Obama and leadership
For a long time, people said one of the problems with Obama was that he wasn’t a leader.
But he is. The thing is, those people who said that were thinking about a different sort of leadership than he offers.
Imagine if a deal like the one just negotiated with Iran had been announced as Obama’s goal in 2008. That is, not a vague “I want to negotiate a deal with Iran to stop them from getting nuclear weapons.” That wouldn’t have stirred any controversy. No, I mean one exactly like the one announced the other day, with all its provisions.
What would have been the reactions, before Obama had prepared us for it? Even some Democrats would probably have been shocked, and denounced it (as long as they didn’t know it came from him, that is). It was too extreme, the capitulation too obvious.
Or had Obama announced his intentions to refuse to defend DOMA, which had been passed by Congress in 1996, would as many people have accepted that, back in 2008 when he was first running? Same for his executive amnesty for large groups of illegal immigrants. Or any number of other things Obama has done.
But now? People (I don’t mean leftists, who would have always approved, but what I call “garden-variety liberals”) have gotten used to all these things, and that’s a reflection of his leadership. His is a slowly-boiling-frog sort of leadership. Step by step, he has accustomed Americans to overbearing executive power, to ignoring the law when a president wants to, to undermining America’s strength in the world. He’s done it through charm (a charm completely elusive to me, but apparently it exists and is powerful), through rhetoric, through a series of strawmen, though accusations at the opposition, through audacious challenges, through threats to those who would oppose him even in his party or in the MSM.
Obama is a very, very bold guy, with a very very strong sense of his own power and abilities. He conveys that to people—and to some he is a leader they have no problem following.
As has been said, Nixon never conceived of what Obama has done.
“Obama is a very, very bold guy, with a very very strong sense of his own power and abilities. He conveys that to people–and to some he is a leader they have no problem following.”
Kinda like a sociopath – no?
His charm eludes me as well. Maybe that is why his accomplishments surprise so many conservatives. If you are immune to whatever his fans see in him, you just can’t imagine that he will succeed in as many things as he does. There are plenty of people I disagree with but whose appeal I understand. Not his. The guy is a dull, colorless ideologue. To me, that is.
Study NLP if you don’t understand his charm aura.
It’s not that surprising considering he is almost completely unopposed. The institutional republican party is unwilling or unable to mount any real opposition — obamacare the exception. Now that they control the house and senate they seem unable to even set up simple up or down votes on Obama policy. And save for talk radio and you and other bloggers, where will you hear any real sustained criticism? There is not even much real discussion.
So yeah, he’s leading and many are following, but he has a clear path with few obstacles. And most importantly, he’s willing to lie.
The key is that the MSM follows him slavishly. A Republican doing the same things would have been ripped to shreds daily and his credibility ruined among the entire public.
JohnOh, 4:37 pm — “The institutional republican party is unwilling or unable to mount any real opposition – obamacare the exception.”
No comprendo.
Last I checked, obamacare is healthy and all “the institutional republican party” has managed to muster has been to talk a good game — some of ’em, anyway. Immediately preceding election season, anyway.
Also last I checked, Congress retains the power of the purse, should it, in its sublime inertia, startle us and elect to exercise that power in a meaningful and consequential manner.
Phooey.
Democrat ideological commitment that far exceeds loyalty to America, Republican collaboration, an MSM that has fully embraced the left’s ideology, justifying the means by the imagined end sought and a thoroughly indoctrinated public, compose the major factors in Obama’s charisma.
The key to Obama is deception, both his use of it through blatant lies as well as the self-deception of everyone who gave him a pass. People who voted for him saw what they wanted to see, a charming black man, nonthreatening, a man who promised to end the Iraq war, and an apparent good family man in a sea of black family disintegration. That he could get a former Objectivist like Ann Althouse and Ronald Reagan’s speech writer, Peggy Noonan, to vote for him is proof of his power of deception, and of their self-delusion.
People had to deceive themselves because the evidence was there from the beginning. He told us of his drug use, his radical lineage, his years sitting in the pew listening to hate America sermons, his radical leftist friends like Bill Ayers, and his mentor for 10 years, Frank Marshall Davis, a card carrying Communist. Hard core leftists didn’t elect Obama twice by themselves. It was a self-delusional public that put this evil man in office.
His leadership consists in being the void at the center of a directionless mass of unhappy people willing to believe anything.
JohnOh, 4:37 pm — “Now that they control the house and senate they seem unable to even set up simple up or down votes on Obama policy.”
*** JohnOh, my apology! ***
I was so taken aback by the sentence immediately preceding this one [“The institutional republican party is unwilling or unable to mount any real opposition – obamacare the exception”], that I immediately set about composing the response above.
*Then* I resumed reading your comment, and it is evident that we were on the same general page, heading in the same general direction.
Carry on . . . [ smile ] . . .
Like you Neo I have always found Obama unlikable and narcissistic. He is thin-skinned and appears drunk on – well, himself. But yes, he is apparently effective as a leader since people will not oppose him when they should.
I was hoping that the majority Republican congress would do more than they have. I will keep hoping but he has a manner that takes for granted that people will do his bidding. Not that this should matter but apparently it does.
