Amused Cynic

This post is prompted by my good friend and frequent commenter BTM. She has lived under fascism in Russia, escaped it, and now recognizes its new form here in the U.S. with a dread that most of our countrymen are too complacent to feel.

No, I haven’t lost my sense of humor or my general joie de vivre, but it is hard for me to look at our current political situation and find much of anything to be sardonic, ironic, or facetious about, which was kind of what kept this blog going over the years. Hope this post doesn’t get too navel-gazy.

I first started it (the blog) years ago when I had been kicked off a popular college admissions web site for disrupting the site’s political zeitgeist with mockery–the best weapon. One of my many cyber-friends from those days said that she admired my “amused cynicism” and didn’t know how I could keep doing it, when so much of what she was reading just incensed or depressed her. Hence the name for this site. And I did keep it going for five years or so, and I’m not giving it up just yet. But I am not quite the happy-go-lucky warrior I once was. These are serious, grim times.

I became aware of this article through The Anchoress (written by Dorothy Thompson, and published in Harper’s in 1941. While I think that the political maxim “he who throws the ‘Nazi’ slur first, loses” is correct (unless the thrower is a liberal Democrat), I do think that the Obama regime is showing definite fascist tendencies, and I’ll never back down from that statement. I would have titled this post “Who Goes Obama?” but it would have been too provocative, even for an agent provocateur like me. But what is, is.

I’ve used the analogy before, but I’ll use it again: This is feeling very much like what it must feel like to be in a hijacked plane. The crazies are barricaded in the cockpit, in control of your very life. The only thing that will save your life is taking control back. Or we might just all crash together.

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times–in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.

It is preposterous to think that they are divided by any racial characteristics. Germans may be more susceptible to Nazism than most people, but I doubt it. Jews are barred out, but it is an arbitrary ruling. I know lots of Jews who are born Nazis and many others who would heil Hitler tomorrow morning if given a chance. There are Jews who have repudiated their own ancestors in order to become “Honorary Aryans and Nazis”; there are full-blooded Jews who have enthusiastically entered Hitler’s secret service. Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind.

It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation–the
generation which was either young or unborn at the end of the last war. This is as true of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans as of Germans. It is the disease of the so-called “lost generation.”

I keep thinking of Smokey Robinson’s songs when I see and hear all the regrets expressed by the clowns that voted for this political disaster. Dupes, morons. It was so obvious.

The Volokh Conspiracy raises an interest point this morning: Since we don’t know the identities of the 400-plus “journalists” who participated in the now (allegedly) defunct JournoList, how or why should we trust any of them? Not that I would anyway.

This Journolist scandal is really one of the greatest things to come along since Climategate, because it exposes these people for what they are, which is a bunch of liars and propagandists. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck exist because so many of us have known all along that we were being lied to by a cabal of lefty insiders…now we can prove it. Moreover, when you look at and listen to these people it becomes more and more evident that they are, essentially, Paris Hilton-like figures; they are famous for being famous, not because of any particular achievement or expertise. From the Volokh post:

[...]To all you non-JournoLister reporters out there, please be aware that your credibility has just taken a big hit, because we, your faithful readers, don’t actually know who is or who isn’t. You can thank JournoList for that, you can thank Ezra Klein, and you can thank the Washington Post, which has done its outstanding professionals absolutely no favors in any of this.

The most charitable thing that can be said for the WaPo as an institution in all this is that the ethics of reporting by bloggers is, at best, murky. Many old-school “reporters” have warned that the term, and the very professional concept of “journalist,” rather than either plain old “reporter” or clearly “opinion columnist,” is an exploitable ambiguity. The emergence of blogospheric superstars like Klein, grafted onto the institutional credibility and body and salary of a traditional paper like the WaPo, has shown that on steroids. One wonders why the Post didn’t address this problem back when the list first emerged into public eye — all the questions, in fact, that Byron York addressed to the paper and which it has so far summarily refused to answer.

