A look back: on desperately wanting to elect Joe Biden
Yesterday I happened across this article by Alex Wagner that appeared on March 24, 2020 in The Atlantic. It’s entitled “Stay Alive, Joe Biden,” and the subtitle is this revealing sentiment: “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”
Think about that – the idea of a figurehead president was fully envisioned and fully accepted, right around the time that Biden was finally seeming to be the nomination frontrunner. Nothing more was necessary; certainly not that certain something known as “leadership.” It was okay that Biden do nothing and be unable to do anything competently. The idea was apparently that (a) getting rid of Trump at the helm would magically solve all problems; and (b) the country could just about run itself after that, as long as Democrats were in control.
That’s not just hubris, that’s hubris squared.
Here are a few excerpts from Ms. Wagner’s piece:
Voters seem to have coalesced around Biden for his past—who they have known him to be for the past four decades in American politics—rather than for anything in his present. It’s as if Biden exists primarily as an idea, rather than an actual candidate.
That certainly was true, as far as it went. I think it’s dangerous; Wagner thought it just fine, as long as the idea contained the words “not Trump.”
More:
if you were on the campaign trail for the past three months, what struck you was not Biden’s organization (there was little), or his resources (there were few), or even the campaign messaging (Joe Biden has been—and forever will be—Joe Biden). What was striking was the sense of anguish and urgency articulated by everyone, everywhere, all the time. And that was before the pandemic.
The “anguish and urgency” was indeed felt by most of the Democrats I know. Trump was so obviously terrible, so profoundly and distressingly evil and destructive, that anyone who could replace him was perfectly fine with them. Where did this anguish come from? Not from anything that was actually happening as a result of Trump – unless they bought the bizarre and evidence-free idea that if only Trump had not been president COVID wouldn’t have taken hold (obviously, since it took hold in most of the Western world, that could not possibly be true – and as Wagner rightly observes, this attitude of sheer desperation predated COVID).
The anguish was purposely drummed up by a combination of the MSM and the Democrats, and was fed and watered by a series of their egregious lies. During Trump’s presidency, it was so obvious to me that things were going relatively well – much better than I had expected – that for a while I actually entertained the thought that even some Trump-hating Democrats might notice and be glad. That was obviously an error, one that became apparent fairly quickly.
More from Wagner:
There were the Bernie Sanders supporters on the campus of Florida International University who told me, however reluctantly, that they would vote for Biden because Donald Trump had to be stopped. There were the soccer moms canvassing for Amy Klobuchar in Johnson, Iowa, who made clear that their primary concern (more than Amy’s chances) was whether Trump was going to get reelected. There were the Culinary Workers Union members in Las Vegas who hadn’t been fired up by any candidate in particular, but who told me they felt as if they faced an existential threat from the Trump administration—and that was enough to drive them to the voting booth and pull the lever. There were the older black voters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who woke up at 7 a.m. to check out Michael Bloomberg, mostly because they were worried that Biden was slipping, and Trump had to be removed—and if Joe couldn’t do it, they said, then they had to find someone else who would.
I wonder how the Las Vegas Culinary Union members are doing these days. I assume they still exist, and so the “existential threat” they faced from Trump’s continued presidency has been averted.
Now comes the heart of the matter as far as Wagner and all the others were concerned. As usual for this sort of list, no examples are given for each of these Trumpian traits. They are considered so obvious, so well-understood and repeatedly proven to the satisfaction of anyone with a functioning brain and moral sense, that no examples were needed:
Ending the Trump presidency — because of the lies, the cruelty, the indignities, the misogyny, the incompetence, the fraudulence, the corruption, the clownishness, the recklessness, the lawlessness, the selfishness, oh, the list went on — that was something that united men and women across the United States and left them in a state of anguish…
…Democrats—some independents, and some Republicans too—were terrified and furious at the prospect of another four years of Donald J. Trump.
That carefully-cultivated “state of anguish” – a sort of delusional hysteria – was not just important to a 2020 victory for the Democrats; it was necessary, and they knew it. For the rest of us, on the outside looking in, it was a lesson in how Orwell wasn’t far off when he described the Two Minutes Hate and its unifying effects, and how something somewhat similar could be employed to influence and guide a modern voting public, and people who consider themselves intelligent and sophisticated.
Whether or not you think Biden won fair and square in 2020 or because of fraud, it hardly matters to the point I’m attempting to make. The reality is that many millions of people, close to half the country if not over half the country, voted for a man who was clearly not up to the task, and rejected the man who was and who had been doing a rather good job by the usual objective measures.
One of the reasons they talked themselves into doing this was that they did not think it necessary to have any skills in order to be president – and by “skills” I mean any record of having made good decisions in forty or so years of public service. They seem to have thought that a country such as the US was on some sort of automatic pilot and would fly quite nicely without much guidance – again, as long as Democrats were in charge.
And indeed, those Democrats didn’t have to be chosen for skills or track records, either. They could all be chosen because they were “progressive” and checked certain demographic boxes. Kamala Harris would be a good example, but so could most of Biden’s Cabinet.
I can’t find anything recent that Alex Wagner has written about Biden. But his plummeting polls – even among Democrats – indicate that at least some people have finally noticed that more than a mere
“corporeal presence” might be necessary to steer the ship of state. Unfortunately, a great deal of damage has already been done, with no end in sight.
“As long as the Democrats are in charge” will likely not cease in 2022. If there was vote fraud in 2020, which I believe there was, the Dems have had the interval to fine-tune its mechanisms.
