Do We Believe Anymore?
Projection
Sometimes our disbelief intensifies from psychological projection. When a senator rails about the one percent and the need for higher taxes, we just assume that he made a fortune in office, or married into it, or dodged the taxes on his yacht. We assume when Barack and Michelle talk about “folks” and “paying their fair share,” they prefer the tony resort and golf links to what the rest of us frequent. When I hear of “campaign financing reform” and “no more revolving door” and “no more lobbyists,” I assume that the speaker believes that such declarations provide him with Medieval exemption, and that by voicing his disgust he can be indulge without consequence.
Why Don’t We Believe?
What are the sources of our disbelief these past four years? We have certainly had presidents who did not tell the truth — Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton most notably. But what is different this time is the attitude of the media. It is quite good at hounding right-wing fakers and dissimulators — and there are many — and so-so in going after centrists like Clinton. But once it invested in the present untruth, then our government understands that they have rolled over. The theme of this presidency is not just that the media is on its side and invested in its redistributionist vision, but that the administration is so certain of that fact that it need not worry even about the most blatant evidence of dissimulation and untruth.
When Plenty of Stuff Means Not Enough
Besides the media, the sheer affluence offered by high technology, mass production, and generous entitlements makes the old notion of poverty almost obsolete. And that fact makes us not believe almost anything that the present administration says. Why do flash mobs target sneaker or electronics stores rather than Costco’s food bins? How can it be that almost everyone we see using an EBD card has both a cell phone and a nice enough car? I don’t begrudge them, but I don’t believe that this is 1933 and we need a new FDR to keep us alive one more day. Obesity not malnutrition is the scourge of the poor. When I visit local health clinics, the plague among the patients is diabetes brought on by obesity and a diet of sweets and starches, not vitamin deficiencies or insufficient calories. There is little scurvy or rickets in my hometown, but an epidemic of high blood pressure. Federal rhetoric does not resemble reality: I drive with the radio on and hear Obama blasting the fat cats who have shorted the poor; I pull into the local parking lot, and watch the full bus head up to the foothill gaming casino; I then enter the food market and see most with EBD cards, and note that lotto tickets sell like hotcakes. Again, I accept the welfare state, but not the lies about it. Perhaps that is why I quit believing.
Utopia within Our Grasp
There is a third contributor to our increasing disbelief. Socialism is scary because it envisions heaven on earth if we are just willing to employ the necessary means to obtain it. To question those means is to question why someone should not have as much as someone else. In theory, the advocates of socialism should not be Hollywood stars, Washington grandees, trust-fund beneficiaries, and high-paid professors and lawyers, inasmuch as their largess must, in such zero-sum thinking, have come from someone else. In fact, promoting socialism has become a therapeutic exercise for the better off: it offers psychosocial comfort for those who have a lot, with the assurance that they have so much that their own redistributive plans would not make that much difference to themselves. The resulting disconnect is that capitalists par excellence promote redistribution, and feel no word or act is out of bounds to achieve that noble goal — and the rest of us believe almost nothing they say.
If Barack Obama loses the election — despite incumbency, despite the media, despite the October surprises to come, despite his mellifluous teleprompted rhetoric — it is because a growing number simply do not believe anymore what they hear. It is all bottled piety without truth.
Also read: This Is What a Blue State Looks Like: Rally for Nudity in SF.
Apathy
The masses demand Bread and Circus, it is a malignant national malaise.
NOT only are too many hooked on evading personal responsibility, but a good share of this worldview traces back decades, at least as far as the 1960′s.
In no small measure, the co-opting of the media, academia, and major cultural by radical left forces has created a disproportionate zombie-like population. This is the case in most of the west, but its dangerous impact is most pernicious throughout the U.S.
To be sure, their infiltration/penetration is no less insidious than the same tactics used by the Muslim Brotherhood Mafia. In fact, if NOT for the radical left’s invasion, it would be impossible for the Brotherhood Mafia to be as entrenched as they are in the U.S. body politic.
http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/09/02/the-subversion-of-america-through-the-fault-lines-of-democracy-muslims-in-america-plotting-in-plain-sight-with-their-leftist-counterparts-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
Again, knowing how the foxes entered the hen house is critical to saving it!
You really ought to stop this self-advertising. You are becoming a joke.
Well if you don´t like the comic, don´t come to the club!
YOU don´t get to choose, around here, who says what about what.
Stop behaving like a Liberal Fascist and start READING what competent people have to say!
Keep on trucking, Adina!
I appreciate your thoughts, and links.
REZKO, OBAMA, AND THE NADHMI AUCHI RAILROAD LINKING CHICAGO, WASHINGTON, AND BAGHDAD (Part 2 of 3)
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/24/rezko-obama-and-the-nadhmi-auchi-railroad-linking-chicago-washington-and-baghdad-part-2-of-3/
I think the question is can we survive that disbeleif? All stable societies are based on trust and ours is no different. We have abandoned the Christian values that used to be well-nigh universal and synonymous with America.
-We trust in those shared values to keep our homes safe when we leave for the day or for vacation.
- We trust in those shared values to allow our children to be taught by starangers.
- Our very money is based on our trust that our neighbors and fellow citizens will exchange goods and services for little peices of paper in lieu of tangible wealth such as food, gems, gold and livestock.
When we abandon those shared values, how do we retain the necessary levels of trust in one another to maintain a stable society? We cannot.
Well put. Ironic (or just plain sad) that in his inaugural address on January 20, 2009, Obama said:
“And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”
Trust is important, but it was never enough by itself. Someone needs to watch the watchers, We used to rely on the media to help us with that important task. But they have sold us out. So we have two choices: help them build their empire of lies, or oppose and destroy them.
The latter is the hard path, not because our enemies are difficult to identify, but because it means we have to expose ourselves directly to the hatred (which is a hideous strength) that drives the left. It takes a special kind of moral courage not to wither before such monstrous, gibbering hatred.
It’s all moot if we don’t turn out in massive numbers on November 6th (I am confident we will). Then one of the key tasks in the immediate aftermath (after the terrible destruction the left will wreck between November and January), will be to stare down, and then bowl over the leftist media. Besides being stupid, the apparatchiks of the leftist government-media complex are also cowards; so in the long run they will fold before a sustained, committed onslaught of Truth.
The problem for us is that political victory alone is not enough (though it is the crucial first step). Communists long ago became expert at ‘boring-in’ to the system. When the climate turns against them, they simply fade into the shadows and focus on destroying the moral fabric of society. Hence the erosion of trust you speak of. This time we can’t let that happen because they are (were) very close to achieving their objective. They launched their open offensive about a decade too soon (they were themselves seduced by their own pied piper, Barack Obama). So we have to counter-attack very aggressively, committed this time to seeing things through to the bitter end.
We will need a kind of national De-Demification. Exposing the media’s coordinated lies will be part of this process. Start with a couple of easy, high profile targets. Itemize the methods and objects of their deceptions, name the perpetrators, find the skeletons in their closets, demonize them, make associating with them career destroyers and pretty soon their allies will hang them out to dry (that process has already begun). Expose in step by step detail their deliberate efforts to deceive us in order to weaken our security, steal our earnings, manipulate our votes, modify our thoughts, and ultimately, bind us to an all powerful state.
Romney himself is unlikely to launch such an undertaking. But he can’t resist Congressional efforts too hard. Once we score a big hit, it will be easier to run down and across the various tributaries of the leftist networks. Make it shameful to be associated with them, turn the tables on them with a Political Correctness of our own called the Truth.
Count me in 100% on your “de-demythification” project, Gylippus. I refer to it as The Andrew Breitbart Memorial Trouble Makers League. If you want to join, then you already have!
Proud to hoist the ABMTML banner! :)
Gylippus:
I thoroughly enjoy your comments whenever I see them. Thanks for the inspiring directive. In harmony with this political unmasking that you describe, it must also be balanced with a concerted effort to educate the citizenry, particularly the principles that are the bedrock of our civilization, as laid out by the Founding Fathers. People need to understand what it means to be American. The core strength of a nation is what in people’s hearts and minds, not simply a robust economy, or a land of abundant natural resources, though those assets have their purpose and are to be respected and developed. If people are not introduced to the proper narrative to replace their ignorant fantasies, then some other negative variant or new version of their old illusions will fill the void.
Words to live by!
“If people [Obama, Jarret] are not introduced to the proper narrative to replace their ignorant fantasies, then some other negative variant or new version of their old illusions will fill the void.”
Bingo.
Look for the Tea Party for help, we’ll be ready.
Indeed we are!
Re: De-Demification.
Hey, why you are at the De-Demification process, which by the way I am all for, please include some moderate rhino Republicans as targets, too. Some that come to mind that always seem to come forward to block any conservative or tea party reform efforts include Senators John McCain, Lindsey Gramnesty, Lisa Murkowski, Speaker John Boehner or even Gov. Romney himself. Wow this is fun. How about some non office holders, too, like Carl Rove, McCain’s entire election staff, Reince Preibus (sp?) or any other operatives that contributed to the downfall of Tea Party or conservative candidates in the midterm elections or who are failing to support conservatives or tea party candidates this time around. Think Ted Cruz, Todd Akin or Marco Rubio. Win or lose in the current election, the rinos need to be purged or else the conservatives and tea party folks need to form a new party.
Here is some good news for everyone. I live in Illinois, which is a blue state. (Most of that ink is generated by the democrat machine that is Chicago). Outside of the city there are a LOT of conservative republicans. I stopped by the early voting booth today and it was packed. I have NEVER seen it like that before. I think that bodes well for the election. So hang on, folks. In a few more days, God willing, this nightmare clown and his henchmen toadies will be through.
Dupage: I was in your county in late Sept. visiting a relative. I’m from another blue state, Washington. There was a small gathering for me, my son and some of her friends who wanted to meet me. Seven dyed in the wool libs, aligned against my son and myself. At times I felt like I was being “observed” by liberal social scientists.
We countered their sound bites with logic in an unemotional way. That’s all you can do. One of them piped up about the Supreme Court decision that affirmed the free speech rights/contribution rights of corporations: “Corporations aren’t people,” she exclaimed. I said, that same decision also affirmed the rights of UNIONS
Dupage: I was in your county in late Sept. visiting a relative. I’m from another blue state, Washington. There was a small gathering for me, my son and some of her friends who wanted to meet me. Seven dyed in the wool libs, aligned against my son and myself. At times I felt like I was being “observed” by liberal social scientists.
We countered their sound bites with logic in an unemotional way. That’s all you can do. One of them piped up about the Supreme Court decision that affirmed the free speech rights/contribution rights of corporations: “Corporations aren’t people,” she exclaimed. “I said, that same decision also affirmed the rights of UNIONS to contribute. You can look and see in many states and national races how much money unions contribute. And as far as corporations go, every single one of you is invested in pension plans, 401Ks, 457 plans that hold stock in corporations. You should be glad that corporations are able to try to influence legislation that would hurt their earnings, and your returns.”
Silence.
I hope you are right and that we conservatives will make some progress in local, Illinois races. It is probably one of the bluest states, so I don’t look for much progress there at the national level.
Best wishes.
So… Your plan is to demonize “high-profile… media targets” on the left because you believe they are deceiving the American people? First, demonizing anyone is, in and of itself, a deceptive practice. Please look up the definition of the word “demonize”. Demonizing is a portrayal/representation, which by definition means that it is your own perspective on the truth. Your “de-demification” itself is not only misinformed but also quite devious/deceptive. If your goal is so righteous, then you will need nothing more than the truth to win the hearts and minds of the people. On the other hand, if you tell the people the truth and they still don’t support your cause, then your goal has been found wanting by the people of this great democratic country, and your policies are unworthy of the right to govern americans.
