Last night I was thinking about the Obama revolution, and how it's going to work out. All societies face revolutionary fervors; and in a democratic society we deal with them the way we just did: we bring in a total outsider. It's amazing to watch.
Obama's movement was built on outsider energy. Obama was incredibly scary to the Republican Jewish Coalition, and I mocked them all campaign long, but he must have been just as scary, or almost, to Marty Peretz and Rahm Emanuel. They surely worried that he had revolutionary zeal. He's too skinny to make anyone comfortable. They feared he would chase the moneychangers from the temple, re Israel/Palestine, and they acted shrewdly. Now they're all over him.
That's how the Old Guard works. Now we'll just have to see how far the revolutionary energy goes. For instance, all the leftwing blogosphere attention to Rahm Emanuel; will it break the surface? Will the mainstream media finally address his religious zealotry? Isn't the character of a democratic revolution that Obama will triangulate Rashid Khalidi and Rahm Emanuel; isn't that his task?
Two related data points: It was a beautiful thing for me to see Bill Ayers treated with respect on Huffington Post today. This shows the revolutionary energy in the air. Ayers says the 60s generation is getting one last crack. I like that idea.
David Frum tried desperately to reposition himself in recent weeks. I blogged about this once without fully understanding the process. Huffpo mocks the fact that Bill Kristol is now kissing Obama's behind. These neocon guys have the most to lose; they are about to become total outsiders, just the way I got washed out in the tide in 1980. I stuck with my knitting; but Frum is running away from his warmongering record, and saying that Republicans have run out of ideas. Neocon Shapeshifters Cross Aisles Like Nobody's Business.
Back to the revolution conceit. What interests me, as someone with power issues-- who was raised to think of myself as an outsider, who went to Harvard and did my share of groveling to influential people, who has teetered in my magazine work between adoring the elites and sniggering at them-- is my own conflict of Outsider/Insider feelings writ large. Obama was surely an alienated young man at times. He had an outsider crowd in Hyde Park. He must have dug Reverend Wright. Then he went inside. A friend at the fancy party I went to last night (I told you I'm conflicted) talked of hearing Obama speak at a palace in Martha's Vineyard 2 years ago ("underwhelming"--callow).
I think Rashid Khalidi is the same way. Outside/inside. If you don't think Khalidi will reap an intellectual/political dividend for conducting himself with such grace and composure through the reputation-rape that was just attempted against him (McCain called him a neo-Nazi), just watch this space. He is sure to turn up on the Op-Ed page momentarily. (Has he already?)
Samantha Power too. Lately I twitted Power for a toothless tract in the New York Review of Books that seemed intended as a job application, but my friend James North points me to this landmark piece by Power in 2001 in The Atlantic: Bystanders to Genocide, about the Clinton Administration and the genocide in Rwanda.
"If you wanted to safeguard the possibility that you would get a job in the next Democratic administration the last thing you would do is write a thoroughly-sourced article saying that people who might have your fate in their hands had covered up genocide," North says. "The piece attacked at least 50 percent of the people who were able to give her a job. It was a courageous act, in my view."
I've always found that appealing about Power, she is both inside and outside. She had a keening outsider energy; lately a news report said she rode a Lexus at her wedding. Obama's got the same confusing vibe. Michelle, too. I don't know how the story will end, but I'm sure enjoying the transition.
Words of the prophet, 1964:
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
"Obama was incredibly scary to the Republican Jewish Coalition…he must have been just as scary, or almost, to Marty Peretz and Rahm Emanuel."
Not any more. As with the Dems after their Congressional victory in 2006, the first people he has thrown overboard (after winning the election in part on their backs) are the anti-Zionists, the anti-imperialists and the anti-interventionists. His corrupt Dem co-horts in Congress taught him well.
Weiss: "They feared he would chase the moneychangers from the temple, re Israel/Palestine, and they acted shrewdly. Now they're all over him. That's how the Old Guard works. Now we'll just have to see how far the revolutionary energy goes."
