Our Obama Saga. Part One—Chapters One to Four
Chapter One — The Liberal Hope and Dream
I think our Obama collective story will some day be written something like this. The leftwing anointed vision of America got stalled with the failures of the Great Society, and the high tax, big government discontent of the 1970s and 1980s.
Abroad after Vietnam, the gospel that America was the problem sputtered out — with the fall of the Soviet Union, the rejoicing in Eastern Europe with the liberation from communism, the market reforms of China, and the general rise of a murderous radical Islam, coupled with the later 9/11 attacks.
In short, doctrinaire liberalism, now to be recast as progressivism, was in trouble. About all that could be hoped for in lieu of ideological governance were entrenched liberal congressional enclaves, which served traditional Democratic constituencies — and offered occasional opposition to conservative excess and corruption of the Abramoff sort.
Jimmy Carter was simply too inept, self-righteous, and inexperienced to retake Rome from the barbarians. A gifted Bill Clinton might have; but he was too savvy for subservience to an unpopular ideology, too enslaved instead to his multifarious appetites and too malleable and worried about Bill Clinton to be a principled avatar of hope and change.
So the media, academia, the unions, the foundations, and the elite on Wall Street kept waiting for the Great Stone Face to appear — the saintly deliverer who would at last have the requisite skill and pedigree to bring a benevolent liberal statism to the unwashed, who for so long in their ignorance and selfish, petty agendas had resisted what was good for them.
Chapter Two — The Perfect Storm
Then the unexpected occurred without warning. The Iraq War was successfully demagogued as Vietnam redux. Indeed, we still apparently think it was lost, and the surge a failure. The Republican Congress by 2006 was mired in corruption. After eight years of Republican rule, conservatives of the base had tired of 50/50 deal making that had resulted in more big government and big deficits.
John McCain almost seemed more interested in losing majestically to our first serious African-American presidential candidate than conducting a hardball successful campaign. He too had alienated his base in the past, and many never forgot it, as their lackluster emotional and financial support attested.
Barack Obama, in contrast, offered to many an irresistible win/win proposition: centrist, bipartisan governance, and absolution for past sins through the election of a president of color. That Obama was young and patterned himself after JFK in his eloquence and pizzazz made a nice antithesis to George Bush’s tongue-tied speeches. And that the world promised that they would like us again only made it all the sweeter for the gullible.
Chapter Three – The Ascension
So Obama came in, quickly shed his thin centrist exoskeleton, and started in on the long promised bigger government agenda. In short order, we saw the absorption of some of the private sector, attempts at statist health care, and appointments that reflected an equality-of-result philosophy, mandated and enforced by a guardian class of Ivy-League technocrats, immune to the protocols they enforced on ignorant others, although, unlike Plato’s overseers, subject to no harsh regimen.
“Obama knew little of Middle America and had little desire to learn.”
Barack Obama’s narcissism prevents him from learning anything new that contradicts the existential certainties of his youth. What you see now—will still be the reality many years into the future. Obama is a fundamentally flawed man. He is doomed to intellectually remain a middle age man who is still intellectually in his early twenties. Obama is a master at guilt tripping white people. This is his only real talent. He has had a relatively easy life. Obama never really had to work hard in his entire life. John F. Kennedy had to accomplish far more to even get a chance to run for president. His wealthy father could not open doors in the manner taken for granted by Obama. Our current president’s intellectual laziness is a serious handicap. The only real answer is his removal from office. Needless to add, that is much easier said than done. Am I totally demoralizing you? Well, what can I say? That’s just the way it is. The country is royally screwed.
“Part Two to be continued with Chapter Five—The Verdict Is Still Out”
The jury is only out because it is trying to determine the extent of the guilt of the defendant—and for no other realistic reason. We must not fill ourselves with false hope. Obama is not going to grow into his job. The odds might be better that you or I will win the lottery tomorrow morning.
It is always interesting to try to write history in advance. Some things are clear and easily forecast, others more murky. There seems, for instance, little reason to doubt that George W. Bush will, like Harry Truman before him, be held in high esteem in the judgement of history, as long, that is, as historians continue to be persuaded by genuine merit, accomplishment, and the long term application and effect of accomplishment on history. Historians have the advantage of hindsight, and as such, need not be caught up in the drooling, leg-tingling passions of the moment. Which candidate, which president in history, has ever been the fortunate recipient of more and more undeserved passion than Barack Obama?
Perhaps in the future, history will reveal a more complete picture of Obama. Which president possessed of a supposedly meritorious educational career has been more circumspect in its revelation? About which president’s most important mentors and influences has the press ever been so disinterested? Can any name another president whose appointments have engendered less interest on the part of the press, or when their words, beliefs, actions, even crimes have been inadvertently exposed, has there ever been less press interest or outrage? What will future historians write of a president who counted as his mentors and profound influences prominent communists, domestic terrorists, racist, anti-American ministers, tax criminals, Mao worshipers, advocates of sex between adults and children–of the same sex–and who overwhelmingly appointed advisors and bureaucrats, not only possessing no qualifications for their posts, but who had no experience whatsoever in the private sector they were trying to seize and control?
What will they write of a president who could not recognize a terrorist, even when that terrorist came within milliseconds of murdering hundreds of Americans on American soil? What will they write of a president so undisciplined, so unmoored from reality that he demanded that armed, unlawful enemy combatants in time of war be given civilian trials while simultaneously poisoning the jury pool and virtually ensuring that they be freed by proclaiming that they’d be found guilty and executed, and that regardless of the outcome of the trial, they’d never be freed? Might some future historian be tempted to suggest that this wasn’t mere neophyte stupidity, but a sly attempt to win freedom for a fellow traveler? What will they record of successful terrorist strikes on Obama’s watch (those after Christmas, 2009–that was the third of three freebies)? Will they write about the destruction of the Obama administration and the consignment of democrats to the political wilderness for a generation or of the administration’s success, abetted by the media and the philosopher-prince and princess class, to blame George W. Bush and Republicans, deflect attention from the victims and their families, and to spin clever and not so clever lies into soaring, teleprompter supported rhetoric?
And ultimately, will future historians pronounce that Obama was truly a brilliant man, despite virtually no evidence of merit or accomplishment prior to his ascension to the presidency, a virtual genius whose presidency was damaged by factors outside his control, an intellectual, moral giant constrained by ants, or will the lack of merit and accomplishment, the stilted, affected speaking skills enabled and propped up by a substantial teleprompter safety net, the serial misstatements, misrepresentations, construction of straw men and outright lies be remembered and explained? Will Obama be remembered as the savior of mankind, towering intellect, uplifting orator, shrinker of the oceans, healer of the planet, uniter of all men, non-partisan political healer, or a grossly over-hyped, clinically narcissistic con man?
Will history record that enough Americans came to understand that soothing rhetoric doesn’t necessarily reveal the speaker’s true beliefs or inform their policies? Will history record that when Obama and the Democrats asked: “who you gonna believe? Me or your own lyin’ eyes?” that a sufficient number of Americans believed their own lyin’ eyes and America survived? The verdict is, yet, out.
Wish iBama would spend more time at the office.
In short, doctrinaire liberalism, now to be recast as progressivism, was in trouble. About all that could be hoped for in lieu of ideological governance were entrenched liberal congressional enclaves, which served traditional Democratic constituencies—and offered occasional opposition to conservative excess and corruption of the Abramoff sort.
Indeed, VDH, indeed. In fact, the strategy was apparent…starve a Cold War, feed a leftist fever.
What the “progressive” movement lacked was a good villain…and the right “hero”. They could always invent a villain, they had been doing it for decades. Nixon was a perfect foil. Reagan was not…hard as they tried.
But Bush-Cheney-Rove as the three-headed monster, took hold and the Iraq/Saddam narrative took a 180 degree turn from the days of Clinton/Gore/Albright/Cohen…with Cohen taking a five pound bag onto Meet the Press…Saddam as monster, was no longer useful.
So the media, academia, the unions, the foundations, and the elite on Wall Street, kept waiting for the Great Stone Face to appear—the saintly deliverer who would at last have the requisite skill and pedigree to bring a benevolent liberal statism to the unwashed, who for so long in their ignorance and selfish, petty agendas had resisted what was good for them.
And Hollywood…with almost all of entertainment. 9/11 became a pivot point, where “ornamental sympathies” for America and our national defense apparatus…our military at large…became a place where “progressives” and the “educated class” had to “dress their tree” with the tinsel of faux patriotism (the “wrong kind”, but it had to be showy and glittery nonetheless)
Once the energy behind the mission to root out our sworn enemies died down..the ornaments and tinsel came down off the tree of faux patriotism and we saw the internal battle lines being drawn. They were on a search and destroy mission…Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, …the “grim milestones”.
They were “fooled” by the WMD issue and the “intelligence” failures.
Game on…to change the narrative.
Then there was the presidential insistence that police stereotype and act stupidly. We heard non-stop the old-time gospel that the better off must pay their fair share and spread their ill-gotten wealth, if they are to be deemed patriotic. As in the 1960s, America should apologize, given that it was as culpable as Europe or Islam for current global tensions. And so on.
…. The hypocrisy of left wing redistribution politics…
And we were off…to God D–n America! Time to make a grab for the banks, health care, auto industry, and energy. Time to seize, control and redistribute…according to the Ten Point playbook.
Apology tour, reset buttons, …”man made disasters” and deep bows. Trying enemy combatants as street thugs. Lawyering up the enemy.
“We won…suffer that”.
In your face leftism…a supermajority bullying the electorate.
ALL the ornaments and tinsel were packed away and nothing but sharp needles left strewn on the floor, piercing the skin with every step.
Filthy, disgusting slurs…including high ranking officials calling middle Americans a name dug out of the garbage as a slur against homosexuals engaged in oral sex.
But…as a line in the movie Twins, paraphrased…”You made the first mistake in a crisis situation…you moved too soon”…they tried to big a grab, took naked a takeover, too notorious a seizure.
The pushback came in Boston, in an election for “Ted Kennedy’s seat”…which turned out to be a wakeup call…to put the tree back up and get out the ornaments and tinsel once again.
Will the eye be distracted this time? Will we be fooled again?
Actually, Mr Hanson, I believe the real story is much worse than the one you’re portraying. Mr Obama is much more than just “to the left of Carter and Clinton.” I don’t think you grasp just how dirty this thing is.
Good Doctor:
Surely for #3 you meant to use accession rather than ascension.
Ascension is yet to come, if indeed it does ever come.
Not mentioned above was the disgrace of the TV Networks and Newspapers who were both traitorous and incompetent by not reporting objectively or investigating Obama.
Also, in the past 12 months, we have seen the rise in importance of talk radio, FOX, and blogs.
If it weren’t for the latter three, the USA would be a goner.
It is the next chapter of this saga that most worries me– the middle part. Is BHO politically radioactive from this point on? He has a long climb down from his prized statist goals, even if he chooses to make it– and I doubt he will. His temperment seems to suggest he isn’t used to pragamtic give & take required in the “real world”. And assuming no course change– and an ever shrinking base of influence from which to operate– what happens during the next 3 years???
I imagine everyone gets extremely weary. Republicans, emboldened by mid term success, occupy the spotlight as the new power brokers. Democrats, impelled to show some kind of activity and illusion of relevance, alternately parry/thrust and extend olive branches. Normally it would all back to “biz as usual” but the sluggish economy exacerbates the frustration of the middle class, who continue to suffer. Neither side has enough juice to force through the free market reforms needed, though the republicans, increasingly infiltrated by tea partiers, seem to have the intellectual momentum. Meanwhile, BHO grows more and more marginalised. Maybe there’s the perrenial Mideast initiative to show he’s still relevant– that always seems a favorite gambit.
