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American Extremists: "Obstruction fiction, what's your function?"

vastleft's picture
Submitted by vastleft on Thu, 03/11/2010 - 12:15am
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American Extremists

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Submitted by libbyliberal on

first balloon person says something like: Did you just say Obama was a Manchurian candidate?

second balloon person: Nope. Worse. A Pavlovian candidate!

first balloon person: Cuz he's a barkin' socialist liberal?

second balloon person: Shhhhhh!!!! Doggone, now you've gone and triggered another reflex move of him to the right!

It needs work ... but ya get my drift.

vastleft's picture
Submitted by vastleft on

I'll riff around on it, and see what my muse might make of it.

My view is that he doesn't move to the right, reflexively or otherwise. Rather his core values are solidly conservative. It's true that almost every stimulus (including the "stimulus," as it happens) that occurs in our politics is treated by all Villagers as a rationale for the rightwing policies they would have adopted anyway.

Submitted by libbyliberal on

gamesman... but then I also see he came with that agenda, as operative for his corporatist "daddies" and their selfish dreams..... which to my mind means he deserves the Oscar for that campaign performance. I think I want to apply amoral relativism as a label because of the chameleon like posturing. And I do think, vast, that Obama responds to the heavy handed and pro-right gamesmanship verdicts of the media. On that "score" I think he also is quite responsive... since that is all about appearances more than reality. Who cares about reality... it is perception of the favored audience. I was trying to fit the word "stimulus" into the Pavlovian punning but couldn't round it up.

anyway, I had fun playing with your format. but appreciate your take. thanks for exploring it back to me.

gqmartinez's picture
Submitted by gqmartinez on

They will say anything to win the support of people. They appeal to our egos.

But, Obama *did* praise Reagan and blasted Bill Clinton's presidency (which seems a constant theme of progressives in general, btw). That should have been a clue to where he was politically. He also ran Harry and Louise ads for cripe's sake. How can you *not* know Obama's intentions after that? Then add to that the fact that he and his supporters fought tooth and fucking nail against having voters from MI and FL count. Those are not things a liberal or even "moderate" does. Those are actions of an extremist. If you didn't see it then, you didn't want to.

It does no good to wash this shit under the rug. It happened in plain view. If you chose not to pay attention, that's on you. But in order to move on, we all *must* acknowledge the truth of what happened in 2008 and not try to provide ourselves intellectual cover by claiming that Obama was such a clever stealthy candidate. You ignored the signs. Deal with it. You'll probably be less likely to repeat the same mistake if you do.

Submitted by libbyliberal on

His opportunism is for the corporatist agenda. Doesn't mean he's ideologically there. He is opportunistically there, which to me might be even more chilling. Even more crazymaking... because it means he will change lanes rhetorically more blithely. Like a good old salesman.

Upon testing rats.. rats who were tortured... were less nutty than rats who were sometimes treated well and sometimes tortured. So having a Prez who flips at times to another stance... without any need to acknowledge the reality that he flipped to a different stance ... is crazymaking.. if that is making sense.

Note to vast... In the biography The Bush Tragedy... the author explains how Pavlovian W was, both Rove and Cheney.. all they had to do was say, "Well, this is what your dad would do in a case like this.." and sure enough... Bush from his reaction formation... did the opposite. Child's play to control him.

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