HUCKSTERS, SCAMS AND FRAUDS

A few recent sampling of the left's "fake, but accurate" mentality:



(Four Block World) (hat tip: OBH)

And, while we are speaking of scams and frauds....here's a doozy:

Rick Duncan” of Colorado Springs was a prominent anti-war activist who claimed to have served in Iraq on three tours of duty AND survived the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. He has now been unmasked as a lying mental patient (via Colorado Springs Gazette with a big hat tip to This Ain’t Hell):

The leader of a statewide veterans group who fought for homeless veterans in Colorado Springs was in the Denver County jail on Wednesday, unmasked as a former psychiatric patient who posed as a wounded Marine officer and 9/11 survivor.

Federal authorities are looking into whether Rick Duncan, whose real name is Richard Glen Strandlof, could have pilfered money he raised in the name of Colorado veterans, said Daniel Warvi of the Colorado Veterans Alliance (CVA), the group that Duncan founded.

“We were all taken aback,” Warvi said.

Strandlof, 31, who invented the name Duncan and claimed he was a former Marine captain and 1997 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, never served in the military and falsely claimed that he was in the Pentagon during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the group said.

Two members of CVA said the group became suspicious of the man they knew as Duncan after discovering inconsistencies in his personal story…The group said it found that Strandlof had been a patient in a mental hospital in Washoe County, Nev., at the time of the roadside bombing in Fallujah, Iraq, that he claimed left him severely wounded.

Read it all and watch the videos at the link. Don't expect scam artists posing as journalists to make a big deal about this, though; they've got more important fish to fry.

I hear a song parody in my head to the tune of "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves"....but I'm rather overwhelmed with work at the moment. Later.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF DENIAL; OR, THE PERILS OF SELF-DELUSION

In a recent article at American Thinker titled, "The Price of Denial is Death", Jed Gladstein writes:

In a recent article in Foreign Policy, Washington Post journalist David Ignatius bewailed his inability to function effectively as a "moderator" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where Islamic officials once again took the opportunity to blame Israel and America for the Arab's failure to create peaceful and prosperous societies.

Ignatius describes himself as "... someone who has spent much of his career trying to operate in the middle of the Middle East conflict and working hard to avoid any appearance of bias..." [Emphasis added.] Without overtly acknowledging it, Ignatius makes it clear that he sympathizes with what he describes as the "rage that is felt across the Muslim world."

Six decades of horrendous violence and murder, a multi-generational effort to destroy the State of Israel, and forty years of worldwide terrorism are insufficient to persuade Ignatius that he has a personal stake in opposing the sociopathic behavior of the Arab Middle East:

"I know a little about talking with our enemies because I have been doing it for many years. Not my enemies, mind you (journalists aren't supposed to have any), but my country's. I talked with the PLO ...Muammar al-Qaddafi. ... Hassan Nasrallah ...(and) Bashar al-Assad ..." [Emphasis added.]

It does no good to dismiss people like Ignatius as "liberals full of blather," as some are wont to do. People like Ignatius must be brought to understand that they are in denial about the truth of what is going on in the world. It is one thing to cherish idealistic beliefs, possess a kindly disposition, and maintain an attitude of humanistic tolerance; it is quite another to project those thoughts and feelings onto people who glorify religious murder and suicide, and then delude yourself into believing that by doing so the impulse to commit such evil acts will disappear.

At the heart of the denial that afflicts people like Ignatius is fear. They are afraid to believe that there are people in the world who embrace evil over good and death over life. Like many people in denial, Ignatius finds it far more comforting to believe that everyone is just like him -- basically well intentioned and occasionally misguided. However, Ignatius is wrong -- just as wrong as wrong can be -- and the whole of human history stands as witness to his error.

Gladstein makes excellent psychological sense, and you should read the whole piece.

The consequences of psychological denial can be seen every day in today's world; and particularly in the minds of the political left and the Democrats. All you have to do is watch these intellectual and moral giants in action for even a brief moment and you likely will come away with the sense that something is terribly wrong with them. They are like posturing peacocks who strut around acting like they are little gods and goddesses, oblivious to the fact that others perceive them as fools and clowns (Pelosi and Reid come to mind). As for the peacock-in-chief, the broader public have not yet caught onto his tenuous relationship with truth and reality because they are besotted with his rhetoric and they want to believe in his godliness so very much in these troubled times.

Just yesterday, I had a brief discussion with a co-worker about the rising deficit and how Obama has taken it to stratospheric heights, unheard of in history. Their response? "Well, it wasn't his fault; he inherited it" quickly followed by, "But I know my President will fix it and everything will come out all right!" This was said with no hint of sarcasm, just simple adoration. This was a man who, in many ways, I tend to respect.

But that is one of the many incredibly wonderful aspects of psychological denial: it cuts off one's connection to reality, as well as from one's own congnitive and rational process.

In the recesses of their own minds, many who deny reality are able to convince themselves that they are actually "reality-based". One might justifiably ask them why they have an almost obsessive need to aggressively tout their connection to reality, like some sort of celebrity name-dropper expecting to increase his stature in the eyes of the world: "Oh, by the way, did you know that I'm reality-based?" It gives you your first clue that they are trying to compensate because they understand on some level that reality is actually in the rearview mirror of their "progressive" minds .

Sadly for them, just because one repeatedly claims a close connection to the Big R, does not prove anything one way or the other; nor does it absolve the boaster of providing the requisite evidence to back up their claim. Feelings won't do, I'm afraid; though it is often to those arguments of emotion that the denier will ultimately resort when impeded in his quest to avoid reality.

As a psychiatrist, I would be the last person to suggest that even a primitive and immature psychological defense mechanism like denial didn't have some positive results for the individuals who use it. Obviously, if it resulted in the outright death or extinction of the person using it, denial would probably not last long as a viable strategy in the real world; nor would it be particularly helpful for the species as a whole.

The truth is that frequently denial works--at least for a short while--and that is why it is so often resorted to in extremis.

Some positive consequences of psychological denial include:

• In the short-term, psychological denial can help a person maintain their sanity--which would be threatened by awareness of a painful truth or reality
• In the short-term, denial can help a person function day to day
• In the short-term, denial can prevent a person from having to acknowledge painful thoughts, feelings or behavior and help them maintain a world view threatened by an unacceptable reality or truth

The operative word in all of the above is "in the short-term." In the short-term, even the unhealthiest of defenses--such as denial, projection, paranoia-- may be creative, healthy, comforting, and coping. And, while their use may strike observers as downright peculiar at times, in the short-term, they may be transiently adaptive.

In fact, psychological denial is a way to integrate one's experience by providing a variety of filters for pain and mechanisms for self-deception. It creatively rearranges the sources of conflict the individual faces so that the conflict becomes manageable.

To some extent, all psychological defenses ultimately function to deny reality. Psychological displacement--the mechanism that underlies Bush Derangement Syndrome as one example--as a way of avoiding dealing with a really threatening and/or painful truth by focusing on a less threatening object. In fact, displacement is sort of a "higher functioning" type of projection. Scapegoating--which includes anti-semitism and various forms of racism and genocide--is a convenient way to displace one's anger (because you are afraid of retaliation from the real object of your anger) onto someone who doesn't frighten you. It was much easier to blame Bush--or America or the Jews--than it was to confront the amoral, death-loving, murdering Islamists who are willing to destroy all of civilization to achieve their ends. As Han Solo says, "Let the Wookie win", because they tend to pull your arms out of its socket when they lose.

Hence Gladstein is correct when he says that this sort of denial is done out of fear. For psychological displacement to work, a person has to project his or her own ideals into someone who clearly does not possess them; rendering them less threatening and "just like us!" (and therefore not to be feared.

One could argue that President Bush did a similar thing by suggesting that people of the world, particularly the Middle East, all want political freedom--but Bush's argument, I suggest, makes a hell of a lot more sense than the one that proposes that all the people of the world (including evey terrorist, dictator, murderer and thug of any variety) are really nice guys underneath; and are simply misunderstood and in need a little kindness and love. Bush's argument has concrete evidence to support it--that in almost all cases when individuals are given the choice, they choose freedom for themselves. OTOH, Gladstein correctly points out that the "Kumbayah Hypothesis" (as I refer to it) has all of human history against it.

Let's consider some of the negative consequences of psychological denial:

• In the longer-term, denial requires a continued compromises with reality to maintain the pretense that "Everything is fine!" or "If only X would happen, everything would be fine!" Eventually, delusional thinking, along with paranoia and its inevitable conspiracy theories begin to take the place of rational thought in those who deny reality for long periods of time. (see all the 9/11 conspiracy theorists for examples in our own country. See here and here for some examples in the Muslim world, which is rife with conspiracies and which could not exist as a cohesive society without them).

• The denier must then place the blame for the unacceptable reality on someone else and that leads to increased conflict between those who are in denial and those who aren't. Efforts to maintain their denial consumes them and will lead them to escalate their anger and rage as their denial becomes untenable and ever more obvious.

• The denier will begin distort language and logic to rationalize and justify their behavior(examples of this are too numerous to mention, but I have discussed it here , here and here) . Eventually, cognitive strategies and rational argument will be abandoned altogether by the denier, because those strategies are not sustainable and are unable to convince others; at which point the person in denial will simply refer to his feelings or emotions as the sole justification.

