I suppose everyone has seen or heard of the remarks of Oslash commemorated in the video link at Allahpundit’s post.
“I don’t want the people who created the mess to do a whole lot of talking.” Read, as they say, the whole thing. Good assembly of bits and ‘bites, including a lady-like bleat from Peggy Noonan.
How quickly the gloves have come off. So, there is too a Red America and a Blue America, and Oslash only wants to hear from one of them.
But note that his phrasing is loaded with a false implication: that those who would speak against his Death Care plan are the people who “created the mess.”
In fact, the people who oppose Obamacare – and the family of compulsory -cares swirling through Congress — have done little to bring us to our current situation (the one in which 4 out of 5 Americans profess to be happy with their health care) other than vote a succession of mostly big-spending, regulation-happy centrists into office, in Congress and the statehouses of this great nation. In that sense, we can spread the blame for whatever it is we may call “the mess” around.
But there’s no bloc of culprits that “created the mess.” In fact, we need an umpire to define “mess” for us. Say again, all after “mess”? Interrogative your intention?
This is pure demagoguery on Oslash’s part. There is no excuse for it. He is not behaving like the chief executive of a constitutional republic, one who vigilantly guards the rights of all. Imagine if George W. Bush had ever said anything like what Oslash said last night; and then asked the audience “Am I right?” — obviously soliciting cheers and applause.
Do we understand that this is not some ultimately meaningless street agitator speaking, a guy who will only be a problem for the Chicago police and a few machine politicians in Illinois? The man behaving in this way is the president of the United States. This is it: the one who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In one week we have seen his White House request that citizens send it the emails of other citizens who disagree with O-care — and then seen the president himself invite a political crowd to agree with him that his opponents should stop talking.
This is real. This cannot be explained away. This is anti-constitutionalism and anti-republicanism. It doesn’t even matter if Oslash doesn’t realize the import of what he is doing: he should. Imagine, again, if George W. Bush had ever said anything like this. But, of course, he didn’t.
Comments 27
America really isn’t so bright. I guess Bill Maher was right.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Bruce, I skimmed that. Not worth much more time than that. (Maher isn’t so bright either.)
J.E., thanks for sharing. TGL sure is some piece o’ work.
I cut my reaction short, having had to take a breather lest I start venting which is (a) unprofessional and
counterproductive. I can only say that behavior like this earns its comeuppance, which will be intense and hurtful—especially to someone with as thin skin as TGL has. I suppose someone at one of the pep rallies should remind him that this is a temp position and that in 4 years somebody else gets to challenge him for the job and that, when they do, they are going to play these tapes of him taking his digs at the “people responsible for the mess” and that those people will make their voices heard.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Americans stupid and gullible? There’s a better explanation.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2009/08/man-blames-cat-child-pornography.html
August 7th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
I think that TGL, like the true TGL that he is, will calm the heck down if and when his favorables take another significant hit. What’s scary, though, is to contemplate what he’d be like if he recovered public support to previous levels on the basis of this kind of appeal.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Consider what you just said, CKM. TGL will “calm the heck down.”
Not the way citizens of a constitutional republic talk about their chief executive. More the way citizens of a socialist people’s republic talk about a dictator.
Do we all understand that with Oslash in charge of the executive branch, and the Democrats with GOP-proof majorities in Congress, there is, in fact, no failsafe in operation now? There is no brake on Oslash’s agenda, if the Democrats agree among themselves. There is only the appeal of the people to Democrats who can still be induced to listen.
Radicalism like what Oslash has immersed himself in throughout his adult life can’t be domesticated. It can’t be lived with. And there is no mechanical check on it at this moment, at the federal level. No automatic shut-off when it overheats.
If America does get out of this mess, it sure won’t be because of our brilliance or judgment, as Bruce, NV points out. It will be because God looks after fools, drunks, and the United States.
Careful there, fuster. Don’t go developing a fey sense of humor on us.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
“If the Democrats agree among themselves.” That’s a big if, J.E. The moderates among them have jobs to look after and constituents who I hope won’t stand for this imperial posturing. In the end, this is still a center-right country, and I just don’t think his (and his missus’) brand of “democracy” is what the masses want.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
HP — agreed. My argument here is not that the Democrats will agree among themselves, willy-nilly, but that there is no systemic brake on the president, as long as he has his current Congressional majority.
I wasn’t happy with all the things Bush II did with his majority, but never once did Bush II ask citizens to report on each other’s political speech, or encourage a crowd to agree with him that the opposition should not be heard from.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I hear you loud and clear, JED, on TGL’s um… uh… peculiarities.
There’s hardly anything he can do on the domestic side that can’t be undone, eventually, and to some extent “the worse, the better” may hold true if you don’t believe that 2010 and 2012 should be “normal” elections. On the international side, I guess we need to depend on the fact that our people swear an oath to the Constitution, not the TGL.
