Anyone else notice that the President seems to reserve his most forceful rhetoric for comments directed at his fellow Americans?
Where is that kind of rhetoric when it comes to people who are actively shooting at us? He has virtually groveled before hostile foreigners while the first bit of emotion he showed was directed at BP (“going to kick their asses”). Heck, he won’t use the term “enemy” when talking about, well, the enemy but he will use it in the context of internal politics.
After badmouthing everything Bush did in Iraq, he kept on Bush’s Secretary of Defense. Then he put his primary Democratic rival in as Secretary of State. By doing both, he signaled he was marginalizing foreign policy in his administration. He simply doesn’t care what foreigners do good or bad.
Leftists have long accused non-leftists as vilifying and seeking to attack “the other”. Leftists have lectured us for decades about how non-leftists mark out those deemed outgroups, e.g., foreigners and our own native criminals, and then sought to direct the violence-based coercive power of the state against those outgroups. In short, non-leftists like to shoot Nazis and hang serial killers.
However, leftists also wish to direct the violence-based coercive power of the state against other human beings. However, they make it clear that directing the power of the state against foreigners and native criminals is barbaric and seldom, if ever, needed. Attacking foreigners and criminals is beneath them. Only Neanderthals think like that. All dictators and criminals need is a stern talking to. Who then do they wish to direct the power of the state against?
Their neighbors.
The left is obsessed with dominating and controlling their fellow non-violent Americans. They either want to make people permanently dependent or they wish to force others to behave as leftists believe best. Everything in their ideology, including their foreign policy, revolves around forcing their fellow Americans to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do. That is why Obama only uses harsh rhetoric and shows passions when vilifying his fellow Americans. In his mind, we are his only enemies of significance.
It is one of the dark ironies of the 20th Century that when leftists complain about military spending, especially during a shooting war, they are really talking about diverting force from killing foreigners and instead directing it at Americans.
Obama is a wholly typical leftist. If you’re not dependent on Obama, you are his enemy. He will be more angry at you than at outsiders who are actually killing Americans.
I think there is little to fear from Obama. He is yet another example of the faux rage of the pantywaist left. What did his community organizing accomplish in Chicago?
I had an amusing experience today. I have a house in the mountains. The weather is getting cool. I have been thinking about vinyl double pane windows. The highest quality windows are made by a company in California called California Deluxe Windows. Today, a young man came up to the house to make his presentation. I decided to buy even though they are expensive. In the course of the afternoon, he mentioned that he is a liberal politically. He noticed a book I had on the table titled “Radical in Chief” and commented about it. It had gotten late and we had Fox News on the TV. He noticed that Bill O’Reilly was on and commented on it. I think O’Reilly is a bit of a blowhard and the young man went further saying he was all blowhard and did I get my news from Fox News?
This was all in a friendly conversation and I don’t get excited about this stuff as three of my kids voted for Obama. At some point in the conversation, he got on the subject of the fact that he is now a partner in the business and he cannot understand how hostile California has become to small business. I told him he was starting to sound like me. He left later with my order and I wonder if he is in a transition to the tea party position. Of course, I didn’t mention this to him.
I think he will figure it out soon. he was a very nice young man. He didn’t have to tell me he is a liberal after he mentioned that he is buying a new Prius. Logic is tough to refute if you are honest and it is tough to be successful in business if you are not honest.
Why I remained on the left as long as I did is becoming a mystery to me. For instance, I noticed during the seventies that the least internationist of the people I talked with were also the farthest on the left. Thos remains true.
“Tend your own garden” beliefs are strongest among people who see so many weeds that need tending, I guess. But these arguments also came from extraordinarily limited sense of who were our brothers. Putting up housing that would soon become dangerous and ugly was more important than ensuring that someone in another country would be able to vote. Well, maybe. If putting the housing up would ensure happier, more productive people that might be true. As it was, everyone just ended up worse off. And the boat people, the killing fields – those were the fault of the pentagon; these countries would have been the unique examples of non-totalitarian, non-democidal communism if not for the malevolent US army.
The narcissist saves his deepest anger for those who fail to properly honor the pageantry of his life.
Robert Avrech has some related thoughts.
Michael,
I’ve seen similar phenomena with formerly blinded and besotted fans of Obama—kids who cast their first vote for hope and change, and are seeing the reality of all that debt and all that duplicity coming from the current administration. The older liberals won’t ever get it, but their is hope for some younger folks. Both of my adult children (mid-20’s) report they have lots of friends who regret their vote for hope and change and are now sympathetic to the Tea Party movement.
Obama is a Marxist; just sad it took the rest of the country 18 months to figure out what many of us knew in 08….I can see 12 from my house.
Keep the Faith!
Shannon-
I am not so sure this is endemic to the left. Take the average batch of pundits from the right (Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, et. al) and listen to them for a day. I hear many a forceful denunciation of progressivism. I hear very few foul words thrown at terrorist or dictators – and then only in the context of criticizing the current President and his cohorts.
