Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Around Christmastime, after the wife & I watched a biopic from 25 years ago about our nation’s 36th president, I described an important split:
Liberals aren’t liberals. Their class is necessarily divided into two hemispheres, both equally important, one enjoying the much larger share of influence and the other enjoying the much larger share of mass. The elites who possess the influence also possess a far superior understanding of the ultimate disastrous effect of liberal policy. In other words, they know that taking guns off the street does not make innocent people safer, and they know that offering special privileges to minority groups in hiring, contracting and college enrollment does not have a healing effect on racial, gender, and sex-preference divisions. They understand these policies do not do what they are supposed to do, and they even understand the entirely legitimate claims that the policies may in fact be achieving the reverse.
They don’t give a fig. They couldn’t care less.
The commoners, on the other hand, not only think that passage of the latest “landmark legislation” is all that is needed to achieve perfection and finally ascend to that plateau of Nirvana, but that if you argue or question the idea then you must be the stupid one. They are therefore constantly arguing for policies sure to produce disaster, deluding themselves into thinking the opposite, and in doing so making fools of themselves — again deluding themselves into thinking the opposite, that the subtle “nuanced” sense of irony makes them look like little smarty-pants or something. So they’re headed 180 degrees opposite from where they think, twice in a row, and all of the time. It isn’t that they really are that dumb; if they were, they wouldn’t be able to get dressed in the morning and go walking around. The problem is that they just don’t pay attention. They want to go in to the voting booth, poke the right chad, and have everything come out alright. They think the process is just like watching teevee, except the screen is a bit bigger and there are a bunch of other people fighting over the remote. Therefore, if it doesn’t go their way, or if it doesn’t go well, it is of no more consequence than last night’s round of channel-surfing failing to yield the proper satisfaction.
And that doesn’t bother them, they’d admit, if they were honest about it. What does a bad Tuesday night of surfing matter on Wednesday morning? Next to nothing, right? You need to have a few hundred of them, perhaps years’ worth, stacked up on top of each other before you even reconsider your cable subscription.
And so there are the apathetic, who know the policies are bad and don’t care, and the ignorant, who might care that the policies are bad if only they could be bothered to pay attention, but they can’t be, so they don’t know any better.
The apathetic elites, I named “strategists” in my Art of War Against Liberals post, dividing the ignorant commoners into ten other classes:
He has skin in the game. He is materially entangled in the liberal vision, being rewarded either out in the open or in secret, by way of cash, discounts, perks, votes or career advancement. He has a “job,” of sorts, to make himself and other liberals more powerful.
He therefore cannot be dissuaded.
The rift between this type, and the other ten, is the most precious asset we have. Do not engage this sort of poser in any direct way.
Accentuate, for the benefit of any bystanders, the differences between his interests and everybody else’s.
The rift between the apathetic elites, and the ignorant commoners, is “the most precious asset we have.” And therein lies the key. This is what was not emphasized to the public, before the democrats successfully retained the White House and the Senate. The democrats have their interests; the poor and middle class have theirs; who cares what’s what, if both sets of interests might be served by a common course of action? So re-electing democrats looks like a good idea. It didn’t work out that way, people saw, once they were issued their first paychecks of the year. But by then it was too late.
What’s the answer?
I got my idea when I caught wind of House Joint Resolution 15, “Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President”. Okay, it has zero chance of getting past committee. And it isn’t clear that Congress has the authority to unilaterally repeal an amendment such as the 22nd, which is supposed to be an agreement between the feds, the states and the people. Nevertheless…
This defines the one question that might end the silliness, the question for which the apathetic elite strategists will have one answer, and the low-information commoner independent centrists will have the opposite one. Three words: What’s the endpoint?
The partisan democrat strategists simply don’t have one. They will resist the imposition of any limit. The term limit for the President is to be repealed and replaced with…nothing. Barack Obama is to serve as President forever and ever and ever, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Hallelujah. Is that sacrilegious? Tough, deal with it, we’re talking Obama the Replacement Jesus here. And knock off with this absurd ritual of putting Him up for re-election. He is our Emperor after all.
