Home » They may be seeing Obama’s feet of clay—but then what?

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They may be seeing Obama’s feet of clay—but then what? — 35 Comments

  1. Cognitive dissonance:
    The feeling you get when you suddenly realize everything you thought was true is actually a lie.

  2. Even and aside from the political change aspect of this, I wonder if there’s not something more at play in the recent criticism leveled at Obama. Specifically, managing expectations for the next presidential election. For instance, in looking towards the 2016 Democrat field, it could be quite challenging to run a candidate that could only ever fall short of Obama at the height of his hype. But, by critizing Obama (humanising him) now, when it will practically make no difference, they’re able to welcome on stage the next Great Savior. Obama, only better. Obama at his best with upgrades. And, to the extent that those non-rabid Democrat voters are left questioning what chance a mere mortal could possibly have when Obama wasn’t able to deliver all he promised, the answer becomes that we were deceived in Obama’s promise, but Obama 2.0 is the real deal. So buy now!

  3. As neo has said, much of a lib’s political viewpoint is connected with his self-identity. Can’t change one without changing the other. And since libs’ pov wrt liberalism makes them Very Good People, having to abandon it means they are abandoning an extremely important prop to their self-regard.
    Since the IPCC has admitted things are not as advertised, I think we’re going to see a miniature version of the conflict when people face the truth about AGW. Very Good People, who love the Earth and all its people believe in AGW. If even the IPCC is with the deniers, the Very Good People will have a cognitively dissonant moment. Pass the popcorn.

  4. Disillusionment on Obama is not enough. Obviously, he’s not running again, but even if he was, that still wouldn’t be enough. A vote that is for the Dems or *against the GOP* works out equally well for the Dems.

    I would wager the same folks who are disappointed with Obama still have the same BDS based on the same false narrative, consider Bush ‘the worst president ever’, and use that as their cognitive baseline to perceive the GOP generally.

  5. Two related articles I saw today – Michael Goodwin at
    NY Post on how Obama has reached a new low with that speech on Monday during the slaughter and Rachel Maddow reflecting on a government too big to conduct adequate security checks is a government that has grown too big.

  6. They think they will be forgiven for now needing to find some other Messiah to worship in order to make themselves smart?

    They really think they will be forgiven and their crimes against humanity just shoveled under the rug?

    Huh.

  7. With a little practice you shouldn’t be bothered by cognitive dissonance. Just take the Queen’s advice from Alice in Wonderland.

    Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
    “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

  8. I think much of the reason for Dowd’s current feeling about Obama is because of the way he mishandled the Syria crisis. She is, I think, deeply embarrassed by his performance.

    And maybe also, like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, she was insulted by his “style points” schtick:

    Obama’s dismissive remarks came in response to a question from ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who asked the president about criticisms of his approach as ad hoc, improvised and unsteady.

    “Folks here in Washington like to grade on style,” Obama sniffed. “And so had we rolled out something that was very smooth and disciplined and linear, they would have graded it well, even if it was a disastrous policy. We know that, ’cause that’s exactly how they graded the Iraq war until it ended up blowing [up] in our face.”

    Indeed, Obama portrayed capital insiders’ scorn as a badge of honor. “What it says is that I’m less concerned about style points; I’m much more concerned about getting the policy right,” he continued, taking credit for Syria having acknowledged its possession of chemical weapons and agreeing to put them under international control. “That’s my goal,” he said. “And if that goal is achieved, then it sounds to me like we did something right.”

    “dismissive” and “sniffed” — Ruth’s not a happy camper.

  9. vanderleun

    Yes, I like Aaron Clarey, too. He tries to be realistic and I liked his suggestion to young liberals to go to FRED and look at the data.

    I was just reading some stuff on AJ Strata’s sight and he was hammering something that Walter Russel Mead has been hammering: the blue model does not work any longer. Mish had a post today about just how underfunded the Chicago pension plans are. Yet, the liberals want to tinker around the edges as the house burns down. There seems to be no way to get through to them. Neo points out it how difficult it is to change a belief system even as it crumbles.