• The denier will feel justified in acting out against those who threaten the peacefulness of their fantasy (check out the "peacefulness" and "reasonable" slogans chanted at most antiwar rallies these days). Check out, for example, the attacks and attempts to silence authors like Mark Steyn because his book , America Alone, discusses the genocidal demographic trajectory of Europe as they refuse to acknowledge or deal with the reality of Islamic immigration.

[NOTE: Considering the fact that Europe has taken this track before in recent memory, Steyn is more of a Delphic oracle, rather than the genocidal maniac he is being portrayed as by those who would also deny reality. Nevertheless, his former Canadian Inquisitors--which were laughingly known as a "Human Rights Commission" were ready and willing to find him guilty--without benefit of trial --until public opinion intervened and stopped the madness. But here is something that was said at the time:

While freedom of expression must be recognized as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy, the Commission strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and indeed any racialized community in the media, such as the Maclean’s article and others like them, as being inconsistent with the values enshrined in our human rights codes. Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism.

So in effect the Ontario "Human Rights" Commission, the world in labiaplasty jurisprudence, have decided that, even though they don't have the guts to hear the case, they might as well find us guilty. Ingenious! After all, if the federal Human Rights Commission hadn't been so foolish enough to drag Marc Lemire to trial, their bizarre habits of posting their own hate messages using telecommunications fraud and identity theft would never have come to light. If they'd simply skipped the trial and declared Mr Lemire guilty anyway, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in.

So, having concluded they couldn't withstand the heat of a trial, the OHRC cut to the chase and gave us a drive-thru conviction. Who says Canada's "human rights" racket is incapable of reform? As kangaroo courts go, the Ontario branch is showing a bit more bounce than the Ottawa lads.

For more on the etiology of this kind of PC, multicultural thinking from Canada and Europe, I recommend this excellent article which analyzes the origins of this sort of behavior in places like Europe: "Fear Masquerading as Intolerance").

• Problem solving and decision-making will deteriorate as the entire focus of energy becomes the maintenance of the denial. In place of rational alternatives, excessive emotionality in general; and specifically anger and rage escalate toward those who are "blamed" for the reality that does not conform to the denier's worldview. (consider the lack of any specific ideas in the Democratic party's agenda; or it's reflex negativity toward any substantive position or any compromise offered to them.

• In the end, interactions with those in denial are characterized by the denier's frequent smugness; sense of superiority; arrogance; belittlement of alternative views; and undiluted hatred toward anyone or any idea that questions their worldview.

• Finally, in the long-term, denial will always bring great harm to the individual using it and all who happen to be in his sphere of influence. It may lead to his death or many deaths when practiced by groups or larger societies. It will certainly leads to all sorts of dysfunction and destructiveness; even if--for a brief time--the denial gave the individual or group a sense of calm or control over their world because it blocked out the forces that threatened to upend that world.
The Democratic party's early consensus on the Iraq war varied from day to day. Initially they were "for it before they were against it (look at the record); Then it was ("Victory is not an option") and Harry Reid's famous "The Iraq war is lost"; next: the Surge can't possibly work; then, the Surge isn't working. When it became clear the Surge was working, their response was, so what? Now, of course, if confronted they will reluctantly admit that the Surge actually worked, but they are so set on "undoing" all that Bush accomplished in the War on Terror, that it is likely they will ultimately snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Never have so many been willing to deny so much reality!

Any success that was accomplished under a Republican is an unacceptable reality for them, thus they must distort it; and even make that success a crime, in order to maintain their own fragile sense of self.

Every person in denial has a hidden psychological agenda--which, in these examples, is nothing less than the continued humiliation of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the Republicans, and America so that they can continue to shore up their own self-esteem.

Note that even after they have won the White House, their dysfunction continues.

They pride themselves on "speaking Truth to Power", but at the White House correspondents' dinner the other night, who were they denigrating with their humor? President Obama? The Democrats in power? No, they were still harping on the past Administration which has become the convenient scapegoat for their own irresponsibility, incompetence, and aversion to reality.

Their rhetoric is always designed to obfuscate and deny objective reality --which interestingly is a concept they don't even believe in to begin with (or, they believe in it until it become threatening then they seek refuge behind postmodern political rhetoric). The motivation for their continual Bush/Republican bashing is simple: they have no real ideas of their own (except the same one my teen daughter and her friends have: spend lots and lots of money without concern about where it comes from or who pays the bills. I can understand the teens--they are children still and irresponsibility is their default. They will grow out of it with patience. But the Obama Adminsitration is supposedly composed of adults who should know better). Unfortunately, they are as irresponsible as it is possible to be as adults.

As the real world presses in on them, their voices of the left will become ever more shrill and hysterical; their rage at the past will escalate (because dysfunction always escalates). They will look for--and find--new, improved scapegoats. The previous Administration is just the beginning. They will have to scapegoat big business, small business, Wall Street, and capitalism itself, to maintain their economic delusions; and they will have to scapegoat Israel and the Jews along with the previous administration, to be able to continue to maintain their delusion that Islamic terrorists are simply misunderstood citizens of the world, who given the chance to idolize Barack Obama will enthusiastically embrace this Messiah who transcends faith and focuses his largesse upon them.

It's been a while since most of the minions of the left bothered to argue their points logically; nor do they want to debate at all. They simply loudly denounce any idea or person who threatens their ideology or their god in the White House; or deliberately and with the ruthless finesse of all tyrants and thugs, simply attempt to silence all dissenting opinions.

9/11 did not wake them up; rather it forced them to openly move toward what they have supported surreptitiously all along--the elimination of free speech in the name of political correctness and multiculturalism; a dictatorship where the pseudo-intellectual, politically correct priesthood rule; and complete control over the lives of others (for their own good, of course!). Why should they waste a crisis, when they can use it to implement their ideology with the least muss and fuss?

Since their long-range objectives happen to parallel those of the Islamic terrorists, they care not that their behavior enables and encourages the terrorist's agenda. They blithely denounce America and the principles of freedom and democracy out of one side of their mouth, while remaining convinced that their actions are patriotic and are representative of "true" American values.

Once they considered it patriotic to dissent (when Bush was in the White House); now, of course, any dissent must be labeled at once for the racism and sexism and hate that it represents.

Their outrage at Republicans or Israel conveniently obscures the reality that we are at war with an implacable enemy that wants to kill us all.

That's what denial is all about. It allows--nay, it encourages-- the most blatant contradictions in thinking; and the individual does not ever have to account for those contradictions or take responsibility for them because they don't even perceive them! Facts,shmacts.

The left pretends their behavior is motivated from" love" or "peace" or "patriotism"; but these are only words they use to rationalize their actions to themselves, which often exemplify exactly the opposite. Their self-deception and denial is simply stunning in its sweeping grandiosity and self-righteousness betrayal of the good.

When psychological denial distorts or obscures reality, people are far more likely to make the wrong choices and ignore the serious problems; they are more likely to avoid the difficult decisions then blame others when things don't come out perfectly.

Even in politics--perhaps especially in politics, reality and truth matter.

As Gladstein notes, "Six decades of horrendous violence and murder, a multi-generational effort to destroy the State of Israel, and forty years of worldwide terrorism are insufficient to persuade Ignatius that he has a personal stake in opposing the sociopathic behavior of the Arab Middle East...."

Unfortunately, Ignatius is only one of many on the political left who have taken refuge in denial. And the consequences of their denial are going to be devastating....

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.” 1984 (The definition of " Doublethink")

A MUSHROOMING PROBLEM

[More Cartoons by Steve Breen ]

[Blogging will be light because of pressing matters at work this week.]

MEN (AND WOMEN) TO MATCH MY MOUNTAINS

Mark Steyn has written a bitingly brilliant piece in which he dissects the idea that conservatism is over:

Well, of course it is. Everyone from James Carville to Colin Powell says so. “The Republican party is in deep trouble,” General Powell told some group willing to pay him serious money to deliver this kind of incisive insight. “Americans do want to pay taxes for services. Americans want more government in their lives, not less.”

Whether or not they want it, they’re certainly going to get it. And if you like big government now, just think how big it’ll be once both parties are fully signed up to the concept....

One of Powell’s more famous utterances was his rationale, after the 1991 Gulf War, for declining to involve the U.S. military in the Balkans: “We do deserts, we don’t do mountains.”

So I have no great regard for Powell’s strategic thinking, at home or abroad. As the general sees it, the Republican party ought to be a “big tent”: Right now, the tent is empty, with only a few “mean spirited” and “divisive” talk-radio hosts chewing the limbs off live kittens while gibbering to themselves. By comparison, over in the Democrat tent, they’ve got blacks, gays, unions, professors, Ben Affleck: diversity on parade.

In fact, the GOP’s tent has many poles: It has social conservatives, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, national-security hawks. These groups do not always agree: The so-cons resent the libertarians’ insouciance on gay marriage and abortion. The libertarians don’t get the warhawks’ obsession with thankless nation-building in Islamist hellholes. A lot of the hawks can’t see why the fiscal cons are so hung up on footling matters like bloated government spending at a time of war. It requires a lot of effort to align these various poles sufficiently to hold up the big tent....

Meanwhile, over in the other tent, they celebrate diversity with ruthless singlemindedness: In the Democrats’ parade, whatever your bugbear, government is the answer. Government is the means, government is the end, government is the whole magilla. That gives them a unity of purpose the GOP can never match.