But even if there is a GOP landslide in 2022, the fact of senile Biden with a veto pen remains to thwart the GOP efforts.
Plus, one must never forget the large majority of the 2.5 million (or more) federal employees, totally secure in their regulatory positions, are Democrats, committed to socialism.
I may be one of the resident cynics here, but I believe the table cannot be turned.
Venezuela should have taught us that there is a lot of ruin in a country, which can rather quickly be visited upon it. The Producer Price Index is up 9.6% from a year ago, which is a record. Price inflation to consumers will necessarily rocket. We have a Department of inJustice and a corrupt FBI, the new Stasi. Zimbabwe seems to be the new model for the nation.
https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1470834849971945473?s=20
The way Big Tech and the Fake News covered for Biden is one of the worst things ever. And, by far, the worst incident was the cover-up on the Laptop from Hell.
Joe Biden was bribed by the ChiComs and people don’t even know it.
The content of the list of objections above highlights a critical difference between the collectivist’s herd animal mentality and that of a citizen.
Now of course, lawlessness, corruption, fraud, and incompetence are what we might expect in any litany offenses against republican virtue and honest governance.
But notice that the first two, “cruelty” and “indignities” have nothing to do in this case with the rule of law or good government per se, but rather, in the typical context of the anguished progressive, to do instead with those treasured “feelz” and social affirmations … or specifically the lack thereof, emanating from the Great Mother which art in Washington, hallowed be Its Name.
Now, just how are you supposed to have a life when you are shackled by law and administrative rule, to the mentally and emotionally ill?
We need to ask ourselves if it is even moral, much less kind or just, to allow ourselves to be destroyed by mentally ill females and soy-boys.
This Rawlsian, “commitment to a shared fate” (insofar as it has not been replaced by “commitment to replacement” or ‘voluntary extinction’) is simply a form of once slow, but now accelerating, suicide.
At what point do the frightened Grandmas and Grandpas stand up to their own woke offspring? Ever? And if they decide to continue to lay passively on the altar of their sons’ and daughters’ smug, threatening, privileged malice and resentments, can they at least comprehend how the reactions of others toward their kids will be justifiably different?
Michael Anton:
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/12/unprecedented
As I’ve said many times, at bottom this is, for true progressives, a religious phenomenon. Trump’s election was a blasphemy, a defilement. To let it stand was simply intolerable. All the specific complaints, warnings, and so forth about the actual things that Trump actually did or might do were only the visible results of the horror at the blasphemy and the desperate need to put an end to it. It would have been strong at any time, but was more so coming after eight years of the glorious light-bearer Obama.
In other words this is an effect of the elevation of politics to a religion for progressives.
Adding to what Cornhead said, Sundowner has yet to make a decision China wouldn’t approve of, and doubt he ever will. Taiwan is toast.
“During Trump’s presidency, it was so obvious to me that things were going relatively well”
And Trump was a former Dem, with tolerant social positions and a history of donating to Dem candidates.
Our Prog neighbors clutch their false view of reality tighter and tighter …
Related (somewhat metaphorically):
A woman who fought tooth and nail to save her daughter from the devious and perverse transgender cult—
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/12/13/what-ive-learned-rescuing-my-daughter-from-her-transgender-fantasy/
H/T Instapundit.
This treasonist party would have accepted a Putin pawn or worse, just to get rid of Trump. They deserve to be totally destroyed.
I don’t think that Biden’s mental condition was ever a major concern for the democrat leadership. Nor, other than “the optics” is it much of a concern even now. Today’s democrat party follows a less overtly structured version of the CCP. Wherein the difference lies is that the democrat party has no Xi whose edicts are ‘non-negotiable’.
And unlike the CCP leadership, the democat party elite pay lip service to the concerns of its base. But only to the degree necessary to the manipulation of its base.
Cicero,
Re: democrat voter fraud, “the Dems have had the interval to fine-tune its mechanisms.”
That is the only way that democrats will not pay a massive political price in November.
“even if there is a GOP landslide in 2022, the fact of senile Biden with a veto pen remains to thwart the GOP efforts.”
True. If McConnell and McCarthy retain control, at best the Republican Congress will be portrayed by the media as ‘obstructionist’ and completely incompetent.
I believe the ‘table’ can be overturned. But I’m not at all certain that enough people have the will to do what is necessary.
DNW,
“We need to ask ourselves if it is even moral, much less kind or just, to allow ourselves to be destroyed by mentally ill females and soy-boys.
This Rawlsian, “commitment to a shared fate” (insofar as it has not been replaced by “commitment to replacement” or ‘voluntary extinction’) is simply a form of once slow, but now accelerating, suicide.”
Bingo. Once a cancer starts to metabolize it must either be cut out of the body or radiated to death.
Mac,
“this is an effect of the elevation of politics to a religion for progressives.”
Indeed and an ideological/theological fanaticism that is committed to forcing the ‘infidel’ to prostrate before it… is the human equivalent of a rabies infection.
And there is only one cure for rabies.
“That carefully-cultivated “state of anguish” – a sort of delusional hysteria – was not just important to a 2020 victory for the Democrats; it was necessary, and they knew it.”
More people are waking up to the mass psychosis surrounding Covid, but it didn’t just happen ex nihilo. You touch on the practice run of the 4+-year temper tantrum under Trump, where everything was blown out of proportion and misrepresented. This ended up laying the perfect groundwork for the lies, exaggerations, and misrepresentation over Covid. Just another day for those dealing in delusions and psychosis.