Far be it from me, to say that exposing deceptive/lazy practices by the media isn’t a noble goal, but your “de-demification” plan is deceptive at its core. Furthermore, your goal in using that deception is to promote your own ideology at the expense of the truth. In essence, you what you perceive as an evil by using that same evil as a counter-attack. The only difference is the polar opposite position you occupy on the political spectrum. The true evils that you should be focusing on are the attempts by political extremists on both ends of the spectrum to delude moderates and independents.
If your true goal was eliminating deception in political media, then you would be re-miss by failing to start with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity. All four of which have been exposed time and again for making false, unsubstantiable, and hyperbolic claims.
If by stating that you want to “find the skeletons in their closets”, you mean that you want to find who is lining pundit’s pockets and who is using cash to lobby Washington, then I am all for it. However, I am afraid to say… conservative extremists such as yourself are bound to be very disappointed with the results of such an undertaking if you investigate both sides of the aisle.
Darn… can’t edit that post. The third sentence in the second paragraph should read: In essence, you want to eliminate what you perceive as an evil by using that same evil as a counter-attack.
I’m mainly interested in exposing and punishing all of the ringleaders who actively supported the Dem apparatus in their attempt to overthrow the Constitution.
As for RINO’s etc., it will be their turn soon. First things first.
…and what I mean by demonize is present the truth in a loud, dramatic, high-profile and sustained way – blare it from every megaphone in the nation, to make sure as many as possible are made aware of their crimes and turn against them.
Gylippus, some of us have already been working very hard at that, for a very long time.
I’ll go with ‘just plain sad’. Obama’s promises were those of a sociopath. He exhibits ALL the pathology of of someone who is a sociopath (Antisocial Personality Disorder) if they exhibit any 3 of these characteristics which is as follows:
Sense of entitlement; Unremorseful; Apathetic to others; Unconscionable behavior; Blameful of others; Manipulative and conning; Affectively cold; Disparate understanding; Socially irresponsible; Disregardful of obligations; Nonconforming to norms; Irresponsible…describes our 44th President, Barack Obama, to a ‘T’.
Unfortunately it describes his entire administration.
And WE, the public, scratch our heads trying to understand how he can behave this way when the fact is we aren’t sociopaths so we can’t imagine behaving this way. For Obama it is inherent in his nature…he’s not stupid, he’s missing a vital ‘chip’. Unfortunately for us he is imbued with superficial charm, is glib and practices “good” intelligence; he has a very grandiose sense of self, is pathological in his lying and is extremely manipulative; additionally he exhibits a complete lack of remorse,shame. Yep, he’s a sociopath alright.
It’s not just plain sad, it’s absolutely terrifying. Certainly if he wins another 4 years as POTUS we’ll be forced to experience what this nut case has planned for us.
Yes. Most of the time I am extremely angry with Obama. Though recently I’ve been feeling sorry for him and for his impending destruction. His sociopathy has been bolstered and propped up for a very long time. (he’s the guy driving down Park Ave and magically all the lights turn green as he approaches). It’s not entirely his fault. He’s been enabled by fools and ne’er do wells alike. The Norwegians gave him a Nobel prize for peace when he hadn’t done anything to deserve it, which is like giving alcohol to an alcoholic (little did they know). Fast forward. Now they know. They’ve seen the pathology. He’s not only our first “pretend” president, he’s killed more people with drone aircraft than any other Nobel peace prize recipient.
We can only hope that these people acquire some humility and contrition, admit the mistake they made, never do it again, and hopefully this new found maturity will bubble up into the Left leaning brains that still have a conscience.
You aren’t the only one who is furious with Obama. His former base of black supporters in Chicago has figured out that the Democrats’ ‘war on women’ is nothing more than an excuse for a war against black babies.
I agree with your assessment of Obama. About the only good thing to have come out of those four horrible years is the fact that the race card has been pretty well used up.
Well said, Mom.
And can you see the humor in high gas prices making “green energy” more affordable? Is there a “new logic” to accompany the “new math”?
“Green jobs” were all about crony capitalism – which is another word for corruption.
Obama’s real agenda was, and is, to cripple all economically viable sources of North American energy so as to keep us dependent on the Saudis.
This had the additional benefit (in Obama’s eyes) of keeping us, the hoi polloi, poor. It isn’t enough for Obama and his hangers-on to be rich – they can’t be happy unless the rest of us are poor.
Amen to that, Mom!
Whoa! If man is a fallen creature, redeemed only through the redemptive blood of the lamb, what would all this supposed previous trust be based upon? The world has always been the world, hasn’t it? Politicians know that one has to put forth a somewhat Christian stance, but from Jefferson and his de-mythologized personal scriptures on, why would we assume that our politicians were believers? And if they weren’t, why would we assume that those fallen creatures would level with us?
All these rhetorical grenades against the new reprobate Mr Obama, are pretty much just that, rhetoric. I miss the good old days when we had the born-again Jimmah Carter in the White House. ;-)
There certainly is a case to be made against the Obama Presidency, but VDH and so many others here get all wound up (like Obama campaigning, according to him) when railing against what Obama has wraught. Yes, we DO need a critical press; that is VDH’s most valid point, but the alternate bombast from the right, including his own symphonic etudes of resentment and bitterness, is only occasionally plausibe enough to be a corrective. Glyppius’ political score-settling advice takes on the tone of an auto de fe. Sounds about right. Praise the Lord and pass the patriotic piety.
Just prescribing some of the same medicine you lefties have been using for years Dwight: Identify your opponents and then go after them. Only we’re fighting for freedom, you for serfdom.
Good comment sans the snark. Trust and belief are overrated.
See, I don’t want to have to believe or trust a politician beyond one promise and one qualification, namely, that he’ll abide by the laws governing our constitutional republic both in letter and in spirit, which he reads the same way I do. America’s founders gave us a republic governed by laws, not men, so that we wouldn’t have to trust men beyond the founders. But we can’t even do that much, hence the “Living Constitution”, to be amended according to the whims of 5 unelected seasoned citizens.
You lefties have never understood the Tea Party because you don’t understand the foregoing. When Tea Party types goof on America’s founding documents, what they’re saying is, “We trust these and believe in the men who framed them, not today’s temporary politicians.” That’s a slap in the face – and a well-deserved one – to every politician of every stripe, not just the ones who favor trillion dollar deficits but also the ones too cowardly to stop them.
“is only occasionally plausible enough to be a corrective”
You must be one of those students who sits in Professor Hanson’s front row. Dude you get an “F” for critical thinking and impartiality. You are the reason our founders gave us limited government. It doesn’t matter if the cockamamie theories of Progressives are correct (all historical and logical evidence to the contrary), you should have no right to subject any one of us to the societal messes caused by your naivete and aggressive incompetence.
I think it depends on how the disbeleif is channeled. If it is channeled against those who want more gov, and think gov is the solution to everything, like obama and the dems, and some big gov repubs, rather than against america generally, then this disbeleif can be productive, since it is grounded on reality.
Certainly Prof hanson doesn’t need Greeks to define zenophobia. but the Greeks. Romans. Persians, Celts. Anglo-Saxons. the Letts and Balts, and every other human society that has ever existed can all exemplify it. We trust only “our own people”. As Don Vito Corleone pointed out: “This wouldn’t be happening if I had a Sicilian consigliari.” Groups of alien peoples remain groups of alien peoples because they are not related. Every animal society, including Homo sapiens is the same: a group of related individuals, sharing common values in competition for common goals. Sure. every human society shares common values (religion, language, customs, behavioral norms) in pursuing common golas (dominance, females, status), but first comes the requirement that all members be related. No matter what else is shared, a number of Spaniards, Hollanders, and Poles will always represent at least three different societies. Maybe this upsets your Enlightenment/bizarro world-view, but if so, you just can’t handle the truth. Get over it.
That was Sonny Corleone. Vito was in the hospital.
Even in Europe, people are beginning to realize that you are correct.
How can we trust the media when they are so blatantly in the tank for the current administration?
Look at this ad from the most recent Vanity Fair:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=476965848991740&set=a.476965825658409.115818.100000349869671&type=1&theater
Mom, I am assuming that you equate “abandoning Christian values” with the decline of the Christian church. If not, feel free to disregard this entire post.
If so,what you have failed to consider is that Christian values and societal values in general are not mutually exclusive. Most societies have a core set of values that are homogeneous throughout the world. If you observe Scandinavian countries with low crime and high quality of life, you will see that even though they are predominantly atheist, the people there share many of the same core values as yourself. I’m not sure which values you are referring to, but your examples give some clues.
First, your trust that your fellow members of society will keep your home safe is one that is shared in any society. I know of no society that promotes theft of property during vacation.
Second, your trust in schoolteachers, which I’m assuming refers to trusting that they will teach your children valuable truthful information, is again shared by any society that supports education. The difference is which information is considered to be valuable and truthful. The curriculum in our public schools goes through a political process just as any other regulation must. If you believe that the information provided in public schools is false, then you have the option to vote for new school board members, state superintendent, and POTUS. If society agrees, then you get what you’d hoped for,if not, your values aren’t shared by society.
Finally, I’m not really sure how you equate Christian values with the belief that cash can be used in lieu of bartering, but all first world countries have a monetary system. Your faith that your bank notes will be honored doesn’t stem from your faith in Christ, it stems from your faith in the economy, as a whole. The economy knows no religion. It relies exclusively on a series of inputs and outputs.
“I had a lot of Obamas in class…”
Okay, I laughed.
“We live in an age of disbelief, in which citizens increasingly do not believe what their government says…”
I really think this cynicism, this disbelief is going to be our salvation. When a President insists that four dollars a gallon for gas is proof of his success, he practically begs people to get up early, drive to the polling place and vote against him.
Precisely my plan, too: get up early, get to the polls and wait as long as necessary to cast my vote.
Obama himself insisted we must vote him out of office if he doesn’t keep his promises to reduce spending and debt, heal the earth, cause the oceans to recede, bring the parties together in agreement, improve America’s international standing, create a new and stable global landscape, generate a bazillion green jobs …
As Dr. H points out, Obama excels at rhetoric. Performance and results? Not so much.
More accurately… “Not at all.”
Straight from the horse’s mouth: Proof that Barack Hussein Obama NEVER wanted Americans to enjoy prosperity!
Dr. Hanson wrote, “…the administration is so certain of that fact that it need not worry even about the most blatant evidence of dissimulation and untruth.”
Let us apply this sentiment to BenGhazi. Blaming the anti-Islamic film was just another lie to shift blame to the victims – both the American people and those who had died in BenGhazi. “Never let a crisis go to waste” was the habituated meme that induced President Obama to warp the truth about the attack. He used the deaths of those serving America to weaken the resolve of the country to oppose their killers. It was our fault for holding prejudicial attitudes toward our enemies. On one of the Sunday talk shows immediately after Chris Stevens was killed, a Democratic Congressman indignantly asked, “What was Stevens doing in BenGhazi anyway?” as though he was not there under orders from his deluded bosses.
