Obama the Alinskyite, revisited
[Note: A commenter recently alerted me to this 2009 article by David Horowitz about Obama’s Alinsky roots which described the aims of his presidency. I’d like to give that commenter a hat tip, but I can’t seem to locate who it was.]
Although I had certainly read about Obama’s Alinsky roots prior to Obama’s election, and understood in a broad and basic sense what that past of his meant—looking back now on David Horowitz’s 2009 essay on the subject I’m impressed by how deeply Horowitz understood what was going to happen. His essay is still well worth reading, although I wish all of America had read, and understood, it before voting in 2008.
But it’s no accident it—and the facts and predictions in it—was kept hush-hush. The vast majority of the press and Obama’s fellow Democrats were too excited at the prospect of electing America’s first black president, and were either fooled by Obama’s generalities and platitudes, or they were fully on board with the leftist fundamental transformation of America that he contemplated and wanted to keep it a secret from the public as long as possible.
Looking back, these quotes from Hororwitz leapt out at me with particular poignance and clarity. Now that we’ve experienced five and a half years of Obama’s destructive presidency, it’s possible to appreciate even better than before (and most people on this blog were well aware of Obama’s nature even in 2008) how excellent and important the fit is between Obama and Alinsky:
The Alinsky radical has a single principle – to take power from the Haves and give it to the Have-nots. What this amounts to in practice is a political nihilism – a destructive assault on the established order in the name of the “people” …the goal is power for the political vanguard who get to feel good about themselves in the process.
The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” In other words the cause – whether inner city blacks or women – is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution.
Guided by Alinsky principles, post-Communist radicals are not idealists but Machiavellians. Their focus is on means rather than ends, and therefore they are not bound by organizational orthodoxies in the way their admired Marxist forebears were. Within the framework of their revolutionary agenda, they are flexible and opportunistic and will say anything (and pretend to be anything) to get what they want, which is resources and power.
Unlike the Communists who identified their goal as a Soviet state – and thereby generated opposition to their schemes – Alinsky and his followers organize their power bases without naming the end game, without declaring a specific future they want to achieve – socialism, communism, a dictatorship of the proletariat, or anarchy. Without committing themselves to concrete principles or a specific future, they organize exclusively to build a power base which they can use to destroy the existing society and its economic system. By refusing to commit to principles or to identify their goal, they have been able to organize a coalition of all the elements of the left who were previously divided by disagreements over means and ends.
After Obama became a U.S. Senator, his wife, Michelle, told a reporter, “Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.”
Thus Alinsky begins his text by telling readers exactly what a radical is. He is not a reformer of the system but its would-be destroyer. In his own mind the radical is building his own kingdom, which to him is a kingdom of heaven on earth. Since a kingdom of heaven built by human beings is a fantasy – an impossible dream – the radical’s only real world efforts are those which are aimed at subverting the society he lives in. He is a nihilist…I am constantly asked how radicals could hate America and why they would want to destroy a society that compared to others is tolerant, inclusive and open, and treats all people with a dignity and respect that is the envy of the world. The answer to this question is that radicals are not comparing America to other real world societies. They are comparing America to the heaven on earth – the kingdom of social justice and freedom – they think they are building.
Conservatives think of war as a metaphor when applied to politics. For radicals, the war is real. That is why when partisans of the left go into battle, they set out to destroy their opponents by stigmatizing them as “racists,” “sexists,” “homophobes” and “Islamophobes.” It is also why they so often pretend to be what they are not (“liberals” for example) and rarely say what they mean. Deception for them is a military tactic in a war that is designed to eliminate the enemy.
The most basic principle of Alinsky’s advice to radicals is to lie to their opponents and disarm them by pretending to be moderates and liberals.
Alinsky’s advice can be summed up in the following way. Even though you are at war with the system, don’t confront it as an opposing army; join it and undermine it as a fifth column from within. To achieve this infiltration you must work inside the system for the time being. Alinsky spells out exactly what this means: “Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people.” In other words, it is first necessary to sell the people on change itself, the “audacity of hope,” and “yes we can.” You do this by proposing moderate changes which open the door to your radical agendas
No matter what Alinsky radicals say publicly or how moderate they appear, they are at war. This provides them with a great tactical advantage since other actors in the political arena are not at war.
