Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Long March Begins...

The Long March, for those who don't study history, refers to the retreat of the Chinese Communists of Mao Tse Tung into the hinterlands of China to escape the pressure of both the Chinese Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai Shek, and the Japanese Army (the conflicts between Japan and China in those days are the origin of the Second World War in Asia). Moving tens of thousands of people thousands of miles, many dying in terrible misery along the way, Mao led his people to a remote region where they could regroup, rearm, make a marriage of convenience with Chiang against the Japanese in order to buy some time to indoctrinate a new generation of communists and, ultimately, wait out the larger conflict between Chiang and the Emperor in relative safety... only to emerge after the War to sweep across China and grab power in a revolution.

History, they say, always repeats itself, and if it doesn't always repeat itself literally, you can always try to find two situations and make at least a rhetorical comparison. Today, we're seeing the beginning of Barack Obama's own Long March. It begins here, with Obama's admission to having made "mistakes" and losing his personal touch with the American people.

The next step in the rehabilitation of the Obama Aura comes from Lanny Davis, Bill Clinton's attack poodle, who writes in the Wall Street Journal that the defeat of Martha Coakley, Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine in three bellwether elections is not so much a repudiation of Obama and his policies, as it is a reaction to a certain segment of the democratic party. In other words, Lanny blames the hippies, and to a certain extent he's gotten that right. You'll notice that Lanny is still pushing ObamaCare as a good thing: a mere reform for a broken system, instead of calling it what it is: a load of crap that destroys basic liberties and the national economy. These people continue to recycle the same argument: "Communism is a good thing, we just haven't found the right communists yet...". Says Lanny:

"...The Democrats have a simple message on health care that has still not really gotten through: If our bill passes, you never have to worry about getting, or losing, health insurance for the rest of your life. How is it that so few people have heard that message?..."

Translation: The message is fine, the messengers need to be shot.

The more militant 60's retreads in the Congress, starting with Reid and Pelosi, have decided that right now is the time to ram through every 'reform' and 'program' they've dreamed about since Woodstock. Having mistaken their own electoral victories in Congress in 2006 (victories based in large part on the ineffectual and often criminal nature of their predecessors, not because of any ideological affinity) and the elevation of a black man to the Presidency in 2008 as signs that the 60's vision, the promise of the Great Society and "I-have-a-dream" have finally come to be, they're out to ensure they can set that vision in stone in much the same way FDR's neo-communist New Deal was.

It would work, they believe, if only they didn't have such ineffectual spokespeople like Coakley, Corzine and Deeds, and if the foot soldiers were sufficiently revolutionary enough to make the great personal sacrifices required to see it through, sacrifices they themselves, naturally, will never have to make. The problem is Obama, and Reid, and Pelosi, and their sycophants; they haven't gotten it through their thick skulls that what they advocate is a crock of shit that no one in their right mind wants to buy. They are delusional. When you have delusional people living in the past at the forefront of your movement, don't be surprised when it's "message" is rejected. If you are surprised at the results of Tuesday night, then you yourself are delusional.

But even more than this residue of 1960's idealism, delusion and stupidity, the reason why Obama must pivot, must reorient and reinvent his Presidency right now is because he's finally learned that he's not God. He can be forgiven for thinking he was, because the Press and the Cult of Personality nature of the democratic party made him believe he was. Then again, I don't think this man ever expected to be elected in the first place, and was genuinely shocked when it happened, and decided that a little opportunism would do just the trick; use the goodwill and good fortune he garnered to finally implement what had certainly been advocated by every liberal since Marx. Why shouldn't he get away with it? He got away with Reverend Right, Bill Ayers, Chicago Machine Politics and a See-through resume. No longer: even Chris Matthews has lost that tingly feeling.

Barack Obama has finally learned that he isn't immortal, and that he needs to listen. Before Tuesday, he could count upon a compliant press and a residual distaste for his political opposition to obscure the truth of events. No more. We're about to see Obama retreat into the wilderness for a while, waiting for the brouhaha over Scott Brown to fade a bit, and then he'll reemerge as Obama the Centrist; exactly what he lied about being when he ran for office. We'll see many a liberal policy fall by the wayside, and many a supporter tossed under the bus (Obama's really good at that), probably beginning with Rahm Emmanuel (the Trotsky of the Obama Administration). When you've won the Revolution, who needs revolutionaries? When you're about to lose the Counter-Revolution, you sacrifice the former revolutionaries publicly. We'll hear more about "bi-partisanship", and republicans can expect a few more invitations to the White House, and maybe get a few of their pet projects into a smaller version ObamaCare, just for appearances sake.

But don't be fooled: Obama/Reid/Pelosi are still the same people, driven by the same ideology as they were before. The leopard never changes his spots, and the process of the Long March is always the same; escape to regroup, purge the more dangerous or useless elements from the movement, train the next legion of stupid people, then reemerge under a slightly different banner to carry on "the struggle". It's all about buying time.

Don't believe a word of what you hear for the next nine months. It's all part of the strategy to get you to buy another dollop of dogshit disguised as diamonds. The goal of impregnating the American system and Society with dangerous and expensive liberal institutions that cannot easily be destroyed or voted down will continue apace; the language will just be less harsh, less combative, the reasoning behind them less ideologically-charged, there will be less name-calling and demonization of the opposition... until the time is right to try it all again.

Update: They didn't even wait a week. Healthcare is still not dead.

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