It's been in the media and on the Internet long enough that people are actually starting to believe it: Obama's popularity ratings are down, his “base” is eroding, his administration is starting to fray at the edges with gaffes and scandals of all sorts... and so on. The message is that he's running scared... or ought to be. At the extremes, it's “dead man walking” and “shovel-ready” -- all of which ought to lend greater urgency to the Republican primary and nominating process. After all, if you know something is a lost cause, you're going to run out of energy sooner or later... but if there's real hope! That's a different matter.
And sure enough, the Republicans are already starting – with the enthusiastic aid of the media – to slough off the more radical, “extreme” candidates... and to gently, but firmly, marginalize the “tea party” contingent. What we will have in November of 2012 will be a choice between white bread and light brown bread, and very little else. Nothing nutritious, nothing with any flavor... nothing that has any hope of keeping the nation's economy (or anything else) alive and well.
So the bottom line – already! With over a year to go! -- is that it's not going to make the slightest bit of difference who wins in November of 2012 – Obama or one of the “good hair boys”. Oh, there might be some twiddling around the margins in terms of domestic policy, but when it comes to foreign policy – forget it. The juggernaut of folly will continue to roll, on the path to destruction, and no one with any power or influence will be the least bit interested in stopping it.
But having said all that, it's far from obvious that Obama is “in trouble”. In fact, it's fairly obvious to me that his reelection is pretty much assured – and here's why. All you have to do is ask - what, or who, makes up his “base”? Well... in the broad sense, the base of a socialist politician has to be made up of people who benefit, or expect to benefit, from socialism, i.e. from government control of some sectors of the economy and tight regulation of the rest, and a legal and regulatory system that continually serves to redistribute income from the producers to the non-producers – i.e. parasites (not that there aren't “deserving poor”, but they're a small minority). And with half the population of the country being tax receivers, as opposed to tax payers, you already have a substantial group that is reliably in Obama's corner and is likely to stay there.
Then you have, among working people, government workers at every level, many of whom are unionized – and don't forget to include public school teachers in this category! They are government workers, and the most politically reliable ones to boot. Then you have non-public sector unions, which are also politically reliable, and which offer enormous campaign contributions besides. Then you have “minorities” of all sorts, who – even if employed – will always prefer the candidate who offers the biggest safety net, and mouths the proper words besides – words like “fairness” and “social justice”, for example. And besides these actual voters, you have the vast mainstream media structure that works full-time to influence their votes – and that is overwhelmingly liberal, and on Obama's side.
Then you have political liberals and ideologues on the left, which includes the vast bulk of academia and nearly the entire “entertainment” industry. One also has to include powerful special interest groups, like trial lawyers. Then we have habitual Democrat voters (the “old blue-collar” class, who vote Democratic because their fathers, grandfathers, etc. did), college and university students, and the vast array of willy-nilly liberals of all sorts, who will tell you, with very little prodding, that they find Republicans “creepy”, “stiff”, “square”, “anal”, “white”, and so on. (And let's admit that candidates like Bachmann, Perry, and Romney do nothing to disabuse them of that idea...)
I'm sure I've left some groups out of this tally, but I think we're already well over 50%... not that they are all guaranteed to vote, but they seem more likely to whenever they are frightened and panicked through the efforts of the media. You threaten people's “benefits” and ideals enough, and they will make their way through the most inclement weather in order to cast their vote.
Now, you'll notice whom I left out of this tally. One group is the one that is above the fray; it makes little or no difference to them who is president, since their reach and power will remain unaltered. This group includes the titans of international finance, and the upper reaches of Wall Street, as well as big – by which I mean really big – business and industry. Their fortunes are made no matter who is in charge. Their only concern is to insure that no one who might cause problems comes anywhere near the presidency, and they accomplish that through their influence on the major parties and the media.
A related group to whom it makes no difference is the armaments makers. We're going to be in a state of perpetual war no matter what – and again, their only concern is to keep any genuine anti-war candidates, not to mention pacifists, libertarians, etc., off the ballot.
