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Victor Davis Hanson asks the wrong question — 82 Comments

  1. Yes. Mr. Hanson seems like he cannot accept what has happened. It’s so obvious what Obama is, and people just cannot see it.

  2. VDH’s prose is not always stellar. But a case can be made that Obama is a Nihilist and I think the word is somehow closer to the true Obama than the word knave.

    “Knave” to me implies a certain level of respect for things like law, tradition, values, good, and so on. The knave is the one who takes wrongly; who succeeds by being two-faced; who fools and tricks others out of their wealth or health or fortune. He likes the world he lives in; he just wants to get the best out of it by using and abusing others.

    The “Nihilist” is different. He believes nothing and values nothing in the present. The grandfather of the modern Nihilist is Nietzsche. For Nietzsche God was dead, and we killed him! This was not a happy occurrence for Nietzsche, but a true one. Therefore the thing required was to invent and impose one’s own morality. The Ubermensch, the SuperMan, was the one to do this. Hitler fancied himself thusly. So does Obama.

    he has no soul. There are no values for him except winning. He is like the pagan god Thor. His being is his strength, and he makes himself and society completely. There are no restrictions on him. There is nothing to love and value in the present but his own esteem and power. The Uberman and He alone makes the rules that others follow. The social order HE and he alone crates is, in nihilist logic, ipso facto the best one.

    ObamaUbermensch is, in his own mind, the Ur-progenitor of a new species of human animal; the fittest to survive in the Darwinian sense as proven by his defeat of all other contenders.

    Obama is demonic in this sense. His fatal flaw, however, is he gets bored and lazy. If we are lucky, he will be satisfied to retire to a South Sea Island but with a private jet to return to planet earth and harass us mere minions like a Dragon of old or a Harpie.

    VDH has picked up on the true measure of the man; the true fear of him; the true hope that the Dragon will not return when his term is done.

    But I say…Bilbo Baggins, call your office.

  3. The meme of fool or knave is endlessly fascinating.

    Does anyone think Obama is sitting in the Oval Office saying to himself, “Ah, Russia has fallen into my trap. Things are going just swimmingly in the ME and Afghanistan. Four dimensional chess is so easy for me and no one else can quite figure out my moves.” Chuckles to himself and calls his Secret Service detail to arrange for another golf game at Andrews AFB.

    My opinion is that Obama looks at this from a perspective of, “Oh crap, nothing is quite going the way I thought it would. However, the one thing I am sure of is that cowboying up and leading from the front is not the correct thing to do. That would betray my principle of putting diplomacy as the alpha and omega of my policy. Things are not going well, but jaw, jaw is always in all ways superior to war, war.”

    Obama, like most progs, believes that the U.S. superiority in economic and military affairs is a given. He often says such things as, “Iran is a tiny country with a small GDP, they are no threat to us.” or “ISIS is a JV team. They don’t pose a threat to us.” or “Russia is not on a par with us militarily or economically. They are near broke and low oil prices are making their situation worse.” To Obama and other progs, the golden goose will keep laying eggs because they think it is a magical process that just happens. If they thought otherwise, Obama would have tried to encourage business and a recovery in this country. He hasn’t because he does not understand how the golden eggs are produced. He only knows that deregulating the economy would be “unfair.” And that takes precedence in his mind.

    He operates from a position of ideology that is blind to all else. It is a faith in the prog ideology that blinds him to all other options. He is the ultimate True Believer.

  4. Why do so many leaders of the West seem to be using Islamic end time prophecy as a template for geopolitical change?

  5. J.J.:

    Every single detail isn’t exactly as Obama would have wished. But the general trend is. That’s what’s important to him, and I believe he considers himself a major success.

  6. neo, your assessment of Obama accords entirely with mine, and you put it better. I would add that he is of somewhat above-average intelligence, yet succeeds at convincing people he is a genius and deep thinker. His most powerful attribute, in fact, may be his ability to get people to project onto him their desires.

    You are right that he does not fear those who see through him, but has only contempt, because of his narcissism. However, he could have learned to fear them if his Voice of Saruman stopped working on enough people. Narcissists quickly recover and resume their unreality, but in the moments that they are revealed before the audience, the scalding vindictiveness can pour out quickly.

  7. 1,500 words to ask why someone getting paid wants another paycheck and so cant just say openly too much…

    same with liberal fascism…

    if one wants a paycheck in a liberal funded world, one needs not to go too far, or far enough that the enemies of your message can marginalize you. then where would you write to be paid and so eat?

    Obama is a Change Agent..
    see The Change Agent’s Guide
    Ronald G. Havelock, Steve Zlotolow
    [edited for length by n-n]

  8. But a case can be made that Obama is a Nihilist and I think the word is somehow closer to the true Obama than the word knave.

    ever hear the term Nihilist communism (from history)? ie. This is the definition of class hatred.

    http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/monsieur-dupont-nihilist-communism.pdf [126 pages]

    ‘Nihilist communism’ argues against the conception of ‘consciousness raising’ and recruiting as practised by the far left, whereby it is implicitly assumed that the social revolution may be brought about by enough persons spreading communist ideas effectively enough. Monsieur Dupont also argues regularly against class consciousness and even consciousness as a factor in revolution. To this, they counterpose a model of revolution based on a crisis of capitalism which will necessitate the appropriation of entire key industries by the essential proletariat – a class which they believe should be defined solely by the economic position of its members.

    here is a link to a introductory reading list for “left communism” (That right opposition soviet thing)
    http://futurefutures.tumblr.com/post/74935467423/an-introductory-reading-list-for-left-communism

    this is the basis of the idea of cloward and piven, as well as the idea of the fabians as to starting world wars to change the world..

    all this stuff the westerners dont know could fill a large library… kind of like standing in a room of invisable elephants and wondering why there is a big mess on the floor and no one to blame the stink on.

  9. the whol job of the change agent is to cause things that expose resisters that then have to be dealt with. think on it.. how do you expose the “racists”, by letting in lots of others and then looking at who complains…

    For every 1 net American born to today’s population–births minus deaths–the federal government will add 7 more people to the country through future immigration.

