Time to review the legacy of 'Ol' Big Ears': #1

I hesitate to offer an opinion on the domestic nature of American life after eight years of Obama because I don't live there or even visit there.  Mind you, given the nature of modern media, my far off view from 'over here' is probably no less clear than that of an observer on the East Coast attempting to make sense of California, or an inhabitant of Seattle trying to work out conditions on the Mexican border.  Given that, I will overcome my innate shyness - and I heard that! - and hazard a guess.

America is in turmoil!  Quite where this turmoil will lead, I do not know because if trying to see what is actual is intensely difficult, then seeing the future is impossible.  Internally, no-one could deny that America seems roiled in vicious antagonisms bordering ever closer to actual civil violence.  I know that American politics in general, and Presidential elections in particular, are far more vicious than anything 'over here' but I cannot recall anything like the menace lying behind this particular contest.  Because of the vagaries of the delegate system and the innate corruption at the State level, no-one can be absolutely confident of the outcome although my bet is that 'HillBilly' will win.  What is really worrying though, is what follows.  Neither side will accept the result and whichever candidate wins he or she will seek revenge on the other.

So where has all this animosity sprung from?  Personally, I blame Obama.  He came in unexpectedly as a young, college-educated, black man and the hopes were high that he would salve the wounds, particularly the racial ones.  What has been the result?  An almost complete breakdown in black/white relations leading to extreme violence.  The so-called 'guardians of law and order' have been demoralised to the point where policing of black youth has virtually stopped.  This has caused a rise in white feelings of insecurity stemming from the knowledge that once black youths stop killing each other wholesale (see Chicago), they will soon turn their attention to the whites.

Meanwhile, 'down Mexico way', the Obama apparat has operated an unscrupulous, open-door policy for Hispanic immigration happy in the knowledge that all those millions of voters will be safely in the Democrat bag thus ensuring their command and control for decades to come.  It is not a time to be poor and white in America!  But there is no action without re-action, and the re-action from poor whites, a notoriously tough bunch of people, will likely be bloody.

It almost doesn't matter who wins the Presidency.  Both candidates will face four years of mounting obstruction from a variety of sources which will sap their ability to run the country.  A divided America - divided that is in ways seldom seen before - is a weak America, so God help us all!

I will write on Obama's foreign legacy later.

 

Comments

[Whyaxye]

Agreed. A very fine analysis. I haven't visited there for twenty years, so everything I know is from the news or blogs, rather than first hand experience. But there does seem to be a sense of grievance and hysteria hanging over the country. Americans had their "national faults", of course, just like Brits and every other nation. But they seemed in the main to be an easy going and warm-hearted bunch. Where have all those good Americans gone? People seem to be so angry and spiteful. I'm worried for them.

[JK]

On the offchance you require some assistance David;

http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2016/11/8-years-a-president-thoughts-on-2-terms-of-a-black-president-and-black-first-family/

[JK]

And one for you Bob;

http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2016/11/02/ballot-typo-in-lonoke-county-makes-clinton-hilliary#more

[Bob]

David, I'm not quite sure if this post was intentionally funny or not, but nicely done! With all the fog about, England is a scary place too; full of Baskerville hounds and werewolves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpYBT0XyvA

[backofanenvelope]

As I'm in Cornwall Bob, not to forget Piskies!

[David Duff]

BOE, it do be bad enough 'ere in Zummerzet to understand the Queen's English but the further west you go the more incomprehensible it becomes!

[Bob]

JK, Hillary's a wonky, uninspiring liar; something like Michael Dukakis in a pants suit.

BOE, does Cornwall have pixies too?

David, we do have our problems and I shouldn't make too light of them. There's a racial component. There's always a racial component in US politics for obvious reasons. I'm repeating myself here, but the current feeling of alienation has more to do with the people of the US struggling with the dislocations brought on by the ended post-war boom, trade, skyrocketing income inequality, rapidly advancing technology, demographic changes, outdated institutions, and a world in which the US is not perceived to be the only leader. We're not all bed wetters and we will adapt. Btw, news is bad by definition. Partisan hacking that claims to be news is even worse.

[JK]

She is NOT Bob!

The first part. I mean to say she isn't a "wonk." 'Cause otherwise, she'd a'knowd not to lie in a FBI meeting room of all places.

That's about the whole of WonkSchool 101 Bob ... I kinda figured even NASA engineers had to attend that class.

[Cuffleyburgers]

Bob - I don't get your "for obvious reasons"

Why is the racial component in the US so much more vicious than in the UK? With the vast efforts that have been made over the last 50 years to integrate blacks and with 8 years of a supposedly black president you would expect some progress to have been made. Instead relations are worse than ever. Obama's abysmal presidency far from marking a watershed moment has been a disaster which ever way you look at it.

One can only conclude that there is a substantial faction in the political structure which does very nicely tahnk you out of the grievance industry, and as usual progressive fake kindness bought with other people's money is just a sick moneymaking scam for the right on classes and their useful idiots.

