Richard Fernandez sees pragmatism and cynical necessity in some of Obama’s recent oratory — particularly in his decision to illuminate tribal demarcations:
Why has the president, faced with a revolt from the middle, decided to go left? Tactically because the middle was lost to the president months ago; perhaps his strategists have given up hope of recovering them in the short time left before the polls. Maybe they think there is more to gain by going hard left and mobilizing the faithful than by trying to attract moderate voters who are beyond reach now anyway. By energizing the true believers it may be possible to limit the extent of the Republican gains. Going on the defense often means shortening lines. At least, it is a kind of Final Protective Fire.
There are strategic arguments for going hard left also. By ramping up rhetoric and emphasizing the contradictions between the party faithful and the dull proletariat, President Obama may have calculated that a program of “better fewer, but better” holds the best hope for longer-term advance. The Democratic Party will be devastated in November. This creates an opportunity for the Left within it, because they more than others are likely to hold fast within its walls. Although it may be entirely coincidental, the failure of Hope and Change is reminiscent of the immense failures in Lenin’s programs which by the early 1920s had forced him to scale back his ambitions. As Marxist.com recalls:
In 1921, under the pressure of the millions of peasant small proprietors, the workers’ state had been forced to retreat from the path of Socialist planning and industrialisation, in order to procure grain for the starving workers in the cities. The old Civil War practice of requisitioning grain had to be abandoned to placate the peasants, whose support was necessary if the workers’ state was not to succumb to the reaction. A free market in grain was re-established, and concessions were made to the peasants and small traders, while the main levers of economic power (nationalised banks and heavy industries, state monopoly of foreign trade) remained in the hands of the workers’ state.
This retreat which had been forced upon the Bolsheviks was not to create a Socialist, classless society but to save millions from starving to death, to re-build a shattered economy and to provide houses and elementary schools – i.e. to drag Russia into the twentieth century.
Although apparently forced to give ground on the economy, Lenin considered it a mere expedient. His long-term answer to the problem of “false consciousness” was to create a cadre of motivated fanatics who would persist until the long-term goals had been achieved. As Lenin put it:
We have been bustling for five years trying to improve our state apparatus, but it has been mere bustle, which has proved useless in these five years, of even futile, or even harmful. This bustle created the impression that we were doing something, but in effect it was only clogging up our institutions and our brains.
It is high time things were changed.
We must follow the rule: Better fewer, but better. We must follow the rule: Better get good human material in two or even three years than work in haste without hope of getting any at all.
I know that it will be hard to keep to this rule and apply it under our conditions. I know that the opposite rule will force its way through a thousand loopholes. I know that enormous resistance will have to be put up, that devilish persistence will be required, that in the first few years at least work in this field will be hellishly hard. Nevertheless, I am convinced that only by such effort shall we be able to achieve our aim; and that only by achieving this aim shall we create a republic that is really worthy of the name of Soviet, socialist, and so on, and so forth.
“Better fewer, but better” is a strategy that has either allowed elite parties to survive in lean times or condemned them to marginalization. Which it will be depends on how things turn out.
Fernandez is right about to whom Obama is trying to appeal — though I think he gives the President too much credit for the why: Obama craves adulation and cheers, and in the midst of an electorate in revolt, the President is seeking out applause (and intellectual validation) from the last group left that might reasonably rally into giving it to him.
I think this less a consciously cynical electoral ploy (though it acts as an electoral ploy for the very reasons Fernandez discusses) than it is the effort of a long-pampered and entitled narcissist to hold on to a perception of self as an intellectual giant that even he must be beginning to question, given the failures of his policies.
From both perspectives, his propensity to place blame on everyone other than himself makes perfect sense; but when Obama appeals to the leftists he considers the only legitimate cultured intellectual class in the West — and he does so at the expense of diminishing the “scared” bitter clingers whose tribalism blinds them to healing like of progressivism — he is doing so because only they have the capacity to understand his greatness and brilliance, and it is these things Obama needs reinforced, not some neutral measure of the effectiveness of his policies (which analysis is always necessarily tainted anyway, given the institutionalized racism, nativism, etc., of those who trouble said policies).
this would make TWO rings of fire posts today!
that’s value
And in two weeks, we’ll be fire-ring a bunch of Congressmen and Senators!
Damn sockpuppet.
I appreciate Fernando’s in depth analysis of Obama’s strategic gaffes, but it still boils down to Obama being an overly emotional idiot who says things that he thinks are cool, or funny, or negro, depending on the setting. And he is wrong on all counts every time.
