Well, at least Obama’s not Bush

The New Neo Posted on by

Logern writes:

And the resume’ of conservtive foreign policy success of the last 8 years is what? And, as such, why should we listen to your advice?

If Obama isn’t pursuing that failed policy, then he at least is potentially on a different track.

Let’s see, the results of the foreign policy of the last eight years: a free Iraq that’s doing fairly well. No major terrorist attacks in this country. Al Qaeda much weakened. And I hadn’t noticed any significant problem between Bush and Sarkozy, or Merkel, or Brown, or eastern Europe, or any of the other European countries that Obama is presently sucking up to.

Nor do I see any concrete improvements as a result of Obama’s speeches in terms of what Europe is actually planning to do vis a vis the US. It’s all rhetoric; but that’s Obama’s style, anyway, so it’s a good match if rhetoric is Europe’s reaction, as well.

Oh, and saying “at least [Obama’s] potentially on a different track” is an absurdity. “Different” is not better—although those who voted for this dangerous man on the promise of “change” fail to understand that.

You might as well say “Well, at least Hitler wasn’t the Weimar Republic.” True, but hardly a point worth making. And no, it doesn’t mean that Obama is Hitler. But it does mean that the consequences of Obama’s policies could put us, and the world, in a situation a whole lot worse than we had under Bush.

The evolution(?) of extreme ballet

The New Neo Posted on by

This article documents a trend I’ve noticed for decades: ballet lines have become more exaggerated over time. This is especially true of what is known as “extrension”—that is, the height of the nonsupporting leg when it is raised. But it’s also true of the curve of the foot itself, the flexibility of the back, and the general shape made in space:

Daprati [a researcher based at the University of Rome] raided the archives of London’s Royal Opera House for photos and videos of dancers from 1946-2004…She reduced each image to a stick figure and calculated the angle between the raised “working leg” and the vertical supporting one. For each position, Daprati found that this angle increased as the years went by. Take developpe a la seconde – in the 1940s, dancers held their moving leg just above the 90 degree level, but today’s dancers effectively extend it straight up with an incredible 180 degree gap between their two legs.

This sort of thing results in a very different type of ballet dancer than the ones I saw as a child.

Although many arts contain elements of the physical—for example, musicians must use their bodies to coax a glorious sound from inanimate instruments—dance has always been the art that most seamlessly merges the athletic with the esthetic as well as the dramatic. But balance must be there or it becomes an empty physical exercise (what some of my dance teachers used to call circus tricks or nightclub acts), sensational in the physical sense, empty of the soul that makes it all meaningful.

One of the things I liked so much about a Russian dancer from my youth, Maya Plisetskaya (about whom I’ve written previously, here), was that her unique physical attributes—a powerful jump, pliant back, and sinuously flexible arms—were combined with extraordinary musicality and a rare emotional fire. It is unusual for these elements to be displayed in the same dancer; for example, strength and flexibility are natural antagonists in the human body, and dancers most often favor one over the other. The triple package—power, suppleness, and drama—is exceptionally rare.

But let’s start with the physical. As the raised legs get higher and still higher, the line of the body changes dramatically. Ballet was originally designed to feature more gentle poses involving curves, but lately those arcs have become more excessive, and other elements have become sharper and more angular. In ballet’s quest to achieve ever more sensational physical effects to make the audience gasp, the artist has all too often been sacrificed to the athlete, even in the most famous of dancers.

Take a look at a few examples of the pose known as “arabesque,” then and now. This first photo is of Sallie Wilson, who danced with American Ballet Theater during the 60s and 70s. She was a physically strong but not especially flexible dancer known for her intensely dramatic interpretations of Tudor classics.