Very insightful Neo.
He just ignores the critics and basks in his victories.
He NEVER loses or gets denounced.
How about his claims and pathetic lobbying of the Supreme Court on the ACA? He was going on like it was a slam dunk. If John Roberts and Tony Kennedy would not have tortured the language, Barack loses 5-4.
Of O’s leadership qualities, it seems to me the slowly boiling frog metaphor is better applied to the polity. Is it not the people who are the frogs, having acclimated themselves to ever higher temperatures of government insinuations into their lives? More likely it is not any special acumen on O’s part but merely the right man — not especially the brilliant man but the motivated force — at the right, opportune, time — a devitalized, enervated, degenerate polity.
Ymarsakar:
I have studied NLP, and I was aware of that lengthy piece on Obama and NLP when it was first written. I don’t see how people can’t see past that sort of thing.
George Pal:
Yes, I meant it’s the people who are the frogs. He is a leader who uses the slowly-boiling-frog technique to accustom people to his style of “leadership.”
Yeah, I agree with George Pal. Its pretty easy to be seen as a leader if you have a fawning press covering for you and a public thats more concerned with whether or not Adam and Steve will be hassled by a Christian baker or will the quality of their marijuana will diminish now that its leagal. Other thna that, there’s very little leadership here outside of the community organizing type polarizing.
Lets face it: This is the decline of America. Im not a religious person but there’s an evil here and it isnt Obama. He’s just an un-witting agent of it. (Although, for sure he imagines himself far more than that Im sure).
You asked what would happened if Obama had announced his intention to make this deal early in his term would this had fly? No, but a decade earlier Obama would never had been elected either. The time just happened to be right. Obama, like Hitler, is just an accident of a series of perfect mishaps in history rather than some genius leader and we’re all going to pay for it.
Very early on in 2008, before anything was really known about Obama, a friend of mine — who works in television, and was assigned to the John McCain’s plane — asked me who I favored in the race. Just to be original — and because he’s black, as my friend is black, I answered “Obama.”
My friend said, “I know someone on his plane, and he says Obama is the single most arrogant jerk of a politician he’s ever met.”
He said Obama never had conversations with the reporters on his plane, never hung out and joked with them as McCain did. He said he really liked McCain. I asked if he would vote for him and he replied, “I could never vote for a Republican.”
I found this inside information intriguing, and began paying more attention. When I discovered that 1) Obama’s college grades and SATs were sealed, and 2) that he was a friend of Bill Ayers, who I remembered well from Weatherman and thoroughly despise…. well, that was the end of any Obama “boomlet” for me.
Then came Reverend Wright.
Meanwhile, my black friend became inordinately obsessed with the inadequacy of Sarah Palin. This became his excuse. He didn’t want to hear ANYTHING about Bill Ayers or why could we not view Obama’s grades (after all the intense interest there’d been in those of Bush).
Other friends were caught up in the idea of a black president and how healing this would be for American blacks. The “cult of personality” aspects of his campaign they found easy to ignore. My best longtime friend insisted that Obama was a moderate.
None of this has ever improved. I don’t discuss anything that’s in the news with any of these people, ever, and have not for years.
The boychild makes me hope there is an afterlife with a heaven and a hell. Eternal torment would be his just deserves. However, I am an agnostic so I will go back to dust and ashes happy to know my children and grandchildren will be able to piss on his grave. It will be my dying wish.
Some other reasons we just give up: 1) the Republicans do nothing; 2) The other Democrat leaders have absolutely NO scruples–the end justified the means. Why bother getting upset when nothing will be done anyhow?
It is a bit unsettling to me, and to my daughter — whom I have shared many a political discussion with — to see how things are going, now that we know that we cannot depend upon anyone in the Establishment Party to see to our concerns, our interests, and even in our personal safety. That poor woman in San Francisco, and now the military personnel at a recruiting office in Chattanooga … really, there is some kind of limit being reached The lady-boy in the White House doesn’t give a sh*t for our safety, neither do the other well-protected members of the Establishment Party. There is a limit being reached, and very soon, I am afraid.
Adding to your list of how he did it: because he’s black. He wouldn’t have been tolerated or gotten elected or into Harvard or been promoted along, for anything else if he was not. He was a lazy, average student, he’s generally ignorant of history and almost everything else, including the law, and he’s the laziest person to ever occupy the office. He’d be held to a higher standard if he were a different race.
The rest of the things you describe are artifacts – bullshit he gets away with because he’s a protected class and has been since he came on the scene. Always Above any criticism because it was politically incorrect or for fear of being labeled a racist.
If the NLP (hypnosis) thing is true, then the next Democrat will have to employ it or suffer some decline in support. Also, it makes Obama even creepier. Where does one come across such puerile, sociopathic crap? In a pick-up artist book from a bookstore near the airport?
this is horrific beyond words and the masses still don’t wake up! Keep up the good fight!
How does the mesmerist emerge from the man who can’t pronounce ‘corpsman’? Do his hypnotic pauses and hand gestures appear as stage directions on the teleprompter?
