The Amazing Mittdrake the Magician

To deflect from the Obama train wreck, the Aspen Daily News resurrects the fear of Romney.  Surely the threat Romney presented to the mountain Left’s way of life was mitt-i-gated at the polls over a year ago?  But so long as Romneycare keeps chunking along up in Massachusetts, and the promised magic of Obamacare keeps failing to materialize out of the One’s hat, the Aspen Left will have to keep reaching.

HELP WANTED [Read more…]

The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ. . . .To rely on evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason.  It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.  What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.  The fanatical Japanese in Brazil refused to believe for years the evidence of Japan’s defeat.  The fanatical Communist refuses to believe any unfavorable report or evidence about Russia, nor will he be disillusioned by seeing with his own eyes the cruel misery inside the Soviet promised land.

It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy.  He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence.  Strength of faith . . . manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move.  And it is the certitude of his infallible doctrine that renders the true believer impervious to the uncertainties, surprises and the unpleasant realities of the world around him.

Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is.

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Over half of Americans practice to some degree belief structures in economics and politics built on certitude.  These beliefs manifest in self-fulfilling prophecies, militancy, tyrannies of identity groups, mob actions, and one-party rule.  Their immunity from non believers comes from upholding truths that are not observable through objective experience, and an absolute certainty that they are correct.

Meanwhile a shrinking minority of Americans connected to observation and experience go about trying to talk sense to the majority of true believers, perhaps unaware they’re dealing with people ensconced comfortably inside an impermeable cocoon built on certainty of their own subjective truth.  If a true believer can somehow overcome his fear of uncertain reality and an uncertain future, he’ll still have hard work ahead to discover and comprehend the crushing detail of modern reality.

How daunting this must be for leftists and environmentalists who have only known the certainty of belief all their lives, who have only been friends with other people who share that same certainty and loyalty to the agenda.

Free market individualists, unburdened by an overhead of subjective belief, with only unvarnished history to guide them, come along to happily share simple proven principles with the true believers.  In return they get shouted down, they get accused of horrible intentions, they get maligned and impugned for completely unreal things they have no connection to.

Set back on their heals, they shake their heads in wonder about what they could have possibly said to engender such viciousness.  Most free marketers probably aren’t aware that the true believers never even heard, or comprehended, what was said.

Merely speaking to them, as a non-believer–an “other,” is enough to trigger their defense systems.  Words coming in that might not uphold the certitude of their true belief must be put down ruthlessly before they can be absorbed.  That is the discipline of true belief and it must be preserved.  The alternative is an uncertain emptiness of reality without structure, beyond belief, difficult to understand, perhaps even pleasantly surprising, but too overwhelming to imagine.

Will reality-based people succeed in breaking through the hard shells maintained by the true believers?  Will more true believers continue to turn violent against reality-based people?  There seems to be no end in sight to this conflict.

Though they will never admit it, true believers are clearly caught up in ideation reinforcement mechanisms that manipulate and subjugate them.  Conservative realists must find a way to set them free.

B_Imperial

GOP accusation confirmed: Obama out to break it

By Jennifer Rubin , Updated: March 4, 2013

The [Washington] Post reported: “[President] Obama, fresh off his November reelection, began almost at once executing plans to win back the House in 2014, which he and his advisers believe will be crucial to the outcome of his second term and to his legacy as president. He is doing so by trying to articulate for the American electorate his own feelings — an exasperation with an opposition party that blocks even the most politically popular elements of his agenda.”

This confirms what Republicans have been saying (despite liberal pundits’ scoffing): The president is interested in breaking the back of the opposition not accommodating or passing centrist legislation. A senior GOP House aide was mattter-of-fact: “It’s been clear since December that President Obama is more interested in leading his Organizing for Action campaign than leading this nation.”

The acknowledgment of the permanent campaign is quite an admission, casting most of what the president does in a more realistic light. He is engaged in bare-knuckle campaigning, not governing, when he engages in faux negotiations and goes around the country to hammer Republicans.

Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), took the high ground. “Our country faces real challenges: cutting spending, fixing our debt and deficit, getting our economy moving and creating jobs. Hopefully, those challenges — not partisan politics — will be the focus for the White House. The American people gave us a divided government, and we all have to make it work.”