And yet and yet . . .

...the washed-up loser no-hoper side managed to get 46 percent of the vote.

Okay, it’s not 51 percent. But still: Obama’s 53 percent isn’t a big transformative landslide just because he behaves as if it were.

To put it in Powellite terms, the general thinks the Republican party is in the desert, when in fact it’s climbing a mountain.

Conservatism, Steyn reminds us, does do mountains.

And, like Irving Stone's wonderful book which I read many years ago, and which describes the western expansion of the U.S. and the building of American society; conservatism is all about the expansion of freedom and the building of a civilization based on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It doesn't take much character or integrity to desire power over others; nor to get votes and pander to the basest aspects of human nature. It doesn't take much leadership to divide humanity up into various tribes and pit them against one another; or to appease the forces of death and oppression in the world. It doesn't take much intelligence to talk about "social justice" while enslaving the individual mind and delivering injustice on a grand scale.

In short, it doesn't take much self-delusion to con a leftist or a Democrat these days.

It takes free men and women of character, integrity, and purpose; reaching for galaxies to create a country like America. It takes the same kind of people to keep such a country and let it thrive. Instead, we have the morons in Congress--both Democrat and Republican--who increasingly believe that more government, and less freedom, is the answer to every problem.

We still have men and women in this country to match our mountains--and all the prairies, seas and stars; but they are increasingly demonized and vilified by those whose only goal is power over others.

Jonah Goldberg says that what the conservative movement needs is a "hero"; but what he is really talking about is

...a winning salesman or vessel for them, and that person doesn’t seem to exist right now. Again, I’m speaking to my fears, not my hopes.

On the bright side, nobody knew who the hell Barack Obama was the day before yesterday either.

The problem is that no one knows who he is today, either. It sort of reminds me of the scene in Pride and Prejudice where Lydia, after her rather disgraceful behavior with Wickham has brought considerable distress to her family is now married to him at great expense and grief; thoughtlessly prattles on and on about about how, now that she is married, she will get husbands for all her sisters. Elizabeth, the sensible one cannot help exclaiming, "[B]ut I do not particularly like your way of getting husbands!"

I don't particularly like the Democrats sleazy way of getting power back. Conservatism doesn't need a snake-oil salesmen (Lord knows, we have enough of them in Congress already); or an empty vessel waiting to be filled with whatever the liquid du jour happens to be... What it needs is leaders whose characters and vision are able to match the mountains of conservatism's ideal and values.

The Coming American
By Samuel Walter Foss (1858-1911)

Bring me men to match my mountains,
Bring me men to match my plains;
Men to chart a starry empire,
Men to make celestial claims.
Bring me men to match my prairies,
Men to match my inland seas;
Men to sail beyond my oceans,
Reaching for the galaxies.
These are men to build a nation,
Join the mountains to the sky;
Men of faith and inspiration,
Bring me men, bring me men, bring me men!
Bring me men to match my forests,
Bring me men to match my shore;
Men to guard the mighty ramparts,
Men to stand at freedom's door.
Bring me men to match my mountains,
Men to match their majesty;
Men to climb beyond their summits,
Searching for their destiny.
These are men to build a nation,
Join the mountains to the sky,
Men of faith and inspiration,
Bring me men, bring me men, bring me men!

SYRIA AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

Want to know why it would be a pretty good bet that the Syrian government is involved in developing biological weapons of mass destruction?

This, for starters.

For those of you who read this blog regularly, you will recognize the psychological mechanism being used by the Syrian government in its government daily.

Projection.

As I have suggested previously, the manipulation of projection and paranoia are the bread and butter of these Islamic nutjob regimes .

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY !

[Cartoons by Larry Wright]

SHAMELESS APES IN TUXEDOS AND THE MANY CATASTROPHES THAT THEY WILL PRECIPITATE

Victor Davis Hanson asks, "Have you no sense of decency, Ms Pelosi...?"[apparently not]:

The news that Nancy Pelosi was, in fact, briefed on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques as early 2002 should have two repercussions. Her status as a legislative overseer involves more responsibility than was true of the legal advisors who offered opinions that could or could not have been accepted by the administration and those select few in Congress charged with monitoring CIA protocols.

Second, Pelosi has repeatedly misled the country about her exact role in such oversight and the degree to which she was briefed — quite unlike Yoo, Bybee, etc. who have not denied their briefs, but sought to argue they were legitimate options given the crises of the times and the nature of the killers involved.

All of which leaves us in a quandary — will those who are on record demanding to indict, impeach, disbar, etc. lawyers who offered legal briefs (and have told the truth of their role in offering such opinions), now turn their animus to others who (1) had the legislative authority to stop cold what they knew was going on, but instead approved it, and (2) have not been at all truthful about such complicity?

What we are seeing is yet another chicken, albeit a large one, coming home to roost — especially when we were lectured throughout 2007-8 that what has now become the current Obama anti-terror protocols (e.g., rendition, wiretaps, email intercepts, Predator drone executions, staying the course in Iraq, etc) were once all proof of Bush's trampling of the Constitution that had only empowered our enemies.

At some point, someone in the Obama media is going to have to come to their senses and admit, "Okay, enough is enough, this is getting shameless beyond belief."

But when it comes to the political demagogue steeped in postmodern relativism, enough is never enough.

Postmodernism, after all, is entirely about the corruption of the truth.

Stephen Hicks in his book quotes Frank Lentricchia, a noted Duke University literary critic. Postmodernism, says Lentricchia, "seeks not to find the foundation or conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change."

Postmodern rhetoric explicitly rejects truth, and because of this it is indifferent to consistency and dismissive of reason. Postmodern rhetoric explicitly rejects truth, and because of this it is indifferent to consistency and dismissive of reason.

Consider these astonishing realities: We live in a world where people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barney Frank are actually taken seriously. We live in a world where a nobody "community organizer" with no accomplishments and who freely admits he is a blank screen on which others can project their fantasies, can become President and leader of the Free World.

Don't waste your time looking for any sense or consistency in the contradictory demands and rhetoric of these political postmodern demagogues. They will say whatever they need to say in order to obtain and keep power.

In Obama, the political left finally has the opportunity to translate their postmodern therapeutic psychobabble into real political action. Let's look at how the therapeutically-inclined culture, one saturated with psychobabble and good feelings, approaches foreign policy.

Wretchard discusses the imminent acendency of Hezbollah in Lebanon, thanks mostly to the Obama Administrations courtship of Iran and Syria:

Benny Avni, writing in the NY Post describes a disaster in the offing in Lebanon as the Obama administration sends the signal — so decisive in Lebanese survival politics — about which way the international winds are blowing. The Obama administration is undoing the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon and may get a Hezbollah dominated government north of Israel in its place. While this may help the administration pressure Israel to get their desired peace deal, it will probably culminate in a catastrophe.

Meanwhile, the same Obama Administration has boxed itself in with regard to Israel attacking Iran, even though attacking Iran before it obtains (and uses) nuclear weapons may well be morally and militarily necessary.

Thus from Obama's point of view, any pressure he can put on Israel not to attack would be a good thing. Hence the push to get Israel to give up even more to the Palestinians for "peace" in the region. And he is pushing Israel to give up their own nuclear weapons. Amazingly, Israel is worried about this change in policy by O's Administration...don't they understand that peace is finally at hand???

Next, on the issue of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban:

Which brings us back to President Obama. Pakistan, some may remember, was the one foreign-policy issue on which Obama took a tougher stand than McCain in the election campaign — complete with threats to invade Pakistan, and go to the gates of hell to find Osama bin Laden and defeat the Taliban. None of this is much in evidence any more. Instead, President Obama now tells us that there is no military solution in Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates thinks that Islamabad’s capitulation to the Taliban in Swat — a deal conceived and executed by the military — is an acceptable compromise. Further in the same line of enlightened analysis, Obama’s key political appointee at the Pentagon, Michele Flournoy, opined that 70 percent of the Taliban were “reconcilables,” only to be contradicted by Vice President Biden, who sees only 5 percent of the fanatics as “incorrigible.” Lastly, as if to provide some comic relief, Secretary Gates shuttled to Riyadh to plead with the Taliban’s long-time Wahhabi supporters and paymasters for help against the Taliban.

Ah yes, comic relief...except that it's rather difficult to laugh, considering.

Or, how about this public relations stunt, described mildly as "public diplomacy at its most asinine":

President Barack Obama will deliver his long-rumored address to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 4th. Early reports suggest that Obama chose “The City of One-Thousand Minarets” for this speech to bolster U.S.-Egyptian ties, which have been chilly ever since the Bush administration called on the Mubarak regime to hold competitive elections in 2005.

In short, if Obama believes that the choice between Muslim publics and their secular authoritarian leaders is another “false” one, he’s about to be disappointed. Make no mistake: the moment our Agent of Change is seen standing next to Misr Stability, millions of Muslims will conclude – rightly – that Obama is no different from his Hosni-loving predecessors. Actually, many Muslims might conclude that Obama is worse, since none of his predecessors had the temerity to claim that their relationship with Mubarak was in the name of cross-cultural respect.

