Charles Krauthammer…
…writes a depressing column:
Act One [of Obama’s plan] is over. The stimulus, Obamacare, financial reform have exhausted his first-term mandate. It will bear no more heavy lifting. And the Democrats will pay the price for ideological overreaching by losing one or both houses, whether de facto or de jure. The rest of the first term will be spent consolidating these gains (writing the regulations, for example) and preparing for Act Two.
The next burst of ideological energy — massive regulation of the energy economy, federalizing higher education and “comprehensive” immigration reform (i.e., amnesty) — will require a second mandate, meaning reelection in 2012.
That’s why there’s so much tension between Obama and congressional Democrats. For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign.
Obama is down, but it’s very early in the play. Like Reagan, he came here to do things. And he’s done much in his first 500 days. What he has left to do he knows must await his next 500 days — those that come after reelection.
The real prize is 2012. Obama sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underestimate him at their peril.
So Krauthammer comes down firmly in the “knave” camp of the “Obama, knave or fool?” debate. I tend to agree with him, and with his warning about the perils of underestimating Obama, especially now when he seems down and out.
But one thing puzzles me, and in this respect I’m more optimistic than Krauthammer: even if Obama is re-elected in 2012 (perish the thought), if Congress has also gone Republican—which it is likely to do—would he not be stymied in enacting his legislative agenda? He can’t do everything by executive order—although I wouldn’t put it past him to try.
[ADDENDUM: Bookworm has a related post about whether it’s time to despair.]
There are so many ‘drafting errors’ in the bills already passed that he could spend a second term defining to 2000+ messes.
Such a big topic…..
I’ll try to be brief. Obama struggles under the following truths:
1) His policies make life worse for a large portion of America. The more he succeeds, the more people hurt. That’s a big political head-wind.
2) The American Society moved to the right quite a bit over the last 20 years. The collapse of communism had a lot to do with that. Big examples include school vouchers, charters, health savings accounts, Private Social Security accounts. This trend forced Obama to go for broke and try complete socialism all at once. He couldn’t do the incremental stuff that was the history of the Democratic party. Going whole hog has big political blowback.
3) When the Republicans take over congress next year, they won’t make such a great foil to Obama. They will attack Obama on issues that are in alignment with the American people. Obama will oppose them. That works to the Republican’s favor, not against it.
4) When Clinton ran in ’96, he had Perot in the race and a terrible Republican Opponent. The Republican opponent in 2012 will be better than Dole. Clinton also failed to implement his agenda – such as socialized medicine – so there was less to fear from him.
The economy could get better. Iran’s government might fall – producing peace in the Mid-East. Luck might move in Obama’s direction in 2012, but he has a lot of headwinds too.
It seems Obama can already do a lot by executive fiat – see yesterday’s order to insurance companies regarding co-pays. No one seems to be quite sure exactly what is in this junk that Congress is passing – perhaps some of its provisions, when their arcane details are interpreted correctly, hand even more dictatorial power to the executive.
As far as estimating Obama, Joe the Plumber pretty well sized him up in ’08.
He’s not much of a thinker. Name one idea he has advanced that did not come out of a tract. He doesn’t write; the authorship of his two books is questionable. Off-teleprompter and off-script he’s not a good speaker. Barely better than W.
Obama’s job is two-fold; to represent government to the voters; and to act as “doorman”; ie. hold the door open so that a stream of Leftists can take key posts in government.
The Obama Administration is a tragedy. Like all classic tragedy, it was self-inflicted…by We the People…Now we have to fix.
If the Congressional majority swings to the Republicans, they should be able to tie Obama into knots that will stop new overreach. Obama has already abused his oath of office to the extent that there are sufficient grounds to consider an impeachment. The difficult question is whether there be enough conservative drive to repeal the major unpopular legislation that the Democrats and RINOs have passed todate, and slash entitlements to a sustainable level. No doubt we will have to wait at least until 2013 to return to reasonable government.