    I don’t know what it will take for the bulk of this country to realize we are heading for collapse. There are warnings now, but not enough to penetrate. Hemingway was asked how one goes bankrupt. He said “slowly at first, than all at once”. That is what collapse looks like, too. What happens to Detroit when there is no welfare and SNAP money coming in? Even “bread and circuses” stop when the money runs out.

  10. The two most common tactics for libs not feeling cognitive dissonance are:
    1) Avoidance: they simply refuse to confront contrary evidence, and instead occupy their minds with other (often trivial) matters.
    2) Projection: assuming that they acknowledge the existence of the contrary evidence, they try to blame it on someone/something other than the true cause.

    These two explain probably 60% of the left.

    For people like Dowd and Marcus, I can’t decide if they’re so angry because they were lied to, or because their side is being mocked by the oh-so-cosmopolitan elites in the rest of the world.

  11. “I don’t know what it will take for the bulk of this country to realize we are heading for collapse.”

    LOL Rick, the nation will fall into a huge pile of rubbish, and the left will never even notice. They’ll just stand around, wounder why their welfare checks dried up, and then blame Bush…

    Later

  12. My brother and his wife are true blue progressives. They belong to a church that is progressive. They are very proud of the fact that they have a few gay couples in the congregation. Unfortunately, the congregation just fired their minister (who was openly gay) because it turned out that he had an agenda to turn the congregation into a predominately gay congregation. He also arrogantly encouraged all church members to attend Gay Pride events to show support. Now they are somewhat confused. They just didn’t realize there might be an agenda in the gay community. A bit of cognitive dissonance for them.

    They have lived their lives by conservative principles, but just have to feel that they are helping right society’s wrongs and be Very Good People. (Thanks to Richard Aubrey for that one.) We just returned from visiting them. They are a bit disillusioned with Obama, but not with the cause of defending the downtrodden. So, they will continue to vote democrat.

  13. @ Tater

    I’ve heard many people fall into this sort of cynical worldview, especially after the election.
    I don’t believe it.
    I believe evolution (God, if you’re so-inclined) has made discerning “The Truth” an imperative. It’s hard-wired into us, and can’t be easily gotten rid of. That means people have a natural resistance to propaganda based on their own senses and experience.
    The ideal situation is to have all excuses removed when the end comes. Detroit comes close to this, since a Republican hasn’t been in power there in 50 years.
    But even in less clear-cut situations, people will just get tired of excuses after a while.

    I’m reminded of the quote from an anonymous Soviet worker, “We would pretend to work, and the government would pretend to pay us.”
    This shows that whatever the party line was, the common people knew the truth…even in the Soviet Union.

  14. What people should do is smash their face in it. They’re now the racists. They’re now the people who don’t support the President. They’re now the ones who called for jingoism but doesn’t show enough Loyalty to the State.

    Ask them if their tax returns should be IRSed, why they don’t show sufficient Loyalty to the Regime.

  15. Maureen Dowd was hell (and very funny hell at that) on Bill & Hillary Clinton, back in the day. No, she doesn’t change her principles, assuming that’s what they are. She just gets royally p*ssed when someone embarrasses her point of view or when someone doesn’t *make* reality deliver what she believes it should.

    But, I always thought that she was basically a spoiled debutante, sulking and having tantrums upstairs and ruining her debut party just to embarrass Mom and Dad – but, no way was she ever going to actually walk away from the inheritance. No, she’s just a complainer and no one ever lives up to her expectations.

    Also: Ymarsakar @ 7:31 p.m. is on to something. Racists!

  16. Did you read that Robert Gates and Leon Panetta have also criticized Obama on Syria? I think this is just the beginning.

  17. I’m afraid I have to say “in your dreams,” expat. Here’s David Ignatius in the Washington Post:

    What’s puzzling about this latest bout of Obama-phobia is that recent developments in Syria have generally been positive from the standpoint of U.S. interests.