[...] the business model is not just topsy turvey, it is one which has empowered a group of writers with many opinions on many things, but little reporting experience, and little supervision. That has been said a lot; what this person adds is that it is really hard to question this inside the paper because these folks are regarded as the new thing in the business plan. Questions make you not a team player in the new, quite unsettled business model with its equally unsettled professional ethics. [...] in effect the Post, and other outlets, have been utilized by their erstwhile employees to partisan political ends that, whatever the sympathies of the editors and publishers, is highly unlikely to be seen by the principals as a legitimate activity for a newspaper.

Related: DC Examiner

Fascism:

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Except for the fact that the current administration has a policy of belligerent anti-nationalism, sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it? Of course, I’ve been saying it all along, as have a few others.

I think part of the reason I haven’t been blogging lately is simply because I’ve been saying this stuff for so long–and saying it fairly well, IMHO–that I just got tired of repeating myself. I’ve got other fish to fry, so to speak. But it is wonderful to see that others are recognizing and articulating the terrible gravity of our current national predicament. Case in point: A few days ago, over at American Thinker, John Griffing defied George Orwell and concisely defined the word “fascism,” using the current presidential administration as the paradigm. Terrific piece. Send it to all your friends.

I wrote a piece called “It’s Not Fascism When We Do It” back in early May of 2009 (the title was borrowed from the graphic above, which I found at Breitbart’s BigHollywood.com site back then). I don’t have too much to add to it, so I’ll just link it HERE. Check it out, follow the links. What the Obamalinskyites are doing to this country is beyond reprehensible. These are evil people, not just misguided Utopians.

I’ve been traveling a lot this summer (another excuse for not blogging much), and next week I’m heading to France for a family reunion in the Pyrenees, where the mountain passes provided escape routes–both north and south– for people fleeing fascism for much of the early 20th Century. I’m sure the trip will evoke some thoughts similar to those I had in Italy last year, when I happened upon the place where a certain Italian guy lost control of his railroads.

RELATED: Neoneocon

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Long-time readers know that I was extremely angry about the decision by the Obama Dept. of Justice to drop the charges against three black fascists who were attempting to intimidate white voters here in Philadelphia. I wrote about it well over a year ago. So I am extremely gratified to see it back in the news, thanks to the heroic actions of DOJ whistleblower J. Christian Adams. This is going to lead into a broader soliloquy on why I stopped blogging for a while. One of my favorite bloggers, Neo-neocon alluded to this just the other day. At some point, I began to feel like a homicide detective who just couldn’t stand to look at another bloody corpse.

You see, nothing that Obama is doing makes any sense at all–unless you recognize it for what it is: a slow-motion act of espionage. He intends to crash the economy, there can be no question any more. He seeks to recreate 1929. He intends to be the new FDR, and do all the things that FDR couldn’t quite pull off. People who are still trying to figure Obama out by examining his “competence” as a chief executive are completely missing what this little three-card Monty punk is doing right in front of their eyes. I thought it was interesting that even the staid, stolid Wall Street Journal ran a piece the other day that mused on the possibility that Obama is letting the Gulf gusher continue to foul our southern shore to create a crisis that he can exploit politically. No rules in a knife fight, my friends. And no consolation prize for second-place.

Someone scoffed at me other day when I shared my thought that this is all deliberate, part of a larger plan of controlled crises. “That’s ridiculous,” she said, “if he crashes the economy he won’t get re-elected.” See, I think Obama already has that covered. That’s where this Black Panther case comes in. It makes no sense, unless you see it for what it is, which is a plan to use election law to control the outcome of future elections. It’s truly chilling stuff. Mr. Adams (what a great patriot’s name!) is scheduled to appear before the US Civil Rights Commission tomorrow. I wonder if he was the anonymous DOJ lawyer who wrote this prescient piece nearly two years ago.

