They Had a Dream

[4est_4est_Gump]

They had a dream. For almost a hundred years now, the famed academic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex has dreamed of a government run by their kind of people (i.e., nature’s noblemen), whose intelligence, wit, and refined sensibilities would bring us a heaven on earth. Their keen intellects would cut through the clutter as mere mortals’ couldn’t. They would lift up the wretched, oppressed by cruel forces. Above all, they would counter the greed of the merchants, the limited views of the business community, and the ignorance of the conformist and dim middle class.

...

Attitudinal rather than doctrinaire in their judgments, they leaned Democratic because of their loathing of business, but they judged people largely by mores and manners, and men in both parties would earn their contempt. Harry Truman, as Siegel notes, “had triumphed not only over Republicans and business, but also over Henry Wallace and the supporters of the Soviet Union on the left, and Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrat segregationists of the right.” Truman was also a businessman whose small men’s-wear store had gone bankrupt, and for this Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a solon whose influence would span half a century, called him “a man of mediocre and limited capacity.” Schlesinger, who also complained about the “Eisenhower trance” and described the race between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter as “Babbitt vs. Elmer Gantry,” would find his true soulmate in Adlai E. Stevenson, a fellow snob and two-time loser in the race for the White House, whom Michael Barone has described as “the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle class American culture.” Schlesinger famously fell for John Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, less for their politics, which were in the end not too different from Truman’s, than for their personal glamour and aura of privilege, which set them apart from the multitude. But even those two, and their successors, fell short. Kennedy shunned Schlesinger’s counsel. Bill Clinton was a wonk but also a Bubba, who never completely outgrew the Hot Springs experience. All three had middlebrow tastes when it came to the culture, sympathized with the middle class, and tried to promote and not stifle prosperity and upward mobility. And thus the elites had to wait for the man of their dreams.

When they found him, he was a rare breed: a genuine African American (his father was Kenyan) who thought and talked like the academics on both sides of his family, a product of the faculty lounge who dabbled in urban/race politics, a man who could speak to both ends of the liberals’ up-and-down coalition, and a would-be transformer of our public life whose quiet voice and low-key demeanor conveyed “moderation” in all that he spoke and did. Best of all, he was the person whom the two branches of the liberal kingdom—the academics and journalists—wanted to be, a man who shared their sensibilities and their views of the good and the beautiful. This was the chance of a lifetime to shape the world to their measure. He and they were the ones they were waiting for, and with him, they longed for transcendent achievements. But in the event they were undone by the three things Siegel had pegged as their signature weaknesses: They had too much belief in the brilliance of experts, they were completely dismissive of public opinion, and they had a contempt for the great middle class.

From the beginning, they made it clear that the Obama regime would be different from all others that had come before. The damaged economy was the critical issue, but the creation of jobs took a back seat to boutique left-wing causes. The stimulus, costing more than a trillion dollars, came and went leaving nothing behind it, unlike the spending of FDR’s era, which at least for a while gave jobs to real people, and left behind things like bridges and dams and parks. “Climate change” had become an obsession, symbolized by the refusal to act on the Keystone pipeline proposal, which would have created jobs in Middle America, but which Obama’s Hollywood backers denounced as unclean.

...

Today, Obamacare is a technical mess and a public relations disaster, a bomb that has been radioactive to all who come near it. Thus far, it has terminated the careers of almost 70 national Democrats, given the Republicans control of 26 states, and brought in a new crew of GOP leaders inspired by fighting it, just when it seemed that the well had run dry. It has overwhelmed Obama’s presidency, destroyed any chance to build a center-left coalition, or to pass any other big bills. As it was four years ago, it is the central issue in the midterm elections, and the reason the Democrats may lose big again. Obama did win reelection, but it is now widely understood it was because the bill’s main provisions were designed not to go into effect until a year after that election.

