Why Orwell Matters(Victor Davis Hanson & Hussein Obama)

National Review Online ^ | April 13, 2008 | Victor Davis Hanson

[kellynla]

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Here is what Sen. Obama now says he said:

"So I said, 'Well, you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on,' " he continued. "So people they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country or they get frustrated about, you know, how things are changing. That's a natural response."

1. Note how version #1's "cling" becomes version #2's "vote about" and "take comfort from"—as the condescending dismissal becomes empathetic understanding.

2. Note how version #1's "religion" and "antipathy to people who aren't like them" becomes version #2's "faith" and "their family and community" —as fundamentalist xenophobes now become beleaguered folks who band together against the unfairness.

3 Note how version #1's "anti-immigrant" becomes version #2's "mad about illegal immigrants" —as the nativist who opposes all immigrants, legal and illegal, now becomes understandably angry only about those coming here illegally.

4. Note how version #1's "as a way to explain their frustrations" becomes version #2's "they get frustrated about" as the misguided scape-goaters become those who react understandably to adversity.

5. Note no explanation in version #2 for version #1's "anti-trade sentiment"—and no wonder since Obama himself is embarrassed that so far he's voiced far more "anti-trade sentiment" than those he caricatured.

6. Note how version #1's "And it's not surprising then they get bitter" becomes version #2's "your'e" and "you" and "Thats a natural response", as the condescending use of the embittered and distant "they" now morphs into a kindred "you" and the quip "not surprising" becomes the sympathetic "natural."

7. Note how version #1's idiotic logic that Middle-America has only become religious or pro-gun in the last 25 years as a result of job loss is simply omitted.

8. Note how there is sudddenly no "context" for the landscape of version #1: an elite Bay-area audience that is told stories about those Pennsylvanian gun-toting zealots.

With Obama, the clarifications (cf. the Wright and Michelle contextualizations) are always more interestig than the original lapse.

[kellynla]

"Hussein, jelly or jam with your toast?"

[Farmer Dean]

Let the liberals who created Obama now try to jusify his existance as their candidate.

[JoanneSD]

Seems both these democrat candidats can dance around what they said. and when they mis spoke, or taken out of context, or they were tired, or what is irrevelant or not to their speech especially Mrs. Clinton, is good at that..

[CreviceTool]

I think this is the seminal moment. Obama did not misspeak this time - he revealed himself and it will not go away. Things like Rev. Wright and his wife’s comments were just pieces of the mosaic. Now the final pieces have fallen into place and a very unflattering picture has emerged. Ironically, it took the wealthy SF libs to draw out his true feelings.

CreviceTool a.k.a Seymour Good - Publisher at Bitter and Clinging - A Journal Where Exceptional Americans Speak Truth to Ordinary Elites.

“An armed society is a polite society”....Robert A. Heinlein

[oldenuff2no]

All of us in fly over country heard every word he said. He was talking to San Francisco Freaks and trying to make the rest of us look like his version of Redneck Idiots.
I've got a clue for both the Black socialist and the beast.
The electoral college is still firmly in place and flyover America will elect the next president.
The dems have insured that they are terminal one more time by simply letting the “REAL AMERICANS” know who they really are and what they really think.

[phillyfanatic]

I’ve lived in many geographical areas throughout the USA from Cape May to Ca.;From DC to Nashville; From NY to Fla. The only bitter haters and whiners I found complaining about the USA all those years were liberals. That’s the problem Obama, you guys!

[Fox_Mulder77]

“Let the liberals who created Obama now try to jusify his existance as their candidate.”

It’s funny to see them try to weasel this whole thing away by saying Obama was just attempting to blame Republicans for creating the need of small town people to cling to guns, religion, and xenophobia to make it through economic hardship.
In the end they never take responsibility for anything: it’s always the Republican’s fault, or some right wing conspiracy.

[padre35]

As if this is some large unmasking of Che Obama, when the campaign workers in Houston hung up the Cuban Commie flag with Che’ on it, anyone with .02 cents worth of common sense could see what this guy was all about.

Then there was 20 years with Rev Wright in the TUCC that hates anything that is White.

Now there is this, small town folks do not share values with this guy, yet people will buy the spin.

It’s known as Dissonant Language, does it really matter what the man says? People will buy into it anyway....

[eggman]

7. Note how version #1's idiotic logic that Middle-America has only become religious or pro-gun in the last 25 years as a result of job loss is simply omitted.

It only seems that way to BHO as it is the Democrat party that has become so much more anti-religion and anti-gun in the last 25 years.

[JasonC]

The workers have false consciousness, because they are supposed to side with the vanguard of the proletariat intelligentsia in their calls to slaughter the bourgoisie and take everything they own. But instead they believe in ridiculous petit bourgois fascist anachronisms like country and rights and opiates like religion.

Obama is simply a marxist ideologue to the bottom of his boots. He isn't an American at all - his "country", such as it is, is communism.

[arthurus]

ARepublican campaign poster should juxtapose the Che picture with Hussein. It should go up all over the midwest.

[alecqss]

Dems are always taken out of context; mainly because their context is constantly shifting with propaganda demands of the minute.

