The Totalitarians Among Us
BY Herschel Smith10 years, 1 month ago
Victor Davis Hanson observes:
In short, Obama will always poll around 45 percent. That core support is his lasting legacy. In a mere five years, by the vast expansion of federal spending, by the demonizing rhetoric of his partisan bully pulpit, and by executive orders and bizarre appointments, Obama has so divided the nation that he has created a permanent constituency that will never care as much about what he does as it cares about what he says and represents.
For elite rich liberals, whose money and privilege exempt them from the consequences of Obama’s policies, and their own ideology, he will always be their totem. He is iconic of their own progressivism and proof of their racial liberalism, and thus allows them to go on enjoying their privilege, without guilt and without worrying too much about how they got it or whether they might lose it.
For the vast new millions on federal disability insurance, food stamps, and other entitlements, Obama is their lifeline to government support.
These are pregnant paragraphs indeed, but perhaps Hanson doesn’t want to consider where his own observations take us. The problem has exacerbated under Obama to be sure, but the real problem runs far deeper than him or his cronies.
Obama is the leader du jour of the elitist collectivists, and they have specific designs for the hard workers in America (here referred to as middle class).
“The best short credo of liberalism came from the pen of the once canonical left-wing literary historian Vernon Parrington in the late 1920s. ‘Rid society of the dictatorship of the middle class,’” a motto that Sacramento has internalized to a man.
But for much of the entitlement state, the middle class is necessary for their own existence. Corporations rely on the wealth of the middle class in order to hire illegal aliens to do work. They don’t pay them enough to provide for their medical care, so the middle class provides it in insurance premiums thus ensuring that when the aliens show up at the emergency rooms all across America for treatment, the hospitals don’t go bankrupt. Food stamps, welfare and other forms of government handouts rely on the wealth of the middle class. Thus having low paid workers in America from foreign countries is a form of corporate welfare. It enriches the executives and board members.
Members of boards of directors sit on multiple boards, voting policy into action, traveling from one board meeting to another, and ensuring that their friends receive membership on some influential board as well. They travel in the same circles, ride on the same yachts, fly on the same chartered jets and drink the same expensive wine as the politicians. The politicians ensure that the corporate welfare continues by implementing policy to support it at the national level.
But if there is an entitled class in the upper echelon of society who requires redistribution of middle class wealth, the inner cities of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Houston and Atlanta grow no produce, make no product, and exist by funneling wealth from the suburbs and rural areas of America to their own coffers. As much as one half of America pays no federal income taxes, and yet this (i.e., welfare and food stamps) is referred to as “slavery” by well intentioned people who want to see the impoverished become self supporting.
Slavery it is not, when food, medical care, housing and education is handed to you for free, while you have the opportunity to work yourself out of the inner city into a better future. The slaves are the ones who suffer taxation – theft by the power of a badge and gun – in order to fund all of those benefits.
Finally, there are those who work to ensure that the system continues unabated – the police and all manner of federal law enforcement agencies. While the police typically see themselves as sacrificing for the sake of the people, the effete, entitled, elitist sophisticates see them as Neanderthals. Brutish and evil, but a necessary evil if the state is to function to maintain two classes of people. Oftentimes – though not always – the police do their bidding. The ridiculous war on drugs has few supporters within the elite establishment, but it has served to militarize the police, and that’s a positive thing to them. SWAT teams may make people think about the likeness of America to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, but the elite don’t want any hint of rebellion among the ranks. Better to overdo things and make sure than to honor the rights of the ordinary folk.
So it’s a collection of bastard groups that has designs on the middle class, and its allies sometimes agree on very little. These groups (and many more I haven’t named) have only one thing in common: The wealth and subjugation of the middle class. This is such a strong bond that it unites people who would otherwise hate each other.
Take careful note that the problem doesn’t just reside within the beltway of Washington, D.C. The federal Leviathan would be powerless without the will of the people, without the agents and police to keep them in power, without the judges to sign their arrest and home-invasion warrants, without the money coming in from the workers like you and me, and without willing dupes in the counties and states who implement their laws.
You see, workers for the NSA, DOJ, DEA, EPA, DOE, and ATF, local, county, state and federal police, workers for all manner of state and county agencies, tax agents for the state and federal government, government accountants and lawyers, DHS workers, child welfare and other meddling agents, and on and on the list goes, all require your wealth and need for the host to stay alive. They are empowered by the collective, and yet they need the collective to survive. No one should be surprised over the notion that one half of the country is collectivist.
The totalitarians are among us. That’s why after watching New York and Connecticut implode over gun confiscations and new gun laws, as strange as it may sound, Alabama has folks just like them. So does South Carolina. But also just like parasitical beings, the parasites are unconcerned about the potential death of the host.
With multiplication of the parasites the host cannot survive, but that doesn’t stop the parasites. First comes the draining of resources, but usually soon comes disabling of the host defenses. Gun control is an easy way to ensure compliance with the parasites while the middle class is drained dry.
Eventually the host becomes very sick and perishes. Confiscations of IRAs and 401Ks (and nationalization of other forms of wealth) are inevitable. That the parasites no longer have a host isn’t in the calculus. Parasites have no conscience and do not plan ahead. But we can and should plan ahead and see the current sickness for what it is. It is an existential battle for life as we know it. The parasites – the totalitarians and their allies – are among us, and the host has precious little time left.
UPDATE: See Senator Larry Martin, South Carolina, for one of our local totalitarians.