    Obama has accomplished goals that most Americans endorse, given the unpalatable menu of choices. Polls suggest that the public overwhelmingly backs the course Obama has chosen. APost-ABC News surveyasked Americans if they endorsed the U.S.-Russian plan to dismantle Syrian chemical weapons as an alternative to missile strikes; 79 percent were supportive.

    Yet the opinion of elites is sharply negative.

    Here’s what I see when I deconstruct the Syria story:…

    He then proceeds to show, at least to his mind, just how brilliant the whole episode has been. And then:

    The mystery is why this outcome in Syria is derided by so many analysts in Washington. Partly, it must be the John McCain factor. The Arizona senator is in danger of becoming a kind of Republican version of Jesse Jackson, who shows up at every international crisis with his own plan for a solution, sometimes through personal mediation (as with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt), other times demanding military intervention (as in Syria). Because McCain is a distinguished figure, he commands respect even when his proposals have no political support at home.

    Not so Obama. He can propose what the country wants, succeed at it and still get hammered as a failure.

    Cool. A Republican to blame. And one so very respected that he never, ever gets blamed for anything he proposes.

  18. What’s a failure is how Obama wasn’t able to post birth Abort dear David here when the resources of Gaia were truly strained.

  19. @Ann

    Those are the ramblings of a fringe kook. I suppose that David decided Obama was truly “the One”; the embodiment of all his liberal fever-dreams. David won’t repudiate Obama because that would mean repudiating himself.
    Others like Dowd are worldly/cynical enough to not have personally invested themselves into the Obama cult. If he falls short, she can always say that he wasn’t “the One.”
    Personal investment (i.e. drinking the kool-aid): that’s the nature of the developing schism on the left these days.

  20. @Matt_SE

    “Personal investment (i.e. drinking the kool-aid): that’s the nature of the developing schism on the left these days.”

    Which doesn’t seem to match up with your previous reply to me. I agree with your statement above, and I think it applies to the vast majority of the left. Our kind host is testimony on the difficulty (and rarity) of a left winger seeing the light. Your previous example of Detroit is an even better example, despite 50 years of left-wing government that has destroyed their city, they’re still electing nothing but Democrats.

    Kool-Aid drinkers simply can’t change.

  21. If they could change themselves for the better, they wouldn’t need to be part of the Utopian society for changing the world now would they.

    In the end, this war might as well be called “Those who change themselves” vs “those who want to change the world”.

  22. True, the cognitive dissonance can create an actual change of heart and mind, but it is so difficult! The thought of alienation from friends or family may be too much for most people. I just lost another good friend about three weeks ago. This, because of Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman. Suddenly, this person flips out and decides I am a “racist” because I think Zimmerman is indeed not guilty. I even linked to one of your posts on the case Neo. I do think, on reflection, that one of the things that may have been happening in this case was that the individual actually was beginning to listen to some of what I said, in response to our conversations on politics, and was a bit shaken. I think some of her cardinal beliefs about politics were being called into question and that was too much. The usual, but I was a bit surprised since she was someone who had left me because of politics before, despite my best efforts to avoid that, and she had come back. Any way… I guess I am still going through the throes of this political change, though I have become tougher and more hardened to the inevitability that some left wing friends will leave. I do think what you say Neo about the “alienation” from the prior self that believed certain things very differently, is hard to sort out. I am working on that… it is all very daunting. In my core, I am the same, but I think what happened was I saw at some point that my actual values of free speech, freedom, individual rights and so on – were not being served by left wing agendas. I also learned more about economics and that is a big one!

    Obama was one of the factors that hastened my departure from the left… while they are disillusioned I agree that most progressives will not change their tune, unless something really dire occurs. Like a currency collapse or a huge terrorist act of massive proportions… I hope these things do not happen. The situation in Detroit is a case in point of left wing economic policy failure, but most will not even look too closely. My friend, the one that just left, was given a brief glimpse of another viewpoint and chose to run away with an epithet (“racist”) on her lips. It is laughable but sad. I think most of them will do that since personally, this is really a hard transformation to go through.

