Most of you who are reading this article are not tied into the network of political grassroots activists and professional agitators with whom I am in contact every day. Like most of our media, our political leaders and just about everyone else, I suspect that you have almost no idea of the level of anger which is seething below the surface in this country.
At most, you probably see only the tip of the iceberg of white-hot rage which is consuming and radicalizing more and more of our population. You may laugh at the claims of the Birthers or scratch your heads at the slogans on the signs held up at a Tea Party or snicker when Bill Maher calls the political right crazy. You dismiss protesters as "angry white males" and point to the declining number of self-identifying Republicans and the complacent Democrats holding all of the power in the halls of government and you think you've won, the future is yours. Obama is in office and all's well in the world. You couldn't be more wrong and nothing is as it seems.
You think that the dwindling number of Republicans means that people are being driven away from the conservative message and presumably being won over by Obama and the left. But did you examine the polls? Yes, the GOP has lost supporters. But while the number of Republicans has gone down, the number of self-identified Democrats has not gone up significantly. These disaffected voters haven't left the Republicans, they've left the political mainstream altogether. They are still conservative. They just think the Republican party has failed them and is too moderate.
What you are missing is the rapidly growing block of voters who are extremely conservative and very angry and who are hostile to both political parties. No one is polling to find them, but I suspect they make up about 20% of the population at this point. About half of them still reluctantly vote with the Republicans and about half just vote against incumbents and the establishment if they even still think their votes have any meaning, which many do not. In a lot of cases they no longer see elections or politics as a way to solve the nation's problems at all. They have become radicalized.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Arch Conservative
Has there ever been anyone as arrogant as Obama in the White House?
Not in my lifetime anyway. (I'm 32)
Apparently Obama believed that his election meant he'd be able to stroll into the White House, give a few teleprompted speeches and we'd all become socialists overnight.
For someone who is supposedly so brilliant, that's an awfully dumb plan.
He and his party have grossly misread the tea leaves from last year's election. They saw the election as green light to ramp up their uber leftist agenda and try to mainstream it throughout the nation. Big, big mistake. Last year's election was, more than anything else, a referendum on George Bush and many conservative Republicans like myself were glad to see him go. It was not however a mandate to turn this nation into a European style socialist state.
The Dems have way overplayed their hand. They got away with the stimulus bill, the bank bailouts and the auto industry stuff because Obama was fresh in office and they were able to stoke people's fears about the economy.
However we all say what happened to cap and trade and now it appears that there most likely will be no government takeover of healthcare.
Moderates and conservatives who dare criticize the one are growing very weary of being called "racist" by the Obama cultists. They're angry about things such as the Democrats in the House voting against an amendment preventing illegals from receiving billions in healthcare services.
Obama, because he is so arrogant, and other Dems, because they know that this is their one and only chance, will probably stay the course and try to foist their leftist agenda upon the American people. However, all the signs point to their eventual failure and for that I am grateful.
Despite 40 years of onslaught from the radical left, America is not dead yet and with a little luck we may even experience a rebirth and return to the traditional conservative values that once made us so great.
2 - Ruvy
Has there ever been anyone as arrogant as Obama in the White House? Not in my lifetime anyway. (I'm 32)
You are just a kid, Bing. And I finally figured out what has me bothered about your moniker here, Arch Conservative. Watch this episode, the whole thing. Then think about what it sounds like to me when someone here calls you "Archie".
Like David says, you have no idea....
3 - Ruvy
I just saw this at Arutz Sheva. Shekel Flexes Muscles as Obama Dollar Sinks. From the article.
The Israeli shekel rose to its highest level in a year Monday morning against the sinking American dollar, under severe pressure as U.S. President Barack Obama continues to pile up the U.S. debt. The shekel-dollar rate now is trading at the 3.74, its lowest level in a year.
Expectations are that today’s rate may be high compared to what is ahead. Merrill Lynch predicts that by next year, the rate will drop to 3.40, which would make the shekel worth 29.5 cents, compared with 26.5 cents today.