    Feminists are the most forward group visable to make such happen, and they dont want to be seen as X, so they keep fomenting more and more… till they have no power or dont exist

    you can then see the next stage is:
    Portland State course aims to ‘make whiteness strange’

    According to Portland State University Professor’s Rachel Sanders’ “White Privilege” course, “whiteness” must be dismantled if racial justice will ever be achieved.

    The course description states that “whiteness is the lynchpin of structures of racial meaning and racial inequality in the United States” and claims that “to preserve whiteness is to preserve racial injustice.”

    so basically if they resist they are racist, if they dont they are exterminated… jews die with them as the jews are mostly white

    See how the game works?

    now if VHD illustrates that, would he be published at 100-200 dollars per article per paper across the nation and websphere?

    doubt it.

    someone once suggested that i might be liked more if i wrote like churchill, but they forgot that churchill was saying something people wanted to hear, and i am saying things they dont know about (at best) and dont want to hear (mostly)

  10. He who would believe there was no longer any real substance to traditional social, political, moral, and religious values is a nihilist. He who would seek to uproot even the remnants of such a deracinated society is a nihilist. He who would destroy everything in his path is a nihilist. He who would proclaim “God is dead” (even though correct in the observance of it) and acclaim it as progress is a nihilist.

    BHO is what he ostensibly is because to be, you must be something, and he is an assortment of those things he had touched in life. He could hardly have been of use to the demolishers if he’d represented himself as such. I’m a nihilist, I believe in nothing but destruction, and I want your vote.

    Who is BHO? A Christian? No, not a bit of one. A Muslim? Well, he’s said prettier things about Islam than Christianity but does that make him one? No. A soldier of Allah — make me laugh harder… try. A communist? Using the methods of cultural Marxism as an entryway to the mainstream doesn’t make you a communist, it makes you resourceful. Nihilist can’t be resourceful? Where is it written? What precisely had BHO erected in the place that he’d played some part in destroying? Nothing. What order had he in mind for the chaos he’d played a part in fostering? None. To what may speculators point as being the philosophy, the ideology, the convictions behind BHO’s plans? Nothing. Whether there be little or nothing remaining of what once had been, BHO would be one majestic Gnostic. BHO is a nihilist.

  11. maybe i write too much.
    maybe people dont like it
    maybe some do

    but if your house was on fire, and you told me to shut up, and didnt listen, would you accept that i didnt try harder to let you know your home is about to be no more?

    at what point does one give up and let their neigbors home burn down? a friends? a family members?

    i would suggest reading what ex soviets and ex germans wrote about their time in such a system… (not much from chinese).

    i always suggest this because the ONLY reason one is confused and this is a mystery is because there is one huge blankspot in americans education system and that is the soviet union, how it worked, what its history is, what its methods were, and so on.

    other than cartoony movies with cartoony dialogue and all that, one does not ever get to know how things were unless one has friends or family that lived through it and even with that you had to take the time to tease it out of them.

    all thats going on can be read from history american and russian… all of it… obama is not very original, nor are his others… they are copy cats, making history repeat in pieces by new labels.

    if you never saw it before, you would not recognize it.

    the whole point about not teaching you or letting you knwo is that a confused animal is a frozen animal, and that goes for people too. confusion and fear you may be wrong in a conclusion with no confirmation, you stand like a deer in the headlights… will you get run over? will you survive? who knows, the deer doesnt, as the deer doesnt have enough knowing to get out of the way or even understand the mystery of a car.

    well, without the concomittent education in methodologies and so on, one sits there trying to make sense of things from a frame of reference that has no comprehension of another system or how it works, or how they achieve power (not progress). ours is a system or was a system of self fulfilment and work and freedom. we have not the mental tools to understandf teh refined practices of a closed system we cant even summarize without resorting to cartoonisms.

    Its like watching people trying to solve a riddle and they dont want to learn the language the riddle is written in…

    ok.. erase the post.. i had my say..

  12. I agree with MikeM, if I have understood him correctly. That’s to say that the 4th definition could well apply to Obama as a precursor condition or substrate attitude, in which either a profound skepticism regarding objective truth or a resentful emotional relativism, would provide the subsequent seedbed for his political machinations and sabotage of our system of governance.

    “an extreme form of skepticism [and/or cynicism I would say]: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.”

    “Real” existence as used in this context of course, means extra-mental non-subjective existence, of kinds and natures independent of the mind’s arbitrary, deceptively filtered, or will-driven categorization.

    Now, whether you see his embrace of anti-American principles to be based on his genuine appreciation of some non-American or western value system, or as a mere flight of convenience to an emotional or intellectual pretext, would determine whether the term “nihilist” in sense 4 would properly apply.

  13. I think VDH, along with many other conservatives, fail to see and understand Obama’s real motivations because they were never leftists themselves. I used to be a mostly passive armchair leftist with many similar friends. Also, like Neo, I have experience with psychotherapy. Neo’s expositions of Obama’s thinking have always seemed spot on to me. I bet David Horowitz would agree. I hope Horowitz has discovered Neo’s brilliant insights into not only Obama, but the tens of millions who follow the Democrats, without hesitation.

  14. ok. fine.
    i have heard…
    i wont comment…
    anymore.
    thanks for the time here.

    your house is burning down
    good luck

    [just rememer that no country has avoided the final outcome – ever… every targeted state eventually fell in order of their distance and importance]

    neo, please erase my post.
    thank you.

  15. No doubt Dr. Hanson has a great mind, but he writes without hope, and tends to be groping for an explanation to events that are, in his astute view of history, devastatingly bad. The short answer to his query is we elected a President that is a reflection of our society, and that society is not likely to improve in its capacity to discern or elect leaders having both ability and integrity. This is due in large part to a prevailing information system that decimates both our attention span and our ability to sort fact from fantasy. Maybe some of us should invite Doc. Hanson over to view THE MATRIX on Netflix and get the right side of his brain equally engaged on the problem.

  16. “Alan F Says:
    October 6th, 2015 at 3:08 pm

    I think VDH, along with many other conservatives, fail to see and understand Obama’s real motivations because they were never leftists themselves. I used to be a mostly passive armchair leftist with many similar friends.”

