Meanwhile…
Remember the economy?
Sometimes I think that people get used to almost anything. Who would have thought people would get used to $4 gas without blaming it on Obama?
So perhaps the lousy economy has just become non-business as usual: “We have always been at war with Eastasia.”
And it’s Emmanuel Goldstein‘s—uh, I mean Bush’s—fault.
My, my, aren’t we just a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day?
Today’s data were grim. GDP and durable goods numbers suggest a possible recession around election time. Obama has nothing to fear because the MSM will ignore it.
The reason people don’t mind high gas prices is because the MSM are not beating Obama with it every day. When Bush was in we heard daily sob stories staged at a gas station on the TV news and in the press.
OT: I was reading Bella Dodd’s School of Darkness last night (at Artfldgr’s excellent recommendation), and came across this most apposite passage:
Btw, this book is available free online.
Mr. Frank Says:
September 27th, 2012 at 2:26 pm
That, and if you’re out of work, you don’t have to do much driving.
Obama promises the people redistributive change. They will elect to exchange their liberty for submission with benefits. It represents a lower energy state. A comfortable state for less capable or less patient individuals.
To be fair, he is not the only politician or leader who avoids addressing causal issues, whereby he preserves and promotes an infantile state of existence. Men, and women, just want to have fun.
Aside from those who have lived for several generations inside the welfare state, a majority of Americans want to be successful in their own right. Those who are unemployed want a job and they want to pay their own way. They are willing to put their shoulders against the grind stone.
I know several people who are working 2 or even 3 part time jobs. They are neighbors and I talk to them at least once a week. They are not whining and they are not expecting unicorns to fly out of BHO’s posterior and land on their backyard.
overheard at a liberal college the other day, two professors:
“and we have a critical election coming up in a few weeks.”
“yes.”
“and more and more people are starving.”
“right.”
no names were mentioned but they meant: therefore (!?) vote for Obama. How do I know? They woiuld not have DARED speak this aloud if they meant vote for Romney.
Why are these people starving – if they are starving?
Why such bleak language? I have not heard the reports of more and more starving. I have only heard more and more food stamps. Are more and more starving and the media not reporting it? I think not. I think they are just … professors.
Are more and more starving and the media not reporting it? I think not. I think they are just … professors.
And lousy ones, hence the parlous state of education generally, and at the tertiary level particularly, since objective reality has failed to punch through their intellectual carapaces.
One question: where exactly are these starving people? Where would they be? When’s the last time you saw anyone who looked malnourished? We have an obesity problem, and it is more severe among the poorest. Yet liberals and other cognitive bonsai persist in babbling about “hunger in America.”
I once confronted a liberal about this, and he maintained that we lived in a wealthy area, but there were places (in America) where people were going hungry. Really? Where? Crickets.
I believe I mentioned previously going on a “Fighting Hunger in America” website (when the charity was engaged by our city government), where they featured examples of the “hungry” and “food insecure” whom they’d helped. (The latter two categories putatively comprising 30 million (!) people.)
Seriously, most of the people in the photos had multiple chins, and looked like Jenny Craig “before” pictures. Few women were under 200 lbs., and most men were pushing 300. I emailed them to point out that depicting page after page of fatties undercut their message.
Their response? They eliminated the photos, but left the narrative portions.
True story.
Well, with the debates coming up, there’s the chance for Romney to force the MSM to “cover” the issue. There will be endless denials, first, mind you, but plenty of chances to force the issue down their throats.
expectations management
Occam’s Beard :
Did you try and find the site on the wayback machine? the older version might still be there, in which case, you could take screenshots showing it and post them around the web.
}}}} expectations management
I think tarring and feathering would probably manage my expectations sufficiently well…
Since our vaunted “educational system” has managed to teach fewer and fewer students the fact that” private property” is the indispensable foundation for all our other rights, and since economics is pretty correctly called “the dismal science” few people, especially people who do not have any surplus money that they invest, pay attention to economic news or understand its implications.
