On the one hand, governments of developed nations micro-regulate every aspect of your life in the interests of “keeping you safe.” If you’re minded to flip a pancake at speeds of more than four miles per hour, the state will step in and act decisively: It’s for your own good. If you’re a tourist from Moose Jaw, Washington will take preemptive action to shield you from the potential dangers of your patio in Arizona.
On the other hand, when it comes to “keeping you safe” from real threats, such as a millenarian theocracy that claims universal jurisdiction, America and its allies do nothing.
Read the hilarious highlights.
It makes perfect sense to the do-gooder mentality to keep you safe from the pitfalls of running in a race; or from the untold horrors of the hot tub; but any potential nuclear threats from the homicidal mullahs of Iran are blithely dismissed with, "We do not believe they have the capability to enrich to the degree to which they now say they are enriching."
Which is to say, stop bothering us with all those doom and gloom warmongering fears about Iran when we have more important things to do to keep you safe from your own foolishness and healthy against your wishes.
What we have here is classic denial of reality via the tried and true method of psychological displacement. Once again we find ourselves dealing with the essentially narcississtic and grandiose motivations of the leftist do-gooders. It is all about THEM. Their need to feel good about themselves; about their "superiority" in knowing what is best for the poor saps who lack their nuanced intelligence.
ShrinkWrapped once wrote about the "dirty little secret" that defines the inner workings of a typical do-gooder leftist zealot:
Defensive rationalizations and intellectualizations are used to keep us from knowing uncomfortable things about ourselves. In the 1960s, in order to avoid any feelings of fear and attendant anxiety over masculinity, the war effort needed to be demonized. The original idea of "speaking truth to power" required minimal bravery. The level of danger the anti-war protesters faced was a tiny fraction of the real danger truly brave people living under brutal governments faced in Eastern Europe, or that our military men faced in Southeast Asia. Yet in order to avoid feeling scared, the war protesters needed to see themselves as bravely facing a quasi-fascist regime (LBJ and then Nixon); our protests were heroic efforts to establish and support peace and justice. In reality , the protests were nothing of the sort and millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians paid the price of our rationalizations. By demonizing the war as based on lies, immoral, imperialistic, etc (which all had a grain of truth but were clearly exaggerations and hardly the exclusive reasons for our involvement in Vietnam) the logic of our defensive edifice required the eventual cut-off of funds to the South Vietnamese, who until the military aid cut-off were more than holding their own.
We see the same kind of rationalization today in the emphasis of the Obama Administration on "fixing" the not-so-broken health care system, while ignoring the very real threat that exists in Iranian pursuit of a nuclear weapon. In this way, Obama and his leftist base can continue to assert their morality and bravery, and fight the "good war" against evil Capitalism, Republicans and white male oppressors. The need to demonize companies like Anthem for daring to raise rates (when they are only already responding to the worthless interventions in the marketplace by these brave, do-gooders is a case in point. Obama has endless patience with the Mullahs, repeatedly offering them incentives and soft-spoken invitations to the negotiating table; yet, he can fiercely stand up to and even threaten any American company that dares to act in its own economic self-interest.
In order to avoid a painful reality out there (or, rather in there), Obama and the left must maintain consistency in their rationalizations about themselves and the world, and are willing to abandon dealing with what really might keep America "safe". In this way, the intrusive, meddling do-gooders of the left can feel morally superior and "continue to support the edifice of rationalizations that have sustained their image of themselves as brave rebels since the glory days of the 1960s."
But their courage actually only extends far enough to allow them to criticize Republicans, conservatives, and capitalists; blaming them for an unsafe world. It would be far too dangerous for them to confront the real threat: those who are determined--no matter what it takes--to obtain the power to destroy our country, its allies and our way of life.
No wonder it is twilight in the West; as the setting sun glints off the metallic shell of Iranian missiles.
This psychological defense mechanism is referred to as "displacement", and it is the psycholgical basis of Bush Derangement Syndrome, as well as the tendency of many to conveniently blame America (and Britain) and Israel for every problem in the world.
One way you can usually tell that psychological displacement is being used is that the emotion being displaced (e.g., anger or fear) is all out of proportion to the reality of the situation. The purpose of displacement is to avoid having to cope with the actual reality. Instead, by using displacement, an individual is able to still experience his or her anger, but it is directed at less threatening targets than the real cause. In this way, the individual does not have to be responsible for the consequences of his/her anger and feels more safe--even thought that is not the case.
Psychological displacement explains the remarkable and sometimes lunatic appeasement of Islamic fundamentalism that we have seen--unfortunately not only in America; and not only by the Obama Administation. It explains all the fiddling around and useless diplomacy that must make the Mullahs roar with laughter at the naivete of the West. It explains why there is more emphasis on protecting the "rights" of terrorists, Mirandizing them, rather than holding them militarily accountable for their actions and extracting information from them that will save lives.
But, American lives are in danger because of a health care system that is imperfectand within which, people die of diseases that cannot be cured and health care that they choose not to seek; not because the Iranians are steadfastly and determinedly pusuing their dreams of Islamic world domination.
Don't you feel safer? Aren't you pleased as punch that people who have pancake races are being prevented from the risk of slipping in the rain? Aren't you happy that Harry Reid is going to force health care reform down the throats of those evil Republicans in the Senate if he can; for your own good and the future of our country? Isn't it wonderful that Obama believes he can suspend the laws of supply and demand and eliminate that nasty profit motive from health care delivery? Don't you just feel soooo relieved that Robert "Baghdad Bob" Gibbs has assured us that the Iranians are not anywhere near being able to nuke Israel, Europe, or anybody they want?
I know I am!
And, isn't "twilight" just some romantic movie about "good" vampire predators protecting foolish and unsuspecting humans from the "bad" variety?
What's to worry?
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