Plouffe's "Stray Voltage". Maybe it only worked for Obama

Why does President Obama never let sleeping dogs lie? Why does he have to stir the pot over "gun violence?"

The simple answer is David Plouffe's "stray voltage" theory.

The theory goes like this: Controversy sparks attention, attention provokes conversation, and conversation embeds previously unknown or marginalized ideas in the public consciousness.

This theory also applies to Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. The idea is for the community organizer to keep his followers all angried up; it correlates with the need for army commanders to keep the morale up in their soldiers.

But. There is a counter-narrative, which says that while you may want to keep your followers angried up, you definitely don't want to angry up the opposition.

Now I think that the Obamis did a pretty good job of angrying up their supporters in 2008 and 2012. And they managed pretty well to demoralize the opposition. In 2008 they blamed President Bush for everything, and they had a point. In 2012 they painted the caring, exemplary Mitt Romney as a corporate monster that sent the wives of laid-off workers to their doom.

As I understand, the point of negative ads on TV is not so much to blacken the reputation of a candidate as to demoralize his supporters.

But let's be clear. Any time you are playing the angry-up game you are playing with fire. You could, unless you are smart and/or lucky, end up demoralizing your side and angrying up the opposition.

So when President Obama decides to "politicize" the Roseburg, Oregon, shooting, is he going to energize the liberal gun-control nuts or the NRA gun-rights nuts? You tell me.

Since we are talking about the nation's First Black President, let us talk about a slightly different issue, the rage that inner-city black males express when they are "dissed" or disrespected.

Now, as a libertarian conservative I'd say that the record of the Obama administration is one long "diss" to people like me. I'd say that the popularity of candidates like Trump, Carson, and Fiorina is that they are pushing back against the day-in-day-out disrepecting of ordinary middle-class white people that is baked in the pie of liberal politics.

I'd say that the mobilization of minorities and women and young people that the Obamis achieved in 2008 and 2012 just ain't gonna work no more in 2016. Because minorities and women and young people got screwed in the Obama years. Sure, the Dems can roll out the same angry-up techniques in 2016 but I have the feeling that they won't get the same voltage, stray or otherwise, they got back when Hope and Change was new, and President Bush was the worst president ever.

I believe in the old idea that it's OK to angry up the partisans at election time. But after the election the wise leader extends the hand of friendship to the defeated side and talks up the fact that we may disagree as Democrats and Republicans, but at heart we are all Americans.

I believe that the politician that doesn't do that is sowing the wind and that after he leaves the stage his party will find that it has reaped the whirlwind.

David Brooks Calls for Kinder, Gentler University

The job of David Brooks, and it is an important one, is to gently nudge the gentry liberal elite that reads the New York Times and watches PBS and gently suggest that liberals maybe could fix a few things at the office.

Now, in "The Big University," he blandly talks up a reform movement in university America.

[F]or the past many decades colleges narrowed down to focus on professional academic disciplines, but now there are a series of forces leading them to widen out so that they leave a mark on the full human being.

But, he continues, universities need to "find a way to talk about moral and spiritual things while respecting diversity." And he comes up with four ways to do this: "reveal moral options... foster transcendent experiences... teach new things to love... apply the humanities."

The problem is, of course, that in reality the universities are merely implementing mandatory study of their secular religion, as in the American Spectator's "Professor Raccoon Brings Home the Bacon." The Deans and the administrators know that critical thinking and "departments of ethnic, gender, identity, and grievance studies are suddenly no sale." But instead of Brooks' proposed high concept they are implementing "Engaged Scholarship and Learning."

 Curricula promise “collaborative and interdisciplinary solutions to local and global challenges” and “deep and transformative experiences.” They vow to promote civic responsibility, democratic values, and public leadership through personal involvement and growth.

What they are really doing is pouring the old wine of political correctness and liberal activism into new wineskins, as in conducting "research and activism related to the experiences of Latina housecleaners."

