks for the kind words.
“You’re attacking with “facts.” But facts don’t matter, because your enemy doesn’t value information like you do. Life expectancy’s smaller in the States? So what — according to your enemies, you can’t trust facts from Cuba (or France). So you have to attack not with “facts”, but with meta-information” Isn’t this the whole global warming approach? Facts aren’t facts? I think that approach has been proven ineffective in the long term, though politicians and the MSM tend to lag behind
that should be “…information as….” not “…information like….”. Has Harvard Business Publishing no copy editor?
Also, Warren Bonesteel, here’s a site perhaps of interest.
Also, this guy has some thoughts –there’s oceans of this sort of bear analysis out there –while the USA stock indexes have had their best six week run since 1933. i thought i’d link this guy, Egon von Greyerz, becuz the charts here are well done and clear. I haven’t followed his advice all that strongly –but i am worried about the Autumn, as he is.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/greyerz082709.html
Mongoose@165 Amen!! and thanks for that.
Sara, Salt Lick and others, I’ll be @ the teaparty rally in D.C. and I’m bringing 3 or 4 more senior ladies with me. We can still walk and carry home-made signs.
also, mongoose @ one thread over turned us on to this and it IS flat out comically perfect –Iowahawk smites every single Came a lot meme a high resounding wet noodle hilarious um thing to end this sentence with.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/08/lion-of-leinenkugel-norm-snitker-72-laid-to-rest.html
Mongoose
I’m not discounting what you say, you make valid points, and something like what you’re describing is possible. I just don’t view it as the most likely. Many of the other possibilities are grim as well, but none would be worse than the outcome you’re describing.
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2009/0828.html
The Sequence Begins.
“Life expectancy’s smaller in the States? So what — according to your enemies, you can’t trust facts from Cuba (or France). So you have to attack not with “facts”, but with meta-information about how to value facts.”
The reason American life expectancy is shorter than European life expectancy is because our murder and vehicle-related death rates are staggering by comparison. Comparing the two without taking that into account is a false analogy.
Where it matters, our health care system wins hands down. Our detection and survival rates for all the leading natural causes of death — cancer, heart disease, etc. — are leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the West. I’d also think, although I haven’t seen the numbers, that our ability to treat grave injuries — gunshot wounds, trauma from vehicle accidents — are likewise far better than those in Europe because of the higher incident rate.
There is a reason that no one goes to Morocco or even France for treatment when they have leukemia or renal failure; they come to the U.S.