I’ll tell you what’s depressing. The thought that the debacle of modern progressivism is so entrenched that none of us of the age to visit a blog such as this will live long enough to see things really get corrected.
I think it’s quickly approaching time for the nuclear option. Which would be a nationwide shutdown of private sector production. I’d rather eat beenie weenies in a house with ten other people for a couple years than see my country gradually get destroyed.
I haven’t read all of Krauthammer’s column, just what neo excerpted. But in the past Krauthammer has said he thinks Obama will have an easy go at winning re-election because by 2012 the recession will be over and the economy will be creating job growth.
I don’t think Krauthammer realizes how much damage Obama and the Democrats are inflicting on the economy. The financial reform bill is 2300 pages. Mark Perry wrote an excellent article putting that in perspective:
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is 31 pages;
The Glass-Steagal Act of 1933 is 37 pages;
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is 66 pages.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is 74 pages;
The Social Secrutiy Act of 1935 is 88 pages.
Each of the laws above were sweeping changes that transformed society and the economy, and none were even 100 pages long, but it took Dodd and Frank 2300 pages to reform the financial system?
So I believe Krauthammer is underestimating the stifling impact a 2300 page monstrosity will have on the economy. I’m hearing people talk about a lost decade as the effects of the healthcare and financial reform take hold over the next 10 years. And if that happens, it won’t be good for Obama in 2012.
“”he thinks Obama will have an easy go at winning re-election because by 2012 the recession will be over and the economy will be creating job growth””
Scott
I’d like to see someone compile news stories from 1930..31..32..33…34…35..36..37..38….about how recovery was always just around the corner. Theres a reason downturns turn into recessions and then depressions. And it’s called government.
I have a lot of respect for Krauthammer, so its disappointing that he leaves out so much.
Obama in the polls just barely ties Palin, who with the possible exception of GW Bush is the most vilified political candidate in history.
Obama’s ‘handling’ of the Gulf oil spill has left a really bad taste in people’s mouths, they won’t forget it.
In Nov-Dec-Jan of 2010, the lame-duck Democrats will probably try to ram through cap & tax, card check, federalized higher education and even possibly “comprehensive” immigration reform (i.e., amnesty), if they do try, it will further alienate even more people against Obama.
Obama’s on the wrong side of the illegal immigration debate and he’s going to stay there, sooner or later, law enforcement is going to run up against the drug cartels in a major incident and a bloodbath will be the result. Obama’s going to get the blame because he’ll deserve it. Reneging on his promise to provide 1200 National Guard will be an albatross he can’t escape.
Iran is going to get the bomb in 2011 and nuclear proliferation will explode across the middle-east. Once they get the bomb, the Mulah’s will get much more aggressive and Obama will be perceived as a ‘wuss’, even by liberals.
We’re going to at best, experience another double-dip recession and at worst a complete collapse of the economic system.
The financial repercussions of the Gulf oil spill and the moratorium on drilling have yet to fully manifest and its going to greatly hinder recovery.
Inflation is waiting in the wings for its entrance cue.
After the mid-terms, it’s a virtual certainty that Obama will shift his blame game from Bush to the Republicans. That’s going to backfire on him, Americans don’t like whiners and that’s how he’ll be increasingly perceived.
More terrorist attacks are coming, one (or more) will be successful and the responsibility for failing to prevent it will be laid entirely upon Obama. For the first time, in the publics mind comparison with Bush will not favor Obama.
Obama’s has had his shot. It’s all downhill from here.
