OT: The Crumbling Cult of Obama

Started by neoteny, Aug 14, 2011, 08:16 PM

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neoteny


The Crumbling Cult of Obama
Sorry guys, there are no more kings
David Harsanyi | August 10, 2011


The romance is gone. But don't worry. It's not him; it's you.

It turns out we are the ones who failed Him. We weren't prepared for a mega-dosage of awesomeness. We were too dimwitted to grasp the decency of central planning. And the insistence of troublemakers to engage in debate and vote, in fact, is the most serious threat to this nation's future.

In a recent New York Times piece, Drew Westen, a professor of psychology and a Democratic strategist, wrote that the American public had been "desperate for a leader who would speak with confidence, and they were ready to follow wherever the president led." Do Americans really have some innate autocratic tendency that makes them desperately seek out a half-term senator "wherever" he may lead?

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, recently echoed Westen's authoritarian sentiment in a Daily Beast piece, titled "Obama Is Too Good for Us," wherein he disparaged a system that allows mere simpletons to transfer their free market absurdity to Washington through elections. Similarly, Jacob Weisberg of Slate wrote that because of "intellectual primitives" on the right, "compromise is dead" and "there's no point trying to explain complicated matters to the American people. The president has tried reasonableness and he has failed."

"Reasonableness," you'll remember, is shoving a wholly partisan, Byzantine restructuring of the health care system through Congress in the midst of an economic downturn. But chipping a few billion off a $3.7 trillion budget in exchange for raising the debt ceiling is an act of irrationality that has, apparently, sucked the very soul from the American project.

The sight of a crumbling Cult of Obama--and with it the end of the progressive presidency--has many on the left so frustrated that they simply dismiss the very idea of ideological debate. To challenge the morality and rationality of Obamanomics only means you're bought, too stupid to know any better or, most likely, both. A slack-jawed hostage-taking saboteur.

Armed with this unearned intellectual and ethical superiority, it is not surprising to hear someone like John Kerry reprimand the media for even covering conservative viewpoints. It is predictable that the Senate would "investigate" a private entity like Standard & Poor's for giving an opinion on American debt that conflicted with its own. (Remember when not listening to the Dixie Chicks was a "chilling of free speech"?)

Obama himself blamed the volatile stock market on the "prolonged debate over the debt ceiling...where the threat of default was used as a bargaining chip." So it's not the job-killing policy or another $4 trillion of debt in two years that's problematic; it's the insistence of elected officials to represent their constituents that's really killing America.

Following the lead of the Environmental Protection Agency, Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently used this imagined "dysfunction" as an excuse to try to unilaterally implement comprehensive education "reform" by bypassing law and using a waiver system. Why? "Right now," Duncan explained, "Congress is pretty dysfunctional. They're not getting stuff done."

Hate to break the news to you, Arne; for many Americans, stopping this administration from "getting stuff done" is getting stuff done.

The Founding Fathers rightly feared that the purer the democracy the more susceptible voters would be to the emotion of the moment and the demagogues who take advantage of it. Needless to say, we are democratic enough to get the politicians we deserve.

But debate is not dysfunction. Feel free to bemoan the fact that the American people are not automatons, but "getting stuff done" is not the charge of the Constitution. Neither is having a king, though sometimes you get the feeling that a lot of folks who believe in power as the wellspring of morality are really annoyed by that fact.

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Well said.
The spreading of information about the [quantum] system through the [classical] environment is ultimately responsible for the emergence of "objective reality." 

Wojciech Hubert Zurek: Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical

Quentin0352

Let me see, reporters claimed Obama was great and humble in STEPPING DOWN to become President, others stated he should be declared sole ruler for his term so he could do what he wanted without congress getting in his way and etc.

Now we see it is everyone else's fault for his failing, the credit rating downgrade and rest. Compare that to the statements by him and the democrats during his run and since. Some examples;

Obama; I WANT the responsibility for the economy and will accept it!

Obama; The republicans can sit at the back of the bus and come along for the ride.

Obama; I will be fiscally responsible and cut deficit spending.

Obama; We need to concentrate on getting Americans back to work as our first priority. (This was on the campaign trail and ever since though healthcare, the wars, Libya, screwing veterans, gays in the military and rest have actually come before anything to help people get to work beyond bailing out unions and handouts to his buddies.

All of these are paraphrases but you get the idea. No responsibility for his actions, no real plans to help the people, blame everyone else and you do as HE says.

Men's Rights Activist

College and university professors today are far from being objective, or unbiased.  In my perception, more than a few are academic bullies, democrat shills, and teacher's union thugs who hold students hostage and use their podiums to spread propaganda, instead of teach.

Marxist Valley College
Life, Liberty, & Pursuit of Happiness are fundamental rights for all (including males), & not contingent on gender feminist approval or denial. Consider my "Independence" from all tyrannical gender feminist ideology "Declared" - Here & Now!

BRIAN

Obama is who we thought he was.

He isn't socialist enough for the left and he is socialist enough to ruin the economy with policy wonkery.
You may sleep soundly at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence upon those who seek to harm you.

davis2ab


My take on Obama is that he successfully tapped into the need for "change." 

He based his entire campaign on "change."

He is then elected and doesn't change anything except for one thing -- Obama Care.

Everything else is just more of the same (and more)  -- wars, bailouts, etc.

One reason I think Ron Paul actually might win is that the people understand that we need real change.

I understand that a large number of people depend on big gov and will not vote for the change that we need.

Government is supposed to provide a level and safe playing field nothing more.

When it tries to do more, it is at best highly inefficient and at worst downright destructive.


neoteny


Government is supposed to provide a level and safe playing field nothing more.

When it tries to do more, it is at best highly inefficient and at worst downright destructive.


Pretty good summary in two sentences.
The spreading of information about the [quantum] system through the [classical] environment is ultimately responsible for the emergence of "objective reality." 

Wojciech Hubert Zurek: Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical

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