The Anchoress
Because all of his pronouncements are subject to sudden change, President Obama, who decried the use of reconciliation on much smaller matters than this, has decided reconciliation is the perfect vehicle by which to tell the American public to shut up and take what he’s giving them (language warning), and also take command over 17% of the economy.
And he’s doing it, all while pretending not to know that America is saying “no.”
Is that just Obama taking a stab at some plausible deniability? Or is he one of those guys who thinks a “no” is a coy “yes?”
As Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (who increasingly reminds me of someone who once got a laugh at another’s expense and thus considers himself a wit) declared today, “whatever it takes to get health care done,”, President Obama put the exclamation point to the sentiment by handing some judge robes to the brother of an undecided Democrat. If the timing of the appointment is merely co-incidental, you’d think the president would be attuned to the bad optics of it, but Obama doesn’t really care what anything thinks about what he does.
All of that has left Dan Riehl very, very angry. I mean, way beyond Marvin-the-Martian angry:
This neophyte, this joke we have in the White House has absolutely no idea of the force and the rage he is about to unleash on him and his entire political party. If there are not enough responsible adults left within his party to rein in this accidental, affirmative action jerk, this self-styled, extremely flawed little man, then his party is worthless to America. It deserves to be marginalized electorally and, ultimately, utterly destroyed, before being relegated to the dung heap of history with the rest of the marxist, socialist clowns Americans have dispatched before.
Reconciliation for this disaster of a destructive health care bill I doubt anyone on the Hill can fully define means all out war. The only question remaining is, whose side are you on?
Ehhhhmmm…yeeah. That’s…pretty…damned…mad. Obama campaigned promising that he would both “unify” and “remake” America. Seems he meant it, for better or worse. But many moderate Democrats, Independents and even some Conservatives thought Obama meant we’d all have a cookout and work on fine-tuning the American engine and polishing the fenders between bites of potato salad.
They apparently did not realize he meant a complete overhaul and redesign.
Those of us who did should not be acting too surprised, at this point.
Glenn Reynolds is concerned:
I’ve never seen Dan Riehl this angry. Is he an outlier, or a leading indicator? The Dems had better hope it’s the former. . .
I don’t the Democrats give a damn about it, they haven’t for a while, which tells me that they have their eyes on something so vast that the rest of us -riding on the back of the beast and thus unable to gauge its proportions– can’t even see the totality of it.
Whether Riehl is an outlier is a good question, though. My readers and penpals are mostly temperate sorts who are not quick to go all Yosemite Sam and a-haulin’ out their rifles. But I actually have had a few emails indicating that the Looney Tunes White House and the Democrats are crossing a line they ought not cross, if they’d prefer not to test the action/reaction theory.
Undoubtedly, there are some Americans who are feeling as angry as Reihl. There are people out there -you can read them in political forums and the comments sections of most internet-posted news columns- who are literally thisclose to saying, “the government has abandoned America and its precepts; they are the outliers, they are the ones bending the nation to the breaking point, and they must be stopped.”
By what means? Who knows.
People are feeling not just “fooled” but betrayed and disrespected by their elected leaders, who are supposed to be their servants. No one likes feeling that way. Many Conservatives and Independents sense that their hirees are out of control and dictating to them from on high; to them, America feels like a college campus occupied by a bunch of spoiled adolescents who are alternately calling their tuition-paying parents “stupid and bourgeois” or “stupid and oppressed,” depending on the day. They are bristling at the disdain and condescension they sense from their government. In his speech today, Obama seemed one rhetorical flourish away from saying, “don’t you know who I am?” And the sense I am getting is that Americans are ready to say, in return, “don’t you know who we are, who hired you?”
Centers are definitely not holding. The more cynical side of me, which I am trying to keep tamped down, even wonders if some in DC are counting on the threat of violence occurring, as a means to yet another end.
I took a “retreat” day, today; spent the whole day in prayer, reading, contemplation. Retreating from the daily hash of news and spin, I came back to “the world” more and more convinced that illusions are spinning like mad all around us, and that the only way to defeat them is to hold on to what we know is true, and not get sucked into a whirling vortex of emotion. Emotion is always the exploitable bugbear that lets things slip further out of control than they should; emotion is what Democrats seem to count on, and what conservatives are increasingly falling prey to, as they feel their principles are being dismissed, and the nation’s precepts are being steamrollered.
In an address to congress, Abraham Lincoln said that in order to save our nation, we had to “disenthrall ourselves” of our passions. That, of course, only works if all sides agree to do it. Nobody is agreeing to nuthin’ in 21st Century America.
My hope is that Riehl is an outlier. I suspect, though, that if he is, and if the Democrats force their way forward, against an objecting populace, he won’t be for very long.
UPDATE 1: An email from WM:
What you and I fear we’ve detected: the attempted establishment of Soft Tyranny, is what will make violence conceivable to most once they become convinced that’s what’s going on. Once that becomes widely believed, confidence in the Rule of Law will be undermined by continued political maneuverings, and the powder keg will only lack a precipitating outrage.
God help us all if it comes to that. . . . We are in a water-shed time. This country I love will either rise, or fall. . . . I hold this country and the principles it was founded on dear.
This is not an atypical response. What I’m seeing in my email is: violence is the last thing people want to consider, and no one can be flippant about it…but some are worrying that it may well be part of our future.
Perhaps that’s why I want to pray all the time. I’m putting a bit of a round up, below.
UPDATE II:
Dan Riehl clarifies; he’s thinking more Tiananmen Square than armed insurrection, at the moment! :-)
Related:
Andrew McCarthy: If Obamacare passes, it is forever
Hot Air: What’s the biggest problem?
Private Sector Innovation in Health Care
NRO: “Lisbon Treaty and Obama’s Up-or-down vote are of a piece…”
The “Outsider” from Inside DC
Dan Gerstein: Dems have lost the Public Trust
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