The left sees no need to tiptoe around any more
Read this and weep.
One thing I’ve long felt about the Obama presidency is that it showed the way and blazed the trail, at least for American leftists since the 60s. Particularly since Reagan, the left in this country used to think it had to tiptoe around so as not to wake the sleeping Americans, because it couldn’t get away with anything too blatant. The Gramscian march continued, in order to pave the way, of course. But people running for office felt they had to play by certain rules, for the most part, or they’d be in trouble.
Obama has shown that, given the right “leader,” Americans are no more protective of liberty, due process, checks and balances, and all that dead white man jazz than are most people around the globe. Exceptionalism? What old-fashioned hooey.
Sorry to be so gloomy today. But the news in general has not been good, here and in other countries.
You change the contents of the box and it’s not the same product; no matter what the label says.
Let me help. You should never have gotten your hopes up after the 2012 election. Feel better, now?
Seriously though, whenever I get morose about our national affliction – I remind myself that this is what the majority wanted. There is nothing much we can do but go into survival mode. Acceptance brings a peaceful, calming resignation. Anything else is tilting at windmills. A country looking at an election likely featuring Trump and Hillary is beyond saving, in the traditional sense.
It’s enough to make me glad I’ll be 80 next month.
Rhetorical question time. Why do you think that gun sales have skyrocketed over the past seven years?
KRB
Neo: “the Obama presidency is that it showed the way and blazed the trail”
Effect, not cause.
Characterizing it as cause is misleading because it implies the premise that electoral politics are the primary agent of social change, which is incorrect.
The difference is not a fundamental change in the nature of We The People.
The difference is merely the progress made by the Left in the activist game. Which really, is just the obvious thing to do. Participatory politics are bigger than electoral politics. The Left’s progress across the spectrum warps the social fabric for everything else, including electoral politics.
The only solution to the Left is the Right competing in the activist game. The Right must stop passing the buck to Republicans to do the job of countering the Left that only the Right can do.
The Left will continue to run roughshod on the clear field as long as the Right self-limits in the activist game. As competitors, what else but continue taking ground is the Left supposed to do if the Right refuses to compete with the Left in the activist game?
When is catastrophe a catastrophe? When it doesn’t look catastrophic. When it has become the new ordinary. When it is no-longer possible to shock the bourgeoisie. Stay long in the midst of ennui, general neurasthenia, malaise, disquiet, corruption, war, death, vulgarity, immorality, and the trinity of the self – self-abnegation, self-absorption, self-actualization, and after awhile, they all tend to go unnoticed. Senses immersed and steeped in the abattoir, soon no longer sense the abattoir.
No-one can live in the future and everyone is slave to the present. Abortion is worse than a ‘right’, it’s normal. War is worse than a horror, it’s normal. The ‘Self’ is worse than vanity, narcissism, egotism, it’s normal. Another surrender — the egoist had submitted to the egotist.
NB: there stands Obama and his opposite number Trump — exemplars extraordinaire of the latter.
NB 2: if a nation had elected the first — twice — what is it that elicits any confidence that it has had its fill of it and is ready to pin their hopes on something than another egotist?
NB 3: all egotists are not alike. The one who would promise to lower the oceans has but one leg to stand on — self-delusion. The other, who would promise relief from over indulgence, has two legs to stand on — the imperative and the possibility.
NB 4: all narcissists are not alike. One, the classic narcissists, falls, as did Narcissus, for an image of himself – an image of jerry-rigged construction erected over decades. The other, the conventional narcissist, falls for himself, even if too hard, for the accomplishments reflected in his image.
When in Rome, do as the Romans… when in the midst of a revolution, rebel… when in Oz, find a good witch.
Yep, “blaze” seems spot on.
And Obama’s gonna add as much fuel as he can to this conflagration until December 2016.
Problem is, who’s gonna put it out?
File under: The fire this time.
Let’s put this in perspective: it’s just one poll and not all that at variance from polling in the last several month. The only significant difference is the slight bump above 50%.
