Stroll down memory lane with intellectuals, Obama, and Obamacare
Noemie Emery has a good summary of why intellectuals were attracted to Obama’s candidacy, and how Obamacare has threatened the entire liberal enterprise as well as the reputation of intellectuals themselves.
Obamacare has even gotten a few of those intellectual to say things like gee whiz, the real world isn’t quite like our models, fancy that!, in a rare moment of relative (and probably temporary) humility:
“It is actually harder to do some of these things in reality than we thought when we put it down on paper,” a book review in the Washington Post quoted a former Obama health care adviser as saying.
Emery follows that quote up with this observation, which closes her article:
They wanted their chance, and they got it. They had it. They blew it. They’re done.
I have the deepest respect for Noemie Emery. I’ve been reading her articles for years, and been impressed by them. But I think she’s making a huge and dangerous error in underestimating this group—their tenacity, their disregard for principle or truth, and their ability to rise like phoenixes from the ashes of whatever mess they’ve created.
Do not ever count them as “done.” It’s not in their nature, and it’s not in their plans. In fact, it’s not in human nature to permanently reject the leftist dream. Beware. Way too many Americans still buy what they’re selling.
[ADDENDUM: I just noticed that back in January of 2010 I wrote this article in the Weekly Standard that dovetails nicely with Emery’s latest. Here’s an excerpt:
A great many liberal pundits (who, conveniently, don’t have to run for reelection) are in agreement that the health care reform bills should not be allowed to die a quiet death. The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg calls for passage, and Paul Krugman makes the argument that dropping the push for the bills at this point would be to “fail the test of history.”
That last phrase indicates what might be driving these Democrats over the cliff (or the precipice, as Obama might say): Their long-held conviction that there is an upward historical trajectory which cannot be denied, a trend from less governmental control to more, and towards ever-expanding and newly-found guaranteed “rights” for citizens. Anyone who opposes this process is impeding the proper course of progress.
But a funny thing happened on the way to destiny: The people had the insolence to reject the idea. Well, say these Democrats condescendingly, then the people will just have to be ignored. Once the bill is somehow passed, and they see how much it helps their lives, they’ll come around and thank us…
… forget the most fundamental fact of all: There might be something inherently difficult and even contradictory about the notion of universal health care that is comprehensive, affordable, high quality, and yet comes without a huge price; that there may be no way to slice the available pie into enough large and tasty pieces to satisfy everyone without resulting in national near-bankruptcy, as well as substantial and unacceptable loss of liberty.
Dismissing such concerns with the sanguine reassurance that “all will be well, just trust us” is not enough. Maybe the problem with passing these bills is not merely strategic, and maybe most Americans will never approve. Maybe they would prefer more minimalist and gradual change, or even (gasp!) the implementation of some of the more modest proposals Republicans have suggested, such as interstate transportability of private health insurance, and tort reform. Maybe voters’ very real concerns are based on reality, not a reaction to scary rhetoric designed to frustrate the wishes of Democrats and halt the inevitable progressive sweep of history.
But it is much too threatening to the Democrats’ long-held vision of universal health care at last to actually look at these facts. It might mean they would have to admit that they could be chasing a pipe dream, albeit one they’ve held close to their hearts for the better part of a century.
Read the whole thing.]
Agree with you wholeheartedly on Emery. Her article years ago on how Democrats capitalize on tragedy (“Speak of the Dead” – also found at Weekly Standard). is probably the finest I’ve ever read online.
Video – Mark Cuban Speaks On Racism in this now famous interview “We All Have Our Prejudices And Bigotries”
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2014/05/mark-cuban-interview-we-all-have-our.html
“It is actually harder to do some of these things in reality than we thought when we put it down on paper,”
The thought that someone that stupid was an adviser on anything is beyond frightening.
We should not give power to anyone unclear on the difference between theory and practice.
If moral revulsion at xterminating 150 million people in the 20th century didn’t finish off the fascists/communists/socialists/progressives, nothing will.
Conservatives have to do what Billl Clinton said during impeachment, “well we’ll just have to win”.
Or take Hugh Hewitt’s book title “If it ain’t close they can’t cheat” as the goal for all elections.
And part of winning would involve everyone posting what Pat Sajak tweeted every time you can:
I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends.”
I was going to say what Harold already said – despite numerous, blaring failures of left-wing government they still keep trying to shove it down everyone’s throat. Because it looks good on paper. Because it shows “compassion” even if the result is misery for millions. Because it puts them in power over others.