He is effective… or at least an effective front man, but Obama did not accomplish on his own. There was obviously an agenda and plenty of fellow travelers either already in the federal bureaucracies or quickly placed in them. (Remember all the czars?)
Either we are living with the organic results of a century of progressive thought or there is a more deliberate strategy at work.
if it cheers anyone up at all; I’ve been rereading The Forgotten Man and I guess my take away is it has been this bad before. Reads very similar to the Obama years… in the bad ways. Its been this bad before and we made our way back. We can do it again… IMO.
starlord Says: 7:28 pm
“Adding to your list of how he did it: because he’s black.”
Agreed. If I were to make a list of Obama’s leadership qualities which make him successful it would begin thus:
1. He’s black.
2. He’s black.
3. He’s black.
4. He’s black.
5. He’s black.
Beyond that I’d say that he is a consummate liar who almost always claims that he is doing the exact opposite of what he is really doing. The Iranian nuclear “deal” is just the most recent example of that tactic. He claims he is trying to prevent Iran from getting the atom bomb when he is actually facilitating their quest for the bomb.
I call BS. Democrats will support any Democrat –no matter how flawed, how corrupt, how criminal, how nasty, how stupid. They will elect Alcee Hastings, Ted Kennedy, the Memphis Fords, Hillary Clinton, Marion Barry.
They will support the Milwaukee prosecutor, Al Sharpton, Gov Moonbeam, Reid, Pelosi, Harry Byrd.
There isn’t anything that BOzo could do that they would choose to abandon him. Nothing. Not even raping babies, taking payoffs from Putin or Iranians, or cannibalism.
As Bill Clinton so famously pointed out to his cabinet, to do otherwise would help the Republicans. And that is the absolute worst of all possible sins.
Name someone Democrat voters have not supported. They have, on very rare occasions, defeated someone in a primary because the replacement is a D. Even that is extremely rare. But they never abandon a crook as long as he or she is a D. Never.
I remain unimpressed.
Obama is a liar, who is simply never opposed. If we purged the Republican leadership, suddenly and quite mysteriously, Obama would stop winning.
I think that falls under the category of “waaaay too much credit” for the petulant narcissistic child.
He can’t tie his shoes w/o a teleprompter… he has been a puppet of the Chicago machine from the very beginning- being told what to say, when … he revels in the idolatry of idiots … but has never actually done anything but read the teleprompter and sign where they tell him … old Valerie from Iran, being one of the ‘they.’
The notion of jugears as ‘leader’ is stretching the concept beyond its limits. “figurehead/puppet,” I think, is about as ‘good’ as he could deserve.
I don’t see how people can’t see past that sort of thing.
You’d have to be a user of it to understand how it works. Merely abstract knowledge, is not enough.
In a pick-up artist book from a bookstore near the airport?
Neural Linguistic Programming, from my research, was resurrected and made famous by people who reverse engineered human dating and mating habits. But that’s not where the core knowledge and R/D came from. The core came from a hybridization between Chomsky’s Linguistics, the Power of Language results, and the Leftist sexual programming with Stockholm syndrome induced from violence, that came from various human experimentation such as Patrician Hearst or Jim Jones mass suicide and execution of children.
NLP is the most efficient, least violent, and mass producible version of the research the Leftist alliance did when they were still the WMDs of the Soviet Union.
Obama is now my Daddy.
Superficially a positive story ….
It took this site’s writer and readers how long to resolve the Fool v. Knave debate?
Now it’s sooo very obvious, when it is too late to make any difference, short of armed revolution.
It is a very pathological virus that has infected the Supremes, paralyzed the nominal legislative opposition, and caused suppression of defensive instincts that allowed installation of black racists like Holder, Jeh (“My momma couldn’t spell”) Johnson, Lynch, and white corruptocrats like Geithner and Koskinen.
NLP has been around and discussed and disseminated/taught for a while now … hasn’t exactly taken the world over. Just another New Age thing really.
I one wants to ascribe special convincing powers to Obama then what about FDR… re-elected 4 times.
Occam’s razor: the voters are to blame. Stupid is a stupid does ….
Hussein is a tyrant, but not the worst tyrant the Left has in their arsenal. The difference between a tyrant and someone like a fool or incomptent king, is that the tyrant doesn’t listen to you or care about you, and to carry his plans out, he actively crushes factions against him. The fool also doesn’t listen to people, but the fool gets crushed by the people around him as a result.
When Hussein ordered the IRS and ATF and NSA and other fed gov branches to crush his resistors, it was clear what category of leader he became.
As for Lincoln being called a tyrant by Demoncrats, understand where it comes from. General Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest didn’t spread that propaganda or think in such ways, since if Lincoln is a tyrant, then that would be the same for all Democrat slave owners too. And if Lincoln was assassinated because he was a tyrant… why didn’t Sherman kill all the Confed generals and politicians and land owners who refused to serve in the war? There would never have been a KKK insurgency afterwards, if that had been done, nor would JIm Crow have been imposed on the South by Demoncrat traitors. Lincoln was foolish for trusting Democrats, North or South, and thus they crushed him in the end and broke the Reconstruction, winning it for Jim Crow and Southern Democrat totalitarian slave control. Lincoln the Tyrant would have killed all of the Southern leaders, every single family clan, and most of the ones who thought Lincoln a Tyrant, would be buried in the ground. Just as Hussein is planning to do and already has.
then the next Democrat will have to employ it or suffer some decline in support.
