There’s a lively conversation going on in the comments section here about what has become one of our favorite topics: how dangerous is Obama? Meaning: how can you tell if tyranny is approaching, and especially whether it’s likely to be successful?
I would submit that the signs are there, especially the all-important attempts to control the media and therefore the message that gets out to the population. This is of course more difficult in the twenty-first century than it was in the twentieth, but hardly impossible.
For example, the MSM has already been firmly in the hands of liberals and the Left for quite some time now, with conservative media the exception rather than the rule. However, even though the number of media outlets on the Right are small, they still manage to capture a large audience, and this causes a special ire on the Left. This administration is trying hard to stifle those alternative voices and make sure others are afraid to join them in reporting news unfavorable to Obama. The Left is already largely in control of education as well, which is a huge piece of the puzzle that must be in place, and it paved the way for Obama’s election.
Another warning sign is duplicity. All politicians lie at times, of course. But as I’ve said before, Obama is the first US politician I can think of in my lifetime in this country who has lied about his basic political orientation, presenting himself as something he is not: moderate, bipartisan, and post-racial instead of radical, intensely partisan, and race-focused. This is duplicity of a fundamental type.
Next we have an attempt to take control of the electoral process. This has been a long march, just as in education. The successful drive to drop requirements for proper IDs in many states is part of it. The Obama administration also made taking over the census an early priority, with a plan to involve the wretched ACORN in the process. It’s hard to avoid the idea that the goal had to do with cooking the voter books in favor of the Democratic Party. Once this is done, all bets are off.
Moving right along, we have the government takeover and/or control of many businesses and industries, and now the attempt to take over the health care industry, one of the biggest and most important of all. Why else the pile-driver push to do this now, immediately if not sooner, even in the midst of so many more pressing crises? Why else the insistence on the public option, when other less radical fixes would probably work much better? And why not try to cut Medicare costs first and show that it’s possible?
Haste in general is a mark of this administration. Haste makes waste, and it also makes confusion. The idea is to accomplish extreme and fundamental changes before the American people have time to learn and object, or to reject the Democrats in Congress in 2010.
Then we have the expansion of the czars, and their radicalism. This is hardly an accident; it’s a way to get around the usual checks and balances.
Most tyrannies feed on the perception of the opposition as a demonic enemy. Despite his sometimes mild demeanor, Obama has used this approach more than any other president in memory—and I am including Richard Nixon here, who was the previous front-runner in that dubious competition.
I could go on, but there’s no need to. I think it’s clear that Obama would grab as much power as he could. The question that remains is: will he be successful?
Some have cited his lack of success so far as a reason to assume he will fail in the end. I think such a position is dangerous, because it fosters laziness and lack of attention to what’s happening. We should do whatever we can now to be very aware, to spread the word in a way that doesn’t sound nutty (difficult, I know), and to work for the opposition in 2010.
But the “it won’t happen here” position is not only dangerous, it’s incorrect. I submit that it depends on what the “it” is. Tyrannies don’t always look exactly alike. In fact, they only resemble each other in very broad principles, such as the reduction of liberty and the spread of state power.
Yes, Chavez rewrote the constitution of Venezuela, and Obama may not be able to do that here. But he (or any other president bent on similar goals) can do quite a bit to further the same end: through government regulation, through the cooperation of a supermajority in Congress, through threats (the Chicago way is alive and well and living in DC), through lies, through voting fraud granting the Left bigger and bigger majorities.
Take a good look at the history of Hugo Chavez. You will note there were some false starts, as well as some speed bumps along the way—most especially a 2002 coup against him that seemed to work for a very short while but that ultimately was unsuccessful. Chavez also began his own bid for the top with a failed attempt at a military coup back in 1992, and then he was imprisoned. An onlooker might have written him off back then, perhaps. But if an onlooker had done so, that onlooker would have been sadly mistaken.
Another good example that comes to mind for me, albeit in another arena, is the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. What a bunch of stooges, right? They were the Keystone Cops of terrorism—until a few years later, when they weren’t quite so inept after all.
Incompetence is sometimes the prelude to competence if people learn from their mistakes and try different approaches. Do you not think that those who would revolutionize a country (hope, change) are patient?
Hugo Chavez certainly was. After the 1992 coup:
Ché¡vez, alarmed, soon gave himself up to the government. He was then allowed to appear on national television to call for all remaining rebel detachments in Venezuela to cease hostilities. When he did so, Ché¡vez quipped on national television that he had only failed “por ahora” (for now).
Obama is fond of getting inspiration from Hispanic sayings. For example, “Yes, we can” was cribbed from “Si, se puede,” the motto of another very patient Chavez, Cesar.
So if Obama seems to be failing at the moment, my guess is that he is only telling himself some version of “por ahora.” We cannot afford to relax our vigilance and imagine that the Left’s temporary failures are permanent ones.
