I used to be quite Left in my thinking. My views changed midway through the Clinton Presidency when I could no longer overlook the hypocrisy of my position. People wedded to liberalism avoid the truth like subway-dwellers avoid the glare of bright sunlight, but at some point the light is bright enough to shine through the thickest sunglasses! I am often surprised at how much hypocrisy the Left can ‘overlook;’ in the Clinton era a liberal needed only a bit of hubris to ignore the media double-standards, but now huge distortions of logic on the level of delusional thought are required in order to maintain the liberal argument! As I try to understand how an entire country can fall victim to ‘folie a deux’, I find order by dividing the delusional Left into two groups– the ‘low insight Left’ and ‘high insight Left.’ I will use a practical example to explain the difference.
Obama promised that HIS administration would be much more open than the Bush administration. He said that all bills winding through Congress toward his desk would be debated and discussed openly on C-span (something that was already happening under Bush, by the way, but that has largely disappeared under the Democratic ownership of the government). Obama promised there would be no back-door sessions, no private meetings with lobbyists, no kickbacks or bribes, and that every new piece of legislation would be published for at least 5 days on the internet for all citizens with a computer to see and review. He promised to seek bipartisanship and to listen to the ‘middle’ of the country. Of course anyone with even half a mind knows what has INSTEAD happened (and if you don’t already know all of this, you must have quite a blind spot!!). We can look at the ‘stimulus’ bill– a piece of legislation that spent more money than 99% of the bills that ever pass through the legislature. Obama sent it to Congress demanding passage, without allowing time for even Congress or the Senate to review the bill– let alone the American people! There was no bipartisanship, and no allowing for debate. Anyone from private industry who stood in the way was called out publicly by the President in a way that I have not witnessed during my 50 years—and in a way I hope I never have to see again. Obama literally provoked death threats against bankers and company executives—openly, without complaint by the media! Given the way it was thrown together, it is not surprising that studies of the ‘Stimulus’ Bill show that most of the money goes to districts where Democrats hold power. Even worse, more money goes to wealthy Congressional districts than to poor districts! Secret meetings with lobbyists were not disclosed, and that the press did not asked about them. The process was more secretive than ever before– forget ‘more open!’ The result was a mess; pay-offs to liberal groups and spending that occurs years after the recession ends, rather than targeted stimulus. And not surprisingly we have had no job creation beyond what happens after every recession– perhaps even lower job production from the fear of higher taxes for businesses instilled by Obama spending a trillion extra dollars. It is one thing to avoid trimming government too far during a recession, but another thing to waste of massive sums of money, resulting in deficits four times higher than the worst deficits under Bush (Obama also promised to trim the ‘immoral’ Bush deficits, by the way).
The low-insight Left can be divided again into ‘true believers’ and ‘simple idiots.’ The true believers WANT to tell the truth, and really mean it when they say they want things to be truthful and open– but they believe so strongly in their liberal principles that things that aren’t liberal causes don’t ‘count’. They don’t consider it lying; they think that keeping our own money instead of paying it to the government is a selfish, silly idea– and so fair and open debate doesn’t need to include that opinion. Similarly, they believe that the Earth is going to be destroyed, so the climate debate doesn’t need to be ‘fair’– in fact, they think that evil businesses fight dirty, so they CAN’T be fair in return– that NO serious, ‘good’ person would even EXPECT fairness when dealing with evil business people. The minds of true believers simply dismiss opinions that differ from what THEY believe to be true, but still consider themselves open, honest and fair, even if every counter opinion is suppressed—because the counter opinions are not ‘valid’ enough to count. If a respected scientist makes a discovery that causes his/her opinion to change to the counter-argument, the true believer actually believes that the person was paid off or became mentally ill– and so the ideas don’t deserve ‘fair and open’ expression. The other half of the low-insight group– the idiots– believe whatever they hear without question, as long as the messenger fits a certain image. Obama was the perfect messenger to appeal to this group, and they continue to buy into him hook, line, and sinker. Emphasis on sinker.
The high-insight Left can also be further divided into the ‘manipulators for a cause’ and the power-hungry egomaniacs. Rahm Emanuel is probably in the first group, and I would put some of Hollywood into this category— at least the few Hollywood and media types who have a decent education. These people know they are being hypocritical, but justify their hypocrisy by believing that the ends justify the means. Tom Daschl’s book about reforming health care displays this type of thinking very clearly. The reform is needed, so lying, cheating, breaking promises, and double-speak are all OK as long as they lead toward the correct goal. They cannot trust leaving such complicated decisions in the hands of regular people, because they consider regular people to be a bunch of fools that they push this way and that way around election time. Their contempt for average Americans was obvious during the TEA Parties, when Nancy Pelosi literally cried at the thought of meeting up with those unwashed masses. The insight of this group of liberals is somewhat limited, as they cannot see the self-righteousness that their position requires. They see people as good or bad depending only on party affiliations. When someone from the Right gets into trouble, these liberals scream from rooftops about hypocrisy. But when someone on the Left does something far worse, the transgression is a ‘fluke’– devoid of any meaning or importance. Packwood, to these liberals, was a ‘serial groper’. Clinton on the other hand was ‘victimized by a right-wing conspiracy’. Go figure!