Note the gorgeous sweeping curved arc Wilson’s modestly elevated back leg makes with her elegantly upraised torso, a line that is fully extended through the position of her arms and head. I saw this photo decades ago, when it was first taken, and remembered it all these years as a thing of rare beauty:

salliewilsonarabesque.jpg

We have no photographs of one of ballet’s originators, Marie Taglioni, who in the 1830s perfected the art of dancing en pointe and making it look easy. But we do have this lithograph:

taglioniarabesque.jpg

It conveys the essence of Taglioni’s art: to appear otherworldly and gossamer, a creature of clouds and air, perched on toe as a butterly hovers rather than balancing there like a circus performer. Her other leg is held quite low; no need to fling it skywards to create the effect she’s after.

But that’s just a drawing, you say; she didn’t really look like that. Well, here’s Anna Pavlova; no doubt you’ve heard of her. She popularized ballet by touring the world during the early part of the 20th century. She was a petite woman with a tiny foot:

pavlovaarabesque.jpg

Her leg is a bit higher than Taglioni’s, but it’s the same idea: delicate and weightless, she alights rather than poses. The asthetic is very different from today’s, when such a photo would be inconceivable except as farce. Pavlova often skirted the boundaries of kitsch, but she stayed on the side of art.

Next is the Russian dancer Olga Spessivtzeva, who performed from 1913 till the late 1930s. Technically she’s in what’s known as “arabesque par terre” in this photo, because her foot is not raised at all but placed on the floor in tendu. But I have included the photo because the line she makes is so enchantingly beautiful despite the subdued nature of the pose. I submit that what she manages to accomplish here is more rare—and more moving, and more beautiful—than any arabesque with the leg pointing nearly to the sky:

spessline.jpg

Speaking of pointing nearly to the sky, here is contemporary Russian ballerina Svetlana Zakharova in arabesque (to be more exact, she’s between arabesque and attitude, because her raised leg is bent ever-so-slightly):

zakharova.jpg

Now you can see what Ms. Daprati was talking about. As a static pose, Zakharova’s has an undeniable beauty. The curves are there but in highly exaggerated form, especially that of the supporting leg and foot which bow almost alarmingly in extreme hyperextension (most dancers—including me—are somewhat hyperextended, but Zakharova has a degree of reverse curve to the supporting leg that surpasses that of most).

The photo is of “Swan Lake,” a role in which the dancer is supposed to be a bewitched combination of swan and woman. Therefore the other-wordly qualities of Zakharova’s body work better in this ballet than they would in those featuring more human protagonists. My experience in watching dancers of this sort, however, is that after the first gasp of shock they elicit in the viewer, their lines begin to seem less interesting and more freakish, and one yearns to watch a body that seems to be an ordinary human doing extraordinary things, rather than an extraterrestrial made of new-age rubber.

The next image is not an arabesque. But I include it because it shows just how far this thing can go, and the negative consequences. It features Sylvie Guillem, a French dancer who is now in her forties (the photo is probably from a few years earlier) and who is known for her extreme flexibility:

guillem2.jpg

Aside from looking as though she is in drag (not the impression she ordinarily gives), here Guillem’s line is just plain ugly. What is she trying to tell us? I only see a gymnastic feat. Everything else has been subsumed to the almost shocking physical effort. The dancers of old would have frowned on such a parlor trick.

Guillem started out as a gymnast, which is hardly surprising. But gymnastics bears only a superficial similarity to ballet. In many ways the two are opposites in terms of what the dancers are trying to convey, and what is considered esthetically desirable.

That’s not to say that there aren’t ballet lovers the world over who would disagree with me, and who think Guillem and her ilk to be spectacular artists who surpass the more subtle charms of dancers of the past. To me, however, their dancing begins to pall very quickly; what they are doing simply does not interest me.

We could use some oversight here: frequent fliers in the emergency room

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a little tidbit you may have missed:

Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the Austin area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report. The patients went to hospital emergency rooms 2,678 times from 2003 through 2008, said the report from the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, a group of health care providers who care for low-income and uninsured patients.