  23. Ann,

    As I’ve often said here, Obama will always fall back on that whatever he does is better than Bush and Iraq. It works. The GOP needs to rehabilitate Bush’s legacy and correct the Democrats’ false narrative on the Iraq mission.

  24. Eric,

    About correcting false narratives, this piece over at First Things speaks to that, although not specifically with regard to foreign policy. It makes some good points, but I’m wondering who among Republicans can be a messenger who’s anywhere near Reagan’s league.

    Anyway, here’s some of the article:

    I recently had a conversation with an acquaintance and I asked them what Romney was for. This person was stuck and finally said that Romney was for cutting Social Security and for the elite. For all the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the Romney and the right-leaning Super PACs, many young people only hear conservative ideas explained (or merely condemned) by left-of-center politicians, journalists or entertainers. Often, when young people do see conservatives in their own words, it is only when those words are exceptionally embarrassing. This left-of-center socializing is constant, but right-of center political advertizing is an election year phenomenon.

    and

    It took Reagan time to figure out the priorities of voters. It takes even longer to explain. How do you explain an agenda to people who lack context and who have been told a hundred different ways that you are the enemy? It takes time. It can’t just happen during elections. It has to be plain words and clear explanations of who will benefit and how. It will take more than thirty seconds to get any meaningful point across. The speech that launched Reagan’s political career was a thirty minute paid advertisement. It doesn’t have to be thirty minutes, but it has to be long enough to make a cogent and relevant argument to people who are not already inclined to vote for a conservative candidate, and it has to be on media that is consumed by young people who do not identify as conservative. If conservatives can produce a relevant agenda and learn to talk to people who don’t consume conservative media, liberals like Peter Beinart might be in for an unpleasant surprise. But the children of Reagan will have to repeat the Gipper’s feat of explaining a center-right populism to people who think that Republicans are exclusively the party of a selfish elite.

    That “who have been told a hundred different ways that you are the enemy” is daunting, isn’t it?

  25. Ann,

    Yep, the need for the GOP and the Right to undertake a serious perpetual Marxist-method activist popular movement – that’s not limited to election cycles – is another theme I’ve repeated often in comments here. Most recently with comments in this thread:

    http://neoneocon.com/2013/09/14/i-wont-sit-on-a-hot-stove/#comment-655643

    In modern electoral politics, the Marxist (method) game is the only game in town. The Right needs to be reorganized by real Marxist-method activists.

    In Obama v McCain and Obama v Romney, it wasn’t the better candidate that won or lost. The better movement won, which was pretty easy considering the GOP and the Right don’t have a movement.

    How many of us have thoroughly refuted a Democratic talking point on an issue like Iraq only to have the same person later reiterate the same discredited talking points as though you never had the discussion? Painstaking individual corrections of the Democrats’ false narrative have an effective limit when it lacks the backdrop of a popular social trend – a real influential movement.

  26. Ann,

    If the solution is limited to looking for a new Reagan, then the GOP and the Right will fail.

    Movement first, then candidate.

  27. Just use youtube. It ain’t that hard. You can’t delegate it to your flacks and interns though.

  28. The problem I still see with the movement described by Eric is how they will stand up against the ATF, FBI, IRS, and everybody else that will destroy them.

    An organization needs leaders, a hierarchy, and funding. All of which will be targeted for destruction sooner or later.

    Unless Eric can come up with a defense against that, a defense the Tea Party did not try to use, a “movement” will not be allowed to exist by the Left.

  29. Ymarsakar,

    Get the Marxist-method activists, put them charge at the top and on the ground, give them what they need, and take off from there. They’ll figure it out. Igniting and spreading popular movements in adverse conditions is what activists do.

  30. That sounds like a more cellular system based upon individual prowess, not an organization or an extremely wide movement.

    Normally insurgents have utilized politically acceptable mainstream movements as a front, backed up by an elite few fanatics, true believers, and wet work artists behind the scenes. But the methodology of those two groups are very different. The mainstream org is huge and moves very slowly. The elite cell moves very quickly, but does not have direct access to the resources/support of the organization.

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