Yes, some amount of overestimation of threat is necessary and sane. However, past some point it is wasteful and even crazy. Finding the happy medium can be difficult.

Most of the discussion in this blog has focused on the threats and possible threats Obama poses with little or no consideration of our defenses against Obama.

Although everyone promised that we wouldn’t go Obama Derangement Syndrome, IMO this blog has become deranged or close to it on the subject of Obama. I understand. I was quite concerned myself last summer.

However, Obama — whatever his ultimate intentions might have been — peaked several months ago, and the erosion of his power since has been spectacular and it doesn’t seem that he has hit bottom yet.

It’s clear that the fascist takeover theory has lost ground correspondingly and my optimistic scenario has done quite well.

The tenor of discussion here has shifted some, but not all the much. I’ll be curious to see how that develops or doesn’t.

http://tinyurl.com/ygewu8k

I see the actions I listed above as something that Hugo would be proud of.

We should be alarmed.

Yes we should be careful with our rhetoric so that it is persuasive.

I don’t believe most things said here on this blog should be the focus of thought police. The reason why I post here is because it is fairly free of the weeds and unreasonable ugly people.

It is better than most newspaper comments like the Washington Post and the Sacramento Bee. There… you find totally non-persuasive people cluttering up the place.

You have been consistent from the beginning in warning that loose rhetoric and name-calling are dangerous to the Resistance, because they turn away people who could be and probably should be allies. I remember that you, Fredhjr, and I went round and round last winter on the question of to what degree Obama could be legitimately described as a socialist. I suspect that you didn’t want to use the word “socialism” technically because you know that some people will throw it around as a content-free scare word; and that plays into the anti-anti-communist narrative into which the blue-state people we know have been indoctrinated.

I also remember that huxley was calling the turn in Obama’s political fortunes last spring, when it became clear that the Democrats were committed to directions–politicized stimulus, deficits, international apology tours, energy and health policies–that the vast majority of Independents would not be willing to take. This was not a matter of clairvoyance, but of analysis.

Baklava, you are right about a lot of things, including your point about car company nationalization. Good money after bad, and utterly hopeless, unlike the TARP program, which was always a good bet to take. You are also right about how out of control the progressives can get on the local level. I sometimes daydream about buying real estate in California, near my relatives; but then I come awake with a jerk and ask myself why I would ever willingly expose the fate of my property to the California Legislature. I have started daydreaming about Alabama and Texas instead.

The citizens lost on that issue and others.

neo: And that’s not what I said. What I did say:

he intends to create a full-out fascist state and he has the resources to do so as President in the next eight years.

I recognize that your side is not certain that Obama can do so, but unless I have misunderstood what people are saying, you are talking about some fascist outcome very serious and very possible for Obama to accomplish. If you are just talking Obama as a wannabe FDR, we can stop arguing now.

Give the United States’ long and entrenched history of democracy, the strength of its Constitution and the resilence of its people, the basic center right nature of its citizens, the current wealth and stability in spite of recent challenges, the tyrant Obama scenario always struck me as quite a remote possibility, and events since have borne that out.

Your side, it seems to me, has consistently overestimated Obama’s capability and ruthlessness, and underestimated the strength of America and its citizens.

neo: This is strictly mindreading on your part and untrue.

Which is one of my objections to your characterization of Obama as a prospective tyrant.

Yes, that is one way to interpret his behavior, but not the only way.

However, the fact is that none of us knows for sure goes on behind Obama’s smooth, closed exterior, and we are still flailing about trying to figure him out.