Losing America
Posted on September 9, 2009
Filed Under Barak Obama, Congress, Democrat Congress, Democratic Party, Freedom, Freedom of speech, Freedom of the Press, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Tea Parties, Town Halls, activists as educators, arrogant elites, corruption, democrats, democrats in Congress, free society, health as a government business, healthcare | 2 Comments
American author, teacher, social critic and dissident feminist, Camille Paglia, a registered Democrat who supported and voted for Barak Obama, has made some revealing observations in Salon.com:
Too late for Obama to turn it around?
Sept. 9, 2009 | What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration’s bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had drastically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama’s declining national support.
But this tonic dose of truth-telling may be too little too late. As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration’s strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have — from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama’s plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)
I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have — from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Yes, gentle reader, there is many a liberal with a brain still out there. Here is one who gets it, who is sick of the media’s unwarranted adulation for BHO, even as she herself voted for him.
(Who is naive enough to believe that Obama’s plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?) And yet… you still find an army of sycophants (to whom reason or even a small amount of thought are anathema) defending that disastrous bill which no one in Congress has yet bothered to read. You still find huge herds of otherwise likable people who will blindly repeat the talking points from those who wittingly or unwittingly would destroy this country.
By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done.
The White House and its attack dogs in Congress (Reid, Pelosi et al.) felt that they could rush through bill after bill at blinding speed and the normally lethargic American public would barely notice, but notice we did! The Democrats were stunned!!! During the primaries and especially during the presidential campaign gratuitous accusations of “racism” were hurled at anyone who dared ask about the emperor’s clothes. Such accusations succeeded… But, not this time, America is finally waking up! Galvanized against the arrogance of those who are supposed to work for us, united in battle against the destruction of our country by ideas that failed everywhere else, we must stand up against the iron fist of these power elite. How? By never wavering in our commitment to this country, twhich in spite of its many flaws, is still the best this planet has to offer. Let’s give the false Messiah in the White House a message. Let’s let him know that while he has an iron fist, even if it’s masked in a charming smile, our fist is bigger, harder!!!
This was going to become the most transparent administration in history, the candidate, Obama said… Instead, it has become the most secretive, the one that is working hardest to overturn the Constitution and crush every dissenting voice. But do the Republicans have a unified voice? Haven’t some of them become sycophants as well? Where is the leadership? Why was it necessary for bloggers and talk show hosts to first start screaming about Obama’s czars before the first of them was forced to resign? Why haven’t Republicans in Congress been at the forefront of this popular revolt? Why the silence?
Ms. Paglia continues:
[...]Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy — I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.
Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? Why? Because of the total disconnect between the power elite and the man on the street.
First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. Chat shows may once have been a barometer of public opinion (though I doubt it!) but people are starting to realize how easily the network and the shows’ producers manipulate the talk and they are leaving in droves!
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
There you have it folks an intellectual, a member of the Democrat Party, recognizes they no longer represent the people even if they were overwhelmingly voted in by those they are supposed to serve.
How has “liberty” become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin’s book “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto,” which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party — but I must be living in the nostalgic past.
Yes, Camille you are living in the past. I too was once a ‘60 revolutionary, but reality slapped me hard and woke me from the dream that was usurped and twisted by pampered, spoiled, quasi intellectuals.
But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it’s invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote “critical thinking,” which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms (”racism, sexism, homophobia”) when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.
Colleges have become indoctrination labs, “liberal” colleges have become anything but liberal and will not allow any opinion that disagrees with their activist, non educating professors. I must agree with Ms. Paglia: The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.
All of that is good and fine but the republicans are still bickering among themselves, too busy to assume leadership, too busy self destroying. Because of this disarray, Obama may yet get his way and we will lose America. Pity!
Chaim
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This is the “socialization” of America at its best!
I agree only that Healthcare needs an overhaul.
But Obambi? He’s confused and bamboozled the American people so much – he’s never got a bottom line on ANYTHING.
All he did was send his bots out to ‘take care of’ people who dared to speak up at Town Hall meetings. And how’s he going to pay to back up his non-stop inflated rhetoric?
This whole thing is a joke. And Barry’s the punchline.
Might interest you:
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2009/09/09/baracks-bullshit-healthcare-bamboozlement/