We are a society of corrupt moneychangers now (since we abandoned our Christian ethic) and Obama is the last gasp of the corrupt Establishment (ie, “hey, let’s bring in a black man to create the greatest illusion of change so we can keep the wheels on just long enough for final plunder.”) The real revolution is going to have a major Christian component, and is going to slap down in a big way both the degenerate money-worshipping Right, and the degenerate hedonistic Left, Godless materialists both. Obama is just a red-herring to appease the idiots and the politically correct, and an effective way of staving off the true reckoning awhile longer — but everyone knows it is coming within short years. It’s in the air.
Hope you're right Ed. I'm afraid it won't be peaceful.
Ed, I've got my .50 caliber Israeli made desert eagle all ready for you when you show up at my door.
I think disgust with the Judeofascists, the money-worshippers and the hedonists is one close-to-final stage, followed by collective self-disgust, then followed by massive rage, upheaval and cleansing. Once it reaches the stage of every man for himself (and that stage is built in to our “survival of the fittest parasites” system) the next stage is inevitable. Right now, the clever rodents are quickly and frantically lining their nests, stowing away foodstuffs and scurrying for cover before the lion roars. The process is exponential and contagious, and we're long since past the point of no return.
Right on, SOG, mine is a Yugoslav SKS with a telescopic sight. I sometimes think Nietszche must have been thinking directly of Ed when he wrote
"The weak and impotent will never cease to fantasize about revenge against the powerful. It is why they are inferior."
It’s not me coming to your door, SOG. It’s Fate and History. All your made in Israel hardware won’t stop that. It never ceases to amaze me how you allegedly Israelite Ashkenazi are so utterly clueless about the concept of cosmic justice pioneered by your supposed ancestors. I guess what they say must be true: the Ashkenazi are completely and utterly unrelated by to the biblical Jews. Ironic, isn’t it? The Ashkenazi shouldn’t even be passing the very bloodline race tests written by them into law in Israel.
"Ed, I've got my .50 caliber Israeli made desert eagle all ready for you when you show up at my door."
SOG, that's probably the wrong weapon. I know it sounds good to you, but a shotgun would probably be better if you are expecting a mob.
Phil is wrong on Emanuel. He's been closely involved with Obama for a very long time, knows him well. There is no surprise, no fear.
Obama has been centrist for a very long time, and fantasies that he will be a radical are that, fantasies.
He is president of the United States, and will swear to and will act to uphold the responsibilities of the presidency.
Also, Ayers is wrong. The Obama presidency with Emmanuel as chief of staff is a new generation of leadership. It is NOT the sixties/seventies. It is not the anti-war generation.
America skipped us.
My hope is that average Americans don't totally agree with zero-sum game, which David Duke, and Witty-SOG represent.
Phil and Ed,
Good thoughts. Historically, O. never knew exactly whether he wanted to be inside or outside and kept changing places. The question now is whether being HimSelf the centre of the circle is going to cure him completely from the feeling of self-betrayal that he has had in the past when he was completely inside.
Yes- Cosmic Justice, the Israelis cannot bear the thought; they would be the first to have the arc of their covenant crash over their head. Thus the continuous belligerence of the terrified…
Chris Moore, is there any chance to find out more about you than this:
Chris Moore is the founder and editor of LibertarianToday.com.
Would you say all US Libertarians share your preoccupations with religion? Religion as the ultimate solution to the world's problems. Did I misunderstand?
What peoples and or books shaped your perception of the world, beyond religion. What is your background? What turned you into a Libertarian?
On the one hand the Jewish ideologues exploit their alleged Old Testament connections by selling the concept of a Western, “Judeo-Christian” war against Islam. On the other hand, they forsake the concept of Old Testament cosmic justice because it hits too close to the idea that the Holocaust may have been cosmic payback for the millions of murders committed by Jewish Bolshevism/Stalinism, and so they preach the idea that “we’re an Empire now and we can make our own reality.” (In other words, the biblical rules no longer apply.) The middle road and correct path, Christianity, is of course anathema to both the Judeofascists and the contemporary corrupt gentile Left-Right materialist Establishment, so they all continue to flounder about in a Sisyphean hell and drag the rest of us down with them. That’s why I say this state of affairs simply cannot last. Eventually the God-inspired human demand for order out of chaos is going to wash away Judeofascist/Establishment materialist control, and we will more or less peacefully return to the Christian ethic, or, alternatively, they will burrow in even deeper until the entire society collapses, and we return to the Christian ethic by way of a neo-medievalism. Either way, a return to the Christian ehtic is going to happen.
