A few more prognostications from the past (from FredHJr and others)
A few weeks ago I was looking at some old comment threads to find some apropos quotes from commenter FredHJr for a post on the fifth anniversary of his death, and I came across a few extra ones that I thought worth highlighting.
The first is from commenter “Hogarth,” who was a regular here for a while but hasn’t been heard from since some time in 2009. In October of 2008 he wrote, addressing another commenter on the thread who expressed the hope that Obama might be “evolving”:
…[Obama’s] answers to even the simplest questions are textbook examples of dissembling, misdirection, Clintonian deniability, and mutually exclusive statements in a single but-ridden sentence. The ”˜uhs’ are telling ”“ he is measuring every word to insure that it says nothing that he can ever be held to.
Evolving? There’s the evolution that brings the maturity and self-sacrifice required in a leader, and then there’s the evolution that becomes a chameleon whose position at any moment is calculated 100% to deliver maximum political expediency and personal gain.
I understand what you think you see in Obama, but I don’t understand how your impression can survive even a cursory glance beyond what he has said he has done and what he has actually done. If the past is any indication of the future, Obama will be an indecisive, thin-skinned, and potentially dangerous president.
Back to FredHJr again. The subject of the thread was attacks on Joe the Plumber after he had asked Obama the question that made Obama look bad:
The ethics of [Obama] and his supporters in the media, and the voters committed to him are very, very important too. They give us a window into HIM and OURSELVES.
This is how despots and their bootlickers behave. They are bound in a thuggish miasma of moral relativism that signify a sickness afoot in the nation.
Of course Obama’s response to Joe was revealing. Obama and his operatives saw a crack open up for McCain to exploit, and they are destroying another human being unjustly in order to advance the socialist revolution.
We have an entire generation of kids, the Baby Boomlet Generation (the one behind GenX) that has fused with the Older Cohort of Baby Boomers, in an alliance to destroy capitalism and lay the West open to predation from abroad. The danger is not just to our Republic and its Constitution. If we fall, so does all of human civilization, and the carcass will be picked over by the stronger polarity in the Unholy Alliance between Western socialists and Islam. My bet is that Islam will win that rumble. Easily. And then the darkness that humanity descends into will be for a very long time.
It is, ultimately, our moral disorder and our intellectual sloth that lays up open to the predators waiting and circling. Obama will be the first one inside the perimeter.
Oh, why not one more from FredHJr, on the same thread:
Joe’s question to the future President Obama was legit. The wrinkles in his life are immaterial to the validity of the question.
He was indeed metaphorically raped by NKVD chekists. His life was trashed by people who did not like the fact that he asked an uncomfortable question and Obama’s answer alarmed a lot of people.
So, a message was sent: If you mess with me by making me look bad, I will burn you so badly you will never recover. I will destroy your life and make the public humiliation so heavy that you might never get out from under that burden. And I will always find people in offices where confidential information is kept and in the media who will gladly help me do this to you.
“Chris White” I’ve gotcha by the throat in an ironclad grip of logic and moral reasoning. You can’t squirm out of it. To try to deflect, change the subject, or change the focus will not work. You cannot avoid the logical ramifications of your choice.
You accuse neo of having an echo chamber, but if we came over into your ”˜hood and posted our opinions over there we would be banned and our opinions deleted. I’ve seen it happen to friends of mine. In academia, grad students, undergrad students, faculty, and staff who are conservatives HAVE TO HIDE THEIR VIEWS FOR FEAR OF VERY REAL RETRIBUTION. Yes, you people are Stalinists. The ethics of expediency do obtain among the collectivists.
You can’t hide from the truth forever, however much you want to silence it. And no one knows the socialists like a former Marxist. Those of us who left the Left are utterly despised by former comrades and fellow travelers. For a very good reason. We took the playbooks with us.
