By anyone's measure, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. deserves the cover of Time magazine and the appellation, "Person Of The Year." The amazing charade that will lead him to the White House is deserving of the media aristocracy's accolades. Obama, and his band of shadow warriors, pulled off a magic trick that would have inspired Houdini. You can read the orgiastic description of the King of Cool within the fetid pages of Time for yourself. However, Obama's plans for our economic future remain insipid and enigmatic. We are promised an enlightened program of infrastructure revitalization. A deliverance of biblical proportion, with a near-trillion dollar price tag, from a crisis as severe as the great depression! Never mind that the actual economic reality is more akin to a serious recession. And, oh be still the heart, the great BO promises us faster and more available internet! Idiocy!Time has chosen to use an image of Obama in the style and composition of Stalinist propaganda, how apropos. I discussed this topic at length in an earlier post. Apparently, it's really cool to associate with tyrants and psychopathic terrorists. Of course, this is nothing new for the Islamocentric man-child. He has long since made his bed with Chicago thugs and Pakistani subversives.
However, what most disturbs me is the subtle way in which Obama is attempting to recast the language describing American capitalism. In Obama's comments today, he described capitalistic activity as "a culture of greed and scheming." He proposed a false argument, that our economic difficulties are the result of lack of regulation and oversight. Obama attempts to make capitalism and the free market the culprit. Obama's manipulation is Orwellian in nature. In Orwell's book, 1984, Big Brother imposed an insidious form of totalitarian control by engineering a sanitized language, making it impossible to formulate heretical thoughts against the Party. This new language was termed Ingsoc, or English Socialism. Its essence is reductionist and manipulative. Obama, in Orwellian fashion, attempts to reinterpret capitalism through his own brand of Ingsoc: selfishness. It is revelatory of Obama's Marxist tendency, wherein he attempts to foist upon the free market the doctrine of "fairness", the Insoc version of equality of economic outcome. Our economy has been "pre-socialized" by Democrats in Congress and by turn-coat Republicans. Obama has only to extend the deleterious grasp of central planning. He will do so by redefining what it means to be an American Capitalist. Guard your thoughts, the Ministry of Truth is here.
19 comments:
Hi John,
Just a couple of quick points in response to this, starting off with a point of clarification. In 1984, Ingsoc is actually the political philosophy/theory of English Socialism - the language that supports (and indeed, enforces) it is called "Newspeak." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak)
More substantially though, I am concerned that your post fails to address a legitimate point about regulation. Particularly in light of the Madoff debacle, I think it is fair to say that all taxpayers (including those of us who wish we were being taxed a lot less) would have been well-served by more rigorous regulators. A good analogy would be food: very few among us have the expertise (and time) to ensure that the food we are buying is in fact clean and healthy. So, we instead decide to invest the authority to regulate food production in a small group of experts. This then allows the rest of us to trust that the food we are buying at the grocery store is safe to feed ourselves and our families.
Imagine what it would be like if we couldn't have this trust (Admittedly, the FDA does sometimes get it wrong and we have a bit of a scare, but nothing on a systemic/permanent scale). It would be impossible to provide food at any sort of scalable/sustainable level to our population, because there wouldn't be any broad sense of trust that the food was in fact safe.
This is exactly the sort of societal meltdown that would happen if we did not (and arguably right now, we do not) have adequate regulation. Investors who cannot be assured that there are at least basic rules to the game of the market will cease to trust the market, and put their capital elsewhere. This reduces the credit available to companies as well as consumers, and reduces overall spending as returns (and incomes) decline along with consumer confidence.
We certainly don't want a Soviet-style planned economy, but I really don't think that's what Obama is pushing for. I think he's making the argument that for at least the past 10 years (Clinton's administration certainly has a share of the blame here too), the inmates were allowed to run the asylum - and now we need to bring back the sense that the market is a place that rewards hard work and carefully assessed risk rather than recklessness and blind faith in bubbles.
John,
Good luck with your future writings. I wanted to believe that this blog, and specifically your thoughts, were grounded somewhere in some sense of good will. However, you have once again proved me wrong. I will no longer be viewing this blog or wasting my time with your hateful writing.
Good day.
Hear, hear, to DarkBlue04.
I also must admit I find your whole use of the 1984 metaphor a little tired and, to be blunt, intellectually lazy, John.
Ooohh, no! The 1984 reference!
