We've seen, recently, attacks on Limbaugh by the Left, which is par for the course. But also a war on news entities that are not sufficiently servile, coupled with warning to the others. We've seen a war on the Chamber of Commerce which consists in part of an effort to dismantle it, because they oppose the Administration on some issues (I.E. Cap and Trade) after supporting it on other measures (I.E. the "Stimulus"), and an attempt by the government to gag a private entity, intimidating it and others from using their free speech.
What is going on here was revealed in Steven M. Teles' review of "The Predator State" by James Galbraith in the March/April 2009 issue of "The American Interest". You may or may not decide to read the book itself, but even the sympathetic review is illustrative. I wasn't blogging in the Spring when this was published, so the below is adapted from an e-mail I wrote on it. I think it's even more self-evident now that the tactics recommended by Galbraith and endorsed by Teles are the ones being employed by the government now.
Before proceeding, I must note the method of Progressives on display here: Projection. It consists of three main steps. First, describe a tactic and declare its use completely outrageous and despicable. Second, claim that the opponents of Progressivism have been engaging in that tactic. Thirdly, use that claim to rationalize their own use of said tactic on a massive scale.
One of the premises of Galbraith's is that conservatives attempted to demolish Progressive opposition. The accuracy of this assertion can be seen in the fact that entities like ACORN were hounded out of existence by the Bush Administration's Justice Department, and how the Republican Congress was completely successful in pursuing a "de-fund the Left" agenda. Right.
On to the review, which I believe illuminates the overarching vision of the current Administration:
"The shift of power to allocate capital from the financial industry to government is, for Galbraith, far from unfortunate. Galbraith sees higher taxes and more debt as serving political objectives as well as economic ones. He wants to dry up the political power of the financial industry that courses through both parties because he is intensely skeptical of the capacity of financial markets to allocate capital in a way that meets the long-term needs of society. The real economic issue, Galbraith argues, is where the 'true seat of economic power' lies. The new liberal regime will be one that empowers 'scientists, engineers, some economists and public intellectuals -- who attempt to represent the common and future interest', and deposes 'banks, companies, lobbyists, and the economists they employ -- that represent only the tribal and current interest.'"By empowering "some economists", I think we can take it as a given Galbraith does not mean members of the Mises Institute or Cato. He doesn't mean we will turn to Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams for sage advice. He means empowering members of his father's school of thought.
"...The planner rather trhan the entrepreneur will hold the position of honor in the new liberal American regime of political economy. Our system of education will be called upon to disseminate the findings of the professions, and, one suspects, to enshrine the new hierarchy of honor."One where those who depend upon tax revenues for their existence (NGOs that receive grants from government, and the like) will be elevated, while those who pay taxes or engage in commerce will be looked down upon by the honored the way any entrenched Mandarinate or Feudal Nobility does in Ancien Regime states.
Opposition from these lessers is not tolerable in the face of their honored betters:
"...As Galbraith states bluntly, a key objective of the new liberal regime will be to use political means to produce market outcomes that strengthen its allies and weaken its enemies."I'm not sure that "political means" so employed produce "market outcomes", but such a phrasing is simply evidence of the Orwellian manipulation of language we are being subjected to. See also "choice and competition" used as a mantra by those who want a government operated health care system.
"This may seem a breathtaking admission, but only to those who haven't been paying much attention to American politics for, say, the past two centuries."Progressives can only speak for themselves and their own methods, but it is nice to see someone being candid about how they see government power: As a tool with which to destroy their domestic political opponents. Even more candidly:
"...The new regime [Obama's] may adopt many of the measures Galbraith recommends not because it shares his vision, but because crisis [don't want to let one go to waste] will force it to do so. Faced with a full-bore attempt by the deposed regime to reassert itself by obstructing the Administration's agenda, the new regime may find that it has no choice but to use the economic tools at its disposal to destroy its opponents root and branch.""Cet animal est tres mechant; quand on l'attaque, il se defend"
The use of the phrase "no choice" of course is a deceit meant to keep people from thinking too much about just what is being argued for here: In effect, a one-party state, where nothing like a "loyal opposition" is tolerated. Instead, anything that dissents from the Progressive line and seeks to use the options available to it in a liberal democratic structure is to be crushed. By any means necessary.
