~ joanie
I thought tonight’s summit on Service settled the issue. All we need is more Serfdom, er, Service, and everything’ll be alright.
How come the networks never air summits on how government service makes things worse? How come evertything that features politicians gets media coverage. Wait, before you answer that the media is the government’s watchdog, remember, press coverage only lends them legitimacy. I want to live in a world where people realize that the world is moved by an extended order of unconscious cooperation, and that all the government does is step in at the end of the process and move around the pieces.
Well done.
The Roman Empire subsisted for four centuries on bread and circuses. It looks like our leaders are following their model.
America seems to have peaked some time between 1965 when Johnson debased the coinage and sought to make government dependents of the poor, and 1970 when Nixon canceled the Apollo program and adopted a strategy of deceit and defeat in Indochina.
Leaders since then have tried, sometimes heroically, to arrest the decline but the institutional rot has set in and I can find no historical precedent for reversing the trend.
Excellent, Joanie! You make some very valid points that I hadn’t considered, and some that have angered us conservatives for years. Thanks for the ping.
Decent points.
And, I’d be disappointed to see our side err tooooo much with such stuff.
On the other hand, some folks don’t even wake-up, much less pay attention until one speaks their language.
Not that THAT should excuse wholesale stooping to their level.
Certainly there are dozens and dozens of hugely important crises here and looming which the globalists are very skillful at distracting from with the bread, brainwashing and circuses routines.
Thanks for the ping.
One would think, indeed!
And indeed, your list of impending crises couldn't be more complete.
But the fact is the news media no longer considers that it is in the business of fairly informing the public WRT the news and critical issues of our day. The fact is, these "elite intellectuals" believe that the rest of us are deluded rubes who can't understand anything anyway; so you might as well do "bread and circuses" instead — and elect a "bread and circuses" kind of guy to the presidency of the United States. Which seems to be MSM's main focus these days.
In short, your list of impending crises will never be touched by the MSM. And the reason why is: Barack Obama doesn't see these as crises. (He has "other fish to fry.") Which just goes to show how a radical Left progressive lives in a completely different world than the rest of us.
And the MSM seems almost universally to be giving him cover for his absolute flight from reality. One gathers the MSM just approve of his ideology — which makes them just as crazy and deluded as he is.
Ideologues don't ever deal with the "real." They're trying to "change the world," you see.... To a "better" world — they promise us. (But who's actually to pay for this magical trip to Fantasyland??? And after the wreck of our Republic that a successful Obama candidacy would bring about, what of "normal" American life would be left standing?)
And honestly, I think the reason why the MSM gives Obama cover is, if Obama were really, frankly to tell us what his plans are for the United States (putatively achievable with a complaisant, Democrat-controlled Congress), NOBODY would vote for him! Hence, the distractions of the "bread and circuses," this total charade of what he calls a presidential campaign.
Actually joanie, I rather liked that McCain ad re: lipstick on a pig. To me it reveals Obama's basic character, plus the sort of tactics he is using. Not that the "bread-and-circuses types" out there would see it that way.
Obama's entire appeal to citizens boils down to "what's in it for me?" Which to me suggests his appeal is limited: Not every voter out there votes for personal benefits; many still see that there is such a thing as the national interest. And many such folks clearly recognize that, at this point in time, what is desperately needed is to put the federal checkbook under lock and seal.
Meanwhile, Obama is proposing new spending in the trillions of dollars.... Some of us realize that this is tantamount to a complete government takeover of our national life (political, economic, and cultural) that can only go forward by trashing our constitutional order, and thus our God-given liberties. Which would thenceforth be whatever Obama says they are — no more, no less.
I have noticed that some of the noises that Obama has uttered lately have to do with co-opting certain profound cultural understandings of the American people. For instance, there is a cultural and moral consensus in the mainstream of American life which states that the very definition of a human person is someone who has
"a sense of life beyond the physical and material, beyond mere personal existence. It is the sense of a common world that stretches before and beyond the self, of belonging to something greater than the self, that gives strength not only to community but to the individual as well." — Natan Sharanski, Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, 2008.Obama is absolutely seizing on this theme; it all sounds so very, very good and desirable. But what the people don't know — yet — is that HE would be the one who gets to define this "belonging to something greater than self"; and he would define it in such a way that it would not be OPTIONAL: It would be a case of "get on board, or else." With federal power to back it up.
So much for personal liberty.
Indeed, his constant theme of "community service" is a harbinger of his future plans. Now as I understand it, what Obama's idea of "community service" really boils down to is: training individuals to be effective in making demands on taxpayers. This is hardly the same thing as what Sharansky is talking about....
Just a bunch of stray thoughts, joanie. Hopefully they are coherent.
Thank you ever so much for your beautiful, trenchant essay/post dear sister in Christ!