All the people in politics work in politics and socialize with people in politics, and so there’s a cold sweat fear that passes around Washington: what if we’re out of touch?
Both sides use this as a weapon. Obama is out of touch because he likes arugula; Romney is out of touch because he’s a billionaire who likes the trains to run on time.
But like any closed industry, it’s politics itself that is out of touch. For years, the GOP has sat around thinking that they’re doing a good job of staying relevant; middle America has looked at them and wondered when they’d locate a fighting spirit again.
Whether he leaked that mystery video of himself speaking candidly to millionaires, or whether it escaped by subterfuge from the other side, Mitt Romney has re-written American politics with a bold mood: telling it like he sees it, and uniting his tribe around an idea.
This idea is flawed, as are all things in a time of decay. However, it is less flawed than other ideas, and moves us closer to a healthy state of mind. This idea is that there’s no free ride.
Emotionally, we find this concept difficult. No one wants to go to a job, and no one wants to think of someone being needy. But when you start the subsidy, you begin working against the principle that results and reality matter, and instead you go into the neurotic world of wishful thinking.
Imagine the liberals you know. How many are actually happy? It’s not because they don’t have Jesus. It’s because they’re neurotic and near-schizoid with doubt. They live in a world of mental projection and reality to them is a terrifying, distant, unknowable place. That’s the result of the free ride style thinking.
Obama united such people with an idea of “you didn’t build that.” The underlying idea behind that meme is that if we all think the same illusion together, nothing can hurt us. Thus there can be no independent actors who don’t need us as a crowd.
Romney’s counterpoint was both a touchstone for the right, and a shibboleth for the left:
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” Romney says in one clip. “There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.” – CNN
This is the type of campaign the GOP should have run years ago. It is not purely factual; in fact, it’s symbolic. That is why it’s true: there is in fact a huge group of people who believe they are victims and that the government should ensure equal survival through handouts. They all vote Democrat.
Whether these are to a person the 47% who don’t pay taxes is uncertain but unimportant. The point is that we have a large mob of people in this country who want to live in the free ride world of wishful thinking. We call them liberals.
Since the 1930s, the left has been busy creating its voter pool. Every divorce makes another kid who will be mentally fractured for 20 years, and will vote left during that time.
Every imported immigrant is another consistent vote that will never go to the right.
Every empowered woman, angry minority, disenfranchised bisexual, or person working in government, academia or media, is a Democratic foot-soldier in the fifth column they hope will take over the USA.
The only way to fight back against this is to identify it for what it is (a parasitic crowd) and then to formulate an opposite mythos, which is that we in the 53% are the ones who make this place work, and we do it through the principle of natural selection: reward those who adapt and contribute, and push the rest on to somewhere else.
The whole West is shot through with parasites because of two centuries of liberal social programs that emphasize equality, and as a result attempt to shield individuals from the consequences of their actions. A free ride for all means we are all right in our life choices.
Romney’s words brought the right together. Our goal is to adapt to reality, to do what is right and good, and to make a society that lasts through the ages. Our enemy is wishful thinking and its associated illusions, free ride style nanny states, big government and the group sentiment of the disenchanted.
He also provided a shibboleth, or word useful for detecting allies, on the left. The MSM and leftists are all busy running around telling each other how Romney made a huge “mistake” and how it will doom him. Like all echo chambers, they depend on each other to feel correct, since they have zero idea about how reality works.
Rightists are beginning to see how leftism/liberalism is a mental health disorder. It is denial of reality. It is narcissism, or receding into the human mind. You don’t appease it, you certainly don’t apologize to it, and eventually, you have to kick it out of your country before it destroys you.
The Romney campaign seems to have gotten the message, becuase this is their latest update:
We believe in free people and free enterprise, not redistribution. The right course for America is to create growth, create wealth, not to redistribute wealth. – Mitt Romney on Facebook
The point is that there are two competing worldviews here.
The right wants the best to rise based on their knowledge and successful results in reality.
The left wants a social club where no one rises and no one falls, but everyone is employed thanks to having the right opinions.
There is no compromise. The two are incompatible. By noting this, and injecting the first note of honesty into this campaign, Mitt Romney has begun revitalizing the GOP into a fighting force worth supporting.
