You, John, and most of your round-table sophisticates, are tilting at shadows without seeing what else is going on. Only, you say it is POTUS who is tilting at shadows. The White House is well aware of the polls. And they applaud them. They are running around the country proclaiming their hatred for the rich - not to improve their poll numbers, but – to cement them. They couldn’t care less about poll numbers – which should tell you, they couldn’t care less about elections. Why?
Barack Hussein Obama is first and foremost (by profession) a street thug and agitator. That is to say, he knows how to agitate; to divide; to provoke. His current focus is on widening the class envy split. Should he succeed in getting his financial regulation legislation passed, he will have won control over yet another chunk of our listing economy. He will have consolidated additional power. Key players on Wall Street may be in on the ruse. It is called ‘crony capitalism’.
Getting back to the November elections: The key question that should be asked is why does POTUS not seem to care about the midterms? Answer: Because Congress has already discredited itself by having been forced to govern against the will of the people. This is not something that new faces can change. If Obama wanted to finesse the point, he would right now be seeking a way to indefinitely postpone the elections altogether, citing national security (or economic crisis, whatever…). But this won’t be necessary this election. But, mark my words; it will become an issue in 2012.
These guys are professionals. Do not sell them short. Right now, the plan is to agitate – to make things worse, to set brother against brother; son against father; poor against the rich; black against white. All these divisions will come into increasingly sharper focus as the economy continues to falter; as jobs continue to be scarce; as communities have to begin cutting into basic services.
As long as we view the Obama presidency as a series of failures to be endlessly evaluated and debated, we miss the import of Obama’s overall intent. To him, each failure accrues to the complete and total re-structuring of our nation which, by the time it’s done, can no longer be called ‘America’.
I’m not saying this is inevitable. We can either allow it or stop it. We allow it by refusing to see what’s actually happening; by refusing to note what has happened already; by blindly chasing after every flare sent aloft for the sole purpose of diverting attention.
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I'll comment on this at JB.
ReplyDeleteAnd I did, as well as on my blog. No worries, we pretty much want the same things.
ReplyDeleteI think you suffer from an excess of paranoia and have inflated a Public Relations mediocrity to something akin to a Machiavellian genius. The truer genius of the American system will both defeat and survive Obama and his cronies,despite the incompetance and lack of sophistication of the opposition. Witness N.J.and Mass. This Administration is so obvious, so transparent and eventually when, abandoned by the "fooled me once" body politic so vulnerable to a fall. Obama, sans congress may attempt to shift the blame for what will then (thankfully) be an impotent regime to the RP but I think you underestimate the anger and bitterness and seething resentment bubbling below the surface of those who are paying attention.
ReplyDeleteDear Doctor, I see it. But someone once told me "believe only half of what you see, and none of what you hear". I do hope you're right, of course. We should know in short order.
ReplyDeleteThe"structural" problem in and of the American mind, and thus its body politic existed well before BHO and will remain after his parting. That these are the real problem is something we all have to live with and understand so that we may better come to grips with the way in which we are manipulated by the powers that be and their propagandists. I am not really optimistic but I think we get too carried away with the details of left/right atagonistics. I see it as more of a faceless non-ideological tropism, a technological menace that has exceeded our ability in human terms and whose affect on the MIND traverses the political spectrum.
ReplyDeleteI greatly enjoy reading your posts and commiserate often with your sentiments. I think I require a bit more of a positive aspect,more perhaps as a survival mechanism than a realistic assessment of the times we live in. I often feel when reading you that your intellience and perception would lend itself well to a series of essays and is wasted in the echo chambers of the blog form. I also sense that site specific politics misses so much because of the double blind mechanisms that obscure the realities of influences and manipulations we only later (and sometimes never ) become aware of.You have a great talent for seeing behind things but I wonder if your frustration,partisanship and emotional involvement doesn't sometimes make you unable to see the larger picture that controls these events. And by this I am not refering to the omnipotent deity, or the various harebrained conspiratorial views of historical determinism, but rather the way in which power and influence guide the "ship of state(fools??)" through the murky foulness of democracy and worse perhaps, one as regressive intellectually as ours so dangerously is. The key here is to step back a bit from the chattering and explosions and the fear and loathing,despite their portentous truths which are not available elsewhere.For to truly understand,one must detach oneself and objectively evaluate the interests and limitations of those who are behind whichever "front man"(person) is in charge to see how quickly it all can change again.
And remember Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" -"...Mendacitity is the system by which we live"
Dear Doctor, Thank you for this. A painter comes to appreciate his brushes; a dancer comes to appreciate her body - the same is true of an athlete. A writer loves his words; a carpenter, his saws; a thinker...
ReplyDeleteYou are a thinker. Think long enough and you come to the same point at which you started, leaving you with nothing left to say. The page remains empty, the pencils are broken.
I react to JB's missives. It gives me my starting point. I am fully aware of the limitations of words, yet I have come to love them after 30 years of blind blue-collar work. I am fascinated by the way in which words string together to express something more than the mere sum of their number. This is not to say, that I have any illusion of even approaching 'truth' as truth would require my saying nothing at all. I have too much time on my hands to remain silent.
I don't disagree with you. You've stated an essence after all. I'm just trying to posit an explanation for what I do and why. I just ran across an article you might find interesting. I know I did. I hesitate to post it because, frankly, it worries me that it could be true.
www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1367.htm
P
After getting through the self-congradulatory prose...it would seem to me that the root of what you call the structural problem is really populism. There are many forms of it, social, economic, racial, tribal, etc. One side the poor is getting poorer, the rich are getting richer, another side says family values are going down the tubes, we need federal marriage amendments, another side says our jobs are going overseas. It's the manipulation of constituencies that started with the progressive movement and was fine tuned by FDR and now is a science. Having just two major parties helps keeps this train going and the press loves the good theatre of it all. It's a sick little play. Mendacity? If it were only that simple. People have preconceived notions about almost everything based on experience, education, and upbringing. Most salesmen know this and use it to their advantage. In a democracy, politicians are no more than salesmen. Mendacity is just part of the job. In fact it's become a necessary skill.
ReplyDelete