Can Obama defeat the Republican cult?
By Thom Hartmann A...
Yesterday, President Obama spoke at Knox College in Illinois - about his vision for the American economy. Throughout his speech - the President highlighted facts - like how middle-class Americans are struggling to survive - while CEO pay and earnings for the top 1% of Americans have skyrocketed. The essence of the President’s speech was that it’s time to get away from the failed economic ideas of the past 30 years - like Reaganomics and trickle-down economics - and instead look to the days of the Great Society and the New Deal to boost our economy.
Right now - Republicans in Washington are hacking away at the very programs that could help this nation recover - and that would make the middle-class strong and stable once again. In yesterday’s speech - the President proposed increases in infrastructure spending, more investments in education, and continued work to make healthcare affordable in America. Unfortunately - Republicans refuse to address this nation’s infrastructure woes - they don’t understand the value of a good education - and they’ve voted about 40 times to repeal Obamacare - which makes healthcare more affordable in America.
But why are they doing this? Why are Republicans standing by the failed policies of Reaganomics, trickle-down economics, supply-side economics and the Reagan Revolution? It’s because the Republican Party is a cult. Scientists tell us that cult leaders pretty much always do the same thing to their members. Cult leaders put their members in physically or emotionally distressing situation to soften them up. Cult leaders reduce complex problems to bumper stickers, and they demand loyalty to the founder and core ideas of the cult. Cult leaders spoon feed information to their members in a way that always makes them look good and everyone else look bad.
Our President is fighting an up-hill battle to restore vital programs that could put Americans back to work, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and stimulate our struggling economy. For the sake of our nation, let's hope he can defeat the cult, and bring back the Great Society by enacting a new New Deal.
Comments
#2
Quote Hartmann:
It’s because the Republican Party is a cult. Scientists tell us that cult leaders pretty much always do the same thing to their members. Cult leaders put their members in physically or emotionally distressing situation to soften them up. Cult leaders reduce complex problems to bumper stickers, and they demand loyalty to the founder and core ideas of the cult. Cult leaders spoon feed information to their members in a way that always makes them look good and everyone else look bad.
Yes, I agree that the Republican party does this...but so does the Democrat party.
Tell me that the Democrat party "cult leaders" don't "put their members in physically or emotionally distressing situation to soften them up". What do you call the political tactics of scaring the voters into voting for a lying traitor for the second time because the thought of a Romney (or any Republican) in office would be too terrible to imagine. Even though that would have been quite true...many voters did not seem to imagine that Obama's failures to follow through with his first campaign messages during his first administration would be a pretty good indicator of what he would do in his second term.
Tell me that the Democrat party doesn't also "reduce complex problems to bumper stickers, and they demand loyalty to the founder and core ideas of the cult."
And tell me that the Democrat party doesn't also "spoon feed information to their members in a way that always makes them look good and everyone else look bad.' For instance, Hartmann's blog usually always returns to a common theme of supporting the Democrat party and condemning the Republicans. I certainly agree that the Republicans are very worthy of condemnation but to let the Democrats get away without condemnation as well is total obfuscation. Oh, occasionally, Hartmann's blog will throw in a bone to make it seem like they are not a total shill for the Democrat Party to make it seem like they are "fair and balanced".
Once you realize that the Democrat Party is just another arm of the ruling elite, just another one of their tools to keep us all constrained to their dictates, you will begin to see that persistent promoters of either political party are working for the ruling elite and against the majority of citizens in the US. We all have to wake up and realize that we are all being played for fools by the ruling elite when we vote for either Republicans or Democrats...when we restrict ourselves to the narrow confines of the rules of the game as set forth by the ruling elite.
#3
Obama can say a lot of things to make it seem like he is empathetic to the plight of the majority of Americans but he is just doing what he, and other politicians do, pretending that they are not the wolves that are devouring the victims...that they are the protectors. Total bovine excrement! Don't judge Obama by his current lugubrious garbage. Judge him by his past. He's just a tool that the ruling elite are using to keep us all full of false hope and instilling in us a reticence of real and meaningful action. Break out of the mold, the trap, that the ruling elite has managed to set for us all and stop playing by their rules. Nothing will change unless the ruling elite feel threatened. We all need to get mad as hell and refuse to take it anymore. Do something different this time!
#4
Ronald Wilson (666) Reagan the founder of an evil cult? No! You gotta be kidding me? Who'd a thunk it? I thought he was a friendly Beast/Antichrist!