    Why, sincerely asked, were you a leftist; and what did the presuppositions of the left regarding the moral status of the individual, mean to you, when you looked at it as it potentially affected yourself?

  17. @Artfldgr: You are not allowed to go.

    Everyone is different. You do research no one else does. I only skim your bold fonts, but that means nothing either.

    If we all left every time someone told us to leave (someone who was probably having a bad day himself) none of us would be anywhere.

    But here we are.

    And Obama is a nihilist, which is really the same as saying he worships the demonic as his god. Or more euphemistically – his father is none other than the father of lies from all time. JC sussed his lot out way back when, and people have not changed since then. Not a bit.

  18. @Artfldgr

    My family survived – and didn’t survive – the Nazis and Communists. Dachau, Vorkuta, etc. We grew up living with the repercussions of it like mother’s milk. I think what you’ve written is spot on.

  19. Now my browser interrupts with:

    “Slow down, you are posting too quickly.”

    Some jolly joker is in the loop.

  20. Maybe Ann Althouse is right and Obama is cute and dreamy and we should “just deal with it”. Or not.

  21. I have thought since sometime during the 2008 presidential campaign that Obama is an unaligned destroyer. His first target is Western Civilization in general, and the U.S. in particular–his first one, but not his only one. He has a ready-made weapon in the alliance of convenience forged between Islam and the international Left over at least decades. Once we are destroyed, the Left and Islam will fight each other over the wreckage. They will most likely destroy each other in that battle, but he will not care which of them wins it. For one thing, the spoils of the victory will be precisely that: spoils. No one who wins them will have gained much, and it will not matter to him anyway, so long as we have been destroyed first.

    I have lately thought that the forces of Islam seem to form the military arm of that alliance of convenience, and the Left sees itself as the brains, the strategic planners. The forces of Islam are looking stronger now than they might have earlier in the conflict. So he is working to weaken them; notice how he seems to favor now one side, the Sunni (Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS), and now the other (Iran, Hezbollah, Syria). That fight, he might think, can only serve to weaken the Islamic whole, and work in favor of the brainy Left. He may not be able to leave the Presidency in 2017.

    While our fall is now all but certain, the victor in the battle over the wreckage is not so clear. He wants it to be more of a dead heat than it is right now. So the MENA battles are going to weaken the Islamic faction. Between Sunni and Shi’a, it is presently unclear who will prevail. And once that battle is settled, IF it is settled, Islam as a whole will be weaker for it. If that works, the Left will be relatively stronger. Another battle looms, with uncertain outcome.

    Except that the single certainty will be destruction, and the future will not look like much, not worth fighting over. And he will have prevailed.

    Sounds like nihilism to me.

  22. I remain unimpressed by the jug-eared clown in the Oval Office. The only lesson I’ve learned from the Obama years is that our own party needs a good purge.

  23. George Pal says it well.
    I too vote Nihilist.
    Baraq Hussein is the Sampson in our temple, an unblind Sampson. He destroys, loves his destructive powers. Never builds anything. Community organizers never built spit anywhere, just agitated for agitation’s sake, but Baraq is The Destroyer.

    Better than anything, this explains what he hath wrought with the Federal Debt, the destruction of our military, our institutions, his bulldozing contempt for normal Americans.

    In destruction is his victory.
    Nihilist.

  24. In destruction is his victory.
    Nihilist.

    I blame the voters.
    I blame the Repubics.
    I blame the Repubics donors.

    The donors never made the calls and asked about the lack of pushback?
    Draw your own inferences.
    Ann is right.

    Newt’s silence. Curious.

  25. To all those who say Obama’s a nihilist, see the “Addendum” I just added to the post.

  26. VDH is fighting the last war, to use a historical reference, in politics.

    He is very much a product of the older generations, rather than the situation which has crafted and grafted the newer generations of America.

  27. The Leftist alliance was and is allied to Islamic Jihad. Hussein Obola, being the God King religious head of the Left currently centered around the US, cannot be “un aligned” with global forces, by definition.

  28. Neo: You say Obama is not a Nihilist because he is first and foremost a man of the Left. But the Left is nihilist.

    That is what it is. It destroys Civilization in order to build a new civilization, but the values are completely different. Nietzsche was the “transvaluation of values” guy.

    Every traditional value is nothing. If it is there it is wrong, an artifact of an old system where there used to be a God.

    Now the only value is whatever the Left bullies into being by murder, mayhem, killing, tearing down and then refashioning the world to their desires.

    That is why every Leftist is Pol Pot who would kill people in the jungle if they could. That is why every Leftist would kill three billion people to save the planet and get back to the garden if they could. That is why every Leftist will have NO value left standing. There is No truth. There is No marriage. There is No family; No Constitution; No Law to follow but the Law of the Left’s Iron Fist.

    The Left are Tolkien’s Orcs from Mordor.

    That’s it. They do not compromise, and they do not tire, and they do not negotiate.

    That’s the truth.

    Period.

  29. It destroys Civilization in order to build a new civilization,

    The Left doesn’t build anything. They take over Western civilization and pretend they built everything in it. Sort of like what people call “Arabian numerals”, as if the Arabs built that.

    That’s it. They do not compromise, and they do not tire, and they do not negotiate.

    That’s called a fanatic too.

  30. Mike M:

    I think we’re arguing semantics, in a way.

    The Left thinks it’s building something, believing in something. Some nihilists are hangers on with the Left, and they only want to destroy. But they’re not Leftists, they’re nihilists.

    It’s a fine distinction, but a real one.

    I believe that Obama is a leftist. He destroys, of course, but in order to build something that he believes in. He also destroys what he hates. It’s a twofer for him.

    Goebbels was much more purely a nihilist. I’ve written about that here:

    In Goebbels, it seems to have been a purely sociopathic nihilism, compounded by enormous narcissist drives (the following is taken from the Meissner book):

    As far as one could tell, Goebbels had no beliefs at all. People still living [the book was written in 1980], who were part of his immediate circle or his household, agree absolutely about this. To him all human existence was nothing but chaos. He considered himself one of the very few intellects capable of surveying it and mastering it.

    In fact, it may be that Goebbels didn’t even particularly hate Jews, at least no more than he hated the entire human race. His interest was in power, self-promotion, and persuasion, and he was a rare genius at all three, willing to do literally anything to further those causes.