There is no real parallelism in the war which radicals have declared. One side is fighting with a no-holds- barred, take-no-prisoners battle plan against the system, while the other is trying to enforce its rules of fairness and pluralism. This is the Achilles’ heel of democracies and all radical spears are aimed in its direction.
What makes radical politics a war is the existence of an enemy who must be eliminated. For Alinsky radicals, that enemy is the “Haves,” who “oppress” and rule the “Have-Nots.”
Lenin once said that the purpose of a political argument is not to refute your opponent “but to wipe him from the face of the earth.” The mission of Alinsky radicals is a mission of destruction.
In contrast to liberals, who in Alinsky’s eyes are constantly tripping over their principles, the rule for radicals is that the ends justify the means. This was true for the Jacobins, for the Communists, for the fascists and now for the post-Communist left. This is not because radicals begin by being unethical people. On the contrary, their passion for a future that is ethically perfect is what drives their political agendas and causes many to mistake them for idealists. But the very nature of this future – a world without poverty, without war, without racism, and without “sexism” – is so desirable, so noble, so perfect in contrast to everything that exists as to justify any and every means to achieve it.
Writes Alinsky: “The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem.” In other words, Alinsky’s radical is not going to worry about the legality or morality of his actions, only their practical effects. If they advance the cause they are justified. “He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.”
The end of Hororwitz’s article is, “What radicals like Saul Alinsky create is not salvation but chaos. And presidential disciples of Alinsky, what will they create?” Even back then it was a rhetorical question; Hororwitz knew the answer, although he did not yet know how successful Obama and his minions would be.
The feeling many Americans now have of having been duped by Obama is completely understandable. They were purposely and consciously duped. We who never bought into Obama in the first place, who regarded him even in 2008 as a leftist con man fooling Americans, don’t feel duped. But we feel horrified at the way it’s played out so far. Obama has run into speed bumps along the way, but how many Americans are still unaware of what they are dealing with except for a vague feeling of unease? And how many think what Obama’s been doing is just peachy keen because they agree about wanting to destroy this country and move it to the far left? There are way too many of both types: the fools and the knaves.
Horowitz has been an activist. I’ve been an activist, though not like him, but enough. We’ve played the game in the arena, he with the Leftists, me directly against them. We know.
The activist game is the only social political game there is.
The Right can win the activist game. Anyone can. Marxist-method activism is a method anyone can use to reify any cause in the competitive social political arena, not a fixed ideology. But the people of the Right must commit together, collectively, to play the activist game to win, all in, for real, first, always, and non-stop. Most of all, the people of the Right need to empower and rally around genuine activists as community organizing leaders.
Maybe it’s true that the Alinsky toolkit doesn’t work for the people of the Right like it does for the Left. That’s fine. Activism is a much bigger workshop with a lot more tools than just the Alinsky toolkit.
http://doingdemocracy.com/
Figure it out. Like Horowitz says, if war is politics by other means, then activism is politics as war by other means. The Founding Fathers won their new nation as activists. To save their creation, their descendants must be activists, too. Activism is the only way; it’s the only way there has ever been. It’s just competition, as always, now, then, and forever.
A major weakness of both McCain and Romney is that they failed to notice that they were at war. And in consequence they did not fight like they were at war, and they lost. I doubt either realizes to this day what happened to them, or why.
There was a black race riot in Rochester NY in 1968. The blacks went on a loony rampage in which they burned down about a 20 square block area in which most of the blacks resided. A chopper carrying several city officials including the police chief crashed into the flames, with all dead; it may have been shot down.
The city fathers, soft Repubs all, invited Alinsky in to fix “the community.” He was handsomely paid, and perhaps he did “fix” things. The city has never recovered. Xerox, founded there, moved out about 10yrs later. Rochester’s economic base is now the very diverse multiculti Univ. of Rochester. Kodak stayed, invented the digital camera, but has slowly gone fully belly-up, capsizing in slow motion.
Alinsky published “Rules” about 14 years before he was invited to organize Rochester. But the GOP Establishment greeted him as the city’s savior.
For those interested in Obama’s early political history and ideological development, I’d like to recommend Stanley Kurtz’s “Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.”