“What we’re really trying to do is find out who’s using our emergency rooms … and find solutions,” said Ann Kitchen, executive director of the group, which presented the report last week to the Travis County Healthcare District board.

The average emergency room visit costs $1,000. Hospitals and taxpayers paid the bill through government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, Kitchen said.

Eight of the nine patients have drug abuse problems, seven were diagnosed with mental health issues and three were homeless.

Let’s do the math. For each of these nine people, this represents an average of one visit to the emergency room every 7.3 days, year-round, for six years. No doubt some went more and some went less, but that’s the average.

Kudos to the folks at Integrated Care Collaboration for at least trying to study these shocking facts and to seek solutions. I wonder, though, why it took them to notice it. Surely the folks at the hospitals involved must have recognized what was going on, with this volume of visits by such a small number of people. Are there not social workers there who might figure out another way to handle this? Is there no way to refer these folks to primary care physicians or the mental health and especially the substance abuse treatment systems? Or is the taxpayer just eternally on the hook, because no one can be turned away if he/she appears at the ER door?

I also wonder how many of these patients were illegal aliens. The article is mum on that fact, so we have no idea whether it was an issue. But considering that the venue was Austin, Texas, it’s a good possibility.

I think this study points out a common problem, which is that a few people can be responsible for a great deal of strain on a system, and that government regulations often tie an organization’s hands even if those who work there might want to implement a more creative—and reasonable—solution.

I’m fairly sure that, when it was decreed that no person without insurance would be turned away from an emergency room, the idea was that ERs would actually be used for emergencies. But creating an entitlement often causes it to be used for purposes never originally envisioned, expanding it beyond all recognition into absurdity.

Obama and the disturbing influence of Frank Marshall Davis

The New Neo Posted on by

Much has been written about the fact that Frank Marshall Davis was a mentor to the young Barack Obama. But Davis was an unusual role model for a boy; not only may he have been a sometime pedophile, according to a book he wrote under a pseudonym, but he was also a Communist. Some have even speculated that Davis was Obama’s biological father, a fantasy for which I can find no evidence whatsoever and have dismissed as unlikely in the extreme.

I have also dismissed it as irrelevant. Because the truth is that Davis was already influential enough in Obama’s life without needing to be an actual blood relative. Living in Hawaii, he was a good friend of Obama’s grandfather Stanley Armour Dunham, the man who actually was a father figure to Obama, because he and his wife raised the young boy. Not only that, but Davis—who was a black man—was designated by his buddy, Obama’s grandfather (referred to as “gramps” in Obama’s memoir), as a guide for the very young Barack to instruct him on how to be an African-American man.

What a strange choice Davis was! Even forgetting the Communism and the possible pedophilia; Obama presents Davis as a seedy and dissipated figure [excerpt is from Dreams From My Father]:

…by the time I met Frank [Obama was around nine years old] he must have been pushing eighty, with a big dewlapped face and an ill-kempt gray Afro that made him look like an old, shaggy-maned lion. He would read us his poetry whenever we stopped by his house, sharing whiskey with gramps out of an emptied jelly jar. As the night wore on, the two of them would solicit my help in composing dirty limericks. Eventually, the conservation would turn to laments about women.

“They’ll drive you to drink, boy,” Frank would tell me soberly. “And if you let ”˜em, they’ll drive you into your grave.”

I was intrigued by the old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes. The visits to his house always left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable, though, as if I were witnessing some complicated, unspoken transaction between the two men, a transaction I couldn’t fully understand….

No wonder Obama felt uncomfortable; in family therapy lingo, we’d say that both of the old men in Obama’s life—the two father-figures for the fatherless boy, “gramps” and Davis—had what’s known as a “boundary problem.” In other words, their behavior was inappropriate for a young boy to be witnessing. It’s not for nothing that Obama says he felt “vaguely uncomfortable” around them; most children would have felt that way.