I found this pithy summary of Obama's core assumption driving American Foreign Policy for the next four years to be right on the mark:

I was chatting yesterday with a foreign-policy professional whose position precludes him from publishing. His comment, which I repeat with permission, that "behind every Muslim ideologue, whether Sunni or Shi'a, lies a reasonable, urbane liberal waiting to be accomodated appears to be the basis for our foreign policy for the next four years," appears, unfortunately, to explain a lot about Obama's approach. (emphasis mine).

And, for the record, Rubin clarifies:

[T]the difference between the Obama and Bush core assumptions is that Bush recognized, at least in his first term, the problem of Islamist ideology whereas Obama chooses to ignore it.

All this reminds me of what Siggy has called the "Apes in Tuxedos" syndrome:

You can put an ape in a tuxedo and you even teach the ape to dance. In the end though, you still have an ape.

While there are many examples of 'apes in tuxedos,' no better examples can be found than the apologists and supporters of the various Arab causes, including, but not limited to, Iraq and the Palestinians.The pathology is always the same. Rather than demonstrate the moral superiority of the Muslim world, there is a sleight of hand demonstration that attempts to denigrate western- andparticularly American- values, so as to equate those values with more base and primitive behavior.

Rosa Brooks has been singled out multiple times as a sufferer of this particular syndrome; and guess what? This anti-military, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian radical leftist with ties to George Soros is Obama's apointee as adviser to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Pentagon.

You can just imagine the kind of advice she will be giving.

What America has today is an entire Administration dressed up in tuxedos, trying to pretend that they are something they are not; and pretending that other apes intent on killing us are something they are not, i.e., our friends. This Administration is shameless beyond belief in their dissembling opportunism; their associations and their appeasement and enabling of Islamist ideology--a sick ideoogy that consistently refers to the Jews as 'descendants of apes and pigs.'
The real descendants though are the thugs and homicidal maniacs of Islam and those who would cozy up to them out of some malignantly narcissistic naivte.

Quite simply, Obama's insanity will precipitate many, many catastrophes.

"OH, BRAVE NEW WORLD THAT HAS SUCH ETHICAL SPEECH GUARDIANS IN IT...!"

The assault on young minds by the political left feverishly continues. The left understands clearly that if they can subvert the young; indoctrinate them early, then they will be good little leftists for the rest of their lives (assuming they are prevented from ever having to think for themselves--something the Obama Administration is intent on making sure happens.

The basic principles of the plan are simple:

1. PROMOTE ECONOMIC ILLITERACY

Keep students from kindergarden on--but especially college students--economically illiterate and specifically ignorant about capitalism and the wealth it creates; while touting the "social justice" and "superior ethics and morality" of socialism.

Ashley Herzog discusses "Socialism, College Style":

If you’re baffled by college students’ enthusiastic support for Soviet-lite economic policies, you need to watch several short videos created by members of Young America’s Foundation (YAF).

In the videos, YAF members approach their classmates with a petition calling for the redistribution of student GPAs. “It would make it so that all students have an equal opportunity to go to grad school,” University of Oregon YAFer Kenny Crabtree explains. Students with bad grades would therefore be entitled to points earned by straight-A students.

Their classmates are flabbergasted.

“Is that, like, a joke or something?” one guy responds.

“Why would you take points from people who are higher up and give them to people who didn’t meet the requirements?” another asks George Mason University YAFers. But when asked if he supports Obama’s wealth redistribution schemes, he says “yes.”

Shocking? Not really. As I pointed out in my March 30 column, most college students are economically illiterate.

Here is the YAF video referred to above. It's worth watching:



2. TAKE CONTROL OF THE CURRICULUM

Take complete control of the curriculum and make sure that it only teaches "ethics"--or rather what the leftist "progressive" view of ethics and morality happens to be.

Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom is trying not to gag:

Ethics.

– Which, predictably, is a euphemism for “adopting progressive positions” — and proscribing conservative thought in the process as necessarily unethical.

Unethical thought, it follows, is hateful — the practical effect of which will be that it is just, from an “ethical” standpoint, to remove conservative positions from the marketplace of ideas, ostensibly to avoid giving offense to those who are responsible for determining “hate” (or “extremism”): the serially uncomfortable, the (actually) intolerant, the intellectually doctrinaire and/or incurious… the “interpreter” to whom we have ceded the control meaning…

But no worries. Remember, conservative thought is a malady of the limbic brain and thus can be treated once identified. Think Jack Nicholson at the end of Cuckoo’s Nest.

Oh, brave new world, that has such ethical speech guardians in it…!

Gah. Pass the soma.

Actually, we should probably put antipsychotics in the drinking water of our colleges considering what toxic ideas they are aggressively pumping into our children. As he suggests, academia is fast becoming just a factory for churning out more liberals carefully prepared to have only the "correct" PC thoughts.

Of course, we have known for some time that this is exactly the kind of educational system that would only be encouraged in an Obama Administration.

3. HAVE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TAKE OVER PAYMENT FOR ALL COLLEGE EDUCATION

Last, but certainly not least, is this insidious idea that is the equivalent of "socializing" college--much the same way that Obama and Associates are socializing the economy and taking over companies right and left.

From an April 24th story at CBS NEWS:

President Barack Obama on Friday renewed his call for the government to stop backing private loans to college students and replace them with direct financial aid to young people, a challenge to a decades-old program with strong congressional support.

Obama's plan to eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan program could save $48 billion for taxpayers over the next decade, but critics warn it could turn the Education Department into a national bank. Lenders and some college officials oppose the proposal, which Obama backed as a U.S. senator and pushed during the presidential campaign.

Of course, there is a little catch to taking the money from the government. Isn't that nice? I suppose that he expects after the K-12 indoctrination programs and the carefully constructed "social justice" curriculum, that college students and graduates will become good little workers for the state.

Oh, brave new world...coming to you soon on a college campus nearby!

SUPREME CONSIDERATIONS

[Cartoons by Jerry Holbert]



[Cartoons by Glenn Foden]

EMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

In my profession, empathy is a useful quality that helps me understand where people are coming from. But even in the psychiatric field, too much empathy can get in the way of helping a person become independent, functioning and eventually successful. I wrote in "Therapeutic Sensibility, Psychobabble and Postmodernism:

"The therapeutic sensibility", or what I call "therapeutic psychobabble", is not actually therapeutic (i.e., leading to healing) in the least.In fact, this sensibility often becomes the major impediment that prevents patients with serious emotional problems from taking control over their lives. And, for individuals who aren't patients (but soon will be, most likely) it reflects a passive world view, where a person is the helpless victim of forces outside their control.

The same "therapeutic psychobabble" now threatens one of the most fundamental legal principles of western civilization: the rule of law, which holds that all individuals are equal under the law.

When it comes to empathy as a key characteristic for choosing a Supreme Court Justice, the potential to undermine the rule of law, upon which our Republic is based, is enormous. In other words, it is a really really bad idea to think that feelings and emotions should dictate or significantly influence decisions in a presumably impartial court of law. Justice would no longer be blind, but open to the manipulations of the hysteria and political correctness du jour.

Thomas Sowell:

That we are discussing the next Supreme Court justice in terms of group “representation” is a sign of how far we have already strayed from the purpose of law and the weighty responsibility of appointing someone to sit for life on the highest court in the land.

That President Obama has made “empathy” with certain groups one of his criteria for choosing a Supreme Court nominee is a dangerous sign of how much farther the Supreme Court may be pushed away from the rule of law and toward even more arbitrary judicial edicts to advance the agenda of the Left and set it in legal concrete, immune from the democratic process.

Would you want to go into court to appear before a judge with “empathy” for groups A, B, and C, if you were a member of groups X, Y, or Z? Nothing could be farther from the rule of law. That would be bad news, even in a traffic court, much less in a court that has the last word on your rights under the Constitution of the United States.

Appoint enough Supreme Court justices with “empathy” for particular groups and you would have, for all practical purposes, repealed the 14th Amendment, which guarantees “equal protection of the laws” for all Americans

.
As Sowell says, its bad enough that this country (which, as I understand is supposedly in a "post-racial" epoch; PREMA) is making membership in a special group --any sanctioned special group--the most important criterion in the selection of a replacement for Justice Souter (why not have a gay/lesbian, muslim Republican? Now, there's a minority that is truly oppressed and worthy of empathy), This whole identity politics things has become truly insane.

As Jeff Goldstein notes, the natural end of identity politics is...ever more identity politics! And the natural end of diluting the rule of law in our courts with the rule of man is...the rule of gangs.

Sowell is sounding the alarm, but does anyone on the political left even care anymore about "shredding" the Constitution now that they have their Messiah in the White House? They don't need no stinkin' Constitution now. The nature of their game is becoming pretty obvious....


Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for long, long years
Stole many man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

WHEN IT COMES TO UNDERSTANDING HUMAN NATURE, SOCIALISM GETS FAILING MARX

I read this piece at Foreign Policy by Matt Yglesias that extols the brilliance of Karl Marx, expecially now that we are undergoing one of the episodic "kinks" inherent in capitalism. In, "When it Comes to Marx, There's No Time Like the Present, Yglesias basically says that in our current economic crisis, we have a lot to learn from Karl Marx, whose "idea that wealth and power have a tremendous ability to gin up self-justifying narratives. Global elites' curious passivity in the face of the growing housing bubble was an excellent example."

Jonah Goldberg at The Corner takes issue with Marx and Yglesias' praises of his forsight (read the whole critique):

But Yglesias' whole ode to Marx rests on Marx's insight that capitalist systems have periodic crises....