Supporters of the president profess themselves thrilled with the progress since last fall. True, Obamacare is still alive, but it is on life support—hooked up to IV drips of varied descriptions in the intensive care unit and worlds away from being that jewel in the liberal crown that they imagined in 2009, a historic achievement for which the country would be forever grateful. In Kentucky, the Democrats’ senatorial candidate and a rising star in the party celebrated her win over her primary rivals last week by blowing off her president and all of his doings, and refusing to say that she would have voted for his historic and signature act. As even the New Republic admitted, the launch was “a fiasco that could haunt progressives for years to come.” Also, “Liberalism has spent the better part of the past century attempting to prove that it could competently and responsibly extend the state into new reaches of American life. With the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the administration has badly injured that cause.” One could say also that for the better part of the past century intellectual liberals had been attempting to prove they had superior judgment, and that hadn’t gone too well, either. But to note that it was a setback for their belief in themselves and their wisdom might have been a little too much to expect.

Noemie Emery
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/they-had-dream_793497.html?nopager=1

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame

 

[RobDownSouth]

How's the job search going, Chief?

Obamacare is not "on life support", you stupid son of a bitch.

That's simply wishful thinking from the fucktard right.

 

[subdued_passion]

I think you're better cast as Thernardier.

♪Master of the house? Isn't worth me spit!
`Comforter, philosopher' and lifelong shit!
Cunning little brain, regular Voltaire
Thinks he's quite a lover but there's not much there
What a cruel trick of nature landed me with such a louse
God knows how I've lasted living with this bastard in the house!♫​

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"What we've got here is failure to communicate

"Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men."

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Similarly, our intellectuals have some shared delusions...

To be sure, it is very probable -- indeed, almost inevitable -- that the West is in economic decline, and that our civilization will be dealing with serious social and cultural disruptions in the coming century. The West is collapsing under its own contradictions, under a lack of any moral vision or self-confidence, and the steady growth of government power accompanying this moral default. The truth in the common prediction is that the West will recede economically to the position it occupied in the world before the nineteenth century; but that is about all. This does not tell us anything about the condition of and further developments in the non-West; indeed, too often analysts assume without further investigation that the non-West will be able to carry on the economic, scientific and technological development that characterized the West in the past two centuries. However, all the historical and cultural indicators at our disposal suggest otherwise.

Very common in the fashionable view of the rise of the West is the assumption that this phenomenon was largely coincidental, and that other cultures can achieve the same results if only they benefit from the right stimulants. This view reflects the traditional uncertainty about the reasons for their own success that has often bothered Westerners, and this uncertainty is not a unique attribute of the postmodern age. For instance, in the imperial era, Western success was explained in terms of unclear concepts such as respect for tradition and authority, cultural pride, and the work ethic -- and among the most desperate segments of public opinion, by stating that the white race was inherently superior to all others. All these explanations, including the modern one, miss the crucial point. The main reason for Western success was the Western philosophical paradigm, namely the combination of individualism and rationalism (meaning the application of the law of causality to the outside world). The basis of the value-adding capitalist economic system is the unhindered use by the individual of his own mind, and no other foundations will carry this system. If the West can be expected to decline drastically in the coming centuries, this decline will be due to the forces that are working against the mentality that made it great.

From this misunderstanding of the reasons for Western success and decline follows an exaggerated confidence in the potential of other cultures. We believe that all that is needed to achieve economic success is hard work and discipline like the Chinese are capable of, and that it is just a matter of time before the emerging economies overtake us, since all they have to do is basically to copy Western methods and technology -- in short, the useful parts of Western modernity that suit their immediate purposes. The success of emerging economies until now seems to validate this view. The paradox here is that, having lived in a Western-dominated world for so long, we no longer understand how fundamentally other cultures differ from ours, and assume without questioning that people in different cultures basically share our set of mind.

Nikolaas de Jong
http://americanthinker.com/assets/3...ker.com/2014/05/the_world_after_the_west.html

 

[Saint Peter]

Nikolaas de Jong
http://americansphincter.com

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Wish I may, wish I might
Have this I wish tonight
Are you satisfied?
Dig for gold, dig for fame
You dig to make your name
Are you pacified?