Democrats are not tribal? Pleeeeeaaassse, spare me that nonsense.
Happy, the world gets burned to a cinder. A select group of elect get saved transported by aliens to a distant new world. And of course the elect are all progressives.
The end.
[…] Goldstein picks up on that, and applies a little pop psychology: I think this less a consciously cynical electoral ploy (though it acts as an electoral ploy for […]
Meanwhile, In other news: Hubba hubba!
http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/19/russian-spy-anna-chapman-poses-in-lingerie-with-gun-for-moscows-maxim/
– Yada, yada, yada. In the end, lacking a Stalin-esque fist of control and a commensurate firing squad, there’s nothing else the Left can do except stand around with their ideological shirts hanging out, Mei tai’s in their hands, and watch the crash and burn, as bumbblefuck takes the usual ‘hard line’ that will just anger the plebes even further.
– May be narcissistically satisfying, looking down his elitist nose at all the ‘lessors’, but they will be his undoing just the same.
I wonder what will happen when he loses the last audience? When the last group is pissed off because he threw away all of the potential and walks away from the man behind the lectern? When it finally kicks in that he can’t ever get the crowd back and the janitor who is sweeping the floor is wearing an MP# layer?
Then what? Attention must be paid?
I loved this:
I’m reminded of those magic-eye posters that looked like visual static when you focused on the surface of the poster but that revealed a 3D dolphin or some such if you learned to focus beyond the surface.
Some people couldn’t make it work for them; but then there was the edition of Glenn Beck’s Fusion magazine that featured a magic-eye thingy on the back cover. Stare and refocus though I might, I couldn’t get the image to resolve.
On account of there was nothing there. That was the gag: they just wanted to make you try for awhile and fail, with all of the requisite hilarity ensuing.
Which, with the delusions of the Left, you’ve got people claiming to see the dolphin when there’s nothing there. And if you can’t see it, you dullard, then you need to STFU and take our excellent council.
Yes, I know: it’s the naked emperor analogy in another form, but about whom was that story told if not about the ever-present self-styled elite?
I think this less a consciously cynical electoral ploy … than it is the effort of a long-pampered and entitled narcissist to hold on to a perception of self as an intellectual giant that even he must be beginning to question, given the failures of his policies.
This is how you differentiate the clinical narcissist from the merely fanatical: the narcissist will never, EVAR, conclude that his premises, methods, or goals were wrong. It will always be the fault of sinister or malicious forces who thwarted him, preventing his grand plan from coming to fruition.
Obama is not questioning a damn thing. He might switch to other methods to get what he wants, and he’ll resort to lashing out in narcissistic rage when he sees his goal slip through his fingers, but he is psychologically incapable of recognizing any of his own errors.
Natural extension of the cult of personality.
This Noemie Emery article is just all kinds of fun.
Sorry. I’m still not seeing Barak Obama as being in any way, shape, or form even remotely concerned about accomplishing squat concerning the business of the Republic.
He’s here to fuck things up – to end the Establishment. All that’s left to see now is if the hapless Republicans can (will?) even recognize, much less deal with, the concrete and exquisitely crafted Easter Egg that has been constructed across the entire regulatory framework of the Federal beauracracy over the last two years.
Bankrupt? Check.
Hopelessly confused and cowed business/banking sector? Check.
Critical shortages in energy/mineral/food (best read up on fertilizer/farm machinery/rail capacity, folks…) stocks? Oh hell yes.
A Western world turned on its collective philosophical head? Big check on that – watching Angela Merkel decry Multikulti brought to mind strong memories of “…. it’s a COOK BOOK!”.
Barak Obama has had a tremendously successful presidency, so far, in his eyes. His team thinks so. Let’s be honest – he’s the only judge that will ever matter to him. And there’s only a few hundred of them; his team, that is. The folks who crafted Obamacare. Who had the paperwork ready when it was time to nationalize manufacturing. Who just happened to have 2500 pages of financial reform on hand when it should have been humanly impossible to fuck up what was left of capitalism. They rose to the occasion. The committed people who have put in place regulations that will triple the cost of concrete and triple the cost of or even prevent outright any public work project objected to by… anyone.
The rest of those dumb fuckers who voted for Obama are busy blowing what’s left of their credibility by losing Patriot Trivial Pursuit (Kindergarten round).
Have a fine day.
Why isn’t The One triangulating?
I don’t think that he intends to give up power.
November 2nd is going to be a blowout, but November 3rd is when the fun starts.