Well, if you want to give Marx full and sole credit for the insights that capitalism hits the occasional speed bump or that wealthy and powerful people self-servingly justify their own status, you're free to do so. But my guess is that you can find people making the second point in the Bible (Hebrew and Christian), among the ancient Greeks and Romans, in Confucian China and amongst all of the philosophes of France.

As for the first point, well, here's the thing: Every human thing has "periodic episodes of crisis." It is an eternal trope of leftism to assign to its enemies problems that are generic to humanity itself.

Is it remotely true that socialism doesn't have "periodic episodes of crisis"? Communism? Fabianism? Feudalism? And, let's not just consider grand experiments in political economy. Families have such episodes, businesses, religions, sports teams, political parties, individuals (both in terms of their health and emotional state) even ecosystems and solar systems have their down times, if one can be forgiven for anthropomorphizing them.

Physicists, geologists, sociologists, biologists, psychologists and historians can each tell you how there are discernible patterns to their subjects, that small problems or tensions or contradictions build until they bring about a "crisis "and then there's a new equilibrium. So it is with we call capitalism. (Indeed, this is a very Marxist-Hegelian point).

Now, the political Marxist will tell you that there's some internal Hegelian mechanism unique to capitalism that makes it different than other systems (using the broadest definition of system possible). Eschewing the desire to simply say "you're wrong," we can concede the point without losing much. Because it is also true — as Marx himself would admit with only a few caveats — that capitalism is also the best system ever created for generating wealth. Marx's insight that capitalism has its bad moments hardly trumps the now equally proven benefits of capitalism.

But, (and here's the essential thing) there is a very important reason that capitalism is the best system ever created for generating wealth: IT IS BECAUSE CAPITALISM DOES NOT NEED TO CHANGE HUMAN NATURE TO WORK IN THE REAL WORLD.

Let me explain that more fully. In 2005, Will Wilkenson wrote a piece titled "Capitalism and Human Nature"; in it he noted:

In the spring of 1845, Karl Marx wrote, ". . . the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations." Marx's idea was that a change in the "ensemble of social relations" can change "the human essence."

In June 2004 the communist North Korean government issued a statement to its starving citizens recommending the consumption of pine needles. Pyongyang maintained that pine needle tea could effectively prevent and treat cancer, arteriosclerosis, diabetes, cerebral hemorrhage, and even turn grey hair to black.

Tragically, human nature isn't at all as advertised, and neither is pine needle tea. According to the U.S. State Department, at least one million North Koreans have died of famine since 1995.

Marx's theory of human nature, like Kim Jong Il's theory of pine needle tea, is a biological fantasy, and we have the corpses to prove it. Which may drive us to wonder: if communism is deadly because it is contrary to human nature, does that imply that capitalism, which is contrary to communism, is distinctively compatible with human nature?

Among all known social, political and economic systems, democratic capitalism is the one that is most consistent with human nature.

Far from encouraging the "survival of the fittest" or even a "dog-eat-dog" animal mentality, capitalism simultaneously encourages cooperation for mutually beneficial trade and for competition.

Far from encouraging war and dominance; capitalism encourages trust and human cooperation; as well as alliances to maximize productivity and wealth creation.

Far from concentrating all wealth in the hands of a few, capitalism makes it possible for anyone to accumulate wealth (contrast for example the number of people who earn over $100,000 a year in the U.S., with those do in Cuba. The only really wealthy person there is Fidel Castro and his cronies. Likewise, in any collectivist system you will find that the only wealthy people are the thugs in control and their cronies. It is certainly true that "the rich get richer" under capitalism--but so do the poor; and, that happens because the creation of wealth is not a zero-sum game.

Envy is a real human emotion that is often destructive socially and personally, but only in a capitalist system can one transform one's psychological envy into socially acceptable and personally positive actions that improve one's own lot without stealing or looting from others, or attacking and destroying them.

Human nature is what it is. This is not tragic, it is simple truth.

When it comes to understanding human nature, the left and their do-gooder utopian fantasies get failing marksMarx. They have a persistent biological fantasy that human nature is 'perfectable'; and that by some magical means, the implementation of their 'perfect' ideology will force people to behave in some 'perfect' fashion. Their delusional biological and psychological hallucinations about human nature always end in misery, suffering and death for large numbers of imperfect homo sapiens wherever it is implemented. No matter how many times this happens, the die-hard Marxists, communists, ocialists and all their variants and heirs keep trying force humans into some "ideal" state.

All their attempts and systems failed the real-world tests in the last century; and all current versions of these ideologies will also eventually fail and fade away (even Obama's). To the extent that they attempt to incorporate some aspects of "human nature" into their failing system, they may last a bit longer (e.g., China); but it is much more likely that human nature will transform the ideology than the reverse.

The one good thing about Marx's motivations is that, from all I have read about him, he genuinely thought of himself as a "humanist" who wanted to free the human spirit with his theories. Unfortunately, he never fully appreciated how his theories would be used to enslave the human mind (or, perhaps he had a some sense of the evil he had unleashed when he exclaimed later in his life, "I am NOT a Marxist!") Like his heirs today, he meant well.

Too bad, so sad that his 'good' intentions have caused so much fanatical revolutionary fervor and so much death and oppression.

Indeed, even in the most benign application of his economic ideas we can learn a few lessons--though not the ones that Mr. Yglesias' supposes.


In a recent Washington Times article, we learn that:

Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts.

In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats.

He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats....

Mr. Franc's study also showed that contrary to the Democrats' tendency to define Republicans as the party of the rich, "the vast majority of unabashed conservative House members hail from profoundly middle-income districts."

Heh. These rich 'cultural Marxists' identify themselves as Democrats because it is just so cool and hip--and virtuous--to champion the 'poor and oppressed.' How unfortunate for them that this virtuousness requires them to nurture and maintain a never-ending supply of the 'poor and oppressed'; and to encourage and support victimhood and entitlement.

The truth is that the poor who are not brainwashed by this victimhood/oppression BS, aspire to the middle class and want to be free to improve their lives and those of their children. Most normal people don't want endless handouts, bailouts or pity. Nor do they want to be the recipient of some do-gooder's endless charity when it is based on the assumption that they are somehow inferior or defective and can't possibly be successful without being perpetually 'championed'. Funny, isn't it, that in spite of all the billions of dollars spent on the poor, it only seems to perpetuate their poverty? The old saying, "“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime" comes to mind; but the last thing that the left or Democrats; or Marxists really want is for the poor to become independent of their virtuous and compassionate largesse.

Back in the 30's and 40's it became increasingly clear to Marxists and their ilk that something was fundamentally wrong with the master's economic hypotheses. Like the followers of Jesus, they had been waiting a long time for the second coming,and they expected the collapse of capitalism at any moment. In fact, they were greatly encouraged by the Great Depresion and were certain that it was imminent.

But like a bad dream, capitalism just wouldn't go away, and instead of collapsing, it rebounded stronger than ever.

Why, they wondered anxiously, are the proletariat not rising up in rebellion against the oppressive forces of capitalism?

Far from rising up against their "oppressors", that same proletariat were buying into the capitalist system and the "American Dream" in large numbers. The sharp differences between the classes were slowly eroding, and more and more of those in poverty were finding their way into the middle class, thus gaining hope for themselves and their children.

Not only that, to the great astonishment of the socialists etc., the "oppressed" proletariat seemed relatively happy and content with their lot!

Happy and content people do not generally initiate violent revolutions nor rise up against their so-called oppressors--particularly when they don't feel oppressed, but feel empowered.

And, furthermore, much to the puzzlement and subsequent rage of these same intellectuals, in those places in the world where socialist and communist theory had triumphed, wealth was disappearing; initiative was in decline; and the human misery index was climbing. This was the legacy of Marx's "social justice".

Instead of creating a utopia for the proletariat, Marx and his theories only generated the conditions for societal suicide.

The clever capitalist system was actually co-opting the oppressed workers, and helping them enter the dreaded "middle class"!

Marx always expected that the middle class would disappear as capitalism developed, since he believed that the only sustainable positions were the ones of his dialectic.

That is not what actually happens in the real world as it turns out.

Whenever people are given political liberty and allowed to pursue their own happiness (and not the mandates of the state), the ranks of the middle class expand and grow stronger.

In fact, the values and ideals of this particular economic group have come to anchor society in the United States.

Far from wanting to ignite a worker's revolution as Marx predicted, they enjoy the creature comforts of the capitalist system and feel themselves empowered by it. Worse (from the communist/socialist's perspective anyway), the typical person in the middle class believes that he or she can better themselves by using the many opportunities offered by a liberal, capitalistic democracy.

Even in Communist China, capitalistic pursuits and entrepreneurship have become the true "opiates" of the masses--in the sense that to the degree people are free to pursue their own happiness and work for their own interests--i.e., where they have economic freedom, even if they don't have political freedom-- they are relatively content, and are unlikely to fulfill the ardent communist/socialist's revolutionary fantasies.

From a joint post written by Dr. Sanity and SC&A some months back:

...a successful middle class demands that government answer to them, and not the other way around. Democracies are not developed or sustained by the political extremes- they are the trust and legacy of a vibrant, functioning middle class....