Aside from the usual biases of the mainstream media, I don’t understand why this book hasn’t received more attention. It was published in 2010, so there was plenty of time to talk about it before the 2012 elections.
In this post, Neo wrote briefly about the book:
http://neoneocon.com/2010/10/29/obama-the-radical-in-chief/
At one time I thought that leftists were simply confused. That their idea of a logical fallacy was “Ronald Reagan was not literally the reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse”.
Then I realized that those who thought like that wouldn’t survive long enough to learn to read and write. Hmm, something else afoot?
The flaw in that article is that Alinsky wasn’t particularly interested in Utopia: he was a sociopath who was fascinated by the gamesmanship in overturning existing power structures. RfR is filled with descriptions of all ideals, including left-wing ideals, as decoration that helps sell the movement, but nothing more.
Alinsky was well aware that when you took power from the Haves and gave it to the Have-Nots that the new Haves behaved just as badly. He didn’t care: his interest was only in finding clever ways to perform the change-up.
Given that the left attracts sociopaths in high concentrations, I wonder how many of them likewise care nothing for Utopia but only for power, not as a means to an end but as the end itself.
It’s hard to be a Democrat politician and not be conning some poor mark.
The characteristic emotion of the Leftist is hatred and rage. That’s why Leftists are always talking about hate and accusing their opponents of being haters. Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it. They believe they can create heaven on earth so any dishonesty or vciousness is permissible in pursuit of their utopian goal.
When an author dedicates a treatise to Lucifer… what else need be said?
He was the pied piper of cultural injuries.
Not surprisingly, his tune called forth the league of NPD.
&&&
BTW, there is no way that society can make the have-nots into the haves — given that the have-nots are of that status by dint of weak thinking, poor impulse control, lousy memory, and lack of consequential thinking.
One is reminded of 17th Century pirates who stole plenty — sometimes astounding amounts of booty — yet were broke in no time flat.
And of gold miners who blew away all of their assets — in short order — even if the amounts were staggering for their era.
And of the lotto winners — the fellows who win $50,000,000 and more — who manage to blow it all in less than five years. Losing the entire prize fund is actually the norm.
###
All of which points to Alinsky’s reality: it was destruct, destroy, ruin — all for his own vanity. RfR made Alinsky self-important. He had NPD, himself.
His whole life was a “look at me” project.
Not surprisingly, he also attracted the terminally jealous, a trait which dominates the extreme Left.
The single biggest misconception that people have about today’s Left which, as dicentra notes Horowitz unfortunately expresses here, is that it works to benefit Have Nots by taking from the Haves.
The Obamas, Clintons, John Kerry, Al Gore, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren are all worth tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars. They Have, if anyone does. Most Haves today, from the multi-millionaires on Wall Street and in Hollywood and D.C. to the tech billionaires in Palo Alto, are left-wing Democrats. None of them are using the system to take away from themselves to give to Have Nots. If anything, they’ve gamed the system not only to gain power but to greatly enrich themselves so as to firmly entrench their Have status.
It is more accurate to characterize the Left as the Haves and their functionaries taking away from those who Have a Little Something And Aspire to Earn More to give to Have Nots in order to control Have Not votes and loyalties.
Terrific blog post.
This also explains why everything Obama does is presented as “helping”, as “humane”, as “beneficial”, as “promoting peace”, etc.
E.g.,
– His health care plan
– Peace in the Middle East
– Cutting the defense budget
– Summarily opening up the southern border to assist all those needy unfortunates.
– The entire race issue
– “Hope and Change”
It’s his M.O.
File under: Caveat Emptor….
“The issue is never the issue”
That’s the money shot here. “Ra-a-a-cism” isn’t about race, “War on Women” isn’t about women, “Islamophobia” isn’t about Islam. They are all beards to demonize the opponent and gain political power.
“Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created. Because of human restlessness, mankind would grow rebellious under any utopian domination, and would break out once more in violent discontent–or else expire of boredom.”
Russell Kirk
A nation of Alinskyites elected an Alinsky. That is the awful truth.
Many commenters here believe the end is certain and America’s day is over. I don’t think we can know that, but there is a price we must pay and are paying. For example, the average income of families has been reduced by one third. Incredible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/business/the-typical-household-now-worth-a-third-less.html
A resurgence is possible, and the redoubtable Fernandez suggests it is. We can reform but not without suffering.