I know this is all silly talk. But the questions should be asked. The elites have one answer for them, the commoners have the opposite answer, and the commoners deserve to know all about that even if the elites do not want them to. Besides, in all seriousness, from what I can tell so far the unstated answer is always to-infinity-and-beyond. Sultan Soetoro gets everything He wants, if the Constitution is in the way then it has to be nudged aside, if the situation all turns to crap then it’s some Republican’s fault. Lather, rinse, repeat. Good for Obama and democrats, bad for everybody else. And if we’re tired of talking about effects & outcomes, we then have to confront a wholly separate issue about this whole thing: It has long ago become tedious and boring. Round and round we go. Barack Obama wins all the arguments, it turns out badly, the talking heads on the teevee blame Republicans, and let’s all line up to do it again.
What’s the daily routine at 1600 Pennsylvania? President Obama should roll out of bed whenever He darn well feels like it, like a spoiled little kid…decide what the favorite color of the day is going to be for the whole country…if He feels like it. And then a round of golf while the rest of of us trudge off to the salt mines. Again, if He feels like it. It should be like a real-life re-enactment of the Good Life episode of the Twilight Zone.
Right?
Republicans should do this with every fight they’ve lost. ObamaCare, Fiscal Cliff, Cash for Clunkers, Stimulus. The House Speaker can’t negotiate with the President, so everyone should stop expecting him to. Give the President what He wants. But — always insist on an answer to the question: Is this the end of it, or is more needed? I heard a few months back there’s a movement afoot to get another stimulus going. So, question, again: How about it? How big is the second one going to be? How about a third one?
That’s probably the best way to kick off some visible discussion about endpoints; make that the default response to everything, that President Obama has asked for action on exactly the right thing, in the right direction, but maybe not enough of it. Raise the federal minimum wage to twelve bucks an hour? Right you are, Mister President, but shouldn’t it be more like twenty? Raise the highest marginal income tax rate to thirty-nine point six? Maybe sixty percent is the better rate, why did you stop where Clinton did? You’re better than he was, aren’t You? Outlaw high capacity magazines? Why not outlaw low capacity magazines as well?
Speaking of guns, I see the President is “facing criticism” on the executive orders thing. That does not mean it is political suicide; Barack is a big boy, He’s handled hot potatoes before. But it is obvious that this situation is tolerable to the nation only because its citizens, apart from those interested in buying guns or ammunition, remain unaffected. Nobody else is experiencing the frustration of waiting for Barry to pace around in a room somewhere, mull it over in His Holy Noggin, and figure out who He wants to wish out to the cornfield. It’s a whole different kettle of fish if everyone has to wait and wonder. People don’t see how risible the whole arrangement is, if it doesn’t affect them personally. When it does, that’s when “separation of powers” starts to look like a swell idea. Hey, someone should write that down on a piece of parchment or something…
You ever argue with one of these libs? These “strategists”? I say not to engage them; I don’t always follow my own advice here. When I don’t, it ends up being a waste of energy and time. I’ll tell you where it all goes: They don’t know anything about anything, except one thing, and that is who among us is leveraging influence, and should not be able to. That’s all they’re willing to define, for all the blustering they do about having the answer to all our problems: Who should be ostracized, who should be defrocked of power or position. Who should be exiled. Who should be stopped. Stop the religious people from obstructing abortion. Stop the gun nuts from buying their guns. Stop the conservatives from doing…whatever it is they do…which is what? Voting? I think the answer is voting. Whoever disagrees with liberals shouldn’t be able to vote. They don’t say so because they don’t have to say so. The question never gets asked. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. So ask the question. If it isn’t asked, the ignorant commoners are left with the impression that the apathetic elites agree with them about everything when this is not the case. This serves the interest of nobody save for the apathetic elites.
To coin a phrase, we need a national dialogue on the endpoint. We need an open discussion on how far the democrat-party loyalists want to take…well…everything. It is the proper and fair thing to do. And it’s relevant, because lately they’ve won a lot more than they’ve lost. Well, there’s a burden that goes along with that. If the locomotive is charging onward, full steam ahead, then it is good for the nation to know where the tracks are laid down — and how far.
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- House of Eratosthenes | 01/18/2013 @ 10:17