Conservative resistance is an attack on Universalist Progressivism, and must be destroyed root and branch - dissent is no longer patriotic, disagreement and efforts to resist policies one disagrees with is the project of wreckers, horders, and Kulaks, who must be ground to dust.
"[W]hen they had the Power in their hands, those Graces were strangers in their gates!" indeed...
Question is, will it work? I suspect not, at least not in the long term. I predict there will be some economic recovery in the next year or so. It will, of course, be weaker and briefer than it would have been without His Royal Hopey Changiness's (HRHC) policies, but it will happen. The American public (about whom H.L. Mencken said, "It is impossible to underestimate [its] intelligence) will give full credit to HRHC and re-elect him. The real catastrophes (hyperinflation, structural high unemployment, the collapse of the health care system, military defeats) will come in Obama's second term. Since even a moron knows when s/he doesn't have a job, goods cost significantly more today than they did yesterday, and re-establishment of Al Quaeda in Afghanistan is bad, opposition to Obama and progressive policies will re-emerge with a vengeance, and HRHC's butt boys in the media will suffer along with Him and the Democrats.
Look, I disagree with using this stuff as a a political means, but hasn't it become a bipartisan, par for the course kindof thing.
The RNC white house was determined to crush partisan opposition. Name calling, leaked stories, declaring court case evidence as "confidential" at the last minute, & gearing up war based on a political calendar are some of the last WH.
I'm not saying the Democrats are NOT guilty, rather that our entire system is more dedicated to partisan advantage than actually fixing anything. More dedicated to helping lobbyists than actually working. This is not a 1 party flaw. It's systemic.
From this article, I'm not sure what you're trying to tell us. Sure, the system is bad. Most of us here have been saying that for 10 years. But what now? Do we solve this problem systemically, or focus on a single party (which has worked great so far BTW...)
On Limbaugh: Limbaugh has been in constant feuds over stupid things for 20 years. Why should a new stupid feud surprise anyone? Liberal opposition had little to do with his bid. Instead, black players were skeptical after years of degrading comments. Goodell was skeptical of Limbaugh's ability to avoid controversy. Lots of conservatives can (& have!) bought teams in the NFL. They just don't have radioshows.
"On Limbaugh: Limbaugh has been in constant feuds over stupid things for 20 years. Why should a new stupid feud surprise anyone?"
I think was is surprising is how willing the MSM is to jump in with both feet without looking. Limbaugh is a major target of opportunity for them, they can't resist.
I think you are correct that nothing is particularly new here, but I do think there is evidence of an acceleration of partisan hammering using government power, and certainly of the majority of the MSM actively picking sides with barely a pretense of objectivity. I think the latter is actually healthy (call a spade a spade), but the former is terrifying. Something needs to stop this slide. The next Republican administration is very likely to pick up every cudgel Obama uses and add a few new ones. This is a bad cycle.
I would say the only solution is dissolving and replacing this corrupt political class and getting a huge turnover of new blood.
I favor a political movement that swears only to remove incumbents from power, regardkess of political stripe. I think there is an appetite for that.
I think it is a mistake to attribute big-picture political strategy, of any kind, to Obama, or to see this "revolution" as the culmination of anything except some silly political manias that have been over-coddled in our free and generous society. If a bunch of college sophomores from Amherst took over the country, this is exactly what it would look like. The Obama administration is a fluke brought about by bad circumstances, complacency, and lazy thinking; it has no political meaning or significance.
Obama does what he does because his "compelling personal narrative" is a very narrow life experience spent exclusively among like-minded people, who regard any thought outside of their tiny box as illegitimate, racist, and evil. What is frightening about this administration is how easy it is for a large class of such people to thrive in this country, without ever moving outside of their own circles.