Another very pessimistic take by Andy McCarthy in the Corneron NRO:
“..I think the Left has already factored in the inevitability of setbacks – perhaps heavy setbacks – in the next few election cycles. While our side swoons over the prospect, the statists coldly calculate that these losses are a price well worth paying in order to impose a transformative takeover of the economy. It is a perfectly rational calculation for two reasons. First, with a significantly bigger and more powerful government bureaucracy, there will be many avenues for leadership to reward Democrats who lose their seats after casting the unpopular votes necessary to enact the Left’s program. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who spent his post-Clinton wilderness months in a lucrative sinecure at Freddie Mac, knows well how this game works – and, under Obama’s command, the economy is becoming one big Freddie. Second, and more important, Democrats know the electoral setbacks will only be temporary. They are banking on the assurance that Republicans merely want to win elections and have no intention of rolling back Obamacare, much less of dismantling Leviathan. For my money (while I still have some), that’s an eminently sound bet. The Bunning battle, in which the GOP was nowhere to be found, is the proof. Bunning just wanted Congress to live within its gargantuan means. Yet, the Washington Post ridiculed him: “angry and alone, a one-man blockade against unemployment benefits, Medicare payments to doctors, satellite TV to rural Americans and paychecks to highway workers.” That’s outrageously unfair, but it is a day at the beach compared to the Armageddon that would be unleashed upon any attempt to undo Obama’s welfare state on steroids. As it turns out, Republicans didn’t have the stomach for a fight over wealth transfers that plainly exacerbate the problem of unemployment. Why would anyone think they’d take on a far more demanding war, in which Democrats and the legacy media would relentlessly indict them for “denying health insurance to millions of Americans”? Even if the GOP gets a majority for a couple of cycles, even if President Obama is defeated in his 2012 reelection bid, Obamacare will be forever. And once the public sees that the GOP won’t try to dismantle Obamacare, it will lose any enthusiasm for Republicans. Democrats will eventually return to power, and it will be power over a much bigger, much more intrusive government….”
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTllMzlmZTgwMjcwNmE2MTg4M2Y0NWRlZGFmNzU3NGE=
I hope McCarthy and Dr. K are wrong. But maybe regardless of what happens in 2012, Obamacare IS forever….
Personally, I suspect that the Dems will perpetrate so much fraud in the next election, that we will not be able to say we had a fair election. I belive the Dems have no intention of ceding power. I don’t know what form it will take, but it will be messy and very bad for the republic–possibly even involving violence.
Obama and his administration are outright criminals, but even the intelectuals on the Right doesn’t want to admit it. This guy is evil, and we find it hard to believe that we can’t recognize evil when somone is shoveling it down our throat.
When a regime creates a lot of confusing and conflicting rules, everyone is vulnerable to the manipulation of rules by higher-ups, and anybody can be crushed by some bureaucrat trying to please his boss. Soon everyone is just trying to get along by playing along; no one has time to grow an actual economy. And no one misses the growth they could have had– how can you miss what hasn’t come into being yet? See Angelo Codevilla, “The Character of Nations.”
Most of the commenters here are still assuming that Obama & Co.—while perpetrating this or that piece of subversion of the Constitution, or this or that criminal act, will still operate, will still stay within certain boundaries, and that, thus, the damage done by Obama & Co. can be contained, can be “ridden out, “can be mostly “fixed,” and that the Legislative, Judicial, Executive, Regulatory and Constitutional furniture–if just a little bit worse for wear and tear–can still be put back pretty much in their original places.
But, what if they can’t be?
What if our Republic is analogous to someone who has been hit by a serious medical condition or disease, and while some function can possibly be restored, that person is now crippled, and will never be the same again, never come back to be the person they were?
Looking back over what has happened in the last few decades and especially the last two years, I feel like I am reading the pages of a book detailing the inexorable progression of Roman history, from the Republic, to the Empire, and then to Rome’s decline–the death of a thousand cuts–until Rome is extinguished, as all of the bad decisions and trends reinforce each other to bring the downfall of that State.
I read a letter to the editor in my hometown paper today from a retiree. He wanted to know why Obama hadn’t kept his promise to allow retirees to earn 50 thou taxfree. This is one little issue that has branded Obama as a liar to one group. There are so many more lies and broken promises. Maybe in the end it will all come down to trust. And maybe exposing the 2000-page monster laws as lies full of unwanted consequences will scare Congress into drastic changes.
Wolla Dalbo: That is my fear.