Read the whole article, folks. I'm always happy to bring you good news from the Holy Land....
4 - Andy Marsh
All of these criminals in DC think when they win an election it's some kind of mandate! I bet even Al Franken thinks he has a mandate from the people of MN! And he won by what, a little over 200 votes?
You really do have to wonder when the Speaker of the House has a lower approval rating than the former VP!
I'm not exactly sure how the speaker gets that position, but it was definately a screw up on the Dems part to make the most left leaning congressperson they have the speaker of the house...but I guess with her running her mouth she actually makes Obama seem more centered!
The one thing I'm noticing is how many liberals are now screaming racism. I heard some bimbo on Morning Joe (editor of Salon.com)the other day say that the reason Obamas health care proposals were going no where is because America is a racist country! Not because the proposals are screwed up, but because we're all racists. What a bunch of BS!
Another BC'er here posted an article last week on Facebook about a pic being emailed around congress showing Obamas head on a witch doctors body and of course, this is construed as racist. I'm pretty sure I've seen the very same picture used with cheney and bush, but of course, they're white, so it's not racist.
It makes me wonder what might happen if they start calling it Obamas voodoo health care plan???
Somebody told me the other day that insurance companies should be forced to cover pre-existing conditions. Really? Why should any business be forced to serve anyone they don't feel like serving?
Does that mean I can go buy a totalled car and then get my insurance company to replace it? Isn't that a pre-existing condition?
No offense, but you folks that think the govt should be involved in health care just really don't have a clue do you? Look at some of the things that govt runs already...the post office...doing a bang up job and raising rates constantly...look at congress! The dems have control of it and STILL can't get shit passed! And not just a little control, but total control! Our govt has the anti-Midas touch, everything they touch turns to garbage!
And just wait, when Henry Waxman gets his way and makes cigarettes illegal, EVERYBODY is gonna be paying higher taxes! And I'm a FORMER smoker!
5 - roger nowosielski
An angry white male!
It's rather new in American politics, isn't it so, Dave? Is it perhaps because the scales have tilted so that they no longer view themselves as a privileged group but as an oppressed one? You've said it.
Here's one suggestion as to how this "radicalization," as you call it, could be put to good use. Why not translate it into the political arena and develop a grass-root movement starting with local and eventually national politics? If the numbers are as prominent as you say they are - 30 percent - it would bound to produce short- and long-term results.
I don't bet, however, that any such response is forthcoming, because we'd already be seeing all the signs and symbols. Ultimately, I think you're mischaracterizing "the movement." I think it's reactionary at bottom, something akin to paramilitary, militia movement of old, except that it may have expanded to include some of the newly "disenfranchised" while males.
The birth issue is a non sequitur; and although it may serve as a temporary slogan and "call to arms," it will not do in the long run. New ideas and thinking is required. But traditionally, a white male, especially ill-educated one, was never given to thinking. Why should he as long as everything was going his way, believing himself to occupy the privileged status in the society? So it's kind of late to expect him to change his ways. That's the weakest link, I think, in your argument: the group's profile. It's psychologically untenable.
6 - Jordan Richardson
Our govt has the anti-Midas touch, everything they touch turns to garbage!
So the solution is every man, woman and child for themselves? I know it's hip to have the cynical "government is the FAIL" point of view when you lean to the right, but is it really that the government consistently fails or is it that the government consistently fails in doing what you want it to do?
Andy, I get the "no mercy" attitude you have. I really do. I get that it's couched in bitterness, but what about compassion? The pre-existing conditions problem isn't comparable to your crashed car analogy in most cases. In reality, the loophole as created by these insurance companies winds up costing good, honest people an awful lot of money and stress. The pre-existing conditions insurance companies rely on is often not even close to being related to the problem they are asked to cover, ie. you once had a chest cold and the insurance won't cover your heart surgery because the chest cold might have had something to do with its onset and, face it, you're fucked.
