I will save you from your pathetic pathologies
Bookworm on Apr 13 2008 at 2:26 pm | Filed under: Barack Obama, Democrats
Here’s Barack Obama, speaking to the plutocrats
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them — like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they’ve gone through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.“
Last week, I blogged about that very same visit to the super rich. To make my life easier, I’ll quote myself:
Obama bills himself as a man of the people, who will beat down big business (although some of the more disingenuous in big business have already figured out a way to profit from these so-called populist policies). Indeed, his “man of the people” credentials may run a lot deeper than he’s admitted, since it turns out that the father on whom he admittedly modeled his political ideals was an extremist, dyed-in-the-wool communist. Given his populist stance, Obama’s recent trip to the Bay Area, during which he hobnobbed only with the richest and most famous, is amusing, since it either presents a man with no discernible principles or it presents a bunch of rich people who are allowing themselves to be led like lambs to the slaughter.
I was on the way to the truth when I said he is “a man with no discernible principles” but I hadn’t made it all the way there, no doubt because I lacked all of the necessary information. I saw a man who was a hypocrite: One who lambastes the rich, but who nevertheless sucks up to them to fulfill whatever his needs are at any given moment. What I didn’t realize is that, much as Obama hates the rich (and I believe he does, despite his intense desire to join their ranks), he also hates the poor. Only someone who hates the poor could classify their belief systems as pathologies (which he, Messiah-like, can remove, of course).
What’s even more interesting is the type main types of behaviors that he, from his Olympian height, deems pathological: Gun ownership, a right the Founders enshrined in the Second Amendment; and religion, something in which he professes to believe, as well as something that the Founder’s encouraged with their emphasis on freedom of worship. With his Leftist “root cause” mentality, he’s reduced guns and religion to the same level as crime, terrorism and out-of-wedlock births, all of which are behaviors that the Left routinely attributes to poverty and despair.
I actually don’t have anything more to say on this topic. I think it was a terrible statement in that it reveals Obama’s deep disdain for ordinary American people, but I don’t believe, as some do, that it will derail his candidacy. Given that Obama could not rise above race, and given that he is now seen by the black community as the black candidate, the Democrats cannot undermine him. If they do so, they risk alienating their only utterly reliable constituency — African-Americans. The Democrats, therefore, are just going to have to say good-bye to the inevitable McCain Democrats, with the hope that these temporary Republicans will return to the fold, just as the Reagan Democrats ultimately did in 1992.
One more thing: if you want to drive your liberal friends crazy, you can get mugs, shirts and posts with the perfect Obama imagery.
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32 Responses to “I will save you from your pathetic pathologies”
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Hi Bookworm -
Thanks for addressing this. You touch on something that has been on my mind since Obama said this. Since the inception of his campaign, we have been assured that he is a devout Christian, one who takes his faith seriously. We also see him channeling (ad nauseum) the black preacher role in his speeches, whether it is with the style of delivery or what he actually has to say.
Then, in the space of four weeks, we find out that:
- he has been attending a church that has a pastor, the man that Obama called his mentor, who is a horrid racist who preaches the damnation of America and makes hideous sexual gestures behind the pulpit. When forced to explain himself, Obama asks us to believe that even though he has attended this church for 20 years and clearly had developed a close relationship with his pastor, he wasn’t really aware of the reverend’s beliefs.
- he equates ideas that he clearly believes are bad and backwards (i.e., bitterness, gun ownership, antipathy, anti-immigrants, anti-trade, frustration) with people who cling to religion.
So, what about this faith of his that he and all of his followers assured us that he had? How does he distinguish between the faith he has and the faith that all of these poor, bitter, and stupid mid-westerners have? (And yes, he clearly does think they are stupid - if they were smart like he and his wife, they would have figured out a solution to the problems he thinks they have, right?)
Don’t bother trying to explain how he distinguishes the two - I already understand. Bottom line: this man simply disgusts me and I’m rapidly getting to the point where I’m disgusted with people who support him. He is so transparent. He is so elitist. And he is such a liar.
One year ago, if I had thought that Hillary would be competing against someone who can hold his own against her in terms of lying, I wouldn’t have believed it. And yet, here we are.
Deana
P.S. And I just love Hillary’s most recent whopper - her pro-gun / pro-religion stance. Please. I’d ask her to give us some credit but she really is not all that different than Obama in what she believes about us mid-westerners.
Isn’t it interesting that he can spend almost his entire life in the US without having a clue about average Americans, yet a spring-break trip to Pakistan thoroughly prepared him for international politics? And just think of Michelle as our goodwill ambassador, relating how mean and lazy we are.
Poor Obama, just said soemthing awkwardly.
Poor Helen, her fingers cannot spell.
No Helen, he was speaking from his heart.