There’s one Narrative I’m finding myself almost ready to believe: The rumor that the White House & State Dept. knew what was coming in Benghazi – in fact, Amb. Stevens was sent there with half-@ssed security for a reason. That reason was for him to be taken captive in the embassy assault, to be exchanged for the Blind Sheik. That way, Obama’s trusted friends in the Muslim Brotherhood would have their victory and cement control over Egypt, while our media would trumpet The One’s great foreign policy victory: the saving of an innocent, brave American as a bookend to the killing of supervillain Osama bin Laden. Mercy and justice; don’tcha just love it? The jihad defeated once and for all, and happy days here again. (Feh. Would the country have bought it?) But the plan fell through – maybe Chris Stevens fought too hard and the jihadis overdid it (remember that he died of his wounds, not by a clean killshot or such), leaving the Obamunists to come up with another Narrative. Am I being paranoid or overly credulous here?
No, I think your hypothesis is a good one. I do remember the blind Shiek’s name being mentioned as one of the reasons the Egyptian mob was assembled.
The more I think about it, why did Hillary say those photos were of the friendly and grateful Libyans
bringing the ambassador to the hospital? What a weird notion, unless she was trying to salvage the original narrative. Those guys sure didn’t look like they were full of tender concern.
Why also was a drone there to record everything, yet security was so weak?
Good theory. Absolutely there is more to this debacle than meets the eye. State was certainly cooking up some kind of hare-brained scheme to further some political objective. The exact outlines of the scheme may take a while to come to light, but when they do we need to make sure there is hell to pay.
I’m just disgusted, and more & more am starting to seriously think & rethink conspiracy theories. The Libya murders are just one more in a long line. Think “Fast & Furious” – immed. after it started getting real air time, we heard Consigliere Axelrod et. al. several times say some damn thing about needing more gun control. Ah, so you created a crisis that shouldn’t be wasted? What about the Gulf oil spill – if you listened closely there was defin. some shady stuff going on behind the scenes. Also in that case, where was the “citizen army” Obama was recruiting (something something City Streets? volunteering a yr. for basically a Peace Corps at home)? Why weren’t those so eager to volunteer all shipped “toot sweet” to LA? Let’s not forget Head Crook Holder and his office, all those busy bees esp. in the voting rights div. However, they aren’t concerned at all with things like Black Panther voter intimidation; you know, that adjudicted case where BY DEFAULT the defendants were already judged guilty that simply trickled away by AG’s say-so. Arrrgh, I can’t stand this; may we have only 2 wks. of this cr@p left!
We can’t let up until all the facts are known and those responsible brought to justice. At the very least we owe it to Agent Brian Terry and his family.
The administration appears to be generating a coverup. They were clearly hoping the voters would buy the “disgusting video” story. Are we know faced with Libyagate?
Actually the media narrative very much supports conspiracy theories wrt fast and furious and Bengazi. Remember all those news stories and magazine pieces in the weeks before FF came out about how legally purchased guns from America were responsible for the violence in Mexico? Those were being pushed hard, and as soon as the FF scandal started to surface they all mysteriously disappeared. Never mentioned again. They were building the narrative to get public sentiment behind some gun control measure and using FF to drive statistics, but it blew up on them. Same thing in Bengazi. I would not be in the least surprised if it was an October surprise gone wrong. Evidence includes all those Egyptian demands for the blind sheik seeded in the media in the weeks before, now suddenly curiously gone. The complete lack of security, and the effort to push the video afterwords which was no doubt a pre-planned fallback. So far everything seems to support this version of events and I’ve seen nothing to discredit it.
BINGO!
Interesting, isn’t it, that the whole “Huma” issue has faded away? Huma Abedin, Hillary’s top aide, daughter of a Saudi family with well-documented Muslim Brotherhood relations and contacts … . Last summer the Republicans were making a lot of noise about Huma, then the whole issue dropped off the face of the Earth in part because McCain moved to squelch it. Odd that no one’s talking about her now, given that Hillary and State’s security chief seem to be at odds over what happened and when.
The Benghazi fiasco was all about funneling weapons and personnel to our militant Muslim enemies.
Do we believe anymore that ghettos and poverty are only or even mostly the products of racism? We see the ever present lack of fathers in the homes as a the most prominent feature of those stuck in what is now defined as “poverty”?
When music of the inner city celebrates gangbanging, sex with any commitment, and learning as “acting white” does anyone really believe that government programs will somehow “level the playing field” and turn the residents of these vast projects into productive hard working citizens? Isn’t it true that two parent Black families have the same economic status as two parent white families? Self selecting poverty by having children out of wedlock is not racism!
Yet we continue to hear the siren call of our political leaders that the oppressed minorities need affirmative action better known as reverse racism to make things fair for those who “have been left behind”. Isn’t it true that many if not all of those “left behind” have choosen their lot in life by their own actions?
Racist pig! [snark]
A glance at education levels in Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the most affluent counties in the U.S., shines a blinding light on “family values” as an indicator of success for most students. The county has small “ghettos” of Koreans, Indians/South Asians, Vietnamese, Hispanics, and Blacks. It also has a fairly even blend of middle and upper class members of those racial societies spread throughout the county.
This is also reflected in the student body of the top high school in the area, the Thomas Jefferson HS for Science and Technology, a magnet school for eight counties and independent cities in Northern Virgina, and one of the top ten high schools in the nation. The class of 2014 is 2/3rds Asian. It is 3.2% Hispanic and 1.21% Black. The population of the school’s attendance area is about 60% white and 20% Asian. Blacks and Hispanics make up the remainder of the people in the area.
Why do the Asians do so much better than the rest? Simple – their families push them much harder on education from pre-kindergarten right through college/university.
Are you aware of the number of “low income housing projects” in your area?
YOU are paying for those, too.
Anytime I hear an official story that is unbelievable, two questions come to mind. What is the practical effect of pushing the unbelievable story? Cui bono? How does the explanation offered function in fact?
Secondly does the explainer know he is pushing an untruth? If so, why? If not, who could be the source of the malstory? What do they get?
Not a bad way to deal with all the untruths swirling around us to prevent us from recognizing in time that we are in the midst of a collectivist political coup being conducted through education and in the name of AGW or Climate Change or international competitiveness. Scams to get grant money and build Corporatist support as the designated sector crony in a centrally planned and state led economy. We get the lies because they do not want us to react politically at the ballot box in time. We get the social and emotional and psychological attacks through the media, K-12, and higher ed (all classified by the statist schemers as Communication institutions) to change what we value and believe and how we feel. After 20 years of outcomes based assaults, no wonder too many know little and believe nothing except at an emotional, irrational level.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-the-leaders-of-higher-ed-think-they-are-a-cartel-how-can-it-ever-drive-innovation/ is me following the unmasking trail of the popular myth that colleges and universities are the drivers of innovation in the economy. And that they therefore need all the manna that can be rained on them.
Most of it ends up being consumed in a negative sum game just as assuredly as those GAO conventions for government workers. No value added at great expense.
Other than the media, I do not believe anything will really change if Mitt Romney wins. Ask yourself, during the almost six years of George W. Bush and both houses of Congress with Republican majorities, did we ever start drilling in ANWR? Do you think we will start drilling if Romney wins? Did we balance a budget? Did our national debt go down? How did Bush’s Supreme Court nominees turn out? Do you think Romney will do any better?
However, what will change things is our inevitable collapse. That is something, regrettably, I do believe in.
Dave: You said “other than the media.” If the media changed, if it became a means by which truth was communicated to the masses, other changes would follow.
“Other than the media, I do not believe anything will really change if Mitt Romney wins.”
Really? After eight years of hate from the MSM directed at Bush, you actually think the media will change? If Mitt Romney wins (and I hope and pray he does), the same old hate will again grace virtually all of our MSM, guaranteed. You really want to put forth the theory that nothing else will change? With that much ability to see into the future, what stocks would you suggest we invest in? Who will win the World Series? I want the benefit of all this foresight.
obama keeps complaining that he inherited a mess. Did obama have a September 11, 2001 happen near the beginning of his presidency? If that hadn’t happened, do you have any idea what Bush might have done had America not had that little “bomb shell” dropped on us? Well over 3,000 people, mostly Americans died because of that, most during the actual cowardly act. The assassination of our Libyan ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans is a terrible and evil act that was blamed on a ridiculous video by our administration for well over seven days. Pathetic. Ask me again in four years, if Romney is elected, if I think there is any difference. If obama wins, all bets are off…. you know nothing will change for the better.
A better comparison to make is – “What will happen if Obama wins?”. Comparing Bush to Romney (“if Mitt Romney wins”) is ineffectual. You should look at this from the perspective of an Obama win.
You forget one big change in the repub party, they now have the tea party watching over them, and the tea party is almost as skeptical of bush era repubs as they are of obama. They will be watching very closely for repub party backsliding.
The Tea Party movement really has begun to change the Republican Party. Today I voted for Ted Cruz instead of the next-in-line establishment Republican. Since the Tea Party made “primary” into a verb, safe seat Republicans are much more careful with their votes. The ability to focus conservative energy on individual close primary elections is a very potent weapon.
I’m fairly comfortable with my vote for Mitt Romney. He’s not a conservative, but he’s a huge improvement over the incumbent. I see lots of opportunities for incremental spending cuts and regulation rollbacks to buy us some time.
Agreed. And if just sticks to that commitment to budget test as important enough to borrow from China to pay for it, I think you will see more than trivial and fringe cuts. Romney will be a great President and leader of the free world.
“Have we become Greece or Argentina?”
Yes, if Obama is re-elected their is a non-zero chance we may also become Zimbabwe as well.
Change…
“The same is true of Libya: the noble idea of a reset Middle East, appreciative of the unique heritage and ideology of Barack Obama and his bold attempt to reformulate America, was simply too precious to be imperiled by al-Qaedist thugs who hate us as much as ever and will kill until stopped.”
Yes, they will continue to attack until they are stopped. Does anyone believe that the Commander in Chief of our professional military, the finest ever fielded, will allow our forces to accomplish that mission, to “stop them.”. As I have often noted here and elsewhere, the mission of the Infantry of the United States Army is to close with and destroy the enemy and/or their will to resist. They have not been allowed to take on that mission for many years now, not since lawyers have been added to every rifle platoon [an admitted exaggeration] to ensure no such mission will be accomplished. Why not? Because the UN wouldn’t like it any more than the Democratican base and the WAPO/NYT.
And now, because of the falsehoods perpetuated by the media, e.g., in order to have peace and security we must not make war, everybody seems to agree on one giant stupidity belied by the entirety of history itself: there should be and shall be no more wars. (Thank you, sir. May I have another? Certainly: there should be and shall be no more crime.)
“This time, vote like your whole world depended on it.” –Nixon, ’68
Very apropos, and an excellent statement on the commentary of Professor Hanson.
Do I Believe?
Well as a great American put it so succinctly,
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”-Sarah Palin
Without doubt or reservation that makes me the resistance to high treason, for that is what these big lies are, or to be exact, treason by those who are complicit in them.
It is tyranny plain and simple.
As another American in our time has stated:
“It is not ours to restore the power of the Constitution. It is ours to show them the wrath of America without the protections the Constitution offers them.
Let them restore it to find refuge from us” – TL Davis
How right you are. The day we can no longer own guns we become slaves.
XSANDIEGOCA:
“The day we can no longer own guns we become slaves.”
Ya buddy, you know it.
Remember, those who ignore or forget history take the dirt nap first.
I believe with all my heart it is time we stop beating around the bush if we believe in our Liberty.
Everything the leviathan and its ruling class does, ultimately, it all centers around one thing, guns, “gun control”. Gun control is about one thing, control.