Once Neural Linguistics have been programmed, triggering it can be done by anyone or anything. Once a person has been raped or indoctrinated into Leftist critical race theory, merely mentioning Republicans will trigger evil thoughts and reactions. Merely mentioning the weakness of women, will trigger the trauma. NLP merely takes that to the next level, by creating artificial emotions and events. What do you think the rape indoctrination at campuses are for? It is NLP, it programs memories, emotions, and events that… never happened, but still trigger extremely strong and traumatic emotions.
What do people think were using in the colleges… education? It’s indoctrination, but you don’t actually know what that means… until you do.
Lincoln the Tyrant would have killed all of the Southern leaders, every single family clan, and most of the ones who thought Lincoln a Tyrant, would be buried in the ground. Just as Hussein is planning to do and already has.
Obama/Hussein as you call him, is planning mass execution and “already has”? My God, you are so extreme and bonkers I’m surprised that you haven’t self-destructed by now.
And Neoneocon treats you with respect? I’ve had it with this site even as I agree with many of the articles and positions taken here. If this is the company one must endure, it is not worth it.
Other, much more rational venues are available. You have lost it Neo.
Occam’s razor: the voters are to blame. Stupid is a stupid does
Are you now claiming that voters can’t be brainwashed, that mere stupidity is enough?
Stupid people are harder to con and manipulate. The smart people with no spines, are easy to manipulate and get into a cult.
For those that are allies of the Left but think they are somehow humanitarian true libertarians:
How many people died due to Fast and Furious?
How many people died in Syria due to Hussein?
How many people died in Benghazi due to Hussein’s orders to stand down?
How many people died in Libya due to Hussein’s war?
How many people died due to police SWAT raids on the wrong house and on conservatives?
How many people died in cities that were under Democrat control, when they wanted to clean house and intimidate voters?
The list keeps going on, but when you get a blank face in reaction to that, then realize this. You’re talking to a Leftist, not an ally.
Frog:
You write:
I can’t speak for every commenter here. But I know that in a post written about 6 years ago, on July 13, 2009, I wrote the following:
So that’s how long it took me to resolve it in favor of “knave”: about 6 months after Obama first took office. And I’m not at all sure I didn’t think he was a knave even earlier than that, since I wrote the following in October of 2008, about a month before Obama’s election:
Sounds as though even before his election I was seeing many many signs that the answer would be “knave.”
There was a big discussion about knave vs. fool in the comments section of this post from April of 2010 where lots of commenters agreed it’s “knave” for Obama. My own comment there said this:
Obama/Hussein as you call him, is planning mass execution and “already has”? My God, you are so extreme and bonkers I’m surprised that you haven’t self-destructed by now.
Larry Grathwohl on Ayers’ plan for American re-education camps and the need to kill millions
You should already know about that by now ….
It’s not the man or not just the man. It’s the social activist movement and can only and must be countered with a social activist movement.
Mike Roark said:
“’Obama is a very, very bold guy, with a very very strong sense of his own power and abilities. He conveys that to people–and to some he is a leader they have no problem following.’
Kinda like a sociopath — no?”
Bingo. He’s not a leader. He’s a manipulator. Think if his interview with George Stephanopolous. Obama was insisting his individual mandate, not a tax. Stephanopolous finally pulled out a dictionary thinking he could corner this snake with a definition of tax. Obama responded with “You’re reaching George, you’re reaching.” And Stephanopolous sat there with his deer-in-the-headlights look and let it slide.
Basically, Obama challenged Stephanopolous with the question, “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying dictionary?” The left has decided to believe their messiah over their lying dictionaries, eyes, ears and memories.
Which is the point of gaslighting. Obama is a leader the same way Charles Manson was a leader. And hopefully, like Manson, Obama’s visit to the federal prison at El Reno, OK, won’t be his last to such a facility.
To my mind, NLP is — at this point — EMBEDDED in Barry Soetoro’s personality.
Restated, he’s a COMPULSIVE ‘brain washer.’
No small amount of Magical Thinking is also embedded in his psyche.
As I’ve previously posted: Barry is Isaac Asimov’s MULE.
See the Foundation Trilogy, second book.
For those in this modern time wondering how in H#$% any German could lap up Adolf’s spew —
Barry is your answer.
( Adolf was plainly the template for Asimov’s Mule character. )
What do
Adolf Hitler,
Napoleon Bonaparte,
Josef Stalin,
Saddam Hussein
Barry Soetoro
ALL have in common?