Finally, there are the high-insight liberals who don’t even care about the cause; they only care about the power that the cause can bring. We know that Obama is in this group because of his efforts to distort the meaning of words and phrases to try to look good, without any effort to really DO good. Measures to prevent privacy while voting about unions are called ‘Free Choice Acts.’ Pay-offs for favors from unions are called ‘stimulus acts.’ Government takeover of health care is called ‘insurance reform’ or ‘healthcare reform’, depending on the polls. Worst of all are the outright lies. Obama is not an idiot, so he surely knows that the passage of his health care bill will raise insurance premiums and eventually destroy the insurance industry—and the competition that it brings. Obama knows that the bill cuts Medicare spending, and he knows that it will reduce the freedom to choose one’s own doctor. But his speeches claim the exact opposite! He claimed that the bill will LOWER premiums (watch yours and see), PROTECT Medicare (watch that as well), and INCREASE choice (good luck!). Everybody watching the game knows by now that Obama couldn’t care less about the content of health care legislation– he just wants a win. He doesn’t care that all of his promises will be untrue, as long as people keep believing him. I used to put him in the first group of high-insight liberals, thinking he was saving up his ‘honesty’ for something important. Before that I even gave him credit as a ‘true believer.’ But we have seen him lie about pretty much every issue! There are no more issues to ‘save up for.’ He does not care about the future of the planet, the future of the economy, or the future of health care in America. He just wants his applause. He goes to the Middle East and bends over, in order to get a roomful of people to stand up and applaud him– even if there are others in the basement of the same building working to destroy us. Obama’s lies are too complete to be accidental. He has become utterly reliable in what he says, as long as you just substitute the opposite. If he says ‘I will cut spending,’ you know that he is planning on a major spending increase, and is simply preparing for the response. He uses the forgetfulness and ignorance of the American people to avoid being found out– and members of the press are true believers, so they don’t call him on it. Obama could give a speech claiming that the sun rises in the West every morning, and the press would either ignore the comment or print it as true, boycotting any stories that claim the opposite.
Many of the climate types are in this group, by the way. How else do you explain people like Al Gore living with Carbon footprints the size of Rhode Island, while selling books and movies about cutting back? I chuckled at the stories about the shortage of limos in Copenhagen– they were shipping limos in from thousands of miles away, rather than forcing attendees at the climate summit to drive hybrids– or take the bus!! Many scientists have hopped onto this gravy-train for years, knowing that any research proposal with ‘warming’ in the title is more likely to win support than a proposal seeking only the truth. I put Soros in this latter group as well. Streisand and Huffington are probably true believers or simple idiots. Pelosi is probably in the low-insight group somewhere; I used to thing she was smarter, but after watching the ‘deer in the headlights’ look in response to the Town Hall meetings and TEA parties, I have to assume that the insight isn’t there.
With all of that as a background, some of the people who are trying to follow the truth have come to the opinion that the climate nonsense is a front for something else– namely for control. This was certainly in evidence at the Copenhagen Climate Summit—people talking about seizing global power that made Obama’s selfish desires seem amateurish in comparison! I supposed the ‘one global government’ folks have their ‘true believers’ as well– those who picture a world ruled by one leader, with all people believing together in the same, noble goals. They are the same people who hate the US, and want us to pony up trillions of dollars for ‘past carbon sins’—ignoring the amazing advances in technology and medicine that came from our enviable Capitalist system, and that raised the standard of living for every person on Earth. But take away the true believers– the peace fairies and blind idealists– and you have a frightening group of people who are to the current world, as Hitler was to Europe.
We are lucky that the modern Left as a whole lack the intelligence and insight to go very far; the most insightful are also the most power-hungry, preventing any meaningful collaboration as each new leader is eaten by the others who want to sit on the throne. But the power-driven efforts of the insightful Left combined with the sheer mass of ‘useful idiots’ can easily cause damage to our economy that will take decades to repair. We are already at a point where half of the population pays no Federal income tax, opening the door to confiscatory tax policies. It would be asking too much for a large number of idiots to recognize the hypocrisy of the President who they elected. But the rest of us should at least keep OUR eyes open! Please join me at my blog, where I do my best to read between the lines of the weakest and most secretive government to rule our country in decades.