In the most successful societies there is a large middle class, and anyone has the potential to succeed if they have a good idea, commitment to work and plenty of drive. America, Canada, the UK, Australia and Israel are all examples of societies that while very different, are very successful. As barriers to entry into the middle class becomes more onerous and difficult, requiring expensive and hard to obtain permits and licenses; societies are less successful and become progressively more likely to fail. The nations of the Arab world is a good example of that. There is no middle class in most of the middle east; only an elite, plundering class who are the beneficiaries of the oil wealth the land is blessed with; and a lower class, condemned by the elites to poverty, ignorance and oppression.

When there are few barriers to entering the free market, then the middle class can thrive; and the more successful the entrepreneurs and community becomes, the greater the stake the people have in maintaining peace and prosperity.

Thus they become true conservatives. Is it any wonder then that the backbone of society--the hard-working middle class, middle-income Americans-- lean toward the Republican party? Is it any wonder that the Democrats constantly seek to identify and define more victim classes that they can virtuously champion. So much so that their creative imaginations are able to see victims everywhere and reward them for their victim status; as well as to nurture their grievances and envy.

So, how do we explain those many wealthy individuals who make up the ranks of the Democrats--the closest thing we have to the socialist party here in the U.S., and under Obama and his leftist base, asymtotically approaching a neo-Marxist socialist party?

Having achieved a degree of success and/or wealth in our free society, a person who has worked their way out of the middle class (or out of poverty) is then subjected to a constant barrage of both subtle and overt messages created to make him/her feel guilty for doing so. Propaganda aimed at discrediting "the rich" (who actually pay a disproportionate amount of taxes to begin with) is pervasive and unrelenting. The Democrats use this rhetoric all the time to stoke the fires of class warfare.

This was not always the case. Once upon a time in America there was a certain pride that came with the "rags to riches" story that many Americans lived. Both Democrats and Republicans believed that this was a country where it was understood that if you worked hard, you could get ahead; make something of yourself and even become President someday! There were no social or class restraints imposed in America and that's why people came to this country to begin with. Equal opportunity meant that anyone with an idea or talent could make a successful life for themselves.

But equal opportunity gradually morphed into a demand for equality of outcome. And that if you don't have what the other guy has, then it must be becaused you have been oppressed by the other guy--after all, you can only get ahead by stepping on someone else. Your gain MUST be someone else's loss.

Here is where the Marxist garbage of "oppressor vs oppressed" has had the most impact on American society. Having been taught from kindergarden on that capitalism is a zero-sum game (and by definition, evil) many Americans have difficulty in thinking of resources or wealth as ever-expanding, and tend to think that someone else's gain must be their loss. If you have only two choices--to be either an "oppressor" or one of the "oppressed", most people would generally prefer the latter because it means they must be nicer people.

This kind of thinking inevitably leads to envy, and a cult of victimhood with all the associated social and political conflicts those emotions generate. Envy, in particular, is the lovely human emotion that drives all socialist systems; and it exists in pure, unadulterated and vicious form in those systems.

And, in answer to the unspoken question, yes; capitalism also thrives on envy--and even greed.

But, capitalism within a democratic and politically free system of government offers a healthy channel for the redirection of negative emotions like envy and greed into something positive for both the individual and the larger society.

Something, I might add, that Marxism, socialism and all its malignant variants completely fail to do. You cannot escape the reality of this dark side of human nature. You can either channel that dark side and use it constructively to benefit the individual and incidentally the society he lives in; or you can encourage and facilitate it in all its destructive power, and by doing so create the hell on earth we've come to associate with communist and marxist societies.

I'm sure that the usual accusations will instantly be hurled at me for saying such a thing. The victims of the world will rise up against intellectual oppressors like me someday and....wait a minute! Doesn't that proposed scenario sound strangely familiar? Since I started writing this blog, I have been taken to task by the left about how everything economic position I take is "socially unjust" and that policies like that will "impact the poor most of all..."; that conservatism is racist, sexist, or some other such nonsense. I'm sure I will get emails describing how such insensitive suggestions will result in harming little children and puppies disproportionately and without compassion.

But, no matter what they say about my motives, it remains a fact that poverty and misery have a cure; and that cure is capitalism and freedom.

When it comes to understanding human nature and encouraging the development of healthy psychological and behavioral strategies for positively channeling destructive human emotions, capitalism has nothing to fear from collectivism of any stripe. As Goldberg notes, "It is an eternal trope of leftism to assign to its enemies problems that are generic to humanity itself."

I have pointed out repeatedly that this tendency is actually a psychological projection--a way of disowning this unpleasant aspect of human nature in themselves--leaving them free to pursue their Marxist/Utopian delusions.

AMERICAN IDOL-- Washington's Got Talent...For Spending Your Money

Have you ever felt that Washington politics is becoming a 'reality' TV show--but without any of the reality?



But who's going to be the Simon Cowell that gives this endlessly self-absorbed teen idol-in-chief a well-deserved reality check?

OBAMA AND THE NEO-MARXIST LEFT: The Clever Manipulation of Projection and Paranoia

In, "The Necessary Enemy", Dr. Zero at Hot Air has identified the crucial psychological defense that is required for collectivism:

Collectivist politics of any stripe requires enemies, because they rely upon coercion. Socialist utopias don’t come into existence spontaneously. There would be no need for confiscatory tax rates on the wealthy, if the wealthy voluntarily used their money to buy cars and houses for everyone in the lower income brackets, without requiring them to work in return. Nobody would be talking about nationalizing health care if doctors and hospital staff were happy to work eighty hour weeks for minimum wage, and pharmaceutical companies were run as giant charities that cheerfully sank billions into developing drugs they resell at cost. Few people would leave a sizable chunk of their estates to the government, if the government didn’t seize the money through death taxes. No large group of people on Earth has every freely chosen to peacefully organize themselves into a socialist collective – they either slip into it through small losses of freedom that seem relatively painless as they happen, or they are forced into it at gunpoint. If Franklin Delano Roosevelt had proposed Obama’s current budget and regulatory plans at the outset of the New Deal, he would have been laughed out of office, and if he had attempted to impose Obama’s policies by force, he would have needed infantry platoons and tanks.

The basic premise of socialist government, as Obama famously explained to a plumber in Ohio last fall, is to take wealth away from the more successful people in society, and “spread that wealth around.” This will always be a more attractive proposition to the people serving as the bread, than the people being used as the peanut butter. The creators of wealth must be forced to participate in the system, far beyond the point where a sense of civic duty or compassion for the downtrodden would keep them in line. After all, nearly half the country currently pays no income taxes, and they’re not all “downtrodden” people deserving of charity. In fact, the socialist dream is to reach the point where over half the population pays no taxes, and will thus be inclined to support all expansions of government power. You can’t get to the magic 51% of tax dependents just by using hungry orphans as props.
Increasing levels of coercion are necessary to expand the socialist system, and keep wealth producers trapped within it. To maintain popular support, the socialist needs voters to stay angry at designated class enemies. The Obama style of total government control over private businesses tends to turn feral with frightening speed, because it attempts to preserve the illusion of private enterprise, even as the “entrepreneurs” are enslaved to the total state.

The psychological defense mechanism being described is projection (which, with just a little psychic push can become full-blown paranoia).

The beginning of the 21st century will surely be looked back on as a golden age of paranoia. The headlines of today fairly ooze with the delusions and vast conspiracies dreamed of in the mind of the paranoid left.

I will also admit that paranoia and delusional thinking are equal-opportunity, multiracial, multicultural and gender-indifferent psychological processes. And, they are so easy and convenient to use, that they are accessible even to the youngest of children or the most physiologically disabled adult mind. The political left certainly has no claim of exclusivity in the use of these two immature defenses, but they are without a doubt the gold medal winners in the American paranoid olympics, and the political right will have to work very hard to ever catch up with them.

Which brings me to the most prevalent mental dysfunction of our time, and the underlying cause of all denial, projection and paranoia: The Unwillingness To Face Reality And Its Consequences.

I deal regularly with people who have various levels of physiological abnormality in their brain. Through an unfortunate series of events--their genetics; random biological mutations; or the deliberate use of mind-altering substances that activate the latent psychosis; etc. etc., these unfortunate souls start out with or unknowingly stimulate a defective physiology which causes a dysfunction in their cognitive faculties. Their defective brain works hard to integrate events and make sense of the world, but it is at a serious and overwhelming disadvantage because its neural pathways don't work properly. Hence, auditory or visual hallucination; bizarre delusions; complicated conspiracy theories; disorganized thinking; and an impaired critical thinking capacity in general--all of which lead to pervasive misperceptions of the world and the people around them.

We rightly call such people mentally ill. For the most part (except for the substance-induced psychotics) the only choice they have in the matter (and this, too is often dependent on whether or not the insight they have into their illness has been spared the physiological degneration that effects other parts of their brain) is whether to regularly take the medications that give them some hope of being able to accurately perceive reality.

The political paranoia and projection that is rampant in the world today repesents a process as close to being mentally ill as it is possible to get. In political paranoia and projection there is the same catastrophic physiological disruption in the brain that the paranoid schizophrenic has; it's just that it is achieved via a different biological route.

