Destiny Demands a Decision

In some ways Paul Ryan and pols of any persuasion are like Obama: ideologues. They present themselves as right or left cut-outs and hope to sell it to a multifaceted public. The public resists. It understands the ruse. They ask, "Why should anyone reduce the rich and complex organism of himself (or group) to a formula so simple, so rudimentary, so primitive?

"And if ever the suspicion of his manifold persona should dawn on him… and break through his illusion of the single ideology he espouses, and perceive that every individual self is made up of a bundle of selves and interests, he has only to say so and at once the media puts him to pillory, calls science to aid, establishes the efficacy of padded cells, seeking to protect humanity from the necessity of hearing the truth. Why then waste words on proclamations, plans, pledges, and roadmaps that every thinking man accepts as self-evident, that America totters on the edge of existential threat, when a mere utterance of it is a breach of taste?”

What was true in Hermann Hesse’s day (in italics) is certainly true now. Perhaps even more so. For far too long we have used a shorthand for governance - Republican and Democrat; conservative and liberal; etc - while glossing over the fact that we were spinning the mesh of our web in an increasingly tighter and suffocating weave.

Now we have arrived, at a particularly virulent form of socialism, one that seeks to quash every dare of liberty and we ask ourselves, How has this happened? We were more than willing to entertain strange, even alien, notions. But we did so primarily out of curatorial interest, to be able to wag our fingers and proclaim ourselves better. American exceptionalism was ingrained in us. We never thought there was ever the possibility of letting it slipping away.

Now we find ourselves engaged in a great struggle. It is composed of a myriad of smaller struggles and each skirmish we win produces yet another head - or three. Are we willing to invest everything, or will we accept something as insipid as compromise. It seems to me we’ve been compromising all along. It’s even gone beyond face-saving. We’re into the real stuff now. Destiny demands a decision.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Rats Fleeing

The departure of key personnel from the White House also marks the abandonment of the last vestige of any relevant metrics with regard to polls, vote count (Rahm and Axelrod), the economy (Summers), the war in Afghanistan (Gates) by which to evaluate the success or failure of the Obama administration. From now on the White House will be operating purely on faith. Faith does not require data, logic or reason as a basis for decision making. All it requires is the blunt outline of an ideology.

This, simply put, means that Obama will likely continue to do what he alone feels is right. He will no longer be required to pay attention to voters’ concerns or to statistics that define traditional economic realities, or actual conditions on foreign battlefields.

This shifts our Republic to an autocracy. If the president, even after elections, refuses to work with Congress, or even bypasses Congress altogether; if he refuses to listen to the wisdom of experts; if he chooses to ignore the complaints of the electorate, then we are all at the mercy of a single, possibly mad, mind.

As Hermann Hesse so eloquently puts it in “Steppenwolf”, his true magnum opus (as opposed to “The Glass Bead Game” which is commonly considered as such), “All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require a medium of theories, mythologies and lies…”

We now know that Obama is not the 'savior'. He may not even be the smartest among us. To trust any single man to steer our nation of 50 States is pure madness. The one item that was missing from the Republican plan - the most important item - was to immediately initiate impeachment procedures.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Hanging Chads

On the other hand, gridlock is the only real remedy left to us. It’s the price we, the bourgeoisie, must pay after we have allowed our government to go rouge. “…the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly…than a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty… The bourgeois is by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful…and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility.”

Unfortunately, as I see it, such half measures will not be enough to remove the leftists from power. They have studied us as we are only now beginning to study them. They know our weaknesses better than we know them ourselves. They know exactly what moves we will make; how we will react to provocation and such. They’ve got it all planned out: a bomb here, shortages there, a racial incident…

Leftists will write the operatic score and the media will play it over and over again. We will be tempted to puncture our own eardrums just to make it stop.

Unless we can convince them that we too are a power to be reckoned with; that we can think outside the box; innovate; surprise; ambush; strike …and then melt back into ominous shadows, they’ll walk all over us. Look at New York’s primary election fiasco; look at Philadelphia, Chicago… Look what they’re doing with the votes of those serving overseas! With today’s Justice Department being what it is, who is there to complain to. And, as I’ve said before, what does Congress matter anyway when the president holds the veto pen in one hand and executive privilege in the other?
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Italics loosely translated from Hermann Hesse’s “Steppenwolf” to fit.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Leaders And Jailers

Leadership should not be difficult. The Bible says that people should obey their leaders as to make their leadership not a burden to them. A leader is in essence a tube through which a higher power speaks. The people will be proud to serve for they know that he serves them as well. They will be confident that he has their best interests in mind.