It does, potentially at least, set the stage for a real policy debate, prolly starting in 2011, between a neoReagan Tea Party-approved Republican and a “realist” centrist Democrat (aside: one thing that has struck me is the lack of lip service paid by Dems to free market concepts… it is as if most don’t feel the need to even affirm ‘of course, I’m just as capitalist as the other guy but…’ i think the lip service will return big time as dems re-discover adam smith, if only to level the playing field)
and so the serious debate of the age (post modern 20th century PC left vs 21st century capitalist libertarianism) will totally eclipse the guy in the WH– a failed president who will have 3 years to start packing for home.
but wow– what a long drawn out three years it will be…sigh
I read this post in Dubai at a coffee shop hot spot. I agree with everything VDH said as I usually do. I don’t like big government, but do realize that the internet, a powerful tool, is the end product of a Defense Dept. project. So govt. can do some good, just not when its main objective is wealth transfer.
Much as he would like, the history of Obama cannot be separated from the history of the country since the late 1940′s, because he is the creature of the forces that created him.
In the late 40′s, the US was a triumphant colossus. Russia an, equal partner in the victory in WWII, was so devastated by the war that it was humiliated in comparison to the US’s emergence as the dominant world power.
Quickly, the communists realized that it would be decades, if ever, before they could confront the colossus directly. Another way beside military conflict would have to be developed to attain the world dominance Russia craved.
That way was subversion. America saw it play out as the Russians stole the nuclear secrets of the West, and then all of the military technology and as it managed to infiltrate the intelligence agencies of all of the western powers. But the west ignored the continued silent subversion of the universities, the unions, and the media.
By the 60′s, the foundation for a Marxist triumph over the west was largely in place. Russia, still unable to compete militarily, and once again humiliated as the West’s vastly superior economic system easily surpassed the early edge the Russians’ attained in space exploration, had in fact already consolidated two much greater beachheads in the west. They dominated Academia, and they controlled the media in the US and the entire western world.
In short order, the Marxists subverted the US’s military’s crushing triumph in the Viet Nam war. The final straw was when Walter Cronkite emerged from decades of low-key reporting to declare that the war was lost, when in fact, it had been won. The ploy worked, and Cronkite escaped to continue a career as an ostensibly objective centrist journalist. Supported by a youth movement fostered by the universities and funded by the Russians, America caved in and surrendered in a war it had won militarily. At the same time, the media in general emerged from its chrysalis phase and sabotaged the greatest foreign policy president of the 20th century. No sooner had Nixon opened a pathway to co-existence with the Chinese, than the press inflated petty political skullduggery into a constitutional crisis and the president was forced to resign.
Two years later, Jimmy Carter was leading the country. In short order he created an economy so horrendous and a foreign policy so humiliating that the country was poised for a coup.
But that Marxist success was preliminary. Ronald Reagan stopped the impending disaster with a handful of simple actions and the country was restored to a semblance of its past glory. At the same time, Reagan was able to bring Russia to ruination. It appeared the long war between the communists and freedom was over and that freedom had won.
But just as Carter’s apparent runway for the Marxists was preliminary, so was Reagan’s success for the American patriots. The subversives still retained and were expanding their control over the education system and the media, which was at that point virtually total. Despite the loss of Russia, conditions in the US for the Marxists were much better than anyone could imagine. Carter had revealed the fatal flaw. They needed a better demagogue.
That was when the story of the great Marxist Barack Obama began. Born to communists, raised by Communists, mentored by Communists, taught by Communists, he was the multi-everything, multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-religious, probably multi-sexual, wonder man. He was the perfect creation to appeal to every American, in an America that had been hammered by the intelligentsia for decades for its purported racism, sexism, imperialism and castigated for practicing evil capitalism, the system that has created all of the misery on earth, or so we are told by the media and intellectuals. And Mr. Obama was a very trainable demagogue. He had a sonorous baritone voice, created by years of tobacco addiction and drug abuse. His speech patterns were tuned by his handlers to demonstrate intelligence, but he also learned to speak the language of the ethnic groups that had been recruited as the base of Mr. Obama’s party. He was sent to Harvard to build his intellectual credentials and appointed to be the editor of the Law Review. At Harvard, and later, he was carefully instructed in the art and science of obfuscation. He was an apt student. No scandals were allowed to mar his life. The occasional sexual experiments were easily covered up with the help of the compliant press. For the world to see, he was a dedicated family man, a heterosexual who was skilled at the manly sport of basketball. He understood the bargain: future power was to be his only if his personal story was kept scrupulously clean. Bill Clinton had exposed the mortal danger of a careless personal life in the early 90’s when Obama was still in the beginning years of his preparation.
So Barack Obama was nurtured for decades. He probably was not the only one. We will never know for sure. By why would his handlers have gambled everything on just one future demagogue? That would have been too risky. Perhaps Deval Patrick was another candidate for the throne. There must have been many more.
In 2007, years before the anticipated time of opportunity, the perfect storm emerged for a demagogue to emerge. Obama was still green, but he was also an unmatched talent. In the years just prior to 2007, the press had successfully jaw-boned a minor and successful war in Iraq into a national crisis and convinced the country that conservatism and George Bush had failed. The field of candidates in both parties to replace the demonized Bush was exceptionally weak. The Republicans settled on a fence-straddling version of the mortally damaged sitting president. The Democrats appeared destined to nominate the cuckolded wife of the lecherous Bill Clinton.
So, years ahead of plan, the heirs of 60 years of Marxist subversive architects decided to seize the moment and take a chance on Barack Obama, their young but promising Manchurian candidate. The results were spectacular. Politically, Obama was positioned as a centrist. Culturally, the country was more than ready to embrace the multi-everything man. He had something to appeal to every demographic, and he was so smooth, so energetic, so elegant, so non-threatening. The musical played out in perfect cadence. Obama performed nearly exactly as scripted. A few slip-ups were effortlessly glossed over by the press, and the demagogue’s extensive radical associations were simply ignored by the voting public. Just as Mr. Obama had learned in his youth that a smiling, light-skinned Negro could easily placate the fiercest racist with good humor and reticence, the public was charmed by his pleasant manner, obvious intelligence and effortless lies. The 60 year effort to control the media paid off in spades, and Academia, also as planned, lined up in lock-step behind the demagogue, giving him a glamorous patina of false erudition. His occasional radical outbursts in past years were simply ignored. They might as well not have happened.
But it still wasn’t enough. The curmudgeon McCain somehow shook off the yoke of Bush and refashioned himself as a maverick to create separation between him and the media-created devil. He energized the base of his party by selecting a beautiful, youthful, outspoken, independent woman as his second. Even an around-the-clock, over-the-top media assassination wasn’t enough to lessen her appeal. On September 8, 56 days prior to the election, McCain/Palin emerged as the leaders in the most respected poll in the country. With the price of oil higher than ever in the country’s history, with foreign threats foremost in the public’s mind, with a normal economy, the country appeared to be deciding to stick with the better known war-horse and his energetic second.
But on September 9, something extraordinary happened. Volume on the stock market, which had been declining in value for months, nearly doubled and stayed at historical highs for months. Within a week, one of the country’s most prestigious financial institutions was brought to its knees by speculators and declared insolvent by the government. The following week there was a massive and unprecedented run on Money Market funds. Thursday of that week, 11 days after McCain/Palin’s first lead in the polls, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve declared a financial Code Red, an emergency of a scale never before experienced in the civilized world. Nearly a trillion dollars was needed IMMEDIATELY, or civilization would collapse, or so they said. This, 45 days prior to one of the most consequential presidential elections in US history….and on the Republicans’ watch, BushMcCain’s watch. The crisis, though certainly the long-term result of the Democrat’s insane policy to force banks to make mortgage loans to unqualified buyers, and though certainly precipitated by illegal insider trading by Obama’s wealthy backers (and perhaps abetted by foreign governments) was a godsend to Obama, and the media immediately laid it squarely at BushMcCain’s feet, as the platinum asset of the Marxist architects, the American press, did it’s masters’ bidding. Obama remained above fray, playing his script as the calm logician who cannot be ruffled. McCain was suckered into the epidemic of panic, humiliated himself with a series of inane actions, and lost all chance of winning the election.
By November 4, the country’s wealth was depleted by 12 trillion dollars; a depression had started; layoffs of millions of Americans had begun, and Barack Obama, the Marxist mole nurtured for 20 years, became president of the United States.
Within a year of his inauguration, Mr. Obama had nationalized the auto industry, the banking industry, the Student Loans industry, and was on the verge of nationalizing multiple industries that constitute the United State’s Health Care service and industrial complex. 56% of the economy was within his grasp. Mr. Obama had doubled the deficit and put the country on a path to quadruple the national debt within a decade. Generations of American’s were in debt that could never be paid off. He had increased unemployment to over 20% to further sponsor fear and panic in the country. Free speech had been attacked from the White House itself as well as proxies in the government and the media. Centuries-old contract law had been overturned. Radicals and communists controlled dozens, perhaps hundreds of high level positions in the administration. Foreign policies consistently practiced for decades had been reversed. But Mr. Obama simply denied it all. In the most blatant display of contempt and hubris in the country’s history, he simply and repeatedly denied that any of this had even happened. He has simply reacted to events. He was, he declared in his best baritone voice, a Centrist. The charges that he was a socialist were absurd, he said.
One year after his inauguration, the country had had enough. In the heretofore most liberal state in the country, a Republican was elected to the seat previously held by the most liberal Senator in the country. The Republican ran on an explicitly anti-Obama platform, and won in a resounding victory.
After that victory, the White House proclaimed in an Alice-in-Wonderland moment that the Republican’s victory was in fact, evidence of the same forces that had swept Mr. Obama to victory.
To be continued, God willing.
I always read Professor Hanson for his insight, and this column on Obama is no exception. I do, however, have one point of disagreement that is a minor subject in the column.
It has become standard for some to criticize John McCain for the 2008 campaign, and I will not suggest here that McCain ran a great campaign. McCain did, however, best Obama in all the debates on substance. At the Saddleback Forum (the best moderated debate), McCain was clearly the superior candidate to Obama. McCain also had great videos. It goes a bit too far, then, to say that McCain seemed more interested in losing honorably than running a hard hitting campaign. To be sure, McCain was interested in winning honorably and thus made a decision to confine atatcks on Obama for Ayres and Wright to videos. In retrospect, with Obama’s radicalism, that judgment seems unwise. But at the time, there were two concerns: (1) with the public mind on the recessionary economy, attacks on Ayres and Wright would be counter-productive, seen as trying to get the subject away from what was really important; and (2) attacking Bill Clinton back in the 1990′s for being a draft dodger did not do much for the GOP.
What I think is necessary for all conservatives to keep in mind is that 2008 was a terrible year for Republicans. The polls over a two year period showed that only McCain among Republican candidates had a chance of defeating Hillary or Obama; in September 2008 after the National GOP Convention, the McCain-Palin ticket was in the lead. There were, however, a number of what may be called “headwinds” that made for a big Democrat win: (i) the financial “crisis” starting in late September 2008 that created economic uncertainties that historically have favored Democrats and did in 2008; (ii) the Bush Administration bailout that muddied the waters of the clear differences between the two parties on economic policy and blunted what was a conservative McCain-Palin economic message on the campaign trail; (iii) the unpopularity of President Bush, which was unfair but was the result of unceasing left wing attacks that GW did not get into the bully pulpit sufficiently to rebut; (iv) the 7 to 1 money advantage that Obama had, which could and did pay for a lot of what was misleading campaign advertising; (v) a mainstream media that was absurdly biased in favor of Obama and that acted as a day-in, day-out propaganda machine for Obama; (vi) demographic changes in the country (with the same demographic make-up as existed in 1992 and the same voting percentages per group between McCain and Obama, McCain would have won); and (vii) the weariness with or lack of concern about the war with the radical Islamists.
