Posted on 09/08/2009 9:55:24 PM PDT by Senator Goldwater
See article below.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
But this tonic dose of truth-telling may be too little too late. As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have -- from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)
By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. At this point, Democrats' main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate. Given the GOP's facility for shooting itself in the foot, that may well happen.
This column has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go. Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster -- as witness the middle-of-the-night bum's rush given to "green jobs" czar Van Jones last week -- but there's a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?
Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web -- both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy -- I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."
But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.
Throughout this fractious summer, I was dismayed not just at the self-defeating silence of Democrats at the gaping holes or evasions in the healthcare bills but also at the fogginess or insipidity of articles and Op-Eds about the controversy emanating from liberal mainstream media and Web sources. By a proportion of something like 10-to-1, negative articles by conservatives were vastly more detailed, specific and practical about the proposals than were supportive articles by Democrats, which often made gestures rather than arguments and brimmed with emotion and sneers. There was a glaring inability in most Democratic commentary to think ahead and forecast what would or could be the actual snarled consequences -- in terms of delays, denial of services, errors, miscommunications and gross invasions of privacy -- of a massive single-payer overhaul of the healthcare system in a nation as large and populous as ours. It was as if Democrats live in a utopian dream world, divorced from the daily demands and realities of organization and management.
Mzz Paglia strikes again.
For people whose watchword is diversity, most liberals have little sense of how diverse our country is.
Wow, that’s the second article from Paglia in a couple weeks that makes a lot of sense — except for the line about Democrats being in favor of freedom when all their actions show they are in favor of State micromanagement of everybody’s life.
And I had to laugh at her line “Democrats’ main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate.” McCain was certainly “hopelessly feeble” running up to the election, but Obama is certainly wearing that label well after the election.
One of my favorite columnists. Rush Limbaugh spoke very highly of her, so I looked up a column and absolutely loved her style.
LOL, Camille - as opposed to exactly what Democrat proposal that was any different, at any time? If you subtract the utopian Democrat bureaucratic solutions to the problems the utopian Democrat bureaucracy created in the first place, the Party ceases to exist - even back during Woodstock.
Paglia has got to be one of the most brilliant people who still cannot separate the goals from the mechanisms. Reading her is like watching a blind person map out an entire room, but still miss the door over and over and over again.
Couldn't have said it better.
“...rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms (”racism, sexism, homophobia”) when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled...”
This bit is pretty good too...:^)
“Mzz Paglia strikes again.”
Does she ever. Thanks for posting. I like reading her.
Wow..I’m impressed. I hope the media and the democrats listen...for the sake of our country!
bookmark
What a great description of her - very astute.
The day Ms. Paglia finally becomes a Republican will be amusing to enjoy. It will probably come during Sarah Palin’s historic presidential run in ‘12.
Now that's a "pickled" keeper.
What is significant is that Paglia is a liberal democrat.
But sheis smart and a Catholic and can see thru Obama.
Still, my husband and I argue,,is this Obama incompetence or is it the plan. Is he the stool or is he the driver.
She supports some democrat objectives, but she is one of those democrats that democrats don’t like.
She will never be a republican but she may be like Pat Caddell, an honest democrat. They do exist.
She is an admitted atheist.
Read: 0's last best chance is for us to pick a RINO on the next go-around.
But she grew up a Catholic,,once you do that, you can call yourself an atheist but in my long life I have never seen someone who grew up in the church really an atheist.
I think if you spend your early years going to Church in a religious famiy, it is with you for life, want it or not. It is enbedded in you to the extent that you know some things are just wrong no matter what you say intellectually.
Just my opinion. She is also alot of things but she can see what Obama is doing. She may not know what he is yet but she will, if we are unable to stop him.
I tend to agree with Camille in that Nancy was the first to the pooch screwing and Harry was a close second. Even yesterday Nancy was blaming Republican obstruction. In reality, it is Democrat support they are lacking.
She’ll go libertarian before she goes republican.
and that’s coming from a lifelong republican that is ready to go libertarian after seeing what the morons in charge of the party have done to it
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