I think the period between January and April 15th will lead to a sea change type of uproar when people see their taxes.
When people pay it becomes personal and cant be explained away with a talking point, thus exposing the biggest lie of all, no tax increases for people under ___ fill in the blank.
http://atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171#
I vaguely recall at some point Obama saying the United States should be more like California. There is real potential in an ad with that quote in it, especially if California continues to unravel.
SteveH Says:
“I think it’s quickly approaching time for the nuclear option. Which would be a nationwide shutdown of private sector production.”
A conservative general strike? Have to keep in mind, even the lefties who pushed for those (back in the day) knew they wouldn’t work. It was just a team building exercise.
roc scssrs Says:
“and anybody can be crushed by some bureaucrat trying to please his boss. Soon everyone is just trying to get along by playing along”
Most of the talent will just move to avoid being in that situation…
When you control both sides you control everything…
For appearances they play antagonists to each other, but together, like legs climbing a ladder, they take you to the same place. Reaching across the aisle is just colluding against your constituency.
Study the history of collectivist movement in the US. Progressives and the Foundations (you know, the ones who funded the rewriting of history, and that you see funding so many PBS show). and DO read about George Counts. Nicholas Butler and the committees.
if you know them, and others i have mentioned. and you know what they talked about and wrote and decided, you would also know what is coming around the corner.
i promised Tom not to write long for a while.
I have a lovely quote its long, so i will only put this one in its place.. as to the core fight.
It may surprise you to learn that most of the great political debates of our time — at least in the Western world — can be divided into just two viewpoints. All of the rest is fluff.
Typically, they focus on whether or not a particular action should be taken; but the real conflict is not about the merits of the action; it is about the principles, the ethical code that justifies or forbids that action. It is a contest between the ethics of collectivism on the one hand and individualism on the other. Those are words that have meaning, and they describe a philosophical chasm that divides the entire Western world.
“”A conservative general strike? Have to keep in mind, even the lefties who pushed for those (back in the day) knew they wouldn’t work. It was just a team building exercise””
Thomass
Well exactly. They were always threatened by lefties who by definition are the parasites and not producers. We may actually get there by default anyway. Would you work for 40% of what you earned knowing it was being distributed to deadbeats? I wouldn’t and haven’t for the last 18 months. I can sit home and not make money.
Scott:
Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker has been saying that simply reinstating Glass-Steagall would have gone a long way towards fixing the problems with the banking industry.
Nope, the 2300-page “reform” bill is for other purposes, just as the 2000-page “health care” bill is not really about health care.
I share Wolla’s concern.
To expand on his theme of non-fixability, I offer the unoriginal observation that the Federal Civil Service, whose members are as entrenched as tenured academics, is a huge part of the problem. It is pretty clear, though I lack hard data, that the large majority of our civil servants are Leftist in belief and action. Who would more favor Big Gummint than those who occupy its seats, being both unelected and tenured? They had no hesitancy in suborning Bush Cabinet officers, who were powerless to do anything about it.
The just-passed “Financial Reform” Bill is an example. Despite its 2000 pages, the actual specifics just paint very broad strokes, per the WSJ. But the Bill sets up numerous new agencies, with the actual regulations left up entirely to those agencies to define, promulgate, and enforce, and the same for existing financial regulatory agencies, granted expanded scope and power, with rare specifics.
The regulations come from faceless, tenured bureaucrats with superb pension plans and other benefits; they get to do what they want to do, and to do it to us with impunity.
I think Wolla Dalbo has it figured right. The end of the Great Experiment is close at hand.
I agree with Krauthammer. My feelings toward Obama is that is worst critics have been proven right. He’s sneaky, and indeed a hustler. His interests do not lie with the Country, but with actually weakening the Union and creating an atmosphere of havoc. He’s a disaster and a liability to us all.
CV, ahem, roc scssrs, Wolla Dalbo: Right on.
I haven’t been commenting much lately because by the time I get to a thread, others have already said what I was going to say, and said it much better.
To paraphrase Wolla, once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can’t put it back in.