This led to a most unfortunate consequence in Obama becoming President. As good a candidate as was Obama, he is a terrible President. As bad a candidate as was McCain, he would have been a good President. McCain has been and is still is one of the more knowledgeable persons around concerning foreign policy, military matters and national security; significantly, McCain was one of the most qualified candidates in decades to be Commander in Chief. In contrast, you have in Obama a narcissist President who is a radical socialist, a former community organizer and someone lacking in knowledge and experience in foreign policy, military matters and national security — the stuff needed to be a capable Commander in Chief.
For well over a decade in Canada, while the conservative party was split, we had a one party state. There was simply no check or balance to everyday governing, and without surprise, those in charge fully indulged themselves.
All Americans will be thankful, when and if, the Congress and Senate shift to a more balanced representation, if not a mix of majorities between all houses.
From a macro perspective, this has been one of the sources of the U.S.’s current problems. Between force feeding Bills, especially health care, or ineptitude such as NYC fly by’s and criminal courts for military matters and many other examples of dysfuntion, there is no “in the present” check.
The best hope and indication this will change is the GOP Massachusetts senate seat win. And until balance is restored from the current position of the pendulum of political power, pray that the worst was that a 20 something Nigerian kid that had lost his way, lost his genitals rather than succeed in his murderous intent, that it was “10′s of” at Fort Hood, and not 100′s or more, that one industry was lost (autos) to government control, not one third of the economy (healthcare and financial), and that there hasn’t been a tragedy (EMP strike, biological attack, or some such other evil doing) of any greater proportion from an already unacceptable scale.
Was Dick Cheney really off base in his unconventional criticism of the President’s policies and America being less safe!? How much evidence is necessary such that there is an objective in the minds of most of “regime change” in the Whitehouse?
Oh yeah, and 10-15million people un- or under-employed…
The ingredients stewing are recipe for very unwanted results.
Serious stuff, with very uncertain solutions that are 10 months away from any tangible action steps.
Hey folks brevity is the soul of wit. Do some of you really need to write a tome in response to a post?
I have wondered if John McCain didn’t know something we didn’t. From his position inside I think he had already seen the handwriting on the wall and decided to let someone else steer the truck over the cliff. If that’s the case, the smartest thing the Repubs ever did was throw the race in 2008.
VDH: The only fault I find with your saga – and other commentors’ spins – lies in its origins. Many people today forget, or have never learned, that in the middle of the last century the Communist Party was an active and open participant in American politics. It ran candidates for President, and for many other offices, federal, state and local. But, as Norman Thomas, is supposed to have said, the American electorate would never knowingly vote in a socialist government. So, after the war years with Joe McCarthy’s Red Hunt and the House Anti-American Activities Committee campaign, the CPA dissolved itself: they just became “liberals”, “progressives” and “activists”. They deliberately did not identify themselves as socialists and join the Socialist Party, which is today moribund.
But the true believers in Communism were still there: they differentiated them differentiated themselves from the church-going social activists and other soft socialists
Camouflaging themselves as “left-leaning liberals” they moved into the ranks of the Democrat party. A few of them still clung to open doctrinaire Lenin/Stalinist communism ( Check Bill Ayers’ site – a RedStar rising above the arc of the globe) – centered in Chicago and adopting the ruthless strategies of Saul Alinksy’s Community Organizing approach to bloodless revolution and running under the cover of the Daley machine.
Obama, steeped in doctrinaire Ayers/Mao/Castro/Chavez style Communiism, did not just fortuitously emerge from his mediocre past as an organizer, constitutional law lecturer, Illinois senator. David Axelrod, a brilliant advertising/publicity/marketing manager, and a member of Ayers’ coterie, carefully planned and directed Obama’s entire campaign. Step one: dazzle the Democrats with his platitudious over-blown oratory: step two:scheme with a sympathetic DNC to back him as a cadidate; step three: go to outrageously lengths to prevent him from ever being vetted, and jstep four: spend obscene millions to lie and cheat him into the White House.
The most amazing thing about the saga is: how could an entire nation give consideration to accepting, as a candidate for our highest office, a man whose entire public record was calculatedly concealed from public release? You wouldn’t hire a security guard without checking his records. You wouldn’t hire an office manager without checking her records. You wouldn’t hire a city manager who held back essential information – big blanks on the application form. Even though the press and TV were complicit, historians will regard this as beyond comprehension.
Particularly since the other political party, the GOP, flatly refused to point out these omissions in its campaign – never once challenged his easily traceable public record of incompetence, never attacked him on his corrupt Chicago machine connections. A year and a half ago I was hounding the RNC ad people about this and they were proudly proclaiming their great “rapid-response” techniques. Just like Custer would have pointed out his great surprise strategy.
You mentioned everything about the Great Saga except the truth that it was – and remains -a carefully orchestrated collosal SCAM – a bloodless coup from which we may never truly recover.
“To be sure, McCain was interested in winning honorably and thus made a decision to confine atatcks on Obama for Ayres and Wright to videos.”
There would have nothing even slightly dishonorable in criticizing Barack Obama’s relationships with Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Moreover, the politically correct John McCain had an obligation to do so! He failed miserably in carrying out his duties to the American voters. McCain was too intimidated by Obama’s skin color. He is truly a guilt tripped white dude. The GOP presidential candidate also refused to discuss how the Democrats forced lending institutions to provide mortgages to minorities possessing poor credit ratings. This may even the number one reason why pollsters show the American public blaming George W. Bush for our current economic troubles. McCain should have gone after Obama’s radical friends no later than May of 2008. I remain convinced that had he done so—Obama’s candidacy should have been effectively over no later than by mid September. The majority of voters would have deemed the Democratic Party standard bearer too high of a risk. They also would not have changed their minds during the economic crisis in October.
John McCain would have doubtlessly been a better national leader regarding foreign policy issues. Nonetheless, he would have destroyed the Republican Party. That price in the long run is simply not acceptable. McCain enjoys the reputation of being an iconoclast—-and he would have gone out of his way to stick it to his fellow Republicans. It also seems that I accurately predicted that Obama would be unable to sign into law a cap and trade bill. McCain would have already likely pushed this nonsense through both houses of Congress. No, I am glad that McCain lost the election. It is sad to say that Obama’s administration may ultimately prove to have been a less destructive one.
Always love the VDH commentaries and thoughtful discussion/comments and today’s is no exception….while its pretty easy to imagine what the world will say from the prospective of the future and the as yet unknown outcomes. But the entire story is not yet written….the reaction of We the People will write this ending….whether we succumbe to the teat of the nanny state security, content as long as American Idol comes back each season and the state continues to pay for our cheese and our cell phones…or, do we shoulder the burden of our heritage and look back to our founders who knew and insured that the ultimate powers are in the hands of the people, if they are knowledgeable, and diligent and involved…the marxist/statists can only be successful with our consent, which we offered (in the past but no more) in our silence and our trust that our elected officials actually had our best interests At heart. The election in MA and the erupting tsunami wave of anger at the entrenched corrupted elite oligarchy currently occupying DC is our best hope. It is the responsibility of all to learn, to teach to watch, to be involved….
Proreason: that was as beautifully laid out a piece as any published article…..thank you
A fine synopsis, though I would add a few words to Chapter Two:
The corruption and anti-Americanism among Obama’s allies and associates shouldn’t be neglected, either.
And when “the rest of the story” is revealed about our secretive president, I will be most interested in: who his father was, why his passport file was of interest, his transcripts from all his colleges and what names he used at various times, who really funded his campaign (which foreign countries and how much) and his education.
Phil Byler writes, “It goes a bit too far, then, to say that McCain seemed more interested in losing honorably than running a hard hitting campaign.”
How, then, would one explain McCain’s insistence at a forum on “service” during the campaign that Obama’s service as a community adviser was “outstanding”? Seeing that, I said to myself, “What the he**! Is he deliberately trying to throw the election?” Palin at least suggested that such work involves no need to show results in her convention speech, but McCain closed down the discussion altogether.
Thanks VDH and Proreason. You have helped crystallize my thinking for a few important personal decisions that needed to be made.
Dr. Hanson thank you for the history lessons.
If we forget what happened last week/year,
we will also forget what they plan to stick us with tomorrow/next week-
2010 $1.8 trillion dollar deficit for instance.
@ 10: proreason
And never forget that Charles Schumer (DNY)
pointed his finger at Cal Bank in Calif. because of their Democrat sponsored sub-prime loans and yelled FIRE,
it went under.
“Never waste a good crisis.”
Then because of the sub-prime turmoil my favorite company AIG lost half a trillion dollars out of 1 trillion.
“Never waste a wonderful crisis.”
Now we still have a speeding train wreck of a fiscal nightmare on the horizon running over anyone/everyone in its path,
and this administration has a community organizer dressed in an empty suit controlling the stick, overspend control and whistle.
A speeding train running the tracks can be stopped, but when that train is tearing up the tracks behind-
What happens when it tears up that half mile high wooden bridge?
This is so spot on but chapter two could also include one word about Palin and her role in challenging Obama’s empty campaign rhetoric (and continuing to do so), speaking to the middle America unknown to Obama, and rousing a sleeping giant. It will be interesting to see how she features in chapters five, six ….
#1-David Thomson:
You nailed the reality of this mess! It’s nice to know someone else sees this as I certainly do. The irony is that I could see an extreme leftie get so worked up he decides to take out Obama: That’s how wacked these so called “progressives” seem to me. As did the communists many years ago in naming their movements, so too have the democrats adopted such a policy. Progressive…I don’t think so, Regressive is more to the truth!
Vote the bums out, and those democrats who now try to “soften” their passive aggressive positions to save their seats…throw them out while also voting out those republicans who joined in the feeding frenzy, forgot American principles, and raped the American Dream!
Put’em to the curb…with extreme prejudice!
A grassroots tea party movement and three off-year elections indicate that the jury has reached an early verdict. Americans prefer divided government and a return to small “r” republican rule. That a small political and cultural elite think they can force their agenda on 300 million free people only proves their arrogance.
I agree with proreason (post #10) that the seeds of progressivism were sewn by the Soviet Union. Yuri Bezmenov exposed the entire plan shortly after his defection from communism. His exegesis should be taken seriously. The real war right now is cultural.
Our triple cultural heritage of Judeo-Christian morality, Greco-Roman philosophy, and Anglo-Saxon law will withstand the current assault by progressivism. Marxism is a fad compared to our much longer pedigree as a free people. Stalin and Mao knew that only a wholesale destruction of a nation’s cultural institutions could bring about the promised utopia. It didn’t work because the communist edifice was built on a foundation of lies.
Why is it that progressives always conceal their objectives behind a blizzard of propaganda? They know as do most average Americans that the goal is power. Yet our system of government was constructed by the Founding Fathers to diffuse and disperse the concentration of power. I’ll place my bets with Washington, Madison, and Franklin over Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. Our system will endure for awhile longer yet.
When the history of this period is written, it will be yet another testament to the brilliance of our Founders. I suppose that the left believes those yellow Gadsden flags displayed on September 12th were some kind of fashion statement. Clueless as usual. It’s a definitive warning from a free and defiant people. And we are legion.
What I fear is that Chapter Five will really be a replay of an earlier time in history when a great empire, mired in its own corruption and lost in purpose other than self-indulgence fell prey to hoardes from the north (at least we don’t have to worry about Canada). Will we follow that course?
