Losing trust
In the end, will anything much be done about all these suspiciously lost IRS emails and the larger IRS scandal? Will the buck stop somewhere, and if so where? And how?
It certainly won’t be easy to get at the truth and some accountability, because of the high probability that they’re all in on the corruption: not just Lerner and the IRS, but the DOJ, Obama, perhaps the FBI, and of course the MSM, which has barely been covering the story at all, as opposed to its furor over the missing minutes in the Nixon Watergate tapes.
Poor Nixon. If only he’d had the MSM on his side (which would only have happened had he been a Democrat), he—as a commenter here wrote—probably could have “burned the tapes, and then accused the other party of arson” and gotten away with it.
The depth and breadth of the government corruption in the IRS scandal makes me think of a memorable moment in the 1985 film “Witness”. It’s when the Harrison Ford character, who’s been fighting an enormous web of police corruption and has been reporting back to his trusted supervisor about it, has the dawning and horrific realization that the supervisor is also part of the conspiracy. It’s a searing scene as I recall it (I can’t locate a video clip, though, to check my memory), conveyed through Ford’s facial expression as he’s talking on the phone to the guy.
Although I saw the movie long before my political change, I think that sort of feeling of deep betrayal by a person or people you once trusted can be an integral part of the process of change. How many people in America are feeling that way now—and how many would be feeling that way if the MSM were to properly report the story?
[NOTE: Although I can’t find a clip of the scene, “Witness” is an excellent movie, in case you haven’t seen it. Here’s a different clip that deals with a different—but also fascinating—topic. Harrison Ford has been hiding out with the Amish after the Amish child Samuel has witnessed a violent murder while in the city. The gun here is Ford’s gun.
I’ve written about pacifism many times. The summary version of my viewpoint: too bad the bad guys won’t agree to be pacifists, too.
Another cinematic treatment of the same question occurs towards the end of another wonderful movie, “High Noon.” Grace Kelly, Will Kane’s Quaker wife, has to make a similar decision. She decides that she knows who the bad guys are.]
Neo: “the same question … She decides that she knows who the bad guys are.”
That’s it. The Dems and Left have answered that question with the chief “bad guys” are not America’s competitors, including the terrorists, but rather the Republicans and Right. Therefore, any action to counter the ‘bad guys’ is justified. They’re dedicated to convincing everyone else of that. It’s the foundational premise of their political strategy, of which their pegging defense ‘no matter what, Bush was worse’ strategy is a subset.
That’s why I’ve long advocated that it’s critical to rehabilitate Bush’s legacy and set the record straight on the Iraq mission in the popular narrative of the zeitgeist. Correcting the foundational premises is not just about Bush. It’s about breaking the Dems/Left’s proven political strategy moving forward.
By not stepping back to rebreak and reset the crooked bone by correcting the foundational premises, you’re handicapped in any future attempt to confront issues on their face.
We already see the compounding harm caused by the corrupted political dialogue based on the prevailing false narrative of the Iraq mission in the zeitgeist.
It isn’t my idea but I like it. A poster on Instapundit suggested a crowd sourced reward for producing the missing requested emails.
That’s a Kickstarter I can support.
What was that about an Army of Davids?
Alas, past of me wants to say, though: “Of course when we’re all audited, it will show that we were right, all the way to our IRS reviews. Then it’ll make our point for us even better. Then, they’ll just give another half-baked excuse and stall until the next election’s over. No one will remember or care what America used to be…”
A quite wonderful movie. The dance in the barn is moving.
The bad men are those who were human, but have forfeited their human free will and conscience for luxuries and power over their slaves.
It’s not hard to come up with a test for this. They even have TUring tests for computers.
DC, are you still under the same belief as Art, that people who read what you read will automatically agree with you because there is only One Truth and you, of the credential mob, have it in superior ownership?
When the movie came out internationally, I didn’t have to explain to my Greek and English neighbors about shoo-fly pie and the Pennsylvania Dutch.
I think the sense of betrayal is only now just starting … a few rocks tumbling down the hillside that presage a whole landslide. How many military and veterans have any trust in the administration after the Bergdahl swap, the VA bungling, and now appearing to cut the Iraqis loose … and those American contractors in-country? Now this naked politicization with the IRS, and essentially daring us to do anything about it?
The next couple of stupid moves by the administration might very well make into into a huge landslide, for which they have none to blame but themselves.
The missing email case would appear to involve criminal behavior at the Federal level. That means the Department of Justice would handle it. That would be Holder which means there isn’t much that Obama can’t get away with.
Eric Holder: “Justice is not blind… for I Am Her Eyes.”
While I abstained from going gloom and doom on Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007-08, now that things are going as predicted and envisioned, the chickens are coming home to roost. Blaming Hussein won’t change America or Iraq. Blaming Iraqis for their civil war, won’t help Americans being raped by Mexicans across the border.
The only thing, the Only Thing, that will change things for the better is to destroy the Left. All of it.