On March 3, 2014 at 10:37 am, GenEarly said:
There is One Party Rule in the USSA ,with a few exceptions in the Repubs. The Progressives are the Democrap Party and the Establishment RINO Repubs. Reality is at least a starting point, the Progressives also infest State, and Local gov’ts. It may be the type of people that like to control others seek positions of authority from dog catcher to presidente. We, the sheeple either allow it or support it, unfortunately.
If it wasn’t for the Laws of Economics, the Progressive Insanity would go on forever, but Financial Collapse has a way of clearing the table, of everything.
On March 3, 2014 at 10:52 am, Calmyourself said:
VDH never takes his points to their logical conclusion. He is difficult to rad for that reason he comes so close and then abandons all solutions to become another chronicler of our situatio n when he could be so much more.
On March 3, 2014 at 10:57 am, anonymous said:
“As much as one half of America pays no federal income taxes,”
Are you including Mitt Romney?
This isn’t a war of rich vs poor. It’s the rich and the poor vs the middle class. A lot of conservatives need to pull their heads out of their arses and realize that. Because an ideology that divides people into “looters” and “producers” needs to stop worshipping a subset of looters.
On March 3, 2014 at 2:19 pm, Unsooper said:
Not to disagree too strongly with you because my problem here is VDH is not clear: I am no Mitt supporter but the Harry Reid lie that Romney paid no taxes is a bad joke that has become just another Liberal lie like “John Kerry released all his military records” or “Kerry was Swiftboated with lies” or ‘Bush’s Illegal war” or ‘Saddam never had uranium or chemical weapons” or lately “the IRS, Fast and Furious, NSA scandals are fake” and on and on.
VDH also needs to realize that if you work endlessly and are taxed punitively against your political beliefs so that you cannot succeed financially you ARE worse than a slave. Slaves got free healthcare, housing and food. Everyone not in the upper classes are now in the lower; the ‘middle class’ is basically already gone and the new ‘middle class’ needs a lot more money to be in the “middle”. We have direct government slavery through government social engineering. Freedom is now only what an elite political class that honestly thinks itself middle class says it is. An average 20 something with only high school today, if lucky enough to find any job, might start in a restaurant making $8 or $9/ hour—that was the starting salary 30 years ago. The average middle aged American salary is in the high 40K range while the average representative’s salary is 175K and HALF of elected reps are multimillionaires and think they are middle class. Federal pensions–what used to be considered lower middle class–are skyrocketing past private pay and tens of thousands retire on 100+K forever. Also please note the lowest paid national media bobble heads make hundreds of thousands a year and lecture the rest of us on politics and economic policy. All societies based on unworkable models collapse. We are now already in a Civil War.
On March 4, 2014 at 8:24 pm, BeeKaaay said:
No, this is the Marxists versus everyone else. Simple as that. They use the poor as tools. The middle class is their enemy. And rich Marxists love this. Rich non-Marxists are the enemy.
On March 5, 2014 at 9:15 am, Fed up said:
Of course…never mind all of the other investments, corporations and other entities upon which his name (Romney) is affixed that fork over taxes due. Do you really believe that no taxes are paid at all on all of these assets? You need to understand that wealth needs to remain in circulation, not stuffed in a mattress to do any good. He hands over more revenue in the form of taxes in one day than the complainers and gimmee girls do in a lifetime.
Don’t kill, eat and digest the golden goose. Parasites are killing us.
On March 3, 2014 at 11:19 am, anonymous said:
“Parasites have no conscience”
Are corporations sociopaths?
Under the law, they are “persons”, with legal rights. And conservatives think this is a good thing.
Yet corporations have no conscience, empathy, morals, etc. And conservatives also think that is a good thing.
But a person who has no conscience is, by definition, a sociopath. America has, in effect, been colonized by immortal sociopaths. And conservatives think this is a good thing.
Back in 2008, Nick Wilson of the Libertarian Reform Caucus wrote that
Religious conservatives, and those libertarians who claim to believe in the Constitution (“people” means “people”, and individual rights aren’t collective, eg the 2nd Amendment), should be opposed to “corporate personhood”, not embracing it. Those smelly Occupy hippies were wrong about a lot of things, but they weren’t wrong about everything.
This isn’t a war of the rich vs the poor. It’s the rich and the poor vs the middle class. Yet most conservatives only see enemies on one front.
On March 3, 2014 at 2:55 pm, Brennan Graves said:
“…And conservatives think this is a good thing…”
Why, just because YOU say so.
You lose.
On March 3, 2014 at 8:22 pm, anonymous said:
“Why, just because YOU say so.”
No, it’s based on decades of observation. I have never heard a conservative (or libertarian) do anything but laud the concept of corporate personhood, which is a construct of judicial activism, not the Constitution.
On March 3, 2014 at 9:32 pm, Herschel Smith said:
I have never – not even once – spoke about the issue of corporations and personhood.
You also said, “This isn’t a war of the rich vs the poor. It’s the rich and the poor vs the middle class.”
I think that’s what I said.
On March 4, 2014 at 9:55 am, Brennan Graves said:
Yeah, well, you need to adjust your prescription, then.
You lose.
Still.
Stay away from stuff you don’t understand.
On March 4, 2014 at 10:11 am, Herschel Smith said:
To whom are you speaking, and what pray tell are you saying?
On March 4, 2014 at 9:58 am, Brennan Graves said:
Oh, another thing, why no mention, NONE, of the absolutely HORRENDOUS behavior that is accustomed to Donkeys?
Why?
Right.
I know the answer, even if YOU don’t.
On March 5, 2014 at 3:49 am, Roger V. Tranfaglia said:
What the heck are you talking about????
On March 4, 2014 at 8:23 pm, BeeKaaay said:
And leftwingwackos think that actual human beings don’t deserve human rights. That’s why they love it when babies get slaughtered.