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/07/25/when-god-goes-fishing/
“The Alinsky Radical has a single … goal … the accumulation of power”.
What would they do with such power?
“The human race divides politically [and always has] into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” – Robert A. Heinlein
The Alinsky Radical seeks power to overthrow the social order, not to create a more perfect world (that’s for the rubes and useful idiots) but to create a world in which they have the power and everyone beneath them is properly deferential in thought, speech and actions.
“Some Men, Just Want To Watch The World Burn”.
People’s actions are motivated by their individual mixture of growth in understanding (learning), building things of worth or protection of the social order (patriotism, care of family & friends), which are all aspects of love… or greed, indolence (entitlement), egotism (lack of empathy) or power (dominance), which are all aspects of hate.
“The world is divided into two races – the decent and the indecent.” Victor Frankl
Chaos is a segue to authoritarianism. In the absence of sufficient force, the left will exploit chaos (e.g. anarchy) to establish an authoritarian monopoly. Contrast this to South Africa, where they used overwhelming force to slaughter several million native black and white Africans.
While Americans are vulnerable, they still have the home field advantage. They should probably stop aborting their progeny by the millions. Supposedly, Americans, in the majority are of a Judeo-Christian faith. If the principles of evolution are insufficient to convince them, God ordered us — for our own good — to be fruitful and multiply, and teach our children their parents’ religion (i.e. moral philosophy).
War: defined as winning matters more than anything else, any other moral principles, ordinary kindness or consideration, tradition, duty, honor, country…
God ordered us – for our own good – to be fruitful and multiply, and teach our children their parents’ religion (i.e. moral philosophy).
Unhhh. For our own good . . . moral philosophy. Unnhh.
“Anarchy never lasts long, being intolerable for everyone, and contrary to the ineluctable fact that some persons are more strong and more clever than their neighbors. To anarchy there succeeds tyranny or oligarchy, in which power is monopolized by a very few.”
Russell Kirk
“The Alinsky radical has a single principle — to take power from the Haves and give it to the Have-nots.”
Wrongo, wrongo! The purpose is to take it from the Haves and keep it for themselves, claiming loudly that they are using it for the Have-nots.
waitforit, 6:03 pm — “A nation of Alinskyites elected an Alinsky. That is the awful truth.”
Disagree. The nation that “elected an Alinsky” is composed of the very naive; the very low-information; the racially/ethnically/homosexually/gender-obsessed aggrieved; the very “cool ‘n’ hip” (in the sense that pee cee collectivism is cool ‘n’ hip whereas individualism is not, you know, the more-evolved sophisticates) — *and* Alinskyites, liberally [ahem] sprinkled in, inflaming those in the other four categories.
Posts here remind me of Glen Beck, he used to analyze
how Obama / Soros & Alinskyites would succeed in retaining power.
He would use the phrase “Top Down/Bottom Up” then he would say that there would be chaos at the highest levels, (foreign policy now, USA loss of prestige ) &
bottom up, (thousands streaming into US & being relocated to communities) these places will have their schools, hospitals, law enforcement stretched to the MAX & beyond. And the chaos so upsets
people that they are literally calling out for someone/anyone to restore stability.
Beck was always concerned that people would fall for & be duped into giving up their Rights by those who would promise elimination of chaos in exchange for power.
@ chuck, 2:26 pm:
“I doubt either realizes to this day what happened to them, or why.”
Maybe, maybe not. For many in the Republican establishment, “It is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
They would’ve preferred to win the election, but really, as long as they continued to receive their perks, what difference did it make?
@ dicentra, 3:51 pm:
“… I wonder how many of them likewise care nothing for Utopia but only for power, not as a means to an end but as the end itself.”
That would be the ultimate con, the ultimate lie, wouldn’t it? Convincing young radicals that you’d discovered a new method for achieving Utopia, while in actuality, you were only interested in the power and influence such standing gave you.
Maybe that was the lesson Alinsky learned from spending time with the Mob: have power and the privileges that come with it, but never appear to be the power. Always operate from the shadows, so you cannot be targeted.
@ M J R, 10:25 pm:
I agree.
If I thought America was composed of true-believing Alinskyites, there would be no point at all in fighting. America would be finished, no matter what we did.