Obama is not just left of Carter, he is a Marxist who hates America, and is trying his best to “smash the Capitalist system” and to bring tyranny to America.
I have often used the term “Blitzkreig” to describe Obam & Co.’s full bore attempt to overwhelm us with so many actions—some important, some not, some in the form of appointments, or proposals, or legislation, some in the form of regulations, some in the form of executive orders—that we would find it almost impossible to become aware of all of the attacks, much less sort them all out, and to respond to all of the more serious threats among them.
However, there are some actions that are so unusual, actions that make no ordinary sense—but make very much and ominous sense, if seen and understood as possible building blocks, laid to construct a Tyranny, actions that stand out and erupt, like a magnesium flare in the night. One such very early flare was Obama & Co.’s attempts, in the first few weeks of his administration, and continuing today, to get control over the Census, whose population counts are used to apportion Congressional Districts—and thus affect voting power in Congress–and to direct Federal funds to states and localities.
Now come two other major cases on point—both executive orders signed by Obama with little fanfare, that stand out, that make no sense, but that—if you believe that Obama & Co. are striving to institute some form of Tyranny–have very ominous implications for every American’s freedom.
The first, the one paragraph Executive Order 12425, signed December 16, 2009, without any signing statement or justification (subsequent media requests for the justification for this EO have not been answered) and quietly placed on the White House website, exempted INTERPOL, the international police force, from all U.S. laws; they can now operate in the U.S. without any restraints on them whatsoever, without being subject to, for instance, the restraints placed upon all U.S. law enforcement organizations—local, State and Federal police, Federal Marshals, police of various federal agencies, and the FBI–by the Constitution and our laws. EO 12425 also makes INTERPOL property and records exempt from all search and seizure laws, and also exempts INTERPOL from having to comply with the Freedom of Information Act requests.
INTERPOL, by the way, has its U.S. headquarters located in our Justice Department so that, it would seem, any documents that might be in INTERPOL section of the Justice Department cannot now be ordered to be produced or be examined by any U.S. authorities. Gee, I wonder what would happen if some Justice Department files—say, for instance, those files pertaining to the DOJ’s decision not to go forward with the Black Panther’s voter intimidation prosections–somehow got into the INTERPOL offices?
Moreover, it would also seem that, post EO12425, if the International Criminal Court were to rule that some U.S. citizen or official were, say, a “war criminal,” it appears that INTERPOL could hunt him down and arrest him here within the U.S. and transport him overseas for detention and trial, and there is no legal way to stop them.
The other E.O., one that was also issued very quietly and that has drawn hardly any notice, was a January 11, 2010 EO establishing the “Council of Governors,” supposedly “…to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards.” The EO signing statement points out that the Council was created pursuant to a mandate to do so contained in language in the FY08 DOD Authorization bill. However, many such Congressional mandates are routinely ignored by both the White House and by DOD, so I believe Obama & Co. decided to heed this mandate to give them cover for something they already wanted to do.
Says the White House signing statement, “When appointed, the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”
The EO says that the Council is to be composed of ten governors selected by the President (no more than five Governors from one party) and the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and America’s Security Affairs, the Northern Command Commander, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau. The Secretary of Defense will designate an Executive Director for the Council.
With Obama there are no “innocent explanations.” One would think that with all the various exiting connections and interactions between Federal, State and local agencies, and with a National Guard Bureau in each and every state and the existing National Guard-DOD connections, there would already be enough consultation about the National Guard and any internal policing issues in the U.S., so this seems very duplicative.
But, when viewed in the context of steps taken to build a tyranny and creating various centers of power and control mechanisms, given Obama’s bizarre call for a “Civilian National Security Force… that is just as big and well funded as our [current] military,” given that among the other members of this new Council, the current Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs, is the very dangerous and odious Valerie Jarrett, given that the justification for this EO talks of internal policing in the U.S., given that the Posse Comitatus Act very strictly forbids the use of U.S. military forces within the U.S.; this Council, with its predominance of White House and Federal military leaders, but few National Guard members, and its concern with such internal policing, also has a very ominous ring.
Great description! Obama narrative with the majority of Americans is non-existant. It is so contrary to the American experience that they are in revolt. Obama beside being a stranger to the truth he is a statist idealogue surrounded by statist-socialists.
Most people are an interesting mixture of good qualities and ill. Can anyone (but the raving left) forget the tears welling into GWB’s eyes as he comforted that young girl who lost her mother on 9-11? Stumble over words, President Bush may have, but he didn’t stumble emotionally.
The guy in office now? This is a dark and bad place inside him. I am unable to come up with one positive attribute.
Needless to say; His grades and transcripts have been hidden for good reason.
They can only be an embarrassment of incompletion and failure. And these two terms shall be the legacy he leaves.
The Verdict Is Still Out
no VDH …there are many like me who had no doubts what Obama and his circus clowns were about.
sin embargo bien escrito
Doesn’t this man demonstrate how Affirmative Action has failed the minorities?
VDH should add two further observations. One, after the Republican Convention in August 2008, McCain was tied with Oh!Bummer and perhaps a little ahead in opinion polls. What blew the McCain campaign to smithereens was his completely inept response to the emerging financial crisis in September. McCain revealed himself as an ignoramus on national economic matters — which should have been no surprise, he has never been competent or even interested in those issues, and he had an inept economic team on the campaign. Had he been able to respond more forcefully to the crisis, he might even have won the election.
Two, the Bulls in Congress. We have a formidable class of senior Democrats who came into Congress in the early 1970s, and they’ve patiently abided their opportunities, like a pack of wolves running their prey to exhaustion before moving in for the kill. Oh!Bummer never had a chance against them, even he had been more centrist in his inclination — like a six-foot guard going up against an all-pro basketball team. So he, disastrously, let them run his first year, with a plan to move back to the center in the second year — this is what Rahm meant when he said that a crisis should not be wasted. They knew time was of the essence in passing their “progressive” dreams and tie the US down to European welfarism forever. Now, they’ve mostly wasted their chances, with the backlash in three critical state elections, and popular opinion turning on the President. He will be forced to move to the center without, luckily, any worse damage to the nation than humungous public debts to be serviced for the rest of eternity.
So, he got elected because of McCain’s incompetence in economic affairs, and then he was cornered by the Bulls. And, now, he’s in trouble. The right was never with him, the center is failing him now, and the left is livid with anger over what they see as his betrayals of the Dream and the Promise. For now, he’s got nowhere to go, and you could sense how cornered he feels from listening to that discombobulated SOTU speech last week. Alito got it right, and we can generalize his comment: most of what the President says is “definitely not true.”
Our national nightmare continues. In fact, the best hope we have right now is a popular revolt — the Tea Party. If they can move the Republicans back to basic Reaganism and put the religious right agenda on the backburner for a while, perhaps some of the damage done by the financial crisis can be mitigated. I doubt, however, that the financial system can be repaired quickly, or perhaps ever. I think that its breakdown will leave permanent economic damage to the US. In fact, I believe the greatest threat to our future is not terrorism, but the Administration’s and Congress’ war on financial institutions.
I disagree with Proreason that Obama’s rise was plotted or choreographed. Conspiracy theories are too neat and tidy; the real world is messy and plagued by the Law of Unintended Consequences. One could argue just as plausibly that Barack Obama is really a deep cover Republican sleeper agent, whose purpose is to destroy the Democratic Party just in time for the next reapportionment. The reality is that Barack Obama (or Barry Soetoro, his legal name) is just a privileged preppy, raised first in relative affluence in Indonesia, then sent to Hawaii’s top prep school, Punahou, where he went nowhere and hung out with burnouts, then to Occidental College, where he did the same, then to Columbia College, where he started to get off drugs and get his act together, then to Harvard Law, where he continued his career as a privileged nonentity. His political career has been more of the same. Saturday Night Live has his number: “Send me anything; I’ll sign it. I don’t care.”
Call me cynical. This society is mainly driven by the media and the education establishment. This cabal has created a heavy population imbalance of craven ignorant narcissists in our society. Our nation is committed to the path of self-immolation.
The 20% of us left with awareness and morality should move to Texas, Oklahoma or the like and secede. Otherwise we’re just going down with the Titanic while ignoring an empty life boat.
Admit it, you can’t even get through to your own kids … you aren’t going to out vote the Obamanation.
Wow! A great article by VDH. The stunning part is the magnificent comments. You guys just blew me away. This is why I always read PJM first in the day. Thanks all.
Mike McDaniel- thanks for your posts. Excellent insights.
I agree with you about the historian view of Bush – and your analysis of Obama. He is indeed a clinical narcissist. And as David Thomson also points out, an ignorant, intellectally shallow and lazy individual. Obama has spent his entire life advancing via personal manipulation of those around him rather than on intellectul and work merit.
His manipulative skills are excellent; we saw that in the televised meeting with the Republicans, where no follow-up questions were allowed. This turned the session into a campaign slot for Obama since no criticism and questions of his statements could take place.
So, he misinformed (aka lied), did his usual exoneration of responsibility -eg, yet again portraying himself as The Pure One, coming in to a financial disaster not of his own creation… So what? His job is to deal with problems. Ignored his pork-stimulus, claiming that it saved the economy when there’s no proof of this.
Insisted that he was ‘bipartisan’ declaring that he’d read the Republican Health Care suggestions – So what? Inform us why you rejected them. etc etc. It was pure manipulation, a strategy he’s perfected since he was a young boy.
My own view is that Obama is intellectually empty; he’s a malignant narcissist and his only interest is in personal control of others. He’s embedded within the socialist statist agenda because that ideology sets him up as a Controller rather than an interactive individual.
The radical socialists who run him use him as their upfront Salesman to ram through their policies. But Obama is not very good at this because his interest is only in himself and his power to control others..rather than in the policy’s control over others.
Therefore, we see his weakening role in the statist attempt to take over America. It is important to watch their next steps. Neither the statist agenda nor Obama’s agenda can change. How strong is America to resist and fight these two forces?
Proreason,
The casual reader will deem you a lunatic tin-hat-wearer. And I would have a mere two years ago. BUT, it is now conclusive (per Venona decoded wires and declassified info) that McCarthy was 100% accurate, that Hiss WAS guilty, that the Rosenbergs WERE guilty; the market WAS engineered to crash days after McCain/Palin pulled ahead via Rasmussen. Sadly, you are historically and factually accurate, scary as it seems. We fight on…
Obama & Co. really are just playing at governing, if by “governing” you mean good faith efforts to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic,” and to work diligently to take all prudent steps to repair and energize our economy and protect our freedoms; wrecking is a lot easier than building.
One key piece of evidence demonstrating their unseriousness is the fact that, according to the Chicago Times, as of the first week of December, 2009 the Obama White House had thrown 170 parties–roughly one every 3 days–in his first 11 months in office (not including, I note, the other 17 parties and 11 open houses–feting more than 50,000 guests–-held over the Holiday season.
The wild card here is whether the jihadis manage to hit us and how hard. Thus far, the administration’s security management has not been awe inspiring. If we are hit hard and appear to be vulnerable, something more serious could ensue. Still out indeed.
#5 AHEM: you are bang on, sir.
Add that McCain and Bush deserve heaps of blame for:
1. Playing Me-Too with the progressives.
2. Allowing lies to become truth.
— and those two out of touch oligarchs should got to the wall along with the Bolsheviks.
#9 Claude: “I don’t like big government, but do realize that the internet, a powerful tool, is the end product of a Defense Dept. project. So govt. can do some good, just not when its main objective is wealth transfer.”
NASA is also a govt run program – grossly over-expensive and little results (with a 40 year old moon trip, several types of telescopes, spy satellites and assorted probes to its name).
