Let’s begin with the snobbish paternalism and rank condescension that tries to present itself as a kind of championing of the masses. First, Obama, 2007, the “other race speech”: On “poor” people: “We can’t expect them to have all the skills they need to work. They may need help with basic skills, how to shop, how to show up for work on time, how to wear the right clothes, how to act appropriately in an office.”
Compare with Michelle Obama and Lisa Cericola, Supermarket Shopping 101:
Before you can cook for your family, you need to know how to grocery shop for foods you’ll use. From how to make a list to making healthy choices, consider this your go–to cheat sheet […] You’ve got your list, you’ve got your cart – let’s get shopping! Focus on the perimeter of the store first – that’s typically where you’ll find the produce, meat and dairy sections, which stock fresh, whole foods that should comprise the bulk of your shopping list. Then navigate your cart toward other essentials, like canned goods (beans and tomato sauce), grains (pasta, rice, boxed couscous or quinoa mixes) and frozen foods (fruits, vegetables, seafood).
Steer clear of the cookie, snack and soda aisle until after you’ve collected everything on your list – at that point, your cart should be full, which might make you feel less tempted to buy things you don’t need. By always heading to the essential areas of the store first, you’ll train yourself to form a shopping pattern that’s healthier […]
Note the themes here: the workaday world of the typical 99%ers is filled with difficult, often exotic challenges and potential distractions, making the United States, with all its supposed freedoms a very difficult place to navigate effectively and efficiently. So while the Republicans with their social darwinist mindset would have you believe you should sink or swim on your own out there in the competitive wilderness of a supposedly free peoples — you are either the Grizzly or the salmon, and that’s just the way the free market works — the progressives understand your fears, and moreso, with a kindly guiding hand, will help remove social barriers such as choice and competition and all the burdens therein that come with the destructive mythos of “liberty” and self reliance and rugged individualism; and that’s because while in theory things like competition can prove occasional useful, for the vast majority of the masses, people who’ve been public school-educated and whose idea of high culture is the monthly splurge at Red Lobster (complete with an appetizer!), liberty is in fact a burden, requiring of them a level of engagement and knowledge and attention that can distract from the kind of quality of life and inbuilt stability a fundamentally transformed United States promises to provide. Republicans want you alone and frightened; progressives understand that it takes a village, conveniently located in the District of Columbia, and flush with enough of your tax revenues to distribute wealth where it needs to go. For our own good.
Now. Compare the above mentioned themes to those presented by Obama in his now infamous “you didn’t build that” speech — which is itself built on sentiments plucked right from the academy and offered up for public consumption by political hopefuls like Elizabeth Warren (whom. I prefer to refer to by her Native Cherokee name, Nibbles on Scones):
If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be ’cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, that — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
At first glance, we have variations on a theme: to be successful, you need help. And from the progressive perspective, that help comes from the government, be in through picking and choosing winners and loser; government providing the roads and essential services on which commerce relies; regulation on free enterprise to even the playing field (for “fairness,” naturally, though a “fairness” of outcomes); or shopping tips to become a successful parent committed to providing your family with healthy and nutritious meals — above and against all that capitalism and the “competitive foods” that seek to thwart the best of governmental intentions to mold your body and soul into something that is far more aesthetically pleasing than the blob of ill-dressed goo you’d likely turn yourself into left to your own misinformed devices.
But look closer: While the Obamas are busy promoting the idea that less economically successful people in the United States find themselves in a state of societal disconnect because of systemic racial and economic inequality, along with a general lack of basic skills that any freely available public education should have provided them — remember, we’re told these downtrodden and oppressed folk can’t grocery shop, can’t dress themselves properly, can’t figure out ways to show up for work on time, can’t speak clearly and articulately, and so on — at the same time, Obama wants to have it both ways: not being able to grocery shop or dress yourself properly or speak or find a way to show up for work on time doesn’t make you less smart than those who’ve managed some degree of success and self sufficiency! “There are a lot of smart people out there” who presumably suffer from basic deficiencies in their life’s CV, eg., an inability to figure out how to dress themselves appropriately. And of course, these very same people, many of them, haven’t been outworked. “There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there” who, but for being unable to grocery shop, dress themselves, speak, or get themselves to work on time, would be every bit as successful as those who have managed the basic skills.
— Meaning, the problem is not with those who can’t master basic skills — after all, the government has yet to step in and provide them with the kinds of knowledge that parents, churches, or basic human observation haven’t been able to disseminate efficiently; but rather, the problem is with all those uppity successful people who rub your faces in their ability to shop and dress and show up on time and express themselves clearly.
As if they were able to figure all that out themselves.
In short, Obama condescends and infantilizes, while at the same time fluffing up the esteem of those he sees as helpless drones by pretending that their ignorance and lack of drive is somehow noble — and the success of others somehow unfair and based on a degree of privilege stemming from some unmentioned injustice and form of soft oppression over those whom they’ve out achieved.
As if wealth or success is a zero-sum game. As if there is a finite pool of wealth and innovation available to human kind, and it’s being hoarded by the haves and therefore illegitimately kept from the have nots — despite the fact that all Americans, those who succeed and those who haven’t, have relied at some point or another on a government road, or good teacher, or a Pell Grant.