I give that the ideas contained inside the book have some legitimate political references to the world and to the use of government at large, but come on!
You're terrified. It's unbecoming.
Ahh, more liberal cannon fodder!
DarkBlue04,
You have perfectly illustrated the liberal fallacy. Your cursory understanding of Orwell's work provides a fascinating insight into the pseudo- intellectualism that pervades and indeed fuels the modern liberal paradigm: a sophomoric, pop culture, illiteracy. Instead of relying on Wikipedia, a secondary source (and I am being generous in describing it as secondary), you would be better served by actually reading Orwell's 1984. Insoc and newspeak are synonymous elements in the Orwellin cosmos.
" 'The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he [Syme] added with a sort of mystical satisfaction." (Signet Classics edition, pg 52) (ISBN: 978-0-451-52493-5)
In the future, dispense with Wikipedia-style analysis and push beyond your comfort zone, engage in some original thought and genuine scholarship. Orwell's work is far more complex than is suggested by your Wikitrash.
The rest of your comment persists in the same error. You are only familiar with the worn old liberal half truths and simplistic analysis. Yes, the inmates have been running the asylum. That is precisely the point. Only now, Hannibal Lecter will preside over the continuing Democrat debacle. The fools who created this economic mess (e.g. Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Dingy Harry Reid, and now B. Hussein Obama and, the human gaffe machine Joe Biden) will now have free reign. Those fools have been asleep at the wheel, while Republicans attempted to forestall the inevitable. What restraining influence the Republican party exerted will now be cast aside. We have sown the wind and will now reap the whirlwind.
Joe,
I'm sure you'll be back. But just so you know how we feel: don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Comradi0,
Comradi0? How apropos! Your ID sums it up. You're a bore.
John, I'm old enough to have read 1984 BEFORE 1984, and find your comparisons amusing and predictable.
However, that will not keep me from wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas, filled with the joy of the season and hope for the future.
Pray for Peace, the only hope for our planet.
Blessings.
Cheryle,
The future will provide little in the way of humor. I fear you will rue the day you cast your uniformed vote for B. Hussein Obama. The events in India and the developments involving the Russians in Cuba are a foreshadowing of an Obama-stained future. I'll be here to say, "I told you so." Enjoy your mirth while you can.
Thank you for your kind Christmas wishes. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
I, however, will be praying for the triumph of truth. Peace is not the future for this world's system. That is a humanistic fallacy.
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword...And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." (Matthew 10: 34,36)
The only hope for man is Christ and his redeeming work on the cross. I pray you will come to understand this in its fullness. Have a merry Christmas and new year.
Merry Christmas to you both,
But I hope you find a new hobby. John you are a skilled writer and I hope you are doing more with it than just to hear yourself speak (in this case, see yourself speak). But in all honesty our government has too many checks and balances to turn into the "Big Brother" environment you think is possible. Your critique of a President who has not yet been inaugurated is tiresome and I also will not be viewing this Blog anymore. The world can use a little less hate and more help.
Apathetic,
Merry Christmas and bye bye! Boohoo, dissent is hate!
Ingsoc quote of the day: oldspeak= dissent; newspeak=hate.
Ignorance is Strength!
That is all.
Sincerely, The Ministry Of Truth.
LOL!!!
John,
Having chosen to not post my rebuttal to your "30 Days", I have once again come to realize that an intellectual debate is not what you are interested in. You prefer labeling those who disagree with you as stupid, dim, misled, sophomoric and pseudo- intellectual. And when the rebuttal to both your insults and your arguments returns, you simply hit the delete key. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to pretend to be smart in that arena.
You often liken your own writing and intellectual capabilities to a razor sharp blade that cuts through all that liberal nonsense to get at what you claim is the truth. All that ego-ridden bull has the bark stripped off of it when you decide to censor the rebuttals that most reveal your weaknesses for what they are.
You aren't interested in the truth, John. You can't handle the truth. You are interested in this tightly controlled arena where you can simply censor the arguments that threaten your house of cards most deeply. And then you and Tami, and Third Rock can continue this self-congratulatory love fest without dealing with those troublesome items called facts.
All the while you survive on predictions of doom and disaster to feed your followers who are beginning to sense that Obama and his progressive outlook might have answers to these problems that conservatives, rigid in their anti-regulatory, anti-tax foxholes might have missed. Those dire predictions will work for you until the man actually gets in office and begins to create a government that works.