Is this additional evidence for gloom and pessimism? Sure. But ancillary evidence at best. The are a wealth of reasons to be pessimistic and to despair. But this post does tie in nicely to Neo’s post on the Yglesias piece. The left now believes it can capture 50%+1 of voters such that the Presidency will be permanently theirs. And they are governing and campaigning accordingly (that is, without restraint and with minimal appeal to anyone outside progressive ideological sphere). Obama’s approval rating will never be above 60% again; it is unlikely to ever be above 55% again. Nor will a potential President Hillary. They understand this and they don’t care. They are perfectly comfortable with close to half the country opposing them (even passionately hating them) so long as slightly more than half support them uncritically and slavishly.
That, friends, is the bigger cause for despair.
I see I posted my response under the Yglesias post by mistake. But, it’s relevant to both.
The problem is that this is no longer a center – right country. With all the brain-washed younguns (Ever watch Watter’s World on O’Reilly? Callow youth stupidity on constantly display.) and immigrants (both legal and illegal) this is now a center – left country. That’s why they are more brazen in revealing their true motives and methods.
What will change it? Unfortunately, I fear it’s going to take hard times like not seen since the 1930s or a major attack (nuclear/chemical/bio) with big mass casualties before people begin to scrutinize their leaders more carefully – not for their celebrity or coolness but for their common sense and no-nonsense leadership abilities.
I walk out of my house and stroll about the neighborhood. It’s peaceful, the trees are ablaze with fall colors, neighbors are doing their thing, and most are cheerful. Same thing when I do my weekly hunter/gathering at Costco and Safeway. Life goes on quite normally. One would never guess that our rights are slowly being eroded. And therein lies much of the problem. Life is good for enough people that it is only those who are paying attention that know about the undertow of liberal fascism that is slowly sucking us down. Only a monstrous wake up call can change that.
Error – should be: “Callow youth stupidity constantly on display.”
J.J., 5:02 pm — “The problem is that this is no longer a center — right country. With all the brain-washed younguns . . .”
. . . and the immigrants, predominantly but not necessarily illegal, who have never had instilled in them any appreciation for the Constitution — ours or anyone’s for that matter — or for the the rule of law rather than of men or wymyn. What many, many of them do have instilled in them is an appreciation of gimme: gimme the fruits of the labors of The Man (in the case of muslim types, also known as The Infidel), because they’re rightfully mine to begin with. As for gratitude, surely you jest.
Cultural and national suicide in slow motion, except the motion ain’t so slow now. Sez M J R, it will continue to accelerate.
Can I have off the crazy train now?
I don’t know how this plays into it, but I was talking to my parents this weekend that the leftist vileness was infecting regular people. I see all the nasty, mean-spirited memes on FB from just regular people, and I’m shocked. Well, that’s a strong word, but saddened doesn’t seem appropriate.
That which keeps me going is that Jesus said he would bring division and discord within families and between people. I’m not trying to say that conservatives are pure good and progressives are pure evil, but if you read the Bible carefully, we conservatives tend to advocate and believe more of the Biblical ‘good’ than the they do.
What keeps me going is my extended family. We are a cohesive ‘clan’ bound by blood and tradition. Plus, we all reload. 😉
They spend so much time extravagantly promoting the narrative. Thats what wears me down. Any more there’s no moral authority’s or objective truth seekers its what ever they believe and with this Rathergate movie the narrative can never ever go away no matter how long ago or how trivial.
JJ:
“What will change it? Unfortunately, I fear it’s going to take hard times like not seen since the 1930s or a major attack (nuclear/chemical/bio) with big mass casualties before people begin to scrutinize their leaders more carefully..”
I have a friend of mine who refers to this event as the “reset”. As for myself, I dont think anything will go back to what it was before, not for a long-long time.
I was walking around today and feeling sad that America is perhaps a thing of the past. I tried to drop my car off at a garage for repair in my small town, and the man in the garage told me to speak to the fellow in the store about my car. The fellow in the store told me to speak to the man in the garage about my car. They barely spoke English and really had a machismo dismissive attitude prevalent of the third world culture they have recently arrived from. It depressed me that they were there. I had to drive around and find an American garage where they happily good my business.
Canada now has their Obama. Sad to see.