His problem was that, just like when John Kerry commented on how if you don’t study hard and do your homework, you can get stuck in Iraq, Obama thought he was among friends. He forgot that while everyone there might have been very comfortable with his beliefs, others who saw the tape might not be. He got caught. And now he, and his supporters, are coming out and saying that we simpletons are making it into something it wasn’t, that we just don’t understand. I guess we are all just too stupid to understand what he “really” meant.
Deana
Of course, he was speaking from his heart. Some people want to criticize the way the man breathes, because they don’t want him to be president. It’s fine to want someone else, but the nitpicking is silly. Liberals don’t think in terns of singling out each sentence and analyzing it. They aim for the big picture. Look at what Y. does to everything I say. And I’m not running for anything.
Helen:
The BIG PICTURE is that Senator Obama and Señora Abogada Obama are a pair of condescending Ivy Leaguers who haven’t a clue how the rest of the country lives nor what the rest of the country values. I spent the first half of my life in a small town, and I picked up very quickly on his condescending attitude. It is by no means the first time I have detected condescension from the good Senator.
The good Senator and his wife belong to the same church for 20 years. Then the good Senator says that those small towners in Pennsylvania who have hard times “cling” to religion in reaction to those “hard times.” ( I am reminded of my Quaker ancestors who left England for Pennsylvania so that they could practice their religion freely.) That to me seems like a BIG disconnect in the good Senator’s thinking. Do the good Senator and his wife CLING to their church from the financial haven of their million dollar mansion? So, from the good Senator’s point of view, poor people “cling” to religion as false solace for economic hardship, but a wealthy millionaire couple go to church out of the goodness of their souls.
THAT is the BIG PICTURE. If you have a problem with agreeing with me, I will be glad to provide the nitpicking details of how I arrived at my conclusion
BTW, you are right. I do not want Obama to be President. Since you have a scorn for NITPICKING DETAILS, I will simply state that is the BIG PICTURE. Here is one nitpicking detail: Obama has shown his unwillingness to commit himself by the many times he voted PRESENT when he was a state legislator in Illinois. That makes me uncomfortable with him.
Helen, the BIG PICTURE here is not Liberal or Conservative, but Tribe. You belong to the Arts and Humanities Tribe. I belong to the Science and Technology Tribe. Nitpicking details matter to the S+T Tribe. A comma in the wrong place can crash two lines- or a hundred pages- of computer code, for example. Arts and Humanities Tribe: I want it to work, I wish it would work. If we wish hard enough it will work. Science and Technology Tribe : the #$%# thing doesn’t work. Fix it or trash it.
Facts are funny things, Gringo. The other day, Mr. Bookworm and I were sitting on the couch. He got up to brush his teeth, and then returned to the couch. Realizing he’d left the light on, he stood up, and I discovered on the couch, directly under the spot on which his right arm had rested, a long smear of toothpaste that hadn’t been there before. Investigation revealed that he also had toothpaste on his right arm. Toothpaste is very hard to get off of couches.
What was so fascinating was that Mr. Bookworm resolutely denied that he had anything to do with the toothpaste. He didn’t deny that he had just brushed his teeth. Nor did he deny that the toothpaste first made its appearance on the couch after he returned from brushing his teeth. Instead, he kept saying, over and over again, “That can’t have happened. I rinsed all of the toothpaste off of me.”
His whole approach here — and he has a science background — reminded me strongly of the Democratic Congress’ response to Petraeus’ testimony regarding the current situation in Iraq. They can’t deny the facts he presents, so they keep saying that it can’t be true, because their constituents don’t want it to be true.
Helen - Obama is better when he camoflages his true beliefs. When that man speaks from his heart, when he slips and reveals his true self, he gets himself in trouble.
I don’t want him to be president for one simple reason: he does not value what I value. He does not advocate policies that I support.
Deana
Gringo -
Excellent post!
When I first went to college, I was in the Arts and Humanities. Like most universities throughout the U.S., the university I attended was very liberal. I was a good student and swallowed everything they said - hook, line and sinker.
It wasn’t until the end of my college career when I got myself turned around - mostly by reading books that were full of ideas that had NEVER been discussed in school. It was like a breath of fresh air to suddenly stumble across authors who unashamedly advocated for individual liberties AND responsibilities. And what struck me was that, unlike what we had been spoonfed in school, these authors took the time to show us real-life examples of the successes and failures. You could see what worked and what didn’t in countries across the globe.
Evidence is very important. Many liberals claim that the reason their ideas have failed so miserably in the past is because the surrounding circumstances were wrong, or there was interference from something else. We are told that we just need to try harder and “hope for change” - it will all work out. It doesn’t matter that there is no evidence that it has ever worked - we just need to keep marching forward to the end, to the great, giant utopia they keep assuring is possible here on earth. The end, that BIG PICTURE they keep thrusting in our face, will justify the means.