I, for one, would love to see where we could be in space exporation if big govt hadn’t told America that WE couldn’t try it ourselves. Big govt put its patent stamp on space decades ago and my money is betting that big govt hurt us there.
proreason,
Usually I decry those who write long screeds on other’s blog comments but for some reason I read yours and it is very very good. Thank you.
The thought most dominant in my mind after reading was that the puppet masters are surely about to engineer some huge world shaking catastrophe. Something allowing the False Prophet to take full and unchallenged control.
Ron Kean @ 7:
You said a mouthful. Conservatives should vow to never forget what the leftist media attempted….and is still attempting…to do. An absolute and total boycott is in order. Partake of the media’s lies only to the extent where they reveal the intent of America’s enemies, the most noteworthy of which is its present government.
A random sampling of first graders, high school dropouts, or rain forest indians could have done a better job than Obama and company on the economy and job creation during the first years. Their idiocy and incompetence is inexcusable even on the basis of their own argument that they inherited the mess. Remember Obama was supposed to be a miracle worker.
Instead they spent 3 TRILLION dollars with NOTHING to show for it.
I agree, Dr. Hanson, with your assessment of the boy-child Obama. It took a while for the country to realize that Jimmy Carter was a failure. It took less than a year for us to figure out that Obama has a deep-seated hatred for common American values, and subsequently, for Americans.
The bad thing about narcissists is that they don’t change. There are sites on the internet that describe the symptoms and he fits many. But if you look for published ways to work with these people or live with them, the general consensus is just to try to run away from them. They can’t recognize it in themselves. We don’t have that option.
11. Phil
I’ve said this before and I run the risk of looking like a foolish conspiracy theorist, but right when McCain and Palin pulled ahead in the polling by 3 or so points, somebody started a multi-billion dollar sell-off that caused the economy to tank and gave Obama the boost he needed. This was followed by similar sell-offs on Fridays after that. Coincidental?
It’s odd that nobody delves into the mysteries of Obama. When giving money to Obama’s campaign by credit card, he disabled the address and info requirements. To test this, conservatives donated token amounts using the names Adolf Hitler and Mickey Mouse. And then there were amounts like $87.65 or $132.89 that looked curiously like foreign currency was being converted to dollars.
The professor skirts the issue by saying he’s curious about Obama’s college loan papers or college entrance forms and examinations, but many of us only ask what we ask anybody in public office, or who wants a driver’s license, or who wants a passport. Give it up bro.
The Black Panther scandal is more in-your-face and then there’s the issue of the ethics investigater who busted Obama’s buddy in San Francisco and was fired saying he was mentally incompetent.
The professor is right to speak of what is known. But there is too much of what is unknown.
Important to note:
When a significant portion of the congress is retaken there is a tool that we can use that will be deadly to the progressive agenda:austerity.
I live in a college town and almost every single day I speak with far left academics and I’m absolutely horrified to discover they are subsidized with taxpayer money to write and teach nothing more than deviancy and Anti- American propaganda.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a libertarian and I’m all for someone letting their freak flag fly… It’s just not the business of the state to subsidize it.
This garbage that the taxpayer is either entirely or partially subsidizing is the fountainhead of the disease. We can plug this hole by defunding it.
Believe me when I say this: getting rid of their poison pen will turn into an uglier fight than even getting rid of the NEA, so the only way to do it would be by painting with very broad strokes.
We’d basically have to stop give out pell grants etc for degrees that cannot be expected to be repayable on the basis of their own merit within a reasonable timeframe. I.E. no more money for English, Philosophy, Anthropology, etc degrees.
If someone wants grants for a degree in biology or physics, excellent. Post colonial studies? Not so much.
Dr Hanson always has excellent points in his writings and has his understanding of history to underpin his wisdom. The commenters also understand the situation, what brought us to this point and I am in agreement with them. The one thing I would add to the thread is the observation that we have done this to ourselves! Americans, perhaps subverted, but Americans none the less are to blame for the current situation in this country. For most of the 20th century, Americans have allowed (or participated in) the changes in our government and culture that have lead us to this moment of crisis and clarity.
What we do from this moment forward is what VDH is writing about in his article. Chapter five is still unwritten. Will we really reject the bitter fruit that we have grown and decide to return to the proper management of the garden? Some seem to dislike the taste. They have thrown down the bitter fruit and plowed it under. Or will we as a nation settle for the lesser quality that many in the world now have and seem to be resigned to?
If we decide as a nation to reject the table as it is laid out for us, we face a hungry, lean time ahead. The majority may find it easier to just settle for less, rather than clear the table, burn the fields and start to grow new crops from the few good seeds we have left.
how many americans died in Iraq, how many Iraqi civilians died in Iraq, how many american and iraqis were injured by IEDs and other terrorist weapons because the Democrats gave terrorists and Al Qaeda encouragement and support as part of their relentless, unprincipled, homicidal attacks on the President if the United States?
Obama, Clinton, and every important democrat are resposible for at least half of all deaths and 2/3rd of all injuries suffered in Iraqi. No wonder they regularly questioned their own loyalty to the U.S.
The non-stop campaign waged by the Left beginning in 2007 claiming the economy was weak and that 4.5% unemployment was unacceprtable — led by Obama — destroyed our economy and caused the Great Crash of 2008 and the Great Collapse of 2009.
Never forget that Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, every East European dictator, Adolf Hitler, Nassar, Idi Amin, Nasrallah, The Dear Leader, Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Manson and his gang, and Osama bin Laden were/are all Socialists and Liberals.
baal,
In 1968 my Psych 101 course at KU was taught by a turban wearing Afghan communist. I swear it. We were taught Che Guevarra and very little psychology. Kansas. 42 years ago.
We had been prepped for this professor’s tender mercies by reading Catcher In The Rye in english class accompanied by an endless draught of self hatred inducing ‘humanities studies’ courses our senior year. Throw in a stupidly prosecuted Viet Nam War and wallah! Demoralization.
How can a society expunge insanity this deeply ingrained? It can not. The sane need to withdraw, regroup and wall out the incurably sick.
I really would like to see Dr. Hanson’s attention to the progressive policies, although they usually were not described as such until recently, of recent Republican Presidents including Nixon and Reagan who have been falsely labeled as conservatives.
How much does contemporaneous peer or social pressure drive policies of of supposedly right-leaners to the left? Or is individual man’s short-sighted animal nature so dominant that statism and zoo-keeping by the leftist “dear leaders” is inevitable?
#13 Pedrosito
If the words are too big for you to understand, or the text too long to keep you from nodding off – just bypass them and look for the shorter stuff to keep you happy. But please don’t assume that your tastes are the same as the rest of us who are interested in good and insightful writing. Possibly you would be more at home on Huffington? You know, the one with all the small and dirty words.
President Obama is also opposed to the First Amendment and freedom of speech. His attack on the Supreme Court granting freedom of speech to corporations as granting corporations the right to contribute as much money as they please in politics, shows not only his ignorance of the actual decision but his ignorance of the First Amendment.
The people making comments on this article are not representative of the voters that put Obama or Bush in office. The electorate are far less informed. They are guided by a variety of misinformation. Obama had no record so perhaps the greatest reason for Obamas’s victory was due to political correctness (required by MSM). The vast numbers of Obama bumper stickers were trying to state, “I am not predjudiced”. The majority of voters have never read an article by Doctor Hansen. They only see/hear the mainstream media (MSM). Only when the MSM began criticizing Obama did a majority begin to surface for alternatives (Massachusetts).
The most dangerous threat our country faces is the imminent debasement of our currency. The nitty gritty of this is not discussed on the MSM. The MSM still believes that huge deficits benefit the majority of voters and so they will continue to support Obama’s socialism.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money (Margaret Thatcher). The big question is when the MSM will tell people that the dollar is worthless. For those that ask when will TSHTF, that is when.
There is the ruling class and there are the dopes and frustrated slaves who lust to be dominated by them.
The ruling class, liberals if you’ll pardon the expression, have problems tying their shoelaces and going pottie. A quick review of the mind boggling incompetence of the party in power and the nincompoops in the WH bear this out.
The dopes and frustrated slaves either don’t see this or don’t care, being subjugated and hand fed like the little pet goats at a childrens zoo being their only passion.
And so here we are. And we have to argue with this collection of trash.
14. JB: Wonder is John McCain had fore-
knowledge of the coming Fall ?
Amongst TPTB in both political parties,
it has been a commonly known, and never spoken truth, for years, that the US was headed for a Fall, and that nothing could
be done to stop it; Isn’t it odd how one hit after another is landing on The One and the Democrats, now that they own the blame for the Fall ?
The Republicans seem to think that because they are not in power now, they can avoid
their share of the blame that the people
will place on _all_ politicians when the
Hard Times begin.
Many thanks VDH.
Having been slapped down by Mass. BO will be ever more desperate to shift the country to the Left. You ain’t seen nothin yet ! He will do this in the predictable manner of talking Centrist then acting Leftist. You will never hear this liar speaking well of our founding fathers, the Constitution, or the Bill of rights. They are a hinderence to his intentions. BO must be praying for another 9-11 so he can grab that bullhorn but this time to blame our evil Democracy and to take credit that we would have lost even more people had it not been for his administration (as his calculus for the “jobs saved”). BO is on a mission having nothing to do with a free society. He is on a mission as expressed by Rev. Wright. If you want to know BO then you must know his teacher / preacher of 20 years. To give credit where credit is due the Rev. was correct that the USA would be “Da—” although in the person of BO. With due respect, VDH seems more optimistic than is justified by actions of the past year. Bad guys and scroundrals don’t always come in last or get their just deserts. As historian perhaps VDH can give us a list of scounrdals who came in first at the expense of the unwashed.
Obama’s full court press (MSM pun included) of attacking and spending in all directions keeps in on the front page. Throwing out new issues obfuscates the character and intent behind the issue. Before the debate can be settled, a new cure for a supposed problem adds to the constant barrage of distractions.
VDH still seems to want to give BHO a small benefit of the doubt. Check out the optimism of last year’s posts, and the curve is downward. Perhaps American exceptionalism still hopes that the Obama character is not a criminal mind.
“Obama was the ultimate homeopathic — cure the patient by giving more of what caused the symptoms in the first place.”
Just to pick on this one topic, Obama says that Washington politics are corrupt and we need to give more power to that same govenment. This is selling poison as medicine with a masking shot of guilt and free lunch. Before that conflict is resolved he will be jetting somewhere else with our national treasury checkbook.
Writing history in advance usually means looking backwards. As I recall, 1n 1492 Spain finally kicked out the Muslims and discovered the “New World.” An up and coming power, Spain blew it a hundred years later in 1588 when the Great Armada sank in a perfect storm. In 1961 JFK proposed going to the moon in ten years. This was only 15 years after WW2, fifty million dead, a quarter of a million of them Americans–everyone showed up for the war. In 1969 we made it to the moon, early: at the time I was running around Vietnam getting my butt shot at–because of a selective Selective Service, not everyone showed up. Forty years later the great navel gazing baby boomers have yet to go back to the moon, and their presidential hero just canceled that planned Bush endeavor. No money for the moon and NASA, and all the science and technological off shoots, but we can nationalize GM, health care, and the mortgage market. Oh, and as a sop to the private sector, they get to do the space station service flights, if they want too. Yup, that should work. Kinda reminds me of Spain after they blew it. A few centuries later Spain was invaded and occupied during the Napoleonic wars. But things do happen quicker today, even when they’re supposedly impossible in the new economy. .