Good luck with your dismal domain after that.
I don't have even a faint thought that you will post this but I do wish a Merry Christmas to you and Tami and all your supporters.
Thomas
Thomas,
Or should I address you as Tom Cruise? I can't handle the truth? Thomas, you're always good for a laugh. You don't get successive comments published simply because you become redundant and verbose. You flatter yourself too much by assuming the persuasiveness of your arguments.
As to my predictions of doom. I base my assessment of future conditions on B. Hussein Obama's stated policies. If BO carries out his policies as stated in his campaign, he will be disastrous. Don't take my word for it, examine the history of the Great Depression or the history of any socialized state. If you can do so honesty, you will come to the same conclusions. There is nothing new under the sun. Your "progressiveness" is as old and dusty as FDR's corpse. Obama's repackaging does nothing to Change that. At the risk of being redundant myself, I will be here to say, "I told you so."
Merry Christmas and have a happy new year.
Third Rock: We only do it so you will have *something* to laugh about. God knows, you are one of the most humorless - and least discerning - people posting on the internet today.
Ooops. I've insulted one of the sheep (she just won't be able to recognize the insult). Put me in Bellevue!
Third Rock: You need a new dictionary. "Discern" commonly means "insight" or "discriminate." A spell- and grammar-checker would be helpful for you as well.
I haven't threatened to leave - at least not lately. I enjoy showing up from time to time, to see what's going on and to comment if I feel moved to do so. Of course, not all of my comments get posted, and that's okay. But once in a while Tami and I have a good conversation.
I'm not holding my breath, either. If you actually had a desire to understand, you would strive to do so. You have, instead, a desire to take refuge in a safe place and point fingers.
But this won't get posted, and I don't care. I feel better having written it. You've been annoying with your "me, too" posts for a long time now, and I guess I just needed to get it off my chest.
Third Rock: I don't believe I've called you names, but it's okay if name-calling makes you feel better.
I come here - as I've said several times - because I think it's important to hear all sides. If you were keeping up, you would know that Jennifer's blog is no longer "anti" Sarah Palin and she is, in fact, removing the incendiary posts. I know this is not comforting to most, but I do think it's a step in the direction of reconciliation. Just as I believe Tami allowing my posts is a step in the same direction.
I'm going to leave you alone for now, but would ask if you would please at least try to spell my name correctly in your posts. It's just not that difficult.
Happy New Year, and a belated Merry Christmas!
Chicago thugs and Pakistani subversives? Islamocentric manchild? Where are you getting these facts?! I absolutely agree that his economic plan seems sketchy at best, but I have to admit that the current administration's 800 billion dollar bail-out gave me the same feeling. I'll admit that you raise legitimate concerns, but insinuating that Time is somehow conspiring to resurrect Soviet Russia really undermines you. Finally, I'm not sure why you included that video at the end. All that did is prove that he, Islamocentric or not, has picked a team of very experienced and well qualified economic advisers. From both sides of the political spectrum. Unlike the Clinton administration he did not get stuck on partisanship, but rather has chosen experience over perceived obedience. I mean, did you even watch the video? And if you still think i'm crazy, check out The Economist. it's a historically conservative, BRITISH magazine (they could care less about American partisan politics) and widely considered to be the best mainstream magazine currently in circulation. Kudos on the wsj citation though. Although you still managed to blow that one slightly out of proportion...
Phillipe,
I happen to agree with your concerns regarding the current administrations wild spending and pre-socialization of the economy. Bush has done much in the past six months to damage the cause of conservatism by allowing huge socialist bailouts to occur on his watch. Indeed, Bush has sponsored these bailouts. I oppose this policy.
However, there is no assertion in the post that suggests that a Soviet style government is on the horizon. Do I believe that Obama is a Marxist? Yes. Will he infuse socialist programs and policies into our democratic institutions? Absolutely. But, it does not follow that I am arguing the ridiculous proposition that the Soviet Union is about to unfold in our Republic under B. Hussein Obama's watch. You are arguing from the absurd. However, Obama will push us by leaps and bounds further down the socialist path. This I abhor. God save us if we are saddled with nationalized healthcare.
Obama has assembled a band of nincompoops who will implement the same old, tired liberal agenda. Nothing new, no change, just the same old crap from the left. These buffoons, led by their Buffoon-in-Chief, will drag us from recession to depression. Wait, watch, and see.
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