Even if the Republicans take back one or both houses in November, how many of them will be small government conservatives as opposed to RINOs? I’m not hearing much talk of repeal among the Republican leadership. For the most part, they are creatures of government regardless of whether they are in the majority or the minority at any given moment. They just want to have their seat at the table of power, or at the trough of pork.
It is becoming more and more obvious every day that the government itself is the enemy of liberty and prosperity. During the 20th century, governments around the world murdered upwards of 100 million of their own citizens. We Americans have been lucky up till now, but I fear our luck is about to run out.
Bill Ayers himself said back in the 1970s that around 25 million “recalcitrant” Americans would have to be liquidated in order to bring about his Marxist utopia. Does anyone believe that that thought is not still alive and well among the many Communist “czars” that Obama has appointed?
Thomas Jefferson famously said that the tree of liberty must periodically be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. With each passing day, I am less and less hopeful that the march of tyranny can be turned around without violence and bloodshed. We know what the left will do to us if they get the chance. We have countless historical examples to show us.
Are we really just going to sit here and wait for it to happen?
Surely there will be lawsuits against the various government fiats. Even BPs stockholders could bring suit against the arbitrary $20 billion that Obama ordered BP to pay.
Maybe lawyers will save our Republic! If so, what an ironical outcome.
Seriously, folks. Why should any business follow Congress’s rules when the rules are probably full of a lot of nonsensical discrepancies. How can Congress required insurance companies to do anything? A massive lawsuit could slow things down to a snail’s crawl.
Hey, Patriots can use Saul Alinsky’s rules for radicals too. Destroy the evil system by using it against itself. Isn’t this some form of judo that many people know?
I notice that we concentrate on the laws that have been passed, but they are really only top-level guidance and, as has been mentioned, it is the agencies these laws set up and the already existing agencies that will draft the regulations and implement the rules and procedures that will be applied to every field of human endeavor in the U.S. It is the all- encompassing, very sticky web that they will weave that will capture, restrain, and force everyone of us to comply with their wishes if we want to go on living our lives in relative wealth and comfort. And once woven and put into place, that very sticky mass of webbing can be very hard, indeed, to remove, especially to remove completely.
I sort of feel like i’m listening to a debate between five thousand head of cattle complaing about the direction three cowboys want to drive them. I can sort of understand the cattle not seeing the big lopsided picture. I don’t understand it in people. We’re just like the cattle in that we have no concept that we possess the power to chart our own course.
And theres good news. If the s*** gets out of control, its better to be one of the cattle than one of the cowboys.
I remember when around 1980 both my brother-in-law (a diplomat) and myself predicted that by the end of the century the Soviet Union would have taken Mexico. Point, sometimes pessimism is not warranted. Even stupid people learn not to touch hot stoves, eventually. Simple fact Obama is a thousand percent worse than any president in US history (he beat out Buchanan IMHO). It may take generations to repair the damage he is doing and it will hurt, so good, if that is what it takes to learn so be it.
I would be more concerned if were popular.
BTW other countries turned themselves around. I reading “Start Up Nation” now, about how Israel went from over 300% inflation in the 1970s to high tech powerhouse with a lower unemployment rate lower than the US. All they had to do is dump government regulation and their more socialistic silliness. Bibi was largely responsible, the one Obumbles is treating with such disdain.
BTW did you notice how people manage to break laws that keep them from making money. Obama going to do damage, probably a lot, but a too easy life is what got him elected. He and his supporters will get it. And, as you could see above, I am usually a pessimist.
This is brilliant. It is long,but very worthwhile. Angelo Codevilla takes apart the political class.
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
renminbi beat me to it. I just finished reading Codevilla’s article and was going to post it here. It’s a very insightful analysis of what many of us are discussing on this thread. It’s a great read.
Being fearful and depressed has long been a staple of the intellectual Right;it makes them sound so “wise” and sober.Blah blah.