Obama does what he does - and note that he does it very badly, always blundering into the scenery - not because he has some well-planned agenda, but because he thinks this is what normal people do. This is what everyone believes, or would believe if they weren't brain-washed by Fox News. He has Axelrod and Emanuel to supply some sincere attempts at cabalism, but they are ham-handed incompetents, too.
A real Marxist would tell them, for example, that you never, ever associate with people who engage in public radicalism, much less with people who have actual connections to the Communist Party. Also, you don't attack the Chamber of Commerce, you have lunch with them. Real subversion is real quiet. Amateurs!
Actually I'm having great fun watching the collective media have kittens over Mr. Limbaugh's actions. Rush loves it; he can get no finer free advertising while the rest of us are getting a real, clear picture just who the collective media and their useful idiots are. This will not end the way they want.
mark (#3),
Well, that might be better than what we have now, but on the other hand it might just place more power in the hands of the permanent staff and regulatory agencies.
What we really need, and it's something we collectively have far too little appetite for, is for people to get elected to office who will say things like this, mean it, and try to bring it about:
As for Limbaugh, which for some reason a few of the commenters are fixating on, he wasn't my point. Given that, I possibly shouldn't have even included the throw-away line referencing him; that's an entire separate topic really.
"The RNC white house was determined to crush partisan opposition. Name calling, leaked stories,"
Most of the virulent name-calling was directed at them, but anyhow one's milage may vary on that: You might think otherwise, but, for better or worse, it's par for the course.
This isn't about "normal" political debate, or what passes for it, however deplorable. Leaking, for example, doesn't destroy opposition "root and branch", and is arguably the most devastating charge you leveled at the former Administration.
But I'll note that 1) By far most of the leaks that took place when the prior administration was in office was aimed against it, by opponents in the Civil Service. 2) The most noteworthy example of a leak that impacted an opponent of that Administration (a man who sought to undermine it) ended up being an example of "Blue-on-Blue" Friendly Fire (Richard Armitage was the source of the leak in question).
"I think it is a mistake to attribute big-picture political strategy, of any kind, to Obama."
I definately think you give his administration too little credit. If there is one thing they've thought about long and hard, it's how they want to go about entrenching their "fundimental transformation" of America.
Now, on its face their is nothing wrong with that: That sort of thing is a goal. Rove had a goal of political re-alignment, too (which backfired horribly, consisting as it did of trying to win people over by "me tooism" on things like the federalization of education, prescription drugs, and the like - "crowding the political space").
That is very different from attempting to destroy political opposition "root and branch". Again, the previous Administration went along with funding things like ACORN (that's why the current Administration in power can point and say there is nothing they're doing that Bush didn't already do...while also blaming them for everything and decrying their policies. Doublethink is all around, but I digress).
There is a smooth but meticulous ruthlessness in this Administration, which is soft on foreign enemies, tough on domestic opponents.
Because of their ideology, they may not seem competent, but that does not mean they are not intelligent and haven't thought very deeply about this.
"Question is, will it work? I suspect not, at least not in the long term"
As an economist pointed out, in the long run we're all dead. Sure, in the long term this too shall pass. How long a term, and what rubbelization will it leave in its wake?
The attempted trashing of every important institution that is not under the dominance of what can be called the "Extended Civil Service" (which consists of: Government, the "responsible" press, pro-government activist NGOs [especially the ones that pose as anti-government rebels but always advocate more "programs" to be administered through government], the big/influential universities, &tc) is likely to be very damaging indeed before it too passes. And then what shall come next?
Civil society properly understood has been under assault by those who claim to be its upholders for a long time (the transmogrification of intermediary institutions into "NGOs" that have to be designated as such because otherwise it's hard to tell them apart from the government bureaucrats they get their funding from was one milestone). Now we've accelerated.
As for the previous Administration: There are only a very, very small number of examples of where they actually did anything domestically that a Progressive would not have (which is why the current rulers can point to so much of what they're doing as having been initiated under Bush - again, while simultaniously decrying everything the previous Administration did). They just didn't go as fast or spend as much ("underfunded" this and "underfunded" that).