Truly terrible childhoods — with either father abandonment/ hyper dominant maternal up bringing ( Napoleon, Saddam, Barry) or violent paternal abuse — sometimes to the point of hospitalization/ near death. ( Hitler, Stalin, Saddam )
Name changing (strictly for political purposes)
Stalin
Napoleon
Barry
Repression of all childhood history
Stalin
Barry
Special religious schooling
Stalin
Barry
Napoleon
Aculturated to alien norms by politically radical mother
Barry
Totting up the damage: we have the worst of the worst — the most psychologically damaged soul — sitting in the Oval Office.
Not one of the other nightmare tyrants actively hated his own country.
Barry is as paranoid as any of the above — demanding and getting Secret Service protection all the way back in 2007 — before he was even remotely a viable candidate.
And, of course, and without doubt, Barry is an atheist — having no room in his psyche to worship anyone but his reflection.
Until military fiascos, not one of these players ever backed away from radical economics, radical politics.
Not one of them had/has a self-limiting personality.
I have little doubt that further study will reveal yet other commonalities.
Still the same disconnect by commenters.
Again, there is good enough observation and appreciation of Left activism as the driving destructive, creative force, yet when the discussion turns to solution, instead of calling for the obvious logical match of Right activism to counter Left activism, the discussion is directed to electoral politics and the call is for Republicans to take on the tasks that belong primarily to Right activists.
Activism’s broader social cultural/political scope subsumes electoral politics. Electoral politics are within the context of activism.
Republicans can do their part following Right activists doing their part – the same as Democrats have done their part following the Left’s lead on the stage set by Left activists.
The Democrats did not lead the cultural revolution and by the same token, Republicans can not lead the counter-revolution.
Republicans cannot counter the Left. Only the Right can counter the Left. Republicans can counter Democrats once Right activists have defeated Left activists and seized control of the zeitgeist.
It’s pointless to blame Republicans for not doing what rightfully belongs to the Right to do. Be activist to make a difference.
I agree quite a bit with The Other Chuck: some of the wild speculation is far enough out there, yet presented as, well, just obvious… that it bends discourse into the realm of the irrational.
There’s no point in arguing with someone who’s the equivalent of a jailhouse lawyer.
People are desperate these days. It’ll be too bad if this site gets tarnished by too much input by manic crackpots.
“It’ll be too bad if this site gets tarnished by too much input by manic crackpots.”
Personally, I think Neo is doing a good job. I don’t understand exactly what Ymarsakar is saying about Lincoln and the Southern generals, but so what?
The only thing I’d change about this site is that it doesn’t allow corrections once something is posted. For people like me who are not very good at proofreading before posting that can be a problem since I often see my mistakes after they are already posted permanently. I’m sure errors in my posts sometimes leave people scratching their heads wondering exactly what I mean.
miklos000rosza said:
“I agree quite a bit with The Other Chuck: some of the wild speculation is far enough out there, yet presented as, well, just obvious… that it bends discourse into the realm of the irrational.”
What wild speculation are you and The Other Chuck referring to?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/24/us-contacted-irans-ayatollah-before-election/?feat=home_cube_position1
“Prior to this month’s disputed presidential election in Iran, the Obama administration sent a letter to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for an improvement in relations, according to interviews and the leader himself.
…An Iranian with knowledge of the overture, however, told The Washington Times that the letter was sent between May 4 and May 10 and laid out the prospect of “cooperation in regional and bilateral relations” and a resolution of the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program…”
This is a friendship treaty with a criminal, terrorist regime. Not an arms control agreement.
There is nothing speculative about that fact. I think one thing that you are missing is that this entire agreement is based upon one precondition. That the US recognize the legitimacy of the Iranian Mullahocracy. That the US will not pursue nor permit regime change.
Hagel’s confirmation hearing was instructive.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/chuck-hagel-stumbles-on-iran-question-87001.html
“…I support the president’s strong position on containment, as I have said,” the former Republican senator from Nebraska told the Senate Armed Services Committee considering his nomination for Defense secretary…
…’As you know, our policy is prevention, not containment,’ Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Fox News on Tuesday. “We have, through the hard work we’ve undertaken with the international community, imposed the toughest set of sanctions – international and bilateral – on any country.’
…But even that was not clear enough. Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) stepped in to clarify further.
‘We do have a position on containment, and that is we do not favor containment,’ Levin said. ‘I just wanted to clarify the clarify.’
…In addressing Iran, Hagel said that the country was ‘a member of the United Nations. Almost all of our allies have embassies in Iran … [It is] an elected, legitimate government, whether we agree or not.'”
The unsophisticated Hagel committed a classic political gaffe. He spoke the truth. This administration has never had as its goal preventing the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons. Rather, its goal was to legitimize this criminal regime.
Is this hard to understand?
Here’s my take on the Obama NLP thing: I think it’s ridiculous–but I can see why it persists (and the reasons, they are not good ones). http://politicalomnivore.blogspot.com/2015/07/an-explanation-for-obama.html
it has come to this: NLP and Lizard people …
The Praetorian guard would swoop in regularly when it got too ridiculous …
As to Carthage and its child sacrifices to Moloch …
One thing is certain: We can no longer view ourselves as smarter or better than the German people in the 1930s. We even had their example to learn from, and it has availed us nothing.
it has come to this: NLP and Lizard people …
Here, watch Ben Shapiro trying hard to remain rational:
TUR THREATENS TO SEND BREITBART’S BEN SHAPIRO HOME IN AN AMBULANCE DURING JENNER DISCUSSION
We can no longer view ourselves as smarter or better than the German people in the 1930s.
it has come to this: NLP and Lizard people …
Amusing photograph of the Queen of England doing the Nazi salute.