Like in the Soviet Union, the mass of humanity is never devoted to the ideology. They just want peace and prosperity. They have eyes and ears…they can see at least most of what’s going on.
Which is why both GB and myself have been saying for a while that the problem is the voters. When TSHTF, they won’t like it very much. They will know who to blame.
For proof of that, see the response even from blue states about the border crisis.
The cracks are starting to show.
I read Rules for Radicals to find all the holes in Alinsky’s logic- I personally feel there are many.
For example this rule (http://beforeitsnews.com/mediadrop/uploads/2013/38/9c5bfb9f9ad93c8776723946740e216619c9f18e.png) can be trumped by the “truth in comedy” rule I have.
My idea is that a truthfully funny insight can trump some childish ridicule (I actually derive my “truth in comedy” rule from Del Close’s “Truth in Comedy” book as one of the rules in there is “the truth is funny” 😉 ).
Just something to think about all 🙂 I still enjoy reading your blog neo-neocon and it’s been at least a year or two 🙂
Shade and sweet water all 🙂
Matt_SE, 12:06 am — “[B]oth GB and myself have been saying for a while that the problem is the voters. When TSHTF, they won’t like it very much. They will know who to blame.”
I am not *at* *all* convinced they’ll “know who to blame”. Those who write history can be very creative when they wish [smile].
Anyway, I’m sure you’re very familiar with this quote, which I’m reproducing here for some who may be relatively new to this blog [I’m *sure* our landlord (neo) has cited it here]:
— — —
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
— H.L.Mencken, A Little Book in C major (1916)
Whatever you think about the LIVs of today, the fact is that most “common” people were always on the low-end of the informed crowd. You can get by on that as a political party for a while, but eventually reality intrudes.
And that’s the left’s problem: socialism doesn’t work. Feel-good-ism works right up until the voter gets hit in the pocketbook. Witness the outcry from even leftists over the individual mandate raising rates.
As far as who writes history, the LIVs won’t be reading it.
The only way the left can maintain control is if they have absolute control when TSHTF. But the left in America isn’t even close to that: military is still conservative, guns still in the hands of citizens, internet for info dissemination, etc.
I don’t see even LIVs crying out for some more socialism if things bad.
“As far as who writes history, the LIVs won’t be reading it.”
For the most part, true enough. But history will be filtered down via the popular culture, through the myths that inhere in the popular culture. For example, “we all know” Senator McCarthy was evil, that John Kerry was unfairly “swiftboated”, and so on. Will the Dinesh D’Souzas write history, or will the Michael Moores and Oliver Stones, the Jon Stewarts and the Bill Mahers write history — and will the LIVs get history filtered through a culture with D’Souza memes, or a culture with Michael Moore (etc.) memes?
Guess you can easily figure how I see future “history”, even though I like yours [or what I perceive as yours] much better.
Yup. And from Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckley to Anne Althouse and Walter Russell Mead, the best and the brightest voted for him.
And they’re all stupid dupes of a media conspiracy of silence. Oh, wait, nope. As an enlightened electorate the American people choose to do this to themselves.
Yup. And from Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckley to Anne Althouse and Walter Russell Mead, the best and the brightest voted for him.
They are mere shadows compared to the true geniuses and mad scientists out there.
I never liked the term LIV or Low information voter, since the way people used it made it seem like the reason people are the way they are, is because of ignorance, lack of information, or being conned.
Most people are under self deception, not external coercion. They aren’t being conned so much as they want to be conned. Or to put it another way, cons cannot work unless the mark wants it to work. The mark that thinks itself invulnerable, will also not bother to setup guarantees or securities.
We all know Nixon was guilty and we all know that Valerie Plame was the innocent targeted by Dark Lord Cheney. Or maybe we don’t all know this, and the Left finds that a problem equal to heresy or apostasy.
Slavery has been experimented with all along human history. Some forms of slavery were better and more efficient than the US Southern plantation setup. So while the Left’s version of slavery is better than many, it is still slavery. Just one where the slaves think they are free.