Proof in the pudding goes like this. Part and parcel of the tried and true tactic of tyrants throughout time recorded, is a strategy of divide people then conquer them. Use fear as a psychological weapon. Fear is the quintessential choice for totalitarian systems of power. Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then ideally, finish off the few who aren’t afraid enough.
Tell me what is wrong with this picture?
What part of sovereignty of the people, shall not be infringed, and unalienable God given rights can these people not understand?
I contend the ruling class is the existential threat to the very crux of we the peoples sovereignty, through our unalienable uninfringable primal liberty to defend ourselves from tyranny via our 2nd Amendment powers is the ultimate goal of these tyrants.
This is all about guns. When you boil it all down to its essence, everything these son of a bitches do ultimately involves the barrel of a gun. It is the threat of power of the use of guns to enforce their will that lies behind every law and regulation.
It is profound it is the threat of, and escalation to, the use of guns, if these laws and regulations these tyrants hide behind, that have no legitimate legal connection to the Constitution and bill of rights, are not obeyed.
It is arms in the hands of we the people that is the ultimate existential threat to these elites. It is those arms that is the only bulwark against the resistance of peaceful redress any decent law abiding American wishes to come to pass. And it is when the ruling class makes peaceful redress impossible, that they make violent redress possible.
There is a universal truth in the timeless axiom of our founders where, “When the people fear the government, that’s tyranny; when the government fears the people, that’s freedom.”
As American Mercenary said so well concerning these co-opted rouge regime elements hiding behind the guise of “legal lawful” entities such as dept. of HLS:
“…Over 6 billion people on the planet and they want to put the microscope on 300 million. That is putting the microscope on 1 American and ignoring 20 other threats. Hope that puts it in comparison…”
In that vein there is a funny secret whispered between many fellow American’s who are dismayed by this evil arrayed against us. It is said when a republic turns to tyranny, the armed citizen still gets to vote.
Our founders did not put the 1st and 2nd Amendments one after the other for no reason. It is reason itself for this structure of Liberty. The two are essentially inseparable. One can not exist without the other. And that is why the legacy media and the ruling class, along with a host of treasonous entities from the muslim brotherhood, (a perfect proxy of the left) to the EPA is outflanking these primal freedoms. They have to destroy one, or both, in order to obtain absolute power.
The pen is mightier than the sword, but you need the sword, to protect the pen.
And the ruling class knows this all to well. An armed aroused citizenry, armed not only to the teeth, but with the will and conviction of their principles of freedom, the gestalt of the truth it is liberty or death, well you can’t stop people like this.
They get a bone in their teeth.
They become legion.
An appeal to heaven is in order.
Violent constitutional redress is redress of last absolute options.
I think there is a great awakening underway, I hope and pray it is what saves the day.
But the question of the day, is the truth.
The truth.
Wonderful idea, something to really believe in.
And the day they take total control over our healthcare, we become even more enslaved.
Splendid, Dr. Hanson. I can visualize this speech rolling off your tongue with fluid conviction.
The only terms missing from this excellent essay are “petulance, buffoonery, incompetence, and blatant corruption”. But, I know you have used them before in describing this regime of imbeciles and their propaganda bureaus.
Those “students” arguing their knowledge of the subjects are becoming attorneys that will argue for the release of mass murderers and child molesters because of their childhood misfortunes, and petition for their grades to be reviewed and improved through appeasement.
And future medical care may only be administered to Californians that can speak fluent spanish. Argentina? Oh, si senior! Quieres papas fritas con esto?
I don’t think the “Era of Disbelief” is necessarily a bad thing because it leads us to the “Era of Distrust”. When consumers don’t trust a business that business disappears, when citizens don’t trust government then government gets much, much smaller. Obama is living proof that our “Too Big To Trust Government” must be radically and aggressively downsized. The Obama Legacy will be “The Era of Limited Government” once everything he’s ever advocated is examined and found lacking.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
– Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Nazi Propaganda
It is all about power, for all their lies and treason’s, we do not belong to the government. Just as we once did not belong to King George III of Great Britain, for Americans are not subjects of monarchs, parliaments, congresses, Presidents, Governors, Mayors, Kings, Queens…the who lot of them.
To whit: The failed policies of George Bush, the failed policies of George Bush, the Failed policies … you get the idea. AFAICT, those policies were essentially capitalism. This lie has become a mantra for Obama, Axelrod, Cutter and Wasserman. It helped get Obama elected. “Vote for me, I’m not George Bush.” But the failed policiy mantra really says, Capitalism itself has failed, and Socialism is the way to go.
Obama brought it up again in the last debate. What a surprise, right? I was angry that Romney blew his best chance of rebutting the lie with something like, The real failed policy was the liberal policy of social engineering through government over reach in the form of the Community Re-investment Act that strong-armed lenders to make unwise business decisions that they never would have made otherwise. Bush raised the flag of concern many times in Congress but no one listened. This lit the fuse on the housing bust and subsequent economic meltdown.
Something to that effect. Correct me if this is wrong. Anyway, I don’t understand why people with a microphone don’t stand up to this lie.
I don’t believe anymore either. Neither does anyone else I know. This can have grave consequences. In 1940, the population of France had come to the conclusion the government was no longer a force for good in their lives. When the Germans invaded, the government begged the people to remember the Marne and rush to the defense of La Patrie. Truth be told, most Frenchment chose to remain in the cafe. Truth be told, most Frenchmen welcomed the idea of a little Teutonic efficiency in their lives. The most famoust Bordello in Paris, Le Chabonais, did not miss a beat. The top officers of the Wehrmacht were welcomed with champagne.
is belief, not disbelief.
Obama’s lies, media falsehoods, governmental coverups, official mendacities, all of them are swallowed whole.
Truth itself no longer exists, but gullibility, the will to believe anything, holds its own and is stronger than ever.
For decades, Obama was born in Kenya. Now he was born in Hawaii. Gotta be this or that? No. Both are true.
A good liar used to be hard to find. Now they abound like bunny rabbits. And there’s a sucker born every minute.
even believe their own lies, yet!
There is an underlying thread to all this. The truth is it ultimately involves the 2nd amendment, the idea we the people are sovereign, we who have primal unalienable rights and freedoms. Liberty! Liberty begins with the idea that you have the right to defend yourself against tyranny.
As one who understood power like no other:
“Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” “Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.”
– Mao Tse-tung
November 6, 1938
Lets not beat around the bush. This All about guns. Everything these elites do revolves ultimately about guns. It is guns that give these elites their power to enforce their will. It is guns that they fear. It is guns that they must, if they are to obtain absolute power, posses in order to rule with an iron fist. It is guns that they must take from the populous in order obtain that absolute power. It is guns they understand, as no other people, that are the real power behind anything. It is guns this system of government now lives by. It is guns that they use to enforce everything.
It is guns our founders foresaw as the ultimate line of defense of our Liberty against tyranny.
And it is guns in the hands of We The People that they fear most.
Any thing else is a cheap side show.
Yes, well Obama is an obamination. Should we get our hopes up that the GOP will transcend itself and refrain from the trough, withhold largess from the 47% including the beltway bandits, curtail their turn at spending, refrain from Federal Register expansion, and disdain “socialism (which)has become a therapeutic exercise for the better off (since)it offers psychosocial comfort?”
How did that last GOP governor in California work out?
“How did that last GOP governor in California work out?”
Arnold is what happens when the candidate is not vetted by the party he claims to represent.
How about the last GOP governor of NY, George Pataki?
How about the last GOP governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney? With Romneycare and carbon cap and trade. “I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people, and that plant, that plant kills people,” Romney was quoted in front of a coal fired power plant.
Governors Almond and Carcieri of Rhode Island?
I will not vote for Obama. I didn’t like him in 2006, even less in 2008 and he has proven himself a walking disaster. I will vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
But I am skeptical about the trio of Addison Mitchell “Mitch” McConnell, John Boehner and ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. I am skeptical about many of the powerful longstanding GOP senators.
Let’s focus on November 6th first. Then it will be time to clean our own house as well. It will take several cycles to get where we want to be. Don’t let your (valid) frustrations distract you from the long term objective.
As a member of the older generation, I agree with “Call Me Mom” and VDH. I do not believe anymore. I do not believe when Obama and any Democrat and most Republicans try to tell me their version of the truth. I do not believe anymore when I am told that the poverty rate is so high in America when I have travelled abroad to third world countries and have actually witnessed poverty first hand. I do not believe anymore when a disproportionate number of children are born into single parent homes when not that long ago, two parent homes was the norm, not the exception.
I no longer believe when our young people would rather emulate the hip-hop, rapping, foul language, gold covered teeth, gold chain encrested, and extremely wealthy entertainers than someone who is responsible and lives a clean life. I am no longer a believer in the American dream because the American dream has been coopted by the Obama cult followers who have no clue because they have never experienced a day of want in their priviledged lives.
I no longer believe because I see my two adult children who have earned their MBAs and one is working on his doctorate work, produce, and all the while, those around them who do less but take credit for the work of the group and because of their political beliefs are usually rewarded to a greater degree.
So, in the twilight of my years, at times I ask myself, “why am I still fighting the good fight?” “Why not enjoy the largesse’ of the free trough of goodies offered by the Obama types who are top-notch class enviers and class war purveyors?” Yet, even now, I cannot bring myself to accept anything less than who I am for my remaining years. What others do, I cannot control, only what I do. When the questions arise, I take a look around and know, I do not want to be like them because I no longer “believe in them”.
I think this election will be the one that either brings us back to some sense of national self-worth or put us further down the path of reliance on the government to meet our needs.
As a prior commenter wisely pointed out, many fundamental aspects of our society-in fact, of any generally healthy and well-functioning society—are based on and run on shared values and trust, and once that common ground and those shared values are gone, once that trust that holds a society together is replaced by a certain level of cynicism and distrust, things start to fall apart, as they are doing today, and it soon becomes “every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.“
The great, generation’s long project of Antonio Gramsci and the Left has been to break those bonds of trust, to disorient us, to discredit our once shared common history and values, and to sow dissatisfaction and discord, to divide, Balkanize, and fragment us and, then, to pit one group against the other, so that our vision is clouded, our course uncertain, our national unity is shattered, and our power is diminished; the Left hoping that in the resulting disorder, violence, and chaos they will get their chance to rearrange the structure of and relationships in our society according to their collectivist and totalitarian ideology.
Thus, our first priorities must be to do everything we can do to regain our clarity of vision and direction, to reunite the country, to re-establish and reinvigorate its first principles and traditional values, and to protect and defend distinctly American interests, in a danger-filled world that is often hostile to those interests.
To quote Sun Tzu, “Know yourself and know your enemy, and you can win a hundred battles.”
I was pleased to see the descriptive term “polypragmon” crop up again. A few years back, Hugh Fitzgerald, formerly the deputy director of Jihad Watch, used that term frequently to describe denizens of the State Department and of other federal agencies who are unable to resist involving the United States directly in every foreign squabble, no matter how small, creating out of thin air American interests where there are and never were any interests. By keeping busy attending to these squabbles, the polypragmons squander American resources, dilute American power, and, worst of all, they completely miss the big piture. By this negligent behavior, they actually subvert the primary American interest–that of protecting Western civilzation from a virulent, confident, and well funded totalitarian ideology that plans to, and relentlessly acts to, obliterate it. Driven by habit and vanity to frantically rush about here and there and everywhere, the polypragmons never allow themselves time to stop, study, and think. By doing so, and by scandalously failing to husband Western military, political, and economic resources, they betray us all. Hugh Fitzgerald’s writings on this theme can be found in the archives at Jihad Watch. He continues today to write pieces for New English Review.