Julia NYC Says:
October 20th, 2015 at 8:31 pm
I was walking around today and feeling sad that America is perhaps a thing of the past….
WATCH an ARMY of young Muslim males MARCH through tiny Slovenia on their way to Germany!
Insects …
I won’t believe that the American left will vote for someone they know to be a criminal until I see it. If there’s massive turnout for Hillary, then I’ll know the left has truly gone insane.
To Matt_SE – is not Obama a constitutional criminal?
Was not the IRS fiscal blockade of Tea Party organizing for 2012 a quiet coup?
“The end justifies the means” surrounds us, and I see no rule of law to counter it coming back.
Sulla is the best to expect.
In short, it’s not over next year – it’s over now. All that can positively happen is pro-counter-counter-revolutionary….I have so lost count.
Matt_SE, 12:30 am —
They already voted for Lyndon Johnson.
(“Landslide Lyndon”.)
And for William Jefferson Clinton.
They knew both of these to be criminals.
Am I mistaken?
M J R:
Yes, you are mistaken.
Of course, it depends who you mean by “they.” The vast majority of people who voted for LBJ and Bill Clinton knew no such thing. In addition, the vast majority of people who voted for them were not leftists.
Johnson wasn’t a man of the left, although he was a liberal and he certainly cheated in that election you’re referring to . And what criminal act do you assume was common knowledge about Bill Clinton at the time he ran for president?
Oh, and by the way, I find Broaddrick’s allegations unconvincing.
When did they ever?
They were pulling this stuff against Goldwater in ’64.
In re MJR’s contention, you must not have been around then. I was.
Everybody knew Johnson as a “Texas wheeler-dealer” and viewed him as a crooked politician.
My mother certainly did and that was the feeling at the time. The only reason he did so well against Goldwater was Bill “Mr Ethics” Moyers’ efforts to paint him (Goldwater) as a dangerous nut.
no need to tiptoe around any more:
Clock Boy’s Dad Calls For A New Amendment to The U.S. Constitution:
At a press conference Tuesday morning outside the U.S. Capitol Building, Ahmed ”Clock Boy” Mohamed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, urged the president and Congress to amend the Constitution so that innocent people like his son would not be victimized by authorities ever again…
Not a spoof!
Ya’ll stay rational and focus on producing well considered and articulate posts …
no need to tiptoe around any more:
Feds dangle $12,000 bonus to firms that hire foreign students
… But the Center for Immigration Studies said it will punish American STEM students competing for those same jobs. And, they added, in adjusting how the foreign students are categorized as employees, they get out of paying payroll taxes used to help fund programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Dangle … nice word that …
Free associates with lamp post ….
The Left. Yes.
While growing up in the 1960’s I remember their clarion call:
“Don’t trust anyone over 30.”
Hahahahahaha, now they are all over 30. Most of them are twice that age. Supporting their socialist candidate who weighs in at 74 years old.
___
The Left has caused America all of its woes over the past many, many decades. Not all Leftists. Just the Left.
The Left is that group that insisted, during WWII that America had to share all information regarding nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union so that they were not at a disadvantage. Yep——that was the Left. In the 60’s they carried their “little red books” around while applauding Mao Tse Tung and his ideas.
This, while wearing their Che Guevara t-shirts. Even in the first term of Obama, Anita Dunn, gave an approving nod to Mao in one of her public addresses.
“Ho…Ho…Ho Chi Minh.” A favorite chant of theirs.
Yes, the Left. Dangerous then. Dangerous now.
And now with Canada’s new representative of the Left, his first decree is to pull military support from the war on terrorists in the ME. No need to fight those people. They are merely fighting for their own worthy cause and pursuits.
formwiz:
I was very much around when LBJ was running. And no, everyone knew no such thing.
Perhaps it depends on where you lived at the time.
The main beef with LBJ held by the people around me was that he was uncouth, and he wasn’t young, handsome, witty, and cool like JFK. Then, later, of course, that he was a warmonger.
That was the sum total of it.