#5
Palin -- Other than the democratic bumper sticker "Republicans are a Cult" what did you have in mind? I always thought of the dems to be to wimpy to have a bumper sticker.
#6
Palindromedary ~ chuckle8 makes a sound point. What to do? Anger and violence will solve nothing. It seems to me the best course of action would be to organize and educate one another to vote for a third party candidate in the next election. Anger only clouds reason. In this case we have to stay smart.
BTW Todays newsletter had a link to yesterday's blog. Has anyone else experienced this?
#7
Quote article:
The Arctic's rapid warming could cost the global economy more than $60 trillion if melting permafrost releases huge quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, a new study finds. The cost nearly mirrors the $70 trillion size of the world economy in 2012.Permanently frozen ground, called permafrost, beneath the Arctic's East Siberian Sea could belch out 50 billion tons of methane at any time, researchers said in an analysis published Thursday in the journal Nature. More than a trillion tons of methane is thought to be trapped in the Arctic Ocean's icy marine sediments in the form of what are called methane hydrates, some of it in shallow water.
Because methane traps atmospheric heat 25 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide, a sudden Arctic methane release would have a catastrophic effect on the global climate
Adding 50 billion tons of methane to the atmosphere would hasten this century's predicted 3.6-degree Fahrenheit global temperature rise by 15 to 35 years
http://www.wunderground.com/news/climate-sticker-shock-arctic-thaw-could...
#8
Chuckle8: Maybe the Democrats realize that they are the only ones without a gun to defend themselves against extreme right Republicans when they are being shot at for having "leftist" bumper stickers on their cars. Maybe the Democrats are too polite or civil (read chicken) to really, physically, stand up for anything. But one Democrat bumper sticker I like is the one where the GOP elephant is peeing on "LIBERTY". I also liked, many years ago, when saw this sticker of a picture of GWBush with a caption "Go ahead, he's been pissing on you!" in a men's urinal. But, there are a lot of anti-gun and other anti Republican bumper stickers and T-shirts out there.
#9
DAnneMarc: For most people, unless they get really angry, they are not really motivated to do anything beyond being the trained seals that they've become. They will continue to rally behind a failed Democrat Party for fear that the Republicans will get in again. The ruling elite have most of us where they want us. The dummies that keep voting for the Republicans and the dummies that keep voting for the Democrats who may as well be Republicans. They'll keep the psychological pressure of "voting for the least evil" candidate. Yup, the ruling elite have us right where they want us! The only real organizing that will really matter will not be within the framework of the existing two party system. Our only hope lies in jolting some sense into this entrenched "good ole' boy" club of Democrats and Republicans that we will no longer restrict ourselves within the confines of their rigged playbook. History has shown over and over again that it has taken a rebellion by the people against tyranny in order to make any meaningful changes. Had they never rebelled, even violently, we would still be ruled by Kings and Queens and the illusion of "Royal Blood".
#10
Good work Palindromedary! Leave it to you to find a solution thinking outside the box. Bring on the permafrost! Bankrupt the world. Putting the elite on the same foothold as homeless people is poetic justice. Talk about intelligent design. Could this geographic scientific fact mirroring political evolution be merely a coincidence? These are the types of coincidences that support my faith. Isn't random selection beautifully ironic?
Oh, how the Wrath of God is poured out without measure!
#11
Palindromedary ~ Are you suggesting rebellion without organization. Pardon my naivete; but, I don't see one happening without the other. Is that not why the "right to assemble" was written into the Constitution? How can any resistance occur without organization. Any resistance without organization will not only fail, but will not even be news worthy. Change on any grand scale must occur with the blessings of the people. Only through careful organization can such efforts receive such blessings.
#12
Death is the great equalizer! No one is really a wealthy person when he dies and the important thing to remember is that money, in whatever form, is no more valuable than dirt after death. Wealth may help to buy a little more time for some of us but that time is just a flash in the pan.
I can't help but have an image in my mind of Jews in a Nazi gas chamber climbing upon one another...clawing each other...trying desperately to reach any perceived source of air. No one, at such a time, is concerned about civility. It is too late for civility when you are in your death throes. I believe we are fast approaching that scenario. All the world's humans and animals will be trampling one another, clawing one another trying to get that last breath of air.
Maybe the time to be less civil is now before it is too late.
Especially against the enemies we know are trampling on us all now. They are using every trick in the book to make us all believe we should all be civil while the Zyklon B is being primed and inserted into the pipes.