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“The right wants the best to rise based on their knowledge and successful results in reality.”
I’ll fix that for you:
“The right helps the psychopaths rise based on their crony rolodex and successful exploitation for profit at any cost.”
It’s good of you to drop by and fix things for us.
But we don’t really need you to do that, since we don’t live in la-la land. Still, we know you meant well.
Please give an example.
Then show me how the left does not do this.
I can to some degree agree with this. There is without question a game that is played to get ahead. It is not all based on merit, and in fact it helps to know people and play the game right.
That said, I also agree with Brett’s comment that the left does the same. I think both sides, at least the dishonest components of both sides (and both sides are full of dogma and dishonesty), have their own games they play.
I also want to add that the whole “you didn’t build that” bit was taken out of context by the right. I actually believe in a lot of the basic principles of the right, so this isn’t a me vs. them thing. I saw the video, and clear as day Obama was saying that basic infrastructure like roads and bridges, things that private enterprise benefit from, came from government efforts. It sickened me how out of context it has been used in the campaign. Made these people look like lairs and cheats.
So yeah, in the end I think both sides have their crappy people. That is why I am digging in deep and trying to come to my own conclusions about what really is going on. I don’t want to just “parrot” this or that party line. I really want to figure out what I feel about things.
Good post. I agree in that I like it as it opposes the collective PC thinking you are almost told you have to subscribe to these days.
Agreement is a mental laziness that stops he who agrees in his tracks. What use is agreement anyway? Does it affect anything?
If you really want to figure out how you feel, you won’t be feeling what you might have, before the figuring-out changed how you feel.
If you want to feel what you actually feel, don’t even think about thinking about it. I would imagine you already feel what you feel about things, but that you don’t yet know how to be aware of it, let alone trust it.
You and millions of others :)
Two words: Clintonian economics
Every financial plunder libs accuse conservative elites of – protecting banks with bailouts and eliminating their investment risks with tax dollars, government insider trading, extorting up-and-coming national economies from Mexico to Japan, protecting the interests of big business and back door deals with Wall Street – occurred during the Clinton administration, and gave rise to the largest crony capitalism in U.S. history.
Well, we love guys who tell it like it is.
The problem is that vast numbers of other people, don’t.
Reality only appeals to those who are aware of it.
Those who aren’t, invent their own.
I would like to see MR win, but I don’t imagine he will.
I really hope to be wrong about this.
But MR didn’t tell it like it is; he told it like it isn’t. Don’t any of you read the fact checkers when politicians make claims? The Washington Post, a paper with a strong Republican editorial policy, has a very good one http://tinyurl.com/3ovcaxm Or do you assume that all fact checkers are those dreaded liberals? The vast majority of those who don’t pay taxes; from the top with General Electric Corporation, which hasn’t paid *any* taxes for years, through Romney himself who pays no more than 15% of his income in Federal taxes based on his released returns, down to Southern white males whose income is low and whose kids are many, all are solid Republican supporters. And anyway, shouldn’t a small government conservative be pleased that so many are not paying Federal taxes?
Seriously, I come here in hopes of finding a sane conservative viewpoint, and though Mr Stevens writes well in lucid prose I rarely see any awareness of verifiable facts based on actual data. It often seems like the commentary is about a made up world. Are you all adrift in the Mayberry of the mind?
A biased view is exactly that.
Yours certainly is.
So what?
Anyway there are no facts that are not verifiable, first-hand.
All is hearsay, and very likely inaccurate.
Are you surprised that Brett writes for conservatives?
Do you imagine he should only write things acceptable to leftists?
What would be the point?
This is not a left-friendly site.
Personally I think it’s a good thing GE and MR manage to hold onto their cash from being sucked into the howling maw that is subsidising the self destructive.
Something like the top 10% of earners pay over 50% of the taxes in the states, so yeah.
If you didn’t notice Romney’s main point was that they feel entitled to other peoples cash, the lack of paying into the pot is just part of being on the take.
People generally come around to the right when they grow up and out of their “huddled masses yearning to be free” sentimentalism.
Another important point. We can’t sabotage those who are the groundwork of our economy.