    Obama is also interested in power, self-promotion, and persuasion (as are many politicians). But they are not complete ends in themselves for him, although they are very very important.

  31. “Fanatic” just a word. Not particularly descriptive or precise. It applies to Baseball Fans too.

    The Left are not fanatic. The Left are demonic. That is the start. The external behavior follows from that center.

    Yes, they do not build in the sense of good things. Yes, they are parasites at heart, thinking they are independent innovators. But they build in the Devil’s sense – always trying to the god they hate.

    It’s all in the f*&^ng Bible.

    All this post-mod hyper-analysis is 99.5% Bulls&^t.

    It has ever been thus. It will ever be thus until the end of time.

    To twist Marx on these monsters: The point is not to describe the Left; but to defeat them.

    But to defeat them you have to fight them. And to fight them you have to wake up to who and what they really are.

  32. It applies to Baseball Fans too.

    That’s because fan came from fanatic, because they are weaker versions of the original.

    If you have never fought a fanatic, you don’t understand what they are then.

  33. But they build in the Devil’s sense — always trying to the god they hate.

    Only God or divine power has the ability to Create. The devil, as you term it, only has the power to corrupt via evil.

  34. Words, words, words. So many words.

    I’m not interested in words any more. When will it be time for action?

  35. The Left are not fanatic. The Left are demonic. That is the start. The external behavior follows from that center.

    Demonic
    Documented

  36. I’m not interested in words any more. When will it be time for action?

    Like food preparation, logistics takes time. A critical mass of Dragon’s Teeth cannot be imported or created automatically. The people must understand suffering and pain, in order to condition out decadence and condition in hate and Willpower.

    It is very hard to put a time table on such things, but the date hasn’t surpassed my original estimates at least.

    All this post-mod hyper-analysis is 99.5% Bulls&^t.

    Maybe, but it’s not time yet to go “loud” in the wet work sense. As a personal defense matter, that’s not up to centralized command or strategic organizations to dictate, so people can still shoot back at Muslim wreckers, invaders, crims, and mass killers.

    But in the meanwhile, what are people going to do with their hate and anger? I say, refine and sharpen it into a better weapon.

    Human emotions are more powerful in rhetoric and motivating action, than merely “logick” and “reason”.

  37. http://www.voxday.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-birth-of-anti-sjw-advertising.html

    Here’s some red meat for the natives.

    But as Europe is showing us, the Left’s end game is Population Replacement via rape, crime, and enforced totalitarian dictates from authoritarian systems and societies and rules and laws and other cow poo poo.

    So, with that strategic vision in sight, what do you want to do about it?

    Right now, at least, the US Regime’s ability to prevent citizens from empowering themselves with X, Y, and Z is severely limited compared to what they will have in 10 years, if Europe is a good barometer to judge by.

  38. You know the Left has all these *great plans & schemes* they hope to inflict on humanity but people are not taking into consideration how the world is functioning in this *new era*!
    Getting control of a population, especially in First World countries, will become more difficult then it has ever been in the past. Sure they feel that starting conflicts will force *things* to change, but they will not get the results they desire. The old adage sums it up *Be careful what you wish for*

  39. “He does want to destroy–certain things, to accomplish certain goals.”

    What goals? The argument may be academic; destruction is destruction after all. What the goals are fall into the category ‘ostensibility’ unless it can be shown that the goals have to them a causal connection — that they consist of A, B, C, D, to get to F. I can’t see it. Well, I can if F is chaos. Otherwise there is no rhyme, reason; the premises of an argument, of action, must eventually support a belief. What does Obama believe in? Christianity, Judeo/Christian ethics, tradition, the understandings of millennia? Islam? He thinks the Muslim call to prayer is lovely, so? What of the daily prayers? The Caliphate? Jihad? The Golden Age of Islam? He learned Communism at a pervert’s knee, so? Is he a communist? Does he ascribe to “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need…” His high life would suggest no, even accounting for the corruptibility of Communists. Has he in mind, does he work to the attainment of a classless communist society? ‘Without class’ fits him as if spoke for, but classless society — look to all the swells about him and his acolytes. Anyone believe a classless society had ever crossed any of their minds?

    What else might Obama be? Is their much else? He’s not a Jew, entrepreneur, builder, uniter, There is nothing of Obama that suggests an overriding belief. There is nothing of him that suggests first things, first principles. Read for even a short time any of the commenters on this blog. It becomes readily apparent that they believe strongly in something. I had never been disposed to believe that of Obama. Obama is entirely pretense; and the pretense labors to disguise nihilism. Unless of course one would insist that chaos is not nothing. In that case then the pretense cloaks a destructive Gnosticism. And that’s where I had started — destruction is destruction

  40. rickl:

    If you’re not interested in words, what on earth are you doing reading blogs, or commenting on them? Particularly this blog?

    Words mean things, and they are the way we communicate with each other, expressing our thoughts.

  41. A free and enlightened people in a free election choose Obama as they have chosen the path Obama rides over and over again, with ineffectual interludes, since 1932.

  42. Pingback:Reading 2015 10 07 | Rebel Yid - Ideas beyond the left/right, red/blue, and liberal/conservative thinking

  43. ErisGuy Says:
    October 7th, 2015 at 4:24 am
    A free and enlightened people in a free election chose Obama as they have chosen the path Obama rides over and over again, with ineffectual interludes, since 1932.
    They did re-elect FDR four times! An imbecile, a cretin.

    Nowadays the Repubics make it worse:
    Wanted: A President of Good Character
    Can’t have that with a mush populace.

  44. All those goals are pretexts. They must be, otherwise, the man is a blithering idiot intent on denying failed societies so that it could not be claimed that he’d been wrong. If it can be said of someone that he must be aware of the monstrous failures of Marxist economics then his insistence on Marxist economics would, ought, set off alarms. What could he have in mind but the failure of that society. What of anything of Marxism, the greening of it, the labor theory of value, the proletarianism, would recommend it to anyone after they’d been witness to the death of an empire that had been built on it. It stands to reason that subverting what works and finagling for that which had failed is as hell bent as one can get on destruction. And O is much more a cultural Marxist than he’d ever been an economic one. Economic Marxism had promised all manner of magnificence for the future. It’s understandable that someone could have fallen for it — but not after it had fallen. Fabianism too much benefits Obama a doubt he hadn’t earned. Cultural Marxism on the other hand is more up Obama’a dark alley. Endless contention, endless struggle, against three thousand years of civilization. To what purpose? Its destruction. All Gnosticism tends to nihilism. I don’t know were Obama is on that personal journey. I know where he’s headed.