Read the piece Neo posted a few blog posts down a bit. It was a link from Instapundit that was linked to Vox – they sure as heck will vote for Hillary! Lying is a feature, not a bug.
a long time ago i mentinoed this would happen and that their masks come off the more power they think they have
Artfldgr:
Speaking of predictions, I wrote of Obama in 2010 that if he were elected to a second term of office:
Once power has been obtained, and there is little or no accountability, the powerful are free to take their masks off.
See also this from January 2011, and also this from 2010.
Neo, says,
Bobby Baker
KTBC
Billy Sol Estes
Johnson was a fraud, a thief, and probably much worse. [edited by n-n]
DNW:
I’m speaking of the perceptions of the average voter I knew at the time.
Also, those charges of LBJ’s involvement in the shady activities of his buddies were not proven. That doesn’t mean they weren’t true, of course. But people could dismiss them as rumors, if they even followed them at all.
“Johnson was a fraud, a thief, and probably much worse. [edited by n-n]”
Thanks, seriously. Been reading a little too much post classical history lately.
DNW:
I would think you know what I edited out, and why I deleted it.
It wasn’t about history of any sort.
It was your wish as to where LBJ and those who “knowingly supported” him should go after their deaths, and what should happen to them there.
You surprise me. But that is right. I know. It was about my hostile and contemptuous attitude toward Johnson’s eternal – should he or anyone else have one – fate, and not my insinuation that he may have been complicit in murder, if the confession of his criminal associate Estes could be trusted.
So I do indeed know. I just didn’t think you were particularly sensitive or religious, or even slightly religious enough, to take the theme as a strong, and let us say morally significant, “metaphor”.
But let’s pretend we are convinced of an afterlife, and that what I said about Johnson’s destructive subversion of our system earned him the end to which I would have tossed him without regret.
What might that fate have looked – and even at this moment look – like? What would I have been condemning him to?
Well, I don’t know what Jewish tradition says. I didn’t think Jews believed in Hell. And even Christian tradition is of course less than clear.
But for those with any interest in these kinds of things, there are – and I looked them up – several Catholic traditions based on ostensibly unrelated and unconnected visions. Visions, which have oddly surprising commonalities.
A nun in Poland just prior to WWII; a Japanese nun in the 1970s, and of course the claims supposedly related to the events at Fatima in 1917.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOk9pYjakCI
I began to check on a couple of these things after coming across an account in Bede’s history, which I believe I have mentioned before.
The relative sophistication and logic of the story – given the “Dark Age” date and the expectedly rude and simple psychology of the supposed participant – interested me as a possible actual report of a psychologically experienced event. (The reference to Virgil notwithstanding) That is to say, truly experienced as an event, but not necessarily real in any other sense.
There is no denying that it was written down before 732, whether it happened or not.
And this leads me to ask if there might not be some odd way in which the human mind visualizes “events”; one which would cause a householder in Cunningham Northumbria, to report an aspect of “Hell” which weirdly corresponded on certain core points to something peasant children in Portugal, a Polish nun before the war, and a Japanese nun, are reputed to have observed.
What I am talking about as a core and common thread in these “reports” concerns the dark plasma-like blooms which well up bearing the screaming souls of the damned, and then descend again; that, and the depth of the surrounding darkness which is experienced as so complete as to be nearly palpable; and the unbearable stench.
Fire and brimstone will prime part of the imagination’s pump I guess. But the dark blooms or welling bubbles of plasma fire have me puzzled.
Where did that imagery derive from?
Where would a Japanese nun, or three shepherd children in Portugal have gotten a copy of Bede?
Perhaps it is fortunate I don’t really have the power to send Democrats, even deserving ones, to Hell, eh?
By the way, my “post classical history” remark was about social collapse, demoralization, and moral apathy. Just in case there was any misunderstanding re my point of departure.
Effect, not cause.
It’s not that simple. The Leftist alliance created the contentions for the rise to power of Hussein types, but Hussein also showed the Left just what audacity and hope would give them in terms of real power.
The Leftist alliance has had a conservative strategy ever since the 1960s insurgencies, bombings, and terrorism didn’t work out as they thought. It worked, to a certain extent, but it wasn’t as quick as they thought. So they went underground, gave up their bombing days, like Ayers, in return for luxury and a slower route to power. Well, they also realized that being an insurgent was a quick and short way to Death. They preferred being alive and being rich.