Related: Justice and Vote Fraud

…be there, or be a serf for the rest of your life. We can do this. You gotta be bad, you gotta be hard, you gotta be tough…

Although I am pleased that Obamalinsky’s numbers are plummeting in the polls, I’m still frustrated that there are still people talking about “competence.” There was never any reason to expect him to be competent….he had no experience, and no record of competence other than his affirmative action path to Harvard Law School.

I don’t think that his supposed “incompetence” in foreign affairs, the economy, the Gulf oil disaster, or anything else are examples of incompetence. I think that he is creating crises, with the hope of exploiting them in the furtherance of his radical agenda. He is a liar and a fraud, as virtually any fair reading of his public pronouncements prove. There is nothing there, nothing…except deception and malevolence regarding the American way of life and the concept of the rule of law.

Don’t know really why I stopped blogging. I just got tired of it, banging my head against the wall, day after day. I, along with many others, have been pointing out what was coming with Obamaism for a long time. My hoarded retirement money is soon going to be worthless, so I’ve been spending it on all my “bucket list” items. Giving it to my kids, so they can have a little fun before the Peoples’ Republic kicks in.

I’ve been sending it to candidates that I think may have a chance to avert the train wreck that I’ve been predicting for several years. Call me a frustrated Cassandra. I just got back from several trips, finished a class in my graduate school program, etc. I have a month before I go on my next travel binge, and I don’t have any academic writing to impinge upon my egoistic blogging time until September, when my next classes start. So I think I will take advantage of that, and let you into my nihilistic vision of what the future will bring if we don’t roar into DC this November and take the country back.

So, I am going to do some thinking now, and then come back and see if I still have any blogginess left in my soul. I think I do. Talk soon. Don’t buy gold…buy ammunition. Guns trump money, every time it’s tried. Current favorite movie: “The Road Warrior.” I know, Mel’s all fucked up, he’s got problems. But still…that is where we’re headed under the boot of this particular society that has decided to take us over.

This ain’t governance….this is espionage. And you damn well better believe it. This is a fight to continue the American Dream.

In the meantime, listen to some David Bowie music.

Don’t talk of dust and roses
Or should we powder our noses?
Don’t live for last year’s capers
Give me steel, give me steel, give me pulsars unreal

He’ll build a glass asylum
With just a hint of mayhem
He’ll build a better whirlpool
We’ll be living from sin,
then we can really begin

Please Saviour, Saviour, show us
Hear me, I’m graphically yours

Someone to claim us, someone to follow

Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo

Someone to fool us, someone like you
We want you Big Brother, Big Brother

I know You think You’re awful square

But You made everyone and You’ve been everywhere
Lord, I’d take an overdose if You knew what’s going down

We want you Big Brother

Commenter “Ja” had it exactly right at this post at thefoxnation.com

This has just gotten so far beyond ridiculous.

So, for starters let me admit to having absconded from my blogging duties–and for that I apologize. I don’t know what came over me, but ever since roaming in the rainy Roman ruins, and exploring Florence, the birthplace of the re-birth of western civilization after a millennium of darkness…I guess everything just seemed more in perspective. I found it hard to get as mad as I usually am about American politics, lost touch with my inner Sam Adams. I still read the news, I’m still active in local politics, but I just haven’t had the urge to pontificate or share my analyses. Turned the sword back into a plowshare, and worked the garden like Cincinnatus. Planned a few trips for the summer, and worked on a design for a remodel of the master bedroom. Stuff like that.

As I said, I still read the news every day, and stir up trouble at cocktail parties–although I’ve noticed a great deal more concurrence with my views than usual, recently. And that is the subject of today’s post: Something’s Happening Here. The world disaster index seems to have been fluctuating as wildly as the stock markets. We have the Euro on the verge of collapse, civil war in Thailand, with war drums beating around the corner in the Koreas. Iran is still threatening to threaten the world with nukes, Obama has taken his world-wide apology tour home and is now beating on his fellow citizens in Arizona. And we have an ecological disaster gushing away in the Gulf of Mexico. So why do I feel so happy this morning? Well, as Rahm might say: “You never want to let a serious crisis [in this case crises] go to waste…Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” The Obamakins have out-crisis-ed themselves, and I think we are on the verge of a historic counter-revolution.

