We Play Chess; Obama Plays Go

There is a lot of chatter these days – on talk radio, Fox News and conservative web sites -- about the sheer incompetence of Obama in actually governing now that he is President. One of the few dissenting voices has been Newt Gingrich's. Perhaps, he hints with a sly smile, governing is not what Obama is really about.

The truth of the matter came to me while trying to discuss the AIG bonus flap with a right wing populist. His argument went something like this: “It matters not if the egregious AIG bonuses are taxed at 120% and their recipients clapped in irons and thrown in prison. It is a minor outrage, an inconvenience that affects only a few greedy and incompetent executives. It is a sideshow and a smokescreen. There are larger schemes afoot, and this is designed to take our eyes off the ball.

Leaving aside the facts (that the recipients are mostly blameless employees trying to fix AIG's complex problems under legally binding employment contracts negotiated after, and explicitly blessed by, the Federal bailout) this attitude clearly misses something. And the obvious validity of the argument – that the flap itself, is small potatoes – tends to distract us from the reasons why the AIG flap is actually very important.

The main reason it is important is that the flap is not “by itself”. It is part of a broader battlefield on which many equally small, seemingly isolated conflicts are taking place. Taken individually, each seems like a small sideshows. Seen as part of a coordinated initiative, however, a frightening picture emerges.

Here is what I see when I look at that picture: The game is all but over. Sixty days into the Obama administration we have already, probably irretrievably, lost the the free Republic that Franklin famously announced outside the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

That picture snaps into focus when seen through the prism of four words: “Think globally; act locally.”Alinsky's mantra for radicals.

As a Chess game, the Obama presidency is an unmitigated disaster. Carter Redux. But Obama is not playing Chess; he is playing Go. As a game of Go, he already dominates the board and has us all but surrounded.

Chess is a game of tactical movement with well defined and reciprocal goals for victory: capturing the opposing King. It is a vector game, with a clearly defined “ball” to keep one's eyes on.

Go is a subtle game about dominating wide space through small, discrete but interconnected, incremental victories at a local level. Global victory is achieved through thousands of small, local captures of space. Keeping one's eyes on one “ball” is a surefire recipe for defeat.

It is hard to connect the fragmentary dots except by overlaying the outline of the finished picture. So let me fast forward (four or so years) to the America taking shape around us.

Unprecedented power over almost every aspect of American society has now been accumulated in the hands of the Central government. I use “Central” because “Federal”, with its connotations of limited and enumerated powers, no longer applies.

Meanwhile, significant power has been shifted away from the “constitutional” Central government to a loose, but increasingly self-organizing, network of grassroots cadres practicing “direct democracy” or, more generally, exercising control. That is, by the way, the technical definition of a “soviet”; it was the definition even before the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia. So I will refer here to the groups as “soviets”. I will call this emerging parallel power base, The Party. It is none of the existing electoral parties; it is a new source of political power outside, but intertwined with, the electoral and governing processes.

The local soviets include groups like Organizing For America and ACORN. New, targeted groups are also emerging. Government spawned Community Health Centers, for example, increasing act as gatekeepers to health care. Existing groups, like school boards, are falling willingly into place as educational soviets. Unions extend the reach of the soviets into more and more workplaces, now, thanks to ballot-free union organizing -- cadre muscle spawning more cadres.

It amazes some how many of the components for this new world have already been with us for seventy or more years. The difference is that a Community Organizer In Chief now helps them actualize and coalesce into a ruling party, The Party.

One of the Birmingham organizers of local Organizing For America said in 2009: “We're not looking for a fight. That will come later, when we have an army.” The Party has an army now, too, thanks to the GIVE (Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education) Act. Some used to joke, after tax equalization, about the uniformed presence being SAD (Stand And Deliver). You do not hear that much anymore. Those uniforms are now everywhere: in ambulances, at floods and disasters, assisting police forces with crowd control, in the halls and classrooms of our schools. They may not be armed, but they are backed by those that are.

Speaking of taxes, the IRS has been irresistible in equalizing the tax burden – or rather, the take-home pay – of workers of all sorts. The Volcker Tax Commission, a quasi-government organization, fixed the tax code once and for all. Attempts to blunt the result through State obstruction collapsed due primarily to the XVI Amendment “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states”. The Central government won the underlying argument, under Lincoln, 150 years ago. Some of us might think (but certainly not say) that it is ironic that the ultimate result was not only the emancipation of a few of us, but the eventual enslavement of all of us.

The bailout of the mainstream media has resulted in mostly not-for-profit newspapers. Increasingly, they have fallen into the hands of (or recreated themselves as) local soviets serving their masters loyally, if not well. Talk radio, of course, fell victim to “Fairness”. And attempts to police the Internet have muted, if not silenced, the drumbeat of resistance echoing furtively and futilely around cyberspace.