There is basically a mental disconnect in the mind of a liberal. Sometimes it’s curable (like in the case of this blog’s author). Usually it isn’t, no matter how many facts and results you show them.
I question how much of an intellectual Barack Obama really is….I suspect any reasonably-well-read individual could make mincemeat of him in a scholarly debate with honest moderation. He HAS been very effective, though, at projecting a “he is one of us” vibe to academics, writers, journalists, etc. And many of these people seem to be extremely status-hungry and desperate for approval on the part of authority. What they don’t realize is that Obama, while patting them on the head, actually feels great contempt for what he views as their trivial and boring lives.
Regarding intellectuals in positions of real responsibility, I recently reviewed Herman Wouk’s novel The Caine Mutiny, which has this topic (among others) as one of its primary themes. Link:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/43106.html
Intellectuals are more retarded than they think, especially when they lack the physical virtues to compensate for the mental virtues.
Sometimes it’s curable (like in the case of this blog’s author).
Neo Neo never did have the unquestioning obedience to authority found in thralls and cannonfodder of the Left.
Thus there was nothing there to fix in the first place.
I love Noemie’s next-to-last paragraph:
“…Another [conclusion] is that the people who shine in the faculty lounge ought to stay in it, that novelists have not been good judges of political horseflesh, and that if you really believe you belong to an aristocracy of the intellect, you most likely do not. The intellectual salons include a whole lot of windbags, and would have excluded a number of very effective real-world practitioners, such as Truman and Reagan and Ike.”
Great article, but sadly, I can’t agree they’re “done,” either.
They remind me of nothing so much as the zombies in The Night of the Living Dead (q.v.: no, really!). Just when you’ve nailed the door shut with crossed planks, they thrust their arms through the windows, howling for brains.
[Those who aren’t versed in zombie lore: zombies eat living people’s brains. The metaphor is practically perfect!]
Academic intellectuals and journalists generally seem to discount the idea that Executive Management is an important and difficult skill…I suspect many of them are quite confident that they could easily be CEO of Whatever Corp, and that they are making a real sacrifice by teaching or writing instead.
Academic intellectuals who work in B-schools tend to make a related but somewhat different mistake: the overrate the degree to which Management can be learned from books, simulations, case studies, and lectures.
Beverly, zombies? Do you mean Leftists and Democrat cannonfodder?
the overrate the degree to which Management can be learned from books, simulations, case studies, and lectures.
Some people actually believe they can take 100% of the knowledge and wisdom of the ancients, merely by reading one of their books.
Similar to how Leftists think that being in the religion of perfect human utopia, the Leftist alliance, means that salvation on Earth will come through stopping global warming (apoc).
I’m with you on this. They will convince/have already convinced themselves that they cannot give up the ship.
Progressives will not give up on their ideas because it is central to their sense of self and being convinced of their superiority. The little slip that Obama is incompetent rather than admit that their ideas are is at least temporary proof of this. Part of the left’s makeup is never admitting error in ideas but rather execution. They will always have a ready excuse.
The Left never quits because politics defines their very existence.
They are also experts at incrementalism.
And because we don’t agree with their looney ideas we are allegedly haters. Doing nothing is way preferable too compromising with them.
To the Left, their politics is more like a religion, with all its faith based institutions and powerful absolution of guilt packaged in.
Neo…
There are always additional fools to replace the old fools.
New lies for old…
Means recycled memes for man.
%%%
More than they could bear to think, collectivism is an attempt to return to the paleo-tribe: to live in a cashless, communal clan and not deal with the larger world.
One aspect of that primal urge is the active repression of race differences, cultural differences and religious differences.
They, the dreamers, round on every ‘square peg’ in sight.
Everything that was ancient is new again — for them.
(This is facilitated by not reading the Old Testament.)
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
Keep your powder dry and wait until you can see the whites of their eyes through the scope and then put the cross hairs on the bridge of the nose. Next breathe out and gently squeeze, and be surprised by the recoil. Thats what my daddy and uncles taught me. They got the tech but we got the numbers and the spirit. Until that day comes to pass; agitate, vote, and pray that day never has to come.
Amen to that
Parker.
We will keep on
fighting.
The weapons and tactics
may change,
but
not our spirit.
In the states
In the cities
In this nation
this new world:
Whatever the cost
may be,
we shall never surrender!