And that’s not fair.
This is the basic mixed message of the socialist/progressive world view — paternalistic in its rationalizations, envy-driven in its emotional appeals.
These are the Obamas words. And they represent a window into the ideology that drives them and has always driven them.
Once you see how they operate in concert — even as they ignore the self-contradictory logic that allows them to be conjoined for rhetorical effect — you can see the soft seams that hold together the Utopian message of the Marxist / Communist message.
And once you see those seams, you should work to tear at them with your teeth and nails until the fluff drops out, and the emptiness of the entire endeavor is fully revealed.
Red Lobster! Dog whistle!!!
The President and FLOTUS on…wait for it…the Forty-Seven Percent.
Using pretzel logic.
It’s pledge drive time at the community radio station again, which means another round of “Annoy a Socialist,” hosted by Squid. This week, the magic phrase is, “That’s a very convincing argument, if you’re trying to rationalize taking away other people’s hard-earned wealth.”
It’s actually rather sad, how very ill-prepared my proggie acquaintances are to cope with any sort of counterargument. They spend all day listening to Amy Goodman and Rachel Maddow, and haven’t the foggiest idea that people might disagree with them for very good, very real reasons, and not just because they’re ignernt racist h8ers. Oh, how quickly they resort to childish “Nuh-uh!” retorts, and beat a hasty retreat to go talk to somebody else.
I’d feel sorry for them, if not for the fact that they’re trying to put me in chains. That little detail exhausts my sympathies right quick.
I just realized that the way the Left treats their voting herds is very similar to the way they treat our servicemen.
— Poor souls with no other options? Check.
— Products of dysfunctional families who’ve followed this pattern for generations? Check.
— Lost little lambs who need our support? Check.
— Liable to snap at any moment and rain hot death on their neighbors? Check.
— The very best that America has to offer; the pinnacle of our culture? Check.
Uncanny.
Poor people ‘[n]eed help with basic skills, how to shop, how to show up for work on time, how to wear the right clothes, how to act appropriately in an office.”
I learned all this stuff from my family. By watching functional people get up at 0-dark-thirty every morning to go to work whether they wanted to or not. By being taught to do my chores whether I wanted to or not. By being made to go to school every day whether I wanted to go or not and to do my assignments on time and do them well.
NONE OF THIS REQUIRED MONEY. My parents learned to be functional by being raised in functional homes, and my grandparents learned by watching their parents. Most of my ancestors were dirt poor. None of them learned to function from a government bureaucrat. None of them took handouts. None of them thought they were entitled to jack. And many of them were driven out of the country at gunpoint by the government.
It is exactly true that people who were not raised in functional homes need to be taught to function in the workplace. But they’ll learn a helluvua lot more from the people in their own towns and cities, people who mentor them one-on-one. (Retirees! They know how and they’ve got the time! Our church sends ’em out by the fistful to help such folk!)
The bureaucrats have screwed things up beyond all recognition, and they’re not held accountable by any metric or standard. If the poor are getting poorer, it’s because those tasked to help them have FAILED.
Look, if the Democrat party depends on the poor to vote for them, then it’s not really in their best interest that the poor not be poor anymore.
We’re all noble savages now.
Except those successful assholes.
Uh-oh, we’re in dutch now. Look’in ugly and ride’in dirty…
Here’s a clue Althouse, if you’re still undecided at this point, after four years of Obama and six years of campaigning by Romney, you’re to stupid to know ugly when you see it.
Do yourself a favor and pick someone, ya dishonest hack.
This “o” goes up there…
Do us a favor Ann,
DON’T VOTE!
This week Insty linked his column on why everybody must pay personal income tax. Now, Althouse.
So much for Libertarianism.
LB, just saw that and about puked. I don’t know how you could possibly vote for this idiot, unless you are completely in the tank for the democratic party. Has she not been paying attention ? Has she learned nothing? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expected a different result- Althouse idiotically voted for the “Good Man” in 2008 – she didn’t get a pass but hell, plenty of allegedly smart people were fooled. This time, she’s not fooled- no idea what her argument FOR Obama would be.
I dropped Reynolds a line about her idiocy and asked him if he’d stop letting her guest post. If we want idiocy with a side squishiness, we can find her blog. Not that we would want to.
It is exactly true that people who were not raised in functional homes need to be taught to function in the workplace. But they’ll learn a helluvua lot more from the people in their own towns and cities, people who mentor them one-on-one.
Yes, this. I don’t think you understand the level of dysfunction in the lives of those who come from the urban underclass. they don’t know how to clean their house. THey don’t know how to pick up garbage (they’ll throw it on the street). Because of the racism or something. Teenagers bringing up babies for a few generations has resulted in complete societal breakdown. They don’t know how to do … anything. The poor – when they came from “families” used to know the basics – how to cook. How to keep their house orderly.
It’s completely gone now – at least in the cities.
This essay was excellent. I think it puts forth a pivotal argument.