Political paranoids aren't necessarily born with much of a physiological vulnerability for becoming detached from reality....no, they had to have repeatedly travelled down a very specific psycho path--or be manipulated and enticed down that path-- to reach their final delusional destination. It is likely that at first those so manipulated just went along with the crowd mentality and took a cognitive 'wrong turn', leaving the main highway of reason and reality. It is always within their cognitive power to return to the main road (unlike those with mental illness who are biologically trapped on the false path); but at some point they choose to stay on their projected course.

The world of politics attracts paranoia, conspiracy theories and projection like flypaper attracts flies. And it is deeply disturbing to observe.

There is, of course, a reason that human beings experience suspicion, distrust and hypervigilance. That reason is because there is REAL danger in the world. Our ancestors in the caves knew this to be true. They lived with continual danger just to survive every minute of every day. Those who did not have the psychological capacity to perceive the danger in the environment surely died out long ago.

But this important psychological trait which senses danger and strives to protect the ego; and which is accentuated in children and early in life, is appropriately balanced out by the development of the rational faculty--the intellect.

The tools of the paranoid are denial, distortion, and projection. These psychological tools are almost always pathological when used to cope with the real world. For the user these three primitive psychological defenses permit a [hopefully temporary] rearrangement of external reality so that an actual, often unpleasant or painful reality may be avoided; for the beholder, the users of these mechanisms frequently appear crazy or insane. These are known as the "psychotic" defenses, common in overt psychosis, in dreams, and throughout childhood.

Denial is a refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening. There are examples of denial being adaptive (for example, it might be adaptive for a person who has a terminal illness to use some degree of denial). But for the most part, denial is only useful as a short-term strategy, to permit a person to come to terms with reality. As a long-term strategy to protect self-identity, it is potentially lethal--since the person or group that uses it extensively is blinded to the real danger that might be out there.

Distortion is a gross reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs. It is more acceptable to believe that some evil person has tricked you, than it is to believe that you behaved stupidly.

Delusional Projection occurs when an individual or group have delusions about external reality, usually of a persecutory nature. Scapegoating is not only possible under these psychological conditions, it is often necessary as Dr. Zero points out.

Just to be clear, there is a reason that all human beings are capable of psychological projection, which is the emotional technique of attributing one's own unacceptable feelings to someone else in order to 'disown' those feelings. The result is a psychological inversion of reality. For example, instead of saying, "I hate my father", the individual thinks, "My father hates me", and this serves two important functions. First, it gets rid of the unwanted and unacceptable feeling within; and second, it make the person projecting a victim of someone else (in this example, a victime of the person's father).

Now, why would such a psychic mechanism exist? Projection is rightfully referred to as an immature defense mechanism because children early in their development quite routinely use it. As they mature, this initially unconscious capability to project one's own emotions into others will become the conscious psychological capability of experiencing empathy.

The key word is conscious; and the action of making our unconscious needs, desires, emotions and all the other irrationalities swirling around in our brains fully conscious is called psychological insight. When we are conscious of our foibles and fantasies; our insanities and irrationalities, we can choose how best to deal with them--even, constructively deal with them; instead of letting them deal with and control us.

As I mentioned previously, full blown paranoia is only a short step away from projection (when you believe your father hates you instead of admitting that you hate him, it is not much of a leap to imagine that he is going to hurt you and to become fearful of him). Indeed, even in the paranoid person, logic is unimpaired and they make all the right logical connections. The problem (i.e., their disconnect with reality) is that their basic premise is flawed or totally incorrect.

Now, when we get to political paranoia and projection, we have various forces in the group, society, culture or nation, working deliberately to encourage such faulty and dysfunctional premises. And they do it for exactly the same reasons that individuals resort to these primitive defense mechanisms: to avoid dealing with an unpleasant reality about themselves. One that, if exposed, would crush their sense of self; or their self esteem; or make them the object of ridicule and/or shame.

It is easy to see how such psychological manipulations work to keep a person or a group insulated from reality. In truth, we witness such behavior all around us (and it is certainly not exclusive to one side of the political spectrum--though the political left has almost exclusive rights to it at this point in history).

Before we discuss the most recent attempts by the neo-Marxist left via the Obama Administration) to totally scapegoat capitalism and business for our current economic woes; let us turn to the "masters of scapegoating"--the dysfunctional and broken culture of the Middle East.

It has always amazed me to observe that the political left in this country is so taken with the Palestinians and the jihadists and have made the Palestinian cause their own.

It is only a very short step from marching to support and cleverly rationalizing the homicidal and violent terrorist groups that make up the Palestinian cause to then swallowing whole the vile antisemitism that motivates the delusions they need to maintain their victimhood status.

As long as the Palestinians are the left's preferred and idealized victim group, neither have to face their own pathological inadequacies as people. As SC&A observe in a post on Arab conspiracies:

Israel and the success and contributions of Jews to western civilization as opposed to their own failures are in the mirror the Arab world has to look at daily. Those truths are almost intolerable to most Arabs. To be sure there are many progressive, intellectual Arabs that understand that Israel is a reality and that the successes of Jews in the west are a model that should be emulated, but for most, Israel and the success of the Jewish community integration into the American and western mosaic, remains a cruel violation of Allah's promise to them. The fact that Allah seems to have abandoned them to live in such squalor and hopelessness is of no concern- it is the non Muslims that remain the obsession. It is the non-Muslims that have upset the 'natural' Islamic order.

The Arab world is not humiliated by the lack of decent schools. The Arab world is not humiliated by their scientific backwardness and book burnings. In a smaller, interconnected world, they cannot be unaware of their own medievalism. The Arab world is not humiliated by collapsed economies. There are car manufacturers in China and Africa, yet there are only 'plans' for an auto industry in the Arab world.

To put it all in context- how is it possible that the humiliations of centuries of Arab failures are trumped by the political 'humiliations of today? What powerful agenda can pull a whole society away from reality?

The insane asylum we refer to as the Middle East and all its affiliates in Africa and Indonesia where Islamic delusion runs rampant, have a fully formed paranoid fantasy that explains their lack of progress and their dysfunction in the real world. Likewise, the lunatic left also subscribes to their own special convoluted explanations of dysfunction. In both cases, if the object of their projections did not exist, they would have to invent them because their world view cannot be held together without the gummy glue of the paranoid fantasies that connect all their dots.

If we turn to our own country, we must deal with an entire political party and half the nation or more in the grip of projection and early paranoia. It is the same powerful agenda of paranoia and projection that has pulled the political left away from reason, truth and reality.

In a sense, the Palestinians have become the poster children for all those on the political left who are as unwilling as they are to face reality. Hence the rising anti-semitism we witness in this country by the left, who actually identify and feel an emotional 'solitarity' with the Arabs. It is that emotional link that is the psychological basis of their alliance of hate with the Islamists, jihadists, and foes of America wherever they may be.

The paranoia, projection and denial all serve to make them feel better about themselves; make them feel less like the losers they are. By inventing themselves as the victims of the BushHitler--or the Jews, or the neocons or the Republicans or of capitalism and business-- they can, like a typical, arrogant paranoid psychotic, pat themselves on the back at their heroic, courageous, and "principled" stand against the forces of oppression. Their failures are NOT THEIR FAULT. Everything in their life would be better if THE EVIL OPPRESSORS would go away. Their need to externalize blame for their own failures, or for their own greed or envy, will trump any facts and obscure any contradicting reality.

When it comes to the Palestinians, and Islamic culture as a whole, without the paranoia, they are nothing. Without their feelings that they are persecuted and oppressed by the Jews, they might actually have to take responsibility for the pathetic state of their own society where killing the Jews is more important than life itself. Time after time they have been given the opportunity to have their own state and live in peace with Isreal and look forward, abandoning their dysfunctional envy and coming to grips with what keeps them backward and unable to thrive.

Likewise, for the political left who so recently won back the White House. But, to look forward would mean they would have to abandon their scapegoating of Bush and Republicans. To look forward would mean that they would have to acknowledge their own issues and correct the flaws in their ideology's basic premises. Instead, they have refused to give up the denial of reality and continue to nurture their paranoia and projection through a frenzy of undoing and hysterical amnesia.

The paranoid cannot ever afford to examine his or her premises and face reality because to do so would do two things:

(1) it would display to the world the deep, irrational hatred which he is defending himself against by making himself the "victim" of someone else's deep, irrational hatred; and

(2) it would cause him to admit his own insignificance, because if he is NOT the center of a plot and the focus of his "enemies" then he must be shamefully unimportant - a nobody.

You would think that a paranoid person would be reassured to discover that people or groups are NOT out to get him. That there is no conspiracy against the group. You would be wrong. This is the last thing that the paranoid individual or group really want, because--if they are not being persecuted, or betrayed, or lied to, or oppressed--then the paranoid must face the devastating reality of his own insignificance or intellectual bankruptcy. This he cannot do and it is why the alternate reality was constructed in the first place.

The paranoid solution to unacceptable thoughts or feelings is to say, "If I am having these bad thoughts or feeling or behaviors, then someone else must be to blame and is making me do it." The neo-Marxist of today's left does not take responsibility for his own thoughts or feelings or behaviors--their own envy or greed--because to do so would cause the whole house of Marxist cards to come crumbling down. Paranoid neo-Marxist logic goes like this:

• Are you poor? Someone must have robbed you of what you are entitled to!
• Are you angry and experiencing hatred, but like to think of yourself as a loving, compassionate sort of person? Then the object of your hatred magically becomes the one who hates...you!
• Is your genius not universally recognized? You must have powerful enemies that prevent you from achieving the success you know should be yours.
• Have you made mistakes in your life or shown poor judgment? Someone has clearly tricked you into acting a certain way otherwise you wouldn't have.

