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P.M. Carpenter
The Fifth Columnist
How perfectly demagogic, which is so typically democratic.
Barack Obama utters a less than attractive truth about the American working class which historians, sociopsychologists, anthropologists, theologians, economists and political scientists have been writing for decades and his opponent pounces with feigned outrage and panders with saccharine homilies.
Should Sen. Obama fail to make it to the White House, it will only be by virtue of his being too damned dumb to know he's too damned smart for the Reagan Democrat crowd.
His heresy? By now, I'm sure, you know it well. Obama was being honestly, historically analytical:
In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it....
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
I defy any self-respecting social or economic or political historian to find one dram of intellectual fault with any part of that passage. Obama, they would all tell you, nailed in a few sentences the industrial and postindustrial socio-political history of working-class Americans. They are bitter because they have indeed been "beaten down" for generations and in response they do cling to comforting irrelevancies and scapegoats.
That's what keeps them beaten down. And when they aren't distracting themselves by their own devices they've always had mawkish demagogues to distract them further and tell them that the harm they've been doing to themselves has been just the right medicine.
I give you, in spades, the prodigiously mawkish and Yale-educated demagogue Hillary Clinton, who finds Obama's intellectual truth to be "elitist":
It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who've faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They're working hard every day for a better future for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them ...
... and who feeds their self-defeating prejudices and who perpetuates the comforting irrelevancies and who yearns to extol at the anti-intellectual drop of an opportunistic hat the uncommon brilliance of the common man, whose very brilliance has kept him wretchedly disadvantaged for generation upon generation.
But Hillary wasn't through. There was more humbug to come -- parts of which Hillary may actually believe, but it's all too maudlin to distinguish the opportunism from the genuine appraisal:
I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don’t "cling to" religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.
Well, isn't that precious. I am positively weepy eyed.
Hillary, the people I know cling to their religion because a) their parents did; b) they've never examined other faiths or the liberating merits of agnosticism or deistic secularism; and c) above all it gives them some slim hope of eternal justice in the celestial aftermath of disingenuous politicians who have cheated them out of social justice on Earth and, when convenient, propelled unprovoked wars.
And still she wasn't through. As the NY Times reports this morning: "Although she has been a strong supporter of gun control in the past, urging Congress to 'buck the gun lobby' as first lady, Mrs. Clinton said, 'Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it’s a constitutional right.'"
It really is true. If we didn't know it before we now have transcribed proof supporting the unambiguous knowledge that there is absolutely nothing this woman won't say to finagle a vote.
This will all pass, of course, since the demands of electoral ignorance and blind outrage already have Obama backpedaling: "I didn't say it as well as I should have.... The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us" -- which was delivered with all the heartfelt conviction of Paul Newman in the quasi-election knife-fight scene in "Butch Cassidy."
But not before Hillary does indeed get a bump by bamboozling a few more voters.
How perfectly demagogic, and so sadly democratic.
Please respond to the commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact P.M. at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com
Thanks for the column.
Key graphs:
"In fact, the Democratic race has not been especially rough by historical standards. What’s more, our conversations with Democrats who speak to the Clintons make plain that their public comments are only the palest version of what they really believe: that if Obama is the nominee, a likely Democratic victory would turn to a near-certain defeat.
Far from a no-holds-barred affair, the Democratic contest has been an exercise in self-censorship.
Rip off the duct tape and here is what they would say: Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working-class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico).
Read the whole thing.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9564.html
goodbye democratic party
That's what keeps them beaten down. And when they aren't distracting themselves by their own devices they've always had mawkish demagogues to distract them further and tell them that the harm they've been doing to themselves has been just the right medicine.
____________________________________
I submit that the same can be said of minority (black, gay, etc.) middle-class voters who are soon to see their economic gains as members of a growing 'investor class' be negated by Democrat tax policy, specifically, but not limited to, an increase in the capital gains tax rate.
The poverty of progressivism.
By Thomas Sowell
People in the media, in academia, and among the intelligentsia in general who are obsessed with “disparities” in income and wealth usually show not the slightest interest in how that income and wealth were produced in the first place.
They are hot to redistribute the existing income and wealth but seem wholly unaware that how you do that today can affect how much income and wealth will be produced tomorrow. Any number of schemes for redistributing wealth have ended up redistributing poverty in a number of countries.
“Progressives” in the media and among academics and intellectuals claim to be interested in ending poverty but the production of more output is the only way to end poverty for millions of people.
It not only can be done, it has already been done in many countries, for all countries were once very poor by today’s standards. But most self-styled “progressives” show virtually zero interest in economic history or in economics in general.
Even in the United States, most people did not have a telephone or a refrigerator as late as 1930. Today, most Americans living below the official poverty level have not only these things but also color television, air-conditioning, a microwave oven, and a motor vehicle.
How did this happen? The progressive intelligentsia show no interest in that question.