Thus it's really hard to accept assertions that they did the same thing. Indeed, domestically, they were mostly "in office, but not in power" after 2002 at the latest. Foreign policy might be another matter, but the differences are really less than people imagine, coated as everything was by subsiquent intemperate rhetoric that issued forth from people who voted and spoke in favor of certain policies until they saw political gain to be made from attacking them, and slipping their own earlier positions down the memory hole (with the help of an enabling opinion-making establishment).
Heck, even on Diplomacy, the substance of Bush's was much better than the often gratuitously insulting (towards Britain & Israel), malign neglect (towards the ties that were built with India over the last decade), lack of consultation (with Poland and the Czechs), communications incompetence ("Reset" with Russia), and bemused befuddling (of France even. You know the "Reality-Based Community" has lost all touch with it when you're lectured by the leader of the Country most known for metaphysical surrealism on the difference between a virtual world and a real world) that the current Administration has so far displayed.
I know that in the virtual world of American politics, conventional wisdom says something completely at odds with all that, but I chronicle the events of the real world, noting the rhetoric of the virtual world that the "Reality-Based Community's" worsmyths construct, but not being blinded by it.
In the real world, the previous Administration did nothing to attack the institutions of its opponents anywhere remotely similar to what's being done by those in power now.
We leftists are so good at manipulating history, we got Winston Smith to create a tape of Dana Perino and the Bush White House complaining about MSNBC in much the way Obama treated with Fox. And we planted other evidence that as an economist, James Glassman has the knowledge of my dead cat. But now that you caught us, I guess we should give up and tune in to Limbaugh, if we can't find Michael Savage on the dial.
Andrew, you're illustrating Porphyrogenitus' point. Your link specifies that Perino said that towards "Towards the end" of Bush's eight years in office, they "didn’t do a lot with MSNBC" - so there's the claim that the opponents of Progressivism have been engaging in the despicable tactic. Of course, deciding seven or eight years in to curtail involvement with one of dozens of hostile media outlets is in no way comparable to Obama's "own use of said tactic on a massive scale", in excommunicating Fox from the Church of O.
"Much the same way"? I don't know which would be worse, if you were insane enough to think that's so, or just rabidly partisan enough to claim it to people who know you're lying.
Andrew, go ahead and defend the indefensible. But notice that the most popular cable "news" show not on Fox seems to be Keith Olbermann.
Now, if someone you knew personally were to brutally fantasize about an attractive woman as a "big mashed-up bag of meat", you might suspect them of being an outright psychopath with a crawlspace full of dead bodies, and you would be quite right to suspect that.
Fox, frankly, is not that good. It would not be at such stellar heights if CNN and MSNBC had not fallen to such execrable depths. Can the public - the people who vote in this democratic society - possibly make their preferences in this matter any more clear?
This is why I can't give Obama the credit Porphyrogenitus does. This Fox fight is too stupid to be anything but stupid.
Did Bush set up a website to combat fox? Did Bush declare MSNBC wasnt a legitimate news outlet (whatever that means these days)?
You know why your analogy is in serious trouble? Because nobody really knew anything about Bush's problem with MSNBC, because it wasn't a big deal and Bush didn't make it one. Obama, on the other hand, is publicly going to war with Fox, using his bully pulpit to try to de-legitimize them.
Don't you agree these are two different animals? Using the power and aura of the executive branch to try to essentially run a media company out of business is a lot more serious than snubbing one you don't like.
"I guess the Birthers and the Death Panelists have upset you too much to think rationally."
God knows the left is obsessed with tarring everyone that disagrees with them as a birther, but I'll tell who's way crazier- anyone who actually believes these medicare cuts they are proposing to pay for healthcare are going to happen. THAT'S crazy.
Fortunately 99% of the democrats are just political hacks comfortable with fantasy. I do prefer that to the insanity of actually believing the numbers they pulled out of the air to apply the lipstick to these bills.