My Dear Cyberfriend VDH…believe in what?
Do I believe in a Senate that arrogantly refuses to put forward a MANDATORY budget to be scored? No, I don’t.
Do I believe in an NLRB that attacks a private business for attempting to expand into a right to work state?
Do I believe in an inane plot to gut the military in half by playing a game of chicken with our national security pitted against a class warfare schemed to confiscate earned, saved and accumulated wealth?
Do I believe in abdicating our sovereignty to the UN for purposes of ruling our citizenry and putting their grubby hands on our earnings?
Do I believe in a DOJ that allows armed thugs to threaten to kill “cracker babies” at a polling place?
Do I believe in a global media that forges documents to tilt a Presidential election and then tells us we only need “truthyness”? Or stages events with Green Helmet guy? Or photoshops pictures, reddens the eyes of candidates for magazine covers, edits audio tapes to give a false impression of what is said, fuzzies up pictures to hide material evidence? These are not merely glaring omissions…the sitting on their hands type of ignoring key issues that may harm their candidate or party of choice…these are affirmative acts of intentional fraud, deceit. If the very information stream we must rely on to self-govern this land of ours is so toxic and polluted with Propaganda and Lies Ministry evil-doing and mischief…when it is not involved in out and out treachery, treason and abetting enemies of state…or publishing leaked national security items…what is left to believe in?
No, my dear VDH…I most decidedly do NOT believe. I suspect. I accuse. I level charges against those who mean harm to our Constitution, to our checks and balances, to our rules and regulations, to our national security, to our border integrity, to our natural resources, to our free market democracy.
I cling to my Bible and my guns. That statement, from my President, is about all I can really believe from my government, with one exception, which is related. I believe our troops, in harm’s way, are laying it on the line.
God help them, and God help America.
Thanks Dr. Hanson, always well written.
Obama and his communist friends are just bigger ticks sucking even more blood from the host, these ticks just happen to be communist, marxist, muslim ticks. But that’s what the governments of men have become: big ticks sucking blood and treasure from the all of the people.
This Babylonian form of government must end. ‘Of the people by the people and for the people’ means government must remain small, the size of a pea, not the bloated mess it has become. Tell me how many problems could not be solved at the local level if the law allowed? See, at the end of day the most of what todays governments do is self serving, designed fatten their own lazy ass. It seems some have awakened to this fact. Hopefully enough.
In todays upside down lexicon, “too big to fail” really means: guaranteed to fall, as they all have and always will.
Here’s what I believe: that the American idea transformed the world and made life many time better for billions of people, and that abandoning that idea and the principles derived from it for snake oil from confirmed liars and power-mad tyrants is insanity.
Dr. Hanson hits the nail only partially on the head. Since I don’t have my reputation for intellectual fairness to protect, I will try to drive the nail home. Obama is a Muslim who supports the idea of a world wide Islamic caliphate. He has cultivated an alliance with the Communist Party of America who, as Hillary Clinton and most of our mainstream media illustrate, also believe in a world governance solution of a slightly different sort. We, as Dr Hanson brilliantly points out, are not used to this kind of propagandist rhetoric coming from our political leaders and are reacting with disbelief. I say, things have already gotten well beyond that stage and we are making a last ditch effort to return our country to something that appears to be more American to us. Only God can help us if we don’t stop Obama and his allies this time. And God may just think we have squandered the one great chance he gave to humans to live with dignity and with the freedom to choose their own pathways in life, for all we know. ABO2012
Never trust anybody under 60.
“There is a nihilism about that terrifies me.” Me too. Ah nihilism – and where might we find that? In the Postmodern dominated Academy as I am sure VDH is well aware. Last week I was discussing Modernism with a friend and he said it started in the Renaissance. I can see that view but I also know I tend to think of Modernism as a product of the Enlightenment. So I looked it up in Wikipedia and indeed my friends view is the more dominant one these days. According to this view the beginning of Modernity dates from the fall of Constantinople, but the end is given as 1989!? So the Modern projects is over, finished..gone…kaput! What happened in 1989? The Wall came down and with it Communism – finished, gone kaput. And who decided to end Modernity at that particular juncture? Why, good old academics. Postmodern, Marxist, Gramscian academics who were forced to witness the inevitable triumph of socialism..er… collapse. It was the end times for heaven on earth. So what did they do? They control the narrative in the academy – so they ended Modernity. But they want capitalism and, well, America to collapse too. That’s part, I believe, of what is driving the nihilism and the over the top hatred – the frustration of the Marxist Millennial vision. Outside America, where I live, they are quite open about it. The American left has to pretend their self loathing is the highest form of patriotism. And as we can all see God has sent Obama to redeem that vision and, dang it, it has worked out just like it always does.
Good point.
Ninety-nine percent of people in the media earn less than $250,000per year. As a result, they think Obama’s tax increases will not affect them, so they are fine with it, as it gouges others, not them. Add to this their envy that “businessmen” make more than they do, and you understand why the media is in the tank for O. Someone once said, “there is no envy like the envy the six figure man has for the seven figure man”. Support for O among the liberal educated is a toxic brew of envy, perceived lack of respect and hurt feelings. If O wanted to raise taxes on all who made more than $100,000, they would quickly change their tune!
Who believes ANYTHING, these days?
Confusion is permeating all dimensions of our consciousness, for most people.
Tingles up our brains rule.
This analysis means that are folks like Obama wandering about in academia, the fourth estate, government and other places. They will be the next wave of people attempting to fix what Obama couldn’t accomplish. I suspect the goal is to get 100% dependency on the government. 47% is just too low a number.
With the death of Communism, those people got a new lease on life. What is next great challenge for America? Terrorism is just too nebulous as is Islam. That I suspect is the problem. America needs a problem to marshal its forces to do good before Obama and his ilk make their changes.
Very good VDH, perhaps the best in a long time.
So sadly, because it is all one long bummer.
But what is different this time is the attitude of the media.
Yes. None of these things are new, but where are the countervailing forces? The failure of the press paralyzes. Also, the extreme polarization of our politics.
I had a lot of Obamas in class.
Naw, not really, an Obama doesn’t speak up in class. A John Kerry speaks up in class! It’s amazing, isn’t it, how verbal capacity can be so ungrounded by reasoning. It’s quite remarkable. And, as we’re learning, scary and dangerous.
the sheer affluence offered by high technology, mass production, and generous entitlements makes the old notion of poverty almost obsolete.
Yes, there is much to this, and it may actually be hopeful as it may mean that we *can* screw up all sort of things, and still get by, with our EBD card, Obamaphone, and a good-enough car. To some extent that Protestant work ethic is simply not needed anymore, when all those non-college males can’t find jobs anyway, and yet we are STILL not suffering a lack of goods. We are runnng up a huge deficit. Does THAT matter anymore? Maybe not. I’m not sure we quite know the parameters of our Brave New World.
Can’t disagree with your last line.
Do you believe that the President of the USA is taking his family in vacations to a former FBI convict vineyard?
I do.
“Or do you believe what the president, the secretary of state, and the director of national intelligence will say to us when the next embassy is hit?” Speaks directly to my unease, this administration’s initial and ongoing response assures more attacks. The idea that Bush knew or should have known the 9/11/2001 attacks were coming was given credence in the Lame Scream Media (LSM). The fact that Obama’s partners in THE crime, the French and Brits, had fled the scene, is a minor footnote. The crime the three of them came together to murder a toothless midget! That dead midget demon has been replaces with several more virulent monstrousness demons.
Those of us who received our educations before the politically-correct shibboleths of the modern era took hold (i.e. when learning to think rather than learning to parrot was the objective) are able to do reality checks. Does what is being said make sense? Would I do something similar if I were in that situation? Are there other explanations for what we see besides the ones we are being told?
The late Nobel Physicist Richard Feynman told of his work on the Challenger Disaster. The official line was that there was no reason for the machine to fail, but when he talked to engineers they told him it was reasonable to expect a 1-2% failure rate for even tried and true solid rocket technology. Those two ideas are in conflict with each other, and one obviously is more realistic than the other.
Nowadays, doing reality checks is called “racism.”
Well said.
And I love your Spoonerism. :)
Superb,with one exception: VDH’s disbelief in the Department of Labor statistics. I worked for nine years in office of the DOL’s Bureau of Labor Statistics that publishes the unemployment numbers, and I can vouch for their integrity.
That was then- this is now:
http://michellemalkin.com/2012/10/19/coincidence-of-the-day/
“Lies, damn lies, and BLS…”
(with apologies to Mark Twain)
That was true, back in your day. There was always a gentleman’s agreement to not politicize certain parts of the government, like the BLS, because everyone understood that we need some solid data to govern effectively.
It is no longer true. These Leftists are not about governing. They are about obtaining power. It is all politics, all the time. Nothing is sacred to them. Everything is bent to the political Narrative. This is why we have the distrust, now, because everything is politicized, and politicians and their operatives lie as a matter of course.
The people in the BLS could adhere to the highest standards of integrity relative to their job definintions and requirements and the statistics could still be complete bullshit.
They do their sums according to parameters they have been given. So if, as just one example among a multitude, their requirements say they must use the unemployment data that is given to them by the states, and one of the states doesn’t give them data, they will produce a comletely “accurate” and “objective” unemployment number that is pure bullshit.
Seems like that might have happened recently. And coincidentally, it was the last unemployment number produced before the election. Also coincidentally, it equals the number when the Fraud took office. Also coincidentally, the “new” jobs were the highest in 30+ years, even though there hasn’t been another example in the order of magnitude for four years.
So much for the objectivity of BLS statistics.
From the same group of honest and objective statisticians who told us that the Unaffordable Health Care Act would reduce the defiit.
Frankly, anybody who produces that bogus crap is no better than their criminal masters. Any BLS statistician who knew the California data was omitted from the miracle unemloyment report and who didn’t blow the whistle should resign. Anybody who knew and didn’t resign is complicit in the crime.
Superb offering as usual, Vic, but it’s “EBT”, not “EBD”
Thank you. EBT = Electronic Benefits Transfer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Benefit_Transfer
I suspect that the trust-fund and Hollywood grandees who espouse socialist redistribution are motivated not only by senses of guilt or desires to appear au courant but that they also expect to be admitted into the Inner Party. That some of them might be the first to disappear in the purges that would inevitably follow the full success of the kind of State they desire probably never crosses their minds. They perceive not that all the thrustings under the buses serve only as rehearsals.
It shouldn’t be nihilism that “terrifies” you, Mr. Hanson, it should be dis-information. And if you want to see where that comes from all you have to do is look in the mirror or read this decrepit blog that you associate with. That’s enough to terrify anyone that’s got a lick of sense and is paying attention.
I won’t take the time to deconstruct your little essay line by line but trust me, almost everything you post is pure, unadulterated, kool-aid-inspired nonsense straight from the fever-swamp of the reich-wing disinformation echo-chamber, all of it intended to create the Invisible Obama that only you and your ilk can see, a fascist, socialist, communist, Muslim, foreign-born, Manchurian Candidate out to impose Sharia Law and destroy America. And, oh yeah, he can’t think for himself so must read thoughts programed by others on a teleprompter and his wife wants to make us eat carrots.
Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician, said about hope, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” And Obama’s policies definitely give me more hope and make more sense than another round of trickle-down class warfare that tracks back to Reagan and the beginning of the explosion of our national debt and the upward redistribution of national wealth to the top tier of Americans. A quick look at charts of those two trends will show clearly the truth of that. Reagan’s program to increase military spending, cut taxes, and “balance the budget” led to a 188% explosion in the national debt, the greatest percentage increase before or since (yes, including Obama).
You can hope all you want that the results of more trickle-down will be different this time but keep in mind that the definition of insanity according to Albert Einstein is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If you want something to be terrified about, look no further than the fact that so many of you are willing to do just that.
“I won’t take the time to deconstruct your little essay line by line…”
Shocker. That would take effort and some intellectual honesty.
“..but trust me…”
I, and probably nor anyone here, do not.
Lets see:
1. ignore facts,
2. bad-mouth the opponent
3. style onself as some sort of wiseman based on a fictional space movie…
yeah- that would be an Obama voter from the intellectual class
This guy is obviously a bomb-throwing troll, but the issue of the expansion of the wealth of the 1% is worthy of some consideration, if only because it relates to how wealth is and is not accumulated these days. It obviously might have something to do with the policies of Reagan, Clinton, and the Bushes, but also how money is made in “modern” society. With less manufacturing here, but more investing, hedging, and possibly witchcraft, the money is headed upward, from some forces which probably transcend the righty-lefty divide here.
When we strike you down, you will become less powerful than you can imagine.
O’Dismal could not get away with all the crap he flings into the airwaves, without the absolute corruption of the Marxist Media Megaphones. Its through the newspapers, magazines, blogs, and of course ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. Oh, and all through the debates with Candy Crowley interrupting Romney’s attack of O’Dismal’s handling of Bengazigate and incorrectly stating that O’Dismal was correct when he wasn’t.
And what of all O’Dismal’s unconstitutional acts, regulatory overreaches and executive orders. They’d be howling if GWB’s had done half of this stuff.
And O’Dismal had complete control of congress for over a year. Why didn’t he change the tax code to make Mitt Romney pay more? Why didn’t he pass immigration reform? Was it because O’Dismal didn’t want his fingerprints on the legislation? Why hasn’t Harry Reid passed a budget for over three years? Why hasn’t O’Dismal chided him to pass one? Is it because they don’t want you to know what they’re spending the money on?
And then there is the Fast and Furious gun running scandal. Hundreds of Mexican killed and a border guard.
And O’Dismal saying he’s an all of the above president on energy. He’s a none of the below ground energy president. One of O’Dismal’s first acts was to cancel the oil leases Bush signed just before exiting office. Where did O’Dismal get the authority to cancel these leases? And he’s done nothing but obstruct drilling, mining, agriculture, farming, and fishing.
And he’s spent us into oblivion. Where are we going to get the money to pay off this massive debt. We’ve sacrificed the future for what? We’ve built no great pyramids and no Golden Gate Bridges. And he’s shut down the NASA space exploration program. He’s downsizing our military.
He’s made a mess of N.Africa and the Middle East. He’s enabled the MuBros to come to power. You know those people who James Clapper were NOT RELIGIOUS, but religion is the center of their beliefs and want to implement Sharia Law.
Many good questions. Simple answer: Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim Communist and the media is quite aware of this. But they are all in for Boobily, as long as it can be shown that he is at least half a black man. What a messed up world and it gets worse as politicians gain more control. ABO2012
Blaming Obama is the coin of the realm around here, but Arab Spring, probably caused in varying parts by our toppling Saddam. modern communication technology, and the cycles of history eventually turning on corrupt tyrants provided a dilemma that I did not see the right having clear answers to. We could have doubled down with Mubarak, (who was clearly in a different league as an ally than the following two) Quadaffi, and Assad, but, really? I can’t see that Obama responded all that differently than GWB or Romney would have. It is a mess, for sure, but it wasn’t Obama’s bowing to some Saudi prince king that led to this, but much larger issues. Romney will face the same issues, and short of starting another war, won’t do all that much different.
After hearing all the “redistributing the wealth” rhetoric I have a suggestion for all the wealthy leftys. Why don’t they calculate the average income of all the people on Earth and redistribute their own income until it equals the global average? Surely every lefty would jump for joy at the prospect of redistributing their wealth to all those poor people around the world.
Now if everyone on Earth was given the same income that truly would be redistributing the wealth. I’m guessing that Obama, Michelle, Michael Moore etc etc would find some reason why they should not do it.
Just look at the endless rounds of golf, the “play breaks” instead of attending security briefings, the schmoozing with celebrities and famous airheads. Not to mention Michelle’s numerous and obscenely expensive foreign vacations. Anyone else notice the snarky comments about the cost of Mrs. Romney’s dress at the recent media dinner? Then someone pointed out that Mrs. Obama’s outfit cost twice as much at which point the subject was firmly closed and never addressed again.
Whenever talking about “fairness” and wealth redistribution the lefties always have a great deal of rationale for why they deserve special treatment. It’s because they care so much, work so hard for the poor and downtrodden, they need a few perks to keep their strength up.
Or as I believe it was Orwell pointed out, “all pigs are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
The president is right; it is the story…and for almost four years, the story Barack Obama told America has been “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Read more of my article: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/obama_is_right.html#ixzz2A3L4orun
I blame a lot of this on the mainstream media. At one time, they would have actually searched for the truth about a major issue, such as what happened in Libya. But it was stunning how, in the three days after the attack, the focus of the mainstream media was on what Mitt Romney said rather than even acknowledge the horrific fact that we were attacked, AGAIN, on 9/11. For three days the mainstream media went after Mitt Romney without asking ANY major questions of either the White House or the president. And they didn’t even question what Susan Rice said on FIVE TV talk shows the Sunday after the attack, even though by that time numerous sources (including the president of Libya himself) said that this was a terrorist attack and NOT a riot over a video nobody ever even heard of. But now, thanks to the work of a handful of reporters (mainly from FOX News), the president and Clinton are forced to admit that something went terribly wrong in Libya and that the State Department didn’t lift a finger to stop it.
And then the mainstream media wonders why people don’t trust it anymore? The mainstream media was totally in the tank for Obama in 2008 and now, in 2012, they can’t admit that they made a mistake and have to go “all-in” for Obama so that they won’t look like idiots for supporting this empty suit in the first place. And even when you have four dead Americans, or a dead US Border Patrol agent and 200 dead Mexicans because of the “Fast and Furious” scandal, the mainstream media is doing its level best to ignore these stories. If there was a Republican president in the White House, don’t you think that these stories would be front-page news for weeks?
Americans are simply finding different outlets for their news, mostly on the Internet. This is also dangerous because you never can tell what is being pushed as “the truth” over the Internet. But the mainstream media brought this on by themselves and most of them will go the way of Newsweek unless they make some major changes, and FAST.
So if all y’all don’t trust ANYONE in government how ’bout you stay the f**k out of politics so the reasonable ones amongst us can actually govern effectively?
Who are you to say what’s reasonable? Or who trustworthy?
The incredibly biased, leftist array of rotten, perverse, depraved, degenerate American newspapers still have a tremendous effect on the thinking of the American people.
Any railroad commuter from New York to Missouri will confirm this; that the railroad system is a petri dish of malignant ObamaThought.
University professors and assorted other slacker occupations never intermingle with this “change at Jamaica” mentality, and, consequently, aren’t aware of this manipulating press influence.
People who commute into cities and work their 12 hour days, including commuting time, know these facts only too well.
Regardless, many are smart enough to see through the corrupt bias of the mainstream media.
But it’s the demonstration of blatant incompetence, machine gun repetitive ObamaLies in the debates that is proving to be ObamaEar’s Waterloo.
Folks, it’s gonna be a landslide. Obama will be buried in voter white hot hate.
On the evening of November 6, Romney’s going to roll over Obama like Patton’s 80th infantry Division rolled across southern France and had Germans soldiers, by the tens of thousands, begging them to take them prisoner so the Germans wouldn’t fall into the killing arms of the Russians. (who Obama promises to be more flexible with during a second term)
More and more, Americans are realizing that we have nothing more than an ally-hating, enemy-loving mole in the White House; a looter of our treasury, an enemy of our constitution, a destroyer of our military, a breaker of every law the puke Obama doesn’t like, who loves the idea of having Black Panthers stalking voters on election day.
Yet, even with all the Democratic vote thievery; refusing to send ballots to fighting men and women overseas who hate Obama and would vote 99% against him, Obama is destined to be slaughtered in this election on total vote, 54& to 46%, with massive turnout telling the tale.
Fact is, this will be the biggest voter turnout in the history of our union.
When the dust is settled and Michelle’s frown is affixed back on her ugly face, many will press for justice for them; to have Obama prosecuted for his assorted lies, crimes and misdemeanors. I personally, won’t be able to sleep without Ambien until B. Hussein is led away from whatever hole he plans to hide in, in handcuffs.
Every ObamaMove he’s made has been with full scienter; intentional in every way.
When Obama said the murders of our Americans Libya wasn’t optimal, he means exactly what he ways. And when Sean Smith’s mother seethes with animus over ObamaRemarks like this, good thinking Americans of all stripes want to join her in sealing Obama’s fate for good.
Many souls won’t rest until Obama takes his rightful place in the trash heap of history.
Please stop it; you and 50% of the people at PJM are embarrassing yourself with all the wild language. If Romney is better than Obama, and I think he is, it is because he can sit in a room of people who disagree and come up with a better resolution of the issues.
Well, yes, of course Mittens is slightly better than the extreme leftist Obummer. But nothing he’s proposed will do much to actually improve the economy or job markets.
The trouble is that Mittens has also (along with Obummer) already said that he wants to do things which will hamper economic recovery. At a time of over-population and over-crowding and a 30M job employment dearth and 5 or 6 decades of vast illegal immigration and far far too much legal immigration, both Mittens and Obummer want to lower our standards for getting visas. In the face of terrorism they refuse to require background investigations of visa applicants. They refuse to restrict visas to the genuinely best, but instead, both continue to beat the drum for more cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with questionable ethics.
They seem to think we don’t have enough bright, knowledgeable, industrious, creative US citizen STEM workers unemployed and under-employed. They seem to be saying that nearly 2 million wasted American minds is not enough, that 3 million or 4 million or 5 million would be oh, so much better.
Don’t tell people to stop it, Dwight.
You are not the moderator, nor are you the arbiter of proper thought. This is a place where people read what VDH has to say, and they react to it, and they say what they think about what is going on politically and socially in this nation.
I lived in San Diego for 30 years and got to know Northern Californians at UCSD. A Northern Californian thinks he is destroying the planet when flushing the toilet and a Southern Californian does not. The two iconic figures that separate the two cultures is Bob Dylan and Johnny Carson.
Well anyway when you get the upper hand on a Northern Californian lib in a political conversion there fall back is allays nihilism. It’s hard to argue with nihilism and they think they are so insightful when they say nothing can be done or you can’t know for sure. bla bla.
3rd topic. Congressman Issa I have $2K for your primary run and another $2K for the general campaign when you run for CA governor. Issa 2014!!
My fall-back is correct spelling. ;-)
And subject-verb agreement.
And the last refuge of a scoundrel when he cannot refute the facts is to fall back on the role of grammar and spelling cop.
The proper use of language is of course important, but when someone obsesses on it to the exclusion of the content of the message it merely demonstrates the lack of a counter argument from the objector.