Again, I would disagree with the pessimists and conspiracy theorists: the market crash of Sept.-Oct. 2008 was not “engineered”; it was the outgrowth of years of imprudent lending. Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were infamous on Wall Street for underwriting the worst garbage mortgages as CDOs. As for Scott’s suggestion that we move to Texas or Oklahoma, as a New Yorker I am looking forward to getting my incompetently run state back in 2010, thanks to Mr. Obama’s foolish policies and the popular revulsion to them.
Analysis and assessment, be damned.
He lied and he continues to lie. He’s a fraud. He’s a sham-front for the Chicago mob in the persona represented by Emanuel and Axelrod, and was never his own candidate. They threw Bernie Madoff in jail, and we should do the same thing to this malicious fraud and liar.
Darn, I do so miss the enlightened arguments of skeezix and poor citizen – perhaps they aren’t awake yet…
/sarc in case you need it
If you travel Italy, you shall find prior social groups have done this extensively. It is present in other countries, also.
Currently transpiring in Israel.
1. “That Obama was young and patterned himself after JFK in his eloquence and pizzazz….”
Someone needs to attack and point out in how many ways BHO is no JFK.
2. And how did Obama raise all that money? This guy is so arrogant his Supreme Court taunt out to be taken up by a *real* journalist.
VDH writes: “The great stone face”. Best Obama metaphor so far! One of these days, a gifted sculptor will produce a morphed rendition of 40% Mussolini, 40% Obama and 20% Easter Island statue. Microphone optional, teleprompter unnecessary.
This remark is not intended to diminish the rest of the piece, which is excellent as usual.
#33 Carl Dahlman:
“So, he got elected because of McCain’s incompetence in economic affairs, and then he was cornered by the Bulls. And, now, he’s in trouble. The right was never with him, the center is failing him now, and the left is livid with anger over what they see as his betrayals of the Dream and the Promise. For now, he’s got nowhere to go, and you could sense how cornered he feels from listening to that discombobulated SOTU speech last week. Alito got it right, and we can generalize his comment: most of what the President says is “definitely not true.” ”
Thats how I read it too. Well stated.
What worries me is what comes next. You identify some of the symptoms in this para:
“Our national nightmare continues. In fact, the best hope we have right now is a popular revolt — the Tea Party. If they can move the Republicans back to basic Reaganism and put the religious right agenda on the backburner for a while, perhaps some of the damage done by the financial crisis can be mitigated. I doubt, however, that the financial system can be repaired quickly, or perhaps ever. I think that its breakdown will leave permanent economic damage to the US. In fact, I believe the greatest threat to our future is not terrorism, but the Administration’s and Congress’ war on financial institutions.”
But, like VDH, you don’t touch upon what I see as the underlying malady.
That is that we have never been of a uniform culture, and for the past 50 years at least, there has been a concerted effort at cultural war by proxy…using politics as the battleground.
This is akin to building a bomb in your basement, you’re just as likely to blow yourself up as to do any damage to your intended target.
You have to ask yourself…does our government reflect our culture? If it doesn’t, then why is this so?
How long can the Republic survive when the cultural differences of it’s citizenry is used as a battle cry.
Isn’t this also what Lincoln said about “a house divided”?
There might be multiple histories written about Obama, and indeed all of our time’s political and governmental deeds, not a few of these might be taught in Confederate classroms…among others.
It’s also a symptom of how far we have gone down this road that I don’t necessarily think that this would be abd thing.
OBAMA has just announced that he is cutting taxes and cutting federal spending, for the first time in nine years and your against that?
Im confused. I thought you wanted your taxes cut and spending reduced….oh yeah, I forgot, that.s only when your party is out of office….
..next..
A long-time acquaintance told me he voted for Obama. I was stunned. He was by all measures a conservative. A lawyer, he even works in the Intelligence category. When I asked him why he voted for Obama, all he said was “Let’s play”.
That gave me a shiver up my spine. I knew that what he meant was akin to the Final Battle. I realized how deep his thinking on the subject was at that moment. He wanted to bring on the inevitable climactic battle.
Here we are.
The leopard cannot change his spots.
The “avatar of hope and change” cannot himself change to reflect the voters’ reality.
A comparison to the sudden and complete fall of Tiger Woods might be apt.
In short, doctrinaire liberalism recast as progressivism is nothing but pond scum to be skimmed off and discarded by Americans at the voting booth in the next election, and the next, and the next ==== until purged like a plague from the political system in America.
Long live the American people, free of the hype and chains of pond scum peddlers.
#25 ~Paules wrote: Yuri Bezmenov exposed the entire plan shortly after his defection from communism. His exegesis should be taken seriously. The real war right now is cultural.
Precisely. Actually, Bezmenov articulated what Antonio Gramsci recommended in the early 20th century. Gramsci, an Italian Socialist concluded that the average person would never voluntarily reject the faith and culture of the West. He concluded that the best way to implement a collectivist government was to use an intellectual elite to destroy traditional values by attacking fundamental Jewish and Christian beliefs. Gramsci envisioned a three-phased assault. He specifically called for ‘the long march through the institutions’ – a deliberate and calculated undermining of Western values and culture via ‘change agents’. Interestingly enough, Bezmenov mentions exactly the same three phases that Gramsci enivsioned: demoralization, destabilization and ‘normalization’. We hear the echoes of that strategy from the likes of Chomsky and Alinsky; the Gramscian praxis is perfectly reflected in the now-famous Cloward-Piven strategy for overwhelming our system in order to replace it with… something else.
Yes, the battle IS cultural at its root. And that is where it must be fought. Our educational institutions are almost irredeemably corrupt. the last straw for us was when I visited our kids elementary classromm and found Howard Zinns anti-American screed “A Peoples’ History of America” being used as a text book, complete with teaching aids and classroom posters. We immediately removed our kids from that situation and undertook to teach them ourselves. That meant undoing a certain amount of damage, but it was largely a matter of filling in the blanks. Going back to the classics. Paul Johnson instead of Zinn.
If you want to gain an insight into just how corrupt our religions institutions have become, visit almost any mainstream religious organizations website. there, you’ll be no more than two or three clicks away from leftist websites calling for the ‘redistribution’ of wealth. ‘social justice’ and submission to to state authority.
Our free market system didn’t fail – it was pushed down the stairs by the Gramscian, Machiavellian Marxists who now believe that they have the upper hand.
Our modern leftists have a real problem, though. By corrupting the very language and terms debate, they have made debate impossible. By advocating ‘change’ via coercion and the ruthless application of state power, they have left themselves with some very bad choices. Those of us who value economic and moral freedom will not go quietly into the nightmare of totalitarian Marxism.
Dr. Hanson’s column was excellent; the commentary, down through 55 (where I came in) and with the exception of Pedrosito’s lament that they were too verbose, is probably the best and most insightful that I have seen in response to ANY column, by any columnist.
Thanks to all.
I am in agreement with Ray Elliott:
What I read on PJM is not what I experience daily even in the reddest of red states. Reading many of these excellent comments is far from the norm. It may represent a breath of fresh air for me personally, but it does little to solve the glaring problem.
The battle is not documenting or arguing Obama’s many failures, or the lies perpetuated by the MSM. These are symptoms of a much more difficult obstacle to overcome.
America has become for the most part a shallow populace of cliches, attention and entertainment seekers, and little interest of substance. We are more concerned about Tiger’s dalliances, or the Super Bowl.
While the PJM audience argues the impending deficit of doom, our inability to fund Medicare or SS for future generations, our amorality, the propaganda of “yes we can!”, or the threat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents, the average voter I talk to screams of the evils of “big oil” because gas is 25 cents more per gallon due to its collusion with Halliburton and George Bush.
And I’m not sure how to overcome the obvious gullibility and apathy. :sad:
P.S. – Another excellent article Dr. Hanson.
“A conspiracy theory is a term that has come to refer to any tentative theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful Machiavellian conspirators, such as a “secret team” or “shadow government”. wikipedia
There are no secret plots around Obama. He himself has described how he chose his radical friends. It’s no secret that communists have influenced him at every stage of his life. It’s no secret that he has placed radicals and communists in positions of power.
When you take over the auto industry, and banks, it’s no secret that you are following a Marxist playbook. It’s a fact that Obama was an Acorn ally, and there is visual evidence of him teaching in front of a board filled with Alinsky tactics. He has spoken out about redistribution and complained about the flaws in the Constitution. He has said he would increase captital gains taxes not because they increase revenues but “for fairness”, which clearly means that he intends to use taxes to limit the acquisition of wealth.
Anybody who knows anything about the man’s life can see that he has been guided. He never made any significant money prior to 2004. He purchased his mansion in questionable fashion. He never won a contested election. He never held a real job, other than as a Community Organizer/Agitator. He moved up the political despite having no accomplishments, not because of any success. The authorship of his autobiographies is hotly contested. The sum total of his published works, other than those 2 books a less than 5,000 words. Yet the first book is considered a work of genius. He has been the most liberal legislator in the Chicago and US Senate, by objective measures.
And regarding the events of Sept / Oct 2008, the facts are clear. The attacks on Solomon Brothers started the day after McCain took the lead in the polls for the first time. The drop in the markets was larger, by far, than had ever occured in the two months before a national election. Volume jumped on that day and remained at a level for months that was only matched one time in the prior 60 years. Paulsen and Bernacke did declare a global emergency. The price of oil did fall by unprecedented amounts shortly before the election. George Soros was convicted of securties fraud for his activities during that period. Amercians did lose trillions in personal wealth. Goldman Sachs and Soros did make billions during 2008. Obama did waltz into the White House as the most unqualified man ever to win the office. There is no dispute about these facts. There are no secrets.
And Obama’s actions after the election are no secret.
Where is the conspiracy theory?
If stating facts to support an explanation about why events have happened as they have, then every history book is a conspiracty theory.
A quibble. Bush was often tongue-tied although his demonstrated clarity far surpasses Obama’s, but not during speeches. Rather it was in his off the cuff responses that he arguably stood on his own glottus but still far less so than Barack. Bushism is a household expression. Obamism, as a pejorative, much less so.
One thing about VDH’s writings – it sure brings out the prolific comments. Some of you guys need to have your own blogs!
Dr. Hanson has hit it out of the park in a succinct history lesson. When the statists born of the sixties, cultivated by the education system, and with the use of wall street criminals and union thuggery finally are exposed true Americans revolt. I am proud to have started my revolt during the Bush years. Obama merely gave immediacy to the cause. We will stop him and his ilk.
Mr. Hanson,
I try to be a student of your work, and have learned a great deal about western culture from you. I read your entries here as often as I can. However…
Please write about something other than Obama. I’d like to hear some thoughts about the current state of our military, as it is something that concerns me directly. Your views on other events happening abroad would be good to hear, too. I’m just hoping for a change, perhaps variety, in the content of your posts.
A fine overview. I look forward to Part II. One minor addition. You name, among the bus-tire flattened, “Van Jones, Ron Bloom, and Anita Dunn.” You leave out that some of the most dangerous characters — and all the more so for appearing ‘mainstream and respectable’ — are creatures like Cass Sunstein and Larry Summers.
It’s the true Progressives – those clever enough to appear reasonable while advocating the most dangerous ideas – rather than the open Marxists, who are the most dangerous. After all, that’s how Obama got elected in the first place.
“…the elite on Wall Street…”
Why on earth would the players in the world of finance want leftists in charge? That’s like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.
George Soros is of course a villian, but is he representative? Is Donald Trump a closet communist? I’m loathe to bring up the fictional persona of Gordon Gekko, but in truth that diseased caricature of capitalism is how the left views people on Wall Street. That kind of disdain tends to become mutual.
I honestly don’t now that much about this part of the world, but it does seem strange to me that the individuals who would be most in favor of unfettered capitalism would be anything other than the existential enemies of the Marxists who today masquerade as Democrats.