We can no longer view ourselves as smarter or better than the German people in the 1930s.
No.
It’s something, but it’s not leadership. Simply stated, leaders bring people together in furtherance of a common goal. Obama is divisive in the extreme.
Obama is imbued with the knowledge that his particular fawning minions and the MSM will never desert him, and these are also the people with whom he surrounds himself. This increases his imperviousness to criticism, freeing him up to be as cocky as he likes, which he likes it a lot. Whatever that is cannot be called leadership.
POTUS: Big job. Small man.
That reminds me, the Left called people crackpots for saying that Vietnam would end up in a slaughter if Communists won. They also said something similar about what would happen in Iraq after the US left.
The crackpot theory is a rationalization humans and tools of the Left utilize to justify their lack of guilt and their participation in human atrocities.
@ rickl Says:
July 18th, 2015 at 10:22 am
One thing is certain: We can no longer view ourselves as smarter or better than the German people in the 1930s. We even had their example to learn from, and it has availed us nothing.
You summed it up exactly.
To weaklings like Rosa that can only speak up here if he has a vanguard leader to hide behind, arguing is pointless.
To people like me, arguing is pointless because the Leftist alliance will make you believe, by putting their boot on your head. It doesn’t matter if people refuse to believe me. If I am correct, you will be made to comply with the Left, regardless of what you think about agreeing or disagreeing here. I won’t be issuing threats, although there’s nothing against that either, but the Left will carry through with their threats if you step out of line, boyos.
To people who can predict and see the future or merely the true reality of things as they stand now, who are strong enough to see cruelty for cruelty, evil as evil, war as war, consensus is meaningless. Agreement is meaningless. Independent people have no need to make people agree. Other people are going to be experiencing Leftist FGM and castration in the future. So it is not my duty to do something about that, it is their duty. If they wish to abdicate their duty to their own families by refusing to see evil as evil, well, I’ll still be here watching humanity die. Aren’t we all going to be doing that pretty soon.
Besides, when the Left starts producing mass rape camps for America… are the words being issued here going to stop it? Will mere words be enough to challenge the Left’s Authority, Wealth, and Violence? The 3 forms of power needed to rule.
The Otrher Chuck
That sums up people like you as well, you know.
German people in the 1930s
Here’s my take on the Obama NLP thing: I think it’s ridiculous
Here’s a list of other people that were called ridiculous by the incompetent.
The difference is stark. You can’t do it, just like the scientists back then couldn’t understand the science of the frontier pushers. Because they didn’t understand it, they rejected it, even though they could have merely repeated the experiments and listened. But they were too incompetent to even do that.
http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html
George S. Ohm (Ohm’s Law)
Ohm’s initial publication was met with ridicule and dismissal; called “a tissue of naked fantasy.” Approx. twenty years passed before scientists began to recognize its great importance. See M. Schagrin, “Resistance to Ohm’s Law,” American Journal of Physics, #31 pp536-547 1963.
Ohm’s Law is something engineering students may be familiar with. Why was he treated with ridicule and dismissal, even if we presume that it was a minority? Because incompetents don’t actually understand how science works, so they think it’s aliens or something fantastical.
Most people’s opinions are like crabs in a bucket. They don’t actually produce anything useful. The Wright Brothers’ flight experimentation is praised now, but back then, Americans chased them to Europe and got rid of them, because they refused to see the evidence before their eyes.
In every era of human history, there are explorers and scientists that push the boundaries, and in return society reacts with hostility and scorn. Once the discoveries are considered beneficial or useful, profitable, then society does a 180 and then suddenly decides that the Wright Brothers were heroes or some kind of ideal human.
While it’s true that at least 99% of revolutionary announcements from the fringes of science are just as bogus as they seem, we cannot dismiss every one of them without investigation. If we do, then we’ll certainly take our place among the ranks of scoffers who accidentally helped delay numbers of major scientific discoveries throughout history. Beware, for many discoveries such as powered flight and drifting continents today only appear sane and acceptable because we have such powerful hindsight. These same advancements were seen as obviously a bunch of disgusting lunatic garbage during the years they were first discovered.
In science, pursuing revolutionary advancements can be like searching for diamonds hidden in sewage. It’s a shame that the realms of questionable ideas contain “diamonds” of great value. This makes the of judging crazy theories far more difficult. If crazy discoveries were always bogus, then we’d have good reason to reject them without investigation. However, since the diamonds exist, we must distrust our first impressions. Sometimes the “obvious” craziness turns out to be a genuine cutting-edge discovery. As with the little child questioning the emperor’s clothing, sometimes (but rarely, of course,) the entire scientific community is misguided and incompetent. Sometimes only the lone voice of the maverick scientist is telling the truth.