So you can see that Brooks' high-minded call for transcendence is already churning out more of the same-old-same-old liberal political activism.

Brooks begins his article noting that most universities were "founded as religious institutions, explicitly designed to cultivate their students’ spiritual and moral natures" and then branched out into "career training." But the truth is that the religion has been there all along. Only today the universities are teaching the secular religion of liberal activism, rather than the Christianity or Deism of their founders.

Brooks is a good guy, but the current university model cannot reform itself: big bureaucratic institutions seldom do. If you want moral options, transcendence and something to love you won't get it in any big institution.

Today's universities are the secular seminaries of the big government state. They are funded by the state and they serve the state. They are great big bureaucratic systems and system is domination. If you want moral options and transcendence and love then you are going to have to get away from system and disentangle yourself from bureaucracy.

The reality is that today's university is a very unfriendly place for anyone that treasures moral options and transcendence and it's not going to change any time soon. And it's going to get worse, if Professor Raccoon has anything to do with it.

Government's Job is To Protect

It goes without saying that the job of government is to protect us. But from what? Obviously from enemies foreign and domestic. But then what?

Should the government protect us from shooters like the young man that shot and killed young people at Umqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, last week?

Well, yes, of course. But what should the college actually do? Should it establish a secure perimeter and search everyone that comes through the perimeter? Should it have an armed corps of first responders ready to respond to a shooting incident? Should the government just take away everybody's guns?

You can see that, as soon as you dig down from pure generality to specifics that things get complicated. Because the simple fact is that government cannot "keep us safe." It cannot be everywhere all the time preparing for a one in a million chance that a perp will start shooting people.

And then there is the catchphrase that, when seconds count, the government is minutes away.

Government's job, to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic, is also government's game. If you are in politics almost every issue that you use to get elected comes down to protection. Here is a climate change activist from "Know Tomorrow" playing this game.

To face climate change it’s going to take all of us — a movement in which each and every one of us takes action to motivate our political and business leaders to protect our planet and our society. [my bold]

And really, every liberal protest movement is an attempt to establish and enforce, by collective "action," some new danger from which political leaders should "protect" us.

We want government to protect us, with the minimum wage, from employers that don't pay their workers enough. We want government to protect us from greedy bankers and short-term corporate CEOs. We want government to protect us from racists, sexists, and homophobes. And we want government to protect the environment.

The thing about protection is that it easily turns into a protection racket, as in "nice little business you got here, pity if something should happen to it." It's not just criminal gangs that make that offer of protection. Governments do it all the time. So much so that St. Augustine asked, 1,500 years ago what was the difference between a government and a gang of robbers. His answer? The "addition of impunity."

And the thing that governments do, most thoroughly, is say that unless you pay the government, you don't work and you can't run a business and you can't hire people and you can't sell goods and services.

It's the old, old game. Who will protect us from the protectors? Quis custodiet ipsos
custodes?

You tell me.

Has PC Gone About As Fur As It Can Go?

One thing we have seen from all three of the outside GOP candidates for President of the United States is that they have been breaking the rules on Political Correctness.

Donald Trump seems to break the rules all the time. Ben Carson said that he didn't think a Muslim should be elected president and lived to tell the tale, and Carly Fiorina told Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to watch the Planned Parenthood tapes, and it didn't seem to hurt her either, although every liberal on the planet is convinced that the PP tapes are a pack of lies.

The point that occurs to me is that the regular elected officials running for president wouldn't dare to do that. They have been, if you like, neutered by what we like to call Cultural Marxism. They know what you are not allowed to say, and they don't say it.

Republicans and conservatives complain about this cowardice all the time, but we don't have to try to do politics in the new lethal battlefield where one "gaffe" can end your career.

So what's going on? Why are the new guys getting away with it? The short answer is that they had nothing to lose, so they could afford to take risks that the professional politicians, from long experience, knew not to take.

But the long answer, I hope, is that political correctness is starting to run up against opposition from the ordinary American people.