  45. Irene, thanks

    my family too experienced Stalin twice and hitler once.. most of them were exterminated in one way or another

    some in camps, some as conscripted troops, some designated as traitors by stalin for being conscripted, and others just by circumstance (bombs, starvation) and my grandfather was tortured to death in front of the family.

    even though that was before i was born, and while my dad was quite young, the whole of it always hung over the family, colored their choices of what to study (ie. additional stuff from the other side that was absent in our education system back then and now), and lots and lots of stories. as i was born in the age of being social with family and people, not the age of computers and isolation.

    to those that have lived their lives in the US mostly untouched directly by the worlds effects, they do not believe that its possible that one day, equipment can appear at both ends of their street and the life they knew would be gone in an instant without any means to question it, understand it, protest it, etc.

    they certainly dont know the processes and methodology that is used to do that as it works and is refined over and over from country to country without much protest as there is a huge set of state organs behind the game. They dont even have an inkling, they misuse terms and to the elite that know the things they dont, and so on, they seem like idiot rubes the way that the characters in the movie Deliverance appears to them!!!

    i have for years tried to inform them that the people who have experienced and DO know these things all sit around talking about how foolish everyone else is and often are afraid to talk. they worry that what they say will be remembered and if things change the way they fear, that will come and haunt them as it did in other places.
    [edited for length by n-n]

  46. One of the Left’s first goals has always been to make America into an Evil Slave Empire. This was part of Soviet demoralization and weakening of their rivals, but when the Soviets went kaput, the Leftist WMDeception virus went out and mutated.

  47. the way i see it, the tour guide Virgil won’t suffer if Dante does not follow / But Dante will be in a world of trouble if Virgil abandons him where he is

    🙂

  48. Mark30339: The short answer to his query is we elected a President that is a reflection of our society, and that society is not likely to improve in its capacity to discern or elect leaders having both ability and integrity.

    actually not… this has to do with the law changing and that people no longer get to select their representatives or donate to candidates, but instead donate to parties and parties select candidates. (i forgot what year this changed)

    so you can have any color you want as long as its black in this arrangement. without the party selecting and picking the candidate the people want, its just a choice over which cutout they want (and they, like magicians, play with your ability to pick a card using sociological information to their advantage)

  49. neo-neocon Says: To all those who say Obama’s a nihilist, see the “Addendum” I just added to the post.

    i agree… he wants to make something new in its place not destroy and leave a barren anarchy. Obama and communists know that one must raze the edifice of the prior to erase the love of what was, and replace it with a singularity that choice of love or hate becomes irrelevant as its the only choice. They think they are fulfilling Schopenhauer’s creative destruction

    The left has long been allied with Islam

    yes thats true, but their love of islam comes from their love of the soviets, who use islam. the best example of the kind of thing they do from history is way back when the CPUSA was more forward and the party line changed… this forced the people to turn on a dime to follow moscows movement. Given that the left is still on the goal of the “final solution to the jewish question” but more clandestine after they found out what the world thinks is not what they think (post Hitler). After all, russia took up the relationships with islam that hitler had. they also took over the camps which FDR signed over to them and they continued to use behind an iron curtain (not to mention that their idea of extermination was to put people in barges, and float them out to the north sea and sink them. unlike germany, this leaves no evidence for the future).

    Russia and satelite rulers have LONG taken claim that they were the ones who invented the use of planes as weapons starting with hijackings and bombings and ending up with the towers, and other incidents. they also like to have convenient accidents in passive agressive ways… oh. we bombed your CIA members and rebels to hell? sorry, accident… oh, we shot down a passenger plane, sorry, accident. Russia has a lot of accidents, but like a person cheating at the register, they always seem to be in their favor not distributed normally (in statistic talk)

    I believe that Obama is a leftist.

    yes, in classical “right opposition” soviet sense… which would make him a trotskyist, whose toolbox includes entryism (which we would call a process of co-opting and using the skin of trusted institutions till the trust runs out). He is MUCH akin to his uncle odinga who facilitated a school in kenya (like highlander in the US) and once he got permission from the state for soviet funding, the school and its members used that to train and initiate a coup d’état
    [edited for length by n-n]

  50. Arrgggggh.. can we make the columns wider so that the posts come out shorter? 😉

    During late 19th and early 20th centuries social democracy aimed to replace private ownership with social ownership of the means of production, influenced by both Marxism and the supporters of Ferdinand Lassalle until 1868—1869 when Marxism became the official theoretical basis of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany

    In the early 20th century, the German Social Democratic politician Eduard Bernstein rejected the revolutionary and materialist foundations of orthodox Marxism, believing that socialism should be grounded in ethical and moral arguments and that it could be achieved through gradual legislative reform. Influenced by Bernstein, following the split between reformists and revolutionary socialists in the Second International, social democratic parties rejected revolutionary politics in favor of parliamentary reform while remaining committed to socialization In this period, social democracy became associated with reformist socialism. Under the influence of figures like Carlo Rosselli, social democrats began disassociating themselves from Marxism altogether and embraced liberal socialism appealing to morality instead of any consistent systematic, scientific or materialist worldview. This included appeals to communitarian, corporatist, and sometimes nationalist sentiments; rejecting the economic and technological determinism generally characteristic of orthodox Marxism and economic liberalism. By the post-World War II period, most social democrats in Europe had abandoned their ideological connection to Marxism and shifted their emphasis toward social policy reform in place of transition from capitalism to socialism. The Third Way is a major faction in social democratic parties that developed in the 1990s which aims to fuse right-wing economics with social democratic social policies, though some analysts have characterized it as an effectively neoliberal movement.

    and so, they are Nazi’s technically
    the third way fusion of socialism and capitalism is the goal, which we USED to call fascism. but you cant sell fascism any more, and china is now facist.

    so fascism is what is being made here, and it pretends to be separate from the mother marx that its derived from.