A vote for Biden was always a vote for the Deep State plus the national party organizations who control the flow of tax money through Congress and to their patrons and clients.
The big institutional players wanted it back how it was.
Related (AKA an irony that alas cannot be savored):
Given that the Democrats are the “Projectionist Party of America”, the following should surprise no one.
“Schumer, Who Accused Trump of Russian Collusion, is Getting Paid by Putin”
(Not just Schumer, however….)—
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/schumer-who-accused-trump-russian-collusion-daniel-greenfield/
H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
The list of evils is promoted as if it’s objectively true. No evidence is needed.
Asked before, is there a moral requirement to use one’s rational faculties in matters of public policy? Is it therefore immoral to consult solely one’s feelings?
Or can half the country not tell the difference?
A woman who fought tooth and nail to save her daughter from the devious and perverse transgender cult—
I’m pleased things seem to be working out well for her. Reading it, I could not help but ask why her pre-adolescent daughter was issued a smart phone or permitted to set up social media accounts. I also kept asking where was her father and where were her other siblings in all of this.
Note, her reference to the TeenTalk program is another indication that ‘sex education’ and other such paraphenalia does not belong in schools and that the purveyors of it are often creepy people.
Geoffrey Britain,
Where is our Atticus Finch?
The corporate media have their whole TUSH on the scales of public opinion to bend reality to their and their masters preferences.
Independent voices are the only thing that can get around the narrative, and they are to often canceled on the corporate social media platforms.
I don’t see the economy gathering enough main street steam in the next year to convince any ordinary American who votes to ignore their lying eyes and marvel that the “emperor has the finest clothes in all the land,” and there-fore deserves 100% unthinking, uncritical support in the 2022 elections.
BOHICA
“…creepy…”
Indeed. But worse than creepy. Far worse: it’s malevolent and abusive.
And soul-destroying.
What struck me is how many kids get sucked up into this monstrous and criminal vortex? (And the way the cultists provide information to “new recruits” to evade parental supervision.)
Moreover, how many parents would have the tenacity and the strength to extract their child from such a predicament?
Seems that there should be a national/regional self-help group that can counsel and help others who find their kids essentially kidnapped. Or hijacked. Share experiences, techniques, etc.
From someone who has experienced totalitarianism firsthand and finds what’s currently happening in the US abhorrent:
“Many have yet to realize that the new cold war between the United States and China is not one between democracy and dictatorship.”—
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-to-the-totalitarian-bottom/
H/T Powerline blog.
Only if one purports to be a rights bearing citizen of a republic, instead of a satiety seeking bag of unexamined urges, existing at the sufferance and by the leave of one’s governing masters.
I am not sure what percentage of the squealing woke masses do view themselves as anything more when you get down to fundamentals. Not that they don’t at the same time demand the social cossetting of their persons, the cherishing of their neuroses, the enabling of their dysfunctions, and the affirming of their incoherent desires.
Well, probably not if you are willing to accept the impact of a hatchet impelled by the equally valid and impervious to judgment feelings of another.
Or are all feelings not somehow equal, after all?
Joe Biden is America’s version of the Soviet Union’s Konstantin Chernenko, who only lasted a year. Biden’s “corporeal presence” has been much more destructive by having bureaucrats run the Country. It is really tragic how the propaganda worked with so many people. The worst lie was that so many voters thought Old Joe would manage Covid, especially after he had done a awful job with Swine Flu.
One of the things that shook me almost as much as discovering that 56% of white female progressives admitted to PEW Research that they were mentally unbalanced – as most of us had previously only inferred them to be – was reading a couple of the most recent walk-away stories linked to here.
What the two or three examples – Liel Leibovitz, Abigail Shrier, and Maud Maron – who I am thinking of, finally desired more than their place in the charmed circle, was intellectual coherence and the salvaging and retention of some shred of moral dignity.
Indeed. But worse than creepy. Far worse: it’s malevolent and abusive.
In this specific case, most certainly. Even if they weren’t promoting the worst of it (as they certainly were not when I was a high school student decades ago), these programs would still be undesirable intrusions. Mothers and fathers are certainly capable of instructing their children in these matters and if they’d prefer to delegate it, outfits like the Y could set up voluntary community programs. It was inserted in the schools because the sort of school employee who lands on the board of Planned Parenthood has no use for parental discretion.
Joe Biden is America’s version of the Soviet Union’s Konstantin Chernenko, who only lasted a year.
Russia was able to develop something of a pluralistic public forum after Chernenko, but it was attended by a hideous economic depression, a severe decline in public order, and a decline in life expectancy to boot. Russia has recovered from that as we speak, but the last 35 years have been a hell of a ride. Not looking forward to it at my age.
expat,
The nearest we have to an Atticus Finch is Sen. Ted Cruz.
However, given our division and corrupt government, our situation is clearly incapable of legal redress.
Unfortunately we need an Alexander, one willing to cut thru the Gordian knot of the Deep State and DC swamp. Or a Cromwell disbanding the Rump Parliament “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately … In the name of God, go!”
This November’s election will determine how close to the precipice we stand. If voter fraud results in the democrats holding on to the congressional votes needed to prevent even minimal redress of our grievances, then IMO, only the most radical of surgeries will then save the patient.