Look, there is immense strategic cunning in Gramsci's "march through the institutions" and with Marcuse's tolerant intolerance to shut up the opponents to the glorious march of lefty justice. They have taught generations of lefty activists how to play the PC game.

But there is a principle bigger than politics; it is that all government is injustice. It is one thing to be an outsider, railing against injustice. But as soon as you seize the reins of power then you become the brute insider, the exploiter, the oppressor, the dominator. Our liberal friends make a great show of being outsiders battling against Wall Street and Big Business and the white patriarchy. But the truth is that they are the ruling class, not some chappie on Wall Street or another one sitting in a corporate boardroom. Hey, when President Obama told BP to cough up $20 billion, it did so. It didn't go and argue in the courts. So who has the power?

Oh sure. People knuckle under to the PC boys. They recite the approved ideas to get grades in school and college. And they end up parroting a lot of the ruling class's agenda. But they hate it. They hate it because of the basic instinct in all men, articulated by Nicholas Wade. Men like power and will seize it if they can. But if they cannot have power their next choice is that no-one shall rule over them.

Back in 2009 I wrote again and again that the Obamis were making a strategic mistake by putting the pedal to the metal on their liberalism. The best thing would have been to keep the mailed fist inside the velvet glove and make nice, and solidify the emerging Democratic majority. But they didn't. They acted like thieves in the night that had to to grab the swag and run. Maybe they were right and had no time to lose.

The whole Obama experience has been a vast seminar in Government 101. The reason for the government to rule according to law is that when you rule by executive action or by ignoring the law you provoke a head of rebellion. And that is a really stupid thing to do unless, like Mao and his adepts, you are willing to use Terror. And even then, according to Crane Brinton in his Anatomy of Revolution, Terror cannot last forever. Eventually it must relax and reaction will set in.

The point is that people will cringe before bullies, but they hate doing it. And sooner or later they find a way to do for the bullies.

I wonder if this is the electoral cycle when the PC bullies get their comeuppance. Only time will tell.

But here is something to ponder. Those professional politicians that are used to playing under the old rules are paying attention. Pretty soon they will be coming out and playing under the new rules. That should be interesting to watch.

Playing Out Obama's String

When an NFL team at the end of the season has no chance left to get into the playoffs, sportswriters write about "playing out the string." There's no death or glory in it, but the team is still expected to come out on game day ready to play.

That's the situation the US is in with nearly sixteen months to go in the Obama Era. There is almost nothing to be done until President Obama leaves office on January 20, 2017.

So perhaps we just have to sit by while the president makes a mess of the Middle East and the economy continues to sputter.

For many it is too frustrating, and that's why the Republicans in the House just showed Speaker John Boehner the door. And that's probably why three people without experience of elected office are leading the Republican race for the president.

The problem is not that Obama is unteachable, as the Wall Street Journal recently opined. The problem, as I've written, is that liberals are unteachable.

There is not necessarily anything shameful in that. We all have our world views, our belief systems, and we stick to them no matter what. The liberal world view is that foreign wars and carrying the big stick solves nothing. In fact it is worse than nothing; it is imperialism and colonialism. We should concentrate instead on solving problems at home, fighting racism and inequality and homelessness.

So that's why the Democrats determined to retreat from the US world empire built up since World War II. We can't solve the world's problems; in fact we often make them worse. For instance we took Iraq and broke it. Every culture is different; we should let people determine their own political arrangements rather than impose our own.

Domestically, of course, Democrats believe in fundamental transformation. They believe in detailed political and administrative supervision of race relations; they believe in political and economic interventions to correct historical inequality. And they believe in detailed political and administrative supervision of the workplace and the market economy. Even left-wing writers like Jürgen Habermas have admitted that such a politics amounts to "internal colonization."