Indeed it is an odd approach only two months after the last election. Aside from dropping the mask and conceding the high ground, the revelation about the president’s 2014 strategy appears just at the time that he has been revealed to be untruthful with regard to the sequester. Now he wants the country to give him virtually unlimited power with a Democratic House? Moreover, in a midterm election the electorate is generally whiter, older and more conservative.

Is this the electorate (without Obama on the ballot) to hand him the House? Don Stewart, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) answers, “Let’s not forget, we’ve already seen what happens when he has an unchecked agenda: Stimulus, Obamacare and trillions in debt.”

• African Americans
• Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders
• Catholics
• Educators
• Environmentalists
• Jewish Americans
• Latinos
• LGBT Americans
• Native Americans
• Nurses
• Parents
• People of Faith
• People With Disabilities
• Rural Americans
• Seniors
• Small Business Owners
• Veterans & Military Families
• Women
• Young Americans

These are groups Obama has targeted to re-elect him.  Maybe this is just the list his campaign thinks can be reached on-line.  There are other groups in play that don’t present so well on the internet such as government employee unions and government contractors.

Obama’s job is really pretty simple: Identify groups and pay them off.  Authorize an entitlement, a benefit, a public expenditure for a group, expend the debt-financed federal money, move on to the next group.

Republicans have to sell an ideology, a basket of ideals that capture the imagination of their constituents – a much tougher proposition because it involves education, persuasion, historical context, ethics, morality … good grief, the list is endless.

To contrast, Democrats just write checks out of the treasury to their voters.  Democrat constituents must possess the skill to cash a check, and then get to a polling place from time to time to pull a democrat voting lever — a pretty short resume’.

It doesn’t look good for taxpayers.  They’re not on Obama’s list.

B_Imperial

Not Communist Party, Cloward and Piven, though some might say that’s a distinction without a difference.

The ersatz Republicans at New-Plains continue their manipulation of ELCO Republican voters, causing confusion, corruption and chaos in their Cloward and Piven strategy to replace our system with theirs.

The Summer of the Schlegel Recall
www.new-plains.com
Only a moron or dedicated liar could twist it into anything approaching “partisan.”

The Cloward and Piven strategy: overwhelm the system, force it to collapse, replace it with a socialist alternative.

Cloward and Piven applied to Elbert County: overwhelm commissioners with open records requests, constant misrepresentations of their policies, challenges to every decision they make, spurious litigious actions.  Cause the commission to expend money and resources defending against phantom issues, then blame them for doing so while at the same time ignoring any culpability or responsibility for generating the phantom crisis.  Install socialist commissioners with plans to use zoning to take control of private natural resource properties.

B_Imperial

“Table 2
Members of victimhood groups as a percentage of total population,
% adjusted for multiple discrimination

Female gender    51
Ethnic minority     8
Disabled             22
Non-Christian     5
Elderly               18
Gay or lesbian     5
Grand Total       109

How was the estimate of 109 per cent reached? 51 per cent of the population are women and ethnic minorities make up another eight per cent, according to the 2001 Census, and some 22 per cent of the population of Great Britain are said to be disabled.   Eighteen per cent of the population are pensioners. And at the time of the 2001 Census about five per cent belonged to non-Christian faiths.  A similar proportion were gays and lesbians.”

We’re (Nearly) All Victims Now!   by David G. Green [Read more…]

“The Desire for Substitutes

There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization.  The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest.  On the other hand, a mass movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.  A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.

People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement.  The prospect of an individual career cannot stir them to a mighty effort, nor can it evoke in them faith and a single minded dedication.  They look on self-interest as on something tainted and evil; something unclean and unlucky.  Anything undertaken under the auspices of the self seems to them foredoomed.  Nothing that has it roots and reasons in the self can be good and noble.  Their innermost craving is for a new life—a rebirth—or, failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by an identification with a holy cause.  An active mass movement offers them opportunities for both.  If they join the movement as full converts they are reborn to a new life in its close-knit collective body, or if attracted as sympathizers they find elements of pride, confidence and purpose by identifying themselves with the efforts, achievements and prospects of the movement.

To the frustrated a mass movement offers substitutes either for the whole self or for the elements which make life bearable and which they cannot evoke out of their individual resources.”

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

What irremediably spoiled past life is Obama substituting?