Let me second dicentra. I learned about work from my parents. Not only that, I learned about supervising from my father, since he used to tell me what had happened with the men assigned to him and how he handled it. When I was suddenly thrown into a situation of supervising a bunch of undergrad TAs, I had a base to fall back on. The same thing could be done by retirees to kids who didn’t have what I had. Many of them would be happy to help and it wouldn’t cost a dime of taxpayer money.
Then again, progressives think that anything that didn’t come from government money (i.e. freely given) is less than something coming from government money (i.e. taken at gunpoint). So, volunteerism is okay as long as the government steers it in the correct direction.
Finally, Ann Althouse needs to retire to her fainting couch. The day one cannot use a politicians own words against them is the day in which we may as well appoint them permanently and do away with elections.
Those of you who are pleased with these seemingly exciting new weapons to use in the fight to defeat Obama are losing perspective. You are not thinking about how you look to the people you need to convince. Here’s a clue: You look ugly.
Yet, Obama’s lies, etc don’t seem to bother her one bit.
Got it.
*Yes, this. I don’t think you understand the level of dysfunction in the lives of those who come from the urban underclass. they don’t know how to clean their house. THey don’t know how to pick up garbage *
I guess I see it differently and maybe I’m just a racist- to me, its not that they don’t know how, its that they don’t care. They’re lazy. They can get away with it. They can blame everyone else. They can claim that they’re poor. They can claim they’re disabled. There’s always an excuse and most of the time, the excuse is given to them by the government- its the white man or its the rich or its the Mormons. Jugears is telling them that they’re entitled to the same stuff people who work and know how to function in society have earned. When you have a president and political party who bends over backwards to make excuses for your laziness, while giving you an Obama phone and an EBT card, why would you change your ways?
Charge first requires will. Will requires commitment and desire. These people- and we know who we’re talking about – the lazy poor and the entitlement babies- not just blacks but whites too- will not change unless life becomes so hard for them that they are forced to do so. And its not in the democratic party’s best interest to ever let that happen, even if it requires taking too much from the productive.
Matt – yes there is always an excuse, but there is mostly a disconnect. They don’t understand that by cleaning their yard, and taking in their garbage cans – makes THEIR OWN ENVIRONMENT BETTER. They’re more than happy to enjoy the work YOU did, but fail to notice the work they didn’t do.
Ann, here’s a clue: You look stupid.
Unhelpful much, Godlstein?
I think I see why Althouse (and the rest of the smart set) were fooled into voting Obama in 2008, and why they haven’t learned anything since.
They refuse to hear anything about Obama the man! They don’t want to hear it, and you that do are ugly idiots. Anything about Obama before this second is immaterial, he must judged purely by what he says. Everything else besides that is an illusion they get to choose, wherein one can relax and submit to the hope and change as we move forward. The illusion is theirs, they like it, and anyone that threatens it is rude, uncultured, cruel, stupid, and likely a racist. It’s worse than stealing the innocence from a child.
I don’t think you understand the level of dysfunction in the lives of those who come from the urban underclass.
I spent a couple of summers working in a restaurant at a national park with “white trash,” many of whom did not last very long because they couldn’t handle being chastised by a supervisor or having to follow rules. They’d be scheduled to show up at 6am (they lived on the property, in dorms), and they didn’t have the self-discipline or common sense to NOT stay up until 3am drinking.
It was evident that they didn’t have the emotional fortitude to stand up under the adversity that everyone encounters in a job, weren’t accustomed to being functional, didn’t know how to react to the demands. When fired, they’d often trash the place in a rage.
I guess I see it differently and maybe I’m just a racist- to me, its not that they don’t know how, its that they don’t care. They’re lazy. They can get away with it.
That’s some of it, but don’t underestimate the psychological impediment of “learned helplessness,” which you get by being raised in an out-of-control environment. When you learn that there’s nothing you can do to change things, it’s pretty damned hard to change that attitude. Why pick up the garbage? It doesn’t change things, I don’t feel better, my life still sucks: so expending the energy is exactly useless.
They may not be conscious of their learned helplessness, but it’s still there. I’ve got a touch of it myself from having a narcissist for a father (nothing I did would stop him from being so mean), and I know how it feels to not care if the house is dirty, because cleaning it doesn’t make anything better.
They’re essentially depressives, so why not be drunk or high or both all day long? Nothing matters.
And what happens in those “depressives” who fall for a hopeful tale, get drunk on a vision of an impending improvement in their circumstances, only to learn that that vision was just another lie all along? Yep, that’ll cheer ’em up. ObamaPhones!
Matt, I second what Carin said. I think it’s a matter of pig ignorance more than laziness. Peoples lifestyle is mostly a product of their environment growing up; they hardly ever change what they consider “normal”. I’ve dated (and hastily rejected) upper middle-class young ladies that live in a pig stye, completely unaware covering an entire apartment in dirty cloths, dirty dishes, pizza boxes and soda cans isn’t normal.
I suspect that Ann Althouse will continue to gag on gnats and swallow whole horses as required by the good graces of her social circle so long as she thinks she and her family are sufficiently insulated from the consequences of her foolishness and whimsy.