FredHJr:
Evolving? There’s the evolution that brings the maturity and self-sacrifice required in a leader, and then there’s the evolution that becomes a chameleon whose position at any moment is calculated 100% to deliver maximum political expediency and personal gain.
Which reminds us of Obama’s “evolving” views on gay marriage. He was agin’ it, but several days after some prominent gay fundraisers expressed dissatisfaction with Obama, Obama’s view on gay marriage “evolved.”
Evolving- reminds me of John Kerry’s “I voted for it before I was against it.” Or was it the other way around?
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Quite the vain, whether vane.
Collectivism is — at its fundamental — neo-tribalism.
What was ancient is to be made new again.
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In truly primitive tribes there are no property rights. The big chimp re-purposes any asset upon his whim: everyone’s anything is his to control.
The emotional logic of collectivism doesn’t scale up beyond the (nuclear) family.
Significantly, there’s nothing much to adjudicate in such an ethos. Those under the top chimp have no rights at all.
In every way, Barry is a retrogression.
That collectivists are going backwards to their (utopian) future is entirely lost upon them.
We are (collectively) centuries into the Renaissance and yet humanity has yet to figure out its own nature.
(hyper-clever primate)
%%%
I’m struck by the general lack of insight inre Red Chinese soot pollution.
Everyone in Beijing is gagging on it … but the West dismisses its impact.
As if particulates don’t nucleate snow, ice and rain… all over Alaska and the Yukon
$$$
For those curious, Western technology — power plants — always includes ‘bag houses’ — these are reverse air filters. They are requisite in the First World for anyone burning serious amounts of coal. All that they do is capture soot — after combustion.
The Red Chinese simply bypassed their bag houses. This only takes a turn of a valve. (Thought you’d want to know.)
Even the best bag houses need service. So, during that period, the exhaust gases are vented directly into the atmosphere. This feature is built into EVERY bag house ever built. (It’s a shut off valve. Yeah, it’s enormous.)
Bag houses not only cost serious money… they use serious amounts of (electrical) power. One has to force the exhaust gases through these titanic filters. (Hence the term bag houses — they are staggering in size since they have to pass all of the exhaust of the power plant. Regardless of scale, they are no more sophisticated than the bag on your vacuum cleaner. (!) Soot drops out quickly. )
How much power?
Try $ 0.005 per kWHr.
Actually that’s a lot — when the juice is sold for
$ 0.060 per kWHr.
Further, dirty, sulfurous coals lie close to the surface — in China — and are MUCH cheaper to mine.
(You’d be shocked as to how many CAT machines have been sold to the Chinese coal mining industry. CAT is actually, at the margin, a play on Chinese coal mining.)
Take a wild guess as to what payoffs have been made.
Hogarth nailed it. As did FredJr with the small caveat that I disagree that once the western right was gelded, the left would lose in a conflict with Islam.
Many make the mistake IMO of equating the liberal, ivory tower, “useful idiot” gullibility that the left promotes as its public face with the reality of who actually calls the shots on the left. A Stalin type always rises to the top in any such system.
Eliminate America as a global factor and if ever there is a real showdown between Islam and the real left, such as the Chicoms… and the M.E. will be quickly turned into a glass parking lot with Muslims hunted down and exterminated outside the M.E.
1984 types do not submit to 7th century fanatics, they exterminate them and in any real war, Islam lacks the logistical resources to prevail. Fanatical ruthlessness only prevails against an opponent unwilling to be as ruthless.
The Chicoms, Putins, and the Rahm Emanuels of the world are every bit as ruthless and as uncaring of casualties among the innocent as any jihadist. They are at base, birds of a feather but… the left has the resources.
I think once a person is able to accept that the Leftist alliance is allied with Islamic Jihad, something triggers and changes in the individual. Something that loads of movie propaganda alone cannot do, that change alone changes the entire face of the battlefield.
Again, I see description, definition, and prediction from FredHJr – but I see no prescription.
If Fred indeed “took the playbooks” with him, he should have been well equipped to formulate a prescription that’s actionable in the social arena of activist competition.