Yet even should the Republicans regain a congressional majority, far too many who vote Republican consider our nearly defunct Constitution to be a suicide pact. Far too many fail to grasp that it is not the Constitution that guarantees our liberties but rather, an absolute refusal to relinquish them.
This is why “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
Regardless of how the Constitution is ‘interpreted’ to effectively extinguish its recognition of our natural liberties, those “self-evident truths” remain eternally valid. They are worth fighting for and if necessary, giving our “last full measure of devotion”.
each of these Trumpian traits. They are considered so obvious, so well-understood and repeatedly proven to the satisfaction of anyone with a functioning brain and moral sense, that no examples were needed:
Substitute ‘skin color’ for ‘Trumpian’ in that little half-paragraph, and you’ve pretty much got human bigots of all epochs right in the spotlight, with the most active and self-righteous these days mobilized against people of pallor.
Richard Aubrey:
As I’ve written many times, they believe they have plenty of facts and evidence, presented by the MSM, etc. They don’t realize 99% of that evidence is lies. But they certainly don’t think it’s just based on their feelings. And every highly educated person they know qgrees with them.
DNW says, “What the two or three examples . . . who I am thinking of, finally desired more than their place in the charmed circle, was intellectual coherence and the salvaging and retention of some shred of moral dignity.”
You might be interested in an essay by Julie Burchill, a British writer who learned to stop wallowing in feelz after her adult son committed suicide in 2015– For two weeks, I couldn’t move my legs or eat – I couldn’t do anything but sleep and cry. I lost a third of my body weight. Then I got up, went to volunteer at the nearest Mind shop and carried on as if nothing had happened. . . . The thing is, I prefer being this way. I used to think, growing up, that a life was only fully lived if one was a slave to one’s emotions. But though I’d never argue for a life without feelings, I do feel that far too much stress is now placed on heart over head.
On a political level, our whole culture is being ruined by those who prize feelings over facts. It’s not just silly to say that living a life led by emotions is unconditionally healthy, it’s actually sinister. Men are showing their feelings when they attack their wives. Children show their feelings when they bully weaker children. Parents with a tendency towards sadism show their feelings when they torture and murder a helpless child. . . .
So it’s an unusual experience, being this way after living most of my life as a bona fide prima donna – but I do like it. . . . I look at emotional people – footballers crying over losing matches, celebrities crying in jungles – and think ‘The state of you!’ . . . . for now, after a tiring lifetime of emotion, I’m enjoying living my life on ice.
https://www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/comment/135098
A column (blog entry) like this present one was my intro to New Neo in October 2020. Somehow I stumbled upon this post …
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/10/17/hatred-of-trump-leads-to-liberal-confusion-about-what-to-do-bari-weiss-gets-it-and-she-also-doesnt/
… (with 182 comments!!!) and promptly launched a VDARE.com blog entry off it:
https://vdare.com/posts/liberals-informed-by-their-ignorance-and-adamant-about-it
(If you want to read it, you may have to click past a current fund-raising page.)
I’d first written about the unmoored animus against Trump in October 2016, also at VDARE.com: https://vdare.com/posts/the-left-projects-its-own-rage-fear-paranoia-bigotry-and-wait-for-it-hate-on-donald-trump
I wonder if the parents, especially the Moms, of the Yale Women’s Swim Team that did vote for Biden understand that their vote brought this upon their daughters. Those Soccer Moms that were canvasing for any Dem will soon have large, strong, transgender Men joining their daughters on the field too. But will it change any votes? I doubt it since the Dems will most likely field a Woman in 2024, and not necessarily Harris.
@Geoffrey Britain: Well and truly spoken, sir.
I think for a majority of voters they had to
1) Convinced themselves Trump was the embodiment of evil. And while many are supposed secularists. They took to getting rid of him with the fervor of an actual holy crusade. It was purely a belief system that no amount of evidence could possibly contradict
2) That the bureaucracy was their clergy. Who silently (in their minds) resisted the anti-Christ and would lead us to the promised land. No actual leadership was needed. As the perfect understanding of the tenants of their religion was all that was needed to move forward.
3) The politically astute among the Democratic politicians and bureaucracy understood and encouraged it. Realizing the power they had to gain from controlling their faction of the rudderless ship.
4) We are now seeing those left standing fighting to be the new pope. Now using the same machinations and knives used against Trump.
My mind has often lately been coming back to the idea of the devolution of government over time. Young governments outgrow their initial chaos to become briefly competent, but over time, they invariably ossify–at the same time they grow into unmanageable behemoths.
Certain parts of the right in the US seem to understand that the administrative and regulatory state has become not just unmanageablely big, but incompetent too (exhibit A: the government-engineered gas can). But on the left and in other parts of the right they still trust that the government will coast along, doing the right thing most of the time.
The government has become so big that it is now impossible to manage. What can the president do about the rogue FBI or the Lois Lerners in the IRS? The Birxes and the Faucis, drunk on their own power? What can it do about out-of-control regulatory state, which above all, works to protect and project its own power–over the needs of the people? Look at any department in Washington, and you’ll find bureaucrats who haven’t a clue how the world works, or know the first thing about how government should act, but who do know how to schmooze the DC party scene.
Trump tried: destroying one or more regulation for every new one imposed. But he’s gone, and four years was not enough to make a dent.