Although Obama writes about Davis in his memoir, he only refers to him by the name “Frank.” This is interesting; whom was he protecting by not giving the man’s full name? After all, Davis was already deceased when the memoir was written in the 90s (it was published in 1995), and Obama’s grandfather had died in 1992.

Obama couldn’t leave out such an important father-figure as “Frank.” And he was quite candid about the seediness of his life and character. What he omits, as far as I can tell (disclaimer: I’ve only read excerpts from Dreams From My Father and therefore I’m not familiar with the entire work), is Davis’s Communism.

It is difficult to imagine that the man did not speak about this aspect of his life with Obama. He certainly didn’t seem to be the type to hold back for propriety’s sake—the word “frank” describes him as an adjective, as well as being his first name. So the omission would have to be Obama’s. How much Davis’s Communist ideology influenced Obama is unknown, and Obama isn’t telling.

But whatever the truth of Davis’s ideological influence on Obama, his relation to Obama was certainly profound in the psychological sense. The evidence for that is in Obama’s own words—and I’m not just talking about the prose in Dreams From My Father. Obama also wrote a poem in college called “Pop” that appears to be about Davis.

Some people have assumed this poem is about Obama’s grandfather because of the title, but there is little question in my mind that the subject is actually Davis. The description in the poem dovetails perfectly with the description in the book (poet, whiskey), and the black glasses at the end match this photo of Davis giving a public reading.

Take a look; it is quite a disturbing document on many levels:

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and brokenӬ
In, sprinkled with ashesӬ
Pop switches channels, takes anotherӬ
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asksӬ
What to do with me, a green young manӬ
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, sinceӬ
Things have been easy for me; Ӭ
I stare hard at his face, a stareӬ
That deflects off his brow; Ӭ
I’m sure he’s unaware of his”¨
Dark, watery eyes, thatӬ
Glance in different directions,Ӭ
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,Ӭ
Fail to pass.ӬI listen, nod,Ӭ
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale, Ӭ
Beige T-shirt, yelling,Ӭ
Yelling in his ears, that hangӬ
With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He’s so unhappy, to which he replies…”¨
But I don’t care anymore, cause”¨
He took too damn long, and fromӬ
Under my seat, I pull out the
”¨Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing, ”¨
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his faceӬ
To mine, as he grows small,Ӭ
A spot in my brain, somethingӬ
That may be squeezed out, like a Ӭ
Watermelon seed betweenӬ
Two fingers.Ӭ
Pop takes another shot, neat,Ӭ
Points out the same amberӬ
Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and”¨
Makes me smell his smell, comingӬ
From me; he switches channels, recites an old poemӬ
He wrote before his mother died,Ӭ
Stands, shouts, and asksӬ
For a hug, as I shrink, my Ӭ
Arms barely reaching aroundӬ
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ’cause
ӬI see my face, framed within
Pop’s black-framed glasses”¨
And know he’s laughing too.

The lines that begin “points out the same amber stain…Makes me smell his smell, coming/”¨
From me” may be describing outright sexual abuse. But perhaps not; we don’t know, and we’ll never know. But there is no question that the poem is describing a boundary violation on several levels: this child feels invaded—perhaps even taken over—by this man, and is fighting against that sensation.

That is the subject matter of the poem, which Obama composed while in college. It seems—as do so many poems written in adolescence and young adulthood—to be an attempt to work out in poetry a deep psychological wound and an ongoing dilemma, something that probably could not be talked about as frankly (there’s that word again) in an ordinary and prosaic way. When, years later, Obama got around to writing his prose version in Dreams From My Father, it is apparent that he was already hiding the truth, and softening the depth of the violation he had felt.

The poem describes a boundary violation that is both physical and mental. The physical is obvious: he is forced to hug the man who repels him, and as he does so he feels himself shrinking. But the violation is mental, too; earlier in the poem, Obama has described “Pop” as a person who has actually gotten into his brain, and whom he wishes to eliminate from it:

as he grows small,Ӭ
A spot in my brain, somethingӬ
That may be squeezed out, like a Ӭ
Watermelon seed betweenӬ
Two fingers.

