Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Obama and the Progressive Agenda- A Wounded Tiger?

My friend ShrinkWrapped has a brilliant post up. In it he poses the idea that Multiculturalism and Anthropogenic Global Warning have sustained enough damage in recent events to set them on a course for the oblivion they so richly deserve. He is so accurate about so much that I hesitated to bring up the one big problem I see in his theory. I finally posted a comment that outlines what I see as a terrible unmentioned, terrifying danger arising from this apparent victory for good sense. Here is my comment with some edits and expansion:

Multiculturalism is to nations as the self-esteem movement is to individuals. Unless we can reclaim the principal that only people who work hard, take care of themselves, contribute something of value to society and produce something that other people will pay for, deserve to have a "decent" living and hold their heads up in society, we will never accept that the cultures that value and foster that kind of individual more effectively are, simply put, better cultures.

As to the difficulty of next few years, I see terrible danger. Fascist totalitarianism is the time-honored response of ideologies that have no other chance of success. President Obama fired the opening salvo of a campaign against free thought and speech last Sunday. It was a not so thinly veiled as a reference to ipods etc.. but clearly implied that ungoverned thought, opinion and the speed of information were problematic. In forcing the health care bill through congress he has already proven more than capable of imposing his will over the outcry of the majority. He is surrounded by people who welcome crises and turmoil as opportunities to "change" things...

In my opinion, the worst aspect of this is that there is no organized opposition. The mainstream of the Republican party, for their own reasons, are complicit with the Democrats. The corporate world will be delighted to have legions of docile, socialist drones penned up in cubicles in all the nation's offices like so many veal calves fattening in their boxes. They work a little, complain a lot and their paychecks are ample enough to bleed off and aggregate big corporate bonuses and social entitlements for the vast army of indolent voters that will continue to vote for their unearned privileges in increasing numbers. The cubicle dwellers work too hard and clear too little profit from their labor to outbreed the welfare voting block, so the power shift is on.

The corporations have it made. Every cubicle dweller is one less potential competitive entrepreneur and, anyway, they have been pronounced too big to fail by the party of the welfare bloc. The Tea Party thing is a start but there is no true leadership structure. It is a big tent and a magnet for nut jobs. The danger that one person can fatally damage the movement with one bad gaffe is huge. Leadership must be developed, entrenched and schooled and that takes time.

The Beast is strong in both parties and they are tough and ruthless. They see the folks in the cubicles and the people who make their own way in life waking up to the fact that they are caught in the pincer between the corporate oligarchs and the entitlement class. They have been wounded because the poor economy has made us think about the weight of the bonuses and free goodies we pay for. They are afraid and in pain- a wounded tiger- a whole zoo full of wounded tigers.

There are some good Republicans and even one or two good Democrats but they need to have some faith in the electorate- some where to go for support. If the real independents, the entrepreneurs, producers and creators, do not come to understand the peril before this November's elections and if they only have run-of-the-mill Republicans and Democrats to vote for, I fear that this will not end well.

6 comments:

Nancy Coppock said...

Call it oligarchy or crony capitalism, this is a real problem. GE - so big they run commercials just telling you how wonderful they are; meanwhile they are sucking at the gov't trough on this Global Warming scheme all while indoctrinating cubicle workers about that scheme and more with their corporate news affiliates

Didn't the original Tea Partiers ixnay the whole oligarchy thing when a certain tea tax was passed to prop up a certain large consortium that was tied incestuously with the royal house and members of Parliament?

The more things change, the more they stay the same...dodah, dodah.

Don't be so multicultural with our political parties. There's no such animal as a 'good' Democrat and most Republicans are suspect. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn please check with the person handling calls to see what people REALLY think.

lgude said...

