Daniel Greenfield is a New York City writer and columnist. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and his articles appears at its Front Page Magazine site.
When the applause had died down and the softly glowing screen of the teleprompter faded to black, the echoes of the Leninist cadences of Obama's State of the Union address, "We must out-educate, out-compete, and out-innovate the rest of the world", "We have broken the back of the recession" and "We can't win the future with a government of the past" suggest that we are now living in a land without history.
How else could Obama get up and deliver an address whose rhetoric represents a 180 degree turn, while the substance continues down the same track. The meat of the address was stolen from Clinton's 1992 campaign stump speeches on the economy. There is the same invocation of personal stories of unemployment combined with promises of replacing the old bad manufacturing jobs with free educations for everyone. But Clinton was better at pretending to be one of the boys, a working class man who only got out thanks to a good education. Obama's people must have known that dog wouldn't hunt.
Countries most often destroy themselves by refusing to gauge the consequences of their actions. That blind spot creates a weakness. The bigger it gets, the more vulnerable the country becomes. America's blind spot has been an unwillingness to recognize the economic cost of its social programs.
American prosperity was built on the combination of vast resources, cheap labor, class mobility and few regulations creating a society with the shortest line possible between innovation and production. But as liberalism's regulatory culture made everything from mining to manufacturing to employment more expensive, the old American economic miracles were no longer possible.
Obama needs a victory. Somewhere. After losing congress and returning from another useless international trip, that victory has to come from somewhere. Outmaneuvered on the home front, he desperately needs to regain his stature and upstage the new Republican congress with a major achievement. And it's clear now to even his dimmest media supporters that such an achievement won't come from another international tour.
His political status as the occupant of the White House, and his own personal celebrity, mean that he can hop on Air Force One and get a reception in most countries. But having cocktail parties thrown in your honor and actually being listened to are two different things. Internationally Obama has become a "party guest", whose attendance brings status and media attention, but who isn't to be taken seriously.
The 112th congress is the first congress in half a century without a Kennedy on board. And the first glimpse of a Republican landslide came with the backlash over the "Kennedy seat" in Massachusetts. As it turned out, it wasn't the Kennedy seat, it was the people's seat. And it wasn't the Kennedy congress, it is the people's congress.
What was once a family on the verge of creating an expansive political dynasty in two branches of government, barely had enough clout to convince A&E not to air a scandalous miniseries about their family. Which is a pity, because the Kennedy family long ago became little more than entertainment, their scandals making them no different than any other group of celebrities. And that seems an altogether fitting end to their deliberate self-iconization.
This was what the political climate looked like back in 2006 when this was the DVD cover of a widely promoted movie featuring the murder of President Bush, as a way of discussing how awful Bush is. This wasn't the work of a single lunatic. Roger Ebert, who is predictably outraged over Palin, praised the movie as "necessary to an understanding of George W. Bush's role in the world today."
Here's more:
"The scenario is a familiar one: What would happen if a much-hated world leader was killed in office? Since the failed assassination attempts on Adolph Hitler, fictions imagining how things might have changed with the elimination of one powerful figure have fascinated historians and the public."
Up until the winter of 09, Muzzammil Hassan was known as the founder of Bridges TV, one of those ubiquitous ventures meant to normalize Islam in the American context. There was all the usual talk about promoting moderate Islam, even though Bridges TV broadcast "Current Issues" which focused on building bridges to such average Americans as David Duke and assorted other Neo-Nazis and shock collar wearing types. Then in a shocking turn of events, Muzzammil Hassan beheaded his director of programming and wife at the TV station after she had received an order of protection against him.
There is hardly a better way to degrade the entire idea of political speech than by classing everyone who is in any way critical of the government as "anti-government". Such a label creates two camps, the camp of government and the camp of everyone unhappy with government, and defines the latter camp by the actions of a psychotic killer, who was unhappy with government, grammar and higher mathematics, among a seemingly inexhaustible supply of other things. Such a course is not only intellectually dishonest, it is also far more dangerous than slapping a bullseye across a congressman.
From all the outrage over congress opening with a reading of the Constitution, you would have thought that the Republican party was proposing to outlaw green labels on household products, put up a fence made entirely of snarling dogs across the Mexican border, and haul Obama off to Gitmo. Even an upcoming attempt to repeal the Obama Care monstrosity, hasn't generated nearly as much outrage as a reading of the United States Constitution.
The session has just begun, but the media is already declaring that the Republican congress has failed. After 2 years, the only bad thing they can bring themselves to say is that Obama has not fully and properly communicated his wonderfulness to the ignorant masses. But the Republican congress is already a failure after 2 days.
The attacks are as irrational as they are incoherent. The Republicans are accused of adding to the deficit and of wanting to cut the deficit, of wasting time to read the Constitution and refusing to read the whole Constitution. The race card of course parades around on its special float. Greg Sargent at the Washington Post suggested there's a racist Republican conspiracy. On MSNBC Matt Taibi accuses John Boehner of "coded racism", which apparently is racism sent by carrier pigeon.
It's impossible to open a magazine on any topic anymore without encountering a barrage of "tips" on how to live a greener life. Cooking magazines tell you how to carry on eco-friendly cooking. Computer magazines warn readers about the dangers of "vampire power" from their plugged in devices. Business publications lecture on carbon neutral business practices. Entertainment mags offer cackle on about celebrities and their ecologically friendly mansions. Anyone a century from now who picks up a present day magazine will assume that the people of the early 21st century spent all their time sorting compost and calculating their carbon emissions, when they weren't recycling their toilet paper.