This mental and emotional usurption of the young Obama is echoed in the last image of the poem, in which the boy sees his own tiny image framed in “Pop’s” eyeglasses.”¨ The poem describes a struggle against an attempt at identity takeover, a rejection of being reduced to a reflection in the eyes of the stronger, older, more experienced mentor, who has tried to make Obama over in his own image:

I see my face, framed within
Pop’s black-framed glasses”¨…

The sight is chilling to Obama, who is trying to break free. One wonders if he ever fully succeeded.

[ADDENDUM: Those who argue that this poem is about Obama’s maternal grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, would have to explain the following lines in light of the fact that Dunham’s mother (Obama’s great-grandmother) died when Dunham (Obama’s grandfather) was only 8 years old:

…he switches channels, recites an old poem”¨
He wrote before his mother died,

It simply does not make sense if “Pop” is about Obama’s grandfather.]

Obama, his task force, and the auto industry: does anyone else find this especially chilling?

The New Neo Posted on by

When Obama took it on himself to fire GM CEO Rick Wagnoner, this is how it went down, according to someone who ought to know:

“The president said he had decided to do that. He wasn’t asking for opinions,” said U.S. Sen Carl Levin, a Michigan democrat. “There wasn’t much point in arguing whether it was fair or unfair, wise or unwise.”

Curious, isn’t it, coming from a president whose big skill was supposed to be his ability to dialogue with both sides and to hear them out? And remember, this is a man from Obama’s own party speaking, one who should have had something to say on the matter of the auto industry. After all, he’s not only the Senator from the state most deeply involved, Michigan, (and has held that office for a very long time), but he’s a liberal Democrat as well.

But it seems that the King has spoken, and it’s off with Wagoner’s head—metaphorically, that is. No questions asked.

Wagoner himself was blindsided, according to the Reuters article. It had been a few months since the cries for his resignation had been heard last fall and they had died down, although Wagoner had to have known his days were numbered. But the word that he was through came with great suddenness, at a meeting where he was presenting a plan to restructure GM to the Obama administration’s auto task force.

We all know that President Obama has no experience of business in general or the auto industry in particular, and virtually no management or executive background either. But what about the members of this shadowy “auto task force”? Surely they must have had something to do with the auto industry, right?

I didn’t find too much about them when I looked just now—except for this, which was written a week ago, before the Wagoner firing. Somehow, it’s no surprise to learn the following (note: as someone not registered with the WSJ, I can’t seem to access the WSJ article referred to here; no link to it is given, either):

A large part of the [WSJ] article is given over to a discussion of the absence of industry expertise among the members of the auto industry team.

In session after session in a warren of offices at the Treasury Department, the team has sat through tutorials on dealer financing, studied basic data and debated the future of U.S. car sales. They have spent days trying to understand the complexities of the hundreds of companies that supply the car companies with axles, seats and other parts.

Steven Rattner, a former journalist-turned-investment banker, was picked last month to head the team…[he says] “[W]e’ve learned a lot about how car dealers work, and how companies get paid when they sell a car to a dealer, and why there are a certain number of dealers more than are optimal. Have we learned everything? Of course not, but I think we are learning what we need to learn to do this job.”

Disquieting isn’t it. I can’t fault the members for trying to get their hands around the industry whose future they are deciding but I don’t understand why a few people with real industry expertise aren’t integral members of the panel. It’s one thing to get a crash course and quite another to apply the lessons in a cogent manner.

“Disquieting?” I’ll say. Oh, but of course this task force has learned in a month all they need to do the job. Much more than Mr. Wagoner, who had been in the auto industry for thirty-two years.

But what the hey, they’re smart guys, aren’t they? Smart people can cram for tests and learn enough to get an “A,” right?