A secondary problem with this regulatory state, is that it has proven to produce horrifically bad politicians. Politicians aren’t asked to actually learn how to get things done as they move up the ranks, because everything is done by the regulators and agencies. (Eg: Pete Buttigieg.) Politicians only have to learn how to fund raise and give a rousing speech.
Government is on autopilot anyway, so politicians can be as bad as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and most people won’t think that their incompetence even matters–and they are likely right, especially on the domestic front.
Republican politicians are rarely any better–Paul Ryan threw away everything he ever stood for, because he hated Trump more than he cared about getting things done for the American people. Republican politicians go native as soon as they cross the Potomac, working overtime, not to improve the country, but to raise campaign funds and get invited to the right parties and onto important television spots.
And the government continues on autopilot.
I suppose, when the pilots are all untrained, stupid, and drunk on their own power, that might be preferable.
SHIREHOME–
I think you mean the Princeton women’s swim team.
When I tried to talk my wife out of voting for Obama I argued that he was nothing but a fast-tracked Chicago Machine politician; that electing him would bring that machine to the Federal level and it would take years to wash that slime of the system, if we even could.
Joe Biden is just the current facade for that machine. They don’t care that he’s a buffoon because they’re pulling his strings.
@ PA CAT,
So yes …
I followed the link and read the essay and I find it relatively interesting; though I am not sure I fully understand what she is saying about her own transformation, or by what exact psychological mechanism, as opposed to intellectual conviction, it was brought about.
“No matter”, I suppose. She says she likes the result and gets the drift critically insofar as it relates to the presently existing social pathology, at least.
But here was a shock for me … if I take her statement literally and as having once been a reflected upon or thought-through conclusion or operating principle on her part. [As opposed to a present bit of self-deprecation]
Now, I suppose that the terminology “slave to” might be a hint that she is engaging in hyperbole. But she might not, be. She might have only recently evaluated what she had theretofore unreservedly believed about a rewarding existence in those terms, and to have all intents and purposes believed it without qualification at one point. But I think, that she is perfectly sincere about the depth of what she once felt.
Because, we see it before our very eyes. Some women, and some males as well, seemingly do believe that life is only lived fully if it is lived with the emotions set to overdrive … any emotional discipline or reserve being inauthentic or a crippling form of inhibition.
And some few people of whatever “gender” they may be, seem to additionally see their own emotional outbursts as a social privilege to which they in particular are somehow entitled; and with regard to which, they enjoy a responsibility-free dispensation, and an immunity from any retaliation in-kind.
I am not saying she thought that or acted that way. But some people behave that way, whether their overt affect is pronounced or not.
We saw clearly that in the Case of Brett Kavanaugh, wherein some clearly unhinged persons – 3 at least – seemed to be playing by the special dispensation game rule, i.e., I’m upset so whatever I do is alright.
A game, one example of which you may recall, was seen among some children two generations ago, and went something like this: “We are all exactly in every way! But you can’t hit me back because I’m a girl”.
Boys of course had their own version. But I don’t recall it involving emotion in quite the same way. Though ” Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” did a pretty good job of skewering it … whatever it was.
Early in this thread, Mac wrote, “It would have been strong at any time, but was more so coming after eight years of the glorious light-bearer Obama.”
Glorious light-bearer. Yep.
I hope I’ll be forgiven for pasting the entire text here of a June 6, 2008 article by one Mark Morford, an entertainment columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. It **isn’t** a parody, and it truly must be seen to be believed:
https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/morford/article/Is-Obama-an-enlightened-being-Spiritual-wise-2544395.php
Is Obama an enlightened being? / Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain’t no ordinary politician. You buying it?
Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
June 6, 2008
I find I’m having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I’m having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell’s the big deal about Obama?
I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.
Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former ’60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain’t gonna like this one little bit.
Ready? It goes likes this:
Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae – or no antennae at all – to all those who just don’t understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama’s aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.
To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?
No, it’s not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.
Dismiss it all you like, but I’ve heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who’ve been intuitively blown away by Obama’s presence – not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence – to say it’s just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.
Here’s where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.
Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there’s something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn’t assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It’s because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.
Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.
Let me be completely clear: I’m not arguing some sort of utopian revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. I’m not saying the man’s going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.
Please. I’m also certainly not saying he’s perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual. While Obama’s certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn’t hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.
But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it’s not even about Obama, per se. There’s a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that’s been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama’s candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him. It’s exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.
Don’t buy any of it? Think that’s all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls– and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you’re talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.
Not this time.
My psych BA was completed in 66. Paid attention to the field, off and on, since then. Couple of takeaways. They don’t know as much as they want you to think they do. They don’t know as much as they think they do.
Freud, once king-emperor, is now barely a punchline.
BUT. The undergrads looking in from the outside saw the evils of “repressed” whateveritwas. That was popular. I can’t help but think this added a bit of gravitas to the emotions-rule or emotions-should-rule. Probably didn’t start it but I heard serious conversations in voices, some of which were changing, but intent about the depth of the depthness of the concept.
Doesn’t explain all of it but if you move some ballast from the center to the side….the course changes.
It is…hard to explain…seeing somebody in the throes of such when public policy is the issue. I HATE TRUMP. HE’S AN AWFUL MAN. And if you ask for facts…forget it.
One of the advantages of at least a modest IQ is the ability to rationalize why something bad happened when things were done your way against advice and facts.
We are a good nation with a lot of good people, kind of split down the middle with the nefarious assholes taking advantage of the left and a few on the right. We might be coming up to a reset like we did in the 1860’s and I think our finest years were WWII and then we screwed up a lot with the almost wars that took too many lives. We have way to many people on government payrolls and benefits and not near enough actually creating productive profits and that is getting ready to catch up with us. I think there will be some hard times coming and some crashes but then we as a nation can dig ourselves out, if I am living then I would be delighted to watch that, and once more we can be a shining beacon for freedom. This nation, the US of A will not disappear or cease to be very soon, we have set the sparks of freedom in a lot of the new folks who have arrived in the past few decades getting away from nations much worse than ours. God Bless the USA.
Yeah, LOL.
Because as we all know “hot monkey sex” anywhere anytime and with anybody will release pent-up energies which will usher in an Aquarian Age of enlightenment and peace and justice … sympathy and trust abounding … mystic crystal revelations … and the mind’s true liberation.
And Grace Slick will never grow old and look like she does now; and as Mark Morford, that anal receptive and tattooed skin-sack demonstrates, “geniousity” as I think it was Woody Allen called it, will flow forth from the brains of the if-it-feels good-do-it freelovers, and neither they nor we as a “society” will never have regrets or suffer the unpleasant spillover consequences of their swimming stoned in a sump of infection and physical, emotional, and intellectual degradation.
You know, Zaphod’s quoted cynicism aside: At least the Swiss got Cuckoo clocks. We got pussy hats, soy boys, and 57 varieties of gender blenders trying to drive sparkle ponies into your toddler’s bedroom, and their genitalia into their bottoms.
Christ help us. And that is a prayer, guys. Not an exclamation.
As somebody said, it took ten thousand years to get it tucked in and now we’re supposed to let it out.
DNW, good riff on the times. As I have said in tiresome, repetitive posts year after year, I didn’t follow pop music at the time. But from time to time, one song or another takes me back.
When we got to be senior candidates at Infantry OCS, we were allowed to play radios Sunday afternoons. One guy liked Slick and her group….Jefferson Airplane or something–and made sure to pump it up when one of her songs was on. So it takes me back to…..my next gig, involving an Infantry commission.
A couple of others you mention to Basic Training.
Not sure we were the market.
The hot monkey sex thing was to be sold to the women; the guys were already convinced. You’d think….but late adolescence is not where you go looking for considered decision making.
To be a bit sad, though. I notified Next of Kin and did survivor assistance to a bereaved family. If we could avoid that, I’d go with cuckoo clocks.
By the way, off topic but alluding to Zaphod’s favorite film auteur, [no, I am not serious about that and I don’t pretend to know] I have apparently and without realizing it, begun a collection of Der Orson’s films. Or films which he’s been involved in.
So far what I can say is that apart from Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, which I alone in the world apparently find unwatchable, several of Wells’ films are extremely interesting at the very least. And even movies he merely starred in seem to show significant traces of his style: i.e., Prince of Foxes, and The Third Man.
Compare for example the relatively novel (except for say Howard Hawks use of it) technique of actors naturalistically talking over and interrupting each other in conversations.
Touch of Evil, a bizarre classic.
Lady From Shanghai, I am still trying to get a feel for. And I think it is too damn bad that studios, Columbia and Harry Cohn in this case, did not allow a director to at least keep a copy of his original cut and the unused footage, even if they chopped 40 minutes out of any theatrical release. Why destroy everything else? The pettiness boggles. Who cared back in the 40’s and 50’s, as long as it was locked up in non-compete for 10 or 15 years or even 30 years.
Viewer’s mileage may differ, but I way prefer the originals [restored proposed release] in some cases. The Big Sleep, for example which for my money becomes much more comprehensible.
But the studio execs of the time were intent on peddling, so they thought, or so they felt, the attractive sexiness and sass of Lauren Bacall – who actually has as much sex appeal as a 6 foot tall mouse – so they reshot scenes and and cut others to emphasize and feature her interactions with Bogart.
Personally, finding her as sexy as a used Dixie cup disposed of on a fairgrounds pathway, and not being a voyeur, I prefer the story, to the sass.
I’d liked to have seen Wells’ visions too. If only out of curiosity.
@DNW:
Eisenstein and Riefenstahl more like it 🙂 Plus Kurosawa.
Welles could read a laundry list and make it sound prophetic. There are supposedly outtakes of his various TV commercials where he has a lot of fun being very rude.
Was digging around for some Beast Taming Music to get me through the morning’s quota of news, emails and Slack annoyances and found in Tidal an album of Nino Rota’s works for harp. Who the hell is/was Nino Rota?
Turns out he was the onetime child prodigy who composed many scores for Fellini and Visconti. Also the first two Godfather films.
Like Korngold, he had his first public success at age 11.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nino_Rota
So there wasn’t just Morricone after all.
Lauren Bacall – who actually has as much sex appeal as a 6 foot tall mouse –
Your aesthetic isn’t worth much.
DNW: try “The Stranger” (1946). Welles as a Nazi fugitive in a small Connecticut town. Very creepy.
I like “The Lady from Shanghai”, despite the cuts. Rita Hayworth is always worth watching. Great scenes of 1940s San Francisco, plus cameo appearances by Errol Flynn and Flynn’s yacht, the Zaca. Full movie on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWqoDUvduZ0.