What makes the LEft’s poison extremely toxic is the level of self deception in it. It’s one thing where a cultist tells you that the Word is this way, because his leader told him it was so. That’s a clear and honest, if not particularly good or valid, recolonization of authority. Humans can function under this type of hierarchy. However, what people call their lib friends, their DemFrog relatives, or other “LIV” near them, behave in a significantly different way. They cast their judgment on Sarah Palin, not merely because they are following orders and are doing as they are told, but honestly they think they decided this for themselves and thus their opinion is better than your opinion if you like Sarah Palin.
That’s the self deception. That’s the evil. That’s the action that tips them over the brink, where people can no longer shield them with “well, they’re just being duped, they are harmless and innocent”.
They aren’t innocent. They will receive the FULL punishment decreed by Heaven and Earth. Everyone in the same city region, even if they disagree with the Leftists called LIVs, will also be punished. That’s what Collective Punishment is. It’s what equality brings. It is pure fairness. Yet it is neither Just nor Righteous.
If members of the Left merely supported, by passivity or proxy, the evils of the Left, then they might be able to claim that they were “following orders” and doing things they didn’t want. When they lash out at Republicans for being evil, and utilizing their own dependent judgment to do things to people not of the Left’s religion, that’s no longer “following authority”. That’s them doing their own evil shtick.
Look at all those pages of propaganda on Facebook. Ask the Leftist authors if the evil conspiracy of Hussein Alinskys made them do it or whether they decided to do it by themselves against the Enemy (You). Just ask them. See what they say.
MollyNH, that’s why people said Glenn Beck was crazy.
Because crazy people are actually rarer than the intellectual credentials of a Mead or Althouse or Reagan (Jr, not adopted one).
Y, Glen Beck also predicted the current establishment of a *caliphate* ! I recall the episode were he did this &
I recall the belittling it received from Chris Matthews & other Lefties. Even my currently Leftie son ( I am working on him) whines,” Mom Glen Beck never went to college ” To which I respond, “Good”, then you know you can trust him !” & “look how dumb you got going to college”!……Hmmm, Maybe I am being too confrontational?, LOL
reticent said: (July 26th, 2014 at 4:51 pm)
“The single biggest misconception that people have about today’s Left {…} is that it works to benefit Have Nots by taking from the Haves. {…} ”
= = = = = = = =
Not to mention that in the process of “taking away from the Haves and distributing to the Have-Nots” everybody in the “taking” apparatus gets to dip into that lovely, gushing stream of money. Over and over.
Very-damn-similar to what we’re hearing about so many “charitable foundations” –once executive salaries are paid, and costs for fundraising and office space and equipment get subtracted out– gee, there’s not a lot left over for those unfortunates that the “charitable” foundation was established to help.
= = = = = = = =
In USA 2.0, we have GOT to restrict FedGov from doling out money for ANYTHING, no matter how noble the purpose. Money, like offal, attracts nuisance-critters which feed on it and infest everything nearby.
Money handed out by individual states will of course create the same problem, BUT since the “infestation” is closer to the voters, they’ll have a better chance of keeping the processes under some sort of control.
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Some of us who knew in 2007 what was going to happen if Obama gained real political power continue to be mightily frustrated because we were dismissed as racists, conspiracy theorists, or neocons.
Cons work as the premise of the con is the greed of the mark. We see that with the Free Shit Army. They are greedy for someone else’s money and so the politicians’ con works on them, quite easily, I might add. Just look at how the old meme ‘The Republicans are the party of the rich’ has survived and it still going strong. Wall Street, bankers, CEO’s, and old money (to name a few) are predominately Dem donors, and large ones at that. But the ‘the Republicans are the party of the rich’ meme still lives and is readily believed.
The marks (the FSA) want to be conned, as they believe the con to be true, until the EBT card doesn’t get refilled on the first of the month. And even once our financial house of cards collapses and those EBT cards do not get refilled, the marks are still going to blame the Republicans for their misery, because Republicans are mean. That many Republicans believe in the Laws of Economics matters not one whit. Unicorns and Skittles works for the FSA.
So what will we do about him?
“Hmmm, Maybe I am being too confrontational?, LOL”
If I was working on him, he might get psychologically traumatized. So keep it up.
He would use the phrase “Top Down/Bottom Up”
It’s “Top down, bottom up, inside-out,” and it comes from Van Jones, not Glenn Beck, who is merely quoting Jones and his fellow radicals.