Oh, and there’s another little detail that hasn’t gotten much attention: not only is Wagoner gone, but “a majority of GM’s board will also be replaced.” Oh, why not? Send them to all the Bastille.

Let’s learn some more about how the Obama auto task force has been operating:

The task force met with a committee representing GM’s bondholders on the same day it met with Fiat executives…The bondholders’ attorneys laid out the details of a plan to exchange debt for equity, which would reduce pressure on GM to repay the bondholders. As the lawyers walked through a litany of potential challenges, Messrs. Rattner and Bloom took notes, offering minimal commentary, according to people who attended the meeting. Since then, the bondholders committee has had little contact with the task force. Its lawyers say they were surprised two weeks later when Mr. Rattner publicly criticized them for not being flexible enough.

Mr. Rattner and the Treasury Department haven’t responded to requests for comment on the complaints by bondholders.

I can see a pattern starting to emerge, and it’s not a pretty one. This post isn’t about whether Wagnoner needed to go or not. I’ve read opinions on both sides; I really don’t know. It’s about the process by which that happened and Obama’s imperial style, and really astounding hubris.

This is the slippery slope on which businesses place themselves when they accept a bailout. Of course, in the case of GM, it seemed to be that or bankruptcy. But when you sell your soul to the government, the government becomes a dictator.

And we all know how well government is at managing businesses. Probably a good sight worse than Rick Wagoner and the Board of GM, despite those government task force wizards.

It is merely simple common sense to think that the task force should have been composed mainly of people with auto industry experience. But all of them seem to be too tainted to be considered by the Obama administration—tainted, that is, by the actual reality of doing business, and the inevitable compromises and hard decisions that need to be made.

This is part of a pattern I’ve noticed in the Obama administration, that of distrusting those with hands-on experience in a given field in favor of smarty-pants generalists with no track record—such as Obama himself.

[NOTE: Here’s task force head Rattner’s bio, from the NY Times:

Mr. Rattner started his career as a financial reporter for The New York Times. He has been active in New York’s Democratic Party, holding a variety of fund-raisers for candidates; he originally backed Hillary Clinton for president. Mr. Rattner’s wife, Maureen White, was a co-chairwoman of finance for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

He previously worked at Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Lazard as a mergers and acquisitions specialist.

So we have a dedicated Democrat (not that there’s anything wrong with that), a journalist (ditto, I’m sure), and a Wall Street money guy. Great background for his present job, don’t you think? Note also, in the comments section of the Times article, which appeared in late February, that at least the readers note the lack of auto industry (or any other industry) experience, even if Obama doesn’t.]

[ADDENDUM: I finally was able to locate the WSJ article. Here is some information on other task force members:

The team’s industrial expertise comes from Ron Bloom, a scrappy Harvard Business School graduate who gave up investment banking in 1996 to work as a top adviser to the United Steelworkers union…

Several team members, such as Brian Deese, a 31-year-old former Obama campaign aide, are on loan from the White House’s National Economic Council. Three others specialize in climate change. The rest come from agencies such as the Energy and Labor departments. Backing them up are about 30 accountants and advisers.

Great. Just great. Thirty-one-year old. Specialists in climate change.

There’s more, if you’ve got the stomach for it:

People on the Fiat team came away [from a meeting with the task force] thinking that the task force’s questions betrayed a limited understanding of the industry. “It’s fair to say we walked out of the meeting and were a little unsettled,” says one member of the Fiat team…

Several auto experts who’ve met with the panel say they’ve been struck by the group’s focus on trying to determine exactly when car sales will rebound. “They are absolutely concerned with the short-term, so it’s hard to see them grasping the medium or longer-term issues,” says Daniel Roos, an automotive expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who briefed the team in Washington on March 6.]