So where is Fred’s prescription for winning the activist game, the only social political game there is?
If Fred offered no prescriptive solutions, then he like Neo and the rest of us, all we’re doing here is unctuously whining, bitching, and complaining – expelling large amounts of virtual hot air with no real effect – while Left activists are all the while going about their business, doing the real activist work that moves the chains and makes a social cultural/political difference.
The first step is to convince people or have people convince themselves. When people don’t believe in the threat, it won’t matter what “prescription” they read about, it’ll all sound crazy and unbelievable.
Only when Belief begins, do people start working on the solution. That wasn’t the case in 2008. That wasn’t the case in 2000 either.
I saw a comment at Ace of Spades this morning. I don’t recall it exactly, but it was something like “a dictator doesn’t impose his will; he arises from the popular will”.
The leftists who are disappointed with Obama now think that he hasn’t been tyrannical enough towards the hated white male capitalists.
I’m working on a story line set in a world where the two main political powers are Islam and the Materialist (Atheist) West. I love this FredHJr!
ANYONE noticed that the Youth Vote is trending (and voting) Republican lately?”
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2014/07/has-anyone-anyone-noticed-that-youth.html
Steve-w.r.t. the youth vote, unless survival is at stage the two factors that determine most people’s votes are self-esteem and the opinion of the person next to them. If the young are voting Republican my guess it is because they are afraid.
Let’s hope they become more afraid.
Speaking of predictions:
http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2014/07/20/2014-anime-comments/
Eric 5:29 PM:
Again, I see description, definition, and prediction from FredHJr — but I see no prescription.
If Fred indeed “took the playbooks” with him, he should have been well equipped to formulate a prescription that’s actionable in the social arena of activist competition.
So where is Fred’s prescription for winning the activist game, the only social political game there is?
If Fred offered no prescriptive solutions, then he like Neo and the rest of us, all we’re doing here is unctuously whining, bitching, and complaining — expelling large amounts of virtual hot air with no real effect — while Left activists are all the while going about their business, doing the real activist work that moves the chains and makes a social cultural/political difference.
I say this with total respect and sympathy, because I think you really do put your finger on the crux of where we are now.
I don’t think we are whining, bitching and complaining, let alone unctuously so. I think we are all genuinely disturbed and alarmed by what we see, not only the mere happening of it, but also by the frightening knowledge that so few people see what we see.
I refer again to Neo’s series A Mind Is A Difficult Thing To Change which beautifully and simply captures a period of time I am familiar with, and uses the historical background to explain why so many folks think what they do and have the psychology they have.
(Totally tangential: how many Catholics are there who are close-minded Leftists? Many, many. Or Jews? Yet, if they truly absorbed their catechism and tanach their thinking would be too deep to be mindless Leftists. I am not saying agreeing with the catechism and tanach, I am saying absorbing the deep thinking reflecting centuries of logical inquiry about metaphysical questions).
American culture has been wiped out since the 60’s. Gone are the cultural, societal, economic, “philosophical” agreements we used to hold. Think about the family farm. America is no longer the family farm, in all the literary senses.
The quandry is where to turn. I personally can easily envision an “activist” agenda from the non-Left, but I have to say I also personally do not know of any non-Leftists who would have any aptitude or inclination for an activist agenda.
To ride a hobby horse yet again: it is astonishing and bewildering to me that non-Leftists do not use the history of slavery and every related issue against the Democrat Party. You see it here and there, but is usually brought up in a truncated, parenthetical and apologetic fashion.
There is no reason whatsoever for every non-Leftist venue everywhere NOT to bring up the million aspects of Democratic hatred of black people, and the ensuing Democratic Party present power based on that hatred. I am talking about hard facts a couple centuries long. Don’t get me started on the Mexican War.
