WhatFinger


The Left speaks of “Jobs” as if the word actually meant something

Did you say Jobs?



imageBack home here at the Words Mean Things Ranch, Santa Anna Obama winds have once again fanned the flames of class warfare, envy, and, most tragically, the death of decency in the use of our language. Obama and his minions persist in touting their “Jobs” Bill, “Jobs” Program, “Jobs” Creation, cynical to the last, inevitably certain of the success of their deceit.
How is it that the Media remains so credulous whenever Obama or the Democrats of his ilk claim that they can “create jobs?” If this were true, wouldn’t they have created them before now? What were they waiting for? Are we really to believe that the first trillion was merely a down-payment on our stunning 9.1% unemployment rate? The Left speaks of “Jobs” as if the word actually meant something.

Populist drivel of the Liberal


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Even we Conservatives are now reconstructing our mother tongue in a clearly futile effort to catch up with the populist drivel of the Liberal. First of all, we will never catch up to the populist drivel of the Liberal. Second of all, we will never match the Liberal at the game of language bastardization. It will always be impossible to compete with a person or party willing to hijack the Humpty Dumpty exploitation of language epitomized by Humpty’s declaration, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean.” Somehow, the Conservative Language Police (oh, wait, we don’t have any of that sort of thing, thank goodness) or some force, somewhere, must grab our Presidential candidates, our governors, our pundits, and shake them hard, very hard, admonishing them to “stop trying to sound like Liberal Democrats! Stop talking about “creating” jobs! The government is incapable of “creating” jobs! It costs more for government to “create” a job than the income from the job itself! Stop talking this way! Use your big boy words!” We’ve known since the first Great Depression that whenever government “creates” jobs it creates make-work jobs at best, “shovel-ready” jobs that nobody thought were worth paying for in the first place. Yet our leaders persist in using our language this way. Are our Conservative elders’ memories so impaired that they cannot recall the derisive “flipping hamburgers” rhetoric employed by the Left in its attacks upon the good news of the massive jobs “creation” (for real) by the private sector during the Bush Administration? Do they truly not remember that Job growth under Bush was relentlessly trivialized by the Left with allegations that the only beneficiaries of such growth were pimply-faced teenagers slinging fries at McDonald’s? Where is the Left now, what with so many “not-ready” “shovel-ready” jobs? More to the point, where are their snorts of disdain, their denunciations of what are now clearly “dead-end” jobs; how could a “shovel-ready” job be otherwise? There is a more fundamental issue at stake in the Jobs Wars. It is an issue that speaks to the breathtaking illegitimacy of the Left’s use of language – and the growing tragedy of the Right’s failure to use language effectively.

The issue is Jobs – not Jobs themselves – the issue is the word, Jobs

The issue is Jobs – not Jobs themselves – the issue is the word, Jobs. What does such a word mean? What does the word “flowers” mean? Which flower? What kind of flower? Are all flowers the same? What about trees? Is a microbiologist’s “Job” the same as a tax attorney’s? Is a medical doctor’s “Job” the same as an English Professor’s? Is a welder’s “Job” the same as a blacksmith’s? There are countless types of jobs. There are countless types of job applicants with countless preferences and personalities and proclivities. There are countless varieties of training and education required for each job and these training and education requirements change every day. There are countless unpredictable and unforeseen job opportunities constantly springing to life and then popping out of existence – even during this second Great Depression. And, in the midst of this potentially rich and diverse matrix of opportunities comes clomping the presumptuous federal government, magnanimous in its conceit, the great Provider cum Destroyer, THE “CREATOR” OF JOBS.

How is it that no one asks “what” jobs?

How is it that the government presumes to know what kinds of jobs are needed on this day or the next, among the millions of jobs that exist on this day or the next? How does the government know when such jobs are needed, or where? How does the government presume to find the people who are trained or educated sufficiently that they are capable of taking these jobs? How does the government know whether the adequately trained/educated job-seekers will actually like the jobs they get or will stay with them? The Obama-Marxist collectivist regime only possesses a hammer – it looks at all problems as nails – nails to be pounded into compliance and servitude. And, just as with Pol Pot’s genocide of “smart people” and Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution forcing businessmen and university professors onto rice paddies, the current administration belittles the legitimate hard work and accomplishments of its individual citizens in favor of the constrained vision of Americans as nameless worker drones requiring guidance and control. Understanding that this is the vision of the Left, from Marx to Obama, it is entirely logical that the Administration bellows “Jobs!” from every bus stop, as if all Jobs are the same just as the proletariat, the masses, are all the same (that’s why Marx/Lenin called them “masses”). The current “Jobs” blather of the Left and its Democrat defenders can be understood in no other way.

“Jobs” tour" Is it possible to imagine a more disingenuous propaganda parade?

Worse, consider the implications of the “Jobs” tour. Is it possible to imagine a more disingenuous propaganda parade? Could the President be more patronizing if he tried? Could any conspiracy be more successful than the one existing between the Complicit Media, the White House and the Democrat Party, all colluding to present a united and misleading unity on the Jobs issue? Could we characterize the current political theatre of the absurd as anything but a conspiracy? So what can Obama, the Jobs President, mean? What kinds of jobs, exactly, is he intending to “create?” Factory Jobs? Professional, Technical, Specialist Jobs? All of these jobs, even those requiring very little skill require some skill – most require several to many years of training and/or education. How can Obama’s actions, in one year, or even two years, possibly have any effect on these kinds of jobs? Upon whether individuals choose to seek these kinds of jobs? Upon the expense, to the individual, for the training and education required for these jobs? About the “opportunity cost” faced by individuals choosing to become trained or educated for these jobs? How is $450 billion dollars this year or the next or the year after that going to have an impact upon these sorts of jobs, the sort requiring previous training and education? (Keep in mind that outside of Detroit, unskilled labor almost invariably means below-$10.00/hour labor). Even one trillion or ten trillion dollars can’t buy a time machine capable of transporting our current unemployed into trained and educated job applicants today. Thus, what is that $450 billion dollars “Jobs” bill supposed to do TODAY? And what of those $10.00 per hour unskilled jobs that might flow from the $450 billion dollars? Are we now to accept the declaration that $10.00 per hour is a ‘living wage’? Are we expected to believe that now, $10.00 per hour (one to two dollars more than minimum wage – it varies by state) is NOT the wage for what the Left has long declared to be “dead-end” jobs?

Democrats and Obama have learned, almost preternaturally, to “talk Republican” better than Republicans

To be charitable, one must admit that the Democrats and Obama have learned, almost preternaturally, to “talk Republican” better than Republicans. Obama is entirely capable of maintaining a straight face when he waxes on about how “small business is the engine of our America’s jobs growth.” Nevertheless, and despite our political and media elite’s orgasmic fantasies of an Orwellian state, it is still true that “evil prevails when good men do nothing.” For now, there exists the opportunity for good men to do something. For now. For now, we are still privileged to live in a world where at every moment, any one of us has the freedom, and perhaps the bravery, to ask of The Man on stage or in front of the camera the ultimate question: “Jobs? What Jobs? Be specific.”


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Dr. Brad Lyles -- Bio and Archives

Dr. Brad Lyles is an independent writer for the Tea Party.


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