We have had our attention deliberately focused on the wiggling Left hand, while the neglected Right hand we have not been noticing has gone silently and mostly unobserved about its subversive work. What have the 35+Czars been doing all this time? For the most part we have no idea, since the MSM has very conveniently looked the other way and not reported on what they have been doing and has, instead, been focusing public attention on the trials and tribulations of Al “release my second Chakra, baby” Gore, and Lindsey “F==k you” Lohan. My guess is that these Czars have been frantically changing procedures, writing regulations, setting up organizations, and getting their people in place, in anticipation of the Left hand being slowed down by the 2010 elections.
Thus, for instance, from the very few glimpses we have gotten, out of sight a whole regulatory framework for Obamacare is being constructed, regulations have been written, staffing has been done for key committees and organizations (courtesy of legislation and funding sufficient for several years, hidden within the Stimulus bill that nobody read), and this structure is, I suspect, just one of many such structures we will find appearing out of the mist in the next few years, and is starting to come to life. I suspect that in the end these Czars will have done more damage to the United States and to us than any of the more visible major legislation that has been passed, and their work will be infinitely harder to completely identify and then root out.
With this in mind, it seems to me that to have any real effect, any Conservative legislative program intended to get majorities of more conservative members elected to the House and Senate and to beat Obama & Co. in 2012 must consist of two major components; one positive, one negative.
The negative component, that has to be undertaken if the positive branch of the program is to have any chance of succeeding, must be a deep and relentless effort to repeal as much of the legislation passed by Obama & Co. and this Congress as possible, and just as important, an all out effort to root out all of the changes in procedure and regulation that both this legislation and Obama & Co.’s Czars have put in place. Such a “purge” will also necessarily involve identifying and getting rid of as many “left behind” Obama & Co. saboteurs in the Federal government as possible; a task that I am sure Obama’s apparatchiks are making preparations to make as difficult to carry out as possible. It may also be necessary to investigate and prosecute the most egregious actions of Obama & Co. and its key members.
The positive part of the program must focus on regaining our economic strength by decreasing taxes and by drastically reducing the size, scope and cost of government, by implementing drastic cuts in spending and decreasing and limiting entitlements, by deregulation, by dismantling the scheme of Economic Fascism that Obama & Co. have started to construct–including drastic overhauls or dismantling of Fannie and Freddie and the Federal Reserve, by restoring the Rule of Law within government–starting with the DOJ–and without, particularly in commercial law and the law of contracts and bankruptcy, in selling off all of the companies that Obama & Co. have bought and returning them to private ownership, on development of all forms of Energy, on restarting the Space Program, on reinvigorating and better funding our military and expanding its size and on changing its doctrine, on putting in place a very robust, full-blown Missile Defense for the U.S. and our Allies, on a very hard nosed foreign policy, on actually enforcing our borders and immigration laws, on a total revolution in our understanding of and approach to Islam and Muslims , taking a very hard line approach to Islam and Muslims and their subversion, law breaking and terrorism, here and abroad.
Whether there are enough would be members of Congress who would dare to run on such an aggressive “take no prisoners” platform is an unknown, but I don’t see much evidence of this so far. Whether enough citizens are aware and aroused enough to vote for such tough measures is also unknown. But the fact that members of Congress like the clueless demagogue Rep. Sheila Jackson Leigh (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=981 and http://michellemalkin.com/2010/07/16/a-sheila-jackson-lee/) continue to get reelected tells me that many citizens don’t really understand or care about the issues or who is in office, as long as the benefits keep flowing.
Wolla Dalbo Says:
July 17th, 2010 at 9:13 am
Well said, and I don’t have much to add.
I have always believed that George W. Bush’s greatest failure was not systematically rooting out the moles that Clinton planted in the Federal bureaucracy.
If and when we get actual conservatives in power, purging leftists from government, academia, and the media must be the first priority. There must be prosecutions and prison time for progressives and communist sympathizers. It will not be pretty, but it must be done. It should have been done in the 1950s, but it wasn’t. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were only the tip of the iceberg.