Is that really an ideology you want to defend? Put aside your "fuck everybody else, I'm out for me" gig for just a second and tell me that you'd really wish that on someone.
7 - Dave Nalle
Jordan, do you not get that when the situation in the country is driving so many people to be bitter and angry that's the beginning of a very bad, very volatile situaton. That is NOT the reaction which a liberal government is supposed to provoke in people.
Dave
8 - roger nowosielski
I think that was bound to happen, Dave. All social change tends to produce that kind of response, especially from a group which perceives itself as losing its relative position in a society. And we are going through a significant period of social change - no doubt about it. (Reread my #5.)
9 - Doug Hunter
Roger, you just don't get it, it has nothing to do with race or social grouping. I know that meme of screaming, stating, or simply implying race/racism has worked well for you guys, it's pretty much the only thing you have so you have to repeat it incessantly.
My desire to not be a productive slave and subservient bitch to an all powerful government has nothing to do with skin color, race, national origin, sex, handicap, familial status, social status, class, or anything else. Your, and your fellow lefties, desire to foist that upon me disgusts me in the most basic way. That is what is radicalizing us.
10 - M ark
I suspect that, if there is a new radicalization going on in the US, it has more to do with unemployment, underemployment and class war than with Obama's Statist policies.
Perhaps, as Dave believes, 30% is a magic number, and were the real unemployment rate to get there then we'd see real change.
11 - roger nowosielski
I don't claim that racism is the predominant or the only motivation. Still, we are dealing here with an angry white male - an Anglo, too. And yes, as a social group, they are losing ground. I didn't include you in the group - because I don't believe you're either a tea-bagger or a birther. But if you are, then you are a hopeless fundamentalist, only at one remove from the rabid and fanatical religious Right. The only thing of difference is the dogma. So I'm not really foisting anything on you, unless you decide that my remarks apply personally to you.
We are going through a period of significant social change, get used to it. So the old ideas of 200 or so years ago will no longer do in the present environment - however grand and lofty and workable they may have been in the past. The entire world is becoming globalized, or perhaps you failed to notice. You should be thinking of the ways to make the best of the situation rather than crying for the lost and irretrievable past. So no, I definitely disagree. It's not radicalization but reactionary.
And it's not a matter of whether I like or do not like what's happening. So there you are, wrong again, with your lame "leftist" characterization. I don't believe I have addressed this issue - certainly not on this thread. It's a matter of dealing with an impending reality. So get with it, Doug, and try to be more innovative in your thinking, like I know you can. Time waits for no one.
12 - Clavos
Class war IS becoming a real issue, as the Left continuously beats that drum, preying on people's baser instincts and fomenting envy and hatred.
With the willing complicity of the media, the message that "the rich are evil and are exploiting you" is incessantly drummed into everyone who is not rich.
It's very reminiscent of the early days of the Socialist and Communist movements; it worked well then, and it will work now, especially since the current ruler is aiding and abetting in the spreading of the message.
13 - roger nowosielski
#10
Correct, Mark, especially with respect to the first two items. As to the third, if it is a matter of "class war," I don't think it's in the traditional, Marxist sense, because these folks are not against the capitalist system. They're more against the leveling effect that appears to be taking place - insofar that they no longer perceive themselves as better than "the niggers," the women, and the dregs of society.
14 - Andy Marsh
So those of us that think the govt couldn't run a laundromat are just bitter old uneducated white guys?
That's what I get from comments 5 and 6.
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] You liberals have your noses so far up in the air that you can't see what's happening right in front of you! Like the hollywood elite, you think that people that don't think like you must be uneducated. I say that people that think like you have never lived in the real world!
I have health insurance and in a round about way, it's run by the govt. I guess the better way to put it is it's the health insurance the govt or DFAS decided to buy for those of us that EARNED it! And I promise you there are plenty of pre-existing conditions in my healthcare system.
Yeah, I'm bitter, I want to be part of that 5% that all you LIBERALS/PROGRESSIVES want to tax to death!