All the wants you waste
All the things you've chased

Then it all crashes down
And you break your crown
And you point your finger
But there's no one around
Just want one thing
Just to play the king
But the castle's crumbled
And you're left with just a name

Where's your crown, King Nothing?

 

[siobhansmut]

theres so many sharp tonged things i can say here, but i already shot at forest jump once today so I'm gonna hold my text for now

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Just keep a coming and put your hand out to me
'Cause I'm the one who's gonna make you burn
I'm gonna take you down - down, down, down
So don't you fool around
I'm gonna pull it, pull it, pull the trigger
Shoot to thrill, play to kill

 

[Saint Peter]

...and too many pills...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Too many colors...



We see this intellectual conceit in most of the compelling issues of the day where the academic faculty types ignore real Science and like Canute impose common-sense straight-line Socialist Math to complex and chaotic systems and try to force climate, people and economies to behave the way that they have always dreamed they should...

Then the walls, come tumblin' down...

 

[Ishmael]

The whole academic intellectual thing didn't work too well for Wilson either.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

This isn't MLK's Dream, but Dreams by Obama:

Rarely do I disagree with the conclusions Bill reaches in his Afterburner videos, but I think he may be slightly off regarding today’s left. As people as divergent as Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty, hapless Twitter user Justine Sacco, and Brendan Eich, the former CEO of Firefox, can attest, the modern left appear to be soft, sensitive Eloi, but underneath their freshly powdered skin and ubiquitous tortoiseshell Smart Glasses, they’re pure Morlock, ready to devour anyone who deviates even slightly from the day-to-day definition of political correctness.

Take the racially-obsessed on-air talent at MSNBC, or Ethan Krupp, who posed for photos late last year as the Obamacare Footie Pajamas Boy. The jammies were intended to appear cute and non-threatening, making Krupp look like he just parachuted in from the set of the Big Bang Theory, but he was quoted by the Daily Caller as saying, “We have no morals, and we will attack you:”

“I am a Liberal Fuck,” Krupp wrote in one post. “A Liberal Fuck is not a Democrat, but rather someone who combines political data and theory, extreme leftist views and sarcasm to win any argument while make the opponents feel terrible about themselves. I won every argument but one.”

Krupp then detailed the only political argument he claimed her ever lost, a drunken encounter he had with a “conservative gay prick.”

Of course, Krupp is simply a creature of his environment — his worldview was cultivated by his college professors, reinforced by both the media he consumes, and his colleagues. It’s certainly commonplace at Organizing for Action, the Obama special interest group where Krupp works, when not starring in their in Tweets and videos to shill for socialized medicine.

As they say at David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine, ”Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.” What happens to a society led by those who have similar or worse worldviews than those at OFA? The transformation of the Weimar Republic into something far darker and destructive is one extreme direction. The societal collapse of socialist postwar England is another.

In the meantime, the mob must be sated, if only to keep distracting attention from its leader’s dreadful performance in the White House.

Just ask Obama supporter Mark Cuban.

Ed Driscoll, PJMedia

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Obama, you see, is our nemesis. He is a totem, the logical manifestation of a warped media, the reification of some crazy — and arrogant — ideas about redistributive politics, the statist economy, and cultural and social life that permeated American life the last forty years. He is the president with a 1,000 faces that we have all seen at work, on TV, throughout American life, and at some point the odds determined that we had to have a rendezvous with him— perhaps a catharsis to teach us the wages of Keynesian debt, of a social policy contrary to human nature with its equality of result doctrines, of an all-powerful, all-growing unaccountable government, of the now hip ambiguity about past American protocols and history. Obama is the exaggeration of all the dubious ideas that arose since the 1960s — brought to fruition on his watch, delivered by mellifluous cadences by an untouchable persona.

In fact, a Barack Obama was long overdue. Had he not appeared out of nowhere in 2008, we would have surely had to invent him.
Victor Davis Hanson

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The whole academic intellectual thing didn't work too well for Wilson either.

Ishmael

They're building on crumbled foundations, the edifice cannot be sound.