I often wondered how different the world would have been had all the Jews had weapons and a belief system that had no problem militarizing against the likes of Nazi Germany. A few eventually did and fought back in the resistance. But think about how hard it would have been if every Jewish family had a gun and actually fought back instead of dutifully climbing upon those box cars.
But, in retrospect, it seems they learned their lesson the hard way and are now very militaristic..perhaps overly so. In fact, many people believe that the Jews have become the Nazis..especially against the Palestinians.
In fact, the Jews set up their own "concentration camps" in Poland, Russia and Germany, where they starved, beat, and tortured many thousands of Germans and Polish Nazi sympathizers immediately after the fall of Germany. They went around confiscating property and sending the owners to the death camps. They were "death camps" because many prisoners were starved, medically untreated, severely beaten over and over again, and tortured to death...just like the Nazis did to them. Except I don't think there were any Zyklon B gas chambers or ovens like the Nazis had. So, in that respect, the Nazis were way more evil than the Jews later were. Can't blame them much..that's for sure!
But to properly understand history, you have to see the progression of it and avoid the pitfalls of totally demonizing one side while keeping the other side pristine and without sin of their own. Maybe, when the masses of oppressed Americans manage to overthrow our own neo-nazis that, even if some of them are Jewish, or not, in the banking, Wall Street, and corporate sectors we'll have the sanity, or humanity, to keep from creating our own "concentration camps for the ruling elite". Naw! No sense in dripping with human kindness toward those swine! Which means, I guess, that I just fell into my own pit of demons that someone like a future John Sack will write about one day.;-}
A few books were written on the subject. A good free book to read on this is by John Sack called "An Eye For An Eye" can be downloaded from http://archive.org/details/AnEyeForAnEye I bought the book many years ago and read it then.
#13
DAnneMarc: One would think that it would take a certain amount of organization for a successful endeavor. But, organization requires being able to communicate, in secret, and that is getting harder to achieve...except if all members used one time pad encryption, perhaps. And try to teach that to the masses. Although they did pretty well in Egypt just using Facebook, I understand. It wasn't really very well organized. The people, the masses, just lashed out. All it took was a trigger message to amass at a certain location. A successful endeavor also requires a certain amount of being able to trust others to not be some kind of infiltrator...or someone that won't sell others out. I believe that it would be very difficult, under the current circumstances to expect to "organize" very successfully. That would leave the only option to minimize organizational structures and, basically, if people are pressed to such an extent that they are desperate, they will likely lash out in unison...like they did in Egypt. I have heard nation's leaders and others who have echoed their nation's leaders say things like "War is a messy business"..I heard Michio Kaku, and others, try to dismiss US hegemonic actions with this phrase along with other phrases that tend to justify the criminal actions of their countries. So, in such a fashion, it could be argued that Revolution is a messy business. A lot of people will be hurt...but not as many as, over the years of continually increasing oppression, will be eventually hurt by that oppression. Blowing someone away with some weapon is way more dramatic than blowing someone away for lack of decent health or medical care. People die all the same. The former is a dramatic newsworthy event, perhaps, but the later just dies quietly and unobtrusively. No one gets held accountable for the later. No obvious villain. And the real murderers get away with their crimes while they amass their fortunes.
#14
DAnneMarc: I don't know about your wrath of "God" but the wrath of my "Teddy Bear" is at the boiling point. And good point about random selection...it is ironic..perhaps that's why bad things continually happen to "good" people just as well as to "bad" people. No supernatural favoritism for those who talk to their imaginary friend. My Teddy Bear sure doesn't listen to me..very much. Damn thing never says anything specific...only in riddles and parables. Just when I think he meant one thing, I find out that was all wrong. In fact, I have just as much of a successful event as anyone else who begs favor from their imaginary friends and just as much of a successful event as anyone who talks to no one or no thing at all. It's all random! The patterns, we can imagine, are representative of a supportive claim as to the efficacy of our beliefs in some great designer...the Great and Powerful Oz pulling the strings and talking to us through his microphone...and being the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent boss of all eternity. The one with the greatest PRISM spy network ever, who keeps constant tabs on us, so we are driven paranoid into being nice and not naughty. What!? Who said that?! I heard what my Teddy Bear said to me! No, I won't do it!..I have a whole room full of Catcher in the Rye novels as it is! The body of Teddy Bear compels us! The body of Teddy Bear compels us!
Those inconvenient deviations of what we witness, that challenges our belief system, those things that are void of what we view as evidence of design, eg: mistakes, can be attributed to the devil...or to my evil dark Teddy Bear which I keep chained in the freezer. ;-}
#15
In fact, my Teddy Bear that I keep chained in the freezer (the one I call Ursinous Oedipus Rex...he's the evil one because he killed his daddy and he kept trying to hump his mommy)....is such a devious little squirt. Licentious little bastard even tried to hump me a couple of times. He had as much decorum as a horny little Chihuahua. My other Teddy Bear, whose name is Ahura Mazda, shines radiantly day and night. And although I can never quite understand just what it is trying to tell me, I persist in believing it is the creator of the universe..watches me constantly..knows when I've been naughty or nice...and that it is looking out for me and guiding me in life's travails...and will be the great decider as to which place I will wind up after I die (or, maybe even before)...in a crematorium or a freezer....
#16
Palindromedary ~ I'm sorry, I don't have a Teddy Bear. I have a Real Doll. It's much better than an imaginary friend. It hardly talks too which is even better. Oh, wait! It has something to say. She wants me now. She can't wait. Oh, well, what are you going to do my friend. When your toys need your attention, you must go. I bid you goodnight. Sweet dreams!
#17
DAnneMarc: That was really funny! But be careful...I understand those Real Dolls can be really possessive!
#18
Quote Book: An Eye For An Eye by John Sack:
yes, the Holocaust happened, the Germans killed Jews, but that a second atrocity happened that the Jews who committed it covered up: one where the Jews killed Germans. God knows the Jews were provoked, but I learned that in 1945 they killed a great number of Germans: not Nazis, not Hider's trigger men, but German
civilians, German men, women, children, babies, whose "crime" was just to be Germans. Through the wrath of Jews, however understandable, the Germans lost more civilians than at Dresden, more than, or just as many as, the Japanese at Hiroshima, the Americans at Pearl Harbor, the British in the Battle of Britain, or the Jews themselves in Poland's occasional pogroms: so I now learned, and I was aghast to learn it. This was no Holocaust of the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, but I new that if I reported it, I’d be exhibiting, well, call it chutzpah, for I could guess what the world would say, but I felt I’d be doing the righteous thing both as a reporter and as a man who's a Jew.
#19
The cult currently has some pretty powerful tools with the likes of, Fox, Limpbaugh, ALEC, and the House of Norquist. These all make intervention quite a challenge....I should know, I have family members who with just a box of donuts in front of FOX TV have been tragically swept away to a real bad place. It really feels like the North and South drama I watched back in the eighties. In my opinion Obama stands little chance of representing the 99.99% unless we purge the Teabaggers in 2014.
#20
The answer to that question is yes and it can be done quite easily.
First I would like to pose the question that answers itself and ends every economic arguement that someone wants to propose.
Would you rather spend $9 Billion on a pipelene (that won't help us) or create and pay for 360,000 salaried jobs for 1 year?
Take any billion dollar waste/subsidy useless government program or military project and instead redirect that money to a jobs mandate that hires and trains people in the residential trades AND gives homeless families houses using what we throw away everyday, unwanted houses.
I am basing my proposal on bringing this country to full employment and how that goal would shut the republicans up and fix out economy.
Now if the President wanted to moot the republicans he could outflank them on all the points they could bring up.
The proposal is on the web and is ready to go at www.TheJobsMandate.org
#21
anobene -- how are those homeless families going to contribute to the campaign of their representatives? You know, it is the only reason a representative will vote for something.
#22
Palind -- I don't believe there was a rebellion to put FDR in office. We should copy what ever happened then. FDR policies created the greatest economy the world has ever known.
#23
If you were one of those polititians that helped create their jobs they would have their supporters/voters/contributors etc.
#24
on the economy, as with any related policy, The Jobs Mandate .org should be the only subject discussed with the goal of full empoyment PLUS reducing the Fed budget overall.
Can you create a million jobs without new stimulis money? It can.
If Bernanke directed 1 months worth of Wall Street money to The Jobs Mandate it would pay the salaries for 3, 400,000 people for 1 year. Republicans 'say' they are all about jobs so give them an ultimatum and shut them up. The President could do this and quite a lot more if he chooses to help us.
#25
the president's ultimatum would threated what?
#26
POTUS only has to put together three things that we currently throw away and he can bring this country to full employment.
people, houses and subsidies.
That is all POTUS has to put on the table to beat any Republican argument. Which was the original question asked by Thom.
#27
Now POTUS is on a cross country trip saying something about middle class jobs. I'm no longer listening.
If he were serious about helping the middle class he would adopt The Jobs Mandate.org
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