It's both.
Posted on 10/23/2009 6:51:56 AM PDT by Scanian
Arguments go back and forth about whether or not the Obama administration is really "socialist" in the sense that they wish to control the means of production, takeover all businesses, and put the "people" (unions) in charge.
Wherever you come down on this issue, there is no denying the straight line from Obama's Chicago roots and ways of getting things done to the White House. I wrote about it a while back when Chrysler dealers were being closed down, in a post I called "Not Socialism: Gangsterism:"
"It can happen because we are barking up the wrong tree when we accuse the Democrats of practicing socialism. Any Chicagoan recognizes what's going on as pure gangsterism - the application of power through the use blackmail, threats, and pure muscle and the devil take the Constitution, the rule of law, and simple fairness. It can happen because we've elected a president who aggrandizes power unto himself while running roughshod over individual rights.
It can happen because we are allowing it to happen. We are too busy, too worried about the economy, too frightened of the future, and too complacent about the idea that "It could never happen here." It's happening now and not enough of us are raising our voices in protest. Not enough of us are demanding that our politicians be held to account for meekly accepting Obama's fait accomplis."
Since I wrote that, the Obama Mob has come down like a ton of bricks on numerous other targets, using tactics not seen since the Nixon administration - and some that Nixon would never have dared to try.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The sharks are circling because they smell the blood in the water on Obamacare. The WH is living in mortal fear of the left and on issues such as Obamacare which is losing support on a daily basis, on Afghanistan which they seem they cannot make any decision on at all, on Russia and Iran, on North Korea, on Pakistan, on dealing with Dick Cheney, and on how to treat Fox News and many other issues. This WH and Obummer administration is so living in fear of everything and everybody, left and right and independent that they are coming apart at the seams and their plummeting poll numbers certainly reflect those fears. I believe their is a great deal of panic behind those WH doors.
It's both.
It’s the gangsterism OF socialism, communism = fascism.
That’s pretty much it...and the most skilled practitioners of the art in this country are labor unions: they let businessmen retain ostensible “control” of a company but they’ll strong-arm them and squeeze them for all they are worth.
You're quite right, the Obama administration smacks more of fascism than communism but the distinction is of small moment to anyone who is not a favorite crony of the party in power. Of course, every fascist regime assumes its own culture. The author speaks in politically correct euphemism when he calls it the Chicago culture.
Whatever we call it, it is important to note that the default posture for the regime when it comes under attack for its gangsterism, cronyism, and corruption is to revert to its ideology. And that ideology is always to convince the public that the regime is defending them from attack. Hitler was defending them from communists and Jews. Stalin was defending them from many demons. Castro was defending them from America and he has a copycat in Hugo Chavez. In our culture it is obviously not safe for Obama to tell the people that he is defending them from capitalism on behalf of communism so he tells people he is defending them against the racists like Rush Limbaugh and the oppressors like the insurance companies and the greedy grasper's like the bonus recipients, and the doctors who would chop your feet off. But the real default card for the Obama administration, always played by surrogate, is the race card.
The ideology provides the political cover for the electorate and the moral rationalization for the cronies within the administration to enjoy their perquisites and the devil take the hindmost.
And what disturbers me most, we seem to have reached the point in this country where the majority of voters are willing to trade their liberty of a false sense of security
I expected Obama to split the difference between national socialism and soviet socialism. It looks like he’s instead triangulating between his two favorite versions of socialism and the joys of a Chicago kleptocracy.
I imagine there’s a lot of yelling, a lot of cursing.
Bush won two terms in large part because he wouldn’t read the scripts the media had created for him. Specifically he refused to do the kabuki dance of the drug usage confession - he just said he wasn’t going to talk about it.
Obama likewise won by refusing to play the media’s game - and he captured them and made them his bitches. But how long will that play?
I would put it like this: When gangsterism takes over a country it’s called fascism.
Socialism is the theory - Gangsterism is the, uh, ‘praxis’.
Reminds me of what B-1 Bob Dornan used to say about Soviet refugees he talked to in his travels: “We have gangster government!”
What else motivates anybody to want to rise to the top of a socialist/communist system besides power hunger and greed? Organized crime 100%.
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