Below is a list of scientists who were reviled for their crackpottery, only to be later proven correct. Today’s science texts are dishonest to the extent that they hide these huge mistakes made by the scientific community. They rarely discuss the embarrassing acts of intellectual suppression which were directed at the following researchers by their colleagues. And… after wide reading, I’ve never encountered any similar list.
“When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift
“Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as ‘conceptual necessities,’ etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors.” – Einstein
Humans have this flaw. They obey Authority, which includes social authority. Social consensus, however, doesn’t push the boundaries of the Race. It just slows things down.
Ymarsakar:
John Kerry on the subject of what would happen if we withdrew support in Vietnam.
What actually happened, and the Left’s denial.
G Jourbet:
Obama has brought the left and liberals and all the special interest groups Democrats pander to together in a common goal: electing and re-electing Obama, and hating the right and calling it mean, racist, homophobic, anti-woman, etc. etc.
I got another arrow in my quiver, btw.
This was from a thread Neo linked to, which is circa 2007.
Actually, smoking bans HAVE been implemented in many U.S. cities and even states(by leftist Dems and Repubs), trans-fat bans are being advocated by leftists(the leftie Bloomberg in N.Y.C. even implementing one). I’ve never heard Wm. F. Buckley call for bans on fast-food, or quashing right-wing radio as “hate speech”. And while the “religious right” may have kooks, too, It should be noted that Apartheid is a Socialist system, slavery and Jim Crow laws were institutions of the Democratic Party’s South(other forms of Socialism), and Hitler’s ideology was “National Socialism”(as opposed to International Socialism: communism), and the last time I noticed, socialists tend to be leftists, not free-will, free-market, individual liberty advocates like most of the conservative right, Like Jefferson, Lincoln, and Kennedy. The groups you claim as mine are in fact YOURS. Stop your Goebbelesque lies anon.
Here’s what some commenters responded to that with.
And this, friends, is when the train departs Crazy Town.
Lee, again, if I believed, as you seem to, that every single bad thing ever in the history of the universe is the sole fault of some guy named “The Left,” I’d have a problem with “The Left” as well. So, the result is that I end up pitying you for your profound ignorance of history, etc. But if you honestly believe this stuff — if you know enough history to have some idea of who Goebbels is, and still manage somehow to believe that Jim Crow laws — a militant attempt to preserve class and racial privilege — or that Apartheid — a militant attempt to preserve class and racial privilege — are anything other than conservative, in both their literal and modern political meanings, then…well, there’s really no point in talking with you any more, is there? It’s like trying to have a conversation with someone who insists that his left foot is the Prime Minister.
As the propaganda poster created with the intent to mind fuc people up, I quote: “I’m not saying it’s aliens… but it is aliens.”
I’m not saying it’s the Left, Lee is, but the response is from the Left.
There’s no “counter revolutionary” consensus or social activism, as Eric mentions the need for. So while there is mention of the Left, as an organization even, in response to Neo’s comments on this theme, there is no counter revolutionary consensus. There’s no full agreement or even partial agreement. Back in 2007, it was just a bunch of individuals arguing with Leftist trolls. They didn’t make it personal. Some of the anger leaked out, but it was anger, not Hate. Not Personal Hatred of these Leftists. They didn’t like what Leftists did to the Vietnamese, but it wasn’t personal… not yet at least.
What about now, has it gotten “Personal” yet?
Neo said:
“Obama has brought the left and liberals and all the special interest groups Democrats pander to together in a common goal: electing and re-electing Obama, and hating the right and calling it mean, racist, homophobic, anti-woman, etc. etc.”
Perhaps Neo has a point. Obama is a skillful leader who has united many Americans in hatred against fellow Americans. It appears that on the left uniting some Americans to hate other Americans is about as good as their leadership can do.
Is Obama a knave? That’s like asking whether water is wet. The question is whether he is also a fool, not whether he is a fool rather than a knave.
I don’t really consider him a fool. I think he has above-average intelligence (though not nearly as high as he and others think) and I think he is aware of what he is doing. But I do *not* think he is playing some fiendishly clever six-dimensional chess game. He is shallow and conceited. He is the type of person who thinks he can achieve his goals by the force of what he imagines to be his intellect, not by hard work and careful planning.
To a large extent he makes it up as he goes along. Truly successful people not only have good plans of what they intend to do but they have Plan B, and maybe Plans C and D, in case things don’t go as expected. Obama improvises Plan B on the spot because he thinks he is so brilliant that he never considers the possibility that Plan A might not work. His classic improvised Plan B was the accusation that the Benghazi debacle was caused by some 12th-rate YouTube video. He gets away with it because the MFM never fails to cover up for him – I won’t address NLP which I don’t know anything about.
To bring it back full circle *all* his actions, whether planned or not, or smart or dumb, are informed by his knavishness (knavity?). Especially his arrogant leftist contempt for the country he is supposed to lead.
Neo, to me a leader brings more people together than those already on board. YMMV.
G Joubert nails it.
Obama is the political expression and realization of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple in Guinea. He has gotten millions to drink the Kool-Aid.But he will not drink it himself.
ALL here are advised to take a look at the wonderful Michael Ramirez’s very recent cartoon with a Blaze going on one of Hillary’s SOP blue pants legs: “Liar…Liar…Pantsuit on Fire..!!”
G Joubert:
As I indicated in the post, he didn’t just bring them together. He brought them together and showed them the way, and what was possible—things they hadn’t before thought were possible now. This has both united and emboldened them. That is leadership of the community organizer variety.
In addition, he’s accustomed those who are in the middle, not exactly on board but not against, to greater and greater levels of mendacity and leftism. He’s moved the whole ship to the left.
“He’s moved the whole ship to the left.”
Yes he has. But is it because Obama has some magical qualities of “leadership” or because the MFM has been in the tank for him since probably late 2007? If the press had been in the same galaxy as objective reporting he never would have been elected in 2008 let alone re-elected in 2012 with a sluggish economy and Benghazi. Obama barely beat out Hillary in 2008 even though the press refused to publicize the fact that his career was that of a Chi-town machine political hack with few if any substantive accomplishments.
FOAF:
His qualities of leadership are not “magical.” And no, they are not the whole story; but yes, they are an influential part of it. He basically is a community organizer for the left, and it has influenced the nation as a whole. He’s good at what he does. That doesn’t mean that what he does is good. It is most certainly not, as I think I’ve indicated in over 1500 posts.
Neo, I have always known how intensely you dislike Obama. If anything you despise him even more than I do and that’s saying a *lot*. But you seem to be according some kind of regard for his abilities that some of us do not feel is warranted.
One thing that has always maddened me about Obama apart from the obvious points of his ideology and personality/character is that he had almost no substantive accomplishments in his life prior to his election as POTUS. Yes he was a “community organizer” but what did he actually do as such? Nearly everyone here equally loathes the real community organizer Saul Alinsky. But regardless of that, the things Alinsky did entailed some degree of planning and organization – activities that are notably lacking in Obama’s pre-POTUS resume. And I suspect that even now his attempts at these are pretty desultory. A commenter at Ace of Spades once had a perceptive take on Obama – “He has always been groomed and promoted”, but without having really to do anything to get those “promotions”. His record between law school and the US Senate was a series of short-term positions followed by a mediocre stint as a state legislator. You have often brought up how he stepped on Alice Palmer to win his first election. But do you think he even caused that? It was a classic Chicago machine pol move undoubtedly engineered by some backroom boys.
I have long believed that “evil geniuses” are not nearly as smart as people think they are. It’s a lot easier to get your way when you have no conscience or moral scruples. And it’s a lot harder to build things up than to tear them down. Obama has done a great job of diminishing American power and prestige in the world. But his main attempt at actually constructing something was an unmitigated disaster. Remember the train wreck that was the ACA rollout? He got away with it only because the MFM has continually enabled his most repellent, nauseating, vomit-inducing anti-leadership quality – the automatic blaming of everyone but himself when something goes wrong. There is not a shred of evidence he could lead a team of three people to do something constructive, even from the leftist point of view.
In short, I don’t believe Obama has any rare talents or abilities, unless you count the “charm” of the sociopath among such.
Who Sent Obama?
Who Sent Obama?
There is more than Ayers:
Obama’s Chicago Roots Help Explain His Unfathomable Israel Policy
Obama and the Jews: the key role Chicago Jews played in getting him to where he is
Moron is as moron does. TWICE!
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FOAF:
My response to you turns out to be so lengthy that I decided to make a post out of it that should appear some time this week.
Till then, however, I refer you to this and this.
I grow increasingly pessimistic about the survival of the U.S. Our form of government (although what else is there?) depends too much on the education, attention, responsibility and commitment of its citizens. It’s too easy to fool voters into believing an attractive, charismatic candidate is a benevolent force, and once that belief takes hold it’s nearly impossible to pry it loose. And once a belief takes hold, it’s way too unsettling and way too much trouble to rethink.
NLP or not, Obama’s obvious (to us) defects are easily overcome by his talents for manipulation and lying and by the unwitting complicity of a populace that can’t be bothered to pay attention. The pace and demands and diversions of modern life render the country dangerously vulnerable to the committed Left as well as to the patient and committed Islamists. I no longer have much hope for survival.
Totalitarian dictators used slaughter and violence to bring people together. If bringing people together is the benchmark, then the guy who kills 5 billion humans and brings together the 10 billion left, is superior to the politician that brings together 100,000, after all.
I’m looking forward to your post, neo. I did put more effort into what I wrote than my usual off-the-cuff snarky blog comment.
I don’t think we really disagree that much about Obama, maybe cast it a little differently. Regardless of whether his rise was due to skill, charisma, manipulation or even luck it is very disheartening that he has come to wield so much power, which is probably why we have put a lot of thought into the phenomenon.
July 19th, 2015 at 5:25 pm is in moderation.
Regardless of why, more people are paying attention to the important and critical details. And no, that doesn’t need the majority of idiots that live in a democracy, either. 1% of people with influence, tells the other 99% of people in a democracy what to do, that’s how it always turns out after awhile.