Posted on 02/27/2009 5:15:48 AM PST by IrishMike
History teaches us many things if we're prepared to listen.
A few decades ago, Mad Magazine published the non-smear political smear, which included such slurs as "My opponent's daughter is a thespian," "His youngest brother wrote an essay extolling the virtues of being a homosapien," and "His nephew subscribes to a phonographic magazine."
It was a very funny way to highlight the way words can be used to convey images their exact definitions do not intend. You know, like the fellow in Washington, DC who got fired from his job a few years back for using the word "niggardly" (which means "stingy") in a budget meeting, but whose remarks were interpreted as a racial slur by someone with a public school education who didn't have a firm grasp on the English language. Or like my friend who got in a lot of trouble for teaching his 5-year-old child the proper name of antique aircraft. His wife found her son running through the house one day chasing his older brother who was holding a WWII fighter, shouting "Get the Fokker!"
This is the kind of wordplay that brings a smile to my face even the example of political correctness gone mad that resulted in the firing of a Washington, DC bureaucrat for putting his education to use, and endeavoring to use more than a two-syllable word to describe a fiscal situation. Except for the terminally ignorant or perpetually offended, we can all see these examples for what they are.
But that was then, and this is now. I'm afraid we've entered into a brand new era of political demagoguery that no longer uses similar sounding words, but rather employs deliberately misleading imagery to make a misleading point. Where before we could all take comfort in a shared value system that had an agreed-upon set of core beliefs, I am convinced that no such shared value system exists today. We're in an era where words aren't used to convey ideas that contrast us with our political and philosophical opponents, but are rather instruments of power in their own right designed to deliberately mislead and confuse a debate.
I've written about some of this in "The Hopelessness of Debate" (Part I and Part II), where I make the point that we're no longer having a real conversation in this country with the Left, but rather a series of parallel discussions. The Left will take a general statement about "science", and immediately turn it into a specific proposition about Darwinism, Man Made Global Warming, or any one of a number of specific policy options. Question Darwinian theories of evolution, and you are a Biblical literalist, period, end of debate. Dispute the fact that man is responsible for global warming or question exactly how this world-wide "warming" is accurately measured and you automatically advocate constructing more high-sulphur, coal-burning power plants. Protest the Obama Administration's non-stimulus stimulus bill, and you simply want to "do nothing."
We'll always have this kind of ignorance and stupidity to contend with, so again there's nothing new so far in any of my observations about the thought process of the Left. But after listening to Obama's minions for the past few weeks defend the porkulous package that Congress recently passed, as well as the O-man's own pronouncements in his speech Tuesday night, I've come to a somewhat different conclusion about the modern-day language of the Left.
History teaches us many things if we're prepared to listen, so rather than spell it out in my own words, let me refer back to a nearly 100-year-old document that spoke at length about the root causes of society's problems. Other than a few archaic phrases that would be said today with fewer words, the sentiment is pretty much unchanged; at least insofar as how the Left has been framing the current debate in this country.
See if you can pick up any of these catchy phrases in President Obama's next speech, or in the mainstream media's review of his (or his Administration's) words. All the Left needs to do is insert a few key word substitutions to make this old document respond to issues in 2009 instead of, say, 1929 give or take a couple of years.
* * *
"If, with the help of his [Conservative/capitalist] creed, the [Wall Street Banker] is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity."
"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the [Wall Street bankers], I am fighting for the work of the Lord. [After all, Jesus was a community organizer too.]"
"In his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the [Wall Street Banker]."
"The ignorance of the broad masses about the [workings of Wall Street and American capitalism] . . . make the people an easy victim for this [attempt by Wall Street Bankers to foreclose on unpaid mortgages]."
"All [Wall Street Bankers] want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks."
"With satanic joy in his face, the [Wall Street Banker] lurks in wait for the unsuspecting [sub-prime loan mortgage holder] whom he defiles with his [corporate greed], thus stealing [their homes when they won't pay their mortgage]. With every means he tries to destroy the [financial security] of the people he has set out to subjugate . . . It was and it is [Wall Street Bankers] who bring the [sub-prime loans], always with the same secret thought and clear aim of [foreclosing on their homes] . . . and himself rising to be its master."
"In politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of [the Wall Street Bankers]. In [market-driven capitalism] he has found the weapon which lets him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows him to subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist . . . He weaves a net of enemies, thanks to his international influence, and incites them to [an unjust] war [in Iraq so Halliburton can profit]."