I heard Donnie Dickhead on MSNBC this morning say that the middle class isn't pissed that Nancy wants to tax the rich to death. He doesn't believe that we aspire to anything! We're all just happy as pigs in shit to be here in suburbia working for assholes like him!
Jordan, I'm really happy that you like your govt run health care system up there in the great North. But that story you tell about an insurance company denying benifits because you had a cold 40 years ago is BULLSHIT and you know it.
I'm not bitter...honest...I'm a happy man! I just turned 50, I can still hit a golf ball 300 yards, I'm relatively happily married and I have two besutiful daughters in their twenties. I get a check from the govt every month that keeps a roof over my head and health care for my family that works pretty well. But you see, that was all part of the plan that I started for myself 33 years ago when I joined the military at 17.
When my govt health care cost me twenty years why should yours be free? Because I'm a compassionate man? Figure the odds!
15 - roger nowosielski
Here we go again, Clavos politicizing the issue and attributing causation to human designs rather than to the workings of history, of events unfolding and their consequences.
16 - Clavos
attributing causation to human designs rather than to the workings of history, of events unfolding and their consequences.
WTF do you think "history" IS, if not the "unfolding of events" BECAUSE of and DRIVEN BY "human designs?"
Either you're incredibly stupid or your being disingenuous again.
Which is it, Roger?
17 - Ruvy
You know, I originally recommended that Bing watch the first episode of "All In The Family" because I wanted him to comprehend how stupid the name "Archie" sounded when applied to him, a short version of "Arch Conservative" - something which he is not, by the way. He is a moerate with a nasty temper. Whatever Bing is, he is, he is not some dumb bigoted idiot from Queens, who is going to be put down by all those he is bigoted against.
But now I'm recommending that all the rest of you watch this show as well. You will see that all of the issues that tear you apart above were tearing you apart 38 years ago when this show first aired. It is remarkable! Like Dave wrote in his title, you really have no idea! And neither does he!
So, what is the difference between then and now?
The difference is that you are broke. You can't throw money at the problems you have and you still do not have the answers - and Nixon's "moral majority" - represented by hardhats who beat the living daylights out of anti-war protesters, are now the people who are slowly boiling up in anger at the "liberal" administration that has been elected.
As pointed out in the Arutz Sheva article, I referred you to upthread,
"Dozens of U.S. banks have gone bankrupt while tighter regulations in Israel have averted a crisis.
However, the strong dollar poses a problem for [Israeli] exporters, whose income in dollars drops when converted at a lower rate in shekels. Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer tried to overcome the problem more than a year ago with a massive purchase of dollars, going against his own stated philosophy that central bank intervention in local exchange rates usually boomerangs.
He was able to prop up the rate to around the level of four shekels, but the massive debt that President Obama is amassing, while bailing out failing companies and printing more money to pump up the economy, has left the dollar in the skids."
So the options available to you Americans have also shrunk, and you are all on the skids as a result, no matter what your political orientation, or whether you think you should ignore what I say as a matter of policy or not, or whether you are so patriotically snooty that you do not wish to "consort with such as I".
It really is no skin off my ass. But as your dollar depreciates in value, it is sure going to be skin off yours. Because you will suffer from hyper-inflation like you have never seen in your lives - unless you lived here 30 years ago.
18 - Bliffle
IMO Dave has gone around the bend. Perhaps he's spent too much time close to the crazies.
For one thing, he overestimates the impact of words like 'socialism' and 'communism'. It's been a generation since the commies were the kind of military threat that caused us to tar 'socialists' with the same brush, and even 'liberals' and 'lefties'. The commies are a past threat, and 'socialism' is a respectable political position. Maybe you don't like 'socialism' but it's legal, many of our allies are openly socialist, and it's even practiced by some of our most respected Corporate CEOs as they dip deeply into government welfare.