It is America itself they must blame. It is Americans they see every day they will have to psychologically prepare themselves to contest and conflict with. It is them, they are their worst enemy. Not the ISIL. Not the Muslims. Not the Mexican speaking workers being used as shock pawns by the Left. Not the goons oversea in Russia. Themselves. Your worst enemy is always yourself.
For America, it is America. For Americans, it is other Americans. They will destroy everyone you ever cared about, and if that isn’t a motivation for you to fix your vision on the right target… I don’t know what is. What is going on in Iraq, will be a paradise compared to when things change in the United States of America, soon to be the Disunited States of America.
For movies with a pacifist theme, I recommend both “Friendly Persuasion” and the original “Angel and the Badman”.
“Friendly Persuasion” stars the wonderful Dorothy McGuire and Gary Cooper as Quakers raising their family during the civil war. “Angel”, with John Wayne and the beautiful Gail Russell, brings a reputed gunslinger into the lives of a Quaker family in the old west. Both tastefully handled the conflict between pacifism and violence.
The problem with lefty “pacifists” is that they’re not consistent. Their whole politico-economy is based on force; yet they are against the use of force in self-defense or in defense of society. War on Terror? Bad. The war of the State against liberty? Good.
hey
your missing that harry reid just got the trademark office to negate the wshington redskins trademark!!!!
that is.
if your not with hitler, hitler will remove state protections
you know, like let blacks beat white guys
well now… if your a jew and you own a basketball team, you better not speak freely
if you own a team and it uses the term redskins which many indians like the rememberance, then your going to lose your trademark protection
how so?
well, dear leader and his minions have new powers never given and have decided to act without law, and without congress and make decrees and so on.
be ready for the showers and ovens.
after all, like the sign over buckenwald said
you get what you deserve
you get what you deserve
The people who denied their support to Hussein are getting what Hussein’s supporters deserve. Except the sacrifice payment is being paid now, and the Obamacan payments are waived until later.
“Witness” is one of my all time favorite movies.
don’t have time, at the moment, to go back and read your 13 posts on pacifism, I’m guessing you address the fact that most lefty/libs just play at being pacifists rather than being true pacifists.
Re: Loss of trust in the IRS and government, I predict a general increase in tax evasion among the general public.
KLSmith, from my analysis, Democrats are fake pacifists, just as they are face equality advocates, fake anti war advocates, fake atheists, etc.
An Atheist is someone that doesn’t use faith, like a Skeptic, but if you believe that humans are gods, that isn’t Atheism. If you believe in Global Warming, that’s not atheism. For an Atheist, God is either dead or it never existed to begin with.
For the Left, of course, it’s easy to tie the dots together.
@kaba
They got the idea from me, yesterday:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/190347/#respond
Its starting to look like a mad dash to do tons of stuff before the war breaks out… or to start an internal one..
anyone besides me notice that each of these things, from global warming to the IRS is basically undoing trust in the things that we depend on to function as a society?
hard to buy tulips after the mania…
for those that dont know the reference:
and when there is nothing that can be trusted.
Paranoia sets in… (remember the soviets?)
Well, you know Obama and he knows whats better than roses on a piano! tulips on an organ…
Indeed, leftists are not pacifists. They just want someone else to doing their killing for them. Real pacifists are religious people who adhere to an illogical premise that allowing someone to kill you is somehow better (more holy) than killing those who come to kill you.
Getting back to the weaponized IRS, everyone fears the IRS. Now if this fear, in light of the ‘lost’ emails, can be transferred to the entire DC behemoth by just 2% of the people who vote by rote for dems, this travesty might prove to be a positive smidgen of scandal. Personally, I was raised to distrust government and believe that the bigger the government the more there was to distrust. I’ve raised my children to do the same.
Another thing to consider is that BHO & his horde have been a boon to the underground economy. More and more people in my area are conducting transactions on a strictly cash basis or by barter.
Real pacifists believe in de-escalation, which means neither physical NOR verbal violence. Thus if they are killed, it is because they were specifically targeted, not because they gave offense or escalated a situation.
Yes, Parker, I see more cash transactions too where I live. The big banks and government are going to redouble their efforts to use debit cards and eliminate cash, just like parts of Europe.
If things are like “Witness” then I cannot wait ’til we get to this scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdW1BlDtcyU
“It’s over! Enough! Enough.”
Please somebody ring that warning bell for all to hear!
Parker, I turned to cash disbursements 3 yrs ago, and use plastic only when the tab exceeds the cash I’m carrying. Maybe the bank thinks I do poorly at casinos.
This also yields quick 15% discounts whenever I request that from plumbers, yard workers, etc. Quickly and no hemming about it.They know the wisdom of lack of a paper trail (Yard workers!), and what % they pay in taxes. None like Obama either.
Artfldgr – good tulip joke.
The offensive word in the name Washington Redskins isn’t “Redskins”.
Answering Neo: No. See previous screeds about the Republican “leadership”, whose idea of leadership is for Boner to lumber up to a microphone each time there’s another scandal, crisis, or screwup, and intone with stunning lack of self awareness, “the president needs to show some leadership”.
2.5 years to go.