I know, LeaAnder, as a liberal feminist brainwashed into anti-Christianity by decades of your Leftist-materialist German government's indoctrination, the idea of a return to the Christian ethic infuriates you, (nearly as much as it infuriates Jewish ideologues). But I suggest you de-program yourself and deal with it. Both you and the Jews.
Whether or not there will be a return to the Christian ethic I don't know, but I agree that some kind of apocalyptic future scenario is looking increasingly likely. Right now there are glimmers of hope that the tide may be turning against the Zionists, but we have to always remember that they're not going to go quietly. They will change their tactics and develop new strategies. And the last time Jewish power was challenged, we got WWII.
Ed, strange diatribe. Who is LeaAnder?
But you are welcome, if you ever again need to unload your negative stereotypes onto someone, I am very pleased to serve as your role model.
Is your God as blood-thirsty as the Gods (Protestant versus Catholic) over here in Europe a couple of decades ago? But I may have asked you this before.
Sorry: a couple of centuries ago.
I meant of course.
Amazing: And the last time Jewish power was challenged, we got WWII.
So, I guess the poor Nazis only fought for their survival? Right?
Interesting perspective D. How does it go again. Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer?
NO, much simpler: I'm a Jew, you're not.
Germans, just keep paying us.
Americans, ditto.
Pretty simple, eh?
RE: "So, I guess the poor Nazis only fought for their survival? Right?"
No.
And all the Zionists ever did is fight for their survival.
"the last time Jewish power was challenged, we got WWII."
As politically incorrect as this sounds, its actually roughly accurate, if incomplete. No question the Germans were menaced and threatened from the exterior by Judeofascist Bolshevism/Stalinism, and from the interior by internal German Communists backed by the Communist Internationale (many of whom were also Jewish). They all no doubt had plans to commit the same millions of murders in Germany as they already had in the Soviet Union. This doesn't excuse that the Nazis stooped to Communist levels in their genocidal programs, but it certainly exonerates the charge that the German people were motivated merely by hate and a desire for world domination (although Hitler obviously was, in part). Given the context, it is clear that the German people were in a struggle for their lives, and challenging "Jewish power" (I prefer the more specific "Judeofascist power”), was part of that struggle. And what the Soviets did to Eastern Germany during and after the war (which would have been much worse if the [then-Christian] Americans hadn’t been keeping a close eye on them from across the border) is proof of that.
I hope his right
Ed,
It looks as though you espouse something resembling Amillennialist Christian Reconstructionism. If so, that is unfortunate. In any case, though you may be partially correct in your assessment of the global conflagration being ignited, you are either missing the balanced point or grossly neglecting to make it: "For ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." To put it another way, the entire world is lighting this final holocaust, not just the Zionists, money changers, "Judeofascists," materialists, and such. To be sure, "the love of money is the root of all evil." And though we have, in a sense, passed the point of no return, we nevertheless did so when Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit as "The wages of sin is death." We are not experiencing, in a moral sense, anything the world has not been plagued with since that time. But "the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." In short, if you believe the "Christian ethic" will arise from the ashes of the great combustion to restore balance because "Eventually the God-inspired human demand for order out of chaos is going to wash away Judeofascist/Establishment materialist control, and we will more or less peacefully return to the Christian ethic, or, alternatively, they will burrow in even deeper until the entire society collapses, and we return to the Christian ethic by way of a neo-medievalism. Either way, a return to the Christian ethic is going to happen," then you are acting like the people you chastise and you are delusional. It sounds as though you would like your kind to have all authority and power, replacing these other earthly rulers with people just like you. It is true that Revelations says, "And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth." But notice, He is against those who would destroy the earth. In other words, it is He who will save mankind from destruction. Only Christ, not Christian ethics, can redeem mankind. If I have improperly chategorized you or your thoughts, you have my abject apologies. But you may want to try loving your neighbor (including the Ashkenazim), peacemaking (including with the Zionists), and remembering that all authority is given unto Him. Maybe read Colossians chapter one. Speak the truth and stay informed, but please do it with love, not a desire for judgment and power.