Translation: I still have checks, I can’t be out of money.
True story:
Recently at the Store Where I Work, I had customer get upset because her entire purchase wasn’t covered by food stamps (actually an EBT debit card). She tried twice to get it to pay for everything she wanted to buy, and then opened her wallet and–I swear I’m not making this up–sorted through SIX different credit cards before choosing one on which to put the remaining $7.99.
How the hell she qualifies for both food stamps and six credit cards, I have no idea. Me, I’m working three part time jobs in order to keep Youngest Son in private school (I’d sell my own organs before I put him in public school), have one credit card I never use, and have never been on welfare. I guess I’m the 1% or something.
WOW…! No wonder,’Yo, that The Boy King is(allegedly)ahead!! Who, for Gawdsakes, wants a strong economy anyway,’Yo. Long a I can git my Bammy Phone,’Yo..!
A: I think Romney is doing better than the bogus polls show.. I’ve mentioned Bush’s reelection as an argument that the country cant be as crazy it would take to reelect Obama… but lets add the next argument…
B: Mcsame was not beaten by a wide margin. In a year that democrats were motivated and the rest of us were tired of being beaten on for every problem under the sun for 8 years…
Romney’s only problem right now is his strategy is too similar to McCain…
“Me, I’m working three part time jobs in order to keep Youngest Son in private school (I’d sell my own organs before I put him in public school), have one credit card I never use, and have never been on welfare. I guess I’m the 1% or something.”
Good for you, I admire your energy and attitude. However, you are not 1% of something, you are 50+% of America.
I know, parker, I was being sarcastic. By the standards of the entitlement crowd, I am the 1%; I own my own home, have some investments and a modest retirement fund, and have sent all four of my kids through private schools. That I did so at great personal and economic sacrifice (what I could have done with the funds spent on their tuition) is irrelevant to them.
In the course of my job as a cashier, I hear and see the most egregious displays of emotion driven reasoning (if you can call it reasoning). There really is a shockingly substantial number of folks, even in the relatively upscale neighborhood wherein I work, who truly believe they deserve to be provided everything from health care to housing just because they’re alive. That they might have to earn any of it is not part of their understanding.
These are the people who will vote for Obama no matter what he does, or doesn’t do. Are there enough of them to pull off a win? I have no idea, but I hope to God not.
It is odd that the swing state polls show Obama ahead when the 2010 election had the Dems spattered all over the sidewalk. My guess is that Romney easily wins the popular vote. The heavily Dem weighed polls only give Obama a slight edge. To me it looks it looks like the polls that show Obama ahead are predicting just the opposite.
In 2008 my (highly liberal burb) neighborhood was festooned with Obama signs, bumper stickers, etc.
This year, not a single yard sign and the only bumper stickers I’ve seen are those from ’08 that can’t be scraped off. It’s as if people are embarrassed to tout the guy again, but I assume that privately they plan to cast their votes the same way. I think many know, on some level, what a monumental disaster O has been.
However, haven’t seen many Romney signs either, even in the white collar areas where there generally are lots of GOP signs.
What a strange year for such a critical election.
“Sometimes I think that people get used to almost anything. Who would have thought people would get used to $4 gas without blaming it on Obama?”
And yet, when gas prices spiked this high for 3 months, during GWB’s term, the press was all over it. It’s almost as if there’s a double standard or something.
Karl Rove on the Poll Ploy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37HjVRnzcOE
Maybe some people can ignore the gas prices (if they’re jobless and no longer commuting), but it’s pretty hard to ignore the food prices. Not only have the prices gone up, but the packaging sizes has gone down. Even on food stamps, your allotment can’t be stretched as far.
@Occam’s Beard thanks for the info on the novel. Here is another great thriller about avg. Americans taking a stand against federal tyranny & ends up starting the 2nd American Revolution so I recommend it. ( http://www.booksbyoliver.com )
It’s interesting that the economy is still not the main headline in mainstream media. It’s always what some politician said by accident, what they are eating that day or some murder in California or dog lost in Colorado.