Btw, I think it would be safe to say that a lot of the comments here, if it had been seen and rad in 2007-2008, would have been considered “crazy”.
I just want to let that out there so people would know that.
Crazy and normal is a matter of statistics and maturation.
neo,
Johnson may not have been thought of as crooked but he was definitely seen as a “wheeler-dealer”. Before becoming VP he had made his reputation as an active, arm-twisting Senate majority leader. I believe his landslide win in 1964 was not due to any great personal affection on the part of the American people for him but had two main origins:
1) a desire of the American people to pull together after the Kennedy assassination. This may be hard to believe now but that is who we were as a people back then.
2) the successful portrayal of Goldwater as an extremist (daisy ad, eliminating Social Security)
neo-neocon Says:
DNW:
I’m speaking of the perceptions of the average voter I knew at the time.
So are we. You say you grew up in a very Liberal area. Maybe there they wouldn’t believe anything bad about any Democrat.
I came from a relatively Conservative (majority Republican but plenty of Democrats, Haverford College right down the road (literally), I walked past it on my way to school) part of the Philadelphia ‘burbs and the feeling was as I and DNW (where he came from) indicated.
formwiz:
The discussion, however, was not about what conservatives thought or knew about LBJ. It was about what those who voted for LBJ thought or knew about LBJ.
My response was originally to this comment by M J R, about those who voted for LBJ and what they knew about him.
What the conservatives around you thought about LBJ and knew about LBJ was irrelevant to what I was saying and what we were originally discussing—which is what LBJ voters thought and knew about him.
If that was the case, then they did not “knowingly support” in the sense of knowledgeably support and condone, him.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/knowingly
However, I have little doubt that many of Johnson’s most significant Democrat Party supporters and enablers knew quite enough to know just exactly what they were doing.
It’s amazing how little, people even now, want to know about Johnson, lest their worldview be completely upended.
By the way, I think you would probably agree that this remark …
… has the potential for speaking volumes about the political and moral sensibilities and standards of those around you at the time.
One the one hand, I suppose, it could be read as saying “He was a perfect candidate on all substantial matters, lacking only …”
On the other hand …
“One the one hand, I suppose …”
On the one hand …
DNW:
The discussion about “knowingly” supporting came later.
I’m talking about what we originally were discussing when I made my first remarks about who knew what when. In relation to those remarks, I was responding to this from MJR, which only concerns those who voted for LJB and what they knew:
That’s why what the liberals around me thought is relevant, and what conservatives thought at the time is irrelevant. Your “knowingly” remark came later, and my objection to that was your eschatological comments.
As for your statement that what those liberals knew or didn’t know spoke “volumes about the political and moral sensibilities and standards of those around you at the time”—actually, what it really spoke of was their sources of information and how well the information that reached them was controlled. In those days “well-informed” people read the Times and watched the nightly 7 o’clock news. It doesn’t really say all that much about their morals, although it definitely says something about their politics, as shaped by the MSM and the environment in which they lived.
What’s more, by the way, most of them did not like LBJ on the personal level. Most liberals in the northeast were still reeling from JFK’s assassination and felt that LBJ was an uncouth boor, as I indicated. However, he was a Democrat, and Goldwater was an arch-conservative who was successfully portrayed by the MSM as a warmongering extremist.
neo-neocon Says:
October 22nd, 2015 at 2:22 pm
“eschatological comments” That’s a particularly delicate way of my consigning Lyndon Johnson to everlasting hellfire for crimes both common and Constitutional.
And yes, my comments, with the qualification “knowingly” as applied to Johnson’s supporters, did come later. I’m the one who asserted that there was plenty of additional material apart from that previously mentioned to indict him for, implied that it had been much in the news, and then damned both Johnson and his “knowing” supporters.
Yes, that is an accurate description. I don’t challenge that.
I’m kind of baffled here. Didn’t I quote you to the effect that your friends’ skepticism of Johnson, the only failed hurdle which they might have challenged him to cross, was based on looks, youth, and style? Is this not then the sum and substance of their test as it might have applied to any Democrat with “the right” politics?
That is to say, that character never even appeared on their checklist.