My world view says that all politics and government is colonization. Because government is force. And my world view says that, if you are going to choose, it's better for the US government to carry a big stick outside the US rather than inside. In other words the job of the United States government to protect our external trade from tin-pot dictators and pirates, and force and projection of force are the only ways to do that. Within the US the efficacy of force is more limited, and morally questionable. Because what is the government doing when it puts the hammer down on, e.g., Uber drivers?

Over the years liberals have convinced themselves that their world view for external retreat and internal conquest is the right and proper thing to do. My judgement is that they are wrong, and the Obama experiment is a pedal-to-the-metal effort that will prove it.

Remember back in the 2000s? Judis and Teixeira prophesied that Democrats would own the future with The Emerging Democratic Majority of minorities, women, educated and young people. Well, minorities got to be hardest hit by the real-estate crash, young people are living in their parents' basement. So how's that emerging majority doing, Barack?

Back in 2008 I voted for Barack Obama because I wanted Democrats to own foreign policy and show what they really believed in beyond attacking President Bush and everything to do with him.

But I can see now that I only saw half the picture. We needed Democrats to take the bull by the horns and implement their entire world view and prove to the world that it was all rubbish and delusion.

So that's where we are today. Americans instinctively understand that something is wrong with the way the government works. They understand that it is Time for a Change. Hey maybe we could have Hope and Change. For a change.

The only question, after we play out the string, is what change?

An Open Letter to UW's Sarachik and Wallace

Dear Dr. Sarachick and Dr. Wallace:

I was rather disappointed to see your names on the now notorious "Gang of 20" RICO Letter. You see, I live over the hill from the University of Washington Seattle campus in Green Lake. It is painful to me that you two scientist chaps would get yourselves involved in such a tawdry affair.

There was a time when liberals cared about siccing the government on political opponents. Remember the McCarthy era? But these days, it seems that any means is OK for advancing a political agenda. The RICO act was passed to make it easier for the federal government to pursue actual criminal gangs. Do you really want to expand the use of RICO so that the government can use it against any conspiracy? Really? Have you thought through that? Have you thought about what a Republican administration staffed to the gills with Koch Brothers adepts could do with such an expanded RICO?

I have a number of problems with your letter, reproduced here, now that the original on the IGES website has been withdrawn.

The letter you signed is not about science, but about politics. I looked at Brulle, 2013, and it is not science. It is political advocacy. Surely you can see that. And the other references in the letter are obviously books of political advocacy. Nothing wrong with that. It just isn't science.

The letter you signed wants to make normal political chicanery into a crime. Let's accept the climate advocates' premise that the opposition to climate change policy is driven by Big Oil and Big Conservatism and that it is a cynical program knowingly based on lies to mislead the American people. If you made that illegal you make just about all politics illegal.  All politics is a conspiracy: people agreeing on a particular cause band together. They raise money; they spend it. Very often their contributors want to hide their identities, because of fear of reprisal. They castigate their opponents as knaves and liars. So even if Big Oil and the Koch Brothers' financed foundations are monsters and are opposing climate change policies for their own selfish and anti-social purposes, that is their right in a free country.

The letter you signed used the tobacco company suit as an example to follow. Really. How much do you know about the tobacco suit? Do you know that most of the money went to the lawyers, and a lot of the rest to governments so they could run anti-tobacco campaigns although in the event a lot of the money was just spent on programs, money being fungible? Do you know that actual smokers got very little of the settlement money? In my view the tobacco suit itself was something of a conspiracy -- to milk the tobacco companies of their profits.

The letter you signed says that, speaking "as climate scientists... America's response to climate change... is insufficient." You may be right. But the point of politics is that the people and their representatives are perfectly within their rights to say: "screw the future, we ain't spending no money on this egg-head stuff. Give us our entitlements and shut up." And if Congress is "recalcitrant," well the answer to that is to elect a Congress that isn't recalcitrant. But judging from the election returns of the last few years, the people are perfectly happy with a recalcitrant Congress. What people want right now is jobs, and I must say, as a member of the 1% (which you pretty well have to be to afford to live in North Seattle) I sympathize with the people.