"The most frightful example of this kind is offered [in 5 states: California, Michigan, Arizona, Florida and Nevada], where he killed or starved about thirty million people with [greedy capitalist] savagery . . . in order to give a gang of stock exchange bandits domination over a great people."
Wall Street Bankers: The New “Jews”
The three C’s are the new “jews”
1) CONSERVATIVES
2) Capitalists
3) Christians
Picky point, but Fokker was a major aircraft builder in WWI and not WWII. They built the D.VII and the famous Dr.1 "Triplane".
~~William Cohan, "Does Goldman Sachs Really Rule the World?" October 2008
Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.
~~President Andrew Jackson, on the 2nd National Bank
"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes the laws."
~~Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild (1744 -1812), Godfather of the Rothschild Banking Cartel of Europe
Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.
~~Sir Josiah Stamp, in1927 the 2nd richest man in England, and former head of The Bank of England
We have suffered more from this cause [unbacked paper currency] than from every other cause or calamity. It has killed more men, pervaded and corrupted the choicest interests of our country more, and done more injustice than even the arms and artifices of our enemy.
~~Daniel Webster
"The crisis of the abuses of banking is arrived. The banks have pronounced their own sentence of death. Between two and three hundred millions of dollars of their promissory notes are in the hands of the people, for solid produce and property sold, and they formally declare they will not pay them. This is an act of bankruptcy, of course, and will be so pronounced by any court before which it shall be brought. But cui bono? The laws can only uncover their insolvency, by opening to its suitors their empty vaults. Thus by the dupery of our citizens, and tame acquiescence of our legislators, the nation is plundered of two or three hundred millions of dollars, treble the amount of debt contracted in the Revolutionary war, and which, instead of redeeming our liberty, has been expended on sumptuous houses, carriages, and dinners. A fearful tax! if equalized on all; but overwhelming and convulsive by its partial fall. Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper, as we were formerly by the old Continental paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burthen all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard in this game of Robin's alive, and take care that the spark does not extinguish in their hands. I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But our whole country is so fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they will not stop short of its total and fatal explosion."
~~Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Thomas Cooper, 1814
If I was a rich wall street banker I would cash out and move to Nassau for the duration. I have a feeling Bahamas real estate is going up. Someone will probly build a free market hospital down there.
Not only was her daughter a thespian but performed the act in front of audiences, and perambulated her daughter openly upon the city sidewalks.
Jews in NAZI Germany were capitalists, they are the first group they went after.
Did’t the luftwaffe have Fokker bombers in WWII ?
The junkers was the most common.
I know after WWII Fokker built commercial passenger aircraft
and later had a big part in the European version of the F-16 Falcon
Perhaps you're thinking of the Focke-Wulf 200:
The bulk of their bombers were Heinkels, Dorniers and Junkers.
You’ll appreciate this one.
“The three Cs are the new jews
1) CONSERVATIVES
2) Capitalists
3) Christians”
You are correct. We have to avoid falling into the populist trap liberals set for us. When Wall Street prospers, we all prosper. That doesn’t excuse fraud and theft which must be rooted out, but we need to avoid succumbing to class envy, a trap liberals continually set and so many fall into.
Here is a list of German aircraft during WWII.
The primary manufactures were Messerschmitt, Junkers, Focke-Wulf, Heinkel, Dornier, Gotha, Arado, Blohm & Voss.
They long range Focke-Wulf 200 condors anti shipping bomber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuF4wGkHA5g
Thanks
Yuck... yuck!!! Makes me spit.
The Germans used Fokker aircraft in WW I, but Anthony Fokker was actually Dutch. He had a few military designs fly for the Dutch air force before and during WW II, very briefly of course since the Dutch didn’t last long. Nothing for the Germans.
After the war Fokker made some fairly successful commercial aircraft (the F.27 Friendship, Fokker 28, 50, 70, and 100) but I think they went bankrupt and no longer exist.
}:-)4
Picky point, but Fokker was a major aircraft builder in WWI and not WWII. They built the D.VII and the famous Dr.1 "Triplane".
An old Norwegian fighter pilot was invited to speak at an English woman's club luncheon about his flying experiences during WWII.
"Und der I vas at 4,000 ft... two fokkers in front of me, a fokker in back of me, four fokkers above me!"
At this point, the proper English ladies became uneasy about his language. The President of the club then said, "Please don't be alarmed, ladies. A fokker is a type of German airplane... isn't that right, Mr.Olsen?"
"Yah, yah, dat is right, but these fokkers vas flyin' messerschmitts!"
A toddler in my house had difficulty with the phrase "dump truck." (Use your imagination; this is a family forum.)
PING
LOL!
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