I don’t see our predicament as truly being an indictment of the electorate. In addition to blessing fools, drunks, and the US of A, God, and through Him the electorate, sometimes work in mysterious ways, and by Machiavelli’s “circuitous and unknown paths.”
August 7th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
This is a very unattractive side of him that came out during the campaign when momentum had shifted towards Palin and McCain and out of desperation he ginned up the lipstick on a pig comment. In my view, this is where the whole campaign started to unravel since McCain and company took the bait and allowed Obama to get back in the spotlight. In any event he is a poor loser — certainly Stanley Ann didn’t teach him much about sportsmanship — and now he is losing the health care issue and perhaps the opportunity for a historically successful presidency. It is only fitting that he lash out blindly at his “enemies” – -who just happen to be representative of some of the people who voted for him in the first place.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
This ‘Tube featured at HotAir, by a blogger at Townhall, should be entered into the record:
August 7th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
J.E. @ 7: Speaking of Bush II, I just wonder–and, I grant you, I’m being perverse–but I just wonder if liberals had discussions like this (minus 40 IQ pts) when they perceived Bush II’s “cowboy diplomacy.”
No, I grant you again, it’s not choosing sides among members of the electorate, which is frankly one of the unspeakable heinous acts I’ve ever witnessed in a US President, but I wonder if libs felt the same helplessness and fear.
Czar, on the international side, I’m afraid more of the inaction than action of the electorate if TGL does something really stupid.
nkh: Don’t forget also the obscene “bird” gesture toward his Democratice challenger. He’s a pretty coarse character, a trait that’s all the more unattractive because of his arrogance and thin skin. (Sorry for sounding like a stuck record.)
August 7th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Colin, I watched the video you posted. I gotta say, he’s one very sick puppy.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
At the rate he’s going, now contradicting himself explicitly and dramatically within mere minutes, he may need to take some time to visit the Eskimos who have perfected the art of speaking in two voices at the same time.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Saw that, CKM. Nicely juxtaposed.
Of course, when Oslash says he wants to listen, he means this as an appeal to people who hold the worldview that “they” — Republicans, right-wingers, white people, anyone with a credit rating over 600 — aren’t listening. Oslash’s audience, its long years of yearning unheard, is who will be listened to. Not the evil “they” who can write checks that don’t bounce, and who “created the mess.”
So he’s not really contradicting himself here. Cherchez le Marxiste — there’s a synthesis out there in every seeming antithesis.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
HP — there is still a difference, in my view (between Bush and the left, and Oslash and the right).
I was in a minority on the right that thought the need to monitor phone conversations to interdict terrorism should have been handled differently. In the strict sense of regarding “warrantless wiretapping” as an inherently dangerous practice, most of the people who were on the same side of that point with me were on the left. I remain gravely concerned about its potential for abusing civil liberties.
But! — the left doesn’t. Even though Oslash is continuing the practice on exactly the same basis, suddenly the silence on its evils, from the MSM and left-wing blogosphere, is deafening.
Oslash gets very little grief from these entities on GTMO either, whereas when Bush was administering GTMO it was, according to their endlessly repeated accusations, worse than Auschwitz and the Lubyanka combined, and in five minutes or less Ma and the kids were going to be loaded into a cattle car and shipped off for their complimentary waterboarding.
The favoring of personalities over principle is too much a reality here for me to take seriously the hysteria of those with BDS. I actually had some of the same concerns about GWOT measures and the Patriot Act, but the difference is that under Oslash, I still have them.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
J.E., I appreciate what you’re saying, although your example points out a difference between ideologies (or political parties) as much as it does the two men. Again, I don’t want to sound coy or seem to be a booster for our side, but I believe there is a lack of intellectual honesty in far too many liberals that I have rarely if ever encountered in conservatives. I believe that with liberals, winning is everything. If their guy wins, they’re going to cut him breaks that they wouldn’t dream of conceding to a leader from the opposition side.
I have nothing beyond personal experience and anecdote to back up this view. I also recognize that there are liberals (Doug Schoen comes to mind) who are as fair as any conservative. I nevertheless maintain that on balance, liberals are more devious and less honest than conservatives.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Well, OK, HP. I was really going more for the point that it’s not hysteria analogous to that of leftists under Bush, for a rightist to be gravely concerned about the anti-constitutionalist tendencies demonstrated by Oslash.
As we’ve seen with the reproduction rate of Czars, the high-handed handling of the auto companies, and the behind-closed-doors wrangling of the finance giants, Oslash really will act well outside his constitutional authority, as long as there is no effective brake on him.
And there remains none. There are only, at the moment, inertia and tradition. We can hope that the concern of the people will turn Congress into a brake on him in at least some ways. But I fear that CKM is too sanguine about the ease of turning back Oslash’s measures with a new Congress in 2010, or a new president in 2012.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Paying taxes, playing by the rules, not being a burden on the public fisc makes me one of those who “created the mess”?