And – this might surprise you, but I'm convinced it's true – the “neocons” don't care who wins, since their agenda -- perpetual war on Islam -- is going to be carried out in any case. Admittedly, they aren't hanging around the White House in droves the way they were during the Bush administration, but it doesn't matter – “conservative” think tanks by the score, within a mile of the White House and Capitol, are bursting at the seams with neocons, and they have their spoon in every pot and their finger in every pie. Obama is their man every bit as much as Bush was – in terms of their core agenda.
And, not coincidentally, the Israelis, and the Israeli lobby – to the extent one can distinguish it from the neocons – are unconcerned. Every candidate from either of the major parties is thoroughly vetted by AIPAC and related organizations... they are all required to swear a loyalty oath to Israel... and anyone who doesn't is relegated to the political outer darkness. Now, you might say, but isn't Israel starting to get a bit impatient with Obama & Co.? Well, admittedly, Obama and his crew occasionally mouth words that might be taken to imply that they consider the Palestinians something other than a lower life form – an admission that no one in the Bush administration ever made. But this is nothing more than show and window dressing. In fact, what I suspect is that it's a way to avoid awkwardness with the part of Obama's base that is (1) black and (2) Moslem. If you occasionally seem to recognize that the Palestinians might be human, and might have some rights, you're going to stand less of a chance of antagonizing their fellow Moslems in this country – especially those of the black sort. But all it is is mouthing words; it has no bearing on anything that is actually done, Middle East policy-wise.
Likewise, people whose entitlements are ironclad have no worries – the agriculture sector being one example. No one is seriously threatening farm subsidies, and in fact Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid almost seem more under the gun than agriculture – which ought to add another large group of people to Obama's base, since he's the one who promises to save all of the “entitled” from the ravages of the cruel, heartless, mean-spirited, death-worshiping Republicans.
Now, what about the flip side? Who can be characterized as being firmly in the Republican base – or at least in the anti-Obama base? Certainly anyone who is opposed to socialism has to be counted as anti-Obama, and that would include libertarians and anarchists – but these groups are no more likely to be pro-Republican than pro-Democrat, so I think we can write them out of the scenario, since – if they vote at all – they're likely to vote for a third party, or a fictitious character, or their dog, or something else. And that leaves people who are both anti-Obama and pro-Republican, and this group is made up almost entirely of the middle class, AKA bourgeoisie – a group that is shrinking before our eyes, like the Wicked Witch of the West. Now, they aren't all “tea partiers”, because that group has pronounced populist vibes, and I can't offhand imagine a conservative businessman – let's say a guy who made it big in plumbing supplies in Kansas – getting too enthusiastic about the “tea party”, which seems a bit rag-tag and hysterical at times.
One thing I hope I've established here is that just because someone is working, and self-supporting, doesn't mean they will automatically be opposed to socialism, big government, and Obama. The bases of the two parties are not synonymous with “working” vs. “non-working” -- they're synonymous with “self-sufficiency as a value” vs. “safety net as a value”. There are working people whose biggest fear – what keeps them up at night – is that they will, perhaps very soon, be non-working. And it is the sum total of their self-image, and their attitude about what the government's duties are toward them, that will determine how they vote. And their numbers are, I daresay, substantially higher than the numbers of the non-working who, nonetheless, believe in self sufficiency.
The impression the MSM want to convey is that the “tea partiers” are a small, paranoid group of right-wing fanatics, bigots, and “haters” -- sort of the middle-class equivalent of the KKK. And it's funny how tea party demonstrations are treated with contempt – when they are treated at all – whereas left-wing and/or liberal demonstrations and treated with the utmost sympathy and given generous news coverage. It's no longer (assuming it ever was) a matter of the “in group” vs. the “out group”, but what they represent in terms of ideology – not to mention background, social class, skin color, ethnic background, religion, etc. The establishment of our time has – in the fashion of all establishments down through history – defined acceptable protest (i.e., worth listening to) and unacceptable protest (i.e., worth demeaning and ignoring). Al Sharpton and his rent-a-mobs at least get thrown a bone once in a while, but the tea partiers are made to feel like outliers and freaks – like the “unpopular kids” who had such a hard time in middle school.