Ed, ignore the bible thumper, but do continue your wisdom regarding Christian ethics as implemented beginning with the Enlightenment, catching its most effective implementation via the USA's deist founding fathers.
I really regard Christianity as the proper ethical, moral and intellectual foundation of society, not an end in itself. America is on the vanguard of history, and its devolutionary trajectory demonstrates that the godless Capitalism and Socialism (both of which are fundamentally materialist frameworks) upon which America now rests are lousy foundations, and are actually predatory upon the people they are ostensibly serving. I want every child to have the opportunity to intellectually rebel against his or her stable home, but in order to do so, there must be a stable home to begin with. What we have now is parents rebelling against their children, husbands against their wives, the “elite” against their societies, the rich against the poor, the poor against each other…everyone using and exploiting everyone…all encouraged, even inherent, in our current system. It is not possible to build a healthy, functioning society upon this kind of dysfunctional framework. Christianity is the rock upon which Western civilization has always rested, and our morally stunted "elites" have deliberately kicked it out from under us for their own sick, selfish purposes, and we are all now sinking into the swamp.
Anon,
What Ed is arguing for is a take-over of Christians. That is what the entire school of the "return of the Christian ethic" is about. It's merely a code name. Read up on your Reconstructionism (Kingdom Now). It sounds much better than what it actually is, and it has very little to do with anything our very wise deist or religious founders had to say. He ain't talking the Jefferson Bible. I am arguing that we should live by Christian ethics now – by loving our neighbors, living in peace, caring for widows and orphans, etc. – instead of rushing toward theocracy. I'll let God be God of history. As for the original article, Rahm Emanuel et al are alarming choices. You cerainly won't find anything resembling ethics of any kind there.
Ed,
I did not see your latest post before my last one – my bad. I very much agree with your latest post. The reconstructionists often speak of the "return of the Christian ethic" as a code for they themselves ruling the rest of us in a theocracy. I don't want Christians ruling over me in a neo medievalism. I thought this is what you were arguing for. All apologies. I would like to have Christ ruling our hearts, but that is a matter of, well, the heart. It would certainly be better to live by the Sermon on the Mount than to rush toward the Apocalypse – which is out of our hands anyway.
"I don't want Christians ruling over me in a neo medievalism."
I don't want it to come to that either, but this seems to be where we're headed because of the selfishness of our society. Those that believe in cosmic justice and cosmic design and Christianity's role in them have to conclude that God is going to accomplish the Christian base by hook or by crook. If he has to put us through another period of medievalism before we get the message, he will. I’m not cheering this on any more than I am cheering on another holocaust by pointing out the Soviet holocaust context of the German-perpetrated one. To the extent that I have an agenda, it is urging society to take the high road and quit repeating our mistakes and hubris.
Now that we've made everyone uncomfortable with eschatology and theology, let's talk about Obama's choices. Actually, just one more bit on religion. Check out: link to israelnationalnews.com
. (Sorry if you have to copy and paste in the address bar.) Have a look at what the late Rabbi Kaduri has to say about Christianity, Islam, and the role of the Messiah (who he says is alive and well in Israel today). We're dealing with a subject that can't be ignored, no matter how much the secularists would like to. For more on Kaduri as a possible Unknown Lamed Vovnik, check out: link to infoisrael.net
. Interesting folks, Lamed Vovniks. They demand our attention.
Obama is certainly a very intelligent, well-read man. His life's story makes him uniquely qualified to be president at this time. If we are going to have peace – particularly but not exclusively in the Mid East – he is going to have to make friends with the most powerful people in the world, like them or not. I've spent a good deal of time in the West Bank, and that is certainly what the majority of the Palestinians want – to get along with the Israelis. Now, obviously the Israeli government does much to prevent this, but many Jews in Israel also want peace. As this is the key issue for spreading peace throughout the region, it should be the primary focus of our foreign policy. Emanuel, Ross, and others certainly don't appear to be big fans of peace. But there they are. Still, if we're going to achieve peace, we may have to utilize men like them. You could argue that if their Israeli constituency doesn't agree to the peace then we have no peace at all, which would make it necessary to have men like them on board to achieve anything. Or, you might argue that Obama needs to keep is enemies closer if we are to achieve anything. On the other hand, if Obama is cowardly and obsequious then welcome to more of the same.