Dems fighting words

Now that Van Jones, the so-called Green Jobs Czar has resigned, one might say the cost of fighting words has risen. While he signed onto the cause that 9-11 was an inside job by the Bush Administration, the amazing foul mouth line against Republicans says something about the hubris of the Democratic power elite. Evidently, there is an assumption that thoroughly rotten behavior is forgiven if one is a Democrat and in power. Others feel that this kind of lunacy and profanity are now par for the course in our national dialogue. Perhaps that's why Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarret, close advisor to the President, according to Politico.com, heaped praise on Van Jones rather recently. Perhaps only Republicans are accountable for wretched speech or insane conspiracy theories.

That words now count differently for some who lead rather than others comprises a fundamental distortion in our national discourse. It also exposes the craven. If say, a Republican now votes for Obamacare after Democrats have called them "Un-American" (Pelosi/Reid) racist (Patterson, Rangel) or "Asshole" (Van Jones), that person is a punk. If someone called you these to your face, you'd dispute it to say the least, if not take a swipe at them. These are fighting words. Do nothing and you deserve the abuse you will receive. Anyone who's vaguely aware of how people interact know there are certain words and phrases that are certain to inflame a conversation. It's that attempt by someone to make general attacks personal that is so evil. To sink a phrase hook into someones consciousness, is to try to intimidate someone on an intellectual plane.

Unless one replies in kind, the verbal smear artist has achieved a hold over the target.
However, this verbal intimidation has not worked, so far. Barrack Hussein Obamas big speech to Congress can do little fix things. As Walter Ong wrote, once something is uttered, all else afterword is simply patchwork on the previous oral expression. Obama's soothing words can do little to stop the rancor that has engulfed the national conversation this summer. Sure' we'll get a speech of the grand visions and the individual sob stories, but for most, the system works. Look, once someone has called you a vile name, no amount of sweet words can change your opinion.

Obama cannot persuade with facts because they are completely against him. Of the 50 million newly insured in Obamacare, less than 10 million are actually indigent U.S. citizens who lack means for coverage. So we're paying over one trillion so as to insure less than 3% of the population? We're cutting Medicare to insure illegals? Will doctors want to practice in a profession that will pay them less and make them take more patients? We're taking a hatchet to one sixth of our economy when we're in the worst economic slump since the Great Depression? If this weren't so close to becoming law, it would be laughable, it's so bad. The program as it stands described now is an absolute farce.

In spite of this obvious contradiction between between facts and words, language is the way out for Obama now. Obama will, as one Congressman advocated as a course of action in Vietnam, "declare victory and get out". Obamacare is doomed in its' present form. This means the administration will pass some weasel bill supported by Democrats and a few punk Republicans probably costing a "mere" 200 or 300 billion dollars. This "victory" declared by his hoard of media toads will allow Obama to segway into another issue, probably energy. However, he is damaged goods. The vicious vile language of the health care debate will haunt him.

On the other hand, maybe it's best to take a different tack. Let's go along with the smear job in one specific instance and see if it leads somewhere. Perhaps we should assume Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Brian Baird are right and the Republicans opposing this really are "Nazis" Absurd? sure, but allow this to play out.

We know know from history the Nazis were murderous scum, but how driven were they really? Assuming Obama believes his own teams' propaganda, what is he up against? How determined are these Republican/Nazis. If history is a guide, here is an example from North Africa, 1942. It highlights the observations of one captured American officer watching the workings of a German military airfield from a holding pen.

"At El Aouina airport, whence the captives were to be flown to prison in Italy, the Americans watched as Allied bombers briefly pummelled the field and flew away. At the all clear signal, German soldiers heaved grappling hooks into a burning Junkers transport plane bombed moments after landing from Italy. Bulldozers dragged the wreckage off the runway. Landings resumed instantly, and Wehrmacht troops clattered down the aircraft ramps before the propellers stopped spinning. Only then did an ambulance pull up to the burning Junkers, and German rescue workers in asbestos suits begin pulling injured men from the wreckage.

Another captured officer turned to Frelinghuysen. "People who fight a war like that," he said, "will be hard to beat."

I'm not sure those "people" have that much in common with Republicans, so let's put them in the role that they might actually fit in, that of Americans in the same place and same time. However, let's be fair to Pelosi and use a Nazi description of them. Attributed to Erwin Rommel after he saw them fight in North Africa, this assessment of the American troops could perhaps apply to Republicans. He supposedly said of American soldiers, he had never seen worse soldiers in their first battle, nor ones who had learned so much by their second.

Republicans were drubbed in their first electoral encounter with Obama, but his youth and inexperience is showing and they seem to be learning fast. We'll find out how much they've learned next year, 2010.