  51. NEO says: As far as one could tell, Goebbels had no beliefs at all. People still living [the book was written in 1980], who were part of his immediate circle or his household, agree absolutely about this. To him all human existence was nothing but chaos. He considered himself one of the very few intellects capable of surveying it and mastering it.

    Sergey Nechayev 1869
    The Revolutionary Catechism

    The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution.

    3. The revolutionary despises all doctrines and refuses to accept the mundane sciences, leaving them for future generations. He knows only one science: the science of destruction. For this reason, but only for this reason, he will study mechanics, physics, chemistry, and perhaps medicine. But all day and all night he studies the vital science of human beings, their characteristics and circumstances, and all the phenomena of the present social order. The object is perpetually the same: the surest and quickest way of destroying the whole filthy order.

    4. The revolutionary despises public opinion. He despises and hates the existing social morality in all its manifestations. For him, morality is everything which contributes to the triumph of the revolution. Immoral and criminal is everything that stands in its way.

    6. Tyrannical toward himself, he must be tyrannical toward others. All the gentle and enervating sentiments of kinship, love, friendship, gratitude, and even honor, must be suppressed in him and give place to the cold and single-minded passion for revolution. For him, there exists only one pleasure, on consolation, one reward, one satisfaction — the success of the revolution. Night and day he must have but one thought, one aim — merciless destruction. Striving cold-bloodedly and indefatigably toward this end, he must be prepared to destroy himself and to destroy with his own hands everything that stands in the path of the revolution.

    7. The nature of the true revolutionary excludes all sentimentality, romanticism, infatuation, and exaltation. All private hatred and revenge must also be excluded. Revolutionary passion, practiced at every moment of the day until it becomes a habit, is to be employed with cold calculation. At all times, and in all places, the revolutionary must obey not his personal impulses, but only those which serve the cause of the revolution.

    once again, i point out to understand obama is not to use modern terms and things, but to use terms from the soviets.

    Obama is a revolutionary, just as Geobbles was
    and for the same ideology… trotskyite social democracy which spawned all this.
    [edited for length by n-n]

  52. Ymarsakar Says:
    October 7th, 2015 at 12:06 am
    But as Europe is showing us, the Left’s end game is Population Replacement via rape, crime, and enforced totalitarian dictates from authoritarian systems and societies and rules and laws and other cow poo poo.

    The following chart and background have been provided to Breitbart News exclusively from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, which is chaired by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). The chart shows that for every 1 net American born to today’s population–births minus deaths–the federal government will add 7 more people to the country through future immigration.
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/04/exclusive-senate-immigration-subcommittee-releases-chart-proving-immigration-will-outpace-american-population-growth-7-to-1-through-2065/
    [edited for length by n-n]

  53. Neo, I’ve read your blog for years and never felt the need to comment until now. However, your take on Obama has me troubled. I never saw him as particularly bright or driven or ideological (except in the sense of being purely reactionary to some stimulus or the other — e.g., mass shooting = gun control). In fact, I never thought of him as an individual at all. I see him as a vessel into which all the Leftists surrounding him pour their own pathologies (I’m NOT a doctor of any sort). He seems more a wind-up doll to me than anything else. I think of his inability to speak without a teleprompter about important issues during the early part of his administration — before he had learned his lines as well as he knows them now. Is it possible that an individual can actually be not an “individual” at all, in the sense that one can evaluate his personality, but an amalgam of the personalities who use him as their mouthpiece? I know I’m not expressing this idea very well, but would love your comments on this.

  54. Russian jets intercept US predator drones over Syria…

    they are at war with us…

    they have always said they were…

    when will our modern leftists realize that their “friends” are shooting at them?

  55. Not an amalgam, more like an alliance that has a secular + religious head in one position.

    Much of Hussein’s power comes from his position or personal resources, but what makes evil dangerous is when they cooperate with each other in an alliance: the Leftist alliance for human utopia.

    Then they go a conquering, then the effects of evil becomes obvious and too corrosive to ignore.

  56. I have no doubt Obama considers himself a success, and in many ways he has been, but he is still a fool. He enjoys giving preening, self-congratulatory speeches in which he lectures his opponents from what he imagines to be a position of intellectual and moral superiority to hide that fact. He consistently says the most pig ignorant things. He gets away with that domestically but foreign audiences outside of equally suicidal western europe don’t care about the symbolism of his historic blackness. He is an international laughing stock.

    Obama has been very good at destruction. Leftist always are; they’ve demonstrated that everywhere they’ve held power. But that is easy.

  57. Steve57:

    I have often said that in some ways Obama is also a fool; the two are not mutually exclusive.

    However, I am firmly convinced that most of his actions that people think are the result of “fool” are really “knave.” In other words, people should not think he is merely some sort of bumbling fool who means well in terms of America, and that explains the disasters he has wreaked and continues to wreak. It does not.

    He may be a fool, but he’s also a knave and a successful one.

  58. AntiLeftist:

    That’s an interesting question.

    Everything I say about Obama reflects my impressions and conclusions based on my observations and research. Of course, I could be wrong.

    People often say I give Obama too much credit—that he is a mouthpiece for others, and some sort of “puppet” who has learned his lines, takes his orders, and can hardly do much of anything without them.

    That’s not my reading of him, obviously.

    But I also do not see Obama as a loner, a self-made man with no allies, supporters, confederates, helpers. The left is definitely a group enterprise. When I write that he’s a man of the left, I mean that in that sense, as well. When he was younger, it was recognized that he was a good front man, and excellent at adopting a facade that would hide his true intentions while signaling to other leftists what they actually were. I believe he has studied the methods of the left and the history of the left and of activism. He has had the help of others, for sure. But he’s no empty puppet. He’s an intelligent man who is usually able to think on his feet and be very very careful in what he says.

    I don’t see him as an amalgam, an empty personality merely reflective of others. I don’t think we see the whole Obama; only a few people see that. I believe the whole Obama is a lot more angry and a lot more cold, a lot more ruthless and very planful rather than impulsive. Above all, he is a narcissist.