Feel overwhelmed? [continued]

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an excerpt from a comment by “Wolla Dalbo” on yesterday’s post that I thought made some points well worth highlighting:

I believe that in order to understand what is going on, we have to apply a model radically different from the one we usually apply to the actions of politicians and Presidents here in the U.S. Greed, stupidity or incompetence we can understand, ruthlessness is also a given and pandering is taken for granted, too, but a grab for power so great that it will result in true Tyranny; that we are not used to thinking about and being on the look out for. Except for the application of this model by the Left to create their alternate world of the Bush Presidency””and a fine piece of projection that was, we do not really look for the telltale signs left by someone trying to set himself up as a tyrant or dictator as a way to comprehend what it is our President is up to; in the case of Obama, that is what we must do, and I think a moment’s reflection will demonstrate how this model fits.

Just ask yourself, if you, as a new President, were plunged into the midst of a major financial crisis as soon as you took office, would you be trying, in every way you could, to douse the flames, to calm the situation, or would you be throwing gasoline on the fire to make it bigger and hotter; what ends of yours would best be served by a bigger crisis and more panic, rather than less; panic, haste and confusion rather than clear thinking and analysis and deliberate, well thought out actions?

Would you be making taking control of the upcoming Census one of your immediate priorities in the first few weeks of your new Presidency, would you be involved, as well, in trying to acquire the ability to take over the Internet and disconnect certain parts of it, would you be trying, over and over in those critical first few weeks, to fund ACORN””a corrupt leftist organization that you have close ties with”“with hundreds of millions of tax dollars, would you be concerned with changing obscure DOD procurement regulations so that ammunition supplies for civilians would start to dry up, or would you consider spending precious time to try to do any, much less all of these particular things in the midst of a crisis, a waste of precious time and a “distraction?”

I was certainly not seeking signs of tyranny in the Obama administration, nor am I a natural conspiracist. I tend to scoff at such things—after all, I was one of the few people in America who clung to the idea that Oswald acted alone.

Before Obama took office, I noticed some traits of his that concerned me (you can find the relevant posts under the category “Obama” on the right sidebar of this blog). His grandiosity and narcissism. His fostering of a trancelike hero-worship in his followers. His lack of humor. His complaints about being tired, used as an excuse for his errors. His ignorance of history. His hubris about his foreign policy background, based on his childhood and early adulthood sojourns and travels. His emphasis on “coolness” over substance. His breaking of his word on campaign finances. His associates, especially Wright and Ayers.

But I always maintained that the only way we would know Obama would be by his actions in office. There were worrisome indications that he would make poor judgments, or even that he would govern from the Left, but there were so many contradictory signals coming from him that one could not be sure of much of anything, especially what ideology might be driving him.

Right after the inauguration, I even wrote a piece for Pajamas Media cautioning against Obama Derangement Syndrome. In it I said:

Yes, there are reasons to fear that Obama has a far left agenda, based on his history, some of his own statements, and his associations. There are even reasons to believe that whether he does or doesn’t have such an agenda himself, he will lack the inclination (or perhaps the backbone) to stop the far left agenda of those with the power to pass bills ”” in other words, the hugely Democratic Congress and its leaders Reid and Pelosi.

But I suggest that everyone stand back, take a deep breath, and wait. Wait, and observe. It will become clear enough as Obama chooses a Cabinet and advisers. And then it will become even more clear as he takes office and begins the work of government. More clarity will come as he handles the inevitable crises and tests that will occur on his watch.

The goal of each of us should be to react only to evidence, not fear….It is necessary both for the sake of the country and our own well-being to give the man a chance to prove those fears wrong. And it is also necessary to hope that he will do so, and to believe that whatever happens, our Constitution and our form of government is not as fragile as all that.

Sounds fair, no? And I still fervently hope that that last phrase will prove true: …that whatever happens, our Constitution and our form of government is not as fragile as all that

But as far as the rest of it goes, I think the waiting is over; Obama has put enough cards on the table to see much of his hand. The reason I quoted Wolla Dalbo’s comment at such length at the beginning of this post is that I think it lays out quite succinctly some of the evidence that has amassed in the nearly ten weeks (has it only been that? How time doesn’t fly when one isn’t enjoying oneself) since Obama’s inauguration.

