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.