Here’s a bit of an old Seattle Times article on the USSR’s black market.
Preview of coming detractions?
“MOSCOW [1990]- While the Soviet Union’s legislators and theorists ponder the vistas of a revolutionary economic-reform program, the people of this country live like hunter-gatherers in a real-world economy that is half desert, half medieval bazaar.
The official structures of the Bolshevik experiment are collapsing with such finality, the state-run shops are so barren, that nearly everyone now must participate in the immense ‘shadow economy” of speculation and petty bribery, barter deals and black-marketeers.
President Mikhail Gorbachev has proposed sweeping economic change to a form of market economy – a measure the Supreme Soviet is scheduled to vote on on Monday. But that’s the future; for today, life for the average Soviet citizen is a struggle for survival.
The demands of the ‘shadow economy” trace a Soviet lifetime.
A child comes into the world with the mother paying a 200-ruble bribe to the maternity nurse for a sterile needle and an anesthetic.
When a Soviet citizen dies, relatives are overcome not only with grief but with the knowledge that they must pay thousands of rubles in bribes to the mortician, the coffin maker, and the gravedigger.
What comes in between is an unending hustle. To buy a car means entering a world of markups in the thousands of rubles. A place in a good kindergarten requires 100 rubles – or better, $10 – slipped to the local school inspector.
To find a pair of jeans or even the cheapest Western luxury inevitably means a trip to places such as Moscow’s Vidnoye Market or Odessa’s City Market, vast parking lots of primitive commerce that seem like market scenes in the paintings of Brueghel or Bosch. Crowds form around old women who sell shampoo, hairpins, and lipsticks out of tattered plastic bags.
‘In a way, this is the real economy, and it touches all of us, every day of our lives,” said Yuri Shchekoshikin, a deputy in the national legislature who writes about the black market for the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta.
Everyday survival here requires of everyone – from childhood to old age – a street savvy that makes life in the inner cities of the West seem innocent by comparison. Many older Soviet people say the situation is much like it was after World War II.
Survival is a degraded art form requiring such skills as knowing under which bridge the black-market gasoline dealers operate on Tuesdays, and what sort of Western chocolates to give a schoolteacher on a state holiday so that a child can get decent treatment in the coming semester.
Anatoli Golovkov, the resident expert on economics at Ogonyok magazine, said, ‘There is nothing to buy through ordinary channels, but you can get anything you need if you are willing to play the game and pay big money. The whole process makes all of us cynical about the law and ourselves. It degrades us. But what’s the choice?”
New York City, being a socialist mess, has always had a lot of extra-private enterprise, IYKWIM.
Don Carlos,
I too use cash in daiiy life and usually negoiate a bill that is 10% lower than the initial tab. I also use barter by trading my capentry skills, such as they are, or food that I grow and preserve or eggs from my hens. I hunt venison during the bow, shotgun, and black powder seasons. I always get 3 deer and routinely trade 2 of them for things that I want. Most everyday people that I encounter are not fools. They know they are being squeezed by stagnant wages, higher taxes, and inflation where it counts: food and energy.
Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth.
Good thing the IRS has all that ammunition and war time material… eh?
Last night’s Grapevine on Special Report said the major networks have not said one word during the evening broadcasts about the missing IRS emails.
I think the only way the Left continues to win is if the 4th branch of government continues to be able to run blocker for the Democrats. The entire house of cards comes crumbling down with an honest press.
How about forging a media campaigned aimed squarely at the press itself and it’s dishonesty?
30 second spots on all the major networks asking a simple question, why didn’t the press tell you about this story? What are they hiding? Who are they hiding it for?
Finally, a teardown of the folks reporting the news as individuals. Who they are, who they worked for? Their college papers, etc. etc.
I don’t like the idea of it, but the fact is we are perilously close to the edge of no return and the people orchestrating it need to be exposed.
At least now you all will realize what i meant when i put up those songs a few times…
The war is ot over by kazaa, and Those were the days my friend.. a song dear to soviets.. which is why mary hopkin recorded it, as the yippies and other communists copied lots of stuff over to here..
mary hopkins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KODZtjOIPg
and the other versions
lenningrad cowboys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh_h-KdbBrE
Those were the days Dorogoi dlinnoyu (in Russian, 1968)
https://www.google.com/#q=those+were+the+days+my+friend
1968 was the summer of ‘love’
[that led to the current winter of hate]
Those Were the Days” is a song credited to Gene Raskin, who put English lyrics to the Russian romance song “Dorogoi dlinnoyu” (“Дорогой длинною”, lit. “By the long road”), composed by Boris Fomin (1900—1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii. It deals with reminiscence upon youth and romantic idealism.
[it] is probably best remembered in English-speaking countries for Mary Hopkin’s 1968 recording, which was a top-ten hit in both the US and the UK [shortly after Hopkin had been signed to the Beatles’ newly created Apple label.]
In Spain, Que tiempo tan feliz
In West Germany, An jenem Tag
In Italy, Quelli erano giorni
In France, Le temps des fleurs
No wiser…