I didn’t expect evidence to accumulate so fast and to point at such a pessimistic conclusion. But it has. And, as the commenter points out, one of the biggest pieces in the “what does Obama want?” puzzle—perhaps the biggest—has been his upside-down priorities.

There’s his assertion that his shockingly expensive energy, education, health care budget is connected to the economic recovery when even a dim knowledge of financial realities dictates the exact opposite (this appears to be use of the time-honored technique of the Big Lie). There’s his outright fomenting of class war, his demonizing of Wall Street and the rich. His bait and switch on tax relief. His cavalier disregard for the huge additional stock market drop that has occurred on his watch. His favoritism towards ACORN. His attempt to create some sort of compulsory government service for young people. His push for card check and cap and trade, two proposals so far to the Left that even the Democrats in Congress are balking.

Obama came to office in the midst of a profound economic crisis, one that might even have been responsible for his winning the election. But it has taken his administration a surprisingly long time to get around to offering concrete and specific proposals to actually address it—for example, a scheme for evaluating the toxic assets. What’s more, the Treasury Department, which should have been his top priority, remains curiously vacant, with hapless Tim Geithner wandering all alone listening to the sound of his solitary footsteps in its echoing halls.

Although I remain open to evidence to the contrary, for now my working hypothesis is that Obama is a man of the Left, that he is insufficiently devoted to the age-old American idea of liberty but is instead a committed statist, and that the mind-numbing pace of his change is deliberate and has been effective so far.

I used the word “numbing” in the above paragraph, and I mean it. I noticed in the same comments section of yesterday’s post that another reader pointed out that “I am seeing the effect already amongst friends who have just stopped listening to any news.”

Oddly enough, this is what I have noticed among my liberal friends, Obama-supporters all. I cannot tell you how many times I have asked them what they think about Obama so far and they answer that they haven’t really had time to follow it all, and it’s all so very confusing.

Now it’s true that most of my liberal friends are not exactly newshounds, nor do they read blogs, even blogs on the Left. But it seems as though they are turning away from politics even more than usual, especially considering that they should be joyfully lapping up the wonderful news, now that their man Obama is in. I believe that their turning away is both an attempt at protecting themselves from the anxiety of hearing about the financial crisis, and a reaction to a feeling of “something just isn’t right with Obama” in the pits of their stomachs.

I am convinced that Obama is counting on this reaction. He knows the Left is behind him (except for a few details such as his Afghanistan policy, or those who think he’s not far enough to the Left in terms of his financial interventions). He knows those on the Right will despise him and what he’s doing. He knows both of those groups will be paying attention to the details.

But he also knows that those more in the middle will not be noticing much, until the deeds are done. And he is counting on them to look away and hope for the best. The question is whether his pace is fast enough, and whether they will catch on—and whether they will then understand what is happening, or care. Or will the predictions of the Grand Inquisitor come to pass in this country, as they have in so many others?

[NOTE: In case you missed it, here’s the “Grand Inquisitor” quote from Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” once again:

Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man? ]

Feel overwhelmed? Maybe you’re supposed to

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve noticed that, more than at any time since I began to blog about four years ago, there are too many compelling topics to write about rather than too few. Each day I have to drop dozens that interest me, in the name of having a life.

It hasn’t always been so frenetic, but it is now. Things are happening so fast and so furiously that people have no time to process the amazingly complex issues involved, and the radical changes being proposed and in many cases implemented.

The frantic pace is supposedly happening because we are in crisis mode. But I’m certainly not the only one to wonder whether the sense of crisis is being purposely escalated in order to speed up the passage of controversial and “transformative” legislation. And to be very wary of where this “change” is really leading us.