No thanks. The details matter. It’s the details that make things work or not work. It’s the details that lay the foundation of authenticity and ensure that whatever is being created is good and solid all the way through. And that’s important when you are talking about the future of America.
Deana
Besides - whenever I hear someone say that we shouldn’t be concerned about the details but rather should look toward some mythical vision that has been created, I can’t help but think of the Wizzard of Oz imploring Dorothy and her friends to “pay no attention to what is behind the curtain” after Toto has pulled back the curtain and exposed the “Wizzard” for what he really is.
Deana
Guys, I’m a poet, and details do matter. I can spend hours deciding to change a comma to a dash only to put it back again, whereas, my husband who is programmer, may hunt for hours to solve a “problem,” which is, in fact an “error” that makes the whole program work wrong. The difference between art types and science types is not a lack of detail in either case. It is what the detail is used for. Science types solve “problems,” fix things that are broken. Art types describe and shed light on meaning (not function). Perhaps it is for that reason that I, as an art type, see nitpicking a person you don’t plan to vote for under any circumstance as just destructive.
I think Deana spoke from the heart when she said, “I don’t want him to be president for one simple reason: he does not value what I value. He does not advocate policies that I support.”
Now what difference does it make what church he attends, if you’ve already made up your mind not to vote for the man on other grounds? How does it help you as a person to tear someone else down? Saying, in effect, “see he’s dishonest, see he said (fill in the blank), see . . . that really means” just seems ugly and unnecessary to me.
“Art types describe and shed light on meaning (not function).”
Hmmm…I think that this is exactly what Book, Deana, Expat and Gringo have been doing in these posts, HelenL.
Gringo, I do have one quibble with your otherwise excellent post: the “good” senator Obama? I live in Illinois and I doth protest.
Perhaps so, Danny. I do believe there are art types and science types in both political parties. And “good” was penned with a bit of sarcasm in mind.
Bookworm and I do not see each other as enemies. I don’t see any of you as enemies. If I didn’t enjoy lively discussion, I wouldn’t return. We all know we’re free to blog or not to blog, but I do see some nitpicking as missing the point, maybe on purpose. Maybe ignoring the point is a better way to put it.
Helen -
I don’t care what church Obama attends - I care what he believes. If Obama had attended that church for 20 years with a pastor who preached the Bible and Jesus’ message, I would be impressed. Instead, he attended a church who has a pastor that preaches things that would never have come from Jesus’ mouth. That is a problem, Helen.
And another thing: pointing out what comes out of Obama’s own mouth is not “tearing him down” or being ugly. It is simply pointing out what he clearly believes. He said it, Helen. I didn’t.
And don’t words mean something, Helen? I’d swear you have argued that point before.
Deana
So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.“
Wouldn’t it be more accurate if he was talking about himself and his constituents? After all, the Democrat party are very bitter about the war and Bush in their refusal to do what is right for the nation at the expense of cooperating with Republicans. Anti-war sentiment, anti-Republican sentiment, anti-humanitarian sentiments, anti-self-protection, and a whole host of other anti-sentiments strongly implies that it is the Democrats and Obama himself who are the bitter ones. Small souls that cannot rise above their own mental limitations to do something good for mankind.
antipathy toward people who aren’t like them
Who had more hate and antipathy towards the South Vietnamese and Iraqis? Republicans or Democrats? Who voted and supported to have Iraqis split up and cut off? Who voted and supported to have South Vietnam destroyed simply because they were different than the Democrats?
If ordering the genocide of an people is not “antipathy”, I do not know what is. There was no empathy for Diem when they assassinated him from the Left. There was no empathy, but quite a lot of sociopathy.
Danny: Where is your sarcasm meter? Did you lose it during a trip to Iowa? BTW, my grandfather, a lifelong resident of a small town located in downstate “Ellanoi” Maid Rite country, had a deep loathing of Chicago politicians. Obama’s electoral opponents falling by the wayside and Obama’s dealings with Rezko would not have surprised my grandfather at all.
Gringo: believe me, my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek. :-). Your grandfather was right.
My 17# comment is awaiting moderation.
Deana, Word do mean something. What does apology mean to you?
I think Deana might say that apologies mean “I apologize” not “I told the truth and it was taken the wrong way by the people I was talking about”
There is a good reason to point out negative things about a person you don’t intend to vote for. You don’t want other people to vote for him either. You don’t want the guy to be president, and you don’t want the probable consequences to this nation that his presidency would bring. (Feel free to substitute “her” in the above.) Politics isn’t a place for: “if you can’t say something nice about a person, then don’t say anything at all.”