That was Dan Henninger’s suggestion today, in the WSJ: A New Age of Reform

I would argue that the Reform wave building in the land is not antigovernment, but pro-government. When people call themselves Americans, Californians, New Yorkers, Illinoisans, Texans or, yes, New Jerseyans, they aren’t just talking about a place name, but a fought-for legal entity with a grand political history. Anger at Albany, Sacramento, Springfield, Trenton and Washington, D.C., isn’t antigovernment. It’s rightful rage at years of misgovernance.

George Will posits something similar, in his piece on the Ayn Rand fan who is poised to run against long-time incumbent Senator Russ Feingold in Wisconsin: Running, Not Shrugging

Before what he calls “the jaw-dropping” events of the last 19 months — TARP, the stimulus, Government Motors, the mistreatment of Chrysler’s creditors, Obamacare, etc. — the idea of running for office never crossed Ron Johnson’s mind. He was, however, dry tinder — he calls Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” his “foundational book” — and now is ablaze, in an understated, upper-Midwestern way. This 55-year-old manufacturer of plastic products from Oshkosh is what the tea party looks like.

He is trim, gray-haired and suddenly gray-suited. For years he has worn jeans and running shoes to his office, but now, under spousal duress, he is trying to look senatorial — “My wife upgraded me to brown shoes.” He has been endorsed by the state party and will almost certainly win the September primary for the Republican nomination to run against Russ Feingold, who is seeking a fourth term in a year in which incumbency is considered a character flaw.
[...]
But in this season of simmering resentment of the political class, a neophyte such as Johnson might be a stronger candidate than a recycled executive. Johnson can fund himself. Asked how much of his wealth he will spend, if necessary, his answer is as simple as it is swift: “All of it.”
[...]
But this year the “social issues,” as normally understood, are less important than the social issue as Johnson understands it — the transformation of American society in a way foreshadowed in fiction.

What Samuel Johnson said of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” — “None ever wished it longer than it is” — some readers have said of “Atlas Shrugged.” Not Johnson, who thinks it is “too short” at 1,088 pages. Noting that Massachusetts “is requiring insurance companies to write polices at a loss,” he says, “We’re living it,” referring to the novel’s dystopian world in which society’s producers are weighed down by parasitic non-producers.

From 2000 through 2008, sales of “Atlas Shrugged,” which was published in 1957, averaged a remarkable 166,000 a year. Since Barack Obama took office, more than 600,000 copies have been sold. The novel’s famous opening words — “Who is John Galt?” — refer to a creative capitalist, Rand’s symbol of society’s self-sufficient people who, weary of carrying on their shoulders the burden of dependent people, shrug. Ron Johnson would rather run.

And then there is this one, which really tickled me: Sarah Palin’s Army of Mama-Grizzlies…Enjoy!

Agree with them or not, it’s the women of the GOP—like Sarah Palin, Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN) and Gov. Jan Brewer (AZ)—who are tough enough to say exactly what they think. And their words are resonating with an increasingly vocal electoral bloc.

Lori Ziganto writes on NewsReal, the team blog of the David Horowitz Freedom Center:

“True feminists are women like Sarah Palin and Nikki Haley. They are the new faces of feminism…We’ve had it, you see. We are angry… We are tired of women being painted as perpetual victims by the left, in need of Big Daddy Government to save us. We are tired of working so hard to raise our families and having the government take more and more away…We are angry that our children’s futures are being squandered and we are fearful that they will never know the country we knew and love. We are angry that we are losing our freedom. That old phrase ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?’ Say hello to the scorned (I’m waving at you right now).”