I am not *at* *all* convinced they’ll “know who to blame”.
I keep hearing about how when it all comes crashing down, the scales will fall from people’s eyes and our folly will be recognized for what it was.
But if you can’t see what’s happening now, total economic collapse won’t wake you up. Most people will revert to blaming those they blame now: the rich, the politicians, the Tea Party, the GOP, the immigrants, etc.
In third-world countries and during times of chaos, fantastic tales and urban legends rule the day: how long did it take for “there are corpses piled up like cordwood in the Super Dome” to travel ’round the world while the truth’s alarm clock hadn’t even gone off?
Nope. It won’t be clear at all to the LIVs what happened, only that their lives totally suck now and someone’s gotta fix it.
But the left in America isn’t even close to that: military is still conservative, guns still in the hands of citizens, internet for info dissemination, etc.
(1) The higher-ups in the military have been swapped out during the Omimistration for people more sympathetic to the Left. Big Brass is primarily a political thing, after all, and not the meritocracy we’d like. Furthermore, there has been heavy recruitment from gangs (including Latino gangs) who want citizenship or just the chance to blow stuff up. The military is not what it was, and neither is law enforcement: http://www.steynonline.com/6487/holiday-memories-youll-cherish-forever
(2) The guns are also in the hands of all the gangstas streaming over the border. Machine guns. Fast-and-furious arms. They’re more ruthless and wicked than Joe Second Amendment and are organizing in anticipation of the Great Collapse. In many areas, the populace will be surrounded and out-gunned before the dust settles.
I don’t see even LIVs crying out for some more socialism if things [go] bad.
They will cry out for ORDER and will embrace the first charming sociopath who offers it. History has shown this to be what follows chaos Every. Single. Time. We think that because we’re America it won’t happen to us but perhaps you’ve noticed that we’re not exactly The Greatest Generation here. The influx of immigrants has been meant to change the mentality of the populace, and Latinos are exceptionally vulnerable to the “follow me and I’ll feed you” temptation. That’s how Ché¡vez and Castro got their power; that’s how our future dictator will do the same.
internet for info dissemination
(3) Assuming that the electricity is on. Assuming that those who control the Enormous Internet Routers (the telecoms) won’t be forced (or “forced”) to shut off or throttle down traffic, especially from sites the gubmint considers dangerous. Guess who that will be?
Even if there’s good info dissemination, there will be a tsunami of misinformation and disinformation and other shenanigans that we already see on the ‘tubez.
We’re in much more trouble than you think; the worst thing you can do is dismiss Worst-Case Scenarios or think It Can’t Happen Here.
It very much can, and frankly, we deserve it. We let the Left do its slow march through the institutions and were too polite to call them on it, too cowed by being called “prudes,” too willing to take the “high road” instead of getting into the sewers where the rats multiplied and bred.
Neo’s essays on the evils of pacifism strike a chord: evil has prospered because the good people were too busy raising kids and running businesses to curb-stomp the enemies of liberty.
They cast their judgment on Sarah Palin, not merely because they are following orders and are doing as they are told, but honestly they think they decided this for themselves
The “authority” in this case is Jon Stewart, who is emblematic of the whole effort to establish what’s cool and what’s beyond the pale. It’s the same dynamic as the popular kids vs. the losers in Jr. High: everyone hastens to avoid being the loser because the mockery is too painful to bear.
Even as adults, few people can endure the ridicule of “the popular kids” in the media and politics, so they “logically” align their thinking to win the favor of the kewl kids and dodge their disdain.
The path of least resistance wins over most people most of the time. This is an unimpeachable law of human society.
In order to become truly strong, several benchmarks must be met.
1. Overcoming the fear of dying alone
2. Overcoming the need or desire for safety in groups, obedience to authority
3. Strengthening and changing the self, vs clamoring for charity or free stuff.
Seems pretty simple, yet 97% of humanity isn’t qualified.
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Y, My mom was excellent at instilling independent thought in her kids. Her favorite *dig* was to call you a sap or a sucker if you went with the herd against your self interests. “They re laughing at you behind your back”, worked wonders even though she had no way of knowing if that was actually happening !
We were served large helpings of “Think for yourself”
She hated politicians of every stripe usually remarking
“let em pay me 20 bucks if they want my vote “!!!