Dennis Prager really doesn’t understand Obama’s campaign themes. “Yes We Can” isn’t a slogan, it’s a sentence fragment; “Hope” is a thing with feathers, and thus really ought to be getting shot by Dick Cheney rather than driving a presidential race; and as for this inchoate yearning for “Change,” it implies the fanciful, if not insane notion that there is room for improvement in this, the best of all possible worlds.
Of course, Obama himself often has spoken about the overriding need for change from eight years of President George W. Bush’s policies. But this is not what he or most of his supporters really mean when they talk about change. In fact, it cannot be. This is easy to show: All candidates for president run on a platform of change from the party in power. If they don’t stand for change, why vote for them?
By this reasoning, when Obama uses the word “change,” it is not an exhortation, but a request. In other words, he’s panhandling, and if you give him any loose coins you may have he’ll only use it to buy drugs, fortified wine, and TV advertising time in West Virginia.
What Barack Obama is tapping into with the word “change” is nearly eight years of the left’s constructing a description of an America that has been made so awful that “change” means changing America, not just changing policies.
The truth is that aside from the Iraq war, which is turning out to be quite successful…
In fact, we’re thinking of turning it into a chain. We’ve already had inquiries from potential franchisees in Iran, Syria, and Venezuela.
…George W. Bush’s policies have not been particularly controversial or even particularly right-wing.
Dennis voted for Fascism and all he got was this lousy Authoritarian t-shirt. And a foam rubber Corporatist drink caddy.
The left, from The New York Times to MoveOn.org, has led itself and others to believe that:
–George W. Bush lied America into war.
–Tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4,000 Americans have been killed in a war waged in order to line the pockets of Vice President Dick Cheney’s friends.
–The Constitution has been trampled on.
–America has become a torturing country.
–America’s poor have become far more numerous and far more downtrodden.
–American troops in Iraq repeatedly have engaged in atrocities against innocent civilians.
–The opportunity for economic self-improvement has ceased for most Americans.
–Racism is endemic to American society.
–Republican rallies are hate-fests.
–John McCain has run a racist campaign against Barack Obama.
–Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, is a religious zealot and an idiot.
–Christian fundamentalists are on the verge of taking over America and turning it into a theocracy.
–The world is getting closer and closer to catastrophic and irreversible damage caused by human beings; and George W. Bush and energy interests are standing in the way of preventing universal destruction.
–America is on the road to fascism.
Now, as it happens, none of those things is true. But the left believes them all.
Poor, deluded Left. I think we can best understand their plight by revisiting the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant. Six sightless men were asked to describe an elephant, after each had touched a different part of the animal. The man who felt the leg said the beast is like a pillar; the one who felt the tail said it resembles a rope; the one who touched the trunk said an elephant is like the branch of a mighty tree; the one who felt the tusk said the creature is like a plough, while the last man, named Dennis, ran his hands over the wide flanks of the elephant and said, “What the hell are you idiots talking about? There’s nothing there, I didn’t feel a thing!”
Anyway, while there are pro- and anti-American areas of the nation, there aren’t enough fake Americans to outvote the real Americans, and yet somehow Obama is winning. So clearly some tricksyness is involved.
Of course, many Americans who do not consider themselves leftist also will vote for Barack Obama and left-wing Democratic congressional candidates. They do so because they are lifelong Democrats who do not realize how far left their party has strayed and think they still are voting for the party of Truman and JFK…
…or Martin van Buren and William Jennings Bryan…
…or because they personally benefit from Democratic largesse (e.g., government workers)
Under hardnosed, fiscally conservative Republican administrations, Cabinet-level agencies are staffed entirely by volunteers — usually Rotarians or Oddfellows who give up their weekends to run the Department of Commerce, or Homeland Security, although a lot of the higher level positions at the Department of Justice and the Treasury are filled by people who are working off Community Service sentences, and most of our ambassadors are unpaid college interns who are just trying to earn a little course credit. The only paid staffers work at the Department of Agriculture, but they’re mostly day laborers.
…or because they are active in their unions; or because they have come to believe the media and the Democrats, who have been telling them for almost a decade about how George W. Bush and the Republicans have ruined their country.
Which is totally unfair, because it didn’t take a decade. It didn’t even take two terms.
But as for the left, it lives in a bubble of its making. That is why most leftists live in places where nearly everyone shares their fantasies — bubbles such as Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, the west side of Los Angeles, and the most hermetically sealed of the bubbles: universities. They interact almost only with other people who share their fantasy world of America Made Bad.
I wondered why it was getting so crowded in here. Look! People! The whole country can’t fit inside my bubble! Can’t some of you real Americans go back out to Reality and keep Dennis company?
From Karl Marx to today’s Democratic Party…
Oops, sorry. This isn’t actually a column, it’s apparently a pledge drive to raise money for Dennis’ thorazine. Boy, don’t I feel the perfect ass.