We will defend our lives
against all evil
and despair.
David F, thank you for the link to the review and discussion of “The Caine Mutiny”. That is one of the most deeply thought-provoking pieces I have read in a long time.
What distinctions are left today? Are there intellectuals? Are there scientists? Are there mystics? Not likely for anyone between 20 and 30 where 70% of them have gone to college and been ruined. Keefer, the manifestation of the age, is the cause of that ruin. Is he an intellectual? No. He is no Maimonides. He is an accuser, a slanderer, an Obama, the manifestation, the prognosis, the end of the leadership of his age. Today we demand no distinctions, except to distinguish against quality, merit and norms.
Yes, thank God, there are a few intellectuals (Kolnai, Neo, Foster, Beverly, Ysmarker, GB, and many others here), scientists (Artfldgr, Sergey and the incredible Schneiderman) and mystics (Gagdad Bob, also a linguistic and punning genius) and some who have it all (Vanderleun) and it is upon them and us (the yeoman, the volk) to carry the light, the information, the understanding, the DNA of freedom’s survival.
OMG, a great intellectual has surpassed himself, again, as he does, often, but this time, really!
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/378648/resign-kevin-d-williamson
Steve, on the Mark Cuban affair:
The race police:
“Race Police”
The race police, they live inside of my head
The race police, they come to me in my bed
The race police, they’re coming to arrest me, oh, no
You know that talk is cheap
And those rumors ain’t nice
And when I fall asleep
I don’t think I’ll survive the night, the night
‘Cause they’re waiting for me
They’re looking for me
Every single night
They’re driving me insane
Those men inside my brain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yRRqxJHQmA
The Left doesn’t even have the tech, most of them don’t even know how their microwaves work. Science, when they made it into their religion, lost most of its military flexibility and civilian applications.
David Foster, I also want to thank you for the link, the review, and inspiring the comments to the review! Fascinating!
You quoted Wouk’s character saying: ‘Keefer has a cynical attitude toward the Navy, which he refers to as “a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots,” . . . .’
This idea, put in a truer fashion as: Systems often need be a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by non-genuises. This is basically what Sir Francis Bacon said so long ago about the importance of method, of turning complexity into doable methodology that can be valuably pursued by those who need to accomplish something but who needn’t do the deep thinking–this is one of the most important concepts in history. What’s essential here is that the method needs to be based on reality, and needs to discourage dishonesty or corruption. (This last–based on REALITY with safeguards, etc., is where the Progressives fail, and fail disastrously.)
You also chose to quote a character saying (with my brackets: “You’re not supposed to love [a group] necessarily, just give them a fair shake.”
If you make the substitution of “a group” here, as I did, the sentence is imperative to our time. Tolerance is not, not, not admiration or silence about opposing views, but rather ensuring that everyone is given a “fair shake”. The Progressive HATE this. For them, tolerance means open agreement and admiration and disagreement silenced, by force if need be.
The entire review is thought-proking and worth rereading, too!
waitforit and Steve, great links, too.
Neo, thanks for allowing links. They are always worth following.
Reposted here and at the Caine review.
What is remarkable about The Caine Mutiny is that this reconsideration of Queeg is effected with no cagey revealing of heretofore concealed information, merely by a suggestion that we look at the facts we know from a different perspective. Who has not experienced this? Our most urgent certainties can collapse at a friend’s unexpected comments.
All you have to do is to look at Queeg with hate in your heart and see him as an enemy or as a tool, and you will see several things.
Then reverse the pov and instead of hate, view him with love.
Without hate, it cannot be discerned. Without love, it cannot be seen.
WWII conscience + truth vs obeying authority can be seen in FDR vs Admiral Kimmel.
http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/admiral-husband-kimmel-and-pearl-harbor/
Back in the day, true patriots existed in positions of power, even though we might not have liked their policies or judgments. The Leftist alliance took advantage of this love of America, to destroy America. They did not reciprocate love and forgiveness of mistakes, for the greater benefit of the nation, to anyone else after they were done. And so here we are now.
Minta, Marie, thanks! Re “Systems often need be a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by non-genuises,” I agree…there is a distinction, though, between assuming that the executors are non-geniuses and assuming that they are idiots. The latter leads us to the management philosophy known as Taylorism…see my post Mindless Verbal Taylorism, which discussed the damage that this approach is doing in customer-service contexts.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/8034.html
David Foster–that discussion of Taylor, etc., was totally cool!