OldTexan: agree about hard times coming. We came out of the Great Depression stronger than before, but we had to go through a big war to get there–and got our ass kicked in the beginning. I wonder if something similar is in the offing this time around. Here’s a video of Thomas Ricks talking about how George C. Marshall prepared the U.S. armed forces for combat in WWII:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OehvY94N-WA
From 2011, but perhaps even more relevant today. Marshall knew that the United States would go to war “ill-trained and poorly equipped”, suffering disastrous defeats at the outset, and planned accordingly. Wish we had a Marshall.
Thanks for the correction PA. Not sure what I was thinking, maybe not at all.
Paul Nachman:
I took yoga classes in San Francisco from Mark Morford. He was a handsome athletic guy with the right tatts and one gold nipple ring. He gave a tough class and kept his preening egomania somewhat under control.
I was surprised how unpleasant he was in print, especially since he aspired to New Age spirituality and usually New Agers try to avoid talking trash about others and appearing mean-spirited.
But he wasn’t the main teacher. That was Pretzel, a Hungarian gymnast turned contortionist turned yoga teacher. She was great. She told me she was leaving San Francisco for Austin, but it turned out she died not long later. I’m not sure what happened. I found an obit for her online a few months ago.
The Big Sleep, for example which for my money becomes much more comprehensible.
DNW:
Even Raymond Chandler, who wrote the novel and the screenplay, didn’t fully understand the movie.
Someone asked him who killed the Sternwood’s chaffeur and Chandler realized he didn’t know.
DNW:
I’m Johnny Appleseed for Welles’ “F for Fake,” a sort of meta-documentary about forgery and forgers, plus the bigger questions of art.
Welles thought he had invented a new form and planned to make more such films, but “Fake” flopped, so he didn’t.
It’s getting renewed interest these days. If you see it — you can see it free on YouTube — I’d enjoy reading your response.
Essay Tuesday from Doc Zero, of some topical relevance:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1470766460482080770.html
That list of Trump’s traits is simply projection. Democrats, the Left, always tell you exactly what they have been doing, are doing, and wish to do by what they claim their most hated political enemies are doing. I can’t say how long they’ve used this method but I first noticed it myself during the Clinton administration. It’s a tell they can’t seem to quit.
I disagree with Doc Zero in this part. Bill Clinton brought the hatred of America out of the closet when he was overseas. He’d apologize to foreign nations for the “sins” of other Americans in the past. This set the stage for bringing the hatred into the public arena back home in the 2000s.
I am continuously disappointed by these “Turn” stories. This one, even moreso by the person referring us to it! Rod Dreher claims to be a “conservative”, but admits to being disappointed that a friend dumped him because he had the nerve to claim Trump “did some good things” while he actually supported impeachment over the January 6th 4 hour insurrection.
It should be self evident, at this point, that these people live in an alternative reality crafted by the Democrat run media.
The only way forward is to utterly obliterate the mainstream media.
It will probably be written “When the Democrats started calling their opposition ‘the enemy’ everything started sliding downhill. The period of President Trump’s presidency eventually broke any pretense that they (the Democrats) cared anything for the people of the country.”
If one is hoping to get rid of a “bad” leader or bad govt., best figure out who/what is waiting to step into the void.
The Russians wanted the Czars gone; they got their wish and in came Lenin and Stalin. The latter being the worst mass murderer in world history (up until Mao of China came along.) Note that the body count of Stalin’s murderous policies did NOT deter USA born / raised and highly educated Americans from spying FOR Stalin.
The depths of human depravity are literally bottomless; and here I am referring to the Americans who spied for Stalin.
The Cubans wanted the crook , US mafia puppet, Batista out; they got their wish and in came that beacon of human rights and individual liberty, Fidel Castro, who died one of the wealthiest people on planet earth. After all, he did own everything in Cuba.
The Venezuelans wanted a change in direction, which they got in the form of Hugo Chavez and now Maduro; both Castro acolytes. Venezuelans now have the privilege of waiting in long, interminable lines to buy gasoline – in a nation that has gigantic reserves of oil – as well has having free room and board in a Venezuelan prison if they dare vocalize their displeasure with Senor el Fuhrer Maduro.
Note that the American Brooklyn born Bolshevik, Bernie Sanders actually said, “waiting in line is good,” when asked about long lines for food in the USSR or communist nations.
Sanders and his ENTIRE extended family should be deported to Havana – along with AOC and her extended family – and while there, waiting in line, they can be regaled by Bolshevik Bernie how waiting in line for gasoline or Chinese canned rat meat “is a good thing.”
The good voters here in the USA decided that President Gerald Ford and more recently,, Trump, had to go. Thus we got / have Jimmy Carter (the former nuc-u-ler engineer) and now , senile Joke Bidet; the latter two amongst the worst presidents (but not the worst !!) in American history.
Sometimes I think that only business owners should be allowed to vote; and only if they are over the age of 35. They would support policies that help ordinary folks because, as business owners, they need folks to buy from them.
Poor people do not buy much of anything; folks need money to buy things. Policies that help keep money in the pockets of people would be advantageous to the ordinary folks as well as business owners.
Anyway, it still is VERY disconcerting to know that 30% of voters STILL !!! approve of Joke Bidet.
What the hell will it take for this 30% to wake up??
“…desperately…” [seeking ruin]…
But of course…
“Where are noncitizens allowed to vote in the US?
A few US cities and 14 smaller jurisdictions have laws allowing noncitizens to vote”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/united-states-noncitizen-voting-cities
A huge amount of reservoirs built up for many years of trust and credibility has been expended to get Trump at any cost.