Thanks for keeping the issue of the economy on the Internet.
Do not judge the depth of the pond by its surface.
Just because we are not hearing about high gasoline prices and rising food prices in the Obamedia does not mean that people aren’t taking notice.
i am sorry this is so long, but i am trying to condense the salient parts in a whole book to what is allowed…
NEO Sometimes I think that people get used to almost anything.
And so… as neo wakes up a bit more every day as it’s a process not a switch, she starts to say the same things as others who woke up and knew.
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, Viktor E. Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning
AN INTRODUCTION TO LOGOTHERAPY
Viktor E. Frankl
http://drmichaelharris.com/_mgmt_share/Man%27sSearchforMeaning.pdf
this so you know where he was…
this is what he learned… (next paragraph on the page)
If one can get used to that, can a society get used to something that at the individual level seems great, but in the aggregate means destruction? It would be very hard for the individuals benefiting to sacrifice that, for the good of the whole. No? now what if they were told that the individual level false benefit WAS good for the whole?
How could you stop something like that?
Does liberation from biological requirements seem good for the individual taught that it is?
Can they see the decline, destruction, genocide, etc… that comes from it?
Are they too selfish to give up free rubbers to save society?
Are they too selfish to give up some gew gaws and such,
to insure there are children to carry on tomorrow tomorrow?
Nah… you can get used to anything, even poison…
Ever notice how much insecticide people like to purposefully ingest and pay for to get in concentrated form?
Nicotine – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine
By the late 17th century, it was used not only for smoking but also as an insecticide. After World War II, over 2,500 tons of nicotine insecticide (waste from the tobacco industry) were used worldwide, but by the 1980s the use of nicotine insecticide had declined below 200 tons. This was due to the availability of other insecticides that are cheaper and less harmful to mammals.
Now… do you think we can get rid of the social equivalent? I don’t, because I don’t see anyone with any desire to actually take up the full discussion, the full damage, the ticks and tocks and any analysis that is not endlessly debated as a form of critical theory.
After all, to debate, use rhetoric, logic, analysis, and facts… that’s critical thinking
To debate as if all ideas are the same value, not compete so there are no winners, and endlessly talk with no resolution… that’s critical theory a Marxist means of getting everyone to spin their wheels but think or believe they are doing a productive job. (never asking why work was so entertaining).
“There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.” – Lessing
Why is everyone so fat? For the same reason soviets were so drunk…
Why does everyone want to bathe in some form of entertainment pleasure like a rat pressing a lever and not with some sense of balance and limits so that its actually enjoyable, and not a motion act that is habit and unfulfilling (and so one hits the lever again)
Because they are acting normal in abnormal situations in which they think the situation is normal, and so rather than change it, they try to cope with it. As they have no will to change a situation, they find normal… [it becomes more understandable if you apply this to the khmer rouge children murderers of the killing fields, and then see it’s the same thing for those here except not machine guns and fields, but courts and living rooms]
And exactly how much of a gaffe was Romney’s mention of the 47% paying no income tax?
This much:
(Here’s the money quote):
Read more:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/27/fox-news-poll-7-percent-say-all-americans-should-pay-income-taxes/
So, economically speaking (since this is a thread about the economy) just what does this say about the American experience and American’s tolerance for fellow citizens perpetually on the dole?
just remember that the people who make plans, know this stuff… and so know what they can do, what can be gotten away from, and what you will endure if your forced to and CANT FIGHT BACK…
if you are disgusted with what they do, and you show it, their capo will wack you.
And so, the mortification… and so you wont fight against it. will you?
yes, once injustice is normalized… we will just sit there and watch as affirmative action and such cheats people. we are too numb to fight.. we don’t want to get waked by the capo… who wants to fight their own mates (other than women)? We don’t stick up for the victims… any more than someone in a camp could… who gives those poor men who lose life, career, and so on, for the good of women, society, and the future a reward? Then again, you don’t reward someone for what your entitled to take, do you? You don’t even thank them or pay them, compensate them, etc.
you can see similar in our lives in our society… these repressions and rules not based in biology or sense, and subject us to what we don’t want… do the same thing, but not so acutely as we are not starved while its practiced on us, and its not as brutal, but it is as unending and sure, as any opposition, the capo wacks you.