 

[rosco rathbone]

http://www.amazon.com/The-Revolt-Elites-Betrayal-Democracy/dp/0393313719

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Good Morning Comrade!

 

[Ishmael]

Obama, you see, is our nemesis. He is a totem, the logical manifestation of a warped media, the reification of some crazy — and arrogant — ideas about redistributive politics, the statist economy, and cultural and social life that permeated American life the last forty years. He is the president with a 1,000 faces that we have all seen at work, on TV, throughout American life, and at some point the odds determined that we had to have a rendezvous with him— perhaps a catharsis to teach us the wages of Keynesian debt, of a social policy contrary to human nature with its equality of result doctrines, of an all-powerful, all-growing unaccountable government, of the now hip ambiguity about past American protocols and history. Obama is the exaggeration of all the dubious ideas that arose since the 1960s — brought to fruition on his watch, delivered by mellifluous cadences by an untouchable persona.

In fact, a Barack Obama was long overdue. Had he not appeared out of nowhere in 2008, we would have surely had to invent him.
Victor Davis Hanson

But he is amazing to watch in action. He's in perpetual campaign mode. He even campaigns against his own policies. It's like he never took the oath of office, let alone responsibility. To the casual observer he appears to be the candidate running for office that is going to cure all the wrongs that have erupted under his watch. And in reality he's not only NOT cured any of the wrongs, he's busily been creating some new ones. Thank God he's term limited, but he's going to leave one hell of a mess behind.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

But he is amazing to watch in action. He's in perpetual campaign mode. He even campaigns against his own policies. It's like he never took the oath of office, let alone responsibility. To the casual observer he appears to be the candidate running for office that is going to cure all the wrongs that have erupted under his watch. And in reality he's not only NOT cured any of the wrongs, he's busily been creating some new ones. Thank God he's term limited, but he's going to leave one hell of a mess behind.

Ishmael

Even more amazing is watching his Myrmidons trying to keep up with as stories develop.

It was clearly the movie, no he said it was terrorism!


The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
Senator Barack Hussein Obama, 2006

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents - #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back -- $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.
Barack Hussein Obama

"That's not part of his power, but this is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he goes along. I disagree with that. I taught the Constitution for 10 years. I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We're not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress...,"
Senator Barack Hussein Obama, 2008

Watching them flop around on issues like these is amusing...

 

[Ishmael]

Even more amazing is watching his Myrmidons trying to keep up with as stories develop.

It was clearly the movie, no he said it was terrorism!


The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
Senator Barack Hussein Obama, 2006

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents - #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back -- $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.
Barack Hussein Obama

"That's not part of his power, but this is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he goes along. I disagree with that. I taught the Constitution for 10 years. I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We're not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress...,"
Senator Barack Hussein Obama, 2008

Watching them flop around on issues like these is amusing...

Not when Executive Orders work.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

tee hee

 

[rosco rathbone]

Good Morning Comrade!

Good morning AJ.

I haven't read this yet, but it looks interesting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

 

[Ishmael]

Good morning AJ.

I haven't read this yet, but it looks interesting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

Heart tugging horse-shit.

Now make the case why anyone that had nothing to do with those events should pay.

Ishmael

 

[rosco rathbone]

Heart tugging horse-shit.

Now make the case why anyone that had nothing to do with those events should pay.

Ishmael

Even if Reparations were politically possible, which they never will be, they wouldn't accomplish the real goal anyway which is wiping away the toxic shame of the slave. For that you needed a Dessalines or a Spartacus and it never happened.

That said, the story of the Freedman's Bureau and the Presidential abrogation of Special Order 15 is good stuff for connoisseurs of injustice.

 

[Ishmael]

Even if Reparations were politically possible, which they never will be, they wouldn't accomplish the real goal anyway which is wiping away the toxic shame of the slave. For that you needed a Dessalines or a Spartacus and it never happened.

That said, the story of the Freedman's Bureau and the Presidential abrogation of Special Order 15 is good stuff for connoisseurs of injustice.

They can hold on to that pipe dream all they want. And the holding on probably causes even more problems for the 'holders.'

Ishmael