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees.
That’s not an individual taxpayer, but a corporation.
When most of your income comes from owning things, the calculation is a bit different. For starters, you aren’t actually realizing that value as income, nor could you if you decided to sell it tomorrow (not to mention the catastrophic effects that would have on a lot of lives).
Facts can be misleading. Most things that are called facts are not, and most interpretations of facts are also wrong.
These are 1,000 word essays, not research projects.
Yay :)
The Master speaks!
Yeah, Brett covered this fairly well in the article. He did point out that Romney’s statements were more symbolic than outright “factual” in the way that moderns understand that word.
What Romney did was, (in his own words) inelegantly state what conservatives have been saying for years: the very poor in society are not the people we should be focusing our energy on. Most of them are in that situation due to their (or their ancestors’) inability to be self-reliant. “Rescuing” these people will not help them, and it will most certainly not help society, as these people will not be able to create more wealth (hint: that’s why they find themselves where they are).
Instead, it makes more sense to reward those who “rise to the top” and create, with very little aid from government. This way, you encourage a certain type of behaviour, and essentially, give power to those who create for the benefit of the entire system, and not those who fritter wealth away trivially, or hoard it up so that only they benefit from it.
Now, personally, I don’t believe that every Republican thinks this way. Indeed, most Republicans in governmental positions are selfish, and are only on the right because they realise it means wealth accumulates at the top, and they’re hoping to cash in. The smart ones (they’re usually not in government – or at least, they haven’t been life-long bureaucrats) recognize that in order to sustain a wealth-producing economy, you have to fight greed, and focus on your energy on using wealth to create more. If you’re liberal/Democrat, you’re not even thinking in these terms, because you’re fixated on the individual and can’t think outside this narrative.
Your last paragraph is bitter and adds nothing to your argument. Essentially, you’re admitting that you started reading an article with the expectation that it would tell you what you wanted to hear, written in a way which was suitable to your current mindframe. Think about what that says about said current mindframe.
Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by Obama “likes Arugula? I looked it up and all I’m getting is stuff about a plant known taxonomically as “Eruca sativa”. I don’t get it.
It is the salad plant that ive always known as Rocket, I assume because it has a zing to the taste of it. I’m trying to remember the taste now!
As NotTheDude says below, it’s an additive to salad. An expensive one, favored by coastal elites :)
It’s frou-frou.
(and delicious with blue cheese crumbles and pecans)
I suppose what was implied in the post about arugula is that is a minor thing to note about Obama up against the fact that his opponent is a wealthy success who likes efficiency. I personally feel that you Americans make your elections into huge reality shows and so lose touch with reality. But that was blatant eh?
Is this unique to America?
Not at all, it’s just a much bigger “production” come election year for Americans. No other country’s national elections are so widely covered by the international media. I’m not saying this has anything to do with America’s cultural hegemony, but it may…:-) Or should that be AmeriKa’s cultural hegemony?
Certainly not. All of the West’s politics have been turned into a version of Pop Idol.
[...] a video was leaked revealing candidate Romney uncannily honest remarks to a group of potential donors, the GOP candidate faced a choice: repudiate his words and insult his donors, or accept his words [...]
My problem with this approach is in this notion of adapting to & succeeding in the current climate, which seems to me to entail offering the lowest common denominator his bucket of slop faster & cheaper than the next guy.
It seems like we need a more stalwart, refuse-nik posture than “adapting”; I don’t know what is left to conserve in what we might adapt to these days.
I hear you, I do. It’s more of a general principle to life, which may need to be severely adapted to the current setting.
It’s easy to “rise to the top” in today’s society by understanding the system, and gaming (‘milking) it like crazy, leaving wreckage behind (like the remains of your soul at this point). The point is that the alternative being offered by the left is far worse (from the tone of your post, I’m sure you’re well aware).
It may be a tad too idealistic, but I figure that once enough people start moving in the right (pun intended) direction, it will be easier to alter what needs to be altered, conserve what needs to be conserved, and stably dismantle what no longer works at all. Until that time, however, it’s important that the right rallies around the kind of ideas being described here. This is the core of our reality-study – the consequences of our actions are what matter most.