It should have been done in the 1970s, after the left cost us victory in the Vietnam War and consigned millions to death, imprisonment, starvation, torture, and slave labor, but it wasn’t.
It should have been done in the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, but it wasn’t. All of the fellow travelers in the West who were apologists for communism should have been publicly exposed and humiliated, and fired from their jobs, but they weren’t.
Marxism, communism, socialism, progressivism–call it what you will–must be as thoroughly discredited and made repugnant as Nazism was. I don’t know how many more chances we will get.
I just finished reading Angelo Codevilla’s article at the American Spectator. To echo earlier commenters, it is brilliant, and truly a must-read.
Wolla Dalbo
A long time ago i said, you can turn a cucumber into a pickle but you cant return it to a cucumber if you don’t like it.
but then everyone’s attitude is we have to try things to know things completely ignoring that not all operations are reversible. That is the point of the word “gleichschaltung”.
Rather than perceive the potential danger and then bone up on history, as they were very far behind the curve, they are generally still trying to decide whether whats going on warrants the effort still. Eventually we pass a event horizon, at that point nothing we do will matter. We do so as we didn’t oppose the process early on. we instead voted in the process and validated to them their mandate. (proof that their lying and such is the right thing to do as our not stopping such practices is seen as consenting to them)
preventing us from studying these regimes prevents us from seeing what methodologies are copied and then used in the political arena (our ignorance allowing it). we have been taught to have the attitude that knowing or interest is the same as believing, consenting and desiring. We forbid ourselves the information to recognize methods borrowed from history (as if that information has power to contaminate us).
Nazi Gleichschaltung
http://www.history-ontheweb.co.uk/concepts/concept72_gleichschaltung.htm
As a totalitarian regime the Third Reich developed its own language, a perversion of the German language. The control of hearts and minds, to which totalitarian political systems aspire, necessitates such a perversion of the normal use of language. Meaning is twisted and distorted in such a way that the citizens of a totalitarian state can no longer distinguish truth from falsehood.
Word games… perspective games, etc… think of it as a psychological version of the spin before you try to pin the tail on the donkey. in this game, the public gets spun and the spinners laugh as their chances of succeeding if not being pointed in the right direction at all is pretty much a nil.
This is the process of marginalizing people (up to the limit of what you can get away with. in Germany then, a lot, today less, but still enough).
Shouting people down, making up things to set people against each other, not allowing them to speak. the point of allowing some groups to tear the place apart, and pretend other groups tear things apart when they don’t. the laws and particular points are to align businesses, banking and so forth to the end (like loaning to those that cant pay so as to facilitate).
All this is packaged in confusion and odd terms that most don’t know, and perspectives that make us want the end (loans to poor), and so allow, and enjoy the thing (get the bankers abandoning them – and so they had no choice but to betray a system that turned on them).
i did say i presented the whole thing. that its the same and we are doing it. everyone was looking for banners, and costumes. they could not see what they already were doing that was the same, and they had accepted as normal to them.
Saul Alinsky and others they repackaged the processes with a new name. laundered it. he didn’t make it up and design it, he copied it, maybe refined it a bit, gave things new names, and labels.
At its core Gleichschaltung is what we call Politically Correct.
[rest deleted for space by me]
I agree that Angelo Codevilla’s essay linked above is a brilliant summation and analysis of the situation we find ourselves in today, and a very accurate delineation of the two opposing sides; a true “must read,” and an essential jumping off point for thought and discussion.
However, while at the conclusion of his essay he gives his opinions as to the approaches for taking back our Republic he thinks will not work, he does not really spell out what the approaches are that he thinks will work, and we are left to figure this out for ourselves. I feel that Codevilla is not yet ready to admit to himself or to us the sacrifices and lengths to which we will have to go, the “hard ball” we will have to play, if we are to have any real chance at all of taking our Republic back.