I’m not trolling, I’m not whining. I’m genuinely trying to understand how this group of people would want ANYTHING to do with the left, let alone be championing their return to power.
[I]In other words, “progressivism” is easily identified as cynicism, as a condescending plaything of the well-off, who are exempt, either by government largess or private capital, from the very strictures they would impose on less knowledgeable others.[/I]
There could not be more concise explanation of why academia and the super-rich are progressives bordering on leftists. Thank you.
Ron Kean: I fear you are correct in your diagnosis of Mr. Obama. Not only does he not want to listen to the American people, or make any attempt to identify with them- he simply can’t. He meets the diagnosis criteria for narcissism, and that’s a very frightening thing. For as eminently educated as he seems to be, reason will not work with him- not even the self-preserving reasoning of governing by the polls.
Furthermore, he’s internalized his policy initiatives. His use of the words “I” and “my” when describing his agenda indicates he thinks that any criticism of them is a direct blow to him. Of course, that means he can’t walk away, back down or change course. Despite his Ivy league education, he is literally unreasonable. What would I give now for a politician who would “govern by the polls”! These days that would seem to be a high compliment.
I remain unconvinced that he’s doing any of this because of the courage of his convictions, leftist or otherwise. Progressivism, it seems to me, is simply the star to which he’s attached his chariot because it is the movement that embraced him, coddled him and set him up as its icon. He’ll throw anyone to the wolves, as we’ve seen demonstrated time and again.
No- this is all about Obama. Who would ever have thought the greatest democracy on earth would end up being ruled by a cult of personality? Were it not for the 41st vote and a clever hacker with a yen for climate research, it’s very possible that all those leftist dreams could have come true.
It isn’t over yet, but it’s scary how close we came to the edge.
#1 Thompson is right. He was his early twenties intellectually when elected. I call his kind 70′s arrested developement cannabis heads. I do think being throttled by reality may have made him grow a bit. He’s maybe 26 now, but far from being a well-adjusted American male.
He is one hell of a liar too. Way better than Clinton, who was also quite a liar.
“I’m genuinely trying to understand how this group of people would want ANYTHING to do with the left, let alone be championing their return to power.”
You are asking a very easy question. I feel like home run hitter Babe Ruth waiting for a slow pitch over the center of the plate. Big business inherently desires to form close relationships with politicians. They want guaranteed profits and less competition. Crony capitalism is the result. These phony capitalists merely desire a seat at the table when the goodies are passed out. This is why small to middle size businesses are always under threat from the political class. The latter prefer to deal with only a relatively small handful of business executives representing the larger companies. It’s much easier and neater.
You are confusing big picture economic realities with small picture here and now desire for immediate profits. Those cooperating closely with the Obama administration are only worrying about themselves. Future generations will have to take care of the inevitable mess.
Obama is a criminal fraud, a Big Brother wanna-be who succeeded in selling his Marxist lies to a credulous bunch of race-blinded American voters who should have known better. Our government has been hijacked by rancid statist thugs, indistinguishable from communists; black racists; Muslump sympathizers; and, best of all, anti-American appeasers, in love with our deadly enemies.
The historic damage done and continuing to be done by this appalling, mentally unbalanced phony and his co-conspirators – Reid and Pelosi only topping the endless list of media, academic, union and Democrat fellow-travelers – will take a generation to correct, at best. I am not sure that the United States will, or can, ever recover, but the effort had better be made. Our lives are at stake. This November will settle the question.
#81 Lee Reynolds – I’ll answer your question, mate. Crony-Capitalism.
These Ivy-League educated crooks in the financial arena controlled much of the wealth of the country. Instead of investing that money in the economy and creating wealth, they invested that money in Congress and stole the wealth.
Normally, when one tries to create wealth, one also produces jobs as a by-product, as part of the process. However, employees and infrastructure are expenses, not assets. (Remember that whenever you think you’re an asset to your company. No, you’re an expense.) The purpose of business is to create wealth, not jobs. If they can create it without the expense and hassle of employees, et al, then they shall do so.
This alternative process means stealling the wealth. Very little overhead with theft. Bribe a few Congresscritters with campaign coffer kickbacks (institutionalized bribery), and reap huge rewards. Sure, after awhile, you run out of money to steal, but hey, you got yours, right?
The problem is the suppression of Christianity in our society. Our leaders go around without those good angels on their shoulders whispering in their ears, telling them when they’re crossing the line. Our business leaders say, “It’s just business.”, as if Right nad Wrong have nothing to do with it. Our elected leaders say, “It’s just the way the game is played.”, again as if Right and Wrong have nothing to do with it.
Our traditional great institutions of higher learning have become nothing more than family legacy mills. It is the perpetuation of wealth within established aristocracy. It is no longer about merit. So, the spoiled, entitled, brat progeny are running our institutions of finance. Crony Capitalists.
It’s about entitlement, not merit. Entitlement is a morally bankrupt way of thinking, and this is the result. We have devolved to an old, inferior economic system of Patronage, rather than the superior Merit system.
Inevitably, this results in the destruction of wealth and of the middle-class, who are left with merely the scraps from the tables of their “betters”. They sell their reforms as championing the middle-class, but it is actaully the middle-class they are targeting. These societies always end up with just a small percentage, 4-5%, with all the wealth, and everyone else living in poverty and fear. The middle-class disappears.
Those with wealth are Connected. Those without connections are poor. This magnifies the Power of the Patrons, which is a far greater drug to them than mere wealth, which they also enjoy (just see Pelosi and Gore for examples). They like the wealth, but it is the Power (and the game of pursuing Power)that is their drug of choice.
It’s sick, but the power-seekers we shall always have. They will always do whatever they must to get their fix, like any junkies. There is no Right or Wrong, nor is there Truth. There is only Power. Patronage: Crack for the elites.
An executive and a leader Obama is not. Someone who comes into a critical position and consistently and continuously blames his predecessor, is someone who is insecure. There is no senior executive or leader in any organization or corporation on the planet that blames his predecessor for anything and everything that’s happened more than this very angry man.
A successful leader (or a leader SEEN as successful) comes into the job, accepts the hand he’s dealt and starts working to “git er done”. He doesn’t waste his time with petty non-sense, especially when everyone knows he has no executive experience or has run any organization and paid a single salary. A successful leader makes his (or her) mark by accomplishing, rather than destroying and blaming, so that the people under him will respect and accept his decisions and continue to follow him willingly through even risky decisions and actions.
You don’t have to agree with Bush, but one thing’s for sure, Bush is seen as kind-hearted and decisive, while Obama is mean-spirited, very angry, insincere and viewed by Middle America as a bully and a scatterbrain with too many unrealistic goals. You lose the bully pulpit, interest and respect amongst followers when you are an overly micro-managing, insecure, unrealistic, dictatorial bully.
An executive and a leader Obama is not. Someone who comes into a critical position and consistently and continuously blames his predecessor, is someone who is insecure. There is no senior executive or leader in any organization or corporation on the planet that blames his predecessor for anything and everything that’s happened more than this very angry man.
A successful leader (or a leader SEEN as successful) comes into the job, accepts the hand he’s dealt and starts working to “git er done”. He doesn’t waste his time with petty non-sense, especially when everyone knows he has no executive experience or has run any organization and paid a single salary. A successful leader makes his (or her) mark by accomplishing, rather than destroying and blaming, so that the people under him will respect and accept his decisions and continue to follow him willingly through even risky decisions and actions.
You don’t have to agree with Bush, but one thing’s for sure, Bush is seen as kind-hearted and decisive, while Obama is mean-spirited, very angry, insincere and viewed by Middle America as a bully and a scatterbrain with too many unrealistic goals. You lose the bully pulpit, interest and respect amongst followers when you are an overly micro-managing, insecure, unrealistic, dictatorial bully.
#10. proreason
Do you have a blog?
10. proreason:
“But on September 9, something extraordinary happened. Volume on the stock market, which had been declining in value for months, nearly doubled and stayed at historical highs for months.”
This does smell like George Soros, does it not?
Tis an oft told tale, void of surprises.
Hence no Conspiracy Theories are required;
His individual enemies simply prepare their
responses to his predictable mistakes, and
give a little nudge at the appropriate time.
Napoleon said it: “Never interrupt an enemy
while he is making a mistake.”
Gordon Dickson named it “The Tactics of Mistake”
“Poor Citizen” at 68 states, “OBAMA has just announced that he is cutting taxes and cutting federal spending, for the first time in nine years and your against that?”
Obummer triples the deficit his first year in office and then proceeds to announce he will someday will toss a few crumbs back at us.
Doesn’t take much to impress some people does it?
VDH:
Obama successfully portrayed Bush as a dummy in his campaign. Now Obama wants to believe that voters are dummies. How else can we reconcile numbers and rhetoric — trillions in deficits, but his concern over deficits is genuine? The President has elevated himself above reality, where he interprets any criticism as contempt.
All the necessary ingredients are present for Obama to become the worst President in US history. However, gentlemen (and historians) loathe to predict what may become, except when a lot is at stake. Here there is a lot at stake, mostly with respect to long-running governmental institutions that Obama is trying desperately to bring into existence.
Prognostications about Obama should be based on qualities about him that he is incapable of changing. When Obama is able to change, he is capable of preventing his own demise — albeit up to a point.
So far, Obama has not been able to change from a politician into an executive. Also, Obama has not been able to communicate effectively with his critics and opponents. His partisanship is a personal failing that under normal circumstances could have led him to an early exit from politics, except that he was able to ind an environment to exploit it (Chicago).
For lack of being an executive, one would expect that his execution of policies will be very poor, especially for policies that he does not understand. There is already substantial evidence that execution is bad, from the stimulus, to the absurd and haphazard meanderings of the justice department.
For lack of empathy with his opponents, expect increasing political polarization. The next few years may result in many more partisan battles. Ironically Obama pretends to despise polarization, but his style depends on it.
Obama has many other stubborn and self-defeating qualities, but the two above may be the most influential in the future.
3. Gandhi: “Wish iBama would spend more time at the office.”
I wish he’d spend more time near the South Pole (sans satellite phone and parka) confirming the thickness of Antarctic ice in this era of “proven” anthropogenic global warming.
The last place I want Obama to be is in the White House signing bills and baying to the press.
81. Lee Reynolds:
“it does seem strange to me that the individuals who would be most in favor of unfettered capitalism would be anything other than the existential enemies of the Marxists who today masquerade as Democrats.”
It isn’t strange at all.
Money and power is their ideology, just as it is for the Marxists. For the Wall Street elite, manipulating markets is their weapon of choice. For the Marxists, the promise of redistribution and revenge is their weapon of choice.
At the upper levels of Wall Street, the last thing the elite want is genuinely free markets. If markets were truly free, they could lose. And an opportunity to lose isn’t something people with billions are willing to risk. They simply buy as many politicians as they need to cover their flank.
That is why financiers have ALWAYS partnered with whatever government is wielding the power. The “ideology” is irrelevant.
Goldman Sachs has been in the center of every financial bubble for the last 100 years. And miraculously, they have make money every single time. Pretty lucky, heh.
Sameosame Obama bashing. Quid pro quo after the beating Bush took. OK fine. Sameosame grid locked American politics. But… conservatives should be ecstatic with Obama’s continuation of the Bush “nation building” doctrine. We won in Iraq. One suicide bomber takes out scores today. Ehhh, no biggie. Whip up more hysterical fear mongering dialog about all of those “Radical Islamics” out to get us.
When is enough enough on Rev Wright? I don’t remember Bush being bashed ad nausium for his close associations with the likes of “Kenny Boy Lay.”