  59. George Pal:

    Marxism and/or leftism is as much a faith as anything else. It does not rely on logic, although believers use logic (or what they think is logic) to justify it. Many are very smart; it’s not about intelligence. They are true believers. I have known many many of them (including when I was growing up) and have been privy to the way they think.

    They are not stupid. They are experts—geniuses, actually—at rationalization. They (like many people, actually) will do almost anything to avoid the consequences of cognitive dissonance between what they believe and what has happened in the world. There is always an excuse. And tomorrow is another day. But the believers actually believe.

  60. DNW asks:

    Why, sincerely asked, were you a leftist; and what did the presuppositions of the left regarding the moral status of the individual, mean to you, when you looked at it as it potentially affected yourself?

    My answer:
    It would take thoughtful psychoanalysis to uncover my root motivations. In short, I think I was typical of my horny young men who couldn’t readily figure out how to make it in established dating and work milieus. So, I readily accepted much of criticism of the culture and came to believe that a free-love revolution along with a socialistic ordering of industrial capacity would usher in a greater good. I took our liberties for granted at first, not thinking that the left would destroy them. I had already served in the 101st Airborne and never bought into popular naive pacifism. I settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. That began the undoing, as I watched the left’s programs bring on dysfunction. What sent me solidly into the right was the lack of indignation of liberals after the WTC attack on 9/11.

  61. neo-neocon said:

    “However, I am firmly convinced that most of his actions that people think are the result of “fool” are really “knave.” In other words, people should not think he is merely some sort of bumbling fool who means well in terms of America, and that explains the disasters he has wreaked and continues to wreak. It does not.”

    I agree. I don’t think he’s merely a fool. But if we had a loyal opposition instead of today’s GOP they should have exploited the fact that Obama is also a fool. A malicious, angry, ruthless fool, but still a fool nonetheless. And if I were in a position of political authority I would have exploited his weaknesses to at least discredit him if not actually drive him around the bend. For the good of the country.

    When he opens his mouth to lecture the country (and the UN, and other countries) he is simply indulging his vanity. He clearly thinks he’s more insightful, sees farther in the future, has a superior grasp of any situation than any of his critics. Especially when it comes to foreign policy. He is such a vain, hubristic man he can’t resist lecturing everyone about how we have all been doing everything wrong since the beginning of time to when he was elected.

    And during the course of these lectures he reveals himself to be a shallow, juvenile thinker.

    I am convinced his outsized, fragile ego couldn’t stand being mocked. That he would self-destruct. That, I think, was the point of Putin’s NYT op-ed. He’s a former KGB officer who used to handle western turncoats. He knows people like Obama inside and out. In fact, I’m certain beyond a shadow of a doubt he has a thick dossier on Obama, including a psychological profile detailing all his weaknesses. And he wrote that op-ed just to let Obama know he has his number. And Putin has been proving that all over the world, outsmarting Obama right and left.

    If Obama were merely a fool I wouldn’t suggest playing hardball and causing him to implode, cracking that facade of his. But it’s precisely because he is so effective that I see this as the only course of action. Not the “he’s a nice guy, just in over his head” course of action that failed in 2012. He’s not a nice guy, and I think Ben Carson was onto something when he said he believed Barack Obama is a psychopath. He may be ruthless, but only when punching down. I don’t think he could take much pressure and for the good of the country I suggest putting more pressure on him than he can take.

  62. In short, I think I was typical of my horny young men who couldn’t readily figure out how to make it in established dating and work milieus.

    There’s a sub culture going around especially to deal with that, namely called:

    Men Going Their Own Way

    Alpha game or game or PUA.

    It came from a research group of internet nerds who wanted to de construct and reverse engineer human social rules for dating advantages. Then it just sort of linked up with a bunch of other people doing similar things that worked. Then it became really anti feminist sometime after it linked with larger internet communities like 4chan and reddit.

  63. Not the “he’s a nice guy, just in over his head” course of action that failed in 2012. He’s not a nice guy, and I think Ben Carson was onto something when he said he believed Barack Obama is a psychopath.

    Hussein is a gate way to turning people against the Left. Because what people do is to treat the Left as a nice guy, and they don’t take the Left seriously. They do not consider them enemies, so they will not support allied or patriotic efforts to crush the Left. People don’t care about abstract movements one way or another, very strongly. But a person can act as a focus lens to direct people’s love, adoration, or hate, and once that emotion is installed, it can be diverted towards other uses.

    If there are only some things that can be seen with the love of a patriot, then some things can only be seen with hate.

  64. Barry O is the first president to come through the modern American educational system. He absorbed every word of the lying bullshit they shovel and just plays it back. He’s the Chauncey Gardner of leftism. He’s never had an original thought in his life — you know exactly what he’s going to say on any subject, in any situation. That’s why the academic-media-government complex loves him so. He’s their robot!

    It doesn’t matter an iota to me whether he’s saying, “No shit, did I really get away with that?” or “BWAAA-HA-HA-Ha! My evil plan for world domination is succeeding!” His actions are the same in either case, so who cares how he gets there?

    P.S. Why are you guys all picking on Fabian? Sure, he was no Elvis, but “Turn Me Loose” was pretty good — had a good beat, good to dance to, I give it a 75.

  65. Richard Saunders said:

    “He absorbed every word of the lying bullshit they shovel and just plays it back. He’s the Chauncey Gardner of leftism. He’s never had an original thought in his life…”

    This is the fool aspect I was referring to. He actually believes the crap he spews. He also believes that he creates reality merely by talking.

    I agree with neo that he no doubt views himself as a great success, and he has been at “fundamentally transforming”the US. But within the borders of the US he controls the levers of power since he controls the executive branch. So, as I said, he can act tough since he’s punching down. He’s a thin skinned, glass jawed coward who enjoys playing the part of the bully. That’s why, for instance, he enjoys attacking people personally when he has a captive audience. Such as when he attacked the Supreme Court Justices at one of his SOTU speeches.

    It’s in international affairs that the distinction between fool and knave becomes most pronounced. He has enormous, totally undeserved self-regard for himself. I don’t believe for an instant he enjoys being b***h slapped and publicly humiliated like, for instance, Putin and Khameini are currently doing.