Leadership is a gift - an inborn skill, like that of ‘boys who can hit a bird with a stone at thirty paces. They have not learned it; they can simply do it; it did not come by effort, but by magic or grace. The stone in their hand flies off by itself; the stone wants to hit the bird and the bird wants to be hit.’*

How far we have fallen!

Leaders who complain about how hard it is to lead are not leaders; they are jailers who must constantly watch their backs. They preside over chaos and discontent. Indeed, they make use of these in order to promote the fiction of their leadership. It renders them ever more isolated, like planets spinning out of their orbits.

‘There must seem to be a center in the vast network of associations. If one were at that center, one would know everything, could see all that had been and all there is yet to come. Knowledge must pour upon the one who stands at that center as water runs to the valley and the hare to the cabbage. His word would strike sharply and infallibly as the stone in the sharpshooter’s hand.’*

I used to admire Jerry Brown. I had read somewhere that he studied Buddhism and practices Zen. As such, I thought of him as possessing some measure of wisdom. Now I see him (and others) as just another in a long line of political hacks.
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*excerpts taken from Hermann Hesse’s ’The Glass Bead Game’ and translated roughly from the German to fit the context of this writing.

'The Glass Bead Game' (continued)

Jerry Seib is entirely too cautious in predicting the outcome of what the incomparable Hermann Hesse would agree is America’s version of the ’Glass Bead Game‘. These elections, as any others, depend on the overall perception of the disenfranchised electorate. Insofar as the federal government has seen fit to insert itself into virtually every aspect of American life, the exercise becomes an essentially meaningless referendum of Obama’s performance in office.

The only difference is cosmetic. During the last cycle, the media did such a bang-up job in demonizing George W. Bush and Republicans, the only choice left for the public to make was ‘other’ Obama was sufficiently ‘other‘. This time, the media will be powerless to affect the outcome.

When Obama was up for election back in ‘08, it was merely a matter of rearranging the political deck furniture. The clarion call for ‘change’ was mere fluff. This time, a real sense of alarm has descended like a black cloud over America. People will vote out of fear. And their vote will favor Republicans.

The game remains a game. As I have previously stated elsewhere, Obama retains power for at least the next two years. Unless Republicans mount a serious effort to impeach him, he will continue to determine the direction of the nation. As things continue to fall apart, (enter the media) Republicans will be blamed - and defeated in 2012.

Prosperity will continue to diminish, but will appear as robust in relation to the greater diminishing prosperity of others. It will be enough to keep the markets from collapsing and the people happy.

The game continues as scripted. Republicans will take control of Congress in November.

A Bad Joke

Secession. An interesting idea; one, among several, the states may have to consider if they are to have any hope of rolling out from under our suffocating government monster. Expect a slew of law suits originating from within our various states, challenging federal mandates. As long as the Supremes remain split 5 to 4 we have a chance. We’re hanging by a thread.

Those of us who predicted this back during the last presidential campaign were called all sorts of names. Now it’s happened. What to do? Secession? Impeachment? It’s not that McCain would have been better. In some ways he might well have been worse. It would have given the Left even more time to arm and organize. Just the fact that they don’t yet own the Court means that they jumped the gun.

The problem with the Left is that ‘they have distilled a kind of world history to suit certain purposes. It consists of nothing but the chronology of ideas. It is bloodless and lacking in reality …nothing but laws and formulas, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow academic construct‘.*

‘Suppose an anatomist is dissecting a body. He does not confront wholly surprising discoveries. Rather, he finds beneath the epidermis a assemblage of organs, muscles, tendons, and bones which generally conform to a pattern he has brought to his work. But if the anatomist sees nothing but this pattern, and ignores the unique, individual reality of his object*, he has lost touch with an essence.

Similarly, today’s Leftist relies on the power to manipulate data (the bones) to suit some highly improbable Utopian purpose, quite without regard to the spirit that girds it.

When we elected Obama, we essentially decided to attach a Rolls Royce logo to a Yugo. It made people sit up and take notice without making the car run any better. Now it’s become just a bad joke.
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*roughly translated from passages in Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.