Obama’s inherent fascism is showing.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Now you’ve gone and done it, aelfheld. Not the “F” word!
August 7th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I’m gonna let that crack at Czars slip, but just say that, if I thought all that we needed to do was turn stash the Ø, I’d worry that 2010 or 2012 wouldn’t be enough. A “normal” new congress and a “normal” new president would be expected to course-correct a couple of degrees in the other direction.
I don’t anticipate at all that a single congress or a single presidency will be enough to make up for lost time, but that’s because I don’t see Ø as a complete novum: He’s the peculiar vehicle, in effect purpose-built, for the continuation and the hypertrophied exaggeration of all that’s unsustainable and no longer worth bothering to afford in American political culture.
The earlier it’s overturned the better, and preventing Øcare and whatever else he tries to cook up will our tasks easier, but he could disappear tomorrow and the Democrats could rescind everything they’ve done since 2006, while operating a caretaker government til 2010 and 2012, and there’d still be a huge amount of work to do.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
We non-cultists need to have our own toned-down version of the MLK versus Malcolm X debate, ie how strenuous and gloves-off should we be in opposing these goonies?
August 8th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I really appreciated this post.
Seth- all you have to be is the wrong demographic handing out “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and they will come to with the gloves off.
Barack’s words are a warning shot to his foes and a call to arms to his friends. But most of the United States isn’t Chicago. The incident in St. Louis happened in large part because of its proximity to Chicago- SL is the traditional “down river” locale for Chicago heavies.
August 8th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Seth — well, my vote is that we engage in no physical or vocal hysteria. That’s counterproductive. I was disgusted to see a piece on Fox yesterday comparing the anti-Obamacare citizens of 2009 with the college-age hooligan protestors of the 1960s. The ’60s protestors threw rocks, damaged property, and inflicted physical harm on innocent bystanders, becoming public order problems for police. None of the Tea Partiers or Obamacare protestors have done anything like that.
But superficial comparisons are too easy to make when you shout down speakers at townhall meetings.
Meanwhile, however, while I think the use of freighted symbols (e.g., swastikas) can also be counterproductive, it is not some form of intellectual violence, or a removal of the “gloves,” for those on the right to point out what is true: that the Alinskyist tactics being used by some on the left are, in fact, the tactics of Lenin’s Bolsheviks and Hitler’s brown-shirts — and they are being used in service of a collectivist objective that has the same root as Marxist-Leninism, Stalinism, Mussolini’s Fascism, Hitler’s Nazism, and Maoism.
If Oslash’s support network didn’t have thugs on the street intimidating peaceful protestors — or, as in November, and last year’s primaries, voters — his rabble-rousing, one-sided oratory might come off as mere sloppy impulse control. But he does have a support network with these features.
I think we can take heart that, as Barbara says, it’s not nationwide. I had exactly the same thought on seeing that the SEIU attack on the black conservative was in the St. Louis area — Well, it would be St. Louis. Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis. A lot of political similarities there.
But it’s going to come to everyone’s neighborhood — bused in, if necessary, with George Soros buying the gas — if we pretend it doesn’t matter, and conveninently bellieve that the republic can somehow just live with and tolerate government that seeks mainly to compromise with these folks, in exchange for a little peace. It doesn’t work that way.
At some point, we have to take the valid stand that it is they who are being anti-democratic, in seeking to silence and intimidate others — that they are not just in disagreement on policy, but in the wrong in terms of their tactics.
August 8th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
They are anti-democratic. But: wrong tactics morally, or operationally? Clearly the tactics are wrong morally, but only if you think living in a civil society is a good thing. Excuse me, only if you think there is any such thing as a moral good.
But operationally? I think the jury is still out. On the local level, Alinsky-ite methods have been used for years to manipulate planning meetings and “empowerment” sessions at schools, and in some churches. This is how the takeover of institutions by the left is accomplished and reinforced. Our only hope in this battle is that the brazenness and arrogance tips the wheelbarrow back on the pusher and they get buried in their shøt.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
So, Barbara and JE, I take it you’re both suggesting, bring a camera to these town hall meetings, but not brass knuckles; and don’t say anything that might embarrass you if it were nationally televised.
The DoJ won’t be much help but so far there’s still YouTube and FOX.
CK has suggested that demagoguery may have to be fought with Southern based populism. I feel like the
bootlegger Mr. Leehman in the movie “The Public Enemy.” Make sure my name doesn’t get into the papers, he says. Don’t worry, says Nails Nathan, we won’t use you in our advertising.
August 8th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Make that, that wouldn’t (have) embarrass(ed) your mother….
August 8th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Oops. Double negative. Would, not wouldn’t.
August 8th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
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