And the generations of black kids who lives are ruined are just collateral damage. As is the progressive destruction of the greatest nation on earth.

[Whitewall]

Obama continues with his ignorant belief that "the arc of history bends toward justice". It does not. It bends toward reality. As for "justice", there is proper justice which if denied long enough will become "justice" of another sort---rough justice. The dillusions of "progressives" are always with us and they inevitably bend toward mass chaos and mass murder. These dillusions don't just reside in America, they are running rampant throughout most of the Western world. The "progressive" only needs willing mules to carry it: mass waves of ignorant third world immigrants, blacks, and idealistic young people who are easily manipulated to be useful idiots.

[Whitewall]

Should be 'delusions'. Damn coffee cup typing.

[Bonnemort]

The stuff about Obama being a racial healer was always wishful thinking by liberal whites. There's an interesting dynamic going on in the States by which black people are moved out of inner cities (as we all know there are no job prospects in NY or Chicago) using (taxpayer-funded) Section 8 vouchers, to white suburbs (which then rapidly become non-white). Ferguson, Missouri is one example - from 99% white in 1970 to 30% white in 2010.

This policy has two perceived advantages - 'gentrifying' the inner cities (and making huge profits for developers with the right political connections) so they're nicer places for elites to live, and demoralising poor white people by forcing them out of their homes.

(Obama's foreign policy is, while poor, better than someone like John McCain - the US would probably be fighting in Iran and Ukraine by now if he'd won)

[Whitewall]

Bonnemort, good points. White guilt has turned into white regret and black sorrow. Too many people sought absolution via the blank slate of Obama when it was apparent to anyone who understood the radical Left and Obama's murky background which included his home church and pastor that he came to divide and this is his true "success". Using black inner city poor the way you described has been tactical and the Housing voucher is one means. Poor blacks can be depended on to deliver for the Dems every two years and then return home to shut up.

[JK]

I disagree Whitewall.

Its been strategic. All tactics is short-term.

[Bob]

Cuffleyburgers,

I'm really condensing this, so it's only generally accurate: Since the settling of the regions of the US by Europeans there has been a deep, philosophical split concerning race. The European South began as an English investment by the the Virginia Company of London, and based its economy on lucrative, slave-powered agriculture. The North, which was more based on industry and issues of religious freedom, did not approve of slavery. Eventually this led to our Civil War, which was extremely bloody and is still not forgotten. When I was a boy my father enjoyed driving to Florida when the weather turned cold in Chicago. Along the way there were still ruined plantations, which had relied on slave labor, standing in the Jim Crow South (look up Jim Crow).

After the South was defeated it was treated badly by Northern business men and politicians and new grievances were generated. Shortly after there was a "great migration" of black ex-slaves and sharecroppers to the industrialized North where they could find jobs and live better lives. Contrary to what a lot of Northerners would like to think, blacks were not treated all that much better in the North than the Jim Crow South.

The US has assimilated people from all over the world, but blacks have fit in less easily because of the Civil War and its resulting politics. The South is losing its old identity, but it's probably going to take another century for blacks to be fully integrated.

[TheBigHenry]

0bama is a smooth-talking ignorant huckster who stumbled onto a perfect-storm moment in time for his singular skill, namely, telling people what their cravings and wishful thinking wanted to hear -- hopey-dopey.

And his secondary skill, walking backward (a la Michael Jackson) allowed him to stay in power eight long-suffering years for our country. The latter skill is the ability to make stupid remarks and decisions followed by phony retractions with weasel words and doubling down on his bad decisions, thereby convoluting problems and inevitably making them worse.

He will go down in American history as our worst President, exceeded in vile stewardship only by HRC.

[david morris]

Probably a bit late for this, but I wonder (in light of his remarkable 1974 speech *): http://www.narsil.org/index/peopl/jimmycarter/lawday what Jimmy Carter thinks today about this 2016 election & the two main candidates ?

* esp the last 4 paragraphs. Stirring stuff.

[TheBigHenry]

David Morris,

Carter was once quoted in a Playboy Magazine interview:

"I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."

This Jew-hater's "adultery of the heart" no doubt caused his syphilis of the brain. So I don't believe he thinks much of anything these days.

It grieves me to think I voted for this scumbag. Twice. In my own defense, however, no one (except those close to him) was aware of his Jew-hatred in those days.

[Whitewall]

Henry, I will confess...I voted for him in 1976. Don't tell anyone. Only Dem. president candidate I ever voted for.

[TheBigHenry]

Robert,

I came to the realization that the Democrat Party was an insane asylum much later. After Dubya's response to the Taliban in Afghanistan, I finally realized I was a Conservative, not a f*cking Leftist liberal. I never intend to vote Democrat again. Maybe God will forgive me for the error of my ways when I was younger and much more naive.