Posted on 11/17/2013 5:41:05 AM PST by Kaslin
I’ve periodically used “Schadenfreude” to describe my feelings about certain issues.
“Time for another tax hike!”
Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I’ve openly admitted to a perverse sense of happiness at the misfortune of others when, for instance, France’s class-warfare tax policy backfired because successful taxpayers emigrated.
And I’ve expressed similar amusement when writing about Europe’s fiscal crisis and the whining of statist politicians.
But the Obamacare disaster gives me a steroid-fueled feeling of Schadenfreude. As a matter of fact, we need to augment that term with another phrase just to capture what’s happening.
So what’s a good option? Well, according to Wikipedia, “Desert /d?'z?rt/ in philosophy is the condition of being deserving of something, whether good or bad.”
That’s where we get the phrase “just deserts,” and that’s exactly what Obamacare supporters are getting as their cherished scheme for government-run healthcare blows up in front of our eyes.
I’m not the only one who is enjoying this moment in history. Here’s some of Jonah Goldberg’s unabashedly snarky column in National Review.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the unraveling of Obamacare. …If you can’t take some joy, some modicum of relief and mirth, in the unprecedentedly spectacular beclowning of the president, his administration, its enablers, and, to no small degree, liberalism itself, then you need to ask yourself why you’re following politics in the first place. Because, frankly, this has been one of the most enjoyable political moments of my lifetime. …Indeed, not since Dan Rather handcuffed himself to a fraudulent typewriter, hurled it into the abyss, and saw his career plummet like Ted Kennedy was behind the wheel have I enjoyed a story more.
Isn’t that a marvelous excerpt, particularly the comment about the “beclowning of the president”?
But Jonah’s just getting started.
In every tale of hubris, the transgressor is eventually slapped across the face with the semi-frozen flounder of reality. …in the modern era, comeuppance-for-the-arrogant is more often found in comedies, and the “rollout” of Healthcare.gov has been downright hilarious. …Indeed, the whole law is coming apart like a papier-mâché yacht in rough waters.
I don’t even know what “orcs” are, but this next passage does a very good job of nailing Obama for arrogantly refusing to negotiate when the President probably had the most to gain from a delay!
During the government shutdown, Barack Obama held fast, heroically refusing to give an inch to the hostage-taking, barbaric orcs of the Tea Party who insisted on delaying Obamacare. …But we didn’t know something back then: Obama desperately needed a delay of Healthcare.gov. In his arrogance, though, he couldn’t bring himself to admit it. The other possibility is that he is such an incompetent manager, who has cultivated such a culture of yes-men, that he was completely in the dark about the problems. …This is how you know we’re in the political sweet spot: when the only plausible excuses for the administration are equally disastrous indictments.
Jonah also has some great commentary about the role of other Administration flunkies.
The president may now claim that he knew nothing, but he must have wondered why Henry Chao, Healthcare.gov’s chief project manager, set the bar of success at sea level last March: “Let’s just make sure it’s not a Third World experience.” At this point, it could only be more of a Third World experience if Healthcare.gov required enrollees to pay with chickens. …every day Jay Carney looks even more like a little boy who put on his dad’s suit. You have to wonder what goes on in his mind, as a former journalist, when he tells his former colleagues that “the American forces have been completely destroyed with minimal Iraqi casualties.” (Oh, wait, that was Baghdad Bob. I get them confused.) And what about Dan Pfeiffer going on the Sunday shows to insist that no American should believe his or her lying eyes? …the website will get better. It could hardly get worse, short of a finding that it causes irritable bowel syndrome.
Speaking of Jay Carney, Jonah says that the President’s spokesman has reached the point where “the musky stench of fear, sweat, and urine wafting from the podium makes it hard for all but the true believers to put much stock in his words.”
Jonah then makes the very serious point – in a very amusing way – that Obamacare was deliberately designed so that millions of people would lose their old coverage.
Five million people — and counting — have lost their health insurance, despite the president’s years of “you can keep your plan” promises. The president has apologized, sort of. He says he’s “sorry” that people have found themselves in a bad situation because of “assurances” he made. But no one has lost their insurance because of the president’s assurances, they’ve lost their insurance because of the president’s law. If a captain has the lifejackets filled with cement, his assurance that “you can keep your lifejacket” is only half the crime. Obama knew the lifejackets wouldn’t work. …Millions more will eventually lose the insurance they like because of Obamacare, according to the administration’s own internal estimates. The cancellations aren’t a bug, they’re a feature, and the president lied about it over and over again.
So what’s the bottom line? Jonah is reveling in the moment.
…as a political and ideological matter, this is beyond fantastic. For years we’ve been told that Democrats were more “reality-based,” that “facts have a liberal bias,” in the words of Paul Krugman, and that if they could just have their way, they could fix all of our problems. No one represented this arrogant promise more than Barack Obama himself. But, with an irony so rich it would be made of Corinthian leather if it was a car seat, the only way he could get his signature legislation passed was to baldly and brazenly lie about it, over and over and over again. He created a rhetorical cloud castle where no one would lose his insurance, every family would save thousands of dollars, and millions of the uninsured would suddenly get coverage. Anyone who doubted this was called a fool or a liar, or even a racist.
Let’s add to our amusement with some cartoons, starting with one from Glenn McCoy.
Next is one from Michael Ramirez.
When bad things happen to bad people, that’s called justice. More precisely, when bad things happens to bad people because of their bad conduct, that’s justice. Sometimes, bad fortune targets a bad person, who suffers an injury unrelated to his bad conduct. When that happens, one sometimes feels schadenfreude, because in larger sense, the guy still had it coming.
Either way, it is enjoyable to watch. This time the glove fits, and there had better damn well be a guilty verdict.
There is no just desserts.
There is just deserts.
And there is the flip side called "Freudenschade." A few weeks ago the Left was celebrating next year's "victory" for Democrats based on reactions to the government shutdown. In a short time their victory turned to ashes in their mouths.
Freudenschade, baby!
And for anybody still confused by "Freudenschade," check the DUmmie FUnnies archive.
The proper phrase is “just desserts”, not “just deserts.” I guess deserts are just in that they uniformly are harsh to everyone...
I am not so sure about the analysis of Obama’s motives. I have observed that liberals enamored with some socialist scheme are incapable of understanding that the scheme will not and cannot work. I remember, years ago, posting (on another forum) several reasons why a socialized health care scheme cannot work and does not work in countries that have it. Some liberal got mad at me, saying “But don’t you *want* everyone to have health care?” They could not understand that feelings on the issue, no matter how heartfelt, simply cannot make an unworkable scheme work. I believe Obama is in the same boat as that liberal. His health care scheme *must* work because he and all the leftists *want* it to work.
President Obama told the most brazen lie in my lifetime with this ACA act. My hunch is that he’s a man that is not used to being challenged, is convinced he is bulletproof and has absolutely zero respect for his supporters...never mind his detractors. It’s still unclear how this ends. Obama has assumed dictatorial powers with no push back from the media....or congress for that matter.
If Obamacare is so great, why did he have to lie to getting passed? I think I’ve answered my own question.
It is ‘deserts’.
In this phase ‘deserts’ is the plural of desert, meaning “that which one deserves”.
Sorry, but that's incorrect.
grammar fight...may the best consonant win!
I may be the only one, but I’m not laughing at His Nibs granting a brief reprieve.
I fear that the cure may be worse then the disease.
I have had just deserts on several occasions.
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