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| "The peasants are revolting!" |
Hey, Glenn has people reading again. He’s not just selling his books; he’s selling millions of books for obscure professors and academics, newspaper columnists and freelance writers. Where's the kudos to him for that! The publishing industry must be loving the sales numbers. They're probably scrambling right now looking for the next conservative blockbuster they can get him to recommend. All the while, you can bet their staff holds its collective pseudo-intellectual nose (not forgetting to endorse those paychecks when they deposit them, though).
From articles like this and others in the liberal blogosphere, it's obvious that you guys really do think regular folks like me are complete idiots that never check out anything but simply stumble around blindly doing as we're told.
Well you're wrong. What scares the willy out of the progressive left right now is that the conservative tea party movement doesn't seem to be collapsing. The mythical payoffs from big insurance were supposed to run out and all those grandmas and grandpas and guys in overalls and feed store caps were supposed to stop coming to rallies once they weren't being paid anymore
What happened? Why are the rallies growing ever larger? Why are we dominating the bestseller lists? Why are news media that offer a conservative viewpoint burying the mainstream media that sits solidly on the left? Why are the incumbents in both parties that got our country into this mess in the first place dropping like flies in the primaries (or bailing out while they can still collect their pensions)?
You may not like us, Bub, but we're real and we will not go quietly into that good night as we were expected to (and yes, we do read poetry). You may think we are just a collection of the most stupid people in the country and that we are being herded sheep-like by golden-tongued radio personalities.
Keep thinking that and you really will continue to be utterly surprised as we stand up en masse to oppose the blind rush to socialism that the left has been engineering for so long.
Once, the lower 50% of the IQ range in this country belonged to the Democrat party and voted blindly because they were told (more like chanted at really) that Republicans were rich exploiters and besides FDR saved us from the depression. Unfortunately for Dems, the conservatives are beginning to dip down into the loyal Democrats for new converts. Simple folks are beginning to hear a coherent message from conservatives like Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and others that makes sense to them. The Democrats are doing stuff that makes them so mad, they’ve forgotten FDR and the propaganda about how evil Rush Limbaugh is supposed to be. They’re having a little listen and discovering that the evil conservatives are a lot more like them than are the spokeswomen for the “People’s Party”.
You're losing them and you haven’t a prayer of gaining any traction with the diverse and often very bright set of folks that have taken up the tea party banner. As people grow more angry with what the federal government is up to, you’ll see more folks lose their fear of being seen publicly to align themselves with the tea party. The crowds will continue to swell and the ratings will continue to rise.
You libs remind me of the fat burghers in Europe who lived constantly in dread that the peasants would figure out what was going on and rise up and murder them in their beds. Of course, they were also constantly trying to figure out how to keep the peasants fed (but not too well fed), how to keep them quiet, but busy on the farms and how to work them to a stupor so they wouldn’t have time or energy to figure out how scared the barons and earls really were of them.
It won't happen like that here. America’s peasant class is well fed (by its own efforts), but not so quiet. America’s one of the few countries in the world where obesity is a problem among our poor. It’s kind of odd really.
It is nice that you fear that we’ll murder you all in your beds. It makes for some really entertaining media. We enjoy watching jumpy liberals look for boogers at every tea party rally. Some of you guys have even resorted to manufacturing boogers and taking them to tea parties – I suppose to relieve your anxiety. By the way, you need to work on being a little more subtle when you misspell words on signs. The gun-toting Nazis in the group can pick you out like an orange pig in yellow grass.
I mean after all the tea party people are supposed to be gun-toting Nazis aren’t they? The progressive ideology says so. If the tea party folk aren’t gun-toting Nazis, what else could be wrong with progressive ideology? And that thought is apparently unthinkable to the progressive mind. We see that in socialist countries where the news reports vary widely from actual conditions on the ground in those countries. The elitist socialist will not tolerate variance from his ideology, even in the face of reality. Better to manufacture evidence than admit the ideology is flawed.
People tend to see the world through their own prejudices, beliefs and attitudes. Thieves see everyone as a potential thief. People who love power think everyone around them wants to take their power from them. After all, it’s what they’d do if the tables were turned. People, who think they are smarter than everyone else, tend to view others not in their “class” as stupid. They delude themselves into believing that most everyone except for themselves and their circle is stupid and that they should, somehow, be smart enough to figure out how to make all those stupid people do what they want them to do. They are, after all, stupid and incapable of governing themselves. The ideology says so.
What you've done, though, is finally get the attention of all those folks you thought were so stupid. You see, all those wonderfully diverse and intelligent folks out there who were content to let you guys play power games for all these years, so long as you left them alone to do their business and live their lives, have suddenly realized that you guys are really starting to mess things up. When you start diddling with people’s paychecks, you get their attention. You're taking their money for things they don't want to buy. You're mortgaging their children's futures
And, yes, Virginia, conservatives have learned, to your horror, how to use slogans effectively - a propaganda technique you always hoped we were too stupid to figure out. People with no interest in technology or the Internet have picked up this useful tool and the propaganda techniques to go with it in response to the threat they see from progressive socialism. And they are using it to devastating effect. Grandmas and grandpas are networking and organizing in a way that would give Saul Alinsky an orgasm if we all were progressive socialists.
Ah, but there's the rub. Once again, an enemy of America has misunderstood the character of the nation and badly misjudged. The Japanese did it back in the 30’s. They thought our preoccupation with business and digging ourselves out of a depression and our love for peace and our tiny military, meant we would fold easily once confronted with the might of the Japanese Empire. After all, Americans are far from warlike was the thinking. The resulting war, which had been going quite well for the Japanese up until they won that great "victory" at Pearl Harbor, turned out rather badly for them once Americans got into it..
The progressive movement thinks that free market capitalism is an "antique" notion and that folks will gladly give up capitalism and a few of our freedoms and privileges as Americans - at least a few at a time - in exchange for small payoffs like healthcare. They think, despite evidence to the contrary, that the time is ripe for the really smart people to finally fix things. They see themselves creating a world without hunger, ill health, homelessness or joblessness. What could be better than that? Oh, and the fat burghers who help create this new worker’s paradise will get to keep their treasure and prestige while the proletariat and working middle class and working wealthy will level out into a nice dreary gray sameness under the benign control of the new government. And the so-called classless society the progressives fantasize about will pretty much ossify the classes into just two - the elite leaders and the proletariat.
Imagine the shock when they begin to reach for our liberties and get their fingers bit off.
It'll be quite a shock to the ideology that believes the ignorant masses will go quietly into that dreary dusk of a once-thriving civilization. But, the left isn’t there yet. They’re still true believers like the arrogant Japanese military leaders in the heady days after Pearl Harbor. They didn’t yet realize they were doomed.
You see, we have help coming soon, from a quarter that no amount of central planning can prepare for. Whatever gains the progressives think they are making, whatever powerful coalitions they think they are creating, they are simply binding themselves into bundles - just like the ones I put out by the curb on Tuesday and Friday.
The brilliant Japanese admiral, Yamamoto, said it best when he lamented after Pearl Harbor that he feared that all they had done was “…waken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Tea anyone?
Just one man’s opinion….
Tom King
(c) 2010 originally printed in "Uncle Tom's Traveling Salvation Show" - Open Salon, May 5, 2010
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