VAE VICTUS
But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth –that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way–an honourable way– in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfilment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation
of an infinite glory.”
and what if ideology takes that away before the bad this time, rather than after?
Artfldgr wrote @12:46PM: “just remember that the people who make plans, know this stuff… and so know what they can do”
Do some of “them” know this? I’m sure they do. Are ALL of “them” part and parcel of this same coordinated conspiracy? I’ll bet they’re not. Why? because the bulk of this enemy is simply not that smart or as clever as artfldgr gives them credit for.
Now one may respond it doesn’t matter. A coordinated conspiracy or a comedy of errors, if the results are the same who cares about the process? I, OTH, believe very strongly in the resilience of the American people. When called upon to do the correct thing, we usually respond correctly; I offer that you will see exactly that on Nov 7th when election results are known for certain. Remember, “God watches over fools, drunks, and the United States of America”.
Now, some people (artfldgr among them) may respond that this is meaningless because we will have a Republican “boob” in the White House instead of a Democrat “boob.” I disagree with that, too. I confess to having voted for Ross Perot in 1992 because I believed that a grounded businessman in the White House would serve this country well. Romney provideds that same breath of fresh air; not a career politician, but a successful career businessman who became a politician.
Will he be the be all–end all? No of course not.
Will he, with the stroke of a pen abolish the Dept. of Education and severly restrict the EPA? I only wish.
Will he begin a successful trend to rebuild this economy, improve the GDP and at least begin to deal with the deficit and national debt? I’d expect nothing less from a successful businessman if only because his response to an inside look at everything going on will be something like “How can anyone run a business this way and expect it to succeed?”
I’ll be more than happy with that as our first step on this new journey.
Bob Woodward is peddling his new book on the news networks. He’s criticizing Obama for his lack of leadership and assuming responsibility to do anything about the crushing debt. He’s telling a story about Obama and his detached and aloof “style”, and pointing out how it’s affected his entire presidency. In a nutshell, he’s telling anybody that will listen Obama is a lousy president. Does anybody care but a small percentage of us?
I keep seeing this theme, that the MSM is preventing Romney from getting his story out, but there’s more to it than that.
I’m just not buying that the MSM is entirely to blame. Americans have access to more information and sources than any time in history, and yet a simple survey of people on the street will prove a large percentage of us don’t know much about anything. If they were truly tuned into the MSM, as dispicable as it is, they would know our ambassador in Libya was assassinated. But I’ve seen recent interviews of ardent Obama supporters who clearly aren’t even aware of the event.
You cannot believe the MSM or liberal professors are to blame for left leaning Americans, while so them are abysmally ignorant about nearly everything — their ignorance is breathtakingly broad when it comes to politics or goverment.
The 911 assassination is a good example — it WAS covered, and was pretty hard to miss unless you actively avoided watching the news. But there are a shocking number of people who haven’t a clue it happened.
And I truly believe there are far more people who tune ALL of it out than those who are swayed by the talking heads.
Long before there was television, there was socialism, and jealosy, and bloody communist revolutions. I don’t know what the printed media was saying before the Russian revolution, but the revolution itself and those who came out on top were sadistic and vindictive to the formerly well off, and utterly and tyrranical to anyone who opposed them. Fairness and the good of society had nothing to do with it, and this tendency for people to feel entitled to other people’s property and labor, to give into envy, to blame others for their problems, transcends modern media and cultures. IMHO, it’s an attitude or instinct, of the most basic kind, that a lot of people have, and how they got it isn’t all that important. The fact that so many have been able to justify it to themselves as “fairness”, is in itself telling about the minds of those who embrace it.