Even such historically poverty-stricken countries as India and China, repeatedly struck by massive famines, have within the past two decades adopted changed economic policies that have raised vast numbers of people out of desperate poverty.
An estimated 20 million people in India rose out of destitution in just one decade and more than a million Chinese per month have risen out of poverty. But have you heard any progressive intellectuals explaining how such a dramatic change for the better came about?
Progressives are in the business of complaining and denouncing — as a prelude to seeking sweeping powers to control other people’s lives, in the name of curing the ills of society.
The last thing they want is to discover and discuss how millions of people rose out of poverty by entirely different methods, often by freeing economies from the control of people with sweeping power over other people’s lives.
Poverty and economic disparities are the raw materials from which the political left manufactures a sense of moral superiority, self-importance and political power.
Against that background, it is understandable how they strive to keep poverty alive as an issue, even as they claim to want to end poverty, by playing lady bountiful to the poor.
Even as they define deviancy downward, many of the progressive intelligentsia define poverty upward, so that people with amenities that even the middle class could only strive for, two generations ago, are still called “the poor” or the “have-nots.”
Except for people who can’t work or won’t work, there is very little real poverty in the United States today, except among people who come from poverty-stricken countries and bring their poverty with them.
Talk about “the working poor” still resonates in politics, but most of the people in the bottom 20 percent of American households are not working full-time and year-round. There are more heads of household who work year-round and full-time among the top 5 percent of American heads of households than among the bottom 20 percent.
The Left has striven mightily to make working no longer necessary for having a claim to a share of what others have produced — whether a share of “the nation’s” wealth or “the world’s” wealth.
They have also striven mightily to inflate the number of people who look poor by counting young people with entry-level jobs, who are passing through lower income brackets at the beginning of their careers, among “the poor,” even though most of these young people have incomes above the national average when they are older.
The real obsession of the Left is in gaining power or, at the very least, engaging in moral exhibitionism.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/12/ST2008041202580.html?hpid=topnews
Call me suspicious, but my tinfoil hat wearing radar has been consistently humming ever since the first stories of these inspections came out.
This is an industry that is NOT in good shape, so explain to me why they'd do this on such a major scale if it's not way more serious than we've been led to believe?
But, maybe I'm just being too suspicious.
Here is a link to an article that presents the opposing viewpoint you first post:
Here is the concluding quote:
"Where Obama and many Democrats go wrong is describing cultural stances as outcomes of hard times, rather than principled, joyful, well-intentioned, or long treasured family traditions. Reality lingers in both theories. But Democrats too often mention the worst and forget the best, as Obama did. In Obama's defense, he spoke of family traditions on Saturday. But context is always hard after the gaffe. Just ask McCain and Republicans about their struggle since early January to contextualize his 100-year remark on Iraq."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/obamas_great_mistake_the_san_f.html
What are you getting at? Terrorism?
From today's Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/04/13/cant_eat_ethanol/
Is it in the interest of low income voters to support a party whose energy policies are contributing to the rising cost of food?
What are you getting at? Terrorism?
No, I'm getting at that the airlines fleet is probably in worse shape than we thought. That the FAA has probably been letting them slide on safety inspections - choosing profits over people - and only when it got to the point where the planes could be falling apart, as we getting these ' inspections'. I just have no faith in Bush's Government to EVER look out for ' the little person'.
I am conflicted about ethanol. I'm hearing criticisms like this, but on the other hand, when I look at a country like BRAZIL, who has weaned themselves off of foreign oil dependence because they use a SUGAR-based fuel substance, I just don't see why the USA can't do it too. This is a supposedly 3rd world country, and they are less dependent on foreign oil than we are, and have been for a couple of generations. Our dependence upon foreign oil makes us less independent and more vulnerable. Plus, we're literally funding our enemies.
“If [Republicans] could cut funding for Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment, middle-class Americans would see fewer benefits from their tax dollars, feel more resentful paying taxes, and become even more receptive to their appeals for tax cuts and their strategy of waging campaigns on divisive social and cultural issues like abortion, gay rights, and guns.” - Bill Clinton, saying pretty much exactly what Barack Obama’s been saying (and Sen. Clinton’s been attacking Obama for) in his 2004 memoirs, My Life
The site is a combination fundraiser for the Obama campaign, and collective storytelling effort (well, we hope it will be collective if other people agree to participate).
Jack and Jill Politics is my number-one favorite site for news and discussion on the campaigns. I would be very happy if people here -- site owners, regular readers and commenters -- would add your stories or otherwise get involved. And spread the word of you think it's worthwhile.
We have no idea if this project will be of interest or use to anyone but us. We hope so. But, we'll see.
Michelle (who has commented previously in a few discussions here)
http://storiesproject.wordpress.com
Perhaps we should re-direct focus on some concrete issues and not the pissing contest. The Alfonso Jackson thing exposes salient themes on race, the economy, greed and the Bush Administration, as an example. The post on China while yes it's a great vehicle for attacking the Clintons, it should be a wedge into our general problem of CEOs and Wall Street mortgaging this country to a nation that likely bears a bigger threat to us in the long run than jihadis. Likewise, where do the candidates stand on Darfur, on Tibet? On the neo-colonial push of China into Africa, with African govts all too willing to take the cash and turn over their already suffering populaces (after a century of racist imperialist followed by decades of similiarly vampiric rule by their own people) to the whim of China?