And Trust and Credibility once lost, is hard to regain quickly.
And Trump has not been destroyed.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, except in politics for actions masked, hidden, and / or not noticed.
Trump has ripped off so many masks that hid incompetence, corruption, fascism, bias, and extremism.
This has created a Lot of angry voters.
I’ll look it up and let you know.
I should have looked up the spelling of his name too; after I glanced at what I had just typed, and wondered why it somehow didn’t “look right”.
But if instead of letting fly, I carefully considered, checked, or tried to proof what I write, I’d probably never hit “Send”.
Less scrambling around afterward, though.
Inflation heading to 20% p.a.?—but only if we’re lucky it won’t go any higher!…
Who knows? (It all depends on how inflation is measured…or defined…)
In any event, “Biden”‘s inspiration would appear to be another “inspired” world leader….
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/lira-implodes-turkey-proposes-huge-fines-hoarding
(In more ways than “merely” inflation….)
At the end of the day, however, a man of principle!!:
“Biden says ‘willing to lose’ presidency over decisions including pandemic, Afghanistan, middle class”—
https://justthenews.com/world/middle-east/biden-says-hes-willing-lose-presidency-over-decision-withdraw-afghanistan
Shorter version: “No one—NO ONE!—can say I don’t love America! I love my country so much that I will destroy her EVEN IF DOING SO DESTROYS MY POLITICAL CAREER!!! So help me God…”
Principle! (continued…)
“Rep. Byron Donalds: Democrats don’t want to talk about inflation ‘because it’s Joe Biden’s fault'”
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/rep-byron-donalds-democrats-dont-want-talk-about-inflation-because-its-joe
Key grafs:
‘”Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to talk about it,” said Donalds. “But you have virtually every Republican member — and I’ll tell you, there’s even some rank-and-file Dems who want to have this conversation — but we’re all blocked by Nancy Pelosi. So it’s left to having this conversation in news interviews and in media.
‘”[W]e’re much more verbose on our side of the aisle about talking about it,” he continued. “The Dems don’t want to talk about it because it’s Joe Biden’s fault. Even they know it. They tell us quietly on the side, like, ‘Man, this additional spending is crazy,’ but they vote for it. And they vote for it because they can’t win elections without the support of Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat Party — they’ll lose.”‘
File under: “Transparency” (Chapter ~)
I’m still, well, ‘puzzled’ would be a mild word, over McArdle’s assimilation into the Borg. After her ‘Trump=nuclear war’ column during his first campaign, I thought that the Abraham Accord, at least, would have led her to realize Trump had *reduced* the likelyhood of nuclear war.
Instead she went all BAMN during the second campaign.
When I was a kid, I saw a movie clip of a baby carriage rolling down a grand staircase, as some reviewer intoned about great filmmakers. I took away from it that there was a genius movie director in Russia who had the same last name as Einstein.
I have since learned that their names are not really the same. But not much else about the director.
Reifenstahl: other than ” the famous one” , the only movie of hers I have seen is Das Blaue Licht. I downloaded several copies in order to try and get a clear one. The sharper one is impressive enough. I’d probably pay good money to see a pristine, or as near as can be had, print.
Funny though, had a good laugh recently while watching the last scene of the film noir “Christmas Holiday”: as Deanna Durbin rises from the body of her ex, and backlit, looks toward the parting clouds of the night sky to the strains of Wagner( I think) .
Connection lights up after having previously seen Das Blaue Licht. “Oh! Son of a —- so that’s where Siodmak got … ”
Kurosawa. Stray Dog, and Yojimbo. And that opening scene in Ran(?), I think it was, where they are pig hunting. Talk about something unique in film. The grassland was mesmerizing. Well, I found it so. Seven Samurai, specifically the fight in the rain storm; Rashomon, and the cowardly and inept sword fighting in the forest …
I’ll stop hijacking the thread now.
Thought it was moribund as a topic. Apparently not.
DNW – I’m sure white people appreciating foreign films from non-white creators is now racist and verboten, enjoy it while it lasts.
*****************
Good rant RE: the Biden Economy
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=49737
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Good article RE: Democrats destroying Democracy to save it (i.e. keep themselves in power which is the ONLY way to ensure a bright prosperous future.)
https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/01/no-the-right-doesnt-exist-to-save-the-left-from-its-own-folly/
Liberalism has a democracy problem. At least, that’s what liberals, including self-described conservative liberals, are saying. For example, New York Times columnist David Brooks is fretting about the possibility of conservatives “using state power to break up and humble the big corporations and to push back against coastal cultural values. The culture war merges with the economic-class war — and a new right emerges” to rally the “masses against the cultural/corporate elites.”
Deadrody – “The only way forward is to utterly obliterate the mainstream media.”
It all boils down to this. Every fakir and crook and corruptocrat we have identified got there the same way… with the connivance of the media. And they are protected from our justice and allowed to hurt us again… with the connivance of the media!
I’ll repeat it again…
“The only way forward is to utterly obliterate the mainstream media.”
Also, it’s tribal. People say and do incredibly stupid, hurtful, counterproductive things because (they think) everyone else (who matters) is doing/thinking/saying the same. It IS the MSM that creates this fiction that captures these gullible midwits and turns them into zombiecrats.
@Cicero – I pretty much agree with your post. Very hard to believe we can dislodge the Iago party.
Bill Clinton brought along his wife. No one hates regular Americans like Hillary.
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Reposting actual words from liberals is racist.