 |
| ||
|
||||||||
|
May 16, 2008 Hawking Retro-Change and Misplaced HopeBy Lee CaryObama will be, even more, the tall, confident, articulate young leader whose soaring motivational speech touches, we'll be told, the souls of a generation of disenfranchised and disheartened Americans of all ages and colors. In contrast, the MSM McCain will be the angry, old politico, whose stiff speech motivates few. He will be the candidate from a past, we'll be told, that represents why so many voters are hungry for real change this time. Thus will be the old media's storyline, one more time, for old time's sake. Their power to influence voters is on the wane, but it still carries considerable weight. And it will weigh-in solidly for Barack Obama - every - single - day - until November. In the end, it may come down to how many Manchurian voters are already media-programmed to vote on the rebound. Those of us conscious for the '76 election recall how Jimmy Carter won on the rebound after Nixon. We remember how the old media -- the only media back then -- portrayed Carter as the political scion of the New South, and Gerald Ford, pardoner of Nixon, as the literally stumbling Old Establishment. It worked just enough for Carter to win by 1.9%. Today's now-old media has spent many of the last eight years, and all of the last four, in bash-Bush overdrive. Consequently, millions of voters are, again, softened up to vote on the rebound. In the coming MSM storyline, McCain becomes Ford as McCain's past conflicts with the Bush administration will be minimized. In contrast, Obama will project the youthful image of hope and change -- or is it change and hope? Doesn't matter which comes first. What only matters is how it's to happen. And although the how in Obama's speeches and campaign documents could not be any clearer, the MSM will seldom explore Obama's how. They favor Obama's how. He offers the kind of enhanced federal government that the MSM likes to cover. More and bigger federal government on a scale reminiscent of FDR's New Deal, Truman's Fair Deal, JFK's New Frontier, and LBJ's Great Society combined. Government activism on steroids. In the first three months of 2008, all levels of government combined hired 76,800 new workers, so government is already a growth industry. But that would be only an anemic prelude of what's to come in a Washington, D.C. that becomes the center of national educational policies, national healthcare management, gasoline price control, greater equalization in wages, fairer taxation...the Grand Arbiter of Fair itself. The opportunities for government intervention are only limited by the imaginations of those who translate every pain in life into a presumed unfairness, and every presumed unfairness into a perpetrator-versus-victim equation that summons the government to put things right. Good big government to challenge the Evil Bigs - big oil, big corporations, big pharmaceuticals, big retail, big whatever - except, of course, big unions. A government in which we, the people, can believe in for a change. One wherein we can hope for more programs to fix our social ills. More regulations to thwart our exploiters. More legislation to bring justice for us all. Hope, in the intrepid principles of the never-dying myth that began for us nobly enough in the 1930's during the Great Depression, but then turned decrepit as times changed but the myth kept attracting otherwise intelligent citizens, like Barack Obama, decade after decade after decade. Hope in a government that can make us whole. Redress our grievances. Repair our souls. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness through big government. Driven by the passion of a social worker, the education of a Harvard lawyer, the articulation of a speaker skilled with a teleprompter, eager to organize our communities and save our embittered souls, comes Barack Obama to rescue us. And because, by his lights, equalization is the fix, he preaches a 21st Century political gospel of liberal socialism baptized in biblical motifs. A spin on Marx. From each according to their untapped ability to pay more taxes. To each who feels disenfranchised -- a word made popular in the wake of the contested 2000 general election that today covers an ever-expanding directory of self-proclaimed victims who've suffered bloodless wounds from perceived slights and insensitivities. In the meantime, few of us ride AMTRAK when we need to get somewhere. Many workers in their 30's don't expect to ever receive Social Security checks. A significant percentage of Mexico has relocated here, uninvited. We send important mail via some carrier other than the USPS. The FAA decides to make an example of American Airlines and strands tens-of-thousands of travelers. An airport TSA screener yanks a cloth doll out of the only hand of a hesitant, one-armed little girl to run it through the x-ray machine. She cries and I want to. Medicare pays a Hospice program several thousand dollars to visit my dying mother, but no one ever comes. It takes most of a year and the intervention of a U.S. Senator's office to get Medicare's attention. And many of the same politicians who complain that the VA delivers substandard treatment to our veterans want this same government to take charge of the nation's health care system. Down in Ellis County, Texas, the federal government spent billions tunneling what was to become a 64-miles underground ring for the nation's Superconducting Super Collider, only to cancel the project in 1993. An Army Corps of Engineer official who worked there in contract procurement told me how he was still letting contracts for tunnel digging while he began awarding other contracts to fill in the tunnel still being dug. This same federal government will, according to Barack Obama's plan, fix our broken public education system. Imagine that. Chicago's Public Housing Projects are an example of a big government fix -- gone bad. They're dilapidated monuments to bad urban planning and killing fields for gang warfare that's helping put Chicago on-track toward a record year in murders. But still the political hawkers cry, "Come one, come all. This is change you can believe in. Come place you hope in big government. Yes we can!" And a crowd forms. Politicians selling change based on the failed myth from the past are hawking retro-change. And hope placed in government's ability to build the American utopia is, of all the sources of hope open to us, the most misplaced. Remember this one:
Excerpts from "Our Nation's Past and Future:" Acceptance speech delivered by the Democratic Party nominee, Gov. Jimmy Carter, July 15, 1976.
|
Recent Articles
Blog Posts
|
|
||
Comments
While I agree with some of what you say, your rhetoric has long been bankrupt. Bush bashing has been well deserved. If not for Khomeini and Iran, voters might not have "rebounded" to Reagan. Take off your blinders, this cuts both ways.
Posted by: Bill | May 16, 2008 01:15 PM
Well, as a racist white man, there IS one thing that has been nagging me about our savior...
Is he a black man with a white mother or a white man with a black father...
I'm having some MAJOR night tremors thinking about this...
Posted by: Jeff | May 16, 2008 01:31 PM
Re Carter - It wasn't only Khomeini and Iran that caused voters to "rebound" to Reagan. It was the utter fecklessness of the Carter administration and the dismal state of the economy. Having come to age during the Carter age, I assure you that our current economy is infinitely stronger than the 1976-1980 period. And Sen. Obama's protectionist, tax-raising platform would almost inevitably be disastrous.
Posted by: Cyrus | May 16, 2008 01:41 PM
Let's see, "if not for Khomeini and Iran, voters might not have rebounded to Reagan." What about the escalating interest rates already in play when Carter took over, the housing crisis then, the gas lines and the taxes. I guess none of that mattered, right Bill? For those who yearn for those good old days, I guess Obama is your man.
For me, I'll hold my nose and vote for McCain and pray that God will guide us through this dark period.
Posted by: Lou Ann | May 16, 2008 01:53 PM
Not only would I second what Cyrus has written about Dhimmi Carter, but also, as a Pole, I'd add that the Iranian affair wasn't the only foreign policy issue on which Dhimmi Carter has failed abysmally.
His other failures include the Cold War (during which my nation was imprisoned in the Soviet Empire), disbanding the ADC, allowing Soviet troops to train in Cuba, the Panama treaty of 1977, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Do I need to list more reasons for why American voters rejected Dhimmi Carter 28 years ago? Of course not.
Posted by: Zbigniew Mazurak | May 16, 2008 03:17 PM
Bush bashing? Really? The so-called MSM as you refer has given him a full 8 year pass and the right wing stink tank talking points you push and the back tracking to Jimmie Carter just shows the truth about you and your party...you have absolutely nothing new to say...BTW, read up on the real history of your savior ronald reagan, talk about your revisionist history, joke then, joke now to anyone who really paid attention. As for the constant talk of big government, take a long hard look at the past 8 years, the biggest, most pervasive version of government in the world and it happened under unbridled GOP control...do not shit in our mouths and try and call it an ice cream sundae. not another small brained republican, i don't think the world can take it.
Posted by: tread | May 16, 2008 04:00 PM
never ceases to amaze me how angry the libs/commies are. guess you can't be to happy when you know deep down inside you are just plain wrong on most things, just like carter was wrong on everything and still is.
Posted by: krw | May 16, 2008 05:43 PM
Is "tread" a big brained Democrat? Judging by the eloquence of his speech I would say he is (for the other Dems with large cranial capacity that was sarcasm).
The Bush government, in my opinion, is way to large. However, the solution to such unchecked government expansion can hardly be to vote in a politician who has grotesque vision of increasing the government even more.
Here is a simply fact: I neither want nor need a government to force the doors of university open for me because my race or gender, to give me handouts because I do not want to work, to manage my health, to direct my family, or to tuck me in at night, and then to tax me mercilessly to cover the cost of doing so.
If I wanted to live in Sweden, or perhaps more accurately, Cuba, then I would move there.
The only thing I, or most Americans, really need for Government to do is to put into place the necessary safgaurds that allow me to pursue my goals by my own initiative.
Posted by: Matthew-Jerusalem | May 17, 2008 05:28 AM
'As for the constant talk of big government, take a long hard look at the past 8 years, the biggest, most pervasive version of government in the world and it happened under unbridled GOP control'
Really? Measured by what? The number of Cabinet-level departments? If so, let's review the list of those agencies that were created after 1903, OK?
Department-Year est.-Pres. who created it:
DOL-1913-Wilson (D)
DOD-1947-Truman (D)
Dept. of Health-1953-Eisenhower (R)
HUD-1965-Johnson (D)
DOT-1966-Johnson (D)
DOE-1977-Carter (D)
Dept. of Education-1979-Carter (D)
Dept. of Veterans' Affairs-1988-Reagan (R)
DHS-2002-Dubya (R)
SO?
Of the 9 newest Cabinet-level Deparments (most of which are useless), 6 have been created by Democratic Presidents. Only 3 were created by Republican Presidents. These three departments have a combined budget not exceeding $200 bn. The budget of the DOD alone is $515 bn.
Source:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/the_taxpayer_frogs_in_the_irs.html
Posted by: Zbigniew Mazurak | May 17, 2008 06:36 AM
I don't put much stock in "rebound" elections (after all, Nixon's election could be characterized as a "rebound" from the LBJ years and Reagan a "rebound" from the utter failure that was Jimmy Carter). It's been said that had the '76 election been held one week later, Ford would have won (according to Arthur Schlesinger's personal diaries, the Democratic establishment despised Carter--the entire McGovern family voted for Ford, Jackie O cast her vote for John Anderson). One thing we do know, the youth of America, no matter how disenfranchised or disaffected, don't elect presidents. For which we can thank God.
Posted by: Kyda Sylvester | May 18, 2008 04:47 PM
Obama will take the high road (unless he gets seriously behind) and allow the 527s and the media to weld McCain and Bush together. It's odd since McCain and Bush rarely have agreed on anything. But to make the "change" argument work McCain has to be portrayed as "old" school and Bush's lackey.
Posted by: Dennis | May 19, 2008 11:13 AM