Artfldgr: again, your assumptions about what I know and think are incorrect. I am not “waking up” to the fact that “sometimes I think people can get used to almost anything.” Just because I thought people would be likely to get more upset than they appear to be at the moment about $4 gas doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of the fact that people can get used to hard things.
Also, I read the Frankl book you quote shortly after it was written. I am quite familiar with it, studied it, wrote a paper dealing with it, and owned it for many years.
Again, I am requesting that you stop just assuming things about what people know and don’t know. It would be much better if you would just offer the information that you want to talk about, without adding all the assumptions about people’s prior knowledge or lack thereof.
T Do some of “them” know this? I’m sure they do. Are ALL of “them” part and parcel of this same coordinated conspiracy? I’ll bet they’re not. Why? because the bulk of this enemy is simply not that smart or as clever as artfldgr gives them credit for.
It doesn’t work the way you think it doesn’t work…
And that’s as short and sweet as i can put it.
but i will address one part…
because the bulk of this enemy is simply not that smart or as clever as artfldgr gives them credit for.
what credit do i give them? the bulk of the enemy are herded like sheep or animals by playing with their whips and carrots legally available to them and by shaping mass opinion and moving rules around.
the good people are hearded by law and taxes they dont fight against… the poor and not to bright are hearded by different programs giving them different things in exchange for votes and the insinuation of more later. each group set against the one scape goat are all being told that scapegoat did this (a la germany), and its even confirmed (in their minds) given legal restrictions on programs (how can it be law).
its an army of eager people. who dont know where the boat is really going. but they like their three squares and a cot, and the captain keeps telling them its a nice place.
they cant work out whether that place is going to be nice, or whether the concept solution will work. a vast majority of them dont even know whats going on news wise…
Maybe the worst news of all in the poll is that younger Americans are not the news consumers that their parents are. Fully 29 percent of Americans under 25 said they didn’t pay attention to news.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/cnn-newspapers-hammered-as-americans-turn-to-mobile-news/article/2509299
Artfldgr,
While I do not disaree with your characterizations in general, I offer that there are assumptions being made here that are not necessaily inimical to change.
Let’s start with the end: “Fully 29 percent of Americans under 25 said they didn’t pay attention to news.” You note this as though it marks the beginning of the end. It’s classic. No 25 year old pays much attention to the news. When their parents were 25, they weren’t paying much attention to the news either. When these 25 year olds reach the current age of there parents they will be paying more attention, too, because then, like the prior generation, they will be in the thick of the “battle.”
“the good people are hearded [sic] by law and taxes they dont fight against.” Just because the don’t pick up shotguns and storm the bastille does not mean that many of them do not oppose such oppression. That’s the reason there is such a thing as a black market, for example; it is opposition to tax and regulation codes. Likewise anytime even a bureaucrat looks to circumvent a regulation to accomplish a given task, they, too, are providing opposition.
Bureaucracies and regulations are static, life is dynamic and, like water running in a creek, some of it always finds its way around the rocks. That is why preference cascades occur.
And sometimes there is decisive, active opposition, not simply the passive opposition I refer to above. I am especially heartened by the rise of Tea Party candidates and the fact that numerous establishment politicians (both Dem and Repub) were replaced by new blood in 2010. I am equally heartened by the rise of the Bobby Jindles, the Nicki Haleys, the Allen Wests, the Mia Loves and the Paul Ryans as they begin to take a place in the influential political world.
Your cautions to us are not without cause or justification. You look at the past as lessons for us in the future. I submit, however, that you look at the old fruit on the tree and say it’s past it’s prime, the tree is no longer productive. This is true, but I offer that it is limited. It sees the old tree and the old fruit but fails to recognize the buds of the new fruit.
I see the new fruit and say let’s nourish it because it will take time. We didn’t get here overnight and we will not solve the problem in a single election cycle, probably not even in a single generation.
The battle is engaged, however. That is the first step to winning the war and that, itself, gives me great hope.