And, yes, I deliberately substituted “non-genius” instead of “idiot” because I like people, and because the essence of Sir Francis Bacon’s belief seemed–to me–to be that the average person could, through a strong and wide-ranging education, become a fully capable participant in a meaningful life lived in an ever more complex world.
Bacon thought of the future through the analogy of the new continents that were then being discovered and explored. The scientific method–used to study everything, even things like agriculture, cooking, and manufacturing–would question reality, and systematic and careful experimentation and study could produce the “maps” that would allow the average person to successfully navigate the new realm always coming into being with each new dawn. Everything that was complex could be codified, organized, systematized, broken down into instructions, and so forth. Always based on reality, always based on the constant feedback of results, of cause and effect, of understanding context and purpose–and the ongoing evaluation of well-educated minds carrying theory into practice, modifying their actions based on what actually happens.
Unfortunately, the postmodern curricula most frequently offered in K-12 and college deliberately steers the student away from contact with excellence, beauty, brilliance, truth, reality, the scientific method, the in-depth history of Western Civilization, and of America–as part of that tradition–and the great achievements of the finest minds of the past (from all cultures). The practical arts and craftsmanship, techne, praxis, have been largely abandoned. Instead, the student is dumbed-down, subjected to Leftist propaganda, made prisoner to the latest fads in subjects such as math, forced to read tendentious and ugly materials, and, in general, taught self-esteem rather than self-confidence, and emotional, knee-jerk ideological reactions rather than logic and fact-based reasoning.
This results in the formulaic “scripts” and tedious methods so often devised by those who rely on poorly-examined context and purpose, on the coerced demands of PC, and on toeing the Leftist line. They have become cargo cultists out of necessity–the great cartography of long-tested tradition is absent. More and more, people are lost. They keep huddled in small mental clearings, surrounded by paths they are not allowed to follow, and unable to step into what has become–for them–the wilderness of Terra Incognita.
Okay, I just read through what I wrote, and I want to add something.
I know that a lot of managers and other executives simply assume people are idiots, and treat them accordingly. That’s always been true, hasn’t it?
But I also know that people are capable of a hell of a lot more than self-proclaimed intellectuals and “educators” believe they are, and it is unspeakably rotten that so many minds are being deliberately prevented from realizing their potential. The Left leadership starves minds and hearts and spirits because they have contempt for what they consider the masses. There is no argument they can give that can stand against the FACT of what the Left has done, and has allowed to happen, to the people in the cities they control.
People in control on the Left, those in positions of power, would never, under any circumstances, allow their own children to be raised under the conditions they CREATE and CONTROL for the children of others in the cities they control.
How many children–of all races–will never know what they might have taken delight in, what they might have prized, what they might have been able to accomplish, if they had come into contact with, and been taught the abilities to appreciate, the best the human spirit has created over time?
If you can’t read very well, how much of the world is beyond your reach?
It’s heart-breaking.
To say that the leftists blew their chance is to assume that you know what they were trying to do. I don’t think Obama, Obamacare, and the Left in general have failed at all – in what they are actually TRYING to do, which is to destroy the United States. They’ve been QUITE successful at that.
It’s heart-breaking.
Yes… but it is also intentional. They intend to destroy all competition, while raising their kids the right way. Check Chelsea’s “anger”.
KM is correct as well. It was an intentional engineered collapse. The bridge just didn’t suddenly collapse because somebody made a mistake or miscalculation on the math.
I agree. That’s why I said “deliberately”. The Long March. The Fabian Society. The Frankfurt School. All of Artful’s lists. And so many others.
In books, papers, manifestos, speeches, films, the media, songs, poetry, displays, art, methodology, atrocities, subjugated peoples, desperate lives–they’ve spelled it out, carried it out, and strategized for the the future.
They work to silence the Truth, demonize the Good, emotionalize Reason, limit Knowledge, and eliminate the Beautiful.
That is so. Which is why I wrote on my blog that the Leftist alliance’s war on humanity just took a new set of sacrifices in California, since the murdering agent was heavily influenced by Californian and Hollywood culture and philosophy (of death).
The Left wars against women, blacks, dogs (PETA executions), and so on and so forth. Might as well include it in the uber umbrella of humanity.
Do squats A great squat should feel like it’s working the complete lower half
of your body, in addition to stretching the core muscle tissues around your again and abdomen.
Listed here are some workouts to try, so as of intensity: