Jonah Goldberg:
Hillary Clinton is in a pickle. She’s a shoe-in for her party’s presidential nomination because of Barack Obama’s failures. But those failures might keep her from getting the job. Her husband’s “law of politics” is that elections are always about the future, but she’s stuck in the past.
In 2008, Obama pandered to liberal hopes while Clinton appealed to their good sense. Obama promised miracles and magic. Clinton promised more homework.
“Cynicism” was Obama’s real opponent, he explained. And he used Clinton as a stand-in for it. She played her part, pointing out that the Civil Rights Act got through Congress because of LBJ’s hard work, not Martin Luther King’s speeches. She insisted that politics was toil, not performance art.
And, as we have learned from a president who so often thinks giving a speech is a substitute for solving a problem, she had the better argument. One need only look at the reaction from Democrats to President Obama’s handling of the VA scandal to see that even they would trade some inspirational claptrap for a bit more old-fashioned competence.
That attitude helps Clinton immensely. Burned by disappointment, many liberals want to vote with their heads, not their hearts, this time around.
And the Hillary-Industrial Complex is ready to exploit that sentiment. The HIC is the vast network of loyalists, retreads, activists, pols, hacks, fans (in and out of the press), Friends of Bill, and, of course, Friends of Hillary who want to see a Clinton restoration. They are waiting for her to run like 19th-century land speculators anticipating news that the railroad will go past their lots. Would you want to be left with 500,000 “Ready for Hillary” bumper stickers in your garage? (It’s a solid rule of business that you’ve made a poor investment if a Hillary Duff comeback is your Plan B.)
The Hillary-Industrial Complex must be an awesomely hard thing to say no to. It would feel like telling your royal entourage, after years of buildup, that you’re going to decline the throne and live a quiet life in the country. These remoras are counting on her, not just for jobs and access but for vindication: “We were right to back Hillary from the beginning!”
Alas, leaning on your entourage for advice is never a great idea. They may think Clinton would be a fresh start, but will normal voters not similarly invested in her? Americans almost never reward a party with a third consecutive term in the White House, and when they do, it’s because they want more of the same. Anyone want to wager on how much of a “more of the same” mood America will be in come 2016?
I think you are giving things such as “rational thought” and “love of liberty” (which you don’t specifically mention, but I’ll take the liberty of putting words in your mouth if I may) far too much of a pedestal in your hierarchy of influences on the electorate.
Over and over, this admin has created a pattern of forced dependency. I will use as my model the Common Core implementation. The admin essentially forced local school districts, by virtue of threatening to withhold funds during the worst of the financial crisis, to implement CC. At the same time, the admin is pressuring colleges and universities who find that about 60% of their incoming students require remedial math or English, to admit much greater percentages of freshman students….without any required remedial instruction. It’s not that CC will work better (and few think it will, although that’s a matter of opinion) but it will create the appearance that it does/will. Success! They are forcing college standards lower to validate their own imposition of CC standards. Local schools, then, are forced to implement CC or pay a heavy price. The SAT tests are being reformulated to reflect lower general standards but higher conformance with the lines of CC. Along with the virtual takeover of the student loan industry (sure to require taxpayer bailout at some point with a 15% or so default rate) this admin is planting the seeds of a serious segment of the population who is going to be beholden to what the government tells them to do….for a decade or more after get out of secondary school. This isn’t a haphazard series of policy stabs. It’s an all-encompassing takeover of a segment of the operation of the economy.
OK, so it’s one example, but 0bamacare….isn’t that kind of a similar effort? It’s a glacial, all-encompassing campaign to “transform America” and will surely take years….but it is such a globally-enforced effort that it is bound to have durable effect.
So the question arises, at some point, will American tradition, love of liberty, hatred of tyranny, admiration of individuality shrug off these overbearing, smothering initiatives of an all-powerful government wanting to control virtually every action of the individual?
How? Guns? Voting booth? Levin’s Convention of the States?
I’m skeptical. These Marxist ideologues have this thing (eg; the American experiment with the republic) on the run this time and I am suspecting they will get it done. That there may be massive dislocation and destruction and misery on their path to utopia is of secondary concern. Additionally, I would say that about 75% of the people in Wash DC are there for one general purpose: Self-aggrandizement, self-enrichment. Power. If it damages the country, that’s again a secondary concern. Some of them are actually committed leftists who think they are constructing the next utopia. Some of them are wishy-washy Republicans who just want to hang onto their seats but regardless I am a big proponent (and possibly the originator of) of the “Harlem Globetrotter” theory: Which is, if you recall the Harlem Globetrotters, they always had a “foil” team to play against, mostly the Washington Generals. Guess what? The job security of the Generals is pretty much the same as that of the Globetrotters. These leeches don’t care if they are in or out of power; the flow of money and the ability to influence and lobby and grift is very much the same. Think that can be overcome? Color me again, skeptical.
Jonah makes an interesting point about how the elites think they have armies of followers behind them, but it is not always true.
I wonder who will be sporting all those free bumper stickers.
When so-called professors give lectures and speeches blaming capitalism for all the problems in the world – and the students are too naive to realize how egregiously they are being brainwashed – it is all too easy for the left to use glitzy, empty-headed appeals for baby seals, the CHILLLLL-RUUN, and the snail darter to guilt people into praising the splendor of the emperor’s new clothes.
What we have now is a huge population of people who are more concerned with being part of the “cool, caring and hip” crowd than with being honest, intellectual, and able to take care of their personal responsibilities. The dems have been growing this cancer since the imposition of the income tax, followed by the keynesian insanity of FDR, with the ponzi scheme of social.security, then LBJ and the venomous effect of “welfare”, foodstamps, medicare and medicaid…further eroding the American spirit of self-motivation, hard work, and self-reliance. The sheer hypocrisy of one person demanding that someone else be forced to give up ever greater amounts of their earned income because “they aren’t paying enough” – and claiming legitimacy under the ridiculous banner of “social justice” – is an indication of how sick our constitutional republic truly is. Obamacare is just the latest leftist venus flytrap luring more uneducated victims to their doom.
Now that marxist piece of garbage Bernie Sanders is trying to push yet another tax upon us…..a new carbon tax….why don’t the leftists just come out and admit they should simply have control of all our money, because every single “problem” they shriek about only seems to have one solution…more taxes. The “logical” conclusion to their line of leftist reasoning is that the government should simply control all wealth, and dole out only what is needed to survive, just as Marx wrote. Why wait? I am tired of their slow frog boiling tactics. If the dems had any integrity they would just admit their goals – like their buffoonish pseudo professors just did in Oregon last week – so those of us who refuse to live under their collectivist scam could make plans to emigrate.
@Al:
Part of the problem I think is that many conservatives are unwilling to play the same psychological warfare that the Left routinely engages in. Partly because they’re too busy working to support themselves and fund the lazy lifestyle of socialists, but partly because they don’t want to lower themselves to the same level. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to fight the same kind of psychological warfare with the same kind of tactics if the Republic is going to survive, which is why I propose the following:
Once upon a time, progressives called themselves liberals. But before that, they called themselves progressives. More recently Leftists referred to themselves as Occupiers. Democrats constantly shift the labels that they give themselves. But why? Because when one label falls into disfavor, like a shape shifter, they change their labels to camouflage their communist intentions. It’s a word game. Orwell called this NewSpeak, I call it Collectivese. I’ll explain why later.
I propose that thinking individuals help the Left out, by placing all of its past, present, and future monikers under one umbrella term; the Collective. This would include, leftists, liberals, progressives, hippies, hipsters, Democrats, socialists, communists, Occupiers, both foreign and domestic, and whatever else they attempt to relabel themselves as at any point in the future.
But why the Collective? What significance does this hold? Allow me to explain.
For those who haven’t had to suffer through 4 years of a liberal education at a major university, most of this will seem like nonsensical gobbledygook; and you’d be right. My time in the bowels of fringe left thought have given me an insightful perspective into the psychopathology of the leftist mind. This is how they think, it’s how they speak, and it’s what they teach. It’s high time that we use their nonsense against them.
A student cannot go a single day without hearing or reading the word “collective” at least a dozen times or more. Other words such as collaborative and cooperative also feature prominently in worthless collegiate materials, but certainly nothing is as ubiquitous as the word “collective.” Please don’t take my word for it. Simply go to your local 4 year university, and take in a lecture or two. Look at the materials posted on the billboards in the hallways. Examine the reading assignments listed on the syllabii. Check out the assigned textbooks. See for yourself. In particular, try slogging through a modern sociology textbook, where the word “collective” litters nearly every other page.
In fact sociology today is little more than progressive philosophy, and since it’s a requirement in many curriculums, it serves as an entire class in leftist indoctrination. When reading modern sociology textbooks however, it’s clear that the content is orchestrated by progressive professors making things up off the top of their heads from the comfort and safety of their windowless academic offices, since 99% of the content has no direct relationship with factual reality. Anyone who has lived the things that these authors pontificate about can see the truth of this. Unfortunately, highly impressionable 18-22 year olds simply do not possess the experience necessary to see through the glamour of liberal academia. They think they’re getting away with something by being able to peruse Facebook during a professor’s poorly put together power point presentation, that they get to spend class time outside stomping their feet while holding up misspelled signs under the aegis of “activism,” that they can read the latest Twilight novel while ignoring a politically inflamed lecture the likes of which can be heard from any drunk on a barstool. They think they’re going to get a better grade by ingratiating themselves to their professors by emulating the adolescent drug-fueled misbehavior of the flatulent 1960s, which gave birth to modern progressivism. It’s only after graduation do they find that there aren’t any want ads seeking employees who know about restorative justice, appropriation, culture jamming, white privilege, any of the worthless Ayers founded SDS propaganda, or whatever other abject stupidity progressives are dreaming up this semester. Unfortunately professors are merely taking advantage of students to vicariously relive the antics of their misspent youth. But I digress.
Additionally, “collective” is how leftists often like to refer to themselves. One can visually see how wise leftists feel whenever they jut their chin out, point their nose to the sky, and utter the word “collective.” They often use it as a pretentious synonym for the word club. For instance, there is the Underground Food Collective, the Sustainable Cities Collective, the Energy Collective, the Climate Collective, the Trippy Hippie Collective, the Compost Collective, the Beard Collective, the Bicycle Collective, the Student Sustainability Collective, the Feminist Collective, the Beehive Collective, and of course, the Marxist-Leninist Collective. Though this woefully incomplete list only scratches the surface, I think you might be getting the idea. Is it any wonder that militant Venezuelan socialists call themselves “colectivos?”
But why do leftists gravitate towards this terminology? Why refer to themselves as collectives? Because communists are at their core; collectivists.
This is the first reason that leftists take umbrage at folks right of center utilizing their own favored self-labels against them; because calling them the Collective effectively outs them as the communist collectivists they are publicly. It utterly negates the adolescent relabeling games they like to play with respect to the identity they want to project, and thus eliminates their power of self-identification. It destroys their ability to hide their motivations by shifting how they chose to identify themselves. Now, we define them.
But there’s a second reason. For that, we need to look to Saul Alinsky‘s 5th rule:
Leftist’s really, really do not like it when you turn their own tactics against them, which is exactly what makes this so fun. Some regular readers around Flopping Aces will note how the local drones become irritated and infuriated by the use of the terminology. Why? Because it ridicules the very terminology that they favor internally for themselves, which they think you’re too stupid to know about, because you haven’t wasted 4 years of your life and thousands of dollars on a worthless collegiate indoctrination, that no one is hiring for. It’s part of a special language they’ve developed much in the same way that a young person’s tree house club might develop their own secret language. Much like Orwell’s NewSpeak, it’s part of what I call, Collectivese. Anyone who has ever had to read about the disproportionate disparities of the disaffected disenfranchised and other assorted liberal balderdash, may understand what I’m talking about here.
So why refer to individuals in the Collective as drones?
Because in the singular hive-mind of the Collective, there aren’t any individuals. There are only drones who do the bidding of their Queens. Pay particular attention to Democratic mouthpieces like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz or Alan Grayson emitting some foul rhetoric, and how after which drones will be mindlessly parroting that same tripe over and over again. They don’t think. They repeat. Mic check. Leftists who attempt to explain the mic check as some brilliant way to get their voices heard in a crowd, apparently never heard of the low tech solution whereby a newspaper or any other pliable material can be rolled up into a bullhorn. That college education sure is doing those kids wonders.
Many leftists will attempt to shame you into not using this phraseology, in an attempt to get you to stop and prevent it from going viral. Simply respond by pointing to a link of this article.
So annoy a liberal today. Start referring to them as the Collective. You may be surprised at just how enjoyably entertaining their resulting hyperventilation can be.
@Kraken:
Very nice post, Kraken.
I find in my discussions with leftists that there are two kinds. The first type are the die hard zealots who truly believe it is ok to do whatever is necessary to advance the collectivist dystopia. Nothing can penetrate their underling envy of other’s success, as they cannot stand the thought that someone else has more than tbey do, because they cannot stand the idea that a succesful person could possibly be better than they are, so the only acceptable excuse is that the successful person somehow cheated and therefor needs to be economically punished in a manner that transfers wealth to the collective. These types of leftists are virtually impossible to talk to, because even if a dem was caught filleting baby seals with a chainsaw while molesting a child on video, this type of leftist would blame racism, capitalism and/or Judeo-Christian philosophy as the reason for the behavior.
The other type of leftist is typically someone who doesn’t take the time to consider the ramifications of the logical progression of collectivist ideology. They hear leftist politicians say “we can provide ‘free’ health insurance to tbe poor and decrease the cost of health care” and do not ask how such an economically impossible thing can happen. They hear “we should raise the minimum wage so people can afford to live” without considering how such an arbitrary economic move would affect prices and employment. I find that calmly discussing the implications of such disasterous leftist policies in a logical fashion tends to open the eyes of this type of leftist – because once common sense is brought into play this type of person suddenly realizes they have been bamboozled by the snake oil selling collectivists. It is even more fun to do this in the presence of the first type of leftist next to a computer where you can google every one of there false claims during tbe discussion, to show the lies to the second type of leftist. The sputtering from tbe first type of leftist when confronted with facts their Orwellian doublethink propaganda cannot refute is heartwarming.
All well and good, ridicule. I am unconvinced it will have any sort of lasting effect. Why? Because Conservatives who value the individual also wish to leave the individual alone to reach his/her own conclusions. With those liberals who graduate college and are lucky enough to find employment in the current environment, it often starts when they see the deductions from their paycheck and start thinking about showing up for work Monday am but not earning a net nickel in their pocket until some time Wednesday morning. Yet by that time they’ve already voted in at least two elections with their pristine liberal teachings firmly implanted into their impressionable brains.
Today; a parent of the kid who went nuts in Santa Barbara is blaming the NRA. I can understand a whole lot of irrationality on the part of the parents in the wake of this tragedy, but really, they, the parents didn’t know their kid was so alienated? The father is a Hollywood type, ass’t director of the Hunger Games—in which the main plot line is teenagers murdering other teenagers. Big on knives, too, the method of killing 3 out of 6 of this kids victims. Santa Barbara, that’s a whole 100 miles away from Hwd, so I guess it can be understood why the kid was so distant from his parents. And assuming the 3 qty 9mm pistols the kid bought weren’t cheapos, these are basically $500 each so here’s $1500 in “krazy money” the kid has to blow while away at school. In his pathetic little BMW 2-series in which he just can’t close the deal with any chicks.
Nothing is their fault, you see. Only their intentions matter, only their hashtags. This is what makes me skeptical of any turnaround in this trend other than the useful idiot advocates finding themselves firmly in the clutches of the emergent fascist/socialist state. By then it will be too late.
That’s for the edumacated portion of our internal opponents. The survival section and the die-hard unionists who see what side of the bread is buttered for them, the ones who would physically punch your lights out for engaging in whatever kind of reverse mockery you might be suggesting….they are going to vote their survival. Keep them checks coming. Until it all implodes…and again it will be too late.
@Pete:
The Collective has a long list of scapegoats for its own failures. Sexist misogynist racist homophobic white male Christian Republican bourgeoisie capitalist colonialist imperialists. Drones never look inwards at their own problems because when you belong to a hive there is no self; there is only the collective. So for them, all problems arise with those who haven’t yet been assimilated into the hive.
With all due respect, I too think there are two kinds of drones, but I think your two types fall into one category; the drones at the bottom of the Collective. These are the ones that genuinely believe all of the worthless socialist propaganda they’ve been fed in the public school system and at universities. They typically tend to be low information voters. They like what the Collective has to preach because it means that someone else will always be footing their bills. It’s a very seductive call. Who wouldn’t want to have their bills paid by some faceless “other” as they say. They’ve been so steeped in this propaganda that they can’t see past their own immediate base needs, and because the Collective hasn’t spent any time teaching them useful or employable skills, independence and self sufficiency will always elude them. But all they’re taught is the Utopian sales pitch of socialism. When confronted with the historical reality, they balk and chant “Faux Noise.” After their teenage years, they simply cannot be reasoned with, and are utterly ineducable. These are the infamous “useful idiots.”
The second type are the drones at the top of the Collective; the Queens. These are Soroses, the Clintons, the Reids, the Gores, the Schumers, and so forth. They know full well and understand the implications of socialism just as we do. The difference is, they don’t care. Just as any socialist does, they crave power and are willing to sacrifice the economic well being of the nation in exchange for the power to impose their will upon us. Historically they dream up pseudosciences such as eugenics or climate change which get the uncritical drones all frenzied up to act collectively on their behalf. Queens use drones to their advantage preaching the unattainable goal of perfect equality. During this process, Drones fall into poverty while the Queens clothe themselves in $12,000 dresses.
@Al:
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” ~ Leon Trotsky
I agree with you. But conservatives are going to have to start counteracting the incessant assault on their individualism, or lose it forever.
While impressionable 18-22 year olds are victims of collegiate indoctrination, using these tactics can help to counteract that. All it will take is for some 18-22 year old to read these things, and compare them to what is being taught in their worthless universities, and potentially have his mind opened to what’s being done to him before it’s too late.
Kraken: I agree with you in pure principle; but the skepticism I have lies in the feasibility and frequency-of-exposure studies. For the prototypical liberal arts student, you and I are one hoary, intermittent voice. OK, two voices. On the other side is the morning-to-night immersion in their peer group, their learning environment (that they have to succeed = achieve good grades) at. Over weeks, over years. A Patrick Henry would have a hard time overcoming that gross imbalance of influence. Likewise, a prototypical union worker (even worse, a gov’t union worker) has to vote their paycheck. It’s not a vanilla-strawberry choice, it’s a do or die choice.
I used to run into the ex-mayor of LA, Dick Reardon, when I lived down there. I asked him if my impression that every action in CA is essentially dictated by the effect on the labor unions was accurate, his “yes” reply had no hesitation whatsoever. The CA (where I am) worker is going to vote to sustain his/her pension no matter what the macro effects. The young mushbrained lib is going to vote to sustain their utopian vision no matter what the externalities. The car could be already over the cliff, in free-fall, and they still would so vote. It will not change until the front bumper actually impacts the rocks and the seat belt cuts into their thoraxes that they become open to change.
Hence my pessimism: By the time these elements come around, the damage will be unrepairable.
@Al:
Well, part of the problem is that students are trying to recreate the hey day of the flatulent 1960s under the encouragement of their pin headed professors. They’re regaled with romanticized tales of Woodstock and the Civil Rights movements. They’ve seen the drug-fueled antics of white suburbanite hippies portrayed in carefully un-color corrected grainy images from the period that give it a kind of historical afterglow. Attending a protest on campus today is the modern equivalent of putting an apple on your professor’s desk; so these kids are in fact the squares.
But we need to look at how we got here. Remember, the morons running our governmental and learning institutions themselves were engaging in those kinds of antics because they were rebelling against the establishment of the time. They however, are the establishment now. They are no longer the counter culture, they are the culture. So the key is to appeal to the natural rebellious nature of youth. After all, you can’t really be a counter cultural rebel, when your dim witted professor is patting you on the back.
The key is to make naked truth to power rhetoric fashionable, much in the same way that George Carlin did.
“So the key is to appeal to the natural rebellious nature of youth. ”
That was then, this is now.
Students are today, if anything, the very paradigms of 1984-grade conformity. They cannot even accept a Condi Rice or a Phil Robertson giving a damn speech! “Tolerance” has been redefined as its own negative. They still think of themselves as rebels: Rebels against the homophobic racist white folks who burn coal. See, the mechanism of projecting ones’ own negative attributes onto others has been perfected to Olympic-grade. Results are replaced by intentions. The “rebel” instinct has been successfully replaced by the “conform or stick out” instinct.
They already think they are rebels even as their every instinct is to conform. Heck, with US foreign policy apparently based on anal sex…..now they have new and exciting frontiers of diversity to incorporate into their thinking.
They have had the panorama of wide-open career opportunities replaced by anecdotal evidence from their upperclassmen that gainful, degree-relevant employment is very probably not waiting for them on the far side of graduation. And for many, that scares them to death, and ought to. But in the end—they too will become and aspire to become gov’t serfs. What they have been successfully trained to rebel against—is you and me, my friend. Certainly not the cloud of their mindless conformity.
@Al:
These youths are mostly just lost causes. They’re not really the ones I’m referring to. These are the loud frenzied fascist rabble that scream in your face if you dare utter some word that hasn’t been pre-approved by the Collective. They’re mostly unreachable.
What I am referring to, are those students on campus who are too afraid to stand up to their professors and peers. Who fill their own papers with lefty gobbledygook not because they actually believe any of it, but because it’s the surest and easiest way to get an A. I had the advantage of returning to school later in life and seeing what is happening on campus through the eyes of an adult, rather than that of an impressionable 18-22 year old. Such students are greater in number than anyone realizes. They’re scared, because if you even dare ask a professor a question that forces him to go off narrative they become visibly agitated and it directly affects your grade. The seeds of such a rebellion are already beginning on sites like College Insurrection, Progressives Today, Campus Reform, etc. Some students are filming the worthless rants of their professors and posting them online for all the world to see. But they need to know that they have the support of adults outside of the universities, or they’re not going to have the confidence to grow such efforts.
@Kraken:
I forgot patriarchal.
I just love to read this smart exchange RIGHT HERE,
especially because it doesn’t bug me to feel my own lack of understanding of higher knowledge,
which i missed learning in previous time,
but it make me advance my openness to intelligent way of expanding ,
my own forever thirst to more please, and make me so secure to know that here,
is where i constantly learn and fill my mind,
i am always in AWE to read such precious nuggets given to all and myself included,
THANK YOU ALL
yes there is a definite call for rejuvenation,
in this GOD GIVEN COUNTRY
fresh new and old still ideas needed, along a maturity of mind,
these last years, will be remember as wasted time,
PLEASE, not the same food for my taste, has evolved according to time which pass too slowly
for the citizens rendered anemic for lack of pure food, lack of pure air needed, for the mind ,to breed urgently,
for an emaciated people, kept hungry for trying to fit in those too thight clothes impose to them,
by this low level imposed change of route, which will if kept within the same group new leader,
is heading to the same compulsion of follow the lemming toward the wonderfull cliff , ending a total half generation,
taught to follow and think as i do, and do as i think,
open and always there, waiting for the masses of mindset to follow the leader who is lost between his mind and his sanity,
PLEASE not that same food,
we the people are sick and tired of being led, and fed,
WE WANT OUR FREEDOM BACK,