Ezra Klein, at the Netroots conference in 2008, talks about the the deceptive strategy underlying ObamaCare.
Bringing me to an important point about these types that isn’t much discussed: for all their talk about community, they literally step over each other to lay claim the certain ideas or arguments — and in fact are so intent on making sure their intellectual fellow travelers recognize them for their unique genius that they often discuss these thing if not directly out in the open, then on special “Journolists” or “Netroots panels” or things of that sort. Which is to say, their supposed selflessness, like everything else about them, is a pose. They adore adoration.
Prairie Fire? Thanks for giving us your handbook, fellows. Rules for Radicals? Same. Cloward-Piven? Ditto.
Pro tip: if you want to bring down a country and fundamentally transform it, take a page from Obama’s book and very carefully have everything you may have uttered in public either buried or diffused by carefully planted misinformation or plausible deniability. Then have a compliant and sympathetic media complex available to you to run cover when some little bit of sinister information makes its way out into the public discourse.
Allowing yourself to be filmed while noting that for the Greater Good you’re going to have to engage in a program of lies, distortions, and misinformation? That’s the kind of shit that comes back to bite you in your ass.
Glad I could help.
This was the intent, Jeff, do you think you can change the minds of its supporters by pointing out the underlying goal? THEY SHARE THE GOAL which is why they will be cropping up in droves to ignore this one.
Assuming, of course, “ObamaCare” was even about health care in the first place.
if you want to bring down a country and fundamentally transform it, take a page from Obama’s book and very carefully have everything you may have uttered in public either buried or diffused by carefully planted misinformation or plausible deniability. Then have a compliant and sympathetic media complex available to you to run cover when some little bit of sinister information makes its way out into the public discourse.
Point of order: You forgot to mention having John McCain and Lindsey Graham run interference for you.
Jeff, do you think you can change the minds of its supporters by pointing out the underlying goal? THEY SHARE THE GOAL which is why they will be cropping up in droves to ignore this one.
The true believers, sure. But there are millions — tens of millions — of well-meaning but hopelessly misinformed people in the middle who honestly believe that they’re on the side of wisdom and compassion. Drill it into their heads that they’re supporting a not-very-well-camoflaged path to socialized medicine, and watch their support dry up. And if you at the same time offer them membership in an actual reform movement, one which they can feel good about signing on with? The sky’s the limit.
I wonder if all eligible voters in the US registered and actually voted, if the results would be what the left would expect.
Of course I know that by registering those going for public assistance that they are skewing things.
Assuming you can get enough people to care. Which is not at all a given.
Oh, come on Jeff. 2008 was, like, a hundred years ago and shit.
At this point, what difference could it possibly make?
Listening to this little thick-tongue ass makes me physically ill. Why do you want me to be ill? He sounds like a giant busy-body girl in a boy’s body. I want nothing more than to smash his face in. The impulse to control every goddamn thing does make me sick and to do that controlling through government makes me smashing-things mad.
Despising Klein (“thick-tongue ass” doesn’t begin to describe his dishonesty and ignorance), and not liking the ephemera of YouTube, I made a transcript…
//Klein
And I want to make one other point, because I have the beautiful luxury of not working for an organization, thus I don’t have to be diplomatic. The problem, the problem with health reform in this country is that there is a paradox at the center of all public opinion. About 80 to 90 percent want reform. Okay? 80 to 90 percent want to reform health care. 80 to 90 percent are happy with what they have. The normal poll result, “Do you like your individual health care coverage?” 86 percent. That is the average, average across Kaiser, Harris, Gallup, we can go on and on down the line. Time and again, time and again, well meaning good people have gone to folks and said, “You’re scared about losing your health care? Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take it from you and build something new.” And every time we have done that we’ve gotten the hell kicked out of us. And so, today, we’ve had eight, ten, twelve reform battles, all of which have gone nowhere. Every trend we hate continued. We had 35 million uninsured in 1994. Today, 47. We had one ninth of the economy in 1994 being health care. Today, one fifth. At some point you have to win. Not everything, but you have to put winning first, and it has to stop being a question of, “Yes, I would like to sign the insurance companies out of existence with my pen. It would be sweet.” But it has never happened in the history of this country that we have signed a multi-billion dollar industry, employing tens of thousands of people in every district in America, out in one shot. So, the problem is, and I hear what you’re saying, but like, the reason these organizations have done what they’ve done, I think I can list for them in ways they’re not necessarily allowed to, is that, yeah, they have a sneaky strategy, the point of which is to put in place something that over time the natural incentives within its own market move it to single payer.
//end Klein
The ends justify the means, and even 2008 schlep Klein was building that which 2013 master-schlep Klein and his minions are spinning with unbridled fervency.