I guess the Birthers and the Death Panelists have upset you too much to think rationally.
Fortunately 99% of the democrats are just political hacks comfortable with fantasy.
Wow. This was not at all predictable.
And this is why "D's are worse than R's/(vice versa)" screeds don't work. Everyone retreats back into their partisan hidey-hole, and nothing changes. We need a bipartisan (or better yet, nonpartisan) solution that deals with the virtol in both parties.
I just don't see this happening today.
To be fair, I was talking about the Democrats in Congress. To be clear, i think that 99% of the Republicans in congress are political hacks comfortable with fantasy as well. Hence, where we are today.
As a nation we've really got to snap out of this fantasy. We are fatally overextended in our entitlements already on the books, and we're still discussing adding huge new ones. This Congress is through the looking glass and no coming back, they need to be stymied before much more damage is done- and it doesn't matter much which party has the reigns. We still haven't accepted that the demographics bomb is going to make our current 'crisis' look like a joke.
We Enemies of the State have even assembled a little video of Fox's finest moments with respect to Obama. Let's keep track: Obama is a fascist, a socialist (repeatedly), and a communist. What Obama does is just what Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and North Korea did. “The Enemy is in the house.”
And some of this is during their alleged news shows: look at the logo!
When a contestant in a MoveOn contest compared Bush to Hitler, well, that was an outrage. Hitler-Obama? Not so much.
According to Jon Stewart, Fox News spent 3 minutes on the Gay Rights march on DC, which drew about as many protestors as their beloved Tea Party March that they covered endlessly and indeed fomented (including instructing protestors to whoop it up for the camera). They spent 8 minutes showing an empty lawn where there had been a minuscule protest about the schoolchildren singing to Obama—the day before.
Republicans had gotten used to a Democratic Party guided by Benedict Lieberman with the whining, helpless attitude of a beaten spouse. We can discuss whether, say, Obamacare is excessive government interference in the marketplace, but as far as the tone of the discussion, conservative complaints are risible.
Probably no accident that the Secret Service is running out of agents to investigate death threats against Obama. I mean, with Hitler-Mao-Kim and his forged birth certificate as President, it's time for Wolverines.
What massive scale? Obama calls out Fox, tries to shut the network out from interviews conducted by a pool which they're a part of and help pay for, his press secretary and communications director say they're not a real news organization, Obama whines about them to his groupies, sycophants like Jacob Weisburg and Joe Klein call Fox "unAmerican" and "seditious", an organization founded by a member of Obama's White House tries to orchestrate a boycott to get a popular Fox program taken off the air, and
Bush called out MSNBC by sending a letter taking for granted that the network wants to have a difference between its opinion and straight news shows.
I don't think you're too upset to be rational. I just don't think you're very bright.
Check out this New York Times account of why the Obama brigade decided to charge the Fox guns at Balaclava. Since this is real news, it requires some annotation.
We recall the excuses given: Newsrooms are short-handed, key reporters were not on duty, and apparently no one even had time to click on Drudge. But it was this timid admission that non-Fox media had failed to keep up with Fox that caused the Administration to go all red alert.
That liberal bias-monitor is the hapless Media Matters, which exists to pick fights with Bill O'Reilly and get its ass kicked.
Think about this: The President of the United States invited eight left-wing pundits (not reporters) to the White House and commiserated with them for two and a half hours about how awful Fox News is. Is the White House concerned about news, or about the fact that left-wing pundits are not as popular as right-wing pundits? And he's telling this to Dowd and Olbermann, as if they were the solution and not the problem?
There it is again. What enrages the White House are furtive admissions by Obama-friendly media that they can't compete with "non-traditional" media in the marketplace. Could this stuff be any more transparent?
Yesterday a daring NBC reporter asked Obama why he was confronting Fox, and he artlessly resorted to "the American people have more important concerns". This guy couldn't make two honest bucks cheating at cards.
My comment for this thread is in moderation queue.