And again, I am not claiming that this says something directly about their morals, as in their direct actions. But rather it reflects on their moral sensibilities; i.e., what they consider as part of the constellation of evaluatively significant moral traits.
And Johnson’s very dubious and notorious character does not seem to be included in that constellation of significant stars.
Being a warmongering extremist may have been the only thing he was ever unfairly accused of.
DNW:
By the way, we’re not talking mainly about friends of mine here. We’re talking about the adults who surrounded me—the average liberal voters at the time (at least in NYC).
I was never of voting age when Johnson was running. I was a teenager. This is based on my general observation of people around me who were of voting age. They just weren’t paying attention, past what the Times and the nightly news told them. The internet did not exist back then, of course, nor did 24-hour cable coverage. It was very very different in terms of sources of information and amount of time spent gathering it.
As for a vague background idea that Johnson might have been a bit shady in his dealings, one thing that was probably operating in their minds (this is a guess; it’s not like we were having in-depth discussions about it) was that they probably were cynical about politicians in general. So LBJ would not have been considered such an outlier, unless there had been a publicized smoking gun—which there was not.
The people who dismissed him as uncouth and crass—that wasn’t based so much on my memories of people around me, as it was based on my memories of reading columnists to get an idea of basic liberal thought at the time. It was just a gut feeling, too—and a grief reaction to the shock of losing the young JFK in such a traumatic manner.
JFK’s assassination was deeply traumatic. Remember, also, that it occurred a very short time before the 1964 election (a single year), the only election in which LBJ was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. And he’d already been president for a year.
It was NOT a normal election in any sense of the word, including and perhaps especially the emotional sense.
I was greatly disturbed by the article at Vox, and sent the author a brief email–which I am sure he will ignore–asking him whether he sees a problem with the precedents about which he is so enthusiastic being used by someone he finds less palatable than the Hildabeast, and asking, rhetorically, whether this might perhaps be the sort of thing that leads nations to “interesting times,” as the Chinese say.
I hadn’t read the original (it is linked to as well) until a few moments ago.
Now that I have, I can easily say that Matthew Yglesias is someone I would not hesitate to leave dying in the middle of the road, or to “broom” off my porch if he ever showed his face there.
He’s an open enemy of my heritage of rights, liberty more generally and Constitutional government in particular; and thus is far beyond the pale when it comes to moral and political peer-hood.
It is unusual to have a two-bit totalitarian punk come out and declare itself for what it is, but on rare occasions they will do it.
Yglesias, is unfit to be an American, or to even draft off the wake of free men and women.
And to think that Neo blanched at the notion I would consign someone to hell for their politically evil deeds …
neo, you misread what I was saying. A lot of Conservatives and Republicans voted for Johnson because they bought the Lefty propaganda about what a nut Goldwater was.
My point in giving you a glimpse of where I lived at the time was that it went heavily Johnson in ’64, even though it was a pretty conservative area.
And I saw a lot of “Republicans for Johnson” buttons that fall.
formwiz:
Yes, LBJ’s landslide in 1964 was so huge that many Republicans had to have voted for him. But to a lot of Republicans, he really was much further to the right than they were.
I think that anyone who has even the vaguest childhood memories of that time, remembers that Goldwater was generally taken as some kind of lunatic.
My father didn’t vote for him.
One memory I do have was that there was only one Goldwater lawn sign in the neighborhood. It was next door to my little pal’s house and in the front yard of a childless – as far as I knew – but youngish middle-aged couple who had one of those meticulous Bentgrass lawns. The guy cut it with an unpowered reel-type push mower, and wore cotton gloves while doing so.
By the way, by way of carry-over from an earlier Neo comment, I mistakenly replied …
“Being a warmongering extremist may have been the only thing he was ever unfairly accused of.”
… when I carelessly skated over the actual subject of the remark, and on the basis of an earlier observation of Neo’s mistakenly placed Johnson as the subject of Neo’s newer remark.
She was not, as my negligent glance assumed, again referring to Johnson’s reputation with a nascent anti-war movement, but quite clearly instead to Barry Goldwater.
That said, I make no admission of error, since I am implacable of making earors.