Hu Jintao Is Awesome

In Japan, when people screw up, they resign – sometimes permanently - from everything. At the very least, they say, “I’m sorry” and ask what they can do to make amends. This would not work in the U.S., primarily because we have taken the concept of ‘failure’ off the table. We no longer know what ‘failure’ is. Nor do we know ‘success’.

We use these terms loosely as carrots and sticks, depending on whether or not we like any given person. ‘Liking’ or not becomes the ultimate criteria that dictates how we respond. If we like somebody and they do something bad, we either ignore it or shift the blame to someone whom we do not like. Similarly, if we hate a person, and this person then does something good, the credit for it gets shifted to someone we consider ‘good’ (even if he had nothing to do with it). In short, individual action – no matter what the result – will never be judged other than in light of one’s standing within the assumed hierarchy of liking or not liking.

That’s how we got to the point where anything a Democrat does is always good and anything a Republican does is always bad. The concept has now been expanded to include race, gender and religious affiliation. We have been told over and over again just who the bad guys are. Performance has very little to do with it, though we still use performance metrics as a club to enforce politically assigned assumptions.

We have since learned that a nation does not run itself; that competent leadership is essential. In fact, we have learned that things can always get worse. Bush wasn’t so great – or so we were told. ‘Anybody but Bush’ would do just fine. Many of us are still trying mightily to prove this theory right. After all, we’ve done exactly what we were told we should do. We’ve elected (good) Democrats to run the most important offices in the land. Things haven’t exactly worked out. We might even say that things have gotten worse. Now we are struggling with the notion that this is how things should actually be.

Katrina was easy. It was Bush’s fault all the way. Bush hated black people and wanted to give them their comeuppance. Now, with the tornados in the South, we can’t exactly blame Obama. He’s doing the best he can; besides, he has come out against ‘global warming’ which would presumably assure that nothing like this ever happens again. It’s only Republicans who continue to stand in the way of his ‘green power’ initiatives that’s keeping this president from solving our weather problem for good.

It’s pretty much the same thing with everything else. Life has become entirely too complicated for representative government to work. The leaders of China have a much easier time of it.

They can build dams, roads and cities at the snap of a finger. They can build high-speed rail and carrier battle groups. They can move populations. They can stifle opposition. No wonder President Obama thinks Hu Jintao is perfectly awesome.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Before They Gouge Out Our Eyes

Obviously it won’t be Obama who rides to our rescue. He’ll be the one seen as having run the country into the ground. No doubt, accusations will continue to fly from both sides. So who will it be? A Reagan-like figure? Or someone more centrist? Left? Anybody (again)? Will it even matter?

Hard to say at this point. I maintain we’re already ‘landing softly’. This is not enough for these people. The plan appears to be global. The action will center on the Middle East. That’s where the die will be cast. Everything will radiate out from there. Oil.

What struck me was how desperately Obama wanted to take credit for what happened in Egypt. It’s not yet over. If the worst should happen (and I don’t see how the worst can be avoided under our present leadership), will our president again seek to claim credit? Probably. But it won’t wash - not here, anyway.

A war in the Middle East, whether America is involved or not, will act as a ‘reset’ button for - not Russia, but - America. (How the Russians must have laughed!)

It’ll happen soon enough. While economic collapse could drag on for years, the Middle East - from Turkey to Pakistan and down into North Africa - has reached the boiling point. I have no clue if Israel is even prepared to defend itself. In any case, it’s probably out of Israel’s hands as well.

The era of cheap oil is be over. We hear it over and over again - like self-fulfilling prophecy. Oil has been the lifeblood of American ‘success‘. Our worthless dollars will no longer buy oil from the Middle East. And then there’s the matter of retribution. Venezuela will go along with it and cut us off.

Cloward-Piven has already achieved its aim. This can be illustrated in any number of ways. We’re now into our post-revolution. The point is, we no longer control the ropes. Who will come to our rescue (with some version of the Marshall Plan) should we stumble? (Again, we have already stumbled.) The sainted Brotherhood? The Chinese? The Russians? It’s likely that we’ll continue to wallow in our own stew for some time to come.

Doubtful too that Obama will be granted a villa in Shiraz (believe me, I tried to find some sort of beach resort for the family) to live out his miserable life. Though, it might be thrilling to catch a glimpse of Michelle’s ankle just before they gouge out our eyes.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Degrees Of Brutality

So, at last we’ve come full circle. We’re back to practicing the absurd - yet irresistible - game of racial politics. If the election of Barack Hussein Obama was to have fixed anything, it was precisely this. Instead the racial divide within our country has widened since Obama’s been in office. Anyone who disagrees with his radical policies is now automatically labeled ‘racist‘. That would include upwards of 70% of us.

There is a solution. The President could make use of his bully pulpit and tell everybody to just cool it. In the area of race, no white chief executive could have made much of an impact; it‘s an opportunity that is open only to blacks. Instead Obama remains silent. He is the dog who doesn’t bark, which leads to the inescapable conclusion that he actually wants it this way.

The first thing we have to realize about this is that it’s not about color. It’s about class. If it were about a hierarchy based on color, we would all be growing the same color flowers in our gardens. There’s nothing magical about skin color. In Hinduism, the god Krishna is depicted as (random) blue, simply to set him above the rest.

The world over, it has long been apparent that the white race as a group has enjoyed greater comfort and success - albeit, by it’s own definition of that success - than others. Now conditions have become ripe for the rest of the world to challenge the whole notion of ‘success‘. Within our own nation, meritocracy has been largely supplanted by the notion of entitlement. This is why the answer to 2+2 no longer matters.

Similarly, commonly used terms have been modified. ‘Success‘, for instance, no longer means success. It means ‘oppression‘; or, if you wish, ‘slavery‘. This is why blacks in our public schools are encouraged by peers to fail and not to be seen as playing by the rules of the ‘oppressor‘. As such, all knowledge that had been traditionally taught in our schools has now been downgraded to rank propaganda, promoting a largely leftist, egalitarian agenda.

The reason Obama cannot produce his school records is because there are none. He is the product of affirmative action which eschews merit as a standard for achievement. It was telling early on when he seemed not to know the precise number of states that make up our union. To him such lapses are of no consequence. Any number - even one that happens to coincide with the exact number of Arab states - would have earned him a passing grade.

What matters most is ideology. Ideology easily flows into the vacuum that typifies ignorance. Racial politics is retrograde. Yet we can expect more - not less - of it as the 44th presidential term progresses. It has always been an convenient political tool for dividing people up into groups, sowing suspicion, and setting them against each other. If the white race were to disappear overnight, it would not solve the problem.

On a local New York radio talk show this morning I heard about a school out on Long Island, where the students of one school had to be moved lock stock and barrel to another, a mile and a half away. It seems the original area is no longer safe. Gang activity has become so rampant as to render local authorities helpless. Gangs mentioned in the report were the ‘bloods‘, the ‘crips‘, and ‘MS-13‘. Whites were not known to be involved.

When affirmative action supplants success, new hierarchies begin to proliferate like weeds in a garden. Hierarchical behavior is sewn seamlessly into the human condition - like language and having to breathe. In Wyandanch the new hierarchy is apparently based on degrees of brutality.