So with all of this in mind, I grow weary of the “polls” and the allegations on both sides. I suspect, in fact, that the left/liberal media are engaged, more than anything else, in fear-mongering – not unlike what Bush & Co. managed to do vis-a-vis the Iraqi WMDs (alleged). So while we don't quite yet have mob rule, we certainly have mob preferences, and the preferences of the media for some kinds of mobs over others. And this is all accomplished through media “coverage” and the pronouncements of the administration – which, in turn (sadly), go a long way toward determining the overall mind set of the public, and therefore of their voting “patterns”. Look, for instance, at how the media have set up as a bogeyman the image of the “angry white man” -- an image which has been nicely merged with that of the tea party. The tea party is, according to the script, no more than a bunch of angry white men plus their female relatives (who are too oppressed to speak up for themselves). And the thing of it is, this propaganda strategy really works! Anyone who believes in “traditional values” is made to feel ashamed, embarrassed, and outmoded. And we are talking, by and large, of the shrinking pool of working people – overwhelmingly white, let's admit – who aren't so sure this brave new world is the one they worked all their lives to create for their children and grandchildren to live in. They are what I call the “new disenfranchised” -- not in the literal sense so much as the social/cultural sense.
And you would think that – if the historical and socio-economic models are correct – the working middle class would be considered the most important single source of the nation's wealth. After all, isn't there are high correlation between middle-class prosperity and the overall prosperity of a nation? But this is either disbelieved or ignored by the controlling class of our time and its media servants – much as it was at the time of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the (second) Chinese revolution. The eternal vision of the proletariat, and the populists, is that the middle class is part of the problem, and that we don't need them, and the sooner we get rid of them the better. So what we have now is a bloodless (to date) revolution of the same sort – eliminate the bourgeoisie and all will be well – forgetting that the people at the top have much more money and power than the bourgeoisie of old ever did, and are the ones responsible for the "income gap". It's almost as if the proles, and minorities, and entitlement junkies of our time think that the government is the source of wealth – which they obviously do! You'll notice that everyone out there is begging Obama for “jobs”. They aren't asking businessmen and industrialists for jobs – that would be too humiliating. (And besides, they might wind up with real jobs, i.e. ones where you're expected to work! And we can't have that.) Government “jobs” on the other hand, are almost guaranteed to be sinecures – and the greater the proportion of jobs that are government jobs, as opposed to private sector jobs, the better they like it. The problem is, those jobs don't produce anything – which means that, in economic terms, they aren't jobs at all, but just a different form of welfare. And yet this is seen as the key to “economic recovery” -- maximize the number of non-productive jobs, and make it difficult for anyone to create the productive kind. But then where is wealth supposed to come from? I guess from the same magic tree that sits in the Capitol rotunda, and which showers down money on the preferred and entitled.
A student of Ayn Rand would be tempted to ask, when is Atlas going to start shrugging? The problem is that the Atlases of our time are, to an overwhelming extent, in bed with the government. They are just as anxious to aid and abet the coming of the Servile State as is the government itself. And if the GNP suffers, and the currency is degraded, and savings are consumed by taxes and inflation, it's all to the good because that will only accelerate the process.
And need I add that this process is diametrically opposed to any sort of wish for American dominance on the world stage? We can see quite plainly that a two-class society (slaves and controllers) like Soviet Russia may be able to exert dominance for a while, but eventually that kind of system collapses and makes way for societies that have a more natural class structure and are less hobbled by debilitating “ideals”. Our ruling elite are falling into the King Midas trap – turning all they touch into gold while, outside the castle walls, everything is falling into confusion and chaos. Is that really the kind of world they want? So it appears. But do we have the will to stop, or even slow down, their folly? It remains to be seen – but don't look for the answer in the 2012 election.
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