Re Codevilla, who I much admire: His implied non-violence at his conclusion has a point, which Artfldgr’s pickle analogy symbolizes well. The point is we are most probably done. And done for. Welcome to the New Zimbabwe. There are no external forces to rescue the USA from itself. Internally, it will be a long time, if ever, before our Solidarity movement is born. The Tea Parties are a symbolic endeavor, but there is no solidarity, no cohesion, no all-shoulders-to-the-wheel. And I am a TeaPartier….
Wolla Dalbo Says:
July 17th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
It’s that old “Tree of Liberty” thing. It’s not surprising that many people blanch at what that entails. Most sane people really don’t want to go there, unless they have no alternative.
Ruminating about Codevilla’s essay linked above, I have realized that it just might be today’s version of “Common Sense” for us Americans here in the 21st century.
Too little too late.
we cant recover over 100 years of applied process in 2 years… even if we did have the power to try.
and the whole thing is meant to use the energy generated by such writings as a modern “common sense” would…
that is they have worked out that since one cant get to the position they want without such actions happening at some time. they accept that as a fact, the work from the premise of controlling and using such a thing, as they think 10 plys ahead of reactionary masses, who refuse to learn about them.
all the reasons they succeed are all the common actions you and everyone else takes up given lack of actual preparedness, understanding, and methodology.
too many people pretend to be intelligent and pretend that doing so is just sitting around immune and inured to reality while they blase talk their way to deciding. there was a reason why i played the movie clip from the scarlet pimpernel. to show the difference of doing that as an affectation of cover, and what it means to be actually doing that without that end.
doing so without that end is the adaptation of the nihilist clinical position of watching the world going by and trying to make commentary.
just as psychology is a system for helping to turn around situations and conditions that screw us up, one can use its antithesis, to do the opposite with the information (social engineering) .
that is, psychology helps the individual align with a healthier life, while social engineering helps the collective align with the states life designed for which set you belong to.
knives always cut both ways.
there is no way out of the forest without knowing how you got into it…
and there is no way to know how you got into it, without listening to those who know and lay it out. refusal to look at a map, and look at the lay of the land, and try to find your way out of a place where you dont even know its location in reference to your destination, makes the desired end impossible.
they are coordinated, we are antithetically uncoordinated.
they are studied in history and the methodologies and operations that have worked in taht past, we are antithetically ignorant.
they are the pinnical of almost 200 years of effort, we antithetically have been put to sleep more and more since then
For the record Krauthammer is a member of the CFR
Angelo Codevilla
“What is to be done?”
In short, the regimes whose death would give us peace have enemies who are eager to kill them. . . . Democracy may not be part of their agenda, and liberalism surely will not be. That is their business. It is enough for our peace that there be people who have their own reasons for destroying the people and culture–the regimes–that are the effective causes of violence against us. U.S. military operations can and should make it possible for them to do it. (p. 138)
Artfldgr–trying to decipher what you are saying, what I come up with is that you say that our Freedom has been slowly, almost imperceptibly at first and, now, increasingly quickly whittled away, removed bit by bit, until now very little really remains–there is a box we can all see labeled “Freedom,” that we think is full, but that box’s contents have almost all been stolen, and it is almost empty, with the last remaining items about to be stolen from us as well. That you think that the leadership cadres of our enemies–call them Progressives, call them Fascists, or Marxists, or Statists or Collectivists–have a much firmer grasp of History, and of the strategy and tactics needed to bring about their desired Revolution, have been working to bring their Revolution into being for over a hundred years, and dare to act while we fear to act and, instead, we stand back and analyze, that since we have not the background or wit to know how we got into this position and where were are in the process, or to even know that there is a process going on, and again, we discuss and analyze but fear to act, we have very little chance of taking our Freedom back, because the enemies of Freedom have already arranged things so that the “correlation of forces” is overwhelmingly on their side, and they control all the choke-points, and all the levers of power. That whether we realize it or not, the cucumber has already been almost entirely pickled, and it can’t be made back into a cucumber again.
As for your remarks about our foreign enemies, I can’t figure out what it is that you are trying to convey.