There are structural reasons for this. “Speak softly and carry a big stick” said Teddy, and he was right in saying so. Verbal assaults do little to change the behavior of other states or their leaders. In this case, as in so many others, actions speak louder than words.
On the other hand, words are quite useful on the domestic scene. Nothing mobilizes the base so well as a crusade against evil. It is the only reason anybody – on either side of the isle – even cares about the gay marriage debate. A good politician does not miss the chance to rally the base against the monsters next door. It is how elections are won.
He gets angry and forceful only at people who can’t fight back.
The pundits from the right that you name say much the same thing year in and year out. What they say can usually be checked and I don’t believe they lie. I don’t watch Beck but what I have seen of him, he seems fact based. Sarah Palin worked her way up through local government to state government and never had a mentor that I know of. I wish Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman had a little of Sarah’s experience. Local government, even in fairly small towns, teaches a lot about people and how to get things done, even if it is only a new trash pickup contract. All three of them have worked at things other than punditry. There is no substitute for such experience.
I don’t know of a left wing pundit who has experience outside government, journalism and academia, all on salary.
I keep wondering what George Soros wants out of all this. I know there is a payoff for him. And not just the drilling moratorium that benefits his investments in Brazil.
I keep wondering what George Soros wants out of all this.
Me Too. I see him as a bit like Ross Perot who had some sort of personal animus against Republicans and George H.W. Bush and the money to indulge himself in trying to get even. Soros is bitter about something and is willing to spend his fortune to get satisfaction. Return on investment can’t explain it because he spends in amounts that aren’t likely to be recovered that way.
There are several other Billionaires on the left that seem to have the same sort of motivation, such as the gang of four in Colorado. I believe they don’t care about investment returns because they don’t really need any.
Hollywood is literally full to the brim with these types, for whom investment profit can’t nearly explain them. They don’t even make movies with a profit motive. It’s a wonder the IRS doesn’t disallow their business deductions on the grounds they are in reality non-deductible political expenditures.
Why are we allowing the verbal abuse? He needed to be called out on this and I hear he sort of apologized. How does a man who seems entirely scripted make so many mistakes in communication? It must be because it is hard to keep a mass movement active and organized without raising the rhetoric. He felt (and still does) he had a large enough majority to change America, and did not expect much resistance. AS Hayek noted, socialism leads to using force if people won’t go along willingly, which is where he seems to be headed.
He seems to embody the signs of a mass movement described by Eric Hoffer: the frustrated who’s lives appear spoiled (like rotten) who need something to lose their own identity (and therefore responsibility for), an enemy (the right, conservatives, free market, George Bush), the appeal to the working man as the backbone of society, the emotional responses of the participants, the messiah-like appearances and pronouncements,and a call for separation of the family. This disenchanment of Obama is a dangerous phase for him, for he is losing control.
Some large part of the blame for the election of this confused, semi-American president is due to the shallowness and uninformed aspect of the youngest cohort of voters in this country. This makes sense since the age of maturity and responsibility has gradually become greater and greater and enfranchisement has become younger. There are exceptions, to be sure, but….
I don’t know many 18 year olds I’d trust with my car, much less my life. Perhaps it is time to repeal the 26th amendment.
Saith Tyouth:
No, Greer, I don’t trust my life to enlisted 18 yr olds. I may trust my life to the system that trains and directs the 18 year olds. There’s a reason why we don’t trust an 18 year old with important decisions. Since you bring it up, that reason is reflected in the number of sergeants, captains, majors, and generals that are 18 years old.
Oh? So is it only the sergeants, captains, majors and generals that should be allowed to vote then? Any man ready to die for his country should have a say in what he is dying for – and in a ideal world, more of a say than those twice his age unwilling to sacrifice half as much for the polity. The world is not ideal, however, and I am more than happy to settle for all 18 years having the vote.
Besides, this really is an academic question anyways. Voter turnout for the 18-21 age group is too lowe to be the source of this nation’s problems.
You’re getting sidetracked Greer, here Jonah Goldberg (in 10/8/10 column) gives an example of the dangers of youthful misplaced enthusiasm:
” ….. “In America,” Oscar Wilde observed, “the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.” A Pew poll released last week showed that a third of young voters didn’t even know the Democrats controlled Congress. But such surveys are a snapshot. As events change so do our views. Whatever motivated so many young voters in 2008, far fewer of them are similarly motivated today to vote to let Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi keep their jobs.
A recent “Rock the Vote” survey found that the Democratic Party’s advantage among young people has been cut in half. Obama sees it as proof that his most ardent supporters are less serious today than when they thought he could walk on water. But for those of us outside the White House bunker, it’s proof that at least some of them are finally getting serious at all.”
Before I got tired of trying to find exact numbers it appears that 18 to 20 year olds would be about 2 or 3% of the electorate.