If you wish to be the antidote to Kos fine. if you want to battle the right wing blogs, fine. But mix in the more mundane--and critical--matters of life and death and our future as well as the horserace/gladiator carnival of this election and the diversion bullshit issues it has come to embody. I'm not attacking this blog. Quite the contrary. I think it's a beacon in the fog--but not always. I'm just saying we all need to be a little more Edward R Murrow and a little less O'Reilley or Jay Leno or Michael Moore. Given the monster that weve created, it might be impossible...but there's nobility and posterity in the fight.
You must read the whole article because rarely are white people so frank about their own racism. Here is one example:
Catherine Donnelly shopped at Kmart, settled into her dorm room and soaked up the Gothic stone buildings where, over the next four years, she would grow into her own woman.
But her first day at Princeton held a surprise, too. And Donnelly knew it would mean confronting the past.
She walked into the historic Nassau Inn that evening and delivered the news to her mother, Alice Brown. "I was horrified," recalled Brown, who had driven her daughter up from New Orleans. Brown stormed down to the campus housing office and demanded Donnelly be moved to another room.
The reason: One of her roommates was black.
"I told them we weren't used to living with black people — Catherine is from the South," Brown said. "They probably thought I was crazy."
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/04/12/roommate_0413.html
The hypocrisy of the Clintons is classic.
It's funny: Hillary gets in trouble when she gets caught lying. Obama gets in trouble when he gets caught telling the truth.
Thanks for the interesting article.
This reinforces my position that America knows better than blacks that they were and are prejudice.
I think its laughable that the mother, Brown, agrees with Cosby that blacks are lazy and need to get off their buts and work and educate themselves, but didn't want her daughter in school with someone who was doing just that.
I hope this story makes it further than the AJC. I know what Michelle Obama experienced and wrote about was real and true and America knows it too. I would just like to see it discussed in realistic terms and not used as a tool to say she was ungrateful for a right that should have been hers all along.
I completed understood and agreed with her statement about being proud of America, she surely had no reason to be proud of an America that included many people like Brown who hated her for her skin.
yeah, that was a good article. It galled me when people suggested Michelle was ungrateful to America. What do they know what she went through? I - like every other Black person - knew the instant she said she went to Princeton and Harvard, the kinds of things she went through. Suggesting Michelle has no right to be critical seems an acknowledgment of the rarity of her experience.
I love how the most racist whites always quote Bill Cosby. He should be proud.
I know - right? That's another blog!
Ta-Nehisi Coates has an interesting story on his site about Cosby that reveals some interesting facts.
I have no respect for Cosby.
Of course he and Alvin Poussant will be speakers at the Essence Fest CNN sponsored forum on Black in America.
I just know I'm going to be embarrassed and pissed off!
Bill Clinton Flashback: "All These Economically Insecure White People...Are Scared To Death"
Those who live in glass houses....
He of course rocked it and served it up to her. He almost laughed at her.
He was clearly more comfortable speaking about his faith and how that guides him through his life and politics.
I am so proud of him and the more I see him the more proud I am. The audience received him well and clapped almost every time he answered a questions.
I keep thinking about how they can call him "elite" and what they are basing that on given his history.
I have come to the conclusion that they believe because he has achieved the success that he has being black - he is then elite in the category of black in America.
I have nothing against Bill Cosby. For all he has given, putting his money where his mouth is, for decades, he's earned the right to say what he wants.
With all respect due to you, I disagree.
I believe that he has been irresponsible in his representation of the black community in the public arena. I really feel that having this open conversation about blacks in mixed-company so-to-speak, he lends to a dangerous practice of feeding prejudices and thereby giving a pass to and providing a false sense of security in superiority for both whites and successful blacks.
I would appreciate him more if his advice were given where it is most needed and not where it draws the most amens!
If you haven't already done so, please read the story on the AJC regarding Michelle Obama's roomate at Princeton and her mother's past racist actions and current racist beliefs which she is all too comfortable with associating with what Mr. Cosby said and maybe you will see where I'm coming from.
I am aware of the many problems facing the black community and where some of them stem from, but I'm not ready to join in with the forces complicit in some of these pathological behaviors in a public ass whipping thinking that will change anything at all.
There is no wrong greater than any other.
MD-80 have had problems with landing gear from 'way back.' I used to subcontract with the FAA back in the early '90s. A poster above, who alluded to the fleet being in worse condition than we think, was spot on.
And the state of aviation took a distinct nose-dive (both technically, loss of skilled labor and moral-wise, loss of camaraderie) when Ronnie Ray Gun fired the air traffic controllers.