The American news media gives a disproportionate amount of coverage to extremist loons. I suppose they consider that 'fairness', reporting both sides, fair and balanced, etc. they don't want the extremists to be able to claim that they are discriminated against. For example, I heard an audio clip from Glenn Beck on NPR (of all places!) where he was stating that he thinks Obama deep down in his heart hates white people. But it has the effect of creating a false sense of endorsement and exaggerates their numbers, to which Dave may be reacting.
As for Obama, it's hard for me to believe that anyone could characterize him as a rabid socialist or Marxist. Not just because of the numerous critics on the left, but because his whole history is centrist and his bi-partisan efforts are well-known. After all, he continued the Bush administration Bailouts and sent more troops to Afghanistan and has taken a rather tough position on Detainees. Seems to me that he's a centrist and corporate-statist just like most other presidents.
As an aside, I think the republicans are playing with fire when they stoke up the personality politics against Obama. It was a convenient tactic to slander John Kerry, a tactic that was covered when they defeated Kerry and he receded from the scene, but it's a different matter that they use the personality politics against a long term person. Eventually the rage they stir up will redound against themselves as the mob becomes unhappy with their tepid political moves.
19 - roger nowosielski
Simplistic picture, Clavos. Not everything that transpires can be accounted in terms of human design. You've heard of "unintended consequences," no doubt, or of the "invisible hand" explanations. Just some of the examples.
20 - Andy Marsh
and 'socialism' is a respectable political position
To whom?
You liberals and lefties maybe!
21 - roger nowosielski
I never used "Archie" that way, Ruvy. I've used it, believe it or not, as a term of . . .
well, affection.
22 - handyguy
Dave studiously avoids saying whether he agrees with these 'new radicals.' This sentence for example:
"You may think goofy controversies like the questions about Obama's birthplace are silly and they certainly draw the ridicule of pundits and humorists, but to those involved they are seen as deadly serious issues and only a small part of a vast conspiracy to destroy America."
I mean, you do make them sound like unthinking weirdos. Yet you seem to admire them [as in the past you have expressed bizarre admiration for the likes of Blackwater]. If all their claims are as bogus as the birth certificate nonsense, it does cast doubts on the legitimacy of their 'reasoning.'
And this stuff about the Obama administration cracking down on dissent just doesn't ring true -- and is not made more credible by the link you provide to Project World Awareness, which lists this gem at the top of its list of Recent Posts:
Glenn Beck: Cash For Clunkers is a government scam to gain access to your computer
As for the Feds keeping an eye on extremists: if their aim is to prevent people like Timothy McVeigh from blowing up buildings, I think I can support their efforts [within the law].
I do not believe this administration genuinely wants to suppress dissent or free speech. But if you come up with real evidence instead of alarmist heavy-breathing, I'll agree with you.
I know this president excites all sorts of reactions in all sorts of people. But can we try to stick to facts? Some of this is unpleasantly reminiscent of the idiots who believed Bill and Hillary Clinton ran drugs through an Arkansas airport and had people murdered.
PS Watch out for them black helicopters, dude.
23 - roger nowosielski
Andy,
It's not black and white. "The world is grey, Jack!"
A line from Clear and Present Danger.
24 - Doug Hunter
"and 'socialism' is a respectable political position."
Yes, exactly. The problem is some people, myself included, value freedom much higher than you do. You prefer the warm security blanket of mommy/daddy government, I prefer being able to make my own decisions and chart my own course. Obviously, a large percentage or even a majority prefer subservience. It's something I can't even begin to comprehend.
I have done some thinking about the future and the direction humans are going. As government grows there is no rooom for individual freedom for the little guys. The only ones achieving what we all take for granted now will be the well connected politicians and bureacrats who are above the law in any system. To that end I'm hoping to influence my children and orient their lives in that direction, where they can either work closely with the government or be directly a part of it. That is the future.
25 - roger nowosielski
Yes, there is a kind of disconnect here, Handy as to Dave's stance on this birther's issue. On one hand, he does think them a lunatic fringe, yet on the other, he does admire them.
Which is it, Dave? Will the real Dave step forward, please!