Now we have the revelations that the lead signatory of your letter, Jagadish Shukla, seems, on the face of it, to be "double-dipping" in violation of the protocols of the National Science Foundation. Who knows what the truth is? And what does it say that only right-wing organizations have so far written about it?  Only I would say this. When Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit gets involved you'd better start looking for the exits.

I'm sorry that you chaps got involved in this mess; I'm sure that you regret it. Perhaps we could get together for coffee some day. I doubt if I'd be interested in your politics, but I would certainly be interested to hear about the science.

Sincerely,

Christopher Chantrill

It's Not the President Who's "Unteachable"

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an edit page piece on "An Unteachable President." And the whole conservative commentariat chimed in too.

Yeah, the president is unteachable. Unreachable even. But that's not the point. President Obama is not an island entire of itself. He is exactly what the liberal ruling class wanted. First of all, black, so it can pat itself on the back for its evolvement and its fight against racism. But the whole constellation of President Obama's policies, from Obamacare to green energy to the response to the "rape crisis" in the universities, all of it is just what the liberal professor wanted from his willing student.

It is not President Obama who is unteachable. It is the whole liberal ruling class.

It is not just President Obama who wanted to ram Obamacare down America's throat, it's the whole liberal ruling class. They think that they are called to design and administer the whole US health care system, because fairness, and nothing is going to talk them out of it.

It is not just President Obama trying to ram green energy down our throats, it's the whole liberal ruling class. They think that the science is settled, the earth is going to fry, and they have a moral duty to manage the switch from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy, and nothing is going to talk them out of it.

It is not just President Obama pushing the whole sexism, racism, homophobia agenda, it's the whole liberal ruling class. They think that racism is America's Original Sin, and they are called to atone for it--with your money and your life and your job. That's what the whole "victim culture" is all about. The world is full of victims, and the liberal ruling class is called to advocate for them.

It is obvious that nothing is going to educate the liberal ruling class, nothing except a rebellion.

A couple of early 20th century philosophers knew what had to be done in a case like this. Smokoe Joe of Brendan Chase and The Badger of The Wind in the Willows both understood that, with certain people, you can't teach them. You "learn 'em."

That is the situation we face with liberals. There is no way of teaching them. Why, they are supposed to be the teachers, the educated evolved ones. So we will have to "learn 'em." This is also known as learning the hard way when your fashionable theories collapse of their internal contradictions and you lose political power to the insurgents.

If you look back, we almost had liberals on the ropes in the 1980s. Liberals said in the late 1970s that in the complicated modern world America was ungovernable. So the inflation and recession and the failures of President Carter were facts of nature. Nothing can be done, as the song has it.

Then came President Reagan and proved them all wrong. And then WASPy President Bush succeeded him. Liberals made a tactical correction and pretended that they were New Democrats and that they agreed that "the era of big government is over." But they couldn't change their spots, didn't even want to. And so we got to President Obama and his "fundamental transformation." I wonder who taught him that catchphrase?

The good thing is that we can definitely experience the existential disquiet bubbling up in the great American middle class. They know that something is wrong.

But look, this is democracy. Just because the people think that something is wrong doesn't mean that help is on the way. We could elect a chucklehead for President who could compound the Obama liberal errors into a real disaster. All that the voters can do is vote for Four More Years or they can vote for Time for a Change. That is all.

The good news is that almost all the Republican candidates are proposing about the same agenda. That's not surprising. They all have pollsters, and they all have conservative intellectual policy analysts, and they all swim in the same water.

The bigger problem is how to change the culture. How to delegitimize the victim culture. How to up-vote bourgeois dignity, bourgeois equality, and bourgeois virtue and down-vote the sexual revolution, entitlements, and the victim culture of Julia the Government Girl, Pajama Boy, Mattress Girl, and Clock Boy.

It's the cultural agenda that troubles me. Because we have not yet begun to fight.