The state and The Party are now thoroughly interwoven. State organs and The Party share intelligence and coordinate activities. This has made resistance difficult. One never quite knows when a fight with local soviets or The Party will be perceived as an attack on the state, itself. Increasingly, however, resistance is snuffed out locally, through tactical application of unofficial muscle. This obviates to need for embarrassing official action.

A few years ago, there were so-called tea-parties across the nation. Mob fury at these greedy bankers led to a clash between them and local cadres. When the organized cadres out-muscled the bankers, the bankers brought out guns. This quickly brought the wrath of the state down on their heads. The tea parties stopped.

All this can be seen implicit in current initiatives and events. It is especially clear in the AIG flap. AIG is not just a sideshow. It does distract from the other thrusts, true. But it also directly strengthens an important assault – more regulatory power over other companies. It undermines societal and constitutional defenses and establishes precedent for mob rule and confiscatory taxation on the unpopular. Thus it actually enlists Obama’s opponents directly in several of his initiatives (which, if the opponents had brains to think with, they would have opposed).

With Obama, it is probably best to assume that nothing is accidental. A few minutes ago he presided at the swearing in of the new Attorney General. After a ringing endorsement of our great Constitution he dropped a few artful words. Unless I misheard, they subordinated that Constitution to the practical effects of laws and the implementation of those laws on the workers. That sacred Constitution is now locked safely up on display. We are now actually governed by Obama's good intentions. And may God have mercy on our souls!

By the time the pendulum swings back towards sanity, which has already started, it will simply be too late. We do not have the cadres to compete at Go. Even if we did, our goals do not lend themselves to “direct democracy”, except as our founding fathers understood it: armed rebellion. The Central Government's club will always trump that. As a judge (I think it was Robert Bork) once observed, the second amendment was about restraining the power of the central government, but you cannot very well keep a stealth fighter in your garage.

Ironically, perhaps the only salvation for the great American experiment would be an al Quida attack in the next few months. If they are smart, they will wait until we complete our renovations.

How many here have read the book “The Post-American World” by Farheed Zakaria? Wasn’t BO photographed holding a copy of that book? Supposing he has read it, what in that book is informing him?

I think most conservatives give Obama way too much credit. He is nowhere near the strategist that Go requires. At most, he is a willing tool. The Go analogy is good, but remember, the larger the board; the more opportunity for both sides.

Ultimately, I think the Go analogy best represents the tendency toward factionalism and secession. We are engaged in endless "triple ko's" while we surrender territory wholesale. However, even if one side "wins," the other retains its own territory.

A defense strategy in Go is to build safe groups inside of overexpanded big groups. Go was quite popular among the Mathematics Graduate students at Princeton 1950.

even if one side "wins," the other retains its own territory.

Only until the game ends and score is toted. This is a winner (on points) takes all game. there are no safe havens.

Unfortunately, I believe you are correct. While many conservatives have been thinking that the game was a ShidouGo, the left has been playing a kadoban. We definitely have Bad Aji.

But, is it not a fact that we (the people) can make a huge statement next year by voting in Republicans that are conservatives and take back control of at least one of the two houses of Congress?

Obama can be stopped.

I think this describes what has happened to America — bit by bit, piece by piece, ever since the 1920’s — apparently uncoordinated, but actually focused on the glorious dream of communist utopia.

I think a lot of Obama’s performance can be laid to incompetence and a lack of focus. He’s trying to do everyting at once and mostly failing at the overwhelming majority of them. How can that be seen as winning at Go? He might be all over the board and have lots of people who are acting in concernt with him, but, aside from the mandatory youth volunteer service and the horrible stimulus act, I don’t see how he has succeeded. Sometimes when a person comes across incompetent, he is actually incompetent and not dazzling us with moves off the field and out of the line of vision. But, I can see that it might be his intention to dazzle us with irrelevancies while consolidating power. So, it’s good people like you point out the danger.

I oscillate between the two interpretations myself. But I wonder if an incompetent or even inadvertent Go player with the power Obama has amassed might not almost always defeat a disorganized rabble, each member playing a different Chess game. Seen through the lens of governance, he is "trying to do everything at once and mostly failing at the overwhelming majority of them". But the net effect might well be a commanding board position in four years in terms of social organizing.

He is a product of Harvard Law -- which often means brilliant but, in practice, incompetent. He is also an experienced radical organizer, so he knows how to achieve his radical goals.

Bottom line: I've decided on a quantum mechanical view of him as existing in two universes -- the real world and the alternative, radical world. His failures in one might well be victories in the other. And down the road, I fear, we'll wake up in the second universe ourselves.

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