I think multiculturalism and AGW will persist for some time because they are more articles of faith in the Marxist religion than rationally held beliefs. But I agree people are wising up to them plus they are becoming economically unsustainable. Ideological luxury items. The welfare state itself looks to be in deep trouble in California as well as Greece. Here in Australia the PM wants 40% of mining company profits - which gives you an idea of how desperate even resource rich Australia is to prop up its welfare state. Unlike Greece they have the illusion they can plunder their private sector and every thing will be OK. I agree with Nancy that the oligarchs have well and truly gotten a stranglehold on the American people. Both parties and most of the big money. But both Dems and sell out Repubs are in hot water with their electorates. It will take a while for the shift to take place but I see people left and right that realize that the situation is untenable. You are correct that the movement is currently unorganized. I think it is only a partly formed coalition but could have the potential to put an end to crony capitalism and business as usual. I also agree that the entitlement culture is a real problem in terms of creating this new coalition, but economic realty will increasingly dry up the entitlements and that will force many to find other ways of being self reliant - and therefore part of the new coalition. We will know that we have gotten back to reality when we start growing our own vegetables out of necessity. :-)

ShrinkWrapped said...

The next two election cycles are the key. If the Tea Party movement is able to get a number of Reps and Sens elected who are committed to a small government, free market, freedom agenda, their impact will be far out of proportion to their numbers in Congress. If the Tea Parties fail to change our course, all sorts of dire outcomes are likely. I do not want to make any such dire predictions yet, but even if we lose, the natural law that "whatever cannot go on indefinitely, will not) has not yet been repealed. The welfare state must change; we are running out of money and no amount of obfuscation can hide that fact from reality.
lgude: "Growing our own vegetables out of necessity" is a good description of a nascent movement toward Resilient Communities.

Nancy Coppock said...

Shrinkwrapped, yes indeed on the tea party movement and getting smaller gov't representation elected.

The second phase, and this is really big, don't listen to the media harangue. If these new men and women are doing their job correctly, the media are going to screech like your 2nd and 3rd wives stoked on PMS.

We cannot allow ourselves to falter in this course to allow individuals have the freedom to be responsible for their own behavior. I can't believe we are in the situation I just described in the previous sentence. Crikey! We are a LONG way from freedom when a sentence like that explains where we want to go.

Gardening? You guys have non-genetically modified seeds from the storage bins north of the Arctic Circle? grin

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Wakefield Tolbert said...

This crowd has gotten away with quite a bit for quite a while.

Thus as just one example the latest memes around the Blogosphere from the likes of Little Green Footballs (a supposedly erstwhile "conservative blog") is that Obama is indeed a centrist, Global Warming is more than just Laodiciean Hellfire and will kill us if the idiot homeschooled right-wing crazies don't get out of the way of multi-culti progress, Islam is a religion of peace and love and interplanetary global harmoney, and of course Obama is a centrist, the Tea Partiers are racist thugs who are merely mad at a black man in the big house, etc. Reagan (per Newsweek and Charlie Johnson over at LGF) would not be welcome with the Teabaggers, as he was not rapid right wing enough. Rationing from ObamaCare is said to be pure "myth", the Founders were Marxian warlords, unions are sacrosanct, it's OK to pay city bus drivers 150K a year for opening doors after all, we are not defined by borders (at least not the southern one) and of course, and 10% unemployment is now deemd the new "normal" to be "expected" by this crop of idiots' new economic policy wonks.

So it goes.

(IE--the powers of the Dark Syde are working quite well in the propoganda department)

Make no mistake. The Left is prepped and girded for war this time. The hippies finally got the helm of the Ship of State, and they DO mean business. I run into more than a few fellow conservatives who just don't see it, pooh-poo the warning signs and the increasing Tyranny Lite, Softcore socialism of the Eurofetish type we're headed for, and tell me they don't have time to engage all the political crap.

Well, more fool them. The enemies are freedom, borders, industry, guns, home education, and a host of other things we take for granted sure as hell are paying attention.

Scouts honor.

Long row to hoe here, gang.

It's not going to be easy.