I’ve been thinking along these lines as well. There was an article in Atlantic (I saw it linked on Hugh Hewitt’s site) that went into great detail about how the technonerds in the Chicago headquarters did successfully what the disastrous Romney ORCA project was supposed to do.
Yes,there was massive fraud, but that alone is not enough to explain things.
It dovetails with the strange sense I’ve been getting this fall in the classes I teach at the university. Never before have the students been so openly hostile to Christianity, so mind-numbingly ill-informed hoop-jumpers, such non-self-starters. They absolutely refuse to step back, examine an idea, think it through. All they want to know is which hoop to jump through to get an A. Never mind that their A’s are meaningless (I tell them that) or that there will be no jobs even if they do get A’s. They just don’t want to be bothered with learning to be self-starters and to think critically about Stuff. They just want hoops to jump through.
Why is this so much stronger and all of a sudden?
I’m sure there are many reasons, but I’m thinking that since this is the first class, more or less, to enter university never having not known the Internet, that they really are more mind-numbingly hoop-jumpers than the last few years’ classes because they’ve been totally trained, like Pavlov’s dogs, by the internet, Facebook, instant-messaging ephemerality.
It’s a variation on how to do demagoguery and bread and circuses. Obama’s people have glimpsed the import of the Internet for the future and are exploiting it.
The problem is, can a mind-numbing technology be employed by those whose “product” they want to sell is a product that requires real, thoughtful, critical analysis??
They have found a way to leverage technology (social networking primarily) to get out the Stupid Vote.
They can directly target messages to these people convincing them that their personal pet favorite dumb issue will be Obama’s #1 priority.
The GOP has nothing like it. Indeed the same pro-Obama software people who worked on the Dem system probably also worked on ORCA and sabotaged it.
There is a DIRE DIRE NEED for some Conservative Techies out there.
I really like your post. While you were posting it, I was typing @#14.
I see the same thing at the university I teach at. I teach advanced system administration and network engineering.
One thing I stress is how important it is to make all your purchases and efforts focused on achieving business goals. That right off the bat puzzles them. What are business goals?
I stress that anything that generates a profit for that business, and how important that is. The just don’t see it. I actually have GRADUATE students who thought a business could perform underwater for a time. He was certain a company (his words) he worked for had loses and didn’t go under, so that is just ok. Here this guy (a middle aged man) is arguing this with me in class!
I asked him how that business managed to pay the bills. He said he didn’t know. Finally I asked him what the businesses name was. His words:
“Ah, the State of Alabama.” Me: “What?! That’s not a business!” “But people work for them,” he replied. Me: So what’s their product, and where’s their sales?”
Confused, deer in headlight stare.....
Interesting observations.
Mass hypnosis? As in successful Madison Ave. branding?
We know that the issue is never about the issue, it’s all about power and control. Once the emotional trigger is set on the subject, is is possible ever discuss reality with these lemmings?
For example, in Ohio, Brown set out an emotional campaign to make Josh Mandel unelectable. They used the word ‘trust’, as in can’t be trusted, so that whenever any issue was brought up, it was dismissed with emotional rants. Mandel’s campaign tried to turn the tables and call out the dishonesty, but used the trigger word, ‘Liar’, (which of course is associated with George W Bush) and it was deemed very harsh and nasty.
Any opposition to a leftist agenda can quickly be thwarted by calling down their minions.