Has your ideology continually and repeatedly failed in the real world and resulted in death and misery for all who implement it? Take heart! It is not your fault or your ideology's! Either it wasn't implemented virutously enough; or there were evil people [Capitalists, Republicans, Neocons, Males, Whites, Christians, Jews] (choose one or more) who have been plotting against it!

The above mental gymnastics allow the left to externalize blame and avoid responsibility--and to encourage as many others as possible to avoid taking responsibility and to claim that their misfortune is always someone else's fault and not their own.

Thus begins the ever-expanding culture of victimhood and endless entitlement. It's so easy to convince others to follow the yellow brick psychopath to scapegoating and externalization-- because it is very hard to be a grownup and take responsibility for one's own life. Hell, why should you? The loving nanny state; mother of us all, will take care of you!

In addition to externalizing blame for one's own pitiful situation in life, there is yet another advantage to this paranoia and projection/scapegoating thing: very often, a creative distortion of reality can reliably pump up one's own self-esteem! You are the righteous; persecuting the true racists thus proving you, yourself, are incapable of any racist thoughts or emotions! Aren't you wonderful?

A talented con artist, e.g., our Con Artis- in-Chief, performs this kind of psychological manipulation consciously and deliberately and understands the effectiveness of the basic psychological maneuver. Con artists come in all sorts of political stripes, of course, but in our day the great examples are pretty much exclusive to the political left, because the vast majority of the left's minions have such an intense need to appear virtuous. In fact, the appearance of virtue in themselves is much more important than any other reality.

Reality is always redrawn in order to pump up their own righteousness and virtue. Anyone who opposes their policies is automatically branded as racist, sexist, homophobic, islamophobic-- take your pick, depending on the circumstances.

Hell, anyone who offers ANY new ideas in these areas are automatically branded with one of the "isms".

It is inconceivable to paranoid persons that people actually exist who view the situation differently from them. It is inconceivable that they could be wrong about their perception of reality. Con men always think others are out to con them. In fact, most paranoids consider themselves the ONLY reality-based community, because they get to define what reality is and it is always what they happen to feel. And it is always about making sure they feel good and virtuous and self-righteous.

Paranoia and projection also provide a rationale and justification (to the paranoid, at least) for acting out against those who--from their perspective-- stand in the way of implementing their social programs; or will not submit to the will of their god (whoever and whatever it may be).

Paranoia and projection as psychological defenses used by otherwise normal people are not mental illnesses that can be "cured" by mass quantities of antipsychotic medication in the water supply. Instead, they represent a distortion of reality that occurs in order to meet the inner needs of a crumbling self (or a crumbling ideology, culture, or society) that cannot otherwise be psychologically sustained.

To those who are using such a defense, their behavior and rhetoric seem perfectly logical and internally consistent. They are unbothered by the obvious contradictions because reality is all in their head anyway. Their logic is as impeccable as any reasoning can be--considering that it originates from distorted premises.

The clever manipulation of projection and paranoia--of finding a necessary (and imagined) enemy-- is all in a days work for the leaders of the political left.

Lee Harris once noted in a TCS article titled "Why Isn't Socialism Dead?":

It may well be that socialism isn't dead because socialism cannot die. As Sorel argued, the revolutionary myth may, like religion, continue to thrive in "the profounder regions of our mental life," in those realms unreachable by mere reason and argument, where even a hundred proofs of failure are insufficient to wean us from those primordial illusions that we so badly wish to be true. Who doesn't want to see the wicked and the arrogant put in their place? Who among the downtrodden and the dispossessed can fail to be stirred by the promise of a world in which all men are equal, and each has what he needs?

Here we have the problem facing those who, like Hernando de Soto, believe that capitalism is the only rational alternative left after the disastrous collapse of so many socialist experiments. Yes, capitalism is the only rational method of proceeding; but is the mere appeal to reason sufficient to make the mass of men and women, especially among the poor and the rejected, shut their ears to those who promise them the socialist apocalypse, especially when the men who are making these promises possess charisma and glamour, and are willing to stand up, in revolutionary defiance, to their oppressors?

The shrewd and realistic Florentine statesman and thinker, Guicciardini, once advised: "Never fight against religion...this concept has too much empire over the minds of men." And to the extent that socialism is a religion, then those who wish to fight it with mere reason and argument may well be in for a losing battle. Furthermore, as populism spreads, it is inevitable that the myth of socialism will gain in strength among the people who have the least cause to be happy with their place in the capitalist world-order, and who will naturally be overjoyed to put their faith in those who promise them a quick fix to their poverty and an end to their suffering.

It is discouraging to see this political insanity continue through the efforts of the neo-marxist collectivists like Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Robert Mugabe--and now Barack Obama-- rising on a tide of populist socialist-bullshit.

In re-reading Harris' excellent analysis, it occurs to me that if socialism cannot die because its mythology is seared into the psyche of the individual; captialism, the bane of socialism (just as socialism is the bane of capitalism), also cannot perish for precisely the same reason--each one is the political expressions of one of the two fundamental developmental lines of the human psyche (see here , here and here for a full discussion).

Thus, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the thing most feared by today's neo-Marxists is capitalism. They are right to fear it, because capitalism works in the real world; while communism, socialism and all the utopian variants thereof do not.

Capitalism and free societies are always willing to tolerate even the insanities proposed by collectivists, because in the marketplace of ideas, better ideas will ultimately win out. But collectivists (and leftists of every stripe) are not willing to do the same because they believe they are better people , and the very existence of people who disagree with them is existentially threatening.

In every empirical test in the real world, capitalism has worked better than socialism or communism or any Marxist ideology. The last century once and for all completely debunked all the original Marxist claims about socialism's supposed superiority.

--Instead of exploiting people, capitalism has empowered them, while Marx's theories made them poor, miserable, and oppressed.
--Instead of increasing poverty, capitalism has mostly eliminated it. The rich get richer indeed; but the poor get richer, too. Under socialism’s yoke, everyone becomes poorer--except, of course, the corrupt (see Cuba, Venezuela, etc. etc.).
--Instead of being more humane and peaceful, socialists and communists who gain control of a country have led that country to dictatorship and oppression; and then became aggressive and violent toward other countries as they attempt to externalize blame for their own economic and political failures.

The social engineers of the left, motivated as they are by their creative utopian aspirations--expressed by the desire to impose (forcibly, if necessary) universal peace, social justice and brotherhood upon humanity--are completely oblivious to the malignant side of their own nature; and to their own denial, paranoia and projection.. Both they and the capitalist entrepreneurs of the right who they despise so vehemently are both driven by the darker human emotions: envy, greed and a need to dominate others.

However, there remains an extremely crucial difference between them:

The do-gooder leftist in all the various ideological incarnations--the antiwar crowd, the environmental crowd, the communists, socialists, and assorted collectivists--offers the rationale that he does what he does for the "common good" and for "social justice", "peace" and "brotherhood". His high-minded, self-righteous rhetoric justifies (to him anyway) imposing his will and beliefs on others for their own good; and he will not hesitate to use whatever coercive capablity he has at hand to get others to do what he wants and what he says.

The capitalist, on the other hand, is overtly out to pursue his own selfish profit, and understands he must use persuasion. That is, he must convince people that his ideas and the products of his mind are better than all the rest so that they will be willing to part with their hard-earned money to possess them. His desire for power over others is manifested in an indirect manner because people must want what he has to offer and believe that they will benefit from an interaction with him.

There is no parallel social limitations on the behavior of the leftist. This tyrant wannabe does not feel the need to convince others of the veracity or even the effectiveness of his ideas; nor does he accept defeat when others are not interested or resist their implementation. He knows in his heart what is best for everyone, and he will use coercion if necessary. He will not allow options; nor will he permit others do do what they think is right for themselves. Their feelings or concerns are a matter of complete indifference to him. Only his own matter.

Just listen carefully to the clever rhetoric of the Obama Administration and the thuggish manner in which it is dealing with the economic crisis by demonizing business and businesses. Is it any different from how Islam demonizes Jews--then turns around and acts as if they are the poor, helpless victims of a Jewish plot?

Isn't the entire world a victim of A CAPITALIST CONSPIRACY??? (and if you can't read it, the disgusting depiction to the right says in the lower right corner, "TO: The World, From: Capitalism")

Yes, says the 'pacifist' left if we must kill, let it be capitalism--and the evil rich--that we kill!


Which brings us full circle to Dr.Zero's astute observation. In order to achieve his collectivist agenda, Obama and the left need a scapegoat. Watch and see who is being scapegoated and you will understand what is now happening in this country. To maintain popular support, the dedicated socialist "needs voters to stay angry at designated class enemies. When all else fails, they will crank up the hate and the projection ; and "turn feral with frightening speed." Obama will attempt to preserve the illusion of private enterprise, even as he demonizes entrepreneurs and scapegoats them to avoid having the federal government accept its own role in the current economic crisis.

Through the clever use of projection and paranoia; by scapegoating the productive and the wealthy, Obama's government will grow bigger and more powerful and never have to take responsibility for the worsening state of the economy. The necessary scapegoats are in place...let the show trials commence!