    It’s why he gives self-important speeches at the UN about how nations can not go back to the old ways of one nation dominating another. Putin, as I said earlier, has his number. Putin knows Obama isn’t going to do a damn thing about his aggression in the Ukraine, his attacks on US affiliated forces in Syria as he props up Assad. Obama really does think he can alter facts on the ground merely by making speeches. And then continuing to ignore reality.

    It’s why he has CENTCOM doctoring the intel about his pathetic, failed war on ISIS. It’s why he gives mewling, whiny speeches about Putin acting out of weakness in Syria; Putin wouldn’t need to send in troops if he was in a position of strength, Obama claims.

    Thus unintentionally indicting himself as even weaker, since the same thing must be said about Obama being forced out of weakness to send troops back to Iraq. The difference being Putin is actually playing his weak hands of cards for all they’re worth, while Obama is publicly humiliating himself by refusing to play his cards at all. Which, again, is why he has CENTCOM doctoring the intel; to make it look like he’s in the game when he’s so weak and afraid he’s actually just folding right and left.

    But to reiterate the point, he sees himself as the smartest man in the room. He’s the most resolute leader, in his own mind. He’s the strong man, not Putin. Reality says otherwise, and not just in his dealings with Russia. I think at some level he’s aware of that, although he’s in deep denial. It cuts his massive ego to the quick, so he can’t let it go. Hence his pathetic speech making.

    Hence, also, his “pivot” to gun control. He’s doing that because it gives him better headlines. Outside the borders of the US he can’t play the bully. He needs to distract people from his serial humiliations. And, as Jonah Goldberg observes at NRO, the importance to the gun control issue to Obama is the politicization of it. As he himself proudly stated. Not finding solutions. It allows him to demonize his domestic opponents. It’s what weaklings like him do after getting beaten up. Weaklings like Obama try to find someone small enough for them to beat up.

    Basically, he’s trolling Republicans. And the solution is to turn the tables on Obama. Don’t take the bait, but rather troll him. As Putin trolled him in his NYT op-ed. Point and laugh at the pathetic Obama. Mock him as the laughingstock he is; mock him as every tin pot dictator mocks him. As a complete irrelevancy who nobody fears or respects.

    His fragile ego wouldn’t be able to take it. That is, as I see it, the only way to save the country from further damage. Because I agree he isn’t just a fool. He is mostly a malicious left-wing America hater who is deliberately damaging the country. So if the GOP loves this country they’d exploit this man’s obvious vulnerabilities. They need to engineer an Ed Muskie moment, when he loses it in public. Or if you’re familiar with “The Caine Mutiny,” recreate the moment when the defense attorney probes CAPT Queeg’s vulnerabilities in order to expose his mental instability.

    As I said, it would be for the good of the country.

  66. Obama is easy. He is the Joker = ‘some people just want to see the world burn’.

  67. R Daneel:

    That’s too easy. Do you really think he doesn’t care what burns as long as there’s burning? I think he is very selective in what he wants destroyed and what he wants empowered.

  68. Putin is aggressively trolling Obama. And it’s working.

    http://hotair.com/archives/2015/10/08/reuters-congress-demands-answers-on-how-intel-agencies-missed-russian-offensive-in-syria/

    “Russia is fulfilling the policies advanced by the hawks, only instead of going after ISIS in the east, they’re applying them to the US-endorsed “moderate” groups in western Syria.

    That’s a subtle thumb in the eye to Obama. CNN reports on a more blatant humiliation, one conducted by the Russians when the US met with them to discuss air safety over Syria:”

    (Video at the link)

    “The Russians videotaped a meeting on military coordination and put it up on YouTube. So much for being respected on the global stage, eh? Meanwhile, we’re backing off from our own missions because we’re not sure the Russians won’t make a “mistake.” The humiliations are certainly having the intended effect, no?”

    Right. If the Russians fire at one of our drones or manned aircraft it won’t be a mistake. This administration is simply refusing to acknowledge reality, and gap between reality and Obama’s rhetoric (and that of his minions, who have to toe the party line) is increasingly undeniable.

    Had the GOP trolled this President during his first term instead of playing Obama’s game we might have been spared a second. For instance, instead of bemoaning the President’s “failure to lead” on so many issues they should have rejoiced in it. That for the good of the country, the more time Obama spent playing golf and working on his bowling score (he really did spend a lot of time on the White House basement bowling alley after he was embarrassed by his poor showing, referring to it as a “special olympics” score, one of the many data points that convince me this narcissist’s obsessive ego won’t tolerate the tiniest slight and should have been exploited) the better off the country would be.

    For two reasons. First, because it’s true. And second because I’m convinced he would have publicly lost it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AznmrRZsRQ

    “Put on Your ‘Bogie’ Shoes – Strawberries ”

    (CAPT Queeg loses it on the witness stand over a pint of strawberries and an imaginary key.)

  69. The Iranians trolled/are trolling Obama as well. If you recall a few years back Obama sent “secret” messages to the mullahcracy which the Iranians promptly made public in order to embarrass Obama. Of course, at the time Obama was impossible to embarrass. And the messages were indeed embarrassing, if one is capable of being embarrassed.

    They reminded me of nothing more than some teen aged girl trying to get together with some jock who had nothing but contempt for her, alternating between what were obviously empty threats on the one hand and groveling and begging on the other.

    Of course, if one were capable of embarrassment one wouldn’t have written or sent those messages in the first place.

    And of course the trolling continues to this day, as after pantsing Obama for all the world to see the leader to the “death to America” society has banned all further negotiations with the US government.

    I have no doubt that Obama had every intention of selling out the US and destroying its reputation as a reliable ally or as a foe to be reckoned with. That’s Putin’s unforgivable sin; he supports his allies and fights his enemies. Obama apparently can’t grasp the fact that other leaders aren’t as eager to work against their country’s interests as eagerly as he is to work against his own.

    But based upon his increasingly bizarre public comments it also appears to me that despite his ideological denial of reality it does sort of seep in through the cracks

  70. That is, eventually it does dawn on him that he is being humiliated. And he doesn’t know how and is not equipped to deal with it.

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