If the Dem is for it the Rep unequivocally opposes it even if it is something they previously advocated. Meanwhile we all go down on our common good ship Titanic. If you conservatives think your strategy will lead to success, think again. Just ask Arnold. It gets old.
We need to make sure Democrats DO NOT pick out presidential candidates. The primaries are all held on different days and the Dems switch parties and vote for the Republican they would most like to lose. The Republicans seem to be too nice to demand that this process be stopped. We also need to stop the crazy Republican idea that “it’s my turn” – might as well have Dole run again.
85. TulsaJack:
Obama is a criminal fraud
YES
He’s a credit to his race. Whatever.
sigh… A little MSM spun dog an pony show at the Republican summit and… well, has anyone seen today’s Rasmussen daily tracking poll? With the electorate like that, who needs foreign enemies?..
I don’t claim to have all the answers to solve our problems, that’s for sure, but here VDH seems to have set off an orgy of purple prose, conspiracy theories, inane psycho-analysis of Obama, a large group MOAN about things, with very few people having any practical ideas on how to move ahead, or even what ahead is.
I thought that it was liberals who got together to ventilate their feeeelings. The odds are that Obama is a POLITICIAN, and a fairky skilled one, who will move to the center as he has to a la Clinton. There are already signs of that. But the rants on this thread, with a higher percentage of nutty ones than most other threads either give us sweeping historical “analysis” or creative paranoia about El Presidente. Obama will either win or lose the next election and we will move on. Sheeeesh.
I did find one comment interesting which asserted that Obama had been overrun by the vet lefty bulls in his party. Maybe so. His ability to separate himself from them, should the need arise, or they simply not get elected will tell us a lot more about him that the blather which passes for analysis above.
But let’s not forget what happened to Newt and his contract crew when they decided to hold Clinton’s feet to the fire and shut down the Federal Government. To be fair, a few of you acknowledge and despair over the fact that your fellow citizens will always react as they did then….whether or not Obama is the ant-Christ.
#52. Walt, and #13. Perdisto, you’re both right. Most if not all acknowledge VDH’s exceptional writing. Much is due to his economy of words, precision, and being consistently on the mark.
That said, we’re all wound up given the subject matter, and it’s difficult to hone it down to concise and surgical with such in depth issues and potential consequences.
There’s a ton written in these commentaries, and the standard is very high. It’s often the highlight to see such insight following on Dr. Hanson’s usual gems.
Onwards and upwards…
To
#26. Mike Jefferson, easy now, speaking from Canada… eh.
Correct, there won’t be hoardes from the North, but if you don’t kick out the jackal in the Whifehouse soon, we’re going to turn off your blackberries. ;-)
Good luck!
34. Laurent:
I believe the gist of what you say about Obama is true and probably all there is to the man. He’s not the radical revolutionary the libs have been waiting for. Just a better spoken mouthpiece from the Che tee shirt crowd.
Sure, if we hand Obama a socialist America, he’ll take it and take credit for it. He’s use to hand outs and to touting them as his own accomplishments (c.f. his ghost-written memoir The Audacity of Daydreaming…or whatever).
But bust his butt, get his hands dirty and fight for something? Not a chance. He’s never done that in his entire life. Never had to. The hardest he’s ever worked was to build street cred and AA bona fides in Chicago, and he had a lot of help doing that from more aggressive pseudo-revolutionaries (Ayers, Wright et al).
So, if he were a white guy, he’d have been merely another dissolute Leftist loser. Instead, thanks to a PC miracle, he became president. And is now well on his way to accomplishing the same thing at a higher level.
We can safely forget the conspiracy theories. They don’t matter now. As even the Leftists realize, in Obama there’s no there there.
Lenin would puke if he saw this guy in action.
tennvol @21, I think I reached that decision some time ago.
I think lots of people have.
I’ve said it before, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, excercise your 2d Amendment rights and prepare. We will have to safeguard out Republic’s future, and our children’s future, which are one and the same.
The majority of the teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings in this country are too far gone to understand what they’re doing to the Greatest Show on Earth, for all it’s imperfections, perceived, real or distorted.
Lee Reynolds @81; I’ll refer you to “Architects of Ruin” ,by Peter Schweizer. He gives the answers you’re lookin’ for, which as Marc Malone @86 said, can be summed up as “Crony-Capitalism”. Banks have been getting bailed out for years, allowing, indeed encouraging, them to take bigger and bigger risks, knowing that we (taxpayers) are backing them. It started before Clinton, but he took it to a level that resulted in the mess we’re going through now.
I just read Aaron’s message that the reason he’s such a big fan of the good Doctor is because he realizes you don’t chop
a diseased tree that’s gotten Progressively worse down by swinging your axe at different places on the softening bark.
You hone in on one place and chop away. Or you do what the brilliant Dr. Hanson does and take a verbal power tool box of knowledge and language and goes through it like a bullet through the head of Osama, like a hot knife passes through soft tissue paper.
Of course, Aaron, the lad, was the new face in here with the gall to suggest Dr. Hanson sprinkle some variety into his writings. Like maybe talk about the harrybone whopping crane and how scientists in England expect it to be extinct next October because they forsee in the crystal globe future 233 days of rain and snow and sleet and perhaps even a peek at Donder and Blitzen. Wonderbar Aaron says. They we realize he’s just mumbling to himself. Aaron, I don’t know how to put this to you, but, out-wet-behind-the-ears energetic progressive piece of Saul talk, it won’t be thee.
No, young, Aaron, now’s not the time to redirect fire. Dr. Hanson, among erudite others have Pee Wee SermonEars bracketed. They’re fish in a barrel. Now for those Democratic, Obama drivern haters of the military, a class on terms like “bracketed.” Bracketed refer to, well, you wouldn’t understand, so let me put it another way. When you have artillery zeroed in on a target. when your regisration points are pre-registered, lads from the Progressive side of the tracks don’t have a ghost of a chance. This is when you wish you didn’t throw baby Jesus out of the local courthouses all over the country. This is when your firm support for abortion doesn’t stand you in good stead with the real One.
Oh, gosh, it’s too late to do anything about your overt hate for the military. You had your chance to see things straight. And you blew it.
Permit me to say, Obama hears the screaming meemies and white hot verbal shrapnel exploding all around him, taking its toll on all those Frequent Liar Miles he’s piling up. During the made from mirrors and smoke speech, there was no way Obama was getting away unscathed. Especially when Alito began lobbing in rounds of moters, one almost landing directly on Obama’s head when Obama misstated the law about foreign corporations being able to send money to affect an election. Obama, safe to say, was feeling the heat of truth; ping, ping, ping on his steel melting pot of misstatements, half truths and outright, outrageous, outlandish fibs. In fact, if Obama were a Russian Mig 21, one of his engines would be
on fire from all the 50 calibre lie-attracting-flak coming in from all angles hot and heavy.
I even noticed Michelle Obama about to yell, full voice, LIAR, LIAR, MY HUSBAND’S AN OUT AND OUT SOCIALIST PROGRESSIVE LIAR. However,somebody got a hand around her neck and throttled her. I think it was her father.
Well, another state of the union speech is in the books and the aftermath; it’s possible affect on history is now under hot
and heavy dishing and discussment. (on the internet, the mass media is still swooning and slobbering)
Possibly the blatant speech lies and rueful oratory compared to Barack’s usual first cabin delivery has the Progessive socialist in a school girl tizzy. I expect the knee jerk Obama reaction to blame scapegoats will come soon. Ralm probably being the first of the list to go. Then Reid for sheer incompetence will be thrown under the bus, then Biden will be given an office on the east side, nearer to the Jersey Shore than the West Wing. Then they’ll all get in a circle with paint ball guns and fein death so the questions bound to come from the few honest reporters still possibly can be avoided.
It’s not a pretty picture for these progressives who planned to hold their supermajority for,one said, a thousand years.
And, though, the many faces to blame and counter blame are as different as black and white, this picture of guilt and organizational incompetence would be easy to erase.
Aaron, my lad, folks of PJM, in the state of the union speech, as Dr. Hanson
fairly suggested witnessed not a positive step, but rather the beginning of the end. It was Slaughter 5 once again.
Or as Ringo would say. Obama, you’re a loser, and you’re not what you appear to be
“Part Two to be continued with Chapter Five — The Verdict Is Still Out” ======
Nonsense, the verdict is IN!
The progressive label should be replaced with the word “Fisters”. Meaning those people who try to shove something too big and too fast where the sun doesn’t shine. Hey, the Fisters named us Teabaggers. Two derogatory names may not make a right, but if the pot is black, then so is the kettle, or what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Meanwhile, our world is progressing as decreed by the Almighty and his flock – fisters all. Keep your powder dry, the end of the madness will happen this November.
Excellent article, Dr. Hanson. It’s imperative you and others like you continue to produce articles on Obama and his attack on America and American values until more of us are educated about exactly what’s happening right under our noses.
And wow, EXCELLENT comments by the readers, even more exceptional and insightful than usual. Especially the comments by proreason. You are correct, there is no conspiracy, only facts, and you expertly laid out the facts in an easy-to-follow manner.
I am 39 years old and have never witnessed such a full-frontal assault on America such as the one we’re currently enduring by Obama and the Democratic Congress. It’s downright frightful. I fear that even if we do take back America in 2012, the damage done will be much too great to ever be able to repair.
God help us.
Who are these incredible people who recognize that the entire Watergate drama was FEINT, for the development of the entire history of politics in America and the world? But by whom and for what purposes. Conspiracy maven ? You bet !
101. Dwight
“one, who will move to the center”…perhaps you have a crystal ball. Some believe that this will not happen. We will see.
“the rants on this thread…”, “…the blather …”…rants and blather is in the eye of the beholder. You may be the one with the rants and the blather here.
Blogs are a still-new opportunity to speak freely. Barely 10 years old. If it were up to the New York Times, CBS, et al, few or none of our thoughts would be heard or read. I like to think that you come here to learn.
86. Marc Malone:
The problem is the suppression of Christianity in our society.
Really? Who is suppressing who, Jesus-wise? Who’s preventing people’s freedom of religion?
thank you (:
The whole idea behind crony capitalism rubs me raw. In essence it allows Wall Street high rollers to gamble, ever more recklessly, secure in the knowledge that if they screw up, the government, aka the taxpayers, will cover their losses. The winnings, of course, they get to keep.
Hell, this would be like going to Vegas and having Uncle Sugar cover all your gambling losses. Why the hell wouldn’t you go? Hell, you’d probably want to move to Vegas. This is truly nuts.
For those of you who don’t think there are many Americans who are frightened out of their shoes over what Obama and his boys intend to do…may I draw your attention to this simple fact:
For almost a solid year now I have visited my local Wal-Kart superstore to find the shelves where gun ammunition is located for sale damn near empty. Every now and then I inquire of the salespeople as to when are they going to get enough to stock the shelves fully: They look at me like I’m a jerk and smile that smile which says “are you kidding?”
People are always amazed at how certain animals know drastic trouble is coming, such as an earthquake, etc. by their behavior.
Maybe those who have bought up this ammo know something too!
The left in this country is on a trajectory to implode over Obama’s ultimate rejection by the American people this year and with absolute finality in 2012. The only question is how much damage he will do from until then. The budget numbers suggest that he will try to do considerable damage.
Another ray of hope is that the zenith of America’s race-guilt is now in our past.
116. davelnaf:
Pre-emptively blaming Obama for your inability to govern should you regain power two years out. Wow. You’re more hypocritical than I imagined.
Blame Obama Blame Obama. Blame Obama. blah blah blah blah
Clearly you’re part of the problem. Were you in Baltimore?