I am the only human being on the face of the planet who sees and understands a totally free, totally factually supported issue which can be abundantly and creatively used against the Democrat Party, the issue of demanding reparations to black people from the Democrat Party, the existing legal entity which solely inflicted and explicitly used of the word nigger, opposition to anti-lynching laws (FDR) etc etc etc, to gain and hold power nationally.
A movie about the lonely Democrat who dramatically and with great personal suffering opposed his party to support the 13th Amendment? Forget about it.
Black Americans are a treasure, just as Irish, Italian, German and other Americans are. Maybe moreso, maybe black Americans are, in a sense, the True Americans.
But to suggest the offering of the piquant truth is almost to admit the futility. You Eric and I know that there is no capacity on the non-Left for the sort of vigorous activist agenda you talk about. I love the Tea Party, but the Tea Party does not hold any positions where they can effectively advocate, let alone in the way you (and I) envision.
The non-Left is stuck in electoral politics. There is a single plausible hope for electoral politics for the non-Left, and that is the Supreme Court. Maybe, but not probably, electoral politics will prevent the total annihilation of that body.
The non-Left has close to zero influence outside of electoral politics. I love Rush, and Rush is powerful. He does not get the recognition he deserves. But he is about all there is.
Where, I ask, is the source of non-Left activism in any meaningful sense. Where do you see this happening? Who are the people who are going to do this?
A slow-moving tsunami hit and we are looking at the wreckage.
A powerful and very accurate statement, Tonawanda.
We are stuck in electoral politics, which means we are forced to think like “political scientists”, which means we become Boehners and Ryans and Roves. And when we don’t lose, even then we do not succeed.
One reason there is no activist base on the Right is that there is no outside source of funding and centralized organization as there is on the Left. Stalinist tactics work very effectively even without Stalin at the helm.
I have come to see that the Left always telegraphs it’s secret agenda by preemptively accusing their opponents of it. Thus, famously, Hillary can whine about a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Certainly there exists a vast Left wing conspiracy, but having accused the Right of that, the Right cannot make the counter accusation without sounding petulant and stupid. “I’m rubber and you’re glue, it bounces off of me and sticks to you!”
Yet they find their agenda thwarted in unexpected ways. Consider the ChickA-fil (sp) debacle (for them), or the Duck Dynasty reverse, and now the pushback on illegal alien children resettlement program. If the Right were to stop being afraid to get their hands dirty they would be working with Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Alinsky would have seen these three examples as actions that he would capitalize on. But the Right does not do that. Too often their battle cry is,
“Woe is me!” They see themselves as defeated, which only means they are believing the Left’s propaganda. The Left is terrified of the Right, and with good reason. An effective leader would wipe out decades of Gramscian progress.
Electoral politics has it’s place, and certainly the Right should enter those lists. But the real source of their untapped power lies in the issues they are most afraid to touch, cultural issues. Homosexuality, abortion, illegal immigration, marriage, to name a few, are all hot button issues for the Right’s base, but the erstwhile leaders on the Right have been convinced by the Left’s propaganda to cede the field without really having stepped foot upon it. It is also probable that the Left has infiltrated the Right’s leadership cadres. And, of course, whenever a strong leader pops their head up on the Right, the Left targets and destroys them. The politics of personal destruction did not originate with the Clintons; the Clintons simply made the calculation that they would be able to get away with using this Stalinist tactic.
The Left has been at war with America and the West for over 70 years. Until the Right wakes up to the fact and goes to war in return not much can change. Marquess of Queensbury rules won’t cut it.
I would trade places with him..
he was infinitely more valuable than i would ever be
The Left has been at war with America and the West for over 70 years. Until the Right wakes up to the fact and goes to war in return not much can change
read the educaiton thread, the right sold us out before i was even in high school. part of it through reagan as the elites idea was a merger between us and the soviet union… ie the soviets would become a bit more rock and rol, and we would be a bit more country, and all get along like donnie and marie.. then merge… like Martin Fugate and having methemoglobinemia … (look it up.. the worlds first blue man group)