Team Obama-
The perfect disciples
By SHEILAH PEPPER
The Gazette Staff
I, like many others who watch politics, have wondered lately why those on the Left seem so angry. After all - they hold all the major avenues of power in this country.
They have the White House, they have the House of Representatives, they have the Senate, they are repopulating the executive branches and are taking steps to regain control of the United States Supreme Court. So, why all the anger, directed at conservatives and conservative icons and even sometimes at anyone who dares to disagree on the issues?
Some have a quasi-psychological explanation that goes like this: Their ideology is all that they really have in their lives. Therefore, the emptiness must be constantly avoided, and the anger fulfills this need.
I have a much more practical explanation.
In 1971, a community organizer and writer, Saul Alinsky published a book titled "Rules for Radicals." He was a socialist, actually a Marxist, but his book isn't about ideology. It's about methodology - concrete steps to take to gain power, beginning at the neighborhood level. He has many apostles, but the most well-known and powerful are Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. The former head and initiator of ACORN, the community organizing group now involved in voter and possibly financial fraud, was a follower of Alinsky who originated the community organizer concept. Here's a telling quote from Alinsky: "The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which man can reach - to create, to be a ‘great creator', ‘to play God'." Obama worked as a community organizer in earlier days in Chicago, in a neighborhood Alinsky had worked.
There are also people around Obama who seem to be following the Alinsky blue print. His chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, voiced one of Alinsky's foremost directives, when he said you can never let a good crisis go to waste. It gives you the opportunity to do things you otherwise would not be able to do, because of public outcry.
The White House is also carefully following another tenet stated by Alinsky. Create a sense of panic. If the panic abates, recreate it or create it on another issue.
Alinsky also advised followers to adopt a conservative appearance in dress, speech, and demeanor, so as to not seem frightening. Alinsky felt any revolution must have the middle class supporting it.
Have you noticed Obama's slow, deliberative way of speaking? It reassures people. Yet if you listen very closely to what he is actually saying, you might be very worried. He carefully modulates his tone of voice and keeps emotion to the minimum.
I'm finally learning to translate his remarks. When he said recently that the current rates of spending are unsustainable, something conservatives having been saying loudly, here's what he means: We're going to put your taxes up big time, but I'm going to make sure someone else gets the blame. (Congress, more than likely.)
In addition to the government, all other centers of power now belong to the Left. They have a worshipful mainstream media, almost all of academia, the fine arts, Hollywood, all of broadcast TV, and the pop culture gained slowly and incrementally over the years. But.incrementalism is only a course Alinsky approved for the gaining of power.
Once you have power, he states that immediate action must be taken. Hillar Clinton famously rushed in with socialized medicine, but the Clintons didn't have the kind of cover provided by the crisis we currently have.
Obama, an admirer of Alinsky's work, understands you must take lightening action on many fronts at a dizzying pace. This leaves opponents stunned and confused. No one dreamt of the kind of multi-trillion dollar spending and future debt we are now incurring.
Don't listen to what Obama says. Watch what he does.
He said the government doesn't want to run the car companies. Then, as Jim Geraghty noted in National review, he fired GMs CEO, demonized the bondholders, ensured that the auto unions got a sweet deal and guaranteed warranties. He also said he doesn't want to run the banks. But his Treasury Department doesn't want to take back some unneeded TARP money because those funds give them influence over bank policy.
Sustaining anger and crisis come from the Alinsky playbook. So does pragmatism. Alinsky said any means always are justified by the end. He said holding POWER was the central focus. Do nothing that detracts from that power and do everything to add to it.
It's no longer about Right or Left, or policy. We can call it socialism, or statism, or corporate fascism, whatever. But I agree with Mr. Geraghty when he says it's the Alinsky administration, its all about power and it has been for a long time.
The sustained anger of the now powerful Left is just another strategy designed to increase that power.
Copyright©2009SheilahPepper
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