Or, rightly or wrongly, the spelling and grammar simply keep you from taking whatever they are saying seriously.
The incumbent-challenger thing is so so true. Notice how in the second debate they were always demanding Romney “be specific” to set up Obama to go out and campaign on Romney not offering specifics. The question rightly belongs to Obama as the incumbent. He’s already had 4 years to demonstrate specifics. The moderator in a fair debate would’ve asked Obama: How would YOU do things differently? What’s YOUR budget proposal? Will you even get a single member of your own party to vote for it this time? What are YOUR plans to reform systems that you freely acknowledge to be failing? Be specific.
I agree entirely with Victor Davis Hansen’s point about this being an age of disbelief across a wide spectrum of the western world. If I were to compare this to any age in history it would be the Roman empire of the third century A.D. when the old paganism had run its course and was no longer believed in, the empire was still strong and powerful but was seen by the public as incredibly debauched, and Christianity was only an underground religion, persecuted and competing with many other new fangled cults and religions that had emerged in the cultural turmoil of the preceding centuries. However I would never start such an article with a point about the freaking General Services Administration…
The press dedication to big gov and not the facts is the most alarming.
The reason I do not trust government is that the people in government so often prove themselves so unworthy of trust. I suspect most people who mistrust government would agree. Yet “most people” are the very voters who elect the bozo politicians over and over.
So the failing is in the voters who continue to elect these charlatans (and then complain about them).
btw, it is easier to keep your eye on local politicians. The farther away from your home the politicians work, the more government atrocities they get away with in your name and with your money. If “question authority” has any meaning, it means this: attend your local town council and school board meetings. You will be dismayed at what you witness – but you will be well in range to register your objections when what they say makes no sense.
The only solution is to fix the K-12 public education system. And the only way to fix that is with freedom.
That’s what we are trying to do at End the Education Plantation.
The sooner the better… for millions of individuals and the future of this country.
Tune: “Feed the Birds” with apologies to Mary Poppins.
“FEED MEDIA’S FOOLS”
Coifed and costumed each day come the media whores,
For their lies must commence with the sun,
With the guile of a temptress, to our nation they call,
“Come drink the Kool-Aid of “THE WON.”
“Then suckle his minions, and show them you care,
And you’ll be, oh so glad, if you do.
The public craves truth, but our cupboards are bare,
We can only feed Kool-Aid to for you.”
“Feed our fools, just a few lies apiece,
We can all drink the Kool-Aid for a few lies apiece.
“Feed our fools” that’s what they cry,
And throughout our nation their song fills the skies
.
From someplace not hot for the wicked,
Mitt’s attackers are slaving away,
And although we can’t see it, we know they are smiling,
For each honest soul led astray.
Though the Media’s corrupted (it’s true),
If you listen, they’re calling to you:
“Feed our fools, just a few lies apiece,
A few “spins”, a few “shams”, a few “fibs” apiece.”
VDH’ premise is perfectly accurate. The “Presstitutes” are bought and paid for whores:
* They are supported by our tax dollars in such tainted entites as NPR–”in the tank” for Ovomit.
* They know that they can leave “the private sector” to get big bucks jobs at the White House–and they do that regularly.
* They are hired by Gazillionaires and other “elites” who DO NOT BUY MEDIA AS A TOOL OF COMMUNICATION, BUT A FORCE FOR PROPAGANDA.
* They win the the “elites” praise, and garner the social approval, fame, and power of “decision makers” (not fact reporters) of others in their field.
Any member of the “media” who creates; approves of; passes along; or blindly accedpts the lies, slanders, political attacks, accusations, etc. for which they (1) have no personal knowledge; 2) no reputable source; 3) rely on here second or third hand hearsay; or 4) cannot advance facts, pictures, or proof of any kind IS A MEDIA WHORE.
What is most frightening about Obama is he promises the Government will take care of everything, everybody, and provide an endless supply of welfare, running up massive, unimaginable debts, while his policies destroy the means by which our society creates wealth which allows it to provide all those freebies. Obama’s policies have succeeded wildly at running up massive nation destroying debt, but they have also given us the worst UNEMPLOYMENT since the Great Depression, and an economy that is barely growing, and about to plunge back into recession. Its exactly what happened in Greece, and Obama doesn’t seem to care, and has no PLAN to restore Growth, or JOBS. Meanwhile he lies to the middle class and the poor telling them all will be fine if those nasty selfish rich people will just pay their fair share. Obama knows…knows for a fact that if you take all the money all the 1% have it won’t cover his 1 year deficit, and it will destroy millions of jobs, and plunge the nation into permanent decline. Folks, Obama is destroying the economy of the richest nation on earth, and as our economy declines our ability to defend ourselves and our freedom also declines. Gov Romney is our only hope to restore JOBS and GROWTH, and the real American Dream. Our only hope!
You have some excellent points, but try to be honest about the 1%. It is not about taking all their money now, but taking 5-10% more of their money forever. If that would help balance things out, would you do it?
Name one issue that Dr. Hanson illustrates that is false.
Indeed, The Red Pencil Neck is marking up PJM like a Modern Liberal dog in its self needed Uncle Sam provided green space park.
D-White, let government feed you at the approved caloric rate. Let government house you with an approved hut. Let government allow you to speak in an approved manner. Let government bless you with many Julia’s coupled with government approved sperm basting.
Why not just announce that there is no deficit? No Benghazi?
Where does it end? If some is good, why not all? Who decides? Faceless inductees of the Children’s Prison system, let loose at age 30, with paper on the wall, granted by a multitude of D-Whites? Where did come they come from? Why are they better than… Personal Choice?
Limited government…. What the hell is that? So many examples of failure abound, and yet the Ping Pong Tongue bounces reality off, and “blathers” merrily along, as if none of the many centrally planned experiments ever existed. Let’s see 5% + X forever, yeah, or the D-White For For For Plan. Rev it up!
Nope, find a fence, sit on it, and let spoon feeding continue.
Good thing Pick It Fence But, that that fence is not made of copper.
They’re so hard to satisfy, You can tranquilize your mind
So go running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper.
Mr L, old pal. As far as I can tell, they’re not going to take more of your money; as for the people who pay to support your gig, who knows? VDH’s central conceit is that we NOW live in a world of disbelief, whereas, if I recall, we were pretty damned suspicious about what the guvment was telling us about Vietnam in the sixties and seventies, beginning with the Gulf of Tonkin. Apparently, it was just a different demographic being suspicious. Now, the good, ole folks are suspicious. It just when Victor gets wound up, (the Doctor to you) he just piles it on in a way that makes someone looking for rational analysis of a situation…disappointed.
“… looking for rational analysis…”
This – ” f I recall, we were pretty damned suspicious about what the guvment…”
Then this – “Now, the good, ole folks are suspicious.”
And so…??? The act of piling it on now discredits it? Or maybe being older?
Of course. Substance does not exist in the Children’s Prison System.
The problem, Dwight, is that “forever” only lasts one tax cycle. Take more that what the owner of the wealth believes is fair and do you really believe that they won’t move that wealth somewhere else? And I’m not even talking about extremes such as oversea bank accounts, but perfectly legal tax shelters that currently do not provide the best after tax return, but would under an increased tax burden.
That’s the problem with those pesky rich folks, they don’t just sit and take it. They do whatever makes the most business sense based on current situations. Which, by the way, is why so many businesses are sitting on cash right now. The situation is so fluid that they are unwilling to risk capital when the rules can change at the whim of government.
Well, let’s go with that. Evidently the people with wealth, who apparently thought it was fair to have those high rates in the top brackets not that long ago, no longer think it is fair. And if they don’t think it is fair, then we’d damned well better humor them, eh? Are the wealthy less patriotic and/or concerned about the general welfare than they used to be? If money is now flowing TO the 1% disproportionately than to the next 40%, what’s up with that? A smaller percent of people know how to gain wealth now? The next 9% somehow get hurt more by guvment than the top guys? What?
It’s not just the Lies Obama tells, it’s also the Obama Jihadi media covering for the lies, with more lies, misdirections and deflections! Yes, Obama has less credibility than the Iranian Propaganda rags, but, that’s a direct result of the piling on, of the jihadi media, attacking anybody with the temerity to tell the truth or challenge the Obama Lie! I’ve made it a point to give a road map for how to combat the Obama Jihadi media. The Repubs and Mitt, better start treating these Anti-American, Marxist loving, media like the jihadis they are or they will get steam rolled! Just like muslim jihadis, the Obama jihadi media will attack, but if you don’t hit them back hard, they will only feel encouraged & emboldened to hit you again and harder the next time! Here’s how Mitt needs to take on the Obama Jihadi media: http://paratisiusa.blogspot.com/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-those-who-should-know.html?spref=tw
God Bless America!
All this would be heartbreakingly cynical–except that it just true.
I believe that there were and are “shovel-ready jobs”. The civil engineering association publishes a count and cost estimation of road and bridge and canal maintenance projects that keep getting pushed off to later. There are enough of them to absorb several times the amounts the porkulus bills wasted on “green energy”.
But neither FDR nor Obummer would allow a cent to go to them unless they involved pay-offs to their political friends, or tilting the balance in swing states in their favor.
And besides, maintenance isn’t “politically sexy”.
The “commission on presidential debates” wasn’t unbiased when it was a League of Women Voters event. It wasn’t unbiased with the major networks took it over. And it hasn’t been unbiased since. Neither the incumbent Reps nor Dems nor their party bosses would tolerate actual unbiased debates on the issues and facets of them that the citizenry most cares about. It would significantly lower incumbent re-election rates.
WHOM do we not believe? It is the academics, the educators, the media, foundations, the bureaucrats, the judges, non-profits and the entertainment industry. Our elites are suffering under a collective delusion. They dominate public discourse and the political process. When the will of the people opposes their will, the will of the people is thwarted at every turn. Examples: affirmative action and immigration. The people are firmly and consistently opposed to policy in both these areas and our masters will allow nothing to happen. Any organized opposition to the elite agenda or resistance their ideas (the tea party, the pro-life movement and the Catholic Church) is demonized. Discourse can only take place within approved boundaries.
Our nation is headed for destruction. The only question is whether reality will come crashing into their worldview before it comes crashing into our daily lives.
What does the 26 cities with a population over 250K and the greatest poverty level have in common?
All are heavy unionized and all have been controlled by Democrats for many many years!
Does this fact and the Blue States bordering on Bankruptcy penetrate the mental fog surrounding. the Liberal mind and their emotions that they use in place of thinking?
Of Course NOT!
Never have so many been oblivious to the obvious.
They still think the Democrat Politicians are concerned about their Welfare.
The same party and polities that reduced the black population into welfare bondage and the most dependable Democrat voters will work just as well for the rest of the population.
Just reduced them to poverty and Depending on Welfare and you have a Democrat voter for life!
President Zero and the Democrats are pursuing the same polities and spreading poverty for the rest of the Nation that have turned those cities and blue States like Calif., Illinois, New York etc. into basket cases and made them dependable votes for the Democrats!
The more the Democrats can spread Poverty, Welfare and the Entitlement mentality the more Democrat voters they make and the closer they get to a Third World Socialist Food Stamp Paradise controlled Lock, Stock and Barrel by the Democrat party!
Under your Straining Credulity heading you state a person’s status should effect their political judgement. This reminds me of the Liberal incredulity at the patriotic poor. Your statement is effectively this; those people have it good, why would they be concerned about anyone else?
Why don’t you answer your own question?