I’m with judyrose on this. Initially I thought Obama was a decent interesting guy who was too inexperienced to be president. That has changed as new facts came out. He now appears seriously deluded about the value of his “experience,” unable to recognize bigotry and confront it in his own circles, and unconnected to and demeaning of the values of most Americans. He is also trying to deal with personal issues by solving the world’s problems. I think the information we have learnd about Obama needs to be widely known so the voters can make informed decisions.
Guys, do you really think many folks who might vote for Obama are reading this blog? I’m like the Lone Ranger.
No Helen. But this blog isn’t the only place where information about the candidates is aired.
And we aren’t the only people who have figured out what a dangerous thing an Obama presidency would be.
And another thing… I’m glad you still come here to play with us because I do enjoy having you in the mix even though you definitely fry my frijoles at times.
I think I mentioned that I’m reading “Liberal Facism”. I’m _still_ reading “Liberal Facism”. It’s a slow read. My present chapter is “Brave New Village”, and it discusses the linkage of Obama and Clinton both to Saul Alinsky. In the process, he also discusses Alinsky. It’s very elucidating. I’m going to excerpt a couple of paragraphs:
“The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Alinsky got his start as a criminologist, but in 1936, fed up with the failures of social policy, he committed himself to attacking the supposed root cuases of criminality. He eventually becamse a labor organizer in his native Chicago…. ‘It was here,’ writes p. David Finks, ‘that Saul Alinsky would invent his famous “method” of communite organizing, borrowing tactics from the Catholic Church, Al Capone’s mobsters, University of Chicago socilologists and John L. Lewis’union organizers’. His violent, confrontational rhetoric often sounded much like that heard from Horst Wessel or his Red Shirt adversaries in the streets of Berlin.
Alinsky joined forces with the churches and the CIO – then chockablock with Stalinists and other communists – learning how to organize in the streets. In 1940 he founded the Industrial Areas Foundation, which pioneered the community activism movement. He became the mentor to countless community activists – most famously Cesar Chavez – laying the foundation for both Naderism and the SDS. He believed in exploiting middle-class mores to achieve his agenda, not flouting them as the long-haired hippies did. Alinsky believed that working through friendly or vulnerable institutions in order to smash enemy redoubts was the essence of political organization. And he was, by universal consensus, an “organizational genius”. He worked closely with reformist and left-leaning clergy, who were for most of his career his chief patrons. Perhaps as a result, he mastered the art of unleashing preachers as the frontline activists in his mission of “rubbing raw the sores of discontent”.
(Liberal Facism, Jonah Goldberg, pp321-322)
Sound familiar??
Makes me wonder why Obama goes to church.
Copied, pasted and saved from another commenter on another blog.
Marxism did not die with the fall of the USSR. It found a very welcoming home in academia and is the basis for a considerable part of the Democrat Party agenda.
When your reasoning for everything–literally everything–is that there isn’t enough money in it or that a government program should be made or should be made *larger*, those are basic Marxist principles. Does it require that the person espousing it know they are Marxist? Of course not. An African tribesman speaking Swahili might not know the name of his language but speaks it nonetheless.
The reason I use it with reference to Obama is that if you read his writings, look at his speeches, look at his acquaintances, he is largely a Marxist. In his speeches, his solution for every possible problem is to create a government program or throw more money at it. He will say he believes in the free market and then spend five minutes talking about proposed programs that are decidedly anti-free market and wholly socialist…
Read up on Marxist principles and goals:
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the U.S
17. Get control of the schools.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV & motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression.
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. ” Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural and healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion.
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture.”
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
40. Discredit the family as an institution.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special interest groups should rise up and make a “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
Any of those read as familiar in light of the Democrat Party and the Left over the past 40 years?
Thmgxz sqd moyph - wait a second, I got a gun in one hand and a cross in the other, I better put ‘em down so I can type…
We’re all bitter, according to Barry. So what’s his excuse for hanging out for twenty years in the church of a man who is perhaps among the bitterest people currently extant, who is incidentally building a mansion (with other people’s money) in the most exclusive neighborhood in Chicago?
Along with being a standard-issue product of Chicago democrat machine politics about whom there is nothing original, he has all the democrat elitist attitudes - and all of their tone-deafness, too.
John Kerry, the ultimate elitist, probably blew the election in 2004 as much as by any other single act, when he decided it was time to identify with the little folks, and went hunting. Remember “kin Ah get me a huntin’ license here?” WHAT a horse’s patoot!
I think Obama has just ceased to be a problem, and for the same reasons. You don’t go out to middle America, tell them how dumb and pathological they are - and why; and then expect to win a national election.
Obama is an elitist, but his elite seems to consist only of himself. Having no judgment, and apparently very little self-control without cue cards, I would be surprised to find that he hasn’t just inflicted almost terminal damage on himself.
Y -
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Deana