[DuncanWaring]

Ping

[Wuli]

the obama double-speak is a great lesson

and yet so is the basic problem -

rural and/or post-industrial areas in the u.s. -

where either billary or bama want the listener to believe

that the area’s are failing because the federal gubernut did not deliver enough of other people’s wealth and income to the area

when, the “decline” is in part natural and cyclical, part historical-technological change, in part self-imposed by state and local government meddling and corruption and part by some individuals not taking responsibility for themselves and their families to decide that the grass really is greener somewhere else

it is not a “federal” failure that the numbers in failed or failing areas are what they are and federal redistribution of wealth to them, no matter how well intended, has never brought back economic growth to them, and never will

if the forces - human, material, markets and historical as well as cyclical - present in the locality and/or state are insufficient to restore robust economic growth, sufficient for net population growth as well, then federal money to lift them up is just dumped down a black hole

and if those forces are sufficient for that growth, federal money is not needed in the first place, only good local government that permits good free enterprise there to flourish

---

here is the word to our “faithful” rural american friends

the federal government cannot be, and will not try to be, your savior, in any sense, unless it can also become your master in that same sense

who is your master

any power ceded to the federal government “to do” supplies the same power “to rule over”

who is your master

[sodpoodle]

Obama may have black skin - but he does not have the genuine soul of any African American I know.

[okie01]

Let the liberals who created Obama now try to jusify his existance as their candidate.

Why should they have to? They believe exactly as he does.

And, like him, they don't want us to know about it.

[GunnyB]

Hussein tried - really tried to jump the shark with this... Except that as he reached apogee, his momentum gave out and he fell into the water with the shark... As for me, I just order a gross of popcorn...

[FredZarguna]

Is it possible to see others through any prism other than our own? Obama's own "faith" is cynical and opportunistic; he had none before he entered politics. His estimation of small town Americans--to whoops and laughter from his billionaire, Marin County, America hating audience, no less--is that we are as bigotted as he and his racist friends and "spiritual advisers." Or that bitterness and resentment, the staples of liberal class warfare since the 1930's are shared by those of us who reject this bankrupt ideology. Obama has not withdrawn the remarks, because he is not capable of understanding what is wrong with them, he understands only that his packaging is somehow scuffed.

For all the pomp and glory, the fainting and healing, the post racialism and transgenderism, a rather ordinary and tedious progressive politician, with the same tired nostrums and condescending prejudices, after all.

[glorgau]

You have mastered the marxist dialectic! ;-)

[AZLiberty]

... where either billary or bama want the listener to believe that the areas are failing because the federal gubernut did not deliver enough of other people’s wealth and income to the area

See Not Yours to Give, an article by Col. David Crockett (yes, that one) about why the government has no business stealing from one person to give to another.

[Farmer Dean]

Good point,I keep forgetting that liberalism is a mental disorder.

[WVNan]

Wouldn’t you, just once in a lifetime, love to see someone run for president on the “common sense” platform? The doublespeak has become nausiating.

[Farmer Dean]

If the candidate were an honerable man ,then tes.My great fear is that the next common sense candidate will be Hitler all over again.People in this country are being pushed toward such a man by all this crap going on now.

[upchuck]

Ironically, it took the wealthy SF libs to draw out his true feelings.

For those who have not seen it, click this link to the excellent blog from Zombietime.com on this meeting of the elites on "Billionaire's Row" in San Fransicko. Great pictures.

[rlmorel]

Ask and ye shall receive...took me a little longer than I wanted, but...I think it captures the sentiment nicely! (Ain't Photoshop great?)

Note: This is not to equate Obama directly to Che Guevara, which the Lefties might like, but only because many of them have no idea what Guevara did in real life. Even if they did, they might still like the link.

What I am saying is that socialism always leads to people like Che Guevara eventually, in the same way that people like Chamberlain always lead to people like Hitler.

[redgolum]

You assume that his true believers care.

Hitler was very open about what he wanted to do. Wrote a book on it even. He still won the election.

[Eva]

Obama worked for the Gamaliel foundation which is very pro immigrant rights and amnesty.

[gitmo]

Obama may have black skin - but he does not have the genuine soul of any African American I know.

What does that mean, exactly?

[Eva]

Obama tried to blame Clinton, as well.

[Travis McGee]

He’ll have to uncling my cold dead hands.

[muir_redwoods]

This is a liberals nightmare; an armed, confident populace that wants very little from the government.

No wonder Obama wants to spin it his way.

[Bender2]

[FastCoyote]

HoooYeah, that morph is a keeper. It will be all over the internet thingy.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

All politicians engage in Orwellian twists of language, the current adminstration is by no means an exception.

Orwell didn’t invent his formula from thin air. He just put all of the pieces of the puzzle together.

The clear fear of Obama is that he is so good at it. At the same time, I find that people who are in the boomer generation are a lot more afraid. It is probably an age and generational thing. Realistically, except for the color of his skin, Obama isn’t any different from the standard.

[sodpoodle]

I don’t know;)

My emotions didn’t reach my brain LOL!!!!

It has something to do with his maternal heritage being European American not African American.

[Grampa Dave]

"Bitter Gate: the gift that keeps on giving!!!

" Crackerquiddick ~ Bitter Gate " and “Wright is wrong Gate” are huge problems for the elitist would be Sneerer in Chief, Hussein Obamasnob!!

You can't win a general election with a coalition of America hating Bitter African- Americans and America hating Bitter white liberal elitist billionaires/millionaires, who buy brie, Chardonnay, and Hussein Obama/Samma.

For an inside look at the real Hussein Obama and his elite hate America backers at San Francisco where Hussein Obama made his elitist remarks,

Go here to see the thread with all The Pictures posted and Here to see another thread about this meeting of elite left wing America haters.

There are some very interesting pictures and comments re the actual meeting on those threads.

"Hussein Obama’s big mouth, small brain, condescending, America-hating, grandkid-baby-terminating, born-alive-infant-abandoning, America-hating-wife, kooky-moonbat-America-hating-pastor, racially-divisive, race-baiting, crotch-saluting, America-flag-disrespecting ... chickens ... coming home to roost ...!"

Behold the would be Sneerer in Chief!