Sunday, June 24, 2012

Beyond Adequate Mockery

To those who have believed, in their heart of hearts, that politics in these United States could not possibly sink any lower...
To those who have hoped that the viciousness of the 2008 campaign might never be repeated...
To those who have yearned for an honest discussion of the most serious issues facing our badly beleaguered nation, rather than a fresh descent into mudslinging and tawdriness...
I give you:

The Obama Event Registry:

Truly, there are no words...but you know I'm not about to let that stop me!

***

Since the day he assumed the presidency, Barack Hussein Obama has made the evocation of divisions among Americans -- race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, you name it -- along with the nurturing of a sense of entitlement in various groups, the central tactic of his politicking. Given the degree of destruction his policies have inflicted on the United States, he could not have maintained any degree of popular support with other methods. Setting groups against one another and then pandering to one side -- sometimes, to both -- was his sole hope of keeping adequate public allegiance.

If we go by the evidence of the midterm elections, it didn't work as well as Obama hoped. But Obama, a disciple of Saul Alinsky, is a "one trick pony." Among the more famous of Alinsky's maxims was that "If you don't have an opposition, you don't have an issue." A politician who takes this to heart, as Obama clearly does, must seek out conflicts to be mined for political advantage. His setbacks have been characterized by moments when the opposition to his preferences was essentially overwhelming, as for example in the matter of the Bush-era income tax rates.

As matters have worsened for middle-class Americans, Obama and his strategists have realized that there's little hope of using divisive tactics to nullify the huge advantage that's accrued to his opponents from his economic policies. In a quadrennial year, a presidential candidate must have a majority of the middle class behind him to have a chance at victory; therefore, he cannot pursue a course that will render majority middle-class support adverse. There simply aren't enough non-middle-class special interests, racial, ethnic, or comparable groups to make up for that deficit.

The Obama campaign has compounded its difficulties with its celebrity-centered fundraising approach. This, too, has garnered unfavorable attention from all points on the compass, including some of the entertainment celebrities whom Obama has attempted to use as "his personal ATM." Yet middle-class donations to his campaign have fallen off dramatically from 2008, which has compelled him to seek whatever other sources of funding remain open and ample. An unfavorable positive-feedback loop as regards Obama's public relations has resulted.

The "donate to the campaign in lieu of a gift" notion must have struck someone in Obama's organization as a clever move. After all, Americans are notoriously uneasy about failing to honor special events -- weddings, birthdays, Christmas, etc. -- with gifts to family members and special friends. The money traditionally put to that use must have looked like an untapped vein. Trouble is, you can't insert politics into a custom as personal as gift-giving without evoking derision and contempt...and that's exactly what has eventuated.

The question I've been entertaining is how long it will take for Obama to back away from this extremely unwise tactic -- along with who will be compelled to shoulder the blame for what very well might have been Obama's own idea, given his venality and self-absorption. There will be a sacrificial lamb; Obama won't take responsibility even for knowing about this gambit, much less originating or approving of it. Besides, that bus looks hungry, and it hasn't been fed in quite a while now.

4 comments:

furball said...

This is my fault, I guess.

I was "taught" Methodist, and I knew right from wrong, but I thought maybe I was a little better than all that.

My grand-dad worked hard, my parents went through WWII, but I was born smart, right?

The thought - "History doesn't include me" - was paramount. I was pre-intra-post Viet Nam. I volunteered, but was never "of" my own generation because I skated above it.

That's not how it works, but even afterwards, I lived with a wonderful woman and she decided to have a daughter. Notice: I'm still not making choices.

However: wonderful daughter. But she grows up angry and feeling "owed" because I don't impart hard life-lessons.

For example: "The natural state of humanity is poverty. You are blessed at a certain time and place and things will almost certainly get worse in your lifetime."

Her response: "Dad, you are not sensitive enough, you drink too much and you are too cynical about the human condition."

(Sotto Voce: Anyone who speaks of "the human condition" is already gone. The "human condition" is poverty, want, disease and serfdom. Human "striving" is a better life for our children, a breath of freedom and a moment of feeling free of the shackles of monarchs, Soroses, MSNBC, orthodoxy or the ever-advancing statism of Bisnarck, Hitler, Stalin and Obama.)

But, again, it's my fault. I didn't teach her these things. And I didn't take her to Catholic classes when she was young.

I taught her that there was a way AROUND the problems, or that she could wriggle through them, by virtue of being smart.

WRONG! She's ggonna get caught up in all the **** that's coming and she'll be even LESS capable of dealing with it since I didn't teach her how to shoot, how to "discriminate," how to plant or how to believe in herself without all the hype of "greens," "unions," "the poor," or whatever group will take from her efforts to give to their efforts.

I didn't teach her to believe enough in herself to be SELFISH. She's childish and self-centered, but she is NOT self-sufficient and adult.

And that is my fault.

Obama is the collective fault of us "boomers" who thought that the "administration" was always going to be grown up and responsible, while we could rail against it and then grow up on our own to make money.

The "administration" became us and affirmative action and diversity and Political Correctness and the fascism of divisiveness. We sat still for Ethnic Studies while our culture suffered.

Obama is my fault and I didn't teach my daughter enough about those paranoid fore-fathers who did NOT trust government.

furball said...

If you think about it, this almost exactly equates to, "God, leave me alone. If it weren't for your weirdness and stupid stuff, I'd be ok!"

Alright, I'm old now and surely silly by MSNBC standards, but doesn't it seem that we reap what we sow?

We were supposed to have fixed government after disbelieving in Nixon and proclaiming openness.

Nixon gave us EPA - good? Went to China? Maybe good? Wage and Price freezes? Bad, but nobody knew it at the time?

But he was a Republican and "tricky-Dick," so bad?

Let's face it. As an electorate, we are so childish that we go ON and ON about these nonsensical labels and IGNORE what is really happening around us.

I propose the following:

1) A President has NO power of "Executive Order."

2) There is NO circumstance where a President can order U.S. troops
to move to any country or kill anyone of a sovereign country without permission from Congress.

3) "Glass-Steagle" is in full effect: No bank can engage in market-trading with depositors' funds.

4) EVERY TRADE, EVERY TRANSACTION, EVERY POSITION OF THE U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE will be immediately posted on the internet and announced to the media. THERE WILL BE *NO* secret communications between the Federal Reserve and the banking community. *ANY* collusion or secret or beneficiary information passed between ANY member of the Federal Reserve and private business will be punishable by a fine of NO LESS than TWICE the possible recompense of that information, with a MINIMUM fine of ONE MILLLION DOLLARS and TEN YEARS in a maximum security federal prison.

ZenTiger said...

The Obama Event Registry:

Just make a donation in lieu of a birthday gift, and attach the birth certificate as evidence....and we'll send out a card.

That means all but Obama are eligble to donate. Clever.

:)

cmblake6 said...

This is just so pitiful. How does one not find hilarity in it?