Hate to say that you missed somethings, but you did. Envionmentalism is the purview of the upper classes but what they propose raises the costs for the lower classes. Our higher energy and gasoline costs are really regressive taxes which the railling against the one percenters makes a mockery of. Then we have the welfare of the poor. The poor cannon get out of that delimma without an education, not even a college education but one which teachers reading and writing and math and critical thinking. Yet we have the elites that are against any education reform that has ever been proposed. The elites santify the teachers (never enough money for them) but pay no attention to the kids at the receiving end of this folly. If you can’t fire a teacher, even forgetting what they are getting paid, then you can’t get kids out of ignorance and poverty.
The elites are killing the lower classes, the ones they profess to be for. What an irony.
Really? What is your take on high stakes testing like the MCAS in Massachusetts?
Mr. Hanson is lamenting, after all, human nature. Humans haven’t changed although the power matrix among and between us has. He references nihilism, but that’s a shallow analysis. I think one can say that more harm comes to a society of believers than skeptics. One can teach the classics, but what are classic truths? Those fo Plato and Aristotle? Hardly. The sophists were more truthful than them. The belief in truth and tyranny go hand in hand, but not because their isn’t truth, but because the accepted truth is false. For example, any society that could make Lincoln a hero has a problem with truth. Should one believe in the noble lies just because it is accepted wisdom?
I long ago read a book called “Envy”. It traced the history of envy from primitive cultures up to modern societies. Mind you, nothing has changed. We are the same as we’ve always been, but my bet would be that Mr. Hanson thinks negatively about envy, as being bad or at least detrimental to society, when in fact it is a human virtue-if you’re inclined to think that we have evolved in an efficient manner to ensure our survival. Envy is a manifestation of our ego, just as altruism is, and both required for survival of the species.
The point being that there is not a right or wrong in American politics, at least not in the way Mr. Hanson frames the issues. There is only selfishness, power and circumstances, which combined, are sufficient to describe the motivations of everyone.
Lincoln not a hero??? Then, who is, Pierce, Buchanan, Davis?
The others aren’t considered hereos. The Civil War was for economic hegemony. Lincoln was a puppet of the railroads (and their lawyer) and other Northern financial and industrial interests. The Tariff issue was the main reason for war. The South were the importers and needed to balance their sales of cotton to Europeans, so the Tariff (which was the majority if not all the federal revenue back then)was paid for by the South and used largely for the welfare of Northern industry–such as railroad grants, internal improvements (crony capitalism, etc. So one group was paying and the other receiving all the taxes–sound familiar?
In addition, the north didn’t like competition in selling their manufactured goods to the south, so tariffs were necessary to eliminate it. Secession would have ended the exploitation.
Most people ignore the anti-lincoln scholarship out there, but it is there nonetheless. He was every bit a dictator and since the winners of wars and conquests invent the history that serves as the official story, he became an unreproachable hero.
Our history books are nothing more than fairytales. I’ll leave you with one book “The Costs of War” edited by John Denson, which are a collection of essays on the war’s we’ve fought. The sections on Lincoln can lead you to considerable revisionist history on him.
And I’ll bet the South just pretended that the war had something to do with slavery in their founding documents, because they knew that they could not get people to die to stop tariffs. Damned clever, that Jeff Davis and the planters.
I would argue, however, that we have not reached a state of moral exhaustion. We don’t believe what our national government tells us, but we still see a path from here to a condition in which there would be more truth and honesty.
I don’t think most people who distrust the Obama administration distrust all federal administrations on principle.
We are still able to conceive of what we think reality is, and we are able to make important distinctions. One example would be the endlessly-flogged theme that Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. Polls through the end of his administration suggested that most people thought the intel was faulty, and that Bush wasn’t lying but misled. The narrative that his administration was steeped in incoherent evil hasn’t made headway with the average American; it remains a niche belief among the core of far-left voters and activists.
The important distinction here is between a narrative of evil concocted against Bush over ambiguous developments, and the emerging picture of Obama catastrophes like Benghazi and Fast & Furious. The Bush administration handled the questions over the WMD intel much differently from Team Obama’s handling of the Obama crises and their aftermath.
So did the MSM. The MSM’s bias on these matters is blindingly obvious. But we can envision the different narrative that appears to be more accurate, and lots of people are out fighting for it, whether as bloggers or political activists. We still care. We still believe the truth matters, and that it is possible to convince most people of a commonly-held truth. We haven’t sunk into intellectual despair. I know a lot of people are tired and discouraged, but truth and a more honest federal administration won’t find us staring slack-jawed into space. We will recognize what’s good for us when we see it, and be galvanized.
I have worked as a photojournalist for more then two decades. I served as a combat cameraman for the USAF. The most important aspect of my job was to not try to put my opinion into my work but to lay out the facts and explain them without spin. I taught ethics to my people and when they stepped out of their role as journalist and entered the world of editorial I called them out on it and had them correct stories and photo cho
ices that did not put forth idealogy.
I have been growing more and more frustrated with the MSN over the years.The journalists over the past few weeks will not call a lie a lie.
They refuse to tell the truth about the impending default of Socil Security and Medicare. I pick these two items just to prove a point that the lies have been going on for a long time. The facts are the facts and the MSN refuse to tell the truth about the true fiscal situation. The facts of unfunded liability for the programs has been known for decades, they have not changed, new math has not been discovered to change the facts of these ponsi schemes, they will fail and the next generation will inherit our mismanagement of our selfish arrogant demand for free stuff. Yes I said free stuff, don’t tell me you paid in and demand your share. The fact is those receiving benefits will take out much more then they have paid in and will pass on the balance to their children and grandchildren to pay for their largess. Why is this not told on the nightly news daily. Why are those who raise the alarm accused of wanting to force granny to eat cat food or take away her insulin. Why don’t the press talk about how we as a nation are stealing from our children and taking away their future.
We know that the President lied at the last debate about calling the attack in Bengazi a terrorist attack on the 12th. No matter how you try to spin his speach in the Rose Garden not one reasonable person can make his words fit the narrative. The MSN refuses to call his claim a lie. They even have tried to rewrite history. I am amazed at how stupid the MSN believe the american people are. We are expected to believe the newscasters and deny our lying eyes and ears. I expect pundits to lie but when the so called hard journalists are running interference for the government, I am saddened that we have come to this point. I am conservative but I want tough questions of all polititians, our public officials, government agencies etc. Without a strong ethical press we will surely end in tyranny. Please forgive spelling and punctuation I am typing with one finger on a tablet.
” A busybody, non-stop talker, a “polypragmôn,” someone who jumps from here to there, always talking, persuading, speechifying, but never really accomplishing anything.”
Or, just as simply, CHARLATAN! (from `charlar´– someone who talks the hind legs off the donkeys who stop to listen)
We have finally come to the point where we understand who are the true villains of the story of this misbegotten man…The Barry-boy catamites in the LAMESTREAM MEDIA…
Sarah Palin suffered it, survived it, called it what it was..bullying, victimisation of those like herself, uncontrollably biased acolytes who couldn´t wait to destroy those who dissed their god!
Well, the god has feet of clay and there is a last desperate effort now going on to keep him from melting down and falling off his plinth–and it will NOT SUCCEED! Barry-boy is finished, and his facilitators will end with him.
I predict that the Matthews, Maddows, Goldbergs, Crowleys and their ilk will be OUT OF JOBS within two months of January 20th. and that Barry-boy himself will finally show his true colours and formally EMBRACE ISLAM within the year!
A whole article about “Belief in Government” and no mention of “Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq” ? A little intellectual honesty should not be a burden…..
When I go out to a movie – say, “The Terminator” – I know it’s unreal when I buy the ticket. Before the show starts, we know it’s just pretend. There really isn’t a killer robot sent back in time from our future to murder the mother of the robots’ future enemy.
People who actually believe that the plot of the movie is grounded in reality are properly regarded as insane or delusional. The guy who recently killed a dozen people in a Colorado theater in the belief that he was playing Batman’s “Joker” is obviously a nut.
Likewise, those who actually believed that “hope and change” had even a scintilla of substance were also delusional. Did you really believe, even for a moment, that “the oceans would stop their rise”? You don’t really believe – and never considered believing – we can continue to borrow trillions of dollars without consequence? Or that peace would suddenly break out in the Mideast simply because of our new President’s genetic makeup? You never really believed that a former “community organizer” having zero experience could actually function as our president, did you? What? You thought Hillary would be a great SOS? You’re kidding, right? I bet you think the Muslim Brotherhood intends to turn Egypt into Switzerland.
Come on. It’s all pretend. We’re all pretending we have competent government. The media pretends to objectively report the news. The gap between reality and illusion today’s culture is no less cavernous than in any Schwarzenegger movie.
Me? I think I’ll flip on MSNBC and get some “news.”
Capitalism and conservatism is the promise of the memory of past experiences with the knowledge of the limitations of human nature. socialism is the anticipation of the future without any concept of the frailities of the human psyche. Capitalism has produced more wealth and prosperity than any other system created. Socialism has created more misery and suffering than any other form of government man has ever known. We are in the beginning stages of a new civil war, the bullets just haven’t started flying yet.
Not only has fantasy has become reality but the ability to rationalize the once unthinkable to perpetuate the new reality is the roadmap to our perdition. I fear for the species.
The Untouchables weren’t untouchable,
They were closely watched and weren’t able.
Lord Acton’s truth is government’s reality;
Fed is absolutely corrupt is the actuality.
We send our children to a private Christian school and we don’t own a TV. We just couldn’t trust the liberal teachers union and the liberal media with our children.
The saving grace is that many on the right who don’t believe the media, the government or pundits do believe that there is someone who will never lie to them. They place their faith in that person and then conduct their lives accordingly. This is what makes Obama’s stand on so many issues so troubling. Many people know what is right, but the spin doctors and their inablers continue to try to confuse the issues. The truth eventually “will out” but “will it out” in time?
Hanson is on to something I’ve noticed while screening job applicants. Some folks interview very well yet once hired bring nothing to the table. It is important to remember that interview (or campaign) skills often have nothing to do with job performance.
Taking issue with:
“When we hear of all the future brain surgeons and chemists who will emerge due to the amnesty offered by the Dream Act, I am not automatically skeptical.”
I’m more than skeptical: expedience should not trump law. That which is free is seldom valued by recipient. Besides, as my husband recently inquired, “If your car breaks down on the road, who would you rather see drive up, a brain surgeon, or a mechanic?” If your home has unsafe wiring, whom would you rather diagnose and fix it, a chemist, or an electrician? Same for your plumbing, septic system, etc. We need the expertise of many professions to live in civilized society, but each individual needs to earn his way into his own profession. Those who are unwilling to dedicat themselves to the point of sacrificing immediate gratifications to achieve their goals, ergo to acquire their degrees and experience are unlikely to be worth their salt. “The workman is worth his hire,” unually only when the workman earns his hire!
That said, I’ve no debate with the conclusions of most of this essay.
You wrote: “Again, I accept the welfare state, but not the lies about it. Perhaps that is why I quit believing.” I’m baffled by your acceptance of any welfare state at all. Upon what grounds? Do you believe we are our brothers’ keepers? If so, do you believe that moral imperative should be actionable under the law? If so, where do you draw the line? Is there a line? My view is that government should be denied the power of forced charity – among many other powers, including payroll taxation – so that their betters are left the wherewithal to properly handle issues of charity. We might not do a perfect job, but Leviathan sucks…and bites.